5 6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tives lie has little else to do than sign his ministers' documents. He 

 ought to interfere in certain cabinet crises, but dares not. His power, 

 like that of the sovereign, is reduced to a shadow. The premier of 

 the colony is now its working king. 



As the governor's authority wanes, his dignity waxes. After 

 1632 a viceroy of high rank was sent to ]STew Spain. In 1867 Dis- 

 raeli, half genius and half charlatan, commenced a policy of ostenta- 

 tion by announcing that only those would in future be appointed 

 colonial governors who had been " born in the purple," or were peers, 

 and notwithstanding two or three Liberal reactions the policy has 

 been confirmed, in regard to all the more important colonies, by the 

 demands of the colonists. On arriving in his dominions the new 

 ruler has a royal reception. He becomes the head of the ceremonial 

 system in the colony, and if he ceases to govern he reigns (according 

 to Bagehot's theory of the monarchy) by impressing the popular 

 imagination. And as loyalty to the Queen is passing into loyalty to 

 the imperial tradition, so is loyalty to her representative being trans- 

 muted into the pride of imperial connection. 



The governor completes the parallel with sovereignty by under- 

 going all its vicissitudes. As monarchs have abdicated, been im- 

 prisoned, banished, restored, tried, and beheaded, colonial governors 

 have resigned, been imprisoned, expelled, recalled, restored, im- 

 peached, dismissed, and hanged, and in both sets of cases for similar 

 reasons. They have resigned because of ill usage at the hands of 

 their ministers, because things were done in their absence of which 

 they disapproved, or because they were entrapped into approving of 

 their ministers' wrongdoing. La Bourdonnais was sent to the Bas- 

 tille, Andros was imprisoned for tyranny in Massachusetts, and in 

 North Carolina it was the " common practice " to resist and imprison 

 their governors. Depositions were frequent in the North American 

 colonies. An oppressive Governor of Virginia was banished to Eng- 

 land, but sent back; a Governor of New South Wales was deposed 

 for rectitude by a military mutiny and shipped to Tasmania; a Gov- 

 ernor of New Zealand was placed on board a ship for England be- 

 cause he had excited the ill will of a powerful company, and had in- 

 discreetly realized the dream of free traders by making the colony a 

 free port. As Pericles dreaded being ostracized, early Governors of 

 New South Wales feared being placed under arrest. Recall is the 

 sentence that governors of British colonies had most to shun in the 

 days when they were still irresponsible. The first four Governors 

 of Australia, and possibly the sixth, were lied out of office. One 

 was recalled because of the financial embarrassments of his colony 

 and his own devotion to science; another, on the better grounds of 

 tyranny and red tape. A Governor of the Cape of Good Hope was 



