The answer which appears to me sufficient to those whom claim that Britain's control of India interposes {252} an insuperable obstacle to a Federal system for the Empire is this:—
India is practically a crown colony, and as yet the United Kingdom has shown no inclination to govern it otherwise than as a crown colony. The same duty may be rightly accepted and duly fulfilled by British people as a whole under any system of common government. To accept it would create no new national burden or risk, would react no more upon the ordinary political development of the various states than it has upon that of the United Kingdom.
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CHAPTER XI.
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.
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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.'