Saul spent his first years at a Jewish children's home in England, where he suffered from the malnutrition and rickets that physically affected him for the rest of his life.

[2] Saul Solomon's original election promise had been "to give my decided opposition to all legislation tending to introduce distinctions either of class, colour or creed".

[3] Throughout his political career he strictly adhered to this manifesto – repeatedly turning down both cabinet and ministerial posts so as to be free to vote according to his beliefs.

Although he was from a Jewish background and even funded the establishment of the Cape's first synagogue in 1849, Solomon was openly secular in outlook, declaring himself to be "a liberal in politics and a voluntary in religion".

In the first Cape parliament in 1854, he presented his "Voluntary bill" (intended to end government subsidies to churches, and to ensure equal treatment of all beliefs) but it was turned down.

"[8] The eastern part of the Cape Colony had a long-running separatist movement, consisting of a portion of white settlers (the "Easterners"), led by parliamentarian John Paterson of Port Elizabeth, who resented the rule of the Cape Town parliament and wanted stricter labour laws to encourage the Xhosa to leave their lands and work on the settlers' plantations.

When he was addressing parliament about the need to enforce the principles of racial equality that the Cape's constitution called for, the Separatist representatives all stood up and walked out on him.

Separatist parliamentarians branded him a "negrophile" – an intended insult that he in fact accepted with considerable pride, and he went on to push even further for social reform (for example repealing the discriminatory Contagious Diseases Act[clarification needed]).

Both suggestions were ignored by the Colonial Office and over the next few years Carnarvon's disastrous confederation scheme unravelled as predicted, eventually resulting the outbreak of several destructive conflicts across the region.

[13] To further the Confederation scheme, Sir Henry Bartle Frere appointed a new and more compliant government, under the puppet Prime Minister Gordon Sprigg.

Although Saul Solomon had initially agreed to accept Sprigg's new government, its discriminatory policies immediately brought down his strongest criticism, which was voiced through his various media outlets.

Solomon's editor, Patrick McLoughlin, had supposedly anonymously written several pieces criticising the Sprigg government and the British colonial establishment, the most infamous of which was entitled "Pro Bono Publico" ("For the Public Good").

Crucially, he produced letters from the Koegas trial judge asking him to publish the information, and detailing the brutal violence of the murders and the racism which had prevented justice being done.

His proposals were usually well researched and he characteristically spent long hours studying censuses and other government publications for the precise facts and figures that he believed should inform his opinions.

He has led a life of steadfast consistency, and has conferred benefits upon the colony, which must earn for his name the unswerving veneration of generations of South Africans yet to come.

He is animated by noble, generous impulses, but here, if I may make bold to say so, in criticising so great a man, I think his goodness of heart has somewhat thwarted the soundness of his judgment.

The French encyclopaedists were all wrong, these ideas are utter nonsense.His progressive views on equal rights extended to gender relations (for his marriage ceremony he asked that his wife should not have to vow to "obey" him), religion (he never officially renounced his Judaism, but he abhorred sectarian attitudes and attended churches as often as synagogues) and class (he asked his employees and household servants to simply call him "Saul").

Their views tallied on many matters, not least girls' education: he owned a first edition of Mary Wollstonecraft's polemic A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

[19] The wedding, which took place on 21 March 1874 at his home, was to have had an alteration to the standard Anglican marriage vows: neither wife nor husband wished her to promise to obey him.

He and Georgiana enjoyed welcoming guests as varied as Cetewayo, King of the Zulus, and the future British Emperors, Princes Edward and George.