COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7423, 9 June 1902, Page 2

COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION.

WANTED-DEVOLUTION. ■ ■ \ [FROM OtTR CORRESPONDENT.] . ' LONDON, April 18. The paper read by Sir Hubert Jeringham, late Governor of Trinidad, before the Royal Colonial Institute last Tuesday on "Colonial Administrationi' related rather to the Crown Colonies than to. the selfgoverning ones, and was a plea for the loosening of the strings which attach Crown Colonies to their mother's apron by affording to many of them the benefit of a. larger share in the management of th^ir own local affairs. His survey, however^ of the principles of our colonial administration vras of general interest. Taking the late Lord' Carnarvon's definition of our Imjperial duties as a guide, Sir Hubert came to the conclusion that the curtailment of detailed administration from Home has become a necessity in order to give more scope to the study of Imperial policy suited to the new vital forces of the Empire. That definition/declared Imperialism to be "the honourable discharge of duties we have undertaken in defending and developing the lands for wfiich we are responsible to ithe.world! z in securing freedom, safety, andi profit in the great Imperial unity, not looking to the bulk of territory, but to the men that are bred' up and the qualities which those men possess." This was the keynote of English colonial policy as opposed to that of other countries. Spanish administration became a mere instrument o>f military despotism. The French emigrated to escape from cruel fiscal laws, and were formerly hampered by Court jealousy, and now by the meddlesomeness^ of French officials in the shape, of a political fever, with which they try to inoculate the natives of their colonies, rather than to study how to promote their welfare. •A short time back M. de Lanessan wrote that the French have shown no greater regard for the interests of the native people than that of transferring to their colonial possessions the whole administrative and judiciary machinery of ths Mother Country, without asking themselves whether the natives, for whose benefit they pfofess to work, would not find in that machinery simply tools of oppression and exploitation, and 1 concluded that "if the colonising nation is obliged to take an its hands the direction of the aduniniistrative . affairs of a colbnyj it should, in doing so, make as much use as possible of the chiefs and the 'heads of the more important families in order to show its intention of not breaking with the local custom, and thereby earn sympathies which might be utilised /in order to introduce gradually 'both progress and civilisation." In spite of this sage advice it is doubtful whether French officials will endeavour to ameliorate the lot of the coloured races otherwise than by giving them the doubtful present of political franchise. The keynote of Dutch colonisation was trade, and hence the emigrants desired to live in peace with the races among whom they settled. In Java the lands have been fertilised by the culture system, and the natives protected and taught thrift and industry, but kept in tutelage and considered only as infants, and b.ence of little account. The -success of English colonisation is mainly attributable to the fact that man as man, irrespective of race or colour, 'has been treated as such, and has been educated from the beginning to appreciate the blessing of liberty. Allowance being made for the* roughness of the age, men born of freedom were bound to educate subordinates or subjects to a similar love, and hence to 'breed in distant settlements a desire for eventual home rule without necessary severance from the parent stem. The. evolution of colonial administration emanated from royal permission' to trade in lands not in the gift of the Crown. British enterprise abroad acquired, conquered, or settled those lands in the name of the Crown, developed them intd loyal assets of the Crown, until the Crown, in turn forced to recognise their individual capacity to govern themselves, gave back, as it were, their original independence, and now requires them to unite in an Imperial Federation for the common good, which means their assistance to the Crown in honourably maintaining the Empire, built for the Crown by the Crown's own dependencies. * ! The Colonial Department has so many questions of Imperial policy to deal with that the Home authorities should confine themselves to the 'consideration of matters of policy and greater questions of political economy and importance, and leave to the local Legislatures of the Crown Colonies the discharge of purely administrative details and the management of questions of merely local importance. Sir Hubert, in brief, demands for the Empire t!:ut decentralisation and devolution which has proved so necessary in the War Office, which no doubt is equally necessary in the Colonial Office, and which is so urgently needed in the United Kingdom in order to relieve the Imperial Parliament from dealing with j aE sorts of petty parochial questions of local government, and to leave it free to j concentrate its attention on great questions of policy.