Lady Lugard

“ The creation of the British Cotton-Growing Association already points to a movement in this direction. Not only questions of planting, but questions of transport, questions of labour, questions of administration, and questions of taxation—which extended administration must always carry in its train—would no longer be simply catalogued in a list of obstacles—they would be faced and dealt with. Men would not content themselves with pointing out that native cottons are usually of the wrong staple. ”

“ It may be wise or unwise; but in the Crown Colonies, where there can be no question of self-government in the white man's sense, this barrier does not arise. There the labour problem may be, and in some instances has been, greatly simplified by a recognition that the Empire is one, and that all British subjects are at home where they are protected by the British flag. To enable them to move from one field of labour to another involves at present the difficult questions of indentured and imported labour. ”

“ The conception of the development of our tropical resources has one great charm for the English imagination. This is that to realize it rests mainly with ourselves. Within the limits of benevolent autocracy, we may do as we please in the greater part of the Crown-governed Colonies. Tropical Australia, which has been transferred to the administration of the Australian Commonwealth, is outside the present range of experiment from home. Some of the West Indian Colonies approach nearly to conditions of self-government. India has its own time-honoured administration. ”

“ Were the circulation of native labour within the Empire free, it would be the aim of enlightened administration to attract to the less populous but naturally fertile districts immigration of the most desirable kind.
It is, therefore, advisedly that we speak of markets that may be indefinitely enlarged. If the millions whose increase we have assured by the humanitarian character of our legislation are led to employ themselves in reasonable labour, they will almost necessarily rise in the scale of humanity. The wealth of the countries in which they live must also proportionately increase. ”

“ They were also in ancient times reserves of labour for the great civilizations which based their industries upon the institution of slavery. They may become again reserves of labour, but of free labour, which, under white direction, may be no less valuable than reserves of raw material in enabling us to maintain our industrial position against competition of a very different character from any to which we are now exposed. ”

“ It was considered a terrible innovation when the new Poor Laws were passed, and every man could become, if he chose, a pauper upon the neighbouring parish; but it is difficult to imagine how the Empire could have been made if the old Poor Laws had been maintained. So now it seems to many minds a terrible thing to contemplate that labour should be really free to circulate within the Empire. But can the greater Empire be made unless means are found to render this circulation of labour harmless through such parts as urgently require it? ”

“ Englishmen in India and elsewhere have not shown themselves to be deficient in administrative ability. And if the whole body of men now engaged in administering the British tropics were to have their attention directed to the end of promoting industrial development under conditions consonant with good English traditions, it is hardly conceivable that such a direction of their thoughts would remain without result. ”

“ But a great opportunity is preparing itself, and the statesman who first sees his way to formulate a constructive policy of tropical development which shall command the confidence of the country is likely to live in British memory as the leader of one of the most important movements to which our colonial history has given rise. ”

“ Public time has been freely lavished upon the consideration of their affairs, and in the course of the last half-century, since we entered on the new colonial chapter which was initiated by the abolition of the Com Laws and the repeal of the Navigation Acts, they have established themselves very firmly, and, in spite of assertions sometimes heard to the contrary, we may be permitted to believe very loyally, on the foundation of self-governing freedom. ”

“ They are nations of human beings with a history of which we are for the most part as profoundly ignorant as they themselves are of their future. It is scarcely realized that the extent of territory acquired for Great Britain in Africa within the last five-and-twenty years is nearly half as great again as the whole of British India. ”

“ If their labour is intelligently directed, the increase will be great. There will be surplus wealth to exchange for commodities which they desire, and, according to the degree in which their territories are opened to civilization, their wants will be satisfied from the markets of the civilized world. If their countries are not opened to civilization, but are still protected by civilized powers from the ordinary ravages of war. ”

“ Would it not be possible to approach them without passion, in a spirit of enlightened common-sense, and apply in a great sense to all our native subjects that freedom to carry their labour to the most advantageous market which was only conferred upon the English labouring poor when the Settlement Acts were repealed about the year 1884. Up to that time local English labour was not allowed to migrate freely beyond the call of its own village bells. ”

“ The British Empire extends over some 16,000,000 of square miles, or about a quarter of the habitable territory of the world. About 4,000,000 square miles, or a quarter of the Empire, lies within the tropics, and this portion of British territory is so much more densely occupied than the remainder, that of the 413,000,000 who are estimated to comprise the population of the Empire, something more than 350,000,000 are counted as inhabiting it. ”

“ The race is so persistent that it has endured. Let it be preserved with even a moderate amount of care, as elephant and buffalo are in certain regions preserved, and it will increase at a rate which may be a peril or an advantage according to the manner in which it is treated by the white man. It is not difficult to foresee a period when the existing 12,000,000 or 20,000,000 of Northern Nigeria may be increased to a total approaching the present total of India; and the same may probably be said with truth of other tropical Colonies. ”

“ These 2,000,000 square miles of territory possess vast resources. They produce in small quantities now the cotton, the silk, the tobacco, the coffee, the tea, the cocoa, the sugar, the rice, the gums, the oils, the dyes, the drugs, the spices, the minerals, and other materials of commerce and manufacture which are needed for the maintenance and the expansion of our trade. There is little doubt that the production of raw material could be indefinitely multiplied till it should render British manufactures of these and similar articles substantially independent of foreign supplies. ”

“ We are forced to recognise that we shall have some day to face in the markets of the world the industrial development of a people actively intelligent as the Japanese, with a body of the best manual labour in the world lying ready to their hand in China. ”

“ The extension of such markets of supply would automatically create markets of consumption within the Empire for many classes of manufactured goods; and were it possible to organize a system of tropical administration which should enable British industry to bring about this result, British trade would enter upon an era of prosperity which would leave little doubt of the value of the tropics. The Empire is large enough to become, if it were desirable, self-sufficing ”

“ Slave-raiding—by which large tracts of country are annually desolated and the able-bodied male population slaughtered, while women, children, and boys are carried away into captivity—is as destructive to the race of man as indiscriminate hunting is to any kind of game. ”

“ They would not rest with the observation that difficulties of transport raise the price of native goods above any profitable level. They would insist on the creation of systems of transport which would put an end to this artificial price. ”