The discussion on Mr. LabotIchere's amendment to the Address, asking
for a complete investigation of the political and financial action of the Chartered Company of South Africa, was resumed yesterday week, when Sir William Harcourt made a speech remarkable for ite parenthetical testimony to the personal honour of Mr. Rhodes, of whom he said that, though he might have been actuated by "the last infirmity of noble minds" (namely, ambition), he had cer- tainly not been actuated by any mean or sordid motives, or by greed of gain. Sir William spoke incidentally of the regret that would be felt by every one at the " termination " of the hopes expressed by Mr. Chamberlain that President Kruger would visit this country, on which Mr. Chamberlain
interpolated the request, "Please do not call it termina- tion," and Sir William thereupon corrected himself and spoke of the check to our hopes as "a hitch." He commented unfavourably on the publication of Mr. Chamberlain's de- spatch to Sir Hercules Robinson, and remarked that when a common friend intervenes to heal a " domestic " quarrel, he does not usually invite the general public to listen to his proposals for reconciliation. Mr. Balfour replied that Mr. Chamberlain had been enthusiastically praised for making public the whole early hietory of the Transvaal collision, and that it would have been extremely difficult to stop at the point at which Sir William Harcourt thought that he ought to have stopped. When you have fed the public interest on generous food, he said, you cannot suddenly stop and put it on starvation allowances. Perhaps he might have added, if he had told the whole truth, that nothing was more necessary to restore tranquillity in Johannesburg than to let the people of that populous mining community know that England did not intend to abandon them and their very just claims, to the capricious mercy of the Boers.
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