(1.
Crown Colony government (owing to the acute problems which arose from
the abolition of slavery in 1833), the W. Indians have retained their Pirong
trong disposition towards these institutions. To such an extent is this
so that even in its independence constitution Jamaica retained the full
apparatus of British institutions, an Executive Council (equivalent to
though the Cabinet), a bi-cameral legislature and even a Privy Council (with limited functions concerning disciplinary matters and the prerogative of mercy); and likewise the 'Associated State' of St. Lucia was given in its
constitution the option to provide for an Upper House if it so desired
(just as we did for the then near-Dominion of S. Rhodesia in its 1923
self-governing constitution).
Strong local tradition is therefore the
main factor in the W. Indian territories, despite the expense and unneces- ary eleborateness of this machinery to such places; in many 'the second Chamber has not even the (dubious) justification of providing a means of
at least some representation of minorities.
into them
The reason for our adherence to this system of government in the other S.D's and even our introducing itjin recent years, and despite alternatives which have been suggested by such bodies as the Colonial Office Committee on the Constitutional Future of Small Dependencies of
1951, is not so easy certainly to identify, but the observations of the
many commissions and committees which have since 1945 sat to draw up
constitutions for independent ex-colonies in defence of this policy of
theirs is perhaps the most authentic if not truest guide. The same
arguments were frequently heard in the Colonial Office itself and may be
briefly put as follows. that our system is that of the 'Mother of Parl-
iaments' and acknowledged throughout the world as the model of good government institutions; that it has stodd the test of time here, and most successfully; that it is the only system which we know and have experience of; that we could not commend to the dependencies any other
system of which we have no great knowledge and no experience; that the colonies would regard any other as our giving them some second-class constitution; that the system (alone apparently, if Uontemporary
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