Colonial administration

“ Placed at the head of the administration, he breathed into the British Councils a new soul. He revived the energies of the colonies. He gave new life to dependencies, whose loyalty was weakened, and whose means were exhausted by a series of as ill-contrived and unfortunate expeditions as were ever attempted. He addressed circulars to the colonial Governors, assuring them of the determination of the ministry to send a large force to America, and called upon the colonies to raise as many troops as possible, and to act promptly and liberally in furnishing the requisite supplies. ”

“ This volume in “The citizen’s library of economics, politics, and sociology,” “is rather a statement of the various problems confronting colonial governments, and an indication of the main lines of solution that have been attempted than a complete and conclusive discussion of the principles involved. The book gives in small compass a broad survey of the most important activities of modern colonial governments, and deals with the facts of colonial administration rather than with the underlying philosophy. Such topics as education; finance; commerce; currency, banking, and credit; agriculture ”

“ It is a constitutional sight like few.
And yet an instinct deeper than the Gospel of M'Croudy teaches all men that Colonies are worth something to a country! That if, under the present Colonial Office, they are a vexation to us and themselves, some other Colonial Office can and must be contrived which shall render them a blessing; and that the remedy will be to contrive such a Colonial Office or method of administration, and by no means to cut the Colonies loose. Colonies are not to be picked off the street every day ”

“ In 1853 he published 'The Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration' (2 vols.) in the form of a series of letters addressed to the late prime minister ; therein he boasted that during his period of office a remarkable development in both the population and the resources of the colonies had taken place, a commercial revolution deeply affecting the colonies had been safely passed through, and a great reduction of the colonial charges imposed on the treasury had been effected (Colonial Policy, ii. 303) . ”

“ This belief, however, is perceptibly passing away, and in many of the West African colonies the natives are not now prepared to accept, without question, the acts of European administration. To such an extent has this feeling grown within recent years that administrative action sincerely taken in the best interests of the natives is frequently assailed.
BRITISH JUSTICE
No one would deny that blunders are but human; few would deny that the finest Colonial Office in the world—that of Great Britain—has made mistakes which subsequent history condemns. ”

“ No reasoning man can maintain that the people whom a few years will behold as numerous as the inhabitants of these islands, will be content to live permanently under the system of the Colonial Office. That system is probably the only one our Constitution permits us to adopt; but it is nevertheless the policy, if not the duty, of this State to foster the youth and early life of the colonies we have founded, and to protect them, as far as may be, from the evils which shall come upon them in consequence of their present connection with Great Britain. ”

“ We augur well of this Imperial arrangement, not merely because it forms a fitting acknowledgment of colonial enterprise, but because we may venture to see in it the beginning of a new policy, by which the Home Government frees itself, once for all, from the imaginary, or, at any rate, to it, the needless costs and difficulties of founding new colonies. Colonies already established and prosperous may be left to perform this duty, and they may be so left all the more readily when, as in this case, they are prompt to take the duty in hand, with all its outlay and trouble. ”

“ A colonial policy means that we shall send to the Philippine islands a few traders, a few taskmasters, and a few office holders, and an army large enough to support the authority of a small fraction of the people while they rule the natives. ”

“ For a nation to plant out large bodies of colonists on comparatively unoccupied lands, as in Africa or Australia or Canada, in a deliberate and organized fashion, with every facility towards co-operation and success, and yet on the principle of leaving, each colonial unit plenty of freedom and autonomy, would not be a very difficult task, nor a very expensive one, considering the end in view. ”

“ Men cannot forbear a smile at the Despatches and Government Orders of this period of colonial history, and the care and trouble of officialdom with a very few hundreds of Aborigines, having miserable weapons, while controlling a colony of many thousands of Europeans, and possessed of a large executive power in British soldiers and well-armed constables. ”

“ A Crown colony where the Government has it all its own way must be the paradise of officials, and the high sense of honor and the righteous esprit de corps which characterize our civil servants in the Far East, and a conscientious sense of responsibilities for the good government and well-being of the heterogeneous populations over which they rule, seem as good a check as the general run of colonial parliaments. ”

“ Our obvious policy would be, to conciliate the leading men by titles of honour, to conciliate the rising generation by giving them the offices of their own country, and make it a principle of colonial government, that while the command of the forces, or the governor-generalship should be supplied from home, every office below those ranks should be given to those brave and intelligent individuals of the colony who had best earned them. ”

“ The new constitutions had then been in operation for some time in several of the great colonies, and already no slight friction had occurred in the endeavour to adjust Imperial and Colonial rights and responsibilities upon a clear and well-understood basis. Moreover, the continued formation of new colonies and the desire of certain Crown colonies to attain to responsible government suggested a fundamental treatment of the whole question of colonial relations. ”

“ How liberal a construction has been given to the distinction between imperial and colonial questions is shown by the fact that the whole of the unappropriated lands in the regions behind our American and Australian colonies have been given up to the uncontrolled disposal of the colonial communities, though they might, without injustice, have been kept in the hands of the imperial government, to be administered for the greatest advantage of future emigrants from all parts of the empire. ”

“ The citizen of the United Kingdom has often been compelled to regard the colonies as great dependencies which increased his responsibilities and multiplied his difficulties without returning to the mother-country, under their present organization, strength in men or resources, or even in exclusive commercial advantage. Every new colony or colonial interest was to him something new to defend, and augmented the burden of Empire. ”

“ To-day as the Colonies send their sons in their thousands to uphold the Motherland in her fight for Justice and Freedom, we know that our colonial attitude has been more than justified, and England is indeed proud of her Dominions. ”

“ One thing is, however, indispensable to the success of this or any other system of Colonial Government. You must renounce the habit of telling the Colonies that the Colonial is a provisional existence. You must allow them to believe that, without severing the bonds which unite them to Great Britain, they may attain the degree of perfection, and of social and political development, to which organised communities of free men have a right to aspire. ”

“ In a great empire, the springs of action are concealed; the public behold only the results, and can scarcely guess how those results were brought about. In a colony, every one stands so close to the little machine of Government, that he can readily discern how it is made to work, and therefore takes a more lively interest in the working of it. The model has its representative of a sovereign; its Ministers, who comprise the Executive Council with the Colonial Secretary as Premier ”

“ When it is recollected, with what extreme discontent and reluctant obedience the British colonial restrictions were enforced in the manufacturing and navigating states, while they were colonies, it is incredible, that they should be willing to adopt a government, which should, or might entail upon them equal evils in perpetuity. ”

“ Such a complication, it is safe to say, never existed in any other region of the world, or in any other record of colonization and expanding empire. That government was possible at all reflects great credit upon the administrators, and shows that, as years passed on, the Colonial Office had at last risen to the level of its responsibilities, had grasped the true spirit and the absolute necessity of Imperial growth, and had learned that the men in charge of distant regions must have the confidence of rulers at home and a policy with some degree of continuity in plan and principle and detail. ”

“ Thus, even leaving sentiment aside, the balance of material advantage to the Colonies is great and real; while their self-government is complete, for the mother country never interferes with any matters of colonial concern, unless in the rare cases where a matter primarily local may affect the general relations and interests of the whole empire. ”

“ Every colonist had a right to inhabit, if he pleased, in any other colony, and as a British subject he was capable of inheriting lands by descent in every other colony. The commercial intercourse of the colonies too was regulated by the general laws of the British empire, and could not be restrained or obstructed by colonial legislation. ”

“ I trust that the British North American Colonies will, in reply to the above remark, send forth such a voice of attachment to their mother country that will encourage her people at home and embolden them to come forward in aid of great colonial measures, resulting as they must do in universal benefit to the empire. ”

“ And with such an understanding as this, and with all education perpetually going on in colonial legislatures, weaning the feelings and separating the interests of the colonies from the mother country, how can it be expected that that interest in England necessary to all true loyalty, and that knowledge and appreciation of her institutions necessary to all enlightened or patriotic attachment, can take root, or subsist for any length of time in the colonies? ”

“ It was England's. The colonies have been allowed by their legislatures to shake the leaves of their interests; imperial legislation has always assailed the trunk. But this is not all; colonial interests have been, unheard and unheeded, sacrificed to other interests in England. ”

“ You will get nothing done in tropical Africa except under the influence of individual men; but your West African Governor, though not controlled by the Councils within the colony, is controlled by a power outside the colony, namely the Colonial Office in London. Up to our own day the Colonial Office has been, except in the details of domestic colonial affairs, a drag-chain on English development in Western Africa. ”

“ All such forces are under the full control of the Colonial Governments, whether, as in the Australian Commonwealth and Canada, under the Federal Ministry of Defence, or, as in Cape Colony, under the department of the Prime Minister. An imperial officer may be lent, as in Canada and Australia to-day, for the command of the colonial force, but as soon as he enters upon his command he becomes a servant of the Colonial Government. ”

“ Remember, that for modern civilisation among the Outeroos, the world is indebted to the colonial enterprise and success of Britain; but remember, too, that it is not always the ‘colonising nations,’ but the ‘colonists’ of the ‘colonising nations,’ that carry the standard of social progress to advanced grounds. ”

“ They owed, indeed, allegiance to the British king, as the head of each colonial government, and as forming a part thereof; but this allegiance was exclusive, in each colony, to its own government, and, consequently, to the king as the head thereof, and was not a common allegiance of the people of all the colonies, to a common head. [1] These colonial governments were clothed with the sovereign power of making laws, and of enforcing obedience to them, from their own people. The people of one colony owed no allegiance to the government of any other colony, and were not bound by its laws. ”

“ There is hence the strongest obligation on the government of a country like our own, with a crowded population, and unoccupied continents under its command, to build, as it were, and keep open, in concert with the colonial governments, a bridge from the mother country to those continents, by establishing the self-supporting system of colonization on such a scale, that as great an amount of emigration as the colonies can at the time accommodate, may at all times be able to take place without cost to the emigrants themselves. ”

“ When our economic system has so developed that it will be impossible, in most cases, for an outside Power to interfere with English interests without at the same time interfering with Colonial or Indian interests, then we may hope to enlist the serious and permanent attention of the Colonies in the problems of Imperial Defence. What applies to the general policy of the Foreign Office applies no less to the details of its departmental work. ”