The Sun.
London, England, 1849-02-21 00:00:00

Mtn

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1842,

An important decision was arrived at last evening
by the House of Commons in reference to our,system.of
colonial administration. According to the motion, as
proposed by Mr. BAILLIE, and as seconded by Mr.
HumE, it was resolved that a Select Committee shall
be appointed to inquire into the real character of the
grievances complained of in the Crown Colonies of
Ceylon and British Guiana, in connexion with the
conduct and government of those dependencies. The
Committee will thereupon be required to report their
opinion whether any measure can be adopted for the
redress of such grievances as may be proved to be of
an intolerable character, and whether, moreover, any
rational course can be followed towards the improve-
ment of the administrative machinery to which the
population of those colonies has hitherto been subjected.
Although the resolution was ultimately agreed to
without a division, the discussion which followed its
announcement was both lengthened and animated.
It provoked several of the most brilliant opponents of
the Government into the utterance of language not
♦ery far removed from the acrimonious ; nor can that
circumstance be matter of surprise even to the most
devoted adherent of the Ministry, so long as the mal-
administration of affairs in our colonial possessions
continues to be so glaring as at present, with all its
enormities, weaknesses, prevarications, extravagance,
chicanery, despotism, and harshness, with its
garbled dispatches and its enervated commerce,
with its oppressive taxation and its Governors
bankrupt in popularity. Notwithstanding the
ingenuity of the amendment with which
Mr. RICARDO endeavoured to blink the judgment of
the representatives, and to divert the attention of the
House from the enormous grievances which the mo-
tion was intended to stigmatise, the original resolu-
tion was accepted, with only a few minute verbal
emendations made by the proposer and the seconder
themselves. The reprehensible acts of the Cabinet
were not permitted to escape censure under cover of
so very shallow and transparent a subterfuge as
that the blow was furtively dealt at the prin-
ciples of Free-trade by the Honourable Member
for Inverness, and that the projected Commit-
tee was to constitute merely the advanced guard
of Protection. Nor was the open and
almost chivalrous defence of the Colonial
Minister by the Under-Secretary, and subsequently
by the First Lord of the Treasury, one jot more suc-
cessful. A withering discharge of accusa-
tions was directed from all quarters against
the , occupants of the Ministerial benches.
Earl GREY', unless " case-hardened" against the
stings of conscience, must have shrunk into the re-
cognition of his own manifold and multiform culpa-
bility, whoa liatouiLig lkst night, n the keers' ,

lery of the House of Commons, to the damning
charges levelled at his own department. The enthu-
siastic onslaught of Mr. BAILLIE, the formal and
matter-of-fact opposition of Mr. HUME, the statesman-
like self-possession with which Sir ROBERT PEEL
pronounced his very unimpassioned but very emphatic
expressions of condemnation, the perfunctory taunts
and excoriating sarcasms of Mr. DISRAELI, the ear-
nest indignation of Sir WILLIAM MOLESTIORTH, with
the tart and ‘:cutting personalities of Mr. ADDERLET,
all " told" powerfully against the Colonial Secretary,
and appeared to tally exactly with the temper and
opinions of the Parliament.
Ostensibly the purport of the resolution proposed
by the Hon. Representative of Inverness was
restricted to the consideration of the evil rule of the
English Government over her English colonies ;in re-
ference exclusively to Ceylon and Guiana as Crown
dependencies. In reality_ the motion amounts to a
direct vote of censure against the whole system
of administration introduced by Earl Gam- into the
Colonial Department. For convenience, and as
affording the readiest means of arriving at some
satisfactory conclusion upon this most unsatisfactory
subject, Mr. BAILLIE confined himself to the matter
as it was illustrated, and deplorably illustrated too,
in our Asiatic possession of Ceylon, and in our Ame-
rican possession of British Guiana. The melan-
choly facts relating to the Governorship of Lord
TORRINGTON in the former colony afforded the bit-
terest arguments against the whole of that pernicious
scheme, of which those unfortunate acts were merely
among the subordinate consequences. The reckless-
neasthe tyranny, the absolute cruelty of that Noble.
maAl government over the inhabitants of Ceylon serve,
indeed, to reveal in the blackest view imaginable the
evil tendency of the political despotism from which
it has emanated. While, in regard to the taxation
extorted from our colonists, it was declared by the
Hon. Member for Inverness that in Guiana it abso-
lutely amounted to 21. 6s. a head, or to about one-
sixth more per head than the taxation of Great
Britain—it was asserted by the lion. Member for
Southwark that the expenditure of Ceylon, charac-
terised at all times by extravagance, has of late years
enormously increased. While Mr. Hewse reminded
the House in deprecatory accents that Lord Ton-
RINGTON has repealed taxes in Ceylon to the amount of
30,0001. per annum, and has reduced the expenditure
during the first six months of 1648, by a sum of 20,0001.
per annum—the returns or census for 1843 from that
island inform us that its inhabitants numbered even
at that time almost as many as the population of this
gigantic metropolis—reaching, in fact, to precisely
1,421,631, and rendering thereby the momentary
and tardy reductions just spoken of, matters of abso-
lute insignificance. While the political crime, and
what is worse, the political blunder, is called to our
recollection by Mr. BAILLIE, that the Peer placed at
the head of the administration at Ceylon had caused
one of the native priests of Buddism to be shot in
his sacerdotal vestments, while, we are told by the
Member for Inverness, that the same Administrator
had further striven to estrange the people of Ceylon,
by unnecessarily subjecting their aristocrats to the
ignominy of flagellation previous to banishment—we
are reminded by the Member for Berwiek, that juries
had been illegally " packed " under the direction of
the same Nobleman. Certainly, with these glaring
testimonies of incompetence before us, it doe, appear
somewhat questionable whether my Lord TORRINGTON
—a Peer previously, "only known to fame as having
filled the office of a Lord of the Bedchamber "—would
have been elevated to the responsible office of
Governor of a noble colony like that of Ceylon, had
his name been merely WILLIAM SMITH, or plain
Joint BROWN. After the exposures which have re-
cently taken place it does not assuredly require the
authority of Mr. MERRITALE, the permanent Under-
Secretary, to demonstrate that enhanced expenditure
has not been accompanied by better colonial govern-
ment. Whether or not Mr. BAILLIE be correct in
maintaining that no remedy can be contrived until
the colonies have acquired a complete control over
their home expenditure, and a complete manage-
ment of their own affairs, it is rather a reckless no-
tion on the part of Sir WILLIAM MOLESWORTH, to
transfer Ceylon to the East India Company, simply
because Lord TORRINGTON has proved himself to be
, incompetent to be Governor, and because Earl GREY
has shown himself unable to direct with advantage,
either to the mother-country or her dependencies, the
numerous and intricate affairs of the Colonial Depart-
ment. Ever since the beginning of 1802, when Ceylon
passed from under the control of the Company,it has
continued to be entirely a Royal Government. To say
that Lord TORRINGTON'S mal- administration is a proof
that England cannot furnish, under the direction of
her Ministers, a fit person to occupy the rank of
Governor, would be as ridiculous as to assert that
Buddism could not find a votary among the Cinga-
lese, or the Hindoo worship a disciple among the Ma-
labars. So far as the Governor of Ceylon is con-
cerned, Parliament has pronounced its condemnation,
, and in doing so it has virtually directed its high cen-
sure against the Minister of the Crown who holds the
office of Colonial Secretary.

The movement in Sicily bears a much nearer
resemblance to the glorious English revolution of
1688 than it does either to the French revolution of
1793, or to the various movements which have taken
place throughout Europe during the past eventful
year. The Sicilian movement cannot, strictly speak-
ing, be denominated a revolution; it is, in fact, a
movement for a restoration of those constitutional
rights of which Sicily, up to the year 1816, had been
in the enjoyment for centuries. The first of the pre-
sent dynasty who was called to the Sicilian throne in
1734 rested his claims solely on the plea that the
non-observance of those rights by the SOVEREIGN
involved forfeiture of the crown, and when, in 1812,
the old constitution was reformed (a change, be it ob-
served, of not greater magnitude than that introduced
into the English Constitution in 1832 by the Reform
Act), each particular article was accepted by the
KING, and the constitution itself was g uaranteed to
Sicily by England. It appears, from the recently
published work of M. AMAMI, entitled " La Sicile et
les Bourbons," that from times anterior to the con-
quest of the island by the Normans, Sicily possessed