The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. MONDAY. NOVEMBER 24, 1881

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 4520, 24 November 1884, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

MONDAY. NOVEMBER 24, 1881

For the cause that lacks assistance. For the wrong that needs —'utMinft For the future in the distance, And the geod that we can do.

In our Friday's issue we reviewed the questions that were under consideration of the International Conference re Congo affairs nonr sitting at Berlin. We learn by cable to-day that Mr Stanley has obtained from the Great Powers a recognition of the country opened up by the International African Association as a Free State. The nature of his scheme we described before m detail. Briefly stated, it gives the Association control over the whole of the country watered by the Congo, on condition that the navigaof the river shall be kept free all nations. The reward is not too large a return for the labours of Mr Stanley, under the auspices of the Association, in opening Central Africa. The explorer's friends are, however, still curious i£o know what security he can offer to capitalists in order to procure the large sum required for the construction of his 250 miles of railway round the rapids from the seaborne navigation of the Congo to the clear waters of the upper river. If the conditions imposed on the Association prevent customs taxation on foreign ships, Stanley must depend upon the profits of trading or taxation on the blacks to furnish his new State with revenues. The railway and the Association's fleet and rule on the river will, no doubt, give a virtual monopoly Of the Jarge trade of the interior, and the concession sq closely, resembles the old charter of the jLast jndja Cjompany that Mr Stanley may ba abje to, cqu' : vjnce investors that there is cenf. per cent, in the novel speculation. At any rate, he has publicly affirmed that the money is ready the moment his Free State has received international recognition, and we may take it for granted that the work will go on somehow.This opening up of a vast territory on which" until within the last few years the foot of white man had never trod fills in another of the blank spaces on the map of the world, and offers a AvirJe area of the earth's surface for |the : adaptation of . European civilisation to the peculiar conditions of "The

Dark Continent." Another stronghold of primitive man has been broken intoand annexed by the irresistible paleface, and the destinies of thirty millions of people are placed at the-discretion of a dozen or so trading adventurers. Stanley's Free State is a country of no mean dimensions. The colonists of New Zealand are in the habit of thinking that they occupy a considerable space of ground—its area is just 104,403 square miles; Stanley's new Free State is 1,300,000 square miles, or nearly equal to half the area of the entire continent of Australia. Notwithstanding this gigantic appropriation, there are still some very considerable patches of Africa unclaimed by any civilised nation. Stanley's leap from the duties of a humble reporter on a Yankee newspaper to the position of founder and virtual dictator of a vast country and millions of people h one of those marvels of success which the author of " Self Help " would exhaust the list of adjectives in extolling.