British colonialism

“ England, by these defences, would seem to say to the colonists—"Look there, my lads, and see the emblems of your protection, and of British rule in America for ever." By her legislation and free trade policy, she has unequivocally told them, "that she must buy her bread where she pleases; and they may find a government where they please." With one hand she has taken her colonies by the shoulder, and told them they must behave themselves: with the other, she has shaken hands with them, and told them they may kick up their heels as they please for all she cares. ”

“ When Great Britain lost her American colonies by reason of her misgovernment and oppression of them, it was a lesson which her people never forgot. From that day, the colonial policy of the British government was altered, and the spirit of liberality and generosity began to dominate. To-day, every colony of Great Britain that enjoys representative government—Canada, Australia, Cape Colony and many others, owes to the United States the liberty which Great Britain grants. ”

“ Therefore it is so interesting to watch this gradual expansion of the national idea of empire based entirely, instinctively, and rightly on the colonies we were founding. The whole “earth hunger” of Great Britain, if viewed in its natural light, is the opening of new lands for trade, the extension of colonial empire by true colonists, men who mean to make the new realm their permanent home, and the preserving intact, with a good series of supply stations along these unmarked ways, the roads that unite Great Britain with her colonial children. ”

“ The British authorities appeared at that time not to fully realize that that movement was rife with future dangers and complications to their own colonial interests, that it meant the creation of a nucleus of a people openly averse to the English, and who would independently carry out practices in near proximity, especially in dealing with aborigines, which would seriously compromise them and become a standing menace against peaceful expansion and civilization. ”

“ In those parts of the world which have been settled and not merely conquered by Europeans, and which are still British possessions, in British North America, Australasia, and South Africa, there has been on the whole parity of progress. No one of the three groups of colonies has in wealth and population wholly out-distanced the others. This fact has unquestionably made for strength and permanence in the British Empire, and it is equally beyond question that the spread of colonization within the Empire would have been wanting, had Great Britain retained her old North American colonies. ”

“ Were a Power like Germany to use force to conquer Colonies, she would find out that they were not amenable to force, and that the only working policy was to let them do exactly as they did before she conquered them, and to allow them, if they chose—and many of the British Colonies do so choose—to treat the Mother Country absolutely as a foreign country. ”

“ Anyone who knows English colonies knows that the British Government, wherever it has been possible to do so politically, that is, in all her colonies which are already properly organised and firmly established as British, has always met in a most generous and sympathetic way German, and indeed any foreign, trade or other enterprises. ”

“ If the colonies, in truth, are to be made, or to be kept British, in anything else than in name—if even in name they can long be kept so—it must be by the infusion of the essential elements of British character and British principle into them, by means of British legislation. ”

“ It is to be hoped that the present awakening on the subject of past failures of our government to enforce respect for its own principles may be a warning to all concerned against any transgression of those principles.
Continental friends with whom I have conversed on the subject of the British Colonies have sometimes appeared to me to leave out of account some considerations special to the subject. They regard British Colonization as having been accomplished by a series of acts of aggression, solely inspired by the love of conquest and desire for increased territory. ”

“ Men cannot forbear a smile at the Despatches and Government Orders of this period of colonial history, and the care and trouble of officialdom with a very few hundreds of Aborigines, having miserable weapons, while controlling a colony of many thousands of Europeans, and possessed of a large executive power in British soldiers and well-armed constables. ”

“ How to administer a new domain with equity and sound judgement; how to give to new subjects, acquired by conquest, the privileges enjoyed by the old colonies; how to reconcile the claims of the old colonies, whose inland borders had never been demarcated, with the undoubted rights of native races; how to promote trade and settlement without depriving the Indians of their heritage;—such were the problems which the British Government was called upon to face and if possible to solve. ”

“ The basis of modern colonial success, was, of course, in the fibre of the British race; but for the resistlessness of British colonial enterprise much was due to flagrant faults in Britain’s domestic policy.
“We are land animals—we live on, and from the land, and Britain had but 124,000 square miles of dirt. ‘Room’ was scarce, so people had a ‘far-away look.’ But worse, a very few in the Motherland ‘owned’ most all this meagre surface, so people saw opportunity only in a change—for a deep love of liberty forced the evils of monopoly upon their attention. ”

“ With inherent instinct, the British Government recognizes that the real asset of the colony is the indigenous inhabitant, whose material and moral progress is not only the first, but the truest interest of the State. ”

“ The English colonial system was the most difficult to deal with, since it was not only the most extensive, the most valuable, and the English colonies among the nearest to the United States, but its complications and inconsistencies were the most elaborate and perplexing, while to the British nation there was no absurdity in the whole mass that was not twisted deeply about some strong moneyed interest and that was not sanctified by age and English blood. ”

“ He is perhaps not far wrong in thinking that I have long believed that the future of the colonies and the future of this country were interdependent, and that this was a creative time, that this was the opportunity which, once let slip, might never recur, for bringing together all the people who are under the British flag, and for consolidating them into a great self-sustaining and self-protecting Empire whose future will be worthy of the traditions of the race. ”

“ A continuation of the same liberties that have been enjoyed by the colonists since the Revolution, and the same moderation of government exercised towards them will bind them in perpetual lawful and willing subjection, obedience, and love to Great Britain she and her colonies will both prosper and flourish. The monarchy will remain in sound health and full vigor at that blessed period when the proud arbitrary tyrants of the continent shall either unite in the deliverance of the human race or resign their crowns. ”

“ I trust that the British North American Colonies will, in reply to the above remark, send forth such a voice of attachment to their mother country that will encourage her people at home and embolden them to come forward in aid of great colonial measures, resulting as they must do in universal benefit to the empire. ”

“ British Government. By a new homestead law, embodying liberal inducements, a vast army of colonists from all over the British dominions were transported to Central Africa. Thousands upon thousands of persons from the congested districts of London, Glasgow, Liverpool and other large cities, were persuaded to leave their limited surroundings and uncongenial atmosphere, and go to the promising new land, teeming with boundless opportunities. ”

“ They even addressed the people of Great Britain, as subjects of the same empire, as men possessing common sympathies and common interests; yet they added that "they would not be 'hewers of wood and drawers of water' to any nation in the world." Had all the colonists been Englishmen or descendants of Englishmen no more could have been expected. When we recollect that they had been gathered from many nations and different climes, their subserviency to the interests of the British empire is remarkable. The colonists even appealed to their fellow-colonists in Canada for aid and sympathy. ”

“ Civilization went on apace, and with it the moral improvement of the aborigines, paving the way as well for the spread of Christianity. All this was accompanied with an immense and ever-advancing expansion of trade with England and the recognition of British prestige as a successful colonizing power. ”

“ The subjects of a free and happy constitution of government have a thousand advantages to colonize above those who live under despotic princes. We see how the British colonies on the continent have outgrown those of the French notwithstanding they have ever engaged the savages to keep us back. Their advantages over us in the West Indies are, among other causes perhaps, partly owing to these: (1) A capital neglect in former reigns in suffering them to have a firm possession of so many valuable islands that we had a better title to than they. ”

“ If I were to define the modern colonists, I should say they are the noble discoverers and settlers of a new world, from whence as from an endless source, wealth and plenty, the means of power, grandeur, and glory, in a degree unknown to the hungry chiefs of former ages, have been pouring into Europe for 300 years past in return for which those colonists have received from the several states of Europe, except from Great Britain only since the Revolution, nothing but ill-usage, slavery, and chains, as fast as the riches of their own earning could furnish the means of forging them. ”

“ It was not policy, it was not system, which gave North America to the English rather than to the French, and yet there was a certain gain even from the utter absence of both policy and system. Natural forces had more play on the English side than on the French, and in a sense it might be said of the English colonies that their strength was to sit still. ”

“ The two chief obstacles to imperial unity, so runs a saying, are the bumptious colonial and the supercilious Englishman. I readily grant the latter, but is the first fairly described? A colonist is naturally prone to self-assertion in certain walks of life. If he creates an industry alone and from the start in the teeth of hardships, having had to begin from the very beginning, he is apt to lose perspective and unduly magnify his work. If he owns a bakery, it is the finest in the world, at any rate in the British Empire. ”

“ We all think ourselves happy under Great Britain. We love, esteem, and reverence our mother country, and adore our King. And could the choice of independency be offered the colonies or subjection to Great Britain upon any terms above absolute slavery, I am convinced they would accept the latter. The ministry in all future generations may rely on it that British America will never prove undutiful till driven to it as the last fatal resort against ministerial oppression, which will make the wisest mad, and the weakest strong. ”

“ For the royal colonial authorities had not been able to cope with their foes. [2]
[Pg 2] But there was always the reserve power of Great Britain to defend her possessions. If only the home Government would send an army of British veterans, the colonists felt that, as a matter of course, the French and Indians would be routed, the immigrants made safe, and the way cleared for their ever-swelling thousands to take up and people the lands beyond the Alleghanies. ”

“ They are not prepared to lose our West India colonies, which are believed to contribute largely to the prosperity and strength of the kingdom; nor are they at all disposed to inflict injustice upon their fellow-subjects, knowing well, that whatever odium may now attach to the colonial proprietor, [83] the charge of having countenanced slavery is one which he shares with the whole British nation. ”

“ In new fields of colonization, on the other hand, wars are not artificial; they are natural, and not only natural but sometimes absolutely necessary to future happiness and welfare. Just as Europe was herself once in the melting-pot, so the lands which Europeans have settled and are settling, if they are to be the homes of strong peoples in days to come, must, when rival races are planted there, be the scenes of armed strife.
Colonial wars which end where they began, with indecisive treaties tending to further bloodshed, may well be the subject of national sorrow and regret ”

“ I have no doubt that we are answerable for sins of commission as well as for sins of omission; but, after all is said, this remains—that we alone among the nations of the earth have been able to establish and to maintain colonies under different conditions in all parts of the world, that we have maintained them to their own advantage and to ours, and that we have secured not only the loyal attachment of all British subjects, but the general good will of the races, whether they be native or whether they be European,295 that have thus come under the British flag. ”

“ They are full of benignity to Africa; not "by purchase of territory"—or "commercial speculation"—or "colonial settlement"—but by means of light and law! Not a word is said to disparage the poor settlers, in England, or to point out Africa to them, as the only refuge from British insanity, cruelty and pride.
The exclusive object of 'the American Colonization Society, "is to promote and execute a plan for colonizing (with their consent) the free people of color, residing in our country, in Africa, or such other place as Congress shall deem most expedient. ”