ABSTRACT
The economic and financial distress of the mid nineteenth century caused the defeat of the colonists in this contest, and in many of the islands abandonment of their representative institutions marked their final surrender. Before the end of the century all the islands except the Bahamas and Barbados had undergone constitutional reform. It was in the course of the struggle and before its end that the colonial agencies disappeared. In 1850 an official of the Colonial Office noted on the back of a letter relative to the agencies that “endeavours have been frequently made on the part of this office to induce the legislatures of West Indian Colonies to forego the appointment of agents on the ground of their uselessness.” The middle years of the nineteenth century saw the first appearance of separate agencies for New South Wales and South Australia, to be the forerunners of other such agencies in all parts of the Empire.
