WHAT QTTEENSLAND HAS GAINED. T ORD KNTJTSFORD'S announcement on Tuesday
was unsatisfactory. Had the Government deter- mined to stand by their appointment in Queensland, Sir Henry Blake would hardly have declined to be their representative. His discovery that, "after what has passed, it would be extremely unpleasant for him to under- take the Governorship," probably followed upon the dis- covery that it would be extremely unpleasant for Ministers if he did undertake it. It is fortunate, perhaps, that the real cause of the Queensland remonstrance has not been made public. We have difficulties enough connected with Ireland without the Home-rule controversy being reproduced in every Colony where there is an Irish element in the popu- lation. It is very bad to withdraw a newly appointed Governor because he is not peraona grata to those over whom he is to exercise a, nominal sovereignty. It would have been worse if we had had to admit that the Queen must not be represented in one of the Dependencies of her Crown by an official who in the discharge of his ordinary duty has made an enemy of Mr. Parnell. We have been spared the public confession of this humiliation, though every- body knows that this is what it means. We commend the facts, however, to the partisans of Imperial Federation. The value of a tie which is strained almost to breaking at the first sign of a difference of opinion between the Colony and the Mother-country on a question with which the Colony has nothing to do, may supply profitable matter for Lord Rosebery's next speech.
As it is, we have to deal with a claim put forward by certain Colonies to be consulted in the appointment of their Governors. So far as this demand. can be dissociated from the special circumstances of Queensland, it seems to be prompted by the Colonial desire to be ruled by con- spicuous men. They have no fear of getting a King Stork, so they do not mind rejecting a King Log on the ground that he is not strong enough. There is nothing unreasonable in this desire. The subjects of a roi faineant may fairly ask that he shall look as much like a King as he can. If the men are to be had, no one will grudge the Colonies the loan of them. A Governor can do so little directly, that the influence he can exercise indirectly is really the most important part of his work, and the bigger the man, the better this part is likely to be done. There is one thing, however, which Colonial politicians forget. Dignities that are close at hand are apt to seem more worth having than they really are. Colonists may fancy that it is only the jealousy or the favouritism of the Home Government that stands in the way of their getting eminent men. The Home Government is painfully aware that the true obstacle is the indisposition of eminent men to accept the honours offered them. There are three things that might lead a man such as the Colonies want to accept a Governorship, —power, wealth, or the absence of any alternative career. To frame the laws, and thereby shape the future of a young community, would be a task which the most ambitious politician—provided that his ambition were of the right sort—might eagerly undertake. To save money enough to give him an independence on his return, and so to make an English political career at once easy and honourable, would have great attractions for those whose desires pointed definitely to distinction at home. To an energetic man who finds pleasure in work, and has at the same time to live by his work, a Colonial Governorship, if it came in the ordinary course of service promotion, would give the satis- faction born of a consciousness that he has pleased his chiefs and deserved advancement. Let us see on which of these three motives the Colonies can best depend for getting the Governors they want.
It is plain that in a Colony with representative institu- tions, the desire of power can have no influence whatever. There is no position, perhaps, of equal pretension in which the holder has so little of his own way as in a Colonial Governorship. As a rule, he can do nothing. Once and again, perhaps, the balance of parties in the Colonial Legislature may be so even, that he has the opportunity of trying an experiment ; but unless the attempt is made with extraordinary caution, it probably ends in uniting both parties for the moment against him. The Sovereign's representative has not even the special knowledge and the long experience which may be possessed by the Sovereign himself. He is only a sojourner, and by the time that he understands the rival parties which successively furnish him with Ministers, his term of office may be coming to an end. No doubt the Colonies can, if they choose, alter all this. They can make their Governor- ships real prizes, by making them real careers. The Viceroyalty of India does not need to go begging, because in India the Queen's representative has more power than the Queen herself. In the five years he spends there, he can devise and carry out a policy, and even hope to see some of its fruits. Let the Colonies surrender the authority, or even a part of the authority, now shared between the Ministers and the Legislature into the hands of the Governors, and Governors such as they want may be had for the asking.
They can reach the same end by another road. They can make their Governorships real prizes by making their holders really rich. Here, again, the Viceroyalty of India in an instance in point. Again and again it has tempted men who had no wish to go into exile, by the prospect of coming home again with money in their pockets. Let the Colonies put their Governorships on a level in this respect with the Viceroyalty of India, and see how keen will be the competition for them. They will become the stepping- stones over which men who are at once poor and ambitious make their way to wealth and all that wealth brings with it. But if a Colony were to think about doing this, the question would soon be asked,—Are we getting money's- worth for our money ? It would be agreeable to have a succession of men of the first political and social importance serving their time in the Colony, and carrying home a sub- stantial part of the Colony's wealth. But wherein would the Colony be the better for it ? The Governor, if he were Lord Salisbury or Mr. Gladstone himself, could do no more than give dinner-parties and offer unsolicited advice.
• The dinner-parties and the advice of a man drawing £25,000 a year might be better than those of a man drawing one-fifth of that sum, but would they be five times better ?
If the Colonies will neither allow their Governors to have power, nor help them to grow rich, they are far more likely to get good men for the post on the present system than on any other. In an old country, there will always be a considerable number of able men whose opportunities fall far below their merits. They would make very good Prime Ministers or Lord Chancellors, if they were not headed in the race by the ignoble necessity of living. It is this that turns them aside into the various services. In them they can at worst be sure of subsistence, and at best rise to such distinctions as the service has to confer. It is a lottery, of course, on both sides ; but the bullet finds its billet as often in the Colonial as in any other branch of administration. What a Governor taken from among men of this type will be like, may be inferred from the kind of men who fill Permanent Under-Secretaryships at home. They are, for the most part, men who have -had to make their own way, and have elected to make it in the Civil Service. If they are compared with those Parliamentary Under-Secretaries who never rise to higher dignities, the difference is at once evident. The permanent official is usually a man who would have been distinguished if he had not been forced to go into harness early. The Parliamentary official is often a man who is undistinguished enough to derive some lustre even from the possession of subordinate office. This last kind of distinction is all that the Colonies can secure for their Governor by the line that some among them seem inclined to take. They may be ruled by obscure Peers. Whether it is worth a long wrangle with the Colonial Office to get no more than this, is for them to consider.
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