NIGERIA UNDER BRITISH RULE 463 abolition of slave-raiding and slave-trading need not be discussed. There is no voice that would be raised in humane society in favour of the maintenance of these institutions. The abolition of the legal status of slaveryhas an effect in two ways. It is different from the abolition of slavery. It means only that the law as administered in British courts does not recognise the existence of slaves, and that property in persons as slaves is not admitted. It is not forbidden to a native to hold slaves so long as the master and slave are mutually satisfied, but the slave can at any time assert his freedom if he wishes to do so. Under this system emancipation is gradual, and the value of it is that, without dislocating the whole machinery of labour in the Protectorate, it gives to the individual slave the power to change his condition if he pleases. This is the first and obvious use. The second effect is no less useful. It tends to lessen the value of property in slaves by the fact that no one is a slave any longer than he chooses to remain one, and that property in slaves is not property in the eyes of British law. This, combined with the increasing difficulty and expense of obtaining slaves in consequence of the abolition of the slave-trade and slave-raid, will have the natural economic effect of preventing the investment of money in slave property. Thus, by pressure of circumstance, without abolition, and without compensation, the slave-owner will gradually cease to exist.

Having set the machinery of freedom in motion towards an inevitable end, it is not to the interest of the administration to hasten its operation. On the contrary, it is evidently to be desired in the interests of the country that it should work slowly.

While the stream of investment is being diverted from its old employment, and a free generation of children born after the advent of British administration is growing up, a process of education is going on of both classes, upper and servile, to the conception of a free labour contract and the respective responsibilities under it of master