FOUNDING THE PROTECTORATE 
i 11 
this proposal. Gradually, however, it became obvious that if the natives of the 
Lower Shire district were to pay taxes, the other natives of such portions 
of the Protectorate as we were obliged to administer at our own cost, should 
do the same. For a year I talked this over with the leading chiefs of the Shire 
province (the only portion of the Protectorate we were then prepared to 
administer), and got most of them to agree to the principle that the natives 
of the Protectorate should contribute, to a reasonable extent, towards the 
revenue. The idea of taxing the natives, however, was strongly opposed by 
the missionaries, and also by many erf the traders and planters, who believed 
it would cause discontent and would make native labour dearer. I still held 
to my view, nevertheless, that those natives of British Central Africa who- 
THE NY AS A GUNBOATS IN NKATA BAY, WEST NYASA 
were unable to protect themselves from the incursions of slave raiders, or 
who by their own misconduct compelled the intervention of the Administration 
for the maintenance of law and order, should contribute as far as their means 
allowed towards the revenue of the Protectorate, for it was not to be supposed 
that the British taxpayer, or the British South Africa Company, could continue 
indefinitely finding subsidies for the support of the Protectorate; that the 
Protectorate must justify its existence by eventually supporting itself on its 
locally raised revenue. At a meeting with some of the leading missionaries 
and planters at Blantyre, in the winter of 1892, I agreed to propose to the 
Secretary of State that the Hut tax should be reduced to 3s. per annum, and 
eventually it was fixed in the Queen’s Regulations at that sum. 
The only other taxation incumbent on the natives was the taking out 
of a gun license, for which the same sum was charged as in the case of 
Europeans and foreigners, namely, ;£i for five years, or in the case of the 
natives, 4^. per annum. The payment of the Hut tax was at first confined 
