influence they have, are dead letters, and legislation is in the hands of the Governor. This is no evil in itself. You will get nothing done in tropical Africa except under the influence of individual men; but your West African Governor, though not controlled by the Councils within the colony, is controlled by a power outside the colony, namely the Colonial Office in London. Up to our own day the Colonial Office has been, except in the details of domestic colonial affairs, a dragchain on English development in Western Africa. It has not even been indifferent, but distinctly, deliberately adverse. In the year 1865 a Select Committee of the House of Commons inquired into and reported upon the state of British establishments on the western coast of Africa. "It was a strong Committee, and the report was brief and decided. Recognising that it is not possible to withdraw the British Government wholly or immediately from any settlements or engagements on the West African Coast, the Committee laid down that all further extension of territory or assumption of government, or new treaties offering any protection to native tribes, would be inexpedient, and that the object of our policy should be to encourage in the natives the exercise of those qualities which may render it possible for us more and more to transfer to them the administration of all the governments with a view to the ultimate withdrawal from all, except, perhaps, Sierra Leone."[1]
Remember also this. This one in 1865 was not the first of those sort of fits the Colonial Office had in West African affairs. It was just as bad after the Battle of Katamansu in 1827, and had it not been for the English traders our honour
- ↑ See Lucas's Historical Geography of the British Colonies, Oxford, 1894.
