with the ablest of them, Sir James Stephen, whose abilities and personality were so great that he not only dominated all the Colonial Ministers of that time, except the late Earl of Derby, then Lord Stanley, but succeeded in training such high-class permanent officials as Sir Henry Taylor and Sir Frederic Rogers (Lord Blachford) to uphold and promote this policy of disintegration. About this time this was also the accepted policy of many of the leading Liberal politicians of the day, and the granting of self-government to remote dependencies was based on its expediency as an intermediate and necessary step in the direction of their complete independence. The sooner, they thought, this final severance with Great Britain took place the better, so long as the separation was effected in mutual amity.
Now it is an undeniable fact that these opinions were never held by any considerable section or by any political party in Australia.[1] In fact, with the solitary exception of Dr. Lang, no Australian public man of recognised position has ever formulated a scheme of Australian independence. In his case, too, it was simply regarded as an unaccountable eccentricity, although it would be very unjust to
- ↑ See Appendix B, Sir C. Gavan Duffy's "Royal Commission."
