West Africa probably will never be a pleasant place wherein to spend the winter months, a holiday ground that will serve to recuperate the jaded energies of our poets and painters, like the Alps or Italy; probably, likewise, it will never be a place where we can ship our overflow population; and for the same reason—its unhealthiness—it will be of no use to us as a military academy, for troops are none the better for soaking in malaria and operating against ill-armed antagonists. But West Africa is of immense use to us as a feeding-ground for our manufacturing classes. It could be of equal value to England as a healthy colony, but in a reverse way, for it could supply the wealth which would enable them to remain in England in place of leaving it, if it were properly managed with this definite end in view. It is idle to imagine that it can be properly managed unless commercial experts are represented in the Government which controls its administration, as is not the case at present. It is no case of abusing the men who at present strive to do their best with it. They do not set themselves up as knowing much about trade, and they constantly demonstrate that they do not. Armed with absolutely no definite policy, subsisting on official and non-expert trade opinion, they drift along, with some nebulous sort of notion in their heads about “elevating the African in the plane of civilisation.”
Now, of course, there exists a passable reason for things being as they are in our administration of West Africa. England is never malign in intention, and never rushes headlong into a line of policy. Therefore, in order to comprehend how it has come about that she should have a system so unsuited to the regions to which it is applied, as the Crown Colony system is unsuited to West Africa, we must calmly investigate the reason that underlies this affair. This reason, which is the cause of all the trouble, is a misconception of the nature of West Africa, and it must be considered under two heads.
The thing behind the resolution of 1865 is the undoubted fact that West Africa is no good for a Colony from its unhealthiness. There is no one who knows the Coast but will grant this; but surely there is no one who knows, not only the West Coast of Africa but also the necessities of our working classes in England, who can fail to recognise that this is only half an argument against England holding West Africa; because we want something besides regions whereto we can send away from England men and women, namely, we want regions that will enable us to keep the very backbone of England, our manufacturing classes, in a state of healthy comfort and prosperity at home in England, in other words, we want markets.
Alas! in England the necessity for things grows up in a dumb way, though providentially it is irresistibly powerful; once aroused it forces our statesmen to find the required thing, which they with but bad grace and grievous groans proceed leisurely to do.
This is pretty much the same as saying that the English are deficient in statesmanship, and this is what I mean, and I am convinced that no other nation but our own could have prospered with so much of this imperfection; but remember it is an imperfection, and is not a thing to be proud of any more than a stammer. External conditions have enabled England so far barely to feel her drawback, but now external conditions are in a different phase, and she must choose between acquiring statesmanship competent to cope with this phase, or drift on in her present way until the force of her necessities projects her into an European war. A perfectly unnecessary conclusion to the pressure of commercial competition she is beginning to feel, but none the less inevitable with her present lack of statecraft.
The second part of the reason of England’s trouble in West Africa is that other fallacious half reason which our statesmen have for years been using to soothe the minds of those who urged on her in good time the necessity for acquiring the hinterlands of West Africa, namely, “After all, England holds the key of them in holding the outlets of the rivers.” And while our statesmen have been saying this, France has been industriously changing the lock on the door by diverting trade routes from the hinterland she has so gallantly acquired, down into those seaboard districts which she possesses.
“Well, well, well,” you will say, “we have woke up at last, we can be trusted now.” I own I do not see why you should expect to be suddenly trusted by the men with whose interests you have played so long. I remember hearing about a missionary gentleman who was told a long story by the father of a bad son, who for years went gallivanting about West Africa, bringing the family into disrepute, and running up debts in all directions, and finally returned to the paternal roof. “Dear me! how interesting,” said the missionary; “quite the Parable of the Prodigal Son! I trust, My Friend, you remembered it, and killed the fatted calf on his return?” “No, Sar,” said the parent; “but I dam near kill that ar prodigal son.”
FOOTNOTES:
[57] See Lucas’s Historical Geography of the British Colonies, Oxford, 1894.