MR. STANLEY'S RECEPTION.
IT is, on the whole, good that Mr. H. Stanley should be received as he has been. Many of the incidents of his reception have been offensive to good taste, and some, like the mismanagement at Dover, even discreditable ; but the total effect has almost certainly been beneficial. A hero should not be hunted by sightseers as if he were a monstrosity ; shoals of reporters would vulgarise a visit from a Prophet ; and no man can be lionised through a London season without being slightly lowered either in character or reputation. Still, as all this glaring publicity is inevitable, as the gigantic microscope is now so fixed that all must pass under it, and as the multitudinous public will have sensation, it is well that its attention should be turned as often as possible to something better worthy of study than the things and the people which usually arrest it. Better Stanley than Succi, and African Exploration than the latest proceedings in a scandalous divorce case. There is something, at all events, of true hero-worship in the adoration paid to the great explorer ; and no man, even if animated only by a desire for excitement, can read of Stanley's expeditions, his sufferings and his triumphs, without feeling his brain a little enlarged, and his heart made to swell with a sympathy which, even if transient, is for the moment ennobling. It is very doubtful indeed if we English observe our heroes quite enough ; if it would not be well, as we must bear the degrading publicity of modern life, if we knew more of those who, in the per- formance of civil duty, defy danger and conquer pain, and carry to a successful end enterprises which have sometimes all the importance and many of the heroic incidents of war. No one was ever the worse for going into captivity to Stephenson, or feeding his imagination with the pathetic story of the search for the North-West Passage; and we only wish we knew more of those who died that the bridge of steel might be flung across the Forth. They were not martyrs, any of them, not to be named, it may be, with Father Damien ; but we may make too little of the secondary noblenesses which in their very number ought to make men conscious that some high qualities—such as fortitude, endurance; .self-postpAneinpne —are possible to average himankind. Stanley may be a self-seeker, for all we know, and may regard the wealth his book will bring him as his best reward ; but he is a hero too, and whatever the object of his expedition, whether to rescue an imprisoned philanthropist, or to found a new Dominion for Great Britain —the last is, we think, the latest of the two dozen stories circulated—his march across the dwarf-haunted forest of the Aruwhimi is worthy to rank with the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Gossips are saying in their cynicism that Stanley is "the last and the luckiest" of African explorers; but the world does not lose by recognising that the first constituents of luck are endurance, perseverance, and decision, and gains much if it believes—in this case against evidence—that all the qualities which make up heroism may be displayed by ordinary men. The clubmen would not even criticise a successful General, if he did happen to think much of his own achievements ; and if Stanley is not a successful General, where is there one to be found ? We understand, perhaps too fully, impatience with the applauding roar of a. crowd hardly instructed in the facts, and with the admiring whispers of the caste which thinks that it exalts heroism by being conscious of its existence ; but if the object deserves the uproar, a willing- ness to make it improves both caste and crowd. They are, at all events, doing their best to elevate an ideal ; and it is ideals which are nowadays in danger of dying of too much talk and too many evening papers. The true objec- tion to the roar and the whispers is that they so often create false fame, and set men to imitate what are in truth false examples ; but the fame in this instance ought to be bestowed, and there is no risk of manufacturing Stanleys by any amount of noise. Leonidas has been hymned for three thousand years ; but the number of those who have died to arrest the Persians has never been too oppressive. Besides, attention to Stanley is attention to Africa, and the multitude, whether cultivated or otherwise, ought to attend to Africa much more sedulously than it does. We are pouring into the vast continent on three sides at once, and the problem whether we shall in the end do good or harm, will at last be decided by the votes of electors almost as ignorant of Africa as the Esquimaux or the Lapps. At present, except in Egypt, we have as yet done no good, beyond increasing a little the knowledge of the minute class which understands much of East African geography. We have not diminished the curse of Africa, the slave-hunting, but have roused to a more evil energy the leaders of the slave-hunts, the Arab desperadoes who will shortly be descending the Congo towards the west. We have not " developed civilisation," for except in a few villages scattered just around the Lakes, there is nowhere on the continent of Eastern Africa any guarantee for order, nor any district which can be said to be tranquil because of our exertions ; while we have lost the hold which a poor civilisation had gained on the great region which Mr. Stanley is wisely naming Equatoria. We doubt if we have even increased the British sympathy for the Negro, for without endorsing Mr. Jephson's strong statements, we hold it true that, as usual when Englishmen are disappointed, the popular impression of the men who have caused the disappointment is more hostile than it was. The unreasoning fury which is in every savage, and which sacrificed Cook as much as Barttelot, has struck our people as if it were something new. We have but begun our task, and if it is to go on well, the electors must sanction its objects and understand the only means by which success can be reached. India was conquered in a better way, by experts of whose proceedings the masses never heard until it was years too late either to sanction or to veto them ; but times have changed, and Eastern Africa, if subdued at all, must be subdued with the consent of the mass vote, which as yet has approved, and that indirectly, only of exploration. Exploration is of no use whatever except as a preliminary, not even of as much use as appointing a Select Committee of Inquiry is to philanthropic legislation. Whether we like it or not, there is but one way of civilising East Africa, and that is to govern it, govern it regularly, reso- lutely, and avowedly for at least a century, exercising all taxing powers, distributing all justice, and in all ways, the military way included, training its savages to become orderly men, and therefore men capable of a civilisation. You might as well expect a city to grow because of sur- veyors, as Africa to be civilised because of its explorers. If there is one result of human experience which is certain;- - it is that the Negro will do nothing alone, that he needs the strong discipline of a higher race, and that his choice lies between submission to the vivifying rule of the white man, and the destroying rule of the half-white Arab. If we are not prepared to accept that position as rulers, with its incidental expenditure of valuable lives, English energy, and quantities of treasure, of which only the last can be repaid, we shall do better to stop away, and allow the frenzy of self-assertion now visible in the Mussulman world of Africa, to cool slowly down for want of opposition. We shall accomplish nothing unless we govern, and we shall risk the extirpation of half the population of East Africa, already suffering from the new and almost demoniac energy of the slave-stealers, aroused by the dread of our advance. The choice between these alterna- tives lies with the English people—for the Chartered Com- panies are mere screens—and in order to choose rightly, to come to some working compromise between the ideas of mere traders and of the Aborigines Protection Society, they must attend to African affairs at least sufficiently to give a definite sanction to a permanent course of action. There could be no better provocation to such attention than their interest in Mr. Stanley, and no better instruction than his adventures. By a wise mixture of tolerance and severity, he has made of savages, soldiers who, though able to kill him at any moment, have under his government borne hunger and thirst and intolerable hardship, in order to secure an end of which the ablest among them can have been throughout but half-aware. What he has done with his Zanzibaris, we have to do, if our conquests are to be justified even in our own eyes, with entire tribes of subjects ; and to do it, the ultimate master, the democracy, must at least have made up its mind. Mr. Stanley's feats and his book will both help that mind. to be made up ; and therefore, though as a rule we detest all this advertising clamour, we are glad that the eyes of the country are fixed on the explorer, and that the culti- vated. and the populace seem alike disposed to make of him the hero of the hour. All that braying of trumpets is good. if it fairly warns a whole people that if it means to do its work in Africa, it must shoulder the heavy burden of governing its share.
Previous page
