Rhodes alone of those not in official position saw the ultimate aim of all these entangled politics.

But unfortunately, though he had the capacities and experience of a statesman, he was not a patient man; indeed, throughout his life he had acted like a big spoiled child, to whom must be given at once whatever he desires.

Too often he acted in the present, marring the future by thinking only of the immediate success of his plans, and brutally starting to work, regardless of consequences and of his personal reputation.

Though his soul was essentially that of a financier and he would ride rough-shod over those who conducted their business affairs by gentler methods, yet at the same time, by a kind of curious contrast, he was always ready, nay, eager, to come to the material help of his neighbour--maybe out of affection for him; maybe out of that special sort of contempt which makes one sometimes throw a bone to a starving dog one has never seen before.
The greatest misfortune in Rhodes' life was his faculty, too often applied upon occasions when it were best suppressed, of seeing the mean and sordid aspects of an action, and of imagining that every man could be bought, provided one knew the price.

He was so entirely convinced of this latter fact that it always caused him a kind of impatience he did not even give himself the trouble to dissimulate, to find that he had been mistaken.
This happened to him once or twice in the course of his career.
The English party in the Colony regretted until the end of Rhodes' life the strange aberration that allowed the Raid, and made him sacrifice his reputation for the sake of hastening an event which, without his interference, would almost surely soon have come to pass.