Again, when Victoria came to the throne (1837) the greater part of Africa was simply a geographical expression; the coast had been explored, but scarcely anything was known of the country back of it.  Through the efforts of Livingstone and those who followed him (1840- 1890), the interior was explored and the source of the Nile was discovered (1863).  Stanley undertook the great work on the Congo River and the “dark continent” ceased to be dark.  Trade was opened with the interior, and the discovery of diamond mines and gold mines in South Africa (1867, 1884) stimulated emigration.  Railways have been pushed forward in many directions (S622), new markets are springing up, and Africa, once the puzzle of the world, seems destined to become one of the great fields which the Anglo-Saxon race is determined to control, if not to possess.

On the other hand, the British West Indies have of late years greatly declined from their former prosperity.  The English demand for cheap sugar has encouraged the importation of beet-root sugar from Germany and France.  This has reduced the market for cane sugar to so low a point that there has been but little, if any, profit in raising it in the West Indies;[1] but fruit is a success.

[1] See Brooks Adams’s “America’s Economic Supremacy.”

619.  England’s Change of Feeling toward her Colonies.

One of the most striking features of the “Diamond Jubilee” celebration (S607) was the prominence given to the Colonial Prime Ministers.  There was a time, indeed, when the men who governed England regarded Canada and Australia as “a source of weakness,” and the Colonial Office in London knew so little of the latter country that it made ridiculous blunders in attempting to address official despatches to Melbourne, Australia.[2] Even as late as the middle of the last century Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote to Lord Malmesbury in regard to the Newfoundland fisheries, “These wretched colonies will all be independent, too, in a few years, and are a millstone around our necks.”

[2] See Traill’s “Social England,” VI, 684.

Twenty years afterwards Disraeli, later Lord Beaconsfield, declared that one of the great objects he and his party had in view was to uphold the British Empire and to do everything to maintain its unity.  That feeling has steadily gained in power and was never stronger than it is to-day.  Canada, Australia, and the other governing colonies (S625) have since responded by actions as well as words, and “Imperial Federation” has become something more than a high-sounding phrase (SS625, 626).

620.  The Condition of Ireland; International Arbitration.