It was from one of these latter that Mr. Trimblerigg received news of the swift civilization that was taking place in parts scarcely heard of as yet, owing to the beneficent efforts of certain missionary centres not only to sow the seed of the faith but to develop the wealth and resources of the fields in which they laboured. This particular missioner was an optimist about his own districts. ‘In fifty years’ time,’ he said, ‘it will be for its size, the richest country outside Europe and the States.’ And as its size was nearly half that of France such a forecast suggested big possibilities.
He went on to tell with what prudent and fatherly care those in control of the missions had headed off the rapacious traders and concession hunters, who follow in the missionary’s track, by obtaining from the native chiefs exclusive rights strategically based upon the routes of trade, such for instance as the building of landing-stages at the junction of rivers, and the setting up of white settlements on the high table-lands of the interior.
As a consequence the economic future of the country was controlled, not indeed by the missionary society itself, but by a humane-minded organization of business interests working with and through it. And under this happy co-operation the Native Industries Company in the Ray River territory to the north of Puto-Congo (not then the familiar name it has become since) had opened up commercial relations at the cost of only a few score thousand pounds, which in the near future might be worth millions. They were already paying an interest on shares which compared favourably with larger ventures of longer date; and as the total number of shares was comparatively small, they offered to early investors a great future.
And so Mr. Trimblerigg, who had a taste for speculative transfer, sold out and reinvested a few hundred pounds in Native Industries Limited; and receiving his dividends thereafter on the scale promised, thought very little further about it, except as something sound which carried with it the larger hope of value that might increase.
The sense in which he thought very little about it, was as to the actual source of its profits—oil, rubber, copra, or ivory—the methods of its working, and the men who worked it, or what it really did for the native beyond making him more accessible to the influence of missions and of trade. As to that last, a very slight preliminary inquiry had satisfied him that it was so; and there he left it. It never occurred to Mr. Trimblerigg, who was eloquently opposed to corporal punishment in his own country for crimes of violence and such like, to inquire whether corporal punishment played any part in making his dividends from Native Industries Limited nearer ten than five per cent per annum. And why indeed should it occur to him? The shareholder system, on which modern trade is run, does not prompt such mental occurrence; and where so many millions are satisfied that their responsibilities end in the acceptance of the reports of their directors, can any particular blame attach to one, however eminent in the organization of the mission field, if he also was satisfied, and become in consequence forgetful?
Mr. Trimblerigg had then—as always—a perfectly clear conscience. He was very busy, he was doing good work; his doctrine of relative truth was giving theology a more modern and a much more sensible mind about all the things it could not really prove but loved to fight about; the coalition of the Free Churches was advancing under his manipulation by leaps and bounds; behind that loomed Disestablishment. Given a greater corporate union of Nonconformity, the argument for it would be irresistible; and when it came he would be the up-to-date Luther before whose assault that final stronghold of religious privilege toppled to ruin. For Mr. Trimblerigg had been busy not only in the organization of missions but upon the political side also; and would no doubt by this time have gone into Parliament had not somebody already been there before him who was doing what he would have done in exactly the same way—with the same brilliance, the same elasticity, the same eloquence, the same hand-to-mouth conviction, and the same enthusiastic and catchword-loving following. Parliament did not need two wizards to cast upon it the same spell. That was the reason why Mr. Trimblerigg kept his wizardry for the Churches.
And so, through strenuous years Mr. Trimblerigg laboured to make Free Evangelicalism greater, and more powerful, and more feared than it had ever yet been; and before he had touched middle age he began to be spoken of as candidate for the high office of President at the Annual Conference—a post for which previously no head without grey hair on it had ever qualified.
It only wanted some great cause, some big agitation led by himself, to carry him through and make him, before he reached the age of forty, the most prominent figure in the Nonconformist world. And then, while he was looking for it, came, just in the nick of time, the story, the horrible story of the Puto-Congo atrocities.
He was no missionary and no trader, but a mere outsider who brought it to Europe; and when, for reasons, Government threw a belittling doubt upon it, questioning the motives and veracity of its reporter, then Mr. Trimblerigg saw his chance, and blew a blast to the Free Evangelical mission world. He took up the cause, made it his own, and gave it all the publicity it required.