by no means assume this of New Zealand; on the contrary, it has hitherto been, and it it is hoped and intended, if possible, that it shall continue to be, a signal exception to this supposed law. At present, the settlers and natives are living together in complete harmony and constant intercourse; the natives, much the most intelligent, as well as most powerful race of savages that have ever been discovered, are rapidly being converted to Christianity, and submitting themselves to English laws and customs; and if successive Governors and Bishops of New Zealand shall have the spirit in this respect that animates the present holders of those important offices, we may hope that this great experiment—one of the most interesting that has ever been made in the course of human improvement-whether a savage race can be raised from its savageness and enabled to live with Europeans on a footing of equality and not of slavery, will meet with lasting success. We therefore class New Zealand as a mixed Colony in respect of population.

You will thus perceive the truth of what I said above, that, numerically speaking, the real Colonies of England, constituting the third of the above-named classes, are but few out of the whole number of the countries popularly so called. For we have gone through the whole list, and shown that all we have mentioned are at present to be otherwise regarded than as Colonies in the full sense, with the two great and important exceptions which I now proceed to advert to-the North American (all but Lower Canada) and the Australian Colonies. You will see at once why I have said that it is only numerically speaking that these Colonies form but a small part of the whole number of our foreign Dependencies. Reckoned

by weight and not by tale, they are far more important than all the rest of the Colonies put together. Their names are soon said: Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward's Island, Newfoundland, and the Bermudas, in North America; New South Wales and Port Philip, South Australia, Western Australia, and Van Diemen's Land, in Australia. But no one can estimate either what advantages and what glory to England these vast regions may or might now bring, or to what a height they may not, in future ages, advance the power and the renown of the British race.

Both these groups of Colonies may be called pure British Colonies, that is, composed of natives and descendants of Great Britain or Ireland. Yet even between these some distinction may be made. In North America we have already excepted Lower Canada from this description; and in the other continental Colonies, those of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, I believe there are also some few natives of France and other countries intermingled. But, throughout the whole of the Australian Colonies, properly so called, and excluding New Zealand, the inhabitants are of unmixed British origin. There are indeed a few natives, of whom I may hereafter say a little more; but they are quite removed from what is commonly understood as the settled and inhabited parts of those Colonies, which are entirely occupied by British. In this respect, therefore, as being so entirely sprung from ourselves, as well as in respect of their youthful energy and hopefulness, their remoteness from and consequent independence of all other nations, and their immense capabilities of development in all the elements which form great and free communities, there is pro

bably no part of the Empire which more demands and will more amply requite the wisest care on the part of England, and would more deeply condemn her neglect or illusage, than these vast possessions in the Southern Ocean.

I have thought it might be interesting and useful in this manner to lay down accurately what, properly speaking, are alone Colonies of England, and what are not. But it will not be expedient, in pursuing the subject, to look solely at these, namely, the North American and Australian Colonies. We may include all those where any considerable number of British subjects have permanent interests in the land as residents or owners; excepting, however, Ceylon, which, though in some degree answering to this description, is in fact a part of India, and ought not, even in common parlance, to be reckoned among our Colonies. And, according to this, our Colonial Empire may be said to consist mainly of the North American, the West Indian, and the Australian Colonies, and the Cape of Good Hope.

Now, when we so look upon it, and always bearing in mind our definition of a Colony, we may first be struck with the idea that no other nation at present, but England, has a Colonial Empire. Other nations have Colonies, as France, Spain, Holland; though, perhaps, not Colonies in the full and proper sense. But an Empire implies something great, if not vast; and these comparatively small possessions do not deserve that name. Again, other nations have large foreign possessions that is, removed from the land they themselves occupy-as Russia and Turkey; but they are in no sense Colonies. But I think we may go further, and say that, with very few exceptions, there is no in

stance recorded in history of a Colonial Empire such as England possesses. The chief exception is, the Spanish possessions in America, subsequent to the discovery of that quarter of the world. By a course of the most merciless barbarity, the Spaniards almost entirely exterminated the natives whom they found in those countries, and, occupying them with their own people, constituted what may fairly be called a Colonial Empire. Perhaps the same may be said of the Portuguese, or the Dutch, and, during some part of its history, of the Moorish Empire; but, with these reservations, there is not even an apparent exception to be found in modern history to what I have said. In ancient history I need only briefly advert to the cases of the Greeks and the Romans.

With regard to the latter, the Romans can hardly be said to have been a colonizing people in the complete sense of the word. Italy indeed was in great measure colonized from Rome; but that country is rather looked upon as itself the home of the Roman Empire, and, although throughout the vast extent of that empire, there were what were called Colonies (as we read in the Acts of the Apostles that Philippi was a Colony),* and, although they were partly occupied by natives of Italy, yet they seem rather to have been foreign possessions held and governed from Rome for political purposes, but in which the bulk of the people were still foreigners, than offshoots from Rome as a parent country.

On the other hand, the Greeks were eminently Colonizers in the fullest sense. Our word metropolis is a Greek word, of which we have changed the sense; in the original it meant simply what we call the mother

*Acts xvi. 12.

country. Now you may have observed that I did not include, in the definition of a Colony, any political connexion, any connexion of government between the Colony and the country from which it was settled. It is no necessary part of it. We are in the habit of talking of Colonies and Dependencies as if they were the same thing; but a Colony may be quite independent. The Greek Colonies can scarcely be said to have been Dependencies at all. The Greeks, especially the Athenians, founded great and flourishing Colonies in Asia Minor, Italy, and elsewhere. They did so in the most systematic and deliberate manner, by sending out from themselves large and organized bodies, prepared to establish, in the vacant lands which they went to occupy, communities and constitutions in all respects resembling what they had left behind. But when so established, their connexion with the country from which they sprang became one almost of equality, instead of being one of dependence. They made their own laws, and supported their own institutions; and were bound by little beyond a general obligation to be friends with the parent state, and to be her allies in war.

Now, we shall not hastily conclude that this system was an inferior one to the Colonial system of modern times, as usually administered, especially in the most recent days of English history. That system is the exact reverse of the Greek system in the important particulars to which I have referred. We attempt to govern the whole of our Colonies immediately from home, by a Government Department sitting in London. More so indeed in some cases than others. Those of our Colonies in which elective representative bodies are part of the