NIGERIA UNDER BRITISH RULE 465 as far as possible discouraged, some provision has to be made. This difficulty is met in part by the establishment of freed slave homes for the women and children, the larger number of runaways being women whose cases are more properly cases of divorce. Men are expected to support themselves. Another difficulty of the transition period which has to be taken notice of, is the master's difficulty of obtaining labour for necessary industries as the bond of the existing labour contract is loosened. This would certainly become grave were runaway slaves provided for on any large scale in a condition of idleness.

In tropical Africa the ground is so fertile, and the wants of the primitive native so few, that a family may be easily supported for a year on the produce of a few weeks' work. Dr. Barth says that, in Northern Nigeria, a family could live comfortably for a year on produce of which the equivalent value in English money would be £. Beyond the satisfaction of these simple requirements there is no need for the native to work. As a free agent he may therefore prefer to be idle. But he has, in slavery, the habit of work, the country can only be developed and made prosperous by labour, and it would be retrogression, not progress, if a race now fairly laborious were, by a too sudden alteration of the social system, to be rendered idle and vagrant.

There is no need that this should happen in Nigeria, where, as we have seen from Dr. Barth's description, the pagans whom the Bornuese raided for slaves were in their free state extremely industrious. Two conditions appear to be of value in preventing such an unsatisfactory result.

One, which is the first essential of all social progress, is that each man should feel himself secure in the possession of the fruits of his labour ; the other, which seems at first sight like a contradiction in terms, is that he should be obliged to contribute his share towards the expenses of the State. The apparent contradiction is accepted by all civilised societies, and takes the form of security from confiscation accompanied by regular taxation. 2 G