TO THE EDITOR OF THE “DAILY NEWS.”

Sir,—I should abandon my case if I omitted to reply to the important paper on the “Utility of Colonization”, by Mr. Herman Merivale, read before the British Association, and reported in your journal. Mr. Herman Merivale is not only a writer of the highest distinction on Colonial subjects, and one to whom all students of those subjects are deeply indebted, but, as Under-Secretary for the Colonies, he was long the chief administrator of the present system. If he fails to give sound reasons for the continuance of the system, it is because there are no sound reasons to give.

I must, in the first place, guard against a fallacy as to the views of Mr. Merivale's opponents which is implied in the title of his paper. As I have said before, nobody can doubt “the utility of Colonization.” To doubt the utility of Colonization would be to doubt the utility of every inhabited country on the earth, except the original seat of man. What is doubted is the utility of keeping Colonies in a state of dependence on the Mother Country when they are capable of self-government and self-defence, and when their fitness to manage their own concerns has been formally acknowledged by the gift of Parliamentary institutions.