SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT AND LORD MILNER. To TUE EDITOR OF
TILE "SPECTATOR."J Siu,—The speech of Sir William Harcourt in the House of Commons on Monday night contains a misstatement of fact to which attention ought to be called. Speaking on the authority of an anonymous writer in the Economist, Sir William charges Lord Milner with having told the leading citizens of Johannesburg, In a speech addressed to them "after dinner," that on a moderate estimate the population of the city might be expected to amount in the year 1904 to five millions ; and, founding himself on this text, he jeers away in his usual strain at the folly, and worse than folly, of the High Commissioner and his advisers. But, Sir, Lord Milner never said anything of the sort. He could not have done so. As Sir William says, it may take twenty years before there are five millions of people in the whole of South Africa. Five millions in a single city in two years ! It is not possible. The population would have to grow all the time from now till then, at the rate of seven thousand a day. It is a fantastic absurdity. Had Sir William Har- court, like other Pro-Boers, not been so ready to swallow incontinently any cock-and-bull story likely to throw dis. credit or ridicule on the High Commissioner, he would have seen that there must have been a mistake somewhere, or if he had not the sense to see this, he would at least have had the prudence to read Lord Milner's speech, which was reprinted verbatim in the Johannesburg Star, before he undertook to laugh at it. Had he done so he would have perceived that the five millions in question were not five millions of people at all, but only five millions of pounds sterling, and would at the same time have had the advantage of reading an admirable passage (for which he would have been all the better) calling on the citizens of Johannesburg to set their ideals high, to make their city great as well as wealthy, and not to shrink from a generous application of their riches to that noble
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