But, while they enjoy, like Canada and
New South Wales, complete control over their internal affairs and
their taxation, every office or dignity in the gift of the Crown is
freely open to the native of Guernsey or Jersey. Generals, admirals,
peers of the United Kingdom, are made, and there is nothing which
hinders prime ministers to be made, from those insignificant
islands. The same system was commenced in reference to the Colonies
generally by an enlightened Colonial Secretary, too early lost, Sir
William Molesworth, when he appointed Mr. Hinckes, a leading
Canadian politician, to a West Indian government. It is a very shallow
view of the springs of political action in a community which thinks
such things unimportant because the number of those in a position
actually to profit by the concession might not be very considerable.
That limited number would be composed precisely of those who have most
moral power over the rest: and men are not so destitute of the sense
of collective degradation as not to feel the withholding of an
advantage from even one person, because of a circumstance which they
all have in common with him, an affront to all. If we prevent the
leading men of a community from standing forth to the world as its
chiefs and representatives in the general councils of mankind, we
owe it both to their legitimate ambition, and to the just pride of the
community, to give them in return an equal chance of occupying the
same prominent position in a nation of greater power and importance.
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