We have a kind of impression, that some general improvement is about to
take place in the more neglected portions of the world, and that England
is honoured to be the chief agent in the great work. Africa, which has
been under a _ban_ for so many thousand years, may be on the eve of relief
from the misery, lawlessness, and impurity of barbarism; and we are
strongly inclined to look upon this establishment of British feeling, and
intercourse in Abyssinia, as the commencement of that proud and fortunate
change. All attempts to enter Africa by the western coast have failed. The
heat, the swamps, the rank vegetation, and the unhealthy atmosphere, have
proved insurmountable barriers. The north is fenced by a line of burning
wilderness. But the east is open, free, fertile, and beautiful. A British
factory in Abyssinia would be not merely a source of infinite comfort to
the people, by the communication of European conveniences and manufactures,
but a source of light. British example would teach obedience and loyalty
to the laws, subordination on the part of the people, and mercy on that of
the sovereign.

But we have also another object, sufficiently important to determine our
Government in looking to the increase of our connexion with Eastern Africa.
It is certainly a minor one, but one which no rational Government can
undervalue. The policy of the present French King is directed eminently to
the extension of commercial influence in all countries. To this policy,
none can make objection. It is the duty of a monarch to develop all the
resources of his country; and while France exerts herself only in the
rivalry of peace, her advance is an advance of all nations. But her
extreme attention, of late years, to Africa, ought to open our eyes to the
necessity of exertion in that boundless quarter. On the western coast, she
had long fixed a lazy grasp; but that grasp is now becoming vigorous, and
extending hour by hour. Her flag flies at Golam, 250 miles up the Senegal.