Sydney Smith Bell
Published: 2015-06-29
Total Pages: 514
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Excerpt from Colonial Administration of Great Britain This dissertation had its origin in an inquiry which, in the year 1853, I felt it my duty to make, as to the foundation of the law I was to administer under Her Majesty's Commission. The inquiry was begun without anticipation that it would lead to more than perfecting information for the discharge of a responsible duty. If any reader shall be staggered at some of the doctrines propounded, he will not be more so than I freely confess I myself was, when I first found them to be the inevitable result of reflection, as the subject gradually developed itself. Finding the inquiry to be interesting, I committed the result to paper, and completed the MS. so long ago as the year 1854. At that time the Crimean war was in full vigor, - presently came our quarrel with China, - and immediately upon the back of it the great Indian rebellion. While these demands upon the national resources continued, it did not seem prudent to publish a dissertation of this kind; although, in a pecuniary point of view, it might have been wiser for myself to have done so, inasmuch as dissatisfaction by several of our colonies with the mode of their government was then rather lively, and public opinion a good deal directed to the subject. That state of the colonies, however, operated only as one reason the more for refraining from publication. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.