this direction would, doubtless, have been made in vain. It was at once tragic and ludicrous that the moral force of Lord Durham's mission was in England to some extent weakened by the presence among his advisers, though holding no official appointment, of one of the few men who were capable of giving real help. Wakefield, of course, did valiant service with his pen for the cause of colonial reform, and in the public life both of Canada and New Zealand was able to fight for his principles. Nevertheless the final impression left upon the mind by the singularly fascinating Life of Wakefield by Dr. Garnett is one of disappointment. "The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices

Make instruments to plague us."

Again, the haughty and difficult temper of Lord Durham, together with his early death, prevented his attaining to the place in public life which was the due of his natural powers and position. The brilliant and generous Charles Buller died just when men were beginning to realise that sterling sense is not always divorced from inexhaustible brilliancy and wit. Sir William Molesworth himself, throughout his life the victim of ill health, had hardly attained the post wherein it was possible to give practical effect to the views which he had maintained for about twenty years concerning colonial policy, when death again intervened, and the clock of Greater Britain was put back at least thirty years. Although valuable pioneer work had been previously done by books such as Sir Charles Dilke's "Greater Britain," and above all, Seeley's "Expansion of England," the period of Greater Britain may be said to date from about 1886, but

it is no disparagement to the distinguished men who initiated and carried through the Colonial Conference of 1887, to say that it was not till the accession of Mr. Chamberlain to the Colonial Office, in 1895, that the aspirations of Molesworth were really fulfilled and the conception of the Mother Country with her colonies as prima inter pares fully grasped. Considerable discussion has taken place with regard to the rival merits of English political parties in the past, where colonial questions were concerned. To the profane, who inhabit outside the ring of the political wire-puller, such discussion appears a little to savour of "Short's your friend, not Codlin"; but in any case the candid reader of Molesworth's speeches will arrive at the conclusion, always assuming that he agrees with Molesworth, that neither political party has very much to boast of in its past record upon colonial questions.

What, then, was there special in the attitude of Molesworth and of the colonial reformers, which differentiated them from either Whig or Tory statesmen and which makes good their claim to be the harbingers of a better day? Briefly, the whole difference lay in the spirit with which colonial questions were approached. That spirit sufficiently appears in the following speeches. The indictment of Lord Glenelg's administration of colonial affairs begins with a positive assertion of Molesworth's own belief in the advantages of a Colonial Empire, and the negative criticism is throughout charged with an underlying confidence in a more excellent way of colonial government. The speeches on transportation, emigration, the dealing with the public lands, colonial expenditure, and the right

form of colonial government are all parts of a single whole, which is itself quite simple. The golden rule, Molesworth seems to say throughout these speeches, is, "Do as you would be done by." Treat your colonists as equals, fellow-subjects, fellowcitizens. But if But if you do this, such a system as that of dumping your moral and social filth upon the colonists' land becomes an impossibility. From an economic standpoint much might be said for transportation, but when once the absolute immorality and injustice, from the point of view of the colonies, is realised, it stands condemned. But a mere negative attitude is not enough; it is necessary to see whether the economic advantages of transportation may not be obtained in another way. But here we have ready to hand the Wakefield system of dealing with the public lands, so as to provide a labour fund for the colonies. It is not necessary to enter here into the details of the Wakefield system of disposing of the colonial lands. Few will be found at the present day to deny that the manner in which in the British North American colonies the lands had been recklessly given away was lamentable, and that to provide an emigration fund from the proceeds of their sale was most expedient. The actual amount of the "sufficient " price, necessary to retain immigrants as labourers for hire for a reasonable time, may be difficult to calculate, and Merivale and M. Paul LeroyBeaulieu have adduced strong arguments to show that the system is not applicable to every kind of land or in all circumstances; but it cannot now be denied that the measures advocated by Gibbon Wakefield, Charles Buller, Ward and Molesworth,

would, had they received a fair trial, have done much to hasten the growth of the colonies in population and wealth. It is true that something was done in this direction, from the first action of Lord Howick, in 1831, till the colonies were themselves allowed the full disposal of their public lands; but, considering the constant flow of emigration to the United States which went on during the period between 1830 and 1855, and the immense potential resources of the British Empire, it seems certain that a bolder use of the revenue derived from the lands might have diverted a considerable proportion of this flow to British channels. Be this as it may, whatever else he advocated, emigration, both as a remedy for social distress at home. and as a means of building up a Greater Britain. beyond the seas, was never far from the thoughts of Sir William Molesworth. Thus, discussing the question on which he differed most from the Imperialist of to-day, the question of South Africa, after setting out his views as to the uselessness of Cape Colony to Great Britain, with its endless series of native wars, Molesworth went on: "If, however, public money is to be spent at the Cape of Good Hope, it would be better both for this country and the colony that it should be spent on emigration. . . . If we were to reduce our military force at the Cape by 1,500 men and were to send there in their stead 9,000 emigrants a year, there would in all probability be a reduction in our expenditure on account of that colony; and the rapid increase of the population would enable the colonists to guard their frontier effectually against the Kaffirs." Had this advice been followed, British

preponderance in Cape Colony would have been secured by sheer weight of numbers, and the racial troubles, which later took so dangerous a character, need never have arisen.

But if money and energy were to be expended upon the sending forth of people to the colonies, this could only be justified upon the assumption that those sent out remained free citizens, with all the rights and privileges of Englishmen. The fierce crusade carried on by Buller and Molesworth against the Colonial Office was inspired by the conviction that the system of government through the Colonial Office involved the denial of these elementary rights. It is not necessary to adopt Molesworth's views on past colonial history. He believed-following authorities, who were, it may be contended, equally in error-that under the old English system of colonial government all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds; until the folly of George Grenville and of Townshend closed the gates of this Paradise, and condemned English colonial policy to an outer world where it became enmeshed in the toils of a meddling Colonial Office. In fact the relations between the Mother Country and the colonies under the old system, so far from being on a basis of equality, were grounded on the most galling of inequalities, viz., restrictions upon trade. So far from being simple in character, such relations were, as any one may satisfy himself by a glance at such a book as Pownall's "Administration of the Colonies," complicated in the extreme. It is true that the old system tolerated local self-government, and so far merited the eulogies of the colonial reformers; but