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In the Lagos Province we had an output of 13,000 bales last 

 year; and with the rapid progress of railway extension we 

 hope for even larger results from the north of Nigeria, though 

 there, of course, at present a great deal of the cotton is locally 

 consumed in making the very fine Hausa cloth which is some- 

 times a formidable competitor with the looms of Europe. 

 Even Australia has caught the infection and experiments are 

 now to be tried in Queensland, though there the element of 

 the cost of labour forms a serious and what may prove to be 

 an insuperable obstacle. 



Meeting' as we do in this building I cannot omit to pay my 

 humble and admiring tribute to the excellent work which has 

 been done by the Imperial Institute and its capable staff under 

 Professor Dunstan. No one who has not been like myself in 

 constant touch with their work can realize how wide is the 

 range of their work, experiments and inquiries. It is not 

 cotton alone but every product of our tropical lands which 

 comes under their inquisitive, I might almost say, acquisitive, 

 observation. From cotton to coal, oil to timber, butter to 

 metals nothing comes amiss to their retorts, test tubes and 

 microscopes. The merchants of England, the commerce of 

 our Colonies, the prosperity of our Protectorates owe more 

 than they know and far more than they are ever likely to repay 

 to the work and the wisdom of those who are labouring within 

 these walls. 



The position of a Secretary of State for the Colonies in these 

 latter days is as fascinating in its variety as it is overwhelming 

 in its labours, but it is made endurable by the knowledge that 

 the almost autocratic powers it possesses may be, and I hope 

 always is, exercised for the collective and the individual benefit 

 of the millions over whom it rules. In these days the Colonial 

 Office has more of the attributes of an immense trading concern 

 than in the earlier days when it was a mere machinery of 

 Government. Our days and nights are spent in the study of 

 medicine which is daily becoming more abstruse in the 

 diseases which it tackles, and happily more curative and more 

 preventive in its results. Our time is devoted to railway 

 construction, with a desire that the smallest sum of money may 

 lay the largest number of miles of track in the fewest possible 

 number of days. I am a coal and a tin miner in Nigeria, a 

 gold miner in Guiana; timber in one Colony, oil and nuts in 

 another, cocoa in a third ; copra and copper, sisal hemp, cotton, 

 coffee and tobacco are common objects of my daily care. All 

 this has been done by wise and generous expenditure by the 

 people of Great Britain, and to-day nearly every Colony and 

 Protectorate is self-supporting and 1 requires no grant in aid. 

 But in return for all that has been done in the past the 

 Motherland exacts no tribute from her prospering sons. She 



