RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT FOR THE COLONIES. (Concluded from No. 918).

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 921, 31 May 1854, Page 4

RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT FOR THE COLONIES. (Concluded from No. 918).

Chapter VIII. — Conclusion. — In describing the vices of the present mode of administering the government of the Colonies from Down-ing-street, we have sought to avoid singling out particular individuals to bear the burden of a blame which in fairness attaches to the system. The faults v/hich 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 administer a system such as the present. While we have attempted to shew that that system has caused great mischief both to communities and to individuals, we think it but fair to add, that the permanent officers of the Colonial department 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 necessarily result from the attempt to conduct the internal affairs of the Colonies in accordance with the puhlic opinion, not of those colonieo themselves but of the Mothercounty. We have shewn 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 arc habitually occupied with such subjects. The appeal from the colonies to the Mothercountry ends in concentrating power in the hands of a few official person?, not of those who are ostensibly responsible for the management of Colonial affairs, but of some unknowu and irresponsible individuals among the permanent subordinate officials of the department. By these are, in fact, fielded the whole legiblstive and administrative powers of government ; by them the course of Parliament is prescribed whenever it legislates for the colonies ; by them is exercised all the still larger power of disallowing the acts of the Colonial Legislatures, and of passing laws in the form of Orders iv Council. And this power is exercised in the faulty .nanner in which arbitrary, secret, and irresponsible power must be exercised over distant communities. It is exercised with grent fgneir.nca of the real condition and feelings of the people subjected to it, it is exercised with { that presumption, and at the same time in that spirit of acre routine, which are the inherent vices cf bureaucratic rule; it is exercised in a mischievous subordination to intrigues and cliques at home, and intrigues and cliques in the colonies. 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 present system of Colonial government ; and must be the results of every system which subjects the internal affairs of a people to the will of a distant authority not responsible to anybody. At the root of this bad system lies the maintenance of our present mischievous and anomalous mode of conducting the general government of colonies, without that responsibility to the people which we assert to be the necessary consequence of Representative Institutions. We choose to hold the Executive entirely free from popular control, and consequently equally independent of popular support. It is no accidental consequence, but the necessary result of such independence, that the Government which enjoys it is almost I invariably found to be in a state of collision with popular leeling. The rule of cabals, and cliques, and compacts, follows with equal certainty ; and as the irresponsible authority thus established in | the colony has no sslf-supporling power, it must constantly be leaning on the Imperial Government, and compelling- its interference in the details of Colonial 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 Mothercountry : and hence originates the injurious influence which a few unknown officials in Downing-street exercise over the fortunes of all the wide-spread colonies of Great Brilaiu. Hence, therefore, flow the practical evils which misgovernment everywhere produces. Lord Durham has drawn a striking but by no.means too highly-coloured picture o\ the social disorganization, the political dissensions, the barbarous administration, and the consequent stagnation of the British Colonies in North America. Through every department of government he lias traced the faulty, negligent, and often corrupt working of an irresponsible Executive. He has shewn its operation in the neglect of education, the mal-administration of justice, and the mismanagement of public works. He has traced to this source the political disorders of those colonies, and shewn that we ran ne^er hope for any cessation of either the present mismanagement or the consequent discontent, until we give the people of the colouies the control over their Executive Government which they desire. He has had the opportunity in this case of contrasting the backward and stagnant condition of our own possesions with the flourishing activity of those stales of the American Union, which lying j along the frontier, and inhabited by a people of

the same race, possess precisely similar climate, soil, productions, and meaDS of acquiring wealth. The result has been a fearful picture, an ignominious, contrast. But we very much fear that if the state of other colonies were investigated by an inquiry as enlightened and as laborious as that instituted by Lord Durham, and laid open with an honesty as unflinching as that which characterizes his Report, we should discover that other colonies have suffered from the same causes quite as much as the Canadas, and find in the condition of even the most highly-favoured the germs of the same fatal disorders. It has been our object in the foregoing pages to shew 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 adoption of the simple suggestion of facilitating the management of Colonial affairs, by intrusting it Jo 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 them ; and that we should adopt as the principle of our government, in them, that which must be the principle of government wherever representative institutions prevail. We have not pretended to lay down any precise rules of regulating the division of power between the Crown and the Representative body ; this can only be determined by circumstances, and the prudence of the two parties. A long experience has suggested the course which is followed in the conduct of affairs in England : and whenever we establish in our colonies the fundamental institutions 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 shew 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 connection 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 departments 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 administrative, but with its legislative authority. The Imperial country makes its own laws, and administers them 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, in as much as they administer the ! laws and execute the duties of the Imperial, not of the Colonial Legislature. That the responsibility 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. Tbose who would prevent it would perpetuate all the maladministration of family compacts, all the jealousies, the collisions, and the chronic anarchy which are consequent thereon, and all the blunders, intrigues, delay, and vacillation of Mr. Mothercountry'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 constitutional system of Great -Britain, which cannot be omitted with safety in any attempt to introduce to our colonies the principles of that constitution ; and if we shall have dispelled the vague notions that prevail respecting the necessity for constant and extensive interference with the internal affairs of the colonies in order to maintain our connexion with them. That connection, we may depend upon it, is secured by every feeling of the Colonial mind, and every interest which 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 the 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 consequences of the general system of .our Colonial Government to tbose colonies in which representative institutions are established. We have not examined the reasons which are commonly put forward for that modern and un-English system of Colonial Government, by which many colonies inhabited by Englishmen or their descendants 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 adrainistratration 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 representatives of their countrymen, would not long put up with Mr. Mother-country and his system. The two reforms ought, therefore, to go hand in hand ; and we trust that when Responsible Government is, as we infer from the union of the two Canadas, and Lord John Russell'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 Parliament ; nor would any scheme of practical reform enlist in its behalf a larger amount of public sympathy, than that which would bring the influence of public opinion really to act on the Colonial Department.