ment up to 1911 has been given in my Responsible Government in the Dominions, the subject-matter of Part I has been in the main drawn from the events of the last four years, which have been years of high importance in the development of self-government. One word of explanation may be given in regard to the terminology employed. 'Self-governing Dominions' or more shortly Dominions' is the technical term, first invented at the Colonial Conference of 1907, for the aggregate of the five colonies possessing responsible government-Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, and Newfoundland. Crown Colonies' denotes all the colonies which do not possess responsible government, and which therefore are under the control of the Crown as regards their executive government. The term has unfortunately in recent years been abandoned as a collective term by the Colonial Office out of a wish to defer to the illinformed desire of some West Indian communities to avoid the use of a title which in their opinion denotes that their legislatures are controlled by the Secretary of State for the Colonies; their opinion is wholly unhistorical, and it may be hoped that in course of time the historical expression will prevail over the monstrosity of colonies not possessing responsible government', which has been coined to replace it. To the use of the adjective, colonial' it may be trusted that no exception will be taken, since it has been endorsed by the action of Mr. Bonar Law, who is not merely Secretary of State for the Colonies but is proud to have been born in the Dominion par excellence. 6 Freedom from the restrictions of an official position has enabled me to express more freely my views on the actions of both Dominion and Imperial Ministries. The press assumption that in every controversy between the Dominion and Imperial Governments the latter is invariably wrong does more credit to the chivalry of the United Kingdom than to its historical judgement, but such complaisance is inadmissible in a serious discussion. For assistance in the preparation of this work I am indebted to my wife. A. BERRIEDALE KEITH. November, 1915. INTRODUCTION THE immediate cause of the origin of responsible government in the British Dominions was the outbreak of rebellion in Canada, which convinced the Imperial Government of the day that the system of government then in force in that Colony had ceased to serve even the elementary purpose of maintaining public order. It became clear that some form of administration must be devised which would obviate the recurrence of rebellion in close proximity to the frontier of a power which might without much injustice be suspected of being not unwilling to see the disappearance of man-✓ archical government from the American continent; but it was not less certain that the form chosen must be such as to obviate any possibility of the separation of the Colony from the mother country, a contingency which from the period of the War of American Independence was always painfully present to the minds of those responsible for the conduct of colonial affairs. The solution then adopted, in large measure at the instigation of Lord Durham, was to leave to the colonists, to the greatest extent possible, the control of those affairs which could properly be described as local, while reserving control in those matters which could be held to affect the Empire as a whole. To concede full responsible government was, Lord John Russell argued, impossible, if it was meant by this that the Government of the Colony should be at liberty to manage all the affairs of the country in the same unfettered manner as the affairs of the United Kingdom were managed by the Imperial Ministry, for that Ministry could not permit disloyalty to flourish in the country as it had done in Lower Canada under Papineau; but nevertheless it was possible to allow the affairs of the Colony to be managed for the most part by the Governor as representative |