want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to defeat a whole system.'

Sir B. Frere was sent to the Cape in the spring of 1877. During the Trans-Kei and Zulu wars which have since taken place, despatches have constantly reached the Colony too late to affect the action of the Governor. He found on his arrival that under the authority of a Commission issued some six months before, a Dutch Republic larger than the United Kingdom, and enjoying the luxuries of both bankruptcy and anarchy, had been added to his unwieldy empire. Much mischief has resulted, for which Sir B. Frere is wholly irresponsible. Nevertheless, he has to stand a galling fire for the acts of others. The attacks led by Sir C. Dilke and Lord Lansdowne last year have been now renewed, and are feebly parried by the Prime Minister, who contents himself by pleading for a brief respite for the Governor until he shall have completed the work of confederating the South African Colonies, which, according to our latest advices, decline to be confederated. Whether this task of welding together old colonies with new ones, of reconciling the political claims of Kaffirs and Dutchmen, of colonists who have tasted the sweets of self-government with those who know nothing of its charms, is ever likely to be accomplished at all is by no means certain. But to commit such a task to a representative of the Crown with a 'rope round his neck,' which the Imperial Government may tighten whether he fails or succeeds, is not a very hopeful experiment in the best interests of colonial administration. The moral of it all is that if you send proconsuls to your colonies, you must trust them not at all or all in all.'

Responsible government has now been established for good or evil in all our important groups of colonies, which have been and are large fields for British settlement and enterprise. In our North American, South African, and Australasian colonies, the same causes which have led to government by party, in all countries in which representative government exists at all, have naturally operated.

Men desire [says Adam Smith] to have some share in the management of public affairs chiefly on account of the importance it gives them. Upon the power which the leading men, the natural aristocracy of every country, have of preserving or defending their respective importance depends the stability and duration of every system of free government. In the attacks which these leading men are continually making upon the importance of one another, and in defence of their own, consists the whole play of domestic faction and ambition.2

And though it may be as true even now, in our most advanced colonies, as in the days of Lord Metcalfe, that'statesmanship has not risen to an independent position, but is an appendage to the more certain support of professional occupation,' and that consequently there may still be a deficiency of men uniting the qualifications of

2 Wealth of Nations, book iv. cap. 7.

leisure, capacity, and inclination for the task of legislation; nevertheless, experience has proved that the safety-valve afforded by responsible government is and will continue to be our best security against the restlessness of those active spirits who naturally seek to reproduce a counterpart of our home institutions in the outlying provinces of our empire.

It is not too much to say that it is on the condition of maintaining and expanding the principle of self-government, and on that condition alone, that we can hope to maintain a durable political union with our distant dependencies. It must be borne in mind that Great Britain alone, among the five States of modern Europe which have, at various periods, attempted the occupation and government of distant provinces, still retains a large portion of her dominions. Portugal, Spain, Holland, and France, each in their turn aspired to colonial empire of precisely the same fragmentary and disjointed character as that which now owns the sway of England. There was an age when 150 sovereign princes paid tribute to the treasury of Lisbon; for 200 years more than half the South American continent was an appanage of Spain. Ceylon, the Cape, Guiana, and a vast cluster of trading factories in the East, were at the close of the seventeenth century colonies of Holland; while half North America, comprising the vast and fertile valleys of the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the Ohio, owned, little more than a hundred years ago, the sceptre of France. Neither Portugal, Spain, Holland, nor France have lacked able rulers or statesmen, but the colonial empire of each has crumbled and decayed. The exceptional position of Great Britain in this respect can only be ascribed to the relinquishment of all the advantages, political and commercial, ordinarily presumed to result to dominant States from the possession of dependencies. Imperial England not only exacts no tribute, and imposes no commercial restrictions, but protects by her navy the courses of her colonial trade, and shields her colonists from all perils which may be the outcome of Imperial policy. It is true that by a wise limitation of her liability, Great Britain no longer undertakes, as formerly, to scatter over her dependencies fragments of her land forces for the purpose of discharging in cases of internal disturbance, as an imperial police, duties which obviously appertain to the local administration of each colony, but with this reservation it is distinctly understood that an aggression on even the remotest portion of the British empire is and will be regarded as an attack on Great Britain herself. It is not, perhaps, surprising that our colonists should acquiesce complacently in an arrangement involving a distribution of burdens and privileges so eminently favourable to themselves. The objection, if any, to such a contract might have been expected to arise rather in the interests of the parent state than of the colonies. And if claims are sometimes urged, as recently

at the Cape, inconsistent with the terms on which alone any central responsibility for the peace and good order of the empire can be undertaken, it will generally be found that the error has arisen from an entire misconception of the basis on which alone a lasting relation between England and her colonies can be founded. For the only possible condition on which a responsibility so vast can be fulfilled is that of the undisputed recognition of the supreme authority of the Queen's representative, whenever perils may threaten any outlying province of her empire. It is not in the interests of the central power, but in those of the safety and well-being of all concerned, that the retention of such a prerogative is essential; nor can it be regarded as at all inconsistent with the fullest development of responsible government in our colonies. Indeed, any other arrangement must inevitably lead to that irresponsibility which is the parent of anarchy, and a long experience has proved that the most perfect freedom in all matters of civil government is consistent with the maintenance of this prerogative. If we exacted from our fellowsubjects at the Cape or elsewhere that (like the thirteen United States before the revolution) they should provide the whole cost of their defence from the produce of their own taxes, they might perhaps apply to their position the good old maxim that he who pays the piper orders the tune.' But our policy is at once wiser and more generous, and with the responsibility of defence follows the prerogative of command. The House of Commons affirmed in 1862 the recommendations of the Committee on Colonial Military Expenditure, by adopting the following resolution :—

That this House, while fully recognising the claims of all portions of the British Empire to protection against perils arising from the consequences of Imperial policy, is of opinion that colonies exercising the right of self-government ought to undertake the main responsibility of providing for their own internal order and security, and ought to assist in their own external defence.

It will be by extending the principle of colonial self-government that we shall be able to extend that of colonial self-defence, and it is by grouping our colonies wherever practicable, that both these objects will be best attained. It is too late to speculate whether bargains might have been made long ago with our Colonies for their own self-defence, and for free-trade with us, as the price for the concession of self-government. Such stipulations, if attempted, would probably have failed. Now, at all events, our trust for friendly tariffs, and for co-operation in the defence of the Empire, must be on the influence of an enlightened public opinion on the free Colonial Parliaments which we have ourselves created.

For while the Crown reserves precisely the same control over the external relations of all our dependencies as over those of the British islands, the Parliaments of the thirteen colonies in which responsible government has been established exercise precisely the same

unfettered administration over all the internal affairs of those colonies as is exercised at home by the Imperial Parliament, and it is in the uncontrolled exercise of these powers by our colonies that we shall find our surest guarantee for their enduring connection with the parent State. It is true that by the gradual relaxation of the ties of dependence the union must more and more lose the protective. and approximate to the federative character.

But it does not follow [says Mr. Merivale] as a necessary consequence that the attainment of domestic freedom is inconsistent with a continued dependence on the Imperial Sovereignty. The epoch of separation is not marked and definite, a necessary point in the cycle of human affairs, as some theorists have regarded it, for the mere political link of Sovereignty may remain by amicable consent long after the Colony has acquired sufficient strength to stand alone. On such conditions as these, and assuredly if not on these then on none-may we not conceive England as retaining the seat of the Chief Executive Authority, the prescriptive reverence of her station-the superiority belonging to her vast accumulated wealth as the commercial Metropolis of the world, and linked by those ties only with a hundred nations not unconnected like those which yielded to the spear of the Roman, but her own children, owning one law and one language. 3

3

By whatever other agencies this consummation may be attained, one, at all events, will be the fearless extension through all those distant provinces whose subjection could never have been enforced by bayonets or bought by commercial monopolies, of that free constitution which has been to Great Britain, through the vicissitudes of six centuries, the secret of her strength, and the mainspring of her moral and material progress.

ARTHUR MILLS.

• Lectures on Colonisation, by Herman Merivale, delivered at Oxford in 1841.

OUR NATIONAL ART COLLECTIONS AND PROVINCIAL ART MUSEUMS.

PROVINCIAL MUSEUMS and Galleries of Art may be made to exercise an influence for good the importance of which it is hardly possible to overrate, or on the other hand they may, by confusion of aims, and by the indiscriminate mixing up and appraisement of things good and bad, conduce to a low level of appreciation whereby the public taste may be positively vitiated. But the question presents itself— if provincial Art museums are to occupy the higher status, from whence is to come the vast aggregate mass of original specimens needed to furnish them forth? The answer, paradoxical as it may seem, is not far to seek-such an aggregate will not be forthcoming. In respect to the art of bygone periods, provincial museums and those of new countries, unless in exceptional instances, can no longer hope to acquire really important series of original specimens.

The finest works of art in many categories are already nearly all permanently placed; or whenever they do, at rare intervals, come into the market, the avidity of wealthy private amateurs is so great that even Imperial Institutions often find themselves outbid; the more limited funds, then, which Provincial Collections are likely to have at their disposal would be utterly inadequate.

It may safely be predicted that at the present day even America, if her unbounded wealth were freely drawn upon for the task, would find it impossible to create one single National Art Museum on the level of those of even secondary rank in European countries. Doubtless time was, and that not long ago, when the annual expenditure of sums of money by our several Imperial Art Administrations-greater, it is true, than the pittances which have been fitfully disbursed, but yet ludicrously small by comparison with the untold millions which have been lavished in other ways, with absolutely nothing to show for the outlay-would literally have drained Europe of its Art treasures for the benefit of the English race. The myriad treasures which slumbered, and indeed still slumber unseen, although in ever-waning numbers, in the cabinets of wealthy amateurs, or which pass from hand to hand amongst dealers and speculators as