COLONIES AND THE MOTHER COUNTRY. (II.)
By JAMES COLLIER.
The growth of the relations between a colony and the mother country closely follows the development of the relationship between an organism and its offspring, or (in higher species) between parents and children. When an infusorian subdivides into two cells, the new cell produced swims away and henceforth leads an independent life. Most of the Phœnician and most of the earlier Greek colonies were social infusoria which parted from the parent organism by segmentation and had no further relations with it. As we rise in the animal scale a new relationship, that between mother and young, and a new instinct, the maternal, come into existence. These begin as low down as the mollusks, and expand and heighten, though not without strange lapses, in both insects and birds as species develope; but we need not trace the evolution here. Let it suffice to note that there are successive degrees of specialization; a site is chosen suitable for depositing and hatching eggs; means are found for making them secure; a shelter is built for them; they are deposited near substances adapted to nourish the young; special food is prepared for them; they are reared through food disgorged or brought to them. The accession of the male to the family marks the dawn of the paternal instinct; it appears earliest among fishes. This evolution is repeated in the history of colonies, where, however, the maternal and paternal offices melt into one another insensibly.
The mother country founds and nurtures colonies. Most of the earliest colonies are the work of adventurous bands or navigating merchants or fishermen, who seek their own habitats, carry with them their own equipment and fight their own battles. Then the metropolis settles its surplus or discontented citizens in territories previously chosen, provides them with all that is necessary for their start, and often nourishes them during the infancy of the colony. Hispaniola was a state colony manned with miners and artisans who were provided with tools, and this at the cost of a loan and a draught from the confiscated property of the Jews. Nor was it until gold began to be found in large quantities that the receipts equalled the expenditure on the young colony. Louisiana was founded and fostered with a royal munificence that conferred on it “more than was contributed by all the English monarchs together for the twelve English colonies on the Atlantic.” Georgia was a one-man foundation, but the British Parliament twice granted considerable sums to initiate it and carry it on; the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel aided, and the benevolence of philanthropic England contributed largely to its success. Not till 1818—more than half a century after the conquest—did the revenue of Canada balance its expenditure. The convict colony of New South Wales was, of course, entirely of state origin. Stores of every kind, together with cattle and seeds, were sent out at the beginning, and long continued to be sent out to it. The first governor was granted a space of two years to make it self-supporting, but the growth of a convict colony is abnormally slow, and the civil and military establishments for thirty-four years continued to be a drain on the British exchequer to the extent of over ten millions. Even now one of the oldest and best of existing British colonies, with an area of over three hundred thousand square miles, does not produce the breadstuffs needed for its own consumption. The Cape of Good Hope, of mixed Dutch and French origin, was first made a truly British colony by the dispatch of six thousand emigrants at the cost of the mother country—a cost much greater than was anticipated. When the Transvaal was forcibly annexed by England, the stepmother country advanced a sum of £90,000 to rescue the quondam republic from its financial difficulties. In 1895 Parliament voted three millions for the building of a railroad in British East Africa. Uganda is supported by a British subsidy. Algeria is a manufactured colony, which has all along had to be supported by its creator. Apart from the cost of their civil and military establishments, France has to subsidize her colonies to the extent of over four millions sterling, partially expended in reproductive public works. Even tiny New Caledonia costs France half a million, one half of which, it is true, is expended on the convict establishment.
Most colonies at their beginning are burdensome to the mother country. Years after its foundation South Australia fell into such embarrassment that its governors had to draw on the imperial exchequer for nearly a million. In 1834 the expenditure in Cape Colony was still in excess of the revenue. Sierra Leone had to be aided by a parliamentary grant year after year. No wonder the Colonial Office complained that colonies were expensive to keep up. In German Africa the revenue does not meet the expenditure. The Congo Free State does not pay its way. On the other hand, Congo Française has a substantial surplus. Western Australia was another exception to the rule. There the Imperial Government announced that it would contribute nothing to the foundation of the colony, which was to be self-supporting from the first. Private capitalists were to arrange for the emigration of ten thousand persons in four years. Lands were granted to the emigrants on a scale of extravagance which long hampered the progress of the colony. Companies likewise expend large sums in many colonies. French and English companies embarked on American, Indian, African and island adventures at ruinous loss. Law’s company withdrew from Louisiana, the New Zealand Company from New Zealand, and the Canterbury Association from Canterbury with a balance on the wrong side of the account. Wealthy individuals bear their part. Mr. Rhodes annually subsidizes the British Central African Protectorate, and King Leopold the Congo Free State. Colonial bishoprics have also been endowed and colonial cathedrals built, largely with the aid of voluntary contributions by sympathizers in the mother country.
The mother state sometimes gives the colonies the benefit of her financial good name. In 1869 England withdrew her regiments from New Zealand when the colony was still at war with the Maoris, and to salve the wounded feelings of the colonists she agreed (under pressure) to guarantee a loan of a million in aid of emigration and public works. Before the Canadian Pacific Railway could be completed the Imperial Government had to guarantee a loan of £3,600,000. Mr. Rhodes proposes (unsuccessfully, it now appears) that the Imperial Government, which contributed £200,000 to the cost of a railway from Kimberley to Buluwayo, should guarantee a loan of an enormous amount for the continuation of the African trunk railway from Buluwayo to Lake Tanganyika.
The mother country supports or aids its self-governing colonies through its capitalists. In order to execute public works—roads, bridges and railways—to assist immigration, to build fortresses, and sometimes to pay the interest on previous loans, all the colonies have habitual recourse to the British Stock Exchange. There are good reasons for this. The colonies have little capital of their own, for all their money has been used up from day to day. The English investor has an almost unlimited amount—the savings mainly of one industrious century—and he is prepared to lend it at a lower rate of interest than would content the colonial capitalist. Of over two thousand millions sterling which John Bull has out at usury all over the world, the total public and private indebtedness of the seven Australasian colonies alone, with a population of four millions, is stated to exceed three hundred and twenty millions, or at the rate of eighty pounds per head of these daring colonists. One half of this sum is due from colonial governments for the purposes already named. The half of it, due from banks, building companies, mercantile associations and mortgage agencies, excites no misgivings; these institutions can always go bankrupt, as many of them did in the financial collapse of 1891–’93. But it is not open to a British colony to file its schedules, or at least so we used to think; and so the Times said till the oldest of British colonies went bankrupt the other day. At all events, it is harder, and we contemplate this enormous pile of public indebtedness in young and scantily peopled communities with the same feelings as made alarmists foresee impending ruin in the growing augmentation of the gigantic public debt of the United Kingdom. It is commonly said that while the imperial debt has been accumulated as the cost of “just and necessary wars,” or of wars that were neither just nor necessary, the colonial debt has been contracted for the execution of reproductive public works. This is not altogether so. Eleven million pounds of the public debt of New Zealand were contracted to carry on war with the Maoris, who were defending their territory. The Seven Years’ War, which was begun on the part of England to gain possession of the Ohio Valley and thus increase the extent of her colonies, doubled her public debt. Where is the difference between the two classes of expenditure? Then most of the self-governing colonies have expended large sums in fortifying ports, some in partly supporting a fleet, and one at least in purchasing war ships of its own. Nor has all the remainder been reproductively expended. The building of schools is a wise way of spending money, one’s own or another’s, but it can not be called a materially reproductive way. Governors’ and ministerial residences, parliamentary and departmental buildings, are indispensable, but they can not be called ‘assets,’ especially if built of perishable and inflammable timber. Even railways, most profitable of public works, are not always true assets. In many of the colonies they are light railways, and when traffic increases and a higher speed is required they will have to be built over again and new rolling stock procured. Not a few of them, too, are ‘political railways,’ running through a sparsely populated country no-whither, and built to capture votes. Roads are only less valuable, but they were made (sometimes by graduates and men of scientific antecedents who were afterward cabinet ministers) at the wage rate of from two guineas to four pounds ten per week, and are an inadequate return on the outlay. Last century British loans were issued as prizes to friends of ministers, and a much reduced amount found its way to the treasury. Deduct an analogous, though not quite similar, item of waste in colonial loans, add this to all the other non-reproductive elements, and the genuinely reproductive proportion will shrink considerably. Every one of the colonies, even with the fee simple of territories only less than Europe in extent in their hands, would have sunk under the increasing burden. Happily or not, the ever-growing wealth of England has so cheapened money that the interest charge on the whole Australasian indebtedness sank in five years (1890–’96), mainly through conversion of loans, from fourteen millions to twelve and a quarter. It may be added that the colonies which have borrowed most recklessly have not been the most populous or those with largest resources, but rather the socialistic colonies with big schemes on hand.
A father may assist his son by supplying him with the capital needed to carry on his business. Thus it is entirely with the mother country’s money that the first colonial banks are founded. As the colony grows wealthier and the business of the banks extends, colonial shareholders purchase stock in it, but the number of British shareholders remains considerable. A typical example is that of the Bank of New Zealand, from two fifths to one half of whose shares are (or in 1888 were) held in the United Kingdom. In the older or wealthier colonies of New South Wales and Victoria the number of English shareholders may be smaller, though still large. A still larger proportion of the shares of the great colonial steamship companies, amounting possibly to three fourths or nine tenths of the whole, is held (chiefly by commercial men and firms) in Great Britain. Many commercial undertakings in all the colonies are engineered entirely by English capital (not included in the two thousand millions). The Canadian transcontinental railway; railways, electric tramway lines and silver mines in Tasmania; the Midland Railway and also copper mines in New Zealand; the gold mines in Western Australia to such an extent that much more English capital is said to pour into that colony than gold flows out of it—are only a few colonial enterprises that would never have been undertaken but for the mother country’s aid. Some of these are lucrative, others not; some have been abandoned, and others belong to a still darker class. “Uncounted millions of capital have been raised in the central money market of London, only to be fooled away in ill-conceived and misdirected enterprises abroad,” says Lord Brassey. Nor are the losses confined to questionable undertakings. Two great Australasian banks have frittered away their entire capital of four and three millions, respectively, and it may be assumed that the British investor has borne one half of the losses. Of half a dozen smaller colonial banks a similar tale might be told. Father and son have to share in one another’s adversity, as in one another’s prosperity.
The socialistic movement in England has lately so strongly reacted on the relations of the Imperial Government with the colonies that the Secretary of State is believed to be willing to employ the resources of the empire to assist backward colonies. He has invited English capitalists to aid the declining West Indies, and a leading firm has offered to invest a million in the sugar industry if a guarantee of sufficient returns is given. The constitution of the projected Australian Federation contains a novel analogous provision, permitting the commonwealth to aid its needy provinces. The growing unity in the social organism as a whole is accompanied by an increasing unity in its component parts.