Page:Morel-The Black Mans Burden.djvu/217

 this statement will appear absurd. It is, however, strictly accurate, and it is not too much to say that if the African system of land tenure existed in England, the English people would be a happier people and, in the truest sense of the term, a more prosperous people, i.e., the mass of the people would be more prosperous. "I conceive that land belongs to a vast family, of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are yet unborn." That picturesque phrase, which fell from the lips of a dignified African ruler, examined by the West African Lands Committee, symbolises the entire philosophy of African social )ife, political, economic and spiritual. The fundamental conception underlying native tenure all over Africa (with a few reputed exceptions) where the white man has not undermined or destroyed it, is that land, like air and water, is God-given; that every individual within the community has a right to share in its bounties provided he carries out his social and political obligations to the community of which he forms part; that in the community as a whole is vested the ownership of the land, and that consequently the individual member of the community cannot permanently alienate the land he occupies and uses. The word "community" may typify the "family," a term which has a much wider significance than it has with us, the standard being a traceable consanguinity; or the clan, sometimes called the "house" and sometimes the "village"; or the tribe, which is a collection of clans, "houses" or "villages"; or, again—the final development—the collection of tribes under a kingship—a kingship which approximates more nearly (with rare exceptions) to a democratic, or rather to a Socialistic republic. But whether the smaller or larger social organisation be regarded as the landowning unit, the same common principle permeates the social structure and lies at the root of all social philosophy.

There is no word in our language which is capable of describing with accuracy this African system under which land is held and used. The terms "communal ownership" and "individual ownership" as employed by us are far too rigid to define a system which partakes of the character of both. In our eyes private property in land signifies freehold in land, and freehold in land implies that the individual is the absolute owner, and