XXX.—HOW SHOULD WE DEAL WITH THE COLONIES?
The foreign relations of England are necessarily complicated by her colonial concerns; and these deserve the most careful consideration, because at any moment they may arouse the hottest political dispute of the day. In considering the colonies we have to ask three questions: (1) How and why did we get them; (2) How and why do we keep them; and (3) Ought we to force them to stay?
At the history of the why and how we acquired our colonies, it is impossible here to do more than glance. By settlement as in the case of Australasia, by conquest as in that of Canada, and by treaty cession as in that of the Cape, have been obtained within the past three centuries practically all that we have. The wish for expansion has continually made itself felt, and the frequent result of war as well as of peaceful discovery has been to gratify it. And the consequence of both conquest and discovery has been the acquisition of a colonial empire vaster in extent and resources than the world has ever seen.
Having got our colonies, there are various reasons for retaining them. The imperial spirit, which is elated by expansion and would be deeply wounded by contraction, has been a prominent factor in causing England to take a leading position in the world’s affairs; and it is one which none interested in her prosperity will despise. Even if there were no material reasons for keeping our colonies, this sentiment would cause many Englishmen, and probably the majority, to regard with the deepest distrust any movement having a tendency to separate the colonies from the mother country.
But there are material reasons for binding the colonies to us which none will ignore. They form not only an outlet for our surplus labour and enterprise, but give us markets of high importance to our trade. Emigrants who go to Canada or Australia not merely remain attached by obvious considerations to the English connection, but continue to be our customers in a very much larger degree than if they went to the United States or any other foreign country. Those who study the statistics of our export trade will recognize that if we lost the custom of our colonies—and this we should be likely to do if we lost the colonies themselves—the consequences to our commerce would be very serious.
Thus there are reasons of the highest sentiment, as well as of commercial expediency, for retaining the possessions the hard fighting and determined enterprise of many generations of Englishmen have acquired; but the question which is needed to be answered in much more fulness than either of the others is that which may affect the politics of the near future: Ought we, if any of our self-governing colonies desire to secede, to force them to stay?
A distinct difference has been made in the form of this question between the self-governing colonies and the dependencies—a distinction arising from the very nature of things. There is a chasm between the consideration of letting Australia or letting India go, which is too wide to be bridged. Australia consists of various colonies, peopled by Englishmen or the descendants of Englishmen, who have the fullest means of constitutionally expressing their desires. India has a vast concourse of deeply-divided peoples, who have no bond of union, whether of race, religion, or common descent, and who are in no sense self-governed. In the argument about to be set forward, therefore, it is to be understood that only the colonies, and not the dependencies, are in consideration.