An extraordinary project is announced in the papers, which appears
to have some sort of vague countenance from the Government. This is to form a Company, to be called the Soudan Company, on the model of the North Borneo Com- pany, and entrust to it the government of the Soudan. At a preliminary meeting held on Wednesday, it was intimated that the British Government would be asked to lend £2,000,000 with- out interest for five years, and to grant a subsidy of £240,000 for the first year, diminishing by £40,000 in each successive year,—that is, in plainer words, to give the Company £810,000 outright. With this money and a nominal capital of ten millions of its own, the Company is to raise troops, establish trading stations, and, in fact, conquer the Soudan. The project, considering the character of the Sondanese tribes and their fighting record, seems to us utterly chimerical, and if it depends upon a national grant, it will assuredly come to nothing. If we do not want the Soudan for ourselves, we assuredly do not want to conquer it in defence of a knot of mercantile adventurers.
Previous page
