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HIS SPEECHES.
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spread from Matabeleland to Mashonaland, and then perhaps Australia and Canada will consider the question, and you will thus be retaining a market for your goods. And you have been actually offered this, and you have refused it. You will be acting foolishly if you do not in the forthcoming elections insist upon that clause being put in. Now, I hope you will not say I have departed from the commercial aspect and gone to a political speech; but I can assure you of this—I think it will do you and your trade more good than anything I can conceive. Gentlemen, in all things it is the little questions that change the world. This charter came from an accidental thought, and all the great changes of the world come from little accidents. All the combinations and beautiful essays that are put forward so eagerly are unpractical enough, but this constitution is a more practical thing. I can assure you there is a very practical thing in it. We have been accused of being a speculative set of company-mongers, and nobody could see any great chance of our ultimate financial success; but by your support we have carried it through. When the man in the street sneers at you, you can remind him that it was an undertaking he had not the courage to enter upon himself as one of the British people; the Imperial Government would not touch it; the Cape Government was too poor to do it. It has been done by you, and the enterprise has succeeded, and I do not think anybody would say they would like to see that portion of the world under another flag now. And it has been done, which the English people like, without expense to their exchequer—(laughter)—and we have had to combine this expansion with the commercial or else we should
