§ MR. BAILLIE COCHRANEsaid he felt great reluctance in the then state of the House to introduce a question of very considerable importance, but he was anxious that the case of a most distinguished body of gentlemen should be put fairly before Parliament and the country. They had had a discussion that night as to the injustice which had been done in an individual case, but the case he had to submit was one of injustice to a large class of most distinguished gentlemen. It was a case of justice to Governors of Colonies, but it also involved the best interests of the colonial service generally. For the last half century great attention had been paid to the case of pensions and superannuation allowances to meritorious officers. Several Committees had sat on the question from time to time. Of these the most important was appointed in 1856 and reported in 1857. In 1859 the present system was introduced, by which superannuation allowances were given out of the Consolidated Fund to all who had served the Government in civil employments; but Governors of Colonies were excluded from participation in the benefits, in the face of the new regulations for the diplomatic service. In the case of the diplomatic service the necessity of paying their officers and giving retiring allowances had been accepted. It was decided that an attaché should begin to count his time after three or four years' service, and the system of retiring allowances to begin after fifteen years' service was carried out to a much greater extent than formerly. It seemed extraordinary that only one class of public servants were excepted from the privilege of superannuation allowances or retiring pensions, that class being gentlemen of the highest consideration, who had filled offices of the highest responsibility in the State. They were more important than attachés, because they represented the person of the Sovereign. He believed the circumstance 1945 had arisen altogether from an oversight or misapprehension. It was never intended to leave them out; but the fact was they did not exactly come under the Superannuation Act of the 22 Vict. They were apt to speak of a Colonial Governor as if, when a gentleman took the situation of the Governor of a colony, he adopted the colony altogether and broke off entirely from the mother country. But there was no such thing as a Colonial Governor; he was the Governor of a colony, not a colonial Governor; he was the officer of the Home Government, and in constant intercourse with them. A colonial Judge or secretary was connected with the colony, and received his, instructions, as it were, from the colony; but the Governor received his instructions from home, and if not paid in the colony he would, in the last resort, come to the Home Government for his salary. They had forty-five colonies. In twenty-four of these the Governors were paid by the Home Government, Ten were paid indirectly by arrangements made with the colonies, the Home Government having sacrificed certain sums of money or land which they possessed when they gave responsible government to the colony —as in the case of Jamaica, where they gave up a claim of £200,000, on condition that the colony paid the Governor. In other cases they had thrown on the colonies the responsibility and charge of paying the Governor's salary. Was that a case in which when a man returned home they should refuse to give him the same privileges and retirement which had been given to other distinguished servants of the Crown? In Geelong and other Australian colonies a system of superannuation had been adopted, and the only persons who were omitted from its benefits were the Governors of the colony. He was quite certain that no eminent statesman who had filled the office of Secretary for the Colonies—whether his right hon. Friend below (Sir John Pakington), the Duke of Newcastle, or his right hon. Friend who had just entered on that important post— would desire to act unjustly; but the case he had to submit was a very grievous one. Formerly these appointments were very frequently conferred on officers of the army and navy, who while employed abroad moved on in the service, and received other appointments, perhaps, when they came home; but then there were not more than four or five colonies where the Governors were officers in either service. Then there was no branch in which there had been 1946 such great reductions. In nearly every colony the salary of the Governor had been reduced. He remembered that a relative of his who was formerly Governor of Newfoundland received a salary of £5,000 a year, with everything found; it was reduced to £2,000. In Jamaica and Mauritius the salary was also reduced, and the whole amount was scarcely sufficient to enable the Governor adequately to fill his post. Nothing could be saved. It was said these gentlemen should insure their lives for the benefit of their families. But they only held office for six years; they might be recalled, and the policies would lapse. No system could be more unsatisfactory than, that of underpaying the public servants, and no one could deny that it was great injustice that gentlemen of great ability, who had served their country for many years in distant colonies, might be brought home to starve—not a sixpence of pension being allowed to them. If a retired Governor had no resources of his own such might be his fate, although he had been the faithful representative of his Sovereign for twenty or thirty years. The practice of other countries was vastly different. In France not only were all public servants entitled to pensions, but their widows also, and their children, if orphans, were maintained at the public expense. The same system prevailed in Austria, and England was the only country where such injudicious economy was practised. Military and naval officers serving abroad were entitled to pensions, and to count the time they might have spent in the civil service, thus giving them an advantage which civil Governors did not enjoy. In a pamphlet written by Sir Edmund Head there was a passage which gave a painful description of the present system. Sir Edmund Head said—
In short, my deliberate opinion about colonial service is this:—The public, in this department, is the worst master a man worth anything can have. Under the present system there is no career, properly so called, and an able man who devotes himself to the colonies makes a great and serious mistake. It may be, in many cases, that a man cannot help himself; but I speak of those who have an opportunity of advisedly selecting their line of life. It is not a comfortable reflection, after spending the best part of one's life in the public service, to find that the provision thought equitable in other cases is denied specially in yours. Whether a man can or cannot do without it, there must be a certain bitterness of feeling generated by the contrast.He was sure the House would concur in 1947 the opinion thus expressed. It was certain that such an unfortunate state of things must have arisen from mistake, and from the facts not having been made known to Parliament and to the country. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been present, he being thoroughly acquainted with colonial matters, that right hon. Gentleman would not put forward upon the occasion any financial consideration to oppose an act of justice, and especially when the sacrifice demanded was really inconsiderable. When it was remembered that putting aside India, our colonies represent an extent of country twenty times larger than Great Britain and Ireland, with exports and imports continually increasing, having reached in the last year above £100,000,000, and a continually growing population, it could not be denied that it was most important to have men of character and ability to represent the Sovereign in those colonies. And what had these men to submit to? It would be invidious to mention names, but there were gentlemen who had spent forty years of their lives in various climates as servants of the Crown, and who were unemployed without a sixpence of retiring allowance. The service was not one in which were employed mere ordinary men whom it was desired to get out of the country, but it was a service which had been adorned by the most eminent names, such as Elgin, Sydenham, Denham, Normanby, Grey, Hamilton, and others. If the country availed itself of the services of such men it should pay them properly; but, as the matter stood, a Governor who had no private resources, and had saved nothing from his very limited salary, might come home to live and die in a garret, with a feeling of regret that he had ever entered the service of the country. It would be no answer to say that there was no difficulty in obtaining men to fill the posts under the present arrangements. That might be so, but it was no argument for not dealing justly with them. He regretted that he had not been able to state these facts in a, fuller House, but he had felt it to be his duty to state them, in order to enable the right hon. Gentleman opposite to express an opinion upon them, because it would give confidence to the gentlemen whose position he had described; and, at all events, he had laid the foundation for a consideration of the subject under more fortunate circumstances, and in a more adequate manner. When the facts were duly considered, he had no doubt that the 1948 decision of the House would be worthy of the dignity of the Crown, and in support of the interests of the colonial service.
§ MR. CARDWELLsaid, that when he had the honour of succeeding to the Colonial Office he found that his noble Friend who had preceded him in that Office had taken a deep interest in the question. A departmental letter had recently been sent to the Treasury, containing, in general terms, the same arguments which had been adduced by the hon. Member who had just spoken. Owing partly to the illness of his noble Friend, which all would regret, no answer had been received. The subject had been under his own consideration, and he had been in communication with the Chancellor of the Exchequer respecting it. In all such communications the Departments at first adopted different views. Those who stood in his position adopted much the same view as the hon. Member for Honiton, while it was the necessary duty of the guardians of the public purse to examine most minutely all the arguments that were advanced in favour of any increase in expenditure. He could only say that the subject had received the most careful consideration of his Department, and it was receiving the most earnest attention of the Treasury Department. He was not prepared to announce that it was in such a state as that the decision of Government could be given upon it; but he hoped before long to be able to make a statement respecting it. Meanwhile, he thought his hon. Friend would agree that it was not desirable that he (Mr. Cardwell) should enter into any discussion of the arguments either for or against the proposed change.
§ SIR JOHN PAKINGTONsaid, he would have been very well content to receive the answer which the right hon. Gentleman had just given, if that had been the first occasion upon which a similar reply had been given to the House, and he would be very well content to receive it then as the expression of feeling of the right hon. Gentleman himself. It showed, however, that the Motion of his hon. Friend had been very well timed, The noble Duke, whose illness they all regretted, had, he believed, been sincerely anxious to deal with the question according to its merits, but the real objection, as he had heard for a long time, came from the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. He regarded the existing state of the question as nothing more or less than a national scandal. Sir Edmund 1949 Head, who every one would acknowledge to be an able, honourable, and distinguished public servant, had stated his deliberate opinion that the Colonial branch was the worst Department of the public service, and that an able man devoting himself to that portion of the service made a serious mistake. The high spirit of English gentlemen would lead them to go wherever the Queen sent them, and spend their salaries to the last sixpence. But that was not the footing on which the question should stand. It was both impolitic and unjust to continue the existing; system, and when he had the honour of holding the seals of the Colonial Office he endeavoured to commence a change in the case of Sir Charles Grey, the Governor of Jamaica. The question was one of most pressing public policy. He hoped that the time would come when the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Cardwell) would be able to give the House a more satisfactory answer.
§ MR. MALINSsaid, he rose to express his great satisfaction at the observations which had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary, because he know the right hon. Gentleman was one of those persona who never made professions without an endeavour to give them effect. It so happened that he was acquainted with several gentlemen who had been colonial Governors, and no position could be more painful, or more disgraceful to the country, than to see gentlemen who at one time represented the Queen abroad, obliged to live, he would not say in garrets, but in obscure lodgings in obscure streets in London. That was a most unfortunate state of things. A distinction had been drawn between the diplomatic and the colonial service; but he should like to know why gentlemen connected with the Colonial Department were not equally entitled to pensions with those in the Diplomatic Department. The Colonial Governors, he believed, did not amount to more than fifty; and certainly the amount required would not exceed £10,000 or £15,000 a year. He was satisfied that the right hon. Gentleman would do his beat to carry out his promise. The question was too important to be burked, and he regretted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had not been present to hear the discussion. Daylight having been once let in upon the question, he felt satisfied that the discussion would lead to a valuable result.
§ LORD JOHN MANNERSsaid, he sincerely trusted that the indication which they had heard of the intentions of the Colonial Office would be verified by the result. He felt, however, that the few observations which fell from his right hon. Friend, showed the great difficulties which surrounded his path. He could not divest his mind of the remembrance of the debate which had taken place on the previous evening, when they had under discussion a subject of national and great political importance. A part of the question was the divergence of opinion between an Admiral upon a station and the Governor of a Colony. That Admiral, distinguished in his profession, had a future course of emolument, distinction, and promotion open to him on his return home, while the Governor, by whose decision the Admiral was guided, on returning, would be allowed to remain an unknown and unrecognized public servant. Was it politic, could it pay, to engage men to fill the office of Colonial Governor, in which they might have to determine questions of peace and war, and then, when they came home, having, perhaps, earned the respect and gratitude of their fellow countrymen abroad, condemn them probably to obscurity and poverty for the rest of their days? The time was come for the serious consideration of the question, and he trusted that the House would press upon Members of the Government, who were, perhaps, adverse to the proposal just made with so much ability by his hon. Friend, the duty and the necessity of some change in the present system.