ABSTRACT
Apart from maintaining order, our overriding purpose was to improve and develop our District as much as possible, in close collaboration with the Chiefs and the Native Authority. Very much was this done de haut en bas, done without obvious condescension and from the very best of motives, yet very paternalistically. Professor P.T. Bauer (later Lord Bauer), who had lectured us on the economics of colonial development at Cambridge, would not have approved. He believed in free-market, not governmental, solutions for development problems. He may have been right, but would he have sat as assured in a remote District, simply waiting for the law of supply and demand to work its magic? As Shakespeare said of spirits, ‘Do they come when you do call for them?’ Certainly, we made mistakes and wasted scarce resources when enthusiasm sometimes overcame caution, but on the whole, there was gradual improvement. Whether as much or more advancement would have occurred if, instead of the directing hand of government, there had been the invisible hand of Adam Smith, remains dubious conjecture.
