There are great differences of opinion among the white citizens of the
empire with regard to the treatment of their coloured fellow-subjects.
Australia and some provinces of the South African Union would exclude
Indian immigrants altogether; and white minorities have an invincible
repugnance to allowing black majorities to exercise a vote, except
under stringent precautions against its effect. We have, indeed,
improved upon the Greeks, who regarded all other races as outside the
scope of Greek morality; but we do not yet extend to coloured races the
same consideration that we do to white men.
So far as the white population of the empire is concerned, the problem
of self-government was solved in the nineteenth century by procedure
common to all the great dominions of the crown, though the
emancipation, which had cost the mother-country centuries of conflict,
was secured by many colonies in less than fifty years. Three normal
stages marked their progress, and Canada led the way in each. The first
was the acquisition of representative government--that is to say, of a
legislature consisting generally of two Houses, one of which was
popularly elected but had little control over the executive; the second
was the acquisition of responsible government--that is to say, of an
executive responsible to the popular local legislature instead of to
the home Colonial Office; and the third was federation. Canada had
possessed the first degree of self-government ever since 1791 (see p.
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