A few of the richest of them were the most hopeless politically--ever ready to sacrifice principle for an extra dividend of a quarter per cent.; and, in their inmost souls, ready to bow the knee to Oom Paul and his unwholesome, undemocratic, and corrupt government, if only the dividends moved on and up.
Byng was not a great genius, and he had never given his natural political talent its full chance; but his soul was bigger than his pocket.

He had a passionate love for the land--for England--which had given him birth; and he had a decent pride in her honour and good name.
So it was that he had almost savagely challenged some of the sordid deliberations of this stern conference.

In a full-blooded and manly appeal he begged them "to get on higher ground." If he could but have heard it, it would have cheered the heart of the broken and discredited pioneer of Empire at Capetown, who had received his death-warrant, to take effect within five years, in the little cottage at Muizenberg by the sea; as great a soul in posse as ever came from the womb of the English mother; who said as he sat and watched the tide flow in and out, and his own tide of life ebbed, "Life is a three days' trip to the sea-shore: one day in going, one day in settling down, and one day in packing up again." Byng had one or two colleagues who, under his inspiration, also took the larger view, and who looked ahead to the consequences yet to flow from the fiasco at Doornkop, which became a tragedy.

What would happen to the conspirators of Johannesburg?
What would happen to Jameson and Willoughby and Bobby White and Raleigh Grey?
Who was to go to South Africa to help in holding things together, and to prevent the worst happening, if possible?
At this point they had arrived when they saw-- ...

The dull dank morn stare in, Like a dim drowned face with oozy eyes.
A more miserable morning seldom had broken, even in England.
"I will go.