13. What rights does the sovereign possess? State a constitutional maxim as to his acts, and describe its practical effect. How is the country protected by official responsibility? What is the main protection of the people from unconstitutional acts? What are the sovereign's functions as to parliament? How is the sovereign the fountain of power?

14. Describe the difference between peers spiritual and temporal. How does it operate? Who are the temporal peers? In what way does the House of Lords act as a court of law?

15. How are the members of the House of Commons classified? Describe an ancient privilege of the commons, and the way in which it was used. What is an adjournment of the house? What is a prorogation? How is parliament dissolved?

16. What three great features characterize the administration of justice in Britain? Give an account of jury trial. How are the judges made independent? How are the English courts for administering civil justice divided? Give an account of them. How is civil justice administered in Scotland and Ireland?

17. What is the court of highest criminal jurisdiction in England? What other courts are held for the trial of offences? What is the method of proceeding? How does the system of criminal justice in Scotland differ from that in England?

CHAPTER XLI.

THE COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES.

1. It was of old a boastful expression of the Spaniards that on their king's dominions the sun never set. This may be truly said of the dominions of the British crown. When sinking from our view in the western ocean, the orb of day is rising on our colonies in the new world; and as the settler in Australia or the wearied soldier on the parched plains of India watches his receding rays, he may picture them glancing brightly on the dewy hills of his native home. Extensive as are the lands swayed by the British sceptre, it is rarely, in comparison with the acquisitions of other states, that they have been gained to satisfy the mere lust of conquest. Even in that fabled soil of "barbaric wealth," great as were the crimes that stained the earlier days of English weakness and insecurity, so soon as those perilous moments were past, the native of Hindostan for the first time learnt the blessings of good government, first cultivated his patch of ground in tranquillity, and first enjoyed the privileges of impartial law. It is true that the best efforts have not enabled us to colonize barbarian countries without some hardships to the natives. Even where there is neither slaughter nor plunder, the very presence of the industrious civilized man, ploughing and building, renders the land no longer fit for the idle savage who feeds on the roots and wild animals of the wilderness.

Thus, unfortunately, in the vast territory of Australia, as well as in other places, the natives have fallen victims to the evils of civilisation, or have wandered into unexplored wilds. But they were few in number, and to compensate for this evil, we have the thousands who are there living by improvement and industry, and reaping a legitimate harvest from those fertile coasts, along the whole extent of which new settlements are yearly bursting into existence, combining all the activity of youth with the steadiness of purpose of mature age. From a mere speck of land off the coast of China, we may hope that erelong the example of a higher state of civilisation, of a purer morality, and of a holier religion, will exercise its influence upon that mighty empire, which had for ages been a forbidden country to the people of the West. In Borneo the standard of European civilisation has been raised by the chivalrous enterprise of a single individual, and rivers once the retreat and stronghold of the pirate, may erelong be the great arteries of wealth and peaceful commerce. Occupying nearly the same position in the southern hemisphere as Britain does in the northern, the islands of New Zealand, no longer the sole abode of men whose chief delight was war, and who celebrated their victories by devouring the bodies of their victims, welcome a host of emigrants to their now hospitable shores, where a wider field of exertion is opened to them than they can find at home, and where they seek to revive the nobler parts of long-tried institutions. The natives, once far more terrible than the burning volcano which towers high above their heads, are gradually softening down, and from the admixture of the races a nation may possibly arise far superior in energy and endurance to any that the world has ever seen.

2. AMERICA. Towards the close of the fifteenth century, a new route had been opened to India, and another continent had offered its treasures to the adventurous sons of Europe. The Spaniards and the Portuguese were the first to avail themselves of this discovery; but the British were not left far behind. A small squadron sailing from Bristol in the reign of Henry the Seventh was the earliest to catch a glimpse of the coast of North America; but the British did little before 1588 towards the foundation of their colonial dominion. In the reign of Elizabeth, Sir Walter Raleigh formed a settlement, to which he gave the name Virginia, in honour of his sovereign. Under the patronage of James I. two companies

were formed, one consisting of London merchants, the other of traders of Plymouth and other seaports, to colonize all the known parts of North America. This territory was divided into two equal portions; that which retained the name of Virginia fell to the London company, the other was called New England. The former prospered to such a degree that in 1619 a general assembly of the inhabitants was convened, to which eleven towns sent representatives, and the constitutional forms of the mother-country were adopted.

Massachusetts was first settled by a small body of presbyterians, who sought freedom of worship on those distant shores, where six years afterwards they founded the city of Boston. The disordered state of England drove great numbers of the oppressed puritans across the Atlantic; then came crowds of Roman-catholics; and finally the outbreak of the civil war impelled many lovers of peace and order to seek those blessings beyond the western main. These states gradually grew in wealth and strength, and when they were able to secure themselves from foreign enemies, they began to feel the burden of the commercial and other restrictions imposed upon them by the home government. Their endeavours to be placed on a more favourable footing ended, as we have seen, in a contest which eventually led to the dismemberment of the colonies, and the establishment of their independence as the United States of North America.

The English colonies in the West Indies did not begin to flourish until the early part of the seventeenth century. In 1625, private merchants established factories in Barbadoes and Saint Christopher's; but they were of little importance until the sugar-cane, which had been transplanted from Brazil in 1641, began to be successfully cultivated. The conquest of Jamaica, during the protectorate of Cromwell, opened a new source of wealth to the commerce and enterprise of Great Britain.

The West Indian Islands, with Honduras and British Guiana, the oldest of our colonies, are nearly 170,000 square miles in extent, and contain a population of about 900,000 inhabitants. Their exports to the value of about five millions of pounds consist chiefly of sugar, coffee, tobacco, rum, cotton, mahogany, logwood, spices, fruits, dyes, and drugs. They purchase from the mother-country manufactured cottons, linens, woollens, clothing, &e., to the amount of about two millions. Jamaica, the largest of the West

Indian Islands, contains a population of nearly 380,000, of whom only 30,000 are whites, the rest being negroes, who were almost all slaves until emancipated in 1838 under an act of parliament that had been passed in 1833. Since that time those colonies have continued to prosper, their exports increasing every year. Jamaica was the only exception, where from various causes there existed much discontent, which culminated in an insurrection of the negroes at Morant Bay in August 1865. The riot, for it was really little more, was quickly suppressed, but with such severity and lawlessness, that Mr Eyre, the governor, was recalled, a royal commission was sent out to investigate the matter, and by the voluntary act of the legislature, the constitution was surrendered to the crown, so that the island has ceased to enjoy the privilege of self-government.

Several attempts were made in England in 1867 and 1868 to bring Governor Eyre to trial for alleged illegalities committed by him or his agents while putting down the insurrection; but they all failed, the grand-jurors apparently holding that he was not actuated by malice, and that if he committed errors, he had been sufficiently punished by deprivation of office. The prosecutions were of great importance in a constitutional light, as giving the Lord Chief Justice an opportunity of affirming authoritatively that martial law was not recognised by the English constitution, and was applicable only to soldiers actually under arms and in the field, according to the terms of the Mutiny Act.

That vast extent of territory, the United States, originally colonized by English settlers, having secured its independence in 1782, the British possessions on the continent of America lie with a very trifling exception to the north of the river St Lawrence and the great chain of lakes to the straits of San Juan. Extending into regions covered with perpetual ice and snow, and traversed only by the wandering Esquimaux, or the scarcely less savage trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company, much of this territory produces little else than hides and furs: from the more genial portions we derive timber, wheat, ashes, fish, turpentine, and other articles. These colonies, including Newfoundland, &c., have an area of about 3,600,000 square miles, with a population of about 4 millions, of whom the majority are of British origin; in Lower

Canada alone the habitans, the descendants of the original French settlers, being the more numerous. The people of both provinces are as loyal as any of the Queen's subjects. They received the Prince of Wales with unbounded enthusiasın; they rose to a man when there was a probability of war with the United States in 1861, and quickly drove back the Fenians who had made an inroad in 1866. The next year Canada and the maritime provinces were united into a confederation under one government; but as yet the various interests of the colonies do not appear to amalgamate. The value of their exports exceeds 8 millions, and their purchases from the home country in manufactured goods (woollens, cottons, linens, hardware, soap, and candles, earthenware, clothing, &c.) amount to between 4 and 5 millions. The discovery of gold along the course of the Fraser river and in Vancouver's Island has led to such a rapid influx of settlers that a new colony has been formed between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific under the title of British Columbia.

3. AFRICA. The chief dependencies of Great Britain in Africa include Sierra Leone, Cape Coast Castle, the possessions on the Gambia, Cape Colony, Natal, and British Caffraria, on the mainland, with the Islands of Ascension and St Helena in the Atlantic, and the Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. They embrace an area of nearly 250,000 square miles, and contain about 1,500,000 inhabitants. The most important of these is Cape Colony, which was taken from the Dutch in 1806. Its imports in British and Irish produce and manufactures amount to about 2 millions sterling and it exports to the mother country wool, wine, hides, ivory, and aloes. From our settlements on the western coast of Africa we receive gold-dust, palm-oil, ivory, teak and dye-woods, wax, hides, &c., and we send them cottons, hardware, and the other manufactures of Britain. Mauritius, named by the Dutch discoverers after their Prince Maurice, is a small island in the Indian Ocean, with an area of 700 square miles, and a population of about 240,000. It is, however, important from the richness of its soil, and from its position as a place to protect and supply vessels on that vast ocean which stretches from Africa to Australia. It was a possession of the French, and so valuable to them,

The