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THE GREAT GAME;

-A. IPXjEj^

FOB A

BRITISH IMPERIAL POLICY.

BYA BRITISH SUBJECT.

WITH AN INTROBUCTION,

BY A CANADIAN.

TORONTO :

WILLING & WILLIAMSON,

1.876.

)

THE GREAT GAME;

-A. I^LEA.

90R A

BRITISH IMPERIAL POLICY.

BY A BRITISH SUBJECT.

WITH AK Il^TRODlJCTION,

BY A CANADIAK,

TORONTO :

WILLING & WILLIAMSON.
1876.

/- Zf

«■

/-37n

i'/^r/

THE EOYAL COLONIAL INSTITUTE
THIS WORK

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED

^l> the Jltttltor,

IN THE HOPE

THAT IT MAY HELP ON THE WORK

WHICH THAT SOCIETY IS DOING.

it )

B/S5(a

INTRODUCTION.

The following work proposes a scheme of Imperial Federation
which is attractive from its very boldness, but which in the
present temper of England and the Colonies may be safely pro-
nounced 'Impracticable. The book is interesting to Canadians
for two reasons. We were all talking a few months ago, and
many of us are yet, about a vague notion of Imperial Federa-
tion, in which Canada's voice should be heard. The other
reason why this book is interesting to Canadians is this : we all
like to hear the evil that is said of us as well as the good ; and
the author of "The Great Game" treats Canada with glaring injus-
tice, and empties on us and the United States the '-opious vials
of his irrational scorn.

Mr. Blake's speech at Aurora contained an adumbration of
an Imperial Federation — in which " the people of Canada * *
" should have some greater share of control than they now have
" in the management of foreign affairs " — should have a word to
say in all " relations with other countries, whether peaceful or
"warlike, commercial, financial, or otherwise ; " and should take
upon themselves the correlative burdens of enlarged duties and
privileges and powers. The first act, however, of this author, is
to shut out from the empire brotherhood he wishes to create the
greatest of England's self-governed dependencies.

The advocates of Imperial Federation may say that if the
author of " The Great Game " had approached the question
from a democratic rather than a despotic standpoint, — for no
lighter phrase would accurately describe this gentleman's
" mount of vision " — there could be no objection to his proposals.
But in that case the preponderance of representation in the Im-

perial Senate would still be with the United Kinjjdom, and
Colonics grasping at a little importance would ultimately find
they had been allured by a shadow and had lost the substance.
For England such an Imperial Constitution would be fatal, be-
cause it would at no distant day break up amid execrations
against her from all her children, whose hate or friendship was
worth considering. Th.e fine policy to begin with of pushing
Canada off, shows how wise this author and his friends of the
Royal Colonial Institute are. Perhaps, however, most Cana-
dians will think when they read the following pages that as some
people's tender mercies are cruc', the cruelty and contempt of
the author of " The Great Game " might, if he could wield a
sword as powerful as he evidently considers his pen, be regarded
as merciful.

It is a gain, however, to have such a proposal before us, for
now at length somebody amongst ourselves may speak and give
us a plan. We as a people are at present placed in a somewhat
ludicrous light, and the light falls on our public men and on our
press. " We must find some common ground on which to unite,
" some common aspiration to be shared, and I think * * it can
" be found alone in the cultivation of that national spirit, (mean-
" ing a Canadian national spirit), to which I have referred." But
if we are aiming at Imperial Federation what we should do is
not to " cultivate " a Canadian national spirit, but an Im-
perial spirit ; it is the imperial lion, not the Canadian beaver we
should get astride of. And it may be said in passing that
" cultivating " a national or an imperial spirit is like culti-
■ vating love for your mother ; if the love requires culti-
vation the soil is barren and the seed diseased. The con-
versationsj^about nationaPspirit remind one of the dialogue be-
tween Cleopatra and her unseminared Mardian. " Hast thou
" affections .•' " asks the self-willed serpent of old Nile dreaming
amid the vast moral slime of her own nature, of Anton} . " Yes,
" gracious madam," is the reply. " Indeed .-' " inquires C leopatra
incredulously. " Not indeed " is his answer. If we have national
sentiment there is no need of cultivating it, and if we have not,
it is one of those things which to be genuine must come as the
early day breaks over the hills— silent — gentle — strong, — while

night hesitating "coldly eyes the youthful Phoebus " and

disappears.

Wo have a "people drawn fronuliffcrent countries andof difierent
" faiths," and the parts have not yet been fused into homogeneity.
All we can say to each citizen is that — in the case of an im-
migrant who has settled here — having come here of his own free
will — his first duty is to this country — and he has no right to
bring disturbing controversies or antagonistic allegiances from
elsewhere. In the case of all — to enrich, to enlighten, to elevate
the country of adoption or birth is the supreme duty — and wc
arc so situated that this can be loyally done by persons of all
nationalities and all creeds, and nearly al! political sentiments.
We only make ourselves ridiculous if we shout in chorus " wc
must be national " witliout having any definite idea, or sing stuff
like Mr. l-^dgar's lyric about this " Canada of ours " — a poem
which should have been illustrated by a napkined baby doing
irreverence to his warrior father's helmet.

There are three courses before us, (i) To go on as wc are, en-
joying " the influences and the inspiring contact of a great
nation "— contact which those who have been below the line
know has on our social and political life, the happiest efiects.
(2) To seek for Imperial Federation, the supposed advantages of
which would seem to be delusive. (3) To look forward to inuo-
pendence.

As to this last there is no reason for regarding with any dis-
favour its discussion. But if we are not going to bring it into
existence right otif, what is the use of talking about it .-• What
above all, is the use of talking bout it if a majority of the
people and a majority who have s- lie backbone and would stand
to their guns, are utterly opposed to it .'* The inconvenience of
premature controversies will appear from the following pages, for
it will be seen that what has proved the mere vapouring of a few
young men with their wit, where Ajax's was, in tlie ventral
region, has been regarded in England as a thunder cloud. The
writer of " The Great Game " is not in the least aware that the
Canada First gentlemen objected to nothing so much as to be
taken seriously. Looking at all the circumstances, the first
course would seem the best one to pursue, especially if we lean

VIU

more and more towards British and more and mor^ from Yankee
civilization. If we were tc make part of an Imperial Federa-
tion and had representatives in London, or if we were indepen-
dent, our expenses would be vastly increased. Are our people
prepared for this ? Are they full of longing to have their fingers
in warlike pies ?

If we go on as now, faithful to the present and the future, the
time may come when a British Bund for international purposes
will be possible. The writer was much struck with the following
idea thrown out by Sir John Macdonald on an occasion when he
h"d the honour of a lengthened conversation with the veteran
statesman. Sir John said while his eyes flashed and the nervous
frame seemed to thrill with the prospect : " Twenty years hence
" is the time I should like to come up, — then the Australias will
" be a great naval power ; so will Canada — we shall then be pro-
" bably ten millions, and the three powers combined in a great
"Pacific policy, could rule the world."

"^lit public opinion is king. If public opinion were to-morrow
in favour of independence, independence we should have. It is
however, notoriously the other way, and the best thing that can
be done therefore at present is to go on as we are, leaving the
future in the hands of Providence. This is is what called by
some persons, drifting. But the future is an unknown sea, and
in an unknown sea you cannot do better than fit yourselves for
what new circumstances may arise, and not try and anticipate
what those circumstances .shall be. We hear constantly " we must
" prepare for this and that." If ve only take care to L , honest
and straightforward and instructed we shall be amply prepared.
Lying, plundering the public purse, snec-'ng at public spirit,
earning one's bread by dirty transactions ana pjlltical pandering,
want of courage and want of c ndour, — these are bad prepara-
tions for anything requiring manliness and statesmanship.

So far as Canadians are concerned, an answer has been given
by anticipation to the argument of " The Great Game," which
to the exte.it that it has any bearing on this country, is now
set forth.

THE GREAT GAME.

CHAPTER I.

DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN.

" It is the wish of Her Majesty's Government to abstain from
any tenitorial acquisitions and from cortractinj^ any new
obligations."* It was sadly surprising to hear Her Majesty's
Secretary of State for the Colonies repudiating the course of
action which has made Her Majesty the greatest sovereign
whom the world has ever seen. . It was hardly possible to
believe that he had become a pervert to the Manchester School
of Radicals. When Cheap John comes forward to peddle his
bits of Brammagem political economy, no one expects anything
but Hastiness puffed v/ith " vehement shallowness." Mr. Glad-
stone's frenzied hatred of everything Imperial is well known as
the last and worst inr«<-mity of a noble mind. Familiarity
ought, at this time of day, to have bred general contempt of the
windy philanthropy and high-flying philosophy of Sir Charles
Dilke and Sir Wilfrid Lawson. We all know how delightfully
cheap and easy it is to be a dispassionate cosmopolitan, above
the narrow prejudices of national ambition, delicately consid-
erate of the "natural right" of "men and brethren" to abuse
themselves and their neighbours, looking down with serene
disdain on the childish pride of conquest and the vulgar lust of
territory. " Stay at home and let things take their course/
naturally seems the golden maxim of statesmanship to that
pestilent brood of pretenders to wisdom, who look upon the
political art as nothing but the art of keeping out of trouble

• House of Lords, W .y 12, 1874.

while keeping in office. But, et tu Brute! In Carnarvon, at
least, we had some right to expect that there remained a
sympathy with the grand, masterful, and adventurous in the
relations of England to the world : a willingness, an eagerness
to make strong England play a father's or an elder brother's
part in the family of mankind, taking the weak and ignorant by
the hand, striking terror into evil doers, giving protection and
encouragement to the beginnings of good, causing the wilderness
to blossom as the rose, rjid sending forth the light cf religion
and civilisation into those dark places of the earth which are stil
the habitations of cruelty. But the fires of hope were a. most
extinguished by that s^oeech. The hero seemed to have joined
himself to the ignoble chorus of repudiators of rational duty.
He seemed, like a famous Laodicean of old, to have " caught
the Whigs bathing," and run away with their livery of dishonour.
In that garb he seemed to be coming forward as chief priest to
sacrifice national honour at the altar of the great god Laisses-
fairc. It was the latest and inost alarming symptom of growing
virulence in that epidemic of insular churlishness which had
during many years been raging amongst English public men.
Half of our leading statesmen had already delivered speeches
under its debasing influence, and the rest, with the noble excep-
tions of Earl Grey and Sir Bartle Frere, had shown no signs of
healthy resistance to the infection. Public opinion had indeed
become grievously emasculated. Everywhere the valetudinarian
theory of British policy commanded the assent of safe medio-
crities and stolid Philistines. The Times, after its kind, dealt
out " practical " commonplaces, sicklied over with the colour of
the reigning disease. Even the Standard seemed inclined to
follow the multitude to talk evil. Everybody was informed that
he knew " that England had given up business as a conquering
and aggressive power. In the whole fourth estate the quasi-
Radical Spectator had the doubly si.igular honour of upholding
an imperial policy. The creeping palsy of cynical self-abase-
ment had become so powerful that its cant had almost taken the
form of established maxims of English public conduct. The
dogma of non-interference was constantly alluded to as an
incontrovertible first principle. Argument in favour of increas-

'■<

ing or consolidating the empire was quietly sneered down as
dreamy nonsense, needing no refutation beyond some off-hand
phrase, such as " we have enough already to bother us." The
hole-and-corner politicians were masters of the situation, and
answered their adversaries with little but brow-beating ridicule.
Foreign nations exulted in the belief that England tvas allowing
her sun to set. She would not only take no more business into
her hands, but be thankful to get rid of what she had, and would
retire as soon as she could into a comfortable shell, there to
undergo a quiet and natural decline into a power of the third or
fourth magnitude. There can be little doubt that many English-
men had begun to acquiesce quietly in this degrading estimate
of their state, urged persistently by a small but noisy set of
crazy economical doctrinaires. Reaction from those extravagant
delusions about the pecuniary value of colonics, which Adam
Smith had exposed, had given birth to a more unreasoning
passion of depreciation. Because some supposed benefits of
colonial relations had been shown to be imaginary, men jumped
into the opposite belief that thc/e are no benefits at all. Some-
times, indeed, the dislike to foreign possessions rose, or was
professed, from a maudlin kind of democratic and cosmopolitan
philanthropy, little more indeed than .sympathy with the crass
selfishness of other human beings. But more often there was no
redeeming feature, real or apparent, in the mutual attitude of the
dominant sect. Colonies were assamed to be unprofitable, and
isolation thus appeared to be dictated by an enlightened self-
interest, scorning equally the grasping rapacity and the senti-
mental love of grandeur supposed to characterise the advocates
of imperial policy. Then this self-interest was assumed to be the
one guiding principle which ought to regulate our conduct
beyond the four seas. The practical mind of this commercial
age rejected with a superior sneer all Quixotic notions
that we owe more than merely negative duties to our
inferior fellow men. There was for them one God : Let
Alone was his name : and this was his commandment,
that we mind each man his own business. All this was,
and is ; but, thank God I not in all its former strength.
The dawn '^f a better day began to gUmmer when the Earl of

II '

i (.

Carnarvon showed that he had uttered the Shibboleth of th^ day
merely in thoughtless imitation of the fashion, by showing an
evident anxiety to annex Fiji. Close upon the heels of this first
word spoken for the right, came Mr. Disraeli's noble declaration
of determination that Her Majesty's dominions should not be
diminished under his stewardship, and of hope that they would
be increased. Then followed the debate in the House of Com-
mons under circumstances exceptionally favorable to the party
of progress, and resulting in the ludicrous defeat of the obstructives.
Nothing tends so much to promote the growth of an infant tone
of thought, or line of policy, as accoidant action under circum-
stances which prevent the employment of most hostile arguments,
and offer few points on which the animosity of most enemies can
fasten. As a result of this happy event, a change in the style of
public talk about colonies has already become apparent in many
public speeches, and in many of the public prints. Doubtless,
also, the Earl of Carnarvon's unexpressed mental tendencies in
favour of extension and consolidation have received such confir-
mation and impetus from practical success, that we may reasonably
cultivate hopes of a further prosecution of his career of imperial
improvement. Not that one can safely say that a revolution in
public sentiment, or anything like it, has yet been accomplished.
We have only the opportunity of organizing forces for a victorious
advance The process of conversion has fairly begun, but the
good cause still needs all the help which any ready tongue and
any willing pen can render. One influential newspaper has
been found to declare that the certainty ot ruin to the white popu-
lation, and long-continued bloody anarchy among the black, if
Fiji is left to itself, is no reason why England should incur the
risk and expense of managing a country at the other side of the
globe. And we cannot doubt the sad truth that the crabbed
selfishness which gave birth to that infamous sentiment, lives and
thrives unabashed in a very large and powerful portion of the
people. The Age of Drift, as Mr. Jenkins has felicitously called
it, has not yet passed away as regards most of our legislators.
The blight of political fatalism lies heavy on Lords and Commons
alike. The energetic personality of the few, which has achieved
every great improvement of mankind, is ^invisible to modern

political eyes through the general and apparently impersonal
processes of human change, to which that ver^ personality has
given impulse and direction. We have far too many helter-skelter
politicians, never ready for an emergency, butbufifeted hither and
thither by the waves of accident ; men who arc so "cautious"'
that they can never see the need of action till the manifest and
irretrievably disastrous results of inactivity have made action
impossible, or utterly useless ; carried idly about by every wind
of a public opinion which they take no part in forming ; able
only to dodge from one makeshift to another, and appalled at
the audacious suggestion to look a little beyond their own noses.
Far too many administrators who glory in the shame of aimless
patchwork, and do not despise themselves for being not Wills
but Weathercocks. For too many sniggering cavillers who never
do anything, or have serious thoughts of the way in which any-
thing is to be done ; but prompt to raise vague yells of " danger"
at every proposal of action, while comfortably blind to the
dangers of careless repose, and practised in the use of oratorical
wet blankets dripping with the cold rain of proverbial philosophy,
to quench all sparks of manly political action. We hear far too
much about the unwiseness of going farther to fare worse, and
the wiseness of enduring the ills we have, rati ,r than flying to
others which we know not of ; far too much semi-pious advice
to take no thought for the morrow, and trust in Providence,
hoping that something may turn up to help men who will not
help themselves. There is far too much of the spirit of those
French triflers whose maxim was apres tnoi le deluge^ and far
too little of the spirit of the statesman. A statesman is not a
molluscous creature who lets other men make up his mind for
him, but a strong, wise man, who knows what is good for his
country or the world, and is determined to do it. He does not
regard himself as a mere machine for accurately reflecting and
registering the blind movements of human masses. He does not
make it his prime immediate object to be all things to all men,
but to be master of the situation in all circumstances. He does
not swim with the stream of other men's activity, but tries to
turn the cn-'ant in the direction which he prefers. He does not
so much shape his policy to events, as work to make events con-

i i!

14 .

venient for his policy. His talents are not for discovering or
conj^iring up difficulties, but for overcoming and undermining
them. Difficulties only strengthen his resolution. " Rest and
be thankful " seems to him a motto fit only for men in dark ages,
who are quite content that the ages should remain for ever dark.
Thank God, England has some few statesmen in Parliament, in
power ! The spirited and strong-minded Cecil of the 19th century
is a happy contrast to the stilted goose who founded the political
greatness of his family ; to that shifty, head-shaking, hand
wringing Burleigh who successfully cheated the world into
believing him great, till Motley came forward to show how he
had worried and hampered those brave m?n who saved England
in spi!:e of his negligence and meanness, to drag the solemn
noodle into the daylight of impartial criticism and to crown him
with his appropriate fool's-cap. The Prime Minister has swum
undauntedly against the stream throughout tlic j^r^ater part of
his life. He has steadily fought the good fight against stagna-
tion and anarchy amidst storms of ridicule and obloquy which
few men but he could have endured. Now, at length, in the
fulness of years, he holds in his hands the power to shape the
history of England ; the power to loose and to bind the British
Plmpire ; the power to set the fashion of government which the
world is most likely to follow. High hopes are natural, and ex-
pressions of enthusiastic expectation pardonable, even in the
form of suggestion and exhortation. There can be no more useful
ambition than that of helping on the great reaction against the
accursed Devil's-spell of Let Alone, led by Fitzjaraes Stephen as
philosopher, and Benjamin Disraeli as political orator. Against
the mawkish and sordid delusions still stifling the English people,
it is the duty of every man who has a spark of tlie enthusiasm of
humanity, to raise his most energetic protest. He is bound to
make some effort to rouse his countrymen from, their paralysis of
public spirit — their stupor of complacent self-degradation.

CHAPTER II.

ENGLAND'S ABDICATION.

An able English thinker has lately warned his countrymen
that three dangerous rocks lie ahead of their political course.
Unhappily he has had good reason to style himself Cassandra, for
the general feeling of his readers seems to be a comfortable in-
credulity, the thought of which must be very uncomfortable to
every patriot.

Taking a wider sweep than Mr. Greg's, and extending the
prophetic scrutiny from Great Britain to that group of terr-tories
supervised by England and loosely called the British Empire, I
see its collective existence menaced by the growth of three great
disruptive influences.

(A) The loss of the mother-country's commercial preeminence
and consequent control.

(B) The ambition of colonial statesmen.

(A) The probability; the certainty of England's commercial
decline may be assumed here without any statement of reasons.
Every one knows them or knows where to find thcni. Com-
petent observers and economists have so marshalled the evidence,
that the comfortable saycrs of smooth things and prophets of
false peace hav^e almost ceased to repeat the hackneyed cavil
that similar alarms have been raised before and not justified by
following events. Even the rotund optimist platitudes of the
late Under-Secretary for India, have grown somewhat pale and
flabby at the evident approach of the wolf. The only crumb of
comfort that he can give is that the evil day is still far distant,
and two or three generations more, therefore, may eat, drink, and
be merry in the glow of sufficient coal. But even while her
mineral wealth endures, while the pits are not yet abandoned,
while the furnaces are not yet blown out and the factories not

■ ; '■

yet shut up because of the famine price of coal, while there is na
absolute decadence, nevertheless a small territory with limited
internal resources and widely separated from its dependencies,
must constantly become less and less important as a member of
the society of progressive states. Relatively England must de-
crease with the rapid increase of manufacturing activity in larger
countries, probably not much inferior acre for acre in natural
resources above ground and below. We are in our zenith, they
are only coming up from the horizon. The industrial progress of
other European countries and of the gigantic North American
republic promises that they will very soon leave us far behind in
the competition. And prestige "moral " superiority, intellectual
influence, all depend so much on material superiority, that loss
of the last must be quickly followed by loss of the former. From
England's material weakness alone, if from no other cause, the
self-governing colonies will soon cease to pay any deference to
the authority of their decrepit mother, or any regard to her
wishes and interests, to form any part of her strength in diplo-
matic dealings; or to be bound by any but the loosest ties, if,
indeed, they do not claim formal independeifc:^ and make open
separation. Htr African and Asiatic dependencies and her war-
like strongholds she will soon be incapable of holding against
internal rebellions, against the attacks of neighbours now savage
but then grown powerful, or against the jealousy of those Great
Powers whose dig ity will be offended and who:e cupidity will
be roused, by the sight of a second-rate or third-rate power pos-
sessing so many of the keys of war and commerce. If the
ordinary course of nature is allowed to run in its present grooves,
the loose, unsteady fabric of dominion cannot long escape dis-
memberment, and one consequence of dismemberment will be
the speedy political effacement ot England, now the central figure
of a superficially magnificent empire. Spain will not allow
Gibraltar to remain. in the hands of a nation having only half of
her wealth and population. The Italians will not rest till they
get hold of Italian-speaking Malta. The French will reap the
benefit of Indian revolts, and find excuses for wresting Aden,
Stngapur, Hongkong, the Mauritius and the African settlements
from the feeble hands of perfidious Albion. Brother Jonathan's

mouthpiece in London will soon be audibly calculating that the
manifest destiny of Canada, Bermuda, and the West Indies is to
be ruled from Washington, and fraternally pointing out the use-
lessness of fighting against Providence, the thickest iron-clads
and the biggest battalions. Robbed on every side, and growing
weaker day by day, England will sink into unhonoured senility,
wilh neither love, obedience, nor troops of friends to comfort her
in her days of dull decrepitude. A continued diet of leeks and
humble-pie will soon shrivel up John Bull into the proper leanness
of a decayed gentk-nan ' bo has seen better days, and convert him
into the likeness of those Greeks and Portuguese, whom he now
so much despises. That is what will happen, at least, if he con-
tinues to think more of his nationality than of his imperial
functions. His temporary industrial preeminence has been
designed only to give a start in the race for empire, which he
must fii. 3n in reliance on means of another sort. The alternatives
before him are a struggling increase to be The Great Power, or a
sleepy decrease to be one of the smallest Powers. He must look
beyond the British seas for sources of new strength, which he
may make all his own. To remain great he must make the
territory of England greater, and found the United Kingdom on
a wider material base by taking in new English-speaking king-
doms to be integral parts of the union ; to be bone of its bone,
flesh of its flesh, nerve of its nerve. Wielding their ever-growing
forces in virtue of his paternal influence, he may hope to hold
the first place in the world as long as the sun and moon endure.
But never by his own insular and insulated strength.

(B) The separation of the colonies people J by men of Euro-
pean blood, and already self-governed in all domestic affairs, is
otherwise so easy as to be highly probable, but is seen to be in-
evitable when we consider the natural ambition of colonial states-
men. That ambition must in almost every ease greatly acceler-
ate the adolescent divergence of the young Anglo-Saxon from
the household of the parent. It was one great cause, perhaps
the great cause, of the American Declaration of Independence,
and that is a precedent which amply justifies fears of similar
movements in the larger colonies still attached to their mother,

and rapidly becoming as large in comparison with her as the
B

North American colonies were in 1776. To assume difference of
future conduct from alleged difference of treatment, and con-
sequent absence of motive, is to overlay a permanent cause with
the immaterial occasion which manifests or precipitates its effects.
The Yankees were as much self-governed, and, in general, quite
as liberally treated as our new colonics now arc. Like the story
of the greased cartridges in India, the petty amount of taxation
without representation was only a spark of injury, so fanned by
dexterous intriguers, that a mass of mankind already inflammable
with pride and lawlessness, burst readily into a flame of open
revolt. The grievance was merely a grievance to sentiment and
vanity, to the feelings which naturally make large bodies of
civilised men impatient of even nominal control exercised by
distant authority. Public feelings of this kind are naturally
strongest in the public men of the country, and co-operate with
their more conscious and self-interested desire to swell their own
power and dignity, in disposing them to cherish and educate the
germs of national aspirations which exist among their constitu-
ents. No one who has used his eyes well in obseiving colonial
events can have failed to see that such a process of education
has been carried on for not a few years in more than one of our
larger colonies. An impatience of their subordinate position is
very evident in the attitude of Canadian and Australian politic-
ians. They have a longing for the diplomatic swagger of an in
dependent state, able to deal directly with foreign nations. They
would like to have a finger in the international pie, to send
plenipotentiaries, to make treaties on their own account, with an
eye to their own exclusive interests, to have their own little
foreign intrigues and their own little foreign wars. New South
Wales assuming the airs of a sovereign state, offered to pay for
the government of Fiji as her dependency, and is now sulking
because the Earl of Carnarvon has made it a separate Crown
colony. They would like to confer iiW^s ad libitiun, or io abolish
them altogether, according to their several preferences. They
have no patience for the long and varied service which fits a man
for a well-deserved governort^hip. Led by social circumstances,
by education, and by political theories, to follow American rather
than English modes of public life, they would like to reach the

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higrhest posts by the short and easy roads of trickery and popular
flattery. British snobs who use stolen crests on their letters aro
quite willing to abolish the hereditary titles which they have no
hopes of enjoying. Accordingly it is not astonishing that
colonial politicians should occasionally make or allow a spiteful
peck at the Civil Lists, which they do not expect to have to
spend. Within the last six years large majorities of the Canadian
Parliament and the New South Wales Assembly have attempted
to cut down the salaries of their governors. In neither case was
it seriously argued that the sum paid was too much for a colony
to give or a British Governor to receive. In both cases this
strange and significant reason was given, " the President of the
United States gets less."

"Advanced" politicians at the Antipodes, chafe under the
restraints which British supervision places upon robbery, jobbery,
oppression of opponents, and all those freaks of boastful tyranny
which an ochlocratic majority so keenly relishes. British con-
trol is slender indeed, but it is enough to gall the Australian
rowdies. They would like a little more freedom to insult and
plunder the Australian gentlemen, whose English sympath ies
English habits, and superior culture, are so offensive to repub-
lican simplicity. Ostracism from public offices and honours, of
the class which has most loyalty to England, and most sympathy
with English ideas, gives only feeble satisfaction. Neither do
they think that they have done enough against the most obnoxi-
ous section of that class by legally allo\ving " free selection " of a
squatter's lands, and practically permitting any vagabond to
extend the application of the same principle to the squatter's
horses, cattle, and sheep.

Nothing less than a social revolution, levelling all to the
" uniform condition of frogs under a flagstone," will satisfy the
Australian Communards. Complete confiscation of estates bigger
than one-man farms is openly and pcrscveringly sought. A
Victorian prime minister announced that it wa? the mission of
his Government to " check the baneful operation of those odious
laws which make some men poor and other men rich." The
Victorian Government is indeed little but a great organization
for out-door relief to its rowdy supporters. Its chief employ-

If I

ment is in laying heavy taxes on its opponents, to build useless
railways, and bribe with subsidies those numerous constituencies
which are too mean to pay for their own local roads, bridges,
and schools. Self-government there is nothing but self-indul-
gence by the rabble at the expense of the better inhabitants and
the rest of the Empire. The revenue (say rather the poor-fund
and bribe-fund) is made to look like the big revenue of a
flourishing country by reckless borrowing and by squandering of
those Crown lands which the Whig Parliament of 1856, with
equally disgraceful recklessness, entrusted to the Colonial
Assembly. The handful of persons who happen to be already
in Victoria, grab for themselves the sole and exclusive benefit
of lands which are the heritage of the whole British race. They
give not a penny of the money for the promotion of emigration
from over-crowded England, the very purpose for which the
Crown lands were given to them in trust. They have fixedly
set themselves against increase of the population of their land of
milk and honey, fiercely determined to keep all its good tljings
to their own greedy and dishonest selves. Not content with
these stolen gains, they, and with them other Australasian
rabbles, have tried to force up the rate of wages by protective
tariffs, and are impudent enough to avow the additional purpose
of thereby rendering themselves independent of external supplies.
The popular cry in Melbourne, " Why let foreigners swamp our
markets ?" will bear testimony to the truth of the accusation.
And so will the only scientific sentence in Mr. Mill's " Political
Economy" which the Victorian Assembly hears with patience.
" The only case in which on mere principles of political economy
protecting duties can be defensible, is when they are imposed
temporarily (especially in a young and rising nation), in hopes
of naturalizing a foreign industry, in itself perfectly suitable to
the circumstances of the country." Observe the words "nation"
and "foreign" in the only argument of protectors who deign to
reason. When this policy was resisted by the Upper House, an
official person named Higginbottom, aided and abetted by the
other ministers, burst out into violent contempt and open outrage
of the constitution which the British Queen and Parliament had
established. He levied the proposed taxes on his own authority,

insulted the judges who protcctcfl the rights of Her Majesty's
subjects, arrogantly set aside thei. judgments by his own illegal
interference, and made a stupid and slavish Governor refuse to
sign warrants issued by the Supremo Court. This extraordinary
and audacious animal was indeed a fitting mouthpiece fcr an
Assembly of sharp practisers, public sponges, bankrupts, and
brothel-keepers, elected to be vessels of the popular wrath
against the taxpayers represented by the Upper House. The
Upper House, however, fought for and saved the constitution,
and the infamous proposal to reward Sir Charles Darling for
violating the constitution was gallantly rejected, in the face of
threats and actual danger from the brutal mob of Melbourne.
This courageous resistance, and the lash of English censure, have
since led to some improvement, and the Higginbottorn no longer
roars from the Treasury benches. But he is still powerful, and
lately denounced British supervision as " interference by a foreign
power," in the midst of the approving Assembly. Sir C. G.
Duffy, the succeeding Prime Minister, has written the same
thing in more guarded language. And above all, the protective
duties are still at work to build up an independent Victorian
nati'^n. New South Wales is not so bad as her big sister, but
she also has a restless rabble, ready to aspire to independent
national existence, and the other Australian colonies show signs
of following in her wake. In Southern Africa, a half-Dutch
ha'f-Radical antipathy to British control has been openly
expressed, since the introduction of responsible government.
In Canada, very few politicians would express any desire for the
continuance of connection with England if they were not afraid
of inability to stand alone. The benefit of the connection goes
altogether to Canada, and the burden altogether to England.
Canada supplies nothing which cannot be got elsewhere, at least
as cheaply ; buys no great quantity of English goods, and takes
in no great number of English emigrants. In return for these
nothings, she gets entire exemption from diplomatic expenses,
and almost entire exemption from military and naval expenses^
Nevertheless, the dominant party is too ambitious to be satisfied
under the present shadow of subordination. A powerful section
favours annexation to the United States. A more powerful

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section, openly or covertly, is preparing for independence. As
the Standard ingeniously hints, the new motto, " Canada First,"
really involves " England nowhere." If proof is wanted, the
recent negotiations with the Yankees will supply it in
abundance. Any one who has conversed with many Cana-
dians, and made a practice of reading Canadian news-
papers, can see that the people of che Dominion are
already more Yankee than British. They have formally
adopted the Yankee currency, and their speech is so full of
Yankee phrases ana idioms as to show that they look at most
things through Yankee spectacles from a Yankee point of view-
I believe with Sir A. T. Gait that the proposal of a British
Federation comes too late for Canada. And I confess that I am
not at all sorry. She would necessitate such an addition of
colonial members to the Federal Legislature as v/ould frighten
jealous Englishmen into rejection of the entire proposal. She is
a child too big and wilful for paternal amendment of her evil
republican ways, and the elevating effect of the indirect influences
of British connection is far too slight to justify an enormous
sacrifice of British imperial efficiency. While she remains
nominally a part of the British Empire, she is the pledge of its
thraldom to her insolent neighbour. The rowdy Republic is
formidable to England, only because England is trammelled by
the fear of bringing a Butler or a Sherman to acquaint helpless
Canadians with the horrors of American warfare. She is now
thoroughly tired of being sauced, fleeced, and kicked by Yankee
bullies, and ought to hail with rapture the prospect of deliverance
from the source of her weakness and humiliation. When lib-
erated, .she may obtain compensation for the loss of Canada by
taking more manageable territory in warmer latitudes. New-
foundland, moreover, need not follow Continental Canada, and
British Columbia 's so far separated from the populous parts of
the United States as to be nearly equally secure from attack.
It is indeed already par^ of the Dominion. But it is so dis-
affected that severance would be welcomed by its own peo'^'e,
and could not well be prevented by the other provinces. These
last would then be at liberty to secure a quiet life by forming
themselves into the Canadian Republic.

But a happier fate is possible for the other English colonies.
Their connection with England adds in no way to the dangers of
either party, and federation would make each a sure source of
strength to the other. At present, nearly all the military and
naval expenses of the Empire, leaving out of sight those specially
belonging to India, are defrayed by England alone, and the
colonies are consequently exposed io U e very real dangers of
having their rights and interests sacrificed to the bold demands
of some aggressive foreign state, or of being left unprotected
against barbarous neighbours, by ungenerous economists in the
House of Commons. Federation would immediately give relief
to England, and security to every one of the now endangered
colonies. Under the benign influence of political union, many
unpleasant characteristics of Australasia and South Africa would
gradually soften and disappear. Local feeling, instead of
developing into national feeling, would never be more than the
patriotism of Scotland now is, a merely graceful and picturesque
sentiment, giving warmth to poetry and zest to friendly emula-
tion. Capacity of full-fledged patriotism will have nobler and
more enlightened exercise than any mere love of Australia or
South Africa could furnish, in proud love of the empire on which
the sun never sets. The current of colonial ambition would be
changed by access to the splendid dignities of the federal
legislature and emoluments of the federal ministry. The char-
acter of colonial politicians would be elevated by translation of
the ablest to work in a higher field, in contact with men of high
culture and stainless honour, and under the influence of the
traditional purity, courtesy*, and self-control which have ennobled
the public life of England. A judicious bestowal of some few
privy councillorships, and a more liberal distribution of the
honours of the Bath among the more prominent colonial officials,
would give a seductive foretaste of the imperial grandeur which
they are asked to share, and be wonderfully efficacious in facili-
tating the cheerful acceptance of the federal state of existence by
the ambitious Anglo-Saxons of the southern hemisphere. The
recipients may not be worthy of their honours, but the greatness
of the occasion will vindicate the English Ministry from the
charge of making its rewards too cheap.

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Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters
Point to rich ,5nds."

England must stoop to v-onquer. If she continues to grasp too
long at the form ot supremacy, sh. must soon lose the sub-
stance. She mast descend from her solitary position of formal
sovereignty, to preserve her real greatness, as leading member of
a joint and undivided family of sovereigns, all controlling a huge
common estate. The younger members, now ready to fret under
a sense of constraint and inferiority, would then cheerfully yield
precedence to the elder sister, with whom they are f^^rmally
equal, and she, while continually dwindling in her own material
greatness, would continue strong with all the strength of a wide-
organic unity, growing greater and greater from year to year.
When no longer entitled to a majority of the central legislature,
she would still rule indirectly through new EngHsh communities,
moulded after her own likeness by long reverent submission to
her mental influence. Their growing life would be trained to
take the forms of solid British culture, in conformity with the
standard of British morals, in harmony with the refined social
and political institutions of the British Islands. Such healthy
organic outgrowths, filially receptive of influences generated at
the centre, would invest England with tremendous physical
weight in the counsels of Europe, and be vigorous cooperating
factors in the Angiification of the world, not as they now threaten
to be eLments of strength to the Philistine opposition. Their
increase would be just as good as increase of the area of England
itself. They would keep the Yankees below us in quantity as
well as in quality, and insure such a perennial increase of the
effective man-power of the true English breed, as would, in case
of need, keep the dark-skinned races in just and necessary
subordination by sheer power of bone and muscle. England
would always remain their beloved metropolis ; the venerated
headquarters of British law and literature, science and social
culture; the focus of the highest form of earthly civilisation.
Holding such a position in the most powerful federation of
countries on the face of the globe, she would inevitably reach a
still higher position in the time of the unity of man and the-

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" Federation of the World." She would be the necessary seat
of the " Parliament of Man," the administrative centre of the
earth, the fountain-head of all authority. And she would also
be the great University of the nations ; the Athens as well as
the Rome of the new civilisation ; the centre of thought and
light, to which illustrious men would be irresistibly attracted
from every corner of the earth, and whence their children would
go forth fitted for high careers of honour and of usefulness.
The features of the developed world would be mouHed after
English types, and English brains would guide the energies of
the human race.

CHAPTER III.

This is an able chapter on " The Past and Future of Our
Indian Policy," in which the author advocates an energetic
policy in India, which would make use of the natives in a
manner at once cautious and just, bring the native gentleman
into the Civil Service and the Sikh into the ranks of the army
officers, which would annex in all directions, and put sixteen
provinces under the Governor General, whos t rule would extfend
from Peshawar to Birma, a policy which would further place the
seat of government in the central provinces, say at Jabalpur — a
capital which would be surrounded by English zemindars and by
colonies of English hill farmers.

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CHAPTER IV.

THE IMPERIAL STRUCTURE AND ITS SAFEGUARD.

How are India and the other colonies to be made co-equal "
parts of Britain ? By the Queen and Parliament of the United
Kingdom in the following manner. The present Ministry ought
in the beginning of the next session to propose that the present
so-called Imperial Parliament pass a short and simple Act, in-
vesting a truly Imperial Convention, with absolute power to
establish a legislature representing and controlling every portion
of Her Majesty's dominions. To economize time they may
omit the formality of asking the consent of each colonial legis-
lature. It may be presumed that every man sent by each colony
is a plenipotentiary, and the Imperial sword may justly be
thrown into the balance against those who obstinately dispute
the presumption. The Convention ought to consist of lOOO
members, collected from the following sources.

A. The whole House of Commons, 652 in number,

B. 200 Members of the House of Lords, nominated in pro-
portion to the relative strength of each of the great parties
therein, 1 10 from the Ministerial side, and 90 from the Opposi-
tion. No gentleman on the Opposition would doubt the honesty
of the Ministry in the conduct of this delicate process. The 90
would be undoubtedly nominated from a pr'vate list supplied by
Earl Granville.

C. 48 Members, a fourth of whon ought to be non-Europeans,
nominated by the Government of India. Its impartiality also
would be beyond suspicion ;

D. 100 Representatives of the other colonies ;

1 Newfoundland

2 Bribiohx Columbia

3 Bahamas

4 Leeward islands

5 Barbadoes

6 Other Windward Islands jointly

7 Tnnidad ... . , '
^ 8 Jamaica

9 British Honduras

10 British Guiana . .

1 1 Cape Colony

12 Natal

13 Griqualand

14 Mauritius

15 Gold Coast

16 Sierra Leone and Gambia .

17 Ceylon

18 Straits Settlements ! '.

19 Sarr.walf . . [\

20 Hongkong

21 Malta

22 Channel Islands

23 Isle of Man

24 Fiji

25 New South Wales"

26 New Zealand [[ .

27 Queensland

28 South Australia . .

29 Tasmania . . . ] ]

30 Victoria

31 Western Australia

2—11—13

1—13

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15
10

6
2
21
1—61

The distribution is based partly on revenue, partly .a popu-
lation, partly on the character of the population. I confidently
believe that it will appear equitable to the impartial spectator
and be fairly acceptable to the principal parties concerned.
Some small colonies are omitted, because their non-official popu-
lation IS insignificant. The greatest of the purely European
colonics is excluded, for reasons which have already been fully
placed before the reader. Its most westerly province, British
Columbia, IS, however, placed in the list, because it is widely
separated from Central and Eastern Canada, in situation, in
leehng, and in relation to those circumstances which necessitate
the exclusion of the Dominion. The representatives of each
colony ought to be elected by the members of tlie Legislative
Council and the members of the Assembly sitting together as
one body. Where there is no Assembly, or it refuses to vote,
the Council alone, or with the minority of "the Assemblv, ought

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to exercise the full power of election. To secure representation
of ail parties, the representatives ought to be elected in one mass
by a single and final ballot, each elector being allowed to accu-
mulate his votes in favour of one candidate, or byway of equiva-
lent, restricted from voting for more than one candidate.

The crisis is drifting on with appalling rapidity. Delay will
soon bring dissolution. Now or never will be the day of salva-
tion. The Convention ought therefore to meet as soon as possi-
ble in 1876. No elaborate preparations would be necessary. A
large part of the local business of the House of Commons might,
without much inconvenience, be postponed to the next year, and
in June and July its members would have leisure to transact the
business of the Empire. No abrupt change would be percep-
tible ; the Convention would sit at Westminster ; would be
served by the clerks of the House of Commons, and would fol-
low its procedure under the guidance of Mr. Speaker Brand.
Much might be done in the last two months of the regular ses-
sion, and after a brief autumn recess, the work might be con-
cluded during the last three months of the year. Nothing but
gross mismanagement, or wanton and malignant obstruction
could prevent it. The former is improbable. The latter would
be checked by public indignation. The nature < f the work
would present few opportunities for obstruction. No long and
complicated Constitutional Bills would be required ; hardly any
formal change of any kind. The British Constitution, as it now
is, has its being chiefly in public opinion, and the growing
changing mass of public traditions. It has never been
formulated by authority The powers and relations of its
parts are outgrowths from a few great public sentiment,
based on a few great public facts. They are not statutory
and need not specifically changed by statute. Merely change
a few great facts, a few great fundamental characteristics
of the Constitution by a few laconic Acts, and whole
groups of derivative powers and functions will be changed in
correspondence. This simplicity and plasticity of the chief ob-
ject to be operated upon would immensely facilitate the work of
the Convention. Indeed, one of the chief duties of the Con-
vention would be to take care lest anything should hinder the

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new Imperial Conrtitution from being similarly simple and plas-
tic. Plant it and let it grow in accordance with the changing
circumstances of the time, under the guidance of educated pub-
lic opinion. Modified continually, like the English Constitu-
tion, by the mere fact of its existence in the changing minds of
men, it would yet be stable, living on as an organic whole, and
broad-based upon the public will. By common consent, by
general recjgnition of the fitness of things, the Imperial Gov-
ernment would draw to itself all necessary powers, and throw
into desuetude all practices and even laws inconsistent with the
performance of its approved functions. And by the very same
forces its unnecessary encroachments would be repelled.

The work of the Convention would be mainly a work of trans-
ference by declaratory Acts, few, short and simple. The abro-
gatory and creative Acts would be fewer still, and only one of
them, that creating the Imperial Legislature, would be at all
lengthy or complicated. The changes of names .would be few
and slight, and the Conservative sentiments of Englishmen would
receive only a very mild shock. To the superficial observer
very little difference would be apparent. Mer Most Gracious
Majesty would still bear the honored English name of Queen,
not the foreign and novel name of Empress. She would still live
in London, and be the direct ruler of England without an inter-
mediate viceroy. London would still be the scat of the Privy
Council of the Empire, and the headquarters of all departments
of the Central Government. The Houses of Lords and Commons
would live on, would .still manage all affairs, and enact all laws,
with which Englishmen, as mere En^^lislimen, are peculiarly con-
cerned, and would appear altered only in having less work to do
Nobody would interfere with their formal dignity, or forbid a
member of the Lower House to write after his name the impor-
tant letters, M.P. The laws and their administration would re-
main unaffected by extraneous action, except in the institution
of appeal to the Privy Council. The fate of the Chuich of Eng-
land would remain wholly in English hands. The schools, en-
dowments, and municipal institutions of England would still be
under the sole supervision of the English Houses of Parliament.
The revolution would, indeed be scarcely seen or felt by anybody
except those who had brought it to completion.

The chief probable changes, and their efifects may easily be
put into a summary.

I. — A declaratory Act would proclaim that Her Majesty should
thenceforth be styled Queen of Great Britain instead of Queen
of the United Kingdom and its dependencies, and that the name
Britain should be regarded as including all these dependencies
among its integral parts. Nothing would need to be said about
Her Majesty's Rights and Prerogatives. By presumption of law
they would remain unchanged ; and therefore by the simple pro-
clamation of a new royal designation, the real powers of conferr-
ing titles and pardoning offenders would be transferred from the
guardianship of the Ministry dependant on the present House of
Commons, to the Ministry dependant on the Central Legislature.
Similarly they would acquire the patronage and administration
of the Army, the Navy, and the Diplomatic Service, with which
Her Majesty can deal as she pleases, checked only by the need
of obtaining supplies. These her advisers would recommend her
to ask thenceforward from the Central Legislature, instead of the
House of Commons. In the same tacit way the control over
India and the other Colonies now exercised by the latter would
be surrendered to the former. The task of organizing the ad-
ministrative framework would not need to occupy the time of the
Convention, but might be left to the manipulations of the Execu-
tive Government wielding the formal powers of the sovereign. If
legislative interference should appear desirable, it might be left
to the Central Legislature, and no great harm could result from
the delay. .

II. — All Crown lands in England and elsewhere would be
transferred by formal enactment from the House of Commons
and other local legislatures to the Central Legislature. The
latter might, however, permit the former to manage, and in some
cases to draw revenue from these common heritages of the Em-
pire. The remaining revenue would be available for the general
purposes of the Central Government ; preferably not for the main-
tenance of the monarchical element. The royal family and the
various viceregal establishments ought rather to be supported by
a tax at the rate of one per cent, levied on the net general revenue,
and on each net lOcal revenue. As the value of money will

probably continue to decrease, it is reasonable that royal expen-
diture should increase — at least proportionately with increase of
other public expenditure. Even if the value of money should
not fall, or, on the contrary, should rise, we must remember that
increased public expenditure generally shows increase of wealth
and power in a healthy nation, and therefore a necessity for pro-
portionately increased splendour in the embodiment of the
national dignity.

III. — The religion preferentially acknowledged by the Central
Government in its ceremonials, and at its diplomatic and con-
sular posts, would be chosen by the Sovereign. But all impor-
tant religions could be recognized in the establishment of military
and naval chaplaiincies.

IV. — A regular act would abolish the Privy Council of the
United Kingdom, and transfer all its powers in a mass to those
whom her Majesty shor'd b„' pleased to call as the PrJvy Council
of Britain, lesponsible for its advice to the Central Legislature.
These persons, of course, would be the present Privy Councillors,
with some additions. The Cabinet ought to be legally recog-
nized under the name of the Executive Committee, including
always the following great officers of state, besides others whom
Her Majesty might be pleased to summon.

(A) The Lord Chancellor, corresponding to the Continental
Ministers of Justice.

(B) The Lord President of the Council.

(D) The Lord l^Iarshal, equivalent to the present Secretary
^or War.

(E) The Lord High Admiral.

(F) The Lord Correspondent with Foreign States of Europe,
equivalent in part to the Foreign Secretary,

(G) The Lord Controllor of Trade, having the powers of the
President of the Board of Trade.

(H) Five Lords Chief Secretaries of State — viz. :

( ) Fcr Home Affairs, including those of Malta and Gib-
raltar.

{ft) For Indian Affairs, including relations with protected
States east of Persia, and with independent Asiatic
States except Russia.

{y) For African Affairs, including those of Western Asia,
and relations with protected and independent States, from
Persia and Arabia westwards.

(5) For American aftairs, including relations with protected
and independent American States.

(e ) For Australian Affairs, including those of China, Mal-
acca, and the Pacific Ocean.

Possibly, also, the dozen might be made a baker's dozen by
the addition of a Lord Privy Seal. But this office might very
well be included in that of the Lord President, who would gener-
ally be Prime Ministe)-, jut not necessarily and ex officio, as the
leading spirit of the Ministry might wish to have a special
department, besides a general supervisory function. Recognition
of the Prime Minister's name and position ought to be formally
made in the procedure of the new Government.

The Judicial Committee of the new Privy Council would have
the jurisdiction of the old, enlarged by an Act of the Convention
making the Committee the Supreme Court of Appeal for Eng-
land, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as India and the other
colonies. Its paid members would be increased in number, and
would receive higher salaries, The Lord Chancellor, who might
also be Lord Chancellor of England, and practically always
would be such, would sit as president. The Lord Chief Justice
of England, the Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common
Pleas, the Lord Chief Baron, the Lord Justice-General of Scot-
land, and the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, would be members ex
officio, and, of course, also the Lord Chancellor of England, if he
were not Lord Chancellor of Britain.

V. — A British Senate would be constituted jointly with the
Queen in Council, the supreme legislature for all Britain. If so
un-English a name should be insuperably distasteful to Con-
servatives, it might be called the British Parliament, even at the
risk of confusion with the Parliament of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland. By statute it would have : —

and
ight

mon
icot-
ex
he

the

.on-

the

33 •

1. Exclusive power to pass Acts binding all Britons, when
approved by the Sovereign.

2. Power to levy taxes and raise money, to any amount, in
any way, for any purposes.

3. Power to control and gain profit by all postofficcs and
telegraphs within Britain.

4. Power to define the territorial limits of local legislative
action.

5. Power to give authority to the Queen in Council to restrain
local governments from borrowing money, and to compel them
to pay interest due on their debts.

6. Power to give authority to the Queen in Council to restrain
local governments from levying custom duties, and to confiscate
the money so gained.

This last power would be necessary for the security of free
trade between all parts of the consolidated empire, But a most
of the smaller colonies it would be necessary to let the local
government raise money by such taxes, or to bestow upon it a
subsidy from the central treasury. The Central Government
would have no direct concern with the National, Indian, and
Colonial debts now existing. They would remain local debts,
and continue to lie upon the same shoulders which bear them
now.

The bestowal of the six above-named powers upon the Senate
would be the only formal interference by the Convention with
the House of Commons. The constitutional right of that House
to control those Acts of State in war, diplomacy, &c., which
naturally belong to a Central Government, is not a legal right,
but a moral right depending on public opinion, and that public
opinion is based on the fact that the House alone has the power
to tax, and therefore the power to supply. Transference of the
power to the Senate must transfer the right, since Her Majesty's
Councillors would then advise her to seek supplies no longer
from the House of Commons, but for ever afterwards from the
Senate. No general statutes to define the boundaries of the
central power over local governments would be at all necessary.
The discretion of the Central Government might safely be relied
upon. The Sovereign's powers would continue to be as impot-

! I

ent for mischief as they now are, nnd a legislative body, constitut-
ed as the Senate would probably be, would not be prone to
wanton and irritating encroachments on local autonomy. In the
last quarter cJf the 19th century, the public opinion of the ivorld's
most enlightened race would be a far better check than any
elaborate constitutional barriers. Such things are in the end
more troublesome to all parties than useful to any. Change of
circumstances, in the.se days of rapid change, soon makes them
useless obstructions. Very frequently the common weal or the
safety of the federal state imperatively demands that they be
broken down, and this can sometimes be done only by the con-
stitution-shocking operations of a war, or z. coup (f eta t. England
needs have little fear that her wishes would be overridden by a
legislature, which would for at least a generation contain an im-
mense majority of Englishmen. But to take away all excuse
for hesitation on the part of timid Conservative minds, tiie Con-
vention might enact by way of exception to the first general
power conferred upon the Central Legislature, that every Act
affecting the rights, dignities, and constitution of the Houses of
Lords and Commons, or the Laws of Primogeniture and Entail,
or the religious establishments of England and Scotland, or the
educational and charitable institutions and endowments in Great
Britain and Ireland, should be null and void unless approved by
both Houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, or of
England, Ireland, and Scotland, if those kingdoms should after-
wards have separate local legislatures.

. The Convention would not act wisely if it should seek to re-
strict the rower of the Central Legislature to change the mode
of electinrf I'le Senate, the distribution of its members to con-
stituencies, or the electoral rights of the constituents. It would
show its discretii)n by practically acknowledging that laws must
change with the times to remain just, and by therefore placing
full confidence in the discretion of the Senate. But it could i.ot
neglect the duty of deternn'ning the composition of the first
Senate, the kind of suffrage by v.'hich it would be elected, and the ,
mode of conducting the election. We would hear little wrangl-
ing about the last. The ballot is already used almost everywhere
for local elections, and no good reasons can be given for not

1« {'!

'iljll

istitut-

DIIC to

In the

vorld's

in any

le end

nge of

i them

or the

hey be

ic con-

Ingland

n by a

an im-

cxcuse

le Con-

gcneial

;ry Act

mses of
Entail,
or the

n Great

ived by
or of
aftcr-

to re-
mode
to con-
It would

vs must
[placing
luld liOt
he first
land the .

Lvrangl-
lyvvhere

for not

using it at an Imperial election. For the sake of simplicity,
saving of money, and saving of time, the Senate ought to be a
single body. It would not be wise to liampcr the organizers of
the new kingdom with the cumbrou.i and costly machinery of a
second chamber. An Upper Mouse is cither superfluous or mis-
chievously obstructive, when the Lower House is so wisely con-
stituted, as to be really representative of the nation's culture,
experience, and intelligence. It can be useful only when the
Lower House contains a majority of demagogues elected by the
rash young and the ignorant poor. Hut in that, as in every
otiicr morbid case, prevention is better than cure. To keep most
of the dema;joguc;; out of the elected House is better than to
thwart them by an Upper House of nominees. The best safe-
guard against hasty legislation is a suffrage law, wiiich will
always keep the hasty legislators in a small minority. It is
always safer to meet such enemies in the open field than to skulk
behind some flimsy constitution il buhvark. Opposition by an
Upper House very often strengthens the enemy by uselessly
irritating him. lUit the demagogues would quickly be reduced
to thtir natural insignificance by a good suffrage- law, not exclud-
ing the rash young and the ignorant poor, as stupid Conscrva_
tives propose, but giving to them no more than their small right-
ful share of representation, and thus providing a safety-valve for
those volcanic forces which would rend the body politic asunder,
if caged in according to the stupid Conservative formula. Even
the British House of Lords, the best of all Upper Houses, has
been nearly as obstructive to good legislation as to bad, and with
such a House of Commons as the present must be useless where
it is not mischievous, fhere is no strong reason fur preserving it
except the historical, and that rea'^on will lose much of its
strength with the loss of the Appellate Jurisdiction.

Concentration cf the political talents of a nition in one legis-
lative chamber, saves not only from waste of time, but from
waste of power, and secures a more thorough discusbioa for
every bill. No disputed proposal can get the fullest and fairest
treatment, if the ablest supporters are in one house and speak
to-day, while the ablest opponents are in another house, and can-
not speak lill the middle of next month, when the attention of

the first speakers is claimed by something entirely different.
The efficiency of Parliamentary leaders is moreover seriously
impaired by the distracting necessity of frequently keeping an
eye upon two important debates going on at the same time in
separate chambers. Under such circumstances, no statesman
can work at his highest intellectual level. Iron cannot sharpen
iron when each piece is used at a different time and in a separate
place. An able state-man sent to ihe gilded cage oi uu Upper
House loses more than half of his influence on the nation's coun-
sels, and the nation loses more than half the value of his ser-
vices. He is totally excluded from the consideration of fiscal
questions. In disjointed discussions his arguments do not fall
with their just weight upon remote antagonists, and his projects
do not gain adequate consideration. His. debating powers arc
wasted on a cold and narrow stage. He is continually galied by
a feeling of helplessness and confinement. He cannot hope to
produce so much effect and gain so much glory by his activity
as in a larger and more exciting arena. And consequently he
does less public work and takes less pains with v/hat he does.
The Convention ought therefore to eschew that worn-out dis-
credited makeshift, an Upper House. It ought to aim at gather-
ing together all the cream of British political talents on the floor
of the Senate, and letting these powers come into collision on a
common level of debate, where every man can strike while the
iron is hot, where he has all his foes before him, and knows that
his argument and theirs will command attention together. Such
men as the Duke of Argyll and the Marquis of Salisbury in
the House of Lords are steam-hammers used to crack walnuts,
and would rapturously hail the prospect of removal to the
grander theatre of the Lower House. To provide another ele-
gant cage for such men in establishing a new constitution would
be ^ deliberate and sinful waste of noble powers.

The first senate would probably consist of about 450 mem-
bers.

I. From the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,
300.

tvers are

o mem-

II. From India :

1 Newfoundland . .

2 British Columbia

3 British Honduras

4 British Guiana

5 Jamaica

6 Bahamas

7 Leeward Tslands

8 Windward Islands

9 Trinidad

> 20

(a) Nominated by the Viceroy in Council

''^ ""SfrDepXr ^-*-*-l«*"^t- and Titular Princes, or^ ''
The Nizam ' ' " ' • " • • • • I

The Nawab of Bhoi)al
The Amir of Kabul
Tlie King of Siam
Tlie King of Birma
The Maharana of Mewar or Udipur
Ihe Maharaja of Gwalior

J) of Indur

» of Maisur . .

), of Marwar or Jodpur

>> of Jaipur

), of Travankur

» of llewa or Bagelkand

}i of Nepal

») of Patiala . .

The Gaikwar, or the Rau of Kach
llie Nawab Nazir of Audh
The Nawab of Bengal
The Maharaja Dhulip Sinjrh "
The Rajah of Berar

(r) Elected by the British Provinces :—

Bengal and Orissa

Assam

Birma

Behar

Audh

Rohikand

Malwa

Panjab . .

Afghanistan

Sind . . . _' '

Gujerat . . , ] ' '

Dekhan or Maharashtra

Kamata ...

Dravida . .

Telingana . .

Gondwana

III. From the smaller colonies :

J-70

5-)
1

y 30

1
1

li.
1
1

i li

10 Cape Colony

1 1 Natal and GrUiUaland

12 Mauritius

:. ;: • ?

13 West African Settlements

14 Ceylon . .

lb Hong Kong

16 Straits Settlements

4
1
1

17 Sarawak

18 Malta . .

19 Mau

20 Channel Islands . .

21 Fiji

22 New South Wales

1
13

23 New Zealand

24 Queensland

25 South Australia . .

26 Tasmania

27 Victoria . . . . . .

28 Westen) Australia

The Senate would not be bound to appor'ion >■ -nbers to these
thirty territories, and others afterwards a ' e > i. accordance
with any hard and fast principles. Room for the exercise of
discretion wculd be necessary. If the rate of contribution to
the central treasury should be made the standard, India would
have nearly as many members as England, the representatives of
the other colonies would form an inappreciable fraction, and in-
deed the majority of those colonies would be left completely out
in the cold. All of these results would be highly inconvenient.
And if the quantity of population should be the standard,- the
obvious and startling differences of quality would make its ap-
plication ridiculous as well as dangerous. In drawing up the
scheme for the first Senate therefore, the Convention w- ' ! ''on-
sidcr revenues, quantity of population, and quality i, "'...', in
connection with each other, and would moreover be \ ei lv al
to the smaller colonies. The foregoing list is therefore pro. .b'v
approximate to that which would seem good to the assembled
wisdom of the empire. Whether the members should be directly
elected by constituencies specially formed for them, or should be
nominated by the Local Legislatures, would be indifferent if all
those Legislatures were bodies elected by a uniform system of
graduated suffrage. But as many are not elect' 'e at all,
and few, if any, are likely to become elective by j.'raduated
suffrage, before the time would come for choosii.j ihe first

.80

■on-

.' in
lV al

Inibled

irectly

luld be

if all

;m of

all,

luated

first

Senate, the Convention would have the not very difficult duty of
carving out districts to form special constituencies. The work
would be greatly lightened by acknowledgment of the rijht of
minorities to some representation, and consequent establishment
of no constituencies not big enough to deserve at least three
members, except in the smallest colonies. To make the working
of the principle simple and complete, no elector ought to be
allowed to vote for more than one candidate. All the Indian
provinces would be single constituencies, and likewise all the
other colonies except the three largest of the Australasian.
Only in those and in the United Kingdom therefore, would
the Convention have to trouble itself with making electoral
divisions. And in these cases the simple standard of population
would be sufficient.

The nature of the suffrage would differ materially in two great
natural divisions of Britain. In those mainly peopled by men of
European blood, the United Kingdom, Man, the Channel Is-
lands, Malta, Newfoundland, British Columbia, and all the Aus-
tralasian colonies except Fiji, it might safely be universal. But
in the others, as every one would agree in saying, it ought to be
restricted to those having considerable freeholds, occu-
pying substantial houses, or paying income trx. A
graduated income-tax with a corresponding dependen -^ 'S-
tem of graduated suffrage would not be at all unpopular
in India, and would be peculiarly fitted to draw out in
fair proportion the evpresslon of such opinions of the natives
and non-official Europeans as are deserving of public attention. It
ought to begin at the rate of one pie in the rupee on all incomes
of Rs. 300 per mensem, and go up at the rate of an additional
pie and additional vote for each additional amount of Rs. 300,
the second pie not being levied on the rupees under 300, nor the
third pie on the lupees under 600. So on it would go, till it
would reach the possessor of more than Rs. 3600, compel him to
pay an anna of every rupee above that amount, and endow him
with twelve votes by way of compensation. The temptation to
under-statement would thus be counterbalanced, and the Indian
Exchequer filled without odium or unpopularity attaching to the
Indian Government. Similar, but probably less restricted sys-

s i

,:''(

terns would be fit for the other colonies where white men are
outnumbered by black.

As the convention would not consist of madmen, it would not
add equality to the universality of the suffrage in the other great
class of constituencies. A more elaborate kind of graduation
than that already exemplified would be necessary, but one or
other of two alternative scales would be fit for application to
every locality. The two Tollowing scales are, I believe, good
enough to be their own excuses for publication. In preface it
ought to be stated, that every sane person not being a minor, nor
a pauper, nor a prisoner, nor unable to read and write, would have
one vote. He v/ould be able to register his right in any con-
stituency within whose bounds he had dwelt during thirty days
* the time having elapsed since the last registration. But he
juld have no right to have his name on more than one register
at the s ^me time.

iliil

i are

i not
great
ation
le or
3n to
good
ice it
r, nor
have
' con-
days
ut he
gister

41
SCALE I.

Standaud a.

ExPKKIiiNCE.

Votes.

(1) Age 21

30
40
50

1
Double
Treble
Quadruple

Stand AKD B.

Payment of Taxes.

additional

VOTES.

(1^ Occupation for the greater part of a yeai- of a
dwelling-house at a rent of ^'20, and conse-
quent payment of house -tax in England al-
ready, and in Britain afterwards.

(2) at £40

(3) at (JO

(4) at 80

(5) at 100
And so on up to 600

2
3
4
5
30

Standard C.

Knowledge.

additional.

VOTES.

(1) For the present— (a) Certificate from Inspector

of aided schools, after examination in ordinary
subjects, especial attention being given to
Geography, English and General History, and
Elementary Political Economy
{/3) Certificate of the second class from University

Local Examiners of middle-class schools.
Afterwards. — Certificate from Public Examiners spe-
cially appointed to hold quarterly examinations
equal in difficulty to the foregoing, instead
thereof.

(2) For the presetit.—{a) Certificate of first-class from

Univ. Local Ex, of middle-class schools.
(/S) Success in con<petitive examination for Home
Civil Service Class II,
Afterwards. — Equivalent public certificate instead
thereof.

(3) For Vie present.~{a) Matriculation by examina-

tion at any Indian Univ. or Univ. in Great
Britain or Ireland, or University of Sydney,
Melbourne, Capetown, Otago, Adelaide, or
Queensland.
{ft) Success in competitive examination for the Army
or Indian Civil Engineering College.

I ':

■'A

SCALE I. — Continued.

Standard C.

Knowledge.

yy) License to practice as an attorney.

(*) License to practice medicine or burgery.
Afterwards. — An equivalent public certificate as an
alternative, not displacing the foregoing quali-
fications.

(4) (a) A first University Degree, Literary, Scientific,

or Professional.
(/3) Admission as Jin English or irish Barrister or

Scotch Advocate.
(;') Success in competitive examination for In

dian Civil Service, or Home Civil Service,

Class I.

(5) («) Honorary Degree, or Degree of LL.D. or

D. Sc. by examination, or Professional De
gree in addition to Literaiy Degree by exam
ination.

{ft) Call to Bar in addition to Literary Degi'ee.

\y) Queen's Counselship.

ADDITION All,
VOTES.

This scale would be fit for all countries, as house-rent is every-
where a fair practical test of what a man pays in taxes direct and
indirect. The connection, however, is not so obvious as that
between a graduated income-tax and a corresponding scale of
voting power, and the substitution of income-tax for house-rent
under Standard B would make a new scale peculiarly fit for the
local suffrage of the United Kingdom, but fit also for the general
suffrage of Britain, if the Central Government should need to raise
money by an income-tax. Paymen* of the tax for three years
before registration wduld be required as a security against
bribery.

SCALE II.
Standards A and C same as in Scale I.

Standard B.

iry-
md
hat
of
ent
the
;ral
ise
ars
nst

Payment op Taxes.

INCOME.

£100
£101 —
12G —
161 —
201 —
251 —
301 —
?M —
401 —
451 —
50J —
GOl —
801

1001 —

1201 —

1501 —

2001 —

2501 —

3001 —

4001 —

5001 —

6001 —

8001 —

10,001 —

15,001 —

20,001 —

25,001 —

30,001 —

40,001 —

60,001 ad

125
150
200
250
300
3o0
400
450
500
600
800
1000
1200
1500
2000
2500
3000
4000
5000
6000
8000
10,000
15,000
20.000
25,000
30,000
40,000
50,000
infinitum

PART PAYING
BATE.

LAST

^20

— 25
25

— 50

— 100

— 200

— 300

— 600

— 500

— 1000

— 2000

— 5000

— 6000

— 10,000

BATE.
8. d.

ADDI-
TIONAL
VOTBS,

.12

-26

l< '

By the adoption of such schemes as these the timid English-
men in the Convention would completely secure themselves from
being- overridden by colonial demagogues, while these dema-
gogues, inside ol the Convention and outside would be utterly
unable to resist the current of legislation. They could nowhere
rouse the enthusiasm of their rough constituents to the resisting
point, except, possibly, in Victoria. Elsewhere delight in secur-
ing federation on any terms would be the uppermost feeling.
And if the Victorian Government should actively or passively
obstruct the proclamation and effect of the Convention's Acts, a
British fleet, a brigade of British soldiers, and a coup d'etat would
be warmly welcomed by one-third of the Victorian population,
three-fourths of its wealth, and nearly the whole of its political
intelligence and virtue.

Most probably the Convention would have the Honour of in-
troducing Graduated Parliamentary Suffrage to the enlightened
and delighted world. Possibly, however, it might find a preced-
ent for its Act in an English statute. Great principles advance
slowly. The great principle of qualitative representation, the
only security for stability and progress in democratic communi-
ties, is still invisible to most minds through mists of custom, pre-
judice, and grasping dishonest selfishness. The inability of most
professed politicians to grasp the notion of a golden mean be-
tween the unconditional admission of the lower classes to the
right of suffrage, and their unconditional exclusion, would seem
ridiculous, if it were not so terribly dangerous. Men who admit
the evils of ochlocracy, but yet rightly think that adult, self-sup-
porting, tax-paying heads of families ought to have some share
in making the laws which they obey, nevertheless perversely or
stupidly think that they can only do what they believe to be just
by establishing what they secretly dread. And on the other
hand most men who wish above all things to save their country
from mob-rule, can find no other way of doing so than by cutting
off large masses of their fellow-countrymen from all the elevat-
ing influences of recognized citizenship, with its privileges and
responsibilities, and thus making them exasperated with a sense
of exclusion and oppression. Legislation goes stumbling blind-
fold from the false principle of exclusion to the false principle of

absolute equality, missing the true principle of proportion or
relative equality which lies between. The first triumph of the
political Elixir Vitx- was won in England forty years ago, but
never since has it made much advance, except in men's minds.
The English scale of voting for Guardians of the Poor, the tolerat-
ed ancient anomaly of Universit}' representation, and the Ger-
man system of dividing the power of electing Town Councillors
in three equal shares to three pecuniar}' classes of municipal
voters, arc the only experiments which have yet been made. But
though they have been such conspicuous improvements and suc-
cesses that no one proposes to make an end of them, there is a
strange lack of proposals to make similar experiments in other
fields. Whately spoke for them without producing visible effect.
The Conservative Government in 1867 made provision for dual
suffrage in its Reform IMll, but esteemed it so lightly as to
sacrifice the clause without a contest on the first intimation of
Mr. Gladstone's disapproval. Professor Lorimcr's admirable
"Constitutionalism of the Future" was roared down without
serious attention, in the noisy political conflict terminated by the
lucky leap in the dark. But a crisis is now approaching w'^en
for self-preservation the Conservative leaders must revive the
discarded piinciple, and give to it full embodiment in a necessary
legislative act. The agitation for Household Suffrage in the
counties is not a thing fit to be treated in a spirit of jaunty and
jesting procrastination. The strenuous cry of two or three mil-
lions of men, goaded by a rankling sense of exclusion from those
rights of citizenship which are possessed by their equiils in urban
constituencies, cannot long be baffled by mere dilatory pleas and
plausible evasions. Those are neither the wisest nor the bravest
Conservatives, whose " trust in Providence " allows them to sit on
safety-valves and smoke pipes of peace amongst open powder-
barrels. " To look danger calmly in the face," says Alison, "and
make preparation to meet it when still afar off, is the mark not
of a timid but a resolute mind. The greater part of the want of
previous arrangements, which .so often doubles the weight of mis-
fortunes to nations " (and parties), " as well as individuals, is the
result of mental cowardice. They are afraid of being afraid, and
therefore do nothing till the evil day has arrived, just as they

i (::

I lll

delay making their \vills till it is too late." Swaggering talk
about not being afraid to extend the franchise when the fullness
of time arrives, is either humbug, or the resu't of ignorance of
the Conservative party's strcnpjh and weakness. No man who
knows the social and economica' antagonisms of England can
believe that the party would have had a majority at the last
election, if the right of suffrage in the counties had been pre-
viously assimilated to that in the boroughs. It is notorious that
the county constituencies are at present the Conservative strong-
hold, and it ought to be equally notorious that in the towns of
England even — still more in those of the smaller kingdoms, the
Opposition has a decided majority. And if the counties are
assimilated to the towns by extension of the franchise, in the
crude manner which alone .seems to be contemplated by anybody
at present, the Ministry can hardly escape dismissal at the very
n^'xt election, l^irm-labourers will rarely, if ever, be found on
the same side with farmers and landlords, and the poaching
miners and manufacturing villagers — who are together more
numerous than the purely agric-iltural men. of their class — will
set their faces (and fists) flintily against those whom they regard
as social tyrants. Even if the party persists in refusing the c^m-
cession, it will be equally exposed to defeat at the next election,
by the sympathy o! the town-workmen with their fellow-work-
men in the country. The Ministers must therefore be satisfied
with one or two years of rose-coloured prospects and perorations,
and novv buckle on their harness to fight their way out of a ruin-
ous dilemma. The sooner the attempt, the easier the victory.
They ought to deal with this deadly danger in precedence of all
other business, and save themselves while Ihtir party is strong,
united, and in the flush of victory : when consequently it can
impose conditions while conceding to demands.

A Fabian policy on the part of Conservatives always ends in
unconditional surrender, when the act of submission cannot even
be made with grace, anJ is not in the least likely to be rewarded
with gra itudc and confidence. Like most otlie- dangers, this
will be less if taken at its outset, when the agitators are inclined
to save ihemselves from trouble by coming to a compromise,
than when at a later period they know that they have merely to

wait a little longer before tiieir efforts will be crowned with com-
plete success. If the Ministers arc resolute, they will be able to
mould the suffrage laws of the United Kingdom as clay is
moulded by the hand of the potter. Some few half-Conserva-
tives may openly rebel, but ninete n-t\vcntieths of the party
will obey the whip — some of them groaning and staring, it may
be, at the startling innovations, but still obedient. The Opposi-
tion, moreover, would not be united in opposing the Ministry
and would send over many of its ab'cst members to counter-
balance the Ministeri.il losses by desertion. Mr. Lowe, Mr.
Ilorsman, Mr. Roebuck, Mr. Fit/.james Stephen, if he gains a scat,
and probably Sir William Vernon Harcourt, would become sup-
porters of Mr. Disraeli. The eminent historian. Freeman, might
on this occasion be expected to add the weight of his opinion
to the side of his ordinary antagonists. He says that "Demo-
cracy in the sense of l^erikles demands for every freeman a voice
in the management of public affairs ; it does not necessarily de-
mand an equal voice." * If that is the meaning attached to the
word by those who use it lovingly, then the Advanced Tory and
the Philosophic Radical can shake hands as brother Democrats.
Henceforward the first must confine his denunciations to ochlo-
cracy, and the other reserve all his invective for oligarchy.
Graduated suffrage is not inconsistent with Democracy, and
Universal Suffrage is not con-jistent with Aristocracy. And to
crown all, Aristocracy is not only consisteit with Democracy,
but is a species ot which democracy is the genus. Truly Rigli-
teousncss and Peace have kissed each other, and the Lion has
lain down with the Lamb I Order is comfortably stowed away
inside of Freedom. What does not Mr. Freeman deserve for
accomplishing this magnificent reconciliation.^

The fury of the Unphilosophic Radical Opposition would pos-
sibly be somewhat baffled, and the assent of the old-fashioned
Conservatives less sullen, if the Bill were proposed for seven
years following the precedent of the Ballot Act. The extremely
" practical " denouncers of the project as impracticable could not
with very good grace object to so moderate a dem md, for op-
portunity of cotifu'iiig th m in the only d -cisive way, by trying

'" " uiuWili o^ tAj l-LgiiiU e^unstitiitiou," p. 11.

it in practice. Unless they could adduce reasons for thinking
the Bill dangerous, equal in distinctness to the reasons adduced
by its supporters for thinking it powerless for evil and mighty in
promise of good, they would lay themselves open to the effective
charge of wantonly and wickedly obstructing that course of safe
experiments which is necessary to the perfecting of the political
art. The advocates have at least matic out a case for trial. The
Act could not do much mischief in seven years, and if it did no
good, it would quietly expire. If it should incur popular detes-
tation, and cause great practicel inconvenience, as the opponents
would allege, surely that " Will of the People," which they pro-
fess to believe omnipotent, could lay an arresting hand on a
Parliament favouring renewal. Its friends would, however, rest
in assured confidence that it would be renewed just as certainly
as the Ballot Act will be renewed. Graduated Suffrage is just one
of those extremely practicable institutions, which are so tho-
roughly in harmony with the established maxims of ordinary
human conduct, that if men once see them " ^ operation, every-
body will wonder how he could have bet ^h a simpleton as
to endure any other systems. But reasons are the very last
things whi:h the opponents would attempt to biing forward.
They know very well that the principle is impregnable to direct
and honest assault. Stale cavils, hazy misrepresentation, dis-
torted applications, parade of imaginary and exaggerated ex-
ceptions, and threatened appeals to vulgar jealousy and lust of
power, would be the substitutes for argument, as they have been
always hitherto. Masters of the art of sarcastic exposure, such
as Mr. Disraeli, and his friends on the other side of the House,
would feel only a scornful confidence in tilting against foes armed
merely with such weapons as these.

The Ministers would have to endure a host of Noodle's Ora-
tions against principles inconsistent with the glorious liberties
of freeborn Britons. They would hear dull men of routine,
whose most cherished institutions had been made practical not
long ago by dead and buried generations of despised " vision-
aries" and " theorists," crying out " impracticable " to a scheme
recommended by A»-chbishop Whately, the most businesslike of
humankind. But thc.<^^ creatures would not be very dangerous.

The men who called Mr, Mill unpractical for his nobility in
choosing to lead forlorn hopes, were the sordid safe men who
take good caie always to be strong on the side of the strongest.
The Ministry would only need to show its firm determination to
be the strongest. A little doggcdness in a man, behold how
good a thing it is ! " Practical " obstructives must be treated as a
wise man treats a marauding ghost. He lets the ghost see plainly
that he intends to smash it if it does not take its stupid carcase out
of the way. The ghost suddenly recollects a pressing engagement
in some other place. Just so the opposition of the stagnant "prac-
ticals" would collapse like a pricked bladdcj at sight of the Min-
isters with set teeth, girt-up loins, cfnd eyes of flame, grimly de-
termined to send the Bill smashing through all obstructions, in
spite of all hazards, The threat of a dissolution, with its attend-
ant worries and expenses, would cow many Radicals, and reduce
refractory Conservatives to abject obedience. And as without
Graduated Suffrage the Ministerial party must be utterly wrecked
in 1880, the Minist ,s could not lose much, even if an obstinate
House of Commons should foice them to take the risk of defeat
in 1876. They could have small pleasure in holding office for
three or four years with a sword hanging over them by a rapidly
thinning cord. But the danger of dissolution is visionary indeed.
The " practical" politician is a servile creature. As typified in
Sir Robert Peel, and defined by his biographer, he is a man who
denounces every proposal as impracticable until he sees that it
will soon be carried into practice in spite of his resistance. Then
he adroitly changes front, reaps the Iruit of other men's labours,
and adds injury to insult by filching the credit due to the victims
of his gibts and sneers. He always swims with the tide against
strui,'gling projects, and when the tide turns he sneaks round to
come in at the head of those men whom he has been buffeting
back, and to steal away the laurels which their courage has earned.
His sole principle is to be always, at any cost of character, on
the side which is strongest for the day ; his sole test of a P>iirs
goodness or badness is its likelihood of speedy success. He can-
not or will not take the trouble to appreciate anything else. Jiut
he has a keen eye for his own test. And a Tory Ministry with a

majority in both Houses will, therefore, have only itself to blame
D

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if it cannot make him see clearly that its side must be the winning
side even in the present Parliament — much more in the Conven-
tion, where all the Indian members, and most of the Colonial,
would be at its back.

Of course, some answer must be made to the wordy attacks.
Fal'acies and sophisms are not self-evident to most of mankind.
Trenchant exposure is continually needed, for ill weeds have mar-
vellous vitality. "This principle is all very well in theory, but
will not do in practice." We would hear ad nauseam that poor
old cloak for ignorance of facts, inability to grasp principles, and
other consequences of mental laziness or imbecility. The answer
would be easy. The phrase is self-contradictory. If a principle
is good in theory it must be good in practice also, if men can
only find the right way of carrying it inco practice. Mature men
of average sanity, who have devoted their str'-nuous attention to
the study of the right way, have a right to patient and detailed
criticism of their proposals, and vague general objections by
mental slovens, who have never taken the trouble to form accur-
ate scientific notions of the subject and its issues, are just so
much irrelevant impudence. If I bring forward a plan for cm-
bodying in action a principle confessedly good, you who object
are bound to show that it is a bad plan, or to propose a better, or to
acknowledge that you oppose without having a reason. It is quite
true that no experiment can ever be successful if nobody ever
tries or is ever allowed to try. But are there no legislators in Eng-
land who are willing and able to try } As Mr. Mill pungently
says,* there is no difficulty in proving that any principle what-
ever will work ill, if we suppose universal idiocy to be conjoined
with it. Is the character of British legislators anything ap-
proaching to universal idiocy .•• The complexity which is so
dreadful to your listless n-ind is almost universally a prime con-
dition of legal excellence. The justice of law varies to no small
extent directly with its complexity, with its adaptation to vary-
in-T circumstances. Fact is the basis of nght, and as the facts
of human nature are extremely various and complex, trouble-
some complexity must be a characteristic of every good classi-
fication of human rights. Troublesome toil is by a law of the

* Utilitarianism, 36.

)n-

lU
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Icts
)le-

Ithe

universe inseparable from the obtaining of every great good. In
all private affairs you cheerfully admit the maxim that nothing
is worth much which can be got with little trouble. How then
can you prefer the least trouble to the greatest good in the most
important department of human activity, ?nd still expect to be
treated as a rational being ? You think no expenditure of time
and trouble too great to bestow upon arrangement of the details
of post-office work, or upon a railway time-table, or a scheme of
insurance-rates. Yet you cry out again.'t expending a small frac-
tion of the time and trouble devoted to these matters, on that
infinitely more important matter, a scale of political rights.

Says anoLi.er noodle, " Your proposal is impracticable, be-
cause you can never get a perfectly accurate standard of political
capacity." Most potent, grave, and reverend noodle ! nobody
proposes to attempt anything so foolish, nobody but yourself
has been thinknig of such a thing. No such standard is needed
in political, more than in any other practical adjustments of
human affairs in active life. The wisest men are satisfied with
approximations to perfection in steering their intricate way
through a world of imperfection. In common life we do not
deem it a waste of time to estimate men's values, though we
cannot be sure of doing so with perfect accuracy. If we did not
do it, common business would be involved in confusion. That
we cannot do quite so much as we would like to do is no reason
for contented idleness. Surely three-quarters of a loaf is bet-
ter than no bread ! For the required measurements of political
capacity we have the close approximation to a perfect stan-
dard, which is furnished by combination of th ■ three
mutually corrective and supplementary standards -A age,
property, and education. We all use them already in
estimating the capacities of men for private business,
and you will admit tnat they serve you with tolerable accuracy,
even in year rough and hurried applications. Is it then inipo.s-
sible that calm scientific legislators can frame a tolerably accurate
scale of human political capacity, which would deal out sub-
stantial justice to the electors as a whole ? Isolated cases of
injuslice must always occur under human laws, if only because
our imperfect knowledge does not enable us to accommodate

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them accurately to divine laws. The complex science of humatt
nature is in a very imperfect state, and we do not yet know all
the limitations of its general rules, still less the subsidiary excep-
tions to these very limitations.

Many opponents come so far on the right road as to admit
that the nearest approach to a perfectly just distribution of
political power will be found in some form of graduated suffrage
But they rate the difficulty of the task so highly and the capacity
of British legislators so lightly, as to think that any new system
of suffiage would be no better, and probably much more unjust
than the old, though in a different way. That is a matter of
opinion. The theory of universal idiocy over again ! But your
opinion, my friends, is not that of those who know most about
the work and the workmen. They thmk that the data and the
men are practically sufficient for a considerable work of improve-
ment. To give to you an opportunity of showing your fitness to
pronounce an opinion, I challenge you to prove considerable
flaws in the schemes propounded in this book. Do not think
that you have answered my challenge, when you have pointed
out cases exceptional to my rules. You haye no right whatever
to object to those rules unless you can give good reasons fo.c
deeming the exceptional more numerous than the normal c;^ses,
or can suggest better rules devised by yourself or some other
person. It is quite true that a Scotch fishwife could thrash a
French private of the line, but that fact does not dethrone the
general rule that men are stronger ihan women. You may say
that some nun are as wise at twenty-one as others are at fifty,
but you have no right to reject the standard of age until you can
substitute most for some. You may say that a paragon mechanic
is wiser than a young bachelor of arts, but until you can prove
that men who have had a liberal education are as a rule no wiser
than those who have not, you have no riglit to say that the stand-
ard of education does not correspond to facts of human i.ature.
En passant ccmpare nine average borough-members with the
nine university-members, six of whom are privy-councillors and
seven of whom have been found worthy to hold high offices
under this and preceding Governments. You may sneer as much
as you like at mere wealth, but the standard of property remains

fixed on a rock which you do not attempt to shake, on the almost
invariable connection of wealth with leisure to think, means of
study, opportunities of imbibing wi^idom by contact with highly
cultured men, and a comfortable frame of mind well disposed to
entertain tolerant and liberal sentiments.

At least you may permit an experiment. Can you give good
specific reasons for thinking that any probable system of gra-
duated suffrage would be attended with more injustice and con-
sequent ill-feeling than the present system oi" equal suffrage ?
Formal exclusion ev(m would be less grievous to the lower
classes than virtual exclusion is to the upper, because the latter
have more sensitiveness and more just pride to be wounded
Oligarchy is by its nature more tolerant and tolerable than
ochlocracy. Many of its members are always men of gentle
feelings and liberal sympathies. It dares not go to great lengths
of tyranny because it cannot command the ultimate physical
force of the nation. Fear of the populace is an effective check
to oligarchical excesses. But Qnis cnstodiet ipsos custodes. There
is no physical force in reserve to check the sovereign mob from
dragging everythii;g down to its own sordid level. To say that
fear of mob-tyranny is fear of a phantom, on the ground that the
newly enfranchised p ^lulace of the English towns has not yet
shaken off its habits .ji r ,.i[)ectful subordination, is merely to
utter a most y y atid childish cavil. The wolf will come at
last and do all ... -w :)rc mischief because smi't;- ; optimists have
lulled everybody into fals. security. And ^e nave the glaring
examples of America auu Australia before our eyes to warn us
of what we may expect when our lower classes have come to
know their own strength, to be inflated with sense of their own
supremacy, and to be intoxicated '\y: the wilful and capricious
exercise of absolute power. The lection of Dr. Kenealy is a
nice foretaste of what we may soon have in abundance.

The invidious assertion of an unnatar i quality is a standing
insult to every class but the lowest, T' nt is one good answer to
those unmitigated Radicals who denounce graduated suffrage as
an outrage on manhood, an artifical degradation of the essence
below its mere accessaries and accidents. Not the only one,
however. Wealth and learning are not generally accidental, and

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accessaries, as in the case of paints, are sometimes at least more
valuable than such a groundwork as their canvas. But let that
pass. The artificiality is altogether on the side of equal suffrage.
Electoral equality is an anomaly in the universe. There is noth-
ing like it in the order of nature, in social arrangements, in the
estimation of evidence, in the choice of agents. Nobody in his
common life and ordinary business acts upon tlie principles that
all men are equal, and that one man is as good as another
These arc just as far from being established maxims of human
conduct, as are the statements, that all the Mammalia arc equal,
and that one vertebrate animal is as good as another. There is
nothing intrinsically invidious in .' uman inequality. Social,
moral, and intellectual inequalities are cheerfully recognised by
all men in every relation of life except the political, and no men
but morbid misanthropes feel insulted by mention of them,
except when recognition is demanded in an insolent' man-
ner. Neither will anybody feel insultec; by electoral in-
equality, when it has once beer fairly estab'.shed on an intelli-
gible basis. Nobody would even now feel insulted by the
proposal, if Radical incendiaries would only let men alone and
cease from their railing false accusations. What is proposed is
merely to reform our antiquated laws by taking away the
element of arbitrary and artificial interference with universal
inequality. The end of suffrage-laws is not the levelling of
inequalities or the correction of evils, but simply the expression
of every man's opinion in political action according to the
natural measure of his powers. If directly used as means of
education, they are abused by perversion to an unnatural purpose,
while graduated sufirage ofters all the indirect educational advan-
tages of equal suffrage without its liability to abuse. The
perfection of an electoral law lies in its concurrence with facts of
human nature as they are, not as men may think that they ought
to be, I follow nature and recognise facts. Human inequality I
see is a great glaring fact, and our laws are glaring contradictions
of that great fact, I wish, therefore, that positive law should be
harmonized with natural facts by political recognition of natural
inequalii}'. Graduated • nffrnge equally with equal suffrage is a
recognition of the great uict of manhood as the groundwo»-k and

ill,

55 .

necessary condition of electoral power. But a foundation is not
the best part of a house. Manhood is the basis of the highest
share of voting power, just as bottlehood is the basis of the
highest-priced dozen of wine. But bare humanity, like empty
bottlehood, is a very poor thing. All men, considered simply as
men, arc equal, or nearly equal, just as all bottles, considered
simply as bottles, are nearly equal in pettiness of value. The
value of bottles depends chiefly on what is put into them by the
wine-merchant, and just so the value of men depends chiefly on
what is put into them by experience of men and things, acquisi-
tion of formulated knowledge, and all the educating influences
which consciously or unconsciously modify the possessor of
v/ealth. And after something has been put into them, men dififer
from each other in political value, just as much as a bottle of
small beer differs in price from a bottle of Imperial Tokay. The
right of every mature, law-obeying, self-supporting man to a
share in the government of his country is one thing; a thing,
which I am as ready to admit as any Radical in England. But
the claim of every man to an equal share is another and alto-
gether difl"erent thing : a thing which I cannot regard as anything
more than a piece of ridiculous impudence. Government by the
majority is right and necessary : but only when the majority is
a majority of mental quality, not merely of physical quantity ;
of human value, not of human units of different values ; of brains,
not of flesh and bone.

Arguments like these may be made perfectly intelligible to
working men. They have distinctions of persons already
amongst themselves, and none of those established by graduated
suflfrago are naturally likely to ofifend them. There would be no
broad invidious line of demarcation cutting them off from other
men as a quite separate and degraded caste. On the contrary,
the strata of political power would be as numerous as the grada-
tions of the social scale, and shade into one another as insensibly.
Still better, they would sometimes not coincide with social strata,
but break through them, and gratify ambitious workingmen by
lifting them politically above their social superiors. Most of
them would have plural votes, and a middle-aged skilled artisan
earning £2 a week, or livhig in a house rented at 8s., would have

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more votes than a young officer in the army. The latter would
have only five or six or seven votes, while the former would have
at least eight, and might increase the number to twenty, if he
should devote his evenings to study and pass the third public
examination. There would be no sting in such a system as that.
Poor men revolt at distinctions of kind : not at distinctions of
degree. The standard of age would excite no envy. Everybody
could hope to reach the highest rungs of that ladder. The
standard of education would be gladly accepted by able n'orking
men as a spur to self-improvement and a mean of attaining a
higher political status. Nor would the property-standard be so
" odious " as Mr. Mill seems to have thought. Working men
have sense enough to know that the best of them get the best
wages, and that greater wealth is presumptive proof of greater
wisdom to understand political affairs, and conclusive proof of
greater interest in the maintenance and welfare of government.
There is nothing which they can more easily comprehend than
the argument that as the State is a joint-stock institution for
protecting life and property, those members ought to have the
greatest share of control who contribute most of the stock and
have most property to be protected. They can be made to see
the injustice of giving more control over the affairs of a joint-
stock company to twenty individual shillings paid for a single
share than to nineteen individual sovereigns paid for nineteen
shares. They will readily admit that those who pay the piper
ought to have the power of choosing the dance.

.We need not be frightened by Radical threats of a grand
uprising of the People (with a very big P) in all its majesty
against this flagitious scheme of insult and robbery. Those who
believe them must think tliat the working nieii of England are
" such fools as to be incapable of having a scheme of represen-
tation which is founded on reason and justice explained to them,
or such scoundrels as to set it at naught after they have become
acquainted with it." Riots and ferocious agitation would indeed
be the result of an attempt to take away the right of suffrage.
But they can easily be made to see that in the case of the
country workmen there cannot be any taking away at, all from
those who hav'e got nothing ; and that in the case of the town

nd
ty
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nie
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;he

workmen there will be only the taking away of something
entirely different from the right of suffrage — the power of every-
where excluding their superiors from representation. It is not
extravagant to hope that the discussion of the subject in Parlia-
ment will at least half-persuade them that they have no divine
right to so treme idous a power. Most men are somewhat
reluctant io give up even powers which they know to be
unrighteous. The working men may therefore be somewhat
sulky at the loss of their present control of the town constitu-
encies and their prospect of controlling all the constituencies. But
they have not yet been spoiled by long possession and capricious
exercise of absolute power. They have still some amount of
sweet reasonableness in their nature. They are not capable of
violent indignation and' revolt against a reform supported by
reasons which they must admit to be strong if not sufficient,
which arc not insulting to them, and which involve no exclusion
or degradation of a'lybody from political status. The rights and
dignities of citizenship are evidently bestowed for the first time
by that reform on one half their number, and remain intact for
the other half.

Nevertheless, Cheap John and his apes cannot afford to lose
their clap-trap, and will of course yell out that the Ministry is
taking back with one hand what it gives with the other to the
present-non-electors in the counties. For the moment, before
the practical operation of the Act confutes them, the sophistic
epigram might be as mischievous as a bombshell among weak
minds not able to see that it it is also as hollow. Herds of ill-
informed, inconsiderate, and essentially childish intellects would
regard the balanced phrase as a brilliant argument. For their
sake I shall now rip it open and expose the lie which is sole
tenant of its belly, in the illustrative style adapted to such as
are of weaker capacity. Once upon a time I went to my
brother's house, loaded as to my coat tails with three red apples-
On the appearance of Charley, aged ten, I put one of the apples
into his hand, and had the pleasure of seeing him look happy in
the conscious possession of his uncle's kindly regards. Needing
to attend to something else for a few minutes, I overlooked the
presence of Bobby, aged five. Bobby had the uncomfortable

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feeling of being left out in the cold, and was sore at the thought
that his uncle had no ruch esteem for him as for Charley, and
did not think him worthy of any notice. I took out another
apple, and instantly brightened the little fellow's face with the
feeling that he had come in from the cold outside, ancf was no
longer excluded from the warm circle of affectionate esteem. At
the same time, with the other hand, I gave the third apple to
Charley. Did Bobby feel that I had taken from him with one
hand what I had given with the other ? No, thank heaven, he is
not one of the odious little greedies who look upon anything
done for another child as a wrong done to them ! He did not
think that he had lost his place in my regards and been put out
into the cold again. He would have liked another apple, indeed,
but he was content with one, when I explained that Charley got
two because he had a larger organism with a double capacity for
assimilation. /)c te fabula narratur, I hope, O virtuous peasant,
O sturdy miner ! You will have some of Bobby's sweet reason-
ableness } The epigram will surely not deceive the working
men, who get and keep the vote, which the talking men will try
to make them believe Mr. Disraeli has juggled away. They
may join in the talking men's cry with hope of frightening Par-
liament into giving something more than a vote. But when the
Bill has become an Act, they will rest content with what they
have got. Think of what a great thing it is which they will get !
Satisfaction of their aspirations to the place of a recognized
citizen ! Relief from the galling sense of inferiority in kind to
their neighbours in farmhouse and town ! Rescue from a de-
pressing feeling of exclusion from the highest of ordinary human
ambitions, from having a share in the government of their coun-
try I The self-respect of men who have public rights and duties,
whose voices are heard in the determination of public affairs I
They will no longer be political nullities whose wishes and
opinions are things of no importance, but frceborn Britons, able
to swagger up to the polling-booths and record their secret votes,
with all the gravity and deliberation due to such momentous
proceedings. They will be able to listen to the humble solicita-
tions of fine gentlemen at elections, with a.l the dignity of a man
who has a favour to confer. They themselves will be addressed

as gentlemen from crowded and brilliant platforms. Will all
these things be nothings to men who feel themselves despised
outcasts ; and will they believe in spite of all their five senses
that Mr. Disraeli has only been playing some of his tricks and
has left them no better than they were ? All these things come
with their votes, evfen to those who get no more than one vote,
and do not go away because their superior neighbours get ad-
ditional votes. The secret reason of the Radical's fury is not
that anything is taken away, but because something is not given,
which, above all things alone perhaps, he really desired. He is
'ingry, not because the reform will take away citizenship from
any working man, but because it will not invest the lower classes
with absolute power of doing as they choose with the empire.
He cares little for the social and moral elevation of the poor,
which citizenship indirectly helps to effect. What he wants to do
is to demoralise those who have the weakest heads and least
regulated passions in tlv' nation, by suddenly thrusting upon
them the intoxicating draught of unlimited power. Then he
will, he hopes, be able to lure them on with flattery, excitement
of jealousy, and promise of plunder, to gratify the social and re-
ligious grudges which he cherishes in his own benevolent bosom.
That hope is the mainspring of all his desperate ragings against
graduated suff'rage. He wishes to make the poor masters of
England, not because he loves them, but because he hopes to
make them the tools of his now impotent malignity.

The only argument against graduated suffrage, which is in the
least degree respectable, is the statement that Age, Intelligence,
Wealth, and other forms of social superiority are already repre-
sented indirectly by their influence on the inferior electors, and
that direct representation in addition would consequent!}'- be un-
necessary and unjust. There are, however, only a few grains of
truth in the premise, and none at all in the inference. The
political opinions of old and young are notoriously and often
violently different. Almost the only persons who sufficiently
respect great learning and wisdom are those few who have leisure
and ability to appreciate it, and who therefore have least need
of guidance. Highly educated and thoughtful men have few
opportunities of coming into contact with those inferiors who

need enlightenment, and can influence only those who are of the
same class with themselves, and who would vote in exactly the
same way if left quite alone. Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Froude have
hardly any more political influence in Chcl.'^ea than their most
common-place ncif,dibours, Oxford and Edinburgh have long
been over-flowing hot-beds of the meav.est and least intellectual
type of extreme Radicalism. The Scotch University-men are
predominantly Tory, yet four Scotchmen out of every five arc
Whigs, or worse. Every election-agent knows that the learning
and wisdom of a candidate, or of his supporters, go for nothing ap-
preciable in a parliamentary election. Mr. Mill's statement, that
moral influences arc exactly expressed by universal suffrage, is
irrelevant but true, because it is merely an identical statement.
The supporters of graduated suffrage contend for recognition of
moral superiority, a thing mightily different from moral influ-
ence, and indeed often varying inversely with it. Mr. Mill con-
founds v.^hat ought to be with what is. Because A is wiser,
more learned, in every way more estimable than B, C, and D, it
does not follow that any one of the latter will guide his opinions
by those of the former. To make an impression you must have
not only an impressive agent, but a correspondingly impressible
object. There ' such a thing as casting pearls l)efore swine, and
it is rather the rule than the exception in regard to the matter in
hand. Besides how can excellence have much eftect on those
with whom it is not brought into close and frequent contact .-*
What do scavengers know or care about the political opinions
of scholars and savants ?

The only kind of natural superiority which at present obtains
any appreciable amount of political recognition is superior
wealth. But the recognition is restricted to certain sorts of
wealth, employed in some few particular ways which bring their
owners constantly into intimate relations with large masses of
men on a footing of predominance, and not possessed by the
majority of men who are in comfortable pecuniary circumstances.
Their possessors are not even coincident with all or nearly all of
the most wealthy members of the community, and are very far
indeed from being the chief possessors of the resultant elevation
and refinement of thought and feeling, which render men with

i.|

comfortable incomes best fitted to l^.old political power. Name
landowners and manufacturers, and you name almost the only
men whose wealth enables them to direct the votes of other
men. Their more numerous social equals may enjoy as much
social consideration, but seldom command a vote beyond their
own. Poor men are not influenced by rich men who are not
masters. Are not Marylebone and Clielsea notoriously the most
Radical of the Metro[)olitan Boroughs, thou[j;h nine-tenths of the
rates are paid by Conservatives ? Social deference is not po iti-
cal deference, even under the practice of open votintr. A noble-
man may often be treated with respect and kindliness by an indi-
vidual Radical, when the tv.'o meet as individuals. If left to
himself the latter might not feel very anxious to humiliate his
aristocratic neighbour. But wh:n men act politically, they act
in masses, their individuality is merged, and a class-hatred is
often generated to the displacement of soberer, gentler, and more
judicial private feelings. Class-c pinion and clique-opinion dis-
place individual opinion, and the former are almost always
formed by thoie members of the class who are most self-assert-
ing, most envious, and most intolerant of the claims of real
superiority.

1 he actual indirect representation of property, moreover, is
not only irregular, unfairly distributed, an i miserably inade-
quate, but also extremely precarious, and continually growing
smaller. The Ballot Act took away a great part of it, and in
time, with the growing love of independence in classes long tor-
pidly submissive, will take it away almost entirely. Besides, it
is immoral and dangerous to the public weal, because it is a vio-
lation of the spirit of the law, and thus brings the law as a wh le
into contempt. The precariousness and immorality of this ad-
ditional political power actually adhering to property, combine
with its inadequacy to urge on tl;e sub-.titution of direct for
indirect representation of its natural powers. The result would
not at all justify the inference that p operty would get too much
representation, in being represented both directly ar.d indirectly.
It would cease to be represente-i indirectly. Gentlemen now use
their m.ney power to get something like that share of political
power, to which they have a divine right, but no legal right.

The public opinion of their class now permits violations of the
spirit of an unjust law, just as the public opinion of the lower
classes recognizes the poacher as still an honourable man, be-
cause it regards the laws which he violates as unjust and
oppressive. Give legal recognition to the divine rights. Pro-
vide open and legitimate modes of giving proportional expres-
sion to natural powers in political action, Srnso of horour will
then constrain every gentleman to abandon his present illegiti-
mate and half-concealed modes of finding expression for natural
powers so large as to be only insulted by the bestowal of a sin-
gle vote. Faggot-voting, bribery, significant importunity, in-
timidation, are only reasonable reprisals made by men whom
the present laws keep out of their just political powers. The
public opinion of the educated classes does not now regard these
expedients as dishonourable, but it would quickly make an end
of them, if those just political powers were fully conceded. The
establishment of graduated suffrage would immediately put
every gentleman on his honour to abstain from all attempts to
influence the use of another man's vote, and legal rights oi" suf-
frage would correspond to divine rights, not informally and
imperfectly, but with nearly complete equality in letter as well
as in spirit.

I close this discussion of practical statesmanship, with an in-
tensely practical parting shot. Under the present suffrage-laws,
householders and lodgers have much trouble in proving their
claims, much litigation goes on before Revising Barristers, and
many vexatious exclusions are continually being made on the
most paltry grounds. Nearly all these troubles would cease
under tlie simple requirements of the proposed Act in regard to
residence. And no troubles of equal intensity would take their
vacated places. Nothing is easier, or more easily understood,
than the production of evidence of age, tax-payments, and edu-
cation. Everybody understands the nature and necessity of
extracts from birth-registers, receipts for house-tax or income-
tax, examination certificates, and university diplomas. Detec-
tion of fraud would be so easy and inexpensive that none would
venture to incur its penalties. The only difficulty connected
with the subject is in framing a scale, and that would trouble
none but the ministers themselves.

CHAPTER V.

Till-: POLICY OP ANNKXATIOX.

Till-: establishment of '^an imperial ..enatc would remove the
chief present objection'to''cxtension of the British Empire. Her
Majesty's Hritish]Cabinet]coulJ no lonj^er plead over-work and
want of time as reasons for not extending to other dark places
of the earth those " blessings of British rule " which Sir Wilfrid
Liwson mentions so lightly, 'and every candid friend of civiliza-
tion values so highly. For the legislature of the Empire
would be mercifully relieved from the knagging drudgery of local
English legislation, and^would have plenty of time to attend to
the affairs of the wide world beyond the four seas. The many
reasons for enlarging the borders of Britain would then, per-
haps, for the first time be fairly 'considered and acknowledged
by active British statesmen. We_,can surely hope that they will
despise the antique homilies on the decline and fall of the Roman
Empire in consequence of too great extension. It would be
much more reasonable to say that Rome fell because she did not
conquer enough, but left an ^outer world of uusoftened barba-
rians, whose rude vigour was sufBcient for her destruction. She
fell to pieces not because she was unwieldily big, but because
she became rotten - hearted, and therefore foul - blooded.
While Britain is sound at the core, her body will only grow
stronger ^by grov/ing larger. We hive no strong reason to fear
degeneration, and many strong reasons to hope for improvement.
The conditions of these latter days of Britain are radically dif-
ferent from the conditions of the latter days of Rome. Then
there was little religion and less morality, and both were rapidly
hastening from bad to worse. Now religious faith is here grow-
ing stronger and clearer day by day, and morality growing more
Tefined, more intense, and more comprehensive in its influence on
human feelings and on the details of human life and conversation.

■I

PI;

IM n^

The duty of Britain to take a large part of the outer world under
her management is not practically limited by the condition of
competence to manage so much. She can never " liave enough,"
and the more she has the more good she will be able to do. She
is now, and is likely to remain quite competent for any duty
which she may be called to perform. Folk who talk .^nceringly
about "visionary schemes," need to be reminded that she has
already accomplished tasks more difficult than any which can
test her in the future. Let them read again the first page of
Macaulay's Essay n Clive. and recall the prophecies of the sage
Dr. Lardner. Let them still further reduce themselves to a
wholesome siate of humility, by reflecting that they belong to the
same brood -A wiseacres, who ridiculed the project of an Atlantic
cable, and derided the Suez Ca:ial as the dream of a magnificent
madman. Men who prate that Britain has already as much as
.she can manage, seem to imagine that she has only one brain
a id one pair of hands for political work, and cannot do more by
greater division of labour. But nobody proposes to add anything
to the work oi" those whose attention is already sufficiently
occupied. It will not be difficult to find new officers fit for the
new work, from additional corporals to additional Colonial Secre-
taries. The British Islands and their colonies in the southern
hemisphere contahi an inexhaustible store, actual and potential,
of soldiers, civilians, and "iai)tains of industry," as good as any
who are already in the field. Nothing is warned but sini'lar
preparation evoked by snniliar opp, rtunily. There will be no
lack of volunteers to run all the risk and take all the trouble,
while the timid obstructives may sit at home in perfect ease of
mind and body, without even needing to put their hands in their
pockets except for their own private purposes.

Foreign Secretaries and Colonial Secretaries may try to shirk
moral responsibility, and avoid the very appearance of formal
obligation. But they, as stewards for the British nation, cannot
cast o^ its divine responsibility for making the best use of itj
pre-o.iiinent and peculiar talents. They cannot relieve it or
tliemselves by a careless official '' non possitjiuis''' from the sacred
obligations to act as Justice-General of the world's peace, and
schoolmaster of inferior tribes, which are imposed upon it by its

ucir

lU'K

I not

iv;3

red

liiid
its

general superiority. Such a policy as the timid obstructives are
prone to favour, might suit a nation of niggards, sluggards, and
cowards. But the world has a right to expect somel.ing better
from the "hereditary nobility of mankind." Noblesse oblige.
The powers of the Anglo-Saxon race have not been given for its
own insular gloiy and gratification. To squander the energies of
an imperial people in petty local work would be an unpardonable
outrage on the divine order of nature. Lives sacrificed to duty
are not losses to the world. They have not been lived in vain.
They cannot be better spent than in leading the forlorn hopes of
humanity, in reclaiming savage men and dangerous lands, in
sowing broadcast the seeds of good, and watering them, even
though it be with English blood. That blood will speak elo-
quently to stir the blood of all truemen who follow. On some
men must lie the duty of developing that greatest happiness of
the greatest number ; which, as Radical philanthropists need
often to be reminded, may not be the greatest happiness of the
greatest number presently existing. Some nursing-fathers are
needed for the savages and stagnant half-civilized peoples who
cannot well walk forward without leading strings. Dazed as they
will be by the inevitable movement from darkness into the blaz.
ing light of modern civilization, they must not be allowed to
stumble to and fro into sloughs and over precipices under the
guidance of blind leaders chosen by the blind. Any natural pro-
cess of change among such beings must be erratic or interrupted,
and is less likely to end in good than in some new form of evil.
The operation of trade and intercourse with Europe is not by
itself an unmingled benefit. As we may at this moment see in
Fiji, the earliest commercial adventures in an unorganized coun-
try arc not remarkable for culture, or for any virtue but courage.
The efifects of intercourse with such cannot bo very beneficial,
and have in many cases been positively degrading, positively
obstructive to the entrance of civilized notions and habits, and
ruinous to trade itself Even when the country recovers from or
resists the mischievous influences of the first contact, its unaided
growth must be like that of England — tedious, fitful, and painful.
From such suffering, such waste of time and strength ; f.^/ni the
long-drawn misery of a lonely, self-directed upward struggle, we

can save it, and in so doing benefit our traders, all ourselves, all
the world. It is the duty, the high privilege of us who have
painfully learnt the lesson of order, to teach the weaker brethren
who would have to spend a long time indeed in puzzling it out
for themselves. We deem it wrong to leave the wild children of
our cities to their natural processes of development. Is it not
equally wrong to leave the wild peoples of the earth ? For most
nations civilization has been, and must be, a grafted, not a
natural fruit. Peaceful intercourse on equal terms has not done
a titliC of as much as has been done for culture by the imposition
of a conqueror's stricter order and superior usages. But
for the formation of the vast Roman Empire we would never
have seen the astonishing development of modern Europe. And
as it has been in the past for Europe, so must it be in the future
for Asia, Africa, and tropical America. " Great is the power of
what is good," some will say, " it must prevail everywhere sooner
or later." Why not sooner rather than later ? Virtue may be
strong even in its nakedness. But how much stronger when
clothed in the garb of public power, and speaking with the voice
of legal authority ! When can the arts of peace spread so fast,
and root themselves so deeply, as when the competent hand of an
enlightened ruler guarantees that the peace shall not be broken ?
Does not the presence of the European magistrate add tenfold
efficacy to the labour of the mcrchan', the planter, the school-
master, and even the missionary.-' And are not the number and
character of the former thiee incalculnbly improved by his pro-
tection and control .•' The qualities of the English race are just
such as pre-eminently fit it for the work which some, neverthe-
less, now adjure us to prosecute no further. Its enterprising
spirit and stc;idy industry make it the best developer of wild and
thinly-peopled regions ; its religious uprightness and political
talents make it the best body of managers of the progress of in-
ferior races. No oiher people is comparable to it in fitness for
the discharge of imperial functions. Divine piovidence seems
to have made a special disposal of historic conditions, mental
and material, to cultivate in Englishmen those special qualities
which justly command the allegiance of inferior races. No other
;COuntry has been so favoured with that pure religion from which

most human uprightness and kindh'ness have their origin and
nourishment. Nowhere else has society preserved so much of the
tone of the chivalrous ages, of that sense of honour which so power-
fully inculcates devotion to duty, and is in the absence of con-
firmed Christian principles the great ensurer of judicial purity,
official integrity, and commercial honesty. Our long and unique
political training has produced not only political institutions, but
also a national public character of unique excellence. The
British constitution, sturdy by long natural growth, and yet
plastic by long habituation to modifying influences, is a slowly
elaborated model in which above all others — perhaps, in which
alone — has stability been made compatible with progress, and
dignity with active efficiency. In it alone are found the mutual-
ly necessary and mutually corrective elements of a wealthy com-
monalty, a liberal aristocracy, and a Crown strong both by anci-
ent right and by popular choice — the three legs of a healthy
commonwealth. The English people in their public character
are also in many ways an example deservinL,^ to be brought home
to the rest of the world. Nowhere are public morality and c.q^acity
so high as in it, equally among the governors and the governed.
In no other people are the political talents and virtues so gen-
erally diffused. And nowhere else has reverence for law been
so strongly developed, not only in no opposition to, but in har-
mony with, a spirit of individual enterprise, self-reliance, and
steadiness of purpose. And that spirit has formed those mari-
time habits, and given that maritime supremacy, which most
conspicuously declare England's fitness for the leadership of an
almost world-wide federation. The acquisition of such a position
will be far easier to her than to any nation likely to be her com-
petitor. No other has so many convenient bases for exterded
operations. To no other can sucl' a policy seem so natural,
ei-her in her own eyes or in those of her neighbours.

Yet we have been more than once taunted with grasping un-
fairness to other European nations in our imperial career, and
many generous souls are therefore ready to stigmatize further
acquisitions as the acts of a greedy gobbler, whose Mind voraci-
ous envy will not permit others to do for themselves a tithe of as
much as he has done for himself in the field of colonial enterprise.

They jump at the slightest excuse to fasten upon us a charge of in-
satiable and unscrupulous lust for power and wealth, in a field
where there is plenty of room for all, and thinking that we have
already enough and more than enough, bid us leave the rest of
the world to the devices of our neighbours. The taunt and the
advice are alike irrational. If any profit is to be gained from
subordinate territories, surely those have the best right to it who
are willing and able to render the greatest services in return.
And that is and always has been the character of England. Her
history affords no cases analogous to the long systematic plunder
of South America by Spain, and Java by Holland. Her admin-
istration hasjn general been honestly framed with a view to the
welfare of her subjects, and in many parts of Africa established
for directly philanthropic ends. In the light of past colonial
experience, England's supreme fitness for the leadership of infe-
riors is quite unquestionable. Why then question the rightful-
ness of the utmost use of her beneficent powers ? What good
can be done by burying some of her talents in the earth .'' What
right. has she to hand over to inferior workers the task which
none can do so well as she, while still having"within her widened
bounds an exhaustless supply of energy, of men clearly marked
out by nature to be the officers of the industrial brigades of the
great equatorial regions } It is a strange kind of generosity which
allows other men to spoil work which you yourself can do per-
fectly well if you only choose to try. It is a sin and a shame.

The great duty is one which ought to be shared with others in
as slight a degree as is consistent with the avoidance of war with
a very powerful neighbour. We clearly cannot get all the unciv-
ilized and unappropriated world under our umbrella, though we
may get a very large part. That we can do it better is alone a
sufficient reason for keeping the work out of the hands of others.
That makes it our duty to get and keep territory wherever we
can. That will justify us in anticipating Germany and in inducing
Holland, by payment of a million or two and the aid of our
Asiatic fleets and armies against the obstinate Achinis, to cede
her large claims and small settlements in those great islands,
Borneo and Papua, which are already partly British. When the
best has been said, these Protestant and Monarchical countries

are decidedly inferior to England and Scotland in religion, in
morals, and in the political virtues and talents. Far stronger is
the obligation to save the world from tutelage by nations imbued
with Popish or Ochlocratic superstitions, the two disastrous
extremes of social tendencies, and above all from Frr-.ce, where
the extremes meet. The ascendancy of France, Italy, Spain, or
the United States, would be a misfortune to any country, how-
ever bad its present state may be. Not much beyond a varnishing
of mechanical civilisation would be gained. France has done
litt'e or nothing to improve in any way the large districts which
she holds in Algeria, Cochin-China, and New Caledonia, but has
been guilty of many acts of cruelty and oppression in very
modern times. The religious effects, such as they may be, of
French supremacy will not atone for the political. Frenchmen
do not like Ultramontanism for themselves, but they are willing
enough to impose it upon others. They will displace a Pagan by
a Papal superstition, not much better in itself, and much more im-
pervious to the influence of rational Christianity. Not content
with that, they will probably persecute Protestant converts already
made, as they have done in Tahiti and arc now doing in the
Loyalty Islands. From imminent danger of similar treatment it
is the urgent duty of the First Protestant Power to rescue Mada-
gascar and Tonga, and more especially the Presbyterian New
Hebrides, lying so perilously near to New Caledonia, so conve-
niently near to Fiji. France is notoriously hungry for colonial
conquests, and none can doubt that if our policy of indifference
continues she will very soon be mistress not only of Northern
Africa, Senegambia, and Indo-China, but also of Madagascar and
the larger part of Polynesia. The first two and the greater part
of the third we cannot, indeed, save without open war, and must
therefore abandon to their fate. Algeria is already French, and
is out of all relations with us, while Tunis, Tripoli, and perhaps
Morocco, we must leave at her mercy in order to save something
more important. Cession of Bathurst and all our forts in Sene-
gambia north of Sierra Leone, is necessary to complete our
control of Guinea by the acquisition in a fair exchange of the
French stations on the Gold Coast and the Gaboon River. The
Gallic Eagle has already fixed his claws so deeply in the Empire

of Anam that we cannot now deprive him of his prey. But we
can at least save the neighbouring kingdom of Siam from a
similar fate by enrolling it among the protected States of India.
There is nothing to prevent us from saving Tonga, Rarotonga,
the New Hebrides, and the Solomon Islands, by immediately
annexing them to Fiji. Madagascar is too conspicuous to be
treated so unceremoniously, while we have a quieter but equally
effective way of procuring her deliverance. We can so work on
Malagasy fears of the French as to induce the Queen tu acknow-
ledge the imperial sovereignty of the Queen of Britain, in return
for a guarantee of protection by British soldiers and sailors
against her most dreaded enemy. To ask more than such an
acknowledgment would not at first be politic, but more would
inevitably follow. A protected state when once fairly entangled
with a great federal kingdo:i) cannot but gravitate to a condition
of federal subordination. The device of a protectorate is more-
over applicable advantageously elsewhere than in Madagascar.
In Siam, as already mentioned, and also in Persia, in Egypt, in
Arabia, and even in America, it may be used to extend the area
of British power without the troublesome necessity of conquest.
The intimacy of the connection ought to vary for different states
as well as at different times. Some, like the Native States of
India, would be occupied by British troops ; others would not.
A wise British Government would be exceedingly liberal tc^them
in matters both of privilege and finance. It would, at least, in
the beginning, allow them to keep up separate armies and engage
to defend them for a small annual payment ; would let them have
a share of central legislative powers, but yet not make Acts of
Senate binding on them unless confirmed by the local legislature;
and would admit them to all or most of the privileges of British
citizenship, while troubling them with few or none of its responsi-
bilities and restraints. Of course, however, they would imme-
diately cede to the imperial sovereign the power of declaring war
and concluding peace, and even reluctant Madagascar would
soon, if not immediately, have to yield full local rights to all
members of the Empire. The consequent influx of Anglo-Saxons
would very soon assimilate the Protected States lo the ordinary
parts of the British Federation. Surely this v/ill be a policy

much less troublesome, and much more profitable to ourselves
and to mankind, than any more paltry patching up of equal
alliances with the flighty and faithless occupants of rickety chjiirs
of State.

Italy has not yet any colonies, and has not tried to get them.
If she does try, she ought to be instantly thwarted. The wisdom
shown in her management of her own affairs is certainly not such
as to promise much for any distant subjects. As for Spain, no
one can seriously contemplate her interference as capable of
benefiting anybody anywhere. She has the faults of France in a
worse degree, with ignorance and sloth in addition. Happily she
cannot just now try to grab anything, and we will not be con-
cerned with her at all. Portugal is ambitious enough in Africa*
as she showed with a good deal of spiteful sulkiness at the time
of our war with the Ashantis. Her dominion, unprofitable to
herself and superficial as it is, is no small curse to both sides of
Southern Africa, and, in the interest of everybody, ought to be
brought to a speedy end. As she owes her independent existence
to us, we have another strong justification for very peremptory
dealing. The recent quarrel ab:)ut Delagoa Bay might have been
so used as to force a sale of her rickety forts on the whole coast
of Mozambique, and thus place the great Zambezi River, as the
fitness of things demands, under the contrbl of a really commer-
cial nation. She has established her hold more firmly on the
Western Coast, but does so little in any way that nobody can
have much of excuse for calling us very wicked if the imperial
Senate votes a handsome payment for enforced concession. At
any rate we must have the Congo, which late discoveries have
shown to be so important a water-highway, and as the north
bank is still in the hands of independent savages, there is nothing
to prevent us from occupying it without delay.

In the United States nobody but the falling President shows any
intention or desire of going beyond North America, and perhaps
some of the adjacent isles. But even there our vigilance will be
useful. They appear already to have got some hold of Samoa,
but the Sandwich Islands, Hispaniola, and Mexico are still as
open to us as to them. We can and we ought to do something
in the way of anticipating the movements of the slipshod parody

h 7 'I

of orderly and enlightened England. The extension of its power
will be fraught, not indeed with the same religious, but with many
of the same civil and social mischiefs which accompany the
ascendancy of the French. Its so-called government is nothing
but a gathering up of all the folly, paltriness, dirtiness, and
roguery of the country into a position of predominance over its
sweetness and light — the supremacy of the nouvellcs couches
sociales with a vengeance — " ignorance making a merit of its

meanness

and

meanness makinsf a

merit of its ignorance.'

Truly a nation of shop-keepers, with no notion of progress beyond

the multiplication of turbulent man-flesh and the unscrupulous

accumulation of inelegant wealth ! They have all the public

vices of the cis-Atlantic republicans. The same incompetence,

dishonesty, and venality; in many places the same tyranny on

the part of officials. The same meanness, ignorance, corruption,

jealoosy of eminence, and contempt of law on the part of the

people : a contempt not indeed very surprising, when we consider

the contemptible creatures by whom their laws are made and

administered. Can any good thing come out of a country whose

ignorant roughs elect roughs not much better informed to misrule

its wealth and intelligence ; where the classes socially and morally

last are politically first or everything, and the classes socially

and morally first are politically last or nothing.? Can a nation

be fit for political supervision of others when its own respectable

members habitually use the v/ord "politician" as a term of

reproach.? We must judge them by the total absence of decency

and good sense from the management of their internal affairs, by

their raspinc^ and malignant oppression of the conquered South,

and by their continuous plunder and slaughter of their Red Indian

subjects : and then we can pronounce no other sentence than that

of utter unfitness for any new responsibility.

Prevention is within our power when once England's neck is
freed from the Canadian millstone. Oh for the joys of being free
to snap our fingers in the faces of the Yankees on that glorious
day of emancipation 1 They will, after that, think once, twice,
and even thrice, before they allow their insolent and touchy
vanity to carry them into a war which must be entirely naval on
their part, and in which, therefore, they could not fail to get that

jolly good thrashing which they have needed so much ever since
they began to flaunt tlje star-spangled banner. They will not
make it a casus belli that the King of the Sandwich Islands
acknowledges the Queen of Britain as his imperial sovereign-
They will not feel in honour bound to resist our acquisition of
control over their rejected Hispaniola, separated as it is from *
their territory by the long group of British Bahamas and sur-
rounded by islands already in European hands. The republic
of Santo Domingo, which contains the largest and finest part of
the island, is not very eager to maintain its independence, has
already sought admission into the United States, and would pro-
bably be very glad to be protected by the United Kingdom. At
any rate it will not demand anything exorbitant for coding
Samana Bay, one of the most important harbours in the world,
and necessary, like Egypt, the Sandwich Islands, and either
Nicaragua or Darien, to the power which wishes to be really
mistress of the seas, able to maintain fleets and secure uninter-
terrupted passage for its trade on every important portion of the
globe's aqueous surface, Nicaragua will be the most difficult of
all to acquire. That wretched product of Whiggish weakness —
worse even than the Ashburton Treaty — the Clayton-Bulwer
Treaty of 1850, as revised in 1859, surrendered our protectorate
of the Mosquito Coast, and tied our hands against annexation of
Central America, or obtaining control of that great western
gateway of war and commerce. But as the Yankees have vio-
lated their engagement, in spirit if not in letter, by successfully
negotiating for the sole right of making and using a canal
through the isthmus of Darien, we have a very plausible ground
for demanding another revision of the treaty and perhaps release
us from our engagement. The Yankees have no more commer-
cial interest in, or natural connection with, the Central American
trade route, than we have. It is too much, therefore, that they
should have full command of one of two possible canals, and be
able to prevent us from using the other in time of war. Having a
disbanded army, a dismantled navy, a large population of
disaffected subjects, and no Canada to attack, they will
be much more willing than in 1859 ^^ listen to reason.
Though they may chafe at our progress, they will not be so

1^-

eaten up with zeal for the Monroe Doctrine as to prefer a war
to a fair division of two canal-routes between two great
commercial nations. They may be soothed, too, by per-
mission to seize the coveted northern provinces of Mexico,
when in the exercise of our creditor's right we assume
management of the estates of that impudent and profligate
bankrupt. We have never got satisfaction for the outrages
which led to the abortive joint-expedition of i86i, and
we must now take it with our own hands alone. Under our
management the enormous agricultural and mineral resources
will soon be so developed as to pay off the debt, besides paying
the expenses of government, and when we have got satisfaction,
a plebiscite of owners of property in the Clerical south will secure
our management in perpetuity. In like manner we may deal, if
we choose, with Honduras, Costa Rica, Venezuela, and especially
Hayti and Uruguay. These so-called states are mere territorial
conspiracies of swindlers and banditti, which have none at all of
the moral attribr' of governments. We will incur no odium
with well-inforniL crsons by displacing such organized brigan-
dage. And on the other hand we will get enough of solid pud-
ding to comfort us under the empty blame of empty-headed sen-
timentais. We could not be quiet in Santo Domingo, if the rascally
Haytians should retain their independence ; while Venezuela and
Uruguay will be splendid stock-farms for the British army and
navy, nearer and cheaper than Australia.

The present moment is, indeed a galaxy of golden opportuni-
ties for extending the area of internal good government and
international peace. The half-civilized states (so-called) have not
yet got a thoroughly recognized ' political standing. With
Mexico, the largest of all, except Turkey, no Government but
that of the United States has any diplomatic relations. Doubt-
less much jealousy will be felt, and openly or covertly expressed
in Europe and America. Let them be jealous ! Though there
may be much barking, no biting will ever be attempted. If the
British bull-dog shows his teeth with significant decision, the
growling curs will be glad enough to let him take most of what
he wants, and to profess themselves satisfied with the very
smallest scraps. What would be the result of a war, a naval

the
the
hat

war as it could no*: but be, between the British Empire and any
other power, except the Russian, or indeed any two other powers?
Simply that we would give it a sound thrashing, and like Ger-
many in 1 87 1, make it pay the costs of its lesson in the duty of
not interfering with its superiors. Spain is baicly able to main-
tain an equal contest with Cubans and Cai lists. Italy has as yet
no grounds for colonial pretensions, and if she had, could not
fight for them. Her immense armaments have rendered her
powerless for offence. By lavish indulgence of her military
vanit)' in time of peace she has sapped the vigour of lier sinews
of war. She is a silly child, who has long been overstraining her-
self to hold uj) a giant's club. The very first attempt to use her
unwieldy weapon would burst her lungs and break her h ick.
Brazil is not strong, and is already gorged w th territory, having
a square mile for every group of three Brazilians. Austria and
Russia, as I shall soon show, will be consenting and profiting
parties, in .so far as concerned with our im,ierial operations. The at-
tention of France and Germany is concentrated in intense mutual
jealousy, and their strength all reserved for the expected gr.itifiT
cation of their mutual haired. i\either can afford to have the
luxury of another enemy. Germany has as yet no colonial in-
terests to give excuse for meddling with us, and such colonial
ambition as she may have she will soon be able to satisfy with-
out crossing our path. She will soon swallow up Holland, and
thus gain command of the Moluccas, the Sunda Islands, and of
Dutch Guiana. France is frantii ,dly ambitious, and will not allow
us to act, especially in Egypt and Madagascar, without vehement
protests and vigorous machinations. Everywhere she will look
upon us with a jealous eye and try to counteri.ct us by ingenious
plots. But if we are careful to spare her vanity, and avoid formal
casus belli, while steadily accomplishing our purposes, she will
hesitate to pick a quarrel in her present shattered, disorganized,
and debt-laden condition. Her means, happily, do not corres-
pond to her ideas. The ape element in her nature undoubtedly
retains all its efficiency, but the tiger is too'hless, and the only
result of a petulant attack on the British Lion would be the loss
of those foreign provinces which she might otherwise be allowed
to keep in her claws. If she remains a good quiet child, she

may be permitted to slake her thirst for military glory and exer-
cise her brilliant talents of constitution-making; in Anam. Senc-
gambia and Northern Africa.* Let her rest and be thankful with
these.

Many will cry out against these acquisitions as quite useless
and very costly to the rest of the empire. Thoughtless crea-
tures ! Nearly every one of the countries marked out as
proper objects of annexation will soon add considerably to the
wealth and strength of Britain — add more than enough to pay
for the additional cost of its own defence ; while altogether will
thus add more than enough to pay for the new small military
and naval stations. For a year or two indeed, till the new
order has been firmly fixed and has established confidence,
the revenue may not be sufficient for the expenditure. Such is
the case of Fiji. But in a few years, when British intelligence,
British capital, and Asiatic laborers have flowed into the land,
Fiji will have a public income more than sufficient for all neces-
sary outlay. In most new private enterprises merchants know
that they must incur present loss for the sake of great future
gain. They are very ready to cast their bread upon the
waters, expecting to find it after many days ; and why are so
many statesmen in this " nation of shopkeepers," unwilling to
imitate the practical far-sightedness of their constituents .'' What
will happen in Fiji will also happen in those parts of Africa, of
Malaysia, of Tropical America, which ought also to be annexed.
They are naturally as rich as Fiji, and they are very
much bigger. The speedy development of the great and
various capacities of these abused and neglected lands will soon
furnish an clastic and overflowing revenue. The rich rocks of
many, the r'ch soil of most, are waiting only for the establish-
ment of a state of society in which industry and enterprise can
get and keep their just reward. Then they will lay their trea-
sures at the feet of astonished mankind. Many of these coun-
tries are indeed morally burdened with debts, the interest of
which at present they cannot easily pay. But under British
management these debts would become mere trifles, not merely
from the great increase of revenue, but from the entirely just re-
duction of interest. Most of the stock was issued at a discount

of
sh
:Iy
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int

of 30 per cent, or more, and the rates of interest per cent, arc
far above the 4 which India and Australia find sufficiently at-
tractive. After annexation, of course, interest would be paid at
4 per cent, only, and only on the amount actually received by
the borrower. Turkey, for instance, pays ;^ 10,000,000 a year in
interest. If under Britain, as India is, she would pay at the
most, only 5 or 6 millions. That would give the holders quite
as much as they could equitably claim. In other countries the
payment would fall not merely to a-half, but to a third or even
a fourth of the amount promised by the original distrusted bor-
rowers. It must be remembered also that the money is due to
creditors chiefly British, and that by thus making herself respon-
sible for it, Britain will be adding directly to her own wealth.
She will be preventing destruction of liritish capital, and securing
payment to British tax-payeis of large sums of interest, out of
which they are likely soon to be partly or completely defrauded.
In the same countries, moreover, English owners of capital will
have vast fields for secure investment of their new and embar-
rassing accumulations. Under a less firm and honest Govern-
ment than that of Britain, they would not dare to send much
capital into such places, and could not send their little without
very great risk. But alter annexatic n they can scarcely send
too much. They will need to fear no Railway Rings, no Revo-
lutions, and no Repudiation, and will not be troubled even by
rumours cf v/ars. Thus the rate of interest and of profit will be
raised for all British capital, and the wealth of the great nation
will go on steadily and permanently increasing by the possi_.
bility of greater saving.

Much of thi new acquisition will be nothing more than ex-
tension of the boundaries of British colonies already existing,
but too small to be profitable, expansion of what appear as
mere points in the map of the world into surfaces having con-
spicuous magnitude. Such are Belize, the Gold Coast, Labuan,
and even the Straits Settlements. Extend them, following the
recent example of wise Sir Andrew Clarke in the Malay
Peninsula, and then they will soon be wiped out of the list
of those parts of the Empire, which give nothing to the fede-
ral treasury, and draw out much for defence. Such colonies

as Central America, Guinea, Borneo and Malacca in whole, would
add nothing to the cost of defence incurred by the other members
of the federation, while immensely increasing the federal resources.
The F^mpire at present is too bony and skinny. It needs more
flesh to protect its joints and its vital organs. It is far too
stragcjling, and needs to be made mot compact. Hardly any
extension could weaken it f^r defence, aii 1 such extension as is
here recomm nded w <u!d certainly strengthen. Its parts are
already so widely scattered, its pres nee so generally diffused,
tha even now it m lintans a navy with a squadron lor almost
every sea. No greater increase of ships would be required than
is required at this present moment to maintain Britain's historic
mastery of the ocean. On land the effect of extension would be
a help rather than a hi.idrancc to defence. Now many parts of
the empire m'ght be occupied and held securely without rcbist-
ance, if a considerable hostile force should suddently attack.
Then almost every part would be able to levy and equip a formid-
able body of defenders, who would not permit the enemy to occupy
more «"han a small portion of the country, and would make his posi-
tion extremely uncomforjable and extremely insecure. Very few
more English troops would be needed than are stationed at present
in Africa and other tropical countries. Cheap and hardy armies
of Africans or Asi^.tics led by European officers would be quite
sufficient. Where disaffection might be suspected, or even
regarded as possible, it would not indeed be wise to lean upon a
strictly native army for the maintenance of our autliority. But
in a greatly extended empire we could follow the wise example
of the ancient imperial people, and change or exchange the places
of troops native to different subject provinces. Rulin<;, like the
Romans, a great variety of kindreds and peoples, we ^night imi-
tate them in playing off diversities of race, creed, and custom
against each other, to ensure the fidelity of either our subjects or
our servants. That would almost entirely save the empire ^rom
the expense of the serious local revolts which some profess to
dread as the result of tropical annexations. Neither would the
nev/ly-acquired territory be rendered unprofitable by wars with
savage neighbours. The most warlike Africans have already felt
the weight of our arms, and will not only remain quiet, but cum-

municate their dread to tribes more remote. Very soon, indeed,
no independent savages would be left to trouble us, all being
reduced under the rule of Britain. France, Russia, or some other
civilized power. Free and benighted barbarians may be turned
into British subjects by very shore, cheap, a d easy methods.
A mere formal display of force, the appearance of a few gunboats
in a harbour or river will make a beginning, and the rest of the
work may be done to suit the advance of cultivation, by an
armed poiice force gradually spreading its fortified stations back
from, the coast and along the river highway-; The proposed
East African Company m.ay safely build its railwa/ to the cent-
ral lakes ;, ■ soon as the British flag has been hoisted opposite
Zanzibar, Here and there a rough tribe may compel a
petty war like that with the Ashantis. But from the beginning
the peaceful pagans of Papua, l^orneo, and the Soudan wi 1 be
the obedient friends of their English deliverers fiom Sulu pirates
and Fellata marauders. The cost of consolidating a larger and
more compact British Empire by conqaest of savage African and
Asiatic countries would, therefore, mike no serious addition to
the expenses of their Governments. And even the hall-savage
countries of Centra! and Southern America would not probably
be so foolish as to add to their debf-s by futile re .istancc ;
Mexico perhaps excepted. But Mexico has so much easily
tangible wealth under ground, that shew)ild in a few years
hardly feel the burdens of a war of co iquest, even if it had cost
as much as the Abyssinian expedition. Nowhere would the
indusLry evoked by British miintenince of order and enforce-
ment of ob'igations be crowned with more magnificent results.
But everywhere the industriuu^ classes would make us welcome, and
everywhere, in some degree at !ea.*t, the final and not long delayed
result of inclusion in the British Empire would be profit to the
people of the locality, profit to the wUole people of the Empire,
profit to the whole of mankind.

CHAPTERS VI. & VII.

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[The two last chapters " Euthanasia for the Sick Man " and
"What Will Hinder.-'" are of small interest. In " E\ithanasia for
the Sick Man " it is contended Russia ought to have Constanti-
nople, and we doubt if a better arrangement could be made, if
England should be willing and be able to adopt the Indian policy
of our author, which is wiser than his policy in dealing with the
colonies. In " What Will Hinder .-' " he contends that any oppo-
sition in Victoria, New South Wales, or the Cape Colony must
give way " once the thing has been decisively done." Of course
the same thing v.'ould be said oj' Canada, and we are not pre-
pared either to give up our Crown lands or our voice in regard to
our future. Nor is it easy to think the " splendour-loving na-
ture" of Mr. Disraeli will be readv to compel the people of Vic-
toria to place their Crown lands in the hands of a body of 450
men in London, 350 of whom would be elected by the United
Kingdom, and the majority of the balance from various parts of
the world.] :, ,

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