ABSTRACT
IN the September issue of the Nineteenth Century Review an elaborate defence of the policy responsible for the recent disturbances in Sierra Leone, is attempted by Mr. Harry L. Stephen. e defence is conceived in a spirit that nds but too ready acceptance at a time, when the perfervid cult of the Imperial idea threatens to obscure those rst principles of morality and righteous dealing towards native races, upon which the greatness of our Colonial Empire is based. To the natives is attributed the maximum of vice; to the white Administrator, an infallibility which must never be questioned. To demur to the former proposition is to exhibit a sentimentalism at once unhealthy and absurd; to doubt the latter, involves the charge of lack of patriotism. It has seemed to the writer of the present pamphlet that this form of reasoning, as applied to the Sierra Leone troubles, should not be allowed to pass without protest. /
THE essential cause of the divergency of opinion between the defenders and detractors of the Hut-Tax policy in Sierra Leone rests, it seems to me, upon the method of interpreting the nature of our relations with the aboriginal population of West Africa. Other points of di erence there are, of course, but these would not in themselves be su cient to account for the very wide gulf which separates those who like Mr. Stephen, resolutely set aside the claims of native sentiment and tradition, in connection with British legislation, and those who maintain that British legislation ought to make allowances for the working of
the native mind, and be framed as far as possible in conformity with native ideas. at the Hut-Tax was a material factor in the Sierra Leone rising, is admitted even by Sir Frederic Cardew himself. e Royal Commissioner, Sir David / Chalmers,5 who was appointed by Mr. Chamberlain6 to make an Enquiry into the circumstances which led to the rising, and to whose sagacity, experience, and impartiality the Colonial Secretary paid high tribute, assigned the main cause of the disturbances to the Hut-Tax. A careful perusal of the Evidence collected by the Royal Commissioner, cannot fail to convince ninety-nine people out of every hundred that Sir David Chalmers was right.
