PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
།།།།།།
Reference :-
2 C.O.885
19 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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(page 15).
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do not think that this is ate pronouncement. Residents, at any ould uphold the authority of the chiefs, to raise the standard of chiefs and tribes- se, until by common consent the system An out of date.
gard to Fiji, Mr. Chamberlain expressed There it of government mere happily:
m for difference of opinion about the aims he British government of the natives of uld set before itself. The first and most nt is the encouragement among them of of individual effort and selt reliance eful regulation of the communal system, mied by a gradual loosing of its bonds, is
• policy which will enable the change to a of individual life and government to be lished, not without friction, but at least
serious disturbance.“*
ng as there are chiefs, they should be to the utmost. In the words of Sir C. rs, when giving evidence before the Commission, “As long as they had to iefs they must give them authority and [them.”†
'eylon we pay salaries to many of the n. and I think in the Malay Peninsula They are not only native aristocrats but rvants of the Government. How far the practice holls elsewhere in the British 2. others will be able to say: the advan- of it are obvious; the prospect of regular and pension appeals not only to the ts of the natives but to their pride; they,
Government a recognised position as
; and they are gradually trained to rule
: ruled in citizen fashion.
Frederic Lugard's memorandum on the con of Natives in Northern Nigeria‡ gives,
as I understand it, a very interesting and tive are unt of how native chiefs can be
d under European guidance, Apparently rovince there is at the top the native Emir British Resident. The province is divided free or four “administrative divisions,” each an Assistant Resident; and into a number tricts, each under a district headman." ollects the tax from the village healmen, in turn distribute the tax among the The unit. so far as government is
ers.
ruel, is the village, and the proportion to id by the individual is left to the village nau, as in India."
e 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.
orrespondence relating to native taxation, &c., as p. 20, fatal Native Affairs Commission, Evidence, p. 126. 'olonial Reports, Miscellaneous, No. 40. Feb., 1907.
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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."
(ii) 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 scattered 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, eg, a specified district or area, but a group of individuals—u tribe or a clan-however scattered." Under the old régime "the officers of the native state who held lands from the Emir under a system amlo- gous to the fiefs of our own femulal system were the owners or lords not of a self-contained aren with its towns and villages, but of individual towns scattered at great distances from each other all over the Emirate, which made residence in the fief impossible.". Now with the creation of 'districts the fief holder disappears as such. As far as possible, these former tief-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 fiel-holders have thus, for the most part, become district headmen, where they were willing to reside in their districts."
Thus the chiefs have become 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 Chiefs 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 recognised 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 tribu....”*
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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