Office had laid claim to omnipotence and infallibility in all matters concerning the colonies. That claim had been for some time acquiesced in, but recently a strong feeling against it had arisen in this country, while almost every colony had energetically protested against it. He then traced the causes of this awakened and altered opinion, ascribing it partly to the vast extension of emigration by this country within late years, partly to the writings of eminent men on this class of subjects (among whom he instanced particularly Mr. E. G. Wakefield), partly to the impulse given to public opinion by the discussion of free trade and the Navigation Laws, and partly to the heavy expenditure recently imposed upon this country by a series of remarkable events in the colonies. The cost thus occasioned to the mother country within the last fifteen years Sir W. Molesworth estimated at eighty millions sterling. These eighty millions would have sufficed to carry out four millions of British subjects to Australia, whereas all our colonies together did not now contain more than one million persons of British or Irish descent, while there were as many British subjects at present in the United States. The export trade to all our colonies did not now exceed 9,500,000l. a year. Several of the most disastrous events that had occurred in our colonies had taken place during the government of the existing Secretary of State. Sir W. Molesworth briefly referred to the transactions in Canada, British Guiana, Jamaica, the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, Van Diemen's Land, New Zealand, and Vancouver's Island. The result was that public opinion condemned the colonial policy of Great Britain and put no faith in its official organs in either House of Parliament a state of things dangerous and unsatisfactory in the extreme. The inquiry which he proposed, with a view to an alteration of the system, would arrange itself under three heads: 1, Colonial Government; 2, Colonial Expenditure; 3, Colonization or Emigration. In the first place inquiry should be made into our system of colonial government, with a view to remove the main causes of complaint. Sir William quoted Mr. Charles Buller's remarks on the faults of the system-its arbitrary character; its government from a distance, on second-hand and one-sided information; its secrecy and irresponsibility; its subordination to parties and cliques; its constant procrastination and vacillation; its heartbreaking injustice and continual disorder. Although after Lord Grey's attacks on the colonial system much was expected from his coming into office, Mr. Buller's description applied now as closely as ever it did. Under the existing system, even in those colonies which enjoyed representative institutions-with the exception of Canada, those institutions were shams rather than realities, the Colonial Office generally attempting to carry on the government by means of a minority in the Assembly co-operating with a majority in the Council nominated by the Colonial Office. Ignorance, negligence, and vacillation were the inseparable accidents of our system of colonial government. Ignorance was the necessary consequence of the distance which intervened between the rulers and the ruled; negligence was the invariable result of the want of efficient responsibility; and the responsibility of the Colonial Office to Parliament was merely nominal, in consequence of the ignorance of Parliament with regard to colonial affairs; and when ever there was either ignorance or negligence, there vacillation must also exist. This censure, however, applied not to individuals, but to the system. The Colonial Office governed forty-three communities, including various races, tongues, religions, laws, and customs. The office comprised the Secretary of State, two Under, and one Assistant Under Secretary, a chief clerk, and twenty-three inferior clerksin all twenty-eight persons. The two first were removable; the three next in order were the real governors of the colonies, though screened from responsibility by the political functionaries; the division of labour was impracticable. Sir William described with much force and humour the infinite diversity of questions and interests arising in the forty-three settlements scattered from one end of the earth to the other, among which the Secretary of State was compelled to divide his attention and his time"traversing and re-traversing in imagination the terraqueous globe, like nothing in earth or in romance save the Wandering Jew." This system ought to be revised. A broad distinction should be drawn between those colonies which had or ought to have representative institutions, and those of the Crown colonies which were unfit for free institutions. It would be necessary also to consider what would be the best form of local government for those Crown colonies which were unfit for free institutions. Turning next to colonial expenditure, Sir. W. Molesworth went through an array of figures to show how much money had been devoted to public works, and how much more must be spent to complete those works in which capital was at present locked up. If the Commission which he proposed should be appointed, it should inquire to what extent it was necessary for us to keep troops or build fortifications in our colonies; whether we ought to do so in any colonies except strictly military stations; what colonies should be considered to be military stations; and what would be the best mode of checking the present excessive and uncontrolled Ordnance expenditure. He then contrasted the salaries paid to British Colonial Governors with the salaries paid to State Governors in the United States, which the former exceeded by nearly nine times. The proposed Commission would deal with the questions both of the salaries and appointments of governors, would determine in what cases the payment should be made from colonial or from imperial funds, and would devise checks, where required, against lavish expenditure. Thirdly, the Commission should inquire into colonization and emigration. It should determine whether or not convict emigration was to continue? Whether upon the whole the empire was a gainer therefrom. It should also investigate the obsta cles which impeded emigration to our own colonies. Why was it that emigrants from this country generally preferred the United States? He asked this question in no spirit of jealousy towards that great Republic, for which he entertained the most cordial sentiments of good-will. But in the same manner in which he might ask why emigrants preferred one British colony to another, he asked why they preferred the United States to our own dependencies? It was Colonial Office misgovernment, convict emigration, and other causes, which a Commission would be able to probe and investigate, that now turned away the tide of colonization from our own settlements. The Commission would likewise assist in determining what powers ought to be reserved to the Imperial Government, and what intrusted to the local legislatures. His reason for proposing a Commission was the fear that the subject would be found too large for a Parliamentary Committee. He suggested that the Commission might consist of four persons: one representing each of the four sections of the House of Commons, and to these he would add one distinguished political economist, as for instance Mr. John Stuart Mill. Mr. Hume seconded the motion, and inveighed against the general system and spirit of the colonial administration, which was managed too much with a view to patronage, without regard to the capacity of governors or to the interests of the country. Mr. Hawes opposed the scheme as an impracticable one, and protested against delegating the inquiry into great imperial questions, which ought to be discussed in that House, to five gentlemen who, though of discordant political sentiments, were expected, when brought together, like a "happy family," to forego all their antipathies. He maintained that Lord Grey had laid down larger principles of commercial policy than any other Colonial Secretary had done, and that Sir W. Molesworth, whose speech was full of exaggerations, had laid no ground for his motion. He then proceeded to justify those parts of Lord Grey's policy which had been assailed by Sir W. Molesworth, and with respect even to the West Indies, said to be ruined by the policy of the Colonial Office, Mr. Hawes argued that the success of the free-trade policy was already There were, manifesting itself. no doubt, subjects of great importance affecting the interests of the colonies, which deserved consideration; but were all these ingredients-the effects of the abolition of slavery, the forms and the cost of colonial government, waste lands, and other questions-to be thrown. into one common cauldron? Such a comprehensive inquiry, which must involve the consideration whether or not our Colonial Empire was worth retaining, would excite hopes and expectations which could not be realized, and would paralyze a great executive department of the State. Mr. Gladstone thought that some exception might be taken to the terms of the motion, which seemed to contemplate a minute inquiry into the governments of the different colonies, and all complaints and grievances against the Colonial Department. But Sir W. Molesworth did not propose to inquire into abuses of detail, or the conduct of individuals. Great, as Mr. Gladstone admitted, were the merits of Lord Grey, he had been led into serious errors, which called for measures of prevention; and, looking to the general scope and object of the motion, he thought the time had arrived when an attempt should be made to improve our colonial system, founding his opinion, not upon one single consideration, but upon the joint result of many considerations. He confuted some of the objections offered by Mr. Hawes to the appointment of a Commission to inquire into these subjects, which a Colonial Secretary, overburdened and distracted by so many duties, had not sufficient time to consider as he ought; and he believed that a Commission appointed by the Executive Government, and acting in harmony with that Government, would afford useful extraneous aid; and, so far from this being an extraordinary, it was a useful course, and one followed in other cases by the present Government. Mr. Gladstone adverted to various questions connected with important branches of our colonial policy which called for inquiry, and might be fitly investigated by a well-chosen Commission, and he, therefore, supported the motion. Mr. Labouchere opposed the motion, which was grounded upon a sweeping, indiscriminate censure of the whole colonial policy of the empire, alike impolitic and unjust. The three classes of subjects to which the inquiry of the Commission was to be directed, comprised almost the whole circle of duties belonging to the Government and legislature with reference to the colonies. However convenient it might be to get rid of responsibility by shifting it upon a Commission, he objected, on constitutional grounds, to delegate to a body of this description functions which should be exercised, on their own responsibility, by Ministers of the Crown. He showed the distinction between a standing Commission, contemplated by Sir W. Molesworth, and Commissions appointed for special and defined purposes, whose inquires were of practical utility, whereas nothing could result from the former but disappointment. The motion was supported by Mr. Scott and Mr. Adderley. Lord John Russell was at a loss to know what were the definite objects of the proposed Commission, whose inquiries, in the terms of the motion, were so vast as to be beyond the power of any Commission. It was an objection fatal to the whole scheme that, having such a multiplicity of subjects to inquire into, the Commissioners could not possibly arrive at any rational conclusion as to any, and if they attempted to carry on the ordinary business of administration for the colonies, they would interfere with the functions of the Executive Government, and might open fresh sources of complaint in the colonies. He showed that an attempt to define the limits of imperial and local questions might lead to serious disputes, and that the adjustment of the forms of colonial government by abstract rules might cause dissatisfaction. All questions of administration were to be decided by certain fixed principles, but in applying them the circumstances of the country must be considered. In such a Commission all the responsibility of the Government would be merged; instead of this it would be better to leave these, like other questions, to be dealt with in the first instance by the responsible Ministers of the Crown, and afterwards by the control and supervision of Parliament, which was in accordance with the constitution of this country. After a short reply from Sir W. Molesworth, the House divided, when the motion was negatived by 163 against 89. The only remaining colonial topic that it appears necessary here to advert to is the cession of Vancouver's Island to the Hudson's Bay Company, which gave occasion to a very able speech, though an abortive motion, of the Earl of Lincoln, on the 19th of June. The proposition of the noble Lord was for an address to the Crown, expressing an opinion that the Hudson's Bay Company, to which the island in question had been granted by Royal charter, was ill adapted for superintending the establishment of any colony founded upon principles of political or commercial freedom; that the means adopted to ascertain that the Company's acceptance of the grant would be consistent with their charter of incorporation were insufficient; and praying Her Majesty to direct that measures might be adopted for ascertaining whether a valid grant had been made of the powers purported to be conveyed. The noble Lord commenced by demonstrating the impolicy of establishing a colony through the medium of an absentee proprietary, from the examples of the American colonies, which had flourished or languished according as they were founded by resident or absent proprietors; and he argued that, upon general principles, a company must, from its very constitution, pursue its own individual interests; of all companies, for the purposes of colonization, the Hudson's Bay Company being, he contended, the worst, as it was a strict monopoly governed by despotic maxims. After slightly glancing at the defects in some parts of the original title of the Company, Lord Lincoln proceeded to consider their VOL. XCI. conduct with relation to the natives and the colonists in that portion of their territory where their rights admitted of no question, namely, the extensive districts west of the Rocky Mountains, in order to prove the impropriety of confiding them to the colonization of Vancouver's Island. The charges against the Company comprised the neg lect of religious instruction, and the encouragement of the sale of spirits amongst the aborigines; the abuse of their rigid monopoly, not only by charging arbitrary prices for their commodities, but by giving most inadequate rewards to the Indians; and the graver charge that murders had been frequently perpetrated by the Company's servants, and capital punsihments in some instances illegally inflicted by them; and he adduced evidence in support of these several charges. He adverted to the complaints alleged against the Company by the Red River settlers since the transfer of the settlement by Lord Selkirk; he examined the results of the inquiries into the charges against the Company, none of which, he maintained, had been satisfactorily refuted, whilst many had been substantiated; and he contended that it was an abandonment of their duty on the part of the Government to hand over Vancouver's Island to such a body, which was actuated by an anticolonizing spirit and a horror of publicity. În considering the objections against interposing this Company in the scheme for colonizing the island, he contended that no part of their capital could be diverted from a lucrative investment to the purposes of colonization, for which the island was well adapted, and looking at the mighty objects to which the western coast [K] |