hands. For he had changed Rhodes's declaration of equal rights for every civilised man' into 'equal rights for every white man,' and thereupon Jameson called him a liar, challenged him to prove his words, and fairly chased him round the native territories.

Then comes an undated note of triumph from Cape Town :

'DEAR SAM,-Yes, it is a good win. Thanks for cable. Sprigg even now won't go, and must be removed with dynamite; but I think we shall manage it in the next couple of days-then the beastly work begins. Already everybody wants every billet. With luck I may get home for a month about July for health.-Yrs.,

'L. S. JAMESON.'

It was indeed a good win. Jameson's victory at Grahamstown had given the Progressives a lead. Sir Gordon Sprigg was defeated at East London by Dr. Smartt, and, even more terrible for the Bond, Colonel Crewe beat Sauer at Aliwal North,1 and Merriman was thrown out at Wodehouse. Of the Government only two unimportant Ministers were left in the House.

Yet it remained a close fight, for as Jameson put it, not the Archangel Gabriel would have stood a chance in a Dutch constituency unless he were a Bondman. And the Bond and Progressive parties were so evenly balanced that on February 15, 1904, the parties were standing level with forty-five members each, with only five more results to come in.

But Barkly West, Prieska, and Tembuland all returned Progressives, so, as the final results stood, the Progressive party had a majority of five in a

1 Sauer had represented Aliwal North for twenty-seven years.

House of ninety-five members. The majority, moreover, was pledged, and it had for its leader Dr. Jameson, so that whether Chamberlain liked it or no, there was now nothing else to do but make him Prime Minister.

CHAPTER XXXV

JAMESON PRIME MINISTER

'His high mettle, under good control,

Gives him Olympic speed and shoots him to the goal.

THE undated letter just quoted was probably written on mail day, February 17, 1904, for on that day we find the Beaufort West Courier blandly announcing that 'Sir Gordon Sprigg will meet Parliament without a constituency, following several British precedents, but with sufficient support. The present Ministry slightly modified will remain in office.' What British precedent there could be for a Prime Minister to continue in office without a seat and without a party [to be exact, with only two followers in Parliament]1 the student of Erskine May might be puzzled to determine. As for the dynamite' we find a hint in the Cape Times of the same day'that H. E. the Governor might follow the example of Sir Bartle Frere, who dismissed the Molteno Ministry.' Certain it is that the very next day Sir Gordon Sprigg 'tendered his resignation to the Governor, who sent for Dr. Jameson and asked him to form a Ministry.' The 'tenacious sticker' had indeed defeated the 'slashing fighter,' and since there was now neither Merriman nor Sauer, the Raid for a time at least would not be thrown in his face like a football on a string.' Yet, he could not but see 1 The Hon. John Frost and Sir Bisset Berry.

that once more he had got himself into an extremely uncomfortable position.

Invading the lazy tangle of Cape politics, Jameson had created a solid pledged' party, by appealing to a common sentiment in separate communities. But, sentiment apart, the interests of these communities were opposite and conflicting. The strongholds of the British Party were Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, and Kimberley, Grahamstown, and King William's Town, and a small but important country section of Eastern Province and Border British farmers.

Port Elizabeth and East London competed for the rich prize of the Johannesburg trade. Against them both Delagoa Bay and Durban also had a great advantage in point of distance; but owing to the steepness of the escarpment on the east these two lines of approach to Johannesburg had also certain disadvantages which gave the Colonial ports reasons for hope that under fair treatment they might not be altogether driven out of the interior trade. Cape Town was so far from the centre of wealth that, except for light and passenger traffic, she had almost fallen out of the running.

Easy to imagine that a not altogether friendly power in the Transvaal, bled in the days of its weakness by the monopoly the Colonial ports had once enjoyed, should play off one against another and heighten their jealousies in order to obtain the best possible terms for its traffic.

And that is what befell. Johannesburg gave the Portuguese port of Delagoa Bay the lion's share of its trade in exchange for facilities for recruiting labour. Railway rates roughly upon a mileage basis not only penalised the British against the foreign

ports and Natal against Delagoa Bay, and the Colonial ports against Natal, but Port Elizabeth against East London. And this made Port Elizabeth the more bitter, as the railway system she commanded was thought to be the true fighting line for the trade of the interior.

Moreover, the miners of Kimberley blamed the merchants of the coast ports for the high cost of living, arguing that the ports paid nothing in railway rates. but that these rates formed a large part of the revenue of the Colony and were a charge not upon trade, but upon industry.

These divergences between the four towns were sunk for the moment in their common fear of the Bond, a power not only hostile politically, but economically. For the Dutch farmers supported both a racial and an economic policy based on the protection of agriculture. And, trade being depressed beyond all precedent, and stock having been decimated by an unexampled drought, the people of the towns were in a state almost of panic about the cost of living.

Jameson designed to continue the Rhodesian policy of friendship with the Dutch farmers; a policy which must bring him into conflict, sooner or later, with the cheap food and free trade sentiments of the bulk of his own followers. The position of a Prime Minister who desires to follow a policy at variance with the interests of his party must always be difficult even when he commands a large majority, but, as Jameson had a majority of only one in the Upper, and from five to seven in the Lower House of Parliament, his situation was desperate from the

outset.

Trouble began with the formation of a Ministry.