New Zealand was endowed with the same system.
Among all the British realms in which the white man was predominant,
only South Africa was as yet excluded from this remarkable development.
The reasons for this exclusion we have already noted: its consequences
will occupy our attention in later pages.

Very manifestly the empire which was developing on such lines was not
an empire in the old sense--a dominion imposed by force upon unwilling
subjects. That old word, which has been used in so many senses, was
being given a wholly new connotation. It was being made to mean a free
partnership of self-governing peoples, held together not by force, but
in part by common interests, and in a still higher degree by common
sentiment and the possession of the same institutions of liberty.

In the fullest sense, however, this new conception of empire applied
only to the group of the great self-governing colonies. There were many
other regions, even before 1878, included within the British Empire,
though as yet it had not incorporated those vast protectorates over
regions peopled by backward races which have been added during the last
generation. There were tropical settlements like British Honduras,
British Guiana, Sierra Leone, and Cape Coast Castle; there were many
West Indian Islands, and scattered possessions like Mauritius and
Hong-Kong and Singapore and the Straits Settlements; there were
garrison towns or coaling-stations like Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, St.
Helena. To none of these were the institutions of full responsible
self-government granted. Some of them possessed representative
institutions without responsible ministries; in others the governor was
assisted by a nominated council, intended to express local opinion, but
not elected by the inhabitants; in yet others the governor ruled
autocratically. But in all these cases the ultimate control of policy
was retained by the home government. And in this general category, as
yet, the South African colonies were included. Why were these
distinctions drawn? Why did the generation of British statesmen, who
had dealt so generously with the demand for self-government in Canada
and Australia, stop short and refuse to carry out their principles in
these other cases?

It is characteristic of British politics that they are never merely or
fully logical, and that even when political doctrines seem to enjoy the
most complete ascendancy, they are never put into effect without
qualificati