RENOUNCING THE COLONIES. [From the Sydney Morning Herald.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 473, 16 February 1850, Page 4

RENOUNCING THE COLONIES. [From the Sydney Morning Herald.]

This, Edinburgh Review for April last, in an admirable article on the financial prospects of the United Kingdom, devote a few pages to the subject of Colonies and Colonization. The Object of the reviewer is to expose the fallacy of some of the more plausible arguments employed in the tracts pot forth by the Financial Reform Association. One of the arguments, it seems, is founded on the assumption that the sums of money annually] expended on her coloriet by the mother coun- ] try are out of all proportion to the benefits which she derives from thoie possessions. It is urged, therefore, that one of the most obvious means of retrenching the national expenditure and diminishing the burthen of taxation, is to lop off this class of expenses without delay and without remorse. The Reformers are willing, in consideration of this rough excision, to invest the colonies with absolute control over their own internal affairs ; but they are npt at all unwilling to go farther still, and to sever entirely the connexion between the colonies and the parent state. To show, by a few significant symbols, what the colonies are, the reviewer states that what he calls " the noble possessions of England" exhibit, for the year 1848, the following results .—. — Population 5,332,000 . Imports into United Kingdom £9,289,000 Exports from ditto £19,794,000 Declared value of British manafactures imported £8,725,000 That is to say, oa the broad average, every human 'being inhabiting the colonies purchases from the British Isles, in a single twelvemonth, nearly £4 worth of commodities ofjwhich nearly one-half consists of British manufactures. And yet, the whole of these "noble possessions," in .Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, do not, it is alleged, cost England more than is expended by France on that " scene of violence, rapine, and cruelty," Algeria. * * * * This enlightened writer measures the value of the colonies to the parent country, not by the pounds sterling representing their commercial transactions with her, though he by no means underrates even these, but by the 1 solid and permanent relief which they are ea- < pable of affording, by means of colonisation, to her own complicated sufferings. He reiterates his firm conviction that the solution of the ' Irish difficulty' depends upon the application of this remedy. " Without this remedy," he uiges, "all others. will be found vain. Land improvement Bills will not work ; encumbered estates will not find purchasers. Tbe Poor Law must fail. Accompanied by this remedy, all others will be rendered doubly efficacious. And when, to use the words of, Mr._ Canning, ' the new world is called into

existence to redress the balance of the old,' by the energy and courage of some practical itatesman, the benefit to the empire will be so immediate and so unquestionable, that any indifference to colonial possession!, and all jealousy of their necessary expenses, will be forgotten. 1 his will be the great and glorious use to which our colonies may be applied, as much for their interest as our own. * * In her enduring national strength England is not to be dealt with as a mere life-tenant without heirs. She foresees and almost grasps the future." Those tinkering politicians whose grovelling minds deal with the colonies as so many trading speculations, and who talk about their being renounced by England as coolly as they would talk about selling a ship, or stopping a mill, or shutting up a shop, should be taught the meaning of Sir Robert Peel's axiom, that, in the eye of the constitution, the colonies are integral parts of the empire. The Sovereign can no more withdraw from them the authority and protection of her sceptre without their own consent, than she can from the connty of York or from the City of London. Allegiance has its rights as well as its obligations ; and the obligations are not more inalienable than the rights. The great national compact embraces the whole national family. And until it can be demonstrated that by the act of settliug in British possessions beyond the seas, British snbjects cease to be members of the national family, and forfeit for themselves and their posterity the rights and privileges of the national brotherhood, the notion of proclaiming the colonies as outcasts, ought to be laughed down as sheer nonsense, or frowned down as meditated fraud and spoliation. The colonists have nothing to fear on this bead, however, either from Financial Reformers, or Reformers of any other name. Slowly, but surely, the colonial cause is making headway. The important part they are destined by -Divine Providence ,to perform^ in the solution of these tremendous anora ilies, which are filling statesmen with perplexity, and philanthropists with dismay, is beginning to be understood by all ranks of thinking Englishmen. Witness the admirable disquisitions which occasionally appear in such journals as the Edinburgh Review ; witness the motions brought forward and the speeches delivered in every successive session of the , House of Commons ; and witness the elaborate inquiries and reports «f the House of Lords. The .article to which we have now been drawing attention quotes, a passage from; the first of Lord Monteagle's Reports on Colonization ; and is as follows : — "To transplant our domestic habits, our commercial enterprise, our laws, our institu- ' dons, our language, our literature, and our -sense of religious obligation, to the more distant regions of the globe, is an enterprise worthy of the character of a great maritime nation. It is not only, in its progress, the pursuit and the attainment of glory, but, it is the performance of a high duty, and the accomplishment of a noble destiny ; and if it can also be made subservient jjtp^-the relief of pressing distress at home,—^lf the labour which is in excess in certain parts of the country can be rendered the source of an extending and durable prosperity in the colonies, — such * combination of advantages cannot fail the more to recommend this great question of colonization to the earliest attention of the legislature."