Colonial period

“ 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. ”

“ It was a period of growth, not simply in the direction of a vast material prosperity and a rapidly increasing population, but in national sentiment, which made itself felt everywhere. Wherever we turn during those years, we discover a steady decline of the colonial influence. ”

“ It must ever be borne in mind that the distinguishing feature of the situation in this country during the colonial period was a superabundance of fertile soil, rich in a variety of natural resources, and a scarcity of men. That is, the ratio between men and land was low. Hence there was a great demand for settlers, and newcomers were believed to be, and were, an asset to the community. A certain degree of rivalry and jealousy between the colonies, leading them to covet a rapid increase in population, contributed to this sentiment. ”

“ On the eve of the great Revolution, France possessed, as I have said, the finest colony in the world. Her historians are never weary of enumerating the amount of its products, the great trade, the warehouses full of sugar, cotton, coffee, indigo, and cocoa; its plains covered with splendid estates, its hill-sides dotted with noble houses; a white population, rich, refined, enjoying life as only a luxurious colonial society can enjoy it ”

“ To-day as the Colonies send their sons in their thousands to uphold the Motherland in her fight for Justice and Freedom, we know that our colonial attitude has been more than justified, and England is indeed proud of her Dominions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A Crown colony where the Government has it all its own way must be the paradise of officials, and the high sense of honor and the righteous esprit de corps which characterize our civil servants in the Far East, and a conscientious sense of responsibilities for the good government and well-being of the heterogeneous populations over which they rule, seem as good a check as the general run of colonial parliaments. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is unfortunate that the colonial back country appealed so long to historians solely in connection with the colonial wars, for the development of its society, its institutions and mental attitude all need study. ”

“ We augur well of this Imperial arrangement, not merely because it forms a fitting acknowledgment of colonial enterprise, but because we may venture to see in it the beginning of a new policy, by which the Home Government frees itself, once for all, from the imaginary, or, at any rate, to it, the needless costs and difficulties of founding new colonies. Colonies already established and prosperous may be left to perform this duty, and they may be so left all the more readily when, as in this case, they are prompt to take the duty in hand, with all its outlay and trouble. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They were a primitive people, farming, hunting, reading the Bible, pious, sturdy, and independent; and the colonial Government was by no means willing to see them leaving the fields and farms that they had colonised, in order to found fresh states outside the boundaries of the newly acquired territory. ”

“ Colonial questions, such as in times of profound peace and goodwill, and after generations of experience, are yet almost insoluble, confronted him, without precedent, without guidance, in their most uncompromising form. He faced them, and through all the mire and mud in which England and English civilians and soldiers and sailors wallowed in these miserable years, he carried one name at any rate which stood for dignity, uprightness, and firm prescient statesmanship. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every colonist had a right to inhabit, if he pleased, in any other colony, and as a British subject he was capable of inheriting lands by descent in every other colony. The commercial intercourse of the colonies too was regulated by the general laws of the British empire, and could not be restrained or obstructed by colonial legislation. ”

“ A colonial policy means that we shall send to the Philippine islands a few traders, a few taskmasters, and a few office holders, and an army large enough to support the authority of a small fraction of the people while they rule the natives. ”

“ In the Colonies, as everywhere else in this world, the vital point is not who decides, but what is decided on! That measures tending really to the best advantage temporal and spiritual of the Colony be adopted, and strenuously put in execution; there lies the grand interest of every good citizen British and Colonial. Such measures, whosoever have originated and prescribed them, will gradually be sanctioned by all men and gods; and clamors of every kind in reference to them may safely to a great extent be neglected, as clamorous merely, and sure to be transient. ”

“ The third cause of the world’s commercial progress during the past century has been colonial expansion. Germany, France, and other countries, influenced by the great success of the United Kingdom, have established colonies in different parts of the world, and assumed control over uncivilized peoples, until there are now 125 colonies, protectorates, and dependencies. ”

“ Rival Colonial Empires.—Some time after the establishment of the German Empire, her rapidly growing wealth, population, and trade led her to regret the opportunities for colonial expansion that she had missed. She cast jealous eyes upon the vast colonial possessions of other nations. She also took what was left over,—several large regions of Africa, a port in China, a few [Pg 54] islands in the Pacific,—not nearly enough to satisfy her ambitions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Cape of Good Hope alone, of all the British colonies, was a source of public anxiety during the year 1851. India, so often the field of conflict, triumph, and disaster, afforded comparatively few incidents of great public interest suited to the records of a general history. Peace, loyalty, material development, and prosperity characterised the colonial chronicle of the year. ”

“ And with such an understanding as this, and with all education perpetually going on in colonial legislatures, weaning the feelings and separating the interests of the colonies from the mother country, how can it be expected that that interest in England necessary to all true loyalty, and that knowledge and appreciation of her institutions necessary to all enlightened or patriotic attachment, can take root, or subsist for any length of time in the colonies? ”

“ In the same way, we should expect to see a greatly altered relation between Great251 Britain and her colonies. Three-quarters of a million of colonial defenders constitute a contribution that demands reward. ”

“ For a nation to plant out large bodies of colonists on comparatively unoccupied lands, as in Africa or Australia or Canada, in a deliberate and organized fashion, with every facility towards co-operation and success, and yet on the principle of leaving, each colonial unit plenty of freedom and autonomy, would not be a very difficult task, nor a very expensive one, considering the end in view. ”

“ The social and economic condition of the people is described, and attention is paid to the political characteristics of the several colonies both in the conduct of their local affairs and in their relations with each other and the mother-country. It is shown that the causes of the Revolution were deep-seated in colonial history. Attention is also called to the fact, generally overlooked, that the thirteen mainland colonies which revolted in 1776 were not all of the English colonial establishments in America. ”

“ It is a matter of most interesting reflection that after the nations of the Old World, from which we took our being, had sought for many years to gain wealth and strength and profit by the enforcement of a narrow and mistaken colonial policy, the revolt of the colonies of the New World brought to the mother nations infinitely greater blessings even than they were seeking. ”

“ Between them and the inhabitants of the Colonies we see a great distinction. There may be in this body individuals infected with the worst vices of the colonial character. But there are also among them many gentlemen of benevolent feelings and enlarged minds, who have done much to 327alleviate the condition of their slaves, and who would willingly see the meliorating measures which his Majesty’s ministers have suggested, adopted by the West Indian legislators. They have scarcely any thing in common with the Colonists, or with the scribblers whom the Colonists feed and clothe. ”

“ I am extremely obliged to the gentleman for his explanation. Entertaining great respect for his talents, I am happy to find, upon such authority, the charge is neither applicable nor intended. The colonial system has been always regarded as essential to all the vital interests of Great Britain. Every relaxation of that system has excited murmurs and great discontent in the mother country, and yet they have been constantly produced by the wants of the colonies. Would they have been permitted in favor of the United States, could those wants be supplied from any other quarter? ”

“ For though it may be true that the practice of defending the Colonies with the troops and at the cost of the mother-country was an innovation upon the earlier Colonial system, introduced at the time of the great war, it is not the less certain that to the generation of colonists that had grown up since that time the abandonment of it had all the effect of novelty. ”

“ Of necessity, therefore, colonial interests, from the standpoint of the colonists, were bound to be in part neglected by England, and in part misunderstood, while they served, to a far greater extent than was possible with those of any class or body at home, as the hunting-ground of rival cliques of self-interested individuals or groups. ”

“ Although some of the nations, notably England and France, were able to block out empires so located, as to their parts, as apparently to fulfil the requirements, no such perfect adjustment of colonial production could ever be reached as to fit the needs of the theory; while its logic, seemingly so perfect, left out of account the fact that the colonists were human beings, who would surely develop their own local interests, troubles, and aspirations, and not insensible parts of a great machine. ”