Cecil Rhodes left to the world a Will whose provisions have caused more comment than those of any other Will of modern times. A simple paraphrase of its chief provision would be ‘I Cecil John Rhodes leave £2,000,000 for the foundation of between 150 and 200 perpetual scholarships at Oxford University.’ To stop, however, with such a summary is to know nothing of the real character of the Will. Aside from being a legal document disposing of property, the Will is an excellent commentary upon Rhodes’s life and thought and a record of certain of his conclusions. Its value to our present subject, however, is rather prospective than retrospective. Rhodes provided not only the money for the foundation, but a detailed memorandum of the principles which he wished his Trustees and Executors to keep in mind in establishing the Rhodes Scholarships.
The first essential, then, to an understanding of the Rhodes Scholarships is to be familiar with the clauses of the Will which are the foundation upon which they rest, and which determine the general shape of their structure.
It may be well, however, and a considerable aid to an understanding of the Will, to remind ourselves first of a few important incidents in the life of Rhodes—incidents which go far to explain his motives and methods.
Rhodes entered Oriel College, Oxford, in 1873. A few months later, being in bad health, he was sent by his physician to South Africa. This forced trip spelled Opportunity in large letters before him. Keen perception, ingenuity, and careful application forged the links between opportunity and wealth. But wealth was not a goal; it became an instrument for the realization of ideals. Coincident with the success of his business schemes, and intimately correlated with his practical thinking, was the development of a personal and political philosophy which shaped his ideas of the value and proper function of wealth.
Rhodes had not been a brilliant student; but he was a persistent and a logical thinker. Long before he finished his College course he had set himself certain problems such as seldom occur to the ordinary man, and whose solution is rarely attempted even by extraordinary men. What was most important, he met his problems squarely, carried his thinking to conclusions, and his conclusions into practice.
Throughout his life he cherished a fond memory of his student days and a deep reverence for his University. His high respect for Oxford grew not alone from the happy impressions of early and careless years. He matriculated when twenty years old. For the next eight years he alternated between winters spent in South Africa amid the influences of frontier life, and summers spent in the social and academic atmosphere of Oxford. When, after eight years, he took his degrees, B.A. and M.A. together (1881), he was already a successful business man, well on his way to maturity (b. 1853). Thus he had been an Oxford undergraduate both as a youth and as a man, and had learned the theories and practices of Oxford side-by-side with the practical experiences of business life during the impressionable years of early manhood.
During these undergraduate days he had been deeply impressed by a passage from Aristotle—‘Virtue is the highest activity of the soul living for the highest object in a perfect life.’ He appreciated Aristotle’s emphasis upon the necessity for having a high ideal and for struggling toward that ideal. He revolved in his mind while in Oxford and in Africa, as he went and came, and during his summers here and his winters there, many problems as to the end and object of existence. What is the end of the process of evolution? Is it man? For what end does man exist? Why do I exist? What does my existence demand of me? Is there a God? If so, what does he wish man to do? What would he have me do? What can I do best?
He became conscious of a desire for power—effective, creative power, the power which ‘does things.’ He early decided, and he never changed his opinion, that the ‘open sesame’ to the realm of power was money. The opportunity for making money lay before him; the ability and the business capacity lay within him; money was his. Yet wealth was not his end; he never made money an end; it was always a means.
His self-interrogation did not cease. He decided that his first great duty was to his country. What is this duty?—he asked himself. Naturally, to further her interests. Her interests are?—Those of the British Empire. And those are?—To advance civilization and the cause of universal peace. What could he do? He decided that he would ‘paint as much as possible of the map of South Africa British red’. But patriotism should not be selfish—nor should it be narrow. He looked beyond the boundaries of the Empire. ‘What race can do, is doing, and will do most to advance civilization?’ He answered himself that the Anglo-Saxon race was the race of the Present and of the Future—the instrument of Destiny. Therefore, he would devote himself to the ideas which the Anglo-Saxon race represents.
These conclusions were recorded in a ‘draft of some of my ideas’ which Rhodes put upon paper while in Kimberley, when he was about twenty-four years of age (1877). He continued with a consideration of how his ideas might be made effective. His fancy suggested the formation of a kind of secular church which should have its members in all parts of the Empire, especially at the Universities, and whose common interest should be the extension of the Empire. He sketched the kind of men upon whom he could depend, the method by which they might be recruited, keeping ever in mind ‘the closer union of England and her Colonies’.
That same year he wrote a Will in which he directed that all his estates and effects of every kind should be administered to promote British rule; to perfect a system of emigration from the United Kingdom to the Colonies; to further the consolidation of the British Empire; to assist towards the restoration of Anglo-Saxon unity; towards securing the representation of the Colonies in Parliament, and the foundation of a Power so great as to render wars impossible and to promote the best interests of humanity.
At that early period, then, we find—not the idea of the Rhodes Scholarships—but the ideas which dominated Rhodes’s subsequent imperial theories, the soil which was ready to receive the suggestion which seems later to have come spontaneously, of founding and defining a scholarship system.
This Will of 1877 was suspended in 1882 by a very informal Will written on a single sheet of note-paper, and that in turn was revoked and replaced by a third in 1888.
In 1889 Rhodes met Mr. W. T. Stead, then editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, and the two men discovered a remarkable coincidence in their ideas, especially on the subjects of an English-speaking reunion and a society for the promotion of world welfare and peace.[1] Mr. Rhodes set forth a number of his political ideals at considerable length.
His earlier devotion to the idea of British ascendancy, while not lost, had become but a part of his larger idea of Anglo-Saxon supremacy. So unbiased had he become that in 1891 he expressed himself as so desirous of seeing an English-speaking union that he would be willing that the English monarchical system and isolated imperial existence be sacrificed, if necessary, to its achievement.[2]
In 1891 he signed his fourth Will, making over his real and personal property to two persons, one of whom was ‘W. T. Stead of the Review of Reviews’.
The fifth Will was drafted in 1892 and signed by Mr. Rhodes in 1893. The name of Mr. Hawksley was added as one of the Executors, and joint-heir. It was understood that Mr. Stead was the ‘custodian of the Rhodesian ideas’, and the other two Executors were to direct necessary financial and legal measures.
In January, 1895, Rhodes first announced to Mr. Stead his intention of founding a number of scholarships. He said that while on the Red Sea in 1893 the thought had struck him of creating a number of scholarships at a residential English University to be open to various British Colonies. His proposition at that time was to provide for twelve scholarships at Oxford each year, each tenable for three years, of a value of £250 per year. A codicil was added to the fifth Will providing for these scholarships for Canada, the Australian Colonies, including Western Australia and Tasmania, and for Cape Colony.
A good many things happened in the life of Rhodes between the time he left England in February, 1895, and the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899. There was the Johannesburg Raid, for instance; and there were all those strenuous preliminaries to the war in which Rhodes stood as the champion of what his imperial school considered the true rights of England.
In July, 1899, before the outbreak of the War, Rhodes recast and expanded the whole scheme of his Will and substituted, for that of 1893, a sixth document, which became his ‘Last Will and Testament’,[3] wherein he outlined and provided plans and detailed directions for establishing the scholarships which are now known as the Rhodes Scholarships. Each of the friends who became a Trustee doubtless had a share in the discussions and suggestions which gradually shaped and realized the Scholarship idea. Mr. Stead tried, without success, to persuade Rhodes to divide the scholarships between Oxford and Cambridge, also to open them to women; he was successful, however, in his suggestion which resulted in scholarships being granted to the States and Territories of the United States.
Rhodes rejected all propositions whereby the appointments were to be based solely upon Competitive Examinations. His own ideas upon this subject were expressed in the Codicil of October, 1901.[4]
Thus the form realized in the last Will and Testament was not the result of any hasty resolution to attempt some great innovation in the method of bequeathing wealth for educational purposes; it was not a philanthropic caprice; it was not a mere response to suggestions occurring to him while casting about, as so often happens, for an answer to the question, ‘How shall I leave my money?’ Both the substance and the letter of the document by which he left £2,000,000 for ‘an educational experiment’ were the result of living and thinking, suggesting and receiving suggestions, accepting and rejecting; and, finally, of careful decision. It represents conclusions; it is characteristic, moreover, of the mind of its author, combining practical judgement with the promptings of an imperial imagination; it represents unbroken confidence in the ideals which to him made life worth living.
Soon after the writing of this Will the Boer War broke out, and the political concord between Rhodes and Mr. Stead was at an end. Their friendship, however, continued, and each remained true to the same old ideal—although their opinions as to British rights in South Africa were in violent antithesis.
In the original Will Mr. Rhodes left the residue of his real and personal estate to the Earl of Rosebery, Earl Grey, Alfred Beit, William Thomas Stead, Lewis Lloyd Mitchell, and Bourchier Francis Hawksley, absolutely as joint tenants. The same persons were appointed his Executors and Trustees.
In a Codicil dated January, 1901, Rhodes directed that the name of W. T. Stead should be removed from the list of his Executors.[5] In October of the same year he added Lord Milner’s name to the list of Executors and joint heirs, and in March, 1902, on his death-bed, that of Dr. Jameson.
Before the month was out the great creative imperialist had passed from the scene of his successes. He died at Muizenberg, near Cape Town, on the 26th of March, 1902, in his forty-ninth year.
In his constructive fancy he had known no ordinary limits. ‘I would annex the planets if I could.’[6] He had measured by more than the span of a single life or a few generations; he had built for to-morrow as well as for to-day. ‘I find I am human, but should like to live after my death.’[7] He frequently wished ‘that he might return to earth to see how his ideas were prospering, and what was being done with the fortune which he had dedicated to the service of posterity’. His Will expresses in concrete form what were his purposes and what the plans which he left as a sacred Trust to the care and guardianship of his chosen friends.