The Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, which lately re- monstrated with
Lord Salisbury for his want of energy in not seizing more territory in West Africa, and for allowing France to annex lands and make treaties with natives, received on Tuesday, at their annual meeting, a well-deserved lecture from Lord Salisbury, in the shape of a letter in which one of the Assistant-Under-Secretaries is "directed" to tell the merchants of the " African Section" some home-truths well worth their attention. In their keenness for trade, the Chamber had " failed to give due weight to historical facts, and to the universally admitted rules as to the rights of nations." England has not had " the monopoly of treaty-making and of declarations of protectorates." The Government could not have prevented the French annexations had they wanted to for they had no prior claims on the territories, and no right of forbidding treaties. The French could, in fact, only have been prevented by England in the past having "assumed the re- sponsibility and expense of erecting a savage, harbourless country, under the geographical conditions of this coast, into a British Colony." This is one of the best State papers ever written by Lord Salisbury, and should win him the gratitude of all those who are anxious that our foreign policy should be freed from the taint of Jingoism. It is well that our merchant- adventurers should be reminded that we have not a sort of divine right to all places fit or possible for colonisation. Can- not we be content with the pick of Asia and Africa, and the whole of Australia ?
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