The Treaty between Great Britain and Portugal has been passed
by the Cortes by overwhelming majorities, and Lord Salisbury on Thursday explained it to the House of Lords. He described the arrangement, as we have always done, as securing the highlands to the British and the lowlands to the Portuguese ; but added, what we had missed, that the whole of Barutsa's kingdom to the east of Portuguese terri- tory in West Africa passes within the British "sphere of influence." No one even in the Foreign Office pretends to know the boundaries of this kingdom, but Lord Salisbury clearly suspects that it is very extensive. Finally, he took credit for having acted very fairly by Lisbon in the matter of Gungunhama's dominion. That chief is friendly to the British, and owns all Portuguese territory south of the Zambesi. We might, therefore, by supporting him, have "elbowed" Portugal out of Sofala and Gaza, and given ourselves a long littoral; but as we had agreed in a treaty of 1847 that this region should be Portuguese, Lord Salisbury adhered to the treaty. That will sound to Englishmen only proper, but it was advisable to mention it, because on the Continent the idea is, that in Africa Great Britain respects no rights at all. There is a weak point in this treaty, that we have no road of our own to the coast ; but we fancy that may be settled by a sale or lease, and for the rest we have only too much of Africa.
