[8] “Affairs of West Africa.” Heinemann, 1902.
[9] The subject is discussed at greater length in [Part IV].
[10] In the case of some of these companies, such as the West African Mines, Ltd., the Anglo-Continental Mines Company, Ltd., etc., only a part of their capital is invested in the tin mines.
[11] Perhaps the above remarks are a little too sweeping. It has been brought to my knowledge that in one such case where permission was sought by an experienced ex-Government official and granted by the authorities, the former’s action was, as a matter of fact, twice instrumental in preventing a fraudulent concern from being unloaded upon the public; and no doubt there is something to be said in favour of the practice from that point of view, arguing from an isolated case. But I must adhere to the opinion that, speaking generally, the practice is objectionable, and lends itself to incidents which are calculated to impair the very high standard of public service of which Great Britain rightly makes a boast.
[12] Whose administration offers no problems comparable with the task of governing a Hausa province.
[13] Now the capital of the Niger province.
[14] It is only fair to state that Mr. W. H. Himbury, of the British Cotton Growing Association, has since pointed out, in regard to the prices fetched by indigenous Southern Nigerian cotton (p. 227), that the prices here given only refer to small samples and cannot be taken as indicative of the general selling value of Southern Nigerian cotton. The official report of the Commercial Intelligence officer of Southern Nigeria, from which the figures here given are quoted, is thus somewhat misleading. But the correction does not appreciably affect my general line of suggestion. Referring to the cotton grown in the Bassa and Nassarawa provinces of Northern Nigeria, Professor Wyndham Dunstan in his recent report states that in making a comparison of the lint for the Liverpool market the standard employed is “Moderately rough Peruvian, which is a grade of higher price than Middling American.”
[15] And some of the Wesleyans—notably the Superintendent of the Wesleyan Missions in Southern Nigeria, the Rev. Oliver Griffen.
[16] It may, perhaps, be well to emphasize, in view of the printed statements describing the writer as the “champion of the liquor traffic” and so forth, which are so freely made in certain quarters, that the above remarks are concerned solely with the liquor traffic in Southern Nigeria—not in West Africa as a whole. They deal with specific facts affecting a specific area of West Africa and with specific circumstances surrounding those facts which have formed the subject of public controversy.