Chief secretary (British Empire)

Chief secretary was the title of a senior civil servant in various colonies of the British Empire.

In all colonies in British North America (with the exception of Prince Edward Island and Bermuda), the equivalent title was "provincial secretary".

The colonial secretary was thus a government minister and politician, and the position was fundamentally equivalent to the later term home secretary, and it was commonly (but not always) held by the colonial prime minister, later referred to as premier.

[citation needed] After the grant of responsible government, this office like its British equivalent, the First Lord of the Treasury was frequently the formal position held by the colonial premier because the office of premier was not mentioned in any legislation.

[2] Several of the Australian states and territories retained the title for many decades, the chief secretary's departments ultimately evolving into the modern Premier's Departments in those states, although the chief secretary position itself became separate from that of the Premier, and evolved differently in different jurisdictions: in some places it became the equivalent of the British Home Secretary or a Minister of the Interior elsewhere.