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19 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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CROWN AGENTS' ENQUIRY COMMITTEE:
19. The Crown Agents, on the instructions of the Secretary of State, select- usually in consultation with the Consulting Engineers of the Colony concerned- candidates for various Colonial appointments, mostly of a technical or subordinate character and for a limited term of years. They enter on behalf of the Colonial Government into the formal agreements with the persons selected. They provide passages at the expense of the Colonial Government for officers and their families who may be entitled to free passages. They make arrangements for the carriage of indentured Indian labourers to the West Indies and Fiji.
20. The Office also continues to act for the Cape, Natal, New Zealand, and Western Australia as regards the loans originally issued by it for those Colonies, and to transact certain financial business for the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony.
21. The funds from which the salaries and other expenses of the Office are defrayed are furnished by contributions from the Colonial Administrations served. These contributions take the form of fixed annual payments and commissions, the amounts and rates of which are determined from time to time by the Secretary of State, and are intended to distribute the cost of the Office between the Colonial Administrations roughly in accordance with the relative amount of work performed for each. These contributions and the growth and character of the Reserve Fund which has been built up by the excess of the contributions over the expenditure of the Office will be dealt with later.
22. The salaries of the Crown Agents are fixed by the Secretary of State. Those of the Staff have, however, been left to the discretion of the Crown Agents, subject to their not spending more on the number of established male or female clerks allowed than the maximum lump sums allocated to those classes respectively, and subject also to a maximum rate of salary (now apparently £850), and to their rendering to the Colonial Office periodic statements showing the actual salaries paid to the established officers.
23. The Crown Agents are selected by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and hold office during the pleasure of the Crown. No rule for the compulsory retirement of a Crown Agent on the ground of age or other disqualification appears to have been laid down, but in this matter the Committee see no reason why the regulations of the Home Civil Service should not be applied. The Committee recommend that the salaries of the Crown Agents should be reviewed from time to time by the Secretary of State as new appointments have to be made.
24. The members of the Staff are selected by and hold their appointment at the pleasure of the Crown Agents—their salaries can be increased or reduced by the Crown Agents, subject to the limits mentioned above-and they have no definite scales of increments. This wide discretion in dealing with their staff was conferred on the Crown Agents in 1863, in consideration of the acceptance by the Crown Agents of full personal responsibility for the dishonesty or default of their staff.
25. The Crown Agents' Office is not allowed to undertake work for persons or bodies other than the Governments of the Colonies or Protectorates served by them and such semi-governmental bodies as the Tanjong Pagar Dock Board (Straits Settlements) or Colonial Municipalities; and since 1904 the Crown Agents themselves have been forbidden by the Secretary of State to hold directorships of companies. The Committee consider it desirable that the same rule should apply to members of the staff.
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26. The explanation of many of the existing features of the Department is to be found in the idea that it is not a Government Office but is of the nature of a private mercantile firm doing work for Government but outside the Government service and therefore not bound by the rules applicable to Government Offices. The Committee do not think it possible, after an examination of the facts, to accept this view. institution which is created by the Government for Government work, which cannot undertake work for private persons or bodies, and is absolutely under the control of the Home Government, is in its nature a Government Department; and the Committee consider that the staff of the Department should be Civil Servants of the Crown.
REPORT.
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27. With regard to the position of the Crown Agents towards the Colonial Governments and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, the view which has been suggested in some quarters that the Crown Agents are rather the masters than the servants of the Colonial Governments and are not sufficiently amenable to Colonial instructions is a misconception.
The Crown Agents are the Agents of the Colonial Governments, and as such are bound to carry out the instructions sent to them by the Colonial Governments. But their distance from their principals and their knowledge of the markets render it necessary that, in order to secure satisfactory results, the Colonial Governments should give them considerable discretion in certain matters; moreover, they act not for one Colony but for many.
For these reasons, they form part of the general machinery of Crown Colony government and are necessarily subject to the instructions of the Secretary of State. Their relations to other Colonies and to the Secretary of State may sometimes render it impossible for them to carry out the instructions of a Colony with the despatch or in the exact manner which a particular Colonial Government might desire.
The fact that the Crown Agents are allowed, especially in financial matters, con- siderable discretion in transacting a Colony's business, and that it is their duty to point out to a Colony if and when its interests could best be served by some modifica- tions in its orders, certainly does not enable them to overrule the maintained opinion of a Colonial Government. They may appeal to the Secretary of State from the decision of the Colony, and ask for his instructions on uncontroversial matters when the question is urgent and cannot wait for reference to the Colony; but the Secretary of State decides all such questions on his own authority in virtue of his powers of control over the Crown Colony Governments, and the Crown Agents can only act on his instructions, and have no independent authority.
On this question the Committee feel that the evidence which they have taken leaves no doubt.
28. It is obvious that no one Crown Colony Government can claim any effective voice in the organisation of the Crown Agents' Department, which must remain absolutely in the hands of the Secretary of State.
29. The organisation of the Office is given in Appendix I., and a list of the staff in their classes, with their rates of salary, will be found in Appendix II. The work of the office is divided between a number of Departments, which for the most part consist of a Head (Class I.), a Deputy Head (Class II.), two or more Section Heads who are members of Class III., and a number of Class IV. Clerks and Boy Copyists. Two divisions—the Stock and Coupon Department and the Correspondence branch-are composed, the first mainly and the second entirely, of Lady Clerks. The Crown Agents divide between themselves the supervision of the operations of these Depart- ments, and from the evidence it would appear that that supervision is now not unlike that exercised by the Heads of an ordinary Government Department transacting similar work. The operations of the Office have become too numerous to allow of a Crown Agent giving detailed personal attention to any but the more important questions, and a considerable amount of responsibility is accordingly imposed on the Heads and Deputy Heads of Departments, acting on general lines laid down by the Crown Agents.
30. The nature of the work of the Crown Agents' Office is very similar to that performed by the Stores and Accountant General's Departments of the India Office, and the methods employed appear to be much the same. The chief differences appear to be two. In the first place the mechanical part of the loan work-the receipt of applications, the allotment and registration of stock, and the payment of interest is performed by the Crown Agents' Office, while in the case of the India Office, where the loans are generally speaking much larger, the work is done by the Bank of England on behalf of the Secretary of State for India. The loan work appears to be carried out by the Crown Agents in a satisfactory manner, but there is not, in the opinion of the Committee, any ground for considering that this work could not be performed with equal efficiency under the organisation of a Government Department. The other difference is in the large number of Governments in various stages of development and subordination to the Home Authorities which the Crown Agents serve, compared with the centralised Indian system. The diversity in requirements and the impossibility of adopting uniform patterns equally suitable
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