Such was the state of the country in 1900, when its administration was assumed by the British Government. It has been the task of the Administration to endeavour to restore the ancient régime, improved by British ideas of justice and organization, and to introduce a system of rule in which the native chief and the British rulers shall be identified in a single effective machine, each cooperating with and complementing the other, while the emancipation of the peasantry alike from slavery and from extortion may lead to the increase of population, and of productive industry. It is as yet early to judge how far the untiring enthusiasm of the political staff has succeeded in realizing the first beginnings of these ideals, for the Administration is as yet but five and a half years old, and the first years were occupied in consolidating British rule, and in creating the machinery with which to work.
III.—Administrative Questions.
This brief sketch of the conditions which obtain in West Africa, and more especially in Northern Nigeria, will, I trust, have aroused sufficient interest in my reader to justify me in adding a few words on the nature of some of the problems with which the young British Administrator has to deal in Africa, and the methods by which he endeavours to solve them.
(a) Slavery.—Among the problems which are peculiarly African that of slavery occupies a prominent place. The British tradition (which I should be very sorry to see abandoned) is that in any country which has been annexed to the Crown, and has become a Colony under the British flag, slavery is not tolerated in any form; but that in the initial stage of development, which under most diverse and varying conditions has been called by the ambiguous term of a 'Protectorate,' it is impossible to forbid domestic slavery. This tradition would, however, appear to have been set aside in the case of Ashanti, which has been annexed, and in
