Mr. Froude has given, most usefully, the views of the colonists.  Let us take Mr. Dalley’s, which is also that of most others, namely, that the nascent but increasing colonial navies should be all under one imperial command—­that is, be a part of the British navy.  There is one more step—­namely, to dispose of all colonial military force in the same common-sense way, and then we have a politically united empire.  But we are “constitutional” or representative in our polity, so that something else is still wanted.  In short, the unity of the empire requires two things.  First, that all its force be under one executive, and, next, that the colonies be proportionately represented in that executive.  The Cabinet seems to me the adaptable body we can operate upon to this end.  That body would then be actually, as well as legally, the empire’s executive.  Nothing should—­nothing need—­prevent the attainment of this grand end.  The tariff bugbear concerns only commerce, and need not arrest nor even interfere with the empire’s political unity.  All other matters of the common interest can be leisurely settled by mutual consent, as the empire, in its united state, sails along the great ocean of the future.  The mother will then, in emergency, have the sure call of her children; while every colony, even to the very smallest, will know that in case of need the whole empire is at its back.  When the rest of the world knows that fact, it will thenceforth probably not trouble our empire either about international rearrangements or anything else.

EARLY PORT PHILLIP.

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And the days o’ lang syne.” 
—­Burns.

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” 
—­Haynes Bayly.

Entering Port Phillip on the morning of the 13th December, 1840, we were wafted quickly up to the anchorage of Hobson’s Bay on the wings of a strong southerly breeze, whose cool, and even cold, temperature was to most of us an unexpected enjoyment in the middle of an Australian summer.  A small boat came to us at the anchorage containing Mr. and Mrs. D.C.  McArthur and others who had friends or relations on board, and who told us that for some days there had been excessive heat and a hot wind, which had now reacted in this southerly blast, to go on probably into heavy rain, the country being excessively dry.

MY FIRST NIGHT ASHORE.

“The Hut on the Flat.” 
—­James Henry.

“How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude.”  —­Cowper.