native young men, tempting them from nobler careers, and forming them into a sort of wall-class between the English official and the main body of the native population. Take, for example, the number of Government servants at the Gold Coast, according to Sir William Maxwell, 1897;—
| European officers. |
Native clerks. |
Hausas. | Civil police. | |
| Accra . . . . | 35 | 206 | 432 | 105 |
| Cape Coast | 8 | 69 | 0 | 47 |
| Elmina. . . . | 5 | 6 | 50 | 19 |
An awful percentage of clerks is 311 for such a country, more clerks than police, only 121 less Government native clerks than soldiers in the army; and you may depend upon it the white officials are clerking away, more or less, too. I always think how very apposite the answer of an official was to the criticism of excessive expenditure: "Sir, there is no reckless expenditure; every J pen has to be accounted for!"
No, I am quite unable to agree that anything but the Crown Colony system is to blame, and that because it is engaged in administering a district with no possibilities in it for England save commercial matters, in which the Crown Colony system is not well informed. I have only quoted these figures to show you that Lagos and the Gold Coast are merely keeping line with Sierra Leone—increasing their expenditure in the face of a falling trade, with a dark trade future before them, on account of French activity in cutting them off from their inland markets, and of their own mismanagement of the native races.
The trade and the prosperity of West Africa depend on jungle products. There is no more solid reason to fear the extinction of West Africa's jungle products of oil, timber,
