# West African Studies/Chapter 15

CHAPTER XV
MORE OF THE CROWN COLONY SYSTEM
Having attempted to explain the internal evils or what one might call the domestic rows of the Crown colony system, I will pass on to the external evils—which although in a measure consequent on the internal are not entirely so, and this point cannot be too clearly borne in mind. Tinker it up as you may, the system will remain one pre-eminently unsuited for the administration of West Africa.
You might arrange that officials working under it should be treated better than the official now is, and the West African service be brought into line in honour with the Indian, and afford a man a good sound career. You might arrange for the Chambers of Commerce, representing the commercial factor, to have a place in Colonial Office councils. But if you did these things the Crown colony system would still remain unsuited to West Africa, because it is a system intrinsically too expensive in men and money, so that the more you develop it the more expensive it becomes. Concerning this system as applied to the West Indies a West Indian authority the other day said it was putting an elephant to draw a goat chaise; ​concerning the West African application of it, I should say it was trying to open a tin case with a tortoise-shell paper knife. Of course you will say I am no authority, and you must choose between those who will tell you that only a little patience is required and the result of the present governmental system in West Africa will blossom into philanthropic and financial successes, and me who say it cannot do so but must result in making West Africa a debt-ridden curse to England. All I can say for myself is that I am animated by no dislike to any set of men and without one farthing's financial interest in West Africa. It would not affect my income if you were to put 100 per cent. ad valorem duty on every trade article in use on the Coast and flood the Coast with officials, paid as men should be paid who have to go there, namely, at least three times more than they are at present. My dislike to the present state of affairs is solely a dislike to seeing my country, to my mind, make a fool of herself, wasting men's lives in the process and deluding herself with the idea that the performance will repay her.
Personally, I cannot avoid thinking that before you cast yourself in a whole-souled way into developing anything you should have a knowledge of the nature of the thing as it is on scientific lines. Education and development unless backed by this knowledge are liable to be thrown away, or to produce results you have no use for. I remember a distressing case that occurred in West Africa and supports my opinion. A valued friend of mine, a seaman of great knowledge and experience, yet lacking in that critical spirit which inquires into the nature of things before proceeding with them, confident alone in the rectitude of his own intentions, bought a canary bird at a Canary Island. He knew that the men ​who sell canaries down there are up to the sample description of deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. So he brought to bear upon the transaction a deal of subtlety, but neglected fundamental facts, whereby his triumph at having, on the whole, done the canary seller brown by getting him to take in part value for the bird a box of German colonial-grown cigars, was vanity. For weeks that gallant seaman rubbed a wet cork up and down an empty whisky bottle within the hearing of the bird, which is the proper thing to do providing things are all right in themselves, and yet nothing beyond genial twitterings rewarded his exertions. So he rubbed on for another week with even greater feeling and persuasive power, and then, to drop a veil upon this tragedy of lost endeavour, that canary laid an egg. Now, if that man had only attended to the nature of things and seen whether it were a cock or hen bird, he would not have been subjected to this grievous disappointment. Similarly, it seems to me, we are, from the governmental point of view, like that sea captain-swimming about in the West African affair with a lot of subtle details, in an atmosphere of good intentions, but not in touch with important facts; we are acting logically from faulty premises.
Now, let us grant that the Crown Colony system is not fully developed in West Africa, for if it were, you may say, it would work all right; though this I consider a most dangerous idea. Let us see what it would be if it were fully developed.
Mr. St. Loe Strachey thus defines Crown Colonies:—"These are possessions which are for the most part peopled by non-European races of dark colour, and governed not by persons elected by themselves, but by a governor and ​other officials sent out from England. The reason for this difference is a very simple one. Those colonies which are peopled by men of English and European races can provide themselves with a better government than we can provide them with from here. Hence they are given responsible governments.
"Those colonies in which the English or European element is very small can best be governed, it is found, by the Crown Colony system. The native, dark-skinned population are not fit to govern themselves—they are too ignorant and too uncivilised, and if the government is left entirely in the hands of the small number of whites who may happen to live in the colony, they are apt not to take enough care of the interests of the coloured inhabitants. The simplest form of the Crown Colony is that found in some of the smaller groups of islands in the West Indies. Here a governor is sent out from England, and he—helped by a secretary, a judge, and other officials—governs the island, reporting his actions to the Colonial Office, and consulting the able officials there before he takes important steps. In most cases, however, the governor has a council, either nominated from among the principal persons in the colony, or else elected by the inhabitants. In some cases—Jamaica or Barbadoes, for example—the council has very great power, and the type of government may be said to approach that of the self-governing colonies."
Now, in West Africa the system is the same as that "found in some of the smaller groups of the West Indian islands," although these West African colonies have each a nominated council of some kind. I should hesitate to say, however, "to assist the governor." Being nominated by him they can usually manage to agree with him; it is only ​another hindrance or superfluous affair. Before taking any important steps the West African governor is supposed to consult the officials at the Colonial Office; but as the Colonial Office is not so well informed as the governor himself is, this can be no help to him if he be a really able man, and no check on him if he be not an able man. For, be he what he may, he is the representative of the Colonial Office; he cannot, it is true, persuade the Colonial Office to go and involve itself in rows with European continental powers, because the Office knows about them; but if he is a strong-minded man with a fad he can persuade the Colonial Office to let him try that fad on the natives or the traders, because the Colonial Office does not know the natives nor the West African trade.
You see, therefore, you have in the Governor of a West African possession a man in a bad position. He is aided by no council worth having, no regular set of experts; he is held in by another council equally non-expert, except in the direction of continental politics. He may keep out of mischief; he could, if he were given either time or inducement to study the native languages, laws, and general ethnology of his colony, do much good; but how can he do these things, separated from the native population as he necessarily is, by his under officials, and with his time taken up, just as every official's time is taken up under the Crown Colony system, with a mass of red-tape clerkwork that is unnecessary and intrinsically valueless? I do not pretend to any personal acquaintance with English West African Governors. I only look on their affairs from outside, but I have seen some great men among them. One of them who is dead would, I believe, had the climate spared him, have become a man whom every one interested in West ​Africa would have respected and admired. He came from a totally different region, the Straits Settlements. He found his West African domain in a lethargic mess, and he hit out right and left, falling, like the rain, on the just and the unjust. I do not wish you to take his utterances or his actions as representing him; but from the spirit of them it is clear he would have become a great blessing to the Coast had he but lived long enough. I am aware he was unpopular from his attempts to enforce the ill-drafted Land Ordinance, but primarily responsible for this ill-judged thing he was not.
In addition to Sir William Maxwell there have been, and are still, other Governors representative of what is best in England; but, circumstanced as they are under this system, continually interrupted as their work is by death or furloughs home, neither England nor West Africa gets one-tenth part of the true value of these men.
In addition to the Governor, there are the other officials, medical, legal, secretarial, constabulary, and customs. The majority of these are engaged in looking after each other and clerking. Clerking is the breath of the Crown Colony system, and customs what it feeds on. Owing to the climate it is practically necessary to have a double staff in all these departments,—that is what the system would have if it were perfect; as it is, some official's work is always being done by a subordinate; it may be equally well done, but it is not equally well paid for, and there is no continuity of policy in any department, except those which are entirely clerk, and the expense of this is necessarily great. The main evil of this want of continuity is of course in the Governors—a Governor goes out, starts a new line of policy, goes home on furlough leaving in charge the Colonial ​Secretary, who does not by all means always feel enthusiastic towards that policy; so it languishes. Governor comes back, goes at it again like a giant refreshed, but by no means better acquainted with local affairs for having been away; then he goes home again, or dies, or gets a new appointment; a brand new Governor comes out, he starts a new line of policy, perhaps has a new Colonial Secretary into the bargain; anyhow the thing goes on wavering, not advancing. The only description I have heard of our policy in West African Colonies that seems to me to do it justice is that given by a medical friend of mine, who said it was a coma accompanied by fits.
Of course this would not be the case if the Colonial Office had a definite detailed policy of its own, and merely sent out men to carry it out; but this the Colonial Office has not got and cannot have, because it has not got the scientific and commercial facts of West Africa in its possession. It has therefore to depend on the Governors it sends out; and these, as aforesaid, are men of divers minds. One Governor is truly great on drains; he spends lots of money on them. Another Governor thinks education and a cathedral more important; during his reign drains languish. Yet another Governor comes along and says if there are schools wanted they should be under non-sectarian control, but what is wanted is a railway; and so it goes on, and of course leads to an immense waste of money. And this waste of money is a far more serious thing than it looks; for it is from it that the policy has arisen, of increasing customs dues to a point that seriously hampers trade development, and the far more serious evil of attempting directly as well as indirectly to tax the native population.
I am bound to say I believe any ordinary Englishman ​would be fairly staggered if he went out to West Africa and saw what there was to show for the expenditure of the last few years in our Crown Colonies there, and knew that all that money had been honestly expended in the main, that none of it had been appropriated by the officials, that they had only had their pay, and that none too great.
But, you will say, after all, if West Africa is as rich as it is said to be, surely it can stand a little wasteful expenditure, and support an even more expensive administration than it now has. All I can say is, that it can stand wasteful expenditure, but only up to a certain point, which is now passed; it would perhaps be more true to say it could stand wasteful expenditure before the factor of the competition of French and German colonies alongside came in; and that a wasteful expenditure that necessitates unjust methods of raising revenue, such as direct taxation on the natives, is a thing West Africa will not stand at all. Of course you can do it; you can impose direct taxation on the native population, but you cannot make it financially pay to do so; for one thing, the collection of that tax will require a considerable multiplication of officials black and white, the black section will by their oppressive methods engender war, and the joint body will consume more than the amount that can be collected. From a fiscal standpoint direct taxation of a non-Mohammedanised or non-Christianised community is rank foolishness, for reasons known to every ethnologist. As for the natural riches of West Africa, I am a profound believer in them, and regard West Africa, taken as a whole, as one of the richest regions in ​the world; but, as Sir William Maxwell said, "I am convinced that, from causes wholly unpreventable, West Africa is and must remain a place with certain peculiar dangers of its own"; therefore it requires most careful, expert handling. It is no use your trying to get its riches out by a set of hasty amateur experiments; it is no use just dumping down capital on it and calling these goings on "Developing the resources," or "Raising the African in the plane of civilisation;" because these goings on are not these things, they are but sacrifices on the altars of folly and idleness.
Properly managed, those parts of West Africa which our past apathy has left to us are capable of being made into a group of possessions before which the direct value to England, in England, of all the other regions that we hold in the world would sink into insignificance.
Sir William Maxwell, when he referred to "causes wholly unpreventable," was referring mainly to the unhealthiness of West Africa. There seems no escape from this great drawback. Every other difficulty connected with it one can imagine removable by human activity and ingenuity even the labour difficulty—but, I fear, not so the fever. Although this is not a thing to discourage England from holding West Africa, it is a thing which calls for greater forethought in the administration of it than she need give to a healthy region. In a healthy region it does not matter so much whether there is an excess over requirements in the number of men employed to administer it, but in one with a death rate of at least 35 per cent. of white men it does matter.
​I confess it is this excessive expenditure of men which I dislike most in the Crown Colony system, though I know it cannot help it; it is in the make of the thing. If these men were even employed in some great undertaking it would be less grievous; but they are many of them entirely taken up with clerk work, and all of them have to waste a large percentage of their time on it. Some of the men undoubtedly get to like this, but it is a morbid taste. I know one of our possessions where the officials even carry on their personal quarrels with each other on government paper in a high official style, when it would be better if they put aside an hour a week and went and punched each other's heads, and gave the rest of their time to studying native law and languages and pottering about the country getting up information on it at large, so that the natives would become familiarised with the nature of Englishmen first-hand, instead of being dependent for their knowledge of them on interpreters and the set of subordinate native officials and native police.
I wish that it lay in my power to place before you merely a set of figures that would show you the present state of our West African affairs, but such figures do not exist. Practically speaking, there are no reliable figures for West African affairs. They are not cooked, but you know what figures are—unless they be complete and in their proper stations, they are valueless.
The figures we have are those which appear in "The Colonial Annual Series" of reports. These are not annual; for example, the Gold Coast one was not published for three years; but no matter, when they are published they are misleading enough, unless you know things not ​mentioned in them but connected with them. However, we will just run through the figures published for one West African Crown Colony. For many reasons I am sorry to have to take those regarding Sierra Leone, but I must, as at present they are the most correct available.
Now the element of error which must be allowed for in these arises from the proximity of the French colony of French Guinea, which is next door to Sierra Leone. That colony has been really developing its exports. Goods have, up to last year, come out through our colony of Sierra Leone, and have been included with the exports of Sierra Leone itself, though Sierra Leone has not dwelt on this interesting fact. And, equally, since 1890 goods going into French Guinea have gone in through Sierra Leone, and though traceable with care, have been put in with the total of the imports. So you see it is a little difficult to find out whether it has been French Guinea or Sierra Leone that has really been doing the trade mentioned in the figures.
Nevertheless, it has been customary to take these joint, mixed up figures and get happy over "the increase of trade in Sierra Leone during the past ten years"; but a little calm consideration will prevent you from falling into this idle error.
Personally I think that if you are cautious you will try and estimate the trade by the exports; for among the imports there are Government stores, railway material, &c., things that will have some day to be paid for, because it is the rule not to assist a colony under the system until it has been reduced to a West Indian condition; whereas the exports give you the buying power of the colony, and show the limits of the trade which may be expected to ​be done under existing conditions. Now, the annual total exports during the five years ending—
| 1875, | amounted in value to, | £396,709 |
| 1880, | amounted„in„value to,„ | £368,855 |
| 1885, | amounted„in„value to,„ | £386,848 |
| 1890, | amounted„in„value to,„ | £333,390 |
| 1895, | amounted„in„value to,„ | £435,175 |
These figures show for the twenty-five years an increase of less than 10 per cent., or about 1/2 per cent. per annum; and this is not so very thrilling when one comes to think that that 10 per cent., and probably more, is showing the increase in the trade not of Sierra Leone, but of French Guinea, and remembers that in 1874 the exports were £481,894, an amount they have not since touched.
Then again even in error you are never quite sure if your Colonial Annual is keeping line; sometimes you will get one by a careful conscientious secretary who takes no end of trouble, and tells you lots of things which you would like to hear about next year, only next year you don't. For example, in Sierra Leone affairs the report for 1887 gave you the imports for consumption in the colony, while that of 1896 represented the total imports, including those afterwards shipped to French Guinea and elsewhere; and again, in estimating the value of the imports Gambia adds the cost of freight and insurance to the invoice value of imports, and the cost of package to the declared value of exports. So far, only Gambia does this, but at any moment an equally laudable spirit might develop in one of the other colonies, and cause further distraction to the student of their figures.
Besides these clerking errors of omission, there is a ​constant unavoidable error arising from the so-called smuggling done by the native traders in the hinterland. Remember that colonies which you see neatly enough marked on a map of West Africa with French, English, German, are not really each surrounded by a set of Great Walls of China. For example, under the present arrangement with France, if France keeps to that beautiful Article IX. in the Niger Convention and does not tax English goods more than she at present taxes French goods on the Ivory coast—cottons of English manufacture will be able to be sold 10 per cent. cheaper in the French territory than in the adjacent English Gold Coast.
Up to the present time it has paid the native hinterland trader to come down into the Gold Coast and buy his cotton goods, for English cottons suit his West African markets better than other makes, that is to say they have a higher buying power; and then he went down into the French Ivory Coast and bought his spirits and guns, which were cheaper there because of lower duty. Having got his selection together he went off and did business with the raw material sellers, and sold the raw material he had purchased back to the two Coasts from which he had bought his selection, sending the greater part of it to the best market for the time being. Now you have changed that, or, rather, you have given France the power to change it by selling English cottons cheaper than they can be sold in your own possessions, and thereby rendered it unnecessary for the hinterland traders to buy on the Gold Coast at all. It will remain necessary for him to buy on the Ivory Coast, for spirits and guns he must have; and if he can get his cottons at the same place as he gets these, so much the better for him. It is doubtful, however, whether henceforth ​it will be worth his while to come down and sell his raw material in your possessions at all. He may browse around your interior towns and suck the produce out of them, but it will be to the enrichment of the French colony next door; and, of course, as things are even now, this sort of thing, which goes on throughout all the various colonies of France, England, Germany and Portugal, does not tend to give true value to the official figures concerning trade published by any one of them.
I have no intention, however, of dwelling on the various methods employed by native smugglers with a view to aiding their suppression. It may be a hereditary taint contracted by my ancestors while they sojourned in Devon, it may be private personal villainy of my own; but anyhow, I never feel, as from an official standpoint I ought, towards smugglers. I do not ask you to regard the African native trader as a sweet innocent who does not realise the villainy of his doings, he knows all about it; but only once did I feel harshly towards him over smuggling. A native trader had arranged to give me a lift, as it were, in his canoe, and I noticed, with a flattered vanity and a feeling of gratitude, how very careful he had been to make me quite comfortable in the stern, with a perfect little nest of mats and cloths. When we reached our destination and that nest was taken to pieces, I saw that what you might call the backbone of the affair was three kegs of gunpowder, a case of kerosine, and some packages of lucifer matches. That rascal fellow black, as Barbot would call him, had expected we should meet the customs patrol boat, and, basely encroaching on the chivalry of the white man towards the white woman judged that I and my nest would not be overhauled. If there had been a guardian cherub for the Brussels Convention or for Customs doubtless I should have been blown sky ​high and have afforded material for a moral tale called "The Smuggler's Awful End," but there are no cherubs who watch over Customs or the Brussels Convention in West Africa and I have no intention of volunteering for such an appointment.
But to return to the Sierra Leone finances and the relationship which the expenditure of that colony bears to the revenue. The increase in the imports is apparently the thing depended on to justify the idea that as the trade has increased the governmental expenditure has a right to do so likewise. The imports increase in 1896 is given as £90,683. From this you must deduct for railway material, £26,000, and for the increased specie import, £19,591, which leaves you an increase of imports of £45,092 from 1887—896, and remember a good percentage of this remainder of £45,092 belongs to French Guinea.
Now the expenditure on the government of Sierra Leone has increased from £58,534 in 1887 to £116,183, being an increase at the rate of 991 per cent., whereas the exports during the same period have increased at the rate of 34.8 per cent., or from £333,157 to £449,033.
In other words, whereas in 1887 the government expenditure amounted to 17.5 per cent., the exports in 1896 amounted to 25.4 per cent. The sum of £40,579 of this increase is credited to police, gaols, transport, and public works; and if this is to be the normal rate of ​increase, the prospects of the colony are serious; for it contains no rich mineral deposit as far as is at present known, nor are there in it any great native states. As far as we know, Sierra Leone must for an immense period depend on bush products collected by the natives, whose trade wants are only a few luxuries. For it must be remembered that in all these West African colonies there is not one single thing Europeans can sell to the natives that is of the nature of a true necessity, a thing the natives must have or starve. There is but one thing that even approaches in the West African markets to what wheat is in our own—that thing is tobacco. Next in importance to it, but considerably lower, is the group of trade articles—gunpowder, guns, and spirits, next again salt, and below these four staples come Manchester goods and miscellanies; the whole of the rest that lies in the power of civilisation to offer to the West African markets are things that are luxuries, things that will only be purchased by the native when he is in a state of prosperity. This subject I have, however, endeavoured to explain elsewhere.
We have for Sierra Leone, fortunately, a scientific authority to refer to on this matter of the natural resources of the country, and the amount of the natural riches we may presume we can take into account when arranging fiscal matters. This authority is the report of Mr. Scott-Elliott on the district traversed by the Anglo-French Boundary Commission.
Regarding mineral, the report states "that the only ​mineral of importance is iron, of which the country appears to contain a very large amount. There is a particularly rich belt of titaniferous iron ore in the hills behind Sierra Leone."
Titaniferous iron is an excellent thing in its way, and good for steel making; but it exists nearer home and in cheaper worked regions than Sierra Leone.
The soil is grouped by the report into three classes:
"1. That of the plateaux and hills above 2,000, or sometimes descending to 1,000 feet, which is due to the disintegration of gneiss and granite rocks.
"2. The red laterite which covers almost invariably all the lower hills from the sea level to 1,000 or 2,000 feet.
"3. The alluvium, due either to the action of the man- groves along the coast, or to rivers and streams inland."
These soils are capable of and do produce fine timber, rubber, oil and rice, and the general tropical food stuffs, but these, except the three first, are not very valuable export articles. Whether it is possible to enhance the agricultural value of the alluvium regions by growing tobacco, jute, coffee, cocoa, cotton and sugar, for export, is by some authorities regarded as doubtful on account of the labour problem; but at any rate, if these industries were taken in hand on a large scale, a scale sufficient materially to alter the resources of a West African colony, they would require many years of fostering, and it would be long before they could contribute greatly to the resources of such a colony as Sierra Leone, in the face of the organised production and cheaper labour, wherewith the supply now in the markets of Europe could be competed with.
I have had the advantage of associating with German and Portuguese and French planters of coffee and cocoa. ​These are the planters who up to the present have been the most successful in West Africa. I do not say because they are better men, but because they have better soils and better labour than there is in our colonies. By these gentlemen I have been industriously educated in soils, &c.; and from what I have learnt about this matter I am bound regretfully to say that most of the soil of the English possessions is not really rich, taken in the main. There are in places patches of rich soil; and the greater part of our soil will be all the better this day 10,000 years hence; but at present the soil is mainly sour clay, slime and skin soils, skin soils over rock, skin soils over sour clay, skin soils over water-logged soil. We have, alas, not got the rich volcanic earth of Cameroon, Fernando Po, and San Thome and Principe. The natives who work the soil understand it fairly well, and negro agriculture is in a well-developed state, and their farms are most carefully tended and well kept. The rule along the Bight of Benin and Biafra is to change the soil of the farm at least every third year; this they do by cutting down a new bit of bush, burning the bush on the ground at the end of the dry season, and planting the crops. The old farm is then allowed to grow bush or long grass, whichever the particular district goes in for, until the time comes to work back on that piece of land again, when the bush which has grown is in its turn cut down and the ground replanted. This burning of the trees or grass is clearly regarded by the native agriculturist as manuring; it is practically the only method of manuring available for them in a country where cattle in quantities are not kept. It is a wasteful way with timber and rubber growing on the ground of course; but not so wildly wasteful as it looks, for your Negro agriculturist does not go to ​make his farm on bits of forest that require very hard clearing work. He clears as easily as he can by means of collecting the great fluffy seed bunches of a certain tree which are inflammable and adding to them all the other inflammable material he can get; he then places these bonfires in the bit of forest he wants to clear and sets fire to them on a favourable night, when the proper sort of breeze is blowing to fan the flames; when the conflagration is over, he fells a few of the trees and leaves the rest standing scorched but not killed. Moreover, of course an African gentleman cannot go and make his farm anywhere he likes: he has to stick to the land which belongs to his family, and work round and round on that. This gives a highly untidy aspect to the family estate, you might think; considering the extent of it, a very small percentage must be kept under cultivation and the rest neglected. But this is not really so; if you were to go and take away from him a bit of the neglected land, you would be taking his farm, say for the year after next and grievously inconvenience him, and he would know it.
The native method of making farms does not, indeed, do so much harm in well-watered, densely-populated regions like those of Sierra Leone or the Niger Delta; but it does do an immense amount of harm in regions that are densely populated and require to make extensive farms, more particularly in the regions of Lagos and the Gold Coast, where the fertile belt is only a narrow ribbon, edged on the one side by the sand sea of the Sahara, and on the other by the salt sea of the South Atlantic. You can see the result of it in the district round Accra, which has always been heavily populated; for hundreds of years the forest has been kept down by agricultural enterprise. Consequences are, the rainfall is now diminished to a point that threatens to extinguish ​agriculture, at any rate, a sufficient agriculture to support the local population; and it is not too much to say you can read on the face of the Accra plain famines to come. There is little reason to doubt that both the African deserts, the Sahara and the Kalahari, are advancing towards the Equator. Round Loanda you come across a sand-logged region of some fifty square miles, where you get the gum shed by forests that have gone, humanly speaking, never to return; human agency is largely responsible, it is like sawing the branch of a tree partially through, and then the wind breaks it off. Forest destruction in lands adjacent to deserts is the same thing; the forest is destroyed to a certain extent, an extent that diminishes the rainfall and makes it unable to resist the desert winds, and then—finis.
In the regions of the double rains in the great forest belt of Africa things are different, so you cannot generalise for West Africa at large in this matter. It is one thing for forest destruction to go on in the Gold Coast, quite another for it to go on in Calabar or Congo Français, where men fight back the forest as Dutchmen fight the sea. But I apologise. This, you will say, is not connected with Governmental expenditure, &c.; but it is to me a more amusing subject, and indirectly has a bearing; for example, Government expenditure in the direction of instituting a Forestry Department would be right enough in some regions, but unnecessary in others.
To return to this agriculture in Sierra Leone. Well, it is, like all West African agriculture, spade husbandry. It is concerned with the cultivation of vegetables for human consumption alone. In the interior of Sierra Leone and throughout the Western Soudan, for which Sierra Leone was once a principal port, there is a fair cattle country, ​and an old established one, as is shown by the exports of hides mentioned in the writers of the seventeenth century. Yet it would be idle for the most enthusiastic believer in West Africa to pretend that the Western Soudan is coming on to compete with Argentina or Australia in the export of frozen meat; the climate is against it, and therefore this cattle country can only be represented in trade in a hide and horn export. Wool—as the sheep won't wear it, preferring hair instead and that of poor quality—need not I think be looked forward to from West Africa at all.
I have taken the published accounts of Sierra Leone, because, as I have said, they are the most complete. They are also, in the main, the most typical. It is true that Sierra Leone has not the gold wealth, nor the developing timber industry of the Gold Coast; but if you ignore French Guinea, and include the things belonging to it with the Sierra Leone totals, you will get a fairly equivalent result. Lagos has not yet shown a mineral export, but it and the Gold Coast have shown of late years an immensely increased export of rubber. Rubber, oil, and timber are the three great riches of our West African possessions, the things that may be relied on, as being now of great value and capable of immense expansion. But these things can only be made serviceable to the markets of the world and a source of riches to England by the co-operation of the natives of the country. In other words, you must solve the labour problem on the one hand, and increase the prosperity of the native population on the other, in order to make West Africa pay you back the value of the life and money already paid for her. This solution of the labour problem and this co-operation of the natives with you, the Crown Colony system will never gain for you, because it ​is too expensive for you and unjust to them, not intentionally, not vindictively nor wickedly, but just from ignorance. It destroys the native form of society, and thereby disorganises labour. It has no power of re-organising it. You hear that people are leaving Coomassie and Benin, instead of flocking in to those places, as they were expected to after the destruction of the local tyrannies. English influence in West Africa, represented as it now is by three separate classes of Englishmen, with no common object of interest, or aim in policy, is not a thing capable of re-organising so difficult a region. I have taken the Sierra Leone figures because, as I have said, they are the most complete and typical, and the state of the trade and the expenditure on the Government are those prior to the hut tax war. So they cannot be ascribed to it, nor can the plea be lodged that the expenditure was an enforced one. These figures merely show you the thing that led up to the hut tax war and the heavy enforced expenditure it has and will entail, and my reason for detaining you with them is the conviction that a similar policy pursued in our other colonies will lead to the same results—the destruction of trade and the imposition on the colonies of a debt that their natural resources cannot meet unless we are prepared to go in for forced labour and revert to the slave trade policy.
It seems clear enough that our present policy in the Crown Colonies, of a rapidly increasing expenditure in the face of a steadily falling trade, must necessarily lead our Government to seek for new sources of revenue beyond customs dues. New sources under our present system can only be found in direct taxation of the native population; the result of this is now known.
I will not attempt to deal fully with the figures we ​possess for our remaining Crown Colonies in Western Africa,—Gambia, the Gold Coast, and Lagos,—but merely refer to a few points regarding them that have so far been published. When the result of the policy pursued in these colonies leads to the inevitable row, and the figures are dealt with by competent men, there is, to my mind, no doubt that a state equal to that of Sierra Leone as a fool's paradise will be discovered; and the deplorable part of the thing is, that the trade palavers of the Chambers and the Colonial Office will give to hasty politicians the idea that West Africa is not worthy of Imperial attention, and large quantities of the blame for this failure of our colonies will be put down quite unjustly to French interference. That French interference has troubled our colonies there, no one will attempt to deny; or that if it had been acting on them when they were in a healthy state it would merely have had a tonic effect, as it has had on the Royal Niger Company's territories; but, acting on the Crown Colonies in their present state, French influence has naturally been poisonous. Even I, not given to sweet mouth as I am, shrink from saying what has been the true effect on the Crown Colonies of England of the policy pursued by us towards French advance. This only will I say, that the French policy is no discredit to France. Regarding the financial condition of Gambia it is not necessary for us to worry ourselves. Gambia is a nuisance to France. She loves to have high dues, and she cannot have them round Gambia way. She has had to encyst it, or it would be to her Senegal and French Guinea possessions a regular main to lay on smuggling. Knowing this she has encysted it; it pays better to smuggle from French Guinea into Gambia or Sierra Leone than from Gambia or Sierra Leone into ​the French possessions. This is a grave commercial position for us, but to it is largely owing the advance of the prosperity of these French possessions during the past three years.
The Gold Coast has on the west a French possession, the Ivory Coast, on the east the German Togoland. Togo is a narrow strip, and to its east and surrounding it to the north is the French colony of Dahomey, whose recent expansion has told heavily on its next-door neighbours, both Togo and the English colony to the east, Lagos. I give below the latest available figures for the foreign West African possessions. ​Unfortunately there are no figures available for the French Sudan which would represent the real value of the trade; the total value of trade is, however, considerable. You must remember that in dealing with French colonies you are dealing with those of a nation not gifted with commercial intelligence; and that, in spite of the perpetual hampering of trade in French colonies, the granting of concessions to French firms who have not the capital to work them, but are only able to prevent any one else doing so, the high differential tariffs, in some cases 100 per cent., which up to the present time have been levied on English goods, &c.; the English traders nevertheless work in the markets of the French colonies, and work mainly on French goods. Of the £117,518 representing the Ivory Coast trade for the first quarter of this year, over £76,000 was English trade, and of the Dahomey £156,835 for the same period, £131,705. In reading the imports figures for these French colonies in Upper Guinea, you must remember that those imports include material for the well directed, unamiable intention of France to cut us off from what she regards as her own Western Soudan; it is a form of investment far more profitable than our expenditure on railways, gaols, prisons, and frontier police. It is one that, presuming this highly unlikely thing—France becoming commercially intelligent—would any year now enable her entirely to pocket the West African trade down to Lagos from Senegal. She may do it at any moment, though it is a very remote possibility. So we will return to the Gold Coast finances, though our authorities on them are at present meagre.
In 1892 the Gold Coast government was financially in a flourishing condition. On the 1st of January, 1891, there ​was a sum of £75,181 4s. 4d. standing to the credit of the colony, which was increased to £127,796 2s. 3d. on the 1st of January, 1892, and to £152,766 16s. 7d. on the 1st of January, 1893, and the colony had no public debt. There was no native direct taxation. The Customs dues were lower than they are now. The extremely careful official who drew up the report shows evidence of realising that Customs represent an indirect taxation on the native population, for he says: "In Sierra Leone and Lagos the taxation per head is very much higher (than 2s. 5d. per head), in the former nine times, and in the latter seven times." However, in all three colonies, apart from the attempts at direct taxation, the indirect taxation on the native has considerably increased by now.
The report for 1894 shows the colony still progressing rapidly, the trade of it amounting in value to £1,663,173 19s. 9d., of which £812,830 8s. 10d. represented the imports, and £850,343 10s. 11d. the exports. The expenditure showed a large increase as compared with previous years. It amounted to £226,931 19s. 4d., being £8,670 13s. 7d. in excess of the revenue for the year, and £47,997 7s. 11d. more than in 1893. The principal items of increase were public works, upon which the sum of £54,163 0s. 3d. was spent, and the expedition in defence of the protected district of Attabubu against an Ashanti invasion, which cost £10,778 11s. The Gold Coast assets on 31st of December, 1894, stood at £166,944 8s. 7d. Then came the last Ashanti war, regarding which I beg to refer you to Dr. Freeman's book. No one can deny that he has both experience and intelligence enough to justify ​him in offering his opinion on the matter. I entirely accept his statements from my knowledge of native affairs elsewhere in West Africa. Anyhow, the last Ashanti war absorbed a good deal of the assets of the Gold Coast. There is no published authority to cite, but I do not think there is an asset now standing to the credit of the Gold Coast Colony, unless it be a loan.
The income for the Gold Coast Colony in 1896 was £237,460 6s. 7d., the expenditure £282,277 15s. 9d. The exports £792,111, against £877,804 in 1895; but the imports were £910,000, against £981,537. Since 1896 the Customs dues have risen; but, per contra, the expenditure has also risen, in consequence of the expenses arising from the occupation of Ashanti, and the Gold Coast railway. The occupation of Ashanti and the railway must be looked on in the light of investments—investments that will be profitable or unprofitable, according to their administration, which one must trust will be careful, for they are both things you cannot just dump your money down on and be done with, for the up-keep expenses of both are necessarily large.
The subject of West African railways is one that all who are interested in the future of our possessions there should study most carefully, for two main reasons. Firstly, that there is possibly no other way in which money can be spent so unprofitably and extensively as on railways in such a region. Secondly, because railways are in several districts there—districts with no water carriage possibilities―simply essential to the expansion of trade. In other words, if you make your railway through the right district, in the right way, it is a thing worth having, a sound investment. If you do not, it is a thing you are better without; ​not an investment, but an extravagance. The cost of its construction must fall on the colony, alike in money and the distraction, from ordinary trade, of the local labour supply. In both countries the cost of a railway out there is necessarily great. I hastily beg to observe I am not aiming at a rivalry with Martin Tupper in saying this, but am only driven to it by so many people in their haste saying "Oh, for goodness gracious sake! let the Government make a railway anywhere; it's done little enough for us, and any railway is better than none."
There has been considerable difficulty over the Gold Coast Railway already, though it is only just now entering on the phase of actual existence. Surveys have been made for it in all directions. Surveys are expensive things out there. But the general idea the Government gave the Chambers of Commerce was that, at any rate, this railway was to run up into Ashanti, and be a great general trade artery for the Colony. The other day Manchester found out, quite unexpected like, that the Government whose affections Commerce had regarded as safely and properly set on the hinterland trade was off, if you please, flirting round the corner with a group of gold mines at Tarquah, and intended, nay, was even then proceeding with the undertaking of running the one and only Gold Coast railway just up to Tarquah, and no further, until this section paid. Manchester, very properly shocked at this fickleness in the Government and its heartless abandonment of the hinterland trade, said things, interesting and excited things, in its Guardian; but, beyond illustrating the truth of the old adage that it's "well to be off with the old love before you are on with the new," things of no avail.
​This Tarquah railway is estimated to cost £5,000 per mile. It is to be financed by a loan, raised by the Crown Colony Agents, of £250,000. We have ample reason to believe that this £5,000 per mile will not represent one-third of its final cost from demonstrations by the Uganda, Congo Belge, and Senegal railways; more particularly are we so assured from the knowledge that the railway's construction will be in the hands of nominees of the Crown Agents, whose method of arranging for the construction of these railways is curious. They do not invite tenders for material or freight in the open market, and they do not give the taxed people in the country itself any opportunity for contracting for the supply of as much local material as possible—things it would be alike fair and business-like to do. Exceedingly curious, moreover, is the fact that the nominees of the Crown Agents' employers are not subject to the control of the local governmental authorities on the Coast, their sole connection with the affair apparently being confined to the passing of ordinances, as per instruction from the Colonial Office, authorising loans for the payment of the debt incurred by making the railway.
There is no doubt that any Gold Coast railway which is ever to pay even for its coal must run through a rich bit of the local gold reefs. Similarly, there is no doubt that the gold mines of the Gold Coast have been terribly kept back by lack of transport facilities for the machinery necessary to work them; but there is, nevertheless, evidently much that is unsound in the present railway scheme. If the charge for it, as some suggest, were to be thrown on the gold mines, it would be as heavy a charge as the old bad transport was, and they would be no less hampered. If, as is most likely, the charge for the railway ​be thrown on the general finance of the colony, it will be a drain on other forms of trade, without in any way improving them; in fact, during its construction, it will absorb labour from the general trade-oil, rubber, and timber—and, if it extensively increases the gold-mining industry, it will keep the labour tied to it chronically, to the disadvantage of other trades.
Lagos, our next Crown Colony, is a very rich possession, and under Sir Alfred Moloney, who discovered the use of the Kicksia Africana as a rubber tree, and Sir Gilbert Carter, who fostered the industry and opened the trade roads, sprang in a few years into a phenomenal prosperity. Then came the French aggression on its hinterland, the seizing of Nikki, which was one of those foci of trade routes, though possibly, as many have said, a non-fertile bit of country in itself. To give you some idea of the bound up in prosperity made by Lagos, the exports in 1892 were £577,083; in 1895, £985,595. The main advance has been in rubber, which in 1896 was exported from Lagos to the value of £347,721. Early in this year, however, the state of the Lagos trade was considered so unsatisfactory that a local commission to inquire into the causes of this state of affairs was appointed.
The publication of the Government Trade Returns for 1897 supported the long grumble that had been going on about the bad state of trade in Lagos, the imports for 1897 showing a decrease on those of 1895 by £67,474. The Board of Trade Journal, quoting from the Lagos Weekly Record of February 28th, 1898, says, "An examination of the export returns affords a clue to the direction of such decrease. It is to be noted that notwithstanding that the export of rubber in 1897 shows an excess of ​£13,367 above that exported in 1895, yet in the aggregate of the total exports of the two years that of 1897 shows a decrease of £193,745; this is due to the great falling off which is perceptible in the palm oil and kernel trade, which together show a decrease in 1897 of £162,580 as compared with the quantities exported in 1895; while as compared with the exports in 1896 the decrease amounts to £114,773. The returns show a steady and increasing decline in the exports of these products, for while the decrease in 1896 as compared with 1895 was only £47,807, the decrease had risen in 1897 as com- pared with the previous year to £114,773, as already intimated, which implies that there has been a further falling off of the trade to the extent of nearly £67,000. This manifest excessive diminution in what must be regarded as the staple commodities of the trade is undoubtedly a serious indication, for though these commodities come under the classification of jungle products they are not liable to exhaustion as are the rubber or timber industries, and hence they form the only reliable commodities upon which the trade must expand. The dislocation of the labour system in the hinterland is no doubt responsible in a large measure for the falling off in the yield of these products, while in many instances they have been abandoned for the more remunerative rubber business. But, be the circumstances what they may, it is evident that there has been an actual decrease of trade to the extent of over £114,000."
This was the state of affairs the local committee was appointed to deal with. Its discussions were long and careful. I will not attempt to drag you through its final report, which a grossly ungrateful public in Lagos sniffed at because ​it merely seemed carefully to reproduce every one's opinion on the causes of the falling off of trade and to agree with it solemnly; but, like the rest of the local world, it made no sweeping suggestion of means whereby things could be altered. Since the committee, however, was formed, there has been a greater interest taken in expenditure, healthy in its way, but too often ignoring the fact, that it is not so much the amount of money that is spent governmentally that constitutes waste, but the things on which it is expended. Large sums have been spent in Lagos, I am informed, on building a Government House that every valuable Governor ought to be paid to keep out of, so unhealthy is its situation, and again on bridging a lagoon that has no particular sound bottom to it worth mentioning.
That such forms of expenditure are not the necessary grooves into which a place like Lagos is driven in order to get rid of its money is undoubted. The local press at any rate indicates other grooves; for example here is a cheerful little paragraph:
"A propos of what was said in your last issue about the grave-diggers, there is no doubt that something should be done to relieve the men from the strain of work to which they are continuously subjected. The demands of a constantly increasing death rate, which has caused the cemeteries to be enlarged, make it necessary that the number of grave-diggers should be increased. Besides, these men are poorly paid for the work they do. Of the twenty grave-diggers, six are paid at the rate of 1s. per diem, and the rest at the rate of 10d. They have no holidays, either, like other people. While the Government labourers, of whom there is a host, may skulk half their time, the hard-working ​grave-digger is at it from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, Sundays included, for the Grim Reaper is ever busy. The Keeper of the graveyards, also, has much to do for the paltry salary he receives. I would earnestly appeal to the authorities to do something to raise the burden of this over-worked staff." So would I, but rather in the direction of giving the "Grim Reaper" and the grave-diggers fewer people to bury. I must also give you another beautiful little bit of local colour, although it suggests further expenditure. "It is satisfactory to note that the Chamber of Commerce intends to take up the question of the swamp near the petroleum magazine. Since the Government made the causeway leading to the dead-house and cut off the tidal inflow, the upper portion of the swamp has been formed into a most noxious disease-breeding sink, into which refuse of all kinds is thrown, the stagnant waters and refuse combining, under the effects of the sun, to emit a most formidable pestilential effluvia. In the interests of humanity something should be done to abate this nuisance."
However, I leave these local questions of Lagos town. They just present a pretty picture of the difficulties that surround dealing with a place that has by nature swamps, that must have dead-houses, grave-diggers, and extensive cemetery accommodation, and that is peopled by natives who will instinctively throw refuse into any hole; with evidently a large death rate in the native population and a published death rate in whites of 153 per thousand. Let us now return to the higher finance.
"The total expenditure of Lagos in 1888 amounted to ​£62,735 15s. 11d. The expenditure has risen in 1898 to £192,760, which gives an excess of £130,025. The total cost of the staff in 1888 was £15,932, while the present cost amounts to £41,604, which is an increase of £25,672. This increase, apart from the augmentation in the Governor's salary, is mainly in respect to the following departments:— Secretariat, Harbour Department, Constabulary and Police, and the Public Works Department. The cost of working the secretariat has been increased by £1,074, due to the following additional officers:—Two assistant colonial secretaries, a chief clerk, and a first clerk. It is well known that in 1888, when the department cost the colony about one-half its present expenses as regards the European staff, the work was performed with efficiency and despatch; while at present it is not only difficult to get business got through, but, what is more, if the business is not followed up with watchful care, it will become lost in the super-abundance of assistants and clerks who crowd the department, and the practical expression of whose work is more discernible on the public revenue than anything else." The Lagos Record goes on to say, "There is room for retrenchment in the matter of expenditure on account of the European official staff." I do not follow it here. It is room for retrenchment in mere routine workers, black and white, that is wanted, and the liberation of the Europeans to do work worth their risking their lives in West Africa for. The percentage of black officials, mainly clerks—excellent and faithful to their duties—is increasing in all our colonies there too rapidly; and the existence of poorly paid but numerous posts under Government with a certain amount of prestige, is a dangerous allurement to ​native young men, tempting them from nobler careers, and forming them into a sort of wall-class between the English official and the main body of the native population. Take, for example, the number of Government servants at the Gold Coast, according to Sir William Maxwell, 1897;—
| | European officers. | Native clerks. | Hausas. | Civil police. |
| Accra . . . . | 35 | 206 | 432 | 105 |
| Cape Coast | 8 | 69 | 0 | 47 |
| Elmina. . . . | 5 | 6 | 50 | 19 |
An awful percentage of clerks is 311 for such a country, more clerks than police, only 121 less Government native clerks than soldiers in the army; and you may depend upon it the white officials are clerking away, more or less, too. I always think how very apposite the answer of an official was to the criticism of excessive expenditure: "Sir, there is no reckless expenditure; every J pen has to be accounted for!"
No, I am quite unable to agree that anything but the Crown Colony system is to blame, and that because it is engaged in administering a district with no possibilities in it for England save commercial matters, in which the Crown Colony system is not well informed. I have only quoted these figures to show you that Lagos and the Gold Coast are merely keeping line with Sierra Leone—increasing their expenditure in the face of a falling trade, with a dark trade future before them, on account of French activity in cutting them off from their inland markets, and of their own mismanagement of the native races.
The trade and the prosperity of West Africa depend on jungle products. There is no more solid reason to fear the extinction of West Africa's jungle products of oil, timber, ​fibre, rubber, than there is to worry about the extinction of our own coal-fields—probably not so much—for they rapidly renew themselves. Yes, even rubber, though that is slower at it than palm oil and kernel; and at present not one-tenth part of the jungle products are in touch with commerce; and save gold, and that to a very small extent, the mineral wealth of West Africa is untouched. It is not in all regions only titaniferous iron; there are silver, lead, copper, antimony, quicksilver, and tin ores there unexploited, and which it would not be advisable to attempt to exploit until the so-called labour problem is solved. This problem is really that of the co-operation for mutual benefit of the African and the Englishman. In the solution of this problem alone lies the success of England in West Africa, not of England herself, for England could survive the loss of West Africa whole, though doing so would cost her dear alike in honour and in profit. The Crown Colony system which now represents England in West Africa will never give this solution. It necessarily destroys native society, that is to say, it disorganises it, and has not in it the power to reorganise. As I have already endeavoured to show, English influence in West Africa, as represented by the Crown Colony system, consists of three separate classes of Englishmen with no common object of interest, and is not a thing capable of organising so difficult a region. All these three classes, be it granted, each represent things for the organisation of a State. No State can exist without having the governmental, the religious, and the mercantile factors, working together in it; but in West Africa these representatives of the English State are things apart and opposed to each other, and do not constitute a State. You might as ​well expect to get the functions of a State, good government, out of these three disconnected classes of Englishmen in Africa, as expect to know the hour of day from the parts of a watch before they were put together.
You will see I have humbly attempted to place this affair before you from no sensational point of view, but from the commercial one—the value of West Africa to England's commerce—and have attempted to show you how this is suffering from the adherence of England to a form of government that is essentially un-English. I have made no attack on the form of government for such regions formulated in England's more intellectual though earlier period of Elizabeth, the Chartered Company system as represented by the Royal Niger Company. I have neither shares in, nor reason to attack the Royal Niger Company, which has in a few years, and during the period of the hottest French enterprise, acquired a territory in West Africa immensely greater than the territory acquired during centuries under the Crown Colony system; it has also fought its necessary wars with energy and despatch, and no call upon Imperial resources; it has not only paid its way, but paid its shareholders their 6 per cent., and its bitterest enemies say darkly, far more. I know from my knowledge of West Africa that this can only have been effected by its wise native policy. I know that this policy owes its wisdom and its success to one man, Sir George Taubman Goldie, a man who, had he been under the Crown Colony system, could have done no more than other men have done who have been Governors under it; but, not being under it, the territories he won for England have not been subjected to the jerky amateur policy of those which are under the Crown Colony system. For nearly twenty years the natives ​under the Royal Niger Company have had the firm, wise, sympathetic friendship of a great Englishman, who understood them, and knew them personally. It is the continuous influence of one great Englishman, unhampered by non-expert control, that has caused England's exceedingly strange success in the Niger; coupled with the identity of trade and governmental interest, and the encouragement of religion given by the constitution and administration of the Niger Company. This is a thing not given by all Chartered Companies; indeed, I think I am right in saying that the Niger and the North Borneo Companies stand alone in controlling territories that have been essentially trading during recent years. This association of trade and government is, to my mind, an absolutely necessary restraint on the Charter Company form of government; but there is another element you must have to justify Charters, and that is that they are in the hands of an Englishman of the old type.
I am perfectly aware that the natives of Lagos and other Crown Colonies in West Africa are, and have long been, anxious for the Chartered Company of the Niger to be taken over by the Government, as they pathetically and frankly say, "so that now the trade in their own district is so bad, it may get a stimulus by a freer trade in the Niger," and the native traders not connected with the Company may rush in; while officials in the Crown Colonies have been equally anxious, as they say with frankness no less pathetic, so that they may have chances of higher appointments. I am equally aware that the merchants of England not connected with the Niger Company, which is ​really an association of African merchants, desire its downfall; yet they all perfectly well know, though they do not choose to advertise the fact, that three months Crown Colony form of government in the Niger territories will bring war, far greater and more destructive than any war we have yet had in West Africa, and will end in the formation of a debt far greater than any debt we now have in West Africa, because of the greater extent of territory and the greater power of the native States, now living peacefully enough under England, but not under England as misrepresented by the Crown Colony system. I am not saying that Chartered Companies are good; I am only saying they are better than the Crown Colony plan; and that if the Crown Colony system is substituted for the Chartered Company, which is directly a trading company, England will have to pay a very heavy bill. There would be, of course, a temporary spurt in trade, but it would be a flash in the pan, and in the end, an end that would come in a few years' time, the British taxpayer would be cursing West Africa at large, and the Niger territories in particular. Personally, I entirely fail to see why England should be tied to either of these plans, the Crown Colony or the Chartered Company, for governing tropical regions. Have we quite run out of constructive ability in Statecraft? Is it not possible to formulate some new plan to mark the age of Victoria?
* ↑ Industrial and Social Life of the Empire. Macmillan and Co.
* ↑ For Lagos, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and Gambia from 1892 to 1896, £2,364,266.
* ↑ Forty-eighth annual report Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, 1898.
* ↑ £ Increase. Expenditure on police and gaols, 1896 31,504 £ Expenditure„ on police„ and gaols,„ 1887 3,037 28,467 Expenditure on transport . . . . . 1896 10,091 Expenditure„ on police„ and gaols,„ 1887 3,298 6,793 Expenditure on public works . . . . . 1896 6,736 Expenditure„ on police„ and gaols,„ 1887 1,417 5,319 Aggregate increase. . . . . 40,579
* ↑ "The Liquor Traffic in West Africa," Fortnightly Review, April, 1898.
* ↑ Colonial Reports, Miscellaneous, No. 3, 1893. G. F. Scott Elliott, M.A., F.L.S., and C. A. Raisin, B.Sc.
* ↑ French colonies— Imports. Exports $\scriptstyle {\overbrace {\quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad } }$ $\scriptstyle {\overbrace {\quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad } }$ 1896. 1897. 1896. 1897. £ £ £ £ Senegal. . . . . . . 1,047,000 1,167,000 783,000 845,000 French Guinea. . . 185,000 240,000* 231,000 201,000* Ivory Coast. . . . 186,000 188,000 176,000 189,000 Dahomey. . . . . . 389,000 330,000 364,000 231,000 French Congo. . . 192,000 † 190,000 † * For nine months only. † No statistics. Trade of Dahomey and the Ivory Coast for the first three months of 1898— Imports. Exports. Total trade. £ £ £ Ivory Coast. . . . 58,658 58,560 117,518 Dahomey. . . . . . 84,064 72,771 156,835 German possessions― Imports. Exports. $\scriptstyle {\overbrace {\quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad } }$ $\scriptstyle {\overbrace {\quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad } }$ 1895. 1896. 1897. 1895. 1896. 1897. £ £ £ £ £ £ Togoland. . . 117,000 94,000 99,000 152,000 83,000 39,000 Cameroons 283,000 268,000 * 204,000 198,000 * Total. . . 400,000 362,000 * 356,000 281,000 * * No figures available for calendar year. Board of Trade Journal, September, 1898.
* ↑ Colonial Annual, No. 88, Gold Coast for 1892, published 1893.
* ↑ Ditto, No. 188.
* ↑ Ashanti and Jaman. Constable, 1898.
* ↑ Lagos Standard, September 7, 1898.
* ↑ Lagos Weekly Record, September 10, 1898.
* ↑ Lagos Weekly Record, August 27, 1898.
* ↑ See Introduction to Folk Lore of the Fjort. R. E. Dennett. David Nutt, 1898.
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