derives such plausibility as it possesses
from the gross ignorance of the public as to the principles and habits
which govern the English State system. A mere account of the
constitutional relations existing between England and a self-governed
colony is almost equivalent to a suggestion of the reasons which forbid
the hope that the true answer to the agitation for Home Rule is to be
found in conceding to Ireland institutions like those which satisfy the
inhabitants of New South Wales or Victoria. To render such a statement
at once brief and intelligible is no easy matter, for, among all the
political arrangements devised by the ingenuity of statesmen, none can
be found more singular, more complicated, or more anomalous than the
position of combined independence and subordination occupied by the
large number of self-governing colonies which are scattered throughout
the British Empire. Victoria, which may be taken as a type of the whole
class, is, for most purposes of local and internal administration, and
for some purposes which go beyond the sphere usually assigned to local
government, an independent, self-governing community. Victoria is at the
same time, for all purposes in theory and for many purposes in fact, a
merely subordinate portion of the British Empire, and as truly subject
to the British Parliament as is Middlesex or the Isle of Wight.

Let us try in the first place to realize--for this is the essential
matter as regards my present argument--the full extent of Victorian
independence.

Victoria enjoys a Constitution after the British model. The Governor,
the two Houses, the Ministry, reproduce the well-known features of our
limited monarchy. The Victorian Parliament further possesses in Victoria
that character of sovereignty which the British Parliament possesses
throughout the dominions of the Crown, and is (subject, of course, to
the authority of the British Parliament itself) as supreme at Melbourne
as are Queen, Lords, and Commons at Westminster. It makes and unmakes
Cabinets; it controls the executive action of the Ministry; who, in
their turn, are the authorized advisers of that sham constitutional
monarch, the Colonial Governor. The Parliament, moreover, recognizes no
restrictions on its legislative powers; it is not, as is the Congress of
the United States, restrained within a very limited sphere of action; it
is not, as are both the Congress and the State Legislatures of the
Union, bound hand and fo