The Globe. TUESDAY, APRIL 22, 1879.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1613, 22 April 1879, Page 2

The Globe. TUESDAY, APRIL 22, 1879.

Plans o£ annexation appear to be quite the order of the day just at present. It is not long since Sir G. Grey addressed a memorandum to the Secretary of State in reply to a despatch of the latter on the subject of the Now Hebrides. The Premier urged the wisdom and justice of allowing the colonies either to annex to any colony by agreement, or to occupy with the consent of the inhabitants, islands in the Pacific Ocean, the cost of governing and maintaining which it may be willing to undertake. That great difficulties would stand in the way of such a proposal being carried into effect, no one can of course doubt for a second, but it will not at all bo from bashfulness in the way of pushing British interests into now domains, that the English Government will hang back in the matter. Speaking a short time back at Stroud, in Gloucestershire, the Secretary for the Colonies observed very significantly that it would bo in future the policy of her Majesty’s Government to develop our African colonies in a way hitherto undreamt of. Sir M, H. Beach waxed eloquent on tlio future that lay before British commerce by pushing it jp to the heart of the “ Dark Continent.” He stated his opinion that the difficulties and dangers of forming factories in the interior of Africa had been much exagerated. Livingstone, Cameron, and numerous other explorers have penetrated into the wildest

parts almost totally unprotected. It is now a well ascertained fact that long 1 before modern expeditions gave to the public the wonders of this unknown world, the Portuguese of the 15th century had forced their way on foot and had ascended from the coast to the chain of lakes which water and fertilize the interior, and there is no groat kingdom in that direction which by force of the numbers of its inhabitants can render itself formidable to small bodies of Europeans. Although the Colonial Secretary did not intimate that the Government would initiate any movement towards pushing English commerce into these now markets, it follows in necessary sequence that when once British traders are settled in advanced posts, and when it is an acknowledged part of British policy to encourage such movements, some active support will have to bo given in case the lives and properties of the traders are endangered through any sudden rising of the populations among which they live. Consequently, a speech by a Cabinet Minister such as that delivered at Stroud, to a certain extent pledges the Government to a policy which may have vast bearings on the future welfare of the British Empire. The European and American markets are now more or loss closed to our goods, and it is absolutely necessary that we should find some now outlet for our industries. All the common necessaries of open air life will find ready purchasers among the teeming thousands of Africa. At first wo shall obtain in exchange ivory, gold dust, precious stones, and drugs, but as time passes on and the resources of the country become more known, timber, minerals and hundreds of other products will bo added to the list. Indeed, the highlands of Central Africa, watered as they are by an almost perfect system of lakes and rivers, are capable of growing cereals and depasturing sheep and cattle to an almost unlimited extent. The vine and the olive would grow there luxuriantly. There is also one fact that tolls most strongly in favour of European settlement in a country where the climate precludes white labour. Of all the barbarous races with which the Anglo-Saxons have come into contact in their career of colonisation, the only one that has not diminished in numbers and deteriorated in quality by the contact is the African. There appears to bo an inherent vitality in this race which enables it not only to hold its own, but absolutely to increase in numbers in the immediate neighborhood of the conquering white. Thus the question of labor is not one of the difficulties that would stare a colonist in Central Africa in the face. It would not be the burning question that it is in Queensland. The African negro, although naturally lazy, is always willing to do a certain amount of work for a small wage. He is a contented and happy individual, and would probably welcome the European as affording him some security from the raids of the rapacious slave traders, who at present render bis life more or loss a burden to him. Various have been the schemes lately mooted for the purpose of carrying into effect this new idea of Central African colonisation. One of them is to build a railway from a port a little above Zanzibar to Lake Victoria Nyanza; another to construct a line from the port of Bagamoyo, nearly opposite Zanzibar, to Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, the large lake just south of the Victoria Nyanza. Whether either of the schemes will fructify has to bo proved. We may feel, however, quite certain that the idea having been once started, the restless energies of the British trader will not allow affairs to remain stagnant. Whether an entrance is effected by railway from the East Coast, or by watercarriage up the Congo, or by pushing on northwards from the Transvaal, cotton fabrics of Manchester, and the iron goods of Birmingham and Sheffield will ere long find their way into places where the foot of white man has never before trod. The “ store ” will bo erected and the woolly head of the native belle will lean overtire counter anxious to purchase some telling costume wherewith to electrify her Sambo, as they float in their primitive canoe on one of their groat central lakes, the very existence of which was, but a few short years back, considered mythical.