29G COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS 



\vitli which to speculate on the Stock Ivxchavige, and who arc hkcly to over- 

 ride roughly existing native rights and industries. I earnestly hope that our 

 Government may share these views to a reasonahle extent. At any late, 

 until, say, ten or fifteen years hence, we find that the natives of the Uganda 

 Protectorate are hopeless, that they will do absolutely nothing to develop 

 under our direction and for their profit the resources of the country in 

 animal, vegetable, and mineral wealth— until then I consider we ought to be 

 most careful not to repeat a policy which has been shown to be disastrous in 

 the Congo Free State and in certain French colonies. 



Commerce ought to be absolutely free and imrestricted in the I'ganda 

 Protectorate. If the native profits by developing the resources of his 

 country, the Administration of the Protectorate will profit also; for the 

 native will have money with which to pay his hut and gun taxes, the export 

 duty on certain goods, or the import duty on others. The European 

 merchant will find his gain in the cheapness of native labour, and con- 

 sequently the low price of the native products which will be tendered to 

 him for purchase. Put do not let us — at any rate, until we have tried 

 other expedients and failed — hand over large districts as exclusive 

 concessions to this or that company for rubber, timber, ivory, or coflee. 

 Special arrangements in regard to mining may possibly have to he n:ade 

 owing to the utter inability of the native to develop that particular 

 source of wealth. At the present time any European or foreigner (or, 

 for the matter of that, any nativej can purchase from the Crown an estate 

 of 1,000 acres iii any one place, provided such estate be the property of 

 the Crown and not of a native or natives, and unless it contains an 

 amount or special patch of forest which for good reasons the (xovernment 

 may not wish to sell. Therefore there is no hindrance in the way of 

 modest enterprise. At to mmodest enterprise — a single association buying 

 up a whole province or obtaining an exclusive rubber concession over 

 25,000 square miles — I for one am totally op[iosed to any such policy — 

 at any rate, until it has been show^n that a mass of small traders and 

 4,000,000 natives cannot between them develop the resources of their 

 country in a manner productive of profit and happiness to all. 



The British taxpayer has had to pay for the establishment of the 

 Protectorate over Uganda since 1894 about £1,394,000, and £4,900,000 

 for the construction of the Uganda Pailway. For ten years to come he 

 will have to pay, let us say, another £2,200,000 for the maintenance of 

 the Uganda Kailway until its revenue makes it a self-supporting concern, 

 and a yearly contribution to the revenues of the Protectorate to meet the 

 deficit between the revenue and expenditure, which will not entirely cease 

 to exist, let us suppose, for another ten years. This means that the 



