COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS 2«1 



Freedom of religion has certainly been one result of a liritisli 

 Administration in Uganda. A man may now be Catholic or Protestant, 

 Muhammadan or pagan, without fear of his life or without loss of his 

 property. I am honestly convinced, and so I think would be any 

 unprejudiced observer, that so far as happiness of the natives goes, our 

 Protectorate over Uganda has been justified, as it has been elsewhere in 

 Africa. 



It is not within my province to pronounce on the work of other 

 nations on the same lines. I should certainly say that the condition of 

 Tunis, Senegal, and Dahome under the P>ench was a hundred times 

 better than the state of those countries when entirely left to the devices 

 of native rulers. Here and there a native of Unyamwezi may feel the 

 heavy hand of a German sergeant ; but the people know, at any rate, 

 that as long as they pay their taxes and obey the law their lives and 

 property are secure. But I feel we have quite enough to do to look 

 after our own possessions and spheres of influence in Africa without 

 turning aside to criticise the work of other nations. Until we are sure 

 that not a fault, not an error of judgment, remains in our own rule, 

 that there is not a thing left undone that ought to be done, we may 

 save ourselves the waste of time and energy involved in trying to show 

 how badly the French, Germans, Belgians, Italians, and Portuguese 

 manage their possessions. Let their work be judged eventuallv by its 

 results. If the results are good, then the work cannot have been 

 wholly bad. If all these nations are treating the natives abominably, or, 

 as is sometimes complained of the P\ench in Senegal, with mistaken 

 kindness, then no doubt the expensive failure of their efforts will be 

 sufficient punishment to the countries at fault. We have at any rate 

 secured a sufficient share of Africa in which to put our own philanthropic 

 theories in practice, and above all in which to give our commerce 

 absolutely free play. 



In theory I maintain that inasmuch as we entered upon the assump- 

 tion of Protectorates over East and Central Africa mainly in the interests 

 of the natives, to put down the slave trade, and in the case of some 

 countries to establish British protection at the natives' request, in 

 preference to allowing them to comie under the sphere of another I\)wer ; 

 as the immediate outcome of these Protectorates is of benefit prinri}»ally 

 to their Xegro inhabitants, it is to the natives that we should look in 

 the first instance to provide according to their means the funds neces- 

 .sary to maintain an economical but efTf'ecti\e Administration. If every 

 adult male native in these Protectorates paid 8s. a year in taxation, there 

 would be little, if any, need to resort to the Treasury of the United 

 Kingdom for funds to supplement the cost of administration. There 



