' Travellers propose to make them over to Liberia
or to any Power that will accept such white elephants.
Remains now the task of placing upon the path of progress these wretched
West African 'colonies,' and of making them a credit and a profit to
England, instead of a burden and an opprobrium.
Immigration, I find, is _le mot de l'enigme_.
Between 1860 and 1865 I studied the labour-question in West Africa, and my
short visit in 1882 has convinced me that it is becoming a vital matter
for our four unfortunate establishments, Bathurst, Sierra Leone, the Gold
Coast, and Lagos.
A score of years ago many agreed with me that there was only one solution
for our difficulties, a system of extensive coolie-importation. But in
those days of excited passions and divided interests, when the export
slave-trade and the _emigration libre_ were still rampant on either coast,
it was by no means easy to secure a fair hearing from the public. Not a
small nor an uninfluential section, the philanthropic and the missionary,
raised and maintained the cuckoo-cry, 'Africa for the Africans!'--worthy
of its successor, 'Ireland for the Irish!' Others believed in imported
labour, which has raised so many regions to the height of prosperity; but
they did not see how to import it.
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