Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/308

302 vigorous action in Egypt having been thrown away again and again by the feeble statesmen who rule us, we have nothing before us but increased expenditure and further complications, which might have been avoided if we had possessed a Government blessed with the power of knowing its own mind, and capable of acting with that promptitude and vigour which, in the action of nations as well as that of men, are essential conditions of success. It is of course possible that Lord Wolseley's achievements may cause the British public to forget the blunders of the past, and condone the errors of the Government. Those blunders and errors, however, will have cost the British taxpayer an enormous sum before the final account is made up, and, far worse than this, they will have cost that which is of greater value than gold, namely, the blood of thousands of men who have fallen for no other reason than because the British Government lacked the courage to discharge the duties and responsibilities which it had voluntarily taken upon itself, and which would have been honourably and adequately discharged if our Government had been in the hands of men worthy of the confidence of the people of England.

The misdoings of our Foreign and Colonial Offices have been so interwoven during the past year, that it is not always easy to separate one from the other; but if special blame is to be attributed to Lord Granville, even a larger portion must be cast upon the shoulders of his colleague. The relations between Great Britain and her colonies have furnished the theme for so much writing and so many Parliamentary debates, that it is difficult to avoid treading on old ground in recurring to the subject. It may well be remembered that, previous to and during the existence of Mr Gladstone's first Government, accusations were frequently made against the Liberal party upon the score of their coldness towards the colonies and disregard of colonial feeling. These accusations were certainly not without foundation as regarded certain members of the party attacked, who had spoken of "letting the colonies go free," and both in speeches and pamphlets had pointed, with seeming satisfaction, or at best with indifference, to the possible alienation from Great Britain of certain of her larger colonies. But upon the part of the Government itself these accusations were again and again refuted and repelled, and a practical answer was given to the assertion that the Liberals were unwilling to extend our colonies by the annexation of considerable territories to our colonial empire. Between 1868 and 1874, under the Colonial Secretaryship of Lord Kimberley, we acquired the Dutch forts at Elmina, in the regions of West Africa, but for which the difficulties of Sir Garnet Wolseley in the Ashantee war would have been infinitely greater than those which he actually had to encounter. The Ashantees had always been the allies of the Dutch, and had Elmina remained in the hands of the latter, the additional cost and trouble to the British expedition can hardly be estimated. Under the same Colonial Secretary, the gold fields of South Africa were annexed; and although the actual accomplishment of the annexation of the Fiji Islands was left to the Conservative administration of 1874, it is undeniable that the inquiry into the condition of these islands, by direction of Lord Kim-