Page:The future of Africa.djvu/96

90 am not satisfied,—I tell yon the truth,—that the wealth of this, our Africa, should make other men wealthy and not ourselves. It troubles me in the night, and in the day it vexes me, that of all the moneys poured out here for fish, and meats, and shoes, and merchandise, so little stays at our own water-side. The policy which shall modify this state of things is not, I know, to be demanded altogether of the merchants. The whole country, by management and legislation, is to aid in bringing about this result. And it seems to me that, by increase of agricultural activity, by the opening of roads, by a more extensive system of farming, by a proper attention to our great tropical staples, we may at one and the same time increase the comfort and well-being of our communities in general, give importance to the agricultural interest of the land, assist that strong arm of the nation, mercantile enterprise, and thus aggrandize the country!

And now, before I close, allow me briefly to say, that, as a new Christian state, there is one good we can do the world: we can strive after a lofty style of government, and the lustration of law and order. I see the seeming vanity of such an aspiration. But I have neither time nor inclination to bestow thought upon what merely seems to be presumptuous, when I have a real truth and a possible reality to suggest. The world needs a higher type of true nationality than it now has: why should not we furnish it? I know the wont to regard precedent in fashioning and