264 ENGLISHSAOA

years they not only paid the bulk of the country's taxation but
outnumbered the Dutch burghers. Kruger could only maintain
Dutch independence by denying them the franchise. If he
granted them the rights of democratic citizenship, they would
deliver his country and its ancient, primitive civilisation to the
- enemy. For the uitlanders, most of whom were British, natural-
ly preferred Rhodes's conception of South Africa to Kruger's.

Rhodes had only to be patient. Kruger was trying for the
impossible: he was fighting against a majority and against
time. But, though no one knew it but himself, so was Rhodes,
In his early forties he learned that he was a dying man.
He had accomplished only a tithe of his great dream. If he was
to see it achieved, it must be achieved quickly. He could not
trust others to complete it. Already the power that had
come to him was impairing his character: he was growing
arrogant and impatient of opposition. Discarding the virtues-
tact, patience and conciliation—by which he had climbed, he
staked all on a gamble. The gamble failed.

The armed Jameson Raid from Rhodesia into the Trans-
vaal put a term to Rhodes's power as a politician. The
Dutch felt he had betrayed them: the English liberals and
humanitarians, who had been growing increasingly suspicious
of his wealth, his dubious companions and his attitude to
the native problem, felt their worst fears confirmed. Rhodes
had shown the cloven hoof. His failure discredited his
vision and made Little Englandism a permanent mood among
idealists and progressives. It was even assumed that he had
engineered the raid to improve the value of the Chartered
Company's properties and shares. Henceforward he was a man
tainted and cut off from the people he had sought to serve.
Though there was much that was great in the final years of his
life, the future of South Africa and the Empire passed into other
hands. His legacy to his country was Rhodesia, the Rhodes
Scholarships* Trust, and, when his mistake had been expiated
by the Boer War, the Union of South Africa.

A few months before his death at the age of 49, at the bitterest
moment of the wax, when victory had become certain and foolish
men were talking of revenge, Rhodes addressed the South African
League at Cape Town. "You think," he said, "you have beaten
the Dutchl But it is not so. The Dutch are not beaten; what
is beaten is Krugerism, a corrupt and evil government, no more