IMPERIAL FEDERATION
{ii}
This Edition is intended for circulation only in India and the
British Colonies
{iii}
Macmillan's Colonial Library
IMPERIAL FEDERATION
THE PROBLEM OF NATIONAL UNITY
BY
GEORGE R. PARKIN, M.A.
_WITH MAP_
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1892
No. 143
{iv}
'I tell you that when you study English history you study not
the past of England only, but her future. It is the welfare of
your country, it is your whole interest as citizens that is in
question while you study history. How it is so I illustrate by
putting before you this subject of the Expansion of England. _I
show you that there is a vast question ripening for decision,
upon which almost the whole future of our country depends. In
magnitude this question far surpasses all other questions which
you can ever have to discuss in political life._'
PROFESSOR J. R. SEELEY.
OXFORD: HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
{v}
PREFACE
THIS book has been written at the request of many friends who
think that a useful purpose will be served by putting the facts
and arguments which it embodies into a connected form, where
they will be easily accessible to the ordinary reader, and where
either their fallacies may be exposed or their truth find a
wider recognition. In most of the chief centres of the British
world both at home and abroad I have found men of all classes,
and not seldom large masses of men, who agreed on the whole with
the line of thought which I here try to follow; agreed, too,
with an intensity of belief and a warmth of enthusiasm which
are, I think, rarely found except in connection with great and
true causes. This concurrence of other minds has deepened the
profound conviction which I have long felt that the completion
of a closer and permanent political unity between the British
communities scattered throughout the world should be a first aim
of national statesmanship, and might {vi} become, if its
advantages were clearly understood, a supreme object of popular
desire.
It is essentially a subject for full and free discussion.
Permanent national unity for British people can only be based on
an agreement of opinion among at least the larger self-governing
communities that the union is for the common good. That there
should be an absolute unanimity of consenting opinion among the
populations of the communities concerned we have no reason to
hope. It has never occurred in any large national consolidation
hitherto, and it is not likely to do so now. The continued unity
of the Empire is a political question involving immense issues,
and divergent opinions may be assumed from the start. Indeed, it
becomes more evident from day to day, to those who watch
carefully the current of events, that the end can only be
gained--as great ends have ever been gained--after a severe
struggle between contending forms of thought. The provincialism
which has uniformly resisted large national organization; the
pessimism which sees danger in every new form of political
evolution; the repugnance to change in an old country with forms
of government more or less fixed; the crudeness of political
thought and want of national perspective in young communities;
the ignorance which begets inertia: all these exist and must be
combated. In this struggle the better cause, the strongest
arguments, the deepest convictions, the most {vii} strenuous
moulders of public opinion, will win. Mere circumstances will
never shape themselves for the required solution. A policy of
drift will never result in united strength. Growth may be an
unconscious process--organization can only be the result of a
conscious effort. No thinking man today would wish to see the
American Republic resolved into its original sovereign states,
Germany into its kingdoms, small principalities, and duchies;
Canada into its distinct provinces; Italy into its cities. Yet
none of these would now be what they are had their fortunes been
left to the drift of circumstances alone. Their history proves
that the ideals of the clearest minds, backed up by intense
convictions and resolute effort, are essential to the attainment
of the highest political organization. Circumstances or the
course of events may thwart human effort or favour it, but they
can never take its place as a complete substitute.
The further consolidation of the Empire depends in great measure
upon the answer given to two questions. Is it for the advantage
of the different communities that they should remain together?
and, granting an affirmative answer to this, does the problem of
further unification on a mutually satisfactory basis present
difficulties which transcend the resources of British
statesmanship?
These questions roughly indicate the line of enquiry which I
wish to follow. Behind them lies an issue {viii} which British
people throughout the world will soon be forced to recognize as
infinitely surpassing in momentous significance any upon which
their political thought and energy are now being spent. We may
not unreasonably believe that the movements at present going on
in the mother-land and the colonies are only supplying us with
the political formulae required for grappling with the higher
national problem.
It seems like sheer political blindness not to perceive that in
different parts of the Empire forces are now actively at work
which may at any moment precipitate a decision of this great
question; movements in progress which, it seems safe to say,
must of necessity lead up to a decision within a time measured
at the very most by one or two decades.
Nations take long to grow, but there are periods when, as in the
long delayed flowering of certain plants, or in the
crystallization of chemical solutions, new forms are taken with
extreme rapidity. There are the strongest reasons for believing
that the British nation has such a period immediately before it.
The necessity for the creation of a body of sound public opinion
upon the relations to each other of the various parts of the
Empire is therefore urgent. In stating the case for British
Unity I have constantly found myself merely linking together
arguments already used by thinkers in many parts of the Empire.
{ix} Any apology on my part for thus making use of other men's
thoughts, is unnecessary. Earnest believers in a great cause
only wish that the grounds of their belief should be made known
as widely as possible.
No one can be more conscious than myself of the incompleteness
of the statement which I have tried to make. But even a partial
study of a great subject may serve a useful purpose. If what is
here said furnish to the advocates of National Unity some texts
upon which they may enlarge and improve, if it provoke that
honest criticism which leads to a firmer grasp of truth, I shall
be more than satisfied.
{x}
{xi}
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER II
FEDERATION 31
CHAPTER. III
DEFENCE 59
CHAPTER IV.
THE UNITED KINGDOM 103
CHAPTER V.
CANADA 115
CHAPTER VI.
FRENCH CANADA 153
CHAPTER VII.
MR. GOLDWIN SMITH 163
CHAPTER VIII.
AUSTRALIA. TASMANIA. NEW ZEALAND. .192
{xii} CHAPTER IX. PAGE
SOUTH AFRICA. THE WEST INDIES 232
CHAPTER X.
INDIA. 243
CHAPTER XI.
AN AMERICAN VIEW 253
CHAPTER XII.
FINANCE 271
CHAPTER XIII.
TRADE AND FISCAL POLICY 278
CHAPTER XIV.
PLANS. CONCLUSION 296
MAP
Commercial and Strategic Chart of the British Empire, on
Mercator's Projection .._End of book_.
{1}
_THE PROBLEM OF NATIONAL UNITY_
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
THE glory of the British political system is often said to lie
in the fact that it is a growth; that it has adapted itself, and
is capable of continuous adaptation, to the necessities of
national development. The fact is proved and the boast is
justified by British history, but behind them, no doubt, is a
race characteristic. A special capacity for political
organization may, without race vanity, be fairly claimed for
Anglo-Saxon people.
The tests which have already been, or are now being, applied to
this organizing capacity are sufficiently striking and varied.
In the British Islands themselves a gradual and steady process
of evolution, extending over hundreds of years, has led up from
the free but weak and disjointed government of the Heptarchy
period to the equally free but strong and consolidated
government of the United Kingdom. In the United States, within
little more than a hundred {2} years, we have seen one great
branch of the race weld into organic unity a number of loosely
aggregated provinces under a system which now extends over half
the area of a great continent. Twenty-five years ago the process
was repeated on the other half of the American continent. In the
face of difficulties, by many believed to be insuperable,
Canada, stretching from ocean to ocean a distance of nearly 4000
miles, has become a political unit, and already exhibits a
cohesion which small European States have often only gained
after long periods of internal and external conflict.
On another continent Australians, dealing with provinces larger
in area than European empires, are grappling courageously with
the problem of political combination, and the universal
confidence felt in the ultimate success of their efforts shows
what reliance is put upon the strength and efficiency of the
race instinct. In South Africa and the West Indies the
considerable intermixture of coloured races complicates the
question, but here too the forces which make for unity are more
or less actively at work.
Speaking generally we may say that in the long course of
Anglo-Saxon history whenever the need of combination has arisen
the political expedient has been devised to match the political
necessity. This capacity for adequate organization has been the
keynote of distinction between the democracy of our race and all
the democracies by which it has been preceded.
There is reason to think that this organizing quality {3} is one
which has given effectiveness to all others. The steadiness of
the advance which the race has made in social and industrial
directions has depended upon the security given by political
organization at once comprehensive, flexible, and strong. No
other branch of the human family has ever been so free to apply
itself to the higher problems of civilization.
All the conditions of the world at the present time point to the
conclusion that further progress must be safe-guarded in the
same way. On the one hand, we see an extraordinary organization
of military power and a widening of military combination among
European nations to which the past furnishes no parallel, and
which suggest hitherto unheard-of possibilities of conflict or
aggression. On the other hand, the vast extension of industrial
and commercial interests among British people, without any
parallel in the previous history of the world, seems to demand a
corresponding widening of the political combination which is
required to give them security.
Meanwhile the amazing spread of the race has become the main
fact of modern history--the one which assuredly will have the
most decisive influence on the future of mankind. Only within
the last hundred years, one might almost say within a still
narrower limit of time, has this been fully realized. The
tentative efforts of Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, and French to
dominate the new continents opened up by the discoveries at the
end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth
centuries did not {4} receive a decisive check till towards the
end of the eighteenth. Then the new tide fairly began to flow.
The flux of civilized population, by which new and great centres
of human activity are created, has since that time been so
overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon that nearly all minor currents are
absorbed or assimilated by it. Teuton, Latin, Scandinavian, with
one or two limited but well-defined exceptions, lose their
identity and tend to disappear in the dominant mass of British
population which has flowed, and continues in scarcely abated
volume to flow, steadily away from the mother islands to occupy
those temperate regions which are manifestly destined to become
in an increasing degree centres of the world's force.
With abundant space on which to expand, increase has been rapid,
and it would seem that in mere mass of numbers English-speaking
people are destined at no distant date to surpass any other
branch of the human stock.
That an expansion so vast should bring in its train a new set of
political problems, with a range wider than any that had gone
before, is only natural. That new hopes should be conceived from
this wonderful change in the balance of the world's forces; that
new plans should be devised to utilize it, as other expansions
have been utilized, for the good of our race and of mankind, is
equally natural.
It is almost needless to point out that the conditions
incidental to this expansion were at first misunderstood. The
ignorance of public opinion as to the true {5} relations between
mother-land and colonies, seconded by the blindness and
obstinacy of politicians waging a bitter party fight, produced
in 1776 the great schism of the Anglo-Saxon race. Chatham,
Burke, and many of the clearest minds of England, believed that
the American Revolution was unnecessary--in America itself there
was a large, and for a long time a preponderant party, which
held that in constitutional change a way of escape could be
found from Revolution. The worse counsels prevailed, and
Revolution took the place of Reform and Readjustment. It is, no
doubt, idle to speculate upon the results which might have
followed from a different line of action; if the statesmen of
that day had proved equal to the task of dealing with the
political problem with which they were confronted. The idea that
the separation of the United States from Great Britain was a
pure gain to either country or to the world may, however, be
distinctly challenged.
It may easily be imagined that the earlier ripening of public
opinion in England upon the question of slavery, and the earlier
solution found for it on peaceful lines, might have helped to
solve the problem at an earlier stage in America as well, and
thus prevented the frightful catastrophe of the War of Secession
in 1865. The close and intimate political reaction upon each
other of the two greatest Anglo-Saxon communities, the one with
its higher standard of statesmanship and public morality, the
other with its more active liberalizing tendencies, might have
been in the highest {6} degree healthful for both. United with
all others of their own race and language, British people might
have been able, in self-sufficing strength, to withdraw almost a
hundred years earlier than could otherwise be possible from the
entanglements of European politics, and to be free to devote all
their energies to the maintenance of peace, and the development
of industry, commerce, and civilization. Qualifications to these
views will, of course, present themselves to every mind, and it
is not necessary to press them too far or to quarrel with the
course of history. Much more important is it to observe its
results and learn the lessons which it teaches.
We now see that the bifurcation of Anglo-Saxon national life
which took place in 1776 was of all other events in modern
history the one most pregnant with great consequences. The war
of the Revolution led primarily to the foundation of the
Republic of the United States. Its significance, however, is not
exhausted by this fact, great though it is. The reflex action
upon the thought and policy of Britain involved consequences as
important and far-reaching. Revolution for once in our
development had taken the place of Evolution, but in the end
enabled the latter to resume its steady course. The revolt of
the American colonies led to the closer study of the principles
which must control national expansion. Britain strove, and not
in vain, to acquire the art of bringing colonies into friendly
relation with the national system. The nation-building energy of
her people remained unimpaired, {7} and though one group of
colonies had been lost, others, extending over areas far more
extensive, were soon gained. Under new principles of government
these were acquired, not to be lost, but retained as they have
been up to the present time. Is that retention to be permanent?
Is it desirable? Can the colonies be brought, and ought they to
be brought, not merely into friendly relations, but into organic
harmony with the national system? Has our capacity for political
organization reached its utmost limit? For British people this
is the question of questions. In the whole range of possible
political variation in the future there is no issue of such
far-reaching significance, not merely for our own people but for
the world at large, as the question whether the British Empire
shall remain a political unit for all national purposes, or,
yielding to disintegrating forces, shall allow the stream of the
national life to be parted into many separate channels.
Twenty-five years ago it seemed as if English people, and it
certainly was true that the majority of English statesmen, had
made up their minds definitely as to the only possible and
desirable solution to this great national problem. The old
American colonies had gone, and had remained none the less good
customers of the mother-country for having become independent.
Very soon, it was sincerely believed, the whole world would be
converted to Free Trade, and with universal free trade and the
universal peace which was to follow, nothing was to be gained
from retaining the colonies, {8} while the colonies themselves
were expected to look eagerly forward to complete political
emancipation as the goal of their development. A few brilliant
writers in the press, a few eloquent speakers on the platform,
gave much vogue to these views. The correspondence of prominent
public men which has since come to light, the recollections of
men still living, furnish convincing proof that this opinion was
widely accepted in official circles. A governor, leaving to take
charge of an Australian colony, was told even from the Colonial
Office that he would probably be the last representative of the
Crown sent out from Britain. This tendency of official thought
found its culmination when, in 1866, a great journal frankly
warned Canada, the greatest of all the colonies, that it was
time to prepare for the separation from the mother-land that
must needs come. The shock which this outspoken declaration gave
to Canadian sentiment, built up as it had been on a century of
loyalty to the idea of a United Empire, was very great. That
statesman and journalist alike had misconceived the temper of
the British as well as of the colonial mind was soon made
manifest. This was shown by the almost universal applause which
greeted the passionately indignant protest of Tennyson, when, in
the final dedication to the Queen of his Idylls, he wrote:--
'And that true North[1], whereof we lately heard
A strain to shame us--keep you to yourselves: {9}
So loyal is too costly! friends, your love
Is but a burden: break the bonds and go!
Is this the tone of Empire! Here the faith
That made us rulers! This indeed her voice
And meaning, whom the roar of Hougoumont
Left mightiest of all nations under heaven!
What shock has fooled her since that she should speak
So feebly?'
At once it became clear that here the real heart of Britain
spoke--that poet rather than politician grasped with greater
accuracy the true drift of British thought.
It is not too much to say that from that day to this the policy
of separation, as the true theoretical outcome of {10} national
evolution, has been slowly but steadily dying. John Bright held
the theory in England almost up to the end of his great career.
Goldwin Smith advocates it in Canada still. Of their views I
shall have more to say later. But among conspicuous names theirs
have stood practically alone. Politicians in Britain do not
wish, and if they wished, would scarcely dare, to advocate it on
public platforms. Separation may come under the compulsion of
necessity, from the incapacity of statesmen to work out an
effective plan of union, or as the result of national apathy and
ignorance--not because it is desired, or from any theoretical
belief in its advantage to the people concerned.
If we lay aside, however, the question of national feeling, or
national interest, and look upon the matter as simply one of
constitutional growth and change, it is little wonder that the
statesmen of that earlier period took the view they did.
I have in my possession a document which seems to me of much
historical interest in this connection as furnishing concrete
evidence of the direction of political thought at the period to
which I have referred. It is the printed draft of a Bill
prepared with great care more than twenty-five years ago by Lord
Thring, whose long service as Parliamentary counsel to
successive Cabinets has given him an experience in the practical
forms of English legislation quite unrivalled. The Bill was
intended to be a logical sequel to those measures of Imperial
legislation by which responsible government was {11} granted to
the Canadian and Australian colonies. The new constitutions had
then been in operation for some time in several of the great
colonies, and already no slight friction had occurred in the
endeavour to adjust Imperial and Colonial rights and
responsibilities upon a clear and well-understood basis.
Moreover, the continued formation of new colonies and the desire
of certain Crown colonies to attain to responsible government
suggested a fundamental treatment of the whole question of
colonial relations. The Bill therefore embodies an attempt to
put upon a just basis the relations between Britain and her
colonies at each period of their growth, and to state clearly
their mutual obligations and mutual duties.
It naturally provides in the first place for the government of
settlements in their earlier stages of growth under the absolute
jurisdiction of the Crown.
In the next place, the transition of such a Crown settlement
into the rank and status of a colony with responsible government
is not left to be decided by agitation within the colonies or by
irregular pressure in other directions, such as lately took
place in the case of Western Australia; but it is made to depend
on a definite increase of European population and other
conditions equally applicable to all colonies alike. With the
grant of responsible government, however, comes a clear division
between imperial and local powers, and an equally definite
distribution of burdens; the guarantee to the colony of
protection from foreign aggression being contingent upon the
contribution by {12} the colony of the revenue or money required
for defence in fair proportion to its wealth and population.
Lastly, 'as the natural termination of a connection in itself of
a temporary character' (to use the words of the preface to the
Bill), provision is made for the formal separation of a colony
and its erection into an independent state when its people feel
equal to under-taking the full range of national responsibility.
Direct provision is made for independence only at the colony's
own request, but it is suggested that separation might be
brought about by coercive proclamation on the part of the
mother-country in case the colony fails to perform the national
duties which it accepted with responsible government.
The interest of this proposed legislation seems to me to lie in
the proof which it furnishes that the grant of responsible
government was by no means regarded as giving finality to
national relations, but only as marking a stage in colonial
development. The view thus taken by Lord Thring in England was
the view taken by Joseph Howe in Canada, to whose opinions I
shall have occasion hereafter to refer.
The merit of the Bill lay in the fact that it placed upon a
defined and easily understood footing the relations of
mother-land and colony so long as they remained together; and
provided a constitutional way of escape from the connection when
it had ceased to give satisfaction to either party. Its
peculiarity, indicative of the opinions prevailing at the time,
is that no notice is taken of the possibility of a colony rising
{13} to a place of greatness and power inconsistent with a
strictly subordinate colonial relation, and yet desiring to
perpetuate its organic connection with the nation.
The constitution of the United States provides that new
settlements, though thousands of miles from the centre of
government, and as truly colonies as those of Britain, shall
rise from the condition of territories into that of states,
under which they enjoy the full national franchise, and assume a
full share of national responsibility. In a like manner Lord
Thring's Bill fairly faced the fact that for communities such as
those which British people were forming, the colonial stage was
temporary and transitional, and it provided, in a different
sense, but in accord with existing conditions and beliefs, a
fixed goal for colonial aspirations, and a fixed limit to the
responsibilities of the mother-land.
The framer of this Bill is now, I have reason to think, among
those who believe that a very different end of colonial
development is both desirable and practicable. Such a reversal
of opinion is the natural outcome of the extraordinary changes
which have passed over the national life. The extension of
commercial and industrial relations, the growth of common
interests, the increased facility for communication, above all,
the retention in the colonies, under their new systems of free
government, of a strong national sentiment, and the absence of
the anticipated desire to break the national connection, have
thrown new light upon the whole question.
{14}
In that new light it now seems that there is an argument well
nigh unanswerable, which goes to prove that so far from being a
matter of indifference, the separation from the Empire of anyone
of our great groups of colonies would be an event pregnant with
anxieties and possible disaster alike to the colonies and to the
mother-land, and so far from being the natural line of political
development, that separation would be as unnatural as it is
unnecessary. It is this thought that has given birth to the idea
of national federation, to the conviction in many minds that the
chief effort of our national statesmanship should be directed to
securing the continued unity of the wide-spread British Empire,
to resisting any tendency towards that disintegration which a
generation ago was looked forward to with comparative unconcern.
This is not the thought of mere theorists or enthusiasts.
Statesmen and thinkers of the first rank both in the mother-land
and the colonies, while reserving their judgment as to the lines
on which complete unity can be gained, have strongly affirmed
their belief that it is the true goal for our national
aspirations, that the question is one of supreme concern for the
whole Empire, and that the problem must soon be grappled with in
practical politics.
Not the creation, but the preservation of national unity, is the
task which thus confronts British people, which they must accept
or refuse. Unity already exists: it is the necessary
starting-point of every discussion. It will prove, if need be,
an incalculable assistance {15} towards the attainment of the
completer unity at which we aim. But the existing unity is crude
in form, one which in its very nature is temporary and
transitional, one which ignores or violates political principles
ingrained in the English mind as essential to any finality in
political development, and which already results in gross
inequalities in the conditions of citizenship throughout the
Empire.
The logic by which this position is proved seems irresistible in
its appeal to the mind of the ordinary British citizen. It is
well to be clear on this point.
The essence of British political thought, the very foundation
upon which our freedom, political stability, and singular
collective energy as a nation have been built up, may be
expressed in two words--Representative Government. The loyalty
of the subject and the faithfulness of the ruler spring alike
from this. The willingness to bear public burdens, the deep
interest in public affairs, the close study and careful
application of political principles which distinguish the people
of our race from all others, and the advance of the whole body
politic towards greater individual freedom combined with greater
collective strength, are all direct outgrowths of Representative
Government. Other races may work out other systems and attain
greatness in doing so; we have committed ourselves to this, so
far as dealing with our own people is concerned. From the local
board which settles the poor-rate or school-tax for a parish, to
the Cabinet which deals with the highest concerns of the Empire
and the world, {16} this principle is the central element of
strength, since it is the ground on which public confidence is
based. A British subject who has no voice in influencing the
government of the nation throughout the whole range of its
operation has not reached that condition to which the whole
spirit of our political philosophy points as the state of full
citizenship. We are on absolutely safe ground when we say that
great English communities will not permanently consent to stop
short of this citizenship, nor will they relegate to others,
even to a majority of their own nationality, the uncontrolled
direction of their most important interests.
With certain qualifications, introduced to mitigate the glaring
anomaly of the situation, the great self-governing colonies of
the Empire are in fact now compelled to allow many of their most
important affairs to be managed by others. Canada, with a
commercial navy which floats on every sea, holding already in
this particular the fourth place among the nations of the world,
has a voice in fixing international relations only by the
courtesy of the mother-land, and not by the defined right of
equal citizenship. Australia, occupying a continent, with vast
and growing commercial interests, is in the same anomalous
position. English-speaking, self-governing populations,
amounting in the aggregate already to nearly a third of the
population of the United Kingdom, and likely within little more
than a generation to equal it, with enormous interests involved
in nearly every movement of national affairs, {17} have no
direct representative influence in shaping national policy or
arranging international relations.
The almost perfect freedom they enjoy in the control of local
affairs accentuates rather than mitigates the anomaly. By
accustoming them to the exercise of political rights it makes
them impatient of anything which falls short of the full dignity
of national citizenship.
No one who understands the genius of Anglo-Saxon people can
believe that this state of affairs will be permanent. No one who
sympathizes with the spirit which has constantly urged forward
British people on their career of political progress can wish it
to be so. Great countries with an assured future cannot always
remain colonies, as that term has hitherto been understood. The
system which persists in making no other provision for them is
on the point of passing away.
It is sometimes urged that freedom from national burdens should
be enough to reconcile colonists to any lack of representation
in national counsels; that if they have no sufficient share of
Imperial Government they are at least rid of Imperial anxieties;
that wise direction of affairs may, in any case, be looked for
from the mother-land. But no immunity from public burdens, can
compensate for the loss of a share in the higher life of the
nation and the higher dignity of full citizenship: no honourable
career can result from a readiness to shirk responsibility: a
willingness to rely upon others to do our {18} work or protect
our interests is not the spirit which has built up or will
perpetuate the power of our race. Such argument may suit the
infancy of colonies; applied to their adolescence it is
degrading, since it implies a mean and contented dependence. If
the greater British colonies are permanently content with their
present political status they are unworthy of the source from
which they sprang. It will not be so. The spirit of independence
has developed, not degenerated, in the wider breathing space of
new continents. A very little further growth, increasing the
complication and aggravating the anomaly of the existing
situation, will bring us to a stage where that spirit will no
longer endure the restraints now put upon it by practical
difficulties of political organization, and where those
difficulties must be swept away by the gathering force of
national instincts and necessities. About the direction of
change there may be a question; about the certainty of change
there can be none.
But the argument is equally strong when we reverse our attitude,
and place ourselves in the position of the taxpaying citizens of
the United Kingdom. There are probably few of these who are not
at times filled with a glow of pride and enthusiasm when they
think of the vast extent of those colonies, which, planted by
British energy, held through years of conflict by British
courage, and proudly inheriting British traditions, are rising
to pre-eminence in every quarter of the globe.
{19}
This pride and enthusiasm have very positive and practical
issues. The citizen of the remotest colony knows that should an
enemy wantonly attack his frontier--should port or city be
threatened by a hostile force--almost within twenty-four hours,
as soon as telegraph could summon or steam convey them, British
sailors or British soldiers would be pouring thither, as ready
to fight and die for that particular bit of soil as for the
shores of England itself. But the sentiment which makes this
possible is balanced and qualified by very different
considerations. The citizen of the United Kingdom has often been
compelled to regard the colonies as great dependencies which
increased his responsibilities and multiplied his difficulties
without returning to the mother-country, under their present
organization, strength in men or resources, or even in exclusive
commercial advantage. Every new colony or colonial interest was
to him something new to defend, and augmented the burden of
Empire.
Yearly the vast expense necessary to provide adequately for
national responsibilities increased, and added itself to the
weight of taxation incident to an advanced civilization and
complex social system. While forced to bear the chief burden of
the taxation required for national defence, the people of the
British Islands could see that the mass of the colonists
benefited by this protection already possessed, or were likely
before long to possess a higher average of wealth and comfort
than the mass of the people {20} who bestowed the benefit.
Looking forward little more than a generation he could foresee a
time when the colonists whose commerce was protected would equal
in number the whole home population which gave the protection,
when the volume of colonial commerce itself would surpass that
of the mother-land.
It requires little argument to prove that the anomaly of leaving
one part of a nation to bear a disproportionate share of the
burdens of the whole is as inconsistent with Anglo-Saxon ideas
of government as the exclusion of the colonies from a
proportionate voice in the conduct of national affairs.
An effective method of illustrating this anomalous condition of
the Empire and of British citizenship at the present time is to
consider the immediate change which takes place in the political
privileges and responsibilities of a man who shifts his
residence from the mother-country to Canada, Australia, or any
other great colony. He crosses the ocean, perhaps, to carry on
in another part of the Empire the business of the the bank, or
commercial house, or shipping firm with which he is connected
here. Such of his interests as require national protection
remain the same, and continue to enjoy security under the
British flag. He continues to take precisely the same interest
as before in the national welfare. But he loses at once the
right to influence national policy by his vote, and at the same
time he drops his old responsibilities of citizenship, since he
no longer pays the same proportion {21} of the taxes which make
the nation strong to protect him.
Take again a crucial case as applied to the working man. In
Australia one finds nearly 100,000,000 of sheep. The shepherding
and shearing of these sheep, the packing, carriage, and shipping
of their wool, give employment to a large section of the
industrial population. Nearly all this wool finds its market in
England, where the manufacture of a portion of it gives
employment to an immense population in centres such as the West
Riding of Yorkshire and parts of Scotland. The safety of this
wool in passing from the Australian centre of production to the
British centre of manufacture is essential to the prosperity of
the people in both. To this end Australian ports are made strong
at Australian expense and British ports at British expense. So
far all is fair and the distribution of the burden on industry
is equal. But between the two countries lie 12,000 miles of sea
to be guarded, and this is effectively done at enormous naval
and military expense, the burden of which, however, is almost
exclusively borne at the British end of the line. The proportion
paid by the Australian workman is comparatively insignificant.
Yet he is the one who earns the higher wages and feels the
pressure of taxation less.
I have heard a working man in a large public meeting in
Australia assert that the position viewed from this aspect was
unfair, and he added that he personally was far better able to
bear an equal share {22} of national burdens as a working man in
Australia than he had ever been as a working man in Britain. He
was certainly as competent to exercise the national franchise.
The illustration thus taken from a single colony and a single
department of industry has, of course, a wide application.
Whether viewed, then, from a purely British or a purely colonial
standpoint there are unanswerable reasons, and they are equally
unanswerable from either side, which point to an early
modification of the national system.
Especially is it to be noted, however, that the circumstances
which have developed this great problem have not arisen, like
many other political problems, from injustice or mismanagement
in the past, or from any causes tending to provoke mutual
recrimination. Through the simple processes of growth and
change, the conditions which satisfied the demands of national
life in the past have become insufficient to satisfy its
necessities for the future. Nothing could possibly be more
helpful for the solution of the question than this fact, that
men are able to approach it entirely free from party feuds and
local animosities.
Why, it may be asked, have not the inconsistency and the
temporary character of the existing national system been all
along obvious to every one? Why does the public attention
require to be directed to facts so manifest? Perhaps the best
answer is to be found in the wonderful rapidity of the changes
which have been going on, and the intense {23} absorption of
British people, both at home and abroad, in the actual processes
of national evolution, which left no time for studying their
indirect results.
Within the last century, and mainly within the last half
century, the United Kingdom has passed through the most
strenuous period of industrial development known in the history
of nations. The social system has been revolutionized by an
extraordinary increment of wealth, an immense increase of
population, and its concentration in towns, with all the
difficult problems which these changes involve. Political
thought has had enough to do to adjust the balance between
decreasing rural and increasing urban constituencies--to meet
the wants of a democracy advancing in prosperity and
intelligence, to maintain an equilibrium between new and
conflicting forces. Moral effort has been strained to the utmost
in dealing with education, sanitation, social reformation, and
kindred questions, a deepening sense of public responsibility in
such matters going hand in hand with an almost paralyzing
increase in the masses to be dealt with. Under such
circumstances it is scarcely to be wondered at that British
people within the United Kingdom have been too much absorbed in
what was directly before them to weigh carefully the results of
what was going on abroad; that even when most active in external
as well as internal affairs they seem to have conquered and
peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind.'
{24}
In the colonies the preoccupation of thought and energy has with
equal reason been as complete. It is scarce fifty years since
the Canadian provinces obtained local self-government. The last
half century has witnessed the growth of a most complete system
of municipal and provincial institutions, crowned by a great act
of constructive statesmanship in Confederation. The organization
of half a continent on material lines has kept pace with each
step in political construction. Railroads, canals, telegraphs,
postal facilities, steamboat communication, all the machinery of
modern civilization, have been widely applied to an immense
area.
In Australia movement has been even more rapid and engrossing.
Melbourne has changed in fifty years from a village of a
thousand inhabitants to a city of 500,000. Australian commerce,
in its infancy when the Queen came to the throne, now equals
that of the United Kingdom at the same date. New Zealand, then
the home of mere savages, has already a British population which
exports annually £10,000,000 worth of the products of civilized
labour. In South Africa half a continent is being organized
under conditions of extreme difficulty.
In the rush of progress so swift as this, the mass of men are
conscious chiefly of the work immediately before them. But as
this work grows under their hands, the vast external interests
are created, and the wide external connections grow up, which
compel attention to the larger problems which they involve.
{25}
The local politician, as provinces consolidate, is, by a process
of natural compulsion, changed into the statesman with a
national and international range of political vision.
It seems almost superfluous to point out that in striving for
closer consolidation British people would be following strictly
along the lines of the most striking national movements of
modern times. They would be merely keeping abreast of the spirit
of the age.
For the idea of national unity the people of the United States
twenty-five years ago made sacrifices of life and money without
a parallel in modern history. No one now doubts that the end
justified the enormous expenditure of national force. 'The Union
must be preserved' was the pregnant sentence into which Lincoln
condensed the national duty of the moment, and to maintain this
principle he was able to concentrate the national energy for a
supreme effort. The strong man who saved the great republic from
disruption takes his place, without a question, among the
benefactors of mankind.
Germany struggled through years of difficulty, conflict, and
swaying tides of national passion towards the ideal of a united
fatherland. The ideal has been realised; the men who made its
attainment possible have won, not merely the gratitude of their
countrymen, but the world's respect as well; even their acts of
despotism are forgiven and more than half forgotten in the
momentous significance of their one supreme {26} achievement.
Today it seems as if their work of consolidated strength was the
best guarantee of Europe's peace.
Cavour's statue stands in the squares of Italian cities--his
name lingers in Italian hearts. To Tuscan, Lombard, and
Neapolitan alike he is 'our great Cavour'--the man whose
courageous genius found a basis in facts for the conception of
Italian unity, whose patient and resolute diplomacy made
possible the satisfaction of the national aspiration.
Canada has placed first on her roll of greatness the statesman,
to whom she mainly owes the achievement of Federal unity. Thus
beyond a doubt the men who have graven their names most deeply
on the history of our time are those who have carried out in
many lands and under varying conditions the work of national
consolidation. American unity, German unity, Italian unity,
Austro-Hungarian unity--the expansion of Russia without loss of
unity--these are the accomplished facts of our time which we
have to face. More than this. We do not need the philosophical
historian to tell us, for the process is going on under our own
eyes, that a governing tendency of the age is towards the union
of many states into combinations of nearly equal
strength--sometimes by fusion, sometimes by federation,
sometimes by alliance. On the practical equipoise of two such
great groups the equilibrium of Europe at this moment depends.
Race adds its influence to the tendency.
Pan-Sclavism--Pan-Latinism--Pan-Teutonism {27} are more than
names. They are forces which play their part in moulding the
destinies of nations and governments. The aspect of the whole
world irresistibly suggests the thought that we are passing from
a nation epoch to a federation epoch. That British people should
fall in with this tendency is in the strict line of historical
continuity. 'From clans in the north,' it has been truly said,
'and from a heptarchy in the south, England and Scotland grew
into nations and thence into one nation.' In the great offshoots
of the race abroad the tendency is renewed, and each step
prepares the way for another and greater effort. To consolidate
the empire which Chatham founded is the one manifest opportunity
remaining in the British world for British statesmen to place
their names in our history beside those of the greatest of the
statesmen of the past.
For the mother-land an organized national unity means, not
degradation from her imperial position, but a frank acceptance
of the facts of national growth, and the greater dignity which
would come from acknowledged leadership of the free communities
which have grown up around her.
Prussia gained, instead of losing, in dignity, when many of the
higher functions of her historic parliament became merged in
those of the Reichstag of the German people, when she gave up
her individual place as a nation in Europe to assume the
leadership of the German Empire. So would it be with Great
Britain.
{28}
For the colonies national unity means independence: not
'virtual' independence, as their present ill-defined condition
is sometimes spoken of, but the manly and sufficient
independence which comes from asserted rights and assumed
responsibilities.
There are two kinds of independence. The first is that of the
son grown restless under tutelage, who throws himself off, more
or less recklessly, from the family connection, refuses family
advice or assistance, and takes the chances of life on his own
account. Given, on the one hand, overbearing and unsympathetic
parents anxious to retain their control till the last moment,
or, on the other, children filled with ignorant self-conceit and
consequent discontent, and independence of this first type is
the natural result. Sometimes it is justified, and succeeds;
sometimes it is born of blind stupidity and makes lamentable
shipwreck. But this is not the ideal or the only form of
independence. Given reason, due consideration, mutual regard for
rights on both sides, and the family tie becomes a partnership
which combines the advantages of all the liberty required for
full development with the unity of action and counsel which
assures strength. It produces a great Rothschild firm, each head
of which is free to work out his own views at his own centre of
the world's finance, but each in touch with the other for
counsel or action, each making use of the business machinery
established by all the rest, and thus securing incomparable
business advantages for all. So in a wider sphere it produces
the nation--the great {29} American Republic--the Swiss,
Germanic, or Canadian Confederation; each state or group of
states working independently within its own well-defined sphere
of influence; each taking its share as freely in the equally
well-defined but wider orbit of a large national life.
Our admiration is not given to the independence of the American
state, or the Canadian or Australian province when holding aloof
from union, where we feel that a spirit of petty provincialism
is at work. Nor can it be reasonably given to the independence
of the Greek state impatient of any control beyond that which is
found within a city's walls. At least, in this case, if we
admire, we pity still more, for the lack of the power to
preserve the liberty which the city had created. We reserve our
admiration for the reasoned and secured independence of a state
whose members have abandoned the petty side of their
individuality, and displayed that political self-restraint,
sagacity, and largeness of view which is implied in wide
organization for the attainment of great ends.
It is to this independence of partnership that a real national
unity would lift the colonies of the British Empire. Doubtless
it would at first be the partnership of junior members. More
than this could not reasonably be expected. But the position
need not be an irksome one.
One primary principle reason approves and experience recommends
for our guidance in attempting to outline the form of union
which will best be adapted {30} to the genius of the British
people. For all its communities there should be the utmost
freedom of individual action which is consistent with united
strength. Apparently this condition will be best fulfilled under
some form of Federal connection.
[1] Lord Dufferin dedicated a Canadian edition of his 'Letters
from High Latitudes' in the words 'To that true North.' I cannot
refrain from connecting with these lines one more association
which will, I feel sure, in Canadian hearts at least, add a
tender grace to the vigorous thought of the poet and the
delicate compliment of the politician. I am able to do so
through the accident of a conversation with the late Rev.
Drummond Rawnsley, of Lincolnshire, a connexion and intimate
friend of Lord Tennyson, whom I happened to meet some years
since at the house of a common friend, Professor Bonamy Price,
at Oxford. Introduced to him by our host as a Canadian, I was
informed by him of a fact which he felt sure would interest all
Canadians. The Poet Laureate, with whom he had lately been
staying, had told him that when the articles referred to had
appeared in the _Times_, Lady Franklin, who was then a guest in
his house, and who felt the most intense interest in the future
of Canada, had been filled with indignation at the wrong which
they did to English sentiment and to Canadian loyalty, and had
strongly urged upon him the duty and propriety of giving
utterance to some sufficient protest. Being in the fullest
sympathy with Lady Franklin's views, the poet acted upon this
suggestion and the lines were written. I do not think any
private confidence is violated in mentioning the facts told to
me on such unquestionable authority. It seems well that Canadian
people should know when reading these lines, that behind the
poet's brain was the woman's heart, and that a lady whose name
is held in highest honour wherever the English language is
spoken, and wherever heroism and devotion touch the human heart,
is thus connected by the subtle thread of sympathy and the
golden verse of our greatest poet with their own loved land.
{31}