I REMARKED that ancient Greek colonisation, com pared with the modern system, might be called in a certain sense the natural system. And yet the modern system might be represented as natural also. The Greeks regard the State as essentially small, and infer that a surplus population can only be accommo dated by founding another State. But is there any thing necessarily unnatural in the other view, that the State is capable of indefinite growth and expan sion “J The ripe fruit dropping from the tree and giving rise to another tree may be natural, but so is the acorn spreading into the huge oak, that has hundreds of branches and thousands of leaves. If Miletus among its daughter-cities may remind us of the one, England expanding into Greater Britain resembles the other.
And yet surely there must be something unnatural in the system against which our own colonists revolted a hundred years ago, and the colonists of Spain and Portugal a few years later LECT. IV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 67 The truth is that the simple idea of expansion has seldom been conceived or realised clearly. Let us work out a little in our minds the concep tion of a Greater Britain, of the English State extended indefinitely without being altered. The question is often asked, What is the good of colonies ? but no such question could possibly be raised, if colonies really were such a simple extension of the mother-state. Whether this extension is practicable may be questioned, but it cannot be questioned that if it were practicable it would be desirable. We must begin by recognising that the unoccupied territory of the globe is to those who take possession of it so much wealth in the most absolute sense of the word. The epitaph which said that to Leon and Aragon Columbus gave a new world was almost literally true. He conferred upon certain persons a large landed estate, and if, as the result, many poor people did not become rich and many unfortunate people pros- perous, the fault must have lain in the distribution or administration of the wealth which he conferred. By his discovery the nations of Europe came in for a landed estate so enormously large that it might easily have converted every poor man in Europe into a landed proprietor.
But one thing was necessary before all this wealth could be reduced into possession and enjoyment. Property can exist only under the guardianship of the State. In order therefore that the lands of the New World might become secure enjoyable property, States must be set up in the New World. Without the 68 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect.
State the settler “would run the risk of being murdered by Indians, or attacked by rival settlers of some hostile nationality. On the other hand suppose the reign of law and government established in the NewWorld, as in Europe, so that property is equally secure, then the poor man in Europe who finds life painful and the acquisition of land in these crowded countries utterly beyond his power, has only to transfer himself to the New World, where land is cheaper, and he is at once enriched as much as if he had received a legacy.
Thus there, can be no dispute about the value of organised States in the less crowded parts of the globe. But why should these be our own colonies ? There is nothing to prevent the emigrant from settling in a colony belonging to some different European State or in an independent State. Why need we trouble ourselves therefore to keep up colonies of our own ? This is a strange question, which would never be asked in England but for an exceptional circumstance. Most people like to live among their own country- men, under the laws, religion and institutions they are accustomed to. They place themselves moreover most really and practically at a disadvantage by going to live among people who speak a different language. As a matter of fact, we do not find that, the course of emigration being free, any large number of Englishmen yearly settle in those New World States which are really foreign, that is, in the South American Republics or in Brazil or in Mexico. There would be no question at all about the value of IV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 69 colonies, and we should all as a matter of course consider that only by means of colonies was it possible to bring the wealth of the New World within the reach of our population, if it were not for the existence of the United States. But the United States are to us almost as good as a colony ; our people can emigrate thither without sacrificing their language or chief institutions or habits. And the Union is so large and prosperous and fills our view so much, that we forget how very exceptional its relation to us is, and also that if it is to us almost as good as a colony, this is only because it was con- structed out of English colonies. In estimating the value of colonies in the abstract, we shall only confuse ourselves by recollecting this unique case ; we ought to put the United States entirely out of view.
Considered in the abstract then, colonies are neither more nor less than a great augmentation of the national estate. They are lands for the landless, prosperity and wealth for those in straitened cir- cumstances. This is a very simple view, and yet it is much overlooked, as if somehow it were too simple to be understood. History offers many examples of nations cramped for want of room; it records in many cases how they swarmed irresistibly across their frontiers and spread like a deluge over neighbouring countries, where sometimes they found lands and wealth. Now we may be very sure that never any nation was half so much cramped for want of room in the olden time as our own nation is now. Populations so dense as that of modern England are a phenomenon
70 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LEOT, quite new at least in Europe. We continually speak of our country as crowded, and, since the rate of increase of population is tolerably constant, we sometimes ask with alarm what will be its condition half a century hence. “The territory,” we say, “is a fixed quantity; wehave but 120,000 square miles; it is crowded already and yet the population doubles in some seventy years. What will become of us ? " Now here is a curious example of our habit of leaving our colonial posses- sions out of account. What ! our country is small a poor, 120,000 square miles ? I find the fact to be very difi"erent. I find that the territory governed by the Queen is of almost boundless extent. Let us deduct from the vast total India, as not much open to settlement, still the territory subject to the Queen is much greater than that of the United States, though that is uniformly cited as the example of a country not crowded and in which there is boundless room for expansion. It may be true that the mother-country of this great Empire is crowded, but in order to relieve the pressure it is not necessary for us, as if we were Goths or Turcomans, to seize upon the territory of our neighbours, it is not necessary even to incur great risks or undergo great hardships ; it is only necessary to take possession of boundless territories in Canada, South Africa and Australia, where already our language is spoken, our religion professed, and our laws established. If there is pauperism in Wilt shire and Dorsetshire, this is but complementary to unowned wealth in Australia; on the one side there are men without property, on the other there IV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 71 is property waiting for men. And yet we do not allow these two facts to come together in our minds, but brood anxiously and almost despairingly over the problem of pauperism, and when colonies are mentioned we ask. What is the good of colonies ? Partly no doubt this is due simply to a want of- system in our way of thinking on subjects of this kind, but partly also it is evident that colonies have never been regarded in England as a simple extension of the English state and nation over new territory. They have been thought of no doubt as belonging to England, though precariously, but at the same time as outside of England, so that what goes out of England to them is in a manner lost to England. This appears clearly from the argument which is often urged against emigration on any large scale, viz. that it might be good for the emigrants, but that it would be ruinous to England, which would be deprived of all the best and hardiest part of its population — deprived, for it is not imagined that such emigrants could remain Englishmen, or be still serviceable to the English commonwealth. Compare this view of emigration with that taken in the United States, where the constant movement of the population westward, the constant settlement of new Territories, which in due time rise to be States, is not regarded as either a symptom or a cause of weakness, not at all as a draining-out of vitality, but on the contrary as the greatest evidence of vigour and the best means of increasing it.
We have not really then as yet a Greater Britain.
72 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot.
When I speak of the creation of Greater Britain during the eighteenth century, I in a certain sense exaggerate. In our colonial Empire was laid the foundation of a Greater Britain, and a Greater Britain may in the end arise out of it, but nothing of the kind was originally intended, nor later was the true significance of what had taken place perceived. A colony was not really thought of as an extension of the mother-state, but as something different. What then was the precise conception formed of a colony t We find ourselves forced to ask this question again.
I have pointed out already that in the sixteenth century there was no natural overflow of population from Europe into the New World. Europe was not over-peopled; there was no imperious demand for more room. Why then should the conception, so natural to us in these days, of a territorial extension of the State occur to those who lived at the time of the discoveries? We see on the contrary that contemporary statesmen were puzzled to decide what use could be made, and even doubted whether any use could be made, of the new lands. Sebastian Cabot is encouraged by Henry VII., until it is found that he does not bring back spices; then he is neglected, and abandons England for the Spanish service.-^ Thus the same cause which made it neces- sary to call in the help of the State led to a peculiarly materialistic view of the work of settlement. What the State wanted was revenue; hence it became 1 Schanz, JHhiglische Handelspolitik. Read the whole chapter entitled, Die Stdlung der bdden ersten Tudors zu den Entdechungen.
TV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 73 necessary to regard the new countries rather as so much wealth to be transported into Europe than as a new seat for European civilisation.
I spoke before of natural colonisation, intending such colonisation as results from the spread of a race over an unbounded territory at a time when political institutions are in their infancy. The colonisation of the sixteenth century is curiously different. It arises from the discovery of remote regions of unknown wealth by nations accustomed to a limited space and to a rigorous government. As in the former kind the State scarcely appears, but individuals or rather tribes accomplish the work, and in making a new settle- ment make a new state, in the latter kind the State takes the lead, superintends the settlement, recruits for it, holds it in subjection when it is made, and, as a consequence, looks to make a profit out of it. At first sight this latter system might seem less material istic than the other, for it conceives the State as resting not upon mere locality but upon kindred ; but it becomes more materialistic in practice because it looks at the colony purely with the eyes of the Government, and therefore from a purely fiscal point of view. Hence in the first settlement of America the conception of a Spanish colony as an extension of Spain was mixed up with a different conception of it as a possession belonging to Spain. And whereas the first conception, though it was formed instinctively, yet answered to nothing in experience, —for who had ever heard of two parts of the same State separated by the whole breadth of the Atlantic Ocean 1—the 74 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect.
second conception was less embarrassing in practice because it was by no means new. There had been examples in the Middle Ages of States possessing dependencies separated from them by the sea, and I daresay it might be possible to show that the Spanish Council of the Indies was guided at times by the precedents afforded by Venice in its dealings with Candia and with its dependencies in the Adriatic. The Venetian conception of a dependency was purely selfish and commercial. So far from thinking of it as forming part of the Republic, they regarded it as so much live stock forming part of the wealth of the Republic. Thus it was by confounding together two theories radically inconsistent with each other that the modern colonial system, first formed by Spain and adopted with more or less modification by the other Powers of Europe, came into existence.
Now we have this conception more or less distinctly in our minds whenever we ask the question, What is the good of colonies ? That question implies that we think of a colony, not as part of our State, but as a possession belonging to it. For we should think it absurd to raise such a question about a recognised part of the body politic. Who ever thought of inquiring whether Cornwall or Kent rendered any • sufficient return for the money which we lay out upon them, whether those counties were worth keeping 1 The tie that holds together the parts of a nation state is of another kind ; it is not composed of con siderations of profit and loss, but is analogous to the family bond. The same tie would hold a nation toIV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 75 its colonies, if colonies were regarded as simply an extension of the nation. If Greater Britain in the full sense of the phrase really existed, Canada and Australia would be to us as Kent and Cornwall. But if once we cease to regard a colony in this way, if we consider that the emigrants, who have gone forth from us, have ceased to belong to our community, then we must form some other conception of their relation to us. And this must either be the old Greek conception which treats them as grown-up children who have married and settled at a distance, so that the family bond has dissolved away by the mere necessity of circumstances, or if the connection is maintained, as the modern States insisted on main taining it, it must change its character. It must rest on interest. The question must be asked. What is the good of the colony 1 and it must be answered by some proof that the colony considered as a piece of property, or as an investment of public money, pays.
Now this may be a very good basis for the union of two countries, provided the benefit received from the union is mutual. In this case it constitutes a federation, and there are many instances in which, without any tie of kindred, countries have been held together in such a union simply by the sense of a common interest. Among these instances are Austria and Hungary, the German, French and Italian cantons of the Swiss Confederation. Such would be the case of our own Empire, if not only we ourselves felt that our colonies paid—that is, that we reaped some advantage from them which we should cease to reap if 76 EXPANSION OF ENGLAIrt) LECT. they became independent—but also the colonies felt that the mother-country paid, and that they gained something by the connection with it. And in the present day it is quite easy to imagine such a sense of common interest existing between us and even the remotest of our colonies, because in the present day distance has been almost abolished by steam and electricity. But in the first ages after the discovery of the New World such a common interest was less possible. The Atlantic Ocean was then for practical purposes a far deeper and wider gulf, across which any reciprocal exchange of services could not easily take place. And so the old colonial system in general had not the character of an equal federation.
It is the custom to describe the old colonies as sacrificed to the mother-country. We must be careful not to admit that statement without qualification. It is supposed for instance that the revolt of otir own American colonies was provoked by the selfish treatment of the mother-country, which shackled their trade without rendering them any benefit in return for these restraints. This is far from being true. Between England and the American colonies there was a real interchange of services. England gave defence in return for trade-privileges. In the middle of the last century, at the time when the American quarrel began, it was perhaps rather the colonies than the mother-country that had fallen into arrear. Wehad been involved in two great wars mainly by our colonies, and the final breach was provoked not so much by the pressure of England upon the colonies IV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 77 as by that of the colonies upon England. If we imposed taxes upon them, it was to meet the debt which we had incurred in their behalf, and we saw with not unnatural bitterness that we had ourselves enabled our colonies to do without us, by destroying for their interest the French power in North America.
Still it was true of the old colonial system in general that it placed the colony in the position, not so much of a state in federation, as of a conquered state. Some theory of the kind is evidently implied in the language which is commonly used. We speak of the colonial possessions of England or of Spain. Now in what sense can one population be spoken of as the possession of another population ? The ex- pression almost seems to imply slavery, and at any rate it is utterly inappropriate, if it merely means that the one population is subject to the same Government as the other. At the bottom of it certainly was the idea that the colony was an estate which was to be worked for the benefit of the mother country.
The relation of Spain to its colonies had become a type which other states kept before their eyes. A native population reduced to serfdom, in some parts driven to compulsory labour by caciques turned into state-officials, in other parts exterminated by over- work and then replaced by negroes; an imperious mother-country drawing from the colony a steady revenue, and ruling it through an artful mechanism of division, by which the settlers were held in check by the priesthood and by a serf-population treated
78 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect.
paternally that it might be available for that purpose such was the tjrpical colonial system. It was wholly unfit to be a model to such a colony as New England, which paid no revenue, where there were neither subject Indians nor mines of gold and silver. Nevertheless governments could not afford to forget the precedent of profitable colonies, and I find Charles II. appealing to it in 1663. It became an established principle that a colony was a possession. Now it is essentially barbaric that one community should be treated as the property of another and the fruits of its industry confiscated, not in return for benefits conferred, but by some absolute right whether of conquest or otherwise. Even where such a relation rests avowedly upon conquest, it is too immoral to last long, except in a barbarous state of manners. Thus for example we may have acquired India by conquest, but we cannot and do not hold it for our own pecuniary advantage. We draw no tribute from it; it is not to us a profitable invest- ment ; we should be ashamed to acknowledge that in governing it we in any way sacrificed its interest to our own. A fortiori then it is barbaric to apply such a theory to colonies, for it is to treat one’s own countrymen, those with whom we have no concern at all except on the ground of kindred, as if they were conquered enemies, or rather in a way in which a civilised nation cannot treat even conquered enemies. And probably even in the old colonial system such a theory was not consciously and deliberately adopted. But since in the sixteenth century there was no IV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 79 scruple in applying it to conquered dependencies, and since the colonies of Spain were in a certain sense conquered dependencies, we can understand that unconsciously, unintentionally, the barbaric principle crept into her colonial system, and that it lurked there and poisoned it in later times. We can understand too how the example of Spain and the precedents set by her influenced the other European States, Holland, France, and England, which entered upon the career of colonisation a century later. In the case of some of these States, for example France, the result of this theory was that the mother-country exercised an iron authority over her colonies. In Canada the French settlers were subject to a multitude of rigid regulations, from which they would have been free if they had remained in France. Nothing of the kind certainly can be said of the English colonies. They were subject to certain fixed restrictions in the matter of trade, but apart from these they were absolutely free. Carrying their nationality with them, they claimed everywhere the rights of Englishmen. It has been observed by Mr. Merivale that the old colonial system admitted no such thing as the modern Crown Colony, in which Englishmen are governed administratively without representative assemblies. In the old system assemblies were not formally instituted, but grew up of themselves, because it was the nature of Englishmen to assemble. Thus the old historian of the colonies, Hutchinson, writes under the year 1619, “This year a House of Burgesses broke out in 80 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect.
Virginia.” And assuredly the Home Government in those times did not sin by too much interference. So completely were the colonies left to themselves, that some of them, especially those of New England, were from the very beginning for most practical purposes independent States. As early as 1665, only forty years after the first settlement and a hundred years before the Declaration of Independence, I find that Massachusetts did not regard itself as practically subject to England. " They say,” writes a Com missioner,^ “that so long as they pay the fifth of all gold and silver, according to the terms of the Charter, they are not obliged to the King but by civility.” Thus our old colonial system was not practically at all tyrannous, and when the breach came the grievances of which the Americans complained, though perfectly real, were smaller than ever before or since led to such mighty consequences. The misfortune of that system was not that it interfered too much, but that such interference as it admitted was of an invidious kind. It claimed very little, but what it did claim was unjust. It gave un- bounded liberty except in one department, namely trade, and in that department it interfered to fine the colonists for the benefit of the home traders.
1 Calendar of state Papers ; Colonial, December, 1665. He adds : " They say they can easily spin out seven years by writing, and before that time a change may come : nay, some have dared to say, Who knows what the event of this Dutch war may be ? They furnished Cromwell with many instruments out of their corporation and college, and solicited him by one Mr. Winsloe to be declared a Free State, and now style and believe themselves to be so.”
IV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 81 Now this was to put the mother-country in a false position. It put her forward as claiming to treat the colonies as a possession, as an estate to be worked for the benefit of those Englishmen who remained at home. No claim could be more invidious. If it was not quite the claim that a master makes upon a slave, it was at least similar to that which an absentee landlord makes upon tenants in whom he takes no further interest, and yet even the absentee landlord, if he gives nothing else, does at least give the use of land which was really his own. But what— Massachusetts colonist might say—has England given to us that she should have this perpetual mortgage on our industry 1 The Charter of James I. allowed us the use of lands which James I. never saw and which did not belong to him, —lands too which, with- out any Charter, we might perhaps have occupied for ourselves without opposition.
Thus this old system was an irrational jumble of two opposite conceptions. It claimed to rule the colonists because they were Englishmen and brothers, and yet it ruled them as if they were conquered Indians. And again while it treated them as con- quered people, it gave them so much liberty that they could easily rebel.
I have shown how this strange hybrid conception of colonies may have originally sprung up. It is not very difficult perhaps to understand how the English, after once adopting, may have retained it, and may have never seen their way to a better conception. In the then condition of the world, if the English had G 82 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect.
thought of reforming their colonial system, their most natural course would have been to cast off the colonies altogether. For the analogy of grown-up sons and daughters applies very properly to the case of colonies, when they are so remote from the mother country that they have come to have wholly different interests. All practical union, and therefore all authority on the part of the mother-country, fall into abeyance in these circumstances, and the Greek system is then most appropriate, which gives complete independence to the colony, but binds it in per- petual alliance. Now in the seventeenth century our colonies were, at least in ordinary times, practically too remote for imion. This is so true that the difficulty is rather to understand how the secession of New England can have been delayed so long ; but I imagine the retarding cause was the growth of the French Power in North America towards the end of the seventeenth century. After the great colonial struggle of France and England had fairly begun, the colonies were drawn somewhat nearer to us than before, and we can imagine that if Canada had not been conquered from the French in 1759, and if the struggle with France instead of coming to an end had grown more intense, the colonies would have issued no Declaration of Independence, and our connection with them might have been put on a better footing instead of being dissolved. As it was, the need of union was at first not felt ; it was then felt strongly for a time, and then by a sudden deliverance all pressure was removed, so that the IV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 83 thought of a reformed colonial system gave way at once to the dream of independence.
In these circumstances the old colonial system would naturally be retained as long as possible by the mother-country, because it was dangerous to touch it, because the least alteration would snap the tie that held the colonies altogether. The invidious rights were doggedly maintained simply because they existed, and because no alteration for the better was thought possible.
Probably also no healthier relation could then be even clearly conceived. I have described colonies as the natural outlet for superfluous population, the resource by which those who find themselves crowded out of the mother-country may live at ease, without sacrificing what ought to be felt as most valuable, their nationality. But how could such a view occur to EngKshmen a century ago? England in those days was not over-peopled. The whole of Great Britain had perhaps not more than twelve million inhabitants at the time of the American War. And if even then there was more diffused prosperity in the colonies than at home, on the other hand the love of native soil, the dominion of habit, the dread and dislike of migration, were infinitely greater. We are not to suppose that the steady stream of emigration to the New World, which we witness, has been flowing ever since there was a New World, or even ever since we had prosperous colonics. This move- ment did not begin till after the peace of 1815.
Under the old colonial system circumstances were 84 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LEOT.
quite diflferent, and may be illustrated by what we know of the history of the New England colonies. Of these we learn that from their commencement in 1620 for twenty years, until the meeting of the Long Parliament, immigration did indeed flow in a steady stream, but for a quite special reason, viz. because the Anglican Church was then harsh, and New Eng land afforded a refuge for Puritanism and Brownism or Independency. Accordingly we are told that as soon as the Long Parliament met this stream ceased to flow, and that afterwards for a hundred years there was so little immigration into New England from Old England that it was believed not to balance the counter-movement of colonists quitting the colony.^ These were circumstances in which, though there might be colonies, there could be no Greater Britain. The material basis of a Greater Britain might indeed be laid—that is, vast territories might be occupied, and rival nations might be expelled from them. In this material sense Greater Britain was created in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But the idea that could shape the material mass was still wanting. Towards this only one step was taken, namely, in laying down the principle that colonies did in some ^ “The accessions which New England henceforward {i.e. after 1640) received from abroad were more than counterbalanced by perpetual emigrations, which in the course of two centuries have scattered her sons over every part of North America, and indeed of the globe. The immigrants of the preceding period had not exceeded twenty-five thousand, a primitive stock, from which has been derived not less perhaps than a fourth part of the present population of the United States."—Hildreth, Hist, of U. S. i. p. 267.IV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 85 way belong together with the mother-country, that England did in some sense go with them across the sea, and that they could not cease to be English but through a war.
And what is true of the English colonies in the eighteenth centuiy is equally true of the colonies of other States. Greater Spain, Greater Portugal, Greater Holland, and Greater France, were all, as much as Greater Britain, artificial fabrics, wanting organic unity and life.
Consequently they were all short - lived, and Greater Britain itself appeared likely to be short-lived. It seemed indeed likely to be more short-lived than many of its rivals. The Spanish colonies in America, which had been founded a hundred years before the English, did not break ofi” so soon. The Declaration of Independence of 1776 was not only the most striking but also the first act of rebellion on the part of colonies against mother-countries.
Nor did Greater Britain ultimately escape this danger by any wisdom in its rulers. When the utter weakness of the old colonial system had been ex- posed, we did not abandon it and take up a better.
A new Empire gradually grew up out of the same causes which had called into existence the old, and it grew up under much the same system. We had not learnt from experience wisdom, but only despair. We saw that under that system we could not per- manently keep our colonies, but, instead of inferring that the system must be changed, we only inferred that sooner or later the colonies must be lost.
86 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot.
Then came, in the forties of this century, the victory of free-trade. Among other restraints upon trade it condemned in Mo the old colonial system. This system was abolished, but at the same time the opinion grew up that our colonies were useless, and that the sooner they were emancipated the better. And this doctrine would have been obviously sound, if the general conditions of the world had remained the same in the nineteenth century as they were in the eighteenth and seventeenth. Our forefathers had found that they could make no use of colonies except by extracting trade -advantages from them. What then could remain to the mother-country, when her monopoly was resigned ? There followed a quiet period, in which the very slender tie which held the Empire together suffered no strain. In these favourable circumstances the natural bond was strong enough to prevent a catas- trophe. Englishmen in all parts of the world still remembered that they were of one blood and one religion, that they had one history and one language and literature. This was enough, so long as neither colonies nor mother-country were called upon to make very heavy sacrifices each for the other. Such a quiet time favours the growth of a wholly different view of the Empire. This view is founded upon the consideration that distance has now no longer the important influence that it had on political relations.
In the last century there could be no Greater Britain in the true sense of the word, because of the distance between the mother-country and its colonies IV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 87 and between the colonies themselves. This impedi ment exists no longer. Science has given to the political organism a new circulation, Avhich is steam, and a new nervous system, which is electricity. These new conditions make it necessary to reconsider the whole colonial problem. They make it in the first place possible actually to realise the old utopia of a Greater Britain, and at the same time they make it almost necessary to do so. First they make it possible. In the old time such large political organisms were only stable when they were of low type. Thus Greater Spain was longer -lived than Greater Britain, precisely because it was despotically governed. Greater Britain ran on the rock of parliamentary liberties, which were then impossible on so great a scale, while despotism was possible enough. Had it then been thought possible to give parliamentary representation to our colonists, the whole quarrel might easily have been avoided. But it was not thought possible ; and why 1 Burke gives you the answer in the well-known passage, in which he throws ridicule upon the notion of summoning representatives from so vast a distance. This notion has now ceased at any rate to be ridiculous, however great the difficulties of detail may still be. Those very colonies, which then broke off from us, have since given the example of a federal organisation, in which vast territories, some of them thinly peopled and newly settled, are held easily in union with older communities, and the whole enjoys in the fullest degree parliamentary freedom. The United States 88 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect.
have solved a problem substantially similar to that, which our old colonial system could not solve, by showing how a State may throw off a constant stream of emigration, how from a fringe of settlement on the Atlantic a whole Continent as far as the Pacific may be peopled, and yet the doubt never arise whether those remote settlements will not soon claim their independence, or whether they will bear to be taxed for the benefit of the whole.
And lastly what is thus shown to be possible appears now to be much more urgently important than in the last century. For the same inventions which make vast political unions possible, tend to make states which are on the old scale of magnitude unsafe, insignificant, second-rate. If the United States and Russia hold together for another half century, they will at the end of that time completely dwarf such old European States as France and Germany, and depress them into a second class. They will do the same to England, if at the end of that time England still thinks of herself as simply a European State, as the old United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, such as Pitt left her. It would indeed be a poor remedy, if we should try to face these vast states of the new type by an artificial union of settle- ments and islands scattered over the whole globe, inhabited by different nationalities, and connected by no tie except the accident that they happen all alike to acknowledge the Queen’s authority. But I have pointed out that what we call our Empire is no such artificial fabric ; that it is not properly, if we exclude IV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 89 India from consideration, an Empire at all ; that it is a vast English nation, only a nation so widely dispersed that before the age of steam and electricity its strong natural bonds of race and religion seemed practically dissolved by distance. As soon then as distance is aboHshed by science, as soon as it is proved by the examples of the United States and Russia that political union over vast areas has begun to be possible, so soon Greater Britain starts up, not only a reality, but a robust reality. It will belong to the stronger class of political unions. If it will not be stronger than the United States, we may say with confidence that it will be far stronger than the great conglomeration of Slavs, Germans, Turcomans and Armenians, of Greek Christians, Catholics, Protestants. Mussulmans and Buddhists, which we call Russia.
LECTUEE V