The latest British colonies to receive this livery of the empire were the Transvaal and the Orange River colonies. A chequered existence had been their fate since their founders had trekked north in 1837. The Orange River Free State had been annexed by Britain in 1848, had rebelled, and been granted independence again in 1854. The Transvaal had been annexed in 1877, had rebelled, and had been granted almost complete independence again after Majuba in 1881. The Orange Free State, relieved of the diamond fields which belonged to it in the neighbourhood of Kimberley in 1870, pursued the even tenor of its way; but the gold mines discovered in the Transvaal were not so near its borders, and gave rise to more prolonged dissensions. Crowds of cosmopolitan adventurers, as lawless as those who disturbed the peace in Victoria or California, flocked to the Rand. They were not of the stuff of which Dutch burghers were made, and the franchise was denied them by a government which did not hesitate to profit from their labours. The Jameson Raid, a hasty attempt to use their wrongs to overthrow President Kruger's government in 1895, "upset the apple-cart" of Cecil Rhodes, the prime minister of the Cape, who had added Rhodesia to the empire and was planning, with moderate Dutch support, to federate South Africa. Kruger hardened his heart against the Uitlanders, and armed himself to resist the arguments of the British government on their behalf. Both sides underestimated the determination and resources of the other. But Kruger was more ignorant, if not more obstinate, than Mr. Chamberlain; and his ultimatum of October 1899 precipitated a war which lasted two years and a half, and cost the two republics their independence. The Transvaal was given, and the Orange River Colony was promised, representative government by the Conservatives; but the Liberals, who came into power at the end of 1905, excused them this apprenticeship, and granted them full responsible government in 1906-1907.
British colonies have tried a series of useful experiments with the power thus allotted them of managing their own affairs, and have contributed more to the science of politics than all the arm-chair philosophers from Aristotle downwards; and an examination in their results would be a valuable test for aspiring politicians and civil servants. The Canadian provinces, with two exceptions, dispense with a second chamber; elsewhere in the empire, second chambers are universal, but nowhere outside the United Kingdom hereditary. Their members are either nominated by the prime minister for life, as in the Dominion of Canada, or for a term of years, which is fixed at seven in New Zealand; or they are popularly elected, sometimes on a different property qualification from the Lower House, sometimes for a different period, sometimes by a different constituency. In the Commonwealth of Australia they are chosen by each state voting as a whole, and this method, by which a big majority in one locality outweighs several small majorities in others, has sometimes resulted in making the Upper House more radical and socialistic than the Lower; the system of nomination occasionally has in Canada a result equally strange to English ideas, for the present Conservative majority in the House of Commons is confronted with a hostile Liberal majority in the Upper House, placed there by Sir Wilfrid Laurier during his long tenure of office. The most effective provision against deadlocks between the two Houses is one in the constitution of the Australian Commonwealth, by which, if they cannot agree, both are dissolved.
Other contrasts are more bewildering than instructive. In Canada the movement for women's suffrage has made little headway, and even less in South Africa; but at the Antipodes women share with men the privilege of adult suffrage in New Zealand, in the Commonwealth of Australia, and in every one of its component states; an advocate of the cause would perhaps explain the contrast by the presence of unprogressive French in Canada, and of unprogressive Dutch in South Africa. Certainly, the all- British dominions have been more advanced in their political experiments than those in which the flighty Anglo-Saxon has been tempered by more stolid elements; and the pendulum swings little more in French Canada than it does in Celtic Ireland. In New Zealand old age pensions were in force long before they were introduced into the mother-country; and compulsory arbitration in industrial disputes, payment of M.P.'s, and powers of local option and prohibition have been for years in operation. Both the Dominion and the Commonwealth levy taxes on land far exceeding those imposed by the British budget of 1909. Australia is, in addition, trying a socialistic labour ministry and compulsory military training. It has also tried the more serious experiment of developing a standard of comfort among its proletariate before peopling the country; and is consequently forced to exclude by legislation all sorts of cheap labour, which might develop its industries but would certainly lower its level of wages. It believes in high protection, but takes care by socialistic legislation that high wages shall more than counterbalance high prices; protection is to it merely the form of state socialism which primarily benefits the employer. It has also nationalized its railways and denationalized all churches and religious instruction in public schools. There is, indeed, no state church in the empire outside Great Britain. But the most significant, perhaps, of Antipodean notions is the doctrine, inculcated in the Queensland elementary schools, of the sanctity of state property.
Finally, the colonies have made momentous experiments in federation. New Zealand's was the earliest and the briefest; after a few years' experience of provincial governments between 1852 and 1870, it reduced its provincial parliaments to the level of county councils, and adopted a unitary constitution. In Canada, on the other hand, the union of the Upper and Lower Provinces proved unworkable owing to racial differences; and in 1867 the federation called the Dominion of Canada was formed by agreement between Upper and Lower Canada (henceforth called Ontario and Quebec), New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Prince Edward Island and British Columbia joined soon afterwards; and fresh provinces have since been created out of the Hudson Bay and North-west Territories; Newfoundland alone has stood aloof. Considerable powers are allotted to the provinces, including education; but the distinguishing feature of this federation is that all powers not definitely assigned by the Dominion Act to the provinces belong to the Dominion. This is in sharp contrast to the United States, where each individual state is the sovereign body, and the Federal government only possesses such powers as the states have delegated to it by the constitution.
In this respect the Australian federation called the Commonwealth, which was formed in 1900, resembles the United States rather than Canada. The circumstance that each Australian colony grew up round a seaport, having little or no overland connexion with other Australian colonies, kept them long apart; and the commercial interests centred in these ports are still centrifugal rather than centripetal in sentiment. Hence powers, not specifically assigned to the Federal government, remain in the hands of the individual states; the Labour party, however, inclines towards a centralizing policy, and the general trend seems to be in that direction. It will probably be strengthened by the construction of transcontinental railways and by a further growth of the nationalist feeling of Australia, which is already marked.
The Union of South Africa, formed in 1909, soon after the Boer colonies had received self-government, went almost as far towards unification as New Zealand, and became a unitary state rather than a federation. The greater expense of maintaining several local parliaments as well as a central legislature, and the difficulty of apportioning their powers, determined South African statesmen to sweep away the old legislatures altogether, and to establish a united parliament which meets at Cape Town, a single executive which has its offices at Pretoria, and a judicature which is located at Bloemfontein. Thus almost every variety of Union and Home Rule exists within the empire, and arguments from analogy are provided for both the British political parties.
Two extremes have been, and must be, avoided. History has falsified the impression prevalent in the middle of the nineteenth century that the colonies would sooner or later follow the example of the United States, and sever their connexion with the mother-country. It has no less clearly demonstrated the impossibility of maintaining a centralized government of the empire in Downing Street. The union or federation of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa has strengthened the claims of each of those imperial realms to be considered a nation, with full rights and powers of self-government; and it remains to be seen whether the federating process can be carried to a higher level, and imperial sentiment crystallized in Imperial Federation. Imperial Conferences have become regular, but we may not call them councils; no majority in them has power to bind a minority, and no conference can bind the mother-country or a single dominion of the crown. As an educational body the Imperial Conference is excellent; but no one would venture to give powers of taxation or of making war and peace to a conclave in which Great Britain, with its forty-four millions of people and the navy and army it supports, has no more votes than Newfoundland, with its quarter of a million of inhabitants and immunity from imperial burdens.
Education is, however, at the root of all political systems. Where the mass of the people know nothing of politics, a despotism is essential; where only the few are politically educated, there needs must be an aristocracy. Great Britain lost its American colonies largely through ignorance; and no imperial organization could arise among a group of states ignorant of each other's needs, resources, and aspirations. The Imperial Conference is not to be judged by its meagre tangible results; if it has led British politicians to appreciate the varying character and depth of national feeling in the Dominions, and politicians oversea to appreciate the delicacies of the European diplomatic situation, the dependence of every part of the empire upon sea-power, and the complexities of an Imperial government which has also to consider the interests of hundreds of millions of subjects in India, in tropical Africa, in the West Indies, and in the Pacific, the Conference will have helped to foster the intellectual conditions which must underlie any attempt at an imperial superstructure.
For the halcyon days of peace, prosperity, and progress can hardly be assumed as yet, and not even the most distant and self-contained Dominions can afford to ignore the menace of blood and iron. No power, indeed, is likely to find the thousand millions or so which it would cost to conquer and hold Canada, Australia, or South Africa; but a lucky raid on their commerce or some undefended port might cost many millions by way of ransom. A slackening birth-rate is, moreover, a reminder that empires in the past, like that of Rome, have civilized themselves out of existence in the competition with races which bred with primitive vigour, and had no costly standards of comfort. There are such races to-day; the slumbering East has wakened, and the tide which flowed for four centuries from West to East is on the turn. The victory of Japan over Russia was an event beside which the great Boer War sinks into insignificance. Asiatics, relieved by the Pax Britannica from mutual destruction, are eating the whites out of the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and threatening South Africa, Australia, and the western shores of America. No armaments and no treaties of arbitration can ward off their economic competition; and it is not certain that their myriads, armed with Western morality and methods of warfare, will be always content to refrain from turning against Europe the means of expansion which Europe has used with so much success against them. The British Empire will need all the wisdom it can command, if it is to hold its own in the parliament of reason or the arbitrament of war.