A NEW SOVEREIGN COMPANY.
THAT section of the British public which is interested in Africa—a much larger section, by-the-way, than is supposed, including as it does all Scotchmen, most religious Englishmen, and a host of wealthy philanthropists —is just now fairly happy in its mind, but is still a little perplexed. In the great scramble for the vast continent, this country is getting her share, or even, if the precise truth is to be spoken, just a little more. The French are hungry, and the Germans are thirsty, and the Portuguese are voracious, swallowing, indeed, so much that they will by-and-by be sick ; but, nevertheless, the British Foreign Office is ruling Egypt and Zanzibar, and the British Colonial Office has silently stretched its territory right up to the Zambesi—that old dream of Sir Bartle Frere- thus possessing itself of a territory which, including the Dutch Republics, now becoming British under the influx of settlers brought by gold and diamonds, is equal to five times the area of France, and may be the seat in another century of a powerful Empire. A British Company has seated itself with sovereign powers on the upper valley of the Niger, a second Association is mistress from Mombassa to Lake Tanganyika, and now a third, with the approval of Lord Salisbury, is about to possess itself of " Living- stonia," a magnificent kingdom as large as Spain, stretching from the middle of the Zambesi, and the terminus there of the projected South African arterial railway, right up to the corner of Lake Tanganyika. "The whole region to be included," writes one who knows in Tuesday's Times, will "lie between the south end of Tanganyika, the west shores of Nyassa, the southern boundaries of the Congo Free State, and the western and eastern possessions of Portugal, down to the frontiers of the Bechuanaland protectorate." Its territory will contain magnificent mountains and broad stretches of plateau, upon which Europeans can live, if not work in comfort and with safety, and may, if it is only successful, cover the whole of the region of the African Lakes. Another kingdom or
two will, it is believed, drop in, perhaps very speedily ; the Congo State itself, with its awful expanses of forest, will in a few years be in the market, for it is a white elephant for Belgium ; and there will, it is evident, be no lack of room. A few millions of settlers, a few thousand prosperous
planters, with, say, twenty villages apiece, a few hundreds of evangelists,—there will be space and to spare for all ; but still thereis a difficulty.
We want a new instrument of government for our possessions in tropical Africa, and though one has been discovered which may work, everybody is not as yet altogether satisfied. The Foreign Office, though it does its best to acquire African territory, cutting huge slices with a silent audacity we cannot but admire, will not, in- deed cannot, govern its new possessions directly. It does not understand the work ; it has not the agency at its disposal, and it is quite enough fretted with its task of management through native dynasties in Egypt and Zanzibar. The Colonial Office, again, has quite enough of Africa upon its hands. Besides the pesti- ferous little Colonies on the West, it has to govern all the continent from Cape Town to the Zambesi, which is farther than from London to Warsaw, and would like a decade or so of breathing-time to digest its more recent acquisitions, one of them being, it is dimly conjectured, the richest mineral region on the planet. It would under- take the task if compelled, and would probably succeed, its grand tropical possession, Ceylon, being, on the whole, the best-managed Dependency in the world ; but it would rather begin when there is a revenue, disliking collisions on money matters with an ignorant House of Commons. The India Office, though it has the experience, and the agency at disposal, especially the military agency, and if it likes, the pecuniary means, has a fifth of the human race already to provide for, and will not burden itself further with those profitless and troublesome African affairs. A new agency must, therefore, be found ; and the Foreign Office, and the Colonial Office, and the missionaries, and the wealthy philanthropists, and General Strachey, the able President for the past year of the Geographical Society, all think they have found one in an extension of "commercial associations entrusted with the exercise of reasonable administrative authority within the several areas assigned to them." As each district of Eastern or Central Africa is opened up by ex- plorers, or missionaries, or commercial adventurers hunting
for ivory or buying oils, or planting tobacco, a Company is to be chartered, and is thenceforward to bear rule while its
territory "passes within the sphere of British influence."
That is a large idea, especially as such a Company has always Asiatic notions about areas, and looks upon pro-
vinces the size of England as mere districts ; and prima facie it has a good deal to recommend it. To begin with, there is no trouble about money. The kind of enterprise attracts men with millions ; they like ruling, they like patronage, they like opening up new trades, and in a majority of cases, they like most heartily to enjoy these things while doing much unmistakable good in their day and generation. Then there is no difficulty about agency. The ruling men of such Companies have only to hold up their fingers, and out of that inexhaustible reservoir, the sons of the British middle class, there pour hundreds, if necessary thousands, of adventurous young men who only ask a small salary and a "chance," and they will go anywhere and do anything, set up stations, clear roads, build villages, open up trades—which means making advances on produce to arrive or even to be grown—and lick all manner of dark persons into very useful and partially civilised police. They are doing those things by the thousand in every tropical and semi-tropical region, and their numbers seem never to grow thin. They die very fast, but they do not care about that, nor does anybody else, and those of them who survive are usually the ablest among them, and grow into the most efficient of mankind. Then there is no home prejudice to overcome. Englishmen have heard all their lives of these governing and colonising Companies, and have an idea —derived in great part from the history of the Hudson's Bay Company—that besides being fairly successful, they are kindly rulers with a special aptitude for disciplining and conciliating the inferior races of men. The plan will therefore, we doubt not, be adopted, and before long we shall have four or five of these Companies, each governing a kingdom in Africa, with a revenue, an armed police, a " service " of able white agents, and some tens of thousands of dark subjects. That will strike many people as an attractive prospect, and we are most unwilling to object, or even criticise, for we see clearly that without the: Companies the work will wait, and waiting means that those villains, the slave-stealers, aided and abetted by the Portuguese, shall desolate whole provinces ; but we could wish that the House of Commons would understand what a big thing is on hand, and instead of finding in it an opportunity for a party attack, would insist upon certain necessary conditions. To begin with, General Strachey's "reasonable administrative authority" is only a smooth phrase. If a Company thus chartered has not full administrative authority, power to raise soldiers as well as police, power to defend its subjects even by war, power to hang murderers and slave-stealers, and power to regulate the sale of liquor, it will have no power to do any civilising work, and the whole business will be just the biggest dacoity ever heard of. We have no patience to hear of a Company seizing a great slice of territory with a thousand villages upon it, taxing them all, trading with them all, making them all work, and then neither pro- tecting them nor training them, nor legislating for their benefit. That work, which is the compensation we give for conquest, requires full and legal sovereignty, not "reasonable administrative authority," and if we delegate .sovereignty, we ought to make those who exercise it directly responsible to some department of the State. We must fight for these people if we plant them in Africa, whether we intend it or not, and some responsible Minister ought to be able to give the Companies orders ; to settle boundary quarrels, which will come up at once ; to forbid oppressive monopolies ; to control legislation about contracts, which will else be the basis of a new slavery ; and above all, to insist that there shall be for the very feeblest some means of obtaining redress for wrong. The Companies will do very well, W.) do not doubt, especially at first, while their founders are alive ; but the nation has no right whatever to lend them the irresistible strength of its civilisation, and then declare itself irresponsible for their use of power. The East India Company was a very great and, on the whole, very benevolent body ; but its agents began their reign in Bengal with one of the most gigantic crimes ever committed, a regrating of rice on a scale which reduced a people to famine.
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