barbarous practices, and agree that murders, robberies, and other crimes should be tried by the Queen's officers. The objection could not be the expense, for it need cost us nothing. We had a Consul there already; and the necessity of keeping ships of war in theseas where these Islands were situated had been pressed on the Government by Lord Belmore, who, in a despatch of the 22nd of November, 1871, said

"I must press on the Government the necessity for the constant presence, while the season permits, of one, if not two, of Her Majesty's ships for some time to come among the South Sea Islands, cost what it may."

SIR CHARLES WINGFIELD said, he was sorry that the protectorate of these Islands had not been assumed 10 years ago, and he should certainly support the Motion, though he thought that absolute annexation would now

be

better. He did not quite understand the meaning of a protectorate, the French protectorate of Tahiti amounting to absolute government, and he agreed with the Earl of Kimberley, that a protectorate, if it meant something less than annexation, would not diminish our responsibility, while it might be a source of embarrassment. Something must certainly be done, for Lord Belmore had declared that anarchy prevailed in the South Seas, and it was clear that the Fiji Group was fast becoming the refuge of scoundrels and fugitives of all descriptions. The soi disant Government was not recognized by many of the White settlers, and, as mentioned by Sir James Martin, British subjects charged with acts of violence in the Fijis were amenable to the Courts of New South Wales, an Act of George IV. giving them jurisdiction over all the islands in the Pacific not subject to any European State. Our intervention was, therefore, likely to be invoked. In that case he saw no medium course between reorganizing the Government that had been set up by the Whites, and absolute annexation. To the first course there were, he need hardly say, insuperable objections, for all control over them being by that Act abandoned, it would lead to the extermination of the natives, and to the increase and permanence of slavery. The policy he recommended,

Government unwilling to extend our colonial possessions. In this instance, however, it was a duty to humanity to do so, for the present scandals could never be effectually put down until we assumed the government of these Islands. It was intolerable that a great slave-holding Anglo-Saxon settlement should grow up in the South Seas. While he was glad to hear that the Government intended to strengthen our squadron in the Pacific, and to add some light-armed cruisers to it, he also hoped that the more decisive step recommended by this Motion would be supported by the House.

MR. R. TORRENS said, it appeared that considerations of expense had hitherto deterred the Government from taking possession of these Islands and establishing civilization in them; but he seriously doubted whether there would be any expense at all in doing so. The great colonies of Queensland and Victoria had cost the mother country nothing, and South Australia had caused no expenditure till some years after her foundation, when a grant of £200,000 had been made to meet a season of distress consequent upon the mismanagement of an autocratic Governor appointed by the Home Government. He cordially agreed with the last Speaker that annexation was the only course to be thought of, if any action at all were taken by the Government. The policy and mission of this country had hitherto been to enlighten the dark places of the earth; that policy had been recognized by Europe as an honourable distinction, and he trusted the Government when taking this matter into consideration, would be impressed with the feeling of pride with which the people of England regarded the results of that policy hitherto.

MR. SALT remarked that, in considering a question of this kind, we should regard ourselves as the head of an aggregate of great countries rather than as a single country. The par. ticular matter under discussion was a question of detail combined with a grave question of policy. The question of detail as to whether the Fiji Islands were of more value to this country than to any other, and whether they would

"protectorate" the words "British authority."

MR. KNATCHBULL - HUGESSEN said, that although Fiji was not a British colony, yet the artillery of so many speakers in the present debate had been directed against the Colonial Office, that the House would not feel suprised at his rising to reply to the Motion of his hon. Friend the Member for Lambeth (Mr. M'Arthur). A fallacy ran through a great majority of the speeches which had been delivered. It seemed to be assumed that at the present instant, the inhabitants of the Fiji Islands were supplicating us either to assume authority, or, at all events, to establish a British protectorate over them. As far as his information went the inhabitants were doing nothing of the kind, and therefore, brushing that cobweb aside, he would proceed with the general question. Allusion had been made to other acquisitions of territory which Her Majesty's Government had sanctioned in South Africa, and on the West Coast of Africa, but there the circumstances were essentially distinct from the case of the Fiji Islands. With regard to South Africa, we had to deal with a large territory immediately bordering on our great colony of the Cape, and containing a population which comprised a considerable number of British subjects, and it was essential to the welfare of the Cape that order and good government should prevail in that colony. Again, in that case, there was a unanimous wish among the native population that we should annex the territory, because they feared that if it were not under British rule they would be absorbed by another neighbour. We had, besides, the interests of a large population of British diggers and of the Cape Colony to consider. What the Government said, therefore, was that if the great colony of the Cape, in the interests of civilization, of the British diggers, and of the native tribes, and of South Africa itself, thought fit to undertake the government of that country, Her Majesty's Government were not indisposed to think it would be a wise and conciliatory policy to consent to the annexation. With regard to the West Coast of Africa, we had a large sea-board, which was broken in upon by certain Dutch possessions, the result being a divided authority and a dual jurisdiction, which could not fail

to be productive of complications and inconveniences, whilst the friendly cession to us by the Netherlands Government of their forts could not but tend to the peaceful and progressive development of our own original settlement, and conduce to the well-being of the native tribes. The case of the Fiji Islands was, however, entirely different. Thirteen years ago Mr. Pritchard, British Consul at Fiji, forwarded to Her Majesty's Government what purported to be an offer on the part of the King to cede to Great Britain the Sovereignty of the Islands. Now, he noticed that in the course of this evening's discussion the hon. Member for Lambeth spoke of the King of Fiji as being the supreme Ruler over all the Islands, whereas the hon. and gallant Admiral (Admiral Erskine) said there were many Chiefs who had authority in the different Islands. Her Majesty's Government would certainly have done wrong if they had annexed the Group without instituting an inquiry on this point, and they accordingly sent out a gentleman of high character, who reported that instead of there being one King, there were about 40 independent Chiefs who had power in the Islands, and whose authority would have to be disputed in the event of any foreign Power acting on the assumption of the King having the power to dispose of the territory. It was exceedingly doubtful whether these independent Chiefs really understood what was involved in the word "annexation;" and even if they had understood it, it was still more uncertain whether they would have concurred. There existed among the tribes many barbarous practices which it would have been impossible to tolerate in a British possession, but which could not be eradicated without great difficulty, and no inconsiderable labour and expense. Doubts were, moreover, thrown upon the cotton-producing powers of Fiji in Colonel Smyth's Report. It was pointed out, moreover, that all England wanted was a coaling station, and that that might be obtained without annexing 200 islands for the purpose. It was also pointed out that the direct route from Sydney to Panama lay many miles south of the Fiji Islands. Under those circumstances the Government of the day would have acted very rashly if they had accepted the offer which was made. Since that time nothing like a formal assume Sovereignty over them. His hon. Friend behind him (Sir Charles Wingfield) had spoken of the existing Government of Fiji; but on that point, he must confess he had heard with pleasure the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Dixon), because it was the first in which anything like a fair view had, in his opinion, that evening been taken of the condition of that Government, to which he had heard with pain such terms as "filibustering" applied. It was no part of his duty to express any opinion upon the character or probable stability of the Fiji Government; but at all events it was a Government which professed to be endeavouring to establish law and order, to put down slavery, and to develop the resources of these Islands; and until that Government should have been proved by some act of its own to have forfeited our confidence, and to have committed offences against public morality, it was, he thought, a little hard that we, in the House of Commons, should take upon ourselves to judge of its conduct from the reports contained in newspapers and in private letters which were not always disinterested. It must also be borne in mind that the annexation of Fiji, though it might by some be looked upon as a simple matter, was not one which could be considered entirely by itself. The hon. and gallant Admiral behind him, than whom nobody was more conversant with the subject, had informed the House as to the enormous number of islands which there were in the Pacific, and had used these remarkable words, that the occupation of Fiji would entail the acquisition of an enormous number of small islands, and would be a step owing to which White settlers would gradually occupy all the Islands in the Pacific. If we were to annex one group of Islands, was it possible, he would ask, that we could stop there? He might also observe that the Fiji Islands were over 1,700 miles from Sydney, and 1,150 from New Zealand, and about 1,400 from Brisbane. When, therefore, they were spoken of as being contiguous to Australia, those who used such language must, he could not help thinking, be regarded as having rather an elastic imagination. There might be, no doubt, considerable advantages arising from Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen

should hurry to a conclusion in the matter. He (Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen) would sum up the case for and against annexation as clearly and concisely as he could. The first argument in favour of annexation was that there was a large and increasing number of British subjects resident in these Islands; that a considerable amount of British capital was embarked there; and that during the last two or three years they had made great progress. That, however, was hardly a good reason for interfering with the present state of things, for we must take care that in trying to make things better we did not make them worse. The second argument was with regard to the cotton-producing powers of the Islands, and he thought the statements which had been made in the Report of Colonel Smyth had been negatived by experience, for the evidence went to show that cotton of a very superior character could be grown in Fiji, and the supply might no doubt be materially increased. There was also the argument in favour of annexation, that it would be a great advantage to us to have an advanced post in the Pacific, and there was, besides, another point, of very considerable importance, that unless there was a strong Government in Fiji our exertions to put down the abuses of the labour-traffic would be very much paralyzed. On the other hand, we must bear in mind that there were cogent reasons against annexation. In the first place, we had no expressed wish on the part of the inhabitants of those Islands that we should annex them, or enter on a protectorate. Then there was the question of the expense, which might be variously estimated, and when speaking of philanthropy and the growth of cotton the British taxpayer must not be entirely ignored. We ought, therefore, to see our way very clearly before we entered on any course which would throw additional burdens on him unless there were some corresponding advantage. New Zealand had been mentioned in the discussion, but hon. Members should bear in mind that our original policy with respect to New Zealand had cost this country something not far short of £20,000,000, expended in wars with native tribes. There was a further argument against annexation, and that

policy, and he would beg the House seriously to consider to what results such a rule would lead. He would not, however, endorse for a moment the policy founded on the other extreme. A policy founded on the other extreme was maintained by a party in the country. He did not refer to that party which was said to undervalue the advantages to England of her present colonies, and to desire the

protectorate would, in his opinion, be very much worse. It involved all the responsibility, without the advantages of annexation. Indeed, he had never been able to find out exactly what a protectorate meant, but the idea of a protectorate, especially of an uninvited protectorate, was one which he could not help thinking it would be in the present case most unwise to entertain. It was, however, by Australian energy that the resources of the Fiji Islands were being developed, and if they could be governed through one of those Colonies, consider able advantages might be the result. That was the proposition which the Government had made in the last despatch presented to Parliament, in which the Earl of Kimberley said that

"If the Colony of New South Wales were willing to undertake the responsibility of providing for the government of the Islands, Her Majesty's Government would not refuse to entertain such a proposal, if it met with the concurrence of the Native Chiefs."

We should thus virtually extend British Sovereignty over Fiji, whilst it would be directly governed by and through that portion of Her Majesty's Dominion which was most immediately concerned with its commerce and settlements. It was far better, however, to wait and act with caution than to take any precipitate step. He had heard some general principles enunciated to-night about adding to our Colonial Empire. Well, if the House chose to lay down the rule that wherever there was a country inhabited by uncivilized and barbarous tribes, the possession of which by England would, in our opinion, be ultimately beneficial to the inhabitants of that country and to ourselves, then it was our duty to annex that country. Of course, if such a rule were established, it was wrong on the part of the Government in not annexing Fiji in 1859; but he was not prepared, either speaking for himself or on the part of

times heard of that party, but he never met them. If they existed, he believed their number was infinitesimally small, and they might be practically ignored. In fact, he was inclined to think that they only existed in the fertile brains of imaginative statesmen who, in order to create a new political programme for their own party, found it necessary to misrepresent the policy of their opponents. But he referred to those who, more or less admitting the value of existing colonies, stedfastly set their faces against the acquisition by England of any more territory under any pretext whatever. They were principally actuated, no doubt, by economical considerations; but in his opinion there were sometimes considerations of higher moment than those of economy. The conquest of a country against the will of its inhabitants; the acquisition of territory merely for our own aggrandisement and our own convenience these were offences against public morality which could not be defended. But the acquisition of territory freely offered by the goodwill of its inhabitants, securing to them the advantages of order, good government, civilization, and Christianity, and at the same time opening up to us new markets for our trade, new fields of labour for our people-this was not an acquisition to be spurned or lightly estimated. The peculiar conditions of Great Britain should never be forgotten the smallness of her area at home, her large and ever increasing population, the active, energetic, restless character of her people, all point to the wisdom of enlarging by every legitimate means the field of action before us. And he would venture to say that if English statesmen, forgetful of these conditions, ignoring the responsibility of England as a great nation, and thinking only of economy, should ever lay down as an axiom of policy that Great Britain should under no circum