In 1839 Russell, as Colonial Secretary, stopped transportation to New South Wales. But convicts were still sent to Tasmania and Norfolk Island. In four years no less than sixteen thousand of these unwelcome immigrants had been forced upon the inhabitants of Tasmania, and in 1840 they presented a petition praying that the system might be stopped. Peel's Government suspended transportation to Tasmania for two years, but actually contemplated reviving it in the case of New South Wales. Transportation was apparently regarded as a sort of administration of human alcohol. So long as the proportion of convicts to independent settlers did not exceed a certain figure no harm would be done. But the inhabitants of New South Wales protested loudly, and when the Whigs came into office in 1847, with Lord Grey as Secretary for the Colonies, they abolished all transportation except to Bermuda and Gibraltar. A last attempt to impose upon colonists was made in 1849. A shipload of convicts was then taken to the Cape. There was a violent outburst of feeling, and the noxious cargo was finally discharged in Tasmania. After a few more years of bickering between the embarrassed Imperial Government and the determined colonists, the system was completely abandoned in 1853.[[261]]
The next step was to entrust the colonists with the management of their own domestic affairs. The details of the various Acts of Parliament are not important. In 1842 Peel's Ministry had established a Legislative Council in New South Wales. The Whigs extended the system to the whole of Australia. But the real credit for establishing the new spirit belongs to the Manchester School and the Radicals, of whom Sir William Molesworth was the most conspicuous. Russell and Grey always took the Liberal line, but with more coldness. They were content with nominated or partly nominated Legislatures. Molesworth argued boldly for a complete system of responsible government. "The nostrum of the Colonial Office for the Australian Colonies is the
single, partly nominated Chamber. Now every one acknowledges that such an institution is not only in opposition to the principle of political science, but to the universal experience of Anglo-Saxon communities in every part of the globe.... An Englishman, when he emigrates to the United States, carries with him in reality all the laws, rights, and liberties of an Englishman; but if he emigrates to our Colonies, on touching colonial soil he loses some of the most precious of his liberties, and becomes the subject of an ignorant and irresponsible despot at the Antipodes."[[262]] He proposed "that the Colonial Office shall cease to interfere with the management of the local affairs of these Colonies, and that they shall possess the greatest amount of self-government that is not inconsistent with the unity and well-being of the British Empire."[[263]]
The practical proposals of Molesworth were not immediately accepted, and the first colonial constitutions did not provide for the responsibility of Ministers to the Legislature. But a clause in the Australian Colonies Government Act of 1850 provided that the Colonies might alter their own constitutions, and it was not long before they took advantage of the permission. The Liberal principle of local independence was thus permanently established. The temper in which the Imperial Government has ever since applied itself to the details of administration has been that of Molesworth. "The great principle of colonial government is, that all affairs of merely local concern should be left to the regulation of the local authorities; to that principle I know of no general exceptions, unless in cases where local interests may clash with the interests of the Empire at large, or in cases where some one predominant class of a society might be disposed to exert such powers, so as unjustly to depress some feebler and defenceless class."[[264]] In modern times the line between local and Imperial interests has been pushed farther back. Some Acts of
Colonial Legislatures have been disallowed by the Crown. These have generally conflicted in spirit or in letter with the Imperial law. Among them have been Acts for reducing the salary of a Governor-General, for regulating copyright and shipping, for checking foreign immigration, and for altering the law relating to marriage and divorce. But with the growth of colonial populations even this interference has become rarer. Acts for checking Chinese immigration into Australia and for permitting marriage with a deceased husband's brother in New Zealand have been recently sanctioned by the Crown. Under the influence of this Liberal temper the self-governing Empire has grown to its present proportions. A queer freak of political fortune has made Tories of the present generation the self-styled champions of communities which, if Tory doctrines had been applied to their government half a century ago, would have been long since driven into revolt and independence.
The fidelity of Parliament to the new theory was once more seriously tested in 1853, when the Whigs were no longer in absolute power, and the government was in the hands of a coalition of Whigs and Peelites. The Tory side was then weighted by the influence of the Church of England, in whose favour an unfortunate reservation had been made in Canada. The question arose out of the appropriation of some lands in Canada for the endowment of the Church. The Canadian Legislature had presented an address to the Crown, praying that the disposition of these lands might be left to itself as a matter of purely local and not Imperial concern. There had been considerable dispute about the subject in previous years, and in 1840 Parliament had passed an Act appropriating the revenues of the Clergy Reserves in part to the Church of England, in part to the Church of Scotland, and otherwise for religious and educational purposes. The Canadian Legislature now asked that Parliament should invest it with full power to deal with the endowments according to the wishes of the inhabitants of the Colony. The issue was plain. The Churches were in Canada, the clergy were in Canada, the lands were in Canada.
Were their affairs to be managed by Canadians or Englishmen? The Church fought for its privileges. In 1840 the Bishops in the House of Lords had demanded that whatever other concessions were made to colonial feeling, the Church at least should be maintained at all costs. "The Church wished, for the sake of peace, to make any reasonable concessions with regard to property, provided always that the Church was recognized as the Established Church of the Colony."[[265]] The Canadians were to be adapted to the use of the Church, not the Church to the use of the Canadians.
In 1853 these arguments were employed in the House of Commons by Sir John Pakington and by Lord John Manners. Property had been appropriated to the Church of England, and it must remain with her even at the cost of colonial independence. Sir William Molesworth and Gladstone put the Liberal case as forcibly as on the Australian Bill. "It is high time," said the latter, "to have done appealing to one part of the people. We know of old the meaning of these words—we know from disastrous experience their effects—we know that the effect of them was to create knots and cliques of intriguers, who put upon themselves the profession of British supporters, who denied the name of loyalists to all who would not adopt their shibboleth, and caused a strong reaction in the minds of the colonial population; so that, if under that system of government you would look to govern the people of Canada, you must expect the spread, if not of disloyalty, yet of dissatisfaction and dissent; and that pervading the great mass of the community there will be a current of public opinion throughout the Colony, if not contrary to, yet distinct from, the current of British feeling."[[266]] This argument, showing clearly that the speaker's mind was already moving towards the Irish policy of which he himself had as yet no conception, was sufficient to keep the House in the path upon which it had previously entered. The Church was beaten by 275 votes to 192, and the last foundation-stone of Empire was firmly laid. The strength of the
structure was tested again in 1858, when the Canadian Parliament was allowed to impose duties upon British manufactures. It stood the strain, and in 1879 it was finally acknowledged that in its fiscal arrangements a Colony might treat the Mother Country as it treated a Foreign State.[[267]]