not believe it, and now we find it is only too true. The Colonial Office is even as the scoffers spoke of it: it does a little bit of managing here, and a little bit of tinkering there; tries on one thing with one colony and another thing with another always interfering, and never doing anything thoroughly; but as for any great guiding rule of policy in the abstract, it really does not seem ever to have entertained the notion that such a thing was at all necessary or desirable.

We have no doubt that there never was a Colonial Secretary yet who would not have smiled superciliously at the bare mention of such a thing, and have set us down as theorists, and dreamers, and speculators, unworthy of the notice of men of business. The revelation of this fact, that the Colonial Office of the British Empire is destitute of any great constitutional principle, or guiding theory of action, we look upon as one of the valuable results of the publication of Earl Grey's book. The preliminary to having our wants supplied is the having them clearly ascertained.

When Halley, the great astronomer, went his famous voyage, in which he made the first magnetic charts of the world, and systematised the variation of the magnetic needle, his boatswain and other officers looked on him as a dreamer, and would not obey his orders. Poor man! he did not know the name of a haulyard or a bracehow could he know which way to steer?

We do not profess to be a political Halley, but we do think that there is great need of one, and that without some great guiding theory, by whomsoever discovered, which shall enable the captain of the vessel to steer a true course, in spite of all local variations and occasional disturbances, the ship will only escape being wrecked by accident or good fortune, not by good management.

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Dr. Lang, in a volume we not long ago noticed, endeavours to systematise our colonial possessions to some extent, and claims as colonies proper, only those of North America, Australia, and New Zealand, making it essential to the idea of a colony that it should be "a body of people who have gone forth from the parent state, and

formed a permanent settlement in some remote territory." He also propounds the theory, that all colonies should be absolutely free and independent from the very first, looking to themselves alone for their own governance, and for their own defence. Whatever may be thought of the justness, value, or propriety of this theory, here is a clear, guiding principle, plainly laid down and clearly intelligible; action upon it, whether successful or not, may at any rate be consistent.

We do not, however, agree with Dr. Lang in his limitation of the idea of a colony, because we do not see why the inhabitants of a colony should all be necessarily from one parent state, or even of one great race of people; neither do we see why a colony founded by one race of men ceases to be a colony because it is conquered by another race. We do not see, therefore, why Lower Canada, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Mauritius, should not be considered and treated as British colonies, especially provided that either now or at any future time they should desire it; neither do we see why the West Indian Islands are not colonies (though of a particular order, and requiring a peculiar policy), because a great part of their popula tion came originally from Africa.

Now let us examine Lord Grey's book, and see how far we can gather, from anything there given, a theory as to what a colony ought to be, or a principle as to the way it should be governed. The only part of the two volumes in which anything of the kind is even hinted at is the first chapter, headed, "Colonial Policy - Prelimi nary Remarks." Lord Grey here

says:

"I consider, then, that the British Colonial Empire ought to be maintained-principally, because I do not consider that the nation would be justified in throwing off the responsibility it has incurred by the acquisition of this dominion, and because I believe that much of the power and influence of this country depends on its having large colonial possessions in different parts of the world."

To this passage it may be replied, that our "not being justified in throwing off the responsibility incurred," does not touch the root of the matter at all; the very question is,

why was the responsibility incurred? was it a good thing for us and for the colomes that this responsibility was incurred?—are we justified for the future in taking upon us farther responsibilities of the same kind? Lord Grey speaks of the "responsibility," as if it had been imposed on us by somebody else, and was not as clearly the result of our own act as other "little responsibilities" which occur to most of us in the course of our lives.

Secondly, as to the "power and influence of this country." So far from their being necessarily increased by our taking on us the responsibility of the government of the colonies, they seem to us to be very possibly in many cases diminished. Our power, and influence, and consideration in the world are, doubtless, largely increased by our becoming a great mother of nations, and peopling vast and remote districts with people of our race, speaking our language, breathing our thoughts, animated with our noble spirit of freedom and independence, and united to us alike by interest, by sentiment, and by blood; but they are not by any means increased, but the contrary, by this great and natural extension of ourselves being hampered and confined by the pettifogging interference of the Colonial Office. Were our power and influence increased by Canada being compelled actually to rebel before she could get audience for her grievances at this office, and redress for her wrongs from the Imperial Government? our power and influence increased by the Kaffir wars at the Cape, which were incurred solely by the Colonial Office and its subordinates in the colony; or by the whole of the colonists of the Cape uniting to offer passive resistance, and triumphing before the whole world in that resistance, to the introduction of convicts among them, attempted by this same Colonial Office under this very Earl Grey?

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Granting even that it may be advantageous to this country to maintain her colonial empire, it by no means follows that the best and most efficient means of doing that is by keeping our present Colonial Office. So far from being consentaneous or auxiliary, it may be doubted whether the two things are not ultimately antagonistic.

Earl Grey indeed afterwards says, "I should regard it as a very unworthy mode of considering this subject, if it were to be looked at with a view only

to the interests of this country," and goes on to consider the advantage to the colonies themselves in maintaining our colonial empire. In doing this, however, he immediately in his own mind substitutes "office" for "empire," and even then he makes but a very miserable show when he comes to enumerate the advantages of retaining, or rather the evils that would follow the abandonment of the present office rule. He says that a war of colour would break out in the West Indies, and in Ceylon, that a similar war would arise in New Zealand, and the slave trade would revive again on the coast of Africa, and that the Australian colonies would fall to loggerheads among themselves. To our common sense understanding it really does not appear why these evils should spring up, or at all events why they should not be provided for and warded off, even if we ceased for a while to send out relays of lords and gentlemen to foster our colonial fellow-subjects under their gracious protection, and hit upon some more business-like arrangement than trying to transact a large part of the affairs of all sorts of people scattered all over the world by means of a set of clerks in Downing-street.

It is not till we look back upon history, and endeavour to trace the career of the Anglo-Saxon race, that we become aware how far they have always been a colonising people. Their very appearance in the British Islands was as a colony, much as we have ourselves colonised New Zealand at the present day. They gradually settled in, conquered, and occupied all the fertile plains of England and the lowlands of Scotland, amalgamating to a certain small extent with the previous Celtic population, but driving them for the most part to the high and barren regions of Cornwall, Wales, Cumberland, and the north of Scotland.

The one great characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race is their capacity for self-government, and their determination to exercise it. Even in the rudest times we discern that all their rulers from the lowest to the highest were more or less strictly elected by themselves. Every freeman had an equal voice in choosing from among his own body those who should conduct his affairs. Every tything, or group of ten houses, chose its tything man; every borough its head-borough, every hundred (or subdivision of a county)

had its hundred house, where its affairs were transacted in open court by the voices of the freemen; every shire had its alderman or earl, originally chosen by its inhabitants. The consequences of this spirit of self-government are still seen every day around us in our vestries, our corporations, our sheriffs, our county-rates, our coroners, and all our local authorities and jurisdictions. Even when, by the gradual absorption of one district into another, one king came to rule in what was then for the first time called England, and made the authority hereditary in his family, and the great earls similarly established hereditary honours among their own class, the self-governing spirit of the people was still manifested by the assembling of the Wittenagemote, or great council of the nation, to which, as the whole body of the freemen could not attend, they sent their representatives, chosen by the free meeting of all who were not actually serfs or thralls, in their several boroughs, cities, and shires. This was not merely municipal freedom-the power of a man when living in a certain place, and forming part of a certain body—it was absolute personal freedom and independence belonging to every individual man (who was not a bondsman, thrall, or serf), so that wherever he might be he claimed an equal voice and share in the government of himself and his fellows.

It is needless to point out how much this personal and individual freedom, natural to the minds, and inherent in the spirit, of the Anglo-Saxon race, differed from the ideas and the mode of governance common to the Celtic populations with whom they came in contact. The chief characteristic of the Celtic races was their adherence to the system of clanship, or division into tribes, each tribe belonging, as it were, of absolute right to one hereditary head or chief, to whom they looked up for governance, for protection, and even, in great measure, for food and the means of subsistence. It is needless also to point out what strong traces we still find of this love of a chief in the Highlands of Scotland, in the looking up to the "raal old stock" in Ireland, and in the high respect and consideration still paid to ancient name and family even in Wales and in the Isle of Man.

Now, the Norman Conquest of England appeared for a time utterly to

break down and obliterate the old Saxon independence, and to overwhelm it with a new polity, or method of governance, called the "feudal system,” quite different from, but more resem bling the Celtic than the Saxon mode of rule. This system which, more or less, completely extended itself over the west and south of Europe, was perhaps more rigidly carried out, and more symme trically adjusted, by the Normans in England, than in any other country by themselves or any other race. The very nature of the conquest both necessitated and facilitated this, inasmuch as an army was suddenly changed into a landed aristocracy. The whole kingdom was parcelled out among the conquerors, every great leader having a large tract assigned to him, to be divided among his subordinates according to their several ranks, every man holding his lands on condition of his always being ready to answer the sunmons of his feudal superior, ready and equipped for battle.

The Normans succeeded in firmly rivetting this coat-of-mail system on the mass of the Anglo-Saxon population, but it has always sat more or less uneasily upon them. They have worn it now for nearly 800 years, at first in all its completeness and in all its rigidity, every free muscle cramped, every independent movement fettered if not prevented. Gradually, little by little, they succeeded in loosening it, now in one place, now in another. More and more of their old freedom of life and action were, century by century, restored to them; but the deadening and stiffening effects of the feudal system still remain visible in our every-day life, in our habits, and our modes of thought. However much certain large masses of the Anglo-Saxon population may have, in these latter days, freed themselves either in action, or in habits of mind, from the unballowed restraints imposed upon them by the feudal system, it still rests like an incubus on all our social state, still vitiates our laws, and still haunts the ideas, and festers in the minds of the men who, for the most part, rule over us. The idea that there not only is, but ought to be, an aristocratic class, a caste of nobles and gentry, holding the land, distinguished by blood and, in a great measure, by race, from the mass of the people who keep shops, pursue trades, engage in commerce, and practise the learned professions, is an idea familiar to the mind of every

man among us, whether he agree with it abstractedly or not. Almost all our legislation has hitherto been founded on this idea; all the sympathies of what is called good society are in favour of it; the prejudices of most educated people lean towards it; the Church preaches it, the law works for it, and medicine, with her most courtly practitioners, fosters and flatters it.

We need hardly say that all the nobility and gentry are imbued with this idea. Whatever speaks favourably for our own personal consideration is naturally entertained by us with favour, and few of us are disposed, even if we happen to possess the strength of mind necessary to do it, to question sternly and impartially-to bring to the bar of reason and justice, what is so agreeable to ourselves.

But what," the reader will ask, "in the name of Heaven, has all this radical tirade to do with the colonial policy of the British Empire?" Much, we answer-very much. From the commencement of the modern Anglo-Saxon emigration under that monarch of blessed memory, James I., down to the present day, one, among many other results, has happened to all the colonies. Their populations have emancipated themselves from the feudal system and all its consequences. The Anglo-Saxon population in leaving England, whether in old times, to what are now the United States, or since then to the various other extra-tropical colonies, where they formed the mass of the people (and were not a mere dominant few, with a coloured race to work for them), have shaken off the last links and fetters of that feudal mail, have freed themselves at length from Norman conquest and aristocratic rule, and have reverted, in all their thoughts and aspirations, to their old Anglo-Saxon habit, that of self-government. It has not always happened that the very men who went out succeeded in thus emancipating their minds and habits from early association and training; but it has happened, and is happening even now, that their descendants, in the first or second generation, grew up free men. They have all the instincts of their race; they are hardy, generous, enterprising -but above all independent; unapt to be ruled except by their own consent not accustomed and not inclined to look upon any set of men whatever their natural superiors; and having

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both the capacity and the determination for managing their own affairs, without the dictation or advice of any persons whatsoever. In the colonies a man may be eminent, and looked up to, and acquire power and influence on account of his abilities or personal qualities, or on account of his wealth, but not on account of his birth or family. No one gives himself the trouble to inquire who may have been his father or his mother; the question is, what is himself? The old prestige of rank, and family, and hereditary influence is dissolved and washed away by the blue water of the ocean, and no new one can be acquired in the "bush," the "prairie," or the merchant's store. To express it all in few words, the government of the United Kingdom is an aristocratic one, on account of the strong acquired aristocratic tendencies and training of the people. The government of the colonies must, in the long run, be democratic, because the natural temper and feeling of the people is almost without exception democratic.

It is of little use to enter into any considerations as to whether this result be a desirable one or not-people may honestly and amicably differ upon that point; but that the result is so, and is invariable and inevitable, there is no shadow of doubt.

If we wanted an instance pat to the purpose to prove the truth of our statement, we could not have a better than the account of the recent settlement, or attempted settlement, of Canterbury in New Zealand. Sundry lords and gentlemen, backed by several dignitaries of the Church, acting logically according to their own instincts and ideas, but either in ignorance or in contradiction of the essentially democratic nature of British colonies, took it into their heads to found a settlement, in which should be reproduced a miniature representation of society as we have it here at home.

The Church was to be a conspicuous feature in this settlement-we are not sure whether they did not contemplate starting with a cathedral and daily service; there were, at all events, to be squires and parsons, as a natural aristocracy landed gentry, and “a bold peasantry, their country's pride," with a possible eventual middle class of merchants and shopkeepers, who were to be patronised, we suppose, by the landed gentry, and to be condescending, doubtless, to the " peasan

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try." Every one familiar with colonial life laughed at this scheme. It would be difficult to convey to any one who has not lived in the colonies the utter absurdity of the ideas thus propoundedthe absolute impossibility of their ever being reduced to practice. Some of the absurdity may, perhaps, be perceived, if we just compare the value of land in the British Islands and the proposed settlement. In the one case £50 per acre is a low estimate in the other, 5s. is, perhaps, a high one. In the first case, the possessor of a thousand acres may expect £1,000 per annum in the shape of rent-in the other case, if he get a similar per centage, it will amount to little more than a thousand pence, say, £5 per annum, at the outside. In a new settlement the value of the land is a trifle compared with the value of labour. The "bold peasantry," accordingly, would very soon work the landed gentry out of their estates. The Canterbury settlement may, perhaps, ultimately prosper; but it will be by the reversal of the fantastic theory on which it was founded.

Now, Lord Grey and the Colonial Office make the very same kind of mistake, in treating the colonies generally, which the lords and gentlemen aforesaid made as to this unfortunate settlement. They attempt to govern communities essentially democratic on their own innate aristocratic principles and prejudices, and they impose, as far as they can, and as long as they can, upon the colonies, the very worst and most irritating form of aristocratic government, that of a bureaucracy.

These ideas are undesignedly betrayed by Lord Grey in his preliminary observations, in such passages as the following:

"I believe that the appointment to some of the principal offices in the colonies of persons not selected from the narrow circle of their own inhabitants, and imbued with the peculiar feelings and opinions which are apt to prevail in such communities, but chosen from among the well-educated gentlemen of the mother country, is calculated greatly to improve the tone of colonial society, and to prevent it from gradually degenerating from the standard of manners and acquirements to which we are accustomed at home."

Can anything be conceived more insulting than this sentence-anything more calculated to wound and irritate the feelings of our friends and relatives in the colonies? What has Lord Grey

to do with their "standard of manners?" He had better set up a corps of dancing-masters next, and send them out to teach the colonists the graces of deportment. To bring it home to us at once, let us fancy the Home Minister insisting on appointing the mayors, town-clerks, and principal officers of our corporations and boroughs, and filling them all up with "well educated gentlemen," on the plea of "improving the tone of society, and keeping up the standard of manners and acquirements to that he is accustomed to in London." We should like to see the Home Secretary in the House of Commons after issuing such a rescript. But is there any reason why the Colonial Secretary should be guilty of such impertinence more than his brother of the Home Office, except the fact that the one speaks of people at a distance that which he dare not say if he had to meet them or their representatives face to face before the public?

As a man's real ideas and opinions are more often betrayed by casual expressions than by set speeches, we regard the sentence quoted above as of very high value, as giving the very key-note of the ideas regarding the colonies entertained by Earl Grey and the Colonial Office. In his high-bred and aristocratic prejudices, which if not innate in his blood, he and his race have acquired from the class among whom they move, Earl Grey looks down upon the colonial populations as a low, underbred, troublesome set of people, who won't submit themselves quietly to his absolute wisdom, and decline to be submissively governed by his paternal and benevolent authority. Their Saxon love of managing their own affairs, even if that should not be done in the best possible manner, clashes with the Norman-sprung aristocratic notions of Earl Grey, and our other noble and gentle rulers, who, both at home and abroad, hold themselves the natural superiors, and Godprovided governors of the people.

Earl Grey denies that the colonies are now used as banks of patronage for the Colonial Office, and gives instances of his own selection of officers from the ranks of his opponents. We grant that the old gross use or abuse of patronage is now much rarer than formerly, especially as regards the most conspicuous posts, but it is within our own knowledge that many of the inferior offices