THE EVOLUTION OF COLONIES. 57 



recalled because he was unpopular. Another governor of that colony 

 was recalled for incorrigible insubordination, and again, when he 

 had been pardoned and sent to a more distant colony, for hopeless 

 incompatibility. How so serious a step may be contrived by a mere 

 clerk in the Colonial Office may be read in the autobiography of Sir 

 Henry Taylor, who procured the recall of an obnoxious governor 

 by submitting to a compliant Secretary of State a dispatch recall- 

 ing him. An outbreak of public indignation, like that against 

 Governor Eyre, may be needed to bring about the same result. 

 Dupleix and Frontenac fell before the machinations of their enemies, 

 and the former was allowed to die in misery. Hastings was im- 

 peached. Articles equivalent to impeachment were drawn up against 

 a Governor of New South Wales, who, like Clive, suffered the indig- 

 nity of having his administration scrutinized by a committee of the 

 House of Commons. Lastly, as a single English king was brought to 

 the block, so has a single governor, and he the creature of an insur- 

 rection, expiated his rebellion on the scaffold. 



The election of governors recalls the election of Frankish kings, 

 but really repeats that of the governors of commercial companies; 

 how powerful such elected functionaries may become is shown by 

 the chairman of an English railway company and the American boss. 

 Leaders like Smith or Winthrop, Cargill of Otago, or Godley of 

 Canterbury, who give to young colonies cohesion and the power to 

 survive, or carry them through perils, are their rulers by indefeasible 

 sovereignty; in form they may, as in Massachusetts, be only the 

 presidents of the company out of which the colony has sprung. Re- 

 elected for twenty years, like Winthrop, or thirteen, like Endicott, 

 they may confer on the office a duration equal to that of inheritance, 

 and may show an independence greater than a hereditary or an 

 appointed officer can safely assume. Creators of colonies, like Balti- 

 more, Penn, and Oglethorpe, repeat a type that must be rare in his- 

 tory, if indeed they do not originate the noblest of all types of ruler, 

 and are kings by a diviner right than that of any known sovereign. 



The governor being the brain (or the active portion of the brain) 

 of the body politic, the administration is his limbs, and expands 

 from him with such improvements as new circumstances permit and 

 such modifications as they require, in the same manner as it had 

 done from the sovereign in the mother country. Not that each 

 colony passes through all the stages through which the latter pass; 

 that depends on the date at which the colony was given off. Massa- 

 chusetts and Virginia alone of the North American colonies, New 

 South Wales and Tasmania alone of the Australasian, described 

 most of them ; in the younger colonies the earlier ones were dropped. 

 Thus (to mention a single point) the office of Colonial Secretary 



VOL. LIV. — 5 



