§ LORD RAGLAN had given Notice to ask His Majesty's Government whether the system of native autocratic rule under British supervision has proved so much superior to direct British administration in India as to justify its employment in Africa, where it is not, as it is in India, in accordance with the customs and traditions of the people. The noble Lord said: My Lords, on the Question which I ventured to ask last December as to the system of native administration in Nigeria the noble Earl, in his reply, stated that in the opinion of the Colonial Office native administration was cheaper, more efficient, more progressive and more popular than British administration. Those are not his exact words, but I think they fairly summarise his case. He also stated that it was experimental.
§ I wish the noble Earl had turned his attention to India. He would have found that there the native administration is not experimental; it is a matter of ancient history. For the last two 938 hundred years the question has occupied the minds of all Indian administrators, and I have never heard any suggestion that the native administration in India is cheaper or more efficient than the British administration. As regards it being more progressive, I am informed that such progress as has been made in India towards self-government has been made, not in the Native States, but in those parts of India, which have been longest under direct British rule. As regards its popularity, I am informed that from time to time many attempts have been made, with a view to improving the frontiers and boundaries, to induce Indian districts and villages to consent to be transferred to Native States, and that in no single instance have they willingly done so.
§ Nevertheless, the advantages which the native administration has in India over that of Africa are very many. In the first place, the Indian rulers are really far more enlightened than the African. Secondly, although there is no public opinion in India as there is in England, yet there is a good deal more publicity in India than there is in Africa, and so abuses are more easily checked. In the third place, the people of India have been accustomed to autocratic rule for thousands of years. Many of the dynasties now reigning have reigned from time immemorial.
§ In Africa an entirely different stale of affairs exists. The African native is a slave to the social and religious system of his tribe, but he owes no allegiance to any individual. In many tribes chiefs are unknown. The system is that a man acts in accordance with custom, tradition and superstition. Tribes often go to war, not for any political reason at all but simply because, in accordance with custom, it is time that certain of the classes of young men went out to blood their spears. In such society there is no room for autocratic chiefs and they do not, as a rule, exist. Many tribes have no chiefs at all; in many others they are merely the hereditary rain-makers. As long as the rainfall is plentiful tribute is paid to the chief, but if the rainfall fails this tribute is withheld and the chief is sometimes killed. That being the case, any form of native administration which involves autocratic rule is foreign to the people of Africa, and autocratic chiefs 939 exist only in those cases where they are the result of recent conquest or where the chiefs have been imposed upon the people by ourselves.
§ This native rule is of advantage from the point of view of the administrator. It is very much easier to sit in an office and allow other people to misgovern the country than it is to govern it yourself, but it is our duty to give to these native Africans the best possible form of administration we can. To sum up, we have this remarkable phenomenon—that whereas in India, where native administration has everything in its favour, it is admittedly inferior in every respect to British administration, yet in Nigeria and other parts of Africa—this does not refer to Nigeria alone but to many other parts— the native administration is, according to the Colonial Office, in every respect superior to British administration. It is this phenomenon that I should like His Majesty's Government to make plain.
LORD BELHAVEN AND STENTONMy Lords, my chief reason for intervening in this debate and occupying any portion of your Lordships' time is that on the question of the relative merits of direct and indirect British administration I may claim to have some ground for speaking with some authority. Thirty years of my life have been spent in India, and more than twenty of them in the Foreign Political Department of the Government of India. Some part of the time was spent in British India, and I gained some insight into the conditions under which Indian subjects of all classes lived. Subsequently my whole career, with the exception of the time of the war, was spent in the Native States, and I never saw the standard which we maintain in British India approximated to even in the most progressive of the Native States. During those thirty years the people of India made enormous progress, but I doubt whether the population in the Native States made anything like corresponding progress in their morale or in their wealth. In fact, I think I could prove the contrary.
A great spur, so far as the millions in the part of India administered by Native States was concerned, came with the brilliant régime, of Lord Curzon, whose loss every lover of India must deeply deplore to-day. He had a wonderful way 940 of dealing with native Chiefs. The keen and benevolent he frankly praised and encouraged, and the lazy and the inefficient were sternly invited to reform themselves, while the wicked and oppressive were promptly deposed. As a matter of common knowledge, this authority was just what was required in India, and it had the effect which might have been expected. Shortly after this the Government decided that it was high time to give the people of India a greater share in the rule of their own country.
I think that perhaps some of the reforms were overdue, and for that reason, when they were granted, they were not received with any visible signs of gratitude on the part of the Indian people. But, sad to relate—and this is in accordance with one of life's little ironies—this relegation of control, so far as it affected the Native States, resulted in the abandonment of large numbers of our fellow-subjects, if I may so call them, though they are living in semi-independent territory, to the tender mercies of bad rulers, and our Political Officers—I was one of them—were instructed that our policy must be one of non-interference. We knew to what this would very probably lead, arid the result was not unexpected. Shortly afterwards, the people, finding that they had no redress from their Political Officers, had to resort to arms and rebellion, and a succession of small rebellions occurred which had to he suppressed by our own Army.
Perhaps I have spoken at rather too great a length and tediously on this subject, but I do not believe that, any one has any doubt that direct rule of Indian and African subjects by ourselves is infinitely preferable and more humane—which is nowadays considered a very important thing—than indirect administration, and, though I do not know very much about our enormous shadowy Empire in Africa, I have full faith that it will become one in real substance in a short time; possibly, we may find in it a substitute for another "Lost Dominion." However that may be. I take it from the noble Lord who asks this Question that he knows that autocratic rule is, generally speaking, foreign to the ideas of the African people. I knew East Africa in the days when we took it over from the Sultan of Zanzibar, and I know 941 some of the men who had been the agents of the Sultan before we took it over. I do not think they are the sort of people to whom I should have liked to hand over a subject population, because all of them bad more or less recently been engaged in the slave trade.
I believe that if, at this juncture, it is possible to put an end to this experiment of acting through the intermediary of a Native African Chief we ought to do so, and thus remove a flaw which, while it is inevitable in our Indian Empire, is one for which I am sure we get more blame than for almost anything we do—namely, this policy of turning our heads in an opposite direction when we are fully aware that our fellow-subjects are not being properly treated. I hope that this experiment, as I understand it to be, in Nigeria will be promptly dropped. If the present Administration is far too expensive, then reduce the number of officers, simplify your code of law and get that class of man into the country who is not a sea lawyer but a man of character, who loves the people and the country, and is able to arrive at right decisions. Above all things, I say that the Governors of these Provinces should be warned when they go to their Provinces not to go with too much desire to show off to their Administrations what wonderful systems they think they are capable of introducing.
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEMy Lords, as I went through the whole of Northern Nigeria three years ago, I should not like this debate to close without saying something. I have noticed that my noble friend Lord Raglan has brought this Question before the House on many different occasions. For what they are worth I should like to tell your Lordships what were my impressions in Nigeria three years ago. I saw a great many of the British officers who are charged with the superintendence of the native administrators, and I never in the whole course of my public life came across a finer set of Scotsmen and Englishmen. The young recruits in particular, who were selected ex-officers, were as fine a class of young civil administrators as I have ever met, and I came to the conclusion quite deliberately that the system of governing that country through the native Emirs was the right 942 system and that the Government was being well superintended by British officers.
It is a great mistake to consider only the period of the war, which is the period dealt with by the writer in the Nineteenth Century who started Lord Raglan on this quest; it is a great mistake to draw conclusions from experience during the war and apply them to that which is going on to-day. We have in the present Governor of Nigeria one of the finest administrators whom this country has ever sent out into the Empire—I mean Sir Hugh Clifford—and I am sure that this House may feel perfectly reassured that under Sir Hugh Clifford the abuses of which there is always a danger in an Indian or African Native State governed by its own native rulers, have been reduced to a minimum, that the superintendence is real and sufficient, and that, as I venture to believe from that which I have been able to observe in the Empire, natives as a whole like that system better than direct administration by British officers.
THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (THE EARL OF ONSLOW)My Lords, there is so much business on the Paper that I must be as brief as I can in replying to my noble friend's Question, which I had a little difficulty in precisely understanding until I had the advantage of hearing his speech. I think that it is now quite clear to me what his point is. My noble friend has dealt in Questions recently with Northern Nigeria, and, though he addresses this Question to the whole of Africa, and I believe that in the course of his speech he mentioned Uganda and one or two other places, he really dealt with the same matter of Northern Nigeria. My noble friend is one of that small body of those who hold that our system of government in Northern Nigeria, which was established some twenty years ago, is not a satisfactory one. I do not think that any useful purpose is to be served in making comparisons with the system of government in India, which is not comparable to that of the system of government in Northern Nigeria, or elsewhere in Africa. Indeed, I think my noble friend in his speech admitted it, and Lord Belhaven, in his interesting account of his many years' experience in India, did not, I 943 think, wish to compare the two systems, because of the great difference between them.
THE EARL OF ONSLOWI gathered that my noble friend said that they were entirely different, but I may have misunderstood him. Anyhow, what he seeks to prove is that the system of indirect rule in Nigeria is unsatisfactory, and that a system of direct rule—I do not think he told us what he proposed to substitute—would be preferable. Of course, my noble friend is entirely free to state that opinion, and indeed it is his duty to do so if he feels strongly on the subject, but I am equally ready to defend the system of government of Nigeria as he is to attack it.
The system of indirect rule in Northern Nigeria was established twenty years ago by Sir Frederick Lugard. Originally, the paramount power in Northern Nigeria was the Sultan of Sokoto. The Emirs, of whom there are some forty-five all told, were hereditary or semi-hereditary governors, dependent on the Sultan of Sokoto. When the Protectorate was established, the British Government maintained a system of native government which was existing then, but as regards the responsibility of the Emirs that responsibility was diverted from the Sultan of Sokoto to the British Government, although the Sultan of Sokoto remained the most important Chief in the Protectorate, as being the head of the Mussulmen in Northern Nigeria. The Emirs are now responsible for the good government of the country, and the assurance that good government is maintained is provided by the supervision of the British Political Officers, to whose efficiency Lord Selborne, from his recent journey in that district, was able to bear such eloquent testimony. The result is that we have not altered the native system of government; we have maintained it. All that we have done is to introduce the safeguard of British supervision, to see that the government is efficiently and honestly administered, and by doing so, we have done what my noble friend rightly said it was our duty to do—namely, to give the inhabitants of that country the best possible government.
944 If my noble friend had his way he, I understand, would abolish the Emirs in Northern Nigeria and similar authorities in other countries, and put in their place a British Resident or Lieutenant-Governor, or whatever it may be, and under that official there would be numerous native officials, for whom the British Political Officer would be individually responsible. Surely the system of making the Emir the sole responsible officer for the good behaviour of his native, subordinates is a right one? It is a system which is understood by the native population; it is the one to which they are accustomed; and it has the advantage of educating the civilisation which is indigenous to the country, and bringing it up to higher and more modern standards. We have heard from Lord Selborne, who has had not only experience of West Africa but also vast experience of another part of the same Continent, that that system of government is working, from his own personal and entirely unbiased observation, satisfactorily and entirely in accordance with the wishes of, I am sure, all of us.
I do not think that if we were to introduce the proposal of my noble friend we should really be able to improve upon the present system of government. Indeed, I think the result would be much to the contrary. If we did that, as I understand, we should have to start afresh, teach the natives a new system of government, which they do not understand, and which they would certainly resent. And what proof is there that the present system is unsatisfactory? It is certainly one which is approved by all the inhabitants, and I do not think that you could find a more contented country at the present time. If your Lordships wish for further proof you have only to see what happened during the war, when the country was practically denuded of any troops and a great proportion of the white personnel was removed. I do not say that the government was as well carried on during that time as it is now. Of course during a period of unrest like that, when the personnel of government is reduced, accidents are bound to happen, and things do not go so smoothly as during the piping times of peace.
That has been pointed out recently by Sir Hugh Clifford in his speech to the Nigerian Legislative Council, when he bore testimony to the success of the 945 system and said much the same as Lord Selborne has just said. I may say that His Majesty's Government have considered this matter very carefully indeed, and are firmly determined to carry on the principles which have been laid down by their predecessors and have been approved by successive Governments—all Parties practically. We consider the present system to be the best system for the natives as well as the most economical and satisfactory from every point of view.