have, since 1862, provided for their own defence, and, except in time of war, or peril of war, are not garrisoned by British troops.[41] It is, therefore, no practical exaggeration to assert that Victoria is governed by its own Executive, which is appointed by its own Parliament, and which maintains order by means of the Victorian police, supported, in case of need, by Victorian soldiers.  An intelligent foreigner, therefore, might reside for years in Melbourne, and conceive that the supremacy of the British Government was little more than nominal.  In this he would be mistaken.  But should he assert that, as to all merely Colonial matters, Victoria was in practice a self-governed and independent country, his language would not be accurate, yet his assertion would not go very wide of the truth.

The local independence, however, of an English colony is hardly more noteworthy than are the devices by which a colony is retained in its place as a subordinate portion of the British Empire, and anyone who would understand the English Colonial system must pay hardly less attention to the subordination than to the independence of a country like Victoria.

The foundation of the whole scheme is the admission of the complete and unquestioned supremacy of the British Parliament throughout every portion of the royal dominions.  No Colonial statesman, judge, or lawyer ever dreams of denying that Crown, Lords, and Commons can legislate for Victoria, and that a statute of the Imperial Parliament overrides every law or custom repugnant thereto, by whomsoever enacted, in every part of the Crown dominions.  The right, moreover, of Imperial legislation has not fallen into disuse.  Mr. Tarring[42] enumerates from sixty to seventy Imperial statutes, extending from 7 Geo. III. c. 50 to 44 & 45 Vict. c. 69, which apply to the Colonies generally, and to this list, which might now be lengthened, must be added a large number of statutes applying to particular colonies.  The sovereignty of Parliament, moreover, is formally recorded in the Colonial Laws Act, 1865 (28 & 29 Vict. cap. 63), which itself may well be termed the charter of Colonial legislative authority.  This essential dogma of parliamentary sovereignty, moreover, is not proclaimed as a merely abstract principle—­it is enforced by two different methods.  Every court, in the first place, as well in Victoria as elsewhere throughout the British dominions, is bound to hold void, and in fact does hold void, enactments which contravene an Imperial statute, and from Colonial courts there is an appeal to the Privy Council.  The Colonial Governor, in the second place, though from one point of view he is a constitutional monarch acting under the advice given him by his Ministers, bears also another and a different character.  He is an Imperial official appointed by the Crown—­that is, by the English Cabinet, which represents the wishes of the Imperial Parliament—­and he is, as such representative of the Imperial power, bound if