Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/30

Rh game-laws, but many of them are genuinely intended for the perpetuation of perishable supplies of food. Some of them, like the Seabirds Protection Act, or the Small Birds Pro tection Act, are dictated by some sentimental fear of the extinction of such animals. As a whole, they are among the least defensible of the modern extensions of state power.

Coercion for Moral Purposes.&mdash;The measures hitherto noticed may in general be justified either on the ground of the inability of the persons protected to help them selves, or on the ground that some good to society as a whole, or to large portions of it, is secured thereby. An other class of measures openly aims at the moral im provement of the individuals affected by them, and in this class there has been an amazing and alarming increase. The laws against gaming are one of the best examples. At common law a wager was a contract, enforceable by the tribunals like any other. Not content with declining to enforce wagers, the state went further, and tried to put them down altogether. It made lotteries illegal. It visited with heavy penalties the keeping of betting-houses, all betting in public places, the publication of betting lists, &c. Games which lead to betting are put under the restraint of a licensing system, and in some parts of the provinces the state orders its citizens not to play billiards after eleven o clock at night. To this class belongs the severe code regulating what is called the liquor traffic. Through the agency of licensing magistrates, the state first of all limits the number of public-houses ; then it dictates directly the hours during which liquor maybe bought and sold; and in Scotland and Ireland it goes further, and prohibits altogether the sale of liquor on Sunday. A committee of the House of Lords has touched the highest point of government control ia proposing to empower local authorities to buy up all the public houses in their districts, and carry on the business for themselves. There is a simultaneously increasing tendency to interfere with people s amusements : fairs are being put down as immoral, music and dancing require licences very charily granted, the grip of the lord chamberlain over the London theatres is tightened, and so on. The course of moral legislation, in fact, threatens to sweep away every barrier to the encroachments of the state. The extended range of Government interference in other things has been accompanied, as we have seen, by a very distinct recog nition of limits, either in the rights of the individual con science, or in the capacity of adult manhood to manage its own affairs. But Acts of Parliament for improving the moral characters of men seem to recognize no limit at all. And it is a singular fact that, while this kind of legislation, under existing social arrangements, fails to affect the well- to-do classes, and presses chiefly on the comparatively poor, it is becoming more and more ideiitifie.d with the popular party in politics, and gathers strength with every addition to the popular element iu government.

  We have hitherto confined our attention to simple as opposed to compound forms of government, and to the supreme as opposed to the subordinate functions of govern ment. The complete treatment of the subject would require us to take some notice of the (1) association of several com- m .mities, with separate governments under one sovereignty, and (2) of the subordinate organizations for carrying on the governme.it of localities, under the supreme government.

1. .&mdash;As this is the subject of a separate article (vol. ix. p. Gl), we need only notice here the case in which one of the associated Governments is the ultimate seat of sovereign power the others being its colonies or dependencies. England is, of course, by far the most illustrious example of a country so situated, and her relations with the subordinate communities exhibit much variety of form. One leading distinction may be drawn, namely, between the communities which are allowed to govern themselves and those which, either as being unfit for self-government, like India and Fiji, or on account of the military necessities of the situation, as Malta and Gibraltar, are governed by the officers of the English Government. In the subject dependencies, as the latter may be called, the government is usually carried on by a governor and council, nominated by the crown, and holding office for various terms of- years. The council, as a general rule, consists of the higher officers of the dependency, such as the chief-justice or the attorney- general. The governor and council are strictly the delegates of the home Government and have no legal or constitutional status of their own. The recently acquired island of Cyprus occupies an anomalous position in the British state system. The English Government holds it, not as sovereign, but as lieutenant-general of the sovereign, the sultan of Turkey. The government of the island is vested in a commissioner who takes his orders, not from the colonial, but from the foreign office. As a general rule the relations between the mother country and her dependencies are under the charge- of a special department of state the colonial office. In free dependencies the alternative is between some kind of confederation with the mother country, whereby the dependency shall have a representative voice in the supreme government, and the practical independence of the dependency in all but international affairs. In the French system the deputies of Algiers and other colonies sit in the supreme legislature along with the other representatives of France. In the English system distance alone would render sucha scheme impracticable; and, even where distance would be little or no hindrance, there has been no desire en either side for any such connexion. Dependencies like the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are as completely sepa rated from England as New Zealand and Canada. The free dependencies have local constitutions framed on the model of the home Government two chambers of legis lature, a governor nominated by the crown, and a ministry dependent on parliament. The governor is supposed to stand to the ministry and parliament as the crown to the ministry and parliament at home ; but it is to be remem bered that the governor is, properly speaking, the representa tive not of the English crown but of the English Govern ment. It is from the colonial secretary that the governor takes his instructions, and the colonial secretary and his colleagues take their instructions from the House of Commons. And, just as the practice of the constitution has made it impossible for the monarch to resist the wishes of parliament, so it is established that the governor, ns representing England, shall not veto enactments of the colonial legislature. Just as in England the House of Commons invariably determines the fate of a ministry, so does the lower or popular house in a colonial legislature. It is needless to say that this is a very great advance on the old theory of colonial relations. Beginning in special grants or charters granted to individuals or corporations, the English colonies in North America held their liberties by the grace of the crown. The successful revolt of the colonies taught the mother country the folly of supposing that Englishmen in America would consent to be governed by Englishmen at home. Although colonial institutions are modelled as nearly as may be after the original type, they are not entirely free from questions of fundamental difficulty. The central question of government Whose will is to prevail 1 has at the present time (1879) been agitating two of the greatest of the colonies, a deadlock between the council and the assembly in Victoria being referred to England, and the governor-general of Canada refusing to dismiss a^lieu- teuant-governor on the advice of his responsible ministry. 