EUROPEAN EXPANSION AND WORLD POLITICS 
9g 
is a man, whose project is under consideration. Every one 
of these has passed hours in that dull but anxious attend- 
ance. . . . After a short conference you will generally see 
him return with disappointment stamped on his brow, and, 
quitting the Office, wend his lonely way home to despair, or 
perhaps to return to his Colony and rebel.” 
These are the words of a partisan, but they convey a 
reasonably accurate picture of the actual condition of affairs 
at the time. 
It was from such leading-strings that the colonies were 
gradually emancipated. Beginning with Canada in 1840, 
where colonial home rule and union originated through the 
activities of Lord Durham in 1839 and 1840, responsible 
government was introduced into New South Wales in 1843, 
South Australia in 1856, Victoria in 1851, Tasmania in 
1853, New Zealand in 1852, Cape Colony in 1854, and into 
Queensland in 1859. By 1870 the new system was thor- 
oughly developed and in good working order in all these 
typical British colonies. 
While this was going on, the old wasteful system of free 
land grants was abolished, and the Government undertook 
to regulate the sale of the crown lands on an equitable and 
scientific basis. The discussions of party politics in Great 
Britain were greatly relieved by the removal of numerous 
petty questions of colonial life and policy from the field of 
Parliament’s activities. The imperial forces were gradu- 
ally withdrawn from the self-supporting colonies, until the 
Colonial Secretary reported, in 1873, that the military 
expenses for the colonies were confined almost entirely to 
the necessities of imperial defense. 
During this period territorial expansion was not popular 
with the Colonial Office. Lord Derby, Lord Granville, and 
Lord Blachford — all pupils of the Manchester School of 
Bright and Cobden —had no faith ina Greater Britain” or