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SIK CHARLES BRUCE, G.C.^l.G., ON 



selves, but their commerce was made completely subservient to 

 the interests of the Mother Country. In the second, having,, 

 by tampering with their internal affairs, lost the North 

 American Provinces, we sought to hold our Colonies more 

 firmly by governing them from home. In the third, we made 

 it our aim to provide them with Constitutions designed to train 

 them into a capacity to govern themselves with a view to their 

 ultimate separation as independent States. 



In all the possessions of the Crown up to the secession of 

 the Xorth American Colonies, the constitutional establishment 

 was formed after the model of the Mother Country, and consisted 

 of an Executive Council corresponding to the Cabinet and a 

 Leo;islatiire of two chambers, one nominated and the other 

 elected. But while the constitution resembled that of the 

 Mother Country in form, it differed in the essential particular 

 that the Executive Council was not responsible to Parliament, 

 The Executive and its departmental officers were the servants 

 of the Sovereign and subject to the control of his ministers 

 through his representative. Under this form of constitution, 

 the Colonies were allowed self-government in local affairs, but 

 their trade was limited by the strictest control in accordance 

 with the universally recognised principle of European colonisa- 

 tion at the time. 



The principle was concisely stated by Mr. Bryan Edwards in 

 his History of the British West Indies: — 



'• The leading principle of colonisation in all the maritime 

 States of Europe (Great Britain among the rest) was commercial 

 monopoly. The word monopoly in this case admitted a very 

 extensive interpretation. It comprehended the monopoly of 

 supply, the monopoly of colonial produce, and the monopoly of 

 manufacture. By the first, the colonists were prohibited front 

 resorting to foreign markets for the supply of their wants ; by 

 the second, they were compelled to bring tlieir chief staple 

 commodities to the IVIotlier Country alone ; and by the third, to 

 biing them to her in a raw or unmanufactured state that her 

 own manufacturers might secure to themselves all the advan- 

 tages arising from their further improvement." 



In the now general condemnation of the old colonial system^ 

 it is apt to be overlooked that a fundamental principle of the 

 system was the appropriation of the profits of monopoly to the 

 defence of the colonies in the widest sense of the term — 

 territorial security against the attacks of warlike natives and 

 foreign aggression, and the protection of their sea-borne 

 commerce. 



