364 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY erected, under the name of Northern Nigeria, into a separate Protectorate. The transfer of authority from the Company to the Imperial Government took place on January ist, 1900, on which day Colonel Lugard assumed office as the first High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria.

In summing up the service rendered to the Empire by the Company, it will hardly be disputed that by the ability, the foresight, and the activity of a single man, who in the first instance united, and subsequently for twenty years directed with laborious care, the principal British interests upon the Niger, a territory was added to the British Empire, and a field secured for all time to British trade, which, without his personal exertions, would assuredly have passed into the possession of France and Germany. In the execution of his work Sir George Goldie was very loyally supported by the shareholders of the Royal Niger Company; but it was by his personal qualities that he won and retained the confidence of those whose interests he took into his charge, and it was by his personal perception of the opportunities inherent to the situation that he was able to use the force acquired by that confidence for great purposes of public utility.

The commercial success of the Company is sometimes quoted in disparagement of the merit of its public service ; but that its Governor was able, without injustice to private interests, to carry out the important scheme of policy in which they were involved, gave, in fact, a substantial value to his work, which no mere recklessness of political annexation, however generous, would have possessed. When the relative positions of France and England were finally adjusted in 1898, British interests had been created in the interior, which it was impossible for either government to ignore. The enlightened view that the prosperity of coast trade depended on the extension of civilised relations to the interior, which led to the expansion of the sphere of