Ramsay Muir

“ To the self-governing dominions it is a brotherhood of free nations, co-operating for the defence and diffusion of the ideas and institutions of freedom. To the ancient civilisations of India or Egypt it is a power which, in spite of all its mistakes and limitations, has brought peace instead of turmoil, law instead of arbitrary might, unity instead of chaos, justice instead of oppression, freedom for the development of the capacities and characteristic ideas of their peoples, and the prospect of a steady growth of national unity and political responsibility. ”

“ Clearly, so far as concerns the great dominions, the British Empire is far from being a military domination imposed by force. It is a voluntary partnership or brotherhood of free peoples, a Commonwealth of Nations. It is a wonderful achievement in the combination of unity and freedom, an experiment in the unforced co-operation of free States such as has never before been seen in human history. ”

“ Britain was the only one of the greater European States which possessed self-governing institutions. She has been, in truth (this is not a boast, but a mere statement of indisputable historical fact) , the inventor of political liberty on the scale of the great nation-state, as Greece was the inventor of political liberty on the scale of the little city-state. And wherever free institutions exist to-day, they have been derived from Britain, either by inheritance, as in America and the self-governing British colonies, or by imitation, as in all other cases. ”

“ Thus before the great European rush for colonies began, Britain, and Britain alone, had acquired a very wide experience in the government of backward peoples, and had worked out fairly clearly defined principles for the government of such peoples. What is more, in all the regions of this type which she controlled—indeed, throughout her whole Empire, everywhere save in the self-governing Colonies—it had become the practice of Britain to throw open all her ports and markets to the trade of all nations on exactly the same terms as to her own merchants. ”

“ It has given a freedom of development to self-government in a variety of forms, to which there is no sort of parallel in any other empire that has ever existed. And by linking together so many diverse and contrasted peoples in a common peace it has already realised, for a quarter of the globe, the ideal of internationalism on a scale undreamt of by the most sanguine prophets of Europe. ”

“ Without it India would have been sentenced to the eternal continuance of the sterile and fruitless wars between despotic conquerors which made up her history until the British power was established. Without it the backward peoples of the earth would have stagnated for ever in the barbarism in which they have remained since the beginning. ”

“ This is the view taken by some neutrals. "Imperialism is the enemy," says one Swiss writer; "whatever form it takes, German or Russian, British or French, it is equally the foe of free government." The Germans themselves make great play with this notion. They describe the British Empire as a vast, greedy tyranny, built up by fraud. They invite us to free the oppressed millions of India before we talk hypocritically about liberty. They assert that the naval supremacy of Britain is far more dangerous to the freedom of the world than the military power of Germany could ever be. ”

“ These things do not make your government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English Constitution that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English Constitution which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the Empire, even down to the minutest member. ”

“ The South African War made Britain appear, in the eyes of most of the world, a vast, greedy, tyrannical power, which, not content with an already immense dominion, must fall upon and devour two tiny, free republics, merely because they contained gold! But the world did not appreciate the real meaning of the South African War. [1] In the British South African colonies (the Cape and Natal) the fullest equality of political rights was enjoyed by Dutch and British residents alike, and their institutions were the same as those of other British dominions. ”

“ The "imperialism" of the European nations has brought great results to the world. It has made possible that unification of the political and economic interests of the whole globe which we see beginning to-day. It is one of the fine aspects of this grim and horrible war that it affects the interests of the whole world, and that the whole world knows this.
The giant's part which has been played by Britain in the conquest of the world by Western civilisation, and the peculiar character of her work, have been due to two things—British institutions and the British Navy. ”

“ For national unity cannot be created by merely asserting that it exists. It will not be fully established until the deeply-rooted differences which are only beginning to be obliterated have largely ceased to determine men's thoughts and actions, as they still do in India. And self-government, on the amplest scale of modern democracy, cannot be achieved until the traditionally ascendant classes, and the traditionally subject classes, have alike learned to recognise the equality of their rights before the law. ”

“ India was the most deeply divided land in the world—divided not only by differences of race and tongue (there are 38 distinct languages in India to-day, and some of them differ more widely than Russian and Spanish) , but divided still more deeply by bitter conflicts of creed and, most sharply of all, by the unchanging, impermeable barriers of caste, which had arisen in the first instance from the determination of conquering peoples to keep themselves free from any intermixture with their subjects. ”

“ There are discontents in India; there is much sharp criticism of the methods of the supreme Government, especially—almost exclusively—among the new class of western-educated men. But the criticism has not gone so far, except with a very few fanatics, as to assert that British rule is itself unjust or evil; on the contrary, all the best opinion in India desires to see that great land steadily progressing towards greater national unity and greater political liberty under the guidance and protection of British rule ”

“ The life-blood of this Empire is trade; its supreme interest is manifestly peace. The conception of the meaning of empire which is indicated by its history is not a conception of dominion for dominion's sake, imposed by brute force. ”

“ It is so once more to-day, when the German peril menaces the liberty of nations. During each of these desperate crises the British Navy has seemed to neutrals to be interfering unduly with their trade, in so far as their trade helped the enemy. In this connection it is worth noting that it has been for two centuries the invariable rule of the British Navy that in no circumstances must a neutral vessel ever be sunk, and in no circumstances must the lives of non-combatants be sacrificed. ”

“ But to all alike, to one-quarter of the inhabitants of the globe, it has meant the establishment of the Reign of Law and of the Liberty which can only exist under its shelter. In some degree, though imperfectly as yet, it has realised within its own body all the three great political ideals of the modern world. It has fostered the rise of a sense of nationality in the young communities of the new lands, and in the old and once decaying civilisations of the most ancient historic countries. ”

“ If the new colonising Powers had been prepared to follow the policy of the open door, to which Britain had so long adhered, there would have been no reason to fear their annexations; rather there would have been every reason to rejoice that other nations were taking their share in the work of giving civilised government to these regions. But since their object was monopoly and exclusion, it was inevitable that Britain should undertake great new responsibilities. ”

“ If Britain should be drawn into war, the great dominions are also technically at war, and if Britain were to pursue a warlike or aggressive policy, this would soon alienate some or all of these young democracies. But it is only by their own free will that they take any part in a war in which Britain is involved, and the Mother Country has neither the right nor the power to demand military aid from them. ”

“ The second is the fact that every port and every market in this vast empire, so far as they are under the control of the central government, are thrown open as freely to the citizens of all other States as to its own.
Finally, in this empire there has never been any attempt to impose a uniformity of method or even of laws upon the infinitely various societies which it embraces; it not only permits, it cultivates and admires, varieties of type, and to the maximum practical degree it believes in self-government. ”

“ We must content ourselves with a very brief analysis of the character and results of the British dominion.
What, then, has the establishment of British power meant in India? Until the British power was established, India had in all her long history never known political unity. She had seen nothing but an almost uninterrupted succession of wars, an endless series of conquests and evanescent dominions. ”

“ And it is here, and practically here alone, that the British Empire comes into comparison with the recently created empires of other European states, France, Germany, Italy and Belgium; none of which possess any self-governing colonies, or any extensive lands of ancient civilisation like India, unless the French colonies of Algeria and Annam are to be regarded as falling within the latter category.
The establishment of European control over most of the backward regions of the world has been, for the most part, a very recent and a very rapid development. ”

“ The first is that men's minds are extraordinarily easily influenced by mere words. The word "Empire" suggests, to many, conquest and dominion over unwilling subjects. In so far as it does so, it begs the question. As we shall try to show, this word is really misapplied to the British realms. The character of their government and of the bond which holds them together would be much better expressed by a phrase which is now being widely used in Britain—the British Commonwealth of Nations. ”

“ Almost every form of social organisation known to man is represented in its complex and many-hued fabric. It embodies some of the most democratic communities which the world has known. It finds place for the highly organised caste system by which the teeming millions of India are held together. It preserves the simple tribal organisation of the African clans. To different elements among its subjects this empire appears in different aspects. ”

“ As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. ”

“ Naturally, Britain thought most of the need of maintaining unity; she thought it unfair that the whole burden of the common defence should fall upon her, and she committed many foolish blunders in trying to enforce her view. Equally naturally the colonists thought primarily of their own self-governing rights, which they very justly demanded should be increased rather than restricted. ”

“ If a British merchant goes to the Philippines, or to Madagascar, or to Togoland, he finds that he has to compete with his American, French, or German rival on unequal terms, because a tariff discriminates between the citizen of the ruling people and the foreign trader. But if an American, French, or German merchant goes to India, or to any British Crown Colony or protectorate, he is admitted on exactly the same terms as the Briton. ”

“ And the result was that, wherever they went, they carried self-government with them. Every colony of British settlers, from the very first, was endowed with self-governing institutions. No colony ever planted by any other nation ever obtained corresponding rights. [1] That is one of the outstanding features of British expansion. In the eighteenth century, and even in the middle of the nineteenth century, Britain herself and the young nations that had sprung from her loins were almost the only free States existing in the world. ”

“ Thus British institutions—the institutions of national self-government, which are peculiarly British in origin—have played a main part both in determining the character of the British Empire and in bringing about its wonderful expansion. The more the British Empire has grown the more freedom has been established on the face of the earth. ”

“ But when the discovery of gold and diamonds brought an immense inrush of British and other settlers, who henceforth produced nearly all the wealth of the country, this denial of equality of rights became serious, and the programme of Dutch conquest, prepared for mainly at the cost of the new settlers, began to seem dangerous. ”

“ One result of these time-worn distinctions is that through all the ages the ruling castes and races have been accustomed to expect, and the mass of humble men to offer, the most abject submission; so that British administrators have often had to complain that the chief difficulty was, not to make laws for the protection of the humble, but rather to persuade those for whose benefit they were made to take advantage of them. ”

“ For, vast though its population and resources are, they cannot be made available for war except under the impulse of a great enthusiasm simultaneously dominating all its members, like that which has led them all to share in this war; and if its directors were to undertake an aggressive and conquering policy, not only could they not count upon general support, but they would probably bring about the disruption of the Empire. ”

“ Is it not true that if these principles had been universally adopted, half the bitterness which has been due to the rivalry of the European Powers for colonial possessions would have been obviated? To-day these principles are being advocated by many earnest men as representing the only mode by which the supremacy of western civilisation throughout the world can be reconciled with the avoidance of bitter rivalry and war between the civilised states ”