In bringing to a close these somewhat casual observations on the democracy of the colonies, I may perhaps be permitted to reiterate my sense of the many imperfections and errors which must inevitably disfigure the career of King Demos as of every other earthly sovereign. Under universal suffrage, unprincipled and selfish men will clamber into the chambers of legislature just as, under a very different system, they have found their way into the palaces of kingly and priestly potentates. To such a pitch has the system reached of harassing the Executive, by the abuse of Parliamentary forms, that Mr. Alfred Deakin, whom Lord Knutsford will remember at the Colonial Conference, on his return to Victoria proclaimed that a remedy must be found, even if some points of the American Constitution are adopted in lieu of the English methods that colonists have hitherto followed. Let us be sure of one thing, that when such a change is deemed essential for the salvation of the State, it will be made in the twinkling of an eye. Nor will any one venture to propose that the Irreconcilables should be bought off by giving them a separate province to themselves to misgovern without let or hindrance. This is, after all, the strong side of what I must call
