whatever their own ideas on their work may be, were men who came up at a critical point to reinforce Liverpool and Bristol and London merchants, who had fought for centuries—not to put too fine a point on it—from the days of Edward IV. for the richest feeding grounds in all the world for England's manufacturing millions. The dissensions, distrust and misunderstandings which have raged among these three representatives of England's majesty and power, are no affair of mine, as a mere general student of the whole affair, beyond the due allowance one must make for the grave mischief worked by the human factors. Well, as aforesaid, Mr. Chamberlain alone of all our statesmen saw the great possibilities and importance of Western Africa, and thinking to realise them, forthwith inaugurated a policy which if it had had sound ground to go on, would have succeeded. It had not, it had the Crown Colony system—and our hope for West Africa is that so powerful a man as he has shown himself to be in other political fields, may show himself to be yet more powerful, and formulate a totally new system suited for the conditions of West Africa, and not content himself with the old fallacy of ascribing failure to the individuals, white or black, government official or merchant or missionary, who act under the system which alone is to blame for England's present position in West Africa; but I own that if Mr. Chamberlain does this he will be greater than one man can ever be reasonably be expected to be, and again it is, I fear, not possible to undo what has been done by the resolution of 1865.
Possibly the greatest evil worked by this resolution has been the separation of sympathy between the Merchants and the Government. Since 1865 these two English factors have
