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Tous les autres exempiaires originaux sont fiimis en commen^ant par la premiere page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par la dernidre page qui comporte une telle empreinte. Un des symboles suivante apparaitra sur la dernidre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbols — ► signifie "A SUIVRE ", le symbols V signifie "FIN ". Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre film6s d des taux de reduction diff^rents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clich6, il est film6 A partir de I'angle supdrieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images n6cessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mithode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 in ji RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT FOI COLONIES. I i LONDON : JAMES RIDGWAY, PICCADILLY. 1840. LONDON llLATCn AND LAMI'liRT, PRINTEUS, GROVE I'LACE, UROMl'TON. ai>vp:rtisement, Except a portion of the Introductory Chapter and the Conclusion, which arc chiefly new, the following pages are reprinted from a series of papers written week by week for the Colonial Gazette, and published in that newspaper in the months of December, January, and February last. Thougii originally intended to elucidate and apply a doctrine of Lord Durham's Report, that had been often misunderstood and misre- presented in the strife of party poHtics, the papers were based on principles of the widest range: and while their appearance has been welcomed in the Provinces of British America, IV ADVKUTISEMENT. for their bearing on questions of the highest in- terest to those countries, they have been leceived with equal favour in the West Indies, as a con- tribution to the cause of good govcinment in all the Colonies. To aid in this object, and preserve them for reference, they arc now col- lected, revised, and published in u compact form. London , Jpril \iSth, IS40. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. While the public are every day becoming more and more alive to the advantages of Colo- nies, the Government and Legislature seem more and more disposed to regard them as mere sub- jects of difficulty and annoyance. Every year they occupy an increasing portion of the atten- tion of Parliament : but it is only to present harassing and insoluble perplexities to its no- tice. With every addition to their population, and its intelligence, with every improvement of our communication with them, and with every enlargement of our general knowledge of them, we only get more ample evidence of their grie- vances and their discontent. A large portion of these communities are ruled in the silence and obscurity of an essentiaUy arbitrary form of B 2 introdi;c;touy. government : and their policy is determined, without reference to public opinion, in the secret deliberations either of the Colonial Office at home, or of close councils in the Colonies composed of the nominees of the Governor. Yet even in these Colonies the discussions car- ried on through the press reveal to us the ex- istence of constant dissatisfaction at the policy of the Government : and the intense excitement occasioned by grievances of more than usual magnitude, every novi^ and then gives rise to motions in Parliament, that inform us of little but the fact that dissatisfaction exists. But where, apparently, the freest institutions have been accorded to a Colony, the content and har- mony, which are the usual results of freedom, are still less to be found : the representctive bodies appear to be only more efficient organs of at least equal discontent : and the popular voice is heard in one wearisome monotony of complaint. Theirs at least is no tranquil and patient suffering : and when they find remon- strance and impeachment unavaiAing, they compel the attention and interposition of Par- liament by stopping the supplies, and obstruct- ing the whole course of government and legis- lation. IXTnODTCTOIlY. a It is not at all difficult for Englishmen to be persuaded of the niisgovernment and dissatisfac- tion that must exist in any country in which the people have no voice at all in the making of the laws. But we have I'ot into a habit of consider- ing the privation of free institutions as a necessary incident of the infancy of colonies : we yield a lazy acquiescence in this period of mismanage- ment and disorder, in some vague anticipation of a period in which Colonies become what is called "ripe" for Representative Government: and we are still more reconciled to the existence of a form of government in our Colonies which is the most repugnant to all the feelings of English- men, from observing that Representative insti- tutions only seem to increase disorder and mis- rule. There are not wanting wise saws and vague theories, to account for this anomaly in the way best calculated to save us the trouble of investigation and reform. We are told that Colonies ought not to have Representative Go- vernments : and a large number of our official wiseacres have admitted it as one of the axioms of their new political philosophy, that no Colony should enjoy any share of self-government until it becomes strong and discontented enough to achieve its entire independence. B 2 IN'TUODUCTOUY. It is not at present our purpose to enquire into tlu; general principles of Colonial govern- ment ; to examine at ■svhat period of its exist- ence a colony beconies fit for representative institutions ; or to determine "Nvhcther now, any more than in former times, any colony of En- glishmen should be for any period deprived of those free institutions wliieh they regard as their birthright. Our object at present, is to inquire into the anomalies that present them- selves in the working of rcprcscntatirc institu- tions, and to discover the cause that renders them sources of additional disorder rather than guai'antees of good government in our Colonies. It is not at all difficult to discover this. The complaints of the represented Colonies all point to the same evil : their struggles arc all for the same object. The Assemblies every where complain that they have no influence on the Executive : that the laws which thev make are administered — the supplies, which they vote, applied — and, in fine, the whole internal poUcy of their community directed, by persons in whom they have no confidence, and over whom they have no control. They complain, further, that the government, not thus subjected to a due responsibility to them, is under an undue contro] nTUODTCTOTlY. s on the part of ii distant authority, rqually ir- responsible to the public opinion of the Colony. All their discontent really originates in tliese two evils : all their struggles are to obtain what they call llesponsible (lovernment in the Colony, and to prevent undue interference on the part of the Colonial Office in Downing Street. They want to have in their own hands the control over their own Executive : and what they ask is certainly nothing more than what experience has taught us to be a necessary incident of representative institutions every- where. When Sir Robert Peel said — " The battle must be fought in the Registration Courts," he expressed the principle of Responsible Govern- ment. He warned the Conservative party, whom he was addressing, against overstraining the power of the Crown or the House of Lords ; assuring them that it was impossible for any administration permanently to retain power in this country, without enjoying the confidence of a majority of the Representatives of the People. Until then the more eager and thoughtless of liis party were disposed to rely on the favour of the Crown and Lords, as a means of governing in spite of the Commons ; since then, the aim of 6 INTRODUCTORY. the whole party has been to obtain a majority in the Representative body. The leader's doctrine and the party's consequent course have been both eminently constitutional. Ever since this celebrated warning, ihey have abandoned all thought of an Executive not supported by the House of Commons. They are perfectly assured that whenever they obtain a majority in the Commons, men of their party will fill the executive offices, and govern the country ac- cording to the views of their party; but that whatever may be the disposition of the Lords or Court, they will do so no sooner. This is the main principle, or rather, the most important usage of the British Constitution — the Execu- tive cannot for a long time differ from the majority of the Representative body. This doctrine holds good wherever the prin- ciple of representation is admitted ; and that principle only works well where this practice is strictly observed. Wherever the principle of representation is admitted, but the practice not observed, there the principle of representation works all manner of mischief. A volume might be rilled with examples of both sorts — of the smooth working of the representative principle, where the executive policy has been agreeable INTRODUCTORY. to the constituent body ; and of the derangement of every representative machine which has wanted the wheel that produces agreement be- tween the constituency and the executive. Herein lies the whole secret of the smooth working of the British constitution since 1688 : here is the true explanation of the failure of almost every attempt in any part of the world to imitate that constitution. In France and Spain, the sovereigns of those countries have, since the adoption of representative institutions, gone on in their old way of taking out of their household, or from among the clerks of the ^public officesi the members of a ministry whenever necessity or caprice has induced them to make a change. A new French ministry used to consist of men whose name and existence the Gazette that an- nounced them as members of a cabinet first notified to the world. By degrees experience has occa- sioned some approximation to the British prac- tice. But a rude experience was necessary. For the deposition of Charles X. was the result of his obstinate determination to carry on the goverment with a ministry which he could get no Chamber to support. rhe principle of a responsible executive is indeed more familiarly tested by a reference to ) 8 INTRODUCTORY. numerous constitutions which have no concern with matters of state ; such as municipal bodies and commercial companies, in which the bur- gesses and shareholders have a voice in the ma- nagement of their affairs. No man of common sense could suppose such bodies to go on well ex- cept by means of the constant responsibility of the executive to the body of electors. Nor is there one of them that has not been in a state of hot water as long as an attempt has been made to conduct its affairs in a way not approved by the burgesses or shareholders. ^Many governments have worked tolerably well without representa- tion, and many institutions have worked tolera- bly well without shareholders or voters. For power without representation is not so great an evil as representation without executive respon- sibility. It is better to be without a fire, than to have a fire without a chimney. For ivhat purpose is representation given ? What is its object ? It has no other object, it can have no ether, than to give the people a control over that alone which ultimately affects them — their executive government. Popular representatives do not meet for the purpose of merely talking and passing resolutions or bills : they are elected as the organs of the people for INTRODUCTORY. the purpose of rendering the whole of govern- ment constantly agreeable to the people. This is the use of an Assembly. Now the Colonial system is to create the power, but forbid its use. The certain consequence is an abuse of the power. The Assembly, prevented from performing the function for which it was creatcf* — deprived of control over the ultimate results of government — becomes a revolutionary body, and does little or nothing but violently assail the Executive, which it would have found whole- some occupation in directing. The Executive returns blow for blow, until thoroughly beaten, and then calls out for help from the Mother- country. Such is the history, past, present, and future, of every Colonial Government in which the principles of Representation and Executive Irresponsibility are placed in permanent oppo- sition to each other. In the Old Colonies of England the prin- ciple of a Responsible Executive was fully adopted, and was in some of them carried prac- tically to the extent of allowing those who elected the Assembly to elect the Governor also. The Local Executive was thus kept in perpetual harmony with the Popular Representatives ; and it may be remarked of those Colonies, that the B 5 10 INTRODUCTORY. ii Crown of England had no more loyal subjects than the people who lived there, until the at- tempt was made to tax them without their con- sent. In all the present British Colonies of North America we have pursued a different system, giving Representation but withholding Executive Responsibility. We thereby, as it were, provided for the unceasing contests which have more or less prevailed in all these depend- encies between the representative body and the holders of office. We have made the fire but stopped the chimney. We have produced just such a state of things as Sir Robert Peel sup- posed would result here from attempting to administer government as if there were no House of Commons : it may be termed a state always verging on revolution. We say nothing here of the miserable inefficiency of the irre- sponsible Executives of the North American Colonies — of the way in which they have mis- managed and wasted the resources of the fine countries submitted to their rule ; for that sub- ject scarcely belongs to the present question. The present question is, whether the verging-on- revolution state is to continue, or is to make way for a peaceful and stable order of things. i'lll CHAPTER II. WHAT "responsible GOVERNMENT" IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT. Great pains have been taken by those active and influential persons whose emoluments or importance would be lessened by the adoption of a good system of government in the Colonies, to misrepresent the meaning of the demand for Responsible Government. The term "Respon- sible Government " is certainly general and vague. It may mean various kinds and degrees of responsibility ; it may denote a responsibility carried to precisely the same extent and guard- ed by the same guarantees as that of the Exe- cutive of this country ; it may mean a responsi- ri 12 WHAT RESPONSIBLE bility carried to an extent and enforced by means repugnant to the spirit of our constitution. The opponents of the principle take advantage of the vagueness of the term in order to give it the latter of these two characters. Sometimes they content themselves with effecting this pur- pose by mere vague insinuations. They give a wise shake of the head, and mutter something about the "Republican" nature of the doctrine; or, if they delight in what is called " strong " language, they turn to and rail in good set terms about rebels, and Mackenzie, and Jo- seph Hume. Sometimes they condescend to give a reason for their faith as to the character and tendency of the principle ; and that reason is generally an utter and gross misrepresentation of facts. They assert that a " responsible " means an " elective " executive ; and that the responsibility proposed is that kind which pre- vails in the various States of the American Union, where every officer of government is appointed either by the direct vote of the peo- ple, or by that of the representative bodies of the State. It is no wonder that misrepresentations such as these, made with the utmost confidence and repeated with the utmost assiduity, should mis- M!i GOVERNMENT IS. 13 lead a great number of persons, on a subject about which so few in this country take the ne- cessary pains to get correct information. Those who make mese assertions rely on the indolence of those to whom they address them, and count on their adopting them without examination ; for the slightest examination would dispel all misapprehension and even doubt on the subject. Among those who in this country or in the Co- lonies have made " Responsible Government " their political watchword, there has never been the least difference of opinion as to the object in view : all have confined themselves to demand- ing that the Crowr, while retaining the present unlimited choice of its servants, should never- theless make a practice of selecting them from among those who possess the confidence of the Le- gislature. No one has ever proposed a legislative enactment with a view to enforce the principle. It has been seen that the practice of governing by means of those who command the confidence and cooperation of the Legislature, must be es- tablished, not by acts of Parliament, but by the good sense of the Crown, impelling it not to make a particular concession at this or any other particular moment, but to adopt a general rule of action as essential to the efficient administra- ) 14 WTIAT RESPONSIBLE tion of the government as to the contentment of the people. Lord Duhham's report has come in for its full share of the misrepresentations directed against all the advocates of Responsible Govern- ment : yet it would be impossible for any candid man to misapprehend what the High Commis- sioner means by Responsible Government ; and indeed the most uncandid have never ventured to quote any passages from that Report to justify their interpretation of its purport. The inhe- rent vagueness of the term can throw no doubt on Lord Durham's meaning, because he does not use the phrase of Responsible Government until he has fully explained his meaning with- out it. He reports his observations, draws his inferences, and suggests the alteration which he advises in the present system of administering the government. It is only after thus explain- ing himself, that he remarks that the conclusion at which he arrives, is the same as that which the Reformers of Upper Canada had in view in their demand for Responsible Government. The Report states that a great part of the disorders and discontents of the British North American Colonies resulted from the state of variance in which the Executive and the Repre- GOVERNMENT IS. 15 sentative bodies constantly were. It asserts and proves by a reference to the past history of all these Colonics, that the usual state of govern- ment in them seems to be that of colHsion between the Ex-^cutivc and the Representative body. " In all of them," it says, " the adminis- tration of affairs is habitually confided to those who do not cooperate harmoniously with the popular branch of the Legislature ; and the Government is constantly proposing measures which the majority of the Assembly reject, and refusing its assent to bills which that body has passed." The report traces the bad conse- quences of this state of things — the constant struggle which takes the place of cooperation, the weakening of the Executive, and suspension of ull the legislative functions, and the conse- quent misgovernment and irritation of the com- munity. Such consequences, it infers, must always result where you attempt to administer a government which requires the cooperation of a representative body, by agents who do not pos- sess the confidence of that body. It concludes, therefore, that in the colony which has a repre- sentative form of government, you must adopt the same principle of government as that on which affairs are conducted in the Mother- 10 WHAT TlESPONSim.E I country ; that you must " facilitate the manage- ment of public affairs by intrusting it to the persons who have tlic confidence of the Repre- sentative body." This it asserts to have been what the lleformcrs of Upper Canada desired, when they asked for a Responsible Executive. The Report admits that there were some who, under the name of responsible, demanded an elective executive : but adds — " an elective Executive Council would not only be utterly incompatible with Monarchical government, but would really, under the nominal authority of the Crown, deprive the community of one of the great advantages of an hereditary monarchy. Every purpose of popular control might be com- bined with every advantage of vesting the im- mediate choice of advisers in the Crown, were the Colonial Governor to be instructed to secure the cooperation of the Assembly to his policy by intrusting its administration to such men as could command a majority; and if he were given to understand that he need count on no aid from home in any difference with the As- sembly that should not directly involve the relations between the Mother- country and the Colony. This change might be effected by a single despatch containing such instructions." GOVERNMENT IS. 17 »j Nor has Lord Duuii.vm, in order to secure; this responsibility, wliich he designates as " u cliange which would simply amount to this, that the Crown would henceforth consult the wishes of the people in the choice of its servants," proposed any provisions calculated to give the popular body a more direct voice in the nomi- nation of the officers of the Executive. " The responsibility to the United Legislature," he says, in his final recommendations, "of all the officers of the Government, except the Governor or his Secretary, should be secured by every means known to the British constitution. The Governor, as the representative of the Crown, should be instructed that he must carry on his government by heads of departments, in whom the United Legislature shall repose confidence j and that he must look for no support from home in any contest with the Legislature except on points involving strictly Imperial interests." In this last sentence is contained the whole principle of a free Colonial Executive. The Mother-country should never interfere in the administration of affairs in the colony, either in the legislation on which the Assembly is bent, or in its preference of one Colonial party to the other, but should let the Governor and Assem- 18 WHAT RKSPONSIBLE bly get on as they best may, passing such laws, and administering affairs by such parties as they may agree on between themselves. The only exception is, where the course of legislation adopted in the Colony conflicts with the inter- ests of the IMother-country. In these cases, which might be defined, it must oppose itself to the wishes of the Assembly : in all others it should let the business of the Colony be carried on by the powers in which the constitution has vested the government of the Colony ; allowing the Governor to use his constitutional powers to influence the legislation of the Assembly, and allowing the Assembly to make use of its consti- tutional powers to influence the course of the Executive. The Governor would, in fact, stand in the position of the Crown at home ; and it is difficult to make out why the preroga- tive which suffices to maintain the balance of power at home, should not be equallj%competent to uphold it in a Colony. This is a division of power of which the main- tenance depends upon circumstances and the prudence of the parties. Sometimes the Exe- cutive must take the first hint on the part of the representative body, and dismiss its advisers on the first indication of the hostility of a majority. GOVERNMENT IS. 10 Sometimes, again, it may with ncrft'ct safety make a long resistance to the majority, wait for repeated declarations of their will, and not sub- mit even then, unless it finds on trial that they are backed by the people. The late King did not dismiss Sir Rouert Peel in \H35, until after several hostile votes of the House of Com- mons. In 1784, George the Third maintained Mr. Pitt for some months in despite of a hos- tile majority of the Commons, and then dissolved that Parliament, appealed to the people, and ob- tained a House of Commons disposed to support his Ministers. But at the commencement of Lord Liverpool's Administration, a still more remarkable exercise of the authority of the Crown was witnessed. A majority of the House of Commons, on the motion of Lord "VVharn- CLIFFE, then Mr Stuart Wortley, addressed the Prince Regent tr form a strong and efficient Administration in place of the Ministry then existing. This vote was carried by a bare ma- jority, composed of the most heterogenous ma- terials. It appeared quite clear that no Ministry which might be formed would be likely to possess greater or even equal chances of sta- bility ; and a prospect offered of rallying round Lord Liverpool's Government some of those I il 20 WHAT RESPONSIBLE who had on this occasion condemned it. The Prince Regc. , therefore, did not act on the vote : the Ministry continued in office, and gradually acquired strength ; and the result was, that the Ministry of the longest duration and most stable authority ever known in this country since Sir Robert Walpole's, was the one which received this rude blow at the outset. It is im- possible to define the contingency on which the Crown or its representative should be bound to remove a Minister in compliance with the wishes of the Representative body. No law, no precedent, can exactly fix it : it must be settled in Colonies, as in the Mother-country, by the mutual strength, determination, and pru- dence of the two parties. If left to themselves, their necessities must bring about an arrange- ment of which harmony wiU be the result. All that is wanted is, that the authority of the Mother-country should not be interposed in order to retain in ofRce persons who can get no Assembly to adopt their course of policy. Such is the whole aim and object of the Colonial Reformers who seek " Responsible Government." No one will venture to deny its perfect accordance with the spirit and prac- tice of the British constitution. Nor is it pos- GOVERNMENT IS. 21 sible to show how representative government can harmoniously be carried on without adopt- ing it. If you want the assent of a represen- tative body to the policy of government; there is no other way of insuring harmony between that policy and the feelings of that body, than that of always intrusting the administration of affairs to those who can obtain the concurrence of the majority. This is one of the necessary consequences of representative institutions : it is just as necessary a consequence of rpprescntative institutions as the predominance of the majority is. And if, as we hear loudly and confidently as- serted, Responsible Government is incompatible with colonial connexion, the only inference is, that representative institutions must be utterly incompatible with colonial connexion. But before we discuss this latter question, it will be proper to examine what there is in the nature of colonial connexion, that should pre- vent the administration of affairs in colonies being intrusted to responsible heads of depart- mentj?, or should render it unwise to select these heads of departments from the party that has the majority in the representative body. This is a question which affects not merely the Canadas, but every colony in which represen- Hi 22 RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. tative institutions are established. All suffer alike from the dissensions, from the corruption, from the absolute stoppage of the machine of government, which are the inevitable results of maintaining an executive utterly irresponsible and obnoxious to the people of the colony. To these , incidents of a colonial connexion we ad- vert in a separate chapter. u* W '!i CHAPTER III. COLONIAL DEPENDENCE CONSISTENT WITH RESPONSIBLE ADMINISTRATION. There seems to be something in the term " Colonial dependence " peculiarly gratifying to national vanity. We assert for ourselves the utmost degree of self-government : we maintain that the rights of Englishmen are so inalienable that we carry them to the remotest regions of the eaith, and that in India and Austrr^' the British settler cannot rightfully be even fined or imprisoned, except in conformity with the law of England, and under the sanction of the verdict of a jury : but when we come to speak of the communities formed by these English- men, of whose individual rights we are so ten- der, we are apt to be far less liberal. When 24 COLONIAL DEPENDENCE. U U'!'! ■;i!|' the question is, whether these, like the great community from which they are ofTsets, shall be allowed to manage their own affairs, and to point out in what spirit and by what kind of persons they wish them to be administered, we are con- stantly met by this vague term, and these inde- finite notions of colonial dependence, and told that in order to preserve the due relations between the empire and its dependencies. Englishmen who settle in the Colonics must be content to be governed in a manner the most repugnant to every notion that education and custom have implanted in their breasts. Now it is not to be denied, that to a certain extent there is truth in the doctrine that a colony must in some respects be entirely subor- dinate to the legislature of the mother-country ; that there are certain affairs on which the people of the United Kingdom have a voice, but on which those of the colony can have none. There are some questions of frequent occurrence which must be settled for the whole empire by one will; and the will must needs be that of the Imperial Government. A colony of England cannot be at war with a foreign state with which England herself is in peace, or at peace with one which is at war with England. The foreign COLONIAL DEPENDENCE. 25 relations of call parts of the empire must be the same, and must therefore be determined by the same mind. Hence we allow our Colonics no voice, no legislative power, with respect to foreign affairs. The relations of each colony with the rest, must, in the same way, be j tied by one common authority. We cannot allow Jamaica to prohibit imports from Ciinada or Australia. Nor can we allow a colonv to have a voice contrary to our own on any question connected with the great interests for the pro- motion of which Great Britain maintains her Colonies. We cannot allow a colony to inter- fere with the immigration of British subjects and the disposal of its unoccupied lands, or the trade with Britain. None will dispute the propriety of colonial dependence in these mat- ters. In respect to them all admit the necessity of rendering the colony entirely subject to the will of the mother -country. These are matters on which the Imperial Legislature has parted with none of its legislative authority : and the persons by whom its laws for the regulation of these matters are to be administered, must of course be responsible to the Imperial authority for their administration. But again, on the other hand, it must be c 26 COLONIAL DEPENDENCE. aclmittecl that there is a large department of Colonial affairs on which the interests of the colony are so entirelv distinct from those of the empire at large, that the Imperial Government has very wisely left to the Colonies the sole legislative authority with respect to them. Of course we have an interest in all three matters : it is our interest that every colony in connection with us should be governed by laws which shall secure its prosperity. But it has been held, and wisely held, that in all matters affecting imme- diately the relations of the colonists with one another — affecting their own internal condition — their stake is so much greater, their attention so mucii more constantly excited, their means of accurate information so much more complete, and their interest in avoiding error so far more immediate, that the best plan is to leave these matters entirely to the Legislatures which we have established in the colonies themselves. We leave to them the entire regulation of their civil and criminal code, c ' their expenditure, and of the taxation by which it is to be defrayed. The division between the two provinces of Im- perial and Colonial legislation has been made on a very sound and very simple principle. On all points which immediately affect the ■ill ' (OI.OMAL DEPEXDEXCE. 27 empire at large, the Imperial Government retains its legislative authority ; on all those which immediately affect the colony alone, it allows the colony to legislate for itself. Such are the limited legislative powers which the state of colonial dependence admits of our allow- ing to a colony. The question is, whether the maintenance of that dependence requires any greater limitation of the administrative than of the legislative powers of the colony — whether it is necessary that those who administer these very laws, the making of which we leave to the people of the colony, should be in nowise responsible to that people for the mode in which they administer them, and should not be liable to be displaced if the spirit of the administration be distasteful to that people. And we must say, that it is hardly possible to frame arguments for those who are unable at once to see the identity of the arguments by which the same amount of administrative as of legislative self-government is recommended for a colony. If it is right that the colonists should determine their own expen- diture and assess their own taxes — if these are compatible with colonial dependence — it is diffi- cult to conceive how colonial dependence can require that the financial minister of the colony I ■i c 2 i B 28 COLONIAL DEPENDENCE. :. m should be appointed without any reference to the wish of the colonists. If colonial depend- ence is not impaired by allowing the colonial legislature to make what civil or criminal code it chooses, how can it be affected by requiring that in the colony, as in England, the attorney- general shall be taken from the party which has the majority in the representative body ? It seems to stand to reason, that on whatever points the mother- country allows the people of the colony to make whatever laws they choose, it can have no interest in preventing these laws from being administered by those persons in whom the people of the colony feel the greatest confidence. We admit the necessity of some limitations on the self-government of a colony. We admit that there are some departments of the ordinary business of government in which a colony must be subservient to the empire. But that subordination must be complete as far as it goes : it must be both legislative and adminis- trative : and in so far as any degree of legis- lative independence is allowed, so far, it seems clear, the administration of affairs must be carried on in independence of the mother- country, in the fullest responsibility to the people of the colony. COLONIAL DEPENDENCE. 29 This, it will be said, renders the colony in a great measure practically independent of the mother-country. It seems to us very desirable that it should be so. It cannot be alleged that we are inclined to depreciate the importance of colonies, or to recommend the severance of co- lonial connexions. But nothing seems to us so calculated to weaken the solidity of such con- nexions as that constant interference with the self-government of our Colonies, which is re- commended by some of those who pretend to be warm advocates of our Colonial system. It is in order that our Colonies may long continue connected with the empire, and be the source to us of those advantages which we believe to be the fruit of wise colonization, that we think that their dependence should be held by a very loose rein. It is in order to keep colonies, and to profit by them, that we would insist on their being allowed to manage their own internal affairs, and that the interference of the Imperial Government should be confined to the very few points on which Imperial interests are affected by what passes in the Colonies. What these points are we have previously stated. But though it is necessary that the general doctrine with respect to the different f:i i;; :' I I 30 COLONIAL DEPENDENCE. U,L I I 11^ interests of the empire and of particular colonies should be laid down in the general terms which we have used, it will be found on examination that the Imperial interests practically involved in the ordinary course of events in the Colonies, are few in number though great in magnitude, and very little liable to give rise to collision be- tween the Colonics and the Mother-country. We are not speaking now of our Indian empire, or of such possessions as Gibraltar, Malta, and the Ionian Isles, which we retain for political purposes, not for the ordi.yary objects of coloni- zation. But looking at our Colonies properly so called — at the Colonies in most part inhabited by British settlers or their descendants, and re- tained for pacific purposes alone — it seems that the British interests which require to be pro- tected by the Imperial Legislature are very simple, and likely to be productive of little ne- cessity for collision. "We want colonies in order to have customers for our trade and a field for our surplus capital and labour. . These are the sole objects for which we maintain colonies, and for securing which we are obliged to keep up our dominion over them. We are under the necessity of governing them, and of protecting them by our fleets and armies, solely in order COLONIAL DEPENDENCE. 31 up the ting rder that we may be sure of trading with them, and sending our emigrants to them. "VVe need in- terfere with them solely in order to secure an advantageous trade, a ready access to our emi- grants, and such a disposal of the lands of the colony as shall promote emigration into it. Practically there is little reason to apprehend collision on these points. Our ancient views of colonial trade are now so completely abandoned, that instead of our maintaining monopolies inju- rious to the Colonies, we sin against the freedom of trade almost entirely for the purpose of giving our Colonies an injurious monopoly of our own market. The Colonies are not likely therefore to come into collision with us on account of our legislation with respect to their trade. Nor are they likely to quarrel with us for sending emi- grants to them, while labour is the great want of a colony, and our authority is exercised with a view of supplying that want. They will hardly object to our quartering our troops in them, as long as we pay the whole military force so quar- tered, and purchase from them our military sup- plies. And if on these points they will submit to a degree of dependence w4iich is chiefly for their own interest, we cannot make out on what other points it is at all necessary for us to inter- T'i ■! i 32 COLONIAL DErENDENCE. f il fero with the complete self-government of the Colonics. If we are right in regarding the points in which Imperial interests can be affected by the management of affairs in the Colonies as so few and so simple, we need not be afraid of granting that executive responsibility which is a necessary part of representative government, on the ground of its being a concession incompatible with colo- nial dependence. The chances of collision be- tween the Imperial authorities and a colony governed on right principles are really so few, that it would be absurd to expose a colony to the certain disturbance of the march of govern- ment, which must result from the present sys- tem, in order to avoid the remote contingency of a collision on the few points on which the in- terests of the two parties may be at variance. We do not pretend that the system of colonial government which we think advisable, is free from all liability to be disturbed by the violence and folly of either of the parties. It is doubt- less very possible for any one who will reason after Lord Joint Russell's fashion, to fancy extreme cases, i«~ dence of the colony would rivet its connexion with Great Britain, by removing those numerous causes of collision that constant- ly arise in the practical working of the present system. iiii lull CHAPTER IV. CHRONIC ANARCHY OF IRRESPONSIBLE COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. From the arguments which we have used to prove that the concession of a Responsible Executive would be a concession neither incom- patible with the practice of our own constitution, nor subversive of the authority of the Mother- country, it mast not be inferred that it would not be one of great practical importance to the people of the Colonies. It would, in fact, de- termine /hich of the local parties in a colony should eiijoy the management of aifairs and dispense the patronage of the Government. How this is settled is a matter of not the slightest miportance to the Imperial State. It can be of no consequence to any one in this country. !; ilH I I Il -I if ^^: II! ■ id fij I oG ANARCHY OF which of the local parties, in the ordinary course of affairs in a colony, possesses power and gives the tone to its policy. It is merely a question between local parties. It is a mistake to sup- pose that in the Colonies possessing representa- tive institutions, the higher offices of government are filled by persons from the ^Mother-country. The Assemblies of these Colonies have possessed a very sufficient control over their expenditure ; and they have used this power in a spirit of such rigid economy as to leave hardly any offices which can be objects of desire to the Briti'^h aristocracy or their connexions. It is quite a;* error, therefore, to imagine that, except as far as regards the Army and Navy, these Colonies are nests of aristocratical jobbing, or that their government is administered by persons sent out to tnem from the Mother-country. Such is not the case. In all of them, or at least of those which possess a body of permanent resident proprietors, the government is almost entirely in the hands of colonists, who are either natives of the province, or have permanently domiciled themselves p.nd their families in it. The ques- tion, then, is not by what race or by what kind of men the government of the colony is to be carried on : we are infringing on no systematic IRRESPONSIPLE GOVERNMENT. 3; habit of managing affairs in these distant posses- sions by means of functionaries sent out from Great Britain. The whole direction of affairs and the whole patronage of the Executi/e prac- tically, are at present in the hands of a Colonial party. Now where this is the case, it can be of no importance to the Mother-country, iii the or- dinary course of thinps, which of these local parties possesses the powers and emoluments of office. It is a question between the Smiths and the Johnsons of every little Colonial community ; and the present system merely gives the Home Government the power of retaining the Smiths in office though the Johnsons happen to possess most influence in the colony and its Assembly. This is a power which can hardly ever be of any value to us, because it can hardly ever be of the slightest consequence to the Home Government whether the one or the other of the Colonial parties is in office. But it is of the greatest im- portance to the parties themselves. To the Sniths and the Johnsons of the colony, the .]i: istion which of them is to be in office and wit'^h out, is one of the greatest importance. And by the people of the colony in general it is regarded with no less interest. There, as else- v'here, the names of the leaders of parties are 'I J^.) ji K1 ■i:'|l 1!|! ■!! I ' ■ ii ; 38 ANARCHY OF connected with the conflicting principles involved — the various subjects of dispute between the two parties. Each judges of the tendency of the measures of the Government by the names of the leading men who support or oppose them. And whatever may be the real merits of the policy of Government, it will be idle to expect that it can be regarded with anything but sus- picion and dissatisfaction, if it is seen to be di- rected by men who are regarded with general t f >1, and to be opposed by those who give the u e to the public opinion of the colony. The peculiarities of the social state of a colony, instead of rendering these causes productive of less evil in it than in the Mother-country, aggravate the irritation which must in any place arise from them. In these communities, social distinction is so rarely acquired in any other of the numerous roads to eminence which exist in an old and thickly-peopled society, that employ- ment under Government is almost the sole means of elevating a man above his fellows. Hence office is sought by almost every colonist with an avidity which surprises an Englishman. In small communities, too, in which there are fev/ distinct circles, and in which every man's history, person, and character are well known to almost IRRESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 30 every one of his neighbours, party disputes al- ways run very high ; and in colonics, it may be very generally said, there is always a greater acrimony of party feeling than any that we are in the habit of witnessing in England. Such a monopoly of power as we have described is therefore much more irritating in colonies even than it would be in this country. And for the same reasons, it is used with more entire sub- servience to the interests of party, and in a more exclusive spirit even than here. So permanent is the tenure of power by parties in these colo- nies, that a man who is once in opposition can never hope to obtain power except by a dis- graceful abandonment of his party and his pre- vious professions. Thus, representative govern- ment exists in these colonies without the only safety-valve for the ambitious, and for the ani- mosities of parties, which such a form of go- vernment necessarily calls into being. We place every person and every principle in the full light of representative government. No doubt is left as to the capacities of the individuals engaged in political strife, or the favour which they and their opinions find with the majority. We call into the most active operation all the warmth of personal ambitions and rivalries. I l]i 40 ANARCHY OF f im liiiji which the strife of free discussion generates. And thus we persist in retaining the whole power of government in the hands of persons whose weakness, whose incompetence, or at any rate whose unpopularity, is no matter of mere supposition and surmise, but of every-day glaring and repeated proof. We can understand how a government, impa- tient of having its will counteracted, and its power limited, may feel very repugnant to all those popular privileges which are apt constantly to thwart it, and may maintain, where it can, a system that, though it gives rise to general dis- content, nevertheless renders authority inde- pendent of the popular will, and gives to the executive, at any rate, a temporary vigour. But this system of combining an unpopular Ex- ecutive with popular Representation, is a device of which the obvious tendency, instead of en- abling a government to do whatever it chooses, renders it, on the contrary, unable to do any thing that it may desire. Whatever justice or the policy of the government requires a legisla- ture to sanction, can only be carried into effect by the concurrence of the representative body : and this is pretty sure to be refused, wherever IRRESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 4! ivice en- loses, any |e or risla- Iffect »dy: jver refusal is possible, to any measures proposed by those whom a majority of the legislature dislikes. As most men judge of measures, not by the nature of the thing proposed, but by the esti* mation in which they hold the person proposing it, we may be pretty sure that the mere fact of the counsels of the Crown being directed by the leaders of a minority, will be considered a very good reason for their being constantly frus- trated by the majority. When the Crown chooses to conduct its business by the agency of men who are always found voting, like the Executive Councillors in Nova Scotia, in mino- rities of the ratio of 1 in 6, it must make up its mind to do very little of its business. The whole history of the North American Colonies is an exemplification of this. For the last twenty years, throughout the whole of them, it has been but by rare intervals that the Crown has ever been able to get either its money voted, or its bills passed as it wished. Throughout that period, its policy has been thwarted by a refusal of the one, and a rejection of the other ; and its only means of asserting its power and gratifying its revenge, has been by completing the general stoppage of public business by a re- ; r It 42 ANARCHY OF i'vLsaX of its assent to whatever bill or suggestion of any kind has emanated from the Assemblies. It is not, however, merely its unpopularity that renders the irresponsible executive of a colony an inefficient instrument of government. The tendency of such a system is to render the tenure of all administrative offices permanent. When the Crown will not remove its officers, for the simple purpose of bringing its policy into accordance with that of the representative body, it cannot remove them, except on some ostensible ground of absolute incompetence or misconduct. Accordingly, an Attorney-General or Executive Councillor is rarely or never dis- placed, except in case of a promotion of the former. Those who are acquainted with the language of these officials, know that they re- gard the tenure of their offices as permanent, and that such in fact it practically is. And though the possible number of the Executive Councillors is unlimited, or at any rate large, the very cir- cumstance of their irrcmoveability renders it necessary for a Governor to be so cautious about making any appointments, that the number is generally kept very low. The majority consists therefore of persons who have been in office a long time, who have been appointed under cir- «i:|l IRRESrONSinLE GOVERNMENT. 43 cunistanccs quite different from the present, who belong to a past generation of politicians, and who possess the confidence and guide the con- duct of no party in the state. The tendency of such a system is to vest ostensible authoiity in the hands of men who are supposed unlikely to use their permanent power in a spirit either of independence or of ambition ; and men are generally selected for their unimportance and pliancy rather than for their abilities. Some- times they are selected on account of the very qualities which deprive them of all influence over the representative body. A government whose supporters are in a constant minority in the Assembly, requires that its business should be conducted by a man whose assurance the adverse opinion of a majority cannot daunt. Audacity and invincibility are the first essentials of its functionaries. AVe see, accordingly, that the public officers, to whom the civil adminis- tration of affairs in the Canadas has been usually intrusted, have been second-rate lawyers, pos- sessing no weight with the Assemblies, or even with the minorities in them, and peculiarly odious to the majority. The greater part of the Executive Councillors in both of these provinces are persons literally almost unknown in the f li 44 ANARCHY OF III I ! V.l t!;;ri ' r ''1 ■ I'i politics of the (lay. Some represent the opi- nions and parties of fifty years ago ; some are submissive and obscure puppets of the oflBciai party ; and perhaps one or two are members of an exactly opposite party, placed in office during some temporary adoption of a policy different from that of the government of the day, and retained there with the result only of perplex- ing, and perhaps even betraying, the counsels of their colleagues. If England were governed at the present moment not merely by Tories, but by Tories of the old and obsolete school of Lord SiDMouTii — if not merely all Liberals, but all the real leaders of the Tory party were ex- cluded from office, and the management of affairs vested in a Cabinet composed of the re- lics of Mr. Perceval's Ministry, with some second-rate Tory lawyer to manage their busi- ness in the House of Commons — this would be something like the state of things that has existed in the Canadas for the last twenty years. Nor can we see how, while the principle of irresponsible government is adhered to, the occurrence of such a state of things can be avoided. Last session, Lord John Russell was pleased to say, in answer to a statement made by Mr. Buller as to the mode of managing IRUESrONSlBLE OOVKKNMKNT. 45 matters in Nova Scotia, that he did not think it desirable that the government should be intrusted to persons who could get only such very small minorities to follow them. He even admitted that some regard should be paid to the wishes of the Assembly in the selection of the principal public officers. But we must adopt one principle or the other ; and if you will not agree that the party which has the confidence of the representative body shall always be intrusted with power, the tendency is that power should always be placed in the hands of persons most at enmity with that body. Lord Durham has described the tendency of the present system to build up a kind of permanent influence on the part of a particular knot of officials — the undue influence which such a body must always acquire over ill-informed and inexperienced Governors, and the habitual collision in which they will generally be with the representative body. That tendency to collision must in the nature of things aggravate itself by continuance. When a Government knows that its officers will be unpopular with the Assembly for the simple reason that they are appointed without any reference to the Assembly's wishes and estima- tion of them, it will find it necessary to select ■; !^l 40 ANARCHY OF ill those men who will show the boldest front in opposition to the majority. Offices will he given as the rewards of a thoroughgoing support of the Government in its contests with the Assem- bly ; and while the minority is in office, the most active of its members will generally be the most frequently in collision with the majo- rity. Circumstances may sometimes in a colony, as elsewhere, throw this power into the hands of men whose character may be moderate and con ciliatory ; but the tendency, aggravated greatly by the violence of Colonial politics, and the small amount of practical statesmanship which public men in colonies acquire, must be to ren- der the quarrel between the dominant party ' I the Assembly every day ir.ore irreconcilab to make hostility to the Assembly a passport tc office, and embitter that hostility during every moment of the tenure of office. The result is to generate the worst feelings on both sides. On the side of those in power, there is naturally engendered a spirit of exclusion and intolerance, and a disposition to abuse to the utmost the powers of government. The other party see themselves hopelessly excluded from office, while they feel themselves at the same time possessed of a power in the representative body lUT ESrONSinT.F. r.OVEKNMENT. 47 which is quite sufficient to embarrass the policy of their opponents. Inclination and means tempt each party to an habitual abuse of its authority. And the result is tlie chronic anarchy which has during the last twei/v years pervaded uU those of our Colonies in which representative uoverunicnt is established. ■iT, \ f I il \i ■l\\ i l'i 1 d *■ ;■ I li'ii'i ■I f' CHAPTER V. ORDINARY OBJECTIONS TO RESPOKSIBLE GOVERNMENT. liiN' The more reas'^nable among the opponents of Responsible Government do not pretend to deny that the existing system is productive of certain difficulties : but when these difficulties are fotind to impede the action of government at every turn, our demand of a remedy is met by a re- ference to some formidable consequences, which we are told will result from attemptmg to keep a Colonial Executive in harmony with the Le- gislature. These evils, it is true, are generally referred to in words of very vague though rather terrific import ; and we rarely get anything but some jargon about " RepubHcan tendencies " and " Monarchical institutionb," / hich '^an have RKSrONSlBLE GOVERNMEM'. 49 but very little effect on those wlio are merely deshing to introduce into British Colonies the constitutional practice of the Mother-country. It is difficult to get at any more precise expla- nation of tlie dangers apprehended: and, indeed, the phrases to >vhi''h we have alluded are the common- place phrases, by the like of which the xc\s', who understand the bearing of any pro- ])osed reform on the abuses in which they happen to be interested, can generally inlist on their side the prejudices of the timid many, who droad every change without comprehv^nding its tendency. AVhen we get beyond these general phrases, and can manage to compel our oppo- nents to express their ideas in anything like definite terms, their alarms appear to arise from some misconception either of the proper extent of Imperial interference, or of the machiiiery by wbich the authority of the Imperial Government IS enforced in the Colonies ; or from some mis- direction of their svmpathies with the officers of the Colonial Executive, who will, as it is erro- neously imagined, be exposed under the pro- posed system to attacks, from which it is still more erroneously imagined that they are at pre- sent protected. If we are right in the view which we have D ■ 50 OBJECTIONS TO taken of the proper terms of connexion between Britain and those Colonics in which Represen- tative Institutions have been established, there is little ground for any dread of the Colonial Executive being brought into collision with the Colonial Legislature in consequence of the latter insisting on a course inconsistent with po- sitive instructions transmitted to the Governor from Downing Street. For, if our views are right, no such instructions ought to be sent on any subject except those which are expressly reserved from the jurisdiction of the Colonial Legislature. The course of a Governor may undoubtedly be generally directed from home to the extent of advising the proposal of parti- cular .measures, the rejection of others, or the employment of particular individuals. The Governor, instead of acting on his own opinion as the Sovereign does, may have his course sug- gested to him by the Secretary of State ; but then, he must act on those suggestions as the Sovereign here acts on those of her own con- science — that is, within the limits of constitu- tional possibility. Queen Victoria probably has her own opinions on men and measures; yet she has but a modified power of acting on those opinions. She possibly approves of the RESrONSinLE GOVETINMKXT. 51 policy of the present Ministry Avith regard to Ireland, thinks that the Appropriation Dill ought to be passed, and that tlie Catholic Emancipation ought not to be repealed. She may think tlie maintenance of these opinions a matter of duty as well as of policy, and may make use of all her influence and customary authority to cari-y her views into effect. But there is a point at which it would become her duty to sacrifice not only her wishes, but her conscientious convic- tions on these matters, to the paramount interests of order and tranquillity. We may conceive the feeling of the House of Commons to be such that she might be compelled to give up all hopes of applying the revenues of the Irish Church to any but their present purpose ; to dismiss INIinisters on the maintenance of >/hose policy she may happen to believe the ^ost in- terests of her empire to depend ; and even (though this, we must confess, is ;> wry extreme case) to give her assent to the repeal of ( 'atholic Emancipation. These are the consequent cs oi representative institutions and limited monarchy. So in a colony, a Governor might be compelled to give his assent to bad laws, to refrain from adopting good measures, to dismiss those whom he considers the fittest, and to appoint those d2 i(! r rp •-/<• OBJECTIONS "O whom he may regard as the most unfit for oHice. It is better that he should do this than that he should have the power of doing otherwise ; be- cause, in the first place, it is about ten chances to one that the Assembly of the colony knows its interests as to men and measures better than than the Governor or his adviser in Downing Street can, and is in the right on the matters in dispute ; and secondly, because, even if the con- trary be the case, the colony will be the sole or far the jrrcatest sufferer bv bad officers and bad policy, and it is better that it should suffer from either for a while than that it should be subjected to arbitrary authority. Without saying, therefore, that the Colonial Office should give no instruc- tions to Governors — though certainly the less that it takes upon itself to instruct those who generally know more of the matter in hand than itself, the better — yet we do say that its instruc- tions should never be positive, but always co?i- (litio)ial. The Secretary of State may advise as to men and measures, but he should always limit his advice to what can be done. He should say, " Pursue sucli a course, if you can ; do not do such a thing, // you cay} help it; employ such persons, exclude others, as far as the Assembly will let you : in short, manage to get RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 53 along with the Assembly as you best may : get it to adopt your policy, or do you adopt its policy. If you don't get it to go as I wish, from any fault of your own, and I have reason to think that another Governor would succeed better, I may have to recall you; but if you get into collision with the Assembly, and cannot get one better disposed towards you, then I certiiiiily must and shall immediately recall you." It will be perhaps admitted that this would be the right course to pursue on all those points on which it is desirable that the colony should in fact be left to manage its own affairs. But then we shall be told, that there are points on which even we do not desire such practical indepen- dence ; that we think that a colony cannot be allowed to treat with foreign powers — to regu- late its external trade — to interfere with a mili- tary force entirely supported by the Mother- country — or to dispose of its waste lands, and impede immigration from Great Britain. Sup- posing the Colonial Assembly to attempt en- croachment on these points, which is imagined to be very probable, it is not desirable that it should by its control over the Executive be able to assum.e an authoritv which the law has ex- pressly reserved to the Imperial Legislature. I'M lit^j .54 OBJECTIONS TO But if the Assembly can force its policy on the Governor, by outvoting those advisers who agree with such of its views as may be contrary to its own, on questions within its jurisdiction, it may equally force him to adopt its views on questions beyond its jurisdiction. It may force him to remove every adviser who will not give in to its unreasonable pretensions, and will not abuse his official authority to favour the usurpation of the Assfmbl J . Now those who hold this language, must think very little of the true principle on which the authority of the Imperial Legislature should be upheld in those matters in which it has exclusive authority ; and must indeed know very little of the machinery by which it actually is exercised. If indeed it is to be supposed that the Assembly will carry out its usurpation by an utter defiance of all law, and will stop the whole course of government, and throw the whole colony into permanent confusion, in order to exercise an authority utterly beyond its jurisdiction, and that in this course it is backed by the people of the colony, this is supposing a state of feeling of which independence must be the object, and agai'.ist which we can suggest no provision ex- cept separation or military force. We must KESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 55 ;of suppose the people and legislature of a colony to have some common sense, some regard for their own welfare, and some general desire for continuing a part of the British empire. We must suppose that palpable deviations from the fundamental constitutional law of the colony will not be attempted every day ; and that the courts of justice will not be shut up, the gaols thrown open, the police disorganized, the militia disbanded, and all public works stopped, in order to enable the Assembly to attain some point pal- pably beyond its legal authority. "We can un- derstand that all this should be done, where, as at present, the whole powers of government in every matter that came nearest to men's bosoms and business, are wielded by persons in whose use of those powers the Legislature has no confidence : but we cannot make out how the giving it control over the persons invested with executive autho- rity in all these matters can increase its disposi- tion to meddle with those excepted from its jurisdiction, and call into use, for the purpose of usurping a fraction of power, those formidable last resources of legislative warfare which it has only occasionally brought itself to employ even when all legislative influence was denied it. The Assembly may still have a desire to usurp ^111 56 OBJECT IONS TO •»l ' I li' t power ; but wlicn the object to be gained is small in amount, of little moment to the Colonial public, and palpably inconsistent with the au- thority of a Mother-country which interferes but little with the Colonial self-government, we think we may calculate on a general aversion on the part of the people of the colony to stop the whole course of government in such a cause. For nothing but a recourse to what Lord Durham calls the ultima ratio of Keprescntativc bodies, could enable an Assembly to succeed in any such usurpations. And for this plain reason, which seems to have been entirely forgotten by all our opponents — that on all those points in which exclusive authority is reserved to the Imperial Government, the law is or ought to be executed as well as made by the central authority. The Governor, the officers of the Army, and the officers of the Customs, are (and the functionaries of the Land Department ought to be) servants not of the Colonialhut of the Imperial Government. Lord Durham's scheme would not put these func- tionaries a whit more under the control of the Colonial Assemblies. On the contrary, it would in the case of the Governor, shift the undue responsibility to which he is now subjected, on RESPONSIULE GOVERNMFCNT. 57 I f his buborcliuatcs in the colony. A\"ith a civil list which would render him pcrsoniiUy inde- pendent of the colony, he would in fact be as irresponsible to the Colonial Parliament as the Queen is to that of Great Britain. A strong repugnance to him on the part of the colony, would of course, as now, operate with a prudent Secretary of State as a reason, if there were no countervailing reason, for removing him. lUit the effect of the system of Executive llespon- sibility would be to render attacks on the (jo- vernor himself unnecessary for securing a change of policy in the Government. This end would be best and easiest attained by effecting the removal of his cabinet ; and the result would be, that the Assembly would then have no temptation to attack the principal, when it could attain its ends by a change of his agents. Nor is it proposed by Lord Durham, or any other advocate of the adoption in the Colonics of the system pursued in the Mother-country, to give the Colonial Assemblies any voice in the appointment of those who have to administer in the colony the functions which are exclusively reserved to the Imperial Government. It was never contemplated that the Assemblies should D 5 •f f 1) r,H OHJECTIOXS TO III get any power over the officers of the British Army serving in the Colonies. That Army is paid hy Ihiiain ; its officers, from the highest to the lowest, are appointed by the Horse Guard's in London. The Covernor and his advisers can- not remove the Commander-in-Chief, or a single Colonel or officer of a regiment serving in the colony. The Assembly cannot stop their pay. What hold has it then on military appointments ? or what fresh hold would the proposed system give it ? But the collection of the Customs affiards the best practical illustration of the independence of the functionaries of the Imperial Executive. The collection of the Customs-duties has been re- served to the Imperial Government; and ac- cordingly, the Commissioners of Customs in London sent out a Collector to the Colony to receive the duties payable in its ports. Though living at Quebec or Kingston, he is the servant of a Board in London. He pays himself out of the revenues which he collects. The Assembly of Canada no more can stop the salary of a col- lector in Canada than of one in Jamaica : if it orders him to deviate from his instructions, he must still obey them : if the Assembly were in consequence to pray the Governor to remove him, RESPONSIULE GOVERNMENT. ^ the Governor's answer would be, that he had no more authority to remove a Collector in Canada than to remove a Collector in Jamaica or in England. The Assembly might stop the Supplies in order to compel the Home Govern- ment to do this. So it might to compel it to remove the Collector at Liverpool. And we very much doubt whether the people of the colony would sanction a stoppage of the Supplies in order to enable the Assembly to effect the removal of the one, a whit more than that of the other. The same rule holds good with regard to the Post-office, as conducted at present ; though we agree with Lord Durham in thinking that this is a department which ought more properly to be left entirely under the control of the colony. But the independence of that department at present is as great as can be desired : and by the same system the Land Department might be rendered independent of the Colonial Legislature. Nor has the Assembly of a colony any more {latho- rity over the diplomatic agents of the Mother- country in neighbouring foreign states. Neither the Governor nor the Assembly of Canada can issue any instructions to the British Minister at Washington, or any British Consul in any State of the Union ; and if either of them did so, 60 Onjl'.CTlONS TO I I t I the jVIinistcr or Consul would mind such in- structions no nioro tlian those given by the ^'estry ot* Miirylcbone. Hut Lord Joiix Ki s- sr.Li, feared that the Ai assume that the colony docs not desire tin.' severance of its connexion with (Ircat IJritain. Of course, it can be of no use to devise :i means of trusting it with a limited portion of power if we suppose its desire to be to use that power for tlic purpose of destroying whatever insti- tutions may be framed for it. Assumhig, therefore, that the people of the colony desire to be connected with Britain, on what mav fairly be considered the necessary terms of Colonial dependence, we can see no reason for apprehending that giving an Assembly control over one portion of the policy and composition of the Executive, would enable it to encroach on that which is expressly reserved from it. The general control proposed would in no wise, as we have shown, extend to the excepted de- partments. And though the Assembly might still, as it now does, be inclined to usurp autho- rity by having recourse to extreme measures, we feel v^ry confident that the Colonial public would be far less inclined to subject itself to the evils incidental to such a contest, when the object in dispute was thus narrowed by general and liberal concessions on the part of the li 62 OBJECTIONS TO II (^ Mother-country. It must always be recollected that the power of stopping supplies, and im- peding the whole administrative and legislative business of the colony, is one which the Colonial Assemblies now possess to the fullest extent ; and tliat the present system of irresponsible government gives the Assemblies the desire and the habit of constantly using that power. The power will be the same ; but we contend that the inclination to use it will be far less, when the Assembly can gain every legitimate object in view by a much simpler and perfectly unobjectionable process. The abuse of power towards individuals, which is habitual in the present order of things, would in the same way, instead of being in- creased be lessened, if not entirely prevented, by the general responsibility of the Executive. Impeachment, with all its fearful legal conse- quences, and all its necessary machinery of le- gal inquisition and defamation, is now the only and habitual mode of effecting the removal of an unpalateable functionary in the Colonies. The journals of the British North American Legislatures show what fearfully prodigal and cruel use has been made of this cumbrous but deadly weapon. The only mode by which the RESPOJJSIULE GOVERNMENT. 63 majority of the day could remove a functionary hostile to it, has been by blasting his character, and rendering it impossible for the Government to employ him, not only at the present, but any future time. Thus the noblest Colonial reputa- tions have been tarnished, and the greatest ta- lents in the communities have, to serve some party purpose of the hour, been rendered too long if not permanently unavailable for the public service. Give the Colonial Assembly the simple Aveapon of a vote of confidence, and it will never need and never use these deadly arms again. The history of our own country is full of instruction on this head. Up to the period of the Kevolution of 1688, the great business of the House of Commons was im- peachment. Since the adoption, at that period, of the principle for which we contend, there has never been an impeachment except for ab- solute treason, or pretty clear malversation in respect of pecuniary matters. It may be that hardship will sometimes be inflicted on worthy public servants by removal from office simply on account of political opinions ; but this is an in- cident of the tenure of office in every free country, which we habitually regard as a neces- sary and slight counterpoise to th« advantages of free government. l.i ll •: G4 RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. Of only one other of the common topics of objection need we here take notice ; and it will be only to remark, that neither Lord Durfjam nor the advocates of Eesponsible Government propose that this removability on account of po- litical opinions should extend to judicial offices. To secure the independence of the Judges is one of Lord Durham's main recommendations : and though we agree with an opinion frequently expressed by Sir Rokert Peel, that in this country we have perhaps rendered it too difficult to remove an incompetent Judge, yet as no better plan has ever yet been devised, we think that the same tenure of judicial office and salary should be adopted in the Colonies as in the Mother-country, with the object of rendering the Judges independent of the caprices and in- fluence as well of Parliament as of the Crown. :• . / CHAPTEIl VI. MR. MOTIIEHCOUNTRY; OF THE COLOMAf, OFFICE. In preceding chapters we have endeavoured to show, that that constant reference to the authorities in EngLand, which some persons call •'responsibility to the Mother Country," is by no means necessary to insure the maintenance of a beneficial Colonial connexion. It is not necessary for this purpose that the people or government of England should be constantly in- terfering in the details of Colonial business. It is not desirable that we should regulate these matters according to notions which cannot be half so correct as those of the colonists them- selves. But even if it were desirable, and if we '(¥*VM'rsaiit long Inous OF THE C0I<0:\1AL OFFICE. n enclosures, no rcd-tapcd heap of Colonial grievances or squabbles, can scare his practised eye. Tie handles with unfaltering hand the papers at which his superiors quail : and ere they have waded through one half of them, he suggests the course, which the previous mea- sures dictated by himself compel the Govern- ment to adopt. Tie alone knows on what prin- ciples the predecessors of the noble or right honourable Secretary acted before : he alone, therefore, can point out the step which in pur- suance of the previous policy it is incumbent to take : and the very advice, wliich it is this ren- dered incumbent on the present Secretary of State to take, produces results that will give him as sure a hold on the next Secretary of State. lHut with all this real power, Mr. Motiifk- coiTNTiiY never assumes the airs of dictation to his principal. Every change of the head of the department, though really consolidating his power, gives occasion for a kind of mutiny against it. The new Secretarv enters with some purpose of independence : he has heard of Mr. Mothercotjntry's influence ; and he is deter- mined that he will act on his own head He goes on for a while on this plan ; but it is sure a 80 MR. MOTHERCOIMRV, to be no long time crc something comes ])oforc? him for which he is obhgccl to refer to INIr. ISIoTiiERcouNTRY : he is ])leased with his ready, shrewd and unobtrusive advice : he appUes to him on the next occasion with more confidence: he finds that Mr. Mothercountry takes a great deal of trouble off his hands — and great men are sure at last to fall under the dominion of any man that will save them trouble. By degrees, he begins to think that there are some things which it is better to leave altogether to Mr. Mothercountry ; and as to all he soon finds it prudent to take no stc]) until he has heard what Mr. Mothercountry has to say about it. If things go smooth, his confidence in Mr. Mo- thercountry rises : if they go ill, his depen- dence on him is only the more ri vetted, because it is ^ Ir. Mothercountry alone Mho can get him through the Colonial contest or Parliamentary scrape in which he has involved himself. The more independent he has been at first, the more of these scrapes he has probably got himself into ; and the more dependent he consequently becomes in the long run. The power of j\Ir. Mothercountry goes on increasing from Se- cretary to Secretary, and from month to month of each Secretary's tenure of office ; and the OV THE COLONIAL OFFICE. «l more difficult the government of the Colonies becomes, the more entirely it falls into the hands of the only men in the public service who really know anything about Colonial affairs. This is perhaps the best result of such a system : and our experience of the follies and presumption of the only Secretary of State that ever undertook to act for himself, is a proof that under tlic ])rescnt system, jNIr. ^[otiikr- couxtry's management is better than that of the gentlemen whom he generally gets put over his head. IJut the svstcm of intrustinq; absolute power (for such it is) to one wholly irrespoMsible, is obviously most faulty. Thus, however, are our Colonies ruled : and such is the authority to which is committed that last appeal fivmi th(^ Colonies themselves, which is dignified with all these vague phrases about the power, the honour, the supremacy, and the wisdom of the Mother Country. )ntb the E 5 i;' ^\ CHAPTER VII. MR. MOTIIERCOUNTRy's FAULTS : THE SIGHING- ROOMS AT THE COLONIAL OFFICE. We have described the secret and irrespon- sible, but steady rule of Mr. Mothercountry, in whom we have personified the permanent and unknown officials of the Colonial Office in Downing Street, as very much better for our Colonies than that to which they would be sub- jected were the perpetually-shifting Secretaries and Under-Secretaries of State really to pretend to conduct afllurs of which they understand no- thing. It must not be inferred from this that we think it a really good system. It has all the faults of an essentially arbitrary government, in the hands of persons who have little personal .'^ Mil. MOTIIKRCOr.NTRY S FAULTS. S3 Interest in tlie welfare of those* over whom they rule — who reside at a distance from them — who never have ocular experience of their condition — who are oblif'ed to truot to second-hand and one-sided information — and who are exposed to the operation of all those sinister influences, whicji prevail wlierever i)ublicity and freedom are not established. In intelligence, activity, and regard for the public interests, the perma- nent functionaries of " the Office " may be superior to the temporary head that the vicissi- tudes of party politics give them ; but they must necessarily be inferior to those persons in the colony in whose hands the adoption of the true practice of lles})onsible (Jlovcrnment would vest the management of local affairs. A thorough knowledge of the internal t'co- nomy of this vast number of diii'crcut commu- nities, situated at the most distant points of the globe, having the most diverse cliniates, races, productions, forms of government, and degrees of wealth and civilization, is necessarily one which the best-employed experience of the longest life can never be supposed to give. From his en- trance into hip office, the necessary labours of the day have occupied almost the whole of Mr. Mothercountry's time and thoughts ; and 84 -'^■. Mll. MOTIIEIICOTNTUY S FAULTS. ;r I .': Iff Mi though \vc will give him credit for having picked up such information as elementary books can give, it cannot very well be imagined that he has learnt from books, newspapers, and oral information, all that mass of particulars respect- ing manners, things, and i)ersons, that is requi- site for forming in the mind a complete picture of the social and i)olitical, the physical as well as the moral condition of those numerous countries. It is in the very nature of duties so laborious as his, that ^Ir. ]MoTiu:jirouxTRY should be able to attend to little except to the questions presented for his decision by the parties contending in the Colonies, and should f(n-m his notion of their condition from these rather than from more ex- tended reading and observation. Conqiellcd to examine the complaints and answers of the various parties, he gradually imbibes the idea that the whole state of affairs is sot forth in these statements and counter-statements. He fixes his eye on the grievances and squabbles that occupy the addresses of Assemblies, the despatches of Governors, and the disputes of officials ; and gets to fancy, naturally enough, that these are the matters on which the mind of the colony is intent, and on which its welfare depends. Hence the result is, that since, in ]SIK. MOTIll.KfOrNTUV S FAl LTls. 8;5 Le les ic of 5"J in Colonics as elsewhere, the real interests of the coniuumlty are overlooked in such disputes, Mr. MoTiiKucorNTUY liiis Jit his fingers' ends, alter u long devotion to the subject, nothing better than a very conii)lete knowledge of very imma- terial incidents ; and that when he (iuicics he knows all about a coh)nv, he has in fa( t only been diverting his attention from everything that is worth knowing respecting it. Thus, while the question of contending races was gradually breaking up the whole social system of Lower Canada, Mr. Motiikjicountky, unconscious of the mischief, thought that he was restoring order and satisfaction by well-reasoned despatches on points of prerogative and precedent. Expe- rience may give Mr. ]MoTiii;Ka)i ntry more in- formation respecting the whole mass of our Colo- nies than any other individual probably possesses. But it is after all a very incomplete inl'ormation, and one which does not prevent his continually committing those gross blunders of which our Colonial history is the record. This is the necessary consequence of the va- riety and distance of Mr. Mdtuekcoi ntrv's dominions. lie has, in addition, the laults of that permanent and irresponsible power, com- bined with subordinate position, which we al- m MR. MOTIIKRCOrNTRY's FAULTS. '\ ways pcrrc'ivc in a government of bureaus or 'offices. It is a position which engenders not a little conceit ; and in whatever form Mr. Mo- TFiMRcoiiNTiiY appears — even in that of tlie lium- blest clerk — you always find out that he thinks that he and his associates in " the Office " are the only people in the world who understand any thing a])out the Colonics. He knows his power too, and is excessively jealous of any en- croachment on or resistance to it. It is a power, he well knows, which has its origin in the indo- lence and ignorance of others : he fancies there- fore that it is assailed by any one who under- stands any thing of the Colonies, or takes any interest in them ; and to all such people there- fore he has a mortal dislike. And though ISIr. IMotiiercountry has none of a fine gentleman's aversion to work, but on the contrary devotes his whole energies to his business, he lik^^s to get over his work with as little trouble as possible. It is his tendv ncy therefore to reduce his work as much as he can to a mere routine ; to act on general rules, and to avoid every possible deviation from them ; and thus to render the details of his dailv task as much a matter of habit as he well can. A hatred of innovation is a distinguishing feature »^ MU. MOTllKllCOrNTUY S FAri.TS. of his as of the gcnoral ofTicial churactor. Every thing now gives trouble ; to enter upon a new course with respeet to (Hstant communities is al- ways matter of danger and ih>ubt, uidcss the step is founded upon a more comi)lete knowledge of the state of things than Mr. ■MoTiiKiuotMUV can afford time to acquire. He is very much afraid of being attacked in l^irliament or the newspapers ; and as it is almost always a sufK- cient answer for the great mass of men, that you have done in any particular instance what has usually been done hitherto, he likes always to have this answer to give. Nor do the common motives to exertion act on him to induce him to labour in the work of improMinent. 1 fc well knows that he shall have none of the glory of improvements in which the public take an inte- rest. The credit of these is sure to be ascribed to the Chief Secret ny. It is but human nature, then, that he shoi^ 1 hate innovation, and dis- courage every proj, *- of improvement. Those who have sugixcsted any improvement in the system existing in our Colonics, or proposed to found new colonic^ on a new principle, know to what a complete science the officials ol the Colo- nial department have brought their mode of re- pelling all such invasions of iheir duuiain. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) .V y. <" Z 1.0 I.I 1:^128 112.5 12.2 ic IIIII2.0 IL25 i 1.4 IS 1.6 / ^j> '^V* ■v Photograpliic ^Sciences Corporaiion 'i3 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 I/. v^ 88 MR. MOTJIKRCOT'.NTUY S VAULTS. i^: ■'if I3ut the worst of all 'Mr. ^Motiiercountry's faults is Lis necessary subjection to sinister inte- rests and cabals. AMKn'evcr tlie public cease to take an interest in what is going on, the reign of cliques and cabals is sure to extend : and when- ever the actions of the Government arc not guided by public opinion, they inevitably fall under the influence of some sinister interest. Every one of our colonics has its own jobs, its own monopolies, and its own little knots of bust- ling and intriguing jobbers. These spare no pains to get the ear of ]\Ir. Motiiercountry. Backed by some stror.g mercantile, or official, or Parliamentary connexion, they press their views on him ; relying partly on their better knowledge of the peculiar subject on which they have so deep an interest, partly on the fear they can inspire by the threat of an appeal to Parlia- ment or the press. Then, again, there are per- sons w^hose past official position and party con- nexions enable them to bring a strong party in- fluence to bear on him. On one or two points there has been excited a powerful interest, which has organized itself into associations, represented by constituted bodies and accredited officers, always ready to push their own views, and able to excite a strong public feeling on their par- MR. MOTIIERCOUNTUY\S FAULTS. 89 ticular point, if their representations should be neglected. While the' c narrow vie^^ s and par- tial interests have these active organs, the Colo- nial public and the interests of the colony have rarely any, never equally efficient represen- tatives. A long experience has taught Mr. MoTiiERcouNTRY, that without conciliatins: those various juntas he never can hope to govern quietly, but that if he manage to get their con- currence, he runs little risk of effectual oppo- sition from either the British or Colonial public. His whole aim, therefore, necessarily is to con- ciliate all of these bodies, or when their interests happen to run counter, either to give each its turn, or to conciliate the most powerfid. One day, accordingly, wc find him conciliating the knot of merchants that enjoy the existing mono- poly ; another day, those who arc exerting themselves for a freer trade ; at one time he is holding out his hand to the West India interest; another time he seems to be entirely under the influence of the Abolitionists. These arc the sec- tional influences under which such a government is sure to fall, owing to its freedom from respon- sibility to a wide public opinion. The worst instance of the operation of these secret influences on Mr. Motiiercountry is to 00 -'^ MR. MOTIIERCOUNTRY S FAULTS. i i i! 1 ,' ii I be found in the Colonial appointments. If he were left to himself, and could appoint as he chose, he might doubtless job a little, but on the whole, he would probably pay some regard to competence in some of his appointments. But the patronage of the Colonial Office is the prey of every hungry department of our Government. On it the Horse Guards quarters its worn-out General Officers as Governors ; the Admiralty cribs its share ; and jobs which even Parliamen- tary rapacity would blush to ask from the Trea- sury, arc perpetrated with impunity in the silent realm of Mr. Mothercountry. O'Connell, we are told, after very bluntly informing Mr. RuTHVEN that he had committed a fraud which would for ever unfit him for the society of gen- tlemen at home, added, in perfect simplicity and kindness of heart, that if he would comply with his wishes and cease to contest Kildare, he might probably be able to get some appointment for him in the Colonies. It is, however, not only of the cliques and interests at home that Mr. Mothercountry is thus placed under the influence. The same causes that render the action of small knots of men operative on him in England, place him under the same necessity of courting the good MR. MOTflKUCOTINTnY's FAULTS. 91 opinion and disarming tlie hostility of every well-organized interest in the Colonics. Now the strongest and most active interest in a colony is always that of the little knot that governs it — the Family Compact, which Lord Duhham has described as being the necessary result of the irresponsible government of our Colonies. Creatures of the Colonial Office, as these Com- pacts are, they nevertheless manage to acquire a strength which renders them very formidable to Mr. jNIotiiercountky. Even when he gets on bad terms with them, he never abandons the hope of reconciliation with them, or the demeanour necessary to insure it. But you will rarely find him quarrelling with them. A des- potic and irresponsible authority is always obliged to govern by a small knot of men ; and these Colonial compacts are the natural agents of the Compact at home. Thus the mischiefs produced by irresponsibility in the colony are augmented and perpetuated by the responsibility to Mr. MOTIIERCOUNTRY. The working of the appeal to Mr. Mother- country in fact only adds to the amount of Colonial misgovernment ; and instead of ob- viating the mischiefs of the system pursued in the Colonies themselves, it only adds another 92 MR. MOTTIKKCOTTNTRY S FATLTS. ■ii 1 <: , •i i, !- i „ |)l; clement of delay, obstruction, and inconsibtcncy. Bad as is the government of Turkish Pachas, the Porte never interferes except to make mat- ters worse ; and ill as the Colonial Compacts manage, the appeal from them to jSIr. ISIotiieu- couNTRY only adds fresh fuel to Colonial irrita- tion and individual ij^rievancc. His iu^norancc of the real state of affairs in the colony, his habits of routine, his dependence on the secret cliques and interests at home, produce an inva- riable tendency on his part to stave off the decision of every question proposed to him. Every matter referred to him is sure to be re- ferred back to the colony ; and every successive answer to every fresh reference only serves him to raise some new pretext for postponing his decision. He is engaged in a perpetual struggle with the Colonial Compacts, in which he and they have no object but that of throwing on each other the responsibility of deciding. With this view, he has perfected a complete art of irrele- vant and apparently purposeless correspondence, by which he manages to spin out an affair until it either evaporates into something absolutely insignificant, or until at any rate the patience and interest of all parties concerned is com- pletely worn out. For this purpose, he has Mil. MOTIlEUcOtrNTUY's FAUrTS. 93 invented and brought to considerable per- fection a style peculiar to Colonial despatches ; a style in which the Avords of the English language are used with a very admirable grace and tacility, but at the same time with an utter absence of meaning. In this singular style we hope some day to give our readers a lesson; but we need now only observe tliat it is of great utility in enabling INIr. Motiiercomntry to keep up hopes of a decision, while he is leading his reader further and further away from it. If any decision is got, it is generally on some point that virtually leaves the question at issue undecided. But sometimes even the semblance of decision is omitted ; and the systematic post- ponement merges into the neglect of absolute oblivion. Thus it has been known, that even reserved acts of Colonial I'arliaments have been poked away in one of Mr. Motiiercountrv's pigeon-holes, and never brought out of it till the period in which they could receive the necessary sanction was passed : and in another instance, a colonist who inquired for a private act, on Avhich his whole property depended, was told that instead of having received her Majesty's as- sent, it was nowhere to be found. But the appeal to Mr. Mothercoiintry on 04 MR. MOTIIEIICOLMJIY S FAULTS. I' i:i ii4' ■ Hf! individual cases is even more mischievous to the parties concerned. It is a mere device in general for prolonging the torturt-s of the un- happy victim, wlio, bandied about from Colony to England, from Secretary to Secretary, from Under - Secretary to Under - Secretary, from clerk to clerk, wastes away hope and existence, as a subject of Mr. Motiiercountuy's system- atic procrastination. There are rooms in the Colonial OiTice with old and meagre furniture, book -cases crammed with Colonial gazettes and newspapers, tables co- vered with baize, and some old and crazy chairs scattered about, in which those who have per- sonal applications to make are doomed to wait until the interview can be obtained. Here, if per- chance you should some day be forced to tarry, you will find strange, anxious-looking beings, who pace to and fro in feverish impatience, or sit dejected at the table, unable in the agitation of their thoughts to find any occupation to while away their hours, and starting every time that the door opens, in hopes that the messenger is come to announce that their turn is arrived. These are men with Colonial grievances. The very messengers know them, their business, and its hopelessness, and eye them with pity as they tha b fl li! MR. MOTIIERCOUNTHy's FAULTS. 05 The and they bid them wait their long and habitual period of attendance. No experienced eye can mistake the faces, once expressive of health and confi- dence and energy, now worn by hopes deferred and the listlessness of prolonged dependence. One is a recalled Governor, boiling over with a sense of mortified pride and frustrated policy ; another, a Judge, recalled for daring to resist the Compact of his colony ; another, a merchant, whose property has been destroyed by some job or oversight ; another, the organ of the remon- strances of some Colonial Parliament ; another, a widow struggling for some pension, on which her hopes of existence hang ; and perhaps an- other is a man whose project is under conside- ration. Every one of these has passed hours in that dull but anxious attendance, and knows every nook and comer of this scene of liis sufferings. The grievance originated pro- bably long years ago, and bandied about between colony and home, by letter or by in- terview, has dragged on its existence thus far. One comes to have an interview with the Chief Secretary ; one, who has tried Chief and Under-Secretaries in their turn, is now doomed to waste his remonstrances on some clerk. One has been waiting days to have his first inter- id ll ,'! ,! i^ 90 MR. MOTIIKUCOUNTUy's FAULTS. new ; another, weeks to have his answer to his memorial ; another, months in expectation of the result of a reference to the colony ; and some reckon the period of their suffering by years. Some are silent ; some utter aloud their hopes or fears, and pour out their tale on their fellow sufferers ; some endeavour to conciliate by their meekness ; some give vent to their rage, when, after hours of attendance, the messenger summons in their stead some sleek contented - looking visiter, who has sent up his name only the moment before, but whose importance as a Member of Parliament, or of some powerful inte- rest or society, obtains him an instant interview. And if by chance you should see one of them at last receive the long-Cicsired summons, you will be struck at the nervous reluctance with which heavailshimself of the permission. After a short conference, you will generally see him return with disappointment stamped on his brow, and, quitting the Office, wend his lonely way home to despair, or perhaps to return to his colony and rebel. These chambers of woe are called the Sighing Rooms ; and those who recoil from the sight of human suffering should shun the ill-omened precincts. i Y- ' CHAPTER VIII. CONCLUSION. In describing the vices of the present mode of administering the government of the Colonies from Downing-street, we have sought to avoid singUng out particular individuals to bear the burden of a blame which in fairness attaches to the system. The faults which we have attributed to our ideal Mr. Mothercountry, are not those of individual character, but those which must be observable in the conduct of any who ad- minister a system such as the present. WTiile we have attempted to shew that that system has caused great miscMef both to communities and 98 CONCMSION. h ) \n ■if to individuals, wc think it but fair to add, that the permanent officers of the Colonial depart- ment must have been possessed of no ordinary abilities to work such a system at all, and keep it together as long as it has lasted. The evils which we have described, are those which ne- cessarily result from the attempt to conduct the internal affairs of the Colonies in accordance with the public opinion, not of those Colonics themselves, but of the Mother Country. Wc have shown that in England there is really no public opinion on Colonial questions ; and that what is called the opinion of the public, is in fact nothing but the opinion of the very small number who are habitually occupied with such subjects. The appeal from the Colonies to the Mother Country ends in concentrating power in the hands of a few official persons, not of those who are ostensibly responsible for the management of Colonial affairs, but of some unknown and irresponsible individuals among the permanent subordinate officials of the de- partment. By these are, in fact, wielded the whole legislative and administrative powers of government ; by them the course of Parliament is prescribed whenever it legislates for the Colo- nies ; by them is exercised all the still larger rONCUSlON. 90 power of disallowing tlio acts of the Colonial Lci^aslatures, and of passint,' laws in the form ol' Orders in Council. And this power is exercised in the faulty manner in which arbitrary, secret, and irresponsible power must be exercised over distant communities. It is exercised with jjrcat ii,Miorance of the real condition and feelings of the pe()i)]e subjected to it ; it is exercised with that presumption, and at the same time in that spirit of mere routine, which are the iniierent vices of bureaucratic rule ; it is exercised in a mis- chievous subordination to intrigues and cli(pies at home, and intrigues and cliques in the Colo- nies. And its results are, a system of constant procrastination and vacillation, which occasions heart-breaking injustice to the individuals, and continual disorder in the communities subjected to it. These are the results of the jn-csent sys- tem of Colonial government; and must be the results of every system which subjects the in- ternal affairs of a people to the will of a distant authority not responsible to anybody. At the root of this bad system, lies the main- tenance of our present mischievous and anom- alous mode of conducting the internal govern- ment of Colonies, without that responsibility io the people which we assert to be the necessary F 2 100 CONCLUSION. i! consequence of representative institutions. We choose to hold the Executive entirely free from popular control, and consequently equally in- dependent of popular support. It is no acci- dental consequence, but the necessary result of such independence, that the government which enjoys it is almost invariably found to be in a state of collision with popular feeling. The rule of cabals, and cliques, and compacts, fol- lows with equal certainty ; and as the irrespon- sible authority thus established in the Colony has no self-supporting power, it must constantly be leaning on the Imperial Government, and compelling its interference in the details of Co- lonial affairs. That interference is also invoked by the complaining Colonists whom we have invested with the power of expressing, and even of stimulating the popular discontent, but with none of allaying it by removing grievances. Thus the present system compels both parties to appeal to the Mother Country ; and hence originates the injurious influence which a few unknown officials in Downing Street ej:ercisc over the fortunes rf all the wide- spi'ead Colonies of Great Britain. Hence, therefore, flow the practical evils which mis- government everywhere produces. Lord Dur- CONCLUSION. 101 HAM has drawn a striking but by no means too highly-coloured picture of the social disorgan- ization, the political dissensions, the barbarous administration, and the consequent stagnation of the British Colonics in North America. Through every department of government he has traced the faulty, negligent, and often corrupt working of an irresnonsible Executive. He has shewn its operation in the neglect of education, the maladministration of justice, and the misma- nagement of public works. He has traced to this source the political disorders of those colo- nies, and shewn that we can never hope for any cessation of either the present mismanage- ment or the consequent discontent, until we give the people of the Colonics the control over their Executive Government which thcv desire. He has had the opportunity in this case of con- trasting the backward and stagnant condition of our own possessions with the flourishing activity of those states of the American Union, which, lying along the frontier, and inhabited by a people of the same race, possess precisely simi- lar climate, soil, productions, and means of ac- quiring wealth. The result has been a fearful pictuij, an ignominious contrast. But we very much fear that if the state of other colonies F 3 102 CONCLUSION. V,,, .'ji ■ ' m were investigated by an inquiry as enlightened and as laborious as that instituted by Lord Dur- ham, and laid open with an honesty as unflinch- ing ai] that which characterizes his Eeport, we should discover that other colonies have suffered from the same causes quite as much as the Canadas, and find in the condition even of the most highly favoured the germs of the same- fatal disorders. It has been our object in the foregoing pages to show the practicability of adopting the remedy proposed by Lord Durham, and the unsoundness of the objections urged against it, on account of some of its alleged consequences. There is no way of putting a stop to the present disorders of our Colonies, except by the adop- tion of the simple suggestion of " facilitating the management of Colonial affairs, by intrusting it to the persons who have the confidence of the representative body." To effect this great change no legislative enactment is required. It is only requisite that we should no longer attempt to withhold from our Colonies the practical results of the institutions which we have established in tliem ; and that we should adopt as the principle of our government in them, that which must be the principle of government wherever represen- CONCLUSION. 103 tative institutions prevail. We have not pre- tended to lay down any precise rules for regula- ting the division of power between the Crown and the Representative body ; this can only be de- termined by circumstances, and the prudence of the two parties. A long experience has susr- gested the course which is followed in the con- duct of affairs in England : and whenever we establish in our Colonies the fundamental insti- tutions of our own constitution, we can only hope to work them with the same success that ' has attended them here, by imitating the spirit in which they have been worked. It has been our object to show that there is no ground for apprehending that the adoption in the Colonies of the practice that has prevailed at home since the Revolution, will sever the con- nexion with the Mother Country, or impair its rightful authority. Few are the points on which it is necessary to interfere with the management of affairs in our Colonies. In those few depart- ments of affairs which ought to be reserved out of the jurisdiction of the Colonial Parliament, the Imperial Government is secured against the interference of the Colony, not only with its ad- ministrative, but with its legislative authority. The Imperial Country makes its own laws, and 104 CONCLUSION. m administers thorn by officers of its own. The utmost responsibility of the Colonial Executive would not extend to the officers of the Army, the Customs, or the Land department, or to our Diplomatic agents. These are, or ought to be, the servants of the Imperial, not of the Colonial Government, inasmucli as they administer the laws and execute the duties of the Imperial, not of the Colonial Legislature. That the responsi- bility of the Colonial Executive would prevent the interference of the Home authorities in the internal affairs of the Colonies, we admit; and we are desirous that it should. Those who would prevent it would perpetuate all the maladminis- tration of Family Compacts, all the jealousies, the collisions, and the chronic anarchy which are consequent thereon, and all the blunders, in- trigues, delay, and vacillation of Mr. ^Motiiek- countp-y's rule. Our object in these papers will have been gained, if we have familiarised the minds of our English readers to the real nature of that demand for Responsible Government in the Colonies, which has been so much misrepresented ; if we shall have induced them to look on the practice which we recommend as a portion of the consti- CONCLUSION. 105 tutional system of Great Britain, which cannot be omitted with safety in any attempt to intro- duce into our Colonies the principles of that con- stitution ; and if we shall have dispelled the vague notions that prevail respecting the ne- cessity for constant and extensive interference with the internal affairs of the Colonies in order to maintain our connexion with them. That connexion, we may depend on it, is secured by every feeling of the Colonial mind, and every interest that binds men to the country which protects them. Nothing can really alienate the Colonies except a government which hurts their feelings and retards their prosperity : and if there is truth in any of the principles of free government, the affection of Colonies as well as of other communities can only be effectually secured, and their welfare steadily promoted, by giving the people a real control over the selection and the policy of their rulers, A large portion of the wide field of Colonial Government we have purposely left unexplored. We have limited our inquiry into the evil conse- quences of the general system of our Colonial Government to those Colonies in which repre- sentative institutions arc established. We have 1/ 106 CONCLUSION. <. not examined the reasons which are commonly put forward for that modern and un-English system of Colonial Government, hy which many colonics inhabited by Englishmen or their de- scendants are deprived of those representative institutions which Englishmen regard as their birthright. Nor have we enquired into the nature of the reforms which must be effected in the adminis- tration of the Colonial Department at home, as a necessary consequence of the general adoption of " Responsible Government" in the Colonies. The popular members of a Colonial Executive, strong in the confidence and support of the re- presentatives of their countrymen, would not long put up with Mr. Mothercountry and his system. The two reforms ought, therefore, to go hand in hand ; and we trust that when Re- sponsible Government is, as we infer from the union of the two Canadas, and Lord John Rus- sell's recent despatches, on the eve of being established in the Colonies, some attempt will be made to reform the constitution and practice of the Colonial Office. No fitter subject could engage the attention of larliament ; nor would any scheme of practical reform enlist in its be- CONCLUSION. 107 half a larger amount of public sympathy, than that which t, .uld bring the influence of public opinion really to act on the Colonial Depart- ment. THE END. h LONDON : BLATCH ANd'lAMPERT, PRINTERS, GROVE PLACE, BROMPTON. •S»^'