Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924100210685 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 100 210 685 In compliance with current copyright law, Cornell University Library produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1992 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 2005 fyxmll W^mvmxii^ § i^nxm^ BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME | FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND -■ THE GIFT OF ,M^nvu m. Sage X891 ^J%hu h .%lxor : ■„:.:..;^„.^;_i PEOBLEMS OF GEEATER BEITAIN PROBLEMS GREATER BRITAIN by the right hon. Sir CHAELES WEKTWOETH DILKE, Bart. AUTHOR OF 'greater BRITAIN,' * THE FALL OF PRINCE FLORESTAN OF MONACO,' 'the present POSITION OF EUROPEAN POLITICS,' AND * THE BRITISH ARMT' WITH MAPS 3Lottti0n MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1890 /A All-, rights resented MY FRIEND His Excellency General SIR FREDERICK SLEIGH ROBERTS, BAEONEr V.C. G.C.B. Q.O.I.B. D.O.L. LL.D. COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF IN INDIA I DEDICATE THIS RECORD OF THAT PEACEFUL PROGRESS OF GEEATER BRITAIN "WHICH IS MADE SECDREE BY HIS SWORD PREFACE In 1866-67, on leaving Cambridge, I made a journey round the -world on which I wrote a book of travel, the name of which has lived whUe the book is wholly out of date. Owing to the success of the title of Greater Britain, the work, since the cessation of its sale as a new book, has continued to be in demand — a demand which has shown no tendency to decrease with the lapse of years, — but has been a source of embarrassment to the author, who could not but feel that the work had become in a great number of points wholly inap- plicable to existing circumstances. In 1875 I made another journey round the globe, after which I added two chapters to Greater Britain, and, by the' insertion of footnotes, tried to bring my volumes up to date ; but the attempt was a failure, as the whole scheme of the work would have had to be recast in order ^to prevent it, in many passages, from conveying inaccurate impressions. As regards two subsequent journeys, in each of which I made my way half round the world, I have not attempted to write of them in the form of a record of travel; I have thought, however, that there was room for an entirely new book upon the same subjects as those treated in the original work, but dealt with from the point of view of political and social observation and comparison rather than from that of descriptive sight-seeing. This then is not a book of travel, but a treatise on the present position of Greater Britain, in which special atten- tion has been given to the relations of the English-speaking countries with one another, and to the comparative politics of viii PREFACE the countries under British government. The MM. Eeclus have shown the usefulness of one form of such general works, and I have tried to do for the statecraft and legislation of the colonies and possessions of England across the seas what they have done for the geography of the world. In making the attempt to survey the position and prospects of Greater Britain, and to re-examine, after a lapse of twenty years, the lands of English government and English tongue, I am encouraged by the feeling that, although the task may be a diffip.nit one, and in some respects almost impossible of accom- plishment, there exists no recent work in which it can be said to have been performed. There are indeed general surveys of the British Empire in the German and French tongues, and one of them — M. Avalle's book — is the best work upon the colonies and dependencies of the United Eongdom ; but in English we have little since Martin's book except mere pamphlets, or books of reference such as the excellent Colonial Office List, or general treatises on colonisation with no special reference to the legislation and the circumstances of the moment. Some authors, such as Dr. Dale, have written excellent books on groups of colonies, which will be mentioned in due course, but have not dealt with the Empire as a whole ; and Mr. Fox-Bourne, who has gone lightly, and Professor Seeley, who has gone deeply, over a wider field, have surveyed it mainly from the point of view of history. Even supposing that my inquiry into the present position of Greater Britain should be pronounced a failure, I may at all events be able to feel that in attempting it I have pointed the way to others, who may contrive to make better use than I have done of the raw material. That material in my own case has chiefly been amassed by some industry in reading many things that issue from colonial presses, and discussing the matters to which they relate with colonists of all pursuits. It would, indeed, have been impossible to have even attempted to enter upon the task without assistance from many inhabitants of the colonies described, and from persons who have made themselves acquainted with the legislation and condition of various portions of the Empire. As, however, I PREFACE ix have sometimes found it a necessity to take a view diametrically opposed to that which some at least of my informants hold, I almost hesitate to name them with a word of thanks for fear they might be supposed to be thus committed to opinions, which, as a fact, they in some cases must disapprove. It is better with this caution to run the risk than to appear ungrate- ful for much kind, courteous, and valuable help. Among those to whom I am under deep obligation for answering my questions, for contributing memoranda upon special colonies, or for reading manuscript or proofs, I should wish to mention the Agents-General of the colonies, from all of whom I have - received unfailing help, and whose collections of statistics and of laws have been freely open to me, and especially my friend Sir Charles Mills, whose personal fund of information with regard to aU matters relating to South Africa has been at my disposal by his kindness, although it is possible that he may not approve of my conclusions. I must also specially name Mr. J. E. C. Bodley ; as well as Mr. Francis Stevenson, M.P., who has paid much attention to the position of our Crown Colonies ; Mr. W. A. M= Arthur, M.P. ; Mr. Alexander Suther- land and Mr. Patchett Martin of Victoria ; Mr. Clegg of New South Wales ; and Mr. Stanley Grantham Hill of Queensland. The officers whose help I gratefully acknowledged in my book upon the British army, have assisted me in the chapter upon Imperial Defence, and I have also to express my acknowledg- ments to my secretary, Mr. H. K. Hudson. CHARLES W. DILKE. 76 Sloaue Steeet, Jfevi Tear's Bay, 1890. CONTENTS PAGE Intbobuotion ....... 1 Pakt I.— NORTH AMERICA CHAP. I. NBWPoinrDLAifD ...... 7 II. The Dominion op Canada . . . . .16 III. The Dominion op Canada — continued ... 76 IV. The United States, Canada, and the West Indies . 89 Part II.— AUSTRALASIA I. VlOTOEIA ....... Ill II. New South "Wales ...... 160 III. Queensland ....... 197 IV. AUSTEALIA AND NeW ZEALAND . . . .225 Paet III.— SOUTH AFRICA I. The Cape 279 II. South Apeioa ...... 308 Pakt IV.— INDIA I. Indian Defence ...... 349 II. British India ...... 393 CONTENTS Part V.— CROWN COLONIES OF THE PRESENT AND OF THE FUTURE 439 Paet VI.— COLONIAL PROBLEMS CHAP. I. Colonial Demooracy II. Labouk, Pkovident Societies, and the Poor III. Proteotion of Native Industries . IV. Edtjoation ..... V. Religion . ... VI. Liquor Laws ..... 485 519 547 563 581 605 Part VIL — FUTURE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE MOTHER - COUNTRY AND THE REMAINDER OF THE EMPIRE . . . . . 625 Part VIII.— IMPERIAL DEFENCE CONCLUSION 647 694 LIST OP MAPS British North America Australia . New Zealand South Africa India To face page 5 a 109 » 247 )> 277 j> 347 INTPiODUCTION The British Empire, with its protectorates, and even without counting its less defined spheres of influence, has an area of some nine million square miles, or, very roughly speaking, of nearly three Europes ; revenues amounting to some two hundred and ten millions sterling ; and half the sea-borne commerce of the world. This empire, lying in all latitudes, produces every requirement of life and trade. We possess the greatest wheat granaries, wool markets, timber forests, and diamond fields of the world. In tea we are rapidly reaching the first place, and in coal, iron, and copper at present hold our own with all man- kind. In sugar we stand well ; in tobacco India and Jamaica produce fine qualities which occupy the third place, after those of Havana and Manilla, and are beginning to compete with them ; and our coffee, though the produce is small in bulk by the side of that of Brazil and Java, is now the finest that there is. As regards food supply, it is certain that we might, if we pleased, be entirely independent of any foreign source. The states of Greater Britain thus scattered over the best portions of the globe vary infinitely in their forms of government, be- tween the absolutism which prevails in India and the democracy of South Australia or Ontario. The dominant force in bringing that empire together and in maintaining it as one body has been the eminence among the races of the world of our own well-mixed people. As to the ultimate result of their high deeds there can be no doubt. The greatest nations of the old world, apart from us, are limited in territory situate in temperate climes, and France and Germany and the others can hope to play but little part in the later politics of the next century, while the future seems to lie be- tween our own people — in the present British Empire and in the United States, — and the Kussians, who alone among the continental nations of Europe are in possession of unbounded regions of fertile lands, outside Europe, but in climates in which white men can work upon the soil. Towards the middle of the last century France appeared at one moment to be the colonising power of the future. Her Canada and Louisiana together gave 2 PaOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN her the whole west-centre of North America, and India seemed already hers. But now the English-speaking people have con- quered India, almost the whole of North America, the greater part of Polynesia with Australasia, and most of the opened parts of Africa. Their position, however, at the present is a mere index to their probable position in the future. The increase of the race, and the increase of that larger body who speak its tongue, are both keeping pace with the figures suggested in the dreams and speculations of half a century ago. More than a hundred million people speak English as their chief tongue, and vastly more than that number as one of two languages ; while four hundred millions of people are, more or less directly, under English rule. In the future conflict of rivalry between our own and the Great-Russian people, we, have upon our side the advantage of combining in our race the best qualities of the foremost races of the old world, with the result that in our daughter-countries there are present courage, national integrity, steady good sense, and energy in work such as are perhaps unknown elsewhere. Considerable as is the power of assimilation of subject races possessed by the Russians, our own people seem, to judge from American and Australian experience, even better able to swallow up Germans, Scandinavians, and the other less numerous emi- grants from Europe ; and while we have in the point of bravery in fighting against obstacles no advantage over the Russians, who are our equals in that respect, we do possess in the greater hopefulness of our national character a point in our favour which is perhaps rather a cause than a result of the very difierent political circumstances under which the English and the Russians live. While it is probable that neither the demo- cratic autocracy of Russia nor the constitutional and parlia- mentary democracy of Great and Greater Britain may be a permanent political form, it is possible that those institutions which we have invented for ourselves will develop more easily, and with less revolutionary shook, into the ultimate political forms of society than is the case with the institutions of our Russian rivals — the only rivals worth considering so far as our race-history goes, if we ignore for a moment the imme- diate dangers that grow out of the temporary military position of the United Kingdom itself. A comparison between the three great growing powers, of which two are mainly Anglo-Saxon, shows that the British Empire exceeds the Russian Empire slightly in size and vastly in population, and has treble the area of the United States ; that its revenue is more than double that of Russia, and nearly three times that of the United States • while its foreign trade greatly exceeds that of the American Union and vastly exceeds that of Russia, although no exact comparison between the British Empire a,nd the United States in trade can be made, inasmuch as it is impossible accurately to distinguish, in all cases, trade between the Empire and foreign countries, from INTRODUCTION 3 trade which is really carried on between various portions of the Empire itself and is similar to the local trade of the United States. In shipping the British Empii'e surpasses the whole world, but the manufactures of the United States have gained rapidly upon our own, and already perhaps equal ours, although it is difficult to make a precise comparison, on account of differ- ences of classification. In coal production the British Empire still stands far before the United States, while Russia hardly appears upon the list, and we not only stand second in the extent of our coal measures for future use, but first as regards the possibilities of the supply of coal to shipping for the North Atlantic and for the whole of the Pacific. In the production of gold the British Empire and the United States stand upon a fairly equal footing, and each of them produces nearly double as much as fiussia. In silver the United States possesses an ' overwhelming preponderance. In iron the British Empire and the United States are running a race in which the latter must in the long run win, while Russia is all behindhand. In wheat production our empire exceeds the production of the United States, and each of them produces nearly double as much wheat as Russia ; but in maize the United States is far ahead. In wool the British Empire stands first of the three, and has nearly double the production of Russia, which itself exceeds by more than a third that of the United States. In cattle the United States stands first, the British Empire second, and Russia third ; while in horses Russia stands first, the American Union second, and the British Empire third. In sheep, as in wool production, the British Empire is predominant, and Russia occupies the second place; but in pigs the order is reversed. In railway mileage the United States stands altogether first, having more than double the mileage of the British Empire, and Russia is nowhere in the race. On the whole, then, we may consider that for the present the British Empire holds her own against the competition of her great daughter, although the United States is somewhat gaining on her. Both are leaving Russia far astern, and it is possible that the growth of Canada and Aus- tralia may enable the British Empire not only to continue to rival the United States, but even to reassert her supremacy in most points. In spite of my having entered on this brief examination of the relative positions of the three great powers of the future, it wiU be remarked that in the course of some of my speculations I once more put out of sight, as I put out of sight in Greater Britain, the political separation that exists between England and the United States. In these introductory words I desire to call attention chiefly to the imperial position of our race as com- pared with the situation of the other peoples, and, although the official positions of the British Empire and of the United States may be so distinct as to be sometimes antagonistic, the peoples themselves are — not only in race and language, but in laws and religion and in many matters of feeling — essentially one. 4 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN There is another point of view from which the present and future of the British Empire are full of interest : our ofl'shoots or daughter -countries are trying for us political and social experiments of every kind. While Germany with her State- Socialism and Switzerland with her Keferendum are initiating experimental legislation which is full of interest, the action of our own colonies and of the United States in the social and political field has this vastly greater importance for us— that it is taken among our people and under circumstances which more closely touch us here at home. One reason why little attempt has yet been made to promote the methodic discussion of colonial experiments is that there is a great deal of ignoraiice in the colonies about each other, and they are only now begin- ning to overcome an apparent reluctance to study one another's institutions. The very fact of the newness of the ground in this respect makes the comparative study of Australian and Canadian institutions one of the most interesting possible, and one specially and peculiarly important for ourselves. While, however, we have so much of which to be proud in the development of our tongue, our trade, our literature, and our institutions, there is a corresponding present and temporary weakness to which it will be necessary in due place to call attention. The danger in our path is that the enormous forces of European militarism may crush the old country and destroy the integrity of our Empire before the growth of the newer communities that it contains has made it too strong for the attack. It is conceivable that within the next few years Great Britain might be drawn into war, and receive in that war, at the hands of a coalition, a blow from which she would not recover, and one of the consequences of which would be the loss of Canada and of India, and the proclamation of Australian independence. Enormous as are our military resources for a prolonged conflict, tliey are inadequate to meet the unpre- cedented necessities of a sudden war. We import half our food ; we import the immense masses of raw material which are essential to our industry. The vulnerability of the United Kingdom has become greater with the extension of her trade, and, by the universal admission of the naval authorities, it would be either difficult or impossible to defend that trade against sudden attack by France, aided by another considerable naval power. Our enormous resources would be almost useless in the case of such a sudden attack, because we should not have time to call them forth. Such is the one danger which threatens the fabric of that splendid Empire which I now attempt to describe. B0.ttij^ '^#««*-'""^^ >^' f \ ■1 I ! BRITISH ]N^ORTH AlVffiRICA | Scale of English Miles 50 100 300 300 400 ^1 %m-. • 40 M^^^ A, ia^-^ \ ^ ^40' ^^ Ua A_ I'mdaa Macmilloii & Co. Stanford's &»og^'Esbab^7jctnBtm. PAET I NOETH AMERICA CHAPTER I NEWFOUNDLAND The nearest to Great Britain of tliose of lier colonies which Newfounrt- possess responsible government is also the colony -which claims laud, to be the oldest English settlement in connection with the British Crown. Newfoundland has a history which has been full of interest ever since the first colonisation by Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583, when a number of ships sailed for St. John's with a view of peopling the island with inliabitants of all kinds. Although the project proved a failure, shortly after this time Newfoundland became the resting-place of English fishermen, who were joined by a resident Irish population. The Calvert family established themselves in one corner of the island ; but it was not until near the end of the seventeenth century that any attempt by England for tiie government of the settlement was made, while our rights were disputed by the French, and our young colony was continually harried by them. A division of rights in Newfoundland between Great Britain and France has unfortunately continued in some degree up to the present time, with evil consequences which I shall have presently to trace. Newfoundland now includes a large part of Labrador, which continental territory of the colony is three times as large as Newfoundland proper, but almost uninhabited, having but 4000 (s* people in its vast solitudes. The colony itself being outside the confederation of the Canadian Dominion, has to be dealt with separately in that consideration of the present position of the North American colonies upon which I now embark. Not only is Newfoundland peculiar in her situation and con- Roman spicuous as a colony for her great age, but also worthy of notice Catholi- in another marked respect. The colony is one in which the cism. Eoman Catholic community is somewhat more numerous than are the members of the Church of England, and in which the bodies representing British Nonconformity or Scotch Presby- terianism are small, with the exception of the Wesleyan, lately merged in the united " Methodist Church of Canada." In Canada itself we shall find that the Boman Catholics more completely outnumber the Church of England, while in the Dominion the Methodists are, next after the Roman Catholics, 8 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i the most numerous religious body. But in Canada the Presby- terians are very nearly as numerous as the Jlethodists, and far more numerous than the Churchmen; moreover, the Eoman Catholics predominate in one Province and the Protestants in the others, while in Newfoundland there is no such geographical separation. The efFect of the religious position of Newfound- land was brought markedly before the world at the time when, tlie Irish population in Queensland having objected to receive Sir Henry Blake as Governor, and their view having been approved by the Queensland Government, it was pointed out that he during his governorship of Newfoundland had ruled successfully tlie most Irish of our colonies and the most Pioman Catholic of our self-governing colonies,' except Canada. The Irish, however, of Newfoundland are Newfoundland-born ; and tlie descendants of those who went thither in the seventeenth century, and of those who joined them in 1798, do not possess the fulness of Australian knowledge as to the doings of Dublin Castle officials, or the writings of "Terence M'Grath." The Roman Catliolic clergy and the educated portion of their flocks were anxious to adopt a conciliatory policy, and carefully abstained from rousing the feeKng which might easily have been excited after the objection which had been previously taken by the Protestants to the nomination of a Roman Catholic Governor. St. John's itself is the centre of the Pioman Catholic population of Newfoundland, and out of 37,000 people in the two districts of St. John's, East and West, over 23,000 are Roman Catholics. As a result of the state of things which has been described, education in Newfoundland is strictly denomina- tional ; its administration in chief is vested in three persons, who represent tlie three leading denominations — Pioman Catholic, Anglican, and Methodist ; and the schools of each Church are managed and inspected by the representatives of these bodies respectively. The education grants come out of the general revenue of the colony, and pass through the hands of the Superintendents of Education, nominated each of them by one of the three principal denominations. To them the inspection of schools is entirely confided, and the Boards of Education in the various districts are also nominated by the three Churches and are entrusted with the appropriation of the grants. There is no Government superintendence, and the whole power is left to the independent jurisdiction of the denominational superintendents and Boards. The system tlierefore is peculiar, and stands at the oi^posite pole from the school system of most of our other self-governing colonies. In practice tlie Roman Catholics manage their own schools exclu- sively themselves, and the Government grant goes to the Bishop, who can virtually dispose of it as he pleases. The Church of England and the Methodist Church to some extent act together, for in the outlying districts, distant from the towns, the Anglican and Methodist inspectors alternatelj' inspect the schools of both denominations. There is in Newfoundland one Congregational CHAP. I NEWFOUNDLAND 9 school, and this I believe is inspected by the Church of England and the Methodist inspectors alternately, in the same way. Denominational feeling, especially as between Protestant and Koman Catholic, runs high in Newfoundland. Elections often turn upon it, and have sometimes been accompanied by riot and loss of life. When a distinguished local politician. Sir Ambrose Shea — for a long time Speaker of the Assembly, who had been the delegate to Quebec at the time of the Confedera- tion negotiations, and the delegate of the colony to Washington for the Fishery Treaty — was proposed by the Colonial Office for Governor, he being a Eoman Catholic, all the Protestants in the island were against the nomination, and an exchange was eflected between Sir Ambrose Shea and Mr. Henry Blake, at that time the Governor of Bahamas. The most curious feature of the hot party feeling which exists is that no great principle appears to be at stake in the controversy. Protestants are not anxious to upset the denominational system of education, and most of their leaders are pledged to it as strongly as are the Roman Catholics. The struggles which I have mentioned seem to take place upon the question of nominal ascendency, and a Roman Catholic majority appears, when elected, to pursue much the same policy as an administration supported by Protestant votes ; but as a fact the Prime Minister has been almost invari- ably Protestant. The Roman Catholic objection to the inter- ference of ,a Protestant State in matters in any way connected with religion is in Newfoundland so strong that the colony lias no system for the registration of births or deaths, and this owing, it is said, to the opposition of the priests, who would have to make the returns, and who do not desire to be under the control of the State ; but, on the other hand, the objection is not pressed against a religious census, which is very com- pletely carried out, and which forms to some extent the basis for the distribution of the education grant. If a registration system should be introduced, it will be because some amateur statisticians have lately been declaring St. John's to be the most unhealthy town in the civilised world, and stating that the death-rate over the whole city is 35 in the thousand — a statement which can only be effectually disproved by the intro- duction of a proper system of registration. As is the case also in Canada, the revenue of the colony i.3 Taxes. drawn chiefly from customs duties, more than half the receipts coming directly from customs, and, also as in Canada, so far as Dominion taxation is concerned, there is no direct taxation, although there are in some cases local rates, as, for example, the water-rate in the city of St. John's, which curiously enough is mentioned as a franchise base in the acts relating to the representation of the people. The customs tariff is mainly a revenue tariff, and there being few manufacturers other than those connected with the fishing interest, with the exception of some tanneries and small iron foundries, it has not at present the effect of incidental Protection except in the case of rope. 10 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN patit i Whatever may ultimately be the case in the settled parts of the colony, the present distribution of the population upon the island, and the sparseness of population in the Labrador district of the colony, would make the collection of direct taxation cost more than the revenue to be collected. The whole population is barely 200,000 ; although the total area, with Labrador, is twice as great as that of the young colony of Victoria, or,_with- out Labrador, half as great as Victoria. The area of the island is considerably larger than that of Ireland, and the area of the whole colony greatly larger than that of the United Kingdom. The most populous part is the peninsula of Avalon, — once the first Lord Baltimore's, — on which stands the city of St. John's. On several of the bays, not included in what is unhappily still known as the "French Shore," of which presently, there is a considerable population ; but otherwise the inhabitants of Newfoundland are sparsely scattered, and n large part of the interior of the island can hardly be said to have been tlioroughly explored. The collection of direct taxation under such circum- stances would indeed be costly, and, moreover, the fishing people of the island are for the most part almost without money, and in the habit of carrying on their business transactions by the exchange of goods in kind. The colony, although old, is back- ward. The municipality of St. John's, now lately brought into existence, constitutes almost tlie first attempt at true local government in the country, and it is a municipality created with small powers, which, however, will probably be soon increased. Labrador. Labrador is still Arctic and uncivilised. The small immigrant population is mainly French from the St. Lawrence and from the formerly French parts of Nova Scotia. Eider-duck, silver- fox, and black -fox, with seals and fish, rather than wheat, are the products of Labrador ; but the climate is healtliy, and in the long run Labrador may rival Norway as a health resort. Newfound- The backward nature of even the island part of the colony land Fish- is illustrated by the prevalence of the truck system, or payment eries. of wages in goods, and the condition of the fishermen is described by the opponents of that system as abject servitude. The cod- fishing industry is carried on by the poor population, who catch the fish either from schooners on the banks that lie off the coast, or by means of traps and engines at the harbo.urs. For the bank-fishing various kinds of bait have to be secured according to the season of the year — herring, squid, and caplin. The cod- fish are brought to establishments upon the coast where are erected what are known as " stands " ; they are cut open by a class of men called, in the trade, " cut-throats " ; the livers are set aside for the best oil, other portions of the entrails for cod oil for machinery, and the fish are split, salted, and left to dry. For all the processes, especially for catching the cod and bait, expensive gear is needed, and the cost is advanced to the fisher- men by merchants upon tlie mortgage of the catch. The main- tenance of the fishermen during the fishing season is provided CHAP. I NEWFOUNDLAND 11 for by the merchants, wlio supply them with clothing and flour at, it is said by opponents of the system, an exorbitant rate of interest. At the end of the fisliing season the fishermen have sometimes to balance their accounts upon the wrong side, and some of them are said to go on year by year in debt, and seldom to be able to make a fresh start even on the profits of a good season. The merchants contend that they run great risks, and that frequently they get no return from the supply of boats and gear. They were till October 1889 strong in the House of Assembly, and they made out a fair case with regard to their profits. The fishing folk seemed to accept their situation as a part of their somewhat primitive existence, but in the recent elections made a considerable demonstration of their power and turned out the merchants. They spend the fishing months in hardship and peril upon the banks, and the cold months in inactivity ; and in the long and trying winters the distress is great. For some years past the Government has periodically relieved the wants of those who have been unable to support themselves, but a stand was lately made against the granting of Government relief to able-bodied men, to the destruction of the self-reliance and independence of the population, and in 1888 it was decided that relief from public funds should be confined to the infirm, the widows, and the orphans. Large sums have been from time to time expended upon relief works, and with a disastrous effect upon the finances of the colony, for road-making cannot be carried out to advantage in such a climate at the period of the year when distress is at its height. In 1886 the expenditure upon the poor amounted to nearly a quarter of the total expenditure, and to more than a third of the total revenue apart from loans, but the state of things was somewhat better in 1887 and 1888. It has been charged against the system that members of the Assembly have obtained grants for the poor in the interior by reporting tliat the people in their districts were dying of starvation, and have used the grants as instruments of political corruption. Generally speak- ing the condition of the working population must be looked upon as backward. The societies of Foresters and Oddfellows, and the trade unions, which flourish as greatly in most of the colonies as at home, have little strength in Newfoundland, where they are represented only by a few benevolent societies among the Kolnan Catholics and by a shipwrights' union at St. John's. The colony is loyal to the imperial connection, in spite of a general belief that the Americans would extinguish French claims to which we submit. The Irish Koman Catholic inhabi- tants place the crown above the harp on the flag that floats upon bt. Patrick's Hall, and tlie Protestant population when it wants to grumble at supposed disloyalty has to point to the drinking of the immortal memory of St. Patrick on one occasion on St. Patrick's Day before the toast of the Queen's health — a question of etiquette as to the respective precedence of deceased saints and living sovereigns on which much might be said on 12 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i either side. Confederation with the Dominion of Canada seemed possible in 1888. The Electors' Qualification Act, 1889, raised — by a peculiarity, confined to Newfoundland among all British colonies, unless we count the tiny dependency of Norfolk Island — the electoral age to twenty -five, as in Japan and Spain, and in other respects gave manhood suffrage. This legislation was supposed to be connected with a local desire to prevent the younger people from casting their votes upon the side of federation. The fishermen of twenty-five are mostly married, while those of twenty-one to twenty-five who are not yet married are generally intending emigrants. The confederation question has been settled in the negative, and Newfoundland continues to stand apart. The chief matter which was at issue in the discussion of federation was that of tariff, and the New- foundlanders gave up the idea of joining the Dominion because they did not desire to replace the revenue tariff by a protective tariff. The merchants were against confederation, which would have disturbed their business ; but the lawyers and some of the politicians were in favour of the change, which would have given them a larger field. Great Britain has no reason to com- plain of Newfoundlanders standing out, for most of the imports (except food) to Newfoundland come from the United Kingdom — food coming to a considerable extent from Canada, although chiefly from the United States. The export trade in salt-fish is largely to Brazil, Spain, and Portugal, in which countries the fish is consumed in Lent ; but there is a considerable trade in the inferior classes to our West Indies, where the fish is eaten by the coloured people. Had confederation taken place Canadian capital would have come in to increase the 84 miles of Newfoundland railroads, and the side of the island nearest towards Nova Scotia would have been brought into a closer connection with the mainland, with the result of a development of Newfoundland's mineral resources. Confederation is not, however, now likely to be again mooted for some time, for that shrewd politician Sir William Whiteway appears, on the whole, now to have made up his mind against it. Although the island is regarded as a fishing island, and cod, seals, and lobsters are the staples of Newfoundland trade, there is excellent timber, great mineral wealth, and rich land which, if the Newfoundland summers were always as long and good as that of 1889, would support a considerable population. Some day the country, which is at present known only as having fisheries almost equal to those of the United States, will become celebrated for some- thing besides cod-fish and icebergs, or "cods, dogs, and fogs," as the Bishop of Newfoundland put it at the Lambeth Confer- ence ; and it should not be forgotten that the colony possesses coal. Tlie French The main difiiculty of Newfoundland arises from its relations Shore. with the Government of France, and those of its peculiarities which I have already mentioned are small as compared with the extraordinary anomaly of a British colony not possessing CHAP. I NEWFOUNDLAND 13 full rights over the whole of its own soil. By the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 the struggles between England and France for the possession of the island were brought to an end, and tliere were reserved to France rights over a portion of tlie coast which is known as the French Shore. These rights were unfortunately continued by all the treaties of the eighteenth century, and by those of 1814 and 1815, altliough the strip of coast itself was varied in 1783. The people of the United States also possess by treaty the right of landing to dry fish and nets on a small strip of the Newfoundland shore. It is a pity that the termina- tion of the great Napoleonic struggle was not made the occasion of a settlement of the extraordinarily dangerous questions then pending and still pending between the French and ourselves both in Newfoundland and in India ; questions out of which it is not too much to say that, but for an amount of tact upon both sides which cannot be permanently counted upon, war might arise at any time. Disputes have been kept from coming to a head in the case of Newfoundland hitherto, chiefly by the spirit of conciliation displayed by the oflicers of the British and French navies in command of the respective squadrons upon the station. Attempts have been made to bring our disputes with France to an end by conventions which have been many times agreed upon between the countries, but which have failed to be accepted by the Parliament of Newfoundland. The part of the coast, upon which French rights exist, has been divided by these conventions, but the provisions reserving to the French their establishments upon the portion of the coast which they actually occupy season by season for curing fish, and giving up the rest of the French Shore to settlement, were marked by the same weakness which was found in the Treaty of Utrecht itself. None of the conventions solved the question at issue ; they all of them left the same difficulties to be fought over in the not distant future, and the Newfoundlanders were perfectly justified in their opposition. Over and over again riots have been caused by the ejection of colonists from Fi-ench drying- places. When British subjects occupy portions of the coast not at present taken up by French establishments the French turn them out by force. The Newfoundlanders claim that the right given to France, by the Treaty of Utrecht, to catch fish upon this shore and to dry them upon land, does not include that of erecting lobster-canning factories, for lobsters are not fish and canning is not drying. The French operations involve the exclusion of the British population of a British colony from the occupation of the soil and from the working of mines in a large portion of the interioi-. The French maintain that by their treaties with us they enjoy the exclusive right of fishery between Cape St. John and Cape Piay, jjassing round the north of the island, and that all British fixed settlements of whatever nature on this coast are contrary to treaty. The Newfound- landers maintain that we have a concurrent right of fishery so long as we do not interfere with or interrupt tiie fishery of the 14 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i French, and that while we have no right to fixed fishing settle- ments upon the French iShore, we have a right to fixed settle- ments of any otlier kind. In practice the French bar the mouths of tlie rivers with nets and ruin the streams for salmon fishery, while we maintain that they have no rights to river fisheries. I myself agree with the Newfoundlanders that the last arrangement, which was come to at Paris in November 1885, was no settlement of the question, and that the French concessions, which fell to the ground through the opposition of the colony, were only concessions upon paper. The French promised to give up large portions of the coast, which, however, consisted chiefly of sheer clifi' or of districts otherwise useless for all purposes. The Newfoundlanders, while praising, as all praise, the tact and ability of Sir Clare Ford, think that he was placed at a disadvantage by not having a highly-skilled naval expert as a colleague, while the French had on their side an officer who knew every inch of the coast and who used his knowledge. The Newfoundlanders assert that in the coast over which France was to surrender her rights there was not a landing-place for a canoe. The very presence of the French fishermen upon the coast, bringing together as it does French and British men-of-war, although the oflicers of the two squad- rons try to live upon terms of courtesy and of friendliness, gives rise to a constant risk of national irritation. The French fishermen, who inhabit rude dwellings upon the shore during the fishing season, dismantle them in winter, when they retire to their own islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, or even across the Atlantic to France, and leave the frames in charge of English colonial keepers; and the quarrels which arise upon, such questions are but one kind of dispute out of many which occur. In all probability the French will not give up their fisliing rights, or the essential portion of them, until after some great change has taken place in the power of the Newfound- ^ landers, or until after a_European war, and all that we can '^ hope is that the tact which has been displayed upon both sides in the past may continue to exist in the future between the representatives of the Western Powers. Bait. Meanwhile a recent Act of the Newfoundland legislature has resulted in somewhat reducing the value of the French fishery. Tlie Bait Bill of 1887 prohibited the exportation of the bait used for the cod fishery, and the operation of this Act has already had some effect. The best bait is only procured in the early season on shores where the French have no riglits, and they had been dependent on the Newfoundland fishers for their supplies of bait. They, as well as the Americans, who are also affected by the Bill, now have with difficulty to fish for their own bait and to go some distance for it, and in this way they lose the first market of each season. The French, however, now assert that they find that periwinkles, which grow everywhere, form good bait ; but this is doubtful. The French bounty system is a hardship to colonial fishermen. The Newfound- (5hap. I NEWFOUNDLAND 15 landers say that French-caught tish is sold for 12s. 6d. a French hundredweight or quintal, and British-caught fish for 14s. 6d. because it is better prepared ; but the French fishermen receive 8s. 6d. bounty. The Newfoundland Parliament would be glad to remove the restrictions laid down in their Act if the French Government would abolish bounties ; but if the efl'ect of the Bait Act had been the partial withdrawal of the French from the shores of Newfoundland, it would have been a step in the right direction, for the present condition of affairs with regard to the French Shore is a disgrace to our standing as a nation. The Americans of the United States possess, as I have said, American in Newfoundland the right by treaty to land on and use a strip rights. of coast, but only so long as it is unsettled. There is, of course, less danger, on account of the words of limitation, that conflicts will arise upon the "American Shore" than is the case with regard to the French Shore, which is not afifected by any equally sensible and just provision. It is possible that the United States, which would be glad to The future possess the fisheries of Newfoundland, and the outpost on the of New- route of all Atlantic trade with Europe which Newfoundland foundland. affords, may make offers to the Newfoundlanders to quit the British Empire for tlie Union. The latter are, however, more likely to use these proposals for the purpose of putting pressure on the Canadians or on us at home, to bring the French claims to an end by purchase, than they are to leave us. It is possible that Irish emigration and emigration from the Western High- lands and islands of Scotland may begin to flow into Newfound- land, wliich offers to the children of the mist good cheap land, suitable for family colonisation, and near at hand, in a climate somewhat similar to their own. In the next chapter — that on Canada — we sliall see how such immigrants to the Dominion have prospered in the West. CHAPTER n THE DOMINION OF CANADA British Continental British North America, the area of whicli, roughly Nortli speaking, may be said to be nearly equal to that of Europe, or America, about equal to tliat of the United States, lias until recent years Ijeen looked upon as an ice-bound desert, fringed by a fertile strip along the border of tlie United States. Eoiigration Since 1829 tliere has been a considerable emigration from the from the United Kingdom to western Canada, but an emigration which Unitetl lias never in late years been equal to the emigration to the Kingdom. United States, although that federation is under a ditierent flag. It has been stated by Mr. Burnett, than wliom no higher authority upon the question could be found, that British emi- grants do not as a body care whether tliey go to lands under or not under British rule, and cross the seas to the United States, Canada, Australasia, the Argentine Republic, or the Transvaal, at the prompting not of sentiment but of interest. Irisli emi- grants have on the whole preferred, when free agents, to quit the shadow of the British flag, and tlie United States have accordingly in the past received the majority of the emigrants from the United Kingdom. Many of those who are set down to Canada in the tables have only journeyed through Canada to the Western States, so tliat the census, and not the emigration statistics, must be our guide. Up to a period between 1830 and 1840 the emigration from the United Kingdom to Canada ex- ceeded our emigration to the United States, both being, how- ever, comparatively small ; but from the commencement of the Irish famine the tables were turned, and the gold rush to Cali- fornia increased the disproportion. In 1852 the emigration from the United Kingdom to the whole of British North America fell to about 10 per cent of our total emigration, and it has remained at about tliat figure up to a recent period though it is now beginning to increase ; while nearly 70 per cent of the persons of Britisli and Irish origin emigrating from the United Kingdom in the last thirty-six years have g^one to the United States, and nearly 20 per cent to Australasia, or double as many to the vastly more distant southern colonies as to Britisli North America. It is also a remarkable fact that the proportions going to the United States, to Australasia, and CHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA l7 to British North America have been, till lately, fairly constant, although the Irish element was at one time predominant in the emigration, while the English element is predominant now. Of the total number of emigrants from tlie United Kingdom who have gone to the United States since 1853 the Irish out- number the English ; at the present moment the English vastly outnumber the Irish among the emigrants, but still resort mainly to the United States, although the emigration to the Transvaal and Argentine Republics is now rapidly increasing in extent. Three times as many natives of the United Kingdom are living in the United States as in the whole of our colonies put together. As among colonies it is, however, the fact that in the last few years, while emigration to Australasia lias declined, that to Canada has remained steady, and is now, as I have said, on the increase, and that at the present moment Canada is receiving a larger number of British emigrants than are going to Australasia. It is striking to notice to how considerable an extent British emigration fails to follow the flag, even when tempted to remain within the Empire by the magnificent soil of Manitoba — the land legislation of the western Provinces of Canada being nevertheless, as we shall see, as liberal as that of the United States. Another curiosity of emigration is the fact that until the last year or two as many British emigrants of the farming class were going to Australasia as to Canada, and that far more than half as many are going thither at the present moment : yet Canada gives free grants of land, while in Australia the land has to be bought for money, and in the Canadian North West the land is prairie land which can be ploughed at once, while in Australasia it is as a rule either too dry for farming or has to be cleared of bush. The British farming emigrant to Mani- toba needs but little capital, and requires only the means of living until he has brought his land under cultivation ; whereas in the least arid portions of Australasia he requires capital both to buy and to clear his land, and has to find the money after he has paid for a far more costly journey. While in Canada he receives free 160 acres, which need no clearing, in Australasia he must either buy land, costing at least £1 an acre, and pay perhaps £10 an acre to clear it, or take land in districts in which drought is deadly. There has been a recent revival of some suggestions by that most able former Agent-General of Canada, Sir Alexander Gait, now retired from very active public life, which proposals have been once more put forward as a basis of colonisation by farm- ing families. The idea by which the adoption of the scheme may be recommended to Parliament at home, is that relief would be felt in London and the great towns if the current of unemployed agricultural labour setting towards the cities could be diverted. Sir Alexander Gait has tried to meet the objec- tion that emigration takes from home many of the best of our workmen, who go to Canada and Victoria and the United States, 18 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i and help these countries to build up manufactures by the use of our picked labour, while they sliut out our goods by high duties. His scheme is one mainly intended for placing the agricultural classes in agricultural districts, and it is meant to be self-supporting or nearly so. Sir Robert Herbert is a high authority u23on this subject, and he has told a Committee of the House of Commons, after carefully considering every plan that has been laid before the Colonial Office, that the Government must expect a loss of money. Now this means that those who stay behind are to be taxed for the beneiit of those who go, while any interference by Government in emigration must tend to destroy the present magnificent system of emigration by self- help, which takes from the United Kingdom some two hundred thousand peojDle every year. It must also be remembered that there is a strong feeling among Englisli workmen against oi'ganised and widespread emigration, which they think is oti'ered to them only as a substitute for social and political reform. Tlien, too, it is admitted tliat the emigrant families under the new scheme must Ije helped by a large advance of money, as the crofter Government emigrants were helised, in order that they may live while they bring the land under tillage ; but it has yet to be shown that, given the fact that steady families are selected, tliey could not do, in many cases, as well with such advances made to them in connection with their trades in England. There doubtless will be much said for the Canadian plan of discourag- ing individual immigration, and of encouraging the immigration of farming families. No objection can be raisecl to tlie Canadian principle of lielping family colonisation by allowing the e.xport- ing agencies to take the security of tlie land for the advance of money ; but wlien Government aid is asked for, even for a nearly self-supporting scheme, it is certain to be pointed out that the poorest and the weakest will be among those who stay behind, and who are to be taxed to meet the deficit, while the value to the mother-country of the exportation of farming families is proljlematical. Canada refuses to take our paupers, except our pauper chil- dren who are being sent there to the general advantage ; and the feeling against pauper immigration is as strong in Canada as it is in the United States, and is indeed almost as powerful as that in Australia against convict inijnigration. In other words, the colonies are now only willing to receive those wliose expatriation is hardly to $ be looked upon as an advantage to their country, and it will be difficult to induce the home-staying population to assent to taxation in any form to help even Sir Alexander Gait's well-thought-out scheme. On the other hand, there are many benevolent people who are willing to incur a certain risk in aiding emigration, and it is probable that, even if Government should decline to assist except in organising effort, such defici- ency in funds as might arise under the Gait Scheme could be met by voluntary help. In any case it is probable, as will be seen, tliat the tide of emigration will for the future flow more CHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 19 strongly towards Canada. Even at the present mighty rate of growth of the American nation, many years beyond the limit of the present century must elapse before the lands of the United States are all occupied by settlers. The people of the British Islands are, however, becoming aware, on the one hand, that the United States will not always remain open .is an emigration field, and, on the other hand, that we possess a Far West superior in fertility to many States and Territories of the Union, and in climate not much less favoured. In the past there was a vague idea at home that our possessions extended beyond the Rocky Mountains to British Columbia ; the Pacific Station of the fleet at Vancouver Island was known to those who had friends or relations in the navy; but in the not distant time when British Columbia could only be reached after a long voyage round Cape Horn, or by a tedious voyage across the Isthmus of Panama, or even, later, by the tiring journey by way of San Francisco, the most remote regions of British North America to which adventurous emigrants made their way were those backwoods of Canada which are now within nine days of London. In the early days indeed of the emigration movement of the The open- present century, and when that movement was in its infancy, ing up of Canada attracted, it has been seen, as large an emigration from the West- Europe as did the United States. Just as in our time, more- ^ru States over, we have witnessed a great migration of Canadian people °^ '^^^. into the United States, so from the close of the American War American of 1814 up to about 1820-30 there was a large migration of ^^°'^- Americans into Canada. The United Empire Loyalists, who had fled or been removed into Canada at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, had left friends in the United States, and their friends gradually joined them in large numbers, and were indeed known as a class by the name " Late Loyalists." Besides the Loyalists, or persons who disliked republican institutions, and more or less preferred the rule of the British Crown, there were in these early days a good many Americans who found that money was to be made more easily in Canada than in the United States, and many Americans who were Republicans in sentiment came into Canada for the sake of gain. All this immigration was, however, to Ontario or to the non-French portions of the present Province of Quebec. About 1830 the rich valley of the Mississippi began to attract world-wide attention, and the gradual opening up of the region known as the Western States, being ultimately followed by an immense famine -emigration from Ireland, gave an enormous impetus to the prosperity of the United States. Tlie fertility of the maize districts of the new lands not only attracted that stream of immigration from Northern Europe which since that time has never ceased, but also drew large numbers of the inlaabitants of Canada across the frontier. Tlie devel- Meanwhile Canada's North West, the counterpart of the opment of Western State.?, similar to Minnesota, and as suitable for wheat "i^ Cana- as Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa are suitable for Indian corn, '1'"° North ' ' West. 20 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIIT part i was locked up, and continued so to be until the territorial clairos of the Hudson Bay Company were purchased, under the Eupert's Land Act of 1868, by the Canadian Government in 1869. A year later the North -West Territories were added to the Dominion, which had been created by the British North America Act in 1867, and the Province of Manitoba was admitted into confederation, and in 1871 British Columbia. Canada hastened to make up for lost time in developing the new region, and there are now a hundred million acres of land surveyed for settlement, wliile railway development is steadily proceeding. In 1880 a contract was signed for the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and in 1886 the first through train ran from Montreal to Vancouver. The completion of this line of communication from Atlantic to Pacific, succeeding the political acts of which it was the consequence, has produced a phenomenon never seen before in the world's history, and never likely to be seen elsewhere, — two countries with a common frontier 4000 miles in length, three-fourths of which is an artificial frontier — two countries under different flags, inhabited by people to a great extent of identical race, speaking the same tongue, each governed by free Federal institutions, and each now provided with independent parallel lines of communication bringing ocean within one week of ocean. On the maps this artificial partition of the continent had existed for genei'ations, but for half the period the western territories of the two powers were, comparatively speaking, unexplored, and for the remainder of the time the northern was dependent upon the southern for its communication with its own remoter regions. The utility of a new overland route to the East and to our Australian colonies, and the strategical value to the Empire of the Canadian Pacific Railway, will be dealt with by me here- after ; but a fact often overlooked in England is that hitherto the western centres of population of British North America have been more intimately connected with districts lying south of them across the American frontier than with places east and west of them within the Canadian border. Emigration from Quebec has flowed in the direction of New England and of New York. Winnipeg, after its rapid rise, was in closest communication with St. Paul, and British Columbia (including Vancouver Island) was chiefly dependent on San Francisco, and, in a less degree, upon Portland (Oregon) and on the growing American seaports on Puget Sound. The Canadian " national policy " of 1879, with its protective tarifii would not have pre- vented relations across the frontier in all these cases becoming even closer and more intimate, had not the new trans -con- tinental line opened up fresh developments of commerce and communication from West to East and East to West. Superiority Although it is true that years and perhaps generations must of soil in elapse before even the increasingly rapid peopling of tlie Canadian Western States and Territories of the Union fills with popula- Nortli tion the vast extent of the American Republic, yet it must be West. CHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 21 borne in miiid that a large proportion of the centre and west centi-e of the United States is desert land, only lit for agriculture after the supply of irrigation, which, in immense tracts of territory, is impossible at paying rates. There are three great systems of communication between the Eastern States and the Far West. The Southern Pacific Railroad, which passes through the arid plains of Western Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, has opened up a less favoured country than that which is traversed by the Union Pacific, which runs through Colorado, Utah, and Nevada; and the latter districts themselves are inferior to parts of North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Wash- ington, which are served by the Nortliern Pacific I'oute. The country traversed by the three main lines is least valuable on the southern route, and increases in agricultural utiKty as we go north ; and when the British frontier is crossed the same superiority in the northern regions is again found up to the point at which climate becomes too severe for the growth of wheat. Much of the laud through which the Canadian Pacific line passes is superior to that in any portion of the west- central districts of the United States. Nor is the good land of our Canadian North West confined to a narrow fringe on either side of the new Pacific road. The best land in the Far West of the whole American continent is said to be found upon the valley of the North Saskatchewan, opposite to the giant peaks of the Rocky Mountains which form the frontier between British Columbia and Alberta. Of the superiority of the Canadian Far West to the land in the same longitude across the American frontier there can be no doubt. There is another particular in which it is frequently urged Projects that Canada has an advantage over the United States, as to for short which I have myself more doubt, and that is nearness for trade routes to purposes to Europe. Canada is indeed geographically nearer Eurojie. than the United States both to Europe and to Asia, and the more northerly the main line of communication across the world is made the shorter it will be. From British Columbia to Japan is a less distance than from San Francisco to Japan, just as from Glasgow to Quebec itseK is a far shorter distance than from Liverpool to New York. It must, however, be remem- bered that the Great Circle route across the Pacific is subject to tempestuous weather off the Aleutian Islands at the mouth of Behring Sea, and we have to inquire if the most northerly Atlantic route can be worked under more favourable conditions. Every year sees produced some new scheme of improved direct communication between the British Isles and British North America. There is a plan for running a railway along the south coast of Newfoundland in connection with a steam-ferry between Cape Ray and the opposite point of Cape Breton. By this means Montreal is to be brought within five and a half days of London. The journey from Montreal to St. John's by rail- way and steam-ferry is to be completed in twenty-four hours. St. John's is only 1730 miles from Queenstown, a voyage which, 22 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet i in tliese days of Atlantic steamers malting five hundred knots a day, can be done in three and a half days, leaving a margin of twenty -four hours for the remainder of the way from Queenstown to London. Advocates of this plan confidently assert that the Newfoundland route would not only bring the Canadian Dominion closer to England, but would divert most of the American passenger traffic, which now goes from New York, on account of the advantage which a sea passage of 1800 miles possesses for a dyspeptic people over one of 2800 miles. There are, however, difficulties in the way. If the channel between Cape Breton and Newfoundland were as clear as that between Holyhead and Queenstown a sea passage of 60 miles in a ferry-boat would be a serious difficulty, but even dur- ing the short Newfoundland summer these coasts are frequently wrapped in impenetrable fog, the recurrence of which would destroy all certainty in the regulation of the traffic and of the mails. Moreover, even if the difficulties of the Gulf of St. Lawrence were overcome, it would not be worth the while of any owners of fast steamships to ply between St John's and Liverpool for the brief season during wliich St. John's would be really available for trade and passage. The duration of the Newfoundland winter and the almost entire cessation of naviga- tion upon the Newfoundland shores during half the year are little realised by the advocates of the short ocean routes. At the same time, fog and ice are drawbacks to some extent shared by all the routes, because it sliould not be forgotten that New- foundland projects so far into the Atla,ntic as to lie upon even the road from New York to Northern Europe. Another of the schemes involves a railway down the north bank of the St. Lawrence to that point of Labrador where the Atlantic meets the Straits of Belle Isle. If it is supposed that a railway could pay expenses in tlie short season during which the ports of Labrador could alone possibly be utilised, there is then the further objection of the danger, even in summer months, of the coast of Labrador on account of fogs and icebergs. A tliird project for bringing the Dominion closer to the old country is the Hudson Bay Sclieme. Its advocates argue that the railway journey from the Atlantic seaboard to Manitoba is too long for immigrants. Tlie Western States of America, they say, were not settled by immigrants who came thither direct from Europe, but by those who flocked in from the more sterile of the New England States, and the average British immigrant has not the means to undertake a long land journey immediately after his sea voyage. They argue that immigrants from the United Kingdom who are bound for Manitoba are apt to disappear before they reach Winnipeg by the Pacific route, dispersing at Montreal to swell the already crowded labour market of Ontario, or to cross the frontier into the United States. Manitoba and the North West must be content, they think, with the surplus of the East until a direct route is established from England to some point upon the coast of CHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 23 Hudson Bay. Thus immigrants might be conducted into tlie very heart of Canada by an ocean voyage shorter than that from Liverpool to New York, — by a journey the same length as that from Liverpool to Montreal ; tlie distance from Liver- pool to Port Nelson or to Fort Churchill, both on the west coast of Hudson Bay, being about 2900 miles. This project has not been received with nmch entlmsiasm either by the Dominion Government or by the Provincial Government oi Manitoba, the argument against it being the ice-bound condition of the waters of Hudson Bay during the greater portion of the year. The route might be used for immigrants if a good deal of money were sjDent upon it, but immigrants, without trade, would liardly pay, and by the time that the route was opened in tlie spring, goods intended for the North West might have reached there by other roads, while the autumn closing of Hudson Bay might come too early for the transport of the produce of the North West itself. It has been suggested that steam -saws might be used for keeping open the channels after they had been blocked by ice, but tins is not a hopeful project. Although the various schemes put forward are perhaps a little visionary, it is not to be thought that communication between Canada and the mother-country is never to be more rapid. All that can be asserted is that there is no immediate prosjject of a more direct communication than that which now exists between Eimouski on the St. Lawrence in the summer months, and Halifax in the winter, and this country. Tiiat the Canadian communications are not yet in a thoroughly satisfactory position is shown by the fact that tliere are towns in Ontario which do a trade with the Maritime Provinces of the Dominion and find it cheaper to send their goods by rail vid the United States. Tlie north shore of Lake Erie, for example, exporting goods to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, largely sends them by rail to Boston and then by sea, instead of using the Canadian railroads or the water-way of the lakes and the St. Lawrence. That Canada has a prosperous future before her there can be Future of no doubt. Of all the lands under a temperate climate to whicli Cauada. British emigrants can go. North America is by far the most accessible, and until that continent is completely filled it is unlikely that in great numbers they will go elsewhere. The Are;entine Republic is farther ofi', and is a land of Spanish and ItEilian speech ; and Soutli Africa has been too largely peopled by Dutch and natives, while Australia is still more distant. Canada, like the United States, tempts the immigrant by free grants of land, and in the North West, as we have seen, no clearing is required, so that tlie intending immigrant has, as compared with those who go to other parts of the globe, the cheapest journey, and the least expenditure to face when he arrives at his journey's end. The immigrants are still too few, but they soon multiply, for Canada produces men on the scale on which she produces timber, and the Canadian population 24 PEOBLEMS OF GREATER BRTTAIK part i increases by natural growth at a wonderfully rapid rate. Of five millions of people in Canada, four millions are Canadian- born — a very different state of things from that which we shall find existing in Australia. On the other hand, while Australia is a land almost certain to be free from the scourge of war, in North America we have to face the fact that there are between the people of our own race, established to the north and to the south respectively of the artificial line which I have described, causes of dispute which I shall presently attempt to investigate.. The Pro- The nearest to Europe of all parts of British North America vinces of after Newfoundland and eastern Labrador, which, as they do the Domin- not form a part of the Dominion of Canada, have been already ion. Nova dealt with, is the Province of Nova Scotia, made up of the Scotia. peninsula east of the Bay of Fundy, and of the island of Cape Breton. Not only is Nova Scotia nearest absolutely to England after Newfoundland, but nearest, not excluding Newfoundland, for purposes of navigation ; its harbours being open in the winter. It is the unrivalled fishery of the Nova Scotian coast that has given rise to the heartburnings and disputes with which, in the last chapter of this part, I shall have to deal. Acadie Nova Scotia has sometimes been called Acadia, while the name was formerly extended to the whole of the JMaritime Pro- vinces of the Dominion, including Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, and forming an old French colony. The name Acadie is said to have been derived from a Slicmac Ai'ord " cadie," signifying " plenty," whence the country was styled La Cadie in a charter from Henri IV in 1604, when the settlemeiits were founded. Acadia is a name now rarely used, and chiefly remembered indeed in connection with the deportation of the French Acadians in 1755. Poetry, not fact, makes popular history, but Longfellow's picturesque account of the sad story of Grandpr^ is so fanciful that the American historian of Canada, also a distinguished son of Harvard, has suggested that the author of Evangdine confused Acadia with Arcadia. How- ever that may be, fewer than 6000 Acadian French were de- ported by the British Government for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the British Crown, but at the present time there are in Nova Scotia more than 40,000, in New Brunswick nearly 60,000, and in Prince Edward Island over 10,000 persons of French descent— or 110,000 in the ancient French province of Acadie, as against the 5000 or 6000 who were sent away ; and so far from refusing allegiance to Great Britain, like the Acadians of the last century, tliey are among the strongest supporters of our rule. Nova Scotia, like Newfoundland, was fought for by England and France. The French attempted to occupy it in 1598, and again in the following year, while in 1604 a French Protestant colony was actually established in Nova Scotia, which failed on account of the destruction of the Protestant party in France, and was succeeded by a colony under tlie auspices of the Eoman Catliolic Church. But the latter was soon destroyed by an expedition commanded by a Virginian CHAP, n THE DOMINION OF CANADA 25 English captain, and Nova Scotia was named and claimed and granted by James I. of England, and the Scottish order of Baronets founded, although a small French population remained in the peninsula. After fighting and dispute, and the cession of British rights in Acadie to Prance by Charles I., the formation of the company of New France by Richelieu upon a priestly base, with the direction to exclude Protestants, tlie conquest of Acadie by Lord Protector Cromwell and its recession to France, Acadie once more became a Jesuit preserve. A French writer has pointed out the weakness of the colonial system which was established there — the ecclesiastical organisation of the colony, burdening the colonists with tithe, made Government oppres- sive. The main reason for the foundation of the colony in the view of the Church was the protection of the natives^ who nevertheless were in fact destroyed almost as rapidly as m the neighbouring possessions of the English Crown. The preven- tion of the sale of drink to natives, which was enforced by law, was found to place the French colonists at a disadvantage as compared with the American English, without saving tlie native races ; and it is indeed a striking /fact that M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu has drawn a picture of Acg/dia which in many respects resembles that which might be drawn of Basutoland and parts of Bechuanaland in thepresent day, and has given as a reason of the downfall of the French power in T^ierioa the adoption of those very principles upon which public opinion in Great Britain desires to proceed in South Africa. Nova Scotia was formally ceded to England by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, and received the grant of a legislative Assembly in 1758, but the island of Cape Breton remained French until the con- quest of Canada. That island was afterwards sometimes under the Nova Scotian Government and sometimes not, and from 1784 to 1820 formed a separate British colony. In 1864 Nova Scotia, with New Brunswick, took the first step which led three years later to the British North America Act and the confedera- tion of the Dominion of Canada. It has been said in jest that the drum-beat of Britain, which Halifa.\. g'eviously followed the morning round the world, now stops at alifax, the Nova Scotian capital, which is our only military station held by regular troops upon the continent of America ; but wliile it is true that no garrison of the British imperial army is found west of Halifax until we reach the coast of Asia, yet the red coats of the Eoyal Marines are sometimes seen as far west as Montreal, and again at the headquarters of the North Pacific squadron on Vancouver Island, where they will soon be joined by a small force of soldiers chosen and sent out from England, whether in British or in Canadian pay. Between Montreal and the Pacific the forces of the Empire are lepre- sented by the Dominion militia. To the English traveller who comes to Halifax as a first landing-place upon the American continent, Halifax may have an American appearance on account of the number of wooden houses and the darkening of 26 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN I'aet i the air by telegiaph and telephone wires ; but to one wlio returns to Halifax from the United States the place looks English, with its English citadel, its red-coated soldiers, and trim villa residences in the woods on the north arm of the magnificent harbour. The completion of the inter -colonial I'ailway from Quebec, down the St. Lawrence, tlirougli New Brunswick, and across Nova Scotia to Halifax, has made Halifax the winter port of the Dominion, and in addition to an export trade of fish and lumber, and excellent Nova Scotian coal, manufactures are springing up in it. Coal. The coal-mines of Nova Scotia are at present the most im- portant in the Dominion. It is indeed a happy fact that, though the " two Canadas " had no coal, by the reception into the Dominion of the Maritime Provinces and of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, as well as by the annexation of the North West, magnificent coal-fields liave been conferred upon Canada. The coal-mining industry in tlie North-West Territories is new, and has been brought into existence by tlie development of the branches of the Canadian Pacific Railway, but local coal from the Piocky Mountain beds is being tried upon that line. There is excellent coal upon Vancouver Island, which will be most important in the future, as it is the only good coal upon the North Pacific ; but Nova Scotia still holds lier own as tlie chief coal-producing Province of the Dominion. Tliere are fine coal-fields in Cape Breton and in the isthmus which connects the peninsula of Nova Scotia with New Bruns- wick, and some of the coal is of the best quality, tliough the Britisli Columbian coal fetches a higher price from its being- situate on the Pacific coast, where coal is scarce indeed. Nova Scotia is already raising nearly two million tons a year, and is exporting a quarter of a million tons to the West Indies, New- foundland, and the United States. Nova Scotia also shares Gold. with British Columbia the most productive gold-fields of the Dominion, but, while British Columbian gold is as yet in part alluvial, the Nova Scotian gold has all along been obtained from quartz. Gaelic. Not only is there a French population in Nova Scotia, but also, oddly enough, a British non-English-speaking population, whose language, however, has been brought from the British Isles. A portion of the Scotch Highlanders of Nova Scotia are a Gaelic-speaking people, of whom some do not understand the English tongue, and, while those near the coal-mines of Pictou are chiefly Presbyterians, the Highlanders at Antigonish pos- sess churches dedicated to Celtic Catliolic saints. Nova Scotia Sir Charles has given to the Dominion, in the person of the statesman of Tapper. United Empire Loyalist descent who brought Iier into the Canadian federation. Sir Charles Tupper, a possible future Prime Minister of Canada. New The Province of New Brunswick is maimed, by a monstrous Brunswick. boundary_ line. The greater part of the State of Maine belongs geographically to New Brunswick or to Lower Canada, and that oiiAj'. u THE DOMINION OF CANADA 27 a large portion of that State is not British territory is the fault of our own representatives. More than half a century after the treaty of peace between the mother-country and the revolted colonies, a President of the United States made a fair proposal to the British Government, and its rejection, and the subsequent Ashburton Treaty, with the result of the creation of the present boundary, fonn a monument of that ignorance and neglect of national interest which have often unfortunately characterised the action of our imperial representatives. Had ordinary diplomatic skill been made use or by us in 1842, we should have obtained a tract of territory, the importance of which to Canada has only been realised since the development of rail- ways. The junction in New Brunswick of the Intercolonial Bailway, where the lines from St. John and from Halifax meet, is nearly due east of Montreal ; but in order to reach that point from Montreal without passing through the territory of the United States, the railway has to run through nearly three degrees of latitude to the north. Among the consequences of the Ashburton Treaty are an additional outlay of ten million dollars in the first cost of the Intercolonial Ptailway, and the removal of Nova Scotia for political, military, and commercial purposes 200 miles farther from the capital and from the chief Provinces of the Dominion. The extra charge on the transport of coal alone would make a difference of a dollar a ton in price to the consumers in the Provinces of Quebec and of Ontario. The Grand Trunk Railway runs through American territory to an American port, and the greater portion of the traffic of the Canadian Pacific line will pass, as well as the greater portion of that from the Province of New Brunswick to the Canadas, over American soil. The population of New Brunswick is to a great extent composed of descendants of the United Empire Loyalists who left New England at the conclusion of the peace and founded the city of St. John. Although they hated republican institutions, they were as democratic in many of their ways as were the rest of the American colonists, and the New Brunswick Assembly preceded the Assembly of Victoria itself hj conduct- ing in the last century a series of struggles with its Legislative Council precisely similar to those which have raged in our time in the great gold colony of Australia. The figlit in New Bruns- wick, as in Victoria, was as to payment of members, and the dead look between the two Houses was of thoroughly Victorian completeness. The people of New Brunswick are chiefly con- nected with ship-building, with the valuable fisheries, and the lumber trade. The city of St. John, including two districts which virtually form part of it, although under separate forms of local government, has 40,000 people ; but New Brunswick follows American example in having its capital established elsewhere than in its chief town, and the picturesque city of Eredericton, the Provincial seat of government, is small. Manu- factures are beginning to be developed in New Brunswick, and the interior is well adapted for farming, and has less bad land 28 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt i in proportion to its area than any Province of the Dominion except Prince Edward Island. The New Brunswiclcers are by- no means wanting in a sense of their own importance. The Americans are inclined to ridicule under tlie term " blue noses " — a name derived from a species of potato, and properly spieak- ing applicable to Nova Scotians only — the inhabitants of the British Maritime Provinces ; but New Brunswick replies that she could beat any two out of the three nearest New England States, and that her militia are superior from^ every point of view, except that they possess fewer general officers. Prince The beautiful island which is named after the father of Edward the Queen is sometimes called tlie garden of the Canadian Island, Dominion, and is a lovely Province of farmsteads, villages, and rural towns. Long depressed by an aristocratic land system — which is now a part of ancient history, for the absentee land- lords and tenant farmers have given way to a peasant proprietary farming their own lands — Prince Edward Island is entei-ing upon a course of rapid agricultural development. Most of the country is cleared and the greater portion of it occupied, but land is still to be bought cheaply, as the English-speaking colonists who mainly inhabit it have not the same attachment to the soil whicli is found among the French, and looking upon tlie West as the land of promise are willing enough to move. The chief drawback to Prince Edward Island is tlie difficulty of regular communication with the mainland during the winter months, owing to ice in Noi-thumberland Straits. The population is, nevertheless, growing dense, and the island is more than twice as thickly populated as any other Province of tlie Dominion, and very densely populated for a colony, although, of course, sparsely inhabited as compared with England. Province of As we pass westward by the railway, or up the St. Lawrence Quebec. to Quebec, the shores recall the early settlement of Canada by Tlie French (-jjg Prench. The ancestors of the inliabitauts of the lower Canadians. g(. Lawrence were partly Bretons and partly Normans, and, living in the neighbourhood of the sterile rock scenery of the Saguenay, they have not become more Parisian than tliey were wlien they left France, although they are not less French. The French have been at Gaspe since 1534, although nearly one hundred years later they were conquered, and Canada held for three years, by England, and it may now be pretty safely said that, whatever else may happen upon the American continent, this part of it will not speak English, and that this branch of the French race with its extraordinary prolific nature is too tough a morsel for our digestion. Professor Seeley, indeed, whose name cannot be mentioned in connection with subjects relating to our colonial empire, even wlien one diflfers from him, without the statement that he is one of the few modern writers who possess a point of view which renders all that they write useful to the world, has said that in Canada as elsewhere the alien element is likely ultimately to disappear. OHAP. 11 THE DOMINION OF CANADA 29 The prophecy may come true, for all things are possible, but is at variance with all that we know of the past and present of the French Canadians in their own stronghold of Quebec. The increase by natural growth of the French-Canadian race has been the subject of remark in many books. Tocqueville already found ten times as many French Canadians as there had been at the British Conquest, and said that they were as French as he was, and much more like the French than the Americans are like the English, which is s.till true of their descendants. Besides the vastly greater number that exist within the Canadian boundaries now than Tocqueville found, we have to remember the French-Canadian population in New England, which also as yet retains its tongue. The Canadian French have even assimilated Highlanders. Between the Saguenay and Quebec, in the district of Charlevoix, there is on the left bank of the St. Lawrence the seigniory of Murray, which was granted to one of Wolfe's officers and settled by his men. Frasers, McNeils, and other Scottish names abound, but their owners can speak no word of English or even Gaelic. When Jacques Cartier of St. Malo took possession of Gasp^ in the name of God and the King of France, and put up his cross with the escutcheon bearing three: fleurs de lis and the inscrijDtion " Vive le roy de France," he founded the only great oflFshoot of the French race, and the most God-fearing, although the French monarchy has been longer dead in northern North America than in Europe. When the 60,000 French colonists became, for good, British subjects in 1763, the English, although they had sworn to respect their customs, expected to absorb them. We behaved at Quebec as we behaved at Cape Town, and with the same result. After causing insurrection we were compelled to give way and to keep our promise. At one time we forced upon the French our laws, our language, and in a measure our religion. The French resisted, at first quietly, and then in arms, as the Dutch at the Cape resisted, at first in arms, and then quietly ; but in each case the defence won, and Quebec is now as French as Stellenbosoh and The Paarl are Dutch. There was, however, a curious interlude in Canada. During the wars in which the United States attempted to drive us out of Canada, the Canadians fought upon our side. The only moments at which we were ever popular in Lower Canada, until we gave her free French institutions, were the moments when tlie Americans were trying to expel us. "Papineau's Kebellion " of 1837 (and Papineau himself had fought for us in arms against American invasion, as, too, Wasliington had fought for us in his youth) won for Canada the constitution of February 1841 by which she obtained Home Kule. It gave the French but little in the direct form, but it gave them the means of winning everything they asked, and they soon carried the use of the French language in all the documents of Parlia- ment, and the equality of French with English as tlie language 30 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN French Canadians and Dutch Afrikan- ders. of debate. At the time of Tocqueville's visit he pointed out that tlie French -Canadian newspapers published with care everything that could inflame popular passion against the British. It is indeed the case that when Te Deums were sung in the French -Canadian Koman Catholic churches, on the occasion of the Queen's accession, the congregations walked out. But Madame de Tocqueville, an Englishwoman herself, was able after her husband's death to show, in the notes which she contributed to his works when they were reprinted, that the liberties granted to Canada by the Imperial Parliament have pacified that country, and have converted the Province of Quebec into one of the bulwarks of the British Empire. Soon there came about that union of the two peoples in heart and spirit which the recent administration of Sir Hercules Robinson has also left behind it at the Cape, but which in Canada the Protestant opposition to the Jesuit Bill has lately shaken. Sir George Cartier, the Conservative statesman who led the French Canadians at the time of the accomplishment of Confederation, had himself as a young man taken part in Papineau's Rebellion, but there never was a stronger supporter of a united empire than my host at Ottawa in the year of the passing of the Bill. The French in Canada have grown from the 60,000 of the conquest to over 1,400,000 in Canada, with '700,000 in the United States. There were parts of The Townships in Lower Canada wliich were by a majority English-speaking at the time of my first visit to the American continent in 1866, which are by three to two French at the present time. The French are increasing in numbers and spreading as regards geo- graphical limits, and they are now so numerous in parts of the State of Maine as to have succeeded in some cases in seating their members in the State legislature. The Canadian Govern- ment have been driven by French feeling to establish a representative in Paris to assist in guiding Frencli emigration towards Canada, but without success. That in the Dominion, created by the Federation of 1868, the old race prejudice condemned as "odious" by the Queen's father, tlie Duke of Kent, and deplored fifty years later by Charles Buller, writing in Lord Durham's name, continues, is only the stronger testimony to tlie value of those Federal institutions which have built up a great daughter-power out of the discordant elements. I have, it will be seen, by inference instituted a comparison between the French of Lower Canada and the South African Dutch. In both cases we found the alien people in the land and dispossessed their mother-country "of the province. In eacli case they have clung to their language and their institutions, and in each country the language of the non-English colonists may now be made use of in the legislature. Both races are tilled with an intense conservatism, and the French of Canada and the Dutch of South Africa are now in fact almost the only surviving true Conservatives living under free institutions. OHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 31 Both races are prolific, and in each case religion is a powerful factor in the national life, and has more political, social, and domestic influence than is usually found among Christian communities of the present day. The difference between the Boer and the French Canadian is not the ordinary difference between Calvinist and Catholic, for, curiously enough, although, as will be seen when I come to treat of the Cape, the Afrikander Boer makes use of Scripture terminology in ordinary conversa- tion as copiously as did the Puritans of Elizabeth's reign or the Covenanters of the Western Highlands, in his mode of life he is less rigid — or narrow if we choose to call it narrow — than is the French Canadian. Let us take dancing as an example. It is a Puritan tradition to hold that exercise in abhorrence, while in Roman Catholic countries it has usually received the sanction of the Church. Yet, while no Boer festivity is ever celebrated without a dance of portentous length and energy, among the French Canadians dancing now lies under the frown of the ecclesiastical authorities. In South Africa, indeed, some jrredikants discourage dancing, but their teaching upon this point meets -with no success, while the French bishops are obeyed. The Roman Catholicism of Lower Canada was always of a severe type. In the time of Colbert there was an angry correspondence between liim and the Bishop of Quebec, the latter wishing to shut up public -houses, while the Minister refused. Both the French Canadians and the Boers have kept a Attitude of certain connection with their former mother-countries, but in the French the case of the French Canadians the tie is one of sentiment Canadians rather than of sympathy, for the inhabitants of Quebec are towards Catholic and Monarchical even more perhaps than they are "™nce. French, and many phases of modern French thought are repulsive to the majority among them. When, after the events of 1871, some supporters of the Commune of Paris came to Montreal, I believe that they met with a reception such as might be given to extreme members of the Italian Left at the Vatican itself. Now that there is easy communication between France and Canada, a few Canadians, both priests and laymen, go to seminaries and schools in France, — no large number ; but the younger men in the Province of Quebec have taken the French tricolour as their flag, and another curious example of pro-French sentiment lies in the frequency of the name of Napoleon as a Christian name in some parts of the Province. Through the fact that the similarity of language leads in Canada to the study of French laws, there is a certain artificial adoption in Canada of French public institu- tions, as, for example, the school savings banks, which are copied from a French model. In one admirable respect, indeed, the French Canadians bear a close resemblance to the peasant class of France. Their fi'ugality is remarkable, and in Mon- treal, where Britons and Frenchmen are not given to needless praise of one another, there is heard on every side testimony 32 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i to the industrious, prudent, and saving disposition of the French. Habitant The language of the habitants, or habitans as the word is often French. written in theTrench of the past and of the future, has become somewhat mixed with English phrases. Cardinal Taschereau talks the dignified French of the Grand Siicle, and although his style may be archaic, his conversation would be a delight to a French purist of the old school. The peasant or the shopkeeper, however, will say "Je n'ai pas de change" for "I have no change." He will describe dry goods on his signboards as " Marchandises seches," and will call out when he is busy, " J'ai un job k remplir." In public meetings we hear of " les minutes," and the seconder of a resolution is officially called " Le secon- deur." For the use in the Dominion Parliament of " L'orateur " for " the Speaker," and for the cry " Ecoutez " for " Hear, hear,'' there is good French authority. Change is now in the direction of purification, and day by day in the speech and writing of the educated among the French-Canadian people, local words are giving way to the more scientific forms of modern French. The British North America Act provides that either tongue may be used in the debates in the Federal Houses, that both must be used in the journals, and that the Acts both of the Dominion Parliament and of the Quebec legislature must be printed in both languages. After a motion has been seconded in the Dominion Houses it is read in English and French by the Speaker if he be familiar with both tongues, and if not, he is bound to read the motion in one language and to direct the clerk to read it in tlie other. Provision has hitherto been made for the use of the French language not only in Quebec and in the Dominion Parliament, but in the Houses of Manitoba and of the North West. An agitation is, however, on foot to banish the official use of French from these parts of the Dominion. We are far from the days when, the two provinces of Canada having been united vmder one Parliament, it was provided that English should be the only language used in legislative records. This was part of the policy, to wliich even Lord John Eussell had at one time given his adhesion, of denationalising the French Canadians ; but this clause was repealed in 1848, and the whole policy has followed the clause into oblivion. The speakers in the Dominion House who wish to exert the widest influence make, nevertheless, a point of addressing it in English, and Mr. Laurier, the acting leader of the Opposition, is an eloquent instance of a French-Canadian member who speaks in English with admirable effect. This matter of language is one of many points in which the French Canadians know that they would make a bad bargain if they were to join the United States. They are well aware that they would not be ijermitted to speak French in Congress, and still less to have the proceedings printed in their tongue. In certain schemes which have been published in America, displaying the political arrangement of Canada after the proposed annexation of the Dominion to the CHAP. 11 THE DOMINION OK CANADA 33 United States, the Province of Quebec is divided into tvjfo States — Montreal and Quebec. This is of course lield out as a bribe to Montreal, where exists the cliief friction between French and Briton ; but the proposal is not one calculated to enamour the French Canadians with annexation. Even if Quebec Province, in its present size, became a State of the Union it would have a very difl'erent relative importance from that which it now enjoys ; but if it were split up, the French influence, notwithstanding the toughness of the French-Cana- dian race, would be overwhelmed. At the present moment the French are not only conquering the small British element in Lower Canada, but are migi-ating into Ontario as well as into the United States, and there is a stream of Frenchmen, in spite of jtheir fondness for their own Province, passing westward along the main line of the Canadian Pacific Kailway. Quebec suflers a slight loss on the whole by migration, and Ontario gains. The chief sign of the inflow of the French into Ontario is the The French establishment of French schools in the districts where the in Ontario. immigration has taken place. In two counties lying between Ottawa and Montreal there are about sixty French schools, that is, schools in which the teaching and use of French preponder- ate over the teaching and use of English. These two counties of Ontario are urdted for local government purposes, and the county council has ten French members out of twenty -four. The original settlers of this part of Ontario were United Empire Loyalists who came in from New England and New York after the Revolutionary War. The French immigration began about forty years ago, and the incomers occupied the low lands which had been rejected by the British settlers, who still hold the upper lands, but are hemmed in on all sides by habitants. Many English farmers have sold out and left for Manitoba, and others are likely to follow their example. It is no doubt the in- crease of the French population in Ontario which has been a potent cause of recent demonstrations in that Province against French Canadians and tlieir religion. The less narrow Protest- ants assert that, although in northern and eastern Ontario the French population is increasing, a large proportion of the French in these districts are becoming less distinctively French, and are growing more like the English in dress, in ways of living, and even in tongue. The Roman Catholic population of Ontario do not by any means universally make use of the separate-school system, and more than half of their children are said now to attend the public schools. The French in Ontario are becoming Anglicised by the operation of powerful causes, and this change suggests that the business of the whole contin- ent will ultimately be transacted in the English tongue, and that only those who are willing to be left behind in the race will neglect to learn English, at all events as a second language. Such a change as is occurring among the Ontario Irench would never have happened under any system of government D 34 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN ■which did not give them absolute freedom. Had they been forced to send their children to tlie public schools it would have been a matter of pride with them to speak nothing but French in tlieir own homes ; but as the contrary view has prevailed they have less resisting force, because the patriotism of race does not enter into the account. Not only has an official repre- sentative of Canada been placed in Paris, as we have seen, but an attempt is being made by private French Canadians to intro- duce French immigrants into the French portions of Ontario, and the editor of a French newspaper, published in Ontario, has taken a leading part in the introduction of the Frenchmen of France. As yet only a few thousands have come, while there are nearly 300,000 Germans in Canada who have come in with- out assistance, although they hardly retain so much separate nationality in Canada as they do in the United States. French The existence of large and solid communities of French Canadians Canadians in New England presents some curious features, in tlie They replace New Englanders, who are pouring into Montana United and the two Dakotas, and it has been estimated that something States. like lialf of the French -Canadian population of the United States is in New England, while it is in the New England States that 350,000 French Canadians are conspicuous from their situation in the midst of n. population entirely unlike them in race, religion, and manner of life. The Canadians of New Eng- land gain their liveliliood as farmers, carpenters, wheelwrights, and operatives in cotton and woollen mills. Some of the factories in E,hode Island are entirely worked by French Cana- dians, and in that State, until within tlie last few years, they have sliown no disposition to become naturalised or American- ised in any way. They still keep very much to themselves, and hold but little intercourse with operatives of other nationalities, and have often refused to unite with them in strikes. The American French bear a good character as law-abiding, frugal, and sober workmen, easily taught the use of machinery and the processes of manufacture. The usual course of their immigra- tion is for a family to come down from Canada, the father obtaining work as a common labourer, the mother taking charge of the house and of the usually enormous family of children, and the sons and daughters as they grow up getting work in mills. They live economically, and save their wages to send to Canada for investment in land in the township from which they came. When their end has been accomplished the whole family often goes to Canada in the spring and works until the end of summer, and then returns to the mills for the winter months. As the parents grow older they remain in Canada, and the cliildren go back to tlie United States and send remittances home, and neither the old nor the young, until very recent years, have been in the habit of learning to speak or even to under- stand the English tongue. Within the last few years, however, the education laws of the United States have begun to break down this system, having a less complete French family life to CHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 35 conquer than existed in Lower Canada itself, in wliicli we failed to fuse the races when we tried to do so. There has been a struggle between the two classes of schools. French-Canadian priests liave been educated in the United States, and placed in charge of Canadian schools in New England, where many parochial French schools have been founded. Gradually the influence of the parish priests of Canada, which has always been strongly exerted to keep the people at home or to bring them back when they went away, has been weakened, and a persist- ent and successful eifort has recently been made by both the political parties in New England to induce the French Canadians to become naturalised, with the result that a good many of them have become members of State legislatures, while the commis- sioner from the State of Ehode Island to the Paris Exhibition of 1889 was himself a French Canadian. Still it may be said that at present the French Canadians remain, on the whole, a community apart. There are New England factories in which are operatives who have been employed there for fifteen or twenty years, and who cannot speak a word of English. The incoming of French Canadians to New England under contract, which used to be common, has been checked by the enforcement of American laws forbidding the importation of labour under such conditions. Of the great number of French -Canadian newspapers in the New England States many have no doubt been started with interested political views, but it is easy to see from the nature of their contents that the readers do not pay much attention to subjects not Canadian, and that these inhabitants of the United States are more interested in ques- tions relating to France, or to their Church, than in those which have to do with the United States. That desire of the Lower Canadians to retain the French Future of nationality which kept them on our side during the American the French wars will always leave the Quebec Province rather British than Canadians. American in its sympathies. The Canadians are willing enough to make their fortunes in the United States, but mostly on con- dition that they may return one day to Canada, and they do not believe that it would be possible for them to enjoy the same measure of insurance of their national peculiarities in the event of their absorption in the United States as they now enjoy under the Act of 1867, which makes Quebec a separate Province with a Parliament of its own. If there were not many other reasons for desiring that the bonds between the Canadian Dominion and the United Kingdom should be rather strengthened than relaxed, there would be a sufficient one in tlie fact that we are now ourselves upon good terms with both French-Canadian Roman Catholics and British- Canadian Protestants, between whom, under an independent system, a conflict would be probable. The success that the principle of federal self-government has achieved in uniting in one Canadian Power two races and two religions so distinct — the success the same principle has had in uniting three races 36 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i and two religions in Switzerland — seems to show that no diffi- culties are too great to be conquered in this fashion. It is probable that federation such as that of Canada would have kept the old American colonies themselves in permanent con- nection with the British Crown. Their past. One reason for the present attachment of the French Cana- dians to the Empire is to be found in the fact that although for many years they had their disputes with us as to their liberties and rights, they had not enjoyed free institutions when under the Crown of France, and the liberties which they possess in so full a measure at the present time are of wholly modern growth. When Colbert was laying down the principles upon which French Canada should be governed, it was proposed to himby a Governor that provision should be made for the summoning of an assembly in the future ; but the Minister severely reproved him, saying that he must always follow in Canadian affairs the forms used in France, and that, as the ICings of France had decided not to call together the French States-General, having indeed the design of ultimately ridding the kingdom of the very theory of their existence, the Governors of Canada must take the greatest pains to gradually suppress every form of collective action, " it being wise that each man should speak for himself, but that no one should speak for all." Surprise has often been expressed that the purely German population of Alsace should have proved, since 1789, and up to 1870, the most patriotic citizens of France ; and in the fact that they owed their social and political liberties to the French con- quest is to be found the explanation. So, too, in Canada, although the defeat and conquest of the French were followed for a time by a continuation of arbitrary government, the liberties which the French Canadians now enjoy under the British Crown, being new to tliem in history, are a powerful cause of their general loyalty. Moreover, in the case of the Canadians, the excesses which followed the French Revolution for long years severed any sentimental connection between the Catholic, monarchical, Canadian jjopulation and the people of France itself. Quebec When I wrote of Quebec in 1868 I laid much stress upon the city. striking appearance of the city. To say tliat the town is in picturesqueness and in position unrivalled on the American continent is poor i)raise for the capital of Lower Canada. In the grouping of its buildings "the Ancient Capital" rivals Edinburgh, and its situation on the heights above the St. Law- rence does not suffer in comparison with that of Lisbon as it rises on the sharp hills from the Tagus. After the dreary monotony of many of the American cities of the Nortli and the North West the eye is not fastidious, but the beauty of Quebec, whether seen from afar or viewed from its own terrace, appeals even to those whose life has been spent among the loveliest cities of the old world. Within the walls, too, at every turn, one discovers some bit of architecture which calls to mind a CHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 37 corner of a quiet French provincial town, and many of the modern buildings of Quebec are not inharmonious, but are, on the contrary, in keeping with the style of the old city. While signs are not wanting throughout the countries of English speech that as our race conquers the non-Russian globe it will establish everywhere in its cities one dull level of unloveliness in architecture, and while even now the most experienced traveller finds it difficult, in examining a photograph of any new settlement of English-speaking people, to say if the scene represented lies in Manitoba, in Texas, in South Africa, or in the back country of New South Wales, the colonies of the Latin races have in their towns some old-world picturesqueness — Quebec like Goa, Macao, Havana, and many more. It would seem as though the penalty of the expansion of England, wliether in her own colonies or in the United States, is the destruction of much of the beauty of the world ; but if archi- tectural superiority belongs to the Latin race prosperity follows on the Anglo-Saxon trail. The city of Quebec, although in the rising portion of the world, is now a stationary town, which actually decreased in population between 1861 and 1871, althougli it has risen again since the latter date. The slow increase of population in Quebec is especially significant on account of the f ruitfulness of the French-Canadian race, among whom families of ten or twelve children are normal, and of eighteen to thirty not unknown. Various causes have been assigned for the com- parative decadence of Quebec. The Orangemen of Ontario ascribe it to the ascendency of the Roman Catholic Church, which can hardly be looked upon as a sufficient cause. Em- ployers of labour lay the blame on the Ship Labourers' Union, wliich has prescribed a higher rate of wages and shorter hours Rivalry of than those of Montreal, with the effect of driving a portion of Montreal. the shipping trade higher up the great waterway of Canada. Others say that the destruction of the forests near Quebec has spoiled the lumber trade, and others that tlie real reason why some part of its commerce has left Quebec is that the British community, which, in spite of the preponderance of French jjopulation, directs the trade of Montreal, is more enterprising than the French Canadians all-powerful at Quebec, and that its energy has made Montreal the head of navigation for sea-going vessels and the centre of Canadian commerce. It used to be said in the old days that there were two advantages which Montreal could not steal from Quebec — the citadel and the tide. The citadel remains as an attraction to the tourists of tlie whole world, but the deepening of the channel has robbed Quebec of the control of the ocean shipping trade, and Montreal has become tlie point of tran.sfer for Western freight and the point of distribution of import trade. The owners of ocean steamers are certain, indeed, to make the head of navigation as far in- land as they can, and especially in the present state of railway development in Lower Canada. The waterway of the St. Law- rence, however, is blocked for navigation for Iialf the year, and 38 PKOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt i efforts are being made to firmly establish Halifax as the winter port of the Dominion. The city of Quebec is connected by rail with Montreal by the north shore railway, which extends to Ottawa, but the intercolonial line has its termination on the south bank of the St. Lawrence at Levi or Levis (now officially styled L^vis, and named after the Chevalier de L^vis) opposite to Quebec, and there is no through railway communication west and east through the Lower Canadian capital. Quebec contri- buted largely towards the building of the north sliore line, but has not retained control over the administration, and the tariff of charges for the 180 miles from Jlontreal to Quebec is often compared with that from Quebec to HaKfax — a distance of 680 miles — the former being on certain classes of freight one-third higher than the latter rates. The completion of the Canadian Pacific line to the Atlantic through the State of Maine has been partly caused by the difficulty in the past of bridging the St. Lawrence at Quebec. Nevertheless the river banks are high, and the deep water channel could in the present state of science be crossed by a single span lofty enough to admit of the passage of vessels of the tallest masts. Even the beautiful landscape would not be interfered with by a bridge, for a handsome bridge is no disfigurement to the finest landscape, as may witness the Victoria Bridge at Montreal or the tubular bridge across the Menai Strait, and the most practicable site for a bridge near Quebec is several miles distant from the city, wliere the familiar features of the scene would not be interfered with. A bridge across the river would divert freight which is now carried to the ports of the State of Maine, and, in addition to assisting the development of Halifax as the winter port, might restore to Quebec a share of the shipping trade, until Quebec is made a centre of railway communication the complaint will undoubtedly continue that Quebec wages are on a lower scale than those of Montreal, for the terms upon which the Ship Labourers' Union insist are an exception to tlie usual rate. Montreal. At the extreme west of Lower Canada lies Montreal, hardly belonging to the Province of Quebec by its geographical situa- tion, and in dispute between Upper and Lower Canada as regards its population. Containing within the city and the suburbs 200,000 people, and possessed of handsome buildings, it must be regarded as the first city of the Dominion, although the next census will probably reveal the fact that Toronto has crept up to it, if not passed it, in the number of its inhabitants. In one respect Montreal resembles the largest city of the United States — New York, namely, that although it has always been the largest city in the land, it is not the capital either of the country or of the federal unit. In another respect there is similarity between the cities, namely, that both owe much to their geographical situation, Montreal standing on an island at the meeting of the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence, as New York stands at the junction of the East and the North river ; but Montreal, though comparatively small, is a finer city than New CHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 39 York, both in architecture and in the background given to it by the wooded slopes of Mount Eoyal. If Quebec is the most picturesque city, Montreal is the most sumptuous in appearance of all towns of the American continent. Its chief feature is the splendour and the number of its churches, and " Mark Twain," who as a good American is used to cities full of churches, said of it that he was never previously in a city where one could not throw a brickbat without breaking a church window. To one who comes to Montreal knowing the statistics, which show that a large majority of the inhabitants are Eoiuaii Catholics, the sight of the crowd of domes and spires gives the impression that he is in a city swarming with Eoman Catholic churches ; but on inquiry it is found that the crosses and the rose windows and the gargoyles belong in some cases to the Anglican Church, and in many to Methodists, Presbyterians, Unitarians, and other societies, whose early existence involved protest against ecclesiastical emblems. Although Montreal is a French-Cana- dian city, in the sense that the majority of its inhabitants be- long to the French-Canadian race, the British minority are so far superior in wealth that, except for a certain beauty which is unusual in Anglo-Saxon towns, a month might be passed in the chief quarters of Montreal without the discovery being made that it is not an English city. The teeming French popu- lation dwell in their own quarter, which is so separate from the parts where are the finest business streets and the handsomest private residences that excitement may prevail in the French quarter over an election or a strike without a sign of it being seen in the English quarter of the town. The existence of French and English populations side by side in " The City of Churches " is the chief cause of friction between the two races in the Dominion. The British minority of Montreal, largely Scottish by descent or birth, strongly Protestant, rich and enterprising, includes the chief men of the community, and this section is given to complain that progress is retarded by the French Canadians, who, being in a majority, make use of the wealthy part of Montreal as the milch cow of the whole Pro- vince. There is, moreover, in the city of Montreal a large Irish population, which at the last census numbered nearly 30,000 out of a total of 140,000 people. These are, with few exceptions, Eoman Catholics, and although they do not in any way coalesce with their French co-religionists, they vote with them in questions that afiect the Church, which include most questions in the Province of Quebec. It is now computed that the Eoman Catholics are to the Protestants in Montreal nearly three to one, and the number and the imposing architecture of the churches belonging to the minority are the more to be wondered at. The very existence of such churches is a proof of the wealth and activity of the British community in tlie city. Montreal flourishes in spite of religious and racial disunion and of political vicissitudes. The city seems to thrive upon religious warfare, race antipathy, and social division. Neither has the 40 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet i removal of the seat of government of the country injured it, nor the withdrawal of the British garrison, though these changes have placed Montreal society on a commercial instead of on an official basis. The reason of the continued and increasing prosperity of the town is that its naturally fine position has caused it to become both a centre of railway communication and tlie head of the navigation of tlie St. Lawrence, and the sight of Atlantic liners and British men-of-war lying off the wharves makes it difficult to realise that tlie ocean is a thousand miles away, and the nearest salt water two hundred and fifty miles down the St. Lawrence. Iiistitu- Quebec, like Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, has a nomi- tions of the nated Upper House, while Prince Edward Island has an elective Province. Upper House, and Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia one chamber only. The names of the deputies of the Legislative Assembly of Quebec are nearly all French, and the names in the Legislative Council French by an overwhelming majority. It is natural that this should be so, as the census of 1881 showed that out of 1,300,000 persons of French race in the Dominion 1,000,000 formed the French-speaking population of Quebec. The members of both Houses are paid. As the Province has the control of its own constitution — subject only to the possi- bility of a veto rarely used — it enjoys manhood suffrage and a purely denominational system of education, which latter is guaranteed to it, while it also keeps up the institution of a virtual parochial establishment of the Koman Catholic Church. It is represented in the Macdonald Cabinet, which governs the Dominion, by Sir Hector Langevin, who is a brother of a bishop, the past editor of religious journals, a writer of treatises on ecclesiastical law, and a Commander of the Order of Gregory the Great ; while, upon the other side, the Province claims Mr. Laurier, the member for Quebec East, who professes, liowever, a strong desire to cement the two races into one nation. Of French Provincial politicians Mr. Honor^ Mercier, the Prime Minister of Quebec, is the most prominent, and seems likely to lead the Lower Canadians during his whole life. The Province has not only the alteration of its own constitution and the school system, but the disposal of Provincial public lands, poor law or charitable institutions, a portion of the public works, power of imposing direct taxation for local purposes, loans on Provincial credit, offices, officers and public servants, matters concerning property, the civil laws, and the administration of justice ; and Quebec enjoys, therefore, as much as she pleases of the French civil laws. The criminal law of England prevails throughout the Dominion. The French Canadians possess their own civil code, which has grown from the Ptoman law through the Customary usages of old France, but has been powerfully affected by the codification of French law by the First Napoleon. It is maintained by the opponents of the Roman Catholic Church that by the Quebec system there is State aid to religion, and OHAP. n THE DOMINION OF CANADA 41 the institution of the fahrique gives colour to that view. Of social peculiarities in the Province of Quebec one is the clause in the Quebec Liquor Act allowing persons to be put under notice by their relations in order to prevent their being served with liquor, a principle which we shall find further developed in one or two other Provinces and colonies, and which also exists in some States of the American Union. The Quebec law has not been generally enforced, although drunkards in country districts are made to go a good many miles for their liquor, and the "Dominion Alliance for the Suppression of the Liquor Trafiic " is now taking the matter in hand. The Quebec Parliament is a little lively, and there is within Parties, its walls a local di'i'ision of parties into Liberal (National) and Conservative ; or Eouges and Bleus (Bleus having in Canada exactly the opposite meaning from that which it bore in France in 1793), which is not the same division as exists in Ontario affairs between the "Tories," who style themselves Liberal- Conservatives, and the " Grits '' or Liberals. The Quebec Liberals now object to be called "Eouges," and claim to be a new party, and Mr. Mercier repudiates the term " Liberal " and most of its Quebec associations. Li the days of Sir George Cartier the Conservative party of Quebec had had the undivided support of the Roman Catholic Church, and the Liberals were of the European type, and opposed to all exten- sions of clerical influence. The leading men of the Quebec Liberal party belonged to I'Institut Canadien at Montreal, which was distinctly anti- clerical, but the Church bent her influence to the destruction of the society and excommunicated its members. The body of a Mr. Guibord, thus excommuni- cated, was left in the dead-house for several years while the Privy Council investigated his right to interment in his own freehold grave. The society was broken up. The Liberal party, which as long as it was anti-clerical was in a minority (except for one brief term), became as clerical as the Quebec Conserva- tive party, and under Mr. Mercier's lead styles itself National and is triumphant. The loyal inhabitants of the Premier Province of the Ontario. Dominion, as Ontario loves to style herself, boast that of all England's possessions it was first occupied in a manner unique in the history of British colonisation. Whereas England has obtained colonies elsewhere by conquest, by exchange, by pur- chase, by discovery, Ontario is the only Province of the Empire which was first settled by men who deliberately gave u]p their homes to maintain their allegiance to the British flag. The land beyond the Coteau du Lac was in French times unbroken forest except for the forts at Niagara and where Kingston now stands, and the political existence of Ontario really commenced when, late in the last century, under the name of Upper Canada, it was divided from the old Province of Quebec to be the home of the United Empire Loyalists. Ontario was settled chiefly by those from New York and from the middle States, 42 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i and especially Virginia, while those from New England with- drew to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The descendants of the United Empire Loyalists are among the most vigorous and the most successful of the inhabitants of the Dominion. The Province of Quebec is in maiiy respects virtually unchanged since I wrote of it in 1868. Ontario, on the other hand, has become a new country since that time, and while Quebec is still from many points of view, as it always was, a part of the old world, in Ontario we reach one of those young offshoots of Great Britain which are recognised in Australia and New Zealand, in Natal, and in the Eastern Province of the Cape. It is in considering tlie condition of Ontario, of Manitoba and the North West, and of the Pacific States of the Dominion, that one has to realise the immense impetus given to British North America by federation. Just as in Syria, in Central Asia, or in Baluchistan, the traveller feels as though he were among people who lived a thousand years ago — in Ontario, as in Australia, he is in the midst of a population who seem to be living half a cen- tury later than his own time. Although the Province of Ontario is smaller than that of Quebec, and considerably less than half the size of British Columbia, yet it is larger than the six New England States with New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland ; nor do its climate and soil compare unfavourably with those of the ten States named. Its average yield of wheat to the cultivated acre during recent years has been considerably above that of the best grain-producing countries of the Union, although Minnesota still raises more wheat than the sparse settlement of Canada allows the Dominion to produce. Ontario is an excellent country for wool and cattle -raising, and for wine. In minerals and in timber it is rich, and every part of it has easy access to its markets. Peopled as it is by a robust stock, Ontario has a future full of promise. Toronto. The city of Toronto, the capital of the Province, displays the energy which characterises Ontario as a whole. If Montreal is the finest city of the Dominion, Toronto is becoming the most prosperous and is the most progressive. Its increase of population gives promise of a growth approaching that of the great American commercial centres. Between 1861 and 1881 Toronto doubled its population, and, if recent estimates may be relied upon, it has already again done so since the last census — the population being at that time 86,000, and being estimated at from 170,000 to^ 180,000 in 1889. No two cities in the wliole world are less alike than the capitals of the neighbouring Pro- vinces of Ontario and Quebec, though neither is American. While Quebec is French, Toronto is more English than American, and looks like one of the southern suburbs of our own London, adorned with a trans- Atlantic equipment of innumerable electric wires. Toronto has no great beauty, and its site upon a flat lake-shore gives it no natural advantage to the eye ; but there is about the city an air of business animation which yields an agreeable impression of vigorous growth. As in Montreal the CHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 43 churches form the chief architectural feature, but the buildings of the University constitute a dignified group. The educational and religious activity of " The Queen City " is as striking as its commercial enterprise. It is to the fact of its having become a great railroad centre that the prosperity of the lake-side capital of Ontario is due — no less than eight Knes converging there from different directions. Ottawa owes its position of capital of tlie Dominion to the Ottawa, jealousies of the greater cities. The situation of the town on the high banks of the Ottawa, close to tlie boiling falls, is superior to that of Washington on the low lands of the Potomac, and, though the Gothic Houses of Parliament are not of the size of the classic Capitol of the United States, the grouping of the legislative and departmental buildings on three sides of an imposing square makes a finer single architectural display than anything to be found in Washington, where the handsome public edifices are scattered about and lost in a wilderness of villas. The Parliament Library at Ottawa is perhaps the finest building of its kind upon the continent, and a block of new Government offices, in the immediate vicinity of the great group, has just been completed, the design of which is a model for the erection of public oifices. The arrangement of the Houses of the legislature combines features which are found at Westminster and at Washington. The Upper House, though it is called the Senate, and though its members, following the American custom, frequently adopt their official rank of Senator as a titular prefix, is in its arrangement, with seats upon oppo- site sides of the chamber, on either hand of the Throne, con- structed on the Britisli plan. On the other hand, in tlie House of Commons, which adheres so closely to English names as to confer the style of M.P. on its members, the seats are arranged in circular form after the pattern of Congress. A sitting of the Dominion House of Commons is an orderly spectacle compared with a session of Congress ; but although the Lower House at Westminster has lost in recent years some of its character for decorum, it is severe in its formality as compared with the Canadian Lower House. One of the most sober journals of the Dominion, lately describing an unusually quiet division, said that " it looked all right in Hansard," but " to the galleries it appeared as though a comic opera had been replaced by a lesson in arithmetic." During the last session, when the most im- portant division of the year was taking place, the members on both sides sang the Marseillaise in chorus — the choice of the song, however, having no political significance. It seems in- credible, but it is the case that, in the interval after the division bell has rung, the Canadian members not infrequently call on some one with a good voice to sing a song with a rousing chorus, in which the other members join, and the Frenchmen, being mvisical, are first asked, and often, though " clerical " in feeling, start the Marseillaise for fun. The society of Ottawa is mainly ofiicial, and revolves around 44 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet i Society and the residence of the Governor -General at Eideau Hall. The publicmen. city is, however, not entirely given up to Parliament and the otKces ; there are lumber mills upon the Chaudiere falls, which employ many workpeople, who form the nucleus of a large industrial population. Although Ottawa is geographically within the Province of Ontario, it stands on the extreme frontier and is also near that portion of Ontario whicli is almost as French as is Quebec. There are in consequence signs of the existence of a French element, and the French notices over the street shops cannot be put up entirely for the benefit of the Quebec members and their families who "board" in Ottawa during the parliamentary session. Ottawa city returns one of the fifty -four French members of the Dominion House of Commons. The Governors-General since confederation have been men of the highest mark, and Lords Dufl'erin, Lome, Lansdowne, and Stanley of Preston have done much for Canada, but of all those who make Ottawa tlieir home for a jDortion of the year, and of all men in Canadian politics, there is one figure which rises above Viceroys, and above other statesmen of all parties. Sir Jolm The position of personal influence which Sir John A. ilacdonald Macdouald. holds in the Dominion is unique among tlie politicians of the British Empire. If it were possible to institute a comparison between a colonial possession and a first-class European power, Sir John Macdonald's position in Canada might be likened to that of Prince Bismarck in the German Empire. In personal cliaracteristics tliere is much in " John A.," as he is often styled, to remind one of another European statesman now deceased — Signer Depretis, the late Prime Minister of Italy, — for there are certainly not a few points of resemblance between " The Old Stradella " and " Old To-morrow," as Sir John is also familiarly called, from his custom of putting off all disagreeable matters. The Prime Minister of tlie Dominion is frequently likened to Mr. Disraeli, but this is chiefly a matter of facial similarity, a point in which the resemblance is striking. The first time that I saw Sir John Macdonald was shortly after Lord Beaconsfield's death, and as the clock struck midnight. I was starting from Euston Station, and there appeared on the step of the railway carriage, in Privy Councillor's uniform (the right to wear which is confined to so small a number of persons that one expects to know by sight those who wear it), a figure precisely similar to that of the late Conservative leader, and it required indeed a severe exercise of presence of mind to remember that there had been a City banquet from wliich the apparition must be coming, and to rapidly arrive by a process of exhaustion at the know- ledge that this twin brother of that Lord Beaconsfield, whom shortly before I had seen in the sickroom which he was not to leave, must be the Prime Minister of Canada. Sir John Mac- donald's chief outward note is liis expansiveness, and the main point of difference from Disraeli is the contrast between his buoyancy and the well-known sphinx attitude. Macdonald is OHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 45 the life and soul of every gathering in which he takes a part, and in the exuberance of his antique youthfulness Sir John Macdonald resembles less Mr. Disraeli than Mr. Gladstone, whose junior he is by a few days more than five years, and whom he also successfully follows in House of Commons tactics or adroitness, as well as in his detestation of those who keep liim past midnight chained to his House of Commons seat. Sir Jolm Macdonald has had unrivalled experience as a first Minister — from confederation up to nearly 1873, and from 1878 to the present time. Dominion Parliaments live long, consider- ing that their duration is limited to five years, the dates of the last four dissolutions having been January 1874, 1878, 1882, 1887 ; but Canadian Ministries live longer still, and that of Sir John Macdonald seems eternal. The composition of his Cabinet is a monument to his powers The Mac- of management and to his skill. There never was a ministry donald so singular for the successful admixture of incongruous ele- Cabinet, ments. Sir Hector Langevin, who is eleven years younger than his chief, although Sir John Macdonald looks his junior, represents the French Koman Catholics, together with Sir Adolphe Caron and Mr. J. A. Chapleau. Sir John Thompson, the Minister of Justice, is a Koman Catholic of a very different type, being by birth a Nova Scotian Presbyterian. Another Roman Catholic member of the Cabinet became celebrated in 1882 as the mover in the Dominion House of the address to . Her Majesty praying that she would grant Home Eule to Ireland. Side by side with these sit as colleagues high officials of Grand Orange Lodges, and such is the influence of the Prime Minister that they, carrying with them many non-oflicial Orangemen, voted against the disallowance or the Jesuits' Estates Bill of Quebec, in the famous division of last year, in face of the hot opposition of the whole Orange Society of Ontario and of every Protestant Church. Since confederation. Sir John Macdonald has been, as I said, The Do- perpetual Prime Minister, save for the five years when Mr. minion Op- Mackenzie's Eeform Administration was in office. Mr. Mac- position, kenzie, who, like Mr. Service and Mr. Deakin of Victoria, and many other leading colonial politicians, has declined knighthood, has now to a great extent retired from active Folitics. Mr. Blake, the well-known Minister of Justice and resident of the Privy Council in the Eeform Administration, a frequent visitor to London, has been compelled to give up public life on account of ill health. The most prominent parliamentary survivors among the leading members of the Mackenzie Government are Sir Eichard Cartwright, _ the former Minister of Finance, and Mr. A. G. Jones of Halifax, who have both been conspicuous in urging commercial union with the United States, although both represent distinguished United Empire Loyalist famiSes. The acting leader of the Opposition, now certain to become its chief, is Mr. Laurier, a French Canadian, but, as I have hinted, a master of the English 46 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet i tongue. He also for a short time held a portfolio in the Mac- kenzie Cabinet, but is a younger man than his former colleagues. By the laws both of the Dominion and of the Provinces the same men cannot serve in the Provincial and in the Dominion Parliaments. There is an exception to this rule, for members of the Quebec Upper House can sit also in the Dominion Senate ; but the rule is absolute as regards representative Provincial bodies, and the exception is wholly unimportant. Of Pro- politicians, vincial statesmen the most eminent are Mr. Mowat, who has been the Liberal Prime Minister of Ontario for the last seventeen years ; and Mr. Mercier, the first Minister of Quebec — already named ; and Cardinal Archbishop Taschereau, the respected head of the French Pi,oman Catholic community, may perhaps be reckoned among them, though he holds no political or legislative position. The word Opposition is a confusing one in Canada, where the one party is in permanent power in the Dominion or Federal Government and the other party in the Provinces ; but I may incidentally remark that, while we speak in England of "Her Majesty's Opposition," the Con- servatives of Ontario have attempted to better the phrase, and style themselves "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition." Political That the tone of politics is on the whole higher in Canada 'if®- than in the United States, and that there is less abstention from politics among some of the best men than is the case - across the border, may be seen from the class of members who sit in both houses of the Dominion Parliament, and in the Provincial legislatures. Party feeling runs high both at Ottawa and at Toronto and Quebec, and at moments of extreme bitterness Canadian politicians, both Federal and Provincial, make serious charges against their opponents, but, nevertheless, the best men are throughout the Dominion willing or anxious to undertake parliamentary duties. In the United States many of the best citizens are absorbed in the pursuit of wealth, and the great railway and banking magnates are seldom to be found either in Congress or in State legis- latures. The wealthy, and unfortunately a large proportion of the most highly educated, among American citizens shun political life as a career with which honest men of substance should have nothing to do ; but in Canada the rich men, like Sir Donald Smith, and the chief inhabitants of all the principal cities, are active legislators. The fact that members are paid both in the Federal and in the Provincial Houses does not call forth the imputation that they seek seats for the sake of the stipend, and scandals of corruption are all but unheard of. The Canadian political press stands as high as do the Canadian politicians. There are leading journals in Toronto and in Montreal which maj^ be compared in general character with such papers as the Liverpool Post or the Manchester Guardian, and it is remarkable, considering the proximity of the United States, how little the newspapers of Ontario and Quebec are infected by the sensationalism of a portion of the American OHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 47 press. The amazing headlines which are so conspicuous a feature of the leading journals of New York exist in Canada only in the mildest form. The Frencli press contains a good deal of characteristic Canadian journalism, very diflerent from any matter published in France. In several of the newspapers excellent French style is found ; but there are between fifty and sixty French journals jjublished in the Dominion, of which more than a quarter are daily papers, and the style in some of them would puzzle a Parisian reader. An effort to improve French-Canadian style is noticeable in Canada, which is similar to the constant striving after classical Greek to be met with among the joui-nalists of Athens. The bitterest of Canadian political controversies of recent Tlie Roman years has been that which lately arose over the power and Catholic position of the Eoman Catholic Church in the Province of Church. Quebec. That Church in French Canada is predominant and privileged. The spires of its churches are conspicuous in the smallest hamlets. The cassocks of the priests are met at every turn, and the mere perusal of a French- Canadian newspaper will be sufficient to show that in the Province of Quebec the Church of Eome has a stronger position than in any Catholic country in Europe — stronger even than in Belgium or in Ireland itself. Sentences of excommunication 'are published by some of the Lower Canadian journals, with the names of the offenders, almost in the way in which bankruptcies are gazetted in communities less ecclesiastical. Even in Belgium, where political laymen take part in religious processions, it would be thought remarkable if leading statesmen appeared in the costume in which Mr. Mercier, the Prime Minister of Quebec, was attired at a festival held lately at St. Hyacinthe. This chief man of a British Province which adjoins the United States appeared in the gorgeous raiment of a Papal order, which included white breeches trimmed with red, a green satin vest, a red mantle, a hat with wliite feathers, and a breastplate set in brilliants. Mr. Mercier's speeches are often as ecclesiastical as his costume. In July 1889 he made one on the spot where Jacques Cartier landed, in which he said that the thought which " had arisen uppermost in his mind while he had assisted at the solemn sacrifice of the mass by a Prince of the Church that day" had been of "the immortal Jacques Cartier and the heroic Jesuit missionary kneeling at the foot of the Cross, and that those heroes were with them that day, and that their words of greeting and of warning to their compatriots would be, ' Cease your fratricidal strife ; be united.' In the name of their religion, in the name of their country, lie would say to them, ' Cease your fratricidal strife ; be united.' For the benefit of their religion, for the benefit of their country, and for the benefit of Canada at large, he urged them to remember that, standing in the face of a common danger, the rouge and the bleu should give place to the tricolour. The demonstration of 48 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i that day had been a triumph for the national cause. Their nationality was insulted, their institutions were decried, their language, their customs, and their laws attacked; and_ there were those who were ready to achieve success by the discom- fiture of their compatriots. They were but two millions of people in the midst of sixty millions. The Government of which he was the head was ready to disappear if that would be the means of uniting the French -Canadian people for the triumph of their sacred cause, for the sake of their nationality and their religion. Tlieir strength lay in the union of the people with the clergy, for to the clergy the French Canadians owed what they were to-day, and if they were a great and patriotic people it was due to the faith of their fathers, which they had maintained. For the sake of their religion, and for the sake of the Dominion at large, the French Canadians must be united. The agitation wliich was being conducted in Ontario was a baseless and a dangerous agitation, and if the French Canadians were to accept the provocation that had been ofiered them they might not be the first victims of that agitation. Profiting by an act of justice that had been rendered by the legislature of Quebec, in the full authority of its con- stitutional powers, the fanatics of Ontario were depriving the French Catholics of some of their dearest and most cherished rights by the most insolent and insulting agitation ever indulged in by a people, conducted by the same men who were saying that the French Canadians had no right to teach their children French in the Province of Ontario. Let them contrast that action with the conduct of the French Catholics of Quebec towards the Protestant minority. The Protestants of Quebec were given one-third of the educational grant, and they were not asked what they taught in their schools, but were allowed to teach a difierent creed and a different language. These men who had been treated with so much generosity and liberality were now joining the fanatics of Ontario. The Quebec legislature had its documents translated into English for the benefit of the few English members, and these fanatics would not allow French to be taught in Ontario. The French- Canadian people were too generous to retaliate on the minority. It was useless to imagine that they would ever cease to be French and Catholic." It will be seen that this speech is a valuable indication of the drift of the internal poUtics of Quebec, and of their bearing upon the politics of the Dominion. Roman Catholic interests are, however, unlikely to be really trampled upon in a country in which the E,oman Catholics possess, as they do in Canada, some 42 per cent of the religious world and are almost as numerous as the tliree next great denominations put together. Bishops and jDriests exercise in Lower Canada a, somewhat minute supervision over the lives of their people. They, of course, discourage mixed marriages, and they do so to such an extent as to strongly promote the homogeneous character of CHAP, n THE DOMINION" OF CANADA 49 the French-Canadian population. Some grief is caused in the city of Quebec, during the periodical residence of the Governor- General, by the fact that no dispensation for dancing is given to French-Canadian ladies on the occasion of Viceregal balls. Archbishop Fabre of Montreal in a recent pastoral warned the faithful against a number of vificked and doubtful practices, contained in a list which brought together amateur theatricals, circuses, and snow-shoe tramps. The legal holidays imposed by the civil code of Quebec include a number of Church festivals not recognised in Protestant countries ; but the bishops are also strict as regards Sunday observance. In the greater portion of the Province of Quebec there is little active opposition to Koman Catholic pretensions, but at Montreal, where the Protestant element is larger, there is some friction and considerable feeling against the powers and privi- leges of the Church. The Christian Brothers have a large printing establishment at Montreal, and there are complaints that tliis house, which pays no taxes, should enter into com- petition with employers of labour who have to pay high muni- cipal rates. Similar complaint is made regarding a laundry on a large scale connected with the Good Shepherd Keformatory. French Roman Catholic influence is, however, strong in Canada even outside the Province of Quebec, and the action of tlie Corporation of Ottawa, the capital of the British Canadian Dominion, may be contrasted with that of the municipality of the capital of France, the eldest daughter of the Church, in the matter of change of names of streets. At Ottawa the name of "Water Street" was recently altered to that of "St. John Baptist," in honour of the patron saint of the French Canadians. It may be interesting to note that in this most Catholic country in the world the Queen's name and not the Pope's takes the iirst place on the toast-list of banquets even of Catholic societies. Last St. John's Day, the chief annual festival of Quebec com- menced in the morning with high mass, at which the Cardinal officiated, the host being elevated to the sound of bugles and a salute of artillery, while in the evening, at the banquet of the societies which had attended this solemn service in the Basilica, the first toast was ofl'ered " a la Reine." The Church of Rome within the Province of Quebec has the A virtual powers of a State Church, and indeed greater powers than State those enjoyed by the Church of England in England and Wales, Cliurcli. but remains unfettered by State restrictions. By an Act of George III passed in 1774 the clergy of the Church of Rome may receive their accustomed dues with respect to such persons as profess the religion of the Church of Rome, and it is under this law that the Church in Quebec now collects its tithes. According to the " Code des Cures " tithe is due upon the crops harvested "by every proprietor or tenant professing the Catholic religion"; but any one who has once been a Roman Catholic cannot evade payment by merely alleging that he no longer belongs to the Church, and he has to produce a formal declara- E 50 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt i tion of apostasy or a certificate that he is recognised as a member of a Protestant Church. Moreover, the Church has the power to assess and raise rates for the support of ecclesiastical fabrics, and there is alsg an exemption of Church property from muni- cipal taxation. The recent controversy on the Jesuits' Estates Bill illustrates the position of the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec and the feeling outside that Province -with regard to it. After the suppression of the Society of Jesus by Clement XIV, the Jesuits' property in Canada was confided to the Legislature of Quebec to be devoted to purposes of education. When the Jesuit body was reinstated in favour at Rome it began from time to time to demand back the property ; and in 1888 the Provincial Legislature passed an Act by wliich the Lieutenant- Governor in Council was authorised to pay to the representa- tives of the Roman Catholic Church a large sum as a quittance for all old claims — the sum to remain as a special deposit until the Pope had ratified the settlement and made known his wishes as to the distribution of the money. The Pope gave nearly half to the Jesuits, and divided the remainder between the Laval University and the dioceses of Lower Canada, and the money, as thougli to irritate the Orangemen, was handed over on Gun- powder Plot Day, 5th November 1889. The same Act appro- ]jriated a far smaller sum — but to judge by population a fully proportionate sum — to the Protestants to be used for the pur- poses of higher education. Immediately an agitation sprang up in Ontario among Orange and Protestant bodies to prevail upon the Governor-General in Council to use his power of veto against the Provincial Act, which was denounced as infringing uijon the supremacy of the Crown, reserved in the Act of G-eorge III ot which I have spoken, and while the whole Jesuit Act was characterised as unconstitutional, the subsidy to Pro- testant education was called a bribe. The unusual course was taken of bringing the question before the Dominion Parliament, but in a full House of Commons, 202 members being present out of 215, only 13 could be found to vote for the resolution in favour of the disallowance of the Provincial Act. Although party feel- ing is bitter, the motion had the effect of uniting the Govern- ment and the Opposition, and the overwhelming majority who voted against advising the Governor-General to veto the Act consisted for the most part of English Canadians of every shade of political opinion, and in most cases of unimpeachable Pro- testantism. After the division the House adjourned, but before the members left they all joined in singing "God save the Queen." It should be added that the Protestant minority in the Provincial Legislature of Quebec had previously assented with unanimity to the Bill. The curious fact of certain Privy Councillors in the Dominion Lower House, who are opposed to one another on every subject except their common Protestantism, voting together for this Roman Catholic Bill, shows that tliere was an overwhelming feeling throughout the Dominion that the legislation was constitutional. But, even though constitutional. CHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 61 it could have been vetoed, and all the Protestant religious bodies passed resolutions in favour of a veto of the Act. A Presby- terian clergyman who declined to denounce the vote of the House of Commons was compared to the profligate dbbh of the court of Louis XV. The poKticians had virtually agreed to shelve the question by discussing it on the constitutional point, which could only be settled in one way, and possibly had so agreed because, the Roman Catholics being united and well drilled, neither party could afllbrd to incur their hostility. But the Protestant objection is to the character and policy of tlie Act, and the controversy has drawn attention to the privileges of the Roman Catholic Church, and has led to the formation of " Equal Eights Associations." Although there is this bitterness of feeling between the Protestants of Ontario and the Roman Catholics of Quebec, in the Lower Province the population, except at Montreal, willingly accept the privileged position of the Roman Catholic Church. On the occasion of Archbishop Taschereau's elevation to the Cardinalate, the first ofiicial visit of congratulation which His Eminence received was from the Anglican Bishop of Montreal, accompanied by his chapter and all the archdeacons of the diocese. The ceremonial of the reception of the biretta at Quebec was one in which the whole population took part, and the day was observed as a public holiday, while the artillery of the militia fired a salute when the Cardinal gave the benediction from the balcony of the Basilica. The Roman Catliolic Church in Quebec accords seats of honour in its cathedrals and all its churches, as of right, to the Queen's judges and all the high officials of the colony. While, however, the claims of the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec meet there with general acceptance, the position of that Church, as by far the largest religious community in the Dominion, intensifies resistance to its claims in other Provinces; and the Orange body in Ontario is not confined to the Pro- testant Irish, but counts among its members many Englishmen. An attempt, too, is being made in Canada to form a united Protestant body, and the Methodist Conference (representing the Methodist Church of Canada which unites the Wesleyan and the other Methodist bodies) and the Presbyterian General Assembly have entered into negotiations with the Anglican Provincial Synod of Montreal with a view to attempt a union. The neighbourhood of the highly organised branch of the Roman Catholic Church in Lower Canada makes Ontario ^ Episcopalianism evangelical in its type. The Methodists are » the second, the Presbyterians the third, and the Church of England the fourth religious body in numtier of members in the Dominion. It has already been pointed out that the privileged position Position of of the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec tends to prevent a tlie Eomau movement towards absorption by the United States. No two Catholic things can indeed be in greater contrast than the surroundings Church in of the heads of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States ^''°'"'* ^""^ 52 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i in the and in Canada respectively. Cardinal Taschereau, holding a United reception in his old palace at Quebec, in a gallery hung with the States. pictures of his predecessors from the earliest French days, is the embodiment of tlie aristocratic Roman Catholic system. Cardinal Gibbons receiving visits in his unpretentious house at Baltimore represents the modern deiiQocratic side of the activity of the Church. The difference in the surroundings of the prelates is the distance which divides the France of Louis XIV from the America of our time, and the co-existence in North America of two cardinals so different in their views of the position of the Church is an instance of the comprehensiveness of the Church of Eome and the elasticity of her system. Cardinal Taschereau has a unique position in Canada in possessing the respect of all parties in the Dominion, and it has been seriously suggested by some of the Protestants of ilontreal that they would gladly see the government of the Province of Quebec absolutely in the Cardinal's hands, as they would have under his government a sense of security which they state that they do not at present feel. I may add that one reason prompting this peculiar display of Protestant feeling may be that the Cardinal and his secular clergy are generally supposed not to be on terms of amity with the Lower Canadian Jesuits, who were reincorporated by an Act of the Quebec legislature in 1887. Constitu- Of the "Liberal" members of the Dominion House of tion of the Commons about a third are French-Canadian " Nationals," who, Opposition though still called " Eeds " by their opponents, are, as has been and the seen, not " Reds " in the Continental sense, as they have mostly Govern- strong Roman Catholic sympathies, while of the remaining two- meut. tliirds a good many are also Roman Catholics — of Irish race. Tlie Conservatives contain in their ranks, as an essential portion of the majority by which they govern the Dominion, the French- Canadian Blues ; but tlie Tories of the remainder of the Dominion are strongly Protestant. One of the marvels of equilibrium which are found in Sir John Macdonald's rule of the majority consists in his being able to hold together his Orange- men and liis Roman Catholics when religious questions are under discussion, and tliere is indeed always a risk that if his great personality were removed some of the strong Protestants of the Dominion might begin to favour annexation to the United States as a means of swamping their Roman Catholic opponents. The existence of this and other serious dangers is a source of strength to Sir John Macdonald himself. In colonies in general there is a feeUng, as we shall see when we come to deal with Australia and South Africa, that changes of government do good, inasmuch as in young countries they accustom more men to the responsibilities of power, and train up statesmen to fill gaps in the ranks of the colonial leading men. Owing to the possession of power in Canada for so long a period by the same statesman, there is in Canada a lack in numbers of experienced politicians. But the danger of absorption l^y the United States OHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 53 in consequence of religious and other disputes, is in Canada so pressing that these considerations fall into the background, and those who earnestly desire to preserve the Dominion as it is all feel that they must do their best to strengthen the hands of the Prime Minister. He rules by a Conservative majority, although there are Conservative majorities in only two of all the Pro- vincial Houses. Ontario and Quebec have a commanding position in the Dominion owing to their population, wealth, and culture, and yet the Liberals are in power both in Ontario and in Quebec, while the Tories are in power in the Federal Parliament. There are Provinces the Parliaments of which are overwhelmingly Liberal, and which, nevertheless, send a Tory phalanx, elected virtually by the same electors, to the Dominion House. The fact is that ithe opinion of the whole country sustains the general policy of the Macdonald party for the maintenance and development of the Dominion, although Liberal and even democratic views prevail with regard to local affairs. The Macdonald Government is a government by the Tory party, but there is nothing reactionary about it, and nothing incon- sistent with local Liberalism. Moreover, the Liberalism of one Province is a very different thing from the Liberalism of another. In ecclesiastical matters some of the Quebec "Beds" resemble the Ultramontane party of Germany or the clerical Conservatives of Belgium. In large portions of Canada the Macdonald Government is chiefly looked upon as a business Government, building railways by subsidies of land and money, and creating great steamship lines. " Conservative " — or rather " Liberal- Conservative," for that is the accepted term — is only a convenient label for the Macdonald party : Sir John Macdonald for many purposes is the party ; and Dominion politicians are perhaps best classed as those who " want to keep Macdonald in " and those who want to turn him out. The "Grits," or Ontario Liberals, are in the habit of stating that Sir John's predominance is brought about by gerrymandering practices, as the Dominion and the Provincial voting districts are in some Provinces not the same ; but this cause cannot account for the large figures and the permanence of the majority. Others say that the immense influence of the Canadian Pacific railroad is the reason of that political omnipotence which they deplore. But the fact is that Sir John Macdonald's Government is looked upon as " National " and " Canadian," though he himself is a Scotchman bom and only Canadian by his training ; and nothing in its traditions oflfends the natural democratic sentiment of the Pro- vinces, which finds local expression in the return of Liberal legislatures. An analysis of the Quebec members, in the Dominion Lower Illustrated House and in the Quebec Legislative Assembly, throws a good by Quebec. deal of light upon the relations between Provincial and Dominion politics. Quebec has 65 members in the Ottawa House of Commons, of whom 37 are called Conservatives and 28 Liberals ; 11 of the Conservatives and 4 of the Liberals having names not 54 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i Erench. The Quebec Legislative Assembly has the same number of members elected for the same districts, and the franchise is almost identical. Comparing the election to the Quebec Assembly in October 1886 and that to the House of Commons in February 1887, the House of Commons being elected by a some- what larger constituency than was the Provincial Assembly — in Quebec West, which returned a Conservative to the Federal Parliament and a Liberal to the Provincial Assembly, the Liberal at the Provincial election had been returned by a small majority, and at the Dominion election the Conservative was returned by a large majority on a much larger number of votes. The Liberal poll had increased, but the Conservative poll had increased in considerably greater proportions. A Ross coalition Ministry had lasted in Quebec from January 1884 to January 1887, the Prime Minister calling himself a Liberal, but his col- leagues, of whom two were French and three English or Irish, call- ing themselves Conservatives or Liberal-Conservatives. After a general election, and the resignation of the Prime Minister in iTanuary 1887, Mr. Taillon, his Attorney-General, formed a Government with three of his old colleagues and one additional English Liberal-Conservative ; but the Ministry fell in two days, and Mr. Mercier formed his Government with seven colleagues, of whom four were French and three English or Irish, the former Prime Minister, Mr. Eoss, being one. The Taillon Conservative Administration had been turned out on a party vote which showed 28 Conservatives to 35 Liberals, and it was on this majority of 7 that Mr. Mercier formed his Government. The chief questions, however, that come before the Quebec House are questions in which Catholic or Frencli-Canadian national feeling is involved, and in these the majorities are overwhelming. In the great division of 1886, on a motion expressing regret at the execution of Kiel after his second rebellion in the North West, the members were 41 for to 18 against ; and on the question of the Jesuits' Estates Bill there was no minority. On Church questions there is little difference between the Quebec parties. The extreme men on both sides believe that Kiel died only because lie was a Frenchman of tlie Roman Churcli, and was killed by English Orangemen and fanatics ; but this feeling carried into power Mr. Mercier, just because the Quebec Con- servatives were connected with the Conservatives of the Dominion who had ordered or silently permitted the execution. A section of the Ultramontane Conservatives, known as the " Castors," however, joined Mr. Mercier's Liberals in his new " National " party. Shrewd and far-seeing, the Quebec Minister has now won the support of the Church authorities, and sweeps all before him at the local polls. Quebec Liberals in the Federal House of Commons vote with the Ontario Liberals or " Grits " on party questions, as, for example, on commercial reciprocity fisheries, and tlie treaty-making power ; but there is a very general belief that if tlie Liberals should come to power after the retirement of Sir John Macdonald, they would hardly persist CHAP, n THE DOMINION OF CANADA 55 in their American policy in its sharper form. Mr. Laurier is, as I have said, the leader of the Federal Opposition in the Dominion Parliament, but he does not meet witli Mr. Mercier's success, perhaps because he has to explain away his votes to Protestant public meetings ; and 26 Quebec French Canadians habitually oppose him, while only 24 vote regularly in his support. One consideration whicli, when we come to the Australian Educatiou. colonies, we shall find to be of poKtical importance, in causing Separate the break-up and fresh formation of parties, does not greatly schools, enter into the Dominion affairs of Canada. Education is delegated to the Provinces, and the Federal Government has with regard to it no power except to secure that in the Provinces in which there exists a separate or dissentient school system for the benefit of the minority that system is maintained. There are " separate " or " dissentient " schools in Quebec and in Ontario for the benefit of the Protestant and the Koman Catholic minorities respectively, and these are guaranteed by the British North America Act. In Manitoba there are separate Eoman Catholic schools, and these might be protected under the same statute by the Viceregal veto. In Quebec the Council of Public Instruction is divided into two committees, the one composed of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and an equal number of Soman Catholic laymen appointed by the Lieutenant- Governor in Council, and the other composed of Protestants, partly appointed by the Lieutenant-Governor, but with co- optative members. Any minority, however small, in a school district, may declare itself to be dissentient, and either form a separate school or join with the dissentients of some neigh- bouring district to form one, which becomes entitled to a grant from the municipal school funds. In Ontario the Roman Catholics form a larger minority than do the Protestants of Quebec, and the separate school system attains larger pro- portions, although more than half the Roman Catholic children in Ontario are believed to attend the public schools. The difierence in the working of the two systems, which accounts for Roman Catholics sending their children to public schools in Ontario, is that (while the Protestant separate schools of Quebec are undenominational), the Roman Catholic separate schools of Ontario are ecclesiastical, and give an educatiou generally thought to be inferior to that obtained in the public schools. The public scliools of Quebec are strictly Roman Catholic and denominational. The expenditure upon education, both district and Provincial, is singularly high, and the school attendance throughout the Dominion, in spite of the sparseness of the population in large portions of its territory, is perhaps the highest in the world. We have seen in the case of education how the Federal Federal- system, by leaving the subject to the Provinces (except so far ism. as the separate schools of the " two Canadas " were guaranteed at the time of Confederation), avoids dangers which in a country of sharp religious difiiculties would otherwise have been great, 56 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i and on a close consideration of Canadian affairs we shall discover that the same cause of peace is one of general operation. Canada is a country which presented difficulties in the way of united government as great as could be easily conceived. Elsewhere there are united in one country, upon a federal plan, three races, not altogether friendly, and two religions : but in Canada were found the same two creeds, in fierce conflict, and races separated by memories of constant war or of the grinding tyranny of past ages. The compilers of the Canadian census of 1881 undertook a difficult task in trying to divide the Canadian people among the difTerent nationalities from which they spring, but it may be assumed that the risk of error in this matter affects all races equally, and that, on the whole, the figures are not far wrong. The Dominion had then, as I have said, about 1,300,000 French, while we may class together the 900,000 Englisli and the 700,000 Scotch as being united by history, for most purposes, into a body of 1,600,000 Britons, representing those who carried on continued warfare with the ancestors of the French in North America. One million Irish are separated from the English-Scotch combination by re- collections of the penal laws of previous ages and of what they think oppression. While the majority of the Irish and the French together form a Roman Catholic population not very different in numbers from the Scotch and English and Ulster Protestant population, the remainder of the inhabitants of the Dominion consisted in 1881 of a quarter of a million of Germans, now increased to over 300,000, and of Scandinavians and persons of United-States- American descent. The Scandinavian and Icelandic element is now increasing rapidly. The jealousies of the two great races and of the two chief Provinces had caused the adoption upon federation of the provision that Quebec and Ontario, in spite of the superiority in number of population of the latter Province, should have equal representation in the Senate ; but the historic claims of Lower Canada upon the representation question were disallowed in the creation of tlie Lower House, where representation was allotted to the Provinces in strict proportion to population, and upon a self- acting system, such as we shall also see at work in some of the Australasian colonies. In Switzerland many of the difficulties of federation were removed by the fact that the cantons had an ancient history which made of them virtually sovereign States coming freely into union, as was also the case in fact and theory with the old English colonies when they formed themselves into the United States, but in Canada this basis for confederation was wanting. Before federation there existed in Canada intense religious and racial jealousies ; and in anotlier delicate matter of importance, namely, local finance and interests, the various colonies had set up custom-houses against one another, and all of them traded with and depended on the United States more than with or on each other. The Provinces (except in some degree CHAi'. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 57 the " two Canadas "), with their then distinct systems of government, isolated by the absence of transit facilities, were as separate as so many foreign countries. At the same time the United States held open wide her arms, and the set of opinion towards aggregation into large communities worked towards absoristion into the United States rather tlian towards British North American union. Some are shocked in tlie present day when they hear of resolutions in Congress suggesting the reception of Canada into the States system, but while I was in Canada in July 1866 a detailed Bill was introduced and read twice in the Efouse of Representatives at Washington "for the admission of the States of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada East and Canada West, and for the organisation of the territories of Selkirk, Saskatchewan, and Columbia." The United States were to assume the debt of tlie Provinces and to give an annual grant in aid of local expenditure, promising to construct the Pacific railroad, and to improve the canals so that large ships should be able to pass into the Upper Lakes, while the Bill also provided for buying-out the Hudson Bay Company. The only remedy for such a state of things was confederation, but the obstacles in the way appeared to be insuperable. By the prudence of the authors of Canadian federation these difficulties were conquered. It was decided that tlie new Dominion should have all powers except those delegated to the Provinces by the constitution, thus reversing the system which exists in the United States owing to the sovereignty of the various States, but which in Canada would not have had within it a germ of historical truth. The idea of a new Canadian national unity was favoured by the creation of a local Privy Council. The defence of Canada was naturally placed under tlie Dominion, as well as the customs, trade, and currency. The old Provinces received the control of their public lands, forests, and mines, but lands in the territories of Manitoba and the North West, as yet at that time unsettled, were to belong to the Dominion. Generally speaking, it may be said that the Federal Government has all powers necessary to the unity, permanence, and development of the Dominion, and the Provincial Government power over the daily local life of its inhabitants. Our own has been a federal age. The year 18G.5 saw the A federal victory of the principle in the United States ; 1867-68 the new age. birth of Canada through the adoption of the system I have described ; 1870 tlie creation, in the German Empire, of the strongest federal system of the Continent of Europe ; 1874 the adoption in Switzerland of a federal constitution greatly improved over that of 1848. In 1885 was laid the foundation of the edifice of Australasian federation, while portions of our West Indian Crown colonies have recently been brought together under similar systems ; and in South Africa alone of the countries in which the experiment has been attempted lias 58 PROBLEIIS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt i a complete failure — and this perliaps only temporary — as yet occurred. The difficulties which have been conquered in Canada by federation are greater than those wliich the founders of the constitution of the United States had to face. The territory now administered by the Canadian confederation is as extensive as the territory now ruled from Washington. The Roman Catholic and Protestant populations are more nearly equal in strength than is the case in the United States, and the fact that nearly a third of the people speak a different tongue from the majority, and have a far different history, prevents the creation of a homogeneous nationality such as is found across the border. On the other hand, the very fact of the existence of the United States, in its enormous power, upon the Canadian frontier, has furnished the necessary reason for a Canadian federation, to the success of which " combination-to- prevent-absorption " is the key, and which was hurried into existence on the lapse of the Reciprocity Treaty at a moment when many Americans were expecting application for ad- mission to the Union from what they looked on as a bankrupt colony. The details of the Canadian constitution can be fully studied in the various admirable works of Dr. Bourinot and Mr. Todd, to which has now to be added a work of home production by Mr. Munro. If Dr. Bourinot's views of the situation are too optimistic, the writings of Mr. Goldwin Smith may supply the necessary corrective, but it is the fact that the latter author has scored up against the Canadian constitution a great number of points which are not specially applicable to Canada, but which are as true of the mother-country. For example, he has made an attack upon the existing state of things in Canada on the ground that the power of dissolution has virtually passed to the Ministries, Federal or Provincial as the case may be, and has pointed out that at recent dissolutions the question was simply wliether dissolution would be a good move in a party game. But it is a well-known fact that the date of dissolution after a Parliament has existed for three or four years is in England, and indeed in every constitutional country in these days, in the discretion of the Minister, and that there is nothing peculiar in the recent action either of Sir John Macdonald or of the Prime Minister of Ontario in this matter. It is indeed an unfortunate thing for Canada that the great English writer and powerful controversialist wlio has taken up his residence within her borders should write so strongly as he does, in English and American organs of opinion, against the "National" policy of the Liberal-Conservative or Macdonald Administration. Cana- dians prefer to fight the matter out among themselves. Canadian Generally speaking, the main difference between the Canadian and United constitution and that of the United States is that in the newer States con- confederation the central power is far stronger, as compared stitutions. with the Provincial legislatures and executives, and in this point the Canadian Dominion resembles the German Empire CHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 59 more than the United States. The Dominion Parliament keeps in its own hands the Criminal law and the law of marriage, the appointment of the judges, the nomination of the Lieutenant- Governors of Provinces, and the militia system, all of which are in the United States left to the vai-ious States. The Dominion has a veto — virtually exercised by the Prime Minister, though in the name of the Crown — upon the legislation of the Provinces, while no such veto, if the local laws be constitutional, exists in the United States. Another superiority is given to the central power in Canada by the fact that the Senate, which in the United States is elected by the States, and in equal numbers and not upon a population base, is in Canada appointed by the central Government, with the result, however, that the Canadian Senate is a less useful body. The Canadian constitution follows that of the mother-country, and differs from that of the United States in allowing Ministers to sit in Parliament. Mr. Goldwin Smith asks what confederation has done for Canada, and I cannot but think that the very existence of Canada in the present day as a powerful self-governing community is an answer. Canada, like Switzerland, seems to have reached the ideal of a federal power as traced by Tocqueville when he said that what was needed was that the central power should be given immense prerogatives, and should be energetic in its action towards the provinces, whilst the provinces themselves were to have perfect local freedom, the sphere of the central power being strictly defined by the constitution. Canada possesses the combination of central dignity and strength of government with local liberty and variety in the Provinces, and when the completion of the federation of Australia, by the entrance into it of the mother-colony, if not of New Zealand, presents us with a similar picture at the other extremity of the Pacific, three English-speaking federal powers will dominate that greatest ocean of the world. Canadian federation is declared by Sir Henry Parkes to be the model on which the future institutions of the British States of Australia are to be built up. In Canada and in Australia the bearing of local federation Imperial upon Imperial Federation is frequently discussed. Just as in Federation. Australia most of the warmest advocates of local federation are averse to formal proposals upon Imperial Federation, although ardent advocates of a strong empire, so in Canada there is a similar feeling among leading men. It is regarded as safe for Canadian politicians to talk enthusiastically about Imperial Federation in the abstract, provided it be understood that no serious practical action is to be taken towards that end, but Sir Charles Tupper's recent suggestions are viewed with some misgiving. There is, however, a certain tendency among some Canadians towards a partial tariff union with the mother- country upon a protective base, and the] advocates of Imperial Federation in the colony are forced to work upon these lines ; but in the opinion of Sir John Macdonald's Cabinet it is 60 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i desirable that Canadian public men should avoid otherwise committing themselves upon Imperial Federation. The prin- ciple is looked upon with disfavour by a large part of the population as possibly involving liabilities for projects which they think of purely imperial concern, such as the maintenance of fleets other than those intended for the defence of Canada itself. Sir John Macdonald has pronounced impracticable any project of a common legislature for Canada and the United Kingdom, and apparently holds the same views in favour of ultimate alliance upon equal terms as are popular with the younger statesmen of Australia. The general Canadian opinion is that it is a mistake to supjDose that tlie alternatives before Canada are those of independence, acceptance of Imperial Federation, or annexation to the United States ; and the pre- vailing tone of thought is in the direction of a continuance of the present system, which, on the whole, gives satisfaction to a majority of the Canadian people. It is very generally admitted that from a purely material point of view it might not be a bad thing for Canada to join the United States, and the Liberals make use of this feeling when they propose closer trade relations with the Union ; but, on the other hand, they repudiate the over-zealous members of the party who profess their willingness to accept annexation, and the feeling of the French Roman Catholic Canadians in favour of their present privilege is, as I have said, a powerful argument against a change. Mr. Mowat, the Liberal Prime Minister of Ontario, has spoken as strongly against annexation to the United States as Sir John Macdonald himself. ACanadian When it is remembered that, as I have pointed out, four nation. millions out of five millions of the Canadian population are Canadian -born, it is seen that Canada has successfully passed through the " birth crisis " in which Australia finds herself at the present time. It is a commonplace of political discussion in our colonies of the South Seas that separatist feeling must spring up as the population becomes less and less British-born and more and more Australian-born, or "native-born," as it is there called ; but in Canada the population has become Canadian to a far greater extent than the population of the most Australian colonies is Australian. The British-born English and Scotch element in Canada is extremely small as compared witli that in Queensland, or in New South Wales, but Canada, owing, I think, to the success of federal institu- tions, is, in spite of the neighbourhood of a rival and attractive English-speaking power, less separatist in feeling than is young Australia. The eftect of the construction of the Canadian Pacific Eailway has been great in knitting together the various por- tions of the Dominion ; but there are two weak points : the one that the railroad, useful as it is in peace, could not be held in a war against the United States, and the other that Canada has not made the necessary sacrifices for an effective colonial defence. Although the success of Canadian confederation, OHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 61 considering the difficulties of race, of religion, and of geo- graphical confonnation, has been as remarkable as that of Swiss confederation, Canada should imitate Switzerland in another matter if she wishes to remain a self-respecting and independent power, and should bring her brave citizen soldieiy into a condition more closely resembling that of the Swiss in numbers and in training. The permanent corps of Canada are small in proportion to Canadian those of the Australian colonies, and some of the less important defence, among those colonies have a larger regular fully paid force than has the Dominion. The " active militia " and " partially paid " force of Canada consists of about 37,000 men with a tendency to decrease, and this is a number which is distinctly inferior to the requirements of the case. However much we may trust the pacific intentions of the United States and the friendliness of her people, we can hardly be of opinion that a country under a separate flag, with a frontier purely arbitrary and of enormous length, can occupy a position consistent with her dignity as a separate Confederation unless she possess a defensive force which would have some chance of repelling a possible attack. As matters stand it is universally admitted by European mili- tary authorities that large portions of Canada would be overrun by the American militia immediately upon a declaration of war. The Canadian Pacific Railway, the waterway of the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, and the mastery of the canals, would be lost at once, and while Quebec could be covered by a British fleet, as well as perhaps the peninsula of Nova Scotia and the islands of Cape Bi'eton and Vancouver, the whole of the rest would lie open to an American invader. Canada possesses an enormous advantage in having placed her militia under the central Govern- ment instead of under the federal unit ; but, on the other hand, while she has good military schools for officers, numbers are so overwhelmingly against her that she is bound, in my opinion, if she wishes to stand apart from tlie United States, to increase the numbers of her active militia, instead of allowing them to diminish. Jiloreover, the training received by the active militia, and especially by the rural battalions, is sadly short, while they have no proper equipment, transport, or reserve of arms. Of wholly unprovoked invasion the Dominion runs no risk, but war between the United Kingdom and the United States, though happily improbable, is a possible contingency for which the Canadians are unprepared. Considering the danger to which Canada is exposed, and the remote character of any which can threaten Victoria or New South Wales, it seems an extraordin- ary fact that more should have been done in the Australasian colonies for defence than in the Canadian Dominion. Tlie ex- pedition against Kiel was admirably conducted by the Canadian authorities, but the number of men moved was small, and the feeding them by civil contracts was a mere matter of expense. It may also be admitted that the Canadian militia possess fine fighting qualities, but this fact only makes us regret the more 62 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i that they should be organised with so little system. Compared with Canada, Switzerland itself is a first-class military power. As Canada stands at the present moment it is confessed that it would be hopeless for her to attempt in the event of war the defence of the country west of the great lakes. Manitoba and the North-West Territories would be abandoned on the outbreak of hostilities, and, the Dominion being cut in half, British Columbia would probably be detached from the confederation, with the result of a complete collapse of the whole Canadian system. The eastern wheat supply would be cut off by the occupation of New Brunswick and of the townships on the St. Lawrence ; the coal supply from Nova Scotia and British Columbia would be prevented, and the Dominion would be ruined. As long as Canada refrains from providing adequately for her defence, her wish to remain apart from the United States cannot be regarded as assured. At the present moment not only is land defence ill provided for, but naval defence is non- existent, except so far as it is supplied by the United Kingdom at the cost of the people of the mother-country ; and the Cana- dian Dominion, which has an enormous shipping trade, and which is in fact one of the first-class shipping powers of the world, pays no contribution towards defending that trade at sea. Canadian It is certain that as long as Canada remains a British colony, feeling, but fails to take suflicient steps for her own protection, we stand at a disadvantage in negotiations with the United States. As a general rule, when one country is invulnerable by another the advantages and disadvantages of that situation are recipro- cal. If Great Britain did not own Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States would stand to one another in a military sense in the same relation in which Great Britain and Germany stand to one another, each of them to all practical purposes in- vulnerable by the other. But, holding Canada as we do, we naturally have to think twice before even standing up for our own in any discussion with the Government of the United States. The Canadian frontier is absolutely indefensible by England, and there are great difiiculties and drawbacks in the way of its defence by Canada herself. If Canadians were unani- mously anxious at all cost to maintain their independence of American influence or domination they would keep up a large organised defence militia. As a fact Canada does not do so, and her organised militia is, as has been seen, not sulficiently numer- ous to be able to make any serious defence of her enormously long frontier line against American levies. On the other hand, the overrunning of the Dominion by the United States in the event of war would appear, when considered from a point of view wider than that of mere British interests in North America, to be a serious blow to the United Kingdom, and the loss of Canada by force would probably have a good deal of influence upon our position in Australia and in India. It is impossible for us of ourselves to strike out any new policy upon these sub- CHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 63 jects, and evident that we must follow Canadian lead. The majority of the present Dominion Opposition are in favour of commercial union between Canada and the United States, but not in favour of political union. Commercial union, of course, implies Free Trade in favour of a nation under another flag, and differential duties as against the mother-country. There are obvious drawbacks to the adoption of this policy, but so difficult is a permanent continuance of the present state of things, if Canada refuses to provide adequately for her defence, that it is possible that people in the mother-country might resign themselves to this curious and anomalous arrangement, which we shall have, in a later chapter, to consider. In the ranks of the Canadian Conservative majority there is, as has been seen, a considerable United Empire element, but commer- cial interest may in the long-run be stronger in Upper Canada than Canadian national feeling among the Irish, Scotch, and English settlers. With the French Canadians it is otherwise, and it is possible that their objections to political union with the United States will be more lasting than those of the people of Ontario. We must conclude, then, that an immense change has been produced in Canada by federation. A majority of the Cana- dians are attached to their federal institutions, and as yet desire politically to work out their future apart from the United States, although many of them lean towards a closer commercial con- nection with that country. Wliile some would attempt to gain a better market for Canadian produce through an imperial customs union, even these are disinclined to undertake in return heavy imperial burdens, and in fact prefer their own Dominion federation, in alliance with the mother-country, to Imperial Federation, which they think might weaken their system, and will not trust their protective tariff to what might prove a Free Trade imperial majority. The feeling of the French Canadians, who naturally prefer a Canada in which they are king to being swamped either in the United States or in imperial British con- federation, also tends in the direction of keeping matters as they are, and, failing a strictly Protective imperial customs union with Kttle other union about it, the drift of opinion in Canada, as we shall find also in Australia, appears to set in the direction of local federations in alliance with one another. One i^ractical form in wliich the points which we have been The treaty- discussing have lately become matters at issue in active Cana- making dian politics concerns tariff arrangements and commercial power, treaties. During the session of 1889 a resolution was brouglit forward in the Canadian House of Commons in favour of giving to the Dominion the right of negotiating and concluding treaties. It was generally felt that the object sought for was the power to conclude treaties with the United States, with special reference to commercial treaties. It was not denied by the supporters of the resolution that if treaty-making powers were conceded to a colony the latter would have no means of 64 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i enforcing a treaty, nor would the country with wliich the treaty was made have any means of enforcing it, except by war with the mother-country. It is a fact that in bygone days British diplomacy has cost Canada dear ; but that diplomacy in relation to Canadian affairs is now controlled from Ottawa, and no British Government would run counter to the wishes of a self- governing colony in the regulation of its fiscal affairs. Not only do the colonies now possess and exercise full power in tariff matters, shaping their policy to suit the needs_ or supposed needs of their peoples and the geographical position of their lands, even where the policy adopted is hostile to the interests of the mother -country, but the colonies have practically a supreme voice in making commercial treaties with foreign countries which concern themselves. There are many recent cases which illustrate tlxe freedom of action which we give to Canada. There were negotiations carried on at Madrid for several years, first by Sir Alexander Gait and afterwards by Sir Charles Tupper, for a commercial treaty between Spain and Canada. Full power was given to the Canadian High Commis- sioner to negotiate directly with Spain, the character and scope of the proposed treaty being left to his determination ; and the only reservation which was made by the imperial authorities was that when concluded tlie convention should be signed by the British Minister at Madrid in order tliat Great Britain might become a party to the instrument, and, by being at the back of Canada, might secure the enforcement of the treaty. Sir Alexander Gait, however, informed the imperial Govern- ment that Canada would not entertain proposals for differentia- tion against the goods of the mother-country. We have also granted to the leading colonies the right of inclusion in or exclusion from commercial treaties, concluded between Great Britain and foreign countries, at the choice of the colonies themselves, and the imperial authorities are in the habit of sub- mitting to the Canadian Government as well as to the Govern- ments of the other leading colonies drafts of all conventions of this character, with a request to know whether tliey desire to be included or left out. Sir Richard Cartwright, who moved the address praying that Canada might be empowered to appoint diplomatic agents of her own, competent to sign com- mercial treaties, received general Liberal support, and was beaten only by the usual party majority. The speech of the mover pointed to a cutting of the connection with the mother- country ; but Oppositions of all kinds in all countries are given to doing curious things, and it can hardly be sujaposed, I think, that those wlio voted with Sir Eichard Cartwright concurred generally in his speech, or had fully considered the consequences of the cari-ying of his resolution. The trade Xhe trade of Canada, checked by protective duties, is not on of Canada. gQ large a scale as Australian trade, only partly subject to the operation of Protection. The area of Canada is as great as the area of Australasia ; the population of Canada is larger. CHAP. IT TEE DOMINION" OF CANADA 65 Tlie railway mileage of Canada is greater tlian tliat of Austral- asia, and as great in proportion to population ; but althougli Canada possesses magniJicent fisheries and a lumber trade which is the first in the world, her total trade is only on the scale of the trade of a single Australian colony. It is pleaded in favour of the " national or protective policy that it has built up manufactures ; but the Canadian market is not a large one, and the manufactures do not show well in exportation. Not only is Canadian trade rather on the scale of that of a single Australian colony than on that of Australasia as a whole, but the Canadian revenue and expenditure and debt are small as compared with ordinary colonial figures. The debt of Canada is one-third the debt or Australasia, although the latter has, as I say, the same area and a smaller population. The Australian colonies all of them raise vastly larger revenues in proportion than does Canada, and they deliberately adopt the policy of spending money freely upon railways and upon local public works. Canada, having over 12,000 miles of railway, and a magnificent system of canals made chiefly at the public cost, may be looked upon as having obtained her public works more cheaply than Australia. While Government does not make the railways in the Dominion, as it does in almost all of the Austral- asian colonies, the Dominion, the Provinces, and the Munici- palities all help railways : the Provinces to a very large extent, as in Quebec, and the municipalities to almost as large an extent, especially in Ontario. But in tlie case of the munici- palities there is an example of the Referendum (similar to that which exists in England in the case of the adoption of the Library Acts, of a decision as to triennial elections of Guardians, and a few other matters), for by-laws of the Councils have to be submitted to a poll of the ratepayers before the subsidy can be given. It must amuse Australians to notice the apologetic manner in which Canadians often speak of their expenditure, inasmuch as a far larger expenditure in Australia is universally admitted to need no defence in young countries, where English money can be borrowed cheaply, upon the credit of the colony, to execute public works, while colonial cajDital is producing a larger return in undertakings for which British capital would not be lent. The longer among the Australian railways have chiefly been made in districts where the land was nearly worth- less, whereas the Canadian Pacific railroad, passing for the most part through fertile territory, has been built largely out of grants of land. It is probable that the policy of Canada will in the future approximate more closely towards tlie Australian model. More money will be spent ; more taxes will be raised • and, to judge by what we shall discover when we come to deal with these questions in Australia, probably with the best results. Canadian trade is certain rapidly to increase. The Dominion is beginning to send to the United Kingdom a sub- stantial amount of wheat, already as large as the ariiount which comes from Russia, although still a small quantity as 66 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Legislative liecnliari- ties. Local gov- ernmeut. compared -with that which comes from India or the United States. Canada possesses, as already mentioned, a self-acting system of redistribution of seats in Parliament, and there are in Canada a much greater number of disqualifications of persons from vot- ing tlian in the mother-country. For instance, the judges of the iSupreme Court, and of the Superior, District, and County Courts of Provinces ; the Revisers ; and persons of Mongolian or Chinese race, are all disqualified by law from taking part in elections. The interest in politics is great, the percentage of votes i^olled at elections being higher than the average in Eng- land, which is unusual in the case of colonies where large dis- tricts are sparsely settled. The whole of the polls at a general election are held on one day, a point in wliich it is probable that tlie mother-country will shortly follow colonial example. Indians possess one of the several Canadian franchises in the older portions of the country, but are altogether excluded in the greater part of the West. Parliaments are quinquennial, an arrangement which slightly exceeds the average colonial term, and members of both Houses, as I have incidentally said, are paid. As regards Provincial systems, neither Ontario nor British Columbia has an Upper House, while Manitoba succeeded in inducing hers to take part in its own abolition. Other Cana- dian peculiarities will be named when I come to discuss the comparative politics of our colonies. Canada is well supplied with local government institu- tions, and the system of local government adopted in Ontario may be looked upon as nearly perfect, and certainly the best in the whole world. The rural portion of the country is com- prised in townships, the villages with a population of over 750 being separately governed, as well as the "towns," with a population of over 2000. The "cities," with over 15,000, are also separate, but with more liighly organised institutions. The council of every village or township consists of one reeve and four councillors, and the county council con- sists of the reeves and deputy-reeves of the townships and villages within the county. Women ratepayers vote, and I should add that Sir John Macdonald is in favour of giving them the political vote as well. In Quebec also the county council is composed of the mayors of the several municipalities of the county. In Manitoba, as in Ontario, the ancient names of reeve and warden are made use of, and that of 2yr4fet, for warden in Quebec in the case of the elective chairman of the county council. Some of the Ontario wardens for many years used a cocked hat and a gown when in the chair, being of opinion that this assumption ontheir part conduced to respect and order. There is local taxation on real property, and on certain descrip- tions of personal property, including all bonds and stocks, and in Ontario, on incomes. Great difficulty is found in obtaining accurate returns, for the purposes of local taxation, of securities held by individuals, and little light is thrown by colonial e.xperi- CHAP. II THE DOMINIOlSr OF CANADA 67 ence upon the best means of solving the difficulty which has always been felt in England with regard to local taxation of personal property. The Dominion municipal system generally is superior to that of the United States. It is a remarkable fact that in local government the mother-country — which really in- vented the whole system, or developed it out of Saxon institu- tions to a higher pitch of perfection than was readied elsewhere — should now lag far beliind her Canadian and Australian colonies. Even the Act which has at last been passed in England is admitted by its authors to be an utterly imperfect measure, needing to be completed by the creation of the district councils, out of which the county councils should in fact have been built up. In the North American colonies no trace is to be found of that fear of trusting the elected representatives of the people with the control of the local police which is met with in the English Act ; and in all cases there is that close connection between the district and the county which was wholly wanting in the English measure even as first introduced, and before the clauses relating to the districts were for a time aban- doned. The peculiarities of Canadian Liquor Legislation will be dealt with in Part VI., Chap. VI. Trade unions have largely increased of recent years in the Labour or- Dominion, especially in the Province of Ontario, some of the ganisation. organisations being Provincial, some Dominion, and others Trade having their headquarters in the old country — for instance, "°'°°^- the machinists, whose organisation is a branch of the British Amalgamated Society of Engineers. Some of the Canadian trade societies are upon an international base, as, for example, the painters' : in other instances we meet with American unions, especially in the case of towns near tlie frontier of the United States ; and finally, there are powerful branches of the Knights of Labour in some of the larger towns. A consider- able number of Canadian members of that order wish to form a national Dominion organisation — a movement which implies impatience of "American dictation," and is resisted at head- quarters in the United States. There are instances where the Knights of Labour have been able to secure improved terms for workmen in Canada ; but the employers of labour in Ontario, who as a rule have no objection to the existence of trade organisations, seem to stand in some dread of the name of this American union, and there have been cases where employers have declined to employ men belonging to the organisation of the Knights of Labour. Certain trades in Canada have voluntarily left the American organisation, as, for example, in Hamilton, where some have formed a brother- hood of their own, on the ground that in the case of arbitration they do not wish to put the matter into the hands of men who know nothing of their particular business. The Unions are not strong enough in Canada (althougli they have shortened hours and raised wages) to be able in all cases to go on strike where non-union men are employed. The cigarmakers of Montreal, 68 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN who give a " blue label " to manufacturers paying union wages — a mark which is supposed to be advantageous to the sale of the cigars consumed by the working classes — have only a seventh of the persons (including women and children) em- ployed in the local trade. I have mentioned the decline of trade at Quebec on account of the supposed " tyranny " of the Shiplabourers' Union, which insists on an eight-hour day. The printers of Quebec struck not long ago for a nine-hour clay, their demand being formulated for them by a branch of the Knights of Labour and by a printers' union of French work- men ; and the employers raised against the men the prejudices of the Koman Catholic Church upon the subject of secret societies, the Kjaights of Labour being denounced as a " masonic society." The French-Canadian boatmen are often forced by their French employers to sign a declaration that they do not belong to any society whatever. The Masters and Servants Act of Canada is a most antiquated piece of legislation, and it is an amazing fact that the Montreal Unions have not been strong enough to force its repeal, although it is true that in- corporated towns have the right to make their own by-laws upon the subject. The miners' organisations are powerful in Nova Scotia, and Unionism generally — partly American — at Halifax, the capital. Friendly Of the friendly societies which flourish in the Province of societies. Ontario and the city of Montreal, the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows is one of the strongest, as is the case throughout the English-speaking colonies. The societies are agitating for federal legislation upon friendly societies, not being satisfied with the Ontario Act, and desiring to obtain uniformity through- out the Dominion. The Independent Order of Foresters is also prosperous, but the Order to which the greater number of Canadian foresters belong is not the Ancient Order of Foresters of the old country, but a Dominion order having branches in the United States, the supreme court of which, however, cannot sit out of Canada, and the cliief officers of which must be resident in the Dominion. j\Iany employers and companies have imposed on their workmen systems of compulsory insur- ance, which are as unpopular with the men as such systems must be everywhere, the Grand Trunk Eailway system being similar to that of the Great Western Eailway of England. There is a, growing feeling in Canada that the Dominion Government should follow the successful example of New Zealand, and set up a system of Government insurance. Already the insurance companies doing business in the Dominion are compelled to make a deposit witli the Govern- ment as a security for policy-holders, and a Government Superintendent of Insurance examines their accounts, and reports to Parliament in an annual Blue-book. Factory Since the growth of protected manufactures under the tariff Acts. of 1879^ child labour has been largely employed in sugar factories, glass works, and cotton mills, and the Factory Acts CHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 69 which liave been passed in Ontario and Quebec have not been adequately enforced by inspection. In Ontario two whole years elapsed after the passing of the Act before inspectors were appointed, and even after their appointment it was a long time before they got to work. The Quebec Act was not passed till 1885, but it has hardly been put in force, and its very existence is still unknown in some manufacturing centres. Although it prohibits the employment of boys under twelve and of girls under fourteen, children are as a fact still em- ployed who are much under the ages named. It is not diificult to detect one powerful cause for the supineness of the Provincial authorities in putting in force their laws. The statutes of Quebec and of Ontario upon the subject are not uniform, and where the laws of one Province impose severer restrictions than do those enacted by its neighbour, competition furnishes a strong temptation to the former not to put its regulations iu force for fear of driving trade out of the Province. There is consequently a growing feeling in Canada in favour of the enactment of Dominion factory legislation, but there is some doubt as to the powers of the Federal Government in this respect, although, if the British North America Act does not confer the right to deal with the question, each of the Provinces might give its consent to a general Act. The Canadian rule as regards hours of labour is that ten Hours of hours constitute a working day, but there are a good many labour, exceptions, and some of the Quebec cotton mills, where children are unfortunately employed, are said to work nearly thirteen hours. On the other hand, the nine-hour system prevails very generally throughout Ontario in many trades, and the hours of labour in some trades are compulsorily shortened in winter by climate. Still, the street-car drivers work twelve hours through- out the Dominion, and shop-assistants are employed for extra- ordinarily long hours. One firm of tobacco manufacturers at Hamilton has made the experiment of a gradual reduction of hours from ten to nine, with the result that there has been no diminution whatever in production. A Canadian Eoyal Com- mission reported in 1889 to the effect that the Factory Acts should be strengthened as regards the employment of women and children, so as to absolutely forbid more than eight hours a day or fifty-one hours a week, and as regards the labour of men they recommended that all Government contracts should stipulate for hours of labour under them not to exceed nine. I shall have to return to their report in my general chajater upon Labour, but may here say that the commissioners were unanimous upon the point, and stated that their ground was that, the Federal Government setting an example. Provincial and municipal bodies would follow, with the result that the working classes would have more leisure for the acquirement of knowledge. Not only are the working classes of Canada badly off as Truck, compared with those of our Australasian colonies in several 70 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Material condition. Immigra- tion of labour. of tlie points -which have been mentioned, but the payment of wages in goods still exists in an aggravated^ form in certain portions of the Dominion. It is no doubt difficult to work the lumber trade, where gangs of men are despatched great dis- tances, or the fishing trade, without some resort to truck ; and the condition of the fishermen of the Maritime Provinces of the Dominion is superior in this respect to that of the fishermen of Newfoundland, altliough very little money circulates ainong them. Even in their own Provinces, however, they constitute a class so entirely apart that their grievances do not appeal to the working population who get their living on shore, while the inhabitants of cities like Toronto and Montreal have no more knowledge of their modes of life than they have of those of the Esquimaux of Baffin Land, also their fellow-countrymen. There appears to be no Canadian legislation against truck, but a system of infrequent payment of wage being common, there seems to be ground for such legislation. Fortnightly pay-days are more usual in Canada than weekly payments, and many Canadian workmen have to wait a month or six weeks for their wages, although the Unions have pronounced for weekly pay- ments, upon Fridays. There are people in Montreal who make a practice of buying the debts of working-men at a discount, as the law with regard to seizure of wages is favourable to the creditor, and these points too contrast sharply with what will be found to be the power of the working classes to enforce their views in our other colonies. Although the condition of the working classes in Canada is inferior to what we shall discover to be the general colonial standard, it has improved during the last few years — a point which will doubtless be scored to the advantage of Protection. Wages are high, hours of labour are shorter, while the necessaries of life are lower in price, with one grave exception, namely, that the rents of dwelling-houses have risen in the larger cities. House rent has been increasing even more rapidly than wages, and although houses may be obtained at low rents in the outskirts of the cities, as, for example, at Toronto, the prices are equalised by car fares. In Canada, as we shall find also in Australia, while the working classes pay a very large proportion of their income in rent, they obtain for the outlay much better accommodation than is found in the old country, and single families not infrequently occupy houses containing from five to eight rooms. The higher wages which are obtained for labour in Canada, as compared with England, tempt thither a considerable number of British immigrants in addition to those farming colonisers of whom I have already spoken at the beginning of this chapter. The home Government advertise in London, through the Emigrants' Information Office, that the average time taken on the voyage to Canada is nine days, against forty-five to New Zealand and fifty-five to Queensland ; the lowest fare for unassisted passages £4, as against 16 guineas CHAP. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 71 to New Zealand and 15 guineas to Queensland ; and they state that there is a demand for good farm-labourers, a slight demand in two or three districts for mechanics, some demandfor general labourers, a demand for miners in parts of the colony, and a good demand for female domestic servants. The more detailed circular for the emigration season of 1889 gives a full account of the depots for the temporary reception of the immigrants ; shows that there is a fair demancf for carpenters, painters, and plasterers in some parts of the Dominion ; states tlie high wages obtained by bricklayers, plasterers, and masons ; explains the cheapness of the necessaries of life ; and generally exhibits the Dominion in a truthful and tempting light. The Canadian Government has ceased to give assisted passages, and it is unlikely that help to immigration will be revived, as the workmen in the large towns of Ontario are as strongly opposed to immigration as are those of Australia itself. The policy of assisting immigrants is now at an end in almost every British colony possessing responsible institutions. There are two kinds of immigration which take place largely in the case of Canada even since the abolition of assisted passages, namely, that of labour under contract, and an immigration of children exported by philanthropists or by Boards of Guardians. The towns complain that immigrants arrive often late in the summer, and are not prepared for the stoppage of many branches of industry by the rigours of a Canadian winter ; and that the result is that, while the inhabitants have to support themselves upon their summer savings, the immigrants undersell them in many trades. Some years ago there was a considerable amount of pauper im- migration, mainly Irish, from the United Kingdom, and it is unfortunately the case that a good many of these people have remained at Toronto, in streets of their own, in a condition of helpless poverty ; and the families from the east end of London are looked upon as equally unsatisfactory. It is said that their children never have a chance in Canada, as they are brought up with the old bad atmosphere about them, the joarents having acquired a habit of dependence upon chance work or upon outside help. On the other hand, the information as to the success of " orphan and deserted " pauper children is of the most encouraging kind, but there is an objection to reformatory boys. Some Canadians, however, hold, to put it in their own quaint language, " that the country is quite capable of pro- ducing all the children it requires," and it is possible that in the future even child emigration may be stopped. Canadian feeling sets strongly against what is called, in Transatlantic phrase, poor persons being "dumped upon our shores"; and the Viceroy has already power to prohibit it by proclamation under the Immigration Act of 1886. It is, indeed, probable that the Dominion Government will soon be forced to follow the lead of the United States by putting this power in force, and providing for the inspection of ships bringing immigrants, with the intent 72 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN i'akt i to send back, at the expense of the shipowners, the cripples, the sick, and those wlio have no money and no friends ready to receive them. There is the more reason for such action that, m consequence of the operation of this law in the United States, undesirable immigrants, who would be rejected at New lork, are now making their way to Canada. The American Union prohibits the importation of labour under contract, and it is said that an English clergyman, whose preaching, when he was on a visit, had pleased a New York congregation, was prevented from landing on his return in consequence of his prospective flock having then_ brought him over under contract to pay a certain stipend for his labour This law is likely to be imitated by Canada, which has, as I have already said, sufi'ered from the rejection, under its pro- visions, of many of her own emigrants from Quebec to the New England States. The importation of labour under contract helps employers to resist the just demands of their workmen, and enables them to coerce the domestic labour. The incoming of immigrants of an undesirable class throws heavy burdens upon the charitable institutions, and the House of Industry at Montreal, for example, is overcrowded in winter, and its managers have to give outdoor relief to a large number of families of this description. It is proposed to legislate against the importation of immigi'ants between October and March, a season at which it is impossible for them to obtain work on account of the severity of the weather ; and when it is objected that it is difficult to prevent British subjects from landing in British colonies, it is pointed out in reply by the Canadians. that the settlement laws of the old country do not permit paupers to become chargeable to parishes to which they do not belong. The resistance to immigration comes, however, chiefly from Ontario and from the city of Montreal. In the Province of Quebec generally, French speech is a check to British immigration, and in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, and the North West, immigrants do well and are well received. It may, however, be remarked that the very existence of a public feeling of any kind is a consequence of the existence of large centres of population, and that Winnipeg is the only British city west of Ontario which can properly be so described. It is not unlikely that the recommendation of the Eoyal Commission on Labour will be carried out in the establishment in the Dominion of a labour bureau similar to that founded at Washington in ]884, with a view to the more equal distribution of the labour of which there may be a surplus in one part and a deficiency in other parts of the Dominion. There remains the problem of Chinese immigration, which applies on a large scale, in the case of Canada, at present only to British Columbia (including Vancouver Island), but which will engage our attention, and specially as concerns Australia, in the second part of this volume. Sport. The northern climate, with its long winter, seems to have oiiAj'. II THE DOMINION OF CANADA 73 preveiited the development among Canadians of that ex- traordinary love of sport wliich is manifest in Australia ; but, compared with the Americans of the United States, they are a sporting people, and in certain exercises, as, for example, in sculling, the Canadians have been able to hold their own even Sculling, with the Australians, and to beat the mother-country. Indeed tlie only practical shape which up to the present time has been taken hy the idea of imperial unity seems to be the selection of the rivers of the old country for the struggles of the oarsmen of Australia and of the Dominion. The national game of Canada is Lacrosse — a French-Canadian pastime of Indian Lacrosse. origin — while the American Base-Ball and the English Cricket are also played. The most characteristic sports, however, of the Canadians are their winter amusements, universally in- Winter dulged in by the population. Eink-skating is a fine art in games. Canada, tobogganing is an accomplishment ; but sleighing and snow-shoeing, though often pastimes, are also normal methods of locomotion during the long winter. There is no prettier sight than a meet of one of the four-in-hand sleighing clubs, and the ice-carnivals of Montreal and other cities attract spectators from all parts of the world. If we turn next to things of the mind we shall discover, as Literature, might have been expected, that Canada has not as yet a really great literature of her own. I have mentioned two authors out of many writers of admirable treatises upon the practice of Parliament, upon local government, and upon law, which have appeared from the presses of the Dominion ; but of literature purely Canadian the best perhaps is still to be found in the works of JSaliburton, whether in the now superseded humour of Sam, Slick, or in the volumes of his histories, remarkable as they are for their excellent style. Haliburton's otherwise admirable histories are somewhat disfigured by party prejudice, and just as a French judge — BriUat-Savarin — in his time distinguished, and celebrated for his works on jurisprudence, is now remem- bered only as thefirst of theoretical cooks, so Haliburton, although thanked in his place in the Assembly of Nova Scotia for one of his serious works, will be best known to posterity as Sam Slick. There is, however, no lack of quantity in Canadian literary production. The yearly review of literature, science, and art which is given in Morgan's Annual Register (an excellent publication) fills more pages than do similar accounts of British productions in the annuals at home. Every year there are published in Canada many volumes of original poetry, history, and fiction , theological works without end, and scientific books of considerable value, as well as legal and educational hand- books. At present, however, there are but few living Canadian writers who have more than a local reputation. Among those whose works are known throughout the Englisli reading world is Dr. Bourinot, already named, author of a series of volumes worthy to rank with the works of Erskine May; and among scientific and educational writers there is the distinguished 74 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PAET I name of Sir William Dawson, of the M'Gill University at Montreal. Canadian Of Canadian poets, on the whole the best is Mr. Douglas poetry. Roberts, a writer now in his thirtieth year, the son of the rector of the Church of England cathedral at Fredericton, New Brunswick, and originally a schoolmaster by profession, who published when in his twentieth year a volume through a Philadelphia house. Mr Liglithall, in his Songs of the Great Dominion, the Canadian anthology, tells us that Mr. Roberts is now a professor of modern literature in a Nova Scotia College. Roberts's " Canada " is a poem which has much political interest, and which begins — "0 Child of Nations, giant-limbed, AVlio stand'st among the nations now Unheeded, unadorned, unhynmed. With unanoiuted brow, — " How long the ignoble sloth, how long Tlie trust in greatness not thine own ! Surely the lion's brood is strong To front the world alone ! " How long the indolence ere thou dare Achieve thy destiny, seize thy fame, — Ere our proud eyes behold tliee bear A nation's franchise, nation's name ? "The Saxon force, the Celtic fire, These are thy manhood's heritage ! Why rest with babes and slaves ? Seek higher The place of race and age." It is, of course, unreasonable to expect literature of the first class from British North America, with five millions of popula- tion, when so great are the difficulties in the way of Trans- atlantic literature caused by English competition, by tlie feverish race for wealth and absence in young countries of a leisured class, that even the United States, with its sixty millions, does not produce much literary work of the highest French- order. On the other hand, while the pressure upon Canadian Canadian literature of that of England, and of Canada's great next-door books. neighbour, does not, of course, alTect French - Canadian literature, there are other causes which militate against the production in Canada of high-class work in French. Every year brings fortli its crop of pretty verses, of which some, such as the Chansons Fo2ndaires of Ernest Gagnon, Jiave had more than an ephemeral success. The Church, however, discourages the reading both of modern Parisian literature and of many of the French classics, and the French booksellers' shops at Montreal and Quebec somewhat resemble in their stocks the semi-ecclesiastical libraries found in French provincial cathedral towns, while the best-known French books have to be bought at the English bookstores, as the Church practically exercises CHAi>. II THE DORtlNION OF CANjVDA 75 expurgatorial autliority over the catalogues of the booksellers of its flock. It is somewhat diflicult, therefore, for French- Canadian authors to study the French models of best style. A French-Canadian poet, M. Frechette, is the author of a poem as interesting in its teaching as the " Canada " of Mr. Roberts. It is called "Le Drapeau Anglais," and describes a French- Canadian ^ father calling on his son to admire the flag of the United Kingdom, the glories of which iie tells at length, and ends by bidding his son bow the head before this emblem of Canadian prosperity and freedom. The son replies — " llais, pere, pardonnez, sij'ose. N'en est-il pas un autre, a nous ? Ah ! celui-lii, c'est autre chose : II faut le baiser a genoux ! " Art education is progressing in the Dominion, and Princess The Fine Louise and Lord Lome, during the term of oflice of the latter. Aits. did much to encourage the Fine Arts in Canada, founding the Canadian Academy of Art, and also the Canadian Art Gallery at Ottawa. There exist now grants by the Academy to art schools at Montreal, Toronto, and the Dominion capital, as well as an annual exhibition. A very large proportion of Canadian school children learn drawing, wliile commissions are being given to Canadian sculptors for statues for erection in various parts of the Dominion. Some of the private collections of pictures at Montreal bear comparison with those of the rich men of New York, as, for example, the gallery of Sir Donald Smith, which contains Henuer's "La Source," and Jules Breton's " La premifere Communion." For the latter beautiful picture an enormous price was paid. Canada is too near to the United States and too near to Great Gompari- Britain for her indigenous art and literature to stand a fair son with chance at present, and although she has taken the lead over Australia. Australia in the perfecting of her political institutions, she must be admitted to be a little behind our South-Sea colonies in many of these points which I have lately mentioned. Her press is good ; her poetry not as yet equal to that which we shall find Australia has produced ; her impatience of direct taxation, as compared with colonies raising a large budget expended with admirable skill, most striking ; her labour, altliough well paid, not yet more politically and socially powerful than that of the mother-country ; and her condition generally more like the old world than is the thoroughly modern and typical colonial growth which we shall find existing in Australia. In one respect, indeed, Canada seems to have led the way, namely, in that temperance legislation which has perhaps too hastily been pronounced a failure, and which I shall discuss separately in the last chapter of the sixth Part. CHAPTER III THE DOMINION OF CANADA — continued. The West. Manitoba. The transition from the Canadas to Manitoba is one from a comparatively old civilisation to a region of new settlements, which are of such recent growth that, even where centres of l^opulation have arisen, the conditions of life are undeveloped ; and although the growth of cities, springing into being witli all the features of modern town existence, is rapid on the American Continent, the time has hardly yet arrived for com- paring the people of the Canadian West with those of Old Canada or of the Maritime Provinces. In Quebec, as at the Cape, several cities have arrived at years of respectable antiquity. In Llanitoba the towns are even younger than in Australia. The Ancient Capital will celebrate its tercentenary in less than twenty years. Soon Montreal will complete what is awkwardly called, in Canadian plirase, its " quarter- millennium " : indeed, the same year will see the 250th anniver- sary of Montreal, the 400th anniversary of the landing of Columbus, and the silver wedding of the Provinces of the Dominion. The city of Trois Itiviferes is older than Montreal. TJie most thriving towns of Ontario liave a record, like many of the Australian cities, of only a little over lialf a century. Toronto has recently celebrated its jubilee, and about the same age are Hamilton — the fourth city of the Dominion — and London, which is becoming so important that travellers from the metropolis of the Empire have to inscribe their addresses as " London, Eng.," or it is inferred that they hail from " London, Ont." Kingston, the prosperous site of tlie military college, on Lake Ontario, is somewhat older ; but all these cities, as well as those which date from the French times, retain certain characteristics of the era before railways. The new growths in tlie western section of tlie Dominion, wliich one day perhaps will outstrip them all— for Canada at present contains no city which is in population of the first, or even of tlie second rank of the whole world — display those features only which have come into existence in Greater Britain in the latter half of the nineteenth century. CHAP, in THE CANADIAN WEST 77 The capital of Manitoba is the only city of the new North Winnipeg. West -which displays true features of town European life. Distant over 1400 miles from Montreal, it is now reached after a journey from that city of two days and three nights. Formerly known as Fort Garry, the Hudson Bay Company's chief post, it possessed in 1871 a population of 250 : ten years later its inhabitants were about 8000, and in 1886 had increased to 20,000, whUe the population is now said to be 30,000 — probably more than a fifth of that of the whole Province of Manitoba. Winnipeg is recovering slowly from the effects of a " boom," the accounts of which show that Winnipeg partakes of the nature of the cities of the new civilisation, in which a boom is as invariable an incident of early Kfe as the distemper of the youth of dogs. The architecture of Winnipeg, though as yet unprepossessing, is ambitious, and its main street is of a width in which the traffic of Piccadilly would be lost. Winnipeg is, without doubt, destined to be the metropolis of the central Canada of the future, lying as it does half-way between Montreal and the Pacific, in the midst of a district the soil of which is perhaps the richest in the world. It is already a rail- way centre of immense importance, lines radiating from it like the spokes of a wheel, and the politics of the local legislature are chiefly concerned with railroads. It is needless now to enter into the dispute between the Dominion Government and the Province on the subject of the monopoly rights of the Canadian Pacific Railway- ; suffice it to say that it is highly probable that, had the Canadian Pacific line not been built, Manitoba would by this time have gravitated towards the United States, as before the construction of the line its communication -with tlie outer world lay through Minnesota. In 1886, the year after the second Kiel rebellion, a census Manitoba. was taken of Manitoba which went into detail as to the origin Origin o{ of the people, a similarly elaborate census of the three districts tl^^ popu- of As.siniboia, Saskatchewan, and Alberta in the North-West lotion- Territories having been taken eleven months earlier. Although so short a time has elapsed since these enumerations, consider- able changes have occurred in the numbers of the people, and also in their places of origin. On the last day of July 1886, of the 108,000 inhabitants of Manitoba 34,000, mostly grown- up, had been born in Ontario, and the same number, mostly children, in Manitoba ; England and Wales together supplied over 10,000 ; Scotland and Quebec nearly 6000 apiece ; and Kussia the same number, partly Mennonites and partly Polish Jews ; Ireland more than half that number ; the United States and Iceland about 2000 each. There were also 8000 half-breeds, mostly French. The foreign element is now increasing, and in the North- West Territories there are, in addition to the settle- ments of Scotch crofters, of French Canadians, and of Londoners from the East End, colonies of Tsechs from Bohemia, of Slavs and of Magyars from Hungary, of Germans, of Roumanians, and of Scandinavians, as well as Icelanders. The Scandinavian 78 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i element is that which, after the English, has been increasing most rapidly of late years (though in 1889 the German immi- gration was greater than the Scandinavian), and in the last few years the Scandinavian immigration has exceeded that from Scotland and Ireland together. Manitoba, liaving been chiefly settled at first from Ontario, is mainly Protestant. It may be seen, from the list I have given, how widely different are the communities springing up in the North West from those of the old Provinces of the Dominion, and this fact will make the growth of Manitoba and of the Territories an interesting study. The first nucleus of a population were the Selkirk settlers, who had their conflicts with the Hudson Bay Company. The life of these men and of the half-breeds, far from the residence of visible government, was one calculated to develop inde- pendent spirit to resist outside authority ; and the rebellion of 1869-70, and its recrudescence in 1885, were as much a consequence of the supposed wrongs of settlers living remote from government as of reasons of race. Into this scattered community have been introduced the heterogeneous elements that I have mentioned, but in all probability their absorption will present little difliculty as compared with that of French Canadians. The whole population will assimilate itself to the original Anglo-Scotch element, and instead of the babel of tongues heard now within the distance of one day's drive, English will become universal. Manitoba stands, however, an intermixture of all races gathered in a land where there were no institutions and no traditions save those of freedom. One foreign community in the North West is likely for some time to remain isolated — that of the German-Russian Mennonites, whose chief settlement lies between Winnipeg and the United States frontier, where they farm profitably large tracts of land held upon a communal system : the one instance of the kind in Canada. They are a frugal, industrious people, and number now at least 10,000. Their German ancestors were given land in Southern Piussia by the Empress Catherine, and the recent adoption by Russia of the Armed Nation system having destroyed their exemption from military service^ tliey have found another resting-place in Manitoba. The rapid growth of these immigrant communities is ac- counted for by the fertility of the soil, and altliough the total yield of wheat is not yet great as compared with that of the "United States, that wheat is of excellent character. It is found, however, that wheat farms cannot hold their own against the occasional uncertainties of the summer, and mixed farming is now in vogue. The people who make money in Manitoba are those who have moved on from Ontario, and who are thoroughly acquainted with Canadian winters and with the farming systems to which they give rise. The Eurojaean immigrants live, but only live, and do not realise fortunes. The homestead law gives them 160 acres of land for each male person of the age of eighteen years, on payment of a mere office fee, subject to the CHAP, m THE CANADIAN WEST 79 commencement of residence and to the immediate cultivation of reasonable portions, and ultimately to the continuance of residence and cultivation, and the erection of a habitable house. The settlers obtain their supplies from Winnipeg, and send their wheat to its stores, and the rapid growth of this railroad centre is a necessary consequence of the system. Although the winter is in some sense a drawback, it is supposed to conduce to the fertility of the soil, and in the west of Manitoba and in Assiniboia and Alberta it is less cold than farther east, and as we approach the Kocky Mountains warm winds so often melt the snows that wheels are used tliroughout the winter. Sheep do not seem to do well in Manitoba as a rule, but cattle thrive ; and it is a curious fact that just as the most tropical portions of Australia are found unsuited to .sheep, but suitable to cattle, so the most northerly portions of the Great Plains are also suitable to the creatures of the wider range. Wheat, liowever, is a special product of the North West ; the growth of wheat is spreading fast, and there can be no doubt that out of the Ter- ritories will be carved several Canadian Provinces of the future as large and as productive as Minnesota. Areas are vast in tlie Dominion : France or Germany could be dropped into the salt lake that is known as Hudson Bay, and be far from tilling that single Canadian inlet. Manitoba possesses no legislative pecu- liarities as yet, for in abolishing her Council, and so giving herself a single chamber, she only followed the example of Ontario and of British Columbia, which had done without an Upper House. The early presence of the French in Manitoba had been recognised by the establishment of the use of the two tongues in official documents, and by that of a separate-school system ; but, under the influence of the strong feeling now prevalent among the Protestants of the Dominion, the Pro- vincial Government are abolishing the dual-language system, and have pledged themselves to bring in a Bill to put an end to the separate denominational schools. As I read Clause 93, sub-section 3, of the British North America Act, which bears upon the point, there will, however, be an appeal to the Governor-General in Council against the Provincial law should it pass, and if that be so it is not likely that the separate schools will be in fact abolished. From Winnipeg to the foot-hills of the Eocky Mountains, by Assiniboia. railway,is a distance of about 900 miles. Theprairie is apparently Alberta, as level as a table, but a gradual rise takes place, and Calgary, the last town upon the prairie before the mountains are reached, has an altitude of 3400 feet, or 2700 above Winnipeg. New towns are dotted along the line, some of whicli, like Portage la Prairie, rose too swiftly at the time of the Manitoba "boom." A temporary depression following on the unnatural prospei-ity of that town caused its municipality to repudiate its debt, while the Provincial legislature of Manitoba passed a Bill indemnifying the town against its creditors. The growing communities along the railway have an air of progress, and tlie prosperity of the 80 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt i neighbourhood may be gauged by the size of the "grain eleva- tors " wliioh speak to the productiveness of the surrounding country. The smallest and newest of these cities of the future are better provided than English towns with the telephone and the electric light. There is a good deal of local colour in places. After the Territories are entered the mounted police are fre- quently seen in their scarlet patrol jackets, performing with efficiency their extended duties — from looking after the Crees and Black Feet to regulating the liquor traffic and watching the American frontier for smugglers ; and when the foot-hills are approached, the cowboys, with the hats and saddles and stirrups found all the way from the North of Athabasca to the south of Mexico, show that ranching thrives. The Hudson Bay Company used to spread the report throughout the world that the region closed by its all but impenetrable wall was buried in eternal snows. Lord Selkirk's men had lived upon the soil since 1813, but their colonisation was on too small a scale to have become generally known. There is no doubt that the climate of this region is much more temperate than either that of eastern Canada or that of Maine. The contiguous States of North and South Dakota have progressed in a manner unequalled in the history of the Union. Some of the land in the Territories is alkaline, like a great portion of Colorado and Utah, though not so heavily covered with the soda as are Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico ; but it is discovered, as has been found by the Mormons, as well as in Baluchistan, that when broken up it is fertile. In the ranching country of the foot-hiUs the bunch grass which covers the prairie as far as the eye can reach looks as little nutritious as the arid vegetation of central Australia or of the South African Karroo, but in reality there is no better pasturage in the world. Coal. There is coal all over the North-Western Territories, both in the prairie district and in the mountains ; and the anthracite found in the Rocky Mountains near the boundary of British Columbia is closer to San Francisco itself than are any of the anthracite coal-fields of the United States. Saskatch- The northern part of the Territories is now known as ewau.Atha- " Canada's great reserve," and the districts upon some of the basoa, aud largest rivers in the world, which flow northwards into the "The Arctic regions, produce agricultural country even up to the NortV gg(-j, degree of latitude, and present none of the usual character- West, istics of a sub-Arctic country. It is possible that in the extreme north-west of Canada tliere exists a region of settlement as remarkable and as unexpected as that district of Australia " beliind the range " wliich, long looked upon as sterile, is now becoming the most valuable part of the new continent. Govern- The Territories of Assiniboia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan are ment of tie governed by a Legislative Assembly, aud possess elective but Territories, not responsible government. Three judges sit in the Assembly as legal experts on the nomination of the Governor-General and without votes, along with twenty-two elective members. CHAP, m THE CANADIAN WEST 81 The Lieutenant-Governor is allowed to choose four members of the Assembly as a Council for Finance. He rules, from his seat of Government at Eegina, Athabasca wliich is outside the repre- sented Territories. All the members of the Assembly are paid, but the Canadian Dominion takes the receipts from the Terri- tories, and provides the funds for carrying on the government. The electors are male non-alien householders, resident a year in the Territories and three months within the district. The Territories are represented both in the Senate and in the Dominion House of Commons, and so possess a superiority of constitutional position over the Territories of the United States, which send only delegates without votes to the lower House of Congress. The passage of the Eooky Mountains by the railway has British practically added to the British Crown a province of enormous Columbia, extent and of boundless capacity, for when the gold discoveries on the Fraser river had brought a population of Californian diggers between 1856 and 1858, and the country was given the name and the status of a colony, its connections were with the United States. In 1866 the colony of Vancouver Island and that of British Columbia were united — the mainland supplying the name and the island the seat of government — but the new country was still virtually reached only from San Francisco. When in 1871 British Columbia was admitted into the Dominion it -was with the promise that the railway should be made. Its representatives came to Ottawa after a sea-voyage to San Francisco, followed by a weary journey across the United States, and it was a, case of Federation under difficulties. Esquimalt Harbour was the remotest of all the stations of the British fleet, and this very fact kept up the feeling of distance and of isolation. The inaccessibility of the colony prevented all similarity between it and the rest of British North America, but Victoria, the capital, is a curiously English city. British Columbia has a far larger area than the other Pro- vinces of the Dominion, and will some day be divided, if its northern country turns out to be as capable of development as seems probable from what is known of it. Eoughly speaking, British Columbia is of the size of New South Wales, or of France with Italy, Holland, and Belgium. When the Canadian Pacific line was finished its population, including Indians and Chinese, was estimated at between 60,000 and 90,000, but large portions of the interior are yet unexplored, and even the ranges crossed by the railway lie in a country hardly trodden by the foot of man until the exploring party which made the railway survey first went over it. The mountain scenery which com- mences on the railway within the boundary of Alberta, where a large reserve has been made for a national park, is as fine as any in the world ; and these mountains serve as a barrier for British Columbia against the severe winter cold of the continent to the east, and in the valleys between the ranges, and upon the Pacific Slope, there are not only vast tracts of magnificent o 82 TROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Coast towns. Vancouver Island- forest land, but also stretches of open prairie, extremely fertile and well adapted for farming. Some of the countiy in the valleys has a climate sufficiently dry for the land to require irrigation, but the lakes afford an unlimited supply of water for that purpose. On the coast of the south part, both of the mainland and of Vancouver Island, the climate is one of the mildest and most equable in the world. Victoria is an agree- able place for residence, but although it has been favourably affected by the opening up of the Province, it views with regret the rise of a rival on the mainland at the terminus of the Canadian Pacific railroad. Hitherto the only town of consider- able size upon the mainland had been New Westminster, which was the seat of government during the short period in which British Columbia was an independent colony separate from Vancouver Island ; but the railway has left New Westminster upon one side, and has planted at its terminus on Burrard Inlet a new city which has been named Vancouver ; and tlie fact that Vancouver is not on Vancouver Island is likely to prove as great a stumbling-block to the schoolboys of the future as the anomaly that Washington City is not in Washington State, or the fact that Mont Blanc is not in Switzerland. The laying-out of the city of Vancouver has been executed on so excellent a plan that the town deserves to be cited as a striking exception to the ugliness of the urban settlements of the Anglo-Saxon race. Its situation would take a good deal of spoiling, placed as it is on a gently rising peninsula with a background of forest, while across an arm of the sea rise the soft outlines of a magnificent mountain range. The site chosen is a good one, not only as regards its picturesqueness, but also from the points of view of commerce, of defence, and of natural drainage ; and Burrard Inlet is a landlocked harbour 11 miles long and from 2i to 3 miles broad, and one of those Sounds of which it is said that all tlie navies of the world could ride within it. Vancouver — at that time Granville, and originally Gastown— was destroyed by fire in the first months of its exist- ence, but has risen again rapidly from its ashes, and has now a population of over 13,000 people. Victoria is distant six hours' steam across the Straits. The naval station at Esquimalt gives an oflicial air to the place exceeding that supplied by the seat of a Provincial government and the residence of a local Lieutenant-Governor. In the law courts both judges and advocates wear the English forensic wig, British Columbia being the only Province of the Dominion where that custom is followed. On the other hand, although there is a decorous British air about everything in Victoria, the street scenes are less English than in many other part's of British North America, owing to the presence of large numbers of Chinese and Indians. Victoria shows no decadence through the rise of the city of Vancouver. Much of the prosperity tliat the railway is bringing to the western coast of the mainland will travel over to the island, which admits of great develop- OHAP. HI THE CANADIAN WEST 83 ment. Vancouver Island is practically unexplored, but is known to contain tracts of prairie capable of producing wheat, while its forests will become of value, as are already the coal Coal, mines of Nanaimo, north of Victoria, and connected with it by railway. Both these collieries and the still larger Wellington coal-iields are close to the sea. Canada, which possesses, in Nova Scotia on the Atlantic and in Vancouver Island on the Pacific, two magnificent coaling stations, receives British forces, as we have seen, for the defence of Halifax, and desires to receive tliem for the defence of Vancouver Island, but has Defence, not been able to agree with the home Government as to the latter station because the Dominion contends that the mother- country should defend it, as " Canada can do without it," and it is needed for the British fleet. The coal -shipping ports of Nova Scotia, although not far off from the defended Halifax, are themselves defenceless, and Vancouver Island is not yet in a position of defence. The home Government lately proposed a partnership between Canada and the mother- country for its protection, and some men who were to be sent out to form the nucleus of the force, and to organise and train the local militia, were to have been borne upon the Canadian rolls and paid by the Dominion Government. The imperial Government were prepared to find the armament, ammunition,, and submarine stores ; the Canadian Government providing the garrison, although marine artillerymen and submarine miners were to have been sent from England to instruct the force. The important armament, however, that was to have gone to Esquimalt was sent elsewhere, the home Government stating that they did not feel justified in keeping the guns in England to await the completion of fortifications which were only in contemplation. The arrangement of June 1888 broke down, and the arrangement of May 1889 broke down, and I fear that the naval headquarters at Esquimalt are still inadequately defended ; that Burrard Inlet — the terminus of the railway — is not defended at all ; and that the same is the case with the coal mines themselves. It is hardly necessary to point out the strategic importance of the naval station at Vancouver Island, which would inevitably be attacked by Prussia in the event of war unless our naval predominance in the North Pacific were complete. In the Canadian reply of July 1889 Canada insisted on a British force being maintained in the Straits as a condition on which alone the Dominion could build fortifications. Both the practical utility and the military imioortance of tlie The new direct communication with the Pacific coast turn upon the Canadian value of the road as a route between Great Britain and China oyerland and between the United Kingdom and her Au.stralasian colonies, route. As compared with the journey by New York and San Francisco, the distance from Liverpool by Halifax and Vancouver to Yokohama or Shanghai is less by over 500 miles, while to Auck- land and to Moreton Bay the distance is about the same ; and some are inclined to see in the Canadian Pacific line a binding 84 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt i force for the closer union of the British Empire. For the first time in the history of Greater Britain it is possible to travel from England to Australia by an overland route (in which that phrase, from the proportion of land to sea on the passages, has a real significance) without traversing a yard of soil not British. As regards the route in time of peace, considered as a passenger route, the people from tlie Australasian colonies who make excursions to the mother-country are accustomed to luxurious accommodation and swift travelling, and although many Aus- tralians have already taken advantage of the Pacific route, the steamers running across the Pacific to Dominion soil are hardly as yet, either in speed or comfort, of a class to tempt travellers to choose it as against the Suez Canal. The class of accommo- dation which they require is, however, already provided on the passage across the Atlantic and ou the journey across the con- tinent, railway travelling on the Canadian Pacific line being more comfortable than that on the American " roads," and the im- provement upon the Pacific is pretty sure to come. Letters have been sent from England to Vancouver in twelve days ; a time which we shall doubtless soon see reduced to ten. From there to Yokohama is under 4500 knots, which eventually will give the Suez Canal route but little chance ; while the distance to Auckland from Vancouver is under 6300 knots, and that to Brisbane under 6400, so that it is easy to see that when swift ships are put on, this intercolonial line will enter upon a serious competition with the route by the Suez Canal. The Canadian road, however, cannot compete with the canal for the carriage of Cliina tea to England ; but the local freight traffic between China and Canada is on the increase, and there is hope of a trade with Australia in Canadian produce, including Vancouver Island timber and British Columbian salmon. It is a question whether, in consequence of the completion of tlie railway, the naval station at Esquimalt should be moved to Burrard Inlet. The southern point of Vancouver Island, in the San Juan Straits, at which Esquimalt stands, three miles to the west of the city of Victoria, and nearer therefore to the ocean, is very close to American territory, Victoria and Esquimalt being immediately opposite the entrance to Puget Sound — an almost landlocked arm of the sea running due north and south, on the shores of which some of the most important ports and cities of the future of the whole United States are springing up. Burrard Inlet has an entrance a few miles to the north of the United States frontier, and just within the Sound are the terminus of the transcontinental railway and the city of Van- couver. When the naval station was first established at Esqui- malt, over thirty years ago, it was in an isolated British colony, farther removed from communication with England, except through a foreign country, than Australia itself. At that time the settlements on the Pacific Slope of the United States were also far from the centres of population in that country, and the only practical route to them was by the Isthmus of Panama. CHAP. Ill THE CANADIAN "WEST 85 Russia again had a very ditievent position on tlie Pacific from that taken by her now ; and the city of Victoria, small as it was, was the only important British settlement on the North Pacific, there being no large town upon the mainland. It is impossible to conceive a sharper contrast than that which is to be found in the present condition of this portion of the Pacific coast. San Francisco has become a city of the first rank • Seattle and other towns in the extreme north-west of the old territory of the United States are rising fast, and Russia has a powei'ful squadron in Pacific waters. These facts alone would Iiave greatly altered the conditions even without the opening of the Canadian Pacific road, which has brought our Nortli Pacific station within twelve days' post of England, and is planting a population upon the mainland of British Columbia. In favour of Esquimalt the home Government urge that a dry dock has been completed there at great cost, and should not be abandoned without the strongest reasons, while Esquimalt is not subject to a land attack from the United States, and they look upon Burrard Inlet as a dangerous trap in which our fleet might possibly be one day caught. On the other hand, it is pointed out by many Canadian authorities that the dockyard and dry dock at Esquimalt are on an unprotected spit exposed to the fire of any passing ship. Even if Esquimalt were made impregnable it could not prevent the seizure, by a land force, of the terminus of the railway, or, if we had not local supremacy at sea, of the coal mines by a naval expedition. Stress is laid upon the fact that Burrard Inlet possesses a, fine harbour, well adapted for a naval establishment and a coaling station. It is also nearer to the Nanaimo coal mines than is Esquimalt, and independent of even that sujjply owing to its communication with the mines on the mainland. As a matter of fact, however, if Canada were as inclined to protect herself as is Australia, she would have amply defended both Esquimalt and Burrard Inlet. For a good many years to come a land attack upon Burrard Inlet must be improbable, inasmuch as between it and the American frontier there is only one road — a forest track impas- sable for artillery ; and there are two rivers to be crossed, of which one is the Eraser, not bridged in the lower portion of its course. Almost the whole Canadian Pacific Railway lies more open to attack from the American frontier than does its ter- minus at Burrard Inlet, but while the risk from organised attack must everywhere be great, the danger from mere raiders is not of so extreme a nature as is commonly supposed. There is no bridge or other structure between Montreal and the Columbia i-iver— nearly 2500 miles, which, in the event of its destruction, could not be replaced by a temporary structure over which trains could pass within two days, unless, indeed, the spot were lield in force by a hostile army. From the Columbia to the Eraser river bridge there are half a dozen structures which would require from five to ten days to replace, but these are on 86 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt i a section of the line which lies far to the north, within the mountains, and are, like the terminus itself, practically inacces- sible to mere raiders. Given tlie fact that the Canadian Pacific line has little to fear from raids across the border, although doubtless exposed in its prairie and eastern portions to attack by an organised force, it may be taken into consideration as a means for the rapid transit of troops except in the case of a war with the United (States. Troops could be sent from Halifax to Vancouver in from six and a half to seven days, and the line has the means of providing at short notice trains furnished with baggage and accoutrement cars, and provision and kitchen cars sufficient to allow 5000 troops landed at Halifax on a Mon- day morning to be at Vancouver on the next Monday ; while field artillery and cavalry in small numbers could be sent across in eight days. The largest guns can be taken over the line, but two weeks' notice is required in the case of guns over 30 tons. On the other hand, there is liability to delay in winter from the snow, but the risk is not considerable, as through the winter of 1888-89 the majority of the trains from Montreal to Vancouver were exactly punctual, and the greatest detention from snow was two hours in a journey of nearly six days. The The only peculiarities of the Canadian Far West are to be Chinese, found in tlie presence of large numbers of Chinese, and in the nature of the Provincial taxation of British Columbia. At the date of the opening of the Canadian Pacific line the number of Chinese in British Columbia was calculated to be about 25,000, of whom 3000 were in the city of Victoria. The local legislature of a Province has, under the British North America Act, no jurisdiction in respect of relations with foreign powers. A section of that Act indeed gives to Provincial legislatures the power to make laws regulating immigration, but these powers are expressly limited so as in no way to interfere with those of the Dominion Parliament. The British Columbian legislature, taking the same course as had previously been taken in the United States and in our Australian colonies, on several occa- sions passed resolutions denouncing the Cliinese, and soliciting the Parliament of Canada to enact a law prohibiting their in- coming ; indeed at one time local legislation, of doubtful legality, upon the matter became the subject of a decision by the Courts. In 1884 there was appointed a Dominion Commission of inquiry which found that the great body of white inhabitants did not wish for the removal of the Chinese already established ; that their presence did not prevent an immigration of a good class of white settlers, and had not an injurious effect upon tlie labour market ; and that the moral and sanitary dangers attributed to Chinese immigration were exaggerated ; but the Commission recommended that, as regarded further accession to the Chinese population, moderate restrictive powers should be obtained and made use of. The consequence of these recommendations has been that, wliile the Chinese are prohibited from entering the United States and some of our Southern colonies, they can enter CHAP. Ill THE CANADIAN WEST 87 the Dominion on pajTnent of a license fee. The result of the prohibition in force in the United States has been to largely increase the influx of Chinese to Britisli Columbia, and a con- siderable proportion of the newcomers smuggle themselves across the American frontier. There are in British Columbia boot and shoe factories employing Chinese labour, to which I shall allude in my chapter on tlie Protection of Native Industries. The building of the Canadian Pacific line has liad some bearing on the recent attitude of the Dominion towards the question, both during construction, when a large amount of Chinese labour was employed upon the railway, and since its completion, for it was pointed out that it would be futile to open up a new road of communication with China, and then to prohibit a large proportion of the resulting trailic. Impartial testimony from Canada shows that the Chinese are not only a hard-working, but a quiet and an honest people. They are now beginning to find their way to some of the larger cities of eastern Canada. Their chief calling in the towns is that of laundrymen, but they also make excellent gardeners, cooks, and waiters ; and the most determined opponents of immigration in Canada themselves acknowledge that as yet there need be no limitation put upon the importation of domestic servants, for which class there is a demand greatly in excess of the supply. At the same time, in the Dominion Franchise Act, the expression "person" means any male person including an Indian, and excluding a person of Mongolian or Chinese race. Australian example shows that it is impossible to strictly confine the Chinese to merely domestic work, and it is possible that the power of the ti-ade unions will ultimately assert itself in Canada, as in Australia, against the Chinese, and cause a stojj to be put to their immigration, as may be done, without further legislation, by use of the Viceroy's powers. The Knights of Labour organisation is being tried as a means of ridding British Columbia of the presence of the Chinese, after the plan that lias been pursued in the adjoining Anierican State of Washington. There has lately been introduced into British Columbia a The British local system of Provincial taxation which is remarkable for Columbian establishing a poll-tax, of three dollars a head, on every resident system of of the Province except clergymen of the various denominations. Provincial The Select Committee of the House of Commons on colonisa- taxation, tion had before it on two occasions in 1889 a gentleman, calling Imm'Si'-'^- himself " Colonisation Commissioner " from British Columbia, ^^.^^^j^g who proposed a scheme for taking out 1250 crofter families from Caitlmess and the neighbourhood to Vancouver Island at a cost of £150,000, whicli was to be advanced by the imperial Govern- ment on a guarantee of repayment from the Province ; but it is to be hoped that the Committee will support the Treasury in the objections which the latter raise to the financial provisions of the scheme. We may find in the Australian chapters political develop- Conclusion, ments more interesting than are to be met with in Canada oven 88 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part t in the working of the Dominion federal system, interesting as that is. But, however beautiful may be New Zealand or Tas- mania, the English traveller round the world cannot leave with- out regret the great northern British country, with her Atlantic and Pacific coasts alike remarkable for noble harbours, for shores and rivers teeming with fish, backed by an interior traversed by unrivalled waterways. At either end of Canada are dark forests yielding the best timber in the world ; in the centre, prairies producing the finest of all wheats where till lately were only winter snows and summer flowery swards ; in the west-centre the grandest of snowy peaks ; and at each end and in the middle of her great iron way inexliaustible coal- realms of the yet undethroned steam king. The one drawback, if Canada desires to remain unabsorbed by the neighbouring Kepublic, is the absence of sufficient means for defending all these treasures in the event of war. CHAPTEK IV THE ITNITED STATES, CANADA, AND THE WEST INDIES In entering upon a necessarily brief examination of the present Dissimi- and probable future relations between the two English-speaking larities communities upon the North American continent I should re- between mind my reader of the considerable constitutional difference Canada ami between Canada and the United States, in spite of there being "'^ United in each of the two countries a supreme Federal Government States. comprehending a union of States or Provinces. In Canada, as has been shown, all powers are held by the Federal Government excepting those delegated to the Provincial legislatures, and both Dominion and Provincial powers proceed from the Crown. In the United States the presumption is that, where the law is silent, power in any given matter belongs to the State, but the sovereign States have delegated certain powers to the Federal Government, and all powers proceed originally from the people, while the Federal Government is unable by tlie constitution, did it wish to do so, to confer titles, to establish or give a prefer- ence to a particular creed, or to restrict the liberty of the press, of speech, or of public meeting. In Canada the Provinces have no militia, as the States of tlie Union liave, but the militia belongs to the Dominion ; and while, on the otiier hand, in the United States there are no subsidies annually paid by the Federal Government to the States, in Canada there are such subsidies paid out of Dominion revenue to each Province — a system which it is sometimes proposed to introduce into the United States constitution for the purpose of facilitating the introduction of British North America to the Union. Leaving political for racial resemblances or distinctions, I am struck, in considering Canada and the United States, with the similarity of their component parts and the diiFerence of the result, it is true that in the United States the Irish-born element is stronger in proportion to the English and Scotch- born than is the case in Canada, but there are more German- born people in the United States than there are Irish, and the mixture of the Irish and German races is producing a people physically very like the English. Moreover, the English, Scotch, and Welsh immigrants to the United States are rapidly gaining upon the Irish, and, while the number of the Irish-born 90 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i in the United States is slightly on the decrease, the number of those born in other parts of the United Kingdom who inhabit that country is increasing fast. The negro element, large in the United States, and predominant in the British West Indies, is almost non-existent in Canada, but it cannot be said at present to greatly aflect American Federal affairs, and it does not mix with the remainder of the population. While, however, the white race is, substantially speaking, in its origin the same upon the two sides of the border, climate, or soil, or institutions, or manner of life, have produced remarkable dissimilarities of type which must strike every observer of the countries. Even if we put out of consideration the French Roman Catholic population of Canada, the superficial dissimilarity between the English Canadians and their American neighbours across the border is remarkable. If we compare, for instance, the in- habitants of the Maritime Provinces and Ontario with the New Englanders or rural inhabitants of New York State, we find that, although the Ontario men may differ in some slight degree from the Nova Scotians (their difference being, however, no more than is found to exist in adjacent counties in England), they differ from the inhabitant of Maine or of Vermont, who is close upon their border, in accent, intonation, and choice of language, as much as does a Cornishman from a Lowland Scot. Nevertheless they often descend from a common ancestry of less than a century and a half ago. On the other band, the similarity of American to American is becoming daily more marked throughout the Union — the Californian growing lilce the New Yorker, who is separated from him by a distance as great as tlie breadth of the Atlantic, and the Texan like the inhabitant of the Dakotas. Canadians from the border are more like English Afrikanders, or Victorians, or Englishmen of the old country, than they are like Americans of the United States, and this although in Canadian society there is less of the mere imitation of English fashions and pursuits than is found in those wealthy American centres that follow the lead of New York. When a Canadian hunts a fox it is generally because his father hunted with the garrison or his grandfather hunted in the old country ; but when an " American Anglomaniac " rides after a drag, and arrays himself in scarlet so to do, it is because he fancies the practice English. The main reason of the difference which exists between Englishmen, whetjier in Canada or in our Australian or other colonies, and the Americans of the United States is, I am convinced, to be found in the circumstances under which the old colonies of America were first founded. To those who have studied the American " colonial " portraits of tlie first half of the last century, it must seem possible that the American peculiarities had been evolved before the separation from Great Britain. The revolution gave public form to a sharp distinction which had already grown up, and the type which existed before Washington has been imposed, by the CHAP. IV CANADA 91 strong individuality and character of the American people, upon the Irish and other settlers who in vast numbers have gradually drifted into their midst. The Mississippi valley in the first place, and the North West later, have themselves been colonis" d mainly from New England, and the moral and physica j ■ features which are predominant throughout the United States are of the old Massachusetts type. The New England character was formed by emigration for the sake of religion, and by conflict with nature under a harsh climate and upon a sterile soil, and the granite state of New Hampshire and its equally "dour" neighbours have sent out into the West a granitic people. The tendencies which, in spite of such dissimilarities, are to Tendency be found in certain quarters in Canada towards a closer con- of the nection with the United States are political, or rest upon Canadiaus actual or fancied interests, and are not to be ascribed to social *" ^^"^ or sentimental causes. There is a widespread feeling in the ^''°^^ ™^ Dominion that, although the new nation seems vigorous and °°™^'^- healthy, it is somewhat " out of sorts." Nothing is hopelessly wrong with Canada. It has the vitality of a young country, and the undeveloped power that lies in its territories is immense ; but Canadians think (little as they have spent or borrowed as compared with prosperous Australia) that they have borrowed and spent a great deal of money of late years, and that the results of the expenditure are not yet sufficiently apparent^ The commercial situation of Canada under the so- called National, or protective, policy of Sir John Macdonald continually affords an opportunity for unfavourable criticism and for the suggestion of radical remedies as a tonic. One set of people very naturally prescribe absolute freedom of trade, accompanied by direct taxation ; another set, imperial customs union, more or less complete i another, a re-adjustment of the tarifT on behalf of infant industries, with higher duties upon certain classes of goods and free admission of others. Another ascribes the malady of the country to the predominance of the Koman Catholic religion ; and it is not to be wondered at that a large section look across the frontier to the United States, and find in the prosperity of that country a reason for associat- ing with its future, in a greater or less degree, the fortunes of the Dominion. It must not be supposed that a majority of the Canadians Extent and hold these last-named views. Allusion has been made in the character second chapter to the fact that, while the majority in theoff'is Dominion Parliament is in favour of the " National " policy of tendency. Sir John Macdonald, in the Provincial legislatures, elected virtually by the same constituencies, the majority belongs to the Federal Opposition. This fact shows that, while the public sentiment throughout the Dominion, outside Quebec, is Liberal or Radical, or at least progressive, some of the electors who support Liberals in Provincial legislatures are inclined, through a sentiment of Canadian nationality, to give Sir John Mac- 92 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Political States. donald a free hand at Ottawa. Moreover, the chief function of an Opposition is to criticise, and, inasmuch as Sir John Maodonald, with that parhamentary astuteness which marks his character, has formed his Cabinet of men representing every shade of opinion in domestic or Provincial matters, the Opposition are almost driven to find their battlefields in criticism of the "National" policy of his Government. At the same time they are afraid to declare themselves free traders, on account of the interests which have grown up under a system of high duties, and indeed jjledged themselves to Protection just before the last general election. The Dominion Opposition are therefore as it were forced to suggest, with a view to the re-invigoration of their country, or the ejection from ofiice of Sir John Macdonald, remedies which are apt to be misunderstood. The suggested changes in relations with the United States union fall under one or other of the three heads of unlimited re- withUnitecl oiprocity, commercial union, and complete or political union. As to the last, it may be said at once that the Liberal Opposi- tion at Ottawa repudiate the idea, and that in the Dominion there are but few persons in responsible positions, and but a small section of the electorate, who are open advocates of annexation or absorption by the United States. Mr. Goldwin Smith indeed objects to the word " absorption," and speaks of eventual " union " between Canada and the United States ; but a union between five millions and more than sixty millions of people could hardly be a union upon equal terms, and although Canadian population will fast grow, it will no more catch up that of the United States than does the age of a younger catch up that of an elder brother. It is a curious fact that most Canadians are inclined to think themselves more free than they would be were they citizens of the United States. In the case of annexation or absorption the democracy of Ontario would have but little weight at Washington, while under the existing system it is dominant at Ottawa, except in ecclesiastical affairs. The power of the President and the absence of Ministerial responsibility to Congress are features of the American federal system which are not regarded with favour upon the Canadian side of the border line. But increased trade facilities for Canada, and a better market, are ideas as popular, as union with the United States is, at all events for tlie moment, the reverse. Unrestricted reciprocity is no new policy with the Canadian Liberals. Before the elections of 1878 the policy of the Mac- reciprocity, kenzie Government was free trade between Canada and the United States, combined, doubtless, with Protection against the world, which was apparently thought consistent with free-trade opinions, for Mr. Mackenzie has been since 1875 one of four Canadian members of the Cobden Club (two of the others being Sir Pdchard Cartwright and Mr. Goldwin Smith). This was the remedy proposed in a period of distress ; and to the fa.ct that Unre- stricted oiiAi'. IV CANADA 93 Sir John Macdonald at that time formulated, as a rival remedy, the policy of increased Protection, known as the National policy, is due the defeat of the Liberal party. Since 1878 Canada has made much progress, and although there is at least room for doubt ■whether even greater rapidity of advance might not have been secured under complete free trade, a majority of the voters seem inclined to think that the progress has been in a consider- able measure the result of the protective policy. Manufactures have undoubtedly grown up under Protection ; the Canadian Pacific Railway has been built ; and the Canadian North West has been thrown open for settlement, although that settlement might, indeed, have been better promoted by free trade. The Liberal party, under Mr. Laurier, Sir Richard Cartwright, and Mr. A. G. Jones, has to justify its existence. Its members point to the fabulously great increase of population in Minnesota and North Dakota as compared with that in the neighbouring parts of Canada. They say, too, that in twenty years the Dominion has trebled her debt, trebled her taxation, and added but 30 per cent to her population. They emphasise the fact that although, even in Ontario, Canada has territory superior in their opinion to any land in the United States, there is an increasing exodus of Canadians across the border, and they seem confident that unrestricted free trade with the United States would remedy all these real or pretended evils. There is, however, a difficulty in establishing unlimited reciprocity, namely, that ever since a period some time anterior to the lapse, through American action, of the old Reciprocity Treaty in 1866, the set of American opinion has been against unrestricted intercourse, and there is little doubt, in spite of occasional all but unanimous resolutions of Congress, that the United States will continue to decline it as a one-sided bargain. The American protectionists hold that the Canadians would obtain by reciprocity a free market of sixty-one million people for their raw material in exchange for a fi'ee market of five million people for the American manu- facturer ; and they believe that the American markets would be flooded with British goods imported ■ through Canada, with the result of a .breakdown of the American revenue system. The last consideration which I have mentioned has led the Commer- Canadian advocates of free intercourse with the United States cial uuiou. to see that there is no hope of their obtaining unrestricted reciprocity without discriminating against the goods of other countries, until indeed the United States are prepared to see their advantage in free trade with the whole world. They advocate commercial union, and the idea has made way among the classes interested in agriculture, in timber, and in fisheries, all of whom look eagerly for the American market. There are, however, stupendous difficulties in the way of that commercial union which is proposed by Mr. Goldwin Smith. Its first result would be the destruction of the protected industries of the Dominion. Jloreover, it is not only a large class of Cana- 94 PROBLEMS OF GEEATEE BEITAIN I'AiiT 1 dians who are opposed to that destruction. One result of the policy of levying protective duties against the United States has been that throughout the eastern parts of Canada American capitalists have established branches of their manufactories, and these would be extinguished by commercial union. Some who favour commercial union are, like Mr. Goldwin Smith, free traders, but think that free trade throughout the American continent is worth obtaining, even at the cost of a protectionist policy as against countries outside that area, including the mother-country, while some of those who advocate the same vifew are theoretical protectionists. There is also another cross division of parties among them, as some of them desire to see the connection with Great Britain continue, whereas others, few and scattered, desire commercial as a first step towards political union. It is contended by the opponents of commercial union that it would necessarily lead to complete or political union, for Ottawa would otherwise be allowed no voice in regulating the common tariff of the two countries. Canada would agree to take a percentage of the gross customs revenue collected at the seaboard, but the tariff would be fixed at Washington. The Dominion 'would become commercially dependent upon the United States, and could hardly continue to be politically de- pendent upon Great Britain while admitting American goods tree and prohibiting the importation of many classes of British goods. The majority, indeed, of Canadian writers and politi- cians believe that commercial would sooner or later be followed by political union. This is the opinion of nearly all those who are opposed to taking the first step, as well as of some of those who advocate it, although these look upon annexation as far ofl'. Others of the advocates of commercial are determined to resist political union. There is as yet, as I have shown, no annexation party in Canada. There are, however, from time to time momentary ebullitions of discontent at temporary grievances, which take the form of an expression of desire for union with the United States, but they are in fact only mani- festations of discontent at incidents of the existing order of things, and are not serious proposals for absorption. Strong Protestants in Ontario have made such demonstrations, called forth by " Jesuit ascendency " j others have been caused by the railway grievances of Manitoba ; but, taking the country through, Canada does not desire political union. During the hot discussion on the Jesuit Bill, threats of helping to procure absorption were made indeed upon both sides. "Certain de- scendants of tlie United Empire Loyalists, who came to Canada to be away from republican rule, threatened to return straight- way to that Government, and equally loud protestations of the desire for annexation came also from the fiercer men among that French lloman Catholic population, who as a fact would cling toBritisli rule after those of P.ritish origin had turned against it. These manifestations were not, in my belief seri- CHAP. IV CANADA 95 ously intended upon either side. The prevailing popular senti- ment of Canada asks with Mr. Talon-Lesperance — " Shall we break the plight of youth, Aud pledge us to an alien love ? " And replies also with him — " Britain bore us in her flank, Britain nursed us at our birth, Britain reared us to our rank 'Mid the nations of the earth." It would not appear that across the border there is any Feeling in strong feeling in favour of annexation. Too much stress ought ''^^ United not to be lard upon occasional suggestions of resolutions in 'S'^'^^- Congress, or upon newspaper utterances, upon this point. When things are dull the annexation of Canada makes an excellent headline, but the resolutions and the articles have the opposite efTect in Canada from that apparently intended by their authors, as the Canadians resent being thus disposed of by their neighbours, and return the compliment by preparing Bills for the admission of the New England States to the Dominion. American statesmen as a rule tiiink that their country is big enough as it is, and wire-pulling politicians are not anxious to dislocate the present balance of political power by the admission of a number of new States containing a large French Roman Catholic element. Although there are Ameri- cans of the Republican party who think that Canada would counterbalance the "Solid South," there are other Americans who consider that the existing status of Canada is a pledge of peace between Great Britain and the United States. They think that England is restrained from declaripg war with the United States, under occasional provocation, because she is aware that such an act would involve the loss of the greater part of Canada by invasion, and they believe that were Canada, after a war, to be annexed by the United States, England would probably retain Gibraltars at Halifax and Vancouver Island, which would form a constant source of irritation between the countries. It is often said by tliem that the Canadian f roiatier is a good insurance against the bombardment by British fleets of American harbours along five or six thousand miles of coast. The argument is, however, a little fanciful, because the provo- cations which are received by Great Britain from the United States almost invariably concern Canadian interests, as for example in the fisheries of the Maritime Provinces or of Behring Sea. The American Senator Hoar, who has made the best speech that I have found among those delivered by Americans in favour of the absorption of Canada in the United States, Jias declared that if Canada comes into the Union it must be of her own accord when she finds that hostile tarifl's cannot be main- tained along such a frontier as both countries become filled, and that commercial union is impracticable. Senator Sherman, the loudest annexationist in the United States, has spoken as PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Causes for clieerfiil- ness ill Caniida. Fisheries. fiercely against reciprocity with Canada as has his brother- senator and brother-annexationist against commercial union. Tlie argument in favour of commercial union or annexation, which is drawn from a contrast between the countries on either side the border line, is perhaps unreasonable. Although Canada is of the size of the United States, a portion of its terri- tories is found in ever-frozen Arctic lands, and those arguments are fallacious which are based on a comparison of the entire area with that of the United States, lying wholly in a temperate zone, with the exception of the outlying possession of Alaska. If some adjacent territories be compared — Nova Scotia and New Brunswick with Maine, Quebec with New Hampshire and Vermont, Ontario with western New York, the Territories with Montana and Idaho — the comparison is not discouraging, for it must be borne in mind that Canada's North West was not opened up by railway communication until long after the North West of the United States. It is sometimes said that Manitoba and Dakota started side by side eighteen years ago on equal terms, and that the two Dakotas have now five times the popu- lation of the Canadian Province ; but long before the so-called start of Dakota the American North West had been opened up as far as the eastern and southern boundaries of that district, whereas the limits of known Canada lay far eastward of Mani- toba. A country of the rich resources of Manitoba and the Territories must soon attract a sufficient population now that the railway communication from ocean to ocean has been made through it, and it is probable that these fertile lands will become the wealth-centre of the Dominion, and communicate to the whole of it a new prosperity. It is, as I have said, sometimes asserted that the only possible paths for Canada lead to annex- ation, to independence, or to Imi^erial Federation with a limited customs union ; but I cannot myself see any reason why Canada, if she takes those reasonable steps for her own defence which are a condition of the existence of a self-respecting nation, should not, if she so wishes, work out a prosperous des- tiny for herself under her present relations with the British Crown. Canadian opinion is so set upon Protection that it is useless to argue that the wiser commercial policy for Canada might be that which she seems the least likely to adopt, namely, one of unrestricted free trade. Canada is and will be mainly an agricultural country, and ought, one would suppose, to pro- mote the sale of her produce to the best advantage, and the supply in return for it, for her agricultural population, of the cheapest goods that can be procured. But, whether under a system of Protection or under a system of free trade, Canada, ii she pleases, can, in an international sense, keep matters as they are. I have named the fishery disputes between Great Britain and the United States, with the details of which it is unnecessary that my readers should be burdened. The question on the Atlantic coast is one which only afl^ects a portion of the sea- OHAP. IV CANADA 97 board, and has little interest for the Dominion at large except as a matter of national sentiment ; while to the United States it is an infinitesimal matter, whicli concerns only a handful of New England fishermen in a population of sixty millions. It was certain that the breakdown of the Reciprocity system between Canada and the United States would lead to a revival of that antagonism upon the fisheries question which had in fact preceded Reciprocity. Canada was certain once more to enforce her view of the provisions of existing treaties, which had never been easy to interpret, and had so long been dormant as to have become forgotten, while the United States were certain to resent such action. The abrogation first of the Reciprocity Treaty and then of the Fishery Articles of the Treaty of Washington had once more brought the relations of Canada and the United States under the stipulations of 1818, and there was a difl'erence of opinion between Canada and the United States as to the powers of the Canadian Government under the first article of the Convention. The negotiations which took place between Mr. Chamberlain and the United States plenipotentiaries in the winter of 1887-88 led, as is known, to an agreement and a treaty as well as to a modus viveridi, and although the treaty was accepted in Canada and Newfoundland it was not ratified by the United States ; but the modus vivendi has prevented fresh troubles upon the Atlan- tic coast. On the other hand, the Behring Sea question, in which the United States have succeeded to the rights" of Russia, against which they had formerly protested, was not dealt with, and remains open — the United States apparently maintaining on their Pacific coast the opposite principles from those on which they act on the Atlantic side, and making the claim for treating the waters adjoining their coasts and islands as territorial waters, which they dispute upon the Atlantic coast when made on a smaller scale by Canada. It is probably the case that the Americans have deliberately raised the Fisheries question in Behring Sea in order to bring home to the Canadians the American objections to the course with regard to fisheries pursued by the colonists in recent years iipon the Atlantic side. The authorities of Nova Scotia, before the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, used to draw a line from headland to headland, and then claimed the right to exclude the Ameri- cans from bays, however wide the entrance ; and although the extreme assertion of the headlands view has now been given up, the Americans resent it in every shape, and, if they are giving it a great extension in Behring Sea by showing a disposition to treat the whole of that sea as consisting of territorial waters, this may be done in order to force our hand. The Americans liave little idea of suffering themselves to be driven by Canadian legislation into a rei-ival of the Reciprocity Treaty, which they consider to have been one-sided, and they are content therefore to be excluded from the territorial or inshore fisheries, because they will not pay the price which they formerly paid for the 98 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paut i privilege of using them ; but they complain of the headlands doctrine in every form, and also of the exclusion of American fishing-boats from Canadian ports by recent Canadian legisla- tion. The inodus vivendi protocol loses its force on the 15th February next, and negotiations are once more in progress at Washington as I -write. From the date of the rejection of the recent Treaty by the Senate of the United States the matter had slumbered, except as regards Behring Sea, till November last, when it was revived by our very able Minister. That Sir Julian Pauncefote may be able to bring about a settlement of the questions in dispute will be the prayer of every true friend of either country. It is understood that, after bringing to a conclusion the negotiations for a new Treaty of Extradition, he has taken up the Fishery question in connection with the idea of a limited Reciprocity Treaty, to be proposed by us. Weight of The pressure of the United States on Canada, not only in the the United fisheries question but also in that of commercial relations, is States, and heavy, from her bulk and population, connected as she is at pressure numerous points with Canada by railroads. It is almost as ]1,P°", trying to Canadians to live next door to the United States as it ^"■^ * is to Asiatic Princes to live next door to Russia. But the attention of the Americans has long been, and is still at the present moment, more turned towards the south than towards the north. There are parts of Mexico in which vastly more American capital is invested than is the case in Canada, and even Central and South America receive more constant atten- tion from the United States than does the Dominion. The Washington Government in this winter of 1889-90 is assuming the position, fairly conquered from tlie world, of patron of all the republics of America, North and South ; and we must look forward to an eventual protectorate, which, great as is the weight of the United States in the world, will bring to it an in- crease. The Spaniards of Mexico and of Central and Soutli America have given way to an active and intelligent mixed race of Spanish, Indian, and Negro Ijlood ; and it is a remarkable fact that while the English in North America, who on the whole adopted a humane treatment of the natives, have in fact destroyed them, the Spanish, who robbed and massacred through two-thirds of the New World, have themselves very largely been absorbed by the Indian race. The populations, however, which the United States is attempting to call into subordinate alliance with itself are not all Hispano-Indian, and in the Ai-gentine Republic an infusion of Italian, French, and Irish blood vai-ies the civilisation of South America. The enormous weight in America of the mass of the United States presses tremendously botli upon Canada and upon our West Indian Islands. If there were no custom houses between Canada and the United States tiie bulk of the Dominion trade — indeed, comparatively speaking, almost the whole of it — would be done by the Canadians with their continental neigh- bours. As it is, a large proportion of Canadian and of AVest . Indies. CHAP. IV THE WEST INDIES 99 Indian trade is done with tlie United States in spite of tariff and on the difficulties ; and the West Indies tend to come more and more West within tlie sphere of American influence. In 1885 the United Indies. States Government proposed to us a draft treaty between itself Proposed and the West Indies, which was equally desired by both parties, American or at all events by a portion of our West Indian dominions as customs well as by the Government of the United States. The treaty treaty with suggested was a Reciprocity Treaty giving favours to West ''^'^ British Indian goods which were not extended to the goods of other ^^?' countries, and projaosing special reductions of duties in the'"'"" West Indies upon articles imported from the United States. One of the articles of the draft treaty professed to be a most- favoured-nation clause, but it contained words providing that the clause was not absolute, but was only intended to apply in cases where equivalent consideration was given. The effect of this would be that if there were sucli a treaty between the United States and France, and the United States were to reduce their duties on French cottons in consideration of a reduction of the high French duties on American wheat, England would not, under a most-favoured-nation clause of this description, obtain the reduction on her cottons unless she gave (which as a free- trade country she would be unable to give) to the United States specially among all nations some equivalent to the French reduction upon wheat. Such a most-tavoured-nation clause is without value, and is a mere cause of dispute. Conversely, another article provided that the privileges of the treaty were not to be granted to other nations by reason of the existence of a most-favoured-nation clause in existing treaties, unless any such nation gave an equivalent. This was obviously a clause pro- viding for the violation by us of our own treaties, and was in itself a reason why it was impossible for us to agree to the propositions. A clause in the draft treaty gave a power of denunciation of the treaty in the event of any change of tariff, so that any change of tariff of any of the West-India Islands would have had to be submitted to the United States. Another clause barred the possibility of commercial union between the West-India Islands and other parts of the British Empire. The general effect of the treaty would have been to tighten the relations between our West Indian colonies and the United States at the expense of the relations between the colonies and the mother-country. The objections to the draft treaty proposed were indeed far stronger than would be those to a complete commercial union. There is a great difference between a connection arising naturally out of unrestricted trade, and one brought about by a series of artificial restrictions in defiance of the plain words of treaties and of the uniform practice of this country. A com- mercial union between Canada and the United States, or between the West Indies and the United States, or between all three, might be inconsistent with our treaties as formerly interpreted by ourselves, but as the contrary pretension has 100 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Proposals for union between Jamaica and the Dominion. Difference in position towards tlie United States, of Canada and tlie West Indies respective- ly. been set up by many other powers of recent years, and lias been assented to by other powers and tacitly accepted in some recent cases by ourselves, it is probable that such a union might be lawfully set on foot. The recent customs union between the Cape and the Orange Free iState, to which I shall have to allude in the chapters on South Africa, is a case in point, although the arrangement has been limited to land trade on account of the objections of the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade. It is probable that if Canadian sentiment were to demand complete customs union with the United States, which, as I have shown, at present it does not, it would be accepted, though unwillingly, by our Government. In the case of the West Indies there was some doubt about there being a distinct colonial opinion in favour of the treaty, and there was also the fact that the colonies were mainly Crown Colonies, and all of them colonies in which the majority of the population, being black, played but a secondary part in public aftairs. As a set-otf against the arrangement proposed between the British West-India Islands and the United States, private negotiations took place in 1884 between Canada and some of our West Indian Governments with a view to union. The negotiations were pushed most actively in the case of Jamaica, but they were all along informal, neither Jamaica nor Canada feeling itself entitled to negotiate directly, and the Colonial Office refusing to entertain the question. The landowners and commercial and middle classes in Jamaica, so far as their views became known, were anxious for union, and there was also a party in Canada in favour of it ; but there was a good deal of doubt as to the sentiment of the majority of the coloured population in Jamaica upon the matter. The home authorities pointed out that the Canadian Government were unprovided with any machinery for ruling a dependency, and they thought Jamaica unprepared to be placed in the same political position as a Canadian Province, and declared that they could not see their way with regard to the proposals. The West Indies do but a small trade with the Dominion as compared with that which they either do at present or would do under better commercial relations with New York and the nearer American ports. The trade of Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, and British Guiana with British North America is, for example, about one-tenth of their trade with the United States. The West Indies stand in a very different position towards the United States from that occupied by Canada. In the case of Canada we have seen the strong reasons that exist for believing that commercial union, if it is ever brought about will be a step towards political absorption. But one of the very reasons which prompt some Americans to desire the annexation of Canada, should a wish for it in due time arise to the north of the border-line, tells strongly against the adoption of a similar policy towards the West-India Islands. Canada has, com- paratively speaking, no negro population, and some theorists of CHAP. IV THE WEST INDIES 101 the United States find a reason for wishing for its absorption in the supposed necessity of counterbalancing the increase of negroes in the South by an increase of white population in the North. On the other hand, the British West Indies are becoming black communities, filled with a peasant proprietary of the negro race — very similar, that is, to some of those Southern States in which the growing numbers or the prepon- deraiace of the blacks form the only nightmare of the American people. While it is possible that, from reasons connected with mines and railways, and the course of trade, the United States may one of these days annex parts of Mexico, after they have already become American in population and in symiDathies, it seems likely that, as regards the other southern countries with which they have to do, the Americans will look rather for commercial and political hegemony, secured to them in return for naval protection and by commercial treaties, than towai'ds a policy of actual inclusion of those countries within the boundaries of the United States. There is a larger question than that of the total or partial Future re- absorption of Canada or of the British West Indies, already lations of discussed, which lies behind, and must necessarily be in the the United minds of those who think upon the subject. Mr. Henry George, States and Professor Hosmer, and others have in their speeches or writings °f "'^ °"'^'' pointed to a time when all the English-speaking peoples will ^"gl'^h- t'orm one league, securing among them freedom of trade, uniform ^P''''"°g currency, common postal laws, as well as absolute predominance! ™!JLaUv in the world, and consequent perpetual peace. The recon- stitution of the family bond in countries ruled by those of whom the vast majority are of English race is no doubt a beautiful idea, and it may be admitted that even the bringing of all mankind under a single Government, capable at least of pre- venting war, does not present difficulties much greater than some of those with which the statesmanship of the world has successfully grappled in the past ; but in a book dealing with the present position, and not with dreams, it is necessa,ry to ask, before indulging in speculation as regards the distant future, whether, in fact, a federation of the English-speaking world would not be as difiicult of accomplishment as a federation of all the peoples of the globe. Jealousy, the great dissolvent, would be more likely to be present in the former than in the latter of these cases, and either the British Empire or the United States could more easily accept a world-wide union than fusion only with the other. At the same time it is, of course, the duty of us all to do nothing that can increase these jealousies, and every Briton must at least be proud that the United States, which form in the classical sense the truest colony of England, are certain to share or to divide with other English-speaking communities at present subject to his authority the empire of two-thirds of the globe. When I made use of the term "Greater Britain" for tlie "Greater countries of English speech or English government I gave the Britain." 102 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet i position of honour to the United States, by devoting to that country the iirst part and the largest part of my book. If a popular usage in taking possession of my title, has applied it chiefly to the English countries outside of the United Kingdom remaining under British government, to the exclusion of the United States, I at least can have but little sympathy with that restriction of its scope. In the controversy upon this point between Professor Seeley and Professor Freeman I cannot but feel that the former has perhaps not given a sufficiently predominant position among the glories of England to the foundation of so magnificent a daughter-State as is the American federal republic. Professor Seeley has said, " To us England will be wherever English people are found ; " but he has, in writing upon the expansion of England, with a certain contra- diction of his own good saying, distinguished sharply between Ills Greater England and the United States. He has indeed remarked that " the United States are to us almost as good as a colony ; our people can emigrate thither without sacrificing their language or their chief institutions or habits," and has pointed out, in eloquent and pregnant language, the extent to which the Amei-ican Commonwealth exercises influence upon ourselves, while at the same time receiving from us equal influence through our literature, and has declared that the whole future of the planet depends upon the mutual influence of the branches of the English race. There is, however, as between the British Empire and the United States, too mucli tendency to encourage petty jealousies and to exaggerate small diflerences ; while many look back to the fact that " . . . we were one in the days When Shakespeare wrote his plays,'' rather to emphasise their belief that we are not one now even in race or spirit. It should indeed never be forgotten for a moment that the United States is a true colony of England, our other so-called colonies being rather dependencies across the seas, possibly on their way to grow into allied nations of the same tongue. It is a curious fact — as has often been pointed out, and especially and most ably by Mr. Lucas of the Colonial Oiiice (now charged with the care of British emigra- tion) in his Historical Geography — that none of the English colonies, commonly so called, fall under Sir George Lewis's definition of a colony, the conditions of which, however, are fulfilled by the United States. The United To present a complete picture of the Union in a book which States. deals with other topics, or, for that matter, in any book at all would be impossible, and, as Tocqueville observecJ, could it be written, such a work would certainly be as wearisome as it might possibly be instructive. What can wisely be done in this direction has lately been accomplished by Professor Bryce. It lias been said of the Americans that no people ever lived under conditions of existence which made it more likely that tliey oiiAr. IV THE UNITED STATES 103 sliould be at once so happy and so powerful. It is possible in these days to go further, and to say that no people ever were at once so happy and so powerful, or so likely to continue in this pleasant position. But a question which every thoughtful American must ask himself is how far his country answers to the magnificent description of the ideal modern democracy in the first chapter of Tocqueville's work. It is probable that Tocqueville himself thought that on tlie whole, and subject to the limitations which he himself pointed out, America would become that ideal democracy, and that he was only checked in the strength and warmth of his statements having special regard to American democracy by the fear constantly present to him, as is shown by his more intimate letters, that the enthusiasm called out in him by the promise of America would be turned against him in France, where he belonged to the Roman Catholic Conservative party. I am ready, for my part, to maintain that in the United States, as well as in Canada and in Australia, there is every ground for hope, judging from the democratic progress of those countries in our own times, that that amount of political corruption wliich still exists will disappear, and that this one blot having been removed, these English-speaking countries will present a, picture of a more general and complete Christian civilisation than the world has ever shown. Already in America, and in Canada and Australia, there is, except as regards the treatment of the negroes and Chinese, a deep respect for the laws which all have helped to make. Already, while individual liberty is prized, the authority of the State is resjDected, and regard for justice is combined with a fervent patriotism. Already there is a manly give-and-take between different classes, combining respect for superiority of any kind with a total absence of servility ; and there is discernible neither a tendency to anarchy on the one side nor (as between white man and white man) a tendency to oppression. The chief changes in the United States since I wrote of them, Clianges in other than those which concern mere growth, such as the the United existence of a city of 120,000 people at a spot which was States in absolutely desert the first time that I passed it, concern the ^^^ 1"^* modification in the condition of the Southern States, and the twent}' fears which negro predominance in some of them have q^™'.] ^ occasioned. This gravest of American problems has not, j]™"^ ' o perhaps, sufficiently engaged the attention of Mr. Bryce in his population admirable work. In the State of South Carolina there are j,, ti,^ twice as many negroes as white men. In Missouri the negroes south. are to the whites as three to two, and in Louisiana the blacks distinctly outnumber the whites, while in North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, taken tog;ether, the two races are about equal in numbers. The statistics are not yet clear as regards the relative rate of increase of the races under negro freedom, but the better opinion is that the rate of increase of the free negro considerably exceeds the rate of 104 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i increase of the Southern white. On the other hand, the fact that black population received an impetus by the abolition of slavery, which may not continue when the negroes have to provide absolutely for themselves, and are supplied with the check of the possession of property, may affect the iigures, and the development of manufactures in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee is bringing Northern emigrants into the South. The black population is gaining ground in education, but is still illiterate compared with the white American race. Attitude of There has been a remarkable retreat on the part of the North United States Government, and of the population of the North, from the attitude of compelling the Southern States to treat the negro as an equal. For many years everything that could be done was done, both by law and by Northern public opinion, and of to bring about this result ; but of late the matter has been left South. to the Southern States themselves, and the negro has lost his political power in those States, and undergone considerable social oppression in some of them. Six million negroes have, since the war, been received into membership of the American nation ; their males of full age into American citizenship ; but their treatment in the States in which they mainly live first went forward to equality, and has now gone back to an inequality more severely felt than in the days of slavery. It has been declared in the strongest and most emphatic terms on behalf of the South that " the South will never adopt the social intermingling of the races. It can never be driven into accept- ing it. The assortment of the races is wise and proper, and stands on the platform of equal accommodation for each race, but separate." The meaning of this is that the blacks are in most places not allowed to enter the churches, schools, or theatres (except separate portions of theatres reached by separate entrances^ of the whites unless they go there as the servants of the whites, and that, not to take up time by mention- ing special instances, everything is done that can be done in order that the two races should never meet. From State juries the blacks are virtually excluded. The Southerners declare that if the race instinct did not exist it would be necessary to invent it as " the pledge of tlie integrity of each race, and of peace between the races." The "boycotting" of the white teachers of the blacks is now commencing, and as some of them have taken the side of the blacks, to the extent of travelling in the negro " cars " in the trains, social ostracism has been the result. There can be little doubt that the South will in the long-run be beaten in the contest upon which it has entered with such clear views. It is difficult to suppose that a democratic people will for any long number of years tolerate the conferring of practical equality upon the roughest of the emigrants from Europe and refuse it to every member of the black race, how- ever cultivated and refined. There are now in the South great numbers of admirable high schools for blacks, and there are CHAP. IV THE UNITED STATES 105 universities for blacks turning out excellent students, while even ultra -Southerners speak of the gentleness and essential nobility of the black race in the highest terms. At the present moment, in some of the States, the most cultivated black woman of the South is made to travel in the negro "car," which is generally an inferior " car," while the " ladies' car," set aside tor white women, carries the roughest emigrant women from the lowest classes of Europe. It is difficult to imagine that such a state of things can long continue, and it is a curious example of the way in which any abuse may be defended from habit to find ministers of Christian Churches writing in defence of the doctrine of the separation of the races. The white-man's church, which is open to the greatest criminal, which is supposed to welcome all, is closed in some parts of the English- speaking world to the black face alone, and Christian men and Christian ministers are found to defend this practice, of which the dangers are, however, grave. As the " Episcopalian " Bishop of Kentucky has said, " This is all I plead for, that separation from us is for the negro destruction, and perhaps for us as well." An attempt is being made at the present moment — which has not yet become what is known in America as a " live issue " in the political world — to either drive out or dis- franchise the negro, or at least to limit that political power of which he has not lately, however, contrived to make much effective use. It is asked indignantly, by Southerners and by some Northern members of the Democratic party, whether the negro has the education, the integrity, tne knowledge of American institutions, that make him more deserving of the electoral franchise than American men of eighteen or twenty, or than American wives and mothers. It is admitted that tlie Soutliern whites have now for some years past controlled the negro vote, and that the negroes have left off supporting Republican " carpet-baggers " from the North, and vote in great numbers with their employers ; but, on the other hand, it is asserted that this result has been attained by much electoral corruption, and, in any case, may not prove lasting, and the Northern public are asked whether they intend that in several of the States negro majorities shall eventually rule. It is pointed out that in a compact group of thirteen States the negroes form nearly half the population, and are increasing more rapidly than the whites, and that America must look forward to the whole South passing under negro electoral control, while amalgamation of the races is so hateful to the notions of the Southern whites as to be impossible of attain- ment. With regard to amalgamation the Southern sentiment is carried in some States to the point that the known existence of a single drop of negro blood in the veins of a woman essentially white makes her a negro for all social purposes, and in practice drives her from the country. It may also be taken as admitted that Southerners generally are willing to allow that the reduc- tion of the political influence of the negroes in recent times, in 106 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i spite of their growth in numbers, has been brought about in some degree by illegitimate means, although they contend that the very fact that it has been brought about, in whatever manner, shows want of governing power in the negro race. This feeling is not confined to the South, and affects great bodies of people in the North. Almost the whole of the courts of the Ancient Order of Foresters in America have been driven from the Order, because of their rules excluding negroes from membership, and of the insistence of the English governors of the Order upon the repeal of this restriction. It is unlikely that Northern sentiment will forcibly compel the Southern whites to abstain from violating the electoral laws. One of the two great parties which divide the country supports the Southern whites in their attitude, and the other is not united upon the question, for many of its wealthy members have large investments in Southern railroads and Southern mines and manufactures, and will not risk the chance of disturbance in the South, but will support a policy of non-interference with the State system. In the South itself, while there is no minority willing to accord to the negroes equal social rights, there is a large minority of far-seeing and intelligent men who are willing to make sacrifices for the education of the blacks in the hope that, when taught by white methods to look upon themselves as American citizens, with American rather than merely racial interests and aspirations, they will continue to be, as for one cause and another they at this moment are, divided between the two political parties, and be no source of danger to white insti- tutions. Our own and the French experience in the West Indies will be found on the whole favourable to the blacks, showing that, under the fair treatment that they meet with in the French and in some of the English islands, they may be trusted to exercise electoral power with advantage to the com- munity at large, and this even in colonies in which they form an overwhelming majority of the population. Tlie burden Anotlier point in which there has been some change in the of arma- situation of the United States towards the world at large, since ments. I last wrote, is in the matter of national expenditure — the American Commonwealth with her fabulously great prosperity, succeeding, in sjoite of lavish and wasteful expenditure upon pensions growing out of the civil war, in rapidly reducing her debt, while the European countries are running a race in the prodigality of their military expenditure. So small is the cost of Australian defence, efficient as it is, as compared with the revenues of the Australian colonies, so small would be the cost of an efficient militia system in Canada, were it to be adopted, as compared with Canadian resources, that our own great groups of colonies are, and will be, as regards this matter, in the same happy position as the Government of the United States. The advantage which America thus gains in purse, in development, and in national happiness, is shared by Australia, which has no military neighbours ; and all the various daugliter- CHAP. IV THE UNITED STATES 107 lands of England are blest in the contrast between their own happy freedom from the necessity of vast expenditure for war- like purposes, and the bankruptcy of the old world. The Canadian Opposition, indeed, deplore the existence of a large debt, almost entirely incurred, however, for reproductive ex- penditure needed for the development of the country, and trifling by the side of that cheerfully borne and willingly in- creased by every section of the Australian people ; but such a debt, even from tiie point of view of the objector or the pessimist, is a very difl'erent matter from the war debts of Europe or India. The effect of Continental-European expendi- ture upon armies and marines must be an augmentation in the emigration rate, already manifest in the case of Italy, and cer- tain to continue and to spread ; and this migration of the peoples from the old world to the new must benefit in the long- run the possessions of Great Britain more even than the United States, now fast becoming tilled with farming people. While the Canada of to-day as compared with the United States of 1890 is but a small power, there is reason to expect that the rate of increase of population in Canada will become more rapid and the immigration rate higher in proportion as the years pass by. I quoted just now a noticeable statement as to the strength America and happiness of the United States, and while, as we shall see and in the next chapter, time has called up a dangerous rival to the Australia. American in the Australian people, so far as happiness of exist- ence goes, the United States as regards power have amply fulfilled their promise of iifty-eight years ago, when Tocqueville wrote. American trade and influence are spreading westward across the North Pacific, and if I was able to prophesy in 1867 that the relations of America and Australia would be the key to the future of the Pacific, it is now certain that three federal powers will control that ocean, of which the Dominion of Canada and the United States of Australasia will probably I'emain under the same flag, but even so will be virtually, in their relations to one another, distinct but friendly powers. By the mission to Australia of the leader of the Dominion Upper House, with regard to communications and to trade, their direct relations have now begun. 120" J30 140: 150° long'itude l40°East of OreenwicTi ISO IHVm's T^oiteiTwt oT Greater Biitam'" Sianfbr^Js Geog^Sstxxb^ Londort. T™.^,™. 1ITo„«,^n„„ S. Cn PAET II AUSTRALASIA CHAPTEE I VICTOEIA A GROUP of colonies about as large as the Canadian Dominion, General or as the United States, or as Europe ; almost wholly settled character by people from the United Kingdom, but still sparsely peopled, of Aus- gives us in Australasia, now officially so called, the prospect of tralia. a remarkable development of our race under conditions of peaceful progress. The western part of the continent of Aus- tralia is as yet only a land of stones and flowers, and the greater portion of the remainder, to the unaccustomed eye a kind of desert, almost mountainless, and consequently almost without permanent rivers. In its thirstiest parts, however, enterprising colonists have gradually found that water can be stored and that sheep can live. In this vast isle the first city is the capital of Victoria, a colony which is for Australia small — one-thirty-f ourth part of the southern continent — not larger than Great Britain. Victoria is naturally a country of huge untidy trees, with only a few featliery leaves — trees that shed their bark in strips, and when cut do'wn impede the settler with hard stumps that have to be slowly consumed by 6re or dragged out of the ground by traction engines. But in soil it is a favoured land, and in climate — except when in summer the bell-birds sound their tuneful notes to a red suu and the tree-crickets chirp through tiery mists — is suitable to the English people and, even in summer, a healthy country for the white man. It was a happy thing not only for Australia, but for the British race, that the convicts that were sent out to Melbourne did not remain in what is now Victoria, but, after an " indignation meeting," were removed elsewhere. When first I wrote about this interesting colony its so-called Victoria — Upper House was fighting against the Lower, with much spirit, changes Sir Charles Darling had not long left, and tlie Council and during the Assembly were quarrelling over a proposed grant of £20,000 to ^^^ twenty Lady Darling, as well as about payment of members, tariff', and y^'"'^' other matters. For two years running the Council had rejected the Appropriation Bill on account of the practice of " tacking." The public servants were being paid without any Appropriation Act by the simple process of bringing suits against the Govern- ment which were not defended, obtaining judgment, and draw- 112 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paut u iug the money from the Treasury. In 1878 tliere was another deadlock over payment of members, the rejection of tlie reform bill for the Council, and Mr. Berry's visit to England. Dead- locks are now at an end, and the plutocratic has learned to give way to the popular House in great matters, but in small ones it still, although reformed in its constitution, sometimes shows its teeth. Since I first wrote about Victoria the land system of free selection by agricultural settlers has received immense development, and jDayment of members for the Lower House has now long been law, and has met with a success which has astounded some of its former opponents, since become sup- porters of payment. The members of the Upper House are not paid, though the Lower House wished that they should be, and though the Senators of the Canadian Dominion receive pay. The common school system since 1872, when it received its present form, has braved continual attack by a well-organised Roman Catholic minority, consisting of a quarter of the popula- tion, and supported in this matter by the influence of many of the clergy of the Church of England, and the coalitions which have been formed from time to time to maintain free, compulsory, secular education, without aid to denominational schools, have brought together Conservatives and Eadioals, free traders and protectionists. That bitter social and political class feeling, that hatred between the squatter aristocracy and the farming and town democracies, which was once of singular intensity in Victoria, has all but disappeared. While democracy and State- socialism have completely ti-iumphed, the conservatism of those who have much to lose has been quieted by the practical proof that their interests are safer in Victoria than they are in many older countries, that socialism in the French and English sense is less developed in Victoria than even in the United States, and that a considerable body of small proprietors, and of house- owning workmen, have become sturdy supporters of the present order of society. Viotoriathe X have treated of the colony of Victoria first among the Aus- inost inter- tralian colonies because it has long been the most interesting of estingottiie ^.j^g group. At the present moment its opinions are perhaps of Australiau jg^g immediate importance than are those of Queensland, which CO onies. liappens to be making itself disagreeable to the Government of the mother -country ; but Victoria has been the leader in the democratic and State-socialistic movements which render Australia a pioneer for England's good. Australia tries for us experiments, and we have the advantage of being able to note their success or failure before we imitate or vary them at home. Although New South Wales is slightly the superior of Victoria in present commercial importance, and, having vastly larger territory, will outstrip it in the race, Victoria, from the char- acter of its people, the nature of its history, and the situation of its lands, is the most attractive as well as the most energetic of the southern colonies. In the very beginning of its career as a settlement, when OHAP. I VICTORIA X13 Port Phillip was a district of New South Wales, its grassy Prosperity parks, lightly timbered, and prepared by nature, as it were, for of Viotoiia. sheep, attracted a good class of settlers, who brought in capital. Their flocks and herds increased, and before the discovery of ^old the possessions of each true settler averaged something like 10,000 sheep and 1000 cattle. The gold discoveries pushed Victoria rapidly along the road of progress, and squatters and diggers together speedily became men of means. Victoria soon attained among all countries the first place in one particular. It was the district of the world in which the average propor- tion of wealth to inhabitants was greatest ; California standing second. Victoria has not advanced so rapidly in wool production as Victorian have some of the other Australian colonies, and her annual gold trade and production has dwindled to little over two millions sterling ; Protection, but, while her staple industries are no longer proportionately what they were, Victoria has immense capital and a great number of various resources upon which to rely. Her wheat exj)orts are considerable, and her export of manufactures large. It is this last point which is the wonder of some of the local free traders, but a partial explanation may be found in that plethora of capital which has just been named. Victoria now manufactures or makes up almost all the articles of every-day use that she requires, and, in spite of the protective duties of all the other Australasian colonies save one, exports such articles to those states. I shall examine into the advance of Victorian manufactures when I come to discuss colonial Pro- tection. It is well, however, to at once put in a word to guard against that exaggeration which is prevalent as regards Vic- torian Protection ; the avei-age duty upon the total value of the Victorian importations has until lately been low as compared with the average in many of our Crown Colonies, and in such self-governing colonies as New Zealand, the Canadian Dominion, and Queensland. No doubt a large proportion of the Victorian imports consists of goods imported to be re-exported, and espe- cially the wool from the back districts of New South Wales, for which Melbourne is the most convenient port ; but the average Victorian duties were up to the end of the session of 1889 only 11 per cent. Victoria, in spite of her Protection, stands extra- ordinarily high in the list of countries which form the markets for goods manufactured in the United Kingdom. Without dealing at this moment fully with Victorian Protection, we may nevertheless fittingly consider some questions, in a sense connected with it, concerning movement of capital and of population. Victoria has almost from her very birth been at the head of all countries in statistics, and the Year-Book of the Govern- ment statist and the other productions of his oflfice are as nearly perfect as such works can be. Yet in spite of the care with which Victorian statistics are compiled it is not easy to get at the exact facts that bear upon the condition of the people ; as, I 114 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paut ii for example, those with regard to the movement of population Waves of between the colonies. As far as I can understand the figures, prosperity they point to waves of prosperity and depression affecting some aud de- and not the whole of the colonies, and causing ebb and flow. pression. For instance, in 1888 there had been some depression in New South Wales, as it is said — that is, upon the coast of New South Wales and in the best known portions of the colony. There had been also some depression in South Australia and New Zealand, and there had been a wave of prosperity in Victoria. But, while immigrants had come from the South Australian and New Zealand coasts to Melbourne, there had been at the same time a movement from Victoria into the back country. In other words, the immigration of one class of people was counterbalanced by the emigration of another. The western half of New South Wales and the greater part of Queensland have been utilised by capitalists from Victoria, who have found in the domains of these vast colonies room which was wanting in Victoria. A large share of the Eiverina country of New South Wales is held by Melbourne squatters and Melbourne syndicates, and all up the course of the Darling river the land is mainly owned by Victorians ; hence the hands upon these stations are also often sent up from Melbourne, and, as the stations grow and thrive they provide for the surplus labour of Victoria. Then, again, many of the sugar plantations of Queensland are owned by Victorians, and some of the cattle runs of that country are in the like case. There is a constant stream of labour from Melbourne to these places. All the boys in Victoria who want to " rough it," find Melbourne men who own "runs" in Queensland or in the back country of New South Wales, and go off to the wilder portion of those colonies. Again, with the capital that goes out from Melbourne there goes also a supply of bank managers and bank clerks, along with the squatters, and the stock-riders, and the cattle-drovers, and the hotel-keepers and store-keepers who accompany them. Capital and labour stream northward from Melbourne and share with those of Sydney in the development of the resources of the interior. The arrivals in and departures from Victoria are both high. A large number of people come there in a state of poverty, anxious to make their way in a colony in which rumour states that all are prosperous. After they reach the jjromised land they find that wages in some unskilled employ- ments are liigher in New South Wales, and many go across the border, while another and a different stream, composed of people of more substance, as has been shown, keeps also flowing northward to the neighbouring and sparsely peopled colonies. No very weighty argument for or against free trade can be founded upon the emigration or population figures of the two great neighbouring Australian colonies. The passing of Victoria by New South Wales in total population was to be expected, looking to the vastly greater extent of land comprised in tlie older colony. CHAP. I VICTORIA 115 There can be no doubt that during the last few years, in Englisli spite of the enormous amount of local capital in Victoria, a money in tide of British capital also has flowed into tliat colony. A high Victoria, rate of interest combined with safety has naturally tempted capital from Europe, and while the money of Melbourne has gone off into the backlands of Australia, outside the limits of the colony, drawn thither by a still hi^-her rate of interest, English capital has not competed with it m these iields because of the want of knowledge with regard to them which prevailed at home, but British capital has replaced Melbourne capital in Melbourne itself. There has been a great deal of investment of capital from Europe in that purchase and repurchase of city properties in the great town which was in 1888 growing at a most extraordinary rate. Sydney people used to speak Melbourne, contemptuously of Melbourne as a "mushroom city," but it continues to be the chief town of the Australian continent, and to increase more rapidly than the older capital. Unless its growth be checked, of which there is as yet no sign, for tlie depression of 1889 was but temporary, half the people of the colony will soon be found living in the city and its suburbs. There are some who predict that under a more complete Australian Federation than now exists Melbourne will be at once the New York and the Washington of Australia — the federal capital as well as the centre of colonial commerce ; but even without the selection of Melbourne as the capital, which will be prevented by the jealousies of the rival cities, the situation of Port Phillip makes it unlikely that Melbourne will decline. Fabulous prices are paid for blocks of land in the business portion of the town, and buildings are erected as high as those at Knightsbridge or at Queen Anne's Gate, and yield a handsome rate of interest to the investor. The population of the city and immediate suburbs increases on the average at the rate of something like 15,000 people a year : from three to seven thousand new houses are run up in the year, so that the build- ing trades are busy, and money has been rapidly made by contractors, owners of brickyards, small iron foundries, estab- lishments for providing plumbers, plasterers, and so forth. Money has Ijeen saved steadily by the journeymen employed, and there has been a large consequent increase in the savings bank deposits. The "land boom" of 1888 brought in from neighbouring colonies many persons with a little capital who transferred their concerns to Melbourne and set up in business there. The influx of capital has been assisted by agricultural prosperity. As a result of her land legislation, in which Vic- toria took a lead through having adopted democratic views upon the land question more rapidly and fully than they prevailed in New South Wales, the former colony has been able of late not only to supply her own food-stuffs, but to export wheat largely and also to beat New South Wales in wine growing, in which the larger colony had a start. The price of land throughout the colony has gone up fast 118 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN The price of land. Land legis latioii. Taxation directed against large estates. (though there was a temporary fall in 1889), suburban lands rising in value in a most amazing way, and villas now dot the landscape for a great distance all round Melbourne. Some land near Melbourne has risen in value in six or seven years from £10 to £500 the acre. So far as past experience may be relied upon, this extraordinary rise in the value of suburban land is a natural process and not an artiiicial inflation of prices, and the prices reached in most districts are permanent — stationary or increasing, and seldom going back at all. The land sales in Melbourne and its neighbourhood had reached, in 1888, fabulous amounts, the sales by public auction attaining a figure of thirteen million pounds worth of property in a year — a portion of this sum representing, however, land sold several times over. In 1889 the exaggerated hopefulness of the time of the "land boom" was followed by an equally exaggerated panic. The value of shares in public companies in Victoria, judged by selling price, fell two millions sterling in twelve months, but there were comparatively few insolvencies, and only some feeble companies disappeared. The revenue con- tinued to pour in, and while the colony suffered, in common with all the others, from drought, the manner in which the financial shock was sustained by Victoria was a marvellous testimony to the soundness of her position. Speculators suffered, but building societies and savings banks continued to flourish and increase. The experience of the land question in Victoria shows that settlers are slow to occupy land for farming on reiital. From 1865 and 1869, when the system of allowing the selection of land at easy rates with a view to the ultimate acquirement of the freehold was introduced and extended, an immense number of farms were " taken up " in Victoria in the course of a few years. The Land Act of 1869 practically embodied " free selection before survey " over the entire territory, and was successful ; but it was not until 1883 that the leasing system was fairly introduced, and very littlS good land easily accessible was then left for occupation. There is now a tendency to discourage the sale of the unalienated portion of the colonial public estate, and to rather bring into the market, for agricultural settlement, lands which have already been purchased and are held in large estates. There exist in Victoria two forms of taxation which are directed against great estates — the succession duty, graduated from 1 to 10 per cent according to the extent of the property which passes, and a land-tax which, although not graduated like the succession duty, is a tax with considerable exemptions the classes of exemption being so constructed that the tax is clearly intended to bring land into the market. The tax is 1| per cent a year on the taxable value, that is, after deduction of the exempted amount, and the whole tax falls upon under three hundred persons. Sir Graham Berry, the author of the tax, attempted to amend the classifications in 1880-81 but CHAP. I VICTORIA 117 altliougli his Bill would have removed some admitted anomalies, the net effect of his proposed changes would have been to increase the amount received from the tax by £70,000 a year, for which reason the Legislative Council or Upper House threw out the Bill. In the meantime the tax, although not important, lias satisfied the public mind. Its principle is certain to be extended whenever the colony is in want of money, but at jiresent the country is too prosperous to feel any such need. The ultra-radical party in Victoria desire a progressive land-tax, increasing with the increase of area ; but their view is the view of a minority, and it is generally felt that before estates are broken up in Victoria by taxation or by any kind of legislation many will Jiave been divided by the democratic effects of irriga- tion, which, as we shall see farther on, makes small farms pay better than large properties. The democratic party in Victoria have for their land maxim : Land " The settlement of men upon the land, instead of its sale to the views of highest bidder," but ai-e not, as a body, land natioualisers. democratic There was at one time in Victoria a Land Keform League, party, afterwards called the Land Tenure Reform League, established in Melbourne by a Mr. Gresham, who tried to get into the Vic- torian Assembly as a land nationaliser but did not succeed. The earth hunger of the artisans, which had overthrown the Crown tenants, was too strong for Mr Gresham. He set forth his principles when standing for an agricultural district in 1868, and the League was active from 1870 to 1872, upholding the doctrine that the State should be the sole landlord and should never alienate land. The League circulated largely a reprint of portions of the Social Statics of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and also reprinted from the Westminster Heview an article on the land question by Mr. Syme, proprietor of the Melbourne Age, sometimes called " the apostle of Protection." Mr Higinbotham, the present Chief Justice, and Mr. Syme both supported the League with their purse. Mr. Gresham afterwards stood for an urban constituency, and again failed. The practical programme of the League was the cessation of the sale of Crown lands, and the leasing of the public domain for thirty years, with security of tenure and revision of rents on the expiration of the lease. I believe that Mr. Higinbotham on one occasion made an attempt in the Assembly to stop the further alienation of the public estate, and Mr. Syme through the Age has often preached the same doctrine, but without the effect, in the one case, of obtain- ing a vote of the Assembly, or, in the other case, of converting the Victorian people. In a very able article in the Melbourne Review, in 1879, Mr. Syme showed how great had been the loss of the community in the neighbourhood of Melbourne by the out-and-out sale of the public domain, and he then proposed as a remedy a tax upon land wliich would secure to society the further increment. He supported his argument from the protectionist point of view, showing that the revenue from customs ought to decrease in 118 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part ii proportion to the success of the Victorian iiscal policy, and that,_ as resort must be had to direct taxation to cover the deficiency, it would be well to make the owners of town and suburban land contribute their full share. He therefore sug- gested a land tax, to be periodically increased as unearned increment accrued, but to be on the land alone and not on improvements. The whole movement produced but little result, for the Victorian artisan would not listen to State landlordism ; but the rich of all classes liave been reached by the graduated progressive succession duty and by the tax on lands worth more than £2500. No objec- Although there is this strong disinclination in Victoria to tionin State ownership of the soil, there is no objection to State inter- Victoria to ference generally. Indeed the strongest disposition exists in State in- Victoria, and, though in n, less degree, throughout Australia tei-ference. generally, to think that the State is able to influence the pros- perity of a country to a larger extent than is believed possible by us in Great Britain, or by our descendants in Canada and the United States. It is almost impossible to deny assent to Victorian views in favour of State-socialism in young countries. Lord Bramwell himself would become a State-socialist if he inhabited Victoria. In the rich young colonies the climate and soil offer wealth in return for population, but there are no people to construct the public works that are needed before the wealth can be won, and Government alone can do so, but can do it either upon the Australian or upon the American system. In the United States and Canada companies are brought into existence by enormous prospective gifts of land in return for the performance of certain operations, and most of the various Pacific railroads were made rapidly upon tliis plan. The companies were bribed to make them, or, if the phrase is preferred, largely paid in land to make them. The Australians have more logically, and there is reason to think somewliat more economically, decided to keep public works mainly in the hands of the colonial Governments. There is, in short, as I have already suggested by my reference to State-socialism, a considerable tendency noticeable in Victoria, towards Govern- ment interference with regard to matters in which the State does not interfere at home. In Australia generally the railways are the property of the State, but in Victoria a similar policy is being pushed very far in many — as, for example, in agricul- tural and horticultural — matters. Tlie Victorian Government not only help to support hospitals and charities and mechanics' institutes, but also spend money more freely in proportion than do European Governments on elementary and university educa- tion, botany, astronomy, schools of mines and design, and on parks. Govern- The consequences of the State control of railways in the ment rail- colonies have been such that the majority of the few private ways. lines which had been made have been bought up by the colonial Governments. Most of the lines were from the first constructed OHAr. I VICTOKIA 119 managed, and owned by the State, and the results of the system in Australia Jiave been apparently at least as good as the result of the opposite system in North America. The Melbourne and Hobson's Bay Eailway, which was in private hands, was bought by Victoria in 1878, and in Tasmania, where the initiation of railway schemes had been left to private enterprise, the State has now bought out most of the companies. It is generally admitted in Victoria that there were many Board of blots on the system of State control of railways until the ap- Commis- pointment of a board of three Commissioners independent of siouers. political influence. It is confessed that the management of a large department, spending a vast amount of money upon labour, when in the hands of political ministers, is often worked for political ends. "Log-rolling," in the construction of rail- ways for private advantage, admittedly existed. It was some- times found in Victoria that weak ministries, clutching at straws to save themselves from drowning, were willing to risk the future prosperity of the system for a little temporary help in the hour of trouble. Yet even under political management the railways of Victoria seem not to have been badly managed on the whole, and to have given a fair amount of satisfaction to the people. They were worked at a slight loss, but railways were constantly being pushed out into sparsely peopled dis- tricts, and the State was willing to look forward to the time when, the population having followed the railroads, the land near them would be weU settled, and the railroads no longer a charge upon the State. That time has come. The Commis- sioners are now working the lines upon a commercial basis, and the railway system of Victoria is self-supporting, the average rate of profit on capital expended having reached 4j per cent. The railways could have been made to pay a better return upon the capital invested, but the object of the State in the colonies has never been to make money directly from the rail- roads, but rather to encourage industry and to render service to the people. Fares and freights have been constantly lowered, so as to keep the revenue at a figure which would just pay all expenses. The profit that would elsewhere have gone into the pockets of shareholders, with no check save that supplied by the competition of other lines— a competition which in itself implies the creation of unnecessary lines and tlie sinking of unnecessary capital— has in Victoria been converted into a means of lightening the load upon the farmers, and permitting graziers at great distances from Melbourne to supply that city with beef at moderate prices. Tlie Government of the demo- cratic colony has not failed to have regard to the desirability of lessening the obstacles that parted friends residing at long distances from each other, and of permitting city men, without greatly increased expenditure, to live far from the town in which they work. Eailway fares in Victoria compare favour- ably with those of other communities, and we must in addition make allowance for the diflerence in the purchasing power of 120. PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet n money. Very similar rates prevail in the other colonies, and in all of them the railways are -worked less to pay interest upon capital than as subservient to the common weal. Persons en- gaged, or supposed to be engaged, on missions of importance to the State are granted free jJasses over the colonial lines. The railways are used for tlie spread of education, and in New South Wales and some other colonies the school children are carried free of charge. In Victoria remissions of fares are made in the case of students in the schools of mines and in the schools of design. Specially low rates exist in all the colonies for sub- urban traffic. The fares in the neighbourhood of Melbourne, for a district nearly 30 miles across, are for single journeys Id. a mile first-class, and fd. a mile second-class ; and return tickets are given at fd. a mile first-class, and M. a mile second-class ; while monthly, quarterlj^, half-yearly, and yearly tickets are granted at great reductions, even upon these low rates. The result is a wonderful spread of suburban railroad travelling, and the custom in Victoria is so developed that out of the large number of persons working in Melbourne who come in by train every day, a considerable proportion come to the town a second time in the evening to visit the theatres. Tlie lowness of rail- way fares in Victoria is the more striking when we remember that wages are twice as liigh for shorter hours as they are in England, and that coal costs nearly twice as much. No one in Victoria now advocates private ownership of railways. Mileafe The Victorian system of managing the State railways by a and cost of non-political Commission has been recently imitated by most tlieAustral- of the other colonies in the South Seas. The extent of railroads asianrail- now in the hands of the colonial Governments is very large, ways. The railways of our Australasian colonies have a mileage equal to half the railway mileage of the United Kingdom. The new railways that are being made in all the colonies are costing the colonial Governments, in spite of the dearness of labour and of machinery, only about one-tenth as much per mile as the Eng- lish railways cost, although the earliest railways constructed in Victoria cost as much as English lines. At the same time the colonial lines, on the whole, are of a more substantial type than the lines of the United States, where trestle bridges of wood are used instead of solid embankments. The Queensland lines are of a narrow gauge, but the Victorian lines are of the broadest. Govern- We have become familiar in England of late years with the inent owning of telegraphs by the State, but we have unfortunately telegraphs, j^q^ become acquainted with low rates. Our rates] in England are heavier than those which prevail in some parts of the Continent of Europe : but the average telegraph rates of our colonies, in spite oi the difference in the value of money, are lower in proportion to distance than are those of the old world. Public de- Not only have the State railways of Victoria been placed pavtiueuts under non-political management, but this lias been the case under non- vjrith the public departments generally. Tlie Commissioners political appointed to free the public service from the former incubus of CHAP. I VICTORIA 121 political patronage are as well paid as tlie judges, and as free manage- from pressure of any kind. The Civil Service Comuiissioners nieut. of Victoria, who are three in number, began their work some five years ago by visiting every place in the colony where public officers were stationed, learning the nature of their duties, determining their relative importance, and classifying the oiEcers accordingly. Salaries were systematised and made uniform in all departments, and appointments and promotions are now determined by the Board. Heads of departments are allowed to make recommendations as to promotion, but the Commission is alone responsible, and, although the Commis- sioners are much guided by the advice of the heads of depart- ments, that advice does not relieve them from any share of responsibility. They are bound to satisfy themselves that the promotions recommended are right, however much they may go to the officials for evidence and information. While the officials of the Education Department are under the Commissioners, the mere teachers are not included in the ordinary Civil Service, and their promotions are determined by a different Board, partly appointed by Government and partly elected by the teachers. The Victorian Civil Service Commission has met with success. Success of and on the rare occasions when members of Parliament have the Civil hinted at a desire to revert to their old practices the voice of Service the community lias at once drowned the whisper of such a Coramis- suggestion. The Civil Service, which was at one time a s'°"- byword, is now a credit to the colony, and nothing can exceed the average capacity, industry, and trustworthiness of its public servants. A British admiral not long ago made a Payment of speech in which he asserted that the Victorian Parliament can members, be bought or bribed ; but he had been wholly misinformed, and his speech not only did great harm but was untrue. In reading tlie comments on it in the colonial newspapers I was struck by one which I found in an agricultural paper, not over friendly to either the Government or the Parliament of Victoria, which almost unwillingly paid a tribute to the honesty of the Victorian legislature in the following words: "Our members are bad enough at striving for office, and wasting time over it, but our legislature is one of the purest in the world. Bribery and corruption are absolutely unknown in our politics, bad and all as they are." The newspaper in question proceeded to explain that the admiral had received his information from an " absentee squatter," and then went on : " The old squatter was probably here when the large estates were being formed and tliere was no payment of members. The poorest members now would despise both him and liis money." A remarkable testimony to the political honour prevalent in the highest places in the Australian colonies is the fact that two of the leading statesmen, belonging to different colonies, who have notoriously been in financial straits throughout their lives, although tliey have for long periods been all powerful, 122 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt ii have not only remained scrupulously honest, which is nothing, hut have never been charged with or suspected of dishonesty by their most savage political opponents, which is much. The Argus is a Melbourne Conservative newspaper, but the Argus is as proud of the financial purity of the Victorian Assembly as is the democratic Aqe, and it is a fact that since payment of members was introduced parliamentary money scandals have been all but unknown. Local gov- Not only were complaints once made of political influence in ernment. appointments to and promotions in the public service in the colonies generally, and in Victoria among the others, but similar complaints were also at one time directed against the system that obtained in local government. Just as in France, so in Victoria, it was said that the wishes of the administration with regard to elections had much to do with State aid to public works that should have been regarded as being of a purely local nature. When I wrote upon Victoria in 1868, and again later in the Cobden Club volume on Local Government and Taxation published in 1875, I described the local govern- ment system of the colony. There never has been much trouble in Victoria about the towns ; tlie difficulty arose with regard to the outlying rural districts, with respect to which appUcations used to be made to Government through members of the Assembly for assistance. The present system is that in the out-of-the-way parts of the country Government con- tributes, within certain restrictions, £2 for every £1 raised by the rates. The local bodies, of course, know the local needs, and a practical test of the urgency of these needs is provided by the requirement that these sparsely jDOpulated localities shall find at least one-third of the cost, and the plan has proved to be a fair system for obtaining the advantages of decentralisa- tion along with those of the opposite system. The roads and bridges which are initiated by the sparse populations of new districts are, of course, often works of general utility ; just as are the main roads of England, towards which the county contributes as a whole, and to which, from 1881 up to April 1889, the State contributed. The State in Victoria does not absolutely confine its contributions to the rural districts, but the contributions in large towns are small, and are based upon ii, different system. Generally speaking it may be said that, while in the thinly populated " shires " the Victoriaji Govern- ment contributes, for the purpose of assisting the population in providing conveniences which are national as well as local, double the sum that is locally raised, in wealthier and more populous districts the State contribution declines until it about equals the local contribution, and in the great cities falls to a contribution of one-tenth. Tramways The principle of Government co-operation with localities m hands of has been carried into a large number of different fields in mumci- tijg colony of Victoria : ti'amways, for example, are constructed pamies. jjy municipalities on Government loans, the State borrowino- CHAP. 1 VICTORIA 123 money for the municipalities on the best terms which the colony can command m the market, but the municipalities ultimately becoming the owners of the lines. The legislature, in establishing the tramway system of Victoria, gave the municipalities the choice of whether they would construct the lines themselves or leave the construction to the Govern- ment, which was willing to undertake it as a portion of its railroad system. The whole of the municipalities, however, twelve in number, decided to use the privilege conferred upon them. In Sydney, on the other hand, the tramway system has been kept in the hands of the Government of New South Wales, and has been treated as a part of the railway system of the colony. In Victoria the municipalities will become the owners of the tramway lines without purchase and without payment. The tramway companies, in the meantime, are forced to repair the adjoining roads, ^and the municipalities have not merely the reversion of the lines themselves, but in Melbourne alone have obtained from the companies nearly forty miles of excellent wood pavement, while the companies are paying a, large dividend upon their shares. The secretary of one tramway line receives from his company a salary of £3000 a year, and is considered cheap at the price, so enormous is the tramway traffic. Tlie cars are worked upon the cable system, with perfect smoothness, at an average rate of eight miles an hour, including stoppages ; and they stop with the greatest ease to pick up and set down whenever hailed. Sand- hurst has started its tramways upon the electric system. The most notable instance in Victoria of the characteristically Irrigation. Victorian effort to unite central action with local knowledge and local control is seen in the irrigation system, the credit of which is due almost entirely to the present Colonial Secretaiy, Mr. Deakin. The irrigation system of Victoria, which will change the whole physical aspect of the country as well as affect its political future, and which is likely, if transported to New South Wales and South Australia, to be of even greater moment to those diT' countries than it will be to the colony of its origin, is one of recent date. Although Victoria has a fair average rainfall, there are parts of the colony which often suffer from persistent want of rain. On the inland side of the low dividing range the climate is not only drier as a whole than on the coast, but it has also the unhappy habit of baulking the farmer's hopes. The wheat -growing land of Victoria which lies in this district, where the rain is apt to fall when it is not wanted, and to fail to come in the short period when it is, con- sists of tertiary deposits near the Murray. There, in ages now long past, when tlie Murray, instead of being a sickly dried-up stream, was a kind of southern Nile, bearing upon its wide waters the same annual gift of fertilising mud, there were stored the elements of an inexhaustible fertility. There are districts near the coast which are richly favoured as grazing lands ; other tracts of disintegrated volcanic rook where schemes. 124 PROBLEMS OF GREATER 15RITAIN" taut ii potato-fai-niing is carried on with extraordinary success ; but the best wheat-growing portion of tlie colony is that which I have described, and it is badly oti' for rain. Other fertile districts are those that lie in the western part of the colony, in IDlains which are well watered in winter by the Wimmera, the Avoca, and the Avon ; but in summer the beds of these streams may be crossed without any suspicion of the existence of a river in the neighbourhood. Farmers sow wheat seed in the depth of winter ; and the soft spring sunshine and frequent showers of August, and the stronger sun of September, see it high ; but November burns it up, and a crop of abundant promise is apt ultimately, through want of moisture, to yield nothing for the farmer's pains. Mr. In 1884 a Victorian Royal Commission was appointed to Deakin's examine into the best methods of conserving the supply of irrigation water and dealing it out to the farmer when in need. Mr. Dealdn was chairman of the Commission, and went to America, according to his instructions, to study the Californian irriga- tion system. Mr. Deakin recommended that the State should exercise supreme control over the sources of water supply. He pointed out the great difference between Victoria, and even the British colonies generally, on the one hand, and the United States upon the other, as regarded the attitude of the State towards every form of enterprise, including the construction and management of railways, telegraphs, and water undertak- ings. He showed how in Victoria all these were in the hands generally of the State, but] sometimes, as regards water supply, of municipal bodies acting with money borrowed from the State. In America, railways, telegraphs, and water supply were almost invariably in private hands. The State Govern- ments in the United States had done little in the way of undertaking or assisting in the construction of irrigation works, while the Federal Government of the United States maintained an attitude of indifference. The large irrigation works of America had been constructed by private persons or by companies. Colorado and California had each procured a i-eport by the State engineer upon irrigation, but that was almost all that had been done in that direction by any public authority in the country. On the other hand, Mr. Deakin pointed out that there has been an immense deal of irrigation in America in places with a very similar climate to that of Victoria and where the crops produced are crops which could be produced in Victoria under irrigation. Mr. Deakin showed how, iji Southern California, in Utah, and in New ]\Iexico, he had gained experience whicli went to prove that lucerne could be grown under irrigation in Victoria with extraordinary success. Four, or even more, crops of lucerne can he raised in the course of a single year, and' a yield of twelve tons to the acre attained ; and lucerne iimi^roves by keeping, and can be stored for three years. Mr. Deakin also pointed out the marvellous future which, with irrigation, lies before the dry CHAP, I VICTORIA 125 districts of Victoria in fruit growing, and especially orange cultivation. Believing as he does in the advantages of the State possession of railroads, Mr. Deakin was able to point out that, by the low freights of Victoria, the farmers in the irrigated districts would be able to successfully compete with the farmers of the west-centre of tlie United States, who are crippled by the heavy railway freights upon their produce. The future that lies before Victoria in the production of olive oil, of currants, and of wine, was also pointed out, and the report concluded with the recommendations upon which subsequent legislation has been based. The boundless possibilities which, under a system of water storage and irrigation, belong to the flat or river district of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, where now in summer the land yawns in deep fissures beneath a brazen sky, form a subject which gives full scope to Mr. Deakin's oratorical powers. At the present moment the Australian colonists lose stock by the million head every few years through drought ; but with water storage, with irrigation of artificial grass-lands, and with resort to ensilage, these losses could be entirely prevented, while irrigation proper will bring into existence fruit and dairy industries, enabling what used to be thought the worst portions of Australia to maintain a dense population in comfort with steady employment and sure profits. The drawback to Australia in the present is the cessation of productiveness about one year in three ; and certainty in itself would make an extraordinary diiference to the prosperity of the country ; but when to certainty, as regards sheep and cattle, are added the possibilities of oil, orange, wine, and otiier small farming under an irrigation system, it becomes clear that the future of the colonies lies this way. When tlie time came for legislation Mr. Deakin proposed state that the Colonial Government should dispose of the water to money for local " trusts " appointed to provide for local needs, and that irrigation the State should at once gather and publish full information as works. to the suitability of various districts of the colony for irrigation. In June 1886 Mr. Deakin introduced a Bill embodying these principles. Part X of the Bill provided that certain classes of works should from time to time be declared national works by Parliament itself ; these being such as are connected with the sources of rivers in mountainous districts, for over these no one trust could exercise control without the danger of undue inter- ference with the rights of others. Works which, though neces- sary, lie outside the sphere of action of any local trust were to be undertaken by the State. The chief engineer of the Water Supply Department has, however, to certify to his belief that the return from the local trusts interested in any works under- taken as national will pay interest on the money expended by the State upon these works. The Bill became law in December 1886. Six districts had already applied to be allowed to form trusts, two-thirds of the landowners in these districts, that is to say, 126 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part ii generally speaking, the farmers, being parties to the application. State money was granted in these cases at 4j per cent, the loan being at 4 per cent, and the ^ per cent covering the cost of borrowing and of the relations between the Water Supply De- partment and the trust. The largest scheme was one to water 800,000 acres, the national works required by it costing about one and a half millions sterling. The total schemes involved a national expenditure of between three and four millions ster- ling. In 1889 the irrigation schemes were being rapidly pushed on, and some thirty irrigation trusts had been formed. A granite weir 900 feet long was constructed across the chief internal river, diverting streams on either side into the rich plains of the north, the larger of them flowing into the biggest storage basin in the world. It is expected that in five or six years cultivation will be revolutionised in the large area affected )jy this scheme. There has been some appearance of delay with regard to actual irrigation, but it must be remembered that much work was necessary to conserve and direct the water upon a scientific system of storage and supply before irrigation could take place. In the Australian summer of 1889-90 irrigation is really begin- ning in Victoria, but even now only upon a comparatively small scale, though there will soon be 50,000 acres watered under the new schemes. Time is necessary to train farmers to make good use of the irrigation, and before its full results are reaped some years of practical experience will be needed. The fruit orchards require, moreover, from four to six years before they come into bearing. There is much to be learnt as regards the handling of fruit, and the conquest of markets for it : it will, however, jaay from the first, and the paying of the system will ensure its further development. The water has first to be stored and taken to the land, and by the summer of 1890-91 the Goulburn river will be pouring life into the dry plains, and progress will be made on a great scale with State aid. The prin- The principle of the Victorian irrigation scheme is, then oiple of the that combination of central action with local action, that plan irrigation of helping districts to help themselves, wliicli we have noticed scheme. in Victorian rural local government generally. The State does that which must be done by the State if it is to be done at all, but what can be done locally is left to the locality with State aid. Private In addition to the Government and municipal works, one inigation private firm has started irrigation works upon a large sca'le in worlds. a tract so dry that, when some leases in it were put up to auction not long before these gentlemen began their operations, the highest rental ofiered was a penny a year for 14 acres' although the principal river of Australia, the Murray, wind.s round the district. There is a good deal of the Mallee scrub- land in the north-west of Victoria which is let by the State for pasture in large blocks at a penny for 20 acres, and Mildura was looked upon as almost as poor a place. The owners of the CHAP. I VICTORIA 127 Mildura property gained their experience of tlie productiveness of an irrigation system in California, where they had previously started one of those great estates upon which Mr. Deakin, in his visit to California for the benefit of Victoria, was able to see the magnificent results of irrigation. Besides their Mildura lands they own also a property not far oflf, but situate in the colony of South Australia, for both properties are near the meeting of the three colonies wliicli divide the river tract. I once visited this district in the summer, and, with the thermo- meter at 116° in the shade, was not able to discover for myself its charms. At the same time I ventured then to prophesy, in Greater Britain, a development of the grape-growing industry, Wine which since those days has progressed indeed with marvellous production. rapidity. I thought that New South Wales, which had the start in wine production in its Kiverina district, would keep the lead, with South Australia for a second. But it looks at the present time as though Victoria would be the first Austral- ian wine-growing colony, run hard by the two others. The fact is that all three' possess about the same advantages for grape culture, and together ought to be, with tlie Cape and California, the future wine-growing districts of the world. I have still to say, as I said before, that the colonies suffer by trying to imitate the wines of foreign countries, instead of being willing frankly to produce their own. It is a curious fact with regard to Victorian wine production that the part of the colony which is most likely ultimately to grow fine wines is not as yet in favour for the purpose. Gipps- land will probably in the long-run produce the finest wines of all Australia, and very possibly the finest wines of all the world. If the growing prohibitionist party should ever get its way in Victoria the strange spectacle will be presented of one of the chief wine-producing countries being under the control of an electorate which is opposed to the manufacture and sale of wine. What is called " Prohibition " in Victoria is State-prohibition, and even the more extreme members of the local option party dislike the name "prohibitionist." The first State-proliibi- tionist candidate ever seen in Victoria appeared at the general election in 1889, and he lost the £50 deposit exacted from candidates as a test of serious intention, for he only polled about 70 votes in a constituency with nearly 3000 voters. The party that desires local prohibition has, however, increased in strength. But irrigation ofiers advantages which are sufiicient to secure its progress even if the teetotallers 'put down the use of wine. In the Mildura district the land with water produces such Success of heavy crops that the farms there will probably be very small irrigation. and the agricultural population extremely dense. Every kind of fruit that can be grown in England can be raised, as well as the productions of the south of Italy. The crops of grapes, of almonds, of olives, and of oranges are magnificent throughout the river counties when water lias once been applied to the soil. 128 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet ii The country upon the Murray banks lias hitherto had the air of a half desert — a desert varied, that is, in Australian fashion, only by the occasional presence of clumps of shadeless trees — and has been looked upon as almost desert even by Australian squatters. For living things there are noisy crickets that seem ready to eat up any vegetation that may be spared by the bush fires or the hot north winds of summer. The dryness of the country has prevented settlement, and the land is still occupied by sheep runs, and sheep runs carrying but few sheep. With a rainfall of from five to ten inches, and with one sheep to a hundred acres, the district, although splendidly situated with regard to the shape of the whole continent, has been looked upon as nearly worthless. Where water has been brought to bear upon it, as for instance at the town of Echuca, the parks and gardens are magnificent ; but all around the country is still parched and thirsty. Within a few years it is to be hoped that all this district (and there are 500,000 acres in the single Mildura scheme) will be maintaining thousands of those small working settlers who form the backbone of the colony of Vic- toria. It must be remembered that a family can live upon five or ten acres of land where the ground is treated with irrigation in such a way as to grow oranges and other productive fruit, and while sheep-farming keeps hardly any people in the country, as compared with wheat-growing, wheat-growing itself can pro- vide for one-fifth only of the population who can live upon an irrigated country growing artificial grasses, vegetables, and fruit. Rabbit One difficulty in the way of this vast change which now plague, exists was unknown at the time of my previous observations — the difficulty produced by the rabbit plague. In the case of the single scheme of which I speak a Government Report, from the chief engineer for water supply, shows that it will be necessary to put a ring of rabbit-proof fence round 250,000 acres of land, and nearly one hundred miles of such fencing was erected in 1888 upon this one estate. The fence is composed of wire net- ting, 36 inches wide, with two barbed wires, and there are round posts 6 inches in diameter every 66 feet, and rolled steel stand- ards every 16j feet. Some of the fences are constructed against rabbits only, but some have to be made proof against both rabbits and wild dogs. I have treated the irrigation system of Victoria as being almost wholly the work of Mr. Deakin, for little had been done before his day. In writing upon the Australian colonies I shall, indeed, be forced to give a considerable place to individuals, be- cause in these colonies men who, by their cultivation and experience, are fit for responsible positions do not form a very numerous class, and those who have the ability and the training to fill such positions with advantage naturally become great powers in the colonial State. It is, therefore, even more neces- sary in these oases than in that of European powers to consider the opinions and the characters of the leading men, and to treat CHAP. I VICTORIA 129 many colonial experiments in legislation from the personal Leading point of view, as their own children. men. In mentioning persons who have recently played a promin- The Gov- ent part in Victoria it is necessary to begni with the late ernorship Governor, wlio had been there from 1884 till 1889. The colony difficulty, of Victoria assumed a different position on the question of the appointment of colonial governors when it was raised by South Australia in the case of Lord Normanby, and by Queensland in the case of Sir Henry Blake, from that taken up by the other colonies. Victoria seemed to lay down the doctrine that who the governor might be was a matter which did not much con- cern the colony so long as he was limited to his constitutional functions. One main reason of this view being taken was, no doubt, that the Victorian Ministry and the majority of both Houses are strongly "anti- Catholic," and looked upon the protest against Sir Henry Blake's appointment, which alone became public at the time, the Norman by episode having been temporarily hushed up, as having been instigated from the Irish nationalist side. In the second place, however, the then governor of Victoria was much more popular than were the late governors of Queensland and of South Australia : and the result of this state of things was that the Victorian Parliament declined to express any view contrary to that present principle of the selection of governors which had given them so good a one. Sir Henry Loch had taken a deep interest in the colony sir Henry of Victoria, and, totally unknown at the time of his appoint- Loch, ment, had completely won the hearts of the people during his term of office. Sir Henry Loch was a little autocratic in his understanding of his office, and confined himself with some difficulty to a strictly constitutional view of his functions : but he is a manly man, pleasant to look at, good-humoured, cordial, frank, and full of energy and of interest in his duties. He had travelled over the whole colony, had mixed with all classes of the population, had entertained right royally both residents and visitors to an extent that must have swallowed up even his handsome salary and allowances. He had been much assisted by Lady Loch, whose tact made Government House the centre of social interest. She was indefatigable in her attention to chai'itable and other objects, and was as great a favourite as the Governor himself. Coming after what was colonially called "the frigid parsimony" of Lord Normanby, the tenure of office of Sir Henry Loch proved successful from beginning to end. Were all go\ernors as well chosen there would be few questions as to the mode of their appointment. Colonial views of persons are much coloured by the Irish The Irish problem. The Irish in Victoria, although they may not all be in "Victoria, good Roman Catholics from a religious point of view, are staunch Eoman Catholics politically, and, constituting as tliey do a quarter of the population, are a great political force, against which, however, of late the other parties have, and not for the first time, to some extent combined. The Irish Roman K 130 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt ii Catholic party up to 1889 appeared to have set themselves the task of obtaining State grants in support of denominational schools, and, in furtherance of this aim, had acted witli every opposition against every Ministry that would not promise the concession. When party feeling ran high between the Con- servatives and the Liberals upon the questions of reform of the Upper House, Protection, and payment of members, the Irish party assisted to put out first the Liberals under the present Sir Graham Berry, in February 1880, and in the succeeding July the Conservatives under Mr. Service. In 1881 the Irish leader. Sir Bryan O'Loghlen (an Irish baronet), moved a vote of want of confidence in the I5erry Government and defeated it by obtaining the support of the Conservatives, who afterwards, however, refused to join with him. He, nevertheless, obtained the help of a late Conservative whip, and, with the aid of tliat gentleman, composed an administration which was expected at the time to last only a few weeks. But the Conservatives, rather than consent to the return to power of the Berry party, unwillingly kept the Irish party in office. Progress in legisla- tion under these circumstances was of course difficult, and at the next general election the O'Loghlen Government, supported by the Irish Koman Catholics, was utterly routed. Coalition Liberals and Conservatives were returned in about equal Govern- numbers, and a coalition Ministry was formed under the leader- ments. sliip of Mr. Service, with Mr. Berry as Chief Secretary. In tliis Government Mr. Gillies held the portfolios of Kailways and Education, and Mr. Deakin was Minister of Public Works and Water Supply, and afterwards Solicitor-General. This parti- cular form of the coalition Ministry lasted three years, during which it put the railways under the management of the non- political Board I have described, and placed the civil service out of the reach of politics. It was replaced in 1886 by another coalition, headed by two members of the outgoing Ministry — Mr. Gillies as Prime Minister and Treasurer, and Mr. Deakin as Chief Secretary and Minister of Water Supply. This coalition has continued the work of the previous coalition, has established the irrigation system, and carried the Naval Defence Bill, and an Electoral Bill redistributing seats. The two great rival papers — the conservative and free-trade Argus and the protec- tionist and democratic Age — have both given their general support to the coalition. The Argus supports the coalition because, through it, the Conservative party remains sufficiently influential to prevent violent change ; but the Argus opposes the Liberal legislation of the coalition, and sides with the Upper House against the Lower when tliere is a difference of opinion. On the other hand, the Age supports the Liberal legislation of the coalition, but grudges seats m the Cabinet to the Conserva- tives, and growls at the " undue influence of the Conservatives" in proportion to their numbers. The Age, as a democratic paper, prefers excitement and strong measures, does not shrink from conflict, and somewhat dislikes prolonged quietude and CHAP. I VICTORIA 131 placidity. The support of such papers is of moment, for the capital plays a great part in Victoria. Melbourne contains a larger proportion of the population of its State than does any other capital in the world, and Melbourne opinion and the Melbourne press have enormous influence in politics. In neither of the two last Governments — that is to say, at no time since the fall of Sir Bryan O'Loghlen, which is a very long period for possession of power by one set of men in a colony — has any Irish Roman Catholic, I believe, held office ; and the Victorian Government has for all these years strenuously resisted every attempt headed by either Anglican or Roman Catholic bishops to touch the education system. The colony is proud of its common schools, and of standing Tlie school high in scliool attendance among the Australian colonies. At the system, general election of 1889 the Af/e suddenly came out with a fierce denunciation of theRoman Catholic candidates. It was a curious fact that, while at every previous election every Roman Catholic candidate had declared himself opposed to the secular system of education, at the general election of 1889 every single one declared himself favourable to it. The new policy was not to attack the existing system, but to be free to support a capita- tion grant to all private schools, most of which are Roman Catholic schools, and the throwing open of all scholarships and exhibitions offered by the State to the pupils of such schools as well as to those trained in the State schools. Tliis policy was opposed by the Government party as strongly as had been the earlier policy of the Roman Catholic Church, on the ground that it was destructive of the national character of the school system, and calculated to intensify distinctions which it was their desire to sweep away. The Age denounced an alleged alliance between the Roman Catholics and the publicans, and with such effect that several Roman Catholic candidates in Melbourne lost seats which they had had some chance of winning. Of the 60 thoroughgoing supporters of the Govern- ment returned in a House of 95 only 3 were Roman Catholics. By the operation of the coalition the feeling of hostility between Liberals and Conservatives has been for a time suppressed, although a severance is certain to come and may come soon. Each party has kept its machinery in working order, and parties are well organised in Victoria. For the moment the coalition stands, and the opposition itself is a coalition of all those various sections who do not like the Ministers or the Ministry. Substantially the coalition re- presents a Protestant alliance against the Roman Catholics, while the opposition includes nearly all the Roman Catholics in the House. After what I have said it will be easily understood how, when Sir Bryan O'Loghlen moved his resolution in 1888, supporting the action of the Queensland Government against the Colonial Office and Sir Henry Blake, it was accepted as an Irish movement, many of his own followers deserted him, and lie only mustered .3 votes to 59. 132 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paut ii Mr. Gillies. The Prime Minister, Mr. Duncan Gillies, is of Scotch birth,— a short, stout, ruddy man, of few words, save when he speaks in public. He was a digger in early days, was returned to Parlia- ment by his mates, and kept by them on liberal wages. He soon joined the Conservative or Constitutional party, and followed their fortunes for many years. Although now almost the oldest member of the Victorian House in point of length of service, he is still in the full vigour of health and ability, and his sturdy frame and fresh-coloured clean-shaven face show no trace of age. He is at once the highest authority upon parlia- mentary practice and the ablest debater in the House, of which he is, by knowledge and talent, the natural leader. Perfect lucidity and extreme incisiveness are the characteristics of his speech. He has nothing of the power of rousing enthusiasm which belongs to the late Prime Minister, Mr. Service, none of the passionate popular sympathies of the late Liberal leader. Sir Graham Berry. Mr. Gillies is extremely reticent in private ; his friends complain that they are never in his confidence, and his enemies accuse him of contemptuous coldness and in- difference. He is a man of remarkable intellectual power, and one who regards all questions in the light of pure reason ; an unsparing destroyer of shams, sophisms, and pretences. Without being popular, he is universally respected in the House, while people outside are a little puzzled to understand the nature of his influence. Mr. Gillies is a man too cool, too little moved by sentiment to make mistakes, save when his mantle has been pierced by criticism. In these cases he displays a dogged persistency which procures for him enemies, or causes friends to owe him a grudge which may turn them into enemies one day. Mr. Gillies is wanting in the power to sally forth and do deeds of enterprise and daring on his own account, but he has the even more useful gifts of sticking to his post with courage, and, by dint of following one path, achieving eventual success. Without possessing the talent of originating, and without the faculty of stirring human hearts, he manages his own and the public affairs in the style of a good man of business, making bargains on every side, never risking much, and always gaining something. His reserved and unsympathetic manner does not prevent him from keeping a close following of men, bound to him by little love but all sharing the Ijelief that those who do as Mr. Gillies does will do right in the end. Mr. Gillies is not a man who loves work for its own sake ; he is not eager to do to-day what can be done as well to-morrow. Cautious, circumspect, and deliberate, he is, nevertheless, capable of an immense amount of work when necessary. He has great powers of administration, though disposed to be somewhat indifferent and procrastinating. Now the leader of the Conservatives by sheer force of natural superiority, he has only gradually won the place and wrung from his party the tardy and almost unwilling acknowledgment of his suprernacy. Mr.Deakiu. The partner of Mr. Duncan Gillies in the coalition Ministry CHAP. I VICTORIA 133 is Mr. Deakin, the leader of the Liberal party. Elected to Parliament some eleven or twelve years ago as a Eadical, and having had to fight, in his first eighteen months in Parliament, four of the fiercest elections that ever took place in the colony, he is one of the youngest members of the House, and time is upon his side, as the future will show. Remarkable for his oratorical power, of which Lord Salisbuiy has reason to remember the force at the Colonial Conference, he is one of the few statesmen in any country who combine energy in speech with great power of work and high administrative skill. He is a certain future Prime Minister of Victoria, if not of a federated Australasian Dominion, and it may safely be predicted that his administration, when it comes, will not be the least remarkable of those that the colony has seen. Mr. Service, a former Prime Minister of Victoria, and first Mr.Service. President of the Federal Council of Australasia, is now a member of the Upper House, of which he is practically, and will soon be professedly, the leader. He supports the Gillies-Deakin coalition. His age has begun to afiect his physical powers, but he is still the eloquent speaker and the subtle leader who created the Conservative party of the present time in the face of desperate odds, and who led the Government and the House during three most brilliant years. Without the fervid oratory, the power of managing men, and the clever conciliatory policy of Mr. Service, Mr. Gillies would not have inherited the lead of an influential section of the House ; for in all these attributes Mr. Gillies is far less potent than was Mr. Service. The old Conservative leader may claim to have created the foreign policy of Victoria, and even of Australia itself. The agitations for saving the New Hebrides from France, for obtaining New Guinea for ourselves, and for creating Australian Federation, all took their shape from him, and in these movements Victoria and Queensland, which took the lead, were backed by general Australian opinion. Mr. Gillies, Mr. Deakin, and Mr. Service are all of them Australian Federationists ; but Mr. Service is, in addition, an ardent Imperial Federationist, as is Mr. Gillies in a more cautious way ; while Mr. Deakin prefers imperial co-operation, and looks upon Imperial Federation as remote, though he is strongly opposed to separation from the mother- country. Sir Graham Berry, the present Agent-General of Victoria in Sir Graham London, has to a very large extent, in the past, controlled the Berry, domestic policy of Victoria. His Protection, local-option, and land -settlement views are now the established policy of the colony, most unlikely to be disturbed. With Mr. Service, he was the most considerable figure of Victorian politics — first during the contests of the two men, and then during their alli- ance. In the earlier years Mr. Service was always analysing and refuting Mr. IBerry's fiery harangues, while Mr. Berry was Prime Minister and the popular idol, the best platform speaker outside Parliament, and the equal of Mr. Service within its walls. Mr. 134 PKOliLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Mr. Bent, Sir Bryan O'Loghleu. Mr. Higin- botham. Views of Mr. Higin- botham on the Gov- eruorsliip question. Service and the then Mr. Berry were the first representatives of Victoria on the Federal Council. Sir Graham Berry still possesses the confidence of the thoroughgoing protectionists in a higher degree than do the newer men. The leader of the Opposition until June 1889, Mr. Bent, who was Minister of Railways in the O'Loghlen Administration, is a man of great energy and enterprise, acuteness and readiness of mind — a man with much knowledge of men and power of management, with a fund of natural good humour, and a kind- liness which makes him many friends. He was an excellent whip in the days when he was a whip, but was perhaps a better whip than leader. He sits, I believe, as a Conservative, but was driven by his alliances into a somewhat varying policy as Opposition chief. On the other hand, Mr. Bent's colleague in Opposition, Sir Bryan O'Loghlen, is a sincere Liberal, a convinced Home Euler, but known even by his political enemies to be perfectly loyal to the British connection. He is a man of education — in former days one of the best Crown prosecutors — a good, but too frequent, and somewhat prolix speaker. With mucli sober judgment at most times, he is occasionally guilty of blunders in tactics which lead his foUowei's into great difficulty. He is an upright man, and a fair opponent when considered from the Government point of view. A devout Roman Catholic, he would sacrifice much for his Church. As an administrator, when tried as such, he was slow and timid. As a Parlia- mentarian he is somewhat wanting in quickness, — is loyal to his friends, but not infrequently injures them by a not very discreet persistency. The most considerable man in the colony, making every allowance for the immense promise of Mr. Deakin, is the Chief Justice, Mr. Higinbotham, wlio was already one of the most prominent politicians in Australia when I made a long stay at Melbourne twenty-two years ago. The Chief Justice is a man of lofty oharac1;er, enjoying the highest possible reputation for political integrity — an integrity so scrupulous, colonial states- men complain, as to make him occasionally impracticable. He breathed into the Victorian Assembly in its earlier days its deference to constitutional principle and procedure, which have Ijecome a portion of its very being. He was in his time the greatest orator that Australia has heard, and no man in Australia is more revered by the whole body of the people. In 1889 he became once more a prominent figure in colonial affairs. Strongly attached to the imperial connection, he nevertheless holds that governors should not even communicate with the Colonial Oflice upon the ordinary events of local politics, but should act as constitutional sovereigns upon the advice of their responsible Ministers, without even recollecting that there is a Colonial Ofiice that may take a certain interest in colonial proceedings. Mr. Higinbotham has always condemned the instructions to governors issued by the Colonial Office, and lie OHAP. I VICTORIA 135 has lately got tliem altered, but even this victory did not soften Ins heart towards Downing Street. Mr. Higinbotham thinks that tlie colonial Ministry and not the governor should com- municate with the Colonial Office upon local afiairs, and wishes governors to decline to write to England upon those topics upon which under his system colonial Ministers would write to English Ministers. The warrant of Sir Henry Loch provided that in the event of the incapacity of the Governor the Lieutenant-Governor should take his place, and on the failure of the Lieutenant-Governor, the Chief Justice. The Lieutenant-Governor of Victoria up to March 1889 was the former Chief Justice, Sir William Stawell, who was not in a fit state to discharge the duties of the office, and who died in the month I name. Sir Henry Loch had left the colony, andMr. Higinbotham "wouldhave become Acting-Governor had not a special step been taken to prevent this. Moreover, he ought himself to have been already named Lieutenant-Governor, according to precedent. Sir William Robinson, the out-going Governor of South Australia, was sent to Victoria to administer the Government for a time, and the correspondence which had passed between Sir Henry Loch, the Chief Justice, and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, was at once published in Victoria by the Chief Justice. It must be remembered that there had been a warm discussion when Sir William Stawell had been originally appointed Lieutenant-Governor, inasmuch as this had been construed into a slight to Mr. Higinbotham ; and by again passing him over the Colonial Office provoked a revival of the Governorship question, in a former stage of which Victoria had so warmly taken their side. The sending of Sir William Robinson as locum tenens was ill advised, because aimed directly against Mr. Higinbotham. The Colomal Office were, liqwever, it is fair to say, supported by the Argus, and Mr. Higinbotham put himself in the wrong hj some apparent loss of temper. It should, nevertheless, be remembered, that if the most loyal of our colonies, Victoria, were called upon to choose her own Governor, there can be little doubt that Mr. Higin- botham would be that choice, whether the election were by both Houses or by a jjopular vote. Yet the Secretary of State is advised by the Colonial Office that he is not tit to be left in charge of the colony, according to almost unbroken recent Australian precedent, in the absence of the Governor, because he will not write a number of very useless despatches. The Colonial Office cannot really interfere against a Victorian majority, and the more fully that fact is recognised the better. When it is remembered that Mr. Higinbotham is not a separatist, but a strong supporter of tlie imperial connection, and even of Imperial Federation, the unwisdom of angering him will appear. Mr. Higinbotham was formerly a rejDorter on the Morning Chronicle, who had been called to the English bar, and he went out to Victoria as the editor of the Argus on a three years' 136 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Success of the Scotch and Irish in the colonies. Victoria opposed to the idea of sei^aration. Conserva- tive policy. engagement, but at tlie end of the three years gave up newspajier work, went into Parliament, and soon became Attorney General. He then codified the Victorian statutes, while lie was conducting the protracted struggle with the Victorian Upper House and with Downing Street, and his high forehead and intellectual face wear traces of the labour of a terrible five years. Mr. Higinbotham is regarded in Victoria as the most distinguished of all our living colonists, and the greatest of Australian states- men. He shares with his fellow Victorians, j\fr. Deakin, Mr. Service, and Mr. Gillies, together with Mr. Hofmeyr of the Cape, and many others, the colonial distinction of having declined a knight-oommandership of our colonial order. Colonial states- men often, however, look on titles of knighthood as meant as a parting gift upon their retirement. In almost every colony and dependency of Great Britain the Scotch and Irish seem to form a larger and more successful portion of the whole than ought to be the case if the various parts of tlie United Kingdom were proportionately represented in our daughter -lands. Mr. Higinbotham and Sir Bryan O'Loghlen are Irish-born ; Mr. Gillies and Mr. Service, Scotch ; Mr. Deakin and Mr. Bent are Australian-born ; and Sir Graham Berry alone of those Victorians whom I liave specially named is English. The colony seems, as is only natural, about to pass under the rule of the native-born. In Victoria the young Australian party has not taken up a definite position upon the question of Imperial Federation, or generally of relations with the mother-country. The tie with the mother-country is stronger in Victoria than in some of the other colonies, and tlie Victorian press is more generally opposed to separation than is the case with the press of New South Wales. It will be noticed from what I have said that of recent years there has been in Victoria a marked tendency towards the formation of coalition administrations. Something of this kind has been seen in other colonies, as, for instance, the union of Sir H. Parkes and Sir J. Robertson in New South Wales, and of Sir B,. Stout and Sir J. Vogel in New Zealand. The Con- servative party in Victoria has almost necessarily to change its tactics from time to time, being gradually driven from one position after another. It was at first an anti-digger party ; then a party opposing the "free selectors" upon the land question; then a free-trade party opposing the manufacturers upon Protection. It opposed manhood suffrage and the exten- sion of the franchise for the Upper House. Half the party opposed State education, and more than half the ]3arty opposed the local-option changes made in tlie colonial liquor law ; while the Conservative party as it now exists accepts these reforms, ilost of the Victorian Conservatives, including the Prime Minister, privately retain free-trade opinions wliich they do not e.x;pres.s, just as many English Conservatives, including the Prime Minister, retain fair-trade opinions to which they seldom ouAr. 1 VICTORIA 137 give expression. The Victorian Liberal party lias carried all Liberal before it— diggers' rights ; laud to settlers ; Protection (for the policy. Liberal party in Victoria is almost entirely protectionist) ; manhood suffrage ; the extension of the franchise for the Council ; free, secular, and compulsory education ; and local option. The present policy of the Victorian Liberal party is the maintenance of tlie Education Act against the Roman Catholics, maintenance of Protection, extension of the principle of local option (existing in Victoria at present only with regard to tlie numbers of licensed houses in a district, and subject to the payment of compensation), and the enactment of the one-man- one-vote limitation upon plural suffrage. Tlie total dissolution of the Council is in view, as is also woman suffrage. The future leaders of the next Liberal administration are, I believe, in favour of a single chamber and of the political emancipation of women. The chief legislative peculiarities of Victoria have been its Legislative graduated progressive succession duty, existing since 1870 (in peculiar- whicli it has been followed by Queensland, New Zealand, i'ies. Tasmania, and New South Wales) ; its non-political boards for managing the public service and the railways, in which points, also, its example is being widely followed ; its early closing law, which I will presently describe ; its payment of members by a permanent law, in which it also took the lead ; and its policy of encouraging mining by a large annual expenditure to help pros- pectors — a policy which is now extended to horticultural and agricultural experimental work. Tliere is little disposition shown in Victoria to meddle witli Reaction the results of political changes, even although they may have unkuownin been hotly opposed in the first instance. Nothing like reaction Victorian has been known in this colony, given though her Parliament is pontics, to the trial of experiments. Since graduated succession duties, increasing in percentage with the increase of the sums on which they are levied, were established, there has been no agitation to abolish them ; in fact, their very existence seems forgotten by colonial politicians, although Mr. Goschen has now commenced an elementary imitation of them in the mother-country, and although a slight application of the principle of graduation has also been lately introduced into the Indian income-tax. The State control of railways has not been challenged ; payment of members is supported by the great majority of the community; Protection, as against the mother-country and Europe, is looked upon as a matter that is settled, so that a platonic opinion in favour of free trade does not now stand in a politician's way in a protectionist constituency; and although the Anglican and the Eonian Catholic bishops at one time joined forces, as I have said, to attack the system of free secular education, they have not been able to carry the whole of their flocks and, still less, the country with them in their crusade. The Cliurch of England is now, in several of the colonies, disjjosed to adopt a less hostile attitude towards the secular schools than was formerly the case. 138 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paiit ii With the possible exception of Protection, as to whicli a new issue has sprung up in the question whether an Australian, or a merely Victorian, nation should be formed, there is more probability that all the principles I have named will be extended than that they will be curtailed. The principles of the Education Act, for example, are now being applied to secondary education, and are ultimately to be applied to the universities; already the boys who distinguish themselves in the common schools receive free secondary education. The graduated succession duties are likely one day to develop into a graduated property- tax. As it is, in 1887 the Land Tax Act provided that land- owners are to pay a heavy duty on valuation of capital value over £2500, a tax evidently intended, as I have said, to break up large estates, though it has not had much effect in this direction. At the same time the land-tax may check the further accumulation of property in the same hands, and has perhaps already limited the growth of large estates. The tax is unpopular witli the rich, and is denounced as a " Class-Tax," but the league for its abolition has not as yet received much general support. State control is being extended from railways to every description of public work, and the radical land legisla- tion of the colony is also now regarded as one of the settled institutions of Victoria. Tliegeneral The general election of 1889 turned upon the side issue, grow- election of j,ig gut of the main policy of Protection, of the answer to be 1889. given to the question, "Australian or .Victorian Protection?" The present coalition Government put forward this principle : — To have no fresh border duties upon Australian products, and to gradually abolish those now in force ; the aim being to obtain a common tariif on the seaboard of Australia, and free trade within the limits of the Australian continent. The provincialists, who seemed at first to make great way upon this question, were at one time expected to defeat the Government, who neverthe- less came back with a two to one majority. The difficulties in the way of the Opposition after a success would have been considerable. If tliey increased the border duties, reprisals from New South Wales would have been sure to follow, for Sir Henry Parkes, run hard by the protectionists, would have been glad to trump his opponents' policy by introducing Protection under tlie guise of retaliation ; while if the protectionists had replaced him they would have acted fully upon their principles as against that neighbouring colony of which they are jealous. The federal instinct, wTiich is strong in Victoria, has hitherto seemed weak in New South Wales. Tlie Victorian Government, how- ever, staked its life on the Australian federation cause, and saved it, thus avoiding, at all events for a sliort time, the opening of a new and of a stormy era of reprisals. Australian The Victorian Government is one of the strongest supporters Federation, of the Federal Council, and has succeeded, through the Council, in isolating New South Wales. In the meantime the Protection question and that of colonial federation are, of course, closely CHAP. I VICTORIA 139 connected. The Victorian stock-tax is supposed to have been a considerable cause of annoyance and irritation to New South Wales, and the declaration of a desire to abolish it was intended to some extent as an overture to New South Wales by the dominant party in Victoria. It was argued that the one difficulty in the way of federation was the difi'erence of opinion in the colonies upon Protection; that, while Victoria was pro- tectionist, the neighbouring colony of New South Wales was a free-trade colony; and that, as South Australia had been in- creasing her duties until they rivalled the duties of Victoria, and as tlie people of New South Wales seemed about to turn in the same protectionist direction, it would be a mistake for Victoria to take any step towards still higher duties, and so to put herself away from those with whom she hoped to coalesce on the Hnes of a customs union. It will easily be seen that such a question was likely to divide both parties, and it did as a fact divide the two parties in Victoria. The question of the stock- tax, that is, of taxing Australian products as a part of the pro- tective system, divides both Liberals and Conservatives, and divides even Liberal protectionists from Liberal protectionists. The probability seemed that if the Government had proposed the increase of the stock-tax and of the duty upon oats and barley they would have won ; but they deliberately preferred to risk their popularity and to divide their party in support of a policy wliich they believed to be Australian and patriotic, and, in my opinion, they deserved high honour for the course they took with a view of putting an end to the unhappy exasperation against Victoria existing m New Soutli Wales. They have, however, as will be seen, since yielded in some measure to the ideas which they had defeated at the poll. The Government frankly told their supporters at the general election that they must be prepared to make a sacrifice, but that they were determined that an intercolonial war of tarifl's, if it was to come, should not be^in with them. So far as they represented the protectionists of Australia, they declared that Australian Protection had been instituted with a view of de- veloping Australian industries ; that there had been no thought of attacking the neighbouring colonies by duties, but only of defending Australian industries against the competition of the old world. The colonies were, at the time when Protection was set up, isolated communities, not bound together as now by railways and commercial intercourse. The Government held that the protectionist system had a national object — the creation of a national feeling. They thought that Victoria was now at the parting of the ways— that, if she adopted a simply Victorian protective system, she would be building up from year to year a stronger and stronger local Victorian feeling, which woidd become an obstacle to any larger union to be proposed in tlie future ; whereas if, on the contrary, the customs duties were Australian, or Australasian, the feeling built up would be Australian, or Australasian. 140 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN party. Programme The Gillies-Deakin Government did not tliink themselves of tlie Gil- strong enough simply to reject an increase of the stock-tax, lies-Deakin proposed by some, and an export bounty upon wheat, suggested by others of their opponents. They crowded their budget with small doles to agriculture. They proposed to give money to IDrovide shed accommodation, refrigerating trucks, and cool- storage facilities; money for increased contributions towards local rates ; money for agricultural schools ; money for boring operations where surface water was unobtainable, and money for bonuses for improved farming, the exportation of dairy pro- duce and fresh fruit, the establishment of factories for fruit- canning, fruit-drying, and butter and cheese making, as well as for preparing flax and silk. Prizes are in fact now to be given by the State not only for the articles named, including raisins and currants, but for hemp, manufactures from paper plants, drug plants, and dye plants, nuts, almonds, tobacco, cigars, olive and other oils, perfumes, and a great number of other products. Although the Ministry attempted in this manner to mitigate the opposition of the agricultural interest, the members of the Government in tlieir speeches in the House appealed to far higher motives. Mr. Deakin, in most eloquent terms, asked the protectionists of the Assembly whether they wished Victoria to be for the future a country by itself, without relations, except those of commercial hostility, with all outside it ; whether Vic- torians could ignore the fact that the line which divides them from the other colonies is an imaginary line, and that those beyond it are of the same race ; and whether they should build up a national feeling which should be Victorian, or a national feeling which should be Australian. He refused to treat the inhabitants of New South Wales and of South Australia as foreigners : he hoped, on the contrary, to unite with them in one common bond of a customs union with a common tariff, and by every possible means to nourish and develop the federal feeling. The Government desired federation and union, making the Australian continent one nation, and maintained that the policy of the Opposition would build up higher barriers, or dig deeper gulfs, between the colonies, so that, while the stock-tax was nominally the question at issue, tlie real question was that of union or separation of the Australian colonies. It might almost be paradoxically asserted that the Victorian protectionists under Mr. Deakin had at this moment become ground hy f^ee traders without knowing it. They argued in favour of that some pro- intercolonial free trade which is the only kind of free trade tectiomsta. ^^i^^p jg ^^^y ^f yg^y much practical importance in Australia; while those who were opposed to them were the practical pro- tectionists in desiring intercolonial Protection. TJie hitherto freeytrade colonies, moreover, so far as they are becoming pro- tectionist, are adopting protective duties with the view of protecting themselves against the protectionists of Victoria. Use of The use of free-trade arguments by the Victorian protec- free-trade tionist leader, Mr Deakin, produced a certain coldness towards Virtual change of OHAP. I VICTORIA 141 him on the part of the Ac/e, and he himself was forced to some- arguments what draw back fi'om the jDosition he had taken up. The really by the pro- consistent protectionists do not view with any pleasure the tectiouist Victorian export trade in manufactures, which Mr. Deakin is leader, anxious to preserve. They say, " What have protectionists to do witli export trade 1 We desire to keep our local markets for our own manufacturers and our own artisans — that is all." At the elections, neither the Age nor the Arg%is was a very keen supporter of Mr. Deakin, for the Age suspected the purity of his protectionist principles, while the Argus, although supporting the Government of which he is a member, naturally supported its Conservative and not its Liberal wing. The proceedings at the Victorian election of 1889 were, as has Election been seen, of much interest. The Liberal wing of the Ministry manifes- pledged themselves to make representations to the Colonial toes. Office requesting the further amendment of instructions issued to the governors of colonies enjoying responsible government ; but the main question before the electorate was that of the Australian " national " principle, as against the purely Victorian position taken up by the supporters of the stock-tax. The old free traders explained that not only must any general raising of the free-trade tiag upon their part be a hopeless undertaking, but that in their opinion the vested interests which had been created by Protection had become so large that it would be dangerous to sweep away the tariff ; and the strong protection- ists of the Deakin school and strong free traders supporting the Ministry went to the country upon precisely the same pro- gramme. The Trades of Melbourne discussed the Protection question in connection with the elections. After they had, as usual, expressed an opinion in favour of the maintenance and extension of the policy of Protection of local industries, tlie question was raised whether the stock-tax should be supported. Some of the members pointed oiit that it would raise tiie price of meat, while others replied that the denial of Protection to the farmers would cause them to join hands with the free traders and upset' the whole policy. Meetings of "Liberals" and of " Kadicals " were held during the election campaign to denounce Mr. Deakin, but the result or the polls was a triumph for himself and his coalition. The "Iladical programme" that was put forward at Opposition meetings in many points virtually favoured Mr. Deakin's policy, but differed from it in supporting the stock-tax, and went beyond it in supporting an absentee- tax. Absentee taxes are theoretically popular throughout the colonies, but difficulty is found in devising them in such form as not to interfere with the influx of " foreign " capital. Tlie line taken with regard to the stock-tax by the dissentient Radicals was that the coalition Ministry, while professing to be protectionist, were destroying Protection by injustice towards the farmer. The supporters of this programme complained that Mr. Deakin had ceased to be a Liberal, and had been con- verted by the Conservatives in the coalition Government. 142 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN "Mr. Beakin's dream." Inter- colonial free trade. Besides tlie anti-Deakin Radical programme there was also a Radical programme of supporters of the Government, drawn up by a caucus including the whole of the Radical supporters of the Government, and held almost under official auspices, Mr. Deakin liimself being in the chair. Many of the planks were similar to those of the other platform, but the " country members " warmly condemned tlie Government's attitude towards the stock-tax. The Radical supporters of the Government appear, however, to still greatly outnumber and outweigh the anti-coalition Radi- cals. The former naturally did their best to make the stock-tax difficulty easy to their country friends by encouraging them to treat the tax as though it were an open question, while the anti- coalition Radicals were able to enter fiercely upon its defence. The chief item in the programme of the coalition Government was federal unity, which was put forward as the indispensable preliminary to the creation of an Australian national sentiment. This was denounced by their Radical opponents as " Mr Deakin's dream," and even the country portion of the supporters of the Government called it " chimerical " ; but, owing no doubt largely to the overwhelming importance of the urban community, it carried the elections, as against the stock-tax, and the two or three known Liberals who associated themselves with the anti- coalition movement did not stand well at the polls. The Argus pointed out with regard to the election manifestoes of the various parties that the greater portion of the Gillies- Deakin programme consisted of principles which are the com- mon property of all sensible citizens ; but the Argus admitted that a national party was in process of formation which united old friends and old foes, and which had for its object Australian unity, to be brought about by free intercolonial interchange. It seemed clear that this struggle was likely to last for many years, and the Argus (which, although the free-trade paper, had for the moment put free trade somewhat aside) strongly sup- ported the view that the policy of isolation from the rest of Australia must be destructive to Victoria. The view taken in Australia generally of the proceedings at this Victorian election of 1889 is that intercolonial free trade would now indeed suit the Victorians, who by Protection have placed their own manufactures in a flourishing condition. Inter- colonial free trade would mean that Victorian soap, candles, rope, biscuits, and other articles would obtain an excellent market. But, it is argued. South Australia and Queensland and Tasmania have now to protect tlieir own manufactures against those of Victoria, wliile if New South Wales should abandon her free-trade policy it would be for the very purpose of keeping out Victorian goods, and of giving the factories of Sydney a better cliance in the trade of New South Wales tlian those of Melbourne. It was admitted by the more impartial politicians in the other colonies that Victorian action in the direction of intercolonial free trade was prompted by mixed motives, and that there was a real growth of federal and Aus- CHAP. 1 VICTORIA 143 tralian sentiment, but it was also believed that the growth of Protection in Tasmania, South Australia, Queensland, and New- Zealand, and the rapid increase in strength of the protectionist party in New South Wales, had had their effect upon the Vic- torians, who had already lost a certain portion of what had become a very promising export trade, and feared to lose the ■whole. On the otlier hand, it was pointed out that the stock- tax was not really needed by the Victorian rural districts, and being directed offensively against Queensland and New South Wales, had the effect of alienating these colonies, and making intercolonial free trade more difficult of attainment. The Aus- tralian view of the new Victorian policy is that Victoria wishes to make of the colonies a protectionist flock isolated from the world, but mixing freely within Australian boundaries, and that if all had had the same fiscal legislation all along the scheme might have been feasible, whereas now it is somewhat late for the adoption of a policy which the other colonies are inclined to look upon as a trifle " smart " in the American sense. Some of the graziers who came to press the stock-tax upon the Government were coining gold. One; for [example, never sold less than a thousand fat cattle every year, for each of which he obtained never less than £10, having paid for them as store cattle an average of £4, and incurred costs amounting to £2 : 10s. a head, leaving £3 : 10s. per head of profit, or £3500 a year from a thousand acres of land. The gentleman taken as an example had been a workman who had acquired his land by paying a shilling an acre for twenty years. He had jDaid in all, in " deferred payment " (if indeed he could be said to have paid anything, for the shilling an acre was not an unfair rent for the use of the land), £1000, out of which he was making £3500 a year of profit ; his 1000 acres having in the meantime become worth £30,000 — a sum which he had refused for them. Now when the deputation, consisting of this gentleman and otliers in a similar position, asked that cattle fattened in Queensland should be kept out of the colony, they did not find the view popular with the electorate, who very naturally said that the graziers had done sufliciently well not to need a monopoly. The granting of this monopoly it was thought would have the result of closing colonial ports to the goods manufactured by the Victorian artisan. At the genei'al election, after a redistribution of seats, tlie Result of Ministry came back with sixty-four nominal supporters in the tlie general House against the opposition of thirty, and with a large election of number of new members among its men. The stock-tax, which l^^^- the Opposition had desired to see increased, found less support than it had before the election, when the House had been evenly divided with regard to it, for sixty-one candidates were pledged to oijpose its increase against thirty-three in its favour. The young Australians, returned in considerable numbers, voted against it by a large majority on account of their preference for the idea of Australian unity, and seemed for a time determined 144 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART II ResiiUa of a war of tariffs. that if there was to be an intercolonial war of tariffs it should not be begun by Victoria. The reaction against the Imperial Federation idea, which was noticeable in 1889 throughout Australia, was marked among these younger men. The feeling in the country upon secondary questions at the 1889 election showed itself in the rejection of four or five of the worst parlia- mentary obstructives, and a demand for the reform of parlia- mentary procedure. But the main question before the country had been, as I have shown, that of intercolonial free trade, upon which Victoria pronounced in favour of Mr. Deakin's policy. Although, however, the coalition Ministry had a large majority, it began in the latter part of the session of 1889 to show signs of approaching dissolution. Parliamentary pro- cedure was reformed, but not in so drastic a fashion as the Government had proposed. Personal difficulties were faced by the ejection of one member of the Ministry, but the reconstruction was not sufficient to please those who had demanded it. Above all, it was found that the Government had lived so long that there was a growing feeling in favour of a change in spite of the existence of that consolidating force between Governments and their majorities — a surplus. The coalition maintained itself by somewhat unworthy promises to place fresh duties upon several articles coming from other colonies, an action entirely inconsistent with the programme upon which they had carried the election. The position of the Government now is that they are opposed to all fresh inter- colonial duties, but have been driven into some concessions to the ultra-protectionists in order to avoid others — a sad falling off from the heroic position assumed immediately before, during, and just after the general election. Even the high stock-tax, defeated as it was, has again become a possibility of the future ; and threats are heard among candidates, who were pledged against it, that if New South Wales insists upon excluding Victoria from the use, for irrigation purposes, of the water of the Murray Piiver, an increased stock -tax must be put on to punish her. As irrigation extends throughout the dry districts of Victoria, the agricultural holders will become stock-raisers upon a small scale, and a greater number of persons will become interested in the Protection of Victorian stock. In the event of a future war of tariffs between Victoria and New South Wales, it is possible that the coalowners of the latter colony may be once more threatened with an export duty upon coal. Some think that the Victorian coal-fields in Gipps- land will ultimately produce coal good enough for the use of the Victorian manufacturers ; but railway freights are too heavy to compete with sea carriage for such an article as coal, and as long as New South Wales does not put an export duty upon coal, Victoria will continue to use New South Wales coal in manufactures as freely as New South Wales makes use of it herself. The Victorian protectionists did not raise an outcry when New South Wales proposed to put on an export duty CHAP. 1 VICTORIA 145 some years ago, but believed tliat its efl'ect would be beneficial to their views by causing a development of the local coal- winning industry. An outcry was raised in New Soutli Wales itself, however, and the proj^osal was dropped, but it will prob- ably be revived unless the protectionists of New South Wales should come to power, and the adoption of moderate Protection should give New South Wales a larger revenue than she knows how to spend. Australian federal feeling has begun to have not only an in- Financial fluence upon the question of Protection or free trade, but also a federation, connection with that of Australian debts and loans. The late Mr. Westgarth recently made a proposal that the Australian colonies should confederate for the purpose of issuing a joint guarantee of their total debt. The proposal was not received with much favour in Mr. Westgarth's own colony— Victoria. Some of the most powerful organs of the press have asserted that it would be unfair to ask a colony like Tasmania, whose national indebtedness is small, to assist in guaranteeing the debt of New Zealand, or of Queensland, which is large. There does not seem to be much in the objection, for all the colonies, with the single exception perhaps of New Zealand, are possessed of governmental assets which equal or nearly equal the amount of their indebtedness, and New Zealand is likely soon to become one of the most prosperous colonies of the whole group. Queensland, for example, it has been estimated, would bring into the common stock £52 sterling per head of State property against £60 a head of indebtedness ; and Tasmania £25 a head of assets against £29 of indebtedness. As far as Australia is concerned, consolidation of loans will no doubt come witli political federation. Mr. Westgarth, favourable as he was to federation, would have tried to make financial federation come even earlier, and the attempt was laudable. Mr. Westgarth showed that the colonies would get as much money as they want, on a joint guarantee, for 3 per cent ; whereas, as long as they continue to be comparatively small and isolated borrowers in the market, some of them will have to pay a good deal above that price. The idea has not been widely taken up, as New South Wales and Victoria object to "guarantee Queensland and New Zealand" without having any control over their expendi- ture. A distinguished economist has lately published a paper in Colonial which he speaks of the colonies as borrowing reclvlessly, but debts. New Zealand is the only colony that lias done so. In "the Britain of the South " a costly native war was succeeded Ijy a large public works expenditure, but New Zealand is rapidly recovering her financial equilibiium, and her position will soon be thorouglily sound. No other Australasian colony has a war debt, and the whole of the Australian borrowings have been expended on public works, which pay directly much of the interest upon the sums invested. The resources of the continent are being rapidly developed by the public works upon which L 146 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" takt ii tlie loans are sijeiit, and, although the taxation of some colonies, measured by a European standard, looks liigli indeed, measui-ed by the price of labour and the returns of capital it is small. The colonies contend tliat in a European sense they have no debt, for all the outlay is reproductive ; while the railways not only pay interest out of their earnings, but now begin to make profit towards revenue, besides enabling further national development to take place through extraordinary reductions of freights and fares. If Victoria chose to part with her rail- ways at the present time she could obtain for them an amount equal to her total debt. The Colonial debts are of special importance to us in the United colonies Kingdom, because we invest largely in them. They do some- tliorouglily thing to create tlie idea of imperial unity and to knit tlie solvent. Empire together. Our home income-tax figures go to show tliat, as regards investments that are known, our colonial investments are increasing with extraordinary rapidity, while our home and Indian investments are stationary, and our foreign Government investments falling oft". It is probable that New Zealand and Victoria will soon each yield more income to English investors in Government stocks than does any other country in tlie world, outside of England. It is very natural that this should be the case, for there is confidence in the stability of the colonial Governments. We understand the way in which the.y float their loans, and their system of book- keeping : we believe in the honesty and ability of their states- men, and we are well informed as to the objects on wliich their del.)ts are spent. There has never been any form of repudiation so much as talked of in our Australian colonies, and, the colonies having no wars, the weakest point of Continental finance is not met with in their case. The colonies instead of being forced to spend their money upon armaments are able to place it in reproductive public works. Tlie colonies too, we feel, are far I'icher than we are at home, and yet their real debt is mucli lighter in propoi'tion to their income than is om-s, and a mere ti-ifle by the side of the debt of France or Russia. The colonies have not only assets in the shape of railways and other works upon wliich the borrowed money has been expended, but also, as they assert, other assets in the shape of their unsold pulilic lands. This consideration might, however, be turned the other way, for New South Wales has carried a i-evenue from somewhat improvident land sales into her ordinary accounts, a practice which Victoria avoids. By an order of the Supreme Court made in London at' the end of 1888 we learn what are at the present time considered to be legitimate investments for trustees. Indian securities are included in the order, but colonial securities are not. No doubt it is possible to argue that while the stock of Victoria and New South Wales may be excellent, that of New Zealand, and possibly of Queensland, cannot at tlie moment be looked upon as a first-class security, and that it might be invidious to pick out particular colonial CHAP. 1 VICTORIA 147 stocks, and therefore difiicult to include them in the order ; but if this were true, ■which it is not — for New Zeahmd is financially more " sound " than India — it wtould be an additional argument in favour of Mr. Westgartli's proposals. A Treasury Committee, which sat in November and December 1889, has recently investi- gated tlie question of the power to invest trust funds in colonial securities, to which it was believed that Mr. Gosohen was un- favourable. The Committee has reported in favour of the admissibility of colonial stocks, provided that the colonies will agree to legislation to give a power of suing Colonial Govern- ments, which, according to the Treasury, at present does not exist, and which certainly can affect only moneys in the hands of the colonial agents in this country. It is possible that stipulations for the maintenance of the standard of credit may be inserted in the Imperial Act, so that the investment sliall cease when the 4 per cents in the case of any colony fall below a certain price. Victoria can show in railways and waterworks alone more Kaihvays than the full value of her total indebtedness, and she has a and water- surplus of revenue over expenditure almost every year. It has works been contended with regard to Victoria that the great decline assets for in the productiveness of the Victorian gold-fields is likely to ™^ ™°1^ involve that colony in difficulties j but the profits to the com- i.. * munity from gold-mining as an industry have for some time been small, and the gold-mining industry in Victoria for many years past, except as an employer of labour on a not very con- siderable scale, has been of little utility to the colony. It is possible, however, that gold-mining itself may yet recover ; the rudest appliances only have as yet been made use of for the extraction of the gold, and in deep-sinking the colonists have everything to learn ; while silver, tin, and copper may yield profits. The real gold-mine of the future for Victoria will lie, however, in the growth, by irrigation, of fruit crops — using the phrase in its widest sense, and including wine and every kind of vegetable oil. Other financial discussions which have taken place in the Other colony of late have been less worthy of attention. There has financial been an agitation for a national bank, which would practically questions. be the State lending money to settlers at rates too low to ofler guarantees of soundness, and issuing inconvertible notes. The scheme did not arouse those workmen to whom it was addressed, and it is to the credit of the Victorian population that they should have rejected it as they did. There are great numbers of good settlers who arrive year by year, who iiave everything but money, and who reach for the first time a country where the almost immediate acquisition of wealth by them seems to depend upon their obtaining a small capital. These men feel in them the energy and strength to win wealth for themselves, if only a little capital could be theirs to make a start. A whole continent lies ready, waiting to be adequately stocked and fenced, and provided with tanks and homesteads. Day by day 148 TKOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" part ii country that was but lately looked upon as useless to mankind is becoming open to occupation and to settlement. At the same time workmen who save their wages soon become capital- ists in the colonies. The man who earns £3 a week, and spends but £2, has plenty of bidders for the £1 that he saves. Banks, building societies, investment trusts, and insurance companies, providing funds for pioneer settlement, compete actively for the possession of the workman's savings. Up to two years ago 8 per cent was obtained in safe investments in the interior, and 12 per cent where a little risk was taken. Those who made a business of lending to squatters, with the chance of drought, could readily get 15 per cent a year ; and many of the wealthiest men in Victoria have made their money by lending to squatters at 20 per cent a year, though taking an amount of risk which made them virtual partners in the "runs." Although from time to time they lost in bad seasons a large proportion of what they had lent, the high rates in a few years of favourable weather left them too strong to suffer more than temporary depression when bad seasons came, There has been a keen demand for capital to be spent on the edges of civilisation where man was reclaiming the wilds, and those who saved doubled, at compound interest, their savings in nine or ten years without risk. Victoria has borrowed largely on account of her very prosperity. All her own capital was so fully and so profitably employed that it could not be used for the making of railways, because in this solid and safe form of investment the British public at home was willing to embark its money at far less than the usual colonial rate. It was for these reasons that the borrowing of money by the Australian Governments began at a moment when Australia was rolling in wealth. New South Wales commenced the process in 1858, and was followed by Victoria in 1859, although Victoria had just raised, in eight years' work, gold to the value of eighty-eight millions sterling. It was in the midst of the full flush of gold prosperity that the railways were begun, but not with colonial capital. Every shilling that the colonies had was in eager demand, earning 10 per cent with safety where lent on loan, and 20 per cent where utilised by owners in their own enterprises. It would have been a waste of resources, the Australians thought, to have used their capital for railways, when the British public was willing to advance the requisite funds at 5 or 6 per cent. Exjieri- It was shown just now with what caution the Australian ments tried vi'oi'kmen abstained from jumping at the bait held out by the in Victoria, proposers of an inconvertible currency. In general I think it must be said tiiat the electorate of Victoria have shown much ]irudence in the new ideas that they have taken up, and in the manner in which they have pressed them forward. The ques- tions discussed at the meetings of 1889 were almost "humdrum," with the exception of that of intercolonial free trade. Sanitation, the free breakfast-table, and the reconstruction of the Ministry, on lines which would make its anti-Irish and its federal elements OHAP. I VIOTOKIA 149 even more mai-ked, were among the chief subjects of debate ; and the colony seemed more proud of having lived for six years under virtually the same Ministry, vi'hile New South Wales had had six or seven Ministries in the same time, and of having had surpluses amounting to over a million in all, to set against New South Wales deficiencies amounting to more than two and a half millions, than anjdous to enter upon any revolutionary course. One of the experiments which in tlie past Victoria has tried Early for us is that of early-closing legislation, and, as this has been closing. named as a case of legislative failure, it is worth some notice. In the early days of the colony it was seen with regret that the long hours prevailing in the old country were being imported into Victoria without change, and in 1855 an early-closing association was formed. The same diificulties were found in relying upon voluntary agreement as have been met with in the mother-country, and the same devices of appealing to the public, after partial failure with the shopkeepers, were resorted to by the association. In 1882 the agitation of the shopkeepers' assistants for early closing had been started, and through their efforts a Ptoyal Commission was appointed to make inquiry into the question, which ultimately recommended legislation. In 1885 the association abandoned the moral suasion position, and, by a large majority, resolved that only an Act of Parliament could set matters right ; after which it dissolved itself and left the field to law. There is no general disbelief in the colony in the principle of The eight- interfering with individual liberty for the purpose of obtaining hour day. such a reform of hours as would be suitable to the great major- ity of the people. For many years the custom of victoria has imposed with the force of law the eight-hour limitation upon the labour of artisans — 8 hours a day or 48 hours a week ; for as a rule a Saturday half -holiday is taken, and met by an extra half -hour on other days. There is a tendency now to apply the eight-hour day to the five days a week, and the five-hour day to Saturday, without making up for the short day by longer labour upon the others. The well-organised trades, such as the carpen- ters, plasterers, and masons, have taken steps in this direction, one trade offering to submit to a slight decrease of pay for the Saturday, while in most cases, however, the demand is for full pay for the Saturday although for three hours less of work, and some Victorian artisans now enjoy the forty -five-hour week. The agitation with regard to shops had been started, as was seen, in 1855, and had ceased, in a request for legislation, in 1885. The artisans did not begin their agitation until 1856 ; but they won all they wanted in twelve days. It was in April 1856 that the stonemasons held the first public meeting upon the subject, at a time when ten hours a day was the rule for their trade. The other Unions followed their example ; a meeting of the united Trades was held, an eight-hour league formed, and notice given that after the 21st April they would 150 PEOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part ii only work eight hours a day. So complete was the triumph that the anniversary of the next day, the 22d of April, has ever since been kept as a holiday among the Melbourne artisans, and it is now a public holiday, under the title of "Eight-hours Day." Some of the contractors made a stand against the work- men, but all except two gave in at the end of the first day, the men agreeing in some cases to a reduction of wages until exist- ing contracts were complete, after which eight hours a day, at the old rates, was to be the rule. Wages have slightly fallen since the eight-hour day was introduced, but there is no reason to suppose that the fall, which was natural under tlie circum- stances of the colony, has been a result of the reduction in hours. It is a general opinion in the colony that the cheerful- ness arising from leisure and comfort gives to the colonial artisan h. spirit and vigour which enable him to do in eight hours as much work as artisans at home can do in ten. The rate of wages is so high that it is not easy to see how Victoria manages, in spite of her protective system, to manufacture articles upon which freights from abroad are light. The Mel- bourne employer apparently pays double the wages for 15 or 20 per cent less time than is the case at home, and, in trades where the labour is a large portion of the cost of the article produced, it is difilcult to discover how the manufacturers of Victoria manage to exist. The duties have, until the recent increase, amounted only to from 17 to 25 per cent on the articles taxed, or 11 per cent upon the total imports. There are now forty-eight trades in Victoria which have the eight-hour day, and take part in the annual celebration, with banners, some of which cost as much as £200 a piece. The tramway company of Melbourne, which is a great power in the town, is forced to bow to the dictates of the Anniversary Committee, and to wholly stop running for two hours. The eight-hour movement spread from Victoria to other colonies. .In New South Wales and elsewhere the leading trades have obtained the eight hours, but the system is not so absolutely universal as in Victoria. In Victoria an abstract proposition has been adopted in Parlia- ment making eight hours a legal day, but this has no real effect, and the system depends wholly upon opinion. Early The success of the eight-hour movement among workmen closing ]ias naturally encouraged the idea of legislation for early closing legislation, fgp i\^q benefit of shopkeepers and their assistants. In 1884 tliere also came before the Victorian Parliament a cognate question ; for a Royal Commission on the local Factory Acts, which already for ten years had regulated the eraploymeiit of women in factories and limited to eight hours their working day, reported that the Act should be extended to other forms of female occupation. It had been discovered that hundreds of young girls were employed in shops and restaurants for such long liours, and under such insanitary conditions, that their healtli was undermined. The Eoyal Commission had also recommended legislation against overtime. In November 1884 OHAP. I VICTORIA 151 Mr Deakin brought in a new • Bill with regard to workrooms and factories, in which the factory provisions were to some extent made to apply to shops ; and a second part of the Bill provided for early closing. All sJiops, except certain classes specially exempted, were to be closed not later than 7 p.m. on five out of the six week-nights, and at 10 p.m. on Saturdays, unless two-thirds of the shopkeepers in any one trade peti- tioned the Town Council for exemption. The penalties were left to the municipalities. The Bill was dropped in 1884 and reintroduced in 1885. It was opposed by some who disliked the principle, and by others who wished it to go farther, and who pressed for the introduction of a clause against overtime ; but it was passed, with no substantial modification, in December 1885, and came into operation on the 1st March 1886. Complaint was soon made that the municipal councils were not friendly to the closing movement, and were using the powers entrusted to them to defeat the Act. The Melbourne Council fixed the fines at Is. for the first offence and 3s. for any subsequent ofl'ence ■ but, in spite of the lowness of the fines, the Act has brought about a revolution in public habits, and the light fines have been a success, for the publication in the news- papers of the names of the offenders has been suflicient. Where exemption has been granted by town councils large crowds have collected, and, by the expression of disapprobation, have forced the shops to close, all purchasers being hooted until purchase ceased. Mr. Deakin has now proposed certain amend- ments of the law, but it is now each year less and less evaded, and the shop hands may be said to have won short hours, although hours not so short as those of the colonial artisans. Victorian workers of all classes, and in some degree the High wages workers of all the Australian colonies, now possess advantages and cheap which make Australia a workers' paradise. High wages are food- there combined with cheap food and leisure for culture or amusement. On the other hand, the return from the labour of highly -skilled professional men is not so great in the colonies as it is in England. The Chief Justice of Victoria has £3500 a year, and would certainly have been a pecuniary gainer by coming home. It is estimated that on the average the cost of living in Victoria is to the cost of living in England in the ratio of about five to four. That accommodation for a bachelor's board and lodging which is obtainable in London for £1 a weel:: costs 25s. a week in Melbourne. Rent is supposed to be much higher in ^Melbourne, and the other costs of living about the same. Coals, servants, and gas are dearer ; good food cheaper. Eents, though higher, are perhaps not higher for the same accommodation, as more space is usually given in Melbourne than in London, and Melbourne covers an area as great as that of Paris. Wages being, on the whole, nearly double what they are at home, and the cost of living not necessarily much greater, every man has clearly a good chance to save, and tlie majority do save considerably, with the result of a widespread prosperity. 152 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part ii Out-door The general diflfusion of sufficient wealth and the existence exercises, of a pleasant climate cause Victorian life to be more cheerful than life in the United Kingdom, and produce a readiness to be amused that is cliaracteristic of the colonist as compared with the home-staying Briton. A larger proportion of Victorians take ])art in and take an interest in out-door sport than is the case at liome, and games such as football, cricket, and lawn-tennis are carried on under more favourable conditions. The climate tem23ts people to be out of doors, and the days when pi-actice is impossible are few. The people liave the leisure and they have the money to maintain their sports, while they possess in a higli degree the inclination for amusement. Every suburb of Mel- bourne has large " cricketing reserves,'' every suburban house has its lawn-tennis court, and, wliile the Victorian climate makes the colony the first in many forms of sport, there is an almost equal attachment to sport and to amusement in the other Australian colonies. At the present moment tlie colonial mind is turned towards football, wliich, it is asserted by its devotees, has assumed in our South-Sea colonies a character of greater science than in England. The most lively interest is taken in Melbourne in the returns of the Football Association, whicli makes up the matches between the various local clubs and publishes the results of the competitions, and, ultimately, of that for the championship of the colony. The excitement of a Madrid crowd about a bull-fight is hardly greater than that of the workshops, offices, and warehouses of Melbourne on the event- ful Saturday afternoon which decides for the year the football championship. To see the crowds streaming to the ground one would fancy that the city itself was to be the victors' prize. An American gentleman, Mr. Eoyce, who, under the title of " Reflections after a Wandering Life in Australasia,'' lias published in 1889 two little papers which form the best view of Australia yet placed before the public, finds the prominence of public sports by far the most noteworthy of all the social features of the colonies, and of all the diflerences between colonists and inhabitants of the United States. He tells us that the popularity of sports in the American Commonwealth dates back but a short distance, and that until lately the Americans were too pious or too busy to play, were ashamed to seem amused, and not only took few holidays, but " were bored " by these. He goes on to explain that the apparent change which has recently occurred still leaves tlie United States far behind Australia in the field of sport ; and that the most pojDular athletes of America are professional gladiators, whereas in Australia it is the peojDle themselves who carry on tlie contest. Life in tlie colonies, according to Mr. Royce is'free from the elements of strain and worry that press upon America, and competition is less merciless towards the individual. As life becomes harder he thinks that the colonists will have two safeguards to fall back upon— the one their love of healthy exercise and of every form of sport, and the other their teri- OHAP. I VICTORIA 153 dency to a high oi'ganisation of social life ; in marked contrast to the individualism of the United States. Horse-racing is, if possible, even more popular in Victoria Horse- than football, and it is a curious fact that the racing club of racing. Melbourne was founded befoi'e the town itself. When not an acre of land had yet been sold, and while the settlers were in- habiting sod-huts and waiting for the arrival of the officer who was to survey the site of the proposed township, a race club was formed, five prizes were subscribed, and a racecourse chosen. From that day to this the Victorian racing calendar has been unbroken. Four times a year the club gives itself up to a week of racing, but the most important of these events is the spring meeting, when, on the first Tuesday in November, is held the racing carnival, called Cup Day, wMch is a holiday of the strictest kind. Those who object to horse-racing make use of the holiday for other purposes : the Sunday Schools take Cup Day for their picnics ; the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion goes out to sea in steamers ; and the Salvation Army gathers its forces for a review in the Koyal Park, and some- times marches as many as 20,000 people under its "blood and fire " flags. The people of Melbourne spend more on amuse- ments than do those of the other Australian capitals; but, while Sydney, Ballarat, and even conservative Hobart, open their public libraries and picture galleries on Sundays, Melbourne keeps hers closed. In Sydney the racing fever, though not un- known, is not so strong as it is in Melbourne ; but in Adelaide it was at one moment almost as highly developed in proportion. Then the legislature made a determined attempt to suppress gambling, and the racing people of South Australia transferred their meetings bodily to Melbourne, until their legislature gave way to local pressure. JRowing and sculling are not forgotten, and the latter is Other pursued in the Australian colonies with success, as we know in sports, the old country to our cost. CycUng is as popular in Victoria as in England. EoUer skating has reached the same pitch of popularity in Australia that it has in India ; Melbourne has eight large places devoted to tliis amusement — some of them of vast size, and all of them extremely remunerative to their pro- prietors. Any novelty in the way of sport, however, is, if duly advertised, certain of success in the Australian colonies. Music is also popular in the colonies to a greater extent than Music, is the case at home. At the Melbourne Centennial Exhibition the visit of Mr. Cowen produced an extraordinary gathering of musical people from all parts of the colonies. The Oratoi-io of " Elijah " was performed three times in succession, and each time the great hall, which holds over 3000 people, was densely crammed. The recent reception of Wagner's music in the colonies, and especially at the Melbourne Exhibition, has been remarkable, as until lately the older musicians reigned supreme in the colonial musical world. An inspection of the Melbourne newspapers for any Saturday reveals the existence 154 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN of a surprising number of musical performances for a city of 300,000 people. During the Centennial Exhibition^ every Saturday would show about eleven thousand persons in Mel- bourne alone attending performances of high-class music, with- out counting a considerable number of suburban concerts and iive music halls giving music of a less elevating kind. Music is mucli taught in the Australian schools. The Fine Arts are largely practised, as I shall have to show in the next chapter, and are aided in Victoria by an astonishing number of State- aided schools of design. Literature. Just as Victoria has not hitherto produced much original music, in spite of the great development of musical taste, so too with letters. The colonists, in Victoria as in Canada, have developed a large reading class, but have not up till now succeeded in producing a colonial school of literature. Their leading literary men liave as yet been English-born. Dr. Hearn was Professor of Greek at Queen's College, Galway, and, having been exported for the use of the University of Melbourne, could hardly be looked upon as a more specially Victorian product than is Dr. Pearson, the able and cultivated Minister of Educa- tion, who went out from Oxford. Still, Dr. Hearn, having left the United Kingdom for Australia at the age of twenty-eight, and having lived some thirty-three years in the colony, producing some excellent books in his Phdology and his constitutional works, was a source of pride to the young Victorian State, although there is nothing specially Australian about his books. Mr. A. Patchett Martin is an excellent all-round writer who, like Mr. Philip Mennell, has come home to us, and there are also many brilliant journalists left in Victoria. Australia has found some literary talent among Bohemians who have been shipped off to the colonies as ne'er-do-weels. Adam Adam Lindsay Gordon was the most remarkable of these, and Lindsay is best remembered in Victoria and South Australia. His Gordon. earlier poems are singularly feeble, and hardly up to the mark of those which appear in the humblest of English provincial newspapers. After some years of a rough life he developed a real poetic vein, which he utilised in the description of life in the saddle. In his latest work there is a good deal of strong feeling, with some revelations of that anger with circumstances that led Gordon finally, by self-destruction, to put an end to his own career. He is at his best when he writes of horses and of riding, and has no equal as the poet of the steeplechase. Marcus Another writer who was connected with Victoria is, on the Clarke. whole, the ablest Australian prose writer that there has yet been — Marcus Clarke, the son of a London barrister, sent out after liis father's death, when he was just grown-up, to the care, if I mis- take not, of his cousin, now General Sir Andrew Clarke. Clarke's best work was done in leader writing, but before he died, a worn-out man at thirty-one, he had shown, in some brilliant essays and excellent fiction, that he possessed consider- able literary power. He is known in England by a story of CHAP. 1 VICTORIA 155 early Tasmanian days, His Natural Life, founded upon the Transportation Blue-books ; but in Australia he is equally well remembered as the author of Pretty Dick, an immortal story of only fourteen pages, and several other charmingly told tales of Australian life and scenery. Marcus Clarke was often coarse in his satire of tlie Melbourne democracy of his time, but Pretty Dick and others of his stories would redeem worse vulgarity than that of his journalistic sketches, and his description of the desolation of the landscape of the Australian continent given in ]iis preface to the poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon is fane, and has been quoted in almost every work upon Australia. On the whole, the best Victorian literature, like the best News- Canadian, is at present to be found in the colonial newspapers, papers. Each of the chief newspajier offices issues a weekly journal of the highest class, intended for up-country use — heavier and larger even than our Field — and containing all the features of a sporting and country gentleman's paper, combined with those of a literary and political journal. The daily papers themselves are excellent, and the Melbourne Argus and Melbourne Age are a credit to the colony, as are some of the other papers of the capital and the daily papers of the smaller towns. The native-born Australians, as we shall see, can hardly yet Colonial be said to have brought forth a great literary man. They may literature, fairly rest content at present although this be so : may be satis- fied to have produced of late, in the field of general literature, even better books than those to which Canada has given birth, though none equal to the great novel which I shall mention in my chapter on the Cape, and to have trained up among them- selves the builders of the new State, and statesmen and orators such as Mr. Deakin. Local literature is pretty sure to follow in due time, and, when it comes, to have that distinctive Australian mark which already clearly pertains to most things Australian, and which may even one day revivify the literature of England. It is gratifying to an Englishman to discover how completely Loyalty the essentially British nationality of Victoria has survived the of the experience of the last twenty years. In 1868 the population Victorians, was British-born ; a third of it was of Australian birth, but almost all this section of the community consisted of mere children. At the present time the Australian-born have come to the front, and provide a large part of the energy, the enter- prise, and the promise of the community. The veterans are dying off— tlie pioneers whose sturdy labour and whose good sense built up the colony on sure foundations, and who liave been able in their declining years to contemplate with pride the prosperity which they had created in what had been a lonely waste. Twenty years ago the Victorian love for England was the love of those who knew it : at the great distance to which they had gone imagination cast a peculiar brightness uj)on the old home that they had left, and they turned towards it with a natural longing. Many had the hope of a return : after a few 156 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part ii years passed in Victoria they would go back rich, and make their permanent home in England. A stream of elderly well- to-do colonists has in the past few years come steadily home, but the vast majority merely visit Europe, and nineteen out of twenty go back again to once more settle down in a sunshine far better for old age than the English climate, and amidst sur- roundings that they have grown to love. Still, colonists of this kind — the British-born — are almost all friends of the connection with the mother -country, and would vote nearly to a man against a separation. As these die out, and as there arises a majority who have no home traditions about the United ICing- dom, and none of that affection for the mother-country which springs from early association, there doubtless may come a change. At the same time, many of the younger men obtain from their parents the advantage of a trip to the old country; they take a pride in the name of Englishmen, and feel satisfac- tion in identification with a people that has held so great a position in the past. The younger colonists as a rule, however, return to Australia with relief, and with them the political tendency is to put Australia first, England second. If ever Australian and British interests should clash, the colonists of the new generation would cast their votes for their own home. But without strong causes of dissension the Victorians will be inclined to uphold the maintenance of the imperial connection. It is probably the practical and businesslike tendency of Melbourne wliicli holds in check those separatist views which are more pronounced in Sydney and in Brisbane. The Vic- torians say that they feel no burden in the relation, and that they realise its benefits, so that the energy and intensity of life, of which they are proud, can find better exercise than in girding at the mother-country. In Victoria there is hardly a tendency towards separation, and thousands of men who are Australian- born, and who never were in Great Britain, still call the old country home. The continual perusal of the masterpieces of English literature strengthens these associations, and in Victoria, whatever may be the case in other colonies, they do not appear to rapidly decUne. Those in Victoria who would at the present moment vote for separation from the mother -country are an obscure and unimportant fraction, and this although the Australian Natives' Association is there a powerful body. Tlie great majority of the people are loyal to the connection, and those who think that separation is inevitable place the event far off in the future. There is in Victoria a general feeling that the colony derives dignity and importance from its connection with the Empire, and that its interests are on the whole bound up with those of the United Kingdom. The existence of any substantial grievance would soon break down this public senti- ment ; but there seems no reason why any such grievance should be permitted to arise. In the old days it sometimes happened that governor.?, fixing their eyes on the London office wiience they lield then- appomtments, and from which they looked for CHAP. I VICTORIA 167 their 'promotion in the future, tried to please their superiors by running counter to the wishes of the Victorian people. But in the long - run the popular will prevailed, and the imperial Government never fought against it after it was unmistakably declared. The Victorians are an almost exclusively British or Irish Birthplaces people. A few Chinese are obvious aliens who remain apart ; °f "'^ the rest of the foreign-born (if we deduct the Americans, who 'Victorian are not noticeably difl'erent from other persons of English race r®"?'^- when domiciled in Australia) are mostly Germans, who, however, are far less numerous in proportion than in Canada, and who soon become patriotic Victorians, while in the second genera- tion nothing foreign is left to tliem except the family name. The Victorian population is well mixed together. The English, Scotch, and Irish elements are much more thoroughly welded into one nationality than is the case in any portion of the mother-country or of the Canadian Dominion. There is no specially Scotch part of Victoria, and no specially Irish part. Wlierever you take a hundred people you may be pretty certain that from 20 to 25 per cent will be Irish Eoman Catholics, that about 15 to 20 per cent will be Scotch Presbyterians, and tlie remainder almost entirely English Protestants ; and that any such small foreign addition as there is to the population sprung from the United Kingdom will exhibit a tendency to rapid in- corporation, leaving no foreign trace behind. The Victorian census displays the same birthplaces for the population as are shown by the present emigration returns of the United Kingdom. The Victorians have always shown a proper spirit with Defeuce. regard to the defence of those liberties which they won at an early date in the history of their colony, and which liave never been seriously threatened. Victoria has not been backward in undertaking her share of responsibility for imperial defence, and her local defence is amply provided for. The natural situ- ation of Melbourne makes it easy to guard against a hostile fleet, and art has been called in to the aid of nature. Heavy guns, submarine mines, and local floating defence have all been attended to, a Zalinski dynamite gun has been ordered from New York, and for some time past there has been a Defence Minister in the Victorian Cabinet. The armoured ship Cerberus has four 10-inch guns, and the steel gun-boat Victoria one 10-inch 25 ton breech-loading gun ; while there are several other steamers armed with heavy guns, and several defence torpedo boats, well manned. The Victorian land forces consist normally of over 5000 men, and are commanded by an eflicient staff' of imperial officers, that is to say, officers belonging to the British army, and serving temporarily with the colonial forces. In addition to the 5000, there are over 4000 sworn members of rifle clubs, and a considerable militia reserve which can be called out by proclamation. There is a Defence Council consisting of the Defence Minister, the naval and military commandants, and 158 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt ij three or four of the senior local officers. The pemmnent element in the force, besides the staff, consists of 200 garrison artillery and a small section of engineers, with non-commis- sioned officers and drill instructors. There is a large force of mounted police, who would be available for defence purposes in case of attack. The remainder of the troops are chiefly "partially paid," to use the Australian phrase. There is a volunteer submarine torpedo company, as well as a Norden- felt battery, some field batteries, and some volunteer garrison artillery ; and the infantry consists of four battalions, with four companies to each battalion. The men are reported to be most intelligent, and thoroughly respectful to the imperial officers ; and there is good feeling between the imperial and the local officers, who, although busy men, give much time to their army work. There is a military club in Melbourne — the United Service Club — where the imperial and the local officers meet. The privates, altliough paid, do not look like regular troops, but like the very best of our volunteer regiments in the old country. They are taller and more intelligent than the average of our regular troops, but less wide and deep in the chest. The terms of enlistment of the men of the permanent force ai-e somewhat similar to those of our army, while the militia or " partially paid " troops are less disciplined. These Victorian soldiers are not dependent on the service for a living, and do not reside in barracks ; but they are paid for each parade tliat they attend, and punishments take the form of lines. The Victorians, as has been shown by Colonel Ellas, who has written about their soldiering, possess a great advantage over volunteers in Great Britain in the vast amount of open space available for ranges, and with these advantages the Victorian soldier naturally shoots well. The three batteries of field guns labour under the drawback of possessing no regular artillery horses. They have harness, and standing arrange- ments are made with civilians for supplying the horses when needed. The same horses are, as far as possible, kept for the work, and obtain a considerable amount of training. It is less difficult to get good drivers in Australia than in most countries, as a large proportion of the population are accustomed to rough driving in every form. There is ample piivate transport in Melbourne for any such force as would be likely to be required in the colony. There is an admirable cadet corps of 3000 boys, who are dressed in military unifoi-m, and armed with a mini- ature Martini-Henry rifle, manufactured on purpose for them. In the Christmas holidays they camp out, and their rations are supplied from Melbourne by railway; their company, battalion, and brigade drill and outpost system have been pronounced excellent by the imperial officers. Every year at Easter tlie general military arrangements of Victoi-ia are well tested. The garrison artillery take up their allotted positions for tlie defence of Melbourne. The militia and the mounted rifles go into camp : and the submarine miners are at their stations ready for work OHAi'. r VICTORIA 159 ■with the electric light and position-finders fitted. The Vic- torian Government have spent money freely in order to secure the absolute readiness for war of all their defensive prepara- tions. The Victorian army is a model army for colonial defence, and an admirable nucleus for the Australian federal defence army of the future. An imperial officer is now, from time to time, to inspect the whole of the Australian forces which in the event of war, subject to the permission of each colony, he will command. Majoi'-General Edwards, in his recent "report on the military forces and defences of the colony of Victoria," and " memorandum on the proposed organisation of the military forces of the Australian colonies," has highly praised Victoria, and has given the full approval of the War Office to the "partially paid" militia system. It is understood that whether the conference on Federation between the Federal Council and the colony of New South Wales, fixed for February 1890, does or does not lead to immediate and complete federal union, military federation will take place. Victoria will propose that the permanent force shall be increased, and that Australian " foreign-service-garrison batteries " shall be sent to Thursday Island and King George's Sound. CHAPTEE II NEW SOUTH ■WALES Sydney. The position of Sydney on the east coast of Australia bears a certain resemblance to that of New York on the east coast of the United States, and to that of San Francisco on the west. A perfect harlDour, placed by nature opposite to Southern Poly- nesia, and exactly where it would seem most wanted for the convenience of the Australian continental trade with America North and South, gives hopes of a future for Sydney equal to the present if not to the future of New York. Sydney indeed has a situation as beautiful to the eye as it is convenient for trade. From near the city one can see the open ocean breaking at the Heads, while on the land side the Paramatta river flows down through orange groves into a still and lakelike bay, which is so divided into little sheltered nooks that its size is lost. Sydney covers an enormous extent of ground, and, it might be said, a still larger extent of water, for the inhabitants in great numbers cross various portions of the bay to reach their work. They live in their own houses at some distance from where they labour, and this habit is as widely spread among the workmen as it is among the merchants or the clerks. The liead and port of an extraordinary development of railway lines, Sydney be- lieves that in a few years she will beat Melbourne, and become once more in fact that which she has sometimes claimed to be in history and in name — the Queen City of the South. Comparison New South Wales bears to Victoria a certain statistical re- of New semblance. The two colonies have about the same population. South and, roughly speaking, about the same revenues, expenditure, Wales with debt, and trade. In each, a great capital collects in one neigh- Victoria, bourhood more than a third of the total population ; in each, life is bright and cheerful ; but while there are resemblances in climate, scenery, and legislation, as well as in other present conditions, considerable diflerences lie behind and are likely to develop in tlie future. New South Wales, in the opinion of Jier enemies, is less enterprising than Victoria, and has less of tlie go-ahead spirit which distinguishes the Melbourne people. On the other hand she possesses a larger territoi-y, abundant supplies of coal, and will have probably, in consequence, a greater future. Although New Soutli Wales is three and a half ouAP. u NEW SOUTH WALES lei times as large as Victoria, and has tlie area of the Geniiaii Empire and of Italy combined, slie is of course much smaller than the three other but as yet less important colonies of the Australian continent. As the country was in a large degree settled by assisted immigrants, of whom something like half altogether have been Irish, while the English section was largely composed of Chartists (Sir Henry Parkes himself liaving been a prominent man among them), the legislation of New South Wales has naturally shown signs of its origin. Manhood suffrage was carried in 1858 ; the abolition of primo- geniture in 1862 ; safe and easy transfer of land through tlie machinery of a Torrens Act in the same year ; and also the abolition of State aid to religion. A public system of education was introduced, with other measures of democratic legislation. Graduated progressive succession duty, which in Victoria dates from 1870, but has been made heavier \ipon large propei'ty by subsequent legislation, was imitated in 1886 by New South Wales, but in the earlier, not in the later form. New South Wales had previously possessed graduation of the English kind, in which the rates depend on the nearness of relationship to the deceased. Public education, which in Victoria is free, is still paid for by fees in New South Wales, though children going to or returning from school are allowed to travel free by railway. In general it may be said that New South Wales legislation in recent times has not been so bold as the legisla- tion of Victoria. The two most important Acts passed in New South Wales of late years have been the Public Instruction Act of 1880 and the Crown Lands Act of 1884. The Public Instruction Act took complete charge of the Education. compulsory education of the people, and recognised the teacher as a civil servant. The object, as expressed by Sir Henry Parkes, was the converting of a population, certain in any case to be large in numbers, into a population of the best material, and, in his words, the Bill was to enable "the child of the poorest man to attain to the highest place, if the stuff is in the child himself." As, however, the chief effect of this Act was to sweep away State aid to denominational schools, while there liad already been a system of public education in the colony, the Public Instruction Act, important as it was, was of less moment than the Crown Lands Act of 1884. By this measure the land policy of the colony was remodelled. In the days of the early settlement the Crown lands were in Land the hands of the representatives of the imperial Government, system, who made grants ; but these were abolished from 1831 and auction sales suljstituted. In 1839 the "Squatting Act" was passed, wliich settled the pastoral tenants on the lands. In 1845 the greater portion of the available lands was in the hands of the squatters, less than 2000 in number, and no pro- vision having been made for the settlement of small holders, tliere was a virtual monopoly of land by tlie rich. At that time there arose the struggle between the pastoral tenants and M 162 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt ii the small settlers. Mr. Robertson, now Sir John Robertson, mentioned in Greater Britain, came to the front as cliampion of land reform, and in 1861 carried liis Bill for " Free Selection before Survey." " Jack Robertson, tlie tribune of the people," lias now retired from Parliament on account of bodily infirmity, and has received a public present or vote of £10,000 for his political services to the colony ; but his long silvery locks, and, still more, the wonderful stories that are told of him, make him a notewortliy figure in the colony, and in its comic journals. The object of the framer of the Land Bill, tlie establishment of a yeomanry, was only partly realised, and liis measure became in some degree an instrument in the hands of tlie squatter to still further secure liis liold upon the land. Under Robertson's Act the system of fraud known in the colony as " dummying " arose ; the " dummy " being the squatter's agent, who, represent- ing himself as a bond fide settler, would select the best portion of a "run" and establish himself there until he had met the required payments (always, however, provided by the squatter) and secured the freehold ; this done, he sold the property to the squatter. JThus squatters secured the freehold of immense tracts of the best land in the colony. A coercive system was adopted in the rural districts against the genuine free selector, and his life in the heart of a wealthy squatter's run was far from pleasant. If his sheep or cattle strayed beyond the boundaries of his selection they were impounded, and a feud grew up between the two classes settled on the land until the squatter and the free selector became sworn enemies. Up to this point the history of the land question in Victoria and in New South Wales was the same, but the democratic Victorian land legislation of 1865 and 1869 was not completely followed in the older colony. In 1884 the task of land legislation was once more attempted in New South Wales, the proposals for land reform submitted by the Parkes Government having been previously defeated. Under the new system all the squatters' runs in the colony were divided into two fairly equal parts, the Government determining whicli part should be let to the tenant then in occupation and which part should be resumed for the benefit of the State. TThe lessee was, however, given a preferential right of obtaining an annual occupation-license for the resumed area, which entitled him to use the land for grazing purposes, althougli not to the exclusion of any person who miglit be in a position to acquire a better tenure. The land of New South Wales has to a large extent come into the hands of wealthy persons who are becoming a territorial aristocracy. Tliis has been the effect firstly of grants and of squatting legislation, then of tlie perversion of the Act of 1861 to tlie use of those against whom it had been aimed and finally of natural causes,— soil, climate, and the lack ol water. The urban population is increasing out of proportion to the population depending upon agricultural pursuits, and the present growth of Sydney and its suburbs is as great as tlie OHAP. II NEW SOUTH WALES 163 total increase in the rest of the country, although this re- mainder of the country includes towns like Newcastle (which depends uiDon the coal sujjply) and other centres of population depending upon mining industries of a different kind. One result has been the necessity, during three bad years, for the construction of national works by the surplus labour of the city, and 'a growing demand for a measure of Protection to native industry. The occupiers of land of at least an acre each, excluding the pastoral tenants, are only about one in twenty- three of the population, and it cannot be regarded as satis- factory that a young colony in a temperate climate should sliow only 4 or 4^ per cent of its population as holding land. Of the nearly two hundred million acres of land in the colony, about twenty-five millions have been sold or granted out and out, and about sixten millions are in process of alienation under a system of "deferred payments," leaving one hundred and fifty-five million acres unalienated ; but, of the one-fourth of the public estate which has been alienated, the greater part has gone into large estates. Only about one million acres are under cultivation, out of immense tracts of land fit for farming. There is thrice as much land under cultivation in the younger settle- ment of South Australia, and two and a half times as much in the youngest and smallest Australian colony — Victoria. In New South Wales agricultural settlement of land has been almost standing still, while the large holdings have been increasing to a great extent. The discontent which naturally arose from the facts I have mentioned has been mitigated by a policy of pubHo works and of local grants, but is still rising, and can be permanently allayed only by radical land legisla- tion very dift'erent from that carried by Sir Henry Parkes in 1889. Public works are indeed looked upon in many of the colonies Public as a safety valve for the woi'kmen's discontent. The Australian works, colonies have, as we know, from what has been seen of Victoria, not the same jealousy as to the extent of the functions of Government as exists in the United States and with ourselves at home. Government in the Australian colonies generally undertakes, besides works which elsewhere would be included in the category of national, many others whicli in Great Britain or the United States would be left to private enterprise, and in New South Wales it has in the past often undertaken them for the sake of help to labour. The State also interferes in New South Wales more largely in local government than we should think desirable. In the parts of the country which possess a true local government, that is, tlie towns and the more settled districts, Government frequently assists poor boroughs— a plan which leads both in New South Wales and in Queensland to some corruption. Government also itself undertakes to rule the outlying population. The Government of New South Wales spends much money from the public treasury on roads and bridges, and it is obvious that such a system has hitherto left 164 PIIOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN in the liands of tlie Ministry a considerable power of influencing votes. Tlie expenditure in New South Wales on public works greatly exceeds in proportion the already too liberal expendi- ture of a similar kind undertaken by France in connection with M. de Freycinet's schemes. Members from the sparsely popu- lated districts of New South Wales have in the past often been elected to the Assembly almost solely on account of their ability to pilot proposals for local works through both Houses, and were often called " Roads and Bridges members." There never- theless exists in New South Wales a widespread desire to nationalise all large enterprises, and the adoption of the policy is being rendered safer than it was by a gradual imitation at Sydney of the non-political system, already named in the last chapter. Railways. The most considerable existing public works of the colony are the railways. The first i-ailway was started with a Govern- ment guarantee, but tlie difliculties in the way of the company jiroved so great tliat Government advanced a loan and imported 500 railway labourers from England. Even after this help the company failed to make a profit, and the property was trans- ferred to Government, by whom the construction and manage- ment of the railways of the colony have ever since been carried on. It has now become an axiom of Australian policy that the State should own all railways. The Government defrays in whole or part from public funds the cost of two classes of public works — those which are national, and those which are local ; the national including railways, telegraphs, and some harbour and navigation works, as well as certain roads and bridges, and other works having a use that is wider than that of the districts in which they are situate, as well, of course, as fortification ; while the local works undertaken by the Government include the metropolitan water supply, tramways, and a large number of roads, bridges, and water supplies for merely local use. Objects in In New South Wales, as in Canada, the enemies of the public view. works system contend that the undertaking by Government of works of a nature wliich it is asserted do not properly fall within its functions, unduly burdens the public revenue, corrupts public life, and causes a feeling of dependence upon the Govern- ment rather than upon individual efibrt. But these evils have been guarded against in Victoria by means which New Soutli Wales, as I have said, is copying, and it is impossible to assert that,_ large as has been her expenditure. New South Wales is not in a solvent state. The money exjiended on railways in New South Wales, and that expended on other reproductive works, comes within four millions of her real indebtedness, deducting the balance of loan money not yet expended. The railways of New South Wales lately, for some little time, yielded only 3 per cent upon their cost, which did not pay the interest on the loans ; but this failure was mainly due to the fact that the Government had aimed at rendering tlie railway service cheap to the travelling and trading public. It had used CHAP. It NEW SOUTH WALES :65 tlie system for the purpose of encouraging up-country settle- ment, and making tlie cost of transport from tlie far interior to the ports small enough to allow the interior to compete with the coast districts. There had also been a desire to win back the Eiverina from Victorian competition. There can be no doubt that, if the railways of New South Wales were worked upon strictly commercial principles, the returns from them would be, at all times, more than sufficient to pay all the interest on the loans. In the meantime New South Wales has, in proportion to its population, a far greater length of railways than any country in the old world. New South Wales stood at a disadvantage as compared witii Victoria in railway building, and comparison of results is difficult, for in Victoria an equal population is concentrated in an altogether inferior area ; yet New South Wales has a mileage slightly superior to that of the neighbouring colony. It was no doubt the early circumstances of the young country, Some re- similar to those described in the last chapter, which forced upon suits of the the people of New South Wales, as on the people of the other public Australian colonies, the principle of the Government entering works upon tasks which in England and in the United States would system. be left to the enterprise of private individuals or to corporate bodies. Some of the evil results which had been foreseen else- where came, however, to pass in New South Wales, though it probably was necessary to face them. The construction of lines of railway into the interior of the colony necessitated the em- ployment of a lar'ge number of labourers, and a great portion of the emigration of recent years has been absorbed in these works, instead of being settled on the land. The loans raised for the railways and other public works have seemed to some to pro- mote, by circulating large sums of borrowed money throughout the colony, a sham prosperity. The public never gained the habit of regarding the season of railway construction as one of temporary and artificial inflation, and as soon as the policy of " easing off" the public works began to prevail, the colony was The un- somewhat astonished at the natural but unpleasant result in employed. the existence of large numbers of "unemployed," and of a general depression of trade. Public works were started to relieve the pinch in the labourers' condition. The unemployed were housed and fed by the State while works were being devised upon which their services could be utilised. The Govern- ment of New South Wales has indeed not only frequently pre- cipitated the construction of public works in order that occupation should be found for the unemployed, but has created work inordertoprovideemployment. Sir Henry Par kes, however, in 1889 severely condemned the system. The keen business men who manage manufactories in the colonies are good at picking out the best workmen, and the unemployed consist largely of those who are unable to do good work. The disposal of these men, to the benefit of themselves and of the State, is almost as difficult in the colonies as at home. 166 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" part ii The Civil Given the prevalence of the policy whicli I have described, it Service. may be imagined that the Civil Service of New Soutli Wales is large in proi30i-tion to the population. State education, State railways and tramways, and, I fear, some past exercise of political influence in appointments, account for the large numbers. Warned by the unpopularity of the wholesale dis- missals from the Civil Service of Victoria, by a gazette known as that of " Black Wednesday," with all the distress and bitter feeling which resulted from the sending away from oflice of several hundred men, the Ministers of New South Wales have been chary of dealing with the reduction of the Civil Service. An attempt was made by Sir Patrick Jennings to reduce the staff, but with no appreciable effect. Some members of the next or Parkes Government on taking ofiioe attempted to reduce the stafl^s of their several departments, but nothing in the way of a comprehensive system of reduction was adopted. Troublesome members of the Opposition are occasionally silenced in all countries by berths in the Civil Service ; but while New South Wales, which until lately has had no payment of members of Parliament, had resorted to this practice, the colonies which liave long paid their members have perhaps a somewhat higher standard in this respect. In the freedom of its civil servants from dependence on political opinion the old country still stands before several of its older colonies and its great daughter- country of the United States. Immigra- It is natural that, in face of the poverty of some colonial tion opera- workmen, immigration operations should have been suspended tioiis at an )jy Victoria and New South Wales ; and it is safe to say that they ■ will never be resumed. The bulk of the assisted immigrants of late years have gone to swell the urban population, and have done but little to benefit the country. City workmen and cleiks have flocked into Sydney and choked the channels of employment. On tl)e other hand, the men who have been thus brought in join with the more substantial people, who object to the increase of a partly idle class, in raising the cry of " Australia for the Australians," and in preventing aid to fresh immigrants. No doubt the surplus labour that exists in the colony is surplus labour of the wrong kind, and while there is an oversupply of some, there is a continuing demand for other labour. Wages are high — higher on the whole even than in Victoria, wliere the cost of some imported commodities is, owing to Protection, higher than in New South Wales. While the unemployed were being fed by the State in Sydney, farmers were crying out for labour. The experiment was made of sending batches of the unemployed into the country dis- tricts, but, unused to the work, and discontented with tlie life, they drifted back again. Moreover, pastoral employment in the country districts of New South Wales, as contrasted with the agricultural interest rapidly growing up in Victoria and South Au.stralia, gives New Soutli Wales a special difficulty to deal with, for the shearers form a floating rural population CHAP. II NEW SOUTH WALES 167 who luake good wages during the wool-cutting period of the year, but during the rest of the year fall back upon the city. New South Wales has hitherto been looked upon as being a free- Free Trade trade colony, although there are duties on some few articles which and Pro- are protective in their eft'ect. Taxation is unpopular every- tectiou. wliere, but seems specially impopuJar in New South Wales, where all forms of direct taxation are rejected when they are proposed, and where there is an agitation against even the tax upon tobacco. The colony ought to raise more money by taxation, and to cease to use the revenue from land sales as ordinary revenue, and should keepthis landrevenue separate from tlie taxes. It was the partial cessation of the wholesale alienation of lands which first caused a deficit in the accounts of New South Wales, and it has lately been proposed, by the free-trade party, to revei't to sales of city and suburban land for the purpose of wiping out past deficits. This, however, is an unwise policy ; in the first place, because such sales cannot go on for ever, and fresh taxation will have sooner or later to be resorted to ; and in the second place, because some of the most valuable sites for public purposes are thus improvidently sold, and when they are needed for public use they have to be bought back at enhanced prices — the benefit going to private owners. After the general election of 1889, the House, containing a small free-trade majority, instead of putting on fresh taxation, merely tried to remove the protective duties on butter, bacon, and cheese, as well as the duty upon kerosene. Their removal was suggested by the protectionist party with a view of embarrassing the incoming Treasurer. At the same time the need for taxation cannot in the long-run be escaped, and, as the least unpopular of new taxes in New South Wales will probably be found to be customs duties upon goods, the true protectionists will be reinforced by a large number of those who really only desire that the colony should pay her way, and, among them, even by some merchants. A free -trade conference held at Sydney at the close of the session of 1889 committed the party to direct taxation in the form of a tax on the unimproved value of land. Tlie growing strength of the protectionist party in New South Wales is partly caused by the jealousy with which New South Wales regards the tiny colony of Victoria, bearing an equal population, with an overflowing treasury, under a system of Protection, while New South Wales supports far less population in proportion to lier territory (although her popula- tion must soon begin to increase faster than that of Victoria), and has till lately had a deficit in her accounts. The explanation of the recent stagnation of New South Wales as compared with the recent prosperity of Victoria is, I myself believe, chiefly to be found in the democratic land legislation of Victoria, and in the inability of New South Wales to devise a land system which will enable agriculture to compete with pastoral pursuits, and will place the people upon the land ; but on the other hand, I fancy that the protectionist policy will in the long-run beat 168 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt ii ilown resistance, and that, instead of the remedy of radical land legislation, the expedient of Protection will be tried. The protectionistmovement in NeM' South Wales was originally a movement by the greater part of the artisans and by some of the manufacturers, and the protectionist party there resembled the protectionist party in Pennsylvania and many other manufac- turing communities, while the j^astoral tenants of the Crown, and inhabitants of the rural districts generally, were free traders. There has been of late a remarlcable change in the composition of the protectionist party of New South Wales. Before February 1889 two-thirds of the members of the Assembly were free traders ; but when in that month the House returned from the general election with sixty-six protectionists to seventy-one fi'ee traders, the protectionists came chiefly from the country districts. The Government soon lost a seat at a bye-election, and the balance of parties became closer still. Of forty-one members sitting for the metropolitan districts only five were protectionists, and yet these districts contain a very large proportion of the artisans. On the other hand, the protectionists had gained immensely in the agricultural and pastoral inland districts, and it is clear that the rural popula- tion had been bitten with the desire to retaliate upon Victoria, while rich peojDle generally had largely supported the pro- tectionists to avoid a land-tax or a property-tax which would fall mainly upon them. Customs duties, the rich rightly think, will bear more heavily upon other classes. New South It is a curious fact that New South Wales should be moving Wales will towards Protection, when, at the same time, it is argued tliat in the statistics prove that it is through her free-trade policy, as corn- future pass pared with the protective policy of Victoria, that New South Victoria. Wales has in some points " passed Victoria in the race " between them that has gone on for many years. The vital statistics, no doubt, go to show that there has been a movement of workmen from victoria to New South Wales. Merel.y to state, without further examination, that New South Wales had gained on Vic- toria would not be enough. New South Wales is by far the larger country. Victoria was rapidly peopled on account of the gold discoveries, and, as always happens in gold countries, the easy and cheap production of gold has fallen off, and these causes would account for the recent greater rapidity of growth of the population of New South Wales. But the falling-ofi' of people of the working age in Victoria, and the peculiar increase of people of the same age in New South Wales, goes to show that the condition of New South Wales has been of a, nature to attract workmen from Victoria, although doubtless many of the immigrants have been of the class to which I have referred in writing of Victoria. As regards local manufacturing, New South Wales, under her free-trade policy, is slightly ahead of Victoria, and if the older colony liad adopted a lancl law more calculated to promote agriculture than the system to which she is wedded, Victoria would have lost lier chief advantage. New cirAP. II NEW SOUTH WALES 169 South Wales exports a larger amount of liei' own produce than does Victoria, and already raises considerably over a pound's worth of coal per head of her population every year. Whether New South Wales becomes permanently protectionist, or con- tinues on the whole free trading, it is certain that in the long- run her larger territory and her coal will enable her to beat Victoria. Her great want is a settled agricultural population — a want which matters not so much from the purely commer- cial point of view (for possibly her exports would be larger if she continued to attend chiefly to wool production from large properties) as because, without a settled population upon the land. New South Wales will never attain to the permanency and equability of policy which are necessary for real prosperity. Protection is certainly not now needed to enable manufactures to grow up on the Australian continent ; it has fostered manu- factures in Victoria, but the cheap coal of New South Wales has brought them thither without Protection, and manufactories are springing up in great numbers between Sydney and the coal- mines. The protectionists are aware of the fact that two classes of Two remedies are ofiered for the evils which exist in New South remedies Wales — their own remedy, and that of the land reformers — and for present the two parties have lately almost come to blows at Sydney ^'^'■^^■ meetings. The settlement of land need not, of course, necessarily be by purchase, and there is in New South Wales a land national- isation party, some of whom hold extreme land nationalisation views, but others of whom would apparently be content if the State retained possession of the land she at present holds, and supplied all her necessities by means of the Henry George " single tax." It certainly seems a strange thing that the public estate of New South Wales has been sold so rapidly for low prices when liigh prices for land were beginning to prevail in other parts of the colony, and when but a few years were needed to show how large an amount of unearned increment the colony would lose by sales. There seems, however, but little prospect of land being largely kept back for the future use of the nation as a whole. Many of the ablest workmen are freeholders of houses in the towns, through the operation of the building socie- ties, and they become interested on the side of the existing state of things, and somewhat careless about land reform. Moreover, the revenue from sales is, as we have seen, used in diminution of taxation. We gave to our Australian colonies a noble dowry in handing over to them all their lands, but they have somewhat wasted this gift, which many regret was not in part retained as an inheritance for the future. When I express the wish to see the population seated on the Fertility of land, and agriculture partly replacing pastoral pursuits, it must the land of not be supposed that I wish to depreciate the value to Australia New South of her unrivalled wool production, and esi^ecially the value of it Wales, to New South Wales, which, with a comparatively small terri- tory, has many more sheep than all the other Australian main- 170 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet ii land colonies put together. But while the development of the railroads of New South Wales has allowed the inferior country to be rapidly occupied with sheep and in some small degree with cattle, it must be remembered that, in tlie valleys nortli of Sydney, New South Wales possesses some of the most fertile land in the world, and that even across the mountains she is able to produce magnificent wines, and that wine pi'oduction is almost invariably a result of small estates. New South Wales is one of the most favoured among countries in the production of fruit and vegetables for preserving, and her climate is such as to allow her to grow, at the same time, excellent oranges, and English fruits in the most perfect condition. The colonial wine production has been less developed tlian it might have been, because the people of New South Wales, like those of California and of the Cape, try to imitate the^ wines of the Bordelais and of the Rhine, instead of developing their own wine after its own fashion. Fine claret cannot be imitated, and the natural wines of New South Wales are wines of the Cote du Rhone and Hermitage type, and magnificent of their kind. New South Wales should not allow Victoria and South Australia to beat her in a wine production on which she was the first to enter. Lack of With all her splendid prospects and her magnificent wealtli, interest in New South Wales is not coming to tlie front so rapidly as she politics. should do, not on account of the absence of Protection, but because of the absence of well-considered measures for the agri- cultural settlement of the land. At the same time it is notice- able that there is not that amount of interest in politics in New South Wales which might be expected. There are a good many wilful abstentions from the exercise of the suflrage, and there has till lately been a still more objectionable form of abstention in the refusal of many of the leading men of the colony to take part in public aftairs. There are not in the colonies clearly marked party lines, and there is support and opposition to each measure under discussion as it comes up, but little permanence in party. The Roman Catholics and the Orangemen generally take opposite sides, as do the supporters of local option and the licensed victuallers j but if free trade and Protection should, as some think they will, create regular parties for the future in New South Wales, this will be a new departure. Party is more highly organised in Victoria than in New South Wales, and a greater stability of Government is the result. One reason why in New South Wales some of the best men have stood aloof from politics is because the Parliament of New South Wales was reputed not to be above a little Jobbery, and it was supposed that a class of poor men oiiered themselves for election witli the view of getting money out of the interference by Government with commercial enterprise. There has, indeed, long been a growing disposition among all parties in New South Wales to adopt the system of payment of members in force in the neigh- bouring colonies, and Bills and resolutions in favour of payment CHAP, n NEW SOUTH WALES 171 of members have been carried by large majoribies in the repre- sentative Assembly, and rejected only in the nominated Upper House, which, at last, in the winter of 1889 reluctantly passed the Bill for the payment of members of tlie Assembly. The Council altered the Bill from one to provide for the payment of members of the present and of future Parliaments, by limiting its operation to the two next Parliaments, but on the motion of the Prime Minister the Bill on its return to the Assembly was laid aside — altliough Sir Henry Parkes himself had opposed the original proposition — he taking the view that the question must be settled upon the lines proposed by the majority of the Assembly. The Speaker gave a formal opinion upon the right of the Council to touch Bills which the Assembly considered to be money Bills, and curiously enough alluded at length to New Zealand and to Queensland precedents upon the subject witli- out quoting the tar more important Victorian precedent. Sir Henry Parkes closed the debate by giving notice of a Bill to provide for popular election of the Council. The Bill was again passed by the Legislative Assembly in such form as to provide tor the payment of members from the date of its becoming law, and the CounoO. took advantage of a slight change, by the omission of all retrospective elfect, to give way, so that the Parkes Council Bill did not see the light. The New South Wales Parliament has not hitherto had so Payment of high a standing in the colony as have the Parliaments of some members, others of the Australian States. There is much disrespectful reference in colonial newspapers to "the bear-garden in Macquarie Street " ; and New South Wales can hardly be said to be so proud of her Parliament as she is of lier development in other respects. It is to my mind doubtful whether the character of the New South Wales Assembly has been affected one way or the other by the non-payment of members. It is the case in the colonies where there has for some time existed the system of the payment of members that wealthy local magnates ai-e often defeated by men with no means, who have to live upon their salary as members, and who yet make excellent and self-respecting members of the Assemblies. It is found that the local magnate, though often a success in politics, is not more certainly a success than the man who is drawn by his abilities from the crowd, and, without money, secures the vote of his fellows. Many of the best men in the paid legislatures would never have ventured to leave their calling and to embark upon political life without some small assured income as ballast. Some young business men and some professional men, who have found their businesses suffer severely from their taking to politics, and who are among the most accomplished and scholarly men that the paid Assemblies contain, would, through the loss of practice or business, be unable to live without payment. The present Prime Minister of New South Wales would liave been less open to attack had he been able to draw, when out of office, his salary as a member. On the other hand, payment of Ml TROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Difference between politics of Victoria and of New South Wales. Decentral- isation needed. members occasionally places in the House demagogues that the colonies would sooner be -without ; but, as it yields at the same time a large number of quiet, modest, sensible members, terribly in earnest about doing tlie work that they are sent to the capital to do, the colonies that have made trial of payment prefer that system. They find that the paid members, as a rule, think and read and understand, and that the well-to-do business men who, on their retirement from their own business, seek seats in Parlia- ment, do not make, on the average, equally good members. They maintain that the will of the people is more effectively and speedily carried into execution when the want of an income is not an obstacle to a candidature. New South Wales has till very lately remained without the system, and as her Assembly is generally reputed to have been the least good among the chief colonial Assemblies, the example of New South Wales has been quoted in the other colonies in favour of continuing the system of payment. There is a curious difference noticeable between the politics of New South Wales and those of Victoria. In New South Wales there is much more tendency to general considerations, or to wliat Victorians would call vague professions and appeals to feeling. In Victoria, Ministers deal with facts, figures, and Bills, and there is close and keen criticism of expenditure, of appoint- ments, and of administrative acts. Her politicians appear to be masters of detail, but it is possible that Protection has had tlie effect of making the people more Victorian and less citizens of the world than the inhabitants of New South Wales have been as compared with them in the past. The tone of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales is democratic, and if some of the richest traders of the colony have lately been standing for election it is probably through their dread of the introduction of Protection. It is certain that the fear either of Protection or of a property -tax and of a tax on absentees, one or other of which must be expected, will arouse a greater interest from year to year in the politics of New South Wales on the part of the moneyed classes. Fresh taxes of one kind or another will certainly be needed as, in bad years when there has not been a deficit, the revenue has been largely derived from land sales, which are falling off. Government interfering not only in railways, bridges, tramways, and sewage disposal, but also in otlier matters, which outside Australia are left to private enterprise, members are apt to claim, as the condition of their allegiance, the disbursal of a sum of public money in their constituency proportionate witli that spent in neighbouring constituencies. If a Ministry restrict its expenditure to thai; which is necessary, it may be beaten. If, on the other hand, it proposes unnecessary expenditure to obtain the votes of members interested, the wliole of them stand by any one of their class who may be threatened, and the expenditure is carried. There is a certain feeling that the loans come from England, which for financial purposes may be looked upon as oiiAP. II NEW SOUTH WALES 173 comiug from abroad ; and although, as I have said, a large pro- portion of the debt represents railroads, still it must be re- membered that some of these do not psiy interest, and that a portion of this expenditure has been upon public works which were hardly necessary, or not necessary in tlie degree in whicli money was spent upon them. The advocates of the expenditure maintain, however, that the railways were not made primarily for revenue; that it is not to be expected that they should all pay interest ; and that the contingent advantages to the colony are a sufficient return in cases where the profit is small. There is this great fact upon their side that the railways of New South Wales could be sold at any time for a price about equal to her debt. It has been too often found that, in the rural districts, elections are detennined by the question of which of the two candidates appears likely to be able to cause the larger amount of Government money to be expended in the district. TJie importance of what is known as the policy of "New-Bridge- aoross-Gum-Tree-Creek " is of course due in some degree to the isolation of the up-country constituencies ; for, cut off as they are from connection with the larger towns, small things of local life become magnified into matters of State importance. But the members of Parliament elected from the back country come down to Sydney charged with statistics and indignation as to the neglect wliich their constituencies have suffered in the past, aad they are too apt to make the " New-Bridge " the price of their vote upon the measures before the House. The only possible cure for this state of things lies in decentralisation, and decentralisation has been promised by the free-trade leaders. An Act of June 1888 established for large public works a stand- ing joint committee of the two houses of the legislature, witli considerable powers, and as the Eailway Commissioners have a check on new railroads, and the joint committee on other great new works, reckless expenditure has been checked, and jobbery has become less rife. Sir Henry Parkes, who has something of the aspect of Mr. sir Henry Punch's Father Thames, but with a clean beard, is the patriarch Parkes among colonial politicians. His career has been described by his enemies as a closely-knit tissue of successful artifice, and it is characteristic of the man that, a number of cojjies of the publication in which that statement was made having been purchased by a previous administration, on coming into office he caused them to be burnt at a bonfire at the Government printing-office. Sir Henry Parkes is not only one of the oldest Parliamentarians in Australia, but one of its most experienced administrators and best political tacticians. Tlie average ability of the leading politicians is not so high, I think, ill New South Wales as in Victoria, but Sir Henry Parkes in New South Wales stands head and shoulders above his rivals. In England he had been a mechanic, but he began colonial life as a toy-shop keeper and a poet, and after a stormy career he is, with intervals, the supreme ruler of the colony. He is now 174 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN tartii by far its ablest speaker, and in liis best efforts displays a rough eloquence wliich puts him on a level with the more cultivated Mr. Higinbothani of Victoria; with Bishop Moorliouse of Manchester, who has left a great I'eputation in the colonies ; and with Mr. Dalley, now no more. It is not often that Sir Henry Parkas readies those heights, but he is at all times a powerful and suggestive speaker. He is not really popular, but only followed or admired, which is a different thing, and, while he has few old friends, has many foes. He is capable of large ideas, and is often the author of far-reaching proposals, but is wanting in grasp of detail. He is in liis element in a popular assembly, reigning and rejoicing in the storms of debate with marvellous physical power. He has a tendency to be jealous of his neighbours, and in a colony which as a whole is jealous of Victoria he is the person who is most jealous. When in the Chinese matter the Victorian Government, fearing a popular tumult, took strong measures to prevent the landing of Chinese immigrants, Sir Henry Parkes, who was unable through popular pi-essure to take the opposite course, outbid tlie Victorian Government in tlie same line, pressed forward a violent Bill, and publicly declared his indifference with regard to the feelings of the Governor or the guns of the British warships in the harbour. The Gov- When Victoria declared against the doctrine of a colonial ernorship nomination of Governors, Sir Henry Parkes seized the oppor- que.stion. tunity to isolate her from the other colonies, in the same way in which New South Wales lierself is isolated by the Federal Council, to which she is not a party ; and he instantly sup- ported Queensland, and ostentatiously joined with the other colonies to leave Victoria " in the cold." It is interesting to re- mark that the press of New South Wales supported Sir Henry's action as unanimously as did the Assembly, so that colonial feeling appeared to be unanimous in opposite directions in neighbouring colonies. It is hardly likely that on tlie merits of the Governorship question this should have been tlie case, and it would really seem that intercolonial jealousy was the chief factor in producing unanimity on each side. In the latter part of the Australian winter of 1889 Sir Henry Parkes entered into negotiations with the other colonies with a view to Federation on the Canadian plan, but insisted on a new departure, and declined to promote the representation of New South Wales on the existing Federal Council of Australasia. Atlitnde of With the exception of the Sydney Morning Herald (the the press, wealthiest journal of the colonial M'orld), tlie press of New South Wales is somewhat less English in its general tone than the Victorian press. Tliere are newspapers in Sydney which openly advocate separation from Great Britain. The liepubli- can and protectionist Bulletin, whicli has a considerable circula- tion, though it is largely a circulation outside New South Wales, is distinctly liostile to the mother-country's interference • and the free-trade Daily Telegraph, which is the organ of the CHAP. II NEW SOUTH WALES 175 new National party, gives an occasional support to anti- English proposals, but in the most thoughtful manner. Looking to the jealousies and difl'erences between Victoria Tie and New South Wales, it is a jiity that the Murray river, where Murray it forms, as in a great part of its course, the boundary between water those colonie-s, is by law all in tlie territory of New South question. Wales. There are likely to be delicate and difficult questions arising from tlie desire of settlers on both banks to use the water, and as the trade from the Eiverina district partly goes to Melbourne, the Government of New South Wales may not be yielding with regard to them. The Victorians hold that they put nine-tenths of the water into the Murray river, and are equitably entitled to take a good deal of water out again. Their Government is at present promoting irrigation schemes which depend upon the supply of Murray water for success, and their representatives declare that tliey will not yield upon the question or surrender what they think their rights, even if they have to dig an artificial river across Victoria to carry tlieir own streams. There was a conference between Victoria and New South Wales upon the subject not long ago, Victoria asking that delegates from South Australia might attend, but being refused by New South Wales, and some kind of agreement was arrived at, to which effect has not been given. Victoria is now pressing for a joint commission, upon which South Australia should be represented as well as New South Wales, to settle the whole question; but I believe that this commission has been refused by Sir Henry Parkes. The Prime Minister of New South Wales has lately stated that the works of Chaffey Brothers, in the Murray near Mildura, are erected on the soil of New South Wales, and that the iirm are trespassers who must be turned out, and the New South Wales Government have prepared returns which show that something like a million and a half of acres in Victoria will soon be irrigated from the Murray, with the effect, as they put it, of draining the river dry. On the other hand, at the very time of the preparation of this report there was such a flood upon the Murray that the Government of Victoria were asked by Sir Henry Parkes, and acceded to the request, to send a special train with boats to the Murray in order to remove inhabitants to higher ground, and Echuca itself was under water. Such are the Australian rivers — so dry one day that they can hardly be found by the investi- gator, and raging floods the next. The question is a dangerous one in the hands of politicians so self-confident and so strong as Mr. Gillies and Mr. Deakin for Victoria and Sir Henry Parkes for New South Wales. Sir Henry Parkes has retired from public life more often than Sir Henry a popular actor from the stage, and the occasional raffles of his Parkes'sin- effects have not lessened the number of his political admirers. fl»ence and Sir Henry Parkes believes in himself, and that deep self-belief P"'"^'^- undoubtedly impresses many of those about him and makes them too believe. He is one of those to whom age is useful. 176 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN I'Aivr ii His years protect him from tlie assaults of the young lions, and when he closes his speeches by reference to the whiteness of beard and hair which has come upon him in the service of his adopted country, the people are apt to go and vote for the " poor old man." When iSir H. Parkes wrote in " The Strong Man"— ' ' Like a rock that breasts the sea, Firm he stood, in front of foes ; To his friends a slielteving tree That in changeless beauty grows," he may have been thinking of himself ; but in person he has been as little favoured by nature with good looks as Socrates or Darwin. For all that, there is an assurance of strength in the massy features, and a consciousness in the eyes that their owner is not an ordinary man. The fact is that, with all his faults and all his weaknesses. Sir Henry Pai-kes is the only great poli- tical power in New South Wales. His sympathy with the democratic ideas which are uppermost in Australia, and his devotion to the colony and broad grasp of affairs, give him a greater hold upon the people than any other Australian public man. His debts, his poetry, are powerless to sink him, and as a man who knows how to use, like so many chess-men, the sec- tions which take the place of parties in colonial politics, he is undoubtedly one of the ablest of colonial politicians, in this respect almost ranking with Sir John Macdonald. The late The next ablest in New South Wales was Mr. Dalley, who Mr. Dalley. ^ffg,s^ for some time before his death, in retirement in the Coun- cil or so-called Upper House, composed of nominated members, and regarded with little interest by the community. Mr. Dalley it was who, being at the time still a leading politician, carried into execution the despatch of the New South Wales expedition to the Soudan. Dalley was a Roman Catholic, of Irish descent, but born in New South Wales. In his early days lie was a democratic Catholic, upon whom his religion sat but lightly ; in his later days he came under the influence of Archbishop Vaughan, and grew more rigid in liis religious views. He was, in consequence, at one time of his life a supporter, and at another time an opponent, of the public school system. He was a finished orator, but always read his speeches for the Assembly. As an after-dinner impromptu speaker lie was most humorous, and when I knew him he was the witty Editor of the Sydney Punch. Dalley's style was florid and old-fashioned, but he had a fine rich voice, with a mellow Dublin brogue inherited from his progenitors ; and as he rolled out his big words and rounded phrases, with here and there a sly allusion, and with frequent quotations of the prehistoric kind, he pleased the public, which liked to remember that all this culture had been acquired in New South Wales. He was no politician. He des- pised parties, loved the quiet atmosphere of his library, was well off, and had a lovely house in an exquisite situation.' To read and saunter, read and trot upon a quiet horse, read and go II. CHAP NEW SOUTH WALES 177 to bed, was the life that suited him; and the fact that for a time he guided the destinies of New South Wales was an acci- dent in his career. Tlie sending of the Soudan contingent was almost personal TheSoudau on Dalley's part, but all the colonies were carried away by the contingent. enthusiasm of the moment. There has been a serious reaction since throughout Australia, but especially in New South Wales, and Sir Henry Parkes, who opposed the expedition, has gained strength through this reaction. It would require a real and grave catastrophe before any colony in the future would ven- ture to oifer direct aid to tlie liome Government, and it may safely be asserted that, when such offers come, New South Wales is not likely to take the lead. Dalley's personal popular- ity has survived his life ; statues are being put up to him, and his place is still warm in Australian hearts ; but his abettors in the Soudan Expedition have not been forgiven by the public, and are continually branded as " Soudan men " by a portion of the press. As Mr. Dalley is dead, the Governor has become, after Sir Henry Parkes, the best-known person in the colony. Lord Lord Carrington has been as popular in New South Wales as was Caningtou. Sir Henry Loch in Victoria. He has, indeed, this advantage over Sir Henry Loch, that lie is freer or less guarded in his manner ; familiar and friendly with all classes of the people. He spends much more than his salary in entertainment, and is a great lover of sport and sportsmen, both of which points are in his favour in Australia. He is a better speaker than Sir Henry Loch, and has shown himself almost as good a governor even in purely official matters. Indeed, he accepted his con- stitutional position more willingly — too willingly for the high authorities. Lord Carrington has apparently laid down the doctrine that a governor can have no knowledge of tlie position of his advisers in the Assembly or in the country, and is bound to accept their advice without question so long as they remain in office, even though they may be obviously near their doom. Now this doctrine is not looked upon as sound if pushed to extreme limits, although the acceptance of it, in most cases, simplifies a governor's course. Lady Carrington with her charming manners has greatly aided her husband in his social duties, and they have established the reputation of being the democratic ideal of a governor and his wife. Lord Carrington has been singularly independent of the Colonial Office, and has discharged his duties exactly in the way that he thought best, without the smallest reference to the wishes of that Office. In several difficult cases he has displayed much wisdom. His lot has in political matters hardly fallen in such pleasant places as Sir Henry Loch's, because there is more anti-English feeling in New South Wales than in Victoria. In tlie recent conflict be- tween the Home Government and Queensland upon the colonial governorship question. New South Wales, as Ihave said, sup- ported Queensland, as did South Australia. But the reasons N 178 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part ii were in the several cases different. A Parkas Ministry which was in office at the time in New South Wales was independent of the Irish Roman Catholics ; the colony was well satisfied with its governor. On the other hand, the reaction from the fervid loyalty of the Soudan contingent episode was in full force, and although the Naval Defence Bill was, from regard to Australian interests, passed in New South Wales, as in South Australia and Victoria, the policy pursued both in the matter of Chinese immigration, and in reference to colonial Governors, has been tinged by a spirit of disregard for irnperial interests. Public In tlie Assembly there are, besides Sir Henry Parkes, no men. very prominent men, and no men easy to pick out and distin- guisli the one from the other. Among the colleagues of Sir Henry Parkes in his Government of 1887-88 was Mr. Inglis, an out-and-out free trader, a fluent witty speaker, a popular lecturer, and an educated man, the author of some excellent books of travel, and of some of the stifFest Indian " tiger stories" upon record. Prominent in the free-trade party was Mr. Wise, the son of a colonial judge — an Australian educated at Oxford, and a well-known speaker at his Union, of which he had been President ; an enthusiastic free trader, too fond of teaching the working classes out of books. Mr. Wise is inexperienced as a politician, and sat only for a short time in the colonial Parlia- ment ; but possessing, as he does, confidence and the power of speech, he is likely to be one of the men of the future. Having at once become Sir Henry Parkes's Attorney-General, he speedily resigned his office — for what reason is not well known, as he stated only that he found that his duties as a minister interfered with his profession as a barrister, which is hardly the experienee of those who had gone before him. No doubt, however, while lie had a large practice as a junior, his private work fell ott' when he was Attorney -General, because as Attorney -General he was forced to lead. He lost his seat in South Sydney in 1889, and has since written some rather bitter attacks upon the Eoman Catholic Church, to which I shall allude in Part VI., Chap. III. Mr. Eeid, a more experienced politician, is another free-trade pamphleteer and champion, and a finished speaker ; and Mr. Bruce Smith is also one of the free-trade leaders— a popular speaker, and a man who has a future before liim if he cares for Parliament, of which he has not been continuously a member. He is just now looked on as "the coming man," although Mr. Brunker, who is an old ParKament man, a great authority on the land question, and a strong free trader, is called the "future leader." Mr. John Sutherland, who died in the Australian winter of 1889, Sir Henry jp'arkes's former Minister of Public Works— " Honest John "—whose speeches generally resolved themselves into the assertion that he in- tended to " vote square," was treated when in office by his fellow-ministers as an elderly baby, and not allowed to receive deputations except in company. The former Parkes Minister for Mines, who had the rabbit question oddly enough Iianded CHAP, n NEW SOUTH WALES 179 over to liim for settlement, was supiDosed to be an authority on bootlaces, but hardly to know mica from gold, although in colonies technical knowledge is thought more necessary in ministers than at liome. When Sir Henry Parkes came into office in March 1889, Thepresent after the general election, he brought in many new men, and adminis- Mr. Brunker, his Minister of Lands, Mr. Bruce Smith, his tratiou. Minister of Works, and Mr. M'Millan, his Colonial Treasurer, came to be looked on as the free-trade leaders. The fact is, that the colony was tired of its previous men. Mr. Bruce Smith, however, soon commenced a brief resort to relief works for the unemployed, which shook his credit with steady -going people, and which conflicted with the views against State interference expressed by him in his book on Liberty and Liberalism. Sir Henry Parkes's former Ministry had by its bitterest opponents been accused of jobbery in many points, and especiaUy in the purchase of property from companies supposed by them to be creditors of the Prime Minister. On the other hand, Sir John Robertson had retired, with the epitaph in the columns of the Bulletin, which is notorious for strong language — " Jack Falstaff without the wit " ; and the same persons who held these views about the leaders of the one party, were in the habit of describing the leader of the other (unjustly, in my opinion) as a blundering adventurer who took up politics after failing in trade. The scenes in the Assembly damaged the rank and file of the members as much as the leaders had been damaged by the attacks on them in tlie press, and the colony was thoroughly ready for a change. At the same time there were many signs of improvement, and the newspapers and cheap travelling were rapidly bringing the means of comparison with other legislatures within the reach of the whole people. The result has been recent marked improvement in the ministerial calibre. On the other side, that is, among the protectionists, Mr. Protection- Abbott used to lead the Opposition — a tall, powerful solicitor, ist leaders, with a clear and incisive style of speech ; a better critic than an advocate, and a somewhat lukewarm politician, easy-going, unless stung into action by the bitter words of an opponent. Then he replies with a force and vigour all the stronger, because, once a free trader, he has -carried a considerable knowledge of the free-trade arguments into the ranks of the protectionists. His main line in debate is that the future of the empire depends upon federation ; that federation is only possible through Protection, and impossible so long as New South Wales stands aloof from the fiscal union policy rapidly growing up among the colonies. Mr. Abbott was oifered office when Mr. Dibbs formed a Ministry in 1889, but he refused it. One of the most influential of the protectionist members is Mr. Garvan, an experienced politician, who has held office in the past, who also represents to some extent the Irish and Eoman Catholic element, and who is deservedly respected by his fellow- 180 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part ii members. He was the Finance Minister of the recent shortlived Dibbs Administration. Mr. Copeland is one of the strongest men on the Protection side. Originally a Victorian resident, he came to New South Wales witli a bias towards Protection, and soon found his way to Parliament, where he became one of the first to advocate the imposition of protective duties. He is a useful man in many ways, and his knowledge of mines and general experience of the colonies and of colonial life stand him in good stead. He is a forcible but not a polished speaker, and is trusted by the protectionist working man. Mr. Copeland also refused office in 1889. Mr. Dibbs. Mr. Dibbs, who is, I think, Australian-born, was Colonial Treasurer in the administration previous to that of Sir Henry Parkes, and Prime Minister for a short time in 1889. He was until 1887, I believe, professedly a free trader, though he laad acquiesced in the imposition of ad valorem duties. He then went over publicly to the protectionists, and became known among free traders as " the one-year-old apostle of Protection." Being an experienced politician and an able man, he obtained the lead of the protectionists, but his protectionist views are as little believed in by the real protectionists as are the corre- sponding opinions of Sir Henry Parkes by the real free traders. There are a good many people in the colony who sympathise with the Bulletin in its attempt to get rid of what it calls the " rival syndicates," which it continually asserts are " played out " — the syndicates being Sir Henry Parkes and his friends, and Mr. Dibbs and his friends. One thing against the latter group, in the eyes of the new Australian party, is that they helped to j)ass the Defence Bill, which is now almost as unpopular as the "Dalley Expedition." Mr. Dibbs, however, has lately given hostages to the " national " party, and his Ministry of 1889 was praised for containing only two members who were not native- born Australians. The Dibbs party is becoming a party sup- ported by all Irish Soman Catholics, all protectionists, and all publicans, and is somewhat similar in composition to the ruling party in Queensland and to the Victorian Opposition, although in Victoria the Government and the Opposition are alike pro- tectionist. The Roman Catholic objectors to the public school system, and the publicans threatened by developments of local option, are the chief strength of the Opposition in Victoria and of the Government party in Queensland ; but Protection in New South Wales, and not in the other two colonies, difleren- tiates tlie party supported by these classes from their opponents. Mr. Dibbs is credited with a hasty temper, and its existence is indicated by the fact that, like Mr. Pickwick, he went to gaol rather than pay the costs of an action in which he was defeated, but which he thought ought to have gone in his favour. He preferred to take a year's imprisonment rather than comply with the order of tlie Court, but finally a friend paid for him, and he was liberated against his will, having learnt wood-carv- ing at Government expense. Sir Patrick Jennings, although a CHAP. II NEW SOUTH AVALES 181 squatter, and a representative man of that section of the com- Otter munity, is claimed by protectionists as well as by free traders, politicians. Until recent years he was better known as a patron of letters and of art than as a politician. He was not a signal success in politics, and the announcement of a deficit of two millions drove him to the polls, with the result that he was dismissed from office in 1885. He perhaps preferred this fate to success, as he is supposed to regard a life of leisured refinement as more agreeable than that of a colonial Minister ; and it is perhaps hardly likely that he will again lead a Government. Mr. Melville is a well-known member, and a useful member for his party, though looked upon as eccentric by his opponents. By calling he is an undertaker, and in the morning superintends the interment of his clients, and in the evening becomes the Bernal Osborne of the Assembly, though now charged with semi-official functions which interfere with the free exercise of his wit. Mr. O'SuUivan, a working-man representative and enthusiastic protectionist, one of the younger men of the House, is respected by his colleagues, though looked upon by his op- ponents in the country as a demagogue. Mr. M'Millan, the representative of the importers, a good speaker — one of the men whom fear of the triumph of Protection has brought into the Assembly — is a man of abilitjr, of fluent speech, and of business capacity, who became Sir Henry Parkes's Colonial Treasurer in the Ministry of March' 1889, although it was popularly supposed that he had had a good deal to do with Sir Henry Parkes's upset in January of the same year. Mr. M'Millan is the leader of the commercial class, and one of the most highly respected members of the Assembly ; an out-and- out free trader, who said not long ago that he believed that the present relations with the mother-country might last twenty years, and would be succeeded, to his regret, by independence ; but no doubt he hopes for better things. It is hardly necessary to mention the well-known member who has been out since the late elections, and who represented that rapidly vanishing race of men, distinct from all others — the bullock drivers ; the fire- brand of the Assembly, who challenges all who difler from him to "have it out" upon the iloor. His speeches fossilise early colonial life. Mr. Barton, once Speaker, is credited with ability, and has now been elected leacler of the protectionists. The Dibbs Cabinet of 1889 was not made to last. Sir Henry Parkes, who had a large majority, apparently went out of office in order to show that tlie Opposition could do no better than he had done; and they are in fact a miscellaneous crowd who would naturally fall to pieces when they tried to work harrnoniously. Sir Henry Parkes had no trouble in beating them in March 1889, though he liad had but a majority of one at the elections, and has since lost that one, and carried on the Government without a real majority. Mr. Dibbs, besides consolidating the alliance between the Sir Henry protectionists, the Pioman Catholics, and the publicans, has Parkes'.'s 182 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART II free-trade pro- gramme. Land legis- lation too timid. Freehold tenure. lately secured a good deal of support from the pastoral interest ; while, on the other hand, Sir Henry Parkes has found, as has been seen, a set of colleagues and supporters much abler than his former friends, and is warmly backed by the free traders, the local optionists, and the Orange Lodges. Mr. M'RIillan shows by his speeches that he believes that, while Protection is fast growing. Protection alone cannot cai-ry New South Wales, and thinks that, if Sir Henry Parkes has luck, the Protestant temperance free-trade union will yet win at an election which cannot be far distant. The active free traders are forming a league with branches all through the country, and a general platform as attractive as possible in the shape of its land, irri- gation, and direct taxation planks ; and it is clear that both parties are becoming consolidated to the advantage of the community at large. Both parties are closely watchiiag the electoral rolls, and are preparing for a fresh election in which tlie farmers and graziers will probably turn the scale. Sir Henry Parkes hopes to detach the pastoral interest from the Opposition by his land legislation and by careful finance, although his suggestion of Federation "upon the Canadian plan," looks as though he intends shortly to throw free trade to the winds. The further amendment of the land laws made in 1889 is timid. While compensation to the squatter for any improve- ment he may have made upon the land is right, the Bill of 1888 did not take from the Minister that power which has been the source of much complaint, and which may be made the instru- ment of corruption — the fixing of the rent of pastoral holdings ; and the Act of 1889 is also far from being a sweeping measure, although it professes to establish a non-poUtical board. The dominant colonial feeling is in favour of freehold tenure for householders and agriculturists, and so general is this view that rich land, or land that is for any purpose specially valuable, will not fetch fair interest by way of rent. The Australians object to put uj) fencing, to clear, and, above all, to build on other people's land. They find a satisfaction, that is beyond that of money, in making the place on which they live to their taste ; and they will not do it with the possibility that tliey may be turned out. They maintain that land can only be worked profitably under the immediate care of the interested person, with the stimulus of sole proprietorship ; and the result is that purchasers will often ofier more than the land is really worth to buy, while leaseholders ofler less by way of rent. People in Australia attach importance to unearned increment, but they want, as a rule, to get the unearned increment for themselves, rather than to secure it for the community. There is, of course, no law- of primogeniture and no entail ; custom forbids the leaving of a man's property to one child alone ; equal division among all the children is general, and this tends more and more to bring large estates of good land into tlio market. The clioicest parts of New South Wales are held by OHAP. II NEW SOUTH WALES 183 selectors whose properties have been purchased out and out on easy tenus, and have risen steadily in value. The proprietors have thus become men of substance, and are strong Conserva- tives in all land questions, but there are in New South Wales, as I have shown, but few of them. Altliough, however, the leasehold system is most unpopular in Australia it exists in Sydney, though not by choice. A great deal of the land on which Sydney stands had been " granted " in far distant times, with the old-world idea of founding families on a property basis of unalienable land ; and the suburbs of Sydney are held by magnates who will only part with the land on building leases. Sir Daniel Cooper is a large holder of land near Sydney, and I believe that on his estates there is a good deal of leasehold villa-building ; but many of the magnificent sites in the neigh- bourhood of Sydney have proved comparatively useless, and the houses built are inferior, on account of the leasehold tenure, to those that are erected in the neighbourhood of Melbourne in situations of far less natural beauty. The graduated or progressive death duties, wliich are only 5 Graduated per cent in New South Wales on the largest properties, will taxation, probably be one day increased to the 10 per cent of Victoria or the 13 per cent of New Zealand. This, combined with a land or property tax, will tend to break up the remaining great estates. Many of the rich men who are not merchants are joining the protectionists because they prefer customs duties to taxation of the kind proposed by the free traders. The Property Tax Bill of 1888 was rejected, but Mr. Dibbs, then leader of the Opposition, in speaking against it took the line that an income tax would be bettei', and one or the other, or a heavy land tax, is sure to come. In spite of such prospects, Sydney freeholds form a favourite investment, and Lords Carnarvon, Rosebery, and Sherbrooke are on the East Sydney electoral roll. It would seem then, on the whole, that New South Wales is Irrigation growing much in great city and little in agricultural settle- needed. ment ; that the emigrants who have flowed of late years into the colony have been of the wrong class ; that land legislation lias been too timid, and that large estates have been encouraged, to the detriment of the small agricultural settler ; that, with a view to promote agricultural settlement, a comprehensive scheme of irrigation is necessary in order that lands now only used for pastoral purposes may be opened up to the agricul- turist. Irrigation indeed is quite as important as railway- making. How, for example, can a New South Wales line which runs for 500 miles through country for the most part carrying only one sheep to three acres, and having no long- distance through traffic, pay in the present condition of the land ? Yet there is country on the line which with irrigation works would feed and keep millions of human beings. Tlie protectionist view, that, the market of New South Wales not being secured to the farmers of New South Wales, tliey are 184 PEOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN South Wales, exposed to a competition against which they cannot tight, I will consider in my chapter on Protection. Victorian Some grumblers in New Soutli Wales point out that agreat business number of the most successful businesses in Sydney are in the men in New j^a,nds of persons from the other colonies. In shipping, they say, New South Wales is less well provided with ocean-going steamship liues of her own than a,re the other colonies. Even the trade between Tasmania and Sydney is chiefly in Tasmanian liands ; and New South Wales cannot be said to have an ocean- going steamship line in the same sense in which Victoria has two at least, and Queensland, South Australia, and New Zealand have each one. Sydney is, however, the final port of every line between Australia and the outside world except one — the British India, which stops at Brisbane ; and all the others (viz. the Orient Company, the Messageries, the Peninsular and Oriental, and the San Francisco lines) make Sydney their head- quarters. It is true that a large portion of the territory of New South Wales and a vast proportion of the territory of Queens- land have been virtually taken away from New South Wales by Victorian capital. In Sydney itself a large number of insurance companies are managed by gentlemen from Melbourne, from New Zealand, and from England. Some of the best mining companies in New South Wales are owned by Victorians and South Australians, who have made fortunes in them. Melbourne people have invested millions sterling in a single year in city property in Sydney, and these operations are carried on with British money, which passes through Melbourne when it might more easily pass through Sydney hands. The wool trade is very largely in the hands of three companies, which are as a fact Victorian firms, borrowing money at 4 per cent, and lending it out at 8. But such are the climate and soil of New South Wales, its mineral wealth, and the room that it affords, that there is, in my mind, no doubt as to the certainty of its recovery from trouble or depression. The land laws of New South Wales will doubtless one day be radically reformed, and a property-tax imposed in order that the colony may continuously pay her way. If more money is needed than a property-tax can easily produce, an export duty upon coal would seem applicable to the circumstances of New South Wales. The colony has of the best coal perfectly situated for sea carriage a virtual monopoly in its own part of the world, and it exports more coal than it as yet needs for its own consumption. The coal-owners have made large fortunes upon estates but recently alienated, and the alienation of which by the Government at the rates at which tliey passed was improvident. An export duty might be looked ujjon as being in the nature of a royalty raised on owners who are making fortunes rapidly by chance; the State stepping in to secure a portion of the unearned increment. There is an export duty upon gold in New South Wales, and there was formerly a heavier one; but in gold the colony has no monopoly. In coal Queensland, New Other remedies suggested. oiiAP. II NEW SOUTH WALES 185 Zealand, and Gippsland cannot, as yet, compete with her on equal terms, as their coal is not equally well placed for manu- factures and for trade. There is only one legislative peculiarity in New South Wales, Legislative which is an electoral law providing for an automatic increase of peculiar- tlie number of reiDresentatives, by a machinery known as the ity- " expansive clauses." These do not work well, and the House of Assembly is supposed to be growing too fast, by the ad- mission of too large a number of representatives. The New South Wales " Expansive clauses '' are less well devised than tlie self-acting Redistribution macliinery of the Dominion of Canada. To turn for a moment to lighter topics, Sydney compares, Fine arts, on the whole, favourably with Melbourne as regards its fine art galleries. Throughout the colonies there is an activity as regards the fine arts which promises good results in the future. Sydney and Melbourne contain strong art societies, holding exhibitions twice a year, in which about half the contribu- tions are from native artists and about half from British artists who have gone to live in Australia. A great deal is being done for art training ; travelling scholarships exist for sending students to Europe, and much originality and power are beginning to be shown by a small band of colonial artists who are thoroughly in earnest. They ai'e excelled in technique by the imported artists, but they seem to have, at all events in Victoria and South Australia, a good deal of vigour. If Sydney is a little behind Melbourne in schools of design, it stands first in the real, though not in the commercial, value of its national gallei-y, which contains a strong representation of French art in de Neuville's "Eorke's Drift and other excellent pictures. There are also at Sydney two Menzlers as well as a good many other specimens of Continental schools. Leighton's "Wedded" is in the Sydney collection, as well as Eildes's " The Widower " and Vicat Cole's "Arundel." The collection at Melbourne is the more interesting to the general public, and contains Turner's " Dunstanborough Castle, " Love and Death," by Watts, Tadema's " Vintage Festival," Long's "Esther," and a fine Alfred Hunt; but that at Sydney is, though less well-housed, more valuable to artists. Both these galleries are generally thronged with visitors. In Victoria the State is giving assistance to provincial museums. Sydney opens her national gallery on Sundays, although Mel- bourne follows, as has been said, the example of the old country in closing the national library and galleries on that day. The Victorian Presbyterian and Wesleyan congregations are strongly opposed to any change ; but in Sydney the galleries are thronged on Sunday afternoons by quiet, orderly, and earnest visitors. All the cities of Australia have botanic gardens, and, as a Botanic general rule, gardens laid out both as landscape gardens, or gardens. "recreation reserves," and as botanic gardens proper. The 1 86 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" part ii present taste lies in the direction of the formation of out-door ferneries, many of the smaller towns having gardens in whicli there are acres upon acres of tree-ferns from live to thirty feet in height. While the Melbourne gardens are the most scientific in the colonies, and as mere gardens also perhaps the best, the Sydney gardens have the advantage of an exquisite situation on a gentle slope leading down to a lovely bay. The Brisbane gardens, with their magnificent tropical effects of wild luxuri- ousness, stand comparison with either of the others. It is the belief of the more cultured colonists that the taste for the beautiful in gardens is having a considerable effect on national character, and is producing a tendency tow^ards refinement ; but the learned side of gardening is not forgotten, and the names of the Government botanists at Melbourne and at Adelaide have long been famous among botanists throughout the world. The gardening fervour of Australia exceeds that of any other English-speaking country, and it would have been impossible to pass over without this notice such examples of it as either the superb but old-fashioned Sydney gardens or the natural parks of the newer towns. The fondness of the Sydney people for their botanic gardens and the " inner domain " that leads to them, and the fact that in their warm climate full advantage is taken by the population of the beauty of the spot, must bring out the more poetic side of human nature in the inhabitants. Throughout the towns private gardening is universal : immediately outside the business portion of the cities pretty gardens surround the houses, and tlie inhabitants almost universally compete at shows. Water is dear in Sydney, and in the dry weather of the summer it is not easy to keep lawns in order, as they have often to be soaked in water ; yet the number of fathers of families who not only pay a heavy water-rate, but water their lawns twice a day, and themselves mow them three times a, week, is amazing to those not Aus- tralian-born. The immense amount of space devoted by the weekly papers to horticultural matters bears witness to the interest taken in them. The prevalence of gardening among the tradespeople and the mechanics of Australia is striking to Americans who have visited the colonies ; but when we con- trast the American winter with mid-winter in Australia, the pall of snow, with the blue sky and the rich earth full of narcissus and of hyacinths, one cannot wonder at the difference. In tlie very depth of winter, in the greater portion of non- tropical Australia, besides the bulbs and the anemones, the geraniums and the camellias — pansies, violets, and roses con- tinue to bloom. In America, as in England, gardening is an amusement for six months ; in Australia a long procession of beauties, changing from season to season, but unbroken as regards continuance, gives zest to the delight. Tlie sale of cut flowers in Sydney is carried on to a much larger extent than in the old world, and the fashion of giving flowers is as developed there as among the wealthy classes in the United CHAP. II NEW SOUTH WALES 187 States. Not only does the State throughout Australia do much for botany and much for tine art, but the colonial Governments take everywhere an intelligent interest in science, and make great sacrifices of money on behalf of astronomy, zoology, and statistics. If it were possible for the State to do much intelligently to Literature, assist letters, I believe that the Australian colonies would be willing to make that attempt. Offices, as nearly sinecures as colonial life can furnish, have twice been given in New South Wales to Australian literary men. There is an uneasy feeling in Australia that, except in journalism, which has been excellent all along, there is a want of first-class native literature. When we speak of Australian literature we must remember that it is natural that, if we exclude from view the journalistic field, a new country should be behindhand in its number of literary men and its fruitfulness of literary production, and that tliis must be specially the case in a country reading the English language and having the whole supply of English literature ready to its hand. But although tiie true literary class in Australia is far smaller in proportion than in Great Britain, the mass of the people are more of a reading people than the English. They buy more books ; they possess more libraries in proportion. London, liowever, is the natural fountain whence flows their supply of books. A man writing in London, with the English public, and the American public, and the colonial public all open to him, is at an advantage as compared with a man writing in a colony, unless the colonial writer writes something peculiarly necessary to the place. On the other hand, literary fashion in the colonies is not protectionist, and gives an almost undue preference to the productions of the old country, so that colonial letters have an uphill fight for life. Works published in Australia have as yet no access to the world at large, and no privilege even in Australia. Li the case of specialists there is no sufficient public in the colonies, and they cannot publish unless it is in the mother-country. There is no case as yet on record of a large demand out of Australia for any book published in Australia. The Australian writer who has anything important to say, or thinks he has, which for this purpose comes to the same thing, will at present continue to carry his book to London. I once in Sydney came across a gentleman who had published there a work on mathematics, of a slightly eccentric type, but interesting to mathematicians. 1 was allowed to write a review of it in the Hydnty Mornimj Herald by tlie kindness of the proprietors ; but I doubt whether there were many people in the colonies who read that review, and I believe that there was nobody in the colonies who bought the book. Such a book in England would have been certain of a sale sufficient to encourage the author to persevere. A mathematical writer in the colonies, therefore, prefers to see his papers published in the scientific journals of the mother- country, even though, at such a distance, he cannot correct liis 188 PKOBLEMS OF GREATKR BRITAIN pakt ii proofs, and must take his chance of errors, because in this way- alone can he obtain access to all the people, not only in Europe but in Australia itself, who are devoted to the same studies. There is not a population large enough in Australia to back up Australian writers, who must necessarily wish as yet to produce their works in England, and who are not unlikely to take up their residence where they produce their works, and Australia is still exporting to England many of her young literary men. Most of the eminent men of letters who have written in Australia have been of English birth, because the number of Australian -born people who have attained to the age of the best literary production is still comparatively small. . The Australian writers are to be found as yet chieiiy in the older colony of New South Wales, and no one of them can be said to have made a real impression upon the world. Dalley is known rather as a politician, through the accident of the Soudan con- tingent business, than as a writer — good writer as he was. As regards imported writers, Australia has not yet oifered a suffi- cient field to tempt good men, as a rule, unless they were driven to Australia by considerations of health, or went tliere as pro- fessors, or journalists. Some of the University professors both at Melbourne and at Sydney have been distinguished men. Professor Woolley of Sydney University, who was drowned in the London, and Professor Badham of the same University, enjoyed locally a high standing. Dr. Hearn and Dr. Pearson have been mentioned in the Victorian chapter. The colonies have also imported much talent among the clergy and ministers of various denominations, many of whom have been men of culture and ability, whose work has taken a more or less literary form. Of the writers of New South Wales the best known perhaps are the late Henry Kendall, a smooth and musical poet, some of whose sonnets remind one of Keats, and Mr. Haddon Cliambers, who (after serving as a journalist in Australia) came to London as a correspondent, has written some interesting tales of colonial adventure, and made a name by a successful play. Some persons in this country admire a recent novel. Robber ji under Arms, by " Rolf Boldrewood " — the name under which Mr. Thomas Alexander Browne, one of the pioneer Victorian squatters who went out from England, and afterwards lived in New South Wales, has long written sketches of colonial life. Mr. Browne is a man of more than sixty, whose stories refer to a colonial society which has wholly disappeared. Old Melbourne Memories contains liis best work, but he is now engaged on a story which is appearing at Sydney in the Cen- tennial Magazine. Music. Sydney occupies as high a position in the musical world as Melbourne. A Good Friday or Christmas Day never passes without the performance of an excellent Oratorio. Tiiere are two good singing clubs, with about a hundred singing members each, and many hundreds of ordinary members ; the great Alfred Exhibition Hall in Sydney is inadequate to hold those CHAP. II NEW SOUTH WALES 189 who desire to attend theii' concerts. They liave an orchestra of seventy performers, and an audience of about 3000, and per- forming as they uniformly do, high-class music, these clubs must have an excellent influence upon the public taste. The best actors, singers, and scene painters still come from The stage. Europe. The appearance on the boards of native-born actors of genuine abUity is hailed with general delight ; and such native-born or Australian-trained singers as there are in the colonies cannot complain of want of appreciation. The supply as yet is not equal to the demand. Australia used to import her best barristers and attorneys, but she now supplies a native article ; and doubtless it will be the same soon with the dra- matic and operatic stage. One well-known Au.stralian woman singer met indeed recently with an immense success, which she is now continuing in Europe. As regards sports. New South Wales takes the lead over Athletics. Victoria in yachting and in shooting, but is somewhat behind the rival colony in cricket, football, and racing. In sculling. New South Wales has an advantage given to her by the char- acter of her rivers, but both colonies beat England, although the mother - country possesses streams far more suitable for wager boats than are those of the Australian continent. The traces of the convict element in New South Wales liave Composi- become very slight in the national charactei-. The prevailing 'ion of the clieerfulness, running into fickleness and frivolity, with a great People, deal more vivacity than exists in England, does not suggest in the least the intermixture of convict blood. It is a natural creation of the climate, and of the full and varied life led by colonists in a young country, while the absence of winter accounts for the difference between the Australians and the inhabitants of the American Western States. The farmers of Australia are not mere farmers. They are mostly people who, before taking to farming, have seen a good deal of the world, and are of a quickness and smartness that are incompatible with the general idea of farming life. They have a far wider horizon, and are vastly better read than tlie corresponding class in England. The type of the ordinary rustic population of England, farmers and labourers alike, is invisible in the colonies. The colonial farmer is a man who has had to push his way and to contrive his own devices for himself. Neither the English fanner nor the English labourer is well suited for colonial life, and the successful Australian farmer as a rule is a man who has taken to farming for the first time in the southern hemisphere. The Austi'alian farmer has been buffeted about the world before he becomes comfortably situated upon his pro- perty ; and where he has remained for a good many years in the same place he is almost invariably a man of substance. If we may judge from the appearance and manners of the rising generation in Australia, although they will not be so well travelled as their fathers, or called upon to tlie same extent to display original faculties in the combat of the pioneer with 190 rROBLEI\rS OF GREATER BRITAIN nature, their class will still be distinguished for the prevalence of a cheerful and self-reliant fulness of life. These are points in which it is to be hoped that they merely mark out, as in politics, the path which their fellow-workmen in England will tread after them, although Australian climate is an advantage which cannot be transferred to us at home. So far, however, from representing a population sprung from the convict element, the population of New South Wales, like the rest of the Aus- tralian population, on the whole represents the descendants of the middle and working classes of the United Kingdom. A population of an excellent type has swallowed up not only the convict element, but also tlie unstable and thriftless element shipped by friends in Britain to Sydney or to Mel- bourne. The ne'er-do-weels were either somewhat above the average in brains, as was often the case with those who re- covered themselves and started life afresh, or people who drank themselves to death and disappeared and left no descendants. The convicts were also of various classes ; some of them were men in whom crime was the outcome of restless energy, as, for instance, in many of those transported for treason and for man- slaughter ; while some were people of average morality ruined through companions, wives, or sudden temptation, and some persons of an essentially depraved and criminal life. The better classes of convicts, in a new country, away from their old companions and old temptations, turned over a new leaf, and their abilities and their strong vitality, which in some cases had wrought their ruin in the old world, found healthful scope in subduing to man a new oaie. Crime in their case was an accident, and would not be transmitted to the children that they left behind them. On the other hand, the genuine criminals, and also the drunken ne'er-do-weels, left no children. Drink and vice among the " assigned servants " class of convicts, and an absence of all facilities for marriage, worked them olf the face of the earth, and those who had not been killed before the gold discovery generally drank themselves to death upon the diggings. There are a few sons of convicts who have become lead- ing citizens in various colonies, but very few, and in these cases generally the descendants of convicts not belonging to the criminal class. The convict element may now be absolutely neglected in a, survey of Australian society. On the other hand, the colonies undoubtedly suffer from the ne'er-do-weels, not so much through their permanent effect upon the race as from the manner in which they crowd the hospitals and asylums, and in one way or another become burdens upon the State purse. Govern- There are societies in the colonies which have for object the ineut con- amelioration of the position of the improvident, but it is found tributious that they have not steadfastness of purpose to continue at any tocliarities. one pursuit for any length of time, and that they drift steadily downwards. The New South Wales Government contribute towards such charities pound for pound. Temperance societies CHAP, n NEW SOUTH WALES 191 liave been started amon^ the tliriftless drunkards, ■which are said to contain the champion pledge-takers of the world. These are often highly intelligent and educated men, nearly all brought to their present position by drink, nearly all anxious to give it up, ancf ceasing wholly from time to time to indulge their vice, but almost universally given to relapse. Few of them have children, and their bad influence is not permanent, especially as great pains are taken to properly train up such children as they have. All the colonies have " State wards '' or " State children,'' Boarding- and the system of boarding -out these children has become out of poor general. A few years ago New South Wales swept away its childreu. huge barracks called orphanages, and began to place the " State wards" in respectable homes in the country districts of the colony ; and the boarding-out system is answering as well as it does at home. There is no difficulty in finding foster-parents. The colonial Governments, as a rule, allow 10s. a week for children under a year old, and reduce this gradually to about 4s. by the time the child is eleven. After the age of twelve the subsidy usually ceases, the child having become absorbed into the family and useful to the household. The children of the improvident sent out from England are so rough that when taken off the streets they have to be kept in a dep6t till they liave learned cleanly habits and to use decent language, it being almost impossible, as a rule, to send them straight to their country homes. A great number of colonial Acts deal with these vagrant and neglected children, the Victorian Acts being specially admirable. New South Wales has reformatories for the older children brought before the police, and the reforma- tories, as established in 1849, and since improved, appear to be better than our similar institutions in being less like gaols. There are also industrial schools, but of late, chiefly through the example set in this matter by South Australia and Victoria, there has been a general tendency throughout the colonies to deal even with the children brought before the magistrates by means of that boarding-out principle which had at first only been tried with reference to orphan children cast upon the State. It may be said generally that the tendency in all the colonies is now to adopt boarding- out for all the younger children, whether they be orphans, deserted, neglected, unmanageable, or slightly criminal. The juvenile ofienders over fourteen are beginning to be dealt with upon what is known as the proba- tionary or American system. It is left to tlie discretion of the magistrates to liberate them with a warning after the first ofi'ence, but with watchfulness exercised over them, and a liability to sentence for the original ofi'ence in the case of any fresh misconduct. After sentence they go to a reformatory scliool, in which any signs of good conduct carry the juvenile ofienders from a strict discipline to that of an ordinary school. If they pass through their stages successfully, as most of them 192 PEOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part it do, they are apprenticed. Little criminals under fourteen are sent into probationary schools, and are boarded out as soon as they are entirely free from any disposition to crime or to the use of bad language. Those who are found to be utterly de- praved are passed on to the reformatories. The children generally talce the name of the foster-parents, and become identified with their new family. The parents of neglected children are made to pay for or towards their maintenance. Experience seems to show in Australia that the great majority of neglected or criminal children who are caught by the State before sixteen are saved, but that those who are left to pass that age are almost hopeless — the girls becoming prostitutes, and the boys thieves and bullies. The rough element among boys of sixteen to twenty, which is noticeable in Liverpool and in some parts of London, is also developed in the Australian cities. A Victorian sergeant of police, now dead, Mr. Dalton of Melbourne, gave this class its name, which is familiar through- out tlie colonies and is beginning to appear in England. The term "larrikin "is used both for the hobbledehoys in general and also for the specially vicious portion of them. Poor immi- It is noticeable that in Sydney as in Melbourne the average greuta. of crime and the average of juvenile crime are both below the average of the United Ifingdom, in spite of the fact that the colonial police are not indulgent. On the other hand, with general education, and high wages and plenty of work for those who really want work and can do it, there ought not in Aus- tralia to be much crime. But there is a large class who idle and sometimes starve — mostly, however, immigrants. Along with the stream of men of pluck and energy there comes also from the mother-country a stream of emigrants of a less desirable kind. These, in Australia as in the United States, are attracted by the overgrown cities, and remain in them. One result is that in the large cities there is virtually a poor law, as we shall find when we examine the matter in Part VI., Chap. IL The Sydney Benevolent Society, besides maintaining an asylum, gives out- door relief to about six thousand people in the year at a cost of some £5000, and it cannot be said that in Australia such opera- tions are merely in the nature of private and personal benevol- ence, because charitable institutions are, generally speaking, assisted by the State. At the same time we at home are responsible for the greater portion of tlie destitution that exists in the colonies. Mr. Ralph Abercromby, who has well said in his meteorological work that there is not much to look at in Australia except the people, and who carefully studied them, has pointed out that the larrikins are fewer and quieter tlian our roughs, and that drinking habits, though common, are less prevalent in the colonies than in England. The smaller The smaller cities of New South Wales are not, on the whole cities at a increasing in population. The country districts thrive, and the standstill, great capital thrives, but the Australian tendency is for the capitals to contain, in themselves and their suburbs, from a CHAP. II 1,'EW SOUTH WALES 193 third to nearly a half of the inhabitants of tlie colony, and for the rest to be upon the land, so that the smaller to'wns remain stationary or dwindle. This is a tendency which will possibly prevail more generally in the future. The growth of the means of locomotion, and the cheapness of fares, when in a democratic state tlie Government has the railways in its own hands, make it easy to go to the big city, where the best and cheapest things of every description are to be found, and where amusements are plentiful, and the former difficulties about the large size of cities have been brought to an end by low freights. Formerly towns lived upon the district round them. Now they live upon the whole of the lines of railways and the lines of steam-ship- ping that converge in them ; and food is cheapest where the largest market is to be found. Few Australians like to live in a country town of 5000 people if they can live in the suburbs of a town of 400,000 people. For all social purposes, for amuse- ment, for education, for all business facilities, except those immediately connected with agricultural or pastoral pursuits, the metropolis offers an immense advantage. The colonist who prefers to live in a small country town finds that he has often to go or to send to the great city, and at last comes to think that he had better go and reside there himself. The only town of real importance m New South Wales outside Sydney is New- castle, which has about 16,000 inhabitants. Its growth and activity are due solely to the coal-mines, which are inexhaust- ible, and supply nearly the whole of the Australian demand. The best steam coal, however, comes not from Newcastle itself, but from the southern mines, to which those of the west coast of New Zealand may ultimately prove a rival. Albury may be chosen as the Federal capital. Towns like Goulburn, Bathurst, and Deniliquin will increase, because of the presence of a court- liouse, of a Government office for lands and survey, of the district banks, and of the chief schools : such towns are sure to grow in a small way and to gather together a number of people whose trades are connected with the land, but only in a small way, for even from these districts the people go to Sydney for clothes, books, furniture, vehicles, and machinery ; and Sydney natur- ally increases every year far more than all the other towns put together. New South Wales has resisted all outside attempts to bring rederation. her into Australian Federation, and she is now the only colony, except the far-off New Zealand, that is outside the Federal Council. In New South Wales it is often argued that Imperial Federation is more important than Australian Federation, and that Australian Federation is not a step towards, but a step away from, Imperial Federation, a matter which hag been partly dealt with already under Canada, and which I shall have to consider further in the New Zealand cliapter and in Part VII. The Imperial Federation League lately sent a capable envoy to Australia, who visited New South Wales in June 1889 under circumstances which I shall describe 194 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Defence. in my chapter on the future relations between the mother- country and the colonies. He came away completely puzzled as to the local view, having received the most contradictory opinions, all of them pronounced in tlie most positive manner, from the leading public men, and he was heard to say that he could make nothing of their attitude towards the Empire, and considered their opinions to be in a state of chaos. Sir Henry Parkes now seems anxious to close his career by proposing a Federation of his own invention ; but the difficulties in the way will be great, unless he throws over his party and adopts the principles of Protection. The defence of the trade of Sydney in particular, and of the colony and its wealth and liberties in general, is as well pro- vided for as is Victorian defence, and upon a system not dis- similar. Sydney is not so thoroughly protected by nature from attack as is Melbourne, although it also stands upon a harbour which is difficult of access. Sydney, being much nearer to the open sea than Melbourne, might conceivably be shelled from the Botany Bay side across the neck of land ; but the colony can be trusted to give a good account of its assailants. Sir Henry Parkes has lately made a speech upon proposals put forward by General Edwards, the general commanding at Hong- Kong, who had been sent to Australia to inspect the colonial defences, and who had suggested a federation of the Australian forces, the establishment of a federal military college, and the introduction for military purposes of n uniform gauge upon the railways. Sir Henry Parses announced his intention to create a military department, and he explained the under- standing which had been come to for a subscription by the various Australian Governments towards the defence of King George's Sound and of Thursday Island — important outlying stations of Australia. Sir Henry Parkes now asks the other colonies to set aside the existing Federal Council of Australasia in order to come into a close Federation with a common Parlia- ment. They reply that the existing federal system will form the best stepping-stone towards such a Parliament ; so that all agree upon the principle, and differ only as to form. But com- mon command for the army could of course be secured, if it is so greatly needed as Sir Henry Parkes asserts, without any closer connection than the Federal Council supplies. The pre- rogative of the Crown could also be made use of if the colonies wished it for the purpose of unification of military command, as the Queen is commander-in-chief of the forces in all the colonies. The Australian feeling with regard to defence is that the feeling witli colonies are strong enough to dispose of any land force likely to regaril to be disembarked by an enemy upon their soil, and that the fleet which is kept upon the Australian coast is there mainly to protect British interests, the greater portion of the maritime intercourse of the colonies with other countries being carried on in British ships, and British property, to tlie extent of many Colonial defence questions CHAP. 11 NEW SOUTH WALES 195 millions, being always afloat upon the colonial waters. The colonists point out that our fleet is even less strongly represented in Australia than upon the China coast, and that it is obviously present in force upon the China coast for the protection of our own shipping. At the same time, they, as a rule — with the exception of a strong minority in New South Wales, and a majority in Queensland — think that Australia benefits by the recent arrangement as to the Australian squadron, although in their belief it was primarily intended to suit British interests. But they point out that Australia does not expect to be embroiled with any great power on its own account, and that any risk of war is a risk due to Australian connection with England, and a risk against which, therefore, Australia has a claim for British assistance. On the other hand, the dominant opinion, except in Queensland, appears to be that Australia, in the event of a popular war, might add considerably to the strength of the old country. For example, it is probable that, in the event of an imminent risk of the loss of India, there would be a disposition in some of the Australian colonies to place in India, as a contribution towards Indian defence, an army, which, although raw, would be converted by a short term of actual service into a most eflicient although a costly force. The colonists believe that the Australian soldier combines the fire, animation, and cheerful activity of the Frenchman ■with the solid determination of the British private. There are two things, however, to be borne in mind in considering this prospect of Australian assistance. In the first place, the Australian contingent would cost us more money, if we paid it, than would an equal force of British troops, and, in the second place, if we were entering upon a popular war, but one which drew largely upon our resources, and wanted Australian help, we should need to ask for it with more politeness than we generally show in our national acts. In such an event it is still probable that the colonies would feel something of the pride of a boy who is asked by his father for the first time to help him in some manly adventure, and that there would be much enthusiasm found in the response ; but the change of feeling in New South Wales in the last few years, and the growth of separatist opinion in Queensland, forbid us to be too confident. The Australian Natives' Association, which in Victoria is loyal to the British connection, is less friendly in New South Wales ; and in Queensland the "native" feeling is "national," and "national" has begun to mean "independent." A debate, to which I shall have to allude when I come to write of the future relations between Great Britain and her colonies, took place upon this subject in the New South Wales Assembly inAugust 1889, when Mr. Dibbs, speaking as leader of the Opposition, in seconding a motion by the Prime Minister, declared in favour of the erection of the British States of Australia into an inde- pendent State. Sir Henry Parkes, while professing his adherence to the principle of " Australia for the Australians," 196 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part n and declaring against separation, and also against Imperial Federation as commonly understood, expressed a strong opinion in favour of alliance with the mother-country upon an equal base, and thought that the North American, the Australian, and the South African colonies might group themselves in alliance with the United Kingdom on such a base, without raising any of the insuperable difficulties which he found in all Imperial Federation schemes. Conclusion. Although from a defence point of view the situation of Sydney is inferior to that of Melbourne, the former capital is better placed as regards trade — especially if America be one day pierced by a canal — and far superior in natural charm. There are few scenes more lovely in the quieter styles of beauty than that which presents itself from the Botanic Gardens, or indeed in any of the creeks of Port Jackson. In the sheltered coves of Sydney harbour, and in the fern gullies of the Range, nature would seem to have made herself attractive that she might lure settlers towards the yellow sun-dried plains of the interior, swept by hot winds in the long summer. There is less feverish activity in Sydney than in Melbourne, and as much enjoyment of life. The people are pleasure-loving, bright and quick, and full of promise of a literary and artistic future. Throughout the colony generally there is the same absence of misery, the same kindliness of disposition between man and man, which form the foundations of that cheerfulness of life which in the Victorian chapter I have noted as characteristic of Australia. In these respects our South-Sea colonies resemble the better parts of the United States — those in which severity of climate has not marred, nor imported horrors vitiated by the infusion of the worst European customs, the frank and natural life of the American people. In the comparative absence of class hatreds, and of the feuds of settled opinion, the Australian colonies also resemble the United States in points in which America is strong. CHAPTEK m QtrEENSLAIsfD Attek Victoria and New South "Wales, New Zealand is as yet Size of the most important of our South-Sea colonies, except in area ; Queens- but if we consider the other Australian colonies proper, Queens- l^id- land first claims our notice. Inferior to South Australia and to Western Australia in size, because these colonies, stretching across the continent, contain, at all events for the present, the greater part of the most northerly districts of Australia, Queens- land is nevertheless so vast that proposals for its division into two colonies have been already made and seriously considered by the Government at home. Queensland is equal in its geographical extent to Germany, Progress of France, and Austria-Hungary united, and is increasing far more the colony. rapidly in population than the other colonies. If we except the more advanced colonies of New South Wales and Victoria, the increase of Queensland is the most rapid absolutely of that of all our colonies in the South Seas, and the Queensland increase is altogether the most rapid wlien considered in proportion to the existing population of each colony. Queensland is pro- gressing fast in spite of labour difficulties, in spite of cotton failures, in spite of sugar depression, in spite of the invasion of rabbits from New South Wales against which she is fencing herself in, in spite of drought and of her lurid sun ; and the colony, although mainly tropical, has proved itself to be a healthy home for people of our race. The energy which some think is wanting upon the coast of New South Wales is certainly found in the stiU warmer Queensland, and that colony already possesses a larger number of miles of railway open to traffic in proportion to population than any other State in the whole world. While the colonies of Victoria and New South_ Wales, on Scenery which we liave already dwelt, are marked by a certain uniform- and ity, if not a monotony, of scenery — scenery beautiful where climate, there is water and the gum-trees grow large, with backgrounds of lake and broken liill, and scenery in tlie dry interior ugly from the flatness of the plains and smallness of the trees, but always gum-tree scenery — in the rapidly-advancing colonies to which we liave now to turn there is more diversity of appear- 198 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Brisbane. Separatist leeliug. ance. New Zealand is as different in aspect from the Australian colonies as the Maories are different from the Australian aborigines ; but even in Australia there are diversities, for, while the greater part of South Australia is similar to the greater part of Victoria and of New South Wales, Queensland, the whole of the north coast, and Western Australia have a vegetation of a different kind. To the far south of Australia tlie Tasmanian island resembles Gippsland, from which it would seem to have been broken ofi^. There are the same mountains, the same ravines, the same gum-trees and tree ferns. But in the north, while tlie southern portion of Queensland is indis- tinguishable from the northern part of New South Wales, the coast as we run through the tropics and up towards the equator becomes more like that of New Guinea than of what is usually called Australia. Queensland lies largely in the tropics and has a tropical vegetation, but it is not so hot a country upon its coast as it would be if it were situate elsewhere tlian on the Australian continent ; and its tropical swamps, although they look like those of the Malay Archipelago, are healthy. In the cattle stations of the interior of the far north the English immi- grants are able to remain the whole day in the saddle, even in the height of summer, and in the long January heats to sit " Galloping the livelong day under a Queensland sun, To head the bullocks gone astray, oi stolen off the run.'' Boat races are rowed at Eockhampton even in the hottest weather, and lawn-tennis and cricket are carried on throughout the colony even in the summer time. Brisbane, the capital, has not only not attained to the posi- tion of a Sydney or a Melbourne, but can never do so. It lies, like Adelaide, out of the reacli of the largest ships ; and, although it is the port of a large settled district, and still more of a considerable sheep country, the immense length of the Queens- land coast, and the fact that metals have been discovered in the north, altogether out of reach of Brisbane, have caused other ?orts to almost begin to dispute its supremacy. Instead, as in ictoria and New South Wales, of all the lines of railway con- verging at the capital, in the case of Queensland a number of short lines have been brought, or are being brought down, to the coast at other points, as is the case in Natal and the eastern province of Cape Colony. Brisbane is essentially the harbour of Darling Downs, a magnificent plateau of temperate climate, and although at Brisbane settlers grow the sugar-cane, close behind it there is a country which will bear the produce of England. While Victoria is perhaps the most interesting of the colonies from an agreeable point of view, inasmuch as it is given to trying experiments for the mother-country, Queensland is an interesting country from a more melancholy point of view, inas- much as there, we have been often told of late, is to be seen the little cloud which is ultimately to cover the whole sky of our OKAK III QUEENSLAND 199 colonial empire. Queensland by its rejection of the Naval Defence Bill, by its action with regard to the colonial governor- ship question, and by the fact that the Government in power claims to be "national" and to pay scant regard to ideas of English importation, is supposed to be, of all our colonies, the separatist colony ; and it is necessary for us carefully to examine the facts upon which this view is based. If it is possible to induce home politicians to turn for one moment from the discussion of the Irish question to matters which regard the Empire generally, they will perhaps see that the dispute as to the particular form which local elective insti- tutions in Ireland shall assume (for no one believes that it will be possible permanently to avoid the gift of local elective insti- tutions to Ireland) is less important than the discussion which the very mention of Queensland raises as to future relations between England and the Australian colonies, or indeed the colonies at large. The enthusiastic support of the imperial idea which was strong throughout Australia four years ago is out of fashion there at the present time ; and the speeches of Lord Rosebery and the other advocates of Imperial Federation, which but a short time back found their loudest echo in Australia, awaken now a good many expressions of hostility in the press, and receive there but little practical support. English opinion takes small heed of these changes, and when Lord Knutsford nominated Sir Henry Blake as Governor of Queensland it was universally assumed in England that the Queenslanders were foolish and wrong-headed in their resistance, although, as a fact, parties in that country were agreed, and were supported in their view by an almost unanimous legislature in the mother-colony, and by the dominant sentiment in all the other colonies except Victoria, and supported even in Victoria privately, as is now seen, by some of those who had their own reasons for expressing publicly, on that particular occasion, a different opinion. It is sometimes said that Queensland is a colony in which The Irish Irish influence is very strong, and this is given as a reason for iu Queens- political trouble which has been met with there. It is not, how- ^™'l- ever, the case that Queensland has proportionally of all the colonies the largest Irish-born population ; but at the same time she has a large Irish population in one sense of the word — the " Irish Roman Catholic " population, not Iiish-born but colonial- born. Queensland has, too, a much smaller Scotch population than have several of the other colonies. The Roman Catholic population is large in Queensland, being about two-thirds as large as the nominal Church of England population ; but in Newfoundland, from which Sir Henry Blake had come, the Roman Catholic population is larger than tlie Church of Eng- land population, and the proportion in Queensland is, after all, only about the same as in Victoria and New South Wales. There are about 40,000 Irish-born persons in the colony, and fewer than 20,000 Scotch-born. We may conclude from an ex- amination of her population that Queensland is inhabited very 200 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet ii largely by native-born Australians from the otlier colonies. The Irish are more numerous than the Scotch and English, m proportion to their numbers in the United Kingdom, and more numerous than the Scotch according to the proportion in the other Australian colonies. There are some German settlers, who indeed are nearly as numerous as the Scotch inhabitants, and who form a thrifty working element, as in South Australia and other colonies. History There is then nothing very special in the composition of the of the Queensland population to account for any peculiar development causes of ^f independent and still less of liostile feeling, and it is evident independ- (.],a^t ^^ j^^g^ Jqq^ elsewhere for the causes of those singular eut leeliug. features which have recently been conspicuous. Up to a period Sir Samuel still not long ago Sir Samuel Griffith, the present leader ofthe Griffith. Queensland Opposition, had been in office, and he had remained in office for a considerable time. He is a barrister, and although in Queensland, as in many of the colonies, the legal professions are amalgamated, practically barristers do not do solicitor's work, so he may be looked upon as being a barrister in our sense of tlie word. Sir Samuel Griffith, who was a Welsh boy, from Merthyr, trained at Sydney University, was not popular although he was long in power. His enemies declared that men were drawn to him rather by community of interest than by enthusiasm. All were chary of offending him, for Sir Samuel Griffith possesses a power of satire which is used somewhat un- sparingly on occasion. He was looked upon as a strong man whose concentration on self was one of the chief elements of his success. In his speeches he was found analytical, conventional in his respect of all the respectabilities, a good administrator, and an untiring worker. His policy. gif Samuel Griffith was the leader of the Liberal party, and its policy was declared by him to be that of " Australia for the white man," the land for the people and not for the monopolist, and the improvement of tlie condition of the wage-earners of the colony. During his tenure of office in the four years which preceded 1888, Acts were passed in Queensland checking the wholesale alienation of land, reorganising local government, establishing an effective defence force, and removing iErom the colony the blame of carelessness in connection with the " coloured labour " traffic, but also involving the total cessation of the traffic at the end of 1890. As regarded defence, the recommendations of Sir Peter Scratchley as to Queensland were, generally speak- ing, carried out by the Queensland Government ; but Brisbane is not difficult to defend. It lies up a shallow river, and a few gunboats and submarine mines make it safe. The defence of the capital was, in fact, thoroughly provided for, but, of course, in so immense a country it would be impossible to prevent by local defence descents upon some portions of the coast. The " labour traffic " legislation was supposed by the planter interest to be liypocritical, because, though there undoubtedly had at one time been abuses which it was necessary to suppress, the ciiAi'. Ill QUEENSLAND 201 " Labour party " under Sir Samuel Griffith made use of tliat fact in order to take steps which were intended to put down what Merivale has called "quasi-servile" labour in the interest of the employment of white men only. The Liberal party, led by Sir Samuel Griffith, was in Queensland, as elsewhere in the colonies, anti-Catholic on the education question. In the meantime there sprang up a grievance against the Grievances mother-country, which caused a certain growth of separatist against the feeling. Lord Derby was supposed to have been too slow in mother- preventing an increase in the transportation of criminals to the country, neighbourhood of Queensland by the French Government. The liome Government were supposed also not to be sufficiently earnest upon the Chinese question ; and the loss of a quarter of New Guinea put the finishing touch to Queensland exaspera- tion. The colony had hoisted the British flag in New Guinea, and proclaimed the annexation to Queensland of the non-Dutch half of that island, but had been promptly disavowed from home. There was also an agitation in the northern or tropical territory for separation from the southern or main portion of the country, which was another disturbing cause in Queensland politics, and which led to a great deal of opposition to Sir Samuel Griffith and to all the measures that he proposed during his administration. Sir Thomas M^Ilwraith, who had been hurled from power by Defeat of Sir Samuel Griffith, and who was the leader of the Conservative Sir Samuel party in the colony, began to see his opportunity. Sir Samuel GnMh. Griffith came to London to the Colonial Conference, and com- mitted Queensland strongly, by his speeches and action in the Conference, to the policy agreed upon with the Admiralty. When lie went back the Naval Defence Bill was rejected. It was submitted to the country at a general election, and popular feeling decided against it. Sir Thomas M^Ilwraith had seized his moment. Mere Conservatism had become unpopular, and it was necessary for the party to choose both anew policy and a new name. The name of " National " was cleverly substituted for the name "Conservative." I have already said that Sir Samuel Griffith and the Liberal party were anti-Catholic on the education system , and the alliance of the Eoman Catholic and Conservative parties was in Queens- land nothing new. The old alliance was only cemented by the new name, and Sir Thomas M°Ilwraith received also the support of the liquor party and of the party who desire to separate the northern portion of the colony from the south. Sir Thomas M^Ilwraith opposed the Naval Defence Bill upon the "national" ground that it was "a naval tribute' to another country, and that the Australian colonies should man and maintain their own fleets for their own defence. On this policy he not only united his own Conservative friends, the Irish, the northerners, and the liquor men, but gained over a few Liberals to whom fresh taxation for defence purposes was intolerable. 202 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Nomina- tion of Sir Henry Blake. The Government of Sir Thomas M'llwraith resigned in September 1888 in consequence of a dispute with the Governor, and resigned with a view of strengthening tlie hands of their own party, which was the result. The Governor was a close friend of Sir Samuel Griffith, the late Prime Minister. The action of the Governor against the Mi'Il wraith Ministry was represented in the colony as an imperial interposition in Sir Samuel Griffith's interest on account of his attitude at the London Conference, and afterwards in the colony itself with regai'd to the colonial contribution towards the imperial navy, which had led to his defeat, although as a fact Sir Samuel Griffith had used on the eve of the elections half-hearted language in defence of his own scheme. In one of Ms speeches Sir Samuel Griffith had protested his vehement opposition to anything in the shape of tribute to the Imperial Government, saying that he was Australian and independent to the back- bone, and one who disclaimed anything like imperialistic notions. The Queensland Governor was a Governor of Crown Colony training, who was in the wrong in fighting his ministers when he did, and who naturally was beaten by them. This fact suggested to the Queensland Ministry the desire to have a Governor of another type, and lience it was that they made the request for a voice in the appointment of the next Governor, without much expecting it to be granted, and without any strong interest or feeling in the matter. The mistaken action of the Colonial Office in nominating, at such a moment. Sir Henry Blake, able and accomplished as that Governor is, roused the tepid feeling into a fierce heat. A large contingent of the voters of the " national " party in power were the Roman Catholic Irish Home Rulers, and they naturally at once made the nomination of Sir Henry Blake a casus belli, and awoke the anti - British feeling. It must be remembered that in the colonies the Roman Catholic party is, as a rule, the best organised of parties, and the only one which has the advantage of possessing a never-changing policy — the defence of Roman Catholic interests by securing support from the public treasury for the education of Roman Catholic children in Roman Catholic schools under the general direction of priests. The Irish party is the kernel of the Australian " national " party botli in New South Wales and Qiieensland, and it is merely from local causes that this joint Irish and " national " feeling happened first to show itself in Queensland. It is somewhat curious that Protestant opposition in Newfoundland, to the appointment of Sir Ambrose Shea as Governor of that colony, gave Bahamas an excellent Governor in tlie person of that Newfoundland statesman — Sir Henry Blake being called upon at short notice to exchange with him ; just as afterwards Roman Catholic feeling in Queensland prevented the transfer of Sir Henry Blake from Newfoundland to Queensland, and gave Jamaica an equally good Governor in Sir Henry Blake. The present Victorian view of Governors used to be the CHAr. Ill QUEENSLAND 203 general colonial view, namely, that so long as the Governor is Consulta- strictly confined to his constitutional functions, it does not tion of much matter who he is. There ought, however, to be no differ colonies as ence of opinion with regard to the propriety of ascertaining in t" Cio"- advance, whether informally or otherwise, the suitability to the <*™or5. circumstances of a particular colony of a gentleman suggested as Governor. There is no more reason why men like Sir Charles Tupper, Sir Charles Mills, Sir Saul Samuel, Sir Francis Dillon Bell, Mr. Archer, Mr. Braddon, and the other Agents- General should not make confidential inquiries upon such delicate points than exists in the case of ambassadors, who have to make such inquiries with regard to their proposed successors. The larger claim made by Queensland originated, as I have shown, partly in the policy of the new national party, and partly from the contest which had just occurred between the " national " Government and the late Governor. The base of the " national " movement is to be found in the The Australian Natives' Association. In Victoria that association Aiistraliaii had for some time existed, but there had been some difficulty Natives'As- in forming branches in other portions of Australia. In New sooiation. South Wales it was a condition of membership that members should have been born in Australia, or been resident in the colonies from the age of five years and have identified them- selves witli Australian interests. As regards Victoria, I recently saw a report of the meeting of one of the branches of the Australian Natives' Association "to consider a charge made . . . to the efiect that . . . the president of the branch was not a native of Victoria." The committee took evidence on each side, and it was shown that the president had on a former occasion signed a certificate that he was born in Ireland ; but, on the other hand, he now produced evidence to show that he was born in Sandhurst. The committee unanimously found that their president was born in Victoria, and the serious charge against him was thus happily dispelled. At the same time a writer in The Colonies and India has since stated that he knew the gentleman, and certainly had never met with so rich a brogue in any other native-born Australian. One of the main supporters of Australian nationalist prin- The ciples is the Sydney Daily Telegraph, a journal conducted with "uational" great ability, and favourable to tree trade. Its line of argu- movement, ment is that it is ridiculous to declare that to stand up against encroachments from home is anti - English ; that, on the contrary, the whole course of English history reveals the same spirit of resistance, to even British imperialism, as animates the native-born population of Australia. There is nothing English, it argues, in unthinking submission to distant rule ; the Englishmeu of America, in preferring the hazards of a cruel war rather than submit to the yoke of imperialism, represented the traditions of English freedom better than did England at that time, and, in winning their battle, won it for England as well as for themselves. This journal asserts that if 204 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part i! the claims of imperialism are resisted in Australia it is because Australians are too truly English to submit to them, and that it is not to be desired that Englishmen in Australia should be contented with a measure of self-government which English- men in England would scorn to accept. The discussion of the question is urged in order that "the more friendly and easy may be the separation when it comes." The Telegraph described Mr. Stanhope's invitation to the colonies to attend the Confer- ence as "sinister and most ill-omened " ; it has since described the Queensland elections as the answer of the people, and promises the answers of the other colonies in due time. The Conservative party would hardly have followed Sir Thomas M'll wraith in this "national" movement, in which they can scarcely have agreed, but for their dislike of Sir Samuel Griffith. The Sydney Bulletin, which possesses, as we have seen, a forcible style of its own, has described the present view of Sir Thomas M^Ilwraith as being that the British Cabinet and the Colonial Office are a pack of old women, and the mother-country "a composite grandmotherly old wreck . . . tottering with a handbag and a cotton umbrella towards an open grave." It is somewhat curious that in 1888 there apiDeared to be a certain approximation towards a coalition between Sir Thomas M^Ilwraith and Sir Samuel Griffith. Sir Samuel was reappointed a member of the Australasian Federal Council through Sir Thomas JM'^Ilwraith, and he also acted in concert with Sir Thomas M^Ilwraith in the protests with regard to the Governor question. Queensland has maintained strict party government ever since 1880, but the colonial tendency towards coalition seems to exist even in this colony. In the early part of 1889 Sir Thomas M'^Ilwraith took a trip to Japan for the benefit of his health. Mr. Morehead acted in his stead, and Sir Samuel Griffith, who is strong in criticism, destroyed a good deal of the Government prestige. He riddled several Government bills, and was quietly but caustically effective in comments upon the alternately temporising and over-demon- strative policy which the Ministry had to follow to keep its Irish supijorters and its northern separatist supporters under control. The tide turned against the Government and in favour of Sir Samuel Griffith and the Liberal Opposition, and it began to be felt that the future of the Government depended upon Sir Thomas M°I1 wraith's help — for he is an excellent party leader, admirable at keeping his men together. Sir Thomas returned and once more joined the Government, but not as leader, and after a time resigned, and is now in bad health. Sir Samuel Sir Samuel Griffith is the ablest lawyer in Queensland, and Grillith. ig for that reason perhaps less successful as a statesman in office. He is, as his foes declare, cold of temperament — an argumentative rather than a taking speaker. He is a man of education and of unblemished character, but he lacks sentiment and is a little inclined to be overbearing. He lost when in CHAP, in QUEENSLAND 205 power some of his ablest colleagues, who would not submit to his rule, and in his last appeal to the electors was at a disadvan- tage not only through the weakness of his leading supporters, but through the lukewarmness of his friends, as contrasted with the bitterness of his enemies — the planters, the publicans, and the Roman Catholics, all of whom he had hit hard during his term of office. On the first formation of the ministry of the National party Sir Thomas by Sir Thomas M°Ilwraith, his chief lieutenants were Mr. Mac- MJl- rossan, the leader of the Irish Eoman Catholic party, and Mr. wraith's Hume Black, at that time one of the chief men of the northern Ministry party. Mr. Macrossan was one of the delegates from Queens- """^ ^"'^" land to the Federal Council in 1889 ; the only Roman Catholic, '^^^°^- and the only opponent of the Naval Defence Bill, on the Federal Council. Although he was a Minister, and his co-delegate, Sir Samuel Griffith, leader of the Opposition, the latter seemed at Hobart to take the position of the representative of Queens- land ; but he had been President of the Federal Council, when Prime Minister of Queensland in January 1888, which gives him great standing on that body. Mr. Macrossan is one of the shrewdest men in the colony, a subtle reasoner, a quiet incisive speaker, and for some time the leader of the northern separation party. Mr. Morehead, who used to lead the Opposition during the time when Sir Thomas M^Ilwraith was in retirement, and who led the Government all through 1889, is the representative of the hotel-keepers as well as of the old Conservative interest, and does not make a strong First Minister, or one likely long to keep out Sir Samuel Griffith. Mr. Maurice Hume Black is a good speaker, a man of sound common sense with an abundance of dry humour. Sir Thomas M°Ilwraith himself is a man of very different Sir Thomas temperament from Sir Samuel Griffith. He has large ideas in JWlwraith politics and in business, has made fortunes and lost them in a^nd other bold speculations, and he was defeated by Sir Samuel Griffith Queensland in 1882 principally on account of large business transactions in leaders. which his Government engaged, and among which was a con- siderable purchase in England of steel rails in which the M^Ilwraith firm were said to be interested. There was also a proposed agreement with a wealthy English syndicate for the construction of railways on the objectionable American land- grant principle, and this also did harm to the party. Sir Thomas M'^Ilwraith has a good humour and a frankness which have always kept about him troops of friends. His largeness of view and his courage in action were exemplified by his hoisting the British flag in New Guinea when German annexa- tion was expected. During the time of Sir Thomas M^Ilwraith's withdrawal, which was supposed to be a complete retirement from public life, though he afterwards came back to office for a few months, Mr. Morehead, as his successor, showed much audacity and energy, while he improved in the matters of tact and self-restraint. Although he was sobered for a time by re- 206 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN patit ii sponsibility, in spite of his fluency of speech and vigour he proved far inferior to Sir Thomas M«Ilwraith, or to Sir Samuel Griffith, and the solid ability of the latter so matured as to make him a. considerable political power among the statesmen of Australia. Sir Samuel Griffith, in spite of his own words at one moment, may be claimed by the imperial federationists, and Sir Thomas M'-'Ilwraith and Mr. Morehead counted as against their views. While Imperial Federation is looked upon in England as a peculiarly Conservative doctrine, the Conserva- tives in the colonies are very generally opposed to it, and the Radicals often its supporters. The prevailing sentiment in Queensland is certainly that Australian federation is workable, but implies ultimate separation from the mother-country. Both are looked upon as inevitable in a more or less distant future. Imperial Federation is regarded as impossible, and there is a general Ijopelessness as to the possibility of maintaining the existing relations with the mother-country, or of establishing closer or better relations for the future, except in the form of an alliance such as that between Germany and Austria. Sir Thomas M°Ilwraith and Mr. Morehead are, I believe, both of Scotch extraction, while, as has been said, Sir Samuel Griffith is a Welshman, and Mr. Maorossan Irish. It is a curious fact that almost all Australian statesmen are men of unusual height and size. The only well-known men in Australasian politics who are small and slight are Sir Julius Vogel, Mr. Higinbotham, and Mr. Maorossan. Mr. Gillies, though short, is very broad and strong ; while Sir Thomas MJlwraith, Sir Henry Parkes, Mr. Dibbs, the South Australian statesmen, and almost all the others, are men of considerably more than average stature. Differences The main real difference between the Liberal and Conserva- between tive parties in Queensland lies in the land question, on wliich the two alone the Conservative or National party is Conservative. As parties. -i fact the two Queensland state.smen hold much the same views upon almost all questions of public concern. Both are protec- tionists, the distinction between them being merely a matter of degree. Sir Samuel Griffith is, comparatively speaking, a recent convert to protectionist views, while Sir Thomas M°I1- wraith declares that he has been a protectionist all his life. On the Chinese question they are in complete agreement. Ten years ago Sir Samuel Griffith thought that sugar plantations could be cultivated only by coolie labour, but he has long since wholly changed his views, and the restrictions placed by him on the South Sea labour traffic, and his general war against the planters on the question of coloured labour, have gained for him the hatred of the whole of the planter class. It is curious that Sir Thomas M'llwraith, although he has taken of late the same line with regard to coolie labour, is nevertheless regarded, because he is a Conservative on the land question generally, as in sympathy with the planters._ Sir Thomas is himself a large landowner, and possesses, I believe, an interest both in " squat- tages " and in plantations. Sir Samuel Griffith is strongly in CHAP. Ill QUEENSLAND 207 favour of a land-tax, and Sir Thomas M=Ilwraith opposes it with all his might. Wliile Sir Samuel Griffith was in office a proposal was seriously made to adopt Mr. Henry George's scheme of land nationalisation, and though it was never carried into effect, Sir Samuel Griffith has leanings in that direction, and would, I think, be inclined to abolish freehold tenure alto- gether if Queensland public opinion were not opposed to such a step. His position upon the land question is similar, as we shall find, to that of Sir Kobert Stout in New Zealand ; Sir Thomas M'llwraith, on the other hand, believing tiiat land is turned to better account by a proprietor than by lessees. The Minister for Lands in the last Queensland Ministry before the present was an ardent land nationaliser, and that principle seems to have more life left in it in Queensland than in the other colonies. I have now explained the reasons for the conffict between The con- Sir Thomas M°I1 wraith and the Colonial Office on the subject flict as to of the appointment of Sir Henry Blake at the end of 1888. tl>f »P- Some cynics have asserted that Sir Thomas M'llwraith would potat™eiit never have taken the view he did had he not been distanced as ^ ^''' an imperialist by his rival Sir Samuel Griffith, who had the ^i^?"^^ credit of having proposed at the Colonial Conference the scheme * ^^' which was adopted. At all events, Sir Thomas upset Sir Samuel's Bill, made Queensland stand out as the only Australian colony which declined to ratify the agreement with the British Government, formed a so-called Australian National party, and having been the idol of the imperialists at the time when he annexed New Guinea, became a bye- word with them for object- ing to the unpopular appointment of the new Governor. Still when we consider that Sir Thomas M'llwraith had not been on the most cordial terms with the previous Governor, which made the appointment of the new one the more delicate, and that he had just won the whole Irish Roman Catholic vote, it seems odd that the Colonial Office should, at such a moment, and in face of such a Prime Minister and such a party, havesent to such a colony a gentleman who was distasteful to Irish nationalist feeling. Although the action of the Secretary of State was approved by Victoria, for the local and special reasons which I have given, it was, as I have said, almost universally condemned througliout the other colonies. Sir Thomas M°Ilwraith is a shrewd Scotchman, who knows thoroughly well what he is about, and who had Queensland behind him in his fight with the Colonial Office. It should be remembered that there are strong imperialists in the colonies who have proposed that the colonies should be given a voice in the selection of their Governors, and they argue, with some force, that to do this would strengthen the connection between the colonies and England. It has been suggested by that able Victorian writer, Mr. Patchett Martin, who is a strong imperialist, that a colony should submit three names, selected by the two Houses of its legislature meeting in conclave; and there can be no doubt that 208 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN in the case of some colonies most excellent choice would be made by such a plan. Mr. Patchett Martin declared that if Victoria had been called upon to choose in 1889 she would have named Mr. Higinljotham, Lord Carnarvon, and Sir Henry Loch ; and those who know Victoria will agree that this would have been a probable choice. A difficulty is that there would be moments when colonies would take the bit between their teeth, and send in three names which would be all equally objection- able to the Government at home. Moreover, candidates would be constantly canvassing the legislature. Still, to admit that a formal colonial selection of Governors would be diificult is not to adopt the view that the colonies should in no way be consulted. If Australia should confederate upon the Canadian plan, the Cabinet of the British States of Australia will name the Governors of Provinces — Victoria, Queensland, and the rest — and will receive from home a Governor-General only. Sir T. M"I1- The programme of the National party, created by Sir Thomas wraitli'.s M°Ilwraith, appears to be mainly the cultivation of an Australian pro- national spirit, the federation of Australia with provision for gramme. national defence, the adoption of the principle that laws passed by the future Australian legislature, or present Australian legislatures, sliould not require the imperial sanction, the Pro- tection of Australian industries, the exclusion from Australia of " the servile races," and preservation of the entire continent as a home for white men, and the exclusion from the islands of the West Pacific of all foreign convicts. The power With regard to the non-requirement of sanction for laws to veto passed by the Australian legislatures, it is no doubt most colonial undesirable that Acts should be vetoed because of a mere dislike laws. to their provisions on the part of the Government at home. There is no longer a chance of harmony in legislation between the various parts of the Empire, and that Acts should be vetoed because opposed to the general principles prevailing in the greater portion of the Empire would be now unreasonable. If, however, the Empire is to be kept together at all, and if we are not to be forced by threats of war to repudiate all responsibility for portions of it, it is clear that there must be the power of veto to prevent colonial laws from overriding treaties. Subject to treaty obligations, the exclusion from Queensland of the servile races, to which they would seem to be as necessary as they are to the northern portions of South Australia and Western Australia, is a question for Queen.sland herself ; and as regards the exclusion of foreign convicts from the West Pacific, I am myself in warm sympathy with the feeling of the Australians, and have often fouglit their battle. Separatist Some of the members elected as followers of Sir Thomas speakers. M'llwraith sound notes of real defiance to the mother-country. One of his supporters has declared " that the Chinese question will never be settled as long as we are part of the British Empire " ; and the same gentleman spoke of the Naval Defence Bill " stifling " the Australian nation. Other supporters of CHAP, in QUEENSLAND 209 government spoke of the necessity for the Australian fleet being wholly independent, and of Australia making ready for her "manifest destiny." Fo one who knows the opinion of New South Wales and Queensland of the present day, which is very different from the opinion of New South Wales and Queensland of even three years ago, can doubt that, while the relations between Australia and Great Britain may possibly continue as they are, it would be dangerous to try to tighten them. People are apt to believe too implicitly what tliey hear from able colonists who have been away for several years from their colonies, or what they hear from colonial governors, especially when it happens to be that which they wish to believe, and to neglect the teachings of the most recent elections and of the press. Let them read the speeches in August 1889 of the Prime Minister and of the leader of the Opposition in New South Wales. The enthusiasm with which the name " National " was Imperial- adopted in lieu of tlie name " Conservative" by the more power- ism cou- ful party in Queensland was explained by that influential journal sidered out the Brisbane Courier as meaning that, throughout Australia, of date. the spirit of nationality is stirring in the people, who have grasped the idea of an Australian national life. The Brisbane Courier prophesies the speedy formation of an irresistible public opinion to demand a readjustment of the relations between Australia and the mother-country, by which Australia shall no longer be a dependency to be involved in distant foreign wars for interests in which she has no concern. " Our first duty is to be loyal to our own country, which gives us breath, susten- ance, and sheltering homes." The feeling which was so strongly shown in the last Queensland elections has been by no means confined to that colony ; and the Chinese diiEculty has greatly intensified the sentiment in the same direction existing in New South Wales. When Mr. Service made a speech in Victoria in opposition to these national views, and denied that separation from the motlier-country is the manifest destiny of Australia, the Sydney Daily Telegraph, a paper, as I have said, of large circulation and influence, declared that his speech emphatically stamped him as an Australian statesman of the past, not of the future, permeated with the imperialism of the vanishing generation and wanting in sympathy for the aspirations which have taken possession of young Australia. The Sydney Daily Telegraph thinks that England may be forced, by Kussian advance on India, one day to fight, "but once we were separated, Australia and Russia could have no possible cause of quarrel, and when we consider the relation of that Empire to China, Russia might prove our best friend, as we know that slie has been a good friend to our kinsmen in America for more than haK a century." There can be no doubt that, outside Queens- land, and possibly in Queensland itself, the majority of the people are for the present content with the existing relationship between England and her colonies ; but an increasing number 210 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN look forward to complete federation among the Australian colonies and ultimate independence. Movement Under the auspices of the present Ministry Queensland will towards probably become gradually more protectionist. Some mildly Protection, free-trade newspapers are supporting the present Queensland Government, but the same thing happens also in South Aus- tralia, and pretty generally in the colonies, and shows to what an extent Protection has become a principle so generally accepted by politicians that a difl'erenoe with regard to it does not interfere with outside support. Mr. Morehead, although a stock and station agent and a squatters' representative in the House, leans towards Protection. Mr. Donaldson, the Minister for Education and Postmaster -General, although himself a squatter and a cattle breeder, is a protectionist ; and it is not the genial Mr. Macrossan, who is Minister for Mines and Public Works, nor Mr. Black, the northern planters' friend, now Minister for Lands, who will stand in the way of increased Protection. There does not appear to be a real free-trade party in Queensland. Under the present fiscal policy of Queensland customs duties are levied chiefly for revenue purposes, but there is an indirect Protection which is popular, and the feeling in favour of fostering native industries is a growing one. I fancy that Sir Thomas M'llwraitli will probably support Mr. Deakin's policy of intercolonial free trade combined with Pro- tection against the world ; and Sir Samuel Griffith, to judge by his constant attitude as one of the Queensland representatives at the Federal Council, seems unlikely to countenance any other course. Propo.sed It will be seen from what I have said above that Sir Thomas divisions of M'llwraith had, in the creation of the dominant party, the territory, support of two separatist parties : those who woulcl virtually separate from England, and those in tlie north who would separate from southern Queensland. In coming into power, the northern people have in some degree dropped their move- ment, and somewhat less has been heard for the last few months of the separation of the northern territory. There can be no doubt, however, it seems to me, that sooner or later a separation of northern Queensland from Queensland, as well as of the Northern Territory from South Australia, and of north- west Australia from Western Australia, must take place. These tliree divisions of colonies may strengthen the movement to- wards federation : or, on the other hand, federation itself may cause them, for the constitution will give the federal Govern- ment power to create new Provinces. A real federation of the Australian colonies, could it be brought about, woulcl reduce friction between the mother-country and Australia, because we should have to deal with an Australian Federal Council only instead of with a number of separate governments. Many difficulties would be settled before they came to discussion with the mother-country, while others would be presented in a more simple form. On the other hand, Australian federation can CHAP, in QUEENSLAND 211 hardly be brought about, looking to the jealousies of the various colonies, except on the base of intercolonial free trade and Pro- tection against the world, including the mother-country. He:e aga,in we find ourselves face to face with tlie same difficulty which met us in the case of Canada, namely, that we retain our empire by facilitating the imposition of increased taxes on our goods. When Queensland came into the present imperfect federation Queensland she inserted a clause in her " Adopting Act " under which she and the at once referred a number of matters to the Federal Council, Fedeial with the intent that as soon as the legislature of one other Council, colony should have referred the same matters to the Council, the Council should be able to exercise legislative authority in respect of them. One of the chief of tliese was the question of the trial and punishment in one colony of offenders against the laws of an adjoining colony, and this had to do with the cattle stealing which disgraces the borderland of Queensland and New South Wales. There is a difficulty at the present moment about dealing with such cases, as the police in one colony cannot act within another colony, and the power of the Federal Council was invoked to meet the case. The present Federation, even as the adoption of the South Australian reforms will leave it, is, however, insufficient to deal effectively with matters of the kind, and Queenslanders generally, while not favourable to Imperial Federation, are thoroughly prepared for a fuller form of Australian union. The separatist movement in the Queensland northern terri- Northern tory was originally largely based upon the fact that it is not separation easy to cultivate sugar plantations by white labour only, while and"servile Brisbane opinion made the use of coloured labour difficult. The labour." agitation for the separation of the north has been somewhat checked of late by the promise of decentralisation and of local control of finance ; but nothing has been actually done in this direction, and even now it is thought probable by all that separation will ultimately come. The late Queensland Govern- ment, as well as its successor, introduced a Bill dealing with decentralisation, and both were withdrawn ; but it is probable that the last one will pass, in 1890, on reintroduction. The Bills both proposed to divide the country into districts for financial purposes, and to keep separate accounts of revenue and expenditure within those districts — the districts being the north, the centre, and tlie south, and the Bills being, of course, intended to weaken or put an end to the agitation for separa- tion. The last Bill proposed to create grand committees for revenue and expenditure for each of the three districts, and in this res]5ect Sir Thomas M'llwraith'sproposal went farther than that of his predecessor. Sir Samuel Gfriffith. The leaders of the northern agitation have lately thrown over the planters, and have declaimed against servile labour. They have given formal jjromises to their supporters that, even if separation takes place, they will not go back to servile labour, and will allow it to 212 PROBLEMS OF GEEATER BRITAIN Difficulties in way of northern separation. become extinct on the 3Ist December 1890, the date at which the end of the labour trade is fixed by the Act of 1885, Tliis Act stops trading in Pacific islanders only, while other legisla- tion checks that in Chinese labour. There is not at present direct legislation against the importation of Javanese or Hindoo labour, but India and the Dutch themselves throw difficulties in the way, although there are some Malays from Java working on plantations in the north ; and if there should at any time be an attempt to import servile labour, other than Chinese or Kanaka, upon a large scale, there can be no doubt that it would be at once suppressed. The recent partial boycotting in the Australian colonies of steamship lines employing coloured labour shows how keenly alive to every development of the labour question are the Australian artisans. The Seaman's Union has used its great jjower and perfect organisation throughout the colonies to prevent the eniployment of Chinese seamen upon mail steamers, and even the Lascars of the British India line are threatened by a Queensland movement. The Government of New South Wales in making new mail contracts now stipulates for the employment of white labour only on board the ships in respect of which subsidies are given. Northern Queensland appears to have passed out of the hands of the planters into those of the cattle -farmers and miners ; and under separation the mine-hands and stock-men would outvote the planters, and continue the exclusion of all coloured labour which could joossibly come to compete with their own. At the same time the working classes in Queens- land have not so completely stopped aid to the immigration of white labour as has been the case in some other colonies. There is still free emigration, from England to Queensland, of farm- labourers and of women-servants ; and those settlers in Queens- land_ who have friends whom they want to bring out may nominate those friends for assisted passages, paying only a trifle towards their fares. " Land orders " continue to be given to intending emigrants to Queensland. So far as northern separation has ceased to be advocated for the purpose of ob- taining _ servile labour, it has become an apparently honest expression of the desire for local self-government. The separa- tion of the northern territories from the rule of Brisbane, of Adelaide, and of Perth would seem to be even more defensible from this point of view than the former separation of Queens- land or of Port Phillip, now Victoria, from New South Wales. At the same time there is a practical difliculty in bringing about the separation of northern Queensland, iuasmucli as the colony might resent imperial legislation not sought by the colonial Parliament. It would undoubtedly be diflicult for the home Government to bring in a Bill for the division of a colony until it had before it some resolution, or address, or Bill passed by the legislature of the colony itself. In the case of the creation of Queensland a special power had been reserved to the Imperial CHAP. Ill QUEENSLAND 213 Government to make the separation; but in the present case the home authorities are asked to tal5:e a step for which there is no modern precedent, that is, to interfere by Act of Parliament with tiie administration of a self-governing colony. The dii£- culty is considerable, because the north is raising an enormous amount of gold and becoming of great value, while the south, being more powerful in Parliament, is spending loans chiefly in the southern part of the territory. Sir Samuel Griffith's Finan- cial Districts Bill of 1887 would have partly met the point, but the Bill was, as I have said, withdrawn, and the Decentralisation Bill of 1888 was not passed. The Colonial Office refuse imperial legislation, and the Queensland Parliament will resist the separation of the north as the Parliament of New South Wales resisted the creation of the colonies of Victoria and of Queens- land out of the territories of tlie mother-colony, so that separation is unlikely until Australian federation upon the Canadian plan remits the decision of the question to the representatives of a united Australia. It is not easy to discover how the tropical portion of the The neeil Queensland coast, and especially the northern part on Torres fo>' colour- Straits, is to be cultivated without coloured or Chinese labour. '*<1 labour. No doubt Indian labour, if the colonists (prefer it, could be secured ; but Chinese labour would probably be cheaper, as is shown by our experience in the Malay Peninsula. The French at Saigon know how difficult it is to attain rapid progress in an Eastern tropical colony to which Indian emigration is forbidden and where the Chinese are not contented, and will not settle in great numbers. The success of our newer protectorates in the Malay Peninsula shows, on the other hand, the great results that can be achieved where the Chinese are encouraged to swarm in. The colonial white working classes of the Queens- land towns are bitterly opposed to Chinese immigration, but the more tropical portions of the colony cannot thrive upon principles which may be applicable to the town of Brisbane or to the plateaus of the interior. It is a general opinion of the Queensland planters that Chinese labour is not the best. While the Chinamen are excellent gardeners, they have, it is said, the habit of drifting into the towns and working as artisans, pro- clucing excellent cabinet work and furniture, but competing against the trade-union mechanic instead of doing the work for which they were brought in. The dislike of the Australians for the Chinese is so strong and so general that it is like the dislike of terriers for rats ; and as rats fight in a corner, so do the Chinese, and lately on the Clermont gold-field the Chinese entrenched themselves, and kept guard over their entrench- ments with rifles and revolvers in the most plucky style. Nothing will so rapidly bring together an Australian crowd as the rumour that Chinamen or rabbits are likely to be landed from a ship, and the one class of intruder is about as popular as the other. Queensland is a colony which has been brought into some 214 PROBLEMS OF GREATEE BRITAIN Ill-treat- disrepute at home through supposed ill-treatment of natives in ment of the past. Two very distinct charges have been made against coloured ^^|^q Queensland settlers : first, that they used to be in the habit labourers ^f shooting down the Australian aborigines in the neighbour- lu the past, j^g^^jj ^^ j.]^gjj. stations, sometimes for amusement, sometimes by way of punishment for pilfering and other trifling offences ; in the second place, that they have been supporters of a labour traifio in the Pacific which has been a virtual slavery. Queens- land required labour other than white labour, and there being the strong prejudice of which I speak against Chinese labour, Queensland had to obtain that labour from men either of the Indian-native or the Polynesian race. The emigration of Indian natives is carefully controlled by the Indian Government, but the obtaining of labourers from the Pacific Islands was subject to less check. During the Griifith Administration a Eoyal Commission was appointed to inquire into the circumstances under which the Polynesian labourers had been employed, and restrictions were placed upon the labour trade. There can be no doubt that at one time a state of things existed upon the northern plantations which was similar to that which we call slavery. The mortality was frightful. The labourers did not understand the conditions under which they were engaged, and gross cruelty was perpetrated at sea. There is now the Griffith Queensland Labour Act, which is good enough, and which is supposed to regulate the traflic ; but it is notorious that, this Act used at one time to be much evaded. On the whole, it is diificult to see how more could be done than has been done for the security of the labourers, and, although some of the super- intendents first appointed by the Queensland Government to look after Polynesian transport were not well chosen, the abuses have now ceased. With regard to the treatment of the aboriginal Australian blacks, it must be said that they were so extraordinarily backward a race as to make it difficult to help them to hold their own. The Kanakas, who are being- exterminated in New Caledonia by the French, were a superior people, and had villages and well-tilled fields, which the French took from them. In New Zealand we have had to deal with such a race, and there our occupation has made them members of both Houses of Parliament, owners of steamships, and large holders of property in the towns, but cannot save them from dying out. In New Guinea we have been doing from the first everything that can be done to prevent unjust interference with the native race ; but in Australia the " aboriginals " are rapidly dying out, and it is hard to see how any other fate could be expected for them. In Australia, moreover, the native popu- lation was always very small. I doubt whether many blacks were shot down for amusement or for trifling offences. Wliite settlers were often murdered by the aboriginals, and revenue was somewhat indiscriminately taken ; and wliile there were no doubt at one time gross cases of ill-treatment of blacks on the Queensland frontier, there is reason to believe that this OHAP. Ill QUEENSLAND 215 is a matter of the past. As regards that past nothing can be stronger than the language now used by the Queenslanders themselves about it. I have seen in the nortliern newspapers the strongest possible denunciation of the crimes of Queensland towards the aboriginal population. Mrs. Campbell Praed has, in her Australian Life, written burning words about the hor- rible cruelties of which she was herself a witness. Mr. Finch- Hatton, who was for several years a Queensland settler, relates in his Advance Australia many instances of cold-blooded murder of the blacks. An Australian poet has said of the birth of Austi'alia — " AVith shield unsullied by a single crime ; " but this is not the Queensland account of the matter. At the same time there is Queensland and Queensland. The blacks were shot by some of the pastoral settlers and cattle holders of the interior, and it is the population of the coast who the most bitterly reproach them with their acts. On the other hand, the cattle holders return the compliment by denouncing the treat- ment of the Kanakas in the coast plantations. The impartial observer can only deeply regret the past, and gladly admit that the present state of things is much improved. The fact that the former evils have ceased, however, in Tlie whole connection with the labour traffic does not satisfy the workmen labour of the towns, and there is now, as I have said, an act in force by traffic to which the whole labour traific is shortly to be brought to an ^^ stopped. end. The policy of the working men has already ruined many of the sugar estates of the north ; but the " Australia for the Australians" movement is unchecked, and insists that only white labour shall be made use of in Australia. It is necessary, therefore, to consider the whole policy of the colony with regard to land and labour in order to judge its prospects. Queensland is a more varied country as regards production Land legis- than are the other Australian colonies. The rich coast lands lation. contain fine forests of timber other than the usual gum trees, such as magnificent pines of several classes ; and these good soils are utilised for agricultural purposes, fruit growing, maize growing, and sugar growing, according to the latitude. Then come the table lands, which are covered with luxuriant grass ; and then rolling plain.s, which stretch far into the west, and up to the mining districts of the Gulf of Carpentaria, where country is held in large tracts for cattle-grazing purposes. Previously to 1885 the land law in force in Queensland gave pastoral tenants immense tracts at nominal rents, and also allowed selection in a similar manner to that known in New South Wales. Under the complicated land law of 1884, which came into force in 1885, and which in some cases followed the lines of changes made in New South Wales, agricultural selection at low rentals, with the option of purchase, was largely adopted, and also a homestead freehold system somewhat similar to that of the United States. The runs of the squatters were, as in 216 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part ii New South Wales, divided into two fairly equal portions, and the conflict between squatter and selector received a check. The land administration in Queensland is placed under a special board, instead of being under the Minister for Lands as in New South Wales. The extent of the leases in Queensland for pastoral purposes may be imagined when I state that the drought in 1886 caused the abandonment of five millions of acres of squatting runs, which, however, constituted scarcely a per- ceptible decrease in the total amount of land under lease for pastoral purposes. In-igation The back country is poorly watered, but, as it is subject in needed. Queensland to occasional heavy falls of rain, it will be possible to carry out water conservation. Boring has also been tried recently with satisfactory results. Some years ago, when the present eloquent Bishop of Manchester was Bishop of Mel- bourne, he was asked to offer up a special prayer for rain, and, I believe, suggested that it might be wise for the colonies to set about establishing a more comprehensive scheme of water storage and irrigation. Although the plain beyond the table land is subject to frightful droughts, and is known as " Never, Never Country," the table land itself, especially Darling Downs, is one of the finest sheep districts in the world. The distances in Queensland are so great that a herd sometimes take a year to march from the cattle stations in the north before they reach a market near the border of New South Wales. Sugar, and In the agricultural pursuits of the coast the cultivation of coloured sugar, though it is declining, has hitherto taken the foremost labour. place. Since the day when the first Queensland sugar-cane was crushed in a copying -press, and the juice then treated in a frying-pan, the industry has taken rank among the chief resources of the colony. It has brought in capital on a large scale, and has dotted the whole coast line with busy com- munities of workmen. Sugar is more popular with the demo- cracy than is wool, because wool production can only be successfully carried out upon large areas, and involves the employment of little labour, which has been even decreased by the recent introduction of mechanical appliances for sheep- shearing. Sugar, on the other hand, apart from the labour of the field, involves the employment of much skilled and of some unskilled labour. On the coast of southern Queensland the settlers, farming with their own labour and with white supple- mentary labour, grow sugar on a small scale. In northern Queensland plantations are of gi-eat extent, and are held by companies with large capital, costly plant, and coloured labour. In southern Queensland there are, as will be seen, a good many co-operative mills. Northern Queensland, with its tropical climate, its rich coast lands, a,nd its " servile labour," is supposed to resemble the cotton-growing States of the American Union, while the democratic southern part of Queensland, the home of small settlers, artisans, and business men, is supposed to be cast in the likeness of the Northern States. Tlie south protests CHAP. Til QUEENSLAND 217 against the introduction of tlie Chinese and the employment of Polynesian labour. Moral arguments are made use of, but n little for party purposes, I am afraid ; and the southern working men really believe that white labour can be employed, and should be employed, in place of black or yellow. It is, how- ever, I am convinced, the fact that profitable sugar production on a large scale in northern Queensland deniands coloured labour, and that if the democratic south insists upon excluding such labour from the coast, that coast cannot be largely utilised. It is true that certain lines of railway have been constructed in the north by white labourers ; but the men, I believe, sufi'ered severely from the heat, and the work was only temporary work and for the inost part work in open country. The labour of cane-cutting is much more severe in its conditions, and five minutes in a cane-brake at mid-day in northern Queensland would be sufficient to convince most people that it is not white man's Work. The case of the labour party was powerfully stated by Mr. The argu- Griffith when Prime Minister of Queensland in 1885. The ments of spokesmen of the northern district had in a letter of that year ^^^ l.ibour summed up their reasons in favour of separation, of which the V^^'^Y- third was the " diversity of interests between the inhabitants of tropical and temperate Queensland on the subject of coloured labour " ; and they expanded this head by explaining that the inhabitants of northern Queensland were anxious to obtain coolies from India. Since that time the nortlierners have more or less withdrawn from this position, but there can be no doubt that it was originally, and very naturally, one of the main grounds for desiring separation. Sir Samuel Griffith based his reply almost wholly upon it. He pointed out with remarkable vigour how large a portion of the northern district was mineral and pastoral, and how small a portion tropical in its nature. He showed that his party desired to substitute a large number of resident owners for a smaller number of absentee proprietors, owning large estates managed by agents and worked by gangs of men of the inferior races. He argued that there was no country in which Asiatic and European labourers were found working side by side on terms of equality, and that where Asiatic labourers predominate in numbers, they, by degrees, monopolise all branches of industry, and manual labour be- comes regarded as degrading. We shall find that South Africa forms in some degree an exception to this rule. Eegulations to punish persons employing servile labour in any occupation except that of tropical agriculture would, the Queensland Minister thought, be inoperative. Sir Samuel Griffith's con- elusion was that representative government in which the iniluence of employers might predominate could not be trusted with the control of inferior races, and that, on the other hand, if the influence of employers did not predominate, the wliite population could not be trusted to wisely control the destinies of inferior races entering into daily competition with them in 218 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Co-opera- tive sugar mills. Maize anil cotton growing. Future diificulties. Lord Knuts- ford's various forms of industry. He thought that if it was seriously intended that any parts of the Australian continent should be thrown open to Asiatic immigration they should be marked out as being clearly unlit for Euroi^ean settlement, constituted as separate colonies, and governed as Crown Colonies by imperial officers, who would act with impartial justice between the races. Sir Samuel Griffith urged, however, that the amount of troiaical country in Australia requiring servile labour would be found too small to make it worth while setting up these separate Crown Colonies ujoon the coast. It was probably the hope of Sir Samuel Griffith that tlie co-operative system of liolding sugar mills in the soutliern part of Queensland would break down the monopoly of the sugar trade by the wealthy planter companies of the north ; but of late a good many of the co-operative mills have been closed, owing to a depression in the trade. Even State assistance, which has been given in loans to the co-operative sugar mills, and secured by mortgage upon the farms, has not made the system a success. As a general rule the small settlers in Queensland grow Indian corn, and the acreage under maize to the acreage under sugar is about as three to two. There had long been even more depres- sion in cotton than in sugar, and tlie cotton industry had lately absolutely died out, but was revived by the formation of a com- pany in .June 1889. A protective bonus was granted by Govern- ment when the industry was started, and the withdrawal of the bonus had killed it. The cotton plant grows in perfection, but it requires too much labour for the colony to compete against the similar industry of countries with cheap coloured labour. It used to be supposed that the chief difficulties of the future in Queensland lay in the problem of northern Queensland, because after separation North Queensland would claim to be allowed to manage its imported coloured labour as it pleased. If we forbade this North Queensland would secede from the imperial connection ; if we allowed the claim, we were told an outcry would arise at home at the moral responsibility we were undertaking. We have seen, however, in our survey that this difficulty is already a difficulty of the past. Northern Queens- land will sooner or later separate from southern Queensland, but will not become a country of coloured labour. There is another direction in which Queensland may give us anxiety. Like Victoria, and like New Zealand, she "has aspirations towards a future in the Pacific. Some forms of enterprise which once were in the hands of New South Wales are now largely managed by Queenslanders working with Victorian capital, and it is Queenslanders and Victorians, and in some cases New Zealanders, who are coming into conflict with the French in the New Hebrides and witli the Germans in Samoa I have now described the difficulties with whicli we meet and with which we shall have to deal, in Queensland— diffictilties which the excellent choice for Governor of Sir Henry Norman CHAP. Ill QUEENSLAND 219 will do much to mitigate. The reception of Sir Henry when choice of on his first tour was excellent, although it is possible that the Governors, fact that the colony had got its way about Sir Henry Blake was the chief cause of the enthusiasm so suddenly displayed. As I have criticised Lord Knutsford for his selection of Sir Henry Blake, under the special circumstances of the case, I ought to add that the majority of his appointments have been excellent. There is every reason to hope that Lords Onslow, Kintore, and Hopetoun will make as good colonial Governors as Sir Robert Hamilton, Sir William Jervois, Lord Carrington, Sir Henry Norman, and Sir Henry Loch. Although Lord Kintore got into some trouble on his arrival in South Australia, owing to a reference to Irish affairs in a speech made by him in England after his appointment, it is a happy thing that at the present critical moment all those who are employed in Australia are popular or fairly popular. A mistake was made in England in treating the Queensland case as though it were an isolated episode. South Australia had virtually refused to receive Lord Normanby almost at the same moment ; but in this case the withdrawal of the name was more quietly asked for and more peacefully obtained. Some years ago Natal refused to receive Mr. Sendall, an excellent public servant, because he was thought to be appointed as a mere subordinate to Sir Hercules Robinson, the Governor of the Cape. Sir Walter Sendall was unacceptable in Natal because of the policy on the part of the home Government which the fancied consultation of Sir Hercules Robinson appeared to imply. Sir Ambrose Shea had also, as I have said, been refused by Newfoundland. The course of the home Government in not more frankly consulting privately the colonial Governments on the choice of Governors is almost universally condemned by colonial opinion. It is now several years ago since Sir George Grey brought forward a motion in New Zealand to make the office of Governor elective ; and the question was afterwards taken up by Mr. Playford in South Australia. When Sir Henry Parkes supported the Queensland action his resolutions were carried all but unani- mously in the New South Wales Assembly. In fact they were only opposed by two gentlemen, who are in favour of immediate separation from the mother-country, and who thought that the consultation of the colony as to the choice of Governors, advocated by Sir Henry Parkes, would strengthen, not weaken, the tie to England. It is thought by some that Queensland is financially in a less Queensland sound position than are the other southern colonies except New financially Zealand. But upon examination it is discovered that, whatever sound, ideas of separation may be abroad in Queensland, there is not the smallest idea of, or risk of. Repudiation. Here, as elsewhere in Australia, loans are not loans at all in the European sense ; the Bi'itish public possess the railways and waterworks of Queensland just as much as if they had been mortgaged. The payment of interest is guaranteed by a Government which has 220 rEOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" Public works and local gov- ernment. The Australian capitals brought togetlier by railways. Immi- grants, abundant resources at its back, and which has to the full the British financial pride of paying to every man the last penny that is owing. If Queensland ever separates from England, which the growth of federal feeling in Australia makes unlikely, she will do so in sturdy self-reliance, and she will not accompany the separation by robbery of the British capitalist. Queensland has pushed on rapidly with her narrow-gauge railways, and has now, as I have stated, a larger number of miles of railway in proportion to her population than any other country, besides which there are many more miles in course of construction or already authorised. She spends largely upon public works, but chiefly out of borrowed money; and she is obliged to spend more freely than the other colonies upon harbours, having an enormous coastline under settlement. Queensland has, on the whole, a. better system of local govern- ment than e-^ists in New South Wales. By the Divisional Boards Act the colony is chopped up into a great number of divisions governed by Local Boards, of from three to nine members, which have extensive powers. Government pays to each board an amount equal to twice the sum raised by rates during the first live years of the operation of the Act, and then a sum equal to the rates collected, and the law has inspired the country districts with new life. The completion of the railway from Brisbane to the New South Wales line, knitting the capital of Queensland to the capitals of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, must do something to foster the growing wish for Australian union or federation. Long sea voyages between capital and capital left an impression of isolation upon the traveller's mind, which is removed by the substitution of the overland route. The greatest railway work of Queensland, however, will be the transcontinental railway connecting the capitals I named just now with the Gulf of Carpentaria. This, it is expected, will become the colonial route to India — " From Gippsland's hop-lined gardens to Carpentaria's Bay." Population is increasing with great rapidity, although the assisted immigration has been checked by confining it to " eligible " agricultural^ labourers and women-servants. It is found that it is very difficult to draw the agricultural popula- tion of Great Britain to such a distance, and there used always to be a preponderance among the assisted immigrants of the urban artisan. In the parts of England where wages are low it was found almost impossible to move the men. The small expenditure necessary for their kit, and still more the cost of transit to a port, were too heavy, the absence of savings too complete, and the depression and unwillingness to move too thorough. In the best parts of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire the labourers are more willing, instead of less willing, to emigrate than they are from the poorly paid_ parts of Wiltshire, Dorset- shire, and Somerset. It is easier to induce small tenant farmers CHAP. 171 QUEENSLAND 221 to go to Queensland than any otlier class of agi-iculturists. On the otlier hand, German labourers have been taken to Queensland in considerable numbers. They form an industrious and hard-working class in the southern portion of the colony, and the German sugar growers utilise the labour of their wives, sons, and daughters in the field, live very closely, save money, and become a considerable factor in the prosperity of the colony. The Germans of Queensland have their own churches, their own newspapers, their own clubs, and their own festive days, but their children speak English and go to the usual schools. The Germans are rooted in Queensland on the border of New South Wales, growing sugar and maize. The English settler, who likes to keep a buggy for his wife, and to send his daughter to a boarding-school in town, is not pleased with the rigid economy and the united family labour of the Germans ; and the German settler, who sends his healthy strong -limbed daughter to strip the sugar-cane, and save the cost of a labourer's wage, is looked upon by some colonists as a sort of monster. Queensland resembles the other colonies in her legislation. Legislative She has an education system somewhat similar to that of peculiar- Victoria. There is a graduated progressive succession duty, '''^^• varying only from 2 to 5 per cent, according to the amount of property, as in New South Wales, and introduced also in 1886. The chief peculiarity of Queensland legislation is its local option without compensation — the most stringent liquor law known to our southern colonies, except that of New Zealand. The Act has not been sufficiently long in force for it to be possible to say much with regard to its effect on the drinking habits of the people, but the view seems to exist that local option has not been a great success, and that the temperance party are likely soon to work for total prohibition. Another peculiarity of Queensland is that the colony has not yet actually repealed certain provisions as to the State-regulation of vice, such as have been repealed elsewhere in English-speaking or English- governed countries, and which were not in Queensland based, as in England, on grounds having to do with military or naval stations, but extended to the capital city. The legal professions are, it has been seen, amalgamated in American fashion in Queensland, as they are also in most of the Australian colonies and in New Zealand. The members of the Assembly in Queens- land are paid, as in most other colonies ; and the only electoral peculiarity of Queensland is the special disfranchisement of aboriginal natives of Australia, India, China, and the South Sea islands, which may be contrasted witli the New Zealand provision that every male aboriginal inhabitant of the colony, as well as every male half-caste of full age not attainted or convicted of treason, is entitled to vote, under the Maori Eepresentation Act, for a member for the Maori district in which he resides. New Zealand also admits Maori ratej)ayers to vote where they live outside Maori districts. Parliaments in Queensland endure for five years, whereas most of the other 222 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" PART II An eiglit- liour day and early closing. General view of Queens- land. Australasian colonies, with the exception of Tasmania, _ wliich resembles Queensland in this respect, possess the triennial system. The usual working day in Queensland is eight hours, and trade unions enforce the limitation under penalties of their own. An eight-hour Bill was carried tlu-ough the Assembly in 1889, but rejected by the Upper House. The new arrivals in the colony, working at gold-mining, earn about 8s. a day, and carpenters and joiners earn about 10s. a day, and they invest their savings in gold-mining on the co-operative plan, which is becoming popular in Queensland, although co-operation does not flourish in the colonies as a rule. Early closing is some- times forced on shopkeepers by window -smashing — riotous mobs parading Rookhampton, for example, and forcing the shops to close. Queensland has so long a seaboard, and the importance of its cities has so much depended upon their being seaports, that several distinct centres of trade activity have there sprung up ; but the coast cities only hold a quarter of the i^opulation among them. Under these circumstances it would be somewhat difii- cult to explain the enormous power exercised by the workmen in Queensland as against the planters and squatters, but for the fact that gold-mining employs great numbers of workmen in districts altogether away from towns. The extraordinary richness of Mount Morgan is well known in England, but what is less well known is that there are gold mines in difierent parts of Queensland, some in the extreme south, some near Rook- hampton, some in the far north, and that there is also a fine coal-field not yet brought into active competition with New South Wales. Gold has lately been found under the cricket-field in the park in the capital itself, and curious complications sprang up in consequence of the conflict between the mining laws and the laws on the subject of the reservation of parks. Queensland by the latest returns is now producing more gold than any other British colony, and 'her copper yield is likely soon to be developed, while a good deal of tin and lead is being raised already. The increase of population in the last few years has been much more rapid in the towns than in the rural districts, and more than half the population now lives in urban districts; but "urban" in Queensland does not bear the ordinary sense of the word. Although the whole of Queensland lies north of the colony of New South Wales, and although the sun heat in Queensland is greater than in the mother-colony, Queensland, generally speaking, is not less healthy than New South Wales. The English race shows as much vitality in the younger colony as in the older one, and thrives under whole months of that cruel Australian sun which the Tasmanian authoress "Tasma" well describes as a red-hot copper ball. It is damp, not heat, tliat kills, and the dry heat of Australia even in its northern parts, except on the imnjediate coast, does not 25revent men of our CHAP. Ill QUEENSLAND 223 race working in the open air without loss of energy. Tlie power to continue the race and tlie health of children seem fairly strong, and if we except a little strip along the coast, the hotter parts of Australia cannot be regarded as deadly to immigrants from Great Britain and Ireland or from Germany. The debilitating effect of residence in tropical or semi-tropical climate is seen all along the coast from Sydney northwards, but, as there is no malaria, it is not sufficient on the Australian coast to cause serious mischief, although it is perhaps sufficient at Sydney to destroy great activity in work. In Queensland the country rises rapidly from the coast, and even more rapidly on the whole than in New South Wales, and as large a portion of Queensland is thoroughly healthy for Europeans as is the case in the other colony. Generally speaking, Australia may be said to be much more healthy than England for old people, and as healthy for people in the prime of life, but to have in parts a more considerable infantile mortality than ought to be the case where the non-climatic conditions are good, as they are in Australia. Queensland, although young, has been remarkable for the Literature, existence of a school of poets. Lamb in his "Letter to B. F., Esq., at Sydney, New South Wales," said that if the colonists "take it into their heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn out, the greater part of them, vile plagiarists." But there are plenty of colonial poets who are not plagiarists, and Mr. Brunton Stei^hens — not Australian-born, for ne is a Scotchman who only reached Queensland at the age of thirty-one — has written his best poetry in the colonies, and is on the whole the first of colonial poets. He writes in every known and con- ceivable style, but his comic verse is his best, and is of the highest order. Stephens has a singularly copious vocabulary, and makes use in his comic poems of a deep knowledge of modem scientific speculation, which lends weight to his light verses. Queensland also claims the only considerable Australian novelist, besides "Tasma," in Mrs. Campbell Praed, who is colonial-born, and whose Australian Life is a vivid autobio- graphical picture of the early days of Queensland. Mrs. Patchett Martin is a writer also worth the reading. It is some- what curious that a new colony such as Queensland should have trained a poet not only so good as Mr. Stephens, but so successful. I have said already that colonial writers are not likely to be adequately remunerated for their work ; but in the case of this writer, who was a student at Edinburgh University, forced to leave through want of means, and who, after spending a few years at Greenock, emigrated to Brisbane, where he became a State schoolmaster, the books produced have a con- siderable sale. Mr. Stephens's "Dominion of Australia," beginning " She is not yet," has a " national " ring about it, though he is, as I have said, not "native-born." Among journals the Brishane Courier is an excellent daily paper (opposed to Imperial Federation), as is the Telcrjrapli ; while 224 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN vart n the Queenslander and tlie Australian are admirable weeklies, and there are several powerful evening papers. The Boomerang, a weekly paper, which advocates an Australian Republic and claims "the largest circulation north of Sydney," has some resemblance to the Bulletin already named. Govern- Queensland makes the same large sacrifice as does Victoria ment aid to in aid of charitable institutions, giving, like Victoria, on the charitable average two pounds for every pound collected from private institu- sources, instead of the one pound which is given in New South ions. Wales. In some periods of depression there has been a need for the giving of charitable assistance even to people of working age and fair health. Cost of The immigrants who at one time poured rapidly into Queens- living, land year by year found that meat was cheap, but those of them who remained in the towns felt themselves oppressed by the heavy rents and by the cost of clothes. Little things which are not considered in preparing schedules of prices, bore heavily upon them, as, for example, the cost of medical attendance. The workmen who have been for some time in the colony keep chickens, and so obtain variety of food ; they secure good wages and pleasant homes, as well as invest their savings at high interest, and despite the sun the race is vigorous, and the people happy. CHAPTEK IV AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND South Australia and a portion of ISTew Zealand were colonised Systems of on a more systematic plan than were our colonies in general, colouisa- and Australia presents in New South Wales, in Tasmania, and tion in in Western Australia, the results of a colonisation commenced Austral- by means of transportation, vastly modified by the subsequent "^ia. discovery of gold in the neighbourhood : while South Australia and the middle or southern island of New Zealand show the results of applications of the Wakefield system. Even, however, in New South Wales the Wakefield system was partially applied in early days, as well as the system of transportation, and a large number of free immigrants were brought in by the money produced by the sale of land. If New South Wales had been left to transportation only, her condition would have been less happy than it is. South Australia was the chosen land of the gonth advocates of the Wakefield doctrine, and the class of immigrants Australia, introduced was excellent. Mr. Gladstone's scheme of 1841 was never fully applied ; but it may be said that through tlie improvements of the Wakefield system which followed the partial failure in South Australia in 1840, Australia would have been certain of a magnificent development, even without the gold discovery which rather hastened than caused its recent prosperity. The older settlements of New Zealand were started upon the modified Wakefield plan, and as in South Australia, so in New Zealand, the immigrants introduced were of the most admirable kind. A full-grown society was planted in portions of these colonies, witli a representation of all classes from the old world, with capital and with an organised church ; and the condition of South Australia is a testimony to the beneficent lesults of the system of colonisation there adopted — tlie most scientific tliat the world has known. The development of South Australia andNewZealand has been as remarkable in its way as that of Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland ; but Tasmania and Western Australia present different features. In each of tliem the neighbourhood of gold, outside their boundaries, and Transportation, seem in the past to have produced for a time blighting consequences, while these colonies had not the wheat-land and copper of South Australia, Q 226 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN nor land so well prepared by the hand of nature for sheep as that of Queensland and New Zealand. It is now more than a hundred years since Australia as a community came into being, and the rapidity of the progress in the last thirty-five years of the gold-bearing colonies is easily explained ; but those provinces of New Zealand that have no gold, and South Australia, may be said to be only half the age of New South Wales, and tlieir progress has been at least as wonderful. Tn South Australia, and in all the provinces of New Zealand, gold- bearing and goldless alike, we see the same development of the appliances of civilisation as in the more populous of the Australian colonies, and free political institutions yielding in little to those of Victoria herself. Foreign writers are too willing to attribute the prosperity of our South-Sea colonies to a kind of chance, and to assert that the accident of a discovery of gold has made them what they are ; but their history shows that the wisdom of our writers and our statesmen, and the vigour of our race, have had vastly more than gold discovery to do with this greatest example of colonial success. It will be the glory of the improved Wakefield system as preached or practised by J. S. Mill, by Mr. Gladstone, by Lord John Eussell, and many others, to have purified Australia from the vices of a convict origin, and to have laid the foundations of communities in which the immigration from England of the most industrious and prudent of our working population has swamped the forced immigration of the most vicious among our people. Governor- South Australia followed the lead of Queensland in the ship question of the selection of colonial governors. The Ministry difficiilties. in power in South Australia, as in Queensland, represented, along with the protectionist interest, the Irish Eoman Catholic party, and had even gone so far as to consider the possibility of making concessions to them upon the education question. There were one or two Eoman Catholics in the South Australian Ministry. There was also in South Australia a fear that Lord Normanby might be forced upon that colony. The South Australian Government had already been communicating with the Colonial Oflice upon that question, and they naturally seized the opportunity offered by the Queensland protest. The claim of South Australia was more moderate than the claim of Queensland, and was confined to a demand to be allowed to privately object to undesirable nominees. The then Governor, Sir William Eobinson, the brother of that most popular of colonial governors — Sir Hercules Eobinson, was one who had not raised much feeling either for or against himself. A man of distant manners, and who seemed to take only a purely official interest in the colony and its fortunes — he was little heard of at all outside of Adelaide, except by the musicians of Australia, of whom he is, deservedly, the idol. South The head of the Government until June 1889, Mr. Thomas Australian Playford, now leader of the Opposition, was a market- lioliticians. gardener, and is a man of shrewd practical ability and good OHAP. IV SOUTH AUSTRALIA 227 humour, called "honest Tom" as much on account of his pleasant ways as on account of his integrity. He is also when in office styled " King Tom," and South Australia, " King Tom's dominions." Mr. Playford would probably have held the second instead of the first place in the Government had not Mr. King- ston been the subject of personal attacks — whether deserved or not I do not know — which thrust him back into the second place. Mr. Kingston, the Playford Attorney-General, is still a young mar, an excellent debater, a good party manager, and a man of quick political insight. In education, parliamentary capacity, and political judgment, he is superior to his chief. The latter is, however, the man of stronger will and more decided character, and is perhaps really the more fitted for the lielm. The two together made a strong combination, and practically formed the Government. I have spoken favourably of Mr. Kingston's education, but it is a curious fact, worth perhaps a word of notice, that in his important addresses to the Federal Council, when he appeared with Mr. Playford to represent South Australia at the session of 1889, Mr. Kingston, according to our English ideas, says " would " for " should." The same peculiarity, as we think it, exists among cultivated Americans, as well as among many well-educated people from Scotland and from Ireland ; and if the best people in Australia are going to follow Scotch, Irish, and American example in this matter, we shall be so hopelessly outnumbered upon the question as to be put in the wrong. Like the militiaman, being unable to induce our comrades to change step, we shall have to change our own, or to go to school again until we too write " would " for " should " in places where " should " would at present be the accepted form. Possibly, however, not the speaker but the reporter was in fault, for Mr. Gillies and Mr. Deakin in their speeches at the Federal Council are also made sometimes to put "wills" for "shalls" and " woulds " for '■ shoulds," although not with the frequency that such changes are attributed to Mr. Kingston. The party who were defeated by Mr. Playford and Mr. King- ston in 1887 were supposed to be led by a gentleman who had not returned to the colony after the Colonial Conference, and the then Ministry was actually headed by Sir John Bray, the present Speaker, the most popular man in the House and a master of tactics, though, like Mr. Kingston, somewhat weak in will. His former leader. Sir John Downer, less nimble of intellect than Sir John Bray, is one of the leaders of the South Australian bar, a man of solid parts and steady perseverance, and a good set speaker. He is not so popular as Sir J. Bray, but is a man of high character and great good nature, with a tendency towards obstinacy as liis failing. Sir J. Downer and Sir J. Bray were themselves the authors, when in power, of a mildly protectionist tarifi"; not, however, sufficiently pro- tectionist for the colony; and it was the Playford Government which carried out the virtual adoption of the Victorian tarifi' 228 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part ii by South Australia. Nevertheless they received a good deal of support from the free -trade portion of the Adelaide Press. South Australian party lines have never been very distinct,, and it may be said that, from some points of view, both the Downer-Bray Governments of 1882-84 and 1885-87 were coali- tion Governments. I believe that Mr. Playford, and Mr. Kingston (in spite of his " woulds "), are English-born, while Sir J. Downer and Sir J. Bray are Australian -born. Sir John Downer is an imperial federationist, while Mr. Playford and Mr. Kingston cannot be counted in the ranks of that party. The Playford Government quarrelled with the farmers in 1889 by refusing to find them seed wheat after a great drought, and they quarrelled with the City Council of the capital as to the reception of the new Governor, Lord Kintore, and other- wise, like Governments in general, made enemies through some of their wisest acts. In June 1889 they were defeated and turned out by Dr. Cockburn — who formed a Government of new men, still more protectionist, and more advanced on the land question than their predecessors — with the support of Sir John Downer, who would not, however, join the Ministry. The Playford Government had been attacked upon almost every conceivable question: upon the property-tax; for pretended injudicious representation of the colony by the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General at the Federal Council ; for arbitrary treatment of selectors, and also for illiberal dealing with squatters by the Commissioner of Crown Lands ; for Mr. Play- ford's refusal to grant seed wheat; for wasteful expenditure in water - conservation works, and, on the other hand, for insufficient energy in the prosecution of the public -works policy; for charging income-tax on money invested in other colonies and paying taxes there ; and for other matters without number. They were defeated by a very small majority, and the new Government has only two members out of seven who liave had any previous experience of official life, and contains no men whose names were known outside the colony. Dr. Cockburn is an able and ambitious Scotchman under forty, a gold medallist of London University, who settled in Australia only fourteen years ago. He is still in search of a sound majority. His Ministry is making a good fight, but is scarcely likely to survive a general election due in a few months' time. South South Australia recently joined the Australasian Federal Australian Council for two years, with the avowed object of striving to views on alter the constitution and to increase the powers of that body. Federation, j^^Jthough protectionist, South Australia seems more friendly to and on y^g British connection than is protectionist Queensland or free- /th the ^^^^ New South Wales, and she appears to be less jealous of United " Victoria than is the latter colony, and, except in the matter of Kingdom. ^^^^ choice of governors, more inclined to shape her policy on that of "the neighbouring colony." The Australian Natives' Association is powerful in South Australia, and it has lately CHAP. IV SOUTH AUSTRALIA 229 beconie anialgiimated with another body called the National Association. The Association is not in Irish hands in the two southern colonies, and loudly proclaims its desire to avoid inter- ference in questions that would be likely to afteot the union between Great Britain and the Australian colonies. As a matter of fact the Australian Association contains both Orangemen and Irish Nationalists. South Australia, as will be seen from what has been already General told, is one of those happy communities which may be said view of to have no history. After its foundation, upon the scientific South system which Merivale has well described, it prospered as a Australia, wheat-growing and copper -producing colony. From 1884 to 1886 it went through one of those periods of heavy depression which attack young countries from time to time, and from which it is now recovering. Its enormous territory is still sparsely populated ; but that is because it stretches right across the continent, and includes the drier portion of the in- land region. South Australia is a thoroughly honest and sound colony, which, whether it be left with its Northern Territory or separated from it, has a future of wealth and usefulness before it. South Australia has had its land boom like Victoria; it lias had its deficits like New South Wales ; but all along there has been a steady increase in the number of the farmers who are the backbone of the prosperity of the country. The pastoral interests of the colony have been for some time stationary, and the yield of copper and vnne has decreased, for at one time South Australia stood at the head of the wine-producing colonies. But in the meantime the number of depositors in the Savings Banks, and the amount of deposits, has greatly and steadily increased, as has the area under wheat. I wrote just now about the land boom in Australia, but, land Adelaide. boom or no land boom, the size of Adelaide and the value of property in the town are most remarkable. A larger propor- tion of the population of South Australia lives in the capital than is tlie case in New Soutli Wales (or even in Victoria, unless we include the Melbourne suburbs), and the proportion is con- tinually on the increase. There are in South Australia no other important towns. Melbourne is the natural centre for a large population besides the population of Victoria, for the Kiverina and Tasmania use Melbourne as their pleasure town ; while Adelaide cannot expect to draw population from outside the colony of South Australia, a fact which makes its prosperity the more remarkable. But the town of Adelaide was built on a site that had been chosen upon highly scientific principles, although it is, as I have said, out of reach of large ships, and the city was laid out from the first as a block surrounded by a great belt of park lands. Although South Australia has gone through a terrible period Financial of depression, and although its finances are not the finances of position, Victoria, nevertheless it cannot be said upon any fair examina- tion of its position to be overburdened with debt. The railways 230 TROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN have lately paid only 2 per cent upon the money laid out upon them, or half what the colony is paying for it ; but the rate is now increasing, and, when we consider the risein the value of Crown lands due to the construction of these railways, we have to admit that the colony is not a loser by them, and still pos- sesses on the whole an asset equivalent to its liability. But South Australia has only some twelve millions out of an ex- penditure of twenty millions from loans that yield any direct return of interest, while Victoria has thirty millions out of thirty-three that give such a return, and the Victorian works pay a higher interest than the South Australian. On the other hand, without roads and railways, land in the interior is worth nothing, while with roads and railways the State possesses vast tracts of land that will fetch a pound an acre. The colony has an immense mileage of railway open, and stands almost as well in this respect as Queensland, bhe has now followed the ex- ample of Queensland and of Victoria in appointing a Board of Commissioners to supervise the working of the railways, and it is probable that the returns in interest will steadily increase, although in so sparsely populated a country they can hardly be brought to such figures as are seen in the case of Victoria. The Commission principle is extending, and an agitation is on foot in South Australia for instituting a Public Service Com- mission similar to that which Victoria has placed over her civil service. Real pro- South Australia has led the way in many important altera- perty acts, tions and simplifications of law. From it came the germ of all Cheap law i\^^ j-g^l property acts of the colonies, under which it has be- courts. come possible to transfer land as simply and as cheaply as to transact any other business operation. In this colony the possession of a certificate of transfer constitutes an indefeasible title, without regard to the history of the older title to the property prior to the ti-ansfer. As this leaves an opening for fraud, a tax of a halfpenny in the pound is levied on all property transferred, and goes to constitute an insurance fund for compensation. This law has been imitated throughout the colonies. South Australia also was one of the earliest colonies to adopt the principle that real property in intestacy should be distributed as personalty is with us. For the purpose of i-endering legal proceedings less expensive, cheap courts were established, presided over by stipendiary magistrates, and per- forming the duties of county courts, in cases involving less than £500, by simple and cheap process. Juries of four, taking the verdict of three, and juries of six, taking the verdict of five, have been introduced into these courts, which do almost the whole of the legal business of the country. Local crov- -A-S early as 1840 South Australia established a complete eriiment. system of local self-government with the most happy results, and the Soutli Australian system of local government lias been largely followed in the other colonies. The municipalities are divided, according to the nature of tlieir district, into corpora- oHAr. IV SOUTH AUSTRALIA 231 tions or district councils. Tlie rural local authorities consist of boards of from five to seven members, elected by the rate- payers, which have a large amount of influence over the control of public lands and over public works as well as over the police. The powers of the corporations and districts were increased in 1887. Women possess the municipal vote in South Australia, as in Woman the mother -country, and in most of our other colonies; and suffrage, women also vote in the election of the boards which manage South Australian main roads. In none of the colonies is the political franchise extended to women, although in New South Wales the Prime Minister has introduced a woman suffrage bill ; but there seems some probability of this extension shortly taking place in South Australia. An all but successful attempt has been already made there to give women the political vote, but it failed, and it is doubtful whether the old country or the colony will lead the way : — I should be inclined to " back " the colony. The South Australian Begister, the mercantile and Conservative organ, answering to the Argus and the Sydney Morning Herald, the next most wealthy newspaper in Australia to the latter, strongly supports women's suffrage, and not only suffrage, but also, its logical outcome, the desirability of women sitting as representatives in Parliament. The remarkable suc- cess of women in the colonial universities, since the universities have been thrown open to them, has had much effect in influ- encing the colonies in what I myself think the right direction ; but the colonies are stuck in the slough of rating qualification, and the larger question of the enfranchisement of married women has not been raised. The fact that Victoria was enjoying great prosperity during Protection, the recent depression in South Australia aroused a considerable amount of protectionist feeling in the latter colony, and it may be said that the Protection party has in South Australia won the day. In 1885 the South Australian tariff was assimilated to that of New Zealand by the Bray-Downer combination, and in 1887 to that of Victoria by the Playford-Kingston party. Before the first of these two steps was taken the highest ad valorem duties had been 10 per cent, whereas now almost everything is taxed, and as many as two hundred articles pay a rate of 25 per cent ad valorem. There is now an almost universal belief in South Australia that Protection has been an absolute success in the colony of Victoria, and that in young countries without industries it is necessary to establish Protection in order to create variety of employment. In 1887 the question was dis- tinctly before the country at a dissolution, and the result was the return of a great protectionist majority and an increase of the tariff. The Victorian protectionists are of opinion that the South Australian action comes too late: that Melbourne by taking the first step in the direction of Protection made itself the manufacturing centre of Australia, and that the Australian population is not large enough to support two such centres. As 232 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Democratic institu- tions of South Australia. Payment of members. a fact, liowever, free-trade New South Wales has the advantage in many kinds of goods, and, with her cheap coal, should keep it. The early traditions of South Australia were somewhat opposed to a democratic state of society, for the Wakefield system was slightly aristocratic in tendency, and in the Clirist- churcli Province of New Zealand produced distinctly aristocratic results. Then, too, there was never any such large influx of a democratic population into South Austi-alia as occurred during the gold rush in New South Wales and Victoria. In spite of these facts, democratic institutions have progressed in South Australia with less conflict than has been the case elsewhere. South Australia, like Victoria, has adopted the elective system for her Upper House. A third of the Council go out every three years, and all owners of £50 freeholds or occupiers to the value of £25 a year have votes for the Upijer House. In the Consti- tution Amendment Act, 1881, South Australia took a decidedly bold step by giving the Governor power to dissolve the Upper House. The original jjroposal of the Government of the day had been that which had been made previously in Victoria, and was made about the same time in France, that, in the event of disputes between the Houses, the two Chambers should meet in congress and settle the question by a two-thirds majority of the whole ; but the Bill was altered in Parliament, and now it stands as follows : — When a Bill has been passed by the Lower House twice, and twice rejected by the Upper, a general election of the Lower House having taken place between the two occasions, and the Bill in the second instance having been passed by an absolute majority of the Lower House on the second and third readings, it is lawful for, but not obligatory upon, the Governor to dissolve both Houses. The plan, as will be seen, averts those dead-locks which at one time became a formidable difliculty in Jamaica and in Victoria. This provision of the law has never been put in force, but conferences between the two Houses as to their disputes have brought about conciliation. There had been a good deal of difi'erence between the two Houses in South Australia with regard to payment of members. In 1884, 1885, and 1886 the Assembly passed a measure on tliis subject, which was rejected in each year by the Council ; but finally the Bill became law in 1887, and each member receives there, as in most of the other colonies, about £200 a year for his services, while in this colony the members of the Upper House, as well as those of the Lower, receive payment, which is not the case in all the colonies where members of the Assembly are paid. In South Australia the legislature is remarkably decorous, and members are very sensitive upon the subject of decorum. The South Australian Assembly was i^i'esided over, I believe, for twenty years by Sir George Kingston, who was followed by Sir Kobert Boss, and both men had so absolute an authority over the Assembly that scenes such as used to be common in Victoria, and are still common in New South Wales, were there unknown. Happily, under the Speakership of Sir J. Bray, the courtesies of CHAP. IV SOUTH AUSTRALIA 233 debate continue to be observed. WJien lately it was proposed to equip liim and the clerks at the table in wigs like those of the Speaker and clerks of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, it was generally admitted that in his case this aid to law and order was unnecessary. Another peculiarity of South Australia is the possession of a Closure, parliamentary closure. All the jjopular legislatures but one in the colonies have at one time or another had reason to wish for some means of putting a stop to parliamentary obstruction. South Australia has been the exception, because Sir George Kingston and Mr. Beresford, a generation ago, had inserted a clause in her Standing Orders providing a power of directing the Speaker to put the question. When a motion is made to that effect no discussion is allowed, and if it is carried the question is at once put. The efficacy of the measure is chiefly seen in the fact that in South Australia it is seldom required to be put in force. Any attempt at obstruction must speedily collapse, and arouse only angry feeling against the obstructionists ; and the power of closure is never abused, though members given to the reading of long extracts have sometimes thought that it is. Victoria imitated South Australia in adopting at one time wliat was known as the "iron hand," which was successful during the session when it was in force ; but it was South Australia which set the example which has now been followed by the mother-country. There has been since 1884 a land-tax in South Australia of Land-tax ^d. in the pound per annum on unimproved capital value — and in- that is, on what the land would be worth if no buildings had come tax been erected or improvements effected upon it. There has been since 1885 an income-tax of 3d. in the pound on incomes raised by personal exertion, and of 6d. in the pound on incomes de- rived from property. All land is valued by public valuers once every three years for the purpose of taxation. In tlie case of the income-tax the levy is on income arising from or derived from South Australia, and does not include income from any place outside the colony ; but income from bonds or other securities of the South Australian Government is exempt from taxation. How to comi^ute what is income from personal exer- tion and what is income from property is very difficult, and the decision appears to be left absolutely to the representative of Government. There is not much complaint upon this head, but very loud complaint arising from the fact that some pro- perty has to pay tax twice over, namely, both land-tax and income-tax on property. The only remaining legislative peculiarities of this colony Other wliich it is necessary to name are that candidates for either legislative House are forbidden to make any personal canvass, and that peculiar- members of the Upper House wlio absent themselves from its j?''^^ "'^ sittings for two consecutive months without leave by so doing ^ . ,. vacate their seats. In Adelaide, as in Melbourne, an " Eight-Hours' Day " is 234 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN The eight- hour day. Immigra- tion. Education. Local option. Size of the colonies. kept by Wie workmen as a public holiday ; Parliament adjourns, and all the shops are closed. The concession was obtained by the men without any struggle in 1873. There has in South Australia been an attempt to make the eight-hour day statu- tory, but as yet without success, although in October 1889 the second reading of the Bill was carried in the Lower House by a majority of one vote. There has been no early-closing legisla- tion similar to that which has been adopted in Victoria, but the shopkeepers in certain trades have agreed to " knock off" half an hour every three months, and so gradually, by agree- ment, accustom the public to curtail the hours. There is still assisted immigration of domestic servants into South Australia. In South Australia, as in Tasmania and New South Wales, education is not free to those who are able to pay, although it is compulsory. It is virtually secular, though there is a power of Bible reading, not often used. About one-sixth of the children have their fees remitted. There is in liquor matters a certain amount of local option in South Australia in the form that no license can be granted if two-thirds of the neighbourhood memorialise against the grant; and in 1889 the incoming Ministry proposed the adop- tion of a fuller form of local option, but without receiving very large support. No liquor can be supplied to any person whose relatives declare before a magistrate that he is wasting his means or interfering with the happiness of his family by drink- ing. This extraordinary provision, which exists also, although in slightly varied form, in Ontario, Quebec, Prince Edward Island, Manitoba, Tasmania, and New Zealand, as well as in some parts of tlie United States, would undoubtedly be made use of in England for purposes of annoyance, but, by general admission, it is not so used in South Australia. The com- munication in writing, or declaration before a magistrate as to the intemperance of the accused person is, I unclerstand, not a privileged communication, and might, therefore, form the ground of an action for libel, which is no doubt a check upon misuse ; but the law is by no means a dead letter, and there are a considerable number of people in South Australia who are under notice in the terms of this clause. A complete measure of local option is likely to be soon adopted : it is proposed each year, but has hitherto failed to pass. There is great difficulty, under partial local option in this and other colonies, in pre- venting the illicit sale of drink in the sparsely populated dis- tricts, where practically everybody sells drink sometimes. It is hard to induce South Australia to pay much attention to its politics, so greatly is it interested in its agriculture and its droughts. The Times lately, speaking of our Australian colonies, said, "In extent they are larger than the Indian Empire," meaning, no doubt, their settled parts. Now, they have three times the area of Britisli India, and South Australia and West Australia are each of them nearly as large as British India. South Australia has an area, roughly speaking, equal CHAP. IV SOUTH AUSTEALIA 235 to that of New South Wales, Victoria, New Zealand, Germany, and France combined. But of its nearly six hundred million acres only eleven million acres have been sold, only five million acres rented for cultivation, and the enormous territory which is leased for pastoral purposes is barely occupied by sheep in any appreciable sense of the term. If the periodical droughts from which South Australia suffers Climate of can be dealt with by irrigation and by conservation of water. South or by boring, very different use will be made of this vast terri- Australia, tory, and irrigation is already beginning to tell its story in the parts of South Australia which border on northern Victoria and south-western New South Wales. The country is so dry that its wheat-growing district yields but a small crop. In those districts which can be irrigated, either from the Murray or by boring, the farms will be reduced in size from the grain farms of two or three hundred acres to fruit and vine and vege- table farms of twenty acres, and an enormously increased popu- lation, living in comfort, will be the result. There is a strong objection among a minority in South Australia to the out-and- out sale of the colonial lands, and the total cessation of sales is often debated, though sales are not vetoed by the legislature. There is a still stronger feeling against "playing into the hands of capitalists " by mere out-and-out sale to the highest bidder. The whole future of the colony will probably be modi- fied by irrigation of the Victorian type, or by boring for water after the plan pursued in New South Wales. The interior of South Australia is at present too like the "never-never" country of northern Queensland. As the gum-trees of the less dry coast tract are left behind, the chattering laughter of the colonial jays is lost, and bird life generally disappears with the woodland and parklike scenery of the south. First there is found a sea of yellow grass with here and there an acacia standing singly upon the plain, and at last a barren waste bleached by a brassy sun and desolate beyond description. The compass is as necessary for a journey in dull weather as it is on the sea itself, and the traveller may march for days together without seeing a single sheep. We now know that the heavy occasional rainfall of Australia is stored underneath the soil, and in some spots boring brings whole rivers of water to the surface. Irrigation under such conditions means con- tinual improvement, because, while water will bring trees to the interior, the trees themselves will retain surface moisture, and in course of time develop a more steady rainfall. There is little to be said socially of South Australia. It is Social view more quiet and old-fashioned in its ways than the great gold- of tlie mining colonies, and its steadiness and homeliness are increased colony, by a considerable German population. These immigrants fuse rapidly, here as elsewhere in Australia, with the British popu- lation, and they even become patriotic with the peculiar local patriotism of the special colony that they have chosen. In the second generation there is nothing but a name to mark them 236 PROBLEilS OF GEEATER BRITAIN off as Germans, and their sons and daughters are as genuinely and as characteristically Australian as are the children of tliose who have come out from England. They are proud of their gymnastic clubs and of their musical societies, but these do not indicate a separate civilisation any more than do the Caledonian societies of the Scotch, and the Cambrian societies of the Welsh. The Germans are not exclusive with regard to their societies, and from two -thirds to five-sixths of tlie people who attend their specially German concerts are English or Australian, while the English are admitted as members to their societies. The French and Swiss who have been brought out as wine- growers keep themselves more distinct from the rest of the population ; but they are few in number, and their influence is insignificant. Methodism is strong in South Australia, but Presbyterianism weaker than in victoria ; and the public picture galleries are open on Sundays as in Sydney, not closed as in the capital of the colony which lies between. Literature. South Australian literature is in much the same condition as that of the other colonies. There is some excellent journalism and a good deal of poetry. The South Australian Begister, a free-trade daily paper, has been named, and this, and the Adelaide Observer, a free-trade weekly paper of forty pages, the South Australian, Advertiser, and several others, are excellent papers. The Advertiser is the workman's paper, like the Age in Melbourne and the Daily Telegraph in Sydney. Lindsay Gor- don, who has been noticed under Victoria, is claimed by South Australia because he lived there when he first came from England. Mrs. Cloud, who writes under the name of Lindsay- Duncan, has composed at least one good poem. Jfr. Alfred Chandler, the author of Bush Idylls, a poet and journalist of some merit, though born in Victoria belongs properly to South Australia ; but in my judgment the best two poets of South Australia are two who are known to me not by volumes, but by a poem or two published in Australian papers and reprinted in Australian anthologies — Miss Leane, who writes as "Agnes Neale," and Mr. Pratt, of the Engineers Department of South Australia, who has written the most beautiful and the most characteristic of Australian poems — a kind of liymn in praise of "Eain." Tasmania. There remain for notice, of Australian countries proper, Western Australia, and the Tasmanian Island which lies almost within sight of the Victorian coast. Tasmania has been some- what depressed during a large part of her existence. To avoid the memories which classed Van Diemen's Land with Botany Bay and Norfolk Island, sliegave up the name of Tasman's love to take that of the discoverer ; but even the openino-'of excel- lent mines, even the softness of her climate and the loveliness of her scenery, have not been able to secure continuous pros- perity. The climate of Devonsliire, coast scenery as perfect as that of Ireland, but combined with a far more beautiful interior great advantages as a pleasure resort for the summer residence OHAP. IV TASMANIA 237 of baked-out Australians, Iiave not yet made the fortune of the little isle — the Emerald Isle indeed of Australian early summer, recalling Ireland as much by its greenness during a great portion of the year as by its size. The Australians marry the lovely Tasmanian ladies as freely as European noblemen marry the Americans, and they carry off their brides, instead of bring- ing to Tasmania any permanent prosperity. Still, the time of Tasmania may one day come, and she may yet be the Australian District of Columbia, although her rival the Albury district seems to have an even better chance of becoming the site of the Federal capital. Tasmania has had her novelist in Madame Couvreur who, Literature, though of Flemish descent, and now married to a distinguished man in Belgium, has not forgotten her island home, and still writes pretty Tasmanian stories under the name of "Tasma." Madame Couvreur's Uncle Piper of Fipe7''s Hill, the scene of which is laid in Victoria near Melbourne, is a colonial novel of much merit. The large population of the towns as compared The with the sparse population of the rural districts is almost as capital, noticeable in Tasmania as elsewhere in the colonies, Hobart and Launceston with their subui'bs having between them a third of the population of the colony. Hobart, with its lovely situation, at the foot of Mount Wellington and on a magniiicent sound, seems designed by nature for the meeting of the Federal Council, or of the Parliament of the British States of Australia, the headquarters station of the fleet, and the scene of the inter- colonial yachting races. There was started not very long ago a movement in Tas- Tariff mania for the annexation of the island to Victoria, but it was questions. commenced by men of no political responsibility, never entered the region of practical politics, and was repudiated by those who were most prominent in Tasmanian public aflairs. The agitation died out before the question had been brought to the Parliament of either colony. The movement appears to have been a demo- cratic eflbrt in Tasmania to secure for tlie working people of that island the popular advantages possessed by the workers of Victoria. Power in Tasmania is in the long-run held by the Conservative landowners, who look with no favour on the assimilation of the Tasmanian laws to those of the go-ahead colony upon the mainland. Tasmania has, however, followed the lead of Victoria in one respect, and has now a tariff which is substantially protectionist, although professedly free-trade. Tasmanians maintain that theirs is still a free-trade colony, and that their customs duties are imposed for revenue purposes only ; but they tax nearly all goods, and their duties would in England be considered heavy. Almost the only class of article which is now left untaxed in Tasmania is stock, which was formerly taxed, and the protectionist party in Tasmania is now chiefly engaged in trying to reimpose the stock-tax. There is a general disposition among those Tasmanians who deny that they as yet live under a protective system to admit that after 238 PROBLEMS OF GREATEE BRITAIN pakt ii Protection has won the clay in New South Wales it will carry- Tasmania also. As a fact, however, equal protective duties will probably be imposed throughout the South-Sea Colonies as a result of confederation upon the Canadian plan. Tasmania has a, legislative peculiarity which is connected with this question of free trade and Protection. The colonial Government is empowered by law to contract intercolonial -free -trade agree- ments with any of the other colonies. In spite of the possible loss of revenue under such a system Tasmania has attempted to come to an arrangement of the kind with Victoria, but as yet without success, although the matter was discussed in confer- ences between the colonies. Legislation In addition to the legislative peculiarity already mentioned, to keep out and to the eccentricity from an Australian point of view of a indigent ratepaying or property basis for the parliamentary franchise, foreigners. Tasmania has another legislative peculiarity which she copied from Victoria, and shares only with that colony and with New Zealand, and which is sufficiently interesting to be dealt with at length in my chapter ujDon Labour. By an Act to regulate the conveyance of passengers to the colony it is provided that if a passenger arrives in Tasmania who seems from any cause unable to support himself or likely to become a charge upon the public or on charity, the owner or master of the ship is required to execute a bond to pay to the colony all expenses which may be incurred within five years for the support of the passenger in question. On the other hand, Tasmania has not excited her- self so much as the other colonies with regard to the immigra- of Chinese. Tiix.ation. The taxes in Tasmania include a graduated succession duty of the mildest possible description, the difference being only between 2 per cent on sums under £500 (which in some colonies are exempted altogether) and 3 per cent over £500 ; so that property which iu New Zealand might pay 13 per cent, in Tas- mania cannot pay more than 3, and this duty is levied upon personalty only and not on land. It has existed for a great many years. The present Government tried to extend the duty to land, but failed. There is now, however, a duty of ^d. in the pound on the capital value of property, as an annual tax. There used to be a tax of 9d. in the pound on the assured annual value of land and on dividends from companies, but not on incomes from professions, or personal incomes from trade. The Government introduced a Bill providing for a more com- plete income-tax than the present ^d. in the pound property -tax which has succeeded the 9d. income-tax on land and companies, but the Bill did not pass. The ^d. in the pound on capital value produces a great deal more from land than used to be produced by the 9d. income-tax on property, for the latter was locally valued and habitually undervalued, whereas now pro- perty is valued upon a more scientific plan. The view of the present Government, I believe, is that the taxation of Tasmania is on an unsatisfactory footing. They think that the poor pay CHAP. IV TASMANIA 239 nearly all the taxes through the customs duties, and that the rich, through the lightness of the succession duty and the manner in wliich the property-tax is levied, escape nearly free. They proposed to tax all property, and I believe their Bill was carried through the Assembly, even on its third reading, but was afterwards dropped on accounC of its unpopularity with the conservative classes. Tasmanian education is compulsory and virtually secular. Education. and there appears to be no probability of the system being modified by changes favourable to denominational schools. The Church party has, as in some of the other colonies, ceased as a body to make common cause with the Roman Catholics for a modification of the Act. Although education has been com- pulsory in Tasmania longer, I think, than in any other British possession, it is not yet free, though several members of the E resent Government are favourable to free schools. Tasmania as scholarships established by Government at the old English universities, although tlie system is, I believe, to cease at the end of 1890. They have existed for a great number of years ; in fact there was a Tasmanian Government scholar in residence at Cambridge when I was myself an undergraduate. There seems little tendency towards nationalisation of the Laud land in Tasmania, but a scheme was lately proposed for " licens- legislation. ing " land in place of immediate sale. The land was to be let gratuitously for five years, and then, on certain improvements having been made, sold at half the present rates. This scheme was intended to check land jobbery, which is rife in the colony, but it was dropped on account of the loss of revenue to which it would have led ; for, although a large share of the revenue from land sales is spent on making roads to develop other lands, a good deal of the money still in fact goes into the governmental purse. As regards the eight-hour system the colony stands in much Eight-liour the same position as do the others in its neighbourhood. The day. eight-hour rule is observed, but not as yet enforced by law. A proposal to make eight hours a statutory day was rejected in the Tasmanian Parliament. Tasmania has no very maiked political parties, and the Tasmanian Jlinistry, which was in oflice from 1884 to 1886, was a coalition, statesmen. While parties and principles are undefined the present Ministry may be said to lean towards Liberalism and free trade, and the Opposition towards the landed interest and Protection. Mr. Fysh, tlie Prime Minister, is a commercial man of good reputa- tion, a supporter of Imperial Federation, and a personal favour- ite with all. He sits in the Upper House, and in this respect is peculiar among colonial Prime Ministers, for in the colonies it is almost impossible to lead Parliament from the Upper House. His Treasurer, Mr. Bird, leads the Assembly for him— a business man of good judgment; and Mr. Andrew Inglis Clark, the Attorney-General, and one of the representatives of the colony on the Federal Council, supplies Liberalism and energy for the 240 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Government. Mr. Clark is a well-read man, of a .somewhat nervous temperament, owner of the best private library in the colony and of one of the best in the southern hemisphere, a great admirer of American institutions and literature, and an an ti -imperialist in his opinions upon the future relations between the component portions of the Empire. Tasmania is the most conservative and the most English of all the Australian colonies both in its social habits and in its politics, and nothing startling lias occurred there since tlie dis- covery of that great tin mine which is still the richest and most prosperous tin mine in the world. The new silver and lead mines are also productive, and gold and coal are beginning to be raised from Tasmanian mines. Free circu- Tasmania has the free circulation of newspapers by post lation of throughout the colony, as have the Dominion of Canada, which news- sends out sixty millions in a year, Queensland, New Soutli papers. Wales, and Western Australia ; but in Tasmania and in Queens- land newspapers may be also posted free, with the ordinary restrictions as to date of publication, even to the other Australian colonies, and Tasmania actually allows her newspaper's to be sent free to so great a distance as the farthest portions of New- Zealand. This is a point in which the colonies have not yet, I think, been imitated by any part of the old world. There is an agitation in Victoria either to follow suit or to make representa- tions to the other colonies to charge postage, inasmuch as the effect of the present variation in practice has been to transfer some newspaper publishing offices from Melbourne to the colonies enjoying the absence of postal duty upon newspapers. Tasmanian Tasmania has had considerable difficulties with her railroads, railways, and on various occasions the Tasmanian Main Line Railway Company prevented Tasmanian Government loans being quoted on the Stock Exchange, to the great indignation of the colony, who thought that the Company were asking for blackmail, and that the Stock Exchange was to blame for permitting the credit of the colony to be to some slight extent, if only temporarily, prejudiced at the instance of a joint-stock company, and had acted without hearing both sides. Tlie matter has now been settled by a payment from the Government to the Company. The whole history of the Company, since its formation in 1870, only shows how much more desirable it is for the colonial Governments to adopt the policy, to which all the Australian colonies have now had resort, of making railways for themselves and managing them themselves, than it is for them to deal with companies, unless they are willing to leave the companies entirely unfettered. Tasniania guaranteed the interest upon the capital of the Main Line Company, and all the consequent trouble has been the result of this middle course. Tasmania has several railway systems. The Launceston and Western llailway is managed by Government, but the company retain an interest, inasmuch as they are to receive any profit above a certain income. The line from Emu Bay to Bischoff is a private OHAP. IV WESTERN AUSTRALIA 241 and unguaranteed work. The Main Line llailway has been until lately, as I have said, in private hands, but guaranteed ; and the other lines have been or are being constructed by Government itself. The debt of Tasmania (although recently increased by one Debt, ami million) is still lighter per head of the population than that of future of any other Australasian colony, and Tasmania is still on the Tasmania. whole lightly taxed, while it is possible that there may be shortly a great development of her mineral wealth. The future of Tasmania, however, probably lies in stock and horse raising, and perhaps in fruit, for she has the finest strawberries as she has the noblest thistles of the world. I oughb not to pass away from Tasmania without naming the admirable government of the colony by Sir Kobert Hamilton, and the deserved popularity of the Governor and his wife. Although Western Australia is a Crown colony, and, it might Western seem, more fitly to be treated when I come to write on the Crown Australia, colonies, yet, as it is represented in the Australasian Federal Council, and as it is likely soon to receive responsible self- government, it must be mentioned here. Western Australia is the largest of the Australian colonies — very nearly the size of British India. . It is less occupied by settlers than any other, and is, indeed, but sparsely peopled, while it has alienated up to the present time but a small portion of its lands. The people of New South Wales are largely interested in Western Australia, having invested a good deal of money there. There is at pres- ent a double agitation on foot in this Crown colony : that for the division of the colony into either two or three separate colonies (which is advocated for much the same reasons as those which were originally put forward in Queensland by the northerners), and the agitation for responsible government. As regards the first proposal, we are told that great ignorance as to the Western Australian northern territory prevails at Perth. The northerners desire to continue to employ Asiatic labour, and for that purpose wish to continue to be a Crown colony when the South receives self-government. At the same time north-west Australia is very dry, and is swept both_ by squalls and hurricanes of such a nature that planting is carried on with difficulty. It would seem to have more future as a pastoral country and a gold country than as a sugar-planting country, and its fisheries are important as well as its supply of turtle. The southern part of the colony contains large tracts of land suitable for peasant farmers, and is also likely to become a wine-growing district ; but there exists there a poison plant which has limited the use of the country for pastoral purposes. The colony, through its legislative body, has asked for Eespon- responsible government, but it has asked for it as " one and sible gov- undivided," and has repudiated the cutting ofi" of the northern ernment. territory, but under pressure from the Colonial Office con- sented to go so far as to concede that the new self-governing colony should not have the control of its lands which lie within 242 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paut ii the tropics. Tlie difficulties in tlie way of grantijig responsible government are, first and foremost, the handing over of such vast lauds to so small a population ; secondly, the necessary reservation of power to make a portion of the territory into a separate colony at a future time ; and, thirdly, the protection of the aborigines in the north. It is on the first point that the sharpest difi'erence with the home Government was manifest in the summer of 1889. Tlie handing over of the lands, even in the degree proposed by the Colonial Oflice, means that an ■extremely small community, here as formerly in the other colonies, will obtain the right to sell tliem at any rates tliey please, and to go without taxation while they live upon their capital. They may, though it is most improbable, exclude English immigrants ; and this seems a large concession to make when we remember tliat there are only a little over forty thousand people in Western Australia ; that the colony con- tains a million square miles, of which a large part is valuable ; and that the country in wliich British immigrants could live lies in that half which even the Colonial Olfice proposed to give up to the new colony. As in Tasmania so in Western Australia, about a third of the population lives in two towns. When we consider that a vast amount of the territory is as yet unexplored, there is much to be said for the view that the whole of these enormous land reserves ouglit not to be at once handed over to the Government of Western Australia. The right course would seem to be to divide the colony into east and west as well as into north and south, and to hand over a large tract of valuable lands to the new self-governing colony (which would contain the great bulk of the population), and leave the north and centre of the country as a Crown colony for a considerable time. jSir F. Napier Broome, the outgoing Governor, admits that British immigrants cannot be introduced into the northern territory, which alone the Colonial Oflice had reserved. The difficulty in the way of making Crown colonies in the Australian north is that tlie democratic colonies, and especially Victoria and New South Wales, will imagine that this is being done for the purpose of giving them a lasting existence based upon a system of servile labour. Addresses will be voted unanimously from the Australian Assemblies, and public meetings will be held, and the doctrine of "Australia for the Australians " put forward as against such a scheme ; and the home Government may well shrink from adopting it, whether in the case of Western Australia^ or in tliat of the Northern Territory of South Australia, or m that of northern Queensland. If we are not to adopt the policy of confining the colony within the limited area wliich has as yet to some extent been reached by settlement or exploration, and retaining the rest of the enormous territory of Western Australia for the present as a Crown colony, we have only two other courses before us. The one is to follow the traditions of our colonial policy, and CHAP. IV WESTEEN AUSTRALIA 243 grant to the colony_(that is, to the few settlers scattered along the fringe of a territory the size of British India) all they ask, namely, control of the whole of these unknown lands, and power, if they should so will, to exclude settlers witliout capital who might come from England. The other would be to take the course of hampering Western Australia, as a new self- governing colony, by statutory conditions, placing her under special restrictions not to exclude assisted immigrants from England, which find no place in the constitutions of the other colonies. The earlier of these proposals I think I have shown to be unwise ; and the other is open to the fatal objection that the moment that such a condition had been put into the constitution, the Western Australians would exercise their ingenuity, very soon successfully, to get rid of it. The Perth people already tell us that we are talking "nonsense" at home; that the colony has attained to such a position as to make it just as impossible for English politicians to deal with it at their pleasure as it would be after responsible government had been granted. "Already they have lost all control over our public finances, and cannot, consequently, force upon us the care of immigrants whom we do not want." The Western Australians are determined to have exactly that which the other colonies have obtained, and it is not easy to see how we are to defeat their wishes, as regards the part of Australia where they live, or with which they are acquainted. There is, however, a reasonable probability that, if the Western Australians are not too long thwarted in their wishes by the obstruction of their Bill, they will, warned by experience, avoid the repetition of the mistakes in land legislation which have characterised the past action of the other colonies, and especially of New South Wales. On the other hand, the fact that we have now discovered that we made a mistake in what a very able Victorian, Mr. Philip Mennell, has called "pre- maturely handing over to the other colonies the untrammelled ownership and administration of the local, or rather the imperial public estate," does not necessarily establish the wisdom or reversing our policy in the case of the last Aus- tralian Government which asks for responsible administration. Western Australia may possibly one of these days prove, under irrigation, to be the most valuable portion of the whole continent. She possesses the noblest forest of the finest class of tree, and she has in large portions of her territory a perfect soil. The climate is as healthy as any in the world, and the mining resources of the colony are hardly known at all, but geologically speaking seem likely to be great. In the older colonies the best land has been sold or is in Spare lands process of alienation by a system of annual payments. In the of Western whole British Empire there is not much land still in the hands Australia of the Crown excejDt in Bechuanaland, at present far out of "2^'' ^ ''^J'' reach, and in Western Australia. In these two spots alone ^°' scieuti- is there good land in large quantities as yet within the control n"^ p^'o"'- 244 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt ii of the imperial Government, and it is a grave question -what should be done with it. Believing as I do that the scientific system of colonisation which was applied in South Australia and in New South Wales and parts of New Zealand in the early days, in the form of modifications of the Wakefield system, was a success, I should like to see some attempt made to plant portions of Western Australia upon a similar plan. In all the colonies there is an enormous margin between the price of the land as sold by Government and the land as resold by "land sharks" to settlers. There is in Western Australia a field for trying to obtain for Government the unearned- inorement-value of the land. In giving responsible government to Western Australia we might, for the benefit of the future self-governing colony, survey the probable lines of railway and probable sites of towns, set aside these sites and reserve them, as well as the mineral lands, the forests, and the tracts on each side of the future railways, and then begin to let and sell good land in small blocks at a substantial price to actual cultivators, applying the proceeds to taking out selected emigrants of the most approved agricultural type. A district might be set aside for the creation of a self-governing colony with sufiicient terri- tory and resources to enable it to stand alone, and the system which I advocate be applied to the remainder of temperate Western Australia, provided that we retain for the new colony that which Bechuanaland has not — a coast. Land legis- It is easy to see the reasons for the failures which have been lation. made in the various Australian colonies in their dealings witli the land, and it would not be difficult now, with the warning of their examples, to construct a better system than that which has prevailed in any, especially if the legislator were not ham- pered by the existence in the community of general ideas upon the theory of land legislation. It would probably be found impossible in any new community to absolutely refuse to sell land. The cry of " Unlock the land," which carried all before it in eastern Australia at one moment, would be, elsewhere as it was there, too strong to be resisted. The principle of " home- stead legislation," such as that of the United States or of Canada, must be admitted, at all events to some extent. Im- migrants of the right class and artisans who have made a little money must be allowed to obtain the freehold of blocks of land actually cultivated by them, free, or else by the Australian system of " deferred payments." Out-and-out sale to the highest bidder and alienation of the freehold of land upon a large scale can be resisted anywhere, because an almost universal public sentiment comes in to back up the law, and the whole of the Australian colonies now regret the improvidence of their large land alienations. The system of the leasing of land as against that of sale can be applied, except as regards the small blocks parted with to actual cultivators of the soil ; but it will be necessary to introduce stringent measures to prevent the ulti- mate sale of the small blocks thus acquired. In Victoria, which OHAP. IV WESTERN AUSTRALIA 245 of all the Australian colonies has clone most to facilitate the acquisition of land by agricultural holders, a great number of the holdings have after a while been bought up by capitalists. There can be little doubt that in the long-run the advantage Leasing to the community is all on the side of the system of leasing as combined against that of the sale of public lands. The State retains its witli national domain as a magnificent asset which increases in value homestead from year to year, and, instead of a few individuals being system. enriched, the whole community gains. Other taxes become unnecessary in face of the rise of the State rents from lands. As has been ably shown in a work by Dr. Quick upon Victoriaji land tenure, the vast sums sunk in the purchase of land would under a rental system have been utilised in the employment of labour and the improvement of land. The public would have preserved for their use the best of the river and mountain scenery ; and the best of the agricultural land would support a large population instead of being, as is too often tlie case, given up to pasture only, while the agriculturists are driven on to the inferior lands. After the harm is once done there is no remedy except severe taxation to break wp great estates, or laws pro- hibiting the ownership or transmission of lands of more than a limited area and value, which lead to a war of classes, whereas no one is harmed when the better system has existed from the first. Probably the best system on the whole for colonies is one of compromise, allowing the sale of town freeholds, but con- fining freeholds as regards the country to the actual agricul- tural occupation of small blocks on a homestead system. South Australia, owing to the plan upon which it was origin- Laud under ally planted, still has much more land under tillage cultivation cultivation in proportion to its population than have any of the other ™ *he Australasian colonies, Tasmania standing next, at a great in- (lifierent terval. The colony which stands third, namely. New Zealand, '^°l°'"es. has a " homestead system " competing with those of Canada and of the United States and Queensland, but suffers from the dense- ness of her bush and the difficulty of clearing land. Fourth upon the list comes Victoria, which has made great legislative efforts to bring land out of pastoral and into agricultural occu- pation. New South Wales and Queensland liave at present virtually no agricultural land, as compared with their pastoral holdings ; but Queensland is fighting hard, by means of a home- stead system, to improve her position ; and as the best land in Queensland becomes " peopled up," Western Australia will have a splendid chance for agricultural development. Like Tasmania, Western Australia now seems to have got Present over the convict blight. It is well governed by a legislature position of containing sixteen elected members and eight nominated by Western the Crown, and the management of its affairs by those nomi- Australia, nated by the Colonial Office has been good. Its finance is sound ; its public works and education system excellent. Sir Napier Broome, the outgoing Governor, himself a colonist, Canadian-born and New-Zealand-trained, is » man of ability. 246 TEOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Tlie negoti- ations for respon- sible gov- ernment. Defence cxuestions. but has a somewhat unyielding disposition, and he found him- self provided with a Chief Justice of a similar temper. Com- plications arose in consequence which are to be deplored, but which are now at an end. Sir Napier Broome has been suc- ceeded by that experienced Governor, Sir William Robinson, mentioned under South Australia, and who now comes to Western Australia for the third time. It is absurd to suppose that the present system can long continue, and it is time tliat Vie completed provident arrangements with a view to tlie gradual conversion of the Government into a self-governing system, instead of delaying until we have to give up everything, and to transfer the whole territory in dispute, with all its immense natural resources, to a handful of people in order to save the shadow of a connection between the colony and our- selves. When the colony receives self-governing institutions, the Speaker of the Legislative Council, Sir James Lee Steere, and Mr Forrest, the Surveyor-General, and former commander of the search exjDedition and of several exploring expeditions into the interior, are likely to be the leading men upon the Conservative side and in the new State itself at first. Sir James Lee Steere was in 1888 and in 1889, althougli represent- ing a Crown colony, one of the most active and useful members of the Federal Council, and was indeed Chairman of its com- mittees in both of these years. He has lately suggested the abandonment of the division of the colony proposed in the Bill of 1889, and substitution of a division hj North and South, leaving between two-thirds and three-fourths of the colony, lying between the 120th degree (shown upon my majj) and the South Australian boundary, in the charge of the mother- country. In the negotiations which went on in tlie winter of 1888-89 with regard to the introduction of responsible government into Western Australia, the Secretary of State argued in favour of the temporary creation of a new legislature consisting of a single elective chamber, and it was the influence of the Governor, Sir Napier Broome, and of his advisers, which caused the Colonial Office to change its mind and agree to the principle of two Houses for the new Constitution. But, on the other hand, the colony suggested the power to pass Bills over the veto of the Council by a two-thirds majority of the Assembly — a proposal the necessity of which has been shown by the con- flicts in New South Wales and in Victoria, and by the means taken to avoid them in South Australia, but to wliioh the Government at home refused to assent. When responsible government and a large share of Australian lands are conferred by us upon Western Australia, conditions should be made as to the part of the colony in the lortifioation and garrisoning of King George's Sound — a magnificent port, not only of advantage to the Australian squadron and to the British fleet in case of war, but capable of being turned against us by an enemy if it were not strongly held. In 1885 two men- Diiheis'tinblems of (i^-ealer Britain " 3txinfbrd.'s C&o^t^ap7ticatJEstahUsfcm£nJ>. CHAP. IV NEW ZEALAND 247 oi'-war had to be detailed for its defence — a complete reversal of the proper duty of a sea-going fleet. The defence of King George s Sound is rather an Australian than either a British or a Western Australian interest, but hitherto the colonies and mother-country have not come to an arrangement sufficiently satisfactory to secure the certainty of its defence. Lying, as King George's Sound does, upon the line of trade from Mel- bourne and Adelaide to the Suez Canal, its defence is as im- portant to the southern colonies as is that of Torres Straits to Queensland. The Federal Council of Australasia at its first meetuig advised the immediate provision of local defence for both Torres Straits and King George's Sound. The Colonial Conference discussed the matter, but were unhappily unable to come to a settlement, though it is to be hoped that it is now being privately arranged. The Fiji group, which also forms a Crown colony, should be Fiji, mentioned in this chapter for the same reason which led me to write here of Western Australia, namely, that the colony is represented upon the Federal Council of Australasia. Some of the planters of Fiji are dissatisfied with the existing go^'ern- ment of the islands, and have made overtures to Victoria for annexation to that colony, to which, however, Victoria does not seem inclined to listen. The importance of the Fiji Islands and also of British interests in Samoa will be increased after a canal has been made through the American isthmus — an engineering- feat which, even though the Panama Company may fail, may be accomplished at no very distant date. The happy position of Australia, a country virtually without New a native race — for the few thousands of savages, living entirely Zealand, by the chase, and having nothing in the nature of settlements upon the soil, who were alone found in the southern portion of the Australian continent, can hardly be said to have consti- tuted one — makes the greater portion of Australia a colonisation country such as is unknown elsewhere outside America. Australia, by climate, and by absence of a settled native population, falls exactly within the conditions which, in his essay on plantations. Bacon laid down for us speculatively as the best. We now have to consider the condition of another colony in the southern seas, able, if she chooses, to be rei^re- sented on the Federal Council of Australasia, but widely different from the Australian colonies both in scenery and in the relations of the Government to the indigenous population. New Zealand in her northern island has a large population of the warlike and intelligent Maori race, and the serious wars which were carried on against these people have affected the political and financial position of the colony. There were no roads across the north island for a long time. 'Travel was entirely round the coast, and tlie country grew up in the form of a succession of independent provinces, at one time almost completely separated politically and socially the one from the other. In the southern or middle island in those days power 248 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN was divided between Otago and Canterbury — between the Scotch capital Dunedin and the Presbyterian Province of Otago, and the English and " Anglican " Province of Canter- l)ury, with Christchurch for capital. In the north island Auckland at one end rivalled Wellington at the other ; and Hawke Bay, and Taranaki, or New Plymouth, on opposite sides of the island, long remained in comparative obscurity. The fact that so many virtually separate colonies had been formed in the New Zealand islands, each as a separate State with its own capital, prevented any one city from gaining a preponder- ance. In the meantime the Maories, in the centre of the north island, occupied a strategical position which gave them advan- tages in warfare, and caused the colony to become burdened with debt in putting down their insurrections. The Maories have declined, both absolutely, and still more relatively to tlie general population, although they have shown a great aptitude for civilisation, and liave won the respect of the wliite colonists — a most unusual thing in the case of any dark-skinned race. The native members of both the Council and the House of Eepresentatives in New Zealand take an intelligent part in the debates, but one of the latter, who first married an English- woman and then separated from her, is charged by the press with neglecting to maintain his wife, rrotection. The great political question in New Zealand for some time past, as in South Australia, has been that of Protection, and to tliat issue everything else has for the time been sacrificed. The year 1888 was marked by a distinct advance in the direction of Protection in New Zealand, as well as in Queensland and South Australia, and Protection of the Victorian type has triumphed in all three colonies. The New Zealanders, like the Tasmauians, call their tariff a revenue tariff, and assert that there are four strong free traders in the Ministry which has lately increased the duties ; but this is mere dust for colonial free-traders' eyes. The Prime In New Zealand the introducer of strong Protection has Minister, been Sir Harry Atkinson, formerly the leader of the Conserva- tive party, but even then one of its most liberal members, and now hardly to be described as a Conservative, although he is in favour of denominational education. The Church of Eng- land party are, however, more and more in all the colonies, coming to hold their view in favour of denominational schools as a mere pious opinion to which no attempt need be made, in face of popular hostility, to give effect. Sir Harry Atkinson is a plain, straightforward, able man, who was a good soldier during the native war, an honest and energetic, experienced and trusted politician, a capable speaker, a good representative of the practical upright portion of the English people, and a man of resolute will and unflinching courage. He is now be- coming as considerable a personage in New Zealand by force of character as is Sir Henry Parkes himself in New South Wales. The late Prime ^Minister, Sir Pobert Stout, who till veiy OHAP. IV NEW ZEALAND 249 recently led tlie Liberal party, is one of tiie chief lawyers in Sir Robert Dunedin, and is a Scotchman from the Orkney Islands. He Stout, was originally a pupil-teacher, and then a schoolmaster, before he became a " barrister of the Supreme Court of New Zealand." He is an able speaker, and a well-read and thoughtful man ; an ardent advocate of temperance principles, a strong democrat, and in religious matters an active " secularist." Sir Robert Stout's honesty to my mind is not doubtful, and he has pro- claimed his convictions in favour of State ownership of land in such a way as to be politically damaging to himself at a time when he knew that the opinion of the colony was against him. He is, substantially, in favour of the same views on the land question as those held in Queensland by Sir Samuel Griffitli and other partial supporters of Mr. Henry George, and in Victoria by Mr. Syme of the Melbourne Age. Sir Kobert Stout is in favour of a single Chamber ; but the view to which he would sacrifice all others is his conviction that it is wrong to sell land for cash, and that land should not be allowed to be- come private property, but should remain within the control of the State. He is opposed to separation from the mother-country, and is a strong supporter of British supremacy in the Pacific. He was damaged by his coalition with Sir Julius Vogel in the Stout-and -Vogel Government from 1884 to 1887. Sir Eobert Stout's opponents are divided between those who foolishly question his uprightness, and those who think that he weakly yielded to a clever advocate and accomplished party leader, who is charged by his enemies with having plunged the colony into the financial embarrassments from which it is now recover- ing. The Opposition have lately chosen for their leader Mr. Ballance, a younger man than most of the other New Zealand politicians, who formerly held the post of Minister of Native Affairs. Sir Harry Atkinson is carrying out a policy of re- trenchment, very necessary in New Zealand as I shall show, but now that Sir "Julius Vogel has decided to give up colonial politics, for a time at least, one of the principal items of the strength of the Atkinson Ministry, namely, the terror of " Vogel finance," has disappeared, and the Ministry has begun to suffer from internal discord. The late Governor, Sir William Jervois, and the present Governor, Lord Onslow, are pleasant and capable rulers, and it is to the credit of the Colonial Oflice that they should have recently found such good men for the South -Sea colonies. Lord Onslow was the first Governor of New Zealand appointed (in 1889) at a reduced salary fixed in 1887. He has energy and business ability, but will find, as Sir William Jervois found, that the existence of towns larger than the capital and the jealousies of the former provinces and their chief cities are difliculties in the way of New Zealand governors. On the other hand, the colony sometimes sees cause to rejoice at the absence of a great city which forms and guides opinion, as is the case in Victoria and New South Wales with Melbourne and Sydney respectively. 250 PKOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Legislative peculiar- ities. Heavy graduated taxation. Pauper ini- uiigratiou. Education. Govern- meut in- surance. The elec- toral law. The legislative peculiarities of New Zealand are its system of Government life insurance ; its electoral law, which leaves the demarcation of districts to a board appointed for the pur- pose ; and its combination of a heavy succession duty, graduated, according to amount, from 2i to 10 per cent, with an extra 3 per cent in tlie case of strangers, making at the outside 13 per cent in all, together with a property-tax of a penny in the pound on all property over £500. There have been since 1873 New Zealand Acts called "Imbecile Passengers Acts," and in the present Act, which is a consolidation and amendment Act dating from 1882, there are jsrovisions relating to the introduc- tion of passengers likely to become a charge upon the public, similar to those which have been already noted as existing in the colonies of Victoria and Tasmania. New Zealand also give.s more local control over education than is allowed by the State in the other colonies. The Government life insurance scheme is a somewhat remark- able experiment, originally suggested by Sir Julius Vogel. It lias been in force now for some twenty years, and, although it has not extinguished the friendly societies, it has competed with them on very favourable terms, and to some extent prevents them from obtaining fresh business. Its enemies declare that it is unsound, tliough actuaries would hesitate to follow them, and there can, I think, be no doubt that the colony would in the long-run pay losses on the fund, which is certainly looked upon as sound by the population. There has been some idea in New Zealand oi' adopting either a general insurance for all classes, which should be compulsory and obviate the necessity for a poor law, or a scheme of compulsory insurance for all workmen similar to that which has been adopted in Germany in recent years ; but nothing ha,s as yet come of either of these propositions. The existing scheme, which has needed a whole code of colonial Acts, is simply a Government provident society, and an extension of our Post-Oi£ce Life Insurance department, but pushed far more actively by the colonial Government. There is also in New Zealand a Public Trust Office, which does a good deal of the work that the Charity Commissioners do in England, but which extends its operations farther, for it acts in place of private guardians and private trustees of wills. The next peculiarity whicli I have mentioned had not been tried in practice up to 1889 and is already unpopular, so that the provision of the electoral law leaving the demarcation of districts to a board is not only peculiar to New Zealand, but not well established there. It has, however, survived the legis- lation of 1889, which has established the principle "one man one vote." In June 1889 Government introduced a Represen- tation of tlie People Bill, which caused a struggle terminating in the witlidrawal of the measure and the passing of a simpler one, only after Sir Harry Atkinson had evinced his strong- partiality for the doctrine of Proportional Kepresentation. The first Piepresentation Bill of 1889 was one for preferential voting, OHAP. IV NEW ZEALAND 251 and it was a crude and badly-drawn attempt to reduce this system into practice, which the House would not consider. In the obstruction to which resort was had to prevent the passing of the Bill, one of the Maori members made a nine-hours' speech. The tendency to decrease the number of members of the Lower House is as marked in JSTew Zealand as the tendency to increase the number is marked in New South Wales, but the New Zealand Assembly, decreased in December 1887, has been left at seventy ordinary and four Maori members by the Act of August 1889. The peculiarity I have noticed, which concerns taxation. Taxation, explains itself. In addition to the very heavy succession duty and to the property-tax there are, it will be remembered, con- siderable custom duties, so that New Zealand is certainly making greater sacrifices in the way of tax-paying than is the case with the other colonies, though the expenditure per liead of the population of Queensland and Western Australia is as high ; but in spite of her heavy taxes and her heavy debt, her people as a rule are prosperous. The New Zealand Govern- ment, where they object to the owner's valuation of propei'ty for duty, can take the property at his valuation plus 10 per cent ; but they also have to make a preliminary valuation of their own, and the landowner can force the Government to take his property at their valuation. Between the two the truth appears generally to be arrived at by a conference. It has been frequently proposed to substitute an income-tax and land-tax for the property-tax, and there are cross-divisions of parties upon tills question, but it seems likely upon the whole that the property-tax will continue to exist, although in 1889 Sir Harry Atkinson staked tlie existence of his Government upon the point, and yet had only a majority of four. There is a somewhat strong feeling in New Zealand, but one Laml legis- confined to a distinct minority, in favour of the State holding lation. the land. Formerly a vast proportion of the occupied land was in the hands of a plutocracy of a thousand people. The recent bad times have fallen upon them ; changes in the land laws, since the abolition of the provincial system, have hit them hard ; and their power has declined and is declining. But as the small holders become more and more numerous, they show more and more plainly the conservative effect of the possession of freehold land, and they do not appear, as a body, to have much sympathy with new ideas on land. New Zealand has endowed its education system with State Education, lands ; but South Australia also possesses, and Victoria is intro- ducing, education reserves, while Victoria has in addition lands set aside as endowments for agricultural colleges and for harbour trusts. As regards the public schools, although Sir Harry Atkinson is himself favourable to denominational educa- cation, he has, I believe, no idea of attempting to touch the secular system, the feeling in the country in its support being far too strong for him, as that in favour of freehold tenure was 252 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part ii too strong for his former rival, Sir Kobert Stout. The Eoman Catholic population is not numerous in New Zealand as com- pared with the other colonies, but is wealthy and influential, and the Roman Catholics are among the most respected portion of the population. They have in the Catholic Times of Welling- ton an excellent newspaper. The Presbyterians of New Zealand, who are powerful in the Provincial District of Otago, are anxious to cause the Bible to be read in schools, and have brought Bills or resolutions before Parliament to compel the reading of the Bible ; but these have been lost by large majorities, and the system is likely to remain free and secular. The charge on public funds for education in New Zealand was greater relatively to population than in tlie other colonies, and is being decreased by Sir Harry Atkinson. Local As regards the liquor question the Queensland and New optiou. Zealand Acts are the fullest local option Acts in existence in any Australasian colonies, and give the temperance party that which they ask in England more closely than any other non- Canadian Acts ; but there is a good deal of evasion, in New Zealand as in South Australia, of all licensing provisions in portions of the colony. Clubs are wholly exempted from the Act, except that all clubs have under it to apply to the colonial Home Office for a charter ; but it is the duty of that office to issue the charter on being fully satisfied as to the nature and character of the club. There is a prohibition party in New Zealand, led by Sir W. Pox, who are making a bitter attack on the club-licensing provisions of the law. Railways. New Zealand has from January 1889 followed the example of Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales, in placing lier State railways under a Board of Commissioners, the chief commisioner being paid £2500 a year. An attempt was made to discover a suitable chief commissioner in England, and one was found, but after being asked to take the place, he accepted a better post at home. The Board has been filled up with colonists, and it is hoped, though doubted, that it may be able to completely choke off those poUtical influences which have been prejudicially affecting railway work. The New Zealand Act is perhaps the strongest of the whole, in the sense of absolutely vesting the State railways in the commissioners, over whom no governor or minister is to have any power of inspec- tion or examination, supervision or control. The Government of New Zealand are now allowing railways to be made by private comiDanies with land grants upoii the American system. The line from Wellington to join the Government railways on the west coast of the north island, known as that of tlie Welling- ton and Manawatu Company, and passing through the Manawatu block — at the sale of which, by the natives, I was present — is now open, and a great deal of fertile land has been brought into settlement. Another liiie made with land grants is to be built by the Midland Railway Company between the east and west coasts of the middle or south island, and two CHAP. IV NEW ZEALAND 253 million acres are to be made over to the company, which has just completed a part of the line on the west coast coal and gold fields, and is now making arrangements for beginning the main part, which will cross the dividing range. A third scheme is under consideration, for, a line between the Government system in Otago and a gold and squatting country not yet reached J but Parliament has objected to the large area of land which would have to be alienated to a private company for this scheme. The plan would never have been thought of but for the objection in New Zealand to fresh loans. The private lines are not under the control of the new railway board. As in New South Wales, there has been in New Zealand for Unem- some years past the need for setting aside money for the ployed, unemployed. The Government threw upon the districts a few years ago the chief part in the maintenance of the hospitals and support of the local charities, and practically it may be said, as will be seen in the remarks on " The Poor " in Part VI. Chap. II. that New Zealand now has a poor law and a poor rate. Waif children are boarded-out in New Zealand as in New South Wales. The eight-hour day is universal for artisans, but has not The eight- received legislative sanction. Several attempts have been made hour day. in New Zealand to narrowly restrict the hours of employment of Payment of women, and one Bill which provided that no female was to work members, more than forty-eight hours a week was carried through the '^''^• Lower House, but rejected by the Council. It is not hard to understand Sir Robert Stout's objection to a second chamber when we notice how large a proportion of the measures of his last administration were thrown out by the Upper House. New Zealand^ like Canada, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, and the great majority of our colonies, has payment of members, and the reduction of the numbers of members in the New Zealand Parliament is made doubly beneficial by this fact. Such a reduction was indeed in my opinion as necessary in New Zealand as it was some years ago in Greece, and the success of M. Tricoupis in halving the number of members and doubling the taxes shows that such opei-ations are not so diflicult, in a parliamentary sense, as they were once supposed to be. The working classes of New Zealand, who have shown their power by compelling the adoption of the laws which I have named, and which are similar to those existing in Australia, have also exhibited on the Chinese question the same feelings as those which have been shown throughout the larger continent ; but the stringent legislation upon this subject, which passed through the Lower House, was modified by the Council. It has been suggested tliat the reduction of the Governor's salary was perhaps an indii-ect way in which the democracy took its revenge for the constant thwarting of its wishes by an Upper House, the members of which are, nominally at all events, appointed by the Governor ; but Governors have 254 PEOBLEMS OF GEEATEE BEITAIN part ii little to do with tlie appointment of members of the Council, and reduction of expenditure is in New Zealand the order of the day. Financial In New Zealand generally it may be said that in spite of the position, financial condition of the colony, whicli is nothing like so bad as it would be if the figures referred to an old country and not to a new and undeveloped one, the people are contented. More- over, a new wave of prospei'ity seems about to break upon the colony. The beautiful climate and the fertile soil make, as has been pointed out by an eminent colonial politician, the women and children of the settlers happy with a happiness that belongs to working women where the cows give plenty of milk and butter, the fowls give plenty of eggs, the land smiles upon them, and the children thrive. Under such circumstances settlers can bear a good deal of taxation without flinching. Population. If New Zealand were populated like Italy or Japan she would liave from twenty to thirty millions of inliabitants within her boundaries. Her soil is as fertile ; her climate as good or better ; her minerals much more valuable ; and there can be no reason wliy this colony, small though it is as com- pared with most of the Australian colonies, should not one day hold thirty millions of prosperous and contented people. There is not the same crowding into towns observable in New Zealand as in Australia. The four chief cities, wliich are the only large ones, have among them under 200,000 people even when we include all their straggling suburbs. Auckland is the largest town j Christchurch and Dunedin follow ; and Wellington, the capital, is but a bad fourth, although Wel- lington is likely, I think, to grow. Under the old provincial system, which has now been for a good many years extinct, Canterbury, Otago, Auckland, and the other provinces had a completeness of Home P^ule which made of New Zealand a somewhat loose federation, and this tended to prevent the predominance of any city. The system is at an end, yet its results in some degree continue. It was in itself a consequence of the mountainous nature of the country and, in the north island, of the occupation of the interior by a warlike native race. The New Zealand people is about as English in composition as are those of the Australian colonies, and rather more Scotch ; and New Zealand is one of the few colonies in which the Scotch are more numerous than the Irish. Our Australasian colonies form the only great countries in the world almost entirely inhabited by the people of the United Kingdom, well mixed up, and by them only. In the United States there is a large German and Scandinavian element ; in Canada there is a large French element ; and in South Africa the Dutcli are more numerous than the English, and the Kafirs than either. But in Australia, generally speaking, we have a population of which a quarter is Irish, an eighth Scotch, and the remainder- English ; while in New Zealand we have a population of which nearly a quarter is Scotch, less CHA]'. IV NEW ZEALAND 255 than a quarter Irish, and tlie rest mainly English. There are more Presbyterians than Eoman Catholics in New Zealand, a fact which in itself forms a considerable example of the peculiarity wliich distinguishes New Zealand from the Australian colonies ; but the Roman Catholics are, as I have hinted, not less influential in New Zealand than they are generally in Australia. Substantially it may be said that New Zealand, like Australia, is inhabited by the people of the United Kingdom shaken together, and that the New Zealand people are as intelligent as the Australians. The advantage which will be the making of New Zealand Products, is that of variety of production, which she possesses in a higher degree than even Queensland, and which must always cause her to be rich through whatever momentary depression she may pass. Sheep country, cattle country, minerals of every kind, timber, fruit — all the productions of the whole of the Australian colonies, and others which they do not afford, are found united iii New Zealand. Her coal is not placed where it is most wanted, but nevertheless her steam-coal is excellent ; gold still exists, probably in large quantities ; and the other minerals are all present, and will undoubtedly in time begin to yield their harvest. New Zealand has been to some extent handicapped by a war expenditure. Repudiation, which has been suggested in some English books which have aroused tierce indignation in the colony, is as unlikely in the case of New Zealand as in the case of any of the colonies of Australia, and the colony is now settling down into what is likely to prove an era of more permanent prosperity tlian she has yet enjoyed. Native troubles are at an end. The war sceptre has been given up by the Maories voluntarily to the Minister for Native Affairs, and the country between and including the splendid mountains of Tongariro and Ruapeha has been set aside as a national park on the proposal of the tribe that owned it. It is to be hoped that the almost unrivalled scenery of Literature. New Zealand may produce in the future some effect upon the literature of that country. Hitherto New Zealand has not brought forth literature of the first order. OU New Zealand is a most remarkable and entertaining work, but the "foreign native" was not New-Zealand-born. Robert Browning's " Waring,'' known to the colony as Mr. Alfred Domett, was, of course, English-born; he was a Cambridge man, and he returned to, and died in, England at the age of seventy-six, having been an olfioial of New Zealand, and the author of the longest poem about New Zealand, but a poet English trained. Moreover, even if his poetry had been real New Zealand poetry, it could not, according to mj judgment, have been pronounced, generally speaking, good. Mr. Farjeon is a clever novelist who in his time has been,^ I believe, first a digger in Victoria and then a journalist in New Zealand ; but he, too, can hardly be claimed as a colonial product. Mr. 256 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN National character. Differences between New Zea- land and Australia. Marriott Watson and other New Zealand writers have become known to students of the best colonial literature, but have not yet made much mark in the outside world, though Mr. Marriott Watson's Marahuna has been lately published in London. Station Life in New Zealand, by Lady Barker, now the wife of Sir Napier Broome, is, after Old New Zealand, the best-known work that the colony has yet produced. It has been thought that, great as are the literary disadvantages under which all colonies labour, these have been increased in New Zealand by the existence of separate provincial centres, each trying to do everything, but not as yet sufficiently considerable to do things well. On the other hand, there is a good deal of originality in the character of the New Zealand settlers. !Men holding peculiar and even eccentric opinions obtain power and influence in New Zealand more readily than in the Australian colonies. While Victoria was first in the introduction of many radical reforms, and while Queensland has at the present moment taken her place as the most demonstrative and active, politically speaking, of the colonies. New Zealand is now coming to the front in the field of political and social experiment. Although there is so close a resemblance between Australia and New Zealand in legislation and in political tendencies, this, one would think, must be of the race rather than of the country, so different are the countries themselves. Physically it may be said that there is absolutely no resemblance between New Zealand and Australia except in the fact that gold and wool are produced in each. We find, of course, in New Zealand much that is common to New Zealand and to Australia, but common also to these and the Canadian Dominion — much that is generally colonial : blackened stumps about the fields ; the absorption of the community in agricultural or pastoral pur- suits ; good fellowship ; the manliness of the men ; the plenti- ful, perhaps exaggerated, use of tea ; even the slang, descending as it does from the diggers' tongue, first born in California about 1850 : but nothing can be more complete than the contrast between Australia and New Zealand. Marcus Clarke lias told us that weird melancholy is tlie dominant note of Australian scenery, which is true enough, for the Australian landscape is as lonely, as melancholy, and as solemn as the Roman Gampagna, with the added weirdness of strange bark- shedding trees, and of uncouth beasts and birds. New Zealand is wholly different— severe and frowning in the south, open and alluring in the north, with a bright Polynesian loveliness. Australia is, as we have seen, in summer a land of dry rivers, brown grass, yellow lurid glare, and brassy sun; and in tlie greater part of winter a land of blue sky and soft smoky haze. New Zealand in summer may resemble parts of Australia in winter, but she has a real winter in her south island, and a wet winter in her extreme north. The west coast of the middle or south island, whence come the New Zealand coal and gold, is a OiiAi'. IV NEW ZEALAND 207 country of constant rain, of glaciers, and of tree fern, and chattering parroquets, inexpressibly distinct from the dried-up Australian gold-fields of Sandhurst. South central Australia has the climate of Greece ; while New Zealand, owing to its enormous length from north to south, has, like Japan, and for the same reason, all the climates of the world except the dry brilliancy of Australia or of Greece. New Zealand, which is all but tropical at the Bay of Islands, is Scotch at Invercargill. It is happy for the Australians that they can visit the perpetual snows, and stand sometimes by the rushing, murderous torrent rivers of New Zealand, usually half lost in their gigantic stony beds. They iind something there to dream of when they return to their native creeks — beds of small rivers, consisting of mere baked mud — and swelter through the still heat of their long dry days, watching the mirage through the fierce yet healthy heat of their burnt-up plains. New Zealand scenery, with that of Japan, is the most beauti- Scenery. ful of the temperate woi'ld. The one drawback to living in the loveliest parts of New Zealand is the drawback to Japan — the wind. The west coast of the south or middle island of New Zealand is unequalled in the combination of jungle with low glacier. It is as tine a coast in its way as the west coast of Guatemala ; but it bears no resemblance to that or to any other in the globe. The glaciers come down almost as low as those of Norway, on account of the great rainfall, the constant damp, and the absence of a true winter ; while the tree ferns of the largest size resemble palm-trees in their apparently tropical loveliness. In the central part of the north island, in a warm and less wet climate, having just enough rain to fairly moisten its rich soil, the snow peak of Mount Egmont and the strange white mass of Tongariro rival the snow dome of Mount Cook of the Southern Alps. On the coast of the middle or south island are fiords as wild as those of Norway or of Labrador, and in the extreme south rocks as rugged as those of the Saguenay. It is indeed to be hoped that one day New Zealand may be able to export us something besides wool and frozen meat, for the true poetry of nature should belong to the New Zealand youth. One result of the conformation of New Zealand is the Defence, extreme difficulty of the problem of New Zealand defence. While it is not very difficult to defend one capital, in the case of New Zealand there are, as we have seen, virtually several capital towns. In New Zealand, as in Italy, and for the same reason— the mountainous nature of the interior — the chief railways cannot but run along the coast and be open to attack. Moreover, New Zealand, also like Italy, has a fabulously long coast line in proportion to her area. The enormous seaboard and the multiplicity of harbours make it difficult to defend the colony by naval means alone, and local protection is required at at least five places, namely, the four chief cities and Inver- cargill. Auckland is easy of defence if sufficient pains are taken S 258 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Prepara- tions for defence. New Zealand's interest in tlie Pacific. Difficulties with the French. to close the entrance ; and tlie same is true of Wellington, and of Lyttelton, the port of Christchurch. Dunedin, or rather Port Chalmers, is more exposed, and the bombardment of Dunedin from the open sea is possible ; while the Bluff, which is the port of Invercargill, although not as yet a very important liarbour, would, if not defended, be exposed to attack. New Zealand was backward in her military preparations at the time of the Russian scare of 1885, but she has not been idle since, and a good many of the batteries recommended in 1883 at the four chief ports have been constructed and guns mounted. There is a considerable volunteer force in the colony, although it is as yet a good deal scattered ; but the railways will soon begin to facilitate its concentration at the five or six chief places. The New Zealand Parliament jjassed the Australasian Naval Defence Bill in the session of 1887-88, and Sir Harry Atkinson in pressing it forward spoke strongly in favour of Imperial Federation. As regards defence, he pointed out that two ships of the new fleet were to remain in New Zealand waters, with an occasional visit to Fiji, and that New Zealand would probably be forced by considerations of economy to con- fine land defence to one chief port. Sir Julius Vogel, on behalf of the Opposition, supported the Bill, and also declared in favour of Imperial Federation : but he pronounced against federation of groups of colonies, and maintained that the federation of groups would not lead towards the federation of the whole emi^ire. Sir George Grey opposed the Bill, but it was carried by a large majority, the native members voting for it, altliough they do not generally all go into tlie same lobby. One of tliem spoke, and his speech was a model of a parliamentary objection to obstruction, and was directed against the tactics of Sir George Grey. As a result of the whole transaction New Zealand finds herself more adequately defended than she was, but not so strong to resist attack as are her Australian neigh- bours, although her shipping is larger in proportion than is that of the Australian colonies. If New Zealand ^vishes to play a great part in the future in the Pacific she will do well to take farther steps to strengthen herself in a military sense. She has shown an interest in the aU'airs of Samoa, and there has been a certain growth of se])aratist feeling in New Zealand through the supposed in- diiFerence of the mother-country to German violence in Samoa, before the Americans interfered, as there was a growth of similar feeling in Queensland on account of the loss of north-east New Guinea. The occasional expulsion of British missionaries by the French from their colonies and protectorates in the Pacific, these missionaries being in some cases Pres- byterians, has been from time to time reported and sharply commented upon by the New Zealand pi-ess ; and the matter has been taken up by the Presbyterians of Otago as hotly as was the New Hebrides question by the Presbyterians of Victoria, and has increased the feeling. But, while New OHAP. IV AUSTRALASIA 259 Zealand is as anxious for British supremacy in the Pacific as is Victoria herself, she took, at the time of the London Colonial Conference, a different line from Victoria as regarded the course upon which it would be wise to enter. New Zealand representations had, I believe, brought about a provisional understanding witli the French Government which would have given the French the New Hebrides, receiving from them in return a pledge to cease all transportation to the Pacific, witli the addition of the island of Eapa for New Zealand, together with an engagement to agree with us as to Pacific matters generally, and to protect missions. In connection with the proposed arrangement with the French, I believe that it had iaeen arranged with Germany that Germany should come under an engagement not to transport criminals to any future possessions of hers in the Pacific. The Germans were also willing to sell the Hamburg land-interests in Samoa to Australian purchasers ; and the New Zealand suggestion was, I believe, that the Australasian colonies should agree to con- tribute among themselves for the purchase of these German land-interests, and towards the establishment of a land court, upon which England, France, and Germany would liave been represented, for the consideration of all land claims in the Pacific islands. The New Zealand view is that the Victorians, under the influence of the Presbyterian congregations, almost as strong in Victoria as in New Zealand and largely represented in the missionary field in the Pacific islands, and especially in the New Hebrides, refused the New Zealand suggestions put forward by Lord Kosebery and by France, and nailed their colours to the mast as to evacuation of the New Hebrides by French troops. France has since obtained Piaiatea and the Leeward group of the Society islands, has expelled missionaries from many islands, and has not ceased transportation. It would be impossible to return to the New Zealand programme, because no arrangement between England, France, and Ger- many would now suffice, inasmuch as the Americans have abandoned their former position of not interesting themselves in the afl'airs of the Pacific, and have virtually obtained a magnificent harbour in Samoa, have subsidised a steamship line, and have shown that they mean to play a part in the Pacific. Writing in 1867, I had said that the relations of America to Position of Australia would be the key of the future of the Pacific, and the the United circumstances which I have described show that my view has States in been justified by the event. The United States, by its action the Pacific, in Samoa — bolder than the action of Great Britain — has not incurred the dislike of the people of New Zealand, but rather seems to have won their admiration. The Sydney Mail drew the moral from Prince Bismarck's disavowal of the German consul in Samoa when it wrote that if England " had been as stiff'" over the New Guinea affair as America over the Samoan, the Australian colonies would not have lost north-east New 260 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" part ii Guinea. The king and chiefs of Samoa in 1884 had proposed to unite themselves to New Zealand in order to prevent Germany taking possession of the islands. New Zealand opinion, recognising that the United States has now established its position in Samoa, prefers the Americans as neighbours in the Pacific to any European military power, and Australia agrees with New Zealand upon the point. Odes to the United States to congratulate her on standing up to Germany were printed in the Australian journals — one of them, in tlie Centen7iial Magazine, going so far as to invite the Republic to "Sweep treaty-barriers down That clieck the limitless increase " of that which was declared to be a " realm of peace," and to promise that " The weak and helpless of the earth Will turn for aid to thee " ; and admit that the United States by protecting Samoa had proved herself to be the " True mother-nation of the world." The sudden popularity of the United States in Australia is one of the most interesting new developments of our day. French and There can be no doubt that for several years before the German meeting of the Colonial Conference, wisely summoned by Mr. action in Stanhope, the public opinion of the Australasian colonies had tlie Pacific. ^^^ been enough recognised in territorial questions concerning the South Pacific. The overwhelming colonial opinion was, as it is, that the presence of France and Germany close to the Australian coast is full of danger to the colonies, and that the transjiortation of criminals by France to the South Pacific is an outrage. Sufficient weight was certainly not given to tliese views at the commencement of the portion of the negotiations with regard to the New Hebrides that preceded tlie meeting of the Colonial Conference. The French had pledged themselves in 1883 to do all we wanted; that is to say, not to entertain the question of the annexation of the New Hebrides without consultation with the Australasian colonies and without our securing conditions satisfactory to them. But after this the French sent troops to the New Hebrides and raised colonial exasperation to fever heat. The islands had been civilised by Scotch Presbyterians, and the congregations took up the question, utterly refusing the suggestion of stopping transporta- tion to New Caledonia (which country they looked upon as already full of convicts), in return for tlie annexation of the New Hebrides to France. It was when Lord Eosebery was Secretary of State in 1886 that this ofler, or rather, the larger offer to wholly cease the sending of convicts to any part of the Pacific, was made, backed by him, and refused by the Aus- CHA7». IV AUSTRALASIA 26] tralicans. At the end of 1887 the Australians got their way, but France obtained an island as a reward for having grudgingly kept her word. The rapid growth of an Australasian Monroe doctrine has been the consequence, and a conference, which ought to have assisted in bringing about better relations between the mother-country and the colonies, resulted in the Australian delegates going liome in an unpleasant state of mind, after exchanging amenities with Lord Salisbury, such as complimenting him upon having delivered a speech which would have been excellent in the mouth of the Prime Minister of France. A rooted idea has grown up in the colonies that, for the sake of a smile from Germany or the absence of a frown from France, the mother-country would always be prepared to triile with interests which the colonies think great. The refusal to the colonies of representation on the Samoa Conference in 1889 increased this feeling. The modern doctrine with regard to the South Pacific, which had been foreshadowed by a resolution to which all the colonies were parties at their meeting at Sydney in 1883, was reasserted, on the motion of Mr. Deakin, by the Federal Council in its session of 1889, when it was unanimously resolved that the colonies put on record their strenuous objec- tion to anjr fresh acquisition of territory by any foreign power in the Pacific south of the equator. Mr. Deakin in his speech went so far as to declare that the two new continents — America and Australia — would take care of the Pacific, and suggested that the Pacific would become an English lake. He proposed as the future name of his own continent, which would watch the southern part of tliat great ocean, "The United States of Australasia." He alluded to the irritation against the home Government for not paying sufficient attention to colonial interests in the South Pacific, and declared that the Federal Council was needed if for this matter alone. United action among the colonies with regard to the Pacific The de- had first been taken in detail and in formal style by a despatch spatch ot from the Agents-General to Lord Derby in 1883, in which they the Agents- asked for a protectorate or annexation of the Western Pacific Geneial. islands and the non-Dutcli part of New Guinea. They stated that they were moved by the fear of what was called " foreign intervention," which at that time meant German intervention, and German assurances were quoted to them in reply. There is a large trade between New South Wales and the Pacific, and a considerable trade between New Zealand and the Pacific, but the greatness of the trade was not put forward in support of the annexation view. It was the impossibility of controlling British subjects upon the islands (which had formed, indeed, the original ground for the annexation of New Zealand and of Fiji) which was again placed in the forefront. Tlie Agents- General pointed out that great numbers of convicts from New Caledonia had escaped to Queensland, and that pardoned convicts from New Caledonia had arrived in all the colonies. 202 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN The Agents-General offered contributions from the colonies towards the cost of all that they proposed. Freucli The articles in the French newspapers with regard to the trausport- " calumnies and boastings," of the Australians were fatal to the ation. French claims in the New Hebrides. They produced a settled opinion in the colonies which nothing could shake, and they have done much harm to French interests, inasmuch as it is now as sure as anything can be that New Caledonia will sooner or later become Australian. There can be no doubt that the colonial hatred of transportation has been one of the principal elements in the production of the Federal Council of Australasia. It was in 1853 that the French, to use the words of M. Gaffarel in his Les Colonies franfaises, made use of a pretext for the purpose of possessing themselves of the magnifi- cent naval station of New Caledonia, which was seized by them at the end of September of that year, although Captain Cook had, by right of discovery, made it a possession of Great Britain. From 1855 to 1859 the Frencli carried on war against the inhabitants, great numbers of whom were killed. As M. Gaffarel says, " E\'ents were extraordinarily monotonous. Re- volts of natives, military marches pleasantly diversified from time to time by summary executions. . . . Assassinations, executions, and revenge, such is the history of our colony." In 1864 the French began to send a few convicts to New Caledonia, but on so small a scale was this transi3ortation carried on that it was hardly to be expected that it should attract much attention, although the situation of the group, to the north of New Zealand and to the east of Queensland, makes it geo- graphically a portion of our Australasian archipelago. In 1865 there were 245 convicts in New Caledonia, but there were nearly 1000 soldiers and nearlj' 1000 free immigrants. By 1870 the number of convicts had risen to over 2000, while tlie number of free colonists had grown to only 1500. Li 1871 the convicted supporters of the Commune of Paris, to the number of 4000, were transported to New Caledonia, and the Australians began to trouble themselves about this jienal colony. The political prisoners were afterwards amnestied, but the ruilians of the gaols of France soon began to be exported in great numbers to New Caledonia, and tliat country now pre.sents a picture of all the horrors which once disgraced Tasmania and Norfolk Island. In using these words I am writing witli distrust of local infor- mation, wliich may be prejudiced, and am not quoting from Australian newspapers, but from the most thoughtful of French writers on the subject. ]\I. de Lanessan, in his L'expansion coloniah de la France, says that one obstacle to the jarogress of New Caledonia is trans]Dortation ; that the results of penal colonisation are deplorable: that the eflect of the present system is that the convict families " live only by robbery and vice." M. Louis Vignon, in his book Les Colonies Jranradses, has said : "More than 15,000 criminals have already been carried to New Caledonia since the first batch of May 1864. New CHAP. IV AUSTRALASIA 263 Caledonia is saturated, and we must not forget tliat transporta- tion is a question of dose ; the dose must not be too strong." It is tliis saturated colony which the Australians naturally dislike to have at their doors. New Caledonia has been brought geographically more closely New into the Australian system, first by the British annexation of Caledonia, the Fiji Islands, and then by that of south-eastern New Guinea and of the archijpelago running from New Guinea towards New Caledonia. Fiji has become a portion of the Australasian Federation, and is represented upon the Federal Council ; and New Caledonia lies in the direct line between Fiji and the Queensland coast from Brisbane to Kockhampton, and is only a little farther from Australia than from Fiji. The very exist- ence of a blue spot between the red patclies on the map is an annoyance to Australia, and the repeated escapes of French convicts to the Australian mainland have added to the strength of the feeling. So large are New Guinea and Australia that Fiji and New Caledonia look small upon the map ; but New Caledonia has one island wliich is larger than any of the islands of the Fiji group, and the Fiji Islands themselves are far larger than the whole of our West-India Islands put together. The land in both the groups is excellent, and tliey are undoubtedly capable of bearing a large population. The Australians have also thought that it was possible that in time of war the con- victs from New Caledonia, who were already drilled and armed and put into the field against the natives during the last Kanaka insurrection, might be landed on the coast of Australia to attack our settlements ; but I think that this danger, if it ever existed, is a danger of the past. The convicts would naturally seize the opportunity of escaping, and would not place themselves in a position where they would probably be shot down by the Australians, who are well known not to love them. In 1883 public meetings were held all over Australia to protest against the proposed increase of transportation to the neighbourhood of Australia by the French ; but the desire of the French to occupy the New Hebrides as well as New Caledonia, and to send habitual criminals there, has now been checked by the action of the British Government which followed on the strong representations made by the delegates at the Colonial Conference in London four years later. It is a curious fact that the first Australian proposals for Australian Australian federation came from New South Wales, the colony federation. which has recently seemed to be opposed to the ideas whioli formerly it put forward. A Select Committee of the New South Wales Council, in preparing a Constitution Bill in 1853, expressed an opinion in favour of a general Australian legis- lature. The Melbourne Eevieiv contained in 1879 an article, "An Australian Nation," by Sir Henry Parkes, advocating the immediate legislative union of Victoria, New South Wales, and South Australia. In 1881 Sir Henry Parkes wrote a memor- andum in favour of federation, which has been frequently 264 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Tlie Fu. TV AUSTRALASIA 265 Soutli Wales, namely, a clause to ijrovide for the retirement of any colony from the Federal Council. In the meantime New South Wales had at leugtli passed a resolution favourable to the original Draft Bill. Victoria at first assented to Lord Derby's clause with regard to -withdrawal ; Queensland ob- jected to it ; but a few days afterwards the Governments of the colonies of Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria (calling themselves tlie "Colonial Governments now prepared to confederate") strongly disagreed with the 31st Clause. In April 1885 it was pointed out by the Agents- General of the colonies prepared to confederate that Lord Derby had inserted the objectionable clause in order to secure New Zealand and New South Wales ; but the agents showed that it had then been ascertained that even the inclusion of the clause would not secure the adhesion of those colonies. They declared that the effect of the clause on the Federal Union would be disastrous, that the Canadian Confederation could never have lasted had the Canadian Act contained such a clause, that even in the case of the Nortli American Union one of the federal units did desire to withdraw from union at a very eai'ly period, and that the United States would have been broken up had such a power been generally recognised to exist in their constitution. New Zealand kept quiet for a time, and acted only through verbal representations made by her Agent- General, but her Ministers recommended the postponement of the Bill until the colonies were agreed. At last, in June 1885, New Zealand came forward and made, through her Agent- General in a despatch, a distinct suggestion, which was declined, and then urged the retention of the 31st Clause. New Zealand is a potential, but not an actual member of the New Australasian Federal Council ; that is to say, she may come Zealand's into it under the Act of 1885, but has not come into it as yet. objectious. New Zealand refused to join because she was jealous of federal legislation aifecting her internal aS'airs. Victoria, as has been seen, strenuously objected to the clause of the Bill which now forms the 31st Section of the Act, and which gives, as I have said, power to a colony to determine the operation of the Act within her boundaries, or in other words, to retire from federation after joining. New Zealand declares that she suggested a mode of reconciling the differences which arose upon the 31st Clause, and, while offering to no longer urge the retention of the 31st Clause if her suggestion was adopted, proposed the insertion of another clause providing for what was known at the time as " subsequent adoijtion." The Federal Council Act itself contains the principle of subsequent adoption. On some subjects the Council has full power to legislate, while on others, brought before it by two colonies, it has no such power ; but its Acts apply only to the colonies from which the reference came. In the case of such Acts, adoption in other colonies has to be by subsequent legislation in the usual form. New Zealand proposed that this latter plan should be adopted 266 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part ii for all Bills, and that the laws passed by the Federal Council sjiould only be operative in any colony if brought into force by the legislature of that colony. It was objected by Victoria and some other colonies, both to the 31st Clause and to the New Zealand proposal, that they struck directly at the principle of federation, and that the latter proposal still further weakened a scheme already weak. New Zealand, on the other hand, argued that there was no more reason for reserving the power of initiating legislation in the case of corporations and joint- stock companies, uniformity of weights and measures, copyright, patents, and bills and notes, which, as will presently be seen, are in the one category under the present Act, than in the case of extradition, the influx of criminals, civil and criminal process and judgments, and custody of oflenders, which are in the other. What reason, asked New Zealand, was there for conceding the principle of subsequent adoption in the case of defence, and denying it in the case of Australasian Pacific policy ? No colony, she argued, could suffer injury if all, instead of only some, laws should be declared to extend to colonies which adopted them. 'As a matter of fact the 31st Clause was retained, in spite of the objections of Victoria and the other colonies that most strongly pressed forward federal institutions ; but the New Zealand suggestion was not taken, although Queensland, and I believe at one time New South Wales, advised that it should be adopted. Behind the reasons put forward there was one to which the New Zealanders attached much importance, but which they thought it prudent not to name. The colonies were at issue upon the New Hebrides question, as I have shown, and also upon the transportation policy. New Zealand cared more for the total future abolition of convict settlements in any part of the Pacific than for keeping France out of the New Hebrides. In Victoria feeling was the other way, and New Zealand tliought tliat if she entered into federation with Section 31 dropped, and without her own clause in, the relations of Australasia with the Pacific would be settled against her under Victorian leadership. The end has been, however, that the question has been decided in favour of the Victorian view, and against the New Zealand view as supported by Lord Rosebery ; and as Clause 31 has been retained in the Act, it would seem that, on her own showing. New Zealand might very well now come in. It is probable that New Zealand would come in, in spite of Sir Julius Vogel's strong statements as to New Zealand opinion, if some small concessions were made to her views, so long as, under the 31st Section, she_ retains the power of leaving the confederation. Clause 31 of the Bill had, as agreed to in advance by some of the colonies, provided that if a colony seceded it might repeal within its own borders the Federal Council Acts which had caused the secession ; but this provision was struck out at the instance of Victoria, and the section as passed makes all Federal Acts continue in force within the seceding colony unless amended CHAP. IV AUSTRALASIA 267 or repealed by tlie Council itself. This section -will certainly have to be modified if New Zealand is to be induced to come in to the Federal Council. It -would be wise, even at some sacrifice of form, to bring Right and New Zealand into federation as she would strengthen Victoria power of a in resisting the possible secession from the British Empire of single one colony. The cla-use allowing a colony to withdraw from colony to federation would, of course, have no bearing one way or the recede. other upon the larger point of withdrawal from the Empire. The New Zealand ers seem generally to take the view that the Australasian colonies ought to prevent the isolated secession from the Empire of a single colony. They argue that Canada is a federal dominion large enough to have an opinion of her own, and that if Canada wished to leave the British Empire it is obvious that she could not be prevented from so doing, but that this view is not applicable to colonies generally and without limit. The inhabitants of the Australian continent, the New Zealanders point out, even if they are not to form a single Australian nation, must have a common interest in their own destiny. It would be difficult for the Au.stralasian colonies to admit that a single northern colony might secede, and possibly establish a Government based on servile labour, hostile to the others and in alliance -with their enemies. Supposing, they say, that Queensland were to set up as a separate republic, the possi- bility of passage by Torres Straits in time of war might be lost to all the colonies, and Moreton Bay itself might become a station from which liostile fleets might prey upon the trade of Sydney and of Auckland. Means ought to be found to satisfy New Zealand that there Refusal of is no intention of making her in any way a dependency of New Zea- Australia. The point at issue is in fact that point. The 'and to h&- Australian colonies in any matter in which the interests of '^°^'^ ^ ^''- Australia and of the far-detached New Zealand were different, P™dency would easily out-vote New Zealand on the Federal Council, and °' :jr"^" New Zealand desires to have a general control by her legislature '*''■ of the applicability or non-applicability of Federal acts to the colony of New Zealand. It is a natu ral feeling, but one which might be satisfied, and yet New Zealand take part in the Fede- ral Council. There is a good deal of feeling in New Zealand altogether opposed to Australasian federation, and favourable to Sir Julius Vogel's view that the only federation which would suit New Zealand inter-ests in the Pacific would be Imperial Federation, and that it was a mistake on the part of England to press forward the Federal Council of Australasia. The citout- Vogel Ministry pledged themselves at the time to the misijaken view that the Bill would remain a dead letter. The dominant feeling in New Zealand, however, is similar to that in the other colonies, namely, that it is contrary to the interest of colonies so distant from the mother-country to send statesmen to Eng- land with a mandate to say "Yes" or "No" for them. They iDelieve that taxation or contribution must lie behind representa- 268 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN The Federal Council as it stands. Fuller federation. tion ; that the electorate of the United ICiugdom would object to colonial interference unless the colonies were to be taxed. With regard to Australian or Australasian federation, the dominant New Zealand opinion is that customs union will liave to be agreed to by New South Wales, with the change from a free-trade to a protective system, before it can become a reality. The Federal Council as it stands is little more than a periodi- cal conference of some of the leading statesmen of six out of the eight South-Sea colonies. New Zealand and the mother-colony standing out. In form it is one of the most dignified assemblies in the world, and when, in its first session, it had only eight members (South Australia having held back at the last moment), it nevertheless rejoiced in oaths of allegiance, a Queen's Speech, an Address to the Crown, and an election of President conducted after the model of an election of a vSpeaker of the Commons of England. It forms a pleasant little Parliament whicli meets at eleven and generally sits till lunch, for its average sittings are indeed sliorter than those of any other legislative assembly with which I am acquainted, except that equally dignified body, our own House of Lords. The Council can legislate directly with regard to the relations of Australasia witli the Pacific, the fisheries in Australasian waters, the enforcement of the law by service of process beyond the colony in which it issues, as to extradition, and for preventing the influx of criminals. As regards defences, corporations, and joint-stock companies, the uniformity of weights and measures, as to patents, copyright, and bills of exchange, and all other matters as to which the colonies themselves can legislate and which are of Australasian interest, the legislation has to be initiated by two colonies, and then the Acts of the Council extend only to the colonies by whose legislatures the matters have been referred to it. Some Acts are reserved for the signification of the Queen's pleasure : others are assented to by the governor of the colony in which the Council is held. It is all but certain that a fuller confederation, when it comes, will come with customs union and with Protection at all the ports ; and the adoption of Protection by New Soutli Wales would make the way clear for a customs union as far as Victoria is concerned. The Melbourne manufacturers would then have Australia or Australasia for their field ; but the manufacturers of New South Wales are protectionists of a dilierent kind, and say that Protection against England would be of no great use to them without Protection against Melbourne also. The Vic- torians, they say, have had too long a start, and New South Wales would be swamped by their competition. It is possible, therefore, that owing to tlie split in the protectionist party throughout Australia, customs union and full confederation may be fartlier ofi'in tact than at present would seem to be the case. Should the present negotiations for the formation of a fresh confederation on the Canadian plan break down by the CHAP. IV AUSTRALASIA 269 resistance of the New South Wales free traders, and of those Australian protectionists who desire Protection against Victoria, it is difficult to forecast the probable drift of affairs when an enlarged Federal Council (for, as we shall see, it is to be at once enlarged) couies to consider the creation of a Federal Parliament even when a move in this direction is made, three or four years will probably be consumed in negotiation before much comes of it. It will be proposed that the new Parliament and Executive should deal with trans-continental telegraphs, with cables, with defence, and intercolonial questions. Then will arise the ques- tion of common tariff, and the probability, in my opinion, is that a common tariff will gradually be adopted, but with a vague understanding that the federation would be willing to admit New South Wales for other purposes even if she refused to give up her free-trade tariff. It will doubtless be urged that border tariffs should be reduced by degrees until altogether re- moved. It is not unlikely that New South Wales may be forced by circumstances into the federation, for she will feel a loss of weight and importance if ten times as much Australian soil is under the federation as is under the flag of New South Wales, and obstruction will be thrown in her way upon border ques- tions if she stands out. When in the beginning of 1889 the statesmen of New South Wales made private overtures to the other colonies, pointing in the direction of the creation of a Federal Parliament and Executive, they wished the primacy of New South Wales, as the mother -colony, in some way to be recognised; a suggestion which is not Likely to be adopted. The acquisition of a fuller form of federation in Australasia, difficult as it is of attainment, will, however, be an easy matter as compared with the diffi- culties which were faced in carrying out the creation of the Dominion of Canada. The difficulty of dealing with Australasia as a number of dis- united states is great, and the refusal of Queensland to ratify the compact made at the Colonial Conference of 1887, concern- ing the Australian naval squadron, undid a portion of the work of the Conference, and prevented much of the benefit which would otherwise have arisen from its labours. The existing union of all the AustraUan States except New South Wales hardly improves matters, because New South Wales objects to that which is done in the name of the other colonies, and vice versd. Sir Henry Parkes has now shown himself conciliatory in form, and although no doubt it is difficult to justify his past upon this question, still it is so much to be wished that the close federation which he proposes should be brought about, that, if Victoria can pocket her feelings as to New South Wales now taking the initiative, it is to be hoped that the overtures of Sir Henry Parkes may be accepted. Whoever may have been in the 270 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part ii wrong as regards history, Victoria should not put herself in the wrong as regards the present and future, by holding out upon questions of mere form. Sir Heni-y Parkes lias met her Protec- tionist Government by declaring publicly that the blessings of free trade are small as compared with the advantages of Australian federation upon Canadian lines, though he said in the same speech that tariff questions might possibly be left aside. The work- The actual working of the Federal Council as it exists is a ing of the matter of some interest. The Federal Council was in 1889 Federal attended for the first time by representatives from South Council. Australia, and the advocates of Australian federation received the representatives of South Australia with a warmtli that is explained by the high cliaracter of Mr. Playford, by sympathy with the South Australian proi)Osals for reform in the con- stitution of the Federal Council, and by joy at the isolation of New South Wales having become all but complete by the tardy adhesion of South Australia. It is a curious fact that the colonies which were the first to come into the federation — Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, and Western Australia — were all geographically separate from one another ; but the adhesion of South Australia has brought in a colony which has a common land frontier with every other colony on the Australian con- tinent. Mr. Playford of South Australia was proposed by Sir Samuel Griflith and seconded by Mr. Gillies, for the Chair. The business of the Council was opened by a Speech from the Governor of Tasmania, as it met at Hobart, and ilr. Deakin moved an address in reply to the Speech, stating in the course of his powerful speech that he looked forward to a Federal Parliament. Mr. Kingston of South Australia and Sir Samuel Griffith, who supported Mr. Deakin's motion, also pointed to a Federal Parliament in their speeches, but Sir Samuel Griffith appeared to object to the introduction of the tarifl: question, that is, to any opening of the question of a customs union. The leader of the Queensland Opposition indeed contended that Australian federation was possible even though there should continue to be separate customs tariffs for the various states, and maintained that the advantages of union in one dominion, for other purposes of Government, would outweigh the inconveniences of this arrangement. The Bills considered by the Council concerned companies and fisheries, but the Bills were not so important as the addresses and the resolutions. A committee of the whole Council was appointed at the instance of South Australia, which liacl joined the Council with this intention, to consider the subject of its enlargement and reform; but difference of opinion at once arose as to whether each self-governing colony should send the same number of members or whether representation should be proportional to population. Tliere was also a difference as to the mode of nomination or election of the members. The final decision was that colonies should have representatives accordino- CHAP. IV AUSTRALASIA 271 to population up to six, and that tliey should be left to devise their own system of election. The Victorian, Queensland, and Tasmanian legislatures have since agreed to the proposed en- largement of the Federal Council, but South Australia has again drawn back. The Pacific cable was discussed, as was the investment of English trust funds in colonial securities; and an address was voted to the Queen, in accordance with a suggestion by Mr. Deakin, as to the affairs of the Pacific, he pointing out that it was of vast imjjortance to Australasia to save Samoa from annexation by Germany, that it was a station for the Pacific cable and was on the track of commerce in the event of the opening of a canal through the American isthmus. The policy of insisting on the preservation of Samoan inde- pendence and the maintenance of treaties was put forward, and an address to the Queen was telegraphed home. A curious constitutional question in reference to the Council was raised when, Mr. Gillies having submitted a motion requesting the President to telegraph to the Secretary of State for the colonies. Sir Samuel Grifiith contended that the message should be sent through the Governor of Tasmania. A motion to telegraijh direct to the Colonial Secretary was however carried. It was then decided to have the next meet- ing again in Hobart, although Brisbane had been suggested. Between this third meeting of the Federal Council, presided over by Mr. Playford, and the second, presided over by Sir Samuel Grifiith, there had been only one year: but between the second and the first meeting, presided over by Mr. Service, there had been a two years' gap. The Queensland Government sent to the Federal Council members taken from both sides of their Assembly, in the persons of the present Secretary for Works and Mines and the late Prime Minister. Although the delegates carry weight, the Council as a whole is crippled by want of powers, and the session of 1889 was the first in which the Council felt a sense of the reality of its existence. In a matter like the Samoan question it can speak with more dignity than could a single colony, and it is showing a tendency to become a useful kind of Court of Appeal in colonial politics, but as yet it is a mere germ. At the last meeting, that of 1889, a motion was carried to the effect that the Council contemplated the early consideration of the question of Australasian parlia- mentary federation, and it was this action by the Council which led, firstly, to private representations, and afterwards to public speeches by Sir Henry Parkes. The Chambers of Commerce were discussing at their meeting Tlie held at the same city and at the same time the same questions Ch.-imbers as those discussed by the Federal Council. Mr. Service made of Com- them a fine speech in favour of a federal legislature, and it was merce. most excellently received. Uniformity of commercial legisla- tion was aimed at by the members; but there was no such unanimity with regard to tarift' legislation, which divided the delegates almost equally. It was urged on the one side that 272 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part ii customs union would secure political concord, which was not possible so long as chance majorities could suddenly impose restrictions upon the trade of neighbours, and on the other side little was said; but the voting, as has been stated, was nearly equal. The congress, however, was more free-trade and less protectionist than the electorates, representing as it did the mercantile classes and not the working people. Imperial The question whether the intercolonial federal movement is unity. '1' step towards or a step away from imperial unity is a very difficult one. Lord Knutsford is of opinion that it is a step towards union, and that, while we could never deal with the colonies one by one, we can deal with tliree or four great groups. I am bound to say myself that I do not see a pro- bability of any long step in the direction of imperial unity being taken by the Australasian colonies. So far as there has been a change in the last two years the movement has been the other way, and the younger men are not so favourable to the imperial idea, taking the colonies through, as are their elders. Mr. Deakin's name for the future Federal continent with its islands — " The United States of Australasia " — has a somewliat independent ring. Tlie possi- If a real union, with a true Federal Parliament, were bilityofa established among the whole of the Australian colonies (with- real union out New Zealand), I think that, looking to their varying size of the Aus- and resources, and to the probability that a federal legislature tralasian would not be set up without a re-division of some colonies, colonies, federation would not rest upon so real a basis as it does in the case of the old states of the United States, or in the case of Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec. Attempts would be made to change federation into a closer union, and the geographical character of Australia undoubtedly makes that closer union easy. Indeed there is no cause wliich operates against it except the mutual jealousy of Sydney and Melbourne, wliioh might be avoided by fixing the capital at Albury or at Hobart. On the other hand, New Zealand and Fiji are within the scope of the present confederation, and the difficulty of converting that partial federation, or in other words, the federation of an Australasia, from which the representatives of New South Wales and New Zealand are still absent, into a closer union is immense. The term Australasia was formerly often used for Australia with Tasmania and New Zealand, and is now used for these countries with the addition of Fiji, as for example in the proceedings under the Federal Council Act. In pojiular IJarlance Australasia now includes even British New Guinea, and there is power in the Federal Council Act to include within federal Australasia such colonies and other territories as the Queen may from time to time declare by Order in Council to be within the operation of the Act. Although I retain the objections which I stated in Greater Britain to the word " Australasia," it has now so thoroughly established itself UHAP. IV AUSTRALASIA 273 as a convenient term for the southern colonies of New Zealand, Tasmania, and the Australian continent (not to speak of its official use for these with the addition of Fiji), that it would be afl'ectation on my part to refuse to employ it in this work. The ' word Australasia suggests, however, the probability of a union never in my opinion likely to be brought about in a close form. The Australian continent is so large that maps which include Melanesia and Polynesia make distances seem small. But New Zealand is at an immense distance from Australia, and Fiji from both. From good harbour to good harbour, from Wel- lington to Sydney, New Zealand and Australia are separated by as great a distance as divides London from Pskof, or Paris from the Arctic circle. F)'ench New Caledonia is much nearer to Australia than is New Zealand ; and the political connection of the various parts of Australasia is hardly closer than the geographical, because New Zealand seems determined not to become "a dependency of Australia." Still, the commercial connection of both Australia and New Zealand with the smaller Polynesian islands is a growing one, and Australasian influence is likely to dominate the South Pacific. There has, indeed, been, as we have seen, of late a movement in the direction of closer union between New Zealand and Australia, and it has been brought about by French and German intrusion in the Pacific ; this action having raised up a conjoint movement in the colonies, and led the New Zealand Agent-General in London to work with his Australian colleagues not merely as the High Commissioner of Canada does, or the Agent-General of the Cape, but as an actual member of the same league. My view, then, is that a close union among the Australian colonies proper is difficult, but probable; that a loose federal union between Australia and New Zealand is possible ; but that an absolute union or very close confederation of Australia and New Zealand is not possible. While I cannot but doubt if New Zealand will come in to the Imperial young Australian nation, I have little doubt that such a nation Federation, will be brought into existence, and this on the base of an alliance with ourselves, rather than of Imperial Federation. The best friends of the mother-country in the colonies hold that the attempt to create a common imperial Parliament would of itself destroy the empii-e ; and I agree with them that if we are ever to have a council of the empire it will have to be very unlike a Parliament. Australian opinion generally is, just at present, more apathetic than is even Canadian, with regard to what in England is called Imperial Federation. If it were supposed that it stood the slightest chance of adoption, apathy would be turned into dislike ; but it is impossible to induce people in England to believe this unless they will take a good deal of trouble for themselves. While, however, the only kind of imperial unity possible will be in the nature of a union upon equal terms between self-governing states, it would be diificult to arrange this witliout a considerable increase in the power of T 274 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt ii tlie Crown, and it is somewhat doubtful whether the electors of tlie United Kingdom would agree to such a scheme. The Aus- tralasian colonies are the most democratic communities that the world has seen, and the United Kingdom is very rapidly be- coming equally democratic ; and an alliance of democracies is not so easy to handle as an alliance of military German states in which one is far more powerful than the others. Still, with the strong sentimental feeling that prevails, and with the close imitation in the colonies of the ways of the mother-country, and also with the ties of interest that exist, union may confidently be expected to be preserved at present, and until it will have a chance of gradually ripening into alliance upon equal terms. Tn a few years the Australasian colonies will have nothing to fear even from the greatest military powers. A scheme for military federation of the Australian colonies is already on foot, and its efficiency, as it grows, will be used as a lever to bring New South Wales into the confederation, even if the present negotiations should break down. There is already, in common inspection, a vestige of common command, and this is popular. When the Australian colonies are all confederated, and their population has grown still greater, their combined strength will be able to withstand, even unaided by us, the attack of any expedition which could be sent against them ; but for the moment this is not so, and there is a practical argument for the connection on grounds of safety. When that has gone, when the connection rests mainly upon sentiment, it may still last indefinitely. It is conceivable that, with our gi'owing detach- ment from Continental aflairs, and with a continuation of the reign in Eussia of peaceful emperors, we may escape war for a great period, even until the population of Australasia and her strengtli exceed the present strength and i^opulation of the United States. If facts are fairly faced, the chief Australasian colonies already stand to us in the virtual relation of friendly allied nations speaking our tongue, and the Governor and tlie Secretary of State for the Colonies have not so much political iniluence at Melbourne as have Prince Bismarck and the German Ambassador at the Quirinal. The colonies have their own land forces ; protect, when they please, their manu- factures against our trade ; we do not interfere with them in any way. They obtain in other parts of the world the services of all the diplomatic, consular, and military agents of Great Britain without contributing to their cost, and those are rela- tions wliich for some time to come will still form an inducement to the colonies to remain with us. In the event of a war they are already too strong to be touched if we were with theui, and the argument that they would be harried and plundered in a cause of which tliey knew nothing, and with regard to which they had not been consulted, is not valid. AiLstral- Our colonies in the South Seas have known great A'icissitudes. iisia. All of them liave suffered from waves of adversity or depression Couchision. but there was never a moment, taking tlie colonies together' CHAP. IV AUSTRALASIA 275 ■when their position as a -whole was not better than it had been in previous years. While the eyes of on-lookers have been fixed on droughts, the destruction of flocks, and political dead- locks causing financial stagnation, the people have been placed in increasing numbers upon tlie iancl, wages have remained high, the investment of the earnings of the workers in the colonies themselves lias steadily increased, and now it may be said that, as compared with the past, political peace reigns in the Australasian colonies, and that financial confidence in tlieir future has returned to the most timid. The external trade of these southern colonies, with their trifling population, already exceeds tliat of the United Kingdojn at tiie time of the acces- sion of tlie Queen. In five and twenty years from now tlie Australasian population will be greater than that of the mother-country, and the colonies will be stronger than we are now in potential military strength. They will have discovei'ed the means, by boring, by irrigation, and by water-storage, of making almost all their soil fertile. They may, by that time, have exasperated a small class at liome by special and severe legislation directed against capitalists and absentees ; but even this wiU afiect but a small number of persons, and will leave the great public untouched. The funds of the Australasian colonies will advance in price both with federation and with the concession of the privilege of being included in the list for legal trust investment. The character and ability of tlie colonial statesmen are already sucli as to show that, in the affairs they may conduct with us, prudence will be at least as likely to be enlisted on the colonial side as upon that of the mother -country ; and, whatever happens with regard to our relations, we are now certain to find in Australia and New Zealand countries of which our sons will be proud. Lj" "\ 20° D A M A R A 30- , TERIiin^HY OP THK BUITI8H sdTJTH AfS{^^^^ BRITI SH S PHERE /-Q-FJs^yPIvirj ^^B : §Stioshoiicj X A M A Q i; A K A W U -/lagto Pequeaii Ji\ ^ o "^ > L AJ!^ 1) ,^' BRCTISH. PRO'l'EOTORATllf ■■« V C A P E C ^ape at' Good ffopf^ S^ U T K~Affi'R/r CAN".' strco/ 2^ 30 AFRICA SOUTH OF THE ZAMBEZI I— -■-VT-S-' Scale of EndisliMles 50 100 200 30° Longiiuiie East of Greenwich ~40^ STto-^XTSIaT™,^?^ PART III SOUTH AFRICA CHAPTER 1 THE CAPE Between the Australian colonies and the South African colonies Differences of England there are some considerable resemblances and two between startling diiferences, political and social. The resemblances are the Cape chiefly those of climate, soil, and production. Australia and ^°'' -^-ws- South Africa are drjr, wool-growing, grape -growing, gold- tralia. producing countries, in parts of which English consumptive patients, if they avoid exposure to dust, receive new life. The main differences are two. While Australia is a continent settled and almost solely inliabited by natives of tlie United Kingdom, South Africa is a Dutch colony wliich we first con- quered in the Statholder's name from his soldiers ; then con- quered a second time, and lastly bought ; all three against the will of the local Dutch population. A struggle followed, result- ing in actual warfare with the settlers. In the second place. South Africa is a country with an overwhelming preponderance of black people. In Quebec we have seen a foreign population annexed through conquest, who have become the strongest supporters of our rule ; but in Lower Canada, and indeed throughout the Dominion, as throughout Australia, tlie native difficulty does not exist. In the Cape we have the double diffi- culty presented by a foreign white population outnumbering the English, and a so-called " native population (which, how- ever, consists largely of Kafir black invaders who have helped the Dutch to crush the former people of Soutli Africa — the Bushmen and Hottentots) vastly outnumbering both together. Our difficulties at tlie Cape and in Natal are in some sense similar to the difficulties of the French in Algeria, but they are at the Cape more formidable. In Algeria the French are the dominant race, as against the Italian and Spanish colonists, as we are dominant in Natal against the Dutch and the Germans ; but in the western province of the Cape our difficulties are those of the French in Algeria combined with those of the Canadian Dominion in Quebec. As it is necessary, in considering the present and future of Cape the Cape, first to look towards the Dutcli or preponderant politician.9. white element, it is no wonder that I must notice as tlie most remarkable and interesting figure among Cape politicians Mr. 280 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part in Hofmeyr, tlie leader of the Dutch party. Hitherto he has not souglit office, although for a few months he was Minister with- out portfolio in Sir Thomas Scanlen's Cabinet. At the present moment he has the making and the unmaking of Ministries in his hands, and has gained the respect of all parties in the colony. He leads in Parliament a body consisting of about half the Lower House, and is supposed to dictate the policy of the present Government, though in 1889 a rift upon the railway question began to be seen among his Dutch supporters. Under his leadership the Afrikander party has shown loyalty to the British Crown, and Mr. Hofmeyr himself is an imperialist who has even gone so far as to draw up a scheme of his own for a customs union of the British Empire. There are, however, those who think tliat Mr. Hofmeyr plays a part. I am not one of them, and I feel sure that so able a politician knows that the United Kingdom must hold Cape Town, and that, if in her days of weakness she should wish to leave it, the Australians would not allow it to pass into the hands of Germany or of an Afrik- ander power which might become unfriendly to themselves. Sir Thomas Upington is perhaps in England the best known of Cape politicians. An Irish Roman Catholic, he went to South Africa for his health, after having been private secretary to Lord O'Hagan, and at once made his mark, becoming Attorney- General in the first Sprigg Ministry between two and three years after his landing in the colony. Sir Thomas Upington is a brilliant speaker, who professes strong imperialist opinions. In 1884 he formed a Ministry, but two and a half years later resigned, on private grounds, the leadership of the Government to Sir Gordon Sprigg, whose Attorney-General he then became for the second time. Sir Gordon Sprigg is an Englishman by birth, the son of an East- Anglian dissenting minister, a politi- cian of probity, whose opponents impute to him not only gross want of tact, but also arrogance and pride of office, although his demeanour appears singularly modest. He may be classed as an opportunist, for he has changed his policy a good deal on Dutch and native questions in the last few years. He is a Parliamentarian, who thinks that Ministries should defer to the majorities by which they are supported, and as feeling in the colony becomes moi-e " Dutch " his policy becomes more Dutch though his personal sentiments are what are known in South Africa as "English." Another remarkable figure in the colony, as popular in South Africa as he was once jjopular at Oxford, is that of Mr. Ehodes, of diamond-mine fame. I believe that, though of old English family, he may be said to have sent himself to Oriel College, Oxford, after he had been for some time in Africa. When he first took to politics, in Griqualand West, which was during a ]3ause in his English undergraduate career (afterwards resumed and terminated in the usual way), he belonged to the anti-Dutch party, but he has modified his views with the lapse of time. His wealth in itself makes him a considerable power in South Africa, where there liave until lately been but few OHAP. I THE CAPE 2S1 rich men, and although his oflficial experience has been short, he was Treasurer-General of the colony for seven weeks in 1884, and might be a Minister to-day if he cared to be one. " The Diamond King," as tliis modest strong gentleman hates to be called, is a man of common sense, who loudly proclaims the excellent principle that Dutch and English should work to- gether for the welfare of South Africa. Mr. J. X. Merriman is perhaps the most cultured of Cape politicians, and was till lately the real leader of the anti-Dutch Opposition. The son of Bishop Merriman of Grahamstown, his traditions are thoroughly English, but he is modifying his sentiments in the Dutch direc- tion. His supporters say that this view of his opinions is only based on an "electioneering speech," but in 1889 he was the prime mover in a friendly invitation to the Volksraad of the Transvaal to visit the gold mines of Joliannesburg, an invita- tion which was accepted with the best results, and in October 1889 he supported the annexation of Swaziland to the Trans- vaal. Both Mr. Merriman and Sir Thomas Scanlen are now interested in Transvaal mines, and the former now supports Dutch influence in Swaziland in return for concessions to the British element in the Transvaal. In June 1889 Sir Henry Loch was appointed Governor of the Sir Henry Cape in place of Sir Hercules Eobinson, and, while I shall have Loch, later on to discuss the policy of the outgoing Governor, I need say little of his successor after the full description which I have given of his character and personality, and of the reasons of his popularity, in my account of the colony of Victoria, from which he came directly to the Cape. In the colony ofiicially known as the Cape of Good Hope, as The Dutch in Canada, the language of the people that we conquered is language, allowed to be used in the legislature. The English party point out, liowever, that, while in Lower Canada French was always made use of, in the Cape Dutcli was not used until the change was decided on by Lord Kimberley. Generally sjpeaking, it may be said that there is no portion of the British Empire out- side Great I5ritain in which past history is to a greater extent reflected in the circumstances of the present day tlian at the Cape. E-oman-Dutch law is still in force, and Dutch ideas regulate the decision of most social as well as of most political questions. Indeed no adequate understanding of South African problems can be arrived at without some knowledge of the course of events which have affected that part of the Dark Continent since the landing of the Dutcli at the Cape nearly 240 years ago, and the formation of the Netherlands India Company. Other historical events which have left a deep trace in the French present state of the Cape of Good Hope are the lai-ge immigra- Huguenots, tion of the French Huguenot refugees in the seventeenth century, and the arrival of the Moravians in the eighteenth ; while in the present century the migration of Dutch farmers towards the north, some fifty years ago, has been a dominant 282 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part in factor ill producing the situation of to-day. The tenacity with which the South African Boers clung to a dialect founded on the Dutch, caused the French language, introduced into South Africa by the Protestant immigrants who settled in the colony after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, to vanish in the course of two generations. Though the large influx of culti- vated people of another race has greatly influenced Cape Colony, the total disappearance of the French language is somewhat remarkable, because the Huguenot refugees were not only of a higher class, socially, intellectually, and industri- ally speaking, than the Dutch colonists, but were strongly attached to the special forms of faith for holding whicli they had been forced to leave Europe. This feeling might have been thought sufficient to have preserved the use of the French tongue, at all events in the churches they set up in their new homes ; but strong determination on the part of the Dutch prevented this result. Not only was it ordained by Their Mightinesses the India Company that Dutch was to be the one language allowed in courts of law or in public transactions, but all religious services were ordered to be conducted in Dutch alone. There are old churches now standing in the vine- growing districts of the Western Province — churches and vines alike planted there by the French immigrants — whose archives may be seen written up to a certain date in French, and sub- sequently, with extraordinary suddenness and completeness of change, universally entered in Dutch. Nothing now remains of the French tongue in South Africa but family names, and these are often mispronounced. Throughout Cape Colony and the two Dutch republics are constantly met the patronymics of du Plessis, du Toit, Joubert, and de Villiers. Sometimes it is imagined that the French type is displayed in the features of the descendants of the Huguenots ; but the two races are in- extricably allied by intermarriage, and there are few indeed, if any, South African Dutch, whether their names be Frencli or Dutch, who have not French Huguenot blood in their veins. In some names the French pronunciation and accent are pre- served, as in the case of " Joubert." General Piet Joubert, the well-known commandant of the Transvaal forces, tells a story of a visit to Paris, when the keeper of the column of the Place VendCme, who for the benefit of tourists speaks English, said to him doubtfully, "There cannot be a Joubert who is not a Frenchman ? " On the other hand, tlie name of Villiers, which is borne by that most distinguished AfrUtander, the Chief Justice of Cape Colony, is commonly pronounced by the Dutch neither according to the_ French nor the English mode, but as if it were written "Filjee." The French language has liad scarcely any influence at the Cape in modifying the Dutch as regards the incorporation of new words ; but the sudden disuse of their own tongue by a large section of the inhabitants was one of the most powerful causes of the breakdown of the im- ported Dutch language, and tlie institution in its place of tlie OHAP. I THE CAPE 283 dialect wliich has become the chief medium of communication in South Africa. The question of the use of Cape-Dutcli in Cape Colony is " Cape- one whicli has often been brought prominently to the front in Dutch.' recent years. The opponents of Cape-Dutch frequently quote the policy of the Netherlands India Company in the early days of the colony as a precedent to show that the language of the dominant power should be the sole official language of a colony. Questions of this kind, however, are not settled by precedent : the attitude of the early Dutch Government towards the French tongue cannot determine the expediency of a policy in the B resent day. One of the causes of the migration northward of lutch farmers fifty years ago was the substitution of the Eng- lish for the Dutch language in courts of law. Nowadays, that is, since Lord Kimberley's intervention, every Bill laid on the table of the House of Assembly is printed in Dutch as well as in English. The sessional Acts have long been published in both languages, for this course had been found necessary, before Lord Kimberley was heard of, for the sake of the Field- Cornets who have to carry out the laws. The votes and pro- ceedings are printed in Dutch as well as English, but the House has not yet recognised the universal use of the two languages. In July 1889 it was proposed by a member of Huguenot name, but of Dutch speech, that the Estimates should be printed in Dutch, and he was supported by the whole Opposition, and a good deal of strong language was used ; another gentleman of Huguenot descent, who pointed out that very few of the papers were read, and that the charge on the revenue would be in- creased by the proposed change, was called a "Boer-hater," while the advocates of the suggestion were described as " Bonds- men " — a satirical reference to members of the Afrikander Bund. Tlie question was raised whether " Mr. Speaker " was to be called in future "Myniieer Speaker," as at present by Dutch members, or "Mynheer Voorzitter." The curious debate ended by the adoption of an amendment, moved by Mr. Hofmeyr, referring the choice of papers to be printed in Dutch to a com- mittee. The anti-Dutch party have denounced Lord Kimberley's changes as retrograde measures, prejudicial to education and to progress, and it is certain that the use of Dutch in Parliament has allowed a somewhat less cultivated body of Dutch farmers to enter its walls than sat there formerly. It does not seem likely, to judge from the e.xperience of the last seven years, that the partial use of Dutch in Parliament will oust the English language from debate, or much impede the spread of English culture. It is possible that some of tlie more backward of the Dutch party supported the use of their tongue in Par- liament iu the hope that Dutch might again become the para- mount language of the colony ; but a concession in this matter is not likely to have any other marked etlect than that of conciliating the powerful Afrikander party. It is not in the Cape as in Quebec, where the English element, trifling even a 284 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART III generation ago, daily becomes proportionally less. In the Cape the English language seems likely to hold its own, and even the conservative Dutch Church is considering the policy of permitting the use of English in its services. Assisted im- migration brings in English people, and while German immi- grants come into the colony in large numbers even without assistance, Hollanders, wlio would be assisted if they would come, decline to do so. " Kitchen It is often said that there are three kinds of Dutch spoken Datoh." in Cape Colony — pure Dutcli, kitchen Dutch, and Hottentot Dutch. Except in the pulpit pure Duteli is rarely heard, iust as pure French in the Channel Islands is almost confined to ecclesiastical use ; and were it not for the Dutch version of the Holy Scrmtures pure Dutch would become extinct in Cape Colony. When leave is given to use a, particular tongue in a fiven place, who is to judoe whether that speech is used 1 ermission to use Dutch in Parliament already covers a Dutch which Hollanders do not recognise. Would permission to use English at Pekin cover "pigeon"? Even in the pulpits of the Cape young ministers who have been educated in Holland find that they lose somewhat of their hold upon their congregations if they address their hearers in language wliich would pass at Leyden. The common speech of the country consists of that which the farmers use in talking to one another — kitchen Dutch — and that in which they speak to their servants — Hottentot Dutch. The Hottentots indeed have no other lan- guage than Hottentot Dutch ; scarcely any trace of their native tongue exists, and their children speak a Dutch dialect as soon as they speak at all. There is a well-known newspaper pub- lished in the colony which claims to be the organ of the Afrik- ander Bund, and it is written in a dialect which is only with difficulty recognised, I am told, as Dutch in Holland. The Dutch Boers are the most conservative community in exist- ence. The backward portion of them sincerely disbelieve in the advantages of education, and their sluggish temperament adds to their indisposition to learn anytliing ; but circum- stances are too strong all the world over for conservatism of this type. The development of the railway system and the opening up of the mineral wealth of South Africa are beginning to shake the supremacy of the Dutch language. There are still constituencies in Cape Colony where a candidate who could speak English only would be cut off from all means of com- munication with the electors ; but, on the other hand, in the Dutch Itepublic of the Transvaal, where Dutch is the only language officially recognised, there are large districts in which the English are in a vast majority over the Dutch. The Afrik- I have two or three times mentioned the Afrikander Bund, ander which is often spoken of in England as though it were an or- Bund. ganisation of disaffection to the British Crown. Its origin, no doubt, dates from a period when the Boers of South Africa, as well within Cape Colony as beyond the Orange River, were ill- OHA)'. I THE CAPE 285 disposed towards British rule ; but the present constitution and aims of the Afrikander Bund are, I thiak, much misrepresented here at home. It must always be remembered that tlie South African Dutch are a peojile of farmers, and tliat the question of English versus Boer is also a question of urban as against agri- cultural population. About 1878 a number of organisations were formed throughout Cape Colony, the object of which was exclusively to watch over the interests of the farmers, and for this purpose to take part in Parliamentary elections. In 1879 an organisation was set on foot which professed to have wider aims, in embracing white South Africans of all callings and of all races, the only avowed qualification of membership being a home feeling for South Africa, combined with a determination to unite to secure the prosperity of the country. In 1880 the organisation received the name of the Afrikander Bund, its chief men at that time being a Dutch clergyman, a Dutch judge in Cape Colony, and a German journalist in the Free State. In the early days of the Afrikander Bund a large proportion of the members sympathised warmly with the revolt of the Transvaal against British annexation, but this feeling wore otfwith peace. Branches wei-e established throughout Cape Colony and the Free State, and in 1882 a congress was held of a hundred dele- gates, which took into consideration among other matters the existence of the sister organisation — the Farmers' Protection Association — side by side with the Afrikander Bund. In 1883 a union between the two bodies was effected, and the association has since grown in strength and is said to number 4000 mem- bers. The Bund was influential in procuring the official use of the Dutch language, and at this moment, as I have said, the Dutch party in the Assembly, under Mr. Hofmeyr, sometimes called "the uncrowned King of the Cape," can make and un- make Llinistries. The present Cabinet contains only one gentle- man of Dutch origin, but it is for all that virtually a Ministry carrying out a "Dutch policy " by the support of Mr. Hofmeyr, and doing so, in my belief, to our advantage. The object of the Afrikander Bund, as explained in one of Objects of the sections of its general constitution, is the formation of a the Band. South African nationality, by means of union and co-operation, as a preparation for the ultimate object — a united South Africa. "The Bund tries to attain this object by constitutional means, giving to the respective Governments all the support to which they are entitled." At the Congress of the Bund in 1888 the President declared that its object was a united South Africa under the British flag ; but at the meeting of 1889, while " united South Africa " was repeated, nothing was said about the flag. The official programme of the national party professes the desire for the establishment of a firm union between the various Euroi^ean nationalities ; proclaims the principle of op- position to outside interference with the domestic concerns of South Africa, and that of religious freedom ; and protests against frivolous interference with the " free influence of the 286 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part in Gospel upon national life," or with the Sunday day of rest, while it insists that in all their actions the Government shall take account of "the Christian character of" the South African people. It must certainly not be supposed that there is now any sharp conflict between tlie Dutch Afrikander Bund and tlie English minority. Tliere are Englishmen who take an active part in the Bund, as there are Englislmien who are elected by Dutch constituencies. There have been from time to time signs that the Bund is desirous of displaying loyalty to the British Crown. During the celebration of tlie Queen's Jubilee in Cape Colony, at no place was the day kept more heartily than at The Paarl, the headquarters of the Bund, where its Dutch news- paper, the Patriot, is published. Every house was illuminated, and a park was presented to the town by public subscription, raised among an almost entirely Boer population. Tlie policy There can, I think, be no doubt that the Afrikander Bund of Sir party is more loyal to British rule at the present time than it Hercules was shortly after the annexation of the Transvaal. The atti- Robiuson. tude of Sir Hercules Kobinson — one of the wisest of colonial governors, to whom injustice was done at liome in May 1889 by the attention called to a garbled report of his farewell speech on leaving Cape Town for home after a rule of nearly (nine years — no doubt conciliated the Dutcli, and the recent policy met with tlie approval of most responsible politicians at the Cape. In so saying I am, as usual, attempting not to indicate my own individual preference, but rather to state colonial facts from a colonial standpoint. The policy of Sir Hercules Robinson was to act as Governor of the Cape on strictly constitutional lines, that is, on the opinion of the Cape Parliament as expressed to him through the Caj)e Ministers, and as High Commissioner for South Africa to act with equal justice towards the three races, and to establish on a broad basis British authority as the paramount power in South Africa. While in Australia tlie coast appears to be more valuable tlian the far interior, the reverse is the case in Africa, and the high healthy plateau to the north of Cape Colony and to the west of the Transvaal seemed to Sir Hercules Eobinson more important than what he called " the fever - stricken mangrove swamps on the east coast, or the sandy waterless fringe on the west." He was favourable to the extension of British influence to the Zambesi, and to the exten- sion of British influence by direct imperial action, but with the intention of gradually bringing tlie territories tlius annexed under colonial government. Sir Hercules Eobinson considers the only possible policy of the future that of handing over the new territories to colonial government so soon as the transfers can be made with justice to tlie natives. The question of time of such transfer he leaves open, and while he thinks the Cape bound in honour to relieve the United Kingdom of an expendi- ture in Bechuanaland from which the British tax-payer can never receive direct return, he does not think it the interest of the Cape to press for the assumption of responsibility in Bechu- CHAP. I THE CAPE 287 analand so long as the Bi'itisli tax-payer chooses to pa}'. Sir Hercules Kobinson considers, however, that interference from honie strengtiiens republican and separatist feeling among colonists, English as well as Dutch, and that a prudent con- tinuation of Ids own policy would cause the past jealousy be- tween the English and the Dutch in South Africa to die away, and South Africa under British rule to prosper. In my own belief the Dutch, under the policy of Sir Hercules Eobinson, would probably become as strong supporters of the British con- jiection as are the Canadian French. Sir Henry Loch will doubtless carry out his predecessor's policy, and, if he does so, there can be no doubt that his popularity will be as great. Tlie recent conversions to the side of the Dutch party have Ch.inge in been remarkable. The present Sprigg Ministry is, as I have tlie Putch shown, warmly supported by Mr. Hofmeyr's following, but Sir policy. Gordon Sprigg during his first administration held views dis- similar from those which prevail at the present time ; and Mr. Khodes, the greatest cajiitalist in South Africa, and Mr. Merri- man have adopted a friendly attitude towards the Dutch. Probably the chief reason whv the Afrikander Bund has become well disposed to British rule is to be found in the impracticable position taken up by President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal with regai'd to the railway question, the Transvaal Government being now pledged to the Delagoa Bay route, to the exclusion of all railway communication with the Cape or Natal until the Lorenzo Marques line is comijlete. The Dutch party in the Cape have been forced by this Transvaal policy to choose be- tween their sentimental feeling for their fellow-Dutchmen in the Transvaal and their commercial interests, and for the iirst time in tlie history of South Africa the urban and agricultural populations of Cape Colony find themselves united by a common bond of interest. In South Africa there are many who say that if Lord Car- Sejiaration narvon had not precipitated the annexation of the Transvaal of offices of against the wish of the majority of the people, and if events Governor had been allowed to take their course, the South African Be- ^^ ^JS'' public would have come as a suppliant to the British Power, Commis- and that a united South Africa would long ago have grown ^'°°^''- up under British rule. Others think that the great existing obstacle to South African unity lies in the office of British High Commissioner for South Africa being in the same hands as the Governorship of the Cape ; and no doubt the paramount position which is thus virtually given to the Cape Ministry may be a cause of jealousy, although I fear that the existence of an official who would of necessity be a roving inspector without a fixed seat of government would be more likely to set the South African Governments at variance than to unite them under one rule. The separation of the two offices would be very difficult to arrange, and would be bitterly resented at the Cape. While the influence of a Dutcli Ministry and Parliament on the extra- colonial territories may be sometimes dangerous when the offices 288 TEOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART III are combined, separation seems impracticable. If the offices were distinct it would be necessary to have different officers, one would suppose, for Basutoland and for Bechuanaland, which are sepa.rated by vast districts over which a single commissioner would have no power, and not even right of passage, although both are reachable from the Cape. Another plan would be to have well-paid Lieutenant-Governors for Basutoland and for Bechuanaland respectively. Free State In tlie Orange Free State there is a good deal of feeling that feeling. jy thoroughly friendly to ourselves. During the lifetime of Sir .John Brand, long the best friend of England in South Africa, the Orange Free btate was more useful to our rule than if it had been directly under our authority. In his time the Government of the Free State were by no means favourable to the action of the Afrikander Bund in their dominions. The President thought it an impernim in imjKrio which had no reason for existence in a free state, and resented the assumptions of its local leader. Opinion in the Free State, even now, by no means universally approves of the policy of the Transvaal, which has had the ellect of postponing the construction of railways through the Orange Biver territory; and although a defensive alliance has been concluded, tlie Free State does not appear greatly to desire tliat complete union with the South African Eepublic which the Transvaal has often urged upon it and which would probably mean the absorption of the smaller republic by the larger. At the Railway and Customs Conference held at the caijital of the Free State in March 1889, and attended by the Cape Prime Minister, Sir Gordon Sprigg, a Customs Union between the Cape of Good Hope and the elder Dutch republic was finally arranged ; and at the dinner which followed. Sir Gordon Sprigg declared that the foundation-stone of South African brotherhood had been laid and the first practical step taken towards South African unity. Railway Generally speaking it will be seen that South Africa is in questions, a transition state, and, when we consider the relations of its various parts, we find reason to doubt the possibility of accurate forecasts of its future until we know for certain what direction tlie ultimate development of the South African railway system will take. Mr. Rhodes's line northwards from the diamond- fields towards Shoshong will soon be commenced, and will run near the Transvaal frontier. The line from Colesberg through the Free State to its centre is now decided on by the Cape and Free State Governments, and is to be made by the Cape, the Free State having rejected President Kruger's suggestions as to who should construct the line. When the railways have crept on towards the frontier of the Transvaal in the neighbourhood of the gold-fields, the attitude of the English population in the South African Eepublic will be a most important factor in the solution of the remaining problems connected with the growth of South African unity. If the neighbourhood of the Transvaal should be reached by a Cape line before the Delagoa Bay route CHAP. I THE GAPE 289 is opened it would become doubtful if the latter would be made at all. In the meantime the only possible policy is the concilia- tion of the Dutch party in the Cape and the Free State, and the conversion of the term '•' Afrikander," from an epithet virtually meaning Boers, to that wider signiiication in which it will embrace all the inhabitants of white race. It must be under- stood, however, that, come what may, we cannot abandon our half-way house to India and Australia at Table Bay and Simon's Bay. The legislative and political peculiarities of the Cape are not Legislative so interesting to ourselves from the experimental point of view peculiar- as are those of the Canadian Dominion and Australasian ities. colonies. The Cape of Good Hope is timid as regards rural local Government, and representation on Divisional Councils is con- fined to owners to the exclusion of occupiers, while Sir Thomas Scanlen and Mr. Orpen do not receive much support in urging that the Cape should legislate, as regards this matter, on the lines which have been followed in our other settlements. The business of irrigation has in Cape Colony been placed under special Boards, and Irrigation Boards can be constituted where- ever tliree or more landowners combine to carry out water- storage works or irrigation. They obtain borrowing and rating powers, and the Government is authorised to assist them with loans of money. Agricultural land is scarce at present, and only T-Jirth part of the land appropriated in holdings is cultivated. As there are, however, irrigated lands within the colony which sell at four thousand times the price which is fetched for pastoral purposes by unirrigated lands in the same immediate neighbourhood, it is seen that the irrigation question is as im- portant as in the Mallee scrub districts of northern Victoi'ia upon the Murray. The main difficulty in the way of Cape irrigation is that the Dutch system of inheritance divides farms into most inconvenient fractions, and is also productive of litigation regarding water rights and easements among a litigious population, so that the creation and smooth working of Irrigation Boards is difiicult. The Cape has an elective Upper House, and a Lower House elected for quinquennial parliaments, and the cumulative vote exists for all elections to the Council, and, in the case of the capital, to the Assembly. Ministers — by a legislative peculiarity of the Cape, unusual in British colonies, but common on the Continent of Europe, and certain to be one day imitated at home if we retain an Upper House — have audience of both Houses, that is, they are allowed to speak in either House, although they can only vote in the House to which they are elected. The electoral franchise is twelve months' residence in the colony in addition to the occupation of property to the value of £25, or tlie receipt of salary and wages of not less than £50 a year, or £25 with board and lodging. There is no special exclusion of alien races from the franchise, and there are a good many coloured electors. It is a peculiarity of the Cape that the electorate is precisely the U 290 rROBLESlS OF GREATER BRITAIN I'Apa' iii same for the two Houses, although the division of constituencies is different. Natives Three years ago there -was a serious controversy over a so- and the called Kegistration Bill, now an Act, which has since had the franchise, effect, and was probably intended to have the effect, of exclud- ing a good many coloured people who would otherwise have enjoyed electoral rights in the colony. Sir Gordon Sprigg, in proposing the Bill, estimated the European population at half the coloured population, and argued that if such measures were not passed, the white vote might one day be swamped by an overwhelming mass of barbarism. The official defence of the Bill was, however, that it was intended to jDut a stop to mal- practices on the part of election agents, who prompted fraud in registration, ancl personation at elections, by bringing on to the register large numbers of natives holding only on tribal tenure, and not entitled to the franchise, inasmuch as they had no individual holdings. On the otlier hand it was argued that the coloured men enfranchised under the law ai-e an industrious class, as well qualified to vote as the analogous class of Europeans. There were at the time supposed to be fourteen seats in the colonial Parliament over which the natives had some influence. One objection of the natives and their friends to the Bill was that the Field-Cornets who have to do the registration work are frequently Dutchmen hostile to the right of the coloured men to vote, but no one lias suggested the meaixs by which a remedy can be applied to a state of things which is in- separable from the general condition of South Africa. Mr. Hutton, who led the opposition to the Bill, sat for a constituency in which the native vote, which was chiefly recorded in his favour, was a most important factor. His enemies declared, indeed, that he sat by the " blanket vote," or suffi-age of the tribesmen. The active and politically minded missionaries are said to have been in the habit of causing the natives to claim the suftVage very freely, even in cases where they were not entitled by the possession of independent property. There was some difficulty in checking illegal registration because of the doubt- ful nature of native names. There are as many Peters and Pauls in parts of black South Africa as there are John Joneses in some Welsh constituencies, and as to the English eye all these Peters and Pauls are much alike, the natives generally pass by canting appellations. It is somewhat difficult to register a voter as "Brandy and Soda " or " Lemon squash," names of the character of those by which the natives are ordinarily known. It is believed by the anti-native party that soTne of the missionaries kept suits of clothes which were handed on from native to native for the purpose of making them presentable as they came up to vote. Mr. Hutton is said to have gone so far as to declare that the Boers of South Africa generally were full of bitter hatred of the native races, and jealous of the immense advance in Christianity OHAP. 1 THE CAPE 291 and education wliicli the natives had lately made ; and that the Colonial Conference had caused the delegates of the Govern- ment of the colony to return with the boast in their mouths that " henceforth the imperial Government was pledged not to interfere with the internal or domestic colonial policy." It was the case that some such promise was given, but it is difficult to see how under free responsible institutions it could have been refused, or how the country is to be governed upon the opposite plan. Local opinion in South Africa is hostile to the admission of the natives on a large scale to equal rights. The Dutch majority look upon the natives as the Israelites looked upon the heathen populations with whom they came in contact in the Holy Land, and the Dutch are never tired of quoting the language of the Old Testament with regard to them. A section of the English are almost equally bitter against the class whom they call "white Kafirs," that is, those who have been brought up among the natives and who take their side in every dispute. There is a good deal of feeling against the missionaries among the English party in South Africa, who charge the missionaries with making money out of the natives by trade. Some colour was given to Mr. Hutton's charges by the Pass Bill of 1889, forcing all natives, however well known, respectable, or wealthy, to obtain passes before they moved about; but the Bill was dropped. The debt of the Cape is twenty-two and a half millions, Tlie Cape which is very high in proportion to the population, and debt and especially high in proportion to the white population ; but the railways. Cape has 1600 miles of Government railways, in addition to which some subsidised railways are being constructed by companies ; so that both her debt and her railway mileage are upon the Australian rather than upon the Canadian scale. Thirteen and a half millions of the Cape debt have been in- curred for Government railway-making. The main line to the diamond-fields is nearly 650 miles long, and will become tlie main line to the north. It had been decided to make the future line branch off by Colesberg to the centre of the Orange Free State — a policy which would benefit Port Elizabeth at the expense of Cape Town — but now both lines are to be made. The Cajje spends less in proportion upon education than do Education, the North American or the Australasian colonies, and education religion, is largely left to sectarian schools. The most powerful of the ™d ™- churches in the colony is the Dutch Eeformed Church, which is niigration. a presbyterian church taking many of her ministers from Scotland, and which claims about 163,000 people ; the Wesleyans coming next with 69,000, and then the Church of England with 68,000. The statistics of the Cape compare un- favourably with those of the chief Australian colonies, and the last census was put off when the time for it came with the idea that in 1891 there would be taken a general census of the British Empire, so that there has been no Cape census since 1875. Assisted immigration into the Cape was stopped in 292 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt hi 1888 and resumed in 1889, the Government following in 1888 the same policy in this matter as prevails in the Australian colonies, but for very different reasons. The Dutch party began to see that their hold upon the colony was being weakened through British immigration, and to grudge the funds for bringing out the British immigrants. An offer was made to bring out Netherlands Dutch as well, but, although an agent of the Cape Government was established in Holland for the purpose, only six families consented to come in the cour.se of a year, of whom four families ended by starting for the United States, and, moreover, the Cape Dutch were not pacified by the proposal inasmuch as they do not like the Hollanders. Finally, however, an English deputation approached Sir Gordon Sprigg and pointed out to him that the Act under which the assisted immigration was carried on had never been repealed, and the result was its resumption for a time. Germans at Tliere is a large German population at the Cape, and if there the Cape, were any conceivable chance of the abandonment of the Cape by the United Kingdom it would be necessary to point out the probability that, but for Australian action, the Germans would take charge of it for us in that event. The soldiers of the German Legion, who were settled by us in South Africa after' the Crimean War, have been responsible for a large amount of the German immigration to that country, as they have gradually brought out their friends. The Germans at the Cape act more with the English than with the Dutch ; but this is partly caused by the fact that they go to the Eastern Province, where the language is English, rather than to the Western Province, where the language and population are Dutch. The Germans mostly land at Port Elizabeth and settle about East London or Queen's Town, or in the parts of Kaffraria to which the Legionaries were sent ; but a good many of them make their way towards the diamond-fields. There is a large German population in Natal. Taxation. There is not in South Africa progressive taxation, graduated Laud legis- according to the amount of property bequeathed, such as lation. exists in most of the Australian colonies; neither are there Labour many direct taxes. There is a house-duty and a hut-tax, but ques ions. ^^ income-tax, property-tax, or land-tax ; and the Boers are strongly opposed to any such taxation. There is no trace of land nationalisation making way, and lands are let on lease with power of purchase, or sold outright at auction. The Cape forms an exception to one colonial rule : white artisans work there side by side with coloured artisans. The coloured handi- craftsmen at Cape Town are principally Malays; but white artisans are taken out as assisted immigrants, and are, indeed, engaged in this country for the Cape at the rate of 9s. a day for a nine-hour day. The eight-hour day has no existence at the Cape ; but the nine-hour day is even more prevalent tlian in Ontario, and the rate of wages, as will be seen, is as high as in Australia, so that 9s. for nine hours replaces 8s. for eight hours as the usual tariff. CHAP. 1 THE CAPE 293 South Africa is enjoying at the present moment a remark- South able growth of prosperity, which may prove permanent. Its Africau main cause is the extraordinary increase in the productiveness prosperity. of the diamond-mines in Cape territory, and of the gold-mines in the Transvaal (which for the present benefit Natal, as yet the chief outlet for the Transvaal trade), and in the yield from wool. The improvement in the position of the South African colonies is affecting their wheat production, and must soon call forth a large production of coal, of which Natal has a magnificent field. Wine -growing has not made the progress in the Cape that it should have done. The Cape began to produce wine a long time ago, but the trade has for some time languished. That occurs with regard to Cape wine and Cape diamonds which happens with Australasian meat: the best kinds of New Zealand and Australian meat are sold in England as English, and the inferior kinds as colonial, to the damage of the Australasian name and trade. So, too, the best kinds of Cape wine are sold in England with European names, and the white Cape diamonds are sold in England as Brazilian, and only the inferior stones as " Cape." The Cape ofi'ers extraordinary advantages in climate and soil for wine- growing ; and CajDe brandy would be good enough, if carefully made, to give at least a chance, looking to the fact that real French brandy is practically not manufactured for, the present, that the Cape product might take its place. In liqueurs the Cape of Good Hope already stands high, and a kind of Cura9oa (made from oranges and Cape brandy) is one of the finest liqueurs in the world. While, however, real brandy and liqueurs command a certain market at a high price, sweet strong wines are a drug in the English market, and the Cape should endeavour to ,send us what are known to the trade as " straight, clean " light wines. Cape grapes already reach England in excellent condition in the early spring when good grapes are dear. There is a future for the fruit trade from South Africa to London, as the South African seasons are the opposite of those of the Mediterranean countries which send us our largest import. Other products in which the Cape is strong are ostrich feathers and copper ore, wool and mohair. As Merivale has pointed out, in climate, soil, and situation the Cape is one of the most favoured countries of the world. The question of intercolonial free trade has as much signifi- Inter- cance in South Africa as in Australia, and is, as I have hinted, colonial closely connected with that of trade routes. The pohcy of the ff^i^ 'ratle. Transvaal is, as it has long been, to adopt the short route to the sea, through Delagoa Bay or Swaziland. On the other hand, Natal struggles, by reduction of duties, to retain the Transvaal trade, and the Cape struggles, by making new railways, to obtain it. In the time of President Brand the Orange Free State in part dissented from the Transvaal Delagoa Bay policy, and agreed with the imperial Government in favouring rail- way communication with the Cape and Natal. Even as late 294 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" paet in as 1888 there was a conference between representatives of the Governments of the Cape, Natal, and the Free State, and they decided upon a customs union between those states, and in- vited the Transvaal to come into the agreement, although it was an agreement really hostile to the Delagoa route. The customs tarifl' of the Cape was high, and though it had been intended mainly as a revenue tarifl^ some of its duties were protective in their operation. The suggestion laid before the conference by Sir Gordon Sprigg was, that the Cape and Natal should establish a uniform tariff of 12 per cent against the outside world, retain a uniform transit charge of 3 per cent on articles passing through either colony, and hand over 9 per cent to the Governments of the inland republics on articles consumed in them, provided that these republics should levy an equivalent duty on articles imported by any other route, the latter proviso being, of course, intended to prevent diver- sion to Delagoa Bay of the trade of Cape and Natal ports. The same policy was to be applied to British Bechuanaland and to Basutoland as that suggested for the republics. At the conference one of the Natal delegates, Mr. Seymour Haden, Colonial Secretary, moved that there should be free trade between the colonies and the states included in the customs union, under certain limitations, in respect of all South African products. A tariff, proposed by Mr. Hofmeyr, was then agreed to, with an ad valorem duty of 12 per cent upon goods not enumerated in the tariff. It was finally decided that the im- porting states should jsay over three-fourths of the customs to the internal states. The general effect of the customs arrange- ment would have been to raise the low duties of the Natal tariff, in consequence of the refusal of the Cape to lower theirs. The Orange Free State delegates, after the decision on the tariff had been come to, insisted on the conference on railways being made a separate conference, and they handed in fresh credentials in order to place it on record that the Free State would not undertake any railway construction unless first in receipt of a share of customs duties. The proposals of the Orange Free State with regard to railways were tlien accepted, as against the alternative scheme submitted by Cape Colony. An Act was passed by the Cape to carry out the agreement, but Natal failed to confirm the action of her representatives, and has since lowered instead of raising duties. The result of the refusal of Natal to come into the customs arrangement to which her delegates had agreed is, that the Free State is bound to try to set up custom houses against Natal and to throttle her trade. It is doubtful whether the Free State will be able to maintain such machinery, or really wishes to do so, and it must be remembered in considering this question that tliere has always been free trade in practice, although not in the eye of the law, upon the South African land frontiers. The difficulties of guarding them by custom houses are too great, on frontiers of such vast extent, for the finances and the military and police CHAP. I THE CAPE 295 forces of any of the countries in question. Nevertheless, I fancy that Natal will ultimately come in, and will adopt the higher or Cape scale of duty, though for the moment she is reducing her duties all round. In the meantime the Free State is apparently intending to play false to the Cape by encourag- ing imports from Natal, for otherwise it is difficult to see why she should have agreed with Natal at a later date in 1889 for the construction of a Natal railway to Harrismith in the Orange State. The jjresent position of the republics towards the Cape is, Position then, a very curious one. The republics themselves are united by of the treaty for defence, and probably for some otlier purposes by a republics secret understanding. On the other hand, the i ree State has towaals come into customs union with the Cape from 1st July 1889, the tlie Cajje. Free State gaining money by the arrangement, and the colony gaining the right to make railways as far as Bloemfontein, the capital and centre of the Free State. The South African Eepublic has, however, bound tlie Free State not to allow Cape railways to be made through the Free State to the Transvaal frontier, and declares it will keep the gold-mines trade in the hands of the transport riders until the Delagoa Bay line is made. The Transvaal itself will not come into the customs agreement, refusing absolutely, since our unfortunate annexation of the country, to agree to any British proposals of any kind whatever. The Act upon the subject of the customs union which passed Customs tlie Cape legislature was assented to at home, but was not at union first proclaimed because of a difl'erence of oijiuion between the between Foreign Office and the Colonial Office upon the question, the the Cape Colonial Office wishing for full assent, and the Foreign Office '"I'i U'^ pointing out that the Act violated the most-favoured-nation ^'■^^^'^t'^- clause of our own treaties. There was indeed a kind of pre- cedent in the case of Servia, where Servia had been allowed, but only after remonstrance, to grant to Austria, over a land frontier, a treatment more favourable than that which she accorded to us, though we had a most-favoured-nation clause in our Servian treaty ; there was a precedent as between Russia and China, and there was a partial precedent in the relations at one time between Canada and the United States, besides others to which I shall presently allude. Finally, the Foreign Office and Board of Trade gave way to the Colonial Office and the Act was sanctioned. The Cabinet, I believe, took the view that there is a distinction to be drawn between inland frontiers and sea frontiers in this matter, and that we were hardly justified in the complaints that we had addressed to Russia, Servia, and other powers with regard to special facilities for land-frontier traffic in articles the actual produce of the countries inter- changing them. Our Servian treaty of 1880, however, contained ■a distinct proviso allowing Servia to maintain arrangements with Austria as regarded local traffic in conterminous districts. There has lately been a constant attemjat on the part of various powers to extend tlie doctrine of the permissibility of special 296 PROBLEMS OF GREATEE BRITAIN pakt hi arrangements for local traffic between conterminous districts in spite of general most-favoured-nation clauses. The word which we render " conterminous " is the diplomatic word " limi- trophe," and it must be noted that Russia has been trying to extend the "limitrophe" doctrine to the trade between Kussia and Japan, asserting that the two countries were in this position ; to which our Foreign Office objected, but urged that if indeed Kussia and Japan were to be held "limitrophe," then Great Britain and Japan were " limitrophe " owing to the geographical jjosition of Vancouver Island ! Cases in It should also be remembered that, as I liave shown, althougli Avhicli the Government at home have allowed the customs union customs between the Free State and the Cape, they prevented some unions years ago a proposed reciprocity treaty between some of the have not West -India Islands and the United States. Correspondence been ^yj^g ]g^jj| before Parliament in 1885 with reference to these sanctioned, discussions which had taken place in 1884, and it shows that the United States began by making or proposing treaties which would have conceded to the Sandwich Islands, to Mexico, to Central America, to the Spanish West Indies, and to San Dom- ingo terms of trade more favourable than those conceded to the British West Indies, and we proceeded to ask for most-favoured- nation treatment for the British West Indies. The Americans contended that their treaties named did not affisct most-favoured- nation clauses. This was no answer to our request, and it was not true in fact ; but our then Minister at Washington failed to see that it was no answer, and accepted the statement as true — a curious example of diplomatic shortcoming. The Americans in their rejoinder, however, opened the question of a customs union with the West Indies, and they quoted the Canadian Eeciprocity Treaty of 1854 as a case in point. Tlie conclusion of a West Indian Treaty was favoured by the Colonial Office, and the Foreign Office at once asked the Colonial Office whether the Colonial Office meant that Ameri- can goods were to be admitted into the British West Indies on terms more favourable than those granted to British goods. A limited treaty was then suggested, by which West Indian sugar M'ould have gone into America duty free or with a great reduc- tion of duty, the colonies abolishing import duties on a number of articles imported from the United States. This was met by the Americans with a counter -project on a larger scale. In February 1885 Lord Granville declined to accept the American jjroposals. This was done on the advice of the commercial department of the I'oi-eign Office as well as on the advice of the Board of Trade, on the ground that the proposals would consti- tute an infraction of the most-favoured-nation-clause treaties. The position of the Americans is, as tliey liave sliown in tlie language which they have used to the Government of Hawaii, that concessions granted conditionally and for a consideration cannot be claimed under the most-favoured-nation clause. While in tlie case of the West Indian treaty the Colonial CHAP. I THE CAPE 297 Office was beaten by the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade, in the case of the Cape and Orange Free State treaty the Colonial Office appears to have beaten the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade, and the most-favoured-nation principle has received a shock. It has, however, previously been held that complete freedom of trade rests on a different footing from mere reduction of duties, and there have no doubt been i)reced- ents for allowing, without protest, countries to abolish custom houses upon their land frontiers, and to permit goods, the pro- duce of other independent countries, to come in free in return for similar facilities. In the case of the Cape of Good Hope and the Free State land frontiers are alone in question, and the goods to be imported from the Free State are the produce of the Free State, except so far as in some degree they may consist of the jjroduce of the Transvaal, or of Natal goods smuggled in as Transvaal produce. The Orange State has no port, and it would be a roundabout course to send products of the Free State to the sea for shipment to the Cape. The whole question of the effect of most-favoured-nation Customs clauses is a difficult one. The old English view upon the subject union, was fully stated in the despatch of the 12th of February 1885 "Most- signed by Lord Granville, which was tlie production of the favoured- commercial department of the Foreign Office, on the advice of "j^''™ the Board of Trade, adopted without change and as a matter '^'^'i^'^''- about which there could be no question. It simply contended for a strict construction of the most-favoured-nation clause as the most valuable part of the whole international system of commercial treaties, carrying in it simplicity of tariff and ever- increasing freedom of trade. These doctrines we urged, as has been seen, with much effect against a narrow view of tlie mean- ing of most -favoured -nation clauses put forward in recent times by the United States under the pressure of protectionist opinion, and entirely opposed to their own doctrine of forty or fifty years ago. The exigencies, however, of the position of our own Government in reference to the unfortunate penal clause of the Sugar Bounty Bill forced them to give an answer in the House of Commons, through the mouth of Sir Michael Beacli, which has greatly weakened the effect of our most-favoured- nation clauses by seeming, to careless foreign readers, to imply that we had given up our own view and adopted that put forward by the United States. Much strained and false interpretation of most-favoured- nation clauses has arisen from ill-considered legislation. Bills are drawn by draughtsmen, and assented to by heads of depart- ments, imperfectly acquainted with the treaties of their own country, and after the Bills have been shown it is difficult to induce Governments to confess that they have approved of measures discovered to be in violation of international com- pacts. Having had myself to conduct the objections raised by us to breaches of the most -favoured -nation principle against our treaties, by Venezuela in 1881 and by Russia in 1882, as 298 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part hi well as to obtain the opinion, of the law officers upon this subject as regards favours granted by China to Russia in 1882, I may perhaps attach undue importance to a subject to which I have given much time. No doubt Commercial Unions rest upon a diU'erent footing from other arrangements witli regard to trade. There are customs unions of territories under diii'erent sovereigns in a large number of cases, for example between France and Monaco, between British India and Portuguese India, between the Austrian Empire and the Italian Kingdom respectively and little states contained within them, as well as the arrangements in Germany under one general sovereignty. Foreign powers do not object in the case of India to the free admission of Portuguese Indian produce into British India, and it has now become usual to admit without question customs unions established on the basis of a common customs frontier as regards foreign nations, and tlie suppression of the customs frontier as regards the states forming the Union. It is, however, to the interest of this country to support most-favoured-nation clauses in the most binding form, ancl every proposal to weaken their obligation should be narrowly scrutinised by all who have the commercial prosperity of the country at heart. The rela- To return to the relations of the Dutch republics with each tious of the other, and with the Cape, it must be admitted that the Trans- Dutch vaal always appears to take a singularly blustering line when "^"■'t, ti ^ dealing with the Free State. In the treaty of defensive alliance ^' '^ between the two republics the Transvaal binds itself to make °''^^' no railroad except the Delagoa Bay railroad unless in consulta- tion with the Free State, — a ridiculous stipulation, looking to the fact that the Transvaal had already spent a large sum on subsidies to the Lorenzo Marques route, and was pledged in the strongest terms, under a fine of two millions sterling, not to allow any other railway to be made. On the other hand, the Free State was forced by the South African Republic to bind itself to make no railroad, with the exception of the extension of the Cape lines as far as Bloemfontein, already arranged for, unless in consultation with the Transvaal, — a stipulation of a very diflferent kind, inasmuoli as the hands of the Orange State were free but for this stipulation, and her interest lay in constructing railways. The Free State has since, as I have said, encouraged Natal to make a railway as far as Harrismith, and the Transvaal already complains that this is a violation of the treaty between the two republics. President Paul Kruger has gone far indeed in asserting that he will not allow any railway line to be made to the Transvaal except tliat by Delagoa Bay, and it is probable that even the Dutch party which is behind Sir Gordon Sprigg will hesitate to try to prevent, at the dictation of the Transvaal Dutch, Mr. Rhodes, tor example, from making the Bechuanaland line towards the Transvaal frontier as a private enterprise. Sir Gordon Sprigg liimself is now pledged to allow this line to be made. Tlie memorandum of agreement between the Delagoa Bay CHAP. I THE CAPE 299 railway company and two other companies, for working the The Deia- line from Delagoa Bay to the Transvaal, was a curious docu- goa Bay ment. It was dated the 28th March 1889, and contemplated railway the construction of a line, in connection with the Delagoa Bay liestion. route, across the Transvaal to the gold-fields in twenty-seven months. The whole of the agreement falls to the ground if any other railway shall cross the Transvaal frontier before this line is finished across the country, and the agreement goes on^ " If the Transvaal Government or the Netherlands Raihvay, or any other company, shall build or allow to be built any railway, tramway, canal, or other line of conveyance in competition with the Lonren90 Marques, or Netherlands Railway, prior to the Netherlands Railway being completed to Pretoria or Johannesburg, then this agreement may be de- clared void by the Louren90 Marques Company. "The Netherlands South African Railway bmds itself to pay to the Lourenfo Marques Railway, as liquidated damages, the sum of £2, 000, 000 sterling, if any railway, tramway, or other mode of conveyance, with or without the sanction of the State, be built during the existence of this agreement to meet any Natal or Bechuanaland Raihvay or Railways, and this agreement shall not be final until the Government of the South African Republic shall in a proper and legal form guarantee to the Lourenjo Marques Railway that in default of the Netheriands Railway paying the damages it (the Transvaal Government) will pay the said sum of £2,000,000 to the Louren90 Marques Company if any line of railway be constructed in the Transvaal, or from any point in the Transvaal, to meet, join, assist, or give entrance to any railway coming from Natal or Bechu- aualand." How the Delagoa Bay Company were to get their two mil- lions, if President Kruger should fail to keep his word, did not appear. Supposing that the ruler of the South African Re- public should see his interest in coming to terms with ILc. Rhodes, and should make a connection with the Bechuanaland line, he will simply say to the Delagoa Bay Company that he is very sorry, that politics have their exigencies, and that he must leave them to their remedy. It is this agreement, extraordin- ary in its nature as will be seen, which the Transvaal Govern- ment has been forcing on Sir Gordon Sprigg through the Free State, and it now remains to be seen wliether the clear interests of the Cape will guide the Cape Dutch to support the Bechu- analand line against the Transvaal, or whether their political sentiment with regard to their race will overcome their per- sonal interest in the Bechuanaland line towards the gold-fields. It is a case of breeches-pocket versus sentiment, and I doubt tlie Cape Boers supporting President Kruger against their undoubted interest. The position of the Cape is interesting for very different Necessity reasons from those which make that of Australia interesting, for holding There is not much probability of South Africa becoming the t'l^ Cape. home of a British population as powerful as that which will inhabit the Australian continent; but, on the other hand, the military position of the Cape is of vital importance to the 300 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt in Empire, and the political problems which the Cape presents ai'e of the liighest moment. The Cape is our half-way house, the loss of wliich would be almost fatal to our Indian Empire and our China trade. In any general war in which France is against us the whole of our Eastern and Australian trade must go round the Cape, inasmuch as even an immense superiority in our fleet and an absolute blockade of the great French ports would not make the Mediterranean safe for trade. As we must hold Table Bay and Simon's Bay, and have a dockyard and a military station there, we must hold some portion of South Africa behind them — that portion which in one sense depends upon, and in another sense controls, Cape Town: hence it is impossible for us to adopt the same policy, in a military and naval sense, with regard to South Africa that we can adopt with regard to the Australian colonies. It is, indeed, impos- sible for us to allow the Cape, even if we could conceivably allow Natal and Bechuaualand, to fall into a republican system in which they would be grou)3ed with the Dutch republics as foreign countries, like tlie Free State, or countries virtually foreign like the Transvaal. On the other hand, to say this is not to assume that those are right who would attempt to enter upon the impossible task of overruling and thwarting the Dutch majority. Our statesmanship must be shown, not in retaining the Dutch by force, but in remaining upon good terms with tliem. Germany. One difficulty in the way is the presence of Germany in South Africa. The annexation in an unfriendly spirit, accord- ing to Lord Derby's words, of Damaraland and Northern Namaqualand has not closed the questions at issue between the Governments in this part of the continent. There is a strip of 40 miles of desert which runs all along the German South African coast, behind which the land rises, and there is to be found that line climate which prevails in Bechuanaland, the Orange Kiver Free State, and a portion of the Transvaal. It is in fact a habitable country, rich in minerals, but with a desert fringe along the coast ; and to this country, which Germany wishes to keep, without spending money upon it, against the day when it becomes useful, there is no access except by way of Walfisch Bay (officially spelt Walwich, no one knows why, as "Walfisch" means whale), which is British terri- tory and has been annexed to the Cape. The Germans natur- ally desire to acquire Walfisch Bay, or at all events a sufficient part of it to allow of the making of a road to the interior. This the Cape Government decline to cede. Walfisch Bay is practically the only port on the whole enormous coast which gives access to the interior, and there is a considerable trade in cattle to tlie coast. In the spring of 1889 the Germans had trouble with the natives, and many of the former were forced to take refuge at Walfisch Bay. Her Majesty's Government wish to give way to Germany in this matter, but the Cape, liaving spent money at Walfisch Bay, and knowing tliat the CUAP. I THE CAPE 301 German territory is useless to Gerniany without it, will con- tinue to refuse. M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, speaking, for France, lias said that "the planting of the German flag at Angra Pequena ... is a protest against the anglicisation of the whole world." But the peojale of the Cape naturally do not like Iiaving the protest made alongside of and round their terri- tories in South Africa any more than the Queenslanders like a similar German protest in New Guinea. The German chartered company is said to be in a bankrupt condition, and it is a significant fact that the recent charter to the company formed by Mr. Khodes contains no boundary on the west, so that it is open to him to buy out the Germans if he can. While there has been a certain recent growth of pro-Dutch The Mao- feeling among the English politicians at the Cape, there has kenzie been a growth of a somewhat contrary feeling among poll- iwlicy. ticians at home, and the late Mr. W. E. Forster and Mr. Chamberlain, who seldom agreed upon any subject, were for many years in unison in supjjorting views which have been powerfully put forward by the Kev. John Mackenzie. The base of the opinion of this gentleman is that England alone is able to impose peace upon the Boers and blacks. The sign of the ditt'erence between two policies is to be found in the question of the separation or union of the offices of High Com- missioner and of Governor of the Cape, and still more in the view taken of the proposed cession of British Bechuanaland to the Cape. A meeting was held in London in 1888 at which many Englishmen known in connection with South African affairs gave general support to Mr Mackenzie's views : but Sir Henry de Villiers, the Chief Justice of the Cape and one of the most distinguished of her politicians, strongly opposed the con- clusions of the lecturer, and quoted against them the opinion of Lord Derby and of Lord Carnarvon. Mr. Chamberlain, who presided, shrank from the decision to separate the High Com- missionership from the Governorship of _ the Cape of Good Hope, and indeed stated it to be his own view that if the posts were to be again combined in the hands of a strong man, the combination might be the wisest course, a policy which was followed by the Government in 1889 when they appointed Sir Henry Loch. In all this doubt and difference that which is clear is, that it is of paramount importance to the Empire that our military position at the Cape should be secure, and that to secure it we must be on good terms with the Cape Dutch. With regard to Cape Defences : after a long controversy Cape the fortifications have been built by the colony, but here, as Defence,?, elsewhere, the guns which are to come from home have not yet been supplied. There is a volunteer force, chiefly English, and a burgher force, or militia, chiefly Dutch. The men, whatever their wealth or rank, are paid but 4s. 6d. a day when called out for native wars. The law of general com- pulsory service has fallen into disuse except for native wars : but in the event of any serious struggle in which the United 302 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Tlie posi- tion an improving one. Social and natural features. Divergen- cies be- tween tlie Cape and Australia. Social condition. Literature. Kingdom might be engaged, the Governor of the Cape would no doubt be advi,sed by his Ministry to issue the proclamation necessary to put the existing Act in force, and in the course of some months a large local army would doubtless be equipped. Unfortunately, however, great wars in future are likely to spring up suddenly, and insufficient time to be given us for such preparation, and it cannot be said that, looking to the importance of the position, the present garrison of the southern portion of the colony is sufficient. On the whole, when we consider the extraordinary difficulties of the South African situation, and the terrible perplexities in which Soutli Africa has involved home Governments in the last twelve years, we shall see that the position at the Cape is an improving one, and that there is ground for a sense of relief in the comparison between the present situation and that of a few years ago. Eace feeling is quieting down, and if the colony were left to itself, without pressure from liome, would soon disappear. I have already indicated my belief — which I am happy to say has now become that of Lord Carnarvon, who certainly at one time was under very different influences — in the prudence and moderation of the dominant party at the Cape. There are great divergencies of social features as well as of natural features witliin the limits of Cape Colony. Although that state is small as compared with South Australia, or Western Australia, yet it lias much more variety. In one point indeed there is uniformity throughout the Cape — the climate is beautiful and healthy — but in every other respect Cape Town differs greatly from the Diamond Fields, and the most Dutch parts of the Western Province differ as widely from Grahamstown and from the English parts of the Eastern Province. There is a certain want of life about Cape Colony as compared with Victoria and some others of our young Australian States. The air of smiling prosperity, which, with its vine-clad slopes of Wynberg and Constantia, Cape Town wears under a cloudless sky of blue, when examined closely has an underlying sense of desolation in the small amount of shipping and of trade as compared with that of Melbourne or of Sydney. The emptiness of Table Bay since the opening of the Suez Canal means, of course, a diversion, not a cessation, of trade, and makes less difference to South Africa itself than it seems to do ; and if Cape Town looks a little dead, Port Elizabeth or Algoa Bay is a bustling roadstead. The social condition of South Africa is full of incongruities caused by the remarkable admixture of races which prevails tiirougliout that land. Large portions of the agricultural districts are wholly Dutch. The seaport towns are chiefly English and Malay, the Malays being employed as artisans. Jubilee taverns, Wesleyan chapels, and Young Men's Christian Associations mingle with Malay and Indian mosques in the towns, while in the country districts, generally speaking, a CHAP. I THE CAPE 303 Dutch farming population is surrounded by South African black and Hottentot servants. The literature of the Cape is mainly of English importation, and the best representative of the imported school is Mr. Eider Haggard, who has written both a romance and a political book about the Transvaal and its neighbourhood. The Dutch literature is unimportant ; the English newspapers are as able as those of Australia, notably the Cajpe limes and the Cape Argus. With the exception of Mr. Theale's admirable histories of the Boers, the only great literary work which has proceeded from the Cape is by a lady, who, I believe, is of mixed English and Miss German parentage, and has no Dutch blood although connected Sclireiner. by marnage with the President of the Free State. The Story of an African Farm has made the name of Olive Schreiner known throughout the novel-reading and jpublishing worlds ; and I believe that tlie authoress has been wooed by many of those rulers of English men of letters wlio desire to publish her future books. These, to our loss, she carefully guards, and will neither show nor issue to the public ; but the genius which marks her story cannot but prompt other efforts of a maturer pen. In The Stonj of an African Farin we have one of those works which stand out for ever in the minds of any who have read them. The picture of South African scenery given is not superior to the pictures of Australian scenery given by Mrs. Campbell Praed ; the accui'acy and trueness to life of the colonial characters are not superior to those qualities exhibited in " Tasraa's " Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill ; but the insight into the child life of those who have been nurtured only upon the Bible is to my mind one of the greatest efforts in all the held of literature, and this simple story deserves to stand upon the same level as the Mill on the Floss itself. Certainly it is impossible for any one who i.s acquainted with The Story of an African Farm to maintain that the colonies do not send us literature. There is no Cape Dutcli literature, and the Puritan French of South Africa have not helped to build up South African letters in the way in which the Catholic Frencli of Canada have assisted in the creation of Canadian literature. In some points, of course, there are close resemblances in Eesera- Soutli Africa to the Australian colonies. The " remittance blances to men " hang about the banks for their monthly or weekly Australia. doles punctually paid by relatives at home on condition that they never revisit their mother-land. The Cape Parliament has one of those handsome buildings, arranged in close imitation of St. Stephen's, which interest British politicians on their travels throughout the British world. Botanical gardens, as beautiful as those of Australia, display magnificent foliage in lovely scenery and remind the traveller of Sydney ; while notice-boards as to Sunday closing and tlie forbidding of smoking recall Melbourne. Where the prohibition of careless smoking is evaded, bush fires rage in South Africa in the 304 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN i'Art iu summer months as they rage throughout Australia, and the smoke throws a pall over the country as it does in the dry continent of the South Seas. Compared with the British buildings of Cape Town, Government House is an ordinary Dutch homestead, of cramped dimensions as an official resi- dence for tlie exalted being who is both Governor and High Commissioner, and it forms a singular contrast to the magnificent palace of the Governor of Victoria. Cape Town, like Sydney and Melbourne, in the latter part of a summer's afternoon is a city of the dead, and its inhabitants, merchants and clerks alike, mount the hill to their suburban liomes. The Cape Town world lives on the richly wooded slopes at the back of Table Mountain, a mountain which must have been so described only by those who had not seen much of the interior of South Africa, where many of the mountains are talkie mountains of a very similar type. The suburban district is served by a short line of railway wliicli dates from before the time when railways were taken into Government hands, and such is the popularity of the neighbourhood it serves that the traffic upon this suburban line resembles in scale that of our Metropolitan Railway. A complaint is made by the country districts that their members, as soon as they are returned to Parliament, become residents of Claremont or of Wynberg, and lose all touch with their constituencies and with the local feeling of their electors. The Governor himself lives in the suburbs during the summer, and comes in by train eacli day to transact business at Government House. Cajje Town society is refined and unpretentious. The villas which line the red roads round Table Mountain are comfortable small houses of a Dutch domestic type, in shape similar to the verandali- surrounded houses of Australia, but on a smaller scale. The costly equipages of Australia are wanting, and there are no lavish entertainments given, tliough there is no place in the world wliere there is more quiet hospitality appropriate to moderate means. Of lai-ge fortunes there are few, for the diamond discoveries have not brought much money into Cape Town, and in the days when fortunes were made in the southern portion of the colony the makers of them did not remain in South Africa to spend them. Some wealthy miners have, however, recently settled at Wynberg. Tlie The contrast, as I have said, between Cape Town and the Diamond Diamond Fields is great. A weekly express with sleeping and Fields. dining arrangements is run from the old capital to the diamond city, and all Cape Town turns out to see it start, the names of the passengers being given the next day in the newspaper in the same way as the lists of the passengers by the English mail. The train is leisurely, but more comfortable than the equally slow trains of India. The old Dutch towns of the Western Province are picturesque ; the pass is romantically beautiful, and then the train runs into the Great Karroo, an apparent desert, really producing wool, exactly like the sheep- CHAP. I THE CAPE 305 bearing solitudes of Australia. The diamond town of Kimberley is still a, huge aggregation of shanties traversed by tramways and lit by electric light, but the South African diamond miners and gold winners are by no means a rough community, and contain among them many men of cultivation thoroughly alive to the comforts of civilisation, who live well and keep up excellent clubs, although there are no amenities of life, unless we may count race meetings, wliich are, I fear, chiefly popular because they provide varied forms of gambling twice a year. The diamond-fields and the gold-fields belong in some re- The spects to the ugly side of modern life, whereas the old towns of tlie Western Western Province and the vine country about Stellenbosch are Province, delightfully and characteristically seventeenth-century Dutch. Stellenbosch derives its name from a combination of that of Governor Van der Stell, who was Governor when the Huguenots came in after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and that of his wife Constantia Bosch, whose Christian name has become celebrated also through the finest sweet wine of tlie world. Stellenbosch counts as a sort of university town, famed for the magnificent oak-trees which line its streets as they do those of many of the other old Dutch towns. Behind them tlie windows of the quaint Dutch houses are closed with green shutters in the afternoon hours when everybody is asleep, for the after- noon sleep is a feature of D.utch colonial life in all parts of the world. At the palace of the Governor-General of the Dutch Indies at Buitenzorg in Java one says "good-night" at one o'clock, after a heavy breakfast ; and even the footfall of the sentries ceases to be heard till five, for they pile arms and also go to sleep. As in Java so in South Africa. The Afrikander race, whetlier of Dutch, of French, of British, or of German blood, takes life easily, and refuses to regard it as a struggle in which the acquisition of wealth is the chief aim. A competency suificient to allow the drinking of coffee and the smoking of a pipe in a verandah is often the limit of Afrikander ambition, and the lovely climate is possibly in part responsible. When the British have inhabited New South Wales for two centuries, or two centuries and a half, it is possible that some such phenomena may be seen there as are presented by the mixed people — a fine God-fearing people in it's way — of tlie Cape. The Eastern Province, which contains Port Elizabeth and The Grahamstown, with many other noted jjlaces, is less Dutcli. Eastern Port Elizabeth — unfortunate in being open to tlie full sweep of Province, the Indian Ocean when the wind is in the wrong quarter — boasts itself to be one of the most English centres of population of South Africa. Some of its public buildings are creditable to it, and its society is that of a prosperous provincial mercantile community. Its friends call it the Liverpool of South Africa, although its physical resemblances to Liverpool do not lie upon the surface. Grahamstown, the city of tlie British settlers of 1820, is more familiarly known in the colony as the City of the X 306 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Good gov- ernment. Coal and ocean routes. Saints, by reason of the multiplicity of sects to be found ^ in it. After the European peace, and in consequence of the distress whicli prevailed in England, Parliament voted a large sum of money for carrying a number of emigrants to what was then the frontier between Cape Colony and native territory. About five thousand persons were selected from all classes of society, and to every party of a hundred families was given the virtual right of selecting a minister of any denomination. The im- migrants landed at Algoa Bay and founded Bathurst, but the trade of the district gradually centred about Grahamstown, which is the most English town of South Africa and the only town of importance which does not contain a Dutch church. The Eastern Province to some extent retains its English characteristics, but even in that Province there is a good deal of want of enterprise. There are, perhaps, more cattle in South Africa in jaroportion to population than anywhere else in the world, except in the Argentine Kepublic and in Queens- land, but there is an import of tinned meat ; and although fruit rots upon the trees, there is an import of jam, while even butter and milk are also brought into the country. Though there is good timber in portions of South Africa, American wood is still imported ; and the Cape certainly stood in great need of the quickening process which has been begun by the discovery of diamonds and of gold. Amid all the political storms which have raged on the South African continent — both in the old days, and then (after a quarter of a century of comparative peace) in the years which followed the departure for Cape Town of Sir Bartle Frere — the Government of Cape Colony has been steady and good. The Cape has absorbed large districts, and governed them on the whole not ill. We may hope that peace is now secured. We know that race-feeling is subsiding, and we may believe that the railway which is once more being pushed forward will bring the whole of the South African States into closer friendship. Instead of four separate lines running up into the interior from four separate ports, we shall soon see a junction of the whole of the British railroad system of South Africa. Railway extension will do much to unify South Africa — linking the older Dutch republic with both the Eastern and Western Provinces of the Cape and with Natal, and giving the Free State people a choice of port. The coal deposits of Natal will be made more available by the junction of the railways, and we shall see a clearer im- perial interest in the retention of Natal under all circumstances than was the case before the discovery of her coal. The horrible failures of South African policy since 1878 will be forgotten lilce a bad dream, and there will follow a wholesome friendly rivalry between the Dutch republics and the British South African State or States. One difficulty in the way of all decisions as to the future of various colonies is caused by a doubt as to the permanency of the commercial use of coal. The strides which are being made OHAP. I THE CAPE 307 in electrical discovery, and the possible future use of water- power for the production of the electric force, are disturbing causes of which it is impossible as yet to estimate the probable eftect. Commercial supremacy may pass from the coal-pro- ducing countries to the petroleum-producing countries ; it is Possible that it may pass to the countries of water-power, n the latter case New South Wales, Queensland, and New Zealand will lose the advantages which they possess over the other portions of Australia ; and the United States will gain at the expense of all our colonies. Time alone can show ; but in the event of the outbreak of a general war, before any such great scientific change has occurred, the Natal stores of coal must inevitably aifect the value of our principal ocean route and of our half-way house in South Africa. It is certain that British interests in the Cape can never be forgotten ; that while a general hostility to our rule would be sufiicient to make us part with almost any other colony, it is impossible for us to give up the military station which we occupy at the extremity of the African continent, and which itself cannot be held unless we hold at all events a portion of the country round it. During the convict troubles the attempt was made by us to hold the Cape peninsula by force, but we were starved out, and it became clear that it was impossible to maintain ourselves upon it without the friendship of the colonists. So it would be again, and it is certain that Simon's Bay and Table Bay cannot be secure by themselves, and must continue to involve us in South African responsibilities. CHAPTEE II SOUTH AFKICA Places in- The phrase " The South African Colonies " includes not only eluded ill the old colonies of the Cape and Natal, but Basutoland, which the phrase is now a Crown Colony ; British Bechuanaland, which is a " South Crown Colony ; Zululand, which is a kind of Crown Colony or African ^^ dependency of Natal; and more or less defined protectorates Colonies, over central Bechuanaland and part of Pondoland ; the little colony of St. Helena (Ascension being governed by the admiralty, and considered as a. man-of-war, and Tristan d'Acunha looking after itself), as well as a "sphere of in- fluence " in Northern Bechuanaland, extending northwards at least up to the Zambesi. Cape Colony governs the Transkei, which forms the greater portion of that which was formerly known as Kaffraria, and Griqualand West, which it has annexed. Walfisch Bay, as has been seen, is also governed by the Cape, although situate in the middle of the German protectorate, and much farther north than the Portuguese Delagoa Bay on the other coast. I do not class the South African Republic among colonies, although we shall have to discuss its position later on. Their forms It is unnecessary to say much of the island of St. Helena, of govern- which has a curious Government, the Executive Council con- raent. sisting of the Bishop, the oiScer commanding the trooiDs, and two other members appointed by the Crown, for, as the Queen legislates for tlie island by Order in Council and tlie Governor by ordinance, and as the consent of the Council is not necessary to legalise enactments, the constitution of the Council does not much matter to any one. Basutoland is governed by the High CommissionerforSouth Africa through a Resident Commissioner, the High Commissioner possessing legislative authority, which he exercises by proclamation ; and there is a certain shadow of truth in the statement often made that when the Governor at the Cape is also High Commissioner he acts in the Cape on the advice of his Ministers, and outside the Cape on the advice of the leaders of the Opposition. It would probably be of advanta.ge, and be worth the extra cost, to pay such salaries to the resident commissioners through whom the High Commis- sioner's authority is exerted as would invariably conni^and the OHAP. 11 SOUTH AFRICA 309 services of first-class men. British Beclmanaland is under the Governor of the Cape as Governor of the territory of British Beohuanaland, and this Governor appoints an officer as Adminis- trator and Chief Magistrate as well as president of the Land Commission, and under his powers as High Commissioner has appointed the same officer Deputy Commissioner for the Beohuanaland and Kalahari protectorate. Legislation is by proclamation. In some parts of British Beohuanaland elective divisional councils have been created, under the provisions of Cape laws, made applicable by proclamation. We shall come presently to Natal, and to Zululand which is under the Governor of Natal. The whole of British South Africa, unless it is held to include Lobengula's country, and the "sphere of influence" up to the Portuguese settlement on the Zambesi, is small. On the 1st of August 1888 we informed the South African Kepublic that we regarded this Lobengula country as being within the sphere of exclusively British interest, but it is a curious fact that the telegram was wilfully omitted from the Blue-book which came up to 27th August of that year. By a charter of the 29th October 1889 the district appears to be assigned, how- ever, to the British South Africa Company. South Africa is small when compared with the vast a.reas of Character Canada and Australia. The Cape, with the Transkei and of these Griqualand West, is not much larger than France. British colonies. Beohuanaland, Basutoland, and Natal have an area which make them insignificant even as compared with the Cape. The Beohuanaland British protectorate is only about the size of France. The Orange Free State is only half the size of England. The Transvaal, or South African Republic, since its recent growth, is somewhat larger than the United Kingdom. The old part of Cape Colony had a white population which was about half the native population^ Beohuanaland, both British and protected, is, of course, chiefly inhabited by blacks. Basuto- land is almost entirely populated by natives, as is the Transkei, and as is also Pondoland. The Orange Free State has the largest white proportionate population of any part of South Africa, nearly halt its inhabitants being white — that is, Dutch, which is the reason why President Paul Kruger wishes by a federal arrangement to add the Free State to the larger and richer South African Eepublic, in which, otherwise, his "old burghers " will soon be swamped by the English popula- tion. The Transvaal has a native population which used to be to the Dutch white population as about fifteen to one, and even since English miners have flowed rapidly into the country the native population still outnumbers the whites by at least ten to one. It will be remembered that Basutoland was at one time governed by the Cape, but was taken back by the imperial Government. It will also be remembered that, while the Orange Biver Free State is a wholly independent country, the South African Republic is under the nominal suzerainty of the British Crown. All the continental countries which I have 310 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part hi named contain some gold, but the Transvaal has proved extra- ordinarily rich in gold, while rumour has it that the Mashona country between the Transvaal and the Zambesi, in the British sphere of influence (although with some doubt about our exact boundaries), is fabulously rich in the same metal. The products of South Africa generally are similar to the products of the Cape. The country northwards to the Zambesi continues to be a country of gold and wool, and wine and copper. Wheat becomes less plentiful and maize more plentiful as we journey towards the north, and sugar plantations more general upon the coast. The interior is an arid, yellow, burnt-up country, parched by drought during the greater portion of the year, but subject from time to time to rains which make it green and rich. This inland country stands high and possesses a iine climate, and is healthy, while the low ground near the coast northward from Natal is subject to malarial fevers. The country is not a no-man's land (as was once the greater portion of Australia), and is throughout its length and breadth inhabited by black tribes; but the British settlers are accustomed to assert that the blacks are the wealth of the country because they provide cheap labour. The production of mohair from Turkish goats is continuing to spread, and fruit-canning will probably develop with the extension of railways. Pondoland As we pass up the east coast from the Cape along the andBasuto- Transkei, and to the St. John's River, which is governed by the land. Cape, we come to Pondoland, where a German annexation was expected some years ago and guarded against by the usual means, namely, the hoisting of our own flag upon the coast. Pondoland has been a virtual protectorate since this step was taken in the time of Mr. Gladstone's second administration, but it is unfortunately coloured as independent in the official map of South Africa in Command Papers 5524 (Bechuanaland, August 1888), a slip which invites German action. There has been, however, a resident commissioner in Pondoland since July 1888. In the case of Basutoland, which Kes at the back of Pondoland and of what is called Kaffraria, and which is now, as I have said, a Crown colony, the Cape of Good Hope contributes towards the cost of government the sum of £20,000 a year, which is, however, I believe, meant as a rebate in respect of customs duties — all goods intended for Basutoland having to pass through the Cape. Natal. Natal is often said to be the real home of the British flag in South Africa. The shipping of her chief port is British in the proportion of ten to one. There is a larger English population in Natal, in proportion to area and to the general white popu- lation, than anywhere else upon the African continent. There are in Natal nearly 40,000 whites, chiefly British, and about 36,000 Indian coolies completely under British influence, to fewer than 500,000 South African blacks ; and the Dutch element is weak. Coolie immigrants are still being brought in under indenture, while immigration of Europeans has all but CHAP. II SOUTH AFRICA 311 ceased. Tlie Natal coast, and a strip of 25 to 30 miles in width, is planted with sugar, cofiee, arrowroot, and cotton, and is well watered, as is the middle district of the colony producing Indian corn ; while the upper district rising towards the moun- tains and the table lands is chiefly a grazing country, though capable of growing wheat. Natal, like Western Australia, has a curious mixed constitu- The Natal tion, more liberal than that of Crown Colonies in general, and ooustitu- approaching in practice to those of the self-governing colonies ''°'^- with responsible Ministers. On the expiration of tlie Wolseley system, which existed between 1875 and 1880, a Bill for the introduction of responsible government was passed in Natal, to which the home Government refused its sanction, and the present arrangement was come to in 1883. ' The Executive Council is nominated by the Crown, but the Legislative Council consists of 30 members, of whom 23 are elected and 5 others are the Ministers. There is a curious proviso with regard to persons not being capable of being elected unless invited by requisition of at least ten electors of the district, and unless the requisition, with the candidate's acceptance, be transmitted to the magistrate a fortnight before the date fixed for the election. Two members appointed by the Governor, in addition to the Ministry, have to possess £1000 worth of immovable property in Natal. The elective members sit for four years, and are elected by persons who have immovable property to the value of £50, or who rent such projoerty to the value of £10, or whose income is equal to £8 a month. Natives are disqualified except they show twelve years' residence, the property qualification, and exemption from the operation of native law for seven years, and, in order to vote, have to obtain a certificate from the Governor, who may refuse it at his discretion. Coloured natives practically never fulfil these provisions, but there are a large number of Indians who possess the Natal franchise ; indeed as many as 300 in Durban alone. There is no direct taxation in Natal in the ordinary sense of the word, and nothing in the nature of direct taxation for general colonial purpo.ses except the hut-tax on the natives. There was, till 1889, nominally a house-tax on the whites, but the law had been left in abeyance, and, the tax never having been raised, the Bill would have had to be virtually passed over again if it had been intended to collect the duty. Dislike of direct taxation is universal in Natal, but there is a general indifi'erence with regard to the extent of customs duties. The unpopularity of the recent proposal of the Government to increase them, with a view of coming into customs union with the Cape, was not caused by dislike of the increase so much as by jealousy of the Cape, which is almost as strong a feeling in Natal as is jealousy of Victoria in New South Wales, but, as I have said, in order to try to keep the Transvaal trade the Natal customs duties have since been diminished. The Natal railways are all in State hands and pay a high rate of interest, indeed the railway 312 PR015LEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART m receipts yield to the colony far more even than the customs, which stand next, the native hut-tax being third. Labour. The workmen in Durban, at all events, have a more con- siderable political position, oddly enough, than they possess in the larger and older colony of the Cape under responsible government, and this in spite of the fact that the Unions are not powerful in Natal. The white artisans refuse to_ work along with the black more generally tlian is the case in the Cape. There are no skilled native artisans in Natal to com- pare with the Malay artisans of the Cape, and the skilled artisans in Natal are white, while the blacks do not compete with them in their trades. There has recently been a great demand for skilled artisans in Natal, which has been caused by the rush to the diggings. At Johannesburg in the Transvaal masons in ] 888 were as a fact, though it was denied, making at one moment as much as 30s. a day at their trade, and it was found impossible in consequence to obtain masons when they were wanted by the Government at Durban at 15s. a day for a nine-hour day, although at the Cape the wages were about 9s. at that time ; but, of course, this irregularity of the rate of wages could be but temporary. In 1889 carpenters were making 22s. Od. a day at Johannesburg, but living was either rough or dear. The English retail trader in Natal suffers severely from the competition of the Bombay trader, or so-called Arab, who has now in his hands the entire trade of wliat is known as " native truck," in iron pots, blankets, beads, and other articles used by the Zulus, and also supplies the towns with vegetables and with fruit. Education In its education system Natal is somewhat more advanced system of than the Cape, and Natal possesses a national system more nearly Natal. resembling, though still at agreat distance, those of the Australian colonies. Tlie Government keeps up not only its own primary schools but also high schools in each of tlie chief towns. The Natal Government lias lately entered u]3on an interesting educational experiment. Readers of Miss Olive Schreiner's Story of an African Farm know that even the Boer farmers of South AJfrica engage tutors for their children, and I believe that the authoress herself was once a governess upon a farm. The Natal Govern- ment has promised to make payments to parents in outlying districts towards the education of their children if they will send them once a year for examination to convenient cejitres. When the white population in Natal numbered only 36,000 people it was computed by Government that as many as 2500 white children were under the care of governesses or tutors. The Natal The Natal press is conducted with singular ability. The press. newspapers are mostly in favour of responsible government, and, if responsible government is carried into effect, its accept- ance will be much more the work of the press than the work of the people, for generally speaking the readers of the Natal newspapers would follow their favourite editors even if they went the other way, newspaper opinion on this point being CHAP. 11 SOUTH AFRICA 313 far ahead of tlie popular feeling, although not contrary to any settled feeling against responsible institutions. As regards the proposed introduction of responsible govern- The pro- ment, it must be remembered that Natal with its strange mixed posed iu- coustitution has what ordinary Crown Colonies have not, troduction namely, the power of the purse in its own hands, and by this of respon- means possesses already many of the chief advantages of re- ^'^'^ 8°^" sponsible administration. The difficulty about conferring ernmeut. responsible government on Natal is, of course, the enormous and overwhelming strength of the black population both in the colony proper and in Zululand. Moreover, while in the Cape the native population is chiefly on the edge of the colony, and the natives who live in the centre are of a tame description, in Natal there are natives living in the heart of the colony who have the tribal system in full force among them. The Cape, as has been shown, may be said to somewhat resemble Algeria in having a large tract of country which is chiefly inhabited by whites, together with other tracts of country inhabited by coloured natives : but Natal is like no other colony in having a large black population living under the tribal system in the heart of the country and connected by ties of every description with the coloured population outside the colony. Natal would probably not accept responsible government on the footing now suggested for Western Australia. She would not accept responsible government, that is, with any permanent control of native affairs by the imperial Government, although she would accept a temporary control fixed to terminate at the end of a, definite and short number of years. This she would accept only if the home Government chose to pay a large con- tribution in money, or to keep at least a regiment of troops for Natal defence. Tlie advocates of the change have, however, always professed themselves willing to receive a nominated Upper House, and they proposed that it should be expressly constituted with a view to the protection of native interests. Natal, again, would not accept responsible government if it were intended that under it Zululand sliould be permanently excluded from colonial control, and, on the other hand, Zulu- land would be terribly difficult for Natal to manage under responsible institutions. Another difficulty in the way of responsible government in Natal is that of defence. One reason why the idea of responsible government is not very jjopular in Natal is because the inhabitants foresee that, with it, tliey will have to accept the burgher system of the Cape in its entirety, and regularly levy a colonial militia for service in native wars. The grant of responsible government to Natal had been Lord Kim- strongly asked for by the colony before 1883, but from that berley's time the agitation subsided until 1887, wlien the discussion was reasoiis for revived. Tlie correspondence wliich took place upon the subject refusing, in 1880 contains arguments which are still applicable to the situation, inasmuch as tliey are mainly based upon difficulties 314 PEOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet hi arising out of the disproportion of numbers between blacks and whites. The advocates of responsible government have upon their side the success of municipal and other local institutions in the colony, and it is the fact tliat tlie relations between the black man and the white man in Natal are marked by a con- siderable friendliness, and tliat native levies raised during the Zulu war preferred to be led by colonial rather than by imperial officers, possibly because the former as a rule could, and the latter could not, speak the native languages. When Lord Kimberley refused the prayer of the Legislative Council of the colony he said that the colony would be unequal to meet from its own resources the liability for defence against internal dis- turbances, while, on the other hand, the home Government could not hold itself responsible for the consequences of a policy over which it would have no control. He insisted that Natal must gain strength by confederation with its neighbours before responsible government could be granted. The Chairman of the select committee of the Legislative Council which con- sidered the despatch from the home Government was the present Sir J. Robinson, member for Durban, at that time a prominent Natal politician, who is editor and part proprietor of the Natal Mercury, and who represented the colony at the Colonial Conference in London in 1887, and, along with Mr. Haden and the Speaker of the Council, represented the colony at the customs and railways conference at the Cape in 1888. The committee put on record its opinion that, -while the colony might properly be held responsible for its defence from such aggression as might be caused by the acts or policy of a respon- sible government, it could not be justly said that there existed any such obligation to meet acts of aggression arising out of circumstances over which the colony Iiad no control — the allusion being, of course, to Zululand. When the Legislative Council was dissolved on the question of responsible government it was found that the members were in advance of their constituencies. There is in Natal a coast party and an " interior " party. It was discovered that in the coast districts, where in old days the planting interest had been opposed to the movement for responsible government, a con- siderable change had taken place in its favour, and that in the upper districts, whej-e the movement had originated, a reaction had set in against it. A majority was returned against respon- sible government. Mr. Robinson lost his seat for Durban, and an address was voted to the eft'ect that the colony was not in a position to undertake the responsibility suggested, and that the maintenance in the colony of imperial troops was desirable. Sir J. Robinson is now again a member of the Legislative Council, but his place as leader of the advanced party has by degrees been taken by Mr. Escombe, a lawyer, and by Mr. Binns, a sugar-planter — men of high ability, of whom the former has been a great_ promoter of the harbour -works at Durban having devoted time and money without stint to that under- OHAP. II SOUTH AFRICA 315 taking. Meetings liave been lield in favour of responsible government, and " responsible " candidates have been returned, after hotly contested conflicts, for important constituencies. There is no decided majority either way, and the movement received a check in 1888 by the rejection of an old member who had undertaken the drawing-up of a Constitution Amendment Bill, and who was beaten by an " anti-responsible " candidate in the inland constituency of Newcastle, the capital of the coal district, where there is a large coal-field full of thick seams of a fair coal, better than that of the Cape, and already largely used upon the railroads, although Newcastle has only just been reached by the State line. Theoretical difficulties seldom oppress colonists. M. P. Leroy-Beaulieu has laid it down as a principle that where, as in Natal and Algeria, active working colonists live side by side with a vastly larger native popula- tion, the mother-country must protect the natives by direct means, and refuse local responsible government, while it may grant imperial representation to both classes ; but, though the colonists attach little importance to this general argument, they Zululand, attach a great deal to the special difficulties arising out of the a difficulty condition of Zululand. That Crown Colony is governed by the i" '^^y "f Governor of Natal as Governor of Zululand, through a commis- granting sioner, and legislation is by proclamation. Natal is frightened ™spo°- by the terror of what it calls "border aggression," and discussions " ^°^' are raised upon the Governor's salary. The imperial Government w"J?i™ '' has agreed that his pay as Governor of Zululand should be charged against the revenues of Zululand, while Natal makes a contribution towards these revenues in respect of the customs duties levied by Natal upon goods intended for Zululand. About one-half of the elective members of the Council Military continue to be in favour of responsible government, but are questions, not cheerfully prepared to defend the border. Their policy, I suppose, would be a mere removal of the imperial garrison into Zululand, an arrangement which would be just as costly for the home Government as the present, wliile it would create local dissatisfaction in portions of Natal in consequence of the loss of trade to certain towns. It is generally acknowledged in Natal that troops of the regular British army are less serviceable for African warfare than are police or local levies. Regular in- fantry have been repeatedly shown to be of little use against the natives, and cavalry appear to be unwieldy for such warfare when compared with colonial mounted rifles. On the other hand, the mere presence in Natal of the imperial forces is popular in the colony, and some think that the natives attach importance to their presence as an emblem of imperial authority. At this moment we spend considerably more than twice as mucli for military purposes in the colony as the colony itself disburses, but there is, nevertheless, an efficient volunteer force. Natal is buying her own guns, which are, of course, not yet ready, and Durban — an exposed port when we consider the French movements in Madagascar — is unfortunately open to the shells 316 PROBLEMS or GREATER BRITAIN The natives. Sale of drink to natives. Tlie Colen- so contro- versy and Church question.s. of an enemy, which might be thrown from the sea across a sandy neck. In spite of the heavy "native hut-tax,'' the black population of Natal has greatly increased of late through immigration, a fact which is nattering to the colony, but not altogether agree- able, and the aspects of the native question here are very different from those which it presents in Queensland or in north-west Australia. Both in Australia and in South Africa the mother-country, as a Christian country, having no strong self-interest tending to make it forget its principles in the matter, naturally concerns itself with the protection of the aboriginal population. The colonist everywhere presents to- wards the native population his rougher side. Among the men upon the frontier are the wildest of the colonists — those upon whom some of the moral obligations of highly civilised peoples have the least binding force. The result is that the colonist who comes into actual contact with the native, and who is exasperated by his pilfering or by an occasional murder, as the case may be, is apt, in Australia, to shoot him as though he were a kangaroo, and where he does not shoot him, desires to be allowed to make a profit out of him by supplying him with strong drink. The mother-country, directly or indirectly, strives to put down these practices, and the grant of complete self- government has been sometimes refused on account of con- siderations growing out of this native question. It is of more importance in the case of South Africa, owing to the great numbers of tlie blacks, than in that of any other group of leading colonies. Hence the special powers of High Commis- sioner in South Africa, and of the Natal Governor in Zululand ; hence the semi-tutelage in which Natal is held ; hence the necessity for British payment of the costs of South African wars. In Natal, however, there has not been the same cruelty exercised towards the blacks which marred the early days of Queensland, or which is said by the opponents of the Dutch to disgrace the Boer republics. The sale of drink upon and just outside the frontier has been more deadly than the rifle, but less deadly within Britisli territory or British protectorates than in the unprotected countries. Of all South African countries it is in Swaziland, which is unprotected, that drink supplied by white men has done the greatest harm. The absence of responsible government in Natal has somewhat prevented the development of remarkable figures among the colonial politicians. Two names will always be associated with tlie political history of the country — those of Bishop Colenso, the uncompromising advocate of native rights, and of Sir Theophilus Shepstoue. _ The latter is still living, though lie has retired from active affairs, and until the troubles in the Trans- vaal he was a most prominent figure in South African politics. Sir Theophilus Shepstone's admirers contend that no man so well understood how to deal personally witli the Dutch, as well OHAP. II SOUTH AFRICA 317 as with tlie Zulus, and that it was the rougher military methods of Sir Owen Lanyon, who succeeded Sir Theophilus Shepstone at Pretoria, which brought about the rising. My own belief is that the rising was inevitable from the moment that Lord Carnarvon annexed the country against the popular will, and that nothing but the presence of an overwhelming force, hold- ing down the Transvaal by the severest military means, would have prevented the continued assertion of its independence. At the same time the Boers had grievances against Sir Owen Lanyon, of which one was his alleged unwillingness to shake hands with them — an unpardonable sin amid these sturdy re- publicans. Sir Theophilus Shepstone, since his retirement from political and official life, keeps up a slight connection with public affairs by advocating the cause of the Church of England in Natal against that of the rival Church of South Africa. The Colenso controversy is understood at home, but what is less well known, except by those who specially concern themselves with Church affairs, is that the results ot the controversy still exist in a painful form. The remnant of Bishop Colenso's friends, strengthened by a, so-called anti-ritualist party, hold the buildings and the property of the Church ; but the bishops who tried to expel Bishop Colenso, and who, when they failed, consecrated a bishop to, as far as possible, take his place, have a Church of their own, which has carried off the greater portion of the congregations. Any such difference must be regrettable, of course, but the more so in this case, because in these days Colenso's criticisms of the Old Testament would not have led to so fierce a difference, and it is impossible not to feel that the stiffness of the bishop chiefly concerned on the other side has led in a great measure to the continuance of the difficulty. It has been asserted, but it is untrue, that the one Church repre- sents the High Church party, and the other the Low. Strict Low Churchmen were by no means led to associate themselves with what they looked upon as the rationalistic views of Dr. Colenso's friends. The other Church has, however, been driven by its position into a general attitude of antagonism to Privy Council judgments, and to an assertion of a High Church atti- tude upon these subjects. It will probably conquer in the long- run, as the influence of the personality of Dr. Colenso becomes weakened by the gradual dying off" of his own friends. There is considerable difficulty in dealing with the property and endowments of the "Church of England," that is, of the Colenso division, and of appropriating them for general Church pur- poses, which would mean to the use of the " Church of South Africa"— the anti-Colenso division. The difficulty is increased by the belief, which is strong in the minds of many of the Colenso party, that the home authorities may yet be induced to consecrate a successor to the late Bishop of Natal. The " Church of England " party refuse to fall into their places in the South African Church so long as the latter denies the supremacy of the English Ecclesiastical Courts, but in many 318 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PAKT III Climate aud customs of Natal. cases this reason is but an excuse for refusing to join a Church the chief dignitaries of which took an active personal part against Dr. Colenso. In fact the feeling of the greater number in the "Church of England" party is rather personal than doctrinal, but there is, no doubt, a real obiection on the part of some who are broad Churchmen to the fiigh Church leanings of the South African Church. When the present bishop and dean are gone, a newly-appointed bishop of liberal tendencies would probably find himself able to fuse the unsympathetic elements, and to make his Church more deserving of the title of the Church of South Africa. The " Church of England " party, although numerically the weaker, includes among its members many of the most important residents in the two chief towns of the colony, and its intellectual force is wholly out of proportion to the numerical support which it receives. Natal is altogether more English than the Cape, and one easily understands, in consequence, the desire shown by even certain Cape politicians to retain it as a Crown Colony, for fear it should in some degree, under responsible government, escape from British influence. The climate of Cape Town is, of course, far more English than the climate of the Natal coast. The vegetation of the seaboard of Natal is tropical, yet, in spite of the exotic appearance of its bananas and its sugar-canes, and in spite of the larger proportion of coloured people than in the more temperate colony. Natal has more of the air of a British possession. Durban, notwithstanding the swarms of Zulus and of Indians in its streets, looks like an English town, and since the opening of the Natal railways the absence of ox-waggons has deprived Durban of its main South African characteristic. Although the summer on the coast is very hot, the white people affect English customs and costumes. They eat roast-beef in the middle of the day, and wear the coats and hats which Englishmen favour, and live without the punkahs which make life endurable in similar climates elsewhere. Durban is one of the most civilised cities in South Africa. Its picturesquely situated harbour- works are most creditable to the citizens, and the prosperity of its merchants is shown in the scores of beau- tiful villas which are scattered among the tropical vegetation of tlie hill slopes. JIaritzburg, as Pietermaritzburg is invariably called, is essentially an official town. Society there is almost confined to persons connected with the Government or the garrison. In by natives, appearance the capital is singularly English, and the distin- guishing feature of its streets is the enormous number of its churches and its chajjels. Every British sect is represented, and represented at such close quarters that on Sunday nio-hts the services mingle their sounds. The white population of Natal is found cliiefly in the towns, and in the country districts the whites are enormously outnumljered by the Zulu popula- tion. In one county in the coal district I find that the popu- lation returns show 2000 Europeans to 15,000 Inclians and Whites out- numbered OHAP. II SOUTH AFEICA 319 65,000 natives. In the Lower Tugela Division there are but 734 whites in 56,021 people. One reason why the wliite popu- lation is so much larger in the Orange Eiver Free State tliau it is in the inland iJortions of Natal, in addition to the obvious reason that the Dutch originally drove out those natives who did not actually labour for thetn, is that the Dutch remain in South Africa, while the English largely look to a future at " home," so that a South African Englishman who has made money is always inclined to leave the colony to return to London, whereas to the Boer South Africa is the only home that the earth contains. " Home " to the religiously-minded Boer means iirst heaven, and next South Africa. Tliere is rather a growing tendency than otherwise in Eng- land to act upon the princiiDle laid down by Government in the case of Ceylon and of the Pacific Islands, that where large bodies of natives for whom we are responsible are brought together with small numbers of whites under one local govern- ment, the chief control should be entrusted to an authority directly responsible to the Colonial Office or to Parliament, and able to show impartiality as between conflicting i-acial interests. The oligarchy of a body of whites in a black country is not believed by the imperial Parliament to be a wise form of government, for such an oligarchy must be influenced by its selfish interests in land and labour questions. The universality of nominal Christianity in British colonies has never led the inhabitants to seriously admit in daily life the equality of man. In some West Indian islands, both of England and France, the negroes are beginning to rule the colonies, but they are them- selves an imported race of considerable power of imitation, and have been for some time trained in the practice of local govern- ment. The wild Kafirs and the remnants of the persecuted Hottentots of South Africa are, no doubt, far from being able to exercise with intelligent prudence the government of a colony. To admit natives in small numbers to the Government is a middle course which may be very possible in the case of an outnumbered and a dwindling race such as the Maories of New Zealand, but which is difficult to maintain with a, rapidly in- creasing people such as the Zulus of Natal. It is even doubtful in the minds of some whether Natal can Doubts as l^ermanently stand alone, whatever her institutions. She is '° possi- surrounded by a warlike native population increasing more 1^''''^ °' rapidly than the white and overwhelmingly outnumbering it, t^, . . and while she desires to extend her boundaries and to annex ^^^^^^^^ " to herself Griqualand East and Pondoland, as well perhaps as ^j^^^^ Zululand and part of Swaziland, such changes of boundaries, althougli they might make her commercially more rich, would render her politically less strong. A close confederation or a union with the Cape would seem more wise, and in the long- run these may be the only alternative modes of protecting the white population against their neighbours. The relations with Natal of her Dutch neighbours have 320 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" Relations witli the South African Republic. The Orange already of necessity been glanced at in the chapter upon the Free State. Cape. TJie Orange Pdver Free State is a republic "which has but lialf as many people to the square mile as Cape Colony, and but an eighth as many as Natal ; but the white population is in the Dutch Eepublic nearly half the whole, and the territory is the most completely colonised and settled of all in South Africa. The Cape has run her railways thither from three points — from Cape Town, from Port Elizabeth, and from East London. All these railways will doubtless one day meet the Natal railways at the Orange River capital. To the north of Natal and of the Free State lies the Trans- vaal, now known both to its own citizens and to our Govern- ment as the South African Eepublic. Natal is at the present time living on the Transvaal trade, and is also doing bu.siness with the Free State, through the Transvaal, in goods which pass in as Transvaal goods, in spite of the customs union between the Cape and the Free State, to which Natal is not a party. The Transvaal is five times as large as Natal : its white popu- lation is more than double, and its British population is now larger than that of Natal. The enormous wealth of the Trans- vaal, especially in gold, has caused a trade which has been the making of our colony. The trade is at present divided be-^ tween the Cape and Natal, and Natal is trying to carry it off by lowering her duties — just as New South Wales is trying to carry off the trade of its back country of the Riverina from Melbourne — and the railway question has in consequence vast importance for Natal. The Free State agreed in 1889 to an ex- tension of the Natal railway system to Harrismith in the Free State ; the line to be made, and probably worked, by a Natal stall' just as the Cape line to the Orange capital is to be made by the Cape Government. I believe that Natal, in refusing that customs union to which her delegates had agreed, counts upon the Free State being unable to isolate herself by custom houses, both on account of the difficulty of the frontier and because of the unpopularity of this policy in that portion of the Orange State itself which largely profits by the Natal trade. As regards the Transvaal, popular opinion in Natal disparages Delagoa Bay, and desires a British protectorate of Swaziland. It seems to be thought by the Natal people that Swaziland and Southern Tongaland can be kept out of the clutclies of the South African Republic, and that Delagoa Bay is so unhealthy that it is not likely to come into favour as a trade route, so that ultimately the Transvaal would have to become reconciled to the use of the Natal railway, which is being rapidly completed from Newcastle to Coldstream on 'the Transvaal border, a distance of 30 miles. There are some wiser heads among the members of the Natal Government who see as plainly as do the authorities of the Cape that it is im- possible to fight against the obvious facts of geography, and that the Transvaal is certain to obtain an opening to the sea, within its own control. CHAP, n SOUTH AFRICA ' 321 In order not to needlessly comijlicate the already difficult problem, Mr. Gladstone's second administration hoisted the British flag over the harbour at Santa Lucia Bay and kept the Germans out of Zululand. Germany protested, but in April 1885 withdrew her protest and engaged to refrain from making acquisitions of territory, or establishing protectorates between Natal and Delagoa Bay ; but as it is impossible to obtain Delagoa Bay from Portugal, and as it is impossible to prevent the Transvaal using it for its trade, the best course would seem to be to make our railways to carry oiF as large a portion of the trade as we can divert by our competition, and by low duties and low freights to do the best we can towards creating in portions of the Transvaal interests in favour of connection with our lines. The part of the Delagoa Bay line which is not yet made is by no means an easy line to make. The extension of the Cape line through British Bechuanaland and across the protectorate is an easy one, and sooner or later, in spite of Transvaal opposition, will be made by the help of those Cape Dutchmen who put interest before sentiment. The country is healthy and free from mountain ranges, and cheap labour can be obtained. The Natal people, while they would agree with me about the difficulty of the Delagoa Bay line, would add as an argument against the Cape lines their length, and then they point out how short a distance it is from the coast at Durban to the Transvaal ; but they must consent to look facts in the face. The Transvaal has a frontier upon the Bechuanaland side which makes the prevention of smuggling impossible, and wliich will put the South African Kepublic at the mercy of the Cape should she ultimately extend her main line to the north. On the other hand, the Transvaal has on the Natal side a moun- tain frontier which can be defended by custom houses with the greatest ease. As it is, Natal knows what Transvaal Protection means, and Natal is a free-trade colony wiiich has given the Transvaal no provocation. The Natal people argue that they have much to lose, and nothing to gain, by coming into the customs union, and they say that all they need do is to make their railway to the frontier and then wait. It is possible that the Natal people hope for the gradual substitution of a British for a Dutch Government in the Transvaal. If Transvaal gold-mining goes on as it has begun it is certain that the Dutch- speaking population will be in a decided minority in a short space of time. The Transvaal revenues at the present moment come chiefly Transvaal from, the pockets of the miners, who are in great part English, miners The 'Transvaal direct revenue from the gold-fields in 1888 was Iiave no already nearly half a million sterling. The British miners still represeut- have no representation, though it is continually being promised ^*''°"- to them. At this moment I believe it takes five years' residence to become a voter, and fifteen years more to become eligible for membership of the Volksraad, which is never dissolved, the members retiring in sections, and where also the Dutch Y 322 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt hi language alone is used — conditions which practically wholly shut out the English. At the end of May 1889 President Kruger in- troduced, not on the responsibility of the Executive, but in his capacity as a member of the Kaad, — " a private member " the Transvaal Bismarck playfully described himself on this occasion, — a so-called " Reform Bill ' ; an obviously delusive measure, which itself was shelved for one year by a reference to a com- mittee. The Bill itself is a curiosity of primitive drafting. It creates a First Volksraad and a Second volksraad, of which the First Volksraad is to be " the highest power in the State," and shall consist of the present Volksraad ; and the laws and resolutions having reference to the Volksraad and its members are to remain in force and to be applicable in the future to the First Volksraad and its members. The number of members in the Second Volksraad is to be the same as that in the First Volksraad, and each member is to take an oath of adherence to the constitution of the Eepublic. The mode of electing members to the Second Volksraad is to be the same as that to the First. The members of the Second are to be elected for a term of four years, half going out, however, at the end of two years, and after that half the members going out every two years. The members of the First Volksraad are to be chosen by " old burghers " who obtained burgher right by birth, and are sixteen years of age. The members of the Second Volks- raad are to be elected by all burghers of the age of sixteen years. No one can be a member of both Volksraden at the same time, and, by another peculiarity of Transvaal legislation, in addition to the extraordinary peculiarity of the choice of the age of sixteen for majority, the members of one Volksraad may not stand to each other in the relation " of father or son or stepson." " No coloured persons nor bastards " can be elected to either Volksraad. Members of the First Volksraad must have been for thirty years members of a Protestant church. Members of the Second Volksraad must be thirty years of age, and need only have been for the two previous years members of a Protestant church in the Eepublic. The Second Volksraad shall have the right to regulate matters relating to metals and minerals, roads, posts, telegraphs, inventions, trade - marks, copyright, forests, salt pans, infectious disease, the relations of master and servant, companies, insolvency, civil and criminal procedure, and such other matters as the First Volksraad may refer to the Second. Laws or resolutions passed by the Second Volksraad are to be referred to the President, who may lay the law or resolution before the First for discussion. If he does not, he is bound to publish the law, which then becomes of force. The voters for the Second Volksraad have to renounce all allegiance to all foreign sovereigns and powers, and in particular to the sovereign to whom or power of which up to naturalisation they have been subjects. On the publication of this draft law the diggers appealed to the British agent at Pretoria to ask whether, by taking the CHAP. II SOUTH AFRICA 323 oath of allegiance to tlie republic, British subjects would lose their statiis as such, and he at once referred the matter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, for the opinion of the law officers of the Crown, whose reply has been a Delphic utterance. The Transvaal Advertiser, which represents the British element and advocates a prudent opportunism, argues that the taking of the oath of allegiance to the Transvaal would not involve the loss of British nationality on account of the peculiar con- nection between the South African Republic and Great Britain, the Queen being suzerain over the republic. Transvaal treaties are submitted to the Queen's Government before they become binding on the contracting parties, and it is, therefore, contended that a British subject taking the oath of allegiance to the re- public does so with a necessary reservation. Supposing that the Transvaal Government, it is urged, should declare war against the United Kingdom, a British-born inhabitant taking part against Great Britain would be not a foreign enemy but a rebel. It is, however, certain that President Kruger himself takes a different view, and in his speech on proposing his dual Chamber scheme he urged that the oath which it would impose upon what he admitted was a majority of the inhabitants would prevent the possibility of the imperial flag ever taking the place of that of the republic. Lord Knutsford's answer to his questioners in the Transvaal was to the effect that the fact of taking the oath of allegiance to the Government of the South African Republic does not deprive those taking it of their status as British subjects, unless by the law of the Republic their taking the oath of allegiance is sufficient to constitute natural- isation, and the persons taking the oath take it with the intent that it should have that effect. By some it is supposed that the enormous influx of Europeans Future to the Transvaal gold-fields means a speedy overturning of the of the Transvaal Government and a return to the British connection, Transvaal, still nominally maintained in the suzerainty of the Queen, but reports from Johannesburg are to a difTerent effect. The large European population may not be willing to long put up with Boer rule in its present form ; the diggers will demand the franchise, and even the use of the Dutch language may after a struggle be abolished in the gold-fields ; but feeling is entirely against annexation to the United Kingdom, and it is hard to say which is the stronger — the distrust of and contempt for the Transvaal Government or the dread of being subject to British I'ule. Tlaere is a wide-spread belief at the gold-fields that the Transvaal must remain a republic, but become an English- speaking republic, though the possible addition of the Free State to the South African Republic may conceivably for a time secure the predominance of the Dutch race. President Paul Kruger has made some concessions to the diggers, but there has been forced upon him of late an extreme policy with regard to the use of the Dutch language which may lead to a tierce struggle. The bad organisation of passenger and postal 324 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PAiiT in communication is also a source of difficulty between the diggers and the Boers. It is a curious fact that the English diggers in the Transvaal, most of whom are Conservatives in England — from those who have belonged to the Junior Carlton or the Constitutional Club to those who have sung " Kule, Britannia " at peaceful meetings — should become republican in the Trans- vaal ; and the possible growth of a, vigorous English-speaking republic on the stump of a Boer community is wortliy of being watched with care. Of course, at any moment the diggings may become less rich and the miners move, or active stupidity on the part of the Transvaal Government may throw the mining population into the arms of Cape Colony. The official Although it is most irksome to the diggers that, in great use of the centres of commercial activity, the official forms for all the Dutch business connected with the posts and telegraphs should be in language, g, tongue which nine-tenths of those transacting business cannot understand, and although the inconvenience caused by the pro- ceedings of the law courts and of auction sales taking jjlace in Dutch is great, yet there is a good deal of hesitation, for reasons which I will give, about expressing a strong discontent. It sometimes happens in the mining districts that the magistrate is well able to speak English, that to the counsel upon both sides Dutcli is a foreign language, and that the plaintiff and the defendant are both English, and the witnesses, as well as the whole or the majority of the jury, English, and yet every word spoken in English has to be interpreted into Dutch for the supposed benefit of a judge and jury who as a fact would come to a speedier and clearer understanding of the case with- out resort to this process. But when it is proposed to hold indignation meetings somebody whispers that if there is any difference of opinion between the miners and " Uncle Kruger " gold shares may go down, and the meeting is postponed. There is a great difference between the language held by the miners when they come to see their friends in Natal or at the Cape and that of which they make use when they are in the territory of the South African Republic, and President Kruger, although he does not reign without opposition from his own people, is a dictator towards the English, and — considering who he is and what he is — is not unpopular. Eeferenoes are frequently made to his good sense and to the certainty that when he visits a part of the country where complaint is made grievances will be remedied. It is curious that it should be so, because "Oom Paul's" old Dutch jealousy of the English is so great that mere fear on his part of bringing into his territory in official situa- tions the Dutch trained in Cape Colony, who might be under British influence, lias often led him to employ Hollanders in his civil service, for which his own people are seldom sufficiently educated. Now Hollanders are far from popular amid the Afrikander Boers. President Paul Kruger was in 1880 the soul of the triumvirate which— first by carrying out the advice of the former president. President Kruger. CHAP. 11 SOUTH AFRICA 325 of patience and protest, and then by raising insurrection — drove from the country a British administration which never had received popular support at any time, and which, it must be admitted, had done little to deserve it. With General Joubert, Kruger was the guiding spirit of the Boers throughout the war, and since the war he has been, through liis strength, the dic- tator of the republic. His power comes partly from his char- acter and in part from the tact that he shares the prejudices of his people. " Uncle Paul " is a, Conservative even among his conservative Boers ; a leading member and teacher of the Dopper sect which objects to some of the modern ways of the Dutch Church, such as the substitution of hymns for psalms. It is supposed by many tliat he hopes to scoop out South Africa and, founding a vast Dutch republic in the whole of its inland territories, to leave us only the sea-coast rind, after the manner in which the Arabs have lately been scooping out northern and central Africa. Some think that President Kruger intends shortly not only to conquer Swaziland from the natives, but also to take Bechuanaland from us and Delagoa Bay from Portugal. But to my mind there are vast exaggerations in this talk. After all, the hatred for us even of the most extreme party among the Transvaal Boers is not greater than that of the people of Lower Canada for the British Government in Tocqueville's time. Yet now, as we have seen, the British Empire does not contain more loyal subjects than the present French inhabitants of the Province of Quebec. Many Boers, finding that the Transvaal is growing English through the digger interest, and that, on the other hand, their friends are in power at the Cape, are selling their lands and returning to the Cape, from which their ancestors went northwards fifty years ago. This process is helping tlie conversion of the South African Pi,epublic from a Dutch into an English state. In May 1889 President Kruger took his whole Parliament to President Johannesburg to see the diggers, on the invitation of a com- Kruger and mittee, and really on a suggestion by Mr. Merriraan ; and after the English their return, he is reported in some Natal papers to have told diggers, the Volksraad that the British diggers might so increase in numbers that the South African Eepublic would only be able to save its independence by coming into a United South Africa, " either under its own, or under a royal flag," and that the new- comers might prefer the latter, and, if so, had a right to be consulted ; but the President must, I think, have been misre- ported. The Transvaal Advertiser gave a diflerent version of his words used in his two speeches of the 29th and 31st May, and made him argue that Almighty God had preserved tlie independence of the Transvaal against terrible odds by a direct and miraculous intervention ; that the newcomers, who within five years would be five times as numerous as " the people of the country," would be able, being in a vast majority, to take power into their own hands, and might declare that they did not wish to have a republic any longer. It was his object, by 326 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Increasing use of the English tongue. the Bill that he proposed, to prevent tliis possibility, by forcing upon the miners the oath of allegiance to the republic. If, on the other liand, his opponents, who put forward the danger under his scheme of a rupture between his two Chambers, per- sisted in their view, the result would be that sooner or later digger representatives would be admitted into tlie Raad itself, and then there might come a proposal for the confederation of South Africa under the imperial flag, and tlie minority would be unable to oppose it. The great difficulty in President Kruger's way is that the voters who are enfranchised for the election of the Volksraad gain also the right to take part in the Presidential elections, and he fears, not without good reason, that an English digger majority would elect an English Presi- dent of the Transvaal. Besides the digger grievances as to language and the other matters which I have named, tliere are difficulties specially affecting their digging trade which would lead them to wish to have their own men in power, even if race feeling did not enter into the account. President Kruger has the old Dutch habit of selling monopolies, which often interfere greatly witli digging work ; for instance, iron work is a monopoly in the Transvaal, and so is dynamite, and the Executive have actually sold the right of making dynamite and of selling dynamite to persons wlio have been unalsle to ma){;e or to procure it, so that the diggers were left wliolly without that which is one of the neces- sities of their pursuit. It seems certain that President Kruger will have in a few years' time to choose between revolution and a real reform which will lead to his own efl'acement. His last chance for maintaining his power lies in an arrangement with the Free State for a federal union as a step towards absorption, but while sentiment might lead the Orange River burghers in his direction their plain interest lies the other way. In the Boer towns in the Transvaal, such as Pretoria, which have been affected by recent mining prosperity, lovers of the picturesque see to their regret old Dutch buildings demolished and rejjlaced by unlovely specimens of British architecture. By a sort of irony these hideous edifices bear upon their fronts some uncouth Dutch inscription, which, being interpreted, sig- nifies the Post Officej or the Magistrates' Court. The building and inscription are significant of the last struggle of the Dutch language against the new order of tilings. Tlie writing on the wall is Dutch, but the style of the building proclaims that British capital and enterprise are peaceably overthrowing Boer rule. With the increase of wealth, and with the improved means of communication which the railways on the frontier will supply, the younger generation of the Dutch will surely adopt as the language of their daily life one which will open up to them the civilisation of the world, and the Transvaal inhabit- ants that are to come will probably regret but little the loss of a dialect which has neitlier a syntax nor a literature. During the session of 1888 petitions were presented to the Transvaal CHAr. u SOUTH AFRICA 327 Parliament declaring that the petitioners felt "hurt in their patriotic feeling by the continually increasing use of the English tongue." The making out of mining licenses in English, the use of English at the markets and at the miners' meetings, were special grievances, and a resolution was carried by twenty- seven to six to the effect that Dutch should be the only lan- guage used at all markets and public sales and in public offices, and that officials using English should be punished. The old Boers evidently think that the early eighteenth century Cape policy of crushing out the language of the Huguenot refugees can be repeated against the English now. But the members of the Eaad have only to walk through the streets of Pretoria to see that in their capital the shop signs are English, business is conducted in English, and English is generally used by the white population. At the very same moment when the farmers' representatives were taking this retrograde action in the Volks- raad the magistrates of the gold-fields were making representa- tions to the effect that they could not perform their duties satisfactorily if they were not allowed to use the English lan- guage in their courts. The action of the old Dutch party in the Transvaal is calculated to promote South African unity in a manner which they do not contemplate, and this, President Kruger himself, whatever his wishes, clearly enough sees. The general opinion of the English who have lived among The Boers, the Dutch in the territory of the South African Kepublic is distinctly favourable to the moral qualities of the Boers, in spite of many obvious reasons why prejudice should come into the account. There is a general admission that they are kindly, honest people, whose chief faults are a narrowness not unlike that of our own Fifth Monarchy men of the Commonwealth times, and a total inability to admit what we look on as the rights of coloured natives. The Transvaal Dutch, however, cannot be formidable to us in themselves, and can only vex our souls if those of their views which we think wrong are taken up for them by the Dutch within our own borders. Now, while President Paul Kruger may secretly look forward to, or may hope for or dream of, a vast Dutch African Republic excluding English influence, Mr. Hofmeyr knows better, and Mr. Hofmeyr by his proposals at the colonial conference in London has clearly shown that he does not believe in the strength of a Dutch republic unable to hold the seas even if it should reach them. I have already mentioned the negotiations between the Negotia- Transvaal and the Free State, as I was forced to do so by my tious be- reference to those between the Cape and tlie Free State. But, tween the going into the matter in more detail, I may explain tliat the Transvaal Transvaal in 1887 offered money to the Free State to refuse to ™'^ '^^ allow railways to be made from the Cape into the Free State, and ^^^ to come, on the contrary, into connection with the Transvaal lines radiating from De'lagoa Bay. This proposal the Orange Free State at that time declined. President Brand in refusing pointed out that the Free State was willing to give up some of 328 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Swaziland and its intecests to please the Ti-aiisvaal, but could not consent to lose for ever all freedom of action in the railway question. Sir John Brand also declined the defensive vi^ar alliance of the two republics whicli his successor has concluded. It is supposed that President Kruger's fear of a rising of the diggers of tlie Transvaal against his authority is the main ground for this alliance. President Brand, with his clear understanding of the interests of his state, and with his affection for the English, would never have willingly assented to such an arrangement as that recently made for checking the Cape lines at Bloemfontein. He was in favour of )-ailway development on the largest scale, by union both with the Ca]ie lines and witli the lines of the South African Republic to be ultimately made from Delagoa Bay. But the Dutch farmers in South Africa are as a. body opposed to railways, and the late Chief Justice of the Free State, who has succeeded Sir John Brand, has more accurately represented their views than did that statesman, who was, how- ever, strong enough to impose his own upon them. Eailways are now to cease at the centre, if not the edge, of the Free State, the Natal lines at Harrismith, and the Cape lines at Bloemfontein. There has been a difficulty between ourselves and the Trans- vaal upon the Bechuanaland side, a difficulty which is, however, Tongaland. j-,Q.^y Jiappily settled. A more serious matter is the future of Swaziland, which, with Southern Tongaland, lies between the Transvaal and the sea to the south of the outlet through Portu- guese territory at Delagoa Bay. Swaziland is inhabited by a branch of the Zulu race (which would form the best portion of it but for the curse of "European" drink), and has a fertile soil and considerable mineral wealth, especially in gold and coal. The Boers pressed the late King to come under their authority, which he constantly refused to do, governing himself by the London Convention of 1884, in which the home Government laid down his boundary. Individual Boers have encroached on Swaziland, and the King made in 1886 a formal request for Britisli protection, renewed in 1887, and alluded to by him in 1888, but the British Government are still considering what shall be the future of Swaziland. Mr. Gladstone defended Bechuanaland against the Boers by the Warren Expedition, and we are quite as strongly committed, by the promises of Sir Evelyn Wood, to defend Swaziland as was the case with regard to Bechuanaland, or even more strongly. British interests seem to be as plainly involved, although there is a party at the Cape and a party among the Government of Natal who think that it is impossible to keep tlie Transvaal from the sea, and who would be willing to make a virtue of what they think necessity, and give to the Transvaal a slice of Swaziland with a river port. I cannot myself see why the unfortunate Swazis should be sacrificed in this way wlien Delagoa Bay affords an excellent outlet for the Transvaal Boers, who would have the choice of passing through British territory or through Portu- CHAP. II SOUTH AFRICA 329 guese, and would be able to play their neighbours off one against the other, and to make, as has been already seen, good terms with eitlier or with both. Our Government have denied that they are able themselves to take a protectorate of Swazi- land, pleading the terms of our Convention of 1884 with the South African Republic, but they appear to be contemijlating the surrender of Swaziland to the Transvaal, which would be, of course, at least as much opposed to the terms of the Conven- tion as would be its annexation by ourselves. Swaziland is full of gold, and closely adjoins the Barberton gold district of the Transvaal, and diggers are beginning to pour into it in great numbers, but diggers who are chiefly of British race. Sir Her- cules Robinson was in favour of making it over to the republic, and in the Blue-book on Swaziland published in 1887 there are despatches whicli point that way. It is tlie case that by ceding to the South African Republic a strip of territory which had been added to the Transvaal by us, when the Transvaal was British territory, we have made it very diflicult for ourselves to reach Swaziland, and consequently diflicult to defend it against aggression. But it seems as though the Government at home wei-e only trying to shirk responsi- bility by keeping the question open until it has been settled for them. In the spring of 1887 they declared that the future of Swaziland was engaging their most earnest attention, and in the spring of 1 889 they made in the House of Commons precisely the same declaration ; but no step had been taken towards defending, protecting, or giving up Swaziland in the meantime. In 1889 Generals Joubert and Smit, on the part of the Trans- vaal, were for some time witli the Swazi King, while we had an officer, wholly inexperienced in conducting such delicate negotia- tions against sucli able diplomatists, "on his way" to the same kraal. Even one so opposed to annexation as Sir George Camp- bell proposed in the House of Commons that we should extend a virtual protectorate over Swaziland, and pointed out that it was lately ruled by a committee of white traders who had set up a tariff and had resolved tliat no Asiatic should be allowed to trade in the country. Tlie Colonial Office repudiate direct responsibility for both Swaziland and Southern Tongaland, but the countries are in the hands of white adventurers who are mostly Britisli subjects, and the Swazi King until his recent death was granting wasteful concessions, which must lead to future war, wliile Ids people were being destroyed by drink. Tongaland stands in a slightly more favourable position than Swaziland, because we have concluded a recent treaty with the Amatonga Queen, under which she is pledged not to cede her country to any foreign power. There is something humiliating in the records of the Swazi- land debates in the House of Commons. The question is an old one, for the Transvaal a long time ago endeavoured to obtain Swaziland, Tongaland, and Santa Lucia Bay, and tliis was one reason why the Swazis joined us in our wars and why we stijou- 330 PKOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet hi lated for their indeiDendence. At tlie same time we afterwards handed over, as I have shown, a strip of territory to the Trans- vaal Government which shut us off from Swaziland. Although the Colonial Office hold that the Convention with the Transvaal prevents our accepting a protectorate of Swaziland, which, in spite of denials, I must assert was as a fact offered to us by the Swazi King, they cannot but admit that the Convention may very probably be forcibly modified in the opposite sense. The Soutli African Republic have violated the Convention with regard to Swaziland by annexing a strip of Swaziland territory, and, as there are two millions of British capital already invested in Swaziland, it would seem to me to be worth giving some small help to the natives in the form of a skilled adviser, otherwise we shall really be responsible for another war. The Amatonga chiefs have lately visited this country in order to ask us to establish a protectorate on the coast, and they, like the Swazis, are of the same race as the Zulus, and are being destroyed by the liquor traffic. We have a treaty of 1877 by which the Tongas bind themselves to refuse to sell or cede any portion of their country to any other power than ourselves ; but it certainly would seem desirable that, unless we are going to adopt the Swaziland policy of Sir Hercules Robinson and distinctly invite the Transvaal to come down to the sea through Swaziland and Tongaland, we should ourselves take the control of the coast line as far as the Portuguese territory of Delagoa Bay. If we are to give up Swaziland we should at least obtain some concessions to our views in return for yielding upon this point. The Boers would probably be willing to make internal conces- sions to the British element in the Transvaal, and also conces- sions as to their northern boundary towards the Bechuanaland sphere of influence, in return for leave to occupy the Swazi country ; and there are many in the Cape who think that we should make such stipulations, and in addition obtain, as they are of opinion we could obtain, permission to make the railway to the gold-fields. The success in Basutoland of a not very costly system of protected native Government under imperial control, after a failure of Cape Government, shows how easily, at a point much nearer to the sea, we could pacify tlie country, check the sale of drink, and develop trade. The Basutos are now consuming large quantities of manufactured good.s, and there is no reason why the same policy that lias succeeded in Basutoland should not succeed also in Swaziland and Tonga- land ; but this question is one that stands apart from mere probabilities of commercial success, inasmuch as the prevention of the sale of liquor to natives upon a little strip of coast, such as alone is now open, is a matter which is worth some small trouble. In September last the Government sent Sir F. de Winton out to Swaziland to meet the Transvaal Commission, and about the time he left this country Umbaudine, the Swazi King, met his death from drink. To judge from a letter signed by Mr. Merri- CHAP. II SOUTH AFRICA 331 man wliich appeared in tlie Times, and from an article by tlie Eev. John Mackenzie which appeared in the Contemporary Review in November 1889, the former opponents of Sir Hercules Robinson in his Swaziland, as in his other, policy have reconciled themselves to the cession of Swaziland to the Boers in return for such concessions as I have named above. Possibly the influence of Mr. Rhodes at the Colonial Oflice was used upon the same side, inasmuch as to put the Transvaal in thoroughly good humour will smooth the path of the new chartered com- pany, and prevent much Dutch opposition to the making of the railway to Mafeking and towards Shoshong. It is diiEcult, however, to see why the South African Committee used their influence with the Government to prevent the return to the Cape of Sir Hercules Robinson as Governor, if they are now prepared to stand by and see the policy of Sir Hercules Robinson carried out by Sir F. de Wiuton and Sir Henry Loch in the point in which it was least defensible. It is a curious fact that in his Lorenzo Marques arbitration Delagoa Marshal MacMahon gave Portugal territory to the south of Bay. Delagoa Bay which the Portuguese have never dared to try to hold against the Tongas. The case as jjresented to the President of the French Republic assumed that the country was either British or Portuguese, and that he was to decide to which of these two powers it belonged. As a matter of fact, however, a strip of it belonged to neither, and de facto is Tonga country, although comprised in the MacMahon award. As this brings us to the pajjers in the matter of this arbitration, it should be pointed out that the Secretary of State at the time contended that the Swazi and Tonga Kings had ceded to us the sovereignty of their countries, although we yielded the point of sovereignty and contended only for trade and settlement by factories. The present Government are now, as has been seen, repudiating British rights upon the Tonga coast south of the part declared to be Portuguese by Marshal Macilahon, and are even refusing the protectorate asked for by the inhabitants, although in 1861 we had actually occupied the northernmost portion of their country, that is, the farthest from us, as a dependency of the colony of Natal. There is a party in tlie Colonies that desires that we should go behind the award and set up a Tonga claim to the Tonga territory south of Delagoa Bay declared by Marshal MacMahon to be Portuguese ; but tliis, while an excellent posi- tion for a Tonga, would in us most certainly constitute a breach of faith. Mr. Merriman has been one of the warmest supporters of the Mr. Mer- doctrine of the paramount imi^ortance to the Empire of Delagoa riman's Bay. He has contended for the view that it is the only ab- ■>'iew as to solutely secure harbour for large ships on the South African Delagoa coast to the eastward after leaving lable Bay ■ that it is the ^"y- best outlet for the whole of the tablelands of south-eastern Africa, and especially for a temperate and well-watered country which is almost certain to become one of the greatest gold- 332 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt in producing countries in the world. Mr. Merriman agrees with the Transvaal authorities that the excellent port and sliorter mileage must lead Delagoa Bay to beat Natal with the longer mileage and less good port, while the Cape Colony harbours are much farther oft' again, and the Transvaal has declined to allow direct railway communication with them. To_ the north of Delagoa Bay'there is another good port, but this is also Por- tuguese ; it is hemmed in on the land side by a most warlike tribe, and if we were to go to that neighbourhood the Por- tuguese and natives would combine against us. The Delagoa Bay is a magnificent naval station for commanding Portuguese the Mozambique Channel, and for either strildng at, or defend- at Delagoa ing ourselves against, the French possessions in the Indian seas, Bay. while we support our own colony of Mauritius. There is a local coal supply, and there can be no doubt that the power which holds this harbour in any war in which the India a,nd the China trade are forced to make use of the Cape route will have in its hands an unrivalled position, ajjart from its local value as regards African trade. The port is held by the Portuguese on a good title, but hitherto on the sufferance of the Transvaal, both sides being perfectly aware that the South African Re- public could in the past easily have dispossessed the holders. In practice tlie Transvaal dared not attack the Portuguese, because the result of a destruction by them of the Portuguese settlement would have been an occupation by British men-of- war. The Portuguese are now building at Delagoa Bay barracks for 1500 men. There have, however, been intrigues with a view of inducing the German Government to acquire Delagoa Bay, and with it a kind of loose protectorate over the Dutch republics ; and there can be no doubt that some of the more anti- English among the Boers would prefer a nominal German suzerainty to the present unchecked spread of the English tongue and influence, and share the view of that patriotic Frenchman !M. P. Leroy-Beaulieu — "better the Germans" than an English uniformity in South Africa. lu 1876 the then President of the Transvaal Republic, accompanied by a Dutch member of the Cape legislature, visited Berlin, and it has always been supposed that tlie question of a German protectorate was talked over in their interview with Prince Bismarck. In 1878 a German traveller strongly urged a German annexation of Delagoa Bay, and the matter was possibly mentioned at Berlin to Mr. Kruger during his subsequent visit. Later came tlie curiously sudden acquisition by Germany of Damaraland and Namaqualand, on the west coast of South Africa, almost valueless except as a foothold. I do not believe, however, that tliere is the slightest risk of Portugal ceding Delagoa Bay to Germany ; nor do I fear that President Kruger is a party to any proposal for substituting Germany for Portugal. Future of Mr. Blerriman has, I believe, often said that it is a pity that Delagoa Delagoa Bay was not purchased by us at a time when a com- Bay. OHAp. 11 SOUTH AFRICA 333 paratively small sum would have bought out the claims of Portugal. Lord Carnarvon has gone farther, and has said : "When I succeeded to office I had reason to think that the offer of a moderate sum might have purchased that which a very large amount now could not compass. Unfortunately the means were not forthcoming, the opportunity was lost, and such opportunities in politics do not often recur." This passage can only mean that the Disraeli Ministry failed to see the value of Delagoa Bay when it was for sale and the price was low, and it is indeed an unhappy fact that we should have lost that most important, after the Cape itself, of all South African positions. In June 1889, behind the financial struggle between the railway company and the Portuguese Government there was evident a desire on the part of some to drive our Govern- ment to take by force that which we had neglected to buy when we were able. Purchase would now be very difficult, if not impossible ; there is a strong patriotic feeling in Portugal which insists on Portugal keeping the whole of her territorial pos- sessions, even though they are, as Portuguese statesmen know they are, larger than she can manage. But another suggestion has been made, that a chartered company, perhaps the com- pany formed for the Bechuanaland sphere of influence (and oddly styled "The British South Africa Company," inasmuch as it intends to work chiefly outside of British South Africa), might negotiate with Portugal for the acquisition of rights which, while they fell short of sovereignty, would prevent German interference. I am disposed to believe that Portugal will cling to Delagoa Bay, and that neither Germany nor the Transvaal has any very real idea of attempting to acquire it. There is some German money in the Netherlands South Africa Eailway, but that is a natural fact enough when we consider the great chance that this railway has of being successful, looking to the fact that it provides a route to Pretoria 350 miles long against a route by the Cape of over 950 miles. There are drawbacks to the Delagoa Bay route. The famous tsetse fly haunts it, and is destructive to horses and oxen. Dogs are killed by it, and it has been cynically said that men and asses alone escape, although as a fact mules, sheep, and goats are equally free from its attacks or from their consequences. The river bottoms are made deadly by fever, and are infested by crocodiles, more formidable than the quiet monsters of Indian, American, and North African rivers. The sub-editor of a Natal paper, who was describing the gold-fields as a correspondent, was eaten by crocodiles while in this neighbourhood ; but neither crocodiles nor fever nor tsetse fly, nor even steep hills, need stop a railway, and there can be little doubt about the ultimate success of the Lorenzo Marques route. In my opinion the Transvaal authorities had far sooner have the Portuguese tiian the Germans at Delagoa Bay, finding the Portuguese good neighbours, inclined to levy low customs duties, and think- ing Portugal a weak power, certain to be locally much under 334 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part m Dutch influence, instead of a strong power with military objects. Neither do I see any general desire on the part of the authorities of the South African Republic to adopt the Cape idea, which invites them to seek an outlet to the sea through Swaziland and the Southern Tonga country in preference to that through Delagoa Bay. They seem to me satisfied with Delagoa Bay as a route, and with the existing political condition of that country. Until the railway is fully made the Lorenzo Marques route is practically impassable, and the fly, the fever, and the absence of roads are ciiiEculties, any one of which would be sufficient to prevent the route being made use of to a large extent. The Portuguese, with the strong approval of the majority of our colonists of Natal, who do not wish for a British rival to Durban, will continue to hold Lorenzo Marques, and the railway will be finished and will become the main line of communication with the Transvaal. President It has been computed that it will take from five to seven Kruger and years to make the mountain portion of the Delagoa line, when theDelagoa ^1^^^; section is begun, and in the meantime the Natal railways Bay route, ^jjj have been carried on to Harrismith in spite of engineering- difficulties. Natal will then begin to carry off' a considerable portion of the internal South African trade. Moreover, in five or six years' time President Kruger's position will not be what it is at the present date. He will have been forced to en- franchise the diggers or to face a revolution, and he will eitlier have disappeared or have come to terms. It is possible that federation may by that time have been brouo'ht about, after the Transvaal has gone through an intermediate stage of existence as an English - speaking republic, and tliat the Bechuanaland line may also have been made ; but, in spite of all these chances, I myself continue to believe that so short is the Delagoa Bay route to a portion of the gold- fields that it is probable that in any event that line will be completed. Portuguese The Portuguese have put out maps in which Portuguese claims. East Africa is made to include Matabeleland, and to cross the continent on the line of the Zambesi river. This is, as regards Lobengula's country, in direct conflict with a decision of our own Government, which, however, had not been made public, as well as with the recent charter to the British South Africa Company. If we are to help the company to take control of the British sphere of influence in Northern Bechuanaland, we must either Keep a route to the north in our own hands or secure a carefully made treaty with the Portuguese as to the passage of our northern trade. In my opinion the precedent of the Congo Treaty, unfortunately upset by the House of Commons, shows that we can make satisfactory terms with the Portuguese ; and the fact that the money of the East Africaii coast is our rupee, and that the traders are our subjects from Bombay, would make it even easier for us to get our own way as regards trade in Portuguese South Africa. The feelino- CHAP. 11 SOUTH AFRICA 335 against Portugal in England is, however, now so strong that it would be difficult to secure fair consideration for the merits of a treaty. It is certain that pressure will be brought to bear on Portugal to open the Zambesi and to consent to the British South Africa Company stretching northwards until it unites with other spheres of British influence. The Portuguese nia]^ of which I have written, and which is dated 1886, was made to accompany a Portuguese parliamentary paper prepared for presentation to the Portuguese Parliament in connection with the negotiations with Germany with regard to the Portuguese and German spheres of influence in Africa. It is now put forward rather as a suggestion than as an absolute claim. The Portuguese say : " This is what Germany was content to leave us. It is only recognised by Germany ; it is not recognised by England, which, as regards its southern part, it mostly concerns. It is for us to settle by negotiation with the English how much of this country, which we colour as Portuguese, and to which we have a good historic claim, we must, under the circum- stances, give up." The British claim is to Lobengula's country, and up to the Portuguese boundary, whatever that may be ; but the Portuguese boundary marked upon the Portuguese map includes most of Lobengula's countiy. Then arises the doubt also as to what is Lobengula's land. Mr. Selous, the explorer, who knows it well, has proved that Lobengula, the Matabele chief, is a raider who makes forays upon territories which are not properly his own ; and if we claim all the lands that he has harried our claim is a larger one than if we confine ourselves to that which in reality he governs. The Matabeles were driven northward from the Transvaal by the Boers some half-century ago, and since that time have conquered the Mashonas, a large number of whom are now virtually their slaves. 'The real Portuguese claim is to that portion of Mashonaland which lies eastwai'd of a mountain chain known as the Mashona Mountains, and this they ask for on the ground of first discovery and of constant commercial relations through the sixteenth century. It is probable that if the Portuguese obtain the Mashona Mountains they may obtain also valuable gold-fields, the existence of which is vaguely known ; but it is not certain on which side of the Mashona Mountains the richest gold-fields lie. The fact that the Portuguese are in occupation of Zumbo on the Zambesi, which lies sKghtly to the westward of the Mashona Mountains, gives colour to their claim ; and it is to be desired that, whatever is to be the boundary between the British sphere of influence in Northern Bechuanaland and the Portuguese colony of Mozambique, the matter sliould be settled without delay. Mashonaland is a valuable country. Mr. Selous tells us that there is one single plateau which contains 20,000 miles at an elevation of from four to five thousand feet above the sea, well watered, besides many other plateaus situated at a lower level, but nevertheless capable of producing wheat upon rich soil. This country has been waste 336 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAITT pakt ni since the Matabeles invaded it about 1840 and drove out or killed the Mashona population. Thecliarter In the charter granted to Mr. Ehodes's company in 1889, of 1889. although it was modelled upon the East African and North Borneo charters, no exact boundaries were fixed ; and although I have expressed the wisli, for the reasons which I liave given, that the boundary question between ourselves and Portugal should be settled without delay, I am aware that that view was deliberately rejected by our Government in drawing up the charter. No doubt they thought that the boundary question between tlie adventurers and Portugal would settle itself, and that if alluvial diggings were discovered British diggers would pour in to Mashonaland and would establisli a boundary of fact which no Portuguese authority could dispute. But this policy throws Portugal into the arms of Germany, and a close understanding between the Germans and the Portuguese will place difficulties in our way in the north which might have been avoided by an understanding which could easily have been arrived at with the Cabinet of Lisbon. It is understood tliat the charter was delayed some months chiefly on account of the desire of some British ministers or advisers of the Ministry to fix the Zambesi as a northern boundary for the British South Africa Company, Mr. Rhodes objecting to have his northern boundary determined for him, and ultimately carrying the day. The result of the delay was that the Portuguese Government pushed forward their exploring expeditions into the interior, and distributed Portuguese flags among the natives in districts which are claimed by the British South Africa Company. It is a well-known fact that it is the intention of the company to push northward across the Zambesi, and that the Germans have thrown difficulties in the way. As soon as the suggestion was made in the press that the new company would go forward till they reached the Lakes, the German ambassador in London had frequent interviews with Lord Salisbury, in which he insisted that, although Germany had not named the western limit of her own East African sphere of influence, as a matter of fact that sphere must be considered to stretch westward until it joined the Congo State. Here again we have trusted to the chapter of accidents, and when British prospectors follow the Matabeles across the Zambesi towards the north sharp difi'erences between ourselves and the Germans and Portuguese are likely to arise. Not only has Mr. Rhodes escaped having a boundary forced upon him on the north, but his dominions remain also unbounded, so far as the cliarter goes, upon the west. The German Government are understood to claim the territory as far east as the 20th degree of east longitude, but they have no real possession of Damaraland, and the Damaras are in arms against them, while the German Company which nominally holds the territory has come to an end of its small funds. Circumstances have made Lobengula somewhat of an ally of CHAP. 11 SOUTH AFRICA 337 tlie Aborigines' Protection Society, although his hands are Thepreseut steeped in blood. But a good deal of outcry was caused at the of rifles to Cape both among the Dutch and among many English people Lobengula. by the reported smuggling through the country in the summer of 1889 of a thousand rifles and 300,000 rounds of ammunition intended for Lobengula's use, there being an arrangement between the British South Africa Company, from whom the rifles came, and the Matabele chief that he :s to make use of them only on the north side of the Zambesi. The Dutch had already been indignant at the fact that the counsellors of Lobengula had been received by the Queen, who on a former occasion had been advised to refuse to receive President Kruger of the_ Transvaal Republic, and the gift of rifles increased the irritation. So unusual a departure from the practice as concerns the supply of arms to natives could not take place without raising the fear in the minds of the Transvaal Boers that possibly the rifles might be turned against themselves. It is said that the Matabele king has already begun to use these rifles against the unhappy Mashona natives of the land ; but I believe it is a fact that the influence of Mr. Ehodes has kept Lobengula quiet since the purchase by the former of the Matabele land concessions. As we journey westward from the southern portion of the British Transvaal, or northward from the Diamond Fields of Griqua- Bechiiana- land West, we first come to British Bechuanaland, a. Crown land, colony, north of which lies protected Bechuanaland — a British protectorate — and north of this again, the Bechuanaland sphere of influence. British Bechuanaland is a Crown colony in which the mother-country is paying largely for the privilege of keep- ing it out of the hands of the Cape, which does not as yet much want the district, provided that it be not allowed to pass into foreign hands, but which would take it if we were to urge that it should do so. The large expenditure for Bechuanaland, which has been borne upon the British estimates for the last few years, leads indeed naturally from time to time to the reconsideration at home of the question whether Bechuanaland should be handed over to Cape Colony. There is, however, another alternative, which is to hand The over Bechuanaland to the British South Africa Company. The chartered friends of that company would be willing to make the northern company, railway from the Diamond Fields on the chance of being able to obtain the gold-fields trafiic and to open up new gold-fields. A little bit of this northern extension railway would lie within Cape territory, and one of the devices of President Kruger to stop the line being made has been to put up his friends ui the Cape Parliament to ask that a Bill should be brought in to forbid private persons making railway lines even througli their own lands ; but this seems to have been the last straw as regards foreign Dutch control of Cape interests, and to have divided the supporters of Mr. Hofmeyr. Sir Gordon Sprigg has now pledged himself to allow the northern railway to be made. The rule of 338 PROULEWS OF GREATER BRITAIN part in Bechuaiialand by a company, in tlie hands of some one popular at the Cajje and friendly with the Dutch — in other words, of Mr. Rhodes — miglit form the best solution of our difficulties. We are spending at the present moment some thirty to forty thousand pounds a year more than we receive in British Bechuanaland proper, and nearly forty thousand a year in Khama's country or in the part of the isrotectorate wluch lies beyond it. When we went to Becliuanaland Mr. Upington declared that the soil was too barren to invite colonisation, and the natives too poor to yield the smallest revenue ; that a large garrison would have to be maintained, and that the English taxpayer would tire in a few years of so costly an acquisition. The British taxpayer is no doubt tired of paying a large sum for Bechuanaland, from which it seems unlikely that he should reap any direct benefit; but some revenue is already yielded by the natives, a large garrison is not found to be needed, and the Cape Government appear to be willing to take over the southern portion of Bechuanaland, while the company has obtained the north. The British taxpayer thus appears likely to be able, if he wishes it, to hand over his acquisition to others, even though it be true that the southern portion of tlie territory, or British Bechuanaland, is badly oil' for water and hardly tit for agri- cultural settlement. The Crown colony of Bechuanaland lias not been in all respects so successful as the Crown colony of Basutoland. Tlie sale of liquor to the blacks has not been fully put down, but the difficulty of putting it down is great, as there IS virtually no white resident jjopulation, and the native police and the other natives will not lielp us to cut off the supply of drink. I have seen it said that the revenue of British Bechuana- land is increasing through the rise in the sale of stamps, ac- counted for by their popularity in the collections of the British schoolboy. British Bechuanaland is not large, and it is a curious fact that most of our best books of reference state its area at from three to four times its real amount — an error which is probably caused by confusion between the colony on the one hand and the protectorate and sphere of influence on the other. Future The present Government at home were supposed at one Govern- moment to contemplate the handing over of British Bechuana- meut of land to the Cape, a course which was recommended by Sir R^.t.ci, Hercules Eobinson, whose authority in such matters is very a- j_ r\ ^c J.1, _ n "A/r:_.- J. _i._j_-_i •__ i .1 . Britisli Bechuana- laad. great. One of the Cape Ministers stated in a speech that Government had actually promised to make over the Crown colony to the self-governing community. If this was so, they backed out of their promise. On the other hand, the Aborigines' Protection Society, the Rev. John Mackenzie, and a large party at home, are strongly convinced of the wisdom of retaining British Bechuanaland under imperial administration. The natives of British Bechuanaland are few in number but the territory becomes richer as we journey northward, anc\ the British sphere of influence contains a denser population than Southern Bechuanaland, and much excellent territory. The CHAP. 11 SOUTH AFRICA 339 natives of British Becliuanaland are undoubtedly in favour of British administration, and opposed to government by the Cape ; but they are, as I say, not numerous, and they ai-e cost- ing tlie mother-country at the present time a pound a head of actual expenditure each year. The Aborigines' Protection Society, however, go beyond the status quo in their demands, and ask that the ruler of British Bechuanaland should be a separate person from the Governor of the Cape— a contention vl\ which I cannot follow my brother members of the Committee of that Society, because the geographical position of British Bechuanaland (a country without easy access to the sea except through the whole breadth of the territory of the Cape, or through the Transvaal and the Portuguese territory) makes it to my mind certain that in the long-run it also must become Cape territory, even though it be desirable for a time to retain it in our own hands. No doubt there are inconveniences in the Governor of the Cape being also High Commissioner. He has to act partly as the direct delegate of the imperial Government, and partly as the constitutional representative of colonial Ministers ; and as the interests re23 resented are often opposed — native interests conflicting with white interests, and questions of cost arising in which most delicate decisions have to be taken — these inconveniences ai-e great ; but on the other hand, looking to the fact that British Bechuanaland is lost in the centreof Africa, and all but unreachable except through the Cape, it would seem impossible to govern it in a sense hostile to colonial wishes. The taking possession of Bechuanaland for the home Govern- ment and the Warren expedition to re-establish order there, were acts of Mr. Gladstone's Government upon which great influence was exercised by Mr. Mackenzie through Mr. Chamber- lain, to whom the duty of speaking upon South African questions in the House of Commons was generally committed, on account of his interest in them, by Mr. Gladstone. But even Mr. Chamberlain has, as I have pointed out in the last chapter, hesitated to commit himself to the view that British Bechuana- land should be under a difl'erent Governor from the CajDe ; and he doubtless sees that Bechuanaland, which must be reached through Cape Colony, will in course of time become attached to it. Griqualand West was once a Crown colony in a similar position to that of Bechuanaland, but it was found necessary to annex it to the Cape, and the same thing will probably occur in the long-run in the far north. It is a noticeable fact that the English organ at Pretoria supports the annexation of Bechuana- land to Cape Colony. The Transvaal Advertiser, when the Prime Jlinister of the Cape, in addressing his constituents at East London, said that the home Government would allow the annexation of Bechuanaland to Cape Colony, pointed out that it was impossible that tlie imperial Government could perman- ently retain the management of Bechuanaland, and that while the Warren expedition was necessary to clear the country from 340 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" pakt hi Boer filibusterers, the northern extension of the Cape railway system must ultimately be undertaken under the auspices of the Cape Government ; minerals were being discovered in Bechuanaland, and it was impossible to suppose that the home Government could govern the country as the white population increased. Tliere is a party at home which points out that British Bechuanaland has cost the home Government a very large sum of money, chiefly through tlie Warren expedition, and suggests that the British taxpayer ought to have the lands. The land in British Bechuanaland is not, however, easily reached by immigrants, and, unless through the assistance of the Cape Government, it is not possible to discover how immigrants from England are to be placed there without great cost. We could of course stipulate, in handing over territory to the Cape, for conditions favourable to immigration. It is to be hoped, in the interest both of the colonies and of ourselves, that in Bechuanaland and in Western Australia, where alone the Empire still has very large tracts of good unused land in its own hands, sales of land upon a large scale to the highest bidder, or letting of land upon a large scale, without clear powers reserved to the State for re-entry at any moment for the purpose of agricultural settlement, will be prevented. The lands should only be parted with, so as to pass out of the control of the State, upon a homestead system to actual settlers. If this principle is secvired, even supposing that the lands are handed over by us to colonial Governments, they will not be lost to the people of the old country, because they will not be rapidly alienated, and there will, for a great number of years, remain good land open for those of our emigrants who desire to remain under the old flag. Becliuaiia- There is still a danger tliat in the event of our suffering )ii]id— defeats elsewhere, as for example in Afghanistan, the Boers of ilanger of the South African Eepublic may again enter upon Bechuana- Boers again J^nd and out ofl" the Cape from all extension northward. On taking pos- tiie other hand, the interest of the Cape, and therefore of its session. Dutch population, in the freedom of the northern route by the Diamond Fields to the gold-fields is clear, and it is conceivable that their influence will be suflicient to prevent the ultimate annexation of the country by the South African Republic when we are in trouble. Those who desire that we .should ourselves hold Bechuanaland must remember how diflicult it is for us to reach its northern parts, and how impossible it would be for us to reach them if the Cape as well as the TransA'aal Eepublic were hostile to the enterprise. The Warren expedition was risky enough and costly enough for the memory of it to make impossible an expedition to the Limpopo against the wishes of the Cape in order to fight Boer squatters. The As we go northward to the protectorate we come into districts Bechuana- where filibustering parties from the Transvaal at one time made land pro- attacks upon portions of Khama's country, but the northern tectorate boundary of the protectorate cuts through tlie middle of Kliama's CHAP. II SOUTH AFEICA 341 country, and a great portion of it lies in the sphere of influence, and the The protectorate has been stated by the Colonial Office repre- sphere of sentative in tlie House of Commons to contain 120,000 square iullueuce. miles, and he said that the sphere of influence contained the same amount ; but if in the sphere of influence is included all the territory so coloured in the map published in the Blue-book of August 1888, then that territory vastly exceeds the figures given, containing as it does the whole of the Matabele country and Mashonaland, and forming a block more than 300 miles from north to south, and some 750 miles from east to west. The Blue-book of 1888, as I have already stated, did not contain the telegram informing the South African Eepublic that the Lobengula country is within the sphere of exclusively British interest, that is to say, that the sphere of influence extends up to the Zambesi and occupies the whole of the country between the German protectorate and the Portuguese colony ; but the essential thing is that the statement was made, and is one from which it is impossible to recede. The most authoritative de- claration that has been made public on belialf of the Govern- ment, with regard to the boundaries of the sphere of British influence south of the Zambesi, was made in the House of Commons on the 9th November 1888. The statement was to the efiect that the eastern boundary was fixed in August 1887, and that a paper had been laid before Parliament, and was shortly about to be distributed, defining the territory as con- sisting of the country north of the South African Pi,epublic and the Bechuanaland protectorate, south of the Zambesi, east of the twentieth degree of east longitude, and west of the Portu- guese province of Sofala. This paper never was distributed, and it would indeed not much have helped us, because no one knows what is the western boundary of the Portuguese province of Sofala. Sir Hercules Piobinson, in sending to Lord Knuts- ford, on the 11th June 1888, the map of which I have spoken, said that Jlatabeleland and Mashonaland might since the recent treaty with Lobengula be considered within the sphere of British influence; but this, it will be seen, is a somewhat indefinite statement, and it is a pity, as I have said, that Government have never made a formal declaration as to these boundaries which are being disputed by the Portuguese. The matter will soon, it is to be hoped, be settled by the practical occupation of the Mashona country by the agents of the British South Africa Company. The country grows progressively more valuable as we journey Future of northward towards and in the tropics. It is rich in gold, and the South its great height above the sea (for the tableland is one of the Africau most elevated in the world) renders it healthy and well suited countries, for colonisation. The height above the sea also causes grand falls upon the rivers, and motive-power will be available in consequence. I shall have to deal with other spheres of influ- ence when I come to discuss, in my chapter on Crown Colonies, our position to the north of Zanzibar and on the west coast of 342 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Future of sphere of influeuce. Africa upon the Niger ; but the meaning of our sphere of influ- ence on the Zambesi was defined by the Secretary of State for the Colonies when lie said that we should not allow the Portu- guese, the Germans, or the South African Republic to annex territory within it. We have in this northern territory of South Africa a double interest : that wjiioh arises from the value, and especially the mineral wealth, of the territory itself, and that which comes from our natural desire to keep open the route northward into Central Africa. It must not be sup]30sed that a very large white population could be poured into the sphere of influence without danger. The difficulty is not climate. Although within the tropics, the country is, from the climatic point of view, suited to white settlement ; but there is a vast settled and warlike population, and the policy for the future of the territory must contemplate the retention of Khama's people upon their lands. The acting administrator himself has stated that the natives in large parts of the pro- tectorate have already scarcely land enough for their own needs, and they are excellent workmen and good specimens of a dark- coloured people. Lobengula had sent impis across the Zambesi to the north- ward before the granting of the charter to the British South Africa Company, and they had brought him word that north of the great valley the hills rose again into tablelands, and that there was good country for his cattle if only they could cross the tsetse belt alive. Lobengula is evidently meditating a farther move to the north, away from gold-mines and the white adventurers, and no doubt the chartered company will be glad to see him go, and the 1000 rifles are intended to facilitate liis going. As, however, he fears that his cattle will all die in cross- ing- the Zambesi valley, it is possibhi that he may refuse to move, and in that case it is diflicult to be hopeful of a peaceful future for the company. Lord Grey in a series of letters to the Times in 1889 suggested that the native states in this part of the world should be formed by groups into vassal or protected countries ; but this would mean that, without any direct ad- vantage to ourselves, we should guarantee the chiefs against attack by one another or from the Boers, and against white filibustering in the event of the discovery of those rich gold- fields which undoubtedly exist among them. This would be to take upon ourselves a very onerous responsibility, and there is no probability of Parliament for many years together consent- ing to bear tlie cost which would be involved. No doubt we ought to be disinclined to put forward our own commercial interests as the only ground to justify to Parliament tiie exten- sion of territory or of responsibilities : but we are nevertheless bound to look to what is possible, anct it would not be possible to induce Parliament to accept the responsibilities contemplated by Lord Grey without some prospect of direct return. On the otiier hand, for us to leave the northern portions of South Africa, and to confine ourselves to tiie defence of the extreme CHAP. II SOUTH AFRICA 343 south for our naval purposes, would be to bring about conflicts between the natives and the settlers, the responsibility for which Parliament would be inclined to visit upon those who had advised the abandonment of the inland country. Mr. Mackenzie thinks that the Crown can continue for an View of almost indefinite period to hold Bechuanaland. It may be ad- Mr. Mac- mitted that it constitutes a magnificent territory, full of gold, kenzie as to and with a fine climate, except in the river bottoms, and that Beohuana- the natives would on the whole prefer a continuance and an ^™'^' extension of our rule. On the other hand. Parliament will find itself forced to deal with an increasing white population, and to maintain a large military police to prevent raiding and out- rage upon the natives ; while if sale of drink to the natives is to be eflfectually put down an exclusively white police must be employed at very large cost. Moreover, Mr. Mackenzie would, as I have said, wish to separate the Government of Bechuana- land from the Government of the Cape, and this would require a large increase in salaries. Now this territory, to be thus, according to his wishes, administered under the British Parlia- ment and at British cost, is, as I have said, very distant from the sea, from which it is entirely shut out upon one side by German territory and upon the other side by Republican terri- tory and Portuguese territory, and is open to the coast for British trade only through the Cape. It may be frankly con- ceded to Mr. Mackenzie that the Cape will put on no great pressure to acquire Bechuanaland for some time to come, but, on the other hand, it will be difficult indeed to induce the imperial Parliament long to continue to spend money upon a country which it cannot directly reach. Mr. Mackenzie himself admits that " in after years " other political arrangements may be come to more desirable than those which he wishes to con- tinue for the present, and that when the European and native population of Bechuanaland have become a settled community they may wish to be united to Cape Colony, and that in that event it is improbable that any British statesman would raise objection. I am at one with Mr. Mackenzie in thinking that under all the circumstances of the case it is a moral duty upon our part to protect the native population of Bechuanaland • but to induce Parliament to adequately protect in all parts of the world native interests for which we are morally responsible has hitherto been found impossible, and there is no reason to think that it will be more easy as time goes on. The real question at issue in South Africa, it will be seen, is Impossible that of how far the English democracy will remember its to give up responsibilities towards natives when that policy is costly and tlie interior when no very direct and obvious return can be looked for. In "f Soutli the case of Bechuanaland a promise of return is indeed held out. Africa. Mr. Mackenzie's policy would protect the natives, but it would also open out the country for British settlement, and in my opinion the two branches of his policy are somewhat incon- sistent with one another. The middle course, of establishing. 344 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART lit under British auspices, a chartered company, closely tied up as regards its dealings with the natives, has been adopted. But it is difficult to suppose that those who would set very high their belief in the claim of the natives to the lands which they more or less completely occupy will prove to be a majority among the South-African white population, and it is also diffi- cult to see how the home Government can, in the long-run, impose its policy upon a hostile majority in South Africa. I am not one of those who wish to set up local opinion as a standard in questions of right and wrong. But, while all states- men should consider right and wrong, questions of possibility must also be before them. That which is clear, I think, is that from no point of view can we safely take the course, which some recommend to us, of deciding that we have no interest in South Africa beyond the maintenance of a naval station at the Cape. In the conflicts which would arise in the event of our abandonment of all influence in the interior, the various parties to the conflicts would call in first the blacks and then the Germans. Difficulties We must conclude our survey of the situation in South Africa of the as we began, by admitting that the problem is the hardest which South arises in connection with any of our colonies, for the greatest African difficulties in the government of dependencies are blended in problem. South Africa, and make the task of ruling it all but impossible. The constitutional difficulties of Canada are met with in Soutli Africa side by side with the problems which arise in the ad- ministration of vast tracts in which there is no white popula- tion, but in which the black subject population is less settled than it is in India ; and between the Dutch country under respon- sible government at the Cape and the wild Matabeleland we have every shade of difference produced by a gradual meeting of the races, and of widely divergent political and social systems, as the white men advance northward. I believe that the greatest of our dangers in South Africa is to be found in the desire of British Governments to shirk responsibility, and their con- sequent inability to proclaim a definite policy, and in the difficulty of inducing Parliament to sanction a continuous ex- penditure without direct return. I do not believe that there exists the danger, to which Sir Charles Warren has often pointed, of a union of the Dutch republics and Cape Colony in an anti-Endish spirit. But of all the suggestions which have been hinted at for keeping out of South African difficulties Sir Charles Warren is responsible for the most ridiculous, in pro- posing not only that the High Commissioner should be a difTerent person from the Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, but that he should live within the boundaries of Cape Colony itself. The authors of such suggestions will not trust to the loyalty of the South African Dutch, although they are not supported by those among the Cape authorities who best know the Dutch, nor by the best of our residents in the Transvaal under Dutch' CHAP. II SOUTH AFRICA 345 rule, and although it certainly seems clear that the Dutch have no interest in trying to stand apart as a weak nation, or in calling in, as long as they can avoid it, a German rule which would be less sympathetic to their peculiar views than is that of England. On the whole question of South Africa it will have been seen Con- that I do not completely agree with either side ; tliat, while I elusions support the policy of Sir Hercules Robinson as to the ultimate future of Bechuanaland (a country without a sea-coast) being necessarily to be found under the Government of the Cape, I do not agree with him in thinking it necessary to cede Swazi- land to the Boers. The ground of union between the two views as to Bechuanaland must ultimately be found in the wishes of the white inhabitants. It would be wise to consult the feeling of the natives were it possible to fairly ascertain it, as formed upon full knowledge of the facts, but the difficulty of doing this in such a country as Bechuanaland is insuperable. The two great chiefs — Khama and Lobengula — represent tribes which have carried on perpetual wars with one another, while the more northern of them has constantly raided upon the feebler peoples still farther to the north. If we bring peace and settled government, and take steps to see that the natives are left in possession of their lands and are not oppressed, we shall have done our duty towards them better than by attempt- ing to gather from their doubtful and changing fancies of the moment a permanent policy for ourselves. If we permit the South African Republic to swallow Swaziland it will, I think, be chiefly upon the ground that it is so situated that it is almost impossible for us to defend it ; and we might make con- ditions, before allowing the Transvaal to come through Swazi- land to the coast, as to the admission of the non-Dutch element in the Transvaal to their fair share in the Government of the republic, as well as bind President Kruger to his offer of a promise never to interfere in Matabeleland. If the House of Commons chooses for a time to continue to pay for Bechuana- land it wiU be wise from every point of view that that territory should be retained in imperial hands, although it is in my opinion, for the reasons which I have given, a mistake to ask that the actual exercise of the Government should be through a person distinct from the constitutional Governor of the Cape. It may also be admitted to be possible that, if the House of Commons will consent to pay the cost of the Protectorate police for a few years longer, Bechuanaland may come to yield a revenue which will defray the necessary charges of the Government. It must, however, be clearly understood by the House of Commons that it will be impossible long to maintain the policy of forbidding concessions and of excluding the white man from the country. There is no power on earth capable of keeping diggers out of a large territory where there is gold, and to attempt to do so is to engage upon an impossible task. Let us prepare as thoroughly as we choose for the advent of 346 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt hi the whites ; but let us not shut our eyes to facts and imagine that tlie diggers can be kept out by the police. Defence I must repeat, at the conclusion of my examination of the questions, situation in South Africa, the statement that we cannot sever ourselves, even if we wished to do so, from South African afi'airs ; that we must hold Table Bay and Simon's Bay as military and naval stations ; that we cannot do so if the southern portion of the continent is in the hands of a hostile power ; and that, even putting aside the field for British ex- pansion which Bechuanaland affords, we must so direct our policy as to preserve sovereignty in one or another form over Cape Colony. The imperial interest in saving for military purposes our hold upon the Cape is so much clearer than any interest which we possess in the more northern and central portions of South Africa that our Bechuanaland policy must itself be subordinate to this end ; but in my opinion it is not only possible but easy, with prudence, to reconcile the two policies which are offered to us, and by giving to the Dutch that due share of influence which we have neither the moral right nor the power to refuse, to bring the two peoples to co- operate for the development of South Africa under the British flag. SOmford^s GeoaVHstdh^Zandorv. PAET IV INDIA CHAPTER I INDIAN DEFENCE The most important question connected with India at the India, present time is that of defence. From the more limited or Pre-emin- British Indian point of view it is of little use for us to concern ence in ini- ourselves with improvements in government if we cannot retain portance the country in our hands ; and from the larger or British °f the Imperial point of view the loss of India would be a crushing q^i^stiou of blow to our trade, if our rule were succeeded by that of a °*''^"'^^- protectionist country or by a period of anarchy. It would constitute, moreover, so grave an encouragement to our enemies in all parts of the world that we miglit expect a rapid growth of separatist feeling in Canada, South Africa, and Australasia, and a general break-up of the British power. The bolder among the pessimists of the Dominion; the extreme Dutch, who may desire the creation of the United States of South Africa under republican forms; and the wilder portion of the " native " Australian party, would need no other signal — would find no longer any difference of opinion among their friends as to the nature of the action that they should take, nor would they be confronted with the same body of opposition to their views as exists in the three groups of colonies at the present time. There are some dreamers who appear to think that we should Loss of leave India to itself, and the loss of trade, by tlie possible India, adoption of a protectionist policy in India, they would, I believe, be content to face. Besides trade there is the interest upon capital, and India remits so much money for various purposes to England that in this sense, too, a peaceful and friendly India seems almost necessary to our existence; and it is difficult for any one who knows the divisions of the ijenin- sula to suppose that an India left to itself would see its races and its religions dwell together in amity and concord. If to speculation speculation is to be opposed, I should be inclined to fancy that some effect might be produced upon the minds of those of whom I speak by asking them to consider not only the evils of a lower kind which the loss of India would occasion, but also those of a higher nature. I would bid them reflect upon the hopeless insularity that would overtake the British 350 rROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Reasons for treating the Indian Defence question separately. Consensus of opinion on import- people if deprived of the romantic interest tliat the possession of India lends to our national life. Is it conceivable, however, that India should be able to govern and to defend herself? The exactions and the quarrels of the native princes alone v^^ould set the country in a blaze, and every city of the north would be a scene of civil discord between the adherents of the chief rival creeds. Even if India did not fall at once to the lot of Ptussia, the recent action of Germany in Africa warns us that Germany, and Madagascar and Tonquin warn us that France, would strive to conquer or to divide that vast peninsula which we should leave wholly unable to defend itself by force of arms. A despotism less beneficent than our own would probably succeed a period of anarchy in which the good results of many years of steady progress would be lost to the subject popula- tion. There can, I think, be no two opinions among reasonable men as to the necessities of every kind that force us to link our fate to our continued domination throughout India. It is then useless to go into inquiries about our Indian Empire unless we first make sure our ground with regard to Indian defence. There is another reason for separate treatment of the question of Indian Defence, and for its full discussion, before we reach that question of Imperial Defence in which it seems to be involved. The Indian problem is distinct from the general problem. Not only is it the most difiicult branch of the defence question, and one which thoroughly deserves to be studied on the spot, but one wholly different in its nature from the British Imperial Defence question as it exists elsewhere. It is only in Canada and in India that we have land frontiers of military importance. I have already dealt in Part I., Chap. II., with the question of Canadian Defence ; but while in Canada there is little prospect that we shall be attacked by our peaceful neighbours, in the case of India we are face to face with a different set of circumstances. It is in fact only on this one of all the frontiers of the Empire that the British dominion is virtually conterminous with the continental possessions of a great military power. The British Empire has of late, in New Guinea and elsewhere in the Paciiio, become conterminous with Germany, in Further India virtually conterminous with France, and in Africa conterminous with both Germany and France ; but if we command the seas we could cut off Germany from Africa and from Polynesia, and France from Africa and from Indo- China. Russia alone is virtually our continental neighbour, in the same sense in which the United States is our neighbour on the Canadian frontier. The United States is not a military power, and, though able to crush us in Canada, will never advance except invited by the Canadians, or driven into war, while Russia is an autocracy with untold millions of men who are ready to march at one man's will. Those in England who desire to close their eyes to the im- Sortance of the question of Indian Defence are in the habit of escribing as alarmists all who force them to discuss the matter. CHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 35I It is, therefore, right to show at tlie outset that tliose who anceof the belong to the peace section of the Liberal party, but who Indian happen to know India well, are as thoroughly awake to the Defence danger as are military Conservatives themselves : in fact, that question, there is unanimity of opinion among the well-informed, what- ever may be their predispositions. For example. Sir George Campbell has argued, in a work circulated by the Cobden Club itself, that we ought not to feel easy about our military position in India ; that our Indian army is, considering what it has to do, " the smallest army in the world " — an army of 200,000 men, not all fit for the most dangerous service, defending, against internal troubles and against a great military neighbour, a peninsula containing 250,000,000 of inhabitants. Sir George Campbell points out that we have to deal with tremendous risks both east and west of India, and to observe the aj)proaoh of two great European powers towards our borders. Bfe shows how our difficulties have been increased by a popular resistance to our rule in Burmah, such as we never experienced in any part of India, and sucli as will call for the presence of a large garrison for many years; and he says: "We can no longer consider India to be a country divided from the whole world, and our military arrangements must be modified accordingly." Eadical economists and the Cobden Club are thus, it is seen, compelled by the necessities of the case to use words which would not be disavowed by those who are looked upon, by the portion of their countrymen who are uninstructed in this particular matter, as alarmists of a military scliool. The first question that arises in connection with Indian Tlie idea of defence is, whether our preparations for war in or near India a Russian against a European enemy are necessary at all, or whether it alliance. would be possible safely to come to terms with Russia. There is a scliool in England the members of which would attempt to bring about an Anglo-Russian alliance based on the general principle that Russia should be allowed to work her will on Turkey, provided our Indian North- West frontier were, through the alliance, made secui-e. There is this to be said for those who think thus, that it is our duty to look at such questions from a point of view less selfish than tliat of British interest alone, and that it is well sometimes to try to place ourselves in the position of Eussian statesmen. Russia, ice- bound as she is, needs outlets; but we must remember also that she has an outlet on the Pacific which will become more and more important day by day, that the outlet through Turkey is not ours to give, and that the outlet through India is ours to refuse. Without dwelling upon the fact that under certain circumstances the possession of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles by Russia might prove a political danger to ourselves, and without urging the consideration that there is a large British trade in Turkey which would soon be destroyed by Russian protectionist feeling, it is difficult to see, if we look to the Indian side of the question, how Russia could put it out of 352 PKOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIjST I'aiit iv her own power at any moment to threaten us on the North- West frontier. What we should gain by an understanding with Russia is far from clear. No promise, especially no promise accompanied by an advance towards our frontier, could enable us safely to reduce our Indian forces and to take less money from the Indian taxpayer. On the contrary, while I am far from agreeing with all that has been written upon the subject by the late Sir Charles MacGregor, still, in discussing the trans- port difficulties of a Eassian advance on India, he was writing on a matter which he thoroughly understood, for he had given much time and care to it. The then Quartermaster-General in India put the most successful possible result of the first Russian campaign as the annexation by Russia of the country up to that very line of the Hindu Kush which it is now proposed by some, whose language is eagerly reprinted by the Russian press, to give to Russia voluntarily, as the result, not of a campaign, but of an understanding. Sir Charles MacGregor was of opinion, as the whole of our authorities in India at the present moment are of opinion, that once in secure possession of Herat and Balkh, Russia could afford to wait, to consolidate her power, to complete her railways, and would then, and then only, issue forth from her excellent bases to make her attack on India. The Tsar. Granting the pacific disposition of the present Emperor of the Russias, and supposing, for the sake of argument, that we might safely give to him personally that which his friends in England ask, is it not at least possible that in some years' time there may be at the head of affairs in Russia those who will hold diflerent views, and who might return to the designs of General Skobelefl^, to the prosecution of which they would bring the enormous advantage of a perfect base for operations virtually bestowed upon them by ourselves? Moreover, we should be giving that which is not ours to give ; we should be thought by the Afghans to have shown the utmost treachery towards their interests ; we should incur their hatred, and at the same time the contempt of our Indian princes, and the Russians would be to a corresponding extent strengthened by the existence of these feelings. Our To willingly let Russia occupy the northern half of pledges. Afghanistan in the lifetime of the present Ameer would be a flagrant breach of faith, for, in spite of Mr. Curzon, whose recent articles made more stir in Russia than he can like, to judge from what he has since written in a book,"^ we are deeply pledged to Abdurrahman by _ our promises, twice at least — perhaps three times — voluntarily made. To give up Northern Afghanistan even when he is gone would be to reverse the policy which seemed wise to Mr. Gladstone's second adminis- tration as well as to their Conservative successors. What we ^ Russia in Central Asia, by the Hon. Geo. N. Curzon, M.P. Long- mans, 1889. CHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 353 should lose by the Anglo -llussian alliance, which seems to reduce itself, when examined, to a permission or to an en- couragement to Kussia to stretch herself on the one side towards the Dardanelles, and on the other side into Afghanistan, is clear : our Turkish trade, our power to use the Euphrates route or the Suez Canal during war with Russia when once she was established on the magnificent position of the Sea of Marmora, the friendship of the Afghan people now tardily obtained, and the confidence of our Indian subjects in our strength. _ At one blow we should have brought military Eussia within possible striking distance of India, and put ourselves farther off from India by driving ourselves to the use of the Cape route even in a single-handed war. An increase of the distance from our base in England to the Helmund where we should have to fight would be brought about at the same moment as a shortening of the distance between the Russian railroads and India. The story of Batoum has shown that Russian promises cannot be trusted. The reply of the friends of Russia in this case is, that the promise as to Batoum was an unwilling promise, extorted from Russia at Berlin. It was not in form unwilling, but, even admitting the fact, we may doubt whetlier the promises or declarations of the present Emperor of Russia would be more binding upon a successor who might very likely hold widely difierent views. We are told that we might diminish our military expenditure in India if we had a Russian alliance. That cautious and economy-loving power the German Empire, at the time when her old Emperor and the Russian Emperor were bound together by the most solemn of alliances, in the Three Emperors' League, continued with feverish haste to strengthen her fortresses of Thorn, Konigsberg, and Posen, useful only against Russia, while Russia strengthened Warsaw and the Polish Quadrilateral, useful only against Germany. No prudent power, with a frontier exposed to land attack, can afford to rely upon promises, however apparently binding, and relax her pre- parations for meeting in arms, if necessary, possible invasion by a military power of the first class. It did not need Batoum to prove that it would be unwise to trust the very life of our Empire to any promise. Without inviting Russia into Northern Afghanistan we may, of course, be called upon to consider what we shall do when she has come there uninvited. The Russians have suificient belief in the reality of our pledges to the present Ameer not, I think, to come there in his lifetime; but supposing that they are right in thinking that the Ameer and Afghan rule are unpopular in Herat and Balkh, and that a successful insurrection may be organised against him, circumstances may so change as to tempt them forward. The Russians may be right, too, in thinking that if the present strong man were removed by assassination there might be civil war in Afghanistan and disorder upon their frontier sufficient to give them a fair 2a 354 TKOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART IV Views ex- pressed iu Greater Britain and in 1887. pretext for advancing. Supposing that we fail to make those wise arrangements, with regard to the Afghan succession, and for securing tranquillity in the country on a change of sovereign, whicli we ought to make in time, and could make, the Russians may very likely cross the frontier with a small number of men upon some apparently excellent pretext, ready to withdraw if our Government should threaten war, and ready to remain if we should only grumble. We all of us are sometimes strangely like the Turks in thinking that what will last our own time is good enough, and in finding reasons for putting off the fight until the time of our successors. We have weakened English public opinion by the very uncertainties of our past Afghan policy, the most amazing instance of which was the sudden reversal by Lord Beaconsfield's Government in 1878 of the uniform policy of Great Britain with regard to Herat, in the offer of Herat to Persia, actually bound at the very time by a secret treaty to Russia, a portion of which has since been I'evealed. It is at least possible that if the Conservatives were in office in England when Russia in small force crossed the Afghan frontier, recently settled with her, there would be a coalition between the mass of the Opposition and Conservatives who hold the view that the present arrangement has no element of permanency in it which would prevent the Government from resisting the Russian advance. In May 1867, when I first wrote upon Indian defence, I recommended that policy of advance upon our left which was afterwards adopted. The railway through the Bolan, and the station at some such position as Quetta has since become were among the suggestions that I made. The adoption of this policy was advised from many sides and the policy was successful : and writing again in .January 1887, after nearly twenty years had passed, I was still able to take a hopeful view of the prospects of Indian defence for some time to come. It was still possible to set very high the risk to Russia of plunging into defiles inhabited by an independent population, and to lay stress upon the time that would be needed for the completion of her strategic railways in Turkestan. On the other hand, while I thus stated my own opinion, I was forced to quote the opinion of foreign military writers to the opposite effect. These think, as I showed, that it would he difficult for us to put 40,000 men at Quetta within three months of the declaration of war, and that we could do it only if we gave up all idea of offensive operations against Russia in any quarter of the globe, and confined ourselves to a defensive attitude leaving Russia to attack us when and where she chose in itself a serious weakness. I showed that the foreigners who had written upon this subject thought that Russia could raise trouble for us in India, and force us to leave a large proportion of our troops behind to watch narrowly the armies of the native states ; and that they believed that an advance force of IMoliammedans, in the Russian interest, descending from the OHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 365 mountains upon Kabul, might conciliate the Afghans and bi-ing with them towards India the tribes eager for the plunder of our plains. I ventured nevertheless to discount these alarmist views, and to suggest that pressing danger would first arise only several years after Eussia had occupied Herat (should we allow her to reach that point), had finished her railways in that quarter, and had fortified her base. The Eussians, it seemed to me, had every interest in postponing war, and would do so for twelve or fourteen years at least. At the same time I hinted that we were one of the least popular of powers, and that if we were attacked in India no hand would be raised in our defence. Writing, however, a few months later, after I had received The in- from India many answers to my earlier suggestions, I had sufficient somewhat to tone down my optimism. Sir Frederick Eoberts ^ number could not be quoted upon the more cheerful side, though natur- *°'i organi- ally proud of an army with which he has been long and ^''''™ °f honourably connected. Lord Wqlseley had thrown the gravest °^^ troops. doubts upon our having sufilcient strength to do more than remain on a strict defensive. I pointed out that it was a dan- gerous delusion to suppose that the whole of the Indian army could take the field against the Eussians, and that English ofiicers who knew the Eussian army thought that their picked troops were admirable, while it was certain, owing to transport difiiculties, that Eussia would, if she attacked India, bring picked troops into the field. I argued in favour of the crea- tion of a separate white force for India, inasmuch as our com- l^romise as to length of service was ruinous to India, and forbade her having any hope of keeping up a sufilcient army to meet coming dangers, in return for such money as she could afford to spend, while at the same time it spoilt our home service army. I stated generally that the criticisms which had reached me showed a steady growth of pessimism among our best ofiicers, and that it was the universal opinion in India that if the Afghans should join the Eussians, the Pbussians would have the game in their own hands. Hence the need for first considering our relations with Afghanistan. The policy of the second administration of Mr. Gladstone in Mr. Glad- the Afghan matter is of some historical and of some present stoue's importance. Mr. Gladstone recommended the removal of Lord Afghan Lytton, and reversed Lord Lytton's policy, but not to revert to policy- the Lawrence policy. On the contrary, while he wisely evacu- ^ As I was invited by my friend Sir Frederick Roberts to accompany him in his military frontier tour of November-December 1888, and did so, and as I have dedicated to him this work, some attempt might possibly be made to commit him to the opinions put forward in this chapter, which he has not seen. It is better, therefore, that I should distinctly say that the views ex- pressed are mine, not his, and diifer indeed in several points from those of the Commander-in-Chief in India. At the same time, where my conclusions are known to me to be opposed to those of the highest military authorities in India, I have said so in the text. 356 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part iv ated Kandahar— following largely the advice of that most skilled of all observers of the Afghan question, Sir Eobert Sandeman — Mr. Gladstone gave those strong pledges to the Ameer of Afghanistan to which I have alluded, and proposed the delimitation of the Afghan frontier. The arrangement declared to be binding by the Russian Emperor in 1888 was the outcome of these proposals. The Ameer of Afghanistan was subsidised and supplied with arms, and was told by Lord Duflferin, by direction of the Government, that so long as he conformed to our advice his enemies would be ours. After some hesitation the Quetta frontier was advanced, the loop strategical railway made, and the Bori valley brought under British rule. This policy of Mr. Gladstone's second administra- tion, followed as it has been since that time by Mr. Gladstone's third administration, and by two Conservative administrations, was wise and necessary. The policy which I have described was, then, a policy of iniiuence at the Court of Kabul, combined with non-interference in the domestic affairs of Afghanistan, and it was a portion of this policy that we should extend either our frontiers or our authority up to the Afghan border. This was indeed the ground for that occupation of the Bori valley under Mr. Gladstone's second administration to which I have just referred. In the course of the twenty years of which I have spoken the British and the Russians liave drawn 1100 miles nearer together, Russia advancing 900 and we 200 miles ; and we are now — not in a. straight line, but by road — 500 miles apart. On this line there is no mountain chain worth naming. There are two much-travelled native roads, along one of whicli Ayoub marched with wheeled artillery before he beat us at Maiwand. Afghanis- The strong, friendly, and united Afghanistan created by our tau as it is. policy will exist during the life of the present Ameer, but there is too much reason to fear that his death will be the signal for confusion in Afghanistan unless we take steps ourselves to pre- vent anarchy; and the practicability of an invasion of India depends almost wholljf upon the condition of Afghanistan and upon our relations with the Afghan ruler. It must be remem- bered that, if an advance should come, large offers will be made to the Afghans. Russia, besides giving money to the chiefs, will promise to Afghanistan the Peshawur valley and other former Afghan districts of the Punjab. So far as the present Ameer's life may extend, we have done our utmost to secure him. He knows that we wish his kingdom to be independent, and by our evacuation of Kabul, Ghazni, and Kandahar we have proved to the Afghans that we do not desire to take their country. He understands us to have promised him to see that the Russians do not take it, and he undoubtedly believes that we should resist, with the whole force of the Empire, and in all parts of the world, any attempt to pass the line of pillars which the joint Commission has set up. He is persuaded that by him- self, and without our guarantee or virtual guarantee, he could CHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 357 not hope to keep the Russians out of Herat and Balkh. Tlie position, although our policy has been successful up to tlie present time, is one necessarily full of anxiety. It is difficult for us to guarantee the succession of the son of the present Ameer, who may not be the best candidate for the throne. It is difficult for us to accept responsibility for the Afghan pro- ceedings upon the Russian frontier while we have no officer within hundreds of miles of Balkh, and yet the presence of British officers upon the frontier, advised by Mr. Curzon, would prob- ably involve responsibilities even greater than those which it might prevent. Still, what is done is done. It was hopeless to expect that the Ameer would be our friend so long as the most valuable portion of his dominions was in our possession. His very existence as ruler of Afghanistan was involved in the Kandahar question, and necessitated our restoration of the city. The result has been that the present ruler of Afghanistan has complete trust and confidence in us, and has done everything in his power, which in such a matter is but limited, to make his people friendly. Sir Lepel Griffin has said ^ that when he first met this remarkable man, at the time when we were about to place him upon the throne, Abdurrahman had never known an Englishman. At least one had, however, stayed with that Afghan prince as his guest near Samarcand, and had long been familiar with liis character. The impression which he made upon the first Englishman who ever saw him was as favourable as that which he produced on Sir Lepel Griffin; and his first English friend, now dead, was equally struck by his remark- able information, self-possession, and knowledge of the world. Brave, strong, and ready, it seemed certain that he would one day succeed. The speculation, however, as to the Afghan throne, which is the most interesting, concerns not the present Ameer but his successor, and to discuss this subject in the present state of our relations with the Ameer would be unwise. Possibili- When the question is asked whether it is possible as a fact ties of for Russia to invade India, the answer must, in my opinion, be Russian that Russia could not invade India with a good chance of sue- invasion, cess if she started from her present frontier. At any time between 1879 and 1885 we might have had some difficulty in resisting, but in consequence of the Indian military measures of the last few years we could place in line upon her flank an army which, did the Afghans continue friendly to us, ought to give a good account of any force for which the Russians could at present find transport across the desert. This is not the opinion of Sir Charles MacGregor in his "confidential" book, wliich was, unfortunately, so largely circulated that it has been thought that copies were purchased for use in Russia. He laid down for the Russians every step of their march, and worked out for them every figure of their transport, but I think that, for the purpose of rousing our military authorities, he lessened the difficulties which the enemy would have to meet. On one ^ Asiatic QiiMrterly Review, October 1888. 358 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN DifHculties in way of Russian advance. point, indeed, Sir Charles MacGregor erred in the opposite direction. He underrated the total military force of JRussia, and then proceeded to make such large deductions from it for garrisons and armies to watch European and other frontiers as to leave the Russians with a limited number of men, although, in his opinion, a sufficient number for attempting the invasion. It would be more accurate to look upon Russian numbers as unlimited for this purpose, but, while unlimited upon their own frontier, sharply limited as long as that frontier is where it is, and so long as Herat is not connected with the Russian railroads, by transport difficulties. One natural result of this fact is that any E.ussian invading army would come in the form of a force of carefully-selected men. To allude only to the extracts that were published from Sir Charles Mac- Grregor's book, he thought the invasion of India already then a ])ossibility. Since that time Russia's peace footing has been in- creased and her war footing almost doubled, as shorter service has gradually affected her reserves. Russia has advanced from Sarakhs to Penjdeh, within easy striking distance of Herat. If Sir Charles MacGregor was right in thinking that Russian Central Asia can produce 30,000 camels, and that vastly greater numbers can be obtained from the Persian frontier, then in- deed advance across the desert is robbed of half its difficulty. Sir Charles MacGregor is, rightly enough, considered in England to have been an alarmist, but there are signs that he was not in all cases inclined to overrate our difficulties. For example, in the opinion of skilled observers of our Indian posi- tion, he underrates the danger to us from the armies of the in- dependent princes of the south in the event of a rising ; and again, it is known that it was his opinion that in the event of invasion all troops might be withdrawn both from Burmah and Assam, on the ground that it would not be difficult to reconquer these great provinces if we repulsed the Russians — certainly not an alarmist view. It is believed in India that the Russians will advance by Balkh and also from Penjdeh through Maimena with small forces upon Kabul ; with a small force and mule transport by Chitral upon Jelalaljad ; and with a small force by Gilgit upon Kashmir, although, according to Sir Charles MacGregor, the last route would be possible in July and August only. These small forces would be from one to two months on the road, and their marches would be extremely difficult at the present time ; but, according to Sir Charles MacGregor, if the Russians were established in Balkh, at the frontier which we are now asked to willingly give them, and which Sir Charles MacGregor said they would obtain as the result of their first successful campaign, these marches would become "a perfectly feasible operation of war." The large force of the invader, with his siege train, would of course come by Hera,t to Kabul unless we beat him, or to Ghazni, and then if not defeated, by the Kuram river, which lie could reach during eight months of the year, or by the Tochi I CHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 359 valley towards Lahore, and by the Gomul pass towards Dera Ismail Khan and the south. Some think that Russia will advance also by Seistan towards Kandahar : but she would have to pass through districts where the people are friendly to ourselves, thanks chiefly to Sir Eobert Sandeman's popularity, for he is looked upon as the best friend both of chiefs and people, and as justice incarnate. At Quetta we are strongly established on the flank of the Eussians, whose main force, advancing over fairly level ground, and not, like the small forces, over passes of 10,000 feet, would have to march 350 miles from Herat — against the 200 from Balkh of the small forces — before reaching us. It is often said that if success or failure depends upon the Results of attitude of the Afghans, as is frequently alleged by Indian Russian oflicers, we had better let the Eussians be the first to enter a^^vance. Afghanistan, as then the Afghans would turn against them. Russian credit has stood very low in Afghanistan since 1878, because the Afghans thought that the Eussians behaved meanly in not defending them against us at that time ; and similar views, in a more aggravated form, would be conceived of us if we took no notice of Russian entry into Afghanistan. The Eussians were not pledged to defend the Afghans. We are iledged, in fact, to the present Ameer, and in universal Afghan lelief to the Afghans generally. Sir Eobert Sandeman's chief assistant, one of the men who know the Afghans best, said to me at Quetta last year that there was no greater fallacy than to suppose that the occupation of a part of Afghanistan by Eussia would make the mass of the Afghans her foes, for that they respected power, and would be more likely to turn against us for refusing to defend them than against Eussia for advancing, and when once shaken would begin to look, as they have looked before, for their share of Indian plunder. I have said but little of the intrigue which would go on in the still " independent," or British, part of Afghanistan, and in India, when the Eussians were established on the new frontier which some would give them. I agree with Sir E. Temple that it would be impossible to preserve Kabul from the interference of a European power established at Herat. To say, too, that there would be intrigue in India itself is not to direct special blame against the Eussians. For example, the Eussians are aware that Indian officers have proposed to the Indian Government to prepare rebellion among the Turcoman tribes, and it is not, there- fore, impolite to suppose that the compliment has been returned. We have never taken any actual steps to disquiet the Eussians in Central Asia, and it is possible that they have never taken any actual steps, as yet, to disquiet us in India ; but there can be no doubt that, if they advanced to the proposed frontier, and if our relations became unfriendly, Eussian agents would swarm at the native Courts. In short, it seems plain that the nearer Eussia is allowed to come to India the more we must increase our army and our military expenditure. As the Government of India are said to have put the matter in August 360 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt iv 1888, the division of Afghanistan between England and Prussia, or the advance of Russia across her present frontier into Afglianis- tan, would be ruinous to India in expense, and our position in India would under such circumstances become intolerable. Importance Those who best know Afghanistan are then of opinion that to Russia invasion of India by Eussia is possible, and would in the event of Afghau of war certainly be undertaken provided that Russian influence co-opera- were dominant in Kabul, and that this could hardly fail to be *""'• the case were Russia at Herat and Balkh. The co-operation of Afghanistan would be of such essential moment to the Russians that any gifts or promises would be cheap payment for it, and it is certain that such promises would not be wanting after the Russians had been allowed to establish themselves at Herat. _ The prol}- We have now to consider by what means the danger of in- lem of vasion is guarded against at the present moment, and what defence. further steps would be necessary if, by the adoption of a foolish policy, the danger should increase. Schemes The original idea was to watch the outlet of the passes and for defence, liave Our main armies on the plains ; but this plan involved. What has in time of peace, the keeping of our chief garrisons in an un- actually healthy valley, and in time of war the abandonment of the whole been done, of the right bank of the Indus without a serious struggle. Tlie eifect in India, in the event of invasion, of the important stations of Peshawur, Nowshera, Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ghazi Khan, and Dera Ismail Khan being abandoned to our enemies would have been disastrous. Yet it would have been im- possible to fight a battle between the Indus and the hills unless at a fortified position at Attock crossing. When this plan was given up, the next suggestion was to fortify the whole length of our new frontier. It was, however, found not only that the fortifications would have cost a great deal of money, and that, for them to be worth much, they would have required larger garrisons than our small army could provide, but that there was an alternative course whicli, in a military sense was a wiser one. The third scheme was to strongly fortify not only Quetta but Peshawur. Here again the inadequacy of our army would have made the step perhaps a mistaken one, committing us to fighting ill strength upon two lines, or else to wasting a large garrison upon Peshawur — an unliealthy place and not a natur- ally strong position. The two The course which has been taken is that of deciding to fight lines of with our field army upon the Quetta line, and of resisting upon defence. the Khyber line, first in the defiles, and then at Attock, only sufficiently to delay the enemy while we attacked him upon the flank. But the arsenal at Rawul Pindi is to be defended on account of the possibility of descent from Kashmir upon our great railway line, and also as the last position for the defence of the lOiyber route. We have made an excellent military road through Kohat and Bannu to Dera Ismail Khan, as well as the perfect road from Dera Ghazi Khan to Pisliin, which I traversed in the cold weather of 1888-89, and which enables troops from CHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 361 the Piiiijab to march to the Pishin valley on the road towards Giriskh or Kandahar -without going round by Sindh. We have made excellent military roads round Quetta, and, The Quetta besides our tunnel through the Khojak, which will be finished line. some time between April and November 1890, an excellent military road over the summit of that pass. There has been con- structed a twofold line of broad-gauge railroad to the frontier with a bridge across the Indus at Sukkur ; Quetta has been strongly fortified as a base, and the position is one naturally so nearly impregnable that even the fact that the new fortifications would not stand against the " high " explosives with which foreign field artillery may soon be armed hardly weakens the value of the Quetta base. The Baleli position in front of Quetta can be easily strengthened by inundations, with the curious result that those of the enemy advancing upon it who do not die of thirst in the "' country of sand " will, when they meet water for the first time, find too much of it. Quetta, in short, with its system of roads and railways, now forms a magnificent base for a field force, but for the liability of the Indus valley and even of the Afghan passes to occasional July floods. The material sufiicient for completing the railway to Kandahar is at the front. The Khyber, on the other hand, is prepared at Lundi Kotal to resist attack by a small party, and, if it is forced, the intention is to fall back first upon the Attock positions and then upon Rawul Pindi, while our main army operates upon the flank of the invader in the neighbourhood of the Helmund or of Kandahar. Fortifications in India are mainly needed by us for securing Fortifica an advanced base such as Quetta is, and such as, in the event tions. of a break-up of Afghanistan, some point upon the Helmund would become ; for the protection of arsenals, such as Quetta and Rawul Pindi, and for the protection of strategic points such as the crossing of the Indus at Attock. Generally speaking it must be understood that the policy which has rightly prevailed in India is that our defence must be by the oflensive with a field army, and that the less we have to do with fortifications the better. We have therefore fortified a perfect base, and we are fortifying our arsenal at Kawul Pindi, but are not attempt- ing to cover the whole frontier by a line of fortified positions, such as that which defends France against the German Empire. By roads and railways we are obtaining the power of rapidly concentrating our troops for oflensive action upon the in- vader's flank. In short, the military policy contemplated is the defensive in the extreme North West combined with a vigorous offensive from Quetta or Kandahar. Our Indian army, if the improvement in its transport which, as will be seen, has already been brought about within the last two years be rapidly continued, may be looked upon as an excellent army for the purpose of offensive action from the Quetta base, provided with a system of communications and with an im- pregnable position in its rear. 362 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part iv The Tliere may be some who . are inclined to think that the Kbyber Indian Government show a want of caution m proposing to !'"«■ act offensively upon the single line from Quetta, and who believe that the invader would come through Kabul and the Khyber, and would be joined by the Afghan tribes. They point to a supposed necessity of our resisting in strength upon the Khyber line ; but the best defence for the Khyber would be attack on the Kandahar side or from a new base to be occupied between Ghazni and the Gomul, the fortification of whicli would both defend the Toohi and Gomul passes, and afford a starting-point for an advance to Ghazni for ourselves. The position of Peshawur, and the probable hostility to us of the tribes in the event of a Prussian advance, make resistance in the Peshawur valley impossible. All we could do would be to delay the enemy in the pass, gain time for orderly retirement, fall back, in the first instance, upon our position at the Indus crossing, and, as a last stand, upon the entrenchments at Eawul Pindi. It sliould be remembered also that the supply of the army, and its reinforcement, if necessary, from home, are easier by Karachi and Quetta than by Bombay and Peshawur. These considerations form a complete defence for the policy which has won the day. Transport. While tlie Indian authorities are, as I have said, pessimists with regard to matters bearing upon Indian defence which are not within their own control, they are of opinion that India is better prepared for war than is admitted by their critics. The considerable length of time which would be needed before concentration at or near Kandahar is chiefly caused, they think, by the distances which have to be travelled. The funds for the purchase of 5000 mules which were provided in 1889 will briijg the number of mules for transport, exclusive of those in Burmah, to upwards of 13,000. The army have also a thousand camels ; and an immense number of mules, donkeys, and ponies are available for purchase or hire in the Punjab and North West, while the frontier itself can supply a vast number of slow camels. It is supposed that in any future war wheeled trans- port will be again resorted to, although there were immense losses in connection with wheeled transport in the last Afghan campaign. In 1880 the whole road from Kandahar to Sibi was strewn with the wreckage of thousands of broken-down carts, but it is thought that the new carts which are being made for transport will be really strong and serviceable, and the roads to the extreme military frontier have been much improved. India is at least well prepared for war as compared with England. Steps to be While the measures tliat have been taken are sufficient for taken. the present upon the Quetta line, and tliose which are being- taken at this moment are sufficient upon the Khyber line, it is necessary to take immediately certain other steps, either in other places or of a general nature. Above all, it is necessary to still further increase the reserve of mules and the reserve of liorses, with all the necessary saddlery, liarness, and carts, and OHAP. I IKDIAN DEFEKCE 363 to provide the whole army with the latest weapons. The delay in deciding about the new magazine rifle has been serious, as we are unable to arm the whole of the native infantry with Martini-Henry rifles until the British troops in India have received the new rifle. The question of ammunition is also difficult. So long as some of our Indian forces are armed with the Snider rifle we must keep up a reserve of Snider ammuni- tion, and, in the hope that the British soldiers will soon have the magazine rifle, Government are unwilling to keep a large reserve of even Martini-Henry ammunition. The ammunition difficulty extends also to the artillery, of which some batteries have the new twelve-pounder breech-loading guns, while others are still ar'med with the old nine-pounder muzzle-loading guns. The Indian authorities are of opinion that the dependence of India upon the War Office for arms and stores should be brought to an end, and India, like the Colonies, allowed to buy them in the open market. The Indian railway bridges should be made fit for the passage of troops on foot ; rolling stock on the railways — terribly deficient — increased to enable troops to be conveyed with rapidity by our strategic lines. The bridges of boats that have been taken away should be replaced ; the Indus ferries kept up ; the railway should be made to Bannu ; the Tochi valley surveyed and opened to trade, and the tribes as far as the Afghan posts brought into relations with ourselves. It is known to the Indian Government, since the recent visits of Sir Robert Sandeman and of General Prendergast, that the Zhob valley would pay for occupation, and that the chiefs and people desire our protection. During the Viceroy's visit to the frontier in November 1889 it was rightly decided to annex the Zhob, and in December Sir R. Sandeman marched through the Gomul pass. The Kuram line — which would have to be defended,, first at Peiwar Kotal, then in the defiles, and then at Kalabagh, where a bridge head is needed — would become also a valuable alternative line of advance for ourselves. Bridge fortifications are also needed for the defence of the Sukkur position. In the meantime surveys should be carried on between the Zhob and Ghazni, with the view of the selection of the strongest point that can be found as a more northern base for our field army. Such a spot is already marked upon our military maps, but it is perhaps better that its name should not be divulged. It would be an excellent military step, and, as I think, an The excellent civil step as well, to put the whole of the frontier frontier, policy and all dealings with the tribes under one man. At the present moment the Punjab Government are allowed to pursue a useless course of blockade, and of the taking of hostages, when it is a well-known fact that the blockaded tribes are glad to have some of their chiefs kept for them in comfort, and are always able to obtain the goods they want from their next neighbours. Wlien Sir Frederick Roberts commanded at Kuram he was also chief political officer there, and it was at one time 364 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part iv proposed to divide the frontier between Sir P^obert Sandeman and himself, Sir Frederick Roberts taking the north part, and Sir Robert Sandeman the south, or, in other words, that which he has now, but with, I fancy, although I did not hear it from liimself, a general control over the whole. This arrangement was prevented by the Afghan War and Sir Frederick Roberts's promotion. The civil officers of the frontier, who have to do with Districts, cannot possibly find time, in executing their continually increasing duties, to carry on relations with the border tribes in that slow manner which is necessary for success. The Commissioner of the frontier might be given a district as large as possible, from GUgit to the Persian Gulf, provided that he had nothing to do but travel about and meet the chiefs, and preside over their councils. They need not see him often — once a year in. each part of his district would be enough, so that one progress along it each year would suffice, and this could be accomplished in the cold weather between October and March. Of course he must have good men under liim, as Sir Robert Sandeman has good men now. Soldiers less experienced than Sir Frederick Roberts are sometimes inclined to resent the authority given to political officers upon the military frontier ; but tlie work cannot be done by the soldiers themselves. On the one hand they are apt to be a little rough in dealing with the tribes, and on the other, they shrink from the often necessary advance of posts, on account of the' unpopularity in the army of frontier stations, where both officers and men are literally bored to death. The army, generally speaking, are as much opposed to advancing our posts into the Zhob — as advised by bir Frederick Roberts and bir Robert Sandeman — as were the navy to the retention of Port Hamilton, and for the same reason. They look upon this service on the extreme frontier much as the Egyptian army look upon service in the Soudan. Sir Eobert Sir Robert Sandeman's one idea is said to be to retire from Sandemau. India and take service of some sort in Ireland, in which idea his enemies, if he has any, will hope that he may succeed, and all his friends will hope that he may fail. If the Government of India would consent to place the whole of the frontier in Sir Robert Sandeman's hands no better arrangement could be made. If they will not do so, then, upon the retirement of Sir Robert Sandeman, I should be glad myself to see the whole frontier given to the Viceroy and controlled directly by himself. The one thing that ought not to be is that the present jealousies of the Governments of the northern portion of the frontier should continue. It is a singular example of the way in which Governments go on in old-fashioned lines that we keep up separate establishments with separate Governors at places like Madras and Bombay, of which the first is unimportant and the second important only as far as trade is concerned, whereas the vital point of the whole Empire is partly left in the excellent hands of Sir Robert Sandeman but partly left to chance. CHAr. I INDIAN DEFENCE 365 Wliile Sir Eobert Sandenian is a kind of king of the whole country between Persia and the Punjab, beyond Sir Eobert Sandeman we come first to the DeiDuty (Jommissioner of Dera Ghazi, then to the Deputy Commissioner of Dera Ismail, then to three other Deputy Commissioners, and then to Colonel Warburton, all of them being more or less hampered by the Punjab Government. The Governor - General of Eussian- Turkestan keeps the frontier question in his own hands, and unless the Inclian Government is content to put the whole question into the hands of Sir Eobert Sandeman, who would be cheap at a peerage and the salary of Madras or Bombay, then our frontier should be in the Viceroy's direct control. There should not be one policy for the Bolan, another for the Need for Khyber, and a third for the Tochi valley and Gomul pass, but uniform one policy for the frontier, the passes, and the tribes. The policy, object of a frontier policy is to protect the peasantry of India against raids ; to protect the merchants who use the passes against exaction ; to allow our survey parties to do their work without being fired at, as they have been fired at in the Mangrotha and the Gomul ; to organise transport for the possibility of our advance ; to make such military roads as we think necessary. In certain eventualities, moreover, after advancing through the passes we must be able to count on finding the people friendly, and, when we reach the other side of them, must be certain of tranquillity in our rear. All this has been attained in British Baluchistan, and can be attained farther north by the adoption of Sir Eobert Sandeman's tribal and local levy system. So complete is tlie belief in the Indian military and foreign departments that the side which has the tribes with it in a frontier war will win, that it is difiicult to explain how it is that the KJiyber system of Colonel Warburton has not been extended to the Afridis of the Bazar valley and to the Kohat pass, or the Sandeman system to the Wazaris behind the Gomul. Not only should we gain security in time of peace, but the advantage of large numbers of recruits of warlike tribes, who could be brought into our ranks against the time of war. Our local levies are expected gradually both to develop their military eificiency (as the Khyber rifies have already done : witness their excellent performance in the Black Mountain expedition) and to extend the recruiting ground for our regular native force. It is also possible that the improved levies may find suitable employment for the best of the native ofiicers of our own army. The local levy system — which is an aristocratic tribal system The under British protection, which answers perfectly, secures Sandeman peace and order, the arrest of criminals, the guarding of roads, system, the protection of trade and of telegraphs, and the partial cessation of blood feuds — rests upon our maintenance of the authority of the chiefs and the decision of all tribal questions, according to the will of the majority of the sirdars and accord- ing to tribal custom. In the districts of strong chiefs the 366 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN system is very similar to that by which tlie Dutch have long ruled Java, aithough the Baluch population is as independent as the Javanese Malays are cringing. Sir Robert Sandeman answers to the Dutch Resident, and princes like Jam Ali of Lus Beyla to the Dutch Java -Sultan. We have_ also an analogous system of government in the British dominions in our new colony of Fiji, but there we have, living side by side with the chiefs, white planters, who make a grievance of the favour shown to the chiefs for the purpose of upholding their influence with the tribes. The Sandeman system could not exist if there were a British population settled in Baluchistan. Other steps One of the many matters that I would deal with as a whole to betaken, by extending the Sandeman system over all the tribes between ourselves and the Afghan posts, and by employing them on road-making, is that of the road from Peshawur to Kohat, which should be properly made, and arrangements entered into for keeping it open. We must speedily erect forts, similar to that which has just been finished to block the Khyber, in the cross valleys which form alternative routes from Jelalabad to the Peshawur valley. It is useless to waste much money upon important forts in this neighbourhood, because they could not be held if the tribes rose against us, and we should have to fall back at once to the Attock position on the Indus, where, it should be observed, the Attock forts have still to be completed. One of the further steps which will, sooner or later, need to be undertaken, is an extension of the railway from Quetta towards the west, in the direction of Nushki — a matter to which I shall be forced to return. A difiiculty is at present caused by Karachi, the base for the defensive action, being in the hands of the Bombay Government, while the army which would be supplied through Karachi and Quetta would be a Bengal army ; but this difficulty is only one of those which are caused by the Presidency system, the abolition of which is of the first necessity. I have now named the various steps that should at once be taken, with this addition, that in the north we should make friends of, and employ as soldiers, the inhabitants of Kafristan, and so defend the passes of Chitral. It is understood tliat the visit of Sir Frederick Roberts to Kashmir in May 1889 was connected with a scheme for raising a local force for the frontier defence, and for improving the Kaslimir organisation for the defence of Gilgit. Ihis was very necessary, as, though in the event of a, Ptussian advance on India the main attack would doubtless come by the road which offers the fewest difficulties, namely, through Herat, smaller columns of infantry, with mountain guns, would attempt to pass through Gilgit as well as across the Pamir to Swat, and through Leh into Kashmir. Action in Now there comes the question of the steps that should be the event taken if, under one pretext or another, the Russians should of further advance to Herat or Balkh, or both. I have already stated Kafristan and Kashmir. OHAr. I INDIAN DEFENCE 367 that I believe that the announcement of the promises we liave Russian made to the Atneer would be sufficient to prevent advance, but advance, failing that announcement the advance may come. If it come during the life of the Ameer, which is unlikely, I assume that war would be the result ; but if it come under the other circum- stances which have been described as possible, and if public or parliamentary oi^inion at home would not support resistance, what are the steps which should be taken ? The railway would at once be laid to Kandahar, although 1 should strongly advocate the policy of stopping short of that city, and not attempting ourselves to undertake the government of the town or province. In the opinion of high military authorities a railroad equipped with defensive posts must then also be made to Nushki and towards Farrah, and there are some who would have this line begun at once. Mr. George Curzon, in a paper read before the British Association, in 1889, advocated the pushing forward of railways into Seistan mainly for purposes of trade, and there can be little doubt that the future com- munication with Europe will pass between India and Persia by this route. The Russians have taught us, as American example seems not previously to have done so, that railways need not be as costly as ours in India, and that lines useful both for trading and for strategic purposes can be made at little cost even in difficult countries. The Russians have bridged a far more difficult river than any we should have to cross, with a bridge of wood brought to the spot at greater cost than would be incurred by taking American wood to Seistan, and, accord- ing to Mr. Curzon, the Russian bridge across the Oxus cost only £30,000, whereas we should probably have spent upon it from half a million to a million. In the opinion of many who have given consideration to the question our position on the North-West frontier will never be thoroughly secure until we have two lines of railway meeting in Seistan — one connected with India, probably by our Quetta route, and tlie other with a point on the Persian Gulf. The country between the Persian Gulf and Seistan must be surveyed, for with our present know- ledge it is impossible to say whether the line should be from Gwadur or from some other port farther westward. The Nushki lines are not the only additional strategic lines of railway which will have to be constructed if Russia comes to Herat or Balkh, and to make railways in such difficult country as the Afghan frontier takes so much time that there will be no room for delay. The heavy rains of 1889 showed that neither the Bolan nor the Sibi-Pishin railway can be depended upon when the floods are higher than is usual, and it is scarcely possible to provide sufficient culverts for the immense volume of water which sometimes comes off the high hills surrounding both these railways. The want of cross communication also between our line of defence in the front of the Khyber and our Quetta line is too complete for safety. The only railway com- munication from Quetta or from Sibi with Pesliawur, or with PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Increase of force in tliat event TIae reserve. InsufR- ciency of present force for the eventu- ality, Kawul Pindi, or the Attock crossing, goes round by Lalla Musa or by Lahore. The Zhob stream rises not far from Pishin, and is easily accessible from a point between Pishin and Loralai. It flows into the Gomul stream, and forms a natural line of communication between Dera Ismail Khan and Quetta, and saves 200 miles, while the construction along it of a railway would bring a vast tract of disturbed country under quiet rule. In the course of November and December 1889 the military authorities have been carrying out a survey of the Indus between Kalabagh and Dera Ismail Khan with a view to the ultimate construction of a bridge, and with the hope that some day Attock will be connected by a line upon the Indian or eastern side of the Indus with the routes through the Gomul and the Bolan, so as to give the necessary mobility to the forces engaged in the defence of the right and centre of our position on the North- West frontier. Above all — and in this would lie the great permanent expenditure — the trustworthy portion of our Indian army, both white and native, must be increased ; and it is in the necessary increase of the European army in India, already so tremendous a burden to that country, that lies the immense danger in allowing a Eussian advance to the Hindu Kush. A regimental reserve has lately been established in India for the native army, and a reserve which, unlike our so-called reserve in England, is to be trained ; but this excellent force, should it grow as is hoped in numbers, will only increase the disproportion between the native and white troops, and, unless there is a proportional augmentation in the number of white troops serving in India, will not increase as against Russia our fighting strength. At present the reserve is small, and would not fill up the ranks to their usual numbers after the losses of a single battle. Our Indian army is possibly suflicient for our present Indian needs and dangers ; that is, while the Kussians keep behind the frontier lately marked by us and them with much solemnity, and recognised, as previously mentioned, by the Russian Emperor — as lately as the 8th June 1888. Our army is, however, as will be shown, insufficient for the other eventuality. The mobilisation scheme which was prepared in India and sent home contemplates, I believe, that India should take the field with two army corps and a reserve division, and some 250 guns ; but it asks for six battalions of British infantry, so that per- haps it will be desirable to neglect the reserve division. If the Afghans were with us we should be able to advance beyond Kandahar with 55,000 picked troops, which would be suffii3ient to meet such an army as the Russians could bring against us if they had to start from their present frontier, with the enormous difliculties of transport across the desert. In the event, how- ever, of a long war beyond Kandahar, or of a Russian advance from a new frontier on the Indian side of Herat, India would need a large force from England to reinforce the garrisons of CHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 369 the Indian towns, to make further provision for lines of com- munication, and also to replace casualties. The coming of these troops would enable every good man now in India to be sent to the front, and the men from England might be recruits, except for the fact that men of very youthful age die in large numbers from the climate. The stores for the first army corps would be ready at Quetta, and those for the second at Eawul Pindi. It has been suggested that the second army corps is mythical, like the second army corps in England, and when I set out to pay my last visit to India, to look into the Defence question, I was inclined to be sarcastic about the probable results of an encounter between the Indian second army corps and the second army corps at home ; but as a fact all is ready for the second army ccrps except the transport, and there is, as I have shown, a great deal of country transport to be obtained in India, while the Eussians at the present moment are also not without their transport difficulties. There can be no doubt that our transport in India is still and of defective, although immense progress has been made since Sir transport. Frederick Koberts has held command and been assisted in this matter by his late Quartermaster-General and by General Chesney. As matters stand our transport difficulties would be all but over- whelming if the ti'ibes opposed us, but would present far less difficulty if they were friendly. Sir Robert Sandeman was able The tribes. in the period from 1879 to 1881 to assure the armies that passed through the Bolan and that occupied Kandahar that he would see that they should not starve ; and, even after Maiwand, he had no difficulty in procuring supplies through his own people, although he was attacked by those people from beyond his northern frontier with whom he had, owing to the opposition of the Punjab Government, not been allowed to deal. We have now two perfectly open lines of communication, yielding a good deal of local camel transport, both of which I myself have crossed. The more northerly, however, of these lines has been carried at vast cost over the summit of a mountain 6000 feet in height, when the line might have been made shorter, and have crossed the SuUeman range through an easy pass at a height of only 800 feet. At last, owing to a positive declaration on the part of the Commander-in-Chief and of the late Quartermaster- ^General that the opening of the Gomul is a military necessity, the posts are being advanced ; but the jealousy of the Punjab Government continues to be marked. The questions of frontier arrangement and of transport are closely connected, and our soldiers appear to be right in their contention that we can do everytliing if the tribes are with us, and nothing if they are against us. From the Sandeman frontier in the Zhob south- wards they are with us : northward they are hostile or almost ignorant of our existence, because the Punjab Government has pretended to have a defined frontier at the mountain foot, and has not established with them those relations which we should have fostered. A thoroughly friendly support from the tribes 2b 370 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part iv as fai" as the Afghan posts is easy of attainment, and to get as loyal a support from the tribes who lie between the Afridis and the Lunis a,s we have from the Lunis and from the Afridis themselves is essential to our position. When in November- December 1888 Sir Robert Sandeman marched to Khan Mahomet Kot, Morgha, and Mina Bazar, he made it possible to survey the Gomul and to give us a far shorter road from India to the new frontier. By every such step fresh tribes of ex-robbers will become our best supporters, camel transport will be locally ob- tained, and our position upon the frontier made daily more secure. Tlie native The native army in India is only partly good enough to be army. used in the field against the Russians. In writing a few months ago upon the subject I was forced to frankly state the opinion of the best impartial military judges upon a portion of the southern infantry. This was converted into an attack upon the whole Bombay army by some critics, for the Madras army was generally given up as regards service against a European enemy. I was far from attacking the Bombay army generally, for I praised its cavalry, its mountain batteries, and its pioneers, and praised indeed its infantry so far as old-fashioned Indian service was concerned, merely pointing out — what is notorious to those who are not partial — that the Bombay infantry are not fit to cope with picked Russian infantry, who are the possible enemy for whom in India we have to prepare. It is a curious fact that I was criticised on both sides at once — by Bombay officers and writers for depreciating native troops, and by English military authorities for rating them too high in stating my firm belief that our Indian native cavalry are, for service in India or upon the Indian frontier, as good as any cavalry that could be put in line against them. The gallant service ot some Bombay troops in the Karen field force was brought up against me, as though I had for one moment pretended that Bombay troops, with their admirable discipline, would not get the better of irregular native levies. My point, and the only point worth discussing, is whether Bombay troops are fit, in the usual pro- portions of native troops to British troops, to stand against the advance of picked Russians. Another form of criticism on my remarks was to be found in the Times of India, which took the line of asserting that, if Madras and Bombay infantry could not be employed against Russians, " Bengal proper " was on a par with them, and that when "the Bengalis boast of their troops they " were " referring to their . . . frontier troops and Sikhs." This is good criticism, and I fully admit that down- country Bengal troops would be of as little use against Russians as troops from the Southern Presidencies, and that the only native infantry which ought to be placed in the field in Afghanistan is that composed of Goorkhas, Sikhs, Patlians Afridis, and the best of the Punjab Mohammedans. The critic' however, went on to urge that what was wanted was " march- ing power, discipline, and a thorough musketry training, in each of which most of the native Indian regiments are exoep- CHAP. 1 INDIAN DEFENCE 371 tionally good." The writer seems to leave out of account that power of standing up against European attack which is not exactly the same thing as mere courage, and which, once pre- sent among the Southern Indian races, seems to have died out among them in the opinion of those of the best judges who are not as it were personally enlisted upon the other side. I fear then that I cannot modify tlie view which I expressed with regard to the southern infantry, and that, while probably the seven regiments of Bombay cavalry and the two Bombay moun- tain batteries might be used on active service against a Russian attack, the twenty-six regiments of Bombay infantry (including tlieir excellent pioneers) could not be put in the front line. So too, while the four regiments of Madras cavalry and the five regiments of Hyderabad Contingent cavalry could be used, if their regimental system should be modified as will be explained the thirty-two regiments of Madras infantry or pioneers and the six regiments of Hyderabad Contingent infantry could not be safely put in the front line. The Hyderabad Contingent artillery are on mobilisation to become ammunition columns, as were some of our own artillery under the War Office scheme of 1887, now nominally abandoned for another system, which has, however, no real existence. _ In the Bengal army and Punjab Frontier Force there are Number sixty-seven regiments of infantry or pioneers, of which, by care- of good ful inquiry, I made out forty-nine, besides pioneers, or fifty-two troops. in all, to be good. There are twenty-four regiments of cavalry of the Bengal army or Frontier Force and six mountain battei'ies. The result of the most elaborate inquiries into the character of each regiment in the whole Native Army led me to believe that the forty regiments of cavalry are as good as anything that could be brought against them ; the eight mountain batteries could all be used in the field, if sufficient money were spent on them in advance ; and forty-nine regi- ments of infantry for the front line, besides the six regiments of pioneers which might be employed on their own work. This leaves seventy battalions of infantry which could not be put in the field against the Russians and are not really worth the money they cost. If we take the infantry as averaging 800 men to a battalion, we shall find that there are 56,000 infantry that are not good enough to use against a European enemy. On the other hand, there are 44,000 infantry or pioneers good enough, if in combination with an equal number of white troops, to use against a European enemy. If we take the cavalry regiments as averaging 550 horses, 22,000 native cavalry can be used; and the eight batteries at an average of 250 men would give 2000 men for use ; that is, 68,000 good, as against 56,000 not fit to take the field against a Russian advance. There are also in various parts of India certain irregular troops whicli are fit for use, such, for example, as the excellent Khyber rifles. Now it is an accepted principle that we must put into the field almost as many white as native troops, and that we must leave 372 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Army should be recruited from certain races only. Impossi- bility of aaf ely usiii j southern troops in Afghanis- tan, a large number of trustworthy garrisons in India. As we have about the same number of trustworthy troops and white troops in India the proportions seem easy to observe, provided we neglect the less efficient troops, which, in my opinion, ought to be gradually reduced. It will have been seen from what I have written that I have formed a distinct opinion that we should cease to enlist men from tlie unwarlike races. We have already ceased to enlist Bengalis, and I should wish that the same principle should be extended, and that we should no longer enlist men from Southern India. When I come to discuss the Presidency system I will consider whetlier there is any political danger in enlisting only men from the Punjab and iSTorth West, and from outside our frontier ; but for the moment I will lay down the preliminary view that our native infantry is of the most varying degrees of merit ; that no one would dream of sending Madras, Bombay, or down-country infantry regiments against Russians; yetthat our native infantry can produce troops as good as any in the world. We can show in the 4th Goorkhas, or the 44th Goorkhas, indeed in Goorkha regiments generally, unequalled dash ; and in the 2d Sikhs, or 14th or 15th Sikhs, and many other Sikh regiments, a steadi- ness able to resist any shook, and men fit for any service except, indeed, one of those prolonged campaigns in which scurvy plays havoc in their ranks. As we can obtain in India recruits from several warlike races, and of more than one religion, it seems clear that we should cease to raise mere peace troops, and to tax the Indian people for their support. It is possible that we can for the present not find an increased supply of Goorkhas, but we have not quite reached our limit as regards Sikhs, and we have hardly tapped the resources of the Afridis and the other frontier tribes. For my own part, failing Goorkhas, I should prefer frontier men to the ordinary Indian Mohammedans. When we were sending Moslem troops to the Soudan an agitator appeared among them, and was ultimately tried at Loodiana for attempting to induce them not to fight against tlieir Arab co-religionists. If we should ever find our- selves exposed to a Puussian invasion, headed by Turcoman levies, these agitators will appear, not by ones or twos, but by hundreds, among our Indian troops. I had sooner trust Afridis than Indian Mohammedans to resist them. It should also be remembered that the British Empire contains vast numbers of warlike races, and that among the Chins of the Burmah hills, whom we are now fighting, and the Malays, not to speak of the Houssas, and other African subjects, we might find ma°-nificent recruiting grounds. While then a large portion of our Indian army is so com- posed that it would not be possible to place it in the field against Russian troops, that part of our Indian army which is good is all but perfect— as good in prosperous times as the best British troops. The drill, even of the Bombay troops, is admir- able, but those who have had experience of them' in battle OHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 373 know that, in spite of their drill, fierce Arabs can go through plena as they please. When they are considered as troops to hold lines of communication, and to do police work, it should be remembered that every additional mouth in Afghanistan is a serious matter, and that the better the troops the fewer the men that are employed. Moreover, it is costly to employ the southern troops in Afghanistan, because they are invalided in great numbers on account of the inclemency of the climate, and hate the service. The Telegu family Sepoy of the Madras armjr is essentially a well-drilled policeman and not a fighting soldier, and I myself do not think that, whatever was once the case, even the Kajput foot-soldier that we now attract to our standard is good enough for our service. Our Indian mobilisa- tion plans ought (they do not) to frankly take into account the uselessness, as regards field service, of a large portion of the native infantry. It has to be virtually recognised in this way that the regiments for war service are brigaded three together, and that the inferior ones would be left upon the lines of communication, and would have to give up a portion of their white ofiicers to the regiments at the front. Sir Kichard Temple has said that it is important not to allow the Madras and Bombay armies to feel any sense of inferiority, or the Bengal army to regard itself as occupying a superior position, and as being indispensable to the State. There is much apparent wisdom in this view, but it is altogether too late to urge it. Since the Eussian danger has come upon us the Madras and Bombay infantry, being notoriously inferior to a portion of the Bengal army, as being recruited from less war- like races, are well aware that they will not be used in the field, while the Bengal army is fully persuaded that it alone will fight. It is perfectly well known throughout India that no general chosen to command in the field would allow even the very few southern regiments which nominally form part of the first and second army corps to appear in the fighting line. It is too late for Sir Eichard Temple's natural objection, and this points to the dissolution of the southern armies as separate organisations, and to the unification of the native force with fighting men only in its ranks. Many of the " garrisons " will require troops trustworthy as and for regards mutiny, although not necessarily of high efficiency for chief the field ; but I fear that the southern troops would not be garrisons, used largely even for this purpose. There are a great num- ber of garrisons in India which are called " obligatory," but these include a force for places which are really on the line of communications, such as Quetta, Eawul Pindi, Loralai, Peshawur, Kohat, Dera Ghazi Khan, and Dera Ismail Khan. Of course the garrisons of Rawul Pindi, Peshawur, and the places lying between and in the neighbourhood, would be intended in the first place for the defence of the Khyber and of the Attock positions, and in the second place for that of the Pindi entrenched camp. 374 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN The force We have in India at tlie present time about eleven liorse in India, artillery batteries, forty-two field artillery batteries, four heavy Ijatteries, sixteen mountain batteries, and twenty-three garrison batteries of artillery. We have nine regiments of British cavalry, and forty regiments of native cavalry if we count the Hyderabad Contingent, which should certainly be counted, or forty-one with the Central India Horse. We have about fifty- three battalions of British infantry, and about one hundred and twenty-two battalions of native infantry, with some irregular forces. The two army corps would take for the field army about eight horse artillery batteries, about seventeen field batteries, about three heavy batteries, and about eleven moun- tain batteries, some six regiments of British cavalry, and fifteen of native cavalry, twenty-seven battalions of British infantry, and thirty-four of native infantry. There would, therefore, as is seen at a glance, be a large force left behind — a larger force indeed staying behind than would go into the field ; but the artil- lery would be crippled by mobilisation, as horses would be taken from the batteries in India for the benefit of those mobilised. Moreover, it is only the batteries for the field army which are as yet armed with the new gun. The infantry and cavalry would, however, be in a far better position than would be the case in England with the troops left behind after mobilisation. An altogether unnecessarily large force of magnificent native cavalry would remain behind in India under this scheme. Mobilisa- The weak point of all Indian mobilisation proposals, those of tiou. 1887 and 1888 included, has always been that the Indian Government asked for a good deal from England which there would be but little chance of their obtaining. I believe that the Indian authorities think that they require some 500 captains or subalterns, some 200 medical or veterinary oificers, and some 20,000 men upon the outbreak of war, and 10,000 for casualties in the first campaign, or about 1000 men a month. I cannot myself but believe that the wisest course would be for the Indian Government to recognise the fact that they will not get officers from England in the event of a general war, and to arrange for promoting non-commissioned officers and utilising their own reserve of officers, now in course of formation, and also for obtaining skilled volunteers who have gone through their training well. The best of the officers from the Madras and Bombay infantry should, of course, be utilised to fill vacancies in the fighting regiments, and their places filled by British non-commissioned officers, able to speak native lan- guages. Difficulties are thrown in the way of all such proposals by the separation between the Bengal, Madras, and Bombay armies ; but every vestige of this separation must be swept away at once if India is ever to be successful in a war. Cavalry. The infantry and cavalry in India can be mobilised without trouble. The artillery, as I have said, is in much the same posi- tion in this respect as the artillery at home. For example, of the eiglit native mountain batteries in India only five are CHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 375 reckoned upon for service in the field ; but the other three are perfectly useless -when left behind, for there are no reserve gun mules, and as a fact three batteries out of eight are completely sacrificed to make five for the field army. Looking to the character of our native cavalry, and to the fact that the Cos- sacks and the Turcoman horse, which alone the Russians would be likely to bring against them after a desert march which would be destructive to their European cavalry, would be troops of the same class, I doubt myselt whether it be necessary to have British cavalry in India. British cavalry would, of course, be of the greatest service in the event of a defeat, when the Indian cavalry could not be counted upon ; but we must not look forward to a defeat upon our North- West frontier, for our rule in India will not survive such reverses. The mobilisation scheme contemplates the placing of about four out of five thousand British cavalry in the field ; but I think, though military opinion is against me, that we might safely employ the whole of our native cavalry in the field, and cease to send British cavalry to India, with a great saving to the finances of that country, and with an augmentation to our strength at home in the very point where we are weakest. At the same time, when Lord Randolph Churchill was at the India Office, I believe that he was on the point of reducing the number of British ofiioers in the Indian army, and of substituting natives, but Anglo-Indian military opinion would strongly disapprove of our relying upon native cavalry unless the present number of white oflicers were kept up or increased. I know that many Bengal officers believe that the Madras cavalry are, although smart-looking upon parade, made useless by the immense number of their followers and by their bad arrangements for cutting grass. But I cannot believe that these are " fixed points " of the Madras service, and one result of the abolition of the separate Madras command would be to assimilate the cavalry system of Madras to the cavalry system of Bengal. Great pains have been taken lately to have the best of CommaiKl- soldiers at the head of regiments as commanding officers and as '"g officers. second in command. One special reason why care is even more needed in this matter in India than elsewhere is because the choice of recruits rests with the commanding officer, and by tliis choice he may make or mar his regiment. We have among the people of India the best and the worst fighting material in the world, and merely to decide that a particular regiment or com- pany is to consist, say, for example, of Punjab Mohammedans, is not sufBcient to give uniformity of type. For instance, there are Northern Indian Mohammedans who cannot be counted upon to fight, while those from Chilianwala and the Salt Range, and from near Rawul Pindi, are as good as any recruits that can be found. On tlie whole, although I should prefer to see a smaller force of artillery more completely provided for war and easier to mobilise, and although I should wish to see the arrangements hastened for buying transport, I consider that 376 TROBLEHS OF GREATER BRITAIN paut iv the Indian army, when the abolition of the Presidency com- mands is complete, will be in an efficient condition for the service that it has at present to perform, and that invasion is impossible until the frontiers of any possible enemy have been advanced. In this event the army will have to be rapidly increased. The The Presidency system places directly under the Commander- Presidency in-Chief in India only the Bengal Army and the Frontier Force, system. and in a certain degree the Hyderabad Contingent and the Central India Horse, or less than two-thirds of our native army. Seventy-nine battalions of infantry of one sort and another are under the Commander-in-Chief in India, and fifty-eight batta- lions are under the Commanders-in-Chief in Madras or Bombay. It is essential to both strength and economy to abolish the Madras and Bombay commands, and to concentrate the whole army under the Commander-in-Chief in India and the Viceroy. It need not be supjjosed that there never was anything to be said for the Presidency system. The old Indian view, before we Jiad to face the prospect of Kussian neighbourhood, was tliat the organisation of the Indian army must be largely governed by internal political considerations as well as by those external considerations which ai-e alone in view in the case of Continental armies. While it is necessary to make our Indian army as effi- cient a fighting machine as possible, we have also to remember that we are an alien race, holding by force an enormous terri- tory, and compelled to rely in great measure on native troops, kept together only by boncls of self-interest and discipline. We are forced, therefore, not to trust entirely to one class of recruits, and this is the defence offered for the maintenance of separate Presidency armies. Although they arose, in the first instance, not through the exercise of any political foresight, but simply by chance, nevertheless they now give us, it is pretended by their supportei's, who are chiefly to be found in England, a valuable guarantee against military combination or mutiny. I have never for one moment argued in favour of our taking all our troops from one class or one race, but I have condemned the Presidency system, because its absurd administrative com- plications, and the present distressing conflicts of authority, are admitted by the Government of India to be fatal obstacles to vigour of action in case of war. I grant that during the pre- valence of political excitement in India it would be a great ad- vantage to be able to bring troops from one part of India to another for the purpose of garrisoning or occupying the country. But it is not necessary for this purpose to keep up that Presid- ency system which the military authorities of liidia have almost universally condemned. Under the Presidency system the military administration is divided as well as the organisation of the troops. There are, for example, still at Quetta Bombay troops under Bombay administration although the Quetta force is supposed to be specially under the Commander-in-Chief in India. OHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 377 Some advance m the direction of simplification has been Eeforms. made. The Ordnance, the Eemount, and the Military Finance Departments have been brought under the Government of India ; but while the Punjab Frontier Force has been placed under the Commander-in-Chief, the Madras and Bombay armies are still maintained on the Presidency system, although the Presidency Governments have really very little power in the matter except by way of obstruction. The Army Commission of 1879 pronounced strongly in favour Tlie Simla of the abolition of the Presidency system, and adopted the Coinmis- proposals on this subject which had been made by General siou, Chesney as long ago as 1868. They stated that an economical administration of the Indian armies was incompatible with the maintenance of the Presidency system, and that its continuance would be fatal to vigour and efficiency in the conduct of military operations out of India. The recommendation of the Commission was adopted by Lord Lytton and by Lord Eipon, but, although it was toned down to suit the Government at home, it was vetoed successively by Lord Hartington and by Lord Kimberley. In 1885 the matter was again warmly taken up by Lord Duflerin and his Government ; but their proposals were vetoed by Lord Kandolph Churchill, wlio, however, did not base his opposition on the merits of the question, but merely upon lus well-known opinion in favour of a parlia- mentary inquiry into the whole question of Indian administra- tion. The proposal for this general inquiry was, however, dropped, and it has not again been heard of. The Indian Government pointed out to the Government at 1888. home in 1888 that, while the garrison of Quetta and the force in Baluchistan have been placed under the orders of the Commander-in-Chief in India as regards the movements of troops, the stations they occupy, and the duties upon which they are employed, the selection of troops for relief, and the inspec- tion and administration of the force, remain in the hands of the Bombay Government. At one time there were Madras troops at Quetta, but the Madras regiment sent there was transferred to the Bengal establishment. A sort of working arrangement has been arrived at, but both in Baluchistan and in Burmah there exist the elements of friction. It was necessary to put the General commanding in Upper Burmah directly under the Commander-in-Chief, leaving Lower Burmah under the Govern- ment of Madras. There is only a small remnant left of the old Presidency system, but this remnant still does much harm. All the inconveniences and embarrassments which occurred during the last Afghan campaign, and which it was predicted by the Government of India would certainly occur again, arose once more in Upper Burmah, after the repeated rejection of the proposals of the Indian Government by the advisers of the Secretary of State. The Military Member of Council himself has reported that it is difficult to describe in adequate terms the extraordinary 378 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part iv embarrassment caused by carrying on military operations under such conditions. He has said that the amount of needless trouble that the Presidency system involves can only be appre- ciated by those who have to encounter it. It is also the case that the Bombay authorities have tried to recruit surreptitiously from the Punjab and North -West provinces, notwithstanding a distinct prohibition which was issued in consequence of the objections of the Government to having the Indian armies homogeneous. I am convinced myself of the groundlessness of the f eai's as to danger arising from the homogeneous nature of an army recruited only in the Punjab and North West. The Punjab and North West, with the addition of the states outside our border which furnish us with men, give us recruits of most varied kinds. We have Punjab Mohammedans speaking one tongue, Mohammedans of the North West who speak another, Sikhs of a different religion, Goorkhas of a difl'erent religion again, as well as a different race and tongue, and Afridis and Pathans — Mohammedans, but divided from the Mohammedans of India by race feeling. My own belief is that the Presidency system is as un- necessary and as evil in its results in civil as in military affairs ; but, while in civil affairs its consequence is only waste and muddle, in military affairs its consequence is danger, and may be the loss of a campaign and destruction of our Empire. If the Indian Council insist on keeping up the Presidency system they may disappear along with it, and certainly their fight for the Presidency system has been a complete condemnation of the wisdom of their own advice. As has been said of it by a former Foreign Minister of France, a friend of England, M. Barth^lemy Saint-Hilaire, in his work on India : " Wlien will the reform be broughf: about ? . . . The sooner the better. The existing state of things is intolerable. No doubt there are many obstacles — the resistance of routine and of private interests — but all these obstacles will be surmounted." 1888-89. In 1888 the Secretary of State asked the Government of India to prepare, through their military department, a draft general order based on the supposition that the unification of the Indian military system had been actually sanctioned, and notifying to all concerned how the arrangements were to be carried out. The work, which was one of great labour, was cheerfully undertaken, because Lord Dufferin's Government fancied that the India Office had really given way or changed its mind ; but a year after, in the middle of 1889, the Govern- Lord Cross, ment of India were informed by the Secretary of State that, ' while he recognised the completeness of the scheme and the thoroughness with which it had been prepared, he regretted his inability to sanction it, as it would involve legislation for which he did not feel in a position to ask. If this reply on the part of Lord Cross did not merely conceal continued difference of opinion among his advisers, it, being interpreted, must be CHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 379 read to imply that the Secretary of State is afraid to bring India ia any form before the House of Commons lest faddists should give trouble. There is another example of the same kind of difficulty. It is admitted by all the authorities of the Church of England that some legislation is needed upon Church matters ; but it is difficult to obtain tliis legisla- tion from a House of Commons in which there is a large lioman CathoHc and Presbyterian and a large Nonconformist element, and in which only a small minority are Churchmen interested in ecclesiastical affairs. The result of the impossibility of legislating about the Church of England in the House of Commons must inevitably be, sooner or later, the disestablish- ment of the Church ; and if Lord Cross be not unduly timid in thinking it impossible to legislate about India in the House of Commons, the result of the impossibility of legislation will be the loss of India. In the refusal of Lord Cross to initiate legislation (if legislation be indeed necessary, which I doubt) to secure the unification of the mihtary command in India, there is a special and peculiar excess of timidity caused by the fact that he is assured of the support of Lord Kipon and of Lord DufFerin, and that he knows that the former of these ex- Viceroys feels so strongly upon the subject as to make it certain that he would be able to secure the support of Mr. Gladstone for the reform. Lord Cross will now bear the blame which might have fallen upon Lord Kimberley. His decision has probably been the last that could be taken in time upon this question. The favourable opportunity may never recur, and to adopt the change when war may threaten, or when the Russian throne may be occupied by one less favourable to peace, will afTord us no breathing period to bring the new system into working order. When, if ever, the Presidency system has been abolished, the Force Indian army will be fit for all which at present it has to do. otherwise The field army is a nearly perfect force, soon to be supplied with fit to cope a perfect weapon, and needing only additional transport mules with to be able to move rapidly to the front. present Now comes the question of what should be done as regards difficulties, men and transport if the Eussians are unfortunately encouraged -j', "f*^ or allowed to establish themselves within striking distance, for luture. our military establishment in India, already small when we consider the size of the country and the numbers of its people, will then become ridiculously madequate for its duties. When the Eussians have connected Herat and Balkh with their European steam coromunications, and made an impregnable and well-provided base at Herat, our numbers of men in India will have to be regulated by no consideration except that of the completeness of Eussian transport. We shall have to be ready to place immediately in the field at Quetta not one army corps alone, or two army corps, but any number of army corps which may be necessary to meet those parts of the innumerable Eussian hosts that can find transport to march from Herat to Kandahar. Our own transport difficulties in India show that 380 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Separate army. this, for the Russians, would be entii-ely a question of cost. We need for the mobilisation of two army corps 20,000 mules, 25,000 camels, and 4000 bullocks. We are able to find a great deal of bullock transport in Sindh, and large numbers of camels in the plains of India, but the plain camels do not stand the Afghan climate. Of hill camels the Brahouis can supply 8000 ; but these would have to be bought right out at a high price, as the Brahouis themselves will not go out to war. The large amount of transport that I have named contemplates the advance of two army corps each consisting of about 35,000 men and 26,000 followers. The Eussians would probably advance without fol- lowers except so far as the followers were able to provide for them- selves. We have only at the present moment 13,000 transport mules permanently in the hands of the Government of India, and, in the event of the Eussians being established at Herat and Balkh, a complete reserve of horses and a provision of transport sufficient to meet the Russian provision of transport must be kept. The Russians are short of mules in Central Asia, but are said to be able to find camels without limit. A vast increase in our infantry and artillery will be needed if the Russians come to Herat and Balkh. When we contemplate the increase of the Indian army in the event of Russia being allowed to settle herself in Herat we cannot do so without taking into view the desirability of the creation of a separate army, which is indeed forced upon us by financial considerations. The present system is too ruinous to India to allow of a sufficient force being kej)t on foot, and we shall court disaster unless we speedily change it, though it is perhaps already too late to do so with safety. India with an increased British force will be drained dry by the money asked of her for a system which is not suited to her needs. When I say a separate army, of course I do not mean a return to the old Company's system. Both the home short service army and the army in India would be under the same supi-eme authority of the throne. They would be alike in drill, exercises, and dis- cipline, but separate in the existence of two systems of recruit- ing ; one for not more than three years for home service, and one for long service for India and the Colonies. In the event of Russia coming towards or to Herat and Balkh, and in the course of time organising an attack upon us, which may, it is only fair to note, be precipitated by a policy on our own part oflensive to Eussia in European afiairs, we opposed to i,a,ve to consider at what point she would be vulnerable, because partition, j^. jg (jifliQult to defend our Indian Empire if we are to remain only upon the defensive. The Indian school, as I have pointed out, would wish to strike at Russia from an Indian base. The War Office school would aim against her an expedition from a naval base on the Black Sea coast. Both schools, however agree in objecting to the only line of attack which to me seems possible. The Indian Mobilisation Committee, the best known members of which were Generals Roberts, Chesney, Chapman, and EUes, I believe, considered carefully the whole problem a Inviola- bility of Afghanis- tan as CHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 381 year or two ago, and, although their report was confidential, it IS pretty well known to all interested in the question what their general conclusions were. They thought that Eussia would be not unlikely, if ultimately she comes to Herat, to hand over that town and valley to Persia as far as civil administration goes, reserving special treaty rights to herself for military pur- poses — in fact to adopt the policy suddenly and strangely resolved upon as regards ourselves and Herat by Lord Beacons- field's Government in 1879. The Indian generals were agreed in thinking that in any case Herat would form the base for Russia's main advance, and Balkh for her secondary advance. Holding us to be absolutely bound to the present Ameer for his life, they thought that anarchy might be avoided on his death if the Afghan army were guaranteed its pay pending unanimous selection by the sirdars of a new Ameer. Our hold over Afghanistan is being increased by the growtli of trade, and the small beginning which has been made by the Ameer in working mines will also have favourable results. Captain Griesbach, a deputy superintendent in the Geological Survey of India, who was deputed at the Ameer's request to go to Kabul and report upon the mineral products of Afghanistan, became a trusted counsellor of the Ameer, and went with him to Turkestan in the expedition of 1888-89, returning to India in July 1889. His reports of the Ameer's health are understood to have been to the effect that it is far stronger than has been supposed, and that he may live for many years. There is a certain danger to our policy involved in the strong Kandahar, desire of many Indian soldiers to occupy Kandahar. It is doubtful to my mind whether even in a military sense, until Russia actually comes to Herat, if we allow her to do so, it would not be better to stay at Chaman rather than to advance to Kandahar. The soldiers seem to think that, while no large army could advance upon the Khyber leaving us in unbroken strength at Kandahar, it is possible that the Russians might pass Quetta. But if enough transport mules are purchased, long before a Russian army could advance in force from Hei-at towards the Khyber we could be in, or in front of, Kandahar. Coming to it then, we should come as deliverers ; advancing to it now, we should reach it as the enemies of the Afghan. Of course, if the Ameer should be brought to wisli, owing to trade or other reasons, for the completion of our railway to Kandahar or to the Helmund, it should be made at once ; but failing such a wish on the part of the Afghans I do not think that an actual advance should be contemplated until compelled by military necessity. The generals who served upon the Mobilisation Committee, Indian I believe, calculated that transport difficulties would at present military prevent the Russians advancing with more than 60,000 picked opinion, troops from Herat, and that, at the outside, Russia could at the same time, by sencling small parties across the passes, gradually collect 20,000 men in the neighbourhood of Kabul or the Khyber, feeding them, however, with much difficulty. This is a compu- 382 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Present vulnera- bility of Russia in tlie Pacific, tation based on the existing state of things, and not on a con- sideration of what would happen if Eussia had been some time estabhshed at Herat. The Mobilisation Committee, I believe, assumed that we should insist on the inviolability of Afghan- istan, and declare a violation of the frontier lately settled between us and Russia a casus belli, even after the death of the present Ameer. They doubtless argued that we are but a handful in India ; that, although our frontier is the portion of the country which is animated by the most friendly intentions towards our- selves, yet there is danger behind us farther east and farther south. After the battle of Maiwand the Bombay troops and a part of the Bengal army were dispirited, and there were signs that the native states would not stand by us in the event of a con- siderable defeat. While some of our leading officers in India have protested against the policy of relying upon the armies of the native states, and while the other party, who wish to use them, have won the day, the latter officers consider the main- tenance of our prestige, by treating any invasion of Afghanistan as a casus belli, an essential jDOrtion of their poKcy, and if they were persuaded that after the next vacancy in the Afghan throne Russia would be allowed to settle herself at Herat and Balkh, they would change their view and agree that we could not afford to utilise the forces of the independent states. They think, moreover, that for us to look quietly on while Afghan- istan is gradually absorbed by Russia will only make an ultimate attack on India the more certain, and the more likely to be successful when it comes. India will be ruined by the expense of keeping up the army which would then be necessary to face the millions of armed men of Russia, and the excitement pi'o- duced in every native Court by the close neighbourhood of a great power would be unbearable. At the same time the pub- lication of our pledges to the Ameer would for the present prevent a Russian advance. Our Indian officers are unanimous in tliinking that in the event of Russia being allowed by Eng- land to advance to Herat we should advance to Jelalabad and Kandahar, and this, of course, would be a virtual partition of the greater part of Afghanistan ; but they are opposed to a Ijolioy of partition because of the strain and drain upon India which would follow, and they would therefore resist a Russian occupation of Herat. The weak point in the Indian argument is that, supposing that a pubUcation of our pledges proved insufficient to prevent a violation of the Afghan frontier, it is difficult to see where we can reach Russia. In my opinion we could do so for some time from the Pacific, especially with the Chinese alliance ; but this is not the view of our Indian officei's, some of whom think, how- ever, that we could anticipate, or, if not anticipate, then success- fully attack, Russia at BTerat. It is to me inconceivable that we should be able to anticipate Russia at Herat ; but other Indian generals think that we should be able to supply officei-s to the Afghans to conduct the defence, and that if the Afghans CHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 383 knew that we were coming to their help they could keep out the Russians. Those who hold such views underrate, I am con- vinced, the power of Eussia and the entei'prise of her soldiers. Many Indian officers believe that Persia should be enlisted, and could be enlisted, on our side : but Eussia can place with ease an immense force upon the Persian northern coast, having a large fleet of steamships on the Volga and Caspian line — the main artery of her Empire. The Indian officers have an easier task when they point out the impossibility of attacking Eussia in the manner which has been proposed by strategists at home. The distances in each case are enormous ; and it is hard to see where, without powerful alliances, we could attack Eussia (except indeed for a time on the Pacific) or where she would not tight us at an advantage. On the other hand, the policy of permanent alliance with the Central Powers put forward by Colonel Maurice has been rejected by Government. It is difficult for me to maintain succes.sfuUy a defence of my Invulnera- suggested temporary policy, of defending India against Eussian bility of invasion by attacking Eussia upon the Pacific, against the com- Rissia bined weight of authority presented by our Indian officers and elsewhere, our generals at home. While, however, the policy of an attack ^^^' '" *^'' on Eussia at the Armenian frontier from a Black Sea base rests ™''"'^> absolutely upon the Turkish alliance, which majV not be obtain- !I™„" able, the policy of an attack on Eussia from a Pacific base does not rest wholly upon the Chinese alliance, but would, in my belief, be feasible without it. As long as Eussia has not developed steam communication by land with Vladivostock, but yet looks upon this stronghold as an essential portion of her Empire, and one from which everything is to be expected in the future, Eussia, it seems to me, must fight at Vladivostock, while she would fight at a great disadvantage. The position is strong, and it is probable that our fleet could not safely force an en- trance to the well-protected bay ; but if we sat down at Vladi- vostock with an expeditionary force the tables would be turned. The policy which exhausted Eussia in the Crimea would be revived, and revived at present with, I am convinced, the same result. The weak point in the whole policy is that before we are attacked in India Eussia will probably have completed her steam communication with her Pacific strongholds, and be able to meet us in superior force, even at those distant points. The home school in their wi-i tings upon the subject assume. The as I have said, a European alliance, at least with Turkey. Not Turkish only is this an alliance which we may be unable to secure, but alliauce. the Bosphorus (and, therefore, ultimately the Dardanelles) could, in the present state of things, easily be seized by sud- denly landing a well-equiijped and not large Eussian force, and it is probable that even with Turkey willing to ally herself to us Eussia might not give her the opportunity. Eussia is build- ing a fleet of ironclads in the Black Sea to which Turkey has now little to oppose. The sum which was wasted on presents to the German Emperor would have defended Constantinople 384 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet it against a rapid land attack, according to the plans of von der Goltz Pasha, but the money has been steadily refused for the latter purpose, for fear of offending Russia. It seems to me probable that, when the struggle between Eussia and England comes, Eussia, for whom we are not in diplomacy a match, will have contrived to isolate us from the remainder of the world. What could we then do ? Sir Charles MacGregor suggested that we should bring Eussia to terms by an attack upon her trade, but I fail myself to see that we could do her much harm even if we blockaded every port and cleared the seas of all her ships. It is difficult to cripple a trade which has so little necessary dependence upon sea routes. Indeed there is much reason to suppose that, although she is never Likely to be a match for us at sea, she would do us more harm by interfering with our trade than we could do to her, looking to the fact of her enor- mous territory and to the smallness of that portion of her foreign trade which is necessarily sea-borne. Unless we had the Turkish alliance, and could confine ourselves to co-operat- ing with the Turks in what would be limited operations upon the Armenian frontier, from a Black Sea base, it is hard to see where in Europe, or in Western or Southern Asia, we could strike a blow. To send an expedition from the Mediterranean or from the Euphrates against Eussia, as seemed in contempla- tion at the time when certain speeches were made about the value of Cyprus as a base, would be wild in the extreme, and the six or seven hundred miles which our armies would have to march would lie through Turkish or through Persian terri- tory : the country could, moreover, be traversed by a British force during only half the year. Persia. We could divide Persia with Eussia at any time, but to reach Russia through Persia is an operation beyond our strength. The Eussians are far nearer to the Persian capital than we are. They could occupy it before we really started upon our march, and in Northern Persia they could easily overwhelm us with their numbers. Herat. The Indian view, that it would be possible to attack Eussia at Herat, is one which seems to me still less tenable, even sup- posing that the Afghan tribes were friendly and anxious to provide us with supplies. By the time we reached the Russians we should be suffering from the long march, and should be greatly weakened in numbers • and it is difficult to see how we could hope to beat them. While we were marching upon Herat the Eussians would send a great number of small columns across the mountains from Maimena and Balkh, and there they would have the country with them. People in India would grow nervous, and expect the Khyber to be both forced and turned through Kashmir, and panic would be not unlikely to result. Instead of our taking the Eussians in the flank, as we could do from Quetta if they advanced from Herat on Kabvil, they would reverse the process, and take us on the flank as we advanced from Quetta towards Herat. In short, it is certain CHAP. [ INDIAN DEFENCE 385 that no advance iii the direction of Herat by a field army would be possible for us, unless we were prepared to denude Great Britain of troops and to reinforce tlie Indian army of reserve by every man that we could command for foreign service. Even then the experiment would be a doubtful one. The smallest reverse, it must be remembered, would bring all the lawless elements of India upon our rear, would convert the Afghans into our enemies, and dangerously disturb the native princes. With regard to the attitude of the Afghans it should be remembered that, wliile they desire to preserve their inde- pendence, if a collision occurs between their two great neigh- bours, in wliicli their government is destroyed, they will prefer to side with the Kussians rather than with ourselves. Upon this point there is no doubt among the best authorities. They all agree that, while the Afghans will fight with us against the Russians as long as they have a fair chance of keeping both sides out, they will prefer to become Eussian rather than to become Indian subjects of Great Britain. They hate and despise our Indian subjects. They look upon themselves as their superiors and our equals, and they believe that under Russian rule they would play a greater part than is possible to them in the event of absorption by tlie Government of India. They know our system and dislike it. They know little or nothing of the Russian, but they have a general belief that the Russians allow more local independence in their subject peoples than we ourselves. Even if they become Russian, they think they would be allowed to do as they please, whereas if they became British the laws of India, they fear, would be applied to them. There is a policy of second line upon which it would be Virtual possible to fall back if the country should reject the Indian partitiou. policy of declaring to Russia that she must not cross the fron- tier lately fixed. It is a policy of partition, or virtual partition, of Afghanistan. Actual partition would, in my mind, be un- doubtedly a mistake. At the next vacancy in the Afghan throne, should this country allow the Russians to advance to the line of the Hindu Kush and to occupy Herat, and should we refuse to take steps to keep Afghanistan together and to fuarantee the new Ameer, it would, in my belief, be unwise, as have already argued, to accept the suggestions which have been thrown out to us by Russian officers that we should occupy Kabul. But, shoi't of becoming the apparent destroyers of Afghan independence and the nominal masters of the turbulent and fanatic tribes, we could, in the event of Russia being settled at Herat, advance our position to the Helmund, make our rail- ways and our military roads, prepare our supplies and transport, and take up our position at a spot which would allow us to enter into close relations with the Hazaras, a friendly Tartar people who are hostile to the true Afghans and who occupy the hills to the north-west of Kandahar. It is hardly possible for those who have given careful atten- Difference tion to tliis subject to realise how little it is understood by many of opiuion 2c 386 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN between the ludia Office anil the Indian Govern- ment. Armies of native states. of those in England who are supposed to be authorities upon tlie question, and who, to the great danger of the Empire, are allowed to throw difficulties in the Indian Viceroy's way. Eor example, a powerful party at home has been trying until recently to force upon the Government of India the fortification of Multan. No doubt the fortification of Multan, like that of Peshawur, was at one time wished for by the Indian Govern- ment ; but times have changed and we have moved, and, now that we occupy an impregnable position at Quetta, it is impos- sible to suppose that it is worth wasting the money of India upon the fortification of a place which lies so far behind our frontier. If ever we were driven to Multan we should have to give up or to reconquer India. The energy which the Govern- ment of India have of late displayed in fighting against the proposals — which at one time had, I believe, been suggested by the Indian Defence Committee, and agreed to by Sir Donald Stewart — for fortifying Peshawur and Multan, and pushing forward a railway to Kabul at the cost of some four millions sterling, would have sufficed for providing that transport in which we are at present still deficient. We must always remember that it is necessary for us to win the first big battle that we fight, otherwise we shall have to cope with a worse storm than that of 1857 in our rear, while the greater part of our army is at the front. Even supposing that no one of the Indian fighting races should turn against us, we liave always the opposition of the rough part of the popula- tion, and in the event of our defeat we should have, as in 1857, the indifference of the vast majority and no armed support. The rebellion would be helped by the leadership of more capable men than could be found in 1857, as a result of what we have rightly and necessarily done for education and enlightenment. The native states have armies which could not, under such circumstances, be counted upon to be friendly, and which Sir Charles MacGregor, after omitting the minor states and all troops that are clearly not worthy to be counted, estimated at 350,000 cavalry and infantry, with a large force of artillery possessing over 1000 really serviceable guns. The native states keep up, besides their so-called ''regulars," a large force of irregular troops, of which it is said by themselves that, to use the words of tlie Hyderabad memorandum of 1886, " it must be admitted . . that . . . their cost is unduly large wlien com- pared with their efficiency." All admit that the armies of Hyderabad and some other of the Southern principalities are far too large, a burden to the people, a danger to ourselves, useless except for evil ; but, of course, there are native states in which the so-called army is in fact a police. As regards Hyderabad, however, a dispassionate observer, Baron von Hiibner, stated in his well-known book that, " according to the highest military authorities, the Nizam could at any moment become the arbiter of the destinies of the Indian Empire." This is not true, but it is sufficiently near tlie CHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 387 truth to startle souie into seeing the gravity of the danger and the need of remedy. The editor of tlie Asiatic Quarterly Revieio, Mr. Boulger, has admirably pointed out in his England and Russia in Central Asia the clanger of the present position as regards the native armies, and he adds Indore and other states to Hyderabad as having armies, in his opinion, after careful examination, enormously costly, and useless except against our- selves. The native states have a far larger force of men and of guns in proportion to the numbers of their people than has the British Incfian Empire, although the native states have no frontiers to defend. It is a question whether we ought not, in the interests of the population as well as in our own interest, to put down these unwieldy and dangerous armies, and in- crease the small contributions of the native states towards oui revenue, which really provides for their defence. At the present moment it may be said that their lifty millions of people are looked after by nearly twice as many troops as the two hundred millions of British India proper. It seems to me only fair that the native states contained The native within our territories — the existence of which depends wholly states ami upon our good pleasure, and which are freed from all fear of defence. war, all chance of invasion by their neighbours, all risk even of serious civU disturbances — should be called upon either to make a large money contribution or to keep up eificient troops under our command. The defence of the peninsula as a whole is an object towards which those whose security is guaranteed by our position should contribute, and it is not fair to the people of British India that they alone should supply the eifective means of defence. When the matter was discussed in 1888 the general view adopted was that which I think was held by the Commander-ia-Chief, though not unanimously by the staff or the Viceroy's council. The policy which prevailed is that we should communicate to the respective native Govern- ments our opinion concerning the number of troops that each should supply for foreign service, and that we should agree to arm and inspect these troops ; and this scheme has been carried out in the Punjab. I have doubts as to the wisdom of applying this plan outside of the Punjab and Kashmir. I altogether reject the idea that the contiagents of the native states would be likely to be iit, unless a large supply of European officers were given them, to fight against picked Eussian troops, which is the force that, if any, we have to meet. On the other hand, as regards lines of communication, as long as we keep up the Madras and Bombay infantry in their present form we have in all seventy battalions of our own which would perform such service in districts in which they would be safe against Eussian attack. The first necessity of India is to add to the troops of the quality of British infantry or artillery, or of Goorkha, Pathan, Af ridi, and the best of the Sikh infantry ; we have no need to increase the number of inferior regiments, but, on the contrary, shall only encumber ourselves with useless men if we add to PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Kashmir. The Sikh states. Arms. our "communications troops." ]\loreover, even for communica- tions, posts held by the armies of the native states would always give anxiety. They would be held in greater strength than would be necessary if they were held by British troops or Goorkhas under white oificers, and this is a serious matter when the food and transport difficulties are remembered ; and if they were held in strong force without support there would always be some doubt in the mind of the General-in-Command as to the disposition of the men. I venture to differ from the Com- mander-in-Chief in India upon this point, and believe that the only sound policy was the bold policy of enforcing upon the great Southern states disarmament, or at least considerable reduction of force, combined with military contribution in money and transport towards defence. On the other hand, I would have lightened the blow by relaxing the supervision over the internal affairs of these states, and I would, of course, allow their rulers to keep up bodyguards and police. The rights and privileges of the feudatory chiefs are secured by treaty, but I believe that almost the whole of these treaties contain limita- tions of numbers as regards the armies, and that they have all been broken or evaded, so that they would form no difficulty in our way. We are, very properly, anxious to observe our stipula- tions towards the native states, but an arrangement might be made with them upon this head. We certainly cannot be acting wisely in encouraging the princes to keep up forces wliich are not good enough to be used against the Russians, and which are sufficiently numerous to overrun India in our rear if we lost the first battle in Afghanistan. Kashmir should, perhaps, unless it should pass under British rule, form an exception to my general principle. If we can make the Kashmir force efficient for the defence of the Gilgit passes, we shall be able, in the event of war, to save one or two divisions which could ill be spared from the Helmund army. It is essential that Kashmir should be made a source of strength, and the Kashmir forces, if placed under British officers, could be made capable of acting in their own mountains against Russian troops. The position of Kashmir is so important in our scheme of frontier defence that the Maharajah's offijr of his army, made before his outbreak of 1889, should be accepted in this form. We have already obtained military control of the Sikh states, which have the best native force in India, and we are to inspect their army by British officers and to make them thoroughly efficient. These, however, are trustwortliy forces. The case of the Southern states is different. We are also confronted with the arms difficulty when dealing with the armies of the native states. If we put good arms int(j their hands they constitute a certain danger to ourselves. At the same time it is not difficult, I think, to prevent their use against ourselves by limiting the supply of ammunition in time of peace, and asoertainuig by inspection, that the amount sup- plied is actually used for practice. CHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 389 If we were upon better terms with the natives in the Eastern The Rus- and Southern parts of India we could more easily afford to sians and disarm the forces of the princes. The Eussians have the reputa- tUe natives. tion of being more successful than ourselves in this respect. A foreign correspondent, who advanced with Skobeleff when lie marched against Geok-Tepe, says that, immediately after the battle and massacre, the Kussian ofiticers came to the field chosen for a Durbar with utter absence of display and with perfect simplicity and geniaUty. They shook hands with the chiefs, offered cigarettes from their cases, and then strolled about unconcernedly -with their hands in their pockets and a smile on their faces, and in a day or two were on friendly terms with all the population. He contrasts this course with that of the British, who try, he says, to behave on such occasions as if they were "at the Field of the Cloth of Gold." The Russians have recently annexed countries that looked Compari- like desert ; and we had taken under our charge a few years sonbetween earlier, and have now annexed, other countries of similar ourselves appearance. Both tracts consist largely of irrigable land which ™<^ ^}^^ would have been cultivated had tribal feuds and raids Russiaus. allowed water to be brought to it. Large districts of Central Asia have already been colonised by the Eussians with their own people. We are unable, even did we wish to do so, to persuade our colonists to go to British Baluchistan, for, unless tempted by the presence of precious minerals, they do not settle willingly in countries inhabited by dark-skiiuied peoiDle. They go chiefly to the United States, the Transvaal, and the Argentine Eepublic, where their presence is of no military utility to the Empii-e. While we stand still in India as regards numbers, Eussia in a militaiy sense grows stronger every day. We must look forward to the time when the Merv oasis will Advan- become as Eussian as the Caucasus has become, and as great a tages pos- military strength to the Eussian Empire m the East. We must sessed by make up our minds to the fact that we shall be fighting, if we Russia, are at war with Eussia, against the most patriotic army in the world with a mercenaiy army on our side, and it is, of course, a commonplace that the best mercenary army of a conquered race cannot be counted upon to fight to the last, under dis- advantageous conditions, as the Eussians would fight, or as our own white troops would fight. The best native soldier, Sikh, or Goorkha, or Afridi, or Pathan, serves because he is a fighting- man, and loves the horse, the rifle, and the uniform, and fighting for its own sake. He likes his pay and he likes his jjension, but, above all, he rejoices in being a warrior and looking down upon the peasant. He is proud of the military history of liis regiment, of medals and orders and titles of honour : but he cannot be expected to continue faithful after severe and general defeat. I believe that of late there has been, exceiJt as regards the Indian armies or contributions of native states, general agreement in opinion. India upon the necessities of the position. The Military 390 TROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part iv Member of Council has fallen in with the views of the Com- mander-in-Chief, the late and present Quartermasters-General, and the other army authorities. The Foreign Secretary has followed suit. During Lord Dufferin's vioeroyalty, the Viceroy and his private secretary were in agreement with the members of the Government, and opposition came only from the quarters from which it might naturally be expected — from those who were especially concerned with the state of the finances, and with the civil public works, which often have to be suspended when pressing military measures must be under- taken. If it were a matured, decided, and well-known policy that Great Britain would resist with all her strength the parti- tion of Afghanistan, or the settlement of Eussia at Herat and Balkh, much of the expenditure which is now becoming necessary might be avoided. I have shown that we are in a position, as soon as a few necessary but not very considerable measures are completed, to repulse any attack which might be made from such a distance as the present Russian frontier. It is, however, impossible to be blind to the risk there is that that frontier may before long be advanced — chiefly through people at home not realising the true facts of the position — and further military measures become necessary. It is commonly assumed by soldiers that we suffer in India and in England by the politician's unwillingness to risk his position by telling the people unpalatable truths. The timidity is foolish, and states- men would find it wLsest to speak out. If, for example, Mr. Stanhope had refused to reduce artillery in 1887, and told the public why he did so, he would have gained rather than have lost in strength. Position It has been said that the Financial Member of Council in of the 1887 argued, against his colleagues, that there might be some Eussians in danger that if we were too thoroughly well prepared in India Central -^^^ should be likely to test our preparedness by making an ^^^^- attack on Eussia. The military position, however, of Eussia is such that there is not the slightest risk of this, which is a real danger in some countries at some times. The Eussians are far too firmly seated in Central Asia to give our soldiers the slightest encouragement to march across the intervening country and attack them in their home. It is perhaps a reproach to our rule in India that the Eussians wlio have been so short a time in Sarakhs and Merv, and even Tashkend and Samarcand, should be so much stronger there than we are in India, where we have been for a much longer period ; but I fear that there can be no doubt about the fact. Mistalceu It is a pity that false views as to our ability to attack Eussia notions. in Central Asia, or to defend Northern Persia against her should be held_ and expressed by persons of great authority' because there is nothing so dangerous as living in a fool's paradise. One of the very highest of authorities on this subject, for example, in writing upon England and Persia, has recently quoted, with approval, some words of the late General CHAP. I INDIAN DEFENCE 391 Jacob about co-operating with a Turlcisli amiy " to (hive the Eussians behind the Caucasus and to keep them there" — a proposal the fatuousness of which is inconceivable to those wlio have seen the military power of Kussia in the Southern Caucasus, and the attachment to her rule of the population of a district which lias been hers for a long period, and which has never been known to rise. The districts behind the mountains which were hostile, and which were annexed at a later period, have been, as is well known, repeopled with loyal Eussians. Any operations by us in aid of a Turkish army on the Armenian frontier would be of a less ambitious kind. Then again this writer says that we must be prepared to prevent the Shah of Persia from becoming another Ameer of Bokhara. Our inter- ference in Persia is likely to have the same result as Eussian interference in Afghanistan in 1878. We should at any time be unable to defend the Persian capital against Eus.sia, just as Eussia in 1878 was unable to defend the Afghan capital against us ; for Teheran is even more open to Eussia than Kabul to us. Such writers are on safer ground when they advocate a Chinese alliance. China is not a Persia, and Pekin is not within a short march of the Caspian. The Eussians have already shown that they have as high an opinion of the military strength of China as they have a low opinion of the military strength of Persia ; and there can be no doubt that an alliance between England and China in Central Asia is a natural result of the present state of things. Eussia and China have 4000 miles of common frontier, and Cliina. England and China desire to maintain the status quo, and are able to strike powerful blows for its maintenance. China will have for some years to come a considerable superiority over Eussia at certain points upon the frontier, and could take offensive action against Eussia more easily than could either Great Britain or Afghanistan. If China were inclined to join an Asiatic league for the maintenance of the status quo she would have more temporary power even than England of enforcing the decisions of the alliance. The alliance of China, which is very important in a general scheme of imperial defence, has, however, little bearing upon the special Indian problem. Yarkand is too distant from Pekin to afford any prospect of the rapid advance of a Chinese force into Eussian Central Asia, at a time when it could have much effect upon the fortunes of the war, especially as there are no troops in Chinese Turkestan capable of standing for a moment against even a Eussian militia force. On the other hand, in the policy of attacking Eussia on the Pacific, wliich for some years to come, until her communications are complete, will be the most effective way of meeting an attack by her on us, the Chinese alliance would be of moment and would paralyse the Eussian advance. The Indian Government have been advised tliat the Chinese alliance is worthless to us, because our sisies in Cliinese Turkes- 392 PEOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt iv tan have found no proper fighting force ; but it is in the north, and not in Turkestan, that the Chinese could give Eussia trouble ; and it was not the Chinese force in Turkestan, but that on the north of Pekin, which alarmed Prussia at the time when she gave back to China the province of Hi. The weak point in the Chinese alliance is that, when the Russian railways have been made and steam communication completed throughout Siberia, China, unless she moves with extraordinary rapidity within the next few years, will have lost the military advantage that at jaresent she does undoubtedly possess. There is, however, a great point of superiority in the Chinese alliance over any other that Asia offers. While the Persians would lie down before the invader, and the Afghans, after fighting, take his side, the Chinese would fight on, and in these days it is difficult indeed, as the French well know, to sign a treaty of peace with China. In spite of the activity of the Japanese, the only three powers in Asia which can be said to count are Russia, China, and Great Britain. The best defence of India lies, however, in the completeness of our own Indian pre- parations. CHAPTER II BEITISH INDIA The subjects to be discussed iu the present chapter connect Special im- themselves with those treated in the last through finance, for portance, there seems reason to believe that military and financial i" the case problems lie at the root of the Indian difiiculties of the present, °f India, of and will greatly afiect the decisions that must be taken in fii^oce. India in the future. For that reason I have placed the state- ment of my views upon Indian defence before those which I have to express on India generally, and I now proceed to touch briefly on questions of finance. Most of our difficulties in India are indeed obviously financial. The fear of Eussia is financial, for no one doubts that the courage and military aptitude of our race would prove sufiicient for the defence of India were we not hampered by the difficulties of paying for an army, both efficient and sufficient in numbers, under conditions of voluntary enlistment — by the difficulty of imposing fresh taxation upon India. The greatest of domestic drawbacks to our rule, namely, the occasional corruption of the native police, may also be looked upon as a financial question, for a higher class of service could be secured at a higher rate of pay. In writing, too, as long ago as 1867 I showed the financial side of the dispute as to the relative numbers of natives and of Englishmen to be employed in the civil administration of the country. As regards defence, the reply always made to those who insist on the need for further measures is that India is poor and overtaxed, and, in the present state of her finances, cannot aflford them. A military expenditure of twenty millions is so large that there could be produced for it even the costly luxury of a sufficiently numerous white army, provided that India were not in fact taxed to provide us for home use with short service, unsuitable to her needs. Supposing even that the cost of a separate army of long service should imply increase, instead of that reduction which I should myself expect, of Indian military expenditure, or sup- posing that home resistance, upon political or military grouncls, to this change should prevent the possibility of its accomplish- ment, we have to inquire whether in fact India be so poor that she cannot provide for her defence, or whether there is still 394 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN takt iv behind Indian finance the possibility of raising more money by taxes. No doubt it is the case that taxation under British rule in India is lighter in proportion to the inconie of the country than was that of the Moghul emperors. Under our regimen profound peace has given rise to much, if partial, prosperity ; and most of the money that has been freely spent has gone towards providing India with the appliances of civilisation, with roads, telegraphs, railways, vast irrigation works, and public buildings, and in assistance to public education, while the fall in the opium revenue has itself laeen the result of con- cessions to the Chinese growing out of our own sense of the duties we think we owe to the principles of international morality. In these circumstances can the loss under the head of opium, and the additional charge on the Indian budget by reason of the fall in the value of silver, be met from other sources, and yet means be found for providing against the possible need of increased expenditure upon men, transport, strategic roads and railways, and fortification 1 Possibility Many suggestions have been made for raising larger sums of of imposing money for the wants of the peninsula of India. It has been a liiglier suggested that the " permanent settlement " might itself be land-tax, revised, but at the fourth National Congress the landlord party or of reduc- ^^^ strongly represented, and all but carried a proposal to ask ingcivi ex- Qovernment to introduce a permanent land settlement through- pen 1 are. ^^^ India. The abolition of the separate Governments of Madras and Bombay, and the getting rid of the political governors and of the separate commanders-in-chief, and ruling those Presi- dencies through the Civil Service of India, while an excellent reform, and calculated to eflfect a saving, would not produce any large financial results. Neither would the more doubtful measure of the abolition of the Council of the Secretary of State. Inquiry into tha home charges of the government of India, which can at no time do anything but good, especially if the question should ever be treated broadly enough to raise that of the separate white army^ould itself not produce considerable results, although Lord Kandolph Churchill had reason upon his side in proposing a general parliamentary inquiry into the position of our Government in India. Parliament used from time to time to have the opportunity, before the transfer of India to the Crown, of instituting a full examination into the administration of the East India Company. There is a dread on the part of the Indian Government of such inquiry, which-, however, in my opuiion, is desirable in the interest of that Government itself, inasmuch as public confidence at home has been tried by the criticisms of the native press and of the speakers at the National Congress ; while the Indian Govern- ment should remember that in these days no institution not supported by the constituencies at home can long survive, and those who think, as I think, that the government of India by the Civil Service has been a good government, should not shrink from pubHc inquiry into its merits. Still, any financial CHAP. II BRITISH INDIA 395 reforms by reduction of expenditure are not likely to be large, and, if more money has to be raised in India for defence, we must extend our survey. The greater portion of the present revenue of India is ob- Nature tained from sources not, strictly speaking, consisting of taxes of the proper, and the taxation of India is light in proportion to the revenue, population, but that population is poor — although it does not suffer, in normal years, tne profound misery wliich afflicts parts of Europe. The risk of famine, though lessened since the in- troduction and extension of railways, is still frightful, and while the farming people are not, as a rule, so ill fed as is supposed, they are altogether without a margin of income beyond their expenditure. The great nobles and the setai - independent princes of Hindostan do not contribute sufficiently towards good government and the appHances which it introduces to their own benefit ; but poHtical reasons are supposed to exist making it unwise to rapidly tighten our hold upon them. As regards taxation of the rich within our own dominion of British India, we have indeed introduced a slight trace of the principle of gradua- tion of income-tax, as, in addition to the exemption of incomes below a certain sum, there is in India a higher and a lower scale of charge, though the difference is merely that between 2 per cent and 2'6 per cent. Not only is the revenue insufficient, and the difficulty of raising new taxes great, but a portion of the revenue is of an uncertain kind, and the long continuance even of a decreasing opium revenue cannot be counted on. While I agree with many of the suggestions of the native reforming party, as I shall presently explain, I differ from them on this important point of taxation, because I think that Indian de- fence must be first considered, and that, if a complete revolution in her military system is not entertained by the authorities, heavier taxation will be needed, although I am well aware of the difficulty of introducing fresh taxes in a country where rich people bear so small a proportion to the whole population as they do in India. It is the fact, however, that this main differ- ence between myself and the more moderate of the reformers is upon the one subject on which they have with them, on the whole, the European press of India and a large portion of European opinion in India, because salaries have been reduced and profits of trade have fallen since the days of the pagoda tree, while the silver difficulty has pressed hardly upon many. As even the present taxes h i i the small white population hard, they, not unnaturally, join their voices to those of the native inhabitants to oppose the imposition and the increase of income- taxes and other duties. But it must be remembered that no- where has trade increased so rapidly, since the world-wide depression of 1874, as it has in India, and, under Free Trade, the growth of the factory system has almost kept pace with the general increase of trade. A large portion of the Indian debt is, like those of Australia, Nature of a debt for public works which are returning good interest upon the debt. 396 rROBLEUS OF GREATER BRITAIN part iv the expenditure both in direct and in indirect form, and the true debt of India, in tlie English sense, is small as compared with her revenue or her trade, far smaller than that of most of the European states, including her great rival — Kussia. Railways. One of the advantages to India of the British connection has been the enormous investment of money in State railroads, and, on a guarantee, in those of the railroads that are not the pro- perty of the State. The greatest change, indeed, in India since ray first visit in 1867 concerns railways and trade. The develop- ment of railways and trade has been immense ; British capital to the extent of three hundred and fifty millions sterling has been sunk in Indian enterprises, on official or quasi-official guarantee ; and a further vast amount of British capital is employed by purely private British enterprise in industry, as Lord Dufferin thinks, "on the assumption that English rule and English justice would remain dominant in India." There are more than 16,000 miles of railway open in India. The Indus has already been twice bridged, and the Government of India now begin to look forward to the time when new railways will be made in India by unassisted private enterprise. The result of the making of railways in India has been a vast development of the grain and jute trades, and a considerable development of the trade in piece goods. India has benefited, as Australia has benefited, by the lines being under Government control, and by the consequent prevention of the competitive wa.ste which takes place in the case of the railways of the United States. One remarkable feature in Indian trade, which is all to the advantage of India, has been the immense increase of trade between India and civilised countries other than the United Kingdom. The increase of tlie Indian trade with France, always large, has been considerable. The recent growth of trade between India and Italy has been immense, though it has now received a check ; and a rapid increase is taking place in the trade between India and the United States. Trade between India and the great countries of the Pacific — China, Australia, and Japan — is large and growing. The net result has been tliat the trade of India has recently been expanding more rapidly than that of almost any otlier country in the world ; more rapidly, perhaps, than that of any country except the Argentine Kepublic. The other side of this picture is that the railways of India, though of considerable mileage, are still very few in number as compared with the population, and that the Government of India are now beginning to sus- pend construction, being a little out of pocket on their present lines. Trade. Ten years ago opium was by far the largest Indian export. Now raw cotton has passed it in the list, altliough the export of raw cotton has fluctuated of late ; and while ten years ago the export of all the grains together was inferior to that of opium, both rice and wlieat now almost equal the opium export, which was then nearly one-fiftli, and which is now less than CHAP. II BRITISH INDIA 397 one -eighth, of the total exports. The trade iu cinchona, in jute, and in tea has increased with rapidity equal to the rise in the wheat trade, and is very large. Although in tea India is now meeting with a serious competitor in Ceylon, the trade in tea from Chma to England is dwindling with rapidity equal to the Indian and Cinghalese increase ; and India and Ceylon have sent us in 1889 twice as many pounds of tea as China. India is also beginning to supply the Australians — the greatest tea drinkers of the world. Indian coffee and tobacco are already remarkable for their excellence, and are certain soon to attract notice in the best markets. Her fibres, her oils and seeds, her indigo and other dyes, are all playing a daily greater part in foreign trade. While new resources have been opened to India in recent years, the ancient art work of the country lias not on the whole undergone decline : her wrought metal, tiUgree and inlaid work, her enamels and precious stuffs, are attracting fresh buyers without sufl'ering, speaking generally, by deterioration through increased production. No doubt the muslins have declined in quality, and the use of European dyes has destroyed the beauty of a portion of the shawl and carpet work ; but with few exceptions the native manufactures of India have improved in volume without losing their perfect Oriental charm. The export of cotton yarns and of cotton manufactures has grown rapidly, and in almost every article the commerce of India must be looked upon as sound, while her manufactures are thriving under a policy of Free Trade. India still imports, however, a far greater quantity of manufactured cotton goods from England than she exports ; and as a curious example of the old-fashioned ways of the peninsula it may be noted that a Blue-book records the fact that an increase in the imports of English cotton goods in a recent year was caused by "the fact that the year was considered by astrologers in India an auspicious one for marriages." While there is a good deal of doubt among the natives India as a whether the increase of their export trade in grain is a real raanu- advantage to the people, and while they point out that the facturing landless members of the population in some jjarts of the country country. have suffered through the rise of prices, there is general rejoicing over the recent increase in Indian manufactures, not unmixed with some amusement that Lancashire, wliich insisted on the removal of the Indian duties upon cotton goods, has now to meet a considerable export of Indian cotton goods to the east coast of Africa and of yarns to the markets of China and Japan. India has indeed such considerable advantages upon her side in textile manufacture, as has been admirably pointed out by Sir William Hunter, that it is certain that her export trade in manufactured articles will rapidly increase. Our government of India, giving absolute peace to the peninsula, and raising her credit to a point which provides her with capital as cheap as is enjoyed by the wealthiest of the continental countries of Europe, has made Bombay a great manufacturing city, and PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART IV Future of Indian trade and mann- factures. Indian mills have doubled their production in the last ten years. Tliat -which has happened with regard to coarse cotton yarns and cotton goods at Bombay, and to coarse jute fabrics at Calcutta, will happen also as regards iron smelting and very possibly as regards many classes of manufactures. India has cheap labour and cheap raw material, and as regards the markets of the farther East less distance to face than has Great Britain in placing the goods produced in the customer's hands. The cost of fuel is decreasing as railways open up her coal- fields, and our manufacturers must look forward to serious Indian competition. Already we see in Lancashire an agita- tion for forcing limitation of hours of labour upon the Indian factories, as well as periodical days of rest — action on the part of England which will be opposed by the Indian Government, and not carried out without much native outcry. The bearing of cheap Indian production of manufactured goods upon the project of imperial customs union deserves notice. A com- mercial federation of the Empire which did not include the most populous and, after the United Kingdom itself, the most trading member of the Queen's dominions would be but an inadequate solution of the imperial problem. Yet the highly paid colonial woi'kmen who complain of the pauper labour of Europe, and drive away the cheap Cliinese, are hardly likely to view with enthusiasm the idea of admitting Indian manu- factured goods to Australia and Canada without a duty, and will think Protection against the goods of Germany or f'rance or Belgium a very incomplete Protection if they have to face the free admission of the goods not only of Lancashii'e but of Bombay. Sir Richard Temple has rightly pointed out that in India there is still a vast expanse of cultivable waste, and there is every reason to believe that her wheat export will continue to grow rapidly, and that her finer classes of tobacco will render her a dangerous rival to Cuba and to the rising cigar industry of our own Jamaica. The fertile peninsula — shut off from the cold winds of the north by the stupendous ranges of the Himalaya, which at the same time provide the water for that irrigation which is needed for the production of the heaviest crops, containing within its limits perhaps a sixth of all man- kind, and possessing all the climates of production, from that of the equatorial belt to that of wheat districts with a pi-olonged if lovely winter — is likely to contribute more and more to the raw material of the world, while its cheap labour is likely also to give it an increasing share of manufactures. Irrigation woi-ks, although checked in many districts which might pro- duce an excellent supply of grain, by the curious Anglo-Indian prejudice against lands which when treated with water show saline efflorescence — a prejudice which those who know the irrigated districts of Australia and of the United States are unable to understand — will be extended, and there will, if only peace be maintained, undoubtedly come in India a rajjid growtli OHAP. II BRITISH INDIA 399 of material prosperity, wliicli, however, upon the isreseiit revenue system of the country, will not produce a corresponding increase in the prosperity of Indian finance. To the eye of the English commercial magnate no doubt Draw- Indian progress wears a singular form. He is disposed to backs, doubt whether the management of Indian railways gives us much of which to boast. A distinguished Anglo-Indian in writing of the Indian railroads has spoken of the natives as being now " borne on the wind with the speed of lightning." It is nevertheless the case that I myself have done a better twenty -four hours' journey in Siberia behind Eussian " couriers' horses" than in India upon branch railroads. We have to compare India in this matter, not with England or with Ger- many or France or the United States or our own colonies, but with countries such as Egypt, and the advance in material prosperity in the past twenty years has been amazing. On my last visit I travelled through hundreds of miles of country wliich I had already traversed in 1867, and found that the wastes of that day had become the corn-fields of the present. There must be a greater diffusion of wealth through India, but argument founded on this fact is met with the statement that the misery of the cultivator is greater than it was before. It cannot be said that the people look unhappy ; on the contrary, the patient contentment of the natives is as remarkable to the traveller as it always has been since India has been known. At the same time it cannot be denied that many who are liighly competent to speak upon the question share the doubts of native critics, and one of the most distinguished of India Office authorities upon Indian trade and agriculture. Sir George Bird- wood, has told us that those who write of India " do not suffici- ently distinguish between the prosperity of the country and the fehcity of its inhabitants." The remarkable material prosperity of India, and the immense volume of her trade with ourselves, will no doubt strengthen the feehng among Englishmen of the necessity of providing for the retention of our I'ule. Our kingdom and our people together draw from India some sixty or seventy millions sterling a year in direct income, the greater part of which would probably disappear in case of Russian conquest, and the whole vanish in the event of the destruction of the fabric of civilised administration by domestic anarchy. Moreover, we shall find that native opinion is with us in resisting unprovoked attack on India, and even in making defensive preparation in advance to meet attack, though still characteristically Oriental in the rapidity of detecting signs of fear or weakness in its rulers and turning against them when it sees such portents. On the other hand, even English opinion in India is indisposed to fresh taxation. The increase of material prosperity has not brought about an improvement, and has possibly caused a decrease, in the tax-bearing capacity of the landless portion of the natives, and we are still far from having found our ways and means. 400 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART IV Need for increased military expendi- ture may, however, be avoided. Increased revenue from tlie native states. Tobacco - tax or rigie. Under the circumstances ■which have been described it is only vital necessity which can justify further inroads upon the Indian budget, and there can be no one who will not shrink from the supposed necessity of imposing further taxes upon such a country, or that of suspending the civil works upon which its future prosperity must depend. As has been seen in the last chapter, our present provision for defence is virtually sufficient unless we should tempt Russia to advance within striking distance; and the want of elasticity of the Indian revenue, and the poverty of a large portion of the people of the peninsula, are additional reasons why we should do nothing to assist in bringing Russia to Herat oi' to the Hindu Kush. Should the evil day of further Russian advance arrive, further taxation will have become necessary, unless we are prepared to levy large contributions, as I think we reasonably might, from the native states, as their share in defence. I cannot but think that the cheapness and increasing excel- lence of Indian tobacco offer a prospect of swelling the revenue by means which have proved efficacious in a great number of well-governed countries, and that the Indian Government, by taking the whole tobacco trade of the country into their own hands, establishing, and at the same time well advertising their monopoly, might find millions flowing into their purse from a source from which as yet scarcely anything has been drawn. The question of an Indian tobacco regie was under discussion for many years before 1871, wlien a Bill was actually drafted upon the subject, but withdrawn by order of the Duke of Argyll. The India Office are opposed to a tobacco r^gie, on the ground that it would not bring in much revenue and might call forth oppression. The Office consider that the fact that tobacco is in almost universal use in India, and is grown in every garden, is a conclusive argument against the reciie. But if such a Government as that of Turkey can successfully work the regie, and obtain revenue, without raising price more than propor- tionately to the improvement in quaHty, I cannot believe that it is out of the power of the Indian Government to do so. The India Office seem to think that it would be impossible either to levy any duty upon tobacco where grown for the consumption of the grower or to collect the tax when the tobacco was moved. It is a fact that in France, large portions of the centre and south of which are mountainous, and where in the south and centre almost every one of the millions of peasants makes both wine and brandy for his own consumption, a very productive duty is levied upon all movement of wine or brandy, and is collected without the smallest difficulty. I cannot but think that the Indian Government were right in the principle of their Bill of 1871, and that the India Office were wrong in causing it to be withdrawn. Surely, too, in such a matter the Indian Government ought to be the judges and not the India Office, as it is upon the Indian Government tliat the difficulty and un- popularity, if any, would be sure to fall. OHAP. 11 BRITISH IKDIA 401 Sir John Strachey, who is opposed to a tobacco -tax, has, nevertheless, estimated that, if the difficulties of detail could be got over, a monopoly of the sale of tobacco in India might yield between three and four millions sterling a year. All who know the finances of Turkey or of Egypt are aware that there is a large revenue to be obtained from tobacco, even in countries where the administration is not highly organised. In Egypt the tobacco revenue has been increased from £80,000 to £450,000 in four years without oppression. A tax of £30 an acre is raised in Egypt on every acre cultivated with tobacco. Control is found easy, and a customs duty of Is. 3d. a pound is levied on foreign tobacco. The Turkish authorities with their own experience of a regie are not very much in favour of it, and thinli that the Egyptian plan of a direct tax on land growing tobacco, combined with a tax on imported tobacco, is better, as causing less friction and irritation, and the revenue produced as great. Such strides have been made of late years m the manufacture of Indian tobacco that some Indian cigars are now superior to those of any district in the world except the Vuelta Abajo of Cuba, and the best of them are now able to liold their own with Havana cigars of ten times their price. The revolution wliich has occurred in the manufacture of Lidian tobacco is as yet appreciated only by Anglo -Indians, and not known to Europe, but it cannot fail shortly to produce an enormous trade. Some indeed pretend that the best cigars of India are made of Java tobacco ; but I am assured by those who know that the tobacco is really Indian, and, whatever it may lie, it is certainly not from Java, as it is free from the peculiar flavour of the tobacco of the Dutch Indies. Although Sir John Strachey admits that tlie poverty of the Other cultivating masses makes it most undesirable to impose new possible taxes if the necessity can be avoided without absolute danger to sources of the State, he is of opinion that India is the most lightly taxed revenue, country in the world. He has pointed out the possibility of raising three millions sterling additional taxation on land in Bengal, one million and a half additional from licenses, and half a million additional from stamps, or five millions sterling of additional taxation, besides three or four millions from a tobacco mono- poly if that were, as I think it is, possible of adoption. We see here eight millions sterling a year towards meeting further depreciation in the rupee, the falling off in the opium revenue, and the additional miiitaiy charges which would become neces- sary if Russia crossed the present Afghan frontier. These additional military charges themselves might be reduced if the separate European army system which I liave advocated were frankly accepted by the authorities at home. It follows from what has been said above that there is reason Moral as to suppose that India has made substantial material progress contrasted during the thirty-two yeai's of the direct rule of the Queen, with There is perhaps more doubt as to the reality of the moral pro- material gress which has been made in the same time. Change there has progress. 2d 402 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Literature whicli illustrates. Sir Jolin Straohey's India. Mr. Cot- ton's Neil) India. Sir W. W. Hunter. Anglo- Indian satire. Difficulty in stating oi^inion upon been, by universal admission ; more rapid, however, upon the surface than in the depths. To attempt to give, in a work covering the whole of Greater Britain, a complete view of the moral and material position of India would be as foolish as to try to do the same witli regard to the United States ; perhaps more so, because, while the importance of a comparison between American and British-colonial problems has more interest than any possible direct relation between British India and the other dependencies of the Crown, such is the diversity prevailing in India as regards religion, race, and conditions of life, that general observations are less possible tlian in the case of the United States. All, therefore, that can be done in giving India her place in a general survey of tlie countries under British government is to select the points of the most pressing political moment, which are those of defence (to which the last chapter lias been given), of finance, which is closely connected with defence, and of the present relations between Government and people, upon wliioh I have now to put forward some considera- tions. While, as I have stated, there is a singular absence of general political or social books in the English tongue upon the British self-governing colonies, there is happily no such want in the case of India. Not to speak of the well-known works upon its history, its government, and its resources which have appeared with frequency for many years, or of excellent works of travel, such as those of Sir E. Arnold, and to mention only one recent book. Sir John Strachey's volume in itself is a serious and able examination of Indian problems and principles of government by one of our most skilled officials. If Sir .John Sti-achey writes (as might be expected from a former member of the Governor- General's Council, once acting Viceroy, former Lieutenant- Governor, and present member of the Council of India) on those general lines of thought whicli may be called " Governmental," all that is necessary, in order to obtain absence of prejudice and a complete view of the subject, is that the student should find for himself that there is another side by reading such a volume as the Neiv India of Mr. Cotton, the articles of Sir William Hunter, or the annual reports of the Congress at which the natives and their sympathisers state their grievances. If these woi-ks be found somewhat heavy reading by the trivial-minded, it is possible to relieve their monotony, and yet to continue to gainsome insight into Indian problems, by the perusal of much brilliant Anglo-Indian satii-e of Anglo-Indian rule in the pages of novels such as the well-known Ditstypore, or of the light poems of Sir Alfred Lyall and Mr. Kipling. Brilliant though it be, Anglo-Indian poetry, as compared -with the fresh verse- writing of Australia, is dyspeptic, and reeks of the hot weather. _ There is one great ditference which I experience in writing with regard to India from the frame of mind in which I sat down to write of our self-governing Colonies. With regard to these I was able to feel that the views which I jjut forward OHAP. II BRITISH INDIA 403 were, generally speaking, those entertained by many besides Indian myself, and that, while I should meet with criticism upon cer- problems, tain topics, the views expressed by me as a whole would prob- ably not be open to serious attack. But when 1 write of India I do so knowing that I agree with neither of the great parties who_ hold strong views upon Indian questions : neither with the oiHcial party in India as a whole and their Conservative friends at home — for I differ from them, or from the more extreme among them, in thinking that, for reasons which I shall give, it is out of the question that the Indian Government should long continue to be a benevolent paternal Government substantially uncontrolled either by organised native opinion in India or by the House of Commons — nor with what are known as the Con- gress people and their Kadical friends at home, because I differ from them as to the absolute necessity of a vast expenditure upon the army, fortifications, and strategic railways. There are two commonplaces in the discussion of Indian The two problems upon which, though much has been said, much remains commou- to be said. The one is that general observations upon India places, are invariably mistaken, because India is a continent rather than a single country ; and the second that, while India is in many matters stationary beyond the possibility of European comprehension, it is in other matters a country of rapid change. The main contention of the official class of writers is one India in which they have truth upon their side : that India is a name not one given by ourselves to an enormous tract of Asia containing couutiy. a great number of people who, speaking generally, know nothing of one another, and are more separated by language and by national history than are the various peoples of Europe. On the other hand, wiiting even as long ago as 1867, I had to point out how much our Government has done to create an India, in the minds at all events of the most active and thoughtful among the small instructed minority of the penin- sula. Still, the supporters of the Congress movement are inclined to somewhat overrate the amount of unity which has been attained. At the Calcutta meeting Rajah Rampal Singh spoke, by an extraordinary confusion of metaphors, of our " converting a race of soldiers and heroes into a timid flock of quill-driving sheep." What we have done has been rather, like the other conquerors of Hindostan, to occupy and rule a peninsula inhabited by races which, in their aptitude for war, are partly " heroes " and partly " sheep." The official writers are able to show too that the District or Provincial rather than the Indian Government is the authority which is present to the people's minds, and that that military union which the Govern- ment of India are trying to bring about is not in itself likely to lead to the growth of an Indian national feeling. As between foreigner and foreigner, the native of the Punjab prefers to be ruled by us rather than to be ruled by a down-country native, for whom he has as little sympathy and far more dislike ; and while in no part of the peninsula is there any feeling that 404 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN the people are now living tinder a national government — for even the rulers of the native states are in most cases foreigners — there is no recollection of a time of national government in the past, and no regret for a nationality that has been lost. It may be admitted, then, that the inhabitants of India are not one people, but a number of diverse races speaking different tong:ues, knowing nothing of one another, ana possessing religions which are as hostile to one another as the Orangism and the Roman Catholicism of Toronto and of Montreal. But although this is a commonplace, because it is the observation first made by every fairly well-informed person who writes or speaks of India, it is a commonplace of the well informed alone, and is almost as far now as it ever was from having made its way into the minds of the English constituencies. On the other hand, although still true and likely to be true for a period of incalculable length, it is not true in so high a degree as it once was. The tendency of our Government is necessarily in many matters to fuse India, and to cause a steady extension of that process of bringing the people of India together, and leading them to know one another and share one another's views about themselves and us and the peninsula, which is already in operation among the native barristers and newspaper writers. There ai-e some of the half informed who are willing to admit that there are still great racial, religious, and linguistic differences in India, but who fancy that railway communication in itself is putting an end to them, as it is putting an end to them in France. But India is a very different country, and its size is so great, its railways, in comparison to its size, so few, that not much movement in the direction of a, homogeneous India has been produced by these appliances of civilisation. The greatest poUtioal or governmental change that has taken place in India since I published Greater Britain in 1868 has been in the opposite direction. Decentralisation, which was begun shortly after that time, has been pushed farther year by year, and India, so far as it is a state at all, has become something of si, Federal State since 1870. The Provincial Governments have received, and will receive, greater and greater powers. Strongly as I myself condemn the exaggerated autonomy and cost of the Governments of Madras and Bombay, and absolutely as I condemn the conflict of separate systems in the case of that service which above all needs centralisation, namely, the military service, I am a hearty sympathiser in the general Indian tendency towards Pro\'incialism, and think it should be much extended in connection with schemes for calling forth, in support of Government, educated native opinion. Want of The view that India has not yet become a nation, but that unity ilhis- Hindostan contains many nations and many creeds, is illustrated trated by i^y the able preface to the " oihcial " report of the proceedings proceed- q\ q^q gf the National Congresses, which frankly states that iiiga ot the ^j^g^ gf t|,e delegates have to leave their Iiomes " to make long CHAP. II BRITISH INDIA 405 journeys into, to theni, unknown provinces, inhabited by National populations speaking unknown languages." If Bengal and the Congress. caj)ital of the Indian Empire form to the majority of the Indian lawyers and Indian native editors an unknown country inhabited by people speaking unknown tongues, what must they be to the cultivators who practically form the whole population of India, so inappreciable a part of the inhabitants are the people of the towns 1 The average Punjabi knows less of Bengal or Madras or Bombay than does the average Spaniard about Finland or the average Norwegian about Sicily. There is, as yet, not only no community of race in India, but no feeling of Indian nationality except among the handful of educated men. In the rural districts, which contain the vast majority of the people, there is local patriotism. The Rajput is proud of being a Eajput ; the Sikh of being a Sikh ; and the Indian Mohammedan proud of not being what he calls an idolater — that is, a Hindoo ; but no one of these is proud of any fancied general Indian nationality, and our Government is as little unpopular in these rural districts as any Government is likely to be, and, as Sir George Campbell has well shown, most nearly popular when it leaves the people most alone. India lias been the meeting ground of races extraordinarily diverse, and exhibits still every phase of racial life, from that of savagery fighting against us with arrows dipped in aconite, up to the most subUme elevation of spiritual ideas, existing unfortunately side by side with amazing superstition. There are among our Indian fellow-subjects men speaking tongues as rude as those of the Australian aborigines, and close to them priests learned in the philosophy and the classics of one of the highest civilisations ever known to man. Moreover, the caste side of Indian religion increases the amount of separation which would in any case have been marked in Hindostan, and the only bond of unity which has existed as yet in. British India has been the link of common conquest by outside authori- ties. The problem, therefore, of the scientific government of the peninsula is one which makes high demands upon our powers, for it is hard to conceive of one more difficult of solution. Those who attempt to write on India may indeed stand appalled at the complexity of situation which has been brought about by her past history. Professor Seeley who has written Professor more suggestively and more profoundly upon the history of Seeley. British government in all pai'ts of the world than has any other writer, has become involved by the difliculties of the Indian problem in a curious contradiction. He speaks of Lidia as having been to us " a prize of absolutely incalculable value," but yet he is obliged to say, in the same part of his work, that it may be questioned whether the possession of India does or ever can increase our power — that it is " doubtful whether we reap any balance of advantage" — while he admits that it vastly increases the dangers of our Empire, and, wearily, almost hopelessly, goes on to say that when we inquire "into the 406 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet iv Greater Britain of the future we ought to thirJc much more of our Colonial than of our Indian Empire." But if it is the case, as Professor Seeley himself thinks, that we must keep India and must keep it by force against invasion, and if the difficulties of our rule are greater in India than in any other portion of the world, we should try to face them and to form for ourselves some notion of what those diificulties are and how they can best be met. Professor Seeley has pointed, as among the greatest of our dangers, to our possible inability to face at the same time a mutiny and an invasion, and has told us that we have little strength to spare. He has warned us that if there should ever arise in India a national movement, similar to that which was witnessed in Italy, the English power must succumb at once, and that if even the feeling of a common nationality began to exist there only feebly, without inspiring an active desire to drive out the foi'eigner, but merely creating the notion that it was shameful to assist him in maintaining his dominion — from that time our rule would cease to exist. It is that glimmering of the idea of nationality that some find in India at the present time, and there can be no more urgent problem in connection with the Empire than that of tracing its extent and seeing liow far we can meet or guide the movement. India not The danger, however, of a common internal movement yet fused, against our rule is as yet far from us. Just as the proceedings of the National Congress have illustrated the difficulties in which the delegates have found themselves, through tlie diversity of tongues and races, so, too, in another instance has it served to display racial jealousies. At tlie Calcutta Congress the separate feeling of the extreme Nortli West came out, and a warlike frontier- man from Dera Ismail Klian cried to an audience largely consisting_of Calcutta clerks and shopkeepers, "Do I look like a Bengah Baboo ?" Conserva- The second great commonplace of which I spoke is one also tism and to be noted : that, while in many matters India is stagnant ' change. beyond conception, in other matters it changes so rapidly that even those who knew it well twenty years ago are apt to commit grievous errors when they write or speak of its condition at the present time. The change, however, which has occurred of recent years is such as was certain to come about and might easily have been foreseen. To merely rail against the Congress movement, and all that excitement of the educated native mind of which it is an outcome, is doubtless idle, because they are but an inevitable result of the nature of our rule. When we decided, mainly under the influence of Macaulay, to impart to the people of India a modern and largely Western education, for which they did not ask, we settled for good or ill the char- acter, and to some extent the pace, of their social and political development. Macaulay prepared our minds for this " proudest day in English history," ancl it lias come. Moreover, to the practical Englishman, even if lie be deeply steeped in official CHAP. IT BRITISH INDIA 407 prejudice, the fact that it is impossible to put down the move- ment is one that should commend itself to notice. Just as dislike of the Congress movement will not stop it, so luterfer- too interference by the House of Commons in the details of the ence by the government of India cannot be checked by a mere statement to House of the House, on the part of the home (government, that the Commons, interference is undesirable. In a Parliament with no Radical majority, and in the teeth of strong declarations by the repre- sentative of the Government of India that the motion was uncalled for and would weaken the hands of Government, a resolution censuring the Government of India was lately carried ; and indeed on two recent occasions the Indian Government has been forced to reverse its policy by parliamentary inter- ference. On both these occasions native opinion in India was on the side of those who moved ; but in the case of the abolition of the cotton duties, which was, more gradually, forced upon India by the constituencies of England, native opinion was hostile to the change, and the same is the case as regards the proposed interference with labour in India by fresh factory legislation. It is possible that interference by the House of Commons, which may have been right on the various occasions on which it has already occurred, but which may probably be wrong on future occasions, as the House of Commons and the constituencies must necessarily be ignorant in Indian affairs, might be checked by consulting that very native opinion in India of which officials wedded to past traditions are inclined to be afraid. But native control itself is, for other reasons, difficult of introduction. However willing they may be to accept our rule, it cannot be supposed that the educated natives are inclined wiUingly to submit to grinding taxation in order that we and not the Russians should be their masters; and here is a danger against which it is of course difficult to guard. At the same time the Government of India enjoy the advantage of having two sets of critics and opponents with whom to deal — parties which, agreeing as they do upon some questions, and upon these all-powerful, may upon others take different views. But a mere bureaucracy, however able and however well informed, must necessarily have great difficulty in maintaining itself against House of Commons censure unless backed by something more than the mere dumb acquiescence of the less intelligent portion of the Indian people. In Greater Britain I threw doubt upon the value to India of Not pre- the Indian Council, though there is much to be said for it from vented by- some points of view. The Council is out of touch with the t'le Council House of Commons, and adds no element of security to the side °f i'"ii^- of the Indian Government in contests with that House, which lias little regard for its opinion. When Mr. Bradlaugh or Mr. Caine, or any members of the House of Commons who have given some attention to Indian affairs, bring forward resolutions, the opinion of the Council, even if unanimous, weighs not one feather's weight in the balance. Tlie Viceroy and his Council 408 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN p.vrt iv in Calcutta are face to face with the House of Commons with little to protect them except the single voice of the Under- fciecretary of State, or of the Secretary of State when he happens to be a member of the House of Commons ; and even their official rejiresentative himself is subject to pressure from his constituency which may render him upon some questions but a half-hearted friend. Its result. Interference with the Government of India by the House of Commons may indeed become a cause of a closer connection between the policy of the Indian Government and native opinion than has hitherto been often observed. When Mr. Caine's views upon the subject of the liquor excise prevailed over Sir John Gorst's opposition in 1889, several of the Indian native news- papers, and of the English newspapers in India circulating chiefly among natives, foresaw the danger that the House of Commons might on other subjects, in which it had not native opinion with it, commit itself to decisions in ignorance of facts, and they pointed out that after all the House of Connnons was a House in which the English people were represented and the inhabitants of India were not, and that there might be many subjects upon which the Government of India might take a view far more free from British prejudice than would be taken by the House of Commons. Its partial Moreover, the House of Commons, which interferes where nature. there is either a British intei-est involved or some social question on wliich there exists strong feeling in England itself, does not interfere in questions not so recommended to it. The repeal of the dvity, for example, upon Indian silver plate — a tax the effect of which is to check and hamper what might be an im- portant Indian trade — is refused by the Treasury, without effective protest by the House of Commons, although the repeal would involve the loss of only a small amount of money to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. At the time when the Indian cotton duties were given up in the name of Eree Trade, but against Indian native opinion, the opportunity should undoubtedly have been taken to sweep away the silver duty, which tells heavily against India. But the House of Commons effectively took up only the one side of the question, and not tlie other. The repeal of the cotton duties was in my opinion wise in the interest of India, but we must face the fact that it was carried out in the teeth of an almost unanimous local native opinion— that is, opinion among the comparatively small number of people in Hindostan who have any knowledge of, or take any concern at all in, public affairs. The application to India of more stringent factory laws might also be beneficial to India, but would liave to be carried from London in the teeth of a similarly unanimous local opinion. These are questions of the class, which day by day will increase in number, in which the Government of India would have a general local opinion upon its side ; and as we should not dream of imposing our ideas in such matters Isy force upon self-governing colonies and CHAP. II BRITISH INDIA 409 as we do not in fact impose them upon many of tlie Crown Colonies, there is a great deal to be said for allowing Home Eule to India with regard to them. As it is not easy for a Viceroy and his Council in Calcutta or in Simla to stand up against the House of Commons, they will be tempted to call in organised native opinion in their support. There is, however, a difficulty in trusting largely in India to native opinion, caused by the consideration tiiat it is impossible to call out the opinion upon pubUc questions of the great majority of the Indian people, who are not in a sufficiently advanced state of political develop- ment to have, and consequently to give one, and a danger which arises from the importance in India of the taxation question. The recent development of partly representative municipal Municipiil institutions in India is connected with both the great common- institu- places which I have named, and with all the subjects which we tioiis. have been discussing. The want of unity in India, and the non-existence of an Indian nationality, suggest both the difficulty of calling out native opinion for India as a whole, and the expediency of obtaining it by municipal institutions in the districts. The rapid change in modern India is illustratecl by this greatest of all changes of recent years — the successful growth of representative municipal institutions ; and the taxation difficulty itself is in part relieved by our calling upon those chosen by the people of the various districts to vote taxes for their own local public needs. As day by day the facilities of travel lead the English rulers of India to live less in their districts ■ to send their wives and children to Europe or to the hills, and themselves to be more often absent upon leave ; as the race of officers who were well-versed in the tongues of India and never went home becomes extinct ; and as the English in India grow daily more into a separate caste, so facts force on us the continual development of municipal institutions. We seem indeed in India to be experimenting on the plan — of which Russian autocracy made trial under Alexander II, with tem- porary success — of the development of local representative institutions under central autocratic rule. The fact that Alex- ander III has taken steps in the other direction, and has deprived Russia of a large part of her local elective freedom, does not imply that our attempt will break down, because it is far from certain that even in Russia herself the system of the father had proved a failure, or that there was any real necessity for the change which was brought about by timidity in the son. There are now in India about 3500 elected members of muni- cipal bodies, and a still larger number of elected members of rural district boards ; but in the latter case the electoral bodies themselves are, generally speaking, nominated — a system which is curiously at variance with the ordinary British ideas upon the subject of election. It has, however, been jjroposed by the last National Congress to extend it — a suggestion thrown out 410 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt iv no doubt with a view to conciliate opponents. One of the main objects in view in tlie estabHshnient of that amount of local self-government which exists in India was to train the commvTnity in the management of their own local affairs ; but another object was to relieve the Government of the odium of petty interference and of small unpopular acts, and in fact to place a buifer between the people and the British administra- tion. There can be no doubt that local government upon an elective system has had, in the parts of India where it has been freely applied, this result. Wisdom of I confess that, after hearing all that the Civilian objectors extending have to say, it seems to me that there can be no question that the system, the time has come when, looking to the success of the elective local self-government system, it might be extended to the greater part of the districts of India, if not to the whole of those inliabited by a settled village population. A gradual extension was long since recommended by Sir Eichard Temple, who is a Conservative, but who probably feels the value of municipal institutions in enabling us to gather the local feeling of the ruled, which Oriental courtesy makes it hard to learn from individuals, but diffi- Many indeed of the difficulties with which in India we have culty in tlie to deal seem at first sight to be solved by handing them over to extension, municipalities elected by local majorities, but there is in India a danger in this matter from which Kussia with her all but complete religious unity is wholly free. The Hindoo majority have been in the past inclined to ill-treat or to neglect the interests of the Mohammedan minority, and if we were so to extend the municipal system as to force ourselves to carry out the decrees of municipalities by our police, we might possibly appear as the oppressors of the Mohammedans, and alienate the powerful support of a population in some parts of the country warlike, and amounting in numbers to over fifty millions. The Congress speakers will honestly deny the exist- ence of the risk, and they have now with them a large number of Mohammedans, who are among their most active and enthusi- astic members, and to whom they are giving a leading place. After the Delhi riots of three years ago (unfortunately renewed in September 1889) and the hanging of a pig in tlie Jumna Musjid, we had firmly to take the side of the Mohammedans, and did it with success, but under free municipal institutions might have found great difficulty in so doing. Otherwise there is but little religious difficulty in the government of India, because the religions are mixed together throughout the country and nowhere in British India do we find a compact Moham- medan Quebec. We may wisely give the go-by to this consider- ation, but must not ignore it, although the supporters of the Congress contend that the majority of the Mohammedans are on their side. At present Indian elective institutions are under our control, and the district officer in some cases, and the Com- missioner in others, has over them something of the powers of a CHAP. II BRITISH INDIA 411 Continental prefect. The municipal system is fairly popular with the natives, although they uudoub'tedly regard it as bring- ing trouble as well as conferring di^'nity. One old native gentleman, who had had the working of municipal institutions in his town carefully explained to him, observed that he thought he began to understand. " It means, does it not," said he, " that, while you formerly got out of us rupees, you now hope to get both rupees and work ? " When it is proposed not only to extend elective local institu- Extension tions, but also to at once make use of those which already exist, of the as constituencies for the election of some of the members of the system to Coijncils of the Provinces, it must be remembered that in India, Provinces, as in Russia, the towns contain but a very small percentage of the population, and that in the Punjab and some other Provinces the inhabitants of towns do not form even an appreciable pro- portion of the people. In the rural districts outside a portion of those of the North -West Provinces and of Bengal the elective system has not yet been carried far, and to rely, there- fore, at present upon the municipalities to elect representatives to the various Provincial Councils, would be to govern a vast rural majority through an insignificant urban minority, having in some cases conflicting interests, and in all very different ideas. The spirit of decentralisation which has presided over the Federation creation of the modern municipal system of India has in itself of Pro- suggested the increase of the self-governing character of the vinces. Provinces. In his most able work, Indian Polity, published now more General than one-and-twenty years ago. Sir George Chesney recom- Chesney's mended a more distinct and definite recognition of the form of views, organisation of the Indian Empire, which already exists in fact, as a number of separate civil Governments, with a more equal relation of the general Government towards them. He proposed that the great difierence between Madras and Bombay, and such Provincial Governments as those of Bengal should be done away with, while the fiction of three separate establishments for the army should be abolished and the troops of India placed under one Commander-in-Chief, without the intervention of local Governments and'their separate departments. As far as names went he suggested levelling up rather than levelling down, and proposed that there should be ten Presidencies with Governors, instead of abolishing in name the Governors of Madras and Bombay. No importance need be attached to the question of name, but it is indeed an amazing example of the routine con- servatism of British Governments that so necessary a change as that recommended by Sir G. Chesney and many others should not yet have been carried into effect. The cessation of direct Expedi- correspondence between the India Office and the Governments ency of of Madras and Bombay as regards military matters is, as I have acting on shown, essential ; but as regards all matters it would be in the tlieni. highest degree convenient, and the time has certainly come for 412 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt iv formally recognising the fact tliat the Governments of the North West and of the Punjab are even more important in these days than are those of the Southern Presidencies. Subject to the necessity of providing vipon a uniform system for military matters and for iinance, we have little imperial interest in Indian unity, and may well push decentralisation to the utmost limits, taking care that there should be a strong central Govern- ment armed with powers over Madras and Bombay equal to those which it possesses over Bengal, the Punjab, or the North West. Bengal, Madras, Bombay, the North- West Provinces, the Punjab, the Frontier, and possibly some other subdivisions, would under this system have complete local freedom except in military matters and in taxation, the Viceroy and Commander- in-Chief having supreme power over all. Provided that military and financial unity be secured we have much to gain by not attempting to reduce India to one dead level in other matters, and may be glad, not sorry, that linguistic and racial differences^ a varied historyj and diverse extent of social development, form obstacles to unity. There is indeed little prospect that, for a great time to come, either the English language or the Hindo- stani camp tongue will establish itself throughout rural India. Neither, in spite of the efforts of the missionaries of many Churches, does there seem a prospect that Christianity will rapidly spread throughout the peninsula, and no native creed is in the least likely to establish itself as even approximately universal. Provincial It would of course be possible, if it were wise, to push farther federation in India the federal idea, and to do so consistently with safety upon an to our rule (provided always that military and financial aristocratic supremacy were complete) by governing in the name of native base pos- rulers of good family. The government of the Provincial groups sible, but upon a democratic basis would present dangers from which a of doubtful highly developed local government of an aristocratic type would expedi- certainly be free ; but, on the other hand, the latter form of ^"''^" government, if applied throughout India, would be open to the charge of being a mere pretence, veiling a completely English system. At the same time it is well to remember that there is much to be said for the system of selection of the best native talent, as suitable to the present condition of development reached by India, in contrast to the elective system, of the working of which upon a large scale there has been but little example as yet in Asia. Any purely elective system may be found in practice to be unfair to the large Mohammedan minority. Provincial Given that unity for defensive purposes, under a single will federation and _ single hand, to which we have unfortunately not yet consistent attained, given also fiscal and commercial unity, no British with interest opposes the gradual development of local self-govern- British ment in the Provinces ; and the loss of a few salaries, in tlie time interests, of the next generation, is as nothing when compared with the calling out of our full defensive strength, and securing the per- CHAP. II BRITISH INDIA 413 maiience of our Empire by rendering it more acceptable to the people. Given, too, the fact, frequently admitted by ourselves, that the happiness of the people should be the first considera- tion, it must be held to be doulDtfuI whether it is better secured by direct British rule or by a system which makes a place for the ablest native administrators trained under our educational system, such as may be found already existing in the best of the feudatory principalities. Those among the natives and among our own politicians who Political advocate the general introduction of political representative represeut- institutions into India argue that the native is more intelligent, ative in- more accustomed to the idea of government, more docile, more stitutious. patient, than vast numbers) of those who exercise the suffrage in European countries, and that is so ; but what is not sufiiciently borne in mind is the fact that, while natives are as intelligent, they are quite different, and that as regards the vast majority — the cultivating class — they neither demand nor understand the political franchise. It is, too, possible that, in its gradual development, modern Indian thought may strike out some system more suited to Indian needs than the parlia- mentary system of the United Kingdom ; and the example of Russia, where the f popular party itself is for the most part opposed to parliamentary institutions, is a warning against the complacent British belief in the existence of an absolute best in government, combined with the possession of that best in our own constitution. I may perhaps find a careful study of Russia, in the course of five journeys in that country, of some use in connection with this topic, as it cannot but familiarise an observer with the condition of a patriotic and advancing country in which the idea of the value of parliamentary in- stitutions is as generally rejected by Radical reformers as by Conservatives. While then after three visits to India, two of them very short, I must necessarily be almost as ignorant of India, so far as personal obsei-vation goes, as are those who have not been there at all, yet having given time to the study of authorities, native and British, upon the subject, I favour the general development of the representative system for local purposes, but continue to be as strongly opposed as I was when writing Greater Britain and discussing the question as regards Ceylon, to the creation of parliamentary institutions for India treated as a whole. The Native Congress does not ask for them. If it were to do so we should at present have to answer that the vast majority of the people— the cultivating class — would not find their lot improved by a system which would form at present but a mere pretence, and which would commit their interests to the people of the towns, intelligent, and rapidly improving in European education, but having in many matters an interest opposed to that of the far larger rural class. The great authority of M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu may indeed French be quoted upon the side of the extension of representative example. 414 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part iv political institutions to people commonly supposed to be un- fitted for them by their social condition and tlieir history. He thinks the introduction of representative government among the Arabs of Algeria certaui at a much earlier date than is generally expected by his countrymen, and considers it im- possible long to refuse the franchise to those who speak French and have served France in the army. Under the pressure of such feelings the French Republic has granted electoral repre- sentation, not only on a Council General, but also in the Chamber of Deputies at Paris and in the Senate, to her Indian natives, and at Pondicherry that wide political franchise is given to the dark-skinned inhabitants for which the Allahabad Congress did not even so much as ask. M. Leroy-Beaulieu declares it impossible in these days to refuse political repre- sentative institutions to persons, not savages, on account of reHgion or of race. He follows Macaulay in the view that the conquering race must spread its tongue throughout the con- quered country, and that conquest upon any other system must be precarious. It is diiSoult to look forward to the time when the English tongue and English education will have spread through India, although the complete substitution of the religion and language of the Spaniards or Portuguese for those of all American people south of the boundary of the United States is an example of a still more startling change. We have little to learn from the Algerian French, and the conditions of India and of Algeria are so different that even the great authority of the French political philosopher forms an in- sufficient guide for us. Neither is the Pondicherry precedent of much value, for in a small community a representation may be freely given without that chance of faulty expression of public feeling which is risked by the representation of two hundred millions of people, of many tongues and creeds and races, in one Parliament. As Dr. Cust has admirably shown, the vast superiority of our rule in India over the French government of Algeria has lain in the subordination among ourselves of the military to the civil power, although sometimes in the frontier districts, and especially during some warlike expedi- tions, the principle has been pushed by us too far. In spite of our having refused all political authority to our soldiers, we have been far more successful in completely pacifying great fighting nations like the Rajputs and the Sikhs tlian the French have been in managing a very small native population in Algeria, consisting only of between two and thi-ee millions of people, of whom but a part are warlike. The French have been inconsistent and uncertain in their dealing with the subject of the extension of parliamentary institutions among dark-skinned and conquered peoples. They represent the blacks of Martinique and Guadeloupe, of E,(5union and French Guiana, in their parliament at Paris, as well as the Hindoos of French India, while, on the other hand, they at present refuse aU representation to the great mass of their Algerian CHAP, n BRITISH INDIA 415 subjects, as well as to the natives of Senegal and Cochin- Cliina. There are many strong imperialists among ourselves who Inevitable think that the Empire would be better governed without extension giving votes in any form to British subjects belonging to what of repre- they look upon as inferior races. They point to the occasional sentative burlesque of Enghsh political fasliions by those Hindoos of the go^^rn- towns and of the commercial classes whom they lump together °'*^"*- under the title " Bengali Baboos," and they ask whether these men can be anything but a source of weakness to the Empire. Without arguing the question as one of right or wrong, and without entering upon any of those considerations of justice which are often impossible of satisfactory decision, it may be permissible to ask such men whether in these days it is possible to contemplate the prolonged exclusion from all political power in any form of races which are extraordinarily numerous, which are becoming rich, and which are receiving in many cases the best education that the world can give. Is it not certain that, not as regards the British Empire only, but as regai-ds all countries, the subject races will make their influence felt, and win their way to some real share of power 1 No people are more jealous of the priidleges of colour than the French, who are admitting, as we see, to political power the native population of their " Indian " and West Indian colonies, though not of Cochin- China and Tonquin. As the peoples of British India learn the English tongue and become powerful in trade, it seems certain that in a greater or less degree they will be admitted to take part in Government ; and a democratic House of Commons, whether under the leadership of Radicals or of Tory Democrats, will not long refuse to the whole Indian dark-skinned popula- tion all share in pohtical power simply on account of colour. I would say, to those who would wish, were they able to have their way, to remain as we are, that it is better to prepare ourselves for that which it is impossible to prevent. It may be said that the Americans, in nominally granting political privileges to the blacks of the Southern States, have managed to exclude them from all real power ; but in America it has been difficult for the Federal Government, or for the American people as a whole, to impose their views upon the whites of the Southern States, protected as they are by a Federal system. In the case of the British Empire, where India is in the long- run governed directlv from home, and where the handful of wliites in India will have little voice in shaping its political future, I am convinced that the Imperial Parliament, when it grants some political privileges to the dark-skinned majority of British subjects, will insist on the powers dealt with by legisla- tion being actually, as well as nominally, conferred. The question that lies open is not whether the Indian natives should receive a share in the government of the peninsula in which they live, but what form that share should take. I have shown why we are not driven by considerations which touch their 416 TROBLKMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" taet iv happiness to work towards the unity of India ; but in the develojament of the Provincial system, which ought gradually to create a federal India, except for fiscal and military purposes, the natives must undoubtedly play a leading part. At the present moment the Councils contain native members, and a demand is made for their election. That demand may be resisted for a considerable time if it is thought necessary to resist it, provided that the men selected for membership of the Councils possess real governing capacity. Native It must be borne in mind that we do not declare, and have states, never held, that subjection to direct British rule tliroughout the peninsula is necessary for the safety or good government of the people. We leave sixty millions of the population, without counting Nepal and Afghanistan, under native rulers, advised by ourselves, and removed when they commit great crimes. Our general military and financial control over the native states is in various forms preserved, although it is far from being so effective and complete as I would make it ; but in all the affairs of purely domestic concern the native states are free. As an Englishman, who knows Asiatics as thoroughly as any one who has ever held Indian office, has well said, "Extensive provinces are left with native sovereigns," who " are deemed capable of exercising the liighest offices of State over" peoples " who are of precisely the same " religions, races, and tongues as our own subjects. He has warned us that, in some cases, in Provinces of British India natives of hi^h ability, equal to those who form the distinguished body of Prime Ministers of the native states, are from a narrow jealousy too often excluded from their fair share of high civil office for which they notoriously are fit, and that no nation that hopes to perpetuate its rule can safely act in this way. The attitude of haughty exclusion must lead sooner or later to expulsion, and the successful government of Akbar, who made great use of tlie conquered people in high office, of the Romans, who gave their citizenship to the picked men of all the subject races, and of the Russians, is held up to us as an example. I have read, on this last point, in a moderate Indian paper, a biograpliy of the famous Russian Colonel Alikhanotf, with the note, "We feel proud of Ali Khan Saheb as an Asiatic. But it is the ' barbarous Russ ' tliat has given him the opportunity for great- ness. Which of us Indians has had anything like the same chance of distinction at the hands of the liberal and enlightened British t" The retired Civihan from whom I just now quoted might add that such statements are called by us " seditious," but that they are in a measure true, although Mr. Curzon has well shown that tliere is some exaggeration prevalent as to the general treatment of Asiatics by the Russians. Native It is a remarkable fact that many of the most experienced of rulers, our own civilians are, against their personal interest, very willing to admit that the fairly well governed or average native state makes its people happier than we can by our more CHAP, n BRITISH INDIA 417 scientific but more rigid system. This fact poiats to a possible future for our Indian Government, if it is to he a lasting system, through its gradual conversion into a federation of provinces governed as a rule by natives, and on their own plan, with the concentration in the capital of the organisation of taxes and of defence. The unchangeable side of Hindostan is curiously illustrated by the native states of Eajputana and of Central India, incomparably more interesting to the traveller in search of the picturesque than any portions of our Empire. In the heart of India we seem to iind the despots, the courtiers, the retainers, the capitals, described by our ambassadors in the time of Elizabeth, or even those found by the Papal legates in their memorable journeys in the days of our Norman kings. Yet these native states are mere bits of India, chosen as it were almost at random, with no barrier of race or of religion between them and the countries which we directly govern, and with no definite natural boundaries, while their kings are commonly late comers and mere strangers, " more modern than the British power," as Sir Lepel Griffin puts it ; difiering often from their people in the two essential points of creed and blood. The native states are in many cases the mere creatures and almost the fictions of our own Government, and, built up as they are by us for portions of the country, might be built up equally throughout the Bombay Presidency or the Punjab, if the rulers of the native states are often tyrannous and corrupt, as Sir Lepel Griffin thinks, it can hardly be our duty in cases where states have long been administered by ourselves to hand them over to fresh sets of native rulers, and it is difficult to explain why statistics do not show a more general emigration of their people into adjoining provinces under our direct rule than is the case. But, while we may look forward to an increase rather than a decrease in the number of people in India living by our permission and their own choice under native rulers, yet, just as I would tighten our rule over the native states for army and finance, and put down their separate militarjr forces, so I would go with Sir Lepel Griffin in taking even farther steps than those which we take at present for securing good govern- ment, by the removal of corrupt judges and tyrannous sub- ordinates. As regards one native state, indeed, I agree with Sir Lepel Kashmir. Griffin. Already in 1867 I pointed out how great was the mis- government of Kashmir. In the hands of its present Maharajah that government has not improved. Sir Lepel Griffin has pro- posed the introduction of European settlers into portions of Kashmir, and it is certain that there are districts, not only in that state, but along the Afghan and Baluch frontiers, which are at present unoccupied by man, yet suited for European settlement. If there is military danger, too, in native Govern- ments, it is on the Kashmir side that that danger is the most acute. But if Kashmir is to be settled by a European population it cannot be left under native rule, or difficulties with the settlers 2e 418 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" Officials of native states ou Britisli rule. Foreign observers. will arise. A preferable scheme woulcl be to make it the head- quarters of that separate frontier clisti-ict the creation of which I liave recommended in the last chapter, and over which there should be a large measure of authority left in the hands of the Viceroy and of his Commander-in-Chief. A great Oriental scholar, the latest and one of the ablest of writers upon India, has described our position in Hindostan as it is viewed by some of his native friends concerned in the administration of semi-independent states. With the exception of a little cheap satire upon the commercial nature of our rela- tions with the princes (such as the communication of a bill, duly dated and payable in rupees at the rate of exchange for the day, for 36 lb. of powder used in firing a salute at "your arrival," " ditto at your departure," with an item for " wear and tear of guns ") the observations of the sirdars were based upon the feeling with which they had witnessed at Tashkend the wearing of the ordinary uniform of Russian officers by the Mohammedan gentry of Central Asia. The friendly foreigner, who has much praise for our rule, reports a comparison, drawn by one of his native friends, between the Russians and the English, in which the Indian native says that by the side of the first he finds his comrades of tlie same colour and the same religion holding equal rank, whereas in British India, he com- plains, the attitude of the conqueror towards the representatives of his race is one of haughty disregard. I had carefully read for myself and noted the works of the foreign observers of our Indian rule when I first saw an article, excellent, though too governmental to be strictly accurate, on India under the IMarquis of Dufierin, in one of the great R,eviews in 1889. Its author has undertaken the same inquiry into the opinions of foreign writers as that on which I had entered, but we have come to diflerent conclusions. On the whole tlie attitude of our foreign critics is one of admiration for what we have done, combined with much doubt as to the possibility of our continuing to proceed upon the same lines. Baron von Hiibner has pointed out that the fact that the white man can travel by day or night in perfect safety from Cape Comorin to the Himalaya, and from Assam to tlie Elliyber pass, under the taUsmanic protection of his white skin, even through districts where native travellers are molested by thieves, is conclusive proof of the total absence of resistance to our rule. There is no hatred of British government, but no special feeling in its favour, and this although Mr. J. S. Mill was right in thinking that there never was on the whole a better government of tlie autocratic type. To say so, however, is not to maintain that it is therefore necessarily possible to long continue to conduct Indian government upon its present lines, and the reasons for and against that view are perhaps as deserving of attention at the present moment as any matters connected with the Empire. It is undoubtedly of interest to note the fact that the great majority of foi-eign observers of our rule in India take a most OHAP. II BRITISH mciA 419 optimistic view with regard to its past and present, and French and Germa,n travellers vie with one another in their expressions of admiration for the government that we have established in the peninsula. The opinion expressed by the great majority of foreign travellers who have written upon India is that the country is not only prosperous from a material point of view, but governed with an integrity and a wisdom which are recognised by the population, and that the countries under the direct rule of Great Britain are visibly more happy than the countries under the administration of native princes. They point out how much has been done by the moral effect of missionary effort ; the liberality of the Government in allowing a freedom of speech and of the press greater than that which exists in Ireland and in most of the continental countries of Europe; and the success of the British Government in securing perfect order without interference with rehgious prejudice or with the usages of the people. While we are apt, with our curious habit of self -depreciation, to think our own rule costly, foreig-n observers generally pronounce it singularly cheap, when account is taken of the value of the expenditure upon public works and railways. As to the material prosperity of Incfia under our rule there can be, they think, but Uttle doubt. The whole of the ancient trade of the country has been retained, wliile an immense development has been given by railways to branches of commerce which until lately did not exist; and considerable as has been the recent increase of taxation, there is, they tell us, much evidence that the condition of the people has, in spite of it, improved. Foreign observers are, however, given to severely criticising our pretence that our government of India is not a despotism ; and, on the contrary, they defend it as the perfection of an autocracy, a benevolent and intelligent rule which in their opinion suits the people governed more closely than is the case with any other government on the earth's surface. It is indeed dilScult to see upon what ground it can be contended that our Indian government is not despotic. The people who pay the taxes have no control over the administration. The rulers of the country are nominated from abroad. The laws are made by them without the assent of representatives of the people. Moreover, that is the case which, as has been seen, was not the case under the despotism of Rome, or in India itself under the despotism of the Moghuls, namely, that the people of the country are excluded almost universally from high military rank, and generally from high rank in the Civil Service. Tlie nomination of a few natives to positions upon the Councils is clearly in this matter but a blind, and it cannot be seriously contended that the Government of India ceases to be a despotism because it acknowledges a body of laws. On this principle the Eussian Government is not a despotism, because the Emperor never takes a decision without some support for his views in the Imperial Senate. 420 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt iv Such, generally speaking, is the view taken by Baron von Hiibner, by M. Darmesteter, by M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, by M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, and by the other foreign students and observers of our rule, while the most friendly of all our critics is one who, though lie writes after profound study, and with an accuracy that is remarkable, has never visited the Indian pen- insula. M. Barth^lemy Saint-Hilaire says of our rule, " India never knew its like, . . . never obeyed a Government so gentle, so enlightened, so liberal " ; and declares that for Russia to interfere with the British rule of the peninsula would be " the greatest and most odious of disasters." The view which is taken by foreign writers of such standing is better deserving of attention than can be the criticisms of many travellers, whose state of information is generally illustrated by the old Anglo-Indian story of one of them asking to be helped to the wing of a "Bombay duck." While, however, we may quote with complacency the praises of our rule by foreign critics, we must in so doing remember that most, if not all, of them point out the difficulties of the future. M. Dai- M. Darmesteter, the ablest, on the whole, of all foreign mesteter. writers upon India — while he speaks of our rule as based on kindness and on justice, giving to the peninsula that boon of peace which it had never previously known, suppressing thuggism and suttee, diminishing infanticide and famine, and covering India with a network of railways and irrigation canals — says that the natives know all this, but do not love the English, although they believe in the truth of the Englishman, and respect as well as fear him. M. Darmesteter tells us that it would be impossible to find in a foreign Government more conscience, more straightforwardness, more sincere desire to do good, and that " there never was in the Roman provinces, even under the Antonines, so much power, so much temptation, so little abuse of power " ; but the high qualities of British rule are unfortunately, he thinks, accompanied by a total lack of that true sympathy without which inferiority cannot pardon superior strength. The English are unable " to enter into the heart of these vast multitudes, so gentle, so weak, so ready to open and to give themselves if only one could speak with them. ... As India becomes more European the gulf between the races grows deeper, for the apparent drawing together only brings out more strongly the natural antipathy — profound and incurable." At the same time M. Darmesteter thinks that without us India would merely go to pieces, and that the Sikh and the Bengali, the Hindoo and the Mohammedan, could not live side by side under a single native rule. India is destined to remain English unless or until Russia beats us ; Russia can never be a peaceful neighbour to India ; the great fight will one day come, and come with doubtful chances, and if Russia wins, India will not be the gainer by the loss of her " silent and haughty but conscientious masters. ' Such are the words of no ordinary observer, who spent a whole year in the country, and CHAv. II BRITISH INDIA 421 ■whose language is the more noticeable because he agrees gener- ally with the other foreigners who have written upon our rule. That able traveller, M. Bonvalot, agrees with M. Darmesteter's view as to our unpopularity. M. Barth^lemy Saint-Hilaire has, as I see is pointed out in M. Bar- the Review article which I have referred to above, entitled his tlielemy first chapter "England and Russia," and has begun his book by Saint- declaring that every lover of mankind and of civilisation must Hilaire. wish the English success in the task that they have set them- selves in India, but asks whether England will be allowed by Russia to_ complete her work. The belief, then, of foreign observers is that our Indian Government has been one of the best Governments in the world, but that it needs to place itself in closer sympathy with the natives in order that it may be free to turn its attention in undisturbed strength to military defence. It is the case that the vast majority of the men who take Drawbacks part in the government of India have a sincere desire to pro- to the good- mote the welfare of that country, but it is, as has been seen, ness of our also true that, with modern facilities for coming home and for GoTem- reaching the hill stations, the present generation, both of ™™'- soldiers and civilians, are less identified with India than was the case with their predecessors ; and as regards soldiers, there is less sympathy between them and the natives because less knowledge on their part of the natives than was the case under the former system. Moreover, it must be constantly borne in mind that the great majority of the people of India are credu- lous and superstitious, and given to believing the most extraor- dinary inventions without the smallest evidence, and that there constantly circulate in India rumours as to the actions and the intentions of the Government, which are generally believed, although entirely without foundation, and which affect pre- judicially the view taken of the rulers by the ruled. For example, incredible though it may seem in England, it is a well-known fact in India that it is thought by the majority of the population that the English are in the habit of killing natives by way of sacrifice at the inauguration of new works. It must also be borne in mind that government comes closest The police, to the cultivators, in the uniform of the police ; and the memor- andum published, by the India Oifice in 1889, upon the Indian administration of the past thirty years and results of British rule in India, frankly admitted that " the police department is now, as heretofore, a weak point in the administration," and stated that " from time to time cases of extortion or of oppres- sion by the police come to light." As a fact, the practice of torture by the police for the purpose of obtaining evidence, to which I alluded in Greater Britain, still exists, and was proved in a recent case in Calcutta itself, while in the rural districts it is certainly easier to practise without detection than in the Bengal capital. The administrative report for the North- West Provinces for a single year records four cases of torture in 422 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART IV which nine police oflGicers were concerned and prosecuted to conviction, to which must be added the larger number of cases in which the police may have so acted as to secure their own safety. The Bengal Government in their annual report for the same year (the latest) state that the working of the town police system continues to be unsatisfactory, while amending Acts do not seem to have effected much improvement in the village police ; that two cases of torture and four of ill treatment of accused prisoners were brought against police officers in the year ; that in two of the cases convictions were obtained ; in two others the officers concerned were dismissed or degraded, while in two only were they exonerated. A very large number of false charges are also reported in Bengal. While, then, no Government was ever more benevolent to begin with than the British rule in India, by the time its good intentions have filtered down to the peasant majority its benevolence has become so corrupted in its agents that there is not much to choose between it and the government of a bad native state. Unpopu- There is also a fresh crop of difficulties caused for us by larity of retrenchment. Great efforts have been made in recent years retrench- to reduce expenditure, and unfortunately the reduction achieved ment. has in some degree fallen upon useful objects of the public care, whereas dissatisfied natives are able to point with justice to the scandal that in some matters where reduction of expenditure would be positively useful to the State, but where it would cut off" patronage — as, for example, in the crying cases of the separ- ate political Governors and Commanders-in-Chief for Madras and Bombay — no reduction has been made. Other Other grievances wliich are much put forward by native grievances, writers concern the imposition upon India of English ideas and some matters connected with the pastimes and pleasures and habits of the ruling class. The abolition of import duties in India has been a triumphant success, but unfortunately it was carried, as has been shown, by interested pressure from Lanca- sMre and against a considerable amount of Indian feeling ; and the objectors have been able up to the present time to continue to point to the retention of the English duties upon Indian gold and silver plate as a remarkable example of self-contradic- tion upon our part. The virtual preservation of wild beasts for sport in shooting, in a country in which the population are disarmed, is also a grievance, as is, with less obvious reason, the State provision made for the religious worship of the English official and military settlers. Inquiry. The existence of these and other grievances and of a powerful movement for reform makes it in my belief desirable that we should adopt the proposals of Lord Randolph Churchill for a general inquii'V, which, on the one hand, would bring home to our own people the wisdom of our Indian government, and, on the other hand, should prepare the way for those changes which are needful to enlist in its favour a larger measure of popular support. The committee proposed in 1886 by Lord OHAi'. n BKITISH INDIA 423 Kiniberley, but not appointed, was of too official a nature, and its inquiries would have been of too limited a scope. Sir Eoper Lethbridge was, in my opinion, right in his action in prevent- ing its appointment, as such a committee could not have fully- dealt with the demand of the natives for a larger share in the administration. Inquiry, moreover, will be useless unless the reforms recommended are carried out; and it must be remembered that the report of the army committee, known as the Simla Committee (which was one of the strongest com- mittees that ever sat), was vetoed by Lord Kimberley himself. Sir Eichard Temple has suggested sufficient limitations upon a general scheme of Indian inquiry, and the best course would probably be to appoint a commission in India — with the Viceroy for president, to prevent its detracting from his dignity or undermining his position — which should inquire into finance in the widest sense, into the extent to which natives should be employed in the administration, and into the extension of representative institutions, either upon a universal district system or in Provincial government. The fact that our govern- ment of India has been a success up to the present time, which must be looked upon as an undoubted fact, is by no means a proof that no change is needed ; and that very danger of the advance and close neighbourhood of a great military power wliich I have discussed in the last chapter makes it a concern of urgent importance that the better order of native opinion should receive satisfaction. Baron von Hiibner, who is a strong Conservative, has summed Baron von up the question upon each side in the words of leading Civilians Hiibuer. whom he consulted. On the one hand he shows how since the days of Macaulay's famous minute we have passed two genera- tions of natives through our schools, imparting to them the highest European instruction in our colleges and universities, and yet continuing to leave nearly the whole administration in the hands of a dominant class of foreigners. Baron von Hiibner proves indeed that, whether we were right or wrong in adopting the system of education that we chose, our course was deliber- ately taken, and that the results of that education are a solid fact which must be recognised, for it is too late to retrace our steps or to destroy the ideas which we have long been implanting. The pressure brought to bear, through the native press, by the educated natives who have passed through the State colleges and universities, backed as it is by the social grievances of the Indian upper classes and by a large amount of Eadical support in England, is irresistible. Baron von Hiibner points out that we had in fact no choice ; that we could not adopt an Oriental system of teaching, because we should have had to teach the mutually destructive doctrines of the Koran and of the sacred books of the Hindoos. In Cairo I believe there are at present two universities, of which one teaches that the earth is circular and goes round the sun, and the other teaches that the sun goes round the earth, which is as iiat as any pancake ; but 424 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet iv it was doubtless difficult for us to adopt a similar scientific impartiality. Given the fact that we introduced English teaching into India, we could not do otherwise than create an educated native class, who could not in turn do otherwise than oust us from a large part of the administration. Mr. In all these controversies as to the past, present, and future Meredith of our rule I find little reason, apart from the risks of ultimate Townsend. foreign invasion which we have discussed in the last chapter, to anticipate that we shall ever be forced to leave India. A distinguished writer, whose knowledge of India was at one time profound, but who has perhaps hardly kept pace with the latest changes in that country, has tried to prepare the English people for the ultimate loss of the peninsula. No doubt the hold of a nation at a great distance over a vastly more numerous people, to the great mass of whom it has failed to teach its tongue, and whom it does not entrust with power, must at first sight seem precarious. But the statesmanship of our race will, so far as civil diificulties go, cope with them, and the nature of our rule will change with the times sufficiently to enable us to preserve our hold on India. No doubt we are a mere handful. There were at the last census under 90,000 British-born subjects in India ; or, omitting the army, 34,000, of whom half were women and children. If from the 17,000 men that remain the members of the Civil Service are deducted, it will be found what a small number of railway labourers, merchants, tea- planters, pilots, teachers, servants, and others are left. Since the date of the census the white army has been increased, but the civil white inhabitants have remained almost stationary in numbers. In enormous districts inhabited by many millions of natives a European population, other than soldiers and "Civilians," that is, members of the Civil Service, may be said to be non-existent, and the EngUsh tongue, spoken as it is chiefly by the half-castes, stands twenty-second in the list of the languages of India. Though a mere handful, we are, however, necessary for the purpose of keeping the peace between rival creeds and rival races. Mr. Meredith Townsend, in his brilliant paper, seems to think that the proof of the feebleness of our numbers and of the separation that exists between the rulers and the ruled is a sufficient demonstration of the pre- carious nature of our tenure of the country, even if we put out of sight the possibility of invasion ; but Mr. Townsend himself admits that as regards the vast majority — the agricultural people — their attitude towards all Governments has always been one of passive acquiescence, and that we may leave out of account the probability of their taking part actively against ourselves. The educated people we liave trained, while they have everything to hope for from our rule, and while many think, witii myself, that we should put them frankly upon our side by a large measure of concession to their views, are men wliose very existence depends upon our government, for in such a period of anarchy as would ensue upon our defeat they would CHAP, n BRITISH INDIA 425 be crushed by the hatred of the fanatics. Mr. Townsend's article -will have done good, however, even though its con- clusions be incorrect, if, as can hardly fail to be the case, he has suggested to his readers the weakness of our rule, and has directed men's minds towards plans of remedy. The one danger is the threatening neighbourhood of the forces of a great European military power. Lord Lawrence himself said of the native army that it cannot be supposed that mercenaries of wholly different race and religion will " sacrifice everything for us"; that there is a point up to which they will stand by us, "for they know that we always have been eventually successful, and that we are good masters; but go beyond this point, and every man will look to his immediate benefit." Our rule in India, giving peace, the absence of disturbance. The future, increasing manufactures, and flourishing trade, is insecure upon one side only, and not mined by any new dangers having to do with the relations of the two colours, provided those modifica- tions in our system of government wMch wisdom and prudence suggest are made from time to time. There would be danger if English opinion were to prompt the continuance, in face of the education of picked natives in European learning and ideas, of the treatment of all natives as interiors by a handful of virtually unprotected whites. When it has been recognised that the natives form in fact an admirable working population, having among them magnificent fighting men, and trained administrators who must be given that fair share in govern- ment which they may claim to have won by reason of their prowess and of their talents, there will be no home or internal risk. The wealth which has been brought to the Indian towns by the opening of the Suez Canal — a doubtful gain to England, but an undoubted gain to India — has caused a growing belief among rich natives that the material prosperity of India is best secured by British rule, and this, as well as the influence of a system of education created by ourselves, must be taken into account. It is not necessary to urge the wisdom of reform upon the grounds of justice or injustice. It is not necessary to point out that, if entrance to the services is to be by examination, regard to our solemn promises demands that examinations should be held under conditions equal as between native and European, and that all the Queen's subjects who can pass them should be treated alike, whatever their colour or religion. It is sufficient to argue from mere considera- tions of expediency that the time has come when it would be hopeless to expect to remain with perfect safety as we are. I do not contend that mere examination is necessarily the best way of finding Indian natives whom other Indian natives will obey ; but that Indian natives must be found, and the highest local power enlisted on our side, is to my mind certain. Whatever may have been the merits of the Ilbert Bill, much Position of of the agitation which arose upon it was mischievous in its educated effect, tending as it did to delay inevitable concession in the natives. 426 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAUST paet iv direction of throwing open more responsible posts to natives, a change which, owing to interested opposition, will necessarily come rather too slowly than too fast. While the writings of men like Sir John Strachey, who sincerely desire the good of India, but who are imbued with officialism, suggest that it is possible to maintain an attitude of resistance towards the aspirations of the educated natives (though the writers are willing to admit not only that our government of India is not popular, but that it is impossible that it should ever become popular), non- official Englishmen, trying to discover for themselves where lies the wisest course, are likely to come to the opposite conclusion. These will believe that, for the sake of the permanence of our Txde, we must bend in a con- siderable degree before the breeze of the new opinion, and also that it would be possible to do so in such a manner as to strengthen rather than weaken our hold upon the country. In the first place it must be remembered that there is nothing before the native mind to replace our Government, and that even among the wilder spirits of the Opposition there is no intention of attempting to replace it, although there may be that of altering it to an extent which it wUl not bear. It is for us to see in what degree it is possible to give satisfaction to the critics, without weakening, although we may modify, the nature of the fabric. Above all, it is essential to the continuation' of our rule under the changed conditions that the individual Englishman in India should behave towards the people as the best behave at present. Sir John Strachey himself has written, "It cannot be denied that the ordinary Englishman is too rough, and vigorous, and straightforward to be a very agreeable person to a majority of the natives in India"; but, while straightforwardness and vigour are admirable qualities, roughness, such as would not be for one moment borne by the meanest man at home, is less worthy of imitation when we are dealing with a population courteous and submissive beyond the conception of home-staying Britons. Sir John In what I have said I may perhaps have made it seem Strachey. as though Sir John Strachey were a representative of non- progressive ofiioialism. That is not so. He represents, on the contrary, what is best in the Governmental school, and I have named him both for that reason and because his book is the most recent as well as, with those of Sir Eichard Temple, the most able upon that side. Sir John Strachey has written in favour of virtually giving to the natives the whole of the judicial appointments of India — a change for which the greater number of officials are far from being prepared, although the number of natives admitted to high judicial rank has increased since the assumption of the Government of India by the Queen. On the other hand, the tone in which he has written of the National Congresses which have been held for some years past is unfortunate, for on the whole those meetings have been characterised by remarkable moderation, and, as they are OHAP. II BRITISH INDIA 427 an inevitable consecjuence of the nature of our rule, it would seem better to consider dispassionately the views put forward by those taking i)art in them than to point out the weakest side of the gatherings in the strongest language. It may be true that the native reformers do not sufficiently denounce what Sir John Strachey calls " the atrocious practices which, under the cover of immemorial custom, are followed throughout India " ; but to attack " political agitators " for " sedition and hatred of the British Government, thinly veiled under frequent and fulsome expressions of devotion and loyalty," is not to advance matters, but, on the contrary, only to increase the want of sympathy between our Government and those who have been trained by our own acts to be our critics. The National Congress movement is based upon our declara- The tions of 1833 and 1835, and 1858. The spokesmen of the natives National point out that in 1833, after much debate. Parliament declared Congress. " that no native of India shall by reason only of his religion, place of birth, descent, or any of them, be disabled from hold- ing any place," and that in the proclamation of 1858 these words occur: "Our subjects, of whatever race or creed, be freely and impartially admitted to offices in our service, the duties of which they may be qualified by their education, ability, and integrity duly to discharge." The natives declare that these promises have been violated in the past, and assure us that if in these days of extending education we alienate the educated class, and force them to believe that as long as the English remain in India there will be no place in Government for them, we shaU weaken our hold upon the country, and our ability to tax it sufficiently to provide for military defence against the armies of a first-class power. Lord Macaulay in his minutes and his speeches foresaw all the difficulties of the present time, and was for facing them. After the Mutiny, when the country was crammed with British troops, we were tempted to withdraw from the position of 1833 and of 1835 ; but, instead of withdrawing from it, we deliber- ately reaffirmed it. Since that time we have extended English education and the use of the English tongue, but looking to the present diiFusion of administrative power among natives it must be confessed that we have in some degree disregarded our own promises. This is shown by the class of men who go from our Indian colleges to take part in ruling native states, because they have not sufficient openings under us. The result is a natural, though a partial, discontent, and in creating a single India for governmental purposes we have not only erected a fabric which in itself does much to unite native dis- content throughout India, but have, in our own tongue, given the discontented a common language known to aU journalists and barristers and most clerks — known, that is, to the whole of those likely to furnish the spokesmen of discontent. The reply that is made takes the shape of criticism in detail The other of the proposals put forward by the reformers ; opposition by a view. 428 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BKITAIN "The Rajah of Bhinga's " anti- Congress pamphlet. section of Mohammedans ; interested, though not consciously- interested, opposition by some of those wiio would be displaced by a more free employment of natives ; and some sarcasm and some bad language. One critic, who deals largely in such words as '' agitators " and such phrases as " revolutionary pro- paganda,'' seems to think that it is a condemnation of the Congress movement that it " must receive much pecuniary sup- port from natives of high position who do not choose publicly to avow their sympathy with the movement " ; a fact making it the more necessary to pay attention to the proceedings of the Congress, which, however, the writer proposes to put down by- force. In the meantime the Congress goes its way, and meets with increasing success each year. The fourth Congress, which was held at Allahabad in the winter of 1888-89, was interesting as taking place in a centre of European and Mohammedan opposition to the movement ; but, of the 1400 delegates, more than 200 were Mohammedans, there was a large attendance at the meetings, a European president — an ex-sheriif of Calcutta and ex-president of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce — who made a most able and moderate speech, and every sign of general adherence among the educated classes. The Congress of Christmas 1889 was of a similar nature. One attack which has been made upon the spokesmen of the native movement, charges them with being indifferent to the moral evils which exist among their own community, while alive to those which are found among ourselves. As Sir William Hunter, a friendly critic, has pointed out, improvement in the position of women in India has not kept pace with general progress, and he con- demns harem seclusion, enforced celibacy of widows, and child marriage. The Zenana Medical Missions meet with opposition from Indian gentlemen, who fear propagandism and espionage. But the Congress is not specially to blame, and it was evident at Allahabad last year that, concurrently with the demand for political advance, there was a movement among the delegates in the direction of social reform. By far the ablest work in the anti-Congress literature is a pamphlet which bears the name of Oday Pertap Singh, Eajah of Bhinga, a landowner in the North- West Provinces, of Kajput race. I say " bears the name," because while the native races produce men who, under immense diificulties, attain to a high standard, judged by our Western tests of scholarship, Indian landowners are seldom found in the first ranks of writers of English. It is the fashion throughout the Civil Service to de- clare as an article of faith that the Rajah of Bhinga wrote his pamphlet with his own hand, but, as no declarations on this subject have been sufficient to remove my doubts, I thinlc it better to state them. At all events the pamphlet is there, and forms a most able English essay against the Congress. The title is " Democracy not suited to India " — a phrase which in itself seems to have the ring of a Lieutenant-Governor's study. All must agree that Hindostan does not form at present a pro- CHAP. II BRITISH INDIA 429 mising field for certain democratic experiments, but to declare that democracy is not suited to India is by no means necessarily to pronounce in favour of a centralised administration of a foreign type ; nor is it to reject a large amount of native help in offices of trust. Government through native gentlemen ma.y prove to be government of an aristocratic and Conservative type. It is at least possible that the form of government which may best " suit " " India " — most conduce to the military and financial strength of the British Indian Empire, and best tend to secure its permanence — will be one in which the natives feel themselves secure under the rule of their own gentry, in their own districts, assisted by their ablest men ; we looking after India as a whole in the matters of the taxes and the army. Even those, then, who think that " Democracy " is " not suited to " the India of our time, may possibly find themselves able to go a long way with the Congress, which in many matters is far from "Democratic" in its ideas. All men who think must recognise the unwisdom of suddenly overturning in an Oriental country a long-existing blend of an ancient Asiatic civilisation with excellent administration from the West. The doubt is whether gradual change, such as is advocated by the Congress, will not in the long-run conduce to the happiness of the people and to their more uniform advance, as well as to the wealth and strength of our own Empire. Greatly as I difier upon many points from " the Eajah," I agree with him in thinking that the cultivators of, for example, the Punjab, would prefer the rule of their own gentry to that of a native clerk from Bengal. It is, however, in the badly paid Bengal clerk, useful to the Eng- lish because he speaks and writes our tongue, that the Punjabi knows British administration now, while the proposals of the Congress would give the Punjab its autonomy under the civil direction of people of Punjabi race controlled by us. Even to those who do not share its ideas the Congress movement should be useful as a reminder and as a counterpoise, and this was the view taken of it in its early days by a Conservative Indian statesman, Sir Richard Temple, and said by him to be that generally held by his friends concerned in Indian government. The recent attitude of the leading Anglo-Indians towards Attitude the Indian National Congress has been confused, and we gain towards the no certain guidance from it when considered as a whole. The Congress of general position has been hostile, but some of the thoughtful Sir William men, as, for example. Sir WiUiam Wedderburn, the President Hunter and of the National Congress of December 1889, have given, under °""'i'^- the form of benevolent neutrality, a full and general approval. The high authority of Sir William Hunter has been set upon the side of approbation, and his pen has conferred upon the last three Congresses a considerable publicity — the meetings of 1885 and 1886 having passed almost unnoticed. Sir William Hunter's support outweighs much opposition. His unrivalled knowledge of India makes him a most trustworthy guide, in everytliing, may I say, but spelling. The attention which was 430 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet iv excited in tlie United Kingdom by the Congress of December 1888 was, curiously enough, aroused by Mohammedan opposi- tion to it. Some leading Indian Mussulmans, able to write an excellent letter of the orthodox English type, stated their views in opposition to the Congress through the most influential English journals. The result of this opposition was to attract much notice in England, which led to an examination of first principles that had not the result that the Mohammedan gentlemen intended, and a study of Sir William Hunter's letters and articles has completed the educating process. He has conclusively shown, with the calm of the historian rather than with the partial spirit of a contemporary writer, that the present native movement is the necessary outcome of the priuciples on which our rule of India has been based, and that it is to our interest, as much as it would be to our honour, to satisfy it in some measure. Policy nnd The Congress of 1885 was small, and the representative demands nature of a true congress was at that time wanting. It was a of National first attempt, and, like all first attempts in a new direction in Congi-ess. such a place as India, was necessarily somewhat of a failure. The Congress of 1886 at Calcutta was a more considerable undertaking : all the religions were represented, and all parts of the country, although the nobles and the leading Moham- medans held aloof. The Congresses of 1887 at Madras, and of December 1888 at Allahabad, were even more remarkable, and considerable sacrifices of time and money were necessary to secure the large attendance of delegates from great distances. The object of the Congresses, as oflicially put forward, has been excellent. The leaders have asked the delegates to give a popular countenance to the empire of Great BritaLa in India as the bestower of peace and order ; they have expressed their determination to promote friendliness between the races ; but, in urging the delegates to discuss the lines upon which it is desirable for native politicians to work, they have demanded that the basis of government should be widened. Just as when the Slavonic delegates from all parts of the Slavonic world came together on two occasions, once at Prague and once at Moscow — as it was said, by their critics rather than by them- selves, to denounce Germany — German was found to be the only language in wliich they could communicate their ideas to one another — so of English at the Indian National Congresses. The language used in the Congress is often necessarily Enghsh, because that is a tongue which the lawyers and the newspajDer editors from all parts of India understand, and though it is not spoken by all the delega1:es, it is the tongue in which a majority can most easily communicate with one another. The Congress by the speeches of its leading men, has asked that a portion of the members of the Legislative Councils should be elected by the natives in electoral colleges by classes, care being taken to represent all the various interests. One base which has been proposed for the future covmcils is that one -fourth should CHAP. II BRITISH INDIA 43] consist of ex-officio members, one-fourth of selected members, and half of members elected by classes. But power is given to the executive Government to select a portion of the electorate, as well as overrule the decisions of the Councils. It may be safely conceded that a constitution of this kind would be work- able, and would not produce any revolutionary change in India ; in fact, bodies so composed would probably be excessively Con- servative ; but opponents are inclined to think that these proposals may form but a first step, and that the idea behind them is the adoption of those parliamentary institutions for which the peninsula of Hindostan, with its extraordinary diversity of races, tongues, and rehgions, appears to be unfit or unprepared. Another main proposal of the Congress is that natives should no longer be practically excluded from com- petition for the Indian Civil Service. In regard to this matter there can be no doubt that promises made to the late Professor Fawcett have not been kept. It would, however, be better to leave this matter for the present as it is than to tantalise the feelings of educated natives by the adoption of some transparent fraud. It is no fulfilment of our promises to invite gentlemen to come to England from Hindostan (which creed forbids many of the best of them to do) in order to compete with Enghshmen in subjects specially chosen to exclude them. Affairs of a different kind are touched by the Congresses in the proposal, not made, however, in the last one or two of them, that thei-e should be no future increase in mihtary expenditure — a matter on which the Congress may have voted in order to please its electors, without any very real regard to the nature of the military necessities of the country. A vast number of topics of less importance, or less interest to ourselves, have also been dealt with by motions. Sir William Hunter in his wise articles has shown the im- The great possibility of governing India either by an absolute despotism tiansitiou. or by parliamentary forms, and the necessity of treating the present period as one of transition and development. He points out that if the question is whether the United Kingdom, supported only by a white garrison and a small close Civil Service, can permanently hold India, Mr. Meredith Townsend is justified in thinking that it cannot ; but Sir William Hunter believes that we have already taken some steps in the direction of reconstitution on a broader base, and that, proceeding steadily in the same direction, we can make our rule more lasting. He shows how the people of India having been promised admission to public office, their education, ability, and integrity, to use the words of the Queen's proclamation, are now such that no ground can be found under these heads for refusing them admission. He points out how we have trained the picked youth of India in the literature of English freedom ancl inspired them with Biitish political ideas, and how impracticable it is to continue to refuse all possibility of growth, even though we may think that growth of free institu- 432 PROBLEMS or GREATER BRITAIN India. tions in India sliould naturally be slow. Sir William Hunter also shows how we have modernised the intellectual class of India, without leavening the whole mass of the population with modern ideas, and how therefore we have two peoples in India in the sense of civiUsation — ^a great mass unchanged, and a small number highly trained in British notions. Sir William Hunter maintains silence upon what may be called the political demands of the Congress, but he supports its view with regard to the reform of judicial procedure, the production of an Indian budget in legislative council, the modification of the Arms Act to prevent the destruction of the population by wild beasts, and a partial admission of natives to the Covenanted Civil Service. Sir WilHam Hunter knows, however, as well as any one, that reform could not long stop here, and that the political demands of the Congress for some introduction of the repre- sentative system into the Provincial Governments are the demands which he behind the rest and upon which the future in India turns. Views of It is curious in this connection to read the comments of the British the Anglo-Indian newspapers upon Mr. Meredith Townsend's press in article on the retention of India by England which I have named above. Many of them seem to think that England can easily hold India by arms, and that no change in the form of govern- ment is necessary, and they differ widely from Sir William Hunter in these respects. Tne native papers, and some of the English papers published in India, agree in declaring Mr. Townsend wrong ; they think that England will retain India, but naturally assume that it will retain it by having that regard to the wishes of the governed which Sir William Hunter proposes. One English weekly newspaper of Calcutta summed up the question very plainly when it said that the leaden dulness of British rule constituted its most serious danger, and that it was a disaster that we should "deny a career to the ambitious youth of the country," and "jealously exclude the people from participation in the government." An excellent journal, the Voice of India, which gives extracts from the native papers of all types, should be closely studied by those who wish to keep themselves informed upon the changing aspects of Indian problems. That gatherings in the nature of the National Congress should take place was to be expected, and was in fact inevit- able, and the demands which have been made — both those which are reasonable and those which, though made in reason- able language, are unreasonable — are also such as might have been foreseen. As has been pointed out by Sir Henry Leland Harrison (who has had great experience, as Chairman of the Corporation of Calcutta and Commissioner of Police, and also by reason of his membership of the Legislative Council of Bengal), much of the opposition to Congress ideas arises from the personal unpopularity of those who advocate them — men who in a, Conservative country have been branded by the The Congress movement natural. CHAP. II BRITISH INDIA 433 repellent name of " agitators." Although it may be true that the Indian "agitator" is un warlike ; that he is despised by the fighting classes, and disliked by the religious ; yet, as he is the advocate of principles to which concessions must undoubtedly be made, it is worse than useless to attack the agitator while we are daily yielding to the agitation. The agitator may be admitted to be ambitious, but I fail to see why the possession of ambition should be denied to him. That those who are dis- agreeably criticised by agitators, and who may conceivably be thereby displeased, should be jealous of the notice which has been accorded to them is natural, but can form in itself no reason for denying claims which apparently are in a large degree consistent with the interests of the Empire. As has been well shown, men who speak better English than most Englishmen ; who conduct able newspapers in our tongue ; who form the majority on town councils which admirably supervise the affairs of great cities ; who, as native judges, have reached the highest judicial posts ; who occupy seats on the Provincial, the Presidency, and the Viceregal Councils, or, as powerful ministers, excellently rule vast native states, — can no longer be treated as hopelessly inferior to ourselves in governmental power. These men look upon the Queen's proclamations as their chai-ters, and point out that, while there is no legal reason agaiust their liDing some proportion, at all events, of the liighest executive posts, there are as a fact virtually no natives high up in the Covenanted Civil Service. That service, although an admirable instrument of government, is becoming more, instead of less, of a close service, and its members less and less Indian and more and more Enghsh in their Hves. To those who take a, purely selfish view it may be urged that we can hardly long go on as we are, refusing to proceed further in the direction of the employment of natives in high office, with the Russians at our door pursuing the other policy, although pursuing it in a less degree than is commonly believed. The unshared rule of a close bureaucracy from across the seas cannot last in the face of widespread modem education of a people so intelligent as Indian natives. On the other hand, British mihtary supremacy sufficient to preserve peace, and British control sufficient to raise the necessary taxes and to prevent the imposition of customs duties, can be more easily maintained if a large measure of local independence is conceded to the Provinces. It is after all only a question of degree that separates the Not so two sides, not one of principle. It is possible to combine the much real views of men who at first sight appear to hold most opposite difference opinions— Sir William Hunter, Sir William Wedderburn, Sir ^ipon the H. L. HaiTison, Mr. Yule, and Mr. Cotton on the one side, and question as Sir Lepel Griffin and Sir Jolin Strachey on the other. The generally former support and the latter attack the National Congress ; '■''°"g"'- but nothing that its opponents have said runs counter to the idea of local representative institutions, while the class of out- side supporters do not propose to govern Eajputs and Mah- 2f 434 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Spirit in wliicli tlie Congress movement sliould be met. Great cliange at hand. rattas and Sikhs by Bengalis, or to constitute an Indian Parlia- ment. UnpojDular as was Lord Eipon with the English official class in India, his policy of increasing the powers of munici- palities was a mere expansion of Lord Mayo's policy, and is generally though not universally approved. Argument upon the matter is to be desired, but not invec- tive, and there is so much reason to think that the Congress movement really represents the cultivated intelligence of the country that those who ridicule it do harm to the imperial interests of Great Britain, bitterly wounding and alienating men who are justified in what they do, who do it in reasonable and cautious form, and who ought to be conciliated by being met half-way. The official class themselves admit that many of the natives who attack the Congress do so to ingratiate themselves with their British rulers and to push their claims for decorations : and, while I am on this point, I may add that it is an almost universal opinion among officials themselves that some of the recent appointments in the various classes of our orders have been unfortunate. Our first duty in India is that of defending the country against anarchy and invasion, with which I have dealt in the last chapter ; but our other greatest duty is to learn how to live with what is commonly called the Congress movement, namely, with the development of that new India which we have ourselves created. Our past work in India has been a splendid task, splendidly performed, but there is a still nobler one before us, and one larger even than that labour on the Irish problem to which our public men on both sides seem too much inclined to give their whole attention. When last I came from India I did so with a feeling that my third visit had been paid at the end of the old period ; at a moment when little real change had yet taken place in the state of things which had previously existed, but when great changes were in view. In the matter of Indian defence I liave shown how the presence of Russia upon our frontier has modi- fied the problem, and how, while our means of meeting attack have grown, they have grown as yet upon old lines. Our army in India is essentially an army of the same class as that which I had found there before. It is the same army with modifica- tions ; in those days strong for its work, and now weak for its work ; but with the probability before it that a complete change of system is at hand, although it may come too late. So with Incfian politics. We still find the courteous and able Civilian ruling India upon the same system in all essentials which existed when I was there before, but with a general admission among all who have come unprejudiced to the matter that the system cannot long endure unchanged ; and I have thought it wise to devote this chapter to the consideration of the alterations proposed and likely soon to come, their advan- tages and their dangers. Persons do not count for much in India. The Indian OHAP. II BRITISH INDIA 435 governmental system is too regular, the codes are too complete, Persons iu traditions too strong, to give much room to human personality. India less No one man can really change the policy, and the greatest important alterations of recent times have taken place gradually by the tli™ help of scores of distinguished men. While in young colonies system. a single governor or a, single minister may bring about a change which will alter the whole future of the country, in India talent can expect no such results. Climate, too, shortens the time during which men can remain in the Indian service after they have reached high rank, and they are inclined to answer in the affirmative Sir Alfred Lyall's question — " With the sweets of authority sated. Would he give up his throne to be cool ? " Statesmen who have comi)leted their Indian career, and left the country never to return, come home and spend another twenty years of useful life — serving their country in Parlia- ment, or their counties or their parisnes at Quarter Sessions or on Boards of Guardians, or themselves upon directorates. The most interesting man in India at the present moment is Sir Sir Frederick Roberts ; but he is an exception among soldiers on Frederick Indian service in having a close connection with the country — Roberts. his father having been an Indian officer and he liimself having served in India almost all his hfe. Hence his personal popu- larity is as great with the native army as with that white army to which he commends himself as a fine specimen of an Etonian. The influence of his name among the natives gener- ally is considerable, even in the remotest parts of India. Supplies were wanted once in the neighbourhood of the lOiojak pass when " Sir Fred " was coming, and appeals were made to the local chiefs and head men of villages, in which the title of Commander-in-Chief and its native equivalent "The Lord of War" were freely used with no result, when at last a staft' officer happened to say " Koberts." Then in chorus the chiefs broke in to say that if the great personage was "General Lobbet Sahib " it was a very different matter, and that the stores should be forthcoming. A man of will, a man of action, and a good writer all in one, it could not but be that Sir Frederick Roberts would make his mark in India, and for the sake of the relations between all classes it is to be wished that others like him, if possible, may be found in the future. There is in India no more striking scene than one of those Indian great reviews which foreign writers have frequently described, scenes. and on which Lady Dufferin has lately written with much success. An ancient city stands near by, with grand Moghul walls ; the parade ground is covered with masses of men of the most martial aspect, in costumes of gorgeous colour, with a background of the great elephants of the siege train, and behind all are the snow crests of the Himalaya ; but the mili- tary strength which is exhibited upon the held is in itself, except as against a foreign enemy, less valuable to our rule 436 TKOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART iv tlian the perpetual courtesy, cheeriness, and good humour of the old Indian generals in command, which explain the delight with which the white-headed native officers, with whom the generals are personally acquainted, step forward to touch swords when visited at the quarters of their regiments. But India is full of striking scenes. Nothing can be more different from a grand review than an early service at a Christian mission church in a great town, where all are natives — the preacher, the verger, and the congregation. Hundreds of thou- sands of dark-skinned people live round the church within the gates of a, walled town guarded by dark-skinned police, and one may walk for hours througli the streets about this church in whicii are sung the familiar English hymns without seeing a white face. The enormous size of India is brought home to us by the variety of the pictures ofiered to the traveller's gaze ; for the peninsula presents us in the south and centre with the per- fection of the scenery of the tropics ; in the north centre with plains uglier than the ugliest of Australia, more destitute of shadow, more parched, green in the winter only, and sun-baked by far the greater portion of the year ; and then in the extreme north with the grandest mountain landscapes that are known. As the country varies from a sterile waste to a natural garden, so does the climate from almost the hottest of the globe to that of cold tablelands and frozen peaks. The driest and the wettest parts of the whole world are both in India, and the colour of the people varies from the black of the peasantry of the Ganges delta to the white of the aristocracy of Kashmir, while the features range from the low types of the Mongolians, and of the aborigines of the Bengal hills, to a purely classic type in the far North West. I have described in Greater Britain the river front of Benares, the Golden Temple at Amritsir, the Taj — incomparably the finest building in the world — and the walls of Agra, the pearl mosques of that city and of Delhi, and the scenery of Central India. I have written of the street life, of the water-carriers and the pariah dogs, of the crows and the screaming kites, of the cream-coloured humped cattle, of the strange music, of the green parrots in the trees, of the never- ending sunshine, of the bronze-statue-like figures of the women bearing loads ; and all that I at that time saw I have seen again, except that the cantonments, which at my first visit were so many brickfields, now resemble Batavia in being so many cities of trees in which one can hardly find the houses for the forest — the only change to the eye in India. But in my last visit I was able twice to realise the feeling with whicli the successive waves of conquerors have seen the dark plains of India from the grand passes of the Afghan hills, with the glitter- ing serpent streaks of the Indus and its tributaries standing out before them in the dust and smoke. Impossi- The English tourists who visit India each year in increasing bility of numbers, which would grow, I am sure, more rapidly were ft CHAP, n BRITISH INDIA 437 not for the fear of overtaxing the hospitality of Indian friends, grasping resort to the interior of the peninsula in that cold weather when the diffi- the fields are green, the towns a garden, and the air in the soft culties of sunshine the most baliny that can be found. They can bring 'li^ Indian back with them but little notion of the real terrors of an Indian Problem m life, and those who would judge for themselves of one of the ^° , freatest difficulties of Indian rule should follow the example of ^''^^ ^^' rofessor Eobert Wallace, recorded in his India in 1887, and visit the country in the other two-thirds of the year. The idea of tlie possibility of British settlement, unless it is in the hills of the North-west Frontier or in Kashmir, will be speedily dispelled. From March to November in the south, from April to October in the north, the plains of India are a furnace from which all who can escape. Tlie only relief is in the rain storms, and the rain storms ai-e more unhealthy than the heat. In the hot weather there are delights, however, which make the joy of travellers, but which have a different aspect to those who are condemned to dwell in the plains unceasingly. Dawn is beau- tiful, and sunrise with its ilecks of scarlet, and at night the Eastern russet moon rising from the smoking plains, heavy with their perpetual dust, until it becomes silver as it bathes them in its light and extinguishes the starlight from overhead ; but from sunrise until the hour when the brick-red sun sets in a black strip of sky there is nothing before even travellers except the deadly monotony of the long Indian hot- weather day. Beautiful as is India in its cold season, there are few English- men who would not prefer to live amid the colossal masses of the silent hills of the North West, rising range upon range from the steaming plains, rather than in the more fertile country, with the flowery winter season, but destructive through its summer to the English race. PAKT V CEOWN COLONIES OF THE PKESENT AND OF THE FUTURE PAET V CROWN COLONIES OF THE PRESENT AND OP THE FUTURE Under the coiiveiiieiit popvilar name of " Crown Colonies " I Popular have to treat of those colonies, dependencies, jjrotectorates, and and spheres of iiifluence of Great Britain which remain for notice scientific after India and the North American, Australasian, and South meanings African groups have been disposed of. We have dealt with the °f '1"® t*'!'™ present position of colonies possessed of responsible govern- Crown ment, in which tlie Crown has only a veto on legislation, and Colonies, the Colonial Office no control over any public officer except the Governor. We have now to deal with the position and pros- pects of the Crown Colonies proper, in which the Colonial Office possesses the control of legislation and administration, and with those of an intermediate class of colonies, which pos- sess repi'esentative institutions, but not resijonsible government, while the Colonial Office retains control over their public officers. The Crown Colonies proper include some in which laws may be made by the Govex'nor alone, while in others they are made by the Governor with the concurrence of a nominated Council. In a portion of the latter class, as, for example, in Ceylon and Mauritius, the authority of the Council rests only on prerogative. In others, as, for example, the Straits Settle- ments, it is based on statute, though in most of these a power is reserved to make laws by Order in Council. The inter- mediate class of colonies — which, so far as they have not already been described, will, for the sake of convenience, be dealt with also in this chapter, as, like the others, they are chiefly tropical plantations — are considered " Crown Colonies " by the public though not by the Colonial Office. In these the Crown cannot, as a general rule, legislate by Order in Council, and laws are made by the Governor with the concurrence of one or two legis- lative bodies, of which one at least is wholly or for the most part representative. In Bahamas, Barbados, and Bermuda, for example, there is a nominated Council and an elective Assembly ; while in Natal and Western Australia, already named, we have specimens of colonies possessing representative but not responsible institutions, in which there is a single Legislative Chamber partly elective and partly nominated by the Crown. The public, however, are substantially in the right 442 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAUST PAET V in classing the intermediate group as " Crown Colonies," inas- much as executive power is in fact in the hands of persons selected by the Colonial Office. Varieties It will be seen that even befoi'e we come to consider depend- of Crown encies of colonies, possessions of the Crown which lie altogether Colonies, outside of the colonial system, protectorates, and spheres of influence, we have to do with settlements of many kinds. In some Crown Colonies the primary object in the occupation is the maintenance of a fortress or of a coaling station. In others the matter in view is plantation, or foreign trade. In some the 23opulation is all white ; in others the white population is con- siderable, but there is a large native black or " coloured " popu- lation to whom representative institutions, if limited by a high franchise, might be unfavourable ; in others the population is almost wholly black. The West Indies present us with examples of colonies formerly possessing a large share of self- government, but a share virtually confined to the wliite race, in which the constitutions have been surrendered and the power of the Crown brought in for the protection of the blacks. In some of the colonies possessing representative but not respon- sible institutions the local Parliaments are very strong, but represent only the white minority — the imported blacks or the natives being almost unheard — while in. others power is passing to the dai'k-skinned races. Depend- Besides, then, the great colonies and India, which have been encies of dealt with, we find British colonies and dependencies scattered Depend- over the whole earth and administered on every system known encies. iq political man. India has her dependencies. Burmah, which is sometimes mentioned as though a separate dependency, is politically a part of India, as are the Andamans and Aden ; but Perim is a dependency of Aden, the Laccadives are a depend- ency of India, and the protectorate over Baluchistan — so real as to make the country virtually British — is an Indian protectorate. As India has her dependencies, so have New Zealand and New South Wales, Mauritius, the Straits Settle- ments, and Ceylon. Lord Howe Island, 600 miles from Sydney, is part of New South Wales, while Norfolk Island and Pitcairn are British territory, and under the Governor of New Soutli Wales, but do not form part of that colony. Chatham Island and the Kermadec Islands, even farther removed from WelHngton and from Auckland respectively than is Lord Howe Island from Sydney, are dependencies of New Zealand. Chatham Island, on which there is both a white and an imported native-population, is governed by a representative of the New Zealand administration, who has lately had his difficulties, caused by the worrying of flocks by dogs belonging to the decreasing Moriori tribe, and has had to send for troops. The Seychelles are dependencies of Mauritius, from wliich they are distant nearly a thousand miles ; the Maldives are tributary to Ceylon, and the Cocos dependencies of tlie Straits. In SoutJi Africa the dependencies of the Cape and of Natal have been PAP.T V CEOWN COLONIES 443 mentioned, as have the new British colonies, protectorates, and sphere of influence, and the detached colony of St. Helena and the Admiralty post of Ascension. More peculiar than even the dependencies of dependencies British are the parcels of British territory separate from the United territory- Kingdom, and yet altogether outside the Colonial and Indian separate systems, such, for example, as the Isle of Man with its curious J™™ constitution, and the Claannel Islands, the most ancient of the !;" , dominions of the Crown, the inhabitants of which declare that cinio'^i'^' the United Kingdom is a dependency of theirs. ^^^ j^^i-j^ In this chapter I shall have to deal mainly with Crown rpj.Qpj(.j^i" Colonies in the popular or wider sense of the term, but must settle- mention our protectorates and our " spheres of British interest," ments. "British influence," or "British activity," to use the cant phrases which came in in 1885, after the African Conference at Berlin. ; and I shall also name the new chartered companies, such as those for the Lower Niger, the Zanzibar coast, and for North Borneo, to which indeed, on account of their novelty and of the future which they seem to have before them, I shall assign priority over the old Crown Colonies. As I have been dealing hitherto with the Empire of India, or with our ofishoot the United States, or with colonies in which white men of our race can work on the land and bring up healthy children, so now I have to investigate the condition of what are called tropical colonies, in which the white men induce others to do their work. The British, the Russian, the Hispano-American, and the Chinese races hold between them almost all the temperate lands of the globe outside of Europe. Germany and France in their recent occupations of territory in Africa and the Pacific have been driven to found colonies of the tropical type ; while the Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese, as well as the French themselves, already had great dominions of the kind. By their population, their extent of territory, their trade, and their resources, the British tropical colonies outside India form only one (ranking at present fourth) of several groups which from year to year may vary in relative importance. When books are written, as many have been, upon the colonies of France, they naturally give enormous space to the discussion of problems which, except so far as they concern comparatively small parts of Hindostan, are for the British Empire of secondary importance. The masters of India, the explorers of Australia, cannot give so great a share of their attention to the British West Indies, Ceylon, Mauritius, and such depend- encies, as Holland gives to Java, or France to Martinique, Guadeloupe, Reunion, and Cochin-China. Among the English-governed countries there are then two Two classes great groups. To the one belong Canada, Australia except its of English- northern coast. New Zealand, Cape Colony, and Bechuanaland ; governed to the other India, a large part of the British African coast, the countries Northern Territory of Australia, as well as Ceylon, Mauritius, ^"ross the Labuan, and North Borneo, British Guiana, British Plonduras, ^^"-^^ 444 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part v the West India and other islands, and the territories under the control of the Niger Company and of the East Africa Company. The former group are the temperate colonies, where, even as near to the equator as Queensland, the English race can labour in the open air, and where the native races consisted mainly of peoples like the Red Indian or the Australian aboriginal, of small numbers, who lived by the chase and made little or no use of the soil. In the other group, of which India is the great example, the English find themselves ruling nations and races that they cannot hope to replace. We may indeed try to change them in the islands or the small peninsulas ; to substitute one black or yellow people for another, as the negroes have been substituted for the Caribs in the West India Islands, and as Hindoos are being in turn substituted for negroes as labourers in some of these ; or as the Chinese in Ijarts of British Malaya have taken as workers the place of the Malays ; but we cannot do without the coloured man, nor conveniently till the soil. Most of these countries of dark- skinned labour which are under British rule are Crown Colonies (except India, of which we have already treated, and which is indeed in a similar position), and most of the Crown Colonies consist of countries of this description. There are a few military stations and a few trading posts, some of which lie outside the tropics, where Englishmen could work if the local resources were sufficient to attract them ; but in the main the Crown Colonies and the habitation colonies form two separate classes. In some parts of India, as, for example, in the tea districts of Assam and the coffee districts of Madras, we encourage English and Scotch planters, but in the old settled districts of Hindostan the native landlords will continue to exist, and the social problems there presented to us are different from those of our Crown Colonies, or of the tropical colonies of France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, and the German Empire. The advance made during the Queen's reign by the self-governing colonies of the Empire has been so remarkable, in regard alike to the growth of population, the development of resources, and intellectual and social progress, that the Crown Colonies, on which in former days was concentrated most of the interest that was felt in British enterprise beyond the seas, have been thrown by comparison into the background. The colonies and dependencies of which I have now to treat do not at first sight seem to illustrate the expansive power of our race to the same extent as do Australasia, North America, or South Africa. The old tropical colonies, as, for example, those of the West Indies, apjoear to the eyes of some observers to have exhausted their vitality and entered upon a period of decline. There are, however, new fields open to British energy in tropical Africa which present us with an early view of the colonial problems of the twentieth century, for the development of Africa by railroad enterprise must be the work mainly of the next generation. As regards t1ie older tropical colonies, it PART V CROWN COLONIES 445 would be unfair to apply to them the same standard by wliicli we measure the growth of the self-governing colonies. With the exception of those military or naval stations to which I have referred, the Crown Colonies are either situate in low ground within the tropics, or, like Cyprus, Bermuda, and the extra-tropical portion of Bahamas, possess a similar climate. They are unsuited to European labour, and in some degree to permanent European residence, inasmuch as upon their rich low lands European children j)ine or die. Moreover, instead of having wide fields for settlement, our older tropical colonies are either small or densely inhabited by dark-skinned races. In most of them the British planters incurred in the last generation great losses in consequence of Slavery, the cessation of slave labour, and found much difficulty in obtaining an efficient substitute, while the consequent increase in cost of production was followed by so heavy a fall in the price of the chief among the articles which they produced as Sugar, seemed to have consummated the ruin of the colonies them- selves. Observers at home naturally turned away from the contemplation of what they thought was a picture of decay to the consideration of the brighter prospects of the larger colonies, inhabited, except in the cases of South Africa and of Quebec, by a homogeneous population, and having about them infinite power of development — life, hope, and promise. At the same time the Crown Colonies are important to us still, and their decay, if decay there was, is at an end. They include in Europe Of what the stations of Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, and Heligoland, the the Crown chief of which wiU be dealt with under the head of Imperial Colonies Defence ; in America little besides British Guiana, Bi'itish consist. Honduras, and the West-India Islands ; in Africa the West Coast Settlements, Mauritius with its deisendencies, and Natal and others which have been described under the head of South Africa ; in Australasia, Fiji and British New Guinea, besides that Western Australia to wliich responsible government is immediately to be given ; and in Asia, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, Labuan, and Hong-Kong. If even we exclude from view the British spheres of influence, or, as the Germans say, of "interest," upon the Niger, in East Africa, in North Borneo, and in Northern Bechuanalancl, as well as the protec- torates, the population in Crown Colonies under direct British rule is almost equal to the pojDulation of all the rest of the colonies put together, and the volume of external trade of the Crown Colonies greatly in. excess of that of the other colonies if those of the Australian continent be omitted. I have already foreshadowed the view that in our new Protector- protectorates, and in the spheres of influence which have ates and been reserved to us in Africa, are to be found the more spheres of important Crown Colonies of the future, in which tlie problems mflucuce. that have been presented by the older tropical plantations of the West Indies, Mauritius and Ceylon and the West Coast settlements will be solved in the next century upon a larger 446 TEOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part v scale. As the interest, then, of our new African and Pacific tropical dependencies is greater than that which attaches even to the West Indian colonies with their romantic history, I deal first with Africa and with the Pacific. No apology is needed for omitting from consideration here those groups which have been already dealt with in the South African jjart, and Western Australia — included in that Australian continent which has been treated as a whole. Fiji too has been already named as represented on the Federal Council of Australasia, and New Guinea as a dependency of Australia, although I shall have a few more words to say of the Papuan island. Among the protectorates, which I have as yet left out of account, are the protected States of the Malay peninsula ; the protected islands of the Pacific ; the northern Somali Territory, or southern shore of the Gulf of Aden from the mouth of the Red Sea towards Cape Guardafui ; as well as Sarawak and Brunei, which have also lately come under our protection. More important, however, are the vast " spheres of influence," full of the possibilities of the future, — new Indias of the next generation, like the Niger ; twentieth-century Australias, lite the tablelands of the Zambesi banks and the high lands of East Africa. Recent annexations, proclamations, and treaties of delimitation have given indeed to Great Britain, in Southern, and in Eastern Africa, and between the Gulf of Guinea and the Soudan, as well as in the South -Western Pacific, regions which possess the highest prospective value, and two out of four of which may ultimately be found to have the advantage over India of being better suited, as regards their vast table- lands, to the health of the white race. Change of Great Britain has been forced by stress of circumstances policy in to suddenly alter her policy in Africa. Up to the winter of 1884. 1884-85 she had refused as a rule to make annexations of territory, and preferred to deal by treaty with the savage chiefs, insisting only upon order and free trade. As late as 1883 it was laid down in a text-book upon the subject,^ " that the policy of England discourages any increase of territory in tropical countries already occupied by native races." We had allowed the French to occupy New Caledonia, and other Pacific groups and single islands, which had been discovered, named, and taken possession of for the British Crown by British navigators. VVe had declined a protectorate of Zanzibar : we had refused the heirship to the late Sultan of Zanzibar, with the reversion of his dominions. We had repeatedly declined the Cameroons. We had declined to ratify the annexation by the Australians of half New Guinea. We had refused to accept the Cameron treaty yielding to us the Congo basin of Central Africa. Both political parties had followed this policy : Mr. Disraeli had refused the Congo and the Cameroons ; Mr. Gladstone had refused the Cameroons, Zanzibar, and half New Guinea. The annexation of Fiji, as '■ The Colonies, by E. J. Payne. Macmillan and Co. I'Aui V CliOWN COLONIES 447 I shall have to show, was, under the circumstances in which it happened, hardly an exception. In consequence of French and German annexations, and the fear of the possible exclusion of our trade from the countries taken by our rivals, a change of policy began in the time of Mr. Gladstone's second administra- tion. After refusing the Cameroons and half New Guinea, and while refusing Zanzibar, he ended by hoisting the British flag in more than a quarter of New Guinea. The question of the acceptance of the Cameroons was reopened, and was actually under the consideration of the Treasury at the moment when the Germans occupied that district. A sudden change of policy had occurred on the part of two other powers, and we followed suit. For some time before 1884 there had been but little seen of the annexation of whole countries for the sake of trade, and the grant of the North Borneo charter at the end of 1881 was a curious exception to a general rule, in which at first the re- sponsibility of the United Kingdom and of Government was purposely made small. The British Empire and the Eussian Empire had spread rapidly no doubt, but the annexations had hardly been made with the deliberate design of subduing new countries for commercial reasons. By their attack upon the regions of the Upper Niger, by their annexation of Tunis and Tonquin, and by their war in Madagascar the French, and by the annexation of the west coast of South Africa the Germans, gave the signal for what has been called the " scramble " of 1885, whicli seems to have swallowed up all Africa and the Pacific islands, at all events as far as the map-makers are concerned, for the profit of North -Western Europe. The change of policy on the part of the United Kingdom was the consequence of the action of her would-be colonial rivals. The administration which had refused all eastern New Guinea was glad to secure the south-eastern portion of that island ; and its successors — the same men who had declined the Congo basin when it had been ofiered in the treaties of an explorer — were glad to receive European acknowledgment for spheres of influence on the Lower Niger and the northern part of the Zanzibar coast. On the whole, we have probably been no losers by not being Results, among the first when the European Powers rushed upon Africa and the Pacific like so many birds of prey. In Western Africa, indeed, we lo.st by our delay the mountains of the Cameroons, which had twice been ceded to us, and where alone in Western Africa a station mi§;ht have been formed for white inhabitants ; but our South African and East African spheres of influence contain high and healthy plains, and if the Niger banks, North Borneo, and south-east New Guinea be unhealthy, the first two at least are rich, while some of the Pacific islands within our sphere are habitable by whites. It is difl&cult to decide to which of the two groups of countries named above pertain the high lands in the territory within the limits of the charter of the British East Africa Company, for it is asserted by US PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part v explorers that, in spite of their nearness to the equator, they may be placed in the category to which Australia and Canada, belong. It is, however, to my mind doubtful if it will prove possible to bring up white children in such a country. The Berlin I have used language not altogether complimentary with Conference, regard to the recent action in Africa of the European powers ; but that action has been of a mixed nature. The motives put forward and the principles proclaimed at the African Con- ference at Berlin were satisfactory. It is only when we find the nature of the measures by which the powers have been forced in many cases to make good their paper annexations, and when we note how large a proportion of the commodities which their subjects send to the black people of Central Africa consists of arms and spirits, that we must confess that the facts are not in accord with the views officially avowed. Free Trade and total absence of import duties for many years to come are excellent things for us ; but the existing free trade of Africa largely takes the form of free trade in muskets and in drink. Great portions of the countries which in various parts of the globe have been wantonly disturbed by European intervention are inhabited by industrious natives, and there are no white settlers in them to protect. In the Pacific, annexations may be necessary, if only for the purpose of preventing criminal acts being perpetrated against peaceful tribes by white aggressors ; but in the greater part of the African countries which have recently come vinder some slight European control, with a view to tlie creation of European government in the future, it would have been difficult indeed to make out a fair case for annexation. When the process had begun, however, it was equally difficult for our Government not to claim its share, for fear that the exclusion of our goods by means of differential duties, which had been already seen in many of the colonies of France, should be imitated in other portions of the world. It would doubtless have been difficult in the long-run to keep white men out of Central Africa, and we may be thankful that an immense tract, running from sea to sea, and including the whole centre of the continent and a vast portion of the east coast, with, on the west coast, a strip sufficient to control the waterway of the Congo, has been freed from commercial barriers, thrown open to missionary effort, and given a fair chance of obtaining neutrality in the event of general war. Some of the principles laid down for Central Africa were indeed so excellent that one can only wish that they may be applied to all parts of the world not under regular government. Present Africa is about ten times as large as British India, and far position more than half of the vast continent — almost two-thirds of it — of Africa, is now in some degree attached to one or other of the European powers. The north and north centre are greatly occupied by desert, and thinly peopled, a,nd on these portions of the Dark Continent the Frencli, Spaniards, and Italians have set their eyes. South of the deserts of the Soudan, Africa may be said to PAiiT V CROWN COLONIES 449 have been divided between England, France, Germany, Por- tugal, and the Congo State. The special interest which we have in Cape Town and its neighbourhood, on account of one route to India, we have also in Egypt on account of our other route to India through the Egypt. Canal. _ It was, indeed, universally admitted at the time of the expedition that we had a high interest in the preservation of domestic peace at Cairo, although there was ground for much difference of opinion about the wisdom of our remaining there after peace had been restored. By our occupation we have improved the government of Egypt, have weeded out adven- turers, and have caused Egypt to be well served, and as well governed as is possible in the case of a country which has to bear so fearful a burden of foreign debt ; but we find ourselves in a vicious circle. We are to stay until our work is done and Egypt is fully able to stand alone, but as long as we stay the certainty that Egypt will be able to stand alone can never be made apparent. It would have been easy to have left the country immediately after Tel-el-Kebir, placing there a few good officers to organise a small picked force to defend the country against attack from the south ; and it was owing to the obstinacy of the Egyptian statesmen, in insisting upon sending an expedition to reconquer the Soudan, that the Hicks disaster followed, bringing all the later evils in its train. Great Britain fijids itself with a "temporary" occupation of the country upon its hands, which, although temporary, is apparently meant to last as long as there are fanatical Mohammedans in the Soudan. The pledges as to the temporary nature of the occupation, which were given in 1882 by Mr. Gladstone, were virtually renewed in 1885 by Lord Salisbury ; but we con- tinue to stay on in Egypt, although some of those who are not unmindful of the necessities of our military and naval position, as, for example. Lord Charles Beresford, believe that the Canal route is one wliich could not be made use of in time of serious war, and seem to think that our occupation is rather a source of military weakness than of strength in time of danger. Con- sidered from a military point of view, it is an occuiDation which too much reminds observers of that French occupation of PbOme which lasted from the time of the Second Eepublic through the whole life of the Second Empire, but came to an end the moment that France was plunged into a dangerous war and had need of the two regiments that were employed there. As we pass from Egypt round the African coast we reach our EastAfrioa. Somali protectorate — a paper annexation of the feeding-ground of Aden and Perim. The Somali coast was occupied in 1887 in Somali the form prescribed by the Berlin Act of 1885, and the Consul coast, who looks after it is paid by the India Office. In 1886 a treaty was concluded between the Viceroy of India and the Sultan of Socotra for a protectorate, and the British flag was hoisted by General Hogg, the political resident at Aden. Soon we come, as we journey southward, to the sphere of 2g 450 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet v Imperial influence which is occupied by the British East Africa Company, British the most favourable part of all tropical Africa for European East Africa enterprise. This district is certain to be well developed under Company, the chief proprietor of the Britisli India Steam Navigation line (possessed of the whole traflic of the coast north of Mozambique), who is President of the company. The best port in the spheie of British influence is Mombassa, familiar to readers of the Lusiad of Camoens, where there is an excellent harbour. The principal trade of this part of the coast has hitherto been in ivory, but such vast quantities are yearly secured by Arab hunters that, unless the British Company should be successful in preserving the elephant in a portion of their territories, no ivory is likely to be obtained after the next fifteen or twenty years. The summit of Kilimandjaro is within the German sphere of influence, but the best parts of its slopes are said to be those upon the north, which are within our sphere and capable of cultivation of all kinds. Mount Kenia, which lies on our side the border, is more lofty than the German giant, and rears a snowy summit to the height of 19,000 feet exactly under the equator. Of the less known among British tropical countries, destined in all probability to great prosperity in the future, the sphere of influence reserved to us in East Africa by the arrangement come to concerning the Zanzibar coast is, indeed, probably the most important. The charter of the company follows generally the lines laid down by the Foreign Ofiice and the Law Oflicers of the Crown in the North Borneo case. It contains a stipulation with I'egard to the slave trade wliich shows one of the conveniences of such charters from a political point of view. The 10th article binds the company to "abolish by degrees any system of slave trade" "in the company's territories." In Province Wellesley and other parts of the British dominions mucli difficulty has been caused by the necessity for the complete and immediate abolition not only of the slave trade, but of slavery. Still, the anti-slavei-y party may reasonably think it is " going a long way " to countenance the temporary continuance of the slave trade itself in territories under the control of a company chartered by the British Crown, and flying a "distinctive flag indicating the British character of the company." Chartered The government of territories by merchant organisations Companies, contains, according to some observers, in each case within itself the seeds of its own ultimate dissolution. "The self-interest, however enlightened, wliich brings a dividend to stockholders is opposed to the high imijartiality and absence of individualism which should characterise a true Government," as was said of the Hudson Bay Company ; — and of tlie companies generally "They must either insensibly measure their dealings by con- sequences, as afl'ecting gain, or be suspected of doing so." A Government which buys and sells, which is tlie great merchant and storekeeper of the country, but which appoints governors and commissioners, judges and magistrates, and virtually I'AiiT V CKOWN COLONIES 451 adiiiinisters_ the law even against its rivals and trade com- petitors, is in an unsound position and one not likely to be permanent. If, too, the exijeotations of the companies which have been formed for the East African and the Northern Bechuanaland spheres of influence should be realised, and a white population should settle within their territories, the example of the Hudson Bay Company goes to show that their difficulties would only become the greater. By our grant of charters during the last eight years we have been trying to keep out other powers from valuable fields, while avoiding direct responsibility for the maintenance of peace; but it is questionable whether the House of Commons has yet faced the difficulties in which the charters may involve us. If the companies embark in war, strong pressure will be exercised to niake us fight for them. If their native agents engage in or aid the slave trade, an outcry will arise at home which may lead to the destruction of the companies, and the substitution of direct British government. The Congo State seems to employ Tippoo Tib in the way in which General Gordon wished to employ Zebehr Pasha ; but, as Mr. W. E. Forster j^revented the employment of Zebehr, his successors will probably make the employment of such agents by the British East Africa Company difficult. On the other hand, it has been already said that this company is suppl3ring guns (to be used in collecting ivory) to Arabs, who are engaged in the slave trade ; and it is a fact, though one for which the East Africa Company are in no way responsible, that the rifles of the Arabs who are fighting against our mission stations on the lakes are British -made. There are those who agree with the able writer of an article in the Edinburgli Review of October 1889, that the " caricature of sovereignty " recently set up under the Great Powers in Central Africa is likely to lead to a widen- ing rather than a contraction of the area of slave-raiding and devastation. Whatever may be the wisdom of setting up such companies, Value of there can be no doubt as to the value of the country which in the country the case of the East Africa Company has been handed over to a dealt witli mercantile Government. The territory within the control of ty the East the chartered company may on the wliole be looked upon as African one of the natural outlets of the Soudan. So vast is the size of Charter. Africa, and so curious its shape and the nature of its navigable streams, that there is much doubt which of several points, removed from one another as regards sea journeys by distances almost as great as any in the globe, will be chosen as the port of the equatorial provinces and central portions of the continent. At the present moment some of the trade from Central Africa comes out through Tripoli to the Mediterranean ; some by the tributaries of the Niger to the Gulf of Guinea ; some by the Congo; some by the Lakes, and through the Portuguese territory of Mozambique ; and some by Zanzibar. More natural roads for commerce would be the old routes down the Nile, or 452 PEOBLEMS 01? GREATER BRITAIN by the Nile and across the narrow strip from Berber to Suakim, if peace were restored and the railway made ; or by Abyssinia to Ifassowa; but we can hardly count upon tranquillity at Khartoum, and British East Africa reaches the Victoria Nyanza lake, and taps for the Indian Ocean the sources of the Nile. In the days of Ismail Pasha Egypt so clearly saw the resources of the Mombassa port as an outlet for Central African trade, and as a door to the equatorial provinces, that she tried to seize it. Just as in the battles between the fleets of Chili and Peru the ironclads on both sides were largely manned by Britons from the Clyde, so, also, when two Mohammedan powers, represented by the Turks of the Egyptian dynasty and the Arab Sultan of Zanzibar, were face to face upon the East African shores, the forces of each were commandecl by a Briton. A Scotch Pasha was kept out of Mombassa by our Consul- Genei-al, Sir John Ivirk. Once a settlement of the Portuguese, and afterwards, under their Arab conquerors, a station of the Church Missionary Society, Mombassa is now virtually a British station. East Africa is likely to be the home of the Alpine club of the next century, containing as it does scenery which is probably as grand as any in the world. German South of the British sphere of influence comes the larger, but East probably less valuable German sphere, in which there are at Africa. present but few signs of German occupation, and the whole trade of which is now in the hands of Asiatics, chiefly British subjects from Bombay. Indeed the commerce of East Africa from Natal northwards may be said to be in tlie hands of the people roughly described in Swaziland as Arabs, and from Delagoa Bay to Guardafui known as Banyans, who are in fact Hindoos and Mohammedans from the west coast of India ; and throughout the whole of this vast stretch of coast — whether sovereignty be in British, in German, in Arab, or in Portuguese hands — the currency consists of Indian rupees. It is not generally noticed that the German sphere of influence upon the Zanzibar coast contains within it an actual German protectorate over a more limited district. While the Sultan of Zanzibar has conceded to the British and the German companies the levying of duties, a rent out of them being payable to the Sultan, as regards the German protectorate there is a separate arrange- ment. It is understood that the German company is not successful, and that the German Government are resolved not to send German troops to Africa, and are half-hearted in its support. Although the concession of 1888 nominally leaves the administration under the flag of the Sultan of Zanzibar, without detriment to his sovereign rights, in iji'actice liis people are in arms to defend their independence against the Germans ; and as we are popular upon the coast, and our Indian traders are its merchants, and our Indian money its circulating medium, it is not impossible that the German may ultimately give way to the British company. The Lakes. East of the German sphere lies the Nyassa region, the trade PART V CROWN COLONIES 453 of which is in the hands of a Glasgow company called tlie iydcau Lakes Company, possessing a steamer upon Lake Nyassa and carrying on its communications through the Portu- guese harbour of Quilimane, where Vasco da Gama stayed a month, as related in the Lusiad. This company, which has a reputation for repressing the sale of drink, is intimately con- nected with the Scotch Free Church Missions, and less closely with the Establislied Church of Scotland Mission, all of which are seated in the neighbourhood of the southern lakes. It is understood that during 1889 there was an idea of declaring the teri'itory under the control of the missionary societies and of the African Lakes ComiJany, from Pambete on Lake Tanganyika to the junction of the Shire and the Zambesi, a sphere of British iniluence, and so endeavouring to join hands between the Nyassa and Matabeleland across the Zambesi and behind the Portuguese. The Germans, who foresaw the immense import- ance of the future of the waterway between the Lakes (connect- ing itself, with short land transits, on the north with the Nile, and the south with the Zambesi, and again, by another short land transit, with the Upper Congo), favour the Portuguese opposition to the British scheme. The Portuguese set up a claim on paper to stretch across the continent from their terri- tory at Mozambique to their territory upon the Guinea coast ; but it is 2000 miles in a straight line from Quilimane to Ben- guela, and the Portuguese will hardly be able to make good their right to set a toll bar across the northern road from South Africa to the Lakes. The territory, however, if declared British, would be without a British port, for the coast is undoubtedly Portuguese, and the dispute will probably be settled by a com- promise. There is a good deal of diflference between Germany and Portugal and ourselves with regard to the boundary upon the lakes. The Germans claim the southern half of Lake Vic- toria Nyanza, and we deny the justice of that claim. The Portuguese claim the greater portion of Nyassa ; but we do not recognise their title, and our Consul there is accredited to the chiefs. Portugal was engaged in fortifying a post at the southern entrance to Lake Nyassa when Lord Salisbury warned her off. The Arab slave hunters, who are powerful upon the Nyassa shores, have lately come into collision with the missionaries and with the African Lakes Company, which, obtaining some sup- port not only from all sections of Scotch Presbyterians, and from the Universities Mission of the Church of England, but more or less from all the missionary bodies, have a powerful combination at their backs, which may possibly induce our Government to take up the difficult task of their defence. We have ourselves, in the past, laid down the principle that arms should not be introduced into Central Africa, and when lately, upon several occasions, we have had to ask the Portuguese to allow the passage of arms for use by British subjects upon the Nyassa, they not unnaturally have placed some difficulties in the way, but have ended by allowing them to pass. 454 PEOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part v Portuguese The Portuguese have conventions with France and Germany claims. which recognise in some measure the claim of Portugal to stretch from sea to sea ; but these Powers point out to us that they have merely recognised Portugal as against themselves, or, in otlier words, have stated to Portugal that it is not their intention to interfere with her in this sphere, but have not pre- sumed to settle questions of right between ourselves and the Portuguese. Upon our side we are able to contend that the conventions of Portugal with France and Germany, so far from causing difficulty to us, may make tilings easy for the expansion of Bi'itish influence towards the north, as it is difficult for Por- tugal to seriously attempt to hold territories where no Portu- guese official is ever seen, while the conventions have the effect of preventing Germany from herself standing in our way. But for the question of access to the coast the interior is of far more importance than the low-lying lands, for the malaria makes the latter all but uninhabitable by wliites. Moreover, in whatever hands the coast may be, there can be no doubt that the trade will belong to the Hindoo and Mohammedan subjects of the British Crown, and that goods sold will be chiefly goods of British or Indian manufacture. German While it is certain that Portugal will have to come to terms claims. with us as to the free navigation of the Zambesi, and with regard also to a route northwards to the Nyassa, and so to Lake Tanganyika, there may be more difficulty in making an arrange- ment with Germany as to the district lying between the latter lake and the Victoria Nyanza, and allowing of through com- munication between our north-eastern and our southern spheres of influence. It is perhaps lucky that there is a good deal of room in Africa, and that white men there are as yet few in number, inasmuch as there is some chance that these questions may be settled by negotiation before they lead to actual conflict upon the spot. When the ofier of our Arab friends at Zanzibar, to make over to us the whole of their dominions, was refused, it was declined only on the ground that our interest on the Zanzibar coast and the lakes behind it was so well estab- lished that no Government would dispute it. Not only, however, do we seem to have lost to Germany on the east coast a territory as large as Egypt or Algeria or Morocco, and on the west coast, at the Cameroons, a door to the Soudan, but we have to take care in the south that our Northern Bechuanaland sphere of influence is not curtailed. I have already described, in the chapter on South Africa, a Portuguese map of Africa ; but it is also interesting to contrast the German and the British maijs. The former extend the eastern boundary of German Damara- land to Bamangwato and to the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi and it is possible that we may be one day told that the African Niagara was named, not after a Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, but after a German Empress. The German map-makers leave us but a narrow neck of Khama's Land to connect our Bechuanaland protectorate with our Matabeleland "interest- PART V CKOWN COLONIES 455 sphere." So general lias been the " scramble " of the last five years that in the whole of Africa south of the equator the only bit which is at present recognised by map-makers as truly belonging to the dai-k-skinned races is a tiny morsel, about one- third the size of the South African Eepublic, which lies in the dangerous neighbourhood of " German East Africa," Portuguese Mozambique, and the Congo State, but which is crossed by our own road of the future, already known to the African Lakes Company as the Stevenson Koad, between the Nyassa and Tan- ganyika lakes. Even this patch too is included in the territory dealt with at the Berlin Conference as within the control of the European diplomatic world, and is not unlikely to be handed over to a British chartered company. As upon the north-east, so upon the west of Africa, England The West has no reason to feel dissatisfied with the share which she has Coast, obtained in the recent " scramble." Upon the Lowerj Niger we have a sphere of influence which afiords as valuable a route to- wards the centre of the continent as that offered by our East African sphere ; and upon the coast we hold in our old colonies some of the best trade stations of the continent. Of the total present external trade of Africa the United Kingdom and British India have almost one-half, and France, which shares with us the best stations of the west, comes next with a quarter of the trade. Of the old colonies not much needs to be here said. The Gambia has indeed been cut ofl' from the interior by recent Tlie extensions of French territory, and can never receive much Gambia, development. Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and Lagos, though Sierra valuable, are territories of no large possibilities, and the great- Leone,Golcl est British interests of the future on the West Coast are those Coast, and which concern our protectorate of the basin of the Lower Niger. Lagos. Our West Coast settlements do a considerable trade with Eng- land, but also a large trade with Hamburg and with Marseilles. The Gambia sends its products more freely to France than to ourselves, and Lagos appears to export its produce more largely to Germany than to the United Kingdom, according to the tables of Sir Eawson Kawson, although it is not quite certain that the figures are exact. We have not, it would seem, fully done our duty in our old settlements of the West Coast, which possess no railroads, although the Portuguese, who are looked upon as the most backward of European powers having settle- ments in Africa, are constructing railroads in their West African possessions, as are the French. The climate, no doubt, makes government and progress drSicult ; but the French and the Portuguese have also a bad climate to contend with on the coast, and, as the interior is more healthy, the very unhealthi- ness of the low-lying tract is an additional reason, besides those of trade, for pushing on inland communication. On the other hand, the French have spent national money freely upon Sene- gambia, while the Imperial Parliament is not likely to follow the example by entering on a fresh course of national expendi- 456 TEOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part v ture on Sierra Leone. Still, it seeBis strange, looking to the fact that at a short distance from the coast there are vast tracts of grassy country, high, and not unhealthy, that the people who have made the success of Northern Queensland as a cattle country should not have started cattle stations ; and the secret must be found in the dread of that Mohammedan invasion from the north, which, although it lias avoided the coast tracts where the Arab cavalry cannot act, has conquered the inland country. We have, however, upon the coast a large force of Mohammedan negroes doing excellent service in our military police, and the Englishman or Dutcliman of the Cape, or the Englishman of Queensland, would have taken them on a long journey into the interior. The West African colonies must have been paralysed by the feebleness of Government, caused by the unhealthiness of the coast tracts from which that Government has been con- ducted. The settlements have been looked upon as mere trad- ing stations, and planting has not been largely pursued upon tlie coast, nor cattle-raising in the interior, and as the French sweep round the back country, defeating the Mohammedan invaders, our coast settlements, unless extended inland, must be starved. The Niger. The Eoyal Niger Company, as it has been called since the date of its charter, formerly the National African Company, already carries on a large but not very profitable trade, limited only by an amount of hostility and suspicion existing between the company and the German traders, which is happily un- known elsewhere. The Lower Niger forms so valuable a portion of our new fields of activity in Africa that the recognition of the British company, as in exclusive possession of tlie Niger trade, by the Conference at Berlin, was to us one of the most useful outcomes of that meeting. The freeing of the navigation of the Lower Niger by the Conference is no loss to us, as we The Congo, only seek for a fair field ; but the freeing of the Congo in a fashion still more complete is a gain to us inasmuch as France and the Congo State, which have ousted Portugal from her historic place upon the Congo, are now bound to give us there that fair field for which we ask. It may be said that the Congo State, at least, would by its constitution always have given freedom ; but we know how near lits territories have once already been to passing into the hands of France, and it is far from unlikely that at some future time they may pass to either France or Germany, and but for the Berlin Act tliey might easily have become, like Senegal, subject to protectionist legis- lation. The House of Commons took a short-sighted view when it refused to accept our treaty with Portugal, recognising the historic Portuguese claims upon the Congo, and providing for the virtual freedom of trade, because there was every reason to suspect at the moment that the choice lay between Portuo-al under her treaty with us and an unfettered France, winch means a protectionist France. Germany at the Conference at Berlin saved us from the ill consequences of tlie Manchester dislike of Portugal. PART V CROWN COLONIES 457 Tlie Oil rivers, so called from their export of p.ilm oil, are those The Oil rivers or branches of rivers which lie between the British colony rivers, of Lagos and the German protectorate of the Cameroons. The greater portion of the country is the delta of the Nigei-. The loaiu stream of the Niger and a good deal of the country on eitlier side of it are under the administration of the chartered company ; but the greater portion of the delta and the whole of the remainder of the country between the boundary of Lagos and the boundary of the German protectorate are administered by British consular officers under various Orders in Council. On the whole, our commercial position upon the West Coast is satisfactory, and if the King of the Belgians should succeed in his attemiat to develop the Congo region, it is certain that the greater portion of the trade will fall to our own share. In dealing with protectorates and with territories within the Spheres of sphere of Britisli iniiuence, or included within the territorial influence limits named in charters to British subjects, we must con- become template the possible future hoisting of the British flag by the protector- Imperial Government in all of them. Protectorates of un- ''''^^j "•'^'1 civilised countries tend to become national territory ; spheres protector- of influence tend to become protectorates ; and chartered . J^ ^°^ companies sooner or later get into trouble and are absorbed. ,° . The difficulty of dealing with offences committed by foreigners against natives, which was the reason for rapidly converting the protectorate of New Guinea into annexation, operates powerfully in all parts of the world. The only class of pro- tectorate which is free from considerable difiiculty is that exercised over countries possessing settled government, such as Johore and Sarawak. At one time the set of opinion was against chartered companies, and the old English system — under which not only had companies of adventurers occupied great portions of what are now tlie United States, but others had founded, in the Hudson Bay Cotopany and the East India Company, bodies of immense power which lasted to our time — became all but extinct. The fashion now sets the other way, and while we have lately granted charters to four new companies, the Ger- man Government have handed over the whole of their quarter of New Guinea to one company, the German East African sphere of influence to another, and IDamaraland to a third. It has been reserved for our time to try the experiment of the occupa- tion of vast territories by a sort of colony of no known nation- ality, obtaining by treaty a nationality for itself ; and if it be possible to secure the continued existence of the Congo State, and to prevent the ultimate absorption of its dominions by sale to France, the experiment will well suit the interests of Great Britain. The territories of the Congo State, as well as those annexed by Germany, Portugal, and France in the same neighbourhood, are declared by the powers to be free from import duties and from the possibility of differential treatment of the subjects of particular states, and form, therefore, a vast district in which British traders will receive all that they 458 PROBLEMS OF GREATEK BRITAIN pakt v demand — "a fair field and no favour." The fact that the Germans have complained of the non-observance by our Niger Company of somewhat similar stipulations shows, however, that diiSculties may arise which would have been avoided if we had oui-selves accepted the protectorate oifered us of the whole _ coast at that time claimed by Zanzibar, and the sovereignty of the Cameroons, and carried through our Congo Treaty made with Portugal — a weak power amenable to our influence. The Tliere can be no two parts of the world more difierent than Pacific. Africa and the Pacific islands, but since 1885, as I have shown, the same fate has attended both, and partition between England, Germany and France has gone on fast until almost every island in the Pacific has been coloured by the map-makers with the tints which denote protectorate or annexation, or has been the subject of agreements between the powers. The countries dealt with in the Pacific are geographically small, but they have, owing to considerations connected with naval warfare and with the coaHng and telegraph requirements of trade, a special importance of their own. Had the Australian colonies com- bined freely among themselves ; had New South Wales and New Zealand, which do the largest trade with the Pacific, joined the Federal Council of Australasia when it first came into existence, it may be safely asserted that our share in the partition would have been larger than it is ; but just as in Central Africa we have secured through German action that advantage of the absence of diflferential duties wliich may render iis indifierent to actual geograpliical extension, so in the Western Pacific a similar immunity has been secured as between Germany and the United Kingdom by an agreement between those two powers. The right to ti-ade freely in the German islands is one which may become to us of considerable import- ance, for New Ireland and New Britain— which have been born again as New Hanover, New Mecklenburg, and New Pomerania, in the Bismarck Archipelago, attached to Kaiser Willielm Land or German New Guinea — are islands of great value. It is curious that, in the recent division of the Admiralty group, the Solomon group, and the Louisiade Archii^elago, Germany has obtained the islands with English names, and England the islands with French names ; but New Ireland and New Britain were better worth taking than the Louisiades. Australians should remember that there is still some danger of the French seizing the unoccupied portion of the southern isles, inasmuch as they lay claim to them by right of discovery, and are being strongly urged by the New Caledonian colonists to dispute the possession of those in which no British settlements as yet exist. New I have already mentioned some of the circumstances con- Guinea, neoted with our annexation of south-eastern New Guinea. It is a country with an unhealthy coast, and has been annexed ajiparently to content Australian feeling and in order to protect PAET T CROWW COLONIES 459 the natives against outrages on tlie part of white men. We have long had in the Pacific a High Commissioner with elaborate powers ; but the system of jurisdiction has been a failure, and international agreement for the Pacific, as for Africa, ought to have been resorted to a long time ago, for a frank agreement between Great Britain, Germany, Iranoe, and the United States would have been the means of preventing much crime, and much suffering to the natives. The difficulty is as to jurisdiction over foreigners. White criminals always declare that they are foreign, and it is difficult to prove to what nation- ality they belong, and impossible, without annexation and consequent rights of sovereignty, to punish them. The British Parhament has passed more than one Act for the protection of Pacific islanders, and the High Commissioner is armed with a. code of portentous magnitude ; but his jurisdiction in New Guinea under the protectorate was so complete a failure that annexation became necessary almost at once. Protectorates may, as has been pointed out, be useful in the case of countries possessing settled government, in order to prevent annexation by other powers ; but they are useless in cases where we have to deal, as in New Guinea, only with a tribal system. Our present government of south-east New Guinea must be looked upon as an interesting experiment ; it is paid for by the Australians of Queensland, Victoria, and New bouth Wales, but they cannot be said at present to get much for their money. The great Tamate (the Rev. Mr. Chalmers) is all-powerful, and he has declared that, while he is as anxious as the Austrahans to keep out the foreigner, the country is not suited for white settlement, and that the coast is unhealthy and densely inhabited by natives, who possess a system of settled cultiva- tion. We have indeed in New Guinea fully recognised the right of the native inhabitants to the soil, and we seem occupied in trying to undo the recollection of the deeds of the white ruffians who in the past have sullied our fame by acts of cruelty. At the same time there have been two recent attacks on British parties by the natives upon the mainland, and the Governor has been forced to hang a number of the inhabitants. In Fiji we have adopted a somewhat different system. We Fiji. liave imported immigrants, and we have introduced a culture system, worked through the chiefs, which has produced con- siderable trade results, but is of doubtful political wisdom. Still, even in Fiji we have given great powers, by the institu- tion of village, district, and jarovinoial councils, to the native race, and may claim to have conferred upon them a fairer chance for life than is extended to Polynesians by the French or Ger- mans. If we contrast the manner in which we have treated the natives of Fiji with that in which the French have dealt with the natives in New Caledonia, which lies in the direct line between Fiji and Queensland, we shall see that the French, as has been shown by Jlr. Julian Thomas, who is friendly to them, have cUsplayed utter disregard of a.ny native rights or property. 460 PROBLEjrS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet v seizing the fertile valleys in whicli the natives had their arable settlements ; while we have recognised native property. It is not strange that the natives of the Pacific islands should detest the " We-wes," as they call the French. Throughout the Pacific the Polynesian race is dwindling under contact with the whites. In the Fiji group we keep out liquor and forbid war, but, in spite of the trouble that we have taken with regard to sanita- tion, European epidemics are committing frightful ravages among the jDopulation. Fiji is, as regards plantation, a favoured land, because able to grow tropical crops of the most varied kinds, and crops for which the neighbourhood of Australia and New Zealand will give in future, as for those of Mauritius, a ready market. We were, no doubt, forced to annex Fiji — which we did very much against our will, for it was before the com- mencement of the annexation period of the last four years — by the fact that the islands had become, as New Zealand had been many years before, the Alsatia of the Pacific. We are able to show in some points excellent results, for, although the natives may be declining in numbers, they seem happy enough, and the white population has become one of a very difterent kind from that which, on the whole, disgraced the islands a few years ago. Future of I said in Greater Britain that in the relations of America to the Pacific. Australia lay the key to the future of the Pacific, and the Tbnericanisation of Hawaii — -the most important group of islands in Polynesia, and one by its central situation destined to become more and more flourishing as time goes on — as well as the recent action of the United States with regard to Samoa, go to show that I was not far wrong. Germany in 1868 had hardly been heard of as a Pacific power, but even now her hold ujDon the islands that are mainly under German influence is rather commercial than political, and caused by the enteriDrise of the Hamburg houses, which, at the time when Greater Britain appeared, already had their branches in the Western Pacific. We may possibly one day obtain by exchange New Caledonia, which lies in the very centre of the sphere of British influence in the Western Pacific, or, at all events, bi-ing about the neutral- isation of the group with stipulations against diflerential duties, and that cessation of transpoi'tation for which we have suc- cessfully bargained with the Germans. AustraHa and New Zealancl and Fiji form neighbours too powerful for the con- tinued independence of the French settlement in their midst, unless it should become wholly harmless, after the manner in which the French settlements in the neighbourhood of Calcutta and Madras and in other parts of India have been brought within the British Indian system. Protector- Wliile at one end of the Malay Archipelago we have annexed ates in the south-eastern New Guinea, at the other end we have obtained Malay Ar- a dominant position in the northern portion of the island of chipelago. Borneo. The first of the modern charters to great trading companies for the occupation of territorial dominions, as I have pointed out, was that granted by Mr. Gladstone's second PART V CROWN COLONIES 461 administeition to the Britisli North Borneo Company in the immediate neighbourhood of our island colony of Labuan. More recently we have obtained protectorates over Brunei and Sara- wak, chiefly for the purpose of preventing the possibility of the interference of any foreign power in those countries, whicli lie close to our great commercial settlement of Singapore and upon the track of our Australian trade through Torres Straits. In the Malay peninsula, off which Borneo lies, we have also recently undertaken the protectorate — already, in fact, virtually ours before that time — of Johore and otlier of the Malay states. The western states, which face India and lie upon our track of trade, have long been within our influence ; but our direct action in the north-eastern Malay country is more recent. The exti'aordinary development of trade at Singapore is a matter rather for statisticians than for me, except as regards mere mention ; but I may jjoint out the not altogether encouraging fact that the increase appears to be with foreign countries (and with our colonies and dependencies) rather than with ourselves. Our great success in the Malay peninsula has lain in enlisting upon our side the warm and even enthusiastic co-operation of the Chinese. We may congratulate ourselves upon the fact that, while the French have failed to sufficiently conciliate the Chinese race to induce them to confer prosperity upon the French colonies in Further India, we, on the contrary, have tempted the Chinese to settle in the Malay peninsula now for many generations. I have seen Chinese magistrates at Penan g whose ancestors have been magistrates there since immediately after the foundation of our settlement one hundred and five years ago, and who have completely identified themselves with the interests of Great Britain. The latest of the Malay states to come within the circle of our protection has been Pahang, which will follow Perak and the others in the growth of culti- vation and of trade. In no part of the world can we point to more obvious results from good government than throughout the Malay peninsula, where England in fact presides over a federation of Malay princes to whom we have taught the arts of success, but to whose former subjects we have added a vast immigrant population of Chinese. In Upper Burniah, recently annexed to India, the Chinese are pushing their way at every centre of activity. They have flowed into the country since our troops have occupied it, and many of them have married Burmese women, who much prefer to be kept in plenty by the Chinamen to being the drudges of men of their own race. The future of the Burmese Provinces of India, as that of Malaya, lies in the development of great natural mineral and agricul- tural wealth by patient Chinese labour. Li summing up what we have discovered with regard to our Policy of new protectorates and our recent annexations, we have then to extension note that until about 1884 we had for some time almost con- "f territory sistently refused oflers of territory which had been pressed °^ respou- upon us. Lord Palmerston had declined such gifts as fii-mly as ^'I'll'ty- 462 PROBLEMS OF GREATEK BRITAIN pakt v had Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Gladstone. The semi-annexation of Cyprus was defended solely upon military grounds. In tlie case of Fiji the annexation had been forced upon us, as had, at an earlier time, the annexation of New Zealand, Isy the im- possibility of putting down ruffianism in any other way. The grant of a charter to the North Borneo Company had been a remarkable exception to the rule of abstention from fresli responsibilities, and, to judge from the debate which occuvred in the House of Commons upon the subject, Mr. Gladstone him- self was, although Prime Minister, personally as much opposed to the grant of the North Borneo charter as he had been to the annexation of Fiji. While Mr. Gladstone minimised the effect of the charter in his speech, Mr. Arthur Balfour and Mr. (now Sir John) Gorst condemned it. The Conservatives, who had refused to ratify the treaties by which the centre of Africa had been conferred upon us by the explorer of the Congo, seemed by no means anxious to censure the Liberals for refus- ing the immediate possession of Zanzibar as a protectorate, or the reversion of that country as a colony. But the quarrel between the Colonial Office and the Australians over the an- nexation of that half of New Guinea which has since been divided between the Germans and ourselves, and the action of Germany at that moment in the Pacific and at Angra Pequena, coming after that of France in Tunis, Madagascar, and Tonquin, brought about a sudden change of feeling which could not but influence the politicians upon both sides. A necessary change of policy followed on the discovery that Germany and France appeared to intend to lay hands between them upon almost all those territories in the globe which did not belong to the European races. The movement of Germany and France seemed to foreshadow the possibility of large markets being gradually closed to our trade by paper annexations, followed, certainly in the case of France, and probably in the long-run in that of Germany, by the imposition of differential duties. M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, who has discussed the whole ques- tion with mucli fulness of detail in Jiis work on modern colonisation, has argued that the " foundation of a great African empire and of a, lesser Asiatic empire is the only great enterprise which destiny permits us," that is, to France. " At the beginning of the twentieth century Pi,ussia will have one hundred and twenty millions of prolific inhabitants occupying enormous spaces ; sixty millions of Germans, supportecl by thirty millions of Austrians,^ will dominate Central Europe. One hundred and twenty millions of Anglo-Saxons will occupy the finest countries in the world, and will all but impose on civilised man their tongue, which is already dominant at the present day in territories inhabited by more than three hundred millions of men. Place by these great peoples the Chinese Empire, which by that time without doubt will recover a new life. By the side of these giants what will be France 1 Of the great part which she has played in the past, of the I'ART V CKOWN COLONIES 463 influence, often decisive, which she has exei'cised over the direction of the civilised peoples of the -world, what will remain 1 A memory, dying day by day. . . . Either France will become a great African power or, in a century or two, she wiU be only a secondary European power ; she will count in the world about as Greece or Roumania counts in Europe." Under the influence of these sentiments even moderate and reasonable men, like the author we have been quoting, liave been driven, first in France and then in Germany, to think it necessary to hoist the national flag upon all the " unoccupied " countries of the globe. M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu is so honest that he left standing in the last edition of his book, in the text, his proof of how much better it would have been, even for the English in India, to have only held trading stations and not to have established political authority, and in his note the diametrical and admitted contradiction by himself of his own views. In the text he said : " Taught by the errors of our fathers, become ourselves more practical and more moderate, less taken with the idea of a false glory, more respectful of the principles of justice, we are trying to found in the East, on a policy of good faith, of European solidarity, and of non-inter- vention in native attaii's, that commerce which it was formerly thought possible to establish and to develop by deceit, violence, and oppression only." In his note he says : "We reproduce with- out change the opinion given by us in the first edition. But we must not hide the fact that our ideas have undergone a modi- fication. We approve the principle that the European nations should establish an eflective rule in the countries of peoples who are either barbarous or have fallen into anarchy, and have not the pi'inciple of regular and progressive government." Hence M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, who once talked of the French becoming " more respectful of the principles of justice," became himseK the apologist of the attempted conquest of Madagascar and destruction of the independence of a most interesting black Christian people who were trying the experiment of self- government with every prospect of success. England could not well but follow the lead given, as she has done since 1884, and a more monotonous uniformity than would otherwise have existed has been prepared for the twentieth century. Starting as we did after France and Germany to take part Value of in the " scramble " in the Pacific and in Africa, we have not wliat we been less successful than those powers, and, as far as our tave^ present knowledge goes, have no reason to be dissatisfied witli obtamed the regions which we have appropriated, or those over which we have proclaimed our influence or granted charters. Our South African "sphere" seems better suited for European settlement than is the Tunisian protectorate of France ; and the territories included in the charters of the three new tropical companies are probably about the richest tropical countries in the world. If, as regards East Africa, it is still a puzzle why Lord Salisbury so easily abandoned the Sultan of Zanzibar, 464 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Old Crown Colonies. The military- stations. Naval and trade posts. looking to tlie virtual pi'otectorate over his dominions which we had long ago as.sumed, it may nevertheless be admitted that our share, although smaller, is better than the German, and that the doors which we have gained to the African lakes give us the fairest possible opening to the interior. It is neverthe- less difficult to restrain a feeling of regret that in African partition we have been forced to follow France and Germany upon a path which we had in former times deliberately aban- doned. The Germans already, both in Western Africa at the Cameroons and in East Africa on the Zanzibar coast, have had to fight the natives, who, formerly glad to receive foreign travellers bringing foreign trade, are 'now banded together against all white men, to defend their country from seizure. It is hard to say what reply we can make to those who charge us with having taken away the territory of others ; with giving to France and Germany that which was not ours to give ; and with receiving, in other cases, by agreement with Germany and France, that whicli was not theirs to bestow upon us. It is easy, no doubt, to say that the native tribes have not made the best use of their own countries. Perhaps we have not made the best use of our own either ; but when we speak of bringing the blessings of civilisation to these peoples, we must remember that we are not dealing with small savage tribes wandering about over an enormous country, like the Australian aborigines, or even with hunting tribes, somewhat more numerous, like the Indians of North America, but with, a dense settled village population, having its own municipal and general government ; and that these people will not even work for us, but will have to make room as labourers for the Hindoos who will follow in our train. The only excuse that we can make is that if we had not laid hands upon their territory France or Germany would have done so. At the Berlin Conference we even failed to prevent the destruction of the natives by an unchecked liquor traffic. If we turn from the new protectorates and spheres of influence — from Africa and from the Pacific, full of the pos- sibilities of the future — to the Crown Colonies that have long been ours, we may begin by passing over for the present those which, like Gibraltar, are merely naval or military stations, and must be named later when we consider imperial defence, and those which, like Singapore and Hong-Kong, are partly naval stations and partly ti'ade posts, possessing vast commercial importance but little territory. Some of the Crown Colonies, like the Falkland Islands, are too limited in population and resources, some, like Heligoland, are too small, to jjossess much interest from a governmental point of view, although even the least important of our dependencies, such, for example, as Pitcairn Island and Tristan d'Acunha, lost in ocean solitudes, make up for their smallness by the romance of the history of their settlement. During the last few years there has been discernible a PART V CROWN COLONIES 465 certain revival of interest in the old Crown Colonies, and the The West i-apid growth of that interest is due, in no small degree, to Mr. Indies. Froude, whose writings on the West Indies have excited con- troversy. On the other side there have appeared from the pen of Mr. Salmon several volumes which have been largely cir- culated by the Cobden Club, and a book by a gentleman of colour — the late Mr. Thomas. The West Indies, by Mr. Wasliington Eves,i may be looked upon as imjDartial. In these works and others, of which the latest in date have been called into existence by The English in the West hidies of Mr. Froude, the relations that subsist between the Government and the people, the methods of administration, and the system, of taxation in force in Crown Colonies, have been discussed. It is to be hoped that the result of some effort to understand will be a corresponding effort to redress the grievances of which complaint is made in the West Indies, and to prepare the way for changes which will prove of social and economic advantage to these colonies. After the loss of cheap labour by the abolition of slavery the Results of blight or the curse of the former system lay upon the planters, emancipa- who seemed stunned, and wholly unable to strike out new tiou. methods, while the emancipated negro showed, and indeed still in a great measure manifests to this day, disinclination to labour upon the large estates. In his mind such work is, and not unnaturally, associated with the bitter memories of the past. Another matter which told against the planter, thougn it benefited the West Indian merchant, was a priority given by the Encumbered Estates Court to the lien of a consignee over charges previously laid on the estate, a point to which great importance is attached by Mr. Salmon. Capital was driven away from the West Indies by this provision, inasmuch as no suffioient security could be obtained for advances upon mort- gage. It was only in 1886, long after the steed was stolen, that the stable door was shut and the liens of consignees finally abolished. In the meantime efforts had been made to reduce the cost of production by the importation of Indian coolies, an Coolie immigration which had the effect of somewhat interfering witli ™iuigra- the well-being of the negro population, but from the plantei-'s '''°°- point of view met with success, as it produced a period of com- parative prosperity. A fresh depression was soon, however, brought about by a fall in the price of sugar caused by increased competition on the part of the beetroot-growing countries of Beetroot the Continent of Europe. sugar. It would be of little use to discuss at length the probable TLe Sugar effects of the passing of a Bill founded on the Sugar Conven- Conven- tion of 1888-89, inasmuch as there seems but little prospect of tiou- such a measure becoming law. If it should at anytime do so, we should soon find ourselves engaged in commercial warfare, not only with France, but even possibly with New South Wales 1 Sampson Low and Co., 1889. (Published under the auspices of the Royal Colonial Institute.) 211 466 rROBLEJIS OF GREATER BRITAIN Process of manu- facture. British Guiaua. The St. Lucia ex- periment. Mauritius. and some otlier of our self-governing colonies, to -wJiich we slionkl be forced to apply differential treatment, on account of their very probable refusal to accept the Convention. As regards the West Indies, legislation based on the Convention would confer an immediate boon on the owners of sugar estates, but it is not altogether certain whether the advantage would long continue. If, under such laws, England were to direct difl'erential duties against the goods of the United States — the chief market for West Indian sugar, as Avell as the largest market for West Indian fruit and other produce — retaliation would be the inevitable consequence, and the last state of our West Indian colonies would be worse by far than their present condition. The depression in the West Indian sugar trade, while, no dotibt, in part due to the existence of bounties upon beet sugar, is also in some degree accounted for by the failure on the part of many planters to adopt the best methods of cultivation and the most recent improvements in. machinery. Where the planters have moved with the times — as, for ex- ample, in British Guiana — they have, comparatively speaking, prospered. In St. Lucia, loveliest of lovely islands, the Government of the colony have tried for some years past the plan of taking a large pecuniary interest (£30,000 worth of shares) in a central sugar factory — an imitation of a policy which has long pre- vailed in the French island of Martinique. The experiment in St. Lucia has been a financial success, and other islands are ex- jDressing a desire for the introduction of similar establishments. It may be doubted whether, as a general principle, the Govern- ments of the West Indian colonies should be encouraged to share in enterprises of a speculative nature, the failure of which would be attended with deplorable consequences to the community as a whole. The present benefit, however, to the planters of St. Lucia is incontestable, for, like those of the other islands, they had continued to use small and antiquated machinery, instead of combining together, as we have seen is the custom in Queensland, to send the sugar to one large factory, fitted with the most recent improvements of all kinds. It is stated upon good authority that the amount of sugar extracted from cane might easily be increased by a large percentage, were means adopted analogous to those which have been employed in the case of beetroot. If we turn from the West Indies to another sugar-growing colony, we find that in Mauritius a strong demand lias arisen for imperial aid in the form of the systematic diftusion of infor- mation relating to sugar manufacture, and of the sending out of men of science who have turned their attention to the recent inventions and discoveries connected with the sugar industry. The same result that is looked for might perhaps be attained if a larger number of planters would send their sons to Europe to study the progress which has been made. The Mauritian planters have derived from the existence of a PART V CROWN COLONIES 407 silver standard a slight temporary advantage, inas the British " Isle of I'rance the planters have h inasmuch as in Ijeen able to pay their labourers in the depreciated rupee, while selling at least a portion of their sugar in markets where the standard of value is gold. That advantage, however, which cannot last long, has been neutralised by a certain exhaustion of tlie soil. Although sugar still constitutes the staple product of several Other of the British West Indian colonies, such as Barbados and tropical British Guiana, it no longer occupies the position of universal colonial predominance which it once held. Cacao competes with sugar products. in the large plantations of Trinidad and other islands, while in Cacao. Grenada it takes the foremost place. Jamaica and Dominica possess vast resources, as yet almost wholly undeveloped, and, while coffee cultivation may be extended, there is a possible future for many of the islands in the growth of cigar tobacco upon the low grounds, and of tea in the mountain districts. As tea has partly replaced coifee in Ceylon, and fibre, under the auspices of Sir Ambrose Shea, is making the prosperity of Bahamas, so in the West Indies also a transformation of estates as regards their produce is now in progress. Oranges, bananas, and other fruits, mostly sent to the United States, form the chief articles of export from Jamaica. In Montserrat the lime reigns supreme, and, in British Honduras logwood and mahogany, though fruit cultivation is fast extending. The rapid increase in the growth of fruit production has Fruit, been partly caused by that depression of the sugar industry to which I have referred, and is in part also the result of the division of property among negro peasant owners, to whom Negro fruit growing presents no diiEculty. As has been well shown peasant by Mr. Morris (in an admirable paper read before the Pioyal 1'™" Colonial Institute), to the late Sir Anthony Musgrave belongs priotors. the credit of pushing the fruit trade of Jamaica, with the result of giving an immense impulse to the prosperity of the small landowners of that colony. The very natural land hunger of the sons of the emancipated slaves has led to the rise of a class of small proprietors, whose existence seems likely to become in the British islands, as it is already in the French, the dominant factor of the West Indian problem. The white population of the islands, both British and French, is on the decline ; the black and " coloured " population is increasing upon the whole, though in some of our own colonies there is a falling off. But the colonies that show prosperity of any kind exliibit an in- crease in the numbers of the people seated upon the land. The great majority of the Jamaica holdings are now under five acres each, and four-fifths of them are under ten acres each. The statistics do not give the number of those who work for wages on the estates of others besides cultivating their own plot of land, but except at crop-time it is not large. If the Crop-time, estimate quoted by Sir George Baden-Powell and Sir William Crossman in 1884, in the Eeport of a Royal Commission, be PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIIT correct, "thirty clays' labour on an acre of good land in Jamaica ■will, in addition to providing a family with . . food for the year, yield a surplus saleable in the market for from £10 to £30." It is no wonder that, under such conditions, the small holders who own their land, and till it by their exertions, should thrive where great proprietors, who have to make use of hired labour, too often fail. It is chiefly to the success of the small holders that must be attributed the remarkable increase in the revenue of the West Indian colonies during the last half- century, in spite of the losses which the planters have incurred. It has been computed by the Eev. George Sargeant, President of the West Indian Wesleyan Conference, that, while the revenue of the slave colonies at the time of emancipation amounted to less than £450,000, it had, in 1887, risen to two millions sterling, or far more than four times as much as in the days of slavery. The revenue is raised mainly by means of import duties, the burthen of which falls upon the mass of the negro people, and were it not for the immense improvement in their condition, consequent on the firm hold which they have acquired of the land, no such increase would have been possible. In almost all of our Crown Colonies taxation falls largely necessaries, upon the necessaries of life, and were it not for this fact we should see among their people a more considerable amount of comfort and of savings, and a greater expenditure on British manufactured goods. Some of these colonies have also export duties, and that upon articles of which they possess no mono- poly ; but the export duties of Jamaica on rum and sugar have lately been reduced, and the export duties of Grenada and some other West-India Islands, as well as those of several of the colonies of the West Coast of Africa, have been suspended or abolished. The taxation on land in the Crown Colonies is, generally speaking, light. In the great island of Jamaica some £12,000 a year only is raised by land-tax and pro])erty-tax together. In British Honduras a considerable revenue is obtained by letting Crown lands on lease, but such a system is not of general application. It has been already stated, in the chapter on the relations of Canada and the West Indies with the United States, tliat the West Indies trade more largely with the United States than with us. This fact constitutes indeed a remarkable difference between the group consisting of India, Australia, and South Af ]'ica on the one side, and the group consisting of Canada and the greater portion of the Crown Colonies on the other. While the West Indies do nearly double as much trade with foreign countries (that is, mainly with the United States) as with the United Kingdom, and while many other of the Crown Colonies, and the Dominion of Canada itself, trade as largely with others as with us, Australia and South Africa do nearly all their trade with the United Kingdom or with the Britisli colonies. The Taxation upon Export duties. Taxes on land. Trade. I'ABT V CROWN COLONIES 469 intercolonial trade between Mauritius and Australia is repre- sented in the Atlantic by the trade between Canada and the West Indies ; but although a customs union between the latter, colonies has sometimes been proposed, it is in the United States that the West-India Islands find the market for their commodities. The Commission which I have already named reported strongly in favour of an extended use of " indentured " labour, and quoted the beneficial results which had been obtained in Trinidad and Demerara as reasons for a spread of the system. The Commissioners believed the importation of coolie labour good not only for the planters but for the negroes. Effect of Without immigration, the great estates, they thought, would all Coolie im- be broken up, or go out of cultivation, and the negroes would migration lose their harvesting work, or " crop-time " as it is called. But on the the great plantations no longer form the chief interest in the °^F° V^°' West Indies, and by the importation of East Indian coolies the P'^^'ors. earnings of the people of the islands are cut down, mainly for the benefit of immigrants with a low standard of comfort, who have no permanent interest in the colonies. The more enlightened Governors, such as Sir William Kobinson — the Governor of Trinidad, who must not be confused with his namesake the Governor of Western Australia — and the late Sir Anthony Musgrave, have done their best to discourage the system. As the government of the British West India Islands becomes The negro with the lapse of time more democratic and more in the hands view of of the inhabitants, it is probable that the Indian immigration, these which seems necessary to the cultivation of large estates in the questions, hands of white owners, will cease, and that the estates will be day by day more and more cut up into smaller properties in the hands of blacks or "coloured" people. M. de Lanessan, who has given attention to the labour problem as it affects Martinique and Guadeloupe, believes that Indian immigration will in those islands speedily be suppressed, with the result of breaking up the remaining large estates ; but he considers that the change will be for the benefit of the colonies and their people considered as a whole. There can, indeed, be little doubt that if the mass of the people of our West-India Islands had a direct voice in the management of their own affairs, as have the inhabitants of the French islands, they would soon remove those of their grievances which are connected with the taxation upon necessaries of life, and the artificial supply of cheap labour. Some who think the negro unfitted for self government point Negro de- to Hayti : they might, however, reflect that Liberia presents a mocracy. difl'erent picture, and that in the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe power is in the hands of the "coloured" population, while the islands prosper. The experience, indeed, of those islands in which the negroes and " coloured " people have been entrusted with a large share in government, and the 470 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIK part v use. which they make of representative institutions, seem to show that their detractors are in the wrong. The friends of ■ the negro are able now to point to the progress eft'ected by West Indian peasant proprietors, to tlie spread of education, to tlie undoubted rise in the standard of comfort, and to _ the IDvominent place already taken by individuals of the African race. The Chief Justice of Barbados and the wealthiest in- habitant of Jamaica are both what some would call "black men," and in the West African settlements negroes are being increasingly employed in government, with excellent results. It stands to reason that between the interests of the large landowners, whether resident or absentee, and the interests of the peasant cultivators of the soil, points of divergence exist, and that, owing to the almost complete non-representation of the latter outside Barbados, their wants and wishes have hitherto not received the attention they deserve. The example of Martinique and Guadeloupe under French democratic in- stitutions goes to show that it is time that we should make trial of a more liberal system. Eepreseut- fj^g most democratic of our dependencies is Norfolk Island, atiye rnsti- .^yiiicli is under the Governor of New South Wales, but not a tutions. pj^j.j. ^^ .j^jjj^^. colony. A popular Assembly, which includes every male over twenty-five years of age, meets four times a year ; and Norfolk Island is also peculiar in another respect, for I believe that it excludes immigrants of all kinds. Bahamas, Barbados, and Bermuda are the only Crown Colonies in which the legislative assemblies are wholly elective at the present time, and in the former two the franchise rests on a fairly wide base, especially in Barbados, and the contentment of the population affords an indication of the benefits of self-govern- ment. The " Bims," as the people of Barbados are called, have enjoyed representative institutions since the days of King Charles the First, and by the free extension of such institutions among the black majority race hatreds have been extinguished, while race prejudices are fast dying out in this old colony. In British Guiana there exists a curious and complicated survival from the clays of the Dutch rule jji the Court of Policy, which constitutes the legislative body, and half of whose members are nominated, while the other half are elected by a tiny body known as "The College of Kiezers." The Kiezers are them- selves elected for life ; and the same constituencies which elect tliem return Financial Representatives, who; together with the Court of Policy, form the combined Court for finance. The number of electors is very small, and the whole constitution is an oligarchic survival from the last century, guaranteed to the Dutch colonists by the terms of the surrender. In the majority of the West Indian colonies the legislatures are now nominatecl in their entirety by the Crown, former representa,tive institu- tions having in several cases been only recently destroyed. In some of the islands the legislative bodies are partly nominated and partly elected. Several of the now extinct legislative PAET V CROWN COLONIES 471 bodies asked for their own destruction ; and in Grenada, where formerly the House of Assembly was wliolly elective, and afterwards altered so as to consist of eiglit elected and nine nominated members, the changed Assembly at its very first meeting voted an address to the Queen informing Her Majesty that it had passed a Bill providing for its own extinction, and leaving it to Her Majesty's " wisdom and discretion " to set up such form of government as Her Majesty might deem most desirable. This was 'sudden action with a vengeance, and such as would hardly have been taken had the matter rested witli the dark-skinned majority of the population, who would have preferred to see the representative institutions widened. The constitutions of the three more liberal Atlantic colonies already named bear a certain likeness to those of Western Australia and of Natal. Sir William Kobinson, the present Governor of Western Australia, in a lecture which he gave at Adelaide a few years back, pointed out that the government of an ordinary Crown Colony is a simple matter, as is that of a colony under responsible government, but that the intermediate form, in which the Governor is also, in some measure, a sort of irremovable and irresponsible Prime Minister, working through a freely elected legislature, is most difficult to manage. The success in practice of the mixed constitution of Barbados is the more encouraging from this fact. The ordinary Crown Colony system of nominated or partly nominated legislatures, in the latter case with a high franchise for the elected portion, is defended on the ground of the numerical preponderance of the less civilised over the more civilised race. The mass of the population of the Crown Colonies properlj' so called consists of negroes or of coohes, and the legislatures represent the interests of the planters. It must not be supposed, however, that these bodies and this class greatly abuse their powers. If they have not done so much as might be wished for the education of the black majority, they are, at least, able to point with pride to their medical care of the negro poor, and to the existence of sanitary departments which are an honour to the colonies. Mr. Salmon has attacked even this side of existing Crown Colony institutions, but, right as he is in many matters, I cannot but feel that on this head he is in some degree mistaken. It is contended that where representatives of the people are In French elected by manhood suffrage, as is the case in the French Colonies. islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Reunion, the result has been (as it has in the Southern States of the American Union) a recrudescence of race hatreds, and in the French colonies the political subjection of the whites to the men of colour. The organisation of many of the EngHsh tropical colonies is, indeed, of a more oligarchic type than that which now prevails in the island colonies of France, of which the prosijerity is remarkable. While we have a certain contempt for the French considered as a colonising people, every Englisli writer on the West Indies admits that the French have been -172 TROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt v more successful in Martinique and Guadeloupe than we have been in similar and closely adjoining islands. JI. de Lanessan has told us that excellent results have been attained by the French of late through frankly accepting the principle that the "coloured" race is better suited to the West Indies than is the white, and that France has encouraged and helped the "coloured" people to become dominant in the French islands. In the meantime the trade of two French islands is, roughly speaking, one-third that of all our own, vastly greater in size and population, and our "Dominica stands between the two French colonies, showing,'' says Mr. Eves, "a lamentable con- trast to their prosperity." The sufirage was conferred on the negroes of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Ei^union, and French Guiana in 1848 at the time of the abolition of slavery. At the same moment the suffrage was given to a large proportion of the natives of French India. The electoral right was in the latter case shortly afterwards taken away, but was restored under the third Kepublic. The negro electors of the French Antilles and of Reunion speak French, are Eoman Catholics, and live under French laws ; but the natives of French India, as a rule, do not speak French, and are not Christians, yet nevertheless possess the franchise. In Tonquin and in Algeria the suffrage has, as I have said, not been given to the natives ; and in the protectorates — such as Tunis and Annam — the French inhabitants themselves, like the English in India, have no votes. In Cochin- China representative government is a farce, inasmuch as the great majority of the electors are in the employment of the French Government ; but in the French Antilles it is a reality. In all, it may be said that four senators and seven deputies are elected to the French Chambers by con- stituencies in which power is in the hands of the coloured or black people; Such is the prosperity of the French West Indies that it would seem tliat we are wrong in not trusting the West Indian negroes and coloured people with a larger voice in their own future, though it may be admitted that if the choice lies only between Crown government and planter Parliaments they are better off under autocratic than they would be under oligarchic institutions. White The white population of the West Indies has been described population, as declining, and it is certainly the case that the British popula- tion bears a smaller proportion to the white po23ulation of the West Indies of two hundred years ago than does the French or Dutch or Spanish population. In Central America there are a large number of men of Spanish race, and, in parts of the West Indies, of French and Spanish race, whose ancestors liave lived for a great time in tropical countries without returning to their homes in the old world. With the English this is m a less degree the case, although there are in Bahamas the descendants of American Loyalists who show no sign of degeneracy of race, and a small number of whites in the West Indies proper who are of old British race. At the same time there is little trace PAiiT V CROWN COLONIES 473 to be found now of the convict element ■which tlironged the West Indies before the Commonwealth. Although it is known that as late as the time of Charles II the Council of Foreign Plantations had under their consideration the question " How noxious and unprofitable persons may be transplanted to the general advantage of the public and commodity of our foreign plantations " ; and although great numbers of such persons were shipped to the West Indies La the seventeenth centui-y, yet, while the descendants of some of the wealthy planters survive, the convict race has become extinct. There is no reason to believe that the British people are less able by nature than the French and Spanish to live within the tropics, but some think that their habits of life, until recently, have not been such as to conduce to the perpetuation of the race under circumstances of long exposure to sun-heat. As it is, we find ourselves with several colonies which have been ours for a considerable period, but in which there is a large white foreign element and hardly any English element to counterbalance it. Complicated questions arise in Crown Colonies in which a Crown large population of European, though not of British, descent is Colonies found interposed between the EngHsh element on the one hand ■with u. and the negro' and coolie element on the other. This is the white case in Trinidad, in which a large number of Frenchmen and foreign Spaniards are settled, and in Dominica, where the French are (Element, strong. _ , _ Tiinidacl. In Mauritius there dwells a highly cultivated population of Mauritius. French descent, side by side with the British oflioials, and with a far larger dark-skinned population, chiefly Hindoo, and an increasing number of Chinese immigrants. Most of the French energetically support, but many of the French planters oppose, the extension of self-government (already partially conceded to the rich inhabitants of Mauritius), which increases the strength of the French element, but may lead in the long-run to the predominance of the Asiatic races. The French island of Reunion lies close to the lie de France, France and now held by us under the name of Mauritius, and the French Madagas- pay great attention to this part of the Indian Ocean, and have car. waged a war with the Hova Government of Madagascar in order to seize, at the north point of that island, a fine harbour, which lies half-way between Mauritius and Zanzibar. The Patrimonio Treaty which concluded that war is a stain on the reputation of the third Republic : its French text wholly differs from the Malagasy text, as the French text of the French treaties with China for many years diifered from the Chinese text. The difference was explained away in a public letter to the Hova Government from the French envoy ; but the letter was disavowed in the French Chamber, and the French text, never agreed to by the Hova Queen, alone is recognised by France. If, as seems probable, the French are going to make a fortress near the easily defended bay and superb anchorage of British 474 PEOBLEMS OF GREATER BEITAIN paet v Sound, or, as it is now coming to be universally called, Diego Suarez, the possession of Mauritius will involve the placing at Port Louis a considerable garrison and its becoming the centre for the operations in war-time of a formidable British fleet. As M. de Lanessan has pointed out in his work on the colonial expansion of France, the French possessions in and about Madagascar " command the route of all ships sailing upwards from the Cape of Good Hope towards the Indian Ocean or the Pacific, and assure to France incontestable preponderance and authority upon the east coast of Africa." This declaration, which is well supported by the facts, is not pleasant reading when we remember that we could not safely run our trade through the Mediterranean if France were hostile, and should be driven to make use of this very CajDe route which the able Deputy of the Seine proves to be commanded also by French establishments, the chief of wliich has been lately occupied after a, costly war undertaken, it would seem, only for the purpose of securing this dangerous point of menace to our trade. M. de Lanessan sliows in another portion of his book that " the bay of Diego Suarez is rivalled in size only by those of Kio de Janeiro, San Francisco, and Sydney. It is one of the finest in the world, and one of those which could render the greatest service to our navy as a port for repair, and would be the most sure and impregnable of war ports." The French have now a small garrison at Diego Suarez, have removed thither the administration of their colony of Nossi-B^, and are engaged in making there a military port. In another passage, again (for he returns to it in all parts of his work on account of its importance), M. de Lanessan says that by basing its operations upon this "impregnable" port, "an East African fleet would be able to worry the advance of an enemy's fleet forced to go by the Cape to the help of Australia or of India." The " enemy " meant must obviously be Great Britain, inasmuch as Great Britain alone could need to go to the help " of Australia or of India." M. de Lanessan concludes his whole.view of the subject by saying of the occupation of portions of Madagascar : " 'ihe new establishments which we have iust founded in the East African seas are of advantage to France not only from the resources wliich they will furnish to her trade and industry, but also from the strength which they add to her naval power." When he discusses the position of France in " Indo-China " he again points out that the French fleet, acting at once from " Indo-China " and from Madagascar, would, in the event of war " between the two greatest naval j)owers in the world," " put an end to all commercial relations between England and India Hong-Kong, and China, and even menace India herself." Tlie best French book on the French colonies, that of ]\I. Gaffarel (who finds it a little difficult to defend on moral grounds the occupation of portions of Madagascar), contains these words : " Madagascar would replace with advantage our lost colonies. Moreover, with the exception of the still unknown countries of PAET V CROWN COLONIES 475 Central Africa and the mysterious regions of the two poles, there is no longer on the globe any other vacant land to occupy." The gallant black Christian peojsle of Madagascar, it seems, do not count. But we have to deal with facts rather than with useless regrets, and the Government of the United Iviiigdom, having oli'ered no resistance to French domination in Madagascar, must now face the fact that both the importance of Mauritius and Mauritius. the difficulty of holding it in war-time have of late enormously increased. As the old authoritative system of government has broken down in the island, it might be wiser to make trial of a more completely elective government, founded on a wider franchise, instead of relying mainly on the French element as we do at present. The laws of ilauritius are an adaptation of the Code Napoleon, as those of British Guiana and Ceylon are founded on Eoman-Dutch jurisprudence. In many of the Crown Colonies the inhabitants have had. Local at all events in recent years, the advantage of the training Govem- which results from the practice of self-government in small ment areas. In the British West Indies and Atlantic Islands we find, in tlie West for instance, that Jamaica, Barbados, Bermuda, Grenada, and ludies, British Guiana possess parochial boaixts, of which all, or nearly all, the members are elected, and wliich have power to authorise expenditure, and, as a rule, to impose taxation for local pur- poses, though the Jamaican boards are only able to control the expenditure of funds allotted to them by the Government of the colony. The Jamaica " parishes " are mostly considerable districts, as there are but fourteen of them in the large island. In Ceylon the councils of the native village communities in Ceylon, exercise over their own localities functions that partake at once of a legislative, administrative, and judicial cliaracter. Even in Fiji, as I have shown, the system of local district institutions in Fiji. has been highly developed, and a congi-ess of head men, presided over by the Governor, meets every year for the purpose of giving and taking advice, and somewhat resembles Sir Eobert Sandeman's Durbar of the sirdars of Baluchistan. The tendency to unite several of our dependencies under the Local Con- same government, shown, for example, since early in 1889 in federation, the case of Trinidad and Tobago, and since 1848 in that of Jamaica and Turks Islands, as well as by the formation of the Leeward Islands Confederacy, and the grouping together of the Windward Islands, marks an advance in the direction of increased economy in Crown Colony rule. The various West Indian unions and federations are of very difterent kinds, but generally speaking, in the union of islands, wliile the smaller island has a local government, and is separate as regards revenue, expenditure, and debt, tlie laws of the larger apply to it. Tlie Leeward Islands, which had enjoyed a federal constitu- Tlie tion from the time of William and Mary up to tlie end of the Leeward last century, were again constituted a single federal colony by Islands 476 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pam v Oonfeder- an imperial Act in the time of Mr. Gladstone's first administra- acy. tion. It consists of five Presidencies, of which the chief is the group containing St. Kitts, Nevis, and Anguilla, united in 1882 under the name of " St. Christopher (St. Kitts)-NeTis," which pays six of the sixteenths into which the common charges of the federation are divided. Next comes Antigua, which includes the island of Barbuda as a dependency, and which pays five- sixteenths, contains the seat of government and of the legislature, has a partly representative constitution, and returns elected members to the general or federal legislature. Other members of the federation are Dominica (three -six- teenths), Montserrat, and the Virgin Islands. The colony has power to alter its constitution by an ordinary Act, and the Crown has power to include in the federation any other West Indian colony upon an address from both Councils concerned. As in the case of the Federal Council of Australasia, there are two classes of questions with which the federal legislature may deal : those given to it by the statutory constitution, and those referred to it by the local governing bodies. Many of the local Acts may be repealed or amended by the federal legislature, and all of them are void if they conflict with the laws of the general body, so that the constitution is hardly one which would suit colonies with responsible government, as questions of legality would be certain to arise. Tlie Three of the Windward Islands — Grenada, St. Lucia, and Windward gt. Vincent — are now under one Governor -in -Chief, and Islands. possess, as West Indians put it, " one lunatic asylum and one Court of Appeal," but have no federal legislative body. Sir Walter Sendall, who has just given up the government of the group for that of Barbados, is the excellent oflicial Natal refused to receive because he was supposed to be likely to be placed under tlie control of the Governor of the Cape ; and another West Indian government — that of Jamaica — is also admirably administered by another rejected Governor, Sir Henry Blake. West Mr. Salmon, in his "Plan for the Union of the fifteen British Indian West Indian Colonies," has thrown the weight of his official federation experience on the side of confederation. At the same time, in of tlie the case of the Leeward Islands the results are not so satis- future, factory as might have been anticipated, and in West Africa attempts to connect settlements have been abortive. If a scheme for the estabUslunent of a British West Indian Con- federacy is ever worked out in practice, it will be necessary to interfere as little as possible with the elements of self-govern- ment already existing in the various colonies, and to rest the federal government upon those Provincial systems, after having reformed and developed them. The difliculties in the way of complete West Indian federation are considerable, but not' too great to be overcome, and not greater than those which were conquered by tlie founders of the Canadian Dominion. TJie local jealousies are as tierce as those of the cliief Australian PART V CROWN COLONIES 477 colonies ; there is no West Indian Eome to which West Indian Turins and Milans can give way. Most of the islands have a noble history of their own, and they are unwilling to merge their individuality in a new country. There is a fear of being taxed for the benefit of the island in which the federal legis- lature may sit or the Governor live. There are local paid offices to be absorbed, and local councillors wlio may suffer loss of dignity. There is the inevitable struggle to be faced as to whether the federal assembly should be nominated or elective. On the other hand, thei-e would be financial economy in a complete scheme, and chances of development which are lacking now ; and the islands would be better able to fiaid the few statesmen, white, black, and "coloured," who would be needed for their government as a grouiJ, than they are to produce the highest level of governing joower in the hordes of councillors who are now needed. It is possible that the informal negotiations between Canada and the West Inches which have been named in the chapter on " The United States, Canada, and the West Indies," may one day be resumed, and that it may be the lot of Canada to bring about West Indian Federation. The dependency of Cyprus, administered by the Colonial Cyprus. Oflice, though, strictly speaking, not a colony, and Ceylon, are the two chief British-governed islands of which I have still to write. In Cyprus we have introduced since 1882 a fairly liberal constitution, which presents the peculiarity of the division of the island into electoral districts in each of which the Moham- medan voters elect one member, and the non-Mohammedan, that is, Greek-Cypriote, voters three members, to the Legislative Council — a cfivision of electors according to creed which is unknown, I think, elsewhere in our dominions. Electoral separation of a particular race, as, for example, of the Maori people in New Zealand, is uncommon, but electoral separation of a religion perhaps unique. While the old Turkish religious courts are kept up for Mohammedan cases, the six district courts for the administration of the ordinary laws are each of them composed of a president and of two other members, of whom one is a Christian and the other a Mohammedan. Our administration is too costly for the island, although there is still a parliamentary grant-in-aid, and the establishment of a High Commissioner at a salary of £4000 a year will have sooner or later to be reduced, as the trade and position of the island make such an expenditure unjustifiable. The remedies pro- posed by the Cypriote-Greeks for the present poverty of Cyprus are curious, and the reasons given for proposmg them stranger still. They ask, for instance, that the wine duties of the United Kingdom should be remitted on Cyprus wines, apparently thinking that no duty is levied on the wines of British colonies, for they argue that Cyprus is in fact, though not in law, a colony ; and they urge that what they wish could be done without loss to tiie Exchequer, as Cyprus wines do not reach 478 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part v England now. That, if the wines of the dependencies of the Emjjire were admitted duty free, other and duty-paying wines would be displaced from consumption, to the detriment of the public purse, is a consideration which has not entered into the minds of the Archbishop and his friends. Substantially, how- ever, they are in the right in thinking that they are still over- taxed all round. Ceylon. Ceylon may not have met as yet with the recent success of Mauritius in establishing for itself a market in our great Southern colonies, and since the drop caused by the ravages of the cofFee-fungus it has not seen its trade increase with the bounds which have marked the growth of the trade of the Straits Settlements, as superior to Ceylon in volume of com- merce as in the flavour of the mangosteen. Still, Ceylon is a country which among the old Crown Colonies has most of all exhibited the interesting quality of British pluck. When its planters found themselves face to face with the total failure of that cofi'ee crop on which they were almost wholly dej^endent, instead of allowing their colony to pine, as the West Indian colonies dwindled in importance after emancipation and the fall in the price of sugar, they set to work and created for Ceylon that marvellous tea trade, the sudden growth of which has become one of the chief wonders of the British world. Tea. The export, indeed, of tea from Ceylon to England is so vast a trade for so small a colony as to deserve special notice. As late as 1878 Ceylon was sending us no tea, while China was sending us tea to the value of ten millions sterling, and India tea to the value of nearly three millions sterling. The Indian export of tea to the United Kingdom (virtually India's only present market, for the taste for Indian tea has not spread as yet to the other great tea-drinking countries) has steadily increased ; but the export of tea from Ceylon to Great Britain has risen witli extraordinary bounds, and, while the Chinese export has steadily declined, Ceylon is rapidly gaining upon India. In 1889 Ceylon sent us exactly half as much tea as did Cliina. When I was in Ceylon in 1867 the first trials of tea seed had just been made, but the cofi'ee trade was flourishing, and coffee was to Ceylon what wool was to New Zealand. When I revisited the colony in 1876 the exportation of coffee was still immense, and a rise of price in the article had con- cealed a falling off' in production, so that the coffee export still figured as of the value of four millions sterling. Tea-growing was then in its infancy, but two growers were supplying local wants. Since that time the tea industry has increased so fast and coffee so rapidly declined, that the Ceylon tea export already exceeds the coffee export in value, and it is computed that in 1890 the export of Ceylon tea will be forty million pounds weight. The Ceylon planters have every reason to be proud of the enterprise and energy which they displayed in refusing to sit still and see their island ruined by the coffee blight. Ceylon has rapidly produced the tea which on the VATir V CROWN COLONIES 479 average comraands tlie highest price, and yet is the cheapest to the consumer, and will year by year increasingly displace China tea and rival Indian tea in the market of the United Kingdom. Great Britain draws from Ceylon some ten or twelve millions sterling of interest on capital, and the planters of the island prosper. Ceylon is likely sooner or later to command the Australian market, an important one, for the Australians, as I have said, stand first as tea-drinkers, and easily beat us of the United Kingdom, who stand next. Whether Ceylon will ultimately obtain the market of the United States, where at present Chinese and Japanese teas are drunk, will depend on the success of tea as a crop in Central America and the West-India Islands. One of the oddities of the British Empire lies in the fact that the Canadians, wlio in many points closely resemble the Australians, drink tea only ujjon the scale of the inhabitants of the United States, and not on that of the Australians or even of tlie home-staying Britons. The coldness of the long Canadian winter can hardly be the explanation, as the Piussians of the extreme north drink tea in winter with a freedom which is limited only by its heavy price and their own poverty, and hold it to be the best of drinks for coachmen and others whose vocations exjDose them to the severest cold. It is not only tea and cofl'ee that Ceylon produces, for the General island has few rivals in fruitfulness, and none in charm. Spice, friiitfulness cacao, and cinchona plantations thrive ; the cocoa-nut jjalm of the yields freely of its varied crops, and in precious stones Ceylon island, stands first in all except diamonds and rubies. The island is also interesting on account of its presenting to us a picture of a settled and orderly Buddhist system which once prevailed throughout India and the Malay Archipelago. On the other hand, Ceylon is the home of Government monopolies, or " farms," such as those of salt, of forests, of pearls, and of liquor, and the Government has unfortunately, on account of the last-named monopoly, an interest in pushing the sale of drink. Not only is the liquor monopoly objectionable from the Draw- point of view of the interest of the natives, but their well- backs, wishers complain also of the exaction of forced labour, redeem- able by fine — a custom which exists, however, as regards road- making in many other Crown Colonies, and lingers on in some parts of Europe. In Ceylon Indian coolies employed as agricultural labourers are exempted from this work or tax, an exemption obviously created to favour planter interests. There is also a tax on imported grain, and other heavy import duties, from which are exempted machinery and goods necessary to the planting industry. There is an export duty on coffee, tea, cacao, and cinchona, which is almost as objectionable in prin- ciple as the duty upon imported grain, but presses upon the planter as well as on the community at large. The effeminacy of the Cinghalese is to be accounted for by that want of variety in their food for which taxation is in part responsible. In the case of Ceylon, as in the case of other colonies of a similar 480 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Hong- Kong. Shanghai. Peculiar- ities of Crown Colony legisla- tion. Con- clusions. type, we may agree witli Mr. Salmon in supporting M. Leroy- Beaulieu's desire to see taxation take the form of heavy duties on intoxicating liquors and toljacco, light ad valorem duties on all other articles except food, and taxes upon land. Tlie present position of Ceylon presents a picture of both the advantages and the drawbacks of a good siDecimen of the auto- cratic Crown Colony system. The friends of the native are opposed to the suggested introduction of so-called self-govern- ment into the island, because they fear the rise of a planter oligarchy, and prefer direct Crown rule until the time comes for Ceylon to receive a government resting upon the representation of the majority. As successful, on a smaller scale, as Singapore itself, Hong- Kong is also a settlement of which we may be proud, and Victoria is indeed one of the most beautiful and well kept of cities. The joint English and American town which divides European Shanghai with the " French Concession," and which is a republic in which the British element preponderates over the American, is also a flourishing part of Greater Britain. In addition to those political peculiarities of Crown Colonies which have been already noted, I may name the fact that in the Straits and several of the old Crown Colonies native educa- tion is free to natives, while fees are charged to natives for learning English. In Heligoland both English and German are taught to aU the children, although their mother-tongue is a Frisian dialect. In Malta the composition of the Council of Government is as complicated as is that of the Court of Policy of British Guiana, already described. Four of the elected mem- bers are chosen by a body of special electors from the classes of ecclesiastics, nobles and landed gentry, graduates of the University, and members of the Commercial Exchange. The other ten elected members are chosen by single-member constituencies of "general electors," and not more than two ecclesiastics may be so chosen. Previously to the recent adoption of the present constitution of Malta, and under tlie ordinance of 1861, the elective members were elected in one list with the limited vote. The destruction of direct minority representation in Malta leaves the constitution of the Cape unique, I think, in the colonial world of politics in making the attempt to carry out any form of proportional representation. On the whole it will be seen that while in the French colonies property as well as power is passing into the hands of the "coloured" population and of the blacks, in their English neighbours this is the case only in a less degree, while the importation of Indian labour has enabled the old system of large properties to be kept up in many of our Crown Colonies. It has been shown also by our inquiries that it is a mistake to suppose that our tropical colonies are in a condition of decline. They hold a secondary place in our attention because of the immense development of Canadian and Australasian interests ; but they are on the whole fairly prosperous and progressive' I'AE]' V CKOWN COLONIES 481 There is indeed in our Crown Colonies a remarkable expansion of trade and revenue, althougli the growth of population is more rapid still. The West Indies, which were once most important to our Empire, now figure only for 1 per cent in our trade, but they give us naval stations, and tliey permit us to try exiperiments which are useful to the world in the produc- tion of the fruits of tropical labour. We liave seen that the British West Indies, like Canada, are feeling to some extent the attraction of the enormous neighbouring body of the United States, and there is now an American party in the West Indies. In my opinion the islands will remain British and not become American, but will more and more be "black countries." Already the decline in the white population has been consider- able, and it is perhaps worthy of note that there were vastly more white settlers in Barbados, for example, in its palmy days of the time of Charles I and Charles II and James II than there are at the present moment. The Crown Colonies have not been dealt with here at such great length as have the self-governing communities, because, although the former try some experiments, these are not spon- taneously introduced by democratic electorates or assemblies of our countrymen, but are the suggestion of officials sent out from home, and are of less importance and less interest to ourselves as an example. The chief need of the Crown Colonies is that the feelings and the wishes of their peoples should be better known and understood by tlie Imperial Parliament, so that Secretaries of State may be urged to grant more liberal institutions to the most advanced in public intelligence among these colonies. France has tried to meet the difficulty by the establislunent of communal and general councils, and the return to the Chamber of Deputies, as we have seen, of colonial repre- sentatives, some of them men of colour, of whom one occupied a seat in a French Cabinet not long ago. With us, however, the population of colonies and of dependencies bears to the population of the United Kingdom so diflerent a proportion that no such complete solution of our difficulties would be pos- sible without a revolutionary cliange in the whole fabric of tlie Empire. So long, therefore, as the Crown Colonies continue to be governed from Downing Street to the present extent, so long will it be desirable that a well- informed public opinion in the United Kingdom should be brought to beai- upon 'administrative acts, on the nature of which depends in a large measure the well-being of many millions of our fellow-countrymen. The Crown Colonies of the British Empire contain some oi Tropical the loveliest countries of the world, and tempt the traveller bj' scenes, their beauty as strongly as do Canada and Australia by the interesting nature of their social and pcjlitical institutions. St. Lucia and Ceylon are superior even to Java in their landscapes, and, witli British Guiana, present a perfect picture of tropical scenery. Tliere is no more beautiful island tlian Ceylon, for if the glimpses of its sacred peak and its dark ranges, caught 21 482 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" paut v through the cocoa-nut groves that fringe its golden sands and purple seas, are equalled, though in a different style, by the glories of New Zealand's Southern Alps, the brilliant colour- ing of the mingled crowds of Hindoo, of " Moorish," and of Cinghalese-Buddhist people that throng its busy roads, adds an element of romantic charm that must needs be lacking in new countries peopled by the English, the Irish, and tlie Scotch. PAET VI COLONIAL PEOBLEMS CHAPTER I COLONIAL DEMOCEACY In entering upon a brief general account of the tendencies of society in the colonies of Canada, of Australasia, and of South Africa, I have in the iirst place to remark that some considera- tions bearing upon the subject have been dealt with in the chapters on Canada, Victoria, and New South Wales. With regard indeed to many of the social and political changes which the English in the colonies have worked out for themselves it is ditficult to generalise, because Canadian practice is closer to that of the united States than is Australian ; and Australian, on the other hand, more interesting, experimentally considered, to ourselves. For example, when I come to mention State- socialism I shall have to show the curious difference which exists between Canada and Australasia in this respect, and how that difference is, day by day, growing greater instead of less. The minor differences between Canada on the one hand, and the Australasian and South African colonies on the other, have been to some extent brought about by the severe climate of Canada, and the slow growth of the country through the absence of gold ruslies, while the existence in its neighbourhood of the tempting El Dorados of the western States of the Ameri- can Union has drawn away from Canada a certain proportion of the more adventurous among its youth. The resemblances, however, which are found in the social and ijolitical systems of the self-governing colonies are many, and they are not all of them to be discovei'ed in the politics and society of the United States. One reason for many of the distinctions that may be drawn Australi.in between Australian democracy and that of the United States is as com- to be found in the fact that the United States are mainly ruled pareil with hj small owners of land tilling their own holdings (a ijoint in American which Canada resembles the United States), while Australasia Demo- is chiefly governed by the town democracy, and the workmen in i^racy. their trade unions are far more powerful than upon the con- tinent of America. In the most remarkable case that has been seen of ithe adoption of an extreme Kadical policy, by a state mainly English in the composition of its people— the carrying of the Kearney constitution in the State of California — the 486 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN workmen, as has been well shown by ]\Ir. Bryce, would have been powerless had they not made an alliance with the landed democracy of the State, and the virtual abandonment in practice of many of the principles of this constitution was brought about by the weakening, and ultimate disruption, of the alUance. In Australia, on the other hand, the advance of the leading colonies in the direction of democracy and State-socialism has been steady, and has been conducted under the leadership in the mam of a single class, who have, however, used their power, on the whole, with moderation and with skill. Absence iu Mr. Bryce ^ has poiuted out the fact that the vast majority colonial of the faults ordinarily attributed to democracies are not Democracy observable in the policy or in the social life of the United States, of faults ijut lias suggested that there are some exceptions. The laws attributed ^re not always steadily enforced. There is consequently a slight to Demo- tendency in some parts of the country to replace law by an cracies. organised mob rule. There is much legislative corruption. There exists, he thinks, a certain commonness in mind and tone, or want of dignity and elevation, rather of style than of character ; a certain apathy among the fastidious as regards pubHc life • a certain want of knowledge in matters of legisla- tion and administration ; an inadequate recognition of the value of experience in dealing with them, and some laxity in the management of public business. I am not here concerned with the inquiry how far Mr. Bryce is right or wrong as regards that nation the affairs of which he has investigated, with so much patience that we may be content with the result of his observa- tions instead of being tempted to make our own. But it is remarkable that none of these exceptions, or at the most not more than one of them, applies to the democracy of the colonial Greater Britain. If we talce Victoria as our example, for the reasons which I have stated in the Victorian chapter (remem- bering that in most points the other Australasian colonies, and that in many Canada, can jDoint to similar conditions), we find the laws as well enforced as they are in England. There is no tendency to lynch law. There is as little pubhc corruption as in the mother-country. It is impossible to ascribe commonness in mind and tone, or want of dignity and elevation, to a people who select men such as Mr. Higinbotham, Mr. Service, Mr. Deakin, Professor Pearson, or, to turn to a neighbouring colony, Sir Alfred Stephen, as the most worthy of public esteem. There is less want of knowledge as regards legislation and administration obseiwable generally in our self-governing colonies than in the United Kingdom itself. The long career in office in Canada of Sir John Macdonald, the permanency of the popularity in Victoria of Mr. Higinbotham, and, I would add, in New South Wales of Sir Henry Parkes, are evidences that there is in our chief colonies no inadequate recognition of the worth of experience in deahng with legislation and adminis- Co. The American Commonwealth, by James Bryce, M.P. 1889. Macmillan and CHAP. [ COLONIAL DEMOCRACY 487 tration ; and no one who knows the public offices of South Australia, or Victoria, or Tasmania can accuse them of more laxity in the management of public business than is to be found in Downing Street itself, while the apathy among the fastidious, which was at one time noticeable in New South Wales, seems, to the great advantage of the colony, to have disappeared. Neither is there to be discerned in Greater Britain any of Merits of that jealousy of eminence, or that reluctance to pay sufficient colonial salaries to obtain good service for the State, which has, by Demo- philosophic historians earlier than Mr. Bryce, been thought a cracy. characteristic of democracy. I ventured to foretell in 1868 that in Australia no such dangers would arise, and so far as there has been change in the last twenty years the change has all been in a good direction. Class animosities are less strong throughout the colonies than they were. There is a more general acceptance of democracy, and a more general recognition of its success, than I found in 1867 prevailing among the wealthier classes of the colonies ; and there is more and more reason to think that, while such colonies as Victoria point out to us now, as they pointed out to us then, the road that we shall take, that road will lead us towards general contentment and greatly increased prosperity. In many matters we have followed the example of our colonies. On the other hand, they have taken fresh strides towards democracy, as, for example, in the widespread adoption, of the principle of the payment of members of Parliament, and — in Australasia — of the principle of the graduation of death duties according to the amount of property bequeathed. Li these points, too, we shall follow them, and, their present position shows, follow them with good results. No possibility exists of contendiog that colonial, any more than American, democracy has crushed out individuality of character, as Alexis de Tocqueville thought it would ; while the cheerfulness and pleasantness of life in our self-governing colonies — more remarkable on the whole in the Southern colonies than in the United States — allow us to draw a picture of a beautiful national existence as the future state of New Zealand and Australia, of South Africa, and of Canada so far as climate admits, with the certainty that it will be realised. There are some who have got over their fear of American No class democracy, and who are inclined to think that a territorial tyranny, democracy may safely be trusted with the affairs of great com- munities, who yet believe that a democracy mainly in the hands of artisans is a much more dangerous thing, and who have fears with regard to Victoria, Queensland, and New South Wales which no longer oppress them with regard to the United States. Although in the United States, as Mr, Bryce has pointed out,^ the rich bear less than their due share of taxation, the wage-earning class, he tells us, is no more active in political ' Chap. Ixxxi. First Edition, vol. iii., p. 70. PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN work than are other classes, returns few workmen to Congress or to tlie State legislatures, and only greatly exerts itself for the purpose of preventing the introduction of cheap foreign labour, and of supporting local industries by protective tariffs. In Canada also this is partially true. In the Australian colonies, although the wage-earning class sliows far more political activity, and is far more powerful, it does not attempt largely to return artisans to Parliament, and is content to help to carry on the government through statesmen and politicians cljosen for merit or for attention to their work, without respect to class. Classe.s. In all the colonies, both in those where the workmen are all- l^owerful and in those where the capitalists rule, there is no such war of rich and poor as is seen in the United Kingdom and Western Europe generally, and no such jealousy between woi'k- men and employers. In the Australasian colonies, in which the workmen are pohtioally the strongest class, there is not, how- ever, so great a fusion of classes, as is seen in the back country of Canada and of the United States ; and the line between classes, as regards social intercourse, is somewhat more sharjDly drawn than in the newer parts of British America or of the United States. If our self-made colonial population — in Aus- tralasia at all events — show a certain impatience of youtliful immigrants of the higher social class, that feeling is natural and not unreasonable ; and if they are given to vaunting their own prosjDerity and running down all that comes from the old world, they have much in their success to excuse them for so doing. The supposed roughness and violence of young Australia is a matter which I have already dealt with in the chapters on Victoria and New South Wales. The facts have been grossly exaggerated by hasty writers, and it may confidently be asserted that the Australian " larrikins " are, in the possession of evil qualities and in their mode of showing them, behind both the roughs of the old country and the " hoodlums " of the United States. Social eon- That there should be little danger in the political predomin- ditiou of ance of colonial workmen is natural when the circumstances are colonial borne in mind. As regards the settlers and the sons of settlers workmen, in the more distant colonies — those of AustraUa and South Africa — they come largely of a picked race, and represent the most enterprising and energetic of their class. Colonial work- men generally are well-to-do ; many of them own jjroperty ; they live in good houses ; often hold land ; are commonly mem- bers of religious congregations ; their wives are able to employ young girls to do much of their household work, and have leisure for intellectual improvement. In many of the factories of Victoria and New South Wales we find not only the excellent bands of musicians which some English factories can show, but debating societies admirably managed, concerts of good music given by the men in evening dress, and the practice of taking the family to the seaside for a holiday trip each year. Wliile the athleticism of England has been, up to the i-ecent revival of OHAP. I COLONIAL DEMOCRACY 489 football, mainly in tlie upper and middle class, in the colonies the workmen supply the tootball, the cricket, and the cycling- clubs with their cliief strength. They take walking tours and outings for sketching and for boating as freely as do the rich. So great is the general prosperity that regular domestic service is dying out, and is being replaced by occasional help from young people or from immigrants before they get good places. It is impossible in the wealthier colonies to tell one class from another by its dress. No doubt many of the working peoiole, like many of the trading and other classes, care notliing for serious pur- suits, and are wasteful and improvident. But on the whole they are good citizens, and their rule presents no danger. So great has been the prosperity of the colonies in recent years that full employment and high wages have led to large investments by workmen, which have become a conservative counterpoise to extreme opinions, and have checked any general movement of the working classes against the present relations of capital and labour. There liave been strikes in particular oases for higher pay, but the disturbances have been coniined to isolated branches of trade, and have never become general, and the parliaments of labour have stopped far more strikes than they have countenanced. Nearly every dispute is referred to boards of arbitrators, and their decisions are accepted by both parties. When I speak of the dominance of labour in the Australian Opinions of colonies"! mean its potential dominance, and its power in those colonial questions upon whicli working-class opinion is united, and do workmen, not wish to suggest that there is much interference by artisans in the whole field of politics. Colonial workmen have of recent years discussed among themselves, for the most part, rather special issues affecting special measures than put forward a]iy general policy accepted by the whole body of working men. So little movement has there been against property, in spite of the steps taken to ensure that wealth should contribute a large share towards the expenses of the State, that property alone, as a rule, is allowed in colonies to vote at municipal elections, and the workmen show little dislike for the principle which exists in many colonies that property should confer in local elections a " plural " vote. So powerful are the urban freeholding in- terests of the working people that city property bears but little State taxation — in Victoria none. The most prosperous of the colonial workmen are freeholders in towns or suburbs, share- holders in limited lialjility companies owning factories and mines, and in fact capitalists and proprietors, with the same feeling against nationalisation of the land as is found among the landowners of the United States. Wliile the colonial legis- lation of the Australian Liberal party has been steadily opposed to tlie principle of mere sale of land to the highest bidder, it lias allotted land, without respect to quality, in fixed areas and at fixed rates, on a freehold tenure, to bond fide settlers, and the workmen who own their houses in or near the towns make 490 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN General character- istics of colonial Demo- cracy. common cause with the free selectors, or, to use the Canadian plirase, the "homesteaders," in the country districts. Although the most extreme land reformers of Europe either care nothing for free transfer of land or dislike it, the whole of the colonies have adopted and maintained, with every sign of popular assent, an easy system of the transfer of real estate, and sup- port it as steadily as they do payment of members, universal State education, manhood or virtual manhood suffrage, and the other planks of the old colonial Liberal programme now mostly carried into law. In the colonies we find now a general pride in the admission that the tone of society is democratic, and the word is once more losing the associations which gathered round it when democracy was looked upon as meaning mob rule, and again coming to be used for the power of the whole people, and for a form of government which calls this out. The Australians and Canadians, and, in spite of the presence of a large native popu- lation of dark skin, the South-African English, show themselves, at all events in the older centres of population, under demo- cratic institutions, a religious, moral, educated, and intelligent people, considerably above the European average, and a people who, whether they style themselves Conservatives or Liberals, are firm believers in democratic principles, and strong opponents of class rule. They admit very willingly that virtual dominance of the working class which exists in some of the colonies, because the working class is the most numerous ; But tliey find it an influence consistent with respect for the rights of minorities, and are aware that the workmen in those colonies do not act as workmen in colonial politics, but as ordinary citizens of the State. An interesting proof of the fact that there is no middle-class hostility against workmen, even in the colonies which are the most controlled, potentially at least, by a working-class majority, was afltorded by the recent subscrip- tions from all classes in Australia towards the dock labourers' strike in London. The members of the trades - unions of Victoria only led the way, and all ranks followed, including employers of labour, and at least one Governor. There is a general belief in the South-Sea colonies, and a widespread belief in Canada, that the majority will be right in the long-run, and all are full of hopefulness and cheerfulness as to tlie national future. Our colonies are, indeed, in one sense not new countries. They possess an old civilisation, in most cases our own with the upper class left out, and therefore similar to the form which ours will probably one day assume when the upper classes have been overwhelmed on the one side by new wealth and on the other side by increasingly powerful Labour. Not only, however, is British aristocracy absent in Australia, but also that political power of wealth which exists in Great Britain and in the United States ; and so steady and gradual has been the political absorption of the richer people in Australia into the ranks of the democracy, that the political CHAP. I COLONIAL DEMOCRACY 491 predominance of riches may be said to liave gone-under witliout a struggle. The fact that the Australian railways are in State hands lias in itself done mucli to clieck the rise in Australia of that supremacy of railway kings which is harmful to American interests. The advantage given in the mother -country by wealth, in the race to obtain certain coveted positions, is altogether non-existent in the great self-governing colonies ; but, while money has in them little or no political power, there is, as we shall see, no socialism in the European sense, and little dislike of the capitalist class. On the whole, liowever, the colonies form as absolute a democracy, although under con- stitutional monarchy, as the American or the Swiss common- wealths under republican institutions. The equality of the citizens is not so much paraded in the self-governing colonies as in the United States, but is quite as real. The mere fact that a peerage does not exist, and that hereditary titles are almost unknown, is little ; but there is in the colonies no sustained rank, and any predominance in individuals that exists is purely personal, and is seldom continued to their posterity. Wealth in the colonies seems to be soon dispersed, but in Canada it is no disadvantage to the offspring of prominent colonial statesmen who contemplate a political career to be their father's sons. When I say that wealth has little or no political power in our colonies — far less than in Europe, inconceivably less than in the United States — I may possibly be told that in South Africa there is one conspicuous exception, for one English gentleman of great reputed wealth does exercise considerable political influence in South Africa. But his case forms no real exception, for it is his business ability and his political ability which have given him his station. In Canada, too, where the Canadian Pacific railroad has considerable political influence, that influence is not directed by a single man. Mr. Van Home, an American by birth, who has become Canadian in his ideas, and who belongs so completely to the American continent that he has never, I believe, been seen in Europe, has attained by his energy to much power ; he is not, however, a politician, and should be referred to rather as a man of business capacity than as a man of wealth. Another difference between our chief colonies and the United States must also be pointed out. There is in the self- governing colonies of Australia and Canada no dark-skinned element comparable in importance to the negro element in the United States, at present excluded by combination from real political power. Nor is there in Australasia any large white foreign element with a lower standard of comfort such as exists in the vast immigrant population of the United States. In the colonies, as in the American Union, State schools, either free or with fees very small, taking into consideration the means of tlie working classes, fuse the immigrants with the majority composed of the amalgamated races of the United Kingdom. 492 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Anglo- Saxon as contrasted with Latin Demo- cracy. Even the German population, wliioh is the most numerous and tlie most prosperous of the alien races, is not so considerable proportionately anywhere in the British Empire as it is in Chicago and many parts of the United States. As the equality of conditions is more complete, and the influence of wealth less, in most of our self-governing colonies than is the case in the Union, so we find that the colonists have been bolder than the Americans in their legislative experiments. The Australians, too, have had in this respect the advantage of coming suddenly into a full-grown political life. The Italian naval authorities have been able to do more with their money than have those of any other country, from the fact that, starting late, they have had the advantage of adopting the newest ideas without clieck or hindrance. In jjolitics the Australians had a similar advantage, except in the one point of local government, in which Canada on the whole stands first, liaving in this respect, as in her federal constitution, profited the most largely by American example. While, liowever, our colonists of Austral- asia are bold in tlieir experiments, and free from all Conser- vative fear of change, yet they are thoroughly English, and as impatient of the doctrine of natural rights as is the Editor of the Quarterly Revieio. It is necessary to insist much upon the English character of the colonial democracy of Greater Britain. Nothing can be more complete than the manner in which history has vindicated the accuracy of many of Tocqueville's observations upon democracy, and the correctness of many of his views. At the same time the most curious contradictions are to be observed in his writings, though each part is true in itself if we confine our attention to a portion of the field. Tlie fact is that Latin democracy and Anglo-Saxon democracy give rise to very different modes of thouglit, and produce very different results. In one famous passage Tocqueville pointed out with extra- ordinary force the tendency of democracy to favour absolute government, and his passage was prophetic with regard to tlie rise of the Second Empire in France. But he himself was well aware that no such empire could be founded in a democratic community mainly composed of the English race. Tocqueville has in another place confessed that the temperament of tlie French nation is so peculiar that we cannot argue about France from the base of study of the tendencies of mankind at large. That inapplicability of general reasoning which he admitted in this passage is also true, though in a less degree, as Ijetween Great Britain and lier daughter -countries. It is impossible unrestrictedly to argue from English example about the colonies, or from colonial example about the United Kingdom. Tlius it is said to be one of the bad tendencies of democracy^ to be set with others against many blessings, that there exists in the most advanced communities » jealousy of distinction of every kind. That popular jealousy is far less strong among the democracies of the Anglo-Saxon race tlian it is in Latin CHAi'. I COLONIAL DEilOCRACY 493 countries. While the American and Australian democracy may be fond of flattery and impatient of control, it is nevertheless far more amenable to the restraints of law, to the guidance of the leading men, and to the moral obligations of justice and Christian principle than is the case with the town democracy of other races, and sucli evil tendencies as it may possess are held in check by much respect for the past and by a true love of freedom. Insufiicient attention has as yet been given by political observers to the characteristics of the colonial democracy and to the importance of colonial example, and, writing in 1885, the late Sir Henry Maine almost ignored them.' That learned writer, in discussing the nature of democracy, drew plentifully upon his stores of knowledge as to the old world and the United States, without seeming to remember the existence of Canada, or New Zealand, Victoria, New South Wales, Queens- land, or South Austi-alia, except when he mentioned the bear- ing of the action of colonial governors as to dissolutions of Parliament on the rights of Governments at home. The only inhabitants of the colonies with whom Sir Henry Maine con- cerned himself were the Australian " blackf ellows." He assumed, too, that under democratic government members would to an increasing degree receive positive mandates from their constituents, although colonial example would have shown him that colonial representatives are left more free in this respect than are members of Parliament in Great Britain. Many of the political evils which are iDut down by impatient Weak and superficial observers to republican government, but which points of are also to be found in the British colonies, under institutions popular at all events nominally monarchical, are, as a fact, evils which goveru- have of late years rapidly increased in England, and ai-e n^eut. increasing, although less fast, in all the free countries of the world. The bids made for votes, at the expense of the true interest of the country, or at the expense of international justice, are perhaps as ofiensive in one country as in another. We have to set this evil — which accompanies immense publicity, the enfranchisement of all classes, the cheapness of newspapers, and the diffusion of superficial iniormation without a very i-eal sense of responsibility — against the blessings which in England, as in the IJnited States and as in the colonies, flow from the same institutions, of which political conduct of the kind I have mentioned forms "the seamy side." No doubt from some points of view modern monarchical government of the German type, resting upon iDublic opinion as much as the democratic governments of Great and Greater Britain themselves rest upon popular support, has much to say for itself ; but looking at it from a distance we are apt to see the good side of such institu- tions and to neglect the bad. Perhaps the weakest point of democratic assemblies is to be found in the conduct of foreign ^ Pojpular Gocerumenf., by Sir H. S. Maine. Joliu Murray. i94 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN affairs, for in the case of war tliey show an amount of energy which makes up for their tendency to occasionally " hang the wrong man." I cannot but tliink tliat if English pohticians would, in foreign affairs, ask more than they do for confidence and silence their request would be granted. The conduct of foreign affairs by the Senate of the United States, although it has been extremely unpleasant to ourselves, has not been dis- advantageous to the interests of the American Union. It must be admitted that it has been from time to time inconsistent with the highest considerations of international courtesy and justice. As regards colonial legislatures, we for the most part iiear in this country only of the least laudable of their proceed- ings, and when an occasional " scene " transcends the bounds of decency it is at once telegraphed to all our newspapers as sensational news, whereas, perhaps, the humdrum proceedings of that same legislature in passing good laws and well govern- ing the colony have been unnoticed for months or even years. On the other hand, a popular autocracy is perhaps more in- clined to make war or to threaten war, with the chance of having to make it, for an insufficient reason and in an unjust cause than any democracy, and such are the gigantic evils of war that the slightest tendency in this direction is a drawback which more than equals the defects wliioh may attend the de- mocratic institutions of Greater Britain. Improve- As democracy is existent or inevitable in most countries meat. inhabited by our race, it is cheering to be able to point out that instead of its evils and its vices becoming greater as years go by, they have proved to be a lessening quantity. Victoria pre- sents, on the whole, an admirable spectacle, as do many of the other colonies ; and if the Parliament of New South Wales is given to occasional outbreaks of a painful nature there is every reason to believe that the pubUc opinion of the colony will gradually succeed in repressing the excesses of which it loudly complains. It has been seen, moreover, that while the evil of violent language and untrue aspersions is supposed to be the reason which prevents the best people in democracies from taking part in pubUc life, in New South Wales the period of Public violence has been chosen by men of a class who formerly did meu. not take part in colonial affairs for their entrance into Parlia- ment. While it must be admitted that in New South Wales and in the United States we often hear it said that the best men are not in poUtics, there is some exaggeration about this statement. Of course in countries where vast fortunes are to be made, and to be made so fast as in these new lands, many of the ablest men have no time for politics, and are devoted to money making in some form as their pursuit ; and in America the small leisured class turns with natural dislike from the still existing corruption of political affairs. On the whole, however, the Australians and, though in a less degree, the Americans have reason to be satisfied with the calibre of their leading politicians, and when it is said that the race of American states- CHAr. I COLONIAL DEMOCRACY 495 men has dwindled it should, I think, rather be contended that it has much changed, and that, while Washington and the men who succeeded to his power were country gentlemen with country gentlemen's tastes and habits, they were not superior' in the real qualities of government to the rail-splitter Lincoln. The public men of at least the younger among the British democracies across the seas have above all a high average, and the type is not a bad one. They are courteous and accessible, and not more servile to the democracy than the public men of Europe are servile either to democratic or to other masters. A good deal of nonsense has been talked and written upon these subjects, and, because some brilliant writers or considerable men of science of the English race in the new worlds have been found to hold themselves aloof from politics, conclusions have been drawn which are no more warranted than would be similar conclusions drawn in England from the opinions of Carlyle. After all, the public men of Europe are not as a rule the rivals in accomplishments of Sir Philip Sidney, and, to take another standard of comparison, if the commanding figure of Prince Bismarck is omitted, it might be contended that the public men of our leading colonies are at least on a level with the public men of the German Empire, and superior, as matters stand, to the public men of Russia. Li the colonies as in the United States the great majority of High the people believe in the wisdom and the goodness of majority standard of I'ule, and they are probably the best judges in their own case, colonial Tlie whole of the colonial governments, from the best to the '"f^- least good, give the advantages of civiUsed government in a high form. The law is almost universally respected and obeyed. The average comfort and security of the i^eople are at a singularly high level. There is order and there is justice, and the people are happy. There is complete tolera- tion of opinion, and the weak and the little have been raised in the social scale, as compared with those of Europe, with- out any wrong being inflicted upon the rich, and the many liave been benefited without driving out the few. While some even of the so-called Great Powers of the old world are suifering from many of the worst evils that can oppress peoples, the young countries of Greater Britain are those of all mankind in which the order of society seems to be the most secure and the condition of the peojDle the best. These facts are not sufiiciently recognised in the mother - country. A lecture was delivered at Toynbee Hall last November by a dis- tinguished publisher, a man remai'kable for his knowledge of men and things ; but the only reference in it to the British Empire outside of England, and to the wider jjubHc to which the works published by him must be supposed to be addressed, was contained in the following words : — " . . . then it was shipped to the colonies. Failed Tjooks like failed men, criminal books like criminal men were sent oft' to the colonies." Such a speech does more harm in Australia than half-a-dozen meetings 496 PROBLEltS OF GREATER BRITAIN of the Imperial Federation Leagaie, with the Lord Mayor in the chair, can be expected to do good. Here is a cultivated Englishman, a man who may be thought to be in advance of the great mass of his countrymen in his knowledge of the Eng- lish-speaking countries, who seems to think that convicts are transported by us to colonies, and that our daughter-countries are peopled by our failures. The ne'er-do-weels who were sent out from England to colonies, rather perhaps to get them out of the way oi their friends at home than with a real idea of improving their own position, are indeed to be pitied in finding themselves sent to countries where the average energy and courage and ability are greater than is the case at home. In all the leading colonies the British people enjoy a higher average of comfort than in the mother-country. The out-door life and the good wages have called forth the better qualities of the race ; and, if the speech that I have quoted seems to show a certain contempt for those who inhabit the daughter-lands we must not shut our eyes to the fact that the feeling may some- times be returned. Great size The colonies differ from one another in a most important of tlie ]ioint. The Australian colonies are countries having a larger Australian proportion of their population in the capital cities than is the cities. case anywhere else in the whole world. Canada, on the other hand, in this respect resembles the United States, where the cities, though large, are more on the European scale. In Greater Britain I ascribed the swelling of the cities of Australia, beyond American and Canadian or old-world relative propor- tions, to the fact that the squatter system of pastoral tenancies had kept the people from the land ; and this political fact is of course, connected with the geographical and climatic consideration that Australian land, without irrigation, is not, generally well suited to agricultural settlement. The Aus- tralians often discuss this City-question among themselves, and are of opinion that the tendency to crowd into capitals is general, and will exert its force throughout tlie world. How- ever this may be, I am concerned here chiefly with the fact and its Australian results. On the whole, it must be admitted that, while the drift of an observer's mind is almost certain to be against the desirability of the creation of capital cities con- taining a tliird of the population of the state, in Australia the good results from the overwhelming size of Melbourne and other capitals exceed the bad. It is tlie growth of capitals and not of all cities that is remarkable in Australia. In America and in Canada and New Zealand there are no great capitals ; no cities which politically take their place. Sfew York is a huge port, but there is no concentration in New York of the whole life of the American people. Montreal is not more Canada than New York is the United States ; but Melbourne is nearly half Victoria in political power, and Sydney nearly half of New South Wales. The total town population of Aus- tralia is not greater in proportion to the rural population than OHAP. I COLONIAL DEMOCRACY 497 tlie town population of Great Britain, but towns of the second order are very few. In each of our chief Australian colonies there is one centre, and not a number of commercial rivals as in Great Britain. Melbourne and Sydney are far larger in ijro- portion to their states than is London to the United Kingdom ; and there are in Australia no Glasgows, no Mancliesters, and no Liverpools. The Australians contend, as I have tried to show in dis- Change in cussing the question separately from the Melbourne and the conditions Sydney point of view, that all modern civilisation tends of town towards the creation in each state of one centre at which all life. business will be transacted, and to which will come all those who search for recreation, for cheap living upon realised gains, for the best schooling for their children, for everything except the mere raising of produce from the soil. While provisions once were dearest in the larger towns, provisions are there cheapest now, because the political and social centre is also the railroad centre, to which all commodities flow. Since statistics have shown that the rural districts keep pace with the towns, and that the great capitals are only gaining ground at the expense of their smaller rivals among the cities, it has become clear that, in the Australian colonies, the capitals are not drawing people from production, but only concentrating for purposes of business and social life those who are not directly producing with their hands. Sydney and Adelaide have respectively about 35 per cent of the population of New South Wales and South Australia ; and Melbourne, if we include its suburbs, a still greater percentage of the population of Victoria. Geelong, Ballarat, and Castlemaine are standing still so far as population goes, although rich and flourishing from the point of view of the industries of each place. The manufactures, too, are coming to the capitals, and shopping tends more and more to concentrate itself in the one centre. The cheapness of railway fares upon the State lines, of course, conduces towards this end, and it is found more agreeable for the customer to come to the capital to deal with all his tradesmen than to make his purchases in the neighbourhood of his residence. The effects of this concentration in capitals upon national character are considerable. In the mother-country we are apt to think that the crowded and insanitary homes of the working people in our cities are a necessary drawback to town life ; but in Australia the working people of the capitals have excellent houses and gardens in the suburbs, and are better off' than the dwellers in the country from most points of view. On the other hand, the population of the colony, generallv speaking, Effect on gains, from the concentration in the capitals, in education, in tlie De- power of recreation, and in many of the matters which make niocracy. life most pleasant. The effect must be a quickening of the national pulse, and is already, in fact, visible in the brightness and high intelligence of the Australian people. It may be asked whether the colonies have as yet produced Culture. 2k PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIK that literary or artistic development which we expect from populations so happy and so intelligent as those which I have described. I have already spoken of the necessary absence as yet in the colonies of a leisured class. In the eastern jjortion of the United States, which, although exposed, as are the colonies, to the literary competition of the United Kingdom, possesses a proportionately larger leisured class than do the newer Canada or Australia or the Western States, there is a more widespread literary cultivation than in any of the old countries of the world. Great results have already been achieved by people of the United States in the realms of science, although these cannot be attributed to the leisured class, and American science is more practical than ours and runs more into invention, because the rewards of invention are in America greater and more rapid. Even pure science has its students, however, in the Eastern States, as poetry is not wanting in Canada and Australia in spite of the powerful influence and competition of contemporary English literature. I have already named colony by colony the most conspicuous examples of a success in literature which is rather ignored at home than lacking in the colonies. Arcliitec- Colonial architecture, although not good, compares favour- tare, ably with that of the dwellings of the British middle class. At the same time our colonists are in this respect behind the colonists of foreign races established in their midst. The French domestic architecture of Lower Canada and the Dutch domestic architecture of South Africa are picturesque, and free from that element of meanness or vulgarity which too often characterises British architecture in all parts of the world. The fine old Dutch homesteads of the Cape, with their indis- pensable verandahs, are perfect specimens of simple archi- tecture — as perfect as are the houses of the best Flemish towns, with the additional advantage of being placed amid beautiful surroundings and shaded by magnificent old trees. The French architecture of Quebec is superior, too, to that of Canada in general ; but in Australia the opulence and comfort of the colonial Britons have helped them to create a school of architecture which is beautifying the cities day by day. Journal- It must be admitted, however, that colonial democracy and ism. the race for wealth, combined with the free importation of the literature of the mother- country and of the art of France, have caused the best writing of the colonies to be found in the pages of their newspapers, and as regards art have prolonged the duration of its infancy. I have already spoken of the wonderful development of the Australian and of the Canadian press, but in this respect, at all events, South Africa is not behind. The leaders in the two daily papers of Cape Town are distinctly above the average of the newspaper literature of Europe • and in South Africa, as in Australia, the weekly editions of the leading papers are marvels of literary production, and widely read. The number of colonial papers is as remarkable as their CHAP. I COLONIAL DEMOCRACY 499 ability and their circulation, and the Transvaal is a British colony in this respect. In the single young town of Johannes- burg, within twelve months of its foundation under Dutch rule, there were six English newspapers ; and even in Pretoria, where the British colonial element is smaller, there are several excellent English journals. It would, I am convinced, be a mistake to suppose that the Re.sem- partial absence of a literature, other than newspaper literature, blauce of in our colonies is in any degree the result of democratic the colo- institutions. M. de Tocqueville pointed out that in the United lies to the States in his day there was little art or literature, and that United many Europeans who had been struck by this fact had thought ^tates of it a result of democracy, whereas they had confused what was .°°T'''" democratic with what was only American. Time has shown V ^ ^ Tocqueville to be right, and America has been making steady progress in science and literature at least, though she has not l^rogressed as yet with equal rapidity, if we exclude the American studios of Paris, in the iield of Art. Writers who record for us, with regard to our own colonies, opinions similar to those which fell imder TocquevUle's censure are likely to prove wrong. Other observations, indeed, of Tocqueville's upon the same subject also apply as well to the colonies of to-day as to the America of his time. For example, he shows how the Americans, finding among the English, whose tongue they spoke, distinguished men of science and writers of eminence, were enabled to enjoy the treasures of the intellect without having to labour to amass them, and how the American people of his day were intellectually a portion of the English, and were merely in fact the English who happened to be out West. Tocqueville with great eloquence pointed out how democracy is likely in the long-run to favour science and literature, by enormously increasing the numbers of those who have the taste for intellectual enjoyment, as compared with those who have the ability to indulge it in aristocratic societies. At the same time he showed how in democratic communities with their active life there would be less tendency towards meditation, and how, therefore, the literary work of democratic communities would probably possess a more practical turn than that of aristocracies. It has often been remarked with what foresight — a foresight due at least as much to his habit of patient study as to natural ability — Tocqueville prophesied the future of the communities which he had seen at their daily toil, and it is remarkable to trace the degree to which his observa- tions on the America of his time fit the Australia and the Canada of our own. In a literary sense the colonies may, indeed, be said to stand Literature, now in pretty much the same position in which the United States stood in the time of Tocqueville, and America made a little later a great literary advance. Though it may still be said of the American people that their reading is not over choice, and that they are largely fed upon telegrams and 500 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part vi sensational stories, nevertheless the country has produced a powerful literary class and some literary work of the highest merit. In the colonies there is almost as much literary dependence upon England now as there was formerly in the United States ; but there is every reason to hope that the universal diffusion of reading power among the people, and the influence of free libraries, public discussion societies, and other means of rousing intellectual interests, will lead to the same good results throughout all Greater Britain which have been witnessed in the IJnited States. Wlaile in the richer among the old countries of Europe there is a larger literary class in proportion than can exist in a new country, I am disposed to doubt whether the population generally are more literary in their studies than in new countries. It is often said that the people of the colonies are superficial in their tastes, that they like a smattering of literature of an easy type, and a smattering of science, but do not read deeply ; but I doubt myself whether a careful examination of the statistics of English Free Libraries would show the existence of a better state of things among ourselves. There are, naturally and necessarily, more people with leisure, and more people of the highest cultivation, in proportion to the numbers of the population here than can be the case in the younger countries, and that is all. Olive Schreiner among novelists and for the Cape, Heni-y Kendall among poets and for Australia, not to speak of statisticians, and of the political essayists of Canada, form the first of a future race of colonial writers ; while Marcus Clarke and Brunton Stephens of the British-born colonists may be counted as colonial as the colonists themselves, and equally precursors of the colonial literature of the future. Although Adam Lindsay Gordon killed himself, and Marcus Clarke died in poverty, and Kendall had little better fate, it may, I think, be safely predicted that the day will come when colonial literature will hold its own with the literature of the mother-country, and letters form an acknowledged and sufficient colonial career. The colonists are no more likely to be content with inferior work in literature and art than they are in other matters, hx their newspaper press they expect and obtain, as I have shown, the best. Their universities are remarkable ; the organisation of secondary instruction admirable ; their railway material upon the State Lines the most excellent perhaps in the whole world ; and although literature and art cannot be called into existence by administrative ability, because they are things of the soul and not merely things of skill, it is impossible to believe that, with their sunhght, their intelligence, their education, their cheerfulness, and their manliness and robust- ness of mind, the colonies will not fulfil the promise that is given by such a work of genius as The Story of an African Farm. Colonial I have mentioned the fact that the workmen are stronger in politics. Australia than any other class, but have also pointed out that CHAP. I COLONIAL DEMOCKACY 501 they do not often stand for the Assemblies. Although, on the other hand, the constituencies at large are favourable to and friendly towards the artisans, some few of the old school of squatters still remain who sneer about " his imperial and royal majesty the colonial working man," but generally speakmg they admit, even where they consider him a despot, that he is on the whole a beneficent despot in his political ways. In those colonies in which there is a dislike on the part of a minority, for the men in power, and a feeling that there is too low a tone in political life, as, for example, in New South Wales, the attack is rather upon what we should call the lower middle class than upon the artisans. The colonies of the United Kingdom differ indeed greatly upon this point of the standard of public life. In some of the self-governing colonies there is as high a standard of public duty as exists at home or in the rural districts of New England, while of some few others this certainly cannot be said to be the case. As the best have payment of members, and the least good till lately have not had it, and in no colony are there more than one or two workmen-members, the existence of a low parUamentary standard cannot well be ascribed to the dominance of the artisan class. In Victoria there is, I beheve, one member of the Assembly who is a working man, still earning his living or a part of it at his trade; and there is one member in a similar position in the colony of Queensland. There are in Victoria perhaps half a dozen who have earned their living with their hands and are still superintending the work of artisans as small masters, and there are about as many more who have left their trades for other employments. But, on the whole, the composition of colonial ParUaments does not greatly differ from the com- position of Parliaments in the old world. The working classes, while far more powerful in Austraha than in Great Britain, have not much more direct representation, although, in nearly- all the colonies, members of the Assemblies are paid, and in all of them candidates are relieved of the necessary expenses of elections. The trade unions have in fact been engaged m Australia as they have in the United Kingdom in minding their own business. They have interfered as Unions only in questions directly affecting labour, such as wages, houx-s of toil, the work of women and children, factory inspection to secure the health of workers, and, I must add, Protection. As a body they have naturally shown themselves favourable (as tliejr are favourable in the United Kingdom) to the principle oi the payment of members, which in the colonies they have been instrumental in carrying into law against the general opposition of the so-called Upper Houses ; but they have done it upon the principle that labour should be paid, rather than with much wish to receive direct advantage by the payment of their own men. Colonial members of Parliament are not so much in the Position of position of delegates as are members of Congress in the United members. 502 TROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part vi States, and they remain in public life for a longer pei'iod than is the case with the Congress men of America. There is in the self-governing colonies much more opportunity for men to obtain distinction through parliamentary service than is the case in the United States. Colonial Ministries are exclusively parliamentary, and this fact is perhaps the chief of those which may account for the higher standing enjoyed in most of the colonies by members of Assembly as compared with the Con- gress men of America. There are, too, much more defined personal groups in colonial politics than in those of the United States — men are more, and " the machine " less. There is no American politician dominant in Federal afi'airs in the way in which Sir John Macdonald is personally dominant in Canada and Sir Henry Parkes in New South Wales. The position in South Australia of Mr. Playford, in Victoria of Sir. Service, Mr. Gillies, and Mr. Deakin, in Queensland of Sir Thomas M°Ilwraith and Sir Samuel Griffith, in New Zealand of Sir Harry Atkinson, Sir Robert Stout, and Mr. Ballance, and at the Cape of Mr. Hofmeyr, as well as that of the Canadian and New South Wales Prime Ministers, is of a non-American type, and resembles the place that has been held in Italy in recent years by men like Minghetti, Sella, Bonghi, Crispi, Cairoli, and Depretis, rather than anything in United States alfairs. Electoral It has been seen that the political peculiarities of our colonies and par- concern chiefly the points in which it may reasonably be expected liamentaiy that we in England shall soon follow their example. The secret peculiar- ballot was once an Australian peculiarity, and the closure a ities. peculiarity of South Australia, but both have been followed very closely by ourselves. Payment of members, sometimes of one only and sometimes of both Houses, all but universal in our self-governing colonies, is so widely spread throughout the constitutional world that we in the United Kingdom are ourselves becoming peculiar among nations in not adopting it, and in this matter, too, we shall probably follow Canadian and Australian and South African example. The most remarkable peculiarity which attends payment of members lies in the adoption by the Cape of the principle that members of either House who live more than fifteen miles from the seat of Parlia- ment are paid fifteen shillings a day in addition to the guinea paid to those resident within that distance, who are popularly called " Cape Cockneys." The tendency in South Africa is to raise the pay of members, because since the Transvaal has become rich it has been liberal to its Volksraad, one member of which declared in his place tliat, looking to the fact that he had to swim a river to come to Parliament, his constituency did not " expect him to get drowned in his old age for thirty shillings a day." Payment of It may be noted in this respect that not only are the senators colonial and deputies elected by Frencli colonies, to sit in the French representa- Parliament, paid as such out of French national funds, but that tives in the same men are also paid by their own colonies, at very France. CHAP. I COLONIAL DEMOCRACY 503 varying rates, as representatives of the colonies on the Coiueii supeneiir des Colonies, a fact which will be found explained in much detail m Dislere's Traite de Ler/islation coloniale, a book which has no parallel in English literature. The wide extension of the suffrage in the self-governing Suffrage, colonies is unaccompanied by any features which distinguish it from the ordinary democratic constitutions of the modern world. With the exception of the New Zealand case, colonial majorities have not as yet appeared to attach much importance to the principle of " one man one vote." In Canada and many other colonies all elections are held on the same day, a provision which makes the one-man-one-vote restriction less important than it is at home, but in Sydney the protectionists complain that the rich merchants have many votes, and in Victoiia the Liberal party are pledged to the abolition of double votes. In Canada, however, under the Dominion Franchise Acts, sons living with their fathers are enfranchised, as joint tenants are with us, where the father's property is sufficient, if divided by the number of proposed voters, to confer the franchise upon each. The latest attempt to deal fully with representation is that made in New Zealand in 1889, wliich is remarkable as confirming the principle, often laid down by Mr. Gladstone, that the sparsely-peopled rural districts deserve special atten- tion in fixing or adjusting the divisions of the electorate. A New Zealand Act of 1887, which had established the permanent commission for the adjustment of representation, to which I have alluded in my remarks upon New Zealand, had fixed the number of members, and had provided " that a nominal addition of 18 per centum shall be made to the number of the population of" special districts, generally the least peopled, in allotting members. The new Act fixed 28 per cent in place of 18 as the proportion to be added, "in comiauting for the jDurpose of this Act the population of the colony," " to the population not con- tained in any city, borough, or town district which contains a population of over 2000." The New Zealand Acts of 1887 and 1889 show that the colony is not too proud to follow the example of the mother-country in some points, for the instructions to the commissioners are based upon those which were prepared, at the Local Government Board, at the time of the Eedistribu- tion Bill, for Sir John Lambert, Sir Francis Sandford, and the other gentlemen who admirably performed the duties laid upon them. The one-man-one-vote provision of the New Zealand law is contained in a short clause which simply provides that " no elector shall at any election of members of the House of Kepresentatives vote in respect of more than one electorate," while the next clause allows a question upon the subject to be put, and a third clause imposes a penalty of £50 for any offence under the Act — words which cover voting in more than one district. No British colonies have shown much favour for cumulative, limited, personal, or proportional rei^resentation. New Zealand rejected such plans when proposed hj the Prime 504 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Minister (although, as we shall see, the cumulative vote exists in New Zealand in the election of Education Boards), and in the other colonies they are seldom named. In New Zealand the cities of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin, have three members each; but the voters vote for three, and there is no plan for preferential voting. Miuority The bulky work upon minority representation which is reisreseuta- published in France names several British colonies as having tiou. some form of the system, but the information of the authors is not brought up to date. They state, for example, that in South Australia the representation of minorities has existed since a time earlier than the date of my own birth; and as a matter of fact it was tried there in 1840, but the experiment was not repeated. In Malta it has only very recently been abolished, and in the Cape it still exists. The cumulative vote for the Upper House at the Cape was approved by Lord Grey in 1850, and brought into force in 1853 ; and was applied also to the election of members of the Assembly for the city of Cape Town. Kimberley returns four members (as Cape Town returns four members) to tlie Assembly by the Act of 1882, but cumu- lative voting has not been introduced in the Kimberley case. Although minority representation has so long existed in the Cape, it has no special popularity there, and very possibly may fail in the future to be maintained. Upper Colonial Upper Houses, whether nominated by the Crown, Houses. as in New South Wales, the Dominion of Canada, New Zealand, Queensland, Newfoundland, and Quebec, or elected, as in Vic- toria, South Australia, Tasmania, the Cape, and Prince Edward Island, are weak. Western Australia, which will probably enter upon responsible government in 1891 with a nominated Upper House, will receive an elective Upper House at the end of six years or when its population reaches 60,000, as the option left to the colony will undoubtedly be exercised. Some of the Canadian Provinces — such as Ontario, the chief of them — have, as has been seen, but a single Chamber, while some possess Upper Houses, constructed on all possible systems — election, nomination for life, and nomination for a term of years. In New South Wales the Upper House is threatened by the Prime Minister, Sir Henry Partes, although he finds it prudent to explain that what he has said of it was only " an ejaculation." In Cape Colony, in spite of _ the dignity conferred upon the Upper Hou.se by the provision that its deliberations are presided over by the Cliief Justice of the colony, and in spite also of the fact that the Ministers can speak in the Upper House even if members of tlie Lower, the Legislative Council is not of much account, and few politicians of import- ance seek election to it. In tlie Molteno Ministry and the succeeding administration, which lasted between them from 1872 to 1881, only one Minister in each was a member of the Legislative (jouncil, all the others being members of the House of Assembly. In the Scanlen Ministry, when it was first formed, CHAP. I COLONIAL DEMOCRACY 505 there was again one member of the Upper House, and on liis retirement in the last days of the Government he was succeeded by a member of the Assembly. In the existing Administration at the Cape there is likewise one member who sits in the Legislative Council. In the Dominion of Canada the weakness of the Senate is illustrated by the fact that out of the fifteen members of the present Canadian Cabinet only two represent the Government in the Senate, Nomination by the Crown, which means nomination by the Government of the day, tends of course, as Dr. Bourinot has shown, when one party has been long in office, to fill the Senate with men not acceptable to the whole people, and the representative character of that body greatly suiters. In Victoria the colonists have not yet got over their satisfaction at replacing their nominated Upper House by an elective body, and they assert that the new Council is infinitely less harmful than the old ; but the new body is not strong, and it is difficult to disfcover what useful purpose it serves. Manitoba put an end to its Upper House by " an Act to diminish the expenses of the Legislature," passed " by and with the consent of the Legislative Council " which the Act abolished. The tendency in the colonies which still possess nominated Upper Houses is to follow the example of Victoria and change them for councils subject to election, but in some cases there is a belief that elected Councils may assume that, also deriving their authority from the people, they are the equal of the Assem- blies, and not so much bound to give way to the other Chamber as is the case with the House of Lords or with nominated bodies. South Australia has found, as has been seen, the means to pre- vent the deadlocks which would occur if elective Legislative Councils were generally to take a lofty view of their constitu- tional rights. The late Attorney-General of South Australia spoke once, somewhat proudly, at a meeting of the Federal Council of Australasia, of "the facilities which exist (in our province) for making the second branch of the legislature amenable to the popular wiU " ; and there can be little doubt that, when a federal Parliament comes to be constituted for Australia, South Australia will propose the application of its genal dissolution clause to the new Senate or Upper House, olonial statesmen and parties are not agreed as to the rights of colonial Upper Houses, the Liberals generally asserting, and the Conseiwatives denying, as in France, the right of the Lower House to the exclusive control of the public funds. The Liberals hold, as Sir Henry Parkes has put it, and as Sir Graham Berry used to maintain in Victoria until the Victorian Upper House gave way, that the parliamentary institutions of the mother- country have descended to the colonies, and that, in accordance with the principles which guide the action of Lords and Com- mons respectively, the Councils have no right to interfere with the Assemblies as regards money Bills. Where there exist, as in some cases, Constitution Acts which contain clauses appar- 506 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN I'AM V[ eiitly empowering tlie Councils to amend money Bills, the Liberals seem to suggest that they should be interpreted by imperial practice and precedent. Disputes between the Houses, however, generally end, like disputes in the mother-country, by the Upper House giving way, with more or less ill grace, without any theoretical settlement being reached of the con- stitutional questions involved. The Ee- In some points our colonies are not leading the way, and we ferendum. must turn to Switzerland to see where lies the probable future of democracy. The colonies as a rule have Upper Houses, with which they quarrel, but which they do not destroy ; and in none of them does there exist a sign as yet of the adoption of the Eeferendum. In Switzerland we learn that the future of democratic government will probably take the direction of the creation of small single Chambers, before which the Ministries and the constituencies will possess equal power of initiating legislation, and which will amend the Bills, after which they wUl be referred to popular vote in a plebiscite of " Yes or No ? Shall the Bills as amended pass?" In sjDite of the rapidly increasing use of the Referendum, not only in Switzerland but also in the United States, and of the growing popularity of the idea in France, no one of our colonies has as yet made trial of either the Referendum or the Initiative. I do not of course forget the imitation in Canadian railway and Uquor legislation of the principle of popular poll in districts known to us in con- nection with English local government. The term Referendum is conveniently applied to the consultation of the people of the entire State. Under the present constitution of Switzerland, as has been well shown by the late Sir Francis Adams,' the Refer- endum is a Conservative force, and has the influence which a powerful Upper House might conceivably exercise if it were cautiously inclined to resist change and impervious both to unpopularity and to the dictates of temper. No doubt since the general adoption of the Referendum the Swiss voter has become to some extent indifferent as to the choice of legislators ; but this indifference rather tends to continue the old men in their positions than to lower the quality of the supply, and from a Consei-vative point of view the institution of the Refer- endum in new countries would seem to be a wiser provision than the creation of weak Upper Houses. Switzerland, indeed, being a federal State, can enjoy the luxury of an Upper House like that of the United States, which has a real basis for its existence in the Cantonal or State system ; but Canada, which might have formed an Upper House upon the model of the American Senate, rejected it for a weak nominated body. It is possible that one reason why Canada failed to follow American example was because the Canadian Conservatives foresaw that while they would govern the federation they might have to face a Liberal Senate ; but it is perhaps to be regretted, in the in- ' The Swiss Confederation, by Sir Francis O. Adams, K.C.M.G., C.B.,aud C. D. Cunningham. Macmillan and Co., 1889. OHAP. I COLONIAL DEMOCRACY 507 terest both of Canada and of political science, that the Dominion should have failed to make trial either of the Eeferendum or of an elective Senate representing Provinces. The Eeferendum and Initiative, with single Chambers, would appear well suited to the circumstances of the Australian states, if they are to remain virtually separate from one another upon the present system ; but if federation is brought about it is to be hoped that any Upper House which may be created for the federation may follow the American rather than the Canadian precedent. The Conservative and resisting forces of strong Upper " Social- Houses, difficult, indeed, to create except upon the federal and ism " or l^rovincial system, seem, however, to be little needed by our " State- colonies, for there is in them no such sign as is to be seen in the socialism.' mother-country of the growth of extreme views hostile to the institution of property and obnoxious to the richer classes. Revolutionary bocialism, as contrasted with State-socialism, is far stronger in Europe than in our colonies ; and if it be true that the Australian colonies, and in a less degree Canada and portions of South Africa, present us with a picture of what England will become, we shall find reason to suppose that the clianges of the next few years will be much less rapid and much less sweeping than many hope and most believe. It is in Great Britain of all the countries of the world that Revolutionary Socialistic views appear to be the most generally entertained among thoughtful people at the present time. The practical programmes put forward by moderate European Socialists are, indeed, mostly law in the Australian colonies, but the larger proposals which lie behind appear to have less chance of being entertained there than they have in the old world. The pro- gramme of the Young Democrats of the democratic republic of Switzerland contains a large number of items most of which are already the subject of legislation in Australia : the railways to be in the hands of the State, sti'ingent labour legislation to be adopted, the separation of Church and State, and so forth. But while Swiss Social Democrats put last in their programme the item which looms largest — the nationalisation of commerce and industry, and equality of the profits of labour — they doubt- less give to it the greater portion of their thought. Now in Australia such ideas have little weight. Revolutionary or democratic Socialism, in short, in Australia, in Canada, and in the United States is not popular with workmen, who largely own their houses and possess land and shares ; but, on the other hand, State-socialism advances rapidly in Australia. Wliile in Canada, as in the United States, the great body of small agricultural proprietors seem disinclined to try many of the experiments of State-socialism, in Australia the householding town democracy has no such fears. The Australian colonists feel that their governments are governments of the whole jjeople, and that the people should make fuU use of the capacity of government to do all that can be done. Mr. Goschen has described Australia as a paradise of laisser 508 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART VI Laisser Jain. Drift of colonial opinion with re- gard to Socialism. faire, but he must have been singulaily misinformed. Railways are everywliere in the hands of the State, which does not treat them as mere investments, but uses its power over them, to the full, for the comfort of the inhabitants. No one in the colonies now struggles against the State ownership of railroads, and, to those in England who think the Australians in the wrong upon this point, they answer that the reasons which we give in our books for Government carrying on post-office work apply equally to railways. They tell us that we are in the habit of arguing that if the postal service were left to private enterprise the smaller places would be without a post, or would be charged more heavily for it than the large and wealthy cities. They quote us as saying that in the towns, in which the service pays, there would, under private enterprise, be competition, with the result of duplication of servants, of offices, and of plant, involv- ing waste to the community ; and they insist that this and our other arguments about posts are true, but are equally applicable to railways. It is very generally believed in our South-Sea colonies that the future of democratic states will more and more point to the conducting of public enterprises by Govern- ment, Parliament not attempting to interfere in the details of the management, but supporting Government in selecting experts to serve as commissioners, on the principle now adopted in the railway commissions of the Australasian colonies. Just as the meetings in England of borough surveyors and of medical officers of health bring about constant improvement in sanitary machinery, so, the Australians think, conferences of the experts employed in the management of public enterprises will lead to continual improvement in the management, without that waste which is inevitable under a competitive system. Education is generally free or virtually free ; labour is more controlled than it is at home. The State interferes in agriculture, by means of bounties, and in many matters in which the advocates of laisser faire would be the first to deprecate its action ; and public works are set on foot for the benefit of the unemployed. In some colonies the Government owns the waterworks of the great towns, and in almost all it contributes liberally towards charities and hospitals. But, while State-socialism prospers in . the colonies, there remains the amazing fact — startling to all Englishmen, whether they are under the influence of the attractions of modern Socialism or whether they fear it as the terror of their dreams — that there is no Socialism, other than State-socialism, worth mentioning in the Queen's dominions outside Great Britain. The leaders of opinion in the colonies are more inclined to- wards certain sides of Socialism than are their followers. While the colonial democracy are not at all inclined to move in tlie direction of Kevolutionary Socialism, Sir Samuel Griffith of Queensland, Sir Eobert Stout of New Zealand, and some others among the leading colonial statesmen, have by speech or writing- suggested large alterations in the existing order of society. Sir oiiAP. 1 COLONIAL DEMOCRACY 609 Samuel Griifith has contributed articles on the distribution of wealth to the Centennial Magazine which are a little vague, but are suggestive of a speculative desire for sweeping change ; and I have already mentioned the tendency towards land national- isation of Sir Robert Stout and others. Among the most extreme or advanced, however, of the working people of the colonies there are few who desire that land should be uni- versally held by the community or labour organised by it for collective profit. There is no general desire apparent to transfer to the community land, mines, or factories, although a universal belief in the wisdom of the community managing railways. The change which has occurred in England from the old Eadicalism, whose last conspicuous representative among us was Professor Fawcett, and which had for its main principle the freedom of tlie individual and the restriction of State action, to the Radicalism of our day, which has strong Social- istic leanings, has not been seen in the colonies. There the old Radicalism has all along been rejpresented by the colonial Conservative party. The dominant Radicalism of the colonies stands firmly in a middle position, desiring to see the State Slay a large part, — as large perhaps relatively as it plays in ■ermany, but not inclining towards democratic Socialistic ideas in the ordinary sense of the phrase. There is in colonies like Victoria no capitalist rule, and even the Protection of Victoria comes rather from the workmen than, as in some protectionist countries, mainly from the employers ; but tliere is little desire to replace Capital by some difierent engine of production. In the colonies as in the mother-country the politicians and the electorate work by rule of thumb, and are impatient of general theories ; but, while the actual progress achieved in the direction of State-socialism in recent years has been great both in the mother-country and in the colonies, but greater in the latter, as might be expected from the openness of the field, in the realm of speculation Great Britain is more advanced than her daughter-countries, and seems more ready to inaugurate a new era for society. While the trade unions of Australia have brought about that universal eight-hour day which the Unions of England have not been strong enough to secure, the Aus- tralian unions fail to show that general feeling in favour of the nationalisation of the land which finds expression at all repre- sentative meetings of English workmen. The workmen of Australia when they express collective opinions upon public afiairs appear to attach more importance to the extension of Protection to local industries, to the representation of labour among the unpaid magistracy, to the employment of workmen as inspectors of factories, to the prevention of tlie importation of criminals, paupers, Asiatics, and labourers under contract, than they do to the Socialistic or semi-Socialistic schemes of Social Democracy ; but they support their Governments in undertaking duties which in the old world and in America are left to individuals. 510 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" National- The exception, so far as it is one, to my statement as to isation of the non-existence in our self-governing colonies of general the laiul. speculative ideas of an advanced description concerns the nationalisation of the land, a change which, as I have pointed out in the Australasian part, has advocates in the South- Sea colonies, although they are nowhere a majority. The colonial Parliaments liave never shown much desire to make the State a landlord, even when invited to do so, as in at least one case, by a colonial Government. A Land Bill brought in by Mr. Ballance in New Zealand, when he was a member of the Stout- Vogel Administration, attempted to carry into law a portion of the land nationalisation views held by Sir Robert Stout and himself, and while it gave power to the State to resume land at 10 per cent above the valuation, it also laid down the policy of leasing as against sale. A Bill for the gradual conversion of New Zealand freeholders into leaseholders under the Crown was also, I believe, suggested by Sir George Grey. A considerable portion of these proposals failed to become law, and those which were carried have since been modilied by Pai'liament. Mr. Ballance, in his speech in bringing in his Land Bill, praised the plan of perpetual leases, and prophesied that it would soon become tlie prevailing system, and afterwards in the administration of the law the present leader of the New Zealand opposition tried to enforce the adoption of his policy of discouraging the sale of land. But the Act was almost immediately on its passing altered by the New Zealand Parliament, and lands which had been " opened " for perpetual leasing were declared open for sale for cash, and holders of perpetual leases allowed to acquire freeholds. Then the Stout Government went out of office, and Sir Harry Atkinson's Government passed through Parliament in 1888 an Act embodying the old policy of sale. Existing The land systems of British North America, which have laud been described, so far as there is need to mention them, are systems, inodelled, as has been seen, uj^on the American freehold home- stead plan. In the Cape there is a curious land system which is of Dutch origin — the greater portion of the land being held of the Crown on a quitrent tenure, and a good deal "more held as leasehold under an Act of 1864, while few of the large estates are held upon a freehold tenure. In 188*7, however, a new law was introduced which expressed the latest views of the Cape Parliament, and under this a public auction system, with payment by the purchaser of one-tifth of the price within the year, and mortgage of four-fifths at 4 per cent in favour of the Government, is the plan preferred. At the same time the State is in Cape Colony a large landowner, and the quitrents form a considerable item in the public revenue, and if Government land is left derelict for five years the Government may resume possession. This land system of the Cape is peculiar in our colonies, has not been imitated, and is based on Dutcli views of lioraan law ; and in our other South African colony of Natal OHAP. I COLONIAL DEMOCRACY 611 tliere is a wliolly different system. Tlie old Dutch farmers who had entered Natal before it became a British colony were allowed farms, some of 6000, some of 2000 acres, at an annual rate of a little over half a farthing an acre, redeemable at 15 years' purchase. But, from 1848, a homestead system was adopted in favour of the immigrants, whicli was expanded when Natal became a separate colony. The jolan of a redeem- able rent was applied to the immigrants under a scheme of 1866, by which a rent of Id. per acre per annum was fixed, which was redeemable, after eight years' occupation, at 5s. an acre. Since 1880 Natal Crown lands have been sold in freehold in lots of not over 2000 acres at a price payable in ten (now twenty) annual instalments without interest, or at a different rate where the purchaser wislies to buy right out at once and receive a clear title. In the Australasian colonies, when lands were let out to pastoral tenants at low rents, it was distinctly only as a temporary arrangement, with the view of the lands being at any time withdrawn for sale ; and in all the colonies the land most suited for agricultural settlement passed gradually to free selectors of the working class. All the colonies except the Cape, and for a time New Zealand, have shown alacrity in getting rid of the freehold of their land for cash, though all of them have tried their hand at legislation intended to secure a preference to the poor man, intending to settle on the land, over the rich man, who is made to wait and buy up freeholds. If in each of the colonies a small body of men, with dis- Opiniousas tinguished leaders, have advocated nationalisation of the land, regards the in none of them — not even in New Zealand — have their views future, found general favour, probably for the reason that too large a proportion of the population are interested, as landowners, in leaving matters as they are. It has been lately stated in England that the legislature of New South Wales, by an Act of 1889, gave to the State power to expropriate owners on paying the full market value plus 10 per cent, without the necessity for special legislation in each case. Even this would have been a very different thing from proclaiming a general State ownership of land ; but in any case the statement was exaggerated, and can in fact only have referred to a Bill dealing with one metropolitan case, and enabling the Govern- ment to assume some land in front of the new Sydney Post Office, taking more land than they actually needed (for streets), which it was proposed to sell to help to repay the cost of the improvement. The principle, as was shown in the New South Wales debate, was one which had been asserted by the Imperial Parliament at least thirty years ago in the case of a corporation. Hayter's admirable Year-book gives an excellent account of the development in the Australian colonies of the existing land system, and all that I need say is that the system meets with general support, although Dr. Quick, in his history of land tenure in the colony of Victoria, quoted above, has pointed out with great force what might have been the better results of 512 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART VI Contra- dictory opinions on finan- cial ad- vantage of State ownersliiii of colonial lands. retaining the Australian public lands in the hands of the State. I have described in the chapter on Victoria the failure of Mr. Gresham and Mr. Syme, supported as tliey were by the authority of Mr. Higinbotham, to convert the Australian population to the same views as are put forward by Dr. Quick, and in these more general remarks I may add that Mr. Syme, best known as the founder of Australian Protection, might easily, had chance so willed, have made in the world the same name that has been made in later days by Mr. Henry George, Mr. Syme having put forward in most eloquent and powerful language the same principles at a much earlier date. Mr. Gresham neglected his business for the land nationalisation controversy, was compelled to support his family by manual toil, and was eventually drowned in one of the arms of Port Phillip. Mr. Higinbotham became Chief Justice ; and Mr. Syme naturally turned from the land policy in which he failed to carry the people with him to that Protection policy in which lie was completely successful. Some of the Australian trades, speaking through their Unions, have expressed, indeed, of late an opinion in favour of Mr. George's views. They have called upon the State to impose a tax which, progressing bjr degrees, shall at last take for the community the full annual unimproved rental value of all lands — that profit which arises from the natural advantages and from the demand of an increasing population to get the benefit of them. The mass of the Australian public are unwilling to admit that they have legislated on the wrong principle ; land legislation in the parent colony is still timid in the extreme, and even the boldest of Australian land reformers prefer as a rule to work through the adoption of progressive death duties, for the purpose of reducing large estates, rather than to adopt more sweeping measures. I am glad to find that so competent an observer as Dr. Dale ^ takes the same view that I do as to the unwisdom of the past Australian policy, and also as to the impossibility now of adopting an effective change of system. At the same time a different view as to the financial efi'ect of keeping colonial lands in the hands of the State is taken by some high authorities. Mr. Sutherland in an article in the Melhoume Review ^ for 1885 lias worked out the figures (which in the case of Victoria, with her admirable system of statistics, are easily accessible) that bear upon the question of the nationalisation of the land, and his calculations go to show that from the mere standpoint of pecuniary interest it would have been a matter of indiflierence in Victoria whether the State had kejat the land in its own hands or sold it to individuals. The writer argues that if that has been the result in the case of a colony whose progress has been so marvellous as that of Victoria, and has been accom- panied by gold discoveries which caused a rapid and constant increase of population, due to the influx of immigrants, in the ' Impressions of Australia, \>y E. W. Dale, LL.D. Hodder and Stough- ton, 1889. ' Melbourne Heview, Vol. X. p. 176. OHAr. I COLONIAL DEMOCRACY 513 average case a young nation would lose by entering upon a policy of nationalisation. The appearance of the article led to a controversy between the Melbourne An/us and the ]\lelbourne jLye, in which Mr. Syme's organ joined issue on the facts and conclusions of the writer of the article. Mr. Sutherland in stating the value of property had allowed 20 per cent over the assessments, and the Aaid, where the State held the land in its own hands, under periodical assessments to be made by public officers, would be as likely to be under the true value as present assessments are, and that the rentals to be received by Government should be diminished iu the calculations for this reason. The author of the Hemeto article, however, did not contend tliat Victorian figures show the undesirability of the policy of State ownership of land, but only tliat the pecuniary results of the two systems would come prettjr much to the same thing. It is seen, then, that the Ministers holding views similar to those of Jlr. Syme or of Mr. George, who have filled high office in the colonies, have not been able to give expression in legislation to their views. Little has been accomplished by laws to carry out their opinions, and it clearly would be more difficult for the colonies to retrace their course than it would have been to have retained the lands in State possession from the time of the earliest settlement. The popularity of " the Torreus Act," with regard to land transfer, is, as I have shown, in itself an evidence of the rejection of extreme land views. The simplification of the transfer of land has in town districts encouraged land speculation, while in rural districts it has greatly facilitated the settlement of freeholders upon the soil, but everywhere its adoption tells heavily against that of land nationalisation theories. While general ideas with regard to the land are unpopular Taxation, with the Australian majority there is no timidity in the South- Sea colonies with regard to taxation upon land — unpopular in Canada and South Africa. I Irave already named the land-tax of Victoria and the graduated or progressive succession duties of nearly all the Australasian colonies, of which the succession duties in New Zealand and some other colonies were adopted for the double purpose of raising money and of breaking up large estates, while the Victorian land-tax was mainly instituted for the latter purpose. It has been con- tended that although the Victorian tax has classes of exemption so constructed as to fine the large owner for the benefit of the agricultural settler, it must have failed in its intention, inasmuch as, had it succeeded, the amount due would have shown a rapid decline, whereas the tax yields an almost fixed amount. The tax, however, has led to a certain adoption of tire excellent practice of dividing properties, early in the life of the 2l 514 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN taet vi possessor, amongst his sons. Mr. Bryce has said ^ that no "legislation that is compatible with the rights of property as now understood" can "do much to restrict" the increasingly rai^id growth of fortunes in the United States ; but an expansion of those graduated or progressive death duties now almost universal in our Australian colonies would certainly have in the long-run that effect, and yet would be, to judge from Australian example, compatible with the rights of property even as now understood by us at home. In new countries the selling value of land rises so steadily by natural increment that it soon counterbalances a certain depression caused by the imposition of taxation of this kind, and capital brings in liuge returns. Progressive Although large landowners and great capitalists as a class taxation, naturally dislike graduated taxation, it cannot be said that the institution of property as such is weakened by it, or money or rich people driven from the colonies. The extreme limit which as yet has been reached by such taxation is the 13 per cent upon certain large properties in New Zealand' but this amount is borne so quietly that it is certain that a far higher rate could be sustained. The tendency of democracy in taxation lies this way. The Australians have chiefly chosen, as I think wisely, the death duties for their experiments. The Swiss have selected income-tax, and in Vaud, one of the most enlightened Cantons, there has been instituted a " progressive " lieavy income-tax in "categories," which was advocated as intended to throw an increased share of public charges on the rich, and to diminish the burdens of the poor. A pro- gressive income-tax also exists in some states of the American Union. Little sign has yet been seen of such taxation in the British colonies outside of Australasia, while in British Columbia a system of Provincial taxation has lately been introduced which combines the democratic system of the exemption from property -tax of small incomes (under the " Taxes on Property Act, 1888") with tlie antiquated expedient of a poll-tax, laid on all male residents of eighteen, and paid by emjiloyers for their workmen. Introduced in the colony of Victoria by a Minister who, though not originally a Conservative, had become known as a Conservative before he carried it, the graduated succession duty, varying from 1 per cent on small properties to 10 per cent on large (widows, childi-en, and grandchildren being subject to a reduced scale only) has worked well, bringing in a large amount of money without greater unpopiilarity than attends taxes of every kind, and it has been imitated in almost all the South-Sea colonies. A fear is felt in England that such taxation, now initiated by Mr. Goschen to the extent of 1 per cent, may tend to cause evasions of the law ; but taxation upon large fortunes is not easily evaded, because in the case of the largest the public notoriety that attends them, and the considerable ' First Edition, vol, iii. p. 667. CHAP. I COLONIAL DEMOCRACY 516 numbsr of persons who possess full knowledge of them, make it difficult to defeat the intentions of the legislature. The legal evasion caused by the division of property in lifetime is beneficial to the interests of the State, and heljis forward one of the intentions of the authors of such taxation — that of dividing- fortunes of unwieldy size into several fortunes of more manage- able dimensions. There can be little doubt that the breaking up of very large estates is, on the whole, an advantage to the community, provided it be not accompanied by a discourage- ment of the provident instinct ; and New Zealand example shows that if heavy taxation is coniined to the largest fortunes there is no discouragement of providence attendant on it. We are so accustomed in England to absolute freedom of Freedom bequest that we are apt to ignore the fact that, in all the many of bequest. countries to which the Napoleonic code aijplies, property owners are forbidden to leave the whole of their money as they please. It might with more truth be contended that rich men would be driven from France to England by the existence of such a law than that the Victorian tax of 10 per cent on large estates, or the New Zealand duty of 13 per cent, has any efi'ect in check- ing the accumulation of iDroi^erty in the colonies. Sir Piawson Kawson and Mr. Westgarth, the highest authorities upon the point, have both told us that the most striking feature in the Australian colonies, as compared with the rest of the world outside of the United States, is the unprecedented pace of growth in property. It is a somewhat curious fact that the principle of graduated Progressive taxation, which has spread rapidly in Australia, in the United taxation in States, and in Switzerland during the last twenty years, was France, adopted in parts of France under the Second Empire when it liad become almost unknown elsewhere. The i-mpot progressif had existed in France for seven yeai-s after its first introduction in 1793, and had been imitated in the house- tax of the United States for several years, beginning in 1798, but had everywhere become extinct during the long peace. In Paris and in some other cities of France, by tlie permission of the State given during the reign of Napoleon III, the house-tax, or rather rent- tax, is now once more "progressive." There is a total exemption of the lowest rents, and then six scales, rents over £40 paying vastly more in proportion than those of from £16 to £24. TJie Australian graduated or progressive taxes are likely to be extended, but as long as enormous sums of money are levied by means of customs duties in those colonies, there is not so much temptation to raise them to the highest levels possible without causing evasion, as there will be when the South-Sea colonies either adopt free trade or learn to manufacture and produce, as will be increasingly the case, the articles that they need, and combine in federation, with free intercliange of goods among themselves. The resolutions of a labour congress in favour of a single tax on land cannot have much weight so long as the same men give their votes for the advocates of Protection. 516 PROBLEMS OF GEEATER BRITAIN Colonial experi- meuts. Position of women. The experiments of the colonies in finance, like their political experiments, have a special interest for ourselves, because, unlike the jjolitical experiments of Switzerland, or tlie social experiments of Germany, they are tried among a people of our own race, and because, too, just as we have already in many matters followed Australian example, so there is reason to suppose that we are likely to follow it in others in the future. It is at least possible, for example, that, as the future of the English Liberal party may lie in the direction of that European SociaHsm which I have called Revolutionary or Democratic, the future of the English Conservative party, in the increasing- strength of Socialist opinions, may lie wholly away from the doctrines of their former opponents of tlie Manchester scliool, and iu the direction of State-socialism of the Australian type. At the same time we still give more attention in our newspapers, our reviews, and our 'books, to Continental than to colonial legislation. So complete is our ignorance with regard to colonial experiments tliat it is equalled only by the want of knowledge in tlie colonies about one another. As regards the federated colonies of Australasia the institution of the Federal Council has done something to familiarise a few statesmen witli the legislation of other colonies ; but generally speaking, Aus- tralian politicians know little of what has been done outside of their own state, and notliing about Canada or Soutli Africa, while Canadian statesmen are in a condition of blank ignor- ance about Australia. The visit to Australia of a leading Canadian politician, sent out by his Government, and tlie tours which are being made by the envoys of the Imperial Federation League, may do something to cause a better knowledge in the colonies of the general principles of colonial legislation ; and as regards the mother-country, the admirable volumes of the Colonial Institute are doing much to remove the reproacli under which we .sufter. One of our highest authorities in England upon colonial topics lately announced the adoption in Queensland of the principle of the payment of members as though it were a new thing there, when as a fact the Bill passed in 1889 merely changed the payment of two guineas a day, while the house was sitting, into a payment of a fixecl salary of £300 a year. In the chapters upon labour, upon education, and upon the liquor laws, I shall have to mention other colonial experiments (made, one would almost think, upon our behalf) in addition to those which I have already attempted to describe, and I will conclude this general chapter by briefly indicating a few other topics upon which it is necessary to note colonial example. There has been little change in Canada aild Australia in the position of women since I wrote on the matter in 1868, and tlie views stated in Greater Britain are applicable to the situation as it seems to me, with little if any change. Superior as are the Australian colonies to the United States, in some points which touch the condition of their people— similar as is Canada OHAP. I COLONIAL DEMOCRACY 517 to the United States — in the one matter of the place of women the colonies stand behind the states of the American Union, and in something like an equal position with the mother- country. The respect for women, though great, is less great in the colonies than in the United States ; the rights conferred upon them by the law are on the whole less considerable. As regards that political franchise concerning which there is doubt among themselves and in the minds of some of their best friends, they nowhere possess it, and in the colonies the question stands in about the same position as it ocouijies in the mother-country. Sir John Macdonald proposed in Canada to give the franchise to unmarried women, but, in spite of his great power and of the dominance of his party, he failed to carry his proposal, and woman's suffrage remains in Canada a mere personal opinion of the Conservative Prime Minister of the Dominion, as it is of the Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The Stout- Vogel Government in New Zealand entrusted to Mr. Ballance, the present leader of the Opposition, a woman-fran- chise Bill, which was strongly favoured by Sir Julius Vogel ; but that Bill was dropped, and in no colony has any greater actual advance been made towards woman suffrage than is the case in the mother - country, although in South Australia, Queensland, and Victoria some think the adoption of woman's suifrage close at hand, and in New South Wales the Prime Minister is as strongly favourable to the extension as are the First Ministers of Canada and of the United Kingdom. In the colonies generally, though by no means universally, women ratepayers possess the municipal and the school-board franchise, as in the mother-country, but, as in the United States, they take far less part in politics than is now the case in England. As regards legislation which bears on domestic conditions, Marriage the colonies show themselves favourable to marriage with a and deceased wife's sister, and, at the suggestion of Sir Alfred diTorce. Stephen, New South Wales proposed to place women upon equal terms with men in the law of divorce, although the measure, which also in other respects enlarges facilities for divorce, has hitherto been vetoed by the Government at home. Victoria has now jjassed a somewhat similar measure. The disallowal of Sir Alfred Stephen's Bill is, of course, lawful. The Colo- because the Colonial Office can technically justify the veto or nial Office suspension of any measure ; but it appears to me to have been veto, unconstitutional. The object of the veto, and the whole inten- tion in reserving Bills for the consideration of the Imperial Government, have been frequently explained by constitutional writers. Governors when they forward Bills that they have reserved give their reasons for reserving them. Now the grounds for reserving Bills and for their ultimate disallowance, as stated by the constitutional authorities, are the possibility of their conflicting with Imperial interests, or their being beyond the legislative powers of dependencies. There is no higher authority upon the subject than Dr. Bourinot, and he, quoting 518 PEOBLEMS OF GEEATER BEITAIN Sir Alfred Stephen, aud other iudepeud- ent Aus- traliau statesmen. the settled opinion of great authorities, declares that ''only wlieu the obligations of the Empire to a foreign power are afi'ected or an Imperial statute is infringed, in matters on which the Canadian Parliament has not full jurisdiction, is the supreme authority of England likely to be exercised." Another weighty Canadian authority, Mr. Blake, put the claim of the colonies still higher, for he declared that the mother-country can interfere " only in instances in which, owing to the exist- ence of substantial Imperial as distinguished from Canadian interests, it is considered that full freedom of action is not vested in the Canadian people." It certainly seems to me that these principles are as applicable to New South Wales as they are to Canada, and that the right course for the Secretary of State, if he did not like Sir Alfred Stephen's Bill, was to make the reply which was made by one of his predecessors when the colonies began to adopt Protection, namely, that, however much the Government might regret the proposed legislation, they did not feel justified in opposing the wishes of the people. Sir Alfred Stephen has performed in his old age many legis- lative services for his colony, and in Victoria Mr. Service, as he grows old, is also becoming known as a safe and cautious proposer of improved legislation, carrying out, for example, in Victorian law principles, admirably laid down for us in a Bill drawn by Sir James Stephen, which the Parliament of the United King- dom cannot find time to pass. The colonial experiments in the field of labour may, however, possess a more immediate interest for readers than topics connected with the science of juris- prudence. CHAPTEK II LABOUE, PROVIDENT SOCIETIES, AND THE POOK The position of the trade unions in the colonies is of much interest Power of to us in Great Britain, inasmuch as they are partly branches of the Unions British unions, and wholly modelled upon the English system. i° ^^^ The Australian unions have, however, reached a power as yet i^oloni^s. unattained by those at home, tlirough the exercise of which they have been successful in fixing the length of the working day, and in a lesser but still considerable degree able to settle the price of labour. The bugbear of the colonial workman is cheap English, Indian, or foreign labour, and the terror of being dragged down from the high position in the scale of comfort which he now occupies to the lower level of the French or Belgian or German labourer. In Australasia he fights for a life of comfort and well-earned partial leisure against a life of mere existence. In trade matters as in politics the workman's power in Australia is exercised, upon the whole, with discretion and restraint. He is able to paralyse the commerce of the con- tinent, and he has not done so ; and where instances may be given — as, for example, in the boycotting of steamship com- panies which employ Lascars or Chinese — of something like abuse of power, it has not been altogether without excuse. The trade unions of Australia are bound together in a com- pact federation, and are in the habit of supporting strikes out- side the particular colony of the subscribers. When the coal- miners of New South Wales struck two years ago for an increase of wages they received considerable contributions from the trades of Melbourne. When the " lumpers " struck against the interference of the English mail steamers in the intercolonial shipping trade the lumpers in Victoria, South Australia, and New Soutli Wales went almost simultaneously on strike. It was therefore no new principle wliich was asserted when the Melbourne Trades supported the "dockers'" strike of 1889 in London, but what was remarkable in this case was the extent to which the general public of Australia backed up the Trades. In the Australasian colonies the eight-hour day 2Jrevails, and Hours of is all but universal, as is in the towns of South Africa the nine- labour in hour day as far as European labour is concerned, wliile Canada Australia, is in this respect perhaps slightly behind even the United 520 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN States — a country itself on the wliole behind our Australian and South African colonies as regards hours of labour. The eight-hour day of Australia is not only all but complete, but has tlie full approbation of the whole community; and when the great procession of Demonstration Day — the Lord Mayor's Show of the Australian colonies — annually in each colony records the triumph of the workmen, and tlie banners and trophies of the trades pass through the streets surrounded by thousands of well - clad, well - nourished men, there are few Australians who do not rejoice at the evidence aflForded of the strength and prosperity of the colonial workmen. Eight-hour Bills have lately laeen proposed in several colonies. In South Australia one was carried on its second reading in October 1889, as I have said, by a majority of one vote, but made only slow progress in Committee before the end of the Session. In Queensland a similar Bill was introduced by Sir Samuel Griffith, and was defeated in the Upper House by twelve votes to two after it had passed through the Assembly, but was thrown out chiefly upon the ground that it was not needed. Effect of In the Australian colonies it is customary to insert in many the eight- public Bills dealing with works to be carried out by Govern- hour day ment a provision that the hours of labour shall not exceed in Aus- eight. In Victoria the Government employs a great number tralia. of men in public works, such as railways, and their hours are fixed by Act of Parliament; and in some private Bills, such, for example, as Tramway Bills, clauses fixing the day's work at eight hours have been inserted in the Assembly. The eight- hour day is so universal in Australia that these clauses are not really needed, as the workmen had forced the complete carrying out of the principle before the custom of inserting them arose. The effect of the eight-hour day, according to general admission, lias been found as satisfactory throughout Australasia as in Victoria. So far as Australian example can bear upon the English labour problem it appears to be favourable to the attemi^t to gradually introduce the eight-houi' day in the contracts of the State and of municipalities, and even to give to it the force of a general law in the case of those trades to which it would be most easily applied. It has been pointed out by the writer ^ who has given the greatest attention to the discussion of the subject that the economic objections which are now brought against the regulation of adult labour by law are the same as those which were directed against the factory legislation of this country when first proposed, and that English Economists who wrote before 1850 opposed the English Factory Acts, while all who have written since 1855 have supported them. In Australia great importance is attached by tlie public to what are called " the enlarged social opportunities " of the working classes conferred by the short hours, and the same feeling is beginning to have a powerful influence in Canada. ' WeaUh and Progress, Ijy George Guiiton. MacmiUan and Co., ISSS. CHAP. 11 LABOUR 521 Tlie Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital lu Canada, which has lately sat in that country, and -which I named in my chapter upon the Dominion, in a " First Report," signed by five members including the chairman, recommends that all Government contracts should stipulate that the daily hours of labour under them should not exceed nine; and in the " Second Report,'' signed by the remaining eight members, " it is urged that the Government aid the movement for shorter hours by stii:)ulating in every contract for work entered into with it that the contractor shall not employ his hands for a longer jDeriod than nine hours per day." Thus the Commission, which was one of high autliority, was unanimous in recommend- ing a nine-hour day in all Government contracts, and it was foreseen that the example of Government would be followed by all municipalities. Now the parliamentary influence of the operatives in Canada is less than is the case in Australia. There is one miner in the Nova Scotia Assembly who is, however, returned mainly as a " Nova Scotia First " man and as an advocate of separation from the Upper Provinces on account of the protectionist policy of the Dominion. There is one miner in the British Columbia Assembly ; and in the Ontario House one member who was returned as a labour reformer, and who is I believe a working mason, though he has been also a captain of volunteer miUtia : the latter member represents the imi^ortant constituency of Lincoln (which contains the Canadian Niagara), and was returned by a narrow majority on a large vote. But, while the workmen are even weaker in the various Legislative Assemblies of the Provinces and in tlie House of Commons of the Dominion than they are in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom or in the Parliaments of Australasia, and less influential, they yet appear likely to shortly secure that model statutory working day as regards Government contracts which tliey have not yet obtained at home. In Australia the effect of the eight-hour and in the Cape of Results, the nine-hour day is socially Conservative, that is to say, the Arbitra- comfort conferred by it upon the working classes prevents tion- agitation for revolutionary change. The tact and wisdom dis- played by the Trades Council of Melbourne have been immense, and the Employers' Union of Melbourne has been able repeatedly, in circumstances of considerable danger, to meet its representatives and settle matters by arbitration, with the effect of preventing strikes. In Canada the arbitration pro- visions rest not on custom but upon law. In Lower Canada the drift of opinion is towards tlie French system of com- l^ulsory arbitration, upon the application of one party to the dispute, witli a judgment by a Council which lias the force of law. In Ontario there is a Trades Arbitration Act which has been on tlie Statute-book for some years, but it has never been made use of, as one section jsrovides that the Boards under the Act shall not interfere with the rate of wages or jirice of labour, tliis section, in the opinion of the Commissioners who signed 522 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PAllT VI American opinion on the posi- tion of labour in Austr.ilia. Wages. Cost of living. the Second Kepovt, rendering it useless. Tlie Ontario Act proceeds upon the Victorian system of the formation of Boards of Arbitration, partly elected by employers and partly by men, under chairmen unconnected with trade, who have power to call witnesses. The American Government lately sent a Commissioner to Australasia to report upon the condition of labour in our colonies, and it is interesting to note the fact, which shows that others are more alive than we are to the value of Australian experiments, that would indeed be more useful to ourselves than to America. The United States Commissioner points out to his Government that, while the great majority of the trades in Australia work forty -eight hours a week, the bricklayers and masons of Victoria work only forty-live, and that the carpenters are likely to secure a reduction of hours to that number. He shows that the two great English societies of the Amalgamated Engineers and the Carpenters and Joiners have branches in Australia and allow benefits to their members, but that most of the Australian unions are not benefit societies, and are founded purely for the protection and security of trade interests. The rate of wages is, of course, higli in the colonies generally, and specially high in Australasia. It has been computed that Melbourne employers have to pay 100 per cent more wages for 20 per cent less time than is the case in England ; but never- theless the price of many articles produced only averages, according to British Government returns, about 20 per cent higher than in England. It is difficult to see how, unless colonial labour is more effective than British labour, goods should be produced in the colonies at only 20 per cent in excess of British prices, although the skilled workmen get nearly double the wages for a shorter day that the same class of men obtain in Scotland or in England. In South Africa there is no unskilled white labour, but the wages of the artisans are on the Australian scale. The wages of labour in the South African colonies have, however, been raised of late by the rush to the Transvaal gold-fields. In Canada wages are somewhat lower than in the South African and Australasian colonies. American rates are higher than those which exist in Canada or in our other colonies,! but the cost of living is much less in the colonies than in the United States, and a careful examination of the figures goes to show that there is an inflation of all prices in America, which makes the real wages much less tlian the nominal. In Australia this is not the case. Some articles indeed are dear throughout the colonies, and house rent is high, though for good accommodation ; meat is cheap, as well as some other forms of food ; and the cost of living cannot be said, on the whole, to be much greater than in England. Those who desire to pursue the subject of the cost of living in the colonies will find much information in the circulars now 1 Cliisholm's Handbook of Commercial Qeography. Longmans, 1889. OHAP. II LABOUR 523 issued by tlie Emigrants' Information OfHoe in London. The only marked exception, other than that of the United States, to the rule that in the districts to ■which British emigrants resort the rate of wages is, generally speaking, about double that of the United Kingdom, for shorter hours, and the purchasing power of money only slightly inferior, is afforded by the condi- tion of the Transvaal gold-fields, which are riglitly classed for tliis purpose with the British colonies, though situate on the terri- tory of a foreign state. With regard to the Transvaal exception, it should be borne in mind that there are no large centres of population in the interior of South Africa except the capitals of the diamond-fields and of the gold-fields — Kimberley and Johannesburg : while there is not only dark-skinned unskilled labour throughout South Africa, but also a certain amount of dark-skinned skilled labour — the Dutch-speaking Malays at the Cape, and the East Indians, who spread westward from Natal. Kimberley and Johannesburg are abnormal in their condition, being the only large, fast-growing cities, the growth of which is not helped by their being railroad centres, and Johannesburg is not even served by a railway system. Building is going on at Johannesburg with lightning speed, but as everything has to be brought in by wagon, and as each wagon is drawn by from a. dozen to eighteen oxen, the cost of all articles is great. It is the place of the whole world where skilled artisans at this moment can make the highest wages, and meat is cheap ; but all luxuries stand at an enormous price, and if the artisan drinks or smokes, or prefers a dear good lodging to a less dear bad one, it is difficult for him to save. The result of the rush to Johannesburg has been to cause a certain demand for skilled artisans in Natal, and for a time to raise the rate of wages there, the nominal rate of wages in Johannesburg being vastly higher, but the cost of comfortable living far greater, than in Natal. The normal condition of the colonial working man as regards the cost of Uving is represented by the settled parts of the Australian continent, where rent is a little higher, and clothes are 20 per cent dearer, than in England, but food con- siderably cheaper. There are in Melbourne a great number of " Sixpenny Eestaurants," giving to the working man what we should call a good middle-class meal for that price. Skilled artisans in Australia commonly pay from 12s. to 14s. Houserent. a week for house rent, obtaining for this a small house to them- selves. Besides the saving upon some kinds of food, there is a saving as compared with England upon fuel in consequence of the warmer climate. Many artisans are willing to pay 16s. to 18s. a week for rent, while some pay as much as 20s. The men who have been a long time in the colony have generally saved enough money to buy an allotment, for which they commonly pay £100. On this they build a cottage for some £300, through the assistance of a building society, and become the owners of their liouse in from eight to twelve years, at the end of which they find themselves in possession of property which is often 524 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part vi worth from £100 to £150 more than it was when they began their payments. Many artisans, in from ten to twelve years from the time of their marriage and settling down as house- holders, are possessors of a freehold house and garden of from five to seven hundred pounds value, and there are whole suburbs of Melbourne which are inhabited by these working- men proprietors. Their cottages are neat, and the interiors show a great deal of taste, while the state of the gardens bears evidence of horticultural skill. It may be said that half the people of Melbourne live in houses of their own, and that more than half the working people of that city are proprietors of house and land. It need hardly be pointed out that when men have in this way for ten or twelve years schooled them- selves in thrift, and find themselves, though still in the prime of life, relieved of the necessity of paying rent, the process of accumulation of capital by working men must be rapid, and the drift of opinion among the Australian artisans in favour of out- and-out proprietorship in the soil is explained. The universal feeling is that it is better to pay two or three shillings a week more in youth than need be paid for rent in order that the question placarded upon the walls by the building societies — " Why pay rent ? " — may be solved long before a man is forty. Board. Considering what a high rent tliose who cater to the wants of the colonial workman have to pay, the extraordinary development of the cheap restaurants that I have named is in itself a remarkable testimony to the lowness of the average price of food. There is one restaurant at Melbourne whicli does no trade whatever except in 6d. meals, and at this some twenty male servants are employed. The proprietor seems to have made his fortune, for he has three sons who have passed through the university and have been brought up as medical men and have travelled in Europe before settling down. There are in Melbourne a dozen such restaurants on this scale, and innumerable small ones. So good a meal cannot be obtained in England for the same price as in Victoria, although the land- lord's rent is higher in the colonies, and although he has to pay double as much to his servants as he would pay at home, Ijesides incurring extra cost for gas and coal for cooking. The unmarried artisan in Sydney and in Melbourne often boards in families, obtaining board and lodging at 15s. a week. The youthful artisan who receives 48s. a week and payslSs. for laoard and lodging with his margin of 33s. can easily save a pound or more per week, and in some six years will find him- self jjossessed of savings which, with tlie interest on his small investments, will amount to some £350, upon which to start married life. This great preponderance of average earnings over average exi^enditure is, of course, tlie main cause of the development of material wealth in the colonies. Rents in In British North America the material condition of the Canada, workino- classes is nothing like so good as in Australia, althougli it has considerably improved since confederation. OHAP. II LABOUR 525 Wages have risen; liours of labour have been reduced ; and tlie necessaries of life are on the wliole, with the exception of rents, lower than they were before. The cost of dwelling-houses has, however, increased in the larger cities, as has been seen, to sucli an extent as to somewhat counterbalance the other advantages. At Toronto the rents average more tlian a, quarter of tlie income. In Montreal rents are even higher, while in Quebec, where wages as a rule are lower, the proportion taten tor the rent is on the average but a iifth. At St. John, New Brunswick, we have the same state of things as in Quebec, while the condi- tion of Halifax more closely resembles tliat prevalent in the cities of Ontario. House rent throughout the towns of the Dominion appears to be increasing more rapidly than wages. In Toronto there lias been a rise of from 30 to 40 per cent in house rent in the workmen's districts in the last ten years. The condition of the workmen's dwellings of Toronto and Montreal is inferior as regards building to that which is found in the cities of Australia, although the hot climate of Australia leads, unless great care is taken, to an equal amount of infantile mortality, likely now to be checked in Melbourne by the improved ad- ministration introduced by a Victorian Act of 1889. In the mining districts of Canada the land in the neighboui'hood of the mines commonly belongs to the mine owners, and it is the practice of the comjianies to build log shanties for their men. These are run up for between £40 and £80, and the rents vary from £3 : 10s. to £10 a year. In the great commercial centres of Ontario complaints are heard of the undue rise of rents owing to urban and suburban jjroperty being in the hands of large landowners, and legislation with regard to unearned increment, or for fixing judicial rents, has been suggested. But the pressure of rent upon wages will have to become more widely felt in the Dominion before pubbc interest is fixed upon the matter. Dr. Dale has argued in his book ujion Australia that, Perman- although the colonial working man has shorter hours, better ence of wages, and cheaper food than his British fellow-subjects, and liigli wages in some of the colonies enjoys also the advantages for liis ™ t^"^. children of a perfect system of free schools, and of a glorious Colonies, climate, it will be difficult for him to prevent wages from gradually sinking to the European level. There is, however, no sign as yet of such reduction. Protection appears to com- pensate the Australian and Canadian manufacturer for the higher wages that he pays, and if it does so at the expense of the colonial consumer, the difi'erenoe in the cost of the articles produced does not seem to exceed 20 to 25 per cent, or to be found ruinous by the community. Dr. Dale is of opinion that if Australia is ever to become a rival of Europe in manufactures her people must be willing to live upon European wages ; but there is no sign of any such desire to beat Great Britain and Belgium in tiieir best markets, and the protectionist workmen of Australia generally limit their ideas on the export of manu- 526 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt vi factures to the Australian colonies. The other scheme for the future life of Australia, which would be afforded by the Australian artisans becoming directors of the cheap labour of the Oiinese or of the dark-skinned races, appears, from wliat has been seen in Queensland, to have been definitely rejected by the opinion of the workmen themselves. Co-oper.i- Just as there is in the colonies little or no Revolutionary tion. Sooialism_ of tlie European type, so also there is as yet little co-operative manufacture — far less than in the mother-country or in the United States. There are, as has been seen, co- operative gold-mines and sugar-mills in Queensland, and there are co-operative stores in Montreal, Toronto, and Melbourne : in Melbourne and Toronto upon tlie Piochdale plan ; while the Montreal stores are, I fancy, only similar to the Civil Service stores of London. After all that has been written by Mr. Mill, Mr. Fawcett and others as to the development of co-operation, and after the remarkable success that the principle has already met with in some pai'ts of Great Britain, it is curious to find that the reports of co-operators from Canada, from Australia, and I from South Africa are all alike discouraging. Wliile tlie British Minister at Washington has forwarded to our Govei-n- ment a memorandum with regard to American co-operation to the effect that American opinion declares that " only a slow- thinking, penny-counting, frugal, and painstaking people could bring co-operation to a success," and that " the average American has thought it beneath him to consider the details of dimes " ; in the colonies the success of co-operation is alto- § ether behind even that wliich it has met with in the United tates. The consul at Philadelphia has told us that "profit- sharing" does not deeply interest the American worl^:ing man ; that " superior individual qualifications, personal ambition, and recognised inordinate desire for immense wealth . . . stand in the way of extended co-operation " ; and that co-operation in the United States is " far distant as an established institution." In the colonies it seems more distant still, for it has hardly been brought yet to the birth. From Australia the co-operators report that "the working class are well paid, and don't yet value the small addition to their income which a co-operative expenditure creates. They could more easily raise funds for self-employment than their class at home, but they are more political and trade union, in which their time, energy, and savings are spent." Another report declares that " every one here came out with the intention of doing something for him- self, having less thought of aiding others than co-operators generally have at home. . . . The workers earn double the wages here that they would at home, and yet only work eight Iiours a day. The result is that they spend more in all kinds of enjoy- ment. . . . They are rather too well off' to value the small sums (as they thinlc them) which the co-operative store brings." It will be seen that the future of labour in Australia cloes not seem to lie this way. At the same time a platonic declaration CHAP. II LABOUR 527 in favour of co-operation was carried at the last intercolonial trade union congress, which also declared its support for the Single Tax advocated by Mr. George, though in practice the members when at their homes mostly give their votes to the protectionists. If in all that bears upon co-operation the colonies are behind- Factory hand, the reverse is the case with regard to factory legislation ; inspection and it may he said generally that tne colonies possess legisla- anrl tion equal or superior to our own as regards factory inspection, sweating, with the addition in some cases of a pi'ovision against " sweat- ing," in wliich we are likely to follow their example. The Victorian sweating clauses provide that every occupier of a factory or workroom who has work done for him outside shall keep a correct record of the work and of the people who do it, and their addresses, for the information of the inspectors, and it is the opinion of some of the most skilled inspectors in the mother-country that such a provision would be useful here. The chief clause was drawn by Mr. Deakin, but it was greatly weakened by words put into a following clause, while the Bill was before the Legislative Council, in which the influence of the employers was exerted to prevent pubhcation of the infor- mation, and to give them the virtual option of refusing it. The Victorian chief-inspector, in his report published in 1889, states that there is little sweating in the colony among women and children, as the demand for their labour is in excess of the supply, and no woman would work longer hours and for less pay in one place than she need in another. At the same time he admits that when liis inspectors have to investigate anonymous complaints about women being employed more than forty-eight hours a week, nothing can be found out. " The statement is denied by the employer," and although the girls are asked to state their grievances, "they j^reserve a stolid silence, or appear to endorse what their employer says. . . . The girls have a great objection to go into Court. To takc! them there against their will would be to have unwilling- witnesses. However, if all the complaints made are correct, they will only amount to a few hours' overwork in occasional weeks, for which the hands are . . . paid." There is in several of our colonies legislation founded on the Truck. EngUsh Truck Acts, but as a general rule, except, as we have seen, in Newfoundland, the condition of the white-skinned workman is such as to preclude all risk of abuse connected with the payment of wages in igoods. In South Africa, how- ever, Kafirs are employed who used to be almost entirely paid in kind, and the truck legislation of Cape Colony is nominally or really intended to protect the Kafirs employed in the diamond-mines, who are not only housed by their employers, but practically imprisoned by them to prevent diamond stealing. The diamond industry of the Cape has created a, special crime — that of illicit diamond buying — and a special class of wealthy criminals the " I. D. Bs " ; and to prevent the 528 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt vi tlieft of stones by tlie natives, who are tempted by large bribes to secrete them, the workmen are hired for several months, during which they are kept in close confinement in barracks attached to the mines, never being allowed to pass the limits during the period of their engagement. The " compounds " contain stores to supply the coloured workman's wants, but the Labourers' Wages Act now prohibits the payment of wages in goods, partly perhaps for the protection of the traders against the mining companies. Chinese. fhe point affecting labour upon which colonial workmen in Australasia and in part of the Canadian Dominion feel most strongly, and upon wliich they are the most thoroughly agreed, concerns the competition of the Chinese. As far back as 1854 Sir Charles Hotham, tlie second Governor of Victoria, after a tour round the gold-fields, reported to the liome Government that he thought the introduction of the Chinese race into Australia undesirable. To the colonies the Chinese question appears to present itself in a very different asjiect from that in which it is viewed by us at home, and it is difficult to induce the men of the colonial lower-middle or working class, dependent upon labour or trade for maintenance, to take what we should call a broad international view of Cliinese immi- gration. That the Chinamen shall be excluded from white colonies means only in the minds of the woi'king colonists that they intend to protect their own position. " Canada for the Canadian," "Australia for the Australian," are the prevailing cries ; and colonial labour, knit together in its powerful federa- tions, desires to limit competition, and above all to wholly shut out the competition of the cheapest of competitors — the Chinese. The Chinaman is pre-eminently a dexterous hand, industrious and persevering, of few wants and small aspira- tions ; an excellent woi'kman, but with a low standard of comfort. The colonial artisan, disliking the competition of tlie European labourer, with a standard of comfort less elevated than his own, finds himself threatened with the competition of a workman with, the lowest standard of comfort in the whole world ; able to live, it would seem, upon that which to a colonial eye is nothing. The colonial woi-kman, with his liigh pay and his short hours, and his time to sit in the shade or play games in the summer, or to read or go to theatres m the winter, and his tendency to pursue all kinds of sport, with his education and his independence, and his sense of power, has come to regard all these privileges as his riglit, and he intends to V, keep, if he can, the position that he has won. He is no more selfish than are the generality of mankind,, and if he gives great subscriptions to maintain strikes where he thinks the sti-ikers are in the right, it is not altogetliei' or always in the expec- tation of a return, as is shown by the contributions from Australian workmen to the dockers' strike, in a case where no return seemed possible. But the colonial workman does not look with favour upon the dark-skinned labourer, and the China- OHAP. II LABOUR 529 man, of whom lie lias seen something, he distinctly hates. While the Australian cultivates broad liberal sentiments within the bounds of Australasia, and the Canadian within those of the Dominion, they are inchned, and not unnaturally, to set a barrier at their frontiers against outside people and their works. The Chinese are a small population in our white colonies Tlieir occu- because of the great difficulties which have been thrown in the Rations, way of their incoming, but they would be numerous if allowed freely to ilock in. It is estimated that there are some fifty thousand Chinese in Australia, but in early days there were almost as many in the single colony of Victoria. In British Columbia they are, as lias been seen, numerous in proportion to the sparse population of that Province, and in British Columbia, as in South Africa, the colonial workman lias taken up that position of director of cheap labour wliicli in the Aus- tralian colonies he is unwilling to assume. The white miners of British Columbia direct the labour of the Chinamen more than they work themselves, and in the coal-mines each miner lias with him a Chinese labourer. In the cajDital of Natal, also, it is no uncommon thing to find a bricklayer attended at his work by three or four Indian coolies. There has been a certain change in the colonial position of the Chinese in recent years. At first they came in rather as gold miners than as workmen, but lately they have swarmed into the cities and become the competitors of the white man in every trade, but especially as carpenters. In western America, both in the United States and on the Canadian side of the border, the Chinamen do laundry-work, cooking, waiting at eating-houses, and a certain amount of private service. In Australia they are cooks and market-gardeners, but are incliued, where not forcibly pre- vented, to underbid their neighbours and to make their way into all town trades. In British Columbia there are, as will be seen in the next chapter, some factories which are worked by Chinese labour. There has been some attempt in Australia as on the American Nature of continent to raise a hue and cry against the Chinese upon the Australian ground that they are dirty and immoral ; but Sir Henry Parkes and has taken up a more defensible position, and has declared that Canadian " they are a superior set of people," belonging " to a nation of feeling an old and deep-rooted civilisation. We know the beautiful iigamst results of many of their handicrafts : we know how wonderful '"em, are their powers of imagination, their endurance, and their patient labour. It is for these qualities I do not want them to come here. The influx of a few million of Chiirese here would entirely change the character of this young Australian common- wealth. It is, then, because I believe the Chinese to be a powerful race, capable of taking a great hold upon the countiy, and because I wish to preserve the type of my own nation in / these fair countries, that I am and always have been opposed, to the influx of Chinese." Under the stress of such sentiments 2 m 530 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part vi the Chinese liave been shut out from some colonies, and a poll- tax has been put upon tliis single race in others. Soutli Aus- tralia is still not altogether unwilling that they should enter her tropical northern territory, of which they practically hold as their own a considerable section. There are in Sydney and elsewhere in Australia a few Chinese merchants of the highest character, employing excellent Chinese clerks and storemen, and enjoying the general respect of the community; but these men are not threatened. It is the Chinese workman, and especially the workman w)io competes with white-skinned artisans, whose presence will not long be tolerated in the colonies. It is easy for us in London to preach to the colonial workmen upon this question and to tell them that it is un- christian for them to declare that they will keep for themselves a country in which they are as yet far from numerous, and will prevent the starving and the destitute of alien races from obtaining a footing there. But, on the other hand, workmen who can point to their comfortable houses, their comijaratively refined wives, their well-nurtured, well-clad children, to the culture and to tlie morality of their comrades, and to the prob- ability of Australia successfully maintaining in the future a civili- sation of this liigh type, have mucli to say for themselves in opposing the introduction of those whose presence in large num- bers would reduce tlieir material condition to the level of that of the unemployed of ,the worst parts of London. The Chris- tianity that they understand is an assertion of the claim of the masses to rise in the scale of humanity, and as tliey are a drop in the ocean compared with the numbers of the Chinese, they assert their inability to raise the Chinese scale of comfort, and decline to allow theirs to sink to that of China. Tlie colonial workman considers that he has as much riglit to defend his country from the peaceful invasion of the Chinese as he would have if they came with weapons in their hands to destroy liis property and his home. Of course the consumer sutt'ers. Of course from the point of view of the political economy of our youth, the Australian or tlie Canadian consumer has a right to obtain Chinese-made furniture at a third of the price (for in cabinetmaking the Chinese are supremely cheap) that lie has to pay to the colonial workman. But the wliole drift of opinion in our colonies is against unrestricted competition, and there is virtually no colonial resistance uijon this subject to tlie views , of the working man. Treaties. The Blue-book of July 1888 relating to " Chinese immigration into the Australasian colonies " begins with a note from the Chinese Minister at the Court of St. James calling attention to the Colonial Acts directed against the Chinese people. The Chinese contention, that the special laws directed against Chinamen are inconsistent with our treaties, was dignified and true. A Treaty between China and the United States was for a moment looked upon by our Government as a happy settle- ment of a difficult question, but that Treaty has since been CHAP. II LABOUR 531 indefinitely adjourned by tlie Chinese. An Australian inter- colonial conference has declared the Chinese "an alien race," "incapable of assimilation in the body politic, strangers to our civilisation, out of sympathy with our aspirations, and unfitted for our free institutions." It is impossilale not to sympathise witli this feeling, but, on the other hand, exclusion presents great difiiculties, one of which is that there are enormous num- bers of Chinamen who are British subjects, and that exclusion means excluding peojDle merely because they ai'e dressed in a particular way or have faces of a particular type. On the other hand, if the Chinese of Hong-Kong are allowed to come in, they will sell their passes to Chinese aliens, and detection of such a trade is difficult. Thus the " Chinamen " to be excluded are not necessarily Chinese, but may have been British sub- jects by descent for many generations, as is the case with some of those settled in the Straits. The Government of New Zea- land has exceeded all others in the liigh-handed character of its action against the Chinese. It reprinted without chaiig'e and put in force in 1888 a proclamation by Sir Ai-thur Gordon, dated 1881, under the Public Health Act, declaring all places where there is a Chinese population, infected with the small- pox, and imposing quarantine upon all persons coming from them, or having received any person coming from them. The appendix to the Blue-book which contains the Colonial Acts (including those of Canada and of British Columbia) against the Chinese is indeed unpleasant reading ; but Lord Salisbury found it necessary to be silent after Sir Henry Parkes had said, "Neither for Her Majesty's ships of war, nor for Her Majesty's representative on the spot, nor for Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, do we intend to turn aside from our purpose." It is curious to contrast the language of our colonies now with regard to Chinamen with the treatment that was meted out to the unfortunate Chinese a few years ago when they ventured to urge that there were reasons which made it difficult to allow that which they have since virtually allowed, namely, the general right of travel by Europeans in the interior of China. It is impossible not to feel that we have two different voices in which we lecture those whom we choose to think the inferior races. In the meantime, the safest way of meeting the difficulties I have described would seem to lie in general legislation against pauper immigration. The fact of colonial anti-Chinese Acts being in defiance of Convict British treaty engagements will not of necessity greatly shock immigra- their authors. Colonial legislators are not likely to be more tio"- tender towards treaties than towards the ordinary law of Eng- land. In 1845, and again in 1849, the inhabitants of Melbourne prevented by force the landing of British convicts, and much more violent language was used of that resistance by the English press than has recently been applied to the equally niegal prevention of the landing of Chinese. But there is now a g-eneral feeling that the anti-convict agitators were in the 532 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Colonial nctiou against undesir- able immi- grants. right. In the second of the two years named the legislature of New South Wales passed a law which imposed on all persons who might have been transported to or convicted in any British, colony in the southern hemisphere, and who might arrive in New South Wales, the necessity of notifying^ to the magistrates all changes of residence on their part, and if sum- moned by a Justice of the Peace, of accounting for their means of supiDort, in each case under a penalty of two years' imprison- ment with hard labour. The Act was disallowed. The Aus- tralasian League, which was started at Melbourne in 1851, was intended, among other objects, to support with money those who might sutler through being prominent in the cause of " anti-transportation," and this league went so far as to unfurl an Austi-aUan flag with the white Stars of the Southern Cross upon a blue ground, although it had indeed, occasionally, a Union Jack in the corner. It is quite possible that the anti- Chinese excitement, unless we feel ourselves able to fully meet it, may revive a separatist movement which the anti- transporta- tion feeling first encouraged. The movements against convicts and against Cliinese have been marked by an equal disregard of the letter of the law. Victoria passed in 1852 a " Convicts' Prevention Act," whicli prevented ex-convicts who had received the Qvieen's pardon, or who were absolutely free, having com- pleted their sentences, or who held tickets of leave which gave them a legal right to go where they chose in Australia, from landing in Victoria, although by the law of England they were able to do so, and which heavily fined the captains of ships introducing them. The Queen's assent was at first refused to the Bill, but it was acted vipon all the same, and ultimately the colonists had their way. Colonial Governments are never backward in illegally pre- venting the landing of persons whose presence is distasteful to the community ; and just as they have in several cases illegally kept out ex-convicts, and as they have kept out Irish approvers without the slightest shadow of a law, so they have sometimes prevented the Chinese from landing before the Governments were armed with powers enabling them lawfully so to do. Sir Henry Parkes, in the Assembly of New South Wales, wlien charged with having broken the law, replied, " I care notliing about your cobweb of technical law ; I am obeying a law far superior to any law which issued these permits, namely, the law of the preservation of society in New South Wales " — a strong declaration for a Prime Minister. Lord Knutsford tele- graplied to the New South Wales Government on this occasion to ask under what law the landing of the Chinese had been prevented, and the reply was that tliere existed no law authoris- ing the prevention. Tlie Supreme Court of tlie c-olony declared the action of the Ministers illegal, so an Indemnity Bill was passed. Lord Carrington strongly backing up his Cabinet. 'The Prime Minister of Victoria, Mr. Gillies, was not so violent as his brother Minister of New South Wales, but he informed Lord ODAP. II LABOUR 533 Salisbury through the Governor that wliile "the Giinese Minister appeals to treaty obligations, Mr. Gillies is not aware of the exact nature and extent of these obligations " ; and went on to argue that it was impossible that the home Govern- ment, which made treaties without the colonies having any direct voice in them, could have bovmd the colonies by treaties allowing a Chinese immigration of indefinite extent. As with convicts so with regard to the Chinese : the treaties, like the laws of the United Kingdom, will be broken down by the strength of colonial feeling. In most of the colonies the anti-Chinese legislation applies Examples only to the Chinese race, and cases have occurred where of streugth steamers have reached colonial ports with Japanese crews and of colonial Chinese cooks and stewards, and sometimes Chinese quarter- feeling ou masters, and the Japanese have been able to take their run pl^inese ashore while the Chinese were penned up on board. Some ™™'g''>-' years ago there was, as I have stated, a seamen's strike in the '°°' Australian colonies, directed against the employment of Chinese by the steamship lines. The Australian Steam Navigation Company argued with the representatives of white labour that, as the Company was extending its trade into tropical climates, it must at least have Asiatic labour in the engine-rooms ; and the men ultimately accepted an agreement that the Chinese should only be employed in subordinate and accessory positions, such as those of stokers, while the total number employed in the Company's fleet was to be reduced from 180 to 130 in three months. The Australian Steam Navigation Company has recently sold the boats with regard to which the strike occurred to a new firm — the Australasia United Steam Navigation Com- pany, which undertakes still more tropical trade, and which seems likely also to have difficulties at the port of Sydney. The seamen's unions of Victoria and New South Wales have compelled the ships trading to China and back to forego trade between intercolonial ports when they are manned by Chinese crews, and they have attacked the Peninsular and Oriental Company for the employment of Lascars ; and the employment of Lascars by the British India Company has been partly stopped by the boycotting of their ships. It is curious to contrast the strength of the Australian and Chinese in American feeling with the favourable opinion entertained of tropical the Chinese in tropical colonies, such as the Straits and the colonies. territories of the British North Borneo Company. From the latter it is oflBcially reported that the Chinese make " excellent citizens, always at work " ; and in the case of Singapore the Chinese residents have subscribed largely to the fund for the purchase of quick-firing guns for the defence of this most flourishing of British ports, one Chinese merchant alone sub- scribing .500 guineas, while many gave £100 apiece. In the Malay Peninsula and in Borneo, as well as in the Dutch Indies, the Chinese form the backbone of the State. It is a happy thing that in some jjarts of the Empire we should be on good terms 534 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Australian opinion not conuected with Pro- tection. Effect npon tile Cliiuese Govern- ment. Anti- foreign leffislation. ■witli the Chinese, for it i.s difficult for us to seek their alliance on tlie A.siatic continent while our colonists violate our treaties with the Chinese Government. In Australia, however, the feeling against Chinese immigra- tion is overwhelming in all classes. Even reasonable and moder- ate people, such as an Australian financier who lived for many- years in London, say that " all treaties must give way " to the consideration that i'f admitted the Chinese will "possess and denationalise Australasia," and this although the writer whose words I quote was himself in favour of the importation of dark-skimied labourers to work in the Australian tropics.^ The anti-Chinese feeling is often spoken of at home as connected with the colonial doctrine of Protection ; but Sir Henry Parkes, whose words I have quoted, is a free trader, and Mr. McMillan, tlie leader of the free traders of the free-trade colony, in his recent address to the electors of East Sydney used these signifi- cant words : " We have decided, although rather perhaps in a precipitate manner, that our virgin soil shall not be contami- nated by hordes of an alien and unmixable race." Australians are tempted by the difficulties of their local labour problem to forget the need in which the Empire may one day stand of the Chinese alliance in eastern Asia, and we in the old country, who see, perhaps more clearly than they can be expected to perceive, that the future mastery of the world lies between the British, the Russian, and tlie Chinese races, may be pardoned for attaching more importance than do colonists to good relations between Great Britain and the Cliinese Empire. China, which fought France not long ago upon a point of honour, and which obtained in our time from Russia, without fighting, a province which Russia had long administered, is a power well able to hold her own ; and if we bear in mind the incredible numbers of her population, and the ability of her rulers, we can feel little doubt that the value of her alliance with ourselves in the future must increase each day. An alliance in Asia Ijetween China and Great Britain would form a true league of peace. A recent American Act of Congress, making it unlawful for persons not either citizens of the United States or having declared their intention of becoming such, or for foreign cor- porations, to hold or own in the Territories real estate acquired after the date of the Act, except such as might be acquired by inheritance or in the ordmary course of the collection of older debts, is legislation supported by one of the same reasons as are applicable to the American and Australian legislation against the Chinese, and it is, perhaps, defensible, and especially defensible under republican institutions. Legislation against an influx of cheap labour would be more easily defensible as a princi]5le than it is, if it were generalised, and not directed against the men of a single race only, but ^ naif a Cmturtj of Australasian Progress, by William Westgarth. Sampson Low and Co., 1889. OHAP. II LABOUR 535 turned against all forms of that competition which is tyjai- tied to the democracy by the figure of the Chinaman. I see no reason to protest against the desire of the Americans and of the Australian and Canadian colonists to exclude the poorest forms of foreign labour, provided that it be done by general laws. Tliere being only 100,000 Cliinese in the United States, out of a population which was considerably over iifty millions in 1880, the cheap labour question can hardly be said to have been, as yet, presented there by the Chinaman in a very formidable shape, except locally on the Pacific Slope. In our colonies the Chinese population, though larger in proportion than in the United States, is so small that the danger guarded against by legislation was also a danger of the future. In the United States, the most severe competition which white labour has to face is the competition of the home-born negro, more prolific than the European races in America, but not, of course, helped as are the American whites by immigration. Just as some in Australia have in their imagination foreseen the pre- dominance in that continent of the Chinese, unless their arrival be prevented, so as regards the American continent some have prophesied the predominance of the negro. It is a cui'ious fact that the English race have more generally English destroyed the native races with wliich they have come in contact and native in their young settlements than has been the case with otlier races, colonising peoples, but have destroyed the natives only after- wards to enter into a conflict with other dark or yellow races, whose efficiency as labourers seems equal to their own. While the destruction of the native races by the British race in countries where the English can labour out of doors is generally complete, it is the fact that other European races who have set to work to destroy the natives in similar countries have not succeeded, and that the English people have often destroyed them when trying hard to keep them in existence. The founders of Pennsylvania made every effort to deal fairly with the natives, but tlie Eed Indian race will soon be extinct through- out the United States, and the Indians of Canada will probably disappear except in the form of the French-speaking Indians who are of mixed race. In Australia, although Victoria and some of the other colonies made great efforts to treat the natives kindly, the race once inhabiting this enormous con- tinent will shortly disappear. The Maories of New Zealand are also a small and a dwindling people ; but in some parts not only of America, but even of temperate America, such as the Mexican plateau, the Indian race has beaten the Spanish, and whole counties are peopled by persons bearing high-sounding Spanish names, and Iloman Catholic in religion, who to the eye are mostly pure Indians in blood. In British North America and in Australasia, whicli we liave swept of their former native owners, we now dread the competition of the Cliinese ; but in South Africa— where the destruction of the Hottentots and Bushmen of tlie Cape cleared large tracts of their native 536 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Anti- Ittdiau agitation in Soutli Africa. Indigent foreigners. population, but where the descent of the Kafirs from the nortli has in some parts replaced tliem by an even greater number of dark-skixuied people — coloured immigrants of another kind are pouring in from across the seas as labourers and even artisans. There has been among the Dutch of South Africa in recent years an agitation against cheap imported labour in some degree similar to that in Australia and Canada against the immigration of Chinese. At the same time there is u. wide distinction between the agitations, and the warmest opponents of East Indian immigration to South-Eastern Africa have been those who have demanded that, while the introduction of Indians should cease, the Kafirs of the country should be tempted or compelled to do their work. The Indian coolies of South Africa are employed in every kind of labour. They work on the plantations and in the fields ; earn high wages in domestic service ; are hawkers, fish-curers, and small shopkeepers, and their savings are great — the Indians returning to Hindostan by a single ship in 1884 having taken with them no less a sum than £15,000. The Bombay traders, under the name of " Arabs," have spread through the Transvaal and Free State, and when the late Sir John JBrand visited Harrismith at the beginning of 1888 a presentment was made to him to the effect that the Volksraad had failed to protect the State from the introduction of Asiatics, that it was against the interest of the European community to admit them, and that the Government should find means of removing the growing evil and destroying " tlie baneful influence" of the Asiatics. The petition concluded by a reference to the anti-Cliinese agitation of Australia — a curious example of the smallness, in these days, of the world. Colonial labour seeks protection by legislative means not only against the cheap labour of the dark-skinned or of the yellow man, but also against white paupers, and against the artificial supply of labour by State-aided white immigration. Most of the countries of the world, indeed, have laws against the admis- sion of destitute aliens, and the United Kingdom is in practice almost tlie only exception. Several of our colonies have, as we have seen, made laws against the introduction of what are styled in New Zealand " Imbecile Passengers," and of these laws the Tasmanian and New Zealand Acts are good examples. There is no such law in New South Wales, but in South Australia, and in some other colonies where persons have been landed who soon became a burden upon the Government in the asylums for the destitute, the Government have re-shipped them at the expense of the colony to the place whence they came. Victoria has a clause in a general statute of 1865 which was closely followed in the drafting of the New Zealand law. The New Zealand " Imbecile Passengers Act " consolidates and amends previous legislation upon the subject, under similar titles, dating as far back as 1873. It enables the customs authorities of New Zealand to force the owners of ships bringing persons likely " to become a charge upon the public or upon any public or charit- CHAP. II LABOUR 537 able institution " to execute bonds in the sura of £100 for eacli such passenger, under which they have to repay all expenses in- curred for his support or maintenance by any public or charitable institution of New Zealand within iive years of his landing. This legislation has been closely followed in Tasmania with the addition of the important words " from any cause unable to support himself." In Canada the Governor-General has power, as has been seen, to prevent by proclamation the landing of destitute immigrants. The colonial workmen are opposed not only to the reception Assisted of tlie destitute from abroad, but even to assisted immigration immigra- of persons willing and able to work. There was for a time tion. almost as much agitation against the employment in New South Wales of Sir Edward Walter's commissionaires as against that of Chinamen. This was an extreme assertion of colonial views, but that colonial workmen should refuse to contribute towards assisting immigration to their colony is fairly reason- able, as it is difficult to reply to the argument that if the colony is in want of workmen it is fair that workmen should be allowed to come in, but not fair that those already in the colonies should be compelled to contribute by taxation to the bringing out of people to compete with them. The workmen argue that as long as English emigration is not assisted, colonial wages are not likely to decline below what they think a reasonable limit ; but that if assisted emigration is en- couraged, inferior workmen will come out, and bring down wages to the European level. I said in my chapter on New South Wales that immigration operations had been suspended by Victoria and New South Wales, and would never be resumed. That is so with regard to immigration operations generally ; but it is the case that, without talking about it. Sir Henry Parkes lias allowed assisted passages to be given to the wives and children of settlers already in the colony of New South Wales at cheap rates, and that the colony is quietly spending money for this purpose — the object in view being, however, rather to keep in the country settlers who are already there than to bring in new families. It must be urged upon the colonial workman's side that. The unem- where assisted emigrants have been sent out on a large scale, ployed, there has frequently been a good deal of temporary want of employment in the colony, and the unemployed have come upon the State for their support. Some of the men sent out to Australia have obtained good employment as shearers, and paid as they are a pound for every hundred sheep, and being able, after a short apprenticeship, to shear from seventy to a hundred in the day, have earned high wages for a short time. After two or three months they find themselves with consider- able savings, and are then in demand for harvesting, and afterwards get odd jobs at fruit-picking, and so are employed throughout the summer from October up to March ; but, bringing out with them imi^rovident habits, they often rapidly 538 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN spend their large se com- sidered, prove that neither Protection nor Tree Trade lias I'arison much affected the neck-and-neck race which the colonies have between hitherto been running, and in which, for the reasons I have "'^ . given. New South Wales under either system must prevail. It colonies. is in fact impossible to show that either colony has greatly suffered from the fiscal policy which it has adopted, victoria has a better average quality of land, but New South Wales possesses a tract, equal in area to Victoria, of land as valuable as that of Victoria. Victoria has enjoyed in the past the advantage of her gold production ; but N'ew South Wales has had her coal-mines, the value of which, in one way or another, has hardly been much less. Both colonies have passed through waves of depression. Seven years ago, when Victoria was in the trough of the wave and New South Wales was on the crest, it seemed as though the Free Trade predictions would be justified, and the colonial Free Traders thought that "the laws of political economy" had been triumphant; but after a short time the conditions became equal, and then again New South Wales went through an era of depression. On the whole, it must be admitted that the colonies still stand upon about an equal footing of prosperity. If we compare the bank deposits, including those of savings banks, and add to them the deposits in building societies, it will be found that Victoria has a slight advantage ; but with regard to these and other figures all tliat can be asserted is that a protective system is by no means so disturbing an element in national finance and national prosperity as was imagined, before the colonies had tried their experiments, to be the case. The Victorian figures also go to show that the gross bulk of trade is not much interfered with by protective duties such as those adopted in tlie past by the colony of Victoria and in the present by South Australia and New Zealand, although it may be by those of Canada, and might be by duties such as those recently imposed upon some articles in Victoria. Twenty per cent duties rather divert imports from one channel into another, and derange items, than affect the sum total, which practically remains unchanged. Victoria, in spite of her Protection, and owing in part to the wealth of her poi^ulation, stands singulai-ly high in the list of countries importing goods from the United Kingdom. In a five years' period which I have taken for comparison Victoria imported about £90,000,000 worth of goods, and exported £80,000,000 worth — taking the sums at which tlie goods were valued when they left Victorian ports. In the same five years New Soutli Wales imported £105,000,000 worth, and exported £87,000,000 worth, but during this period borrowed more largely than Victoria, and her public expenditure amounted to much more than her revenue. The Victorian trade returns have been swelled by the Eiverina trade from New South Wales passing through Victoria to the port of Melbourne, so that New South Wales trade is really larger, and Victorian trade, from 554 PKOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PAPa- vi one point of view, less, tlian figures would lead one to suppose. The effect of Protection is seen in the imports of spirits and beer, whicli are larger in the case of New South Wales than in that of Victoria, because more distilling and brewing takes place in Victoria than in New South Wales. The same is seen in boots and shoes, where New South Wales imports five times as large a value as does Victoria, because shoe manufacturing iias grown up under Protection. New South Wales imports flour and biscuit, while the absence of good cheap coal in Victoria forces Victoria to import her coal from New South Wales. Small The colonial Protectionists and Free Traders fight over the value of figures of colonial trade with a keenness which is somewhat the figures, ludicrous. Tliey are led into struggling for a slight apparent advantage in some particular set oi figures, without regard to the fact that the figures themselves cannot be sufticiently accurately compiled to make tenable so fine an argument as that which is based upon their slight variations. I have seen the most elaborate disquisitions as to the profits of trade in each of the colonies turning upon hair's-breadth differences, and neglecting the fact that no figures of trade ever came within 20 per cent of the truth — a tact which at once vitiates almost every conclusion which can be drawn from them. Any one who has had to do with trade figures as a professional statistician, or as a negotiator of commercial treaties, is aware that considerable sources of error, and, as a consequence, enormous discrepancies, exist, and that it is impossible to trace one and the same operation of trade, carried on through a port of export and a port of import, by any resemblance in the statistics of the two countries concerned. Then again, besides false or erroneous declarations of value, there are differences of classification between country and country which fatally vitiate all trade statistics. If we take figures that are plain, and as to which the differences are so great that it is safe to found an argument upon them, it is clear that Victoria imports less of certain classes of goods, and manufactures them herself, while New South Wales imports them. While, however, the comparison between Victoria and New South Wales does not greatly help us, it must not be supposed that, even if it seems by the figures to matter little which fiscal policy such prosperous young countries adopt, there is no danger in a system of Protection. The difficulty which has been found in replacing local by Australian Protection, the marked tend- ency towards higher duties in all the colonies, point towards in- creased retaliation on the part of all ; and there is reason to fear that constant exasperation may be the result, with disastrous consequences to the growth of an Australian nation. The posi- ^® ^^^^^ already seen that Protection is not needed for the tion iu purpose of enabling manufactures to grow up on the Australian New South continent, and that they are springing into existence in con- Wales, siderable numbers between Sydney and the coal-mines. At OHAP. HI PROTECTION Ol? NATIVE INDUSTRIES 555 the same time there can be no doubt about the growth of protectionist feeling in New South Wales, or about the rise of that principle in popular favour with the constituencies. Powerful causes which at one time operated in the direction of bringing about tlie change were the increase of city popula- tion and consequent difficulty in procuiing employment in Sydney and its suburbs, and the competition in the markets of New South Wales of the goods produced by the protected manufactures of tlie sister colonies. There has also been in New South Wales a considerable development of general Australian feeling in favour of maintaining a high local rate of wages, combined with the fear that, unless a protective policy be adopted, the Australian workman will be forced down into the condition of the labouring classes of Europe. The desire to knit the colonies together on the basis of a federal union, and to establish a nation sufficiently strong to maintain itself against the world, and the impossibility of so doing, in face of the feeling of the other colonies, without shutting the ports of the new country against the manu- factured products of India and of Europe, have also tended in the same direction. It should be remarked, however, that, though the colonial advocates of Protection desire to sliut out British goods, they at the same time expect that the British market will continue to be open for the reception of tlie wool and other products of New Soutli Wales, while they assume that a rapidly -increasing population in Australia itself will guard against the possibility of over-production on the part of the locally protected manufactories. The increasingly powerful protectionist party of New South Arguments Wales point out that she imports more agricultural produce for Pro- than she exports, and is dependent upon the farmers of the tection. other colonies for her food, while many men walk the streets of Sydney wanting work, and there is fertile land in the colony waiting for the plough. These facts, which in my mind point towards the adoption of a better land system, are made use of only for the purpose of promoting a recourse to high duties. Another point of the protectionist speakers bears upon what they think the illogical position in wliich the colony finds itself by preventing the immigration of Chinese, while it allows, or as they put it encourages, the importation of Chmese manu- factures. In reply to the Free Traders, who argue that it is best for the colony, having an extraordinary advantage in the growth of the finest wool, to send its wool to England and receive it back in the form of manufactured clothing, the Protectionists point out that wool-getting employs but little labour. They argue that it enriches the few while the many are left unhelped, and declare that it profits nothing if the imported clothing be cheap provided the working colonists liave no money with which to buy it. It would be a mistake to suppose tliat protectionist feeling in New South Wales is confined to the artisans and the manufacturers. They no 556 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN doubt once formed the backbone of the protectionist party, as the wool-growing squatters and the importing merchants of Sydney form the backbone of the Free Trade party ; but the rapid growth of the protectionists in the last few years has been caused by their receiving very general support among all classes. Some of the Sydney workmen are now Free Traders, but, on the other hand, there has been a considerable growth of protectionist agitation in the rural districts, and especially in the Eiverina, which desires to retaliate upon Victoria. The comparison which has been drawn between Victoria and New South Wales, and much relied upon, as we have seen, by Free Traders in foreign countries, is not popular in New South Wales ; and, so far as the comparison is brought into the discussion, it is generally by the protectionists, who point to the fact that Victoria, with little over one-fourth the area of New South Wales, bears an equal population and possesses a well -filled treasury, while New South Wales with her vast territories has experienced frequent deficits under a policy of Free Trade. The local protectionists sum up the qviestion by declaring that the experience of tlie colony under Free Trade shows that Protection is necessary for the development of her resources and the employment of her people ; and both the imperial federationists and the Australian federationists help forward the movement, often without wishing it, because there is a general belief throughout the colony that either system of federation is impossible so long as New South Wales stands aloof from tlie general fiscal policy of Australasia, which is also that of the vast majority of the units of which the Empire is made up. There has been an attempt lately in New Soutli Wales on the part of the Free Traders to connect the Protectionists with the Roman Catholics, and to damage the doctrine of Protection in that colony by associating it with a religion unpopular with men of other creeds. In an article in the Centennial ]\[agazine of Sydney for September 1889 by Mr. Wise, the late Attorney- General of New South Wales, it was declared that the sugges- tion "that Catholicism, being a religion which rested on the surrender of the individual, was more likely to incline towards a policy of Protection — which is the negation of individual freedom in industrial matters — than a policy of Free Trade," was one " eminently suitable for philcsophical discussion." It should be remarked, however, that in Victoria the Roman Catholic party were formerly Free Traders. On the other hand, the Protectionists of New South Wales attack the Free Traders for being subsidised by the rich importers ; but this is an argument which may be turned both ways, for protectionist manufacturers also subscribe freely in New South Wales, as in the Dominion of Canada and the United States, towards the party funds of the side from which they expect to gain Protec- tion. Now that Victoria has recently adopted a far higher Smuggliug. tariff upon many articles than had previously prevailed within Roman Catholics and Pro tection. Subsidie.s to party funds. CHAP, in PROTECTION OF NATIVE INDUSTRIES 557 that colony, there is a temptation to New South Wales, while retaining her Free Trade principles, to do a large smuggling trade across the land frontier and the Murray, which it would require high expenditure to guard ; but no one can desire that the irritation in Victoria which would result from such a policy should be superadded to that wliioli has already been excited by the question of the Murray waters. The intention on the part of Victoria to continue to take water for irrigation pur- poses from the Murray, although that river is in the territory of New South Wales, would, under such circumstances as those at which I have hinted, become dangerous in the highest degree to Australian peace, as the exasperation on the part of Victoria which would be produced by border smuggling would cause pretensions to be put forward upon the Murray question, and language to be used, wliich might lead to civil war. A difficulty in the way of the protectionists of New South Wales has hitherto been their failure to secure a representation in the daily press proportional to the number of their voters, for both the Sydney Horning Herald and the Daily Telegraph are Free Trade organs ; and the protectionist Bulletin, which is not satisfied with the services of the protectionist evening paper, complains that Mr. Mi^Millan is always presented to the people "wearing a halo round his saintly political head," while Mr. Dibbs " is depicted with horns and a barbed tail." One of the most thoughtful of the colonies, and the most The New inclined to strike out opinions for herself, possibly on account of Zealand her climate and her detached geographical position, is New view. Zealand, and New Zealand is one of the latest converts to dis- tinct Protection by high duties. It is interesting to note the opinion of New Zealand writers upon the Protection question. There is a general leaning in New Zealand to the belief that moderate Protection, during the years in which it was tried in that colony, chiefly by chance — the duties having been mainly put on for revenue purposes — led to the growth of manufactures which would not otherwise have sprung up. These are now of advantage to the colony, and are able to hold their own, though, in New Zealand as in Victoria, the latter fact is denied by the manufacturers interested. Mr. Gisbome ^ lias given the facts of a, case in which a duty was charged in New Zealand on an imported article, with the effect of encouraging local manufacture and founding an established native industry. The result has been that the whole colony is now supplied with an article of local produce at a cheajser rate than that at which it can be imported, so that this article could now be placed in the free list of the tariff without any effect on trade. Sir Harry Atkinson, the Prime Minister of New Zea- land, is quoted by the late Mr. Westgarth, himself a strong Free Trader, in his book of 1889, as having stated that the New Zealand paper manufacturers, who were unable to hold their 1 The Cnlmiy of Nera Zealand, by "VVilliaiii Gisbome. Lonilon, Petlierick ami Co., 1888. 558 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt vi own without Protection, liave, after a short period of protective duties, become able to manufacture paper enough for the islands, and to sell at the same rate at which paper can be brought from AustraUa or from Europe. Still, in New Zealand, as in Victoria, the tendency is towards higher duties. The The adoption of Protection in a marked form by Queensland Queensland — after a short trial of duties averaging 7 J per cent in a tariff ^'i'^w. standing half-way between the Free Trade of New South Wales and the moderate Protection at that time prevailing in New Zealand, South Australia, Tasmania, and Western Australia, and since replaced in New Zealand and South Australia by duties more upon the Victorian scale — is of considerable interest and importance. Queensland is still mainly a country export- ing raw material. She is a gold-mining and a stock-raising country, and has hitherto exported the produce of her mines and pastoral regions, and of the sugar plantations of her coast. She has had little occasion to give attention to the fostering of manufactures, and nearly her whole population has been absorbed in the production of what we call raw material for exportation. It is indeed a remarkable evidence of the strength of protectionist feeling in the colonies that such a country should have deliberately adopted first moderate and then stronger Protection, and that both parties in Queensland should now apparently agree, like both parties in Victoria, in support of the protectionist principle. The view now popular with both sides in Queensland is that formerly put forward by Sir James Martin in New South Wales, when he said that the mag- nificent territories of Australia, teeming with the elements of every kind of wealth, mineral, pastoral, and agricultural, were intended by Nature for other purposes than a sheep walk Kke an Asiatic steppe ; that all honest occupations were equally desirable and equally ennobling ; that the skilled artisans who had come into the colony were entitled to the development of their trades, and should not be driven, of necessity, to settle upon patches of land which they wei-e ill trained to cultivate, and the fruits of which might at any time be reduced in price below the cost of their production by free imports from foreign countries. It is in my opinion unlikely that, with the increase of population, and the demand of the workmen in the towns for new avenues of employment, Queensland will revert to a policy of Free Trade. At the same time Protection is far from popular in the Northern Territory of Queensland, and some- what increases the chances of separation. The There can be little doubt about the general popularity of the Canadian protective system in the Dominion of Canada, and Sir John view. Macdonald's lon^ possession of power has been facilitated by his adoption of the so-called National Policy, and not disturbed by the existence of a serious Free Trade opposition. Those who would change the system would substitute for it commer- cial union -with the United States or throughout the British Empire ; but only an insignificant minority profess Free Trade / CHAP. Ill PROTECTION OF NATIVE INDUSTRIES 559 views or support tlieir proposals by Free Trade arguments. Canada still imports a large amount of manufactured goods, and is not a large exporter of lier own manufactures, being, of course, mainly an agricultural, pastoral, and timber country. But the adoption of the National Policy has affected the import of manufactures, and has caused Canadian manufacturers to win the greater portion of the Canadian market, while there is a general belief, probably untrue, that average prices have not risen. The Canadian argument, which does not carry convic- tion, is that, when times were bad in the United States, tlie American manufacturers made what is called a " slaughter- market " of Canada, and poured their goods into the country. The low prices which ruled on these occasions did not continue, and the occasional influx of goods prevented all growth of Canadian manufactures, but when trade was good in the neigh- bouring larger community prices immediately went up in Canada. As for the attempt to show by figures that under Protection prices have not increased in Canada, the fact that such an argument can be put forth without clear contradiction may be taken as showing that there has in fact been no very great rise in prices. The growth in wealth of the Dominion, by every test that can be applied, has been rapid since Con- federation, but more rapid since the adoption of the protec- tionist policy than it was before that moment. At the same time there is, as I have shown in the British North American part of this work, much dissatisfaction in Canada with the existing state of things, caused by the narrowness of the market that Canada oflers to the Canadian manufacturer, and by the difficulty which he stUl finds in competing in most goods with his rivals in European or Eastern markets. Although the Canadian, like the American and Australian protective duties, are supposed to be directed against the pauper labour of the old world, it is a curious fact that in one portion of the Dominion, namely British Columbia, protected manufactures (as, for example, that of boots and shoes) and other industries (such as that of fish-caroiing) are carried on by the use of Chinese labour in the factories. The white workmen who are employed in packing and in transport, and who direct the labour of the Chinese, are, in British Columbia, many of them favourable to the use of Chinese labour, and some of the inhabitants of the Province desire to see the tax levied by the Dominion upon Chinese immigration removed. It is probable that the use of Chinese labour in Britisli Columbia will sooner or later be put down, and in the meantime the present system is curiously at variance witli the arguments used in Canada to bolster-up Protection. The system which, as I have shown, has a certain popularity Commer- in Canada as a proposed remedy for the economic disadvan- cial union, tages under which she labours, by the application of a higli protective system in the case of a young country with a small home market, is commercial union with some other country or 500 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt vi group of countries. The Canadian Government have pro- nounced against commercial union with the United States, which is the remedy proposed by a section of the Opposition, but the Government have suggested the opening up of new markets in France and Spain, and in Australia and the West Indies. Some Canadians are inclined to imagine that a taritt' union of the Empire is possible, but the protectionists, who are the majority, of course desire Protection for Canada against what they style the pauper labour of India and of the mother- country. Some Canadian Free Traders, like Mr. Goldwin Smith, have committed themselves strongly to the principle of commercial union with the United States ; but the whole of their argument against the existing state of things in Canada points to complete Free Trade instead of discrimination in favour of the United States and against the mother-country. Free Trade would possess this advantage, that it is a system which Canada might adopt for herself without asking the leave of any one, whereas the other proposals find enormous diffi- culties in their way. When maps are pointed to by the advo- cates of commercial union with the United States, and the question is asked if it can be wise for two countries with such a border to set up a high tariff wall between tliem. Free Traders would be inclined to answer that it would be wise to knock down the wall that is built upon the Canadian side, but not of necessity wise to knock it down only for the purpose of building- up another wall along the maritime frontiers of Canada. When the commercial union party declare that it is a crime to shut out Canada from participation in the growth of the commerce of the continent, the argument goes to show that it is a stUl greater crime to shut out Canada from participation in the commerce of the world. If Canada were to abolish her custom houses she would be her own mistress, which could not be the case under a commercial union with a country of over- whelming size and strength ; for such a power must proceed to regulate the Canadian tariff in interests which might not be the interests of Canada. The frontier between the Dominion and the United States is such that it may be safely asserted that by no expenditure could smuggling be effectively prevented if Canada were to remove her duties, and that the American tariff would be broken down. The destruction of the protec- tionist policy of the United States would be of no permanent advantage to the outside world, and a temporary gain to certain industries in Great Britain and in Belgium would be succeeded by a lasting loss. Looking at the matter from a purely Canadian point of view, however, I cannot but think that the circumstances of Canada point to the wisdom of absolute Free Trade, and that not only would her resources be more rapidly developed under such a system, but that greater prosperity would be more equally diffused thi-oughout iier population. At the same time such opinions are altogether unpopular in the colony, and there is, in fact, no sign of their making way. CHAP, in PROTECTIOlSr OF NATIVE INDUSTRIES 561 It is supposed tliat Free Trade is made impossible of adnp- Support tion as a policy for Canada because of the Canadian dislilce for gained for direct taxation, but it is somewhat curious that this should be Protection the case. Many of the Australasian colonies, with a system at ^7 *!"<* ™- least as democratic as prevails in Canada, show little dislike of popularity direct taxation, and it must be remembered that in the case °^ direct of Canada a large revenue might be raised from customs by ''''^^"°°- duties on intoxicating liquors and tobacco to supplement direct taxation. Canada would gain by the adoption of a policy of complete Free Trade. One of the ablest of modern political essayists ^ has argued Effect of out the question of the effect of Protection upon wages ; but he Protection has unfortunately discussed the subject as though it were one upon upon which light could be thi-own only by the example and wages, experience of Great Britain and of the IJnited States, and, like too many writers, has ignored the evidence afforded by the lustory of our colonies. He has shown, as I have also myself contended, that wages in the United States, though nominally much higher than in the United Kingdom, are scarcely higher, except, I should say, at Chicago and in California, when the purchasing power is taken into account. But wages in our Southern colonies — throughout Australasia and in South Africa — are double as high as in England, for shorter hours ; and purchasing power is, on the whole, equal, except with regard to rent, while as regards rent the difference is chiefly caused by men with a higher standard of comfort insisting upon vastly superior accommodation. If I cannot side with those colonial authorities who believe that Protection is a source of the enhancement of wages, I am at least forced to admit that it does not decrease them even from the point of view of pur- chasing power. Sir Lyon Playfair asserts also that "labour disturbances or strikes are " much less frequent and acute " in England " than in the United States with its policy of Protec- tion." But labour disturbances and strikes are not more frequent or severe in the protectionist colonies than in Great Britain, and a colony in which they have been serious has been the Free Trade colony of New South Wales. Sir Lyon Playfair indeed mentions Australia, but only for the purpose of repeat- ing the argument which I have named above, drawn from the faUaoious comparison between Victoria and New South Wales ; and his statement of the comparison involves a partial error, for he asserts, without reserve, that wages are higirer in " Free Trade New South Wales " than in the " protectionist colony " of Victoria— the fact being that on the average they are for most classes of labour about the same, and only higher, as I have said, for some forms of unskilled labour. Sir Lyon Playfair also attempts to prove that "Protection leads slowly, but surely, to socialism, and tends even to communism " ; and he points out that it is not to State-socialism that, in this phrase, 1 Subjects of Social Welfare, by the Paglit Hon. Sir Lyon Playfair. Cassell and Co., 1889. 20 562 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paiit vi lie intends to object, but to Revolutionary Socialism. He thinks that the pi'otectionist " is very near being a communist, differing very little from the man who denies the right of property altogether." Now colonial example, so far from giving support to this contention, goes to show that Protection in Canada and in Victoria, where it has been long tried, has a decidedly conservative effect, and no country in the whole world has less leaning towards Revolutionary Socialism or towards communism than has our protectionist colony of Victoria. CHAPTER IV EDUCATION In the chapter on Labour and the poor we have seen in what way the colonial State deals with neglected or destitute children as State wards, and have now to consider how it treats the children of those who avoid direct dependence uiDon the com- munity for maintenance. The special and peculiar case of Newfoundland has been British dealt with in the first chapter of the first part of this work, Nortli inasmuch as Newfoundland alone among our self-governing America, colonies has a strictly denominational system of education, without "public schools" in the colonial sense, the Boards governing the schools being nominated by the respective sects, and entrusted by the State with the appropriation of the grants. In the whole of the rest of British North America, Tlie although the Provinces group themselves into two divisions, Dominion, one of which is far more denominational than the other, there is no apiaroach to the Newfoundland plan. The common or pubKc school system of the Dominion, except in New Bruns- wick, is in a greater or a less degree compulsory, and (except in Quebec only) is free ; and throughout the Dominion money is foxind by the State, and generally, but not invariably, sup- plemented by local rates, and dispensed through public bodies either to public schools only, or in some Provinces to "separate" or " dissentient " schools as well as to the public schools. In Quebec there are school fees, but they are low, and cannot be called for from "indigent persons"; and throughout the Dominion the total expenditure upon education is enormous, and the number of children upon the school rolls immense. In the newer jjarts of the Dominion, especially in Manitoba and in the North-West Territories, sometliing like one-eighteenth of the total area of the soil has been set apart as an educational endowment, and the sums realised by the sale of the blocks of land are invested in Government securities for the support of education. The reason for the existence of a "separate or dissentient " system in Ontario and Quebec is that at the time of confederation guarantees were given to the Provincial minorities for the continuance of their separate schools : and the British North America Act provides that, while the legis- 564 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN lature of a Province has the exclusive riglit to make laws on the subject of education, it is nevertheless unable to pre- judicially affect any denominational school systems in existence before confederation. As regards the " dissentient " schools of Manitoba there is an appeal to the Governor-General in Council from any acts of the ^Provincial authority affecting any legal rights or privileges of the religious minority, and the Parlia- ment of Canada is armed with powers to enforce the execution of the law, but has not so far been called upon to take action under these provisions. Ontario. In Ontario the phrase " public schools '' includes the public schools proper and the Ixoman Catholic separate schools. Trustees, elected by the ratepayers, appoint the teachers, levy rates, and administer the public funds allotted for elementary education, while " dissentient trustees " are elected in districts where the minority object to the management of the scliools by the ordinary trustees, these minorities being in Ontario Ptoman Extra- Catholic. The Ontario system is remarkable for the fact that ordinary it allows children between the ages of five and twenty-one to liberality attend school free of charge — a liberality unexampled anywhere of system, j^ the colonial world, although New Brunswick runs Ontario close in this respect. Ontario is also distinguished by choosing the whole of its inspectorate from among teachers, who are promoted to be inspectors as the reward of an educational career ; and the Ontario authorities declare, as is shown both in the official handbook and in a useful English work,^ that their system is in this respect infinitely su23erior to our own. The Ontario men maintain that the patronage system which prevails in England for the choice of inspectors has been most mischievous in its influence upon elementary schools, and tliat men with no fitness for the work, who have been " pitchforked into their jjlaces," "have sown misery in their districts," the work of education being consequently retarded. The religious difficulty is, of course, mainly met in Ontario by the provision of the separate Roman Catholic schools ; but as regards the non-Catholic public schools which are officially styled "un- sectarian," every school (and much the same rule applies to the higher schools aided by the Province) must be opened with the Lord's Prayer, and closed with the reading, without note or comment, of authorised portions of the Bible, and a recital of the Lord's Prayer or of a prayer whicli has been sanctioned by the Education Department. There is a conscience clause with regard to attendance on these readings. The clergy of all denominations, or persons appointed by them as their repre- sentatives, have the right to give religious instruction to the pupils of their own Church in each schoolhouse at least once a week after closing hours. The corporations of school trustees are small, and, in a rural district, only one trustee goes out of office each year. They have to raise by rate as much as '■ The Schools of Greater Britain, by Joliu Eussell. William Collins, Sons, and Co. CHAP. IV EDUCATION 565 is received from tlie Provincial Government. Classical schools are aided by the Province, and also receive help from municipal grants and from rates. A large number of the liigh schools are under elective local bodies and are free. The University of Toronto, which is the Provincial university of Ontario, and virhich is unsectarian and has under it a university college which admits women, is mainly kept up by the State or from endowments originally given by the State ; and there exists also in Ontario provision for technical education, schools of science and of art, and a College of Agriculture, all largely helped by the Provincial Government. Mechanics' institutes are subsidised by Government at the I'ate of two dollars for every dollar locally raised. There are a considerable number of denominational colleges, called universities, which are not under Provincial control. In the Province of Quebec there is a system which in theory Quebec, is similar to that of Ontario, except that it is not free. It is based, like that of Ontario, upon the election of school trustees by the ratepayers, with power to provide schools, and with the right on the part of the minority, if dissatisfied, to elect minority trustees, the principal school trustees collecting the rates, but handing over a, proportional share of them to the " dissentient trustees " for their separate schools. In practice the schools which are maintained by the school trustees through- out Quebec Province are strictly Eoman Catholic schools, and the dissentient schools are Protestant. As in Ontario, the State and the localities both contribute towards the support of the elementary schools and of the grammar schools and high schools. Children between five and sixteen have a right to attend school on payment of the low fees exacted, and from seven to fourteen are made to attend. The school inspectors, as in Ontario, are chosen from among teachers. Although the grammar schools of Quebec, like the elementary schools, are not free, there are a large number of scholarships by which the picked children from the public elementary schools receive free education, and there is also an arrangement by which the Protestant children of Montreal can cUmb up, by merit, until they obtain free uni- versity education. The fees in Quebec are not only low, but as a rule are paid for only two children from one family, and are invariably remitted, upon recommendation by known persons, on the plea of poverty. In the cities a more elaborate system has been devised for dividing the rate between the Protestants and the Pi,oman Catholics than obtains in the country districts. In the case of the city school-tax of Montreal — which is levied only upon owners, tenants not being obliged to pay any portion of it unless they have specially contracted to do so — tliere are separate lists of Roman Catholic and of Protestant owners of real estate. There is also a third list containing corporate and company owners, and persons who are neither fioman Catliolic nor Protestant, or wlio are of unknown religion, as well as a catalogue of properties jointly owned by persons of different 566 TEOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part vi creeds. There is also a provision that Jews should be allowed to carry their property from the third list to the Eoman Catholic or to the Protestant list at choice. The rates from the first two lists go to the Eoman Catholic and to the Protestant com- missioners respectively, and those from the third list are divided between them in proportion to the numbers of Roman Catholics and of Protestants in the city. Nora Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island each possess a free, Scotia and compulsory, unsectarian public school system, the trustees in Prince Nova Scotia being elected at a yearly meeting of the ratepayers Edwai-a jjj guiall districts, and the meeting deciding the amount to be Island. raised by the rates to supplement grants from the county and the Province. The Nova Scotian teachers are directed to in- culcate a respect for religion and the principles of Christian morality, and the Eoman Catholics dislike the system. There is in Nova Scotia (as in many portions of the colonies) a strong objection to the principle of payment by results, and this system does not exist within that Province. In Prince Edward Island the age of compulsion is from eight to thirteen, and in Nova Scotia from seven to twelve. New In New Brunswick, although there is no compulsion — its Brunswick, absence being peculiar, inasmuch as all the other Provinces of the Dominion have compulsion in some form — the system is free from the age of five to twenty — an expansion of the prin- ciple of free schools almost as wide, it will be seen, as that prevailing in Ontario itself. The New Brunswickers are proud of their system and of the enormous sums of money which they spend upon education ; but, as in Nova Scotia, there is a good deal of grumbling on the pai-t of the Eoman Catholic inhabitants about the " unsectarian " nature of the public schools, and the absence of provision for separate denominational schools. The teachers are empowered, but not required, to open school by Bible reading and prayer if permitted by the trustees, and there is a conscience clause with regard to attendance at this time. As in many other Provinces, the inspectors are chosen from among the teachers. The Province is being urged to introduce a separate school system for the benefit of the Eoman Catholics. It possesses a Provincial university endowed by the State. Manitoba. Manitoba has that separate school system which exists in " the two Canadas," and the Manitoba system generally possesses a considerable resemblance to that of Ontario ; but the age during which children have the right to free education extends only from five to sixteen years instead of from five to twenty-one, the "school age" being five to fifteen. The Lieutenant-Governor in Council appoints a Board of Educatioii consisting of a Protestant section of twelve members and a Eoman Catholic section of nine members, of which the Eoman Catholic section oflicially makes use of the French language. In the early days of the Province the Eoman Catholic schools chiefly then used by the French half-breeds, exceeded in number CHAP. IV EDUCATION 567 the Protestant scliools used by the Scotch settlers, but since the recent large immigration from Ontario and Europe has taken place, the Protestant population has greatly grown. Schools are founded in the most sparsely peopled districts, for any- where where ten children of school age can be found withm a three-mile radius five heads of families can obtain the formation of a school district, and receive a grant from the Province as well as a grant from the municipality, and also local rating powers, the Province laying down the principle that the great cost of education in sparsely settled districts ought not to prevent the erection of schools. The Provincial grant is divided between the Catholic and the Protestant sections of the Board of Education, the Protestants now receiv- ing about four-fifths. There is a Provincial examining university to which denominational colleges of the Church of England, the Presbyterians, and the Koman Catholics are aifiliated, and which is aided by the State. In British Columbia there is a large Provincial grant in aid British of education ; but in this Province the legislature finds the Columbia, money which in other Provinces comes from local rates. The system is compulsory, free (in the Nova Scotian age of seven to twelve), and unsectarian, and is administered by small boards of trustees in each district, who are chosen by "the people" — a phrase which in British Columbia includes the women. Pieligious teaching in the public schools is virtually prohibited in this Province ; the Lord's Prayer being sometimes read, but this only by special permission of the trustees. In the North-West Territoi-ies, as in British Columbia, tlie North- schools are free ; but denominational schools are helped by the West State, and, as a matter of fact, the unsectarian schools are not Territories. numerous, and the elementary schools are mostly Protestant or Koman Catholic denominational schools. In addition to Toronto University, already referred to, Canadian mention should be made of the M°Gill College, the well-known uuiversi- undenominational University of Montreal ; and of Laval, the ti<5s. Koman Catholic University of Quebec. In Australasia there are as many systems as there are Austral- colonies, but it will be best to mention in the first place those of '^^'^■ Victoria, New Zealand, and Queensland, which possess a certain resemblance to one another. In all three education is free. In all three it is in theory compulsory, although in Queensland the law is not enforced in practice; and in all tliree it is either strictly secular or virtually secular. Generally speaking, throughout Australia the State builds the schools, pays the teachers, and exercises a general management and control over the schools through a central department : but a certain concession is made to the principle of local government by the election in Victoria and in parts of Queensland by the residents, and selection elsewhere in Australia of Boards of Advice, called School Boards in New South Wales. As a rule their powers extend only to small matters, and they are unable 568 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN and South Australia. to appoint or dismiss beacliers. In Australia, in short, educa- tion is more distinctly left in the hands of the State than it is in British North America, except so far as British Columbia and the North-West Territories do not follow the usual Canadian plan. While, however, the School Boards of New South Wales and Boards of Advice of the other Australian colonies have little power, in New Zealand, where elective school committees themselves elect an Education Board for a large district, this Board appoints and dismisses teachers, and administers the considerable State grants, which are supple- mented from the rent of lands granted by the State and by gifts, but not by rates. The Ministers of Education of the Australasian colonies have as a rule no power over universities, and in all the South -Sea colonies except New Zealand are virtually limited to the care of elementary education, tliough in New Zealand the middle class schools are within the ^Minister's control. New South The Victorians are strongly attached to their free system, Wales, and hold that in the great cost of education iu young countries Victoria the small sum produced by the fee, with an enormous amount of worry and friction, is not worth consideration, and is obtained only by means which are objectionable from the educational point of view ; and they think the pauperising effects of remission of fees to those unable to pay are distinctly noticeable in the neighbouring colony of New South Wales. Dr. Pearson, a former Fellow of Oriel, the able Education ilinister of Victoria, has lately travelled through South Australia and New South Wales, and drawn up a report which forms a comparison of the system of the three colonies. He is a thoroughly competent authority, and seems to be well content with the position of his own colony, except in the matter of too strict an adherence to the principle of seniority in tlie promotion of the teachers. At the same time he appears to side with the teachers themselves in doubting the advantage of payment by results, which exists in Victoria, and to a trifling extent in South Australia, but does not exist at all in New South Wales, which shares the usual Canadian view upon this point. Dr. Pearson finds that the children under eight in portions of New South Wales are ahead of the Victorian children of that age, but that above the age of eight the children in New South Wales, although pushed on more rapidly and taught more subjects, are less thoroughly taught and possess less accurate knowledge than in Victoria and South Australia. But New South Wales has taught great numbers of its children Latin, French, and mathematics, and these subjects ai-e better taught and taught to more children in New South Wales than in the other colonies ; while singing and drawing are best taught in Victoria, as a part of the free system. The public school children of Victoria are supposed to learn to read easy music at sight Ijefore leaving school, and if only a small pro- ])ortion of them are able to keep it up in after life a good deal CHAP. IV EDUCATION 569 lias been done for the education of the popular taste. That the attempt to teach music, without fee, should be so widely made is an interesting sign of the willingness of a democratic country to encourage general culture. Victoria, New Zealand, and Queensland, as we have seen, Resem- resemble each other in system pretty closely, and differ blauces considerably from New South Wales, while the remaining ^^<^ Jif- Australian colonies may be said to occupy a middle position, fereuces of In South Australia, Tasmania, and Western Australia educa- Austral- tion is generally compulsory and unsectarian or secular, *^"!" Western Australia alone aiding denominational schools in the ^y^'®'"^- shape of fifteen Eoman Catholic schools and one connected with the Church of England. The school age is most extended in Victoria, where it is from six to fifteen or sixteen years. Victoria, New South Wales, and New Zealand possess the greatest number of scholars in proportion to population, and New Zealand the highest average attendance ; while New South Wales spends the most money upon education, New Zealand and Victoria standing next. Victoria stands far before the other colonies in the proportion of children able to read and write ; and New Zealand and Victoria stand first in the elementary education of their entire people. In all the Australasian colonies tlie State finds from taxes or grants of land either the whole or by far the greater portion of the cost of elementary education, which is one reason why the School Boards have by law so little power. Centralisation is not unpopular in Australasia. While the Australian colonies generally adopt the principle Free of compulsory education they are about equally divided with schools, regard to free education. In New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania fees are charged, to those who are unwilling to obtain remission upon the ground of poverty, amounting to 4d. a week in South Australia for children under eight, and 6d. for children over eight. In New South Wales the charge is 3d. a week for each child up to four of one family, and for any number beyond four the total amount is not to exceed Is. The fees go into the consolidated fund. In the mother- colony school-fees produce about sixty thousand pounds a year, out of a total cost which still exceeds six hundred thousand a year. Children of school age are allowed to travel free to and from the public schools of Tasmania and of New South Wales ; and in New South Wales and South Australia itinerant teachers are appointed in districts where it is not possible to collect a sufficient number of children to form a permanent school. In a country where almost every family pays 6d. a week for a newspaper it is no hardship to provide 3d. or 6d. a week for the schooling of each child, and no doubt an enhanced value is given to education in the nnnds of some parents by the direct con- tribution of some small amount towards its cost ; but, on the other band, the difficulties of collection and the dangers of remission are so great that, when the sum involved is so small 570 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Sacrifices made for education in tlie colonies. Compul- sion. The reli- gious difficulty. as is discovered by New South Wales experience, it is almost obviously undesirable to exact fees. At all events colonial example is strongly upon the side of the Victorians as against New South Wales in this respect. Education may be said to be free throughout almost the whole of British North America, and to more than half tlie population of Australasia. Speaking generally it may be said that Victoria is not surpassed by any country in the world in the efficiency of its system of public elementary schools, although Ontario, New Brunswick, and several of the other Provinces of the Dominion stand on the same level, while South Australia is not far behind. Our colonies compare favourably with the most advanced States of the American Union, and altogether surpass the mother-country in the sacrifices they have made for education, those sacrifices being perhaps greatest in parts of Canada and in New Zealand and New South Wales, although in tlie last-named colony there was at one time perhaps some waste. New Zealand is somewhat decreasing her public expenditure from taxes upon education, but lias endowed her schools with land upon the scale of the education grants of the new States of the American Union. Victoria is now making provision for the endowment of her school system with lands. The colonies have, however, invented little in the educational field, and what they have done has been to pick out the best parts of the systems of the mother-country and of the various States of the Union, and make an excellent amalgam for themselves. Just as elementary instruction is compulsory through almost the length and breadth of British North America, so is it through almost the length and breadth of Australasia, though there are considerable differences in tlie degree in which com- pulsory attendance is enforced in practice. In Soutli Australia, as in Queensland, compulsion is more a theory than a fact. The Australasian colonies, with the exception of Western Australia, avoid all concessions to the denominational system. Western Australia may be said to possess a system not unlike that of the mother-country, and there is in this country of tlie future compulsory attendance at schools either "public" (and these secular or virtually secular) or denominational but State aided. In the whole of the remainder of Australasia only public schools are helped, and these are either secular, or, as in jSTova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and British Columbia, unsectarian and not supplemented by the provision of State- aided denominational schools. There is no attempt in Australasia to imitate, with a view to the conciliation of Pioman Catholics hostile to the public schools, the system prevailing in Ontario and Manitoba. In New South Wales the teachers have to give lessons, which must be " non-sectarian," out of the Irish National Series of Scrip- ture Lessons, and tlie clergy of the Iioman Catholic Cliurch and a portion of the Cliurch of England clergy maintain a OHAP. IV EDUCATION 571 hopeless agitation against the system. The law in Few South Wales, in New Zealand, in Tasmania, and in Queensland allows any cleygyman of the school district to attend the scliool, at such suitable hour as may be arranged, to give Scripture lessons to the children of his own denomination, but, in practice, few of them attend. Here and there some will do so twice a week for a time, and a teacher is told off to keep order for them ; but after a year or two, for one reason or another, the practice drops. In South Australia it is within the power of the parents to demand the reading of the Scriptures, but the reading is seldom asked for. In New Zealand a BUI to compel Bible reading in the schools was rejected by a large majority at the time when Sir Robert Stout was Prime Minister and Minister of Education. In Victoria, where the system is secular and where no reli- In Vic- gious teaching is allowed in school hours, unless that vague tori", religion which is to be drawn from Nelson's Series of Royal Readers can be said to constitute religious teaching, the clergy are at liberty to use the buildings for teaching their own flocks ; but here also they do not avail themselves of the opportunity, and confine themselves to a somewhat sterile agitation. Some of the creeds work for the reading of the Bible without com- ment, others ask for the books of the Irish National Series, while the Roman Catholics and a portion of the clergy of tlie Church of England refuse to accept any system but one of denominational schools. An association, chiefly consisting of ministers of religion, which was formed for the purpose of providing religious in- struction in the State schools of Victoria, ceased to exist after a life of two years' duration ; but there is still " The Bible and State Schools League," of which Bishop Moorhouse was one of the founders. There seems before this League as little pi-ospect of success as lies before the Roman Catholic Church and those few clergy of the Church of England who are working for State aid to denomiBational schools, for the Education Act appears to have a marvellously strong hold upon the affections of the Victorian people, who vote steadily against candidates who are suspected of a desire to upset it. Pastorals are issued by the Roman Catholic Church against those who send their children to " godless schools " ; but the difiiculty caused by sparse popu- lation in the rural districts prevents the Roman CathoKc community frona supplying accommodation in separate schools for their own children, and as a matter' of fact the Roman Catholics largely resort to the public schools. At tlie same time in New South Wales and in Victoria the Roman Catholic Church provides school accommodation for more than one-tenth of the total population of school age. Aid to small denomina- tional schools in the thinly peopled districts would mean a large expenditure by the State, and there is little chance of the Victorian voters agreeing to such a system. From time to time the Roman Catholic Church refuses Confirmation to children 572 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN attending the State schools, and pressure has been put on the parents in order to procure withdrawal ; but, nevertheless, the pi'actice of sending Roman Catholic children to the public schools continues. Eoman No one can fail to admire the earnestness and consistency Catliolics which tlie Roman Catholic Church has shown upon this ques- in Aus- tion and the sacrifices which a community, comparatively tralia. speaking poor in the colonies and in the United States and in Great Britain, has made for Ptoman Catholic education ; but these considerations must not make us shut our eyes to the fact that in none of the English-speaking countries do the Roman Catholics make that amount of way upon the question to which their numbers and political influence would seem to entitle them. The average view taken by the Australian voters, who refuse to help the denominational system, is that it is the duty of the State to see that the children are educated in need- ful branches of secular instruction, while they think that the Churches exist mainly for the purpose of providing religious instruction. The success of the Sunday School system is pointed to as a proof of the wisdom of the voluntary system, and the voters say : " We do our part ; do yours, or leave it alone, as you think best." Higher in- Victoria has not yet extended its public system to secondary structiou. education, except by giving many scholarships as the reward of merit to the best pupils of the primary schools, but wholly supports elementary education and helps a university and colleges. In New South Wales the State not only gives a good deal of superior teaching in its elementary schools, but, like the Canadian Province of Ontario, also assists secondary education, and supports its university in addition to helping the colleges in connection with it. In all the towns of New South Wales there are schools called superior public schools, which compete with private high schools. In New Zealand the State has been mainly instrumental in providing secondary education, but the cost is great, and the public provision is being gradually with- drawn in the interests of economy, and replaced by local help. In New South Wales, and in those other colonies in wliich the State largely helps in the work of secondary education, fees are charged in the secondary schools to the great majority of those who attend them, and these schools are practically self-support- ing. The working classes in tlie colonies as a rule seem to prefer the scholarship system to the undertaking of secondary education by tlie State. Most of the boys when they are fourteen are wanted by their families to work, and even the provision of free education for longer years will not tempt fathers to keep their children from the trades or callings that they wish them to pursue. The scholarship system allows the picked children of the working class to take advantage of free higher education, and it is only for the picked children that a demand for such trainiiig exists. It is therefore probable tliat secondary education will continue in all the colonies to be o"Ai'. IV EDUCATION 673 carried out maiuly by private enterprise, or by colleges founded by the various Uliurc^ies, or by schools wliich, if nominally public and aided by the State, will nevertheless charge fees sufficient to defray the greater portion of the cost. The char- acter of secondary education in the colonies is improving every year, and, on the whole, is satisfactory — giving an excellent liberal training, superior to that of the average school in England. New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and New Austral- Zealand all have universities aided by the State, and largely asian supplied with professors tempted out from England by good Univer- salaries. Tasmania is now engaged on the organisation of a ^'ti^- similar system. Generally speaking it may be said of these universities that tlieir pass standard is higher than a pass degree of Oxford or of Cambridge, and as high as that of London ; but their honour work is less good than that of the old English universities. In their arrangement the colonial universities approximate more closely to Scotch universities than they do to English, and there is a considerable similarity between Melbourne University and the Universities of Edin- burgh and of Glasgow. All the Australian universities now admit women, whose success has been great in proportion to their numbers, and all of them receive large benefactions. Sydney University has obtained nearly £200,000 from a single donor, and possesses considerably over £300,000 of invested property, besides enjoying one of the largest annual public grants made to any university by any State in the whole world. Melbourne University has a grant only less considerable than that of Sydney, and great private gifts have been made to the Church of England and the Presbyterian colleges affiliated to the university. The New Zealand University is an examining body without fixed abode, and the teaching in New Zealand is conducted by the colleges in the chief towns. In addition to these universities and colleges there are soholarshiijs tenable at Edinburgh and London, oflered by the University of Adelaide and the South Australian and Tasmanian Governments, besides the scholarships tenable at the older English universities which have been already mentiojied. New South Wales was the first of the Australian colonies to Technical make much provision for technical instruction, and its Technical educatiou. College is a considerable institution. The Working Men's College of Melbourne is due to private benefactors, and has a large number of students, whose work is of a high level, while the Schools of Mines at Ballarat and Sandhurst and the Tech- nical College in Geelong are also flourishing. Land has been set apart in Victoria as an endowment for agricultural colleges, and schools of design have been established throughout the country, as has been seen. South Australia has a flourishing Agricultural College already in existence, with a large experi- mental farm attached to it, while New Zealand possesses one in the middle or south island. The mechanics' institutes and 574 PEORLElilS OF GREATER BRITAIN Athenpeums, which are to be found from one end of Australasia to the otlier, and wliich in most of the Australasian colonies are assisted by the State, as they are in Ontario, must be mentioned in connection with education ; and free libraries, which are established in some of the smallest villages, are also far more generally diffused in the colonies tlian they are at home. The cadet system and teaching of military drill in connection with education is not general throughout the colonies, but is pushed far in Victoria. Newspajier I have already spoken of the colonial weekly newspapers, education, and noted their extraordinary bulkiness and solidity, but it is almost necessary to name them in connection with popular education in the colonies ; for their encyclopedic information, if carefully studied, as it is studied in the bush, constitutes a considerable amount of practical teaching. The heavy toil of the up-country stations leaves little time on weekdays for reading or for keeping up in any way the excellent primary education which has been given in the colonial scliools ; but Sunday is, as a general rule, carefully observed as a day of rest, and largely spent in reading the weekly productions of the colonial press ; and the horticultural, agricultural, musical, artistic, literary, and popular scientific information given in tliese huge journals is of a formidable kind. Australian In some of the colonies, as, for example, in South Australia, educa- special provision has been made by law for the punishment of tiooal fie- those who " upbraid " any teacher in the presence or hearing of culiarities. his pupils. In other colonies, as, for examjDle, in Victoria, the Queen s birthday and the Prince of Wales's birthday have been set aside as public school holidays throughout the colony. In all tlie colonies there is more mixture of classes in the public schools than is seen in England ; and in some of them, or rather in parts of some of them, there is an absolute mixture of classes in the schools, with results that are excellent for all. " Mixed schools " of boys and girls are not so common in the colonies as in the United States ■ but they exist, and in Queens- land are somewhat numerous. In some of the colonies private schools are inspected by the State, and in these cases the State scholarships giving free higher education are sometimes open to pupils coming from the inspected non-public (that is, from the Roman Catholic) schools. In New Zealand the principle of the cumulative vote is applied in the election of the Education Boards, which are, as has been shown, more important in that colony, from the large size of tlieir districts, than in any other colony of the Australasian group. Future of While then the prevailing system of public education in colonial Australasia, and in those parts of Canada which are not education, affected by the provision for " dissentient " schools made at the time of confederation, is compulsory and secular or unsectarian, it seems popular among the majority of colonial communities^ and threatened with no dangers other than those which arise from the Roman Catholic difficulty, at which we have already CHAP. IV EDUCATION 575 glanced. I call the colonial religious difficulty Roman Catholic, because the members of the Church of England are divided, and the Protestant bodies in general fairly contented ■with matters as they stand. From time to time some of the Church of England colonial bishops have denounced secular education, but they have not been followed by the laity, and their charges have been ridiculed by the press under the name of " Protestant Bulls " ; and it must be admitted that, while the grievance of the High Churchmen is the same as that of the Roman Catholics, the only leverage which can ever avail to shake the colonial secular or unsectarian school system is that of the Roman Catholic vote. The Roman Catholics and a portion of the High Church clergy undoubtedly feel the being rated for secular or virtually secular schools a thing offensive to their conscience, and will use any political power which they may possess to upset the system. I have said that the opposition is making but little way in Australasia and in those Provinces of Canada where there is not already a system partly denomi- national ; and I ought to add that the crime statistics of those colonies which possess a, nearly universal secular system of primary education give no colour to the view that such a system has a deteriorating effect upon those subjected to it. It is necessary before concluding an exammation of the Pennan- present position of education in the great self - governing ^''^ .°f ^^^ colonies to briefly discuss the probability of its permanence. P"'''''^ Fierce attacks have been made in Victoria, where there has ''™°°' been more feeling aroused in the matter than elsewhere, upon ^^^ ^™' Dr. Pearson, himself a decided Churchman, for the supposed excision of the very name of God from works used in schools. Bishop Moorhouses successor in the see of Melbourne has promoted petitions urging the restoration to the school-books of passages relating to Christianity which have been excised from them, and Dr. Pearson has repi-inted speeches made by him in the Assembly in defence of his oiEcial action. Dr. Pearson explains that he was not in the colony when the Education Act forbidding Bible teaching became law, and that he had not entered colonial political life when Nelson's Series was substituted for the Irish Series of school-books, or when, at a later day, passages relating to Christianity were struck out of the Nelson Readers. He also shows that in 1887 a motion was carried directing him to report whether any of the books used in the State schools contained religious dogma, contrary to the provisions of the Act providing that secular education only should be given in the schools. But Dr. Pearson admits that he thinks that the expurgation of the Nelson Series which took place before his time was unadvisable, and in this view he will be supported by opinion in the mother-country. It certainly seems fanatical to attempt to expunge all references to a religious system of which such deep traces are to be found throughout our literature ; and the folly of attemiDting to do so is seen by the fact, forcibly shown by Dr. Dale, that many of 576 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Proposals of the opponents of the secular system. the passages struck out are, if carefully considered, far less objectionable to atheistic parents than the language of the National Anthem, which is sung in the Victorian schools. Dr. Pearson successfully repels the charge of " secularism run mad " in oblitei-ating the name of God from the school-books, but he does not attempt to show the wisdom of the course which had been adopted by his predecessors. He admits that had he been able to do so he would have " applied to the House to restore some of these expurgated passages, the excision of which has given so much ofi'enoe," and which inchide lines in Burns and Longfellow, and in Tennyson's "May Queen" — the passages in Longfellow being, I believe, the same as those the excision of which has raised a similar controversy in some States of the American Union. Dr. Pearson is able at present to gain an easy victory over his opponents, because they are not agreed among themselves. He is in a position to show that while the Eoman Catholics form the backbone of the opposition to the public school system in Victoria, they denounce as strongly the New South Wales system of unsectarian Bible teaching (which some of those who temporarily act with them wish to introduce into Victoria) as they do the Victorian secular system. But Bishop Moorhouse in his day and other later Church of England leaders in Victoria have from time to time proposed not only that unsectarian religious teaching should be introduced into the State scliools, but also that a grant should be given to the Roman Catholics in aid of denominational education. Bishop Moorhouse was prepared to give a pledge that the Church of England, or as it is called by Victorian politicians the Anglican Church, in Victoria would never ask for any separate grant for itself, even though the Koman Catholic Church were subsidised, provided unsectarian teaching in the schools were allowed. The Presby- terians are very strong in Victoria — stronger perhaps than in any colony except New Zealand — and some oi the leaders of the Presbyterian Church support some of tlie English High Churchmen in proposing a grant to denominational schools. The reply. On tlie other hand, the proposal to grant separate sums of money to the Eoman Catholic Church for purely denomi- national education is unpopular with all those who value the secular results of the present system, and in resisting it colonial ministers are able to point to the fact that the majority of the Roman Catholic laity in practice acquiesce in the secular system. Dr. Pearson asserts that only 20,000 out of more than 50,000 Roman Catholic children in Victoria attend Roman Catholic schools, and he says that this number of 20,000 is subject to deductions. He calculates that among the 20,000 are included the children of rich Roman Catholics, who attend denomi- national schools in the same way in which the children of rich Protestants attend private schools often denominational, and that it includes many children who regularly attend State schools, but are withdrawn for some months before their first CHAP. IV EDUCATION 577 Communion (in order that Confiniiation may not bo refused to them) and placed foi- a time in Eoman Catholic schools. Dr. Pearson calculates that, when allowance is made for these classes, the jjublic schools of Victoria may be said to educate two-thirds of the children of the Eoman Catholic conmiunity. The Victorian politicians maintain that Victorian patriotism is promoted by the destruction of the old feelings of religious and of racial animosity, by the children all growing up together, sitting on the same bench, learning the same lessons, and play- ing in the same playground, Protestant and Eoman Catholic looking upon one another as fellow-countrymen instead of as enemies or natural opponents. They assert that religious hatred is dying out in Victoria, and does not exist at all among those who have been educated at the public schools. It is a remarkable fact upon Dr. Pearson's side that one-fourth of the public teachers in Victoria " are Eoman Catholics, who are not deterred hy their religion from teaching in our schools, who rise to be inspectors and to hold the highest places in the Department, and many of whom I know to be most cordially attached to the system." We may well doubt whether the Roman Catholics, even though assisted by the authorities of the Churcli of England and, it may be, of the Presbyterian Church, will make way upon this question, and feel certain that they will not do so unless by the political influence of the Eoman Catholic vote at moments of an equal division of parties. The feeling, too, in Victoria upon the side of the public school system is so strong, the conviction of the majority of the voters' that the Sunday school system is a complete success as regards the religious instruction of the young so nearly unanimous, that attempts to use the Eoman Catholic vote for the purpose of upsetting the public school system ai-e apt to cause a coalition of parties against denominational grants, and to depress for a long time the fortunes of the party suspected of a leaning towards them. The Eoman Catholic Church is stronger in iportions of tho United States than she is in Queensland or Victoria, and yet her strength has not prevailed to obtain a revision of the school system of the States of the American Union in accord with her demands. If ever the agitation against the complete exclusion of religion from the public schools should in the colonies possessing a secular system rise to a height which makes some form of concession necessary, it seems 20ossible that that concession will take the shape of a small recognition of the religious principle in forms which would be more ofl'ensive to Eoman Catholic opinion than even a strictly secular system, but would detach the Presbyterians and many of the Church- men from the ranks of those who at the prasent moment are inclined to lend assistance to the demand for denominational grants. Widely different is the problem of public education in South The Cape. Africa from that presented by Australasia and British Nortii 2p 578 TROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt vi America. The Cape system of education for the whites was virtually establislied by Sir Jolui Herschel, the Astronomer- Royal, and supplemented by a system dealing with the natives which bears the name of Sir George Grey. The Roman Catholics did not receive help under Sir John Herschel's system, because they rejected that amount of State control which in some colonies they have since put up with ; but, on the whole, the plan laid down formed a liberal and compre- hensive system. There are now in the Cape public schools for wliites largely helped by Government grants, but the State assists nearly all elementary schools of every kind as well as secondary schools, and the university — an examining body. There are free pupils, who are known as " Queen's scholars," at the South African College ; and such scholarships are given to picked boys, and there are free scholarships in the elementarj' schools. Grants are made by the Cape to boarding schools, in order to deal with the sparse population of the rural districts — a system which is unusual in the colonies, but not entirely unknown outside the Cape, as there is something like it in South Australia. There are in Natal grants, as has been mentioned in the South African part of this woi'k, for children present at inspection who have been under instruction at their homes. At the Cape there are farm schools, to which grants are given where they are established sis miles from any public school and bring together not fewer than five children to be taught. It is found that the Dutch colonists teach their cliildren Dutch at home, but willingly send them to school to learn English, although a small number of parents who send their children to the scliools express the desire that they should be taught in Dutch and should not learn English. As regards the public elementary schools, the local managers (who are the Municipal Boards or the District Councils, or persons appointed by them, or, where they refuse to act, managers elected by householders willing to guarantee the expenses) have power to provide for religious teaching subject to a conscience clause. The managers in the Cape have far larger powers than the Australian Boards of Advice, for they decide the question as to the teacliing of Dutch, fix school fees, and nominate teachers. The vast majority of the schools of the Cape are two diti'erent classes of schools dealing with dark-skinned inhabitants, and primary education may be said to be more widely spread among the native population of the Cape of Good Hope than among the dark-skinned majority in colonies where there is a numerous black or yellow population, except indeed in one or two of the West-India islands and Hong-Kong. There are in the Cape scholarships similar to those of South Australia and Tasmania of Trinidad and Barbados, to enable young colonists to take degrees at European universities. There are several excellent institutions for liigher education which are aided by the State of which the South African College at Cape Town is undenomi- national, and the Stellenbosch College Dutch ; while of two CHAP. IV EDUCATION 579 diocesan colleges in connection -with the Church of England one maintains a ladies' college of considerable size. In Natal there is a double sjrstem, the colony keepmg up Natal. public schools in spite of the existence of State-aided denomi- national schools, and the state of things in Natal, as in Western Australia, is somewhat similar to that which prevails in Eng- land. The Natal State grant is very high, being more than £5 a head on every scholar ; but less is done for native education and for Hindoo education by Natal than is done for Kahr education by the Cape. The Crown Colonies, other than Western Australia and Crown Natal, which have been mentioned, yield examples of every Colonies, kind of system — from those of Hong-Kong and Barbados, which provide almost as freely for the education of the black or yellow population as do the self-governing colonies for that of their white inhabitants, down to those which resemble that of India in the paucity of the numbers of pupils attending school in proportion to the total population. It is impossible, and if it were possible it would be useless, to describe in detail the various plans adopted for education in Ci'own Colonies. In Heligoland we have a compulsory system, under which all the children attend a free, mixed, German and English school. In St. Helena also there is a compulsory system, whUe the schools consist partly of Government schools and partly of schools (more numerous) merely assisted by the State. In Malta there is a Government system of free schools ; but the schools are denominational, and, in fact, strictly Eoman Catholic. In Hong-Kong there is a Government secular system, but the colony also aids denominational schools. In the majority of the Crown Colonies, but a majority which does not contain the most important, the system is one of denominational schools aided by the State, as, for example, in British Honduras, British Guiana, The Gambia, Lagos, and Sierra Leone ; and the Gold Coast finds its education chiefly in aided denominational schools. In Ceylon there are Government unsectarian schools which are free for vernacular education, while fees are taken for English teaching ; but there are also a larger number of State-aided schools, mostly denominational. In the Straits Settlements there is a similar system, as well as ia Mauritius. Of the West Indies, Trinidad has had the most interesting Trinidad, educational history, fully described by a great writer with leanings towai-ds the secular system at one time in force in that island under circumstances which made its adoption a matter of peculiar difficulty.^ In Trinidad the paajority of the population are Roman Catholic, and in addition to a large koman Catholic black population there is a considerable element of Eoman Cathohc Spanish and French whites, yet a secular system was introduced by a rash Governor, with the natural result that the Eoman Catholic clergy, assisted, I believe, by tlie clergy of the Church of England, took away a ^ At Last, by Charles Kiugsley. Macmillan and Co., new edition, 1889. 580 PROBLEM,S OF GREATER BRITAIN taut vi large proportion of the children from the schools. The system had to be withdrawn, and one of State aid to schools of all descriptions substituted. Tliere is in Trinidad a secular State college which might be termed ii university, and to whicli is atiiliated tlie College of tlie Immaculate Conception, a strictly denominational Iloman Catholic institution ; and Trinidad is also remarkable among small colonies for liolding examinations for scholarshijjs at the London University, as well as giving scholarships of her own to be held at the older universities of England. Other In Jamaica and the Leeward Islands education is increasing West- among the negroes with remarkable rapidity. Turk's Island India has adopted a free and unsectarian system, while in the Lee- and ward Islands of Antigua, St. Kitts, and Nevis the system is Atlantic denominational with State aid ; but the fees which are exacted islands, jj^ nearly all the islands are a hindrance to education among the negroes. In Grenada there is a double system of Govern- ment and of aided schools ; in Bermuda a compulsory system, but without free schools ; in Bahamas a free unsectarian system, partly compulsory, as well as aid to other schools ; while Barbados heads the list among the West Indian colonies in the proportion of school attendance to population, and maintains Government scholarships to be held at Oxford or Cambridge, as well as makes grants to the winners of scholar- ships at London University. General Except to a student of educational systems, or as a branch conclu- of the inquiry into the future of the negro, the position of sions. education in the Crown Colonies is of less immediate interest than that of education in the self-governing colonies ; and while we have perhaps little to be proud of in the extent of education revealed by the figures relating to India and the Crown Colonies, we may turn with pleasure to the educational statistics of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The citizens of the United States, in spite of their strong and general opinion against admitting to equality the negro race, liave made far better provision for negro education in their Southern states than is the case with us in even the most advanced of our West Indian colonies. On the other hand, tlie care which has been shown with regard to the primary education of the people by the inhabitants of New Brunswick and Ontario, of Australia and New Zealand, and, it may be said, of our self- governing colonies generally, testifies to the determination of the colonists to insure the instruction of the future rulers of the State. Nor have the colonies been less successful than the States of the American Union in securing the education of their youth, while the fact that tkey have not recently been called upon to deal with so large an immigration of the poor and untaught of Europe has enabled them to show in their criminal statistics even laetter results from widespread education than can be found in the statistics of the United States. CHAPTEE V EELIGION Those powerful religious influences, wliicli our survey of the education question has shown us to be at work within the colonies, are worthy of separate investigation. Of tlie self-governing colonies some liave grown up without Variety of an established Church ; others possessed one at an early period tli^ r^''- of their history, but have aboUshed the system of State aid ; S''"i'* , while in Lower Canada, as has been seen, there has existed org^isa- since the French possession a virtual parochial establishment *'™ . of the Eoman Catholic Church, and in the Cape, from its ''°^°'^'^^- earliest days, a predominance of the Dutch Reformed Church. By the census of 1881 the Eoman Catholic Churcli stood at Dominiou the head of the religious denominations of the Dominion of of Canada. Canada, but its adherents do not form an actual majority of the population, the members of other religious bodies being to the Eoman Catholics throughout the Dominion at that time as more than four to three — a proportion wliich has probably undergone alteration by the increase of Protestantism through immigration. In the newly peojiled districts the Presbyterians are the strongest denomination, the Church of England standing next, closely followed by the Methodists and the Eoman Catholics ; but taking the Dominion as a whole, the Methodists stand second, the Presbyterians third, and the Church of England fourth, the Methodists in British North America being a united body. Hostility between the Church of England and the Eoman Catholic Church is far stronger in the Canadian Dominion than in Newfoundland or in the Southern colonies. In the Eoman Catholic Province of Quebec, as we have seen, the Protestant minority have, on the whole, lived on good terms with the Eoman Catholic majority, but in Ontario feeling runs high and leads to acts of violence. The Eoman Catholic Archbishop of Toronto, Dr. Walsh, was attacked on his " welcome to his diocese " in the latter part of 1889. His carriage windows were broken by stones, and he appeared in his cathedral with his arm in a sling. Throughout Manitoba, and in the Maritime Provinces, as well as in Ontario, the relations of Protestants and Eoman Catholics have been strained since the passing of the Jesuit Bill. 582 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Protestant Next to the 23reclominance of Eoman Catholicism in a portion Union. of the Dominion the most interesting feature connected with tlie religious life of British North America is the effort which is being made to form a united Protestant body. The differ- ences which separate members of the Church of England, Presbyterians, and members of the Methodist Church of Canada are probably too serious to be bridged over ; but the names of the delegates who have taken part in recent conferences on Canadian Church Union show that what is aimed at there has a more practical side than have the schemes which in the mother-country have been mooted in the Lambeth Proposals for bringing about the unity of Christendom. In. Canada, and especially in the Province of Ontario and the city of Montreal, Protestants have a bond of union which is unfortunately far more powerful than any feeling of brotherhood, namely, their opposition to and dislike of the Church of Rome. Although the very word " Protestant " is obnoxious to great numbers of English Churchmen, the movement towards vmited Protestant- ism was started, as has been seen, by the Anglican United Synod of Montreal ; and the Methodist Conference and the Presbyterian General Assembly appointed committees to confer with the Church of England delegates, who included several bishops. The only result of the Conferences hitherto has been the adoption of resolutions to meet again. The united The union of the four bodies of Methodists in the Dominion Methodist under one Conference took place in 1883, the contracting bodies Church of being the Methodist Church of Canada, the Episcopal Method- British ists, the Primitive Methodists, and the Bible Christians. The North unification of Methodism in Canada (and Methodist "Canada" America, ij^cludes Newfoiindland) has been highly successful in its results, and it must be conceded that Methodism flourishes in British North America more conspicuously than does the system of the Church of England. Throughout the Dominion the Methodist Cliurch forms not only a religious but also a social centre for its people, and, although the Methodists do not act as a united body in either Provincial or Dominion politics, any more than do the Eoman Catholics themselves, they provide ready-made organisations on occasions when candidates are fortunate enough to secure their support. In Canada, as in Australasia, the Metliodists and Presbyterians have in fact the numbers that they claim on pajper, whereas the Eoman Catholics and the Church of England receive the nominal allegiance of large numbers of persons who neither attend a church nor give money towards Church purposes of any kind. The ]\tethodists by the census of 1881 had 743,000 adherents in the Dominion, as against 676,000 Presbyterians and 575,000 members of the Church of England. Out of their 743,000 adherents the Methodists, however, officially claim only 47,000 "full and accredited Church members," the conditions of full membership being narrow and rigid. There are in existence other, but non-ofhcial figures, which set the number of "members" in CHAP, v EELIGIOM 583 Canada vastly liiglier, and even the "Wesleyan Methodist Kalendar " claims 213,000 " members " for tlie Methodist Church of Canada, as against 78,000 Wesleyans in Australasia ; but the word "members" is in this case not so strictly limited as in the otlier statistics from which I have quoted. The movement towards coalition between the various Methodist Churches, which has met with this extraordinary success in Canada, first in welding those Churches into one, and then in immensely increasing the membership of the united body, is now spreading to South Africa, where the Wesleyans are strong. The Presbyterian Church is governed by the General As- The uniteil sembly of Canada (but Presbyterian " Canada," like Methodist Presby- Canada, includes Newfoundland), and is also a highly pros- '''•'i™ perous community. In Nova Scotia the Presbyterian is by Church oi far the most powerful Protestant Church, and in every trade S""?'' centre of the whole Dominion the most prominent commercial ^orth names are of Scottish origin, and belong to members of the ■*-'"<''■"=''■ Presbyterian Church. Presbyterianism in the colonies is, as a rule, united, and in Canada union dates from 1875, when the main body of the Kirk joined forces with the other Presby- terian bodies, as, it may be hoped, will one day also be the case in Scotland in the event of Disestablishment. There is, however, also a small "Presbyterian Church of Canada" " in connection with the Church of Scotland." The Church of England has more difficulty in speaking in Tlie Canada with a single voice than have the other religious bodies ; Clmrch of for, less under discipline than the Roman Catholic Church, it Euglaud differs also from the Presbyterian Church and from the con- i" Canada, federated Methodists in having no representative body for the whole of British North America, or even for the Dominion. The Provincial Synod of the Church of England in Canada includes only the five eastern Provinces, although it is probable that the Church will shortly be united throughout Britisli North America under one ecclesiastical jurisdiction. A scheme has been put forward for the erection of each civil Province into an ecclesiastical province, presided over by an archbishop ; but, considering that the Church of England outside the United Kingdom has not hitherto been given to the foundation of archbishoprics, it seems difficult to treat seriously the proposal of the Toronto Committee for the simultaneous creation of seven archbishoprics (followed, I suppose, by others, as new Provinces spring up) for the benefit of six hundred thousand people. The union of the Church throughout the Dominion would be of advantage to it, but the Church of England will not gain ground by the mere assumption of high- sounding ceremonial titles which have no appropriateness in a new country, although the Roman Catholic Church has indeed five archbishoprics in Australasia. The Church in Canada displays great activity in the large centres of population, but it does not seem to be making headway in the rural districts. The reports of the Canadian bishops of the Church of England 584 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN The Ecf'orniecl Episcopal Church. show a certain despondency as to the future. For instance, the Bishop of Ontario wi'ites that " the members of the Church are only a small minority of the population, and are relatively poor. The wealth of the cities is in the hands of sectarians ; and the Unions recently formed, both between the various Presbyterian bodies and the Methodists, have brought the Church of Enaiand face to face with two powerful antagonistic organisations.' That which at once attracts notice in connection with Church work in Canada, as indeed throughout the Church of England outside the United Kingdom, is the great number of dioceses and of bishops, and the poverty of the young clmrches. "The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America " (to give its official designation to the Church which is in communion with the Church of England) is growing rapidly in strength. Mr. Bryce is unfair to this Church when he assigns to it but 432,000 members, while he credits the principal Baptist body with 2,732,000, for his figures are supposed to be founded upon the assertions of those wlio rule the Churches, and the American "Episcopal Church" declares that it has half a million of communicants, one and a quarter million of baptized members, and great wealth. The heads of the seventy-four " colonial " dioceses of the Church of England (or sixty-three excluding the missionary bishops) tell, as a rule, a different story. Some of the sees have incomes of only_ £190 or £150, and have but a very small number of communicants or baptized members within their limits. The signatures of the bishops in Canada strike one with astonishment, and point to an assumption of geographical control which, one would think, would be best abandoned. "E., Algoma," "M. S., Huron," "W. C, Mackenzie River," "J., Moosonee," and "A. J. R, Qu'appelle," are not only odd signatures, but perhaps in some small degree ridiculous under the circumstances of the case. The dominant tone of the English Church in Canada is Evan- gelical, for the Church in Ontario is naturally somewhat anti- Catholic, from findmg itself at close quarters witli the Eoman Church, and is much associated with the Orange Lodges. The Episcopahan Synods have lately passed strong Protestant resolutions on the Jesuits' Estates Bill, and the proposed amalgamation of the Church with the Presbyterian and JMethod- ist bodies, although visionary, is evidence of Evangelical l^redominance in the Synods. A body known as the Eeformed Episcopal Church began life in Canada some twelve years ago ; but, although it possesses congregations in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, llamilton, and other places, it is not growing at the present time, and has to deal with schism in its own ranks. A portion of this Churcli is affiliated to a similar Church in tlie United States. On the whole, tlie Pueformed Episcopal Church is an Evangelical body, which discards vestments and even the surplice ; and it was started as a ]irotest against the early growtli, as it was supposed of ritualism in the Church of England. But m Canada, where ciiAP. V KELIGION 585 the Church of England is such a body as has been described, there hardly seems room for the continued existence of the Eeformed Episcopal Church. The only other denomination which finds large support in The British North America is the Baptist, strong in the United EiipUsts. States, which claims in the Dominion the adhesion of 296,000 people. In the Province of New Brunswick the Baptists stand next to the Roman Catholics in strength, and have almost twice as many members as either the Church of England or the Presbyterians, who stand respectiAely third and fourth — the Methodists being only fifth in this Province. The Baptists are, however, not a united body ; and the Baptists of New Bruns- wick are divided between the Baptists who are Calvinists and the Free Baptists ; but in educational matters they act together. The Congregationalists jjossess, throughout the Dominion as The Imle- elsewhere, some of the most distinguished and popular of city peudeuts. preachers. In the early days of New South Wales the Church of Eng- Australia. land claimed the position of a State Church in that colony, which at that time virtually included all known Australia ; but I doubt whether there was a legal ground for such a claim, and it certainly never was allowed to jjass without protest by the representatives of the other religious bodies. At the same time in all Crown Colonies in early days the Church occupied a privileged position, though, as a general rule, by favour of the Government rather than by law ; and in most she received endowments or annual contributions from State funds. As Australian settlement increased, and church building on a large scale began, the practice arose of giving State contributions to the building funds of the bodies which were recognised as the four principal colonial Churches — the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Presbyterian and Wesleyan bodies ; and grants were also given m New South Wales towards the salary of the clergymen of the four denominations. The principle upon which sums were taken in the Estimates for religious purposes was similar to that which prevails at the present time in the Australian colonies with regard to contribu- tions towards hospitals and other charitable objects, namely, the provision of a sum to supplement provision by the inhabit- ants of the district. The Baptists, the Congregationalists, and the smaller bodies were left out of the arrangement, but the burden on the young State was nevertheless considerable, and the ecclesiastical items in colonial budgets grew at a pace which seemed to tlireaten indefinite expansion. An agitation sprang up throughout the settlements which was conducted on similar lines to that now carried on by the Liberation_ Society in the mother-country ; and in one after another the time came when it was thought wise to sever the connection between the religions and the State. The change throughout what once was New South Wales, and now forms the present colony with Queens- land and Victoria, was connected only with a jDartial disendow- 586 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN taut vi ment. _ In some cases Church endowments were transferred to educational purposes, but in many the Churches received the lands that they had held, often by State gift, in fee-simple, with power to sell them or to deal with them as they chose, and some of these land grants which were in suburban neighbourhoods speedily became most valuable. The Churches sold a portion and leased a portion of their land ; and the purchase money and the rents have become a permanent endowment. There is now little trace of a connection remaining between any of the Churches and the State in the Australian or generally in the self-governing colonies. In one or two colonies there is a pro- vision that all Church bodies may secure reservations of land as sites for churches in the survey of new districts. The grants payable to the clergy at the time of Disestablishment, were, as a rule, continued for the life of the recipients, and some ten thousand a year is still paid in New South Wales to the survivors of the old Church of England, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, and Wesleyan clergy. Effects of The increase of subscriptions for Church purposes, even in the aboli- proportion to the increase of wealth, has been remarkable in tion of Australia since the cessation of concurrent endowment, and it State aid. cannot be said that there has been a falling off in the vigour of Church work, while the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches have taken a fresh lease of life under the new system. Eeligious activity is now great in the colonies — far greater than it was twenty years ago — equal to the activity in the United States, and, on the whole, superior to the activity in England. Sunday Schools, Young Men's Christian Associations, and ^Missions flourish ; and if the Church of England is less strong propor- tionally, in numbers and in wealth, than she is at home, it is probable that the difference is accounted for by the circum- stances of young countries, and by the fact that the immigrant settlers belonged chiefly to the other Churches, rather than by the withdrawal of State aid. The influence of Christianity is, on the whole, greater in the colonies than it is at home, and there is less ill feeling towards one another among the religious bodies than in Great Britain, while church -going or chapel attendance in the towns is more general, though theology as a study is less pursued. No one in Australia dares to express a wish to revert to the State aid system. Mr. Bryce has said of the United States that a main cause in preventing the State organisation of religion is the American limited conception of the functions and duties of the State ; but in Australia we find exactly the same phase of thought upon the unwisdom of Church establishments, although in no other part of the world does there prevail so high a conception of the true position of the State. There is also to be remarked a more general disinclination on the part of the laity to allow ecclesiastical organisations to interfere in politics than exists at home, and parties in Australia frequently attack their opponents on tlie gi'ound of a supposed CHAP. V RELIGION 687 use of ecclesiastical influence in tlieir favour, for the purpose of discrediting and damaging them through this charge. At the same time the clergy of all denominations in the colonies, as iii the United States, seem anxious to keep aloof from party strife ; and public opinion, while it assigns to them a large share of social influence, holds them in this matter to a course which is recommended to them by the mixed characters of their flocks. It is true now in all the English daughter-countries, as it was in the time of Tocqueville, that the ministers of the gospel " eschew party with the anxiety attendant ujion personal interest." As a rule in the colonies there is no disqualification imposed on ministers of religion to prevent their sitting in either House of Parliament, although in many there was at one time such a disqualification, which was repealed when State aid was with- drawn. A most distinguished Presbyterian minister in New South Wales sat in the Upper House, and after the repeal of the disqualification, which in that colony concerned only the Assembly, he was elected to represent Sydney in the Lower House, and was a member for many years. Other ministers of religion have occasionally sat in colonial Houses in more recent times, but generally after having ceased to be actively con- nected with the ministry of their Church. In Victoria there has been a case of a former minister of religion becoming a minister of the Crown. Nothing can be higher than the respect in which the ministers of all creeds are held throughout the colonies — a change as regards Australia from the days when the clergyman was known by the phrase of the blacks as "dat-fellow-white-man-bin-wear-'m-sliirt-outside-'m-trouser,"an allusion, as a Queensland writer tells us, to the surplice. The position of the Church of England in the Australian The colonies from time to time has varied according to the ability Churoh of and wisdom of her rulers, and the late Bishop of Melbourne England and present Bishop of Manchester — Dr. Moorhouse — had an in Ans- influence, within and without his Church, which greatly im- ti-alia. proved the place of the Church of England in Victoria — a colony in which the Presbyterians, as in Ontario and in New Zealand, are rich and numerous, and in which the Wesleyans have also had from the first great social influence. Dr. Moorhouse was remarkable as a i colonial preacher, but he was also the most popular of Australian lecturers, and his addresses on week- day afternoons, on the problems of the day, were crowded by business men. I have given in my chapter on Victoria the credit of Australian irrigation schemes to Mr. Deakin ; but Mr. Deakin himself has said that as regards these Dr. Moorhouse paved the way ; and indeed the bishop has left his mark on the present aspect of many considerable colonial questions, and his name will not be forgotten in Australia, where he made himself as remarkable by his able tactics as by his powerful speech. _ There is in AustraKa not much tendency towards religious High speculation, and the Church of England is not so much divided Church by antagonistic schools of thought— Anglican " Catholic," High movement. 590 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part vi was ill the right. Since Disestablishment it has been held that cai'dinals should take rank at Dublin immediately after princes of the blood, and although in England the case is different, on account of the existence of an Established Church, in a recent Royal Commission, of which the present Governor of New South Wales was himself a member, the Crown gave to a cardinal a precedence over an English marquis and an EngHsli suffragan bishop. The Despite a marked Australian tendency towards the assertion Roman of the liberty of individual thought, the Roman Catholic Church Catholic jjogg jjQ^ joge ground. There is in Australia less disposition in Church, families to adhere to the family religion than is the case at home ; and, while men of pure Scotch descent are generally Presbyterians, those of English descent seem to move more freely from one Church to another. At the same time, and in spite of the often noticed want of veneration among Austral- ians, the Roman Catholic Church, though weakened, as in all English-speaking countries, by a certain unpopularity of the Irish wlio form the larger portion of its flocks, nevertheless attracts to itself a considerable amount of independent support. There is great diflerenoe of opinion in Australasia, as in the United States, on the subject of the numbers of the Roman CathoHc population. Cardinal Moran some years ago spoke of the Roman Catholics in Australasia as numbering 700,000 — a number which at that time would have placed them nearly on an equality with the Church of England ; but colonial statistics make them the second religious body in Australasia, with about 700,000 people at the present time, and considerably inferior to the Anglicans in numbers, as the latter are now credited with something like 1,300,000 people in Australasia. In nearly all the Australian colonies, but not in New Zealand, where the Presbyterians stand second, the Ptoman Catliolics are a good second to the Church of England by every test which can be applied. The Roman Catholic Church has not been so happy in its selection of an Australian cardinal as in its choice in England of Cardinal Manning and in the United States of Archbishoji Gibbons for the scarlet Hat ; for Cardinal Moran is wanting in the broad popular sympathies which distinguish the present leaders of the Roman Catholic Cliurch in the American Com- monwealth and in England. Dr. Moran will be remembered in England as having been the Government candidate for the T^xchbishopric of Dublin, at the time when Dr. Walsh (known to hold pronounced Nationalist opinions) was selected by the Pope. In Australia, as in the United States, the Roman Catholics spend much money upon their churches, and St. Patriclc's Cathedral at Melbourne, although untinislied, is one of the finest buildings in the Empire. But buildings and organisa- tion are not everything, and not only do the Roman Catholic authorities in Australia wage war upon what they style secret societies, as they do in Europe, but Cardinal Archbishop Moran CHAP. V RELIGION G89 Australasia. The weak point is shown by the statistics of attendance upon the principal service of a selected Sunday. In colonies where, as usual, the Church of England shows by far the largest nominal army of adherents, the Eoman Catholics, Presb,yterians, and Wesleyans sometimes exhibit a greater attendance at divine worship, which points to the fact that the Church returns are swelled by the inclusion of a good many persons who are in fact somewhat indifferent to lier ministrations. The Church is controlled in each colony by Diocesan Synods, Organiea- containing lay representatives elected by the Church members tion of from the various parishes, and the standing committee of the the Church Synod, as a rule, containing a lay majority. The various of England Synods are united in a Grand Synod of Australasia. The ™ ■*"?' rigidity of the organisation of the Church is a disadvantage to ti'^'^'sia. her in Australia. Some of the clergy have wished to " exchange pulpits" with leading Presbyterian and Methodist ministers, but on the question being referred home by the bishops, an adverse opinion has been expressed which is not supported by local feeling. It was thought in Victoi-ia, I know not with what reason, that Bishop Moorhouse leaned towards permitting the exchange j at all events he would not take upon himself to condemn it, and the English decision, although inevitable, was unpopular. In New Zealand the Church of England Bishop of Nelson, who has lately become Primate of New Zealand, not long since was present with his clergy at the laying of a foundation stone of a Wesleyan chapel, and although his action met with general approval in the Australasian colonies, it has been severely condemned in certain quarters at home. Some colonial Churchmen, as, for example, the Bishop of Ballarat, have pointed out that the colonial Churches are rather separate trees than branches of the Church of England. There is, according to his view, no binding legal connection between the Church of England and the Church of England in each colony ; and the Bishop of Ballarat and the ex-Bishop of Sydney have both advocated the federation of the Churches in one great Anglican communion. I tliink, however, that Dr. Barry does not wish the federated Church to impose English ideas in the matter of Church government and of ritual upon the colonies, but rather to leave them Home Rule in all such matters. A good deal of trouble has been caused to colonial Governors Question by questions of precedence, and whenever any bishop of the of preced- Church of England is allowed to assume special privileges at a ence. levee, as happens from time to time, complaints are speedily heard. At the Centennial Banquet at Sydney Cardinal Moran very naturally refused to allow a precedence which some had proposed to grant to Dr. Barry, the Church of England bishop who held at the time the see of Sydney, which is sometimes said, although incorrectly I believe, to carry with it a Primacy as regards the Church of England in Australia. According to the Irish precedents, and to one English precedent, Cardinal Moran 690 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part ti was ia the right. Since Disestablishment it has been held that cardinals should take rank at Dublin immediately after princes of the blood, and although in England the case is different, on account of the existence of an Established Church, in a recent Eoyal Commission, of which the present Governor of New South Wales was himself a member, the Crown gave to a cardinal a precedence over an English marquis and an English suffragan bishop. The Despite a marked Australian tendency towards the assertion Roman of the liberty of individual thought, the Eoman Catholic Church Catholic (Joes not lose ground. There is in Australia less disposition in Church, families to adhere to the family religion than is the case at home ; and, while men of pure Scotch descent are generally Presbyterians, those of English descent seem to move more freely from one Church to another. At the same time, and in spite of the often noticed want of veneration among Austral- ians, the Eoman Catholic Church, though weakened, as in all English-speaking countries, by a certain unpopularity of the Irish who form the larger portion of its flocks, nevertheless attracts to itself a considerable amount of independent support. There is great difference of opinion in Australasia, as in the United States, on the subject of the numbers of the Eoman Catholic population. Cardinal Moran some years ago spoke of the Eoman Catholics in Australasia as numbering 700,000 — a number wlaich at that time would have placed them nearly on an equality with the Church of England ; but colonial statistics make them the second religious body in Austi-alasia, with about 700,000 people at the present time, and considerably inferior to the Anglicans in numbers, as the latter are now credited with something like 1,300,000 people in Australasia. In nearly all the Australian colonies, but not in New Zealand, where the Presbyterians stand second, the Eoman Catholics are a good second to the Church of England by every test which can be applied. The Eoman Catholic Church has not been so happy in its selection of an Australian cardinal as in its choice in Jingland of Cardinal Manning and in the United States of Archbishop Gibbons for the scarlet Hat ; for Cardinal Moran is wanting in the broad popular sympathies which distinguish the present leaders of the Eoman Catholic Church in the American Com- monwealth and in England. Dr. Moran will be remembered in England as having been the Government candidate for the Archbishopric of Dublin, at the time when Dr. Walsh (known to hold pronounced Nationalist opinions) was selected by the Pope. In Australia, as in the United States, the Eoman Catholics spend much money upon their churches, and St. Patrick's Cathedral at Melbourne, although unfinished, is one of the finest buildings iii the Empire. But buildings and organisa- tion are not everything, and not only do the Koman Catholic authorities in Australia wage war upon what they style secret societies, as they do in Europe, but Cardinal Archbishop Moran CHAP. V RELIGION 591 has, according to a private circular wliich has been made public by the ex-Attorney-General of New South Wales, Mr. Wise, pushed the prohibition further than it has been carried in England, by depriving of the services of tlie Church those who join the Oddfellows, Foresters, Good Templars, Kechabites, " and all kindred societies." It is difficult indeed to draw a line as regards " secrecy " which shall exclude the Good Templars or the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows from approval, and include the various Hibernian Lodges as worthjr of recognition. Such a circular must be unwise in a society like that of New South Wales, and can only be read as displaying the intention to force the Eoman Catholics out of the daily Life of the colonial State and into close organisation as a separate community. Such a course must lessen the chance of the Roman Catholic Church holding its own against the democratic organisation of the Wesleyans, and is in marked contrast to the policy of the Roman hierarchy in the United States. The Presbyterians and the Methodists in Australasia do not Presby- form completely united Churches, and in spite of a partial or terianism. federal union in 1885 there is among the Presbyterians no body which contains an overwhelming proportion of Australasian Presbyterians, as the Wesleyan Society contains an overwhelm ing proportion of Australasian Methodists. Putting together all forms of Presbyterianism, the Presbyterians stand third among the religious communities of Australasia, and are not far from holding the first place in wealth and in church attendance. They are, however, much stronger in New Zealand and in Victoria than in New South Wales, where the returns of church attendance show them to be strangely weak. The Presbyterian Churches in the colonies, as in Scotland, are given to the sport of heresy-hunting, and some four years ago there was a pro- secution for heresy in Victoria, by the Presbyterian General Assembly, of the pastor of the leading Scottish Church, who was driven out, and has since founded a separate Church on broad Christian lines, in wliich he has the assLstance of a priest who has lately left the Eoman Catholic communion. Wesleyanism in Australasia is not far belaind Presbyterianism Wesleyau in position, even if the Presbyterians should be treated as one Methotl- body. The Wesleyans officially claim in Australasia (without i^™- the smaller islands) nearly 50,000 "full and accredited Church members," and over 300,000 attendants on public worship — a number even greater than they possess in the Canadian Dominion, crediting them with the whole of the numbers given for the Methodist Church of Canada there united. Non-official figures, as in the case of Canada, are far higher, but the Wesleyan Kalendar gives 78,000 Wesleyan " members " in Aus- tralasia as against the 213,000 " members " which, as we saw, it assigns to the Methodist Church of Canada. The number of adherents as given in the statistics of colonies which take a religious census is always higher for all churches than that of attendants at the services ; but the Australian Wesleyans have 592 TROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet vi provided an amount of church accommodation altogether in excess of the attendance at worship. It is certain that the itinerant organisation of the Wesleyan Church is suitable to the colonies, and a cause of the nourishing position of the Methodists of Greater Britain. There is a Wesleyan Confer- ence for South Australia ; one for New Zealand ; one for New Soutli Wales with Queensland ; and one for Victoria with Tasmania, all under the General Conference of the Australasian Wesleyan Methodist Churcli, but there is a separatist agitation among the Wesleyans of New Zealand. The Victorian Wes- leyans have been recently taking some part in politics on account of their general desire for the introduction of the Bible in the schools. Other The Primitive Methodists and the Bible Christians are Method- strong in the Australasian colonies, and the United Methodist ists. Free Churches have also many members : the smaller Wesleyan Churches (or, as the Wesleyans style them, " the Sister Churches ") having between one-third and one-fourth as many members in Australasia as the Wesleyan Society. The Primi- tive Methodists are the most numerous of the smaller Method- ist bodies throughout the Australasian colonies ; but in Western Australia all Methodism is weak, there being only 2000 Methodists, according to the last census, including the Wesleyans. The Bible Christians are strong in Victoria and South Australia, while the United Methodist Free Church is also strong in Victoria. Congrega- Tlie Independents in Victoria have a powerful preacher in tionalists j)^ Bevan, who is, however, not alone in the Victorian Con- and gregational churches in ability and preaching power. In New Baptists, go^^i^ Wales also tlie Independents have a considerable social and intellectual place. The Baptists are as numerous as the Congregation alists in Australasia, and if we take all the great self-governing colonies, the Baptists exceed the Independents in number ; but neither the Congregationalists nor the Baptist Churches can compare with the Jilethodists or the Presbyterians in strength. If, however, a union should one day be brought about between the colonial Congregationalist and Baptist Cliurches, the new body would stand almost on an equality with the united Methodist or united Presbyterian colonial Churches. Smaller The smaller religious bodies are numerous in the Australasian bodies. colonies, but the comparatively trifling numbers of their mem- bers make it unnecessary to say much of them. Figures do not support the view that the absence of an Established Church tends to the multiplication of sects, for a larger proportion of the jjopulation in the colonies generally, and in each colony taken separately, belong to four or six religious bodies than is the case in England. In those colonies in which a religious census has been taken, difficulty has been found in inducing the people accurately to describe their religious opinions. A great number of jaersons have adopted descriptions which place CHAP. V RELIGION 593 them in categories by themselves. For instance, in Victoria one person claims to belong to the sect of the Waklenses, one returns himself as a Huguenot, one as a member of the Church of Sweden, one as a member of the Reformed Church of Switzer- land, one as a Sankeyite, one as a Borrowite, one as a Millerite, one as a Walkerite, one as a member of the iJSrotherhood of the New Life, one as a Tlieosojjhist, one as a Man of God, one as a Believer in parts of the Bible, one as a Friend of Justice and Liberty, one as a Supporter of Free Religion, one as a " Silent Admirer," one as a Humanitarian, one as a Positivist, one as an Immaterialist, one as an Iconoclast, one as a Fatalist, one as a Heretic, one as a Sceptic, one as a Worshipper of Nature, one as a Believer in Free Irade, one as a Follower of Bishop Colenso, ■while many thousands decline from conscientious scruples to state their religious opinions. Such descriptions, however, are matters of individual feeling, and do not point to a multiplica- tion of sects, properly so called ; and it may be confidently asserted that sects possessing separate places of worship, or separate religious organisations, are less numerous in Australia than at home. The Salvation Army is strong throughout Australia, and its Salvation barracks, and banners, and morning bands, with drums and Army, trumpets, and street corner preaching, are noticeable features in every considerable town ; but the originators and the officers have come from England. When the first of the Salvation leaders came out, new to colonial life, they began a crusade against public -houses, and collected crowds before the bars. This action clashed with the municipal regulations of the Australian towns, and a straggle followed in which the Town Councils asserted tlieir authority, and compelled the Salvation Army to desist from practices which were disorderly. The organisation is, however, powerful, and parades in Sydney and in Melbourne from ten to twenty thousand people upon the racing holidays, when the Salvationists encourage their friends to show their absence from the racecourses by attendance in other portions of the towns. The Salvation Ai-my, who are particularly strong in New Zealand, carry on in Australasia a great number of good works. Their prison-gate brigade and their efforts to reclaim "the lost" are not only praiseworthy, but effective, and seem Ukely to be more permanent than they have been in some of the countries to which the organisation has been taken from England. The same tendency on the part of Protestants to unite Austral- against the Roman Catholics which we found to exist in the asian Pro- Canadian Dominion is discernible in Australasia. The opposi- testantism. tion of the Roman Catholics to the school system of the colonies is the ground of this movement in Australia, as opposition to the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in the Province of Quebec is the Canadian cause. We have seen, in the chapter on Victoria, how marked a tendency there is in Australia towards political coalitions against the Roman Catholics, and the reli- 2q 594 I'ROl^.LEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part vi gious tendency in the same direction is as clear. In Australasia, as in Canada, the Protestant Irish and the Orange societies form the backbone of the fiercer portion of the movement; and the existence of corresponding societies upon the other side, under various Hibernian names, strengthens the tendency towards that separation between the Koman Catholics and tlie remainder of the community which leads to a recognition of common Protestantism among the majority. It is probable that in Australia this is a transient feeling, for the new Aus- tralian population now growing up is imbued, with a tolerant spirit, and the tendency of Australian feeling towards absolute freedom of individual thought, in religious as in other matters, is inconsistent with aggressive Protestantism. On the other hand, the difficulties in the way of Protestant alliance are less great in colonies than they are at home. Many persons hold sittings both in church and chapel, and attend services of the Church of England and of the Independent, Wesleyan, or Presbyterian bodies in diflerent parts of the same day. The Church of England clergy and the Wesleyan and Presbyterian ministers commonly attend one another's social meetings, and take part in mixed services in non-ecclesiastical buildings more often than is the case in England. The Anglicans and Presby- terians in Victoria build joint churches in thinly peojiled up-country districts, as Baptists and Congregationalists some- times do at home. The cause of Protestant union is also aided in the colonies by the Evangelical leanings of the authorities of the colonial branches of the Church. While in tlie United States the body which answers to the Church of England is of High Churcli tendencies, at least so far as is implied by the adoption of an attractive ritual, throughout the English- speaking communities of the self-governing colonies tlie Church is mainly Evangelical, especially in New South Wales, where it has a distinctly Puritan tone. When Bishop IMoorhouse refused to pray for rain, on the ground that Victoria liad not taken sufficient interest in water conservation to enable him to do so with a clear conscience, the outcry from the Church in the neighbouring colony of New South Wales was great ; and when, on another occasion, he informed his hearers that he smoked tobacco and enjoyed it, he brought down a storm of denunciation on his head. Dr. Bariy, the late Bishop of Sydney, found himself somewhat out of his element in New South Wales, for, in spite of his eloquence, his want of the qualities of popular oratory, and liis scholarly liberality of thougl^t, were difficulties in his way in the Churcli of the mother-colony. The erection of a marble representation of the CrucifLnon in St. Andi'ew's Cathedral at Sydney brought a Low Church storm about his ears, and when the bisliop was appealed to by indignation meetings, and protested that he saw nothing harmful to the Church in tlie representation, tlie matter was carried to the Synod, and the panel was removed. Although Dr. Barry had, on the wliole, a less markecl general CUAP. V RELIGION 595 intluence in Australia than had Dr. Moorhouse, when he left New )South Wales all the Pi'otestant creeds were represented by their chiefs at the farewell banquet held in Sydney, and the heads of all these Churches made speeches on the occasion. The bishop in his reply advised the federation of the Protestant Churches, withovtt, however, using those words, which provoke objection from High Churclunen; but his observations as to tlie necessity of drawing close the bonds that exist among tlie Christian bodies were understood by his hearers in this sense, and as excluding Koman Catholicism from view. On the whole, Sunday is observed more strictly in the colonies Suud.-iy than in England (although there are great local difi'erences observance between various towns), and in parts of the colonies as strictly 1° the as in North Britain. In the Dominion Province of Ontario colouies. there is severe local legislation against Sunday excursions. The shops as a rule in Australian towns are shut as closely as in Scotland, and work is as absolutely suspended. Public- houses are closed in nearly all the colonies on Sunday; but, though the Australian streets are as quiet on Sunday as the Canadian, there is in Australia little Sunday gloom. A great many people who have attended church or chapel in the morning take Sunday outings ; the parks are crowded, and in fine weather the outskirts of the towns. But few concerts or public enter- tainments (except of sacred music) take place on Sunday. No Sunday newspapers are published in Victoria, and when a company was started in Melbourne not long ago for the publication of a newspaper to be called the " Sunday Times," it is said that a ijrivate intimation was given to the promoters by the Government that the publication would be illegal and that they would be prosecuted. In some of the other colonies Sunday newspapers are published witliout hindrance. The secularists have in several colonies taken steps to test the legality of selling tickets or taking money for entertainments on Sundays. The proprietors of places Hcensed as theatres or for public performances are afraid to allow Sunday entertain- ments, for fear that their licenses may be cancelled, and attempts to evade the law have failed. On the whole, Sunday is less strictly kept in Sydney than in Melbourne, Adelaide, Hobart, and tiie chief towns of New Zealand, in spite of the efforts of the Sydney llornimj Herald. The museums and picture galleries, it must be remembered, are open on Sunday after- noons in Sydney, though not in Melbourne, where, however, the Zoological (jardens are always thronged on Sunday after- noons. As a rule, tliroughout the colonies there is no Sunday traffic on the main ILties of railway, but a large pleasure traffic in the afternoon upon tlie suburban Lines. It is not possible, I think, to seriously maintain that there Colonial is much general difference between the colonies and the mother- teudeucies country in the matter of religious thought. In Canada non- in religious Catholics are kept together and ai-e strengthened in tlieir tliouglit. Pi'otestant orthodoxy by the existence of a, jjowerful lloman 596 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet vi Catholic CJiurch, dominant in one portion of the country. In Australia the cheerfulness of the national temperament is the cause of the existence of more " Universalism," in the American sense, and less Calvinism than in the older countries. Not many real Australians are willing to dwell upon the gloomier aspects of religious thought, and although church attendance and church membership are widely spread, and religion has in Australia a powerful bearing upon human conduct, deiinite religious convictions sit more lightly upon the people than they do in the old world. Professed Unitarianism is not strong, though, as in England, it is influential out of proportion to its numbers ; and while dogmatic Atheism exists, as at home, among a portion of the artisans and of the professional men, it is perhaps less strong in Australia than in the mother - country. Of free thought in its various forms there has been some growth during the same fifteen or twenty years that have witnessed an increase of church subscriptions and church attendance ; but, as a rule, free -thinking colonists continue their membership and their attendance at orthodox churches, even where their beliefs are honeycombed with doubt, rather than disconnect themselves from the congregations. Australian free thought is not aggres- sive in its character. Free-thought lecturers occasionally draw enormous audiences, but the unbelievers of the working class stay at home as a rule on Sunday mornings and evenings, and do not trouble tliemselves to join societies to spread their views. The leading Australian newspapers, except the Sydney Morning Herald, refer to religious matters from an outside point of view. The Conservative journals adopt a kind of dignified reticence in dealing with religious matters, through which a certain hostility to current creeds may be discerned ; while the workmen's papers make no pretence of concealment of unorthodox views. At the same time, in Melbourne the Daily Telegraph, I believe, belongs to what is called a religious syndicate, has a clergyman for editor, denounces horse-racing, and decries the theatre ; and the paper has made some head- way under its new management. Generally speaking it may, I think, be said that there is among Britisli colonists no such respect for authority or tradition as is to be found in the British colonies among persons of foreigTi race. The French- Canaclian Eoman Catholics, the Mennonites of Manitoba, the Doppers of South Africa, are clerical conservatives such as cannot be matched among the English race; but Christian feeling has an immense and even an increasing influence on colonial legislation. South Eeligious life in South Africa is of a very diflferent kind from Africa, that in the other colonies, and neither the W esleyans, the Church of England, the Eoman Catholics, the Independents, nor the Baptists can be said to count there in the same sense in which they have to be reckoned with at home, in Australia, in Canada, or in the United States. The Dutch Reformed Church is the only religious body which has great influence on the life and CHAP. V RELIGION 697 history of Cape Colony, and its services are conducted, and its sermons delivered, mainly in a foreign tongue. The Colenso controversy in. Natal did not go far beneath the surface of colonial life, notwithstanding the attention it attracted at home. England, of course, has exported her sects to Cape Colony and Natal, but the Church socially and politically predominant throughout South Africa is the Boer National Church — the Dutch Eeformed Church -with its offshoots. The latest official return of religious denominations in Cape Colony puts the Wesleyans first, and the Church of England second, as to the number of ministers and of congregations ; but the Dutch Church, which is placed third in these respects, is altogether below its right position, owing to the manner in which the statistics are compiled. Then, after a long interval, come the Congregationalists and the E.oman Catholics, and then the Presbyterians — so far as they are separate from the Dutch — and, in the seventh place, the Baptists. The returns are misleading, because they include missionary establishments of the Wesleyans and of the Church of England, and the min- isters of small native churches, and native congregations in the interior, which are purely nominal. If we compare baptisms, which are a more serious test, the Dutch Church has nearly twice as many as the Church of England. The counting of mission establishments, which are of various degrees of efii- ciency, makes all calculations as to religious bodies in South Africa untrustworthy or misleading. A recent return of the Cape Government estimates the number of communicants of the Dutch Eeformed Church at over 60,000, of the Wesleyans at 27,000, and of the Church of England at 15,000, while the Congregationalists stand next with 9000. We have seen in the chapters on South Africa how religion Religious enters into the life of the Boer inhabitants, and forms to a I'fi^ °f t''^ greater extent part of their daily existence than is the case Boers, with other communities except in Russia and the United States. A speecli by President Kruger at the opening of the Transvaal Volksraad is more full of Biblical quotations and allusions than is a modern English sermon ; ancl the Boers in ordinary con- versation introduce references to the special Providence which watches over their nation, as a peculiar people, in the same way in which the English Puritans or Scotch Covenanters used to do in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The most influential individuals in rural South Africa are the ministers of the Dutch Eeformed Church, who live in towns, while the farmers travel long distances to these centres for the Sunday services. "Sunday houses" are erected in the neighbourhood of the churches, which are occupied by the farmers and their families from Saturday evening to late on Sunday night ; and, where farmers live at such immense distances from towns that a weekly journey by wagon thither is impossible, they never miss the quarterly sacramental feast, wlien the churches are surrounded by the camps of those who have no Sunday houses. PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART VI Tlie Uoppers. Scotch ministers Disest.ih- lislnneut. Churches and ministers ai'e few, but the attendance is large and the ministers are well paid. Tlie Dutch E,eformed Church, like the orthodox Church of Russia, has outside it a body of " old believers." The " Re- reformed " or " Dopper " Church, which is extraordinarily strong in the Transvaal, is a Church which holds the old Dutch doctrine, and objects to the modem changes introduced into the Dutch Reformed Church. President Kruger is the most distinguished member of the old-fashioned persuasion. The Dutcli Reformed Church is in communion with the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland, and accepts Scotch minis- ters without further ordination. It is a curious and interesting fact that many of the most distinguished ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa are of Scotch extraction, and the Rev. Andrew Murray, one of the professors at Stellenbosch College, and others of these gentlemen enj oy the highest possible reputation throughout the colonies. Although the Scotchmen trained in Holland who have lately come into the Dutch Re- formed Church as ministers are not yet the dominant element among the jwedihanU, the Dutch ministers as a rule are men of culture. Such men as Mr. Stegmann, for example, are friendly to the British, and their influence has been constantly exerted on the side of peace between the races. The Dutch Church, liowever, is separated from the Britisli Churches by its very different view upon the native question, and it has sometimes happened that Scotch Presbyterian ministei's, trained in the same school, have come out \>j the same ship — the one to act as minister for a Dutch congregation, the other to serve as a Scotch missionary, and thus to teach, upon the most difficult question in Soutli African affairs, doctrines diametrically op- posed to one another. The most successful missionary institu- tion in Soutli Africa belongs to the Free Church of Scotland, which preaches the doctrine of the equality of races, abhorrent to the teaching and practice of the Boers. The Cape of Good Hope, like New South Wales, formerly possessed a system of concurrent endowment of the principal Churches, but one which in the Cape was of earlier growth (owing to the strength of the Dutch Reformed religion, and the comparative weakness of the Church of England) than in New South Wales, where it was introduced only after the principle of aid to one Church alone had broken down. Disestablisliment in the Cape of Good Hope took place in 1875, by the passing of what is known as the Voluntary Act, which, like the New South Wales Act, reserved existing interests, and in the Cape many thousands a year stiU continue to be paid as pensions under the expiring system. The absence in the Cape, as has been seen in the last chapter, of the struggle between the Roman Catholics and the majority, over unsectarian as contrasted with denominational education, has prevented that intrusion of religious difficulties into political life which exists in the Maritime Provinces of the Dominion, in Ontario and Manitoba, as well CHAP. V RELIGION 599 as throughout Australasia. The fact that Su' Gordon Sprigg is an English Nonconformist, Sir Thomas Upington a Eonian Catholic, ]\Ir. Merriman a member of the Church of England, and Mr. Hofmeyr a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, has no political importance ; and South Africa is not troubled by the religious controversies which vex the Australians and the people of British North America. Eeligious life in South Africa cannot be dismissed from view Tlie without a further reference to the Colenso controversy, although Cburch of Dr. Colenso's name will be remembered in Natal rather in con- Englaml nection with his political attitude on the native question than ii Soiitli with the theological opinions associated with his name in A.frica. England. Bishop Colenso died in 1883, and since his death the vacancy in the see of Natal has not been filled. The Church Council of the Church of England in Natal petitioned the Queen to appoint a bishop to fill the vacancy. The reply was that steps would be taken for the consecration of a bishop if the Archbishop of Canterbury should apply for one. The petitioners were, however, afterwards recommended to join the Church of the Province of South Africa, which the Church Council declined to do, urging that that course would mean the abandonment of the Church of England in Natal, and they liroceeded to nominate a bishop. The Primate continuing to refuse to apply for a Queen's mandate for consecration, it was announced hy Government in the imperial House of Commons that the Queen would not be advised to appoint, by letters patent, a successor to Bishop Colenso. The Church Council of the Church of England in Natal reply that they do not ask for the appointment of a bishop by letters patent, but tliat all they want is a Royal mandate for the consecration of their nominee as a bishop of the Church of England, with the view of his exer- cising episcopal functions in Natal. They protest against the Arclibishop's advice that they should submit to the Church of the Province of South Africa, which, he urges, is in full spiritual communion with the Church of England, and point out that that Church has been declared to be separate and independent, while they assert that its bishop, claiming to have authority in Natal, is not a bishop of the Church of England, and was con- secrated without legal authority emanating from the Queen. They protest, as a colonial Church on behalf of colonial Churches, against being placed under the personal and therefore varying control of the Primate for the time being ; and they urge that, while all religious bodies are supposed to enjoy full tolei-ation under British law, and liberty to maintain very different forms of worship and of Cliurch rites, the Church of England is denied self-government. The Church Council of the Church of England in Natal, with Sir Theophilus Shepstone at their head, distinctly repudiate the imputation that they are a sect of Colensoites having special sympathy with the doctrines of that prelate. Tlie services at their cathedral at Maritzburg bear out this contention. The sermons are orthodox, and the ritual coo PKOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN tart vi moderate High Church ; while some bishops of the Church of the Province of South Africa have, I believe, been known to wear mitres in their churches, and be surrounded by black choristers in scarlet cassocks, and Kafir deacons in coloured stoles. Owing to the quarrel, the Church of England in Natal remains an Episcopal Church deprived of the means of having its buildings consecrated and its children confirmed. The un- fortunate disputes at Grahamstown, during which the Dean locked the Bishop of the diocese out of his cathedral, display the scandals to which the position sometimes leads. Tlie only l^resent importance of tlie dispute, from a general colonial point of view, is that it suggests a strength possessed by the Wesleyan body throughout Greater Bi'itain which is not shared by the Church of England. If the Church of England is to hold her own in the colonies she will be forced to give Home Rule to her branches, as the Methodist churches have Home Rule, or she will be exposed either, on the one hand, to secession or, on tlie other hand, to depressing and numbing weakness ; and if the Church is to continue to flourish in Australasia and in. the Canadian Dominion, the sooner principles are laid down which have been denied in the case of the Church of England in Natal the better. Wesleyans. The Wesleyan Methodist Church is active throughout South Africa, and has a local self-governing Conference, but its work is mainly missionary. In the Cape of Good Hope district the Wesleyans possess "Dutch" churches, but it must not be gathered from this fact that they have a following among the Boers. The Methodist churches in which Dutch is spoken are kept up for the benefit of tlie Hottentots. In Cape Town the Wesleyan Church is prosperous. The The Church of Rome is less strong in South Africa than it is Roman elsewhere in Greater Britain, though equally active ; and less Catholics, strong, probably, because tlie Irish population, which every- where supplies the majority of its adherents, is weaker in South Africa than in Australasia or in the Dominion. The Jesuits are energetic in the matter of education, and have a seminary for missionaries and an excellent school for boys at Grahamstown, modelled upon Stonyhurst, and presided overby a distinguished ecclesiastic who was formerly superior of the order in England. The The Salvation Army is as busy in South Africa, propor- Salvation tionately speaking, as in New Zealand, or in ]\Ielbourne or Army. in Sydney. Its headquarters are at Port Elizabeth, and its methods successful with the Hottentots, although it is said that the Dutch ministers view its proceedings with dismay. Sunday Owing to Dutch influence, Sunday observance is rigid observance, throughout South Africa, except in the matter of the sale of drink. It is the custom not to serve late dinner at hotels on Sunday, and even at some of the English clubs this rule prevails although public-houses are not closed as they are in the rest of Greater Britain. The Transvaal Volksraad continues to add to its Statute-book severe ordinances upon tlie observance of tlie Lord's Day; and while there is suburban railway traflic at Cape CHAP. V RELIGION 601 Town, in the interior Sunday is kept by travellers in the dry season, as the transport drivers are given to regard the day, although in. the rains tliey have to set aside their scruples on account of the danger of being stopped by floods. We have already seen, in the chapter on British India, the India, small amount of direct impression that has been as yet pro- duced by Christian teaching in the peninsula of Hindostan. The Eoman Catholic Church has made some way among the natives in Southern India ; and the American Protestant missionaries, as well as the missionaries of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionai-y Society, those of the London Missionary Society, and many other agencies, show a considerable number of teachers and of churches, but only small congregations. The work of the Church of England in India is twofold. She is the Church of the majority of the white inhabitants and of the great bulk of the army, and she is also a missionary body, being aided by tlie State in the first but not in the second of those capacities. State aid to the Cliurch in India rests upon a somewhat different footing from that which it formerly occupied in the colonies where State aid has ceased, or now in those few where concurrent endowment of all creeds prevails. Every city in India where there is a white population of considerable size contains a British garrison, and in these the Church is mainly a military church and the con- gregations consist chiefly of men in uniform, who are also well represented in the 'Eoman Catholic, the Presbyterian, and the Wesleyan congregations. As regards the missionary side in India of all the Christian creeds, the accounts of it given in their records are discouraging so far as direct influence or convert-making is concerned. To indirect influence produced by Christian teaching and example, allusion has been made in an earlier portion of this volume. The Hindoos have lately founded Hindoo Tract Societies for the propagation of Hin- dooism and for anti-Christian agitation ; and the Wesleyan Methodists, who seem to have been specially marked out for opposition — probably because of the extent to which they push Bible teaching — complain of the decrease of attendance at their girls' schools, some of which have been emptied through the efforts of the agents of the Hindoo Tract Societies. The regular churches also complain, however, in bitter terms, of the inter- ference of the Salvation Army. On the whole, the vaiious Church of England and Protestant missionary bodies report advance, but advance which is very slow ; and they possess more native converts in the single island of Madagascar than in the whole peninsula of India, vast as is its population. In most of the Crown Colonies disestablishment of the Crown Church of England, or withdrawal of State aid in the case of Colonies, those in which concurrent endowment prevailed, has been brouglit about since 1868. Generally speaking the Christian Churches in them are all in a flourisliing condition; !the Baptists, Wesleyans, Presbyterians, and Churches founded by 602 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet vi the London Missionary Society, but now placed under various Congregational Unions, reporting, however, on the whole, an advance more rapid than that described by the Church of England. In the West Indies the Baptists are strong among the negroes, and indeed it miglit be asserted that the Baptists are an Amei'ican rather than a colonial Church — powerful in tlie United States and in the West Indies, and among the negroes everywiiere, rather than in Australasia, where, as has been seen, the Presbyterians and Wesleyans leave them in the rear. The negro majority in the West-India Islands is chiefly Baptist or Wesleyan, and upon the West-African coast it is principally Wesleyan. While in Jamaica and most of the other West-India islands all Churches have ceased to be aided by tlie State, in Barbados concurrent endowment still exists — tlie Church of England receiving a large endowment from the revenue, and the Wesleyans, Moravians, and Pi,oman Catholics much smaller sums. The Church of England is established in Barbados, the bishop and clergy being paid from public moneys, while the concurrent endowment to the other creeds is by way of grant of lump sums to their governing bodies ; but in the remainder of the diocese, which includes the whole of the Windward Islands, the Church lias been disestablished and disendowed — all State aid to other Churches in the shape of concurrent endowment having, also been suspended or withdrawn. Triniilacl. In many of the Crown Colonies, as, for example, in Malta and in Trinidad, the Roman Catholic population altogether outnumbers the Protestant. In Trinidad there are two and a half times as many llonian Catholics as members of the Church of England, and the small Protestant bodies account only for an infinitesimal proportion of the population. In this colony the Cliurches formerly aided by a concurrent endowment are now being partially disendowed as vacancies occur among tliose of their clergy who have been in receipt of allowances from the State; and it has happened tliat the Church of England Bishop has ceased to l)e directly paid by the State, while the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Port of Spain continues to receive a thousand a year from Government for his life. Canon Kingsley, wlien writing on the religious condition of Trinidad, argued that it was natural that the Roman Catholic Church, owing to the nature of her services, should obtain the greatest liold upon the negroes; but this is not the experience of Barbados, where the Church of England is strong, or of the Southern States of the American Union where the negroes are Methodists or Baptists, or indeed, it may be said, of negro countries generally. The test of figures shows that it is diliicult to maintain that tliere is any great difference in religious tendencies between negroes and white colonists, Methodism being, on the whole with both apparently the most flourishing and advancing Church. Ill the West-India Islands the Church of England has gained ground less rapidly than have the Wesleyan, Bai^tist, and smaller Protestant denominations, because she has sufl'ered Otlier West- India islands. CHAP. V RELIGIOIT 003 from having been the Churcli of the jolanters and the -whites. The emancipated negro was likely to join Churches which would be partly under his control, and lie has done so. The negroes give largely, in proportion to their wages, to church objects, in spite of the heavy pressure upon them of payment for the schools ; and there is reason to think that the Methodists, Baptists, and Moravians have done more for the improvement of the West Indian negro population than has any other agency. Besides Malta and Trinidad, wliich have been named, there Mauritius. are other colonies in which the Roman Catholic element is large, as, for example, the Mauritius, in which the Christian Churches are still aided by the State upon the system of concurrent endowment, the Church of England bishop and the Roman Catholic archbishop each receiving 7200 rupees of salary. In spite of common payment by the State the Mauritian religious bodies fall out with the Government and with each other. The Roman Catholic archbishop has complained publicly to the representative of a newspaper about the treatment of his Church, pointing to the fact that the vast majority of the Christians among the population of Mauritius belong to the Roman Catholic Church, and that "the few converts made " by those whom he classes together as " the Protestants " '" are blacks, who, I have no hesitation in saying, are practically bought, and are really left without any religion at all." The archbishop quarrelled with the Governor, who was an Irish Roman Catholic, because, as he said, the Governor " attempted to interfere with the appointment of priests, and wished only French clergy to be engaged," whereas the archbishop some- what preferred Irishmen. According to the census of 1881 there were in Mauritius 108,000 Roman CathoHcs, and 8000 other Christians ; but the Church of England and the Presby- terian Church receive payment from the State at more than eight times the rate per head of their adherents which obtains in the case of the Roman Catholics. It cannot be doubted that the policy of the disestablishment Disestab- of the Church of England in the few colonies where it remains lishmeut. established, and of the cessation of State aid in those few where concurrent endowment continues, will prevail, and that an end will soon be put to that mixture of systems which in matters of religion as in matters of education exists in countries under Colonial Office control. Since 1868 the opinion of the Office, in the direction of the withdrawal of State assistance, has been clearly shown, and in no case has any step been taken that leads the other way, while in all the colonies where State aid has ceased religion prospers. It is impossible to deal here, otherwise than by mere mention. Pacific with the work which missionaries of the English race, American island and and British, are doing in the Pacific and in otlier portions of o'f'<=y the globe, in countries under British authority or protection as missions, vi^ell as in the open field. Their labours are greater, and the results which they have achieved larger, on the whole, than 60i PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part vi those ■which have been given or attained by teachers of all the other races put together. The various societies of the Church of England, the Wesleyan Methodist, the Baptist, the " London " or Congregational missionary societies, and many otliers, and the American bodies, have for serious rivals only the French Eoman Catholics and the French Evangelicals. Tlie vast subscriptions received by the British societies, the armies of missionaries which the British and American societies send forth, leave to the French Eoman Catholics, who stand next, but little chance of competing with them upon an equal footing ; and if in Southern India and in parts of China the French missionaries have been able to hold their own, it is rather because their system lends itself to success among certain of the Asiatic peoples than because of a greater average energy or self-denial in the missionaries sent out. It would be difficult to overrate the influence which has been exerted on behalf of British enterprise in the Pacific and in Africa by the missionary bodies. Men like ]\Ir. Chalmers of New Guinea are not only religious teachers, but conquerors who win new worlds to British influence. Couclu- We must conclude, then, that the teaching of the colonies sion. goes to show the success of the principle (now adopted almost throughout our Empire outside Great Britain) that the State shall not patronise one form of religion, and shall hold itself aloof from all. No bad consequences can be shown to have followed on the disestablishment that has taken place in some colonies, or, in others, upon the absence of religious Establish- ments from the first ; and the results of the withdrawal of State aid are not to be discerned in any marked departure in the colonies from the English standard, wliile we have noticed a stricter observance of the Lord's Day, and the greater power of the Sunday Schools. The influence of Sunday Schools is far more widely spread, taking the colonies through, than it is in England. The number of religious edifices and the number of the clergy of various denominations, in proportion to the white population, is greater throughout the colonies than in England ; while if church attendance, under the difficulties occasioned by sparse population in vast districts, is less remarkable in extent than is the provision made for it, it is, on the whole, as large in proportion as it is at home. Neither is any decline observable in recent years, but, on tlie contrary, there has occurred in most of the colonies the same marked revival of religious activity whicli has been recently witnessed in the mother-country. CHAPTEK VI LIQUOK LAWS So many persons are deeply interested in that sliarply restrictive legislation with regard to the sale of intoxicating drinks which is almost peculiar to lands of English speech that no apology need be offered for treating it in a separate chapter, although peculiarities in the liquor legislation of various colonies have already been briefly named in passing. While students of politics are aware of the tendency that exists to follow in the mother-country experiments which have been tried by our colonies in political and social legislation, the general public are inclined to look upon the colonies as, above all, countries which, along with the United States, are testing for us the value of Local Prohibition as regards the sale of drink. Foremost among the colonies which have engaged in temper- Canada, ance legislation stands the Dominion, which has dealt with it both as a whole and by Provincial Acts. In Canada the matter is constitutionally as well as socially important. Grave legal questions have arisen in the attempt of the Courts and Parlia- ment of the Dominion, and of the Privy Council at home, to decide the rights of the Provincial legislatures to pass measures which indirectly affect that taxation in aid of the Dominion revenue which is exclusively within the control of the Federal Government. Similar difficulties were faced before a Dominion Act upon the Liquor question was pronounced unconstitutional. The limitations within which the Provincial legislatures of the Dominion may enact measures that affect taxation confine their powers to such as bear upon the raising of revenue for local purposes. Laws restricting the sale of intoxicants diminish Dominion revenue, and are therefore of doubtful legality. On the other hand, by its Act of 1883 the Dominion attempted to deal with matters which had been relegated to the Provinces. Difficult constitutional questions have also arisen in the administration of the Canada Temperance Act, 1878, known as the Scott Act The Scott Act is a Dominion Local Option law — giving Local Op- power to close drink shops, by a bare majority of votes, without tion under compensation — the working of which has been watched with the Scott intense interest by the Local Option party throughout the ^''^• British world. After a Prohibitionist campaign, the provisions 606 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet vi of the Act were put in force county by county, until the whole of Prince Edward's Island, the majority of the municipalities in Ontario, large sections of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, parts of Quebec, and two counties of Manitoba, had made the sale of intoxicating beverages illegal. In the Province of British Columbia the Act was not brought into operation. The Act provided for a reversal of the local popular judgment in the event of a change in public opinion, and in some parts of the country large majorities were found to exist against Prohibition after it had been for some time in operation. In many cases the operation of the Act has been suspended and drink shops reopened. The feeling in Canada was at one time so strong against the prohibitory legislation that there was in 1888 a considerable agitation in favour of the removal of the Act from the Statute-book. On the other hand, the Methodist Confer- ence, which is, as has been seen, very powerful in Canada, and which has on this question the support of many other religious bodies, is in favour of National Prohibition, and is disposed to accept no Local Option law as the ultimate form of legislation upon the subject. Canadian Methodist feeling goes so far as to strongly recommend the disuse of fermented wine for sacra- mental purposes, and Canada is sharply divided into two parties upon the Liquor question. In 1888 and 1889 a great number of Ontario counties voted upon the local suspension of the Scott Act, and in most of these "repeal" was carried, although in many of the same counties tliere had jDreviously been large majorities in favour of the adoption of the Act. A return upon the subject wliicli has been presented to the imperial House of Commons gives a full list of the votes taken under the Canada Temperance Act since its passing. In 1878 the decision was in three cases for the adoption, and in none against, — in 1879 in nine cases for, and in only one against ; that one in Quebec, — in 1880 in four cases for, and in one against ; that one also in Quebec, — in 1881 in ten cases for, and in four against, — in 1882 in three cases for, and in one against, — in 1883 in only one case, for adoption, — in 1884 in seventeen cases for, and in five against, — in 1885 in twenty-one cases for, and in seven against, — in 188G two to two. In 1887 there was one decision against repeal, and in 1888 (and, by Canadian figures, 1880) an overwhelming majority in favour of repeal. Some districts, however, have tried three years of Prohibition under the Scott Act, tlien three years of licensing, and have now returned to Prohibition, ileports have been obtained from certain of tlie Provincial Governments witli regard to the work- ing of the Act. In Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island the Lieutenant-Governors reported that in most cases the Act, although adopted by vote of the electors, liad never been thoroughly enforced. It is the case that the machinery for tlie enforcement of the Scott Act is most imperfect, and tli'is allows the party in favour of Prohibition to declare, with some force, that the failure of the Act has been owing to its loose construe- ciiAi'. VI LIQUOE LAWS BO? tion, which has led to an amount of evasion calculated to make it unequal and unpopular. In Ontario, apart from the Scott Act, the maximum number Oilier of licenses that can be granted in any district has long been Canadifin regulated according to population. By Provincial Acts of Inws upon 1887 and 1888 the number of licenses may be reduced to a iutoxicat- minimum of one in any district, and no new license may be ius'i'FO's- granted against the wish of the majority of the electors. Sale of drink is forbidden on Saturday evenings and on Sundays. There is a provision in the Ontario law that whenever any person comes to his death, by suicide or otherwise, during intoxication, the seller of the liquor that caused the intoxica- tion is liable to an action for damages. This clause is copied from the laws of several States of the American Union, where it is very general, and is known as the " Civil Damages Clause." In Ontario, and also in Quebec, the law provides that the relatives of intemperate persons may notify the sellers of liquor not to sell it to such persons, and if they sell it after such notice they are liable to a suit for damages by the person who gave the notice. Toronto is governed in liquor matters by the old Ontario Act, which dates back before the Scott Act, and by which the municipal councils lix the number of licenses (being unable, however, to grant more than four for the first thousand of the population, and one for every four hundred beyond), and have also power to raise high license fees. Under this Act tlie Town Council of Toronto have much reduced the number of licenses, and that without compensation. In Quebec the local liquor laws are somewhat similar to Quebec, those of England, except that liquor cajinot be sold after 8 p.m. to soldiers, saUors, apprentices, or servants, and that, as in almost all colonies, there is universal Sunday closing. In addition to the Scott Act there exists in Nova Scotia a License Nova Act and Provincial prohibitory law, under which municipal Scotia, councils can refuse to grant any licenses where the majority of the ratepayers are opposed to granting them. Liquor cannot be sold in 'Nova Scotia in gold districts or within a mile of any mine. Neither can it be sold to Indians oi- to minors, and there is general Sunday closing. As in Ontario, when any person comes to his death through intoxication his legal representa- tives may recover damages agauist the person furnishing the liquor. In New Brunswick power is given to the county New councils by the Province to make rules for the regulation of the Brunswick, sale of liquor. The sale of liquor to_ apprentices, servants, or persons under sixteen years of age, without the consent of the master, parent, or guardian, is forbidden ; while in Quebec it is forbidden altogether to persons under sixteen years of age. There is also universal Sunday closing in New Brunswick. In Prince Edward Island the sale of liquor to Indians and to Pn'nce minors is forbidden : there is general Sunday closing, and the iSilward same law on the sale of liquor to intemperate persons after Jsl^mJ- notice as exists in Ontario and Quebec. 608 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Manitoba. Britieli Columbia and the High License system. In Manitoba power is given to the city corporation of Winnipeg, to mate by-laws regulating the issue of licenses within the city, and it is provided that the number of hotel licenses shall be limited to one for every three hundred inhabit- ants. There is also a prohibition in Manitoba of the sale of liquor to intemperate persons after notice, besides the provision which exists in some Australian colonies for an inquiry by a Justice of the Peace at the request of the relatives (with the addition in Manitoba of the connections or the clergyman) of any person who is unable to control himself in the use of liquor, or is squandering his means or neglecting his business, or likely to injure himself or others. In the event of the Justice finding this to be the case he has to take steps to notify in writing all licensed liquor-sellers of the fact ; and the liquor-sellers liave to post up the notice in a conspicuous place, and to ref i-ain from selling or giving liquor to the person interdicted. Where it appears to the Justice that the interdiction is insufficient to effect the reform of the person interdicted, he may commit him to gaol for a period of not less than thirty and not more than sixty days ; but the person interdicted may appeal to the Provincial Queen's Bench. There is absolute Sunda.y closing in Manitoba. In British Columbia, where the Scott Act does not seem popular with the electorate, municipalities may make by-laws with regard to the issue of tavern licenses. In Vancouver City a large fee is charged for licenses, which brings in a consider- able revenue to the municipality. British Columbia, in short, Eossesses what is known in the United States as the High icense system, between which and Prohibition — State or local — opinion in the United States is now divided. As has been well shown by Mr. Edwardes, in his report to the Foreign Office on the various American State systems, tlie weak point in pro- hibitory laws has been found in the difficulty of preventing evasion and in the deadly character of the adulterated liquor sold under an illegal system. While the advocates of Pro- hibition are able to show that in the States or districts where it has been applied it has destroyed the temptation allbrded by open bars, has i-educed drunkenness, and the otiences which may be attributed to the use of liquor, as well as the waste of money upon drink, on the other hand, evasion is almost every- where considerable, although Kansas is said to form an excep- tion to the rule. The scale has been turned in favour of the High License system in British Columbia, as in a good many districts of the American Union, by the fact that, while the institution commends itself to moderate temperance reformers by reducing the number of drinking saloons, and by destroying the more disreputable places where intoxicating liquors are sold, and throwing the trade into the hands of a good class of dealers, it at the same time brings in a large municipal revenue by a form of taxation from which no one seems to sufi'er, and which in fact no one feels. At some places there is combined with the High License system a provision for the finding of a OHAP. VI LIQUOR LAWS 609 large sum under sui-ety by the licensee as a guarantee for not infringing the various provisions of the local laws as to sale of intoxicating drink to minors, to drunkards, and on Sundays, as to adulteration, and so forth. At the same time the High License system is obnoxious to some of the rigid Prohibition party, who would almost prefer to it a system of free trade. In the North-West Territories the sale, manufacture, or Tlie Terri- possession of intoxicants, is prohibited except with the special tories. written permission of the Lieutenant-Governor, who is invested with absolute discretion in the matter, and can prevent the importation of alcoholic drink ; and the policy of the Dominion Government has been to entirely prevent all liquor traffic in the Territories. The late Lieutenant-Governor of the Terri- tories is now Minister of the Interior for the Dominion, and in some speeches and addresses lately pronounced against the system of Prohibition after nine years' experience in its administration. Prohibition in the North-West Territories was originally intended to prevent the sale of drink to Indians, but is now found vexatious by the large white population. The present Lieutenant-Governor agrees with his predecessor, and has reported that the enforcement of the Prohibitory Law becomes more and more difficult year by year. Liquor, he says, is "run" into the country at every point and in every form. He pleads for lager beer, and thinks that the sale of light beer would do moi-e than prohibition to check spirit drinking. In the adjoining American territories comprised in the new States of North Dakota, and South Dakota, total prohibition of the liquor traffic was recently placed in the Constitution by majori- ties, so narrow in the case of North Dakota as to lead to the existence of a widespread doubt whether Prohibition had been carried. In Montana, Prohibition was rejected by the popular vote, or, as Transatlantic usage puts it, Montana "went wet" while the two Dakotas "went dry." The experience under Prohibition of the State of Kansas has been very difi'erent from that of the North-West Territories, and in that rising com- munity Prohibition is popular with the people. Other peculiarities of Dominion liquor legislation are to be Miuor found in the minor provisions of the Scott Act itself ; for peculiari- example, power is given to returning officers and their deputies ties, to seize from all persons within half a mile of the polling stations, when a poll upon the Act is being taken, firearms, bludgeons, or other weapons. All persons convicted of a battery within two miles of any place where such poll is being held are to be deemed guilty of an aggravated assault ; and there are provisions for preventing either non-residents coming into polling districts when carrying arms or residents coming armed within one mile of a place where a poll is being taken. The sale of intoxicating liquors on polling day is jarevented. In 1883 a Licensing Act for the Dominion was passed to The Liquor make the licensing law uniform. It was provided (with certain License exceptions) that the total number of licenses to be granted Act, 1883. 2e 610 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part vr should not exceed one for each 250 of the first thousand of the population, and one for each 500 above the first thousand ; but there were local powers reserved for municipal regulation of the number of licenses. There was a provision that no license should be granted in municipal districts where three-fifths of the voters declared in favour of Prohibition. There was com- plete prohibition of sale of dx'ink on Saturday evenings and on Sundays, except to boarders at table during meals between the hours of one and three and five and seven on Sunday. Sale of drink to persons under sixteen was forbidden. The Act made provision for inquiry into the charge that any person by excessive drinking of liquor wastes or lessens his or her estate, or greatly injures his or her health, or endangers or interrupts the peace and happiness of his or her family ; and two Justices were to have power to forbid any licensed person to sell, for one year, liquor to the drunkard. There was also a provision under which the husband or wife, or father, mother, curator, tutor, or employers of any person under twenty-one, or the manager of any charitable institution in which any " person so addicted " might reside, would have been able to cause a notice to be given to any licensed person not to sell liquor to such interdicted person. But there was a saving clause as regards earlier legislation, and, especially, nothing in the Act was to be construed to affect or impair any of the provisions of the Scott Act, so that many of the provisions mentioned above would in any case have remained in force. This Act of 1883, however, was in January 1885 declared unconstitutional by a judgment of the Supreme Court, on the ground that most of its provisions fell within the jurisdiction of the Provincial legisla- tures, and the disallowance of the Act was upheld by the Privy Council on appeal in November 1885. The Act is still of interest as an expression of the prevailing opinion in Canada, and as virtually a draft code made up from the local laws now actually existing in the Provinces. Not only have Dominion Liquor Laws sometimes been declared unconstitutional, but also Provincial Liquor Acts, or parts of them. Li some cases the method adopted has been held to exceed Provincial powers, but in others has been held to be good in law. The point raised in many cases was that the Provinces were interfering in trade ; but it has been held that the licensing laws relate to police or municipal or local matters, and are therefore within Provincial powers. The Canadian liquor legislation has been the subject of judicial decisions at home, and the Privy Council in its judgment upon the constitutionality of the Liquor Act of Ontario decided that Provinces were able to delegate the powers specially given them by the constitution of the Dominion, to authorities created by themselves, such as license commissioners for municipal areas. The Local Option law of Canada as a whole has also laeen referred to the Courts, and it has been held that that law was within the competency of tiie Dominion Parliament, so we find CHAP. VI LIQUOR LAWS 611 ill Canada^ two temperance systems— the one Provincial and tlie other Federal— both of which are legal, though certain laws of each description have been pronounced invalid. With regard to the Canadian legislation generally, it is Prohibi- inaintained by the suiDj)orters of Prohibition that the Scott Act tion. is unpopular in districts where it has not been really enforced, and that, where drunkenness has under it been suppressed, the Act has been maintained at recent polls ; and it is true that in spite of the partial failure of the Scott Act to secure support there is a marked movement in Ontario in the direction of Dominion or Provincial as against district Prohibition. The majority of the Canadian Liberal party are prohibitionists. The consumption of liquor in Canada is the smallest per head in any English-speaking country in the world ; but it is said that there has been an increase in the consumption of spirits in Ontario in recent years, although this is denied, and the statistics are misleading inasmuch as spirits entered for con- sumption ill one Province are often carried to another. So great has been the evasion of the Scott Act that it has been even said that some of the most active prohibitionists have worked locally for its repeal, holding that their views were better carried out under the former licensing system than under nominal Prohibition ; and it is a curious fact that, while the " Liquor party " and the publicans were everywhere power- less to pi'event the adoption of the Act, "repeal" has been carried in many districts by large popular majorities. The most interesting of the colonies after the Canadian New Dominion as regards licensing legislation is New Zealand, Zealand, where there is a comprehensive Act of 1881, which has since that time been amenaed. There is a steady decrease in the consumption of strong drink in New Zealand in spite of the increase of the population, and New Zealand now spends on drink less per head than does the United Kingdom, and less than do the principal colonies of the Australian continent. Not only is the white population becoming sober, but the Maories are mostly teetotallers, and a majority of the younger Maories are active members of the Church of England Temper- ance Association. The New Zealand Act creates licensing com- mittees elected annually by the ratepayers for this special purpose, persons interested in the rnanufaoture or sale of liquor, or in licensed premises, being disqualified from acting upon the committees ; and there is a provision that if any member of a licensing committee absents himself from two con- secutive quarterly licensing meetings his office becomes vacant. Vacancies are filled by the nomination of persons who hold office until the next election. In districts in which at least half the inhabitants are Maories, Native Licensing Districts are created, and in these districts assessors are elected by the inhabitants qualified to vote for Maori representatives in Par- liament, and the sale or gift of intoxicating liquor to persons of the native race is forbidden. No new licenses since the 612 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt vi passing of the Act in 1881 can be granted until the ratepayers have determined, on a poll, by a bare majority, whether the number of licenses may be increased. Drunkenness, even entirely unaccompanied by disorder, is made a punishable offence where the drunkard is found on licensed premises, on a highway, or in any " public place, whether a building or not." There is complete Sunday closing in New Zealand, as in most of the colonies, but in New Zealand the prohibition of Sunday sale is subject to a bond fide traveller clause. The supply of drink to persons apparently under the age of sixteen years is forbidden, and in New Zealand it is an oifence on the part of the publican to allow drink to be given on his premises to such a person. In New Zealand, as in most of the Provinces of the Dominion of Canada, and in Tasmania and South Australia, where any person by excessive drinking "misspends, wastes, or lessens his or her estate, or greatly injures his or her health, or endangers or interrupts the peace or happiness of his or her family," such person can be put under notice, and all licensed IDersons forbidden to sell drink to him or her. In New Zealand, when a drunkard has been put under notice by the Justices, any person with a knowledge of the Prohibition giving drink to or procuring it for the prohibited person is also punishable. There are in New Zealand inspectors of licensed premises appointed by the Governor, whose duty it is to enforce the carrying out of the Act, and to prevent evasion. The burden of proof is thrown upon all persons found upon licensed premises when they are searched by the inspector in a case where liquor is sold contrary to law, and the persons on the premises are deemed guilty of ,"an offence under the Act "until the contrary is proved." Power is given to the Governor to make regulations for the efficient administration of the Act, and these when gazetted have the force of law. So far the New Zealand law is strong, and calculated to be more effective than the less detailed provisions of most of the Canadian Acts ; but the 229th Clause is said in practice to be found by the temperance party to contain a principle fatal to their power. It enacts that nothing in the statute shall apply to clubs, except the provisions of this clause itself. The clause enables clubs existing at the time of the passing of the Act to apply to the Colonial Secretary for a charter, and directs the Colonial Secretary — if satisfied that the club in question is really a voluntary association of persons combined for pro- moting social iiitercourse and comfort, and providing its own liquors, and not established for purposes of gain — to issue the charter subject to a payment of £5 by the club. Moreover, when any number of persons not fewer than ten propose to establish a new club, they have to forward to the Colonial Secretary an application for a provisional charter, and the Colonial Secretary is at liberty to issue such a charter for one year, and at the end of one year is obliged to give a permanent charter if the ordinary conditions are fulfilled. CHAP. VI LIQUOR LAWS 613 The next most comprehensive Act is that of Queensland, Queens- which establishes a system of Local Option ; two-tliirds of the laud, ratepayers on a poll having power to close all houses, or a bare majority to reduce the number of licenses, or to put a stop to the issue of fresh licenses. One -sixth of the ratepayers are sufficient to obtain a poll, and they state in their notice the Foint upon which the poll is to be held ; but the provisions for rohibition and for reduction of licenses by a specified number have not been popular in Queensland, and the polls have been chiefly upon the third point, namely, the stopping of new licenses. It will be seen that the Local Option portion of the Queensland Act is stronger than that of the New Zealand Act, because a local majority has in Queensland direct power to impose complete Prohibition. But it must be remembered that in New Zealand the licensing bodies are themselves elective, and elected for the special purpose, so that the popular control in New Zealand is as a fact complete, although temperance reformers would prefer a direct popular vote upon the question in all cases, in place of the election of a council. There is in Queensland, as usual, complete Sunday closing, but with a 6o»(?^c^e traveller clause. There is also the usual colonial pro- hibition of the supply of liquor to aboriginal natives — in Queensland the provision is extended to Polynesians and to half-castes — and of the supply to boys and girls. The liquor laws of the remainder of Australia are of a less Other drastic nature than those of Canada, of New Zealand, or of Australian Queensland. While in Victoria there is Local Option as to the licensing number of licenses, with compensation, and in New South 1^^^. Wales and South Austraha a niild form of Local Option as to new licenses or the increase of licenses, involving in the mother- colony a local expression of opinion and in South Australia a memorial by two -thirds of the ratepayers, in none of these colonies are the temperance party in the least satisfied with the state of things which now exists. At the same time in all of them that present condition gives them more power than they have in England. After the Acts of New Zealand and of Queensland, that of Victoria. Victoria has, among Australasian laws, until lately been the strongest in a temperance sense. Fierce fights have taken place under its Local Option clause in various portions of the colony, and in one instance an exciting contest between the publicans and the temperance folk resulted in the closing of twenty-three public-houses in one district at one time. In all, between one and two hundred public -houses have as yet been closed in Victoria under the Local Option clause. Inasmuch as in Victoria, Local Option concerns not total cessation of the sale of drink, but only the reduction of the number of public-houses to a statutory minimum, a commission deciding which public- houses shall be closed and what compensation shall be given, the blow falls upon the houses which have the most indifferent character. The Victorian Act has been already tinkered several 614 TKOBLEMS OF GREATJiR BRITAIN Compen- sation. South Australia. Tasmania. times, and is not likely to last long in its pre,sent form. The figures which have been taken in Victoria for the ordinary statutory number are drawn from Canadian Acts ; one to eacli 250 of the first thousand inhabitants, and then one to each subsequent 500. Victoria is, I believe, the only part of the British Empire in which the principle of compensation has been applied. This forms a precedent which will no doubt be quoted in England, inasmuch as in Victoria the licenses were granted for the good of the community, and not for the good of the holders — the English principle, upon which the United Kingdom Alliance have based their opposition to compensation in the legislation of the mother-country. In South Australia recent proposals have been made to Par- liament for considerable changes in the existing law, under which the principle of Local Option is represented by the efficacy of memorials from two-thirds of the ratepayers against new licenses. The Corporation of Adelaide petitioned against the Bill of 1889, and it was dropped. The outgoing Prime Minister, Mr. Playford, had been pledged to bring in a Bill for complete Local Option, but with compensation. The existing clauses relating to memorials against new licenses provide that no new licenses shall be granted where two-thirds of the rate- payers of the immediate neighbourhood petition against the grant, and that where a license has been refused on account of the receipt of such a memorial, futui-e licenses shall not be issued except upon a memorial by a bare majority to that ett'ect. There is in South Australia, as in many colonies, a, com- plete prohibition of tlie supply of liquor to aborigines, as well as a prohibition of the supply of liquor to minors under fifteen ; and, as in New Zealand, the publican is punishable if he allows any one to give liquor to such children. The clause already mentioned in several colonial Acts as to persons, by the habitual or excessive use of liquor, wasting their means, injuring or being likely to injure health, or endangering or interrupting tlie peace or happiness of their families, exists, as has been seen, in South Australia, and extends, as in the greater part of Canada, to all persons who may knowingly, " during the currency " of an order against a drunkard, supply the person with liquor. In South Australia the publican is also punisliable if he allows a person under notice to loiter about his premises, even although he does not supply him. As in New Zealand, so too in South Australia there are special inspectors to obtain the enforcement of the Act. In Tasmania temperance legislatioti took place in 1889, and introduced Local Option, which had previously been refused. The Bill as presented to Parliament contained a clause which went less far than the South Australian Act, and did not much extend the previous Tasmanian legislation, under which the licensing Bench were to entertain memorials from the locality, although they were not bound to follow them. The Lower oiiAp. VI LIQUOR LAWS 615 House, however, changed this into a provision that memorials from two-thirds of the ratepayers in the neighbourhood objecting to the granting of new hcenses were fatal to the granting of such licenses ; and that where the petition from the locality was directed against the renewal of an old license the magis- trates might rec[uire proof on oath of the allegations of the memorial, and might then grant or refuse the certificate accord- ing to their opinion whether the allegations had or had not been sufficiently established. But the " neighbourhood " is narrowly defined, and consists in the cities of Hobart and Launceston of the space within a radius of 200 yards, and in other towns within 500 yards, and elsewhere within a mile. The Local Option clause has, however, less importance under the new Tasmanian law than it possesses in South Australia ; because the licensing Bench itself under the new law is partly elective, although not wholly elective as in New Zealand. The nominated element of Justices has a sHght majority on each Board, but the number of elected members is so large that a strong temijerance feeling in any district may lead to the stoppage of licenses. The Upper House increased the stringency of the Bill and gave a bare majority of ratepayers, in place of a two-thirds majority, the right of veto of new licenses. The temperance party were, however, dissatisfied with the Bill, and petitioned the Governor for the refusal of the Koyal assent. As in New Zealand, no person interested in the manufacture or sale of intoxicating liquors is in Tasmania to be elected a member of a licensing Bench. A clause was also inserted in the Bill rendering liable to punishment persons found upon licensed premises after hours, and it was supposed in the colony that this clause was a new departure, in punishing the publican's customer instead of the publican alone ; but it will be seen from what has been said above that there exists for it at least one precedent. The clause relating to drunkards being placed under notice has existed for some time in Tasmania : but, in the form in which it now stands, it rests on the evidence on oath of any two persons, instead of, as in most colonies, a declaration by a member of the family. The drunkard himself is liable to penalty as well as those who procure drink for him. Generally speaking, it may be said that all the recent Australian Acts show that their proposers are well acquainted with modern legislation upon tlie subject in other colonies, for each of the Acts takes whole clauses from the Acts of other colonies with- out change ; and it is to be wished that the fulness of know- ledge possessed by colonial temperance reformers concerning the temperance legislation of all parts of Greater Britain extended to politicians generally and led to somewhat more uniformity of legislation in English-speaking countries. The licensing law of New South Wales is moderate as com- New South pared with that of Canada, New Zealand, or Queeiasland, and Wales. timid even as contrasted with that of the neighbouring colony of Victoria. But, although little stringent for a colonial liquor 616 TROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART VI law, it is severe as compared with those which still exist in the United Kingdom. The New South Wales Acts discourage bars for the sale of liquor apart from hotels providing board and lodging and stable accommodation ; and gin palaces and drinl?;- ing music halls are unknown, although, as in most of the colonies, there are shops specially licensed for the sale of colonial wines. There is a Local Option poll, but it is not final as regards licenses, and is in fact little more than an expression of opinion. While there is Sunday closing in New South Wales with a bond fide, traveller clause, this clause is narrow in its provisions, and a New South Wales " traveller " is — or rather should be, if the law were not evaded — a traveller indeed. The same provision, which is general in the colonies, with regard to the serving of minors apparently under fifteen or sixteen years of age, exists in New South Wales. There has been a recent inquiry by a Royal Commission, and at the time when the com- missioners were appointed it was supposed that there had been an increase in the consumption of intoxicating liquors, and the commissioners were directed to inquire into the causes of the supposed increase : but they found, as a fact, that there had been a decrease in the consumption; and I must once more warn my readers against believing all that has been written upon the subject of consumption per head of intoxicating liquors, inasmuch as there exist no statistics more misleading. The Commission pointed to the possibility of the adoption of the New Zealand law for the punishment of mere drunkenness apart from disorderly conduct ; but no other very stringent measures were recommended in the report. On the other hand, a majority of the members returned to the colonial Parhament at the last election were pledged to vote for an extension of Local Option, and a large proportion of them declared against compensation. The Good Templars supported the protectionist candidates in the country districts, and returned them ; but in Sydney some of the protectionists refused to take the required pledge against compensation, and the Good Templars voted for the free traders and defeated the protectionists. Western In Western Australia, with the exception of Sunday closing, Australia, the liquor law is somewhat similar to that of England, Ijut there is a high fee on publicans' licenses. The supply of liquor to aboriginal natives by any person is prohibited in Western Aus- tralia except as between master and servant. There is the usual drunkards' clause, allowing Justices to prohibit all per- sons from supplying liquor to notorious drunkards ; and in Western Australia the notorious drunkard himself, if found loitering about a public -house, may be locked up for a week with or without hard labour. Hatits of In the chief colonies of Australasia, as in the United Kingdom, the people, there is a steady decrease of drunkenness, and a general aversion to the use of stimulants on the part of the self-respecting por- tion of the younger population. Tea is even more widely con- sumed than is the case at home, and coffee palaces and temper- CHAP. VI LIQUOR LAWS 617 aiioe hotels are commoner than they are with us. The early- settlers in Australia took out with them drinking habits, but the Australian climate has done its work in diminishing in the race the craving for the use of stimulants, and the power of the Churches has helped hi the reform. In the digging days the practice of offering drink to strangers sprang up in Australia, and became general, and at one time ofl'ence was given by refusal to drink. The practice of " shouting," that is, of " stancl- ing treat," has now all but died out in the more settled portions of the country. There seems reason to think that the Australian of the future will be a sober man, and the greatest of all the differences between the old colonists and the young Australians lies in the drinking habits of the foinner and the repulsion to drink very general among the latter. A good deal of drunken- ness is seen in Australia from time to time among a limited class — the men employed up-country, who visit the capitals only at rare intervals, and who are apt to spend a portion of the large savings out of their high wages by "going on the spree," as it is called. The system known as " knocking down a cheque " has been fully explained by Mr. Finch-Hatton,i but it would be a mistake to suppose that these occasional outbreaks indicate a large consumption of drink, for such is not the case, and the very men whose drunkenness is from time to time paraded in the streets are themselves sober as a rule. Those who have watched tlie career of Australian youths, and Temper- who are able to compare it with the career of an equal number auce. of persons of the same classes in the mother- country, feel assured that there is less ruin in AustraUa caused by drink than in the United Kingdom, and there is, indeed, less doubt about the fact than about the reasons for it. Some are inclined to ascribe the decline in dilnking habits almost exclusively to the climate, since experience has shown that in the great heats hot tea affords a far better means of quenching thirst than do spirits, wine, or beer. Others are inclined to set down the change mainly to the greater influence in the colonies of the Wesleyan and such bodies, who make temperance a part of their religion. The result in either case is plain ; the young Australians are either teetotallers or moderate in their use of alcohol As the ranks of the electors day by day are swelled by an increasing proportion of native-born Australians, the Local Option principle even to the extent of national Prohibition gains ground. There is a general belief among the younger colonists that there are many people who, if consulted in their reasonable moments, do not want to drinlc intoxicating liquor, and who yet consume it to excess if temptation is thrown in their way. PubUc-houses — or " hotels," as in Australia they all are called, and are in fact — are closed on Sundays throughout the colonies, and the result of colonial experience is to teach that Sunday closing has diminished drunkenness. In Victoria ' Advance Australia I by the Hon. Harold Fiuoli-Hatton. Allen and Co., 1885. 618 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt vi a crucial experiment was tried : the public-houses were closed on Sundays in the early days of Melbourne ; then opened for two hours upon Sundays ; and now wholly closed once more ; and Victoria supports Sunday closing. The bond fide traveller clause is, however, though probably necessary, no doubt made use of for the evasion of the law. As the whole of the New Zealand law is evaded by the general establishment of clubs, so the early closing and Sunday closing clauses of the ordinary Australian Acts are resisted by the same means, but not to a very large extent. South The extreme temperance legislation of Canada, the strong Africa, legislation of New Zealand and of Queensland, the more moderate Local Option laws of South Australia and Tasmania, and the Local Option with compensation of Victoria, seem to establish the rule, in the greater portion of the white-inhabited colonies, of consultation of the popular voice with regard to licenses. But the exception formed in Australia by Western Australia is strengthened by the South African colonies. The Cape and Natal stand even below New South Wales and Western Australia in the scale of stringency of temperance legislation. At the Cape the principle of Local Option is not recognised, except as regards new licenses. We find there the mild provision that new licenses are not to be granted unless a petition in favour of the application is signed by one-third of the inhabitants of the district, and that they must be refused if a majority of the voters sign a memorial against them. The laws of the Cape of Good Hope respecting the sale of in- toxicating liquor were mostly consolidated in 1883, by an Act which was amended in 1885 and 1887. The Cape followed the ordinary colonial view, with regard to the selling of drink on Sunday, in prohibiting that sale, though certain hotels are specially licensed to serve hand fide travellers on Sunday. Licensing is left to mixed bodies consisting partly of magistrates and i^artly of elected members. The elective members are not elected for the purpose, but consist of the mayors or chairmen of municipalities and of members of the Divisional Council. As regards the sale of drink to natives the law is theoretically stringent. The Governor may define areas in which no licenses can be granted and no liquor sold except with the permission of the Governor. No such areas, however, were in existence in 1888 ; that is to say, while the law is strong, this portion of it is not put in force. In 1887 it was announced by the Prime Minister that, in consequence of representations made by magistrates in native territory to the eftect that unless tlie whole colony were proclaimed the resti-ictions were pro- ductive of more evil than good, the Government had advised the Governor to cancel all existing proclamations. There was a debate and a division in Parliament upon the question, and the temperance party asserted tliat their opponents desired to exterminate the Kafir race as well as to encourage the trade in Cape brandy ; but the temperance party in the Cape seemed to CHAP. VI LIQUOR LAWS 619 give up the case of the wliite population, and put forward that of the black people only. The liquor interest in South Africa is strong, for tlie brandy consumed by the natives, commonly called " Cape smoke," is manufactured by the ordinary colonial farmers. The friends of the aborigines argue that the farmers desire free trade in brandy, both in the interests of their own profits and because, being Boers, they desire to destroy the natives ; but the farmers are too strong for them. While the framers of Cape licensing laws have sometimes Natal, begun by stating in the preamble that "the vice of drunkenness prevails to a great extent," the Natal laws generally begin by setting forth " the increase of drunkenness among persons of the native race," and whites are not witliin the purview of Natal prohibitions. There are strong laws in Natal against the sale of liquor to natives, the brandy interest being less powerful in that colony than in the Cape. As regards licenses, the Natal Boards are not even partially elected, like those or the older South African colony. There is in existence in Natal a clause permitting the incarceration of persons for mere drunkenness. Although the brandy interest is not strong in Natal there is a good deal of rum manufactured from the sugar cane upon the coast ; and, in spite of the laws prohibiting the supply of di'ink to natives, there is some evasion of the prohibition. The mining population at Kimberley and elsewhere keeps up Habits of a large number of small bai's, there called canteens, such as would the popu- not be tolerated in Australia ; and there is certainly room for latiou. temperance legislation in Soutli Africa other than that directed against drinking by the Kafirs. The temperance party at the Cape, as has been seen, accuse the Dutch farmers of desiring to exterminate the Kafirs by means of drink ; but it is a remarkable fact that in the Orange Free State the Dutch are following the inhabitants of Natal in trying to jjrevent the sale to natives, rather than the example of the Cape iu permitting it without practical restriction. The vineyards of South Africa, wliich used to produce good wine, and which might largely supply European markets in the present day, have been turned into brandy farms, without, however, having succeeded in manufacturing a grape brandy which can compete with French Cognac. Memorials have been presented to the Colonial Ofiioe from Churches, from the Bishop of London, and from great numbers of temperance bodies, protesting against the granting of licenses by the Cape Government for the sale of intoxicating drinks in the Transkei ; but the Cape Government in their reply stated that, while the,y were willing to give the Secretary of State information, they did not " for a moment acknowledge the right of irresponsible bodies, such as the Aborigines' Protection Society, to interrogate the colonial Ministry, who are responsible for measures undertaken by them within their constitutional rights." There can be no doubt that public interference from home is useless, although the Church of 620 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN England, tlie Wesleyan Church, and the Presbyterians of Scotland may be able to do much by acting upon the Churches in South Africa with which they are in communion. At the same time the influence of the Churches has already availed to modify the Cape proclamations as to tlie Transkei, and the sale of spirits to natives is now forbidden except where permits are obtained from local ofiicers. Crown In Crown Colonies generally there is the same variety of Colonies, legislation with regard to intoxicating liquors that prevails in other matters. In many Crown Colonies, as, for example, Barbados, the Leeward Islands, and St. Vincent, there is general Sunday closing. In Bahamas there is Local Option, though hotels in districts where the ordinary sale of intoxicating drink is stopped are allowed to sell it to their guests. In some Crown Colonies, as, for example, Mauritius and St. Vincent, the sale of intoxicants to minors under fifteen is forbidden, while in Bahamas, Malta, and others the age is fixed at sixteen. In Cyprus there are no restrictions. The sale of strong liquor to the dark-skinned population is carried on in West Africa to a large extent, and revenue is derived from it. In Bechuana- land the sale of spirits and wine to natives is forbidden, though beer is specially allowed ; in Zululand, as in Natal, Kafir beer is alone permitted, while in Basutoland the prohibition is general in its terms. In Fiji the sale of drink to natives and half-castes is forbidden, and natives and half-castes are punished if they make use of intoxicants or even have them in their possession. As regards Protectorates and spheres of influence. Great Britain and the United States attempted at the African Conference at Berlin to check the liquor trade on the West Coast of Africa, but, through the opposition of Germany and France, the proposed clause in the protocols was dropped. At the same time our own West African colonies, like the Cape of Good Hope, are, as has been seen, offenders in this matter. I have not named the colony of Ceylon in this connection, or written as yet of the case of India, because the temperance party complain that in those countries the State is promoting the sale of spirits, for revenue purposes — a question which is a different one from those which we have been discussing. To this matter I will turn after putting forward a few general considerations on colonial liquor legis- lation. Colonial Wliile English and Scotch colonists are generally friendly to liquor Local Option, and are gradually extending its operation, and legislation, while in some colonies the settlers of Irish race are disposed to concur in their views, in others there is opposition from a section of the Irish, who, in Australia, are closely connected with the liquor trade, and in all the colonies the German settlers are opposed to modern liquor legislation. The dislike of the Germans to local interference with their beer-drinking habits is so strong that it is thought that they may not improbably quit districts wliich put down the sale of beer for others in CHAP. VI LIQUOR LAWS 621 ■which it is permitted. In some districts of Iowa they have prevented the enforcement of the prohibitory law, but in other parts of the United States there are great numbers of Germans inhabiting districts which are under Prohibition. As regards the otlier races, the clergy of all denominations — who take in the colonies, as has been seen, but a. slight part in political questions, and indeed hardly any except upon the education question and the one which forms the subject of this chapter — are strong supporters of temperance legislation, and use their power to the full in the direction of Local Option. Another point which is worthy of some notice is that while Wine- the power of local Prohibition is being freely given, and while growing the party in favour of general Prohibition is grower stronger ^md Pro- every day, in most of the colonies the prohibitive legislation '"bitiou. makes special and exceptional provision for the extension of the colonial wine trade. It will indeed be curious to see whether that wine-growing which has a future in Ontario, and the possibilities of great extension before it throughout the Australasian colonies, will modify the prohibitionist sentiment, or whether wine -producing countries exporting spirituous liquors to all parts of the world can become or remain pro- hibitionist as regards home consumption. Formerly South Australia was the wine-producing colony, but now Victoria stands first and New South Wales second, while the other colonies are also producing wine ; and if in that which was once pre-eminently the wine-growing colony — the Cape — public feeling is opj)osed to temperance legislation, this cannot be said to be the case in the Australasian colonies, and in the wine- growing parts of Ontario. It has too easily been thought of late in England that the Supposed Local Option legislation of the colonies has been proved a failure, failure of No doubt in some parts of Canada it is less popular than it Local was. The present Lieutenant-Governor of the North -West Option. Territories in the Report which I mentioned has told the Dominion Government that the sympathy of many of the settlers is against the Government upon the question of Pro- hibition. No doubt the Scott Act has gone out of use in districts where it had previously been put in force, and no doubt, also, in many parts of Canada and of Australasia there is evasion of the law, while everywhere it is difficult to stop an illicit liquor trafiic in sparsely settled countries ; but in Australasia, at least, there is no sign of a desire to repeal the Local Option Acts — on the contrary, the whole political movement sets the other way, and such Acts are yearly being strengthened, or introduced into colonies where they had not previously been in existence. The legislatures of New Zealand and of several Australian colonies have, too, taken steps which are likely to be effective in preventing evasion of the law. Local Option is also spreading in the United States, and total Prohibition by means of general State laws polls a large minority of votes. While, however, American and 622 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part vi Canadian example may as yet be doubtful, Australasian example and opinion cannot be quoted upon the side of resistance to Local Option views. India and The Liquor question in Ceylon and India is different from Ceylon. that which has been discussed above. There is no prohibition of sale of drink to the dark-skinned population ; but various licensing systems are in force, which are opposed by the tem- perance party as being calculated to stimulate the sale of drink to natives, for revenue purposes. Not only, in short, is nothing done to stop the sale of drink, but it is alleged that Government does its best to increase it, or is at least tempted in that direc- tion by the systems which it has continued or set on foot. The House of Commons has, after full debate, condemned the liquor policy of the Indian Government as leading to the establish- ment of the liquor trade, in defiance of native opinion and against the protest of the inhabitants, in places where it did not formerly exist, and, by giving facilities for drink, causing a steadily increased consumption, with consequent evil results to the population. There can be no doubt that almost all recognised organs of native opinion support the view taken by the majority of the House of Commons, and Indian religious opinion has been called into play to support the action of the temperance reformers. The Indian systems of excise raise for Government a large revenue upon the local sale of foreign liquors and upon the manufacture of country liquors ; and this revenue is one which is growing fast ; while the example set formerly by the East India Company, and now by our Govern- ment, is being imitated in native states by princes who, under British advice, are glad by this means to increase their revenue even against the religious feeling of their people. The statements which have been made by the temperance reformers have been sharply denied by many representatives of the Indian Government, but the denials hardly meet the points which have here been briefly stated. At the same time it is not true that, taking India through, there has been a recent adoption of an evil system, for even in the time of the Company revenue was raised by a liquor -farming system ; and the Government argue that the increased consumption of liquor, where there is an increase, is owing to improvement in wages arid increase of industrial employment. It is doubtful, accord- ing to writers who support in this matter the Government view, whether a general increase in the con.sumption of strong drink has in fact taken place, because while a great deal more liquor becomes the subject of duty than was formerly the case it is supposed that there is less smuggling and illicit distilla- tion. Mr. Oust has stated that "the great increase of the Excise in recent years really represents much less liquor sold and an infinitely better regulated consumption than the smaller llevenue of former years. . . . The great uicrease in the Eevenue, which is unquestionable, does not mark the extension of drink- ing habits, but is the result of u. great and general increase of CHAP. VI LIQUOR LAWS 623 the rate of tax, wliioli it would have been entirely impossible , to realise but for the great improvement in the preventive measures.'' The Government assert that in raising the liquor taxes they have intended to check consumption, but the Indian National Congress has, by a unanimous vote, condemned the existing system ; the House of Commons has condemned it ; and the Government of India will be forced to devise a liquor system less contrary to the drift of modern opinion than any of those which have, it may be admitted, long existed within the territories which they govern. While, however, it would be easy to sacrifice the Indian revenue from liquor, it is difficult to see how, without enacting absolute prohibition (such as exists in the North-West Territories of Canada) of the importation, manufacture, and possession of drink, illicit distillation could be prevented in such a country as India. India forms no exception to the general principle that Restriction resti'iction of the sale of intoxicating liquors iinds more and everywhere more favour every day throughout Greater Bi'itain. gaming ground. PAET VII FUTUEE EELATIONS BETWEEN THE MOTHEE-COUNTEY AND THE EE- MAINDEE OF THE EMPIEE 2 S PAET VII PUTITEE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE MOTHER-COUNTEY AND THE REMAINDER OF THE EMPIRE On the 15tli November last, at a meeting at the Mansion- Present House to receive Mr. Parkin, who has recently spoken for the position Impei'ial Federation League in all parts of Canada, as well as of the in Australia and New Zealand, Lord Kosebery and other Imperial speakers adopted a more moderate programme than that which Federation has been sometimes put forward in the name of the League, proposals. Lord Kosebery, indeed, receded from at least one suggestion formerly made by himself. He explained a " fatal " objection to his own scheme for introducing colonial representatives to the House of Lords, as well as the "double objection" to the idea of introducing such representatives into the House of Commons ■ — an idea, however, which he, in common with Mr. Forster, the parent of the League, had been consistent in condemning. He showed that the extension of the Privy Council by the inclu- sion of the Agents-General, as proposed by Lord Grey, was a matter of extreme difficulty, and that the project of a ZoU- verein, or customs union, was by no means a practical proposal towards the consolidation of the' Empire. On the other hand. Lord Eosebery (followed upon the point by Lord Carnarvon) maintained that we already possess a form of Imperial Federa- tion inaugurated by the Colonial Conference of 1887. One of the chief speakers, declaring that the Conference had made recommendations upon matters which concerned the common good of the Empire, exclaimed, amid the cheers of the members of the League, that "if that was not Imperial Federation" he did "not know what is." At a later period in the meetiag a resolution was carried to the effect that a series of such gather- ings as the Conference of 1887 would tend to the consolidation of the Empire, and tliat it was undesirable that a long interval should elapse before another conference was summoned ; and Lord Carnarvon, in seconding the resolution, declared in the name of the League that "all that they claimed and desired was that the question" [that of Imperial Federation] "which was excluded at the last Conference — formally and deliberately, and no doubt wisely, excluded — should not be excluded in the future." The resolution was supported by Mr. Parkin, the 628 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN orator of the League, fresh from the triumphs of liis eloquence in Canada and Victoria, and from liis total failure in New South Wales ; but not one word did Mr. Parkin say of that which those wlio went to hear him most expected — the willing- ness of the Australian colonies to act upon tlie principles formerly suggested by Mr. Forster and other officers of the League, or even to support the moderate platform of Lords lio.sebery and Carnarvon. The modcr- In face of the limited programme now put forward by the ate pro- authorised exponents of the views of the Imperial Federation gramme. League, it is useless to discuss at length the projects which have been sketched by ingenious persons for the reconstruction of the Empire. The "League now asks only for a series of con- ferences at which the subject of Imperial Federation is, though not proclaimed as the chief matter of discussion, not to be actually tabooed. The conferences cannot be frequent if colonial Prime Ministers are to attend, or even colonists of the second political rank. Moreover, Sir John Downer and Sir Samuel Griffith did not improve their position in their colonies by their visit to England in 1887 ; and it will be difficult indeed to per- suade the statesmen of Queensland and New South Wales and South Australia to attend at all in London. Again, tlie exclusion of the subject of Imperial Federation from the debates of 1887 was made at that time an actual condition by New Soutli Wales and some other colonies ; and it is by no means certain that those colonies would be represented, even by their Agents -General, if it were not again excluded. As matters stand it is almost certain that Queensland, for one, would not attend a conference called upon the Carnarvon base, and it is possible that she would decline to attend a conference of any kind. It may, however, be conceded that a fuller form of Australian federation must soon come, and that the Dominion of Canada, Newfoundland, the United States of Australasia (to use the Victorian and South Australian name), or British States of Australia (to use Sir Henry Parkes's name), the Cape, and New Zealand, if she were still outside the Australian federation — that is, all the self-governing colonies possessing responsible institutions — might, after Australian confederation, be willing to attend. Confer- How far the credit for the Conference of 1887 belongs rightly ences. to the Imperial Federation League, and how far to Mr. Stan- hope, it is difficult to say. The suggestion came from the former, but Mr. Stanhope himself and the Cabinet seem to be entitled to praise for the manner in which they overcame the difficulties presented by the question. As I have often attacked a portion of Mr. Stanliope's proposals upon tlie army, I am the more willing to declare that his circalar calling the first Con- ference was admirably conceived, and that he deserves the highest approbation for having seen in advance exactly what could and what could not be done. Wlien sufficient time has passed to make it possible again to obtain the presence in PART VII FUTURE RELATIONS 629 London of colonial statesmen of position not inferior to that of the representatives at the Conference of 1887, no doubt a further conference might be called, especially if Australian federation had become complete in the meantime — a conference which might lead to useful common legislation, and even pos- sibly, though that is far more doubtful, to such a discussion upon the general future relations of the Empire as might clear the air. The first and most difficult subject which must be treated at Future all such conferences is that of defence, which I reserve for confer- separate discussion in the next part, merely pointing out ences. that the difficulties of the question will be lessened after Australian federation, inasmuch as there would be little trouble in dealing with the group, compared to that of facing the separate Parliaments of Queensland and New South Wales. Besides defence, howevei', there are no doubt many matters in which a closer union of the component parts of the Empire is not only desirable, but possible of attainment ; such, for example, as posts, telegraphs and cables, steamship subsidies, patents, currency, weights and measures, census and statistics, extradition, naturalisation, judgments, criminal law, commercial and maritime law, law of status, courts of appeal, loans, and many others. Although this list of subjects avoids the most difficult, namely, common revenue, common control of foreign afiairs, decision as to peace and war, and the conduct of wars, still it includes some of high importance. In posts and tele- graphs, already discussed at the last Conference, but most imperfectly, the Empire is behind many other portions of the world. The fact that English agencies should be in the habit of sending to the Continent letters and newspapers intended for their clients in the greater portion of the British Empire, in order that they may be posted there at cheaper rates, and the fact that the cheaper postage from some foreign countries to India leads to circulars intended for parts of Greater Britain being printed, as well as posted, abroad, are not creditable to us. German letters to almost all portions of the British Empire outside the United Kingdom cost about one-half the sums which have to be paid upon English letters to the same places. These are matters which ought to be settled by agree- ment in London between the mother-country, India, and the colonies. The subsidies of steamship lines, and several other subjects that I have named, are also essentially matters for agreement ; but it is doubtful whether we in England are yet in the frame of mind for conceding to the colonies and to India their due share in controlling the policy of the Empire even upon secondary questions. It seems hardly noticed at home that we are not in the habit of admitting the colonies to freely legislate even upon all matters which concern their own home afiairs. We may take for an example the divorce Bills which have been recently passed in several colonies, and the first of which 630 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN was vetoed because inconsistent with home ideas, although tlie legislation of marriage with the deceased wife's sister has after a struggle been permitted in Canada and Australia. In this and many other matters too, while the legislation has been at last allowed, it has been consented to in a grudging spirit ; and I believe that the wife of a most distinguished late Agent-General, legally married though she was according to the colonial law, was not long since treated in England as though her marriage had been an English one and consequently illegal. On the other hand, the Minister of a foreign Coui-t who was here at the same time, and whose wife was his own niece, which was legal according to the laws of his country, found no difficulty in securing the reception of his wife at Court. In other words, that is still recognised in the case of foreign countries which is refused to our colonists in matters which are supposed to be entirely of domestic concern. Colonial judg- ments, too, are still treated in tlie United Kingdom as though they were foreign judgments. Loans and One of the most difficult of the subjects which I have named financial in my list is that of loans, and I cannot but think that the fact federation, that the mother-country (which has the fewest public assets to show for her heavy debt) has the best credit, in itself points towards a general financial federation of the debts of the whole Empire. This matter has been sometimes raised in connection with the subject of defence, because the savings which could be made for the colonies, by means of a consolidated debt resting upon the credit of the whole Empire, might be used for defence purposes. No means so sure could be found of popularising in the colonies the connection with the mother-country as that of giving them the direct advantage of cheaper money ; and although our own credit stands immensely high at the present moment, it rests upon a less sure basis as regards the future than does that of many of the colonies to which we still deny the right of obtaining trust fund investments. Even the most heavily indebted of all the colonies has been shown to possess a substantially sound financial position, as well as magnificent prospects for the future. No doubt the giving of control to the whole Empire over the borrowing of a colony is difficult, but I cannot believe that it transcends the resources of our states- manship. Mr. Gresswell has discussed this matter with ability, and has powerfully put forward the advantages of financial union, which is further recommended to us by the fact that the colonial debts are mainly in British hands, and are more and more becoming one of the chief resources of the investors of the mother-country. A customs Although the President of the Imperial Federation League union. now puts aside not only projects for close political union, but even those for the creation of a customs union or Zollverein, many of his supporters by no means reject the possibility of a customs union. It is, however, necessary to point out that most of the colonists wlio agitate for wliat tliey call a com- PART VII FUTURE RELATIONS 631 inercial union or customs union mean something very different from what we call by the same names. When our merchants ask for it they express their wish to secure a better market for our goods by getting rid of colonial tariff's, and for this end some of them are willing to adopt pi'otective measures against the outside world ; but the colonists repudiate the idea of relying largely upon direct taxation to make up a deficiency in their customs revenue. What the Canadians ask for is that we should concede advantages to colonial goods over the goods of foreign countries, and many of them distinctly explain that they would not admit British manufactured articles into Canada without duties. They propose, however, to subject them to duties somewhat less heavy than those which would be levied upon foreign goods. Two schemes have been put forward, which are in fact the same, one for an additional duty through- out the British Empire upon all foreign goods — the money to be spent upon imperial defence ; the other for a reduction of duties upon British and colonial goods in colonial ports, accom- panied by differential treatment of foreign as contrasted with colonial goods in home ports. Both these proposals involve Protection in England in a greater or less degree, and as they have been repudiated by Lord Eosebery, the President of the League, they possess little importance for the moment except that it must be understood that they lie behiad the Canadian suggestions for a conference upon imperial union. There was a debate in 1889 in Canada upon commercial intercourse between the mother-country and the colonies. It was in- troduced by the Canadian advocates of ImiDerial Federation, and their proposals met with considerable public favour, although there was a disposition on the part of the leading men to avoid committing themselves to a somewhat indefinite movement. Mr. Hofmeyr's scheme put forward in connection with the Mr. Conference of 1887, for " promoting a closer union between the Hofmeyr. various parts of the British Empire by means of an imperial tariff of customs,'' was less important on accomat of its intrinsic practicability than on account of its author's position in South Africa, where, as has been seen, he is the iDolitician of the greatest power, the leader of the Dutch jDarty, and the maker and unmaker of Cape, Ministries. Mr. Hofmeyr's scheme, which may be brought up at a future conference by the Canadian delegates, is to promote an imjperial tariff' of customs, to be levied independently of the cfuties payable under existing tariffs on all goods entering tlie Empire from abroad ; and the revenue derived from the new tariff' is to be devoted to general defence. As Mr. Hofmeyr is the leader of the Afrikander party, to which has been imputed a desire for separation from the British Empire, it is important to notice his words : " I have taken this matter in hand with two objects : to promote the union of the Empire, and at the same time to obtain revenue for the purposes of general defence.'' Mr. Hofmeyr declared that by his scheme he wished to counteract what he 632 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN paet vii called " territoritalism,'' or the tendency of local interests to bring about the disintegration of the Empire. He instanced the West Indies, where the jjlanters tind tliemselves unable to sell their sugar profitably in British markets, and consequently look to the United States, but fail to make arrangements with the Americans on account of imperial treaties. A feeling naturally arises in favour of annexation to the American Union, as the attachment of the West Indies to the Empire becomes opiDOsed to the self-interest of a portion of the inhabitants. This state of things Mr. Hofmeyr thinks would be remedied by differential treatment. So, too, in the case of Canada, Mr. Hofmeyr points out that if she asks for partial or complete commercial union with the United States we can concede it or refuse it, but that the dissatisfaction which would be aroused by refusal, and the dependence upon the United States which would result from the concession, would be equally dangerous to the unity of the Empire. With regard to defence Mr. Hofmeyr showed that subsidies by the colonies to the mother-country for naval defence may be said by objectors, as in Queensland, to constitute taxation without representation or "Tribute," but that the colonies might consent to indii'ect taxes of such a kind as admitted their right to greater fiscal privileges within the Empire than are accorded to foreigners. Mr. Hofmeyr proposed a 2 per cent all round duty, raising a revenue of between seven and eight millions sterling to be devoted to naval defence. In answer to opposition, founded upon free-trade principles, Mr. Hofmeyr argued that his proposed duty is no worse than differential duties, kept up, not tor the sake of promoting trade between colony and colony, but between a colony and a foreign State — the Orange Kepublic. Grain imported into the Cape from Australia pays duty, whUe that imported from the Free State, a foreign country, pays no tax whatever. The former reciprocity treaty between Canada and the United States was another instance of the same kind. Mr. Hofmeyr meets the very serious objection that his proposal would be an infraction of the most- favoured-nation clauses of our treaties by suggesting that in future treaties we should draw such a most-favoured-nation clause as would allow us to give special privileges to our colonies. Some of the French colonies are forced by the mother- country to give special privileges to French trade, and Frenoli most-favoured-nation clauses are held not to be violated by the provision. Mr. Hofmeyr tried to meet the free-trade arguments as to taxing the food of the British working man, and as to taxing the raw materials of British manufactures, by suggesting that at the present moment the taxpayer of the United Kingdom has to maintain almost single-handed the army and navy of the Empire, while under the Hofmeyr plan the burden would iDe divided. The Cana- Mr. Hofmeyr's position, power, a,nd character render his dian view scheme interesting, as it shows the leader of the Afrikander PAET VII FUTURE RELATIONS 633 party, of all iDi'omiiient colonial statesmen, one of the most of a Zoll- zealoiis on behalf of the Imperial idea ; but it gains practical verein. importance by the fact that it receives countenance from Canada, and will probably be put forward by Canada at some later date. Any form of Imperial Federation proposed by Canada will be Imperial Federation upon a protectionist base, the popularity of which in the mother-country will be problematical to say the least. Moreover, it will, as has been shown earlier in the present work, not admit the goods of the mother-country and or India freely to the colonial markets, because it is of the mother- country and of India that protected manufacturers are the most afraid. The crux of Imperial Federation lies in this tariff question. Difficulties The British Empire for customs purposes consists of a great of a number of foreign and almost hostile countries, and it is as common difficult to conceive the whole of the colonies becomLag free- tariff- trade communities as to expect the mother-country to become protectionist under such temptation as the Canadians could hold out to her. We have not yet been able to reduce to harmony, or to found upon a base of principle, the tariffs even of those Crown Colonies in which we are all-powerful, and there seems indeed but little hope of the adoption of a common system for the Empire as a whole. In declaring that a Zollverein is by no means a practical proposal towards the consolidation of the Empire, Lord Eosebery no doubt thinks that any commercial union tempting the mother-country into the paths of Protection is impossible, just because colonial protectionists are more anxious to keep out the goods of Great Britain and of India than those of any other portion of the world ; but he perhaps also feels that, were it possible of attainment, such a Zollverein would be opposed to our best hopes for the future of the world. Instead of doing our utmost to break down the barriers between peoples, we should be setting up new ones which would help to parcel the globe into three or four great systems of the future, shut off from, and hostile to, one another. The Conference of 1887 was merely consultative, and, distin- Decisions guished and powerful as were its members, its decisions were of Confer- not binding until they had been ratified and adopted by the ences. Parliaments of the various colonies which were affected by the arrangements made. Sir Samuel Griffith took a leading part in the Conference, and he was Prime Minister of Queensland ; Queens- but it will be remembered that the Queensland Parliament land, rejected the Defence Bill and turned out the Ministry. This seems an additional reason, besides others which have been g-iven, why tlie extension of the federal system throughout the Local various groups of which the Empire is composed should precede federation, the series of frequent conferences looked for by Lord Eosebery and Lord Carnarvon. It matters perhaps but little, from this point of view, whether Newfoundland should join or should continue to refuse to join the Canadian Dominion, or whether New Zealand should permanently stand aloof from Australia ; 634 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN The Eosebery- Salisbiiry corre- spondence. General recognition of tile need for caution. Varieties of opinion in tie Imperial Federation League. Home Eule for Ireland. becau.se the more detached are New Zealand and Newfoundland i'rojn the colonies in their neighbourhood, the more certain are they to lean steadily upon the imperial connection. But the case is dift'erent with the colonies of the Australian mairLland, and little indeed can be done in the direction of consolidation until New South Wales has joined, under one system or another, the colonies which send representatives to the Federal Council of Australasia, It took Switzerland 557 years to grow from a league of perpetual alliance into a confederation, and progress in such matters cannot be rapid ; and it is difficult to say that Lord Salisbury's letter of July 1889, declining to summon a meeting of representatives, from various parts of the Empire, to consider the possibility of establishing a closer union, was at the time unwise, although its form was open to misconception. The previous declarations of Mr, Smith and Mr. Stanhope in favour of Imperial Federation, and the paragraph pointing to it in the Queen's Speech of September 1886, are to some degree in conflict with the later declarations of Lord Salisbury, While the Conservative Cabinet have toned down their opinions in favour of Imperial Federation, the Imperial Federa- tion League itself, although it has never changed its official programme, has, as we have seen, also shown a tendency towards some modification of its views. Nothing can be more catholic than the tone which has always been exhibited by its official organ, a paper which has been conducted with an impartiality which might with advantage be extended in political discussions. ImiKrial Federation has, however (while it has always given fair play to all sides), sharply criticised the writings of those wlio have asked disagreeable questions bearing upon the possi- bility of the adoption of a close union, such as the question how the Federation would deal with customs, or, if taxation was to continue to be treated locally, with the refusal of a member of the confederation at any future time to provide money for imperial defence. Then, too, some of the Executive Committee of the League have put forward elaborate schemes for close union diametrically opposed to the views now enunciated by others among their number. Sir Frederick Young, for example, has written strongly in favour of colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament, a scheme wliich Mr. Forster, the first President, discouraged and which Lord llosebery, the present President of the League, has condemned. Sir Frederick Young, writing before Home Rule had been taken up by the Liberal party, frankly admitted that true federation would necessitate the creation of local Parliaments in the various portions of the United Kingdom, and that " Viceroys " " in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin" must be supplied with executives composed of advisers taken from the local Houses. The discussions on Home Rule for Ireland liave indeed, at a later period, somewhat weakened the influence of the Imperial Federation League, although its speakers and its organ liave been most careful to avoid committing themselves upon the PART vn FUTURE RELATIONS 635 question. The fact that Lord Eosebery, the President of the League, is in favour of Home Kule for Ireland lias been a weak- ness to the League in Victoria, where the prevailing sentiments are what is commonly styled " anti-L-ish " ; while, curiously enough, at the same time the fact that the majority of the Com- mittee of the League are Conservatives, and tliat it uses the word " Imperial " in that phrase " Imperial Federation " — " Imperial- which I believe was first invented by a Radical, Mr. Edward ists." Jenkins — has been against the League in New South Wales and Queensland, where there exists at present a terror of the word "Imperial." Such an institution as the Imperial Federation League is necessarily exposed, in the present stages of the dis- cussion which it has raised, to differences of ojoinion in its ranks, and to the publication of much which is " viewy " and " ama- teurish " : and when Mr. Froude, Professor Seeley, and Sir Kawson Eawson — the most competent of judges — were set to allot prizes given by the London Chamber of Commerce (the secretary and founder of which is on the Committee of the League) to the authors of essays upon Imperial Federation, the result of their performance of their difficult task was the selection of prize essays containing arguments mutually destructive. One suggestion which is in the air, though it has not yet, I The think, been made in print, has grown out of the relations Rhodes- between the Irish Home Kule party and some South African Parnell imperialists, which arose from the contribution given by Mr. corre- Ehodes to Parnellite funds. Tlie idea which has been broached spondence. is that of a permissive Federation — the establishment of a federal system, to be brought into being at once as regards England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, of which colonies, or federated groups of colonies, might severally become members by applying for admittance upon certain terms. In order to be allowed representation in the imperial as contrasted with local Parliaments, the colonies making application would have to contribute towards the cost of the common army and marine : for the authors of the plan (to which I daresay Mr. Parnell is in no way bound) intend to leave the fiscal system to each federal Province. The suggesters of this scheme couple it, how- ever, with the adoption of the Hofmeyr or some similar plan, by which Canadian wheat (Indian they forget or do not name). Cape wine, West Indian sugar, and Australian wool would come into the United Kingdom on terms slightly more favourable than those accorded to the wlieat of the United States, the wine and sugar of the European Continent, and the wool of South America. Besides the diificulty of obtaining the adhesion of Great Britain to such a protective scheme there are diiEculties upon the colonial side. It would be possible that New Zealand might apply for admission to the ; Federation, tlie whole of Australia remaining out, and that under the irritation which would arise New Zealand might become an Italy to Australia's France Canada and Ireland, however, might conceivably 636 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN agree in suggesting such a scheme, and it is this which gives it some impovtance. Power of It must, I think, be admitted, whatever the political opinions the Crown, or predispositions of tliose who deal with the question, that, even supposing that the obstacles to a customs union could be avoided, the conduct of foreign affairs and of wars would offer immense difficulties under a federation covering enormous dis- tances, .unless it were accompanied by an increase of the power of the Crown. If the Australians and the people of the United Kingdom were willing to give to the Crown in military affairs and in foreign affairs the same predominance which is assigned to it under the Austro- Hungarian constitution, or by the practice of the German Empire, no doubt many difficulties would be at an end : but the assent of the people of the United Kingdom, of Nqw South Wales, and of Queensland to such a system would be doubtful, to say the least. Colonial It seems of little use to discuss the details of schemes for the opinion. future government of the Empire, involving a closer connection Ijetween the mother-country and the colonies than that which exists at present, unless colonial feeling generally would tolerate an attempt to draw more taut the ties that bind the component parts of the Empire to one another. In the chapters on the self-governing colonies it has been shown that many of the leading colonists and distinguished politicians that Greater Britain has produced are in favour of Imperial Federation ; but it has been seen that some of the communities they repre- sent on other questions seem on this one disinclined to follow Recent their lead, and that in the last two years there has been in the change. eastern Australian colonies a marked change in the direction of opposition to the idea of Imperial Federation. Australia. It is generally assumed in Great Britain that the subject of Imperial Federation is one regarded with much interest by colonists, while some think that there is in the colonies a positive enthusiasm for the cause. As a fact the majority of Australian colonists are disinclined to trouble their heads upon the question, and, when they are forced to do so, treat the sug- gestion as a dream, in much the same way in which we are inclined to behave towards ideas of Anglo-Saxon reunion. The references made to Imperial Federation by those of the leading men of Australia who are in favour of it are not taken up by popular feeling, and their authors are often looked upon as politicians of the past or ridiculed by the press for adherence to impracticable views. The feeling of the Australian demo- cracy is that the existing bond with the mother-country may be one not actually hurtful to the colonies, and, if it does no good, a matter of no great consequence ; but there is an un- willingness to discuss changes in the direction of strengthening the tie. Among the older settlers the leaning towarcls closer relations with tlie mother-country is connected with a conser- vatism in politics and in matters of property which places them out of sympathy with the ruling democracies of the Australian PAKT VII FUTURE RELATIONS 637 colonies ; while the native-born Australians look upon imperial affairs with a languid interest, and are apt to turn impatiently from their discussion to matters which to them are more real and of more practical importance in their lives. The bond between the old land and the new is more and more regarded as a sentimental tradition, and less and less as one of the facts of politics. The late Mr. W. E. Forster seems to have come in contact chiefly with the leading men of the Australian colonies and those belonging to the land-holding and commercial classes, and the views neld by the parent of the Imperial Federation League are not shared by those who have a more general acquaintance with Australia. It is doubtful, for example, whether a, well-informed colonial governor, such as Lord Carrington, would be found to share the copfident belief of some that the ties between the mother-country and Australia can be drawn much closer. The undertones of Lord Carring- Lord ton's speeches seem to show that he shares the views of Sir Carrington, Henry Parkes and Mr. Dibbs, the leaders of the two parties in his colony, and that he expects Australia to grow out of her allegiance to the Empire, and sees that the tendency among her population is towards independence. In laying the founda- tion-stone of the new Houses of ParUament at Sydney during the Centennial festivities Lord Carrington said, " In years to come Australia will be taking her place among the nations " ; and although he insisted upon the advantage to Australia, which for military reasons the connection will continue to possess so long as the population of the new continent consists only of a few millions, his language seemed to point to the independence of Australia when those millions have expanded into numbers siiffioiently great to hold their own against the world. Although for commercial reasons Canada is less hostile, as a whole, to a closer union, the Canadian speeches of Lord Duffeiin and Lord Lome contained many similar phrases. Now most Australians think, and rightly think, that they are already able to hold their own if united among themselves by a closer federation. Canada and South Africa, on the other hand, are exposed to local difficulties and dangers which are likely to hold in check the sentiment of independence; but a federation of the Empire without Australia would be as lame as a federation without India, while the difficulties of obtaining Australian consent are now as great as those of devising a system under which India can be brought in to take her share in the government of a democratic empire. It is probable that Australia will soon be united against the rest of Greater Britain in trade matters; brought into Australian federation on the basis of protective duties directed against the mother-country and against India. Commercial estrangement will in this case work against that union which the necessities of defence alone would, for a time, continue to promote. Austi'alia is gliding by insensible degrees into a national life, PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART VII Australian and, while an alliance between herself and the mother-country nation- on the present conditions may long continue, any active attempt ality. to replace it by a tighter hold is likely to be dangerous. The Centennial Magazine of Sydney in June 1889 published an article on tlie future of the Australasian colonies which is looked upon as having been representative of the sentiments of the young Australians, and the article was itself a Prize Essay at the University of New South Wales. The argument of the article was that the present relations between Great Britain and the colonies were not only anomalous, but also unlikely to be permanent, inasmuch as the colonies were exposed to be pre- cipitated into war and to have their trade destroyed in a cause of which they might know nothing and care nothing. The author maintained that the relationship of Australasia to the United States was as close as her relationsliip to England, and that the Union had as great a right to the friendship of Austral- asia as had Great Britain. He held, therefore, that the relations of the countries could not, in face of this fact, be decided by sentiment, but only by considerations of self-interest, while he maintained that Great Britain was by reason of her geographical position and of her hold on India so deeply involved in Con- tinental complications that the interests of Australia made for separation. Queens- Such views are so widely spread in Queensland as well as in land and New South Wales that it is unlikely that the Governments of New South those colonies would consent to take part in negotiations in- tended to draw closer the bonds which unite the mother-country to the colonies. To summon a conference of the colonies upon Imperial Federation, as suggested by Sir Charles Tupper, would be lijtely to produce a refusal from these two colonies; and to enter upon steps pointing to an Imperial Federation from which large portions of the Empire would be omitted would be a mistaken course. The difficulty may be removed by the creation of a real Australian federation, for in Australia as a whole there is less unwillingness, and a federal Government could be more easily sounded in advance than can the separate colonies. Mr. Parkin, when on his recent journey on behalf of the Imperial Federation League, was well received through- out Australasia, except at a public meeting in Sydney; but he made few converts, and Imperial Federation is now very generally described in the eastern colonies of Australia as " the subjection of Australia to England." Mr. Patchett Martin has saicl, probably with truth, that no body of practical politicians in Australia will ever seriously contemplate a legislative union between Australia and the mother-country. As regards the greater portion of Australia, a good deal of diiSculty will be found in establishing, even for defence purposes, a closer con- nection with the mother-country. Lord Knutsford has consistently maintained on behalf of tlie home Government that any proposals for union must come from the colonies themselves, and must follow rather than Wales. VAUT VII l^UTUEK RELATIONS a39 precede complete Australian fedei'ation ; but tliere are friends of Imperial Federation in Australasia wlio consider that Aus- tralian federation will be a step away from instead of a step towards imperial unity. Imperial unity would seem, however, to be impossible as long as the Australian colonies are consulted one by one. It has been assumed in England that the recent declarations of Sii" Henry Parkes in favour of Australian union constitute a " new departure " ; but the Prime Minister of New South Wales went little farther in his recent utterances than he had already gone two years ago. It is clear from the words with which lie accompanied his suggestions that he looks forward to Australia, like Canada, remaining what has been called "a Federal Eepublic within the Empire," without any closer vmion. Sir Henry Parkes has, for all practical purposes, abandoned the suggestion, which he made in a Review article some years ago, that the British States of Australia should be represented on a council sitting in London, if by representation anything real is meant; while he undoubtedly continues to adhere to the view he then expressed that the functions of Governors should become ceremonial, and be unaccompanied by the practical use of the suspensory power as regards laws. To summon a conference upon Imperial Federation destined to show that it could not be brought about would be a step in the wrong direction, and Lord Salisbury will be justified in refusing to call a conference until Australian federation has become complete. Sir Julius Vogel, who was one of the first colonial statesmen The who advocated Imperial Federation, has written in favour of right of declaring to the colonies at a Conference that the breaking up secession, of the Empire by the secession of a colony or colonies would not be allowed, and has hinted that the real object of some of those who are pushing forward Australian Federation is to interpose a barrier to the consolidation of the Empire. I cannot agree with Sir Julius Vogel that a break-up of the Empire will be facilitated by Australian Federation. At the present moment there is a risk of a declaration of independence on the part of Queensland, and there can be no doubt that federation gives Victoria a great deal of power in preventing such isolated action by a single colony. If, on the other hand, the dominant feeling in Australia as a whole should at some future time become favourable to comjjlete independence, it is certain that the mother - country would not attempt to coerce united Australia into remaining unwillingly in the con- nection. Canada has been named above as being less unfriendly to Canadian the idea of closer union than Australia, but it must not be view, imagined that even in Canada the way is clear for Imperial Federation. While the old United Empire feeling, which is still strong in the Dominion, leads some to a real wish for imperial union, they are but a minority unless joined by the representatives of the Canadian democracy at large. Such 640 PROBLEMS OF GKEATER BRITAIN paut vii willingness to ally themselves to the cause of Imperial Federa- tion as has been found among the Canadian electors is largely based ujion the desire for a wider market, and when it is seen, as there is reason to fear must be the case, that commercial union is as little practical as Lord Eosebery has already called it, this main support of the imperial unity idea in Canada will fall away. Then, too, many of the strongest friends of Imperial Federation among the Canadians of English, Scotch, and American -Loyalist race are strong Protestants, and the dis- covery that the Roman Catholic Church is and will continue to be politically predominant in large portions of the Dominion is alienating them from the Empire ; so that a most dis- tinguished Unionist writer — the best judge of British colonial feeling that I know, although I do not share all his views — has spoken of "a time when the British Canadians will link their fortunes with the people of the United States, if that should appear to them the only method of overcoming and amalgamating the foreign element in their midst." The French Canadians are divided upon the question of Imperial Federa- tion, Mr. Laurier being more or less in favour of it, while Sir Hector Langevin is more or less unfriendly, and Mr. Mercier violently opposed to it. Generally speaking, the Canadian politicians have not held steady and uniform language upon this subject. Sir John Macdonald and Mr. Blake, formerly leader of the Opposition, have each of them been quoted upon both sides, while Sir Charles Tupper, who now suggests a con- vention for the discussion of Imperial Federation, was formerly, I believe, hostile to the idea. It must be accepted as a fact that both the Canadian Governmental party and the Canadian Opposition are divided with regard to closer union ; but Sir John Macdonald and his friends may be said to take the view that federation is desirable if possible, but is of doubtful pos- sibility, and that the Empire will continue to exist whether it federates or whether it does not. Sir John Macdonald is a member of the Imperial Federation League, and has put out a scheme of imi^erial defence based on the idea of the supply by the Dominion and by an Australian federation of auxiliary armies and fleets paid for by themselves ; in fact, the old-world idea of contingents. ]\Iean while Canada is taking a practical step towards imperial unity by sending a leading member of the Upper House to Australia on a mission for the pro- motion of commercial relations between Australia and the Dominion. New The dominant opinion in New Zealand has long been opposed Zealand to Australasian and favourable to Imperial Federation. In a opiniou. debate of 1885 both the present Prime Minister and the present leader of the Opposition, although belonging even at that time to diflFerent parties, declared that Imperial Federation was possible and would come, but seemed to think that it would come only after the Imperial Parliament had created State legislatures for the principal parts of the United Kingdom. PART VII FUTURE RELATIONS 641 Sir Eobert Stout, the former leader of the Liberal party, is also, like Sir Harry Atkinson and Mr. Ballance, a strong supporter of United Empire. When the Canadian orator of the Imperial Federation Mr. P.irltiu League lately attempted to convert New South Wales, in which at Sydney. colony I believe there exists no such formal organisation of the League as is to be found in most other colonies, he met with a bad reception. At his Sydney public meeting, although he had the support upon the platform of members of the two Houses who — like Mr. McMillan, the Finance Minister — are by no means strong supporters of Imperial Federation, there were few persons present in the body of the hall except avowed opponents. Mr. Parkin's lecture was a good deal interrupted; and when he sat down a resolution was moved by a member of the Upper House, and seconded by a member of the Lower House, to the efl'ect " that the inevitable destiny of the Australian colonies is to unite and form among themselves one free and independent nation." The Chairman refused to put the motion on the ground that it did not concern the purpose of the gathering, and tlie meeting terminated in disorder. Wliile the Liberal and Eadical papers of the colony condemned Mr. Parkin's views, the Conservative Momiiig Herald gave him but cold comfort. It declared that the reports of Mr. Parkin's reception in New South Wales would be read in England with " surprise and disappointment," but that it was well " that in matters of such importance no illusions should be entertained " ; and it ascribed the "patent" fact "that within the last few years the opponents of closer union — even the advocates of separation — have gathered courage . . . and taken an aggressive atti- tude " to the New Guinea and Pacific questions, and to tlie indifference of Australians " to interests that lie outside the Australian world." Mr. Parkin afterwards spoke to meetings less open to tlie colonial public, and was charged with having changed his tone by suggesting a union on a democratic basis, in which Great Britain would be only a junior partner or vassal state, never to move hand or foot except by previous colonial permission. The Australian Star, after this, assured Mr. Parkin that he would have to find " a different kind of salt to shake on the emu's tail." Much light was thrown upon the feeling in New South Wales The with regard to the future relations of the mother-country and Western the colonies by the already-named debate on the Western Australia Australia Bill, which took place in the Assembly at Sydney debate. about the middle of 1889. Sir Henry Parkes, Mr. Dibbs (the leader of the Opposition), and Mr. Traill, who took part in it, all looked forward to the speedy creation of a united Australia, independent or semi-independent of the mother-country, and all looked upon Imperial Federation either as a dream or as possible only by union upon equal terms. Sir Henry Parkes not only put forward, as I have said, the doctrine of " Australia ' for the Australians," but urged tlie right of Australia, without 2t 642 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt tit reference to home opinion, to decide what the future of every acre of the continent shall be. He went out of his way to say that he could not bring himself to agree with that theory of Imperial Federation which had been promulgated by very eminent men at home, for the more he thought upon it the more sure he felt that there could be no federation " by a great central power with a number of weaker powers." The leader of the Opposition on his part declared that he looked forward to the existence of a different form of government in Australia, under which she would spring from the position of a dependency to that of an independent state, and maintained that Australia was already as closely bound to England as could ever be the case. The next speaker, Mr. Traill, the representative of the independent protectionists, agreed with the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition so far as he did not go beyond them. It seems clear that, if we call on New South Wales to give us her view of the future of the Empire, she is likely to agree with Queensland in suggesting the selection of Governors by the people, and the abolition of the practice of suspending Bills for consideration at home, and to make no proposal for closer union. Victoria. In Victoria, where he met with a far better reception than in New South Wales, Mr. Parkin's chief difficulty was the one already named — that Lord Rosebery, the President of his League, was a Home Ruler. The dominant party in Victoria, who are in theory favourable to the idea of closer union in the Empire, form, as has been seen, a coalition defending secular education, which of necessity has an anti-Roman Catholic and therefore an anti-Irish tinge. The conservative papers in Victoria, especially the Argiis and the Australasian, were, never- theless, generally friendly to Mr. Parkin's mission, while the democratic papers, notably the Age and the Leader, expressed the view that matters are well as they are, and that a closer connection is not needed. Moreover, the representatives of the colonial workmen seem to think that Imperial Federation is an upper class movement chiefly favoured by the Court and aristo- cracy, and this view is calculated, if Federation is strongly pushed, to arouse among colonial artisans a separatist agitation. Mr. Bent, who has occupied a high position among the minority in Victoria, has declared that the majority of the native-born population, even in this most loyal of Australian colonies, look forward to something very like ultimate separation ; and it must not be_ assumed that in the event of a consultation of colonial opinion the delegates of Victoria would be able to dis- associate themselves from those of New South Wales. The colonies represented on the Federal Council of Australasia would probably adopt a common attitude, and this would of necessity be a compromise between the opinions of Victoria and of Queensland. It is still possible that in the event of a dangerous war, not unjust, but forced upon the mother-country, a wave of enthusiasm might sweep across Victoria and some PART VII FUTURE RELATIONS 643 other portions of Australia; but all would depend upon the manner in which the circumstances of the day presented them- selves to the men who were at the helm. The recent anti- Chinese agitation throughout Australasia has shown clearly that the Australians are determined that if the imperial policy comes into conflict with Australasian interests the latter must prevail. Alliance with China is important to the Empire, but Australia declines to consider that importance, and insists upon having her own way not only in fact but in form. This consideration is by no means encouraging to the prospects of a closer union. The proposals of Mr. Hofmeyr have been already dealt with; The Cape, but it must not be supposed that those are the only proposals that have been put forward from South Africa for imperial union. Mr. JMerriman has adopted Lord Grey's suggestion for creating from the Agents-General a council of advice for the Secretary of State for the colonies. He admits that it will, if adopted, diminish the office of Governor of a colony to an orna- mental sinecure ; but he values the opportunity for bringing the colonial Ministry into direct touch with the imperial Government. Mr. Merriman points out, what is very true, that to some extent the change has already taken place, although he regrets that the new practice is only adopted by favour and out of courtesy, and not as of right. The suggestion of the creation of a Council of the Agents- The General may be taken in connection with that of the election Agents- by the colonies of their Governors. This change is advocated General, only in Australia, and Australian federation upon the Canadian plan will give the colonists the virtual election of the Provincial Lieutenant-Governors, the Viceroy alone being named by the Ministry in the United Kingdom. Mr. Patchett Martin, who is favourable to colonial selection of Governors, has also put forward some practical suggestions which are of value, as, for instance, the gradual elevation of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council into the place filled by the Supreme Court of the United States, and the admission to it of a fair proportion of colonial legists. The colonial title "The Honourable" should be used on formal occasions by our Government for colonial Ministers when in England, as it is recognised in the colonies themselves. Something might be done to draw the mother- country and the colonies together by offering appointments in the Civil Service and by extending the system of offering employment in the army and navy to young colonists, by giving colonial governorships to distinguished colonists of other colonies (as was done in the case of Sir Ambrose Shea), and by drawing closer the ties which bind the colonial universities to the old English universities. There is more hope about such schemes than attaches to the larger systems of imperial union which have been devised. The creation of a Council of Agents-General would bring A Council out the fact that the colonies, as a rule, have at present little "^ Agents- General. 644 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAra pakt vii interest in one another's business; but no such objection can be ofl'ered to an improvement in the position of the Agents- General. The practice might spring up of inviting Agents- General to attend meetings of the Cabinet when matters are under discussion on vi-hich their advice might be useful, just as generals about to proceed to take command of armies in the field, as well as law officers of the Crown, are invited, from time to time, to ministerial meetings. Sir John Gorst has wisely said that closer union should be looked for in the more intimate concert of executives, for change is hardly sought except as regards defence and foreign policy (being impracticable as regards tariflfs), and defence and foreign affairs are chiefly dealt with by executives. In many little matters, too, the position of the Agents -General miglit be better recognised. They should be treated as ambassadors as regards taxation, while at the present time many of them pay income-tax twice over. Their formal constitution as a Council is a more doubtful matter, for no one who knows Sir Henry Parkes would like him to feel that he was ruled by a Victorian ; and Sir Arthur Blyth, another distinguished Agent-General, like Sir Graham Berry of Victoria, has strong opinions on Australian questions, though not the same opinions. A colony may be disinclined to allow the mother-country to deolai'e that a thing cannot be done on account of imperial interests or imperial treaties, but each colony would admit the validity of such a declaration from the mother-country more readily than she would tolerate interfer- ence from the representatives of other colonies. At the same time, while it is difficult to make a Council of the Agents- General, there is no reason why we should not give them a nominal position which would correspond in dignity with the services that they already render. They are, in fact, taken individually, among the most trusted of the councillors of the Empire, and those who have held for some years the position, and who have had the confidence of successive Governments, might well be placed formally in the imperial Privy Council. No pro- It cannot be said that the idea of imperial unity has made spect of rapid progress of a practical kind. The idea is far from tuU con- modern. It was pointed at as regards Canada by Adam Smith, federation, and put forward by Montgomery Martin in his history of the colonies published before the present reign, to which, it is per- haps worth notice, both Her Majesty the Queen and Mr. Glad- stone were subscribers. It is useless to underrate the difficulties in the way. Mr. Seeley has written of England proving " able to do what the United States does so easily, that is, hold together in a federal union countries very remote from each other." But the territories of the United States, with the exception of Alaska, which has no population, are contiguous territories ; and even Professor _ Seeley seems inclined to "exclude India from consideration." He thinks that the British Empire of the future will be far stronger than what he calls the " conglomeration " of races " which we call Eussia." PART VII FUTURE RELATIONS 645 But the vast majority of the people of liussia speak one tongue, and the Kussian territories are contiguous. I, too, think that the British Empire of the future will be stronger than even tlie Eussian Empire, powerful as that is ; but its strength will not be promoted by attempts to force the Aus- tralian colonies into an imperial union for which they are not prepared. It may be conceded that in Australia itself there may possibly come a change in the direction of closer union. The Maritime Provinces of British North America rejected by large majorities the confederation resolutions but a short time before the Dominion became a single power ; and New South Wales and Queensland may possibly come to see their interest in union. If such changes should take place at liome as may put an end to Irish disafi'ection one enormous difficulty in the way of closer union will have been removed, for in Australia the Irish difficulty — both in Queensland and in New South Wales upon the one hand, and in Victoria on the other — stops the way. I shall deal in my concluding chapter with some of those Existing ties, increasing in strength by the operation of natural causes, ties be- whicli at present hold together the British Empire. A certain tween association between the various parts of the Queen's dominions various is produced by the habit of wealthy men from all corners of the P'u'tsof 'lie Empire to not only visit, but often settle in London ; and some ^™P'''^- of our political and constitutional usages facilitate the merger of distinctions between the various parts of Greater Britain which takes place when the Queen's subjects leave one part for another part of the countries that are under her rule. The fact that gentlemen like Mr. Ghose, coming from even those depend- encies of the United Kingdom which do not enjoy representative institutions, obtain the suffrage and the right to sit in Parlia- ment (although they have as yet failed to secure election) when they come to England, forms a bond throughout the Empire that may grow in strength with time. It is a singular fact that the Hindoos and Mohammedans of French India have votes in India and lose their votes if they come to France, whereas the Hindoos, Parsees, and Mohammedans of British India who have no political votes in India possess votes in the United Kingdom when they fulfil, as many of them now do, the condi- tions of property or residence which are required by law. A most thoughtful paper read before the Eoyal Colonial Practical Institute by Sir Graham Berry has suggested steps which might suggestions be taken in the way of a closer union for defence, and Sir bearing on Graham Berry, like Mr. Service, has declared that the Aus- defence, tralian colonies should be prepared to bear some of the burdens of the Empire, which have hitherto almost exclusively fallen upon the " somewhat overweighted shoulders " of tlie old country. Sir Graham Berry saw that, as regards Australia, local federation must be preliminary to satisfactory arrange- ments upon the larger matter, because each successful federa- tion reduces the number of diii'erent and probably contlicting 646 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt vii opinions ujion the subject. I sliall deal in the next part with the details of defence, but the present difficulties may be seen from the consideration of the fact that the moderate pro- posals of the Conference of 1887 are now known in Queensland as the "Naval Tribute Bill." Strong declarations have been made that Queensland will never suffer itself to be taxed by any body outside of Queensland, or even by its own represen- tatives, by way of contribution towards moneys, any part of which is to be spent outside its boundaries. Not only was Sir Samuel Griffith defeated on his return from the Conference on the very ground of his "Imperialism," but it is doubtful whether, after what took place in Queensland, the Naval Defence Bill could have been carried, at a later moment than that chosen, in the adjoining colony — the mother-colony. New South Wales. Victoria goes farther in the direction of federation for im- perial defence than do the other Australian colonies ; but since the days when the Bill of the Conference of 1887 was carried by all the Australian legislatures except one, Australian Nation- alism has become a party cry. It would be difficult to induce Australian Parliaments, with the possible exception of the Parliament of Victoria, to contribute towards the support of the general defensive power of the Empire, and measures of defence will have to be presented to them as being merely what Mr. Wise has called " the most economical method of preserving their own shores from hostile attack." An attempt was made not long ago to unite some hundred young Australians and New Zealanders in residence at the two old English universities in favour of a scheme for the organisa- tion of the Empire as a naval confederation, controlling a fleet paid for and manned by all portions of the Empire • but little came of it ; and the Australians at Oxford and Cambridge, even had they agreed upon such a scheme, could not have been held to represent the opinions of Australian democracy. So great, however, is the importance of the defence problem that it must be considered in a separate part. PART vin IMPEEIAL DEFENCE PAET vin IMPEKIAL DEFENCE The defence of Canada and of Australia has already been Self- treated in the first two parts of this work, and it has been goveniiug shown that Australia is in a position to defend itself from any colonies, attack that is likely to be brought against it, while the Canadian Dominion could not, with our present means, be defended at all against the United States. The Australian troops now number something like 30,000 men, or 40,000 with those of New Zealand, but these are divided into local forces, at present tied to their own ground ; while Canada possesses some 36,000, under a single military organisation, aided by an excellent system for training officers. It is to be hoped and to be expected that in Australia powers Australia, will speedily be obtained for simplifying the command and enabling the forces of one colony to be moved if necessary into another without difficulties concerning discipline. The Aus- tralians are, however, to be congratulated upon what they have already done, and especially upon the perfection of the local defences of Melbourne — the best defended commercial city of the Empire. In his recent report to the War Office, Major -General Edwards, after inspecting the forces and the defences of the whole of the colonies, discouraged volunteers, as unsuited to the colonies, encouraged the " partially paid " miUtia, and proposed an extension of rifle clubs. He pointed out a general deficiency in the Australian supplies of reserve rifles for arming increased forces in the event of sudden war. The proposals for the future included the organisation of the forces of Queensland and of South Australia in the form of a bi-igade from each, the Queensland field brigade to be united into a division in time of war with the northern brigade of New South Wales under the Queensland commandant, while the South Australian brigade with the western brigade of Victoria would form a division under the South Australian commandant. The five colonies of the Australian mainland have among them about a thousand permanently and fully paid regular soldiers to work their big guns and to manage their mine-fields and torpedo defences. ^ These will doubtless ulti- mately be formed into an Australian fortress corps, and will 650 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PART VIII Tasmania and New Zealand. Canada. India, Naval defence. take charge of King George's Sound, Thursday Island, and Port Darwin, as suggested in the report of ilaj or -General Edwards. The defence of New Zealand and Tasmania is in aless satis- factory position than is that of the Australian continent, and except so far as Port Darwin is for the present exposed to occu- pation they are more likely to be attacked. In New Zealand the configuration of the coast necessarily scatters the defend- ing troops and exposes to the enemy the railway system of the colony; and the coal-fields of the Westport district, which yield perhaps the finest steam-coal of the world, are open to seizure. General Edwards has reported of Tasmania " if the isolation of Western Australia and Port Darwin is a menace to Australia, the position of Tasmania is still more dangerous . . . and it might even become necessary to send troops from the other colonies to protect it in time of war. No enemy could seriously threaten Australia, until he had established a convenient base near at hand, and such a base he would find in Tasmania with its numerous harbours and supply of coal." It is a curious fact that General Edwards's useful report attracted but little attention in Great Britain, and was not printed by the newspapers of the mother-country although it had appeared in the colonial press. In the event of a war in which the United States was neutral, Canada would be able to strongly garrison the important station of Vancouver Island, and would be able and might be willing to supply a contingent of brave troops for imperial service. The three groups of colonies comprised under the names of British North America, Australasia, and South Africa liave of drilled men a force of over 80,000, besides rifle clubs and cadets. The defence of India against the possible advance of Eussia has been already treated in detail, and it now remains to examine the conditions of the defence of the Empire as a whole, and to try to find some general principle for our guidance. A school of naval officers, not without support from some authorities connected with the army, are accustomed in their writings to maintain that we should be safe if we put our trust in the dominion of the sea alone. They seem to assert that the navy is not only the first " line of defence," but the sole defence that is of value; and an impression is conveyed to the public mind that as the navy ensures the food supply of the British Isles, an inability on its part to perform its duties would at once reduce us to submission and to payment of the penalties that defeat would bring, including perhaps the surrender of colonies. The deduction is not unnaturally^ drawn from this argument that money spent upon fortifications, except slight works to resist stray cruisers, is thrown away, or at least diverted from the only important end — the increase of the fleet. We have been invited to believe that it is possible to make PAKT VIII IMPERIAL DEFENCE 651 of the enemy's coast our frontier, and to so blockade the whole Blockade of his ports that it would be impossible for his fleets to issue of the forth. I was present in May 1888 at the Eoyal United Service enemy's Institution when Admiral Colomb read a paper upon blockade ports. with special application to wars past and possible between Great Britain and France. He appeared to recommend the blockade of all French ports and a fleet in the Channel in lieu of land defences. As Sir Charles Nugent showed in reply, the Admiral's policy implied or required a, superiority of naval force which we do not possess, and, I may now add, which we shall not possess even when the recent proposals for additions to the navy have been carried out. In four years' time we shall have the ships which were ordered in 1889, and probably- enough guns for them as well as for our fortifications, but with an insufficient reserve of guns for a great war. At the same time, the French are spending ten and a half millions sterling a year upon the services under the Ministry of Marine, and although these figures include a certain amount of colonial ex- penditure, they are, on the other hand, reduced by the existence of a naval conscription, so that we must always remember that France is far from standing still. One of Admiral Colomb's chief supporters in the discussion which followed the reading of his paper admitted that under present circumstances, and under any which could be foreseen as likely to exist for a considerable time, if we went to war with France alone we should be unable to maintain a blockade, and should be compelled to withdraw from Egypt, abandon the command of the Mediterranean, and uncover Malta either to a blockade or to an attack in force. The difficulties of blockade in these days of steam, stated by me in a recent work,^ have been illustrated by the naval mancEUvres of 1888 and 1889. In the former year it will be remembered that although the blockading squadrons possessed a considerable superiority in force the blockaded ships escaped with the greatest ease, and the blockaders found themselves at once obliged to concentrate for the defence of London. Then commenced that harrying of our coasts by an enemy of inferior strength which aroused indignation among such persons as put their faith in the humanity of modern methods of war, and startled the dwellers on the banks of the Clyde by practical demonstration of the fact that their homes might be desecrated even on a Sunday morning during church time. It may be admitted that there is always a tendency among The navy military engineers to over-fortify the countries in which they aud foiti- are allowed a free hand. Vauban himself built far too many fication. fortresses even for an age when a siege was regarded as a pleasant relaxation from the hardships of campaigning in the open field. In 1888 the French war ministry decided that portions of the new French frontier had been over-fortified and would lock up garrisons which would be more useful as part of 1 The British Army, pp. 37i, 375. Chapman aud Hall, 1888. 652 PROBLESIS OF GREATER BRITAIN the field army. Still, there is no sign of the Germans allowing the works oi' either Metz or Strasburg, or of their eastern fortresses, to decay, nor of the French selling the forts of Paris as building sites, however valuable the ground may be on which they stand. As with land fortresses so with coast defence, and it is perhaps enough to say that the responsible authorities at the Admiralty are of all people the most urgent in their insist- ence that the fortifications now in progress at the coaling stations should be carried out, that the conmiercial ports should be defended from the shore, and that the fortification of the arsenals should be improved. It is the naval authorities rather than the War Oflice who have laid down the conditions under which coast defence and the defences of coaling stations should be provided, and the works which are being built are in fact the creations of the navy, though erected by the War Depart- ment. Blockade In 1888 the blockaded fleets escaped, and in 1889 the in the manoeuvres proceeded upon the principle that it had been manoeuvres, jj^oved that an active enemy would be able to escape unless shut in by an overwhelming force, such as against France we could not now supply. The proportion which the British fleets bore in the manoeuvres of 1888 to the enemy's fleet was, roughly speaking, that which our fleet in European waters bore to the French fleet at home. The fastest ships of the supposed enemy broke out, joined others, conducted raids, and forced the British admiral to raise his blockades and to sail for the Chaimel and the Thames. He was helpless, because the enemy might either have brought a superior force to bear against one of his squad- rons, or have broken up into units, to trace and follow all of which by ships of superior size would be impossible. If, how- ever, London had been able to take care of itself for a week or two. Admiral Baird might have acted with greater boldness, and followed the enemy, destroying or capturing such ships as he could catch. There could hardly be a better instance of the need for fortiflcation and coast defence, or a better warning against neglecting to provide them in the degree suitable to each case. The result of the 1888 manceuvres has been that the Admiralty have continued to press for the completion of coast fortifications, and of the protective measures that are being taken at the coaling stations. In 1889 the British admiral gave up the policy of blockade, and adopted that of masking the enemy's fleet. It became clear tliat under such a system the full protection of British commerce, without a vast increase in the number of our fast cruisers, would be impossible. Defence It cannot be said that the naval ro-anoeuvres of either 1888 or of foreign 1889 have been encouraging to those who desire to leave all ■stations by defence to the navy. We have hitlierto considered the home the navy, case, but shall form, I think, the same opinion if we look abroad. British travellers who consult the superior officers of our fortresses across the seas as to their ability under present circumstances to defend the posts committed ibo their charge, PAET VIII IMPERIAL DEFENCE 653 receive an answer which might be stereotyped : " With existing means we could not hold out long against a serious attack, but we trust, of course, to the protection of the fleet." Supposing such combinations against us as are now within the sphere of practical politics, and upon the dread of which the present Government are rightly acting in their increase of armour-clad line-of-battle ships — that is, supposing two naval powers to unite against us, of which one was the second naval power of the world — our whole fleet, even when the new programme has been completely carried out, will hardly be more than equal to those of the second naval power and another power (other than Italy, the third). It is clear, and now I think admitted, that we could not blockade their squadrons, whicli would require a superiority, according to the report of the umpires upon our naval manoeuvres, such as we do not possess. The fleets of our enemies will be free, and the ordinary laws of strategy will govern the situation. Either the enemy will succeed in con- centrating a superior force against an inferior force of ours, or we shall successfully carry out an attempt to do so against the enemy. In either case there must be concentration by us at a spot which the enemy will try to avoid, bringing his force to bear where we are weak. Instead of the fleet defending Malta and Gibraltar, we should be more likely to see those fortresses abandoned by our ships, forced under present circum- stances to meet in home waters for purposes of home defence. I do not for a moment question the statement that the Proposed British navy is fully able to defend the United Kingdom if it home is concentrated in home waters. Nothing, however, in war is defence by more certain to be ultimately fatal than to relinquish the power navy. of the initiative and of attack. K our fleets are to be concen- trated for home defence they must abandon the remainder of the Empire, of which only some portions are able to defend themselves, and we must sooner or later be ruined or partially starved in the British Isles. The abandonment of Greater Britain would involve the destruction of our commerce and would be as severe a blow to the Empire as the invasion of England and capture of London itself. When, therefore, the naval school wliich I have mentioned points to supposed facts in proof of the contention that a superior naval force in home waters could defend the country against invasion, I have only to ask what is the practical application of this platitude to a scheme of defence of the British Empire. If we were to con- centrate at the Nore and in the Channel a fleet superior in strength to those of two European powers, they would not be mad enough to attack our huge armada, but would sweep our cruisers from the ocean, capture our merchant ships, direct expeditions against our coaling stations and our colonies, and destroy the whole edifice of that commerce by which the popu- lation of the United Kingdom is supported. It would not have been necessary to argue this point at all but for a ridiculous tone of triumph in wliich some have pointed to the manoeuvres 654 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pakt viii of 1889 as proving a proposition which no one in his senses has denied. Channel To go no farther from our own shores than the Channel Islands. Islands, we find in them a part of the Empire which is either to be given up in the event of a war with France or to be entrusted to our overburdened fleet. The Kttle army known as the Channel Islands militia, and based on general liability to military service without pay, has been recently described by a competent French critic in the Revue Militaire de I' Etranger as a mere paper force ; and the armament which has been laid down as necessary for the Channel Islands has not been pro- vided. It seems to be thought that, in the event of a war with France, ships detached to protect the islands, even if they could be spared, would be exposed to being caught in a trap, and to be understood that no defence will be attempted, the view having been taken by the authorities that if the French beat us they would insist on the cession of the islands, and that if we beat the French the islands would be restored to us in the treaty of peace. Public opinion in England is, however, prob- ably not prepared to accept the private decision upon this point of the high authorities, and the loss of the Channel Islands at the beginning of a war would be visited on those who had so managed the defences of the Empire as to make it certain. Increase of Wliile the statements wliioh I have made concern the present the navy, and the immediate future, there may be those who think that by a great increase of the navy it would be possible to so meet the difficulties of blockade that we might revert to the policy (scientifically admirable if it be only possible of adoption) of blockade. No doubt it was the old English naval principle to consider the coast of our enemy as the first line of defence, and to protect at once our commerce and our shores by shutting up the hostile fleets in their own ports. This policy would need, if we had two possible enemies only, a fleet at least one-third greater than ours will be at the close of the new period of construction, and even then the chances would be against the permanent success of the blockade. The independence of wind and tide which steam procures, the difiiculty of coaling at sea in rough weather, the invention of the torpedo-boat, the advan- tages as to information and communication which squadrons possess when in their own ports, over hostile fleets at sea, have made the blockade of warships in these modern days, in my opinion, virtually impossible, unless the blockaders have some- thing like the superiority of force which the Great Powers brought against Greece a few years ago. If one squadron escapes, it steams off at once to assist any other squadron, with which it communicates by telegraph j their joint attack may overwhelm the blockaders at that pomt, and the last state of the country of the blockading fleet will be worse than it would have been if a wholly diflerent policy had been followed. Even with an increased navy, the policy of blockade to my mind is fatal to the other portion of the argument of its PAET viu IMPERIAL DEFENCE 655 defenders— the sufficiency of the fleet as a means of home defence. For us safely to blockade our enemy we should ha-ve to follow the advice which has already been given to us by some naval men — to double the fleet, — and even then make up our minds to resign the power of efficiently protecting com- merce. The exaggerated opinion against wloich I am con- tending is really based on the supposition that in a future naval war it would be possible for us from the first to obtain the same overwhelming sujoeriority at sea which Nelson won for us by the crowning victory of Trafalgar. No conceivable increase of strength would be sufficient to make us safe if we trust to naval defence alone, in face of the facilities for concen- tration which steam affords. Moreover, trade is given up in all such schemes, for it must be remembered that in the time of our greatest superiority at sea — when not only had we destroyed every hostile fleet, but had impressed the imagination of the world with the belief that all attempt to contend with us on the waters must be vain — the capture of British ships, even in the Channel, occurred daily. In dealing with the problem of the organisation of the British Empire against a possible attack, the navy should be estimated at its full value as by far the greatest factor in defence, but we must carefully guard our- selves against the view that, even putting aside the necessities of India, it can be the sole defence. Nothing can be more tempting at first sight than the argument that, as islanders, we have only to keep up a sufficient fleet to make invasion impossible. Unfor- tunately, apart from the case of India, the problem of Impei-ial Defence is a good deal too complicated to be solved so easily. There exists another school which assures us that, by a proper Alliances, choice of our alliances, our trade and colonies will be safe, and we ourselves protected against invasion ; and the adherents of this school generally end by advising us to join the " League of Peace." We are assured that without our moving a man of the land forces, without indeed our possessing land forces of a modern type, the British fleet would be of vast importance to German and Italian allies in their international contests, and that Prince Bismarck approves of the notion of our concen- trating our whole attention on the navy. We have, however, to deal with what is possible, and Lord Salisbury thinks that it is impossilble to find majorities in the House of Commons or the constituencies in favour of an alliance with the Central Powers. Moreover, our dangers do not lie in general European war, but in grounds of quarrel which will not bring Central Europe into the field. It is possible then, I think, to lay down the proposition that Work of the navy must be our chief agent in defence, but backed by the navy. fortification and by land forces • and it is necessary to consider what would be the tasks confided to our ocean fleets and cruisers which would form in war the connection between the various detached portions of the Empire. In these days in which hostilities spring up suddenly, in order that the attacking 656 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Coaling stations. Their garrisons. country may obtain the advantage of surprising its opponent, it is necessary that the British squadrons afloat in distant seas should be strong enough to hold their own without reinforce- ment against probable enemies on the same station. The possession of innumerable safe ports in all parts of the world forms one of the chief elements of our maritime power. There are few more astounding proofs of the curious carelessness with which Imperial Defence was treated some years ago than the fact that the coaling stations, as they are now called, were left by us in a condition in which they were unable to protect themselves even for the shortest space of time. When, however, the country discovered in what degree its vital interests had been neglected in this respect an almost equally astonishing mistake was made. While the navy was indeed consulted as to the places to be fortified, no one asked the question " Fortified against what?" After a time, however, the necessary steps were taken to request the Admiralty to lay down for the guidance of the War Office the probabilities as to the strength of the enemy against which each individual coaling station ought to be prepared to guard. The answer showed that we had been overestimating the necessary works in some places, such, for example, as Bermuda, and underestimating them in others. While congratulating ourselves upon the tardy adoption of measures for the defence of coaling stations based upon naval views it is well to ask ourselves whether there are other questions upon which the naval authorities should be consulted by the War Department. The forts and guns for the coaHng stations are being gradually provided, but the garrisons are weak indeed. I raised this point in writing upon the British army, and it ajopears that the suggestion of calling for local levies for the defence of coaling stations has been acted upon, though tardily. It is obvious, however, to all who inquire into the provision made for garrisons for the coaling stations in time of war, that it is still incomplete, and it is a matter of importance that it should be settled in time of peace what reinforcement will be necessary on the outbreak of war, and how it is to be effected. It is important, for example, that the naval authorities should know whether they are expected to undertake the task of conveying or convoying troops to coaling stations, which would be an addition to manifold duties having to be suddenly performed in a moment of great pressure. The War Office are a little like the heroes of the novelist who periodically got their bills together, docketed them with care, and then went to bed with a consciousness that their duty to their creditors had been fulfilled. When I wrote upon the army two years a^o I was at first accused of overstatement, but my criticisms have since been confirmed by the reports of committees, and by the admissions of the Secretary of State for War. This confirmation, however, is but the docketing of the bills, and as regards many of them we do not seem to be nearer payment. The matter of the garrisoning of the coaling stations PAKT VIII IMPERIAL DEJTEKCE 657 has been considered, but, as far as I can learn, lias not been settled. The only satisfactory arrangement will be to have the necessary troops on the spot in time of peace ; but next to this, if that plan be in some degree impossible of adoption, it is needful to arrange with the navy exactly what is to happen in the case of sudden war. Until the one system or the other has been adopted for each case the defence of our coahng stations cannot be said to have been adequately considered. Before taking the coaling stations in detail I must touch Suez or upon another important question. It is necessary that we Cape ? should be clear in our minds as to which route we are to rely upon in time of war for communication with the East — that by the Suez Canal, or that by the Cape. In the Mediterranean our enemies in the event of war might easily be too strong for us. We hold only Gibraltar, Malta, and Cyprus, of which the last in its present state is a source of weakness, not of strength, possessing as it does no sufficient guns or fortifications, or garrison for its own defence. We cannot pretend to guard trade routes on the Mediterranean, and, unless we had Italy for an ally, it is probable that we should be overmatched in Mediterranean waters, at least in the early stages of a war. The French possess a series of magnifi-cent bases on the Mediterranean, and would be able, were they opposed to us, in all probability to force us to relinquish, for a time at least, the Mediterranean line. This change would set India, as well as Hong-Kong and the Straits, much farther off from England, and would add to other pressing reasons for making the Iridian Empire self-supporting in the matter of manufacturing war stores, guns, and ammunition for herself and for her British neighbours. Our interests on that side of the world are great enough to prevent us from continuing the present system of supply ; but a frank recognition of the state of things would also bring out the fact that the naval authorities are not yet satisfied with the amount of dock accommodation which they have in eastern waters. It should be remembered that naval predominance does not rest on the number of ships alone, but on the power possessed by them of obtaining succour and supplies, and the possibility of denying these advantages to their enemy. It is clear that a power which commands the sea can forbid Suez Caual. the use of the Suez Canal to others by guarding all approaches to it ; but in our case this would only be an additional task for a fleet already supposed to be almost ubiquitous. Moreover, it is not certain that in keeping out our enemies from it we could preserve the use of the canal for ourselves. The canal, con- sidered as a means of communication in time of war, is as delicate as a thread of a spider's web. A ship or two sunk in it ; two or three charges of dynamite exploded in the portion nearest to the Gulf of Suez ; a few torpedoes laid down in the night — none of these difficult matters to manage, especially when we remember that we are forbidden to take full military 2u 658 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN i'AUT viii steps for ■watching the canal — would close the passage against ships for clays or weeks, and would prevent the transport by the Mediterranean of anything except troops without baggage. It would be difficult to keep the canal open, even if it lay within the limits of the British Empire, and the task of guard- ing it would lock up a considerable force of troops, and that of watching the approaches to it a portion of our active fleet. But we possess no special rights as regards the canal, and have no power to prevent a dozen merchant ships from sinking themselves in mid-channel. When nations have been some time at war the morality of peace gives way to a desperate craving for success, and many acts are done which international law condemns ; but I doubt whether a British Cabinet would dare to found its system of Imperial Defence upon such a high-handed proceeding as the seizure of the canal at the outbreak of a war and the refusal of passage to all merchant ships except our own. If we cannot count on the use of the canal for ourselves, we should have to set aside a portion of our navy in order to forbid its use by others. We should probably rather welcome the interruption of this route in war-time, and base our plans upon making the sea road by the Cape of Good Hope our main reliance for communication with the East. So much for a war in which we were opposed by a great naval power. In the event of a single-handed war with Russia, and still more in that of a war in which the United Kingdom and Italy were opposed to llussia, the Suez Canal route would be of value. Small rein- forcements of troops for India, in the event of a war in which France was not against us, might go by Egypt ; but the heavy stores of an army would even then be more safe if sent round the Cape. At the best, in my opinion, the Suez Canal can only be an alternative route for war purposes ; and in enumerating coaling stations I will begin with those of the Caj)e route, although Gibraltar stands hrst in either case. Gibraltar. The progress of modern artillery has to a certain extent deposed Gibraltar from its position of pre-eminence. While ships may still take refuge under the shadow of The Rock, they would not be safe from bombardment either from the sea or from Spanish territory. A Spanish artillery officer has written upon the subject a series of articles which show clearly how, in a war in which Spain was opposed to us, the bay could be closed to our sliippmg. Gibraltar, however, is still so important as a coaling station, and would be so annoying to us if in an adversary's possession, that we are forced to liold it or to substitute for it another _ i^ort of equal value near at hand. Putting sentiment aside, it is certain that if a point upon the African coast were equally well fortified it would be as useful to us as Gibraltar ; but the works would cost some millions, and take a long time to construct. Besides which, to make Ceuta really strong we should have to annex a considerable portion of the mainland of Morocco. As regards defence of I'AiiT VIII IMPERIAL DEFENCE 659 Gibraltar against bombardment from the sea, it can bo dealt ■with by the transference of artillery to higher levels, at which the fire of the bombarding ships becomes innocuous, while the guns of the defence can act powerfully against decks — at present the weakest points in most warships. It is impossible to add heavy deck armour to the enormous weights which ironclads carry. They can protect their armoured decks against each other, but not against heavy land artillery directed from considerable heights and employing curved fire. If the French ever try to enter Spezia they will realise the truth of what I say. Old short muzzle-loading guns can be transformed by us, as they have been transformed by the Italians, into excellent howitzers for this purpose. The sea within range would be divided into sections, with the ranges marked at the batteries, and such defence supplemented by a few of the new breech- loaders would make The Rock as impregnable as ever from the sea. Bombardment of the port, however, from the sea can only be rendered absolutely impossible by means of an active defence by torpedo-boats. The French, who have a fine fleet, as well as a powerful army, have never dreamt of relying for the protection of any land station upon naval defence alone, and everywhere proceed upon the principle that bombardment must be guarded against by fijxed defences supplemented by torpedo-boats. Against bombardment of Gibraltar from the land there is, owing to the configuration of the coast, no adequate possibility of defence, were Spain to join our enemies. Pursuing our journey to the Cape along the African coast Sierra we come next to Sierra Leone, passing, however, a French Leone, stronghold upon our way, as well as the tiny British colony of the Gambia, already almost swallowed up by her French neigh- bours. The navy cUngs to the possession of Sierra Leone as a coaHng station, although it is questionable whether, according to our present plans, it is sufiiciently guarded in the event of war with France. The French have so strong a position at Dakar that we should find Sierra Leone, where the civil white population consists, I beHeve, of only between, one and two hundred souls, a case in wliich naval defence would be called for, and which would help to cause a scattering of ships, rendering them liable to be destroyed by a concentrated attack of the hostile forces. If our naval authorities continue to desire the protection of Sierra Leone as a coaling station it must be made self -protecting and receive its war garrison ; but this is a serious matter in the unhealthy climate of the central West Coast. Sierra Leone is one of the places which, if it is to be retained as a fortified coaling station, should receive a full garrison of black troops. It cannot be considered as now safe, for its small garrison of three or four hundred West Indian negroes could not defend it against attack from Dakar, and would need to be reinforced — from what point is not clear. The French keep in Senegal, considered apart from the re- mainder of their West Coast Settlements, about 2250 white 660 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BEITAIN PAKT VIII Report of the Royal Commis- Ascension, St. Helena. The Cape of Good Hope. troops and about 2000 native troops, and 250 sailors for the local fleet. This force of 4500 men is additional to the sailors who might be landed from the French Senegal squadron, -which would, of course, be available to support an attack upon our settlements. Sierra Leone has the best harbour on the West Coast, and, if it were not a British, would become a French coaluig-station. The Chairman of the Commission of 1878 has lately said that Sierra Leone is a post which was after very careful con- sideration by the Commission reported to be strategically of high value, situate as it is half-way between Gibraltar and the Cape, on the track of our eastern commerce, and close to a French settlement where there is a large military force. The advice of the Commission has been so far followed that forts have been constructed ; but Lord Carnarvon tells us that there are neither gunners nor armament, and that, in the event of war with France, Sierra Leone would be immediately occupied by the enemy, the forts which we have built turned against us, and our line of communications broken. With regard to arma- ment he urges that neither our home fortresses, nor our navy, nor our commercial ports are yet supplied, while the imperial stations abroad are unarmed, although Victoria, which supplies herself in the open market, has purchased, transported 12,000 miles, and placed in position guns of the most recent pattern. Even if modern guns are supphed to Sierra Leone, the difficulty of garrison remains, and the guns, would only improve the value of the capture which the French would make. If it was intended not to garrison Sierra Leone in such a way as to protect it against Dakar, it was a siagular mistake on the part of the War Office to approve the report of the Koyal Commis- sion in this respect, and to sanction the building of the forts ; but if the Commission was right, then the supply of a garrison is obviously necessary to the defence of the forts which have been built. Ascension may be looked upon as a fixed storeship of the navy, and is so dependent on the sea that it must inevitably remain with, or fall to, the strongest naval power. St. Helena might be made defensible, is more likely to be attacked than Ascension, and could not be defended at the present time, for it lacks a sufficient garrison. The population is scanty and decreasing, and as St. Helena, from its situation on the Cape route, must be retained, it is probable that in case of war'it would suddenly be discovered that a garrison must be sent out to it. Here we meet with another of the tasks which would fall to our overtaxed navy, and which ought certainly to be provided against in time of peace. The garrison at present consists of under 300 men, and the local militia organisation has been allowed to fall into decay. Considered from the imperial, from the Indian, and from the Australian point of view, as an aid to our maritime power, no spot on eartli is more important to us than the Cape with its TAET VIII IMPERIAL DEFENCE 661 twin harbours Table Bay and Simon's Bay. Table Bay is exposed to the wind in some of the worst months. Simon's Bay is sheltered against the winds to which Table Bay is open, but is not a very good harbour, although, on the whole, pre- ferred by the Admiralty for the naval station. All other harbours are, however, inferior to this until we reach Delagoa Bay. Whatever use might be made of the Suez Canal in war ; whether or not we couldf send troops and stores by that route to India, it is, as I have shown, certain that we could prevent states weaker than ourselves at sea from reaching the canal at either end, provided that our fleets are not tied to the British Channel by the defencelessness of the shores of the United Kingdom. But great as are our advantages at sea, they dis- appear without safe supplies of coal ; and it must have struck any student of the naval manceuvres of 1888 and 1889 how frequently the ships had to return to harbour for coahng purposes. If coaling is necessary in a short period of time spent in the narrow seas, how much more will the difficulty of want of coal be felt in a voyage of 10,000 miles to Colombo round the Cape 1 Every ton of armour piled on to ships or added to turrets, every additional ton weight of guns, every cubic yard filled with engines and machinery, is so much subtracted from the power of carrying coal. As a vessel steaming from British ports for India, or China, or Australia in time of war begins to approach the point of exhaustion of its coal supply it finds itself in a region of storms, far from any shelter except that at the CajDe of Good Hope. The position of that refuge and the certainty of being able to deny it to an enemy, combined with the com- mand of the Eed Sea route, even if only for the purpose of stopping it, draws therefore on behalf of England an almost impassable line on tliis side of the globe between the eastern and the western hemispheres. Here is the reason for the fortification and torpedo-boat Freucli defence of Dakar, and acquisition on the part of France of substitutes Diego Suarez. Being unable to break her journey at the Cape for the she divides it into sections, and attempts imperfectly to replace '-'^P^- the absence of a footing in South Africa by a fortified station in the northern tropics of the Atlantic, and another in the southern tropics of the Indian Ocean upon the island of Mada- gascar. Thus France strives to divide the immense stretch of ocean lying between her European ports and her jDossessions in the farther East. The difficulty which our ownership of the Cape places in the way of possible opponents, even more than the refuge afforded to our own ships, constitutes in war the supreme advantage of the possession of the Cape of Good Hope as a naval station. It is a remarkable instance of past imperial carelessness that Causes of the very principles upon which the burden of defence should past delay. be divided between ourselves and colonies, and of the propor- tions in which it should be borne, have never been settled. 662 PROBLEMS OF GKEATER BRITAIN We have lived from hand to mouth as regards South African, military exioenditure. When we began to fortify the coaling stations we were met with the qiiestions wliether it was necessary to fortify both Simon's Bay and Table Bay, and who should iDay for the erection of the works ; and a fierce and prolonged controversy arose. The Cape, although the most important, is the most easily defended of all our coaling stations. The iron-bound coasts of South Africa, as Lord Brassey has shown, are approachable only at few i^laces, and the enemy could find no base. There are now excellent defences at Table Bay, and at least one modern gun mounted on the latest principles of artillery science; while important works are in course of construction at both Table Bay and Simon's Bay, and a railway to connect them is all but complete. The Table Bay harbour and other works are being constructed, the railway extension to Simon's Bay made, and the forts erected that are deemed necessary by the War Office and Admiralty — all by tlie colony, which is also to garrison the forts ; and the imperial Government are to supply the armament and ammunition, as to which, as usual, there has been much delay. Until very lately tlie dispute between the home Government and the Cape Government had left this most important of our stations unguarded, and even now it is not in an adequate position of defence. Cape The Cape Mounted liifles and the police are a fine force, but forces. are none too numerous for the purposes for which they exist, and are not organised for the defence of works. The Cape Mounted Eifles consist of nearly 800 men with 600 horses ; and the police, who may lawfully be employed for defence, consist of 800 men, now being increased to 1000, of whom about one-fifth are mounted. There are between four and five thousand volunteers, and there exists in Cape Colony a general liability to military service, regularised by the Burghers' Force and Levies Act of 1878, making every able-bodied man between eighteen and fifty years of age liable for military service, both within and without the colony. This burgher service is intended for fighting against Kafirs, and does not produce a force readily available for the defence of coaling stations against European attack. During- the Basuto war the Cape had 18,000 men under arms ; and in 1878 the Cape volunteers were massed with the regular troops, and fought gallantly in several engagements on and beyond the Kei river, and their artillery was commended by the imperial oflicers in command. Generals are, however, sometimes forced to be diplomatic, and home military opinion denies the efficiency for regular war of the Cape volunteers. Maiiritins. After rounding the Cape we come, in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius, which has an admirable harbour and convenient coaling station. The additional works i-ecommended by the Eoyal Commission are being built, and there is a local torpedo service corps directed by non-commissioned officers from the PAET VIII IMPERIAL DEFENCE 663 Koyal Engineers. Here again also we find the garrison inoornplete in time of peace. Until lately our defences at Mauritius have been altogether inferior to those which were thrown up by the French during the time of their possession of the island ; and Port Louis was a fortified walled city until we allowed the fortifications to tumble down. It should be remembered that, as regards Mauritius, French military writers count upon a Frencli expedition being welcomed by the sympathies of a joortion of the French-speaking population. Another warning connected with the history of Mauritius is to be found in the fact that the Frencli lost the island to ourselves by keeping there too small a garrison. We have seen in the Crown Colonies part of the present work how fully M. de Lanessan counts on being able to conquer Mauritius for France, in the event of war, by means of an expedition from Reunion or from Diego Suarez. Mauritius is so much nearer to India than to Great Britain that it is impossible not to regret the centralisation which makes aU the coaling stations look towards England for help. It would seem to be a wiser system to affiliate them to the nearest considerable posts, and, without anticipating a closer union of the Empire, which may one day estimate at its full value and utilise the military strength of the Austral- asian and South African colonies, we might easily place Mauritius in dependence for guns and stores upon India, at a distance of little more than 2000 as against 8000 miles. A larger garrison will, however, be required. Military calculations should be exact — not left as political estimates are left to the gradual development of events, difficulties being met as they occur. Until the readjustment of our military centres takes place there should at least be a complete understanding between the army authorities and the Admiralty as to how tlie garrisons at such remote stations are to be reinforced in case of war against two naval powers. Ceylon has two naval stations — Colombo and Trincomalee. Ceylou. Both are well forward in works and armament, and the neigh- bourhood of India in tJiis case is an additional protection. There is a want of gunners, but the large number of jjlanters in the island might supply volunteers in the event of a dangerous war. Additional trained men are needed for the heavy ordnance. Eastward from Ceylon lies a portion of the world important Singapore. to us whether considered in tlie light of trade or of Imperial Defence. In time of peace our squadrons in the China seas are now of sufiicient strength, and if France and Russia or otlier powers were to increase their naval force we could do likewise ; but it does not follow that hostile powers might not be able, by previous arrangement, to concentrate their force against a portion of our own. There never yet was a war in which even the winning side did not suffer some reverses, and a check in the West Pacific, in the China seas or the Archipelago, would 664 TEOBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" place us in a position o£ much danger as regards coaling stations for tlie remainder of the war, if Singapore and Hong- Kong, Labuan and Port Darwin, were left without adequate protection. Our naval authorities have decided tliat Singapore should be strong enough to withstand attack not only from cruisers but from a squadron of moderate strength ; and the provision of guns of a new pattern has caused delay. Money has been freely given towards the works by the wealthy inhabitants of tlie Straits Settlements, and Singapore will help to keep open for the navy and for trade the shorter passage to the China seas. Australia. On the south-east, upon tlie way to Brisbane and Sydney and New Zealand, between tlie coasts of Australia and of New Guinea, Torres Straits claim attention as an important line of naval communication. It has been decided to fortify Thursday Island, which, with Kling George's Sound, at the other extremity of Australia, and Port Darwin upon the north, are the three points upon the Australian continent as to which there has been some difficulty in providing for defence. Australia is so large that Port Darwin is unreachable for military purposes from South Australia which governs it, and Thursday Island from Queensland ; while King George's Sound lies in Western Australia, which at present is neither populous nor rich. Hence has come the need for making application to the Australian colonies generally as regards such spots, and the Colonial Conference did not upon this matter come to a satisfactory conclusion. The completion of the defence of the three places is essential to a full protection of the Australian trade. Labiian To the north from Singapore or from Australia lie Labuan and Hong- and Hong-Kong, of which the latter is a station of liigh Kong. political, commercial, and strategical importance. There we are in touch with Cliina, a power with which it is most necessary to be on terms of friendship, as our interests in southern and eastern Asia are tlie same as hers, and bound up with the preservation of the status quo. Her strength is our strength, and her alliance in the case of war would be perhaps the most valuable that we could obtain. Lord Carnarvon has written to the Times, in the course of 1889, to complain that Hong-Kong still remains armed with guns of low calibre. The position of the liarbour of Hong-Kong is one of the most defensible in the world, and our trade renders it a port of such vast importance that, apart from its value as a naval coaling station, no argument is necessary with regard to the ■wisdom of making it secure. When I was there, now fourteen years ago, the defences were weak in the extreme ; but since that date' and especially in the last three years, a good deal has been done as regards every point except that of garrison. Hong-Kono- has been called the Spithead of the east, for the anchorage is situate within an island ; but it has hitherto been a Spithead without the Spithead or Portsdown forts or the Portsmouth PART vrii IMPERIAL DEFENCE 665 garrison ; and when Sir William Grossman, -who in political life is tlie member for Portsmoutli, became the designer of the works for the protection of Hong-Kong, he must have been struck with the difficulty of defending such a place with such small_ means as regards men. There exists u, scheme for recruiting a local battalion from India, in addition to the local Sikh police, who are so recruited ; but I am struck with the time which has elapsed between the decision that the battalion is required and its creation. India, as matters stand, cannot spare troops ; but India under a better organisation of Imperial Defence would become the eastern centre of defence from which our garrisons in half the world would be aided, and upon which, rather than upon home arsenals, they would depend for their supplies. Hong-Kong will never be safe so long as it is supplied and administered from this side of the globe. The resources of India as a centre for the East have been Recruiting illustrated by the recruiting of the Burmah military police, from India. 18,000 men have been raised, chiefly from the North-West frontier and the Punjab, and the majority of them were raw recruits who had not served previously as soldiers or policemen. They are under -oflicered, but, nevertheless, form a body of singular efficiency, and are in fact excellent troops. The condition of the Indian naval stations, such as Bombay Indian and Karachi, forms to some extent a portion of the general stations, question of Indian Defence which I have treated in the first chapter of Part IV. India has been for six years awaiting 10-inch breech-loaders ordered six years ago, and there is as yet no sign of their arrival. It seems, moreover, important to point out in the present connection that if any serious damage should occur to the armament of, let us say, Bombay, there is no means of repairing it or of manufacturing a new gun in the Indian Empire. I have already written of the system of military centralisation which prevails throughout the British Empire, and is detrimental to all arrangements for defence. On a logical system of Imperial Defence India would possess the dockyards and the arsenals of the British East, and the creation of an eastern Woolwich is an imperial need. Returning towards England by the Red Sea route we find Aden and Aden, which has long been strong and which has of late been Perim. greatly further strengthened. Happily it is dependent upon India for its garrison. Aden is indeed, although distant nearly 2000 miles from Hindostan, a part of British India ; although Singapore, which is nearer to Calcutta than is Aden to Bombay, has been wholly detached from the Indian system. Would that the sensible plan which has been adopted in the case of Aden had prevailed elsewhere in the eastern seas. While Aden is strong, Perim, which has an excellent harbour, and one which can be used for coaling with less loss of time, is virtually undefended. I lately had the opportunity of spending some hours upon the island, and was struck with the capacity and safety of the harbour, which I visited in a large steamer. 666 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN" paet via and wbicli would hold sevei-al ships of even more considerable size. Egypt. In Egypt we find coaling stations at Suez and at Port Said, wliioh are intended to be neutral in time of war, and which are left to the Egyptians in time of peace, while the citadel at Cairo and the barracks at Alexandria contain a small British force. The present military position in Egypt affords a curious example of the way in which parliamentary questions in England wax and wane. Some years ago the military occupation by us of the capital and its port seemed to form the only question which was exciting to the British people, while now the occupa- tion is almost forgotten. Daily in Parliament members used to ask " How long " the occupation was to continue — " A year ? " — " Two years ? " ; and Governments were continually called upon to " name tlie date " at which they would leave the country. The occupation now continues, and no one says a word ; yet all who have considered the question know that the occupation in peace of a country which in all jjrobability would be abandoned in time of dangerous war can liardly be looked upon as a source of strength. At the same time — altliough I have been from the first a disbeliever in the wisdom of the occupation, and think, as I have said, that we should have left the country immediately after Tel-el-Kebir, giving diplomatic support to Sir Evelyn Wood and carrying out his military policy — impartiality forces me to admit that wars might con- ceivably arise in which our alliances woilld be such that a British garrison might continue to be maintained at Cairo with advantage to our interests. Cyprus. It is difficult to write of Cyprus without raising party questions. The island is unfortified and virtually without a garrison, for the few British troops that are kept there would be wholly unable to defend it against serious attack. No money has been spent upon the liarTaour of Famagusta, which by a large expenditure might have been made into a good port, and Cyprus cannot be regarded as one of our chief military or naval stations. Malta. If we are to attempt to hold the Meditei'ranean in time of war Malta is a station of first-class importance. It lias, indeed, been called, by a great foreign military writer, the "pivot" of English maritime operations in southern and eastern Europe and in northern Africa. Even, moreover, if the Mediterranean route to India be considered unsuitable for a war road, this fact would not put an end to our Mediterranean interests and the necessity for their defence. It is intended by our Government tliat Malta, with its magnificent harbours, should be able to fully protect itself against bombardment, as well as against attempted landing in the absence of the fleet. Malta was too long neglected, but its works are now being improved its armament completed, and supplies organised. The principle of making use of troops drawn from local sources is being extended very wiselyin the islands which we call by the name of Malta. PART vni IMPERIAL DEFENCK 667 Still, taking into account the full numbers of the necessary garrison, and including the local troops, there would remain to be provided from home in case of war at least 3000 men to make up the force required for the forti-ess. Even if, after war broke out, an energetic governor should exert himself to organise tlie whole able-bodied population for defence, officers would be lacking. The best informed among our authorities are of opinion that the places wliicli would be attacked by a sudden rush on or before the declai'atiou of war would be Sierra Leone and Malta, and that there exists special reason for seeing that their garrisons are sufficient if not complete. In France and Germany every Army Corps possesses works Decentral- at which it is able to manufacture the greater part of its equip- isation of ment. I liave already suggested tliat India should be provided manufac- with the means for executing large repairs to heavy guns, t™iig which are certain to be necessary in future wars, as regards ^^'''-Wisli- ordnance afloat and ashore, and I cannot but think that Malta, ™™'^- if it is to be retained and to lock up 12,000 men, should be pi'o- vided with a similar establishment on a smaller scale. Naval guns are subjected to much wear and tear, because our ships carry on gunnery practice with heavy charges which rapidly destroy the interior of tlie bore and bring the guns into such a condition that the accuracy of shooting is afi'ected. In war this fact would be detrimental to the efficiency of squadrons which were far from home, and would prove a dangerous source of weakness to our fleets. If we were in alliance with Italy we could be helped at Spezia or at the Naples Armstrong-yard ; but our greatest dangers will come upon us in a war in which Italy will be neutral. Modern shijas concentrate a far greater proportion of their armament in one gun than has been the case in former wars, and the system of centralisation which requires that a gun should be sent to Woolwich to be " lined " stands of necessity condemned. When the requisite number of guns have been made for the fleet every ship will have reserve guns set aside for her ; these should be available without the necessity of her leaving her station and coming home to seek them, and damaged pieces of ordnance ought to be repaired upon the spot. We should try to rouse ourselves to understand that the defence of our scattered Empire cannot be carried out successfully on the old lines. With Gibraltar, of which I Iiave already spoken, the eastern The protected naval stations come to an end. The western seas are Westcra also studded here and there with our stepping-stones—coaling Seas, stations which are to the navy as depots to the communications of an army in the field. In the western world, however, our dangers are not so great, because no powers ever likely to be liostile to us possess'large establishments there, with the excep- tion of the French, who have a strong garrison in Martinique. The naval power of the United States is at jDresent small (though fast growing), and unlikely to be used against us. Halifax is strong, and is valuable as the winter port of Canada, 668 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PAET Tin Bermnda. The West Indies. Falkland Islands and Fiji. VancouTer Island. Coaling stations generally. the military power of which (by no means inconsiderable against an enemy coming from the sea) stands behind the Nova-Scotian capital to support it. Bermuda is also strong enough consider- ing its position, for it is most unlikely that a European naval power would send an expeditionary force 3000 miles at least from its base to a spot at which success would be of no great value. There would be too much risk of being caught by that superior force which we could provide, supposLag that we possess adequate defence upon the coasts of the United Kingdom and are not forced to keep the greater portion of our ships at home. Bermuda has been a favourite spot for military engineers to exercise their wits upon, and there, more than any- where else, has a risk existed of wasting our resources by over- fortification. A comparison of the best naval and military opinion has saved the nation from that mistake. Jamaica may perhaps be considered as fairly well provided with defence, but France, as has been seen, has troops in West Indian islands, and a change of the political situation would necessitate a reconsideration of the defences of Jamaica. It possesses a fine harbour and a dockyard, and in the event of ■ the construction of a canal across the Isthmus, would become an important station for the fleet. St. Lucia has been selected as the principal coaling station of the West Indies, as the har- bour of Port Castries is supposed to be less open to the possi- bility of bombardment by the long-range guns of a hostile fleet than are the stations at Barbados and at Port Royal in Jamaica. The island legislature has spent upon the wharves and other works for rendering the harbour suitable as a coaling station no less a sum than £70,000. The station at the Falkland Islands will be useful for ships trading round Cape Horn arid for our cruisers in the event of war. Of our stations in the Pacific, to which ships bound from British Columbia to Australia, or from Cape Horn to the China seas, would make their way, Fiji is the most important, and is supplied by nature with admirable harbours. Upon the west side of America lies Vancouver Island, pro- tecting Vancouver City and New Westminster, and containing the coaling station of Esquimalt, the importance of which, always great as regards naval operations in the North Pacific, lias been increased by the opening of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The arrangements for its protection are unfortun- ately not yet complete, but in any war in which the United States is neutral Canada may be safely trusted with that defence. Esquimalt is, however, a station of such value, as shown by its selection as the site of a graving dock, that it is a disgraceful scandal that it should still be armed only with four heavy muzzle-loaders, mounted on obsolete and rotten wooden carriages, and some seven or eiglit old 64-pounder muzzle-loaders. It must appear from the account which has been given that while some years ago we had no adequate conception of the PAET vni IMPERIAL DEFENCE 669 necessity to the Empire of the coaling stations, their importance is now admitted. Fortifications have been buUt, mostly by the colonies, which have been imperfectly armed by the mother- country, and are as yet unprovided with sufficient garrisons to man the forts and work the guns. The result of this state of things must be, if war should break out soon and suddenly, that several of our possessions would pass into the enemy's hands. Sierra Leone and Castries are among those coaling stations which are near to large foreign garrisons and possess no sufficient garrisons of their own. Mauritius contains a smaller force than is kept up by the French at Reunion in its neighbourhood. It is a significant fact that, under the French mobilisation scheme, in the event of the anticipation of imme- diate war, all "reservists" and persons belonging to the territorial army of French India (phrases which include a large number of the natives) are at once to leave for Diego Suarez in Madagascar.^ The important stations of Iving George's Sound, Thursday Island, and Port Darwin, as we have seen, are not yet protected, and garrisons are needed for these, as well as for St. Helena and other stations that have been named. It is of some interest to turn from the views of our own French naval expei'ts, as they are being worked out by the War Office, opinion. to the opinion entertained of our position in distant parts of the world by foreign observers writing for their own country- men. There is one French politician, already named, not remarkable for hostility to this country, who has studied the question for himself and written much upon it. M. de Lanessan, who has held office under the French Government, and who long has been a deputy of the Seine, has, in his L'Expansicni coloniale de la France, written upon the future movements of the war fleets of Europe in the remoter seas. He has pointed out the strength of the French position in the Pacific, and has throughout alluded to it as a position not of defence but of offence against foreign trade, and has recommended the conver- sion into an arsenal, similar to that of Dakar, of Noumea in New Caledonia. M de Lanessan's statements go far to justify the terror with which some Australians regard the presence of the French in New Caledonia. The ground upon which Noumea is to be rendered strong is that it is near Australia, which is " extremely rich," and "would need enormous forces to protect the many points at which that continent is vulnerable." ^ " It may easily be seen what could be done with a French fleet having New Caledonia for a base." With regard to New Caledonia, how- ever, I think that in the event of war the Australians would themselves capture these French islands. The Republican deputy, and deputy with a future, calls for the use of Diego Suarez, of Obock on the Red Sea, of Saigon, and of Tahiti, as well as of Noumea, and of Martinique, and of Dakar, as posts from which France might undertake the destruction of the ' Traits de Legislation coloniale, par Paul Dislere ; 4ieme partie. Paris, Dupont, 1888. ' L'Expansion coloniale de la France, p. 676, 670 PROBLEMS OF GEEATEE BRITAIN False security in France. In Great Britain. trade of the United Kingdom with Greater Britain. It will be remembered in connection with the French position in the Pacific how the French disregarded their engagement with regard to the island of Eapa. M. de Lanessan in arguing, before the question was iinally settled, against any idea of quitting Rapa, said : " Eapa, it is true, is but a barren rock, but that rock has an excellent roadstead, and is situate on the route from the Isthmus of Panama to Australia. It forms, from the military point of view, a Gibraltar of the Pacific, and a military fleet basing itself upon this port, which would be for it both a shelter and a victualling spot, would bar the route of all traders crossing Oceania." M. de Lanessan's policy, explained in the clearest language on the last page of his book, is to provide such ocean fortresses that " in the event of war between France and any European power, the trade of the latter would be immediately arrested by our fleets, and if that nation were England, — that enormous workshop unable to remain at rest during a few months with- out her social edifice crumbling, — peace would be brought about more easily by the complete stop to trade through the action of our fleet in all the seas of the globe than by battles in European waters." ^ In 1870 France felt and showed the same confidence in her military superiority that we have in the naval supremacy of Great Britain. The general principles of organisation and of strategy for land and sea service do not difier. At sea, just as much as on shore, a strong force will beat a weak one, and concentration is a necessary step towards strength. A number of weak forces, though in the aggregate they may be superior to an enemy, may be beaten one after another if they are scattered. It is as dangerous for us to postpone the arrange- ments for the reinforcement of our garrisons until the last moment as it was for France to fail in due organisation of her mobilisation arrangements before the war of 1870 • and in our case, as in hers, nothing is more likely to lead to disaster than the neglect to study the strength as well as the weakness of an enemy in advance. The German official account of the war of 1870 begins by saying of the French: "An error was com- mitted in assuming tliat the concentration of an army could be effected with order and precision without thorough preparation." In August 1870 was seen the result of the want of calculation in time of peace. It had been taken for granted that a system which had once raised France to a jDinnacle of military glory was good enough for the present and the future, and that, when war began, dash and valour would suffice. When our authorities talk of reinforcing garrisons and mobilising reserves, I do not feel sure that they know exactly and have settled in advance how tlie garrisons of Gibraltar, Malta, and all the naval stations, some of them on the other side of the globe, are to be raised at the beginning of a war to 1 P. 1007. PAitT vm IMPERIAL DEFENCE 671 their proper strength, and I should prefer to see the garrisons in existence in time of peace. It is not likely that Great Britain will declare war in haste ; but she cannot possibly be sure that war will not be declared against her suddenly, or even, practically commenced by the necessary mobilisation of naval and military forces before an official state of war exists. We should be warned, too, by the past. The confessions which have been wrung from Ministers from time to time have shown how blindly we have been trusting in the past to a supposed readiness for war which did not exist. The more we recognise how much depends upon the complete fitness of both army and navy in all respects for the duties which they will have to per- form, and that our naval superiority is based as much upon the safety of the coaling stations and sufficiency of their garrisons as on the number of our ships, the more determined should we be that they should be in a state of readiness even in time of peace. It is essential that the mobilisation and concentration of our squadrons should not be delayed for want of guns and stokers, that we should not have to burden our ships at the commencement of the war with the task of carrying out rein- forcement for the garrisons and for India, and that our whole navy should be prepared to assume the initiative immediately that its reserves are ready. The very establishment of a Naval Intelligence Department is a measure of recent adoption. The public hardly seems to have estimated at its full force the circumstance that during the manojuvres of 1889 the arrange- ments for obtaining information from the commanders of the ships were in working order for the first time. The British public was awakened last year upon this question, but it must remain awake, and not trust to ministers or oflicials, however able, to carry out in time of peace preparations in which the country shows no interest. Colonial defence against an enemy coming by sea is reason- The ably provided for by a superior fleet supplied with fortified colonies coaling stations when, but when only, these have been provided aud the with their garrisons. The fleet itself is imperial, and, with fleet. slight exceptions, paid for from the imperial exchequer. Aus- tralasia, except Queensland, has taken voluntarily a share in our naval burdens, not as regards general but only as regards local defence. Australia had, however, already shown an exceptionally good example to Greater Britain in other ways. Her people have made, as we have seen, some of lier ports the strongest commercial harbours in the Empire, and have raised defensive forces which are really trustworthy. But the con- tributions of the colonies towards the navy are inconsiderable, and there has been much difficulty in the case of some colonies in obtaining grants towards the defence of coaling stations needed for their trade as well as ours. The example of Victoria seems to show that as the colonies grow up they may possibly become more ready to assume honourable burdens, fairly proportioned to the protection wliich they claim and receive. 672 PROBLEMS OF GEEATER BRITAIN Land de- fence of Greater Britain. Food supply and trade in time of war. As for defence against attacks across land frontiers tliere is little to be said except that which has been already said of Canada and India, for in Australia and South Africa no danger is to be discerned at present. Mr. Rhodes seems ready without the help of British regular troops to push his way in Africa, as in America our colonists made their own way, in all self- reliance, two or three centuries ago. Frontier questions at the Cape seem likely to solve themselves. The trepidation shown by some at home as to the condition of South Africa is without sufficient cause, and we have only to look on for a few years as spectators — though with interest and sympathy — to find that there will be no more need there for British troops, and no objection on the part of the colonists to accept due burdens for defence. Before turning to the question of the home defence of the nucleus and the capital of the Empire there is a question which concerns all parts of it, but especially the mother-country, wliich must be considered. It is necessary to gain some definite notion how the food supply is to be kept up in the event of war, both with reference to isolated stations and also to the British Isles. India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada may be looked upon as self-suificing as regards food ; but that cannot be held to be the case with many of the small stations, and it is wholly untrue of the United Kingdom. As for the remote settlements, it would be difficult for us to find a sufficient fleet to have ships always upon duty near the ports of entry. Captures would undoubtedly be made by enemies' cruisers, probably even in large numbers, but captures not comparable in importance to the lists which adorned the reports sent in by naval officers after the late manoeuvres. It is one thing to he in wait on a well-known track of commerce, but quite another thing to catch the swift steamers which more and more are monopolising all commerce of importance. In peace manoeuvres a mail steamer does not turn out of her track to avoid or race with a warship of a so-called enemy. In war the capture of fast-steaming merchant ships would be extremely difficult. No attempt, however, to carry out a system of blockading an enemy in his ports could possibly prevent his placing cruisers on the ocean to prey ujDon our trade. The fast cruisers are exactly those vessels wliich are most likely to break blockades, and this fact tells indeed in favour of a bolder strategy. Instead of allowing the enemy to neutralise our superior force by remaining patiently in port, while we wore out our ships by hanging round his harbours, we should try to defeat his squadrons in the open sea, after which we should be in a better position to &D.d and capture his scattered cruisers. No doubt we should put many cruisers of our own upon the waters, and make use also of a large number of mercantile steamers in addition to the fast ships of the navy, yet, when all is done, the vast extent of the ocean traversed by our merchantmen could not be watched. Were there not other PAET viu IMPERIAL DEFENCE 673 chances in oui- favour, no reasonable increase of the fleet could of itself fully protect our mercantile marine. There is, however, a point, already suggested in what I said Advan- about the Cape, which from the beginning of a war would tell tagea strongly in our favour, and might do so still more greatly as possessed time went on. It is an advantage which we did not possess in by Great former naval wars, when the enemy's ships might stay for many Britain, weeks or even months at sea without putting into port at all. In these days they must coal, and the opportunities of an enemy for so doing would be fewer than our own, because his coaling stations would be less numerous. As whalers know that whales must rise to the surface that they may breathe, so we should know that an enemy's cruisers must in the long-run come to the shore to coal. For a short period they might be supplied at sea by coalships, and in the manner described in The " Hussia's Hope,"^ but the coalships themselves would be a considerable time at sea, or, if steamships, would require coal for the long voyages which they would have to make. To say nothing of the many chances in our favour of catching the coalships, depfits on land would have to be established, which we could find and burn, for we have seen in the manoeuvres how difficult and uncei'tain is the operation of taking in coal at sea. Our policy would be to cut off the enemy's supplies of fuel by attacking and capturing not only his coalships but his coaling stations ; and our squadrons would be better employed in such active work as burning uj) or stealing the enemy's coal than in crawling about the home waters by way of protecting the end only of our long lines of communication. If I am right in supposing that we could make most of the distant oceans, as inhospitable to the enemy's cruisers as is an Arabian desert to a European traveller, simply by our possession of almost all the coaling stations, it is difficult to see why the process of starving-out should not be apphed to the sea trade of a hostile power. As for our own vessels the tendency of trade is to make more and more use of large and fast steamships, which need not always follow the well-known tracks where they would be looked for. If sighted by an enemy they must trust to speed and to the protection of the darkness. They will not be dependent on the winds, and may turn in any direction under cover of the night. As some armies are now adopting smokeless powder, with Fuel, great gain to their efficiency, so will that naval power have an advantage which adopts the nearest ajjproach to smokeless fuel ; and there could be no discovery which would be of much greater value in war to a maiitime nation than the invention of a cheap and etfective means of obtaining motive power without smoke. Much may even now be done by improved methods of feeding engine fires, and even by skilful stoking. The lack of skilled stokers during the late manceuvres was shown, among other proofs, by the volumes of smoke which i Caiapman and Hall, 1888. 2X 674 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part viii could be seen blackening the horizon even when the ships were hull-down or themselves invisible. Among the many facts which illustrate the I'ecent progress made by Italy in prepara- tion for naval warfare there is none more remarkable than the success of the school for stokers in the form of the great steamer, formerly employed in British trade, which sets to sea each morning from jSpezia carrying between two and three hundred apprentice stokers of the Italian fleet engaged in learning the artifices of their trade. In the meantime Great Britain possesses, as has been shown by Lord George Hamilton, the best steam coal of the land hemisphere, and New Zealand, I may add, has the best of the water hemisphere, so that in this respect the Empire holds a predominant situation. If we succeed in rendering it impossible for an enemy's cruisers to exist in large numbers on our trade routes, our necessary supjjUes both tor coaling stations and for the British Islands will be secure ; and I am so far in accord with the party who propose to trust entirely to the navy, that I consider the rapid attainment of overwhelming superiority at sea as the most essential point of Imperial Defence. I only begin to differ when they use what appears to me exaggerated language which might lead the country to believe that the only way of protect- ing the home islands from invasion is to keep always in home waters a fleet superior to any that might be brought against it even for a sliort period. Home food It is not at all certain that if we lost for a time the command supply. of the sea it would be so easy to starve us here at home that no nation would be at the trouble to organise an invasion. The word " investment " has been freely used to describe the con- dition of partial blockade in which we should have to live if our command of the seas were gone. " Investment " is a military term applied to the early stage of a siege, and means the process of occupying all the approaches to a fortified place so thoroughly as to exclude the possibility of the reception of supplies ; but, for investment to be fatal, it must be complete. The proportion between the mouths to be fed inside and the land defended must be such that sufficient food cannot possibly be produced for the supply of the garrison and the civil popula- tion after accumulations have been exhausted ; and in order to produce complete investment the besiegers must have a force proportioned to the extent of the circumference which is to be Absolute invested, while the military strength of the country within " invest- which the investment takes place must have been so broken down ment " that there is no power to raise the siege. The whole of these almost conditions are not likely to be fulfilled in the case supposed — impossible, a struggle of the British Empire single-handed against two naval powers. No doubt we should suffer some reverses at sea in the future as always in the past, but it is difficult to believe that the United Kingdom could possibly be invested in the early stages of a war. The first efiect of a naval struggle would be to raise the PAKT VIII IMPERIAL DEITENCE 675 price of all commodities dependent on sea transport. Our sailing ships would be laid up, and the least fast among our merchant steamers transferred to other flags. One result would be a considerably increased production of food at home. There would also be an immense sudden importation in view of rising prices. In the eleven days between the 4th September and the 15th September 1870 Paris was supplied with five months' food; and although the conditions are not the same, still, even in the case of England, the country would to a large extent victual itself in advance by the ordinary operations of trade. Much waste of food would cease through enforced economy, and every inch of soil would be occupied in the pro- duction of grain or meat. While great accumulations of food would have taken place at the very commencement of the war, the quantity of food bought and consumed would somewhat diminish, and the United Kingdom would come much nearer to providing for its own necessary supplies than it has done for many a year. If ever complete investment took place there would, of course, be hardship ; but it is not certain that that hardship would be unbearable, or that we could be starved out of resistance. The cessation of commerce would be harder for us to bear than the pinch of actual hunger. Moreover, even after investment had been attempted, I doubt whether the United Kingdom could be debarred from receiving any supplies by sea. Sir John Colomb, with whom I so often agree that I always regret to difier from him, says in his Defence of Oreat and Greater Britain ^ .- " Consider for one moment on what the pre- " Tempor- sumption of possible invasion rests. It rests on this — the loss, ary " in- temporary or permanent, of the command of the waters sur- vestment, rounding the British Islands. But remember that the lines of communication all radiate from these waters ; the loss, there- fore, of our command here cuts every one of the imperial lines ; and what is this but investment ? " There is a good deal of confusion in this sentence. The argument was useful as one among many that are intended to break down in the minds of a popular audience the idea which still exists only too largely that the defence of the Empire means nothing more than the defence of the United Kingdom from invasion. But it has been quoted and made use of for other purposes, and it is, therefore, necessary to suggest weak points. In the first place there is no object in a "temporary" investment. No commander would attempt investment if he supposed it to be only temporary, because ii once investment be broken its whole object is defeated, and the process has to be begun over again, unless attack— that is, in this case invasion — has been carried out at the same time ; and even then it is the attack and not the investment which has been useful. The second weak point is the vague use of the words " lines ' Defence of Great and Greater Britain, by Captain J. C. E. Colomb. Edward Stanford, 1880. 676 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PAKT VIII Lines of communi- cation. The United States. of commumcation." For ships on. the sea the phrase is only applicable in the sense that certain points, such as coaling stations, may be said to form a chain of communications. A ship starting, say, from Canada or from the United States with wheat for the United Kingdom, is as free from lines of com- munication as is a Bedouin chief. The captain may go, if he please, by Iceland or by Antwerp, and may land his cargo at almost any part of our enormously extended coast line. During the whole period of our overwhelming maritime supremacy after Trafalgar we never succeeded in stopping France from receiving supplies by sea. There never was a case of such a complete superiority at sea in time of war as that possessed by the United States of America over the Southern rebellious states in the latter part of the civil war. Yet blockade-running was a regular trade, and large fortunes were made by those who practised it ; and only as the ports were captured did this profitable commerce cease. England's extremity would be America's opportunity ; and that in a diiferent sense from the construction which has some- times been put upon the phrase. Holland and Belgium and the Scandinavian powers would buy the majority of our merchant ships, unless the United States should change her present system of refusing to confer her privileges upon ships built abroad. It is probable, however, that this change of law will, in view of possible wars in which England will be engaged, be effected in the United States, and in this case the greater portion of our commerce will pass in case of war under the American flag. High prices would attract American enterprise : the United States would cover with the stars and stripes an immense food traflic ; and the fleets that were " investing " us would have to meet the combined energies of the British Empire and of the republic. The carrying trade of the world would pass, doubtless, from our hands, and if we should come out victors from the struggle it would be at the cost of heavy sacrifices. The trade of all the belligerents would be to some extent transferred to other flags, though that of our enemies would suffer more greatly than our own, on account of their inability to secure fuel, if our coaling stations were properly defended by adequate garrisons ; but we should not be starved at home. I am arguing on the improbable supposition, too, of such a collapse of our naval power as would render the inter- ception of supplies on a large scale possible ; and I submit that even in this case it would be the interest of the United States to maintain a strict neutrality, and the interest of our enemies to carefully avoid steps which might lead to quarrel between them and the Americans. As the Union is becoming a naval power, it would even be doubtful if our enemies would dare to declare food to be contraband. On the whole, I am unable to accept the possibility of a complete investment, excluding supphes from without, even in the event of a disaster to our fleets. Partial transference of trade to other nations ; high PART VIII IMPERIAL DEFENCE 677 prices by which many would suffer, might be expected ; but not such pressure as would, without invasion, force us to accept any terras which might be offered. This opinion is strengthened when we consider how enormous Difficulty would have to be the disposable force of an enemy before he of main- could undertake the gigantic task of blockading the coasts of taining a the United Kingdom. Our seas are stormy during a great commercial portion of the year, our ports are innumei'able, and the diffi- l^'ookade of culty which was found by the United States in hermetically S^."* Umted seahng the few harbours of the Confederacy would be magnified ^""g"-"™- a hundredfold in the case of an attempted blockade of the British Isles. Moreover, fleets must scatter to " invest," while, if our navies were not absolutely destroyed, the approach of any British force from outside the enemy's lines would force him to concentrate to fight it — raising the blockade and allowing of our being victualled from the United States or from India and the colonies. No single naval catastrophe could produce a con- dition in which our naval power would be so thoroughly broken down that no attack would be made by us upon any part of the investing Kne. It is only when Sir John Colomb, and more lately his imitators, begin to argue upon the supposition that temporary loss of command on the home waters would bring about starvation, and when we are told by some naval men that for this reason we must eschew land defences and trust entirely to a navy — the defeat or the absence for strategical reasons of which would place us in such a position — that it is time to say that neither the premises nor the conclusion of the argument are justified by known facts. Our manufactures would be seriously assailed, our food supply would become precarious under the circumstances which have been stated, but we should not be brought to the point of surrender by absolute starvation, and the possibility of invasion is not excluded, as some of the naval school pretend, by the fact that it would be unnecessary. On the other hand, a defeat or a temporary absence of the Invasion, fleet might lead to bombardments, attacks upon arsenals, and even to invasion, if our mobile land forces, our fortifications and their garrisons, were not such as to render attacks of any kind too dangerous to be woi-th attempting. There is this difference between the United Kingdom and the colonies and coaling stations : that, whUe our general command of the sea would make the risk of long voyages for attacking our foreign stations too great for an enemy to face, at home we are within a few hours' steam of militaiy ports which may belong to that enemy, and which are furnished with the naval means of preventing blockade, in the shape of great fleets of torpedo-boats. To these ports can be brought in a few days as many troops and guns as could possibly be required for invasion, and more than one high military authority has lately stated that at least one foreign power could at any moment put her hand on shijis able to carry to these shores a large army of invasion. From such danger the colonies are protected by our own general command of the seas, 678 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part viii and by our possession of the fortified coaling stations — when these receive their garrisons. So great is the difference between the United Kingdom and South Africa or Australia in such matters that it would be likely that a naval power with which we were at war would give up all idea of attacks upon the colonies, and would concentrate at home for blows in the Mediterranean and even nearer London. While it is difficult to disembark cavalry and artillery, with- out wliich there can be no complete army, yet no difficulty would be found, in the absence of our fleet, in transporting and landing a large force of picked infantry sufficiently strong to overcome all resistance wliich could be offered on the shore, for no large defence force could move with the same rapidity as ships carrying an equal or greater number of men, Resistance to invasion ought to be calculated on the supposition that an enemy could certainly land a large body of infantry, but that the disembarkation of artillery and stores would be so much slower as to give time for the assembling of a greater defensive force of all arms if it was organised and ready. At the present time, and e-ven after all the preparation of which the Govern- ment boast, I do not hesitate to say that such a force is not prepared to take the field at home. if there is any use, as I think there is the greatest, in such a home defensive force as that which might be supplied by the volunteers, the resistance to invasion is obviously a task for which they should be prepared, and in fulfilling it they would render the highest service to the Empire as a whole by releasing the fleet for its true work. The difficulties of transporting and landing an invading army, and above all of using it for oflence after it was landed, would be so great that tlie possession of our existing bodies of troops, if they were properly equipped and organised for immediate movement, would render invasion a forlorn hope. The peculiar position of Great Britain does not make invasion impossible, but only enables us to resist it with a small army, if that army be highly organised for rapid war, as eflfectuaUy as we could resist with millions of troops if we had land frontiers. The difficulty of invasion reduces to compara- tively small dimensions the force by which we could be attacked on shore ; but, on the other hand, such a force would be com- posed of the flower of our enemies' troops. In the absence of the fleet the landing could not be prevented. There are many parts of our coast where it would present no difficulties, and to try to guard them all would be a fatal strategy, for we should be weak everywhere, and rapid con- centration would be impossible. _ We do not need an immense number of Ul-trained, badly-equipped, and unorganised troops, but an army completely ready to take the field and fight in the open — supplied with a well-trained field artillery. Possessed of such a force we might sleep peacefully in our beds, even though the bulk of the fleet were away settling the question of our command at sea for the next half -century to come. If we PART viri IMPERIAL DEFENCE 679 are not so prepared on shore, then a large portion of our naval forces must be kept uselessly and ingloriously inactive, watch- ing for an enemy who in this case may never come to us, but who may direct expeditions against our colonies and trade. In either case invasion would be prevented ; but in the second supposition at a terrible sacrifice. The concentrated fleets of the two powers might sweep all before them in another hemi- sphere, cripiole our ti'ade, capture our coaling stations, and destroy our scattered squadrons. The French and Germans are now engaged on completing Defence of the defence of their coasts upon a scientific system ; and the coasts Colonel Lonsdale Hale has clearly shown in the Journal of of the the Eoyal United Service Institution how perfect are the United arrangements adopted for coast defence by Continental powers. I^iigdora. We have done much lately in the direction of naval mobilisa- tion, although even in this point we are still, I think, behind the Italians and the Germans, and only on an equality with the French. In other countries the principal oflicers appointed to reserve ships are always ready, knowing even in time of peace thepositions that they have to take up in time of war. Captain Iienderson has excellently said that the power of rapid mobihsation which has been the chief modern cfevelopment of Continental armies has spread to their navies, and that the critical point of modern war, not only in Continental cases, but where we ourselves are concerned, wiU in the future be reached almost at the moment of declaration of war. The principle upon which the French and Germans are proceeding is that, in the absence of success at sea, two classes of attempts are to be guarded against on shore — invasion, by mobile land forces (attacking the enemy after they have landed), and bombard- ment, by protecting with fortification and similar means the place hkely to be bombarded. As regards invasion, I am glad to be able to quote Sir John Colomb, as he thought in 1880, upon my side. In a chapter upon colonial defence he says : " I do not for a moment under- rate the . . . absolute necessity of being prepared to render invasion impossible by purely military forces. If we are not so prepared, we stake the fate of the Empire on, perhaps, a single naval engagement. A temporary reverse at sea might ... be converted into a final defeat on land, resulting in a total over- throw of all further power of resistance. It is necessary . . . that invasion be efiiciently guarded against, so that, sliould our home fleet be temporarily disabled, we may, under cover of our army, prepare and strengthen it to regain lost ground, and renew the struggle for that which is essential to our hfe as a nation and our existence as an Empire." This seems sound sense, for it puts each service in its proper place for the defence of the country. It is very difiierent from the talk of the last two years, that the navy is our only "line of defence," and that not a sixpence should be spent on land defences until the navy has been brought into some ideal condition of strength. 680 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pam viii calculated on the supposition that it is to be able, without doubt, both to prevent all chance of invasion or of bombardments, and every%vhere to guard our commerce upon the seas. While I think the recent outlay upon the navy necessary, yet, even with the additions to be obtained from the extra sums voted for expenditure during the next four years, our navy will not be such as to give us a reasonable superiority of strength against the combination of two considerable naval powers, either in the class of battle -ships or in the class of swift cruisers. The provision now being made might be sufficient if the other powers should stand still ; but recent debates in France and recent action on the part of Kussia negative the supposition that they will merely complete their ships that are on the stocks, and then rest, or build only sufficiently to replace old ships struck off the hsts. What is wanted, as I have urged, is a well-considered combined scheme in which the navy and the army should occupy each its allotted place under such a scientffic consideration of our needs as has been recently given to these matters by the German Empire, according to the showing of Colonel Hale. The moneys tliat the British Empire spends upon defence are immensely great, and what is wanted is that those moneys should be spent as is decided by the best advisers who can be obtained, without the present contention between the services, carried on as though they were rival estabhshments in trade. Such questions must not be left to the decision of engmeers, or artillerymen, or sailors, but dis- cussed and settled as parts of a joint scheme on which the best naval and miHtary talent in the country has been consulted. Land French and German statement of principles for preventing forces, invasion declares for the use of " mobile " forces on land. There is only one true way to checkmate an enemy, and that is by beating him in the field ; and for this pui-pose the greater por- tion of our force must be capable of marching and manoeuvring and must not be tied down to some spot called a "iDosition." Armies which fight wars of positions are always beaten, and I see with apprehension the adoption of position warfare as the highest attainment to which the volunteers are to aspire. If there were chains of mountains with narrow passes to defend on the London, as on the Indian frontier, there might be good position work for volunteers to do ; but writing, as I do, these words at Pyrford, in a room from which I see the low lines of the Hog's Back and of the North Downs, cut through by the Mole and Wey, continually crossed with ease in our own manoeuvres, I find no positions which cannot easily be turned, nor any opportunity for a British defending force to so place itself that it cannot be attacked in flanlf, as Frederick used to attack the armies of Maria Theresa. The plight in which the i^olunteers are placed is due to the fact that there is in this country no field artillery for them, and indeed only just enouo-h for our two army corps (with a few additional troops), which themselves, I am sorry to hear, ai-e not yet in that "mobile" PART Till IMPERIAL DEFENCE 681 state, or even state of readiness for immediate mobilisation which every Continental power regards as essential in these days. One army corps is ready in a fashion ; that is, ready to go abroad at short notice, having a great part of its equipment placed at ports of embarkation where it would be out of the way in case of invasion ; but the second army corps wants much to complete it, and the artillery is still, except that of the first corps, armed with guns of a variety of pattern which would create immense confusion. Mr. Stanhope claims so much credit for having partially supplied 12-pounder guns that there is some reason to fear he has not faced the question of the 20-pounders, which are, I believe, ready for adoption, but are not being manufactured for supply ; and we are, though not in so absolutely destitute a condition as we were when I wrote my work tipon The British Army, still without a mobile force capable of standing against invasion. We have no longer the old excuse that no one knows what a No motile mobile land force should be. Whatever may be the case with land force fortifications, there is no party which denies the wisdom of in England, constituting a thoroughly mobile force complete in all respects, out of the heterogeneous mass of military material which exists in Great Britain. Yet we have not even now completed the organisation of our regular forces. It is still true that if the two army corps should be completed, and be sent out of the country on an expedition, for example, to aid in the defence of India, there would remain no mobile force at all for home defence, and hardly any field artillery. A small commencement has been made towards forming ammunition columns, which, were they fully organised, would release the condemned batteries from their dread of absoriDtion into ammunition colunuis. The late measui'es have been in the right direction, but they all halt after the first step. Portions of the auxiliary forces have been told ofi' for garrisons, but it is still the case that the main body of our armies have no mobile organisation enabling them to take the field, and that the fleet is hampered with the necessity of providing against invasion. We remain, in short, in the position, which I quoted Sir John Colomb as describing, of staking the fate of the Empire upon " perhaps a single naval engagement." No fault is to be found with the Admiralty, I am convinced, as regards the provision for home defence. The highest naval authorities have never abandoned the view, stated by them now fifty years ago, that were an undue proportion of our own fleet tied to the Channel the enemy would be set free, to the great danger of our com- merce ; while, conversely, if the fleet is to perform its proper duties and to carry out its strategical movements unhampered, our arsenals must be defended by fortification and our capital by a mobile army. We have seen how strong Melbourne has been made, and it Fortifica- is impossible to pretend that Liverpool or Bristol, to which in tion of the event of war more trade would come than would face the dockyards PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PAET VIII and com- Channel route to London, are in the same condition of pro- mercial tection. Whatever difference there may be between tlie forti- ports. fication of distant stations, and of the dockyards, arsenals, and commercial harbours of our coasts at home, is all in favour of the heaviest guns and works being in the United Kingdom, because they are more lil^iely to be attacked by fleets of battle- ships, instead of merely by squadrons of cruisers. If the fleet would be hampered by having to guard Sierra Leone and St. Lucia, it would be almost equally tied if the mouth of the Thames and Medway, and the entrances to our commercial harbours, should be unable to hold an enemy at bay for a short time ; and such ports would, in the absence or temporary disablement of the fleet, be exposed to more serious attack than would be Hong-Kong or Singapore or Melbourne. All Jiarbour defence of the modern type must, in order to be com- plete, include a local naval force with torpedo-boats and steam-launches, and shore batteries for the protection of the mine-fields. It is to be regretted that the naval volunteer movement appears to have failed to establish itself on a large scale ; and the provision of local works from local resources seems also as yet to have been a failure. Military science has worked out the whole scheme of the defence of commercial harbours ; but little has yet been done except on paper. Probably the most important point, as has been proved by colonial example, is the selection for the command of the defence at each spot of an oificer possessing scientific know- ledge of the principle of the joint working of mine-fields, shore guns, torpedo-boats, and steam-launches to guard against boat attacks upon the torpedo lines, rather than the qualities which shine best upon parade. Command. The question of command is indeed a grave one. It is necessary for a good defence that artillery, engineering, and boat work should be carried on under one impulse, and I am told that this is far from being the case at present. We may be certain that the good feeling of the services would be made manifest in the case of pressing danger, but that would be a little late. If peace manosuvres have any meaning, they are intended as preparations for war, and, while I see troops of all arms pi-actising perpetual marcliing drill, I fail to notice the daily habit of setting soldiers and sailors to work together on that all - important business — the protection of the vital portions of the seaboard. It puzzles one to see the guardian- ship of the Thames defences ^ and of those of Chatham com- mitted to generals sprung from the infantry or cavalry, while Woolwich, which has no works or heavy guns, and little room for the manoeuvres of field artillery, is commanded by an artillery ofiicer. Counter- ^^ treating the subject of Imperial Defence I have hitherto attack. confined myself to measures necessary for mere protection ; but it is idle to suppose that war could be brought to a termination 1 Up to 9th January 1890. PAKT VIII IMPERIAL DEFENCE 683 unless we are prepared in some way to obtain advantages over the enemy such as to cause him to weary of the struggle. The riposte is as necessary in warfare as in fencing, and defence must include the possibility of counter-attack. In case of war with a maritime power we ought to be able to use our command of coaling stations to complete the advantages whicli we possess at sea. We ought to deprive the enemy of such coaling stations as he now has, and attack his establishments in countries where the population is liostile to his rule. In the event of a war in wliich we had not to fight Russia for the possession of India, the outlying posts and territories of our enemy across the seas would be our natural prey ; but as against Russia we have no such means of counter-attack. It is futile, however, to discuss in detail the conditions of wars which would depend upon the grouping of the powers. In view of almost any conceivable hostilities we ought to be prepared to supply arms and officers to native levies which OfBcera. would support our Empire in various portions of the globe. Our ability to do so is an old tradition of the British Empire, and one of the chief items of our military strength has always been the power of winning the confidence of native forces, inspiring trust, and almost creating courage where it did not exist. When we remember the condition to which the Egyptian troops had been reduced before our organisation of that army, and the abject terror shown by them in presence of such Arabs as they now beat with ease upon the Nile, it may be taken for granted that the old faculty, by the use of which we conquered India, is stUl ours. But the men chosen for such work must be trained and skilled officers, and I do not know where they are to come from. We have none too many for all the requisites of the regular army in case of war. India, as I have shown, would make a call not only for immediate needs, but to meet the heavy drain of a campaign. Neither the militia nor volunteers are fully officered, and the auxiliary forces would take a large number of additional officers in the event of mobilisation. The same principle of full preparation should govern the supply of arms, their manufacture and repair. The stocks should be Arms, larger than they are, and an end should be made to exolusive- ness in production. India at least should be able to manufacture guns, carriages, rifles, and ammunition, and should hold large reserves with a view of giving aid to Mauritius, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, Hong-Kong, Labuan, and North Borneo, and for the purpose of arming eastern races from which we might draw levies. Gordon showed how Chinese may be led to Levies, victory; and the very Chins whom we are now slowly subduing, and who are, I fear, too good for our Madras troops, would soon enlist under our banners if we could arm and officer them. We should have before us schemes for developing our military strength in time of war, such as are not yet prepared, and it is also not encouraging to those who would federate the military organisations of the Empire that we have not yet succeeded in 684 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN pap.t viii putting together a satisfactory organLsation for the large forces that we possess at home. A General The main thing needed for a joint organisation of the whole Staff. of the defensive forces of the Empire is the creation of a body of men whose duty it would be to consider the qiiestions raised and to work out the answers. The problem is more difficult for the British Empire than for any other state, and yet we are the only power spending vast sums upon defence who have no General Staff. A General Staff needs a Chief of the Staff at the head of it, who in our country would be, as he is in France, the right-hand man of the Minister of War, while in Germany he is the adviser of the Emperor, who commands in chief him- self, as well as of the Minister of War. The duty of a General Staff is to teach the art of war and advise on all matters relating to plans of campaign, and the organisation necessary to make them successful. There is little hope of our ever being ready for war, or carrying out a military federation of the Empire, or, indeed, even organising the home forces, until we possess a well-organised General Staff. That office must be no slavish copy of the Prussian office, excellent thougli the Prussian system is, but must give us at the least wliat every other army has in the shape of a powerful Staff Department. The attitude of the British public to the office created, rather than developed, by Count von Moltke, has been one of awe and veneration; of open-mouthed wonder, and hopelessness of ever possessing anything like it. Yet there is nothing to prevent us from having an organisation of the same nature, modified to suit our special needs. The Great General Staff at Berlin — other modern armies have copied it — is nothing more than the apiDhcation to military purposes of the principle upon which civil businesses are conducted. In each case what is first needed is the best information upon the facts. Then plans are formed, anticipating those of others who are likely to become opponents. The difficulty met with in discovering the principles which were to guide us in the fortification of the coaling stations shows that we have at present no such system in force, and no similar system possessed of adequate power. A Chief of the Staff having to deal with such a question as coaling stations would determine, from the infor- mation accumulated in his department, what forces would be likely to be brought against the posts selected, and thus would judge what forts and guns would be required. The working out in advance of the problems of war, per- fectly performed in Germany, involves not half the complication that presents itself in the case of the British Empire. Germany has three lines to defend, and two directions of possible initiative, while tlie British Empire has enormous frontiers, world-wide interests, and numerous possible enemies — small or great as well, of all the nations ours should be that trusting the most to well-ordered knowledge and well -elaborated plans. Yet from time to time we are shocked by revelations of our unpre- PABT VIII IMPERIAL DEFENCE 685 pared condition, and, a strong popular feeling having been thus created, Government follows the impulse and appoints a committee or a commission to obtain information and make recommendations to it. Eeports overlap and sometimes contra- dict each other, and frequently the result of neutralising forces is that no action at all is taken. A General Staff forms an organisation which is itself a standing committee on all subjects -which embrace preparation for war; and, although financial limits must of course be imposed upon it, there is at all events this reason for a change — that under the present plan no British Government succeeds in managing naval and military matters with either economy to the taxpayer or with eificiency as regards the services. The present Intelligence Department of the army performs only a small section of the duties which would devolve upon a General Staff, and the only wonder about it is that it is alive at all. The work that has been given it to do has been well done ; but in the British army the Intelligence Department is a humble servant, if not a drudge. In advocating the creation of a General Staff, in the modern Errors to sense, it is necessary to guard against a misunderstanding which bo avoided might easily arise. Nothing could be worse than the introduc- iu the crea- tion of the old French system (partly at one time imitated in ti°n of a other countries, and now abandoned by France herself for a, General staff upon the German model) of making the staff of the army ^*^^- a permanent organisation — separated from the regimental portion of the services by a strict line of demarcation. To produce a separate institution with interests opposed to those of the fighting army, and to develop a class of sedentary officers, unused to practical work and unfit to take the field in full vigour of body, would be a step in the wrong direction. The modern system is one of a permanent institution worked What it by shifting units, continually receiving fresh men into the should he. office, to whom it imparts that knowledge and training which it alone can give, and sends them forth again to be distributed through the entire army. The French General Staff is a body of this kind, although some complaint is made as to the want of sufficient interchange between staff and regimental work in France. The German Great General Staff has some per- manent officials who are chosen for their special qualities, as collectors and co-ordinators of information, and are not intended to take the field. But the great majority of the officers at any moment within the walls of the Berlin department are there only for a time, during which they practise the more intellectual portion of the work of staff officers, and pass out again to their corps, where they have to deal with the practical details of service ; never, ■ however, ceasing to design manoeuvres that illustrate the strategy and tactics of belligerents. The best men, and nearly all those who become generals, are some three times in the office in the course of their career, leaving it for regimental duties in the various ranks and again returning 686 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PAKT VIII Its duties. A General Staff and the colonies. A General Staff and the coaling stations. to it by selection for merit. The system has been admirably described by Mr. Spenser Wilkinson in The Brain of an Army,^ and the Manchester Guardian also deserves credit for having kept the General Staff system steadily before the British public as a model. Such an organisation in England would have no power to interfere with the duties of the Commander-in-Chief or of the Minister of War. It would neither inspect troops nor regulate the promotion of the army, but it would decide the principles which would arrange the distribution of the imperial forces, and do all the mass of work which is included ujider the head of preparations for mobilisation. It would, however, be less of an administrative office than a school of generalship. If the present Adjutant-General, Lord Wolseley, is to be the head of it when created he must be freed from most of the adminis- trative duties which he is at present called on to perform. The very existence of a General Staif would constitute a form of Imperial mihtary Federation. The Chief of the Staff would have an intimate knowledge of the resources of every colony. The Cabinet would be told what was wanted for each colony, and in what each colony was deficient. Government could then propose to colonies definite schemes, which would carry the weight which would deservedly attach to a highly competent opinion, while at present we are able to do little more than ask vague questions. How ready our children across the seas are to take up clear and distinct proposals is now evident in Australia, where great attempts are being made, as has been seen above, to meet the wishes of the General Officer command- ing at Hong-Kong. Men of business are given to fall in with businesslike suggestions, and several of the colonies would at once be willing to take a share in a scheme which could be shown to be a part of an all-embracing organisation for Imperial Defence. Each colony or group of colonies would have its staff, lent from or trained in the General Staff at home, and would send to England its ablest officers for instruction. The Aus- tralians are already despatching their best officers to India and to England. A General Staff would also calculate the necessary garrisons for the coaling stations that have been chosen by the navy, and would concert with the naval Intelligence Department, itself raised into a school of naval strategy, measures for bringing these garrisons to war strength in the easiest manner. In some cases it would be necessary to keep them always at war strength, while in others this would not be required. These are points which can only be settled by mutual agreement, and arrange- ment in time of peace, between the services, with the heads of which would rest the iinal decision. The main point is to have such questions worked out with authority by officers trained to the investigation of these problems, and having for their business the duty of leaving no difficulties of the kind unfaced. ^ Maomillan and Co. PAKT VIII IMPERIAL DEFENCE 687 Oae result of the existence of a General Staff would be that The flxiug responsibilities would be marked out ; and if ever the Empire of responsi- found itself ill served in war it would know the officials upon bility. whom reproof should fall. At the present moment the Intelli- The present gence Department has not sufficient authority to secure the Inteiii- adoption of its views. That department has, it is known, gi^nce worked out a complete plan of mobilisation of the home forces ; Depart- but this is immediately handed over to another department, ™^°t- and the executive branches may overrule, with imperfect know- ledge, the principles laid down upon fuUer knowledge by those who have studied the masses of facts accumulated in the office. In our present system there is a confusion between the reflecting and calculating and the executive powers ; and no one could be held responsible if our mobilisation schemes broke down, for the original designers and the executive would be able to throw the responsibility backwards and forwai'ds upon each other. When our mobilisation arrangements fail, and there seems a risk that the Empire will go to pieces, there is too much reason to fear that the people will not wait to argue out the intermin- able question of the distribution of blame, but will turn bUndly against the highest authorities that it can reach. Organisation rather than numbers must continue to be the Army or- main topic for discussion when we deal with Imperial Defence, ganisation because it would be vain to call for additional men so long as ''"'i ^^^ those we have, in spite of the enormous cost of our system, are volunteers. not equipped and prepared for war. There may be ignorance, but there is no backwardness on the part of the publio as regards the steps to be taken for defence. Everything that has been done in this direction in the last few years has been done in obedience to outside pressure, which has been rather resisted than encouraged by the leading men. There never was in history a more curious example of topsy-turvy patriotism than the recent seK- taxation of the community to make good the default of the Government to equip the volunteers. Another force which is available and cheap is the militia, a The militia. source of strength capable of large development in time of war ; but here we are met by the difficulty that it has not been decided where the arms and officers which will be needed upon the mobilisation of this force are to be found. The British Empire bears for war expenditure an enormous Cost, charge ; the heaviest borne by any nation in the world. The Empire spends on its defence between fifty and sixty miUions sterling in the year, and upon the British and Indian army alone spends more than the German and far more than the French army costs. The French and German Empii-es each spend on war, through their military and naval departments, about the annual sum which is provided for the year 1890-91 in the German budgets, namely £37,250,000. Although the com- parison which I instituted in my former book between the financial charge for the British and that for the German army is, as I then showed, in many of its figures, vitiated by the PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN PAP.T vni French army ex- penditure smaller than ours. What we obtain for the pay- ments that we make. existence in Germany of a conscription, yet there is the fact that our army expenditure in India and in England together is so enormous that not even the figures relating to pay and pro- visions, and many others which are afTected by conscription, account for the difference, in numbers and organisation, of the force kept up by the United Kingdom and by Germany. When statements of this kind are made it is common to find men saying that those who make them do not take into account the extraordinary war expenditure of France and Germany but look only to their ordinary budgets. As far as I am concerned this is not the case. The German figures are confused through the difficulty caused by the existence of separate accounts for Bavaria and some other states, but in the case of France the figures can easily be given. France keeps up half a million of men in time of peace, and is now able to call into the field two and a half millions in time of war and to supply them with their equipment. That country, in the heaviest year, after the last war, of renewal of material and of fortification, when the whole of that wonderful series of fortresses which now face Germany was under construction, reached the extreme figure of £32,000,000 ai-my expenditure in twelve months. In 1888 the French total war expenditure was less considerable. In 1889 we find the figures creeping up again, and the estimates are for an ordinary expenditure of over twenty-two millions and an extraordinary expenditure of seven, or twenty-nine and a half millions in all, if we include the extra miHtary expenditure in Tonquin. The budget of 1890 shows figures which are very nearly the same as those of 1889, and provides for a total expenditure, ordinary and extra- ordinary, through the Ministry of War, of £28,420,000. Even if we include the cost of the marine infantry, the French army expenditure is only thirty miUions to our thu'ty-eight, thirty- nine, or forty millions of various recent years — not including that on our marines who serve on board ship as well as, like the French marines, on shore. There is colonial expenditure on certain colonial stations which does not appear in our imperial accounts, but which corresponds to some fortification expendi- ture, and expenditure in the French West Indies and in Senegal which does figure in the French accounts. The French thirty millions includes, roughly speaking, in 1889 a million on fortifi- cations, a million on melinite shells, and two millions upon new rifles. Rejecting as we do the modern foreign system of training a huge force, organised for instant action, we maintain a small regular force in time of peace, with untrained reserves, and hope to create a large army out of material ready to our hand when war looms large. Our very plan itself is unsatisfactory, because it stakes too much upon the doubtful chance of a single naval battle; but when we adopt it there at least should foUow the full elaboration in advance of that mobilisation which forms a portion of our principle. Great as are our PATiT vin IMPEEIAL DEFENCE 689 resources, their development would require an enormous time if our precautions had not been fully taken in time of peace. Of all possible courses open to us that of trusting blindly to the large resources of the Empire, without calculating beforehand how they are to be used, is the most foolish. Our only mobilisa- tion scheme for the land forces at present in existence ties the volunteers and tlieir "marching 40-pounder batteries" to the defence of " positions " or entrenched camps on the south-east and the north-east of London, and is obviously insufficient as a scheme of Imperial Defence. If a full scheme were worked out against all eventualities by a competent Chief of the Staff in a proper Staff Department, and set by the Cabinet uijon its own responsibility before the nation and the Empire as a whole, I am convinced that it would be accepted by the public of Great and Greater Britain as the close of a controversy which at present seems interminable. The mother-country, with her concentrated population and Example her possession of skilled military talent, ought to set an to the example to her children by working out a practical system, in colonies. which many of them would gladly take their part. At present we set a bad example of jealousy, friction between different authorities, and absence of organisation. When the approaches to the capital of the Empire are defended by the existence of a well-prepared though small mobile army, our seaports protected, our coaling stations armed and garrisoned, and the schooling of generalship organised in a real Staff Department, we shall be able, vidth more advantage than we possess at present in so doing, to call upon the colonies to follow our example in organisa- tion and to take their places with us in a scheme of mutual defence. If we cannot even establish a General Staff because of the jealousies of the departments, we have no right to wonder that some Australian colonies recently refused to send their forces into the territory of another colony for a general review. If we have never faced the problem of arming and officering and putting in the field the whole of our own militia and volunteers, we have little right to quarrel with Canada for a deficiency in arms and in training on the part of her militia. We do not seem at present in a position even to give lessons in such simple matters as coast defence. Australia long ago sup- plied herself from England with disappearing and with quick- firing ordnance such as our committees are only now beginning to recommend. At present it would seem as if our attitude towards the great colonies should be rather one of gratitude for the good nature with which they accept our shortcomings than of doubt whether they will consent to bear their legitimate part in Imperial Defence. No colony can work out a defence scheme for the Empire as a whole. We, and we only, can suggest it ; and we shall be unable, in my belief, to do so until we are pos- sessed of a first requisite in the form of a sufficient organisation of skilled advice. Our system is condemned by every foreign writer who has 2y 690 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN Foreign considered it. A skilled political observer in the person of opinion. Eduard von Hartmann has lately written upon the subject, and has told us that we have everything to fear if we delay the necessary preparations for defence and military reorganisation. Able foreign writers such as Major Wachs and Dr. Geffcken have recently pointed out that, while the material resources of Great Britain are immense, she would not in a really dangerous struggle have time to draw upon them. Fleets and armies, they have shown, do not start into existence at a word ; the art of war has been revolutionised by the existence of national armies capable of taking the field in four days' time, and while the army of the United Kingdom has slowly grown, the vulner- ability of England has increased a hundredfold in the last fifty years. Her navy is not equal to that wliich would be formed by a combination of the next greatest fleet with one of the second rank, and her capital is so ill protected that she would be forced to rely upon her marine not only to defend her trade but also to guard her coasts. Several of her stations upon the road to India are, as these writers have shown, insufficiently garrisoned; and Kussia, which it was supposed was separated tor ever from India by many hundreds of miles of desert and by inaccessible ranges of mountains, has, by the pertinacity and perseverance of her policy, advanced within easy striking distance of points which Great Britain must either defend, or weaken her Indian Empire by giving up. The ultimate struggle between Kussia and the United Kingdom is, according to Ger- man observers, inevitable, and the result Ukely to be decisive as regards our position in the world. Dr. Geficken says of us : "If the condition of the fleet is at present so far below the duties required of it, that of the British land forces is simply pitiable " ; and again : " The supreme direction of the army is in even a worse plight than that of the navy." If it be objected that these witnesses are German, and therefore interested in strengthening the army and navy of a power which they fancy might possibly come into the field upon their side, I must reply that I have already quoted in The British Army French works in which precisely the same doctrine is put forward, and have shown that foreign military opinion is unanimous as to the deficiencies of our organisation. General Sir John Colomb once complained that the public mind was considera- too much set upon home defence and too little upon that of the tion of the colonies and of the trade routes. He was right at the time, defence but the tendency has lately been the other way ; and we need problem, more than ever to beware of such a neglect of home defences that, while the enemies' fleets are free, ours must be tied to our own shores. A main necessity in Imperial Defence is well- organised land defence at home, such as to secure the capital of the Empire from invasion and the dockyards against bombard- ment : preventing the possibility of panic, and leaving the fleet free to move. If Imperial defensive Federation in any form is to be brought to a successful issue the colonists will wish PACT VIII IMPERIAL DEFENCE 691 to know whether the fleet, which is to be our main contribution to the safety of their trade and of their shores, can be spared for its world-wide work, or must be kept selfishly in the Channel, because we liave not organised for England that land defence which we ask them on their part to have ready for themselves. If we were so prepared on land that we could laugh at the notion of invasion our superiority at sea would be certain, and we should have no reason to fear for any of our colonies or posts. Our own communications will be safe, and we can guard our trade by naval means, depriving the enemy of access to that fuel without which he can no more prey upon our merchant steamers than a sword-fish without tail or fins can chase a whale. One main task of our navy in such a case would be to capture and destroy the enemy's coaling stations, and in this way to give as much protection to our trade routes and colonies as could be afforded by the mere cruising of a dozen fleets. Great indeed would be the power which in the event of war we should enjoy at sea, provided our navy were not forced to guard its ungarrisoned coaling stations, or tied down by the necessity of protecting England, alone of European countries unprepared to defend itself against invasion. India, Canada, Australasia, and South Africa are able to Share of defend their own sea frontiers from any force which could be India and sent against them from a naval base. While we watch and tlie colonies sweep the seas upon the system which I have described, no i° defence, naval expeditions could be despatched, without utter reckless- ness, by an enemy not in possession of ports and coaling stations, situate near the place to be attacked, and strong enough to form the starting-places for naval operations. If our strategy at the beginning of a war were first to beat the main fleets of an enemy, and tien to destroy his chances of forming bases, we should do all that the colonies could ask from us, and could fairly call upon them to take their share in our operations. The mother-country has at vast expense, and by dint in many cases of hard tigJiting, secured the possession of most places on the surface of the globe which could be used as bases for attacks upon the chief colonies; and it would be her business in case of war to obtain the command of any others which might at that time be in the enemy's hands. We should do the naval part of such operations, and the colonies might be fairly asked to contribute the troops which would be required to perform a work undertaken chiefly for their sake. For example, M. de Lanessan has proposed, as has been seen, to use Noumea as a base for attack upon the Australian shores. If our fleet were free to roam the seas in the event of a war with France it would be wise to destroy the enemy's base in that chief New Cale- donian port, and this could best be done by Australian troops convoyed by British men-of-war. The jealousies which prevail in peace would disappear, I think, upon the first sign of danger ■ and as Prus.sia and Bavaria came together in 1870, so war would produce union even between Victoria and New South Wales. 692 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN part viii But Germany's success was due to tlie fact that the dangers of the situation had been foreseen, and the arrangements for com- bined action made in advance. This is the task which now falls to the administrators of the British Empire. When we call the colonies into consultation upon the subject we must be prepared with those definite proposals wliich we alone can make, dra\vn up, not by a series of committees, but by a General Staff, which should be the brain of Imperial Defence. Conclu- The result of this survey of Imperial Defence is to bring sion. before the mind a clearer image of the stupendous potentifd strength of the British Empii'e, and of our equally stupendous carelessness in organising its force. The incredulity with which some statements that I made in The British Army were received, afterwards gave way to an admission of their truth, but although much has been done on paper, little has been done in fact to remedy the deficiencies of wliich I complained. In spite of the abundant zeal and iDatriotism of the country, its enormous wealth and vast resources, the chief success in organisation which has been lately met with has been achieved by the vulgar experiment of " sending round the hat." When a popular Lord Mayor goes begging for subscriptions to equip a portion of the forces of the Queen the astonishment of the world is great. This illustration of our peculiar methods of preparing for defence is not, however, much more startling than is that provided by the consideration of our habit of managing Imperial Defence by temporary committees, while we neglect the uniform experience of other nations in favour of the selection for the purpose of the best men, specially trained. Those of my readers who have followed me in a consideration of the entire subject must, I think, be equally struck by the latent strength of the British Empire and astounded at its latent weakness. Prince Bismarck has said of the British Empire that it would be supremely powerful if it understood and organised its means for offensive war; but our ambition is not for offensive strength, and not only home-stayiug Britons but our more energetic colonists themselves decline to accept such organisation of our power, with the temptations that it would bring. We wish only to be safe from the ambition of others, and the first step towards safety must be the arrangement of consistent plans for supporting the whole edifice of British rule by the assistance of all the component portions of the Empire. As all have helped to raise the fabric, so may all combine to secure it by the adoption of a settled plan of Imperial Defence. At the present moment the words made use of by the Queen, in which the very itaUcs are Her Majesty's own, with regard to our home defences, have become true of those of the Empire treated as a whole : " That it is most detrimental and dangerous to the interests of the country that our defences should not be at all times in such a state as to place the Empire in security from sudden attack ; and that delay ui making our preparations for PART viii IMPERIAL DEFENCE 693 defence till the moment lohen the a2iprehension of danger arises exposes us to a twofold disadvantage. " 1st. The measures will be necessarily imperfect and ex- pensive as taken under the pressure of the emergency and under the influence of a feeling which operates against the exercise of a cool and sound judgment. " 2d. Our preparations will have to be made at a time when it is most important, for the presei-vation of peace, neither to produce alarm at home nor by our armaments to provoke the power with which we apprehend a rupture." CONCLUSION In our survey of the British Empire we have seen, in the Canadian chapters, what a miracle has been wrought by con- federation in converting a backward colony into a flourishing power. In the Australian section we have found reasons for believing that the adoption of complete federal institutions for Australia, if not for Australasia, is at hand. Under the head of South Africa we have been able to judge that the harm done by a premature attempt to force confederation upon countries which were not ready for it, and by the annexation of the Transvaal against the wish of the inhabitants, has been remedied by time and by the wise policy of conciliating Dutch colonists whose interests are identical with our own. In India we have been struck with the existence of difficulties in our way (cliiefly military and financial) greater than those which attend the continuance of the rule of the Queen in the self- governing colonies, and have seen cause to think that, of all false pohcies ofiered for our acceptance, the most dangerous would be that of in"viting Prussia to draw southward into Afghanistan. In the general chapters of Part VI. we have noted the result of social and political experiments which are being tried for us by men of our own race, under conditions which make it likely that many novelties of colonial invention may one day be imitated by ourselves. In the parts of this work which are concerned with the future relations to one another of the various portions of the Empire and with Imperial Defence, we have found that it Ues rather with ourselves than upon the colonists of Canada, and Australasia, and South Africa, to meet the greatest of the dangers to which the Empire is exposed. Turning to matters less important, indeed, than those which have been named, but full of interest to the United Kingdom, we have found that the time seems to have come for the adoption in the peninsula of Hindostan of a gradual modifica- tion of our system of government in the direction of a develop- ment, from among the present elective municipaUties, of Provincial councils dealing with most matters except finance and war ; while the as yet unachieved union of India for military purposes should be completed by the abolition of the Presidency system. In those of the Crown Colonies which are CONCLUSION 695 mainly inhabited by the negro race we have discovered reasons for th ink ing tliat elective institutions might also wisely be extended, as has been done by France in the more prosperous French Antilles. In the chapters on the colonial democracy of the self-governing daughter-countries we have noted, as regards Eeligion, the wonderful development of creeds that flourish in the absence of the establishment of any church ; while as regards liquor laws we have seen the rapid spread of the principle of Local Option, which may before long be adopted here. The success of federalism in Canada ; the likelihood of a speedy expansion of that system among our colonies of the South Seas as the result of conference between New South Wales and the Federal Council of Australasia ; the facts which recommend it in the West Indies ; the gi'owth of the principle of customs union in South Africa, as well as the spread of the Provincial system in India itself, have received attention. The danger of the isolated secession of single colonies will be arrested by the federal principle ; and, while at first the direct tie to the mother-country will become weaker by its adoption (inasmuch as only a small number of viceroys will be named by us instead of a large number of colonial governors, and the practice of reserving Bills with a view to veto wiU become extinct), yet the raising of at least Australia to the footing of a power con- nected with us by a personal union, will undoubtedly diminish many risks and smooth down many petty jealousies. If the future of the Empire lies only in the close alliance of three or four Federations having no cause of quarrel that can be as yet discerned, that alliance may long endure. But it is at least possible that the association of the various British federations for common defence, and the interest which they will possess in the peaceful government of all portions of the Empire, and especially of India and of the Cape, may lead to closer ties being voluntarily undertaken by the powerful federal groups. If we pursue a prudent policy in Hindostan, and unmistakably evince our power to defend it against attack, no war dangers seem to threaten the peaceful progress of the outlying portions of the Queen's dominions ; and if we not only guard our Indian frontiers but our stations on the seas, as well as the shores of England and the capital of the Empire, the power of Great Britain may prove as indestructible as already is the world-wide position of our race. It is not unusual for men to argue as though we were on the way to lose an Empire which had descended to us from, our forefathers ; but it is worthy of remark that our real colonial Empire, as Professor Seeley and other historians have well shown, is the creation of a century, and ahnost of our own time. The full development of the British power in India itself belongs to the present reign, and the rise of Australia and Canada and New Zealand is entirely of our day. The West Indies which were much thought of by our forefathers are still ours to the same extent to which they owned them, but are unimportant 696 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN as compared with the vast bulk of our modern dominions and the magnitude of their trade. Our forefathers lost and em- bittered against us the American states, and it is in the present century that the British Empire has been both rapidly developed to its full extent, consolidated, and made prosperous and happy. Other countries have owned at various times colonies such as were the colonies of the Regency and of George IV and William IV, but no country has ever owned, and it may be safely said no other country will ever own, such magnificent daughter-states as those of Australasia, South Africa, and the Canadian Dominion — full of wealth, and force, and pleasant life. I have spoken in my work, and especially in the Austral- asian chapters and the portions of the general chapters which bear upon Australia, of that wellbeing of our colonial people to which I have here again referred. The type of the Anglo- Saxon of the future, growing up in Canada, and in South Africa, and in Australia, may not everywhere be the same ; the South African English are browner than the Canadians ; the Australians taller and more given to outdoor sport ; but essentially the race continues everywhere to be ours ; — differen- tiated from the people of the old country and from the Ameri- cans of the United States by a healthier clieerfulness of life. To the generosity, breadth, self-reliance, readiness of resource, and proneness to wander which, as has been remarked by many observers, our colonists share with our American descendants, they add a happiness in the act of living which is their own. If the colonies lack something of the depth of earnestness of the New Englanders, they are beginning to share their temper- ance and sobriety. If, too, a certain boastfulness and habit of self-assertion are common to the colonists and to the majority of the Americans, these defects are inevitable in the early life of peoples which have rapidly pushed themselves into a foremost position in the world. Statisticians, and statesmen who base their arguments upon the writings of statisticians, are too much inclined, I think, to argue the question of the wisdom of making sacrinces to keep the colonies in the Empire upon grounds which have to do with what is called " trade " in a somewhat limited sense, and are too little given to look outside the figures which concern mere com- merce. It is doubtful whether the political relation, for example, between Australia and Great Britain, has much to do with the large export and import of commodities which takes place between them ; but, on the other hand, it most certainly has an essential bearing upon the enormous investment of English capital in the South-Sea colonies of the United King- dom. It has been computed that £800,000,000 of British money are invested in Australasia, Canada, India, and the other colonies and dependencies of the Empire ; and this vast sum is lent at a comparatively low rate of interest largely on account of the political connection that exists, inasmuch as it is lent CONCLUSION 697 more freely and in an increasing rate to portions of the Empire as compared witli the amounts lent to countries under a difierent flag. Not only is it the case that the feeling of security produced by the peaceful relations which are involved in the present tie leads the British investor to his favourite field, but the connec- tion is also to be powerfully supported by other less material arguments. The widening of the moral and intellectual horizon by the world-wide ciiaracter of the British Empire is of equal advantage to the colonist and to the home-staying Briton ; and there is some reason to fear that, if the Australian continent should separate its destinies from our own, a certain consequent narrowing of the interests of life would be a result perceptible on both sides. The connection, even though it be little more than nominal, which exists between the United Kingdom and countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa stimulates the energy of the English people ; but it also prevents the growth of a hopeless provincialism in the colonies themselves. If we fail to discern these facts, foreign observers see them, and nothing can be more eloquent and at the same time more bitterly prophetic than the passage upon "the future" with which Prevost - Paradol ended his last book, — La France Nouvelle. Prevost-Paradol preached to the French that, if they would not see their country pine away by comparison with the new Anglo-Saxon lands, they must find their field in Africa and spread themselves at least through the whole north of that continent, in order that, if the Pacific was to be an English lake, the Mediterranean might at least become a French one. Since Prevost-Paradol wrote, and died, his prophecies have been in part accomplished, dnd the progress in numbers' and in power of the English-speaking rivals of the French has pro- portionately been even more rapid than he foresaw. The world's future, more clearly than it did twenty years ago when Prevost -Paradol's book appeared, belongs to the Anglo-Saxon, to the Russian and the Chinese races ; of whom the Chinese in their expansion across the seas tend to fall under the influence of India and of the Crown Colonies of Great Britain. France may grow in military and naval power ; and Germany in this respect, as well as in population, trade, and wealth ; yet so far more rapid is the increase in the strength and the riches of the British Empire and of the United States that, before the next century is ended, the French and the Germans seem likely to be pigmies when standing by the side of the British, the Americans, or the Russians of the future. In spite of German efforts at colonisation the vast majority of the German colonists are being swallowed up in the Anglo- Saxon race, to which they contribute an element of strength. Seven millions of Germans are amalgamating with the Irish and the British and the old Americans of the United States, and will lose all trace of separate life and separate tongue; 698 PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN and the Germans of Canada, of Australasia, and of Britisli South Africa are adding to British power. Not only the offshoots of Germany but also the numerous descendants of the Scandinavian races who flock to the United States and to western Canada are becoming English in habits and in speech. The expansive force of the Britisli people, originally shown mainly in the colonisation of the United States, is now as much exemplified by its power to fuse the descendants of the other colonising nations, as by the growth of Canada, the civilisation of Australia, or the consolidation of the Indian Empire. In the days when Campanella wrote men looked for a uni- versal dominion in the world to fall to Spain. Spain has lost her colonies, although throughout the American continent south of the border line of the United States the Spanish has till lately been the predominant civilisation. The Spaniards across the seas have failed to show their power to fuse the Italian and other immigrants who are now beginning to flock in to the South American republics ; and Spanish America seems likely to fall gradually under the political and com- mercial leadership of the United States. The wealth and the ubiquity, and even the race force of the Anglo-Saxons, will not, however, of themselves preserve the British Empire from meeting the fate of that of Spain. We have frontiers which place us in contact with the only powers of the future that will count greatly in the world — with Kussia, with China, and with the United States. While it may be hoped that the people of the American Union may never again wage war upon ourselves, and while the skilful foreign policy of the Indian Government may retain China as a friend, it is difficult to view without anxiety the military situation of an Empu-e so little compact, and so 'diflicult in consequence to defend. No country can be less homogeneous than a nation which includes within its territories the Oriental despotism of British India and States as democratic as Queensland ; but that which is our weakness is also in a sense our strength, as making Greater Britain, if she learns her task, the most intelli- gent as well as the most cosmopolitan of States. INDEX Abbott, Mr., 179 Abdurraham Khan, see Afghanistan, Ameer of Abercromby, Mr. R., 192 Aborigines Protection Society, 337, 339, 019 Abyssinia, 452 Acadia, see Nova Scotia Acadie, 24, 25 Acts — Act of Congress, 534 Acts concerning Eepresentation (New Zealand), 503 Anns Act in India, 432 Bait Bill, 1S87 (Newfoundland), 14 Berlin Act, 1885, tbe, 449 ; and protec- tionist legislation in the Congo State, 456 British North America Act, 32, 563 Burghers' Force and Levies Act, 1878 (Cape Colony), 662 Colonial Acts against the Cliinese, 531 Convicts' Prevention Act (Victoria), 532 Crown. Lands Act, 1884 (New South Wales), 161 Divorce Bill (New South Wales), 517 Dominion Franchise Act (Canada), 87, 503 Education Act (Victoria), 575 Electoral Act (Newfoundland), 12 (New Zealand), 250 (Victoria), 130 English Factory Acts, 520 Truck Acts, 527 Factory Act (Ontario), 69 (Quebec), 69 Federal Council Act, 265, 272 Hospitals and Charitable Institutions Act, 1885 (New Zealand), 543 "Imbecile Passengers Act" (New Zea- land), 250, 536 Immigration Act, 1886 (Canada), 71 Jesuits' Estates BiU (Canada), 30, 50, 54, 584 Labourers' Wages Act (Cape Colony), 528 Land Act, 1868 (Rupert's), 20 Library Acts (England), 65 Liquor License Act, 1883 (Canada), 609 Local Option Acts (Australasia), 621 Naval Defence BiU (Australasia), 130, 178, 180, 199, 201, 205, 208, 258, 633 Tribute BiU (Queensland), 646 Acts- Neglected Children's Acts (Victoria), 545 Provincial Liquor Acts, 1887 and 1S88 (Ontario), 607, GIO Public Health Act (New Zealand), 531 Instruction Act, 1880 (New South Wales), 161 Scott Act (Canada), 605-GlO Squatting Act, 1839 (New South Wales), 161 Torrens Act, 161, 513 Trades Arbitration Act (Ontario), 521, 522 Voluntary Act (Cape of Good Hope), 598 Adams, Sir F. O., K.C.M.G., C.B., 506 Adelaide, its size, property, and site, 229 ; imiversity, 573 ; Sabbath observance, 595 ; the Corporation of, and local op- tion, 614; referred to, 153, 198, 212, 226, 233, 247, 497, 588 Adelaide Observer^ Tlie, 236 Aden, defence and garrison, 665 ; referred to, 442, 449 Gulf of, 446 Admiralty Islands, curiosity in division of, 458 Admiralty, the, and home defence, 681 ; referred to, 652, 656, 661-663 Advance Australia! 617 Advice, Boards of, 667; and see Educa- tion Afghanistan, as it is, 356; Russian action in, in the event of the present Ameer's death, i&.; advance through, possibilities of, 357 ; its results, 359 ; impossibility of safely using Southern troops in, 372; inviolability of, as opposed to partition, 380; policy of partition, 385 ; referred to, 340, 352, 353, 355, 357, 359, 360, 3G1, 370, 373, 381, 382, 385, 388, 390, 391, 416, 694 Ameer of, his understanding of our promises, 356 ; referred to, 352, 353, 357, 359, 367, 381, 382, 385 Northern, the occupation of, by Russia, and our pledges, 352 ; our course in case of a Russian occupation, 353 Afghan army, 381 policy, our past, and English public opinion, 354; Mr. Gladstone's, 355 succession, 354 Wars, 364, 377 700 INDEX Afghans, tbeir preference for Riissia, 3S5 ; feeling towards our Indian subjecta, ih.; referred to, 352, 353, 382, 392 Africa, development of, 444; its present Ijosition, size, and liow occupied, 448; jH-oportiou of external trade of, with Uuited Kingdom, British India, and France, 455 ; value of what we have obtained in, 463, 464; refeired to, 350, 397, 443, 445-44S, 451, 454, 455, 458, 462, 463, 464, 474, 666, 697 British East, 451, 452 South, the Germans in, 698 Central, trade of, its outlet, 451 ; the British and inti-oduetion of arms into, 453; referred to, 446, 448, 451, 4S8, 475 Grown Colonies in, 445 East, 446, 447, 451, 464 German East, its trade and ciurency, 452; 455 South, office of British High Com- missioner for, 287 ; its railway questions, 288 ; tasation, land legislation, and labour questions, 292 ; prosperity, 293; intercolonial free trade, 293-295 ; Ger- many in, 300; and the Mackenzie policy, 301 ; social condition and literature, 302, 303 ; resemblances of, to Australia, 303 ; its gold and diamond towns, 304, 305; Western Province, 305 ; products, 310 ; Portuguese claims, 334 ; future of the colonies of, 341 ; impossibility of giving up the interior, 343 ; South African pro- blem, dillicuities of the, 344 ; conclusions on the whole question of, 345, 846 ; de- fence questions, 347 ; wages, 522 ; truck, 527 ; anti - Indian agitation in, 536 ; Indian coolies of, i&.; religious life in, 596 ; Dutch Reformed Church, 596, 597 ; religious life of the Boers, 597 ; influen- tial individuals, ih,; the Doppers, 59S ; Scotch ministers, ib.; disestablishment, ib. ; Church, of England, 599 ; Wesleyans, 600; Roman Catholics, ib.; Jesuits, ih.; Salvation Army, ib. ; Sunday observance, ib.; local option, 618; Sunday closing, ib.; licensing, ib.; habits of the popula- tion, 619 ; vineyards, ib. ; memorials from temperance bodies as to tiie Transkei, ib. ; trepidation as to condi- tion of, 672; defence, 691 ; confederation, 694 ; imperial defence, ib. ; customs union, 695 ; Anglo-Saxon type, 696 ; re- ferred to, 23, 37, 57, 100, 217, 2S4, 285, 300, 349, 442, 444-447, 458, 454, 468, 487, 488, 498, 502, 507, 513, 516, 519, 623, 535, 561, 577, 631, 643, 661, 668, 672, 697 West, 447, 464 West Coast of, British share in the recent "scramble," 455 ; reasons for absence of cattle stations on the, 456 ; our position satisfactory, 457 ; referred to, 620 West Coast Settlements of, 445, 660 African College, the South, 578 Company, the National, 456 Conference at Berlin, 443, 448, 620 Lakes, German, Portuguese, and English action as to the territory ad- joining, 452, 463 African Lakes Company, their reputation, and connection with Church of Scotland and Free Church Missions, 453 ; and Arab slave hunters, 453 ; 455 Afridis, the, 365, 370, 372, 387, 389 Alrikander Bund, 284, 285 party, 631, 632 Afrikanders, Dutch, 30 Age, the, see Melbourne Age Agents-General of the colonies, their action as to the Pacific, 261 ; a Council of the, 643 Agra, 436 Agriculture, State, 508 Akbar, government of, 416 Alabama, 103 Alaska, 96, 644 Alberta, 21, 77, 79, 81 Albury, 193, 237 Aleutian Islands, 21 Alexander II of Russia, 409 Ill of Russia, liis treatment of local elective freedom in Russia as applied to o\ir attempts in India, 409 Alexandria, 666 Alfred Exhibition Hall, Sydney, ISS Algeria, Ai^abs of, and representative government, 414 ; natives of, and the suffrage, 472 ; referred to, 279, 313, 315, 414, 454 Algoa Bay, 302, 306 All, Jam, of Lus Beyla, 366 Alikhauofl", Colonel, 416 Allahabad, 428 Congress, 414, 428, 430 Alliances — Russian, 351, 353 ; Turkish, 383 ; Chinese, 534 ; argumeuts of ad- herents of the school of, 655 Alps, the Southern, 257 Alsace, 36 Amalgamated Engineers, the Society of, 522 America and Australia, 106 Indians and Spanish in, 535 ; referred to, 668. 672 ; and see United States, British North America, Canada, etc. British North, its area, climate, and accessibility, 16 ; education, 663 ; United Methodist Church, 682 ; United Presby- terian Church, 583 ; Baptist Churcli, 585 ; Maritime Provinces of, and Con- federation, 645 ; referred to, 17, 19-21, 24, 74, 81, 82, 89, 4SS, 535, 568, 577, 599 ; and see Canada Australasia, and South Africa, force of, 650 • Central, Spanish race in, 472 ; referred to, 9S, 296, 479 Crown Colonies in, 445 North, 2, 23, 62, 98, 444 South, 98, 539, 635, 698 Western States of, 22 American Commoiiwealth, Tlie, 4S6 American Protestant missionaries in India 601 Union, opening up of the Western States of the, 19 War of 1S14, 19 Amritsar, temple at, 436 Andamans, the, 442 Anglican Chui'ch, 576 ; see Religion. INDEX 701 Provincial Synod of Anglican Church Montreal, 51 United SjTJod of Montreal, 582 Anglo-Indian satire, 402 -Indians, 401 Russian alliance, 351, 853 Saxon race, 402, 697, G9S Angra Pequena, 301, 462 Anguilla, 476 Auiiam, Frencli inhabitants of, and votes 472 Annual Register, Morgan's, 73 Antigonisli, Highlanders at, 26 Antigua, 476 ; educational system, 5S0 Antilles, Frencli, negroes of, 472; repre- sentative government in, ib.; 695 Antonines, the, 420 Antwerp, 676 Arabs, the, and Nnrtliern and Central Africa, 325 ; and Madras and Bombay ti-oops, 372, 373 ; rifles of the, on the Lakes, 451 ; so-called in Ti-ansvaal and Free State, 536 ; 452 Arbitration, compulsory, French system of, in Lower Canada, 521 . trade, in Melbourne, 521 ; Canada, ib.', Ontario, ib. Archer, Mr., 203 Archipelago, tlie, effects of a check in the Malay, 663, 664 Architecture, colonial, 498 Argentine Republic, 16, 17, 23, 98, 306, 3S9, 396 Argus, see Cape Argus see Melbourne Argus Argyll, Duke of, and an Indian tobacco rigie, 400 Arizona, 21, 80 Armenian frontier, 391 Armies of native states, 386 Arms, 38S, 683 Army, the, and colonists, 643 Commission of 1879 and abolition of Presidency system, 377 cost of the British and Indian, 687 general, 680 Indian, 379, 380 . native Indian, 370, 372 organisation, 687 stafl, French, 685 German, 685 Arnold, Sir Edwin, 402 Art, 75, 185 colonial, 498 Artisan, colonial, and his privileges, 528 ; his feeling towards the dark-skinned labourer and the Chinaman, 528, 529, and see Labour Ascension, fixed storeship of the navy, 660 ; referred to, 30S, 443 Ashburton Treaty, a monument of ignor- ance and neglect of national interest, 27 ; its consequences, ib. Asia, 21, 25, 392, 403, 412, 664 Central, position of the Russians in, 390; referred to, 42, 359, 380, 389-391, 418 Crown Colonies in, 445 Eastern, alliance in, 534 Russian Central, 358 ; and see Asia, Central Asia, Southern, 384 Western, 3S4 Aswtic Quarterly Review, 357, 387 Asiatics, 410, 452 Assam, 358 ; English and Scotch planters in, 444 Assiniboia, 77, 79 Athabasca, 80, 81 Atheism, 096 Atkinson, Sir Harry, Prime Minister of New Zealand, described, 248; and Protection in New Zealand, 557, 558 ; Imperial Federation, 641 ; re- ferred to, 249, 250, 251, 258, 502, 510 Atlantic, the, 20. 22, 84, 90, 96, 409, 661 islands, British, local government in, 475 At Last, Kingsley's, 579 Attock, 360, 361, 306, 368, 373 Auckland, 83, 84, 248, 254, 257, 442, 504 "Australasia," the word, and Greater Bri- tain, 272 ; graduation of death duties, 4S7 ; no large white foreign element in, with, a lower standard of comfort, 491 ; savings bank depositors, 541 ; life insur- ance, ib.; education, 567; systems of education, resemblances and dilferences of, 509; comjiulsory education, 570; re- ligious teaching, ib. ; Roman Catholics and schools, ih.; universities, 673 ; tech- nical education, ih.; Wesleyans, 583; Church of England organisation, 588 ; Roman Catholic population, 590 ; Pres- byterians and Methodists, 591, 692 ; Wesleyanism, 591 ; Baptists and Congre- gationalists, 592; smaller religious bodies, ib.; Salvation Army, 593; Pro- testantism, it*.; Roman Catholic Church, ih.; Presbyterians and Wesleyans, 602; habits of the people, 616 ; temperance, 617 ; relation to United States, 638 ; and our naval burdens, 671 ; defence, 691 ; imperial defence, 694 ; British money invested in, 696 ; Germans, 698 ; re- ferred to, 16, 17, 349, 396, 397, 398, 444, 485, 486, 492, 534, 535, 561, 575, 577, 643 Crown Colonies in, 445 United Steam Navigation Company, 533 Australasian colonies, possibility of union of the, 272; the author's views as to the, 274 ; hopefulness of their present posi- tion and future, 274, 275 Federal Council, see Federal Council of Australasia Naval Defence Bill, 258 Wesleyan Methodist Church, 592 Australasian Progress, Half a Century oj, Mr. Westgarth's, 534 Australasian, The, 642 Australia, emigration to, 17 ; federation, imperial and local, 59, 138, 145, 193, 228, 263, 208 ; compared with Canada, 64, 75 ; its general character. 111 ; pro- tection, 113, 140, 167, 179, 210, 231, 248 ; State control of railways in, its con- sequences, 118 ; mileage and cost of railways, 120; in'igation, 123, 125-127, 702 mDEX 183 ; periodic cessation of productive- ness a drawback, 125 ; success of Hcotch and Irish in, 136 ; free trade, 140, 142, 167, 1S2 ; Tiew taken in, of iutercolonial free trade, 142 ; financial federation, 145 ; sports, 152-153, 189 ; literature, 154, 155, 187, 223, 236, 237, 255; de- fence, 157, 194, 196, 246, 257, 258 ; im- migration, 106, 192, 220, 234, 250 ; gar- dening, etc., 185; the stage, etc., 189, poor immigrants, 192 ; smaller cities at a stand-still, ib. ; feeling in, on defence questions, 194-196 ; dislike in, to Chinese, 213 ; its capitals connected by railways, 220 ; its climate compared with Eng- land, 223; system of colonisation in, 225 ; size of its colonies, 234 ; land legis- lation, 244; leasing and the lioraestead system, 245 ; land under cultivation in different colonies, of, ib. ; difference between, and New Zealand, 250 ; diver- gencies between, and the Cape, 302 ; aborigines, 405, 464 ; Northern Terri- tory of, 443; no dark-skinned element in, excluded from political power, 491 ; hours of labour, 519 ; artisans and house rent, 523 ; Cliinese labour, 526 ; occupa- tions of Chinamen, 529; feeling against Chinese immigration unconnected with protection, 534 ; and New Zealand, 535 ; emigration schemes, 539 ; Roman Catholics and education, 572 ; primary education, 580 ; educational statistics, ih. ; Church of England, 585, 5S7 ; State aid, ib. ; effects of its abolition, 5S6 ; subscriptions for Church jmrposes, ib. ; unwisdom of Church establishments, ib. ; ecclesiastical organisations and politics, ib. ; High Churcli movement, 5S7 ; Queensland clergy, 688 ; Boraan Catholic Church, 690 ; money spent on churches, ih. ; national temperament, 590 ; Irish and the liquor trade, 620 ; marriage with deceased wife's sister, 030 ; grain, 632 ; federation, 633, 630 ; power of the Crown, ib. ; imperial federa- tion, 636-640 ; nationality, 637 ; union with Great Britain, 6SS ; Agents-General, 643, 644 ; the Irish difficulty in, 645 ; local federation, ib. ; troops, 649 ; de- fence, 649, 650 ; commercial harbours, 671 ; attack upon, 691 ; federal institu- tions, 694 ; Anglo - Saxon type, 690 ; political relation between, and Great Britain, and exports and imports, ib. ; referred to, 3, 16-18, 23, 24, 42, 59, 60, 63-65, 70-72, 75, 79, 8D, 84, 100, 107, 210, 253, 254, 256, 261, 286, 289, 303-305, 307, 309, 316, 398, 402, 436, 443, 446, 448, 400, 468, 469, 474, 481, 487, 4SS, 490, 491, 400-499, 501, 514, 519, 524, 525, 535, 536, 538-541, 546, 549, 55S, 600, 661, 567, 50S, 600, 635, 640, 043, 646, 650, 661, 604, 668- G70, 672, 686, 689, 695, 097, et passion Aiistralia, Impressions of, Dr. Dale's, 512 Australian cities, great size of the, 496 colonies, political activity of the wage-earning class in the, 488 Liberal party, legislation of, and sale of land, 489 Australian Natives' Association in Victoria and New South Wales, 150, 195, 203 ; in South Australia, 22S newspapers and religious matters, 590 ■ opinion as to management of public enterprises, 508 party, the native, 349 railways, 508 ; State control of, aud the supremacy of railway kings, 491 Australian Star and Mr. Parkin, 641 Australian Steam Navigation Company and Chinese labour, 533 Australian, The, 224 Australian workmen, questions to which tlipy attach most importance, 609 Australians, the, and government of New Guinea, 459 ; their qualities, 490 ; and the crowding of capitals, 496 ; the creation of centres in each state, 497 ; referred to, 397, 458, 462, 492, 494 Austria, 295, 543 Austria-Hungary, 197 Austrians, the, 462 Austro-Hungarian Constitution, 636 Avalon, 10 Avoca River, of Victoria, 124 Avon do,, of do., 124 Ayonb Khan, 350 Baboos, Bengali, 406, 415 Bacon, 247 Bad en -Powell, Sir G., and yield of land in Jamaica, 407 ; 551 Badham, Professor, 188 Ballin Land, Esquimaux of, 70 Bahamas, legislature of, 441 ; its legislative assembly aud franchise, 470; descend- ants of American Loyalists in, 472 ; school system, 680 ; local option, 020 ; sale of intoxicants to minors, ib. • 202 445 Governor of, 9 Baird, Admu-al, 652 Bait BUI (Newfoundland), 1SS7, 14 Baleli, 361 Balfour, Mr. A., 462 Balkh, 352, 353, 357-360, 366, 367, 879-382. 884, 390 Ballance, Mr., 249, 502, 517 ; and national- isation of land, 510 ; aud Imperial Federation, 641 Ballarat, Bishop of, and the relation of the Colonial Chm-ch to the Church of England, 589 population of, 497 ; 153, 573 Ballot, the, 502 Baltimore, Lord, 10 Baluchistan, 42, SO, 365, 366, 377, 442, 475 Bamangwato, 454 Bannu, 300, 803 Banyans, 452 Baptists, 584, 585, 592, 601-603, 604; in British North America, 585 ; South Africa, 596 ; Cape Colony, 697 ; Crown Colonies, 601-003 Barbados, legislature of, 441 ; Chief Justice of, 470; representative institu- tions of, ib. ; success of its mixed con- stitution, 471 ; white settlers in, in time of Charles I and Charles and James INDEX 703 II, 451 ; educntion, 579 ; scliool attend- ance and population, 5S0 ; concurrent endowment, C02 ; Church of England, ib. : Sunday closing, ib. ; refeiTed to, 100, 467, 47(i, 668 Barlierton, 329 Barbuda, 476 Barker, Lady, 250 Barry, Dr., late Bishop of Sydney, in New South Wales, and Cliurch federation, 589 ; and the erection of a marble of the Crucilixion in St, Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney, 594 ; and federation of Pro- testant Churches, 595 Barton, Mr., 181 Basutoland, how governed, 308 ; its size and population, 309 ; government of. and the Cape 310 ; prohibition, 620 ; referred to, 26, 2S8, 294, 308, 309, 330 Basntos, the, 330 Basuto war, 602 Batavia, resemblance of Indian canton- ments to, 436 Bathurst (Cape Colony), 306 (New South Wales), 193, 688 Batoum, story of, and Russian promises, 353 Bavaria, 688 ; and Prussia, 691 Bay of Islands, 257 Bazar valley, 365 Beach, Sir M., 297 Beacousfield, the Earl of, and our policy in Herat, 364, 381 ; the Congo and Came- roons, 446 ; offers of territory, 462 ; re- ferred to, 44, 46, 333 Beehuanaland, British, and protectorate, size and population, 309 : future govern- ment, 338, 340 ; danger of the Boers again possessing, 340 ; the protectorate, and the sphere of influence, 340, 341 ; future of do., 342 ; Mr. Mackenzie's view as to, 343 ; sale of liquor, 620 ; referred to, 25, 243, 244, 286, 2S8, 298-301, 308, 309, 328, 330, 333, 334, 338, 339, 345. 346, 443, 446, 461, 464, 538 ; and see British South Africa Company Beetroot sugar, 465 Behring Sea, 21, 95, 97 Belgians, King of the, and development of \ the Congo region, 457 Belgium, 47, 81, 237 ; Conservatives of, 53 ; \referred to, 398, 519, 526, 649, 650, 660, 676 BefU, Sir F. Dillon, 203 Beile Isle, Straits of, 22 Benares, river front of, 436 Bengal, 370, 374, 375, 377, 411, 412, 421, 422, 428, 429, 432, 436 ianny, good troops in the, 371 ; re- ferred to, 373, 374, 376, 382 "Bengali Baboos," 406, 415 Bengalis^ 372 Bengutla, 453 Bent, Mr.j 134, 136, 642 Bequest, fppedom of, 515 Berber, 452 Beresford, Mr., 233 Lord C, and the Suez Canal route in time of warL 449 Berlin, 332, 303 Berlin, African Conference at, 443, 448, 466, 464. 620 Bermuda, legislative assembly of, 441, 470; powers of parochial boards in, 475 ; school system, 6S0 ; military engineers and over-fortitication, 66S ; referred to, 445, 066 Berry, Sir Graham, described, 133 ; liis paper on union for defence, 646 ; referred to, 112, 116, 130, 136, 506, 644 Bevau, Dr., 592 Bhinga, Rajah of, his anti-Congi'ess pam- phlet, 428 " jlible and State Schools League," 571 Christians, 5S2, 692 " Binis," the, aud representative institu- tions, 470 Binns, Mr., 814 Birdwood, Sir G., 399 Bischoff, 240 Bishoprics, 584 Bishops, Australasian, 688, 589 Bismarck, Prince, 495 ; and our navy, 656 ; and British organisation for oifensive war, 692 ; referred to, 44, 269, 274, 332 Archipelago, 458 Black, Mr. M. Hume, described, 205 ; 210 — - Feet, the, 80 ]\Tountain expedition, 365 Sea, SSO, 383 " Wednesday," gazette, 166 Blake, Mr. Edward, 45 ; and the power of veto, 518 ; and imperial federation, 640 Sir Henry, opposition to his nomina- tion as Governor of Queensland. 202 ; conliict as to his appointme]it, 207 ; re- ferred to, 8, 9, 131, 199, 202, 219, 476 Bleus, 41 Blockade, 661, 654 commercial, 677 -running, 676 Bloerafontein, 296, 298, 328 Blulf, the, 268 BIyth, Sir Arthur, 644 Boarding-out of poor children, 545 Board of Trade, 100 Boer National Church, 597 the, his idea of " home," 319 Boers, the, and their mother countries, 31 ; and taxation, 292 ; leaving the Transvaal, 325 ; the old, and the language of Hugue- not refugees. 327 ; Enghsh opinion of them, ib.; their action in Swaziland, 823 ; religious life, 697 Bohemia, 77 Bokhara, Ameer of. 391 Bolan pa.'is, the, 364, 366, 369 railway, 367 " Boldrewood, Rolf," 188 Bombay, 334, 364, 365, 376, 377, 398, 405, 411, 412, 417, 422, 462, 666 army, 370, 373, 874, 376, 382, 387 Government. 866, 377, 394, 404, 411 Bonghi, Signer, 602 Bonvalot, M., 421 Boomerang, The, 224 Bordelais, the, 170 Bori valley, the, 355, 356 Borneo, British position in, 460, 461, 633, 683 704 INDEX Borneo, North, 443, 445 ; charter of Com- pany, 447, 450 Borrowite, a, 593 Bosch, Constautia, 305 Bosphoras, the, 351 ; seizure of, 3S3 Boston, 23 Botany Bay, 236 Boulger, Mr., 387 Bouimot, Dr., 5S, 73, 505 ; and the power of veto, 517 Boycotting, 519 Braddon, Mr., 203 Biudlaugh, Mr., and the opinion of Indian Council, 407 Bradshaw, Mr J., 543 Brahouis, the, 3S0 Brain of an Army, Tlie, G86 Brainwell, Lord, US Brand, President Sir John, 288; and the railway question in the Orange Free State, 327, 828 ; declines the defensive war alliance, 32S ; favours railway devel- opment, ib.\ 536 Brassey, Lord, 662 Bray-Downer comttination, 231 Bray, Sir John, described, 227, 228, 232 Brazil, 1, 12 Breton, Jules, 75 Brillat-Savarin, 73 Brisbane, its botanic gardens, 186 ; cir- cumstances which have alfected its im- portance, 198 ; its position and defence, 200 ; referred to, S4, 156, 211, 212, 220, 263, 271, 588, 664 BrisbaTie CourieT, on the relations with the mother-country, 209 ; 223 Telegraph, 223 Bristol, defence, 681 British and French navies, disputes in Newfoundland prevented by ollicers of, 13 arcliitecture, 498 British Army, Tlie, and difficulties of block- ade, 651 ; referred to, 681, 690, 692 British Association, 367 Baluchistan, 389; and see Baluchistan . Columbia, its area, population, moun- tain scenery, forest land, and climate, SI, 82 ; system of provincial taxation in, 87 ; immigration schemes as to, 87 ; I'eferred to, 19-21, 26, 42, 62, 72, 79, 80, 82, 85-87 Columbia, provincial taxation in, 514 ; white miners of, and the Chinamen, 529 ; education, 567 ; schools^ 570 ; and the Scott Act, 606; High License system, 608 ; referred to, 521, 631, 559, 568, 068 East Africa Company, 444 ; and see Africa, East Empire, its area, revenue, products, and food supply, 1 ; its rivals, 2, 3 ; oft- shoots, 4 ; present and temporary weak- ness, i&.; one of the oddities of the, 479; existing ties between various parts of the, 645 ; and Prince Bismarck, 692 ; referred to, 1-3, 15, 102, 243, 350, 415, 443, 447, 492, et passim Government, The, and economy in naval and military matters, 685 ; refeiTed to, 24, 112, 207, 300, S'23, 330, 831, 339- 341, 863, 877, 383, 403, 407, 411, 417, 419, 421, 426, 427 British Guiana, prosperity of sugar planters of, 460 ; curious survival of Dutch rule in, 470; powers of parochial boards in, 475 ; system of education, 579 ; referred to, 443, 445, 467, 475, 480 Honduras, 467 ; system of education, 579 India — Finance, its special import- ance, 393 ; land-tax, possibility of im- posing a higher, 394 ; or of reducing civil expenditure, ib.; revenue, nature of, 395 ; income-tax, ib. ; debt, its nature, ib. ; railways, 396; trade, ib.; as a manu- facturing country, 397 ; trade and manu- factures, future of, 398 ; drawbacks, 399 ; increased military expenditure, need for, may be avoided, 400 ; the native states, increased revenue from, i&.; tobacco-tax or Hgic, ib. ; revenue, other possible sources of, 401 ; moral progress, as con- trasted with material, ib. ; literature which illustrates, 402; problems, diffi- culty in stating opinion upon, 402, 403 ; commonplaces, the two great, 403 ; country, India not one, ib.; unity, want of, illustrated by proceedings of National Congress, 404, 405 ; British government in, Professor Seeley on, ib.; India nob yet fused, 406; Conservatism and change, ib.; House of Commons, interference by, 407 ; not prevented by the Council of India, ib.; its result and partial nature, 408 ; municipal institutions, 409 ; local elective system, wisdom and difficulty of its extension, 410 ; provinces, extension of the system to, 411 ; their federation, ib.; Sir George Chesney's views on, and expediency of acting on them, ib.; feder- ation, provincial, upon an aristocratic base, possible, but its expetliency doubt- ful, 412 ; its consistency with British interests, ib. ; representati ve institutions, political, 413 ; I^-ench example, 413, 414; representative government, inevitable extension of, 415 ; native states and rulers, 416, 417; Kashmir, 417; British rule, officials of native states on, 418 ; foreign observers, opinion of, 418, 419 ; Darmesteter, M.,420; Sain t-Hil aire, M. B., 421 ; goodness of our government,, drawbacks to the, ib.; tlie police, ib,; retrenchment, unpopularity of, 422 ■ otlier grievances, ib. ; inquiry, ih. ; Hiibner, Baron von, 423; To%vnsend, Mr. Meredith, 424 ; the future, 425 ; educated natives, position of, ih. ; Strachey, Sir J., 426 ; National Con- gress, 427 ; the other view, ib. ; anti- Congress pamphlet, the Rajah of Bhinga's, 428 ; Hunter, Su- W., and others, their attitude towards the Congress 41*9 ; its policy and demands, 430 ; tiie great) transition, 431 ; British press m India, views of, 432 ; Congress movement natural, ib.; emallness of the ■ difference upon the question, 433 ; spirit in which the movement should be met, 434; our duty, ib.; great change at' hand,' i6.- persons less important than system, 435 ' Sir Frederick Roberts, ib. ; ^ndian scenes' ih.; the Indian problem, in-ipossibiiity of INDEX 705 grasping its difllcnlties in tlie cold weather, 430, 437 ; Hindoos, Parseea, and Mohammedans of, and votes in Eng- land, 490 ; referred to, 887, 455, 605, 69S ; and see India British India Steam Navigation Company, 450 Islands, 19, 21, 050, 653, 672, 677 money invested in Australasia, Canada, and India, 690 Nortli America Act, provisions of, as to language used in Federal Houses, journals, and Acts, 32 ; referred to, 20, 25, 69, 79, SO Parliament and protection of Pacific islanders, 459 jilanters and cessation of slave labour in the Crown Colonies, 445 Sound, 473 ; and see Diego Suarez South Africa Company, 309, 333. 334, 336, 337, 341, 342 states of Australia, 62S, 639 war expenditure, 687, 088 ; what we obtain for the payments, 688 Britons, 452 Broome, Sir F. Napier, described, 245, 246 ; and colonisation schemes, 538 ; referred to, 242, 256 Brotherhood of the New Life, a member of the, 593 Browne, Mr. T, A., 188 Browning, Mr. R., 255 Brunei, 446 ; purpose of protectorate over, 401 Brunker, Mr., 178, 179 Bryce, Mr. J., M.P., democracy in the United States, 486; on the wage-earn- ing class in the United States, 487 ; and legal restriction of fortunes in the United States, 514 ; and the Protestant Epis- copal Chuixh in the United States, 5S4 ; State organisation of religions in the United States, 586 ; referred to, 102, 103, 486 Building societies, 540 Buitenzorg, 305 Buller, Charles, 30 Bulletin, The, 174, ISO, 204, 224, 557 Burmah, its political relation to India, 442 ■ Lower, 377 military police, 665 ; referred to, 351, 358, 362, 372, 377 Upper, 377 ; the Chinese in, 461 Burnett, Mr,, on British emigrants, 16 Burns, Robert, 576 Burrard Inlet, 82-85 Bushmen, 279, 535 Cabinetmakino, Chinese, 530 Cacao competes with sugar in Trinidad and Grenada, 467 Cadet system, 574 Caine, Mr., and the opinion of Indian Council, 407; his views upon liquor excise, 408 Cairo, British garrison 666; referred to, 423, 449 Caithness, 87 Calculations, military, 663 Calcutta, 398, 403, 406, 409, 421, 428, 432 Congress, 406, 430 Calgary, 79 California, workmen in, their alliance with the landed democracy, 486 ; 561 California, 16, 127, 170, 256 Southern, 124 Calvert family, the, 7 Cambridge, 239, 255, 573, 580, 646 Cameron treaty, 446 Cameroons, 446, 447, 454, 457, 458, 464 Camoens, 450 Campanella and Spain, 698 Campbell, Sir G., his proposal in the House of Commons as to Swaziland, 329; and the military position in India 351; and popularity of our Government in rural districts of India, 405 Canada, Dominion of, Roman Catholics outnumber Church of England in, 7 ; religious bodies, 7, 8 ; emigration from United Kingdom to, 16, IT ; feeling in, as to pauper immigration, 18 ; projects for short routes to Europe fjom, 21 ; future of, 23 ; provinces, 24 ; coal, 26 ; gold, ib. ; Gaelic, ib. ; French Canadians, 30 ; artificial adoption of French institutions, 31 ; parties, 41 ; a division in the Lower House, 43 ; the Prime Minister, 44 ; duration of Parliaments, 45 ; Opposition, members and leader of the, ib. ; pro- vincial politicians, 46; political life in, ib, ; the political press, i6. ; constitution of Opposition and Government, 52 ; lack of experienced politicians, ib. ; Dominion and provincial politics, illustrated by Quebec, 53 ; education and exjienditure, 55, 563, et seq. ; schools and school attendance, ib. ; federalism, what it avoids, ib. ; nationalities, 56 ; repre- sentation of Provinces of, in Lower House, how allotted, ib. ; a federal age. 57; constitution, 58 ; a Canadian nation, GO; has passed the "birth crisis," t&. ; defence, 61, 650 ; militia, their tiaining and equipment, ib. ; probable result of war in, with America, 61, 62 ; the Opposition of, and commercial union with United States, 63 ; powers of, as to tariff arrangements and commercial treaties, ib. ; trade, area, population, i-ailway mileage, and debt, 64, 65 ; legis- lative peculiarities and local govern- ment, 6G ; its municipal system superior to that of United States, 67, labour organisations and trade unions, 67, 68 ; friendly societies, 68 ; feeling in, as to Government insurance, ib. ; Factory Acts and hours of labour, 68, 69 ; truck, tl9 ; condition of working-classes, 70 ; labour, pauper, and ciiild immigration, 70-72 ; whence resistance to inmiigration comes, 72 ; sport, ib. ; sculling, lacrosse, winter games, and literature, 73 ; poets and poetry, 74 ; books, ib. ; the fine arts, 75 ; comparison of, with Australia, ib. ; political union with United States, 92 ; unrestricted reciprocity, ib. ; causes for cheerfulness, 96 ; the Fislieries question, ib. ; pressure of the United States, 98 ; proposals for union between, and Jamaica, 100; no dark-skinned element in, excluded from political 2Z 706 INDEX powex", 491 ; Dominion Franchise Act, 503 ; weakness of its senate, 505 ; wages in, 522 ; the poor in, 540 ; view of pro- tection, 558, 559 ; educational statistics, 580 ; religious organisations, 581 ; Church hostility, ib. ; membership of Church of England, Roman Catholics, and Metho- dists, 582, 583 ; Church of England in, 583 ; peculiarity of signatures of bishops, 584 ; Reformed Episcopal Church, ib. ; CougregationaUsts, 585 ; Protestantism, 593 ; Roman Catholic Church, ib, ; Pro- testant orthodoxy, 595 ; liquor laws, 605 ; Scott Act, ib. ; Temperance Act (Scott Act), votes since its passing, 606 ; in- toxicating liquors, 607 ; North - "West Territories, liquor laws, 60S, 609 ; pro- hibition, 609 ; peculiarities of liquor legislation, ib. ; Licensing Act, Provincial Liquor Acts, 610 local option law, ib. ; local option, 621 marriage with deceased wife's sister, 030 ; customs union, 630-632 ; recipro city treaty, 632, 633 ; Imperial Federa- tion, 633, 639, 640 ; federation, 633, 635 637 ; Roman Catholic Church, 640 imperial unity, 644 ; troops, 649; con federation, 691 ; imperial defence, 694 federalism, 695 ; Anglo-Saxon type, 696 British money invested in, ib. ; Ger- mans, 697 ; referred to, 1, 3, 12, 57, 118, 154, 164, 193, 240, 244, 245, 253, 254, 256 267, 269, 281, 295, 309, 349, 350, 398, 443 448, 468, 481, 485, 486, 488, 491-493, 496, 498-500, 502, 504, 506, 507, 516-521, 531 S36-541, 546-548, 553, 556. 559-562, 570, 574, 575, 5S2, 588, 591, 596, 600, 613, 615, CIS, 623, 628, 635, 639, 644, 668, 676, 697; et jjossm Canada, West, the Chinese in, 86 North-West, the development of, 19 superiority of soil in, 20 ; wheat, 79 coal, 80 ; government of the Territories of, ib. ; coast towns, 82 Canadian Academy of Art, and Art Gallery, 75 and United States constitutions, dif- ference between tlie, 58 census, 1881, 56 Church Union, 582' Overland Route, its advantages and disadvantages, S3-86 ■ Pacific Railway, completion of, 20 ; effect of its construction, 60 ; political influence, 668 ; referred to, 21, 26, 33, 53, 61, 65, 77, 81-87, 93, 491, 538 Royal Commission, and a nine-hour day, 521 Canadians, their tendency to look across the Border, and its extent and character, 91, 92; commercial union and contention of its opponents, 93, 94 ; good qualities of the, 490 French, see French Canadians Canterbury, Archbishop of, and the vacancy in tlie see of Natal, 699 ; 350 (New Zealand), 248, 254 Cape, the, see Cape Colony Cape Argits.The, 303, 498 Cape Breton, coalfields in, 26 ; referred to, 22, 24, 25, 61 " Cape Cockneys," 502 Colony, dilferences between Australia and, 279 ; its politicians, 279-281 ; Gov- ernor, 281 ; Dutch language, ib. ; French Huguenots, ib. ; "Cape Dutch," 283, 284 ; kitchen Dutch, 2S4 ; Afrikander Bund, the, its history and objects, 284- 286; policy of Sir H. Robinson, 286; change in the Dutch policy, 287 ; separ- ation of offices of Governor of, and British High Commissioner for South Africa, ib. ; railway questions, 288 ; legislative peculiarities, 289 ; iiTigation boards, powers of, ib. ; natives and the franchise, 290-291 ; debt and railways, 291 ; Chui'ch of England, ib. ; education, religion, and immigration, i6. ; Germans, 292 ; taxation, land legislation, and labour questions, ib. ; advantages of its climate and soil for wine-growing, 293 ; position of the Republics towards, 295 ; customs union between the Free State and, 295, 296 ; cases in which customs imious have not been sanctioned, 296, 297 ; "niost-favoured-nation " clauses, 297 ; the Dutch Republics, its relations with, 298 ; importance of its military position, 299 ; the Mackenzie policy, 301 ; defences, ib. ; its position im- proving, 302 ; social and natural features, ib. ; divergencies between, and Australia, ib. ; social condition and literature, ib. ; the Western and Eastern Provinces, 305 ; good government 306 ; coal, and ocean routes, ib. ; the Upper House, 504 ; curious land system, 510 ; truck legislation, 527; poor, 546; system of education, 578 ; Roman Catholics and Sir J. Herschel's system, ib. ; scholarships, ib. ; higher education, ib. ; religious denominations, ib. ; concurrent endowment, 598 ; disestablishment, ib. ; local option, 618 ; Sunday closing, ib. ; licensing, ib. ; tempei-ance party, their accusation against Dutch fanners re- garding the Kaffirs, 619 ; wine-growing, 621 ; grain, 632 ; pai-amount importance to us of, 660 ; French substitutes for, 661 ; causes for delay as to defence, 661, 662; forces, 662; frontier questions, 672 ; referred to, 127, 155, 170, IPS, 219, 286, 300-302, 308-310j 311-315, 319-321, 324, 327, 328, 330, 332, 333, 337, 339, 344 353, 442, 443, 474, 476, 498, 500, 502, 504, 538, 547, 581, 620, 628, 635, 668-660, 662, 695 Comorin, 418 Government, return by, of communi- cants, 597 ; and sale of liquor in the Transkei, 620 Guardafui, 446 Horn, 19, 668 Mounted Rifles, 662 Ray, 21 St. John and Cape Ray, the French and exclusive right of fishery between 13 Cape Times, The, 303, 498 Cape Town, its appearance and society, 304 ; contrast between, and the Diamond Fields, ib. ; its climate, 318 ; Wesleyans INDEX 707 000 ; referred to, 291, 302, 320, 449, 498, 504, 540 Cardinals, rank of, at Dublin, 590 Cariba, 444 Carlyle, Mr., 495 Caniarvoii, The Earl of, and the annexation of the Transvaal, 287 ; the purchase of Delagoa Bay, 333 ; the defence and occupation of Sierra Leone, 660 ; calibre of guns at Hong-Kong, 6(i4 ; referred to, 183, 208, 301, 302, 317, 627, 628, 633 Carolina, North, 103 South, 103 Caron, Sir Adolphe, 45 Carpentaria, Gulf of, 215, 220 Carrington, Lady, 177 Lord, and federation, 637 ; referred to, 177, 219, 532, 590 Cartier, Jacques, 29, 47 Sir George, a strong supporter of a united empire, 30 ; 41 Cartwright, Sir Richard, 45, 64, 92, 93 Caspian, the, 383 Castlemaine, population of, 497 " Castors," the, 54 Catherine, The Empress, 78 CaUiolic Times, the, Wellington, 252 Caucasus, the, 389, 391 Southern, 391 Cavalry, Indian, 374 Ce}Ueniiial Magazine, ISS, 260, 509, 556, 638 Central India Horse, 375, 376 Centralisation, military, 665, 667 Cerbenis, armoured ship, 157 Ceuta, 658 Ceylon, authority of the Council, 441 ; tea and cotfee, 467 ; councils of native village communities, 475 ; an instance of British pluck, 478 ; planters and the tea trade,' ib. ; export of tea to United Kingdom, ib. ; exportation of coffee, ib. ; Ceylon and China and Indian tea in the United Kingdom, 479; likely to com- mand the Australian market, ib. ; general fruitfulness of the island, ib. ; Buddhist system, ib. ; Indian coolies, ib. ; Government monopolies, ib. ; draw- backs, ib. ; its present position and the autocratic Cape Colony system, 480, landscapes, 481 ; school system, 579 ; liquor question, 622 ; naval stations, 633 ; referred to, 397. 413, 442, 443, 445, 475, 620, 683 Chafley Brothers, 175 Challemel-Lacoiu", M., 548 Clialmers, Bev. Mr., and New Guinea, 459, 604 Cliaman, 381 Chamberlain, Mr., the United States and the Behring Sea question, 97 ; on our policy in South Africa, 301 ; referred to, 339 Chambers, Mr. Haddon, 188 of Cnimuerce and the Federal Council, 271 Chandler, Mr. A,, author of Bush Idylls, 236 Cliannel Islands, the, 284, 443; and war with France, 654 ; militia, ib. Channel, the English, 652 Cliapleau, Mr. J. A., 45 Charity Commissioners, England, 250 Charles I, 470 . II, 473 Chartered Companies are absorbed, 457 — British East Africa Company, 444, 447 ; slave trade, 450 ; and the value of the country hantled over to the, 451 ; referred to, 450 North Borneo Company, 461 ; charter, 447, 450 ; and Mr. Glad- stone, 462 ; report as to the Chinese, 533 South Africa Company, 309, 333- 337, 341 Imperial British East Africa Company, see British East Africa Company Royal Niger Company, 456-453 Chartists, 161 Chatham, defences, 682 Island, 442 Chesney, Sir G., 369 ; his proposals on the Presidency system, 377 ; and the federa- tion of Indian provinces, 411 Chicago, 492, 561 "Children, Destitute," replacing of the term, 545 Chili, 452 Cliilianwala, 375 China, military strength of, 391 ; in rela- tion to Indian defence, ib. ; export of tea from, to United Kingdom, 478 ; re- ferred to, S3, 84, 87. 209, 221, 295, 298, 396, 397, 474, 534, 643, 661, 663, 664, 668, 683, 698 seas, effect of a check in the, 663 Chinamen, occupation of, in Western America, 529 ; in Australia, ib. Chinese alliance, 382, 3S3 the, labour in the colonies, 86, 87, 212, 213, 217 ; dislike of, by Australians, 213 ; and the Indian problem, 391, 392 ; French colonies in Further India, 461 ; magistrates at Penang, ib. ; in Upper Burmah, 461 ; immigrants in Mauritius, 473 ; competition, and Australian and Canadian workmen, 528; immigration and the colonial working class, ib. ; their characteristics and occupations, 529; in Australia, British Columbia, and South Africa, ib.; natoie of Canadian and Australian feeling against, 529, 530 ; defended by Sir H. Parkes, 529 ; merchants in Sydney, 530 ; treaties, ib. ; declaration of an Australian inter- colonial conference as to, 531 ; high- handed action of New Zealand Govern- ment against, ib. ; language of the colonies with regard to Chinamen, ib. ; in tropical colonies, 533 ; population in the United States and colonies, 535 ; labour in British Columbia, 559 ; anti- Chinese agitation in Australasia, 643 ; re- ferred to, 394, 398, 444, 519 Empire, 462 Government effect upon the, of Australian action as to Chinese immi- grants, 534 race, 697 Chins, the, 372, 683 Chisholm, Mr., 522 708 IKDEX Chitral, 358, 366 CInistcliureh (New Zealand), 24S, 254, 258, 504 Christian Brothers, the, 49 Christianity and sclioolbooks, 575 ; influ- euce of, in the colonies, 586 Christian missions in India, 601 Churcli attendance, 589 Churches, 5S1-604 Churcliill, Lord R., and British officers in the Indian army, 374 ; the Presidency system, 377 ; our Government in India, 394 ; inquiry into Indian grievances, 422 Church Missionary Society, 452 of England and denominational schools in the colonies, 248 ; in the Cape, 291 ; Natal, 317 ; and Methodists in Newfoundland, 8 ; legislation on Cliurch matters, 379 ; religious teach- ing, 570, 571 ; Canada, 5S1, 582 ; mem- bership and position in Canada, 582- 584 : reports of Bishops of the, 584 ; dominant tone, ib. ; Ontario, ib. ; Aus- tralia, 585, 587 ; New South Wales, ib. ; Crown Colonies, 585, 601 ; State aid, and effects of its abolition, 585, 580 ; Orange element, 588; organisation in Australasia, 589 ; question of precedence, ib. ; clergy in Australia and Wesleyan and Presby- terian ministers, 594; in the self-govern- ing colonies, ib. ; New South Wales, 594, 595 ; South Africa, 596, 699, 600 ; Cape Colony, 597 ; Church Council of, in Natal, and the vacant see, 599, 600 ; and Colensoites, 599 ; in the colonies and Home Rule, 600 : India and State aid, 601; Barbados, 602; West- India Islands, 602, 603 ; disestablishment in the colonies, 603; refeiTcd to, 7, 112, 137, 199, 248, 579, 581, 589, 590, 598, 599, 604, 619 of Rome, 582 ; and see Roman Catholic Church of Russia, 59S of Scotland (Canada), 583 of Sweden, a mejnber of the, 593 precedence, 589 Ciughalese population, their effeminacy accounted for, 479 Cities, great size of, in Australia, 496 " Civil Damages Clause," 607 Service (The Indian), 428, 433 ; and colonists, 643 Claremont (Cape Colony), 304 Clark, Mr. A. Inglis, 23!) Clarke, General Sir A., 154 Marcus, his works, 154, 155 ; and Australian scenery, 256; 500 Clement XIV, 50 Clergy, colonial, and party strife, 5S7 Clerical conservatives, 596 Closure, 502 " Cloth of Gold, Field of the," 389 Cloud, Mrs. (Lindsay Duncan), 236 Clubs, 612 Clyde, the, 452, 651 Coal, 80, 649-061, 673, 674 Coaling stations, 656-659 ; their import- ance, 669 Coal-miners of New South Wales and i Melbourne trades, 519 I Coal ships, 673 Coasts of the United Kingdom, defence of the, 679 Cobden Club, 92, 122 ; and Indian defence, 351 Cochin-China, 415, 443 ; representative government in, 472 Cockburn, Dr., Prime Minister of South Australia, 228 Cocoa, see Cacao Cocas, The, 442 Code Napoleon in Mauritius, 475 Colbert. 31, 36 Coldstream (Natal), 320 Colenso, Bishop, and the vacancy in Natal, 599, 600 controversy, the, in Natal, 316-318, 597 Colesberg, 291 Cole's (Vicat) "Arundel," 185 College of the Immaculate Conception, 580 Colleges, 578-580; technical, 573 ; and see Universities Coloiub, Admiral, at the Roj'al United Service Institution, on blockade, 651 ; Sir C. Nugent's reply, ib. Sir J., his Defence of Great and Greater Britain quoted, 675 ; on invasion, 679 ; and home defence, 690 ; referred to, 077, 679 Colombo, 661 ; defence, 663 Colonial Conference, the, 133, 201, 207, 227, 247, 259, 260, 269, 291, 314, 627, 628, 664 ; and see Conference defence, how provided, 671 democracy, see Democracy, colouial ■ education, iieculiarities, 574 ; its future, ib. ■ governments and railway-making, 240 ; the Chinese, 532 Institute, the Royal, 467, 516, 645 laws, power to veto them, 208 life, high standard of, 495 liquor legislation, 620 Otflce, plans laid before the, as to emigi-atiou, 18 ; and responsible govern- ment in Western Australia, 241-243 ; its action as to Swaziland and Southern Tongaland, 329, 330 ; and annexation of New Guinea, 462 ; veto, 517 ; and dis- establishment, 603; referred to, 9, 18, 102, 134, 135, 141, 226, 241, 242, 246, 295- 297, 319, 330, 331, 441, 442, 477,539, 6U) statesmen, 206 Colonies, their debts, 145 ; solvency, 146 ; wages, food, and leisure in the, 151 ; or- ganisation of Roman Catholics, 202; con- sultation of, as to Governors, 203 ; their verdict on Lord Knutsfurd's action re- garding Sir H. Blake, 207 ; organisation to prevent Chinese labour, 212 ; view in, as to local option, 221 ; co-operation, 222 ; Church of England and denomina- tional schools, 248 ; action of Agents- General of the, with regard to the Pacific, 261; and the New Hebrides question, 266 ; army service, 380 ; English tropical, organisation of, 471 ; electoral and par- liamentary peculiarities of, 502 ; religious organisation, 581 ; withdrawal of State INDEX 709 aid to Churches, 604 ; Sunday observ- ance, Sunday Schools, religious edifices, clergy, and church attendance, ib.; self- governing, 649 ; and the fleet, 671 ; a General Staif, ih.; example to the, by the mother-country as to a practical system of defence, 689 ; and the work of the British fleet, 691 ; share of the, in defence, ib.; tenipei-ance and sobriety, 696 ; and see Crown Colonies Colonies, The, 446 and India, The, 208 Colonisation schemes in Newfoundland, Natal, and "Western Australia, 538 Colorado, 21, 80, 124 Columbia, the District of, 237 River, 85 Columbus, landing of, 76 Command, question of, 682 Comvierciul Geography, Handbook of, 522 Commercial union, see Customs union Commission, the Joint, 10 Commissionaires, 537 CovimuTie of Paris, 31, 262 Communication, lines of, 675, 676 Commuuism, 561, 562 Companies, see Chartered Companies Compensatiou, 605, 613, 616 Competition, negro, 535 ; Chinese, ib. Compulsion, 570 Concentration in capitals, its effect on national character, 497 ; naval, 671 Conclusion, 694 Confederation, local colonial, 475 ; no pros- pect of full, 644 ; naval, 646 Conference, colonial, 628 ; future confer- ences, 629; subjects to be treated, 628, 629 ; decisions of, 633, 664 Congo, its free navigation a gain to us, 456; referred to, 447, 448, 451, 462 State, the, 336, 455 ; and Tippoo Tib, 451 ; France and Germany, 456 ; absorp- tion by sale to France, 457 ; freedom from import duties, ib. ; British traders, ib. Treaty, 334 ; and Portugal, 458 Upper, 453 Congregationalists, 592 ; in Canada, 585 ; Cape Colony, 597, 602 Congi-ess, Indian National, 430, 431 Cotiseil sitperieur des Colonies, 503 Conservatives, military, and Indian de- fence, 351 the, and refusal by Liberals of Zanzi- bar protectorate, 462 Consideration, general, of the defence pro- blem, 690 Constantia, 302 Constantinople, 383 Contemporary Revie^o, The, 331 Convicts, British, and Melbourne inhabit- ants, 531 Cook, Captain, 262 Coolie immigration in the West Indies, 465, 469 ; its effect on negro proprietors, 469 Coolies, Indian, 4G5, 469, 536 Cooper, Sir D., 183 Co-operation in the colonies, 526 ; American opinion, ib. ; reports from Philadelphia and Australia, ib. ; and the inter-colonial trade union congress, 627 Co-operative sugar mills in Queensland, 218 Copeland, Mr., ISO Cossacks, the, 375 Coteau du Lac, 41 Cotton, Mr., his New hulia, 402 ; 438 Counter-attack, 682 Couvreur, Madame (" Tasma "), 223 ; author of V-tide Piper of Piper's Hill, 237 Covenanted Civil Service, 433 Covenanters of Western Highlands, 31 ; Scotch, 597 Cowen, Mr. (the musician), 153 Crees, the, 80 Cricket in the colonies, 4S9 Crimea, the, 383 Crimean War, 292 Crispi, Signor, 502 Cromwell, Lord Protector, 25 Cross, Lord, and the Indian military sys- tem, 378, 379 Grossman, Sir "W., M.P., and yield of land in Jamaica, 467, 468 ; the protection works of Hong-Kong, 665 Crown, the, 636 Colonies, the, 409 ; present and future, popular and scientific meanings of the tenn, 441 ; varieties, 442 ; dependencies of dependencies, ib. ; British tenitory separate from United Kingdom, Colonies, and India, 443 ; tropical settle- ments, ib. ; English governed countiies aci'oss the sea, two classes of, ih. ; some Crown Colonies unsuited for European labour and residence, 445 ; slaverj', ib. ; sugar, ib. ; of what the colonies consist, ib. ; protectorates and spheres of influ- ence, ib. ; change of policy by Great Britain in 1884, 446 ; results, 447 ; Berlin Conference, 448 ; present position of Africa, ib. ; Egypt, 449; East Africa, ib, ; Somali coast, ib. ; Imperial British Bast Africa Company, 450 ; cliartered com- panies, ib. ; value of the country dealt with by East African charter, 451 ; German East Africa, 452 ; the Lakes, ib. ; Portuguese claims, 454 ; German claims, ib. ; the West Coast, 455 ; the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, and Lagos, ib., the Niger, 456; the Congo, ib. ; the Oil rivers, 457 ; spheres of influence, pro- tectorates, and colonies, ib. ; the Pacific; 458 ;— its future, 460 ; New Guinea, 458 ; Fiji, 459; protectoi-ates in Malay Archi- pelago, 460 ; policy of extension of terri- tory or responsibility, 461 ; value of what we have obtained, 463 ; old Crown Colonies, 464 ; military stations, ib. ; naval and trade posts, ib. ; the West Indies, 465 ; results of emancipation, ib. ; coolie immigration, ib. ; beetroot sugar, ib. ; the Sugar Convention, ib. ; process of manufacture, 466 ; British Guiana, ib. ; the St. Lucia experiment, ib. ; Mau- ritius, ib. ; other tropical colonial pro- ducts, 467 ; cacao, ib. ; fruit, ib. ; negro peasant proprietors, ib. ; crop-time, ib. ; taxation upon necessaries, 468 ; export duties, ib. ; taxes on land, trade, ib. ; eflTect of coolie immigration on negro proprietors, 469 ; negro view of these 710 INDEX questions, ih. ; negro democracy, ih. ; representative institutions, 470 ; repre- sentative institutions in French colonies, 471 ; white population, 472 ; down Colonies with a white foreign element — Trinidad, Dominica, and Mauritius, 473, 475 ; France and Madagascar, 473 ; local goveninient in the West Indies, Ceylon, and Fiji, 475 ; local confederation, ib. ; Leeward Islands Confederacy, ib. ; Windward Islands, 470 ; West Indian federation of the futuie, ib. ; Cyprus, 477 ; Ceylon, 473 ; tea, ib. ; general fruitfulness of the island, 479 ; draw- backs, ib. : Hong-Kong and Shanghai, 4S0 ; peculiarities of Crown Colony legislation, ib. ; conclusions, ib. ; the chief need of the Crown Colonies, 4S1 ; tropical scenes, ib. ; the poor in, 540 ; education in, 579 ; disestablishment, 001 ; Christian churches, position of, (iOl, 602; Roman Catholics and Protest- ants, 602 ; liquor laws, 620 ; tariffs, 033 ; elective institutions, 694 Crown Colony system of nominated legisla- tures, the ground of its defence, 471 Lands Act 1884 (New South Wales), 101 Cruisers, fast, 672 Cuba, 398, 401 Culture, colonial, 497 Cumulative vote, 503 Cunningham, Sir. C. D., 506 Curzon, Mr. G., 357 ; and Afghanistan, 352 ; on railways in Seistan, 367 ; the Russian bridce across the Oxus, ib. ; treatment of Asiatics by Russians, 410 Cust, Dr. , and the superiority of our Indian rule over French government of Algeria, 414 ; quoted, ou the increase of the Indian excise, 622 Customs union, a, 630, 695 ; Mr. Hofmeyr's scheme, 631, 632 ; 640, et s&2. Cycling in the colonies, 489 Cypriote-Greeks and their remedies for the poverty of Cyprus, 477 Cyprus, electoral districts and constitution of, 477 ; Mohammedan and Greek- Cypriote voters, ih. ; our administration too costly, ib. ; remedies for its poverty, ib. ; its defence and gariison, 066; re- ferred to, 334, 445, 462, 020, 657 Daily Telegraph (Melbourne), Fi06 , (Sydney), 174, 203, 209, 223, 236, 557 "Dakar, the French at, 659 ; referred to, 661, 069 Dakota, 96 North, 21, 80, 90, 93 ; prohibition, 609 . South, 80 ; prohibition, 009 Dale, Dr., and State ownership of land, 512 ; and the sinking of Australian wages, 525 ; and excisions in tlie Nelson series, "Dalley expedition," 180 Dalley, Mr., his policy and characteristics, 176 ; and the Federal Council, 204 ; re- ferred to, 174, 188 Dalton, Mr., of Melhoume, 192 Damaraland, 300, 332, 330 i Damaraland, German, 454 Dardanelles, the, 351, 353, 3S3 Darling Downs, 198, 216 Lady, 111 Sir C, 111 • River, 114 Darmesteter, M., and our rule in India, 420 Darwn, 176 Dawson, Sir W., 74 Deakin, Mr., Colonial Secretary of Victoria, 123-125, 127, 128, 130; his irrigation schemes, 124 ; use of Free-trade argu- ments by, 140; his "dream," 142; his B ill with regard to workrooms and factories, 151 ; on foreign powers in the Pacific, 201 ; referred to, 45, 136, 140- 142, 144, 155, 210, 227, 270-272, 486, 502, 527, 550, 687 Death duties, 514 Debt, Indian, 391 Debts, colonial, 630 Defence, see 00, 61, 83, 157, 194-196, 200, 257, 301, 302, 315, 629, 631, 632 Bill, see Naval Defence Bill Imperial — Self-governing colonies, 649; Australia, ib.; Tasmania and New Zealand, 650 ; Canada, ib. ; India, ib. ; naval defence, ib. ; blockade of tlie enemy's ports, 651 ; navy and fortifica- tion, ib.; blockade in manoeuvres, 652; foreign stations, defence of, hy the navy, ib.; home defence, proposed, by iia.vy, 653 ; Channel Islands, 654 ; the navy, increase of, ib.; alliances, 655; work of the navy, ib. ; coaling stations, 656 ; their garrisons, ib.; Suez or Cape? 057; Suez Canal, ib.; Gibraltar, 658; Sieri-a Leone, 659 ; Report of the Royal Commission, 660 ; Ascension, ib.; St. Helena, ib.; the Cape of Good Hope, ib. ; French sub- stitutes for the Cape, 661 ; causes of past delay, ib.; Cape forces, 662; Mauritius, ib. ; Ceylon, 663 ; Singapore, ib. ; Australia, 664; Labuan and Hong-Kong, ib.; re- cruiting from India, 605; Indian stations, ib. — Bombay and Karachi, ib.; Aden antl Perim, ib.; Egyptian stations — Suez ajul Port Said, 606 ; Mediterranean — Cyprus, ib.; Malta, ib.; Western Seas, 067— Hali- fax, ib.; Bermuda, 668 ; the West Indies, ib.; Falkland Islands and Fiji, ib.; Van- couver Island, ib. ; coaling stations generally, 668, 609 ; French opinion, 669; false security in France, 670; readi- ness in Great Britain, ib. ; the colonies and the fleet, 071 ; land defence of Greater Britain, 072; food supply and trade iu time of war, ib.; Great Britain, advan- tages possessed by, 673; fuel, ib.; home food supply, 674 ; " investment," absolute, ib.; "temporary " investment, 675 ; lines of communication, 676 ; the United States, ib.; United Kingdom, difficulty of maintaining a commercial blockade of the, 677; invasion, ib.; defence of the coasts of the, 079 ; land forces, 080 ; no mobile land force in England, 081 ; forti- fication of dockyards and commercial ports, 631, 682 ; command, 6S2 ; counter- attack, ib.; officers, 083; arms, ib.i INDEX 711 levies, ib.; General Staff, a, 684 — errors to be avoided in its creation, 685 ; what it should be, ib.; its duties, 686 ; and the colonies, ib.; and coaling stations, ib.; responsibility, the fixing of, 687 ; the present Intelligence Department, ib.; army organisation and the volunteers, ib.; the militia, ib.; cost, ib.; Frencli army expenditure smaller than ours, 688 ; what we obtain for the payments that we make, ib. ; example to the colonies, 689 ; foreign opinion, 690 ; de- fence problem, general consideration of the, ib. ; India and the colonies, share of, in defence, 691 ; conclusion, 692 - — ■ Indian pre-eminent importance of, 349 ; India, effects of loss of, S49, 350 ; reasons for its separate treatment, 350 ; consensus of opinion on its importance, ib. ; Russian alliance, idea of a, 351 ; — what we should lose by it, 353 ; the Tsar, 352 ; our pledges, ib. ; views ex- pressed on, in Qreater Britain and in 1SS7, 354; troops, insufficiency of their nmnber and organisation, 355 ; Mr. Gladstone's Afghan policy, ib.; Afghan- istan as it is, 356; Russian invasion, possibilities of, 357; Russian advance, difficulties of, 358 ; its results. 359 ; Afghan co - operation, importance to Russia of, 360 ; defence, the problem of, ib.; schemes for — what has actually been done, ib.; lines of, ib.;—t\ie Quetta line, 361; fortifications, ib.; the Khyberline, 362; transport, ib.; steps to be taken, ib.; rifles and ammunition, 363 ; the frontier, ib.; Sandeman, Sir R., and the frontier, 864 ; unifonn policy, need for, 365 ; frontier policy, object of, ib. ; Sandeman system, ib.; other steps to be taken, 366 ; Kafristan and Kashmir, 366, 3S8 ; further Russian advance, action in the event of, 366 ; force, increase of, in that event, 368 ; the Reserve, ib. ; present force, insufliciency of, for the eventual- ity, ib. ; and of transport, 369 ; tribes, ib. ; native army, 370 ; good troops, number of, 371 ; army, whence it should be recruited, 372 ; Southern troops, im- possibility of safely using them in Afghanistan and for chief garrisons, 372, 373; the force in India, 374; mobilisa- tion, ib. ; cavalry, ib. ; commanding officers, 375; the Presidency system, 376; reforms, 377; Simla Commission, ib. ; representation by Indian Govern- ment in 1888, ib.; the Secretary of State and the Indian military system, 378 ; Indian army and present and future difficulties, 379 ; separate army, need for, 380; Afghanistan, inviolability of, as opposed to partition, ib.; Kandahar, occupation of, 381 ; Indian military opinion, ib. ; Russia in the Pacific, present vulnerability of, 382 ; her invul- nerability elsewhere, and in the future everywhere, 383; Turkish alliance, ib,; Persia, 384 ; Herat, ib. ; partition, virtual, 385 ; India Office and Indian Govern- ment, difference of opinion between the, 385, 386 ; armies of native states, 386 ; native states and defences, 887; Sikh states, 388 ; arms, ib.; the Russians and natives, 389; Russia, comparison between ourselves and the Russians, ib.; her advantages, ib. ; Indian opinion, ib.; Russians, their position in Central Asia, 390 ; notions, mistaken, ib. ; China, 391 Defence, land, 672 practical, suggestions bearing on, 045 Delagoa Bay, Mr, Merriman's view as to, 331 ; the Portuguese at, 332 ; its future and drawbacks, ib. ; President Kruger and the Delagoa route, 334 ; referred to, 287, 288, 293, 294, 298, 308, 320, 821, 325, 327, 328,' 331, 333, 472, 661 Railway question, the, 299 ; the memorandum of agi-eement, quoted, ib, Delhi, 436 Riots, 410 Democracy, Part vi., chap. i. p. 485 artisan, how regarded, 487 Colonial — Australian as compared with American democracy, 485 ; absence in, of faults attributed to democracies, 486 ; its merits, 487 ; no class tyranny, ib. ; classes, 488 ; colonial workmen, social condition of, ib. ; their opinions, 489 ; general characteristics, 490 ; dif- ference between our chief colonies and United States, 491 ; Anglo-Saxon as contrasted with Latin democracy, 492 ; political observers and, 493 ; popular government, weak points of, ib. ; im- provement, 494 ; public jnen, ib. ; colonial life, high standard of, 495 ; Australian cities, great size of the, 496 ; town life, change in conditions of, 497 ; effect on the democracy, ib. ; culture, lb ; architecture, 498 ; journalism, ib. ; the colonies, resemblance of, to United States of Tocqueville's time, 499 ; litera- ture, ib. ; politics, 600 ; members of Parliament, position of, 501 ; electoral and parliamentary peculiarities, 502 ; colonial representatives in France, pay- ment of, ib. ; suffrage, 603 ; minority representation, 504 ; Upper Houses, 504- 506; the Referendnm, 506; "Socialism" or " State-socialism," 507 ; laisser faire, 508 ; Socialism, drift of colonial opinion with regard to, 508, 509 ; land, nation- alisation of, 510 ; land systems, existing, i&. ; future, opinions regarding the, 511, 512 ; State ownership of colonial lands, contradictory opinion on financial ad- vantages of, 512 ; taxation, 513 ; pro- gressive taxation, 514 ; bequest, freedom of, 515 ; progressive taxation in France, ib. ; experiments, colonial, 516 ; women, position of, ib. ; marriage and divorce, 517 ; veto, the Colonial Office, ib. ; independent Australian Statesmen, Sir Alfred Stephen and other, 518 future of, and Switzerland, 506 negro, 469 ■ tendency of, in taxation, 514 Democratic assemblies, weakest point of, 493 communities, literary life of, 499 712 INDEX Democrats, young, of Switzerland, pro- gramme of, as contrasted with Australia, 507 Demonstration Day, 520 DeNeuville's " Rorke's Drift," 185 DeniliquiD, 193 Depretis, Signor, 44, 502 Deputies, Chamber of, Paris, 414 Dera Ghazi Khan, 360, 365, 373 Ismail Khan, 359, 360, 3(55, 368, 873, 406 Derby, The Earl of, and the Federal Council, 264 ; referred to, 261, 300 Diamond Fields, the, 288, 302, 304 ■ mines of Soutli Africa, 527 Dibbs Cabinet of 18S9, 161 Mr., described, ISO; and Imperial Federation, 637, 041 ; referred to, l79- 1S2, 195, 206, 264, 557 Dickens (Charles), 655 Diego Suarez, effect of French possession of, on Mauritius, 474 ; referred to, 661, 663, 669 Difficulties, racial, 541 Direct taxation and protection, 561 Disembarkation of cavahy, etc., 678 Disendownient, 5S5 ; effect of, 586 Disestablishment, 586, 590, 598, 601, 602, 604 ; in South Africa, 598 Dislere, M., 503, 669 Disraeli, Mr., see Beaconsfield, The Earl of Divorce, 517 Bills, 629 '* Dockers," London, and Melbourne trades, 519 Dockyards, fortification of, 681 Domett, Mr. A., 255 Dominica, white foreign element in, 473 ; referred to, 467, 476 Dominion Franchise Act, 87, 503 Lower House, analysis of Quebec members in the, 53 Parliament, the Jesuits' Estates Bill in tlie, 50 ; 91 Dominion, Soiigs of the Great, 74 Doualdson, Mr., 210 Dopper sect, the. 325 Doppers of South Africa, 596, 598 Dorsetshire, 220 Double Votes, and Liberal Party of Vic- toria, 503 Downer, Sir J., described, 227, 228 ; 628 Downing Street, and the government of the Crown Colonies, 481 ; referred to, 135, 136, 487 Downs, the North, 680 Drill, military, 574 Druids, the, in Canada and South Africa, 540 Dublin, 634 Archbishopric of, 590 Dufferin, Lady, and Indian reviews, 435 The Marquis of, and the Army Com- mission, 377 ; quoted, 396 ; referred to, 44, 356, 879, 390, 637 Dunedin, 249, 254, 258, 504 Durban, its exposed position, 315 ; appear- ance, customs, liarbour works and , prosperity, 318; referred to, 312, 314, i 315, 318, 334, 540 j Durham, The Earl of, 80 Ditstypore, 402 I Dutch architecture, 498 ; homesteads, ib. at the Cape, 57S, 094 colonists and teaching, 578 Indies, 533 language at the Cape, 281 Reformed Church at do., 291, 389, 581 ; South Africa, 597-599 Republics, the, their relations with the Cape, 29S Dwellings, workmen's, condition of in Montreal and Toronto, 525 East London, 292, 320, 339 Ecclesiastical organisations and politics,39S Eehuca, 128, 175 Economist, The, 541 Economists, Radical, and Indian defence, 351 Edinburgh, 573, 034 Edinburgh Review and Central Africa, 451 Education — British North America, 563 ; the Dominion, ih. ; Ontario, 564 ; extra- ordinary liberality of the Ontario system, ih. ; Quebec (province), 565 ; Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, 566; New Brunswick, ih. ; Manitoba, ih. ; British Columbia, 567 ; North - West Territories, ih. ; Canadian Universities, ih. ; Australasia, ib. ; New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, 56S ; Australian systems, resemblances and differences of, 569 ; schools, free, ih. ; Tasmania, ih. ; education in the colonies sacritlees made for, 570 ; compulsion, ih. ; tlie religious dilficulty, ih. ; — in Victoria, 571 ; Roman Catholics in Australia, 572 ; higher instruction, ih. ; universities, Australasian, 573 ; technical education, ib. ; newspaper education, 574 ; Australian educational peculiai'ities, ib, ; colonial education, future of, ib. ; public school system, permanence of tlie, 575 ; secular system, proposals of opponents of the, 576 ; the reply, ih. ; the Cape, 577 ; Natal, 579 ; Crown Colonies, ih. ; Trinidad, ib. ; other West- India and Atlantic islands, 580 ; con- clusions, general, ib. Act, Victoria, 571, 575 Boards, New Zealand, 504, 574 Edward, H.R.H. The Prince, see Eent, Duke of Edwards, Mr., his report to Foreign Office on American State liquor systems, 60S Edwards, Major-Geueral, of Hong-Kong, and the "partially paid "militia system' 159 ; colonial defences, 194 : his report to the War Office on the colonial forces and defence, 649 ; defence of Tasmania, 650 ; 686 Egypt, tobacco revenue of, 401; our special interest in, 449 ; the result of our occupation, ih. ; pledges as to nature of occupation, ib. ; present military posi- tion, QGQ ; referred to, 399, 452, 454, 651, 658 Egyptian army, our organisation of the, 683 Eight-hour day in Australia, 509 ; Aus- tralasia and Victoria, 520; Canada, 521; results of, in Australia, ib. ; refeixed to, 149, 222, 253, 519 INDEX 713 Eight-hour Bills, 520 Elections, colonial, 603 Elective system, Indian local, 410, 411 Electoral Act, Newfoundland, 12 • New Zealand, 250 Victoria, 130 Eliaa, Colonel, 158 " Elijah," at the Melbourne Centennial Exliibition, 153 Elizabeth, Queen, 81, 417 Emancipation, 465 Emigrants' Information Office, London, circulars of, on cost of living, 523 Emigration, a curiosity of, 17 ; Sir A. Gait on, ib. ; feeling against, among English workraen, 18, 538 ; the Canadian Government and French, 30 ; grant for, from Church surplus by Irish Govern- ment, 639 ; see also 16, lS-20, 71, and immigration Emperors' League, the Three, 353 Emu Bay, 240 Encumbered Estates Court and the West Indies, 465 Endowment, concurrent, 598, 602, 603 England, 13, 22, 24, 25, 41, 68, 65-67, 70, 77, 84, 85, 95, 122, 135, 155, 156, 164, 165, 172, 184, 186-189, 199, 203, 209, 210, 212, 219-223, 226, 234, 243, 255, 259, 273, 293, 306, 319, 324, 335, 340, et passim England and Rxissia in Central Asia, 387 England, Church of, and legislation in the House of Commons, 379 English Channel, 651, 653, 655, 661, 681 Factory Acts, 520 language, the use of, in the Cape, 2S4 Scotch, and Irish, in New Zealand, 254 Truck Acts, 527 workmen and emigration, 17, 18 Episcopal Methodists (Canada), 582 Episcopalian Synods and the Jesuits' Estates Bill, 584 Erie, Lake, 23 Escombe, Mr., 314 Esquiraalt, 81-85 ; and naval operations in the North Pacific, 668 ; armament, ib. Established Church, absence of, and mul- tiplication of sects, 592 Estates, large, effect of breaking up, 515 Euphrates, the, 353, 384 Europe, projects for short routes to, from Canada, discussed and explained, 21-24; referred to, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 57, 367, 384, 395, 397, 398, 401, 403, 409, 419, 443, 465, 491, 495, 498, 500, 507, 524, 525, 649, 550, 555, 567, 580, 635, 666, 669 Central, 462, 655 Crown Colonies in, 445 . North-West, 447 Eves, Mr. Washington, on the West Indies, 465 ; and Dominica, 472 Expenditure, Indian civil, 394 war, 687, 688 Expropriation of owners in New South Wales, 511 Fabre, Archbishop, 49, Factory Acts and inspection, 520, 527 legislation, superiority of the colonies as to, 527 Falkland Islands, 464 ; trading ships and cruisers, 668 Pamagustn, liarbour of, 6Q6 Farjeon, Mr., 265 Farmers' Protection Association, 285 Farrah, 867 Fawcett, Professor, and Indian competi- tion in the Civil Service, 431 ; and old Radicalism, 509 ; 526 Federal Council Act, the, 265, 272 of Australasia, Draft Bill to con- stitute the, 264 ; objections of New Zea- landers to the, 265 ; its present position, 268 ; working, 270 ; Chambers of Com- merce and the, 271 ; referred to, 241, 247, 458, 476, 505, 516, 634, 642, 695 Federalism, what it avoids, 65; victories of the principle of, 57 ; 695 Federation, Australasian and imperial, 650 Australian, 263 ; fuller, 268 Church, 689 financial, 145, 630 imperial, Australian opinion of, 273 ; and the tariff question, 633 ; essays on, 635 ; colonial opinion, 636 ; recent change, ib.; Australia, 636-639; Lord Carrington, 637 ; Queensland and New South Wales, 638 ; conference, 639 ; Sir Julius Vogel, ib.; Canadian view, 639, 640; French Canadians, 640; New Zea- land, ib.; Western Australia debate, 641, 642 ; Victoria, 642 ; the Cape, 643 ; Mr. Hofmeyr, ■£&. imperial and local, various opinions on, 69 ; change produced by, in Canada, 63 ; see also 58, 59, 63, 138 ; 145, 146, 198, 196, 206, 223, 258, 263, 264, 268, 631 military, 686 Indian provincial, 411, 412; West In- dian, 476 local, 633, 646 of Protestant Churches, 595 permissive, 636 trade, 619 West Indian, difficulties of, not in- superable, 476 ; and Canada, 477 Federations and unions, West Indian, nature of their government, 475 Field artillery, 678, 680 Field newspaper, 155 Fiji, planters of, and annexation to Vic- toria, 247 ; our system of government of, 459 ; treatment of the natives contrasted with that by the French in New Cale- donia, ib.; a favoured land, ib.; results of annexation, 460; once the Alsatia of the Pacific, ib.; local district institutions of, 476 ; sale of liquor, 620 ; harbours, 668; referred to, 258, 261, 263, 264, 272, 273, 366, 445, 456, 460, 462 Fildes's "The Widower," 185 Finance, colonial, experiments in, their special interest for ourselves, 516 Indian, 393 Financial Districts Bill (Queensland), 213 Fineh-Hatton, Mr., his Advarice AustTulia, 215, 617 Finland, 405 Fisheries, Newfoundland, 10 sgg., 96 Fleet and the colonies, 671 Florida, 103 714 INDEX Food supply in time of war, 672 Football in the colonies, 489 Ford, Sir Clare, 14 Foreigners, indigent, 536 Foreign Office, 100, 296, 297, 450, 608 Foresters, Ancient Order of, 68, 106, 540, 591 and Oddfellows, 11 Forrest, Mr., 246 Forster, the late Mr, "W. E., and colonial representation, 634 ; referred to, 301, 451, 627, 628 Fort Churchill, 23 Garry, 77 Fortification, 651, 652 of dockyards and commercial ports, 681, 682 Fortifications, Indian, 361 Forts, 656 Fox, Sir W., 252 France and India, 350 ; the Congo State, 457 ; colonial representatives, 481 ; in the West Indian Islands, 668 ; in 1E70, and her military superiority, 670; re- ferred to, 1, 7-15, 31, 49, 52, 79, 81, 99, 122, 133, 146, 197, 232, 235, 259-261, 266, 298, 309. 319, 361, 396, 398-400, 404, 414, 443, 444, 449, 454-456, 45S, 459, 464, 465, 473, 474, 492, 498, 505, 515, 534, 549, 560, 635, 651, 654, 658, 660, 661, 676, 680, 685, 697 Army Corps of, and equipment, 667 '* I&le of," British planters in, and payment of their labourers, 467, 473 ; and see Mauritius France, L'erpansion coloniale de la, 669 France Nouvelle, La, 697 Franchise, woman, 517 ; municipal and school board, women ratepayers in the colonies and the, ib. Fraser River, 81, 85 Frechette, M., author of "Le Drapeau Anglais," 75 Frederick the Great, 680 Fredericton, 27, 74 Free Church of Scotland, 598 Gardeners, 540 Libraries, English, 600 Freeman, Professor, 102 Freemasonry, 541 Free State, see Orange Free State Free thought, 596 trade, see 141, 142, 167, 182, 238, 294, 547-552, 558-561, 632 intercolonial, 142, 168 French, the, in Ontario, 33 ; are becoming Anglicised, ih. ; population in Montreal, 39 ; in Quebec, 40 ; transportation to New Caledonia, 261 ; native population of their "Indian" and West Indian colonies, and political power, 415; settle- ments in neighbourhood of Calcutta and Madras, 460; democratic institutions in Martinique and Guadeloupe, efl'ect of, 470; colonies, representative institutions in, 471 ; do. and privileges to French trade, 632 ; success of, in Martinique and Guadeloupe, ib. ; population and self- government in Mauritius, 473 ; at Diego Suarez, 474 ; architecture, 498 ; on the Mediten-anean, 657; opinion on our posi- tion in different parts of the world, 669 ; and coast defence, 679 ; system as to army staff, 685 ; war expenditure, 687, 688 ; referred to, 392, 446, 447, 449, 455. bounty system a hardship, 14 Canadian books, 74 ; labour, 548 ; Roman Catholics, 596 Canadians, Tocqueville on thei r growth in Quebec, 29 ; increase of, in Canada, 30 ; and Dutch Afrikanders, ib. ; difference between the Boers and, 31 ; and dancing, ib. ; their attitude towards France, ib. ; attempt of private, to intro- duce French immigrants into Ontario, 34; in the United States, their occupa- tions, character, and course of immigra- tion, ib. ; incoming of, into New England, how checked, 35 ; their future and past, 35, 36 ; reason for their attachment to the Crown, 36 ; feeling of, as to federa- tion, 63, 640 " concession " at Shanghai, 480 Evangelicals, 604 Government, 12, 15, 259 Guiana, blacks of, 414, 472 • Huguenots in the Cape, 281 India, Hindoos and Mohammedans of, and votes in France, C45 ; reservists of the army of, and the mobilisation scheme, 669 Roman Catholics, 604 Shore, the, 10, 12 sqq. West Indies, prosperity, and our action as to the political future of West Indian negroes and coloured people, 472 Frere, Sir Bavtle, 306 Freycinet, M. de, 164 Friendly societies in the colonies, 539; in South Africa and Cape Town, 540 Frontier, Indian, 361-363 Fronde, Mr., on the West Indies, 465; 635 Fruit, growth of, and negro peasant pro- prietors, 467 Fuel, smokeless, 673 Fundy, Bay of, 24 Future relations, Part vii. passim Fysh, Mr., Prime Minister of Tasmania, 239 Gaffahel, M., anther of Les Colonies fran^aises, quoted, 262; do., on Mada- gascar, 474 Gagnon, Ernest, 74 Gait, Sir A., on colonisation, 17; emigi'a- tion,i&. ; his emigration scheme, 18; and Canadian goods, 64 Gama, Vasco da, 453 Gambia, development of the, 455 ; school system, 579 ; 659 Ganges, the, 436 Garvan, Mr., 179 Gasp6, French at, 28 Gastown, 82 Geelong, 497, 573 Geflfcken, Dr., and Great Britain in time of war, 690 General Staff, a, and its duties, 684, 686 ; position of the Chief, 684 ; not to imitate slavishly the Prussian system, ib. ; errors to be avoided, 685 ; what it should be, ib. ; the colonies and a, 686 ; coaling INDEX 715 stations and a, ib. ; responsibility, the fixing of, 687 : referred to, 689, 692 General Staff, French, 685 — ■ the Great, at Berlin, 684 ; apecial qualities of its officials, 685 Geok-Tepe, 389 George, Mr. H., and land-tax, 512; nationalisation of land, 513, 527 ; referred to, 101, 169, 207, 249 IV, 696 Georgia, 103 Gennan Empire, 57, 161, 353, 444, 495, 6S0 Government, 332, 336 ; and troops for Africa, 452 ; their quarter of New Guinea, 457; East African sphere of influence, ib. ; and Damaraland, ib. German islands, right to trade in, 458 ; population in the colonies, and United States, 492; war expenditure, 687; colonists and the Anglo-Saxon race, 697 Germans, the, in Canada, 66 ; South Australia, 235 ; at the Cape, 292 ; and Walfisch Bay, 300 ; and Zululand, 321 ; the Niger Company, 458 ; beer-drinking, 620 ; prohibitory law in Iowa, 621 ; and the works of Metz and Strasburg, 652 ; coast defence, 679 ; referred to, 447, 452, 462 Germany, and India, 350 ; territory lost by British to, on east coast of Africa, 454 ; and Man cli ester, dislike of Portugal, 456 ; working out problems of war in, 684 ; referred to, 1, 4, 62, 79, 197, 223, 235, 250, 259-261, 271, 280, 300, 332, 333, 335, 336, 350, 353, 398, 399, 430, 443, 449, 454, 455, 458, 459, 462-464, 509, 516, 542, 620, 636, 692, 697 Army Corps of, and equipment, 667 Emperor of, 383 Ultramontane party of, 53 Ghazni, 356, 358, 362, 363 Ghose, Mr., 645 Gibbons, Cardinal, 590 Gibi-altar and modern artillery, 658 ; bom- bardment of, from sea and land, 658, 659 ; referred to, 445, 464, 657, 660, 667, 670 Gilbert, SirH., 7 Gilgit, 358, 364, 366, 388 Gillies, Mr. D., Prime Minister of Victoria, his character, power, and policy, 132 ; his personal appearance, 206 ; and the Chinese, 532 ; referred to, 130, 183, 136, 175, 227,271, 502, 550 Gillies-Deakin party in Victoria, their pro- gramme, 140 Gippsland, province of, 127, 144, 185, 198, 220 Giriskh, 361 Gisborne, Mr., and Protection, 557 Gladstone, Mr., and Bechuanaland, 328; his second administration, and Northern Afghanistan, 352; Afghan policy, 356; and the Cameroons, Zanzibar, and New Guinea, 446 ; the occupation of Egypt, 449 ; offers of territory, 462 ; charter to North Borneo Company and annexation of Fiji, ib. ; the divisions of the elector- ate, 503 ; Government life insurance, 542 ; referred to, 45, 225, 226, 310, 321, 339. 379, 447, 460, 644 Glasgow, 21, 497, 550, 573 Goa, 37 Gold, 26 Coast, development of, 455 ; system of education, 579 Goltz, Pasha, von der, 384 Gomul pass, 359, 362, 363, 365, 368, 370 Good Shepherd Reformatory, 49 Goorkha regiments, dash of, 372 Goorkhas, 870, 378, 388, 389 Gordon, A. Lindsay, 154, 165, 236, 500 General, and Zebehr Pasha, 451 ; and the Chinese, 683 Sir A., 631 Gorst, Sir J., 462 ; and the Indian liquor excise, 408; the concert of executives, 644 Goschen, Mr., 137, 147 ; and laisserfaire in Australia, 607 ; succession duty in Eng- land, 514 Goulburn, 103 Eiver, 126 Graduated taxation, 614, 515 ; and see Succession Grafton, 588 Grahamstown, 302, 305 ; Church disputes at, 600 ; boys' school, ib. Grand Trunk Railway, 27, 68 Granville, 82 The Earl, and American proposals as to duty on West Indian sugar, 296 ; his despatch on the "most-favoured- nation ' clauses, 297 ; 548 Great Britain, land defence, 672 ; advan- tages possessed by, 673 ; referred to, 7, 12, 24, 25, 42, 62, 64, 75, 83, 90, 94, 95, 9(i, 107, 118, 136, 156, 158, 174, 187, 209, 220, 223, 262, 274, 281,296, 323, etpassim Great and Greater Britain, Defence of, 676 Great Circle route, 21 Powers, the, and Greece, 654 Western Railway, England, 68 " Greater Britain," tbe term, 101 colonial, democracy of, 486 ; absence in, of jealousy, or reluctance to pay for good service, 487 ; English cliar- acter of its colonial democracy, 492 ; what its abandonment involves, 653 ; referred to, 1, 600, 616, 623, 670, 671 Greater Britain, political change in India since publication of, in 1868, 404 ; and the value of the Indian Council, 407; parliamentary institutions in India, 413 ; and American and Australian relations, 460 : and the swelling of Australian cities, 496 ; and colonial protection, 547 ; referred to, 127, 162, 272, 421, 436, 460, 516 Greater Britain, The Schools of, 664 Greater England, 102 Greece, and the Great Powers, 664 ; referred to, 258, 267, 403 Grenada, Assembly of, passes a Bill for its own extinction, 471 476 ; export duties of, 468 ; powers of parochial boards, 475; school system, 580 Gresham, Mr., 117; and land nationalisa- tion, 512 Gresswell, Mr., and'financial union, 630 Grey, SirG., 219, 258, 610, 678 The Earl, and native states, 342; referred to, 504, 627, 643 716 INDEX Griesbach, Captain, and the Ameer of Afghanistan, 8S1 Griffin, Sir L. and the Ameer of Afghan- istan, 357 ; rulers of Indian native states, 417 ; European settlers in Kash- mir, ih.; 433 Griffith, Sir S. (Queensland), 200, 201, 204 ; defeat, 201 ; nationality, 206 ; political views, ib. ; Financial Districts Bill, 213 ; his statement of the case of the Demo- cratic Labour Party, 217 ; conclusion thereon, ib. ; his hope as to sugar trade inonopoly, 21S ; and distribution of wealth, 508 ; referred to, 204, 205, 207, 210, 211, 249, 270, 271, 502, 520, 628, 633, 046 Griqualand, East, 319 West, 280, 308, 339 " Grits," or Ontario Liberals, 53, 54 Guadeloupe, 443 ; blacks of, 414 ; manhood suffi-age in, 471 Guardafui, 452 Guatemala, 257 Guibord, Mr., excommunicated, 41 Guinea, 453 Gulf of, 446, 451 New, 440 ; quarrel between Colonial Office and Australians as to annexation, 462 Guns, 656, 662, 663-665 Gunton, Mr. G., and legal regulation of adult labour, 520, 521 Gwadur, 367 Haden, Mr. Seymour, 294, 314 Haggard, Mr. Rider, 303 Hale, Colouel Lonsdale, and coast defence by Continental powers, 679 ; 680 Haliburton, 73 Halifax, 25; its appearance, ib.] the win- ter port of tlie Dominion, 26, 667 ; asylum, 546; referred to, 23, 27, 38, 68, 83, 86, 95, 525 Hamburg, 460 Hamilton, tlie corporation and the poor, 546 : referred to, 67, 69, 584 Lord G., and the steam coal of the Empire, 674 Sir R., 219, 241 Harbour defence, 682 Harrismith, 295, 298, 820, 328, 834, 536 HaiTison, Sir H. Leland, and support of Congress ideas, 438 Hartington, The Marquis of, and the Simla Army Commission, 337 Hartmann, Eduard von, on our defence and military reorganisation, 690 Havana, 1, 37 ; cigars, 401 Hawaii, 296 ; Amerieanisation of, and the future of the Pacific, 460 Hawlce Bay, 248 Hayter, Mr., and development of land sys- tem in Australian colonies, 511 Hazaras, the, 385 Hearn, Dr., 154, 188 Heligoland, 445, 464 ; children of, taught English and German, 480 — ^ system of education, 679 Helmund, the, 353, 361, 381, 385, 388 Henderson, Captain, and rapid mobilisation of Continental armies, 651, 679 Henner's " La Source," 75 Henry IV, 24 Herat, the possibility of attacking the Russians at, 384 ; referred to, 352, 353- 355, 357, 353-360, 866-368, 379-382, 384, 385, 390, 400 Herbert, Sir Robert, his opinion as to col- onisation, 18 Heresy hunting, 591 Heretic, a, 593 Herschel, Sir J., Astronomer-Royal, and education in the Cape, 578 Hicks disaster, 449 High Church movement, 587 Higinbotham, Mr., Chief- Justice of Vic- toria, his history, and views on the Gov- ernorsliip question, 134 ; referred to, 117 136, 174, 206, 208, 486, 512 Himalaya, the, 398, 418, 435 Hindoo education, 579 Hindoos, the, and anti-Christian agitation, 601 ; of British India and votes in Eng- land, 645 ; French India and votes in France, ib.; referred to, 414, 423, 444, 452, 464 Hindostan, its nobles and princes in rela- tion to good government, 395 ; an Oriental scholar on our position in, 418 ; demo- cratic experiments, 429; native landlords in, 444 ; modification of system of gov- ernment, 694 ; referred to, 395, 403-405, 408, 417, 418, 428, 431, 443, 536, 665, 695 ; and see India Hindu Kush, 352, 368, 385, 400 Hoar, Senator, 95 Hobart, Sunday observance, 595 ; referred to, 153, 205, 237, 271, 272, 615 Hofmeyr, Mr., leader of Dutch party at the Cape, 280 ; and a Dutch African Re- public, 327 ; his scheme for a customs union, 631, 632 ; and Imperial Federation, 643 ; referred to, 136, 283, 285, 287, 337, 502, 599, 635 Hogg, General, 449 Hog's Back, the, 680 Holland, 81, 284, 292, 443, 444, 598, 676 Holyhead, 22 Holy Land, 291 Home defence, proposed, by the navy, 653, 654 food supply, 674, 675 Rule for Ireland, 634, 635, 645 Honduras, British, 443, 445 ; logwood and mahogany in, 467 ; Crown lands, 468 Hong-Kong, education, 579 ; political, commercial, and strategical importance, 664 ; guns, ih. ; harbour and defences, ib. ; the Spithead of the East, ib. ; re- cruiting, 665 ; safety, ib. ; referred to 445, 464, 474, 4S0, 551,]57S, 664, 082, 683, 686 " Hoodlums " of United States, 488 Hopetoun, The Earl of, 219 Home, Mr. Van, 491 Hosmer, Professor, 101 Hospital, Roman Catholic denominational, in Sydney, 644 Hospitals, 644 and Charitable Institutions Act (New Zealand) 18S5, 543 Hotham, Sir C, second Governor of Vic- toria and the Chinese in Australia, 528 INDEX 717 Hottentots, 279, 535 Hours of labour, 519 House of Commons, interference by, in Indian government, 407 ; and chartered companies, 451 ; Portuguese claims on the Congo, 456 ; debate in, on charter to Nortli Borneo Company, 462; the liquor policy of the Indian Government, 622 ; colonial representatives, 627 ; alliance with the Central Powers, 655 ; referred to, 379, 403, 407-409, 415 of Lords, and colonial representatives, 627 rent, 523 -tax of Lnited States, 515 ; in Paris, ib. Houssas, the, 372 Hova Government and the Patriraonio Treaty, 473 Hiibner, Baron von, quoted, 386 ; on our rule in India, 418, 420 ; and our educa- tion system in India, 423 Hudson Bay, 23, 79 Company, 20, 57, 77, 78, 80, 450, 457 Scheme, 22 Huguenot, a, 593 Humanitarian, a, 593 Hungary, 77 Hunt, Alfred. P.W.C.S., 185 Hunter, Sir W., and textile manufacture in India, 397 ; on the position of women in India, 428 ; his attitude towards the Congress, 429 ; on the great transition, 431 ; referred to, 402, 432, 433 Hutton, Mr., and opposition to the Cai)e Registration Bill, 290 ; and the Boers of South Africa, i5. Hyderabad memorandum of 1886, quoted, 386 contingent cavalry and artillery, 371, 374, 376 Iceland, 77, 676 Icelanders, 77 Iconoclast, an, 593 Idaho, 21, 96 "I. D. Bs.," 527 Ilbert Bill, the, and concessions to natives in India, 425 Hi province, 392 Illinois, 19 Imbecile Passengers Acts, 250 Immigrants, 611, 538 ; undesirable, 532 Immigration, coolie, 465, 469 ; pauper, 531 ; convict, ib. ; Chinese, 528, 530, 533, 536, 555 ; white, 536 ; coloured, ib. ; assisted, 537 ; State, ib. ; referred to, 18, 34, 70-72, 78, 86, 87, 166, 192, 220, 250, 291, 469, 535, 539, and see Emigration Act 1886 (Canada), 71 Chinese, Commission of Inquiry into, and its findings, 86 Imperial defence, see Defence, Imperial Imperial Federation, 634 Imperial Federation League and colonial legislation, 516; the moderate pro- gramme, 628 ; caution, general recog- nition of the need for, 634 ; varieties of opinion, ib ; Home Rule, ib. ; in Vic- toria, New South Wales, and Queensland, 635 ; referred to, 193, 496, 627, 628, 630, 637, 638, 640 " Imperialists," 635 Impdt progressif in France, 515 Income-tAx, progressive, 514 Indian, 395 Independents, South Africa, 596; and see Congregationalists India, effects of loss of, 849, 350 ; defence, see Defence, Indian ; result of our regimen in, 394 ; Free Trade and the factory system in, 395 ; railroads, 396 ; cultivable waste, 398 ; irrigation works in, prejudice against, ib. ; fresh taxation in, English opinion on, 399 ; tendency of our Government in, 404; abolition of cotton duties in, native opinion on, 407 ; under the Marquis of Dufferin, article on, 418 ; its prosperity under our rule, 419 ; British-born subjects in, 424 ; the National Congress and the declarations of 1833, 1835, and 1S5S, 427 ; tlie other view, ib. ; anti-Congress pamphlet, 428 ; attitude of Anglo-Indians, 429 ; futxure of Burmese provinces of, 461 ; export of tea from, to United Kingdom, 478 ; education, 579 ; progress of Christianity, 601 ; Churches and missionary societies, work of, ib. ; State aid to Church of England, ib. ; Christian missions, ib. ; Salvation Army, ib. ; liquor question, 622 ; Protection against, 633 ; federation and, 637 ; defence, 650 ; troops, 665 ; recruiting, ib. ; nature of the recruits from the North - West frontier, ib. ; breechloaders, ib. ; repairs to heavy guns, 667 : manufacture of munitions of war, 683 ; share in defence, 691 ; military and financial difficulties, 694 ; develop- ment of British power, 695 ; British money invested in, 696 ; referred to. Part iv. jjcwsim ; 1, 13, 62, 212, 220, 221, 234, 241, 243, 289, 298, 441-444, 446, 449, 452, 460, 461, 468, 474 479, 555, 580, 620, 629, 638, 644, 655, 658, 661, 663, 665, 671, 672, 683, 686, 697, and see Hindostanand British India Central, 417 Company, the East, 282, 394, 457, 622 Council of, 394, 402 " Democracy not suited to," 429 French, Hindoos of, 414 language of natives of, 472 . Further, 350 Governor-General's Council of, 402 Horse, the Central, 374 India in 18S7, 437 India, North-West, 372, 375, 378, 406, 411, 412, 421 Office and Indian Government, difTer- ence of opinion between the, 386 ; opposed to a tobacco rigie, 400 ; referred to, 375, 378, 399, 400, 411, 421, 449 Provincial Governments of, 404 Southern Presidencies of, 412 Southern, 372 India, the Voice of, and Indian problems, 432 India, Times of, on the native army, 370 Indiana, 19 718 INDEX tndian fortifications, 361 ; transport, 362, 369; frontier policy, 363, 365; railway- bridges, 363 ; mobilisation proposals, 374 ; cavalry, ift.; feudatory chiefs, rights and privileges of, 388 ; trade, 396 ; art work, 397 ; tobacco and the revenue, 400 ; cigars, 401 ; problems, difficulty in stating opinion upon, 403 ; silver-plate tax, 408; cotton duties, repeal of, ib.; native opinion, difficulty of trusting, 409 ; import duties, abolition of, 422 ; gold and silver plate duties, ib.; parade, description, of, 435 ; — service at a Chris- tian mission church, 436; scenery and climate, diversity of, ib.; coolies in Cey- lon, 479— in Natal, 529 Army, and the latest weapons, 863 ; whence it should be recruited, 372 ; com- manding officers, 375 ; present and future dilficulties, 379 ; referred to, 375, 376, 379, 380 ; and see Defence, Indian, passim corps, first and second, 369 Civil Service and the Congress, 431 ; referred to, 394, 419, 424, 428, 433 Commander-in-chief, and the Presi- dency system, 376 ; referred to, 369, 376, 377, 387, 38S, 390, 412, 418, 435 Council and the Presidency system, 378 ; and the House of Commons, 407, 408 Covenanted Civil Service, 432, 433 Defence, see Defence, Indian Committee, 386 Government and the Presidency system, 377 ; the liquor laws, 622 ; re- ferred to, 302-364, 374, 377-378, 380, 385, 386, 394, 396, 398, 400, 403, 407, 408, 410, 417, 419-421 Mobilisation Committee, their general conclusions, 380, 381 ; and the inviola- bility of Afghanistan, 382 Mohammedans, 405, 430 Mutiny, 427 National Congress and want of unity in India, 404 ; and its critics, 428 ; anti- Congress pamphlet, ib. ; attitude towards the, of Sir W. Hunter and others, 429; Mussulman opposition, 430 ; its policy and demands, ib.; language used at, ib.; Congress movement natural, 432 ; small- ness of the difference upon the question, 433 ; spirit in whicli the movement should be met, 434; the liquor system, 623 ; referred to, 394, 402, 403, 404, 406, 407, 409, 410, 426-430 native army, its value as against the Russians, 370, 371 Congress and parliamentary in- stitutions, 413 ■ police, their occasional corrup- tion a financial question, 393 States, armies of, 386 ; defence, 387 ; arms, 388 ; increased revenue from the, 400 Ocean, 452, 474, 661, 662 officers, and our action if Russia is permitted to advance to Herat, 382, 383 Iiuiian Polity, 411 Indian Provincial Governments, 404 Viceroy, 364, 876, 386, 387, 407, 409, 412, 418, 423 Indians and the franchise in Natal, 311 of North America, 464 Indies, Dutch, 401 Indo-China, 350 Indore, 387 Indus, the, 360, 361, 363, 366, 368, 396, 436 Industries, native, protection of, see Pro- tection of native industi-ies Inglis, Mr., 17S Initiative, the, 507 Institutions, Indian political representa- tive, 413 ; colonial representative, 470 ; French, 471 Instruction, higher, 572 Insurance, life, 541 ; general State, 542 Intelligence Department, army, and the duties of aGenei'al Staff, 685; its position in the British Aj-iny, ih.\ and mobilisa- tion, 687 naval, 6S6 Intemperate persons and liquor - sellers, 607-610, 612, 614 Invasion, 667-669 ; Sir J. Colomb on, 679 Invercargill, 257, 258 " Investment," absolute, 674 ; " tempor- ary," 675 Iowa, 19; prohibition, 621 Ireland, federation, 635 ; referred to, 10, 47, 77, 199, 203, 223, 227, 236, 237, 364, 419, 454 Irish problem, the, in Victoria, 129 and the liquor trade, 620 Koman Catholics and grants for de- nominational schools in Victoria, 130 Irrigation, see Victoria (Australia), and New South Wales Ismail Pasha, 452 Israelites, 291 Italy, education of apprentice stokers, 674 ; referred to, 81, 107, 161, 254, 257, 396, 406, 448, 492, 502, 635, 653, 655, 667, 679 Jacob, General, quoted, 390 Jacques Cartier of St. Malo, and the pos- session of Gasp6, 29, 47 Jamaica, proposals for union between, and Canada, how received there, 100; exports from, 467 ; fruit trade, ib.; holdings, ib.: crop-time, ib.; export duties, 468; taxa- tion, ib.; wealthiest inhabitant of, 470, powers of parochial boards in, 475 ; and local confederation, ib.; education, 580 State aid to Churches, 602 ; defences, barbonr, and dockyard, 668 ; referred to 1, 232, 398, 476 James I. of England, 25 Japan, 12, 21, 254, 257, 296, 396 Japanese, the, 392 Java and the Dutch, 366; referred to 1 305, 401, 443, 4S1 Jelalabad, 358, 366, 882 Jenkins, Mr. E., 635 Jennings, Sir P., 166, 180 Jervois, Sir W., 219, 249 Jesuits' Estates Bill, 30, 50, 54, 581, 5S4 Jesuits, Lower Canadian, 52 the, and education in South Africa 600 ' Jews, Polish, 77 Johannesburg, wages of masons and car- INDEX 719 penters at, 312 ; abnormal condition of, 523 ; referred to, 2S1, 323, 825, 499 Johore, 457, 461 Jones, Ml'. A. G., 45, 93 Joubert, General Piet, 282, 325, 329 Journalism, colonial, 49S Jumma Musjid, tUe, 410 Kabul, 355, 356, 358-360, 385, 386, 391 Kafir education, 579 Kafirs, the, and truck, 527 ; referred to, 319, 536, 618 KaCfraria, 292, 308, 310 Kafristan, 366 Kaiser Willielm Land, 458 Kalabagh, 363 Kalahari protectorate, the, 309 Kanakas, the, 214. 215, 263 Kandahar, occupation of, dangerous to our policv, 331 ; referred to, 356, 359, 361, 362, 367-369, 379, 381, 382, 385 Kansas, prohibition, 608, 609 Karachi, 362, 366, 665 Karen, the, 370 Karroo, the South African, SO, 304 Kashmir, 358, 360, 366, 384, 387, 388, 417, 436, 437 Maharajah of, 388, 417 Kearney constitution in California, 485 Keats, ISS Kei river, 662 Kendall. Mr H., 188, 500 Kenia, Mount, 450 Kent, H.R.H. the Duke of, 30 Kentucky, Bishop of, quoted, 105 Kennadec Islands, 442 Khamaland, 454 Khaina's country, 338, 340, 342, 345 Khan Mahomet Kot, 370 Khartoum, 452 Khojak, the, 361, 435 Khyber line of defence, 362 ; referred to, 360-362, 365-367, 373, 381, 384, 418 Rifles, 371 " Kiezers, The College of," 470 Kilimandjaro, 450 Kimberley, 504 ; abnormal condition of, 523 ; milling population of, and canteens, 619 The Earl of, 281 ; and the anti-Dutch party, 283 : and responsible government in Natal, 313 ; the Army Commission, 377 ; 379 ; his proposed committee on Indian grievances, 422 ; and the Simla inquiry. 423 King George's Sound, importance of its de- fence, 246 ; referred to, 159, 194, 650, 664, 669 Kingsley, Canon, 579; on the religious con- dition of Trinidad, 602 Kingston, Mr., late Attorney-General of South Australia, described, 227 ; on the second branch of the legislature, 505 ; referred to, 227, 270 Sir G., 232 (Ontario), 41, 76 Kipling, Mr., 402 Kintore, The Earl of, 219, 228 Kirk, Sir J., 452 Knightsbridge, 115 Knights of Labour, 67-68, 87 Knutsford, Lord, his choice of Governors, 218 ; and imperial unity, 272 ; answer as to status of British subjects taking the oath of allegiance, 823 ; and colonial union, 638 ; referred to, 341, 532 Kohat, 360, 365, 366, 373 Konigsberg, 353 Koran, the, 423 Kruger, President, curiosity of drafting of hie *' Reform Bill," 322 ; his policy and the oath of allegiance to tlie Transvaal, 323 ; the Dutch language and, 823, 324 ; his popularity and jealousy of the Eng- lish, 324 ; power and Conservatism, 325 ; dread of the increase of the Englisli diggers, 325, 326; the habit of selling monopolies, 826 ; choice between revo- lution and reform, ib.; perception as to South African unity, 327 ; dream of a Dutch African Republic, ib.; and the Transvaal Volksroad, 597 ; referred to, 287, 288, 298, 299, 332, 337, 345 Kuram, 363 ; civil and miliiiary officers at, ib. river, 358 Labour, cheap, legislation against, 534 colonial — Unions in the colonies, power of, 519 ; hours of labour in Australia, ib. ; eight - houi- day, efieut of, in Australia, 520~in Canada, 521 ; arbitration, ib. ; labour in Australia, American opinion on position of, 522 ; wages, ib. ; house rent, 523 ; board, 524 ; rents in Canada, ib. ; high wages, per- manence of, in the colonies, 525 ; co- operation, 526 ; factory inspection and sweating, 527 ; truck, ib. ; Cliinese, 528, 529 — their occupations, 529 — nature of Australian and Canadian feeling against them, 529, 530 — treaties, 530 ; immigra- tion, convict, 531 ; immigrants, undesir- able, colonial action against, 532 ; immigration, Chinese, examples of strength of colonial feeling on, 533 — Australian opinion on, not connected with protection, 534 ; eff"ect upon the Chinese Government, ib, ; legislation, anti- foreign, ib. ; races, English and native, 635 ; agitation, anti-Indian, in South Africa, 5li6 ; foreigners, indigent, lb. ; immigration, assisted, 537; the unemployed, ib. ; immigration, State — colonisation schemes, 538, 539 pauper, 560 traffic in Queensland, 215 Labrador, its population, products, and climate, 10 ; referred to. 7, 22, 24, 257 Labuan, 443, 445, 461, 664, 683 Laccadives, 442 Lagos, development of, 445, 457 ; school system, 579 Laliore, 359, 368 Laisser /aire in Australia, 507 Lalla Musa, 36S Lamb on colonial poets, 223 Lambert, Sir John, 503 Lambeth Conference, 12 proposals for Christian unity, 582 Lancashire, 397, 398, 422, 549 Land forces, 680 ; no mobile land force in England, 681 720 INDEX Land nationalisation, 509, 510 Befomi League, Victoria, 117 reformers of Europe, and transfer of land in the colonies, 490 tax of Victoria, 513 — . and Mr. H. George, 512 Indian, 394 Lands, colonial, State ownership of, con- tradictory opinions as to its financial advantages, 512 Lanessan, M. de, his L'exparision coloniale de la France referred to, 262 ; and Indian immigration, 4(39 ; French encourage- ment of coloured people in the West Indies, 472 ; quoted, on French posses- sions in Madagascar, 474 ; the position of France in " Indo-Uliina," ib. ; conquest of Mauritius for France, 663 ; on the movements of war fleets, 669, 670 ; the French in New Caledonia, 669 ; Bapa, 670 ; attack upon Australia, 691 Langevin, Sir Hector, 40, 45 ; and Imperial Federation, 640 Lansdowne, The Marquis of, 44 Lanyon, Sir Owen, and the Boers, 317 "Larrikin," the term, 192 '* Larrikins," Australian, 488 Lascars, 519, 533 Launceston (Tasmania), 615 and Western Railway, 240 Laurier, Mr., and Imperial Federation, 640 ; refeiTed to, 32, 40, 45, 55, 93 Laval University, 50, 567 Lawrence, Lord, 355 ; and the loyalty of the Indian native army, 425 Laws, liquor, see Liquor Laws prohibitory, weak point in, 608 " League of Peace," 655 Leane, Miss ("Agnes Neale") 236 Leeward Islands, 259 ; their federal con- stitution in the time of William and Mary, 475 ; and Mr- Gladstone's first administration, 476 ; places included in the Confederacy, ib. ; constitutional powers, ib. ; educational system, 580 ; education in, ib. ; Sunday closing, 620 Leh, 366 Leighton's (Sir F.) " Wedded," 185 Leroy-Beaulieu, M. A., and our rule in India, 420 M. Paul, quoted, 301 ; and pro- tection of natives by the mother-coun- try, 315 ; and the extension of repre- sentative political institutions, 413 ; follows Macaulay as to the language of a conquered country, 414 ; on our rule in India, 420 ; quoted, on modern colonisa- tion, 462 ; the English in India, 463 ; on Madagascar, ib. ; taxation in Ceylon, 480 ; referred to, 25, 332 Lethbridge, Sir Roper, and committee on Indian grievances, 423 Levies, 683 L6viH, Chevalier de, 88 Leyden, 284 Liberation Society, 585 Liberty and Liberalism, 179 Library Acts in England, 65 Libraries, free, 574 License system, the High, 60S, 609, 616 Lighthall, Mr., 74 Limpopo, the, 340 Lincoln (Ontario), 521 President, 495 Lincolnshire, 220 Lines of Communication, 676 Liquor Act of Ontario, 610 Laws — Canada, 605; local option under the Scott Act, ib ; intoxicating liquors, other Canadian laws upon, 607 ; Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, ib. ; Manitoba, 608 ; High License system, British Columbia and the, ib. ; the Territories, 609 ; peculiarities, minor, ib. ; the Liquor License Act, 1883, ib. ; Prohibi- tion, 611 ; New Zealand, ib. ; Queens- land, 613 ; licensing laws, other Aus- tralian, ib. ; Victoria, ib. ; compensation, 614; South Australia, ib. ; Tasmania, ib. ; New South Wales, 615, 616; Western Australia, 616; habits of the people, ib. ; temperance, 617 ; South Africa, 618 ; Natal, 619 ; habits of the population ib, ; Crown Colonies, 620 ; colonial liquor legislation, ib. ; wine-growing and Prohibition, 621 ; local option, supposed failure of, ib. ; India and Ceylon, 622 ; restriction, 623 ; 695 License Act (Canada), 1883, 609 sellers in Australian colonies and intemperate persons, 608 Liquors, intoxicating, Canadian laws upon, 607 Lisbon, 36 Literature, American, 499 colonial, 73, 154, 187, 223, 255, 303, 499 - — Indian, 402 Liverpool, defence, 497; referred to, 21- 23, 83, 192, 305 Living, cost of, 523 Loans, 630 Lobengula, present of rifles to, 337 ; and the Aborigines' Protection Society, ib. ; the Chartered Company and, 337, 342 ; referred to, 809, 334, 335, 341, 345 Local Government and Taxation, Cobden Club volume on, 122 Local Government Board, 503 Option, supposed failure of, 621 ; referred to, 605, 613-618, 620, 621, 695 Loch, Lady, 129 Sir H., Cape Governor, 281 ; referred to, 129, 135, 177, 208, 219, 287, 301, 331 London, dock labourers' strike, and absence of middle-class hostility against workmen in the colonies, 490 ; Bishop of, 619 ; defence, 680 ; referred to, 17, 19, 21, 22, 42, 70, 71, 76, 146, 151, 156, 187, 192, 256, 264, 293, 314, 327, 497 526, 530, 534, 539, 573, 628, 629, 634 039 645, 652, 653, 678, 682, 689 Chamber of Commerce and Imperial Federation, 635 Convention of 1884, the, 32S, 329 Missionary Society, in India, 601 ; in Crown Colonies, 002 ; 604 University, 573, 580 (Canada), the poor at, 546 (Ontario), 76 LondoTit the, 188 INDEX 721 Longfellow and Acadia, 24 ; 576 Long's "Esther," 185 Loodiana, 372 Loralai, S6S, 373 Lord Howe Island, 442 Mayor, a popular, and equipment of the forces of the Queen, 6P2 Lorenzo Rtarques arbitration, 331 ; and see Delagoa Bay Railway, see Delagoa Bay Lome, nie Marquis of, 44, 75, 037 Lnuis 5IV, 52 Louise, H.R.H. The Princess, 75 Louisiade Archipelago, division of, 45S Louisiana, 1, 103 Low Church, riS4, 5SS, 594 Lowe, Mr., Chancellor of the Exchequer (Viscount Sherbrooke), 530 Loyalists, American, in Bahamas, 472 "Lumpers' " strike, 519 Lundi Kotal, 301 Lunis, tlie, 370 Lvsiad, 450, 453 Lyall, Sir A., 402 ; quoted, 435 Lyttelton, 25S Lytton, Lord, 355; and the Army Com- niission, 377 Macao, 37 Wacaulay, Lord, and education of Indian people, 400 ; minute of, 423 ; foresight of his minutes and speeches, 427 Jracdonald Cabinet, 40 Sir J., his position, influence, general characteristics, and cabinet, 44, 45 ; his Government, 53 ; and women ratepayers, 00; cnmniercial situation of Canatla nnder his protective policy, and pre- scriptions for remedy, 91 ; and woman franchise, 517 ; imperial federation, 640 ; referred to, 52, 54, 5S, 00, 91, 92, 4S0, 502, 55S McGill University, the, 74, 507 "M'^Grath, Terence," S; aud see Sir H. Blake MacGregor, Sir C, and a Russian advance on India, 352, 357, 358 ; his suggestion as to an attack on Russian ti-ade, 3S4 ; estimate of the armies of native states, 380 M<=Ilwraith, Sir T., his policy and Govern- ment, 201, 202; ministry and successor, 205 ; temperament, ideas, and nation- ality, 205, 200 ; political views, 200 ; conflict with Colonial Office on Sir H. Blake's appointment, 207 ; programme, 20S ; referred to, 204, 210, 211, 502 Mackenzie, Mr., leading members of his Government, 45 ; its policy before 1S78, 92 the Rev. J., his opinion as to English policy in South Africa, 301 ; view as to Bechuanaland, 343 ; referred to, 331, 33S, 33f> MiacMahon, Marshal, his Delagoa Bay award, 331 MoJIillan, JNtr., declaration to East Sydney electors on immigration, 534 ; referred to, 179, 181, 182, 557, 041 Macquarie Street, 171 Macrossan, Mr., 205, 206, 210 Madagascar and France, 473-475 ; referred to, 315, 350, 447, 462, 001, 661. 009 Marira^s, English and Scotcli jdantcrs in, 444; reierred to, 304, 372, 374-377, 387, 405. 411, 422, 6S3 army, 370, 373, 374 cavalry and infantry, 371 Congress, 430 Government, 51, 79, 90, 108 Madrid, 64, 152 Mafeking, 331 Jlagyars, 77 Maimena, 384 Maine, 20, 38, 80, 90, 96 Sir H., and the nature of democracy, 493 Jtaiwand, 356, 309, 382 Jlajorities, colonial, and "one man one vote," 503 Majority rule, 495 Malay Archipelago, protectorates in the, 400 ; referred to, 19S, 479 Peninsula, our success in, and the Chinese, 401 ; results of good govern- ment, ih. ; referred to, 213, 440, 533 Malaya, British, 444 future of, 401 Malays, the, 292, 372, 444 ; Javanese, 366 JMaldives, 442 Mallee scrubland, 120, 2S9 IVIalta, composition of Council of Govern- ment of, 480 ; system of education, 579 ; Roman Catholics and Protestants in, 002 ; sale of intoxicants to minors, 020 ; its flrst-class importance, 000; magnifi- cent harbours, ib. ; defence, ih. ; manu- facturing establishment, 007 ; referred to, 445, 504, 003, 051, 053, 657 Man, Isle of, 443 Manchester, 497, 510 MancJiester Guardian and the General Start' system, 6S6 Manchester Unity of Oddfellows, 68, 540, 591 Mangrotha, 365 Manilla, 1 Maning, Judge, 255 Manitoba, its towns, 70 ; origin of the population of, 77, 78; its wheat, 78; European immigrants of, ib. ; the Pro- vincial Government and the dual-lan- guage system in, 79 ; its Upper House, 505 ; education, 564, 566 ; Protestants and Catholics, 581 ; Scott Act, 000; licenses and sale of liqiior to intemperate persons, 60S ; Sunday closing, ib. ; re- ferred to, 17, 20, 22, 33, 37, 42, 55, 57, 62, 06, 72, 76, 77, 94, 96, 234, 570, 596, 598 Manning, Cardinal, 590 Manrouvres, naval, 651 Manufactures, Indian, 398 Maori Representation Act, 221 Maories, the, and temperance, 611 ; referred tn, 248, 255, 319, 477, 535 Marahnna, 256 Maria Theresa, 680 Maritime provinces, 23, 24, 26, 581, 59S, 045 Maritzbnrg, its society and appeai-ance, 318; cathedral services, 599; 540 3 A 722 INDEX Marmora, Sea of, 353 Marriage with a deceased wife's sister, 517, 630 Martin, Mr. A. Patchett, 164 ; and the election of Colouial Govenio's, 207, 20S ; union with Australia, f33S ; tlie colonial selection of governors, 643 ; colonial legists and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, ib. Mrs. A. Patcliett, '223 Sir J., 558 Martin's history of the colonies, 644 Martini-Henry rifles, 363 jMartinique, manhood suffrage in, 471 ; French ganisou, 667 ; referred to, 414, 443, m9 Maryland, 42 Maslionalaud and the Portugiiese, 335 ; referred to, 341 Mashona Mountains, 335 Massowa, 452 Matabelelaud, 334, 341, 344, 345, 454 Maurice, Colonel, and alliance with tlie Central Powers, 3S3 Mauritius, the, authority of the Council in, 441 ; demand in, for imperial aid in diffusing information regarding sugar manufacture, 466 ; planters of, and a silver standard, il). ; white foreign ele- ment iu, 473; Hindoos, ib. ; the French and self-government, i?*. ; its importance and the difficulty of holding it increased, 475 ; laws, ib. : school system, 579 ; Cliristian Churches [and concurrent en- dowment, 603 ; sale of intoxicants to minors, 620 ; harljour and defences, 062, 663 ; JI. de Lanessan and conquest of, for France, 663 ; referred to, 332, 442, 443, 445, 460, 469, 47S, 669, 6S3 May, Erskine, 73 Mayo, The Earl of, 434 Mediterranean, the, route to India, G66 ; referred to, 300, 3S4, 451, 651, 657, 65S, 67S, 697 Melanesia, 273 Melbourne, the lai'gest town of Australian continent, 115; price of land, ih. ; rail- way fares in neighbourhood of, 120 ; municipality of, and tramway lines, 123 ; the trades of, and the Protection ques- tion, 141; " Eight Hours Day," 150; out- door exercise and football, 152 ; horse- racing, 153 ; roller-skating, ib. ; music, ■ib. ; daily papers, 155 ; line arts, 1S5 ; botanic gardens, 180; poor immigrants, 192 ; defence, 194 ; compared with Syd- ney, 196 ; suburbs, woming men, pro- prietors in, 523, 524 ; University, 573 ; "Working Men's College, ih. ; the Bishops, 588 ; Salvation Army, 593 ; publication of the "Sunday Times," 595; Bunday observance, ib. ; defence, 049, 681 ; i-e- ferred to. 111, 113-117, 119, 123, 131, 142, 150, 151, 156, 15S, 160, 184, 1S5, 188, 190, 19S, 229, 231, 233, 237, 240, 247, 249, 268, 272, 274, 302, 303, 320, 496, 497, 526, 531, 532, 553, 600, 618, 0S2, 6SU and Hobsou's Bay Railway, 119 Age, and land natiLinalisatiou, 613 ; referred to, 117, 122, 130, 131, 141, 155, 236, 249, 642 Melbourne Argits, and land nationalisation, 513; referred to, 122, 130, 135, 141, 142, 155, 231, 642 Anstralasian, 642 . Daily Telegraph, 696 Leader^ 642 - — Review, The, 117, 203 ; and land nationalisation, 513 Melville, Mr., ISl Members, colonial, their position, 501 ; payment of, 502, 503 Menai Strait, 3S Mennell, Mr. Philip, 154, 243 Mennonites of Manitoba, 77, 596; and North-West Canada, 78 Mercier, Mr. H., Prime Minister of Quebec, summary of his speech of July 18S9, on unity among French Canadians, 47, 48 ; and "imperial Federation, 640; referred to, 40, 41, 64, 55 Merivale and the advantages of the Cape, 293; referred to, 201, 229 Merriman, Bishojj, of Grahamstown, 2S1 Mr. J. X., described, 281; and Delagoa Bay, 331, 332 ; the Agents- General, 643 ; referred to, 287, 325, 330, 599 Jlerthyr, 200 Merv, 389, 390 Methodist Church (Canada), 7, 51, 582, 591 ; (Newfoundland), S Conference, 51, 582 ; and national prohibition, 606 Methodists, 600, 602,— Canada, 581, 582 ; Bx'itish North America, 561 Metz, 052 Mexico, SO, 08, 101, 296 New, 124 Milans, West Indian, 477 Mildura, 126-128, 175 Militia, the, 683 ; and mobilisation, 687 Mill, Mr. J. S., and Indian government. 418 ; referred to, 226, 520 Millerite, a, 593 Mill oil the Floss, The, 303 Mills, Sir. C, 203 Mina Bazar, 370 Mine-fields, 682 Miner representatives, 521 Minghetti, Signor, 502 Ministers of leligion, how regarded in the colonies, 587; and parliamentary mem- bership, ih. Minnesota, 19, 42, 77, 79, 93 Minority representation, 504 ; work on, published in France, incomplete, ib. Missions, 586, 001, 603, 004 Mississippi valley, 19, 91 Missouri, 103 Mobile land force, 681 Mobilisation, 671, 687 Indian, 374 naval, 079 Moghul emperors, 394 Moghuls, 419 Mohammedan negroes as military police, 456 Mohammedans, Punjab, 370, 375, 378 ; Indian, 372 ; Northern Indian, 375 ; Noith-West, 378 ; and the National Con- gress movement, 428 ; of Britisli India INDEX 723 find votes in England, 045 ; of French India and votes in France, lb. ; relejTed to, 354, 410, 452 Molteno, Mr. , 504 Moltke, Count von, GS4 Mombassa, 450, 452 Monaco, 29S Mongolians, 436 Monroe doctrine, an Australian, 2G1 Montana, 21, 34, 90; prohibition, 000 Montreal, the lirst city of the Dominion, 38 ; contrasted with New York, lb. ; French iiopulation in, 39 ; Irish popula- tion of, ib. ; reason of its increasin;,' jirosperity, 40 ; cigar-makers, 67 ; Unions, (38; out -door relief, 540; University, 567 ; referred to, 20-23, 25, 27, 31, 33, 88, 39, 42, 70, 72-77, S5, SO, 404, 4iJ0, 525,- 526, 505, 5S2, 6S4 Moutserrat, 476 Moorlionse, Dr. (Bishop of Manchester), 174, 210, 571 ; and educational grants to Rojuan Catliolics, 570 ; his influence in Victoria, 5S7 ; his connection with irriga- tion schemes, ih. ; and exchange of pulpits, 5S9 ; prayer for rain in Victoria, 594 Moran, Cardinal, and Chnrch precedence, 5S9, 590 ; and Roman Catholics in Australasia, 590 ; his election as cardinal, ib. ; prohibition as to societies, ib. Moravians, the, 2S1 Moreliead, Mr,, Prime Minister of Queens- land, 204-200, 210 Moreton Bay, S3, 207 Morgha, 370 Moriori tribe, 442 Mormons, the, SO Morning Chronicle, 135 Morocco, 454, 65S IMorris, Mr., 467 Mortality, infantile, 525 Jloscow, 430 Moslem troops, 372 Mother-country, the, not yot an example to the colonies as to a practical system of defence, 6S9 Mount Cook, 257 Egmont, 257 Morgan, 222 . Royal, 39 AVellington, 237 Mowat, Mr., 46 ; against annexation, 60 Mozambique, 450, 451, 453, 455 Channel, 332 Multan, the fortification of. 3S6 Municipal institutions, Indian, 409 Mm-my, Rev. A., 598 River, 123, 120, 12S, 144, 235, 289, 557 water question in Victoria, 175 Musgrave, the late Sir A., and Jamaica fruit trade, 407 ; and coolie immigration, 469 Mussulmans, Indian, opposition of, to National Congress, 42S, 430 Namaqualand, 300, 332 Nanaimo, S3, 85 Nantes, Edict of, 282, 305 Napoleon I. 40 Ill, 515 Napoleonic code, 515 Natal, its shipping, popnlatiou, and coast, 310, 311 ; constitution, 311 ; dislike of direct taxation, ib. ; white and black artisans, 312 ; education system, 312, 579 ; the press and responsible govern- ment, ib. ; dilhculties of conferring it, 313, 315 ; Lord Kimberley's reasons for its refusal, 813 ; opinion of Select Com- ndttee of its Legislative Council as to, 314 ; military questions, 315 ; tlie natives, 316; sale of drink to thein, 310, 619; Colenso controvei'sy and Church ques- tions, 310-318 ; climate and customs, 31S ; white population, ih. ; doubts as to its being able to stand alone, 319 ; rela- tions witli the South African Republic, 320 ; railway question, ib. ; legislature, 441 ; land system, 511 ; immigrants and homestead system, ib. ; demand for skilled artisans, 523 ; the poor, 546 ; vacancy in the see of, and the Church Council, 599 : liquor laws, 619 ; drunken- ness, ib. ; sale of liquor, 620 ; referred to, 42, 198, 219, 279, 2S7, 292-295, 29S, 300, 306, 30S, 309, 310, 321. 324, 32S, 331- 333, 442, 445, 452, 471, 476, 529, 53S, 540 N'aial Mercnrtj, the, 314 National Anthem, 576 Nationahsation of commerce and industry, 507 of land, 489, 512 Nationality, Australian, 037, 638 Native industries, protection of, see Pro- tection gf native industries Natives, educated Indian, 425 Naval defence, 650 Bill, 130, 17S, ISO, 199, 201, 205, 208, 033, 046 Intelligence Department, 071, 6S6 struggle, fust etl'ect of a, 674 Volunteer movement, GS2 Navy, the, and colonists, 643 ; fortillca- tion, 651 ; defence of foreign statio)is, 652 ; proposed liome defence by the, 653 ; increase of the, 053, 655; work of the, 655 ; and our superiority of strength, OSO Neglected Children's Acts, 545 Negro democracy and Hayti, 409 ; contrast in Liberia, and in Martinique and Guade- loupe, lb. education, 5S0 laboui', 535 peasant proprietors, and fi-nit-grn\v- ing, 467 ; a factor in the West Indian problem, ib. ; and coolie immigration, 469 poor, medical care of the, 471 Negroes, tlieir growth in the south of the United States, 103 ; social position, 104 ; and Christian Churches, 105 ; attempt to disfranchise them, ib. ; the Ancient Order of Foresters and the, 106 ; feeling of a large minority in Southern States favourable to, ib. ; in French Antilles and Reunion, 472 ; and Baptists, 002 Nelson, Admiral, 655 Bishop of, and the Wesleyans, 5S9 Readers Series, 571 ; expurgatioji in. 724 INDEX Nepal, 416 Netherlaiul3 India Company, 2S3 South Africa Railway, '2'.)9, 333 Nevada, 21, SO "Never, Never Country," 21G Nevis, 47tJ ; educational system, 6S0 " New-Bridge-acrobH-Qum-Tiee-Creek," 173 Britain, 45S Brunswick, its boundary line, 20 ; population, composition of, 27 ; trade, ib. ; education, 503 ; primary education, 580 ; Baptists, Chureli of England and Presbyterians in, 585 ; Scott Act, 605 ; liquor laws, 607 ; refeiTed to, 23-26, 40, 42, 57, 62, 72, 74, 96, 570 Caledonia, French transportation to, 262 ; its geographical position, 263 ; land, ib. ; French treatment of natives of, 459 ; the French in, and the Austral- ians, 669; referred to, 214, 260, 261, 446, 691 Newcastle (Natal), 315 (New South Wales), 193 New England, 20, 33-35, 42, 97, 501 States, 22, 72 Newfoundland, its history, 7 ; Roman Catholics strong in, ib. ; education, its nature and administration, S ; schools, how managed, ib. ; denominational feel- ing and elections, 9 ; registration system, ib. ; taxes, whence drawn, ib. ; }iopLila- tion and area, 10; Msheries, ib. ; truck system prevalent, ib. ; lishernien, con- ditiou of, 11 ; working population, societies, and trade unions, "i/). ; con- fedeiation negatived, and wliy, 12 ; export trade, ib. ; main dilHculty of the colony, ib. ; the French Shore, 13 ; Treaty of Utrecht, ftsliing riglits under, and contentions of Newfoundlanders, French and English, ib. ; bait, 14; American rights in, 15 ; its future, ib. ; local federation, 634; referred to, 7, 22, 24, 26, 70, 97, 504, 527, 538, 563, 581-583, 628 New Guinea, protectoi-ate of, reason for its annexation, 457, 458; jurisdiction over foreignei's, 459 ; High Commissioner of, ami his jurisdiction, ib. ; present government an exiieriment, ib. ; referred to, 133, 198, 201, 205. 207, 214, 258, 259, 263, 264, 350, 446, 447, 457, 400, 641, 664 German, 458 Hampshire, 91, 96 Hanover, 458 Hebrides, 133, 21S, 258, 259, 260, 266 Ireland, 458 Jersey, 42 Mecklenburg, 458 Mexico, 21, 80 Plymouth, 248 Pomerania, 458 South Wales, compared with Victoria, 160 ; its legislation, ib. ; education and land system, 161-163 ; public works, and relation of the Government to them, 163 ; railways, 164 ; objects aimed at by Government regarding railway service, ib. ; results of public works system, 165 ; the unemployed, ib. ; Civil Service, 166 ; immigration operations suspended, ib. ; free trade, taxation, and protection, 167, l(i8 ; in future, will pass Victoria, 16S ; protectionists and land reformers — tlieir remedies for present evils, 169 ; fertility of the land, ib. ; past lack of interest in politics, 170; payment of Members of Parliament, 171 ; ditlerence between politics of, and Victoria, 172 ; decentral- isation needed, ib. ; Sir H. Parkes, 173, 175, ISl ; the Governorship question, 174 ; attitude of thel press, ib. ; the jrurray water question, 175 ; Soudan contingent of, 177 ; public men, 178-182; present Administration, 179; protection- ist leaders, 179-181; Mr. Dibbs, 180; other ]ioliticians, 181 ; land legislation and freehold tenure, 182 ; graduated taxation, 1S3 ; irrigation, ib. \ Victorian business men in, 184 ; Jiiethods suggested for raising money, ib. ; a legislative peculiarity, 185; tine arts, ib. ; botanic gardens, ib. ; literature, 187, 188 ; music, ISS, 189 ; the stage, 315 ; atliletics, ib. ; composition of the people, ib. ; Govern- ment contributions to charities, 190 ; boarding-ont of poor children, 191, 192; poor innnigrants, 192 ; condition of the smaller cities, ib. ; federation, 193, 034; defence, 194 ; feeling as to defence ques- tions, ib. ; factories of, musicians ami de- bating societies in the, 4SS ; Upiier House, 504 ; the poor, 544 ; Government maimge- nient, ib. ; private trusts, subsidy of, ib. ; bnanling-out system, ib. ; hospitals of, and the " mixed system," ib. ; public money spent on charity, ib. ; and Victoria, fallacy of comparing them, 551 ; popula- tion figures, 552 ; revenue, ib. ; general view of the comx)arison by free traders and protectionists, ib. ; value of its ex- portand import for five years, 553 ; small value of the figures, 554 ; the position in, ib. ; arguments for protection, 555 ; free traders and Roman Catholics, 556 ; pro- tectionists and the daily press, 557 ; education, 567, 56S : schools, 509 ; Roman Catholics, Eiiiscopalians, and religious teaching, 570 ; higher instruction, 572 ; university, 573 ; technical education, ib. ; State aid to Church of Englitnd, 585 ; disendowment, ib. ; Presbyterian ministers in Upper House of, 5S7 ; Protestantism, 5SS ; Low Church, ib. ; Church of England and the Orange Lodges, ib. ; Roman Catholics and secret societies, 590 ; Presbyterians, 591 ; In- dependents, 592 ; Churcli of England, 594 ; concurrent endo^vnient, 598 ; liquor laws, 615 ; local option, 616 ; Good Templars, ib. ; wine-growing, 621 ; power of the Crown, 636; imperial federa- tion, 638, 641, 642; war and union 691 ; referred to, 37, 61, 81, 112-115, 120 123, 125, 127, 136-139, 142-146, 148-150 159, 197-199, 202, 203, 209, 211, 212, 215 216, 218-226, 228, 220, 231, 232, 234, 235' 238, 240-244, 240, 248, 249, 251-253 261 263-260, 268, 269, 274, 305, 307, 311, 32o' 442, 458, 459, 465, 485-488, 493, 494, 496* 497, 501, 502, 517-519, 532, 533, 536, 537,' 545, 547, 548, 558, 501, 570, 576, 58S, 590,' INDEX 725 5D2, 59S, G13, 1328, 029, 033, 639, 045, 040, 049, 095 Westtninster, 82, COS York, 20-23, 33, 38, 41, 72, 75, S3, 90, 90, 100, 100, 490 Zealand, causes "which liave afTected its political and financial condition, 247 ; aptitude of the Maories for civilisation, 248 ; protection, ib. ; tlie Prime Minister, lb. ; Sir Robert Stout, ib. ; legislative peculiarities, 250; taxation, 250, 251; jtauper immigration, 250 ; education, 250, 251 ; Government insurance, 250; other peculiarities, ib. ; land legislation, 251 ; local ox>tion, 252 ; railways, ib. ; unemployed, 253 ; the eight-hour day, ib, ; payment of members, ih. ; liiiancial position and population, 254 ; soil, climate, and chief cities, ib. ; con)posi- tion of tlie people, ib. ; products, 255 ; literature, ib. ; national character of the settlers, 256; differences between, and Australia, ib. ; scenery, 257 ; defence, ib. ; military prejiarations, 258; Its in- terest in the Pacific, and difficulties with the French, ib. ; objections to the Austmlasian Federal Council, 205-207 ; view in, as to right and power of a single colony to secede, 207 ; refusal to become a dependency of Australia, ib. ; Acts concerning representation, 503; free- holders, 510; progressive taxation, 514; the poor in, 543 ; poor law, ib. ; Boards, ib. ; funds, ib. ; powers of Boards, ib. ; system, resemblance of, to our own, 544 ; view of protection, 557 ; expenditure upon education, 570 ; religious teaching, ib. ; secondary education, 572 ; univer- sities, 573 ; technical education, ib. ; cumulative vote, 574 ; Presbyterians, 570, 587, 590, 591 ; educational statistics, 580; primary education,^.^?). ; Salvation Army, 593 ; Sunday observance, 595 ; liquor laws, 611, 012 ; excessive drinkers, 012; clubs, ib. ; licensing bodies, 013; local option, 021 ; federation, 033, 035 ; imperial federation, 035 ; troops, 049 ; defence, 650 ; steam coal, 674 ; refeiTed to, 42, 59, 68, 70, 71, 88, 113, 114, 130, 137, 143, 145-147, 171, 1S3-1S5, 193, 197, 198, 207, 214, 218, 219, 221, 225, 220, 231, 232, 234, 235, 238, 240, 244. 245, 250, 251, 252, 253, 442, 443, 458, 460, 477, 478, 482, 487, 493, 490, 502-504, 510, 511, 513, 515, 517, 536, 542, 544, 551, 553, 507-509, 592, 000, 014, 015, 628, 040, 004, 672, 695, 697 New Zealand of To-day, 543 Station Life in, 250 TJie Colony of, 557 Newspaper education, 574 Niagara, 41 African, 454 Falls, 521 Niger, the, 445-447, 451, 457 Company, the Royal, 444 ; and Ger- man traders, 456 ; i-ecognition of the, by Berlin Conference, ib. ; the Germans and non-observanceof stipulations by the, 458 Lower, 443, 447 ; our sjihere of in- fluence on the, 455 ; its free navigation a gain to us, 456 Niger, Upper, 447 Nile, the, 451-453, 683 Nine-hour day, 519, 521 ; effect of, in Cape Colony, 521 Nizam, 380 Nore, the, 653 NorfoUc Island, 12, 202, 442 ; its Assembly, 470 ; peculiarity as regards immigrants, ib. Norman, Sir H., 218, 219 Normanby, Tlie Marquis of, 129, 219, 220 Northern Pacific Railroad, 21 Norway, 10, 257 Noumea (New Caledonia), 669 ; and attack ujion Australia, 691 Nova Scotia, its history, population, and reason for its foundation, 24, 25 ; coal, 26 ; Scotch Highlanders of, ib. ; charitable asylums, 546; education, 560; schools, 570 ; Presbyterian Church, 583 ; Scott Act, 600, 607 ; liquor laws, 607 ; referred to, 10, 12, 2S, 27, 40, 42, 57, 61, OS, 72, 83, 96, 97, 521 Nowahera, 360 Nugent, Sir C, on blockade, 651 Nushki, 307, 308 Nyassa, Lake, 453 ; and Portuguese claims, 454 region, trade of, 452 Obock, 609 Oddfellows, 11, 68 ; in the colonics, 540 ; Manchester Unity of, in Victoria, New South AVales, South Australia, and South Africa, 540, 591 Officers, 083 ; Indian coiiinianding, 375 ; naval, and the "line of defence," 050; militia, 083 ; volnuteeis, ib. O'Hagan, Lord, 280 Ohio, 19 Oil rivers, why so called, 457; their posi- tion and administration, ib. Old Melbonrne Memories, 188 New Zealand, 255 O'Loghlen, Sir B., 130, 131, 134, 130] Onslow, Tlie Earl of, 219, 249 Ontario (Province), its settlers, size, cli- mate, and products, 41, 42; emidoyers of labour, their dread of the Knights of Labour, 07 ; indigent poor, 540 ; educa- tion, 564 ; liberality of the system, ib. ; secondary education, 572 ; primary edu- cation, 580; Protestants and Roman Catholics, 582 ; report by Church of England Bishop of, 584 ; Presliyterians, 587 ; Cliurch of England and Orange Lodges, 5S8 ; Sunday excursions, 595 ; Scott Act, 600, 607 ; licenses, 607 ; sellers nf liquor, and death during intoxication, ib. ; relations of intem- jierate persons, ib. ; Liquor Act, 010 ; Prohibition, Oil; wine -growing, 021; referred to, 1, 19, 22, 23, 27, 44, 4S, 53-56, 58, 63, 65-69, 72, 76-79, 90, 92-94, 90, 234, 272, 504, 521, 539, 665-567, 570, 574, 59S Lake, 76 Operatives, Canadian, parliamentary in- fluence of, 521 Opinion, foreign, on our defence, and naval and military organisation, 0S9 726 mDEX Orangemen, English, 54 ; of Ontario, 37 ; New South Wales, 170 Orange River burghers, the, 326 Free State, friendly feeling in the, towards ourselves, 2SS; size and pojiulation, 309 ; white population, 319 ; and railways from the Cajie, 327 ; the Dutch and sale of drink to natives, 53ti, Glfi ; grain, 032 ; referred to, 100, 291, 293-'29(J, 29S, 300, 320 Organisation and strategy for land and sea service, general principles of, 670 army, and the Volunteers, 687 religious, oSl Oriel College, Oxford, 2S0 Orkney Islands, 249 Orpen, Mr., 2S9 O'Sullivan, Mr., ISl Otago, 24S, 253, 254, 25S Ottawa, its situation. Parliament Library, and features of the Houses of Parliament, 43 ; society and public men, 43, 44 ; House of Commons, 53 ; referred to, 33, 3S, 46, 49, 64, 75, 92, 94, 584 Owuership, State, of colonial lands, 612 Oxford, 573, 580, 64i) Oxus, 367 Paarl, The, 29, 2S6 Pacific, French and Gcnnan action in the, 200, 261 ; partition of the islands of, 458 ; future of, 460 ; effect of a check in the, C65; referi-ed to, 20-22. 77, S3-S5, 214, 21S, 249, 2.08-261, 271, 273, 350, 351, 3S3, 396, 443, 446-44S, 402-464, 474, 641, 668-670, 697 Great Circle Route, 21 Islands, 214 ; missions, 603 North, S3, S5 Railroad, 57 Slope, 81, 84, 535 South, 260, 261, 273 South-West, 446 West, 20S, 40S, 400, 663 Pahang, 461 Palnierston, Lord, offers of territory de- clined by, 461 Pambete, 453 Pamir, 366 Panama Company, 247 Isthmus of, 19, S4, 66S, 670 " Papineau's Rebellion " and Home Rule, 29 Papuan Island, see New Guinea Paradol, Prevost-, on "the future," 097 Paris, 14, 151 ; American studios of, 409 ; forts of, 052 ; and food supply in 1S70, 675 Commune of, 31, 262 - — Exhibition, 1889, 35 Parkes, Sir H., his government, 162, 166 ; appearance, career, and ability, 173 ; action in the Governorship question, 174; inliuenceand power, 175 ; ministers, 17S, 179; free trade programme, 182; and Federation, 194, 195 ; on colonial defence, 194; his stature, 206; liis "An Austral- ian Nation," 263 ; quoted, on the Chinese, 529 ; and the Chinese, 531, 532, 534 ; assisted passages, 537 ; and Imperial Federation, 037, 039; referred to, 59, 136, 13S, 161, 163, 165, 171, 177, 181, 219, 24S, 269, 271, 486, 502, 504, 505, 517, 628, 041, 644 Parkin, *Mr., and Imperial Federation, 638; at Sydney, 641 ; in Victoria, 642 ; re- ferred to, 193, 516, 627 Parliamentary peculiarities, 502 Parliaments, colonial, composition of, 501 Dominion, duration of, 45 Parnell-Rhodes correspondence, 635 Parramatta River, 160 Parsees of British India and votes in England, 645 Pass Bill, the, 1889, 291 Pathans, 370, 378, 387, 389 Patrimonio Treaty, French and Malagasy text of, 473 Patriot, The, 286 Paunccfote, Sir Julian, OS " Pauper," " pauperism," " poorhouse," how regarded in the colonies, 545 Paupers, white, 530 Payment of members, 487, 501, '502, 510 Payne, Mr. E. J., 446 Pearson, Dr., 154, 188 ; Education Minister of Victoria, 4S6 ; his report on edncation, 56S ; and Bible teaching in schools, 575, 576 ; Roman Catholic opposition to school systems in Victoria and New South Wales, 576, 577 Peiwar Kotal, 363 Pekin, 2S4, 391, 392 Penaug, Chinese magistrates at, and Great Britain, 461 Peninsular and Oriental Company, the, and Lascars, 533 Penjdeh, 35S Pennsylvania, 42, 168 Perak, 461 Perim, 442, 449 ; the harbonr of,[its capa- city and safety, 665 Persia, division of, with Russia, 384 ; referred to, 354, 365, 307, 3S1, 383, 3S4, 390-392 Northern, 384, 390 Shah of, y91 Persian Gulf, 364, 367 Perth (Western Australia), 212, 241 Peru, 452 rcshawnr, 356, 300, 362, 366, 367, 373, 380 Piccadilly, 77 Pickwick, Mr., ISO l^ictou, 26 Pietermaritzburg, see Maritzburg Pindi, the, 373 Pishin, 360, 36S Pitcairn, 442, 464 Place VendOme, 2S2 Plantations, tlieC'nuncil of Foreign, 473 Playfair, Sir Lyon, on protection and wages, 561 Play fur d- Kingston party, 231 Playfnrd, Mr. T., dosciibed, 226; and local option, 614; referred to, 219, 227 270 271, 502 ' Plessis, du, 282 Plural vote, 4S9 Police, Indian, 421 ; military, 665 Policy, Court of, 470 uuifoim Indian, 365 ; frontier, ih. Polish Quadrilateral, 353 INDEX 727 Political peculiarities, colonial, 502 Politics, colonial, 500 Poll-tax, 514, 530 Polynesia, 2, 273, 350, 460 ; and see Pacific Southern, 160 Polynesians, the, and French and Ger- mans, 459 Pondicherry, 414 Pondoland, its history, 310 ; refen-ed to, 308, 309, 319 Poor, the— In New Zealand, 543 ; New South Wales, 544 ; Victoria, 545 ; other Australian colonies, 540; Dominion of Canada, ib.; South Africa and Crown colonies, ib. Popnlnr Govenivieiit, 493 Popular Government, 495 Porta;;e la Prairie, 79 Port Castries, harbour, 068, 660 Chalmei's, 25S Darwin, military x^ui^poses, 664 ; le- fen-ed to, 650, 6G9 Elizabeth, ilescribed, 305 ; referred to, 291, 292, 302, 000 Hanulton, 304 Jackson, 19(3 : and see Sydney Louis, 474 ; fortiHcatious, 003 Nelson, 23 Phillip, 113, 115, 212, 512; and see Melbourne, and Victoria Royal, 008 Said, coaling station, GUG of Spain, Roman Catholic Archbishop and English Bishop of, 602 ; and see Trinidad Portland (Oregon), 20 Ports, commercial, fortification of, (3S2 Portsdown, 004 Portsmouth, 065 Portugal, 12, 321, 325, 332, 333, 335, 336, 444, 449, 453, 454, 450 Portuguese, the, claims in Soutli Africa, 334 ; in the Lakes ten-itnry, 453 ; and railroads in their West African posses- sions, 455 ; 414 Government, 333, 336 Posen, 353 "Position," warfare, OSO Positivist, a, 593 Postage, 629 Posts, naval and trade, 464 ; and see Coal- ing Stations Potomac, 43 Powers, the Central, 3S3 Pi-aed, Mrs. Cami^bell, her Australian Life, 215, 223, 303 Prague, 430 Pratt, Mr., author of "Rain," 230 PretUkanis, 598 Prendergast, General, 363 Presbyterian General Assembly, 51 Presbyterianism, 501 Presbyterians in New Zealand, 255; and the reailing of the Bible in do., 252; Scotch, and the African Lakes Company, 453; anrl Roman Catholic schools, 570; in Canada, 581; membership in Canada, 5S2 ; Cape Colony, 597 ; in Crown col- onies and Australasia, 601 ; refeiTed to, 582, 585, 5S7, 589, 590, 594, 620 Presidenry Governments, 377 Presidency system, the, 370 ; fatal to vigour of action, ib.; reforms, 377; Army Com- mission of 1879 and abolition of, ib.\ representation by Indian Government in 1S88, ib.\ its consequences in civil and military affaiis, 878 Press, colonial, 500 Pretoria, 817, 322, 320, 327, 333, 499 Pretty Dick, 155 Prevost-Paradol, 079 Primitive Methodists (Canada), 582 ; 592 Prince Edward Island, its loveliness, 28 ; chief drawback, ib. ; education, 560 ; schools, 570 ; Scott Act, 000 ; Siale of liquor to Intlians and minors, 607; re- fen-ed to, 24, 234, 504 Prngressive taxation, 514, 515 ; and see Succession Prohibition, 605, 606, 60S-011, 613, 614, 617, 620, 621 party and high license system, 608 Property, growth of, 515 Proportional repi-esentation, 503 Proprietors, negro-peasant, 407, 409 Protection, see 9, 91, 94, 167, 169, 179-181, 210, 231, 238, 248, 488, 501, 509, 512, 515, 518, 534, 540 et seq., 631, 033 arguments for, 555 Australnsian, 550 colonial, in ISOS, 547 ; subsequent experience, effect of, ib. ; bearing of, on imperial and Australasian federation, 550 - — conipen.'^ates Australian and Canadian manufacturer, 525 of native industries — Protection, colonial in 1S6S, 547 ; subsequent experi- ence, effect of, ib.; Victoria; under pro- tection, 548 ; local manufactures, growth of, 549— goods manufactured, kinds of, 550 ; feileration Australasian and im- perial, bearing on, of colonial protection, ih. ; comparison between Victoria and New South Wales, fallacies of, 551 ; population figures, 552 ; revenue, ib. ; other figures, ib. ; comparison between the colonies, general view of, 553; the ligures, small ■value of the, 554 ; the position in New South Wales, ib.; argu- ments for protection, 555 ; Roman Catholics, 550; party funds, subsidies to, ih. ; smuggling, ib. ; New Zealand view, 557, Queensland view, lb.; Canadian view, 558 ; imion, commercial, 559 ; direct taxation, support gained for protection by the uniiopularity of, 561 ; wages, effect of protection npnn, ib. Protectionists and vote's in Sydney, 503 Protective system and national finance and prosperity, 553 ; and tinde, ib. Protectorates and sjiheres of influence, 445 ; grow into colonies, 457 ; sale of liquor, 620 Protestant Episcopal Church (United States), growth of, 5S4 ; Mr. Bryce and membership of the, ib. - union, 582, 594 Protestantism, 588, 593 Protestants in Victoria, 157 Provident Societies, 539 et seq. Prussia and Bavaria, 691 728 INDEX Public duty, standard of, in the colonies, 001 Instruction Act, ISSO (New South Wales), 1(31 houses and Sunday closing, 595 school system, 575 the, and defence, 566 works and hours of labour, 520 Puget Sound, 20 Pulpits, exchange of, oS9 Pulsford, Mr. (Sydney Chamber of Com- merce), and Vietoriau gold, 551 Punjab, recruits from, nature of, 665 ; re- ferred to, 35(i, 361, 362, 365, 372, 37S, 3S7, 403, 411, 412, 417, 42!) Fi-outier Force, 371, 377 Government, 363, 365, 369 Puritans, English, 31, 597 Pyrfurd, 6S0 Quarterly lievieiv, editor of, ami natural rights, 492 Quebec, ((;ity), its appeai-ance and archi- tecture, 36; rivals Edinburgh, ih.; causes assigned for comparative decadence of, 37 ; rivalry of Montrt-alwitli, (7'.; referred to, 9, 21, 26-28, 54, 55, 61, 74, 49S, 525 (Province), emigration frdui, 20; its institutions, Legishtti^'e Asaeiably, and politicians, 40; its powers and criminal law, ib.; Liquor Act, 41; Parliament, ilivisiou of parties in, ib. ; "Reds," 53 ; analysis of members in the Legislative Assembly, 53, 54; questions belore, 54; Liberals, ib. ; maiiitenauce of poor persons, 546 ; si education, 563, 565; Protestants and Roman Catholics in, 5Sl ; Roman Catholic Churcli, 593 ; liquor sellers and relations of intemper- ate persous, 607 ; local liquor laws, ib. ; referred to, 19, 40-42, 44, 46, 47, 53, 65, 66, 69, 72, 76, 77, 91, 96, 234, 272, 2S3, 325, 445, 504, 521 Factory Act, 69 • Liquor Act, 41 Scott Act, 605-607 University (Roman Catholic), 567 ■ West, 54 Qnee]] Anne's Gate, 115 (jueen, H.M. the, and liome defences, &y2; referred to, 401, 425, 426, 644 Queensland, its size and ])rogress, 197 ; scenery and climate, ih. ; capital, 19S ; separatist feeling, ib. ; Ii'isli,jSeotch, and English in, 199 ; liistory of causes of its independent feeling, 200 ; defeuee, ib. ; grievances against tlie mother country, 201; the "National" movement, 203, 204 ; leaders, 205 ; sentiment as to tedera- tion, 206; differences between Conserva- tives and Liberals, ib. ; couflict regarding appointment of Sir H. Blake, S, 207 ; veto, 20S ; Separatist speakers, ib. ; im- perialism, how regarded, 209 ; movement towards protection, 210; proposed divi- sions of territory, ib. ; its attitude as to Federal Council, 211; northern sejjara- tion and servile labour, 211, 212; difH- culties in the way of the former, 212 ; need for coloured labour, 213 ; Ibrnier ill-treatment of coloured labourers, 214 ; I stoppage of whole labour traffic, 215 ; land legislation, ib. ; irrigation needed, 216 ; sugar, and coloured labour, ib. ; arguments of Democratic Labour Pai-ty, 217; co-operative sugar mills, 21S ; maize and cotton growing, ih. ; future ditti- culties, ib. ; Lord Kuutsford's choice of Governors, 219 ; financial condition, ib. ; public works and local government, 220 ; immigrants, ib. ; legislative peculiarities, 221 ; eight-hour day and early closing, 222 ; general view of, ib. ; gold mines, ih, ; social condition and literature, 223 ; Government aid to charitable institu- tions, 224 ; cost of living, \ib. ; view of protection 55S ; compulsory education, 070; religious teaching, 571; "mixed schools," 574 ; disendowment, 5S5 ; High Church element, 5S7, 5SS ; local option, 613 ; defence, 632 ; power of the Crown, 636 ; Imperial Federation, 63S, 642 ; tax- ation, 646 ; organisation of forces, 649 ; referred to, S, 60, 70, 112, 113, 129, 133, 137, 142, 145, 146, 163, 171, 177, ISO. 1S4, 195, 222, 226, 22S, 230, 235, 240-242, 245, 247-249, 251-253, 255, 256, 25S, 261-266, 270, 306, 307, 310, 444, 459, 466, 4S7, 493, 501, 502, 504, 516, 517, 620, 526, 545, 567, o69, 592, 02S, 645, 604, 071, 69S Queensland, Nortliern, 456 Quceusliuuhr, The, 224 Queeustown, 22 Queen's Town (Cape Colony), 292 Quetta liue of defence, 361 ; referred to, 354, 356, 359-362, 366, 307, 369, 873, 376, 377, 379, 3S1, 3S4, 3S6 Quick, Dr., 245; and land tenure in Victoria, 511 Quiliniane, 453 Quiriual, the, 274 Rabbit plague, 12S Races, nati^■B, destruction of, by Euglish, iu Pennsyh'ania, United States, Cauatla, British North Americji, ami Australasia, 535 Radicalism, dominant, of the colonies, its position, 509 Raiatea, 259 Railway material, colonial, 500 Railways, Indian 396, State, 507 Rajputana, 417 Rajputs, 373, 414 Kapa, the island of, 259 ; and the French, 670 Rawson, Sir Rawson, and exports from the Gambia and Lagos, 455 ; and growth of property in Australian colonies, 515; 035 Rawul Pindi, 360, 361, 368, 369, 373, 375 Kay, Cape, 13, 21 Rechabites, the, in Australia, Canada, and South Africa, 540, 591 Reciprocity Treaty, 53, 93, 97-99, 296 Reciuiting, 605 Redistribution Bill, 503 Red Sea, 440, 665, 069 ; route, 601 liefereudum, The, 506 Reformed Episcopal Church in Canada, 584 INDEX 729 Reforms, Indian, 377 Regency, colonies of tlie, 09G Reyina, SI Reid, Mr., 178 Relations, future, between tlie mother- country and the remainder of the Em- pire, U27 ; loans aud financial federation, 030 ; a customs union, ib. ; common tariff, dirticultiea of a, G33 ; the Rose- bery - Salisbury correspondence, 034 ; Rhodes - Parnell correspondeuce, 1135 ; the Crown, power of, 630 ; colonial opinion, ib. ; recent change, ib. ; seces- sion, tlie right of, 039 ; the Western Australia debate, 641 ; tlie Agents-Gen- eral, (j43 ; a Couacil of them, ib. ; con- federation, full, no prospect of, U44 ; existing ties between various parts of the Britisli Empire, 645 ; de- fence, practical suggestions bearing on, ib. Religion — Religious organisation of tlie colonies, variety of the, 5S1 ; Dominion of Canada, ib. ; Protestant Union, 5S2 ; United Methodist Church of British Korth America, ib. ; United Presby- teiiau Church of do., 5S3 ; Chiucli of England in Canada, ib. ; Reformed Epis- copal Cliurch, 5S4 ; Baptists, 5a-5 ; Aus- tralia, ib. ; abolition of State aid, eti'ects of the, 5S6 ; Church of England in Australia, 5S7 ; High Church niuvement, ib. ; organisation of the Churcli of Eng- land in Australia, 5S9; question of pre- cedence, ib. ; Roman Catholic Church, 590; Presbyterianism, 591; Methodism, Wesleyan, ib. ; other Methodists, 51»2 ; Congregationalists and Baiitists, ib. ; smaller bodies, ib. ; Salvation Ai-my, 593 ; Protestantism, Australian, ib. ; Sunday observance iu the colonies, 595 ; tendencies, colonial, in religions thought, lb. ; South Africa — Religious life in, 596 ; the Boers, religious life nf, 597 ; the Dop]ters, 59S ; Scotch ministers, ib. ; Disestablishment, ib. ; Church of Eng- land, 599; Wesleyans, 600; Roman Catholics, ib. ; Salvation Army, ib. ; Sunday observance, ib. ; India, 601 ; Crown Colonies, ib. — Trinidad, 602; other West- India Islands, ifi.; Mauritius, 603 ; disestablishment, ib. ; Pacific Islands and other missions, ib. ; conclu- sion, ii04 ; 695 Rents at Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, St. John's (New Brunswick), Halifax, and Ontario, 523-525 ; iu mining districts uf Canada, 525 Representation, attempt to deal with, in New Zealaud, 503 colonial, 634 Representative institutions in French colonies, 471 Responsibility, fixing of, 0S7 Retrenchnieiit, Indian, 422 Reunion, blacks of, 414; manhood suffrage in, 471 ; negroes of, 472 ; referred to, 443, 473, 663, 6li9 Revenue, Indian, 395, 400, 401 Revolution, French, 36 Revolutionary Socialism, how I'egarded by workmeli in the colonies and United States, 607 ; and see Socialism Revue Militalre de I'Etraiiger, and the Channel Islands, 654 Rhine, the, 170 Rhode Island, 34, 35 Rhodes, Mr., desciibed, 2S0 ; charter granted to liis company, 336 ; and Par- nellite funds, 635; in Africa, 072; referred to, 2S7, 2SS, 298, 299, 301, 331, 491 -Parnell correspondence, 635 Rideau Hall, 44 Kiel, motion anent his execution, 54; ex- pedition against, 61 ; rebellion, 77 Rimouski, 23 Rio de Janeiio, 474 Rijton, the Marqins of, 379 ; and the Army Commission, 377 ; and the powers of Indian nHiniciiialities, 434 Ritualism, Australian, 5SS Riverina, the, 114, 127, 166, 175, 229, 320, 553, 556 Jiobbery uvder Arms, ISS Roberts, Mr. Douglas, extract from his "Canada," 74 Sii' F., 355, 364; his iiosition at Kuram, 363 ; and the defence of Chitral, 366 ; Indian transport, 369 ; his popu- larity, inlluence, aiid characteristics, 435 Robertson, Sir J., 136, 102, 179 Robinson, Sir H., his jiolicy as Governor of the Cajie, 2S6 ; and the transference of Swaziland, 329, 330, 331 ; refeiTed to, 30, 219, 226, 2S1, 339, 341, 345 Sir J., and responsible government in Natal, 314 Sir W., Governor of Trinidad, and coolie immigration in the West Indies, 469 Sir W., Governor of Western Aus- tralia, on the govei'ument of an ordinary Crown colony, 471 ; refeired to, 135, 226, 246 RocJidale, 526 Rocklianipton, 19S, 222, 263, 5SS Kocky Mountains, the, 19, 21, 26 79-81 Roman Canipagna, the, 256 Catliolic Church outnumbers Church of England in Canada, 7 ; opponents of, and State aid to religion, 40; supported Conservative party in Quebec, 41 ; pre- dominant and privileged in Frejieh Canada, 47 ; feeling in Montreal against its ]io\vers and privileges, 49 ; its powers in Quebec, ib. ; position of, in Canada and the United States, 61, 52 ; and the Knights of Labom-, 68 ; in Victoria, 129 ; in Australia, 590 ; money spent on churches, ib. ; and secret societies, 591 ; Australasia, 593 ; India, 601 ; Canada, 5S1, 693, 640 membership in Canada, 5S2 ; population in Australasia, 590 Catholics and common school sys- tem in Victoria, 112, 131 ; percentage of, in do., 157; in New South Wales, 170; Queensland, 199 ; their organisation in tlie colonies, 202 ; in South Australia, 226; New Zealand, 252, 255; protection, 556; education, 504-567, 569; schools, 730 INDEX 570-572 ; in Australia, 572 ; and religious teacliiiig, 575 ; secular and religious teacliing, 576 ; educational grants, ib. ; teachers iu public scliools, 577 ; and education in the Cape, 578 ; Trinidad, 579 ; South Africa, 590, 1500 ; Cape Colony, 597 ; Mauritius, (j03 ; 598 Romans, government of tlie, 416 Rome, 419, 449 Rosebery, The Earl of, and imperial federa- tion, (527, Gas ; and a customs union, OSO, 033; colonial representation, 634 ; Home Rule, C35 ; referred to, 183, 199, 259, 200, 206, 040, 642 Salisbury correspondence, 634 Ross, Mr., and his coalition ministry, 54 Sir R., 232 Rouges, 41 Roninania, 463 Roumanians, 77 Royal Colonial Institute, 645 Commission and "iudentured" labour in Trinidad and Demerara, 469 Royce, Mr., and sport in the colonies, 152 Ruapeha, 255 Rupert's Land Act, 1S08, 20 Russell, Lord John, 32, 220 Mr. J., 504 Russia, importauce of Afghan co-operation to, 300; lier vulnerability and invulnera- bility, 3S2, 383 ; comparison of, witli ourselves, 389 ; her advantages, ib.; and our means of counter-attack, 683 ; and India, 690 ; referred to, 2, 3, 77, 7S, S3, 85, 98, 146, 209, 274, 295-298, 350-300, 367, 308, 3S0-3S5, 3S9-393. 390, 400, 401, 409- 411, 413, 420, 421, 434, 402, 495, 534, 044, 650, 05S, 663, 080, 094, 09S Emperor of, 352, 353, 350, 308, 419 Southern, 78 Russia ill Centml Asia, 852 Russian alliance, a, and Indian defence, 351 ; invasion, 357 ; advance, 358 ; further advance, 368 Government, 419 race, 097 Russians, and tea-drinking, 479 ; cost nf railways and bridges, 307; referred to, 352-300, 306-372, 375, 379-381, 384, 3a5, 3S8-391, 407, 416, 41S, 433 Eiissia's Hope, The, 073 Sacrifices, colonial, for education, 570 Saguenay, 28, 257 Saigon, 213, 009 " St. Christopher (St. Kitts) Nevis," 476 St. Helena, island of, its government, 308 ; system of education, 579 ; its garrison, population, and local militia organisa- tion, 600 ; referred to, 443, 609 Saiut-liilaire, M. B., quoted on the Presi- dency system, 373 ; on our rule in India, 420. 421 St. Hyacinthe, 47 " St. John Baptist," 49 (New Brunswick), 27 St. John's, NewfountUand, its first colon- isation, 7; the centre of Roman Catholic ])Opulatiou of Newfoundland, 8 ; amateur statisticians and death-rate of, 9; its municipality, the tlrst attempt at local government, 10; referred to, 11, 21 St. John's River, 310 St. Kitts, 470 ; educational system, 5S0 St. Lawrence, Gulf of, 22 (lower), ancestors of the inhabitants of, 28 River, 10, 22, 23, 26, 30-38, 40, 61, 62 St. Lucia, experiment of Government in- terest in a central sugar factory a success, 4iiO ; landscapes of, 4S1 ; coaling station, 008 ; relerred to, 470, 082 St. Malo, 29 St. Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne, 590 Hall and Day, 11 St. Paul, 20 St. Pierre and Miquelon, islands of, 14 St. Stephen's, 303 St. Vincent, 476 ; Sunday closing, 620;; sale of intoxicants to minors, ih. Salisbury, The Marquis of, and the Sultan of Zanzibar, 403 ; imperial federation, 039; alliance with the Central Powers, 055; referred to. 133, 201, 517, 531, 055 Salisbury-Rosebery correspondence, 634 Salmon, Mr., on the West Indies, 405 ; existing Crown Colony institutions, 471 ; confederation, 476 ; taxation in Ceylon, 480 Salt Range, the, 375 Salvation Army, 593 ; in South Africa, and the Hottentots, 600 ; and Dutch min- isters, ib.; in India, 001 Samarcand, 357, 390 Samoa, 218, 247, 258-260, 271 and United States, 400 Conference, 201 Sam tilich, 73 Samuel, Sir Saul, 203 San Domingo, 296 I'Yancisco, 19-21, 81, 83, S5, 100, 474 ■ Juan Straits, 84 Sandeman, Sir R, , 350, 359 ; his chief assistant and Russian occupation of Afghanistan, 359 ; the Indian frontier, 304; his local le^-y system, 365, 306; and the tribes, 309 ; survey of the Gomul, 370 ; referred to, 363-305, 475 Sandford, SirF., 503 SandJiurst, 203, 573 Sandwich Lslands, 296 Sankeyite, a, 593 Santa Lucia Bay, 321, 329 Sarakhs, 358, 390 Sarawak, 440, 457 ; purpose of protectorate over, 461 Sargeant, Rev. G., President of West Indian Wesleyan Conference, and the revenue of slave colonies since emanci- pation, 408 Saskatchewan, 21, 57, V7, SO Savings bank, 541, 553 Scandinavians, 50, 77, 69S Scanlen, Sir T., 280, 281, 280, 504 Scenes, Indian, 435; tropical, 4S1 Sceptic, a, 593 Scholarship system, 572 Scholarships, 580; State, 574 School attendance, 5S0 INDEX 731 School Boards, 567, 56S books ami Christianity, 576 lees, 509, 573 tax, city, of ilontreal, 565 Schools, Roman Catholic, 604, 565, 570- 572, 575-577 ; ft'ee, 569 ; of Mines, 573 ; " mixed," 574 ; private, ib. ; " dis- sentient," ib. ; boarding, grants to, 578; farm, ib. ; State-aided, 579 Schreiner, Olive, antlioress of the Stoi'y of aib A/ncan Farm, 303, 312, 500 Scotch ministei-s and the Dutch Reformed Church, 59S Presbyterians, percentage of, in Victoria, 157 Scotland, 77, 227, 522, 5S3, 595, 598, G35 "Western Higldands and islands of, 15 Scott Act (Canada), 605, 606, 60S, 609, 611, 621 Scratchley, Sir P., 200 Seaboard, protection of the, and soldiei-s and sailors, 7S2 Seaman's Union, the, and Chinese labour on mail steamers, 212 Seattle, 85 Secession, the right of, 639, 695 Secondary education, 372 ; and the work- ing classes, ib, instruction, colonial, 500 Secular scliool system, proposals of op- ponents of, 576 ; the reply, ib. Security, false, 670 Seeley, Professor, and the alien element in Canada, 2S ; quoted, 102 ; on Britisli government in India, 405 ; and federal union, 644 ; referred to, 635, 695 Seine, the, 669 Seisten, 359, 367 Selkirk Territory, 57 ; settlers, 78 Lord, SO Sella, Signor, 502 Selous, Mr,, and Lobengula, 335 ; and Maslionaland, ib. Sendall, Sir Walt^sr, 219, 476 Senegal, French force in, 659 ; referred to, 415, 456, 688 Senegambia, the French and national money spent on, 455 Servia, 295 Service, Mr., described, 133; and Sydney jealousy of Melbourne, 264 ; on a federal legislature, 271 ; and improved legisla- tion, 518 ; referred to, 130, 132, 133, 136, 271, 486, 502, 548, 645 Settlements, tropical, 443 Seychelles, 442 Shanghai, S3, 4S0 Shea, Sir Ambrose, opposition to his nomi- nation as Governor, 9 ; and libra in Bahamas, 467 ; refen-ed to, 202, 219, 643 Shearers in Australia, 537 Shepstone, Sir Theophilus, and South African politics, 316 ; 599 Sherbrooke, Viscount, 183 Slierman, Senator, 95 Ship-labourers' Union, Quebec, "tyranny" of, 68 Ships, fast-steaming merchant, 672 Shire, the, 453 Shore batteries, 682 Shoshong, 28S, 331 "Shouting," 617 Siberia, 392, 399 Sibi, 362, 367 Pishin Railway, 367 Sicily, 405 Sidney, Sir P., 495 Sien-a Leone, development of, 455 ; national expenditure on, by Imperial Parliament, 456 : school system, 579 ; question as to sufficiency of its defence, 659; black troops, ib. ; harbour, 660 ; Report of Royal Commission as to its strategical value, ib. ; Lord Carnarvon on its occupa- tion in the event of war, ib. ; referred to, 637, 669, 6S2 Sikh police, 665 regiments, steadiness of, 372 States, army of, inspection and effici- ency, 3SS Sikhs, the, 370, 37S, 387, 389, 405, 414 Simla, 409 Conunission of 1S79 and the Presi- dency system, 377 ; 423 Simon's Bay, 289, 300, 307, 346, 061, 662 Sindh, 361, 3S0 Singapore, development of trade, 461 ; the Cliinese, 533 ; as a coaling station in time of war, 664 ; refeired to, 461, 464, 4S0 Singh, Rajah Rampal, his confusion of metapliors, 403 Single tax and Mr. H. George, 527 "Sixpenny Restaurants" in Melbourne, 523, 524 Skobeleft', 352 ; his officers, and their treatment of native chiefs, contrasted with that of the British, 389 Slavery, 445 Slavonic delegates at Prague and Moscow, 430 Slavs, 77 Sniit, General, 329 Smith, Adam, and imperial unity, 644 Mr. Bruce, 178, 179 Mr. Goldwin, and federalism, 58, 59 ; referred to, 92-94, 560 ]\Ir. Munuy, and protection in Vic- toria, 548 Mr. W. H., and imperial federation, 034 Sir Donald, 46, 75 Smuggling, 557 Snider ammunition, 363 Socialism, colonial opinion regarding, 508 ; refen-ed to, 507, 516, 526, 542, 561 ; and sec State-socialism Social Welfare, Subjects of, 561 Societies, Government friendly, in New Zealand, 541 ; a failure in the mother- country, ib. ; high percentage of popula- tion insured in New Zealand, 542 ; temperance section, ib. provident — friendly, 539 — in South Africa, 540; savings banks, 541; racial difficulties, ib. ; Government fiiendly societies, ib. ; State insurance, general, 542 secret, 590 Socotra, Sultan of, 449 Socrates, 176 Sofala, 341 Soldiers and political officers, 364 732 INDEX Solomou Islands, division of, 45S Homali protectoiate, its annexation, 449 Territory, 44i3 Horaevset, 220 Soudau, a(i4, 372, 446, 448, 449, 4ul, 454 contingent, tlie, 177, 178 " Soutli African Colonies," places included ill the phrase, 308; their forms of government, ib. ; character, 309 Republic, and the Swaziland Convention, 330; referred to, SOS, 309, ■i-2-3, 334, 340, 341, 345, 455, and see Ti-ansvaal Australia, its colonisation, 225; the Wakelield system in, ih. ; developjnent, ih. ; Governorsliip ditficulties, 220; poli- ticians, ib. ; and their peculiarities, 227 ; views on ft'deration and relations with United Kingdom, 2'2S ; prosperity after its foundation, 229; linancial position, ib. ; Real Property Acts, cheap law courts, and local government, 230 ; woman suffrage, 231 ; protection and democratic institutions, 231, 232; pay- ment of members, 232 ; closure, 233 ; land and income taxes, ib. ; other legis- lative peculiarities, ib. ; eight-hour day, immigration, education, and local option, 234 ; ai-ea, ib. ; climate, 235 ; appearance of its interioi', ib. ; social view of, ib. ; literature, 23i> ; and the Chinese, 530 ; the poor in, 546; education, 50S ; free schools, ib. ; coinpulsoiy education, 570 ; religious teaching, 571 ; universities, 573 ; technical education, ib. ; educa- tional peculiarities, 574; High Cliurcli clergy, 5SS ; Bible Christians, 592 ; local option, 013, 014 ; Prohibition, 614 ; pub- licans and loitering, ib. ; wine-growing, t)21; organisation of forces, 6i9; referred to, 1, 123, 125, 127, 129, 139, 142, 143, 153, 154, 170, 175, 177, 1S4, 1S5, 191, 197, 198, 20S, 210, 219, 220, 220, 233, 242, 244, 24S, 251-253, 487, 493, 497, 502, 504, 517, 519, 520, 530, 545, 549, 553, 558, 573, 592, 018, 628, 004 South An^tmUan Register, The, 231, 230 Koutli Sea Colonies, 349 Islands, 221 Southern Pacilic Railroad, 21 Spain, 12 ; her colonies, 098 ; failure to fuse Italian immigrants, ib. ; referred to, 444, 600, 058, 659 Spaniards, the, 414, 448, 579 Spanish America, 098 artillery otiicer and tlie closing of the Bay of Gibraltar, 058 Spencer, Herbert, 117 Spezia and the Freucli, 059 ; referred to, 007, 074 "Spheres of influence," 445, 440, 457; and sale of liquoi-, 020 Spithead, the, of the East, 064 Sport, 152 Sprigg, Sir Gordon, 280 ; and the Cape Re- gistration Bill, 290 ; referred to, 287, 288, 290, 292, 294, 299, 337, 599, OlS, 619 Squatting Act, 1839, 161 Statf, a General, 084 Stanhope, Mr., 204, 200; and the Imperial Federation League, 028 ; Imperial Feder- ation, 634 Stanley, Lord, of Preston, 44 Stansfeld, Mr., 539 State Aid and State Interference, 551 State aid to Cliurches, 585, 580, 001 schools in the colonies, and immi- grants, 491 socialism, 485, 507, 508, 510, 501 States, native Indian, 410-418 Statesmen, colonial, 494, 405, 501 ; and parties, and the rights of Upper Houses, 505; Austialian, their knowledge about Canada or South Africa, 516 ; Canadian, and Australia, ib.; independent Aus- tralian, 518 Stations, coaling, 050; their ganison, ib.; coaling stations and a General Staff, 080 foreign, defence of, by the navy, 052, 053 ■ ■ Indian naval, 065 Statistics, and rural districts and towns, 497 educational, 580 Stawell, Sir W., 135 Steam-launches, 082 Steamship lines, subsidies of, 029 Steere, Sir J. Lee, 240 Stegmanu, Mr., 598 Stell, Governor Van der, 305 Stellenbosch, its derivation, 305; referred to, 29, 57S, 598 Stephen, Sir A., 480, 517 ; his legislative services, 51S Sir J., 618 Stephens, Mr. Brunton, 223, 500 Stevenson Road, 455 Stewart, Sir U., 386 Stokers, skilled, lack of, 073 Stonyhurst, 000 Storii of an African Farm, The, 500 Stout, Sir R., described, 248, 249 ; and Im- jierial Federation, 041 ; referred to, 130, 207, 252, 253, 602, 508, 510, 517, 571 Stout- Vogel Government, 249 ; ministry and the Federal Council Bill, 207 Strachey, Sir J., his estimate of a monopoly of tobacco sale in India, 401 ; and taxa- tion of land in Bengal, ib.; liis IiuUa, 402 ; and educated natives in India, 420 ; judicial appointments, ib.; 433 Straits Settlements, authority of the Coun- cil in the, 441, 442 ; native education in the, free to natives, but not English, 480 ; school system, 679; inhabitants of the, and defence of Singapore, 604 ; referred to, 442, 445, 478, 531, 533, 579, 067, 083 ; and see Singapore Strasbui'g, 052 Suakim, 452 Succession duty, graduated, 110, 1S3, 360, etc., 513 ; in Victoria, 514 Suez Canal, delicacy of the, as a means of communication during war, 057 ; diffi- culty of keeping open and of watching, 058; an alternative route, ih.; referred to, 84, 247, 302, 353, 425, 449, 001 coaling station, 606 Gulf of, 657 or Cape route, which ? 057 Suffrage in the Colonies, 603, 617 INDEX Sugar, 445, G32, 035 Bounty Bill, 297 Convention, 1SSS-S9, probable effect of a Bill fouiulod on the, 465 ; and ownei-a of snyar estates in the West Indies, 406 trade, West Indian, depression in, how accounted for, 406 ; prosperity of sugar plantei-s of British Guiana, ib.; ex- periment of Government interest in a sugar factory in St. Lucia, ih.; Mauritius, a sugar-growing colony, ih.; demand for imperial aid regarding sugar manufac- ture, ib.; its eH'ect ou fruit production, 467 Suklcur, 361, 363 Sulieman range, 360 Sunday closing, 607, 60S, 612, 613, 616-61S, 620 observance, 595, 60-1 ; in South Africa, 000 railway traffic, 595 School system, colonial, 572, 586, 004 "Sunday Times," 595 Sutherland, Mr. Alexander, and land nationalisation in Victoria, 512, 513 Mr. J., 17S Swat, 366 Swaziland, its inhal)itants, soil, and mineral wealtli, 32S ; action of the Boers in, ib. ; attitude of the British Government on the protectorate question, ib. ; history of the question in, 329 ; Soutli African Bepublic and the Convention with regard to, 330 ; bearing of the success of pro- tected native government in Basutoland on, ib. ; referred to, 2S1, 293, 310, 319, 320, 325, 334, 345, 452 Sweating, 527 ; Victorian sweating clause, ib. ; report by Victorian chief inspector,!^. Swiss Confederation, 'Hie, 500 Switzerland, 510, 634; The licferemJnm ami the future of democracy, 506 ; referred to, 50, 57, 59, 01, 02, 82 Sydney, its position, situation, and extent, 160 ; land and suburbs, 1S2 ; tine arts, 185, botanic gardens, ISO ; music, ISS ; poor immigrants, 192; defence, 194; life and trade, 190 ; merchants and free trade, 556 ; University, 573 ; Presby- terian minister in Lower House, 587; the Bishops, 588; Centennial Banquet, Church precedence at, 5S9 ; Salvation Army, 593; Sabbath observance, 595; Good Templars and compensation, 616 ; imperial federation, 640, 641 ; referred to, 114, 115, 123, 142, 153, 150, 102, 104, 106, 169, 170, 173, 183, 185, 187, 188, 190, 193, 198, 223, 230, 249, 201, 204, 272, 302-304, 442, 474, 490, 511, 533, 554, 555, 556, 589, 000, 637, 038, 004 Benevolent Society, 192 East, 183 South, 178 Sinhieji Bulletin, 557 -^^ — Centennial Magazine, and tlie future of the Australasian colonies, 038 Bally Telegraph, 557 ; and see Daily Mail, 259 Morning Herald and religious matters, 596 ; imperial.: federation, 641 ; referred to, 174, 187, 231, 557, 595 Sydney Fvncli, 176 ■ University, 200 Synie, Mr., 117, 249, 513 ; and Australian l)rotection, 512 Syria, 42 Table Bay, 289, 300, 302, 307, 331, 340, 001, 602 Mountain, 304 Tadema's " Vintage Festival," 1S5 Tagns, the, 36 Tahiti, 669 TaillojT, Mr., 54; his Conservative ad- ministration, ib. Taj, the, 436 Talon-Lesperance, M., quoted, 95 Tanganyika, Lake, 453-465 Taranaki, 248 Tariff, common difficulties of a, 033 Tascliereau, Cardinal Archbishop, 32, 40, 51, 52 Tashkend, 390, 418 "Tasnia," 223 ; and see Madame Couvreur Tasmania, its climate, scenery, literature, and capital, 230, 237 ; movement for its annexation to Victoria, 237 ; tariff (jues- tions, ih. ; legislative peculiarities as to free trade, protection, and indigent foreigners, 238 ; taxation, ih. ; education, 239; land legislation and eight-hour day, ib.; statesmen, ib.; social habits and poli- tics, 240 ; free circulation of newspai)ers, ib. ; railways, ib. ; its debt and future, 241 ; free schools, 509 ; religious teaching, 571 ; universities, 573 ; local option, 014, 615 ; drunkards, 615 ; defence, 650 ; refeiTed to, SS, 119, 137, 142, 143, 145, 1S4, 222, 225, 229, 234, 237, 238, 240, 242, 245, 250, 262, 264, 265, 270, 272, 487. 504, 537, 558, 578, 588, 592, 618 Tasmanian Main Line Railway Company, 240 Taxation, colonial, 513-515, 632 ; progres- sive, 514; inoviiicial, ib. ; progressive, in France, 515; graduated, ib. Taxes, 9 Tea - drinking, and the Canadians, Aus- tralians, Aniericans, and British, 479 Technical education, 573 Teheran, 391 Tel-el-Kebir, OtiG Temperance, 542, 617 Temple, Sir R., and Kabul, 359; the relative positions of the Madras, Bom- bay, and Bengal armies, 373 ; cultivable waste in India, 398 ; tlie local elective system in India, 410 ; Indian inquiry, 423 ; 420 Tennessee, 104 Tennyson, 570 Texas, 37 Western, 21 Thames, tlie, 6S2 ; defences, ib. Theale, Mr., 303 Theatres, proprietors of, and Sunday en- tertainments, in Australia, 595 Theosophist, 693 Thomas, Mr. Julian, and the French in Kew Caledonia, 459 the late Mr., on the West Indies, 465 Thompson, Sir John, 45 734 INDEX Tliorn, 353 Thursday Island, fortiflcation, G'34 ; re- feired to, 150, 394, 650, 009 Times, The, 234, 331, 342 Tippoo Tib, 451 Tobacco-tax, Indian, 400 Tobago and local confederation, 475 Toclii, 358, 302, 303, 3(i5 Tocqueville and French Canadians, 29, 30 ; and the eflect of democracy on art, literature, and science in the United States, 4S7, 499 ; accuracy of his observa- tions and views on democracy, 492 ; and the Second Empire in France, ib. ; re- ferred to, 59, 102, 107, 325, 587 Madame de, 30 Todd, Jlr., 58 Toit, da, 282 Tongaland, recent treaty with the Queen of, 329 ; the chiefs of, and a protectorate, 330 ; treaty of 1877, ih. ; referred to, 320, 330, 331, 334 Tongariro, 255, 257 Touquin, natives of, and the suffrage, 472 ; referred to, 350, 415, 447, 462, 6SS Toronto, estimate of its population, 42 ; chief architectural feature, 43 ; cause of its prosperity, ib. ; grants to charitable organisations, 54(3 ; University of, how maintained, 565, 567 ; liquor matters, 607 ; referred to, 3S, 70, 71, 75, 76, 525, 526, 5S1 Torpedo-boats, 682 Torreus Act, 161, 513 Torres Straits, 213, 247, 267, 461, 664 Tourists, English, and Indian life, 437 Townsend, 51r. Mereditli, and the loss of India, 424, 425 ; bis article on the re- tention of India, comments on, by Indian British press, 432 Toyubee Hall, speech at, its effect in Australia, 495 Ti'ade and revenue in the Crown colonies, 4S1 Indian, 396, 398 in time of war, 672 unions, 149, 519 ; and see Labour Trades Arbitration Act of Ontario, 521 Trafalgar, 655, 070 Traill Mr., and imperial federation, 641 Trait-e de J.hjlslatioii colouiah, 503, 609 Transfer of land, 513 Transkei, memorials regarding sale of liquor by Cape Government in the, 619 ; influence of the Churclies, 620; referred to, 30S-310 Transport, Indian, 362, 363 Transvaal, the, its size, population, and trade, 309, 320; frontiers, 321 ; revenues, -ib. ; british miners and representation, ih. ; the Volksraad, 322; future of the, 323; feeling as to annexation, ih, ; Eng- lish diggers, curious fact as to their politics, 324 ; official use of Dutch language, ih. ; monopolies, 326 ; Dutch buildings and British architecture, ih. ; increasing use of the English tongue, ih. ; negotiations with the Free State, 327; cost of living in tlie, 523 ; annexation, 694; referred to, 16, 17, 281, 284, 285, 298, 299, 300, 311, 328-383, 340, 345, 3S9, 499, 502, 522, 523, 539; and see South African Republic Tra)isv(i(d Advertiser, and the oath of allegiance, 323; its version of President Kruger's speech, 325 ; and the manage- ment of Bechuanaland, 339 • Volksraad, and Sunday observance, 600 Travellers, British, and officers of fort- resses, 652 Treaties, Chinese, 530 Ti'icoupis, M., 253 Trinconialee, defence, 663 Trinidad, wliite foreign element in, 473; and local confederation, 475 ; its edu- cational history, school system and population, 579 ; State college, 580 ; Roman Catholics and Protestants, 002 ; referred to, 100, 578, 603 Tripoli, 451 Tristan d'Acnnha, 308, 464 I'l'ois Rivieres, 70 Troops, Indian, 355, 370, 371 ; southern, 372, 373 Truck, 527 Tsar, the, 368 ; and Indian defence, 352 Tseehs, 77 Tugela, Lower, whites in the, 319 Tunis, 447, 462 ; French inhabitants of, aud votes, 472 protectorate, 463 Tupper, Sir C, and ireipeiial federation, 638, 040 ; referred to, 26, 59, 64, 203 Turcoman tribes, 359, 372, 375 Turins, West Indian, 477 Turkestan, 354, 365, 381, 391, 302 Turkey, 351, 383, 401, 548 Turkish authorities, their opinion of a , tobacco-tax, 401 Alliance, 383, 384 Turks Islands and local confederation, 475 the, 384, 452 Turner's " Dunstanborougli Castle," 1S5 "Twain, Mark," 39 Ulster, 56 Umbandine, 330 " Uncle Paul," 325 ; see Kruger Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill, 303 Unemployed, the, 537 ; in Melbourne and Sydney, 53S Union, American, opening up of "Western States of, 19, 20 ■ commercial, 558-560; Canadian Government against, 560; colonial, 630 Pacilic Railroad, 21 Unitarianism, 596 United Empire Loyalists, .their descend- ants, 42 ; referred to, 19, 33, 41, 94 Kingdom, its vulnerability, 4; emigra- tion from the, to Western Canada, 30- 19 ; wheat sent by Canada to, 65 ; Irish ]iauper emigration from the, to Canada, 71 ; goods manufactured in the, aud the Victorian market, 113 ; importance of colonial debts to the, 140 ; South Aus- tralian views on relations with, 228 ; Government of the, and French domina- tion in Madagascar, 475 ; ditftcidty of maintainingaconimercial blockade of the. INDEX 735 667 ; invasion, ib. ; where a naval power would concentrate to attack us, 678 ; resistance to invasion, ib. ; difficulty of, ib. ; landing, ib. ; what we need, ib. ; defence of the coasts, 679 ; referred to, 10, 12, 16-lS, '22, 61, 62, 75, 83, 111, 136, 152, 154, 156, 157, 190, 192, lOli, 200, 233, 254, 255, 268, 274, 275, 280, 286, 292, 323, 636, 653 United Kingdom Alliance, 614 Methodist Church of British North America, 582 Free Churches, 692 Presbyterian Church of Britiali North America, 5S3 States, dissimilarities hetween the, and Canada, 89-91 ; negro element in, 90; reason of difference between English- men and the Americans of the, ib.; result of levying protective duties against the, 04 ; feeling iu, as to annexation of Canada, 95 ; the fisheries question and the, 96-98; pressure of the, upon Canada, 98 ; difference towards the, of Canada and the West Indies respectively, 100 ; future relations of the, aud otlier Eng- lish-speaking peoples, 101 ; general view of, 102 ; changes in, during the last twenty years, 103 ; gi'owth of the negro pojiulation in the South of the, ib. ; attitude of North and South, 104; tlie burden of armaments in, 106 ; and political privileges to the blacks of the Southern States, 415 ; aud Samoa, 460 ; chief market for West Indian sugar, 466 ; Senate of, its conduct of foreign aflairs, 494; progi'essive income-tax in, 514 ; cost of living, 522; "mixed schools," 674 ; negro education, 530 ; Baptists, 585, 602 ; absence of State organisation of religion, 586 ; the clergy and party strife, 587; Roman Catholic population, 590 ; money spent on Churches, ih. ; Southern States of the, 602 ; negroes, the, and church giving, 603 ; local option, 621 ; reciprocity treaty, 632 ; naval power, 067 ; food traffic in time of war by Britain, 676 ; neutrality, ib. ; blockade of Confederate harbours, 677 ; referred to, 1-4, 12, 13, 15-19, 21-23, 26, 27, 29, 32-35, 33, 45, 46, 52, 56-63, 67, 68, 71, 72, 74, 75, 77, 78, SO, 81, 84-86, 91, 95, 96, 98, 99, 104, 111, 112, 118, 124, 125, 153, 160, 163, 166, 186, 192, 196, 215, 234, 244, 245, 254, 265, 272, 274, 295-297, 307, 350, 389, 396, 398, 399, 402, 414, 443, 457, 459, 467-469, 479, 4S5-496, 498-500, 502, 606, 509, 514-517, 519, 526, 534, 538, 539, 541, 545, 556, 558, 559, 560, 561, 570, 572, 574, 580, 591, 596, 597, 605, 608, 621, m-i, 635, 643, 644, 650, 668, 676, mn- 698 Universities, 573, 638, 046; colonial, 500, 643 ; Canadian, 565, 567 Mission of the Church of England and African Lakes Company, 453 Upiiigton, Sir T., aud Bechuanaland, 564 ; referred to, 280, 338, 599, 619 Upper and Lower Houses, colonial, dis- putes between, how they eud, 506 ; referred to, 601, 504-506, 587 Utah, 21, 80, 124 Utrecht, Treaty of, 13, 25 Vancouver, City, the excellence of its laying out and site, 82 ; population, ib.; licenses, 008 ; referred to, S3, 84, 668 Island, in-actically uiiexplored, 83 ; proposals for its defence, ih.; inade- quacy of its defence, and strategic importance of its naval station, ib.; referred to, 20, 25, 26, 61, 72, 82, 87, 95, 296, 650, 66S Van Diemen's Land, 236 ; and see Tas- mania Van Home, see Home, Van Vauban and fortresses, 651 Vaud (Switzerland), progressive income- tax in, 514 Vaughan, Archbishop, 176 Venezuela, 297 Vermont, 90, 96 Veto, tlie Colonial Office, 517, 695 Victoria (Australia), its size aiid soil, 111 ; changes during last twenty years, ib. ; members of Ujiper House not paid, 112 ; common school system, ib. ; deinociacy and Stat^i- socialism, ib.; is the most interesting of the Australian colonies, ib. ; its prosperity, 113 ; trade protection, ib. ; waves of prosperif^yand depression, 114; English money in, 115; price of land, ib. ; land legislation, 116 ; taxation directed against great estates, ib. ; demo- cratic party, land views of, 117; Land Reform League of, its practical pro- grannne, ib. ; no objection in, to State interference, 118 ; Board of Com- missionere, for Cfmtrul of its railways, 119; i-ailway system self-supporting, ib.; railway fares, ib. ; public departments are managed non-politically, 120 ; Civil Service Commission, its success, 121 ; payment of members of Parliament, ib. ; tribute to honesty of legislature, ib. ; local government, 122 ; tramways are in hands of munciiialities, ib. ; irrigation system, 123; wlieat-gi'owing landof, ib.; Mr. Deakin's irrigation schemes, 124, 125 ; iiTigation works in, State money for, 125, 126 ; irrigation scheme, its principle, 126 ; pj'ivate irrigation works, ib. ; wine production, 127 ; success of in-igation, ib. ; rabbit plague, 128 ; lead- ing men, 129 ; the Governorship diffi- culty, ib. ; Irish problem, ib. ; Coalition Governments, 130; school system, 131; Prime Miiiister, 132 ; a former Prinie Mmister, 133; Agent-Geueral of, in London, Lb. ; the Opposition leader, and his colleague, 134 ; tlie Chief-Justice and liis views on the Govci-norship question, 134, 135 ; success of Scotch and Irish in, 136 ; is opposed to separation, ib. ; Con- servative party, in, ib. ; Liberal party, its present policy, 137 ; legislative peculiarities, ib. ; politics of, reaction unknown iii, ib. ; the Education and Land Tax Acts, 138 ; General Election of 1889, what it turned upon, ib. ; the Stock Tax, 139 ; programme of Gillies- Deakin party, 140 ; virtual change of 736 INDEX ground by Protectionists in, ib.; election manifestoes of 1S&9, 141 ; result of General Election of 1SS9, 143 ; result of a war of tarills between, antl New South Wales, 144 ; railwaj's and water-workw assets for the whole debt of, 147 ; other financial questions, ii). ; experiments tried, 14S ; early closing, 149 ; eight- hour day, ib, ; early-closing legislation, 150; high wages and clieap food, 151; out-door exercise, 152 ; horse-racing, etc., 153 ; music, ib. ; literature, 154, 155 ; newspapers, 155 ; loyalty, 155-157; birth- places, 157 ; forces engaged in the dii- fence of, 157-159 ; compared with New South Wales, liiO ; ditference between politics of, and of New South Wales, 17:^ ; postage, 240 ; free circulation of news- papers, ib. ; Australian federation, 264; fuller federation, 2ijS ; enforcement of laws, 480; factories of, bands and de- bating societies in the, 4SS ; trades unions of, and London dock labourers' strike, 400 ; Upper House, 505 ; Chinese, 529; savings bank depositors, 541; the poor, 645 ; State support, ib. ; neglected children, generous treatment of, ib. ; boarding out, 54ii ; under in-otection, 548 ; local maiinfat:tures, growth of, 549 ; goods manufactured, l;iuda of, 550 ; com- parison between, and New Snuth Wales, fallacies of, 551 ; population figures, 552 ; revenue, ib. ; general view of tlie cotn- paribon by free traders and protection- ists, ib. ; value of export and import for hve yeare, 553 ; small value of the figures, 554 ; education, 5(37-51)9 ; system of ele- mentary schools, 570 ; endowment of school system, ib. ; absence of religious teaching, 571 ; Roman Catliolics and school system, 571, 572; higher instruc- tion, 572; Universities, 573; technical education, ib. ; cadet system, 574 ; edu- cational peculiarity, ib. ; sehoolbooks, 575 ; Presbyterians of, and Roman Cath- olic schools, 570, 577 ; politicians and the secular school system, 577 ; Roman Catholic teachers, ib.; public school sys- tem, ib. ; disendowment, 5S5 ; Presby- terians and Wesleyans, 587 ; Low Church, 555 ; High Church movement, ib. ; Pres- byterianism, 591 ; heresy, ib. ; Bible Christians. United Methodist Free Church, 592 ; Independents, ib. ; curious feature of the religious census 593 ; Roman Catholic Church, ib. ; Anglicans and Presbyterians, 594 ; absence of Sun- day newspapers, 595; local option, 013; comjiensation, 614 ; Sunday closing, OlS ; wine-growing, 021 ; Impeiial Federation League, 035 ; Imperial Federation, 642 ; federation for imperial defence, 040 ; transport, 000; example as to burdens, 671 ; war and union, 091 ; referred to, 10, 17, 61, 100-104, 100-170, 172, 175, 177, ISO, 183-185, ISO, 191, 197-190, 203, 207, 208, 218, 220, 221, 224, 226, 229-237, 242, 244, 246, 247, 249-253, 255, 256, 258, 259, 264- 206, 209, 270, 281, 289, 302, 311, 450, 480, 485-489, 493, 494, 490, 501, 502, 504, 500, 517, 519, 532, 533, 535-537, 547-551, 550- 558, 561, 562, 567-569, 592, 617, 618, 642, 044, 045, 049 Victoria Bridge, Montreal, 3S Falls, 454 Nyanza, 452-454 Afje, 513, 642 Aro7ts, 513, 642 Atistralasiau, 042 Daily Tehgrajih, 596 Leader, 042 Pievicw, 512, 513 Victoria (British Columbia), its judges and advocates, S2 ; referred to, 81, 84, S5 Victoria, steel gunboat, 157 Vignon, M. Louis, his Lcs Colonies /ran- gaises quoted, 202 Villiers, Sir H. de, 2S2 ; views on South Africa, 301 Vineyards, 019 Virgin Islands, 476 Virginia, 42, 103 Vladivostock, 3S3 Vogel, Sir J., described, 249 ; and secession, 639 ; refeired to, 200, 249, 250, 25S, 206, 267, 510, 517 Volga, t)ie, 3S3 Volksraad (of Transvaal), 281, 321, 322, 502, 597, 60O (Oiange Free State), 536 Voluntary Aet (Cape of Good Hope), 59S Volunteers, the, and position warfare, 680 ; tield artillery, ib. ; army organisation, 687 ; referred to, 678, 633, 6S9 Vote, cumulative, 574 plural, in local elections, how regarded by colonial workmen, 489 Vuelta Abajo cigars, 401 Wachs, Major, and the immediate use by Great Britain of her material resources in time of war, 690 Wages, 521, 522 ; high, 525 and protection, 561 Wagner, music of, in the colonies, 153 Wakefield system, the, 225, 232, 244 Waldenses, the, 593 Wales, 77, 635 H.R.H. The Prince of, celebration of his birthday in Victoria, 574 Walfisch Bay and the Germans, 300 ; 308 Wallace, Professor R., aud our Indian rule, 437 Walsh, Dr., R.C. Archbishop of Dublin, 590 Dr., R.C. Archbishop of Toronto 581 M^1lter, Sir E., 537 War expenditure, British, and Indian, 687, 0S8 ; French and German, ib. food supply and trade in time of, 672 of 1870, the German olflcial account of, 070 Ollice scheme, 1SS7, 371 the, and arms and stores in India, 363 ; referred to, 380, 052, 650, 660, 662* 069 ' Warburton, Colonel, Khyber system of 365 "AVaring," 255 AVarren, Sir C, his expedition, 328, 339, 840; and South African difficulties, 344 Waisaw, 353 INDEX 737 Washiuffton (D. C), 43, 5S, 72, S2, 92, 94, 98, 29(5 House of Representatives at, 57 President, 90, 495 (State), 21, 82, 87 ■ Treaty of, 97 Water-works, Government, 50S Watson, Mr. Marriott, 256 Watts's "Love and Death," 185 Wazaris, 805 Wealth, 490; and political power in the colonies, 491 ; in South Africa, ih. Wealth and Progress, 520 Wedderburn, Sir W., and the National Congress, 429, 433 Wellesley Province, 450 Wellington and Mauawatu Railway Com- pany, 252 (British Columbia), 83 (New Zealand), 248, 254, 258, 442, 504 Wesleyan Conference, 592 Kalendar, 591 Metliodist Church, the, South Africa, and Boers and Dutcli, 600 Missionary Society in India, 601 Wesleyans, the, in the Cape, 291 ; Austral- asia and South Africa, 583, 585, 587, 5S9, 600, 602; Cape Coloiiy, 597; Crown Colonies, 601 ; West Indies, 602 ; referred to, 604, 620 West Coast settlements, 445 West-India Islands, Church of England and other Protestiint bodies in, 602 ; re- fen-ed to, 263, 296, 444, 445, 578 Indian Islands, and the growth of to- bacco and tea, 467; problem, dominant factorof the, ib.; colonies, legislatures iu majority of, how nominated, 470 sugar trarle, its chief market, 466; depression in, how accounted for, ih. West Indies, the, pressure of the United States on, 98 ; proposed treaty of United States with, 99; its general eflect, ib.; objections to the diuft treaty, ib.; posi- tion towards the United States, 100; and self-government, 442; revival of interest in, 465 ; Messrs. Froude, Salmon, and Eves on, ib.; results of emancipation, i&. ; Encnnibered Estates Court and capital in the, ib.; coolie immigration, ib.; effect on owners of sugar estates in the, of legislation based on Sugar Con- vention, 460 ; transformation as regards produce of estates, 467 ; result of im- portation of East Indian coolies, 469 ; white population of, 472 ; Baptists, 602; and sale of sugar, 632 ; annexation to the American Union, ib.; coaling station, 668 ; referred to, 12, 26, 106, 296, 444, 445, 468, 546, 560, 632, 635, 688, 6951 West hulies, The, 465 Tlie English in the, 465 West Indies, British, 443 ; and the attrac- tion of the United States, 481 French, 6S8 Western Australia, its size, 241 ; features of its southern part, ih.; agitation for division and responsible government, 241, 243 ; soil and climate, 243 ; its spare lands a field for scientilic colonisation. ih.; present position, 245; responsible government, negotiations for, 246 ; de- fence questions, ib.\ legislature, 441; Upper House, 504 ; religious teaching, 570; Methodism, 592; liquor law, 616; drunkards, ih.; debate on imperial federation, 641 ; referred to, 197, 198, 208, 210, 225, 234, 236, 240-242, 251, 311, 313, 840, 445, 446, 469, 471, 539, 545, 558, 569, 579, 618, 650, 664 Western seas, coaling stations of the, 667 Westgarth, Mr., and Australian confedera- tion, 145 ; growth of property in Australian colonies, 515 ; referred to, 147, 534, 551, 557 Westport district (New Zealand), 650 Wey, the, 680 Whitehead, Sir James, 692 Whiteway, Sir William, Prime Minister of Newfoundland, 12 Wife's sister, marriage with a deceased, how regarded in tlie colonies, 517, 630 Wilkinson, Mr. Spenser, and the General Staff, 6S6 William IV, 096 Wiltshire, 220 Wimmera River, 124 Windward Islands, grouping of, 475 ; their government, 476 ; results of confedera- tion iu, ih. ; disestablishment, 603 Wiue-growing and Prohibition, 621 Winnipeg, increase of its population, 77 ; architecture, ib. ; importance of, as a railway centre, ib. ; licenses, 60S ; re- ferred to, 20, 22, 72, 78, 79 Winton, Sir P. de, 330, 331 Wise, Mr., 17S, 591; late Attorney-General of New South Wales, on Catholicism as bearing on Protection and free trade, 556 ; quoted, 646 Wolseley, Lord, 6S6 system, the, iu Natal, 311 Women, and the franchise in Canada, 517 ; position of, in Canada and Australia, ih. ; and universities, 573 Wood, Sir E., and the defence of Swazi- land, 32S ; his militaiy policy in Egypt, 666 WooUey, Professor, 188 Woolwich, 665, 667 command, 682 " Workhouse," horror of the word, 545 Working classes, 254, 488, 524 ; and see Labour man, colonial, his normal condition represented, 523 men proprietors, 524 Workmen, colonial, bugbear of, 519 ; and cheap labour in British Columbia and Soutli Africa, 529 ; Christianity of, 530 members in the colonies, 501 white, and Cliinese labour, 559 ; and see Labour Wynberg, 302, 304 Yokohama, S3, 84 Yorkshire, 220, 549 Young, Sir P., and colonial representation, 634 ; Home Rule, ih. Yule, Mr., 433 3b 738 INDEX Zambesi, free navigation of the, and Portugal, 464 ; referred to, 280, 308- 310, 334-337, 341, 342, 446, 453, 464 Zanzibar, Sultan of, and levying of duties, 462 ; referred to, 341, 443, 446, 447, 450- 462, 454, 464, 473 Zebelir Paslia, 451 Zenana Medical Missions and Indian gentlemen, 428 Zhob valley and occupation, 363, 364, 308, 869 Zollverein, a 661, 627, 630, 633 Zululand and responsible government in Natal, 315 ; sale of liquor, 620 ; referred to, 308, 309, 313, 314, 316, 319 Zulus, the, 319 Zulu War, the, 314 Zumbo, 336 Printed ly R. 5. R. Clakk, Edinbmgli. mmi^t^^Bmm