were the curse of the country. We propose to share the results with the native chiefs, who no longer have to keep up standing armies and other expenses of Government. The policing of the country is now undertaken by the Government, upon whom, therefore, it devolves to enforce the payment of traditional taxes. The British Administration is thus brought into close touch with the native rulers—themselves aliens in the Mohammedan States—and the interests of both become identical, and close cooperation is insured, while the chiefs will be assured of a regular income (which they are now powerless to enforce), to replace the former arbitrary levies and the profits of the slave trade. For the evils of an alien and absentee landlordism, working through an agency of alien tax-gatherers, is substituted a system under which each village chief collects from the individual, and pays to a local district headman, who in turn pays direct to the Emir and Government This effects decentralization of native rule—which is no less important than decentralization by the Administration itself—and gives to the men who occupy positions of importance definite duties and responsibilities.
It IS wise, as Lord Cromer has said, to make the incidence of taxation as light as possible in the first years of administration, so as to encourage productive industry, and not overburden the peasantry in the earlier stages of agricultural and industrial development; but it is equally wise, in my view, to habituate all classes to their obligation to contribute to the State. Nor can the conditions of the peasantry in Egypt, where I understand that irrigable and cultivatable land is of great value, be considered as identical with those of a country like Nigeria, where limitless land, fertile and well watered, lies ready to the hand of the cultivator, who needs only an incentive to employ his indolent leisure. The serious difficulty lies in the fact that, in the early stages, pending the wider distribution of currency, payment must be made in kind, and its transport and realization present obstacles which almost nullify its
