CHAPTER XIX

LAND TENURE AND LABOUR IN WEST AFRICA

“In dealing with the natives, one must never touch their rights in land.”—SIR WILLIAM MACGREGOR.

“The so-called labour problem is, in my opinion, created by the people who complain of it, and not by the natives, who are perfectly willing to work when fairly treated.”—Mr. J. A. DAW, of the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation.[145]

“I know the Gold Coast natives well, and I repeat, you can get all you want out of them, if people will only realise that the native is a human being, and not an animal or a machine.”—Captain DONOVAN, late of the Gold Coast Police.[146]

“Nothing in all the history submitted on this subject is more misleading, untrue, and unjust than the reiterated statement that the chiefs and people of Western Africa are unfitted for peaceable self-government. It is not pretended they will reach for the present any Western European ideal, but they will not lag behind some people who claim to be better. The people do not want war; the very facility with which their disputes are temporarily adjusted serves to show this disposition. The Coast is far from having recovered from the dire effects of the slave trade. The chiefs are weak, and much of their power is taken from them by the very British Administration which scolds them for their non-success.”—C. S. SALMON, “The Crown Colonies of Great Britain.”

If there is one thing more than another upon which the most competent students of West Africa are agreed, it is the tenaciousness of the West African Negro to his landed rights. Land tenure in West Africa has been properly described as a “cult.” The most experienced English, French and German observers have noted this characteristic. Wherever it has been adequately studied, the system of native land tenure, in its tribal, family, individual and commercial aspects, is found to be at once simple in its broad lines, elaborate in its details, and approaching in many respects to the most advanced democratic conceptions of Western Europe. Before the torchlight of scientific inquiry, the old idea of the Negro being more or less of an animal, incapable of evolving any rational or consistent policy; too backward to frame anything approaching an unwritten code of law; his every act of life being merely the outcome of natural instinct, can no longer be entertained. And to the knowledge that these beings, who were thought irrational, and inconsequent to the extent of being the half-devil, half-child of popular imagination, has been added the conviction that the commercial and political success of the Powers of Europe in their West African Possessions depends for its attainment upon the recognition of native law in respect to property.

But although the testimony to this effect is shared by those who have the largest experience of West Africa, and although evidence is accumulating on all sides which corroborates in the most ample manner the statements of Ellis, Sarbah and Mary Kingsley,[147] it is nevertheless unhappily true that the tendency on the part of the European Powers, not only to interfere with the native law of land tenure, but to frame legislation without regard whatever for its importance in the relationship between the European and the Negro, is increasingly manifest. It would seem as though, having discovered that the West African Negro is not a brute but a man, evidence which establishes the discovery is deliberately set aside; because it is so much easier to go on treating the native as a brute, that is to say, as a being deprived of the faculty of reasoning, and who, on the principle of “a woman, a dog and a walnut-tree, the more you beat ’em the better they’ll be,” will come fawning to our feet in abject humility upon every fresh exhibition of our superiority.

It is very curious to observe this conflict of forces; painstaking research, its published results, and the influence it wields, _versus_ impatience and disinclination to investigate on the one hand; and selfish material interests on the other. The future of European political and commercial enterprise in West Africa is largely bound up with the struggle for the capture of Public Opinion which is going on in this country and on the Continent. At present, the purely materialistic notion, assisted by its twin-brother Indifference, is in the ascendant. Apparent success having been secured in that part of tropical Western Africa where, under the tuition of his white masters, the native has become a mere machine for the production of dividends to European company promoters, a great impetus has been given to the conception, popular in so many quarters, that the _raison d’être_ of West Africa and the West African is their exploitation by Western Europe, on such lines and in such fashion as the peoples of Western Europe see fit. The European Governments are alternately allowing themselves to be dragged along this perilous path whose ultimate destination is the abyss called Failure, or are hanging back from it, beset with doubts. But the danger is acutely realised by many, and as it gathers in extent and consistency, is being energetically opposed. The merchants, English, French and German, are, as a body, unanimous in condemnation. The exceptions to the rule are exceedingly few and far between. The best type of Colonial Administrator in West Africa also is utterly antagonistic, and amongst the still restricted but daily growing section of the Public which follows the affairs of West Africa with intelligent interest a strong feeling of protest gathers volume every day. These forces are numerically inferior, but they carry great weight, and if they can succeed in combining they must ultimately win the day. But the struggle will be long and bitter.

An attempt has been made in this volume to show (1) the unwisdom of interfering too rapidly, and without sufficient care and thought, with native customs generally, and (2), as regards the evil of slave-raiding, the advisability of seriously considering whether force is the only weapon which a great Empire can forge to suppress it. In the latter case, the Powers are able to put forward a plea justifying interference, insomuch as the evil is an active one. The only difference of opinion, as already stated, is the form which such interference should take. In the former case the evils, if some of them are evils—a matter which admits of a good deal of qualification—are of a kind that patience, tact, and time—time above all things—will prove the most efficient means of combating. But in respect to native law of land tenure, we are not confronted with any evil. On the contrary, the system of native land tenure is essentially just, thoroughly adapted to the needs of the country and its people, a striking refutation of the “arrested development” theory as applied to the Negro, and _per se_ an eloquent vindication of the Negro’s claim to consideration at the hands of the European invaders of, and settlers in, his country. There can be no justification whatever for the break-up of land tenure, or for the alienation of native property, under any pretext. It is morally indefensible, and what is morally indefensible is seldom politically wise.

In West Africa, the circumstances being what they are, interference with native property is bound to affect, not in theory but in practice, the interest of every single individual in the country. In the coastwise regions of West Africa proper, as far south, that is to say, as the Rio del Rey, where Bantu culture begins, it may be accepted as a rule (whatever differentiation may exist in the system of land tenure in widely removed districts), from which the departures are extremely rare,[148] that every square yard of the country is _owned_. Sarbah for the Gold Coast; Clozel and Delafosse for the Ivory Coast; Ellis for Yoruba; Mary Kingsley for the Rivers; Bohn for French Guinea; Fabre for Dahomey, have borne witness in their respective fields of observation to this fact—that there is no land without an owner. There is also a vast amount of untabulated corroborative information from almost every part of the Coast. South of Rio del Rey the land customs of the natives have not been the object of so much inquiry as north of it, and there the population is not in the main so dense, but what gleanings are available to us appear to be conclusive on the same point: in all inhabited districts land is never without an owner, whose claims, whether tribal or family, are as sacred in native unwritten law as they would be if duly set forth in a legal document, in accordance with the full requirements of European jurisprudence.

It is easy to understand why this should be so. The native lives on the produce of his land. He not only lives upon it, it is also his wealth, his currency, his medium of exchange for European goods. The products which he gathers in his forests, the plantations he makes in the clearings and the plains, these are at once his sustenance and his cash. Is it astonishing, therefore, that he guards his land and all that grows therein, or is built thereon, with passionate jealousy; and that, whereas he can be induced without difficulty to lease his property rights under certain conditions to Europeans for even a long term of years, he can seldom be brought, save by physical compulsion, to alienate them for ever? Ought it to be matter for surprise that legislation calculated to hinder his free use of the products of his land, or action of which the logical consequence is to reduce him from the position of land-owner to tenant, either provokes him to pit his spears and flintlocks against the repeating-rifles of the despoilers, or breeds in him such utter confusion of mind, such bewilderment and terror, that,

Fleeing to the forest’s dim recess, He broods in sullen unproductiveness, Plunged in deeper savagery, Witness to the high morality Of Christian peoples?

Strange, indeed, does it seem, with the burden of historical proof to the adaptability of the Negro; with the abundant and cumulative evidence of his willingness to trade, to learn, to take on new industries, to everywhere follow up his natural profession of agriculture; with the actual and daily evidence of his enterprise and producing capacity in the existing oil-palm, ground-nut, mahogany and rubber industries; strange, indeed, that European statesmen worthy of the name should for a moment entertain the idea, or lend ear to the suggestion, that in a country like West Africa, where the white element compared with the black is as a grain of sand on the sea-shore, and where the European can attain nothing that is permanent or lasting without the willing co-operation of the Negro, the spontaneous production of the Negro as a free man, in the enjoyment of the fruits of his own land, can be replaced by the forced production of a serf deprived of his lands, his freedom, and his individuality!

If in one sense the question of native land tenure in West Africa is distinct from that of native labour, it is in another way closely allied to it, and to treat of one without referring to the other is difficult, if not impossible. But it is equally difficult, when once the labour problem is raised, to confine oneself to West Africa only; for the theory of “assimilation” is very much to the fore just now, and although the conditions prevailing in West Africa differentiate absolutely from those in Central, East, and South Africa, the same general arguments are made to apply more or less to all four. I must, therefore, crave the reader’s indulgence if I wander somewhat afield.

There is not the least shadow of doubt that the tendency to go past the law of native land tenure in West Africa owes its origin in large measure to the oft-repeated statement that the Negro will not work. Numbers of people have for some time past been assuring the Public that West Africa can only be developed by compelling the native to work.[149] It is, of course, assumed _à priori_ that the native of West Africa does not work. How the contention can be justified in the face of demonstrable and easily accessible facts to the contrary, we need not pause to inquire. It suffices that the contention exists, and that there is not a paper dealing with African affairs in Great Britain, or the Continent of Europe, which does not contain in almost every issue some reference to the matter. Nor is discussion limited to such papers. In the speeches of public men whose interests are associated with Africa; in conferences, in books, pamphlets, and not infrequently in the daily press, the subject crops up again and again. The refrain is usually much after this style: “The native will not work. We have to work and pay income-tax. Why should not the native? What is the use of Africa to us if the native refuses to work? It is intolerable. He must be made to work.”

It must be admitted that the spirit of the hour is admirably suited to act the part of receiver to these laments. The signatory powers of the Berlin Act have allowed the gradual establishment and consolidation in Western Central Africa of an institution the existence of which is based upon repudiation of the inherent right of the native to his land or the fruits thereof; and upon forced labour on the part of the dispossessed for their despoilers. What wonder that the public of France and Germany, observing the enormous profits derived by people immediately connected with this institution, and led astray by the apathy of their statesmen to the evil, should put down to political ability what is merely outrage; and impatient at the comparatively slow progress of their own possessions, should begin to loudly call for the adoption of a similar system therein? “The King of Belgium has succeeded in making the natives work. He and his coadjutors are reaping a huge harvest. Belgian industry is the gainer. Antwerp has become the first rubber market in the world. Why not imitate the King of Belgium?”

[Illustration: THE IDLE NATIVE! MARKET SCENE IN WEST AFRICA]

It would be grossly unfair to describe this mental attitude on the part of public opinion in France and Germany as having been due, or as being due, to a natural callousness. At one time, indeed, the proceedings of the Congo State were severely condemned in both countries, and not farther back than 1895 Count Alvensleben, German Ambassador in Brussels, was carrying on a correspondence with the then principal Secretary of the Congo State anent the payment of rubber premiums by the Congo State to its agents and the trading operations of that State, couched in such language as would have brought about between two European Powers an immediate rupture of diplomatic relations. But wealth commands great power, and its rapid acquisition is a blunter of conscience. The Belgian financiers who control the two great Trusts in the Congo State—the _annexes_ of the Domaine Privé Trust and the Thys Trust—were desirous for their own ends of still further extending their power. They managed to obtain the co-operation of many highly placed persons in France and Germany, and to secure the assistance of an important section of the Colonial Press in the two countries. The result is seen in the creation of what is known as the Concessionnaire _régime_ in the Colony of French Congo; its partial adoption in the French Colony of Dahomey; its attempted establishment in the auriferous French Colony of the Ivory Coast; and its introduction into German Cameroons, where, however, experience has led to a revulsion of feeling as healthy as it is encouraging. In other words, the indifference of the Powers to the violation of the Berlin Act by the Sovereign of the Congo State has involved the application of the new slavery to another vast tract of territory in Africa. Public opinion has been worked to such good purpose that the lucubrations of a Carl Peters or Camille Janssens are not only listened to with patience, but are regarded by many as the embodiment of a rational colonial policy; while in France, open appeals have for the past year and more been uttered every day in favour of a _régime_ of forced labour at the point of the bayonet. The theory that the Negro will not work and must be compelled to do so has, therefore, made strides rapid enough among the Western nations on the Continent of Europe to satisfy the fondest hopes of its promoters.

In England the modern school of thought in African affairs shows a like tendency. We hear in various forms how essential it is to inculcate the African with the notion of the “dignity of labour.” As we are here dealing with West Africa, it would be out of place to discuss at any length the labour questions connected with South Africa. But it is only too obvious that the financiers of the Rand and their friends at home are the leading spirits through whom British public opinion is being influenced towards coercion in the matter of native labour in Africa as a whole, just as the Brussels and Antwerp financiers who run the Congo State are the instruments whereby similar notions are propagated on the Continent of Europe. As already stated, special conditions, as well as the nature of the native population and, indeed, nearly all attendant circumstances, differ profoundly in West Africa and South Africa, but it is necessary to indicate the prevalence of a common shade of thought which it is sought to apply in practice wherever the European has secured a sufficiently strong hold upon the Dark Continent. In a fascinating volume of African travel recently published by a brilliant young explorer, Mr. H. S. Grogan, can be found embodied, in a style distinguished for its honest vulgarity, frank brutality and entire absence of those hypocritical sophistries so much in vogue, the views of the “modern school” as to what is, or what ought to be, the inter-relationship of European and Hamite in Africa.

Here are a few samples of his arguments:

“But few people at home,” he writes, “realise what an alarming and ever-growing difficulty has to be faced in the African native problem. It is a difficulty that is unique in the progress of the world.... Under the beneficent rule of the white man he thrives like weeds in a hot-house.... What is to be done with this ever-increasing mass of inertia? We have undertaken his education and advancement, as we have carefully explained, by the mawkish euphemisms in which we wrap our land-grabbing schemes. When we undertake the education of a child or beast we make them work, realising that work is the sole road to advancement. But when we undertake the education of a nigger, who, as I have endeavoured to show, is a blend of the two, we say; ‘Dear Nigger, thou elect of Exeter Hall, chosen of the negrophil, bread-and-butter of the missionary, darling of the unthinking philanthropist, wilt thou deign to put thy hand to the plough, or dost prefer to smoke and tipple in undisturbed content? We, the white men whom thy conscience wrongly judges to be thy superiors, will arrange the affairs of state. Sleep on, thou ebony idol of a jaded civilisation, may be anon thou wilt sing ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers.’ ... A good sound system,” proceeds Mr. Grogan, “of compulsory labour would do more to raise the nigger in five years than all the millions which have been sunk in missionary efforts for the last fifty.... Why should not other peoples be called upon to work for the cause of progress? Throughout Africa the cry is, ‘Give me labour.’ There is a sound maxim in the progress of the world: ‘What cannot be utilised must be eliminated.’ And drivel as we will for a while, the time will come when the negro must bow to this as to the inevitable. Why, because he is black and is supposed to possess a soul, we should consider him, on account of that combination, exempt, it is difficult to understand, when a little firmness would transform him from a useless and dangerous brute into a source of benefit to the country and of satisfaction to himself.”

What a typical passage is this! The Negro lazy and degraded, useless and dangerous: the European doing all the work while the Negro smokes and drinks—whether imported European liquor or liquor manufactured locally is not stated: narrow-minded visionaries at home preventing the salvation of Africa in the shape of compulsory labour on the Rand mines which constitutes “education”: the perfection of morals that result from such education, and so forth! The crowning folly is conveyed in the words “what cannot be utilised must be eliminated,” which, I suppose, means a “thinning-out process”—such as Professor Gregory tells us has been accomplished only too successfully in Unyoro, where “it has been estimated that in the four years following the establishment of British rule the population was reduced to a fourth”—in order to prevent the too rapid propagation of these “hot-house weeds!” And yet what Mr. Grogan says is repeated by many and believed by more—the mass who swallow this tainted diet as though ’twere nectar, and absorb these grotesque distortions as if they were gospel truths.

Let us endeavour to examine this question in a practical, temperate, and impartial spirit. According to ethnologists, the true, uncontaminated Negro is only found in West Africa, roughly from Senegal to the Rio del Rey. He inhabits the coastwise regions and the forest belt. The innumerable creeks and forests of the Niger Delta shelter the purest specimens, ethnologically, of his race. South of Rio del Rey the Bantu stock begins, and predominates as you work southward. Behind the forest belt the true Negro stock has become changed and modified by infusion of Berber and Fulani, and also, but to a lesser degree, of Arab blood. In the Niger bend, in the regions round about Lake Chad, in Northern Nigeria this blending of races has created a bewildering variety of mixed types, while here and there both the invaded and invading elements have preserved their purity—for instance, among the Negroes, the Bambarra of the Upper Niger; among the Berbers, the noble Imosagh; among the Arabs, the Shuwa; among the Fulani, the Pullo herdsmen of Futa Jallon, Adamawa, Bondu, and of many other parts of the Western Sudan. Leaving west for east, you have the Shoa, Galla, Somali, and Jew in Abyssinia and its confines; then the Bantu—product, as Dr. Voight thinks, of Semitic and Negro mixture—spreading southwards, inwards and westwards; universal everywhere, right down to the Cape—the Masai, Wahuma, Pigmies, Hottentots; and, in the French Congo, the Fans, presenting small channels of ethnic divergence in a vast sea of Bantu stock.

[Illustration: WEST AFRICAN “YOUNG HOPEFULS”]

Throughout all this huge expanse of territory the soil is in the main so fertile that it produces with little trouble everything which the native requires for his subsistence and his comfort, where his sense of what constitutes comfort has not expanded as the result of intercourse with a higher ethical development—a “higher civilisation,” to use the hackneyed term. The climate being mostly hot, it militates against great physical energy, which, moreover, is not, and has not been, economically necessary for the African for countless generations. The degree of development of the native depends upon the extent of his contact with, or remoteness from, influences tending to create in his mind fresh ideas; a higher conception of arts and crafts—influences which may have filtered through to him either by the medium of trade, successive migration, conquest by a more advanced race, or the infiltration of a revealed religion. The more inaccessible the region, the further inland the people, the wider removed from highways of commerce their situation, the more primitive their state. That is logical, although there are, of course, exceptions. But that in his primitive state the African is the “useless and dangerous brute” which the shallow materialism, the frenzy for expansion, the unthinking, rather blatant callousness of the hour would make him out to be, is one of the many fictions which pass for truths about Africa. The Wa-Kavirondo are the most primitive people in the Uganda Protectorate. They go absolutely naked, are more moral than their partly clothed neighbours, and are agriculturists. “Wherever they settle, the jungle around them is soon converted into fruitful fields, yielding sweet potatoes, or various forms of corn. Those who can afford it keep goats and sheep, and the wealthy have herds of cattle,” says Dr. Ansorge, adding that among them, “where the European villain with his lies and frauds has not yet made his appearance, the white man’s simple word is equal to a solemn and a binding oath.” In most parts of Africa, south of the equator—in the huge central portion at any rate—in the Upper Nile valley, the region traversed by Mr. Grogan, the native has never had the motive, the spontaneous impetus to produce more than his needs required or his fancy led him to. Yet he works in iron, moulds pottery, has in many cases a highly developed artistic instinct,[150] manufactures cloth and ingenious and elaborate weapons of offence, has some notions of harmony, and often enough a vein of true poetic instinct. When local conditions have been favourable to the evolving of important social agglomerations, a native state form has grown up which was a cause of abundant astonishment to the early European travellers in Central Africa. Yet, as far back as we are able to plunge in the dim recesses of the past, these millions of natives—this “mass of inertia”—were entirely cut off from intercourse with the outside world, isolated from all contact with the “superior” races. A few stray Egyptian traders probably penetrated to the head waters of the Nile and the Great Lakes. Later on, a handful of Arabs wandered inwards from Zanzibar, but until Burton, Speke and Grant, Livingstone (working from the south), Baker, Emin, and Stanley revealed the interior of Africa, its inhabitants had been innocent of all communication with the higher culture. One need not inquire whether the lot of these people has been much brighter since the advent among them of the half-caste Arab slave-trader, the Belgian ivory and rubber hunter, the over-zealous European missionary, and the land-grabbing fever of the Powers. An estimate on that point must be largely a matter of opinion. But to expect that these natives are going to willingly emigrate _en masse_ to the Rhodesian mines, hire themselves out for the performance of arduous labour, dig, delve, undertake plantation work and the like with the zeal of a European workman anxious to earn a living wage, is a piece of consummate folly. They can only be induced to do so by the most tactful treatment; by the payment of a decent wage; by the selection of European agents possessing some sense of proportion, and at least a rudimentary knowledge of the teachings of history. To attempt to revolutionise these peoples’ conceptions in a few years is madness, and to try and drive them by coercive measures constitutes a policy at once immoral, short-sighted, and disastrous.[151]

Until quite recently British West Africa remained unaffected in any material sense by the gradual gravitation of European public opinion towards the use of coercion in dealing with the African, together with the non-recognition of native land tenure and the various concomitants of the “exploitation” policy. The birth of a scientific gold-mining industry in the Gold Coast, however, has let loose a flood of ignorant talk about West Africa, and raised up a whole host of evil advisers who are busily intent in introducing South African methods in the West African goldfields. Constant complaints are being raised about the scarcity of labour, the indolence and the slothfulness of the native. Experienced men like Mr. Daw, of the Ashanti goldfields, have not hesitated to speak out boldly against these views; and so far the Colonial Office,[152] to its honour be it said, has refused to yield to the clamour, and has declined to repeal the law on the acquisition, extent, and registration of mining concessions whereby the rights of the native owners of the soil are amply safeguarded. In that respect the Concessions Ordinance must rank as the most equitable legislative measure for the protection and preservation of native land tenure which exists in West Africa. It is true that of the numerous complaints which the Ordinance has given rise to, those that refer to the actual working of the measure are justified. The machinery for registration is hardly complete enough, and in that and some other respects matters might be improved. It is also true that cases have occurred where native chiefs have, knowingly or unknowingly, sold their properties twice over, and thus perpetrated a fraud which, no doubt, is exceedingly reprehensible; but certainly not more so than the numerous frauds deliberately consummated by sundry Gold Coast company promoters in foisting upon the British public bogus concerns, causing pecuniary loss to hundreds and thousands of English men and women. The African chief who indulges in sharp practice can be punished in the Gold Coast, but his European prototype generally manages to escape the clutches of the law. It is to be hoped that the Colonial Office will maintain the Concessions Ordinance in its integrity, while perfecting the machinery to administer it, for the law, as a law, is a credit to British justice in West Africa.

On the other hand, it is much to be regretted that the Colonial Office should have framed a code of laws and regulations in respect to the development of forest products and the attribution of forest reserves, in Southern Nigeria, which have given rise to grave objection, and must continue to do so. The effect of these regulations in the aggregate is to authorise the High Commissioner to issue any rules he chooses with regard to all kinds of forest produce, not excepting the produce of the palm. No proper distinction is drawn between so-called “waste”[153] lands and forest lands at the disposal of the native and the Government respectively. Natives are to be compelled to take out licences to enable them to do what they have hitherto done without restriction. The licences are to be granted by the Government officials. Half the money goes to the local treasury, the other half to the native owner, but only if he can show that he is entitled to it! The native is tried, under the penalties provided by the proclamation, by the European officer and not by his own local court. All this is bad and short-sighted policy. It must inevitably tend to suggest to the native mind that the Government is taking entire possession of his land. His rights of land tenure are being treated as though they had ceased to exist, and had been vested in the Government. We are officially assured that the native chiefs are satisfied that this is not the case, and that they welcome these regulations. It is impossible to regard these assurances otherwise than with scepticism. In Southern Nigeria the Crown Colony Government is a despotism absolute and entire. There is no legislative council; there are no native newspapers. The native has no means of ventilating his grievances. The powers of the High Commissioner are more sweeping than that of the Tsar of all the Russias. There is no check upon him, no control of any kind. He does exactly what he likes, and “force” in Southern Nigeria, in other words, punitive expeditions are but of too frequent occurrence. For upwards of three-quarters of a century the natives of Southern Nigeria have been encouraged by successive British Governments in the belief that they were free to utilise the products of their own forests. I defy any jurist to say what amount of freedom they will enjoy if these regulations are carried out to the letter. I have sought the opinion of English lawyers not unversed in native law on this matter, and they have been anything but impressed with the justice or legality of the measure. The regulations have been compared to a retrogression “to the days of William the Conqueror.” “The interpretation of the Commissioner’s powers, under this Ordinance”—I am quoting from the letter of a lawyer to whom I submitted the measures in question—“are far too arbitrary. What privileges are left to the native who, you will remember, is the owner of the soil? It seems that he is in the unfortunate position of being the owner of his land without being able to obtain the slightest advantage from that land, and if he attempts to deal with the products thereof, even with the very best intentions, he is liable at the will of the Commissioner to imprisonment or fine as provided by the Bill. This is surely not the intention of the framer of the Bill; at least I hope not.” The Chambers of Commerce on the one hand, and the Aborigines Protection Society on the other, have protested against this reactionary legislation, which shows that both in commercial and philanthropic circles a similarity of feeling exists in regard to its tenour. It is one thing “to protect the forests from destruction,” which is understood to be the motive of these regulations, and no reasonable being would object to the framing of common-sense rules for the preservation of rubber trees and vines (although it is not rules but _instruction_ which is required) and certain young hardwood trees of slow growth; but it is quite another thing to introduce a series of cast-iron laws of this wholesale character, of doubtful legality, of still more questionable expediency, inevitably calculated to lead to friction and distinctly prejudicial to the development of legitimate commerce. The Crown Colony system in the Rivers has not been such a brilliant success that it can afford to deliberately run such risks! These proclamations, it may be added, were passed into law in Southern Nigeria without the merchants who supply the whole revenue of the country being advised or even consulted. Such is the business-like method with which we conduct our affairs in West Africa!

[Illustration: AN IBO FAMILY GROUP—SOUTHERN NIGERIA]

In Lagos, where a similar measure was introduced (it should be stated that the law is of home manufacture), it met with considerable native opposition, and passed through several stages of amendment before becoming law. In Lagos there is a legislative council on which natives sit—in a minority it is true—and there are local newspapers. Channels exist, therefore, through which native opinion can make itself heard. There is also, happily, a Governor of the widest sympathies, of great and extensive knowledge and experience. Under his auspices we may feel assured that nothing will be wittingly done to alienate native rights in land. The Bill, as amended, provides that it shall be open to the duly constituted Native Councils, or Governments, of the inland protected States, to construe its clauses in accordance with native custom and usage; and as the chiefs are just as interested in preserving their forests as the legislators or the merchants, we may feel tolerably sure that the objects aimed at will be secured. Moreover, it is further provided that the Native Councils shall themselves issue licences when required, the proceeds of which shall come to their own local treasuries entirely; and shall themselves inflict fines under their own law, and in their own courts; and the Governor is further recommending that the Government reserves shall be conveyed under lease.[154] There you observe the difference between the two procedures. The one arbitrary, dogmatic, despotic—the other such as it is seen to be. If any difficulties arise in Lagos in the course of the working of the Bill,[155] it will not be for the want of doing everything possible to avert them, of surrounding the rights of native land tenure with safeguards which, so long as they are adhered to, will be sufficient to protect them, of imbuing the native mind with the feeling that the Administration intends to conform to the traditions of native usage; but they will be due to the principle involved in the Bill, the principle, that is, of a _primâ facie_ right of interference, directly or indirectly, on the part of the Government, in the affairs of native States, whose internal independence in contradistinction to their external relations is guaranteed by treaty. On that point opinion will differ, and some of us will continue to think that, in all matters affecting native industries, instruction is better than restriction.[156]