CO882-(2-3) — Page 468

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

C.O.

882

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

Colonial Office

Case, pp. 15, 16.

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because the India Office has blended together the Colonial Office and the Imperial Government as represented by the War Department, in a manner not warranted by the terms of submission, and the Colonial Office is left to disentangle the confusion thus produced. The argument of the India Office, so far as the Colonial Office is concerned, appears to be this. The India Office relies, first, upon the original consent of the Colonial Office to the appointment of the Committee; and, secondly, upon the appropriation by the Colonial Government of a portion of the stores valued by the Committee, as showing that the Colonial Office is bound by the aets of the Committee, and concludes that the India Office is entitled to the sum estimated by the Committee, and that the Colonial Office being thus bound by the acts of the Committee, the question of the fund out of which the India Office is to be paid is a matter of indifference to that Office, and is a question to be settled between the Colonial Office and the War Office.

The argument is founded upon the alleged consent of the Colonial Office to the appointment of the Committee, and the question naturally arises-To what did the Colonial Office consent?

Several paragraphs of the Colonial ense were devoted to showing that "the Colonial Office did not concur in the assembling of the Committee in the only sense in which concurrence could carry with it responsibility, namely, as a principal." It was necessary to show this, because the Indian Government, in a despatch forwarded by the India Office to the Colonial Office on November 22, 1871, had spoken of "the special Committee which, with the concurrence of the Colonial, War, and India Offices, was assembled (1867-68) at the Straits Settlements to value their military stores (ordnance, commissariat, and barrack) to be transferred," thus placing the three Offices on one level. This state- ment appears now to be modified in the second Reason at the end of the Case of the India Office, which is as follows:---

"II. Because, after the transfer in 1867, of the immoveable property, and the furniture and effects, regarded as belonging to the Settlements, to the authorities therein, the Secretaries of State for War and of India, with the consent of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, appointed a Committee, consisting of four officers nominated by the War Office, and one by the Indian Government, to value the military stores not belonging to the Settlements, and which were to be transferred to the Imperial Government, and also to determine what proportion thereof should be rejected and left to the disposal of the Indian Government."

The

Without offering any remark upon the description thus given of the property to be transferred, a subject already sufficiently discussed, the Colonial Office points out that the statement that a special Committee was assembled with the concurrence of the three Offices, has been softened into the statement that a Committee was appointed by the Secretaries of State for War and for India with the consent of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and that it is admitted that the Colonial Office had no representative on or attached to the Committee. The statement, however, that a Committee was appointed by the Secretaries of State for War and of India, consisting of four officers nominated by the War Office and one by the Indian Government, &c., is not strictly accurate. Committee was a War Office Committee, appointed as above stated in the Case of the Colonial Office, under a Garrison Order of November 1, 1867. Colonel Brown, the officer deputed by the Indian Government to represent their interests, was not a member of the Committee, though he assisted the Committee; he did not take part in the prepara- tion of the lists of such stores as were fit and suitable; he did not sign the proceedings, and his assistance is explained both by the proceedings of the Committee, and in the letter Car, Appendix Q, of the President of the Committee of March 19, 1868, as given in the adoption of the p. 2.3.

values. Nor, again, is the object of the Committee stated with strict accuracy in the last See letter, Colonial lines of the Reason, and it is difficult to reconcile those lines with the humbler but official Office Case, p. 10. language of the Garrison Order which appointed the Committee, and defined their powers, and instructed them to assemble "for the purpose of affixing a money value on all inilitary stores fit and suitable for the use of the troops in the Straits Settlements."

See Proceedings,

Colonial Office

The Colonial Office has no wish to evade the resposibility fairly attaching to its part in regard to the Committee, by whatever name that part is to be designated; but the Colonial Office respectfully protests against its responsibility being determined, either by statements in the Case of the India Office made without reference to official documents, or by any correspondence between the War Office and the India Office which may or may not have resulted in an agreement as to the effect of the valuation between themselves, but with which agreement the Colonial Office has nothing to do. Strictly speaking, the part of the Colonial Office in regard to the Committee was simply ministerial. The stores

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were in the hands of the Indian Government, the military administration of the Settlements was under the War Office. The Colonial Office lent its assistance, at the request of the other two Offices, towards a proposed transfer of stores, more particularly in the assembling of the Committee under the instructions of the War Office. Those instructions have therefore to be carefully looked at in determining the responsibility of the Colonial Office. There has been no inconsistency in the conduct of the Colonial Office. That Office has all along admitted that there was property in the Settlements which did not properly fall to the Settlements on the transfer. So much is admitted by the Colonial Office Letter of January 28, 1867. But the admission that there were subjects for valuation does not bind the Colonial Office to the acts of the Committee, if the Committee included erroneously certain subjects which ought to have been excluded, more especially if the Committee was led to include them by the India Office itself. There was no reference to the Committee to determine which of the military stores produced to them for valuation ought to have fallen to the share of the Colony, and without such reference, the fact of their affixing a money value to any stores does not stamp those stores as property falling to the Indian Government. When the Indian Government, having adopted its own principle of valuation, retained these stores for itself, and then produced them for valuation, how can that valuation affect antecedent rights of the Colony? It is in vain for the India Office to allege the valuation in support of its own wrong, for its own wrong produced the valuation of the stores in dispute. In whatever way the matter is turned, the governing question still recurs-Was the India Office entitled originally to retain these stores?

It is further argued by the India Office that the appropriation by the Colonial Government of a portion of the stores valued by the Committee is evidence that the Colonial Government adopted the settlement of the Committee. The answer to the argu- ment drawn from the alleged consent of the Colonial Office to the appointment of the Committee, contains the answer to this argument also. The Colonial Office has all along admitted the right of the India Office to a share of the stores, speaking generally, to moveables strictly understood, as distinguished from immoveables by nature or destina- tion. Now, the stores appropriated and paid for by the Colonial Government, and described in a despatch of Colonel Ord of January 30, 1869, set out in Appendix G of the Case of the India Office, belong to the class of moveables which the Committee was entitled to value, and the appropriation and payment therefore by the Colonial Govern- ment is not inconsistent with the contention that other stores were improperly included in that valuation.

IX. To pass on from the appointment of the Committee to the proceedings of the Committee. The Committee was appointed under the instructions of the Secretary of State for War by a Garrison order, for the purpose of affixing a money value on all military stores fit and suitable for the use of the troops. These stores are explained by Colonial Offiec the War Office letter of August 4, 1868, as confined to "commissariat, barrack, and Cass, p. 11. hospital stores, and personal equipments," in fact to the stores which the War Office, under the arrangement made before the transfer, was bound to provide in return for the subsidy paid by the Settlements. In valuing other stores the Committee exceeded their, power.

The India Office attempts to defend the Committee in this sentence:-

"That the Committee rightly concluded that the ordnance was within the scope of India Office Case, the reference made to them is shown by the 'Priced Vocabulary of Naval and Military P. 8. Stores supplied by the War Department,' which includes ordnance, with their carriages, among such stores,"

The answer is that the scope of the reference made to the Committee is to be sought in the Order constituting the Committee, and not in the Priced Vocabulary. The fallacy of the India Office lies in treating the Committee as a joint Committee of the India and the War Offices, or as a species of umpire between them, instead of a Board nominated by the War Office for the purpose of a limited inquiry defined by that Office. And when once the true position of the Committee is considered, no doubt can be admitted on the point that the interpretation given by the War Office of its own orders to its own nominees must be accepted as final. Now this point is of importance in regard to the responsibility of the Colonial Office for the acts of the Committee. For even if the India Office could successfully contend that the Colonial Office, by consenting to the appointment of a Com- mittee of Valuation, was bound by all acts within the scope of the reference to this Committee, notwithstanding that the Colonial Office was not a party in defining the scope of the reference, and was not represented on the Committee, it is certain that the Colonal

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