VICTORIA'S SEDITIOUS BARONET.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1416, 29 August 1878, Page 3

VICTORIA'S SEDITIOUS BARONET.

[“ Argus.”] Her Majesty’s Attorney-General for Victoria, is not ashamed to stand up in his place in Parliament and insinuate that, unless the Imperial Legislature will pass a measure which is abhorrent to a very large proportion of the manhood and all the intelligence of this country, at the bidding and for the special convenience of his party, the people here will probably settle the matter by throwing off their allegiance to the British Crown, and surrendering their birthright as British subjects. We must do the hon. gentleman the justice of saying that ho deprecated the course he had suggested, but that such contingencies should be adduced in argument to support a measure about which the very greatest difference of opinion exists, shows to what extravagant lengths Ministers are prepared to go in connection with things closely associated with their personal and party interests. Of course, it is impossible to discuss the question of separation with the gravity which usually attends the consideration of practical matters within the sphere of probability. The very idea, under existing circumstances, is utterly ridiculous. In the first place, we believe that nine-tenths of the inhabitants of the colony are proud of the Imperial connexion, and ardently attached to the mother country. We certainly should not sink to the status of those contemptible little republican states which stud the South American continent without a civil war, the result of which would not, we think, bo quite so favorable to the “ Liberal” party as is sometimes assumed. It appears to us that those who talk so glibly about separation, entirely mistake the policy of the British Government as regards the matter. If the provinces of Australia formed ono dominion, and as a whole unmistakably expressed a desire for independence, then, whatever disappointment and regret our fellow-countrymen at Home might experience, wo doubt not we should be answered —“ Go in peace, and God preserve you.” But to think Great Britain would allow ono province of a group to secede—a province, perhaps, like Victoria, with no natural boundaries on two sides—and so to become a thorn in the side of its neighbors, and a possible base of operations for a foreign invader, is to credit Imperial statesmen with a degree of fatuity in the conception of their duty and of indifference to the interests of those committed to their charge, which are not, wo think, among their characteristics. No doubt, the English Government would gladly grant “home rule” to Ireland, were it not that the action or inaction of an independent legislature in that country might endanger the safety of the United Kingdom in a variety of ways. But if Ireland, under the same Crown, but free to take its own course in domestic affairs, would bo a nuisance and a peril to Great Britain, how much greater an inconvenience and a menace an independent Victoria would be to the confederated Australia of the future. Wo only refer to the Attorney-General’i; remarks on the subject to show how reckless and ill-considered are the reasons advanced by the Government in support of the course it is taking. The Imperial authorities, if they will only give us a man as Governor, need not fear but that wo shall work out our own political salvation without assistance, and remain at the end as devoted servants of Her Majesty as we are at present.