The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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EMIGRATION AND THE COLONIES 851 of colonial affairs, and Radical sentiment was roused, both by AD. 1758 the inefficiency of the system, and by pretensions to authority = over distant and unrepresented communities. The example the Colonial Office in Downing-street. It is there, then, that nearly the whole public opinion which influences the conduct of affairs in the colonies really exists. It is there that the supremacy of the mother-country really resides: and when we speak of that supremacy, and of the responsibility of the colony to the mother- country, you may to all practical intents consider as the mother-country—the possessor of this supremacy—the centre of this responsibility—the occupants of the large house that forms the end of that cul-de-sac so well known by the name of Downing-street. However colonists or others may talk of the Crown, the Parliament, and the public—of the honour of the first, the wisdom of the second, or the enlightened opinion of the last—nor Queen, nor Lords, nor Commons, nor the great public itself, exercise any power, or will, or thought on the greater part of colonial matters: and the appeal to the mother-country is, in fact, an appeal to ‘the Office.’ “But this does not sufficiently concentrate the mother-country. It may, indeed, at first sight, be supposed that the power of ‘the Office’ must be wielded by its head: that in him at any rate we have generally one of the most eminent of our public men, whose views on the various matters which come under his cognizance are shared by the Cabinet of which he is a member. We may fancy, therefore, that here, at least, concentrated in a somewhat despotic, but at any rate in a very responsible and dignified form, we have the real governing power of the colonies, under the system which boasts of making their governments responsible to the mother-country. But this is a very erroneous supposition. This great officer holds the most constantly shifting position on the shifting scene of official life. Since April, 1827, ten different Secretaries of State have held the seals of the colonial department. Each was brought into that office from business of a perfectly different nature, and probably with hardly any experience in colonial affairs. The new minister is at once called on to enter on the consideration of questions of the greatest magnitude, and at the same time of some hundreds of questions of mere detail, of no public interest, of unintelligible technicality, involving local considerations with which he is wholly unacquainted, but at the same time requiring decision, and decision at which it is not possible to arrive without considerable labour. Perplexed with the vast variety of subjects thus presented to him—alike appalled by the important and unimportant matters forced on his attention—every Secretary of State is obliged at the outset to rely on the aid of some better informed member of his office. His Parliamentary Under-Secretary is generally as new to the business as himself : and even if they had not been brought in together, the tenure of office by the Under-Secretary having on the average been quite as short as that of the Secretary of State, he has never during the period of his official career obtained sufficient information to make him independent of the aid on which he must have been thrown at the outset. Thus we find both these marked and responsible functionaries dependent on the advice or guidance of another; and that other person must of course be one of the permanent members of the office. We do not pretend to say which of these persons it is, that in fact directs the colonial policy of Britain. If, may be, as a great many persons think, the permanent Under-Secretary; it may be the chief, it may be some very subordinate clerk; it may be one of them that has most influence at one time, and another at another; it may be this gentleman as to one, and that as to another question or set of questions: for here we get 34

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