The System of British Colonial Administration of the Crown Colonies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Compared with the System Prevailing in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The most learned of historians would find it difficult to add much to the sum of knowledge in treating the subject of my paper. That subject is the comparison between the administration of certain colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and their administration in the nineteenth. The question is why, whereas in most colonies there has been steady progress from representative to responsible government-Lord Blachford was clearly wrong when he seemed to imply that Crown Colony government was the necessary preliminary to both these-in the West Indies, on the other hand, the tendency has been in the opposite direction, viz. from representative to Crown Colony government.