and regulating a native labour army, it would be better. A native regiment of soldiers is a thing you do not want in any hinterland district, whereas the native regiment of labourers is a thing you do want very badly.
There is also in this connection another fact: while, under the present state of affairs, one colony will be choked with men anxious for work, and another colony will be starving for labour, if all the English colonies were united under one system, and a regular labour department were instituted, this would be obviated.
There exist in West Africa two sources of labour supply, but I think the Labour Department had better deal with only one of them—the free paid labour—the other, the convict, would be better placed under the kind care of the municipalities.
All persons convicted of offences other than capital, should be, at the discretion of the magistrates, sentenced to a fine, or so many weeks' labour. The whole of this labour should be devoted to the Public Works Department of the Municipality, not of the State, and above all, should not be sent away up into the hinterland, where there will be no one to look after it as convict labour requires. Quite apart from this, there should be the State Labour Department, whose jurisdiction would extend over both colony and hinterland, and whose white officials should be a distinct line in the service; one or more of these officials should be in every hinterland sub-commissioner's town. They would be recruiters and drillers of labourers, just as you now have recruiters and drillers of soldiers there; and a requisition should be made to all the chiefs, to draft into this labour army any person, under their rule, who might be anxious to serve as a labourer; and they
