We have received a copy of the Message addressed by
the Governor of the Gold Coast, Sir Hugh Clifford, to the Legislative Council in regard to the Estimates for 1919, which throws an interesting light on the Constitutional development of the Colony. It appears that the Legislative Council has lately been enlarged so as to include, besides the chief officials, three European residents instead of two, and no fewer than six native representatives where there were only two before. Three of the six natives are Chiefs, representing the three main tribal groups, while the other three have been selected from the educated natives, who, as the Governor says, are "in some respects far ahead of the bulk of their countrymen." The new Council, Sir Hugh Clifford thinks, is far more efficient than the old one. It affords an object-lesson in our liberal but cautious methods of governing Dependencies, where the welfare of the natives is the British administrator's primary concern. Nothing could be more flagrantly unjust than the suggestion, sometimes made by Socialists, that there is no essential difference between British and German Colonial rule. Sir Hugh Clifford's brief account of the deplorable conditions prevailing in the neighbouring ex-German colony of Togoland when it was occupied by Gold Coast forces in 1914 shows that German and British methods are 'poles asunder.
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