attempt to maintain a supremacy so cherished, so envied, the prize of so many victories . . . . but but you will forgive me, and not suppose me capable of such madness as to address to you by preference doctrines so contrary to popular opinion, unless I were satisfied that I had truths to tell, and that you ought to hear them." And he reflects with strong but suppressed emotion on the opponents with whom he is confronted-the prophets who stand up to prophesy pleasant things; those who have the easy task of tickling the public ear with the sounds most agreeable to it; those who have only to do homage to idols, and flatter prejudices, and affix to all such as dare take the side of reason the stigma of want of patriotism; "men who only repeat to us on every occasion that we ought to imitate our ancestors, and not to allow ourselves to be despised by foreigners, and not to suffer a flag on the sea unless its owners pay us tribute and submit to our dictation.”

Certainly the analogy between the case of Athens at the time of the Social War, and that of Britain at the present day, is not so strong as to render this reference to ancient history ominous. We have not been beaten and humiliated, as the Athenians had. No enemy has reached our shores. No flower has fallen from our chaplet. The resources of the nation are higher than at any period of our history, its spirit to the full as high. We are just as much masters of the sea (attaching any reasonable sense to that somewhat vain-glorious expression) as we ever were. We monopolise almost as large a share of maritime commerce as ever. In one important branch of that commerce we have regained a position which at one time we seemed in danger of losing the American carrying trade has absolutely ceased to rival ours. And, although we have been happily spared the necessity, for half century past, of measuring our strength at sea with that of hostile empires, no reason has been shown for doubting that the elements of that strength are the same as of yore, and that we have in posse the very same means of ensuring victory and organising conquest which were turned to such marvellous account by our grandfathers.

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All this is true; and yet there exists, no doubt, a prevalent feeling, that, in a certain sense, the doom of Athens is already ours. Our power to conquer, or to hold by force, trans-marine empire, in most quarters, may be the same; but that empire itself is not the same. The ties which held it together are not the same. We feel

them weakening and loosening around us. There is a general, vague notion that "something ought to be done" (that favourite formula of the well meaning, but undecided) not merely to arrest further disintegration, but to give additional vigour to our scattered dominion by enabling its several parts to support each other, and to strengthen the whole. This seems to be the form which what is

popularly called the Colonial Question assumes in most men's eyes. If I have rendered their views in language so general as to express only very shadowy notions, this is really no fault of mine. I have, indeed, had the fortune to meet with a few constructive suggestions, put forth by individuals, as to the reform of our institutions in this sense; but no party or section of thinkers seems to have arrived at any definite scheme for obtaining what they want, or even (I say it with all respect) any definite idea of what it is that they

want.

It is, however, perfectly true that our trans-marine, or colonial, empire does tend, in one sense, towards disintegration. This is the fact, whether to avow it be patriotic or no. Isocrates denounced those who opposed him, when he proclaimed to the Athenians that their supremacy was over, as troublesome dealers in patriotism. I will not adopt his denunciation; but I will not allow similar opponents to claim the monopoly of patriotism. As it is commonly said that in battle it requires more courage to run away than to advance, so it is a higher proof both of resolution and of true love of his country, in a statesman, to retreat from an untenable position than doggedly to maintain it. For in the first case he has to submit to the most irritating of all charges: that of having compromised the honour of the country. It is the great weakness of an ordinary intellect, when in power, to shrink before a taunt such as this; to go on in the wrong path, rather than turn back, trusting to the chapter of accidents for some mode of getting through, or (at the worst) hoping to leave it to some successor to reap the harvest of one's own rashness or obstinacy. I think I can name more conjunctures than one in my own time, where public affairs would have taken a different and more favourable turn, had English statesmen possessed as much of the moral courage which can defy the unpopularity of giving way, as most Englishmen possess of mere animal daring.

Assuming, however, this existing tendency toward disintegration, or the gradual dropping off of our greater Colonies from their present union-such as it is-with the mother country; what are the causes of this phenomenon?

They are twofold; arising partly from the nature of things; partly from a policy, which it is mere idle assertion to call recent, or to attribute to this or that party in the State, since it has been deliberately adopted and persevered in by the Home Government for nearly thirty years.

As to the first class of causes: it must be remembered that the passion of Englishmen for the extension of foreign dominion, which grew and developed itself during two conquering centuries, was not a mere sentimental impulse, although it may often have assumed that appearance. It had its real origin in a strong and well-founded feel

ing of national interest. British dominion was to advance two objects: British trade, and emigration from Britain. And those who thus reasoned were thoroughly in the right; only, as often happens, they were in the right as to the general view, mistaken as to particulars. They thought colonies might promote our trade through a system of protection. They thought that emigration was to be moulded and utilised through artificial schemes of systematic colonisation. It is matter of history now, how far their views were erroneous in detail; how far the results justified, and greatly outstripped, those views in a wider sense than the projectors had themselves conceived. Protection was, no doubt, got rid of, not directly through natural causes, but by our own act; but I am justified in considering its fall as coming in the natural sequence of events, inasmuch as it is obvious that (in the colonial trade) we could not have maintained it if we would. And the process of colonisation came to an unavoidable end. Thirty years ago, when I devoted some attention to the subject (if I may be pardoned an egotistical recollection), while occupying the chair of Political Economy at Oxford, the world seemed all open to us. It was a natural, and a very interesting, part of my duty to discuss the comparative attractions of large regions of temperate earth, which rivalled each other in calling on Europe to employ her surplus population in founding her commonwealth on their shores. Now, the world is taken up. Emigration exists and multiplies; colonisation is dead and buried. There is not an available space on the earth's surface, under a temperate climate, in which we or any one else could found a new colony on a large scale, if we would; and we have given away all the unoccupied land of our old provinces. But with the colonial trade thrown open, and colonisation at an end, it is obvious that the leading motives which induced our ancestors to found and to maintain a colonial empire no longer exist. And the mere passion for additional conquest-for annexing to our dominion insulated spots all over the earth-has apparently ceased among us. While France has been raising her flag in Tahiti and New Caledonia, and the United States purchasing for a large sum the frozen rim of the Western Continent, the melancholy region of Alaska; while enthusiasts are urging the North German Confederation to establish colonies in New Guinea, close to the equator; England has within these few years declined to assume the sovereignty of the Fiji Islands, the gem of the Pacific, which was almost thrown into her lap.

But the second class of those causes which tend in our day towards the disintegration of our scattered dominion arises, as I have said, out of our own policy, and that a policy deliberately undertaken and steadily persevered in.

This policy has consisted, in the first place, in giving the greater colonies, step by step, self-government. Some of our ablest states

men urged on the adoption of measures for this purpose, with a full understanding that independence was the final object in view, and that true wisdom required that this should be foreseen and prepared for beforehand, instead of arriving suddenly, and with much social and political derangement. Others, on the contrary, believed -judging at least by their own intimations-that the best way of securing the permanence of the connection was to give everything the colonists asked for; the complete exercise of executive and legislative powers; the right to impose taxation at their pleasure on imported goods, provided they did not violate our cardinal principles of free trade; the right to deal as they pleased with their waste lands, and to enjoy the whole of the revenue derivable from them. All this has been done. We have absolutely no further advantages to concede to them. There is no basis left for any negotiation between us, if we were inclined to enter on such. And the unparalleled progress of wealth and social improvement which the colonies in question have made under this liberal system has more than rewarded, in one way, the expectations of those who devised it and carried it into execution. But to imagine that we could combine both systems-that of local independence and that of imperial centralisation-was a mere delusion, in whatever plausible fallacy ingenious reasoners may have enveloped it.

But there is another particular of our recent policy, which, though of minor importance in itself, has not been without its effect in loosening the old tie between mother country and dependencies. The object of our statesmen has been twofold; to encourage the colonies to prepare for independence for their own sake; and at the same time to relieve the people of this country from the share which they formerly bore in contributing towards their administration and defence. We began with reducing home contributions to their civil governments, until we had very nearly struck this item from the sum of our national out-goings. We then proceeded to curtail our military expenditure on their behalf, until this also was reduced within comparatively narrow limits. And even now a contest is being waged as regards New Zealand, the Cape, Ceylon, and a few other places, on the subject of the shrunken residue. Now, I am not criticising the wisdom of these economics. It is needless to repeat the irrefragable arguments which have been urged in Parliament and the press as to the impolicy of taxing ourselves for purposes which produce no tangible return, and teaching flourishing young communities to rely on us instead of on themselves. At the same time it is possible that this line of policy has been avowed and acted on in a somewhat ostentatious manner, not exactly calculated to soften what there was of disagreeable in the operation itself by the mode of using the knife. I need only refer to the recent little work

on "Colonial Policy and History," published by Sir Charles Adderley, who from the beginning has been the consistent and zealous advocate of colonial emancipation. In this book he carefully chronicles every step in the process of reduction in colonial expenditure, and exults over it as a substantial achievement. It is a red-letter day in his narrative when a colonial judge or bishop has been struck off the estimates for Parliament, or when a battalion has been withdrawn from a colonial post. This, on his part, is perfectly consistent; for he is one of the few who have, in this matter, the courage of their opinions; his doctrine is the simple one; colonies should cost nothing, should manage their own affairs, should remain dependent only as long as they please, and should neither be bribed nor forced into prolongation of their connection with us. But then it is impossible for a British statesman to dwell on reductions like these, and present them constantly to the public in the form of argument by example, without encouraging in colonial minds the belief that Britain does not really care for a connection for which she steadily refuses to disburse anything more than she can possibly avoid. Those, if there be such, who really imagine that the pride and "prestige" of a vast empire are to be maintained without either paying for it ourselves or forcing our subjects to pay for it, are dreaming of making ropes of sand and bricks without straw.

The tie which now connects us with our greater colonies is a voluntary one only. It will endure, barring accidents, in its present strength as long as both parties are satisfied that it is for their common advantage that it should endure. It will not easily bear further loosening; but it cannot possibly be tightened, unless we, for our parts, either think proper to attempt compulsion, or to buy from them a greater amount of submission by incurring for them a greater amount of expenditure. The first method is of course impracticable. And we may rest assured that the second, if English statesmen were to condescend to it, would not succeed in the present condition of colonial prosperity and colonial temper. I feel, however, that I have been adopting, a little too frecly, the loose language of superficial reasoners on this subject, and speaking of a "colonial question," as if any such question, in the general sense, existed or could possibly arise. I must endeavour to make my meaning more distinct by applying my reasoning to the respective cases of our several classes of colonies, as different in social condition and requirements as they are in geographical position.

The first region to which we have to turn our eyes, in taking this general review, is North America. The whole of our possessions in that quarter have recently been amalgamated into one political body, the Dominion of Canada. That dominion forms in truth a commonwealth possessing four millions of people, managing entirely its own