Colonial dependency

“ 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. ”

“ Remember, that for modern civilisation among the Outeroos, the world is indebted to the colonial enterprise and success of Britain; but remember, too, that it is not always the ‘colonising nations,’ but the ‘colonists’ of the ‘colonising nations,’ that carry the standard of social progress to advanced grounds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We venture to say that colonial empire has been one of the greatest curses of modern Europe. What nation has it ever strengthened? What nation has it ever enriched? What have been its fruits? Wars of frequent occurrence and immense cost; fettered trade; lavish expenditure, clashing jurisdiction, corruption in government, and indigence among the people. “What have Mexico and Peru done for Spain, the Brazils for Portugal, Batavia for Holland? Or, if the experience of others is lost upon us, shall we not profit by our own? ”

“ Thus, even leaving sentiment aside, the balance of material advantage to the Colonies is great and real; while their self-government is complete, for the mother country never interferes with any matters of colonial concern, unless in the rare cases where a matter primarily local may affect the general relations and interests of the whole empire. ”

“ It is clear to Us that colonialism, defined in the classic sense, is forever finished, both in Africa and in Asia. Its last remaining vestiges are being systematically attacked and destroyed. The major powers not entirely voluntarily and not without the exertion of continuing pressure - for History knows of few instances where colonial powers have, of their own free will, relinquished control of a dependent people - have admitted that the system is out of date, and have acted to change it. ”

“ Notwithstanding all the obvious advantages of the course of policy which we have recommended—though it would at once furnish the means, as we have shown in a former paper, of obviating our external dangers and maintaining our national independence, and at the same time relieve our internal distresses and extend and consolidate our colonial dependencies—we have scarcely any hope that it will be adopted. ”

“ A vigorous colonial policy, too, will certainly improve the national prosperity if directed, on the one hand, to producing in our own colonies the raw materials which our industries derive in immense quantities from foreign countries, and so making us gradually independent of foreign countries ”

“ European colonisation being also impossible, political cohesion can be secured only by the good- will of the natives, by satisfying their interests, and gradually developing a sentiment of national solidarity amongst them. But this ideal is still far from being realised, and were France not to come to the aid of the colonial Government with men and subsidies, the situation would rapidly become perilous. ”

“ Now anybody who will look at the modern world with his eyes open will know perfectly well that this sort of expansion and progress is one to which the modern world is especially prone. In every quarter of the globe, especially in South America and Africa, there is a perpetual pressure of colonial ambition which would at any moment take advantage of this principle. ”

“ The fear of such restrictions being applied against them is to-day the main motive for a policy of colonial oversea possessions. If industrial states could be assured of the application of the open-door policy, no state would envy another its colonies. ”

“ One thing is, however, indispensable to the success of this or any other system of Colonial Government. You must renounce the habit of telling the Colonies that the Colonial is a provisional existence. You must allow them to believe that, without severing the bonds which unite them to Great Britain, they may attain the degree of perfection, and of social and political development, to which organised communities of free men have a right to aspire. ”

“ I think it may be safely said that those nations who planted their feeble colonies on these shores, from which we have spread so widely, have profited far more from the independence of the American republics than they would have profited if their unwise system of colonial government had been continued. In the establishment of these free and independent nations in this continent they have obtained a profitable outlet for their trade, employment for their commerce, food for their people, and refuge for their poor and their surplus population. ”

“ There is not as much diversity of opinion and heat of political friction in British Africa over the continuance of the colonial system, supplemented by conquest, if needful, in the African crisis of the Empire, as there is in the United States in applying to the Philippine Archipelago, the great principles of the fathers that the Republic shall grow continuously as the generations come and go. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was not reasonable, we insisted, that communities which founded great states, built great cities, and established a commercial navy larger than that of many kingdoms in Europe, and who did these things without asking assistance from the Imperial Government, should be treated as persons who could not be entrusted to regulate their own inter-colonial interests at their own discretion, and we claimed that all existing restrictions on the power of making fiscal agreements between the colonies should be removed. ”

“ Make use of their commerce, regulate their industry, tax them at your will, and spend at your caprice the wealth thus drawn from them, which costs you nothing. Take care to invest the general in charge of them with despotic power, and at the same time give him immunity from all colonial control. If the colonists protest, do not listen to them, but reply by charges of high treason and rebellion. ”

“ The bloody Indian wars, which harassed the people for a part of the first century; the restrictions on the trade of the Colonies, added to the discouragements inherently belonging to all forms of colonial government; the distance from Europe, and the small hope of immediate profit to adventurers, are among the causes which had contributed to retard the progress of population. ”

“ One would think a very obvious permanent arrangement in such a country as England, with such a limitless extent of colonial lands, would be to prepare areas for colonisation—to put up, at a cost to be repaid by the colonists, some kind of shelter—to select the colonists—and to brigade them and send them out to the land, seeing we cannot bring the land to them. ”

“ They have experienced all of the evils that can come from a colonial system administered by a trading company, and they have had a chance to learn that a colonial system, even when administered in such a way as to command the admiration of those who believe in colonialism, still falls far short of self-government. I have already said that we have treated the Filipinos better than England has treated the people of India, but that we have done so at an enormous expense to our country. ”

“ You will get nothing done in tropical Africa except under the influence of individual men; but your West African Governor, though not controlled by the Councils within the colony, is controlled by a power outside the colony, namely the Colonial Office in London. Up to our own day the Colonial Office has been, except in the details of domestic colonial affairs, a drag-chain on English development in Western Africa. ”

“ The support of the power and the maintenance of the political preponderance of Great Britain in the scale of nations, depend upon colonial possessions. To render colonies most efficient, and most advantageous for her general interests, it is indispensably necessary that these should be planted in the Tropical world, the productions of which ever have been, are, and ever will be, eagerly sought after by the civilized nations of the temperate zones. ”

“ Without entering into the question, whether the Government should reserve to itself, exclusively, the right of founding colonies on that continent, or whether it ought to encourage colonial companies, and depend on the efforts of private interest suitably directed, let us be permitted to offer some views, on the prudent and temperate course which ought to be laid down, to arrive at a satisfactory result, not only in respect to the civilization of the blacks, but even relatively to the commercial advantages which the colonist must naturally have in view. ”

“ It was England's. The colonies have been allowed by their legislatures to shake the leaves of their interests; imperial legislation has always assailed the trunk. But this is not all; colonial interests have been, unheard and unheeded, sacrificed to other interests in England. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even if Germany were to receive a share in Moroccan opportunities, might she not still seek by war to obtain the exclusive possession of the immense French colonial empire. Perhaps no arrangement for a joint exploitation of new and presumably less valuable colonies would wholly satisfy the imperialists of great European powers, so long as the old colonies are so unevenly divided. To satisfy the nations without colonies, some arrangements must also be made for a redistribution of rights in colonies already belonging to the great powers. ”

“ There is hence the strongest obligation on the government of a country like our own, with a crowded population, and unoccupied continents under its command, to build, as it were, and keep open, in concert with the colonial governments, a bridge from the mother country to those continents, by establishing the self-supporting system of colonization on such a scale, that as great an amount of emigration as the colonies can at the time accommodate, may at all times be able to take place without cost to the emigrants themselves. ”

“ For Anatole France, the colonial mania is purely economic, and he considers that Japan has done a great service to the union of races by compelling the white man to respect the yellow; he does not despair even of the black, who, he points out, are evolving in South America, growing educated and much superior to the Europeans of 2000 B.C. Of course this means “no more colonies,” which he looks upon as swindles, for “France has expended men and money so that the Congo, Cochin-China, Annam, Tonkin ... ”

“ The true reasons why the Colonial system, self-contradictory as it is in theory and unsatisfactory as it sometimes is in practice, has produced harmony between England and her dependencies, are that the colonies are far distant and are prosperous, that they feel pride in their relation to the mother-country, that whilst contributing not a penny towards meeting Imperial burdens they derive valuable and valued benefits from the connection with the Empire, and lastly that they are not in reality dependencies ”

“ The colonial system by which this whole hemisphere was bound has fallen into ruins, totally abolished by revolutions converting colonies into independent nations throughout the two American continents, excepting a portion of territory chiefly at the northern extremity of our own, and confined to the remnants of dominion retained by Great Britain over the insular archipelago, geographically the appendages of our part of the globe. With all the rest we have free trade, even with the insular colonies of all the European nations, except Great Britain. ”

“ A second possible solution would lie in arrangements whereby a union of Western European nations would undertake jointly the economic development and exploitation of the colonial and dependent areas of the African Continent. ”

“ Betwixt the relative importance in the cost, and in the profit and loss sense, of foreign and colonial trade, on which the question of the advantages or disadvantages attending the possession or retention of colonies is made exclusively to hinge, with a narrow-mindedness incapable of appreciating the other high political and social interests, the moral and religious considerations, moreover, involved—we shall now proceed with the task of arbitrating and striking the balance. ”