PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
C.O.
Reference :--
885
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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payment of a considerable Civil List. After this explanation, the proposal does not appear to have been renewed.
In British Guiana, as in Jamaica, but with a success apparently still more complete, the Governor (who has evinced great discernment, readiness and resource) has found in the local institutions and in the better sense of the colonists skilfully called out, the means of defeating the faction whose violence and obstinacy had stopped the supplies and thrown the affairs of the colony into confusion.
In this, there is no doubt, he was greatly aided by the report of the Committee of the House of Commons, to the effect that the Government had a right to require the maintenance of the Civil List, in so far as they should deem it to be demanded by good faith. After that report had been received in the colony, however, the factious members of the Com- bined Court still persevered in a most pertinacious resistance; and it was only by the force of an altered public opinion in the colony, that they were at length thrown into a minority. The result was, that they resigned their seats, and the Governor profited by the circumstances in which this step placed him, to carry through the Court of Policy an ordinance altering the franchise, enlarging the constituency, and establishing new electoral dis- tricts and new methods of conducting elections. For the franchise having been founded mainly upon payment of taxes to a certain amount, the non- enactment of the Annual Tax Ordinance had dis- franchised almost all the constituency, and when the vacancies of the seceding members were to be filled up, it became necessary to create a new fran- chise. In doing so, the Governor acted in con- formity with the recommendation of the Commons Committee, which had reported their opinion, that more power should be given to the colonists over the administration of their affairs. He acted in con- formity also with the opinion expressed to him both by Lord John Russell and myself, previously to his departure, that the control of a wider representation might become necessary to check the domination of the very close planters' constituency, whose repre- sentatives ruled in the Combined Court. At the sme time the object was not to subjugate or deposu
1 By house or land.
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the planting interest; for, till the negroes shall be far better instructed than they are, it must always be important to maintain some ascendancy of that interest; the object was rather to rescue the plant- ing interest itself from the hands of a very few vio- lent men, and give the planters at large the assist- ance of a more mixed proprietary body, by allying themselves with which the more reasonable planters might be enabled to restrain the more violent, whilst some other elements of society would also take their proper place. With these purposes, the franchise which had been the payment of taxes on an income of 2,001 guilders, or direct taxes to the amount of 70 guilders, was altered to the possession of 3 acres of cultivated land, a rental of 96 dollars per annum; a leasehold occupation of 6 acres of cultivated land, the leasehold occupation of house or land of the yearly value of 203 dollars; a house in a town of the value of 500 dollars, occupation of land, with rent of 120 dollars, an income or salary of 600 dollars, and payment of direct taxes of 20 dollars.
Until a Combined Court could be formed under the new law, the taxes had been renewed provision- ally; and there is every reason to believe that when the new Combined Court shall come into activity, the financial questions will be settled in a satisfac- tory manner. Aud in British Guiana, as in Ja- maica, it should be observed that the Government is the advocate, not the opponent, of retrenchment. The six-sevenths of the revenue, which are, and long have been, at the disposal of the Combined Court in Guiana, might be managed with much more economy than it has been by that body.
VI. In Ceylon, notwithstanding the great diffi- culties created by the very extraordinary spirit in which certain members of the Committee of the House of Commons acted during the inquiry, and by the palpably improper proceeding of publishing in the colonial newspapers garbled extracts from the minutes and evidence printed confidentially for the Committee, and which the House of Commons had refused to call for, while still incomplete; the Governor has continued steadily to pursue the same course of policy as before, and with the happiest results. Uninterrupted tranquillity has been main- tained; and the financial reform which had been
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