TOPICS OF THE BA 1 II 'VA SWAIJ
THE NEXT SUBJECT AND THE
NEXT GOVERNMENT THE next subject, let its intrinsic importance be what it may, is the first that shall furnish to the next Government an opportu- nity of showing quickly that they are capable of doing something agreeable to the public. What is it? It must be a subject on which public opinion and the proximate Ministry are equally ripe for action. What is that ? A real Poor-law for Ireland? Sepa- ration of the functions of Lord Chancellor and President of the House of Lords? Abolition of the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland ? Many more might be named, with regard to which public opinion is sufficiently ripe to admit of practical dealing with them by the next Government, if it should be a strong Government; but the next Government will not be a strong Government, and we may well doubt whether those who will compose the next Govern- ment are themselves ripe for dealing practically with any of the questions mentioned. The paths indicated are full of lions for such men as will compose the next Government, supposing Lord Grey not to be a member of it. In picking a subject with which Lord John Russell and his probable colleagues will be able to deal promptly and practically, we must choose an easy one.; one offering no serious difficulties either from the public or from the timidity which is the vice of every weak Government ; one in which reform (for now-a-days reform is the only mode of hand- ling any subject) may be effected without opposition from power- ful interests ; and lastly, a subject on which Lord John Russell has made up his mind to a course that public opinion would applaud.
Now there happens to be a subject of practical reform with re-
gard to which public opinion is, so to speak, all on one side. There is no controversy about it. Every public man who men- tions it expresses the same views as his neighbour. Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell exactly agree upon it. There is not a shade of difference upon it between Sir James Graham and the Times. Lord Grey and the Standard come to the same conclu- sions. An article about it written for the Edinburgh might ap- pear in the Quarterly' or vice versa, an a matter of course. The
interests" are all in favour of the change ; and some of the,most
powerful of them, including the men to whose exertions we are chiefly indebted for free trade, would earnestly promote it as soon as they perceived its close relationship to the great change which they have just accomplished. Who then would oppose it? In naming them we name the subject. The change would be opposed by the permanent bureaucracy of the Colonial Office, to whom Parliament has delegated an absolute authority in all matters re- lating to colonization and colonial government. For it would consist of a reform of our whole Colonial system, beginning with the Office itself, which stands in the way of every improvement. But this resistance would be of no avail. The Colonial Office, notwithstanding its unlimited sway in all things relating to its own branch of government, has no friends anywhere, and no power of resistance to opinion in this country, where it is neces- sarily unheeded and almost unknown save by faint reflection from those distant portions of the empire in which its mismanagement is felt. The official gentlemen at the bottom of Downing Street might grumble and make wry faces during the operation; but they might not; they might, on the contrary, and probably would, smile and declare their satisfaction at the prospect of relief from a load of odious responsibility and excessive labour. At all events, their opposition would be 80 feeble as to be scarcely an exception from the rule of approval ; and it deserves notice for no other purpose but that of observing that the coming reform would ap- pear more important if it were likely to meet with some formidable opposition. The reform of Parliament, or the reform of our com- mercial system, would have excited but little interest and been deemed a change of no great moment, if all the world had been of the same opinion about it.
But though the question of Colonial reform wants the interest arising from controversy and the conflicts of party, its real impor- tance will be acknowledged as soon as the proposal of change shall be made by a Government. The partisans of the Minister will be desirous of showing that colonial government comprizes coloniza- tion; that free trade has given us no more than the markets which exist tilready ; that the pressure of competition, which was really at the bottom of the national effort to obtain free trade, would be further relieved—that the want of more room for the employment of British capital and labour would he further sup- plied—by adding to the markets which exist as many as we could create in the Colonies; that the greatest and most 'valuable of pre- sent markets was created by colonization ; that the old Colonies of England have been valuable to the Mother-country not as depen- dencies but as markets, and that they were founded, not by costly efforts of the parent state, but at the expense of individuals by means of a system of government which rendered the colonies at- tractive by giving play to enterprise and ambition and making property secure ; that the old-English system was abandoned when we began to colonize with convicts towards the close of the last century ; that for the local self-government .under represen-
tative institutions, which till then had been a rule without one ex- ception, we have substituted the plan of governing by means of an office in Downing Street ; that this central authority is wholly irresponsible to its subjects by reason of their distance from it, and to public opinion here by reason of our necessary indifference CO
the concerns of such distant communities ; that distant and irre- sponsible government is the greatest impediment to colonization ; that in order to extend and multiply our colonies without calling upon Parliament for a shilling, we have only to revert to the old- English plan of letting colonizers and colonists manage their own affairs in their own way ; and that if this were done according to the views expressed in Parliament last year during the debates on New Zealand, by Sir Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, Lord Grey, Sir James Graham, Mr. Ellice, and Mr. Charles Buller, colonization, or the making of fresh markets, would receive an impulse in proportion to the vast wealth and excessive competition which 'distinguish this United Kingdom from all the countries in the world. And then, whilst the friends of Government talked thus their party opponents must needs echo such opinions ; so
that a general assent the work of the next Minister would be made easy, and might be invested with a high degree of interest and consequence.
This work of Colonial reform belongs to the next Government. It has slipped through Mr. Gladstone 's fingers, which seem to have wanted strength to grasp it; and Sir Robert Peel has been otherwise engaged. It falls naturally to Lord John Russell, who has got a name for being able to do something in Colonial mat- ters; who has administered the present system and proclaims its vices ; and who in effecting a complete change, would have the valuable aid of Lord Grey whither in or out of office, as well as that of Mr. Charles Buller, whom the public regard, whatever his party may think, its the proper owner of this subject. In anticipation of the interest that will presently attach to this subject, we devote a Supplement to laying before our readers one ease, or rather an account of one stage in a case, of Colonial grievance. The documents which we publish describe what the colonista of New Zealand have suffered for another 'rear, and how the Colonial Office has passed another year without taking a single step to correct its own previous errors and neglect. The whole case is a curiosity. A petition from the colonists sets forth proceedings on the part of the Local Government, of which it is enough to say here, that a system under which such things could happen is condemned without further hearing. Perhaps the things did not happen : the story of them may have been in- vented to worry the Colonial Office ? And yet the gentlemen in Downing Street take no more notice of this seeming caricature of the worst misgovernment that one's imagination can readily con- ceive, than if it had been a letter about coals and candles for the Office. This hardly credible tale of wrong excites in them no surprise no indignation, no uneasiness : they treat it as just the sort of tiling they are used to—as something which bores them a little perhaps, and which will soonest cease to bore them at all the less they say about it. They have nothing to say, therefore, even to the extent of a word of sympathy or regret. Their correspondence with the New Zealand Company, which is the advocate of the colonists and pleads hard for a total change of system, discloses no feeling, but some annoyance at being troubled at present, and a determination to cast all respon- sibility for the future, as regards opinions and suggestions as well as acts, upon a Captain Grey who has been appointed to succeed Captain Fitzroy as Governor of the colony. The sense of annoyance at being troubled seems to have been thoroughly imbibed by Sir Robert Peel; whose answer to the Company's memorial really says, "I have more than enough on my hands already, and can't be teazed with a matter like this." The style of the Colonial Office letters is the old style of much words and little meaning, apparently exaggerated or burlesqued by Lord Lyttelton, "by direction of Mr. Secretary Gladstone." Sheets upon sheets of good paper are wasted in saying, and repeating, and reiterating, in substance, that the Government can say nothing till it learns what Captain Grey has to say about everything. The proceed- ings at the Company's annual meeting held last week suggest two observations. In the first place, the ruin and dissolution of such a body as the colonizing New Zealand Company by the direct and obvious agency of the Colonial . Office upon whom this "valuable coadjutor" was forced by Lord John Russell some five years ago, is a fact which, if it stood alone, would call for reform in the great house at the bottom of Downing Street : secondly, at this meeting, Mr. Charles Buller made a speech which must preclude him from taking office under the next Government ex- cept as a practical reformer of Colonial government, and from which, if he should not be in office under the next Government., the public will understand that the said next Government does not mean to realize the declarations of the present Opposition with regard to Colonial reform. Mr. Buller proposes in substance a League of all the Colonial interests against the Colonial Office. We give that part of his speech entire. But over and above considerations which relate to the future, this New Zealand case has a bearing on the present state of par- ties, which should give an interest to our Supplement for many who usually care nothing about Colonial questions. The imme- diate object of the Company is to induce the Government to obtain from Parliament sufficient authority for taking steps calculated to save the colony from destruction ; so that another year may not intervene before the attempt at least be made to remedy the past and provide for the future till the next meeting of Parlia- ment. Such authority is required, because Parliament has dele- gated all authority relating to the colony to the Governor and Council, and thus rendered the Crown powerless save by means of sending instructions to.the Governor ; ,a mode of legislation in which nobody who has any acquaintance with it has the slightest
confidence. The Company in fact ask Sir Robert Peel to take power to carry his own declarations into effect, or, if he should not be in office during the recess of Parliament, to enable his successor to carry them into effect. This reasonable request is refused. The ex- cuse about wanting to learn what Captain Grey thinks on the sub- ject, may be deemed a mere Colonial-Office shuffle. The Company says truly, that there must be other reasons, with which it has not been made acquainted. Can the reason be Mr. Gladstone's sense of the impropriety of deciding important questions whilst he holds office without a seat in Parliament, and with every pro- spect of being out of office in a few weeks ? Scarcely; for his col- leagues are carrying through Parliament for him a bill for founding a new convict colony in Australia, and another bill for prolonging the despotic government of West Australia ; and be has taken upon himself to saddle his successor with a second Under-Secretary, of the name of Rogers. Can it be that Sir Robert Peel does not choose to obtain for Lord John Ruts- ken the power of putting this New Zealand matter to rights, and thereby adding to his reputation for practical ability with regard to Colonial questions ? We have no belief in the existence of so odious a motive ; and we mention it solely for the purpose of warning Sir Robert Peel, that he subjects himself to the imputa- tion by giving in to the Colonial-Office nonsense about waiting to hear from Captain Grey. The course of the Company, however, is clear. Let them bring in the requisite bill. They have wisely abstained from reviving their controversy with Lord Stanley; and the Bentinck party in the House of Commons can hardly blunder to the extent of raking it all up again by opposing such a bill. Such a bill would doubtless be supported by the Whigs' and, great as is the respect of the Free-traders par excellence for Sir Robert Peel, —desirous as they are to protect him from defeat by any combi- nation of Whigs and Protectionists for any purpose,—yet even their commiseration of the harassed Prime Minister has a limit, and they would scarcely like to figure before the country as deli- berately sacrificing the suffering and helpless, colonists of N.ew Zealand to party tactics in Parliament. Upon the whole, there- fore, such a bill would in all probability be passed in spite of oppo- sition from the Government. That the Government would not oppose it, is indeed equally probable, unless we are to suppose that the sagacious and prudent Peel wants to retire upon a question in which all the world would think him in the wrong.
Previous page
