made good her losses in America by the capture of French and Dutch colonies. In the readjustment which after 1815 took place England returned much of the most valuable territory which she had conquered, including the great island of Java, retaining only Tobago and San Lucia in the Antilles and Mauritius in the East. The settlement of Australasia was then commenced and pushed with considerable vigor. The growing humanitarian spirit of the age led to the abolition of the slave trade and finally to the emancipation of the slaves in the colonies. During the years of exhaustion and stagnation which followed the war many economic and social evils developed and the disposition of the unemployed became a serious question. In 1826 a committee of the House of Commons recommended that the local authorities provide means for assisting unemployed laborers to emigrate and locate on the Crown lands, and in 1830 the famous Colonization Society was founded for the purpose of directing and systematizing the work.39 Then, for the first time in English history, a systematic plan for colonization was worked out and applied, and during the succeeding thirty years so much progress was made in developing the settlement colonies that they began to resent the interference which the system involved and to aspire to self-government. English colonial history has passed through three clearly defined periods. During the first the colonies were regarded as political and commercial necessities. Every unoccupied island was appropriated and promptly organized into a colony. The policy was satirized by Disraeli in his novel Popanilla. According to the story a tiny speck upon the sea originally thought to be a porpoise proved, upon closer investigation, to be a rock and it was immediately provided with all the paraphernalia of a civ 39 The credit for this policy belongs to Gibbon Wakefield and Lord Howick, afterward Lord Grey. Its central idea was the sale of the Crown lands and the use of the money thus obtained to assist the emigrants. Egerton, History of British Colonial Policy, p. 281 et seq.; Wakefield, View of the Art of Colonization (1849); New Edition (1914); Parl. Com., Parl. Pap. 1836. ilized government. "Upon what system," asked Popanilla, "does your government surround a small rock in the middle of the sea with fortifications and cram it full of clerks, soldiers, lawyers and priests?" "Well, your Excellency," was the reply, "I believe it is called the Colonial System." During the second period, which came in with the Victorian era, there was a disposition to regard all colonies as politically mischievous and commercially useless. England's attitude during that time resembled that of the mother of a numerous family of maturing daughters, all dear to her heart but horribly expensive. To them she was inclined to say: "Keep to yourselves, So loyal is too costly, friends, your love In plain prose, set up your own establishment as soon as possible and relieve me from the burden of your support. The Whig statesmen were inclined to accept Turgot's theory of the inevitable falling of ripe fruit. Many of them assumed that the tropical colonies particularly were a positive detriment to England and that the sooner the settlement colonies such as Canada and Australia were able to establish themselves as independent states, the better it would be for all concerned. Therefore, "all that could be done was to insure that the euthanasia of the empire should be as mild and as dignified as possible." "We must," says Sir Charles Bruce,40 "bear in mind that for decades our colonial policy had for its aim to supply the colonies with a constitutional apparatus, to educate them in political methods, and to provide them with an equipment of political leaders and departmental officials with a view to their ultimate separation as independent states."41 It would be easy to fill many pages with quotations from the speeches and letters of leading Englishmen which tend to con 40 The Broad Stone of Empire, I, p. 170. 41 This, of course, applied to Englishmen in the settlement colonies, not to the backward native people. We, in the Philippines, include the natives. firm this statement.42 The Liberalism of the period was willing to concede a very large measure of self-government to the settlement colonies and experience seemed to show that self-government meant ultimate independence. Lord John Russell in introducing his bill to provide autonomous governments for the Australian colonies declared that its object was "to train the colonies into a capacity to govern themselves." In his speech to the House of Commons43 on February 8, 1858, he said: "It is important that you should know on what it is that you will have to deliberate; if your public spirit should induce you to preserve your colonies; or if your wisdom should induce you to amend your policy, or finally, if an unhappy judgment should induce you to abandon your colonies, it is essential to know what you would preserve, or amend, or abandon.” In 1861 Sir George Cornewall Lewis, who twenty years earlier had published his well-known book on the government of dependencies, said in Parliament: "I for one can only say that I look forward without apprehension, and I may add, without regret, to the time when Canada might become an independent state." John Stuart Mill wrote: "England is sufficient to her own protection without the colonies and would be in a much 42 The historian Froude, writing in Fraser's Magazine for January, 1870, said: "It is even argued that our colonies are a burden to us and that the sooner they are cut adrift from us the better. They are, or have been, demonstrably loyal. They are proud of their origin, conscious of the value to themselves of being a part of the Empire and willing and eager to find a home for every industrious family that we can spare. Whether the colonies themselves remain under our flag or proclaim their independence, or attach themselves to some other power, is a matter which concerns themselves, and to us of profound indifference." See also Froude's article in Fraser's for August, 1870; "How Not to Retain Colonies," by Lord Chancellor Norton, Nineteenth Century, July, 1879; Robinson, The Colonies and the Century, Appendix (1871). As to the methods of the Colonial Office, see Leslie Stephen's Life of F. J. Stephen, p. 443; Bruce's The Broad Stone of Empire, I, Chaps. VI, VII. 43 Spencer Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell, II, p. 103. Vide Stanhope's History of England, VI, p. 143. On February 7, 1850, John Bright made the following entry in his diary: "Colonial policy explained by Lord John Russell in a long speech. Very important. Colonies at the Cape and in Australia to have legislative chambers and to have liberal self-government. Great agreement in the House on the subject. Marvelous absence of prejudice when the objects are ten thousand miles away. Should like to move that the Bill be extended to Great Britain and Ireland." Trevelyan, Life of John Bright, p. 176. stronger as well as more dignified position if separated from them than when reduced to be a single member of an American, African or Australian Confederation. Over and above the commerce which she might equally enjoy after separation, England derives little advantage, except in prestige, from her dependencies, and the little she does derive is quite outweighed by the expense they cost her and the dissemination they necessitate of her naval and military forces, which, in case of war, or any real apprehension of it, requires to be double or treble what would be needed for the defense of the country alone.”44 Lord Morley says that in his views of colonial policy Mr. Gladstone "was in substantial accord with the radicals of the school of Cobden, Hume and Molesworth. He does not seem to have joined a reforming association founded by these eminent men among others in 1850, but its principles coincided with his own-local independence, an end of rule from Downing Street, the relief of the mother country from the whole expense of the local government of the colonies, save for defense from aggression from a foreign power. In a speech at Chester in 1855 Gladstone said: "Govern them upon a principle of freedom. Defend them against aggression from without. Regulate their foreign relations. These things belong to the colonial connection. But of the duration of that connection let them be the judges, and I predict that if you leave them the freedom of judgment it is hard to say when the day will come when they will wish to separate from the great name of England."48 Statesmen were greatly impressed by the dangers of war originating in connection with colonial questions. It was generally believed that the United States had designs on Canada and that the Trent affair in 1861 was a deliberate attempt to involve the 44 To the contrary, the Great War has shown that England's reserve strength is in her great colonies. 45 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, p. 361. "He had from his earliest parliamentary days regarded our colonial connection as one of duty rather than one of advantage." Ibid., p. 359. 46 Ibid., p. 363. 47 country in war. About this time the Duke of Newcastle, the colonial secretary, wrote that "he should see a dissolution of the bond between the mother country and Canada with the greatest pleasure." Sir Henry Taylor, who for many years was an official in the Colonial Office, in an official Minute addressed to the duke, said: "As to the American provinces, I have long held, and have often expressed the opinion that they are a sort of damnosa hereditas, and when your Grace and the Prince of Wales were employing yourselves so successfully in conciliating the colonists, I thought that you were drawing closer ties which might better be slackened if there were any chance of their slipping away altogether. I think that a policy which has regard to a not very far-off future should prepare facilities and propensities for separation; . I should desire to throw the current military expenditure upon the colonists, as tending, by connecting self-protection with self-government, to detach the colonies and promote their independence and segregation at an earlier day, and thereby to withdraw this country in time from great contingent dangers. If there be any motives which should plead for a prolonged connection, it appears to me that they are of a cosmopolitan and philanthropic nature, and not such as grow out of the interests of this country, though there may be no doubt some minor English interests which are the better for the connection. There are national obligations also to be regarded, and some self-sacrifice is required of this country for a time. All that I would advocate is a preparatory policy, loosening obligations, and treating the repudiation by the colonists of legislative and executive dependence as naturally carrying with it some modification of the absolute right to be protected. As to prestige, I think it belongs to real power, and not to a merely apparent dominion by which real power is impaired." In fact nearly every responsible statesman of the period at some time used language which, standing alone, would mark him as an advocate of what is now known as an anti-imperialistic policy, 47 See Bruce, The Broad Stone of Empire, I, pp. 109-111. |