¹ Horton (1784–1841) was educated at Eton and Oxford. He entered parliament in 1819 and assumed office as the Under-Secretary of State for War and Colonies in 1821. Horton was known as Wilmot until May 1823, when in accordance with the terms of the will of his father-in-law he added the name Horton by deed-poll. Before he left for Ceylon as the Governor in 1831 a knighthood was conferred upon him in recognition of his past services, and to suit the new office. For further biographical details, see Jones, E. G., Sir Robert Wilmot Horton, Bart., Politician and Pamphleteer (Bristol University, M.A. thesis, 1936).Google Scholar

² Jones, , op. cit. pp. 29–37 and 340.Google Scholar

³ See Murray, D. J., The West Indies and the Development of the Colonial Government (Oxford, 1965), pp. 119–126Google Scholar and Young, D. M., The Colonial Office in the Early Nineteenth Century (London, 1961), pp. 53–8.Google Scholar

⁴ The reasons that led to the change in Horton's political fortune have been often recounted. With the fall of Wellington's ministry in April 1827, instead of resigning with his Tory friends Horton joined the Canningites. Consequently, when the Tories came back into power in January 1828, Horton found himself isolated. See Adams, W. F., Ireland and Irish Emigration to the New World from 1815 to the Famine (London, 1935), pp. 275–96Google Scholar and Black, R. D. C., Economic Thought and the Irish Question 1817–1870 (London, 1960), ch. VII.Google Scholar

⁵ Jones, , op. cit. p. 97.Google Scholar

⁶ Ibid. p. 58. Horton wrote and lectured incessantly on these issues, and became a widely known pamphleteer. See, for example, The West India Question Practically Considered (London, 1826)Google Scholar; Protestant Safety Compatible with the Remission of the Civil Disabilities of Roman Catholics (London, 1829)Google Scholar; and An Enquiry into the Causes and Remedies of Pauperism (London, 1836).Google Scholar

⁷ See particularly Second and Third Reports from Select Committee on Emigration from the United Kingdom: 1827 (London, 1828). Horton acted as the chairman of this committee.Google Scholar

⁸ For some of the recent views on this subject, see Knorr, K. E., British Colonial Theories (London, 1963), ch. IXGoogle Scholar; Ghosh, R. N., ‘The Colonization Controversy: R. J. Wilmot-Horton and the Classical Economists’, Economica, xxxi (1964), 385–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kittrell, E. R., ‘The Development of the Theory of Colonization in English Classical Political Economy’, Southern Economic Journal, xxxi (1965), 193–4Google Scholar; and Winch, D. N., Classical Political Economy and Colonies (London, 1965), ch. v.Google Scholar

⁹ Bloomfield, P., Edward Gibbon Wakefield: Builder of the British Commonwealth (London, 1961), p. 134.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Cited by Ghosh, R. N., ‘The Colonization Controversy’, Economica, xxxi (1964), 399.Google Scholar

¹¹ The year in which Horton assumed the Governorship of Ceylon also marked the beginning of the official acceptance of Wakefield's views on emigration by the British Government. See Goderich, to Darling, , 9 Jan. 1831Google Scholar in C. Clark, H. M. (ed.), Select Documents in Australian History 1788–1850 (Sydney, 1950), pp. 181–2 and 222–5.Google Scholar For Wakefield's influence on British imperial policy, see Mills, R. C., The Colonization of Australia: the Wakefield Experience in Empire Building (London, 1915)Google Scholar and Burroughs, P., Britain and Australia (Oxford, 1967).Google Scholar

¹² Royal commissions of inquiry were often utilized by the imperial government to inquire and report upon many colonial questions of importance during the 1820s and the 1830s. The Colonial Office took the opportunity of the appointment of the Commission of Eastern Enquiry to inquire into the Cape of Good Hope and Mauritius to investigate the Colony of Ceylon too; the commission's scope was extended to cover Ceylon. The inquiry was not limited to finance but covered the ‘whole state’ of the colony. The commissioners of inquiry who went to Ceylon, William Colebrooke and Charles Cameron, made a careful division of labour, Cameron concentrating upon the judicature, while Colebrooke undertook the investigation into the other branches of the administration. See Samaraweera, V. K., The Commission of Eastern Enquiry in Ceylon, 1822–1837: A Study of a Royal Commission of Colonial Inquiry (Oxford University D.Phil, thesis, 1969). The Maritime Provinces of Ceylon were captured from the Dutch by the British in 1795–6, and the independent Kandyan kingdom in the interior in 1815.Google Scholar

¹³ The role Horton played in the appointment of the Commission of Eastern Enquiry has been examined in ibid. p. 19.

¹⁴ Public Record Office, C[olonial] O[ffice], 54/118: Horton, to Goderich, , 12 Oct. 1832.Google Scholar

¹⁵ C.O. 54/121: Colebrooke, to Hay, , 21 Dec. 1832.Google Scholar

¹⁶ See, for example, his association with the Legal Commissioners sent to the West Indies in Murray, , op. cit. p. 142.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Horton, R. W., Exposition and Defence of Earl Bathurst's Administration oj the Affairs of Canada during the years 1822 to 1827 inclusive (London, 1838), pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Letters on Colonial Policy, Particularly Applicable to Ceylon (Colombo, 1833), p. 15. These letters were originally written by Horton under the pseudonym ‘Philalethes ’ to the Colombo Journal in 1832.Google Scholar

¹⁹ See his Reform in 1839 and Reform in 1831 (London, 1839).Google Scholar This work was published, according to Horton, ‘to point out and refute the fallacies of the Levellers of the day, … and to explain the principle upon which I considered those fallacies ought to be refuted within the walls of Parliament ’, ibid. p. iii.

²⁰ C.O. 54/114: Horton's minute, enclosed in Horton, to Goderich, , 10 Nov. 1831.Google Scholar

²¹ SirHorton, R. J. Wilmot, Reform in 1839 and Reform in 1831, p. v and 5.Google Scholar

²² C.O. 537/136: Horton, to Stanley, (secret and confidential), 27 Apr. 1834.Google Scholar

²³ In the opinion of S. M. Hardy, in formulating these proposals Horton was ‘led to a new vista of colonial thinking. He refused to consider tropical colonies as basically unfit for development and thus distinct from colonies suitable for white settlement. The active role of government and the use of investment had already been reduced to applied principles when he managed the Colonial Office. Now his government of Ceylon, both in his hopes and difficulties, produced the first application of such principles to tropical colonial development; this exceeded any accomplishment of the Radical Imperialists’, ‘Wilmot-Horton's Government of Ceylon 1831–1837’, U[niuersity of] B[irmingham] H[istorical] J[ournal], VII (1960), 181–2.Google Scholar A critique of this study will not be attempted here, but it is important to point out that Hardy has failed to take into account the actual measures adopted by Horton during his Governorship; Horton's policies often did not conform to the principles he himself enunciated earlier, particularly in his Letters on Colonial Policy. It is worth noting that Ceylon was not the type of colony in which Horton could have worked out his views on emigration with any success. He ‘realized that Ceylon was a tropical colony where European settlement could never be extensive’, de Silva, K. M., ‘The Third Earl Grey and the Maintenance of an Imperial Policy on the Sale of Crown Lands in Ceylon, c. 1832–1852’, Journal of Asian Studies, XXVII (1967), 10 fn.Google Scholar

²⁴ C.O. 54/114: Horton, to Goderich, , 22 Nov. 1831.Google Scholar

²⁵ C.O. 54/118: Horton, to Goderich, , 3 Oct. 1832.Google Scholar

²⁶ Ibid.Horton, to Goderich, (private), 13 Oct. 1832. The views expressed by Marshall, the Auditor and Accountant-General, Forbes, the Collector of Colombo, Gisborne, the Collector of Customs at Colombo, Layard, the Postmaster-General, Ackland, partner of the leading mercantile firm in Colombo, Ackland and Boyd, and the Reverend Gogerly of the Wesleyan mission, were thus placed before the Secretary of State.Google Scholar

²⁷ C.O. 54/114: Horton, to Goderich, , 14 Dec. 1831, encl.Google Scholar

²⁸ C.O. 54/118: Horton, to Goderich, , 3 Oct. 1832, encl.Google Scholar

²⁹ C.O. 55/74: Goderich, to Horton, , 15 Mar. 1833.Google Scholar Stewart had claimed that he was not consulted, whereas Colebrooke not only interviewed him personally but also perused Stewart's reports on the pearl fisheries, one of which he deemed fit to place before the Royal Asiatic Society, CO. 54/129: Colonial Office minute, 20 Feb. 1833.Google Scholar

³⁰ C.O. 54/118: Horton to Goderich, 13 Oct. 1832. For the report of the law officers, see ibid.Norris, and Perring, to Anstruther, , 13 Oct. 1832.Google Scholar

³¹ Ibid.Horton, to Hay, , 14 Oct. 1832Google Scholar, encl. The Colombo Journal, which was founded by Horton, was highly critical of the commission of inquiry. Many of its editorials were written by Horton himself. See Samaraweera, , op. cit. p. 53.Google Scholar

³² Murray, Cited, op. cit. p. 147.Google Scholar

³³ C.O. 54/130: Horton, to Stanley, (private and confidential), 25 Oct. 1833.Google Scholar

³⁴ See Ferguson, J., Ceylon in 1883 (London, 1883), p. 123.Google Scholar

³⁵ Jones, , op. cit. p. 47.Google Scholar

³⁶ See Exposition and Defence of Earl Bathurst's Administration. Horton wrote, ' undoubtedly [Bathurst's] general policies did not respond to the movements of the later day in which he lived; but in all cases where first-rate practical good sense, and a rapid yet discreet view of intricate subjects was essentially required, Lord Bathurst possessed a mind far more able than persons who underrated his political efficiency ', ibid. pp. 39–40.

³⁷ C.O. 54/130: Horton, to Stanley, (private and confidential), 25 Oct. 1833. Bathurst was the Secretary of State between June 1812 and Apr. 1827, Goderich between Apr. and Sept. 1827 and Nov. 1830 and Mar. 1833, and Stanley between Mar. 1833 and June 1834.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ Ibid. Horton quoted from Lucan's Pharsalia, book 1, lines 126–8. For a complete version of the quotation, see the edition by C. E. Haskin (London, 1877), p. 9. Lucan referred here to the victory of Caesar over Pompey, as a result of which Cato, the Stoic, committed suicide. I am indebted to Dr Roger Highfield of Merton College, Oxford, for the location of the original source.

⁴¹ Jones, Cited, op. cit. p. 98.Google Scholar

⁴² C.O. 54/118: Horton, to Goderich, , 15 Oct. 1832.Google Scholar

⁴³ Ibid.Horton, to Goderich, , 13 Oct. 1832.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ C.O. 54/114: Horton, to Goderich, , 21 Nov. 1831.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Ceylon Government Gazette, 6 Oct. 1832. With these reductions, introduced mainly as a measure of economy, there remained only those who did not constitute a charge on the public, British Parliamentary Papers, 1834 (570), vi, 139.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ C.O. 54/114: Horton, to Goderich, , 13 Oct. 1832.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ibid. Gogerly acted as a confidant of Horton, and espoused Horton's cause with great zeal.

⁴⁸ CO. 54/114: Horton's minute, 10 Nov. 1831Google Scholar, and CO. 54/118: Horton, to Goderich, , 1 Oct. 1832.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ CO. 54/118: Horton, to Goderich, , 1 and 13 Oct. 1832.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Particularly after the acceptance of the recommendations of a royal commission of inquiry of 1830, all colonial expenditures were subjected to the approval of the Treasury Lords. See British Parliamentary Papers, 1837 (516), VII, 325.Google Scholar

⁵¹ C.O. 54/114: Horton's minute, 10 Nov. 1831. Publicity was given by publishing every government enactment for one month before formal approval.Google Scholar

⁵² C.O. 54/118: Horton, to Goderich, , 13 and 23 Oct. 1832.Google Scholar

⁵³ C.O. 55/74: King's Additional Instructions, 20 Mar. 1833.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ C.O. 55/72: Royal Instructions, 30 Apr. 1831.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ C.O. 55/61: Revised Royal Instructions, 18 Apr. 1801.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ C.O. 54/153: Horton's memorandum, no date.

⁵⁷ C.O. 55/74: King's Additional Instructions, 20 Mar. 1833.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ See below, p. 221.

⁵⁹ C.O. 54/118: Horton, to Goderich, , 1 Oct. 1832.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹ Ibid. and C.O. 54/114: Horton, to Goderich, , 14 Dec. 1831.Google Scholar

⁶² C.O. 54/118: Horton, to Goderich, , 1 Oct. 1833, encl.Google Scholar

⁶³ C.O. 54/127: Horton, to Goderich, (private), 23 Jan. 1833.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Ibid.

⁶⁵ See C.O. 54/150: Address of the Natives. This bore 24,381 signatories. See also Memorial to Majesty, His, 05 1834 in Trial of the Kandyan Slate Prisoners … with Several Connected Documents (Colombo, n.d.), pp. 100–5.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Addresses Delivered in the Legislative Council of Ceylon by Governors of the Colony, together with Replies of Council (Colombo, 1876), 1, 18–24.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ C.O. 55/74: Goderich, to Horton, , 14 Sept. 1832.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ See C.O. 54/146: memorial of merchants, 7 Nov. 1835 encl.Google Scholar in Horton, to Glenelg, , 8 Jan. 1836, and Colombo Observer, 11 Mar. 1833.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ C.O. 54/127: Horton, to Goderich, (private), 23 Jan. 1833.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, n.s., xvi (1835), 35.Google Scholar

⁷¹ See memorials encl. in C.O. 54/141: Horton, to Aberdeen, , 15 July 1835Google Scholar, and C.O. 54/146: Horton, to Glenelg, , 8 Jan. 1836.Google Scholar

⁷² C.O. 537/146: Horton, to Stanley, (private and confidential), 17 Apr. 1834.Google Scholar

⁷³ C.O. 54/135: Horton, to Stanley, (private and confidential), 2 May 1834. Horton utilized the Gazette and the legislative council to counter the attacks of the newspapers. On the orders of the Secretary of State, the Governor stopped the publication of the Colombo Journal in 1833.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ According to Horton, the Indian newspapers were ‘consciously read in Ceylon’, C.O. 54/146: Horton, to Stanley, (private and confidential), 17 Apr. 1834.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Addresses Delivered in the Legislative Council …, 1, 9.

⁷⁶ See Murray, , op. cit. pp. 138–9.Google Scholar For an analysis of Horton's work in relation to these colonies, see Penson, L. M., ‘The Making of a Crown Colony: British Guiana, 1803–1833’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, series iv, ix (1926), 107–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁷ Jones, Cited, op. cit. p. 98.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Jennings, I., ‘Notes on the Constitutional Law of Colonial Ceylon’, Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.s., 1 (1950), 63.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Ibid.

⁸⁰ C.O. 54/114: Horton's minute, 10 Nov. 1831.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Mills, L. A., Ceylon under British Rule (2nd ed., London, 1964), pp. 102–3.Google Scholar

⁸² C.O. 55/72: Order in Council dated 1 Nov. 1830 and Regulation of Government no. 3 of 1832.

⁸³ Mills, , op. cit. p. 98.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Jones, Cited, op. cit. p. 96.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Ibid. pp. 103–4. For Parnell's views, see his On Financial Reform (London, 1830).Google Scholar

⁸⁸ C.O. 54/117: Horton, to Goderich, , 16 Jan. 1832.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Jones, , op. cit. p. 69.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ See Letters on Colonial Policy …, pp. 9–14.

⁸⁹ C.O. 54/117: Horton, to Goderich, , 16 Jan. 1832.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Ibid.

⁹¹ Jones, , op. cit. p. 107.Google Scholar

⁹² C.O. 54/114: Horton's minute, 10 Nov. 1831.Google Scholar

⁹³ Bennett, J. W., Ceylon and its Capabilities (London, 1843), P. 40.Google Scholar Bennett believed that Horton accepted the governorship at a reduced salary (from, £10,000 per annum to £8,000 per annum) ‘as if example were in some degree expedient to reconcile the heads of the civil departments to the reductions that awaited them’, ibid.

⁹⁴ Three years after the implementation of the reforms, for example, Horton reported that ‘owing to the inadequacy of their means to return to Europe with their families, and their inability to relinquish the emoluments of the situations they had attained by a long period of service’, there was stagnation at the top among the civil servants, resulting in frustration at the lower levels. He recommended substantial increases in their salaries to remove this adverse position. See C.O. 54/148: Horton, to Glenelg, , 1 July 1836.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Bennett, , op. cit. p. 41.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ C.O. 54/129: Horton, to Glenelg, , 29 Aug. 1833.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Ibid.Horton, to Glenelg, , 30 Aug. 1833, encl.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ C.O. 54/135: Horton, to Stanley, , 1 May 1834.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ Following Mills (op. cit. pp. 65 ff), historians have assumed that Colebrooke's recommendations were the major causes for the decline of the civil service which was seen particularly in the 1840s. It is true that Colebrooke's proposals contributed to the decline, but the evidence does not indicate that he was wholly responsible for the later state of affairs. See Samaraweera, , op. cit. pp. 303–4.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ C.O. 54/222: minute by Stephen, , 5 Oct. 1842.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Mills, , op. cit. p. 77.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Pridham, C., An Historical, Political and Statistical Account of Ceylon and its Dependencies (London, 1849), 1, 206.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ Mills, , op. cit. p. 77.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ C.O. 55/44: Goderich, to Horton, , 4 May 1832.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ C.O. 54/114: memorandum of Horton, on Colebrooke, to Barnes, , 12 Jan. 1833Google Scholar, and Horton, to Goderich, , 14 Dec. 1831, encl.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ Barnes once wrote, ‘I am not one of those persons who think that black and white people can ever be amalgamated in the Situations of Society so as to do away with those distinctions which at present exist all over the world’, C.O. 54/112: Barnes, to Colebrooke, , 10 Sept. 1830.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁷ C.O. 54/114: Horton, to Goderich, , 14 Dec. 1831, encl.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ Hardy, S. M., ‘Wilmot-Horton's Government’, UBHJ, VII (1960), 184.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ Bertolacci's, A.A View of the Agricultural, Commercial and Financial Interests of Ceylon (London, 1817) was cited as an authoritative work on Ceylon by both the Colonial Office and the Governors of the colony during the early decades of the British rule.Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ C.O. 54/114: Horton's minute, 10 Nov. 1831.Google Scholar

¹¹¹ Ibid.Horton, to Goderich, , 9 Nov. 1831.Google Scholar

¹¹² See Horton's Letters on Colonial Policy … for details of the proposals.

¹¹³ C.O. 54/114: Horton's minute, 10 Nov. 1831.Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ See Prospective View of the Ceylon Improvement Society (Colombo, 1832)Google Scholar. Horton's interest in the economic development of Ceylon did not cease with his departure from the colony. He was publicly active in England to promote investment in Ceylon. His work with the British Colonial Bank and Loan Company is noteworthy in this respect. See Jones, , op. cit. p. 115.Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ See Letters on Colonial Policy …, pp. 9–14.

¹¹⁶ C.O. 54/127: Horton, to Goderich, , 31 Mar. 1833, and CO. 537/146.Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ Addresses Delivered in the Legislative Council …, 1, 25.

¹¹⁸ C.O. 54/127: Horton, to Goderich, , 4 Jan. 1833.Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ Turnour (1799–1843) entered the Ceylon civil service in 1817, and served almost throughout in the Kandyan Provinces. He was regarded as a ‘native welfare conscious official’.

¹²⁰ C.O. 54/118: Horton, to Goderich, , 1 Oct. 1832Google Scholar, enlc. Turnour, to Anstruther, , 28 Sept. 1832.Google Scholar

¹²¹ See the issues dated 13 Mar. and 8 May 1833.

¹²² See for example C.O. 54/129: Horton, to Goderich, , 29 Aug. 1833, encl., the opinions of the Second Maha Mudaliyar and Loku Banda Dissavé, another native official.Google Scholar

¹²³ C.O. 54/149: memorandum of Stephen, on Horton, to Glenelg, , 18 Oct. 1836, n.d.Google Scholar

¹²⁴ Ibid.Barrow, to Stephen, , 19 Apr. 1837.Google Scholar Barrow later wrote Ceylon Past and Present (London, 1857), a work that embodied in the main a summary of earlier writers' descriptions of Ceylon.Google Scholar

¹²⁵ See for example the Memorial to His Majesty, May 1834 in The Trial of the Kandyan State Prisoners …, pp. 100–5.

¹²⁶ Digby, W., Forty Years of Official and Unofficial Life in an Oriental Crown Colony (Madras, 1879), 1, 103.Google Scholar

¹²⁷ C.O. 54/129: Horton, to Goderich, , 29 Aug. 1833.Google Scholar

¹²⁸ Colombo Observer, 14 Oct. 1834.

¹²⁹ See particularly Hardy, S. M., ‘Wilmot-Horton's Government’, UBHJ, VII (1960), 185.Google Scholar

¹³⁰ Thomas Skinner, an official of long-standing service in the colony in the early decades of British rule, termed the actions of the Governor a ‘burlesque’, Skinner, A. (ed.), Fifty Years in Ceylon: An Autobiography (London, 1891), p. 216. Those charged for conspiracy by the colonial government were acquitted after a trial, C.O. 882/1: memorandum on colonial policy, appendix vi.Google Scholar

¹³¹ C.O. 537/146: Horton, to Stanley, (secret and confidential), 27 Apr. 1834. For correspondence relating to the conspiracy, see C.O. 54/137.Google Scholar

¹³² Cinnamon, for which Colebrooke had held a bright future, greatly declined within two decades and became ‘an almost profidess speculation’. Its position was taken by coffee which soon became ‘the great staple of the island’, Capper, J., ‘A Brief Notice of the Vegetable Productions of Ceylon’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xvi (1852), 266–7.Google Scholar The rise of coffee has been examined in Drisen, I. Vanden, ‘The History of Coffee Culture in Ceylon’, Ceylon Historical Journal, III (1953), 31–61 and 156–72.Google Scholar

¹³³ C.O. 537/146: Horton, to Stanley, (private), 17 Apr. 1834Google Scholar

¹³⁴ C.O. 54/149: Horton's memorandum, 26 Dec. 1836.Google Scholar

¹³⁵ See Baker, S. W., Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon (London, 1855), pp. 323–4.Google Scholar

¹³⁶ See Samaraweera, , op. cit. pp. 123–76, for an analysis of the judicial reforms.Google Scholar

¹³⁷ See ibid. pp. 308–9.