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SIR CHAELES BRUCE^ G.C.M.G., ON 



collective representation of the Colonial Empire in London. 

 Nevertheless, the propaganda of the Society, and of the forces 

 it represented, has resulted in the organisation of the consti- 

 tutional apparatus styled the Imperial Conference, to discuss 

 and advise on all questions affecting tlie relations of the 

 Dominions with each other, with the Crown Colonies and India, 

 and with foreign nations. 



I do not propose to discuss the exercise of the autonomous 

 authority of the Dominions within the areas of their jurisdic- 

 tion. I sliall devote myself to a consideration of the true 

 temper of empire in the exercise of the sovereign authority of 

 the United Kingdom in the Crown Colonies, and India. These 

 territories contain some 350 millions of British subjects, aliens- 

 in religion, race, language, manners and customs, whose adhesion 

 to the British Empire is conditioned, not by liberation from the 

 control of the Imperial Parliament, but by the maintenance of 

 that control, because on the efficiency of its exercise their 

 existence as free communities depends. 



Bacon in one of his essays grouped the areas of activity in 

 which it is hard to reconcile sovereignty with liberty as " religion, 

 justice, counsel and treasure." In the application of my text 

 to the sovereignty of the United Kingdom represented by 

 Parliament in the Crown Colonies and India, I may conveniently 

 discuss it under these heads. 



Of Eeligion. 



In the term religion, I include education. The policy of the 

 Imperial Parliament in the area of religious activity has long 

 been to extend to the constituent parts of the Empire the oper- 

 ation of the policy which has controlled the relations of the 

 State to the Church in the United Kingdom. The broad 

 principle of religious toleration may be said to have been 

 definitely accepted by the Imperial Parliament in 1828 when 

 Lord John Eussell, during the passage of the Act to repeal the 

 Corporation and Test Acts, declared that "Statutes imposing 

 penalties and restrictions on account of religions can be justified 

 on no other ground than that of necessity. When that ground 

 is taken away, the Acts remain in all their naked deformity of 

 principle, and that principle is religious persecution." In the 

 very same year, the policy of religious liberty was extended to 

 our colonies in Africa in the fiftieth Ordinance of the Cape 

 Legislature. It was confirmed in 1842 when a Constitution 

 was granted to Natal, conditionally on the acceptance by the 



