4o6 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY Fulani to its most complete expression. Here, in addition to the emir and a council of princes composed only of descendants of the founder of the dynasty, which, though not entirely hereditary, bore some resemblance to a House of Lords, there was also a council corresponding in some degree to our own House of Commons. This was a council of notables, not of royal blood, but holding important state offices, and including the waziri or prime minister, the chief justice, the chief preacher, the commander-in-chief of the army, and the principal officers of the emir's household. The head of this council was the prime minister, and it was the prime minister, not one of the members of the council of princes, who was regarded as second in the state to the emir. Neither council was in a literal sense elective, the appointment to both being in the hands of the emir. But by native custom no appointment was made to either council without giving time for an expression of public opinion, and there were certain recognised methods by which the emir took the advice of his people in the matter both of appointments to council and to all the principal offices of state. Important matters of public policy were referred to the consideration of the two councils sitting together, but the ordinary business of the state was carried on by a privy council composed of two officers taken from each council, who were in constant consultation with the emir. This constitution is believed to have been adopted from the original Nupe state system. The constitutions of Sokoto and Gando, both of them new states created by the Fulani, are less elaborate.

By the end of the nineteenth century, that is, at the moment of the introduction of British authority, the territory of Haussaland may be said to have divided itself into three classes of states. There were states under Fulani rule such as those just named, where Fulani institutions were in active existence ; other states conquered by the Fulani and nominally under Fulani rule, where taxes and Mohammedan institutions were imposed in