FrrURK OF XATIVE EACES OF S. RHODESIA. 149 



tion of tribe assemblies to be able to absorb county councils, and 

 town councils were directly affiliated to mediaeval and post- 

 mediasval guilds, but parish councils seemed always more or less 

 artificial. With this lesson in mind, we must be careful to build 

 any civic or municipal institutions on the foundations we have, 

 and be anxious rather for a natural development than for a theo- 

 retical perfection. The experiences of the native councils in those 

 parts of the Cape Colony to which the Glen Grey Act has been 

 applied will be valuable in this connection. 



An important matter will be roads. A well-built road is an 

 artery of life. In a way, all civilisation is founded upon locomo- 

 tion. There is scarcelj^ any other thing exercises so much 

 humanising, civilising, vitalising influence en a locality as a grand 

 trunk road. 



The provision of wells, for drinking water and for irrigation, 

 will be an affair of the local councils or authorities, guided and 

 directed by the experts of central government. 



Afforestation, for the provision of a sufficient supply of suitable 

 timber for building, wagon-making, furniture-making, and all the 

 other needs of a community, appears to be an object to be taken 

 up by the central government, either directly or working through 

 local bodies covering large areas. 



A topic that has cropped up very often of late j'cars has been 

 that of individual native ownership of land. In this matter we 

 must move slowly. Communities of natives have occasionally 

 purchased farms as communal settlements. Such ownership, the 

 necessity for which will disappear with a due development of the 

 Reserves, and which is in itself a tribute to the strength of the 

 innate prejudice in the mind of the native in favour of land being 

 common, must not be corifused wdtli individual ownership. The 

 individual purchases of farixis by wealthy chiefs have really been 

 made in the communal spirit, for their people as much as for 

 themselves. There have also been a few, very few I believe, 

 genuine individual purchases of land to be held as real j^rivate 

 property. I am not sure about this last point, and am prepared 

 to be told there have been none. If any demand should arise for 

 individual tenure of land, it should, as far as possible, be satisfied 

 by granting holdings adjacent to Eeserves. But in satisfying this 

 demand we should not hesitate to apply rigorously the excellent 

 feudal conception that land cannot be a subject for mere commer- 

 cial transactions, but carries with it obligations to the State, 

 chiefly the obligation to support a certain number of citizens useful 

 to the strength of the State. I would saj^ that land should be 

 granted merely for use, not for out-and-out ownership, and I would 

 not be averse to suiTounding land transactions with a halo of 

 sanctity comparable to that surrounding the ancient Roman 

 transactions in res mancipi. Subject to these limitations I would 

 encourage individual tenure of land, as making for stability and 

 the development of the moral attributes. I see a great future for 

 the ideal of peasant proprietors who are likwise engaged in home 

 industries and handicrafts. Neither is this idea inimical to the 

 idea of more wealthy natives owning somewhat larger tracts of land 

 to be farmed on the most up-to-date lines with modern machinery. 

 Both may, and I hope will, come to pass. 



