COLONIAL SELF-GOVERNMENT. [From the Times, April 20.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume V, Issue 424, 25 August 1849, Page 4

COLONIAL SELF-GOVERNMENT. [From the Times, April 20.]

The>e are two points of colonial policy which especially affect the interests, and attract the attention of the English public ; the first is the colonial power of self-govern-ment; the second is the colonial means of Belf-defence. The former is identified with every sentiment of civil liberty ; the latter is associated with every principle of national economy. As a general principle, nothing can be more true than the doctrine which Mr. Gladstone enunciated wijh so distinct an emphasis on Monday night ; the capacity of Englishmen to govern themselves accompanies them to every part of the globe ; and wherever an Anglo-Saxon society has been established, there the right and the means of self-government already exist. This is true as a general principle, it requires to be understood with those limitations of circumstances from the favourable combination of which it was originally deduced. A body of Englishmen, of average stations*, fortunes, and education — a body of Englishmen in which the professional, mercantile, mecha« nical, and labouring classes were proportionally represented, might safely be intrusted with an extension of those municipal rights at the antipodes which it exercises at home. Such a body, containing in itself the various elements which compose political society in England, would be as able to enjoy the privileges of election, and discharge the duties of representation at Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Cape Town, or Graham's Town, as it had been in its own parish, union, or borough in England. It ■would contain within itself an ordinary and respectable amount of sagacity, knowledge, and experience ; likewise of independence and common sense ; men qualified by their talents to lead, and men disposed by their docility to be led. But such antecedents cannot be predicated of every collection of persons emigrating from Great Britain to the colonies. Take any shipload of emigrants at haphazard, and ask what materials and requisite have they for self-government? Here is a ship freighted with Dorsetshire paupers ; there, another laden with half-starved exiles from Kerry and Mayo. "What do these men know of laws, or law making ? What is their acquaintance with the institutions of their country or society ? What with the habits and rules of popular assemblages ? The best prospect that can be hoped for them is that they may eventually become prosperous settlers and decent farmers ; but there is no condition which their best friends, or the best friends of colonization would so strenuously deprecate for them as that of becoming legislators or public functionaries. A political society raised merely upon such a foundation would indeed be a structure built topsy-turvy. Nor does the past history of our colonial efforts rebut this doctrine. North America was not, as Mr. Gladstone ■well knows, planted by English paupers or ragged Celts. The colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland were administered by municipal governments, and these " municipal governments," says Mr. Wakefield, "were virtually constitutional monarchies, subordinate to the imperial monarchies. Perm and Baltimore wer-e monarchs in fact within their colonies, though' constitutional monarchs enjoined to rule by the help of representative institutions. The constitution of Carolina was elaborately aristocratical." To compose and confirm institutions of this kind every element of society, and every class, from the noble to the artizan, were pressed into the service of^the nascent colony. Therefore every, body of men that went under such leaders to Maryland, Pennsylvania, Carolina, or Massachusetts, went with an adequate and consistent organiiation for the purposes of self-government. Will Mr. Gladstone go on . board the emigrant ships at.Deptford or Plymouth, and- then say that, the same attributes which distinguished the original .colonists of Ndith America shall distinguish-their successors and. imitators in Australia and South^Africa:? i,WVnotic* thi« difference- merely to- shtfw-

that some discrimation und selection mast be applied in conferring representative institutions on our colonies ; not to deny the expediency or the justice of conceding them. And we find that a similar view of the question has been taken by men who of all others would be the very last to disparage or dispense with their own civil rights — viz., the! leaders of the Scotch settlement at Otago. In a memorial addressed to Mr. Hawes by these persons, the chiefs of a Free Church mission, and the most determined champions of free government, are specified restrictions by which they propose to limit" the enjoyment of the franchise in their new colony. "When persons so intelligent and so liberal as the founders of the Free Church settlement begin by proposing limitations and restrictions on the mode of self-government in our colonies (in doing which they merely follow the precedent set by Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey), it is more than ever the duty of the statesman to guard against being carried away by a popular but deceptive term. Again, while we admit that self-govern-ment with certain limitations is the just and proper inheiitance of all Anglo-Saxon colonists, we must at the same time demand that this principle of self-governrrent be made to accord with the Imperial preponderance of Great Britain. As long as any colonies remain dependent upon Great Britain for pro. tection and assistarce, so long should that dependence be evinced by a harmonious and concurrent polity. Self-government is not inconsistent with Imperial dependence. Self-government is local and provincial, for local an.l provincial purposes It may be carried on at Sydney or Cape Town jnst as it is at Manchester or Birmingham. Manchester and Birmingham assess their own local taxation for municipal objects ; but they are all for national objects subject to, Imperial Parliament and the Central Executive. In the same way New South Wales, South Australia, Prince Edward's Island, and Newfoundland, might administer their own local government, and assess their own local taxes, subject to certain definite rules and limitations of the Imperial Parliament. It is, indeed, a question what these limitations should be. They could not be the same in all colonies ; and their definition, would, of course, depend upon the circumstances of particular colonies. However, there is no question but that they should be precise. They should have the certainty and fixedness of simple, intelligible, and obligatory law. They should not be vague, uncertain., 01 arbitrary. " The grand point for the colonies," says Mr. Wakefield, "as to government is, that they should always know what they might lawfully do, and what they might not do. If they had a .constitutional law, ' they would accommodate themselves to it ; or, as it would be known at the seat of empire as well as in the colonies, they might, if it were hurtful to them, get it altered by the Supreme power which had fiamed it." If this had been always done, we should not havehad to deplore those differences between England and her colonies which have proceeded from the capricious violence of a central bureaucracy. For instance, had the constitutions of Jamaica and Nova Scotia contained distinct clauses enjoining that civil lists should be voted for a certain period of years, or fcr the viceroyalty of each Governor, and that salaries should not be reduced without warning, or that officers of the Crown should not be dismissed without compensation except in cases of delinquency, and declaring that certain questions were purely colonial, others Imperial, others again, of a mixed kind, requiring the assent of the colonialoffice, or the Imperial Parliament, before they could be discussed by the colonies — had sucli specifications been distinctly embodied in colonial constitutions, how much of bitterness, h&tility, and faction would "have been avoided ! We trust that in the charters ab6ut to be granted to other colonies these limitations will be clearly and precisely specified. Akin to the subject of colonial self-go-vernment is that of colonial self-defence. The heavy expense of this burden is supported by England at present. How long this can continue we do not pretend to affirm. We believe that the present amount of expense will not much longer be regarded with the same complacency that it has heretofore enjoyed. The age is becoming economical; and there are things which require even a more stringent stinginess than our money. We should be as grudging of our Fnglisb soldiers as of our English taxes. We should be as loth to squander the lives of brave men on ignoble and unhealthy services as in rash and" unplanned battle. fields. - Why should « Queen's "regiment be pareddown to a skeleton by the epidemics of a climate, tfrhenblack troopswould have been equally useful ? Why should the Queen's 7th Dragoon. Guards and 45th Infanrry.be exposed to the ignoble hazard of tracking the spoor, or falling by the assagai of Caffre cattle *tesuV

ers ? Why should England "have encoun- | tered the expense and her soldiers the unhol noured toil of maintaining a desultory coni test with savages, which would have been more speedily, and as successfully terminated by Hottentots arid Fingoes ? "We are t not without hopes that tlie sche'rae of organizing colonial corps will be extended further by the Secretary-at- war, and that a system of defending our colonies will be established which will at once save England needless expense, and her soldiers needless exposure. When this has been (lone, it will remain to be seen what part of this outlay should be borne by England, and what by her colonies. For our own parts, we are convinced that, with a militia of colonial proprietors and agriculturists, and, in some countries, the addition of a colonial corps like the Cape Rifles or the West India regiments, it would be possible to reduce the Queen's troops on colonial stations to one-fourth of their present numbeis ; and, at the same time, to enlist the intelligence, patriotism, and interest of colonial parliaments in resolute efforts to prevent and suppress any civil outbreak or frontier contest, — Canadian rebellions as well as C.iffVe wars.