page_title: James Rose Innes
section_title: In Rhodes's government
hierarchical_section_title: James Rose Innes / Parliamentary career / In Rhodes's government
caption_attribution_description: Cecil Rhodes
context_page_description: Sir James Rose Innes, KCMG PC was the Chief Justice of South Africa from 1914 to 1927 and, in the view of many, its greatest ever judge. Before becoming a judge he was a member of the Cape Parliament, the Cape Colony's Attorney-General, and a prominent critic of Cecil John Rhodes.
context_section_description: Innes served as Attorney-General in Cecil Rhodes's government from 1890, but resigned three years later (supported by Merriman and Sauer) in protest. Rhodes's right-hand man James Sivewright had given a lucrative government railway contract to his friend and business associate James Logan without going to tender (or notifying his Cabinet, who found out only when the press scandal broke). Innes refused to work with Sivewright, with the effect that Rhodes had to dissolve his government.
  In 1894 Rhodes adopted an increasingly caustic attitude to the Boer colonies, becoming, in Innes's words, "the high priest of opportunism"; he had "decided on a more forceful policy, which led him to exchange the constitutionalism of the statesman for the lawlessness of the revolutionary". The nadir was Rhodes's involvement in the Jameson Raid, an event which, Innes said, "no one ... concerned for the true interests of South Africa can recall without regret". The Raid inflamed racial tension between the English and Afrikaners, and President Kruger's suspicions, and thus led to the Second Boer War. Rhodes's attitude after the Raid had not helped. He had gravely betrayed his allies in the Afrikaner Bond; yet, far from showing remorse, he switched allegiances to their enemies, the Progressive Party, emerging more ambitious and jingoistic than ever before. Summing up Rhodes's legacy, Innes said he had "infected Cape public life with a harmful virus, and to South Africa he brought not peace but a sword."
caption: Cecil Rhodes (c. 1900), who "infected Cape public life with a harmful virus" that shaped Innes's parliamentary career.
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