"An English Colonist" writes to the Times on Monday to
say that Lord Granville has sold a British colony, Gambia, to the French Government without consulting Parliament. The statement is, of course, utterly incredible, as the Home Secretary might just as well sell the Orkneys, but it is very minute. The writer says that about 1st May the Minister of the Interior of Senegal arrived in the Gambia, and informed the people that they had all been sold for some territory near Sierra Leone, a statement confirmed by the Governor-in-Chief, Sir Arthur Kennedy. The people are wild at their prospects, and ready to submit to any taxation rather than be surrendered to France. As the trade is worth some half-million a year, perhaps some mercantile Member of Parliament will ask Mr. Monsell how the story came to be invented, and whether the Office considers the British Colonies its private property.
