THE EVOLUTION OF COLONIES. 55 



colonies were at this stage. It answers to England under the later 

 Tudors, and, as there, left ample scope for oppression. Occasionally 

 it blossomed or withered into prodigies of tyranny on a small scale, 

 as in the too celebrated Andros. Sir James Craig, so lately as the 

 beginning of the nineteenth century, treated his Canadian Parlia- 

 ment as superciliously as a Stuart. In New Zealand there were con- 

 tinual complaints that a certain governor had more absolute power 

 than a sovereign. In South Australia and South Africa the same 

 governor ruled like an emperor, his council not thwarting but 

 aggrandizing his authority. This second preconstitutional stage is 

 often unduly prolonged in colonies, as it commonly is in the mother 

 country, on the pretext of an enemy on the frontier or of troubles 

 with the natives, but really because of the forceful character of a 

 governor who is unwilling to lay down the dignity he may not have 

 been overwilling to take up. Its persistence in the North American 

 colonies can only be explained on Haeckel's principle that the devel- 

 opment of ancestral species is followed in the development of the 

 embryo. Despotism in the Old World was the parent of despotism 

 in the New. There is no other reason why colonies ripe for self- 

 government, like Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia, should 

 have been oppressed by such men as Andros, Cornbury, and Harvey. 

 The stage is ended by the granting of a constitution or by a successful 

 rebellion. The governor's personal force will then be the measure 

 of his power. The sagacious and resolute Lord Elgin asserted that 

 he had twice the authority in constitutional Canada that he had 

 enjoyed in Jamaica. Such a governor is the colonial analogue of 

 Queen Victoria, who, in consequence of her association with the 

 Prince Consort, the length of her reign, and her strong character, has 

 prolonged monarchical influence. But the day of such sovereigns 

 is passing; the day of such governors is past. The office is by no 

 means shorn of its prerogatives. The governor, like the sovereign, 

 selects his prime minister, and the act may have serious conse- 

 quences; the appeal of the minister for election as leader by his 

 party shows the blending of the popular with the monarchical strain, 

 but it is little more than formal. As George III in 1783, and 

 William IV in 1834, arbitrarily dismissed the Whigs, a Governor 

 of Newfoundland in 1861 dismissed his ministry; in 1858 the 

 Governor of New South Wales had resolved to dismiss his; and it is 

 not many months since Mr. Rhodes was cashiered. Like the sover- 

 eign, the governor sometimes refuses to grant a dissolution. Like the 

 Governor General of Canada last year, or the Governor of New 

 Zealand a few years ago, he may refuse to appoint senators — success- 

 fully in the one case or only to be bowled over by the Colonial 

 Office in the other. Beyond these real but rarely exercised preroga- 



