Note 15 — Chapter IV · SOME NECESSARY REFORMS

In the remarkable speech he made at the Lagos Literary Institute—the most able and statesmanlike oration ever delivered by a British official in West Africa—Sir William MacGregor said in reference to the extension of the Lagos Railway: “It would require probably not much greater expenditure than would a number of military campaigns, it would save many valuable lives to open up the country in that way, and it would leave a permanent valuable asset. In this the locomotive would be preferable to the Maxim.”