CHAPTER XLIX NIGERIA UNDER BRITISH RULE: SLAVERY The position of the Fulani chiefs was, however, in the first instance, profoundly modified by a condition which was of the very essence of British administration. A large part of their revenue had consisted of tribute paid in slaves, and, in some cases, of the tithe levied on the produce of slave-raids, which they conducted either in person or by the medium of the commander of their troops. But under British government, the slave-raid and the slave-trade were abolished, and all dealing in slaves became illegal. It was not made illegal for a native to own slaves, but by the abolition of the legal status of slavery, every slave who chose to do so could assert his freedom, while the decree making all children free who were born in the Protectorate after April i, 1901, was a decree of general emancipation of the coming generation.

The fact has to be faced by the administrator in Mohammedan Africa, that the abolition of slavery is not a straightforward task of beneficence. It carries with it grave and undeniable disadvantages to the slaves as well as to their owners, and the objections urged against it by the local rulers and employers are not by any means without foundation.

Property in slaves, whatever may be thought of it by the enlightened conscience of Europe, is as real to the Mohammedan as any other form of property. Slavery is an institution sanctioned by the law of Islam, and to abolish it without compensation to the Mohammedan slave-owners would be an act of injustice amounting to nothing less than wholesale confiscation.

It has to be remembered, also, that in countries 460