NIGERIA UNDER BRITISH RULE 477 as the Mohammedan states, their taxes being assessed on the basis of tradition, and the result shared with the British Government. The second class of independent pagans are of very low type, and have hardly yet so far advanced in civilisation as to have an organised state, owing allegiance to a recognised chief. Their chiefs are little more than elders or heads of families. Upon these communities it is proposed to levy a very light tax, payable direct to the British Government as an acknowledgment of its suzerainty. The tax is to be a communal tax, payable through the village elders, and it will be the object of the administration gradually to group these villages together under a central chief, in the hope of raising them to the higher social plane of more civilised races. The obligation to pay tribute to the power whose laws they recognise is well understood by these tribes. It constitutes an acknowledgment on their part of authority and submission to a superior power which forbids brigandage on the roads, &c. As they are often industrious, and rich in flocks and herds, the burden is nominal, while the moral to be enforced is of importance.

But though reform of taxation is as the bed-rock of other reform, it is but a foundation upon which much else must be raised before the substitution of a reign of law for a reign of force can become permanently effective.

To give law a proper place in its literal sense, it was necessary partly to create, and partly to restore and reform the means of dispensing justice through the Protectorate. The principle by which the Native Administration has been incorporated as an integral part of one executive with the British has been applied as far as possible to the judicial system. This has as its machinery three principal engines. There is first a Supreme Court, which is the highest judicial tribunal in the country, and is presided over by the Chief-Justice. To this court there are affiliated local cantonment courts, presided over by British cantonment magistrates, who are Commissioners