I had even helped to draw some pleadings in a
Judicial Committee case when in Chambers. Accordingly, though with some
difficulty, I persuaded Mr. Hutton to let me have my say and show what a
potent bond of Empire was to be found therein. I also wanted to
emphasise how further ties of Imperial unity might be developed on
similar lines--a fact, I may say, which was not discovered by the
practical politicians till about the year 1912, or twenty-seven years
later.
Now it happened that Mr. Gladstone's Ministry, though beaten at the
elections, had not yet gone out of office. It also happened that Lord
Granville, then Colonial Secretary, was to receive the Agents-General of
the self-governing Colonies, as they were then called, on the Saturday;
and finally, that Lord Granville had a fit of the gout. The result of
the last fact was that he had to put off preparing his speech till the
last possible moment. When he had been wheeled in a chair into the
reception-room--his foot was too painful to allow him to walk--he began
his address to the Deputation in these terms:
In a very remarkable article which appears in this week's
_Spectator_ it is pointed out "that people are apt to overlook the
importance of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as one of the
bonds that unite the Colonies and the Mother Country.
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