They
are now impassable; communication is actually cut off from places
of importance. This is your fault, these are the fruits of your
imbecility; your answer to our petitions for repairs was, "There
is no money;" and yet at the close of the year you proclaimed and
boasted of a saving of twenty-seven thousand pounds in the
treasury! This seems a fearful contradiction; and the whole
public received it as such. The governor may complain that the
public expect too much; the public may complain that the governor
does too little.
Upon these satisfactory terms, governors and their dependants bow
each other out, the colony being a kind of opera stall, a
reserved seat for the governor during the performance of five
acts (as we will term his five years of office); and the fifth
act, as usual in tragedies, exposes the whole plot of the
preceding four, and winds up with the customary disasters.
Now the question is, how long this age of misrule will last.
Every one complains, and still every one endures. Each man has a
grievance, but no man has a remedy. Still, the absurdity of our
colonial appointments is such that if steps were purposely taken
to ensure the destruction of the colonies, they could not have
been more certain.
We will commence with a new governor dealt out to a colony. We
will simply call him a governor, not troubling ourselves with his
qualifications, as of course they have not been considered at the
Colonial Office. He may be an upright, clear-headed,
indefatigable man, in the prime of life, or he may be old,
crotchety, pigheaded, and mentally and physically incapable. He
may be either; it does not much matter, as he can only remain for
five years, at which time his term expires.
We will suppose that the crotchety old gentleman arrives first.
The public will be in a delightful perplexity as to what the new
governor will do - whether he will carry out the views of his
predecessor, or whether he will upset everything that has been
done in the past five years; all is uncertainty. The only thing
known positively is, that, good or bad, he will pocket seven
thousand a year!* *[since reduced to five thousand pounds].
His term of government will be chequered by many disappointments
to the public, and, if he has any feeling at all, by many
heartburnings to himself. Physically incapable of much
exertion, he will be unable to travel over so wild a country as
Ceylon. A good governor in a little island may be a very bad
governor in a large island, as a good cab-driver might make a bad
four-in hand man; thus our old governor would have no practical
knowledge of the country, but would depend upon prejudiced
accounts for his information.
