This treatment of the merchant class finds no place in any other colony of West Africa. It is of quite recent growth and monstrously unjust to the merchants, for it should never be forgotten that it is almost entirely to the merchant and missionary communities that Great Britain primarily owes her presence in West Africa. There is another fact our officials would do well to remember, namely, that the natives and the merchants together pay their salaries and pensions.
The younger officials make themselves far more objectionable than the older men, but probably this is due to their inexperience. It is, however, regrettable that the older officials do not set a more pronounced example in the other direction. Within recent years, the British Colonial Office has been sending out, in the capacity of Assistant District Commissioners, many youths of necessarily immature judgment and totally lacking in experience. These lads are by far the worst specimens in their attitude towards the native and merchant communities. Recently, this feature has been impressing itself upon travellers in East as well as in West Africa. Mr. E. N. Bennet, in his book on the Turks in Tripoli, says:—
“Amongst our fellow passengers to Marseilles were eight young men who were on their way to Uganda. Few, if any of them, had ever crossed the Channel before; they wore school colours and did not know an olive tree when they saw one. Nevertheless, they held, and expressed, very decided views—the ideas of the College Debating Society and the London Club—that the ‘man on the spot’ must be the sole arbiter on matters colonial and that kindness was absolutely wasted on black men; the one ethical quality necessary in a representative of Great Britain was firmness.... They also viewed with disfavour the deportation of Mr. Galbraith Cole. One could only hope that when these inexperienced youths grew older they would grow wiser. As it is, an immense amount of harm is done all over our vast Empire by some of our younger soldiers and civil servants, who, utterly devoid of cosmopolitanisme gracieux, treat their non-English fellow subjects with a contempt which would be ridiculous if it were not dangerous.”
The merchant seeking a new field for commerce in West Africa will find the warmest welcome and the fairest treatment in German colonies, and next to Germany, in this respect, the British colonies; there is not much to choose between the Belgian and the Portuguese. None but Frenchmen should go to the colonies of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” for there is little Liberty, less Equality and no Fraternity in the French colonies for white or black.
IV
THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC
It is useless to close our eyes to the fact that an evil of fearful potentiality is being introduced and fostered all down the West Coast of Africa. I have not always found it possible to agree with the much-criticized Native Races and Liquor Traffic United Committee, but it must not be overlooked that some of their critics have made errors, in judgment at least, not one whit less extraordinary than those which have been brought against that Committee of highminded and unselfish men.
The greatest mistake made by people in Europe upon this question is that of comparing it with the European consumption of alcohol. The African is not a drunkard in his primitive state and he detests our ardent spirits; once in an extremity I gave a young man a sip of brandy in water from my medicine case, and he literally howled over it and set his teeth firmly against my trying to give him another dose!
THE MERCHANT AND THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC
The error to which most people cling so tenaciously is that of the “scoundrelly merchant” theory. They cannot understand—because they do not know Africa—why a merchant should pour gin into West Africa, unless he is making a fortune out of it. As a plain matter of fact the merchant makes less out of the sale of alcohol than he would out of almost any other article of commerce. In a village store on the Gold Coast hinterland, I found rum costing 6s. 9d. a gallon being retailed at 7s. 3d.—a profit of only 6d. per gallon. In another store I visited, the native merchant was retailing gin at 9d. a bottle, for which he was paying 8s. 1½d. per dozen, and 4d. a case for transport to his store. A West African merchant once remarked to me, “If you could stop the demand for intoxicating liquor it would pay me to give you twenty thousand pounds.” The merchant was quite right, because, whilst he could get fifteen and twenty per cent. on the sale of Manchester cotton goods, he was only making a few pence a case on the gin he was shipping to Lagos! The sale of alcohol does not pay the merchant, but we cannot escape from the fact that it is a good revenue producer.