British Colonial Policy in the Age of Peel and Russell

W.P. Morrell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136243530
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

First published in 1966. British Colonial Policy in the Age of Peel and Russell (1930) examines British colonial administration during the administrations of Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell. In this period, 1815-41, new ideas were adopted and colonial policy was revolutionized. British attitudes towards colonization and Australia, New Zealand and North America underwent radical changes.

IX

LORD GREY AT THE COLONIAL OFFICE

THE task of devising a new colonial policy was eminently calculated to appeal to the new Whig Secretary of State for the Colonies, the third Earl Grey.¹ He had his defects: he lacked sympathy and the insight which comes of sympathy: he was cantankerous and dogmatic. But he was a man of strong and independent mind, capable of taking a long view and quick to grasp a principle, hard-working and public-spirited. Though an unsparing critic—and critical of himself as well as of others, for he was sincere and honest with himself—his criticism was never sterile: his aim was not to destroy but to reconstruct. By temperament authoritarian, he was yet, by conviction as well as by affiliation, a Reformer.

Of all his traits the most characteristic was his independence. He was only too ready to sacrifice office, if necessary, for the sake of his opinions. He had resigned from his father’s Ministry in 1833 because of the rejection of his plan, prepared in conjunction with James Stephen and Henry Taylor, for the immediate emancipation of the slaves; and had opposed the alternative ‘apprenticeship’ plan of Stanley with ability and determination. As Secretary at War in the Melbourne Ministry from 1835 to 1839, he was several times on the point of resignation, so exasperated was he with Glenelg’s incompetence and vacillation as Colonial Secretary; and he finally left the Ministry on account of his dissatisfaction with the organization of the War Office, and with the changes in the Cabinet, of which he did not hear until they were settled and which in some particulars he disapproved.² Though he apparently kept on good terms with Lord John Russell, he wrecked the projected Ministry of December 1845 by his unexpected refusal to serve if Palmerston were to return to the Foreign Office. The objection, it appears, was felt by other proposed Ministers, but Grey was the most outspoken and perhaps the most convinced objector: there was real danger of a war with the United States on the Oregon question, and Grey heartily disliked, and till the Crimean War and after continued to dislike, Palmerstonian diplomacy. Lord John, though much annoyed, felt unable to do without him in the Lords, and the consequence—a consequence which appears to have taken Grey quite by surprise—was that Sir Robert Peel returned for six bitter months to office.³ The Oregon dispute was settled, and in July 1846 Grey consented, after a long interview with his brother-in-law, Charles Wood, to enter the new Ministry. Grey himself, his relative Sir George Grey at the Home Office, and Wood at the Exchequer, formed the nucleus of a ‘Grey party’ in the Government:⁴ the Colonial Office was in any case one which left a large measure of freedom to its holder: and Grey’s independence was balanced by his willingness to shoulder responsibility.

Grey was, moreover, deeply interested in colonial policy. He had been Under-Secretary for the Colonies from 1830 to 1833, and his term of office had left its mark; for he had a much greater share than the amiable but ineffective ‘Goody Goderich’ in the new departures of those years—the Quebec Revenues Act, the partial adoption of the Wakefield land policy, and the abandonment of ‘melioration’ of slavery for abolition. Later, he had continually pressed upon the Cabinet the need of a progressive and conciliatory policy in Canadian affairs, had kept as far as possible in touch with Roebuck, the Agent of the Lower Canada Assembly, and had welcomed Lord Durham’s report—though thinking that Durham erred in recommending union rather than federation in North America.⁵ He was indeed more closely identified than any one else in the inner ring of statesmen with Wakefield’s Colonial Reformers, and had taken a prominent part in the parliamentary battle over New Zealand between the Company and the Government. He chose Ben Hawes, who had also taken an interest in colonial reform, as his Under-Secretary, and Charles Buller, whom he would personally have preferred, took the sinecure office of Judge Advocate with an understanding—at which Stephen was ‘a good deal disturbed’—that he was to assist in colonial matters.⁶ Wakefield was purring with pleasure. ‘I could not doubt’, he afterwards wrote, ‘that now at last, after long years of toil and trouble, I should be rewarded by the utmost happiness which God vouchsafes to man on earth, the realization of his own idea’.⁷ Perhaps he hoped to be himself installed ‘in some back room’ as the new Mr. Mother Country.

Grey, finally, was a convinced Free Trader. He had been one of the first of the official Whigs to adopt free trade opinions, and would have liked to see Cobden in the Cabinet. He believed that the old colonial system had weakened, not strengthened, the connexion with the colonies, and that British imperialism could be and should be based on much firmer foundations.

Thus in many ways Lord Grey was well fitted to take charge of colonial affairs at this critical period in the history of the Empire. He had the further advantage of being a first-rate administrator, knowing how to make the best use of the machinery of government and yet willing to believe that its efficiency might be improved.

‘I have served’, writes Taylor in 1852, ‘under thirteen Secretaries of State, and have thus had peculiar opportunities of measuring their administrative powers, and Lord Grey is the one whom I should place first. His unpopularity arises in a great degree from his public spirit, which has taken little account of the interest of parties and individuals, and less of his own, when opposed to public interests. He is ardent and tenacious in his opinions, but I think it is a great mistake to suppose that he is haughty and imperious in his temper of mind. When public interests have permitted it, I have not known any man more careful of the interests and feelings of those serving under him in the colonies, or more truly liberal in his manner of dealing with them.’⁸

A study of the facts tends to confirm the testimony of Taylor.

Grey and Stephen were on the best of terms. Their views did not on all points coincide: Grey was more of a doctrinaire on the questions of systematic colonization and responsible government, and more open-minded on questions of native policy: but each man, it is clear, had a genuine respect for the character and abilities of the other. In October 1847, however, ill-health compelled Stephen to resign. Grey realized how greatly the Colonial Office had been dependent upon Stephen’s ability and knowledge, and wished to seize the opportunity both to introduce some more able men into its higher ranks and to improve its organization. Stephen suggested, and Grey and Taylor regarded with some favour, a plan for a Colonial Commission, of which the Land and Emigration Commissioners should be the ordinary members, but to which Privy Councillors on the one hand and men with practical knowledge of the colonies or commercial connexions with them on the other might be summoned on special occasions. The scheme, however, was condemned by Russell and by Charles Buller as an unsuccessful attempt to kill two birds with one stone;⁹ and for the moment it was dropped. Stephen’s work was divided between his successor, Merivale, who as Professor of Political Economy at Oxford had delivered a famous course of lectures on colonies and colonization, and Elliot, who became Assistant Under-Secretary of State. Murdoch took Elliot’s place as Chairman of the Colonial Land and Emigration Board, of which Frederic Rogers and C. A. Wood were now the junior members, and Strachey, a man with Indian experience and a cousin of Buller, was appointed précis-writer.

These men and Taylor (who had declined Stephen’s place) were certainly an able group. Merivale showed great aptitude for business, and his belief in free trade and in self-government, his discriminating support of the Wakefield theory, and his reasoned moderation on questions of native policy, accorded in general very well with Lord Grey’s views. But Stephen’s unrivalled experience was sadly missed, and he himself, when his health recovered, was quite willing to be of service. In April 1848 a new suggestion thrown out by him, that the Board of Trade might again be used as a consultative body on colonial questions and that he might be appointed to it, was acted upon. In 1849, when it had already reported on the question of the Australian constitutions, he revived his first suggestion in a new form, and proposed that this Committee should be virtually separated from the Board of Trade proper. It should be given a President of its own (Sir E. Ryan), and power to co-opt in special cases other Privy Councillors or expert Assessors. Again, however, this suggestion fell to the ground. Russell did not believe that such a committee would carry much weight with the House of Commons or lighten in any appreciable degree the responsibility of the Secretary of State; and he thought the prejudice against Stephen, who would have been its most valuable member, a bar to his appointment to it.¹⁰ Grey continued to make occasional use of the Board, but after his fall the whole experiment was discontinued, though it had in it undoubted possibilities for good. It is significant that in recent years there has been a pronounced movement towards the appointment of Committees and Councils to advise and assist the Secretary of State.

Grey’s relations with the colonial Governments were also most creditable to him. Despite the unfair criticisms of his opponents he seems to have been guided in his appointment of colonial Governors by a single-minded regard for the public interests, and the last relics of the old monopoly of the Horse Guards in these matters disappeared. Where possible, he tried to give promotion to men who had done good service in the lower ranks of colonial administration. And while no personal considerations deterred him from censure or recall where he thought it was deserved, he extended the fullest confidence to Governors of outstanding ability such as Henry Barkly, Sir Edmund Head, Sir George Grey, and, most notably of all, Lord Elgin. The general rule as to subordinate offices should, he thought, be that they should be given to colonists, particularly in colonies with temperate climates and considerable European populations, and that the recommendations of the Governors should be accepted.¹¹ From time to time he expressed to Governors of colonies not enjoying responsible government the wish that an appointment should if possible be offered to a gentleman who had been privately recommended to him, or promotion to an official who seemed to show particular ability: but he invariably left a real discretion to the Governor. A regular Colonial Civil Service was not yet in being, but Grey’s term of office brought its advent a stage nearer.

A British Colonial Minister, however, must maintain relations not only with his office and with the Governments of the colonies but also with his colleagues, with Parliament and public opinion in Great Britain, and with the colonial peoples. Grey was not so well fitted for this part of his task. Lord John Russell himself was the colleague with whom it was most important that he should be in harmony: not only was Lord John the head of the Government, but he had, since the Canadian crisis of 1837, been interested in colonial affairs. As Colonial Secretary from 1839 to 1841 he had by his wise and sympathetic administration introduced something like a new spirit into the relations between the Mother Country and the colonies. He had to his credit the passage of the Canada Union Act, the reconciliation of Jamaica, the agreement, short-lived though it turned out to be, with the New Zealand Company. His presence at the head of the Government ought surely to have been a source of strength to the Colonial Secretary. Yet in actual fact Grey’s relations with Russell, at any rate in the later years of the Ministry, were none too harmonious. There were differences in temperament and outlook which made co-operation not always easy, for this was not a Ministry like Peel’s in which all admitted the supremacy of the Prime Minister. Grey was not much more amenable than Palmerston.

It would seem at first sight as if Grey must have been to blame for any misunderstandings that occurred. Russell was a man of broad sympathy and real generosity of soul, a truly liberal Whig. ‘Whiggism’, says Davis, ‘was a form of political optimism; in the last resort it was based upon the assumption that truth must prevail over falsehood wherever men are free to argue out their differences; in other words, that the reason and the moral conscience are stronger, in the mass of men, than tradition or the instinct of selfishness or party spirit.’¹² It was in this spirit that Russell had approached, one after another, the problems of reform, of Ireland, and of colonial relations; and he had won the Melbourne Ministry such laurels as it had gained. When Althorp retired from politics and Stanley and Graham left the party, Russell seemed to be the only Whig who could contend on equal ter...