Inland Empire

“ How liberal a construction has been given to the distinction between imperial and colonial questions is shown by the fact that the whole of the unappropriated lands in the regions behind our American and Australian colonies have been given up to the uncontrolled disposal of the colonial communities, though they might, without injustice, have been kept in the hands of the imperial government, to be administered for the greatest advantage of future emigrants from all parts of the empire. ”

“ Great Britain and Ireland alone do not constitute the Empire. India, Australia, Canada, the Cape, and shoals of other colonies in every quarter of the globe, all help to build it up, and for its defence we must have an Imperial Army constructed to fit it. ”

“ While it is obvious that Imperial Federation of the British Empire would cover many of the defects in our relationship with the colonies, it is equally apparent that it is open to the fatal objection of merely making us a more formidable factor in the field of international anarchy. ”

“ With the Colonies so loyal and so willing to assist Great Britain in time of trouble and danger, how was it that in a decade the Empire was shattered and the major portion of the Colonies were busy building up a nation of their own? ”

“ Unfortunately the profoundly different policy adopted on these matters in England and her colonies has made such a Union almost impracticable, and it is quite possible for the English colonies to be united by closer commercial ties with foreign countries than with the mother-country. The question of the common defence of the Empire and the question of the representation of the colonies in Imperial politics are also questions of great difficulty and of pressing importance. ”

“ Union would satisfy the most extended aspiration of the colonists, for through it they could march out of their petty colonial existence to the status of a nation, "in perpetual alliance with the Empire, under which it had its rise and growth." ”

“ The policy pursued by the British government towards the North American provinces alienated the affections of the people from the mother-country, and the idea of these extensive colonies becoming a great and independent empire, having gained possession of many minds, the Americans became impatient of their condition. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In conversation with many of them afterwards it was interesting to hear the sons of settlers referring to the England that they had never seen, as "home." That night I realized as never before,—not even amid the agony and sacrifice of the Somme or the Ancre in France,—one reason why the British Empire is great and why, despite all muddling, it carries on. It lies in the feeling of imperial kinship far out at the frontiers of civilization. The colonial is in many respects a more devoted loyalist than the man at home. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The success of France was due largely to her policy of centralization combined of course with the genial character of the French fur trader and the influence of the missionary. The English, on the contrary, had managed their relations with the Indians through the agency of the different colonies, without a semblance of union or co-operation: each colony competed for the lion's share of the trade, a policy which resulted disastrously to the peace of the empire. ”

“ In no case would those at the head of the imperial government, aside from selfish motives, of which there were plenty, have thought it the part of either wisdom or justice to uphold the citizens of any one colony in a course that seemed to run counter to the interests of the Empire as a whole. ”

“ Let it be known that England considers only her immediate interests and will not exert herself, and the other colonies will know what they have to count upon, and the British Empire will dwindle down before long into a single insignificant island in the North Sea. ”

“ On the other hand, there are the strongest reasons for thinking that the separation of even one of the great colonies might produce for the colony itself, for the United Kingdom, and for the Empire at large, a fatal flaw in the capacity for defending interests which are vital to the general prosperity and to the greatness of the nation. ”

“ By this great achievement, the whole extent of North America, from Nova Scotia to the Floridas, was rendered one entire dependency upon the British crown. But mark the consequence: the hitherto-scattered colonies being thus consolidated, and having no rival colonies to check or keep them in awe, waxed great and powerful, and finally becoming too strong for the mother country, were enabled to shake off its bonds, and by a glorious revolution became an independent empire. ”

“ The modern policy of deference to local sentiment and of finding her own advantage in the independent prosperity of the colony, has bound continents, islands, races, religions, to the English empire, and brought from them wealth to England, as the old rule of force never did. ”

“ Within the last few years new States have been admitted into the Union which, in themselves, form a magnificent empire. We allude to the great Northwestern Territories which have become States within the last decade, and which have added so much luster to the escutcheon of our native land. ”

“ The citizen of the United Kingdom has often been compelled to regard the colonies as great dependencies which increased his responsibilities and multiplied his difficulties without returning to the mother-country, under their present organization, strength in men or resources, or even in exclusive commercial advantage. Every new colony or colonial interest was to him something new to defend, and augmented the burden of Empire. ”

“ Neither the French nor the Germans have established great colonies like the English, nor undertaken the administration of a huge Eastern Empire, and have, therefore, not shown what attitude they would adopt under such circumstances. ”

“ When the territory taken possession of was thinly occupied by wandering tribes, as in North America, or by mere savages, as in Australia, we have been able to gain an easy settlement without the sacrifice of many lives. Some countries have come to us as the fruit of conquest, examples of which we have in India, Canada, and Cape Colony. And certain territories we have acquired by purchase or by friendly arrangement with the native chiefs, as in the case of New Zealand and the Straits Settlements. ”

“ In considering the important and somewhat intricate subject of policy on the North-Western frontier of our Indian Empire it will be desirable, in the first place, to give a concise history of the events which have guided our action, and which for many years past have exercised a predominating influence in that part of our Eastern dominion. ”

“ These colonies have now been transformed into eight independent nations, extending to our very borders, seven of them Republics like ourselves, with whom we have an immensely growing commercial and must have, and have already, important political connections, with reference to whom our situation is neither distant nor detached, whose political principles and systems of government, congenial with our own, must and will have an action and counteraction upon us and ours to which we cannot be indifferent if we would. ”

“ Then, again, the inhabitants of the Empire have but dimly the feeling that they belong to a single political organization. The native of India sees close at hand the great officialdom by which he is directly governed. The free Colonies have their own legislation, ministers, parties, and questions. ”

“ Put all these things together, and you will see that the colonies have a very real and genuine interest in the shield which their Imperial connection throws over them, and they have a ground for joining with us in making the defence of the Empire effective, a ground which is not purely sentimental, which does not rest merely upon their attachment to this country, but which is based on the most solid and reasonable foundations of self-interest and security. ”

“ Independently of the communities formed by British emigration, were a good system of colonial government adopted, islands and inferior states would find it their interest to unite with us, and the whole of the multitudinous island-groups scattered over the vast Pacific, in number as the constellations of the heavens, might become incorporated as part of the British empire. ”

“ The original thirteen States have expanded into forty-five, embracing the vast area between the two oceans and extending from the British possessions to the Gulf of Mexico. To them has now been added our colonial territory, so vast in extent that, like the British Empire, the sun never sets on our dominions. Where a hundred years ago were only a few scattered villages and towns, imperial cities now raise their heads. Thousands of square miles of forest and solitude have given place to cultivated farms, to factories, and workshops that hum with the wheels of industry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the Colonies will undertake the duties as well as the privileges of British citizens, we may go on together as members of one great Empire, each part habitually maintaining itself, and the whole ready to rally round any threatened point. ”

“ This paper proposes to deal with the machinery of imperial control as evidenced in organization, personnel, methods, and spirit.
When the home government first assumed the cares and functions of governing a wide empire there was no thought of separating matters chiefly external in character from those wholly or mainly domestic. Traditionally the outlying portions of the realm, "the Scotch borders, the Welsh marches, the Channel Islands, and Ireland were in a special sense" the care of the Privy Council. By custom, therefore, colonies across the sea became subject to its particular direction. ”

“ In a fight with a military mania the leadership of a distinguished soldier is invaluable.
Let me suggest to you, as an argument which may have weight with some, that Imperialism will be the death of Continental Union, which otherwise, as I firmly believe, is within the reach of American statesmanship. No Canadian, however desirous of incorporation with the American Commonwealth, would desire incorporation with a Negro and Malay Empire. ”

“ For all our Crown Colonies adjacent to countries who can compete with them in trade matters are paupers, or their efficiency and value to the Empire is in the sphere of military and naval affairs, as posts and coaling stations. ”

“ The colonies were also afforded protection against the aggression of foreign nations. No colony could possibly have remained independent. The choice was not between the English Empire and independence, but between being subject to Protestant and, as the world went then, liberal England, or to Catholic France or Spain. ”

“ England loses Canada, India, Oregon and Ireland, which latter becomes a Republic; the United States, rejoined, absorbs Canada, Mexico and all British America—her Black races found an empire which will extend from her southern borders to Brazil, under the rule of a series of Presidents; China, Christianized by the Taepings, becomes a first-class power in the East, blotting out Japan and a score of lesser kingdoms; while India and Australia become respectively an Empire and a Republic ”

“ In a speech at the Savoy, in London, in 1917, the Premier of Newfoundland, England’s oldest colony, gave notable expression to such a return to the policy of an earlier day. “This Empire,” he said, “cannot live as a political empire unless it is developed as an economic empire. All the raw material produced in the Empire should be manufactured in the Empire before it leaves the Empire, and nothing should be admitted into the Empire that could be produced in the Empire.” ”

“ The British empire was to become a unit, closely knit by economic bonds and presenting to all other nations a hostile front. With this in view Parliament passed a series of Navigation Acts, under which the trade of the colonies was regulated for many years to come. ”

“ When our economic system has so developed that it will be impossible, in most cases, for an outside Power to interfere with English interests without at the same time interfering with Colonial or Indian interests, then we may hope to enlist the serious and permanent attention of the Colonies in the problems of Imperial Defence. What applies to the general policy of the Foreign Office applies no less to the details of its departmental work. ”