Patronage and Politics in the Victorian Empire: The Personal Gove ...

service selection of administrative grades by examination introduced after the Northcote-Trevelyan report on the British civil service in 1853, which began a slow progress towards reform of the patronage system. Older practices still applied and changes to recruitment for the overseas territories by examination were long limited to India and the Eastern Colonies (Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong), though the self-governing colonies were quicker to follow the British lead. ¹⁶Moreover, the empire Gordon was recruited to serve in was too diverse and evolving regionally at much too different rates of political maturity and territorial expansion for there to be anything like a standardized recruiting system. As the youngest son of an aristocratic prime minister, Gordon fell by birth, education, and good connections into the category of those who could be appointed directly to governorships at their first posting. Behind that system lay early Victorian assumptions and a certain relaxed acceptance in the colonial office that “good breeding,” political experience, and education necessarily fitted an individual for the most senior position in any of a widening variety of dependencies at very different stages of political development. Gordon himself never doubted the wisdom of such a method.

All of this makes him a good candidate for a study in imperial patronage. But it is important to remember that in terms of the model chosen he was employed to serve as a power broker between the metropolis and the colony. That role of administrator and politician could be operated, moreover, for influence within colonies with a large measure of self-government and for control within those in the early stages of economic and administrative development, with little political representation outside a nominated legislature of officials and unofficials. The essential difference was that a governor had little say in the internal administration of a self-governing colony and relied on informal advice; and while he did not have a completely free hand in making senior appointments at the highest level of the judiciary or the specialist departments in a crown colony, he could certainly make recommendations. At lower levels of the judiciary and in the appointment of regional officials his advice was rarely ignored, and in matters of consulting and recruiting indigenous