the final struggle the plan was
rejected by Franklin. In 1831 Joseph Hume proposed that India should
have four members, the Crown colonies eight, the West Indies three,
and the Channel Islands one. Mr. Seeley's book may for a little time
revive vague notions of the same specific. Sir Edward Creasy, also by
the way a professor of history, openly advocated it, but with the
truly remarkable reservation that 'the colonies should be admitted to
shares in the Imperial Parliament on the understanding that they
contributed nothing at all to the imperial revenue by taxation.'[3]
That is, they are to vote our money, but we are not to vote theirs. As
Cobden saw, this is a flaw that is fatal to the scheme. 'What is the
reason,' he asked, 'that no statesman has ever dreamt of proposing
that the colonies should sit with the mother country in a common
legislature? It was not because of the space between them, for
nowadays travelling was almost as quick as thought; but because the
colonies, not paying imperial taxation, and not being liable for our
debt, could not be allowed with safety to us, or with propriety to
themselves, to legislate on matters of taxation in which they were not
themselves concerned.' He also dwelt on the mischief inseparable from
the presence of a sectional and isolated interest in Parliament
(_Speeches_, i. 568, 569). Lord Grey points out another difficulty.
The colonial members, he says, would necessarily enroll themselves in
the ranks of one or other of our parliamentary parties. 'If they
adhered to the Opposition, it would be impossible for them to hold
confidential intercourse with the Government; and if they supported
the Ministers of the day, the defeat of the administration would
render their relations with a new one still more difficult'
(_Nineteenth Century_, June 1879). In short, since the concession of
independent legislatures to all the most important colonies, the idea
of summoning representatives to the Imperial Parliament is, indeed, as
one high colonial authority has declared it to be, a romantic dream.
If the legislature of Victoria is left to settle the local affairs of
Victoria, the legislature of the United Kingdom must be left to settle
our local affairs. Therefore the colonial members could only be
invited to take a part on certain occasions in reference to certain
imperial matters. But this would mean that we should no longer have
one Parliament but two, or, in other words, we should have