the Colony could not last a month.  The policy, in short, of Colonial independence is, like most of our constitutional arrangements, based on the assumption that the parties to it are willing to act towards one another in a spirit of compromise and good-will, and though at the present moment the pride of England in her Colonial empire, and the appreciation on the part of our colonies of the benefits, moral and material, of the supremacy of Great Britain, keep our scheme of Colonial government in working order, it is well to realize that this system is not so invariably successful as might be inferred from the optimism which naturally colours official utterances.  The names of Sir Charles Darling and Sir George Bowen recall transactions which show that a community as loyal as Victoria may adopt a course of policy which meets with the disapproval of English statesmen.  The recent and deliberate refusal of the citizens of Melbourne to endure the landing on their shores of informers whose evidence had procured the punishment of an outrageous crime, combined with the fact that the populace of Melbourne were abetted in a gross, indubitable, patent breach of law by Colonial Ministers who were after all, technically speaking, servants of the Crown, gives rise to serious reflection, and suggests that, even under favourable circumstances, Colonial independence is hardly consistent with that enforcement throughout the Crown’s dominions of due respect for law which is the main justification for the existence of the British Empire.[44] A student, moreover, who turns his eyes towards dependencies less favourably situated than Victoria soon perceives how great may at any moment become the difficulty of working an artificial and complicated system of double sovereignty.  In Jamaica the hostility of the whites and blacks led to riot on the part of the blacks, followed by lawless suppression of riot on the part of the Governor, who represented the feelings of the whites, and the restoration of peace and order ultimately entailed the abolition of representative government.  At the Cape the pressure of war at once exposed the weak part of the constitutional machine.  The pretensions of the Cape Ministry to snatch from the hands of the Governor the control of the armed forces met with successful resistance; but the question then raised as to the proper relation between the Colonial Ministry and the army, though for a time evaded, is certain sooner or later to re-appear, and will not always admit of an easy or peaceable answer.[45]

Any reader interested in my argument should supplement this brief statement of the relation actually existing between England and her self-governing colonies by a perusal of Mr. Todd’s most instructive ‘Parliamentary Government in the British Colonies.’  But the statement, brief and colourless though it be, is sufficient for its purpose; it shows that the proposal to give to Ireland the institutions of a colony is open to two fatal objections.