AN AMERICAN VIEW.
FOR the sake of studying the various angles from which the idea
of federating the Empire is criticized it seems worth while to
refer briefly to some of the views expressed in a paper, lately
contributed to a leading magazine[1], on the subject, by Mr.
Andrew Carnegie, under the title of 'An American View' of
Imperial Federation. Among thinking native Americans I have
found, as a rule, a genuine sympathy with the advocates of unity
for British people, a sympathy perfectly natural in a nation
which has suffered and sacrificed so much as the people of the
United States have for a similar object. Besides, their
familiarity not only with the idea of large political
organization, but with its actual working out has taken away
from them that fear of its difficulties which seems to haunt
many weak-kneed Englishmen who conceive that human political
capacity had achieved its utmost when it evolved the existing
Imperial system. One of the distinguished thinkers of the United
States, after a tour made around the world a few years ago,
expressed {254} to me, with characteristic American energy and
emphasis, the opinion he brought home with him upon the subject
of British consolidation. 'The citizen of the British Empire,'
said he, 'who is not an enthusiast on the question of Imperial
Federation, is a Philistine of the very first magnitude.'
Working out on separate and yet parallel lines the great
problems of liberty and of civil and religious progress, the
United States and the British Empire have the strongest reasons
for sympathizing with each other's efforts to consolidate and
perfect the national machinery by which their aims are to be
accomplished. English people now understand and respect the
motives which actuated the resolute and successful struggle of
the people of the United States against disruption. That
Americans should understand the necessity which exists for
maintaining the integrity of the Empire and the principles on
which it is sought to maintain it, is most desirable. They are
not likely to learn them from Mr. Carnegie.
Curiously enough, he begins his argument by forgetting that
there is a British Empire. As I have pointed out elsewhere
(though without regarding the views as essential to Federation),
there are those who consider that national consolidation would
be hastened on through an endeavour by tariff agencies to make
the Empire self-sufficing in the matter of food, just as the
United States by the McKinley tariff, are endeavouring to make
themselves self-sufficing in the matter of manufactures.
{255}
Mr. Carnegie justifies protection in the United States because
it ultimately cheapens production, and then says: 'Now because
Britain has not the requisite territory to increase greatly her
food supply, any tax imposed upon food could not be temporary
but must be permanent. The doctrine of Mill does not therefore
apply, for protection, to be wise, must always be in the nature
of only a temporary shielding of new plants until they take
root. It will surprise many if Britain ever imposes a permanent
tax upon the food of her 38,000,000 of people, with no possible
hope of ever increasing the supply, and thereby reducing the
cost, and thus ultimately rendering the tax unnecessary. A tax
for a short period, that fosters and increases production, and a
tax for all time which cannot increase production, are different
things.'
Mr. Carnegie evidently forgets that the Empire covers one fifth
of the world, that it produces every article of food and raw
material of manufacture, that under the compulsion of any great
national necessity it could in five years make itself
independent of outside supplies, with the possible exception of
raw cotton, and that by the natural processes of growth and
change, without any protection, it is likely in the near future,
partly on account of the inability of the United States to
furnish what they have hitherto furnished, to be drawing its
supplies of food chiefly from its own territories. It is not my
business to suggest, much less argue for a system of protection
{256} for the Empire, but if it is to be discussed, let us at
least take into account the elementary facts which Mr. Carnegie
omits. The climax of absurdity seems well-nigh reached when Mr.
Carnegie, fresh from the full operation of the McKinley Tariff
and its justification, roundly accuses the Empire Trade League
of making 'efforts to array one part of the race against the
other part' because it has suggested a very slight differential
tariff within the Empire. Life in America is not generally
supposed to destroy a sense of the ridiculous.
Mr. Carnegie's criticism of another class of Federationists is
that they have 'no business' in their programme, 'no
considerations of trade,' that 'sentiment reigns supreme.' It is
evident that he has not a primary conception of the main drift
of federation policy. He is like many of his fellow-citizens in
America, out of whom life on a broad continent appears to have
driven the maritime instinct. Because external commerce or the
carrying trade means little to the United States, or because his
own country is so remarkably self-contained, he has no standard
by which to measure the profound and practical significance
which maritime position has for countries like Great Britain or
Australia. In 1890 of the 3389 vessels which passed through the
Suez Canal 2522 were British and three American. In the same
year, out of the whole volume of American external trade itself,
only 12.29 per cent., or about one-eighth was carried in
American bottoms, of the remaining seven-eighths by far the
larger part crossed the seas under the {257} British flag.
Again, in 1890 the shipping cleared in England amounted in all
to 3,316,442 tons, but of this only 38,192 tons were under the
United States flag, although the trade between the two countries
is one of vast proportions. These figures will serve to
illustrate how difficult it must be for anyone looking at our
national questions from an American point of view to understand
the fundamental interests of British people, and perhaps explain
the airy cheerfulness with which Mr. Carnegie suggests various
processes of political evolution which involve the
disintegration of the Empire. But Mr. Carnegie has other
difficulties than those which arise from studying a question
from an unfavourable angle. The intense occupations of business
in America may well be his excuse for not keeping in touch with
the movement of British politics; they can scarcely excuse him
for discussing English affairs as if he were in a position to
understand them. 'Britain,' he says, 'can choose whether
Australia, Canada, and her other colonies, as they grow to
maturity, can set up for themselves, with every feeling of
filial devotion towards her, or whether every child born in
these lands is to be born to regard Britain as the cruel
oppressor of his country. There is no other alternative, and I
beseech our friends of the Imperial Federation (League) to pause
ere they involve their country and her children in the
disappointment and humiliation which must come, if a serious
effort is made to check the development and independent
existence of the colonies, for independence {258} they must and
will seek, and obtain, even by force, if necessary.' One
hesitates whether to lay stress upon the ignorance or the folly
of sentences like these. I use the words advisedly. Ignorance,
because apparently Mr. Carnegie does not know that almost every
responsible British statesman of the past half century and of
the present day, when dealing with this question, has said that
when the great colonies wish to go Great Britain will raise no
objection; that this view has been re-echoed unanimously by the
press and by public opinion; and that no advocate of Imperial
Federation, national unity, or whatever other name we apply to
British consolidation, has ever hinted at the union of the
self-governing portions of the Empire as anything else than a
pact entered into voluntarily by communities free to choose or
refuse as they please, as free as were the States of the
American Union or the provinces of the Dominion to adopt their
present system. Britain has not waited, and Imperial
Federationists have not waited, for Mr. Carnegie's supplications
to decide this great and fundamental issue of national policy.
The advocates of national unity are the foremost to proclaim it.
Folly, for it is folly when Mr. Carnegie, in the face of facts
like these, which nobody can question, rounds his periods with
hints at cruel oppression, on the one side, and independence won
by force, on the other, when discussing the relations of England
and her colonies. It is on his own continent that he finds the
example of states kept within a national union by force.
{259}
If Mr. Carnegie understands little about Britain's relation to
her colonies and to the world, he understands much less about
the opinions of colonists. None the less he speaks of them with
the most complete assurance of knowledge. A single illustration
will give the measure of his ignorance. Quoting certain views in
opposition to British connection expressed by Mr. Mercier, the
late leader of the extreme national party in the French province
of Quebec, he gravely assures his readers that Mr. Mercier
reflects the sentiments of ninety-nine out of every hundred
native-born Canadians and Australians. Absurdity could scarcely
go further.
Mr. Carnegie poses as a political philosopher and gives English
statesmen the advantage of his sage advice on national
questions. We look for the grounds of this superior wisdom and
we read as follows: 'What lesson has the past to teach us upon
this point? Spain had great colonies upon the American
continent: where are these now? Seventeen republics occupy
Central and South America. Five of these have prepared plans for
federating. Portugal had a magnificent empire, which is now with
the Brazilian Republic. Britain had a colony. It has passed from
its mother's apron-strings and set up for itself, and now the
majority of all our race are gathered under its Republican
flag[2]. What is there in the position of {260} Britain's
relations to Australia and Canada that justifies the belief that
any different result is possible with them? I know of none.' And
knowing none, Mr. Carnegie, by his own confession, writes in
utter ignorance of the main facts of the question which he
discusses. Spain and Portugal governed their colonies from the
home centre, and as tributaries. Britain allows her colonies to
govern themselves, and to dispose of their own money as they
please; Spain and Portugal (and England in 1776) wished to
retain their colonies against their will; Britain now leaves the
question of continued connection a matter which colonists are to
decide for themselves.
Very interesting indeed is Mr. Carnegie's sudden change of front
when he comes to look at federation as making for the
aggrandisement or the good of {261} the United States rather
than of the British Empire. He has just been proving the
absurdity, the impossibility, nay, the criminality, of trying to
knit together in some sufficient federal union the mother-land
and her great colonies. He proves to his own satisfaction that
the colonies never will be and never ought to be satisfied with
the position they will have in such a union. Separate
governments and separate governments alone will satisfy their
yearnings for complete independence.
He passes by without note the idea which inspires the
Federationist, who believes that such a union will make
enormously for the world's peace, not only by preventing the
formation of many distinct and possibly hostile states, but also
by enabling British people to give security to industry over an
area of the world greater than was ever before under a single
flag--at least three times as great as that of the United
States, to say nothing of the vast extent of ocean which the
Empire can control.
With his ignoring of this leading idea of those who wish for
British unity, and his ridicule of federation for the Empire, a
feature of the alternative which he proposes is in odd contrast.
He suggests that Canada should be encouraged by England not
merely to give up her present allegiance, but to join the United
States, and this is the argument with which he supports his
suggestion: 'With the appalling condition of Europe before us,
it would be criminal for a few millions of people to create a
separate government {262} and not to become part of a great mass
of their own race which joins them, especially since the federal
system gives each part the control of all its internal affairs,
and has proved that the freest government of the parts produces
the strongest government of the whole.' Why not, one asks, for
the British people as well as for those of the United States?
Why may not full control of internal affairs and the freest
government of the various parts of the British Empire go hand in
hand with a strong government for the whole? Why may we not
consider the united and sympathetic effort of the different
divisions of the Empire to so consolidate their strength as to
maintain peace over one fifth of the world directly--indirectly
over a still greater proportion--a nobler ideal than that for
which Mr. Carnegie thinks the Empire should give up Canada--i.e.
the peace of America? Nor need the larger interfere with the
smaller aspiration. Incidentally Mr. Carnegie himself fully
admits this. After having used the possibility of conflict
between Great Britain and the United States as his chief or only
argument for the transfer of Canada's nationality, he goes on to
say: 'Even today every Federationist has the satisfaction of
knowing that the idea of war between the two great branches is
scouted on both sides of the Atlantic. Henceforth, war between
members of our race may be said to be already banished, for
English-speaking men will never again be called upon to destroy
each other. During the recent difference ... not a whisper was
heard on either {263} side of any possible appeal to force as a
mode of settlement. Both parties in America and each successive
government are pledged to offer peaceful arbitration for the
adjustment of all international difficulties--a position which
it is to be hoped will soon be reached by Britain, at least in
regard to all differences with members of the same race.'
The Geneva arbitration, the Halifax arbitration, the San Juan
Settlement, the offer of arbitration in the Behring Sea affairs,
so long urged upon Mr. Blaine by Lord Salisbury before it was
accepted, the arbitration arranged with France in the affairs of
Newfoundland, all seem to indicate that Britain is quite as
advanced as the United States in these views of peaceful
settlement. With this qualification of his way of stating the
case we may accept Mr. Carnegie's hopeful outlook, which takes
away all the point of his previous contention. There is,
however, a point worthy of his and our consideration.
I once heard Lord Rosebery express the opinion that equality of
power was one of the chief guarantees of peace between great
states. It adds the very powerful motive of self-interest to
those other influences which incline a nation to arbitration or
other fair and reasonable methods of settling international
difficulties. 'If,' said he, 'it should ever happen that England
became towards the United States like the old grandmother in the
corner, her teeth dropping out one by one, as her colonies leave
her, and she {264} were patronised or despised by her grown up
offspring, this relation would not be one tending to promote
friendly feeling. Far better for mutual respect, consideration,
and closer friendship that each should follow out its own
development on its own broad lines.' Whether a British Empire
going through a process of disintegration, or one steadily
consolidating its strength would be more likely to obtain equity
and fair play from American politicians (who must so often be
distinguished from the American people) I may safely leave even
Mr. Carnegie, who knows them, to decide.
Nor is there anything in the position of the United States on
the continent which would justify Americans in demanding from
the Empire the sacrifice of her maritime position implied in the
transfer of Canada to a new nationality. Ports on the Atlantic
and Pacific as many as they need the United States already have.
Trade in Canadian products they can obtain on terms as fair as
they will themselves agree to. A less aggressive neighbour they
could scarcely expect to have. Two countries on the same
continent working out parallel political problems by different
agencies may be mutually helpful with varying experiment and
example. Contrast and mutual reaction stimulate progress for
more than vast monotony of system.
Mr. Carnegie endorses Mr. Goldwin Smith's opinion that Britain's
'position upon the American continent is the barrier to
sympathetic union with her great {265} child, the Republic.' As
an American he should be ashamed to admit the accuracy of such
an opinion. Britain's right to her place on the American
continent is as much above question as is that of the United
States. The man or people to whom a neighbour's enjoyment of an
admitted right causes irritation, has lost the finer sense of
morality. The nation which yielded an undoubted right under the
pressure of such a base irritation would do a harm to
international morals. British Federationists have more faith in
the nobler qualities of the American people than has Mr.
Carnegie. They earnestly hope for a union of effort in behalf of
the higher interests of humanity between the great Republic and
the Empire from which she sprang, but they know that that union
can only come from mutual respect for each other's rights, and
can never be brought about if the aggrandisement of the one must
be purchased by the disintegration of the other.
One more passage must be quoted to illustrate the range of Mr.
Carnegie's vision when he leaves the domain of American politics
to discuss the affairs of Great Britain. He says: 'Her
(Britain's) colonies weaken her powers in war and confer no
advantage upon her in peace.'
I must let another American, whose mind has not been too much
influenced by devotion to trade on a highly protected continent,
a man who has had occasion to study seriously the larger
problems of national life, make answer.
{266}
'England,' says Lieutenant Mahan[3], 'by her immense colonial
Empire has sacrificed much of this advantage of concentration of
force around her own shores; but the sacrifice was wisely made,
for the gain was greater than the loss, as the event proved.
With the growth of her colonial system her war fleets also grew,
but her merchant shipping and wealth grew yet faster.'
And again;--
'Undoubtedly under this second head of warlike preparation must
come the maintenance of suitable naval stations, in those
distant parts of the world to which the armed shipping must
follow the peaceful vessels of commerce. The protection of such
stations must depend either upon direct military force, as do
Gibraltar and Malta, or upon a surrounding friendly population,
such as the American colonists once were to England, and, it may
be presumed the Australian colonists now are. Such friendly
surroundings and backing, joined to a reasonable military
provision, are the best of defences, and when combined with
decided preponderance at sea, make a scattered and extensive
empire like that of England, secure; for while it is true that
an unexpected attack may cause disaster in some one quarter, the
actual superiority of naval power prevents such disaster from
being general or irremediable. History has sufficiently proved
this. England's naval bases have been in all parts of the world,
and her fleets have at once protected them, {267} kept open the
communications between them, and relied upon them for shelter.
'Colonies attached to the mother-country afford, therefore, the
surest means of supporting abroad the sea power of a country. In
peace, the influence of the government should be felt in
promoting by all means a warmth of attachment and a unity of
interest which will make the welfare of one the welfare of all,
and the quarrel of one the quarrel of all; and in war, or rather
for war, by inducing such measures of organization and defence
as shall be felt by all to be a fair distribution of a burden of
which each reaps the benefit.'
After such a statement of the bases on which sea power rests it
is with natural regret that Lieutenant Mahan adds: 'Such
colonies the United States has not and is not likely to have.
... Having therefore no foreign establishments, either colonial
or military, the ships of war of the United States, in war, will
be like land birds, unable to fly far from their own shores. To
provide resting-places for them, where they can coal and repair,
would be one of the first duties of a government proposing to
itself the development of the power of the nation at sea.'
British people, either at home or in the colonies, may safely be
left to decide whether they can afford that their ships should
be in war like land birds, unable to fly far from their own
shores.'
It must not, however, be supposed that Mr. Carnegie really
represents the views of the better minds of his {268} own
country on the question of British Unity. In an article
contributed to a leading American Magazine three years ago I had
occasion to outline for American readers the chief features of
the Federation problem. The editorial comment upon this paper
seems worthy of reproduction as an expression of genuine
American opinion on the subject, and may be commended to Mr.
Carnegie's consideration. The writer says: 'What could be more
natural than the "Federation" scheme for British reconstruction,
which has been before the British public for years, and is now
renewed in the article just mentioned? It offers to Great
Britain the maintenance of every interest, legal, economic,
political and moral, which has grown up in the past, and has
shown itself worthy of conservation. It maintains all the ties
which have held the different parts of the Empire together. It
even strengthens them prodigiously by transforming the weak ties
of colonialism into a true national life: so that the foreigner
shall look upon Canada or Jamaica, not as temporary hangers-on
of a distant island, but as component and fully recognized
members of a magnificent ocean empire. It distributes the burden
of imperial taxation over the whole empire, so that the
Australian may look upon the Imperial iron-clad which comes into
his harbour as possibly the product of his own state's taxation,
while Canadian regiments shall take their tour of duty in
English or Irish cities, or at the Cape. It lessens the dangers
of a new break-up of the Empire through Colonial discontent:
{269} the Canada or New South Wales of the "federation" could
submit without a second thought to the abandonment of claims "by
its own government," while there is now always something of a
sting in such an abandonment by a home government on whose
decision the colony has exercised no direct influence. It leaves
to every square foot of the Empire that alternative of
self-government in the present, or of the hope of
self-government in the future which is afforded by our State and
Territorial systems. Canada would be at once one of the
self-governing States of the Empire: but the territories of
India would have under the Federation such prospects of complete
state-hood, when they should deserve it, as they could never
have under a Russian Dominion or protectorate. ...
'The question now is whether the inevitable development of
English democracy in new directions, more particularly in that
of a federated empire, shall happily anticipate any conjunction
of circumstances which might otherwise force a second break-up
of the Empire. It is really, then, a race against time by the
English democracy.'
The closing reference to Canada may be commended to the
consideration of Mr. Goldwin Smith, as well as Mr. Carnegie,
since it reflects a spirit worthy of a great people.
'If, as one result, our neighbours to the north of us should
become an integral part of a real empire, such a natural and
simple solution will find no congratulations {270} more prompt
and cordial than those of the American people, even though they
are not based on any of those selfish advantages which
annexation professes to offer to the United States[4].'
[1] _Nineteenth Century_, _Sept._ 1891.
[2] This statement is a characteristic instance of Mr.
Carnegie's inaccuracy. Let him subtract from the whole
population of the United States the seven or eight millions of
negroes in the Southern States, the six or seven millions of
Italians, Spaniards, Poles, Hungarians, Austrians, Russians,
Germans and Scandinavians, who entered the country between 1847
and the present time, the people who with their descendants
threaten, according to American writers, to overwhelm the native
element of the population; let him place beside these figures
the further facts stated on American authority that the
emigration from Great Britain to the United States has been in
the same period only about 1,500,000, and from Ireland
2,500,000; and he may find reason to acknowledge that the mass
of 'our race' is still in the British Islands and in the great
colonies which yet retain their distinctive Anglo-Saxon
character. Mr. Carnegie makes the triumphant calculation that
the child is born who will see more than 400,000,000 people
under the sway of the United States. He adds the odd comment:
'No possible increase of the race can be looked for in all the
world comparable to this.' So far from such a growth indicating
the increase of our race, it could only mean its practical
obliteration in the great Republic. The increase of the native
American population is notoriously very slow--only a largely
increased influx of alien races could make Mr. Carnegie's
calculations a reality.
[3] _Influence of Sea Power_, p. 29.
[4] _Century Magazine_, Jan. 1889.
{271}