NEW SOUTH WALES AND PARLIAMENT. 291 



official and private letters amongst the Colonial Office papers, 

 appear to have been of the pleasantest kind. But he seems to 

 have been then, as he was in after life when he had attained 

 high office, one of the most colourless of men. He was of much 

 the same type as Lord Bathurst, but having been born a com- 

 moner, found it necessary to be just a little better informed, 

 a shade more efficient, than his titled chief. Though a Tory, 

 he was inclined to more liberal views that Lord Bathurst, 

 though in regard to New South Wales no opportunity was 

 taken for putting them in practice. His colonial policy was 

 vague and rather inconsistent. 



" We were not to consider," he said on one occasion, " these 

 Colonies merely as the appurtenances of grandeur, and the 

 gratification of national vanity, but to weigh the right of the 

 people and their individual happiness. ... To those who 

 thought that the Colonies were only an encumbrance on the 

 country, it might be that these reasons would have little weight ; 

 but with those who like himself considered them one of the 

 great sources of our glory, and one of the great supports of our 

 power, affording resources in war, and increasing our commerce 

 in peace, with those who thought them important under every 

 consideration, it would not be doubted that they had a right to 

 due attention. . . . " l Two years later in a debate on Army Esti- 

 mates in new colonies, he said : 



"The effect of that principle (on which was founded our 

 colonial policy) was, in compensation for a monopoly of com- 

 merce, to maintain the civil and military establishments of the 

 Colonies. Whenever that branch of the subject should be 

 brought forward he trusted he would be able to show that this 



o 



system of retaining in our own hands the sources of commercial 

 profit was justified by sound policy, and ought not to be rashly 

 abandoned." 2 



These two utterances, the only statements of general colon- 

 ial policy which he can be found to have made, are scarcely 

 illuminating. The consideration of the "rights" of colonists 

 and their support in war consort but ill with this statement of 



1 Hansard, vol. xxxvi., p. 68, agth April, 1817. Debate on abolition of Third 

 Secretary of State (for War and Colonies). 



2 Ibid., vol. xl., p. 267, ioth May, 1819. 



