page 30

II.—Administration.

Your administrative authority is the second general head to which I have proposed to advert. Under this term I would include whatever relates to your official relation to the principal officers of your Government, and the division of the public business between yourself and them. It is not, of course, my intention to enter into minute details, but rather to indicate some general rules for your guidance, the disregard of which appears to be a fertile source of mischief in many of the British colonies.

Between the two extremes of an unbounded confidence in subordinate officers and an habitual distrust of them, you will, I trust, find a middle point, at which you may, with satisfaction to yourself and advantage to the public at large, take your stand. In a society where all men so much feel the pressure of indispensable private engagements, one of the great elements of good government—with which we are so familiar in this country—must always be, to a great extent, wanting. Few will have at once the leisure, the intelligence, and the public spirit to make any gratuitous contribution of time or thought to the conduct of affairs. The great mass of society will look to the Government for direction or assistance on all questions of general or even of local concern.

If, on the one hand, you should charge your own mind with the whole of this complicated mass of inquiries or measures, you would speedily find the burden intolerable. If, on the other hand, you should devolve it on any one or more of your officers, in an implicit reliance on their ability and zeal, you would, in no long time, find that the reins had passed out of your own hands; that you must govern as the head of a party and not as the head of the society at large; and that a system of partiality and favouritism would either prevail, or be supposed to prevail, throughout your government. To give a large and liberal confidence to the heads of the several departments, and to combine this with a vigilant and punctual superintendence of each, should be the rule of your conduct. To enable you the more readily to conduct the administration of affairs, the Queen has appointed an Executive Council, consisting of your three principal officers. To this body, aided on any particular occasion by others who may be called to their assistance, you will be able to refer all the more arduous questions which may arise. As far as possible, leaving details to the management of each officer in his own division, you will reserve to yourself the consideration of every general principle, every comprehensive measure, and every arduous controversy; endeavouring, even on the points so reserved, to fortify and sustain your own decisions by reports prepared for your consideration, either by the Executive Council, or by any Board or Commission which you may find it convenient to appoint for conducting such inquiries.

It is necessary that your authority over the subordinate officers of your Government should be firm and respected; and that it may be so, it is necessary that it should be exercised in the spirit of kindness, and with a liberal indulgence for the infirmities of those through whose intervention you must act. Having had occasion, in reference to many other colonies, to consider in what manner the just authority of the Government could be most properly maintained and vindicated, I enclose a copy of a circular despatch which I have written on that subject, and which you will consider as addressed to yourself.