Far more interesting, however, was the Colonial legislation of the Government in 1850, which indeed might be termed epoch-marking. The Queen had at the opening of the Session indicated in her Speech from the Throne that a measure extending Constitutional government to the Colonies would be introduced. It was known that she was personally of opinion that the Colonies were giving promise of a growth so rapid, that it would be impossible for any length of time to hold them in the leading-strings of the Colonial Office. The incessant attacks which had been made on Lord Grey in Parliament and in the Press merely served to confirm the Queen in this opinion. It was, therefore, with great satisfaction that she discovered that men of light and leading on both sides of the House of Commons were so far agreed on the subject, that it was deemed practicable by Lord John Russell to minimise the friction between the Colonies and the Colonial Office, by conceding to the Colonists large powers of representative self-government. Lord John Russell explained the scheme which embodied these ideas on the 8th of February. To the Cape Colony he granted two Chambers. The first was representative, and elected under a property qualification. The second, or Legislative Council, was to be elected by persons with a higher property qualification, who had been named by the Crown or municipal bodies for magisterial and municipal offices as individuals of weight and influence. For Australia he proposed a system under which there should be only one Legislative Council, two-thirds elected by the people, and one-third named by the Governor, on the pattern of the system adopted by New South Wales, but with power to the Colonists to change to the bi-cameral or two-Chamber system if they preferred it. Provision was made for constituting, on petition of any two Colonies, a Federal Assembly representing all the Colonial Legislatures, to frame a common tariff, or initiate a common policy for dealing with waste lands. It was in introducing this great scheme that Lord John Russell said that, whilst reserving questions of military defence, the central idea of his Colonial policy was this: political freedom can be best promoted in the Colonies by acting on the general rule, that while the Imperial Government must be their representative in all foreign relations, it will interfere in their domestic affairs no further than may be manifestly necessary to prevent a conflict in the State itself. By finally and formally establishing this principle, the Government of the Queen did all that was humanly possible to repair the wrong done to England and the English people by her grandfather, George III., who flung away, not a crown, as did James II., but a virgin continent, to gratify an absolutist prejudice.