Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/95

 the prevention lies in withholding from tropical Australia that complete self-government that now distinguishes the energetic colonies of the temperate latitudes. The Imperial Government thus retains an effective control over all the colonial legislation—a control it has virtually parted with in the self-governed colonies. Having once, by these free institutions, transferred the reins to the vigorous colonial grasp, we fear that the mere abstract Imperial supremacy, which, with all its strength of legal theory, still unites the Empire under one Government, would prove of small avail in regulating an exciting domestic question of colonial legislation. In the North Australia of the future no question, probably, will be more exciting than that of the regulations of the labour supply. Imperial views in such a question would take an equitable and humane direction for the necessary protection of the labourer; but we may rest assured from much previous experience that the views of a tropical Australian constituency and their legislators, all exclusively of the white and employing race, with their own direct interests and convenience involved, would take a direction quite different.

Already are associations projected in Victoria and South Australia for the colonization of the northern shores, and even a complete political constitution is amongst the items and attractions