decline of

laissez

The Liberalism, which predominated during the political (4.) The life of the sixties, was very far from declaring on the housetops he zenith period of that our Colonies must separate. There was, however, a very and general feeling that such separation was merely a question of time; that, when it occurred, no great harm would ensue, and aller that, meanwhile, all that could be done was to ensure that the principles. euthanasia of the Empire should be as mild and dignified as possible. The theories of laissez-aller never, however, commended themselves to the English people, and from 1870 onwards we note a tendency amongst public men to repudiate the logical conclusions of their own words and actions. Moreover, a new chief actor had been entering upon the scene; the democracy was taking its place beside the middle classes and the governing families in the working out of English history. What would be its attitude towards the Empire? In other words, What would be its Colonial policy?

of Greater

It must be remembered that those Colonies had expanded (5.) Period into great democratic communities, and in many ways ap- Britain. pealed more to the democracy than they could to the fastidious taste of the Whig oligarchy. Again, new facts had to be considered. The latter half of the nineteenth century has seen an immense recrudescence of militaryism amongst the Continental powers of Europe. Nearly fifty years after the great Exhibition, which was to open out an era of peace, Europe presents the amazing spectacle of an armed camp. Face to face with this unexpected phenomenon, England has either to yield her place among the nations and whatever the nature of the "economic man," prestige will always be dear to nations no less than to individuals or else adapt herself in new ways to the new circumstances. But a world-empire, sea-girt, and resting on the command of the sea, is a spectacle at least as imposing as the nations-in-arms of the Continent; and this seems the ideal which England at last is realising. Other causes have been also at work to act upon our Colonial policy. Our chief concern, said Cobden, with foreign nations is to trade with them, but the chief concern of foreign nations appears to be not to trade with us. By dint of protective duties upon

imports from abroad, and by bounties on home exports, the aim of every country appears to be to surround its trade with a ring fence. It may well be that such a policy is really suicidal, and that free trade has been none the less a benefit to England, because the sanguine hopes held out by its first prophets of its general acceptance have not been at all fulfilled; but it is natural that, in the state of things we see around us, men should look more and more to the Colonies as the producers of our raw materials, and the customers for our manufactures, and hanker after some kind of zollverein among the scattered portions of the Empire, however difficult it may be to enact such in express terms. Moreover, human nature remaining what it is, there is nothing which causes men to put so high a value on their own possessions as the observing that they are being coveted by their neighbours. The scramble for colonies among the Continental nations has had the good effect at least of determining the English not to be left behind in the race for empire. To these practical considerations others of a more theoretic nature have been added. A distinguished Cambridge Professor threw a powerful search light on the development of British empire, and brought home to thousands of readers, who had never before thought of it, the sense that, after all, our Colonies are only England beyond the seas-a greater England, but England all the same. A brilliant American writer and naval expert first clearly made manifest the connection of England's Colonial and Imperial greatness with the command of the sea, and carried home to the conviction of Englishmen the truth that, without that command of the sea, our scattered empire is only a source of weakness. The Press has also played a great part in the new movement. For example, consider the influence of the weekly article in the Times on the Colonies, and compare the spirit which animates it with the indifferent and half-contemptuous tone on colonial matters of the Times of thirty years ago. In this state of things, and when both political parties have, with a few exceptions, more notable for ability than weight,

·

nailed to the mast the flag of British naval and colonial supremacy, we have travelled far from the period of laissezaller. It is difficult to give a name to the new policy. The word "Imperial" has too military a suggestion. Perhaps the words "Greater Britain" best describe the new point of view. A world-empire, the separate parts of which are being more> and more closely linked by the discoveries of science, enjoying in each separate part absolute independence, connected, not by coercion or paper bulwarks, but by common origin and sympathies, by a common loyalty and patriotism, and by common efforts after common purposes, such, amidst much to alarm and to disturb, is the apparent outcome of history, the Colonial policy with which Great Britain will enter upon the untrodden paths of a new century.

It is necessary, before dealing with British Colonial policy, Definition to explain what is meant by a British Colony. The Colony, of British Colony. as we understand it, is, it must be remembered, a new thing in history. The Greek Colony was, as its name (åπowía)1 half implies, politically an independent community. It has been admirably described by Archbishop Whately.2 "An ancient Greek Colony was like what gardeners call a layer, a portion of the parent tree with stem, twigs and leaves embedded in fresh soil, till it had taken root and then severed." Its ties with the Mother country were merely those of religion and race. Such ties, however, counted for much with the Greeks of the best period. The reason of this kind of colonization is not far to seek. It lay in the inability of the Hellenic mind to conceive of a Greek state as anything except a city or polis. The passage in the "Politics," in which Aristotle enforces the necessity of its not being too large for a herald's voice to encompass, will be familiar to many. It would seem, however, as though, under the impulse of blood relationship, the independent Greek communities were very nearly forming powers resembling in many ways the British Empire of today. Unfortunately, the Athenian democracy grasped at a tyrannis, and the shock thus given to the conscience of 1 "from home." 2 Note to Bacon's Essay on Plantations."

3 Book VII. ch. iv.

4 Tupavvida exete тǹν áρxǹv, Thuc. III. ch. xxxvii.

Greece caused, as we may read in Thucydides, such moral and material disintegration as could only lead to the general doom of the Hellenic States as direct factors in political history.

The Roman Colonies were more complex in character, but, in their earliest and latest forms, they were methods of securing the peace of districts by settling in them old soldiers with certain rights to land. The nearest modern equivalent to a Roman colonia is afforded by Cromwell's military settlements in Ireland.1

In modern times the Spanish Colonies were, in fact, dependencies, conquered by the forces of the Crown, and where a limited number of Spaniards found a new home. The Dutch Colonies, on the other hand, were trade factories, established on lines of which the British East India Company's forts are the best known example. British Colonies differ from all these. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, in his Government of Dependencies, defines a colony as "a body of persons belonging to one country and political community, who, having abandoned that country and community, form a new and separate society, independent or dependent, in some district which is wholly or nearly uninhabited, or from which they expel the ancient inhabitants." If the aim of language be to make clear practical distinctions, the remark may be ventured that the above definition stands at once condemned. The Latin colonia, in all its phases, I think, connoted some kind of political dependence, and no advantage is gained by including the quite distinct connotation of the Greek ȧroikia. According to Lewis' definition, the United States are a British Colony and Natal is not. Moreover, at the present day, we should not speak of colonists as "abandoning" the Mother country. For practical purposes, a colony may be defined as a community, politically dependent in some shape or form, the majority, or the dominant portion, of whose members belong by birth or origin to the Mother country, such persons having no intention to return to the Mother 1 Military settlements upon the same lines were attempted in Cape Colony and New Zealand, but were not upon the whole attended with much success. 2 p. 168, 1891 edition, with introduction and notes by C. P. Lucas.

country, or to seek a permanent home elsewhere than in the Colony. This definition excludes the United States. According to common-sense notions, were Australia to separate, she would cease to be a British Colony. It excludes India and most tropical settlements, because, in such, there is nearly always among Englishmen the animus revertendi. It excludes, for the same reason, Gibraltar and Malta, and the purely military Colonies or dependencies. It includes Colonies like Natal, where there is a bonâ-fide permanently resident English community, whatever be the number of natives who surround them. It includes Cape Colony, where the original Dutch settlers and the English, who have emigrated thither during the last seventy years, are on the whole becoming fused into a common national type. It includes the West Indies, because, in spite of the climate, Englishmen have for generations found in them a permanent home. We might say that a Colony is a de- > pendency administered by the Colonial Office; but the reason why the affairs of Ceylon belong to a different department from those of India are historical and not logical. In the same way, English statutes, until the Interpretation Act of 1889, carefully guarded themselves against defining a colony, except for the purposes of the particular statute, and the most generic definition included even India, which is clearly inadmissible for present purposes. Under the Act of 1889,1 the expression 'colony' means any part of the Queen's dominions, exclusive of the British Isles and of British India. Looking at the question practically, if we remember that, side by side with the question of Colonial expansion, there is always the question of Imperial power, with which we are here only indirectly concerned, it will be enough if we fix our attention for the most part on the great self-governing Colonies, past and present, in America, Australia, and South Africa, and on the West Indies, although the importance of these last is not as great at the present day as it was in former times.

1 1 Tarring, Laws relating to the Colonies. Second edition, 1893.