THE MODEL-KINGDOM.
A well-governed colony is the Model of a great kingdom. As in the
case of other models, every part of the machinery by which it is
moved is placed at once before the eye of the spectator. In a great
empire, the springs of action are concealed; the public behold only
the results, and can scarcely guess how those results were brought
about. In a colony, every one stands so close to the little machine
of Government, that he can readily discern how it is made to work,
and therefore takes a more lively interest in the working of it. The
model has its representative of a sovereign; its Ministers, who
comprise the Executive Council with the Colonial Secretary as
Premier; its Parliament, the Legislative Assembly; its Bishop of
London, who is represented by the Colonial Chaplain, the dignitary of
the Church in those parts. In the Legislative Assembly there are the
Government party, consisting of the Colonial Secretary and the
Attorney General, who prove their loyalty and devotion by adhering to
His Excellency the Governor on every division, and (according to
general belief) would rather vote against their own measures than
against the representative of their Queen. Then there is the popular
party, consisting of the popular member, who speaks at random on
either side of the debate, but invariably votes against the
Government, in order to maintain inviolate the integrity of his
principles. We have also the Judge, or Lord chancellor, the great
Law officer of the Crown, who sits silently watching the progress of
a Bill, as it steals gently forward towards the close of the second
reading; and then suddenly pounces upon it, to the consternation of
his Excellency, and the delight of the popular member, and tears it
in pieces with his sharp legal teeth, whilst he shows that it is in
its scope and tendency contrary to the Law of England in that case
provided, and is besides impossible to be carried out in the present
circumstances of the Colony. The Model Nation has its national debt
of one thousand pounds, due to the Commissariat chest; and this
burthen of the State costs his Excellency many a sleepless night,
spent in vain conjectures as to the best mode of relieving the
financial embarrassments.
It is pleasant to learn from the model, how Government patronage is
disposed of in the Parent country. Kindly motives, however, which
never appear in the arrangements of the latter, are always
conspicuous in a colony. A public work is sometimes created for the
sole purpose of saving an unfortunate mechanic from the horrors of
idleness; and a debt due to the State is occasionally discharged by
three months' washing of a Privy Councillor's shirts.
Then we have the exact fac-simile of a Royal Court, with its levees
and drawing-rooms, where his Excellency displays the utmost extent of
his affability, and his lady of her queenly airs. There may be seen,
in all its original freshness and vigour, the smiling hatred of rival
ladies, followed by their respective trains of admirers; whilst the
full-blown dames of Members of Council elbow their way, with all the
charming confidence of rank, towards the vicinity of her who is the
cynosure of all eyes. The early levees of the first Governor of
Western Australia were held in a dry swamp, near the centre of the
present town of Perth. His Excellency, graciously bowing beneath the
shade of a banksia tree, received with affability those who were
introduced to him, as they stumbled into his presence over tangled
brushwood, and with difficulty avoided the only humiliation that is
scorned by English courtiers -- that of the person.
Ladies, in struggling through the thorny brake, had sometimes to
labour under the double embarrassment of a ragged reputation and
dress. To appear before the Presence, under such circumstances, with
a smiling countenance, proved the triumph of feminine art, and of
course excited general admiration. But this was in the early days of
the settlement. We have now a handsome Government-house, where
ladies who attend drawing-rooms incur no danger of any kind.
From the financial difficulties of a small colony you may form some
idea of the troubles of the Chancellor of the Exchequer at home. And
yet there is less financial talent required to raise five hundred
thousand pounds in England than five hundred in an impoverished
colony. In the former country only a few voices, comparatively, are
raised in expostulation; and no one cares about them, if Mr. Hume
could be gagged, and the other patriots in the Commons. But in a
colony! threaten to raise the price of sugar by the imposition of
another half-penny per pound, and the whole land will be heaved as
though by an earthquake. Not only will the newspapers pour forth a
terrific storm of denunciations against a treacherous Government, but
every individual of the public will take up the matter as a personal
injury, and roar out his protest against so monstrous a political
crime. Those who called most loudly for the erection of a necessary
bridge, will be most indignant when asked next year to contribute
towards its cost.
The Governor of a colony should not only be a good financier, but if
he would avoid the bitter pangs of repentance, must possess great
firmness in resisting the innumerable calls upon the Government purse.
His Excellency may lay his account to being daily vituperated for not
consenting to the construction of this or that national work, but he
will be still more taken to task when the melancholy duty of paying
for it becomes imperative, and is found to be unavoidable.
It is the general belief, that in a colony we are altogether out of
the world; but it has always appeared to me, that within the narrow
confines of one of those epitomes of a kingdom we may see more of the
world than when standing on the outer edge of society in England.
A man thinks himself in the midst of the world in Great Britain,
because he reads the newspapers and knows what is passing and being
enacted around him. But the same newspapers are read with equal
diligence in a colony, and the same knowledge is acquired there,
though some three months later. To read the newspapers, and to hang,
close as a burr, upon the skirts of society, is not to be in the
world. The world is, in truth, the heart of Man; and he knows most
of the World who knows most of his species. And where, alas! may
this knowledge, so painful and so humiliating, be better acquired
than in a colony? There we have the human heart laid open before us
without veil or disguise: there we see it in all its coarseness, its
selfishness, its brutality.
How many fine natures, cultivated, delicate, and generous, have gone
forth from their native land, full of high resolves, only to perish
in the mephitic atmosphere of a colony!
There we find whatever there is of good and bad in human nature
brought immediately before our eyes. It is a school of moral
anatomy, in which we study subjects whose outer covering has been
removed, and where the inner machinery (fearful to see!) is left
exposed.
A knowledge of the world! if we gain it not in a colony, it must ever
remain a sealed book to us.
We shall leave but a bad impression on the mind of the reader in
concluding this short chapter with these sombre observations; but we
would not leave him without hope. Time will remedy all this. Some
moral evils correct themselves; as the water of the Nile becomes pure
again after it has gone putrid.