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There is another feature, too, in the colonies of North America, which at the present day demands our especial attention. Real bulwarks of the empire, they added strength,—not asked protection. It was not in those days imagined that Englishmen required soldiers to be sent after them all over the world, to take care of them-that was reserved to be the doctrine of a more enlightened age. But our North American colonists had been trained from infancy to take care of themselves they had an organized and disciplined militia, both of cavalry and of infantry; and when the mother country was precipitated into war with a foreign power, instead of asking for defence they made conquests. The New England States, almost unaided, conquered provinces from the French. And throughout the whole of the war with Canada, the disasters which occurred were occasioned, not by the backwardness of provincial troops, but by the incompetence of imperial commanders.

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At last the great struggle for their liberties proved too plainly how well able they were to take care of themselves.

Now in the charters before us, of whatever kind, whether proprietary or municipal, we have a general outline of the governments they were intended to establish. The powers granted are set forth in wide and general terms, the limits of which are left to be inferred from the whole tenor of the grant, rather than from any minute specifications. Penn, for example, was empowered

to ordain, make, and enact, any laws whatsoever for the raising of money for the use of the said province,' 'by and with the advice, assent, and approbation, of the freemen of the said country, or the greater part of them, or of their delegates or deputies.' The same words are found in the charter granted to Lord Baltimore. In the charter to Connecticut, the General Assembly, consisting of the governor, court of assistants, and delegates of the freemen, are empowered from time to time to make, ordain, and establish, all manner of wholesome and reasonable laws, statutes, ordinances, directions, and instructions, not contrary to the laws of this realm of England.'

There can be no question as to the intention of the Crown to communicate to the colonies under these charters the full privileges of English subjects. At any rate, we know they were permitted to enjoy them.

But in the North American system there was one fatal mistake. A mistake of little or no moment as long as the great preponderance of power was on one side; but fatal the moment that balance was nearly equalized.

It is quite evident that it is absolutely necessary for the government of a great empire to delegate to the outlying communities which are at a distance from the central government, the powers which are necessary to enable them to manage their own affairs without constantly referring to head-quarters. If Government is to work at all, this must be done. And it is equally manifest that there must be some guarantee that the powers so entrusted shall not be exceeded. These powers are granted for local purposes. Matters which relate to the welfare of the whole empire cannot, of course, be dealt with by individual communities, they must of necessity be left in the hands of the central authority. The imperial interests must be guarded by the parent community at the head of the empire.

Now there are two modes of doing this. First, by laying down in the constitutional law of each colony the particular subjects with which it may and may not deal, leaving it to the highest judicial authority in the empire to decide, in any particular case brought before it, whether the legislature of the colony have exceeded its powers or not; and, secondly, by leaving the limits undefined within which the legislature of the colony may act; placing all its legislation under the control of a central authority, and requiring an individual official to decide, arbitrarily, in each particular case, whether any individual act of the colony is or is not inconsistent with the interests of the mother-country or of the empire.

Now it is most clear that the main cause of the rupture between this country and her early and noblest colonies, arose from the want of such a definition as we have described, and from the exercise in the stead of it of

a blind and arbitrary judgment on the part of the strongest party in the dispute.

In the government of the North American colonies, indeed, the modern Colonial-office system had not been established, of supervising all the laws, even those on the minutest subjects of local interest, and disallowing such as displeased official fancy, for the laws of many of the colonies were never transmitted to England at all. Still the limits of the authority of the colonial governments had never been accurately laid down. There can be no question that in many respects they exceeded their powers. And by the variation of the provisions in some of the later charters, we may gather that the earlier grantees were exercising powers which it had not been intended they should possess. Mr. Lucas has expressed this opinion very decidedly in his introduction to the edition of the charters granted to the North American colonies, which has been just published. He

says,

I say, then, with confidence, that a careful inquiry will be found to bear out the statement I make, that the primary cause of all the dissensions between this country and her American colonies, was the absence of any clear distinction between her imperial and their municipal rights. Their early charters, faulty in many respects, were especially so in this particular, that they left a wide and debateable ground between the local and imperial functions: upon this ground alternate inroads on either side produced irritation; and a sort of border warfare was kept up, which naturally ended by bringing into collision the aggregate forces of each people, and involving them at length in implacable war.

This is a point of the deepest importance, in turning from the history of our early, to the scenes of our more recent colonization.

It will unfortunately appear, that we have neither consulted the wisdom of our ancestors, nor been warned by their errors. We have not imitated their wise and liberal policy in the constitution of their colonial governments: and it is now proposed to pass a final and general constitutional law for the Australian colonies, in which no sort of definition is attempted of the limits of imperial and colonial powers. Not one safeguard is introduced into the

VOL. XLI. NO. CCXLIII.

Government Bill against future collision between the mother-country and the colonies. It is even disputed whether such is practicable; but we have an example before us in the United States, of a minute distinction laid down in the constitution, between the matters upon which it is competent for each State to legislate, and those which are reserved for the exclusive legislation of the federal Government; - a dis"tinction which has worked with admirable facility for sixty years.

Let us now turn to the second period of English colonization. At the very outset we are met by that most dangerous spirit-the spirit of self-glorification. If, in an ardent longing to see the great energies of our country unfettered, we would point out the fatal mistakes in the colonial policy of recent times, we are met with this answer:-' Look at the result! How can you compare the colonies of North America with those of Australia? The former were wretched failures in comparison to the latter. Look at the tables of population--at the returns of exports and imports. How vastly greater is the rapidity with which the Australian colonies have increased.'

All this is throwing dust in our eyes. It may all be readily admitted. England of the nineteenth century is not England of the seventeenth. She is herself a being of tenfold magnitude. Her population has increased, her wealth is enormously greater. All the appliances and aids to colonization, in commercial and nautical points of view, are immeasurably greater than in the beginning of the seventeenth century. To suppose that England could now colonize on the scale which would have satisfied her two centuries ago is simply absurd. But all this leaves untouched the really important question, In what relation does the present colonization of England stand to her present capabilities, and her present necessities? more than all, what has been the effect of government upon our colonial system? Has Government aided, or has it obstructed colonization ?

And,

Giving up the question altogether as to the duty of a Government to originate colonies- passing over the necessities of the country, arising

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from over-population, from great and increasing burdens of poor-rates, from the still more alarming increase of crime, and the expense which that, too, entails-passing over these State evils, which in the opinion of many can only be met by a State remedy, and the opinion that that remedy is emigration; assuming, for a moment, that colonization ought to be only a matter of private enterprise; still Government cannot evade a large share of the responsibility and of the difficulty which belong to the task. Colonies are not only matters of commercial enterprize, they are communities of English citizens: and they can derive the sanctions of Government from Government alone. The question, therefore, is yet to be answered, In what manner has Government fulfilled its duties in the relations which it has held with the Australian colonies?

There can be no disputing the fact, that the convict system has been that which has struck the real and fatal blow at the colonizing powers of England. Not only in those colonies which were originally convict colonies, but throughout the whole new colonial world, the convict system has spread its noxious influences. The first colonies which were established in Australia were convict settlements. Now in a purely convict settlement the government is of necessity military. There can be no other kind of government in a colony composed wholly of convicts. It must be a government of force.

Around these settlements lay millions of acres of waste lands, the property of the Crown, of value to no one. There was no knowledge, little even of opinion, as to system or art in colonization. It was, therefore, natural that applications for grants of this land would not be regarded unfavourably. Large tracts were thus granted to the Government officials, and others who were willing to become settlers. But still there was no labour. To obviate this difficulty the assignment system was invented. The Government assigned or allotted numbers of the convicts to these settlers, in proportion to the amount of their properties, to till the land. Thus the settlers got their land for nothing, and their white slave labour to till it, also for nothing. The

fortunate idea of introducing sheep into the colony completed the prosperity of the colonists. Under this system all parties were the apparent gainers. The Government gained, because the expense and trouble of keeping the convicts was transferred from themselves to the settlers; the settlers gained labour, the means of wealth; and the convicts gained something like liberty, instead of the horrid and inhuman slavery of the roadgangs. The masters were, moreover, although not compelled by law to pay their convict labourers money wages, frequently obliged to bribe them with money, in order to get their work efficiently performed.

In this manner the colony of New South Wales became rich. And partly by the influx of new settlers, attracted by the fame of its increasing wealth; and partly by the expiration of the sentences of convicts who did not choose to leave the country; and, again, by the natural increase of population, the colony grew from being a purely convict settlement into a community in which the great mass of the population was free.

The government, however, which had been provided for the foul community at first established, long outlived the occasion of its institution. The fatal custom of governing Englishmen by a despotic authority, instead of by the ancient and constitutional mode of a representative assembly of the Commons, had taken root in that luxurious soil, and spread with the rank vegetation peculiar to the locality.

More recent times saw other colonies spring up on the shores of that island-continent, which did not owe their birth to crime, or their progress to slavery-Western Australia and South Australia successively arose. The latter especially was formed of Englishmen, as capable as any whom they left behind of exercising those franchises which are the real guarantee of liberty. But, in the eyes of the votaries of paper-constitutions, the external uniformity of the governmental scheme in the Australian group was of far more importance than the existence of English liberties and privileges. The Upas-tree of despotic power had grown, and the atmosphere of the whole continent was poisoned.

Now, it is most worthy of remark in the history of the governments which have been established in the Australian colonies, that Parliament appears to have usurped the ancient prerogative of the Crown, which beyond all question it formerly possessed, which empowered it to establish, in any of the colonies formed by the settlement of Englishmen on the waste lands of the Crown, a form of government consistent with the British constitution.

The Crown possesses at this moment the power to appoint a governor, to appoint a council, and to instruct the governor to call a general assembly of the people, who, with the consent of those two houses, may make laws for the good government of a colony.

In recent times, however, it has seemed right to pass bills through parliament to empower the Crown to establish particular forms of government. And indeed it is laid down as law in the Beport of the Privy Council, on which the present Australian Colonies Government Bill is founded, that it never was within the prerogative of the Crown to establish any other system of government than one, in which one branch, at least, of the legislature consisted wholly of the representatives of the commons. Hence it must have been necessary to apply to parliament for powers to establish despotic governments.

Thus it was, however, that in all the colonies without exception which have been formed by Englishmen in recent times, in times when the power of the third estate has encroached so largely upon that of the other two, -systems of government have been set on foot in our colonies, more despotic in form, and more tyrannical in practice than any which were devised in the days of the most arbitrary monarchs of England.

Now we are sometimes told, that the injuries which spring from this sort of government are more fictitious than real. This is a strange argument in the mouths of those who justify and reverence our own struggles for liberty. We cannot reason thus without striking a heavy blow at the constitution of our own country.

In fact, however, the consequences of a despotic power are nowhere more unfortunately visible than in our own colonies. Even in the tone

which is given to society, there is nothing more abominable than the toadyism which springs up round a Government which is not responsible to, and is not based upon, the people. There is nothing which so fatally tends to destroy the dignified independence of the English character.

One great, perhaps the greatest, drawback to the emigration of persons of birth, and education, and property, is the inferior tone of colonial mind and manners. Now these are exactly the spheres in which Government is most powerful in small communities. And when the court is composed of persons who are the scum of society in England, bankrupt protegés of the powerful, or needy half-pay officers,-when these are the class of persons who fill the highest offices in the State, what can we expect society to be?

In old communities, society looks up for its guides and patterns to men whom the manifold associations of high birth and hereditary station have deeply impressed with the stamp of nobility. In new communities, where this may not be attained, there is a dignity, inferior to none, with which those are adorned who have achieved by wisdom, or learning, or valour, the admiration, the respect, and the love of their fellow-citizens.

The very prospect of attaining positions of municipal honour, and power, and fame, elevates and ennobles a population down to its lowest member; and the maintenance in power of men who have thus won their spurs in the strife, reacts upon the external frame of society, making real nobility traditional, if not hereditary. Is it possible to devise a scheme more certain to degrade a community, than that which, placing its posts of honour and emolument beyond the sphere of the lawful ambition of its citizens, uses them to swell the patronage of an autocratic power at the remotest corner of the globe?

This, however, is only one mode in which irresponsible government degrades and afflicts a colony; not the least important for it touches the State in its tenderest part - the character and mind of the community.

But in other and more palpable modes, serious injury is inflicted by the present system. The question of government expenditure alone is

one upon which a volume might be written.

The peculiar function of a popular assembly is a control over the public expenditure, and our new colonies are, one and all, most miserable examples of the disastrous consequences of its absence; the more so because from this very question of expenditure is derived an argument for the continuance of despotism. First, we appoint a government upon the most extravagant scale, accompanied by an army to support its authority; we tax the colonists by arbitrary and unconstitutional authority, to the extent we conceive they will bear to be taxed: the revenue still falling short of the expenditure, the difference is made up out of the imperial resources. The colony is prevented from effectually complaining of this expenditure, because we have deprived her of the constitutional means of doing so; that is, by a popular assembly. If she, in her innocence, asks for a popular assembly, the answer is ready, You must not govern yourselves until you can support your own government.' Was there ever such mockery as this?

There is one other point in which Government has made itself a direct party to colonization,—we mean in the disposal of the waste lands of the Crown. Now the waste lands of the colonies, although nominally the property of the Crown, are really the property of the country, and they are held in trust by the Crown for the benefit of the people. Practically, the disposal of waste lands is the most important part of colonization. If difficulty and obstruction are thrown in the way of the settler obtaining land, he may be involved in such additional expense, that it would have been cheaper to him to have gone to a colony at a much greater distance, where he could have been placed in the possession of land without delay. There is nothing, therefore, in which greater facilities or greater obstructions may be offered to colonization than in the disposal of waste land.

Now it may safely be asserted, that in all our new colonies, Government has adopted the obstructive system. By regulations which at first placed land within the reach of all, thereby placing labour out of the reach of

any; and afterwards, which rendered the acquisition of land difficult to the very class who ought especially to possess it, and which left all title to land uncertain; by delay occasioned by the system of setting the land up to auction, and by all the imposition to which the settler is thereby exposed; by exacting a high price for the land under the pretence of obtaining an emigration fund, and then not spending that fund so as to give the settler the promised labour; and, above all, in New Zealand, by a succession of weakness and injustice, tyranny and duplicity, of which there is no parallel in history, the Government of this country has done all that lay in the power of a Government to do, to put a stop to the settlement of its subjects upon the waste land of the

colonies.

It is very easy to say, This is mere abuse, and nothing else. It is impossible in the limited space of this paper to adduce instances as evidence; but when we speak of the obstinate obstructiveness of the Colonial department of Government, we cast ourselves on the experience of almost every individual in this country or the colonies, who has had anything to do, in the course of the last twenty years, with the work of colonization. Practical men do not continue to complain without cause; and some cause there is which has made the Colonial Office stink in the nostrils' of every man who has had anything to do with it.

It seems now to be generally acknowledged, not only by grumblers but by Government, that matters can no longer go on in the old manner. The government of all the Australian colonies is to be com

pletely changed. The old system has broken down,-partly because the colonists have signified, generally and decidedly, that their patience of despotism is utterly exhausted; and partly because it has become apparent that bad government, more than anything else, impedes and obstructs emigration. So, at last, the colonies are to have constitutional governments. It is not to be admitted that the old system was a bad one, but the colonies are said to have become ripe for self-government.

Now, perhaps, more nonsense has been talked on this point than on any

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