GOVERNMENT OF THE COLONIES. [From the Times, April 20.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, 23 October 1850, Page 3

GOVERNMENT OF THE COLONIES. [From the Times, April 20.]

Unless there is more than meets the ear, the debate on the bill for the better Government of the Australian Colonies is a mere question of formalities and expressions. On the main points all parties are agteed. No one appears to doubt that ultimately, and indeed at no very great distance of time, two legislative chambers will be necessary ; that both on that question, and also on the composition o( the several chambers, the colonies themselves will ultimately have to decide ; and that meantime the public opinion of the colonies is entitled to the greatest consideration. On the abstract question, or as far as it relates to Australia, A.D. 1900, or eV«jn earlier, there is really no difference whatever between the Colonial-office and the " Cololonial Reformers." The bill before Parliament almost ostentatiously professes a temporary and provisional character. There is some sort of necessity for dealing with all our Australian colonies, and giving representative Governments to those which have none. It is also abstractedly desirable that these Governments should be uniform. So all that is proposed is this — simply to take the only form of constitutional Government existing in Australia, and to make it the model for the four new colonial constitutions, adding and engrafting in the bill that as soon as the newly-created legislatures wish for a more complete system, they are at liberty to devise one for themselves, subject, of course, to the Imperial veto. The Colonial Reformers conceive that they interpret the public opinion of the colonies more correctly than the framers of the bill, and propose to enact at once such a form of constitution as they think will ultimately be adopted ; viz., two elective chambers. That is their express proposition. But their line of argument is rather that we should refer the whole question to the public opinion of the colonies, and ascertain what they mean by repeated inquiries. Now, we submit, that as public opinion, after all, is not an institution, or a body, or a legal existence, the only way to consult it in a satisfactory manner is to give the colonists some constitutional way of deliberating and deciding on the question. This is all that is intended on the face of the bill. It permits New South Wales to retain the con' stitution it has had now for seven years, and it offers the same to the four other Australian colonies, suggesting to them to use their new Legislatures, if they please, for the construction of others more to their taste. The nature of the case and the character of the present bill would be far more apparent if a different nomenclature had been adopted. The bill calls the proposed assemblies "Legislative Councils." If it had called them "Conventions," or "Constituent Assemblies," or " Provisional Governments," it would have expressed the thing actually intended and descrihed, and it would have been apparent to the whole world, that so far from the British Government wishing to cram one particular form down the throats of the colonists, it is, in fact, merely supplying them with legal facilities for framing constitutions of their own. We are not for a moment regretting the non-employment of the above political terms. We gladly leave them to the nations that change their form of polity once or twice in a generation. But the colonies are now actually to undergo a constitutional change, and that change they are to conduct for themselves. So far, they are to some extent in the same case as our fickle neighbours in 1793, 1830, and 1848. We are giving them a Provisional Government, call it what we will. Such being the real state of the case, and such being all that the bill proposes, it must be said that the only difference between the Colonial-office and the Colonial Reformers is that the latter are somewhat more arbitrary and dogmatical than the former, for while the former are really leaving the question in the hands of the colonists, the latter are for sending out a cut-and-dried scheme evidently designed for permanent adoption. For a mere convention to undertake the ordinary work of legislation as long as it pleases, and to frame a better constitution as soon as it appears necessary, one chamber, embracing the various orders, will operate more readily and efficiently than two. At any great crisis, — and the birth of a colonial

constitution is a great crisis, — power is naturally concentrated into one body. Our own Upper House was a nullity in the struggle with Charles 1., and also in the Revolution of 1688. We might almost add that it suffered a short abeyance at the passage of the Reform Bill. Such precedents are not very agreeable to quote, still less the corresponding precedents from recent French history j but they indicate the formalities of constitutional change. 11 the Australian colonies are to frame their own constitutions, they must be provided with colonial conventions ; for there is an evident danger, not to say absurdity, in creating two heterogeneous chambers to settle a question on which they cannot fail to disagree. The one House would represent the popular cause, the other the official or the aristocratic ; or, perhaps, the one the colonial the other the imperial. As the very question to be decided would be the relative weight to be assigned to these several interests, and as the vote of one chamler would be as good as the vote of the other, there would ensue a series of distressing and perhaps disastrous collisjotis. The only chance of an amicable debate, and a harmonious conclusion, is that which is afforded by one " constituent assembly." We have asserted a provisional character for the form of colonial constitution proposed ; and we are justified in doing s6 by the very terms of the bill, as well as by the correspondence on which it is founded, and the Parliamentary explanations of the authors. It is probable, however, that the colonies will, for some time, be content with the simplicity of one composite chamber. New South Wales, with a population more than equal to that of all the other Australian colonies, has found a single chamber sufficient for all purposes now for seven years ; and it will be many years before the other colonies will rise to equal population or wealth, or attain any of the conditions that render a second chamber specially desirable. New South Wales contains, over an immense surface, the population of one of our larger manufacturing towns, while the population of Van Diemen's Land is under that of New* castle-upou-Ti ne, the population of South Australia under that of Halifax, and the population of vVest Australia is less than that of Abingdon. " Distance lends enchantment to the view," otherwise we should probably think population, of this moderate sort sufficiently governed by a council, or committee, representing the different interests, authorities, and classes. When we have to look through schedule B of the Reform bill for boroughs whose population puts them on a par with West Australia, and when the British population of the whole southern hemisphere is not equal to that of the borough of Marylebone, we cannot help suspecting it will be many years before those scattered and thinly-peopled colonies will maintain each its separate houses of Lords and of Commons. At all events we gladly leave them to discover for themselves ihe necessity of sucb institutions.