Imperial Government

“ There are two sides to all great questions. But whether or not we can settle with the light of modern knowledge such a point as this, I look upon the defence of imperialism in itself, in preference to constitutional government with all its imperfections, as an outrage on the whole progress of modern civilization, and on whatever remains of dignity and intelligence among the people. ”

“ I need not urge this upon you, my people, who are, I believe, deeply conscious of the benefits which have come to us from a strong and unselfish Imperial government. It is our desire that this power should be strengthened rather than weakened, and set on a broader rather than a narrower basis. ”

“ We are persisting in governing the country in direct opposition to the wishes of the people as expressed through their representatives, in refusing to recognise what is, in my opinion, the first principle of Imperial Government, viz., the right of each part of the Empire to manage its own local affairs. ”

“ At the centre, to pursue our examination, we have the nation to whose political genius the Empire owes its existence—a nation renowned, apart from its other achievements, as the parent of free government wherever it exists, and as having carried it in her own case to perhaps its highest pitch of perfection. ”

“ The more powerful Electors and Princes,Condition of States of the Empire. who wished to establish a strong government, met with the same opposition from their vassals, their cities, and even their peasants, which they themselves offered to the Emperor; their provincial Diets were torn with the same dissensions as those which disturbed the Imperial Diet. Yet here, more surely than in the Empire, the authority of the ruler was asserting itself, based upon that principle of independent territorialism which was eventually to triumph. ”

“ Great Britain, ever since she came to the conclusion that the days of the old colonial policy were passed, and agreed that we should freely govern ourselves, with ministerial responsibility, within the powers set forth in our constitutional charter, has scrupulously respected our political liberty. We have administered our own affairs at our own free will. The Imperial Government never attempted to interfere with the development of our federal politics. ”

“ The Imperial Government has from ancient times granted to the different nations under its righteous protection privileges and prerogatives for their religious liberty and the special administration of their internal affairs. ”

“ The question is not for crowned heads and imperial dynasties; not for diplomats with their balance of power, a balance that a touch may upset; but for the peoples, left entirely free to choose the modes and forms of government which they prefer. ”

“ In language of mingled firmness and courtesy he proceeded to point out how impossible the constant shiftings of the imperial policy made it for his government to establish any permanent hold on the good will of the English people. ”

“ The Imperial Government would not disarm until its enemy surrendered and swore allegiance to the monarchy and to the order of things for which the monarchy stands. And now, through the agency of war, the miracle has come to pass! Social democracy will no longer sap the dynastic and military foundations of the State ”

“ Between lies a broad and shifting area, which each may enter, but within which the Imperial authority, in so far as is warranted by the constitution, must be accorded precedence over the authority of a state. "The matters over which the states preserve control," says a great German jurist, "cannot be separated completely from those to which extends the competence of the Empire. The various powers of government are intimately related the one to another. ”

“ We, the Successor to the prosperous Throne of Our Predecessors, do humbly and solemnly swear to the Imperial Founder of Our House and to Our other Imperial Ancestors that, in pursuance of a great policy co-extensive with the Heavens and with the Earth, We shall maintain and secure from decline the ancient form of government. ”

“ Our Imperial Commissioners have reported to us that the prosperity and power of foreign nations are largely due to principles of constitutional government based on the will of the people, which assures bonds of union and sympathy between the Sovereign and his subjects. It is therefore our duty to consider by what means such a Constitution may be granted as shall retain the sovereign power in the hands of the Throne, and at the same time give effect to the wishes of the people in matters of administration. ”

“ But in another capacity it is the government of the whole empire, and provides the bond of common authority which unites all the constituent states of the empire into a single body politic. In a federal, as contrasted with an imperial constitution, there is no such predominance of one of the constituent states. The government of the whole is one in which all the parts have their allotted shares. ”

“ It involves, as I tried to point out in the Lexington paper I have referred to, the abandonment or reversal of all the fundamental principles of our government since its origin, and of the foreign policy we have heretofore pursued. This, I submit, is absolutely unnecessary. Another and substitute policy, purely American, as contradistinguished from the European or British, known as "Imperial," policy, can readily be formulated. ”

“ It showed us that we English, and all those stalwart kinsmen of ours across the Atlantic and on the far side of the Pacific—north, south, east, and west, wherever the old flag flew—were now actually as well as nominally subjects of one Government, and that that Government would for the future be composed of men chosen as their representatives by the people of every country in the Empire; men drawn [336] together under one historic roof by one firm purpose—the service and administration of a great Imperial State. ”

“ At this moment Englishmen are engaged in the earnest endeavour to prove that popular government in Great Britain is compatible with the maintenance of Imperial power and Imperial peace. What may be the issue of this effort to combine honest democracy with sane Imperialism no prophet is daring enough to foretell. Yet upon its success may well depend the fate of popular government throughout the civilized world. ”

“ To-day the words 'Empire' and 'Imperialism' fill the place in everyday speech that was once filled by 'Nation' and 'Nationality.' In the never-ending struggle of political principles authority rather than liberty seems for the moment to have the upper hand; power and dominion rather than freedom and independence are the ideas that appeal to the imagination of the masses; men's thoughts are turned outward rather than inward; the national ideal has given place to the Imperial. ”

“ These extreme views he combined with an earnest solicitude for the consolidation and defence of the empire, which rendered him a determined opponent of all tampering with the Union, and a pioneer of imperial federation. ”

“ These have never known peace and comfort and prosperity until our coming, but are learning ever more keenly to appreciate and to require those advantages. To strengthen the concrete aspirations, to fortify the bodily desires, to elevate the standard of living of those nations entrusted to us, this is, in its material aspect, the imperial office. ”

“ This ideal of a docile nation led by a triumphant emperor whose intelligence embraces everything throws considerable light on the relations of imperialism to party government and parliamentary institutions. ”

“ We are the trustees for the future of the Empire. Upon what is done or neglected in Parliament beforehand must depend sooner or later the fate of England and of the British dominions throughout the world. We are bound in this House to look beyond the bawling and the brawling of the day, and to uphold Imperial policy above the clamour of selfish or short-sighted interests. ”

“ The foundation principle of that policy will be preference—preference in every market under the flag, at home, in the Colonies, and in the dependencies alike, for those members of the Imperial State who bear its burthens, increase its resources, strengthen its defence, and whose morale and organization, whose sufficiency in numbers and efficiency in spirit, can alone perpetuate its existence. ”

“ Yet I can not but admit, however reluctantly, that there is some force in the arguments with which you support that course, based as they are upon your special and personal relation to that portion of the controversy which deals with Colonial preference. You have done more than any man, living or dead, to bring home to the citizens of the Empire the consciousness of Imperial obligation, and the interdependence between the various fragments into which the Empire is geographically divided. ”

“ I first give you, gentlemen, what I think the right principles of foreign policy.
The first thing is to foster the strength of the empire by just legislation and economy at home, thereby producing two of the great elements of national power—namely, wealth, which is a physical element, and union and contentment, which are moral elements,—and to reserve the strength of the empire, to reserve the expenditure of that strength, for great and worthy occasions abroad. Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home. ”

“ Why are these men coming? What has induced them to volunteer to take part in our battles? They are thousands of miles away. Is it not perfectly clear that they are coming because of the principles for which the Empire stands, which in their eyes are much more than power? [Hear, hear.] The Empire stands for justice, for righteousness, for good government, for mercy, for truth. ”

“ The imperial house seeks to extend its power. Those vast designs of conquests, which the sire Has gloriously begun, the son will end. This petty nation is a stumbling-block— One way or other it must be subjected. ”

“ Once more on this old earth of ours is witnessed the spectacle of a vast people stirred by one ideal impulse, prepared for all sacrifices for that ideal, prepared to face war, and the outcry of a misunderstanding or envious antagonism. Whither is this impulse to be directed? What minister or parliament is to dare the responsibility of turning this movement, this great and spontaneous movement, to this people's salvation, to this Empire's high purposes? How shall its bounds be made secure against encroachment, its own shores from coalesced foes? ”

“ In the judgment of many good observers, a dissolution of the empire, so far as the Western colonies are concerned, is inevitable, unless Great Britain, adopting the plan urged by Franklin, becomes an imperial federation, with parliaments distinct and independent, the crown the only bond of union—the crown, and not the English parliament, being the titular and actual sovereign. ”

“ The greater and necessarily prior problems of founding an assured empire and of framing the essential principles upon which it was to be regulated engrossed the thought and force of expansionists and overshadowed administration. The planting of new and the conquest of foreign colonies, the incorporation of new and the strengthening of old trading companies, the passage of the acts of trade, and the attendant wars with the Dutch are the notable events which bear witness to the emergence of England as an imperial power. ”

“ But there is a means, still more effectual than these, by which, and in general by which alone, a full equivalent can be given to a smaller community for sinking its individuality, as a substantive power among nations, in the greater individuality of a wide and powerful empire. This one indispensable, and, at the same time, sufficient expedient, which meets at once the demands of justice and the growing exigencies of policy, is to open the service of government in all its departments, and in every part of the empire, on perfectly equal terms, to the inhabitants of the colonies. ”

“ These results were achieved within fifteen years of the interference by the Colonies in federal affairs, and the foundation was laid for the powerful empire which Britain has become. Two other empires and one republic alone approach it in power, and a cordial understanding exists between them to repress war to the utmost extent possible. They constitute the police of the world. Each portion of the Emperor of Britain's possessions enjoys local government, but the federal government is irresistibly strong. ”

“ And I tremble every day lest, on the vital question of Defence, the pressure of well-meaning but ignorant idealists, or the meaner influence of vote-catching demagogues, should lead this Government or, indeed, any Government, to curtail the provisions, already none too ample, for the safety of the Empire, in order to pose as the friends of peace or as special adepts in economy. ”

“ But political unity and economic development are not in themselves sufficient to meet the needs of Imperial Defence. They form the national basis. But they will not by themselves insure that that material basis is efficiently utilized. ”

“ One conclusion, then, we may draw, that a nation in which the Imperial powers and the State powers are vested in different authorities is no less compact and powerful, as respects all national capacities, than a nation in which both classes of powers are wielded by the same functionaries ”

“ But his empire was to be more than a confederacy, it was to be an effective entity with the imperial rule supreme over all, with the imperial army a ready instrument of war in the hands of the sovereign, to compel the Universal Peace, as he called his empire, and with the king’s officers able to exercise sufficient authority for the protection, not only of the constituent parts of the empire against one another but also of the individual against the arbitrary action of the individual community. ”