Unfortunately there are no figures available for the French Sudan which would represent the real value of the trade; the total value of trade is, however, considerable. You must remember that in dealing with French colonies you are dealing with those of a nation not gifted with commercial intelligence; and that, in spite of the perpetual hampering of trade in French colonies, the granting of concessions to French firms who have not the capital to work them, but are only able to prevent any one else doing so, the high differential tariffs, in some cases 100 per cent., which up to the present time have been levied on English goods, &c.; the English traders nevertheless work in the markets of the French colonies, and work mainly on French goods. Of the £117,518 representing the Ivory Coast trade for the first quarter of this year, over £76,000 was English trade, and of the Dahomey £156,835 for the same period, £131,705. In reading the imports figures for these French colonies in Upper Guinea, you must remember that those imports include material for the well directed, unamiable intention of France to cut us off from what she regards as her own Western Soudan; it is a form of investment far more profitable than our expenditure on railways, gaols, prisons, and frontier police. It is one that, presuming this highly unlikely thing—France becoming commercially intelligent—would any year now enable her entirely to pocket the West African trade down to Lagos from Senegal. She may do it at any moment, though it is a very remote possibility. So we will return to the Gold Coast finances, though our authorities on them are at present meagre.
In 1892 the Gold Coast government was financially in a flourishing condition. On the 1st of January, 1891, there
