Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1898: Volume 54, November 1898Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1898: Volume 54, November 1898
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
As the governor's authority wanes, his dignity waxes. After 1632 a
viceroy of high rank was sent to New Spain. In 1867 Disraeli, half
genius and half charlatan, commenced a policy of ostentation by
announcing that only those would in future be appointed colonial
governors who had been "born in the purple," or were peers, and
notwithstanding two or three Liberal reactions the policy has been
confirmed, in regard to all the more important colonies, by the demands
of the colonists. On arriving in his dominions the new ruler has a
royal reception. He becomes the head of the ceremonial system in the
colony, and if he ceases to govern he reigns (according to Bagehot's
theory of the monarchy) by impressing the popular imagination. And as
loyalty to the Queen is passing into loyalty to the imperial tradition,
so is loyalty to her representative being transmuted into the pride of
imperial connection.
The governor completes the parallel with sovereignty by undergoing all
its vicissitudes. As monarchs have abdicated, been imprisoned, banished,
restored, tried, and beheaded, colonial governors have resigned,
been imprisoned, expelled, recalled, restored, impeached, dismissed,
and hanged, and in both sets of cases for similar reasons. They have
resigned because of ill usage at the hands of their ministers, because
things were done in their absence of which they disapproved, or because
they were entrapped into approving of their ministers' wrongdoing. La
Bourdonnais was sent to the Bastille, Andros was imprisoned for tyranny
in Massachusetts, and in North Carolina it was the "common practice"
to resist and imprison their governors. Depositions were frequent in
the North American colonies. An oppressive Governor of Virginia was
banished to England, but sent back; a Governor of New South Wales was
deposed for rectitude by a military mutiny and shipped to Tasmania; a
Governor of New Zealand was placed on board a ship for England because
he had excited the ill will of a powerful company, and had indiscreetly
realized the dream of free traders by making the colony a free port. As
Pericles dreaded being ostracized, early Governors of New South Wales
feared being placed under arrest. Recall is the sentence that governors
of British colonies had most to shun in the days when they were still
irresponsible. The first four Governors of Australia, and possibly
the sixth, were lied out of office. One was recalled because of the
financial embarrassments of his colony and his own devotion to science;
another, on the better grounds of tyranny and red tape. A Governor of
the Cape of Good Hope was recalled because he was unpopular. Another
governor of that colony was recalled for incorrigible insubordination,
and again, when he had been pardoned and sent to a more distant colony,
for hopeless incompatibility. How so serious a step may be contrived by
a mere clerk in the Colonial Office may be read in the autobiography of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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