Or if the present Governor intimated that he would be willing to accept a nomination, it is not improbable that Sir Henry Loch, who has been so successful as a Colonial Office nominee, would on that account be selected to inaugurate the new régime. If so, what a vastly improved position he would occupy as the man actually chosen by the accredited representatives of the colony, over whose destiny he would preside, and not by the English official, whom so loyal a man as Mr. Higinbotham was on one occasion compelled to stigmatise as the "foreign nobleman."[1] Such a mode, too, of choosing a Governor would excite interest and attention in every part of the Empire, and the individual who attained to this supreme post would rank as a veritable colonial, perhaps Imperial, potentate, instead of being a mere highly-paid Downing Street official; and what an eligible set of Life Peers could be formed out of such a chosen body of ex-Governors, who would really be an acquisition to Lord Dunraven's reformed House of Lords. How, it may be asked, under an elective, or rather selective, Governor, would Victoria differ from an independent
- ↑ See Appendix C, "The Colonial Office and the Foreign Nobleman."
