Page:West African Studies.djvu/489

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THE AFRICAN VIEW
419

administration is a thing into which—after all the long recitation I have inflicted on you concerning African religion and law—I am not justified in plunging here. I will merely, therefore, lay before you a statement of African Common Law, so that you may see the African principle through which the Landes Hoheit—the government of Africa by Africans—would work. I am confident that the thing—the African principle—is so sound that it could work; there is no need for us to put our Commerce under it, any more than there is need that we should attempt to put the African's private property under our own law; but a healthy Commerce and a healthy Law should co-operate, and can co-operate.