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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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4 You have yourself dwelt upon the principal objection that can be, and has been, raised against it, which is that it tends to perpetuate and intensify the isolation of the tribe, and their adherence to the conditions of a nomadic life," so that the same problem might recur in future. However, Lord Lansdowne conceded in principle, and approved in the particular instance, "the creation of reserves under proper administrative control,” and the policy is been continued in East Africa.

Exclusiveness is the whole point of reserves. White men are excluded in order to safeguard the natives within the reserved area. **The

definite acceptance of the policy of native re- serves," wrote Lord Lansdowne in the same despatch, "implies, of course, an absolute guarantee that the natives will, so long as they desire it, remain in undisturbed and ex- clusive possession of the areas set apart for their use." Accordingly, I notice that, in re- gard to recent native reserves in East Africa, the Commissioner for Lands has laid down, as a principle in dealing with requests for land by Christian Missionaries, that "if the Chiefs will consent. I shall make no objection to their having smal plots of ground inside a reserve, sufficient for a louse and garden; but that if they want a larger area, they must seek for it outside on the same terms as other settlers."

I should have said that a system of native reserves ought to be regarded as no more than a temporary makeshift, unsound in principle because stereotyping exclusiveness and non- citizenship, and only to be defended on the score of particular local circumstances as a necessary safeguard of the natives for the time being; but there are reserves and reserves, and a reserve in which some purely savage tribes are allowed to wander unmolested is one thing, while a reserve which is organised and really under proper ad- ministrative control "is another. A reserve of the latter kind is, I take it, Basutoland, where there is a well-organised tribal system with chiefs guided by white officers, and now possessing an advisory Council. The Resident Commissioner and Assistant Commissioners answer, if I under- stand rightly, to what in India and the East would be called Residents, and such a reserve may well be made a good training ground for ordinary citizenship.

This aspect of Reserves, viz., as a training ground, we'l brought out in the Natal Report (par. 55): “The way must be opened for them to congregate in locations, where they should be strictly supervised, induced to become better cultivators, and be influenced by the direct ap- plication of civilising agencies. The visible leaders in these reformative agencies would be the official, the missionary, the medical man, and the teacher: each, in his own sphere, help. ing to raise the standards of thought and life, and preparing them to forsake the trammels of

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tribalism, and enter by progressive stages into the higher status of individualism.”

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(B) The system of Residents has been most highly developed and most conspicuously success- ful with Indian princes and Malay Sultans. I know no reason why it should be less successful with lower grades of native races; and as matter of fact, to a greater or less extent, under one mame or another, it exists in most if not all native territories in the British Empire. Northern Nigeria for instance is allotted out among Residents and Assistant Residents, and I take it that here us elsewhere they are the advisers and controllers of the native chiefs.

The Malay Sultans were, as I understand, despots, and the chiefs under them were mainly -connected by blood with the ruler for the time being. There was little or no system, but more or less anarchy. Our Residents in these States are nominally advisers; they are Englishmen governing in and through the Sultans; they deal, it is true, with a semi-civilised race, and the whole population of the country is under them; there is therefore no separation. But there is no primà facie impossibility of having such a system for a part of a country or a part of its people. It is only a matter of difference in degree, not of difference in kind. Where the system is most developed, the Residents are most numerous and best qualified.

The evils of a separate native organisation, one would think, would best be met by giving the personal element, the want of which the Natal Commission deplores, in the form of British Residents with the native head-chiefs. In South Africa there appears to be, in the different colonies, a large machinery for dealing with the natives; but in 1905 (whatever may have been done since) the Native Affairs Com- mission formed the conclusion that in the Transvaal, and in a lower degree in Natal, and elsewhere, there is in largely populated native arcas a numerical insufficiency of magistrates and Native Commissioners qualified by experience to deal with natives” (Report pp. 33-4); and, to judge from the recent Natal report, there is in that Colony at any rate a want of highly skilled and carefully selected officers" in direct control of the natives (page 6), and an insufficient number of magistrates (page 18); there appears also to be a want of executive and advisory officers as distinct from the magistrates, who, in Natal, and, I think I am right in saying, elsewhere in South Africa, generally, for ob- vious reasons of economy, combine administra- tive with judicial authority.

(7) The Natal report seems to regard the appointment of Commissioners or white advisers as EL valuable means of breaking down the authority of the Chiefs. The Commissioners “should be used to supplant the chiefs in the estimation of their people, and thus gradually help with other agencies to break down the tribal