LORD SALISBURY IN AFRICA. L ORD SALISBURY, by an arrangement full
at once of astuteness and civil courage, has secured for his country a great triumph in Eastern Africa. The key to the position there is the island of Zanzibar. Any maritime Power which exercises sovereignty over that great piece of coral-100,000 acres, or a little less than Berkshire—with its harbours, its streams, and the wonderfully fertile soil which in the course of ages has formed upon it, becomes almost of necessity the leading Power of the East African coast. It can maintain, feed, and water any fleet there, drill and hide any army, and, if safe upon the water, prepare in serene leisure any number of expeditions. To a Power like ourselves, seated in India for the time being as securely as in England, with limitless supplies of acclimatised recruits, with an irresistible fleet, and with a large local population in the island itself con- sisting of Indians accustomed to obey British orders and look for British protection, Zanzibar furnishes a base such as might serve to support an Empire. The local ruler, too, with whose family friendship to England has become a tradition, possesses rights upon the mainland which it would be hard to define, and which have been only intermittently real, but which are rights nevertheless, recorded in many treaties, and quite sufficient in strong hands to serve as foundations for true sovereignty over everybody from the German Company's dominions to Lake Victoria. The immense advantages of the position have long been acknowledged, and sovereignty over Zanzibar has been, to speak truth, coveted in London and Bombay for years ; but it seemed as if it was unattainable. The German Government is quite as keen as our own, and perhaps less scrupulous, and it was jealous of the inde- pendence of Zanzibar because of these very rights. It insisted on treating the Sultan as a person to be approached rather than coerced, maintained at his Court a regular war of intrigue, extracted from him the " lease " of an extensive territory on the mainland, and was, at all events, suspected, perhaps unfairly, of desiring a separate protectorate even of the island itself. For years every telegram has alluded to this struggle, sometimes, we are bound to remark, in terms of absurd exaggeration, the bulletin- makers talking of " influence " and " prestige " as if Zanzibar were Constantinople, when suddenly it ended, and England was proclaimed, with, the full consent of the Arab Sultan, in Berlin and in London sole Protector, which means in Africa overlord, with rights limited only by her will and her means, of the island of Zanzibar. It had occurred to Lord Salisbury, in the course of the African negotiations, that we possessed off the mouth of the Elbe a sand-bank of some four hundred acres—less than the area of Regent's Park—called Heligoland, taken from the Danes in 1807, and now inhabited by some two thousand Frisian fishermen. The place is of no earthly value to any Power, the water being too shallow for great ships ; but it is much used by Hamburgers as an autumn bathing-place, and the Germans might like to have it. They had, it is true, no traditions about it, for the place never was German, and had no more connection with Hanover than with Palestine; but Germany has become an Empire, and Empires dislike to see neighbouring islands, however small, in the possession of foreign, and possibly hostile Powers. They have always an idea that any rock may be made a fulcrum by enemies from which to move their world, an idea with some reason in it in the days of sailing vessels, and grow periodically fidgetty about any such place, as if they lay under a per- petual challenge. The idea of a ring-fence, always so con- solatory, is broken in upon, and Britain would hardly seem ours if the Germans or any other Power owned North Ronaldshay. Lord Salisbury determined, therefore, to offer Heligoland for Zanzibar, and the offer was accepted not only with readiness, but with a feeling that, the terri- tory being in Europe, and just off the German coast, making it showed a proper feeling for German suscepti- bilities, and German rank in the maritime world. No gift could be more acceptable, and so, subject always to the permission of the British Parliament, Heligoland, which, except to Germany, is a minus quantity, was exchanged for Zanzibar, which, in any time but our own, would have been worth a lengthy war.
If there is any sense of proportion or any knowledge of geography left in our countrymen, that settles the acceptance of the Treaty. We confess to a lingering doubt last week about this very Zanzibar, for we dreaded German action there and the position she might acquire by playing off the Sultan against Great Britain, but our hesitation vanishes under the Salisbury agreement. If the Germans are willing to acknowledge us as supreme in Zanzibar in exchange for Heligoland, it is folly to discuss the suggested treaty any further. The Germans gain, it is true, an enormous prize, nothing less than a, magnificent Empire stretching across the continent from sea to sea—this Emperor has big ideas—for they can exchange Metz for the Congo State on any day they choose ; but then, we gain one, or rather two prizes, either of which would seem to any Power but England almost too big to take. Just look at our South African Dominion, or Africania, as we hope it will one day be called, as it now stands under the Treaty. Sir Bartle Frere dreamed of stretching it, already bigger than Austria, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, up to the Zambesi ; but Lord Salisbury has stretched it up to Lake Tanganyika, six hundred miles further to the north. He has taken in a solid block—to be called, we suppose, the Province of Livingatonia—of 250,000 square miles. Between Stevenson's Road and Cape Town, at least two thousand miles, there is nothing which is not ours—for we reckon the Boer States as cer- tain to become English States—except the Portuguese possession, which we shall, under some happy conjunc- tion of circumstances, sooner or later buy. That vast territory, in which you might sprinkle Kingdoms like Portugal and then be unable to find them, cannot be invaded from any side except by Germany, for her dominion, while it shuts us out from one single route—and that we may traverse by treaty right, and avoid by a treaty with the Congo King—also shuts out every other foe. While we agree with her—and if we fought Germany, which is inconceivable, it would be in defence of France, and therefore with France as an ally—we may possess South Africa in absolute peace, and grow nations on its vast culturable plains, and in the valleys of its broad mountains, valleys that would hold States, and over its " mineral regions," which, if rumour may be trusted, are as much richer as they are vaster than Colorado. There is room for everybody, for a century of un- broken emigration to an unpeopled land, and a climate where the white man, even if he works all day, may expand to the burliness of the typical Dutch Boer. The natives ? We are always hearing about the natives in South Africa, but what harm do they do, unless it be harm, when an Empire is being founded, to provide cheap labour ? There are not two millions of them in our present territories, and as we grow and multiply, they will recede to Reserves as the Red Indians do, or if they are too strong for that, will settle and work as the black population does now in the United States. There are valleys without an inhabitant, kingdoms where the in- habitants are as " sparse " as the Maories were when the first ship-captain landed in New Zealand. To ask for more land is the very foolishness of greed. For generations to come, the one difficulty of South Africa will be the disproportion between the extent of its area and the numbers of its population ; and distance will be the impediment alike of statesmen, capitalists, and engineers.
The second " Colony," as it should now be called, unless we can find a new word to describe the domains of the Chartered Companies—why should not " domain " do ?- though a less valuable possession, is a territory full of magnificent possibilities. Under the agreement, though we do not get everything—and who gave us the right to expect everything ?—the British East Africa Company, besides its present territories, acquires Witu on the north, and with it the power of extending itself indefinitely over the Somali country up to Abyssinia if it pleases, the whole of the northern shore of the Victoria Nyanza, the great Kingdom of Uganda, the " pearl of Africa," where Christianity has made such progress, the Albert Nyanza and its borders, and direct communication with the Nile, which involves, if we please, control over the whole of Emin Pasha's former territory, the Equatorial Provinces. We trust we shall not go near them for years ; but surely, if extent of possible territory is an object, and it is for this and nothing else that opinion has been contending, British ambition is gratified to the full. Lord Salisbury has come out of the negotiations with his hands full, and Germans may well say, as an old English philanthropist said last week: "England in Africa is England as usual, grumbling and grieving and grabbing." Our only fear is that we have obtained too much, and that we may neglect the one heavy obligation about which Imperialists and the Aborigines Protection Society are in hearty accord. Every one of these vast conquests, conquests which are like dreams, and which no effort will ever bring home to ithe ignorant electors to whom Providence, in its mysterious ‘wisdom, is giving continents, is a dacoity unless we govern them. Our rule is in Africa the justification for our grasping ambition ; and the duty of Englishmen, if they would keep their consciences clean, is to see that this rule is not only beneficial in intent, but is actual in fact. They are being used, if it is not presumptuous to say so, as God Almighty's ploughshares ; and a ploughshare which stops in the furrow instead of ploughing is a piece of rusty iron, in- stead of an instrument necessary to the crop. These Com- panies with kingdoms at their feet, must be made to establish order and do justice, or they must be superseded by the direct agents of the Crown. We cannot imagine a political crime greater than to claim the " Protectorate," which is the sovereignty, say of -Uganda, and then allow Uganda to be, as it has for some years been, an African Aceldama. °The most pressing of our duties now in East Africa is to snake sure that an order from Zanzibar, which should be the seat of the supervising authority, will throughout the whole of our " sphere of influence cause every spear to -drop.
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