Colonial settlement

“ In regard to the Colony,—which, after all, is at once the best evidence of the progress of the Parent Institution, and the surest test of its principles,—the authentic and indisputable accounts which reach us from every quarter, must be admitted as sufficient to satisfy all reasonable and candid minds, not only of the actual prosperity of the present settlements, but of the practicableness of the colonial scheme on the larger and nobler scale always anticipated, more or less, by the advocates of the cause. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Slave labour was also the economic basis of the colonies established on various West Indian islands during the first half of the seventeenth century; and this distinction between colonies used for exploitation and colonies used for settlement has led to important constitutional variations in the empire. Only those colonies in which large white communities are settled have received self-government; those in which a few whites exploit a large coloured population remain subject to the control of the home government. ”

“ Crown Colonies.There is another group of British possessions which are peculiarly under the government of the Colonial Office, and which have often reason to be dissatisfied with that Government—I mean the Crown Colonies, the most important of which are the Straits Settlements, Ceylon, the West Indian Islands, and Mauritius. In nearly every Crown Colony, the white population bears a very small proportion to the natives, and is composed mainly of merchants, bankers, a few officials, and, in the West Indies, of planters. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As he fulfils his service, so will the Empire grow in virility, or slip gradually into a congeries of nations, whose people will cry, 'I am of Canada,' 'I of South Africa, 'I of England,' as the case may be, and none will be found to make answer, 'We are all of Britain.'
But though this Imperial aspect of land settlement, often somewhat overlooked, should form the foundation of all colonization schemes, nations are made up of individuals; the good of the whole includes the good of the units, and a building does not consist of foundations. ”

“ Widely different was the case of the English colonies in North America. All these settlements started under some form of grant or charter, derived ultimately from the Crown: the Crown from time to time interfered and made a show of its supremacy; but there was no system of any sort or kind, and communities grew up, which in practice had never been governed from home but governed themselves. Most of all, the New England colonies embodied to the full the spirit of colonial independence. ”

“ In spite of the oppressive bonds of the East India Company, the young settlement, containing the noblest blood of old Europe as well as its most exalted aspirations, grew so powerfully that in 1806, when the Colony passed into the hands of England, a strong national sentiment and a spirit of liberty had already been developed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of all the Imperial problems in process of evolution—for solution cannot be named in this connection, since finality in Empire-building synchronizes with an era of deterioration—none can be reckoned of greater moment than that redistribution of population within the nation to which is given the name of settlement or colonization. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This, together with the number of convicts, who after the expiration of their sentences remain with their respective families growing up under them, has so increased the population of free settlers, that the prosperity of the settlement, as a colony, has proportionally advanced ”

“ 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. ”

“ Moreover, our general accounts do not, for the most part, adequately treat of those economic and imperial relations which are of fundamental importance; for the one outstanding fact concerning any American colony in the colonial period is that it was a dependency, and formed merely a part of a larger and more comprehensive imperial and economic organization. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 colonies carry out with them a knowledge of agriculture and of other useful arts, superior to what can grow up of its own accord, in the course of many centuries, among savage and barbarous nations. They carry out with them, too, the habit of subordination, some notion of the regular government which takes place in their own country, of the system of laws which support it, and of a regular administration of justice; and they naturally establish something of the same kind in the new settlement. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Continuity of English colonization meant little more than that the lands claimed by one colony were coterminous with those claimed by the next, and that no other European nation could plant a settlement between the Alleghanies and the sea without committing a trespass and fighting for its place. There was no continuity of what would now be called effective occupation. Colony was divided from colony by many miles of forest and backwood. ”

“ The new constitutions had then been in operation for some time in several of the great colonies, and already no slight friction had occurred in the endeavour to adjust Imperial and Colonial rights and responsibilities upon a clear and well-understood basis. Moreover, the continued formation of new colonies and the desire of certain Crown colonies to attain to responsible government suggested a fundamental treatment of the whole question of colonial relations. ”

“ On these grounds, therefore, and while we acknowledge the colony of Liberia, or any other colony on the coast of Africa, to be in itself a good thing, we must be understood utterly to repudiate the principles of the American Colonization Society. That Society is, in our estimation, not deserving of the countenance of the British public. ”

“ The composition of the colony shows a serious purpose of settlement, since the trades were mostly represented, but there were too many gentlemen to make it a working colony. And, indeed, the gentlemen, like the promoters of the enterprise in London, were probably more solicitous of discovering a passage to the South Sea, as the way to increase riches, than of making a state. ”

“ We want to start, or at least very greatly to strengthen, the notion of colonization on its Imperial, as apart from its individual practical, side; to treat it as a change of homes; to bring before every man, woman, and child who migrates from England to other parts of the Empire that he is, indeed, moving within the family; that he is a living, and therefore a most powerful, factor in the continual renewing of the ties sometimes fretted by the strain of mere space distance; that upon him, in the aggregate, and not on statesmen, soldiers, or sailors, falls the responsibility of Empire. ”

“ Yes; and supposing a Colony to be settled in his Country, he would be glad of the Protection of the Colonists against other Tribes. You mean to say, the same Man who would not object to selling his Land would still object to having the Government transferred from the Chief to the British Government? ”

“ It is not likely that many would at once be able to recall to mind the fact, that an important British colony, dating its official existence from the 22d of March 1851, has suddenly sprung up in the interior of Africa—a colony already possessing an efficient legislature, a handsome revenue, and several flourishing towns, with churches, schools, a respectable press, and other adjuncts, of civilisation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The site of the place where the settlement is to be made having been chosen, you shall order the colonists to build their houses, making in them a sort of stronghold, where they may defend themselves and their flocks if necessary, in case that the Indians try to attack them. ”