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Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la m6thode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 \m THE GREAT GAME; -A. IPXjEj^ FOB A BRITISH IMPERIAL POLICY. BYA BRITISH SUBJECT. WITH AN INTROBUCTION, BY A CANADIAN. TORONTO : WILLING & WILLIAMSON, 1.876. 't ) THE GREAT GAME; -A. I^LEA. 90R A BRITISH IMPERIAL POLICY. BY A BRITISH SUBJECT. WITH AK Il^TRODlJCTION, BY A CANADIAK, TORONTO : WILLING & WILLIAMSON. 1876. /- Zf «■ /-37n i'/^r/ TO THE EOYAL COLONIAL INSTITUTE THIS WORK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED ^l> the Jltttltor, IN THE HOPE THAT IT MAY HELP ON THE WORK WHICH THAT SOCIETY IS DOING. it ) B/S5(a INTRODUCTION. The following work proposes a scheme of Imperial Federation which is attractive from its very boldness, but which in the present temper of England and the Colonies may be safely pro- nounced 'Impracticable. The book is interesting to Canadians for two reasons. We were all talking a few months ago, and many of us are yet, about a vague notion of Imperial Federa- tion, in which Canada's voice should be heard. The other reason why this book is interesting to Canadians is this : we all like to hear the evil that is said of us as well as the good ; and the author of "The Great Game" treats Canada with glaring injus- tice, and empties on us and the United States the '-opious vials of his irrational scorn. Mr. Blake's speech at Aurora contained an adumbration of an Imperial Federation — in which " the people of Canada * * " should have some greater share of control than they now have " in the management of foreign affairs " — should have a word to say in all " relations with other countries, whether peaceful or "warlike, commercial, financial, or otherwise ; " and should take upon themselves the correlative burdens of enlarged duties and privileges and powers. The first act, however, of this author, is to shut out from the empire brotherhood he wishes to create the greatest of England's self-governed dependencies. The advocates of Imperial Federation may say that if the author of " The Great Game " had approached the question from a democratic rather than a despotic standpoint, — for no lighter phrase would accurately describe this gentleman's " mount of vision " — there could be no objection to his proposals. But in that case the preponderance of representation in the Im- vi perial Senate would still be with the United Kinjjdom, and Colonics grasping at a little importance would ultimately find they had been allured by a shadow and had lost the substance. For England such an Imperial Constitution would be fatal, be- cause it would at no distant day break up amid execrations against her from all her children, whose hate or friendship was worth considering. Th.e fine policy to begin with of pushing Canada off, shows how wise this author and his friends of the Royal Colonial Institute are. Perhaps, however, most Cana- dians will think when they read the following pages that as some people's tender mercies are cruc', the cruelty and contempt of the author of " The Great Game " might, if he could wield a sword as powerful as he evidently considers his pen, be regarded as merciful. It is a gain, however, to have such a proposal before us, for now at length somebody amongst ourselves may speak and give us a plan. We as a people are at present placed in a somewhat ludicrous light, and the light falls on our public men and on our press. " We must find some common ground on which to unite, " some common aspiration to be shared, and I think * * it can " be found alone in the cultivation of that national spirit, (mean- " ing a Canadian national spirit), to which I have referred." But if we are aiming at Imperial Federation what we should do is not to " cultivate " a Canadian national spirit, but an Im- perial spirit ; it is the imperial lion, not the Canadian beaver we should get astride of. And it may be said in passing that " cultivating " a national or an imperial spirit is like culti- ■ vating love for your mother ; if the love requires culti- vation the soil is barren and the seed diseased. The con- versationsj^about nationaPspirit remind one of the dialogue be- tween Cleopatra and her unseminared Mardian. " Hast thou " affections .•' " asks the self-willed serpent of old Nile dreaming amid the vast moral slime of her own nature, of Anton} . " Yes, " gracious madam," is the reply. " Indeed .-' " inquires C leopatra incredulously. " Not indeed " is his answer. If we have national sentiment there is no need of cultivating it, and if we have not, it is one of those things which to be genuine must come as the early day breaks over the hills— silent — gentle — strong, — while va night hesitating "coldly eyes the youthful Phoebus " and disappears. Wo have a "people drawn fronuliffcrent countries andof difierent " faiths," and the parts have not yet been fused into homogeneity. All we can say to each citizen is that — in the case of an im- migrant who has settled here — having come here of his own free will — his first duty is to this country — and he has no right to bring disturbing controversies or antagonistic allegiances from elsewhere. In the case of all — to enrich, to enlighten, to elevate the country of adoption or birth is the supreme duty — and wc arc so situated that this can be loyally done by persons of all nationalities and all creeds, and nearly al! political sentiments. We only make ourselves ridiculous if we shout in chorus " wc must be national " witliout having any definite idea, or sing stuff like Mr. l-^dgar's lyric about this " Canada of ours " — a poem which should have been illustrated by a napkined baby doing irreverence to his warrior father's helmet. There are three courses before us, (i) To go on as wc are, en- joying " the influences and the inspiring contact of a great nation "— contact which those who have been below the line know has on our social and political life, the happiest efiects. (2) To seek for Imperial Federation, the supposed advantages of which would seem to be delusive. (3) To look forward to inuo- pendence. As to this last there is no reason for regarding with any dis- favour its discussion. But if we are not going to bring it into existence right otif, what is the use of talking about it .-• What above all, is the use of talking bout it if a majority of the people and a majority who have s- lie backbone and would stand to their guns, are utterly opposed to it .'* The inconvenience of premature controversies will appear from the following pages, for it will be seen that what has proved the mere vapouring of a few young men with their wit, where Ajax's was, in tlie ventral region, has been regarded in England as a thunder cloud. The writer of " The Great Game " is not in the least aware that the Canada First gentlemen objected to nothing so much as to be taken seriously. Looking at all the circumstances, the first course would seem the best one to pursue, especially if we lean VIU more and more towards British and more and mor^ from Yankee civilization. If we were tc make part of an Imperial Federa- tion and had representatives in London, or if we were indepen- dent, our expenses would be vastly increased. Are our people prepared for this ? Are they full of longing to have their fingers in warlike pies ? If we go on as now, faithful to the present and the future, the time may come when a British Bund for international purposes will be possible. The writer was much struck with the following idea thrown out by Sir John Macdonald on an occasion when he h"d the honour of a lengthened conversation with the veteran statesman. Sir John said while his eyes flashed and the nervous frame seemed to thrill with the prospect : " Twenty years hence " is the time I should like to come up, — then the Australias will " be a great naval power ; so will Canada — we shall then be pro- " bably ten millions, and the three powers combined in a great "Pacific policy, could rule the world." "^lit public opinion is king. If public opinion were to-morrow in favour of independence, independence we should have. It is however, notoriously the other way, and the best thing that can be done therefore at present is to go on as we are, leaving the future in the hands of Providence. This is is what called by some persons, drifting. But the future is an unknown sea, and in an unknown sea you cannot do better than fit yourselves for what new circumstances may arise, and not try and anticipate what those circumstances .shall be. We hear constantly " we must " prepare for this and that." If ve only take care to L , honest and straightforward and instructed we shall be amply prepared. Lying, plundering the public purse, snec-'ng at public spirit, earning one's bread by dirty transactions ana pjlltical pandering, want of courage and want of c ndour, — these are bad prepara- tions for anything requiring manliness and statesmanship. So far as Canadians are concerned, an answer has been given by anticipation to the argument of " The Great Game," which to the exte.it that it has any bearing on this country, is now set forth. THE GREAT GAME. CHAPTER I. DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN. " It is the wish of Her Majesty's Government to abstain from any tenitorial acquisitions and from cortractinj^ any new obligations."* It was sadly surprising to hear Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies repudiating the course of action which has made Her Majesty the greatest sovereign whom the world has ever seen. . It was hardly possible to believe that he had become a pervert to the Manchester School of Radicals. When Cheap John comes forward to peddle his bits of Brammagem political economy, no one expects anything but Hastiness puffed v/ith " vehement shallowness." Mr. Glad- stone's frenzied hatred of everything Imperial is well known as the last and worst inr«<-mity of a noble mind. Familiarity ought, at this time of day, to have bred general contempt of the windy philanthropy and high-flying philosophy of Sir Charles Dilke and Sir Wilfrid Lawson. We all know how delightfully cheap and easy it is to be a dispassionate cosmopolitan, above the narrow prejudices of national ambition, delicately consid- erate of the "natural right" of "men and brethren" to abuse themselves and their neighbours, looking down with serene disdain on the childish pride of conquest and the vulgar lust of territory. " Stay at home and let things take their course/ naturally seems the golden maxim of statesmanship to that pestilent brood of pretenders to wisdom, who look upon the political art as nothing but the art of keeping out of trouble • House of Lords, W .y 12, 1874. 10 while keeping in office. But, et tu Brute! In Carnarvon, at least, we had some right to expect that there remained a sympathy with the grand, masterful, and adventurous in the relations of England to the world : a willingness, an eagerness to make strong England play a father's or an elder brother's part in the family of mankind, taking the weak and ignorant by the hand, striking terror into evil doers, giving protection and encouragement to the beginnings of good, causing the wilderness to blossom as the rose, rjid sending forth the light cf religion and civilisation into those dark places of the earth which are stil the habitations of cruelty. But the fires of hope were a. most extinguished by that s^oeech. The hero seemed to have joined himself to the ignoble chorus of repudiators of rational duty. He seemed, like a famous Laodicean of old, to have " caught the Whigs bathing," and run away with their livery of dishonour. In that garb he seemed to be coming forward as chief priest to sacrifice national honour at the altar of the great god Laisses- fairc. It was the latest and inost alarming symptom of growing virulence in that epidemic of insular churlishness which had during many years been raging amongst English public men. Half of our leading statesmen had already delivered speeches under its debasing influence, and the rest, with the noble excep- tions of Earl Grey and Sir Bartle Frere, had shown no signs of healthy resistance to the infection. Public opinion had indeed become grievously emasculated. Everywhere the valetudinarian theory of British policy commanded the assent of safe medio- crities and stolid Philistines. The Times, after its kind, dealt out " practical " commonplaces, sicklied over with the colour of the reigning disease. Even the Standard seemed inclined to follow the multitude to talk evil. Everybody was informed that he knew " that England had given up business as a conquering and aggressive power. In the whole fourth estate the quasi- Radical Spectator had the doubly si.igular honour of upholding an imperial policy. The creeping palsy of cynical self-abase- ment had become so powerful that its cant had almost taken the form of established maxims of English public conduct. The dogma of non-interference was constantly alluded to as an incontrovertible first principle. Argument in favour of increas- I II '■< ing or consolidating the empire was quietly sneered down as dreamy nonsense, needing no refutation beyond some off-hand phrase, such as " we have enough already to bother us." The hole-and-corner politicians were masters of the situation, and answered their adversaries with little but brow-beating ridicule. Foreign nations exulted in the belief that England tvas allowing her sun to set. She would not only take no more business into her hands, but be thankful to get rid of what she had, and would retire as soon as she could into a comfortable shell, there to undergo a quiet and natural decline into a power of the third or fourth magnitude. There can be little doubt that many English- men had begun to acquiesce quietly in this degrading estimate of their state, urged persistently by a small but noisy set of crazy economical doctrinaires. Reaction from those extravagant delusions about the pecuniary value of colonics, which Adam Smith had exposed, had given birth to a more unreasoning passion of depreciation. Because some supposed benefits of colonial relations had been shown to be imaginary, men jumped into the opposite belief that thc/e are no benefits at all. Some- times, indeed, the dislike to foreign possessions rose, or was professed, from a maudlin kind of democratic and cosmopolitan philanthropy, little more indeed than .sympathy with the crass selfishness of other human beings. But more often there was no redeeming feature, real or apparent, in the mutual attitude of the dominant sect. Colonies were assamed to be unprofitable, and isolation thus appeared to be dictated by an enlightened self- interest, scorning equally the grasping rapacity and the senti- mental love of grandeur supposed to characterise the advocates of imperial policy. Then this self-interest was assumed to be the one guiding principle which ought to regulate our conduct beyond the four seas. The practical mind of this commercial age rejected with a superior sneer all Quixotic notions that we owe more than merely negative duties to our inferior fellow men. There was for them one God : Let Alone was his name : and this was his commandment, that we mind each man his own business. All this was, and is ; but, thank God I not in all its former strength. The dawn '^f a better day began to gUmmer when the Earl of 12 II ' i (. Carnarvon showed that he had uttered the Shibboleth of th^ day merely in thoughtless imitation of the fashion, by showing an evident anxiety to annex Fiji. Close upon the heels of this first word spoken for the right, came Mr. Disraeli's noble declaration of determination that Her Majesty's dominions should not be diminished under his stewardship, and of hope that they would be increased. Then followed the debate in the House of Com- mons under circumstances exceptionally favorable to the party of progress, and resulting in the ludicrous defeat of the obstructives. Nothing tends so much to promote the growth of an infant tone of thought, or line of policy, as accoidant action under circum- stances which prevent the employment of most hostile arguments, and offer few points on which the animosity of most enemies can fasten. As a result of this happy event, a change in the style of public talk about colonies has already become apparent in many public speeches, and in many of the public prints. Doubtless, also, the Earl of Carnarvon's unexpressed mental tendencies in favour of extension and consolidation have received such confir- mation and impetus from practical success, that we may reasonably cultivate hopes of a further prosecution of his career of imperial improvement. Not that one can safely say that a revolution in public sentiment, or anything like it, has yet been accomplished. We have only the opportunity of organizing forces for a victorious advance The process of conversion has fairly begun, but the good cause still needs all the help which any ready tongue and any willing pen can render. One influential newspaper has been found to declare that the certainty ot ruin to the white popu- lation, and long-continued bloody anarchy among the black, if Fiji is left to itself, is no reason why England should incur the risk and expense of managing a country at the other side of the globe. And we cannot doubt the sad truth that the crabbed selfishness which gave birth to that infamous sentiment, lives and thrives unabashed in a very large and powerful portion of the people. The Age of Drift, as Mr. Jenkins has felicitously called it, has not yet passed away as regards most of our legislators. The blight of political fatalism lies heavy on Lords and Commons alike. The energetic personality of the few, which has achieved every great improvement of mankind, is ^invisible to modern 13 political eyes through the general and apparently impersonal processes of human change, to which that ver^ personality has given impulse and direction. We have far too many helter-skelter politicians, never ready for an emergency, butbufifeted hither and thither by the waves of accident ; men who arc so "cautious"' that they can never see the need of action till the manifest and irretrievably disastrous results of inactivity have made action impossible, or utterly useless ; carried idly about by every wind of a public opinion which they take no part in forming ; able only to dodge from one makeshift to another, and appalled at the audacious suggestion to look a little beyond their own noses. Far too many administrators who glory in the shame of aimless patchwork, and do not despise themselves for being not Wills but Weathercocks. For too many sniggering cavillers who never do anything, or have serious thoughts of the way in which any- thing is to be done ; but prompt to raise vague yells of " danger" at every proposal of action, while comfortably blind to the dangers of careless repose, and practised in the use of oratorical wet blankets dripping with the cold rain of proverbial philosophy, to quench all sparks of manly political action. We hear far too much about the unwiseness of going farther to fare worse, and the wiseness of enduring the ills we have, rati ,r than flying to others which we know not of ; far too much semi-pious advice to take no thought for the morrow, and trust in Providence, hoping that something may turn up to help men who will not help themselves. There is far too much of the spirit of those French triflers whose maxim was apres tnoi le deluge^ and far too little of the spirit of the statesman. A statesman is not a molluscous creature who lets other men make up his mind for him, but a strong, wise man, who knows what is good for his country or the world, and is determined to do it. He does not regard himself as a mere machine for accurately reflecting and registering the blind movements of human masses. He does not make it his prime immediate object to be all things to all men, but to be master of the situation in all circumstances. He does not swim with the stream of other men's activity, but tries to turn the cn-'ant in the direction which he prefers. He does not so much shape his policy to events, as work to make events con- i i! 14 . venient for his policy. His talents are not for discovering or conj^iring up difficulties, but for overcoming and undermining them. Difficulties only strengthen his resolution. " Rest and be thankful " seems to him a motto fit only for men in dark ages, who are quite content that the ages should remain for ever dark. Thank God, England has some few statesmen in Parliament, in power ! The spirited and strong-minded Cecil of the 19th century is a happy contrast to the stilted goose who founded the political greatness of his family ; to that shifty, head-shaking, hand wringing Burleigh who successfully cheated the world into believing him great, till Motley came forward to show how he had worried and hampered those brave m?n who saved England in spi!:e of his negligence and meanness, to drag the solemn noodle into the daylight of impartial criticism and to crown him with his appropriate fool's-cap. The Prime Minister has swum undauntedly against the stream throughout tlic j^r^ater part of his life. He has steadily fought the good fight against stagna- tion and anarchy amidst storms of ridicule and obloquy which few men but he could have endured. Now, at length, in the fulness of years, he holds in his hands the power to shape the history of England ; the power to loose and to bind the British Plmpire ; the power to set the fashion of government which the world is most likely to follow. High hopes are natural, and ex- pressions of enthusiastic expectation pardonable, even in the form of suggestion and exhortation. There can be no more useful ambition than that of helping on the great reaction against the accursed Devil's-spell of Let Alone, led by Fitzjaraes Stephen as philosopher, and Benjamin Disraeli as political orator. Against the mawkish and sordid delusions still stifling the English people, it is the duty of every man who has a spark of tlie enthusiasm of humanity, to raise his most energetic protest. He is bound to make some effort to rouse his countrymen from, their paralysis of public spirit — their stupor of complacent self-degradation. 15 CHAPTER II. ENGLAND'S ABDICATION. An able English thinker has lately warned his countrymen that three dangerous rocks lie ahead of their political course. Unhappily he has had good reason to style himself Cassandra, for the general feeling of his readers seems to be a comfortable in- credulity, the thought of which must be very uncomfortable to every patriot. Taking a wider sweep than Mr. Greg's, and extending the prophetic scrutiny from Great Britain to that group of terr-tories supervised by England and loosely called the British Empire, I see its collective existence menaced by the growth of three great disruptive influences. (A) The loss of the mother-country's commercial preeminence and consequent control. (B) The ambition of colonial statesmen. (C) The rise of national aspirations in India. (A) The probability; the certainty of England's commercial decline may be assumed here without any statement of reasons. Every one knows them or knows where to find thcni. Com- petent observers and economists have so marshalled the evidence, that the comfortable saycrs of smooth things and prophets of false peace hav^e almost ceased to repeat the hackneyed cavil that similar alarms have been raised before and not justified by following events. Even the rotund optimist platitudes of the late Under-Secretary for India, have grown somewhat pale and flabby at the evident approach of the wolf. The only crumb of comfort that he can give is that the evil day is still far distant, and two or three generations more, therefore, may eat, drink, and be merry in the glow of sufficient coal. But even while her mineral wealth endures, while the pits are not yet abandoned, while the furnaces are not yet blown out and the factories not I6 ■ ; '■ yet shut up because of the famine price of coal, while there is na absolute decadence, nevertheless a small territory with limited internal resources and widely separated from its dependencies, must constantly become less and less important as a member of the society of progressive states. Relatively England must de- crease with the rapid increase of manufacturing activity in larger countries, probably not much inferior acre for acre in natural resources above ground and below. We are in our zenith, they are only coming up from the horizon. The industrial progress of other European countries and of the gigantic North American republic promises that they will very soon leave us far behind in the competition. And prestige "moral " superiority, intellectual influence, all depend so much on material superiority, that loss of the last must be quickly followed by loss of the former. From England's material weakness alone, if from no other cause, the self-governing colonies will soon cease to pay any deference to the authority of their decrepit mother, or any regard to her wishes and interests, to form any part of her strength in diplo- matic dealings; or to be bound by any but the loosest ties, if, indeed, they do not claim formal independeifc:^ and make open separation. Htr African and Asiatic dependencies and her war- like strongholds she will soon be incapable of holding against internal rebellions, against the attacks of neighbours now savage but then grown powerful, or against the jealousy of those Great Powers whose dig ity will be offended and who:e cupidity will be roused, by the sight of a second-rate or third-rate power pos- sessing so many of the keys of war and commerce. If the ordinary course of nature is allowed to run in its present grooves, the loose, unsteady fabric of dominion cannot long escape dis- memberment, and one consequence of dismemberment will be the speedy political effacement ot England, now the central figure of a superficially magnificent empire. Spain will not allow Gibraltar to remain. in the hands of a nation having only half of her wealth and population. The Italians will not rest till they get hold of Italian-speaking Malta. The French will reap the benefit of Indian revolts, and find excuses for wresting Aden, Stngapur, Hongkong, the Mauritius and the African settlements from the feeble hands of perfidious Albion. Brother Jonathan's 17 mouthpiece in London will soon be audibly calculating that the manifest destiny of Canada, Bermuda, and the West Indies is to be ruled from Washington, and fraternally pointing out the use- lessness of fighting against Providence, the thickest iron-clads and the biggest battalions. Robbed on every side, and growing weaker day by day, England will sink into unhonoured senility, wilh neither love, obedience, nor troops of friends to comfort her in her days of dull decrepitude. A continued diet of leeks and humble-pie will soon shrivel up John Bull into the proper leanness of a decayed gentk-nan ' bo has seen better days, and convert him into the likeness of those Greeks and Portuguese, whom he now so much despises. That is what will happen, at least, if he con- tinues to think more of his nationality than of his imperial functions. His temporary industrial preeminence has been designed only to give a start in the race for empire, which he must fii. 3n in reliance on means of another sort. The alternatives before him are a struggling increase to be The Great Power, or a sleepy decrease to be one of the smallest Powers. He must look beyond the British seas for sources of new strength, which he may make all his own. To remain great he must make the territory of England greater, and found the United Kingdom on a wider material base by taking in new English-speaking king- doms to be integral parts of the union ; to be bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh, nerve of its nerve. Wielding their ever-growing forces in virtue of his paternal influence, he may hope to hold the first place in the world as long as the sun and moon endure. But never by his own insular and insulated strength. (B) The separation of the colonies people J by men of Euro- pean blood, and already self-governed in all domestic affairs, is otherwise so easy as to be highly probable, but is seen to be in- evitable when we consider the natural ambition of colonial states- men. That ambition must in almost every ease greatly acceler- ate the adolescent divergence of the young Anglo-Saxon from the household of the parent. It was one great cause, perhaps the great cause, of the American Declaration of Independence, and that is a precedent which amply justifies fears of similar movements in the larger colonies still attached to their mother, and rapidly becoming as large in comparison with her as the B l8 North American colonies were in 1776. To assume difference of future conduct from alleged difference of treatment, and con- sequent absence of motive, is to overlay a permanent cause with the immaterial occasion which manifests or precipitates its effects. The Yankees were as much self-governed, and, in general, quite as liberally treated as our new colonics now arc. Like the story of the greased cartridges in India, the petty amount of taxation without representation was only a spark of injury, so fanned by dexterous intriguers, that a mass of mankind already inflammable with pride and lawlessness, burst readily into a flame of open revolt. The grievance was merely a grievance to sentiment and vanity, to the feelings which naturally make large bodies of civilised men impatient of even nominal control exercised by distant authority. Public feelings of this kind are naturally strongest in the public men of the country, and co-operate with their more conscious and self-interested desire to swell their own power and dignity, in disposing them to cherish and educate the germs of national aspirations which exist among their constitu- ents. No one who has used his eyes well in obseiving colonial events can have failed to see that such a process of education has been carried on for not a few years in more than one of our larger colonies. An impatience of their subordinate position is very evident in the attitude of Canadian and Australian politic- ians. They have a longing for the diplomatic swagger of an in dependent state, able to deal directly with foreign nations. They would like to have a finger in the international pie, to send plenipotentiaries, to make treaties on their own account, with an eye to their own exclusive interests, to have their own little foreign intrigues and their own little foreign wars. New South Wales assuming the airs of a sovereign state, offered to pay for the government of Fiji as her dependency, and is now sulking because the Earl of Carnarvon has made it a separate Crown colony. They would like to confer iiW^s ad libitiun, or io abolish them altogether, according to their several preferences. They have no patience for the long and varied service which fits a man for a well-deserved governort^hip. Led by social circumstances, by education, and by political theories, to follow American rather than English modes of public life, they would like to reach the 19 in 'hey send 1 an ittle outh for king rown olish They man nccs, ther the higrhest posts by the short and easy roads of trickery and popular flattery. British snobs who use stolen crests on their letters aro quite willing to abolish the hereditary titles which they have no hopes of enjoying. Accordingly it is not astonishing that colonial politicians should occasionally make or allow a spiteful peck at the Civil Lists, which they do not expect to have to spend. Within the last six years large majorities of the Canadian Parliament and the New South Wales Assembly have attempted to cut down the salaries of their governors. In neither case was it seriously argued that the sum paid was too much for a colony to give or a British Governor to receive. In both cases this strange and significant reason was given, " the President of the United States gets less." "Advanced" politicians at the Antipodes, chafe under the restraints which British supervision places upon robbery, jobbery, oppression of opponents, and all those freaks of boastful tyranny which an ochlocratic majority so keenly relishes. British con- trol is slender indeed, but it is enough to gall the Australian rowdies. They would like a little more freedom to insult and plunder the Australian gentlemen, whose English sympath ies English habits, and superior culture, are so offensive to repub- lican simplicity. Ostracism from public offices and honours, of the class which has most loyalty to England, and most sympathy with English ideas, gives only feeble satisfaction. Neither do they think that they have done enough against the most obnoxi- ous section of that class by legally allo\ving " free selection " of a squatter's lands, and practically permitting any vagabond to extend the application of the same principle to the squatter's horses, cattle, and sheep. Nothing less than a social revolution, levelling all to the " uniform condition of frogs under a flagstone," will satisfy the Australian Communards. Complete confiscation of estates bigger than one-man farms is openly and pcrscveringly sought. A Victorian prime minister announced that it wa? the mission of his Government to " check the baneful operation of those odious laws which make some men poor and other men rich." The Victorian Government is indeed little but a great organization for out-door relief to its rowdy supporters. Its chief employ- 90 If I ment is in laying heavy taxes on its opponents, to build useless railways, and bribe with subsidies those numerous constituencies which are too mean to pay for their own local roads, bridges, and schools. Self-government there is nothing but self-indul- gence by the rabble at the expense of the better inhabitants and the rest of the Empire. The revenue (say rather the poor-fund and bribe-fund) is made to look like the big revenue of a flourishing country by reckless borrowing and by squandering of those Crown lands which the Whig Parliament of 1856, with equally disgraceful recklessness, entrusted to the Colonial Assembly. The handful of persons who happen to be already in Victoria, grab for themselves the sole and exclusive benefit of lands which are the heritage of the whole British race. They give not a penny of the money for the promotion of emigration from over-crowded England, the very purpose for which the Crown lands were given to them in trust. They have fixedly set themselves against increase of the population of their land of milk and honey, fiercely determined to keep all its good tljings to their own greedy and dishonest selves. Not content with these stolen gains, they, and with them other Australasian rabbles, have tried to force up the rate of wages by protective tariffs, and are impudent enough to avow the additional purpose of thereby rendering themselves independent of external supplies. The popular cry in Melbourne, " Why let foreigners swamp our markets ?" will bear testimony to the truth of the accusation. And so will the only scientific sentence in Mr. Mill's " Political Economy" which the Victorian Assembly hears with patience. " The only case in which on mere principles of political economy protecting duties can be defensible, is when they are imposed temporarily (especially in a young and rising nation), in hopes of naturalizing a foreign industry, in itself perfectly suitable to the circumstances of the country." Observe the words "nation" and "foreign" in the only argument of protectors who deign to reason. When this policy was resisted by the Upper House, an official person named Higginbottom, aided and abetted by the other ministers, burst out into violent contempt and open outrage of the constitution which the British Queen and Parliament had established. He levied the proposed taxes on his own authority, 21 insulted the judges who protcctcfl the rights of Her Majesty's subjects, arrogantly set aside thei. judgments by his own illegal interference, and made a stupid and slavish Governor refuse to sign warrants issued by the Supremo Court. This extraordinary and audacious animal was indeed a fitting mouthpiece fcr an Assembly of sharp practisers, public sponges, bankrupts, and brothel-keepers, elected to be vessels of the popular wrath against the taxpayers represented by the Upper House. The Upper House, however, fought for and saved the constitution, and the infamous proposal to reward Sir Charles Darling for violating the constitution was gallantly rejected, in the face of threats and actual danger from the brutal mob of Melbourne. This courageous resistance, and the lash of English censure, have since led to some improvement, and the Higginbottorn no longer roars from the Treasury benches. But he is still powerful, and lately denounced British supervision as " interference by a foreign power," in the midst of the approving Assembly. Sir C. G. Duffy, the succeeding Prime Minister, has written the same thing in more guarded language. And above all, the protective duties are still at work to build up an independent Victorian nati'^n. New South Wales is not so bad as her big sister, but she also has a restless rabble, ready to aspire to independent national existence, and the other Australian colonies show signs of following in her wake. In Southern Africa, a half-Dutch ha'f-Radical antipathy to British control has been openly expressed, since the introduction of responsible government. In Canada, very few politicians would express any desire for the continuance of connection with England if they were not afraid of inability to stand alone. The benefit of the connection goes altogether to Canada, and the burden altogether to England. Canada supplies nothing which cannot be got elsewhere, at least as cheaply ; buys no great quantity of English goods, and takes in no great number of English emigrants. In return for these nothings, she gets entire exemption from diplomatic expenses, and almost entire exemption from military and naval expenses^ Nevertheless, the dominant party is too ambitious to be satisfied under the present shadow of subordination. A powerful section favours annexation to the United States. A more powerful Hi '■- mmm lit |f i; t ill n i'. ! ■ ■i i! I; ■ *} .: ! i 1 1 It 11 i i ii ^- ! ■ -it !!i I A. . 22 section, openly or covertly, is preparing for independence. As the Standard ingeniously hints, the new motto, " Canada First," really involves " England nowhere." If proof is wanted, the recent negotiations with the Yankees will supply it in abundance. Any one who has conversed with many Cana- dians, and made a practice of reading Canadian news- papers, can see that the people of che Dominion are already more Yankee than British. They have formally adopted the Yankee currency, and their speech is so full of Yankee phrases ana idioms as to show that they look at most things through Yankee spectacles from a Yankee point of view- I believe with Sir A. T. Gait that the proposal of a British Federation comes too late for Canada. And I confess that I am not at all sorry. She would necessitate such an addition of colonial members to the Federal Legislature as v/ould frighten jealous Englishmen into rejection of the entire proposal. She is a child too big and wilful for paternal amendment of her evil republican ways, and the elevating effect of the indirect influences of British connection is far too slight to justify an enormous sacrifice of British imperial efficiency. While she remains nominally a part of the British Empire, she is the pledge of its thraldom to her insolent neighbour. The rowdy Republic is formidable to England, only because England is trammelled by the fear of bringing a Butler or a Sherman to acquaint helpless Canadians with the horrors of American warfare. She is now thoroughly tired of being sauced, fleeced, and kicked by Yankee bullies, and ought to hail with rapture the prospect of deliverance from the source of her weakness and humiliation. When lib- erated, .she may obtain compensation for the loss of Canada by taking more manageable territory in warmer latitudes. New- foundland, moreover, need not follow Continental Canada, and British Columbia 's so far separated from the populous parts of the United States as to be nearly equally secure from attack. It is indeed already par^ of the Dominion. But it is so dis- affected that severance would be welcomed by its own peo'^'e, and could not well be prevented by the other provinces. These last would then be at liberty to secure a quiet life by forming themselves into the Canadian Republic. 23 But a happier fate is possible for the other English colonies. Their connection with England adds in no way to the dangers of either party, and federation would make each a sure source of strength to the other. At present, nearly all the military and naval expenses of the Empire, leaving out of sight those specially belonging to India, are defrayed by England alone, and the colonies are consequently exposed io U e very real dangers of having their rights and interests sacrificed to the bold demands of some aggressive foreign state, or of being left unprotected against barbarous neighbours, by ungenerous economists in the House of Commons. Federation would immediately give relief to England, and security to every one of the now endangered colonies. Under the benign influence of political union, many unpleasant characteristics of Australasia and South Africa would gradually soften and disappear. Local feeling, instead of developing into national feeling, would never be more than the patriotism of Scotland now is, a merely graceful and picturesque sentiment, giving warmth to poetry and zest to friendly emula- tion. Capacity of full-fledged patriotism will have nobler and more enlightened exercise than any mere love of Australia or South Africa could furnish, in proud love of the empire on which the sun never sets. The current of colonial ambition would be changed by access to the splendid dignities of the federal legislature and emoluments of the federal ministry. The char- acter of colonial politicians would be elevated by translation of the ablest to work in a higher field, in contact with men of high culture and stainless honour, and under the influence of the traditional purity, courtesy*, and self-control which have ennobled the public life of England. A judicious bestowal of some few privy councillorships, and a more liberal distribution of the honours of the Bath among the more prominent colonial officials, would give a seductive foretaste of the imperial grandeur which they are asked to share, and be wonderfully efficacious in facili- tating the cheerful acceptance of the federal state of existence by the ambitious Anglo-Saxons of the southern hemisphere. The recipients may not be worthy of their honours, but the greatness of the occasion will vindicate the English Ministry from the charge of making its rewards too cheap. i!i 1 1 ! I !;! I } MijwiRUi'lnnmMnn m !i ! it! I !i if Mil ii! iiii i il ' ' 1 t ! 24 " Some kinds of baseness Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters Point to rich ,5nds." England must stoop to v-onquer. If she continues to grasp too long at the form ot supremacy, sh. must soon lose the sub- stance. She mast descend from her solitary position of formal sovereignty, to preserve her real greatness, as leading member of a joint and undivided family of sovereigns, all controlling a huge common estate. The younger members, now ready to fret under a sense of constraint and inferiority, would then cheerfully yield precedence to the elder sister, with whom they are f^^rmally equal, and she, while continually dwindling in her own material greatness, would continue strong with all the strength of a wide- organic unity, growing greater and greater from year to year. When no longer entitled to a majority of the central legislature, she would still rule indirectly through new EngHsh communities, moulded after her own likeness by long reverent submission to her mental influence. Their growing life would be trained to take the forms of solid British culture, in conformity with the standard of British morals, in harmony with the refined social and political institutions of the British Islands. Such healthy organic outgrowths, filially receptive of influences generated at the centre, would invest England with tremendous physical weight in the counsels of Europe, and be vigorous cooperating factors in the Angiification of the world, not as they now threaten to be eLments of strength to the Philistine opposition. Their increase would be just as good as increase of the area of England itself. They would keep the Yankees below us in quantity as well as in quality, and insure such a perennial increase of the effective man-power of the true English breed, as would, in case of need, keep the dark-skinned races in just and necessary subordination by sheer power of bone and muscle. England would always remain their beloved metropolis ; the venerated headquarters of British law and literature, science and social culture; the focus of the highest form of earthly civilisation. Holding such a position in the most powerful federation of countries on the face of the globe, she would inevitably reach a still higher position in the time of the unity of man and the- i\\ 25 " Federation of the World." She would be the necessary seat of the " Parliament of Man," the administrative centre of the earth, the fountain-head of all authority. And she would also be the great University of the nations ; the Athens as well as the Rome of the new civilisation ; the centre of thought and light, to which illustrious men would be irresistibly attracted from every corner of the earth, and whence their children would go forth fitted for high careers of honour and of usefulness. The features of the developed world would be mouHed after English types, and English brains would guide the energies of the human race. li CHAPTER III. This is an able chapter on " The Past and Future of Our Indian Policy," in which the author advocates an energetic policy in India, which would make use of the natives in a manner at once cautious and just, bring the native gentleman into the Civil Service and the Sikh into the ranks of the army officers, which would annex in all directions, and put sixteen provinces under the Governor General, whos t rule would extfend from Peshawar to Birma, a policy which would further place the seat of government in the central provinces, say at Jabalpur — a capital which would be surrounded by English zemindars and by colonies of English hill farmers. 26 i 1 i i 1 : 1 ! i • 1 j i i 1 i 1 ! 1 .1 '1 ! ;j i i 1 ; 1 i ii ! 1} ■|^ I i ! I 'i( I! CHAPTER IV. THE IMPERIAL STRUCTURE AND ITS SAFEGUARD. How are India and the other colonies to be made co-equal " parts of Britain ? By the Queen and Parliament of the United Kingdom in the following manner. The present Ministry ought in the beginning of the next session to propose that the present so-called Imperial Parliament pass a short and simple Act, in- vesting a truly Imperial Convention, with absolute power to establish a legislature representing and controlling every portion of Her Majesty's dominions. To economize time they may omit the formality of asking the consent of each colonial legis- lature. It may be presumed that every man sent by each colony is a plenipotentiary, and the Imperial sword may justly be thrown into the balance against those who obstinately dispute the presumption. The Convention ought to consist of lOOO members, collected from the following sources. A. The whole House of Commons, 652 in number, B. 200 Members of the House of Lords, nominated in pro- portion to the relative strength of each of the great parties therein, 1 10 from the Ministerial side, and 90 from the Opposi- tion. No gentleman on the Opposition would doubt the honesty of the Ministry in the conduct of this delicate process. The 90 would be undoubtedly nominated from a pr'vate list supplied by Earl Granville. C. 48 Members, a fourth of whon ought to be non-Europeans, nominated by the Government of India. Its impartiality also would be beyond suspicion ; D. 100 Representatives of the other colonies ; 1 Newfoundland 2 Bribiohx Columbia 27 3 Bahamas 4 Leeward islands 5 Barbadoes 6 Other Windward Islands jointly 7 Tnnidad ... . , ' ^ 8 Jamaica 9 British Honduras 10 British Guiana . . 1 1 Cape Colony 12 Natal 13 Griqualand 14 Mauritius 15 Gold Coast 16 Sierra Leone and Gambia . 17 Ceylon 18 Straits Settlements ! '. 19 Sarr.walf . . [\ 20 Hongkong 21 Malta 22 Channel Islands 23 Isle of Man 24 Fiji 25 New South Wales" 26 New Zealand [[ . 27 Queensland 28 South Australia . . 29 Tasmania . . . ] ] 30 Victoria 31 Western Australia 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 2—11—13 6 1 1 3 1 1—13 6 2 1 1- -10 1 1 1 1 15 10 5 6 2 21 1—61 The distribution is based partly on revenue, partly .a popu- lation, partly on the character of the population. I confidently believe that it will appear equitable to the impartial spectator and be fairly acceptable to the principal parties concerned. Some small colonies are omitted, because their non-official popu- lation IS insignificant. The greatest of the purely European colonics is excluded, for reasons which have already been fully placed before the reader. Its most westerly province, British Columbia, IS, however, placed in the list, because it is widely separated from Central and Eastern Canada, in situation, in leehng, and in relation to those circumstances which necessitate the exclusion of the Dominion. The representatives of each colony ought to be elected by the members of tlie Legislative Council and the members of the Assembly sitting together as one body. Where there is no Assembly, or it refuses to vote, the Council alone, or with the minority of "the Assemblv, ought Vi, n ! 28 I I llii h ilH |! to exercise the full power of election. To secure representation of ail parties, the representatives ought to be elected in one mass by a single and final ballot, each elector being allowed to accu- mulate his votes in favour of one candidate, or byway of equiva- lent, restricted from voting for more than one candidate. The crisis is drifting on with appalling rapidity. Delay will soon bring dissolution. Now or never will be the day of salva- tion. The Convention ought therefore to meet as soon as possi- ble in 1876. No elaborate preparations would be necessary. A large part of the local business of the House of Commons might, without much inconvenience, be postponed to the next year, and in June and July its members would have leisure to transact the business of the Empire. No abrupt change would be percep- tible ; the Convention would sit at Westminster ; would be served by the clerks of the House of Commons, and would fol- low its procedure under the guidance of Mr. Speaker Brand. Much might be done in the last two months of the regular ses- sion, and after a brief autumn recess, the work might be con- cluded during the last three months of the year. Nothing but gross mismanagement, or wanton and malignant obstruction could prevent it. The former is improbable. The latter would be checked by public indignation. The nature < f the work would present few opportunities for obstruction. No long and complicated Constitutional Bills would be required ; hardly any formal change of any kind. The British Constitution, as it now is, has its being chiefly in public opinion, and the growing changing mass of public traditions. It has never been formulated by authority The powers and relations of its parts are outgrowths from a few great public sentiment, based on a few great public facts. They are not statutory and need not specifically changed by statute. Merely change a few great facts, a few great fundamental characteristics of the Constitution by a few laconic Acts, and whole groups of derivative powers and functions will be changed in correspondence. This simplicity and plasticity of the chief ob- ject to be operated upon would immensely facilitate the work of the Convention. Indeed, one of the chief duties of the Con- vention would be to take care lest anything should hinder the !if 29 new Imperial Conrtitution from being similarly simple and plas- tic. Plant it and let it grow in accordance with the changing circumstances of the time, under the guidance of educated pub- lic opinion. Modified continually, like the English Constitu- tion, by the mere fact of its existence in the changing minds of men, it would yet be stable, living on as an organic whole, and broad-based upon the public will. By common consent, by general recjgnition of the fitness of things, the Imperial Gov- ernment would draw to itself all necessary powers, and throw into desuetude all practices and even laws inconsistent with the performance of its approved functions. And by the very same forces its unnecessary encroachments would be repelled. The work of the Convention would be mainly a work of trans- ference by declaratory Acts, few, short and simple. The abro- gatory and creative Acts would be fewer still, and only one of them, that creating the Imperial Legislature, would be at all lengthy or complicated. The changes of names .would be few and slight, and the Conservative sentiments of Englishmen would receive only a very mild shock. To the superficial observer very little difference would be apparent. Mer Most Gracious Majesty would still bear the honored English name of Queen, not the foreign and novel name of Empress. She would still live in London, and be the direct ruler of England without an inter- mediate viceroy. London would still be the scat of the Privy Council of the Empire, and the headquarters of all departments of the Central Government. The Houses of Lords and Commons would live on, would .still manage all affairs, and enact all laws, with which Englishmen, as mere En^^lislimen, are peculiarly con- cerned, and would appear altered only in having less work to do Nobody would interfere with their formal dignity, or forbid a member of the Lower House to write after his name the impor- tant letters, M.P. The laws and their administration would re- main unaffected by extraneous action, except in the institution of appeal to the Privy Council. The fate of the Chuich of Eng- land would remain wholly in English hands. The schools, en- dowments, and municipal institutions of England would still be under the sole supervision of the English Houses of Parliament. The revolution would, indeed be scarcely seen or felt by anybody except those who had brought it to completion. j I I 30 it The chief probable changes, and their efifects may easily be put into a summary. I. — A declaratory Act would proclaim that Her Majesty should thenceforth be styled Queen of Great Britain instead of Queen of the United Kingdom and its dependencies, and that the name Britain should be regarded as including all these dependencies among its integral parts. Nothing would need to be said about Her Majesty's Rights and Prerogatives. By presumption of law they would remain unchanged ; and therefore by the simple pro- clamation of a new royal designation, the real powers of conferr- ing titles and pardoning offenders would be transferred from the guardianship of the Ministry dependant on the present House of Commons, to the Ministry dependant on the Central Legislature. Similarly they would acquire the patronage and administration of the Army, the Navy, and the Diplomatic Service, with which Her Majesty can deal as she pleases, checked only by the need of obtaining supplies. These her advisers would recommend her to ask thenceforward from the Central Legislature, instead of the House of Commons. In the same tacit way the control over India and the other Colonies now exercised by the latter would be surrendered to the former. The task of organizing the ad- ministrative framework would not need to occupy the time of the Convention, but might be left to the manipulations of the Execu- tive Government wielding the formal powers of the sovereign. If legislative interference should appear desirable, it might be left to the Central Legislature, and no great harm could result from the delay. . II. — All Crown lands in England and elsewhere would be transferred by formal enactment from the House of Commons and other local legislatures to the Central Legislature. The latter might, however, permit the former to manage, and in some cases to draw revenue from these common heritages of the Em- pire. The remaining revenue would be available for the general purposes of the Central Government ; preferably not for the main- tenance of the monarchical element. The royal family and the various viceregal establishments ought rather to be supported by a tax at the rate of one per cent, levied on the net general revenue, and on each net lOcal revenue. As the value of money will 31 probably continue to decrease, it is reasonable that royal expen- diture should increase — at least proportionately with increase of other public expenditure. Even if the value of money should not fall, or, on the contrary, should rise, we must remember that increased public expenditure generally shows increase of wealth and power in a healthy nation, and therefore a necessity for pro- portionately increased splendour in the embodiment of the national dignity. III. — The religion preferentially acknowledged by the Central Government in its ceremonials, and at its diplomatic and con- sular posts, would be chosen by the Sovereign. But all impor- tant religions could be recognized in the establishment of military and naval chaplaiincies. IV. — A regular act would abolish the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, and transfer all its powers in a mass to those whom her Majesty shor'd b„' pleased to call as the PrJvy Council of Britain, lesponsible for its advice to the Central Legislature. These persons, of course, would be the present Privy Councillors, with some additions. The Cabinet ought to be legally recog- nized under the name of the Executive Committee, including always the following great officers of state, besides others whom Her Majesty might be pleased to summon. (A) The Lord Chancellor, corresponding to the Continental Ministers of Justice. (B) The Lord President of the Council. (C) The Lord High Treasurer. (D) The Lord l^Iarshal, equivalent to the present Secretary ^or War. (E) The Lord High Admiral. (F) The Lord Correspondent with Foreign States of Europe, equivalent in part to the Foreign Secretary, (G) The Lord Controllor of Trade, having the powers of the President of the Board of Trade. (H) Five Lords Chief Secretaries of State — viz. : ( ) Fcr Home Affairs, including those of Malta and Gib- raltar. 33 {ft) For Indian Affairs, including relations with protected States east of Persia, and with independent Asiatic States except Russia. {y) For African Affairs, including those of Western Asia, and relations with protected and independent States, from Persia and Arabia westwards. (5) For American aftairs, including relations with protected and independent American States. (e ) For Australian Affairs, including those of China, Mal- acca, and the Pacific Ocean. Possibly, also, the dozen might be made a baker's dozen by the addition of a Lord Privy Seal. But this office might very well be included in that of the Lord President, who would gener- ally be Prime Ministe)-, jut not necessarily and ex officio, as the leading spirit of the Ministry might wish to have a special department, besides a general supervisory function. Recognition of the Prime Minister's name and position ought to be formally made in the procedure of the new Government. The Judicial Committee of the new Privy Council would have the jurisdiction of the old, enlarged by an Act of the Convention making the Committee the Supreme Court of Appeal for Eng- land, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as India and the other colonies. Its paid members would be increased in number, and would receive higher salaries, The Lord Chancellor, who might also be Lord Chancellor of England, and practically always would be such, would sit as president. The Lord Chief Justice of England, the Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, the Lord Chief Baron, the Lord Justice-General of Scot- land, and the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, would be members ex officio, and, of course, also the Lord Chancellor of England, if he were not Lord Chancellor of Britain. V. — A British Senate would be constituted jointly with the Queen in Council, the supreme legislature for all Britain. If so un-English a name should be insuperably distasteful to Con- servatives, it might be called the British Parliament, even at the risk of confusion with the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. By statute it would have : — and ight mon icot- ex he the so .on- the of 33 • 1. Exclusive power to pass Acts binding all Britons, when approved by the Sovereign. 2. Power to levy taxes and raise money, to any amount, in any way, for any purposes. 3. Power to control and gain profit by all postofficcs and telegraphs within Britain. 4. Power to define the territorial limits of local legislative action. 5. Power to give authority to the Queen in Council to restrain local governments from borrowing money, and to compel them to pay interest due on their debts. 6. Power to give authority to the Queen in Council to restrain local governments from levying custom duties, and to confiscate the money so gained. This last power would be necessary for the security of free trade between all parts of the consolidated empire, But a most of the smaller colonies it would be necessary to let the local government raise money by such taxes, or to bestow upon it a subsidy from the central treasury. The Central Government would have no direct concern with the National, Indian, and Colonial debts now existing. They would remain local debts, and continue to lie upon the same shoulders which bear them now. The bestowal of the six above-named powers upon the Senate would be the only formal interference by the Convention with the House of Commons. The constitutional right of that House to control those Acts of State in war, diplomacy, &c., which naturally belong to a Central Government, is not a legal right, but a moral right depending on public opinion, and that public opinion is based on the fact that the House alone has the power to tax, and therefore the power to supply. Transference of the power to the Senate must transfer the right, since Her Majesty's Councillors would then advise her to seek supplies no longer from the House of Commons, but for ever afterwards from the Senate. No general statutes to define the boundaries of the central power over local governments would be at all necessary. The discretion of the Central Government might safely be relied upon. The Sovereign's powers would continue to be as impot- ! I * 34 ent for mischief as they now are, nnd a legislative body, constitut- ed as the Senate would probably be, would not be prone to wanton and irritating encroachments on local autonomy. In the last quarter cJf the 19th century, the public opinion of the ivorld's most enlightened race would be a far better check than any elaborate constitutional barriers. Such things are in the end more troublesome to all parties than useful to any. Change of circumstances, in the.se days of rapid change, soon makes them useless obstructions. Very frequently the common weal or the safety of the federal state imperatively demands that they be broken down, and this can sometimes be done only by the con- stitution-shocking operations of a war, or z. coup (f eta t. England needs have little fear that her wishes would be overridden by a legislature, which would for at least a generation contain an im- mense majority of Englishmen. But to take away all excuse for hesitation on the part of timid Conservative minds, tiie Con- vention might enact by way of exception to the first general power conferred upon the Central Legislature, that every Act affecting the rights, dignities, and constitution of the Houses of Lords and Commons, or the Laws of Primogeniture and Entail, or the religious establishments of England and Scotland, or the educational and charitable institutions and endowments in Great Britain and Ireland, should be null and void unless approved by both Houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, or of England, Ireland, and Scotland, if those kingdoms should after- wards have separate local legislatures. . The Convention would not act wisely if it should seek to re- strict the rower of the Central Legislature to change the mode of electinrf I'le Senate, the distribution of its members to con- stituencies, or the electoral rights of the constituents. It would show its discretii)n by practically acknowledging that laws must change with the times to remain just, and by therefore placing full confidence in the discretion of the Senate. But it could i.ot neglect the duty of deternn'ning the composition of the first Senate, the kind of suffrage by v.'hich it would be elected, and the , mode of conducting the election. We would hear little wrangl- ing about the last. The ballot is already used almost everywhere for local elections, and no good reasons can be given for not 1« {'! 'iljll 35 istitut- DIIC to In the vorld's in any le end nge of i them or the hey be ic con- Ingland n by a an im- cxcuse le Con- gcneial ;ry Act mses of Entail, or the n Great ived by or of aftcr- to re- mode to con- It would vs must [placing luld liOt he first land the . Lvrangl- lyvvhere for not using it at an Imperial election. For the sake of simplicity, saving of money, and saving of time, the Senate ought to be a single body. It would not be wise to liampcr the organizers of the new kingdom with the cumbrou.i and costly machinery of a second chamber. An Upper Mouse is cither superfluous or mis- chievously obstructive, when the Lower House is so wisely con- stituted, as to be really representative of the nation's culture, experience, and intelligence. It can be useful only when the Lower House contains a majority of demagogues elected by the rash young and the ignorant poor. Hut in that, as in every otiicr morbid case, prevention is better than cure. To keep most of the dema;joguc;; out of the elected House is better than to thwart them by an Upper House of nominees. The best safe- guard against hasty legislation is a suffrage law, wiiich will always keep the hasty legislators in a small minority. It is always safer to meet such enemies in the open field than to skulk behind some flimsy constitution il buhvark. Opposition by an Upper House very often strengthens the enemy by uselessly irritating him. lUit the demagogues would quickly be reduced to thtir natural insignificance by a good suffrage- law, not exclud- ing the rash young and the ignorant poor, as stupid Conscrva_ tives propose, but giving to them no more than their small right- ful share of representation, and thus providing a safety-valve for those volcanic forces which would rend the body politic asunder, if caged in according to the stupid Conservative formula. Even the British House of Lords, the best of all Upper Houses, has been nearly as obstructive to good legislation as to bad, and with such a House of Commons as the present must be useless where it is not mischievous, fhere is no strong reason fur preserving it except the historical, and that rea'^on will lose much of its strength with the loss of the Appellate Jurisdiction. Concentration cf the political talents of a nition in one legis- lative chamber, saves not only from waste of time, but from waste of power, and secures a more thorough discusbioa for every bill. No disputed proposal can get the fullest and fairest treatment, if the ablest supporters are in one house and speak to-day, while the ablest opponents are in another house, and can- not speak lill the middle of next month, when the attention of ^ 36 the first speakers is claimed by something entirely different. The efficiency of Parliamentary leaders is moreover seriously impaired by the distracting necessity of frequently keeping an eye upon two important debates going on at the same time in separate chambers. Under such circumstances, no statesman can work at his highest intellectual level. Iron cannot sharpen iron when each piece is used at a different time and in a separate place. An able state-man sent to ihe gilded cage oi uu Upper House loses more than half of his influence on the nation's coun- sels, and the nation loses more than half the value of his ser- vices. He is totally excluded from the consideration of fiscal questions. In disjointed discussions his arguments do not fall with their just weight upon remote antagonists, and his projects do not gain adequate consideration. His. debating powers arc wasted on a cold and narrow stage. He is continually galied by a feeling of helplessness and confinement. He cannot hope to produce so much effect and gain so much glory by his activity as in a larger and more exciting arena. And consequently he does less public work and takes less pains with v/hat he does. The Convention ought therefore to eschew that worn-out dis- credited makeshift, an Upper House. It ought to aim at gather- ing together all the cream of British political talents on the floor of the Senate, and letting these powers come into collision on a common level of debate, where every man can strike while the iron is hot, where he has all his foes before him, and knows that his argument and theirs will command attention together. Such men as the Duke of Argyll and the Marquis of Salisbury in the House of Lords are steam-hammers used to crack walnuts, and would rapturously hail the prospect of removal to the grander theatre of the Lower House. To provide another ele- gant cage for such men in establishing a new constitution would be ^ deliberate and sinful waste of noble powers. The first senate would probably consist of about 450 mem- bers. I. From the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 300. tvers are o mem- II. From India : 37 1 Newfoundland . . 2 British Columbia 3 British Honduras 4 British Guiana 5 Jamaica 6 Bahamas 7 Leeward Tslands 8 Windward Islands 9 Trinidad > 20 (a) Nominated by the Viceroy in Council ''^ ""SfrDepXr ^-*-*-l«*"^t- and Titular Princes, or^ '' The Nizam ' ' " ' • " • • • • I The Nawab of Bhoi)al The Amir of Kabul Tlie King of Siam Tlie King of Birma The Maharana of Mewar or Udipur Ihe Maharaja of Gwalior J) of Indur » of Maisur . . ), of Marwar or Jodpur >> of Jaipur ), of Travankur » of llewa or Bagelkand }i of Nepal ») of Patiala . . The Gaikwar, or the Rau of Kach llie Nawab Nazir of Audh The Nawab of Bengal The Maharaja Dhulip Sinjrh " The Rajah of Berar (r) Elected by the British Provinces :— Bengal and Orissa Assam Birma Behar Audh Rohikand Malwa Panjab . . Afghanistan Sind . . . _' ' Gujerat . . , ] ' ' Dekhan or Maharashtra Kamata ... Dravida . . Telingana . . Gondwana III. From the smaller colonies : J-70 5-) 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 3 2 3 2 y 30 ij 1 1 1 1 2 li. 1 1 u 80 i li 38 10 Cape Colony 1 1 Natal and GrUiUaland 12 Mauritius :. ;: • ? 2 13 West African Settlements 1 14 Ceylon . . lb Hong Kong 16 Straits Settlements 4 1 1 17 Sarawak 1 18 Malta . . 1 19 Mau 1 20 Channel Islands . . 1 21 Fiji 22 New South Wales 1 13 23 New Zealand 8 24 Queensland 25 South Australia . . 4 5 26 Tasmania 2 27 Victoria . . . . . . 17 28 Westen) Australia 1 51 80 The Senate would not be bound to appor'ion >■ -nbers to these thirty territories, and others afterwards a ' e > i. accordance with any hard and fast principles. Room for the exercise of discretion wculd be necessary. If the rate of contribution to the central treasury should be made the standard, India would have nearly as many members as England, the representatives of the other colonies would form an inappreciable fraction, and in- deed the majority of those colonies would be left completely out in the cold. All of these results would be highly inconvenient. And if the quantity of population should be the standard,- the obvious and startling differences of quality would make its ap- plication ridiculous as well as dangerous. In drawing up the scheme for the first Senate therefore, the Convention w- ' ! ''on- sidcr revenues, quantity of population, and quality i, "'...', in connection with each other, and would moreover be \ ei lv al to the smaller colonies. The foregoing list is therefore pro. .b'v approximate to that which would seem good to the assembled wisdom of the empire. Whether the members should be directly elected by constituencies specially formed for them, or should be nominated by the Local Legislatures, would be indifferent if all those Legislatures were bodies elected by a uniform system of graduated suffrage. But as many are not elect' 'e at all, and few, if any, are likely to become elective by j.'raduated suffrage, before the time would come for choosii.j ihe first 39 .80 ■on- .' in lV al Inibled irectly luld be if all ;m of all, luated first Senate, the Convention would have the not very difficult duty of carving out districts to form special constituencies. The work would be greatly lightened by acknowledgment of the rijht of minorities to some representation, and consequent establishment of no constituencies not big enough to deserve at least three members, except in the smallest colonies. To make the working of the principle simple and complete, no elector ought to be allowed to vote for more than one candidate. All the Indian provinces would be single constituencies, and likewise all the other colonies except the three largest of the Australasian. Only in those and in the United Kingdom therefore, would the Convention have to trouble itself with making electoral divisions. And in these cases the simple standard of population would be sufficient. The nature of the suffrage would differ materially in two great natural divisions of Britain. In those mainly peopled by men of European blood, the United Kingdom, Man, the Channel Is- lands, Malta, Newfoundland, British Columbia, and all the Aus- tralasian colonies except Fiji, it might safely be universal. But in the others, as every one would agree in saying, it ought to be restricted to those having considerable freeholds, occu- pying substantial houses, or paying income trx. A graduated income-tax with a corresponding dependen -^ 'S- tem of graduated suffrage would not be at all unpopular in India, and would be peculiarly fitted to draw out in fair proportion the evpresslon of such opinions of the natives and non-official Europeans as are deserving of public attention. It ought to begin at the rate of one pie in the rupee on all incomes of Rs. 300 per mensem, and go up at the rate of an additional pie and additional vote for each additional amount of Rs. 300, the second pie not being levied on the rupees under 300, nor the third pie on the lupees under 600. So on it would go, till it would reach the possessor of more than Rs. 3600, compel him to pay an anna of every rupee above that amount, and endow him with twelve votes by way of compensation. The temptation to under-statement would thus be counterbalanced, and the Indian Exchequer filled without odium or unpopularity attaching to the Indian Government. Similar, but probably less restricted sys- s i ^r ,:''( 40 terns would be fit for the other colonies where white men are outnumbered by black. As the convention would not consist of madmen, it would not add equality to the universality of the suffrage in the other great class of constituencies. A more elaborate kind of graduation than that already exemplified would be necessary, but one or other of two alternative scales would be fit for application to every locality. The two Tollowing scales are, I believe, good enough to be their own excuses for publication. In preface it ought to be stated, that every sane person not being a minor, nor a pauper, nor a prisoner, nor unable to read and write, would have one vote. He v/ould be able to register his right in any con- stituency within whose bounds he had dwelt during thirty days * the time having elapsed since the last registration. But he juld have no right to have his name on more than one register at the s ^me time. iliil i are i not great ation le or 3n to good ice it r, nor have ' con- days ut he gister 41 SCALE I. Standaud a. ExPKKIiiNCE. Votes. (1) Age 21 30 40 50 1 Double Treble Quadruple Stand AKD B. Payment of Taxes. additional VOTES. (1^ Occupation for the greater part of a yeai- of a dwelling-house at a rent of ^'20, and conse- quent payment of house -tax in England al- ready, and in Britain afterwards. (2) at £40 (3) at (JO (4) at 80 (5) at 100 And so on up to 600 1 2 3 4 5 30 Standard C. Knowledge. additional. VOTES. (1) For the present— (a) Certificate from Inspector of aided schools, after examination in ordinary subjects, especial attention being given to Geography, English and General History, and Elementary Political Economy {/3) Certificate of the second class from University Local Examiners of middle-class schools. Afterwards. — Certificate from Public Examiners spe- cially appointed to hold quarterly examinations equal in difficulty to the foregoing, instead thereof. (2) For the presetit.—{a) Certificate of first-class from Univ. Local Ex, of middle-class schools. (/S) Success in coniirs goodness or badness is its likelihood of speedy success. He can- not or will not take the trouble to appreciate anything else. Jiut he has a keen eye for his own test. And a Tory Ministry with a majority in both Houses will, therefore, have only itself to blame D ^^ Ill i Ri i :i li {) i i i 50 if it cannot make him see clearly that its side must be the winning side even in the present Parliament — much more in the Conven- tion, where all the Indian members, and most of the Colonial, would be at its back. Of course, some answer must be made to the wordy attacks. Fal'acies and sophisms are not self-evident to most of mankind. Trenchant exposure is continually needed, for ill weeds have mar- vellous vitality. "This principle is all very well in theory, but will not do in practice." We would hear ad nauseam that poor old cloak for ignorance of facts, inability to grasp principles, and other consequences of mental laziness or imbecility. The answer would be easy. The phrase is self-contradictory. If a principle is good in theory it must be good in practice also, if men can only find the right way of carrying it inco practice. Mature men of average sanity, who have devoted their str'-nuous attention to the study of the right way, have a right to patient and detailed criticism of their proposals, and vague general objections by mental slovens, who have never taken the trouble to form accur- ate scientific notions of the subject and its issues, are just so much irrelevant impudence. If I bring forward a plan for cm- bodying in action a principle confessedly good, you who object are bound to show that it is a bad plan, or to propose a better, or to acknowledge that you oppose without having a reason. It is quite true that no experiment can ever be successful if nobody ever tries or is ever allowed to try. But are there no legislators in Eng- land who are willing and able to try } As Mr. Mill pungently says,* there is no difficulty in proving that any principle what- ever will work ill, if we suppose universal idiocy to be conjoined with it. Is the character of British legislators anything ap- proaching to universal idiocy .•• The complexity which is so dreadful to your listless n-ind is almost universally a prime con- dition of legal excellence. The justice of law varies to no small extent directly with its complexity, with its adaptation to vary- in-T circumstances. Fact is the basis of nght, and as the facts of human nature are extremely various and complex, trouble- some complexity must be a characteristic of every good classi- fication of human rights. Troublesome toil is by a law of the * Utilitarianism, 36. 51 U )n- lU Iry- Icts )le- Ithe universe inseparable from the obtaining of every great good. In all private affairs you cheerfully admit the maxim that nothing is worth much which can be got with little trouble. How then can you prefer the least trouble to the greatest good in the most important department of human activity, ?nd still expect to be treated as a rational being ? You think no expenditure of time and trouble too great to bestow upon arrangement of the details of post-office work, or upon a railway time-table, or a scheme of insurance-rates. Yet you cry out again.'t expending a small frac- tion of the time and trouble devoted to these matters, on that infinitely more important matter, a scale of political rights. Says anoLi.er noodle, " Your proposal is impracticable, be- cause you can never get a perfectly accurate standard of political capacity." Most potent, grave, and reverend noodle ! nobody proposes to attempt anything so foolish, nobody but yourself has been thinknig of such a thing. No such standard is needed in political, more than in any other practical adjustments of human affairs in active life. The wisest men are satisfied with approximations to perfection in steering their intricate way through a world of imperfection. In common life we do not deem it a waste of time to estimate men's values, though we cannot be sure of doing so with perfect accuracy. If we did not do it, common business would be involved in confusion. That we cannot do quite so much as we would like to do is no reason for contented idleness. Surely three-quarters of a loaf is bet- ter than no bread ! For the required measurements of political capacity we have the close approximation to a perfect stan- dard, which is furnished by combination of th ■ three mutually corrective and supplementary standards -A age, property, and education. We all use them already in estimating the capacities of men for private business, and you will admit tnat they serve you with tolerable accuracy, even in year rough and hurried applications. Is it then inipo.s- sible that calm scientific legislators can frame a tolerably accurate scale of human political capacity, which would deal out sub- stantial justice to the electors as a whole ? Isolated cases of injuslice must always occur under human laws, if only because our imperfect knowledge does not enable us to accommodate H ^i i • 52 Mi : i! II ! them accurately to divine laws. The complex science of humatt nature is in a very imperfect state, and we do not yet know all the limitations of its general rules, still less the subsidiary excep- tions to these very limitations. Many opponents come so far on the right road as to admit that the nearest approach to a perfectly just distribution of political power will be found in some form of graduated suffrage But they rate the difficulty of the task so highly and the capacity of British legislators so lightly, as to think that any new system of suffiage would be no better, and probably much more unjust than the old, though in a different way. That is a matter of opinion. The theory of universal idiocy over again ! But your opinion, my friends, is not that of those who know most about the work and the workmen. They thmk that the data and the men are practically sufficient for a considerable work of improve- ment. To give to you an opportunity of showing your fitness to pronounce an opinion, I challenge you to prove considerable flaws in the schemes propounded in this book. Do not think that you have answered my challenge, when you have pointed out cases exceptional to my rules. You haye no right whatever to object to those rules unless you can give good reasons fo.c deeming the exceptional more numerous than the normal c;^ses, or can suggest better rules devised by yourself or some other person. It is quite true that a Scotch fishwife could thrash a French private of the line, but that fact does not dethrone the general rule that men are stronger ihan women. You may say that some nun are as wise at twenty-one as others are at fifty, but you have no right to reject the standard of age until you can substitute most for some. You may say that a paragon mechanic is wiser than a young bachelor of arts, but until you can prove that men who have had a liberal education are as a rule no wiser than those who have not, you have no riglit to say that the stand- ard of education does not correspond to facts of human i.ature. En passant ccmpare nine average borough-members with the nine university-members, six of whom are privy-councillors and seven of whom have been found worthy to hold high offices under this and preceding Governments. You may sneer as much as you like at mere wealth, but the standard of property remains 53 fixed on a rock which you do not attempt to shake, on the almost invariable connection of wealth with leisure to think, means of study, opportunities of imbibing wi^idom by contact with highly cultured men, and a comfortable frame of mind well disposed to entertain tolerant and liberal sentiments. At least you may permit an experiment. Can you give good specific reasons for thinking that any probable system of gra- duated suffrage would be attended with more injustice and con- sequent ill-feeling than the present system oi" equal suffrage ? Formal exclusion ev(m would be less grievous to the lower classes than virtual exclusion is to the upper, because the latter have more sensitiveness and more just pride to be wounded Oligarchy is by its nature more tolerant and tolerable than ochlocracy. Many of its members are always men of gentle feelings and liberal sympathies. It dares not go to great lengths of tyranny because it cannot command the ultimate physical force of the nation. Fear of the populace is an effective check to oligarchical excesses. But Qnis cnstodiet ipsos custodes. There is no physical force in reserve to check the sovereign mob from dragging everythii;g down to its own sordid level. To say that fear of mob-tyranny is fear of a phantom, on the ground that the newly enfranchised p ^lulace of the English towns has not yet shaken off its habits .ji r ,.i[)ectful subordination, is merely to utter a most y y atid childish cavil. The wolf will come at last and do all ... -w :)rc mischief because smi't;- ; optimists have lulled everybody into fals. security. And ^e nave the glaring examples of America auu Australia before our eyes to warn us of what we may expect when our lower classes have come to know their own strength, to be inflated with sense of their own supremacy, and to be intoxicated '\y: the wilful and capricious exercise of absolute power. The lection of Dr. Kenealy is a nice foretaste of what we may soon have in abundance. The invidious assertion of an unnatar i quality is a standing insult to every class but the lowest, T' nt is one good answer to those unmitigated Radicals who denounce graduated suffrage as an outrage on manhood, an artifical degradation of the essence below its mere accessaries and accidents. Not the only one, however. Wealth and learning are not generally accidental, and fl I I i;i 'f (I ill 54 !l'i 'Si if n accessaries, as in the case of paints, are sometimes at least more valuable than such a groundwork as their canvas. But let that pass. The artificiality is altogether on the side of equal suffrage. Electoral equality is an anomaly in the universe. There is noth- ing like it in the order of nature, in social arrangements, in the estimation of evidence, in the choice of agents. Nobody in his common life and ordinary business acts upon tlie principles that all men are equal, and that one man is as good as another These arc just as far from being established maxims of human conduct, as are the statements, that all the Mammalia arc equal, and that one vertebrate animal is as good as another. There is nothing intrinsically invidious in .' uman inequality. Social, moral, and intellectual inequalities are cheerfully recognised by all men in every relation of life except the political, and no men but morbid misanthropes feel insulted by mention of them, except when recognition is demanded in an insolent' man- ner. Neither will anybody feel insultec; by electoral in- equality, when it has once beer fairly estab'.shed on an intelli- gible basis. Nobody would even now feel insulted by the proposal, if Radical incendiaries would only let men alone and cease from their railing false accusations. What is proposed is merely to reform our antiquated laws by taking away the element of arbitrary and artificial interference with universal inequality. The end of suffrage-laws is not the levelling of inequalities or the correction of evils, but simply the expression of every man's opinion in political action according to the natural measure of his powers. If directly used as means of education, they are abused by perversion to an unnatural purpose, while graduated sufirage ofters all the indirect educational advan- tages of equal suffrage without its liability to abuse. The perfection of an electoral law lies in its concurrence with facts of human nature as they are, not as men may think that they ought to be, I follow nature and recognise facts. Human inequality I see is a great glaring fact, and our laws are glaring contradictions of that great fact, I wish, therefore, that positive law should be harmonized with natural facts by political recognition of natural inequalii}'. Graduated • nffrnge equally with equal suffrage is a recognition of the great uict of manhood as the groundwo»-k and ill, n 55 . necessary condition of electoral power. But a foundation is not the best part of a house. Manhood is the basis of the highest share of voting power, just as bottlehood is the basis of the highest-priced dozen of wine. But bare humanity, like empty bottlehood, is a very poor thing. All men, considered simply as men, arc equal, or nearly equal, just as all bottles, considered simply as bottles, are nearly equal in pettiness of value. The value of bottles depends chiefly on what is put into them by the wine-merchant, and just so the value of men depends chiefly on what is put into them by experience of men and things, acquisi- tion of formulated knowledge, and all the educating influences which consciously or unconsciously modify the possessor of v/ealth. And after something has been put into them, men dififer from each other in political value, just as much as a bottle of small beer differs in price from a bottle of Imperial Tokay. The right of every mature, law-obeying, self-supporting man to a share in the government of his country is one thing; a thing, which I am as ready to admit as any Radical in England. But the claim of every man to an equal share is another and alto- gether difl"erent thing : a thing which I cannot regard as anything more than a piece of ridiculous impudence. Government by the majority is right and necessary : but only when the majority is a majority of mental quality, not merely of physical quantity ; of human value, not of human units of different values ; of brains, not of flesh and bone. Arguments like these may be made perfectly intelligible to working men. They have distinctions of persons already amongst themselves, and none of those established by graduated suflfrago are naturally likely to ofifend them. There would be no broad invidious line of demarcation cutting them off from other men as a quite separate and degraded caste. On the contrary, the strata of political power would be as numerous as the grada- tions of the social scale, and shade into one another as insensibly. Still better, they would sometimes not coincide with social strata, but break through them, and gratify ambitious workingmen by lifting them politically above their social superiors. Most of them would have plural votes, and a middle-aged skilled artisan earning £2 a week, or livhig in a house rented at 8s., would have / I ) 1 : !l i| 1 56 more votes than a young officer in the army. The latter would have only five or six or seven votes, while the former would have at least eight, and might increase the number to twenty, if he should devote his evenings to study and pass the third public examination. There would be no sting in such a system as that. Poor men revolt at distinctions of kind : not at distinctions of degree. The standard of age would excite no envy. Everybody could hope to reach the highest rungs of that ladder. The standard of education would be gladly accepted by able n'orking men as a spur to self-improvement and a mean of attaining a higher political status. Nor would the property-standard be so " odious " as Mr. Mill seems to have thought. Working men have sense enough to know that the best of them get the best wages, and that greater wealth is presumptive proof of greater wisdom to understand political affairs, and conclusive proof of greater interest in the maintenance and welfare of government. There is nothing which they can more easily comprehend than the argument that as the State is a joint-stock institution for protecting life and property, those members ought to have the greatest share of control who contribute most of the stock and have most property to be protected. They can be made to see the injustice of giving more control over the affairs of a joint- stock company to twenty individual shillings paid for a single share than to nineteen individual sovereigns paid for nineteen shares. They will readily admit that those who pay the piper ought to have the power of choosing the dance. .We need not be frightened by Radical threats of a grand uprising of the People (with a very big P) in all its majesty against this flagitious scheme of insult and robbery. Those who believe them must think tliat the working nieii of England are " such fools as to be incapable of having a scheme of represen- tation which is founded on reason and justice explained to them, or such scoundrels as to set it at naught after they have become acquainted with it." Riots and ferocious agitation would indeed be the result of an attempt to take away the right of suffrage. But they can easily be made to see that in the case of the country workmen there cannot be any taking away at, all from those who hav'e got nothing ; and that in the case of the town 57 nd ty ho I re ea- rn, nie cd ge. ;he workmen there will be only the taking away of something entirely different from the right of suffrage — the power of every- where excluding their superiors from representation. It is not extravagant to hope that the discussion of the subject in Parlia- ment will at least half-persuade them that they have no divine right to so treme idous a power. Most men are somewhat reluctant io give up even powers which they know to be unrighteous. The working men may therefore be somewhat sulky at the loss of their present control of the town constitu- encies and their prospect of controlling all the constituencies. But they have not yet been spoiled by long possession and capricious exercise of absolute power. They have still some amount of sweet reasonableness in their nature. They are not capable of violent indignation and' revolt against a reform supported by reasons which they must admit to be strong if not sufficient, which arc not insulting to them, and which involve no exclusion or degradation of a'lybody from political status. The rights and dignities of citizenship are evidently bestowed for the first time by that reform on one half their number, and remain intact for the other half. Nevertheless, Cheap John and his apes cannot afford to lose their clap-trap, and will of course yell out that the Ministry is taking back with one hand what it gives with the other to the present-non-electors in the counties. For the moment, before the practical operation of the Act confutes them, the sophistic epigram might be as mischievous as a bombshell among weak minds not able to see that it it is also as hollow. Herds of ill- informed, inconsiderate, and essentially childish intellects would regard the balanced phrase as a brilliant argument. For their sake I shall now rip it open and expose the lie which is sole tenant of its belly, in the illustrative style adapted to such as are of weaker capacity. Once upon a time I went to my brother's house, loaded as to my coat tails with three red apples- On the appearance of Charley, aged ten, I put one of the apples into his hand, and had the pleasure of seeing him look happy in the conscious possession of his uncle's kindly regards. Needing to attend to something else for a few minutes, I overlooked the presence of Bobby, aged five. Bobby had the uncomfortable itl ! : igi n I !iS- i 58 / feeling of being left out in the cold, and was sore at the thought that his uncle had no ruch esteem for him as for Charley, and did not think him worthy of any notice. I took out another apple, and instantly brightened the little fellow's face with the feeling that he had come in from the cold outside, ancf was no longer excluded from the warm circle of affectionate esteem. At the same time, with the other hand, I gave the third apple to Charley. Did Bobby feel that I had taken from him with one hand what I had given with the other ? No, thank heaven, he is not one of the odious little greedies who look upon anything done for another child as a wrong done to them ! He did not think that he had lost his place in my regards and been put out into the cold again. He would have liked another apple, indeed, but he was content with one, when I explained that Charley got two because he had a larger organism with a double capacity for assimilation. /)c te fabula narratur, I hope, O virtuous peasant, O sturdy miner ! You will have some of Bobby's sweet reason- ableness } The epigram will surely not deceive the working men, who get and keep the vote, which the talking men will try to make them believe Mr. Disraeli has juggled away. They may join in the talking men's cry with hope of frightening Par- liament into giving something more than a vote. But when the Bill has become an Act, they will rest content with what they have got. Think of what a great thing it is which they will get ! Satisfaction of their aspirations to the place of a recognized citizen ! Relief from the galling sense of inferiority in kind to their neighbours in farmhouse and town ! Rescue from a de- pressing feeling of exclusion from the highest of ordinary human ambitions, from having a share in the government of their coun- try I The self-respect of men who have public rights and duties, whose voices are heard in the determination of public affairs I They will no longer be political nullities whose wishes and opinions are things of no importance, but frceborn Britons, able to swagger up to the polling-booths and record their secret votes, with all the gravity and deliberation due to such momentous proceedings. They will be able to listen to the humble solicita- tions of fine gentlemen at elections, with a.l the dignity of a man who has a favour to confer. They themselves will be addressed N 59 as gentlemen from crowded and brilliant platforms. Will all these things be nothings to men who feel themselves despised outcasts ; and will they believe in spite of all their five senses that Mr. Disraeli has only been playing some of his tricks and has left them no better than they were ? All these things come with their votes, evfen to those who get no more than one vote, and do not go away because their superior neighbours get ad- ditional votes. The secret reason of the Radical's fury is not that anything is taken away, but because something is not given, which, above all things alone perhaps, he really desired. He is 'ingry, not because the reform will take away citizenship from any working man, but because it will not invest the lower classes with absolute power of doing as they choose with the empire. He cares little for the social and moral elevation of the poor, which citizenship indirectly helps to effect. What he wants to do is to demoralise those who have the weakest heads and least regulated passions in tlv' nation, by suddenly thrusting upon them the intoxicating draught of unlimited power. Then he will, he hopes, be able to lure them on with flattery, excitement of jealousy, and promise of plunder, to gratify the social and re- ligious grudges which he cherishes in his own benevolent bosom. That hope is the mainspring of all his desperate ragings against graduated suff'rage. He wishes to make the poor masters of England, not because he loves them, but because he hopes to make them the tools of his now impotent malignity. The only argument against graduated suffrage, which is in the least degree respectable, is the statement that Age, Intelligence, Wealth, and other forms of social superiority are already repre- sented indirectly by their influence on the inferior electors, and that direct representation in addition would consequent!}'- be un- necessary and unjust. There are, however, only a few grains of truth in the premise, and none at all in the inference. The political opinions of old and young are notoriously and often violently different. Almost the only persons who sufficiently respect great learning and wisdom are those few who have leisure and ability to appreciate it, and who therefore have least need of guidance. Highly educated and thoughtful men have few opportunities of coming into contact with those inferiors who 6o I I need enlightenment, and can influence only those who are of the same class with themselves, and who would vote in exactly the same way if left quite alone. Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Froude have hardly any more political influence in Chcl.'^ea than their most common-place ncif,dibours, Oxford and Edinburgh have long been over-flowing hot-beds of the meav.est and least intellectual type of extreme Radicalism. The Scotch University-men are predominantly Tory, yet four Scotchmen out of every five arc Whigs, or worse. Every election-agent knows that the learning and wisdom of a candidate, or of his supporters, go for nothing ap- preciable in a parliamentary election. Mr. Mill's statement, that moral influences arc exactly expressed by universal suffrage, is irrelevant but true, because it is merely an identical statement. The supporters of graduated suffrage contend for recognition of moral superiority, a thing mightily different from moral influ- ence, and indeed often varying inversely with it. Mr. Mill con- founds v.^hat ought to be with what is. Because A is wiser, more learned, in every way more estimable than B, C, and D, it does not follow that any one of the latter will guide his opinions by those of the former. To make an impression you must have not only an impressive agent, but a correspondingly impressible object. There ' such a thing as casting pearls l)efore swine, and it is rather the rule than the exception in regard to the matter in hand. Besides how can excellence have much eftect on those with whom it is not brought into close and frequent contact .-* What do scavengers know or care about the political opinions of scholars and savants ? The only kind of natural superiority which at present obtains any appreciable amount of political recognition is superior wealth. But the recognition is restricted to certain sorts of wealth, employed in some few particular ways which bring their owners constantly into intimate relations with large masses of men on a footing of predominance, and not possessed by the majority of men who are in comfortable pecuniary circumstances. Their possessors are not even coincident with all or nearly all of the most wealthy members of the community, and are very far indeed from being the chief possessors of the resultant elevation and refinement of thought and feeling, which render men with i.| 6i comfortable incomes best fitted to l^.old political power. Name landowners and manufacturers, and you name almost the only men whose wealth enables them to direct the votes of other men. Their more numerous social equals may enjoy as much social consideration, but seldom command a vote beyond their own. Poor men are not influenced by rich men who are not masters. Are not Marylebone and Clielsea notoriously the most Radical of the Metro[)olitan Boroughs, thou[j;h nine-tenths of the rates are paid by Conservatives ? Social deference is not po iti- cal deference, even under the practice of open votintr. A noble- man may often be treated with respect and kindliness by an indi- vidual Radical, when the tv.'o meet as individuals. If left to himself the latter might not feel very anxious to humiliate his aristocratic neighbour. But wh:n men act politically, they act in masses, their individuality is merged, and a class-hatred is often generated to the displacement of soberer, gentler, and more judicial private feelings. Class-c pinion and clique-opinion dis- place individual opinion, and the former are almost always formed by thoie members of the class who are most self-assert- ing, most envious, and most intolerant of the claims of real superiority. 1 he actual indirect representation of property, moreover, is not only irregular, unfairly distributed, an i miserably inade- quate, but also extremely precarious, and continually growing smaller. The Ballot Act took away a great part of it, and in time, with the growing love of independence in classes long tor- pidly submissive, will take it away almost entirely. Besides, it is immoral and dangerous to the public weal, because it is a vio- lation of the spirit of the law, and thus brings the law as a wh le into contempt. The precariousness and immorality of this ad- ditional political power actually adhering to property, combine with its inadequacy to urge on tl;e sub-.titution of direct for indirect representation of its natural powers. The result would not at all justify the inference that p operty would get too much representation, in being represented both directly ar.d indirectly. It would cease to be represente-i indirectly. Gentlemen now use their m.ney power to get something like that share of political power, to which they have a divine right, but no legal right. 62 The public opinion of their class now permits violations of the spirit of an unjust law, just as the public opinion of the lower classes recognizes the poacher as still an honourable man, be- cause it regards the laws which he violates as unjust and oppressive. Give legal recognition to the divine rights. Pro- vide open and legitimate modes of giving proportional expres- sion to natural powers in political action, Srnso of horour will then constrain every gentleman to abandon his present illegiti- mate and half-concealed modes of finding expression for natural powers so large as to be only insulted by the bestowal of a sin- gle vote. Faggot-voting, bribery, significant importunity, in- timidation, are only reasonable reprisals made by men whom the present laws keep out of their just political powers. The public opinion of the educated classes does not now regard these expedients as dishonourable, but it would quickly make an end of them, if those just political powers were fully conceded. The establishment of graduated suffrage would immediately put every gentleman on his honour to abstain from all attempts to influence the use of another man's vote, and legal rights oi" suf- frage would correspond to divine rights, not informally and imperfectly, but with nearly complete equality in letter as well as in spirit. I close this discussion of practical statesmanship, with an in- tensely practical parting shot. Under the present suffrage-laws, householders and lodgers have much trouble in proving their claims, much litigation goes on before Revising Barristers, and many vexatious exclusions are continually being made on the most paltry grounds. Nearly all these troubles would cease under tlie simple requirements of the proposed Act in regard to residence. And no troubles of equal intensity would take their vacated places. Nothing is easier, or more easily understood, than the production of evidence of age, tax-payments, and edu- cation. Everybody understands the nature and necessity of extracts from birth-registers, receipts for house-tax or income- tax, examination certificates, and university diplomas. Detec- tion of fraud would be so easy and inexpensive that none would venture to incur its penalties. The only difficulty connected with the subject is in framing a scale, and that would trouble none but the ministers themselves. 63 CHAPTER V. Till-: POLICY OP ANNKXATIOX. Till-: establishment of '^an imperial ..enatc would remove the chief present objection'to''cxtension of the British Empire. Her Majesty's Hritish]Cabinet]coulJ no lonj^er plead over-work and want of time as reasons for not extending to other dark places of the earth those " blessings of British rule " which Sir Wilfrid Liwson mentions so lightly, 'and every candid friend of civiliza- tion values so highly. For the legislature of the Empire would be mercifully relieved from the knagging drudgery of local English legislation, and^would have plenty of time to attend to the affairs of the wide world beyond the four seas. The many reasons for enlarging the borders of Britain would then, per- haps, for the first time be fairly 'considered and acknowledged by active British statesmen. We_,can surely hope that they will despise the antique homilies on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in consequence of too great extension. It would be much more reasonable to say that Rome fell because she did not conquer enough, but left an ^outer world of uusoftened barba- rians, whose rude vigour was sufBcient for her destruction. She fell to pieces not because she was unwieldily big, but because she became rotten - hearted, and therefore foul - blooded. While Britain is sound at the core, her body will only grow stronger ^by grov/ing larger. We hive no strong reason to fear degeneration, and many strong reasons to hope for improvement. The conditions of these latter days of Britain are radically dif- ferent from the conditions of the latter days of Rome. Then there was little religion and less morality, and both were rapidly hastening from bad to worse. Now religious faith is here grow- ing stronger and clearer day by day, and morality growing more Tefined, more intense, and more comprehensive in its influence on human feelings and on the details of human life and conversation. 1. ■I PI; IM n^ 64 The duty of Britain to take a large part of the outer world under her management is not practically limited by the condition of competence to manage so much. She can never " liave enough," and the more she has the more good she will be able to do. She is now, and is likely to remain quite competent for any duty which she may be called to perform. Folk who talk .^nceringly about "visionary schemes," need to be reminded that she has already accomplished tasks more difficult than any which can test her in the future. Let them read again the first page of Macaulay's Essay n Clive. and recall the prophecies of the sage Dr. Lardner. Let them still further reduce themselves to a wholesome siate of humility, by reflecting that they belong to the same brood -A wiseacres, who ridiculed the project of an Atlantic cable, and derided the Suez Ca:ial as the dream of a magnificent madman. Men who prate that Britain has already as much as .she can manage, seem to imagine that she has only one brain a id one pair of hands for political work, and cannot do more by greater division of labour. But nobody proposes to add anything to the work oi" those whose attention is already sufficiently occupied. It will not be difficult to find new officers fit for the new work, from additional corporals to additional Colonial Secre- taries. The British Islands and their colonies in the southern hemisphere contahi an inexhaustible store, actual and potential, of soldiers, civilians, and "iai)tains of industry," as good as any who are already in the field. Nothing is warned but sini'lar preparation evoked by snniliar opp, rtunily. There will be no lack of volunteers to run all the risk and take all the trouble, while the timid obstructives may sit at home in perfect ease of mind and body, without even needing to put their hands in their pockets except for their own private purposes. Foreign Secretaries and Colonial Secretaries may try to shirk moral responsibility, and avoid the very appearance of formal obligation. But they, as stewards for the British nation, cannot cast o^ its divine responsibility for making the best use of itj pre-o.iiinent and peculiar talents. They cannot relieve it or tliemselves by a careless official '' non possitjiuis''' from the sacred obligations to act as Justice-General of the world's peace, and schoolmaster of inferior tribes, which are imposed upon it by its I 65 ucir lU'K hi al I not iv;3 or red liiid its general superiority. Such a policy as the timid obstructives are prone to favour, might suit a nation of niggards, sluggards, and cowards. But the world has a right to expect somel.ing better from the "hereditary nobility of mankind." Noblesse oblige. The powers of the Anglo-Saxon race have not been given for its own insular gloiy and gratification. To squander the energies of an imperial people in petty local work would be an unpardonable outrage on the divine order of nature. Lives sacrificed to duty are not losses to the world. They have not been lived in vain. They cannot be better spent than in leading the forlorn hopes of humanity, in reclaiming savage men and dangerous lands, in sowing broadcast the seeds of good, and watering them, even though it be with English blood. That blood will speak elo- quently to stir the blood of all truemen who follow. On some men must lie the duty of developing that greatest happiness of the greatest number ; which, as Radical philanthropists need often to be reminded, may not be the greatest happiness of the greatest number presently existing. Some nursing-fathers are needed for the savages and stagnant half-civilized peoples who cannot well walk forward without leading strings. Dazed as they will be by the inevitable movement from darkness into the blaz. ing light of modern civilization, they must not be allowed to stumble to and fro into sloughs and over precipices under the guidance of blind leaders chosen by the blind. Any natural pro- cess of change among such beings must be erratic or interrupted, and is less likely to end in good than in some new form of evil. The operation of trade and intercourse with Europe is not by itself an unmingled benefit. As we may at this moment see in Fiji, the earliest commercial adventures in an unorganized coun- try arc not remarkable for culture, or for any virtue but courage. The efifects of intercourse with such cannot bo very beneficial, and have in many cases been positively degrading, positively obstructive to the entrance of civilized notions and habits, and ruinous to trade itself Even when the country recovers from or resists the mischievous influences of the first contact, its unaided growth must be like that of England — tedious, fitful, and painful. From such suffering, such waste of time and strength ; f.^/ni the long-drawn misery of a lonely, self-directed upward struggle, we r 66 can save it, and in so doing benefit our traders, all ourselves, all the world. It is the duty, the high privilege of us who have painfully learnt the lesson of order, to teach the weaker brethren who would have to spend a long time indeed in puzzling it out for themselves. We deem it wrong to leave the wild children of our cities to their natural processes of development. Is it not equally wrong to leave the wild peoples of the earth ? For most nations civilization has been, and must be, a grafted, not a natural fruit. Peaceful intercourse on equal terms has not done a titliC of as much as has been done for culture by the imposition of a conqueror's stricter order and superior usages. But for the formation of the vast Roman Empire we would never have seen the astonishing development of modern Europe. And as it has been in the past for Europe, so must it be in the future for Asia, Africa, and tropical America. " Great is the power of what is good," some will say, " it must prevail everywhere sooner or later." Why not sooner rather than later ? Virtue may be strong even in its nakedness. But how much stronger when clothed in the garb of public power, and speaking with the voice of legal authority ! When can the arts of peace spread so fast, and root themselves so deeply, as when the competent hand of an enlightened ruler guarantees that the peace shall not be broken ? Does not the presence of the European magistrate add tenfold efficacy to the labour of the mcrchan', the planter, the school- master, and even the missionary.-' And are not the number and character of the former thiee incalculnbly improved by his pro- tection and control .•' The qualities of the English race are just such as pre-eminently fit it for the work which some, neverthe- less, now adjure us to prosecute no further. Its enterprising spirit and stc;idy industry make it the best developer of wild and thinly-peopled regions ; its religious uprightness and political talents make it the best body of managers of the progress of in- ferior races. No oiher people is comparable to it in fitness for the discharge of imperial functions. Divine piovidence seems to have made a special disposal of historic conditions, mental and material, to cultivate in Englishmen those special qualities which justly command the allegiance of inferior races. No other ;COuntry has been so favoured with that pure religion from which ^7 most human uprightness and kindh'ness have their origin and nourishment. Nowhere else has society preserved so much of the tone of the chivalrous ages, of that sense of honour which so power- fully inculcates devotion to duty, and is in the absence of con- firmed Christian principles the great ensurer of judicial purity, official integrity, and commercial honesty. Our long and unique political training has produced not only political institutions, but also a national public character of unique excellence. The British constitution, sturdy by long natural growth, and yet plastic by long habituation to modifying influences, is a slowly elaborated model in which above all others — perhaps, in which alone — has stability been made compatible with progress, and dignity with active efficiency. In it alone are found the mutual- ly necessary and mutually corrective elements of a wealthy com- monalty, a liberal aristocracy, and a Crown strong both by anci- ent right and by popular choice — the three legs of a healthy commonwealth. The English people in their public character are also in many ways an example deservinL,^ to be brought home to the rest of the world. Nowhere are public morality and c.q^acity so high as in it, equally among the governors and the governed. In no other people are the political talents and virtues so gen- erally diffused. And nowhere else has reverence for law been so strongly developed, not only in no opposition to, but in har- mony with, a spirit of individual enterprise, self-reliance, and steadiness of purpose. And that spirit has formed those mari- time habits, and given that maritime supremacy, which most conspicuously declare England's fitness for the leadership of an almost world-wide federation. The acquisition of such a position will be far easier to her than to any nation likely to be her com- petitor. No other has so many convenient bases for exterded operations. To no other can sucl' a policy seem so natural, ei-her in her own eyes or in those of her neighbours. Yet we have been more than once taunted with grasping un- fairness to other European nations in our imperial career, and many generous souls are therefore ready to stigmatize further acquisitions as the acts of a greedy gobbler, whose Mind voraci- ous envy will not permit others to do for themselves a tithe of as much as he has done for himself in the field of colonial enterprise. 68 They jump at the slightest excuse to fasten upon us a charge of in- satiable and unscrupulous lust for power and wealth, in a field where there is plenty of room for all, and thinking that we have already enough and more than enough, bid us leave the rest of the world to the devices of our neighbours. The taunt and the advice are alike irrational. If any profit is to be gained from subordinate territories, surely those have the best right to it who are willing and able to render the greatest services in return. And that is and always has been the character of England. Her history affords no cases analogous to the long systematic plunder of South America by Spain, and Java by Holland. Her admin- istration hasjn general been honestly framed with a view to the welfare of her subjects, and in many parts of Africa established for directly philanthropic ends. In the light of past colonial experience, England's supreme fitness for the leadership of infe- riors is quite unquestionable. Why then question the rightful- ness of the utmost use of her beneficent powers ? What good can be done by burying some of her talents in the earth .'' What right. has she to hand over to inferior workers the task which none can do so well as she, while still having"within her widened bounds an exhaustless supply of energy, of men clearly marked out by nature to be the officers of the industrial brigades of the great equatorial regions } It is a strange kind of generosity which allows other men to spoil work which you yourself can do per- fectly well if you only choose to try. It is a sin and a shame. The great duty is one which ought to be shared with others in as slight a degree as is consistent with the avoidance of war with a very powerful neighbour. We clearly cannot get all the unciv- ilized and unappropriated world under our umbrella, though we may get a very large part. That we can do it better is alone a sufficient reason for keeping the work out of the hands of others. That makes it our duty to get and keep territory wherever we can. That will justify us in anticipating Germany and in inducing Holland, by payment of a million or two and the aid of our Asiatic fleets and armies against the obstinate Achinis, to cede her large claims and small settlements in those great islands, Borneo and Papua, which are already partly British. When the best has been said, these Protestant and Monarchical countries are decidedly inferior to England and Scotland in religion, in morals, and in the political virtues and talents. Far stronger is the obligation to save the world from tutelage by nations imbued with Popish or Ochlocratic superstitions, the two disastrous extremes of social tendencies, and above all from Frr-.ce, where the extremes meet. The ascendancy of France, Italy, Spain, or the United States, would be a misfortune to any country, how- ever bad its present state may be. Not much beyond a varnishing of mechanical civilisation would be gained. France has done litt'e or nothing to improve in any way the large districts which she holds in Algeria, Cochin-China, and New Caledonia, but has been guilty of many acts of cruelty and oppression in very modern times. The religious effects, such as they may be, of French supremacy will not atone for the political. Frenchmen do not like Ultramontanism for themselves, but they are willing enough to impose it upon others. They will displace a Pagan by a Papal superstition, not much better in itself, and much more im- pervious to the influence of rational Christianity. Not content with that, they will probably persecute Protestant converts already made, as they have done in Tahiti and arc now doing in the Loyalty Islands. From imminent danger of similar treatment it is the urgent duty of the First Protestant Power to rescue Mada- gascar and Tonga, and more especially the Presbyterian New Hebrides, lying so perilously near to New Caledonia, so conve- niently near to Fiji. France is notoriously hungry for colonial conquests, and none can doubt that if our policy of indifference continues she will very soon be mistress not only of Northern Africa, Senegambia, and Indo-China, but also of Madagascar and the larger part of Polynesia. The first two and the greater part of the third we cannot, indeed, save without open war, and must therefore abandon to their fate. Algeria is already French, and is out of all relations with us, while Tunis, Tripoli, and perhaps Morocco, we must leave at her mercy in order to save something more important. Cession of Bathurst and all our forts in Sene- gambia north of Sierra Leone, is necessary to complete our control of Guinea by the acquisition in a fair exchange of the French stations on the Gold Coast and the Gaboon River. The Gallic Eagle has already fixed his claws so deeply in the Empire 70 of Anam that we cannot now deprive him of his prey. But we can at least save the neighbouring kingdom of Siam from a similar fate by enrolling it among the protected States of India. There is nothing to prevent us from saving Tonga, Rarotonga, the New Hebrides, and the Solomon Islands, by immediately annexing them to Fiji. Madagascar is too conspicuous to be treated so unceremoniously, while we have a quieter but equally effective way of procuring her deliverance. We can so work on Malagasy fears of the French as to induce the Queen tu acknow- ledge the imperial sovereignty of the Queen of Britain, in return for a guarantee of protection by British soldiers and sailors against her most dreaded enemy. To ask more than such an acknowledgment would not at first be politic, but more would inevitably follow. A protected state when once fairly entangled with a great federal kingdo:i) cannot but gravitate to a condition of federal subordination. The device of a protectorate is more- over applicable advantageously elsewhere than in Madagascar. In Siam, as already mentioned, and also in Persia, in Egypt, in Arabia, and even in America, it may be used to extend the area of British power without the troublesome necessity of conquest. The intimacy of the connection ought to vary for different states as well as at different times. Some, like the Native States of India, would be occupied by British troops ; others would not. A wise British Government would be exceedingly liberal tc^them in matters both of privilege and finance. It would, at least, in the beginning, allow them to keep up separate armies and engage to defend them for a small annual payment ; would let them have a share of central legislative powers, but yet not make Acts of Senate binding on them unless confirmed by the local legislature; and would admit them to all or most of the privileges of British citizenship, while troubling them with few or none of its responsi- bilities and restraints. Of course, however, they would imme- diately cede to the imperial sovereign the power of declaring war and concluding peace, and even reluctant Madagascar would soon, if not immediately, have to yield full local rights to all members of the Empire. The consequent influx of Anglo-Saxons would very soon assimilate the Protected States lo the ordinary parts of the British Federation. Surely this v/ill be a policy 71 much less troublesome, and much more profitable to ourselves and to mankind, than any more paltry patching up of equal alliances with the flighty and faithless occupants of rickety chjiirs of State. Italy has not yet any colonies, and has not tried to get them. If she does try, she ought to be instantly thwarted. The wisdom shown in her management of her own affairs is certainly not such as to promise much for any distant subjects. As for Spain, no one can seriously contemplate her interference as capable of benefiting anybody anywhere. She has the faults of France in a worse degree, with ignorance and sloth in addition. Happily she cannot just now try to grab anything, and we will not be con- cerned with her at all. Portugal is ambitious enough in Africa* as she showed with a good deal of spiteful sulkiness at the time of our war with the Ashantis. Her dominion, unprofitable to herself and superficial as it is, is no small curse to both sides of Southern Africa, and, in the interest of everybody, ought to be brought to a speedy end. As she owes her independent existence to us, we have another strong justification for very peremptory dealing. The recent quarrel ab:)ut Delagoa Bay might have been so used as to force a sale of her rickety forts on the whole coast of Mozambique, and thus place the great Zambezi River, as the fitness of things demands, under the contrbl of a really commer- cial nation. She has established her hold more firmly on the Western Coast, but does so little in any way that nobody can have much of excuse for calling us very wicked if the imperial Senate votes a handsome payment for enforced concession. At any rate we must have the Congo, which late discoveries have shown to be so important a water-highway, and as the north bank is still in the hands of independent savages, there is nothing to prevent us from occupying it without delay. In the United States nobody but the falling President shows any intention or desire of going beyond North America, and perhaps some of the adjacent isles. But even there our vigilance will be useful. They appear already to have got some hold of Samoa, but the Sandwich Islands, Hispaniola, and Mexico are still as open to us as to them. We can and we ought to do something in the way of anticipating the movements of the slipshod parody 72 h 7 'I of orderly and enlightened England. The extension of its power will be fraught, not indeed with the same religious, but with many of the same civil and social mischiefs which accompany the ascendancy of the French. Its so-called government is nothing but a gathering up of all the folly, paltriness, dirtiness, and roguery of the country into a position of predominance over its sweetness and light — the supremacy of the nouvellcs couches sociales with a vengeance — " ignorance making a merit of its meanness and meanness makinsf a merit of its ignorance.' Truly a nation of shop-keepers, with no notion of progress beyond the multiplication of turbulent man-flesh and the unscrupulous accumulation of inelegant wealth ! They have all the public vices of the cis-Atlantic republicans. The same incompetence, dishonesty, and venality; in many places the same tyranny on the part of officials. The same meanness, ignorance, corruption, jealoosy of eminence, and contempt of law on the part of the people : a contempt not indeed very surprising, when we consider the contemptible creatures by whom their laws are made and administered. Can any good thing come out of a country whose ignorant roughs elect roughs not much better informed to misrule its wealth and intelligence ; where the classes socially and morally last are politically first or everything, and the classes socially and morally first are politically last or nothing.? Can a nation be fit for political supervision of others when its own respectable members habitually use the v/ord "politician" as a term of reproach.? We must judge them by the total absence of decency and good sense from the management of their internal affairs, by their raspinc^ and malignant oppression of the conquered South, and by their continuous plunder and slaughter of their Red Indian subjects : and then we can pronounce no other sentence than that of utter unfitness for any new responsibility. Prevention is within our power when once England's neck is freed from the Canadian millstone. Oh for the joys of being free to snap our fingers in the faces of the Yankees on that glorious day of emancipation 1 They will, after that, think once, twice, and even thrice, before they allow their insolent and touchy vanity to carry them into a war which must be entirely naval on their part, and in which, therefore, they could not fail to get that 73 jolly good thrashing which they have needed so much ever since they began to flaunt tlje star-spangled banner. They will not make it a casus belli that the King of the Sandwich Islands acknowledges the Queen of Britain as his imperial sovereign- They will not feel in honour bound to resist our acquisition of control over their rejected Hispaniola, separated as it is from * their territory by the long group of British Bahamas and sur- rounded by islands already in European hands. The republic of Santo Domingo, which contains the largest and finest part of the island, is not very eager to maintain its independence, has already sought admission into the United States, and would pro- bably be very glad to be protected by the United Kingdom. At any rate it will not demand anything exorbitant for coding Samana Bay, one of the most important harbours in the world, and necessary, like Egypt, the Sandwich Islands, and either Nicaragua or Darien, to the power which wishes to be really mistress of the seas, able to maintain fleets and secure uninter- terrupted passage for its trade on every important portion of the globe's aqueous surface, Nicaragua will be the most difficult of all to acquire. That wretched product of Whiggish weakness — worse even than the Ashburton Treaty — the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850, as revised in 1859, surrendered our protectorate of the Mosquito Coast, and tied our hands against annexation of Central America, or obtaining control of that great western gateway of war and commerce. But as the Yankees have vio- lated their engagement, in spirit if not in letter, by successfully negotiating for the sole right of making and using a canal through the isthmus of Darien, we have a very plausible ground for demanding another revision of the treaty and perhaps release us from our engagement. The Yankees have no more commer- cial interest in, or natural connection with, the Central American trade route, than we have. It is too much, therefore, that they should have full command of one of two possible canals, and be able to prevent us from using the other in time of war. Having a disbanded army, a dismantled navy, a large population of disaffected subjects, and no Canada to attack, they will be much more willing than in 1859 ^^ listen to reason. Though they may chafe at our progress, they will not be so 1^- 74 eaten up with zeal for the Monroe Doctrine as to prefer a war to a fair division of two canal-routes between two great commercial nations. They may be soothed, too, by per- mission to seize the coveted northern provinces of Mexico, when in the exercise of our creditor's right we assume management of the estates of that impudent and profligate bankrupt. We have never got satisfaction for the outrages which led to the abortive joint-expedition of i86i, and we must now take it with our own hands alone. Under our management the enormous agricultural and mineral resources will soon be so developed as to pay off the debt, besides paying the expenses of government, and when we have got satisfaction, a plebiscite of owners of property in the Clerical south will secure our management in perpetuity. In like manner we may deal, if we choose, with Honduras, Costa Rica, Venezuela, and especially Hayti and Uruguay. These so-called states are mere territorial conspiracies of swindlers and banditti, which have none at all of the moral attribr' of governments. We will incur no odium with well-inforniL crsons by displacing such organized brigan- dage. And on the other hand we will get enough of solid pud- ding to comfort us under the empty blame of empty-headed sen- timentais. We could not be quiet in Santo Domingo, if the rascally Haytians should retain their independence ; while Venezuela and Uruguay will be splendid stock-farms for the British army and navy, nearer and cheaper than Australia. The present moment is, indeed a galaxy of golden opportuni- ties for extending the area of internal good government and international peace. The half-civilized states (so-called) have not yet got a thoroughly recognized ' political standing. With Mexico, the largest of all, except Turkey, no Government but that of the United States has any diplomatic relations. Doubt- less much jealousy will be felt, and openly or covertly expressed in Europe and America. Let them be jealous ! Though there may be much barking, no biting will ever be attempted. If the British bull-dog shows his teeth with significant decision, the growling curs will be glad enough to let him take most of what he wants, and to profess themselves satisfied with the very smallest scraps. What would be the result of a war, a naval the the hat war as it could no*: but be, between the British Empire and any other power, except the Russian, or indeed any two other powers? Simply that we would give it a sound thrashing, and like Ger- many in 1 87 1, make it pay the costs of its lesson in the duty of not interfering with its superiors. Spain is baicly able to main- tain an equal contest with Cubans and Cai lists. Italy has as yet no grounds for colonial pretensions, and if she had, could not fight for them. Her immense armaments have rendered her powerless for offence. By lavish indulgence of her military vanit)' in time of peace she has sapped the vigour of lier sinews of war. She is a silly child, who has long been overstraining her- self to hold uj) a giant's club. The very first attempt to use her unwieldy weapon would burst her lungs and break her h ick. Brazil is not strong, and is already gorged w th territory, having a square mile for every group of three Brazilians. Austria and Russia, as I shall soon show, will be consenting and profiting parties, in .so far as concerned with our im,ierial operations. The at- tention of France and Germany is concentrated in intense mutual jealousy, and their strength all reserved for the expected gr.itifiT cation of their mutual haired. i\either can afford to have the luxury of another enemy. Germany has as yet no colonial in- terests to give excuse for meddling with us, and such colonial ambition as she may have she will soon be able to satisfy with- out crossing our path. She will soon swallow up Holland, and thus gain command of the Moluccas, the Sunda Islands, and of Dutch Guiana. France is frantii ,dly ambitious, and will not allow us to act, especially in Egypt and Madagascar, without vehement protests and vigorous machinations. Everywhere she will look upon us with a jealous eye and try to counteri.ct us by ingenious plots. But if we are careful to spare her vanity, and avoid formal casus belli, while steadily accomplishing our purposes, she will hesitate to pick a quarrel in her present shattered, disorganized, and debt-laden condition. Her means, happily, do not corres- pond to her ideas. The ape element in her nature undoubtedly retains all its efficiency, but the tiger is too'hless, and the only result of a petulant attack on the British Lion would be the loss of those foreign provinces which she might otherwise be allowed to keep in her claws. If she remains a good quiet child, she 76 may be permitted to slake her thirst for military glory and exer- cise her brilliant talents of constitution-making; in Anam. Senc- gambia and Northern Africa.* Let her rest and be thankful with these. Many will cry out against these acquisitions as quite useless and very costly to the rest of the empire. Thoughtless crea- tures ! Nearly every one of the countries marked out as proper objects of annexation will soon add considerably to the wealth and strength of Britain — add more than enough to pay for the additional cost of its own defence ; while altogether will thus add more than enough to pay for the new small military and naval stations. For a year or two indeed, till the new order has been firmly fixed and has established confidence, the revenue may not be sufficient for the expenditure. Such is the case of Fiji. But in a few years, when British intelligence, British capital, and Asiatic laborers have flowed into the land, Fiji will have a public income more than sufficient for all neces- sary outlay. In most new private enterprises merchants know that they must incur present loss for the sake of great future gain. They are very ready to cast their bread upon the waters, expecting to find it after many days ; and why are so many statesmen in this " nation of shopkeepers," unwilling to imitate the practical far-sightedness of their constituents .'' What will happen in Fiji will also happen in those parts of Africa, of Malaysia, of Tropical America, which ought also to be annexed. They are naturally as rich as Fiji, and they are very much bigger. The speedy development of the great and various capacities of these abused and neglected lands will soon furnish an clastic and overflowing revenue. The rich rocks of many, the r'ch soil of most, are waiting only for the establish- ment of a state of society in which industry and enterprise can get and keep their just reward. Then they will lay their trea- sures at the feet of astonished mankind. Many of these coun- tries are indeed morally burdened with debts, the interest of which at present they cannot easily pay. But under British management these debts would become mere trifles, not merely from the great increase of revenue, but from the entirely just re- duction of interest. Most of the stock was issued at a discount 77 of sh :Iy fe- int of 30 per cent, or more, and the rates of interest per cent, arc far above the 4 which India and Australia find sufficiently at- tractive. After annexation, of course, interest would be paid at 4 per cent, only, and only on the amount actually received by the borrower. Turkey, for instance, pays ;^ 10,000,000 a year in interest. If under Britain, as India is, she would pay at the most, only 5 or 6 millions. That would give the holders quite as much as they could equitably claim. In other countries the payment would fall not merely to a-half, but to a third or even a fourth of the amount promised by the original distrusted bor- rowers. It must be remembered also that the money is due to creditors chiefly British, and that by thus making herself respon- sible for it, Britain will be adding directly to her own wealth. She will be preventing destruction of liritish capital, and securing payment to British tax-payeis of large sums of interest, out of which they are likely soon to be partly or completely defrauded. In the same countries, moreover, English owners of capital will have vast fields for secure investment of their new and embar- rassing accumulations. Under a less firm and honest Govern- ment than that of Britain, they would not dare to send much capital into such places, and could not send their little without very great risk. But alter annexatic n they can scarcely send too much. They will need to fear no Railway Rings, no Revo- lutions, and no Repudiation, and will not be troubled even by rumours cf v/ars. Thus the rate of interest and of profit will be raised for all British capital, and the wealth of the great nation will go on steadily and permanently increasing by the possi_. bility of greater saving. Much of thi new acquisition will be nothing more than ex- tension of the boundaries of British colonies already existing, but too small to be profitable, expansion of what appear as mere points in the map of the world into surfaces having con- spicuous magnitude. Such are Belize, the Gold Coast, Labuan, and even the Straits Settlements. Extend them, following the recent example of wise Sir Andrew Clarke in the Malay Peninsula, and then they will soon be wiped out of the list of those parts of the Empire, which give nothing to the fede- ral treasury, and draw out much for defence. Such colonies as Central America, Guinea, Borneo and Malacca in whole, would add nothing to the cost of defence incurred by the other members of the federation, while immensely increasing the federal resources. The F^mpire at present is too bony and skinny. It needs more flesh to protect its joints and its vital organs. It is far too stragcjling, and needs to be made mot compact. Hardly any extension could weaken it f^r defence, aii 1 such extension as is here recomm nded w