The Expansion of England by John Morley

Among the devices for bringing the mother country and the great colonies into closer contact, we do not at present hear much of the old plan for giving seats to colonial representatives in the British Parliament. It was discussed in old days by men of great authority. Burke had no faith in it, while Adam Smith argued in its favour. Twenty years before the beginning of the final struggle the plan was rejected by Franklin. In 1831 Joseph Hume proposed that India should have four members, the Crown colonies eight, the West Indies three, and the Channel Islands one. Mr. Seeley's book may for a little time revive vague notions of the same specific. Sir Edward Creasy, also by the way a professor of history, openly advocated it, but with the truly remarkable reservation that 'the colonies should be admitted to shares in the Imperial Parliament on the understanding that they contributed nothing at all to the imperial revenue by taxation. '[3] That is, they are to vote our money, but we are not to vote theirs. As Cobden saw, this is a flaw that is fatal to the scheme. 'What is the reason,' he asked, 'that no statesman has ever dreamt of proposing that the colonies should sit with the mother country in a common legislature? It was not because of the space between them, for nowadays travelling was almost as quick as thought; but because the colonies, not paying imperial taxation, and not being liable for our debt, could not be allowed with safety to us, or with propriety to themselves, to legislate on matters of taxation in which they were not themselves concerned. ' He also dwelt on the mischief inseparable from the presence of a sectional and isolated interest in Parliament (_Speeches_, i. 568, 569). Lord Grey points out another difficulty.

The colonial members, he says, would necessarily enroll themselves in the ranks of one or other of our parliamentary parties. 'If they adhered to the Opposition, it would be impossible for them to hold confidential intercourse with the Government; and if they supported the Ministers of the day, the defeat of the administration would render their relations with a new one still more difficult' (_Nineteenth Century_, June 1879). In short, since the concession of independent legislatures to all the most important colonies, the idea of summoning representatives to the Imperial Parliament is, indeed, as one high colonial authority has declared it to be, a romantic dream. If the legislature of Victoria is left to settle the local affairs of Victoria, the legislature of the United Kingdom must be left to settle our local affairs. Therefore the colonial members could only be invited to take a part on certain occasions in reference to certain imperial matters. But this would mean that we should no longer have one Parliament but two, or, in other words, we should have a British Parliament and a Federal Council.