it constantly interfered with purely local mattersas, to give a single instance, by vetoing triennial or septennial bills-and the form in which selfgovernment was given was such as inevitably to lead to friction between the Governor, who became more and more a governor in name, and the Legislature, which more and more invaded the province of the executive. It is curious that in their righteous zeal to obtain for the colonies responsible government the colonial reformers overlooked the moral of the old history, which surely was the danger of conferring power and then denying responsibility. The true argument from the past history would have been more to the purpose than the commonplaces in which, here alone, they indulged.

It is interesting to compare the proposals of Sir William Molesworth with regard to the government of the Australian colonies with the practice which now prevails of leaving the self-governing colonies complete independence in the management of their own local concerns. It should be noted, however, that, even now, the internal constitution of the Canadian Dominion could not be, to any great extent, amended without the intervention of the Imperial Legislature. An Imperial Act would still be necessary were it desired to mend or to end the Canadian Senate, to alter the proportionate representation of the Provinces, or to remove the seat of government from Ottawa. Under the Australian Commonwealth Act of 1900, on the other hand, power is given to the colonists themselves to alter their constitution. Any such alteration, before it can become law, must have been approved of by a

majority in both Houses, and must have been afterwards sanctioned by a majority of the electors entitled to vote for the House of Representatives. Although the right of disallowing colonial measures remains, so far as the letter is concerned, still in force, "the truth," according to a work of authority, "is that the Home authorities will now interfere only in two cases-(1) where, in the opinion of the law officers of the Crown, a colonial enactment is ultra vires; and (2) where, if a colonial enactment stands, Imperial interests would be directly prejudiced." It is thus manifest that modern practice very closely corresponds with Molesworth's proposals. Whether it would have been wise to tie the hands of the Home authorities by hard and fast regulations is a question upon which there is room for difference of opinion. It was not unnatural that, with its past record, Molesworth should feel distrust of the Colonial Office, but the Colonial Office of later days has become a very different place from the dismal abode with its sighing chamber denounced by Charles Buller, and at the present time the work of no department is carried on with greater efficiency or tact. The objection to rigid regulations, such as those in Molesworth's Bill, is that, in conceivable circumstances, Imperial issues might be involved in a measure on its face purely local in character. Molesworth, who had never known an English public school education, and who had been brought up at the feet of philosophers, found it hard to tolerate the want of logic and system in English methods of procedure; but English methods at least possess the qualities of their defects, and the elasticity and insensible

movement, which in England rob revolutions of their initial "r," are perhaps cheaply purchased at the expense of some confusion of thought and of difficulty of knowing, at any moment of time, exactly where we stand. Be this as it may, some proposals in Molesworth's Bill were certainly objectionable. His own friend and counsellor, Gibbon Wakefield, has well stated the argument against the proposal that the Governor's salary should be paid by England. "The obligation of colonies," he wrote, "to defray the whole cost of their internal government would be one security for the preservation of their municipal independence, and would therefore be considered rather a benefit than a burden." Nor, although it would be generally unwise to retain a Governor in a colony against the strong wishes of the colonists, would it have been expedient to enact that an address passed by two-thirds of the whole number of the members of each House of Parliament should involve of necessity the removal of a Governor. These, however, are matters of detail. The important point was that the Bill was an honest endeavour to put into formal language the theory which Molesworth had always held, that the colonists were Englishmen, though domiciled across the seas, entitled to all the rights and privileges of Englishmen.

At first sight Molesworth's criticism of the Government measure, which, after all, in the words. of its draftsman, "in effect proposed one resolution, viz., that it was expedient to leave the form of their constitutions to be dealt with by the Colonial Legislatures," may seem a trifle "lurid." On the other hand it should be remembered that there was

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a serious risk lest, starting on wrong lines, the Australian Constitutions should never regain the right track, and in fact the measure was altered in a popular direction in the House of Lords.

Hitherto as the opponent of transportation, the advocate of emigration and of such a mode of dealing with the colonial lands as should promote English population, and lastly as the upholder of the principle of complete self-government in all local affairs, Molesworth is seen to anticipate the views with regard to Greater Britain of a later day. It is true that, compared to the stentorian notes to which we have become accustomed, the trumpet often gives forth an uncertain sound. We hear too much of the United States as still an English colony in the best sense of the term to suit the taste of those who, whatever their respect and affection for the great kindred Power across the Atlantic, still believe that the relations between the different parts of the British Empire must remain something much closer than are the relations between Great Britain and the United States, if Greater Britain is at all to fulfil the promise of its dawn. We must, however, always remember the times in which Molesworth lived, and the difficulty there was then in grasping the idea of Greater Britain. The loss of the American Colonies had seemed the full vindication of Turgot's memorable statement that colonies are like fruit, which, when ripe, falls off the parent branch. English statesmen held on, it is true, to the old colonial system from loyalty to past traditions or from habit, but there was little enthusiasm, and the gospel of Free Trade, which was no longer preached from the

philosopher's study, but from the manufacturer's mill, and from the crowded streets of half-starving cities, appeared to point to a new earth, wherein, in the reasonable satisfaction of mutual wants, sentimental and political considerations should be almost forgotten. It is, from the point of view of those who believe in the British Empire as a force making for liberty and justice, to the eternal glory of the colonial reformers that they did not lose faith or hope or allow themselves to be diverted to false ideals. The majority of them strong Radicals where Home politics were concerned, they refused to be absorbed in the new Manchester school of Radicalism which came more and more to the front in the struggle and the triumph of Free Trade. In the special circumstances of the case it was inevitable that their language should sometimes seem halting and uncertain to the modern student, but, on the whole, they would have subscribed cordially to the words of Lord Elgin, "You must renounce the habit of telling the colonies that the colonial is a provisional existence. You must allow them to believe that, without severing the bonds which unite them to Great Britain, they may attain a degree of perfection and of social and political development to which organised communities of free men have a right to aspire." We have heard much in recent days of Imperial Liberalism. That such a creed is possible was, in the main, the handiwork of Lord Durham, Charles Buller and Sir William Molesworth. If this is so, it is not for us, to whom the glib commonplaces of Imperialism have become so stale that we almost welcome an Apemantus in the