RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT IN THE COLONIES.

New Zealander, Volume XVIII, Issue 1641, 8 January 1862, Page 3

RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT IN THE COLONIES.

(From the “ Daily News,” October 22.)' It has been said by Edmund Burke that one of the best characteristics of a free constitution is, that it contains within itself the elements of its own conservation. Like all things human, popular government is liable to disease; but in proportion as government has genuinely sprung from the wants of the time, and truly expresses the meaning of the people, it manifests, as if by instinct, the power to seek out and apply new remedies for new evils. We are far Irom believing that the tendencies displayed in our Australian colonies under the working of their present democratic suffrage are such as it suits certain supercilious politicians in this country to represent them. Society at the Antipodes is in the roughcast state, when the smoothness of pumice-stone and varnish are unattainable, or if attainable here and there can only seem like affectation. It is utter pedantry and folly to look for the sedate formalism and mellifluous urbanity of old parliamentary usage, in the ways of a sheep-feCding; wool-stapling, and gold mining population. Equally ahsdtd would it be to expect that the apprentice senate of an immature community should reproduce for us in its way of working; the punctilious, critical, and calm demeanour of the hold hands at Westminster. An assembly of University men, bankets, large proprietors of land, and officers of the Army aid Navy, sitting at Melbourne or Sydney, might debate in a fashion that would read better to English taste in an English newspaper, but they would certainly not hi representative of the youthful state the laws of whicl they were appointed to make; they might commit fewer blunders in grammar, pass fewer laws which, when sent home, would try the temper of Downingstreet, and in mimickry of the Parliament of the oil country might hesitate longer about forcing a changs of Ministry • but they would not be a reality for Australia, only a painted sham. If the experiment of representative rule i* to be worked out in a new country with sincerity or loyalty to the principles of freedom, the new country must be left to work out the experiment in its own way. Better far ten years of blunder ing and frequent waste of energy, time and cost, witi the golden experience such practical lessons bring, that the silver chimes and unerring tick-tack of a perfect piece of London-made clockwork wound up by ai exquisite viceroy with a delicate key. We frankly owt that we have read proceedings of more than one Auitralian Legislature which, for the moment, caused is regret and disappointment; hut we had rather suffir such disappointment a hundred times more than sej the youthful vigour of the colonies crippled orcurtailel in any essential degree. With all the babble of heartless dilettantism that we hear every day about the errori of democracy, we say unreservedly, with Do Tocquevillo, that the first requisite of health and hope for i people in modern society is the making of then conscious of their free will, and of the responsibilityattendant upon it. We have a perfect faith that the Australian communities will work themselves right ,f they are only left alone. How, we know not, and vse do not want’to know ; that is not our business to inquire, it is theirs to show. But let us, in passing remind the squeamish cavillers who get hysterical tt the sound of an Australian statute infringing the laie learned theory of free competition, which Old Englanl has at length, after infinite fuss and bother, arrived at, that no such scrutiny was ever before applied to the working of a remote and recently constituted society. Had the telescope of steam communication and journilism been applied to the proceedings of New England, Pennsylvania, or Virginia during the first half centmy of their stumblings towards self-made order and lav, we suspect that much would have to be chronicled against them far less reconcilcable with the ruffled and powdered pomp of legislative England in the seventeenth century, than anything which political dandyism amongst us now bemoans in Australia. Yet none of these early American plantations were half so democratic in their early constitutions as New South Wales or Victoria at the present day. The truth is we are fallen into that state of unwholesome apathy and immobility at home, that we have come to look for objects of political interest in every other region of the world ; and having for some time amused ourselves with the contemplation of the matchless rapidity of Australian growth in population, wealth, and comfort, until there is literally nothing more to be said about the matter, some of those who cater to the public appetite for news have taken to turning the wrong side of the picture, and now try to be amnsing by caricaturing and vilipending everything Australian. Too plainly, moreover, it serves the craven purpose of panic-mongering, and panders to the anti-popular spirit so strong in certain classes.

But let us take a practical example of the selfcorrective principal which, as we have said, is inherent in all free communities. In the colony of Victoria a public loan of One Million sterling was some time ago authorised by the Legislature and sanctioned by the Governor, in order to promote public works of great utility and pressing need. Only a portion of the stock was at first issued, and the latest intelligence we have informs us that £250,000 is now about to be offered to the public, one-half consisting of one hundred pound bonds, one-fourth of fifty pound, and the balance of fire-and-twenty and ten pound bonds, bearing interest at 6 per cent. The monetary effect of such a creation of negotiable securities we are not about to discuss at present. We are more concerned with the social and political tendencies the measure involves. It is felt to be one essentially Convervative in its bearing, inasmuch as it tends to enlist.the interest of a considerable class of persons of all descriptions in the stability of public credit, and in the frugality of the government. Mr. Pitt, as is well known, always laid the greatest stress upon- this characteristic of his marvellous system of borrrowing ; it was the jewel in the snake’s head, and not less a jewel because the snake was pampered by war until it became a monster. A more subtle and successful adept in the art of governing, the present ruler of France, has resorted to the same method of obtaining the resources he requires by engaging fbe confidence and sympathies of great numbers of the people, and so rendering thorn pro hoc Conservative in tfjq genuine

sense 6f th'B t 7 the rerf joornals that havj inspired some „ s with fqsrs on account of democratic tenancies of the colony, Say unhesitatingly that tht loan, ar soon as it is accessible, ■Rill be eaejcrlv taken up. * lc h is the political confidence felt by the most cease; alive class in Victoria. Public securities, which pas® from hand to hand with the same facility as coin, increase the means of security and enjoyment tfba minority, without deteriorating in any way the means and of the majority ; and as the members of the minority arC indispnguishably mingled with the mass terming the majority, t!Q class jealousy can easily arise between them. The financial danger and evil of borrowing is for a state what it is for an individual, that d wasteful expenditure or excessive obligation. Notiing of the kind has been or can be alleged in the instance above referred to ; on the contrary, all agree that the objects for which the sum of one million sterling has been authorised as a loan are indisputably politic anl expedient, because calculated to prove universally reproductive of wealth to the colony ; and politically, we repeat, nothing can be more calculated to exercise a sedative and salutary influence on democratic institutions.