that, if a 1 per cent. duty were imposed, there would not be any disturbance in any part of the mighty system of British commerce.

Having provided an income, it is necessary to frame a Charter defining and limiting the modes of expenditure. Thus the Imperial Fund, to fulfil its objects, must be confined to the improvement of British-owned steamship services forming veritable lines of communication between the great members of the Empire. Such, for example, are lines connecting the United Kingdom with Canada, the West Indies, South Africa, Australasia, India and Hong Kong; Canada with Australasia, South Africa, and Hong Kong; Australasia with India and Hong Kong. The assistance might take the form of subsidies, bounties, or loans at low interest, subject to conditions of speed, tonnage, periodicity, accommodation and employment of British subjects. These questions would need careful consideration and a study of German methods; but they involve no insuperable difficulties. The next step is to create an Imperial Maritime Council with complete powers of administering the Fund under the terms of the Charter. Such a Council might be formed, in the first instance, of the following representatives:

This would be a good working number, and, from the nature of the duties to be performed, representation on the basis of proportional contributions would be unnecessary. As no line of maritime communications could be strengthened without benefiting the United Kingdom, the latter need not claim a predominant influence, and one of the great difficulties of all Federal schemes is removed. The Council should hold a session every year, and at intervals of four years it should sit at the great centres of Imperial commerce-Montreal, Cape Town, Bombay, and Sydney-in succession.

Assuming the working expenses to be 100,000l. a year, there would remain at least four and a half millions sterling to be administered, and such a sum scientifically applied with a single eye to Imperial advantage must produce far-reaching results.

I am aware that evidence unfavourable to subsidies was given before the Select Committee which reported in December 1902. It was pointed out that the effect of State aid tended to check individual effort, and thus to enfeeble maritime development. No one can believe more implicitly than I do in the supreme importance of private enterprise

by which our unrivalled commerce has been built up; but disjointed effort, however strenuous, may lead to overlapping with consequent economic loss, while undertakings not mutually organised may suffer in competition with those which have behind them the assistance of a powerful Government wisely applied. Such assistance can even be made to stimulate individual effort. The liberal French subsidies cannot be said to have produced marked national advantage; but it is clear that State aid and direction have materially contributed to the striking progress of the German mercantile marine. German steamers over 100 tons rose from 741 of 638,000 net tons in 1890 to 1,230 of 2,177,000 tons in 1901, the corresponding figures under the British flag being 6,403 of 5,156,800 tons and 6,088 of 7,523,000 tons. Thus the average tonnage of German steamers during this period rose from 861 to 1,770, and of British steamers from 805 to 1,237. In 1901 Germany owned 128 steamers over 5,000 tons, and stood next to Great Britain with 404. The relatively large growth of the size of German steamers and the rapid spread of German commerce are to a great extent the result of methods scientifically devised with these objects. Such methods are effective or not according to the wisdom or unwisdom with which they are applied, and in the British Empire, if real national objects are to be attained, it is essential that the directing authority should, as I propose, be entirely disconnected from local politics. In any case, the scheme being restricted to the maritime communications of the Empire, there remains an immense field for unaided private enterprise.

Another objection which suggests itself is that, while in some colonies the staff employed by the Customs departments would be able to collect the special duty with little or no addition, a considerable increase would be necessary in the United Kingdom. I believe that about 70,000l. a year would meet the new requirements; but if all mail subsidies were thrown upon the fund, mail communication being most properly treated as matter of Imperial concern, no financial loss would arise.

The advantages which I venture to claim for the scheme are briefly the following:

I. Special encouragement to inter-British trade arising directly from the 1 per cent. preference, and indirectly to a much greater extent from the improvement of the facilities of ocean transport.

II. Possibilities of helping the development of the immense unutilised resources of the Empire.

III. Closer touch between the scattered British peoples, and a check to the diminution of British subjects employed on the sea.

IV. Strengthening the mercantile marine by increasing the number of large and fast steamers which would be trebly advantageous in war, as auxiliary vessels for the use of the Navy, as transports, and as being relatively difficult to capture.

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V. Effective counteraction of foreign subsidies or bounties now enjoyed by ships plying between British ports.

VI. Continuous scientific study of the inter-working of Imperial trade as a whole, which is now lacking, and which would ensure increased economy and efficiency.

VII. Lastly, and perhaps greatest of all, the establishment for the first time of a real Imperial Council, entrusted with definite and most important duties involving pan-Britannic interests on a huge scale, and smoothing the way to further organised co-operation.

While the inauguration of this scheme would not dislocate British commerce in the slightest degree, it would leave complete fiscal freedom with every self-governing community of the Empire. It can, therefore, be considered quite apart from all questions of fiscal policy, and it provides a broad platform on which free-traders, free-fooders, retaliators, preferential tariffists, and 'whole-hoggers' might meet in amity.

'I am satisfied,' said Sir Robert Giffen before the Select Committee,' that the problem of maintaining our merchant fleet is a very serious one indeed for the Government.' It is on the maintenance of that fleet that our national prosperity and progress absolutely depend. If measures such as those which Germany employs with visible success are required in our case, it is essential that they should assume Imperial form and scope. Failure and waste would attend any partial efforts. Continuity of policy, based upon great principles, far-seeing, and seeking only permanent national advantages, is vital.

The scheme which I suggest is designed to fulfil these conditions, and I earnestly commend it to the consideration of all who are learning, in the truest and the noblest sense, to think Imperially.

January 1904.

GEORGE SYDENHAM CLARKE.

THE BLACK PERIL IN SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa may be a white man's colon in the sense that the white man can thrive there, . . . but can it ever be a white man's colony in the true sense of the word that the white man is to be the greater part of the population of the Colony? . . . The blacks not only show no signs of diminution; they are steadily increasing, and they are increasing faster than the whites. They are there; they are going to remain there; and the problem before South Africa in the future is one which has never yet presented itself in the history of mankind. I believe the problem will present incomparable difficulties. The Right Hon. Member for Aberdeen (Mr. Bryce) said the question of the negro in the Southern States of North America was a serious difficulty. What is the difficulty of the relatively insignificant negro population in the United States of America compared with the difficulty which will present itself to South African statesmen when they have got to face this enormous black population, and when you have a community of whites of all classes who are, as it were, an aristocracy over a proletariat class? I do not envy those who have to deal with that situation in the future.-Mr. Balfour in the House of Commons, the 21st of March, 1904.

It is not the yellow peril in South Africa that should occupy the minds of British statesmen, but the black peril. We are drifting in our native policy... the time has come when we should secure the best brains we can from Africa, England, and America to think out a solution of the problem of what the duty of the white races should be to the black.-Earl Grey at the Society of Arts, the 12th of April, 1904.

THE native population of Africa south of the Zambesi is ten millions. The white population is under one million. To-day the majority of the natives are in a semi-savage condition. But the day may come when they shall have emerged from that condition, and have attained the degree of civilisation which prevails amongst the negroes, their kindred, in the United States. The process of evolution has begun. When it is completed, the relative position of the black and white populations in South Africa will be-what? Look to the United States and you shall find some hint of the answer. There the two races are at each other's throat. The negro has become a power in the land, socially, politically, and economically, and his power is a constant source of embarrassment and irritation to the white. Yet half a century ago the American negro was bound hand and foot in the fetters of slavery, and plunged in ignorance as dense as that of the most benighted Kafir. Who shall say that the Kafir,

mean.

half a century hence, will not exercise a similar power, socially, politically, and economically, if not a greater, in South Africa? Personally I have no doubts whatever on the subject. The impulse which came to the negroes of North America with the Civil War, to strive after something beyond that to which they had been born, has now come to the South African negro, less obtrusively perhaps, but no less decisively. Already the coloured man is a formidable force in the game of party politics in one, and the oldest, South African colony. The most deplorable feature of the Cape elections which have just ended was the power exercised by the native vote. The Cape Town correspondent of the Times asserted that it dominated the whole election. He was well within the mark. The gravity of the situation is unfortunately not appreciated in England, or, at all events, appreciated by only a very few. Perhaps this is not surprising when one remembers that many South Africans, blinded by the political expediency of the moment, fail completely to discern the peril which is close upon them. Future calamity, however stupendous, is to them as nothing compared with present political gain, however 'Sufficient unto the day' sums up their creed, with 'Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die' as a variant. It is a strictly non-party and non-racial creed-about the only non-party and nonracial thing in South Africa. Bond and Progressives, English and Dutch, alike subscribe to it, and alike observe it to the letter. In a number of districts the coloured vote is the deciding factor. Bond and Progressives therefore vied with each other, during the recent contest, in prostrating themselves even to the dust before the native, in order to gratify his vanity and so induce a favourable response to their respective claims for support at the polls. The Progressives appear to have been the more successful in this exhilarating performance, since they captured several constituencies which, largely by the grace of the native, the Bond had previously held. Your political bagman is deliriously enthusiastic over these tactics, and is lost in admiration when he beholds his party, by means of them, giving the other side a wipe in the eye.' He makes no pretence of considering the effect of it all on the native mind, and is cheerfully indifferent to the claims of posterity. What has posterity done for me, anyway?' he argues. What if the native does form an extravagant estimate of his own importance, and cultivate an unbounded contempt for the white men? A seat has been won for the party that surely is the main thing!

But how long is this dangerous policy to continue? The native population of Cape Colony, including the territories, is, in round numbers, 1,200,000, and the white population 377,000. Day by day the power of the native grows. The gate of the political arena stands wide open to him, and he is not slow to enter. With the exception of natives occupying lands under tribal tenure (an important exception,