Though we agree with the sentiment which has inspired the
provisions of the Bill—the desire to yield to the natural and very reasonable wish of the Colonists for responsible govern- ment, and yet to prevent the criminal absurdity of handing over absolutely so huge a slice of the habitable globe to a body of settlers numbering less than the inhabitants of the city of Worcester—we cannot say that we think Lord Kanto- ford and his advisers have managed the business very happily. Having decided what portion of Western Australia should be handed over to the new self-governing community, the Ministry should have retained the rest as a Crown Colony. Of coarse, we shall be told that this would be impossible, because there would be nowhere for the Crown Colony Governor to live,—an objection to which we can only reply that the Chief Commis- sioner of New Guinea has managed to make himself a capital in a far more barbarous region of the earth. The course we
suggest would leave England far greater power to.found a new community in the North than that she obtains by a reserved right to split the Colony at some future date,—a right the exercise of which might always be made difficult and invidibus by a vigorous protest from Perth. We cannot help thinking that, in any case, the line of demarcation has been drawn much too high. The twenty-eighth parallel, or a line a little above Geraldtown, would have been am ueh more reasonable northern boundary than that actually chosen.
Previous page
