COLONIAL ENVOYS. T HE little ceremonial of Wednesday at the Colonial
Office is, we hope, the first step towards a new relation between the Home Government and our Colonies,—a relation which ought to supplement and, on the whole, improve that already established through the Agency of the Colonial Governors. Lord Derby's reception of the Agents-General of our self- governing Colonies probably means, and in any case, we think, ought to mean, that in future these Agents are to be accorded a formal position as Envoys of their respective Governments, and that their position is to be granted some at least of the for- mal honours attached to the Ministers of foreign Governments. The need of such a recognition appears to us to be really estab- lished. To a very considerable extent, the self-governing Colonies are,—not, indeed, foreign to us, the hope is that they never need be so,—but as independent of our policy as foreign countries themselves. We allow them, and rightly allow them, to tax our manufactures, and to ignore the commercial interests of this country as they please. We ask them for no help in war, though they sometimes offer it, and though we should be bound to give them kelp, if they needed it. We often sanction their laws, even when they decide important questions of policy, or even morality, in a sense adverse to that which receives the approval of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The reason that the Colonies are so loyal to us is that we have abdicated all serious attempts to control their domestic policy, except in cases where they voluntarily come to us for our arbitration. Under these circumstances, it is no longer sufficient to communicate with them through a Governor who does not in any sense represent them, and who is not dependent on their approbation. As a matter of fact, it has not unfrequently happened that the Colonial Secretary and the Cabinet have been seriously misled as to the public feeling in a colony by the despatches of the Governor. It is true, of course, that the British Governor is in constant communica- tion with his Colonial Cabinet, and is bound to act generally on their advice. But it is also true that he very often finds that advice extremely unpalatable to himself, and that, as a natural consequence, it suffers some unconscious perversion in passing through his mind, so that when it reaches our Colonial Office, it conveys a very different impression from that which the responsible Government of the Colony would have desired to convey. It is very much better that the Colonial Govern- ments should have a completely independent mode of repre- senting their views to this Government, by the agency of men who have lived their lives in sympathy with the local Ministers, and who feel bound to the Ministers by the bonds of interest as well as the bonds of sympathy, so that there may be no false colouring due to the unconscious prepossessions of the medium through which the policy of the Colony is transmitted.
It may be objected, indeed, that to accord such a recogni- tion as this to the Envoys of the Colonies will diminish the importance and influence of the Colonial Governors, who are the permanent representatives of the Crown on the spot. We do not think so. We believe that it will, in the end, add to the importance of these Governors,—for nothing will tend more decidedly to increase their weight than the knowledge that all their despatches, public and private, will be checked at home by comparison with the statements of the Colonial Envoys, and will depend for their estimation mainly on being more statesmanlike, weightier in tone, fuller of knowledge of every side of a question, than the statements of the Colonial Envoys themselves. Our Colonial Governors have far oftener blundered, through their too obvious bias towards that side of the question which they believed to be pleasing to the Colonial Office, than through any other kind of error. The motive for such a bias will be in large measure removed by the clear knowledge that this bias would be not only discovered, but rendered so obvious as to do mischief to the cause they have at heart, so soon as the statements of the Colonial Agents had been fully heard. The consequence, we believe, will be that, though the Governors will still, of course, see the policy of our Colonies more from the point of view of the Home Government than the Colonial Envoys can do, they will yet take pains to avoid all partiality of statement, and send home much more really trustworthy criticisms on Colonial affairs than they have sent home up to this time.
The object of English statesmen,—as well, we believe, Con- servative as Liberal,—has now long been to bring about so cordial a feeling between the Mother-country and the self- governed Colonies as will amount to a virtual alliance,—not necessarily very onerous or active, but always hearty, and always containing the contingency of an active alliance, under any critical circumstances,—between the United Kingdom and these distant branches of the Empire. The various plans for a common Federal representation of the Mother-country and the Colonies are all pure dreams, involving difficulties far too vast to be surmounted. But there is every reason to hope that a provisional alliance between England and her self- governed Colonies, strong enough not only to defeat all hopes of detaching any one of our Colonies from us, but to secure us a very considerable additional strength in time of urgent need, may be easily brought about ; and we are quite sure that nothing will tend more effectually to this result than the frank recognition of them as, to a considerable extent, inde- pendent Governmments, with interests different from, though not opposed to, our own, and a frank deference for all the- representations which these more or less independent Govern. ments choose to make to our own. Lord Derby has initiated his new Colonial Administration with a very important step, taken in the most dignified and impressive way.
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