PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE.
have profited most hitherto by our system of education are drawn from the weakest races of India; and if we were to leave India to-morrow, those people who are loudest in their demands for representative Government would be the very first to go to the wall, overwhelmed by the strong fighting races of the north and north-west. The problem is full of difficulty, it demands the closest attention and the deepest study, which, under the present system of Imperial Government, it cannot have from those who are ultimately responsible for the solution. I should look forward with grave apprehension to such a question being decided in an Assembly where votes are mainly governed by considerations of party politics at home. Therefore, in my opinion, for the proper Government of India, as well as for other parts of the Empire, a body must be constituted in which questions of great Imperial interest are decided by representatives from all parts of the Empire.
Crown Colonies.There is another group of British possessions which are peculiarly under the government of the Colonial Office, and which have often reason to be dissatisfied with that Government—I mean the Crown Colonies, the most important of which are the Straits Settlements, Ceylon, the West Indian Islands, and Mauritius. In nearly every Crown Colony, the white population bears a very small proportion to the natives, and is composed mainly of merchants, bankers, a few officials, and, in the West Indies, of planters. If the Colony has a grievance it is exceedingly difficult for it to bring its grievance before the attention of Parliament, which alone has power to remedy it. The Governor is absolute in his Council, which invariably has a majority of official members, and he can compel them to vote against their opinions12
