ABSTRACT
The end of the Hut Tax War signaled the start of a lengthy process of assimilation of the protectorate’s people into mainstream national politics. There was a need for a new constitution to replace the 1863 Blackhall Constitution, which was limited to the colony of Freetown. An expanded legislative council was also required to accommodate representatives from across the protectorate. The initial challenge facing the colonial administrations (between 1920 and 1924) was whether having both an upper and lower house (bicameral) legislative council was politically expedient. The educated leaders of the protectorate, who called themselves the Committee of Educated Aborigines (CEA), were in favor of a unicameral legislative council provided there was a special chamber to accommodate the paramount chiefs—who acquired their status mostly through hereditary systems—from the protectorate. The African politicians in the colony of Freetown, who had assumed a new, elitist ethnic identity called Creole, 1 were opposed to the idea of having a single house, for several reasons.
