Saul Solomon by M Rabinowitz

SAUL SOLOMON

By M. RABINOWITZ.

I HAVE been invited by the Editor of this work to contribute an article on Saul Solomon, the famous South African statesman, with some record of his family history. An old man has no future, but only a past. As one of the oldest of living colonists (we arrived in Table Bay seventy years ago) it is now my job to dive into the past for personal recollections of Saul Solomon in my boyhood and youth, when he was a familiar figure in the streets of Cape Town and at Sea Point. It is the record of a remarkable man, a great man, who rose superior to a physical infirmity which, to the ordinary individual, would have proved insurmountable for distinction and achievement in public life, and became a power in the land which he made his home. Trollope, the novelist, who, when here, visited him at his house and heard him in Parliament, said he reminded him of Fawcett, the English statesman, who, though blind, rendered high political service to his country.

Saul Solomon was born in 1817 at St. Helena, his father, Joseph, having previously joined his brother, Saul Solomon, of the firm of Solomon, Moss, Gideon & Company, shipping and general merchants there, a firm of considerable standing, of whom the head was Consul for France and the Netherlands. His mother was Hannah, daughter of Moss of the firm. According to Dr. Hertz's interesting pamphlet, at the age of five Saul was sent to England and was circumcised by Chief Rabbi Dr. Herschel, and remained in England a few years at a Jewish elementary school, later returning to St. Helena. In 1831 he came with his parents to the Cape, and went to the South African College for his education. Leaving school, he took up the trade of an engraver, and entered the employ of Messrs. Greig & Co., in Cape Town, with whom he remained some years, and was eventually enabled to take over their business. Then he and his brother Henry started as printers and engravers under the style of Saul Solomon & Co. The firm prospered, securing the contract for Government printing, etc., and most of the trade in that and kindred lines fell into their hands. They then published a newspaper called “The Mercantile Advertiser," delivered gratis at the houses of inhabitants in Cape Town and suburbs. “The Mercantile Advertiser" proved a great success, and by attracting many advertisers it became a valuable property. It was quite a good paper, containing not only the news of the day, put in a bright and attractive way, but also, on the arrival of the mail, an interesting letter from its London correspondent, with all the foreign intelligence, a boon in the days when no cable was even dreamt of. The paper continued to prosper until a rival appeared in the “Monitor," and shortly after ceased publication. Here it should be pointed out that it is quite a mistake to suppose, as many think, that Saul Solomon founded the “Cape Argus," which was started by Darnley & Murray, who disposed of it to Solomon's; they sold it to Dormer, and it was finally acquired by the present Argus Company.

Saul Solomon entered the Cape Parliament as a member for Cape Town in 1854, and almost at once leapt into fame with his great speeches on the Voluntary Bill, the principle of which was the abolition of the system of State grants to the Churches which then prevailed. At first, the mover of the Bill found little or no support from the House, and he had arrayed against him outside the powerful hostility of practically all the Churches—Dutch, English, Catholic, etc. By sheer persistence, as well as by the force of his arguments, Saul gradually won members over to his views; repeatedly passed in the Assembly, the Bill was thrown out in the Legislative Council. After thirteen years' struggle, in which Solomon was represented in a humorous paper as "Jack the Giant Killer fighting the Giant Church," the Bill became law. The clergy of every denomination (including my late father, the Reverend Joel Rabinowitz, Minister of the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation and an intimate friend of both the Solomons) flocked to the House of Assembly to hear Saul on the Voluntary Bill, perhaps his greatest Parliamentary effort. It will be seen from this that he did not agree with Disraeli, who held that the State ought to rest on the Church, and thereby lend the dignity and authority of religion to its councils.

Religion.

Talking of religion, I have been asked to say how the Solomons came to drift from Judaism. This I have been unable to ascertain, and believe that it happened before they left St. Helena. There were very few Jews and probably no regular Jewish place of worship when they arrived here. Both the brothers were members of the Congregational Church in Cape Town, and were to be seen every Sunday driving in from Sea Point for divine service. Difficult as it is for us to understand how one born of Jewish parents could bring himself to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, Henry Solomon told his friend, old Moritz Lewis (who is related to me), that he fully accepted it. (See note at end of article on “The Family of Saul Solomon." Ed. S.A.J.Y.B.)

In addition to the Voluntary Bill, this member for Cape Town directed his energies to the removal of the Contagious Diseases Act, which he considered a disgrace to the Statute Book. In spite of strong opposition from the doctors, who thought it necessary in the interests of public health, he succeeded in getting the Act repealed.

In the 1855 session of Parliament, Mr. Fairbairn, the member for Swellendam, moved a Bill for the introduction of Responsible Government, and it was seconded by Mr. Watermeyer, later on a judge. It was opposed by Solomon as well as by Porter and members of the Executive as premature, the country in their view was not yet ripe for it, and the motion was rejected. Some fifteen years later he (like Porter) strongly advocated it as now suitable to the circumstances of the country, and because he wanted high political office opened to the people of the Colony. But when that Government came in, he refused to accept the Premiership or any other post in the Ministry, and agreed with a British statesman who said that his only happy days were when he took office and when he left it. Like a later South African leader, he wanted power without official responsibility. I omitted to mention that he had even previously declined the Speakership. And here I may relate an amusing episode that once occurred. As to-day, the proceedings of the Assembly commenced with prayer. On a certain day, the Speaker (Sir Christoffel Brand), turning over his papers for opening the proceedings, could not find the Prayer. In great agitation he kept turning his portfolio about, the House waiting. Solomon rose and said, "What's the matter, Mr. Speaker?" “I've lost the Prayer," was the reply. Repeat it without a copy said Saul Solomon. "I can't remember it." “Then," said Mr. Solomon, “say the Lord's prayer." “I can't say it in English," replied the Speaker. "The Lord's Prayer is in the New Testament," said Saul Solomon. The New Testament was handed up to the Speaker, who could not find it there. Mr. Solomon turned up St. Matthew's Gospel, and there it was. The Speaker read the Lord's Prayer with due solemnity, while the House could not restrain from a good laugh at the idea of Saul Solomon, a circumcised Jew of all persons, having to find the Lord's Prayer for a Christian Speaker.

As Parliamentarian.

In the days of which I speak we had Parliaments of a very superior order, many of them picked men like Porter, Fairbairn, Paterson, Molteno, Southey, Sprigg, Watermeyer, Wood, Godlonton and other men of wide culture and experience in public life. Yet in both Houses these able men came to unite in recognising this remarkable dwarf as the most outstanding figure in the Colonial Parliament. It was said of Gladstone that he was “the greatest member that the House of Commons had ever seen." It is not too much to say that Saul Solomon was the greatest and most influential member of Parliament that we have ever known. To quote Trollope again, “It would have been hardly possible to pass any measure of importance through the Cape Legislature to which he offered a strenuous opposition." He had, indeed debating powers of an order well calculated to move assemblies; he possessed that most valuable quality in writer or speaker—pellucid clearness. There was nothing involved, obscure, vapid or inconsequent in his oratory; he was easy to follow; he told his hearers not only what he thought, but why he thought it. He was a Cobdenite and spoke in the Cobdenite manner.

“Strong without rage, without o'erflowing, full." He spoke with the force of a settled conviction. To this he added an almost unrivalled knowledge of affairs, a natural acumen which enabled him to grasp the essentials of a Bill and present it to the House and illuminate it as perhaps no other member could. Thus it was that he came to gain the confidence of his colleagues, came to be regarded as a guide, a leader whom it was generally safe to follow upon important political questions of the day. Upon one subject only he was unable to convert others; that was his native policy; Mr. Solomon was throughout a convinced negrophilist, and there he came into conflict with (among others) Mr. Merriman, then a young member, a brilliant man, but, like Zimri in Dryden's great poem, was

“Everything by starts, and nothing long."

We know that in after life Merriman turned a complete somersault and appeared (like some to-day) more interested in the coloured man than the white. There can be no doubt that Solomon's negrophilism later weakened his influence when carried to extremes, as when he invited a Basuto deputation to dinner. And here it may be mentioned that he carried his Parliamentary duties also to excess. According to "Limner," who wrote the "Notes in the House," he would during the session go home at midnight and there start reading Blue Books until dawn, take a few hours' sleep and then rush back to the House again to resume the debate.

In the difficult, pre-Responsible Government days, when there was a conflict between the Executive and a Parliament which could not be got to vote taxes to cover a deficit, and Sir Philip Wodehouse was forced to summon Parliament at Grahamstown for supplies, the quarrel between East and West (the former clamouring for separation), persistent obstruction in the House, disputed Bills for starting harbour and railway works, which Solomon strongly supported, the chief burden of labouring these difficult questions fell upon the leader of the Assembly. But it would be wrong to suppose that it was only in Parliament that he laboured; in other directions of public usefulness he was found. He was one of the founders of that grand institution, the South African Mutual Life Assurance Society, now developed to gigantic proportions. He founded the Cape of Good Hope Savings Bank, and a gas company was floated by him. With all this, he found time for visitors. Just as in after years distinguished arrivals from abroad sought out the celebrated South African statesman, Jan Hofmeyr, so there came many to interview Saul Solomon; among them the famous General Gordon; and people came from other parts of the Colony for counsel or instruction from that wise head. He liked to exercise hospitality and dine his political friends, liked a good story, and, if he told any himself, remembered Cowper's dictum:

“A tale should be judicious, clear, succinct, The language plain, and incidents well linked."

In 1876 Saul Solomon married Miss Thompson, the Principal of the Good Hope Seminary, by whom he had five children, of whom three died. One son is Mr. Justice Saul Solomon, the eminent judge, now on the Transvaal Bench.

Alas, with advancing years that great brain began to show signs of failing strength and was no longer able to sustain the burden of public or even private life. Somewhere about 1885 he resigned his seat in Parliament and other public offices in which he was engaged, and retired. Doubtless, in addition to other troubles (the loss of a small son and his nurse by drowning deeply affected him), other cares and anxieties pressed upon him in connection with his business, that respectable, old-established and for long thriving firm, now fallen upon dark days of depression and on the point of collapse. His mind gave way. He was conveyed, weeping bitterly, to Europe, and there he died, in Scotland, far from the land which he had made his home. His body was brought over from Eastbourne and buried in the grave that contained a son who died there. An obelisk in the Eastbourne cemetery bears the inscription, "Saul Solomon, born at St. Helena, 25th May, 1817, died 16th October, 1892." His widow survived him.

No stranger reading this simple inscription would suspect that here lay the remains of a statesman who, in his time, had for many years played a large, distinguished and highly important part in the councils of one of the most important possessions of the British Crown.

A bust of Saul Solomon is placed in the lobby of the House of Parliament, beside those of other South African statesman, all of whom have also passed away. I learn now that there is also a portrait of Solomon in the Gallery of what was formerly the Legislative Council Chamber.

The Family of Saul Solomon

By M. RABINOWITZ.

OF Saul Solomon's three brothers who came over with him from St. Helena, Henry, Edward and Richard, the first was a man of considerable culture, interested in astronomy, and occasionally lectured upon The Starry Sky to the members of the Sea Point Literary Society. He took no part in politics, but confined himself to conducting the business of Saul Solomon & Co. He had two sons, who took over the management of the firm in its closing days. His daughter, Ellen, married the Rev. Dr. James Cameron, Professor of Classics in the South African College and minister of the Round Church at Sea Point. Edward, another brother, was a missionary and subsequently minister at Bedford. His eldest son, Sir Edward P. Solomon, K.C.M.G., was educated at a missionary school and, entering the Side Bar, was a member of the firm of Solomon, Hull, Webber & Wentzel (originally Solomon & Thompson), solicitors in Johannesburg. Drifting into polities after the Boer War, he became president of an association formed for establishing Responsible Government in the Transvaal. Later he formed and became President of the Transvaal National Party, which was the English-speaking wing of General Botha's political party, “Het Volk." In 1907, on the grant of Responsible Government in the Transvaal, he represented Fordsburg in the Transvaal Legislative Assembly, and was appointed Minister of Public Works in the Botha Ministry. He later sat in the Senate of the Union Parliament, and died in 1914.

His second son, Sir Richard Solomon, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., K.C.M.G., K.C., had a highly distinguished career. Born in Cape Town in 1850, he was educated at the South African College and at St. Peter's, Cambridge. A wrangler, he was for a short period Mathematical Lecturer at Greenwich. Called to the Bar in 1879, he proceeded to Kimberley, where he started practice, and succeeded in obtaining the retainer for De Beers Consolidated Mines. In 1893 he entered the Cape Parliament as member for Tembuland, and was appointed Attorney-General in the Schreiner Ministry. In 1896, he was retained for the defence of the Reform prisoners in the Transvaal. After the war he was appointed legal adviser to General Kitchener and Lord Milner in assisting in the negotiations and drafting the articles of surrender at Vereeniging, no light task with Generals Smuts and Hertzog confronting him. In the arduous work of restoring order after the chaos created by the war he pulled the labouring oar. In 1902 he represented South Africa at the Delhi Durbar, and was decorated. He was Attorney-General and member of the Transvaal Executive Council from 1902 to 1907, when, being defeated at the General Election, he accepted the post of Agent-General for the Transvaal in London. There he died under operation. A bust of this most able and distinguished public servant is now in the halls of our Parliament.

Colonel (Hon.) Richard Solomon, only son of Richard (Saul's third brother), is senior partner in the firm of R. M. Ross & Co., the oldest hardware merchants in Cape Town. He is a Past President of the Cape Town Chamber of Commerce.

The Chief Justice.

The Right Honourable Sir William Henry Solomon (born 1852), fourth son of Rev. Edward Solomon, of Bedford (and brother of Sir Richard), was educated at S.A. College and Cambridge. He was called to the Bar in 1876 and raised to the Bench. He served at Kimberley, Eastern Districts Court, and in the Transvaal. He was successively appointed Judge of Appeal at Union, and in 1927 became Chief Justice of South Africa in succession to Sir James Rose Innes. He was created a Privy Councillor in 1928. He was declared by his predecessor to be one of the finest judicial intellects in South Africa."

In 1912, on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation, I wrote (by request) an article in the Cape Times on the Jews of South Africa, in which reference was made to the Solomon family. Next day I received a letter from Mrs. James Cameron (Henry Solomon's daughter) in which, after congratulating the writer on "an article of absorbing interest," she asked me if I could get here a work there mentioned, "Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa," by Nathaniel Isaacs, her cousin. This book (in two volumes) was recommended for study by Theal, the late historiographer of South Africa, for an early and interesting account of Natal exploration. The author, born in England, of a bold and adventurous spirit, abandoned his desk at St. Helena and, while yet a youth, in 1825 joined an expedition under Lieutenant King, of the Royal Navy, bound for the Cape. The vessel was wrecked off the coast of Natal, where Nathaniel remained a number of years exploring a region where few Europeans had previously penetrated, and getting into intercourse with the natives. He succeeded in getting into relations with two native chiefs, from one of whom, in return for services rendered in a war with a rival chief, he obtained a grant of a large tract of land off the coast of Natal. He describes with a graphic pen the climate, physical features, natural productions, and manners and customs of the natives; the perils and hardships he endured in a savage country remote from European civilisation. Isaacs concludes his work with an earnest appeal to the British Government to annex Natal to the British Crown in the interests of British commerce.

A hundred years ago the value of African regions was unknown, and Nathaniel Isaacs's recommendations were for the time left unheeded; he severely impeaches both the Cape and the Home Governments for their apathy in the matter, but predicts that both Eastern and South Africa were destined to become important appendages. to the Empire.

And here it may be remarked in conclusion that the historiographer of South Africa has rendered us Jews good service in drawing attention to Isaacs's book, because the Jew as discoverer and pioneer is mostly unknown or unrecognised; he is believed to have taken no part in the great and necessary work of exploration which must precede development, and the story of Isaacs is one of the many that exist to refute this belief.

NOTE BY THE EDITOR.

The Religion of the Solomon Family.—We are indebted to Mr. John G. Gubbins, of Ottoshoop, Transvaal, for the loan, out of his valuable library of Africana, of an original letter written on this subject by Edward Solomon, brother of Saul. The letter is dated from “Cape Town, 15th August, 1835," and is addressed to "Rev. J. Canham, Plein Street, Cape Town." It would appear that Edward had received a little tuition from his uncle, who was a Jew, but that when he left St. Helena he "was entirely unconcerned whether the Jewish religion was true or not, but still rather prejudiced in favour of the common Jewish opinion that the Messiah has not yet appeared." The letter then relates other circumstances of the writer's early life, his attendance at school and at church, and his gradual acceptance of the Jewish faith. Dr. Philip, of missionary fame, whose Chapel he attended, was apparently responsible to a large extent for his complete conversion.

It is not difficult to gauge from this letter that the lack at the Cape of an organised Jewish community and of Jewish educational facilities was largely responsible for the loss to Judaism of this remarkable family.