CHAPTER IV

SOME NECESSARY REFORMS

“It is well known also that this personal system, at its best, is full of abuses of the worst kind politically; the Administrators and those who influence them, get to have favourites, and even chiefs have their legitimate power, influence and dignity interfered with because they refuse to pay homage to their views. In consequence of all this, an apparently successful Administrator is usually and sharply followed by even worse confusion and more protracted wars than were known before his advent. It is the history of all weak despotic systems, having no basis in the country or among the people sought to be governed or influenced.”—“The Crown Colonies of Great Britain” (chapter vi. West Africa), by C. S. Salmon, formerly Colonial Secretary and Administrator of the Gold Coast, &c.

“The inhabitants of the country and the mercantile community who provide the whole of the revenues, have no voice at all in the governing of their Colonies and the expenditure of these revenues, and I sincerely hope that the day is not far distant when the African community will rise up and protest against this Crown Colony system of government”—Mr. ARTHUR HUTTON, President of the African Section of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. (Extract from speech delivered.)

It will, I think, be conceded that, notwithstanding the extraordinarily important and revolutionising discoveries of Major Ross, to whom the entire credit of recent demonstrations belongs, the admirable work performed by the Liverpool[14] and London schools in the study of tropical disease and sanitary improvements on the West Coast, the chances of British West Africa ever becoming a possession where English men and women can flourish and multiply, is excessively remote; so remote, indeed, as to be outside the sphere of useful discussion. In fact, with the one possible exception of the Futa-Jallon uplands, when the Konakry-Kurussa railway line has connected them with the coast, West Africa as a whole is unsuitable, and will, according to all reasonable supposition, always remain unsuitable for European _colonisation_. The dominion of British West Africa must, therefore, be regarded not in the light of a colony properly so called, but as a vast tropical estate.

From that postulate arises a query, or rather, series of queries. What are we in West Africa for? What do we hope to do there? What object took us there? What main purpose keeps us there? The answer is not for a moment in doubt. Commerce took us to West Africa; commerce keeps and will keep us in West Africa. It is the _fons et origo_ of our presence in West Africa. The day that it ceases to be so, West Africa ceases to be of use to the Empire. It will become a costly plaything, and the British people is too essentially practical a people to care long for toys of that kind. As in every other part of the world, commerce in West Africa is the outcome of supply and demand. There is a demand for the products of West Africa on the markets of the world, and there is a demand in West Africa for the products of European industrialism. The increased circulation of a portable currency in West Africa in the shape of silver coinage will facilitate the operations of commerce, but will not dislodge or alter the fundamental nature of that commerce. The development of a mining industry in this or that portion of West Africa will, while it lasts, modify the conditions of trade in the portion affected, but commerce will remain the backbone, as it ever has been, of European intercourse with West Africa.

There is nothing that need occasion regret at the contemplation of the truth. Commerce is the greatest civilising agent. The steps upward in the ethical development of the human race have been synonymous with the spread of commercial relations, and the creation of the means and measures whereby their promotion has been successively extended. The most backward peoples to-day are, generally speaking, those whose secluded habitat renders their commercial transactions with the outside world scanty and precarious. In these days, when the noble meaning which attaches to “philanthropy” and “civilisation” is made the cloak to cover in West Africa so much that is vile, the excuse both sincerely and hypocritically given to explain away so much that is in painful contradiction, one needs, perhaps, to be reminded that such commonplace things as commerce and improved means of communication will do more to benefit the native than any number of attempts to impose laws and institutions unfamiliar to him, by violent even if well-meaning measures of so-called reform.[15] As a nation we should gain much and lose nothing in frankly admitting to ourselves that it is due neither to a desire to mend the ways of priestly theocracies, nor to alter the tyranny of the strong over the weak, which has led to the incorporation within the Empire of some thirty-five millions of West African natives, but the belief that West Africa constitutes a vast outlet for the free and unfettered development of British trade, and an equally vast field for the cultivation of products of economic necessity to ourselves. Thorough realisation of the fact would lead to more accurate appreciation and a truer sense of the direction which our policy should take in West Africa, if ultimate success and not failure is to attend it.

Commercial development is then in an especial and peculiar degree the _raison d’être_ of our presence in West Africa.

Now what are the principal factors in British West African commerce, and how are their claims to consideration in the administration of British West Africa treated under the Crown Colony system? Obviously the two principal factors are the European merchant and his customer, the native. The merchant directly supplies, the native indirectly supplies, the revenue which pays for the salaries of the officials and the general up-keep of the government, and if it be true, as it undoubtedly is, that the burden of taxation ultimately falls upon the native producer, it is equally true that, without the enterprise of the merchant, there would be no revenue and consequently no local funds for the support of administrative machinery. It follows, therefore, as a matter of simple justice, that the merchant should have a voice in the framing of legislation calculated to affect the internal politics, and consequently the commerce of our West African possessions. Apart from its justice, the claim of the merchant to representation in the affairs of our West African Empire has many features in its favour. He enjoys an expert’s knowledge, gained by long years of actual contact with the peoples of Western Africa. Experience has given him an insight into their customs and laws; an acquaintance with their peculiarities, with the working of their minds, with their inbred conservatism, which officials whose residence in West Africa—broken, as it is, by long intervals of leave—is usually of a very temporary or flitting nature, cannot hope to attain at any rate with the same completeness; and a mastery, even if it be only an instinctive mastery, of certain special characteristics which underlie native conceptions, and which have to be reckoned with in dealing with them. The merchant is consequently well fitted to be a most valuable assistant in the administration of British Western Africa.

The fact is recognised by the French and Germans who share with us the vast proportion of influence in West Africa properly so called. Ever practical, the Germans have created an Advisory Board (_Kolonial-rath_) to their Colonial Office, composed for the most part of the leading men in the West African trade. The present Colonial Advisory Board has twelve merchants sitting on its Council.[16] In French West Africa, but on somewhat different lines, the merchant is similarly treated, and just recently the representations of the French merchants to M. Décrais, the then Colonial Minister of France, averted a great evil threatening the Ivory Coast in the contemplated cession to King Leopold’s nominee, M. Empain, of a practical monopoly over the whole of the gold-bearing districts of that dependency, although M. Empain[17] had the most influential support at his back.

The French system, though far from perfect, is incomparably superior to anything we have in this country. It differs somewhat in the various Colonies, but is substantially composed of two Organisms, the Metropolitan Organism and the Colonial Organism. Under these dual Organisms, every Colony which is not directly represented in the French Parliament is represented at the Colonial Office by a delegate elected by vote of the white inhabitants of such Colony. In French Guinea, where the administration in force is in advance of that of any other French (or English for that matter) West African possession, a commercial delegate is regularly elected, and at the present moment a merchant, M. Gaboriau, representing the interests of that Colony, is attached to the Colonial Office. The weak point in the arrangement is, that the officials in the respective Colonies as well as the merchants have the right to vote in the election of a representative, with the result that very often the officials are in a majority. When that happens, a French politician, who can use his influence in promoting the officials who vote for him, is appointed. Each colony possesses a “Superior Council” or “Administrative Council” composed of the Governor, the heads of departments, and two or more merchants. In Senegal the merchant councillors have always enjoyed considerable power, and no step affecting the interests of the Colony is ever taken without the concurrence of the great Bordeaux merchant firms, which between them centralise the ground-nut trade (they themselves built it up), the staple industry of Senegal. Moreover, Senegal is particularly favoured in that it boasts a Deputy in the Chamber and a local General Council which enjoys large financial responsibility, the merchants—provided they do not fall out among themselves—being always in a majority in the said General Council.

With us matters are altogether different. England, which passes for a country where common-sense is the cardinal virtue, refuses to her merchants any recognised _status_ in the administrative machinery of West Africa. It has been accurately asserted that the merchant is the _uitlander_ of British West Africa. He is seldom, if ever, consulted in the affairs of the country, and although Mr. Chamberlain has on more than one occasion given verbal assurances that no legislative acts affecting the natives (and _de facto_ calculated to influence native production—or, in other words, trade) would be promulgated without previously being submitted to the merchants for their opinion, decrees of the highest importance embodying a kind of revolution in our historical native policy in regard to the laws of native land tenure have just become law in Southern Nigeria, not only without the merchants being consulted, but without their being advised in any other way than by a perusal of the published Ordinances in the local Government Gazette. From time to time—and during the last two years with increasing frequency, consistency, and earnestness—the Liverpool and Manchester Chambers of Commerce, which between them represent the majority of the commercial interests of Great Britain in West Africa,[18] have approached the Foreign and Colonial Offices on their own initiative, sometimes supported by as many as ten or twelve other leading chambers in the Kingdom voicing industrial interests more or less directly affected by specific occurrences. When—I am speaking now of recent times—the Foreign Office has been either memorialised or waited upon by deputations from the Chambers, the question at issue has been one of international import, such for instance as the differential tariff against British goods in the French West African Colonies (1898), and the violation of the Berlin Act in the Congo Basin (1901 and 1902). In the first case, the action of the Chambers was surprisingly successful; in the second case, success has not yet attended their efforts.

When, as in the majority of instances, the Colonial Office has been waited upon or written to, the object has referred to some legislation either contemplated or assented to, or to some measure of internal policy towards a native tribe or ruler. I cannot find that the Colonial Office has on any single occasion, in a matter of importance, consented to adopt the views of the men who, as subsequent events have manifestly proved, saw clearer than the permanent officials, and whose advice, if taken, would have avoided the perpetration of serious mistakes. In 1895 the Manchester Chamber and the local Chamber at Cape Coast strongly advised “that the King of Ashanti (Prempreh) be allowed to reserve all the rights that he now exercises over his people,” but that a British resident should be established at his Court, as the best means of ensuring a lasting peace with the Ashanti people, who, if they had erred, also had—as is historically admitted—grounds of legitimate complaint against the British authorities on various occasions. Prempreh, however, was arrested and deported, and from that moment the Ashantis never ceased to intrigue against the British until their discontent, fanned into flame by the injudicious proceedings of Governor Hodgson, broke forth once more and led to the last sanguinary expedition, which involved an expenditure of a quarter of a million of money.

But the most notable instance at once, of the value of the merchants’ expert knowledge and of the fatuity of lightly rejecting their counsel, is provided in the lamentable chapter in the history of Sierra Leone which began with the enforcement of the Hut Tax Ordinance in 1898, and which is not yet closed, whatever officialdom may say to the contrary. As I propose discussing this subject in some detail later on, it is sufficient to state here that the merchants almost went on their bended knees, figuratively speaking, in seeking to turn the Colonial Office from its purpose; that they entirely failed; that they were met by official assurances which were afterwards shown to be entirely erroneous; that their predictions and warnings were fulfilled to the letter; that their views were subsequently substantiated in every respect by the Special Commissioner despatched later by the Colonial Office to make investigations as to the origin of the rising, and that the persistent refusal of the Colonial Office to abide by the Special Commissioner’s report has reduced our oldest West African possession to such a condition that, if the railway now in course of construction through the eastern district does not—and there appears little or no hope that it will—entirely alter the present state of affairs, Sierra Leone under the present _régime_, and with the pressure of French competition in the neighbouring territories, is irretrievably ruined.

Is it not time that in this respect at least something was done to bring the management of British West Africa more into line with modern requirements, and at a period when the commercial position of Great Britain in West Africa is everywhere threatened by foreign competition, to establish some working arrangement—call it a West African Council or Advisory Board or anything you please—whereby the accumulated experience of the men who are supplying the Government with the wherewithal to govern, should be used as an auxiliary force for the promotion of the general interests of Great Britain in West Africa? The nucleus of such a council or Advisory Board could be at once supplied.

It is said that the merchants cannot agree amongst themselves. The plea lacks in truthfulness, and it is permissible to doubt whether it is sincerely put forward. Unquestionably there are rivalries in the West African trade. What trade is without them? But to argue that competition in trade is a bar to co-operation in matters affecting the general welfare of the country is a very narrow-minded position to take up. It is converting a legitimate, natural, and healthy phenomenon into a disqualification which nothing justifies. Where should we be in West Africa to-day but for our merchant pioneers? Suppose they had endorsed the official resolution of 1865 by withdrawing from the Coast, would the Union Jack be floating in West Africa except in Sierra Leone to-day? If the merchant had been devoid of political conception, and content to let his horizon be confined to those petty but inevitable aspects of commercialism which consist in under-selling a competitor, would not the abandonment of the Gold Coast have followed the battle of Katamansu, and would the richest portion of the Niger Valley be a British Protectorate to-day? Let those who suggest that the British merchant in West Africa is incapable of rising above sordid motives of self-interest remember MacGregor Laird. The merchant has everywhere preceded the administrator in West Africa. In his case the old adage must be reversed. It has been the flag which has followed trade, not trade the flag.[19]

It is also said that the merchants are not unanimous with regard to certain features of West African policy. But can any one single out a body of men among whom variations of opinion on specific points do not occur? Do all the members of a Cabinet invariably see eye to eye on a particular measure to be introduced? Are not the very modifications which any given Bill must go through before being finally drafted and approved by the Cabinet as a whole a guarantee that legislation evolved from the interchange of ideas among the sundry persons concerned—and who, unless they be devoid of individuality, cannot all think alike on every point—will be the better for the destructive and constructive criticism to which it has been subjected? The merchants are in substantial agreement in what they consider the vital principles of British policy in West Africa, principles which informed public opinion is at last beginning to realise the urgency of upholding. No material divergency of views will be found among merchants as to the absolute necessity of respecting native land tenure, the need of careful finance, the danger of constant military operations, the indispensableness of preserving native institutions. If there be a charge against the merchants, it is that they have not hitherto sufficiently exercised their power of influencing successive Governments. They have not risen as they should have done to the height of their duties and responsibilities. They have allowed outsiders to perform a difficult and generally ungrateful work, which they themselves should have taken in hand—that of calling public attention to the urgency of reforms in West African administration. At critical moments they have been weak-kneed, and fearful of giving offence when they should have been resolute in standing by convictions which they knew to be sound. Their attitude is now happily undergoing a change which, if maintained, is bound to have lasting results for good.

At no previous period in the history of British West Africa has the co-operation of the great merchant community in the task of administration been so pressing a necessity as it is to-day. Never could better use be made of such co-operation by the department responsible for West Africa as at present. In the increasing notice which is being given on all sides to West African affairs consequent upon the remarkable growth of European relations with that country and with the birth in West Africa of a modern mining industry, a host of dangerous advisers is arising. We see old errors creeping back in the guise of new verities, old misconceptions gaining fresh lease of life, exploded theories crowding forward to mislead and confuse. Appeals to force as the solution of all difficulties arising out of contact with a primitive people, contemptuous disregard of native laws and customs—the “damned nigger” theory in all its perennial beauty, insistent requests for lavish expenditure, heedless of plain economic facts, and so forth—these are the order of the day. Upon elementary errors of geography are grafted the crudest notions of the political and social condition of the Negro, the most amazing ignorance of history and past experience in every branch of West African lore. By a plausible inversion of facts, opponents of the wild and whirling talk indulged in regarding West Africa are denounced as sentimentalists, although it so happens that the denouncers draw the material which serves them as a basis for their contentions from that very discredited sentimentalism responsible for so many errors in West Africa, which portrays the native as an abject being, brutish, lazy, and degraded, greatly honoured by the bestowal of a bible, a suit of clothes; and a shilling, with a possible extra threepence thrown in as subsistence-money, for a hard day’s work. No doubt it is possible to exaggerate the importance of these _ad captandum_ effusions, but their volume is, perhaps, calculated to momentarily drown the voice of reason. Parrot-like reiteration, if sufficiently sustained, is apt sometimes to impress.

At such a time the assistance of a trained body of men thoroughly conversant with the affairs of Western Africa, in a position to point to past experiences, to vested interests, to technical knowledge as their claim to competency, and to the feeding of the administrative machine as their claim to consideration, ought surely to commend itself to the Authorities. To persist much longer in the rejection of that assistance would be equally short-sighted and unjust.

Another and an equally important question connected with the management of our West African Possessions, is the question of the Crown Agents. If any one attempted to define the duties of that body, he would be hard put to it to do so. They are here, there and everywhere, and their interference puts a premium upon extravagance and waste. The Crown Agents are an anomaly which ought to disappear. At present they constitute a sort of half-way house between the Colonial Office and the West African Governors, and are a positive obstacle to sound finance and good business methods. Enough examples of the extraordinary ways of the Crown Agents could be given to fill a volume. The West African Colonies are hampered right and left by the powers conferred upon this body. The Colonies are not allowed to purchase what they require in the shape of stores, equipment, material and so forth on the open market. Everything has to go through the Crown Agents, with the natural result that the Colonies have to pay 40 per cent. and 50 per cent. more than they would have to if allowed to invite tenders on their own account. Look at the way in which these railways have been and are being built.

The construction is, apparently, the monopoly of one particular firm (under the direction of the Crown Agents); a firm which, as far as can be gathered, had had but little experience in railway construction before, metaphorically speaking, falling upon its feet in West Africa.

The same firm holds the position of “consulting engineers” to the Colonial Office. Surely it is anomalous, from the purely business point of view, that a firm retained as “consulting engineers” to a Government Department in charge of West Africa should also be the actual constructors of the West African railways! The two parts strike one as incompatible. Consulting engineers, one would imagine, would be advisers and arbiters. All contracts should be publicly and openly tendered for. A very widespread impression prevails that the time and cost expended in the construction of these railways have been very great. The Gold Coast Railway was begun in February 1898; it is officially estimated to reach Kumasi early in 1904. Assuming that it does, it will have taken six years to build, which works out at about twenty-eight miles per annum—the distance from Sekondi to Kumasi being 169¼ miles.

It is as yet too early to say definitely what the cost of the line will average per mile. Official estimates, we know, are not always reliable. In this case, even the official estimate is very high, viz. £8000 per mile for the Sekondi-Tarkwa section, and £6300 per mile for the Tarkwa-Kumasi section.

That dissatisfaction with the policy pursued up to the present (that is to say, the policy of constructing these railways under the “Department System,” or, otherwise stated, leaving their construction to the Crown Agents), is not confined to merchants, mine-managers and other revenue-payers of the West African Colonies, but is held by competent and highly placed officials, I reproduce the following remarks of Sir William MacGregor, made on the occasion of a visit to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce in 1900, and in reply to the following question of Mr. Arthur Hutton’s[20]:

“Do you think, from what you have seen, it (_i.e._ railway construction) would be better done by contract?”

SIR WILLIAM MACGREGOR: “I believe at the present moment—and I have said so to the Secretary of State—_I believe there would be men living who are now rotting in their graves, if it had been taken out of the control of the Crown Agents_....”[21]

It is competently estimated that the Lagos railway, begun in 1896, will have cost £10,000[22] per mile by the time its 125 miles are in full working order—an enormous rate. The Crown Agents, through whom the moneys have been advanced to the Colony, exact 5 per cent. interest, whereas with the security they have to offer, they should easily be able to get them—and probably have got them—from the Treasury at 3 per cent. Why should the Colony be saddled with an extra 2[23] per cent. interest and find its liability for the current year on the railway loan increased to the enormous total of £54,000, or, say, 22 per cent. of the entire revenue?[24] Why should all indents be sent through the Crown Agents? The delays which this ridiculous system entail are only second in point of importance to the squandering of the public funds which goes on under it. The Crown Agents appear to think that they know more about the material needs of the Colonies than the officials in charge of the Colonies themselves. Two instances have been recently brought to my notice which would be laughable were they not so deplorably unbusiness-like. A certain West African Colony required a two-ton engine for a short, light railway. The request was duly put forward. After months of delay an eight-ton engine was sent out, too heavy, of course, for the rails to support it. It was entirely useless. Again, a scheme was drawn up for the construction of a bridge by the local official responsible. An estimate was made, and the plans and so forth were forwarded home. The bridge was urgently required. Months elapsed; then the Crown Agents, who knew nothing of the local conditions, instead of despatching the materials, sent out an entirely different counter-scheme, far more elaborate, far more costly, and totally unsuited to local requirements. The Colony is still waiting for its bridge.[25] I can only repeat that, whether avowed or not—in many cases, of course, it manifestly cannot be avowed—the Crown Agents are looked upon in official and commercial circles in West Africa as an unmitigated nuisance and a stumbling-block to progress.

The needs of British West Africa at the present time may be resumed thus: (1) A Council or Advisory Board in which the merchant element shall be widely represented; (2) Tight control over the military element—fewer punitive expeditions, and more tact and patience in dealing with native races, the officials whose administration is virgin of wars to be looked upon as deserving of prior promotion; (3) Economy in Administration; (4) Thorough financial overhaul; (5) Elimination of the Crown Agents; (6) Open tenders for all public works; (7) Sanitation; (8) Scientific study of native peoples, laws and languages; (9) Scientific study of native products and improvement of native industries; (10) Maintenance and not murder of native institutions, upholding and strengthening of the power of the Chiefs; non-interference with domestic slavery in the Protectorates; preservation of native land-tenure; (11) A Civil Service on the lines of the Indian Civil Service; (12) A Civilian Governor-General.

PART II