AN IMPERIAL NOTE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 140, 11 June 1909, Page 4

AN IMPERIAL NOTE.

The vice-regal Speech put into the mouth of the Governor at Thursday's pageant contains no schedule of measures to which- the attention of Members is desired. It is unique- in this respect, but the omission is just what was foreshadowed at the informal meeting of Members on Monday. The Prime Minister is to go Home, and Parliament meanwhile is to be. prorogued, hence there is no business to be presented. But supply is needed, and Members of the House that holds the purse strings will be asked to vote the necessary funds to provide for the Public Service after June 30, and also for the continued prosecution of public works. For the rest the vice-regal utterance is. a resume of the events leading up to the offer of a "Dreadnought," with which we arc- ail sufficiently familiar. The Speech is a State document of a remarkable character. It soars above the essentially local spirit which necessarily pervades such deliverances as a rule, and strikes a note of Imperialism which is significant of the change of sentiment rapidly taking place in regard to our relations with the Home Land. V\ re are realising that we are no longer a mere dependency, but part of the Great British Empire, and that sentiment is given concrete form in the Governor's remarks. The work of the local Parliament is to be subordinated to Imperial needs, the conference at the heart of the Empire xipon the vital question of defence taking precedence of all other considerations. Opinions will differ as to the necessity for suspending our own legislation while Imperial representatives are deliberating, or while our own delegate absents himself from his post in New Zealand, to join with other oversea representatives in the discussion of this all-important question. But the suspension of our own Parliamentary session gives greater emphasis to the fact, nevfcr before so clearly marked, that England's defence is our defence, and that the defence of the Empire is of primary importance, not alone to England itself, but to every dependency, however remote. The great gathering to which our Prime Minister shortly proceeds may in a sense be regarded as an Imperial Parliament, charged with the duty of guarding the Empire from aggression. Such assemblages may indeed, yet develop into a real Parliament, in which the majesty and might of the worldwide Empire of Britain may worthily be unheld.