that may be indefinitely enlarged. If the millions whose increase we have assured by the humanitarian character of our legislation are led to employ themselves in reasonable labour, they will almost necessarily rise in the scale of humanity. The wealth of the countries in which they live must also proportionately increase. If their labour is intelligently directed, the increase will be great. There will be surplus wealth to exchange for commodities which they desire, and, according to the degree in which their territories are opened to civilization, their wants will be satisfied from the markets of the civilized world. If their countries are not opened to civilization, but are still protected by civilized powers from the ordinary ravages of war. slave-raiding, and famine, their numbers must increase in many portions of the Empire as savages, in others as semi-civilized, ambitious races, ready and able to organize resistance to an order of things which they have not accepted. It is not, therefore, too much to say that great alternatives lie before us in the tropics.
But if, on the one hand, the public is but half convinced of possibilities of development on which it has not been in the habit of reflecting, and about which it is insufficiently supplied with accurate information, so, on the other, those who are charged with the administration of the Empire are themselves but half convinced that the conditions justify a policy which would in its nature involve further outlay of public money at a moment when the call for economy is urgent. Such a policy would probably involve the raising of loans for local railways; possibly the subsidization of shipping companies. It would carry with it an intelligent revision of laws and regulations affecting the employment of coloured labour. It might involve the establishment in the Colonies and Protectorates of local departments of trade and industry affiliated to the Board of Trade. It would almost necessarily involve extensive rearrangement of administrative machinery. These things are not to be achieved by thought and action
