THE ROYAL NIGER COMPANY 363 the defence was provided at public expense, should be administered at private discretion. The Company had not, of course, attained the accomplishment of its ambitions without exciting many jealousies, and giving rise to widespread criticism at home and abroad. By foreign Powers its too successful methods were made the object of vituperative campaigns in the press, and of more discreet but not less urgent diplomatic remonstrance in the Cabinet. At home complaints were frequent that the concentration of administrative and commercial powers in the same hands gave advantages to the Niger Company over its commercial rivals which amounted to a virtual monopoly of trade which was nominally free. An internal campaign against the Mohammedan chiefs of Nupe and Ilorin, which was forced upon the Company in the opening months of 1897, successfully executed as it was, had also served to give some indication in responsible quarters of the probable development of administrative difficulties on an increasing scale, as soon as any serious attempt should be made to establish white authority, for practical purposes, over vast territories where the thorny questions which mark the difference between civilised and semi-civilised administration were as yet untouched.

For these and other reasons it was recognised that the pioneer work of acquisition had been accomplished, and that the time had come, more swiftly than in the case of other great British companies, on whose precedent the Niger Company had been founded, to abolish a charter which had served its purpose, and to incorporate the territories acquired by the Company with the other colonies and dependencies of the Empire. The charter of the Company was surrendered to the Crown.

Its territories were divided : the lower reaches of the river south of Ida being included, under the name of Southern Nigeria, with the Protectorate of the Oil Rivers, extending from the colony of Lagos to the German frontier ; while the interior cut off from the sea was