tune.
But South Africa is a fertile forcing ground for this sort of thing,
especially when a man goes into politics, and there is small doubt that
he was often unfairly traduced. It was during the famous election
campaign that an orator, speaking for one of Barnato's opponents,
started considerable excitement by saying, "Men are being put forward
who, if returned, would be a disgrace to any society; and it is quite
possible that we may see the spectacle of the dupe on the Breakwater
and his employer in Parliament." This quite clearly referred to Barnato
and an alleged connection with I.D.B., as a term on the Table Bay
Breakwater was the customary penalty for such infractions of the law.
When asked to be more explicit the orator was canny, saying, "I am not
such a fool as to render myself amenable to the law of libel." But what
made Barnato particularly indignant was another allegation that he had
salted his claims in the Kim-berley pit. He confessed, shortly before
he died, that he had been so bitterly hurt by the talk he had nearly
pulled out of South Africa altogether. "I never showed that I felt it";
he told his biographer, Harry Raymond; "and I determined never to give
in, but to face it out. I knew that if I only stayed long enough I
should get justice. So I stayed and faced it out, and fought that
Kimberley election as no election has ever been fought in South Africa
before, and came in at the head of the poll. And then no dog barked."
Rhodes
outlived Barnato by only five years. Once he had cleared up the
situation in Kimberley (after the merger, it had taken him practically
no time to buy out the lesser Kimberley mines), he went north, as he
had always wanted to. First, he bought up gold fields in the Rand.
Then, in 1889, largely with
