TAXATION OF NATIVES IN NORTHERN NIGERIA. 17 
remunerative within a short period, but—what is, in my view, 
far more important—a country situated as Northern Nigeria is, 
can develop sound methods of administration and of taxation at 
that period of its infancy and tutelage when they can best be 
imposed without friction and discontent, and when the minds 
of the people are in a condition receptive of the innovations 
introduced by the advent of a new suzerainty. Later, when 
they have settled down under that rule, and have gauged, as they 
suppose, its demands, it is more difficult to introduce schemes 
of this nature without awakening resentment and discontent. 
Effect on Native Labour and Slavery Questions. 
16. Since (as I have said) the main questions of administra 
tion are intimately connected, a review of taxation would be 
incomplete without a brief allusion to the greatest problem of 
African Administration, in so far as it is connected with this 
subject, viz., the question of native labour and slavery. The 
institution of this scheme of taxation and of reform in the 
Native Administration has brought the British staff into touch 
with the natives as no other method could have done, and has 
made it impossible for Mohammedan chiefs even surreptitiously 
to demand payment of taxes in slaves as was the former custom, 
since the assessment and payments of every village are known to 
the British officers. It has brought home to the latter the real diffi 
culties of the native chiefs and landowners in meeting their obli 
gations, and maintaining their position in the face of a decreasing 
supply of labour, due to the cessation in the supply of slaves, 
and the large number who have asserted their freedom. The 
scheme of taxation aims at providing a modest but sufficient 
income for the ruling classes, derived from a fair and moderate 
tax upon the peasantry, thus enabling the former to maintain 
their position without recourse to slave-raiding and extortion, 
and the latter to devote themselves to increasing the output of 
their land, with the assurance that they will reap the fruits of 
their industry, and that it will not be subject to arbitrary con 
fiscation. In my view this reform was imperative and vital 
to the maintenance of the whole social system, and the preser 
vation of the whole fabric of native administration, which other 
wise seemed in danger of collapse from the great fundamental 
revolution caused by the prohibition of slave-raiding and slave 
trading. That simultaneously a large source of revenue has 
been created, which will steadily increase, is, in a sense, acci 
dental, for the re-organisation was a vital necessity, and a 
natural corollary of the abolition of the slave-raid and the 
slave-market, even had Government abstained from appropriat 
ing any share of the taxation. Moreover, the demand for coin 
wherewith to pay the tax acts as a powerful stimulant to labour 
and industry. There is, moreover, another aspect. The first 
inevitable result of the abolition of the legal status of slavery 
86472 B