If the European nations, in taking possession of America, were making a conquest, it was that of the white race over the yellow one of the New World. Spain and France, in raising their flags over four-fifths of the American continent, were surely strengthening Imperialism. Will our "Nationalists" accuse them of having unduly saved the New World from the secular Indian barbarism?
More especially, Spanish Imperialism in America was most despotic. By a very false political conception, Spain undertook a great settlement work in America with the sole object of bleeding her colonies to her only profit. It failed disastrously as it deserved to. It is because she persevered in her fatal error that, in 1898, she was forced out of Cuba. The last stone of her immense colonial edifice was cast away.
England shared Spain's error, but much less heavily. Like Spain, she reaped what she had sowed. The thirteen British American colonies revolted and conquered their Independence. Alone French Canada remained loyal to England.
If the French Canadians had sided with the British Colonies to the South in the contest for their Independence, the Canada of those days would certainly have been included in the American Republic when England was forced, by the fate of war, to acknowledge the new Sovereign nation. Her offspring then violently broke away from the parental home, but has recently hastened to her defence, at the hour of danger, only remembering the first happy years of her childhood.
Following the loyal advice of their spiritual leaders, and of their most trusted civil chieftains, the French Canadians remained true to England, refusing to desert her, thus maintaining her Sovereign rights over the Northern half of the Continent destined, a century later, to develop into the present Dominion, enjoying the free institutions of the Mother Country.
As previously stated, the American Revolution brought for ever to an end British absolutism in the new continent. Henceforth, liberty and autonomy were to be the two foundation stones of a new colonial Policy which, far from disrupting the Empire as the autocratic one had done, was to cement its union so strongly as to make possible the gigantic military effort she has displayed for more than the last four years.
The Treaty of Paris brought the Seven Years War to a close. Once more the peace of the world was temporarily restored. By the Treaty of Paris, Canada was ceded to England, our "Nationalists" say. If so, how can they pretend that the extension of British Sovereignty over the regions which have become the great autonomous Dominion of Canada was an undue manifestation of British conquering Imperialism?
An intelligent and impartial student of the early settlements of the two continents of America can only draw the conclusion that the New World has not been the theatre of the operations of British Imperialism. Its first real attempt was tried—with much laudable success—in 1867, by the federal union of the Canadian provinces, decreed by the Sovereign legislative power of the Parliament of Great Britain, at our own request and in accordance with our own freely expressed wishes.
Australia is the second autonomous colony of England in extent and importance. It comprises nearly all the territory of the Oceanic continent, so called from the geographical position, in the Pacific Ocean, of the Islands forming it. New Zealand is the second group of these Islands. It is another autonomous British colony, called, since 1907 "The Dominion of New Zealand".
Those two Dominions have a combined territorial area of more than 3,000,000 square miles—almost as large as the whole of Europe—with a population of six millions rapidly increasing. Their two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, each having a population of 700,000, are great commercial centres.