be expected to advance steadily towards the self-supporting stage. When that stage had been reached, the surplus would be set aside under the Provincial budget for extending the system of fixed salaries to native officials, for expenditure on provincial public works and economic research, improvements in sanitation, and so on, in collaboration with the native authorities of its various sections. A portion of my hypothetical Northern or Sudan Province is already self-supporting, viz. Kano. Indeed, but for the military establishment the whole of that Province would be showing to-day a handsome surplus and, apart from the public works to be met out of loans, would require—even if it continued to be debited with the military establishment—very little assistance from the Colonial budget. The hypothetical Central Province would require more assistance for a time, but, as in the Northern Province, the basis of an expanding land revenue is securely laid and a not inconsiderable mineral development bringing revenue, apart from royalties, is assured to it. On the other hand, most of the hypothetical Western Province and almost the whole of the Eastern Province—_i.e._ in combination, Southern Nigeria of to-day—produces no internal revenue whatever except licences, the amount derived from which will assuredly grow but will not become really large for many years. Therefore, until and unless the delicate problem of introducing direct taxation among peoples—the majority of whom we have been in touch with for years without requiring of them the payment of any form of tribute—were approached, the Colonial budget would have to furnish these Provinces with most of their administrative revenues. An alternative scheme would be to abandon the idea of a Central Legislative Council for the whole Protectorate and of a new administrative headquarters, the Governor-General spending a certain time at the headquarters of each Province. Lagos would, under such a scheme, become the capital of the extended Western Province (see map), and the action of the Lagos Legislative Council would extend to the whole of that Province. A Legislative Council would be created for the extended Eastern Province. The administrative machinery of the new Central and Northern Provinces would be left as it is now. On the finance side the alternative scheme to the one I have sketched would be to let each Province contribute to the Colonial budget in accordance with its capacities upon a definite proportionate basis, the sums thus accruing to the Colonial budget, _plus_ the loan funds, being utilized in the creation of public works on the lines already sketched. This alternative scheme, amalgamation on federation, would possess some advantages over the first, and compares unfavourably with it in others.