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else urged that the colonists were grown men able to manage their own business; that the mother and child theory was a pretty metaphor but a bad maxim; that the mother was too far off to know her children's wants, and too ignorant to satisfy them? Were they not Roebuck, Hume, Durham, Lewes, Russell, Cobden, Bright, Gladstone, Morley, and many others, who would all be ranked by Mr. Froude among the number of the lost? Yet hear what some of these have said, and say in what respect the views of Mr. Froude are different! Cobden is the arch heretic, so let his words have prominence. Cobden, as every fashionable writer knows, thought nothing of the colonies, except how England might be rid of them! Here is a proof of the familiar knowledge taken from a speech delivered at Manchester on January tenth, 1849: "People tell me I want to abandon our colonies; but I say, do you intend to hold your colonies by the sword, by armies and ships of war? That is not a permanent hold upon them. I want to retain them by their affections. . . ." And again in the same speech: "Our colonial trade is a sort of coasting trade. Our ships are at home when they get to our colonies."

Is this the language of a separatist? Or is it not the same assertion as that which Mr. Froude has made in other words "The colonies are part of us" (Oceana,' p. 390).

Listen again to the same speaker when he is urging on a reluctant people to grant self-government to Canada and New South Wales (speech at Bradford, December twentieth, 1849): "I say that Englishmen, whether living in Bradford, or in Montreal or in Sydney or in Cape Town, Englishmen are entitled their inherent birthright to all the privileges of self-government. . . . That right belongs to Englishmen abroad to the same extent as to us at home. . . . The proposal to give our colonies abroad the fullest rights

as

of self-government will involve the loss of a great deal of patronage. It will involve the appointment to offices in the colonies by Englishmen there instead of their being appointed by Englishmen living in Downing Street."

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The whole of this speech, which is devoted to the subject of the colonies, I would read like an echo of the first and last chapter of 'Oceana,' if it had not been delivered thirty-six years before that work was published. Like Mr. Froude, Cobden looked upon the colonies as natural outlets for population. "I believe," said he, that by giving our colonies the fullest privileges of self-government, they will afford far better outlets for your population than under a system of colonial misgovernment." But Cobden went further than Mr. Froude, for he would have used the ships of the Royal Navy for the transport of immigrants to Canada and Australia. Like Mr. Froude, too, he did not look to any fanciful expedient for connecting the colonies with England, but trusted rather to the influence of an "enlightened public opinion brought to bear on the colonial minister."

Nor has the colonial policy of Cobden been repudiated by his later followers. Listen to what Mr. Thorold Rogers, who is the very Goliath of the Manchester school, says in a volume of the Cobden Club essays (p. 451): "Such a labour as would establish a true federation between the United Kingdom and the colonies would be worthy of a statesman. It would be undertaken if the British Parliament were less a chamber in which peddling interests are discussed, and settled by compromise, and more a senate where great questions were debated and determined." Then, in the true spirit of practical wisdom which always animated Cobden, Mr. Rogers suggests as one means of benefiting both the parties to the union, that homeless children should be boarded out in colonial homesteads, and so trained into the kind of immigrant which alone is wanted in the colonies.

Further extracts are unnecessary to show that Mr. Froude and the fashionable school of friends to the colonies are missing the mark when they denounce the Manchester doctrines. All which that school urged was the destruction of the monopoly of colonial trade, the extension to the colonies of the responsibilities of selfgovernment, the removal of the abuses of patronage, and the relief of England from a costly and mischievous system of civil and military rule. Separatists, in the sense in which the term is used by Mr. Froude, they were not. But they recognised that until colonists. acquired the dignity of citizenship, and the power of managing their own affairs, the colonies themselves could not progress, and England could derive no benefit from their dependence. For this reason they have steadily discountenanced all vague and fantastic schemes for extending the responsibilities of England without increasing her power, or for diminishing the responsibility of the colonies, or for weakening that pride in their own country which colonists, grown into citizens, are learning to feel.

In carrying out these views, the Manchester school or the Liberal party, for the one has dominated the other, has shown towards the colonies the truest friendship; and to recog nise this fact is not a mere matter of gratitude or idle literary accuracy but a valuable safeguard against present error. The keynote of the Manchester policy is sober wisdom, and contempt of sober wisdom seems to mark a rising school of English politicians. Sentimental professors, sensationhunting editors, and party wire-pullers are combining to discredit common sense, with a result, among others, that every schoolboy who can write an essay, and every journalist who thinks himself a statesman, is ready with some cloudy scheme for an Imperial Union. In such a nebulous confusion the interests of the colonies are apt to be forgotten. It seems to be supposed that our own country and our own

affairs have no attractions; but that we are pining for English titles or English offices, if haply we can come within the range of English politics.

Nothing, I believe, can be further from the truth. There are, undoubtedly, colonists of weight and influence to whom England is everything and Australia very little. These men have their homes in England, and are able to make themselves heard upon all colonial questions. But it is otherwise with the mass of the people. These have an affectionate regard for England, and a sentimental recollection of what their parents may have told them, which often conceals, even from themselves, the slightness of the tie which binds this country to Great Britain. Mr. Froude saw nothing of the men and women whose sentiments really compose Australian opinion. He came among us at a time when the popular imagination had been taken captive by military ardour; and he associated only with the wealthy and official class. Were he to return to Sydney now he would form very different impressions. The Soudan expedition, which started amidst such great enthusiasm, is now the subject of general attack, and, what is even more deadly than attack, of ridicule.

It

is the cause of one fourth of our present deficiency, and its true meaning is being brought home to the taxpayer in a way which he never anticipated. What the result may be, if any future occasion should arise for repeating the offer of of Australian troops, has yet to be seen; but he would be a very rash prophet who would say that, judging from the present temper of the people, Austra lian troops could always be relied upon to fight in wars, in the making of which they have no voice, and which in no way concern their welfare. We have bought our experience-fortunately at a cheap rate. Only the future will show how we shall use it.

The same national spirit which

makes us look with disfavour, upon warlike expeditions in the service of another Power, causes a dislike of the proposals made by Mr. Froude for the reward of our public men by English honours.

Mr. Froude rightly enough scouts the idea of colonial peers; but his suggestion to transfer our judges to the English bench, or to appoint our public men to the Privy Council, is open to the same objection. We cannot at present spare our best men. They are too few already to do the work that is before them. To tempt away those who have served us well, would be a policy we cannot afford. Further, such a proposal is open to the objection that it sets a wrong ideal before our citizens. The instinct of citizenship requires careful nurture. One great difficulty in Australia is to make the individual aware of his

public responsibility. So long as Australia is in a position of dependence, this difficulty will be felt. A colonist is not a citizen, give him what self-government you please. The sentiment of dependence is ever present, and yielding to his sentiments he gets into a way of looking to the Mother Country instead of helping himself. The contrast between the Canadian colonist, and the citizen of the United States, is an every-day example of the depressing influence of even a sentimental dependence. That this is a sentiment which has great force in Australia, no one will deny who has seen the prejudice which exists against everything "colonial," and the readiness to accept anything of any quality, whether in things, books, or men, provided that it come from England.

For all these reasons, many of those who are most alive to the deficiencies of Australian life, and most susceptible to the attractive force of the ideal of an English-speaking commonwealth, are slow to countenance any movement which should weaken in Australians the sense of national pride. This does not mean that there is any body of thoughtful men who advocate separation. To talk of such a thing at present in our disunited and defenceless state would be almost the act of a traitor. But it is another thing to have separation in view as an ultimate necessity, and as an absolutely necessary step towards any real union with Great Britain. Separation at present would mean, in all probability, a repetition in the Pacific of the history of the South American Republics. But the separation of a Federated Australia would, under wise counsels, be only preliminary to a Union with England. For the Union which Australians would approve must take place upon a footing of equality. It must be the Union of an equal with an equal, not the absorption of a colony by an empire.

Union upon any other terms would mean the destruction of Australian citizenship and the death of Australian aspirations. Union, to be advantageous to Australia, can be brought about most surely through the means of separation. At present, however, the time is not ripe for any change. All that can be done is to follow Mr. Froude's advice, let well alone until the opportunity arrive. We can adopt his conclusion, but differ from his arguments.

B. R. WISE.

BALLAIRAI DURG.

DINNER had been over for about an hour at the mess-house of the little station of Mudnoor in the Deccan, on the night of the fifth of May a good many years ago; and though a few were playing pool in the billiard room, the greater number of the officers were clustered in the wide verandah, smoking and talking and making merry, for the afternoon had been overpoweringly sultry, and the low dark messhouse, in spite of the swinging punkahs, was close and stuffy as a ship's hold.

Outside it was cooler. A heavy storm was raging on the edge of the ghats many miles to the west, and though for a while the night wind blew in heavy puffs hot as from the mouth of a furnace, it soon died away, and a cool refreshing breeze, growing every moment damper and more chill, came stealing in from the west. The orderly officer, clinking in after visiting his guards, put his head through the billiard room window, and called out to the players, "Come out of that hole, you fellows, and smell the rain.”

"By Jove, how jolly!" cried a number of those gay young warriors clustering round the window, while the click of the balls ceased, and the dull voice of the marker, "Black lost a life, Green's the player," fell unheeded even on the ears of Green, as with swelling nostrils and open mouths they drank in that most pleasant of all scents, the smell of thirsty ground soaking up the early rain. Soon by the blaze of the frequent lightning the dark line of the coming shower was seen in the distance, and great drops began to patter on the verandah with a sound like hail.

"I say," cried an officer of the Irregular Cavalry, "here's our C. O. coming in, let's go and ask him if he's got any news of pig," as the commandant of the Irregulars, who hap

pened also to be field-officer of the day, was seen by the flashes cantering down the road which led to the mess-house, with the rain-squall pelting close behind him as if in pursuit. In another moment he dismounted, threw the reins of his game little Arab to the syce, unbuckled his heavy sword (cased in the wooden scabbard which kept it sharp and serviceable) and handing it to his orderly came slowly up the steps.

Major Thornhill was a fair specimen of the servants of the old East India Company-just and right honourable masters, who shall say that they were not well served? Standing on the steps, in the long jack boots and dark green tunic of the Irregular Cavalry, crossed by a broad gold pouch-belt, and adorned with two or three faded bits of ribbon on his left breast, and with a red cashmere shawl twisted round his lean flanks, though not a handsome man, he looked every inch a soldier. His subalterns swore by him, and his fierce Moghul troopers, when other regiments mutinied, followed him without wavering against their brethren; and on the dark day, when he at last met the soldier's death which he had often courted, they died in heaps across his body. A quiet, somewhat solitary man, not often moved to conversation or mirth, but, on the rare occasions when he did speak, speaking well and simply, and with a wide experience and knowledge of the country, of the natives, and of human nature; hence his judgment was in great request for the decision of the usual mess-table arguments, which for the most part are begun with dogmatic assertion and met by flat denial-each party in the quarrel being not unfrequently equally ignorant of the subject in dispute. On such occasion he would give wise counsel in few words; but, if

he liked the combatants, he would sometimes illustrate his rulings by stories, which he told simply, but so effectively, that astute subalterns were reported sometimes to devise sham disputes with a view to drawing forth these good stories, for he was a singleminded man, without guile, and fell readily into a trap.

"Any news of pig, Major?" cried young Gordon, the subaltern who had last spoken. "I hear that you sent Maryanne out to Culmaisa."

"No," replied he, "but I told him to come here for orders after mess." Here the Major's orderly, a fine looking Pathan, although his straight black beard parted in the centre and

brushed upwards towards his ears gave him a somewhat cat-like aspect, stepped up to the break of the verandah and saluted.

"Well, Hyat Khan; what is it?" asked the Major in Hindoostanee.

"The Huzoor's [literally, the presence] shikari Murriana, sahib, waits the Huzoor's orders."

"Very good, send him here."

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The orderly went off, and speedily returned, bringing the redoubted Murriana, or 'Maryanne" as he was generally called by the youth of the station.

Murriana was a Mahratta by caste. Though somewhat past middle-age, he still looked full of work; the muscles stood out like whipcord from his lean half-naked limbs, and his large black eyes glistened bright in the lamp light, as he stood with hands advanced and both palms joined, waiting respectfully for his master's orders.

"Murriana," said the Major in Hindoostanee, "you are to go out to Culmaisa to-morrow and try if you can get any news of pig, and a horseman shall go with you, whom you will send back with news."

"Very good, Great King; [Maharaj, a common Hindoo term of respect] I heard just now in the bazaar that the grey boar of Monagul has come down to the Culmaisa jungle; if it is true, the sahibs will have good sport."

"Bravo, Maryanne," cried half a dozen voices. "We've been after that old boar for the last three seasons; it will be a great disgrace to you if you don't run him to earth now; " and then some one struck up the wellknown Deccan hunting-song of "The boar, the mighty boar," to the old English air of "My love is like a red red rose," and every one, even the Major, joined in the familiar chorus.

"The boar, the mighty boar's my theme,
Whate'er the wise may say,

My morning thought, my midnight dream,
My hope throughout the day.
Then sing the boar, the mighty boar,
Fill high the cup with me,

And here's to all who fear no fall,
And the next grey boar we see.

"Youth's daring spirit, manhood's fire,
Stout heart, and eagle eye,

Doth he require, who would aspire
To see the wild boar die.

Then sing the boar, the mighty boar,
Fill high the cup with me,
And here's to all who fear no fall,
And the next grey boar we see.

"We envy not the rich their wealth,
Nor kings their crowned career,
The saddle is our throne of health,
Our sceptre is the spear;

Nor envy we the warrior's pride,
Deep stained with purple gore,

For our field of fame's the jungle-side
Our foe the grim grey boar.

"When age hath weakened manhood's powers, And every nerve unbraced,

The joys of youth shall still be ours,
On mem'ry's tablets traced:

And with the friends whom death hath spared,
When youth's bright course is run,
We'll tell of the dangers we have shared,
And the spears that we have won.

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