The moral obligation, I repeat, is immediate and inseparable from our bounden duty to develop the country, to "subjugate" and thereby "civilize" the natives, and thus justify our assumption of rights in Africa. But I also feel convinced that commercially the enterprise is sound. It is, of course, well-nigh impossible to form estimates of returns in a country that is absolutely stagnant, reposing in abysmal depths of barbarism; but the soil is there, the climate is there, the wild luxuriance of Nature is there, the labour is there, and it needs but the magic touch of the railway to weld them all into one producing whole. It is experimental, I allow, but all enterprise is based on experiment. We are too apt to take things as they are, and not to inquire into what things were before, and by analogy what things similarly placed are likely to become. We reason--"Africa is a waste; India is a garden; and India will remain a garden, and Africa will remain a waste." The day is not far distant when Africa will pour out her wealth of cattle, grain, minerals, rubber, cotton, sugar, copra, spices, and a thousand other products to a grateful world. And over and above this, will give a home of comfort to millions of Europeans now suffocated by lack of breathing-space, and afford a field of investment for the pent-up millions of capital that are crowding returns down to an impossible minimum. What better advertisement to draw these millions into circulation than a railway opening up the unknown! The extension of the railway northwards from Buluwayo through the Mafungabusi, Sengwe, and Sangati coal-fields and the Bembesi, Lower Sebakwe, and Lower Umfuli gold-finds is, of course, a commercial certainty; and the second section through the notoriously wealthy Lo Maghonda gold-field is equally assured. But beyond that, after it crosses the Zambesi at the Victoria Falls, all estimates must be mainly hypothetical. The Katanga copper-fields, the enormous quantities of rubber, which are now giving such magnificent returns to the few traders in the country, and the recently-reported gold-finds by Mr. George Grey augur well for the future; but I cannot agree with Mr. Rhodes in some of his contentions urged on an unresponsive Government as arguments for their support of the northern extension. He urges the native labour question, hoping to bring large supplies of natives south to work in the mines. This wholesale exportation and importation of labour, I am sure, is most pernicious to the general welfare of the country. It raises the cost of labour throughout the districts affected, and, as I have attempted to show elsewhere, is bound eventually to bring all labour up to the highest rate that has been obtained.