Colonial assembly

“ First, all colonial countries and Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories must be granted forthwith complete independence and freedom to build their own national states in accordance with the freely expressed will and desire of their peoples. The colonial system—and colonial administration in all its forms—must be completely abolished in order to afford the peoples of the territories concerned an opportunity to determine their own destiny and form of government. ”

“ A suspension of hostilities was proposed, and as the basis of a final adjustment of the contest, an extension of the privileges of trade hitherto allowed to the colonies was promised; no military force was to be kept up in any colony without the consent of its assembly; the continental bills of credit were to be taken up and ultimately discharged; the colonies were to be represented in parliament, and the British government in the colonial assemblies;—almost everything was to be conceded excepting the acknowledgment of independence. ”

“ If the Council were, in reality, a body of representatives of various sections and parties, it would necessarily contain a large number of irreconcilables, who would constantly be outvoted, as the Crown could not be expected to appoint a majority from the opposition. Had the Governor, as was the case in many of the royal colonies, possessed the executive power, and an elected assembly the legislative, then the struggle between them would have taken the course with which the student of colonial history is so familiar. ”

“ The normal province was thought to be one in which legislation was entrusted mainly to local assemblies elected by the colonists, while executive and administrative authority rested mainly with a governor and council responsible to the king. At the opening of the eighteenth century, colonial governments mostly conformed to this model: in each colony the owners of property regularly elected an assembly which levied taxes and made laws; in each colony, except in Rhode Island and Connecticut, the governor, and usually the council as well, were appointed by the Crown. ”

“ A legislature, consisting of a Legislative Council and a House of Assembly, was established, both to be elected on a franchise wide [138] enough to include people of any race or color holding the reasonable property qualification. The sole check upon the colonial legislature retained by the imperial government was the right of the British crown to disallow any of its acts considered objectionable, on constitutional or other grounds, by her Majesty’s ministers. ”

“ In these English colonies, which are true republics, governing themselves, and which also remind us, through this feature, of the Southern States, the blacks have come to be accepted as fellow-citizens. They practise the liberal professions; they are electors and often elected, for they form of themselves alone one-fifth of the Colonial Assembly at Jamaica; they are officers of the police and the militia, and their authority never fails to be recognized by all. ”

“ Art. 26. Administrative decentralisation and financial autonomy are guaranteed to the colonies so far as compatible with the Constitution, with the state of their de development and with their own resources, without prejudice to the provisions of
Art. 47- Sole § The political unity of each colony shall be maintained by the existence of a single capital and of a single General or Colonial government.
Art. 27. The following measures are the exclusive prerogative of the National Assembly, after proposal by the Minister for Colonies and submission in accordance with Art. 1 13 of the Constitution. ”

“ Parliament made no protest when the king divided up and gave away the New World. Parliament acquiesced when by charter he created trading companies and bestowed upon them powers of government. Down to 1765 Parliament seldom legislated for individual colonies, and it was generally held that the colonies were not included in English statutes unless specially mentioned. The Crown created the colonies, gave them governors, permitted the local assemblies to grow up, and directed the course of the colonial executive by royal instructions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In an explanatory memorandum accompanying his request, he declared that the time was at hand for "the complete and final liberation of peoples languishing in colonial bondage." The United Nations, he said, could not remain indifferent to the fact that more than 100 million human beings were still living in conditions of colonial oppression and exploitation; in keeping with the principles of its Charter, the United Nations must declare itself in favour of the "immediate and complete elimination of the colonial system in all its forms and manifestations." ”

“ They felt, and justly so, that inexperience in the intricate problems of commerce and colonies and preoccupation with domestic politics and foreign affairs made it impossible for the Privy Council to be an alert, constant, and competent colonial department. They urged as a remedy the erection of a special board of skilled personnel, to sit continuously and aloof from politics, to advise the king and council on the affairs of trade and plantations. ”

“ The work, then, of any friends of Imperial Union should be first to ascertain the desires of the colonists. If any special scheme be thought good here, it should be submitted to the colonial governments by the Association before it is pressed on the public for acceptance. We can form, as it has been suggested, a vigilance committee in Parliament at home to take cognisance of anything affecting the colonies, and this we can do without consulting anybody but the men who may desire to serve. ”

“ Occasional committees of Parliament, the Council as a board of trade and plantations, committees of the Council, and select councils and committees do not form a very confusing body of material out of which to fashion a system of colonial control. Yet, despite this fact, the management of the colonies during the Interregnum was without unity or simplicity. Control was exercised by no single or continuous organ and according to no clearly defined or consistent plan. ”

“ The attempt to find material for six separate parliaments in a population of three and a half millions has, it must be confessed in all candour, succeeded beyond reasonable expectations, but concentration will be of service. There will be a laudable rivalry between the colonies which will result in the choice of the fittest men, and a combination parliament will be a more useful and dignified body than has yet been assembled within colonial limits. ”

“ The struggle of the peoples for liberation was a great historic process which could not be checked. The United Nations, they declared, was duty bound to put an end to the colonial system and the best contribution it could make would be to adopt the draft declaration submitted by the USSR.
Representatives of some Latin American Members said that the juridical traditions of their countries made them natural allies of the cause of independence for colonial peoples. ”

“ 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 colonial assemblies immediately after their formation shall signify, in the name of each colony respectively, their sentiments respecting that constitution, those laws, and the administration of them, which will best promote the prosperity and happiness of the people, conforming themselves nevertheless to those general principles by which the colonies and the mother-country are connected together, and by which their respective interests are best secured, agreeably to the decree of the 8th of March 1790 and instructions of the 28th of the same month. ”

“ Each assembly among you, forsooth, pretends to an equality with the British parliament, and allows no laws binding but those, which are imposed by itself. But mark the consequence. Every colony becomes at once an independant kingdom, and the sovereign may become, in a short time, absolute master, by playing the one against the other. ”

“ This consideration should temper and guide not only our dealings, but our tone of communication with our great selfmaintaining and self-governing Colonies.
A great opportunity now presented itself for consolidating, on an even and permanent basis, the union of their great Colonial Empire—an opportunity which, if allowed to pass away might never return, for uniting those great self-governing communities with the parent State by the bond of a common allegiance, affording to each the advantages of common citizenship, and to both the strength of union in a great Empire. ”

“ Before the Revolution the present States, then colonies, were separate communities, unconnected with each other except in their common relation to the Crown. Their governments were instituted by grants from the Crown, which operated, according to the conditions of each grant, in the nature of a compact between the settlers in each colony and the Crown. All power not retained in the Crown was vested exclusively in the colonies, each having a government consisting of an executive, a judiciary, and a legislative assembly, one branch of which was in every instance elected by the people. ”

“ The problem of our tropical possessions will always raise difficulties in the way of a type of union which in essence belongs to white men and the temperate zones. Again, federation means the creation of a new representative body, either out of the British Parliament, by adding to it colonial representatives, or independent of it, but on analogous lines. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Further, it is important, if such a council is ever to grow into a real Parliament of the Empire, to see that the colonial members shall really represent their Colonies. If they are nominated by the Crown, they may be a most competent and valuable element, but they will not be representative. They will be unable to claim any mandate from the people. The advice we take, the share in the executive power we grant, will not be the advice or executive acts of the Colonies, but of a few independent colonial statesmen, whom their countrymen are not unlikely to regard, in Mr. ”

“ The repeated changes caused by political events at home having no connexion with colonial affairs, have left, to most of the various representatives of the Colonial Department in Parliament, too little time to acquire even an elementary knowledge of the condition of those numerous and heterogeneous communities for which they have had both to administer and legislate. ”

“ The centuries roll back, and before us, in solemn session, is the first assembly upon this continent of the chosen representatives of the people. It were impossible to overstate its deep import to the struggling colony, or its far-reaching consequence to States yet unborn. In this little assemblage of twenty-two burgesses, the Legislatures of nearly fifty commonwealths to-day and of the Congress with its representatives from all the States of 'an indestructible union' find their historical beginning. ”

“ As the imperial government and parliament gradually withdraw from legislative interference, and from the exercise of patronage in colonial affairs, the office of governor tends to become, in the most emphatic sense of the term, the link which connects the mother country and the colony, and his influence the means by which harmony of action between the local and imperial authorities is to be preserved. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”