It is, of course, absurd to think that the Natal Government, under which the Natives had lived peacefully for half a century, could have had any inimical motive in taking a census, but that the Natives felt some such motive was latent, is borne out by what happened when the regulations were explained by a Magistrate at a gathering of Chiefs and their followers near Greytown. A Native present put the question: "What guarantee have we that, in being enumerated in the fashion proposed, it is not in the mind of the Government, making use of the information gained, to do us an injury in the future?" The reply was: "The Government has no evil intentions whatever, the sun will sooner fall from the heavens than any evil come upon you, as a result of this census-taking. Europeans, including myself, will be counted along with you." This assurance which, from a European point of view, the official was fully justified in giving, was, however, soon made to bear an interpretation extremely difficult to reply to, and this in the very district where the Insurrection proper afterwards began. The census was taken in due course in 1904, meeting with murmuring here and there among the Natives in parts of the Colony. In the year following, the Poll Tax Act was passed and proclaimed. What was more natural than that they should associate that time-honoured practice of Western Civilization with the introduction of a form of taxation which, in their view, did them injury by imposing an additional financial burden, and, what was worse, accentuating and even legalizing the independence of children towards their fathers, an independence the sons themselves (free from control as many of them had become), veering round in their resentment, also condemned as subversive of their whole system of life. From the parents' point of view, it appeared as if their sons, already too independent, were being rendered still more so. And yet, in passing the Act, the Government was of the belief that one of the correctives above referred to was being provided, and would operate in favour of the parents. Had liability been laid on the father rather than on the son, the protests raised would probably not have been as loud as they were.