The Paris correspondent of the Times denounces the French Government
for cancelling certain great monopolies granted
to individuals in the French Colonies ; and declares that the British Government grants such monopolies, and that this is one secret of its Colonial success. M. Verdier, for example, was granted a monopoly of the right to cut wood on the Ivory Coast, and was then deprived of it because the Governor, M. Binger, declared it would be the ruin of the Colony. M. de Blowitz is confusing two very different things. The British Government has in recent years never granted a monopoly to any private trader whatever. It has granted, most unwisely in our opinion, sovereign powers to Chartered Companies, which often raise revenue by selling land, mineral rights, and, it may be, the right of cutting wood; but then the Company is the Government, and, in theory, is to use its rights for the good of the Colony and its inhabitants. Its receipts provide a dividend, but only after the expenses of administration have been provided for. M. Verdier's concession was a direct and an enormous deduction from the wealth of the Colony without any advantage accruing to it in return. Both systems are bad, but the French one would speedily degenerate into mere plunder for the benefit of men who supported the Administration.
