PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
mimimmi
Reference :-
C.O.885
19 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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system" (page 15). Ldo not think that this is a fortunate pronouncement. Residents, at ang rate, should 'uphold the authority of the chiefs, and try to raise the standard of chiefs and tribes. men alike, until by comtaon consent the system has grown out of date.
In regard to Fiji, Mr. Chamberlain expressed the object of government more happily :
There
is no room for difference of opinion about the aims which the British government of the natives of Fiji should set before itself. The first and most important is the encouragement among them of a spirit of individual effort and selt reliance The careful regulation of the communal system, accompanied by a gradual loosing of its bonds, is the only policy which will enable the change to a system of individual life and government to be accomplished, not without friction, but at least without serious disturbance.'
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As long as there are chiefs, they should be utilised to the utmost. In the words of, Sir C. Saunders, when giving evidence before the Natal Commission, "As long as they had to have chiefs they must give them authority and support them."
In Ceylon we pay salaries to many of the headmen, and I think in the Malay Peninsula too. They are not only native aristocrats but paid servants of the Government. How far the sume practice holds elsewhere in the British Empire, others will be able to say; the advan- tages of it are obvious; the prospect of regular salary and pension appeals not only to the interests of the natives but to their pride; they holl a recognised position as Government officers; and they are gradually trained to rule and be ruled in citizen fashion.
Sir Frederic Lugard's memorandum on the Taxation of Natives in Northern Nigeria‡ gives, as far as I understand it, a very interesting and instructive account of how native chiefs can be utilised under European guidance. Apparently in a province there is at the top the native Emir and a British Resident. The province is divided into three or four "administrative divisions," each under an Assistant Resident; and into a number of districts. "each under a district houdman," who collects the tax from the village headmen, who in turn distribute the tax among the villagers. The unit, so far as government is concerned, is the village, and the proportion to be paid by the individual is left to the village headman, as in India,”
The points of special interest are as follows :--
(i) that
the district headmen are chiefs and court officials or favourites who have been converted into Government officers.
Correspondence relating to native taxation, &e,, as above, p. 20.
↑ Natal Native Affairs Commission, Evidence, p. 126. Colonial Reports, Miscellaneous, No. 40), Feb., 1307.
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(ii) that, while they are at present paid by shares or percentages of the tax collected, so soon as the system has been put into effective operation, and has become well understood, these percentages would with advantage be changed into permanent salaries paid by the Govern- ment out of the total proceeds of the taxation."
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(iii) that they are executive officers only, judicial power being vested in the Native Courts."
(iv) that they are in many cases chiefs of a tribe or class which has smuttered in different directions, who have been converted into "territorial magnates appointed to the charge of a specified area of territory."
"The unit
through a great part of
the Protectorate was not territorial, e.g., a specified district or area, but a group of individuals-L tribe or a clan-however scatteral." Under the old régime" the officers of the native state wh held lands from the Emir under a system analo- gous to the fiefs of our own feudal system were the owners or lords not of a self-contained area with its towns and villages, but of individual towns scattere lat great distances from each other all over the Einirate, which made residence in the with the creation of fief impossible." Now 'districts the fief holder disappears as such. As far as possible, these former fief-holders have been given districts,' and they now become officials recognised alike by the Native and the British Government, resident in their district and responsible for its taxation, and for law and order within it
The fiet-holders have
**
thus, for the inost part, become district headmen, where they were willing to reside in their districts."
Thus the chiefs have becoine or are becoming regular salaried officers of an organised govern ment working under European supervision ; and, simultaneously, a fixed quantity, the district, is taking the place of a moveable quantity, the clan, as the unit of the system.
Native Chicfs are very much utilised in West Africa. To take two further illustrations. On
the Gold Coast at the head of each tribe is a chief, who is elected as a general rule cut of a particular family according to a well recognisel law of succession, whilst in some cases several such tribes are grouped under a Head Chief similarly elected. These tribal organisations are both military and political in character. By native custom chiefs have certain executive functions, and with their Councillors form judicial tribunals having jurisdiction over the people of the tribe."*
This is quoted from a report by the Attorney General of the colony in connexion with Native
• Enclosure to 2052/04–5.
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