CECIL RHODES AND SIR ALFRED MILNER The conquest of South Africa is one of the most curious episodes in English history.

Begun through purely mercenary motives, it yet acquired a character of grandeur which, as time went on, divested it of all sordid and unworthy suspicions.

South Africa has certainly been the land of adventurers, and many of them found there either fame or disgrace, unheard-of riches or the most abject poverty, power or humiliation.

At the same time the Colony has had amongst its rulers statesmen of unblemished reputation and high honour, administrators of rare integrity, and men who saw beyond the fleeting interests of the hour into the far more important vista of the future.
When President Kruger was at its head the Transvaal Republic would have crumbled under the intrigues of some of its own citizens.

The lust for riches which followed upon the discovery of the goldfields had, too, a drastic effect.