CO885-5 — Page 174

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

C.O.

Reference :-

8855 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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

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difficult to obtain a proper administrative staff for the island; not only have all the officers so trans- ferred retained their claims to superannuation privileges from carlier employers, but they have been able to regard their transfer as not really "a change of employer," and to look for further promotion not merely in the limited sphere of the administra tion of Cyprus, but in almost any part of Her Majesty's dominions. The principle is to be found in the 12th clause of the Imperial Superannuation Act of 1859, and in the Act of 1860 c. 89 extending that Act to the India Office; it has been adopted by the Government of India in the regulations settled a few years ago, under which officers of the uncovenanted service, speaking the native languages of India, have entered the service of several Colonies who import coolies from India; it is to be found in almost every Colonial pension law passed in recent years, not merely in the cases where Ordinances have been passed under instructions from the Colonial Office, but in the laws of such semi-representative Colonies as Barbados and British Guiana, whose Governments have objected to interference from home in the matter of pensions. It is possible that the Australian Govern- ments in their mutual jealousy of each other and of the Imperial Government bave not availed themselves of the system; but Sir H. Loch has recently advocated interchangeability of officers in the Colonial forces, and this could only rest on the idea of "unity of service" as opposed to isolation of service under distinct Governments, and the Cape Government has applied for, and in some instances succeeded in pro- curing, the services of officers both from the Telegraph Department of the General Post Office and the Board of Trade.

The minor principle B. is of course not so im- portant as A., but it is distinctly correlative to it, has, with the exception of the Government of India, been almost as universally adopted, both by statute and by practice in almost every branch of the service, and has been attended from the economical point of view with most beneficial results. Thus the Govern- ment of Victoria has been able to suspend the com- pensation allowances of Sir A. Clarke and Mr. Childers while holding office under the Crown at home, and under other Governments; the War Office have been able to save the retired pay of various officers employed in the Colonies; the Colonial Office has been able to promise the Government of Jamaica that a district judge, who got a pension on ill-health after short service, and immediately afterwards was appointed a sheriff in Scotland, causing considerable irritation in the Colony, would be subjected to suspension or abatement the moment his emoluments reached the critical point under the Act of 1834; and officers who have been invalided on pension from the West Coast have been re-employed in healthier Colonies with suspended or abated pensions with manifest advantages to all parties. The provision is to be found in the statute books of auch Colonies as Natal (Law 3 of 1872, clause 2), and West Australia (Act 7 of 1871 c. 11), apart from the Crown Colonies. Hitherto the whole system has rested on the basis that the exact source from which, and the mode in

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which public revenues were raised, did not in any way affect the servant of the Crown in this matter; that basis has been lost sight of, for the first time I believe in the departmental history of the last 50 years, by the Report of the Committee of 19th February 1885, on which the Colonial Office was not represented. Their recommendations, and to a certain extent the views of the later Committee, and the suggestion of the repeal of the Act 35 Vict.

c. 12 made in the latest correspondence between the Colonial Office and the Treasury, all rest on exactly the opposite basis, viz., that the source from which salary is provided determines the employer, and that the action of one set of ministers in one part of Her Majesty's dominions has rothing to do with the action of another set in another part. This view strikes me as containing the element of disintegra- tion of a bud type, and with the prospect in the future of an Irish and possibly Scotch or Welsh Civil Service, distinguished from that of the United Kingdom, the point of "unity" of all the Queen's services assumes greater importance.

It is submitted that the adoption of this new principle must give rise to numerous anomalies, e.g., the Secretaries of State or Under Secretaries of State for India and the Colonies being paid from different sources would be treated as in different employ,"

and on a re-arrangement of offices in an Adminis- tration an ex-military or naval officer might suddenly find himself entitled or disentitled to an extra 3001. or 4001. a year without any adequate cause.

Or, again, take the case of Colonial Governors; there are now eight, who either wholly or partially draw emoluments from Imperial funds; these would be in "different employ "to the Colonial Governers paid wholly from Colonial funds, though the tenure from the Crown is in all cases the same, and the form of their commission and instructions, though varying according to the constitution of the Colony, bears no necessary relation whatever to the mode in which their remuneration happens to be provided. A study of the accounts of the Grants-in-Aid Vote for the last 20 years would show a good many appointments first borne on Imperial and subse- quently on Colonial funds, and some transferred from Colonial to Imperial, sometimes on political, sometimes on financial grounds, without the real position of the holder of such appointments towards the Secretary of State being one whit altered by such changes in the mode of provision of their remu. neration. Numbers of ex-military and naval officers, who may have already got gratuities, or will shortly be in a position to claim "retired pay," have been, and are likely to be, the holders of Colonial Go- vernorships and other appointments, which it is misleading to describe as in "Colonial employ." The adoption of the new rules, particularly if the distinction of Colonies" which receive no contribu- "tions from Imperial funds " from other Colonies be adhered to, would hamper the Secretary of State in the most ridiculous way in considering the promotion and transfer of such officers, as he would find at every turn that he was either giving them a claim