2 MAY 1891, Page 16

MR. CECIL RHODES.

LTO THE EDITOR Or THE " SFEOTATOR."]

SIR,—Your article on Mr. Rhodes is the first indication, so far as I know, of a true and accurate .analysis in a first-rate English journal of the motives and the interests of one of the ablest and most interesting personalities of our time. May I add one more instance of Mr. Rhodes's Afrikanderism ? The three planks of any possible Ministry at the Cape, while the Boers or their tools are in the ascendant, are cheap brandy, dear bread, and free contagion in a sheep disease long since obliterated from Australia and other Anglo-Saxon countries. Brandy and bad wine are the principal industries. There is no excise. Cape politics are as saturated with brandy as the pages of "Pickwick." If the evils of untaxed drink were restricted to white men, I would not say a word ; but the markets in the North, which our gunboats and our Charters have opened to the Dutch brandy-merchants, involve the de- struction of yet one more set of natives who have never sought contact with us. That diamonds may go untaxed, brandy is free from excise ; and the Baal of South Africa, before whom every knee bows, may represent his own interests and achieve his own ambitions with signal success ; but he is not in line with the best traditions and the highest aspirations of the English people.—I am, Sir, &c.,

Devonshire Club, S.W., April 27th. ARNOLD WHITE.