is freed from all paternal control.  The father, while he expects to be obeyed, continues to fill the paternal office of paymaster—­of paymaster, at any rate, to some extent.  And so, I think, it must be with our colonies.  The Canadas at present are not independent, and have not political power of their own apart from the political power of Great Britain.  England has declared herself neutral as regards the Northern and Southern States, and by that neutrality the Canadas are bound; and yet the Canadas were not consulted in the matter.  Should England go to war with France, Canada must close her ports against French vessels.  If England chooses to send her troops to Canadian barracks, Canada cannot refuse to accept them.  If England should send to Canada an unpopular governor, Canada has no power to reject his services.  As long as Canada is a colony so called, she cannot be independent, and should not be expected to walk alone.  It is exactly the same with the colonies of Australia, with New Zealand, with the Cape of Good Hope, and with Jamaica.  While England enjoys the prestige of her colonies, while she boasts that such large and now populous territories are her dependencies, she must and should be content to pay some portion of the bill.  Surely it is absurd on our part to quarrel with Caffre warfare, with New Zealand fighting, and the rest of it.  Such complaints remind one of an ancient pater familias who insists on having his children and his grandchildren under the old paternal roof, and then grumbles because the butcher’s bill is high.  Those who will keep large households and bountiful tables should not be afraid of facing the butcher’s bill or unhappy at the tonnage of the coal.  It is a grand thing, that power of keeping a large table; but it ceases to be grand when the items heaped upon it cause inward groans and outward moodiness.

Why should the colonies remain true to us as children are true to their parents, if we grudge them the assistance which is due to a child?  They raise their own taxes, it is said, and administer them.  True; and it is well that the growing son should do something for himself.  While the father does all for him, the son’s labor belongs to the father.  Then comes a middle state in which the son does much for himself, but not all.  In that middle state now stand our prosperous colonies.  Then comes the time when the son shall stand alone by his own strength; and to that period of manly, self-respected strength let us all hope that those colonies are advancing.  It is very hard for a mother country to know when such a time has come; and hard also for the child-colony to recognize justly the period of its own maturity.  Whether or no such severance may ever take place without a quarrel, without weakness on one side and pride on the other, is a problem in the world’s history yet to be solved.  The most successful child that ever yet has gone off from a successful parent, and taken its own path into the world, is