Colonial secretary

“ He was always reckoned businesslike and capable; at times working exceedingly hard, as when he stayed almost continuously in the colonial secretary's office for over three months in 1872. There are portraits of him in the colonial secretary's office, and in the Civil Service Club, at Cape Town. ”

“ In offering his resignation to the colonial secretary he was able to say that the period of his administration had been "one of considerable social progress"; that "uninterrupted harmony" had "prevailed between the colonists and the local government"; that "the spirit of enterprise" which had proceeded from Jamaica for two years had "enabled the British West Indian colonies to endure with comparative fortitude, apprehensions and difficulties which otherwise might have depressed them beyond measure." ”

“ They reminded the colonial secretary that the differences which the commissioners were appointed to determine had, for half a century, exerted a most baneful influence upon the colony, and that the people hailed with much satisfaction the prospect of having them adjusted. Should anything occur to prevent such adjustment, the consequences would be of a very serious nature, and result in causing much anxiety to Her Majesty’s ministers, and also to the local government. ”

“ The secretary of state for the colonies is the official medium of communication with colonial governments; he has certain administrative duties respecting crown colonies, and has a right of advising the veto of an act of a colonial legislature—this veto, however, is never exercised in the case of purely local statutes. He is assisted by a permanent and a parliamentary under-secretary and a considerable clerical staff. ”

“ Nor is it in matters of routine alone that the permanent officers shape the course of colonial administration. A strong-minded minister with a policy of his own, like Lord Grey or Lord Carnarvon, will force his subordinates to carry it out, hut even here a still stronger-minded Under-Secretary will often have his way. In 1848 Lord Grey, then Secretary for the Colonies, summoned the aged and moribund Committee (of the privy council) on Trade and Plantations to advise with him on the policy to be adopted towards the Australian colonies. ”

“ His conduct, nevertheless, afforded Lord John Russell an escape from an embarrassing situation. Becoming colonial secretary in 1846, he found himself everywhere confronted with arduous problems, which in the main he encountered with success. His administration formed an epoch. He was the first minister to proclaim that the colonies were to be governed for their own benefit and not for the mother-country’s; the first systematically to accord them self-government so far as then seemed possible; the first to introduce free trade into their relations with Great Britain and Ireland. ”

“ The Colonial Secretary has distant communities to deal with, and so has the Secretary of State for India. The Minister for War and the First Lord of the Admiralty each has his labour and responsibility confined within clearly marked limits. ”

“ It is right to explain the singular concatenation of circumstances by which I found myself compelled to act for a time as Colonial Secretary. His Excellency the Governor (Colonel Clarke) and the Honourable the Colonial Secretary (Peter Brown, Esq.) , were simultaneously so prostrated by serious illness as to be incapable of transacting any business; the doctors denied all access except to their nearest friends. How the Government was to be carried on was a grave question. ”

“ In 1886 North Borneo was made a British protectorate, but its administration remained entirely in the hands of the company, the Crown reserving only control of its foreign relations, though it was also agreed that governors appointed by the company should receive the formal sanction of the British Colonial Secretary. To quote the chairman of the board of directors: "We are not a trading company. We are a government, [56] an administration. The Colonial Office leaves us alone as long as we behave ourselves." ”

“ Although the governor of the colony has ever held the rank of captain-general of the forces, there has always been a general officer in actual command of the troops; and in former days, and as late as 1895, such general held, ex officio, a commission as lieutenant-governor of the colony, and succeeded to the control of affairs when occasion arose. The house still retains the name of Headquarters House, though it has been the colonial secretary’s office since the government was removed from Spanish Town to Kingston. ”

“ We have already given "A Settler again" ample opportunity, for displaying his abilities; we have therefore no room for his second communication on the same subject.
"Scrutators" / "Posers" for the Colonial Secretary must have been intented for another quarter; we should have thought it needless to have informed any person, that the Colonial Secretary is merely the organ of the Government. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In September 1842 he was appointed colonial secretary in Van Diemen's Land, and shortly after proceeded to that country, where he fulfilled the duties of his office to the satisfaction alike of the colonists and of the home government. He was one of the founders, a vice-president, and member of council of the Royal Society of Van Diemen's Land, and a contributor to its papers. ”

“ Minds influential in the Colonial Office and elsewhere saw in this only a flamboyant patriotism. The Duke of Newcastle, when colonial secretary, had not shared the desire for separation, and he found it hard to believe that any one charged with colonial administration wished it. He had written to Palmerston in 1861:
You speak of some supposed theoretical gentlemen in the colonial office who wish {121} to get rid of all colonies as soon as possible. ”

“ We all await anxiously the result of the representation. In justice to the indefatigable Colonial Secretary, it must be confessed that he has only inherited the errors of his predecessors, and there is no doubt that he is doing what he considers to be his best to regain the lost ground. May he succeed in his efforts is the prayer of every Indian in South Africa.
The Times of India (Weekly edition) , 17-6-1899
16↑ Vide footnote, “The Plague Panic in South Africa”, 20-3-1899, supra. 17↑ Vide “Memorial to Secretary of State for the Colonies”, 15-3-1897. ”

“ The Peace Preservation Ordinance, as its name implies although framed to keep out of the Colony dangerous character, is being used mainly to prevent British Indians from entering the Transvaal. The working of the law has always been harsh and oppressive—and this in spite of the desire of the Chief Secretary for Permits that it should not be so. He has to receive instructions from the Colonial Office, so that the harsh working is due, not to the chief officer in charge of the Department, but to the system under which it is being worked. (a) There are still hundreds of refugees waiting to come. ”

“ The {68} selection of the individuals by whom such offices are to be borne must be made by yourself from the colonists either of New South Wales or New Zealand, but upon the full and distinct understanding that their tenure of office, and even the existence of the offices which they are to hold must be provisional and dependent upon the future pleasure of the Crown. Amongst the offices thus to be created, the most evidently indispensable are those of a Judge, a Public Prosecutor, a Protector of the Aborigines, a Colonial Secretary, a Surveyor-General of Lands, and a Superintendent of Police. ”

“ We desire to speak with all due respect of the self-governing Dominions of South Africa, but I think we may fairly ask the Colonial Secretary to help the Union Government to realize that there is a strong feeling in this country in favour of everything possible being done to secure just and reasonable treatment for the Natives. One may fairly ask the right hon. ”

“ Dundas (afterwards Lord Melville) , who was then Secretary of State dealing with the Home affairs of the Department, was appointed 'Secretary for War,' and also nominally Secretary of State for the Colonies, but the Departments of War and the Colonies were not actually united until 1801, when Lord Hobart was created Secretary of State for the War and Colonial Department. ”

“ It lacked executive authority but conducted routine business and gathered information on which the Privy Council, Parliament, and the departments of the treasury, admiralty, and war acted. Under the Hanoverians the Secretary of State for the Southern Department became the colonial minister and the Board of Trade lost much of its importance. In America the principal agents of imperial control were the royal governors, judges, customs officials, and naval and military officers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For, be he what he may, he is the representative of the Colonial Office; he cannot, it is true, persuade the Colonial Office to go and involve itself in rows with European continental powers, because the Office knows about them; but if he is a strong-minded man with a fad he can persuade the Colonial Office to let him try that fad on the natives or the traders, because the Colonial Office does not know the natives nor the West African trade. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So excellent and so thorough is the work accomplished—in education, in replacing the machinery of the higher civil administration throughout the colonies—that, without hyperbole, it may be said to fill one with admiration and wonder. If one could always be sure of getting such a man as Joseph Chamberlain at the Colonial Office, and such a man as Alfred Milner as High Commissioner, one would be strongly in favour of retaining permanently as much power as possible in the hands of the holders of these two offices. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 we do know is that with that general philanthropy and honesty{211} without which a British Cabinet cannot now exist we want to do good and to avoid doing evil. But when we look back, and, taking even three liberal Colonial Secretaries, see the difference of opinion on colonial matters of such men as Lord Glenelg, Lord Grey, and Lord Granville, we have to own that our colonial policy must vacillate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”