Australian Studies Centre
Institute of Commonwealth Studies
University of London
WORKING PAPER NO 5
Gladstone at the Colonial Office 1846
Alan Shaw
Monash University
Copyright Alan Shaw
January 1986
ISBN: 0 902499 49 1
Mr Gladstone, four times Prime Minister, was also, it is often forgotten,
briefly Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies - from 22 December
1845 until 6 July 1846. During these months, confronted with a number of
significant Imperial problems, which Morley and Knaplund refer to only rather
briefly and about which even his latest biographer, R.T. Shannon, says
little. Susan Farnsworth, in a recent thesis, correctly denies that there
was a dramatic break in Gladstone's views on colonial policy as a result of
his term at the Colonial Office, but at the same time seems to me to
underestimate the effect of this experience on his 'adaptive mind', as
Bagehot called it and on his attitude to the Empire.(1) A few years after
leaving office, meditating on colonial affairs, Gladstone stressed the need
for colonial self-government - at least in communities chiefly composed of
British settlers. He had misgivings that "the school of discipline that we
have provided for our colonists has been less noble and less free" than
before the American revolution. He deplored the "unduly centralised
administration" and the "gratuitous inter-meddling of the mother country" in
colonial affairs, though like many of his contemporaries, when drawing a
distinction between local and imperial questions, he was inclined to
over-extend the latter and to try to define them, impossible though such a
definition would be.
Before becoming Secretary of State, though he hardly mentions colonial
affairs in the political journal he kept between 1833 and 1843, he had been
more concerned with them than the average member of parliament, and said
later that "the chief part of my parliamentary time and attention was taken
up with colonial subjects". Though he was never an apologist for slavery, he
acted as a spokesman for the West Indian planters in seeking full
compensation for the loss of their slaves after their emancipation in 1833,
and he supported his father's efforts to obtain coolie migrants to replace
them on his estates. At the same time, he was a member of the Society for
the Extinction of the Slave Trade and the Civilisation of Africa, and when
Fowell Buxton lost his seat in Parliament in 1837, he asked the young
statesman, whom he recognised as one who had "served the cause", if he would
take over his role as leader of the pro-Aboriginal cause in the House.(2)
Gladstone refused and next year strongly opposed the reduction of the former
slaves' compulsory term of apprenticeship. But judging by his reading he was
deeply concerned about West Indian labour problems, and he was learning more
about general colonial affairs as he sat on seven select committees concerned
1
with Imperial questions between 1836 and 1841 - South Australia. Negro
Apprenticeship, Colonial Accounts, Aboriginal Natives. Colonial Lands, the
China Trade, and New Zealand.(3) In 1837-8 he was orthodox in his attitude
to the Canadian rebellion. The colonists had no grievance, he said. Britain
could not adopt a "boundless course of unreasonable concession" and must
maintain her authority "with a firm hand". Regarding Jamaica in 1839, he
insisted that Imperial control over Colonial legislatures was "supreme",
though admitting that Parliament should intervene "only on great occasions".
Next year. though he argued that Imperial legislation was necessary to deal
with the Clergy Reserves in Canada, he admitted, none the less, that it was
impossible to "mould colonial destinies against the colonial will" and agreed
that he had not then "obtained a full conception of true colonial policy".
However "it was a mercy that Providence directed my mind to subjects where
its action was in no way fettered by ingrained prejudice".(4) He was at
least willing to learn.
Appointed to the Board of Trade in 1841, his years there and his gradual
conversion to free trade further affected his outlook on Imperial questions
before he left the Cabinet in January 1845 because of his attitude to the
proposed increased grant to the Roman Catholic seminary at Maynooth. However
he was glad when the Prime Minister. Sir Robert Peel, invited him to return
to office in December and. though he lost his seat in Parliament owing to his
support of the repeal of the corn laws. he remained in the ministry until it
collapsed in the following July.
He was then, as he was to be later, reluctant for Britain to annex more
territory. "We should learn to govern the colonies we have before acquiring
more", he wrote, in protesting against a proposal for a settlement at Labuan,
being on this occasion unconvinced by either an exuberant account of an
expedition there, which he had read. or the arguments of his colleagues.
Even if initially the establishment were to be only a naval station to
suppress piracy, it would "attract colonists" and cause "the expenses and
embarrassments inseparable from the multiplication of colonies". Its
acquisition, he argued, would call for more British forces in Asia, which
would be expensive, and since "we already have land almost infinite to defend
that we cannot occupy, and people to reduce to order whom we are not able to
keep friendly", it was "plainly undesirable" to have "new colonies in that
quarter of the globe". He also thought, as Stephen explained to his
2
successor, Earl Grey, that the colony "would inevitably tend to involve us in
all the labyrinths of the politics of Borneo".(5) For reasons of economy,
Gladstone also opposed annexing Pitcairn Island,(6) but like other statesmen,
he could, at times, find a good reason for making new settlements - in his
case because he wanted sites for penal establishments.
Like most MPs, he thought the transportation of convicts "an indispensable
part ... of the penal code ... the only effective secondary punishment in
reliance on which the punishment of death was discontinued", and there is no
doubt that it was desirable from the point of view of the mother country.(7)
But where could the convicts be sent? Was Port Essington in north-west
Australia a possibility? Maintaining a station there involved neither
annexation of territory nor trouble with foreign powers, but it was of "very
doubtful value" either as a colony or a naval station; however, Gladstone
thought it "just possible" that it might be "useful as the nucleus of a new
convict establishment", for its "isolation and dreariness" would "rather
recommend it".(8) Stephen had earlier been very favorable to it, and
Gladstone, perhaps further influenced by reading, in March, an apologia for
the settlement by its Commissioner for Lands, decided it should be kept up,
despite the expense and a possible "insurmountable objection" to the climate,
at least until he should have heard more about the possibilities of renewing
transportation to New South Wales.(9) Similar considerations applied to a
proposed settlement near Port Curtis in "North Australia". This
establishment had been decided on by his predecessor, Lord Stanley, Peel and
the Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, with support from Stephen and the
Prison Commissioners, in September 1845, when Gladstone was not in the
Cabinet. But in office he supported it strongly, as a place where there
seemed "a very strong reason for laying the foundation of a new colony" for
convicts, and it has often been called, slightly inaccurately, the "Gladstone
colony".(10)
This anxiety to find an outlet for such people arose from his recognition
that it was impossible for the moment to continue to foist upon Van Diemen's
Land nearly all the prisoners who were sent overseas. He thought that the
system of working the men there in the so-called probation gangs had not been
properly tried - and he wanted this to be done; but before there could be a
"fair experiment" of the system supposed to have been set up since 1842, a
"breathing time" was indispensable, for the situation in the colony was
3
undoubtedly desperate. Far too many prisoners had been sent there - nearly
18,000 since 1841 - and the economic depression since 1843 had intensified
the men's difficulty in finding work when their sentences expired. Some
steps to relieve the situation had been taken before Stanley left office.
The British Treasury was to assume part of the costs of the colony's policy
and gaol establishments. Other destinations should be sought for as many as
possible for the prisoners but it fell to Gladstone, in 1846, to try to
improve conditions in Van Diemen's Land and to find other colonies to which
convicts could be sent.(11)
This was not as simple as he had hoped, for he was more anxious than Stanley
had been not to antagonise local opinion and was unwilling to adopt the
high-handed attitude which the latter had taken to Van Diemen's Land in 1842.
Thus, when seeking for relief in the central part of New South Wales, he
firmly disclaimed "any intention or desire to do anything not generally
conducive to the interests and agreeable to the inclinations" of the
colonists; he hoped that the economic advantages of convict labour, as
indicated in recent reports from Port Phillip, might induce the settlers to
welcome the prisoners, who, he always insisted, would have been "reformed"
before being sent out.(12) Certainly, he was adamant that convicts who had
been pardoned in Van Diemen's Land should be able to seek work on any part of
the mainland that they wished, and he firmly over-rode the protests of South
Australians and others who objected. But for men still under sentence, he
wanted colonial consent, and here his attempts at persuasion had little
success.(13)
Feeling compelled "to investigate every possibility of employing convicts,
for we cannot afford to lose the slightest chance", he wondered, when he
heard that the project of using local prisoners at the Cape for road making
had been very successful, whether British convicts could not be employed on
the break-water in Table Bay or building lighthouses or perhaps on
preliminary works in the recently annexed Natal.(14) He asked if perhaps
"these unhappy persons" could be used on building the proposed Canadian
railway from Halifax to Quebec; another possibility, that Lord Ripon had
suggested, was the undertaking of public works on the Ionian Islands,
although technically Britain did not possess them.(15) In all these cases
Gladstone stressed that the men would be paid by the mother country, kept
separate from the local inhabitants, and repatriated when their sentence
4
expired. This really amounted to proposing Imperial assistance for colonial
works, and was a bait absent from Grey's later proposals on this subject but,
even so, the responses were unfavorable.(16) In Canada, the provincial
governors warned him that the idea of doing so was "distasteful" and would
occasion "great jealousy and alarm".(17) The Cape was less hostile, but from
the Ionian Islands, Lord Seaton sent an emphatic refusal. The naval
dockyards at Bermuda and Gibraltar could take only a limited number, so it
seemed as if the sorely needed relief to Van Diemen's Land would depend on
the proposed settlement in North Australia.(18)
In Van Diemen's Land itself there was great need for re-organisation, since,
despite all that may be said about Treasury parsimony and economic
depression, the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John Eardley-Wilmot, had been far
from efficient.(19) He had made no significant comments on reports on the
short-comings of the juvenile and female establishments. He rarely made
suggestions on policy. He had completely failed to report on (or to deny)
the abuses which common gossip claimed to exist in the probation parties,
making only "a very late admission" of "part of the existing evil", in
January 1846. He had not properly explained his policy on education. He had
spent money without authority, and his estimates of expenditure had been
extraordinarily astray in both 1844 and 1845. He had quarrelled with Bishop
Nixon over the appointment of religious instructors for the convicts, in this
case being clearly in the wrong. Twenty-seven times in two years, noted
Stephen, had his proceedings "been commented on in terms of disapprobation",
and this must have inevitably affected his authority "in a colony where
nothing is kept secret".(20) In these circumstances, Gladstone's decision to
recall him, explained in over 3000 words on 30 April, was eminently
justified, if it was not inevitable; but his accompanying confidential
letter, referring to the Governor's moral short-comings, seems a misguided
missive, even if based on reports from Nixon the Anglican bishop of Tasmania.
This has been defended as being intended to give Wilmot an opportunity to
defend himself against "notorious rumours" and the statements made to Stephen
that the "indecorum ... at one or two parties had been serious and offensive,
although not such as would be required by a Court as evidence of a criminal
connection".(21) Of course it was Wilmot himself who made it public, but it
certainly intensified the controversy caused by the recall. Even before the
storm broke, it seems that Gladstone may have realised that he had made a
mistake, for in May, only a fortnight later, he refused to take notice of
5
similar accusations brought against the Governor of the Bahamas by the
Archdeacon there. "My general view is", he minuted on this case, "that while
private character ought to be regarded as a leading one among the conditions
of fitness for appointment to office, I cannot make any investigation into
private life unless a public scandal should ... bring the government into
discredit" - and this had not been the case in Hobart Town.(22)
However, having changed his administrators, Gladstone wanted to give the
local authority a free hand, leaving to La Trobe, whom he had sent from Port
Phillip to take charge in Van Diemen's Land until a new Lieutenant-Governor
could go out, "full scope to your discretion in all respects". He
successfully overcame difficulties with the Treasury about extra
superintendents and overseers by speaking directly to the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. Though when Gladstone tried to persuade him to allow convicts to
be used on irrigation works - "not a boon" for the colony, he argued, but
something that would earn "ample profit ... for the benefit of the Imperial
Treasury" - the Chancellor would not listen to this "most profitable of all
schemes for the employment of convicts".(23) In this matter, as in several
others, Gladstone's proverbial parsimony is not apparent. The Treasury
"takes no cognisance whatever of the need to reform the whole system", he
complained, telling his successor that "it was not right to be thrifty" on
this matter. "Van Diemen's Land had a stringent claim on us", he wrote, and
"wherever the evils of introducing Convicts can be mitigated, or the risks
reduced, by money, that money should be ungrudgingly paid". Even so, he
recognised that however much the system there should be reformed by employing
prisoners on public works, supervising them better and giving them better
religious instruction, it was "impossible that transportation could continue
on its present scale for any length of time" unless the convicts could be
more widely dispersed.(24)
This had come to depend on the settlement in North Australia. But, although
Gladtone appointed a Superintendent, the Treasury approved the expenditure,
and an expedition sailed out to what was to become the town of Gladstone, the
project then got stuck.(25) The Colonial Office, the Home Office, the Prison
Inspectors, the Poor Law Commissioners and the Emigration Commissioners all
had different ideas about it. Gladstone wanted to send reformed "exiles" to
the north, together with a small batch of free settlers, but the Prison
Inspectors thought these people should go to Port Phillip, asserting that the
6
"hardships of the north" would be an extra punishment and not 'a reward for
the exiles' "reform". They objected, however, to convicts taking out their
wives with them for that would make their punishment more lenient; and since
the Poor Law and Emigration Commissioners refused to send out other female
migrants, it followed that there would be no women at the settlement to
"humanise" the men.(26) No wonder that Gladstone was irritated. If North
Australia was "to be settled without exiles and without women, it would be
better not settled at all", he minuted, anticipating Lord Grey's decision to
abandon the scheme. As he noted rather despondently on his resignation, "the
circle of space within which we can deposit convicts becomes progressively
narrower, while we much need it being greatly widened".(27)
In the matter of transportation to Australia, Gladstone was ready to override
the feelings of the settlers in New South Wales. It was "impossible that Her
Majesty's Government should ... surrender what appears to be one of the vital
interests of the British Empire ... and one of the chief benefits which (it)
... can at present derive from the dominion we have acquired over the vast
territories of the Crown in Australia", he wrote. Though he argued that a
"depot of labour" in the north would benefit the colonists further south, it
was, in any event "not an unjust or unreasonable exercise of the rights of
sovereignty over these vast regions" to devote "part of them to the relief of
Van Diemen's Land"; and he was ready, if necessary, to impose his policy in
the interests of the mother country.(28) In the case of free trade too, he
unhesitatingly affirmed that British interests were to be preferred to those
of the colonies. Though from 1840 to 1845 he had supported a heavy duty on
foreign, slave-grown sugar, in 1846 he could see no reason why this should be
kept up to compel the British consumer to subsidise West Indian planters. He
insisted that even if the latter could not reduce their costs, the interests
of the home consumer must prevail and he tried, though in vain, to have the
duty reduced immediately.(29)
He was equally insistent that Britain should not retain duties on corn or
timber which raised prices in England in order to protect producers in
Canada. On corn, he declared that "considerations concerned with the supply
of food to the people of this country and the employment of its Population
must be paramount"; he must oppose a "perpetual tax on the people of England"
to help the Canadians, despite an address from the Canadian Assembly viewing
the repeal of the Corn Laws with "apprehension and alarm". With timber it
7
was the same. The "protective principle" was not the only basis for the
colonial connexion or for colonial development, he argued, reminding the
protesters that the Australian colonies had received no trade preferences.
He was sure that Canadian progress would continue "through the energy of the
Colonist, under Divine Providence".(30) In reverse, the British Possessions
Act, 1846, authorised the colonies to repeal duties imposed by the Imperial
Parliament in the past. This meant largely abandoning the claim that Great
Britain should regulate colonial trade. In future, he wrote, Canadian duties
should be determined according to "the convictions and dispositions of the
inhabitants".(31) He hoped these would lead to free trade but, in the event,
they did not and he allowed the province to impose some discriminating duties
when he replied to a series of despatches from Cathcart reporting the
Canadians' wish to protect their river traffic by imposing heavier (ie
differential) duties on goods imported by land through the United States,
rather than by the St Lawrence River. Unlike Stanley, who had insisted on
Imperial legislation for this purpose, Gladstone authorised the Governor to
assent to a local act doing this if it were to be "demanded by the general
sentiment of the community". The question should "be determined according to
the conviction of the Canadian people", he declared; it was a provincial and
not an Imperial one, involving the regulation only of local trade. In the
same spirit in 1849 and 1850 he opposed the Imperial Parliament legislating
on intercolonial customs duties in Australia. They did not affect the mother
country and should be regarded as a local matter, he argued.(32)
But while recognising the right of a colony to control its own affairs to a
greater extent than Stanley had done, he was not entirely ready to accept the
principle of "responsible government" - if indeed he, or any of the governors
of the British North American provinces, fully understood what was meant by
it. Stephen persuaded him to water down his instructions to Lord Cathcart,
when appointing him Governor-General, so he merely told him to leave to the
colonists "the management of all that can with propriety be called their own
affairs". Gladstone was vague about how the Governor was to choose his
ministers. He was to "avoid identifying yourself with any Colonial party",
to "prefer loyalty to disloyalty", and to take the policy of his predecessor,
Lord Metcaife, as a model. But Metcalfe's policy had led to his becoming a
party leader; when "almost all who have British feelings are arrayed on one
side. and all who have anti-British feelings on the other", he thought he
could not admit the latter group "into confidential offices in Her Majesty's
8
service".(33) Then early in 1846, the danger of war with the United States
over the Oregon boundary changed the situation. Gladstone wanted Canada to
embody and pay a militia. To induce the Assembly to do this, he told
Cathcart to pay it "a most studious and ample respect" and to exercise "great
caution in avoiding a collision". Though Gladstone did not say so, and
perhaps did not realise it, this might mean changing ministers and allowing
the parties, through Assembly majorities, to control patronage, expenditure
and the general administration, thus bringing 'responsible government' into
operation.(34) The threat of war had certainly caused him to be more
conciliatory.
Patronage was a source of concern. At first Gladstone had regarded it as a
means of strengthening the Governor's power against a critical or hostile
assembly, and he wanted to allow him, as far as possible, to nominate the
public officers who would serve in the colony, rather than sending out from
London men who would replace local candidates for office. In this he faced
determined opposition from the Treasury, who insisted on nominating its own
customs officers, and he decided to take the matter up with the Prime
Minister, for the Treasury's policy "tended to disturb the relations between
Great Britain and the colonies".(35) But if the governor were to select
colonial officers, should he do so on his own initiative or on the advice of
his ministers? Hitherto he had acted on the former principle but before
Gladstone left office, he was beginning to think that the local ministers
should make the appointments, asking Cathcart whether he had felt "the
pressure of the principle of the distribution of patronage to party was so
powerful as to have exclusive sway"?(36) Local assemblies and ministers were
certainly increasing their powers, and Gladstone was allowing them to do so
in the maritime provinces as well as Canada proper.
Gladstone, unlike Stanley, was always extremely concerned about colonial
opinion. The expenditure on religious establishments in New South Wales was
still legally determined in Downing Street. But Gladstone assured the
Governor "Her Majesty's government is prepared to defer largely to the
deliberate wishes of those persons upon the spot who must be presumed to be
acquainted with the circumstances of the colony", adding that he did not wish
"altogether to pass by the Legislative Council", but to be "aided by a
knowledge of the ... general views of the Legislature". He agreed with
Stephen that it had been a mistake to have enacted in England that the
9
Council should have no control over the appropriation of Crown revenue from
fees and fines and that local district councils should be created in New
South Wales in defiance of the wishes of the local legislature.(37) On the
question of commuting quit-rents, he refused to give FitzRoy any "positive
instructions" but left him "a large discretion" on the measures to be adopted
for settling the matter. On banking, unlike the Whig Grey. Gladstone
insisted that the regulations he proposed were not to be regarded as
"inflexible rules". On railways, his advice was not to be construed as
"implying a disposition to interfere in local legislation ... which Her
Majesty's Government does not entertain", for he wished to "discard all
interference not recommended by strong considerations of expediency to us"
(though the last two words are significant). He gave the Governors
"unfettered discretion" to assent to any "larger measures of intervention"
than he had proposed, so long as the acts provided for mails, military needs
and an electric telegraph, and gave the government the right to purchase the
line - again an interesting reservation.(38)
In other colonies too, he was ready to rely on his local officials, rather
than to impose policy from Downing Street. It was absurd, he wrote about
Sierra Leone, to tie down the Governor "with rigid instructions. Our
Governors are those on which discretion we must rely. and to whose judgements
we must give a large, though not unbounded, confidence ... To appoint a
Governor and think of governing him ... from hence is an idea at variance
with the true state of the relation between us and the colonies".(39) At the
Cape, native problems should be "left to the active care of the Governor".
In Ceylon, when Stephen objected to an ordinance regulating the management of
Buddhist temples, on the grounds that the government should have nothing to
do with "abominable superstitions", Gladstone insisted that "de facto we are
implicated most deeply in this idolatrous religion" and in dealing with it
should "rely on the local knowledge of persons in whom implicit confidence
can be placed".(40)
New Zealand provided a more complicated problem. There Gladstone faced the
pressure of the New Zealand Company, which could always mobilise support in
Parliament. At the same time, his hands were partly tied by the fact that in
1845 Lord Stanley had appointed Captain George Grey to be
Lieutenant-Governor, with quite detailed instructions in which the difficulty
of establishing an elective assembly for the colony was stressed. Gladstone
10
did not want to commit himself to a precise policy until he had heard from
Grey. Nevertheless, while promising him his "zealous support", he stressed
that
the desire and purpose of Her Majesty's Government is that the
colonists of New Zealand, being as they are of British blood and
birth, and not affected otherwise than as it may be casually by
the infusion of actual and emancipated convicts into their
community, should undertake as early, and with as little
exception as may be, the administration of their own affairs.
This desire you will consider as the key to the particular
instructions of my predecessor.
There had, however, to be one limitation. "I conceive it to be an
undoubted maxim, that the Crown should stand in all matters between
the colonists and the natives".(41)
Unlike those who argued for the Company that "God had given the earth
for men to use, not to particular races to prevent all other men from
using", Gladstone insisted on the principles of justice which the
natives were "entitled to expect from the remote and powerful nation
whose settlers have landed on their shores". As he had said in
Parliament in June 1838, "whenever settlers from a people in an
advanced state of civilisation come into contact with the Aboriginals
of a barbarous country, the result is always prejudicial to both
parties, and most dishonourable to the superior" - and he wanted to
minimise the dishonour, by placing the government "in a just and
mediatorial position between the settlers and the native tribes".(42)
Though he thought representative institutions desirable "on every
ground" since "even though the local communities do not govern
themselves well, they like it better than Downing Street" and "the
onus of proof is on those who oppose the representative system", he
was ready to place "large confidence" in the Governor, and did not
want "to aggravate your difficulties by explicit instructions". What
he hoped was that his letter would enable its recipient "to act more
expeditiously in a course which you may have seen reason to approve
than if you were wholly without a declaration of my sentiments". But
he still wanted to leave him a free hand, and as late as May assured
him he would take no decision "which would fetter your discretion or
obstruct your proceedings".(43)
11
For all that, alongside his general desire to support his governors,
he recognised his responsibility to keep an eye on them. As he told
the Governor of Gibraltar, "the duty of my office plainly requires
that I should pursue all authentic information concerning the
incapacity or misconduct of a public functionary under the control of
this department". In this, he did not forget Britain's "Imperial
Mission" and, though that doctrine had not then been enunciated as
clearly as it would be later, he insisted that no Englishman could
help "being forcibly struck by the amount of moral responsibility
which it (the Empire) entails upon us" - and, one might add, on the
Secretary of State in particular. He had to protect Maoris in New
Zealand and Kaffirs in South Africa. In Trinidad, owing to the
mixture of races, he had to check the "pressure of the more numerous
upon the less civilised" as well as that upon "men of property and of
English extraction".(44)
In addition to this, he had to deal with problems arising from the
abolition of slavery in 1833 which still particularly affected
Mauritius and the West Indies. In both cases, the planters wanted to
meet their labour shortage by importing coolies from India or
elsewhere. That might be permissable, but Gladstone insisted that the
government had a duty "to protect the migrants from any exploitation
or ill-treatment" and he was concerned that the planters wanted to
bring in too many Indians and were neglecting the emancipated
negroes.(45) Writing at great length, as he so often did, he told the
Governor of Mauritius, Sir William Gomm, that he was worried by the
disproportion between the sexes and "the destruction of the migrants'
family life", and wanted both coolies and negroes converted into
permanent and self-supporting members of society. However, since his
"general reasoning ... must be liable to modification from local
knowledge", he refused to send positive instructions until he had
heard from the Governor, though he had thought that "something must be
said" to help him decide his policy.(46)
As he told Lord Harris in Trinidad, he thought there was "something
very unnatural and repulsive in the wholesale transportation of men as
mere instruments as labour (even though according to their own free
will)". He was, therefore, equally concerned about the prospects of
12
the immigrants in the West Indies. He recognised the need for them in
Jamaica, Trinidad and British Guiana but he also appreciated the
problems involved; so he limited the numbers, welcomed the immigration
of families, and maintained the ban on the migrants signing contracts
outside the colony or on board ship.(47) Certainly he allowed wages
to be paid in rations, thinking this practice "common in Agriculture",
but he told his Governors to watch carefully for possible abuses, and
he flatly refused to allow the planters to take any special measure to
enforce contracts or to permit summary magisterial jurisdiction to
maintain discipline. Also, he vetoed the introduction of summary
trials for felonies. This was a "remnant of the slave code" and
"draws an odium beyond any possible use".(48)
Surprisingly he was not unduly worried by the immigrants' religion,
unlike Stephen who, somewhat bigotedly, lamented that bringing
Portuguese from Madeira to British Guiana meant that "a province the
more is being added to the Papacy", and that Indian immigration would
cause Christianity to "be impaired by the introduction of many
thousand idolaters, trained from infancy in the barbarous and obscene
rites of Hindoo superstition". Gladstone was more disturbed by
reports of idleness and increasing drunkenness in the islands and to
counter this he urged again that the men should come with their
families. This would help "to arouse a salutary apprehension of the
consequences of indolence". He hoped that the negroes too would learn
the virtue of regular work and he wanted to promote industrial
training in schools.(49)
In this he showed a surprising willingness to agree to government
intervention, despite his commonly alleged opposition to it. Stephen
seemed indifferent to attempts to regulate the migrant ships, claiming
ignorance of the subjects (as he also did at times with convict
transportation, when the problem became difficult), and contenting
himself, as Professor MacDonagh puts it, "with a melancholy
contemplation of the folly and misery of mortals". But Gladstone was
more concerned. He agreed with the Emigration Commissioners that the
traffic from India should be conducted entirely by ships hired by the
government and he arranged for them to be chartered for this
purpose.(50) He insisted that the vessels carrying migrants from
13
Madeira to British Guiana should obey the British Passengers Act of
1842, which had given considerable controlling powers to the
Emigration Commissioners; and incidentally suggested that the Act
should be made applicable to ships sailing from New South Wales.(51)
Recognising the need to improve the methods used in growing sugar he
not only welcomed the initiatives in this direction taken by Elgin's
government in Jamaica, but he also gave his "cordial concurrence" to
the appointment at £1000 a year, no less, of an agricultural chemist
in British Guiana for this implied a "laudable curiosity in the colony
in employing the powers of science for the development of its
resources". However, he thought that government assistance for
silkworm cultivation in Mauritius was going too far; here he hinted
that "the supposition that ... the object in view is good and the
means related to it by no means proves the necessity for public
interference ... but rather the reverse" - a comment which is more
typical of his proverbial outlook.(52)
In education, where the all-important problem concerned religion, he
took a stance rather obviously more liberal than he would have done a
decade earlier. Then he had argued strongly in favour of the
established church, in the colonies as well as at home. Now he wanted
the colonial governments to help the schools of all denominations.
Naturally enough, he opposed a purely secular education, claiming that
non-sectarian religious teaching involved "inventing some patent
extract of religion which corresponds neither with the Divine original
law, nor with any sincere human representation of it" and would lead
to "a degeneration into latitudinarianism"; hence "even the chaos of
discordant religious systems" would be better than "mutilated or
partial religious teaching".(53) As on other matters, he "would give
great weight" to the views of the West Indies' communities in deciding
the conditions on which public aid would be given to popular education
and refused to intervene on behalf of an Anglican monopoly. He took
the same stand in Van Diemen's Land, though he recognised that the
existing system there needed reform and stressed that the education
department was "the last that should be niggardly".(54)
14
Possibly his severest critic was his permanent Under-Secretary, James
Stephen. The lengthy minutes he appended to incoming letters have
been more closely studied than the journal, now at Cambridge
University, which he kept in 1846 during Gladstone's term of office.
In this, which was not available to Knaplund when he wrote his books
in praise of the official he thought so enlightened, Stephen begins to
speak critically of "my master" within a week of Gladstone's taking
office, despite the praise he had bestowed in 1835. "wordy, very
wordy", Gladstone certainly was, though one might say the same about
the Under-Secretary. But if Stephen felt that he "had to convince my
new master that he cannot govern colonies by ... treating them like
children", the latter was not unduly slow in learning his lesson; and
if he could add, correctly, that of responsible government "in good
sooth, my excellent master, your understanding is not masterly", this
was not unique and was, perhaps, after only a month in office not
surprising, especially after Stephen had asked himself, only a
fortnight before, "Who is the Prodigy who really understands affairs
colonial?"(55) After a quarter of a century in the office, Stephen
claimed not to understand such subjects as transportation, migration,
or free trade (except that the last "makes me £100 per annum poorer"),
and though he recognised that force could be used only within narrow
limits to coerce colonial opinion, and therefore was usually opposed
to resisting it, on occasions he was ready to do so. He was unwilling
to stand up to the Treasury over colonial expenditure when he thought
their intervention objectionable, or to discuss matters verbally with
his fellow civil servants in other departments when it was necessary
to do so to defend the colonies' interests. He worked indefatigably
on his minutes - "write, read, read, write or rather dictate all day,
and weary eyes in the evening" - but he was ever reluctant to see
visitors or to dine out in company, and for such a hermit to complain
that Gladstone was "without knowledge of the world in any broad sense"
is for the pot to call the kettle black with a vengeance.(56) He was
glad that he rarely had to see his minister, while complaining that he
was left with the burden of the work of office, "without any partner,
not to say without any direction. It is only by starvation and
seclusion that I am able to get through it", a complaint which the
amount of writing done by Gladstone himself and his other assistants
shows to be manifestly false.(57) Admittedly, by 1846, Stephen had
15
begun to recognise his "infirmities" and the journal certainly
suggests that at that time, as a querulous even complaining neurotic,
his opinions must be taken with great reservation. When Gladstone
resigned, Stephen praised him for recalling Wilmot from Van Diemen's
Land - "for that let him be held in homage" - and that indeed puts him
into a special category, for he praises no-one else. Gladstone's
successor, Earl Grey was "harsh, cold, peremptory and self-willed" and
his Under-Secretary, Hawes, "underbred, something of a shopkeeper,
with no great promise of capacity". All the Secretaries of State, bar
two who together had held office for less than three years, were "mere
throwings up of the Tide of life; commonplace men in high stations",
and as for other members of Peel's cabinet - "I hold them in no
respect".(58) In the colonial office, Rogers was a man "with little
life and power in him", and "not one but Murdoch" deserved his salary.
Wakefield and Buller were "shabby fellows" (perhaps true for the
former): of officers overseas, in New South Wales, Sir Charles FitzRoy
was "a man of torpid mind and body"; in Van Diemen's Land, Dr Hampton
was "unprepossessing"; in Canada, Lord Cathcart, "a man of military
caste ... with the temper of a bashaw" - and so it went on.(59)
Canada would be "a good loss", which was perhaps as well, for "the
game is up ... would we were well rid of it". Across the world, "I
hate New Zealand, and am sick of office papers and office affairs".
After reading this, one begins to sympathise, for the first time, with
Stephen's critics, rather than agreeing with him about the "utter
folly" of putting Britain's colonial "interests at the direction of a
man like Gladstone, who knows nothing about them".(60)
Why then was he "devoured with disgust and vexation about that (spare
the epithets which rise to the tip of my quill) Gladstone - the
poorest and feeblest of all my Downing Street rulers"? Was it because,
at the time of this outburst, in early April, the latter had not made
up his mind to recall Wilmot, as Stephen had advised? Because he had
"truckled to Wakefield at my expense"? Because he was planning the
re-organisation of the office, which would increase the pay of the
clerks and "spell the word of doom to my official importance"?(61) Or
was it simply because he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown? In
the controversy over his alleged authorship of an article in the
Edinburgh Review criticising Wakefield, Stephen showed himself
16
absurdly sensitive, refusing to be appeased by, or even to notice,
either the praise which Peel and Russell and the former
Under-Secretary, Labouchere, bestowed publicly in the House of Commons
or Gladstone's private letter to him, when he declared that
he could not recollect a case in which he had heard such warm,
numerous and unequivocal eulogies upon a public servant still
living, and exposed to the jealousies which the grave
extinguishes, as upon yourself, and it is difficult to find a
case when they were equally merited.
When Gladstone left office, Stephen noted that the resigning minister
said he would have "to leave unattempted the hopeless task of
commending me sufficiently", but commenting on the other side, in true
"saintly" spirit - "me saying nothing".(62)
I would suggest that Stephen's comments are worthless, except as
self-revealing. Leaving them aside, what may be said of Gladstone's
policy? Still a relatively junior minister, he seems to have
frequently discussed his policies with Peel, something all the more
necessary since in his absence from Parliament it often fell to the
Prime Minister to speak for him in the Commons. Their correspondence
shows a close relationship but, for all that, there is no doubt that
Gladstone left his mark on colonial policy during his six months in
office, and the differences between him and his predecessor, Lord
Stanley, are obvious. That he was not at first fully converted to
responsible government is clear from his instructions to Cathcart
written a few days after taking office but, even though he took a step
backward in the debate on the Rebellion Losses Bill in 1848, his
experience seemed to be leading him in that direction. Even though he
was prepared to force a new penal colony in Queensland on an unwilling
New South Wales, his last despatch to Cathcart, admittedly written
when there was a threat of war with the United States, virtually
recognised the right of colonists to choose their own ministers. He
was always readier than Stanley had been to heed colonial opinion though he appreciated Britain's "mission" to the native peoples of the
Empire, and that this might at times limit colonial autonomy. Though
certainly not extravagant, he had not yet developed the passion for
public economy that came after his stint at the Exchequer. He still
believed that the colonies should help the mother country, for
example, with convict transportation and emigration, and it was his
belief in free trade rather than colonial self-government that led to
17
his desire to remove Imperial commercial regulations, insisting that
the interests of the British consumer should come before those of
colonial producers.
But should the colonial connexion be preserved? On this, in 1850
Gladstone was a little ambivalent. In England, he found criticism of
a "colonial drain"; in the colonies, of "Imperial demands". The
British people, proud of their "Imperial sway", knew that "by
tradition" colonies were "beneficial", but "by experience"that they
were "costly". But the maintenance of the Imperial connexion was not
"the sole end" of ruling colonies, he thought. Influenced by his
reading of Sir George Cornwall Lewis' Government of Dependencies.
first published in 1841, as well as by his classical studies, he came
to see the colonies less as dependencies, as the Romans had regarded
their Imperial provinces, and more as allied communities, in the
manner of the Greeks. "The function which Divine Providence assigned
to this country in laying the foundation of mighty states in different
quarters of the world is to cherish and foster these infant
communities ... A political connexion would subsist ... until (they)
were fitted for independence"; thereafter a "community of feeling" and
"an affectionate alliance", more valuable than political connexion,
would replace the latter, after the colonies had modelled their
customs and institutions on those of the mother-country.(64) In this
light, Lord Elgin, Governor-General of Canada, may have had some
justification in thinking the previous year that Gladstone shared the
opinion that "we have no interest in preserving our colonies and ought
to make no sacrifice for that purpose"; but this was not so. and even
with Canada, Gladstone did not think separation close, and was more
optimistic than Stephen, who was asserting that it had "shaken off the
Colonial relation to this country, and had become in everything but
name a distinct state". Gladstone, whatever others might say, had no
wish to make it such as yet. Recognising that the connexion did not
depend on force, he argued that it was cemented by "common traditions
in the past and hopes for the future, resemblances in origins, laws
and manners, and in what inwardly binds men and communities together";
he still looked for the "free and loyal attachment" of the Canadians all the more since the mother country had no selfish ends in its
policies.(65) Though not as ardent an imperialist as some of his
18
contemporaries, he unquestionably hoped that the colonies would long
remain within the Empire, and I would suggest that his term of office,
though short, gave a stimulus to the evolution of his ideas on how
this process of Imperial devolution should be carried out - and
incidentally, to the development of his ideas on Ireland.
NOTES
All references to add mss are to collections in the British
Library, and all to Colonial Office papers (CO) are to those in
the Public Record Office, Kew, unless otherwise stated.
1
John Morley, Life of William Ewart Gladstone (1903), book iii,
ch 3; Paul Knaplund, Gladstone and Britain's Imperial Policy (1927),
p 40ff; R T Shannon, Gladstone, vol i (1982),191; Susan Farnsworth,
'W E Gladstone's Policy towards the Colonies, 1835-1855', Oxford
University, B Lift thesis, 1977 (Rhodes House); W Bagehot, 'Mr
Gladstone', Works (ed Mrs R Barrington, London, 1915), III, p 281.
2
Political Journal, add mss, 44819; ib, extracts on Canada, 1840,
printed by Knaplund, in Canadian Historical Review, xx (1939), pp
195-9; S G Checkland, The Gladstones - a family biography, 1764-1851
(1971), chs 26-8; A F Robbins, The Early Public Life of William Ewart
Gladstone (1894); Buxton to Gladstone, 16.9.37, add mss, 44355, f 145.
3
Parliamentary Debates (hereafter PD - all in 3rd series),
30.3.38, xlii, 224-55; S C on Aboriginal Natives, Parliamentary Papers
(hereafter PP), 1836, no 538 (vol vii in original collection), and
1837, no 425 (vol vii); S C on Colonial Lands, PP, 1836, no 512 (vol
xi); S C on Colonial Accounts, PP, 1837, no 516 (vol vii); S C on
Apprenticeship, PP, 1836, no 560 (vol xv); and 1837, no 510 (vol vii);
S C on New Zealand, PP, 1840, no 449 (vol vii); S C on South
Australia, PP, 1841, no 119 (vol iv); S C on China Trade, PP, 1840,
no 359 (vol vii).
19
4 PD, 22.12.37, xxxix, 1453; 23.1.38, xl, 419-39; 7.3.38, xli, 630;
10.6.39, xlviii, 119; 29.5.40. liv, 725-32; 15.6.40, liv, 1198;
Journal, 9.6.40, Can. Hist. Rev., loc cit. p 196; mem 1892, add mss
44790, ff 40-1.
5 Minutes, 8 and 18.6.46, Labuan, CO, 144/1, f 8 and 43-8Gladstone to Haddington (Admiralty and Lord Privy Seal), 29.1.46 add
mss, 44528, f 13, and 18.6.46, ib, 44735, f 255; H Keppel, The
Expedition to Borneo of H M S Dido (1846); Stephen, min, July, CO,
144/1, f 52.
6
Min on Admiralty to C 0, 31.1.46, CO, 201/370, f 1.
7 PD, 3.3.46, Ixxxiv, 482, 4 and 10.6.47, xc, 152 and 330ff, and
3.3.49, ciii, 422; Stephen mins on Gipps to Stanley, 28.11.44 and
2.7.45, CO, 201/350 and 358; Gladstone to FitzRoy, 7.5.46, CO, 395/1,
and PP 1847, no 785 (vol xlviii), pp 1-2; cf House of Lords, S C on
Criminal Law, Report, PP 1847 nos 447 and 534 (vol VII), and A G L
Shaw, Convicts and Colonies (1966), pp 315ff.
8 Mins on Admiralty to CO, 28.2.46, CO 201/370, f 44, and on
Ellenborough to Gladstone. 26.4.46, ib, f 52 and 61; mem on Gipps to
Stanley, 15.12.45, CO 201/360, f 451-6.
9 Stephen, min on Bremer to Stanley, 2.1.42, CO 201/329, quoted,
Shaw, Convicts, p 316; G W Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia
(1846); Stephen to Emigration Commissioners, 8.6.46, CO 201/360
f 465; Caroline Stephen, The Rt Hon Sir James Stephen - Letters with
biographical notes (1906), p 105.
10 Stanley, mem, 27.9.45, with mins by Stephen, Peel and Graham,
misc mem. N.S.W., CO 206/62, f 272-92. Cf, Shaw, Convicts, p 316; J F
Hogan, The Gladstone Colony (1898), chs 1-6.
11 Mem, 23.4.46, add mss, 44735, f 191; CO to Treasury, 21.11.45, pp
1846. no 36 (vol xxix) pp 16-21; Stephen to Phillips, 8.9.45, end in"
draft. Stanley to Lieut-Gov of VDL, ib pp 3-5; cf Shaw, Convicts, p
318ff.
20
12 Gladstone to FitzRoy, 29.4.46, draft, add mss, 44735, f 194; ib,
30.4.46, PP, 1847, no 785 (vol xlviii), pp 12-13; mem on
transportation, 23.4.46, add mss, 44735, f 191.
13 Gladstone to Hutt (WA), 1.1.46, CO 18/39, f 140; to Clarke (SA),
13.5.46, CO 13/44, f 501; to South Australian Co, 26.2.46, CO 13/51, f
377, and 16.5.45, ib, f 380; min, 30.3.46, ib, f 399.
14 Maitland (Cape Colony) to Stanley, 3.3.45 and 26.2.45, PP, 1850,
no 104 (vol xxxviii), pp 1-14; Gladstone to Maitland, 26.4.46, ib, p
65; Gladstone, min on Treasury to CO, 12.6.46, CO 48/268, f 89-91, and
to Maitland, 17 and 27.6.46, PP, 1849, no 217 (vol xliii), pp 37-8;
Gladstone, min on Maitland to Gladstone (re Natal), 30.3.46, CO 179/1.
15 Gladstone to Falkland (Nova Scotia) and Colebrooke (New
Brunswick), 3.2.46, CO 217/192f 97 and 188/92, f 364; Shaw, Convicts,
pp 318 and 331; Gladstone to Seaton (Ionian Islands), 20.5.46, CO
136/124.
16 Gladstone, draft, 19 May, add mss, 44735, f 218 and 229; Stephen
to Phillipps (Home Office), 13.5.46, PP, 1847, no 785 (vol xlviii), pp
9-11; Shaw, Convicts, pp 330-4; Grey, circular, 7.8.48, to New South
Wales, Western Australia, New Zealand, the Cape, Ceylon and Mauritius,
Historical Records of Australia, xxvi, p 490; mins on Pottinger (Cape)
to Grey, 10.3.47, CO 179/2, and Maitland to Grey, 10.9.46, CO 48/263,
f 182.
17 Gladstone to Cathcart (Canada), 21.1.46, CO 42/540, f 349 and
363; CO to Ordnance, 30.5.46, CO 217/192, f 269; Colebrooke to
Gladstone, 28.4.46, CO 188/94, f 498; Gladstone to Colebrooke,
12.6.46, CO 188/95, f 147; Falkland to Gladstone, 1.5.46, and
Gladstone to Falkland, 18.5.46, CO 217/192, f 262-4.
18 Maitland to Gladstone, 10.9.46, PP, 1849, no 217 (vol xliii),
p 16; Seaton to Gladstone, 22.6.46, CO 136/124; Reid (Bermuda) to
Gladstone, 4 and 24.2.46, CO 37/114; Wilson (Gibralter) to Gladstone,
6.1.46 and 14.2.46, CO 91/176.
21
19 Stephen to Phillipps, 13.5.46, PP, 1847, no 785 (vol xlviii), p
9; Shaw, Convicts, pp 296 and 302-10.
20 Gladstone, mins on Wilmot to Stanley, 5.8.45, CO 280/184, f 26
and 25.10.45, CO 280/185, f 93; draft on education, 21.2.46, add mss,
44735, f 141-61, and 3.3.46, CO 280/182, f 213; Gladstone to Wilmot,
16.1.46, 28.2.46, 14.3.46, 20.4.46, CO 280/184, ff 40, 183, 324 and
533; Stephen, min on Wilmot to Stanley, 8.8.45 and 26.8.45, ib, f 178.
21 Gladstone, min on Wilmot to Stanley, 17.12.45, CO 280/186, f 19Gladstone to Wilmot, 30.4.46, PP, 1847, no 262 (vol xxxviii), pp 1-6;
drafts, CO 280/20, f 561, and add mss, 44364, f 47; Morley, Life, vol
1, p 359; Gladstone to Peel, 28 May 1847, add mss, 44528, f 443.
22 Stafford Northcote, The Case of Sir Eardley Wilmot considered in
a letter to a Friend (1847); Gladstone, min on Mathew (Bahamas) to
Stanley 10.1.46, CO 23/163, f 67; Gladstone to Mathew, 16.5.46, add
mss, 44528, f 46.
23 Gladstone to La Trobe, 16.5.46, CO 280/184, f 62; to Treasury,
26.5.46, CO 280/201, f 139; Treasury to CO 16.6.46, ib., f 173;
Gladstone, min on Treasury to CO June, CO 280/203, f 469 to Goulburn,
27.4.46, add mss 44162, f 43.
24 Min on Treasury to CO, 30.6.46. CO 280/201, f 209; mem for Grey,
4.7.46, add mss, 44735, f 264ff.
25 Gladstone to FitzRoy, Instructions for North Australia, 7.5.46,
CO 295/1, PP, 1847. no 785 (vol xlviii). pp 1 and 5, and 27.5.46, CO
201/370, f 173; Treasury to CO. 2.2.46, PP1846, no 36 (vol xxix),
p 21.
26 Gladstone, mem. 30.5.46. CO 201/370. f 204; Phillipps to Stephen,
29.5.46, ib, f 214, and 22.6.46, ib, f 226. Cf, PD, 3.3.46, Ixxxiv.
482.
22
27 Stephen, min 5.6.46, and Gladstone, min 6.6.46, CO 201/370, f 205
and 215; Gladstone, min, 22.6.46, ib, f 225-6; Grey, Colonial Policy,
ii, 65ff; Gladstone, mem, 2.7.46, add mss, 44735, f 269-79.
28 Gladstone to FitzRoy, 7.5.46, PP, cited note 25, p 4.
29 PD, 25.6.40, xl,27; 10.5.41, Iviii, 165; 3.6.44, Ixxv, 183-7;
24.2.45, Ixxvii, 1122-5; Gladstone to Peel, 5.2.46, and Peel to
Gladstone, 6.2.46, add mss (Peel Papers), 40470, ff 360 and 363. Cf,
W D Morell, British Colonial Policy in the Age of Peel and Russell
(1930), 180ff.
30 Gladstone to Cathcart, 3.3.46, 1 and 18.4.46, PP, 1846, no 321
(vol xxvii), pp 5 and 10-12; Journal of Canadian Assembly, 13.5.46,
PP, 1846, no 374 (vol xxvii), p 49; G N Tucker, Canada's Commercial
Revolution 1845-51 (Yale 1936), ch 5; Gladstone to Cathcart, 3.6.46,
PP, 1846, no 374 (vol xxvii), pp 2-6.
31 D L Burn, "Canada and the Repeal of the Corn Laws", Cambridge
Historical Journal, ii (1926-8), p 252; D G Creighton, The Commercial
Empire of the St Lawrence (1937), pp 361ff; Possessions Act, 9 and 10
Vie, c 94; Gladstone to Cathcart, 3.2.46, PP, 1846, no 263 (vol
xxvii), pp 13-15; P Knaplund, James Stephen and the British Colonial
System (1947), pp 198-9; Knaplund, Gladstone ..., p 50.
32 Stanley, circular, 28.6.43, PP, 1846, no 263 (vol xxvii), p 5,
and to Metcaife, 18.9.45, CO 42/525; Gladstone to Cathcart, 3.2.46
(note 31); Cathcart to Gladstone, end petitions, 25 Feb and 25 and 27
Mar, PP, 1846, no 321 (vol xxvii), pp 10-14; Gladstone to Cathcart,
18.5.46, ib, p 17; PD, 4.6.49, cv, 1128ff and 8.2.50, cviii, 595.
33 Stephen, Journal, 13, 14 and 22 Jan, Cam Univ Lib, add mss, 7511,
pp 13-14 and 22; Gladstone to Cathcart, draft, Jan, add mss, 44363,
f 175-94; ib, 3.2.46, PP, 1846, no 263 (vol xxvii), pp 13-15, and cf
3.4.46, add mss, 44528, f 33; Metcaife to Stanley, 13.5.45, printed K
N Bell and W P Morrell, Select Documents on British Colonial Policy,
1830-1860 (1928), p 85.
23
34 Gladstone to Cathcart, Jan 1846, add mss, 44363, f 174 and
22.1.46, ib, 44735, f 132.
35 Min on Falkland to Gladstone, 2.4.46, CO 217/192, f 140; Stephen
to Trevelyan, 6.3.46, CO 42/531, f 9; Gladstone to Goulburn, 5.6.46,
add mss, 44528, f 54. Cf, Gladstone to Ellenborough, 16.2.46, ib,
f 25.
36 To Cathcart, 3.7.46, add mss, 44528, f 72.
37 Min on Gipps to Stanley, 7.8.45, CO 201/358, f 378, and draft
reply, f 397; Gladstone to Gipps, 17.1.46, HRA, xxiv, 713-5; min on
Gipps to Stanley, 23.11.45, CO 201/360, f 408-9; Gladstone to FitzRoy,
15.6.46, ib, f 410.
38 To FitzRoy, 7.3.46, HRA. xxiv, p 806; ib, 30.5.46, ib, xxv, p 75;
Knaplund, op cit, p 218; circular on railways, 15.1.46, HRA, xxiv, p
711, and cf CO 323/231, f 290-311 and draft to Cathcart, Jan, add mss,
44363, f 185; min on Cathcart to Gladstone, 29.5.45, CO 42/532, f 283.
39 To Sir George Cockburn and Lord Sandon, 19.2.46, add mss, 44528
f 17-18.
40 Stephen and Gladstone, mins on Campbell (Ceylon) to Stanley,
7.2.46, CO 54/223, f 302 and 331-2.
41 Stanley to Grey, 27.6.45, PP, 1846, no 337 (vol xxx), p 74;
Gladstone to Grey, draft, 31.1.46, add mss, 44363, f 165, and desp,
PP, loc cit, p 159.
42 Buller, PD, 17.6.45, Ixxxi, 676; Gladstone to Grey, draft, marked
'suspended', 21.3.46, add mss, 44363, f 337; Gladstone, PD, 20.6.38,
xliii, 874; Gladstone to Grey, draft, 13.3.46, add mss, 44363, f 293,
and desp, 18.3.46, PP, 1846, no 337, p 167.
24
43 To Grey, draft, 13.3.46, add mss, 44363, f 291-6; to Grey,
18.3.46, loc cit, n 42; ib, 26.5.45, draft, add mss, 44364, f 137ff,
and desp PP, 1846, no 712 (vol xxx), p 37; cf to Harris (Trinidad),
13.2.46, add mss, 44528, f 14.
44 Min on Wilson to Gladstone, 2.6.46, CO 91/176; mem on colonies,
1835, Knaplund, 178; Gladstone to Harris, 29.4.46 and 15.6.46, add
mss, 44528, ff 44 and 61; min on MacLeod (Trinidad) to Stanley,
3.12.45, CO 295/147, f 363.
45 Gladstone to MacLeod and others, 29.4.46, PP, 1846 no 323 (vol
xxvii), pp 12-13; Gladstone, min on Gomm (Mauritius) to Stanley,
7.1.46, CO 167/267.
46 Mins on Gomm to Stanley, 20.11.46, 7.1.46, 18 and 20.2.46, CO
167/262, 263 and 267; drafts to Gomm, May 1846, add mss, 44735, ff 205
and 250; Gladstone to Gomm, 13.5.46, PP, 1846, no 691-1, (vol xxviii),
pp 354-6; ib, 14.5.46 and 12.6.46, ib, 691-11 (vol xxviii), pp
216-223.
47 Gladstone to Harris, 29.4.46, add mss, 44528, f 40; to Elgin
(Jamaica), Trinidad and British Guiana, 17.4.46, PP, 1846, 691-III
(vol xxviii), p 10, and cf Elgin to Gladstone, 5.1.46, CO 137/287,
f 5, with minutes; Light (British Guiana) to Gladstone, 16.5.46, CO
111/233, f 88, and min, f 90; Min on Emigration Commissioners to CO,
19.1.46, CO 318/167, f 7; Gladstone's circular, 29.4.46, PP, 1846, no
691-11 (vol xxviii), p 1.
48 Stephen and Gladstone, mins, CO 318/167, f 108-14; Gladstone to
Elgin, 30.4.46 PP, 1846, no 691-11, p 41; Mathew (Bahamas) to
Gladstone, and min, 5.1.46, CO 23/122, f 14 and 25-8; Light to
Gladstone, 2 and 13.2.46, CO 111/231, f 148, and min, f 196; Gladstone
to Light, 3.5.46, PP, 1846, no 691-III (vol xxviii), p 77.
25
49 Mins on Light to Gladstone, 2 and 16.5.46, CO 111/233, f 32 and
89; Elgin to Gladstone, 5.1.46, Charles Grey (Barbados) to Stanley,
5.12.45, Gladstone to Grey, 22.1.46, and 1.7.46, PP, 1846, no 619-1
(xxviii), pp 41-57, 169, 181, and 220; to Harris, 29.4.46, add mss,
44528, f 40; to Elgin, 29.1.46, PP, 1846, no 691-1 (xxviii), p 27.
50 0 Macdonagh, The Pattern of Government (1961), p 86; Emigration
Commissioners to C 0, 18.5.46, CO 318/167, f 180, and Gladstone, min,
f 190; ib, 31.3.46, f 114 and PP, 1846, no 619-11 (vol xxviii), pp
10-11.
51 Light to Gladstone, 17.3.46, CO 111/232, f 32, and 1.5.46, CO
111/233, f 1; Gladstone to Light, 13.6.46 and 6.5.46, P^, 1846, no
691-11 (xxviii), pp 71-3; to Gipps, 4.1.46, HRA, xxiv, 680.
52 Min on Elgin to Gladstone, 6.5.46, CO 137/288, f 258; Light to
Gladstone. 3.1.46, CO 111/231, f 69, and min, f 74; Gomm to Stanley,
6.11.45, and Gladstone's min, CO 167/262.
53 Mem on colonies, 1835, in Knaplund, Gladstone and Imperial
Policy, pp 182-3; mem on W I Education, 7.4.35, add mss, 44724, ff
4-34; cf W E Gladstone, The State in its relations with the Church
(1838); to Elgin, 23.1.46, CO 137/285, f 216; to Sir Charles Grey,
24.4.46, PP, 1846, no 691-1 (xxviii), pp 163-4; to Harris, 22.5.46,
add mss, 44528, f 49.
54 To C Grey, 24.4.46, loc cit. n 53; MacLeod to Gladstone, 18 and
29.4.46, PP, 1846, no 323 (xxvii), p 333; Gladstone to Harris,
11.6.46, ib, p 335; to Eardley-Wilmot, drafts, 21.2.46, add mss,
44735, f 141ff, and 3.3.46, CO 280/182, ff 213-30.
55 Stephen to Gladstone, 3.10.37, add mss, 44355, f 257; Morley,
Gladstone, bk 2, ch 2. sec 3. vol i. p 127; Stephen, Journal,
Cambridge Univ Library, add mss, 7511, 5. 13, 22 and 7 Jan, pp 5, 13,
20 and 8.
26
56 Ib, 18 Feb, f 37; 26 June, f 72; 11 May, f 64.
57 Stephen to Napier, 24.4.46, MacVey Napier, Selections from
Correspondence (1879), p 525; Foot (ed), Gladstone Diaries, iii,
506-47.
58 Stephen, Journal, 2 March, f 44; 28 June, f 70; 12 July, f 74; 28
June, f 70.
59 Ib, 16 May, f 68; 13 March, f 49; 16 May, f 68; 3 March, f 44; 4
May, f 61; 4 March, f 46.
60 Ib, 4 March, f 46; 16 March, f 50; 19 March, f 51.
61 Ib, 1-7 April, f 56; 10 Feb. f 32; 12 March, f 48; 11 May ,f 64.
62 PD, 21.7.45 (Labouchere), 23.7.45 (Peel and Russell), Ixxxii,
859, 991 and 1010; Gladstone to Stephen, 8.4.46, add mss, 44528;
Stephen, Journal, 5 July, f 72.
63 PD, 14.6.49, cvi, 194-208; add mss, 44651, f 40 and 44528, f 72.
64 G C Lewis, Government of Dependencies (reprinted, OUP, 1891), pp
107 and 115-8; Mem on colonies, probably 1850, add mss, 44738, f
248-50.
65 A Doughty (ed), Elgin-Grey Correspondence, 1846-52 (Ottawa,
1937), 18.5.49, i, 351-2; Stephen, min, Jan 1846, CO 42/531, f 412-3;
Gladstone, draft to Cathcart, add mss, 44363, f 179.
27