history of the _ Parliament of Natal
CHAPTER XXIII
HE history of the Parliament of Natal may with justice be said to be the history of the Colony itself, for every vicissitude of early colonial life is reflected in its annals.
Natal became a .British Dependency in 1843. but it was entirely administered from the Cape of Good Hope until 1845. in April of which year Letters Patent were issued constituting the District of Natal a separate Government, to be administered by a Lieutenant-Governor. Mr. Martin West was appointed the first Governor, and was assisted by an Executive Council consisting of the officer commanding Her late Majesty's forces in the District ; Colonel Boyes of the 45th Regiment ; the Secretary to the Government, Mr. Donald Moodie ; the Surveyor- General, Dr. William Stanger ; the Collector of Customs, Mr. W. S. Field, and the Crown Prosecutor, Mr. Walter Harding. Prior to the date of Union, Parliament was composed of a Legislative Council of 13 members and a Legislative Assembly of 43 members, and may rightly be said to be the lineal descendant of that first Executive Council.
A Guide Book of this nature is hardly the medium for a constitutional history of the Colony, so that it will be sufficent to say that until 1856 the District was subordinate to the Cape Colony, but in that year was erected into a separate Colony to be administered by a Governor assisted by an Executive and a Legislative Council. The first Legislative Council met in Pietermaritzburg on the 23rd March, 1857, and consisted of four non-elective and 12 elective members. From time to time the number of members of this Council was increased, and in 1893 it was composed of 24 elective and seven non-elective members. Of the latter five were Government officials in charge of the various departments of the Civil Service.
Not so many years after the grant of this form of self-government an agitation sprang up in the Colony having for its object the obtaining of responsible government in its fullest sense, and in both press and Parliament it is easy to trace the gradual progress of the
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