THE CHINA REVIEW.
CHINESE STUDIES AND OFFICIAL INTERPRETATION
IN THE COLONY OF HONGKONG.
It was somehow England's destiny to have Colonies. The vital power of English com- merce and the roving energies of English- men produced, in the natural evolution of things, stations, factories, settlements, here and there in the world, most of which settle- ments imperceptibly grew into Colonics, some even developing into empires like the United States, Canada, Australia or India. Whilst other nations, impelled by the bud- ding instincts of national aggrandisement, had to annex countries and obtain Colonies by sheer conquest, England somehow had most of her Colonies thrust upon her by the natural course of events.
But more remarkable even than this mush- room growth of English Colonies, is the fact that England, having somehow become pos- seased of Colonies, managed not only to retain most of them, but to govern them rationally and to develop their natural re- sources by a practically successful adminis- tration. Spain and Portugal ignominiously failed with their various schemes of a Colonial policy distinguished principally by its ecclesiastical tyranny. France also fared no better with her Colouies uniformly go- verned by a system of military despotism. Even Holland must be said to have failed to develop fully the resources of her dominions
in the Malay Archipelago with her system of commercial monopoly. England, on the other hand, approached the work of Colonial government with no predetermined policy, simply following the happy-go- lucky system of throwing open her Colonial possessions to all comers without distinction of nationality or creed, leaving each indivi- dual Colony to the tender mercies of select nurses called Governors, who were free to try their apprentice hands, as well as they could, in concert with local Councils, reserv- ing to herself but the exercise of a sort of general step-motherly control, in endeavour- ing to rectify excesses of legislation, to maintain au equilibrium of law and liberty, and generally to prevent rows between the governing and governed classes in the several Colonial nurseries.
In saying this I am well aware that there existed for years, even before its publication in 1862, a code of "Rules and Regulations for Her Majesty's Colonial Service." But the material alterations which this code has undergone in successive years, ever since its publication, the total absence of unity in its detailed features, the difficulty it exhibits of even classifying the various colonies in any but a complex and well-nigh unintelligible manner, and the enormous influence accorded
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