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46.: The Straits Settlements 8 MARCH, 1867 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII - Public and Parliamentary Speeches Part I November 1850 - November 1868 [1850]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII - Public and Parliamentary Speeches Part I November 1850 - November 1868, ed. John M. Robson and Bruce L. Kinzer (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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46.

The Straits Settlements

8 MARCH, 1867

PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 185, cols. 1606–7. Reported in The Times, 9 March, p. 7. Myles William O’Reilly, M.P. for Longford, asked questions of Adderley, the Colonial Secretary, concerning the treatment of officers as a result of the transfer of the Settlement from the India to the Colonial Office. Adderley replied, saying in part that the Colonial Office did not communicate with the superseded officers because it dealt only with its own appointees, not those of the Indian Department. Mill then spoke.

mr. j. stuart mill said, he knew nothing of these particular cases, but he did know something of the Straits Settlements. He hoped that the general proceedings of the Colonial Office were not such as they appeared to have been in this instance. The reason why Parliament desired to transfer the Straits Settlements from the India to the Colonial Office was, he apprehended, because those settlements were totally different from India, in a totally different state of society, and had always been under a totally different system of government. There was no natural connection between the Straits Settlements and India; but as soon as the transfer was made it was thought necessary by the Colonial Office that the officers, who had been conducting the affairs of the Settlements, as seemed to be implied, upon the Indian system, should be superseded by others who would conduct them upon the colonial system. He wanted to know what the colonial system was. He hoped and trusted that there was no such thing. How could there be one system for the government of Demerara, Mauritius, the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, and Canada? What was the special fitness of a gentleman who had been employed in the administration of the affairs of one of those colonies, for the government of another of which he knew nothing, and in regard to which his experience in other places could supply him with no knowledge? What qualifications had such a man, that should render it necessary to appoint him to transact business of which he knew nothing, in the place of gentlemen who did understand it, and who had been carrying it on, not certainly upon the Indian system, and he believed upon no system whatever but the Straits Settlements system? He did not know upon what principle the government of the Straits Settlements was to be carried on by the Colonial Office; but he did know that the principle upon which such trusts were administered by the old East India Company was that of retaining a man in the position the duties of which he understood, and they would never have thought of removing a man from an office of which he understood all the details, and replacing him by one who knew nothing about them. He knew nothing of the gentlemen who had administered the government of the Straits Settlements. He was not even aware whether they desired to retain their offices: but he was sure that if they did, it would have been for the public advantage that they should be allowed to keep them. At all events, if they were to be removed, they ought to have been informed of that intention by some Department of the Government, and ought not to have been allowed to learn it from reading in a newspaper that their successors had been appointed.1 That that should have occurred was very discreditable to somebody; and for his own part he should have thought that it was the duty of the Colonial Office to communicate with these gentlemen, because they were still serving in a territory which had been transferred to that Department, and were not then acting under the India Office. They must, indeed, until they ceased to exercise their functions, have been in communication with the Colonial Office upon a hundred other subjects, and it was curious that the only topic upon which the Colonial Department did not think it necessary to intimate its sentiments to them, was that of their removal from their posts, and the appointment of their successors.

[1 ]See The Times, 6 Feb., 1867, p. 8, quoting from the London Gazette of 5 February.