Page:The empire and the century.djvu/902

 the more civilized races, where individual rights in property have become recognised, it is possible to institute a graduated taxation, according to the wealth and ability of each member of the community to pay it.

Direct taxation is also unsuitable to a people who are held in a state of slavery or serfdom, for the responsibility of the individual is then assumed by the slaveowner. A serf or slave cannot be expected to recognise or understand his obligation to the Government when the results of his labours are not his own, and the produce of the fields he tills belongs to his master. He ceases to have an individual responsibility to the State for his actions, or an obligation to maintain its efficiency by his contributions, however small. These obligations pass to his overlord. Direct taxation, therefore, as being the State recognition of the rights and duties of the individual, is the moral charter of independence of a people. Communities, moreover, who have only recently emerged from such a state of servitude take some time to acquire this sense of responsibility and of obligation. One of the chief defects of Mohammedan rule in Africa is that it holds a large section of the people in this state of irresponsible tutelage, thereby arresting all progress.

The fertility of the soil and the abundance of marketable sylvan produce which needs no culture, the employment of women in manual labour, and the absence of the pressure of population in countries devastated by tribal wars and slave raids, combine to afford the African an abundant leisure, which, in the absence of any external incentive to work, is apt to be devoted to indolence, quarrelling, drink, or sensuality. The imposition of a moderate taxation supplies such an incentive and stimulates production, while at the same time it promotes the circulation of a currency, to the great benefit of trade.

In Northern Nigeria the proposal is to collect the ancient taxes in a simplified and modified form by the agency of the native chief and district headmen, without the intermediary of the tax-collectors, who formerly