cal
grounds, it has probably achieved more solid results--a fact all the
more remarkable when we bear in mind the exhaustion of France in 1871,
and the very slow growth of her population at home. From 1872 to 1901
the number of her inhabitants rose from 36,103,000 to 38,962,000; while
in the same time the figures for the German Empire showed an increase
from 41,230,000 to 56,862,000. To some extent, then, the colonial growth
of France is artificial; at least, it is not based on the imperious need
which drives forth the surplus population of Great Britain and Germany.
Nevertheless, so far as governmental energy and organising skill can
make colonies successful, the French possessions in West Africa,
Indo-China, Madagascar, and the Pacific, have certainly justified their
existence[453]. No longer do we hear the old joke that a French colonial
settlement consists of a dozen officials, a _restaurateur_, and a
hair-dresser.

[Footnote 453: See _La Colonisation chez les Peuples modernes_, by Paul
Leroy-Beaulieu; _Discours et Opinions_, by Jules Ferry; _La France
coloniale_ (6th edit. 1893), by Alfred Rambaud; _La Colonisation de
l'Indo-Chine_ (1902), by Chailley-Bert; _L'Indo-Chine francaise_ (1905),
by Paul Doumer (describing its progress under his administration);
_Notre Epopee coloniale_ (1901), by P. Legendre; _La Mise en Valeur de
notre Domaine coloniale_ (1903), by C. Guy; _Un Siecle d'Expansion
coloniale_ (1900), by M. Dubois and A. Terrier; _Le Partage de
l'Afrique_ (1898), by V. Deville.]

In the seventies the French Republic took up once more the work of
colonial expansion in West Africa, in which the Emperor Napoleon III.
had taken great interest. The Governor of Senegal, M. Faidherbe, pushed
on expeditions from that colony to the head waters of the Niger in the
years 1879-81. There the French came into collision with a powerful
slave-raiding chief, Samory, whom they worsted in a series of campaigns
in the five years following. Events therefore promised to fulfil the
desires of Gambetta, who, during his brief term of office in 1881,
initiated plans for the construction of a trans-Saharan railway (never
completed) and the establishment of two powerful French companies on the
Upper Niger. French energy secured for the Republic the very lands which
the great traveller Mungo Park first revealed to the gaze of civilised
peoples. It is worthy of note that in the year 1865 the House of
Commons, when urged to promote Bri