CO885-(18-19) — Page 386

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

C.O.885

19 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

|ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO

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at the will of the chiefs-a wholly different matter from such well defined rights as may be found where, eg., the village community system has been in force from time immemorial.

Again there may be private ownership without citizenship attaching. An instance of this may be found in the provisions of the Glen Grey Act of the Cape Colony. The object of that Act was, if I understand it rightly, gradually to substitute in certain native districts individual allotments for communal tenure; but the allotments are inalienable without the Governor's consent, they may not be subdivided or sublet, and it is ex- pressly provided that the value of the land cannot be counted for the purpose of qualifying for the franchise. The section runs "All land allotted under the provisions of this Act shall, for the purposes of Section 17 of Act No. 14 of 1887 be deemed to be held on communal renure and the wording of Section 17 of Act No. 14 of 1887-the Parliamentary Voters' Registration Act-is as follows :---

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"No person shall be entitled to be registered as a Voter by reason of his sharing in any com- munal or tribal occupation of lands w buildings unless he shall be in actual occupation for the period required by the eighth section of the Constitution Ordinance, of a house or other building, whether situated or not situated on land held on tribal or communal tenure, which house or building separately or together with land occupied there with held upon other than tribal or communal tenure shall be of the value of seventy five pounds sterling."

The general principle, however, is, I take it, that parliamentary privileges, such as white men enjoy, apply in the case of natives in inverse proportion to the extent to which the tribal system holds,

Differences between the position of

the Natives in the Crown Colonies and the Self-governing Colonies.

Apart from the general consideration that all questions with regard to natives are rendered far less complicated by the absence of responsible, de., party, government on the spot, the characteristics of the Crown Colonies as regards the natives may be summed up as follows :—

(a) Such colonies are all or nearly all the homes of the natives and not of the whites.

Following from this,

(b) The whites are as a rule far less numerous in proportion to the natives than in the self-governing colonies, and

(e) The natives presumably see more in proportion of the official white element as compared with the unofficial, than in the self-governing colonies, because so large a proportion of the white element

in the Crown Colonies is official.

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(d) The ultimate power-the last word

in the administration of the Crown Colonies is not in the Colony, but in England.

(e) The administration of the Crown' Colonies has more personal element in it than there is in the Self-governing Colonies.

For all these five reasons the condition of the natives tends to be better in the Crown Colonies than in the Self-governing Colonies, though there are arguments on the other side

Taking the reasons in order.

(a) As far as I know the West Indies and Mauritius and Seychelles are the only tropical colonies in the Empire where white men in any numbers have been born and bred and made their homes for generations; and in the West Indies and in Mauritius alone among tropical Colonies (omitting the sub-tropical Mediterranean dependencies) are there representative institutions, such institu tions in the case of Mauritius being of comparatively recent origin.. It is note. worthy that while, in the temperate regions of the British Empire, repre- sentative institutions without responsible government have (except in special in- stances) been the stepping stone to responsible government, in the West Indies they are in a sense the remanent of responsible government. In old slave times, Barbados was to a large extent a self-governing colony, self- government being confined to the white oligarchy. With the abolition of slavery, self government went back to repre- sentative institutions without responsi bility; the white men lost a certain amount of citizenship and the black men gained citizenship.

Elsewhere than in the West Indies and Mauritius, roughly speaking, the white men go to the tropical dependencies to rule and trade and not to make their homes. Hence

(b) In all the Crown colony regions, not excluding the West Indies, they are few among many and

(e) The proportion of these few who are officials is large, so that the natives, especially in the least developed parts, probably come into contact with more government officers than unofficial whites.

Now it is true that

(i) where white men make their homes in the same land as the natives they must know the natives more intimately than if they are merely temporary sojourners among them and