HISTORICAL period dating is a
difficult business and can never be too
precise. Before the declaration of the Protectorate over the hinterland
in 1896, the government of the Settlement and Colony passed through
three distinct phases. 1787—1790/91 the period of virtual
self-government or of the proprietorship of Granville Sharp; the
period of Charter Company government from 1790/1 to l807 and, following
that, the period of Crown Colony Government proper. The early period
which forms the matrix of the substance of this paper refers chiefly to
the first two periods particularly to the period of Charter Company
government. This of course implies that the Sierra Leone referred to in
this paper is not the geographical and political expression of today
but the legal expression of the Charter of 1791 embracing the area some
20 miles square acquired in 1787 on behalf of the first settlers.
Small as this area was in physical size, the experiences
with direct taxation in it were fundamental to the development not only
of the smaller settlement but also to that of the larger geographical
area which we now know. A study of those experiments is most
illuminating not only as a piece of history but also as an object
lesson of the role that such little administrative devices can play (in
the context of an underdeveloped country) on the course of economic
development and on such other minor influences on the course of
development as race relations.
In this early phase of Sierra Leone several expedients at
direct taxation were attempted. They were all in the nature of property
taxes using the term in its widest sense. These included taxes on house
and land, on horses and carriages and other domestic animals and a
roads tax. Only one of these, the house tax, survives today. It
survives in the municipal rates in the municipality of the colony, the
house tax in the colony areas outside the municipality and in the
Protectorate.
At the time of the commencement of Crown Colony government
the colony was almost entirely financed by means of Parliamentary
grants-in-aid. Indeed, it is truer to say that local revenue was sought
for in aid of Parliamentary grants. From 1800
ad hoc
Parliamentary grants were made to the Company government, and from 1804
regular grants were so made in aid of the civil administration of the
Settlement and for defence.
The Company government had hoped to finance itself by
means of trading profits and by supplementary internal sources of
revenue. The onset of the Napoleonic war endangered their highly
profitable commercial venture almost from the start and thus
intensified their search for internal revenue. The earlier Charters did
permit of the collection of revenue for "the interior welfare" of the
settlement, and it was primarily with that object in view that the
early attempts at direct taxation were made. This was the central focal
point of all the earlier forms of direct taxation and that explains the
fact that all these taxes or what may, at least, pass for their
prototypes were early to be found in a single measure, namely, the
Highways Act which was designed primarily for the "making and keeping
in repair the highways of the Colony".
The origins of the principles of the Highways "Act" seem
to lie in the Regulations in force at the commencement of the
Settlement under Granville Sharp. Sharp himself claimed to have based
the Regulations on the ancient system of” medieval Frank pledge’’
which, for him, had something almost like divine or, at least, Mosaic
sanction. It is not unlikely that the influence of the English Poor Law
of the time was also at work. There is moreover, a strong presumption
here of the influence also of Adam Smith’s
labour theory of value,
although no direct connection can be traced. It is well to remember
that the “Province of Freedom on the Mountains of Sierra Leone" was
very near to Smith’s "rude state of society".
Sharp had fixed a 310-working day year (with eight hours
work to the day) for the employable male population out of which the
labour of two-tenths or sixty-two days was to be taxed away for the
maintenance of the government and for the upkeep of the poor and sick.
Hence the state was to be financed by means of a direct tax on the
property of labour of the employable male population between the ages
of eighteen and sixty and, in addition, the principle of graduation was
introduced by the imposition of additional taxation on "pride and
indolence ".
That principle minus the graduation element was adopted by
the Company government whose Governor and Council on 10th November,
1795, ordered
“That all male Settlers within the said Territory of
Sierra Leone, from the age of sixty shall be liable to be called upon
for six days work in the course of a year for the clearing and keeping
in order the streets and roads within the said territory, and in case
any person so liable to be called upon, shall neglect or refuse to obey
summons of the Overseers of Roads (to be hereafter appointed) every
person so offending shall be fined in the sum of one Dollar: and all
female Settlers being in possession of a Town or Farm lot in the said
District shall be liable to be called upon to send a man to work six
days in the course of a year and shall be liable to the same fine of
one Dollar in case of neglecting or refusing to obey the summons of the
Overseer as before mentioned.”
This measure, re-enacted in 1801, was still in force when
the Colony was taken over by the Crown in 1807. Together with its
amendment of 1812 it became the foundation-stone of the Road tax in the
nineteenth century. This tax had an interesting evolution in the Crown
Colony period which the limits of this paper will not permit us to
dwell upon. Suffices it to say at this point that, in effect--its
anomalies notwithstanding-- it was a very significant factor in the
promotion of economic development during the nineteenth century, in
particular the development of road communications for the greater part
of the period-- a factor which is quite often neglected or minimized.
Of equally basic significance but with exactly opposite
effects was the other outstanding device of direct taxation in this
early period, namely, the
quit rent.
This is a subject which has never been given any adequate or objective
treatment before.
The
quit rent
was
one of those relics of medievalism which, in the peculiar circumstances
of the foundation of the settlement found its unhappy way to it and
from the first was attended with difficulties. In West Africa it is
peculiar to Sierra Leone. And it is an expedient brimful with lessons
on fiscal policy and fiscal administration for underdeveloped countries
in general. Financially, the quit rent was not a very profitable tax
1;
but the experiment left a deep influence on the course of economic
development in the country.
1In 1796 it was estimated to yield about £200
(currency) p.a.. but Governor Ludlam (1801) reckoned it would yield no
more than £100 p.a.--the cost of collection from 1799, when a collector
of quit rent was appointed,
varying between £15 and £20 p.a.
The first (Nova Scotian) Settlers were each promised a grant of twenty
acres of land together with an additional ten acres for his wife and
five acres for each child.
1 And although the Company
had originally decided that the Settlers, irrespective of race, should
have the land upon such terms and subject to such charges and
obligations as they themselves (i.e. the company) should later
determine with a view to their general prosperity
2;
its agent to the Settlers in
TABLE I.
First Nova Scotian Allotment.3
Acreage
|
No.
of Allotments
|
Total
Acreage
|
1
|
--
|
--
|
2
|
101
|
202
|
3
|
15
|
45
|
4
|
120
|
480
|
5
|
12
|
60
|
6
|
116
|
696
|
7
|
44
|
308
|
8
|
32
|
256
|
9
|
35
|
315
|
10
|
15
|
150
|
11
|
8
|
88
|
Total
|
498
|
2600
|
Nova Scotia had assured the latter that
quit rent was unjust and ought not
to be imposed.
4
Moreover, in the printed promise of land given to each of the intending
Settlers and signed by Messrs. Clarkson and Hartshorne their lands were
promised them “free of expense”. This may have been intended to refer
to the expense of purchase only. In medieval England such a practice
was frequent while not absolving the tenant from the payment of
quit rent.
This was also true for the settlement of New South Wales (Australia).
The Settlers had, however, been told and had expressed willingness to
gradually pay back the expenses incurred by the company in establishing
the settlement and to pay taxes and contribute to the expenses of
supporting the Governor and the poor.
5 When the first
allotments were due to be determined, the peculiar difficulties of the
early settlement suggested the inexpediency of giving each individual
his full share of twenty acres at once “as so large an
1 C.B.Wadstrom: Essay
on Colonization (1794), part ii, p. 29.
2 Letter from Z. Macauley to the Colonists of Sierra Leone
inset to C.O. 270/4, ff. 161-2.
3 Original Source: Montague's Ordinances, vol. iv (London,
H.M.S.O. 1870). There were also 13 Reserves totalling 25 acres among
the allotments.
4 C.O. 270/6, fol. 292.
5 Letter from Z. Macauley, loc. cit.
allotment would necessarily throw many of the settlers to an
inconvenient distance from the town and river” where they would be
unprotected.
1 With the acquiescence of the Nova Scotians it
was then decided to allot them four acres each in the first instance,
the right being reserved to them of claiming the remainder as it should
be wanted. The allotments actually made are summarized in Table I.
The modal allotments
were four acres in size but the allotments were of varying sizes; there
being 116 below four acres and the rest (probably allowing for wives
and children) being above. Of these the majority were five acres each.2
This affords clear evidence that even the compromise arrangement was
not complied with, with about a fourth having grants less than was
agreed.
Meantime, the Company had decided “ that no quit rent
should be charged till midsummer 1792; that then, an annual quit rent
of not more than 1s. an acre should be payable for two years, in half-
yearly payments; that from that time, i.e. Midsummer, 1794, the rent
should be raised to not more than 2 per cent tax on the gross produce
of
the lands; and that at the end of three years more, that is, Midsummer,
1797, the rent should be again raised, and fixed at the rate of not
more than 4 per cent on the gross produce of the lands”3 It
was also decided that if one-third part of the lots was not cleared and
cultivated in two years and two-thirds in three years then the whole
should be forfeited to the Company.
The allotments were completed between November, 1792, and
March, 1793, in time for the crop of the latter year. There was some
dissatisfaction with the allotments.4 Hence on 1st
September, 1793,
1 Prince Hoare: Memoirs of Granville Sharp (London.
1820),
part iii. pp. 280-1.
2In the case of the Maroon allotments at Kingtoms Point—the
Maroons having assisted in putting down the Nova Scotian rebellion in
1800—were worse still. Of 111 grants recorded only one was of 4 acres.
The rest of them varying from 1/3 acre to 3 2/3 acres, the
majority being below 2 acres. And four considerably larger grants
covering the entire foreshore were made to whites including Justice
Bannister and the Heddles. Vide
Montague's Ordinances, loc.
cit.
3C.O. 270/4, ff. 144 et seq.
4 There was some dissatisfaction over the lots falling
to Whites and those reserved to the Company. This was probably not
unconnected with the inter-racial distrust born of the fact that “ all
the white people...sent out in 1788 to assist in supporting the
settlement had been wicked enough” as Sharp bewailed "to go into
the service of the Slave Trade at the neighbouring factories" and
helped to enslave their follow black settlers. Vide
Letter of Granville Sharp to the Rev. Samuel Hopkins dated 26th July
1789, quoted Hoare, op. cit., p. 343. It is also connected with the
conflict of jurisdiction or “revolutionary” shift of jurisdiction.
During
the proprietorship of Sharp there was virtual self-govemrnent and the
people had made their own grants and agrarian law. Vide Note 1, p. 31.
the Governor and Council decided to offer, on quite liberal terms.
some twenty families of the dissatisfied settlement on a portion of the
Bullom Shore which had just been acquired from the indigenous Chiefs.
The terms were:
(1) the families were not to be divided
(2) each individual to be given a piece of land equal in quantity to
that already allotted at Sierra Leone together with a town lot of
seventy-four acre extent provided
(3) they shall relinquish the town and farm lots already allotted them
in Sierra Leone as well as every claim of land or for compensation
instead which they may have had on the Company
(4) they shall agree to pay quit rent of one bushel of clean new rice
for each of their town lots and one bushel of rice for each acre of
land on the farm lots
(5) to obey the laws of the settlement
(6) to be called out for purposes of defence
(7) not to transfer the land without the consent of the Governor and
Council
(8) to agree to clear the town lots and build dwellings on them in the
way prescribed by the Government Agent and that to be done by 1st May.
1794
(9) that in three years from 1st January, 1794, at least one-fourth of
the land granted shall be cultivated otherwise all allotment exceeding
one-fourth which remains uncultivated to be forfeited by the Company.
The liberal terms of this offer were so patently confirmatory of the
suspicion the settlers had that the Company wanted to dispossess them
of Sierra Leone in favour of white settlers that the scant regard which
the Hundredors and Tythingmen gave to it is understandable. The
suggestion of payment in kind especially in rice is bound to be
regarded with suspicion. At that time, the price of rice appeared to
have been fluctuating. Old stocks of rice at the Company’s stores were
being sold at £10 per ton whereas rice from the Great Scarcies was
estimated at £12 per ton.
2
1C.O. 270/2, ff. 109-12-- If payment in rice proved
inconvenient to either party it may be commuted into “as much money as
the above quantity of rice would bring at market"
2CO. 270/2, fol. 94-- allowing for a profit of 10 per
cent.
Assuming a bushel of rice to be
56 lb. in weight, the quit rent
may be reckoned as between 4s. 6d. and 5s. 4d. on each town lot and a
similar sum for each acre of the farm lots although the quit rent was not to exceed 1s. per
acre.1 This 1ooks like offering what was liberal in the
grant with the one hand and taking it back with the other hand.
There was some friction in collecting the quit rent.
The whole atmosphere was complicated by the difficulties of 1794 when
French privateers sacked, ravaged, and pillaged the settlement.
Between 1794 and 1801 the quit rent
proved to be one of the most difficult problems with which the
government had to contend. The whole climate, by that time, was
befogged. There was an inflationary situation which was, in part at any
rate, a result of the Napoleonic wars and the high food prices
following from the shortage of supplies. There were the after-effects
of the French attack itself aggravated by what one commissioner
described as “considerable indiscretion on the part of the government’’
to enforce restitution of the Company’s property which had been
diverted or deemed to have been diverted during those outrages. The
administration too did not appear to have had a high standing for
virtue and honesty. According to Thomas Ludlam (a later Governor) there
were “those tyrannies imposed by the deficiencies of the Company’s
servants e.g. the storekeeper charging the people for supplies they did
not have”.2 Finally, there was the Governor’s insistence on
the Company’s earning monopoly profits.3
Consequently, by that time, the quit rent issue became fused with a
much wider issue, namely, what amounted to a denial of the sovereignty
of the Company government and the asserting of the settlers’ right of
self-government which, to all intents and purposes, they had enjoyed
under Granville Sharp.
In 1796 it was agreed to tighten up the administration and
collection of the quit rent.
For that purpose certificates were to be granted to the proprietors of
town lots signed by the Secretary on behalf of the Government and
grants were to be prepared to be delivered to the proprietors of
country lots by August, 1797. At the same time the quit rent was fixed
at 1s. per acre per annum payable half-yearly as from 1st January, 17974.
Seven months later, on the
1C.O.
270/3, fol. 44.
2 C.O. 270/6, fol. 292.
3C.O. 270/3, fol. 49.
4 C.O. 270/4, fol. 97. .
.....Forward to Part 2