THE BRITISH EMPIRE_MR. LOWE AND

LORD BLACHFORD.

MR. LOWE and Lord Blachford between them have disposed of about sixty-four sixty-fifths of the realms on the possession of which the less wise of their countrymen are in the habit of rejoicing. Lord Blachford is less thorough than Mr. Lowe. The first would merely let the Constitutional Colonies drift away; the second sees a weakness in all the external possessions of Great Britain excepting those held for military purposes, the value of which is a matter purely for sailors and soldiers. So that it should be impossible to misunderstand his meaning, Mr. Lowe terms the Colonies and India 'the foreign dominions of the Crown. The use of that one word “foreign ’ should bring the question well home to the mind of every Englishman.

I thank thee, Roderick, for the word !

It nerves my heart, it steels my sword. Those possessions which the sovereign and the people have looked upon as part of a mighty nation are foreign dominions, a source of weakness not of strength. A sixty-fifth part of the whole is alone worth retaining

Lord Blachford's paper was a reply to one that previously appeared in these pages. Incidentally both he and Mr. Lowe do much to prove the truth of one of the leading allegations in the article Greater or Lesser Britain,' that there was reality in the generally felt fear that an important section of the Liberal party designed or were favourable to the break-up of the Empire. Were Lord Blachford still the departmental head of the Colonial Office, and Mr. Lowe Chancellor of the Exchequer, the opinions they have expressed would have produced an intense sensation. Not being in possession of office, their papers have excited less attention. Yet it is no slight thing to ponder over, that men, who have occupied positions of such conspicuous power, would between them be glad to see Great Britain reduced to one of the smallest of civilised nations.

A great point is gained by the unmistakable views which are now expressed. As long as the advocates of breaking up the Empire hesitated to declare themselves, or declared themselves only through the means of political platitudes or economical theories, there was difficulty in concentrating attention on the question. But now that from such responsible sources the dismemberment of the Empire is boldly defended, there can no longer be an excuse for disregarding the subject. Lord Blachford agrees so far with the paper to which his is a reply, that he admits that the Constitutional Colonies are attached to the Empire by ties that are progressively weakened. If there be no organic change, both sides concurrently believe that the United Kingdom is destined to remember only as a glorious reminiscence the vast possessions it once held. Lord Blachford's objections to a plan by which this Empire might be held together depend to some extent on details. In course of time he thinks the Colonies will be unitedly more populous than the mother-country, and therefore she may then cease to have preponderating influence. He even foresees that the capital might be removed from London, and we may be grateful to him for the argument that, if we had retained our North American provinces, New York before now would be a competitor with London for the seat.of government. How readily the answer comes to such a proposition! New York has not become a competitor even with Washington for the seat of government. It is not conceivable that any city under a United Empire would have superior claims to the seat of government to London. Not only would London always be convenient to the most densely populated part of the Empire, but it would be equally convenient to the crowded countries whose proceedings would be of interest to foreign policy of the Federation. But if it were otherwise, is the aspiration of keeping united the English-speaking people to be weighed in the scale with the paltry advantages attending the seat of the meeting of Parliament? Is there any one to declare that it would not have been better for the English race and for the world itself that the United States should have continued to be a part of Great Britain, even though such union raised the question of the seat of government between London and New York ?

But the argument to which Lord Blachford evidently attaches most importance, and which he elaborates with great skill and tact, is that between the different parts of the same Empire there would be wanting such a common interest or group of interests as would give a common desire to pursue a common purpose. He considers the idea of a permanent association between self-governed states not arising out of geographical neighbourhood · hollow and impracticable.' There was a great deal of subtle truth in the sarcasm with which Lord Beaconsfield a short time since described.cosmopolitan critics' asmen who are the friends of every country save their own.' It is odd indeed how those who are most eager in the cause of uniting nations have the least faith in the unitedness of their own nation,

To tempt

It will be said some day of this period of history, that whilst there has been a tendency in most parts of the civilised world to make nations represent nationalities, there has been in Great Britain a singular exhibition of a weakened national spirit. foreign nations to open their markets to English wares, the Colonies were placed on the footing of foreign countries, and the less the bait has taken the more eagerly has the endeavour been made to show that the genuine Englishman has no national prejudices. Whilst fully accepting Lord Blachford's conditions of common purpose and common objects, the advocates of United Empire contend for it that it meets those conditions. The same language, the same traditions, the same ways of thought, the same habits, the same education, the same ideas of excellence and of the reverse, the same material, territorial, financial, and trading interests—all these, it is contended, go to make up a common group of purposes sufficient to bind in imperishable ties the provinces of the Empire. The differences are differences which might be urged as between different parts of the United Kingdom. That which is said about representatives of Canada voting concerning matters Australian might be said with difference of degree only concerning the members for the North of Scotland voting on questions having peculiar concern for the South of England or West of Ireland.

Mr. Lowe raises the question of want of common purpose in the most material form it can assume, and therefore perhaps in the form in which it is best to discuss it in order to apply the test which Lord Blachford contends for. He asks whether in case of war Great Britain's possessions will be equally interested with herself in the causes that lead to it. The answer is emphatically Yes. Great Britain, as it has been and is known to the world, is a nation whose foreign interests are mainly if not entirely connected directly or indirectly with her exterior possessions. Within her own narrow limits she has not an interest which gives her a right to interfere with other nations or take part in their proceedings or guide their destinies. Centuries have passed since any foreign people conceived the idea of permanently establishing themselves on British soil. All questions of war must be questions in which the people in Great Britain have common interest with their fellow-subjects in other parts of the world. If the quarrel is one because of an insult to British subjects or wrong to British property, the provocation is equally felt by every subject of the sovereign of Great Britain. If the question affects British shipping, that shipping, as will be pointed out directly, is so associated with Great Britain's exterior possessions that the question affects them as much at least as the parent country. If territory is at stake, that territory is not part of the United Kingdom. We have only to look to what is passing around us. All the questions which for some time past have made war a more or less likely event are questions relating to the exterior possessions of this country, and to its exterior trade. The United Kingdom itself has in no way been menaced.

It certainly follows that Great Britain should not be at the sole cost of defence. Let it be remembered that the exemption the Colonies enjoy has not arisen out of the desire to gratify them, but out of the impression that the less complicated the ties which bound the Colonies to the parent country the more easy would be the task of dissevering the connection with them. The utterances now under consideration'do away with any doubt, if any doubt lingered, that the course pursued

, with the Colonies was a course which was to propel them on the road to independence. With that contingency in view a joint interest in defence could only have been an embarrassment, whilst the amount of the Colonies' contributions, within a reasonable period, taking population and property together as the basis, would have been so small as to make it prudent to forego the receipt of such contributions to remove an obstruction in the way of disintegration.

It will, of course, occur to any one who reads this that in the very arguments used to show the interest that the exterior possessions have in the wars of the mother-country, there is confirmation strong of Mr. Lowe's contention that the Colonies and India are sources of responsibility and therefore of danger and possible weakness to the mother-country. Mr. Lowe smiles at the Englishman of a hundred years ago who believed as we believe at the present day, that the elements which constitute the indispensable conditions of the greatness of a State are inhabitants, territory, and capital.' It is reserved to the statesmen of the present day to arrive at maturer knowledge. Had this ancient Englishman dived a little deeper into

6 the matter, he would have seen that the value of all these things depends entirely on the degree in which they can be made useful to the State which is the nominal owner of them.' And so Mr. Lowe argues that as the United Kingdom does not immediately control the people and the territory of her exterior possessions, she gains no more from them than if they were aliens. These are arguments in favour of a lesser Great Britain not only now but in the past ; they are, moreover, arguments in favour of quite a different Great Britain to anything that the British race has been accustomed to think over, and, it may be, could reconcile itself to.

The people of Great Britain are an adventurous, hardy, enterprising race, who venture freely that they may gain largely. They have attained to a ' potentiality of riches ’ which has no equal in history; and, strange to say, widely as they have spread over the universe, they have yet so accumulated within the narrow limits of the parent country as to make their islands the most heavily peopled territory, with one exception, on the face of the globe. There comes a time when the difficulties that distance interposes are in large measure done away with. Steamers practically divide by three the old esti

mate of distance; the telegraph, for some purposes, annihilates distance altogether. The exterior possessions show themselves to be fairer lands than was anticipated ; they prove their adaptability to British institutions of all descriptions-in some respects they set examples that the mother-country eagerly follows, and they cost Great Britain less than formerly, whilst they display a readiness to help each other, as witness the contributions of the Colonies to the relief of the Indian famine distress. But the discovery is made that, notwithstanding all these features intensely favourable to the Colonial dominions, the parent State would be better without them. Is there really anything new in the reasons discovered ? are they anything different from the simple fear of loss which usually follows success ? The Great Britain Mr. Lowe asks for is not the Great Britain known to its inhabitants. He wishes to change everything. The grounds he proceeds on are those which make the rich man who has won wealth by enterprise leave the race to others. He keeps what he has made, he leaves to the young and to those who have yet their spurs to win fresh risks and fresh enterprise. It is a fair question, Has Great Britain run her race? is she to live on herself and to stagnate on the results of the past, or is she to carry her enterprises and her wealth to her exterior possessions until she reproduces herself many times? Mr. Lowe, and those who think with him, have really made no advance on the Englishman of a hundred years ago. They have made no discovery, they have simply applied a fact that must be patent to every one, that every source of strength is conversely a means of weakness. All Mr. Lowe's arguments, and some portion of Lord Blachford's, are unconsciously a testimony to the great law which runs through the universe, that in proportion to the value of an object is the severity of any misfortune which overtakes it. No foreign nation will injure the Colonies because of its coveting them, but because of the blow which would be struck at the nation which owns them. So is a man to be affected by the loss of his children, and machinery by injury to its principal parts. The cultivation of valuable plants, the breeding of animals, every occupation, every development of enterprise is equally open to the argument that its strength is its weakness, that it is most vulnerable where its value is greatest. If such considerations affecting the Colonies are to be allowed to reverse the policy which has grown up with the growth of Great Britain and given to it its place amongst nations, then all enterprise must come under the same category. Each must keep and greedily guard what he has and risk it no further. So entirely does an excessive fear born of success drist from all that makes up human progress, that its ultimate landing-place is a return to the savage condition in which individual responsibilities are lost in the animal propensities that tyrannise over intellectual aspirations. So utterly wanting in reason to those who know the Colonies is the inVOL. III.-No. 14.

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