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The Earl of Derby received at the Colonial Office, on Tuesday last, the High Commissioner for the Dominion of Canada, and the Agents General for the Australian Colonies, New Zealand, and the Cape of Good Hope. The following gentlemen attended :-Sir Alexander Galt, G.C.M.Ĝ., High Commissioner for Canada; Sir Arthur Blyth, K.C.M.G., Agent General for South Australia; Sir Saul Samuel, K.C.M.G., Agent General for New South Wales; Sir F. Dillon Bell, K.C.M.G., Agent General for New Zealand; Mr. Thomas Archer, Agent General for Queensland; Mr. R. Murray Smith, Agent General for Victoria; and Captain Mills, C.M.G., Agent General for the Cape of Good Hope.
Sir Alexander Galt addressed the Secretary of State as follows:—
My Lord,
On behalf of the accredited representatives of all the self-governing Colonies, I am charged to offer to your Lordship our congratulations upon your acceptance of the office of Secretary of State for the Colonics, and your resumption of those duties which were usefully discharged by you under a former administration.
We especially wish to thank your Lordship for giving us this opportunity to convey to you the formal and united expression of the loyal attachment of the great dependencies of the Empire, which we have the honour to represent, to our most gracious Sovereign, and the anxious desire enter- tained by all Her colonial subjects to promote the prosperity, and to maintain ⚫the permanence of the Empire.
We welcome the present interview as evincing an appreciation of the growing importance of the constitutional Colonies, and we trust that our personal usefulness, in serving our respective Governments, will be promoted by a more formal recognition than has hitherto been found advisable, of the deep interest which is felt by the Colonies. in all that concerns the welfare of the nation, of which they regard themselves as an integral part.
We especially rejoice that as representatives of great communities in very varied and distant portions of the world, we are able, unitedly, to testify to the welfare and prosperity which has uniformly followed the concession of local constitutional government, while enhancing the attachment to the mother country of these dependencies.
In conclusion, we desire to express our conviction that, under your Lordship's administration, the interests of the Colonial Empire will not fail to receive every consideration; and that we shall personally continue to find the same courtesy and attention which we have ever experienced from the Colonial Department.
The following was Lord Derby's reply :- Gentlemen,
I thank you for your address, and for the expressions of personal courtesy and goodwill which it contains. Be assured that it will always be a pleasure to me to receive you, collectively or singly, and that any statements which you may bring before me as to the Colonies which you respectively represent will be carefully listened to and fully weighed.
The growing importance of the great self-governed Colonies of England is recognized by every Englishman of whatever party or class.
We rejoice in their strength and prosperity, and we have a right to expect results such as the world has not often seen, where the energies and the experience of an ancient civilization are applied to a boundless territory and an un- exhausted soil. Old men are said to live again in their children, and it is the rare privilege of England to have been able to extend the freedom which she has won for herself over an empire wider than any which in former ages has acknowledged a single head.
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The position which our country will hold in the history of the future will, in my judgment at least, depend far more on her achievements in the way of colonization, and on the diffusion of our race over so many of the choicest regions of the earth, than on the part we have played, or may still play, in Europe. It is difficult to avoid the language of exaggeration in speaking of the possible future of such countries as Canada and Australasia; and if South Africa offers a less extensive field for European settlement, its progress has of late been very remarkable, and is well maintained.
We fully recognize, and we duly value, the attachment of our Colonial kinsmen to the constitution under which we live, to the mother-country from which they have sprung, and to the Empire of which, though divided by distance, they continue to form an integral part.
any Minister
It will be my duty and my wish, and it will be equally that of who may hereafter stand in my place, to take care that the deep interest felt by the people of these islands in the welfare of the Colonies sliall find adequate expression in the language and in the actions of the official repre- sentative of the Crown.