A Short History of British Colonial Policy

Preface

In these latter days when the plague of book-making has taken its place, along with influenza, among the blessings of an advanced civilization, the appearance of any volume, not vouched by an author of eminence, requires a word of apology. Perhaps, however, the standpoint of the present work affords it some justification. There are, of course, various books dealing with various phases of Colonial Policy, or with such policy for some particular period, but there is no book which deals with the subject systematically on historical lines, while in the regular histories the subject of policy naturally takes a subordinate and incidental position. The point of view of the book explains its method. Where a narrative of events is concerned, it is the duty of the author to weigh his authorities, and from them to evolve his own story; but, where we are dealing with the history of opinions, it is desirable, as far as possible, to allow the authorities to speak for themselves.

This must be my excuse for a plentiful employment of quotations : there appearing little advantage in the method which makes the text a bald summary and throws the living interest of a book into its footnotes. In dealing with the history of Colonial Policy, there is one preliminary objection which must be met. " Colonial Policy," it is said, " why — there is no such thing ! Great Britain has

PREFACE.

VIII merely blundered into the best places of the earth and means to keep them." If by " policy " be meant a premeditated advance to a definite goal, the criticism must be allowed. Nevertheless, behind the dim gaze and circumscribed horizon of each individual generation, we recognise forces at work fitting events, apparently fortuitous, into the scheme of a mighty system. The thoughtful student of the past finds himself somewhat in the position of Æneas, when, enlightened by his goddess mother, he recognised the deliberate work of the very go,ds fn what at first had seemed the mere sport of fire and chaos. The following pages were in the press 1 before the arrival of the Colonial Premiers in England, and it has been there fore impossible to deal with the lessons of this annus mira bilis of Imperial history.

This is the less to be regretted, as there can be nothing to add to what has been so well said by various persons of authority. In the face, however, of recent utterances of Sir Wilfrid Laurier and others on the subject of Imperial Federation, it may be well to add a word of explanation of the views maintained in the text. I have not denied — and no one, I think, can deny — that, if the Colonies come to demand Imperial Federation, Imperial Federation there will have to be. Undoubtedly they have a formal and technical grievance in the subordinate position of their Executives and Legislatures with regard to Imperial questions, and, if they come to consider that grievance a real one, some remedy will have to be applied. Further, it is impossible to suppose that the present system can go on indefinitely when the respective proportions of population 1 In fairness it should be remembered that my introductory chapter was written more than a year ago.

PREFACE.

IX and wealth in the Mother country and the Colonies have become materially altered. All that I have ventured to maintain is that Imperial Federation, if it means a Federal Imperial Parliament, will have its own difficulties, its own occasions for misunderstanding and friction, and that it may after all turn out that the future has in store some more satisfactory solution of the problem to be solved.1 Moreover the Colonial Premiers themselves unanimously, with the exception of the New Zealand and Tasmanian representatives, have agreed " that the present political relations between the United Kingdom and the self-governing Colonies are gener ally satisfactory under the existing condition of things." 2 In spite of all that has been recently written on the South African question, I am not without hopes that the portion of this book relating to it may be of some slight use.

The subject has been generally approached either from the point of view of the experienced observer on the spot or of the partisan of some particular policy ; my aim has been to bring out from the Parliamentary Papers how largely the present is the heritage of the past. Pace Mr H. M. Stanley, it does not follow that because we are convinced that Great Britain must remain paramount in South Africa, we need therefore refuse any sympathy to Dutch grievances, which are largely due to the mistakes and hesitations of English statesmen in the past. In a volume which deals with a long period of time and many scattered events, there are doubtless mistakes and inaccuracies. For such I would pray pardon in anticipation. 1 Mr Chamberlain's suggestion of "a great Council" for purposes of consulta tion must be noted. (Parl. Pap., 1897.) 2 Parl. Pap., 1897.

PREFACE.

X With all its faults the book represents much reading and some thought. In writing what is, to some extent, a history of opinion, it has been impossible altogether to suppress my own individual opinions. I trust, however, that I have not seemed to attach importance to them. In dealing" with the later periods, I remembered Sir Walter Raleigh's remark on the fate which awaits the treatment of contemporary history ; but obscurity may claim its compensations, and at least I am not conscious of having written under the bias of personal or party prejudice. Hugh E. Egerton. Sept. 1897. CONTENTS PAGE A List of Dates bearing upon Colonial Policy . . xiii Introductory ....... i

Appendix

A Bibliography ........ 481

APPENDIX.

B On Colonial Administration ..... 401 Index A LIST OF DATES BEARING UPON COLONIAL POLICY A.D. First expedition of Cabot ...... 1497 Second Patent to Cabot ...... 1498 Formal possession taken of Newfoundland by Sir H. Gilbert 1 583 Formal possession taken of Virginia .... 1584 First Charter of Virginia Company .... 1606 Second ,. „ „ .... 1609 Bermudas settled ...... 1609-1612 Settlement in New England of Mayflower Pilgrims . 1620 Grant of Nova Scotia to Sir W. Alexander . . 1623 Barbados settled ...... 1624-1625 Revocation of Charter of Virginia Company . . 1624 Charter of Massachusetts Bay Company . . . . 1629 English capture of Quebec ..... 1629 Treaty of St Germain-en-Laye ..... 1632 Grant of Maryland to Lord Baltimore .... 1632 Committee of Privy Council for administering Colonies . . 1634 Parliamentary Commissioners for administering Colonies . 1643 Navigation Ordinance ...... 1651 Conquest of Jamaica ...... 1655 Navigation Act ....... 1660 Council for Foreign Plantations ..... 1661 Charter to Connecticut ...... 1662 „ Rhodes Island ..... 1663 Charters of Carolina to Lord Shaftesbury and others 1663 and 1665 Conquest of New Amsterdam (New York) . ■ . . 1664 Treaty of Breda (restoration of Acadia to France) . . 1667 Charter of Hudson's Bay Company .... 1670 Abolition of Council for Trade and Plantations . . 1674 Committee of Privy Council for Trade and Plantations . 1675 Charter to Penn of Pennsylvania ..... 1681 Revocation of Charter of Massachusetts .... 1683 Conquest of Port Royal by Phipps .... 1690 New Charter of Massachusetts ..... 1691 LIST OF DATES XIV A.D.

Board of Trade . l696 Peace of Ryswick (restoration of Acadia) . - • l697 Conquest of Acadia by Nicholson .... 171° Abortive Canada Expedition of Hill . • • .1711 Treaty of Utrecht (Acadia (Nova Scotia) becomes a British Possession) ..-•••• I7I3 Foundation of Georgia ...-•• I732 Outbreak of War between England and Spain . . • 1739 War of the Austrian Succession . 174° Capture of Louisbourg by New England Colonists . 1745 Peace of Aix-Ia-Chapelle (restoration of Cape Breton to France) 1748 Albany Congress ....-•■ 1754 Disaster at Monongahela River . . ■ 1755 Fall of Louisbourg . ...... 1758 „ Quebec ....... 1759 „ Montreal ....... 1760 Treaty of Paris ....... 1763 Stamp Act . . . . - . . . 1765 Duties upon Tea, etc. ...... 1767 Appointment of new Secretary of State for American Affairs . 1768 American Congress ...... 1774 Quebec Act. . . . . ... . 1774 Declaration of Independence ..... 1776 Surrender of Burgoyne ...... 1777 „ Cornwallis . . . . .1781 Battle of the Saints ...... 1782 Abolition of American Secretaryship and of Board of Trade . 1782 Treaty of Versailles ...... 1783 Committee of Privy Council for Trade and Plantations . . 1784 Foundation of New South Wales . . . . . 1788 Canada Act. ....... 1791 First Conquest of Cape of Good Hope . . . 1795 Formal junction of War and Colonial Departments . 1801 Abolition of Slave Trade ...... 1807 Beginnings of Constitutional Government in Australia . 1823 and 1828 Van Diemen's Land separated from New South Wales . . 1825 Foundation of Western Australia . .... 1829 Land Regulations and Appointment of Emigration Commissioners 1 831 Emancipation of Slaves ...... 1833 Foundation of South Australia ..... i8',6 Exodus of Dutch Farmers . • ■ . . . 1836 Land and Emigration Commissioners .... 1S40 Annexation of New Zealand . . jg40 Canada Reunion Act .... iSao LIST OF DATES XV A.D.

Representative Government instituted and developed in New South Wales ...... 1842 and 1850 Victoria separated from New South Wales . . . 1850 Annexation of Natal ...... 1843 Free Trade ........ 1846 Assumption of Orange River Sovereignty . . 1848 Repeal of Navigation Acts ..... 1849 Sand River Convention ... . . 1852 New Zealand Constitution Act . . . . 1852 Cape Colony Constitution ...... 1854 Abandonment of Orange River Sovereignty . . . 1854 New Secretaryship of State for the Colonies . . . 1854 Australian Constitution Acts (Responsible Government instituted) 1855 Merchant Shipping Act ...... 1855 Foundation of British Columbia . . . . 1858 Queensland separated from New South Wales . . 1859 British North America Act ..... 1867 Cessation of Transportation to Australia . . . 1867 Responsible Government in Cape Colony Annexation of Transvaal ..... 1877 Pretoria Convention . . . .1881 London Convention .... 1884 London Colonial Conference ..... 1887 Charter to Royal Niger Company . . 1886 „ British East Africa Company . 188S „ British South Africa Company . . . 1889 Grant of Responsible Government to Western Australia . 1890 Grant of Responsible Government to Natal . . 1893 Ottawa Colonial Conference . .

(I.) Period of beginnings. INTRODUCTORY In the following pages an attempt is made to give an account of British Colonial policy. The scope of the book is limited by its title: it is not sought to compete with the many works of authority, which narrate the history of the separate Colonies, nor do even the events, which were the outcome of British policy, concern us, except indirectly, and so far as they illustrate that policy. Viewed from this standpoint, the subject seems to fall into certain main natural divisions which we may term the period of beginnings, the period of trade ascendency, the period of systematic colonization and of the granting of responsible government, the period of the zenith and decline of laissez-aller principles, and the period of Greater Britain. We have first the period of beginnings.

A new strange thing is coming into being, viz : — Colonization as worked out by the Anglo-Saxon race, and the Mother State is puzzled how to deal with it. The problem is how, in days before steam and telegraph, to maintain the authority of the Crown in countries, separate by thousands of miles of sea. In this stage, the first naive impulse is to give to the individual grantee full power to manage his own settle ment in his own way, so long as he maintains, as far as possible, the English laws. As, however, the idea of colonization by Englishmen, as opposed to settlement by conquest of barbarians, becomes more apparent, the crudity of the early view is recognised. For the moment, as in the Charter to the Virginia Company of 1606, the theory is held that legislative authority may remain in the Crown, executive functions being delegated to a local Governor ; and we may note in passing what a powerful instrument of despotism well-managed Colonies might have been in the constitutional struggle of the seventeenth century A 1609.

(2.) Period of trade ascend' ency. had the Stuart Kings understood statesmanship. Within less than three years, however, this attempt is found hopeless, and the theory is adopted of the Trading Company, the government of the Colony to be lodged in the hands of a Governor, appointed by a Council in England, with whom should also rest the modelling of the constitution and enactment of laws. Side by side with this, however, we find complaints of the practice of conferring powers of government on Trading Companies, and assertions of the need of governing the Colonies on a common plan. The grant of Maryland to Lord Baltimore, on the other hand, appears to be a return, with some modifications, to the cruder point of view of the days of Elizabeth. Altogether we have a sense of uncertainty, of feeling the way amidst strange surroundings, and the period may best be described as one of beginnings.

At last, however, the inner meaning of colonization, its final cause, dawns on the historical horizon. The Navi gation Act, or rather Ordinance, of 165 1, it is true, only gave effective embodiment to a traditional policy ; but the English merchant soon followed in the footsteps of the English shipowner and shipbuilder, and from 1660 downwards the theory for more than a hundred years holds the field that the raison detre of Colonies is to benefit the commerce of the Mother country. No doubt, in the application of this theory, honest efforts were made to compensate the Colonies by bounties on the export of raw products, for the trade restrictions, by which they were bound, and the attitude of England towards her Dependencies was much more friendly than was that of any other European power, yet the theory relegated the Colonies to a position of permanent subordination in the economic evolution of the Empire.

Upon the whole, the broad theory of English policy towards the Colonies may be summed up in the words addressed to Penn1 by a leading English statesman — " Take care you injure not the revenue and other matters ought to be 1 Penn to Logan, 1703, Logan Correspondence. INTRODUCTORY 3 (3-) The period of systematic coloniza tion. left to your own satisfaction." It is true, that running counter to this main current, we find under Charles II. and James II. a narrow stream of Royal interference. The family failing of the Stuart dynasty was to reward their favourites by putting their hands in their neighbours' pockets, and the American Colonies were too tempting a sheep not to be shorn. But, serious as such action might have been in its consequences, the revolution of 1688 came too soon for those consequences to happen, and henceforth the formula, as I have stated it, holds the field.

The great wars of the earlier half of the eighteenth century were trade wars : Ireland, the Colonies, War and Peace, were but pawns in the game, which was to win Great Britain commercial supremacy. From the eco nomic point of view of the eighteenth century the policy may have been a wise one, but, as worked out, it involved the consequence that the interests of the Colonies were to be always sacrificed to those of the Mother country. So accustomed, however, had the Colonies become to this theory, and perhaps so easy were the opportunities for evasion, that pro bably things might have gone on for long in the same manner, had not a crisis been precipitated by causes, with which we shall deal later on. When all allowance has been made for the special causes of the American revolution, it must still be admitted that the spirit which they evoked had been engendered by the galling yoke of the Mercantile System.

Monopoly brought forth its fruit, and that fruit was the disruption of the British Empire. Even when she had lost her American Colonies, England did not at first alter her commercial policy. At the same time, it was in practice carefully safeguarded, so that the interests of the Colonies should not suffer prejudice. Generally, on colonial questions, the note of the period is one of extreme timidity. To smother popular aspirations with kindness, and gladly to pay the piper, so that the Colonies might not ask to choose the tune, was for a time the policy of English statesmen. Gradually, however, it begins to be recognised that a wholly new way of regarding the Empire is coming into being. Turgot had long ago said that Colonies were like fruit which, (3.) and of the granting of responsible government, when ripe, fell off, and the experience of the American War of Independence appeared to prove, in a singular manner, the truth of these words.

The old Colonial policy had been based on the theory of monopoly, but the new doctrine of free trade was sapping that theory at its roots. If the principal good of Colonies was to afford a monopoly of trade for the Mother country, and if such monopolies were at once theoretically unsound and practically led to revolution, the consequence seemed to follow that Colonies were not really of use to the Mother country. We seem to be approaching the triumph of laissez-aller views. In fact, however, the English have never been a strictly logical people, and, in any case, new ways of regarding the Colonies presented themselves which were sufficient for the day. In this interval, between the virtual abandonment of the Mercantile theory and the extensive growth of laissez-aller views, a period short in time, but of great importance, intervened, wherein a genuine attempt was at least partially made, to develop colonization on some sort of scientific principles.

To some extent, at least, the theories generally associated with the name of Gibbon Wakefield, made converts of English statesmen, so that for the time the unwonted spectacle was seen of English practice following, though in a very halting and doubtful fashion, instead of anticipating, theory. In the nature of things, however, such interference on the part of the Mother country was only possible in earlier stages of development, and, as the Colonies grew to manhood and aspired to self government, the period of systematic colonization naturally came to a close. There remained, however, the important and worthy task of returning to the original lines of British Colonial policy, and of securing to the Colonies complete self-government in purely local concerns. Reasons will be found in the sequel for denying that this movement was in any way connected with a policy of dismemberment : but when this final work was for the most part practically accomplished, the question could no longer be averted, What, then, is the real good to the Mother country of maintaining Colonies ?

INTRODUCTORY 5 The Liberalism, which predominated during the political (4.) The life of the sixties, was very far from declaring on the housetops that our Colonies must separate. There was, however, a very and general feeling that such separation was merely a question of ™ ° time ; that, when it occurred, no great harm would ensue, and aiier _ that, meanwhile, all that could be done was to ensure that the PnnclP es euthanasia of the Empire should be as mild and dignified as possible. The theories of laissez-aller neve/, however, commended themselves to the English people, and from 1870 onwards we note a tendency amongst public men to repudiate the logical conclusions of their own words and actions. Moreover, a new chief actor had been entering upon the scene ; the democracy was taking its place beside the middle classes and the governing families in the working out of English history.

What would be its attitude towards the Empire ? In other words, What would be its Colonial policy? It must be remembered that those Colonies had expanded (5.) Period into great democratic communities, and in many ways apn^^a pealed more to the democracy than they could to the fastidious taste of the Whig oligarchy. Again, new facts had to be considered. The latter half of the nineteenth century has seen an immense recrudescence of militaryism amongst the Continental powers of Europe. Nearly fifty years after the great Exhibition, which was to open out an era of peace, Europe presents the amazing spectacle of an armed camp. Face to face with this unexpected phenomenon, England has either to yield her place among the nations — and whatever the nature of the "economic man," prestige will always be dear to nations no less than to individuals — or else adapt herself in new ways to the new circumstances.

But a world-empire, sea-girt, and resting on the command of the sea, is a spectacle at least as imposing as the nations-in-arms of the Continent ; and this seems the ideal which England at last is realising. Other causes have been also at work to act upon our Colonial policy. Our chief concern, said Cobden, with foreign nations is to trade with them, but the chief concern of foreign nations appears to be not to trade with us. By dint of protective duties upon imports from abroad, and by bounties on home exports, the aim of every country appears to be to surround its trade with a ring fence. It may well be that such a policy is really suicidal, and that free trade has been none the less a benefit to England, because the sanguine hopes held out by its first prophets of its general acceptance have not been at all fulfilled; but it is natural that, in the state of things we^see around us, men should look more and more to the Colonies as the producers of our raw materials, and the customers for our manufactures, and hanker after some kind of sollverein among the scattered portions of the Empire, however difficult it may be to enact such in express terms.

Moreover, human nature remaining what it is, there is nothing which causes men to put so high a value on their own possessions as the observing that they are being coveted by their neighbours. The scramble for colonies among the Continental nations has had the good effect at least of determining the English not to be left behind in the race for empire. To these practical con siderations others of a more theoretic nature have been added. A distinguished Cambridge Professor threw a powerful search - light on the development of British empire, and brought home to thousands of readers, who had never before thought of it, the sense that, after all, our Colonies are only England beyond the seas — a greater England, but England all the same. A brilliant American writer and naval expert first clearly made manifest the con nection of England's Colonial and Imperial greatness with the command of the sea, and carried home to the conviction of Englishmen the truth that, without that command of the sea, our scattered empire is only a source of weakness.

The Press has also played a great part in the new movement. For example, consider the influence of the weekly article in the Times on the Colonies, and compare the spirit which animates it with the indifferent and half-contemptuous tone on colonial matters of the Times of thirty years ago. In this state of things, and when both political parties have, with a few exceptions, more notable for ability than weight, INTRODUCTORY 7 Definition of British Colony. nailed to the mast the flag of British naval and colonial supremacy, we have travelled far from the period of laisses aller. It is difficult to give a name to the new policy. The word " Imperial " has too military a suggestion. Perhaps the words " Greater Britain " best describe the new point of view. A world-empire, the separate parts of which are being more and more closely linked by the discoveries of science, enjoying in each separate part absolute independence, connected, not by coercion or paper bulwarks, but by common origin and sympathies, by a common loyalty and patriotism, and by common efforts after common purposes, such, amidst much to alarm and to disturb, is the apparent outcome of history, the Colonial policy with which Great Britain will enter upon the untrodden paths of a new century.

It is necessary, before dealing with British Colonial policy, to explain what is meant by a British Colony. The Colony, as we understand it, is, it must be remembered, a new thing in history. The Greek Colony was, as its name (airoiKia)1 half implies, politically an independent community. It has been admirably described by Archbishop Whately.2 " An ancient Greek Colony was like what gardeners call a layer, a portion of the parent tree with stem, twigs and leaves embedded in fresh soil, till it had taken root and then severed." Its ties with the Mother country were merely those of religion and race. Such ties, however, counted for much with the Greeks of the best period. The reason of this kind of colonization is not far to seek. It lay in the inability of the Hellenic mind to conceive of a Greek state as anything except a city or polis.

The passage in the " Politics," 3 in which Aristotle enforces the necessity of its not being too large for a herald's voice to encompass, will be familiar to many. It would seem, however, as though, under the impulse of blood relationship, the independent Greek communities were very nearly forming powers resembling in many ways the British Empire of to day. Unfortunately, the Athenian democracy grasped at a tyrannis? and the shock thus given to the conscience of 1 " from home." 8 Note to Bacon's Essay " on Plantations." 3 Book VII. ch. iv. 4 rvpavvtSa ex^re tt\v apxyv, Thuc. III. ch. Greece caused, as we may read in Thucydides, such moral and material disintegration as could only lead to the general doom of the Hellenic States as direct factors in political history. The Roman Colonies were more complex in character, but, in their earliest and latest forms, they were methods of securing the peace of districts by settling in them old soldiers with certain rights to land.

The nearest modern equivalent to a Roman colonia is afforded by Cromwell's military settle ments in Ireland.1 In modern times the Spanish Colonies were, in fact, de pendencies, conquered by the forces of the Crown, and where a limited number of Spaniards found a new home. The Dutch Colonies, on the other hand, were trade factories, established on lines of which the British East India Com pany's forts are the best known example. British Colonies differ from all these. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, in his Government of Dependencies} defines a colony as "a body of persons belonging to one country and political community, who, having abandoned that country and community, form a new and separate society, independent or dependent, in some district which is wholly or nearly uninhabited, or from which they expel the ancient inhabitants."

If the aim of language be to make clear practical distinctions, the remark may be ventured that the above definition stands at once condemned. The Latin colonia, in all its phases, I think, connoted some kind of political dependence, and no advantage is gained by including the quite distinct connotation of the Greek airoiKia. According to Lewis' definition, the United States are a British Colony and Natal is not. Moreover, at the present day, we should not speak of colonists as "abandoning" the Mother country. For practical purposes, a colony may be defined as a community, politically dependent in some shape or form, the majority, or the dominant portion, of whose members belong by birth or origin to the Mother country, such persons having no intention to return to the Mother 1 Military settlements upon the same lines were attempted in Cape Colony and New Zealand, but were not upon the whole attended with much success. 2 p. 168, 1891 edition, with introduction and notes by C. P. Lucas.

INTRODUCTORY 9 country, or to seek a permanent home elsewhere than in the Colony. This definition excludes the United States. According to common - sense notions, were Australia to separate, she would cease to be a British Colony. It ex cludes India and most tropical settlements, because, in such, there is nearly always among Englishmen the animus revertendi. It excludes, for the same reason, Gibraltar and Malta, and the purely military Colonies or dependencies. It includes Colonies like Natal, where there is a bona-fide per manently resident English community, whatever be the number of natives who surround them. It includes Cape Colony, where the original Dutch settlers and the English, who have emigrated thither during the last seventy years, are on the whole becoming fused into a common national type.

It includes the West Indies, because, in spite of the climate, Englishmen have for generations found in them a permanent home. We might say that a Colony is a de pendency administered by the Colonial Office ; but the reason why the affairs of Ceylon belong to a different department from those of India are historical and not logical. In the same way, English statutes, until the In terpretation Act of 1889, carefully guarded themselves against defining a colony, except for the purposes of the particular statute, and the most generic definition included even India, which is clearly inadmissible for present purposes. Under the Act of 1889,1 the expression 'colony' means any part of the Queen's dominions, exclusive of the British Isles and of British India. Looking at the question practically, if we remember that, side by side with the question of Colonial expansion, there is always the question of Imperial power, with which we are here only indirectly concerned, it will be enough if we fix our attention for the most part on the great self-governing Colonies, past and present, in America, Australia, and South Africa, and on the West Indies, although the importance of these last is not as great at the present day as it was in former times. 1 Tarring, Laws relating to the Colonies. Second edition, 1893.