whole responsibility in this country
for everything that was done under their authority; and their
authority could only be exerted through an Assembly which, as things
stood, they could not control.

The Committee can easily imagine the telegrams and the questions which
would have been addressed from Downing Street and the House of Commons
to these Ministers on native matters, on the question of the
administration of the Chinese Ordinance, on all the numerous intricate
questions with which we are at the present moment involved in South
Africa. And what would have been the position of these Ministers,
faced with these embarrassments in a hostile Assembly in which they
had few friends--what possibility would they have had of maintaining
themselves in such an Assembly? Is it not certain that they would have
broken down under the strain to which they would have been exposed,
that the Assembly would have been infuriated, that Parties differing
from each other on every conceivable question, divided from each other
by race and religion and language, would have united in common hatred
of the interference of the outside Power and the government of
bureaucrats. Then we should very speedily have got to the bottom of
the hill. There would have been a swift transition. The Legislative
Assembly would have converted itself into a constituent Assembly, and
it would have taken by force all that the Government now have it in
their power to concede with grace, distinction, and authority. On
these grounds his Majesty's Government came to the conclusion that it
would be right to omit the stage of representative government
altogether and to go directly to the stage of responsible government.

It is the same in politics as it is in war. When one crest line has
been left, it is necessary to go to the next. To halt half-way in the
valley between is to court swift and certain destruction, and the
moment you have abandoned the safe position of a Crown Colony
government, or government with an adequate nominated majority, there
is no stopping-place whatever on which you may rest the sole of your
foot, until you come to a responsible Legislative Assembly with an
executive obeying that Assembly. These arguments convinced his
Majesty's Government that it would be necessary to annul the Letters
Patent issued on March 31, 1905, and make an end of the Lyttelton
Constitution. That Constitution now passes away into the never-never
land, into a sort of ch