THE FOUNDING OF A COLONY.
SIR WALTER SCOTT'S old laird tells his son to plant trees, because " while we're sleeping they're growing." The British elector may look with somewhat similar feelings upon his Colonial possessions. While he is asleep, at any rate as regards them and their affairs, they are growing apace. We hear a great deal in the newspapers and in Parliament about a Colony when we first annex it, but we next day straightway proceed to forget all about it, until a war, or an Exhibition, or some such circumstance, recalls the fact that the foundations of a State have been silently laid and consolidated by the per- manent officials in the Colonial Office,—men whose names will most likely never be known to the world, but who, in spite of that, often do work which in Greek or Roman times would have ensured them divine honours. The Colonial Office no doubt does little or nothing for firmly established Colonies like New South Wales and Victoria. Over newly acquired territories, however, its work of supervision is constant, and in the quiet, dusty rooms of the Whitehall office are drawn up regulations and schemes of government which will most probably have a permanent influence on the destinies of the State to which they are applied. To realise how the Colonies grow while we are sleeping, and to understand the watchful care of the Colonial Office, one has only to turn the two Parliamentary papers which have just been issued, entitled respectively, " Report of the Special Commissioner for British New Guinea," and " Instruments and Instruction for erecting certain British Territory in New Guinea and the adjacent Islands into a separate Possession and Government by the name of British New Guinea, and for providing for the government thereof." These two documents taken together show a State in the making. We see the south- east corner of Papua passing out of the condition of a geographical expression into that of a definite political entity. Our latest Colonial possession constitutes in one sense a new departure in the history of our Colonies. As a rule, the Colonies have political relations only with the Mother-country. British New Guinea, however, is not in this sense autonomous. She looks politically not only towards England, but to the self-governing Colonies of the Australian Continent.. Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, New Zealand, Western Australia, South Australia, and Fiji have all made themselves, to a, greater or lesser extent, responsible for the acquisition of British New Guinea, and between them have pro- vided, or are to provide in the future, an annual sum of £15,000 a year to assist its finances. Besides this financial dependence upon the Australasian Colonies, appeals in cases civil and criminal are to be carried in the first instance to Queensland, which is thus bound to British New Guinea by a double tie.
The Constitution of British New Guinea is contained, not, like those of the great Colonies, in an Act of Parlia- ment, but in Letters Patent passed under the Great Seal. The provisions for governing its 135,000 inhabitants and its 150,755 square miles of territory are by no means elaborate. The principal are as follows. At present there is to be an Administrator, armed with a Seal of the "Posses- sion," and an Executive and a Legislative Council. No one is to be allowed to purchase land except from the Adminis- trator,—a regulation intended to prevent the quarrels which are sure to arise if traders are allowed to buy tracts as big as Wiltshire for a clasp knife and an old rifle. No deportation of the natives is to be permitted, and no firearms, ammunition, intoxicating liquors, or opium may be sold to them. The civil list is modestly provided for. The Administrator is to receive £1,500; his Private Secretary, £300 ; the Judicial Officer, £1,000 ; and the Secretary to the Government, £500. In addition to these provisions are a series of instructions to the Administrator, also passed under the Great Seal, which complete the structure of government planned in Whitehall, and to be set up in Papua. Most of them are formal, but im- portant matter is contained in the curious list of cases in which the Administrator is instructed to withhold his assent to Ordinances passed by the Legislative Council. Assent is, for instance, to be withheld when the Ordinance seeks to dissolve marriages, to grant the Administrator himself money or lands, to diminish or increase the salaries of public officers, or to impose special disabilities upon the natives. Such is the outline of the internal Constitution of British New Guinea. It must be mentioned, however, that the Administrator is placed to a certain extent under the control of the Governor of Queensland, and is instructed to report to him annually as to the welfare of the " Possession." We cannot help expressing our extreme regret that such an arrangement has been made. No doubt it is in many ways convenient ; but, at the same time, there are objections which far out- weigh all the advantages. As we have found on other occasions, it is all-important that a Colonial Governor should stand towards the Colony to which he is sent, and towards the Ministry of that Colony, in one relation only. He should be simply the constitutional sub-Sovereign, and should be called upon to exercise no functions which may interfere with or cross the functions he has to perform at the advice of his Ministers. The people of the Colony must be able to look upon him as their Governor alone, and not as a man who has other external duties to carry out. In South Africa we have seen that the duties of High Commissioner and of the Governor of Cape Colony may easily, when concentrated in one man, produce very serious difficulties. In a similar way, great inconveniences may arise in New Guinea. Suppose in a few years that some question arises in New Guinea in regard to our neighbours the Germans or the Dutch. As things stand, the settlement of any dispute will be com- plicated by the fact that the Queensland Ministry will very likely desire to have the matter settled in a particular way. No doubt the people of Queensland are deeply affected by all that concerns New Guinea, and -ought to be especially considered in questions relating to -the "Possession ;" but to give the Governor of Queensland authority over the Administrator, is to place him, on some occasion now unforeseen, in a very awkward position. His 'Ministry may strongly urge one course upon him, while his instructions from the Colonial Office .may necessitate a _different line of action. We sincerely trust, then, that the arrangement is only temporary, and that when a Governor is appointed for British New Guinea according to the pro- visions for so doing contained in the Letters Patent, it is intended that this source of future trouble shall be got rid of, and that the " Possession " shall ultimately be made as independent of Queensland as is Tasmania.
Did space allow, we should gladly say something about the present condition of British New Guinea as set forth in the Report of the Special Commissioner, which, under the disguise of a Parliamentary paper, is full of the most entertaining matter. Very entertaining are the notes from the journal of the Special Commissioner, especially in connection with his expedition to return certain natives to their homes in the Louisiade group of islands,—presumably natives who had been taken to Queensland under labour contracts. Apparently the returning savage was not always very welcome, as the following note shows :—" Before breakfast, Cholmondeley took two of our boys [i.e., natives] in the whale-boat to land them at their native cocoanut grove, about a mile from our anchorage. A dozen truculent and hungry- looking dogs came down to meet them, but our poor boys' were frightened out of their seven senses, for they were informed, it seems, with great candour, that their own relatives—six in number—had been killed and eaten. The gentlemen who had cleverly accomplished this gas- tronomic triumph were very anxious that our "boys' should land ; but they did not seem to see it, and Cholmondeley very properly brought them back to the vessel." Can- nibalism, however, to judge from the rest of the Report, is not really a very prominent feature of our new possession. An exceedingly interesting account of the Papuan super- stitions and customs is contained in the Report, but space will not allow us to quote from it. In one matter, at least, the Papuans are very modern. They seem to be in the habit of excusing all wrongful acts by saying that they were seized with a perfectly uncontrollable impulse, and had to obey it. It may be necessary to plead in correction an uncontrollable impulse to hang.
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