The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-02-22 00:00:00

Eke 3teurbritry &mkt

' SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1879.

'7:COLONIAL RESPONSIBILITIES.

MORE than a week has now elapsed since
the receipt of the intelligence of the disaster
to the British arms in the land of the Zulus,
but the lapse of time has not materially
dimmished the gloom surrountiing that un-
fortunate affair. It may safely be said that
since the days when the tidings reached us
of the destruction of the Light Brigade in
the Balaklaxa, Valley, nearly a quarter of a
century ago, no news has brought mowing
into so many English homes and sorrow to
so many English hearts, as the story of the
Battle of Rorke's Drift. As to our soldiers
who fought and fell in that calamitous
encounter, there can be no question of their
courage when, surrounded by overwhelming
masses, they sold their lives dearly, and fell
fighting to the last. The sentiment of all
classes has been that, without demanding
sanguinary or vindictive reprisals, this de-
feat must be avenged; and that, if necessary
the Zulus must be deprived of the means
again to inflict such a blow at the British
power in that part of the world.
The history of colonisation has shown
that wherever the white men and the
aboriginal inhabitants have come into col-
lision, the conflict has had one ultimate
result. Whether it be the Red Indians of
the North American continent, or the Maories
of New Zealand, the natives have been gradu-
ally driven towards the mountains or into
the sea, notwithstanding the fierceness of
their resistance. Cruelty and bloodshed
have marked the successive steps of civili-
sation in new colonies in every part of the
world, and in all ages. If it be true that
King Cetewayo has established a military
system in his territories which is a perpetual
menance and source of danger to the safety
of the British possession in South Africa,
and by which he has been enabled to inflict
the gravest reverse upon our arms that
British troops have sustained for nearly
forty years, the general sentiment will be
that such a military system should be broken
up. The question is not so much between
the Zulu King and Great Britain as between
civilization and barbarism, Civilization, as
represented by this country, has planted in
South Africa a colony which typifies upon
the dark continent the wealth and the energy
which has made us flo-arshingand prosperous i
at home, and has carried the Anglo-Saxon
race into every quarter of the globe. It cm-
bodies a determination to make the best of
enormous new resources which are opened I
up to the skill and enterprise of man, and to
turn to the highest possible use all those
advantages which are given by the possession
of a splendid climate and a fruitful soil.
Against these, what has the savage to offer?
He has occupied the land for thousands of
years, and from generation to generation
leaves it precisely as he found it. The
greater portion of Africa is in just the same
state as it was left at the creation. Indeed,
whereas in those primeval days, one brother
in the adjoining continent of Asia was a
keeper of sheep, and another was a tiller of
the soil, it is doubtful whether the barbarous
lands of Africa to this day contain even
those two elements of civilization. The
people keep no sheep; they till no soil. The
country is overgrown with vast forests, or
with impenetrable brush-wood, there is no
human effort to increase the production of
the kindly fruits of the earth as supplied by
liberal hand of Nature ; no idea of the
immense value of the mighty rivers and
giant lakes; no conception of the mineral
treasures which the slighest effort could re-
cover from the earth. The natives live
after the fashion prescribed by Nimrod the
mighty hunter, and are totally incapable of
progress. Africa, the greatest peninsula of
the universe, is truly a land of strange and
extraordinary contradictions. What for
instance can be in greater contrast than the
Egypt of three thoustand years ago and the
Zululand of to-day—between the Carthage
of twenty centuries since, and the Abyssinia
of the present time? Egypt has well-been
described; as the cradle of civilization, for
civilization seems never to have gone beyond
her own boundaries, and with the destruction
of Carthage by the conquering Romans all
progress was stopped in that direction. But
while Egypt and Carthage have earned for
themselves imperishable names in history,
there are some parts of the same continent
whose names we do not now even know,
whose costume is that of primeval Adam be-
fore the fall, and whose propensity towards
cannibalism marks them out as the lowest
and most degraded type of the human species.
How far England, or for that matter any
Western Power has an abstract right to
settle itself in semibarbarous countries is not
at present the question at issue. If we
accept the broad fact that we have a right
to be in India or Africa at all, it follows also
as a necessary consequence that we have a
right to maintain our empire there. The
experience of all countries in which the
western powers have once pitched their
abode shows, it is true, that European
settlers are constantly endeavouring to extend
their territory at the cost of the native in-
habitants, and that the latter often furnish
excuses for such extensions by attacks upon
the lives and property of the settlers. The
process which has led us into a conflict with
Cetewayo is exactly analogous to that which
has established the dominion of .9 nglo- Saxon
races in the two Americas, in Australia, in
New Zealand, and to some extent in India
and China. Whatever may be the technical
merits of the case as between Zulu and the
High Commissioner in South Africa, it is as
certain that the European settlers will en-
eroa,ch upon the territories of the native
states lying on the frontiers, as that water
will ran towards the sea. In this cornice-
tion there is no necessity to bring the
charge of a desire for further annexation.
It is impossible for a great colonising Power
like England, which has spread civilsation
throughout the world, to arrive at a fixed
point an(' say she will go no farther. It is
not in that way that a new and powerful
nation has been created on the other side of
the A.tla tic, for it never would have been
created had not the early settlers not only
held their own, hut gradually pushed back
the 'lndians towards the Rocky Mountains.
And in the present contest it is as clear
as the sun at noon-day that the struggle
is not so much between the black and the
white man as butween progress and inaction,
and barbarism and humanity.

THE IRON TRADE.

WOLVERHAMPTON, Wednesday.

There was a small attendance on 'Change to-
day, and the actual sales that took place were
very few in number. For the smaller sections of
iron some good inquiries were made, and the
girder iron diakers also reported that there were
increased inquiries with regard to their depart-
ment. Working up sheets and japanners' sheets
were apparently well dealt in, inasmuch as tin-
plate makers were refusing orders for forward
delivery at existing rates, the demand having so
much increased since the restricted production
was determined upon, the value of tin plates Las
gone up. Galvanisers' sheets were very much
neglected, in feet, more than they have been for
a long time past, and some of the makers are
offering them at ruinously low prices. In raw
material the demand was principally for foundry
iron made ho' Ii district, iri Mid;liesbrough
and "r the West Coast, and quotations wer,

InPunir'"