Focus
The Dependency Question
Rev'd Nicholas Sykes
CHAPTER THREE
(part 1)
THE HISTORICAL PRELUDE
In his "Notes on the History of theCayman Islands", George Hirst dismisses the remarks of LordSligo, Governor of Jamaica, in his August, 1834 correspondencewith the Colonial Secretary, quoted in Ch.2 above, about the constitutionallyanomalous position of the Caymanas and its lack of "lawsof any sort", as appearing to be unnecessary (3.1).
Hirst did not take into account the reality that Lord Sligo wouldnot have recognised the validity of laws that had been made inthe Caymanas by previous Chief Magistrates or "Governors"there; nor would Sligo have recognised the laws that had justbeen passed by the new legislative body that began at the closeof 1831 even if, when he wrote the letter, he had known aboutthem. Moreover, Lord Sligo would not necessarily have "overlooked"(3.2) the seventeenth century instructions to Lord Windsor, becausean inspection of them reveals them to be far indeed from "defining"(3.3) the Caymanas as a Dependency of Jamaica.
And forasmuch as there are several little islands adjacent tothe said island of Jamaica, and belonging to the territories thereof,as the Caimanes island, Salt Island, Goat Island, Pigeon Island,and divers others, although they be not particularly nominatedin the Commission granted you for the Government of our said islandof Jamaica, which, by the planting and raising fortificationsupon them, may be of great concern and advantage towards the securityand well settling of our island of Jamaica: these are thereforeto authorise you to pass and consign the lands belonging to theseother isles, or any of them, and any part or parts thereof toany person or persons by grant under our public seal of Jamaica.... And for so doing you have hereby as full power, to all intentsand purposes, as if the said islands were particularly by nameexpressed to be continued under your Government, in the Commissionand letters patent given you by us for the Government of Jamaicaaforesaid, under our Great seal of England (3.4).
The intention of this instruction in relation to the small islandsnamed was merely to authorise the Governor's exercise of powerwithin them for the benefit of the settlement of Jamaica: he wasthus justified in exercising the same authority upon them as ifthey had been expressly mentioned in his commission to governJamaica. The source of the Governor's authority upon them wasin these and any other such instructions, which would not havebeen necessary if the islands had themselves already been legaldependencies of Jamaica.
The instruction refers to all the "divers" islands (not,evidently, just the Cayman islands) as being "adjacent tothe said island of Jamaica, and belonging to the territories thereof".
The phrase was not: "adjacent and belonging to the said islandof Jamaica", which would have been the obvious way of expressingwhat Hirst and others suppose was the meaning of it.
"Belonging to" does not necessarily denote possession,as with, for example, a chair belonging to a particular set offurniture. Just so in meaning is the reference elsewhere in theinstructions to the lands belonging to these other isles. So themeaning is that these small islands belong with one another ina set, and this set is referred to as "the territories thereof[of Jamaica]". "The territories of Jamaica" wouldbe approximately analogous to the modern conception of "theBritish Isles", which are not in every part actual possessionsof Britain. (In other documents of the time Jamaica itself isreferred to as being "in America", without implyingany political connection between Jamaica and any of the settlementsof mainland America.) There might possibly have been the allusionto a claim that the territories to which these islands belongedwere as much English territory as Jamaica itself was, but it ismore likely that "territories of Jamaica" would denotefrom the point of view of far-away England the geographic regionof which the island of Jamaica was the focus of attention.
In any case, just as the Preamble to any Law is not itself a partof the Law's enactment, so this preamble to these early instructionswould carry no power to enact what it might appear to assume,and more especially in the light of the definition achieved later,in the nineteenth century.
Elizabeth Davies shows moreover that the Spanish enactments thathad been in force in Jamaica were not recognised after Englishacquisition (3.5). It would therefore have been impossible forthe English to have found and recognised islands hundreds of milesfrom Jamaica (as the Cayman Islands are) as "belonging"to it by some previous Spanish enactment.3.6 That would be a conditionfor an English legislature to enact into being. The Instructionsto Lord Windsor give an impression of a dependency relationship,but a closer examination shows that this relationship is not substantive.(This rather quirky "relationship" that dissolves intoa mere impression as soon as any weight is placed upon it appearsto be a feature of the history of the Cayman Islands for the nexttwo hundred years.)
Notes:
3.1. Hirst, p. 212
3.2. Hirst, p. 212
3.3. Hirst, p. 212
3.4. Quoted from Hirst, pp. 17 - 18
3.5. Davies, pp. 27 - 29