HL Deb 24 June 1842 vol 64 c538
Lord Brougham

had to present a petition from certain inhabitants of Newfoundland, complaining of a proposed change in the form of government which had for sometime existed in the colony. The parties who had confided this petition to his care were highly respectable, and as the petition was respectably signed, he could not refuse to present it. With respect to the form of government in some of our colonies, he had on a former evening, in the case of the petition from a large body of inhabitants of the Cape of Good Hope, for a constitutional form of government analogous to that of Great Britain, expressed his opinion as to the inexpediency, he would say, the impolicy, of granting a representative form of government in colonies where the inhabitants were of mixed races, and where the power of one might be used to the oppression of the others. This state of things, did not, he admitted, apply to the colony of Newfoundland; but the principle would be found a general one—that where the difference of races was strongly marked, those who called for constitutions like unto that of this country would soon find that they had them only in name.

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