MR FROUDE ON THE COLONIES.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1351, 13 June 1878, Page 3

MR FROUDE ON THE COLONIES.

Mr J. A. Fronde delivered the first of two lectures on March 20th, at the Birmingham and Midland Institute, on “ The Colonies.” He said that though many of our ablest statesmen thought that a separation of the English colonial possessions must eventually take place, yet many of the colonists themselves, as well as the people of this country, were equally in earnest in the desire that the empire might be kept together. The English nation were occupied in building up America, the Indian Empire, and colonial commerce at a time when the ruling people of the country were occupying themselves exclusively with Continental affairs. English politicians for the most part had little to do with the matter, and even up to the present day the colonies had attracted comparatively little interest on the part of the ruling people of England. Wo had European alliances, obligations, and responsibilities. Nothing happened in Europe but what we had a voice in it; while as to the colonies, he would relate a story which would show how they had been regarded. Lord Palmerston being at a loss for a Colonial Minister, and having talked to one and another without finding one who would suit, said to Sir Arthur Helps, “ I think I must take this oJl’ice myself. Just come upstairs, and we will look at the maps, and you shall tell me where these places are,” The incident was very easily explained. The English official mind was governed by traditions. Those Continental tendencies on the part of English statesmen were the legacies of the old days. He did not say that they had no interest on the Continent—they could not shako off all their inherited traditions; but he held that their Continental interests were merely secondary ; their first interests were in their own empire, and their first duties were to themselves. He considered, of all the problems which their statesmen had before them, the one of real practical importance was the problem of how the colonies, which were so anxious to be attached to us, should be attached. As to foreign alliances, for his own part, the only alliance he really cared about would be an alliance with America. Whatever once might have been the importance of their connection with the Continent, they were cut off from the Continent by the Channel. Science has enabled them to make their own shores impregnable, and they had as little to fear from Europe as America had, and as little to gain in mixing themselves up in Continental affairs. They wore no longer a European Power, but an Asiatic and an oooan Power. English enterprise had given them an empire on which the sun never set. They had the colonies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa —were they to lose them F They would never lose them if they recognised their own true position ; but they would most certainly lose them if they persisted in occupying themselves with matters in which the colonies at least could never pretend to have any interest, but which could bring them only a possibility of harm withopt any possible good. From the first the misfortune had been that the ruling people of England had regarded the colonists as a sort of “poor relations.” They were made to feel that wo had no real care or concern for them, and that their interests and wishes were nothing to us when weighed againat the imagined exigencies of European politics.