Page:Two speeches of Robert R. Torrens, Esq., M.P., on emigration, and the colonies.djvu/30

26 his belief that the misunderstanding which had arisen was attributable not in any degree to lack of ability or lack of good intentions on the part of Her Majesty's Ministers, but wholly to the unsuitableness of departmental machinery. He had considered various schemes which had been suggested for rectifying that deficiency with the respectful attention that was due to the character and experience of the gentlemen from whom they emanated. Some had proposed to give the Colonies representation in that House; others, the establishment of a Council exterior to, and, as regarded certain great Imperial questions, superior to this Parliament; others, a Council of Advice similar to that which assisted the Secretary of State for India; and he had come to the conclusion that the noble Lord the Secretary of State for the Colonies was right in rejecting them one and all, either as impracticable or as inconsistent with the theory of the Constitution.

On the other hand, it was a great error to suppose, as had been asserted by Earl Granville, that the Governors constituted the proper channel of official communication between the Governments of the great self-supporting Colonies and the Secretary of State. The Governors constituted a most suitable channel for conveying to the Colonial Cabinets the policy of Her Majesty's Government, and very potent instruments for promoting that policy; but, as the servants of the Imperial Government, dependent as regarded their future prospects on the favour of the Secretary of State, they were not, and never could be, suitable channels for advocating the colonists' case from the colonists' point of view at the Imperial Court. He was glad to find himself borne out in that view by the right hon. Baronet opposite the Member for Staffordshire, from whose recent very admirable work on Colonial Policy he would here read a brief extract —

"It was true that Colonial Governors, however dependent their Ministers might be on the confidence of local representative bodies, are likely enough themselves to keep an eye on the policy of the Home Government, and tune their own course with it."

He would also avail himself of the concurrent testimony of one whose experience had been gathered, like his own, in the administration of Colonial Cabinets. Mr. M'Culloch, late Chief Secretary in the Colony of Victoria, had said, in a recent debate upon the relations with the mother country—

"He deprecated the system which made the Governor, rather than the Ministry of the day, responsible for the despatches which were sent in reply to Imperial communications; these despatches, about which the people in the Colony knew nothing, were taken in England as expressive of the community here, when the fact was neither the people nor the Ministry had anything to do with them. This position seemed to him to be a wrong one which should not be continued."