How the Native Races Committee can reconcile it with the furious attacks upon all and sundry in which they have indulged is not my affair. At any rate, it is a confession of constructive impotence. And for this reason. International conferences on this subject are held regularly every few years, and much portentous talk is indulged in by grave gentlemen sitting round a table. As a matter of fact, Britain, as already stated, leads in the matter of high duties and adjustment of duties to strike at spirits of higher potency. We have difficulty, which is perennial, in getting the other Powers to agree to our level. At the present moment the duty levied in the French territory of Dahomey, which borders Southern Nigeria, is much lower than ours, and smuggling is the result. Therefore, whatever good a Conference may do, that good will affect foreign territory, not Southern Nigeria. As a practical policy the international conference is, thus, devoid of import so far as Southern Nigeria is concerned. “Local option” is largely a catch word which appeals to the public—always influenced by the subjective point of view. What is really meant by it is that a native community should be given the option of not buying spirits. But it has that option now! The native community of Ibadan and of Abeokuta stopped buying spirits three years ago for several months on end, because the people objected to a licensing duty, which naturally put up the price of spirits and was an innovation entirely foreign to the native mind. Any native community in Southern Nigeria is free, to-day, to buy or not to buy spirits, or cotton goods or tobacco or anything else. But a native community consists not of one Chief, but of a Paramount Chief or King (when the native state form has developed to that extent which, in the Eastern Province, for example, is not yet the case), a number of ordinary Chiefs with their councillors, and the people. It is one thing for a Native community to make up its mind not to buy spirits. It is quite a different thing for a Chief to impose his caprice, which may be purely temporary in its action, upon his people. If, for example, we suppose a Chief desirous to please the missionaries in his locality, or objecting to the present high price of imported spirits and wishing to pull it down, or for some other reason, forbidding his people to buy spirits; then the Administration would be clearly in the wrong in supporting that Chief if his views did not coincide with the views of his people. Such action would amount to coercion and interference with the liberties of the people themselves. The Chief so acting would be violating native law and assuming the powers of a dictator, which in Southern Nigeria under the native system of rule he does not possess. He could only do so backed by the British Administration, and in backing him the British Government would be making native rule impossible and inciting to disturbance and turmoil.