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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference:
LICO.885
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ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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climate than there are in all the Colonies put together, there is the fundamental fact that India is governed as a whole and on a uniform system, and not as a number of separate entities on a variety of systems, like the Colonies. India contains a subject population of different race to ours, and is, as a matter of state policy, governed by officials drawn from the conquering race. The Indian Civil Service is founded not on general administrative principles, but on the special requirements of an Eastern-population ruled by a Western people. The Colonies are totally different; there are few Colonies, besides the Eastern Colonies, which we rule as we rule India or which present any analogy to India. In West Africa we are traders, not conquerors, and apart from that part of the world the Colonies are divided roughly into (1) Colonies where we administer the affairs of our own fellow-countrymen settled abroad, and (2) Colonies, like Malta and Cyprus, which we hold on a special tenure. The best method of ruling a subject race of inferior civilization is utterly out of place when you come to a community composed to a great extent of men like ourselves.
There are thus three main types of Crown Colony, and the system suited for one is ipso facto unsuited for another. It follows that no uniform system can be extended to all the Colonies, and that each Colony, or, at the most, each type of Colony, must be treated as a separate entity for local affairs, and must have a separate administration.
It seems to me, for these reasons, that unless you alter the whole present system of Colonial adminis- tration by removing such representative institutions as exist, and substituting a uniform and highly centralized system of absolute government by Crown officials, it is idle to think of a homogeneous Colonial service on the Indian and Eastern model. But where people have any share at all in the Government, it seems to me that they have a right to some at least of the better posts in the Adminis- tration, and this would be impossible of attainment to, say, the Maltese, the Mauritians, or the Jamaicans, if they had to come home to be examined before they could enter the Civil Service. The difficulties of communication and the distance between Colonies
is another great difficulty, though by no means on the same plane as the fundamental objection to which I have alluded above. You can traverse India from
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end to end in a few days, but it takes months to move a man, say, from the Falklands to West Africa, and facility of transferring officers from one post to another is essential to a homogeneous service. Numerous other minor objections have already been pointed out and it is unnecessary to repeat them.
I omitted to say at the commencement of these remarks, that I assumed that there is no question of filling appointments requiring professional quali fications, such as legal ones, otherwise than by the selection of men professionally trained, that is to say,
in the case of legal posts with trained lawyers. The magistrate of the Indian Civil Service type,
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who has had no training at the Bar, would be rather out of place in Colonies where there is a resident white population, where regular barristers- practise, and where there are many quite different systems of jurisprudence, g., Malta, Mauritius, British Guiana, and West Africa.
Still there are many questions which a committee, such as it is proposed to hold, might usefully discuss, questions as to the improvement of our present system, and especially that raised by Mr. Antrobus with regard to the method of dealing with promo- tions and transfers. As Mr. Antrobus says, there is a broad distinction between the business of "first appointments " and "*-
* promotion.” The selection of candidates for first appoint- ments is and must remain personal to the Secretary of State, and can therefore only he dealt with by Private Secretaries, but when a man has once passed into the Service it would seem more proper that his career should be controlled officially by the permanent staff of the office. When the Private Secretary is a member of the Colonial Office, as in the cases of Sir W. Baillie Hamilton and Mr. Antrobus, this object is more or less served, but when he is an “outsider,” like myself, who arrives here with a new Government, and no prévious knowledge of the Colonial Service, succeeding to no permanent system of carrying on the business connected with promotion and transfer, it is possible that the interests of Colonial Officers may suffer until he has had time to learn about their careers and previous records. But as promotions rest with the Secretary of State, the Private Secretary should anyhow be fully acquainted with what is going on, and should in any circumstances be consulted with regard to every move which it is proposed to make. I have endeavoured to revive the system of Annual Confidential Reports, which was resuscitated by Mr. Antrobus ten years ago, and then allowed to fall into disuse. Now this, to my mind, is distinctly one of the things which should be done by the General Department, or under the control of the Chief Clerk, to ensure its perma- nence and regularity. The Private Secretary is only in the position of being able to ask for a thing of this kind to be done as a favour, and has not the authority to insist on Governors being kept up to the mark about sending in their reports, &c. A new Private Secretary might easily be inclined to vote the matter a nuisance and let it fall into disuse; permanence and con tinuity is what is required in this branch of the work. But this is a digression, and I only men- tioned this subject because it had already been raised, and because it might with advantage be discussed by any Committee appointed to consider the question of à Colonial Civil Service.
24th March.
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A.
*
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