the case in West Africa. Nevertheless, direct rule is a constant temptation. It offers greater opportunities to employment and promotion in some branches of the service. It increases the scope of judicial, secretarial, police and military activities. It assists, too, the educated native barrister trained in English law, and the native educated clerk, which our political system continues to turn out in great numbers, in the exercise of their professions. It helps the European capitalist in a hurry to push on what he calls "development." The missionary is apt to regard an indigenous mechanism of government as a hindrance to Christian propaganda. Finally, there is the type of European who is racially biassed against the retention of any sort of authority by the African in his own country. And, as a matter of fact, as already stated, it is only in Northern Nigeria, which has been blessed with a series of the ablest and most far-seeing British administrators, that the policy of governing the African on African lines has become consecrated in actual legislation, and the pernicious habit of allowing the law of England to encroach upon native customary law in matters affecting the land has been ruled out. In Southern Nigeria, in the Gold Coast and in Sierra Leone, general policy has been directed to preserving the native mechanism of government, but the absence of definite land legislation is permitting encroachments which will work much evil if not soon checked. It was with the intention of exploring the evil and circumscribing it, that the West African Lands Committee, referred to above, was appointed.
There can be no doubt upon which side lies the welfare of the native population. The African system of government, reposing upon a system of land tenure, essentially just and suited to the requirements of the people, is the natural machinery for the administration of the community. It is capable of sustaining the strain of innovation and modification consequent upon the advent of European influences, provided it is supported by the European executive. If it enjoys that support it will gradually evolve in such a way as will enable it to cope with changes rendered inevitable by the fusion which is going on, by the growth of permanent cultivation and by the increasing prosperity of the individual. Deprived of that support it will collapse.
