Date: 1855
It is still too probable that a colonial minister's first business is to shut himself up in his study, and find out on the globe where the territories lie which he has to set about governing.  But we are beginning to learn how absurd it is to expect the machinery of the colonial office to do the necessary work ; to understand the growing magnitude of the business of colonisation, and to be prepared for a reconstitution and prodigious enlargement of the office which is to superintend it.  When this impending change is made, men will look back with astonishment on this list furnished in 1825, of the colonies whose affairs at head-quarters had to be managed by Mr Wilmot Horton and Mr Hay.