customs of Venice permitted outraged husbands or fathers to take personal vengeance on priestly offenders; and in London, from about 1400 onwards, the citizens similarly took into their own hands the correction of such black sheep. The country folk of Spain, France, and Switzerland defended themselves by still more degrading precautions. These things impressed even the most orthodox churchmen; in 1415 and 1432, at the great reforming Councils of Constance and Bâle, serious proposals of clerical marriage were put forward, but overruled. Pius the Second (at least in his earlier years) was in favour of it; so was Erasmus. During the Reformation, at the Council of Trent, the permission of marriage was strongly advocated not only by the Emperor Ferdinand but by the equally orthodox Roman Catholic sovereigns. of France, Bavaria, and Poland. None of these princes liked the principle of clerical marriage any better than our Elizabeth did; but all advocated it as the only possible remedy for an impossible state of things. In the face of these facts, which all enlightened Roman Catholic historians are compelled to admit, what becomes of Mrs. Jackson's contention that clerical marriage was deliberately introduced into England in order to kill the spiritual life of the Church, and make of it an instrument for the use of the State'?

Moreover, it happens that a fervent Roman Catholic has within the last few months cut the ground away from her feet in language even stronger than I should have dared to use, though the facts of which he speaks are notorious. With his arguments in general I have here no concern; some of them seem quite worthy of Mrs. Jackson. But he has occasion to emphasise the fact that the French Church, after purging herself of Protestantism with its handful of married clergy, drifted into a bondage to the State which almost killed true religion and morality.10 He writes:

The very fact that the Church had thus become in France an unshakable national institution chilled the vital source of Catholicism. . . . The Bishops found nothing remarkable in seeing a large proportion of their body to be loose livers, or in some of them openly presenting their friends to their mistresses as might be done by any great lay noble round them. . . . Unquestioned also by the Bishops was the poverty, the neglect, and the uninstruction of the parish clergy; nay-and this is by far the principal feature the abandonment of religion by all but a very few of the French millions no more affected the ecclesiastical officials of the time than does the starvation of our poor affect, let us say, one of our professional politicians. It was a thing simply taken for granted.

This (and much more that Mr. Belloc says) is simply a very strong statement of notorious facts. With his interpretation of those facts many of us may disagree; but no ingenuity can fit them

8

Sacchetti, Nov. 111 ad fin.; Riley, Memorials of London Life, p. 566, n. 3. 9 Lea, i. 381, 440; ii. 1, 2.

into Mrs. Jackson's theory; nor would the worst enemy of Anglicanism dare to paint such a picture of English Church life since the Reformation.

For, though popular prejudice often compelled the Reformed country priest in England to mate himself with a domestic servant or a peasant's daughter; though, as Fuller tells us, belated advocates of celibacy industriously spread the report that the offspring of priests were generally unfortunate, like the sons of Eli . . . dissolute in their lives and doleful in their deaths'; yet what is the plain verdict of history? Within a few generations there was no clergy in Europe more learned, more diligent, or more respected; while the Romanist clergy, in spite of desperate efforts for reform at Trent, lived in many places in that state of immorality and illiteracy which is recorded in the writings of St. Carlo Borromeo and Bishop Scipione da Ricci. For some official documents of the modern Roman Church on this subject the reader may consult H. C. Lea's History of Sacerdotal Celibacy, ii. 342 ff.

But I have already touched upon a pleasanter aspect of this question-the sons of the clergy. Mr. Havelock Ellis, certainly no champion of Anglicanism or clericalism in any form, has made a scientific Study of British Genius from the vast field offered by the Dictionary of National Biography. On page 80 he writes:

...

The proportion of distinguished men and women contributed from among the families of the clergy can only be described as enormous. . . . We find that the eminent children of the clergy considerably outnumber those of lawyers, doctors, and army officers put together.

We may cheerfully present Mrs. Jackson with the supplementary fact that the clergy produce also an undue proportion of idiots, though nothing approaching the same disproportion. These considerations were brought out, perhaps even more clearly, by Bishop Welldon in this Review (February 1906), and have long been public property.

But perhaps Mrs. Jackson herself scarcely expects to be taken seriously on these grounds of sacramental philosophy or history or statistics. With her the thing is mainly a question of taste and temperament; her gorge rises at conditions which suited the primitive Christians well enough: 'it is nauseous to think of a girl relating her sins to a possible husband.' W. S. Landor (I quote here only from memory) has an imaginary conversation between the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth. At a certain stage. of the argument Mary cuts the knot with an emphatic I have no patience with them!' Elizabeth makes the only answer possible on such occasions: I see you have not, Sister."

G. G. COULTON.

SOME BRITISH EAST AFRICAN

PROBLEMS

THE building of a Uganda railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria Nyanza, authorised and begun in 1896 and completed seven years later, in 1903, aroused little public comment at home. at the time, beyond occasional mild political criticism when the Foreign Office votes were being perfunctorily discussed in the House of Commons; this criticism being usually directed against the alleged unnecessary and unwise expenditure that this railway involved. But subsequent history has justified Lord Salisbury's foresight in this matter, for his was the original responsibility. After the scheme had been once wrecked in Parliament, the railway was subsequently built entirely at Government cost, the Imperial British East Africa Company having been bought out and its existence terminated.

The railway is 580 miles long. The cost was 5,300,000l., and it is already paying its way. Its original main objects were twofold, first to deal a death blow to East African slave traffic and improve the condition of the natives; secondly, to secure the British position in Uganda. The basis of this good work, as all who have read East African history know, was laid by the British East Africa Company, and its guiding spirit, Sir William Mackinnon, to whose judgment, foresight, and patriotism it has been well said British East Africa practically owes its foundation. A later administrator, Sir Charles Eliot, has even expressed the opinion that this work of Sir William Mackinnon, his colleagues, and their immediate successors is the greatest philanthropic achievement of the nineteenth century.

But the Uganda railway has achieved something more than its original twofold object, something that probably was not foreseen by its original promoters-namely, the opening up of the Nairobi highland plateau for white settlement. About 50,000 square miles of the Protectorate-or, roughly speaking, one-fifth of its total area, approximately its central portion-comprise a lofty tableland, lying on the Equator, with an altitude varying from 4000 to 8000 feet above the sea. It is this altitude which, in defiance of its latitude, makes this plateau a healthy white man's country,

'In April 1905 the administration of the British East African Protectorate was transferred from the Foreign to the Colonial Office.

where British settlers of a good class have been steadily coming in since 1903, there to make their homes and invest their capital in land, in agriculture, and in stock, and, let us hope, there to rear a healthy white race and permanently establish British dominion and civilisation.

British East Africa, although a Protectorate, has already been colloquially termed our newest Colony. The fact that it is a white settlers' country, one of the latest occupied portions of Africa suitable in climate and fertility for such settlement, and, therefore, with all the potentialities of a future self-governing Colony, makes it all the more valuable as a British possession, and accentuates the importance of its administration and development. It is here clearly differentiated, for example, from our West African Protectorates and possessions, which for reasons of climate and altitude must always remain mainly native-populated, whiteplanters' countries. There are not so many unoccupied areas of the earth's surface now remaining that we at home, with our ever-increasing needs and population, can afford to neglect or ignore another new Colony in the making, another healthy cradle for our growing Imperial race.

The Uganda railway, then, settled some primitive problems. But it appears that others of importance and complexity have arisen or are arising in their place, with which it is the object of this article shortly to deal. My reason and excuse is that I have recently returned from a somewhat lengthy and prolonged African tour, including a visit to and big-game hunt in British East Africa. This has given me opportunity, not only of meeting a goodly sample of our own countrymen now settled in the Nairobi highlands, but also of learning something of its native population, and of comparing British East Africa, its features and its peoples, with those of Rhodesia and Portuguese East Africa.

The first and simplest of the questions or problems above alluded to is connected with the big game of the Protectorate. Let me say at once in passing that never have I seen, in any part of the world that I have visited, such a wealth of wild fauna as are now to be found in British East Africa. Even western North America thirty years ago, with its millions of bison and thousands of wapiti, deer, and antelope, scarcely approached our newest Colony as it now is in this respect. I am inclined to doubt if even South Africa in its pioneer days equalled it. It is sufficient to mention that zebra, hartebeeste, gazelle of sorts, with various kinds of antelope, large and small, here exist and thrive, in some cases, I was going to say, in millions, but certainly in their thousands and hundreds of thousands, while the large carnivora', with elephant, buffalo, rhino, and hippo, are numerous and widespread.

VOL. LXXI-No. 420

X

This prodigal wealth of wild animal life now existing on the upland plains and in the wooded grassy hills and valleys of British East Africa, quite apart from its naturalist and sporting side, with which it is not the object of this article to deal, has a direct bearing on the social life, the revenues, and the general prosperity of the Colony. Hunting big game is necessarily the occupation or relaxation of the few. Want of time, fitness, inclination, or of means will doubtless always limit the number of its devotees. But, in the first place, the Colony draws a substantial revenue from licences to kill big game, estimated at not less than 10,000l. per annum. In addition to this by no means despicable sum, the amount of money brought into and spent in the Colony in the necessary attendant safari' expenses, such as hire of white hunters, native gun-bearers and porters, tents, equipment, etc., purchase of stores, to say nothing of transport fares, and perhaps hire or purchase of rifles, guns, and ammunition, probably amounts to at least as much more. It is not an extravagant estimate to put the total colonial receipts from these combined sources at from 20,000l. to 30,000l. yearly, in which estimate no account has been taken of the value of the ivory, hides, and meat obtained. At least two large firms in Nairobi do a large business in, and presumably derive substantial revenues from, the preparation and supply of safari outfits.

From the commercial, as well as the naturalist and sporting point of view, therefore, the British East African authorities may be congratulated on their game regulations, and on the natural advantages, combined with foresight, that have placed them in possession of a vast game preserve second to that of no country in the world-a game preserve, moreover, that is situated in a remarkably healthy equatorial climate, and is singularly accessible, by steamship and rail, from civilised Europe. The highlands of British East Africa are not only, from the sporting view, a biggame preserve and playground for the idle rich in search of sport or some healthy new sensation. In respect of their wild fauna alone they form a valuable commercial asset to the Colony.

But the big game have a distinct relation, not altogether so harmonious, to the settler, as well as in lesser extent to the native. In order to understand this point, it is necessary to have some general idea of the geography and settlement of the Colony.

The railway from Mombasa to Nairobi runs through 327 miles of the Colony, and ascends 6000 feet; then on from Nairobi for another 200 miles to Lake Victoria Nyanza. The first 100 miles or so from the coast is not a white man's, but a planter's country. Cocoanut (near the sea), rubber, cotton possibly, and other tropical produce grow here, but the climate is unhealthy, both for white men and for stock. Then, for 100 miles or more before reaching