older colonial theories. But there were also positive and constructive
forces at work. First among them may be noted a new body of definite
theory as to the function which colonies ought to play in the general
economy of the civilised world. It was held to be their function not
(as in the older theory) to afford lucrative opportunities for trade to
the mother-country: so far as trade was concerned it seemed to matter
little whether a country was a colony or an independent state. But the
main object of colonisation was, on this view, the systematic
draining-off of the surplus population of the older lands. This, it was
felt, could not safely be left to the operation of mere chance; and one
of the great advantages of colonial possessions was that they enabled
the country which controlled them to deal in a scientific way with its
surplus population, and to prevent the reproduction of unhealthy
conditions in the new communities, which was apt to result if emigrants
were allowed to drift aimlessly wheresoever chance took them, and
received no guidance as to the proper modes of establishing themselves
in their new homes. The great apostle of this body of colonial theory
was Edward Gibbon Wakefield; and his book, A View of the Art of
Colonisation (1847), deserves to be noted as one of the classics of the
history of imperialism. He did not confine himself to theory, but was
tireless in organising practical experiments. They were carried out, in
a curious revival of the methods of the seventeenth century, by means
of a series of colonising companies which Wakefield promoted. The
settlement of South Australia, the first considerable settlement in the
North Island of New Zealand, and the two admirably designed and
executed settlements of Canterbury and Otago in the South Island of New
Zealand, were all examples of his methods: with the exception of the
North Island settlement, they were all very successful. Nor were these
the only instances of organised and assisted emigration. In 1820 a
substantial settlement, financed by government, was made in the eastern
part of Cape Colony, in the region of Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth,
and this brought the first considerable body of British inhabitants
into South Africa, hitherto almost exclusively Dutch. An unsuccessful
plantation at Swan River in West Australia may also be noted.
Systematic and scientific colonisation was thus being studied in
Britain during this period as never before. In the view of its
advocates Britain was the trustee of civilisation for the
administration of the most valuable unpeopled regions of the earth, and
it was her duty to see that they were skilfully utilised. So high a
degree of success attended some of their efforts that it is impossible
not to regret that they were not carried further. But they depended
upon Crown control of undeveloped lands. With the growth of full
self-government in the colonies the exercise of these Crown functions
was transferred from the ministry and parliament of Britain to the
ministries and parliaments of the colonies; and this transference put
an end to the possibility of a centralised organisation and direction
of emigration.
A second constructive factor very potently at work during this age was
the humanitarian spirit, which had become a powerful factor in British
life during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It had
received perhaps its most practical expression in the abolition of the
slave-trade in 1806, and the campaign against the slave-trade in the
rest of the world became an important object of British policy from
that time onwards. Having abolished the slave-trade, the humanitarians
proceeded to advocate the complete abolition of negro slavery
throughout the British Empire. They won their victory in 1833, when the
British parliament declared slavery illegal throughout the Empire, and
voted 20,000,000 pounds--at a time when British finance was still
suffering from the burdens of the Napoleonic War--to purchase from
their masters the freedom of all the slaves then existing in the
Empire. It was a noble deed, but it was perhaps carried out a little
too suddenly, and it led to grave difficulties, especially in the West
Indies, whose prosperity was seriously impaired, and in South Africa,
where it brought about acute friction with the slave-owning Boer
farmers. But it gave evidence of the adoption of a new attitude towards
the backward races, hitherto mercilessly exploited by all the
imperialist powers. One expression of this attitude had already been
afforded by the organisation (1787) of the colony of Sierra Leone, on
the West African coast, as a place of refuge for freed slaves desiring
to return to the land of their fathers.
It was principally through the activity of missionaries that this new
point of view was expressed and cultivated. Organised missionary
activity in Britain dates from the end of the eighteenth century, but
its range grew with extraordinary rapidity throughout the period. And
wherever the missionaries went, they constituted themselves the
protectors and advocates of the native races among whom they worked.
Often enough they got themselves into bad odour with the European
traders and settlers with whom they came in contact. But through their
powerful home organisations they exercised very great influence over
public opinion and over government policy. The power of 'Exeter Hall,'
where the religious bodies and the missionary societies held their
meetings in London, was at its height in the middle of the nineteenth
century, and politicians could not afford to disregard it, even if they
had desired to do so. This influence, supporting the trend of
humanitarian opinion, succeeded in establishing it as one of the
principles of British imperial policy that it was the duty of the
British government to protect the native races against the exploitation
of the European settlers, and to guide them gently into a civilised way
of life. It is a sound and noble principle, and it may fairly be said
that it has been honestly carried out, so far as the powers of the home
government rendered possible. No government in the world controls a
greater number or variety of subjects belonging to the backward races
than the British; no trading nation has had greater opportunities for
the oppressive exploitation of defenceless subjects. Yet the grave
abuse of these opportunities has been infrequent. There have been in
the history of modern British imperialism sporadic instances of
injustice, like the forced labour of Kanakas in the Pacific. But there
have been no Congo outrages, no Putumayo atrocities, no Pequena slave
scandals, no merciless slaughter like that of the Hereros in German
South-West Africa.
The principle of the protection of backward peoples has, however,
sometimes had an unfortunate influence upon colonial policy; and there
was no colony in which it exercised a more unhappy effect than South
Africa. Here the Boer farmers still retained towards their native
neighbours the attitude which had been characteristic of all the
European peoples in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: they
regarded the negro as a natural inferior, born to servitude. It is not
surprising that no love was lost between the Boers and the
missionaries, who appeared as the protectors of the negroes, and whose
representations turned British opinion violently against the whole Boer
community. This was in itself a sufficiently unfortunate result: it
lies largely at the base of the prolonged disharmony which divided the
two peoples in South Africa. The belief that the Boers could not be
trusted to deal fairly with the natives formed, for a long period, the
chief reason which urged the British Government to retain their control
over the Boers, even when they had trekked away from the Cape (1836)
and established themselves beyond the Orange and the Vaal rivers; and
the conflict of this motive with the desire to avoid any increase of
colonial responsibilities, and with the feeling that if the Boers
disliked the British system, they had better be left in freedom to
organise themselves in their own way, accounts for the curious
vacillation in the policy of the period on this question. At first the
trekkers were left to themselves; then the lands which they had
occupied were annexed; then their independence was recognised; and
finally, when, at the end of the period, they seemed to be causing a
dangerous excitement among the Zulus and other native tribes, the
Transvaal was once more annexed; with the result that revolt broke out,
and the Majuba campaign had to be fought.
Again, tenderness for the natives led to several curious and not very
successful experiments in organisation. The annexation of Natal was
long delayed because it was held that this area ought to form a native
reserve, and fruitless attempts were made to restrict the settlement of
Europeans in this empty and fertile land. An attempt was also made to
set up a series of native areas under British protection, from which
the white settler was excluded. British Kaffraria, Griqualand East and
Griqualand West were examples of this policy, which is still
represented, not unsuccessfully, by the great protected area of
Basutoland. But, on the whole, these experiments in the handling of the
native problem in South Africa did more harm than good. They were
unsuccessful mainly because South Africa was a white man's country,
into which the most vigorous of the native races, those of the Bantu
stock (Kaffirs, Zulus, Matabili, etc.), were more recent immigrants
than the white men themselves. Owing to their warlike character and
rapidly growing numbers they constituted for a long time a very
formidable danger; and neither the missionaries nor the home
authorities sufficiently recognised these facts.
Perhaps the most unhappy result of this friction over the native
question, apart from the alienation of Boer and Briton which it
produced, was the fact that it was the principal cause of the long
delay in establishing self-governing institutions in South Africa. The
home government hesitated to give to the colonists full control over
their own affairs, because it distrusted the use which they were likely
to make of their powers over the natives; even the normal institutions
of all British colonies were not established in Cape Colony till 1854,
and in Natal till 1883. But although in this case the new attitude
towards the backward races led to some unhappy results, the spirit
which inspired it was altogether admirable, and its growing strength
accounts in part for the real degree of success which has been achieved
by British administrators in the government of regions not suited for
the settlement of Europeans in large numbers. Indeed, this spirit has
come to be one of the outstanding features of modern British
imperialism.
It was not only in the treatment of backward races that the
humanitarian spirit made itself felt. It was at work also in the
government of the highly developed civilisations of India, where,
during this period, British power began to be boldly used to put an end
to barbarous or inhumane practices which were supported or tolerated by
the religious beliefs or immemorial social usages of India. Such
practices as thagi, or meria sacrifices, or female infanticide, or,
above all, sati, had been left undisturbed by the earlier rulers of
British India, because they feared that interference with them would be
resented as an infraction of Indian custom or religion. They were now
boldly attacked, and practically abolished, without evil result.
Alongside of this new courage in measures that seemed to be dictated by
the moral ideas of the West, there was to be seen growing throughout
this period a new temper of respect for Indian civilisation and a
desire to study and understand it, and to safeguard its best features.
The study of early Indian literature, law, and religious philosophy had
indeed been begun in the eighteenth century by Sir William Jones and
Nathaniel Halhed, with the ardent encouragement of Warren Hastings. But
in this as in other respects Hastings was ahead of the political
opinion of his time; the prevalent idea was that the best thing for
India would be the introduction, so far as possible, of British
methods. This led to the absurdities of the Supreme Court, established
in 1773 to administer English law to Indians. It led also to the great
blunder of Cornwallis's settlement of the land question in Bengal,
which was an attempt to assimilate the Indian land-system to that of
England, and resulted in an unhappy weakening of the village
communities, the most healthy features of Indian rural life. In the
nineteenth century this attitude was replaced by a spirit of respect
for Indian traditions and methods of organisation, and by a desire to
retain and strengthen their best features. The new attitude was perhaps
to be seen at its best in the work of Mountstuart Elphinstone, a great
administrator who was also a profound student of Indian history, and a
very sympathetic observer and friend of Indian customs and modes of
life. But the same spirit was exemplified by the whole of the
remarkable generation of statesmen of whom Elphinstone was one. They
established the view that it was the duty of the British power to
reorganise India, indeed, but to reorganise it on lines in accordance
with its own traditions. Above all, the principle was in this
generation very definitely established that India, like other great
dependencies, must be administered in the interests of its own people,
and not in the interests of the ruling race. That seems to us to-day a
platitude. It would not have seemed a platitude in the eighteenth
century. It would not seem a platitude in modern Germany. And it may
safely be said that the enunciation of such a doctrine would have
seemed merely absurd in any of the earlier historical empires. In 1833
an official report laid before the British parliament contained these
remarkable words: 'It is recognised as an indisputable principle, that
the interests of the Native Subjects are to be consulted in preference
to those of Europeans, wherever the two come in competition.' In all
the records of imperialism it would be hard to find a parallel to this
formal statement of policy by the supreme government of a ruling race.
When such a statement could be made, it is manifest that the meaning of
the word Empire had undergone a remarkable transformation. No one can
read the history of British rule in India during this period without
feeling that, in spite of occasional lapses, this was its real spirit.
But the most powerful constructive element in the shaping of the new
imperial policy of Britain was the strength of the belief in the idea
of self-government, as not only morally desirable but practically
efficacious, which was to be perceived at work in the political circles
of Britain during this age. Self-government had throughout the modern
age been a matter of habit and practice with the British peoples; now
it became a matter of theory and belief. And from this resulted a great
change of attitude towards the problems of colonial administration. The
American problem in the eighteenth century had arisen ultimately out of
the demand of the Americans for unqualified and responsible control
over their own affairs: the attitude of the Englishman in reply to this
demand (though he never clearly analysed it) was, in effect, that
self-government was a good and desirable thing, but that on the scale
on which the Americans claimed it, it would be fatal to the unity of
the Empire, and the unity of the Empire must come first. Faced by
similar problems in the nineteenth century, the Englishman's response
generally was that self-government on the fullest scale was the right
of all who were fit to exercise it, and the most satisfactory working
solution of political problems. Therefore the right must be granted;
and the unity of the Empire must take care of itself. No doubt this
attitude was more readily adopted because of the widespread belief that
in fact the colonies would all sooner or later cut their connection
with the mother-country. But it was fully shared by men who did not
hold this view, and who believed strongly in the possibility and
desirability of maintaining imperial unity. It was shared, for example,
by Wakefield, a convinced imperialist if ever there was one, and by
that great colonial administrator, Sir George Grey. It was shared by
Lord Durham and by Lord John Russell, who were largely responsible for
the adoption of the new policy. Their belief and hope was that the
common possession of free institutions of kindred types would in fact
form the most effective tie between the lands which enjoyed them. This
hope obtained an eloquent expression in the speech in which, in 1852,
Russell introduced the bill for granting to the Australian colonies
self-government on such a scale as amounted almost to independence. It
is not true, as is sometimes said, that the self-governing institutions
of the colonies were established during this period owing to the
indifference of the home authorities, and their readiness to put an end
to the connection. The new policy of these years was deliberately
adopted; and although its acceptance by parliament was rendered easier
by the prevalence of disbelief in the permanence of the imperial tie,
yet, on the part of the responsible men, it was due to far-sighted
statesmanship.
The critical test of the new colonial policy, and the most dramatic
demonstration of its efficacy, were afforded by Canada, where, during
the thirties, the conditions which preceded the revolt of the American
colonies were being reproduced with curious exactness. The
self-governing institutions established in the Canadian colonies in
1791 very closely resembled those of the American colonies before the
revolution: they gave to the representative houses control over
taxation and legislation, but neither control over, nor responsibility
for, the executive. And the same results were following. Incomplete
self-government was striving after its own fulfilment: the denial of
responsibility was producing irresponsibility. These was the same
unceasing friction between governors and their councils on the one
hand, and the representative bodies on the other hand; and the
assemblies were showing the same unreasonableness in refusing to meet
manifest public obligations. This state of things was becoming steadily
more acute in all the colonies, but it was at its worst in the province
of Quebec, where the constitutional friction was embittered by a racial
conflict, the executive body being British, while the great majority of
the assembly was French; and the conflict was producing a very
dangerous alienation between the two peoples. The French colonists had
quite forgotten the gratitude they had once felt for the maintenance of
their religion and of their social organisation, and there was a strong
party among them who were bent upon open revolt, and hoped to be able
to establish a little isolated French community upon the St. Lawrence.
This party of hotheads got the upper hand, and their agitation
culminated in the rebellion of Papineau in 1837. In the other colonies,
and especially in Upper Canada, the conditions were almost equally
ominous; when Papineau revolted in Quebec, William Mackenzie led a
sympathetic rising in Ontario. The situation was quite as alarming as
the situation in the American colonies had been in 1775. It is true
that the risings were easily put down. But mere repression formed no
solution, any more than a British victory in 1775 would have formed a
solution of the American question.
Realising this, the Whig government sent out Lord Durham, one of their
own number, to report on the whole situation. Durham was one of the
most advanced Liberals in Britain, a convinced believer in the virtues
of self-government, and he took out with him two of the ablest
advocates of scientific colonisation, Edward Gibbon Wakefield and
Charles Buller. Durham's administrative work was not a success: his
high-handed deportation of some of the rebel leaders was strongly
condemned, and he was very quickly recalled. But he had had time to
study and understand the situation, and he presented a masterly Report
on Canada, which is one of the classics in the history of British
imperialism. His explanation of the unhappy condition of Canadian
politics was not (as some were tempted to say) that the colonists had
been given too much liberty, but that they had not been given enough.
They must be made to feel their responsibility for the working of the
laws which they adopted, and for the welfare of the whole community. As
for the conflict of races, its only cure was that both should be made
to feel their common responsibility for the destinies of the community
in which both must remain partners.
Lord Durham's recommendations were fully carried into effect, partly in
the Canada Act of 1840, but more especially by a simple instruction
issued to governors, that their ministries must henceforward be chosen,
in the British fashion, on the ground that they commanded the support
of a majority in the elected house; and that the governors themselves
must be guided by their advice. A crucial test of this new policy came
in 1849, when the ministers and the parliamentary majority proposed to
vote compensation for property destroyed in 1837. This to many seemed
compensation for rebels, and the indignant loyalists were urgent that
the governor, Lord Elgin, should veto it. He firmly declined to do so;
and thus gave an invaluable lesson to both parties. The Canadian
people, acting through their representatives, were now responsible for
their actions. If they chose to vote for irresponsible and dangerous
devices, they must henceforward realise that they must themselves
answer for the consequences.
Thus, within a few years of the outbreak of rebellion in two provinces,
full power had been entrusted to the rebels themselves. It was a daring
policy, only to be justified by a very confident belief in the virtues
of self-government. But it was completely and triumphantly successful.
Henceforward friction between the Canadian colonies and the
mother-country ceased: if there were grounds for complaint in the state
of Canadian affairs, the Canadians must now blame their own ministers,
and the remedy lay in their own hands. And what was the outcome? Twenty
years later the various colonies, once as full of mutual jealousies as
the American colonies had been before 1775, began to discuss the
possibility of federation. With the cordial approval and co-operation
of the home government, they drew up a scheme for the formation of a
united Dominion of Canada, including distant British Columbia and the
coastal colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward
Island; and the adoption of this scheme, in 1867, turned Canada from a
bundle of separate settlements into a great state. To this state the
home government later made over the control of all the vast and rich
lands of the North-West, and so the destinies of half a continent
passed under its direction. It was a charge, the magnitude and
challenge of which could not but bring forth all that there was of
statesmanship among the Canadian people; and it has not failed to do so.