Page:The empire and the century.djvu/901

 selling price of his goods, and the native producer, who therefore ultimately pays by collecting a larger quantity of produce for a given amount of goods, neither knows of nor cares about the tax. Such methods of indirect taxation are suitable to a savage population, but among the higher races of Northern Nigeria, who have inherited a Mohammedan civilization, direct taxation, as I have already said, is an institution sanctioned by tradition, and accepted as a natural law by the people. It remains to settle how it may be collected with the least leakage and waste, and with the least chance of extortion and oppression in the collection; in what proportion it shall be shared between the Government and the native chiefs; to simplify and organize the too diverse forms which it has taken in the past; and to regulate its incidence on the people so that each may pay in proportion to his means.

The disadvantage of limiting taxation to the collection of Customs lies in the fact that, when a country has attained a further stage of civilization, it is difficult to institute that direct taxation which all civilized States recognise as due to the Administration from the individual, according to his wealth and ability, and the amount of protection, and cheapening of commodities by improved communications and other public works, for which he is indebted to the Government. Where, therefore, it is feasible and possible to introduce the first rudiments of a direct taxation among uncivilized tribes, it has a value apart from the mere amount of revenue collected, in habituating them to the idea of an obligation to the State which it is incumbent on them to discharge, and at the same time it is an outward and visible sign which they well understand of the acknowledgment of the Suzerain Power, with the correlative necessity of obeying the injunctions of the Government to abstain from outrages and lawlessness. Among such tribes in West Africa property is usually held on a communal basis, and the impost is therefore necessarily in the nature of a capitation or poll-tax; whereas among