diminished, when new colonies were forming every day; but a violation of principle was permitted, for which there is no conceivable excuse, either in economy or convenience. Work done by too few hands, is badly done, and a political department without its law-adviser, is sure to be more and more arbitrary.

This progress in the career of mal-administration will be clearly seen in the following table :

14. THE APPOINTMENTS TO PUBLIC OFFICES-This first step in the whole case, may be speedily disposed of. The law upon the subject is ancient and clear, although the practice, in defiance of the law, is notorious. The present Governor of Canada has lately, in a colonial controversy, stated the law truly. It is character alone, i.e. suitableness for the post, that is to settle the choice of candidates for employment,-a rule expressly declared by the statute of 12th of Richard II., which was warmly eulogized by Sir Edward Coke, and vindicated in Parliament by a fine of £30,000, when infringed by Lord Chancellor Macclesfield. The words of the statute are remarkable; by it, the chancellor and others are directed "not to ordain any officers of the king for any gift or brocage, favour or affection ; and none which pursueth by himself, or others, privily or openly, shall be put in the same office, or in any other; but all such officers are to be made of the best and most lawful men, and sufficient to their estimation and knowledge.”

"This is the statute of which Sir Edward Coke said, that it deserved to be printed in letters of gold, and the due execution of it would procure immortal honour to a minister. It was not passed without strong efforts in the reign of Richard II. Two years proviously, a special commission had enquired into the abuse of officers or ministers of the crown, made by brocage-the term of law applied to the practice meant to be suppressed by this statute. A year after it was passed, general rules were drawn up for the members of the Council, among

which one provided, that they should see to the due observance of this good law.* In the next reign, the Commons very early requested that its execution should be guaranteed by fines and imprisonment of the offending parties.†

More recent statutes have been passed to enforce this principle, which, indeed, belongs to the old common law. But some new legislative sanctions are wanted for its due observance, such as regulations for the announcement of vacancies in office, and the more formal examination of the candidates to fill them.

Daily advertisements in the newspapers, offering money for places under government, and the success of " A Guide to Government Situations," explaining all the machinery by which they are habitually disposed of, prove that the illegal practice condemned by the statute of Richard II., is fast attaining a growth which demands rigorous suppression. The present practice and its results are traced in Mr. Taylor's "Statesman," chap. xxix., "as to the administration of PATRONAGE," -a term in itself sufficiently designating the illegality of the practice. "The engrossing," says Mr. Taylor, "of a considerable quantity of patronage into one disposing hand has this advantage; that after the administrator shall have satisfied any private ends which he may have at heart with a portion of the patronage, he will dispose of the rest with reference to public interests. Whereas, if the patronage be comminuted and placed in several hands, each of the patrons may have no more to dispose of than is required to serve his private purposes; or, at all events, after feeding the private purposes of so many patrons, a smaller proportion will be left to be bestowed according to the dictates of public spirit. For a like reason, the minister who has been long in office, will be the most likely to dispense his patronage properly; for the circle of his private friends is saturated."

"A minister should adopt it as a rule, subject to a few exceptions, that he is to make small account of testimonials and recommendations, unless subjected to severe scrutiny, and supported by proved facts. Men who are scrupulously conscientious in other things, will be often not at all so in their kindnesses. Such men, from motives of compassion, charity, good-will, have sometimes given birth to results which the slightest exercise of common sense might have taught them to foresee, and which, if foreseen, might have alarmed the conscience of a buccaneer. I have known acts of kindness done by excellent persons, in the way of recommendation, to which a tissue of evil passions, sufferings, cruelty, and bloodshed, have been directly traceable; and these consequences were no other than might have been distinctly anticipated.”—(p. 217–221.)

Nothing but the positive evidence of the unimpeachable witness, Mr. Taylor, of the Colonial Office, would make this state of things credible.

THE DUTIES OF PUBLIC OFFICERS.-By whatever means public offices may be acquired, they all impose certain duties, and bestow certain rights upon the holders. Non-feasance and mis-feasance of duty, are punishable; meritorious behaviour is a title to reward, and to continued employment. Even in offices held at the pleasure of the Crown, the law will not presume that this tenure is subject to caprice; and whatever contravenes these general principles is against law, whether it comes by intrigue, or by positive injustice, or by refusal to be just.

Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council," vol. i., 5, and p. 18 A. Ibid, vol. iii., p. 433.

These remarks would have been mere truisms, if a very different code had not been formally set up of late as the true rule, and if daily practice, in conformity with this new system, did not prove, that the genuine principles of the constitution have been formally laid aside.

"The business of office," says the author of the book already quoted, 'The Statesman,'" may be reduced within a very manageable compass, without creating public scandal. By evading decisions wherever they can be evaded; by shifting them on other departments, or authorities, where, by any possibility, they can be shifted; by giving decisions upon superficial examinations-categorically, so as not to expose the superficiality in propounding the reasons; by deferring questions till, as Lord Bacon says, they resolve themselves; by undertaking nothing for the public good which the public voice does not call for; by conciliating loud and energetic individuals at the expense of such public interests as are dumb, or do not attract attention; by sacrificing everywhere what is feeble and obscure to what is influential and cognizable; by such means and shifts as these, the Secretary of State may reduce his business within his powers, and perhaps obtain for himself the most valuable of all reputations in this line of life, that of a safe man; and if his business, even thus reduced, strains his power and his industry therein, whatever may be said of the theory, the man may be without reproach-without other reproach, at least, than that which belongs to men placing themselves in a way to have their understandings abused and debased, their sense of justice corrupted, and their public spirit and appreciation of public objects undermined."—p. 151.

This picture of the position of the Stanleys, the Russells, the Grahams, and the Peels of our day, is drawn by a subaltern belonging to their body, who asserts that his facts have been got from "experience, not meditative invention.”— Preface, p. xii.

The same book furnishes equally unreserved views of what the author holds to be the duty of public officers of inferior rank, and these views might be cited on many heads, not for approval, but for a warning. The direct contrary of that which Mr. Taylor thus proposes for the guidance of a public officer, is clearly the course fit to be followed by honest men, and the specimen of the official morality of our day, furnished by this gentleman's chapter "On the Art of Rising," will probably be held sufficient to prove the necessity of an immediate return to better principles.

Such exhibitions of the conduct of our ministers, on the one hand, and of the habits of our subordinate official men, on the other, are surely most melancholy; but a more urgent abuse exists in the manner in which ministers now dispose of differences arising in the course of public service, on which the same author, in a chapter on the "Reform of the Executive," page 153, calls loudly for a change. "Turning, (I would almost say, revolting,)" he exclaims, "from this to another view of what these duties are, and of the manner in which they ought to be performed, I would, in the first place, earnestly insist upon this,- that in all cases concerning points of conduct and quarrels of subordinate officers, in all cases of individual claims upon the public, and public claims upon individuals, in short, in all cases (and such commonly constitute the bulk of a minister's unpolitical business) wherein the minister is called upon to deliver a quasi-judicial decision, he should, on no consideration, permit himself to pronounce such decision unaccompanied by a detailed statement of all the material facts and

reasons upon which his judgment proceeds. I know well the inconveniences of this course; I know that authority is most imposing, without reason alleged ; I know that the reasons will rarely satisfy, and will sometimes tend to irritate, the losing party, who would be better content to think himself overborne than convicted; I am aware that the minister may be sometimes, by this course, inevitably drawn into protracted argumentation with parties whose whole time and understanding is devoted to getting advantages over him: and with a full appreciation of these difficulties, I am still of opinion, that for the sake of justice, they ought to be encountered and dealt with. One who delivers awards from which there is no appeal, for which no one can call him to account, (and such, as has been said, is practically a minister's exemption,) if he do not subject himself to this discipline, if he do not render himself amenable to confutation, will inevitably contract careless and precipitate habits of judgment; and the case which is not to be openly expounded will seldom be searchingly investigated."-p. 153-5.

No 15. The author adds, without hesitation, a case which personally concerns himself; and every other tribunal being refused to him, through intrigues on the one hand, and the error and idleness of the Secretaries of State for the Colonies on the other, the author puts himself with confidence upon public opinion for his deliverance.

THE CASE OF THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

In this case, which is pending before the Crown, a hearing is refused, under circumstances of great injustice; strongly proving the necessity of a new law, to enforce a hearing of appeals at the Privy Council. This is the case of Mr. Bannister, formerly Attorney-General of New South Wales, who claims indemnity from the Crown for services never paid for, although part payment was officially promised by the Government, through its agent, an Under-Secretary of State, entrusted with the matter; and he also claims indemnity for the unfounded condemnation of his conduct in office, which has deprived him of public employment, and blighted his prospects in life.

There is not a shadow of ground for this condemnation of Mr. Bannister's conduct, as a considerate inquiry shows; and the proof of the debt due to him by the Crown, would carry a verdict in any cause between party and party.

The Secretary of State, who was misled, in this case, through an intrigue originating in Sydney, and fostered in Downing Street, went out of office before Mr. Bannister's appeal could be entertained; and all the Secretaries of State since, have refused to hear the case, either on the ground that it was settled by their predecessor Earl Bathurst, or for still more unfounded reasons. So little, indeed, did Earl Bathurst's settlement of the case imply its final disposal, that he expressed his desire in writing, that explanation should be received upon it. His Lordship's letter has been in the Colonial Office fourteen years;-the appeal being immediate, upon knowledge of the wrong, by Mr. Bannister.

It is beyond doubt, that the Secretaries of State themselves have been little acquainted with the facts, having refused to hear Mr. Bannister, and having left the case mainly to one or more subordinate members of the Colonial Office, the principal of whom, Mr. Stephen, had connections in New South Wales involved in the case, who probably influenced him.

At the time, the most eminent members of Mr. Bannister's profession, without

his solicitation, urged, that he should be appointed to a judicial post abroad; but the Secretary of State objected-that his misconduct in New South Wales rendered his employment impossible.

It was once alleged against his claims, that Mr. Bannister had so acted as to deserve removal. When notorious facts disproved that charge, it was alleged that if Mr. Bannister had been removed, it would have been for causing INCONVENIENCE to the Government. At one time, it was said, that the case was of too old a date to be examined at all; and when circumstances, last year, gave the strongest possible colour to the pecuniary claim, it was declared to be inadmissible; and the Secretary of State still refuses to hear the case himself, or to let the Privy Council hear it. Safety from deprivation on such grounds is, however, expressly declared to be the rule of the Government, in Lord J. Russell's Dispatches, 16th October, 1839, on the Permanent Tenure of Colonial Offices.-" The commissions of all public officers throughout British Colonies (except of governors) are very rarely, indeed, recalled, except for positive misconduct. I cannot learn, that, during the present, or two last reigns, a single instance has occurred of a change in the subordinate colonial officers, except in cases of death, or resignation, incapacity, or misconduct. This system of converting a tenure at pleasure into a tenure for life, originated, probably, in the practice which formerly prevailed, of selecting all the higher colonial functionaries, from persons resident in this country when appointed. Among other motives which afforded such persons a virtual security for the continued possession of their places, it was not the least considerable, that, except on these terms, they were unwilling to incur the risk and expense of transferring their residences to remote, or unhealthy climates."-Life of Lord Sydenham, p. 144, 1843.

Throughout Mr. Bannister's case, there has been a succession of those evasions and violations of right which Nr. Taylor, the clerk in the Colonial Office, reprobates, whilst he positively declares them to have fallen within his own experience.

Two examples, in this case, of the length to which a public officer will go to crush an individual, may be selected, to demonstrate the absolute necessity of a superintending power to correct such iniquity.

1st. The Under-Secretary, Sir R. W. Horton, who engaged that a certain sum of money should be paid to Mr. Bannister for services performed, offered to give his testimony to the facts in writing. In order to do this correctly, it became necessary for that gentleman to consult some papers in the Colonial Office, when he was told that his testimony, being on official matters, must be deposited there, and that Mr. Bannister could so obtain a copy. Accordingly, this written testimony was deposited in the Colonial Office, but to Mr. Bannister's application for a copy, it was replied, that the communication being official, a copy could not be allowed him.

2nd. Again, some years ago, the case was actually sent to the Privy Council; but admission to that Board was refused to Mr. Bannister pending the discussion.

The circumstances, however, of an alleged decision in the Privy Council, are remarkable, as set forth in a petition to the House of Commons against it, printed in the Appendix to the 44th Report on Public Petitions, 1834, p. 1693.

In July, 1832, the King referred to the Privy Council a petition from Mr. Bannister.