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and Basutoland is maintained as a Native Reserve, where only a few missionaries and licensed traders are allowed to settle.

In 1891 the Chief Letsie died, and was succeeded by his son Lerothodi, a man of much greater force of character, which is, however, marred by a craving for drink. It is obviously undesirable that a Chief should be seen drunk when liquor is by law supposed not to be found within his dominions. The perfection of the control which has been exercised by the Resident Commissioners is shown by the fact that Basutoland remained fairly quiet during the troubled times of 1896, and that the Rinderpest measures provoked only a local, and quickly-suppressed, ebullition. Two High Commissioners-Sir Henry (now Lord) Loch, and Sir Alfred Milner, and one British exCabinet Minister, Mr. Bryce, have visited the country, and in 1894 Lerothodi was induced to spend a short time in Cape Town. Education has made some progress,† and, although the Christianity which many Basutos profess is not very thorough, "witch-doctoring" has practically died out. In 1897 Basuto recruits did good service in Matabeleland. The population has greatly increased, and is now estimated at 250,000.

On the other hand, grave difficulties lie ahead. The increase of population has caused all the available land to be occupied, and it is difficult to see how a larger population is to be supported. Many young Basutos now go out to work for a term at the mines of the Rand or Kimberley, and, though the wealth of the people is thus increased, these natives return with wealth enough to enable them to live idly for the rest of their lives, with their innate respect for their own chief lessened, and with their natural simplicity affected by exotic vices. The Chiefs are still apt to quarrel, and generally rush to arms on such occa

* See Mr. Bryce's "Impressions of South Africa."

A curious instance of this is the fact that in 1882 Masupha was kept well informed by Cape newspapers of the difficulties of the Government.

sions, although they allow themselves to be pacified by the Magistrates. But the whole nation is armed: the Basutos breed excellent ponies, and, unlike other Kaffirs, make most efficient light cavalry. They have an overweening confidence in their own powers, due to the fact that they have never been decisively beaten in a war with Europeans. Their hereditary hostility to the Dutch might at any moment send 20,000 Basuto horsemen like an avalanche on the Free State. Some splendid regiments for Imperial service could be raised among them, and it would be well if our statesmen profited by the advice offered in New Zealand by Sir George Grey, when he wished to raise some Maori regiments. His plan was neglected, and, a few years later, the Maoris rebelled against the rule under which they would have been delighted to enlist.

And, again, some danger is to be found in the fact that Basutoland seems to be becoming a sort of Naboth's Vineyard to Cape Colony. The country possesses the finest climate in South Africa, and is admirably adapted to European settlement-but no Europeans can acquire land. The soil is the best in South Africa for wheat-and its Basuto owners cannot use it properly. The country is rich in minerals—and prospecting is forbidden. The Cape public is beginning to forget the events of twenty years ago, and to dwell on the fact that the best corner of South Africa is reserved for the use of a nation of turbulent Kaffirs. Of course, the Imperial Government is bound to keep faith with the Basutos, but Colonists often resent inconvenient Imperial obligations. When these features are considered, it is hardly too much to say that Basutoland, despite its present prosperity, may yet become the storm-centre of South Africa.

NOTE.-While I have made free use of a good many books-notably, Mr. Lucas's "Historical Geography of the British Colonies"-for the purposes of this article, I owe special thanks to Mr. F. Perry, of the Colonial Office, for his kindness in helping me to take advantage of the wealth of information on the subject available in the South African BlueBooks.

A COLONIAL EMPIRE ON ECONOMIC AND JUST PRINCIPLES.

By H. R. Fox, BOURNE.

THE problems claiming consideration by political economists are now more numerous and, some of them, more complex than they were a century ago, and Adam Smith's successors have done much in amplifying and supplementing, as well as in correcting, the doctrines he propounded. But, while later teachers have greatly improved on his handling of what are to-day regarded as the essential parts of economic science few have paid even as much attention as he did to some questions which, if in a way only side issues, have direct and momentous bearing on the whole subject, and which have grown immensely in importance since he made his "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations."

The "nations" of whose condition Adam Smith took account were chiefly the few that, in no more than a portion of Europe and in the outlying regions they had then appropriated, had by friendly and unfriendly rivalry with one another attained the measure of civilization which satisfied them before the first rumblings of the French Revolution were heard. Throughout most of the eighteenth century, though there was plenty of desultory fighting, there were in this relatively small area no such great wars as had wasted it before and were to waste it again. In 1775 Adam Smith could speak with a light heart of "the art of war" as certainly the noblest of all arts," and felt himself able to commend the comparatively recent institution of a standing army as the "only means" by which "a civilized country can be defended" and "a barbarous country can be suddenly and tolerably civilized." He saw nothing alarming in the fact, as he stated it, that "the duty of defending a society from the violence and injustice of other independent societies grows gradually more and more

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expensive as the society advances in civilization,"* and it did not occur to him to point out that, however necessary it may be for one nation to be competent to protect itself from the "violence and injustice" of others, the business of war is altogether incompatible with the orderly working of the economic laws by which alone "the wealth of nations" can be assured and augmented. Were he living now he would probably have supplied the omission.

When he sought to promote " the wealth "--that is, the economic welfare-" of nations," all the nations of Europe were small, and Great Britain was one of the smallest. Now several of the European nations claim to be empires, and the British Empire has already an assumed area-comprising colonies, protectorates, spheres of influence and what-not-more than a hundred times as large as that of the United Kingdom, with a heterogeneous population at least ten times as numerous as that of our own islands. We have had no war with any of our continental neighbours for more than forty years, but in asserting and extending our authority over more alien and, as they are considered, inferior races, we wage several little wars each year. Partly on this account, and yet more to ward off possible attacks by European rivals, we maintain a large standing army, besides militia and volunteers at home, and native forces abroad, and we keep up naval armaments much more formidable than our military establishments. Our army is insignificant in comparison with the armies of several of our rivals; but it is slowly growing and increasing in cost, and meanwhile our navy is being enlarged by leaps and bounds. The actual expenditure of the nation in keeping up its fighting machinery, when all the accessories are reckoned in, vastly exceeds the amount, approaching £50,000,000, which was voted in the last Session of Parliament, but this outlay in itself is no small drain on the nation's resources.

All the laws of production and distribution, of equitable * "Wealth of Nations," Book V., Chapter I., Part 1.

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and reasonable supply and demand, are more or less interfered with and violated when society is in a condition. requiring the maintenance of large armaments ostensibly intended to keep it in order, but much more suited if not schemed to promote disorder. On strictly economic grounds the policy of empire-holding, to which the policy of empireextending is a corollary, by means of such armaments as are now in vogue, is indefensible, or can only be defended by pleas that themselves condemn it. It is wasteful of the material with which "the wealth of nations" is built up, even if it can be made, by those most skilful in their enforcement of it, to more than compensate them for their own.

waste.

Economic science was practically unknown in the centuries that saw the slow and often violent building up of what is now spoken of as the British nation, but in which all of British that remains dates from a barbaric age, and in which, whatever may be due to survivals from the original stock, the elements and conditions of national growth mus be attributed in overwhelming proportion to successive encroachments from other lands. Our nation, moreover, owes nothing to economic teachers for the process by which cliques and clanships of all sorts have been gradually absorbed, in so far as they have even yet been absorbed, into the one community of which Scotchmen and Welshmen-may I add Irishmen ?—as well as Englishmen are members. But this has been an economic development, and the development would have been more rapid and thorough than it has been, free from many of the faults and drawbacks we now have to deplore-most notably in the case of Ireland-had it been subject to the proper working of economic laws. The welding, incomplete and clumsy as it is, of several portions of the German people into one empire, furnishes modern evidence of the economic advantages of such fusion. The disasters which, through their narrow and spurious patriotism, befell the old Italian States, and which still weigh upon modern Italy, furnish

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