British Attitudes to the Colonies, ca. 1820-1850 | Journal of British Studies | Cambridge Core (original) (raw)

Extract

In an article in the Journal of British Studies in November 1965, Helen Taft Manning, referring particularly to the period 1830 to 1850, asked the question, “Who ran the British Empire?” She was especially concerned with the influence of the famous James Stephen, but her question raises matters of wider concern.

“Patterns of historical writing are notoriously difficult to change,” she wrote.

Much of what is still being written about colonial administration in the nineteenth-century British Empire rests on the partisan and even malicious writings of critics of the Government in England in the 1830s and '40s who had never seen the colonial correspondence and were unfamiliar with existing conditions in the distant colonies. The impression conveyed in most textbooks is that the Colonial Office after 1815 was a well-established bureaucracy concerned with the policies of the mother country in the overseas possessions, and that those policies changed very slowly and only under pressure. Initially Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Charles Buller were responsible for this Colonial Office legend, but it was soon accepted by most of the people who had business to transact there.

This legend is still to be found, as Mrs. Manning says, in general textbooks, among the more important of the fairly recent ones being E. L. Woodward's Age of Reform, and more surprisingly in the second volume of the Cambridge History of the British Empire. Of course, Wakefield and the so-called colonial reformers are well recognized as propagandists.

References

  1. Manning, Helen Taft, “Who Ran the British Empire 1830-1850?” J.B.S., V (1965), 88CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On another such “pattern,” cf. Shaw, A. G. L., Heroes and Villains in History — Bourke and Darling in New South Wales (Sydney, 1966)Google Scholar.

  2. Spedding, James, Edinburgh Review, LXXI (1840), 517–20Google Scholar. For the attribution of authorship of articles in the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, see Houghton, Walter E. (ed.), The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900 (Toronto, 1966)Google Scholar.

  3. Tucker, Graham, Progress and Profits in British Economic Thought (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 184–86Google Scholar. James Stephen thought that Edward Gibbon Wakefield's theory was “ignorance taking the guise of philosophy.” PRO, minute, 1841, CO 13/20.

  4. Stephen objected to “peremptory legislation about things of their own nature flexible” and thought that “the unqualified doctrine of never giving away land” had caused “much mischief.” PRO, minute, 20 Aug., 1846, CO 280/201, minute on Lord Falkland to E. G. Stanley, 21 Dec, 1841, CO 217/178. On land policy, however, the Wakefieldians had more influence than he. For contemporary criticisms from Australia, see General Richard Bourke to Lord Glenelg, 10 Oct., 1835, Sir George Gipps to Lord John Russell, memo, on Disposal of Lands, 19 Dec., 1840, Historical Records of Australia, first series, XVII, 156, and XXI, 133; Macarthur, James, New South Wales: Its Present State and Future Prospects (London, 1837)Google Scholar; N.S.W. Legislative Council, Committee on the Crown Land Sales Act, Report, Votes and Proceedings, 1843, IIGoogle Scholar, and Committee on Crown Land Grievances, Report, ibid., 1844, II. An Australian would certainly have disagreed violently with Wakefield's assertion that “the prosperity of … Port Phillip … has been wholly derived from a realisation, however defective, of [the reformers'] economical theory.” Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, A View of the Art of Colonization (1849), ed. Collier, James (Oxford, 1914), p. 53Google Scholar. Wakefield clearly understood nothing about “squatting” and very little about grazing. ibid., letters lxvi, lxiv. It is doubtful that Viscount Howick (3rd Earl Grey) understood much about them either. See Durham University, memo, on Disposal of Lands in New South Wales, 11 May, 1838, Grey Papers.

  5. Buller, Charles, Responsible Government (London, 1840)Google Scholar, reprinted in Wrong, E. M., Charles Buller and Responsible Government (Oxford, 1926)Google Scholar. J. A. Roebuck had similarly criticized R. W. Hay, Stephen's predecessor, in Parliament, on 2 Apr., 1835. 3 Hansard 27: 653.

  6. Ibid. 82: 859, 991, 1011 (21, 23 July, 1845).

  7. See esp. Knaplund, Paul, James Stephen and the British Colonial System (Madison, 1953)Google Scholar, and “Mr. Oversecretary Stephen,” J.M.H., I (1929), 40–66Google Scholar.

  8. Wakefield, , Art of Colonization, p. 37Google Scholar; Buller, Responsible Government, ch. vi.

  9. W. E. Gladstone to H. A. Aglionby, 18 Mar., 1846, quoted in Knaplund, , “Stephen,” J.M.H., I, 41, n. 4Google Scholar; Russell, , 3 Hansard 82: 1010 (23 July, 1845)Google Scholar.

  10. James Stephen, evidence to Select Committee on Civil Government of Canada, Report, pp. 229-30, 242, in Parliamentary Papers, 1828 (Cmd. 569), VII, 377Google Scholar.

  11. Stephen's reports, CO 323/45, fol. 199, CO 323/50, fol. 17, quoted in Knaplund, , James Stephen, pp. 267–68Google Scholar.

  12. Stephen's reports, CO 323/50, fols. 129, 247, CO 323/49, fol. 132, CO 323/56, fol. 169, quoted in ibid., pp. 107-09, 121, 132-33. Cf. Burn, W. L., Emancipation and Apprenticeship in the British West Indies (London, 1937), p. 168Google Scholar.

  13. Stephen's minute, 15 Apr., 1835, CO 384/38, fol. 63, quoted in MacDonagh, O., Pattern of Government Growth, 1800-1860 (London, 1861), p. 86Google Scholar; cf. p. 146.

  14. PRO, Stephen's minutes, 22 Aug., 1846, CO 280/201; cf. CO 201/303, fol. 270, and on Land and Emigration Commissioners to Stephen, 22 July, 1842, CO 384/71.

  15. PRO, Stephen's minute on Gipps to Russell, 1 May, 1841, CO 201/309, fol. 206.

  16. Morrell, W. P., British Colonial Policy in the Age of Peel and Russell (Oxford, 1930), p. 43Google Scholar.

  17. PRO, minutes on Gipps to Stanley, 21 Aug., 1844, 31 Jan., 1845, CO 201/347 and 365.

  18. PRO, minutes, 4 Jan., 1836, CO 201/246, fol. 344, 11 Oct., 1835, CO 201/248, fol. 235, 1837, CO 201/263, fol. 72.

  19. PRO, minutes on Bourke to Glenelg, 8 Sep., 1837, CO 201/262, on Francis Baring to Stephen, 9 Oct., 1838, CO 201/279, fol. 257, on Gipps to Glenelg, 3 Nov., 1838, CO 201/277, on Sir Charles Trevelyan to Stephen, 23 July, 1840, CO 280/126, on Sir John Eardley-Wilmot, Governor of Van Diemen's Land, to Stanley, 19 Nov., 15, 17 Dec, 1845, CO 280/185 and 186.

  20. PRO, minute on Gipps to Glenelg, 29 Mar., 1839, CO 201/285.

  21. Minute, 11 Dec., 1841, CO 295/135, quoted in Morrell, , British Colonial Policy, p. 155Google Scholar; Cumpston, I. M., Indians Overseas in British Territories, 1834-1834 (Oxford, 1953), p. 56Google Scholar; minute, 1840, CO 188/69, quoted in Knaplund, , ]ames Stephen, pp. 182–83Google Scholar.

  22. Minute on Bourke to Glenelg, 6 Sep., 1837, CO 201/262, report on Prince Edward Island Acts, 14 July, 1837, CO 323/52, on New Zealand, Stephen to Howick, Feb. 1845, quoted in Morrell, , British Colonial Policy, p. 104nGoogle Scholar; on Jamaica, memo, by Stephen, 17 Sep., 1835, CO 137/200, Glenelg to Lord Sligo, 17 Sep., 1835, CO 138/57, quoted in Burn, Emancipation and Apprenticeship, pp. 294-95.

  23. Head, F. B., Narrative (London, 1839), pp. 326–27Google Scholar. J. B. Robinson, Chief Justice of Upper Canada, in London on sick-leave in 1839, told Sir George Arthur, then Lieut. Governor of Upper Canada, that Head blamed Stephen “most erroneously” and said that Glenelg was “much influenced by Sir George Grey.” However, Robinson later argued that while Lord Normanby was at the Colonial Office, since he regarded himself merely as a “_locum tenens_” and was for some time engaged in defending his Irish administration before a hostile House of Lords committee, “matters rested entirely” with Stephen. Robinson to Arthur, 4 Mar., 4 Sep., 1839, in Sanderson, C. R. (ed.), The Arthur Papers (Toronto, 1957), II, 71, 231Google Scholar.

  24. Arthur contended that British policy towards Canada was dictated by the pressure of “public sentiment in Great Britain.” Letters, 8, 24 June, 1839, in ibid., II, 163, 178.

  25. Galbraith, John S., “Myths of the ‘Little England’ Era,” A.H.R., LXVII (1961–1962), 39Google Scholar.

  26. 3 Hansard 37: 111 (8 Mar., 1837)Google Scholar, and 40: 546 (26 Jan., 1838).

  27. Manning, Helen Taft, British Colonial Government ajter the American Revolution (New Haven, 1933), p. 540Google Scholar.

  28. Cf. Gollin, A., Proconsul in Politics (London, 1964), pp. 140 ff.Google Scholar

  29. Morison, J. L., in Cambridge History of the British Empire, II (Cambridge, 1940), 441Google Scholar.

  30. Russell to Lord Melbourne, 2 Feb., 1839, in Russell, Rollo (ed.), Early Correspondence of Lord John Russell (London, 1913), II, 244–45Google Scholar; Howick to Melbourne, 1839, in Sanders, L. C. (ed.), Lord Melbourne's Papers (London, 1889), p. 424Google Scholar. Robinson thought that Glenelg seemed to “know nothing, care nothing and do nothing” about the colonies. Robinson to Arthur, 4 Mar., 1839, in Sanderson, , Arthur Papers, II, 72Google Scholar.

  31. Grey to Lord Elgin, 27 Jan., 1851, quoted in Morrell, , British Colonial Policy, p. 458Google Scholar.

  32. Quoted in Cowan, Helen I., British Emigration to British North America (Toronto, 1961), p. 107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

  33. See the titles published in the United Kingdom, listed in Ferguson, J. A., Bibliography of Australia (Sydney, 1941–1955), I–IV, 1784–1850Google Scholar.

  34. Fay, C. R., in Cambridge History of the British Empire, II, 388Google Scholar.

  35. Quarterly Review, V (1811), 416–17Google Scholar, and VI (1811), 496-97.

  36. Ibid., XXXIX (1829), 340.

  37. BM, memo, on colonies, n.d., Add. MSS, 44738, quoted in Galbraith, , “Myths,” A.H.R., LXVII, 38Google Scholar.

  38. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. IV, ch. vii.

  39. Speeches of the Right Honourable William Huskisson (London, 1831), II, 287 (2 May, 1828)Google Scholar.

  40. de Vere, Aubrey, Edinburgh Review, XCI (1849), 61–62Google Scholar.

  41. Ibid. 86: 1165-67 (25 May, 1846).

  42. Ibid. 68: 501 (6 Apr., 1843), and 81: 667 (17 June, 1845); Edinburgh Review, XCIII (1851), 496.Google Scholar

  43. 3 Hansard 88: 907 (20 Aug., 1846)Google Scholar; Henry, Earl Grey, The Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration (London, 1853), I, 281–82Google Scholar.

  44. Russell to Grey, 19 Aug., 1849, quoted in Galbraith, , “Myths,” A.H.R., LXVII, 38Google Scholar.

  45. For the distinction between “formal” and “informal” empire, see Gallagher, John and Robinson, Ronald, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” Econ. Hist. Rev., second series, VI (1953), 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Fay, , in Cambridge History of the British Empire, II, 399.Google Scholar

  46. Harlow, V. T., The Founding of the Second British Empire, 1763-1793, II, New Continents and Changing Values (London, 1964), 1Google Scholar.

  47. Edinburgh Review, XCI (1849), 57Google Scholar; cf. 3 Hansard 48: 841–919 (25 June, 1839)Google Scholar; Lord Dalhousie, ibid. 70: 575 (4 July, 1843, House of Lords).

  48. Horton, R. J. Wilmot, Causes and Remedies of Pauperism in the United Kingdom Considered (London, 1830)Google Scholar, A Letter to the Anonymous Author of England and America (London, 1834)Google Scholar, and Ireland and Canada (London, 1839)Google Scholar; Galt, John, Autobiography (London, 1833)Google Scholar; Rolph, T., A Descriptive and Statistical Account of Canada (London, 1841)Google Scholar, and Emigration and Colonisation (London, 1844)Google Scholar; Gourlay, R. F., General Introduction to Statistical Accounts of Upper Canada (London, 1822)Google Scholar; SirHead, Francis Bond, The Emigrant (London, 1846)Google Scholar; Lang, J. D., Transportation and Colonization (London, 1837)Google Scholar, Emigration to Port Phillip (London, 1848)Google Scholar, and Juvenile Pauper Emigration (London, 1848)Google Scholar; Whately, Richard, Thoughts on Secondary Punishment (London, 1832)Google Scholar; Jackson, J. A., National Emigration (London, 1848)Google Scholar; Scrope, G. Poulett, Extracts of Letters from Persons Who Emigrated (London, 1832)Google Scholar; Merivale, H., Lectures on Colonisation and Colonies (London, 1841–1842)Google Scholar; Porter, G. R., Progress of the Nation (London, 1851)Google Scholar; Roebuck, J. A., The Colonies of England (London, 1849)Google Scholar; Anon., The Emigrants Guide to New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land, Upper Canada, Lower Canada and New Brunswick (London, 1835)Google Scholar.

  49. Robbins, Lionel, Robert Torrens and the Evolution of Classical Economics (London, 1958), p. 144Google Scholar. Cf. Winch, D., Classical Political Economy and the Colonies (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Corry, B. A., Money, Savings and Investment in England, 1800-1850 (London, 1962), pp. 37–38Google Scholar.

  50. Mill, James, “Colonies,” in Supplement to Encyclopaedia Britannica (1823)Google Scholar. T. R. Malthus, evidence to Select Committee on Emigration, Third Report, q. 323 ff., in Parl. Papers, 1826-27 (Cmd. 550), V, 225. Whately, Richard, Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (London, 1832)Google Scholar, and “Emigration to Canada,” Quarterly Review, XXIII (1820), 373Google Scholar. McCulloch, J. R., Edinburgh Review, XLV (1826), 49Google Scholar, and XLIX (1829), 300. Senior, Nassau, Remarks on Emigration (London, 1831)Google Scholar, and An Outline of the Science of Political Economy (London, 1836)Google Scholar. Torrens, Robert, Colonisation of South Australia (London, 1835)Google Scholar, Minute on Evidence Given by Mr. Wakefield before the Committee on the Affairs of South Australia (London, 1841)Google Scholar, and Self-Supporting Colonisation (London, 1847)Google Scholar; cf. Robbins, Robert Torrens. Mill, John Stuart, Principles of Political Economy (1848), ed. Ashley, W. J. (London, 1909), p. 971Google Scholar; cf. ibid., Bk. IV, ch. iv.

  51. Prospectus, quoted, S.C. on Emigration, Third Report, p. 461, in Part. Papers, 1826–1827, V, 225Google Scholar. For Gait, see n. 55.

  52. Wakefield, , Art of Colonization, p. 138Google Scholar; for Buller, see ibid., p. 488.

  53. Third Report, sec. vii, p. 35, in Parl. Papers, 1826–1827, VGoogle Scholar.

  54. Horton, , Hansard, n.s., 16: 480 (15 Feb., 1827)Google Scholar; cf. Howick, , 3 Hansard 48: 841 ff. (25 June, 1839)Google Scholar, and Russell, Viscount Mahon, Stanley, ibid. 57: 984-97 (22 Apr., 1841).

  55. Lucas, C. P. (ed.), Lord Durham's Report on the Affairs of British North America (Oxford, 1912), II, 13Google Scholar; cf. appendix on land policy by Charles Buller, ibid., III, 37.

  56. Viscount Goderich to Sir John Colborne, quoted in Manning, Helen Taft, “The Colonial Policy of the Whig Ministers, 1830-37,” C.H.R., XXXIII (1952), 222Google Scholar.

  57. Gladstone, memo., quoted in Knaplund, Paul, Gladstone and Britain's Imperial Policy (London, 1927), p. 25Google Scholar; cf. 3 Hansard 44: 730 (29 May, 1840)Google Scholar.

  58. 18 Jan., 1840, quoted in Brown, George W., “The Durham Report and the Upper Canadian Scene,” C.H.R., XX (1939), 151Google Scholar.

  59. Mackenzie, W. L., quoted in Manning, “Colonial Policy,” C.H.R., XXXIII, 203Google Scholar; Gladstone, memo., quoted in Galbraith, , “Myths,” A.H.R., LXVII, 37Google Scholar; cf. Stokes, Eric, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford, 1959)Google Scholar.

  60. For a measured but weighty criticism of the “pre-rebellion” Canadian administration, see C. P. Thomson (Lord Sydenham) to Russell, 15 Dec., 1839, in Sanderson, , Arthur Papers, II, 345–52Google Scholar.

  61. Since, wrote Buller, colonial land policy “cannot be advantageously or effectively carried out by any other than the supreme and central authority of the Empire,” it was “the plain duty [my italics] of the Imperial Legislature to interfere.” Lucas, Lord Durham's Report, III, 37; Grey, , Colonial Policy, I, 319Google Scholar. Wakefield was prepared to leave land administration to the colonies, so long as “the Imperial government” established the land policy to be followed. Wakefield, , Art of Colonization, p. 440Google Scholar.

  62. See Shaw, A. G. L., “Orders from Downing Street,” Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, LIV (1968)Google Scholar; Phillipp, June, “Wakefieldian Influence in New South Wales,” Historical Studies, Australia and New Zealand, IX (1960), 170 ff.Google Scholar; McKay, A. (ed.), Journals of the Land Commissioners of Van Diemen's Land (Hobart, 1962), p. vGoogle Scholar. Burroughs, Peter, Britain and Australia, 1831-55, a Study in Imperial Relations and Crown Lands Administration (Oxford, 1967), ch. iiGoogle Scholar, seems largely to accept these conclusions, despite earlier criticism in “Wakefield and the Ripon Land Regulations,” Historical Studies, Australia and New Zealand, XI (1965), 452 ff.Google Scholar

  63. Goderich to Sir Ralph Darling, 23 Jan., 1831, Historical Records of Australia, first series, XVI, 34Google Scholar; Quarterly Review, XLIII (1830), 165–71Google Scholar, and XLV (1831), 142-43; Bourke to Goderich, 27 Feb., 30 Apr., 1832, Goderich to Bourke, 26, 29 Sep., 1831, Historical Records of Australia, first series, XVI, 532, 624, 376Google Scholar.

  64. Wakefield argued that it did not matter what the land revenue was spent on. Wakefield, , Art of Colonization, p. 376Google Scholar. Most of the reformers, however, thought it should be used to assist emigration. Cf. S.C. on Disposal of Colonial Waste Lands, Report and Evidence, in Pad. Papers, 1836 (Cmd. 512), XI.

  65. T. F. Eliot, evidence to House of Lords, S.C. on Colonisation from Ireland, First Report, q. 4383, in ibid., 1847 (Cmd. 737), VI, 1.

  66. Wakefield, , Art of Colonization, p. 25Google Scholar; cf. N.S.W. Legislative Council, Committee on Crown Land Grievances, Report, Votes and Proceedings, 1844, IIGoogle Scholar. The “sufficient price” retarded settlement in Canada until it was abandoned in 1843.

  67. Russell to Grey, quoted in Galbraith, , “Myths,” A.H.R., LXVII, 35Google Scholar; Stephen to Russell, 11 Oct., 1839, quoted in Knaplund, , “Stephen,” J.M.H., I, 56, n. 56Google Scholar; Stephen to Grey, 15 Jan., 1850, quoted in Morrell, , British Colonial Policy, p. 45Google Scholar. Like Stephen, Buller had supported the suspension of the Jamaican constitution in 1839. In the debate on the Canadian Rebellion Losses Act, Elgin's support of his ministers was upheld by the votes of the Peelites and Whigs, as well as the Radicals. 3 Hansard 106: 191 ff., 355 ff. (14, 15 June, 1849).

  68. Ibid. 75: 64-65 (30 Apr., 1844); for Wakefield's views, see Morrell, , British Colonial Policy, p. 63Google Scholar.

  69. Gouger, Robert, South Australia in 1837 (London, 1837), p. 1Google Scholar, quoted in Winch, , Classical Political Economy, pp. 114–15Google Scholar.

  70. Bodelsen, C. A., Studies in Mid-Victorian Imperialism (London, 1924, 1963), pp. 19–20Google Scholar.

  71. See Russell, and SirMolesworth, William, 3 Hansard 108: 537 ff., 575–77 (8 Feb., 1850)Google Scholar; cf. ibid. 106: 937 ff. (26 June, 1849), and 115: 1364 (10 Apr., 1851).

  72. See Semmel, Bernard, “The Philosophical Radicals and the Colonies,” J.E.H., XXI (1961), 513Google Scholar; Winch, D., “The Classical Economist and the Case for Colonisation,” Economica, XXX (1963), 387CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Classical Political Economy.

  73. Molesworth, , 3 Hansard 37: 597–601 (16 Mar., 1837)Google Scholar.

  74. Buller, ibid. 68: 490-507 (6 Apr., 1843); cf. Wakefield, Art of Colonization, letter xvi.