TRADE. 
343 
superiority over the Ashantees, to which their greater civihzation 
seems to entitle them. Our force and estabhshraents should be 
respectable ; not to arrogate or to intrude, but to protect the legi- 
timate commercial views, sanctioned and invited by the voice of 
less arbitrary powers, and also to make their first impression of the 
English imposing and preservative. Residencies should be esta- 
blished at these courts, and young men of talent, temper, and 
discrimination be found to fill them, collecting the geographical 
and statistical desiderata, and forwarding them to be investigated 
and digested into one report at head quarters, before they were 
transmitted to England. One or two intelligent Moors might also 
be engaged to trade by different routes, and minute the directions, 
distances, and descriptions of the several places ; thus paving the 
way, and lessening the difficulties of a future Mission to the Niger. 
If the working of gold mines were also an object, the vicinity of the 
Ancobra affords a rich field ; and a small district might either be 
purchased of the natives, or they might receive a dividend of the 
proceeds, which would produce them much more than their pre- 
sent inadequate researches, suppressed by their more powerful 
neighbours the Warsaws. 
The benevolent and politic views of the British Government, 
would thus, by making use of what we have or might easily get, be 
more probably, if not more speedily realized, than by the perilous., 
desultory, arid limited enterprises of two or three individuals. 
