COLONIES AT AUCTION.
WE doubt very much whether Portugal will sell her Colonies, and still more whether, if she did sell them, the advantage, whether to this country or the world, would be nearly so unmixed as some of our con- temporaries believe. The Portuguese Court, we fancy, believes but little in Colonies, which furnish it neither with men nor money ; and the Portuguese statesmen might be very glad to be rid of possessions which have always drained the Treasury, and from their ineffective govern- ment are always bringing the Mother-country, or rather, we ought to say, the proprietary country, into scrapes. The mass of the people, however, are probably of a different. opinion. The citizens of Lisbon and Oporto only last year threatened insurrection because they thought Portugal was ceding too much Africanterritory to Great Britain, and Lord Salisbury was warned by very great persons indeed not to be too peremptory, lest the popular indignation should sweep away the throne of the Braganzas. The Portuguese are full of traditional ideas about their maritime conquests, believe themselves to be in some sort an Imperial Power, and think that the future may bring them in Africa the dignity and the wealth which, as they contend, they once derived from the possession of Brazil. They are, it is true, just now frightened at the financial situation, which comes home, either in taxes or in reductions of salary, to every family in Portugal ; but nations are governed through the imagination, and stepping down from their old position in the world, even though it was mostly imaginary, will be a very bitter pill. No populace in the world really comprehends finance. We suspect the Portuguese will think it much more satisfactory and much easier to " tax "—that is, to confiscate—part of the property of the public creditor, reduce Colonial expenditure until there is something like Colonial anarchy, and retain their nominal Empire until better times arrive. If, indeed, the sale of the Colonies world really right their finances, the statesmen might per- suade them to consent to a transaction which would make the Kingdom once more feel rich, and allow the creation of an infinity of little places • but where is the chance of that ? Portugal has some ten Colonies, covering an area of 700,000 miles, but only four of them—Goa, Angola, Mozambique, and Timor—are worth considering seriously ; and how much could she get for the four ? France might give a million for Angola, which would increase her share of Africa in a region which she is anxious to reduce to order ; but even that sum would be a subject of fierce debate in a Chamber intent on economy, disgusted with the charges for Ton quin, and well aware that the electors detest African semi-tropical posessions, in which all con- scripts sent there lose either their lives or health. As, however, the Foreign Office is intent on having its " share " of Africa, we suppose that, after the usual friction, some such sum as a million sterling might be obtained, or even possibly two; but that would be the limit in cash. The Indian Government also, we suppose, would give another million for Goa. It does not want the territory as a possession, and would be bothered to death with the ecclesiastical question, the Patriarch of Goa having some extraordinary rights, or rather claims, of jurisdiction throughout India independent of the Pope ; but it has always paid £40,000 a. year to be rid of Customs diffi- culties, and, though the treaty has lapsed, will have by-and-by to pay it again in order to protect its monopolies of opium and salt. We pay the same sum to France for the same reason. It might be worth the Viceroy's while to end all complications finally by a payment down, and turn Goa once more into a great port for the trade of Southern India, which naturally debouches either there or a little farther south. Mozambique, too, would have a certain charm for the British Colonial Office, which is always harassed by South African applications for protection, and Portuguese screams that, poor little thing, it is being treated with brutality. Mr. Cecil Rhodes would, we suppose, find a million to possess clear and rapid means of communication between the sea and Mashonaland, and recoup his Company out of Customs duties ; and Parliament would possibly vote another million to be rid of complications with Por- tugal, to regain Delagoa Bay, and to delight the Scotch and Irish Members, the former of whom want clear access to the interior for their missionaries, and the latter desire to gratify Mr. Cecil Rhodes. We do not believe, however, that larger sums would be obtainable ; and what would be the value of three or four millions in righting Portuguese finance ? She wants that sum a year to pay her way upon her present scale of expenditure; and a saving of, say, three hundred thousand a year, interest and losses included, would not exempt her either from the financial risk of defaulting, or the political risk of cutting all salaries down to the very bone. Nobody will buy Portuguese Timor ; at least we shall not, and we cannot conceive of France or Germany doing it ; and there is nothing else of serious value to sell except Macao, for which the Chinese Government might conceivably pay some moderate sum. Even that is doubtful, for the Tsungli Yamen has, we believe, never acknowledged that Portugal had any legal rights in that decaying place, and nobody else could make a bid without risk of incurring the deadly and very formidable enmity of Pekin. There is very little that is practical in the project, par- ticularly as Portugal hopes to sell vast " concessions ' in her Colonies without giving up sovereignty ; and we are not altogether sure that we wish there should be. There is no moral objection, it is true, to the sale of a Colony, or at least none which would not be operative against any cession of territory whatsoever, even after a war ; and there are plenty of modern precedents for a transaction of the kind. France sold Louisiana to the 'United States for hard cash down, and very little of it; Florida was purchased by the 'United States from Spain ; and the Russian Govern- ment, when it ceded Alaska, did it, nominally at all events, for a consideration in money. We ourselves bought Cyprus, though we admit that one " consideration " for the cession was a very unreal, and to our thinking mischievous, guarantee to Turkey. The sale of Colonies, nevertheless, is a very awkward practice, tending as it does to make the arrangements enforced by centuries, both by war and diplomacy, of very little effect. Suppose, to put a case provided against by treaty, France sold Pondicherry to Russia. It was Prince Schwartzenburg, we think, who said that the voluntary cession by Great Britain of the " Septinsular Republic" to Greece, had introduced into diplomacy a precedent of new and incalculable effect ; and certainly great disturbance might be effected by a large sale of dependent Colonies. Suppose the Dutch sold their share of Borneo and New Guinea to the French to serve as penal colonies ! Our position in Borneo would be hardly tenable, and we should have a quarrel once a year, while the Australians would declare themselves independent sooner than allow such a bargain to be ratified. Or suppose the Argentine Republic sold Patagonia to the Germans, or China sold Formosa to the Russians. All these acts would be strictly legal, hardly to be questioned in grave despatches ; and yet they would be acts exceedingly menacing to the tranquillity of States, and to any sense of permanent advantage from the efforts of diplomacy. We do not suppose America would permit for one moment the sale of Cuba by Spain to a Great Power; and yet if Portugal possesses this strange right, which she certainly does, strongly though such a transfer of popula- tions for cash is opposed to modern ideas, Spain possesses it also in full measure. Besides, if Kingdoms are to be sold for financial relief, they will be sold to the highest bidder; and out of an auction of that kind, what troubles might not be developed! We verily believe that France, in possession of Mozambique, would be able to worry us out of Egypt merely by irritating the South Africans by incessant interference; and if Mozambique is to be sold like a derelict barque, who is to guarantee that France shall not be the purchaser ? We have no power to prevent such a transfer except by going to war, for the French, if excited by international rivalry, would bid sums which our saner people, already overloaded with Dependencies, would never consent to vote. The Opposition, whichever party was in power, would call such a purchase at auction prices plunder of the taxpayer ; and to soothe them, if the bidding proceeded, the money would be made a first-charge upon the Colony, which, like the tribute-money for Cyprus, would make all physical improvements seem extravagant. We cannot like the prospect at all, and though we should be heartily glad if negotiation could put us in possession of Mozambique, which is in the way at once of our gold- seekers, our missionaries, and our efforts for the suppres- sion of the slave-trade, we should prefer almost any means of obtaining it to an open purchase in an international sale-room. If we ever engage in such a transaction, it must be after a previous arrangement with France that she may buy what she likes in West Africa ; and an " arrangement with France " while she is still so sore about the position in Egypt, is not an undertaking upon which any Foreign Secretary will enter with a light heart.
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