MORE OF THE CROWN COLONY SYSTEM
Wherein is set down the other, or main, reason against this system.
Having attempted to explain the internal evils or what one might call
the domestic rows of the Crown colony system, I will pass on to the
external evils--which although in a measure consequent on the internal
are not entirely so, and this point cannot be too clearly borne in mind.
Tinker it up as you may, the system will remain one pre-eminently
unsuited for the administration of West Africa.
You might arrange that officials working under it should be treated
better than the official now is, and the West African service be brought
into line in honour with the Indian, and afford a man a good sound
career. You might arrange for the Chambers of Commerce, representing the
commercial factor, to have a place in Colonial Office councils. But if
you did these things the Crown colony system would still remain unsuited
to West Africa, because it is a system intrinsically too expensive in
men and money, so that the more you develop it the more expensive it
becomes. Concerning this system as applied to the West Indies a West
Indian authority the other day said it was putting an elephant to draw a
goat chaise; concerning the West African application of it, I should
say it was trying to open a tin case with a tortoise-shell paper knife.
Of course you will say I am no authority, and you must choose between
those who will tell you that only a little patience is required and the
result of the present governmental system in West Africa will blossom
into philanthropic and financial successes, and me who say it cannot do
so but must result in making West Africa a debt-ridden curse to England.
All I can say for myself is that I am animated by no dislike to any set
of men and without one farthing's financial interest in West Africa. It
would not affect my income if you were to put 100 per cent. ad valorem
duty on every trade article in use on the Coast and flood the Coast with
officials, paid as men should be paid who have to go there, namely, at
least three times more than they are at present. My dislike to the
present state of affairs is solely a dislike to seeing my country, to my
mind, make a fool of herself, wasting men's lives in the process and
deluding herself with the idea that the performance will repay her.
Personally, I cannot avoid thinking that before you cast yourself in a
whole-souled way into developing anything you should have a knowledge of
the nature of the thing as it is on scientific lines. Education and
development unless backed by this knowledge are liable to be thrown
away, or to produce results you have no use for. I remember a
distressing case that occurred in West Africa and supports my opinion. A
valued friend of mine, a seaman of great knowledge and experience, yet
lacking in that critical spirit which inquires into the nature of things
before proceeding with them, confident alone in the rectitude of his own
intentions, bought a canary bird at a Canary Island. He knew that the
men who sell canaries down there are up to the sample description of
deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. So he brought to bear
upon the transaction a deal of subtlety, but neglected fundamental
facts, whereby his triumph at having, on the whole, done the canary
seller brown by getting him to take in part value for the bird a box of
German colonial-grown cigars, was vanity. For weeks that gallant seaman
rubbed a wet cork up and down an empty whisky bottle within the hearing
of the bird, which is the proper thing to do providing things are all
right in themselves, and yet nothing beyond genial twitterings rewarded
his exertions. So he rubbed on for another week with even greater
feeling and persuasive power, and then, to drop a veil upon this tragedy
of lost endeavour, that canary laid an egg. Now, if that man had only
attended to the nature of things and seen whether it were a cock or hen
bird, he would not have been subjected to this grievous disappointment.
Similarly, it seems to me, we are, from the governmental point of view,
like that sea captain--swimming about in the West African affair with a
lot of subtle details, in an atmosphere of good intentions, but not in
touch with important facts; we are acting logically from faulty
premises.
Now, let us grant that the Crown Colony system is not fully developed in
West Africa, for if it were, you may say, it would work all right;
though this I consider a most dangerous idea. Let us see what it would
be if it were fully developed.
Mr. St. Loe Strachey[60] thus defines Crown Colonies:--"These are
possessions which are for the most part peopled by non-European races of
dark colour, and governed not by persons elected by themselves, but by a
governor and other officials sent out from England. The reason for this
difference is a very simple one. Those colonies which are peopled by men
of English and European races can provide themselves with a better
government than we can provide them with from here. Hence they are given
responsible governments.
"Those colonies in which the English or European element is very small
can best be governed, it is found, by the Crown Colony system. The
native, dark-skinned population are not fit to govern themselves--they
are too ignorant and too uncivilised, and if the government is left
entirely in the hands of the small number of whites who may happen to
live in the colony, they are apt not to take enough care of the
interests of the coloured inhabitants. The simplest form of the Crown
Colony is that found in some of the smaller groups of islands in the
West Indies. Here a governor is sent out from England, and he--helped by
a secretary, a judge, and other officials--governs the island, reporting
his actions to the Colonial Office, and consulting the able officials
there before he takes important steps. In most cases, however, the
governor has a council, either nominated from among the principal
persons in the colony, or else elected by the inhabitants. In some
cases--Jamaica or Barbadoes, for example--the council has very great
power, and the type of government may be said to approach that of the
self-governing colonies."
Now, in West Africa the system is the same as that "found in some of the
smaller groups of the West Indian islands," although these West African
colonies have each a nominated council of some kind. I should hesitate
to say, however, "to assist the governor." Being nominated by him they
can usually manage to agree with him; it is only another hindrance or
superfluous affair. Before taking any important steps the West African
governor is supposed to consult the officials at the Colonial Office;
but as the Colonial Office is not so well informed as the governor
himself is, this can be no help to him if he be a really able man, and
no check on him if he be not an able man. For, be he what he may, he is
the representative of the Colonial Office; he cannot, it is true,
persuade the Colonial Office to go and involve itself in rows with
European continental powers, because the Office knows about them; but if
he is a strong-minded man with a fad he can persuade the Colonial Office
to let him try that fad on the natives or the traders, because the
Colonial Office does not know the natives nor the West African trade.
You see, therefore, you have in the Governor of a West African
possession a man in a bad position. He is aided by no council worth
having, no regular set of experts; he is held in by another council
equally non-expert, except in the direction of continental politics. He
may keep out of mischief; he could, if he were given either time or
inducement to study the native languages, laws, and general ethnology of
his colony, do much good; but how can he do these things, separated from
the native population as he necessarily is, by his under officials, and
with his time taken up, just as every official's time is taken up under
the Crown Colony system, with a mass of red-tape clerkwork that is
unnecessary and intrinsically valueless? I do not pretend to any
personal acquaintance with English West African Governors. I only look
on their affairs from outside, but I have seen some great men among
them. One of them who is dead would, I believe, had the climate spared
him, have become a man whom every one interested in West Africa would
have respected and admired. He came from a totally different region, the
Straits Settlements. He found his West African domain in a lethargic
mess, and he hit out right and left, falling, like the rain, on the just
and the unjust. I do not wish you to take his utterances or his actions
as representing him; but from the spirit of them it is clear he would
have become a great blessing to the Coast had he but lived long enough.
I am aware he was unpopular from his attempts to enforce the ill-drafted
Land Ordinance, but primarily responsible for this ill-judged thing he
was not.
In addition to Sir William Maxwell there have been, and are still, other
Governors representative of what is best in England; but, circumstanced
as they are under this system, continually interrupted as their work is
by death or furloughs home, neither England nor West Africa gets
one-tenth part of the true value of these men.
In addition to the Governor, there are the other officials, medical,
legal, secretarial, constabulary, and customs. The majority of these are
engaged in looking after each other and clerking. Clerking is the breath
of the Crown Colony system, and customs what it feeds on. Owing to the
climate it is practically necessary to have a double staff in all these
departments,--that is what the system would have if it were perfect; as
it is, some official's work is always being done by a subordinate; it
may be equally well done, but it is not equally well paid for, and there
is no continuity of policy in any department, except those which are
entirely clerk, and the expense of this is necessarily great. The main
evil of this want of continuity is of course in the Governors--a
Governor goes out, starts a new line of policy, goes home on furlough
leaving in charge the Colonial Secretary, who does not by all means
always feel enthusiastic towards that policy; so it languishes. Governor
comes back, goes at it again like a giant refreshed, but by no means
better acquainted with local affairs for having been away; then he goes
home again, or dies, or gets a new appointment; a brand new Governor
comes out, he starts a new line of policy, perhaps has a new Colonial
Secretary into the bargain; anyhow the thing goes on wavering, not
advancing. The only description I have heard of our policy in West
African Colonies that seems to me to do it justice is that given by a
medical friend of mine, who said it was a coma accompanied by fits.
Of course this would not be the case if the Colonial Office had a
definite detailed policy of its own, and merely sent out men to carry it
out; but this the Colonial Office has not got and cannot have, because
it has not got the scientific and commercial facts of West Africa in its
possession. It has therefore to depend on the Governors it sends out;
and these, as aforesaid, are men of divers minds. One Governor is truly
great on drains; he spends lots of money on them. Another Governor
thinks education and a cathedral more important; during his reign drains
languish. Yet another Governor comes along and says if there are schools
wanted they should be under non-sectarian control, but what is wanted is
a railway; and so it goes on, and of course leads to an immense waste of
money. And this waste of money is a far more serious thing than it
looks; for it is from it that the policy has arisen, of increasing
customs dues to a point that seriously hampers trade development, and
the far more serious evil of attempting directly as well as indirectly
to tax the native population.
I am bound to say I believe any ordinary Englishman would be fairly
staggered if he went out to West Africa and saw what there was to show
for the expenditure of the last few years in our Crown Colonies
there,[61] and knew that all that money had been honestly expended in
the main, that none of it had been appropriated by the officials, that
they had only had their pay, and that none too great.
But, you will say, after all, if West Africa is as rich as it is said to
be, surely it can stand a little wasteful expenditure, and support an
even more expensive administration than it now has. All I can say is,
that it can stand wasteful expenditure, but only up to a certain point,
which is now passed; it would perhaps be more true to say it could stand
wasteful expenditure before the factor of the competition of French and
German colonies alongside came in; and that a wasteful expenditure that
necessitates unjust methods of raising revenue, such as direct taxation
on the natives, is a thing West Africa will not stand at all. Of course
you can do it; you can impose direct taxation on the native population,
but you cannot make it financially pay to do so; for one thing, the
collection of that tax will require a considerable multiplication of
officials black and white, the black section will by their oppressive
methods engender war, and the joint body will consume more than the
amount that can be collected. From a fiscal standpoint direct taxation
of a non-Mohammedanised or non-Christianised community is rank
foolishness, for reasons known to every ethnologist. As for the natural
riches of West Africa, I am a profound believer in them, and regard West
Africa, taken as a whole, as one of the richest regions in the world;
but, as Sir William Maxwell said, "I am convinced that, from causes
wholly unpreventable, West Africa is and must remain a place with
certain peculiar dangers of its own"[62]; therefore it requires most
careful, expert handling. It is no use your trying to get its riches out
by a set of hasty amateur experiments; it is no use just dumping down
capital on it and calling these goings on "Developing the resources," or
"Raising the African in the plane of civilisation;" because these goings
on are not these things, they are but sacrifices on the altars of folly
and idleness.
Properly managed, those parts of West Africa which our past apathy has
left to us are capable of being made into a group of possessions before
which the direct value to England, in England, of all the other regions
that we hold in the world would sink into insignificance.
Sir William Maxwell, when he referred to "causes wholly unpreventable,"
was referring mainly to the unhealthiness of West Africa. There seems no
escape from this great drawback. Every other difficulty connected with
it one can imagine removable by human activity and ingenuity--even the
labour difficulty--but, I fear, not so the fever. Although this is not a
thing to discourage England from holding West Africa, it is a thing
which calls for greater forethought in the administration of it than she
need give to a healthy region. In a healthy region it does not matter so
much whether there is an excess over requirements in the number of men
employed to administer it, but in one with a death rate of at least 35
per cent. of white men it does matter.
I confess it is this excessive expenditure of men which I dislike most
in the Crown Colony system, though I know it cannot help it; it is in
the make of the thing. If these men were even employed in some great
undertaking it would be less grievous; but they are many of them
entirely taken up with clerk work, and all of them have to waste a large
percentage of their time on it. Some of the men undoubtedly get to like
this, but it is a morbid taste. I know one of our possessions where the
officials even carry on their personal quarrels with each other on
government paper in a high official style, when it would be better if
they put aside an hour a week and went and punched each other's heads,
and gave the rest of their time to studying native law and languages and
pottering about the country getting up information on it at large, so
that the natives would become familiarised with the nature of Englishmen
first-hand, instead of being dependent for their knowledge of them on
interpreters and the set of subordinate native officials and native
police.
I wish that it lay in my power to place before you merely a set of
figures that would show you the present state of our West African
affairs, but such figures do not exist. Practically speaking, there are
no reliable figures for West African affairs. They are not cooked, but
you know what figures are--unless they be complete and in their proper
stations, they are valueless.
The figures we have are those which appear in "The Colonial Annual
Series" of reports. These are not annual; for example, the Gold Coast
one was not published for three years; but no matter, when they are
published they are misleading enough, unless you know things not
mentioned in them but connected with them. However, we will just run
through the figures published for one West African Crown Colony. For
many reasons I am sorry to have to take those regarding Sierra Leone,
but I must, as at present they are the most correct available.
Now the element of error which must be allowed for in these arises from
the proximity of the French colony of French Guinea, which is next door
to Sierra Leone. That colony has been really developing its exports.
Goods have, up to last year, come out through our colony of Sierra
Leone, and have been included with the exports of Sierra Leone itself,
though Sierra Leone has not dwelt on this interesting fact. And,
equally, since 1890 goods going into French Guinea have gone in through
Sierra Leone, and though traceable with care, have been put in with the
total of the imports. So you see it is a little difficult to find out
whether it has been French Guinea or Sierra Leone that has really been
doing the trade mentioned in the figures.
Nevertheless, it has been customary to take these joint, mixed up
figures and get happy over "the increase of trade in Sierra Leone during
the past ten years"; but a little calm consideration will prevent you
from falling into this idle error.
Personally I think that if you are cautious you will try and estimate
the trade by the exports; for among the imports there are Government
stores, railway material, &c., things that will have some day to be paid
for, because it is the rule not to assist a colony under the system
until it has been reduced to a West Indian condition; whereas the
exports give you the buying power of the colony, and show the limits of
the trade which may be expected to be done under existing conditions.
Now, the annual total exports during the five years ending--
1875, amounted in value to, L396,709
1880, " " " L368,855
1885, " " " L386,848
1890, " " " L333,390
1895, " " " L435,175
These figures show for the twenty-five years an increase of less than 10
per cent., or about 1/2 per cent, per annum; and this is not so very
thrilling when one comes to think that that 10 per cent., and probably
more, is showing the increase in the trade not of Sierra Leone, but of
French Guinea, and remembers that in 1874 the exports were L481,894, an
amount they have not since touched.
Then again even in error you are never quite sure if your Colonial
Annual is keeping line; sometimes you will get one by a careful
conscientious secretary who takes no end of trouble, and tells you lots
of things which you would like to hear about next year, only next year
you don't. For example, in Sierra Leone affairs the report for 1887 gave
you the imports for consumption in the colony, while that of 1896
represented the total imports, including those afterwards shipped to
French Guinea and elsewhere; and again, in estimating the value of the
imports Gambia adds the cost of freight and insurance to the invoice
value of imports, and the cost of package to the declared value of
exports. So far, only Gambia does this, but at any moment an equally
laudable spirit might develop in one of the other colonies, and cause
further distraction to the student of their figures.
Besides these clerking errors of omission, there is a constant
unavoidable error arising from the so-called smuggling done by the
native traders in the hinterland. Remember that colonies which you see
neatly enough marked on a map of West Africa with French, English,
German, are not really each surrounded by a set of Great Walls of China.
For example, under the present arrangement with France, if France keeps
to that beautiful Article IX. in the Niger Convention and does not tax
English goods more than she at present taxes French goods on the Ivory
coast--cottons of English manufacture will be able to be sold 10 per
cent. cheaper in the French territory than in the adjacent English Gold
Coast.
Up to the present time it has paid the native hinterland trader to come
down into the Gold Coast and buy his cotton goods, for English cottons
suit his West African markets better than other makes, that is to say
they have a higher buying power; and then he went down into the French
Ivory Coast and bought his spirits and guns, which were cheaper there
because of lower duty. Having got his selection together he went off and
did business with the raw material sellers, and sold the raw material he
had purchased back to the two Coasts from which he had bought his
selection, sending the greater part of it to the best market for the
time being. Now you have changed that, or, rather, you have given France
the power to change it by selling English cottons cheaper than they can
be sold in your own possessions, and thereby rendered it unnecessary for
the hinterland traders to buy on the Gold Coast at all. It will remain
necessary for him to buy on the Ivory Coast, for spirits and guns he
must have; and if he can get his cottons at the same place as he gets
these, so much the better for him. It is doubtful, however, whether
henceforth it will be worth his while to come down and sell his raw
material in your possessions at all. He may browse around your interior
towns and suck the produce out of them, but it will be to the enrichment
of the French colony next door; and, of course, as things are even now,
this sort of thing, which goes on throughout all the various colonies of
France, England, Germany and Portugal, does not tend to give true value
to the official figures concerning trade published by any one of them.
I have no intention, however, of dwelling on the various methods
employed by native smugglers with a view to aiding their suppression. It
may be a hereditary taint contracted by my ancestors while they
sojourned in Devon, it may be private personal villainy of my own; but
anyhow, I never feel, as from an official standpoint I ought, towards
smugglers. I do not ask you to regard the African native trader as a
sweet innocent who does not realise the villainy of his doings,--he
knows all about it; but only once did I feel harshly towards him over
smuggling. A native trader had arranged to give me a lift, as it were,
in his canoe, and I noticed, with a flattered vanity and a feeling of
gratitude, how very careful he had been to make me quite comfortable in
the stern, with a perfect little nest of mats and cloths. When we
reached our destination and that nest was taken to pieces, I saw that
what you might call the backbone of the affair was three kegs of
gunpowder, a case of kerosine, and some packages of lucifer matches.
That rascal fellow black, as Barbot would call him, had expected we
should meet the customs patrol boat, and, basely encroaching on the
chivalry of the white man towards the white woman judged that I and my
nest would not be overhauled. If there had been a guardian cherub for
the Brussels Convention or for Customs doubtless I should have been
blown sky high and have afforded material for a moral tale called "The
Smuggler's Awful End," but there are no cherubs who watch over Customs
or the Brussels Convention in West Africa and I have no intention of
volunteering for such an appointment.
But to return to the Sierra Leone finances and the relationship which
the expenditure of that colony bears to the revenue. The increase in the
imports is apparently the thing depended on to justify the idea that as
the trade has increased the governmental expenditure has a right to do
so likewise. The imports increase in 1896 is given as L90,683. From this
you must deduct for railway material, L26,000, and for the increased
specie import, L19,591, which leaves you an increase of imports of
L45,092 from 1887-1896, and remember a good percentage of this remainder
of L45,092 belongs to French Guinea.
Now the expenditure on the government of Sierra Leone has increased from
L58,534 in 1887 to L116,183, being an increase at the rate of 99.1 per
cent., whereas the exports during the same period have increased at the
rate of 34.8 per cent, or from L333,157 to L449,033.
In other words, whereas in 1887 the government expenditure amounted to
17.5 per cent, the exports in 1896 amounted to 25.4 per cent. The sum of
L40,579 of this increase is credited to police, gaols, transport, and
public works;[63] and if this is to be the normal rate of increase, the
prospects of the colony are serious; for it contains no rich mineral
deposit as far as is at present known, nor are there in it any great
native states. As far as we know, Sierra Leone must for an immense
period depend on bush products collected by the natives, whose trade
wants are only a few luxuries. For it must be remembered that in all
these West African colonies there is not one single thing Europeans can
sell to the natives that is of the nature of a true necessity, a thing
the natives must have or starve. There is but one thing that even
approaches in the West African markets to what wheat is in our own--that
thing is tobacco. Next in importance to it, but considerably lower, is
the group of trade articles--gunpowder, guns, and spirits, next again
salt, and below these four staples come Manchester goods and
miscellanies; the whole of the rest that lies in the power of
civilisation to offer to the West African markets are things that are
luxuries, things that will only be purchased by the native when he is in
a state of prosperity. This subject I have, however, endeavoured to
explain elsewhere.[64]
We have for Sierra Leone, fortunately, a scientific authority to refer
to on this matter of the natural resources of the country, and the
amount of the natural riches we may presume we can take into account
when arranging fiscal matters. This authority is the report of Mr.
Scott-Elliott on the district traversed by the Anglo-French Boundary
Commission.[65]
Regarding mineral, the report states "that the only mineral of
importance is iron, of which the country appears to contain a very large
amount. There is a particularly rich belt of titaniferous iron ore in
the hills behind Sierra Leone."
Titaniferous iron is an excellent thing in its way, and good for steel
making; but it exists nearer home and in cheaper worked regions than
Sierra Leone.
The soil is grouped by the report into three classes:
"1. That of the plateaux and hills above 2,000, or sometimes descending
to 1,000 feet, which is due to the disintegration of gneiss and granite
rocks.
"2. The red laterite which covers almost invariably all the lower hills
from the sea level to 1,000 or 2,000 feet.
"3. The alluvium, due either to the action of the mangroves along the
coast, or to rivers and streams inland."
These soils are capable of and do produce fine timber, rubber, oil and
rice, and the general tropical food stuffs, but these, except the three
first, are not very valuable export articles. Whether it is possible to
enhance the agricultural value of the alluvium regions by growing
tobacco, jute, coffee, cocoa, cotton and sugar, for export, is by some
authorities regarded as doubtful on account of the labour problem; but
at any rate, if these industries were taken in hand on a large scale, a
scale sufficient materially to alter the resources of a West African
colony, they would require many years of fostering, and it would be long
before they could contribute greatly to the resources of such a colony
as Sierra Leone, in the face of the organised production and cheaper
labour, wherewith the supply now in the markets of Europe could be
competed with.
I have had the advantage of associating with German and Portuguese and
French planters of coffee and cocoa. These are the planters who up to
the present have been the most successful in West Africa. I do not say
because they are better men, but because they have better soils and
better labour than there is in our colonies. By these gentlemen I have
been industriously educated in soils, &c.; and from what I have learnt
about this matter I am bound regretfully to say that most of the soil of
the English possessions is not really rich, taken in the main. There are
in places patches of rich soil; and the greater part of our soil will be
all the better this day 10,000 years hence; but at present the soil is
mainly sour clay, slime and skin soils, skin soils over rock, skin soils
over sour clay, skin soils over water-logged soil. We have, alas, not
got the rich volcanic earth of Cameroon, Fernando Po, and San Thome and
Principe. The natives who work the soil understand it fairly well, and
negro agriculture is in a well-developed state, and their farms are most
carefully tended and well kept. The rule along the Bight of Benin and
Biafra is to change the soil of the farm at least every third year; this
they do by cutting down a new bit of bush, burning the bush on the
ground at the end of the dry season, and planting the crops. The old
farm is then allowed to grow bush or long grass, whichever the
particular district goes in for, until the time comes to work back on
that piece of land again, when the bush which has grown is in its turn
cut down and the ground replanted. This burning of the trees or grass is
clearly regarded by the native agriculturist as manuring; it is
practically the only method of manuring available for them in a country
where cattle in quantities are not kept. It is a wasteful way with
timber and rubber growing on the ground of course; but not so wildly
wasteful as it looks, for your Negro agriculturist does not go to make
his farm on bits of forest that require very hard clearing work. He
clears as easily as he can by means of collecting the great fluffy seed
bunches of a certain tree which are inflammable and adding to them all
the other inflammable material he can get; he then places these bonfires
in the bit of forest he wants to clear and sets fire to them on a
favourable night, when the proper sort of breeze is blowing to fan the
flames; when the conflagration is over, he fells a few of the trees and
leaves the rest standing scorched but not killed. Moreover, of course an
African gentleman cannot go and make his farm anywhere he likes: he has
to stick to the land which belongs to his family, and work round and
round on that. This gives a highly untidy aspect to the family estate,
you might think; considering the extent of it, a very small percentage
must be kept under cultivation and the rest neglected. But this is not
really so; if you were to go and take away from him a bit of the
neglected land, you would be taking his farm, say for the year after
next and grievously inconvenience him, and he would know it.
The native method of making farms does not, indeed, do so much harm in
well-watered, densely-populated regions like those of Sierra Leone or
the Niger Delta; but it does do an immense amount of harm in regions
that are densely populated and require to make extensive farms, more
particularly in the regions of Lagos and the Gold Coast, where the
fertile belt is only a narrow ribbon, edged on the one side by the sand
sea of the Sahara, and on the other by the salt sea of the South
Atlantic. You can see the result of it in the district round Accra,
which has always been heavily populated; for hundreds of years the
forest has been kept down by agricultural enterprise. Consequences are,
the rainfall is now diminished to a point that threatens to extinguish
agriculture, at any rate, a sufficient agriculture to support the local
population; and it is not too much to say you can read on the face of
the Accra plain famines to come. There is little reason to doubt that
both the African deserts, the Sahara and the Kalahari, are advancing
towards the Equator. Round Loanda you come across a sand-logged region
of some fifty square miles, where you get the gum shed by forests that
have gone, humanly speaking, never to return; human agency is largely
responsible, it is like sawing the branch of a tree partially through,
and then the wind breaks it off. Forest destruction in lands adjacent to
deserts is the same thing; the forest is destroyed to a certain extent,
an extent that diminishes the rainfall and makes it unable to resist the
desert winds, and then--finis.
In the regions of the double rains in the great forest belt of Africa
things are different, so you cannot generalise for West Africa at large
in this matter. It is one thing for forest destruction to go on in the
Gold Coast, quite another for it to go on in Calabar or Congo Francais,
where men fight back the forest as Dutchmen fight the sea.
But I apologise. This, you will say, is not connected with Governmental
expenditure, &c.; but it is to me a more amusing subject, and indirectly
has a bearing; for example, Government expenditure in the direction of
instituting a Forestry Department would be right enough in some regions,
but unnecessary in others.
To return to this agriculture in Sierra Leone. Well, it is, like all
West African agriculture, spade husbandry. It is concerned with the
cultivation of vegetables for human consumption alone. In the interior
of Sierra Leone and throughout the Western Soudan, for which Sierra
Leone was once a principal port, there is a fair cattle country, and an
old established one, as is shown by the exports of hides mentioned in
the writers of the seventeenth century. Yet it would be idle for the
most enthusiastic believer in West Africa to pretend that the Western
Soudan is coming on to compete with Argentina or Australia in the export
of frozen meat; the climate is against it, and therefore this cattle
country can only be represented in trade in a hide and horn export.
Wool--as the sheep won't wear it, preferring hair instead and that of
poor quality--need not I think be looked forward to from West Africa at
all.
I have taken the published accounts of Sierra Leone, because, as I have
said, they are the most complete. They are also, in the main, the most
typical. It is true that Sierra Leone has not the gold wealth, nor the
developing timber industry of the Gold Coast; but if you ignore French
Guinea, and include the things belonging to it with the Sierra Leone
totals, you will get a fairly equivalent result. Lagos has not yet shown
a mineral export, but it and the Gold Coast have shown of late years an
immensely increased export of rubber. Rubber, oil, and timber are the
three great riches of our West African possessions, the things that may
be relied on, as being now of great value and capable of immense
expansion. But these things can only be made serviceable to the markets
of the world and a source of riches to England by the co-operation of
the natives of the country. In other words, you must solve the labour
problem on the one hand, and increase the prosperity of the native
population on the other, in order to make West Africa pay you back the
value of the life and money already paid for her. This solution of the
labour problem and this co-operation of the natives with you, the Crown
Colony system will never gain for you, because it is too expensive for
you and unjust to them, not intentionally, not vindictively nor
wickedly, but just from ignorance. It destroys the native form of
society, and thereby disorganises labour. It has no power of
re-organising it. You hear that people are leaving Coomassie and Benin,
instead of flocking in to those places, as they were expected to after
the destruction of the local tyrannies. English influence in West
Africa, represented as it now is by three separate classes of
Englishmen, with no common object of interest, or aim in policy, is not
a thing capable of re-organising so difficult a region. I have taken the
Sierra Leone figures because, as I have said, they are the most complete
and typical, and the state of the trade and the expenditure on the
Government are those prior to the hut tax war. So they cannot be
ascribed to it, nor can the plea be lodged that the expenditure was an
enforced one. These figures merely show you the thing that led up to the
hut tax war and the heavy enforced expenditure it has and will entail,
and my reason for detaining you with them is the conviction that a
similar policy pursued in our other colonies will lead to the same
results--the destruction of trade and the imposition on the colonies of
a debt that their natural resources cannot meet unless we are prepared
to go in for forced labour and revert to the slave trade policy.
It seems clear enough that our present policy in the Crown Colonies, of
a rapidly increasing expenditure in the face of a steadily falling
trade, must necessarily lead our Government to seek for new sources of
revenue beyond customs dues. New sources under our present system can
only be found in direct taxation of the native population; the result of
this is now known.
I will not attempt to deal fully with the figures we possess for our
remaining Crown Colonies in Western Africa,--Gambia, the Gold Coast, and
Lagos,--but merely refer to a few points regarding them that have so far
been published. When the result of the policy pursued in these colonies
leads to the inevitable row, and the figures are dealt with by competent
men, there is, to my mind, no doubt that a state equal to that of Sierra
Leone as a fool's paradise will be discovered; and the deplorable part
of the thing is, that the trade palavers of the Chambers and the
Colonial Office will give to hasty politicians the idea that West Africa
is not worthy of Imperial attention, and large quantities of the blame
for this failure of our colonies will be put down quite unjustly to
French interference. That French interference has troubled our colonies
there, no one will attempt to deny; or that if it had been acting on
them when they were in a healthy state it would merely have had a tonic
effect, as it has had on the Royal Niger Company's territories; but,
acting on the Crown Colonies in their present state, French influence
has naturally been poisonous. Even I, not given to sweet mouth as I am,
shrink from saying what has been the true effect on the Crown Colonies
of England of the policy pursued by us towards French advance. This only
will I say, that the French policy is no discredit to France. Regarding
the financial condition of Gambia it is not necessary for us to worry
ourselves. Gambia is a nuisance to France. She loves to have high dues,
and she cannot have them round Gambia way. She has had to encyst it, or
it would be to her Senegal and French Guinea possessions a regular main
to lay on smuggling. Knowing this she has encysted it; it pays better to
smuggle from French Guinea into Gambia or Sierra Leone than from Gambia
or Sierra Leone into the French possessions. This is a grave commercial
position for us, but to it is largely owing the advance of the
prosperity of these French possessions during the past three years.
The Gold Coast has on the west a French possession, the Ivory Coast, on
the east the German Togoland. Togo is a narrow strip, and to its east
and surrounding it to the north is the French colony of Dahomey, whose
recent expansion has told heavily on its next-door neighbours, both Togo
and the English colony to the east, Lagos. I give below the latest
available figures for the foreign West African possessions.[66]
Unfortunately there are no figures available for the French Sudan which
would represent the real value of the trade; the total value of trade
is, however, considerable. You must remember that in dealing with French
colonies you are dealing with those of a nation not gifted with
commercial intelligence; and that, in spite of the perpetual hampering
of trade in French colonies, the granting of concessions to French firms
who have not the capital to work them, but are only able to prevent any
one else doing so, the high differential tariffs, in some cases 100 per
cent., which up to the present time have been levied on English goods,
&c.; the English traders nevertheless work in the markets of the French
colonies, and work mainly on French goods. Of the L117,518 representing
the Ivory Coast trade for the first quarter of this year, over L76,000
was English trade, and of the Dahomey L156,835 for the same period,
L131,705. In reading the imports figures for these French colonies in
Upper Guinea, you must remember that those imports include material for
the well directed, unamiable intention of France to cut us off from what
she regards as her own Western Soudan; it is a form of investment far
more profitable than our expenditure on railways, gaols, prisons, and
frontier police. It is one that, presuming this highly unlikely
thing--France becoming commercially intelligent--would any year now
enable her entirely to pocket the West African trade down to Lagos from
Senegal. She may do it at any moment, though it is a very remote
possibility. So we will return to the Gold Coast finances, though our
authorities on them are at present meagre.
In 1892 the Gold Coast government was financially in a flourishing
condition. On the 1st of January, 1891, there was a sum of L75,181
4_s._ 4_d._ standing to the credit of the colony, which was increased to
L127,796 2_s._ 3_d._ on the 1st of January, 1892, and to L152,766 16_s._
7_d._ on the 1st of January, 1893, and the colony had no public debt.
There was no native direct taxation. The Customs dues were lower than
they are now. The extremely careful official who drew up the report
shows evidence of realising that Customs represent an indirect taxation
on the native population, for he says: "In Sierra Leone and Lagos the
taxation per head is very much higher (than 2_s._ 5_d._ per head), in
the former nine times, and in the latter seven times."[67] However, in
all three colonies, apart from the attempts at direct taxation, the
indirect taxation on the native has considerably increased by now.
The report for 1894 shows the colony still progressing rapidly, the
trade of it amounting in value to L1,663,173 19_s._ 9_d._, of which
L812,830 8_s._ 10_d._ represented the imports, and L850,343 10_s._
11_d._ the exports. The expenditure showed a large increase as compared
with previous years. It amounted to L226,931 19_s._ 4_d._, being L8,670
13_s._ 7_d._ in excess of the revenue for the year, and L47,997 7_s._
11_d._ more than in 1893. The principal items of increase were public
works, upon which the sum of L54,163 0_s._ 3_d._ was spent, and the
expedition in defence of the protected district of Attabubu against an
Ashanti invasion, which cost L10,778 11_s._ The Gold Coast assets on
31st of December, 1894, stood at L166,944 8_s._ 7_d._[68] Then came the
last Ashanti war, regarding which I beg to refer you to Dr. Freeman's
book.[69] No one can deny that he has both experience and intelligence
enough to justify him in offering his opinion on the matter. I entirely
accept his statements from my knowledge of native affairs elsewhere in
West Africa. Anyhow, the last Ashanti war absorbed a good deal of the
assets of the Gold Coast. There is no published authority to cite, but I
do not think there is an asset now standing to the credit of the Gold
Coast Colony, unless it be a loan.
The income for the Gold Coast Colony in 1896 was L237,460 6_s._ 7_d._,
the expenditure L282,277 15_s._ 9_d._ The exports L792,111, against
L877,804 in 1895; but the imports were L910,000, against L981,537. Since
1896 the Customs dues have risen; but, _per contra_, the expenditure has
also risen, in consequence of the expenses arising from the occupation
of Ashanti, and the Gold Coast railway. The occupation of Ashanti and
the railway must be looked on in the light of investments--investments
that will be profitable or unprofitable, according to their
administration, which one must trust will be careful, for they are both
things you cannot just dump your money down on and be done with, for the
up-keep expenses of both are necessarily large.
The subject of West African railways is one that all who are interested
in the future of our possessions there should study most carefully, for
two main reasons. Firstly, that there is possibly no other way in which
money can be spent so unprofitably and extensively as on railways in
such a region. Secondly, because railways are in several districts
there--districts with no water carriage possibilities--simply essential
to the expansion of trade. In other words, if you make your railway
through the right district, in the right way, it is a thing worth
having, a sound investment. If you do not, it is a thing you are better
without; not an investment, but an extravagance. The cost of its
construction must fall on the colony, alike in money and the
distraction, from ordinary trade, of the local labour supply. In both
countries the cost of a railway out there is necessarily great. I
hastily beg to observe I am not aiming at a rivalry with Martin Tupper
in saying this, but am only driven to it by so many people in their
haste saying "Oh, for goodness gracious sake! let the Government make a
railway anywhere; it's done little enough for us, and any railway is
better than none."
There has been considerable difficulty over the Gold Coast Railway
already, though it is only just now entering on the phase of actual
existence. Surveys have been made for it in all directions. Surveys are
expensive things out there. But the general idea the Government gave the
Chambers of Commerce was that, at any rate, this railway was to run up
into Ashanti, and be a great general trade artery for the Colony. The
other day Manchester found out, quite unexpected like, that the
Government whose affections Commerce had regarded as safely and properly
set on the hinterland trade was off, if you please, flirting round the
corner with a group of gold mines at Tarquah, and intended, nay, was
even then proceeding with the undertaking of running the one and only
Gold Coast railway just up to Tarquah, and no further, until this
section paid. Manchester, very properly shocked at this fickleness in
the Government and its heartless abandonment of the hinterland trade,
said things, interesting and excited things, in its _Guardian_; but,
beyond illustrating the truth of the old adage that it's "well to be off
with the old love before you are on with the new," things of no avail.
This Tarquah railway is estimated to cost L5,000 per mile. It is to be
financed by a loan, raised by the Crown Colony Agents, of L250,000. We
have ample reason to believe that this L5,000 per mile will not
represent one-third of its final cost from demonstrations by the Uganda,
Congo Belge, and Senegal railways; more particularly are we so assured
from the knowledge that the railway's construction will be in the hands
of nominees of the Crown Agents, whose method of arranging for the
construction of these railways is curious. They do not invite tenders
for material or freight in the open market, and they do not give the
taxed people in the country itself any opportunity for contracting for
the supply of as much local material as possible--things it would be
alike fair and business-like to do. Exceedingly curious, moreover, is
the fact that the nominees of the Crown Agents' employers are not
subject to the control of the local governmental authorities on the
Coast, their sole connection with the affair apparently being confined
to the passing of ordinances, as per instruction from the Colonial
Office, authorising loans for the payment of the debt incurred by making
the railway.
There is no doubt that any Gold Coast railway which is ever to pay even
for its coal must run through a rich bit of the local gold reefs.
Similarly, there is no doubt that the gold mines of the Gold Coast have
been terribly kept back by lack of transport facilities for the
machinery necessary to work them; but there is, nevertheless, evidently
much that is unsound in the present railway scheme. If the charge for
it, as some suggest, were to be thrown on the gold mines, it would be as
heavy a charge as the old bad transport was, and they would be no less
hampered. If, as is most likely, the charge for the railway be thrown
on the general finance of the colony, it will be a drain on other forms
of trade, without in any way improving them; in fact, during its
construction, it will absorb labour from the general trade--oil, rubber,
and timber--and, if it extensively increases the gold-mining industry,
it will keep the labour tied to it chronically, to the disadvantage of
other trades.
Lagos, our next Crown Colony, is a very rich possession, and under Sir
Alfred Moloney, who discovered the use of the Kicksia Africana as a
rubber tree, and Sir Gilbert Carter, who fostered the industry and
opened the trade roads, sprang in a few years into a phenomenal
prosperity. Then came the French aggression on its hinterland, the
seizing of Nikki, which was one of those _foci_ of trade routes, though
possibly, as many have said, a non-fertile bit of country in itself. To
give you some idea of the bound up in prosperity made by Lagos, the
exports in 1892 were L577,083; in 1895, L985,595. The main advance has
been in rubber, which in 1896 was exported from Lagos to the value of
L347,721. Early in this year, however, the state of the Lagos trade was
considered so unsatisfactory that a local commission to inquire into the
causes of this state of affairs was appointed.
The publication of the Government Trade Returns for 1897 supported the
long grumble that had been going on about the bad state of trade in
Lagos, the imports for 1897 showing a decrease on those of 1895 by
L67,474. The _Board of Trade Journal_, quoting from the _Lagos Weekly
Record_ of February 28th, 1898, says, "An examination of the export
returns affords a clue to the direction of such decrease. It is to be
noted that notwithstanding that the export of rubber in 1897 shows an
excess of L13,367 above that exported in 1895, yet in the aggregate of
the total exports of the two years that of 1897 shows a decrease of
L193,745; this is due to the great falling off which is perceptible in
the palm oil and kernel trade, which together show a decrease in 1897 of
L162,580 as compared with the quantities exported in 1895; while as
compared with the exports in 1896 the decrease amounts to L114,773. The
returns show a steady and increasing decline in the exports of these
products, for while the decrease in 1896 as compared with 1895 was only
L47,807, the decrease had risen in 1897 as compared with the previous
year to L114,773, as already intimated, which implies that there has
been a further falling off of the trade to the extent of nearly L67,000.
This manifest excessive diminution in what must be regarded as the
staple commodities of the trade is undoubtedly a serious indication, for
though these commodities come under the classification of jungle
products they are not liable to exhaustion as are the rubber or timber
industries, and hence they form the only reliable commodities upon which
the trade must expand. The dislocation of the labour system in the
hinterland is no doubt responsible in a large measure for the falling
off in the yield of these products, while in many instances they have
been abandoned for the more remunerative rubber business. But, be the
circumstances what they may, it is evident that there has been an actual
decrease of trade to the extent of over L114,000."
This was the state of affairs the local committee was appointed to deal
with. Its discussions were long and careful. I will not attempt to drag
you through its final report, which a grossly ungrateful public in Lagos
sniffed at because it merely seemed carefully to reproduce every one's
opinion on the causes of the falling off of trade and to agree with it
solemnly; but, like the rest of the local world, it made no sweeping
suggestion of means whereby things could be altered. Since the
committee, however, was formed, there has been a greater interest taken
in expenditure, healthy in its way, but too often ignoring the fact,
that it is not so much the amount of money that is spent governmentally
that constitutes waste, but the things on which it is expended. Large
sums have been spent in Lagos, I am informed, on building a Government
House that every valuable Governor ought to be paid to keep out of, so
unhealthy is its situation, and again on bridging a lagoon that has no
particular sound bottom to it worth mentioning.
That such forms of expenditure are not the necessary grooves into which
a place like Lagos is driven in order to get rid of its money is
undoubted. The local press at any rate indicates other grooves; for
example here is a cheerful little paragraph:
"_A propos_ of what was said in your last issue about the grave-diggers,
there is no doubt that something should be done to relieve the men from
the strain of work to which they are continuously subjected. The demands
of a constantly increasing death rate, which has caused the cemeteries
to be enlarged, make it necessary that the number of grave-diggers
should be increased. Besides, these men are poorly paid for the work
they do. Of the twenty grave-diggers, six are paid at the rate of 1_s._
per diem, and the rest at the rate of 10_d._ They have no holidays,
either, like other people. While the Government labourers, of whom there
is a host, may skulk half their time, the hard-working grave-digger is
at it from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, Sundays included, for the Grim
Reaper is ever busy. The Keeper of the graveyards, also, has much to do
for the paltry salary he receives. I would earnestly appeal to the
authorities to do something to raise the burden of this overworked
staff."[70] So would I, but rather in the direction of giving the "Grim
Reaper" and the grave-diggers fewer people to bury. I must also give you
another beautiful little bit of local colour, although it suggests
further expenditure. "It is satisfactory to note that the Chamber of
Commerce intends to take up the question of the swamp near the petroleum
magazine. Since the Government made the causeway leading to the
dead-house and cut off the tidal inflow, the upper portion of the swamp
has been formed into a most noxious disease-breeding sink, into which
refuse of all kinds is thrown, the stagnant waters and refuse combining,
under the effects of the sun, to emit a most formidable pestilential
effluvia. In the interests of humanity something should be done to abate
this nuisance."[71]
However, I leave these local questions of Lagos town. They just present
a pretty picture of the difficulties that surround dealing with a place
that has by nature swamps, that must have dead-houses, grave-diggers,
and extensive cemetery accommodation, and that is peopled by natives who
will instinctively throw refuse into any hole; with evidently a large
death rate in the native population and a published death rate in whites
of 153 per thousand. Let us now return to the higher finance.
"The total expenditure of Lagos in 1888 amounted to L62,735 15_s._
11_d._ The expenditure has risen in 1898 to L192,760, which gives an
excess of L130,025. The total cost of the staff in 1888 was L15,932,
while the present cost amounts to L41,604, which is an increase of
L25,672. This increase, apart from the augmentation in the Governor's
salary, is mainly in respect to the following departments:--Secretariat,
Harbour Department, Constabulary and Police, and the Public Works
Department. The cost of working the secretariat has been increased by
L1,074, due to the following additional officers:--Two assistant
colonial secretaries, a chief clerk, and a first clerk. It is well known
that in 1888, when the department cost the colony about one-half its
present expenses as regards the European staff, the work was performed
with efficiency and despatch; while at present it is not only difficult
to get business got through, but, what is more, if the business is not
followed up with watchful care, it will become lost in the
superabundance of assistants and clerks who crowd the department, and
the practical expression of whose work is more discernible on the public
revenue than anything else."[72] The _Lagos Record_ goes on to say,
"There is room for retrenchment in the matter of expenditure on account
of the European official staff." I do not follow it here. It is room for
retrenchment in mere routine workers, black and white, that is wanted,
and the liberation of the Europeans to do work worth their risking their
lives in West Africa for. The percentage of black officials, mainly
clerks--excellent and faithful to their duties--is increasing in all our
colonies there too rapidly; and the existence of poorly paid but
numerous posts under Government with a certain amount of prestige, is a
dangerous allurement to native young men, tempting them from nobler
careers, and forming them into a sort of wall-class between the English
official and the main body of the native population. Take, for example,
the number of Government servants at the Gold Coast, according to Sir
William Maxwell, 1897;--
European Native Civil
officers. clerks. Hausas. police.
Accra 35 206 432 105
Cape Coast 8 69 0 47
Elmina 5 36 50 19
An awful percentage of clerks is 311 for such a country, more clerks
than police, only 121 less Government native clerks than soldiers in the
army; and you may depend upon it the white officials are clerking away,
more or less, too. I always think how very apposite the answer of an
official was to the criticism of excessive expenditure: "Sir, there is
no reckless expenditure; every J pen has to be accounted for!"
No, I am quite unable to agree that anything but the Crown Colony system
is to blame, and that because it is engaged in administering a district
with no possibilities in it for England save commercial matters, in
which the Crown Colony system is not well informed. I have only quoted
these figures to show you that Lagos and the Gold Coast are merely
keeping line with Sierra Leone--increasing their expenditure in the face
of a falling trade, with a dark trade future before them, on account of
French activity in cutting them off from their inland markets, and of
their own mismanagement of the native races.
The trade and the prosperity of West Africa depend on jungle products.
There is no more solid reason to fear the extinction of West Africa's
jungle products of oil, timber, fibre, rubber, than there is to worry
about the extinction of our own coal-fields--probably not so much--for
they rapidly renew themselves. Yes, even rubber, though that is slower
at it than palm oil and kernel; and at present not one-tenth part of the
jungle products are in touch with commerce; and save gold, and that to a
very small extent, the mineral wealth of West Africa is untouched. It is
not in all regions only titaniferous iron; there are silver, lead,
copper, antimony, quicksilver, and tin ores there unexploited, and which
it would not be advisable to attempt to exploit until the so-called
labour problem is solved. This problem is really that of the
co-operation for mutual benefit of the African and the Englishman. In
the solution of this problem alone lies the success of England in West
Africa, not of England herself, for England could survive the loss of
West Africa whole, though doing so would cost her dear alike in honour
and in profit. The Crown Colony system which now represents England in
West Africa will never give this solution. It necessarily destroys
native society, that is to say, it disorganises it, and has not in it
the power to reorganise. As I have already endeavoured to show, English
influence in West Africa, as represented by the Crown Colony system,
consists of three separate classes of Englishmen with no common object
of interest, and is not a thing capable of organising so difficult a
region. All these three classes, be it granted, each represent things
for the organisation of a State. No State can exist without having the
governmental, the religious, and the mercantile factors, working
together in it; but in West Africa these representatives of the English
State are things apart and opposed to each other, and do not constitute
a State. You might as well expect to get the functions of a State, good
government, out of these three disconnected classes of Englishmen in
Africa, as expect to know the hour of day from the parts of a watch
before they were put together.
You will see I have humbly attempted to place this affair before you
from no sensational point of view, but from the commercial one--the
value of West Africa to England's commerce--and have attempted to show
you how this is suffering from the adherence of England to a form of
government that is essentially un-English. I have made no attack on the
form of government for such regions formulated in England's more
intellectual though earlier period of Elizabeth, the Chartered Company
system as represented by the Royal Niger Company. I have neither shares
in, nor reason to attack the Royal Niger Company, which has in a few
years, and during the period of the hottest French enterprise, acquired
a territory in West Africa immensely greater than the territory acquired
during centuries under the Crown Colony system; it has also fought its
necessary wars with energy and despatch, and no call upon Imperial
resources; it has not only paid its way, but paid its shareholders their
6 per cent., and its bitterest enemies say darkly, far more. I know from
my knowledge of West Africa that this can only have been effected by its
wise native policy. I know that this policy owes its wisdom and its
success to one man, Sir George Taubman Goldie, a man who, had he been
under the Crown Colony system, could have done no more than other men
have done who have been Governors under it; but, not being under it, the
territories he won for England have not been subjected to the jerky
amateur policy of those which are under the Crown Colony system. For
nearly twenty years the natives under the Royal Niger Company have had
the firm, wise, sympathetic friendship of a great Englishman, who
understood them, and knew them personally. It is the continuous
influence of one great Englishman, unhampered by non-expert control,
that has caused England's exceedingly strange success in the Niger;
coupled with the identity of trade and governmental interest, and the
encouragement of religion given by the constitution and administration
of the Niger Company. This is a thing not given by all Chartered
Companies; indeed, I think I am right in saying that the Niger and the
North Borneo Companies stand alone in controlling territories that have
been essentially trading during recent years. This association of trade
and government is, to my mind, an _absolutely necessary restraint_ on
the Charter Company form of government;[73] but there is another element
you must have to justify Charters, and that is that they are in the
hands of an Englishman of the old type.
I am perfectly aware that the natives of Lagos and other Crown Colonies
in West Africa are, and have long been, anxious for the Chartered
Company of the Niger to be taken over by the Government, as they
pathetically and frankly say, "so that now the trade in their own
district is so bad, it may get a stimulus by a freer trade in the
Niger," and the native traders not connected with the Company may rush
in; while officials in the Crown Colonies have been equally anxious, as
they say with frankness no less pathetic, so that they may have chances
of higher appointments. I am equally aware that the merchants of England
not connected with the Niger Company, which is really an association of
African merchants, desire its downfall; yet they all perfectly well
know, though they do not choose to advertise the fact, that three months
Crown Colony form of government in the Niger territories will bring war,
far greater and more destructive than any war we have yet had in West
Africa, and will end in the formation of a debt far greater than any
debt we now have in West Africa, because of the greater extent of
territory and the greater power of the native States, now living
peacefully enough under England, but not under England as misrepresented
by the Crown Colony system. I am not saying that Chartered Companies are
good; I am only saying they are better than the Crown Colony plan; and
that if the Crown Colony system is substituted for the Chartered
Company, which is directly a trading company, England will have to pay a
very heavy bill. There would be, of course, a temporary spurt in trade,
but it would be a flash in the pan, and in the end, an end that would
come in a few years' time, the British taxpayer would be cursing West
Africa at large, and the Niger territories in particular. Personally, I
entirely fail to see why England should be tied to either of these
plans, the Crown Colony or the Chartered Company, for governing tropical
regions. Have we quite run out of constructive ability in Statecraft? Is
it not possible to formulate some new plan to mark the age of Victoria?
FOOTNOTES:
[60] _Industrial and Social Life of the Empire._ Macmillan and Co.
[61] For Lagos, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and Gambia from 1892 to 1896,
L2,364,266.
[62] Forty-eighth annual report Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, 1898.
[63] L Increase.
Expenditure on police and gaols, 1896 31,504 L
" " " 1887 3,037 28,467
Expenditure on transport 1896 10,091
" " " 1887 3,298 6,793
Expenditure on public works 1896 6,736
" " " 1887 1,417 5,319
------
Aggregate increase 40,579
[64] "The Liquor Traffic in West Africa," _Fortnightly Review_, April,
1898.
[65] _Colonial Reports, Miscellaneous, No. 3, 1893._ G. F. Scott Elliott
M.A., F.L.S., and C. A. Raisin, B.Sc.
[66] French colonies--
Imports. Exports
1896. 1897. 1896. 1897.
L L L L
Senegal 1,047,000 1,167,000 783,000 845,000
French Guinea 185,000 240,000* 231,000 201,000*
Ivory Coast 186,000 188,000 176,000 189,000
Dahomey 389,000 330,000 364,000 231,000
French Congo 192,000 ** 190,000 **
* For nine months only.
** No statistics.
Trade of Dahomey and the Ivory Coast for the first three months
of 1898--
Imports. Exports. Total trade.
L L L
Ivory Coast 58,658 58,560 117,518
Dahomey 84,064 72,771 156,835
German possessions--
Imports. Exports.
1895. 1896. 1897. 1895. 1896. 1897.
L L L L L L
Togoland 117,000 94,000 99,000 152,000 83,000 39,000
Cameroon 283,000 268,000 * 204,000 198,000 *
---------------------------------------------
Total 400,000 362,000 * 356,000 281,000 *
* No figures for calendar year. _Board of Trade Journal_,
September, 1898.
[67] _Colonial Annual_, No. 88, Gold Coast for 1892, published 1893.
[68] Ditto, No. 188.
[69] _Ashanti and Jaman._ Constable, 1898.
[70] _Lagos Standard_, September 7, 1898.
[71] _Lagos Weekly Record_, September 10, 1898.
[72] _Lagos Weekly Record_, August 27, 1898.
[73] See Introduction to _Folk Lore of the Fjort_. R. E. Dennett. David
Nutt, 1898.