Mr. H. M. Stanley, in an address delivered in Northumber-
land Street on Wednesday, gave a grave warning to the British people. He is entirely in favour of the retention of Uganda; but he is convinced that it must be accompanied at once by the construction of a railway to Lake Victoria. Otherwise, we shall have some day an insurrection or an invasion accompanied by a Sicilian Vespers for the white men. At present, communication eats up human life, our white agents dying on the road of the climate and fatigue, and a vast army of porters perishing in the transport of goods, which now in German and British East Africa occupies two hundred thousand able-bodied men, who are wanted as culti- vators and as employes of the State. No attempt of Euro- peans to penetrate into Africa has ever succeeded without free communication with the sea, and, on account of the tsetse-fly and various diseases, this cannot be secured by means of animals. We believe this warning to be well founded; but we should like to have a scientific estimate of the probable cost of the railway to the Lake. The usual estimate of £2,500,000, which Mr. Stanley accepts, strikes us as far too low, unless we do the forest-cutting and the earth- work by forced labour. Sir G. Portal, we see, who has been appointed Commissioner, starts immediately, and will be accompanied by five hundred disciplined Zanzibar soldiers.
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