16 
COLONIAL REPORTS—MISCELLANEOUS. 
debited against the expenditure votes on these accounts). A 
limit is, therefore, placed upon the amount of taxation which 
can be usefully imposed upon the people in aid of the revenue 
of the Protectorate, but were a light railway to be made to 
Kano from the Niger, it would become possible to profitably 
export produce from the districts served by the railway and its 
feeder roads, and it would then become possible to receive as 
taxes not merely the cash issued by Government as pay 
ment of troops and labour (or produce required for the food of 
Government employés), but also produce for export over-seas 
which, by the medium of merchants, could be converted into 
revenue. On the other hand, the cash put into circulation by 
the large local payments for labour on such railways, &c., 
would provide the wherewithal to pay the taxes, and would 
greatly stimulate the circulation of currency, while the 
immense cheapening of imported goods (cottons and hardware, 
&c.), would raise the standard of comfort and of wealth 
in the interior districts so that the people would (though 
paying a higher tax) still be able to increase their material 
comfort. At the present moment the tax is paid in British 
currency in provinces near the Niger, like Illorin, Nupe, and 
Kabba. In more remote provinces it is only partly paid 
in coin, to the extent to which coin is put into circulation 
by Government in the payment of troops and labourers. 
The remainder is paid partly in supplies required by Govern 
ment (grain for horses, &c.), and partly in kind (chiefly 
cowries), which it is found extremely difficult to realise in a 
form payable to revenue. It results from this view of the 
matter, that public works undertaken in the interior, where in 
sufficient cash currency exists for payment of taxes, really 
cost the Government but little, since the payment for the 
labour required comes back to Government in the shape of 
taxes which are otherwise unrealisable. In the meantime the 
incalculable advantage is gained of developing the country by 
means of these public works (roads, &c), on the one hand, and 
of habituating the people to a reasonable and fair taxation on 
the other hand. It would, in my view, be very unwise to allow 
the scheme of taxation to lapse in great part owing to the 
impossibility of realisation, for at a future period, when im 
proved communications rendered realisation easy, it would be 
very difficult to re-institute it. Questions of sound adminis 
tration are so intimately connected with each other, and inter 
act so much upon each other, that it is impossible to wholly 
exclude other matters in writing upon taxation. The question 
of the realisation is a vital one in the imposition of taxation, 
but it necessarily involves a brief glance at the question of 
transport, and of the development of the country by public 
works. The root of the matter, in a word, is, that by the judici 
ous expenditure of a certain amount of capital in the early 
stages of a country’s development, not only can that country 
be made self-supporting, and that capital expenditure become