Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 144.djvu/120

114 in these lands for the Crown – i.e., for the people of the mother country. This, as I venture to call it, obvious right was abandoned of course definitively when self-government was granted to each colony, and it might even astonish some of the present generation of colonials to hear that their natural right to these lands had ever been called in question. But the naturalness of it appears less tenable, not to say a little absurd, when we consider the question in relation to Western Australia, where it is even now pending. Here you have a territory of over a million square miles (i.e., some twelve times the size of Great Britain), and a population of some 40,000. These have petitioned for self-government; is it even rational that this vast territory should become the appanage of a handful of people, who live, besides, chiefly in the towns? For if they obtain self-government, as in the other parts of Australasia, they acquire ipso facto the right (which, being a Crown colony, they do not now possess) of deciding, for instance, on what terms emigration to that territory shall take place. The disproportion between their number and the territory in question is so enormous that one can hardly realise it. I am not pleading for any objectionable powers; there would anyhow be no chance in these days of such being exercised. As regards the present settlers, they and theirs must indirectly and in the long-run be advantaged by the presence of every additional emigrant family that we might establish among them; but it is quite possible that a different view might be taken by the artisan class, who, as a rule in the colonies, are opposed to immigration, and yet with whom, if self-government were introduced, the decision of such questions would mainly rest. Meanwhile the question of organised emigration, with Government assistance, is again coming to the front, accentuated by the reflections which recent events in the Highlands necessarily arouse. At any moment, then, some plan may be devised and started for planting out, under all due precautions, some section of our surplus population; and here, in a healthy climate, are fertile lands which at present belong to us to deal with as we see fit. There is here, of course, no question of making money out of our rights; but, possessing the lands, we could hold them as security for the repayment, as far as might be thought desirable, by the emigrants, of the expenses incurred in sending them out and establishing them. Surely, then, it would be only common prudence not to throw away a right and a discretionary power, which we should necessarily exercise, not for the benefit of one side alone, but of all concerned. It is urgently to be desired that when the question again comes forward no measure should be adopted which does not keep these ends in view.

Coutts Trotter.

P.S. – Since the foregoing pages were in type, the action of the Colonial Legislatures, with the view of prohibiting Chinese immigration, has brought to a crisis a perplexing question which, in the interests of the empire, will require very delicate handling; for, as matters now stand in Asia, the maintenance and strengthening of our present friendly relations with China is obviously in the highest degree desirable. It will probably be argued that the exclusion of the Chinese from our territories is an infraction