CAMERON AND COLE BROOK ON COFFEE ECONOMY

In 1825 Barnes had abolished the export duties on coffee and cotton, and in September 1829 he also exempted sugar, indigo, opium and silk from export duties. Barnes could thus be said to have sown the seeds of Ceylon’s future economic development but he was pessimistic about utilitarian ideals finding a fertile field in Ceylon. ‘’whatever Utopian ideas theorists may cherish of universal fraternity without regard to colour, religion or civilization , or whatever notorious levelers may wish to see adopted ,I am decidedly of opinion that this people cannot ,nor ought ,to have under the existing circumstances any greater share in the Government ,” he wrote in a dispatch to the Earl of Bathurst.
Colebrook and Cameron were evangelical liberals who had investigated conditions in the Cape of Good Hope and Mauritius before they came to Ceylon. Colebrook, who knew Ceylon fairly well as he had served with the army in 1805 and 1807, was a nephew of Wilberforce. Cameron visualized Ceylon as a model for other British colonial possessions. “the peculiar circumstances of Ceylon, both physical and moral,” he wrote, “seem to point it out to the British government as the fittest spot in our esten dominions in which to plant the germ of European civilization…”
There were ambiguities in the recommendations of the commission, and contradictions arose in policy decisions such as when the abolition of rajakariya (compulsory service to the state) was largely reintroduced by ordinance no.8 of 1848 which made all males between 18 and 55 liable to six days labour. However the overall structure of a legislative council consisting of official and unofficial members; and executive council of the principal officials; the divisions of the country into five provinces, and the independence of the judiciary, which commission recommended remained more or less intact in subsequent decades.
Colebrook returned into the army in which he became a general and died in 1870 at the age of 83. Cameron returned to Ceylon in 1875 at the age of 80 as a proprietary coffee planter. His wife was Julia, the renowned photographer of Victorian celebrities. Cameron died in Nuwara Eliya, the salubrious hill station in Ceylon, in1880 at the age of 85. The coffee estate the Cameron’s owned is still known as “Cameron watte” (garden).