them was to be "defence not defiance," and to ensure the maintenance of international peace he proposed that the whole male population should be trained to the exercise of arms. The system of training which he proposed resembles in some points the continental method of conscription, and in others it anticipates the organisation of our modern citizen army. He treats the subject with great originality, and one or two points may be mentioned in order to give an idea of the scope of his proposals. His leading suggestion was that we should in this country have four great camps into which all the young men of the nation should enter on their twentysecond birthday, that the ordinary period of training should be one year, but that young men of means should remain two years, while those who could afford to buy horses should be obliged to do so and be formed into the cavalry of the nation. During their stay in camp, the recruits were not only to be trained in strategy, military evolutions, gunnery, fortification, and the like, but, having all gone through a school training, "they should be obliged to read at spare hours some excellent histories, and chiefly those in which military actions are best described, with the books that have been best written concerning the military art." There were to be no recognised chaplains, but such of the youth as were fitted for the office were to be chosen every Sunday to "exhort the rest to all Christian and moral duties, and chiefly to humility, modesty, charity, and the pardoning of private injuries." Having gone through the preliminary training of the camp, the recruits, Fletcher suggested, should return to their homes and engage in their several trades; meeting thereafter once a week for drill, and in the summer uniting with their neighbours in forming camps of instruction.

But not only would he have had the youth trained in the knowledge of military affairs, he thought young men should take an active part in public business. The two great evils which afflicted society he saw were war and corruption of manners. His partition of Europe and his plan of military service were directed against these evils. But they were not of themselves sufficient. He supplemented his proposal to partition Europe into ten great States, with a plan of dividing each State into a number of local governments; and in the case of the United Kingdom, he suggested the formation of provinces around London, Bristol, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, York, Stirling, Inverness, Dublin, Cork, Galway, and Londonderry. In this way he hoped to put a stop to the crowding of the rural population to the Metropolis, of which he says it is "like the head of a rickety

tributed in due proportions to the rest of the languishing body, becomes so overcharged that frenzy and death unavoidably ensue." Besides, he argued that "if the people of Yorkshire or Devonshire were not obliged to go further than York or Exeter to obtain justice, we should soon see another face of things in both."..

That the mere machinery of government could not of itself bring about material prosperity Fletcher was, however, aware; and his experience of the Darien expedition convinced him that the way of salvation did not lie in that direction. It would be tedious to enter into an examination of his political economy, which is extremely heretical, but it may not be uninteresting to point out that he thought the straight road to wealth was the development of our natural resources, and particularly the encouragement of agriculture. His plan for encouraging agriculture was more original than practical. He proposed that interest should be gradually abolished, and that no man should be allowed to possess more land than he could cultivate by the help of his servants. The effect of these two proposals, he believed, would be to bring all the land under cultivation, and force all the wealth of the country into reproductive employment. But that was not all that was needed. In his own country the great practical difficulty which stared him in the face was the want of farm labourers. According to him, farm labourers in those days were so unfaithful and lazy that anxious landowners, even when they tried to manage their own estates, were, after a vain struggle with innumerable difficulties, forced to give up trying to alter the bad methods in vogue. The remedy proposed by Fletcher was a drastic one. It applied to the Scottish out-of-work the treatment Carlyle recommended for the vagrant lack-all and poor Quashee. The only difference is that the older writer, unlike the modern apologist of perpetual service, throws his suggestions into a systematic form and condescends upon details. By his plan, the constant service of the antique world would have been restored, slavery (or, as its author regarded it, secure and steady employment) would have been sweetened to the servant by the hope of freedom earned by honest work, and the social system would then have been reared, it was hoped, on a firm foundation. Trade and commerce were to spring naturally out of agriculture, for it was anticipated that when the new order was fairly organised the children would be trained in the mechanical arts, and that around each small estate there would gather an industrious community which would give up its time to spinning, weaving, and other useful manufactures; while with her

The intention of the system of which the outlines have been given was manifestly patriotic. Its mistakes are obvious. So far as its proposal for the enactment of perpetual service is concerned, it is evident that the author underestimated the efficacy of individualism. When he died in 1716, Time, which tries all things, was proving the truth and error of his theories. A change was rapidly coming over the aspect of Scotland. Industrialism was beginning to take the place of penurious gentility. Ere long, the little village of Saltoun, wisely tended as it was by the members of Fletcher's family, became a hive of industry and famed for its Holland cloth. The harsh ecclesiastical controversy fell silent; and Saltoun affords a somewhat interesting illustration of the changed temper of the time, for we find that in the year 1744 the minister of this Presbyterian parish was "a pious and primitive old man, very respectful in his manners, and very kind. He had been bred an old Scotch Episcopalian, and was averse to the Confession of Faith-the Presbytery showed lenity towards him, so he did not sign to his dying day." The change everywhere was rapid and great. Edinburgh, though the nobles and knights of the shire had forsaken her streets, became the home of the sciences and the arts, and Glasgow flourished by trade. Clearly Fletcher fell into some mistakes. The evils which grieved him were being cured by other means than those he proposed-by means, however, in the provision of which he was a . conspicuous agent, the just terms which he was in great part instrumental in obtaining for Scotland in the Union Treaty. On the other hand, there are matters with which he dealt which will for many long years to come engage the attention of thinking men and baffle the efforts of the wisest statesmen to settle. Many solutions will continue to be proposed and to find advocates. Some of them may be wiser than Fletcher's; most of them, it is safe to say, will go even farther astray. Be this as it may, even an imperfect glimpse of this chivalrous and deep-thinking man should be sufficient to prove the justice of the estimate of one of his eulogists, who says: "He was blessed with a soul that hated and despised whatever was mean and unbecoming a gentleman; and was so steadfast to what he thought right, that no hazard or advantage could tempt him to yield or desert it. In his life he never once pursued a measure with the prospect of any by-end to himself, or further than he judged it for the common benefit and advantage of his country."

FROM THE KONGO TO THE

NIGER.

HE map of Africa is being rapidly filled in in all directions by travellers of the different European nations, a very large share being taken in recent years by the French, who have shown a feverish anxiety in exploring "the Dark Continent." In doing this they are following and developing a strong colonial policy, which has already given France a preponderating share of the African continent. And when a Frenchman travels in Africa nowadays he does not do so merely for the purpose of adding fresh countries to our knowledge, or of advancing trade, but he goes with treaties in his pockets, by means of which to get the petty chiefs he comes across to place their countries under the "protectorate" of France, and so to bring them under the control of France to the exclusion of other countries. John Bull seems hardly yet to have awakened to the way in which the possible extensions of his trade are thus being limited.

The exploration of the Kongo system and the plotting on the maps of its great tributaries had left a great blank space between its northern feeder, the Welle-Mobangi, and the countries bordering the Benue river and Lake Chad, a blank containing little more than the dotted lines of hypothetical rivers according mainly to hearsay information received by travellers. An important contribution to the filling in of this large area has been made by a French traveller, M. Casimir Maistre, the result of whose travels has appeared in a sumptuous volume. M. Maistre was not the first to throw light on this dark "hinterland" of the German Kamerun colony. In 1890 M. Paul Crampel plunged into this unknown region from the Mobangi, with the intention of crossing the Sudan and the Sahara, and emerging in Algeria, but he was taken prisoner by a Mahomedan sultan south of Wadai, and died of fever.

After the departure of Crampel, some Frenchmen who had furnished the funds for his expedition and that of Lieutenant Mizon, formed the "Comité de l'Afrique Française," under the presidency of

'Maistre, C. A travers l'Afrique Centrale, du Congo au Niger, 1892

Prince Auguste d'Arenberg, in order to favour by all peaceable means the extension of French dominion in Africa. This committee at once sent M. Jean Dybowski to join the Crampel mission, to revictual it, and then go and found a permanent establishment in the region of the Shari. Dybowski left Bordeaux in March, 1891, but reached Brazzaville, the French post on Stanley Pool, only to hear of the death of Crampel. With a view to punishing those responsible for Crampel's death, he pushed forward from the Mobangi to the upper

waters of the Shari, when want of provisions compelled him to retrace his steps.

Nearer to the west coast, M. Fourneau had in 1891 explored the Sanga river, another tributary of the Kongo, till he was attacked by very superior forces and had to turn back; and in 1891-92 Lieut. Mizon travelled from Yola on the Benue to the Lower Kongo.

Like Dybowski, Maistre was sent on his expedition by the Comité de l'Afrique Française, his object being to reinforce and act