Imperial Federation: The Problem of National Unity

by George R. Parkin

Westward across the Atlantic, Halifax, Bermuda, St. Lucia, and Jamaica furnish adequate naval bases for the protection of the vast British commerce which traverses this ocean. The harbours of the Gulf and River St. Lawrence and Newfoundland, and of several West India islands, supplement these strongly fortified positions.

On the Pacific Coast Esquimalt and Vancouver {67} furnish stations from which may be protected the new route of trade and travel opened to the far East, and the projected route to Australasia.

Finally, the Falkland Islands, to which it has now been decided to give adequate fortifications, furnish a coaling place for ships in times of urgent necessity, and a point from which trade can be defended in the long voyage between Britain and Australia by the Cape Horn route. They also serve as a base of protection for our large trade with the Western coast of South America.

It will be seen that the map illustrates another group of facts which we must consider before we can fully grasp the relation of this geographical distribution of the Empire to naval power in an age of steam. On the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of Canada, in New Zealand, Tasmania, New South Wales, and Queensland, in India, Borneo, and South Africa, coal is noted as among the products of these countries, and in them all, there are, in fact, great coal deposits forming in each corner of the globe, a wonderful complement to those of the mother-land.

Here, then, is the outline of a maritime position such as no people ever enjoyed before. North and South, East and West, we bold the great quadrilateral of oceanic power. It is not an undue strength of position, for it has to match the greatest commercial expansion that history has known. The security of each part of the system seems essential to the security {68} of the whole, and therefore should be guaranteed by the united strength of all. And it is clear that under modern steaming conditions it is this very diffusion of the Empire over every part of the world which constitutes its greatest advantage for giving safety to a world-wide commerce.

The conditions, however, under which this maritime position is maintained, and the vast and growing commerce of the Empire now enjoys security present some anomalies which cannot possibly have in them conditions of permanency.

Let me summarize the facts as placed before the House of Commons (March 2nd, 1891), by Sir John Colomb. The annual value of the sea-borne commerce of the United Kingdom is, roughly speaking, about £740,000,000; of the colonies and dependencies £460,000,000. As the latter has increased ninefold and the former but fivefold in a little more than fifty years, it is clear that at no very distant time the sea-borne commerce of the outlying empire will become equal to and gradually surpass in value that of the United Kingdom.

The portion of the whole colonial trade which consists of interchange with the United Kingdom, and in the safety of which presumably the United Kingdom has a close and direct interest, is £187,000,000. This leaves £273,000,000 of independent trade carried on with foreign countries, or between the colonies and dependencies themselves. Compared with the sea-borne trade of great foreign powers which support {69} large war navies, Sir John Colomb finds this independent trade to be 'about four times as much as the whole sea-borne trade of all Russia; about equal to that of Germany; about three-quarters that of France; two and a-half times that of Italy; and nearly half that of the United States.' The whole of this vast and rapidly increasing independent trade has precisely the same guarantee of protection from the naval power of the Empire as the trade of the United Kingdom itself. Yet, while the net expenditure (1890) incurred by the United Kingdom in the Naval Estimates is £14,215,100, the whole contribution of the colonies and dependencies for the same purpose only amounts to £381,546, of which India alone provides £254,776. In other words, out of every pound spent for the protection of the nation's commerce at sea, the United Kingdom contributes 19s. 53/4d., the outlying empire 6 1/4d. This comparison is made even more striking when combined with the statement that the united revenues of the colonies and dependencies amount to £105,000,000, against the £89,000,000 which represent the revenue of the United Kingdom. The vast capital sum invested in ships, armament, and naval establishments, believed to amount to more than £80,000,000, is paid wholly by the taxpayers of the United Kingdom.

Besides the protection to their commerce given by the Navy, colonists enjoy as fully as British people themselves the use and advantage of the consular and diplomatic services of the Empire. The colonial merchant, {70} sailor, or shipmaster finds in every chief port of the world a consul to whom he can apply for protection—an officer whose services are paid for by the British taxpayer alone. The Imperial treasury maintains unaided the costly diplomatic staff which carries on the long and delicate negotiations in which the colonies are often more directly concerned than the mother-land itself. If the results of diplomacy sometimes fail to satisfy colonial expectations, the experience is not new among nations, nor likely to be avoided by the agencies which a colony could independently set in motion. When the execution of treaties involves loss to the individual colonist, the example of Newfoundland and the Behring Sea indicates that it is to the Imperial treasury that he chiefly looks for compensation.

This want of proportion in the distribution of national burdens is so striking that one is impelled to ask if it may not have at least some partial or temporary justification. There is one consideration of much weight. The settlers in the outlying sections of the Empire have been compelled in their short history to face tasks of great difficulty. They have had upon their hands the organization of vast continental areas, the clearing of forests, the construction of highways and railroads, the extension of the post and telegraph over immense distances, the speedy application of the machinery of civilization to new lands. Were it quite certain that all this would become a permanent addition to the strength and resources of the nation, it {71} might well be an object of national policy to relieve them from other burdens, however fair in themselves. There would, on the other hand, be no justification for this if they are in the end to become independent powers or additions to the strength of another state.