'I, at least,' says Mr. Forbes, in concluding his little forecast, 'have the implicit conviction that if England should ever be engaged in a severe struggle with a Power of strength and means, in what condition soever that struggle might leave her, one of its outcomes would be to detach from her the Australian colonies' (Nineteenth Century, for October 1883). In other words, one of the most certain results of pursuing the spirited foreign policy in Europe, which is so dear to the Imperialist or Bombastic school, would be to bring about that disintegration of the Empire which the same school regard as the crown of national disaster.
It would be a happy day for the Peace Society that should give the colonies a veto on imperial war. It is true that during the Indian Mutiny New South Wales offered to send away the battery for which it paid, but when the despatch actually took place it was furious. Australia has militiamen, but who supposes that they can be spared in any numbers worth considering for long campaigns, and this further loss and dislocation added to those which have been enumerated by Mr. Forbes? Supposing, for the sake of argument, that Australia were represented in the body that decided on war, though we may notice that war is often entered upon even in our own virtuous days without preliminary consent from Parliament, nobody believes that the presence of Australian representatives in the imperial assembly that voted the funds would reconcile their constituents at the other side of the globe to paying money for a war, say, for the defence of Afghanistan against Russia, or for the defence of Belgian neutrality. The Australian, having as much as he can do to carry on from hand to mouth, would speedily repent himself of that close and filial union with the mother country, which he is now supposed so ardently to desire, when he found his personal resources crippled for the sake of European guarantees or Indian frontiers. We had a rather interesting test only the other day of the cheerful open-handedness that English statesmen expect to find in colonial contributions for imperial purposes. We sent an expedition to Egypt, having among its objects the security of the Suez Canal. The Canal is part of the highway to India, so (shabbily enough, as some think) we compelled India to pay a quota towards the cost of the expedition. But to nobody is the Canal more useful than to our countrymen in Australia. It has extended the market for their exports and given fresh scope for their trade. Yet from them nobody dreams of asking a farthing. Nor do the pictures drawn by Mr. Forbes and others encourage the hope that any Ministry in any one of the seven Australian Governments is likely to propose self-denying ordinances that take the shape of taxes for imperial objects. 'He is a hard-headed man, the Australian,' says Mr. Forbes, 'and has a keen regard for his own interest, with which in the details of his business life, his unquestionable attachment to his not over-affectionate mother, is not permitted materially to interfere. Where his pocket is concerned he displays for her no special favouritism. For her, in no commercial sense, is there any "most favoured nation" clause in his code. He taxes alike imports from Britain and from Batavia. His wool goes to England because London is the wool market of the world, not because England is England. He transacts his import commerce mainly with England because it is there where the proceeds of the sale of his wool provide him with financial facilities. But he has no sentimental predilection for the London market.'
IV.
Proposals of a more original kind than those of Sir Henry Parkes have been made by the Earl of Dunraven, though they are hardly more successful in standing cross-examination. Lord Dunraven has seen, a great deal of the world, and has both courage and freshness of mind. He scolds Liberals for attaching too little importance to colonies, and not perceiving that our national existence is bound up with our existence as an empire. We are dependent in an increasing degree on foreign countries for our supply of food, and therefore we might starve in time of war unless we had an efficient fleet; but fleets, to be efficient, must be able to keep the sea for any length of time, and they can only do this by means of the accommodation afforded by our various dependencies and colonies dotted over the surface of the globe. This is a very good argument so far as it goes, but of course it would be met, say in South Africa, by keeping Table Mount and Simon's Bay, and letting the rest go. It might, too, as we all know, be met in another way, namely, by the enforcement at sea of the principles of warfare on land, and the abandonment of the right of seizure of the property of private individuals on the ocean.
Besides that, says Lord Dunraven, the colonies are by far our best customers, and our only chance of increasing or maintaining our trade lies in 'the development of the colonies.' What development means he does not very clearly explain. Subsidised emigration and all such devices he dismisses as futile. Some means should be devised, he says, whereby the independent colonies should have a voice in the management of matters affecting the empire: what those means might exactly be he does not even hint. The mother country and the colonies might be drawn closer together by the abandonment of free trade and the formation of an imperial Zollverein or Greater British Customs Union. In this way capital would move more freely within the empire from one portion to another—as if capital which has gone from Great Britain to the Australian group of colonies to such a tune that the public indebtedness there is three times the amount per head in the mother country (to say nothing of the vast sums embarked in private enterprise, bringing up the aggregate debt to a million and a quarter), did not move quite freely enough as it is. Supply would at last have an opportunity of accommodating itself to demand without let or hindrance over a large portion of the earth's surface—as if more were necessary for this than the simple reduction of their tariffs, which is within the power of the protectionist colonies without federation, confederation, or any other device whatever. As it is, by the way, the colonies take nearly four times as much per head per annum of our manufactures as is taken by the United States (32s. against 8s. 4d.)
It is not necessary for me here, even if there were space, to state the arguments against the possibility of a perfect Customs Union embracing the whole British Empire. They have been recently set forth by the masterly hand of Sir Thomas Farrer (Fair Trade v. Free Trade, published by the Cobden Club, pp. 38-60). The objections to such a solution rest on the fact that it involves the same fiscal system in countries differing widely as the poles in climate, in government, in habits, and in political opinions. 'It would prevent any change in taxation in one of the countries constituting the British Empire, unless the same change were made in all.' To require Canada and Australia to adopt our system of external taxation, to model their own internal taxation accordingly, and to continue to insist on that requirement, whatever their own change either of opinion or condition might be, would be simply destructive of local self-government. 'Free Trade is of extreme importance, but Freedom is more important still.'
V.
Among the devices for bringing the mother country and the great colonies into closer contact, we do not at present hear much of the old plan for giving seats to colonial representatives in the British Parliament. It was discussed in old days by men of great authority. Burke had no faith in it, while Adam Smith argued in its favour. Twenty years before the beginning of the final struggle the plan was rejected by Franklin. In 1831 Joseph Hume proposed that India should have four members, the Crown colonies eight, the West Indies three, and the Channel Islands one. Mr. Seeley's book may for a little time revive vague notions of the same specific. Sir Edward Creasy, also by the way a professor of history, openly advocated it, but with the truly remarkable reservation that 'the colonies should be admitted to shares in the Imperial Parliament on the understanding that they contributed nothing at all to the imperial revenue by taxation.'[3] That is, they are to vote our money, but we are not to vote theirs. As Cobden saw, this is a flaw that is fatal to the scheme. 'What is the reason,' he asked, 'that no statesman has ever dreamt of proposing that the colonies should sit with the mother country in a common legislature? It was not because of the space between them, for nowadays travelling was almost as quick as thought; but because the colonies, not paying imperial taxation, and not being liable for our debt, could not be allowed with safety to us, or with propriety to themselves, to legislate on matters of taxation in which they were not themselves concerned.' He also dwelt on the mischief inseparable from the presence of a sectional and isolated interest in Parliament (Speeches, i. 568, 569). Lord Grey points out another difficulty. The colonial members, he says, would necessarily enroll themselves in the ranks of one or other of our parliamentary parties. 'If they adhered to the Opposition, it would be impossible for them to hold confidential intercourse with the Government; and if they supported the Ministers of the day, the defeat of the administration would render their relations with a new one still more difficult' (Nineteenth Century, June 1879). In short, since the concession of independent legislatures to all the most important colonies, the idea of summoning representatives to the Imperial Parliament is, indeed, as one high colonial authority has declared it to be, a romantic dream. If the legislature of Victoria is left to settle the local affairs of Victoria, the legislature of the United Kingdom must be left to settle our local affairs. Therefore the colonial members could only be invited to take a part on certain occasions in reference to certain imperial matters. But this would mean that we should no longer have one Parliament but two, or, in other words, we should have a British Parliament and a Federal Council.