Bai Bureh and the Price of a RoofSierra Leone Protectorate · 1898“They put a tax on the hut a man built with his own hands, on his own father's land. Listen to what answered.”Five shillings a year, said Governor Cardew, for every hut in the new Protectorate — never mind that the people of the interior had signed no such bargain and seen no such benefit. A tax on the roof is a tax on existing.The lesson the elders kept: Taxation without consent is not finance — it is a claim of ownership over the people themselves, and people know it.