The partition or occupation of Africa with a view to sound colonization--that is, to fit the country as a future home for surplus population--is the obvious duty of the nations which form the vanguard of civilization. This is the object of our occupation of the various territories under the British flag, and of the Germans in the East and South-west Africa, and, I believe, of the French in the north, to make new markets and open up country for coming generations; to suffer temporary loss for the future benefit of overcrowded humanity. Experience and the suitability of our institutions are the reasons of our success. The predominance of militarism is the reason of the hitherto comparative failure of the two great land powers, and corruption and senile decay are the reasons of the abject failure of the nation that led the van of colonization. However, _experientia docet_, and Germany, at least, is laying a sound foundation for a broader colonial policy, while Portuguese occupation is only a negative failure. But what can be said in favour of permitting a vast tract of country to be run merely as a commercial speculation without more legitimate objective than that of squeezing as much rubber and ivory out of the natives as possible; of arming large numbers of savages and entrusting them to inexperienced men from a land of untravelled commercials to whom expatriation is akin to disgrace; of making the administrators of districts to all intents and purposes farmers of the taxes? However sound the intentions of the fountain-head, there can be no responsible administration without a connection with a definite home government. Men do not take employment in Africa for the joke of the thing. Hopes of preferment or pecuniary profit are what induce them to give up the comforts of civilization, and where the former is lacking the latter must be offered, or only the dregs of other trades will be forthcoming.