Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERT EVENING GISBORNE, TUESDAY, JUNE 30, 1896.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7666, 30 June 1896, Page 2

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERT EVENING GISBORNE, TUESDAY, JUNE 30, 1896.

Mb Cecil Rhodes has been "jettisoned" to Bave the South African Chartered Co. from wreck. The acceptance of his resignation, which has been in the hands of the chairman for the past couple of mouths, will only have been resorted to as a last expedient to save the fortunes of the company at a most critica. stage. The publication of cypher telegram s which disclosed the plot connected with Dr Jameson's raid, absolutely established Mr Rhodes' complicity in the affair, and proved beyond a doubt that Mr Rhodes and Mr Beit, two directors of the company, as well a s Mr Rutherfoord Harris, the secretary of the company in South Africa, were privy to the movement which originated iv Johannesburg. Money, men, and arms were supplied by the company at their direction. Holding the position of Premier of a neighboring State and managing director of an Imperial enterprise, it is pointed out that he had responsibilities of a wider kind which should have restrained him from mixing himself actively with a revolutionary movement and a filibustering raid. Against the gravest errors which Mr Rhodes has been guilty of, British people cannot but weigh his splendid services to the Empire. In the last twelve years he has added to our possessions in South Africa territory thrice the ext6nt of the British Isles, wresting it from other Powers who surely would have secured it had there been no South African Company and no great Imperialist such as Mr Rhodes upon its Board. Whatever may be the public judgment upon Mr Rhodes' acts, says the Times, his aims cannot be abandoned without disaster to the Empire. It is clear that the maDifeat destiny of South Africa is that all the European settlements south of the Zambesi, except Damaraland and the Portuguese territory, shall be bound together in a federal union. Whether they are to bo federated under the British ftug, like the provinces which constitute the Dominion of Canada, or whether they are to form the United States of South Africa, following the example of our former colonies in North America, depends upon the line of policy that is adopted at this crisis by the Imperial Government and the Imperial Parliament. The abrogation of the charter, says our great contemporary, would be a step in the direction of separation. It might well prove the beginning of a movement, the end of which would be the alienation of colonies long prosperous under our rule and almost essential to the preservation of our naval and Imperial dominion. It 13 probably to save the cancellation of the charter that Mr Rhodes has been thrown overboard.