How far this reticence about responsible Government facilitated the passage of the Australian Acts in the British Parliament, as it certainly facilitated the Canadian Act of 1840, it is difficult to decide. It was probably a factor of some importance. At any rate, it is true to say that Home Rule, as in Canada, was mainly a result of practice rather than of statutory enactment. The case of New Zealand is a striking example of this. In 1852 New Zealand obtained from a Tory Government a Constitutional Act, which resembles the Canadian Act of 1840 in abstaining from any expression, direct or indirect which implies the existence of a Colonial Cabinet, and it is probable that the framers of the Act intended no such development, but on the contrary contemplated a permanent, irremovable Executive. But the Act was no sooner passed than an agitation began for responsible government, under the leadership of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, part-author of the Durham Report, and at that time a member of the New Zealand Assembly. By 1855, when the Australian Acts were passed, New Zealand, without further legislation, had obtained what she wanted. To complete the story, Queensland, carved out of New South Wales in 1859, entered upon full responsible government at once, and Western Australia, retarded for so long by the servile system of convict-labour, gained the same rights in 1890. Reading the debates of the middle of the nineteenth century, one is left with the impression that the Australasian Colonies obtained Home Rule by virtue of their distance, and because most politicians at home could not be bothered to fight hard against a principle which at bottom they disliked as heartily for the Colonies as for Ireland. The views of the various parties were not much changed since the days of the crisis in Canada. There were some able Colonial Secretaries who thoroughly understood and believed in the principle of responsible government. On the other hand, some Liberals were not yet converted, though Liberal Governments fathered the Constitutional Acts of 1850 and 1855. Disraeli's well-known saying in 1852 that "these wretched Colonies will all be independent, too, in a few years, and are a mill-stone round our necks," was typical of the Tory attitude.[29] Lord John Russell, in the same year, 1852, was complaining, as Lord Morley tells us,[30] that we were "throwing the shields of our authority away," and leaving "the monarchy exposed in the Colonies to the assaults of democracy." A group of Radicals, headed by Sir William Molesworth and Hume in Parliament, and by Wakefield from outside, still pushed the policy of emancipation energetically and persistently on the principle which they had urged in the case of Canada, that freedom was better both for the Colonies and the Mother Country.