Mr. Rhodes has withdrawn himself into the interior of Africa.
It was understood, after his interview with Mr. Chamberlain and with his fellow-directors of the Chartered Company of South Africa, he would speedily return to the Cape; but on Monday it was announced that he had left London aid Paris and Naples for Beira on the African coast, whence he will proceed to Bulawayo to commence a " reign" in Rhodesia. He is to organise railways, open roads, build towns, "prospect" his whole dominion, and generally act in Rhodesia, which is bigger than France, as a benevolent providence. He has great energy and great means, and will
doubtless do much; but his departure will make inquiry into the affairs of the Chartered Company a little difficult, and the Boers, it is said, regard his return to South Africa with incurable suspicion. They look on him as the grand enemy, not of them, but of their independence. In two defences of his conduct published this week, one by a correspondent of the Daily News, who is obviously closely connected with him, and another by Mr. Stead, it is hardly denied that Mr. Rhodes was at the bottom of the Outlander rising, though he did not expect the Jameson raid at the time it occurred. Mr. Stead further hints that it will not be well to destroy the Chartered Company, for Mr. Rhodes, if pushed to the wail, might tarn Rhodesia into a Republic like the Transvaal. Will he also perhaps beseech the intervention of the German Emperor Mr. Stead is an upright person, but he has a rare faculty for injuring the cause he advocates.
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