NECESSITY FOR COMMERCIAL EXPANSION.

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sion is. The "Scramble for Africa" by the nations of Europe-an incident without parallel in the history of the world was due to the growing commercial rivalry, which brought home to civilised nations the vital necessity of securing the only remaining fields for industrial enterprise and expansion. It is well, then, to realise that it is for our advantage-and not alone at the dictates of duty--that we have undertaken responsibilities in East Africa. It is in order to foster the growth of the trade of this country, and to find an outlet for our manufactures and our surplus energy, that our far-seeing statesmen and our commercial men advocate colonial expansion.

Money spent in such extension is circulated for the ultimate advantage of the masses. It is, Advantages to then, beside the mark to argue that while Ourselves. there is want and misery at home money should not be spent in Africa. It has yet to be proved that the most effective way of relieving poverty permanently, and in accordance with sound political economy, is by distributing half-pence in the street. If our advent in Africa introduces civilisation, peace, and good government, abolishes the slave-trade, and effects other advantages for Africa, it must not be therefore supposed that this was our sole and only aim in going there. However greatly such objects may weigh with a large and

power

1 "I should like to say to you in passing that this question of Uganda, and all questions which affect the extension of the Empire, have a very pressing interest for working men. Those people who want you to have a little Empire must make up their mind that with a little Empire will go a little trade. This United Kingdom of ours is, after all, but a small place-it is but a mere speck upon the surface of the globe-and it would be absolutely impossible that from our own resources alone we could find employment for our crowded population of forty millions of souls. No; your hope of continuous employment depends upon our foreign commerce, and now that other nations are closing their ports to us, and everywhere we see that they are endeavouring to create a monopoly for their own benefit-I say that the future of the working classes of this country depends upon our success in maintaining the Empire as it at present stands, and in taking every wise and legitimate opportunity of extending it."—Times, June 2d, 1892.

ful section of the nation, I do not believe that in these days our national policy is based on motives of philanthropy only. Though these may be our duties, it is quite possible that here (as frequently if not generally is the case) advantage may run parallel with duty. There are some who say we have no right in Africa at all, that "it belongs to the natives." I hold that our right is the necessity that is upon us to provide for our ever-growing population either by opening new fields for emigration, or by providing work and employment which the development of over-sea extension entails-and to stimulate trade by finding new markets, since we know what misery trade depression brings at home.

Advantages to Africa.

While thus serving our own interests as a nation, we may, by selecting men of the right stamp for the control of new territories, bring at the same time many advantages to Africa. Nor do we deprive the natives of their birthright of freedom, to place them under a foreign yoke. It has ever been the key-note of British colonial method to rule through and by the natives, and it is this method, in contrast to the arbitrary and uncompromising rule of Germany, France, Portugal, and Spain, which has been the secret of our success as a colonising nation, and has made us welcomed by tribes and peoples in Africa, who ever rose in revolt against the other nations named. In Africa, moreover, there is among the people a natural inclination to submit to a higher authority. That intense detestation of control which animates our Teutonic races does not exist among the tribes of Africa (see p. 191), and if there is any authority that we replace, it is the authority of the Slavers and Arabs, or the intolerable tyranny of the "dominant tribe" (vide pp. 86, 87). The experiment of an autonomous and civilised African state of freed negroes, such as was founded in "Liberia " in 1820 by the Washington Colonisation Society, and

THE CLIMATE AND POSITION OF EAST AFRICA 383

recognised as an independent state by Europe in 1847, "can hardly be said to have been a success." 1 Such questions, however, as Mr Keltie says, it is now too late to discuss, and they have but an academic interest.

The disadvantages which are urged as against British East Africa are as follows: First, its lati- Climate and tude, bisected as it is by the equator. This, Location. it is assumed, means a sweltering tropical heat, malarial fevers, and so forth. This question of salubrity of climate is dealt with in more detail in the succeeding chapter, since the altitude has so direct a bearing upon it, and districts vary so greatly in this respect that it becomes impossible to deal with the whole en bloc. Speaking generally, however, we may say that of all this vast continent there is probably no part, with the exception of the extreme south, and possibly of the highlands to the north of the Zambesi, which enjoys such natural advantages of climate-consequent on its high altitude. The plateaux, which begin only 150 miles from the coast and culminate in Mau, I shall describe more fully presently. On the higher portions, even frost is not unknown, and the air is bracing and healthy like that of Europe. Of the more inland districts (Uganda, &c.) around the Lake Victoria, and northwards near the Nile, which do not enjoy so high an altitude, and which are close to the equator, Speke, a most competent observer, writes in glowing terms as regards the climate and rainfall.2 The Rev. C. T. Wilson, the first European resident in

Keltie, Partition of Africa, p. 283. So also Silva White, Development of Africa, p. 237, and Mackay, Life, p. 459.

2 "At 5° south latitude, for the whole six months that the sun is in the south, rain continues to fall, and I have heard that the same takes place at 5° north; whilst on the equator, or rather a trifle to northward of it, it rains, more or less, the whole year round, but most at the equinoxes. . . . The winds in the drier season blow so cold that the sun's heat is not distressing, and in consequence of this, and the average altitude of the plateau, which is 3000 ft. [sic], the general temperature of the atmosphere is very pleasant, as I found from experience; for I walked every inch of the journey dressed in thick woollen clothes, and slept every night between blankets."-Speke's Journals, Introduction, p. 15.