THE CHARTERED COMPANY. LTO THE EDITOR OF TUE " SPECFATOR."1
Sia,—Lord Cromer's annual Report is a document which never fails to justify the pride of race which is the inheritance of every Englishman. The record of steady progress, securely accomplished in the face of native inertia and irritating foreign resistance by a determined and justice-loving English- man, is perhaps the most inspiring reading published through- out the year. But I submit that the use of Lord Cromer's Report as an excuse for throwing stones at the Chartered Company is most unfair. It is as unreasonable to state that the difference between the condition of the raw Matabele savage and that of the Egyptian fellaheen—the product of centuries of discipline—arises 'from difference of motive in their rulers," as it would be to say that. the difference between the untamed zebra and the civilised cart-horse lesults from a difference of stable treatment. Nor is there any greater justifi- cation for your assumption that it would be ridiculous to expect "the agents of the Chartered Company" either to be inter- ested in the well-being of the natives of Rhodesia, or to find any consolation for "the monotony and hardship and solitary discomfort of their lives" in the reflection that they have been doing their best to help England to fulfil her humane and Imperial mission of substituting Anglo-Saxon civilisation for barbarism.
I can say, without fear of contradiction by those who know, that there is no Government which has a greater regard to the wants of its native subjects than has the Administration of Rhodesia. I know from my own experience that the spirit breathed by the Chartered Company's official, Hubert Hervey, whose last words as he died almost in the arms of Mr. Rhodes
in the Matoppos were, "It is a grand thing to die for the
expansion of the Empire," is the spirit which animates the Civil Service of Rhodesia. Your attack on the shareholders of the Chartered Company, whom you accuse of ignoring the rudimentary requirements of civilisation until they "have seen the rudimentary elements of a dividend," is therefore to me wholly incomprehensible. You appear to have forgotten the following facts :—
(1) That the country now known as Rhodesia was recognised to be the key of the South African position many years ago by Cecil Rhodes, and that had that country been allowed to come under the dominion of either the Germans or the Boers, South Africa would have been lost to Engl ind.
(2) Her Majesty's Government refused in 1888 to siize this key because they were not prepared to ask the House of Commms for the necessary funds.
The Chartered Company's shareholders took the place of the British taxpayer and saved the situation.
While Lord Cromer has been obliged to exact from the fellaheen large sums of interest for moneys supplied by foreign bondholders, the Chartered Company's share- holders have not drawn one single shilling in dividends on the £10,000,000 they have expended in order to secure a province for the Empire, and to establish therein a system of administration worthy of the highest British ideals.
I cannot within the limits of this letter attempt to put on record the achievements of the Chartered Company's share-
holders and their claim on the gratitude of the Empire. This must be reserved for another occasion; but I have, I hope, said enough to defend both the shareholders and the officials of the Chartered Company from gratuitous imputations upon their character for which no justification exists.—I am,
Sir, &c., GREY. [Lord Grey's letter reaches us too late for us to deal with it at length, but we must point out that our main desire was to meet the accusations so plentifully levelled at direct Imperial rule. We are perpetually being told that Downing Street and the agents of the Imperial Government cannot govern, and that the best and truest exponents of Imperial expansion are chartered companies. In answer to this, we ventured to contrast the conquest and settlement of the Soudan by the Imperial Government with the conquest and settlement of Matabeleland by the Chartered Company. The Chartered Company, we believe we are right in saying, seized all the cattle of the 3fatabele, then allowed something indistinguish- able from forced labour to be established for a time, and gener- ally acted so recklessly that the result was a terrible and bloody insurrection. Such were the results of expansion by chartered company. When the Imperial Government con- quered the Soudan it did not confiscate the people's camels or
cattle, it did not attempt to introduce forced labour, and generally the settlement effected was on wise and prudent lines, and there was no revolt. Yet because we bring out this contrast, which we claim to be of great moment, Lord Grey writes as if we had been guilty of some kind of horrid blasphemy. We admit that the Chartered Company—in no small measure because of Lord Grey's personal influence, which, we fully recognise, will always and in all places be, as -far as in him lies, exerted for good government and the best and most unselfish form of Imperialism—is now doing much better work, and that many of its servants are excellent and devoted men; but we refuse to be muzzled in regard to the past of the Chartered Company, or to bow to the notion that every .voice must be hushed in adoration of the Company and all its works. Its past deserves criticism, and must receive it. One email matter requires to be cleared up. By a. slip the words "Egyptian fellaheen " were used when what was meant was the inhabitants of the recently conquered Soudan. The com- parison was between the recently conquered territories in both cases, as the general tenor of the article showed.—En. Spectator.1
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