War was ended by General Whitmore with colonial troops afforded strong primâ facie evidence of the wisdom of the general policy advocated by Sir William Molesworth. That independence in all local affairs implies responsibility for all local burdens is a sound doctrine, though, when first preached to the colonies, it was far from a popular one. That Molesworth placed it in the forefront of his colonial policy is a clear proof of the simplicity and transparent honesty of purpose which so remarkably characterised him.

But though it would be unfair and misleading to shirk this side of Molesworth's teaching, it must be confessed that the wealth of detail and statistics, with which the speeches dealing with colonial expenditure are loaded, makes them hard reading to the modern student. In this matter especially, quisque suos manes patimur. Each generation has enough to do in concerning itself with the figures and the facts of its own burden. Here at least the average man is inclined to say, "Let the dead bury its dead." Still, without labouring on figures, there is much in Molesworth's criticism which is

even now full of suggestion. The over-hasty individuals, who would end the day after to-morrow the British Empire, if the colonies are not prepared to give the exact contribution to the amount of the cost of the British Navy which we may consider reasonable, should surely remember the past history, which abundantly shows that it was the Mother Country which fostered the habit in the colonies of dependence in the matter of defence. Rather is it a matter for congratulation that Molesworth's policy, carried through as it was under

most untoward circumstances, and by Ministers possessed with a far fainter faith in Greater Britain, still did in the long run justify its wisdom, so that the words spoken by Molesworth fifty years before received their literal fulfilment on the South African veldt. "In certain cases it would not be unreasonable to expect that the colonies should assist the Empire both with troops and with money, and I feel convinced that if the colonies were governed as they ought to be, they would gladly and willingly come to the aid of the Mother Country in any just and necessary war.'

It is perhaps fitting that a selection of Sir William Molesworth's speeches on colonial questions should close with the speech, delivered in 1853, on the Clergy Reserves of Canada Bill. That measure was a distinct recognition, on the part of the Ministry of which Molesworth was a member, of the principle, which he had advocated throughout the whole of his political life, the principle that the colonies should possess full and complete independence to manage their own local affairs in their own way. It was after all an accident that the view taken by the majority of the Colonial Parliament on this question was a view which commended itself to the judgment of English Radicals. Molesworth at least would not have hesitated to apply the same principle had the circumstances been altogether different. It is amusing to note the manner in which deep-seated beliefs caused English statesmen to hesitate in their adoption to the full of this principle. Thus Sir John Pakington during his short tenure of the Colonial Office had shown remarkable readiness to

allow the colonies the full management of their own affairs. It was not till colonial measures tended to disturb his temper as sound Churchman and upholder of existing rights of property that he cried halt to the application of the principle. Again, Lord Grey deserves great credit for his recognition in British North America of the principle of responsible government. At the same time it never occurred to him that the application of this principle involved the recognition of the right, if need were, to go wrong even to the length of overturning the sacred image of Free Trade which the Home authorities had set up. Molesworth alone of the statesmen of the time anticipated the attitude of the British Ministers of to-day.

The present volume contains all the more important speeches delivered by Molesworth upon colonial questions, with the exception of the speech of January 23rd, 1838, on the Canada Bill. That speech, though remarkable for its eloquence and power of invective, has been omitted because Molesworth himself afterwards frankly admitted that many of his former views with regard to the Canadian question had been modified by the conclusions of Lord Durham's Report, and because purely hostile criticism, directed against persons, has no light or leading for another generation. For the same reason, some omissions have been made in the speech on colonial expenditure of 1851 of passages dealing at great length with controversial aspects of the Kaffir Wars. No one who read the delightful autobiography of Sir Harry Smith can suppose that he was the kind of semicharlatan, semi-firebrand imagined by Molesworth;

while the occasional allusions in that book to Molesworth show how ludicrously false was the impression conveyed to Smith of Molesworth's personality. In the Elysian fields one may hope such misunderstandings are cleared up, and the politician and the man of action are able to meet on the common ground of loyal service to their country. Meanwhile it must be admitted that the attitude of Molesworth towards the man on the spot strikes one as sometimes somewhat severe. Official experience and a closer knowledge of the man criticised would, we may be certain, have modified some of his judgments. The severity of his criticisms was assuredly due to no want of human kindness. The irony of fate, which gave Molesworth every gift of fortune and denied him. the health by which alone those gifts could be enjoyed might have embittered him. But the natural sweetness of his nature was strong enough to resist this temptation, and it was only when he had not the opportunity of personal judgment that he seems sometimes a little inclined to err on the side of not making allowances for the difficulties of the man criticised.

It must be remembered that Molesworth died in his forty-sixth year, an age when many politicians are entering upon their public life. From 1841 to 1846 he was not in the House of Commons, and nowhere is it truer than in the House of Commons that out of sight is out of mind. Thus in the great speech of Buller in 1843, on systematic colonisation, there is no mention of Molesworth among those who had advocated the principles of Gibbon Wakefield, although Molesworth had been and was

Buller's fidus Achates. How great was the impression made by Molesworth on his parliamentary colleagues in shown by the fact that he was selected at the early age of twenty-eight to act as Chairman of the Transportation Committee, while the justice of that reputation is shown by the manner in which he carried out his duties. Il health often stood in the way of his attendance at the House of Commons. That, in spite of this and of the critical attitude which he often assumed towards the Whig leaders of his party, those leaders found it necessary to invite him to be their colleague, is the best proof of his position in Parliament. It is idle to dwell on what might have been. But it should be remembered that from 1855 to 1874 the Liberal party were for the most part in power, that during this time Mr. Labouchere, the Duke of Newcastle, Mr. Cardwell, Lord Granville and Lord Kimberley were successively Liberal Colonial Secretaries of State, none of whom was especially persona grata to the colonies, while several of them were for various reasons very unpopular. How great would have been the difference, had a single Minister during these years identified himself with colonial questions in the manner of Mr. Chamberlain since 1895, and, as a strong man conversant with his subject, carried with him the convictions of his colleagues. The full measure of the strength added to a British Minister by the fact that the colonies have come to believe in him and to stand by him, the student of recent history has cause to know. Such a Minister might have been Sir William Molesworth, an interpreter between the new colonial democracies, with their strange new aspirations, heretical in