I do not wish to be understood to say that I look to responsible representative government as a panacea for all the evils with which Western Australia is afflicted, or that I think that a colony which would perish without that remedy would by that alone be saved from ruin. I have no such belief in any form of government. It is in Western Australia, as elsewhere, by the people and their energy that the people must be made to flourish. But I do think that a people who are empowered to act for themselves in politics, even though their political action should in many instances be unwise, are more likely to be stirred to energy than are a herd of men driven this way or that in matters of policy, according as some men from without may choose to drive them. I am aware that a population of 25,000 is very small to support, very small to need, all the paraphernalia of a double-housed parliament; Queensland, however, had not so many when she commenced the experiment, and with Queensland it has succeeded. I am aware that there is at present great difficulty in getting proper men for the position of legislators in Perth;--perhaps I may go further, and say that as yet these are not to be found in the colony. Men are wanted who can yearly afford to give a portion of their time in the capital for nothing, who shall have trained themselves to think, as legislators, of their country’s good, and not of their own special wants, and who shall be possessed of that patient demeanour and forbearing temper which a legislative chamber demands. I doubt whether such men can as yet be found in Western Australia. I know they have not been plentiful in the other colonies. I know that in some of the legislative chambers of Australia rowdy manners are common, and class interests very much in the ascendant. I am well aware that these chambers are not what they should be,--are very short, indeed, of being model legislative chambers. But nevertheless the work is done,--if not in a perfect, still in a wholesome manner, and the colonies are upon the whole raised to energy, vitality, and dignity by the unseen operations of representative government. I believe that the same result would follow in Western Australia, and that the colonists would gradually throw off that Micawber tone of hoping to which I have alluded, if the duty were imposed upon them of managing for themselves.