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410
AN ALTERNATIVE PLAN
chap.

and paid, not by the municipalities, but by the Grand Council.

Each municipality should occupy in the system an identical position to that occupied by the sub-commissioner in his town, and communicate with the district commissioner direct, receive all goods, and make returns of them to him. They should each have and be responsible for hospitals and schools within the town, and for its police, lighting, and sanitary affairs. Each municipality should be paid by the Government the same pay as a sub-commissioner, £1,000 a year. They should get their extra resources from a charge on the trade of the town at a fixed rate made by the Grand Council for all municipalities under the system.

This system would do away with the division of our possessions, at present so misleading and vexatious and unnecessary, into Colonies and Protectorates, and substitute for that division the just division into regions under our Landes Ober Hoheit (municipalities), and those under our Ober Hoheit—(sub-commissioners' districts). Both alike would be under the Governor-General as representing the Grand Council.

There still remains one important new development in our West African methods—the organisation of native labour. The institution of a regular and reliable labour supply seems to me one of the most vital things for the progress of West Africa. There is undoubtedly in West Africa an enormous supply of labour, and that the true negro can work and work well the Krumen have amply demonstrated. All that is required is method and organisation. This you could easily supply. If, for example, you were to direct those energies of yours which are now employed in raising native regiments in the hinterland to raising