The mother country continues to defend its colonies, as animals defend their young and parents their children. But the polyp does not defend its offspring, nor did the earliest colonizing powers succor their colonies. While not even the armed persuasion of Cambyses could induce Tyre to make war against Carthage, neither seems to have helped the other in its need. Carthage fought savagely for her Sicilian colonies, but in her own interests, not in theirs. Though the ties between a Greek metropolis and her colonies were closer, the one did not invariably defend the other. Corcyra refused the aid her daughter city Epidaurus sought, and the latter had to find it in the grandmother city of Corinth, who considered it her colony no less than that of Corcyra. The Dorian city was celebrated for her typical Greek patriotism, and she gladly assisted Syracuse to expel her Carthaginian conquerors. Rome fought for her colonies while her power lasted. France and England fought for their colonies, or rather for the possession of them, all through the eighteenth century. Spain has just fought for her last colonies, but as much against the colonists as against the foreign state that came to set them free. The mother country is also at the cost of keeping her colonies in a state of defence. The sum of £9,000 was in 1679 annually expended on the maintenance of English soldiers in Virginia and two West Indian colonies, and £1,000 on the fortifications of New York. Troops were often dispatched to assist the American colonies in special expeditions. The colonial military expenditure of Great Britain in 1859 amounted to nearly £1,200,000. In compliance with the findings of a Royal Commission, repeatedly reaffirmed by resolutions of Parliament, to the effect that the self-governing colonies ought to suffice for their own military defense, the troops were finally withdrawn in 1873, but she still maintains a garrison at Halifax and in Natal and a fleet in Australian waters, to which last the adjacent colonies contribute a fraction. Most of the self-governing colonies have at their own cost erected fortresses, and they maintain a defensive force. Two of them have stationary ships of war. They are willing and eager, moreover, to aid the mother country when she is in difficulties. When England was embroiled in Egypt or danger threatened in India and South Africa, several of these colonies offered to send, and one actually sent, troops to engage in wars in which they were not directly concerned. The head and the extremities are sometimes at variance because their interests conflict. The heart of such an empire is one. A stride has been taken toward organic unity.
Animals evolve special organs for the nursing of their young, and all colonizing countries seem to have created special departments for the supervision of their colonies. As the lacteal glands are only modified skin-glands, are in certain lower genera (the Monotremata) at first without teats and only in higher species develop into true mammæ, so the colonial department in the mother country is originally a mere adaptation of existing agencies. A rather perfect example of this stage is presented by the earliest of modern colonizing powers. The Casa de la Contratacion de las Indias, established soon after the discovery of South America, was organized in 1503. It granted licenses, equipped and despatched fleets, received merchandise for export and cargoes imported and contracted for their sale. It controlled the trade with Barbary and the Canaries and supervised the shipping business of Cadiz and Seville. Taking cognizance of all questions concerning marine trade, it was advised by two jurists. It also kept the Spanish government informed of all that concerned the colonies. It was a general board of colonial marine trade, and such it remained even when, a few years later, its more important colonial functions were absorbed by a higher department.
Where the colony has been founded by a commercial or by a colonizing company, the mother country controls the colony through the directors of the company; the office of the company is pro tanto the Colonial Office. Yet the later colonial department, as an organ of government, is not a development of these shipping, commercial or colonizing boards. It is a delegation of the sovereign authority. This is at first exercised directly by the sovereign as it was notably by Isabella and Ferdinand. It is next delegated, like almost all functions of the ruler, to his privy council, which assigns the business of colonies to a committee, which again may be set apart as an independent administrative body. The Spanish Council of the Indies, the separate English privy council for colonial affairs contemplated in the first Virginian charter, the Council of Nine appointed by the States-General of the Netherlands, the Swedish royal council, were such bodies. Their powers are everywhere the same. The superintendence of the whole colonial system is entrusted to them. They have supreme jurisdiction over all the colonies. They appoint and may recall viceroys, governors-general, governors and other local officers. They can veto laws and ordinances made by colonial rulers or legislatures. They frame constitutions for the colonies and enact laws. Through the governors and other officers sent out by them, they minutely supervise and incessantly interfere with the whole internal administration of each colony. The tendency of this supreme council is to divorce itself evermore from the privy council and become independent, till at last it is transformed into a ministerial department. Yet an amicable relationship (such as sometimes survives the divorce court) long remains. The Colonial Committee of the privy council in England was summoned as late as 1849, and the Judicial Committee still hears appeals from colonial courts of justice. The government of the commonwealth was naturally averse to the king’s council, and a body of special commissioners (Cromwell and Pym and Vane among them) was appointed to govern the colonies.
The Restoration did not at once return to the old system. On the contrary, a remarkable democratic advance was made. Recognizing that though ‘politics lie outside the profession of merchants’ (as the Swedish and British governments declared), yet trade is eminently within their scope, the restored monarchy set up a Council of Trade and Plantations, of whose forty members twenty were elected representatives of the five merchant companies and the incorporated trades. But there was ever a tendency, at least under the despotic rule of the Stuarts, to revert to the privy council, and in 1674 a standing committee of it was appointed Lords of the Committee of Trade and Plantations. The change appears to have been unimportant. Trade still governed the committee and shaped its policy.
The Board of Trade set up in 1696, rather by the House of Commons than by the Ministry, marked the more popular character of the revolution of 1688, and lasted for ninety years. As if foreshadowing the despotic character of the English reaction against the greater French revolution, this board was abolished by an act introduced by the chief reactionary—Edmund Burke. A committee of the Privy Council for Trade and Plantations was in 1786 again resorted to, and this committee in a shadowy manner survived (perhaps it still survives) till 1849, when it was for the last time summoned by Earl Grey. But the real administration of the colonies had long been in the hands of a department of state, directly responsible to Parliament, though it was still a department that dealt with other affairs as well. Specialization began in 1702 by the colonies being assigned to the Secretary for the Southern Department. In 1768 a separate department with a secretary was created for America, where almost all of the colonies were then situated. After the loss of most of the American colonies the new department was abolished in 1782. The colonies were then annexed to the home department. In 1794 the newly created war department nominally included the colonies, though these were not actually united with it till the Committee for Trade and Plantations ceased to act, seven years later. In 1854 a separate colonial department, with an independent secretary of state, was finally created.[A]
[A] The history of the relations between the government of Great Britain and her colonies will be found in many books, but best in Mr. Egerton’s comprehensive survey of British colonial policy.
As there were twenty-three secretaries in forty-one years, it will be readily understood that the practical work of administration remained with the permanent officials. With a longer tenure of office, previous training and thorough mastery of details, they held all the threads of colonial administration in their own hands. A newly-appointed minister, with little knowledge of the colonies and no acquaintance at all with the business of his department, was no match for an experienced officer who had colonial affairs at his fingers’ ends.
A mere clerk, unknown outside his office, though well known in literature, could recall a governor; another, whose very name was unknown till he died, recommended (that is, commanded on pain of dismissal) a recent Governor of New Zealand to give away to his ministers on a crucial exercise of the prerogative.
Nor is it in matters of routine alone that the permanent officers shape the course of colonial administration. A strong-minded minister with a policy of his own, like Lord Grey or Lord Carnarvon, will force his subordinates to carry it out, but even here a still stronger-minded under-secretary will often have his way. In 1848 Lord Grey, then Secretary for the Colonies, summoned the aged and moribund Committee (of the privy council) on Trade and Plantations to advise with him on the policy to be adopted towards the Australian colonies. The report was drafted by Sir James Stephen and we have no difficulty in discovering in its far-sighted proposals and masculine style the mind as well as the hand of the author of the essay on ‘Hildebrand.’ It is often said that a state department is inevitably wedded to routine. In the report just mentioned the striking feature is the outline of a system of Australian federation that is only now on the point of being realized. So far was the pedantic Colonial Office then, as it has often been before and since, ahead of its subject colonies.
The other colonizing countries have followed the same line of development. Beginning as direct delegations of the sovereign power to a branch, first constituent and then separated, of the sovereign’s council, the department of colonies has been in course of time made an independent ministry directly answerable to parliament. In bureaucratic France the colonies since 1854 have been associated with the navy. On the first of January, 1899, the empire on which the sun never set, having lost the last of the dependencies that were once its glory, abolished its colonial office. The sun had set on Spain to rise no more.