THE ASHANTEE WAR.
THE Government having at length selected a competent organising soldier to set matters straight on the Gold Coast, and supplied him with a lieutenant skilled in the art of handling natives, we may hope for a bold, intelligible West- African policy. We should have preferred Colonel Gordon and Captain Glover, as a more appropriate combination, but no exception can fairly be taken to Sir Garnet Wolseley, who has proved his capacity on so many fields. It is satisfactory also that Captain Glover and the Admiralty have sunk their differ- ences in the presence of a public necessity. With Colonel Wolseley, who has a political as well as a military head on his shoulders, Captain Glover, who is a power among the black tribes, and Colonel Fasting, who has shown that he knows the right way of fighting savage enemies by bringing skill of fence and the genuine old British audacity to shatter and split up num- bers, our affairs on the Guinea Coast ought to be placed on a sounder footing than they have ever stood on before. The time has gone by when we can creditably afford to continue a protectorate of African tribes dependent on the discretion of an Ashantee King. We are bound to adopt and stead- fastly pursue a bold, broad, and imperial line of conduct, and above all things, escape the liability to be regarded as hold- ing the Coast forts on sufferance. Mr. Cobden said " the national obligation to the interests of trade is only to remove obstacles," a proposition wide enough to carry our frontiers anywhere. Military invasions by barbaric powers are decided obstacles to trade, seeing that they frequently stop it altogether. Now self-defence ordains that they shall be repelled, and wise policy insists that the source shall be dried up. The source is over the river Prah, in the heart of Ashantee-land, and the time has come when we must organise and direct a force upon Coomassie, strong enough to dictate our own terms of peace, bring back the drinking-cup made out of Sir Charles Macarthy's skull, and secure complete tranquillity in a wide region for a couple of generations. We cannot pay tribute to the Ashantee Treasury ; we cannot send the King, as prisoners, any refugees he may choose to demand; we cannot tolerate either his presence on the Coast line, or endure any longer these recurring inroads. To make the Protectorate a reality we must remove the obstacles to trade, and among these, the immunity of Ashantee-land by a short, sharp war. If we are to be, as Sir Charles Adderley even admits, general guardian of peace among the tribes, if we are to pass from the defensive and become the presiding power on the Guinea Coast, it is obvious that we must use force, and compel where we cannot persuade. An overmastering policy of that kind is, and should be made, compatible with justice ; that we may stand as arbiters, exerting supreme influence alike over traders and tribes.
We trust, therefore, that the appointment of Sir Garnet Wolseley means an expedition to Coomassie, indeed cannot see how it can imply anything else. If the Ashantees were to be simply beaten off, Colonel Fending could perform that operation as well as another. He has shown that he knows the way. But were our efforts to stop at mere defence, we should not only be discredited, but liable to a renewal of the baffled peril. Nor would it suffice, either for the honour of the flag, or the welfare of the Coast, or the exertion of that indisputable power which alone can render our government a blessing, to give an adequate military organisation to the Fantees, although they are stronger and as brave as their neighbours. We are bound to fulfil all the duties implied in the assumption of rule, and we cannot do that until our might has been irresistibly demonstrated beyond the Prah. Long ago a good broad road to that river should have been made. Had that been done, Ashantee could have been always entered at pleasure. Now we must make the road, carry it over the river, up the hills, and through the jungle beyond, so that disciplined Fantee and Houssa bands, recruited from the Niger country, can at any moment be thrown over the frontier. What we have long required, what we still stand in need of, what, let us hope, is now to be supplied, is a firm, impartial, vigorous policy,. directed to the absolute control of the whole region to a great depth inland, so far as the maintenance of public tranquillity and the upholding of entire freedom of trade, directly and indirectly, are concerned. Except to that extent, we need not interfere with the customs of the people, or do good to them against their will, except by the total extinc- tion of slavery, or thrust down their throats a civilisation, which chiefly takes the form of exacting taxes. But to. that extent we are bound to go, and lift from ourselves. the reproach of pottering about the foreshores of West Africa like a mere corporal's guard to a score or two of traders.
in gold-dust, ivory, and oils. If Africa is to be civi- lised, it can only be done by commerce as the fruit of peace ; and if there is to be peace, there must also be some- where, at central points, power to enforce it. We believe the forthcoming papers will show conclusively that, whether oar policy looks ahead or not, whether it is confined to a very limited present or lays the foundations of a nobler future, we must march a force into Ashantee-land, and bring the rulers there to a due sense of their position. They must be made to understand that the Coast is free to their traders and pro- duce, but not to their armies or their King's emissaries, and that we intend to keep the peace throughout the whole Coast range under our flag.
No doubt it will be said that the thing cannot be done, that the attempt will cost more than it is worth, and leave us where we are ; that Europeans cannot struggle success- fully with an African climate and African miasmata; and that we shall only bury treasure and brave men in the Bush, without accomplishing our Quixotic purposes. The same sweeping assertions were made when Napier, creating a town on a desert shore, set out on his march to. Magdala. He was to be starved, killed with fever and cholera, drowned in torrents, slain in ambuscades, eaten alive, he and his horses and cattle, by venomous flies,—especially the- " pink fly," which played such a part in the orations of Mr. Lowe. We know the result. And as to unhealthy climes, if Englishmen had been daunted by them, what now would be the British Empire ? Cape Coast is not worse than Bombay and Hooghly a hundred years ago ; barely worse than Hong- Kong was a few years since ; not more inimical to folks on land than heat and hardship were to sailors at sea when the• West-Coast cruisers, after a long battle, broke down and destroyed the slave trade. Why, it turns out that until the other day, no attempt to take ordinary sanitary precautions was ever made on the Coast. We can only inhabit these countries with comparative immunity by making them habitable. Rangoon was a mere slaughter- house when an Anglo-Indian army first went there, and the troops died by the thousand. Now it is a sanitarium for Bengal. But we need not risk many European lives on the West Coast. We do not require there ordinary British soldiers, as yet untaught in the art of preserving health. All we require is a few picked men, like Chinese Gordon or African Glover, to organise and drill the fighting Coast tribes and a few whites to set them an example. It is brains and moral courage, not brute numbers, which are demanded' by the exigencies of African enterprise. The Houma offer an example. They are Moslems obtained by volun- tary enlistment from the districts east of the Niger, and they have shown how a few hundreds, well armed, trained, and led, are more than a match for thousands. There is no reason• whatever why a small compact force of West Indian Foot, Fan- tees, and Houssas, led by men like Glover, Loggie, Brett, Festing, directed by the military knowledge and experience of Wolseley, and adequately supported from home, should not conquer- Ashantee-land once for all, not to hold the country, but simply to show the Ashantees that a breach of the peace by them in- volves a heavier punishment than defeat at Elmina or in front of Cape Coast Castle. It is as absurd to say that we cannot reduce Coomassie as that we should not. The breech-loader in the hands of Africans will be just as effective as it has proved to be in the hands of drilled Turkestanis and Cossacks ; and as Napier went to Magdala, Kaufmann to Khiva, and Bourchier and Brownlow the other day into the heart of Lushai- land, so Wolseley can go to Coomassie, and out the tap-root of West-African insecurity by destroying the barbarian who now presumes to threaten our settlements with fire and sword. Delenda est Ashanteea.
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