Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria | Page 4

the Imperial Federation
League has given an orderly procedure in every way promising. The
object aimed at is, that the empire shall have that political binding
which will give to it the maximum of power and influence possible
under all its circumstances. Above fifteen years ago some few of
us--very few they then were--first seriously raised this question at
Home in the Royal Colonial Institute. We had the smallest of audiences
then. It is marvellous to look back now upon that indifference. I
recollect that about ten years ago, when the movement was just
beginning to look serious to those outside of us, a leading Paris paper
devoted an article to the subject, remarking that if Great Britain

persevered so as to unite her empire as sought, the balance of the
world's power would be so seriously disturbed as to call for an
international reconsideration of that subject.
The progress as yet has been chiefly negative, but it has been great.
Modes entertained at first have been discarded. This may be said of
superseding the present Imperial Parliament by a pro re nata Federal
Assembly; and it may be equally said of an influx of proportionate
colonial representatives into the Home House. Councils of colonial
ambassadors, agents-general, and so on, have, I think, definitely gone
the same way. These are chiefly Home views, for Home is at length
aroused as well as the colonies to their common question; and the
summons by the Secretary for the Colonies of the Colonial Conference
which sat in London two years ago marks alike the most prominent and
most promising feature in the movement.
Mr. Froude has given, most usefully, the views of the colonists. Let us
take Mr. Dalley's, which is also that of most others, namely, that the
nascent but increasing colonial navies should be all under one imperial
command--that is, be a part of the British navy. There is one more
step--namely, to dispose of all colonial military force in the same
common-sense way, and then we have a politically united empire. But
we are "constitutional" or representative in our polity, so that
something else is still wanted. In short, the unity of the empire requires
two things. First, that all its force be under one executive, and, next,
that the colonies be proportionately represented in that executive. The
Cabinet seems to me the adaptable body we can operate upon to this
end. That body would then be actually, as well as legally, the empire's
executive. Nothing should--nothing need--prevent the attainment of this
grand end. The tariff bugbear concerns only commerce, and need not
arrest nor even interfere with the empire's political unity. All other
matters of the common interest can be leisurely settled by mutual
consent, as the empire, in its united state, sails along the great ocean of
the future. The mother will then, in emergency, have the sure call of her
children; while every colony, even to the very smallest, will know that
in case of need the whole empire is at its back. When the rest of the
world knows that fact, it will thenceforth probably not trouble our
empire either about international rearrangements or anything else.
EARLY PORT PHILLIP.

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot And the days o' lang syne."
--Burns.
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder." --Haynes Bayly.
Entering Port Phillip on the morning of the 13th December, 1840, we
were wafted quickly up to the anchorage of Hobson's Bay on the wings
of a strong southerly breeze, whose cool, and even cold, temperature
was to most of us an unexpected enjoyment in the middle of an
Australian summer. A small boat came to us at the anchorage
containing Mr. and Mrs. D.C. McArthur and others who had friends or
relations on board, and who told us that for some days there had been
excessive heat and a hot wind, which had now reacted in this southerly
blast, to go on probably into heavy rain, the country being excessively
dry.
MY FIRST NIGHT ASHORE.
"The Hut on the Flat." --James Henry.
"How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude." --Cowper.
The rain did follow at night to the full as predicted. I had engaged to
accompany a young friend that evening to spend the next day, Sunday,
at his "country seat" on Richmond Flat, where he had constructed,
mostly with his own hands, a sort of hut or wigwam, under an
unchallenged squattage. Being engaged in a store for long hours on
Saturday night, it was past eleven ere we started. The rain had begun to
pour, and the night was pitch dark. We got into Collins-street, but had
much difficulty in keeping its lines where there were not post-and-rail
fences round the vacant allotments. Only three years had elapsed since
Melbourne had been named and officially laid