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The British Colonies.

who close their colonies to the outside world, and build round them a Chinese wall of tariffs.

Chapter II.

Pioneers of Colonial Progress and Reform (1837-1897).

The real pioneers of colonial reform and progress in the Victorian era would appear to be individual men who, outside the ranks of office and of party, have pleaded the cause of the colonists. Abroad or in the Colonies themselves, and on the ever-widening frontiers of our Empire, there has been one class of pioneers; at home, another. The one worked with axe and spade, the other with pen and paper. For lack of regular machinery special pleaders have been required to represent Colonial interests and advocate right methods of emigration and colonization. It must not be forgotten that in the ranks of the Colonial reformers of 1830-1840, to whom allusion has already been made, there were a certain number distinguished above their fellows for their especial know­ledge of Colonial affairs, and also for the personal en­thusiasm with which they wrote and spoke about them. These men were more useful out of parliament than in it. Although nominally it chanced that they were of the party of Grote, Hume, Mill, and the rest, they must be distinguished from them, and appear to have exercised a peculiar influence of their own in many channels, an influence which was not exactly that of perpetual op­position, from the mere narrow party point of view at home, to Lord John Russell and the Whigs of that day, who had carried the Reform Bill in England, but did not extend another class of reforms to the Colonies.