RHODES AND CLIVE.

Evening Star, Issue 11725, 7 April 1902, Page 1

RHODES AND CLIVE.

An interesting parallel might be instituted between the gTeat Imperialist who is to be laid to rest beneath the shadow of the Matoppo Hills and the great general and statesman who one hundred and twentyeight years ago passed into the world beyond the grave. Both men came of a good old English family, not overburdened with wealth, but with generations of healthy English blood behind them. Both left their native land when young men, both were subject to ill-health, and both went to possessions of the British Crown little known to the mass of their countrymen, but where adventure was to the adventurous and fortune to the fortune-seeker. .Both 'quickly established a reputation among their immediate contemporaries as men cast in no common mould. Both had gained a commanding Influence in the counsels of those who held the destinies of South Africa and British India in their hands at an age when the. majority are hut. commencing their careers. Both were impatient of control, large of heart, far-seeing, prepared to take chances at which the normal man hesitated, faithful in friendship, and animated with an imperious love for England and England's supremacy. Both added to the Empire an extent of territory greater than that which any single conqueror or potentate, general or legislator, had done or is likely again to do. The one brought the wealth and teeming myriads of the gorgeous East under the Crown ; the other has made an all-red South Africa from the Cape to the Zambesi inevitable. Both had many political and personal enemies, Iwth were charged with every conceivable iniquity, both faced the ordeal of parlimentary inquiry, and both died at the. age of fortynine. We recognise, of course, that the parallel may be pushed too far; that it will not fit in detail—that one accompkshed by the sword what the other did by negotiation and trade; that Clive did admittedly what the most unswerving of eulogists cannot defend, and that in his love of ostentation, titles, dress, establishments, and the like he differed from Ids great successor whose untimely loss the British people now moum. Still, the comparison is not without interest. It might even be claimed that the differences lay rather hi the age than in the men. To establish a family, to become a peer, to meet trickery with trickery, to accept pay in return for public services were characteristics of Lite eighteenth century. Clive in dealing with the native princes of India was dealing with other material than that of the Matabeles. The latter were as confidingly simple as they were cruelly savage, and either phase of passion sprang from the same root. They were sii.vage and cruel to us because they did not know the whites or their motives, and they were trustful and flung down their aims when they learned who and what they were. iNot so with the princes and nabobs, of the East. Lying, trickery, treachery, trafficking with French and English at one and the same time, cruel, wicked, and devilish, the men Clive had to deal with were never at any time or under any conditions reliable. But in handling either, the same confidence in their own personality, their disregard for well-meant cautions', their trusting to their own policy, however much it differed from that of "others—in these things Clive and Rhodes were strangely alike. When Rajah Sahib, with his thousands beliind him, called upon Clive, who was shut up in Arcot, with a few hundred starving Sepoys and Europeans, to surrender, the Englishman replied that the father of Rajah Sahib was a usurper, his army a rabble, and he had better think twice before he sent his poltroons against English soldiers. On the eve of Plassy the majority of his officers favored withdrawal. Clive, after a solitary walk, decided to tight, and thus f.eaied the fate of Surajah Dowlah and of India. Rhodes, in his relations with the Matabeles, was animated with a like disregard for advice. He declined an armed escort, he met the chiefs upon their own ground, lie harangued them in terms of unqualified indignation, aud then that race which had for so long struck terror into the hearts of the South African settlers laid down their arms, even as he willed. It was this same resentful, passionate spirit which had, both in Clive and Rhodes when boys, expressed itself in an undisciplined manner in school and playground. Governed and weighted by a due appreciation of responsibility and the riper experience of years, it proved a factor of moment in the destinies of the Empire. The charges brought against Clive were in part true, and in part —the larger part—false. That he had accepted sums of money from the man he had placed in Surajah Dowlah's stead, and that he had tricked and fooled Omichund, the banker, was true; but that he had robbed and tortured the native, that lie had accumulated his fortune by unspeakably infamous means, and that he was a monster of criminality and wickedness was emphatically faLse. Clive cleared out the harpies who. were sucking the life-blood from the native race; he laid down principles of government which were followed until the old East India Company disappeared amid the chaos of the Mutiny; and he refused fortune upon fortune that others might have taken, and plausibly defended. Give's policy, in brief, reduced the dividends and marred the schemes of. the all-powerful company he was sent out to represent—two items sufficient to gain any man the execration of every self-respecting shareholder and official Rhodes, through his administration of and connection with the diamond iields, gained for himself the vituperation of every small-souled man the Empire over. By many lie was regarded as a vampire, a taskmaster, a sordid millionaire, evtr seeking for wealth through the blood and agony of countless victims. He was the author of the war, the unholy manipulator of the stock market, a soulless monopolist, dead alike to pity or to flame. Fortunately our age is not the age of Clive, and therefore Cecil Rhodes had not had to wait for a generation or two before his name was cleared from the venom of his contemporaries. In Clive's day there were neither telegraphs nor special corresponds s, nor a free cheap Press. In the eighteenth cenfuiy it took nearly two years before a letter written in London was answered from India. Everything had to be tested hy the memories of a. fewmen, who reported slowly and laboriously what they believed had happened to men 15,000 miles away. Add to this the bitter ness, the rancor, the personal animus which were the common characteristics of that day, aud we cease to wonder how such libels on men like Clive became translated into gospel truth. Cecil Rhodes worked beneath the full gla.re of the electric light. Such men as he live and move and have their being in a publicity of which our ancestors did not dream, and among its compensating advantages are two: a lie can soon be nailed, and a man can be known for what he is. There arc. it is true, some points of detail, the motives for which time alone can show, yet to be learned about Cecil Rhodes; but sufficient is known of the man to claim for him from all Englishmen who love and revere their Motherland,' under Avhatever skies they may dwell fir wherever their lot may be cast., a feeling of reverential gratitude that, eren as in the eighteenth century, jio in our own day, the strong and able man was called forth from among his fellows to lay the foundations of a policy that shall in the near future be not alone for the glory of a single people, bat for the honor and genuine well-l>eing of humanity.