This was Government land which has just been sold in Mombasa and not in Nairobi, and I cannot conceive after the statement made by the Government last year as to their determination to prevent the starting of this policy in Mombasa, why this should have been authorised as we learn from telegrams sent from Mombasa.

Then there is the Feetham inquiry. We are given to understand that this inquiry is related only to a discussion of self-government of the Nairobi municipality. I am afraid my correspondents in East Africa may have some justification for fearing it may go a. little bit further than local self-government. In regard to native reserves, last year we were promised that these should be definitely fixed, and then were find that the native reserves are fixed by the legislation of the Kenya Parliament, legislation which can be reversed directly the Colonial Office ceases to control a majority in that Parliament.. We see there, probably, the most pronounced pro-settler Government we have ever had in East Africa up to now. All these are rather an indication that the position is getting worse for the native and not better. I do not feel there is very much hope from the right hon. Gentleman opposite or from his administration. They are not in a position to stand up to the settler. Do not let us shut our eyes to the fact that these 2000 settlers and planters in Kenya may be extremely powerful persons. The position of the natives in Kenya is, probably, more unhappy than that of the natives anywhere else in Africa to-day. I do not mean that these natives are more miserable, wretched or poor, but they are just sufficiently educated to see they are being robbed and to see that they have got no friends, and that what friends they have have been snatched, first Harry Thuku and then Ainsworth, and the next victim will be Maxwell.

It is on these occasions that we and the natives of Kenya miss more than anyone else the late Mr. E. D. Morel. If he had been still living there would have been some hope. As it is I feel hopeless as to the situation of the natives in Kenya.

II this is the very reason why we should preserve Tanganyika from being swallowed up by Kenya. In Tanganyika we have, at any rate, a free population, owning their own land and holding their own land and producing from that land. Do not let us see that there, too, we have the planter insinuated into the native system of cultivation, and using all the threats of economic pressure, used in Kenya, to secure labour.

I would draw the attention of the House to these things. We hear very much about Kenya, but we do not hear so much about Tanganyika or Uganda. And yet the exports of native produce from Tanganyika are far larger than the exports of native produce from Kenya That is because they are allowed to produce freely from their own land. The export of native produce from Uganda is probably, though we have no exact figures, more than double that from Kenya. Those are eloquent facts as proving that just that principle of self- production which has made West Africa successful can be successful on the East Coast if given a chance. We have only just started in Tanganyika after those many years of war, and already, by effecting a system of native ownership of land and allowing him to be free to produce from his own property, the exports are larger than those of Kenya and are going ahead at a much quicker rate. I think the trade of this country stands to benefit far more by the native production of the Africans themselves than by any other form of their labour. For every pound's worth of goods they export—the whole of the £3,000,000 exported by the natives of Tanganyika last year—means £3,000,000 worth of exports from this country to Tanganyika, and I am not surprised at those extra ordinary figures quoted by the hon. Member for Dundee. The native of the Gold Coast consumes 12s. 4d. worth of British goods per head, which is more than the native of any other part of the world consumes of British goods. Let us see to it that we build up in Tanganyika and Kenya a similar body of natives who will be consumers of British goods.

I come to the same point of criticism of the right hon. Gentleman that was raised by the right hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas). I want to know why he put an end to the Commission of inquiry into land in our East African Colonies. Did he think that it was unimportant? What was the reason? Were the interests too strong for him? It is a remarkable fact that three years ago he set up a committee in the Colonial Office to establish the land law of Tanganyika. He did it admirably. The solution that he found was, to my mind, an admirable solution for preserving native rights and native production. At that time he was going immediately to take another step for the formulation of a similar law for Northern Rhodesia. That was three years ago. There has been an interim since, and he has not started it yet. I am afraid that until we get this committee going we shall never get started in Northern Rhodesia the same principle that we have adopted in Nigeria and Tanganyika. Every year that goes by makes it more difficult to start, because you get more and more vested interests built up, spoiling your scheme and making it unworkable.

I notice that the Report of the Schuster Committee, which considered the question of roads and railways in Nyasaland, came to the conclusion that it was impracticable to go on with any of these schemes until the land question was first settled. They stated that in order to rescue the country, that is, Nyasaland, from its present state of comparative stagnation, there must be improved methods of native agriculture, and that this implied a land policy which will create security of tenure and the inducement to adopt methods of good farming. What are the Government going to do about that? Are they going to establish a sound land system in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland? Are they going to re-establish this Committee, which ought to have been at work during the last two years thinking out these problems? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that to-day a new problem is emerging in Uganda? We have the plantation policy there that we have in Kenya, where the plantations are owned, run and managed by native chiefs. That is exactly the same policy as in Kenya. This plantation policy is producing exactly the same results in the Kingdom of Uganda as it has produced in Kenya. We are receiving complaints daily from Uganda as to the methods used by the chiefs to force labour on to the plantations. I know the pressure that is brought to bear upon the Colonial Office to increase cotton production within the Empire, and that it always produces a cheer on these benches. I wish some hon. Members who cheer would think of the conditions under which the cotton is produced.

Now is the time when the right hon. Gentleman ought to be instituting inquiries in Uganda as to the best methods of breaking clown a system which has involved the British Empire and our good name in the re-establishment of slavery. The Governor there comes from the West Coast, I think, and he has the right traditions in him. If the Government will only instigate a reform of the land laws in Uganda, they might yet save the natives in those territories from all the exploitation and the cruelty of the plantation system. Wherever you go, whether it be in Tanganyika, Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia, Kenya or Uganda, it is the land question that decides the economic development of the country. If, as I believe, the right hon. Gentleman is earnestly determined to secure for all time the liberty of the natives of these countries, economically; if he does approve, as I believe he does, of the principle of the West Coast, of self-cultivation, I beg him at the earliest possible moment to re-establish this Land Committee, which was established by the Labour Government when they were in office and wiped out when he came into office, and let us, at any rate, start solving problems the difficulty of which only those know who have spent, as I have, many years in trying to establish sound land systems within the Empire.