'8th Atig.
We ate very sorry for Mr. Chamberlain and the figure he will cut hereafter in the history of the Jameson Raid if. really came on him asia surprise; for while the House of Commons Committee ina burried and scamped report has acquitted him of all previous knowledge of Dr. Jameson's intentions, the whole course of the Committee, as far as the celebrated telegrams and the evidence of Miss Flora Shaw and others of the conspirators are concerned, cannot but make the unprejudiced reader convinced that, if Mr.-Chamberlain' wes not privy to the' intended stroke, he is a fool; and no-one has ever suggested that he is a fool. Miss Shaw, who is the colonial editor of the Times, was careful to assure the Committee that she acted throughout in the miterest of journalism and not asa conspirator; but it is evident that she devoted herself actively to keeping the Colonial Office and the Times up to the mark, and that she was thoroughly trasted to do this by Mr. Rhodes and his friends; so that if there was any crime about it, she was indubitably particeps criminis, although she was in her own opinion not a conspirator. the difficulty for the plain man is to know whether there was a crime in the Raid; for while the tools, Dr. Jameson and his followers, were imprisoned for their share in it, Mr. Rhodes, the instigator, gets off scot-free and is not even removed from the Privy Council. When thie news first came, Mr. Chamberlain not only vouched in the House of Commons for Mr. Rhodes's personal innocence, but undertook that if the Chattered Company was involved in the raid, its charter should be revoked, It is now well known, though Mr. Chamberlain declares he had no suspicion of it at the time, that Mr. Rhodes was guilty up to the hilt, but he is still Privy: Councillor of the Queen, and the Chartered Company does not flourish any worse than it did before. We draw attention to this question because the action of the present Government in the matter of the Raid, and in the matter of the Armenians and Greeks, lias injured the reputation of England all over the world. People who live quietly at hornie and read only their favourite English newspaper, do not know this; but we over-seas men, who mix with people of all nationalities, cannot help knowing it and regretting it. Jubilee rejoicings and the respect in which the Queen personally. is held all over the world, have overshadowed this for the moment, but it has made a very deep and very regrettable impression, particularly in the United States, and had undoubtedly something to do with the rejection by a minority (not by a majority, as the Spectator and some others of the English papers mistakenly suppose,) of. the U.S. Senate of the Arbitration Treaty with Great Britain.
We do not wish to condemn Mr, Chamberlain.. Mr. Rhodes and his friends may have persuaded the Colonial Secretary that if England did not, some rival Power would annex the Transvaal. We know that Upper Burma. was taken away from King ''heehaw. because the Indian Government hud reason to believe that France had immediate designs on it; and it is quite possible. that facts which. it is inconvenient to publish were laid before Mr. Chamberlain which seemed to demonstrate to him the importance of prompt action on the part of Great Britain in South Africa.. It is quite possible that if these facts were known they would be seen to justify Mr. Chamberlain in wiukiog at the raid. Miss Shaw indicated this in her telegram to Mr. Rhodes of the 17th of December, 1895 "Chamberlain is sound in the event of interference by any European power, but I have special reason to believe he wishes rising immediately." She explained that this "special reason" came from. her conversation with Mr, Edward Fairfield, one of the principal Under-Secretaries at the Foreign Office, who is since, unfortunately, dead. Mr. Fairfield, Miss Shaw said, remarked to her that if a rising was to occur he hoped it would be soon. As Mr. Fairfield was confessedly one of Mr. Chamberlain's most able and trusted familiars, Miss Shaw naturally inferred that Mr. Chamberlain knew there was going to be a rising at Johannesburg. Mr. Chamberlain's love of shuffling came strongly into light in reference to Mr. Pairfield. When it was firat hinted that, the Colonial. Office must' have known what was in contemplation in the 'I'ransvaal because Mr, Fairfield knew. all about it, Mr. Chamberlain said it was impossible that a man like Mr. Fairfield could have known about it and not done everything in. his power to stop it. When it.came out that Mr. Fairfield was told about it, Mr. Chamberlain said that Mr, Pair-field was deaf, and probably did not hear clearly what was told him; but when Miss Shaw testified that Mr. Fairfield himself recommended an early rising, no farther explaining away was sible. Mr. Rhodes himself most have been strikingly ignorant of Mr. Chamberlain's ignorance, if he could telegraph as he did to Miss Shaw on the 30th of December, 1895, just, on the eve of the Raid:. "Inform Chamberlain I-can get through all right if he supports me."
History, we take it, will sum the matter up in some such words as these:—Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Belt, Directors of the Chartered Company, wanted the Transvaal, to pull the Chartered Company out of the hole into which it was sliding through the successive failures of Mashonaland, Manicaland, and Matabeleland to justify the hopes of their invaders. Mr. Rhodes was,-no doubt, also actuated: by.the desire to make the whole of South Africa British. Mr. Chamberlain was
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.