"The railway system controlled by the British South Africa Company is now one of 2047 miles of trunk line with 415 miles of branch lines, and as a whole is more than paying its way. Its total cost has been about 16,000,000l., which has been for the most part provided by means of debentures and notes raised on the credit of the British South Africa Company by the railway companies controlled by it, as well as by direct advances from that Company.'*

The British South Africa Company's interest in this great railway system is represented by a holding of about 1,700,000 out of 2,000,000 issued shares of 11. each in the Rhodesia Railways Trust, which itself owns the share capital of the railway companies operating the system. On the shares of the Rhodesia Railways Trust three dividends have been paid in recent years, one of 21 per cent. and two of 4 per cent.-not an extravagant reward, it will be admitted, for the 'onlie begetter' of such an undertaking.

The opening up of the country by the railway system and the establishment of settled government have enabled the Company to fulfil its promise of giving opportunities for European immigration and British trade and commerce. At the time of the grant of the Charter, Rhodesia was almost unknown to the white man. A few missionaries had penetrated into it; a few hunters, traders, and seekers after concessions were there by the sufferance of LoBengula, but that was all. To-day Southern Rhodesia has a population of between 30,000 and 40,000 Europeans firmly established; Northern Rhodesia, a similar population of about 4000. Good houses have been built; family life is as secure and as happy as in Great Britain, and an excellent system of State schools provides for the education of the ever-increasing number of children. Gold to the value of 55,000,000l. has been produced from the mines of Rhodesia in the last twentyfive years, besides important quantities of coal, chrome iron, copper, asbestos, and lead. The land yields abundant crops of maize, tobacco, and oranges, and carries great herds of cattle. In 1921, the last year for which figures are available, Rhodesia, apart altogether from her trade with the Union of South Africa, imported merchandise

'Times,' Oct. 1, 1923.

from the United Kingdom to the value of nearly 3,000,000l., and sent in return exports of practically equal value.

In nothing, however, has the government of the British South Africa Company more amply justified itself than in the all-important department of native affairs. It has been shown on an earlier page that Lo Bengula ruled, as indeed a savage chief could only rule, by the terror of the assegai and the Matabele 'impi.' Even among the Matabele themselves no man's life was safe if the Chief thought fit to take it or the witch-doctor'smelt him out'; while no man had a right as against the Chief to the ownership of a single head of cattle. Far worse was the lot of the unhappy Mashona, continually exposed to danger of raids in which their men were slaughtered, their women and children carried off into slavery to the Matabele, and their cattle driven away. The survivors of the Pioneer column still tell how when they entered Mashonaland in 1890 they found the wretched kraals hidden among the boulders on the tops of the rocky kopjes, placed there in the hope that the invader might pass them unobserved.

To-day the Matabele is an unarmed and peaceful herdsman or a worker for good wages. If he has no longer the fierce joys of the foray or the advantages of slave-owning, his own life and property are safe; while the Mashona has come down from his hill-top to cultivate his garden unmolested. At the beginning of the present century the native population of Southern Rhodesia numbered about 500,000. The census of 1921 showed it to have risen to nearly 900,000, and natives now own nearly a million head of cattle and about the same number of small stock. A quarter of the whole surface of Southern Rhodesia has been reserved for exclusive occupation by the natives. They cultivate more than a million acres of land, and the use of the plough is gradually superseding that of the primitive hoe.

In Northern Rhodesia the slave raiders from the east and west coasts have long ago been suppressed. In 1906 the Barotse under Lewanika voluntarily, though under pressure from the Company's officers, abolished domestic servitude, a long-established and, to them, a perfectly respectable institution. Throughout Rhodesia the efforts

of the missionary have been consistently helped and encouraged; the witch-doctor is being robbed of his terrors, and all traffic in spirituous drink among natives has been effectually prevented.

As long ago as 1907 Lord Selborne, then High Commissioner for South Africa, could say in writing to the Secretary of State for the Colonies after a visit to Northern Rhodesia :

'I travelled through the country with the same safety and in the same atmosphere of the existence of a civilising influence that I should find in the native territories of the Cape Colony or in Basutoland, and I found everywhere the traces of a civilised administration in existence. And yet, it is not more than fifteen years ago since the Matabele perpetrated their last wholesale massacre on the Batoka Plateau, or since the Barotse themselves raided one of their subject tribes, the Mashukulumbwe. It is less than that, so the missionaries told me, since masters killed their slaves at will, and since people were constantly being executed for witchcraft. Neither of these things ever happens now, and indeed the status of slavery (though not yet, of course, the habit in the minds of the people) has been abolished by law. Within fifteen years the most rank atmosphere of barbarism has been superseded by an atmosphere of civilisation.'

And in 1920 a Minister of the Crown could describe the native administration of Rhodesia to the House of Commons as 'a model not only in Africa, but for any part of the world where you have the very difficult problem of the white settler living side by side with the native.'

The administrative work of the British South Africa Company has cost it dearly. Apart altogether from the expenditure of the railway companies which it controls, and from the liabilities which it has assumed towards the debenture and note holders of those companies, the British South Africa Company itself has raised from the investing public for the creation, defence, and development of Rhodesia no less than 13,000,000l., and has borrowed 1,250,000l. in debentures. As against these sums the purely commercial assets of the Company shown in its latest published balance-sheet stood at under 8,000,000l.; and though the Company has derived

* March 31, 1922.

large revenues from its mineral rights and from other sources the discharge of its public duties has called for them all, and it has never yet been able to distribute a dividend to its shareholders. Tante molis erat.

The patience and public spirit of the shareholders have indeed been exemplary; but in order to explain how it is that they should have provided such sums and allowed them to be spent over so many years without return to themselves, it is necessary to refer, however briefly, to the history of the Southern Rhodesian land question.

In 1892 the British South Africa Company had acquired a concession by which LoBengula purported to give the right to make grants of land in his name.' This concession was duly ratified and approved by the Crown, but upon the overthrow of LoBengula in 1893 a new chapter was opened. When in 1894 by agreement between the Company and the Imperial authorities it was arranged that the Company's administration should be extended over the whole of what is now Southern Rhodesia, it was settled that the Company should, as it has in fact done, allot ample reserves for tribal occupation by natives; but, unfortunately as after events have shown, it was not explicitly agreed whether LoBengula's land concession was to be regarded as still valid or who was to be deemed the legal owner of land not required for the natives. Had it been otherwise a controversy, which began at quite an early date after 1894 between the Company and the settlers who claimed that in some way or other the 'land belonged to the people,' need never have arisen.

Admittedly, the Company could make good grants of land to others, and did so. As it was bearing the whole cost of administration, it might reasonably regard the land as its own, and did so regard it. For many years all the acts of the Crown tended to confirm this belief. In 1898, and again in 1906, the Company, stooping under the heavy burden of financing the administration of Southern Rhodesia, applied to the Crown for authority to constitute a public debt the service of which should be provided for from the revenue which accrued from taxation. The reply on both occasions was the same— that the Crown could not allow a charge to be placed on the revenues of the territory as distinguished from those

of the Company as such which had been placed in possession of all the assets of the territory.' If this did not mean that the Company had been placed in possession of the land, then the English language has no meaning.

The Company, prohibited by the Crown on the express ground of its possession of inter alia the land from raising funds for the discharge of its duties by the method which it had proposed, was obliged to obtain fresh capital by issuing new shares. In fact, between 1898 and 1906, 4,292,9371. were raised by the issue of shares in the Company. After 1906, 2,939,7031. were similarly raised. In appealing to the public for fresh money the Company naturally placed before its shareholders what had been officially stated by the Crown with regard to all the assets of the country' including the land, the Company's possession of which constituted an essential part of the security which was being offered to the public in return for its money, and laid great stress upon that possession. The Crown stood by, looked on, kept silence, and did nothing; while the investing public liberally subscribed its cash and was content to wait for the return which it hoped ultimately to derive from the profits of its enormous landed estate.

It was not until 1914 that the Crown, which had previously declined to intervene in the controversy between the Company and the settlers as being a matter that did not concern it, suddenly reversed the attitude maintained for so many years, and claimed to be the owner of the land. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was called upon to deal with the problem, and in 1918 decided, in effect, that the Crown was the owner of the land, that the Company had all along been acting as its agent in carrying on the Administration and in dealing with the land, and was entitled, not to the proceeds of the land, whatever they might be, but only to due reimbursement of the out-of-pocket expenditure incurred by it as the Crown's agent.

From the moment when that decision was given the days of the Company as a governing authority were numbered. The patience of the shareholders could not last for ever. They could not be expected to go on providing funds for the development of a landed estate