to over-estimate their usefulness from this particular point of view. But the course they have been pursuing for the last few years has been quite different. It has been so illogical, so lacking in judgment and sobriety, and so pronouncedly foolish and unjust, as to disgust every fair-minded man who has looked into the facts for himself. Instead of common-sense and reasonable debate, there has been violent and senseless denunciation accompanied by the grossest misstatements. The Administration, urged perpetually to increase the tax, has been cursed with bell, book and candle for the automatic result in swelling the proceeds of revenue derived from these increases. What was demanded as a moral duty has, in its inevitable result, been stigmatized as a crime, and the very men who clamoured for more taxes, have denounced the effect of them. A trade forming from time immemorial, as already stated, part of the general barter trade of the West Coast has become identified in the public mind with a particular British dependency, the very one where official vigilance has been specially exercised. A difficult and complicated economic and fiscal problem has been handled in so unintelligent a manner that it has degenerated into systematic and silly abuse of British officials, who have no more to do with the existence of the traffic than has the Duke of Westminster who presides over the Native Races and Liquor Traffic United Committee. These officials of ours, some of whose difficulties I have attempted to portray, have actually been accused—nay, are still being—of encouraging the trade in every possible way, of forcing it upon the people, of thriving on the drinking habits of the native. Fanaticism has even gone the length of stating that they are “financially interested” in the traffic, as though they received a percentage from Government on the revenue derived from taxing the article! The very Commission which Lord Crewe sent out to investigate the charges persistently brought, has been assailed with unmeasured vituperation for the crime of having rendered a truthful report on the evidence produced, and the public at home has been asked to believe that these Commissioners, the Political and Judicial Staff of the Protectorate, the Medical Staff, the Roman Catholic missionaries[15]—the most numerous in the Protectorate—together with prominent natives and independent outside witnesses as well, are either deliberate perjurers or incompetent observers; although the accusers’ testimony was hopelessly, even pitifully, inadequate when brought to the test of public examination and inquiry. In an official pamphlet issued by the Native Races Committee the statements of Sir Mackenzie Chalmers, the Chairman of the Commission, as recorded in the minutes of evidence, have been reproduced in mutilated form, presumably in order to carry conviction of his bias with the public. Those who can stoop to such methods do irreparable injury to a good cause.