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perusal whether there are any limitations implied in this connection, and I must say lam unable to discover them. The one addition which is made here is, of course, of the first importance. This is to be done by means of a permanent secretarial staff under the direction of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. That means, I assume, that the secretarial staff is to be part of the Colonial Office. CHAIRMAN. Yes. Mr. DEAKIN : I do not know in what sense it will be separated, if separated at all, or distinguished, if distinguished at all, from what may be termed the general staff of the Colonial Office, but I hope I shall not be considered to be unduly pressing the point if I refer once more to the fact that in this great department the gigantic interests with which its Minister and officers are charged in connection with those dependencies to which allusion was made yesterday, great in extent and dense in population, impose upon them serious and incessant responsibilities. To that I have already alluded in brief, and have no wish to repeat myself, but in addition this department is associated with methods of government, of administration, of relation to legislative councils and similar bodies, partially representative, or in some cases, wholly representative, but which are always merely advisory, I think, in the case of Crown Colonies. CHAIRMAN: Not entirely advisory; they have powers of legislation. Mr. DEAKIN : Yes; but that power of legislation is always subject to a veto and general control of a very complete character. Speaking in a familiar way, therefore, the whole tendency of the whole of this department, and of its officers, is to become imbued, both consciously and unconsciously, with principles of government properly applicable to the great countries with which they are dealing day by day and hour by hour, but which are very foreign, and in some cases almost antagonistic, to the principles on which the affairs of self-governing Colonies are conducted, and must be conducted. It promotes a certain strangeness in the manner of address occasionally adopted in the arguments suggested to us and the propositions for their handling, which would not be made by those who were continually associated with the methods of making law and administering law in selfgoverning countries. We have always felt that we labour under a disadvantage, which we are quite justified in mentioning, but of which we can scarcely°complain, because it arises so naturally and inevitably that those most subject to it are very often those who are least conscious of it. One requires to move in a different constitutional atmosphere, to cope with public business in free legislatures, and to view questions from their standpoint, in order to appreciate a contrast which is continually being brought home to us. The object I had in venturing the suggestion was that it might be of advantage to the Colonial Office with its ever-growing responsibilities and certainly would be of advantage to us to have the secretariat under this Conference and working in direct relation to it, separated from those Crown Colony associations which I have described and connected directly with some member of the British Government. We look first, of course, to the Prime Minister, who himself is constantly dealing with his own Parliament, with his own Chambers of legislature, and through them with the electors whom he represents and whose wishes he is able to interpret by that experience. He is already head of the Committee of Imperial Defence and not his colleague the'Secretarv of State for War. We, of course, are aware that in the" Minister who occupies the high office of Minister of State for the

Third Day. IS April 1907.

Future Constitution of the Conference. (Mr. Deakin.)