Of all our colonies that in Southern Africa has the least reason to be proud of its recent history, which has not been rendered any fairer by the discovery of the great Diamond Fields, and the rush of all sorts and conditions of men to profit thereby.  Into the entangled history of our doings in relation to Cape Colony—­originally a Dutch settlement—­and all our varied and often disastrous dealings with the Dutch-descended Boers and the native tribes in its neighbourhood, we cannot well enter.  Our missionary action has the glory of great achievement in Southern Africa; of our political action it is best to say little.

A more encouraging scene is presented if we turn to the Fijian Isles, whose natives, once a proverb of cannibal ferocity, have been humanised and Christianised by untiring missionary effort, and by their own free-will have passed under British domination and are ruled by a British governor.  The extraordinary change worked in the people of these isles, characterised now, as even in their heathen days, by a certain bold manliness, that hitherto has escaped the usual deterioration, is so great and unmistakable that critics predisposed to unfriendliness do not try to deny it.

In consequence of the immensely increased facilities of communication that we now enjoy, our own great food-producing dependencies and the vast corn-growing districts of other lands can pour their stores into our market—­a process much aided by the successive removal of so many restrictions on commerce, and by the practical science which has overcome so many difficulties connected with the transport of slain meat and other perishable commodities.  England seems not unlikely to become a wonderfully cheap country to live in, unless some new turn of events interferes with the processes which during the last two decades have so increased the purchasing power of money that, as is confidently stated, fifteen shillings will now buy what it needed twenty shillings to purchase twenty years ago.  To this result, as a matter of course, the enormous development of our manufacturing and other industries has also contributed.

There is another side to the medal, and not so fair a one.  The necessaries of life are cheaper; wages are actually higher, when the greater value of money is taken into account; more care is taken as to the housing of the poor; the workers of the nation have more leisure, and spend not a little of it in travelling, being now by far the most numerous patrons of the railway; the altered style of the conveyances provided for them is a sufficient testimony to their higher importance.  All this is to the good; so, too, is the diminution in losses by bankruptcy and in general pauperism, the increasing thrift shown by the records of savings banks, the lengthening of life, the falling off in crime, which is actually—­not proportionally—­rarer than ten years ago, to go no further back.