WHAT WILL BECOME OF THIS ENORMOUS EMPIRE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1149, 11 March 1884, Page 3

WHAT WILL BECOME OF THIS ENORMOUS EMPIRE.

This is a question discussed by the Morning Post. Will this empire hold together, it asks, or will the colonies break away from us as soon as they think they can do without us % ‘ The latter,’ it observes, ‘is the more common opinion, we think an erroneous one, founded upon a misconcej ii n of the rebellion of the AmerL-au colonies in the last century. We 1( st our first colonial empire and we immediately set about acquiring a second ; and the argument is that we shall lose this one as we lost the other. Professor Seeley, in his lectures on the ‘ Expansion of England,’ a book which every student of politics should read, points out that there were two facts in connection with the American colonies which, while they explain their separation, render all inferences from them as to our present colonies misleading. The analogy between what are now the United and Canada or Australia fails in two important points. In the first place, our American colonies were not composed of an overflowing population, but of religious refugees ; the emigrants were driven out not by overcrowding but by persecution ; and they therefore left England with a grudge against her Government, In the second place these settlements were governed according to the old colonial system, which regarded distant colonies as so many private possessions or estates of the Crown, out of which as much profit as possible was to be extracted. But this system has been abolished ; the colonies are allowed to govern themselves or are governed in their own interests until they are fit for a responsible Ministry, and the emigrants who possess Australia and Canada have not been driven o«t by any sense of wrong. So that it is a complete delusion to argue from the Declaration of Independence that our present colonies are only waiting to imitate the example of the United States. But, on the other hand, it may be said without fear of contradiction, that things cannot go on as they are ; the framework of our Colonial Empire cannot stand many more such strains as have recently been put upon it by Lord Derby in his dealings with Australia and South Africa. The Empire must be held together by something more substantial than the splendour of an ancient Monarchy. Communities are bound together by and evident and solid interest, and if the Cape Colonists perceives that the Home Government gives way before the pretensions of the Dutch race, and the Australians imagine that Colonial Secretaries are cold and careless, what wonder if the nascent nationalities of the New World think of independence or dream of alliance with the United States ! Assuredly our Empire will either be broken up at some distant date or we must devise some means by which the political union of this stupendous whole can be achieved. The whole tendency 1 of events is m the direction of colossal empires, and England, with thirty-five millions of inhabitants and confined within the island would cut a very poor figure indeed by the side of Germany, Russia, and America. The trade with India alone is valued at £60,000,000 a year, and nothing is more ascertained than that trade follows the flag. But how are we to form and consolidate an Empire like that of the United States or Russia? There are three things which overcome the largeness of modern States —the federal system, the representative system, and the inventions which employ steam and electricity. Why should Great Britain be unable to do with her possessions what the United States has done—weld them by mechanical means into a compact union ?