The Congo State will doubtless recognise its profit by the advent of the
railway to Bulawayo and the extension of the line towards its southern
borders, and the arrangements of the Government will be such as to
ensure respect for boundaries and to teach the native tribes that
transgression of such will be dangerous.
The British Government have a valuable object lesson for the development
of African colonies. For over two hundred years the West African
colonies have been stagnating for lack of such means of communication.
They have been unable to utilise their resources. Their natural
pretensions to the hinterlands have been grievously curtailed, and what
ought to have been British is now French. Nyasaland has also too long
suffered from Imperial parsimony. The function of government should
comprise something more than police duty or the collection of taxes.
The removal of causes injurious to health and life, and the
establishment of communication as required by circumstances of climate,
and needful to augment commerce, are just as urgent as the prevention of
lawlessness and the collection of imposts. The climate of Nyasaland has
slain more valuable men than the assegais of the Angoni. Against the
latter the Government sent their Sikhs; against the former they have
done nothing. Many of the sick colonists might have been saved, if,
when weakened by anaemia, a little railway past the Shire Rapids had
taken them quickly through the malarious land. If it be worth while to
retain and administer Nyasaland, it is surely worth while to supply the
population with certain means to send the fruits of their industry to
the world's markets, and to enable them to receive the necessaries of
existence without endangering their lives in the effort or risking the
loss of their goods. Therefore, to a Government that has shown such
dread of constructing an insignificant railway a hundred miles in
length, the enterprise of the Chartered Company in constructing one five
hundred miles long--and starting immediately upon an extension two
hundred and twenty miles--at the cost of one and three-quarter millions,
must be exceedingly stimulative. The antique and barbarous method of
porterage should be abolished in every British colony, more especially
in tropical colonies, where exposure to sun and rain means death to
white and black.
HOW AN ENLIGHTENED TRANSVAAL SHOULD VIEW THE SPREAD OF FREE INSTITUTIONS
IN THE NORTH.
To the South African Republic it is vitally important to weigh well in
what manner the Bulawayo railway will affect her future. The Republic
will soon be surrounded by a rampart of steel on three sides and alien
land and ocean on the other. From Beira, north of the Republic, a
railway will run west to Salisbury, and thence south to Bulawayo and the
Cape. With two ways of ingress from the sea a country like Rhodesia--
with as good a climate as the Transvaal State, with resources which tend
to rapid prosperity, enjoying impartial and liberal laws, just and pure
administration, opening its arms widely to the whole world without
regard to race, blessed with ample domains and suited to the needs of
all classes--must necessarily prove more attractive to all people in
search of homes, than a country which only favours Dutch burghers; and
Rhodesia therefore bids fair in a few years to overtake the Republic in
population, and even to surpass it. The Boers do not avail themselves
of the advantages of their position to that fulness which would make it
doubtful whether Rhodesia or the Transvaal offered the most inducements
to intending settlers. On the contrary, the common report is that the
object of the Boers is to restrict population and reserve the State for
Boer progeny. I shall see the country for myself, I hope, and either
verify or disprove it. But if true, the attempt to suppress population
and growth by restrictions, monopolies, and vexatious ordinances is
simple imbecility, as compared to the Chartered Company's policy of
stimulating commerce by giving free rein to enterprise, and keeping the
paths and gates to its territory freely open to all comers. If there is
an intelligent man in the Transvaal, it must be clear to him that the
Republic must soon lose the rank among South African States to which she
was entitled by her wonderful resources and undoubted advantages; and
the only thing that can save her from degradation, neglect, and
financial difficulties, is the absorption of that alien population which
crowds her cities and clamours for political rights.