Page:Australian views of England.djvu/69

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AUSTRALIAN VIEWS OF ENGLAND.
57

some worse fruits than any yet from the working of manhood suffrage to shake this belief. Among the public men of England the desire is to let the colonies govern themselves more—not less.

The English papers, so far as they reflect the opinions of conspicuous men in Parliament and directing minds in literature (and the English masses never think about the matter at all), will have informed you that events are tending towards the withdrawal of all Imperial military aid from the Australian colonies. Two set debates on the subject have occupied the Commons (that is, a miserably thin minority of the House) during the past month, besides the incidental sallies of honorable members in the same direction. The originators of these debates were, in the first instance, Mr. Arthur Mills, the member for Taunton, who, before he entered Parliament, had paid a good deal of attention to colonial matters, and had published a book on Colonial Constitutions; and in the second instance, Mr. W. E. Baxter, the successor of Joseph Hume in the representation of Montrose. I am not sure that there is not more of English popularity-seeking than of anything else in these efforts on the part of certain