Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866-7

by Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke

As long as we choose to allow the system to continue, the colonists are well content to reap the benefit. When we at last decide that it shall cease, they will reluctantly consent. It is more than doubtful whether, if we were to insist to the utmost upon our rights as toward our southern colonies, they would do more than grumble and consent to our demands; and there is no chance whatever of our asking for more than our simple due.

When you talk to an intelligent Australian, you can always see that he fears that separation would be made the excuse for the equipment of a great and costly Australian fleet—not more necessary then than now—and that, however he may talk, he would, rather than separate from England, at least do his duty by her.

The fear of conquest of the Australian colonies if we left them to themselves is on the face of it ridiculous. It is sufficient, perhaps, to say that the old American colonies, when they had but a million and a half of people, defended themselves successfully against the then all-powerful French, and that there is no instance of a self-protected English colony being conquered by the foreigner. The American colonies valued so highly their independence of the old country in the matter of defense that they petitioned the Crown to be allowed to fight for themselves, and called the British army by the plain name of “grievance.”

As for our so-called defense of the colonies, in war-time we defend ourselves; we defend the colonies only during peace. In war-time they are ever left to shift for themselves, and they would undoubtedly be better fit to do so were they in the habit of maintaining their military establishments in time of peace. The present system weakens us and them—us, by taxes and by the withdrawal of our men and ships; the colonies, by preventing the development of that self-reliance which is requisite to form a nation‘s greatness. The successful encountering of difficulties is the marking feature of the national character of the English, and we can hardly expect a nation which has never encountered any, or which has been content to see them met by others, ever to become great. In short, as matters now stand, the colonies are a source of military weakness to us, and our “protection” of them is a source of danger to the colonists. No doubt there are still among us men who would have wished to have seen America continue in union with England, on the principle on which the Russian conscripts are chained each to an old man—to keep her from going too fast—and who now consider it our duty to defend our colonies at whatever cost, on account of the “prestige” which attaches to the somewhat precarious tenure of these great lands. With such men it is impossible for colonial reformers to argue: the stand-points are wholly different. To those, however, who admit the injustice of the present system to the tax-payers of the mother-country, but who fear that her merchants would suffer by its disturbance, inasmuch as, in their belief, action on our part would lead to a disruption of the tie, we may plead that, even should separation be the result, we should be none the worse off for its occurrence. The retention of colonies at almost any cost has been defended—so far as it has been supported by argument at all—on the ground that the connection conduces to trade, to which argument it is sufficient to answer that no one has ever succeeded in showing what effect upon trade the connection can have, and that as excellent examples to the contrary we have the fact that our trade with the Ionian Islands has greatly increased since their annexation to the kingdom of Greece, and a much more striking fact than even this—namely, that while the trade with England of the Canadian Confederation is only four-elevenths of its total external trade, or little more than one-third, the English trade of the United States was in 1860 (before the war) nearly two-thirds of its total external trade, in 1861 more than two-thirds, and in 1866 (first year after the war) again four-sevenths of its total trade. Common institutions, common freedom, and common tongue have evidently far more to do with trade than union has; and for purposes of commerce and civilization, America is a truer colony of Britain than is Canada.

It would not be difficult, were it necessary, to multiply examples whereby to prove that trade with a country does not appear to be affected by union with or separation from it. Egypt (even when we carefully exclude from the returns Indian produce in transport) sends us nearly all such produce as she exports, notwithstanding that the French largely control the government, and that we have much less footing in the country than the Italians, and no more than the Austrians or Spanish. Our trade with Australia means that the Australians want something of us and that we need something of them, and that we exchange with them our produce as we do in a larger degree with the Americans, the Germans, and the French.

The trade argument being met, and it being remembered that our colonies are no more an outlet for our surplus population than they would be if the Great Mogul ruled over them, as is seen by the fact that of every twenty people who leave the United Kingdom, one goes to Canada, two to Australia, and sixteen to the United States, we come to the “argument” which consists in the word “prestige.” When examined, this cry seems to mean that, in the opinion of the utterer, extent of empire is power—a doctrine under which Brazil ought to be nineteen and a half times, and China twenty-six times as powerful as France. Perhaps the best answer to the doctrine is a simple contradiction: those who have read history with most care well know that at all times extent of empire has been weakness. England‘s real empire was small enough in 1650, yet it is rather doubtful whether her “prestige” ever reached the height it did while the Cromwellian admirals swept the seas. The idea conveyed by the words “mother of free nations” is every bit as good as that contained in the cry “prestige,” and the argument that, as the colonists are British subjects, we have no right to cast them adrift so long as they wish to continue citizens, is evidently no answer to those who merely urge that the colonists should pay their own policemen.

It may, perhaps, be contended that the possession of “colonies” tends to preserve us from the curse of small island countries, the dwarfing of mind which would otherwise make us Guernsey a little magnified. If this be true, it is a powerful argument in favor of continuance in the present system. It is a question, however, whether our real preservation from the insularity we deprecate is not to be found in the possession of true colonies—of plantations such as America, in short—rather than in that of mere dependencies. That which raises us above the provincialism of citizenship of little England is our citizenship of the greater Saxondom which includes all that is best and wisest in the world.

From the foundation, separation would be harmless, does not of necessity follow the conclusion, separation is to be desired. This much only is clear—that we need not hesitate to demand that Australia should do her duty.

With the more enlightened thinkers of England, separation from the colonies has for many years been a favorite idea, but as regards the Australias it would hardly be advisable. If we allow that it is to the interest both of our race and of the world that the Australias should prosper, we have to ask whether they would do so in a higher degree if separated from the mother-country than if they remained connected with her and with each other by a federation. It has often been said that, instead of the varying relations which now exist between Britain and America, we should have seen a perfect friendship had we but permitted the American colonies to go their way in peace; but the example does not hold in the case of Australia, which is by no means wishful to go at all.

Under separation we should, perhaps, find the colonies better emigration-fields for our surplus population than they are at present. Many of our emigrants who flock to the United States are attracted by the idea that they are going to become citizens of a new nation instead of dependents upon an old one. On the separation of Australia from England we might expect that a portion of these sentimentalists would be diverted from a colony necessarily jealous of us so long as we hold Canada, to one which from accordance of interests is likely to continue friendly or allied. This argument, however, would have no weight with those who desire the independence of Canada, and who look upon America as still our colony.