OBSERVATIONS. (Hansard, 8 March 1867)

§ MR. O'REILLY
said, he rose to call attention to the position of the present Officers of the Straits Settlement, and to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether he can state which of these Officers will be retained and which superseded; and, with regard to the latter, what measures are proposed to prevent the transfer of the Settlement from the Indian to the Colonial Government, injuriously affecting their position and future career? The great Settlement at Singapore was last year transferred from the Indian to the Colonial Government. At the time of the transfer the officials were servants of the Indian Government. Many of them had served long and faithfully and looked forward to the service for a career during their lives, and at the completion of their term of service to a pension and promotion. They might be sent back to the Indian service or transferred to the colonial service. They nominally belonged to different branches of the Indian Government; but many of them had been for twenty years attached to the Straits Settlements, and had become familiar with the Malay and other languages spoken there. If they went back to the Indian service they would have no chance of promotion from the Indian Government, to which they nominally belonged. If they were transferred to the Colonial Government they would lose their right to Indian pensions. He believed it was in the contemplation of the late Government that the junior officers should go back to the Indian service, and that the senior officers should retain their Indian pensions and continue in the employment of the Colonial Government. He desired to know the decision of the present Colonial Office on this point. He would take the case of the Governor first—a general in the Indian army, who had served for better than thirty years 1604 with distinction in war and peace, and who had administered the Government of the Straits Settlements for six years to the satisfaction of those who served under him, and of the inhabitants of the Straits. Viscount Halifax, when leaving the Indian Office, expressed his high opinion of the zeal and energy with which the Governor of the Straits Settlements had carried on the public service. Probably he might have wished to retire, and it was natural to expect that in giving up his command his convenience might be considered. The authorities at the Colonial Office had been in communication with the Governor, but he never received from them the slightest intimation as to any change in his position. He did not know that it was intended to supersede him and appoint another Governor until he saw the appointment of his successor in the newspaper. The next officer to whom the change must bring considerable loss was the Colonial Secretary, who being nominally a lieutenant-colonel of Madras artillery would have nothing but the half-pay of that rank to fall back upon, and who, too, had no knowledge that he was to be superseded until he saw the appointment of his successor in a newspaper. He thought that these officers might have received a little more courtesy at the hands of the Colonial Office. He wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether he could state which of these Officers would be retained, and which superseded; and, with regard to the latter, what measures were proposed to prevent the transfer of the Settlement from the Indian to the Colonial Government, injuriously affecting their position and future career?

§ MR. ADDERLEY
said, he understood from the hon. Gentleman that he did not impugn the proceeding of Parliament in making the change in question. When the Government came into office they had little more to do than pass the Bill through Parliament and take the necessary steps under it. It was considered absolutely necessary that the principal colonial offices should not be left in the hands of the Indian officers. It was thought that on account of the different systems of the Department it was necessary to substitute colonial for Indian officers. He might say if there had been any want of courtesy in doing this he was not aware of it, nor could the Colonial Office be, because the communication to the out-going Indian officer must have been made from the 1605 Indian Department. If it had not communicated the change in time he was not aware of the fact, and if it had so occurred it was much to be deplored, and he regretted it very much. Not a moment was lost after the Act was passed in carrying out the arrangements that were considered essential to it. The Colonial Office and the Indian Department conferred together, and it was decided at once that all un-covenanted officers should remain in their place, inasmuch as they were looked on as permanently attached to the Settlement, and they were retained on their full pay and pension. As to the covenanted or commissioned officers, they were of a class always changing, and in this case that required to be changed for the purpose of carrying out the new departmental system, with the exception of Captain M'Mahon, who was retained as the engineer and superintendent of works. The services of some of these officers were temporarily retained; but as a general rule the covenanted officers would be sent back to the Indian Government to re-occupy the position from which they had been only temporarily removed. It was distinctly understood when they took their offices that the appointment was only a temporary dissociation from services wider the Indian Government, the usual lime in each case had expired, and where the offices they had so held were more lucrative than those they left and were to return to, they had had all the expected benefit. The hon. Gentleman asked him what measures had been taken to secure these officers from being injured by the transfer. He presumed the hon. Gentleman referred to the ultimate expectations of these officers as to pensions. The Earl of Carnarvon had communicated to the Indian Government that it had been arranged to apply to them the same system as was applied to the Hong Kong and Ceylon services, and officers who retired from age, fifty-five being the period at which they would do so, they would be entitled to one-twelfth of their salaries for pension. The officers would be liberally dealt with in regard to these pensions, their services in each place would count, and he understood, though as Under Secretary he personally knew nothing of such appointments, that all that could be done had been done.

§ MR. O'REILLY
Was it not the duty of the Colonial Office to communicate to the officers that they were superseded?

§ MR. ADDERLEY
It is the duty of every Department to communicate with its 1606 own officers. The Colonial Office does not communicate with the officers of the Indian Department.

§ 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 Capo 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 1607 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. 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 winch 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.

§ MR. ADDERLEY
said, that when he spoke of a change of system, he did not refer to a change in the system of government in the locality, but as to a change in the system of communication with the office at home as between the India Office and the Colonial Office.

§ MR. OLIPHANT
said, he did not comprehend whether the right hon. Gentleman meant that the system on which the Straits Settlement was administered was to be totally changed.

§ MR. ADDERLEY
said, it was merely the system of communication with the Departments that was changed.

§ MR. OLIPHANT
said, that with regard to the change of system, he did not see why the transfer from one Department to another should render it impossible to provide properly for old servants. It had given very great dissatisfaction that gentlemen who had been in the Settlements for a very long while should be changed for entire strangers who know nothing of the language of the country, and who were not so well accustomed, and who, therefore, were not so well able to perform the duties. It was very hard, too, that gentlemen who had fulfilled their duties satisfactorily for many years should be withdrawn without having proper provision made for them. It was said that those who returned to India would join their 1608 regiments, but the House could readily imagine that after perhaps twenty years' absence, the duties of, say a lieutenant-colonel, would have to be learned over again. He hoped the Government would take the case of these gentlemen into their consideration.