Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 5.djvu/219

 CHAMBERLAIN

��queen has been established and the great Pax Britannica has been enforced, there has come with it greater security to life and property, and a material improvement in the condition of the bulk of the population. No doubt, in the first instance, when these conquests have been made, there has been bloodshed, there has been loss of life among the native populations, loss of still more precious lives among those who have been sent out to bring these countries into some kind of disciplined order, but it must be remembered that that is the condition of the mission we have to fulfil. There are, of course, among us — there always are among us, I think — a very small minority of men who are ready to be the advo- cates of the most detestable tyrants, provided their skin is black — men who sympathize with the sorrows of Prempeh 1 and Lobengula 2 and who denounce as murderers those of their coun- trymen who have gone forth at the command of the queen, and who have redeemed districts as large as Europe from the barbarism and the superstition in which they had been steeped for centuries. I remember a picture by Mr. Selous 3 of a philanthropist — an imaginary philanthro-

! Prempeh, the king of Ashanti, was overcome by an English force at Kumassi in 1895. A British protectorate was established over his kingdom in January, 1896.

a Lobengula, the king of the Matabele, in 1S93 was completely overthrown in battle by the British, who used Maxim guns.

3 Frederic Courteney Selous, the traveler in Soi'th Africa, who wrote several books describing his adventures in Rhodesia ui.u elsewhere.

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