The French have a new grievance against us. It appears
that civil war has broken out in Uganda, the State on Lake Victoria, between the Catholic Negroes, assisted by the King li'wanga, and the Protestant Negroes who support Captain Lugard, representative of the British East Africa Company, to whose administration the kingdom has been assigned. Uganda was, it will be remembered, included, under the Con- vention of Berlin, within "the British sphere of influence." In January, the Catholics attacked some chiefs protected by the British, and Captain Lugard repulsed them, and threw some of the French missionaries into prison. Monsignor Birth, Vicar-Apostolic of Uganda, declares that he and his priests have been shamefully treated, their property plundered, and they themselves subjected to indignities; and the French Foreign Office, believing him, and anxious to prove that France protects Catholicism everywhere—except, indeed, in France—has signified to Lord Salisbury that it shall expect redress at his hands. Lord Salisbury has replied that he must await reports from Uganda, and has laid before M. Ribot the instructions given to Captain Lugard, which strictly enjoin him not to interfere in any religious quarrels. We have endeavoured to explain the affair elsewhere, and need only mention here that Captain Lugard has always been sup- posed to be over-friendly to the Catholics, and has probably only been driven to act against them by attacks intended to expel the British from 'Uganda. Monsignor Hirth himself
admits in his letter of complaint, that he expected, until the British arrived, to make of Uganda a "fine Catholic realm"
