The colonies, in relation to their forms of government, may be classified as follows:--
I. Crown colonies, in which laws may be made by the Governor alone, or with the concurrence of a Council nominated by the Crown.
2. Colonies possessing representative institutions, but not responsible government, in which the Crown has only a veto on legislation, but the Home Government retains the control of the executive.
3. Colonies possessing representative institutions and responsible government, in which the Crown has only a veto on legislation, and the Home Government has no control over any public officer except the Governor.
The British Colonial Governments thus present an absolute gradation of rule; beginning with absolute despotism and ending with almost absolute legal independence, except in so far as a veto on legislation and the presence of a Governor named by the Crown mark the dependence of the colony on the mother country.
It is to be remembered, moreover, that the colonies which have received this complete local freedom are the great colonies of the earth--nations themselves possessing territories as large or larger than any European State--namely, Canada, the Cape, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania. And this change from dependence to freedom has been effected with the good-will both of the mother country and the colony, and without it being imputed to the colonists, when desiring a larger measure of self-government, that they were separatists, anarchists, or revolutionists.
Such are the general principles of colonial government, but one colony requires special mention, from the circumstance of its Constitution having been put forward as a model for Ireland; this is the Dominion of Canada. The Government of Canada is, in effect, a subordinate federal union; that is to say, it possesses a central Legislature, having the largest possible powers of local self-government consistent with the supremacy of the empire, with seven inferior provincial Governments, exercising powers greater than those of an English county, but not so great as those of an American State. The advantage of such a form of government is that, without weakening the supremacy of the empire or of the central local power, it admits of considerable diversities being made in the details of provincial government, where local peculiarities and antecedents render it undesirable to make a more complete assimilation of the Governments of the various provinces.