COLONIAL DEPARTMENT. (Hansard, 30 March 1855)

§ SIR JOHN PAKINGTON

would take the opportunity of giving notice of a contingent Motion with regard to the extraordinary state of the Colonial Department. He would not repeat the arguments he had used on a previous occasion; but he would venture to say that every day which had elapsed since he had called the attention of the house to the subject had tended to prove the justice of what he had then said. Nothing could be more inconvenient, if not dangerous, than the present condition of the Colonial Department. The House had been told on a former occasion that, during the absence of the noble Lord the Member for London at Vienna, the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Home Department (Sir George Grey) would discharge the duties of the Colonial Office; but they had since been informed 1406 that that right hon. Gentleman had found himself unequal to the discharge of the increased duties which had devolved upon him, and that latterly the duties of the Colonial Department had been performed by the noble Lord at the head of the Government. Now, although it was true that one Secretary of State might act for another Secretary of State, and so far, the discharge of the duties of the Colonial Office in the absence of the noble Lord, by the Home Secretary might not be irregular, still, he did not believe that any power existed on the part of the First Lord of the Treasury to act for a Secretary of state; so that any portion of the business of the Colonial Department which had been transacted by the noble Lord at the head of the Government had been transacted in an irregular manner; and he should say that in point of form that noble Lord had no power to sign any despatches or to put his name to any official documents connected with the Colonies in the stead of the Secretary of State. The real danger, however, was that it was impossible that such a state of things could be long protracted without a feeling being created in the Colonies that their interests were being neglected. A sufficient time had not elapsed since the commencement of the present extraordinary state of things to receive expressions of opinion from the Colonies with regard to it; but it could not be denied that, if protracted, it would create great dissatisfaction, and nothing could be more unwise on the part of any Government than to take any course which could justify a feeling on the part of the Colonies that their interests were being neglected. Having, on a previous occasion expressed his opinions with regard to the subject, he should, on the present occasion not repeat those opinions, but he begged to give notice that if, when Parliament reassembled, the noble Lord the Member for London had not returned to England, or if the management of the Colonial business was not in a more satisfactory state, he should take the first day he could obtain to submit a Motion to the House, having reference to the Colonial Office.