Note 200 — Chapter XXIII · ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA

It is even admitted to be harmful by Sir Alfred Jones, whose steamers carry a large proportion of this liquor to West Africa, and by a large proportion of the merchants who deal in it. The merchants are sometimes violently attacked on account of this trade. Personally, I detest the West African liquor traffic. I look upon it in the same light as the opium traffic in the Far East—a blot upon the escutcheon of Christian Europe. But those who denounce the merchants might just as well, and more logically, denounce the Governments. Per se the liquor traffic is not a lucrative trade to the merchant, but to the local administrations on the coast it is the backbone of revenue. I was never able to share the late Miss Kingsley’s views on this subject, while fully agreeing with her as to the inanity of making the merchants the scapegoats of an evil the responsibility for which is, in a sense, universal. Despite anything that may be said to the contrary, I shall believe that a powerful factor in determining Miss Kingsley’s views was the knowledge that, but for the existence of the liquor traffic as a supplier of revenue, direct taxation would be substituted throughout British West Africa owing to the extravagance of the Crown Colony system; and I know that Miss Kingsley strongly objected to the introduction of European spirits into the interior regions by means of the railways. The liquor question would require a special chapter to adequately discuss.