298 COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS 



British public will have invested a total sum of (in round numbers) 

 £8,500,000 in the Uganda Protectorate, besides about £'2,000,000 between 

 1894 and 1911 in the adjoining East African Protectorate, expenditure on 

 which is closely bound up with that on Uganda, 



What return is the native of the United Kingdom to get for this 

 investment of £10,500,000 sterling? I have, of course,* pointed out 

 that we commenced these Protectorates from motives (Continental nations 

 may laugh, but it is true) of pure philanthropy. Since those days, 

 however, of enthusiasm for the suppression of the slave trade and the 

 general betterment of the black man's condition, the same nation, or only 

 that core of it, the United Kingdom, has been mulcted of £'100,000,000, 

 £'200,000,000 to dissolve the inimical Dutch element in South Africa and. 

 to create a firmly established, free, and self-governing state of enormous 

 proportions between the Cape of Good Hope and . . . and . . . what ? — 

 Tano-anvika ? The British public, therefore — I mean the taxpayers in 

 Great Britain and Ireland — may have grown weary of such expensive 

 philanthropy, and may ask with considerable justification, " May not this 

 monev of mine s}»ent on the African Protectorates be considered as an 

 advance towards the creation of great Negro states, be regarded as the 

 national debt of those states, and be ultimately repaid out of their revenues ? 

 And am I to get no other return for this venture of my capital, this 

 expenditure from my pocket?" 



As a British taxpayer, I certainly feel entitled to put this query 

 myself, and I should like it answered eventually by the consolidation of 

 this theoretical advance of £10,500,000 into a national debt which the 

 East African territories should seek to repay by instalments and by degrees 

 to the mother country. Supposing that the British had spent £10,000,000 

 in the original annexation of the Transvaal in 1877, and in the erection 

 of the Transvaal into a prosperous, well-governed state, with no break of 

 twenty years following ]Majuba. What an easy matter it would have been 

 for the Transvaal, with the discovery of its enormous mineral wealth, to 

 have repaid to the taxpayers of the United Kingdom the £10,000,000 

 expended in the creation of this prosperous colony. It is the unexpected 

 which always happens in Africa. The territories I am now describing, or 

 those adjoining them under the British flag, may turn out to be amazingly 

 wealthy in gold, in precious stones, or in some vegetable product of immense 

 value to mankind. If such circumstances arose, I consider that these 

 territories should certainly be called upon to repay to the Treasury of 

 Great Britain the £10,500,000 or more which it will have cost to erect them 

 into a well-governed state, with a revenue which meets its expenditure. 



And as a further reward to the British taxpayer, I consider that " all that 

 valuable demesne " on the Nandi Plateau which is adapted by nature to be a 



