the open market of the World. To me the life blood of England is her trade. Her soul, her brain is made of other things, but they should not neglect or spurn the thing that feeds them—Commerce—any more than they should undervalue the thing that guards them—the warrior.
But, you will say, we will not be tied down to this commercial reason as England's reason for taking over the administration of tropical Africa. My friend, I really think on the whole you had better—it's reasonable. I grant that it has not been the reason why English missionaries and travellers have risked their lives for the good of Africa, or of human knowledge, but as a ground from which to develop a policy of administering the country this commercial one is good, because it requires as aforesaid the prosperity of the African population; and your laudable vanities in the matter I cannot respect, when I observe right in the middle of the map of Africa an enormous region called the Congo Free State. I have reason to believe that that region was opened up by Englishmen―Livingstone, Stanley, Speke, Grant and Burton. If you had been so truly keen on suppressing Arab slavery and native cannibalism, there was a paradise for you! Yet, you hand it over to some one else. Was it because you thought some one else could do it better? or—but we will leave that affair and turn to the consideration of the possibility of administering tropical Africa, governmentally, to the benefit of all concerned.
