This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
408
AN ALTERNATIVE PLAN
chap.

should be allowed them to bring him to his bearings, and if at the expiration of this time they fail to do so, without any further delay the sub-commissioner should step in. In a very short time the chiefs' council would see the advisability of keeping this from happening, and also see that it can only be prevented by enforcing good government among themselves.

Well, this West Indian guard should of course be under its proper military officers, and at the disposal of the sub-commissioner, and well installed in barracks, and made generally as happy as circumstances will permit.

Then again in each town which forms the centre of a sub-commissioner's district there should be representatives of any firms who may wish to trade there. They can each have their separate factories, or form a local association for working the trade of the district as it pleases them. I think it would be advisable that in each of these towns away in the interior there should be a warehouse, whereto all goods coming up for the separate trading firms should be delivered, and wherein all exports ready for transport to the coast should be lodged, and the figures concerning these things ascertained. This should be the business of the sub-commissioner's secretary, and he can be aided in it by a black clerk. But it would not be a custom-house, because customs, like native regiments, do not exist out there under his system.

If any of the firms like to establish sub-factories in the district outside the town, they should have every facility impartially afforded them to do so. Any attack made on them by the natives should be promptly revenged, but outside the town in all trade matters the native law should rule under the administration of the local chief,