THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA GIFT OF Professor George H. Guttridge THE BRITISH EMPIRE. Specially authorised by the League of the Empire. PHILIPS' PKIMAEY ATLAS OF THE BPJTISH EMPIRE. A series of 72 Maps and Diagrams attractively printed in colours on 24 Crown 4to plates, illustrating simply and graphically the varied Geographical and Climatological Conditions under which the inhabitants of our widespread Empire live. In attractive stifE cover Is., or strongly bound in scarlet buckram 2s. This Atlas has been Prepared under the Direction OF THE League of the Empire in connection with their Imperial Text Book Scheme, and will be followed by a Larger Atlas for more Advanced Study. GEORGE PHILIP & SON, LTD., 32, Fleet Street, London, AND THE LEAGUE OF THE EMPIRE, Caxton Hall, Westminster. THE BRITISH EMPIRE ITS PAST, ITS PRESENT, ANI) ITS FUTURE. EDITED BY A. R POLLARD, M.A., FELLOW OP ALL SOCLS COLLEGE, OXFORD; CaOFESSOR OF ENGLISn HISTORY IX THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDOX ; L.VTE ASSISTANT EDITOR OF THE "DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY. LONDON: THE LEAGUE OF THE EMPIRE (ON BEHALF OF THE TRUSTEES OP THE SPITZEL IMPEttlAL EDUCATION TRUST), OAXTON HALL, WESTMINSTER. 1909. EDITOEIAL COMMITTEE OF THE LEAGUE OF THE EMPIRE. Professor J. B. Bury, Litt.D., LL.D., D.Litt., Begins Pro- fessor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, Chairman. Professor H. E. Egerton, Beit Professor of Colonial History in the University of Oxford. H. A. L. Fisher, Esq., Fellow of New College, Oxford, and of the British Academy. John Murray, Esq., M.A., J.P., D.L. Professor A. F. Pollard, Editor. Samuel L. Spitzel, Esq. GIFT VAii Vic PREFACE. This account of the British Empire owes its orio-in to the generosit}^ of Mr. Louis Spitzel and the enthusiasm of Mr. Thomas Henry Monk. Neither, unhappily, lived to see the result of their practical interest in the Empire. Mr. Spitzel died in September, 1906, aiid Mr. Monk in August, 1907 ; and it is but bare justice to their memory to record in this place the debt which the series of volumes, of which this is the first, owes to their exertions. The execution of the scheme, which was thus made feasible, was entrusted to the History Section of the League of the Empire, with Professor Bury as its chairman. The object of this volume and its successors is, like those of the League of the Empire itself, primarily educational. Its essential purpose is to pro- mote a knowledge and, what is more important, an understanding of the Empire as it is and of the causes which have brough;t it into being, and to pro- vide that minimum of information without which all discussion of Imperial questions is barren, if not productive of positive mischief. The secondary object is to make further provision for education in the Empire. The expenses of the series having been already met, all the proceeds will be devoted to the furtherance of education without distinction of class, creed, or colony. 183 Preface. It is therefore the work of no one school of politics, and represents no single standpoint. It has not been inspired from Downing Street, and no effort has been made to impose upon it a fictitious uniformity of view. To it writers have contributed of all shades of opinion and from all quarters of the Empire ; suggestions have been adopted from authorities in almost every Dominion, Colony and Dependency of the Crown ; and it reflects a diversity of gifts and aspirations which no other political sys- tem has known how to combine with imperial unity. That unity rests upon a historical basis. All the states of the Empire have been built on a common foundation by men who have inherited or assimi- lated Enghsh ideas, and every one of its hundred leoislatures is a child of the Mother of Parliaments. But they have all developed on different lines, and it is well that every Dominion and Colony should understand the British point of view. It is perhaps even more essential that Great Britain should under- stand the points of view of her adult children ; and both objects would have been sacrificed by any attempt to suppress such differences as exist. Understanding rather than knowledge being the primary object of this book, its purpose has been to explain rather than to recapitulate history ; and chronology has been subordinated to the endeavour to trace and appraise the various causes and forces that have moulded the development of the Empire. It has been no easy task to adjust to their proper proportion of pages the claims of its several parts and manifold aspects. In particular, the long history of the British Isles, their preponderance in. white Tnfam. vii. population and wealth, and tlieir influence on the other Dominions and Colonies could not be treated at corresponding length without dwarfing the space allotted to the rest of the Empire. Problematical future importance as well as positive past achieve- ment has had to be weio;hed in strikinc: the balance : and for the detailed history of the British Isles before 1800 students will have to go elsewhere. The few chapters devoted to that theme are designed merely as an introduction to the j)eriod during which the domestic history of Great Britain and Ireland has directly acted and reacted upon that of her daughter-states. Nevertheless, it was impossible to leave Hamlet out of the play, or to explain the growth of derivative institutions without- going back to the source from which they were derived. Limits of space also compelled the omission of a mass of first-hand information generously supplied by responsible persons in every part of the Empire. A cyclopa3dia of the Empire in some twelve or twenty volumes w^ould liave enormous value, but its production is beyond the present means and purpose of the League. This volume should not, however, be valued by its size or weight, and still less by its price. It is the result of two and a half years' labour in which more than a hundred authori- ties have in varying degrees co-operated ; and although it is in no sense an ofiicial publication, no slight proportion of its contents is due to the criticism or suggestion of men who are actually responsible for the administration of the Empire. It would be impossible, even if such recognition were permitted, to acknowledge individually the assist- viii. Preface. diifce tvliich hcis tliiis been unstintedly i-etldered to the book ; but 1 may be allowed, on behalf of the Editorial Committee and myself, to tender our thanks to Mrs. Ord Marshall for undertakiug the vast mass of correspondencie involved in the consultation of authorities in all parts of the Empire. A list of the writers who have contributed to this volume is given on jd. x. ; but something like a third of its contents has been derived from sources which cannot be more particularly specified. This ex- traneous information has modified practically every chapter but the last, in which Sir Frederick Pollock has dealt with the Imperial Conference of 1907 and Dr. Shadwell with the Federal Conference on Education ; and with this exception the Editor must accept the sole responsibility for the statements in this book. A word should perhaps be said on terminology. The great self-governing communities of the Empire have long felt that the term "colony" inadecpately expresses their national status; and "dominions" or " states " have been suggested as substitutes. The difiiculties are that "dominion" does not imply self- government, and that '" states " is a term apj^lied in Australia to the six component parts of the Common- wealth which alone represents the national aspira- tions of the people. " Nations " would perhaps be a better word, and " The Empire of the British Nations," while open to several objections, would at least be less cumbrous than some of the descrip- tions that have been siiggestied for the Dominions of the Crown. But the old terminology still obtains at the Colonial Office and in official documents, and Preface. ix. it has not been possible to avoid it altogether in these pages. Nor has it been possible to follow one consistent principle of spelling proper, and especially Indian, names. Few readers would recog- nise sepoys in sipdliis, and intelligibility has some- times been preferred to scientific accuracy. So, too, the grouping of colonies is not absolutely logical ; it is convenient to treat Ehodesia, Nyasaland, and Basutoland under the heading South Africa, although they are not self-governing states like the other Dominions and Colonies described in Book II. Every method has its defects. No human mind could, follow at one time the divergent stories of these British states, and it was necessary to treat them individually. But they are more than indivi- dual communities, and some attempt has been made to keep their histories in touch with the greater unity, of which they are l)ut parts, by frequent reference to corresponding movements, by a unified chronology of the Empire (pp. 789-809), and by an index which contains some twenty-five thousand entries. A. F. Pollard. X. LIST OF CONTRIBUTOES. E. I. Carlyle, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Lincolu College Oxford. S^J Nicholas Darnell Davis, C.M.G., formerly Auditor-General of British Guiana; author of " Eoundheads and Cavaliers in Barbados," etc. E. C. F. DoLLEY, University College, London. E. W. Frazer, LL.B., I.C.S. (retired), Lecturer in Telugu and Tamil at University College and the Imperial Institute ; author of "A Literary History of India," etc. G. W. GOUGH, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford. W. L. Grant, M.A. (Toronto and Oxford), Assistant-Professor of Colonial History, Oxford University. E. G. Hawke, M.A., Wadham College, Oxford, Examiner in Modern History, London University. A. J. Herbertson, M.A., Ph.D., Eeader in Geography, Oxford University. A. W. Jose, M.A. (Sydney), author of "The Growth of the British Empire," etc. F. W. Pennefather, LL.D, sometime Judge of the Supreme Court of New Zealand. Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart., LL.D., D.C.L. Thomas Seccoimbe, M.A., Lecturer on History at the Birkbeck and East London Colleges. Dr. Arthur Shadwell, M.A., M.E.C.P., Keble College, Oxford Basil Williams, M.A., sometime Clerk in the House of Commons. n. W. Wilson, B.A., author of "Ironclads in Action," etc. CONTENTS. BOOK I. THE BRITISH ISLES. CHAPTER I.— PHYSICAL FEATURES. p^qe. The Narrow Seas 3 Permanent and temporary featiu'es 4 Southern England 5 London and the Thames G-7 The Eastern and Midland counties 8 The Severn and the Marches of Wales 9 The Pennines and the Northern Plains 10 Routes into Scotland 11-12 The Lowlands 13 The Highlands and the Islands 14 The British climate 15 The plains and towns of Ireland 10 Its natural divisions 17 Influence of geography on British history 18 CHAPTER II.— RACIAL FACTORS AND THEIR FUSION. B.C. 55— A.D. 1215. Roman Britain 19 The Anglo-Saxon Conquest 20 The rival kingdoms 21 The coming of the Danes 22 Alfred the Great 23 Canute 24 English decadence and the Feudal System 25 The Norman Conquest and its results 26 England imder the Angevins 27 Magna Carta 28 England a nation 29 xii- Contents. , CHAPTER III.— THE GROWTH OF NATIONALITY, 1215-1559. Page. Parochial patriotism 30 Expansion of political consciousness 31 The beginnings of Parliament 32 The House of Commons 33 The foui'teenth centuiy 34 The Hundred Years' War 35 Wycliffe and the Lollards 36 England under the Lancastrians 37 The Renaissance 38 The New Monarchy 39 The Early Tudors .".""!"!!.!!"!!!!!"!! 40 The Reformation 41 England under Spanish control 42 The Anglican Settlement 43 CHAPTER IV.— THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND, 1559-1800. The Scottish Reformation 44 Ireland under the Tudors 45 The Elizabethan Sea-Dogs 46 Drake 47 First attempts at colonisation 48 The Stuarts and the Puritans 49 New England 50 The Civil Wars 51 The Navigation Acts 52 Ireland under the Stuarts 53 The Union with Scotland 54-5 The Revolution of 1688 56 England and France in the New World 57 George III 58 American and Irish Independence 59 The French Revolution and Napoleon 60 The Union with Ireland 61 Problem of the Nineteenth Century 62 CHAPTER v.— THE ONE DISRUPTION. Causes of the quarrel 63 English and American ideas 64 The Stamp Act 65 The parting of the ways 66 The Boston Tea-Party 67 The War-fever and the Whigs 68 Lexington and Bunker Hill 69 The Declaration of Independence 70 Burgoyne's campaign . 71 Saratoga 72 Contents. xiii. Page. The War spreads 73-4 European intervention 75 Yorktown 76 Peace with Independence 77 The United Empire Loyalists 78 The United States of America 79 CHAPTER VI.— SCOTLAND. Scotland at the Union 80-1 Tlie Jacobite rebellions 82 Pacification of the Highlands 83 Industries and agriculture 84 Political lethargy 85-6 The political revival of Scotland 87-8 Tlio religious revival 89 The Free Kirk 90-1 Economic development 92-3 Education and self-government 94 CHAPTER VII.— IRELAND. The Irish Union and its defects 95 The Irish problem 96 Orange and Green 97-8 Roman Catholic Emancipation 99 Disestablishment 100-01 The Land question 102 Agrarian crime and coercion 103 Irish Land Acts 104-5 Irish poverty and taxation 106-7 The agitation for Repeal 108 Fenianism and Home Rule 109-111 ; CHAPTER VIIL— WALES, MAN AND THE CHANNEL ISLANDS. The Welsh people 112 The Conquest of Wales 113-114 The Union of Wales with England 115 The religious revival in Wales 116 The educational movement 117-118 The Isle of Man and its history. 119-121 Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark 122-3 CHAPTER IX.— THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. The transformation of Great Britain 124 The Factory System 125 Domestic manufactures • 126 Wool 127 Introduction of machinery 128 -jj.jy^ Contents. ■ Page. Kay'3 " flying shuttle " and Hargreaves' " spinning jenny " 129 Compton's " mule " and Cartwright's power loom • 1^^ Lancashire and cotton • ,02 Canals and railways ^22 Growth of capitalism ,0^ EfEects on the working classes ^^^ Wages and hours of labour ^^^ State-control and laissez-faire CHAPTER X.— COMMERCIAL EXPANSION. 1*]8 England becomes dependent on imports 139-141 The Corn Laws ^^2 British Tarifi history ^^3 Tariff reform •■ J44 The movement towards Free Trade ^^^ Sir Robert Peel j^g Repeal of the Corn Laws ^^^ Gladstone's Budgets ^^^ Free Trade and its results ^^^ Development of communications 150-1 Railways, steamships and telegraphs CHAPTER XL-POLITICAL EMANCIPATION. The county and borough electorate " The unreformed House of Commons Jo The Reform Act of 1832 f^^ ' EfEects of the Reform Act ^^^ Russell and Gladstone 161-3 Disraeli's Act of 1867 ^g3 The Ballot Act ••••••• ,g. Enfranchisement of the agricultural labourers i^4 The existing political system The "will of the people" CHAPTER XII.— THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. 1 A7_8 Political and legal sovereignty • ^^^ Executive and legislature ^^^ The Monarchy j^j The Crown in Council ^^2 The Crown in Parliament ^^^ The House of Commons y^^ The House of Lords yj^ The supremacy of Parliament ^^^ The Prune Minister j^^ The party system j^g The Cabinet T'C'Va 179 Its control over the Commons and the Lords ' The Crown as the fountam of justice ^^^^ The Law.Courts 182-3 Trial by Jury jg^ The Established Chiuch Contents. xv. CHAPTER XIII.— LOCAL GOVERNMENT. Page. Results of the Industrial Revolution 186 Redistribution of population 187 Problems of Local Government ]88 Relations between Local and Central Government 189 The English counties ,.... 190 County and other Boroughs 191 The Parish 192 The Union and the District 193 County and Borough Councils 194 Local Government duties and powers 195 Local option and compulsion 190 Central control 197 Local finance 198 The burden of the rates 199 Taxation of ground values 200 CHAPTER XIV.— SOCIAL PROBLEMS. How will Democracy use its Power? 202 Individualism and Socialism 203 Collectivist ideals 204 Karl Marx and Jaures 205 A practical example 206 Charges against the existing system 207 Effects of competition 208 The test of success 209 The question of efficiency 210 Individualism 211 Man versm the State 212 The common denominator 213 CHAPTER XV.— PROBLEMS OF FOREIGN POLICY. Basis of Imperial Foreign Policy 214 Peace the first of British interests 215 Relations with European States 216 The Eastern Question 217 The Tm-kish Revolution 218 Africa 219 The Persian Gulf 220 The Far East 221 The" Yellow Peril" 222 North and South America 223 The Empire and the Navy 224 The awakening of the East 225 CHAPTER XVI.— DOWNING STREET AND THE COLONIES. Downing Street and the Colonial Office 227 Approximation of British Dominions 228 Britain's Colonial advantages , 229 xvi. Contents. Page. Economic basia of the Empire 230 The Anti-Colonial period 231 British trade and the British flag 232 Colonial emancipation 233 The existing Colonial system 234 Economic and poHtical distinctions 235 Colonial types 236 The Self-governing States 237 Crown Colonies 238 Imperial sovereignty 239 Nationalism and Imperialism 240 Problems of Empire 241 The question of Federation 242 BOOK II. THE SELF-GOVERNING STATES. I.— CANADA AND NEWFOUNDLAND. CHAPTER I.— PHYSICAL CONDITIONS. Lowlands, Lakes and Rivers 245-6 The St. Lawrence and the Rockies 247 Climatic and economic regions 248-9 Eastern Canada and Newfoundland 250 Lower and Upper Canada 251 British Columbia and the North West 252 CHAPTER II.— FRENCH AND BRITISH, 1534-1763. Early French colonists 253 The Seigniors, the Habitants and the Church 254 French Colonial ambitions 265 The Seven Years' War 256 Montcalm and Wolfe 257 The Plains of Abraham 258 Death of Wolfe 259 Surrender of Quebec 260 The Peace of Paris 261 CHAPTER III.— THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM, 1763-1837. The Quebec Act 262 The War of American Independence 263 The Constitutional Act of 1791 264 War with the .United States, 1812-1814 265-7 Papineau's Rebellion 268 Mackenzie's Rebellion 269 Contents. CHAPTER IV.— UNION AND CONFEDERATION, 1837-1867. Paoe. Canadian discontent 270 Lord Durham's Report 271 Responsible government 272 Movement for union with the United States 273 Political leaders 274 Abolition of the Gergy Reserves 275 The Federal Conference 276 Nova Scotia 277 New Brunswick 278 CHAPTER v.— THE EXPANSION OF CANADA, 1867-1907. Sir J. A. Macdonald 279 The Great West 280 The Hudson Bay Company 281 Frontier disputes 282 Railway Policy and Protection 283 The Canadian Pacific 284 Louis Riel's rising 285 Sir John Macdonald's last triumph 286 Sir Wilfrid Laurier 287 CHAPTER VI.— THE DOMINION AND THE PROVINCES. Federal Principles 288 Canadian Federation 289 Constitutional powers of the Dominion 290 Provincial rights 291 Federal and Provincial finance 292 Justice and Education 293 The Upper House 294 Provincial Parliaments 295 r CHAPTER VII.— POLITICAL PARTIES AND PROBLEMS. Political tendencies in Canada 296 Canada's future 297 Relations with the Mother Country. 298 French Canadian ideas 299 Domestic problems 300 Stat« control and Labour politics 301 The political outlook 302 CHAPTER VIII.— NATURAL RESOURCES. The old farming system 303 Development of Ontario and Manitoba 304 Improved methods of agriculture 305 Fruit-growing and timber 306 Coal mines 307 Iron and gold 308 Fisheries 309 Fur and feathers 310 xviii. Contents. CHAPTER IX.— MANUFACTURES, COMMERCE AND TRANSPORT. p^^^ The Navigation Acts 311 Protection and Colonial Preference 312 Foreign and domestic trade 313 Wat/crways and railways 314 The Grand Trunk 315 The Intercolonial, Canadian Pacific, and Northern 316 Canals 317 Ocean steamers 318 CHAPTER X.— NEWFOUNDLAND. Discovery and early voyages 320 The fisheries and first settlements 321 Colonial misfortunes 322 The Fishing Admirals 323 Disputes with France and the United States 324 The Reid Contract -... 326 Questions of Self -Government and Federation 325 Recent developments 327 II.— THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA. CHAPTER I.— PHYSICAL FEATURES. The Western Tableland 329 Central Plains and Eastern Highlands 330 Wind and weather 331 Tlie rainfall and its results 332 Influence of geography on Australian history 333 The railways of Australia 334 CHAPTER II.— THE DISCOVERERS. Why was Australia colonised so late? 335 Australian aborigines 336 The Portuguese and Spanish explorers 337 The Dutch sailors 338 Tasman and Van Diemen 339 Dampier 340 Cook 341 Sir Joseph Banks 342 CHAPTER III.— THE EARLY YEARS, 1788-1831. Colonising projects 343 The convict settlement 344 The New South Wales corps 345 Bass and Flinders 346 Bligh, Macarthur, and Macquarie 347 Contents. xix. Page. The Emancipists 348 Sturt and Wentworth 349 Tasmania 350 CHAPTER IV.— EXPERIMENTS IN COLONISATION, 1831-1851. Western Australia 352 James Peel and Edward Gibbon Wakefield 353 South Australia 354 Assisted emigrants and the land 355 The beginnings of Victoria 356 Grant of representative government 357 The Squatters 358 The end of Transportation 359 Victoria separated from New South Wales 360 CHAPTER v.— GOLD AND EXPLORATIONS. The first gold " rushes " 361 The goldfields of Victoria and New South Wales 362 The Eureka Stockade 363 The transformation of Australia 364 The Colonial constitutions 365 The birth of Queensland 366 Burke and Wills' explorations 367 The growth of Western Australia 368 CHAPTER VI.— SELF-GOVERNMENT, 1856-1900. Problems of Australia 369 Land legislation 370 The Torrens Act 371 Chinese Labour and Education 372 Railway development 373 Telegraphs and Tariffs 374 Conflicts between Upper and Lower Houses 375 Sh: Henry Parkea 376 Australian towns 377 Distribution of population 378-9 CHAPTER VII.— FEDERATION AND THE CONSTITUTIONS. Separatist tendencies 380 External pressure 381 Colonial co-operation 382 Rise of Labour Parties 382 The movement towards Federation 383 The Commonwealth Constitution 383 The State constitutions 384 Relations with the Mother Country 384 XX. Contents. CHAPTER VIII.— DOMESTIC PROBLEMS. Page. Factors in Australian History 385 The character of the laud and its settlers 386 The Squatters 387 Paternal Government 388 Labour parties 389 The activity of the State 390 Gold and its influence 391 The problem of Unification 392 State and Federal Finance 392 Class antagonism 393 CHAPTER IX. -EXTERNAL PROBLEMS. A "white" Australia 394 Racial feeling 395 White and coloured immigration 396 The "Dictation Test" 397 Australia and the Navy 398 The problem of self-defence 399 Australia and the unity of the Empke 400 Colonial and Imperial interests 401 The New Hebrides and New Guinea 402 Imperial Federation and Preferential Trade 403 CHAPTER X.— INDUSTRIES AND PRODUCTION. The produce of the Commonwealth 404 Wool growing 405 Gold mining 407 Wheat growing 408 Dairj'' farming and frozen meat 409 Horse breeding and sugar growing 410 Fruit growing 411 Vineyards and Forestry 412! Mmerals 413 Manufactures 414 CHAPTER XL— THE AUSTRALIANS AND THEIR PLACE IN THE EMPIRE. Australian occupations 415 Tiie absence of a leisured class •. 416 The Central Plains 417 The Eastern Tableland 418 Tlie Northern Territory and Western Australia 420 The future of Australia 421 Statistics of trade and taxation 422 Australian experiments and ideals 423 Liberty and State control 424 Obnthrlts. III.— THE DOMINION OF NEW ZEALAND. CHAPTER I.— PHYSICAL FEATURES. Page. Position and area 425 Tlio North Island 42G Tlie South Island 427 Climate, wind and rain 428 Vegetation 429 Agriculture and minerals 429 CHAPTER II.— MAORIS AND EARLY SETTLERS. The Maori migration 430 Their civilisation and religion 431 Native laws and customs 432 Captain Cook 433 Missionaries and settlers 434 The New Zealand Company 435 Tho French m New Zealand 436 Annexation by Great Britain 437 CHAPTER III.— THE CROWN COLONY, 1840-1852. Crown administration 438 The natives and their lands 439 Fhst hostilities 440 Sir George Grey in New Zealand 441 Disputes over the Treaty of Waitangi 442 Colonisation of the South Island 443 The "Canterbury Pilgrims" 444 Representative Government 445 End of the New Zealand Company 446 CHAPTER IV.— CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT, 1852-1867. The New Zealand Constitution " 447 Provincialism and native affairs ^ 448 Ministerial instability 449 Maori deterioration 449 Outbreak of the Taranaki Wars 450 Maori tactics 451 Defeat of the Waikato Maoris 452 Maori bravery 453 Hauhauism 454 Adoption of the " self reliant policy " 455 The New Zealand goldfields 456 Capital transferred to Wellington 456 The Land Court and Native rights 457 Contents. CHAPTER v.— THE PUBLIC WORKS POLICY, 1868-1886. Page. Renewal of the Maori wars 458 The reforms of 1870-2 459 PubHc Works and prosperity 459 Abolition of the Provincial system 460 Free secular education 461 Economic depression 462 CHAPTER VI.— PARTIES AND POLITICS, 1868-1908. The activity of the State 462 Ballance and Seddon ; Women's Suffrage 463 The " closer settlement " policy 464 Crown lands and Labour legislation 465 Comiiulsory arbitration 466 Old Age Pensions 467 Local Option and Prohibition 468 The expansion of New Zealand 469 New Zealand created a Dominion 470 Economic and educational progress 471 IV.— SOUTH AFRICA. CHAPTER I.— PHYSICAL FEATURES. The area of South Africa 472 Mountains and Veld 473 Climate 474 Ramfall and vegetation 475 Economic conditions 475 Geographical factors in South African history' 476 CHAPTER II.— NATIVE RACES AND THE DUTCH. The Bushmen 477 Hottentots and Bantus 478 The Portuguese in S. Africa 478-9 Dutch occupation 479 Hottentot wars 480 The Huguenots 481 South African pioneers 482 The halcyon period of Dutch rule 483 The Kaffir wars 484 Dutch dissensions and British conquest 485 CHAPTER III.— CAPE COLONY UNDER BRITISH RULE. (1) Internal History of the Colony 486-93 The first Englishmen at the Cape 486 The Cape as a Crown Colony 478 English ideas and institutions 488 Dutch discontent : the Great Trek 489 Contents. Page. Representative government 490 Responsible government 491 The Afrikander Bond and the Progressives 492 Recent ministries 493 (2) The Eastern Frontier AND THE Kaffir Wars 494-6 The Kosas and the Kaffirs 494 Downing Street intervention 495 The "Great Native Rebellion" 496 Annexation of Native States 496 (3) Basutoland 497-8 Moshesh and his policy 497 Annexation and government of Basutoland 498 (4) The Northern Frontier 499 Grigualand West and Bechuanaland 499 (5) The Railway System of Cape Colony 499 CHAPTER IV.— BOERS AND BRITONS, 183G-1908. South Africa and British sentiment 600 Exeter Hall and Downing Street 601 The High Commissioner and Federation 502 Su" George Grey's plan 603 Carnarvon, Froude, and Sir Bartle Frere 604 The South African Customs Union 505 The Great War 506 Magersfontein, Stormberg, and Colenso 507 Relief of Kimberley, Ladysmith, Mafeking 608 Kitchener ends the war 509 Self-government and " Qoser Union" 609 CHAPTER v.— ECONOMIC FACTORS. Gold discoveries in South Africa 610 The Rand and Chinese labour 511 Diamonds, Kimberley, and De Beers 612 Copper, tin and coal 513 Cattle-breeding and wool-growing 514 Ostriches, cereals, and wine 515 Agriculture in Natal, the Orange Riv er Colony and the Trans- vaal 516 Economic conditions of Rhodesia 517 CHAPTER VI.— NATAL. Europeans and Natives in Natal 518 Zulu Massacres and " Dingaan's Day" 519 British annexation of the Republic of Natal 620 Native troubles under British rule 621 Representative and Responsible government 622 Indian immigrants and Bishop Colenso 623 The Zulus; Chaka, Dingaan, and Cetewayo 524 Isq.ndhlwana, Rorke's Drift, and Ulundi 525 Contents. CHAPTER VII.— THE ORANGE RIVER COLONY. PacxE. Foundation of Winburg 526 The Orange River Sovereignty 527 The Free State 528 Political parties and Basuto wars 529 The Diamond Fields dispute 529-30 Alliance with the Transvaal 530 The War of 1899-1902 530 Grant of Self-government 531 CHAPTER VIIT.— THE TRANSVAAL. Boer and Native wars 532 The South African Republic 533 Domestic and other troubles 534 The first annexation of the Transvaal 535 Majuba Hill and independence 536 The Rand and the Uitlanders 537 Kruger and the Jameson Raid 538 Conquest and conciliation 639 CHAPTER IX.— RHODESIA AND NYASALAND. Mashonas and Matabele 540 The foundation of Rhodesia 541 Lobengula and his wars 542 Tlie Jameson Raid and the Boer War 543 The constitution of Rhodesia 544 The Cape to Cairo scheme 545 Natural resources 546 The Nya sal and Protectorate 546 Dr. Livingstone and the IMissionaries 546-7 The African Lakes Company 547 Relations with Portugal and Germany 547-8 Sir Harry Johnston and the Protectorate 548 BOOK III. INDIA, CROWN COLONIES AND PROTECTORATES. I.— THE EMPIRE OF INDIA. CHAPTER I.— PHYSICAL FEATURES. Geographical divisions of India 651 Approaches by sea and land 552 The North-West Frontier. 553 Assam and Burma 554 The valley of the Ganges 554-5 The Deccan 655-6 Climate and rainfall ,557 Crops and their distribution '658 The influence of geography on history 669 Political areas 660 Contenfs. CHAPTER ll.— RACE, LANGUAGE, AND RELIGION. p^^E. The aborigines 561 Aryan invaders 562 Religion and Caste 563 Pure and mixed races 56-1 Tiirko-Iranians and Mohammedans 565 The languages of India; Islam 566 Parsis, Sikhs, and Brahmans 567 Hindu philosophies 56S Buddhism 569 Brahmanism and Christianity 570 CHAPTER III.— THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. The coming of the Portuguese 671 Foundation of the East India Company 571-2 The Moghul Empire 572 Decline of the Portuguese 572-3 Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta 573 The influence of Sea-power; Aurangzib 574 The French in India 575 Dupleix and Clive 576 Defeat of the French in the Carnatic 577 CHAPTER IV.— CLIVE, HASTINGS, WELLESLEY. Plassey and the conquest of Bengal 578 The Battle of Buxar 579 Hastings and the Rohillas 580 The Regulating Act of 1773 581 The Marathas and Bombay 582 The Begums of Oudh and Haidar Ali 583 Pitt's India Act of 1784 584 Tippu and Seringapatam 585 The Treaty of Bassein 585-6 Wellesley and Wellington, Sindhia and Holkar 586 CHAPTER v.— EXPANSION OF BRITISH DOMINION. Sikhs and Gurkhas 587 Pindaris and Marathas 588 The first Burmese and Afghan wars 589 The conquest of Sind and the Panjab 590 Dalhousie and the Mutiny 591 Lucknow, Delhi, and Cawnpore 592 End of the East India Company 593 Annexation of Burma 594 Russia and Afghanistan 594-5 Agreements with Russia and France 595 Dependencies of the Empire of India 696 xxvii Contents. CHAPTER VI.— THE GOVERNANCE OF INDIA. Page. (1) The Central Government 597-9 The Secretary of State and liis Council 597 The Governor- General 598 The Legislative Council and the Judicature 599 (2) Provincial and Local Government. 699-601 The Provinces 599 Districts and District Officers 600 Native Administrators 601 (3) Revenue aijd Taxation 601-3 The land revenue 601-2 The incidence of taxation 602-3 (4) The Native States 603-5 Their past and present relations 603-4 Native armies 604 Thek conservatism and loyalty 605 CHAPTER VIL— THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE AND THE ARMY. The servants of the Company 606 Methods of selection; native appointments 607 The Provincial Service and the Examination system 008 The Mohammedans 609 The growth of the Indian army 609 Tiie existing establishment 010 Lord Kitchener's re-organisation 611 CHAPTER VIII.— INDUSTRIES, COMMERCE, AND COMMUNICATIONS. India, past and present 012 Agriculture and State assistance 613 Village industries 613-14 Manufactures 614 Muieral wealth 615 The need of capital 615-16 Exports and imports 616 Indian currency 617 Railways 617-18 Famines 618 Irrigation and canals 618-19 State forests 619 Contents. xxvii. CHAPTER IX.— THE NATIVE MOVEMENT. Page. The white man's burden 620 Native disorganisation 621 Unifying effects of British rule 621-2 Growth of national consciousness 022-3 Limitations of the "national" movement 623 Education in India 624 Universities, colleges, and schools 625 The Indian National Congress 626 Local self-government 627 Lord Morley's proposals 627-8 Native Civil Servants 628 Other fields for native energy 629 CHAPTER X.— INDIA'S PLACE IN THE EMPIRE. The "Empire" of India 630 The claims and disabilities of Indians 631 Indians in the Transvaal 632 India and Imperial Defence 632-3 India's fiscal policy 633-4 Exports, imports, and Preferential trade 634 The intellectual value of India 635 II.— THE EAST INDIES. CHAPTER I.— CEYLON. Physical features 636 Tamils, Sinhalese, Buddhists, and Arabs 637 Portuguese and Dutch in Ceylon 638 British conquest and existing organisation 639 Religion and education, tea and coffee 640 Precious stones, revenue, and expenditure 641 The Maldive Islands 642 CHAPTER II.— THE MALAY STATES. (1) The Straits Settlements 643-8 Portuguese and Dutch in Malaya 643 The "massacre" of Amboyna 643-4 The first English settlements 644 Penaug and Malacca 644-5 The British in .Java 645 Singapore 645-6 Organisation of the Straits Settlements ,.646 Physical features S [647 Population and economic conditions ' i 648 (2) The Federated I\Ialay States 049-52 Physical conditions, race, and religion 649 British intervention 650 Organisation of the Federated States 650-1 Population, revenue, and products 851 The State of Johore 652 xxyjii. Contents. CHAPTER III.— THE FAR EAST. p^^.^ (1) British Borneo 653-7 Physical features and native races 653 Political organisation 663-4 Sarawak and Raja Brooke 654 Economic conditions 655 Labuan and Brunei 656 North Borneo 656-7 (2) The British in China 658-9 Hong-Kong 658 New Kowloon and Weihaiwei 659 III.— THE WEST INDIES. Columbus and Pope Alexander VI 660 The British Islands ; volcanoes 661 Climate, hurricanes, and soil 662-3 Physical conditions of British Guiana and Honduras 663 Breaking up the Spanish monopoly 664 Hawkins, Drake, and Ralegh 664-5 The mother colony of the British West Indies 665 (1) The Leeward Islands 666-9 St. Kitts ; Caribs, French and English 666 Nevis and Antigua 667 Montserrat and the Virgin Islands 668 Dominica 669 (2) Barbados 669-74 Discovery and first settlement 669 Roundheads and Cavaliers in Barbados 670 Naval interests in the island 671 Barbadian institutions 672 Sugar and other products 673 (3) The Windward Islands 674-6 Grenada 674 St. Vincent 675 St. Lucia 676 (4) The Bahamas 676-7 Their discovery and history 676-7 Pirates, products, and institutions 677 (5) British Honduras 677-8 History 677-8 Trade and institutions 678 (6) British Guiana 679-81 History and development 679 Church, education, and products 680 Central and Local Government 681 (7) Trinidad and Tobago 682-3 Spaniards, French, and English 682 Economic conditions 682-3 Political institutions 683 Tobago 683-4 Contents. xxix. Page. (8) Jamaica C84-9 English conquest 684 Economic vicissitudes 685 The Buccaneers and the Slave Trade 685-6 Hurricanes and Earthquakes 686 Constitutional development 686-7 Disputes with the Home Government 687-8 Jamaica made a Crown Colony 688 Its dependencies; Turks and Caicos Islands 688-9 Morant and Pedro Cays. Cayman Islands G89 IV.— BRITISH EAST AND WEST AFKICA. CHAPTER I.— BRITISH EAST AFRICA. (1) The East Africa Protectorate 690-.'> Early history 690 Expulsion of the Portuguese 69] Arabs and British 691-2 The British East Africa Company 692 The Anglo-German Agreement of 1890 693 (2) The Uganda Protectorate 694-9 British pioneers 694 Mwanga and the missionaries 694-5 Karl Peters and Sir F. Lugard 695 Extension of British influence 696 Fighting in Uganda 697 The Uganda Railway 698 (3) The Zanzibar Protectorate 699 (4) The Somaliland Protectorate 699 CHAPTER II.— BRITISH WEST AFRICA. (1) Gambia 700-1 Portuguese and English 700 Development and present constitution 701 (2) Sierra Leone 702-3 The freed-slave colony 702 Expansion of Sierra Leone 702-3 French and British 703 (3) The Gold^Coast 703-6 Portuguese discoveries 703 Dutch, English, and Ashantis 704 A.cquisition of Danish and Dutch settlements 705 Ashanti wars ; annexation of Ashanti 706 (4) British Nigeria 706-13 The Aborigines, Bornu and Fulahs 707 Exploration of the Niger 707-8 Mungo Park, Denham, Clapperton and Lander 708 MacGregror Laird and Sir G. Taubman-G oldie 709 The Royal Niger Company 710 French rivalry 710-11 Annexation ^^of Benin 711 Establishment of the Nigerian Protectorates 711-12 Lagos and its history 712-13 Contents. v.— BRITISH RULE IN EGYPT AND THE SUDAN. Page. Anomalous position of the British in Egypt 714 Us history; Napoleon 715 The Mamelukes and Mehemet Ali 715-16 Ismail's reign 716 The Suez Canal a.nd purchase of British shares 717 The Dual Control and the Khedive Tewfik 717-18 Bombardment of Alexandria and Arabi's revolt 719 Tel-el-Kebir and end of the Dual Control 720 Lord Cromer 721 The attitude of France 721-2 The financial situation 722 Fiscal reforms 723 The Nile and the Assouan Dam 724 Material and moral effects 725 Egyptian sentiment; Abbas II 726 The Sudan and the Mahdi 727 Withdrawal of Egyptian garrisons 728 Gordon and Khartoum 729 Wolseley's relief expedition too late 730 Reorganisation of the Egyptian army 731 The Khalifa 732 Lord Kitchener's reconquest of the Sudan 733 Omdurman and Fashoda 733-4 The Sudan in 1908 73i Lord Cromer's retirement 734-5 VI.— THE SEA LINKS OF THE EMPIRE. The importance of Sea Power 736 Naval history and coaling stations 737 Modern navies ; battleships and cruisers 738 Destroyers and torpedo boats ; strength of the British Navy 739 The use of the Navy to the Empire 739-40 (1) The Mediteeraijean 740-8 Gibraltar 740 Its sieges 741 Its present value 742 Malta 743 Its sieges and acquisition by Great Britain 744 Modern conditions 745 Cyprus 746-8 (2) The Atlantic 748-55 The Bermudas 748-9 Ascension 750 St. Helena 751-2 Tristan da Cunba 752-3 The Falkland Islands 753-4 South Georgia and other dependencies of the FalUands.... 754-5 Contents. Jcxxi* Page. (3) The Inbiak Ocean 755-8 Mauritius 755-6 The Chagos archipelago and the Seychelles 757 The Aldabra Islands 757-8 Cocos and Christmas Islands 758 (4) The Pacifio Ocean 758-62 Fiji 758 Its population, area and climate 759-60 Rotumah and the New Hebrides 760-1 The Solomon and Tonga Islands 761 Pitcairn Island and the "Bounty" mutineers 762 (5) Submarine Cables 762-3 Security of British communications 763-4 CONCLUSION. THE FUTURE ORGANISATION OF THE EMPIRE. Problems and possibilities 765 Imperial unity and diversities 766 The practical question 767 The Imperial Federation League 767-8 The Colonial Conferences of 1897 and 1902 768 The Imperial Conference of 1907 769 A permanent commission proposed 770 Mr. R. B. Haldane's views 771 Continuity of policy 772 Need of a permanent representative body 773 The views of Australia, New Zealand, the Cape and Canada... 774 Resolution of the Conference 775-6 The proposed Imperial Secretariat 776-7 Further questions 777-8 Imperial Defence , 778 A Final Court of Appeal 779 The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council 780 Preferential trade 781 Non-protective Preference 782 Other subjects for discussion 783 Education and the Empire 784 The Federal Conference on Education 785 Discussions and results 786 The League of the Empire 787 A permanent Imperial organisation for Education 788 APPENDIX. THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE EMPIRE. Periods of Colonial development 789 The unity of Colonial history. 789-90 The Portuguese and Spanish period "^90 Beginnings of the Dutch period 791 Anglo-Dutch rivalry. 792 XXXll. Contents. ~"~ ~~ Page. Development of French Colonial activity ^^^^^ Franco-British rivalry 7tU_809 The period of British Colonial Supremacy •• '-^-^ Acquisition of Canada, foundation of Australia and expan- ^^^^^ sion in India , rrg-i Acquisition of the Cape and East Indies . Development of Australia. New Zealand, West Africa . . ...... ... • '«» Political emancipation in Great Britam, Canada, Australia ^^^ and New Zealand \'"\'"'^^"''a""'A Expansion in India, Africa, the Far East and the Pacific and the formation of national States in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa ^^^ ^ INDEX ^"-^ BOOK I. THE BRITISH ISLES. CHAPTER I. PHYSICAL FEATURES. The natural advantages of the British Isles are their posi- tion, their varied Burface features, and their equable climate. Britain lies between 50'^ and 60^'N. lat., and Position. is thus nearer the Pole than any other part of the Empire except Canada. It lies near the centre of the land hemisphere, but this advantage is partly counterbalanced by the vicinity of ice in the Arctic Ocean, Britain is part of tlie Continent of Europe, the mainland of wliich is oidy about 21 miles distant at the Strait of Dover, This distance increases to about GO miles in the middle, and to 100 miles at the western end, of the English Channel. On the east the distance is greater. The coast of Norfolk is about 225 miles from Holland. The distance across the middle of the North Sea is 400 miles. Norway and North- eastern Scotland are about 250 miles apart. These narrow seas are ice free, but often stormy ; tliey promote intercourse, but are wide enough to be an effective barrier against sudden invasion. This fact has played an important part in our history, Ereed from the constant fear of attack, Britain was able to develop religious and political liberty while her Con- tinental neighbours were engaged in continual frontier wars. Tliese waters are very shallow. If the sea The Narrow fell 120 ft. Gi'eat Britain would be reunited Seas. to the mainland of Europe. Two advan- tages result from this shallowness. The fisheries are among the most valuable in the world ; and the height of tlie tidal wave over the continental shelf is much increased. Twice a day the water rises 20 ft., 30 ft., or even 40 ft., in the estuaries round the coast. The rising tide carries shipping inland, the ebbing tide carries it out. Hound tlie coast the men became expert fishermen b2 Physical Changes in Great Britain. and sailors, imbued with a strong spirit of adventure. When the discoveries of the fifteenth century opeued out new fields, it quickly became evident that the position of Britain on the western edge of Europe, but opposite the New World, was a geographical advantage of the first importance. In studying the relation between geography Physical Features, ^^^ history we mu£,t distinguish between permanent and , •' i j. j-^.- rpi temporary. temporary and permanent conditions, ihe positions of hills and plains, of bays, estuaries and rivers are facts which do not change. Eiver mouths, however, may become silted up, the coast may be eaten away or new coasts may be formed, swamps and fen lands can be drained, rivers dredged, forests cleared, and land reclaimed from the sea by dyking and draining. Thus the surface of our islands has differed greatly at different periods in history. The mud-clogged Lea was wide enough a thousand years ago for the Danes to sail up it. Eomney, once a port, is now an inland town. The forests have almost disappeared and with them the wolves and other wild animals of early days. Some natural conditions vary in importance at different periods. Formerly, the command of water power was essen- tial for manufacturing while coal M'as of no value. The vast deposits of this mineral, which are now one great source of our prosperity, have only been utilised for a century or so. Great Britain, the largest of the British Isles, has an area of 88,000 square miles. In looking at a map three thino-s are obvious : first, that the lowlands are chiefiy in the south and east ; secondly, that almost all the great estuaries are on these coasts; and thirdly, that these estuaries are the nearest Europe. For these three reasons successful invasion has invariably been from the south or east. The highlands of Great Britain lie mainly andLowirds! i^^ ^he west. They comprise (1) the high- lands of the Devon-Cornwall peninsula, (2) the Welsh Highlands, (3) the Central Uplands of Great Britain, (4) the Scottish Highlands. The northern part of the Central Uplands is called the Scottish Uplands ; and its southern projection, the Cheviot Hills, is separated by the Tyne from the Pennines and the Cumbrian Mountauis, which form the English part of the Central Uplands. The Pennines are driven like a wedge into northern England, separating the larger plains on the east from the narrower ones on tlie west. In southern Scotland the highland wedge is still broader, the marginal lowlands narrower, and commu- nication between east and west still more difficult than in Highlands and Lowlands. Ease and England. Between the Southern Uplands of Scotland and the Scottish Highlands lie the Central Lowlands of Scotland, broken by hills, but extending from sea to sea. On each of the lowlands one or more powers grew up, and many centuries elapsed before they were all consolidated into a single state. The highlanders, with a poorer country and the superior strength and endurance of hill people, frequently raided the rich lowlands. For this reason strong fortresses were built where the routes from the hills reached tlie plains. This is particularly the case along the Welsh and Scottish borders. England and Wales. If we trace on the map the east-flowing 1)-^ 1. f Thames, Wash rivers, Trent and Ouse, and Communication, the west-flowing Severn, Dee, Mersey, Kibble and Lune, we see that we can pass from the Thames to any of the other rivers without climbing more than 500 ft. above sea-level. Over the lowlands of England, therefore, communication is easy, except where forests, marshes, or tracts of higher ground intervene. The map shows that the case is very different in Wales, northern England, and Scotland, where highlands form the main mass of the country. The lowlands of England are not, however, a unifurm plain. Tliey are much broken, and though the heights are relatively low, they have exercised an important influence on the direction of the routes and, therefore, on the history of the country. The Cornwall-Devon peninsula is a high- Southern land region, highest on Exmoor (1,700 ft.), England. Dartmoor (2,000 ft.) and Bodmin Moor. The valleys are fertile, and the towns are nearly all on the coast. Many are important fishing centres, and Plymouth Sound is one of the finest harbours in Britain. East of the Cornwall-Devon peninsula, the heights run either easu and west or from south-west to north-east. They are arranged in two broken diverging lines: (1) the rounded chalk downs and (2) the limestone and other Jurassic ridges such as the Cotswolds, the Edgehill and the Northampton Uplands. Between the two series of heights the Thames flows east to its deep wide estuary. The best natural route from the English Channel into the centre of the country is by the Itcheu estuary, opening to Southampton Water. Modern Southampton is one of our 6 The Routes of Southern Emjland. great ports, especially for trade with South Africa and South America, and more recently with the United States. Southamp- ton Water, however, witli its two entrances by Spithcad and the Solent, has been important for many centuries, partly because its four tides a day prevent much variation in the level of the water. By this sea-gate the West Saxons made their way inland and founded Wessex. All routes to the north must cross the chalk downs by the natural gaps, and at tliese towns early grew up. The most important arc Salis- bury and Winchester, both old cathedral cities. Winchester was for a time the capital of England, so important was the Itchen route. East of Southampton are Portsmouth, defended by Ports- down, Spithead, and the Isle of Wight, Hastings, where William the Conqueror landed, Folkestone, Dover, built at the nearest point to France, and others of the Cinque ports. The latter are rendered difficult of approach by the Goodwin Sands, which have been cut off from the mainland within the last few centuries. Thus there is a considerable choice of routes inland to London, but all encounter tlie double chalk barrier, consisting of the South and North Downs. Lewes, in the Ouse gap, and Arundel, in the Arun gap-— both of which are now traversed bj rail- ways — are built where the South L)owns can most easily be crossed. Canterbury, Maidstone, Eochester, and Guild- ford are some of the more important towns commanding gaps in the North Downs. Anciently the forested Weald betw^een the North and South Downs, a fragment oi which remains in Ashdown Forest, was a further barrier, but this has now been cleared. This Weald aijd Eomney Marsh are usually said to have prevented the South Saxons from conquering Kent and the Thames Valley. On the east the Thames estuary and valley London. form the great natural route into the heart of the country. The tides at London Bridge, one coming round the north of Great I'ritain, reinforced by another coming through the Straits of Dover, are exceptionally strong and high, and easily float large ships in. London has therefore been well situated forforeign trade. It faces thePhine delta, a fact which was of great importance in the early middle ages, when Flanders was one of the great commercial countries of Europe and whenVenetianfleetstraded between theMediter- ranean and the Baltic. London was built at the lowest point where the tidal river could be bridged, Here an area of higher, firmer ground made a suitable site, while the surround- London and the Thames. ing marshes not merely made it easy to defend, Init forced all the routes to converge on it. Westminster, now joined to London, was built where the undredged river could then be forded at low tide. The Norman power was largely based on the possession of Loudon. William I. strongly fortified it by building the Tcwer, and thus secured his hold on the many routes of which Loudon is the terminus. The Thames Valley is shut in to the north vIueT'' ^y ^•''^ ''^''''"' ^'^'^'^'^' °^' ^^'® <-^hiltern Hills and the low East Anglian heights which continue them. To the south are the chalk downs of Kent and Surrey. Thus Middlesex, the territory of the Mid-Saxons, was effectually cut off from Sussex, and by the Lea Marshes from Essex. The Thames has always been an important route into the interioi'. Windsor, with its fine castle, is built on an isolated chalk height above the river. At Heading the Ivennet joins it, flowing eastwards between the M^estern prolongation of the North Downs and the White Horse Downs. Here,too, the route from Southampton reaches the Thames. At the northern end of the gap cut by the Thames between the Chilterns and the White Horse Downs is Wallingford, where other routes from the south cross the river. Here William the Conqueror passed over, having marched from Canterbury along the northern base of the North Downs. Erom Wallingford he advanced by the Aylesbury gap of the Chilterns on London, which he had thus completely isolated. The gaps in the Chilterns are now utilised by the railway lines which connect the Lower Thames with the Midlands. Oxford is the most important centre of the Upper Thames. It is built among marshes at its confluence with the Cher- well, which flows due south between Edgehill and the Northampton Uplands, and forms a route into the Midlands. The Thames rises in the Cotswolds a few miles from Chelten- ham, almost within sight of the wide Vale of Severn. Their treeless slopes support many sheep, whose wool was the foundation of the woollen manufacture at Stroud and smaller towns. The routes from the Upper Thames to the Bristol Channel follow the lower ground between tiie Cotswolds and the White Horse Downs to the Bristol Avon, which Hows past Bath and Bristol to the Severn estuary. Erom Bristol the routes continue either to South Wales or to the plain of Somerset and the Vale of Taunton, passing to the latter round either end of the Mendips. Erom Taunton routes lead to the 8 The Eastern and Midland Counties. North Devon towns and to Exeter, the centre of the southern routes of the Cornwall and Devon peninsula. rrom Oxford there is easy communica- The Fens and tion east and west across the broad belt of East Anglia. lowland which lies between the chalk and limestone heights. The Nen,Ouse, and other rivers lead to theWash thronghamarshy region, which formerly made comnmnication very difficult. This is now drained but still retains thenameof theFens. Small townswere built among the marshes on islands of tinner ground, and these were easy of defence. Ely, on what is still called the Isle of Ely, was the refuge of Hereward in his struggle against the Normans, Cambridge, Bedford and Peterborough, on the margin of the Fens, command the routes into the drier plains of East Anglia. The coasts of East Anglia (Norfolk = North Folk ; Suffolk = South Folk) are pierced by many estuaries which open opposite the Rhine, the Elbe and other North German rivers. By these the Angles entered East Anglia, while farther south the Saxons settled in Essex. Of these estuaries, the Stour, with the packet station of Harwich, is most important in the present day. The climate of East Anglia is dry and bracing, and its people are remarkable for energy of all kinds. Manufactures early developed round Norwich, which is well placed for trade with the mainland of Europe. The Midlands lie north of the low heights The Midlands, which stretch from the Cotswolds to the Wash. They consist of undulating country, above which rise masses of older rocks. These, though low, determine the course of the rivers and routes. The Warwick Avon, rising near the Welland, which flows to the Wash, itself flows south-west to the Severn through the fertile Vale of Evesham. Rugby, where the route from the Lower Thames by the Northampton gap reaches the Avon, is an important centre of roads and railways. Warwick is built where tlie Cherwell route reaches the Avon. The region to the north- west is a coaltield, which supports the enormous iron industry of Birmingham and the surrounding towns and the pottery manufactures of North Staffordshire on the flanks of the Pennines. Stafford controls the route from the Midlands to the plains of Cheshire and South Lancashire, which passes through the Midland or Stafford Gate betvv^een the Southern Pennines and the Welsh Highlands. The Severn, the great river of western England, rises in the heart of the Welsh Highlands, and flows oast to Shrews- bury, from whicli easy routes lead north to the plain of The Severn and the Marches of Wales. 9 Cheshire, and by Stafford to the Trent. Below Shrewsbury the river frequently changes its direction as it crosses the broken country east of the Welsh Highlands. The Severn, At Worcester and Tewkesbury routes from the Midlands reach the river, which Hows through the broad Vale of Severn to Gloucester, at the head of the estuary. In modern times traffic is carried across the estuary by a long viaduct, or below it in a tunnel. Wales is a region of bleak, barren moun- w3es"*° ^^^^^' ^"^'^ *^'''^y ^°^' sheep-farming. The highest point is Snowdon (;'),560 ft.). The mountain interior is bordered by a coastal plain of varying width, in which are nearly all the towns and population. The easiest routes from England are by the Vale of Flint in the north and by the Vale of Gwent in the south. The former route is commanded by Chester on the Dee, which leaves the Welsh Highlands in a narrow valley and then flows across the Cheshire plain to its broad estuary. Chester has been important sincj Koman times and was strongly fortified. The soutliern route is commanded by Gloucester, where the routes from the Midlands by the Vale of Evesham and those from the Upper Thames converge. From Gloucester the way into South Wales follows t!ie coast north of the Severn estuary by Chepstow, at the mouth of the Wye, Newport, at the mouth of the Usk, Cardiff, at the mouth of the Taff, Swan- sea, at the mouth of the Tawe, and Carmarthen, on the Towy at the entrance to the plain of Pembroke, with its great inlet of Milford Haven. The railway is continued to Fishguard, the port for Southern Ireland. West of the Severn the basin is broken Marches "l"* ^7 many heights, between which routes are Ibrmed by tributai'ies iiowing to the Severn. The route from Gloucester between the Forest of Dean and Malvern Hills leads to Hereford on the Wye, one of the keys of Wales. From Hereford the route continues to Leominster on the Lugg, and Ludlow on the Teme, where it meets the route north of the Malvern Hills from Worcester. Ludlow was strongly fortitied and was the meeting-place of the Council of the Marches or Borders, Chester, Shrewsbury, Ludlow, Hereford and Gloucester con- trol all the practicable routes into Wales. All played an important part in the struggle between England and Wales, during which the Lords of the Marches wielded almost abso- lute authority along the borders. The plain of Cheshire, opening to the Irish Sea, is large 10 The Pennines and the Northern Plains. find fertile. It is continuous with the narrower plain of Lancashire, wliicli rises on the east to the western Hanks of the Pennines. This region was for centuries ^f thrPenniaef ^^^'^^^ ^'^^^ sparsely peopled. At the pre- sent time it is one of the richest and niost densely populated in our islands. This is due to the abun- dance of its coal, which, though of little value till about a century ago, now supports the vast cotton, chemical and engineering industries of South Lancashire. The Mersey estuary opens from this plain to the Irish Sea, and the possession of this geographical advantage lias made Liverpool tlie great port for the American trade and Lancashire the seat of the cotton manufacture (see pp. 130-1). Manchester has found it necessary to cut a ship canal, and is the greatest cotton market of the world. Bolton, Bury, Wigan, Manchester and Stockport may be regarded as one vast industrial town. The Cumbrian mountains (3,200 ft.) project westwards from the Pennines to the Iiish Sea. 'J'he lowest depression between them, Shap Fell, is 1,000 ft. above sea-level. They form the Lake Country, so called from the long, picturesque lakes (Windeimere, Ullswater, Dervventwater) which fill the valleys. Coal is worked on the coastal margin round Work- ington and AVhitehaven. The routes to the North are all diflicult. Shap Fell is reached from the plain of Lancashire by Preston, Lancaster, and the Kibble and Lune valleys, and the descent is made to the valley of the Eden and Carlisle, the western key of Scotland, in the south of the Solway plain. The plains east of the Pennines are larger. The Plams east ^^^^^^ fertile and easier to traverse. Long 01 the Pennmes. , „ ^^ ■ ^ 2. ■ ^ • i i. before the mdustnal period towns were numerous, and many are very ancient. The plain of Lincoln is separated from the North Sea l;>y the chalk Lincoln wolds. East of the wolds the country is marshy and towns are few. The routes from the south are controlled by Leicester, or by Derby and Nottingham in the Trent basin. Gainsborough, at the head of the tidal navigation of the Trent, is a con- siderable port, and Hull is the greatest of those on the Humber. The Vale of York, drained l>y the Ouse and its tributaries, is cut off from the North Sea by the Yorkshire wolds and moors. The coast, which is the nearest part of England to Norway, has often been invaded, and there is a strain of Norse or Danish blood in the people. The arrangement of the valleys opening to the Vale of York is very important. The Don, Aire, Calder, Whaffe, The Vale of York ; the Cheviots. 11 Nidd, Ure and Swale descend in parallel dales from the eastern slopes of the Peiniines, and each has a town where the valley widens to the Vale of York. These have long been engaged in mannfacturing wool, for sheep graze on the hillsides above. The abundance of coal has led to a vast de- velopment of the mining industry. Sheffield, on the Don, which rises in the extreme south of the Pennines, is a great iron centre. The Derwent, a tributary flowing from tlie east into the Ouse, forms the Vale of Pickering, which leads between the Yorkshire wolds and moors to the North Sea. In the Cleveland Hills, north of the moors, excellent iron is abundant. Tliis is smelted at Middlesbrough-on-Tees,a great shipbuilding place and the centre of the industrial region of the Lower Tees. The natural capital of the Ouse lowland is York, at the head of tidal navigation. Its command of routes has made it important from the Eoman occupation onwards. The main route north crosses the Tees to Durham in the valley of the Middle Wear, passes over the Tyne at Newcastle, the centre of the great coal and iron industries of the Upper Tees, and continues along the narrowing coastal plain between the Cheviots and the sea to Berwick-on-Tweed, the frontier town. The upper tributaries of the Tyne afford diflicult routes across the Cheviots into Scotland. The main stream rises far to the west, and forms the Tyne gap, which connects the plain of Northumberland with the Solway plain and Carlisle. This very important route is controlled by Hexham, which saw much fighting in the border wars. The only other good natural route across the Pennines is supplied by the gap of the river Aire, nearly seventy miles farther south, which connects the Vale of York with the liibble and the plains west of the Pennines. This route is carried north by Settle and Apple"by to the Eden Valley and Carlisle. Scotland. The boundary between England and Scotland consists partly of the Cheviots and partly of the Lower Tweed. North of the Cheviots the Southern Uplands stretch from sea to sea. At their broadest they are about 50 miles across from north to south. The traveller from Carlisle to Edinburgh still feels the loneliness of this bleak region, where signs of human habita- tion are few. This isolation must have been far greater before the settlement of the coalfields on the flanks of the Pennines. Then the journey from populous lowland to populous lowland was an affair, not of hours, but of days. This vast expanse of 12 The Routes across the Scottish Borders. harren and thinly peopled mountain and moor may explain why Great Britain wes so long divided into two rival kingdoms. West of the Cheviots is a small lowland Tnto^Scotfand^^ ^"^^^"'^ Sol way Tirth, part of which, the marshy Solway Moss, was difficult to cross. The chief place in the southern part of the lowland is Carlisle. Through the northern part, north of the Firth, flow the rivp.rs Dee, Nith and Annan, which descend from the southern flanks of the Southern Uplands of Scotland. Glasgow, the great manufacturing and commercial centre of Scotland, built where the Clyde is bridged at the head of its estuary, is reached fiom Carlisle by tlie va]ley of the Annan, which rises near the sources of the Clyde and Tweed. Another route is by Dumfries, on the Nitli. The central railway route to Edinburgh utilises the parallel valleys of the Liddell and Teviot, reaches the Tweed at Melrose, goes up tlie valley of its tributary, the Gala, to the watershed, and descends by the Esk to the Firth of Forth. The road follows the older route by the Border Esk to the Teviot. East of the Cheviots the entrance into Eastern Routes. Scotland is less difficult. The coastal plain of Northumberland widens to the broad valley of the Lower Tweed, which has long been prosperous and thickly peopled. Tliis was at one time held by the kings of Scotland from tlie English Crown. David I. founded many abbeys (such as Kelso, Jedburgh and Melrose), and by attaching a settled agricultural population to the soil raised the best possible l^arrier against the expansion of England northwards. Flodden Field (1513) was fought to secure the route up the Till valley to the Tweed at Coldstream. Sheep-farming has always been the chief occupation of the hills above the Tweed and its tributaries, the wool being manufactured into tweeds in the valleys at Hawick, Selkirk and Galashiels. The main east coast route from England crosses the Tweed at Berwick. South of Dunbar the Lammermuir Hills reach the sea. The northern end of the narrow pass across them is controlled by Dunbar, the key of Edinburgh, which has seen much fighting. Built where the Pentland Hills come close Edinburgh. to the sea, Edinburgh commands the route to the north round the head of the Forth estuary. A precipitous castle rock made the city easy of defence, while supplies and foreign aid could reach it by sea. The route is continued by Linlithgow and 1^'alkirk to Stirling, near the head of the estuary, with a castle rock resembling that of Edinburgh. This route has been shortened by the bridging The Lowlands of Scotland. 13 of the estuary. Stirling is one of the keys of the Highlands and must be taken by any invader. The largest lowland of Scotland lies be- LowiandT *^®®'^ ^^® Southern Uplands and the Higli- of Scotland. lands. It is drained by the Forth and the Lower Clyde, and opens by their great estuaries to the eastern and western seas. This lowland con- tains most of the towns and by far the largest part of the population of Scotland. The surface is broken up b^ many hilly masses, wliich determine the direction of the rivers and routes, and the position of the towns. Fishing is important on the coasts. It laid the foundations of a valuable commerce, wliich is greatest in the Clyde ports. The Lowlands are gene- rally agricultural, especially in the east, and the Lothians are one of the best-farmed districts in Britain. Coal is abundant and manufactures flourish at many centres. Glasgow and the surrounding towns are the centre of great iron, engineer- ing and shipbnildiug industries. Cotton, imported through Glasgow, is spun at Paisley {see pp. 84, 92-3). Between the Forth and the Tay is the fertile peninsula of Fife, with St. Andrews on the east and Dunfermline on the west. From Stirling the main route to the nortii passes east of the Ochils to Perth, which is built on the Tay, in the gap between the Ochil and the Sidlaw Hills. East of the Sidlaws and north of the Firth of Tay is the Forfar lowland, with Dundee, on the Tay, as its entrance and port. The lowland at the southern base of the The Smaller Highlands, running north-eastwards from the Lowlands. Tay between PerthandDunkeld, is Strathmore, or the Great Vale. It is shut in by the steep escarpment of the Highlands, which are higher, broader, bleaker and much more sparsely peopled than the Southern Uplands. This barrier must be passed to reach either (1) the coastal lowland of Aberdeen, crossed by the lower courses of the Dee and Don, with Aberdeen and other ports and fishing centres along the coast, or (2) the narrow fertile area round the Moray Forth, where Nairn, Elgin and Inverness are the chief towns. These two lowlands are easily accessible by sea and were frequently ravaged from Scandinavia. The Earls of Moray were among the greatest of Scottish lords, and one of them, Macbeth, succeeded in usurping the Scottish crown. Inverness, one of the oldest settlements in The Great Glen. Scotland, has had an eventful history. It is at the northern end of Glenmore, or the Great Glen — a remarkable rift filled by long, narrow lakes — which 14 Tlie RiqJilands and the Islands. crosses the Highlands diagonally, dividing them into two parts. To defend the northern end Fort George was built after the Jacobite rising of 1745. In the centre of the Crlen Fort Augustus was huilt, and at the end, at the base of Ben Nevis (4,400 ft.), the highest mountain in Britain, Fort Wil- liam, The lakes of the CJreat Glen liave been joined by the Caledonian (Janal, which thus connects Inverness with Fort William at the head of Loch Linnhe. The Highlands consist of old, hard rocks, The Highlands, which form a thin and barren soil. The mountains rise from 8,000 ft. to 4,400 ft. They are treeless, and covered in summer witli heather and rough grass. The valleys contain long, narrow lakes. Except on the coast, the towns, all of wliich are small, are built, like Callander and Crieff, at the mouths of the larger valleys. The rnilway from Perth to Inverness runs by the upper valley of the Tay, through the long detile of Killiecrankie, and crosses the pass of Drumochter (1,500 ft.) to the Spey, The Spey valley is left at Aviemore for a difficult but more direct route by the upper valleys of the Findhorn and Nairn. North of the Great Glen the Highlands are even bleaker. The few towns (Cromarty, Tain, Dornoch, Wick) are on the coast, and depend upon their iisheries. The interior yields poor pasture and the population is very thin. , On the west the Highlands are most easily reached by way of the long narrow fiords which run in from the Atlantic. The West Highland line from Glasgow to Fort AVilliam follows no natural route, Oban, at the entrance to Loch Linidie and opposite the Sound of Mull, is an important yachting and maritime centre. The sharp dividing line between the High- The Scottish lands and Lowlands of Scotland crosses Arran, Islands. in the Firth of Clyde. On the neighbouring island of Bute is Eothesay, another Oban. The Crinan ship canal crosses the isthmus of Kintyre, west of which are Islay and Mull. The Inner Hebrides, of Avhich Skye is the largest, fringe the coast northwards. Of the Outer Hebrides Lewis is the largest. In all these islands the climate is wet, the soil infertile, and the people few and poor. Fishing is important, and there is some sheep-farming. Agriculture is hardly possible. Still farther north are the Orkneys and Shetlands, stretching towards Norway, from whicii they were concpiered and partly settled. The invaders ]iushed on by way of the Hebrides to the Clyde, where they were finally crushed in 1263 {sec p. 119). The British Climate. 15 The climate of Great Britain is equable, Climate and ^yj^j^ mUd winters and cool summers. There Grea^Vritain ^^^' li*^wever, marked differences between the warm south of England and the lileak north of Scotland. In winter the cast is colder than the west, whicli is warmed by breezes from the Atlantic. These moist winds bring more rain to the west than to the east. Tlie drier east, however, has wanner summers than the west and is well fitted for agriculture and sheep-farming. In the rich soil of the south-east, the driest and warmest region of all, wheat is more cultivated than in the north and west ; and in sheltered vales of the south-east and south-west apple and other orchards are common. Elsewhere barley and oats are the chief cereals. The wetter west is a grass country with dairy-farming and cattle-breeding. In the w^estern higlilands the climate is severer and the soil is poorer. Sheep are there bred, chiefly for mutton. An important factor controlling the character of the occu- pations and the density of the population is the distribution of minerals, particularly of coal and iron. Iron was originally smelted in the forested districts (the Weald, the Eorest of Dean). The introduction of steam power led to a great re- distribution of population (see pp. 125-6). The agricultural plains were- gradually depopulated at tlie expense of the manufacturing districts. These are generally on the flanks of the highlands (South Wales, North Staffordshire, the Pen- nines, the Central Lowlands of Scotland). In such cases these highland margins become thickly settled. Where coal is absent the highlands are still almost uninhabited. Ireland. The mountains of Ireland are not arranged. Mountains, Plains • continuous masses as in England, but and Climate. • • i , i n„ ^ ■ ^ \. • m isolated groups. They are highest m the north and the south, and are separated by broad valleys drained by long rivers. In the centre, lakes and large areas of bog and marsh break up the surface and interrupt com- munication almost as effectively as mountains. Ttie plains are thus cut up into numerous small areas, a condition un- favourable to very dense settlement. The climate is mild, and too wet for the cultivation of cereals except in those regions whicli are sheltered from direct contact with the moist winds from the Atlantic. The characteristic feature of Ireland is its green meadows, which give it the name of 16 The Plains and Towns of Ireland. the Emerald Isle ; and dairy industries are the chief source of such prosperity as it possesses. The most fertile regions are found : (1) in Fertile Regions, the north, in the Lough Neagh basin ; (2) in the centre, between Jhmdalk and Dublin Bay (Boyne basin or Meath lowland) ; (3) in the south-east in Wexford and Waterford, in the vales of the Barrow, Nore, Suir and Blackwater ; and (4) in the Golden Vale of Tipperary, between Linieiick and Tipperary, opening to the Shannon estuary and the Upper Suir. All these were easily accessible from Great Britain, which early conquered them. The northern or Ulster lowlands are only about 12 miles distant from the coast of Scotland, from which they were early settled and later systematically colonised {see pp. 53, 97-8). The Meath lowland, drained by the Boyne, lies opposite the estuary of the Dee and the North Wales route. Wexford, Waterford, Youghal and Cork harbours are opposite Milford Haven, so that the fertile parts of Southern Ireland are easily accessible by the South Wales route {see p. 9). The towns just mentioned are the Towns. most important in Southern Ireland. Carrick and Clonmel, on the Suir, and Tipperary and Cashel near it, lead to the Golden Vale and to Limerick, on the Shannon estuary. Kilkenny and Carlow are in the middle of the vales of the Nore and the Barrow. Dublin, on Dublin Bay, at the mouth of the Liffey and at the northern end of the Wicklow Mountains, is the nearest harbour to Holyhead, the terminus of the North Wales route. It is, therefore, easily controlled from England, and has always been the centre of English influence in Ireland. From it all the principal routes of the country radiate, their direction being determined by the need of avoiding obstacles, whether of mountain or bog. The Shannon must be crossed to reach the towns of the west coast, and this is not everywhere possible owing to its many lakes and lake-like expansions. Hence the importance of Carrick-on-Shannon, where the two head streams of the river meet, Athlone, where the river can be crossed at the southern end of Lough Bee, and Killaloe at the southern end of Lough Derg. Tiie main route from Dublin to Galway crosses at Athlone. Westport, on Clew Bay, and Killala, on Killala Bay, are the other important towns on the west coast north of the Shannon. Ulster, the most prosperous part of Ireland, is reached from Dublin through Drogheda on the Boyne, Dundalk on Dundalk Bay, and the Gate of Newry between the Armagh Its Physical Divisions. 17 and Mourne mountains (2,800 ft.), which has always been the most important entrance to Ulster from the south. From the sea there are numerous ways into Ulstei'. Ulster. The most important are by Belfast on Bel- iast Lough, Larne on Lough Larne, Cole- raine at the mouth of the Lann, and Derry or London- derry near the head of Lough Foyle. Most of the southern towns of Ulster are in the lowlands round Lough Keagh (Antrim, Lisburn, Portadown, Dungannon). Armagh and Monaghan are on the south-west lowlands, which extend to the Erne and the Upper Shannon. Enniskillen and Bally- shannon are the cliief towns on the Erne. Ireland consists of five distinct natural Natural .^^.^^^. q , ^^j^^ hilly north, with the Bann, Foyle JJivisions or ^ ^^ \ 1 1 ^ , ,P .1 Ireland. '^"^^ Erne lowlands (separated from one anotlier by the Antrim, Sperrin and Donegal moun- tains) is shut in on the south by the Mourne and Armagh mountains and by the hills and lakes of Cavan and Fermanagh; it forms the province of Ulster. The Shannon, with its many lakes, is a natural boundary between (2) Leinster and (3) Con- naught; the latter province consists of the lowlands west of the Shannon, above which rise theConnemara and other mountains on the Atlantic margin. (4) The rich Boyue lowland formed the ancient kingdom of Meath, but is now included in Leinster, which formerly consisted only of the land south of the Bog of Allen, with the Slieve Bloom and Wicklow mountains rising between the fertile plains. (5) Munster includes the Lower Shannon, which forces its way between the Slieve Bernagh and Silvermine mountains, the Golden Vale, and the hilly region to the south, of which the Kerry mountains form the highest part. These send long ranges eastwards (Galty, Knockmealdown, Bochragh Mountains), with the Suir, Blackwater, Lee and Bandon flowing east, in parallel valleys, between them. Of these hve districts Connaught is the only one which docs not face Great Britain. Ireland is the least prosperous part of Economic Britain. It is on the western margin of Conditions. „ . ^ i- ^i ^ i. Europe and remote from the great centres of population and industry. It opens to the Atlantic, but has no tine harbour with easy routes to the Irish Sea and England to become a focus of Atlantic trade. To avoid tran- shipment, American passengers and cargo go direct to Liver- j)Ool or Southampton. The natural resources are not great. The climate, except in the sheltered valleys, is unsuited for agriculture ; the surface is too broken and in many parts too 18 The Influence of Geogrwphy on History. barren for dense settlement, and there is scarcely any coal. Ireland, therefore, has not kept pace with the modern develop- ment of large cities and dense industrial population. The dairy industries, though prosperous, can never support a very large population, as they require a considerable amoiuit of land and employ relatively little labour. The most prosperous part is Ulster, which carries on linen and other manufactures with coal from the Scottish and Cumberland coalfields. A country which possesses no great natural resources and is not well placed for supplementing them, naturally turns to emi- gration, and the population of Ireland is steadily diminishing from this and other causes {see pp. 102-106). The history told in the following pages has Historical j^^^j^ largely influenced by the physical features just described. We bhould try in studying it to see how it has been donunated by the win- ning or losing of the command of routes. How easily Great Britain can be reached by sea was shown by the Eoman, Saxon, Danish and Norman conquests. Such con- quests never became permanent unless the lowlands were settled by agricultural colonists or unless the routes were firmly held. The great highland barrier in the centre of the island led to the formation of two kingdoms. Of these England, with its large, fertile lowlands, was always the richer ami more prosperous; but the Scots, with their poorer country, were always dangerous foes. They were also always ready to emigrate, whether into the neigh))0uring countries of England and Ireland, or, later, to our growing colonies. The union of the two crowns was a turning point in the history of the island. War between the two countries had been almost a form of civil war, disastrous to both, but especially to the poorer. Ireland never possessed those geographical advantages which favour the rise of a single strong power. Its fertile areas were ruled by rival chiefs, with conflicting interests. Thus it was conquered by England, the strong, well-organised nei"hb(nir which faced its most vulnerable coasts. CHAPTER II. RxVCIAL FACTORS AND THEIR FUSION". B.C. 55— A.D. 1215. The early history of Great Britain is one of successive waves of conquest, and the subsequent amalgamation of race with race. When geologists and anthropologists have agreed upon their theories, we may know the earlier terms in this series of invasions, but until that time we must confine ourselves to the successive conquests of Britain by the Eomans, the Jutes, Angles and Saxons, the Northmen and Danes, and the Normans. Leaving out of consideration the two Roman Britain, fruitless raids by " the greatest man of all the world " in B.C. 55 and B.C. 54, the Romans came in a.d. 43 and found a Celtic, agricultural, slightly- civilised people. The last of them went in a.d. 410, leaving, south of Hadrian's Wall from Tyne to Solway, an ordinary Roman province peopled by " provincials " somewhat hardier than the normal type, and north of the Wall foes fierce and countless,bothreadyand willing to plunder the soft kernel of the province so soon as the iron shell of the legions was removed. Many material traces of the Roman occupation remain — great roads and bridges which sufficed for Englishmen more than a thousand years later, and countless inscriptions, tombs, relics, and weapons. There is evidence that an organised British Church existed, and Christianity had been for nearly a century the official religion of the Roman Empire when the legions departed. The Anglo-Saxon But English history really begins with the Conquest. permanent settlements of the Teuton pirates. The Saxons, long before 410, had been raiding the coasts of Britain, but certainly none settled before that year, or if Saxon 20 The Anglo-Saxon Conquest. historians are to be considered at all, for a generation later. Everyone knows the story in which Vortigern, Rowena, Hengist, and Horsa are the actors ; it may or may not contain some element of truth, though the balance of probability is in its favour. According to our exceedingly indifferent authorities, the in- vaders were of three nationalities — the Jutes, who settled at the head of Southampton Water and in the Isle of Wight, and also founded the kingdom of Kent ; the Angles, who established two kingdoms, Bernicia and Deira, between the Humber and Forth, and later, with adventurers from every tribe, the peculiarly composite kingdom of Mercia, occupying all middle England, and iinally the smaller kingdom of East Anglia comprising Norfolk and Suffolk ; and the Saxons, who set up the southern kingdoms of Wessex, Middlesex, Sussex, and Essex. The " Weahlas " or " Welsh," as the invaders called the pro- vincials, fought well and hard, and offered a stubborn resist- ance which had no counterpart in the fall of the Roman Empire ; but they were in the course of three centuries driven either westwards into the mountains of Cumberland, West- morland, West Wales and Cornwall, or else oversea to Brittany, which derives its name from this migration. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms themselves The Conques^tf ^^i^ered very largely from the other Teutonic powers which sprang up within the Western Empire. The Franks in Gaul, the Visigoths in Spain, the Ostrogoths and Lombards in Italy, and especially the Vandals in Africa, were nothing more than military aristocracies and landowning castes in the midst of subject unwarlilce popula- tions of Romanized provincials. The Teutons who conquered Britain had to fight liard against the provincials ; other Teutonic conquerors had hardly to strike a blow against the peoples they reduced. In England there was a real conquest and displacement ; elsewhere the invaders merely imposed themselves upon the Roman provincials. The extent of this displacement is much disputed ; some historians argue that there was a considerable survival of Celtic influences and institutions, while others hold that the conquest, as the Anglo- Saxon Clironicle seems to hint, meant extermination. The truth seems to incline towards the latter view, but it must be considerably modified. There was a small survival of Roman and Celtic words in Old Enghsh ; but our national institutions are nearly all of Teutonic or Scandinavian origin, and the existence Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms and their Conversion to Christianity. 21 of Wales and its border racial hatred and warfare do not point to a Teutonic occupation of the Continental kind. There would, of course, be a large clement of Celtic blood in the succeeding generations, for the women and children at least of the conquered Britons would be spared for slaves, and intermarriage would soon begin, but the Englishman of the ninth century was pureh^ Teutonic in all but blood. Northumbria, ^'^ ^^^^ intervals of fighting their Welsh foes Mercia and the invaders fought one another, and at last the Wessex. three great kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex emerged. Each devoured its smaller neighbours, and each in turn attained a sort of hegemony or suzerainty over its rivals. Northumbria early attained eminence in art and literature, but its glory was transient. It produced Bedc, the first English historian ; Caedmon and Cynewulf, the earliest Christian poets of England ; and Alcuin, the literary mentor of Charles the Great. Mercia was famous for its barbarism, paganism, and alliances with the Welsh, but its strength lay wholly in military monarchs like Penda and OfTa. Wessex grew more slowly and ripened more maturely. Early in the ninth century its king, Egbert, triumphed over both Northumbria and Mercia, and became the first overlord of all England — a position which the West Saxon kings never really lost. This purely Anglo-Saxon England, even at its best, can hardly be called a kingdom ; the king of the West Saxons had little direct authority outside Wessex, and the old royal lines, in Mercia and Northumbria at least, still survived in the persons of their underkings. The Welsh were for the time quiet, though the Saxons never subdued them, and they remained formidable for another six centuries under the rule of six or more independent principalities {see p. 113). Christianity was re-introduced into Britain ^"S ETknd°'' ^y ^^^^* Augustine, who was sent by Gregory I. from Eome to Kent in 597 ; but his successors were expelled from Canterbury and London, and England was really converted by Aidan and his Celtic monks from the Irish Church. The Roman missionaries subsequently returned and resumed their work in the south, but the brunt of the contest was borne by Cliiistian Bernicia under Edwin, Oswald, and Oswy. Penda, the heathen king of Mercia, slew the two first in warfare, but succumbed to Oswy at the battle of the Winwaed in 654, and at his death heathenism collapsed. Christianity had still, however, some internal difierences to settle. The 22 The Northmen and the Danes. long isolation of the British or Irish Church during two cen- turies and a half had produced and encouraged serious di- vergences of practice between it and the Catholic Church. In GG4 Oswy of Northumbria convoked the Synod of Streone- shalch, better known by its Danish name of Whitby, to recon- cile the differences of Celtic and Roman practice ; the decision was in favour of the latter which, by the end of another century, prevailed throughout the British Islands. The West Saxon overlordship was to be ^the^lSne? °^ ^^i^ken immediately and ere long destroyed by a new and terrible enemy. The Scandinavian lands of the north were barren and inhospitable ; and Scandi- navia now sent out her hosts upon quiescent Europe as Germany had done upon the decadent Empire four centuries before. The Northmen or Danes — the terms are synonymous in use only — poured out upon the sea, and pillaged the coasts of Western Europe whenever and wherever opportunity offered. The sudden crystallisation of the Frankish power under Charles the Great protected his Empire, but only partially and for a time. The readiest place accessible to attack by sea was Britain, and to Britain the Norsemen soon directed their attention. Their earliest recorded appearance was a predatorv raid on Wessex at Dorchester in 790, but the strength of Wessex was increasing, while Northumbria, rich and paralysed by disorganisation, lay nearer to the Danish onslaught. Northumbria was pillaged and burnt, but the West-Saxon Egbert was too strong to be assailed for a time, and so the Danes turned on Ireland. In 835, however, they returned to Wessex and occupied Sheppey, and henceforward Wessex had little peace for fifty years. Historians distinguish three periods of Danish invasion ; one of ravage and pillage, 790-851, one of settlement, 851-897, and one of political conquest, 980-lOlG. The second period, that of settlement, begins when we are told by the Chronicle that the Danes wintered in Thanet 851-2, and is marked by battle after battle, in which the English were as often as not victorious. But their victories were fruitless ; the national levy or " fyrd," in v,'hich every freeholder had to serve, was decaying, and no sooner was a battle won than the victors scattered to their homes. At last, in 878, Alfred purchased peace by ceding to Guthrum, the most prominent Danish chief then in England, one half the country — an easy gift, seeing that Alfred himself The Reconquest of the Danelagh. 23 ruled in full sovereignty over little more than one-third. The Danes were given all England north of a line from London to Manchester, including London itself, which Alfred recovered by a slight rearrangement in 885. The so-called Peace of Wedmore marks an "^ G^^at^^ epoch in English history, and is the beginning of consolidation. By it Alfred surrendered half of his empty claim as overlord and received in exchange the greater half of Mercia in full sovereignty. The Danes had greatly accelerated the coming of English unity ; they had swept away all the old royal houses of the subordinate kingdoms of Essex, East Anglia, Northumbria, and Mercia, and even the ealdormanic houses which had succeeded to, or grown from, them. The field was clear for the West Saxon king ; so soon as Wessex had recovered strength she commenced aggres- sion on the Danelagh, and speedily reconquered it. The Danelagh was too big for the Danes to hold permanently with the small numbers at their disposal ; the English who lived within it now looked to the West Saxon king, and a beginning of national kingship was made by Alfred at Wedmore. The work of Alfred has been both exaggerated and depre- ciated, but it may safely be said that he paid more attentioji to naval and military affairs than to educational or constitutional matters. He built a fleet of ships superior in size and speed to those of the Northmen. He introduced the " burh " system. The " burh " (borough) was originally a strongly fortified post providing shelter to which the people of the neighbourhood might resort in time of trouble ; as the Danelagh was won back Alfred and his successors established these " burhs " in the newly- won territory, and so secured a grip upon it. These measures constituted Alfred's chief work ; they were pressing necessities ; and, wasted as Wessex had been by Danish in- vasion, it needed them more than the mythical system of trial by jury attributed to Alfred, or that division into shires and hundreds which had probably long existed in Wessex. He strove hard to bring back civilisation and education to Wessex, and attracted eminent scholars from abroad ; but as he could not write and perhaps could not read, his literary works cannot have been more than translations dictated from another's reading. The most effective part of his work was that he galvanised into life for a time the decaying military system of his country. Under Alfred's successors Wessex recovered the Danelagh, 24 Dunstan, Canute, and Edward the Confessor. and at last Edgar (957-975) could call himself king of all the English and at least overlord of Britain. How much he owed The Zenith and to Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose Decline of Anglo- puzzling character has never yet been eluci- Saxon ]\Ionarchy. jatcd, is uncertain ; the English monarchy, as in the time of Egbert, was once more greatest on the brink of ruin. The work of Alfred and his immediate descendants was aheady exhausted ; the seeds of feudalism, rapidly swelling on the Continent, were already planted in England, and England was to partake for a time of the lot which had fallen to France and Germany a century before — a weak kingship, a feudalism strong enough to create disorder, but not to defend the country, and barbarian invasion. Sweyn of Denmark, after a short struggle with Ethelred the Ill-advised, drove him across the channel, and a new line of Danish kings began. After Sweyn's death his son Canute divided the kingdom with the strenuous Edmund Ironside, but the death of the latter gave all England to the Dane (1017-1035.) Canute was the greatest king of England Canute. before the Conquest, but he can only be pronounced a mighty failure. Since the time of Egbert even the best of England's rulers could only check the forces of disintegration. The very appearance of such great ministers as Dunstan and Godwin is a sign of weakness ; in those times to ensure success the king had to be the one great man in his kingdom, and the ruler must possess the crown if he was to be obeyed. Canute strove to increase the power of the Crown, to centralise the government, to rule as an English king, and to reconcile Dane and Enghshman ; but the times \vere against him. Unlike Henry II., he could not take his servants from the people ; he had to take nobles, and so, when he swept away the " ealdormen " of the shires and set up a limited number of " earls," he strengthened the dis- ruptive tendencies which, kept under for a time by his own strong hand, burst out under his worthless sons and their pious but incapable successor, Edward the Confessor. The Confessor favoured the Normans among Conies o ^ whom his early life had been spent, and made no attempt to check the strife between the West Saxon House of Godwin and the Mercian House of Leofric. Consequently Haiold Godwinsson received no help nor support in 10G6 from Edwin and Morcar of the House of Leofric, and England fell to yet another conqueror. English Decadence and the Feudal System. 25 The Romans had left a civilised but weak ^of En Tand"'^ P^^P^^ ' "°^ ^^^ *^® Anglo-Saxons in four centuries united England when the Northmen came. These two races had not combined to resist Sweyn and Canute, and the healthy barbarism and freedom of the Danes had only temporarily bolstered up a decadent state. There was no unity in England, or a handful of adventurers, under even William of Normandy could never have conquered it. The Dane of the North, the Mercian, and the West Saxon still had little in common. National institutions were decaying, the " fyrd " proved useless against invaders. Feudal ten- dencies had impaired the vigour and social position of the ordinary freeman, and the new lords had not yet developed the virtues of an aristocracy. Cowardice, treachery, and law- lessness were rife in the highest orders. The English church itself was hopelessly corrupt ; and Dunstan's efforts had failed to ensure its reformation. Simony, secularism, and schism characterized the archiepiscopate of Stigand, and the time had come for Lanfranc and Anselm as well as for William of Normandy and Henry of Anjou. It used to be said that English history begins ^S%LT^^ at the battle of Hastings, and that WiUiam the Conqueror introduced into England the " feudal system." But the Norman conquest only modified institutions which had long existed in England, and feudal tendencies can be traced back two centuries before TO(»G. Feudalism had grown up in England, as practically all over Western Europe, through disorder and weak government produced by foreign invasion ; it may be defined as a state of society based wholly upon land tenure. When barbarian invaders began man required protection ; there was no strong central government with an army, a navy, and police ; and so private enterprise supphed the want. The poor man made a covenant with his richer and more powerful neighbour ; he surrendered his freehold land, received it back again as a tenant, and obtained a promise of protection for life and property in return. In time of war he might take shelter in his patron's castle or " burh " ; if another man injured him, his patron might demand on his behalf satisfaction from that man or from his patron. This practice was known as " com- mendation " ; a parallel institution was the " beneficium," whereby the king, or some great landholder, entrusted an estate to some friend or dependent to manage, on condition of 26 The Norman Conquest and its Results. rendering some payment or service, usually military service, when required. The " lord " got tenants who would fight for him, help to cultivate his land, pay some rent for their own, aid be under his jurisdiction and attend his court of justice. The " tenant " got protection against over-powerful neighbours and invaders, a means of redress against any who injured him, p3aceful occupation of his holding, and considerate treatment Irom his lord, to whom personally he was very valuable. There were, of course, disadvantages in such a state of society, but it was the best possible under the circumstances of the Middle Ages in which it was conceived. The Effects of the Now the feudal system as it existed in Norman England in 1066 differed widely from the Conquest. system which prevailed in Europe. English feudalism was very incomplete, and the old free Teutonic institutions to a large extent survived. William 1. introduced Kttle that was new ; he sharpened the points of what feudalism he found, and the Witenagemot of the Anglo- Saxon kings became an assembly of tenants-in-chief ; but he carefully preserved the old non-feudal institutions. It was his interest, like that of every other monarch, to check great feudal brds. To counterbalance them he, with Lanfranc's assist- ance, reformed and encouraged the Church, giving it courts independent of feudal control, removing its sees to great centres of population, and bringing it once more into touch with Western civilization. But the great novelty attributable to the Normans is English unity. AVhen they came they found many gradations of classes and divisions of race. The effect of the burden which they imposed on the English was to crush these varieties of class and provincial feeling into one more or less homogeneous whole. And then, with the adaptability of true Norsemen, they even- tually sank into this mass and were absorbed by it. By force they had created a force by which they were eventually overpowered. Sir Walter Scott in " Ivanhoe " painted a picture of race antagonism which was passing, if it had not already passed, away ; and Johnof AnjouAVOuld have hated Norman more than Englishman, had not racial hatred died out by the time of Magna Carta. KThe Norman kings had realized the evils of feudalism on the continent, and were determined to prevent their repetition m England ; and the strength of the popular Anglo-Saxon institutions which they retained gave them a support against England under the Angevins. 27 their feudatories which continental raonarchs lacked. William I. exacted the famous Oath of Saruni in 1086, which made every tenant's duty to his king superior to his duty to his immediate feudal lord. WiUiam Rufus and Henry Beauclerc called in the aid of the English to crush feudal revolts ; Henry also strength- ened local and national courts, created the system of itinerant justice? with jurisdiction unfettered by feudal privileges or jurisdictions, and developed the Curia Regis and the Exchequer. The anarchic orgy in which the barons indulged during the nominal reign of Stephen (1135-1154) was merely an interlude ; Henry II. took up the Norman policy, and the pendulum swung to the side of the Crown till the days of Magna Carta. Three times in her history England has Henry II. formed part of a foreign Empire. Canute localised his seat of government in Wessex but spent most of his time abroad ; Philip of Spain ruled England mainly from the Continent ; and Henry II. was far more con- cerned about his Angevin Empire than about its most important constituent. Nevertheless he did much for England in organis- ing a royal justice and a royal administration, and in eliminat- ing feudalism as a system of government. He established in- ternal order, encouraged foreign trade, and, as the next reign showed, made England the wealthiest country in Northern Europe. He continued the work of his grandfather, the " Lion of Justice," and the custom and procedure of his " Curia Regis " gradually became the law of the land. But his attempt to treat the church as he treated feudalism provoked hi^ quarrel with Becket, and led to no decisive conclusion. The church was too strong and too much the superior of the state in culture for its jurisdiction to be yet subjected to the censure and control of royal instruments of justice ; and the aims of Henry II. were not achieved till the reign of Henry VIII. Richard's reign is important only as shewing ^John' ^^^^^ ^^^ father's governmental machine could be run by deputy ; in spite of the King's almost unbroken absence in the Holy Land and France, England remained quiet, save for the quarrels among the royal deputies. With the usual irony of history, it so happened that the reigii of one of our worst monarchs contributed more towards the nationalisation of England than perhaps any other reign in our history. In one year John lost Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Brittany, Poitou, and Touraine ; only Aquitaine re- mained to him of all the Angevin Empire. This compelled his The Great Charier of Liberties. subjects to be either Englishmen or Frenclimen ; it was now impossible to hold lands of both John of England and Philip of France, and this, with the practical close of genuine crusad- ing, soon had its effect upon a nation thus confined to an island ; the cosmopolitan spirit was ii-retrievably weakened, while the absorbing condition of domestic politics turned the attention of Englishmen to their own affairs. The sufferings of the people under the In- Magna Carta, terdict which John's quarrel with Innocent III. provoked, and the zeal with which John used the efficient machinery provided by his father for fiscal ends, at last combined to produce a revolt, and John made his submission to the Pope and then to his people. Magna Carta has been described as " the act of the united nation, the Chm'ch, the barons, and the commons, for the first time thoroughly at one. " But the predominant partners in the alliance were the Church and the barons ; and of these two the privileges secured by the barons were more effective than the general guarantee that the Church in England should be free. The Great Charter only affected the " free men " of England, and these free men probably constituted merely an aristocracy of the nation at large. To no small extent the Charter was re- actionary ; it guaranteed vested interests against the encroach- ments of the Crown, especially when those encroachments were of a reforming tendency. It was an attempt to undo the work of Henry 11. , to prevent judges of the Curia Regis fiom trespass- ing upon the privileges of the baronial com-ts. The " liberties " which it safeguarded were not common prope::tv but special privileges enjoyed by small and limited classes. The fact that it was now possible for the three classes worth taxing — the barons, the clergy, and the citizens of London — to combine and to agrea upon a programme, is infinitely more important than the result of their combination ; for the terms of Magna Carta, if scrupulously observed, would have made government im- possible ; and the baronial government, which ruled in the name of Henry III., itself found it necessary to whittle down the clauses of the Charter v/hich limited the power of the Crown. There is one other fact which is significant "^Estate "^^ —the part played by the Londoners in the extorting of the Great Charter. The develop- ment of municipal life in England was somewhat slow, but London had secured municipal self-government in 1191 England a Nation. 29 for a consideration of 1,000 marks. Even as early as 1141 the Papal Legate, Henry of Winchester, had paid the citizens the compliment of waiting a day for ihem at the Council of Winchester ; the chronicler tells us they were " as it were nobles by reason of the magnitude of theur city." Now, as the first representatives of the great middle class which the commercial policy of the Plantagenets called into being, the Londoners asserted and made good their right to be con- sidered an estate of the realm, and to have a voice in the settlement of national affairs. There was no place for them in a really feudal system, and their action in 1215 was a sign that feudalism was passing away. There was at last an English nation. The Growth of National Feeling CHAPTER III. THE GROWTH OF NATIONALITY. 1215—1559. The first and most obvious aspect of Eng- lish history in the thirteenth century is the sudden outburst of national feeling against the rule of foreign favourites. It may be said that this was a natural sequence of the faculty for united action displayed in 1215 ; it is equally probable that the domination of aliens in Church and State produced a reaction against them. But the growth of national spirit is not wholly to be accounted for on either theory ; it lies much deeper, rrimitive Ties • ^^^ ^^^^ *^^^ days either of nomadic tribes or the Family and city communities there was a common tie, the Land. either the race or the city ; the whole body was bound together by blood or by an intense spirit of locality. Such was the case with the migrating Teutonic invaders of the Roman Empire in the one case, and the citizens of Ancient Greece or Media)val Italy in the other. But when these migra- ting tribes had settled down on the land, they lost the con- sciousness of unity ; the blood tie becomes P-t'^°^t weakened and finally dissolves almost en- tirely. Men have no interests outside their immediate neighbourhood ; agriculture is the only means of existence,'and they live on the land, by the land, and at last for the land. They have no press, post, or parliament to expand their interests or stimulate their imagination ; travelling is difficult, dangerous, and, since robbers existed and roads did not, practically impossible. The " best men " of the town- ship travel to the hundred-moot ; a few freeholders go further The Making of Eiujlish Nationality. 31 afield to the shire-moot ; but apart from these there is little contact with the outside world. Even the old service in the fyrd, which took the freeman beyond his township or his shire, fell into decay during the later Anglo-Saxon period. But Expansion of with the Norman Conquest came a change. Local Under the Old English monarchy it was toler- Consciousness. qXAj safe to neglect the summons of the sheriff and ealdorman ; when William Rufus and Henry Beauclerc called out the fyrd they expected obedience and took steps to secure it. At last, in 1181, came the " Assize ^^^ Arms/'^ °^ ^^ ^^^''^ " ^^ H^^y II- ' ^^e^T freeman was bidden to procure arms and armour befitting his income — not his rank or office. Now when men are com- manded to get themselves arms, and are warned that these will be inspected periodically by visitors appointed for that purpose, it is evident that they and their neighbours must begin to realise that there are people and things which they have never seen and never will see, but which have a most direct bearing and effect upon their interests. There was another novelty which must have furnished these " upland men " in their little townships with food for thought. Soon there was to come to them in the hun- Justbe dred court a body of men from the king, one of whom announced his intention of hearing any law suit which the district might choose to bring before him. These itineian.t justices must have brought home vividly to men's minds in each locality that there was a power beyond that of the lord of the manor. And, as the Angevin kings developed and increased their power, and all classes began to feel the weight of their taxation, men discovered that they had a grievance in common, and that it was pos- sible to resist even the king if they did it in commion, instead of being crushed as individuals. The precedent set in 1215 of a successful combination of classes against the Crown was never followed so successfully, and each class was perhaps primarily anxious to serve its own_ interests ; but it was only a step from resisting the Crown in the matters ^if taxation to resisting it m other ways. The reign of Henry III., like that of his ^ne^nr7m.°^^^*^®^' 8^^® ^ 8^^^* impetus to English nationalism. The long minority threw the government into the hands of De Burgh, and he was essentially a nationalist. He expelled first the French and then John's The Beginnings of Parliament. mercenaries, and strove to realise the ideal of " England for the English." After the fall of De Burgh Henry III.'s insane partiality for rapacious Poitevins and Savoyards and his servile alliance with the Papacy aroused a spirit of opposition ; and Englishmen, always ready to rise against an attack on Simon de Mont- t^isir pockets, drew together under Simon de fort and his Montfort. The Battle of Lewes placed the Parliament, 'kmg in Simon's hands ; the aliens were banished ; a comphcated, supervisory committee system was set up ; and a Parliament of the realm, composed of Montfort's adherents, was summoned to Westminster for January 20, 1265. This Parliament -of 1265 was not the first assembly known as " ParHament," nor does our greatest constitutional historian consider it a Parliament. Two things connected with it were novel — the combination of knights from the shires and burgesses from the boroughs in one and the same assembly, and the small attendance (only twenty-five) of lay barons, for De ]\Iontfort could summon only his adherents. After the Battle of Evesham in the same Edward I. year, 1265, De Montfort's scheme collapsed ; but Henry III. practically ceased to govern, and his place was taken by his son, Prince Edward, whose reign really then began. The new ruler was the first king since the conquest with an English name ; and he enjoys the distinction of having given to England the framework of a con- stitution, to Wales an English system of law and justice, and to Scotland a hatred of her southern neighbour which con- tinued for three centuries. He spent one-half his reign in passing constitutional legislation for his subjects and the other half in infringing the limitations they had prescribed to him and to his predecessors. Nevertheless, his work was valuable both in p V ^ ° ^f quality and in quantity. He, first of all kings, summoned a complete Parliament with repre- sentatives of the baronage, Church, shires and boroughs in 1295, though he never called another like this " Model Parlia- ment." He had no desire to make England a self-governing community, and his reason for summoning the Model ParHa- ment was that it was more convenient to negotiate for money grants with one assembly at Westminster than to send round agents to bargain with each locality. It was the money of his subjects that Edward wanted and not their advice or con- trol ; but taxation was the mother of representation. When H^he Bouse of the " Communitate^." 33 only land was taxed, only landowners sat in the great Council of the realm ; but when the king began to tax the personal property of his commons and his clergy, they too demanded a voice in the grant of money, and a place in the national Council. (see also p. 173). The king's necessity was the nation's opportunity ; and the Model Parliament is as much a measure of Edward's need in 1295 as it is a measure of his statesman- ship. The peculiar value of the Parliament thus completed lay not in its baronage or its ecclesiastical representation, but in its " commons," although it was not until - C^ommons°'' ^^^^^y ^^^^^ ^'^*®^ *^^* ^^® Commons developed a " House " of their own. Other countries had as full representations of church and barons ; but the English House of Commons was unique. It was not a mere tiers dat, the representative of a single class. It was elected by the " communitates " or full shire courts, which themselves embodied almost all the elements of the nation. And in this House of Commons sat not only the elect of the cities and boroughs, but the knights of the shire, who were really " barones minores " and would abroad have sat with the rest of their class in an upper house. It was this union of classes in the House of Commons which gave it its strength, and enabled it to survive and prevail when other representative systems decayed and passed away. Edward I.'s other great work was to set Edwaid I. s jjo^ndg ^q i\^q independence of the Church and to the power of the barons. He checked the absorption of lands in religious corporations by the statute of Mortmain, 1279, and summarily stopped the creation of more ranks and grades in the feudal hierarchy by the statute of West- minster the Third, 1290. In spite of occasionally grinding taxa- tion he encouraged the mercantile class by favourable legisla- tion. He successfully opposed the aggressions of the Pope and of his militant archbishop, John Peckham, and compelled the clergy to admit at least in practice that they were English subjects first of all. He conquered Wales and carved out a Principality of six new shires — Anglesea, Flint, Car- marthen, Carnarvon, Cardigan and Merioneth {see p. 114). He revived Henry 11. 's Assize of Arms and reformed local government. He expelled the Jews from England ; this did not help English financiers much, for he had recourse to Italian and Flemish bankers, and not until his grandson had 34 The " Century of the Commons.'''' acquired an unenviable reputation among these did the English king apply to his natural born subjects for loans. He suffered one check from his barons. Earls ^oUhrChTrterr^^^^"^ ^^^ ^^g^^' ^^ 1^^^' ^^^^ Edward demanded military service abroad from his vassals, took advantage of a technical point and defied him to his face. He refused to grant their demand for a confirmation of the Charters as a security against a repetition of his late arbitrary taxation, demanded an "aid" or general tax, and embarked for Flanders. Thereupon the Earls boldly forbade the payment of the " aid," and at length Edwaid yielded. This struggle is highly important ; the conduct of the Earls was dangerous, unj^atriotic, and narrowminded, but their stubbornness and sturdy stupidity helped to preserve the infant principle of " no charge save by Parliament." Edward had been in every sense a national king, and tlie absence of any great minister during his reigu well illustrates his pre-eminence. But lie had provoked the nation by his heavy imposts so far that it united to demand a cessation of arbitrary taxation, and this is merely the prelude to the great drama of the next century — the remarkable but premature rise of the Com.mons to power It may be as well to define here the expres- IhrCommons"^^^^^^ " Commons," when used to distinguish a class. The class of persons now correspond- ing thereto would be large landowners, big merchants, and pro- fessional men — a select oligarchy of the upper middle class. The mass of the people, perhaps some ninety per cent,, had not a shred of political power ; if they had any political predilec- tions, they would not be those of the House of Commons, When speaking of the mediaeval Commons we must bear in mind that a democrat or demagogue was their bitterest foe, and this is most obvious in their attitude towards the rising of the peasants in 1381. But this middle-class oligarchy pushes • . its way into every department of Enghsh life ; MidcJrckss^s^ ^^ ^^ above all things intensely national. It takes up the French wars, and supplies from its lower ranks the men for English armies. It is enriched by the trade in wool with Flanders, and towards the end of the fourteenth century some of its members rise to eminence. The De La Poles, created Earls of Suffolk, were Hull merchants, and the careers of Aldermen Philpot and Walworth show that the " Commons" lacked neither ability nor influence. Lollardy, EmjUsh Wars and Armies. 35 like Lutlieranism later, was essentially a middle-class creed. Literature, too, shows traces of the influence of the Commons ; Langland wrote for the common people, but Chaucer for the Commons. The new class and its triumphs are far more sig- nificant than Edward I.'s execution of William Wallace or Edward 11. 's defeat by Robert Bruce. m. TT J . ^^^t the French wars are highly important The Hundred • ^.i, i • . r .1 ^ 1 ^ Years' War. ^^ ^'^^ history ot the country, and present many points of interest which bear upon the growth of national feeling. It is needless to study the question of Edward's claim to the French Crown ; the matter is still hi dispute, and it can only be said that the Plantagenet had the better legal claim and the Valois the better moral and political right. Military affairs often reveal nationality and national character more correctly than anything else, and they did so in this case. The English army was, for nearly a century, the most effective in Europe. Of this the secret lies largely in its composition and tactics, for the day of the English general was not yet, and feudal England had no special aptitude for war. But English armies were voluntary and na- Irniies!'^ tional, and composed of highly-paid English mercenaries, drawn, not from the lower strata of society as afterwards and now, but from the lower middle class— the country yeomen and freeholders. The foot were mainly archers armed with the national weapon, the long bow, and it was the skilful combination of bow and lance that won the English victories. The constant warfare during the reign of the first three Edwards in England, Scotland, Wales, France, and Flanders afforded opportunities to develop the tactics employed with such astounding success at Crecy and Poictiers against the brave but undisciplined feudal array of France. The easy triumph on the battlefield of the yeoman's bow over the lance of the knight and baron had not a little influence on the confidence and boldness displayed by the House of Com.- mons. The navy had begun its career under King John and Hubert De Burgh ; and now Edward III. asserted command over the narrow seas. At Sluys in 1340 and in the straits of Dover in 1350 the navy proved its strength, though both fights were hardly won, and the command of the sea was lost to the Spaniards in 1372, after a fight off La Rochelle. 1^ 'M The capture of Calais, however, secured for England the control of the Channel and the wool trade with the Netherlands, fhis was the most permanent result of the war ; for England, c 2 38 The Morning Star of the Reformation. weakened by the Black Death (1349), by the social discontent which followed, by corruption in the government, and by the ill-judged Spanish policy of John of Gaunt, failed to retain the vast French provinces ceded to it by the treaty of Bretigny (1360) ; and at the end of Edward III.'s reign only Calais and the district round Bordeaux remained as a memorial of his earlier martial glory. National feeling, however, broke out in Wycliffe and the ^^^^^ spheres, and the latter half of the four- Lollards. J ,1 . Ill - tcenth century was marked by a strong national protest against the Roman Catholic Church. The Papacy had collapsed after the death of Boniface VIIL, " the last great Pope"; and the great Schism and Babylonish Cap- tivity of the Pope in the land of the national enemy did little to retrieve its reputation in England. English Churchmen were already deeply secularised ; the great religious orders had decayed in morals and in reputation, and the poems of Chaucer and Langland depict sufficiently well the character and con- dition of the clergy, both regular and secular. To the lay mind the idea of the Church was associated principally with financial matters. Englishmen had begun to travel and had seen exemplified in Italy the ancient proverb connecting near- ness to the Church with distance from the Almighty. Had not a dynasty devoted to the Church succeeded to the throne at a crucial moment, Lollards might have done the work of Luther, and Wycliffe might have been the prophet instead of the pre- cursor of the Reformation. He anticipated nearly all the points of the sixteenth century attack on the Catholic Church. He de- nounced the monks and friars ; he called upon the State to reform the Church, and eventually he repudiated the Catholic doctrine of the Mass. National antipathy to a Papac}^ under the control of England's enemies, and secular envy of clerical wealth fortified Wycliffe's arguments ; but there was as yet no majestic lord to break the bonds of Rome. TD- u ;:i TT Richard XL, indeed, had occasional leanings Richard II. , ,i t n i i i i i , to the Lollards ; and he had a stronger taste .{or that despotic imperialism vv^hich the Tudors afterwards developed. But he lacked their iron hand and supple craft. Above all, no Wars of the Roses had yet made such people as Lords Appellants an impossibility ; and Richard was deposed for trying expedients which Henry VII. and his son adopted with success and popular approbation. . The House of Lancaster was borne to the throne on a wavo The Lancastrian Experiment. 37 of reaction against arbitrary rule, and it depended for existence upon the support of Parliament and the Church. Dynasty"^" Its alliance with the latter led to the persecu- tion of the Lollards, and its dependence on the former involved a " lack of governance." Parliament had no idea of taking the initiative and governing itself. But it was determined that the king should " live of his own," that is to say, should not tax his people. It complained of inadequate administration, but refused those supplies which alone could provide for the maintenance of law and order. Disorder was the curse of the Lancastrians. Henry IV. 's struggle with it left him no time to formulate or prosecute a policy ; but he succeeded in surviving all the plots against his throne. Henry V. attempted a more drastic remedy for domestic discontent and dynastic division. He plunged the nation into war with France. It was easy enough to appeal to the war fever ; and Parliament voted supplies for war on France which it would not vote for the government of England. Henry V.'s military genius and the blessing of the bishops favoured an enterprise which was iniquitous in its pretensions and fatal in its results. To conquer and permanently retain France was an impossible task. For twenty years, indeed, the violence of France ^° ^^® Burgundian and Armagnac factions in France seemed to make it feasible. But the national reaction was bound to come ; Joan of Arc roused Frenchmen and even the French king to a sense of patriotic shame ; Burgundy deserted its treasonable alhance with England ; and Bedford, the abler brother of Henry V., died leaving no successor capable of making head against French patriotism. By 1453 the last foothold of England across the Channel, except Calais, had been lost. Henry V. had sown the whirlwind and Henry VI. reaped the storm. The diversion of domestic discontent with foreign channels had failed, and the attempt recoiled upon the dynasty. Lack of governance was aggravated by dis- Lack of Govern- j ^j ^^^^ ^,f ^^^ ^ j further ance at Home. ^ \ i i i r t r ^ , ■, perturbed by the return of a defeated soldiery. Feeble attempts to end the war were made by Suffolk and Somerset, and Henry VI. was married to Margaret of x\njou. But the peace party knew neither how to make peace nor how to make war. Still less did they know how to govern England ; riots occurred in every county ; redress was prevented by local magnates or by favouritisna at court ; and slowly the nation 38 Tlw Dawn of Modern History. reached the conclusion that the only cure was a change of government. The opposition gathered round the Duke of York, who had a better title to the crown by descent than Henry VI. But at first he only led the opposition to Suffolk and Somerset, and it was not until Margaret of Anjou identified her ministers with the crown that the dynasty was attacked. York's chief ad- herents were the Nevilles and the commercial ® Roses' ^ classes ; most of the nobles supported Henry VI. and the cause of anarchy. The Wars of the Roses were to a great extent a concentration of local feuds and factions. Edward III. had sought by royal marriages to capture the nobility in the interests of the crown. The result was to make the crown the sport of noble factions which had grown more bitter as they grew more narrow. In the thirteenth century the barons were a large class, and individu- ally not over-powerful. In the fifteenth the peers were a small class of " over-mighty subjects," divided into two factions, Yorkist and Lancastrian, which disputed between them the control of the monarchy. The victory of Edward IV. over the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury and his more important triumph over his chief baronial supporters, the Nevilles, A New Era. at Barnet in 1471 emancipated the crown from this degrading tutelage. The further struggle between Richard III. and Henry VII. was mainly per- sonal and less significant. The nobility had committed political suicide, the New Monarchy had arrived, and a new era begins. There are four great factors to be considered in this new era, the Renaissance, the " New Monarchy," the expansion of Europe, and the Reformation. The English The Renaissance. Renaissance is apt to be post-dated. It is generally associated with the Oxford move- ment in the beginning of the sixteenth century, but it was well under weigh by the middle of the fifteenth. Duke Hiunphrey of Gloucester, the turbulent brother of Henry V., was a muni- ficent patron of learning. Tiptoft " the Butcher," Earl of Worcester and the Yorkist marshal, who made himself noto- rious for cruelty and slaughter in cold blood after battles, was equally illustrious for his o\vn learning and for his patronage of others'. Edward IV. encouraged Caxton and other pioneers of literature, and even Richard III. bestowed his favour on the first EngUsh printer. The Renaissance was not a revival of ecclesiastical learning like those of the Middle Ages, but a The New Monarchy. 39 genuine growth of secular culture on the part of the new middle class ; for this reason the Church opposed it collectively though it often encouraged it individually. The Renaissance was, moreover, the revolt of the individual against mediaeval collec- tivism. Every sphere of life had been dominated by corpora- tions of one kind or another. The Church was a collection of corporations. The cities were controlled by their craft guilds, of which the City Companies of London of to-day are a sur- vival. But at the Renaissance the claim of the individual to " private judgment " began to be propounded ; once admitted to the realm of art, literature and science, the private individual and the layman began to assert their voice in religion, Tbe New Moa- "^^^ second phenomenon, which was practi- archy and the cally coeval with the Renaissance, was the rise Middle Classes, of the " New Monarchy." Down to the end of the thirteenth century there had existed the idea of the double universal monarchy of the Empire and the Papacy. Western Europe had been purely cosmopolitan ; any man might hope to become its spiritual or temporal head ; it had one language for all who could read or write ; one code of chivalry, one law of the Church, and one form of religion. But now the old idea of the unity of Christendom was beginning to disappear. The new middle class arose and supplanted the old baronage of arms and the land in national government. National litera- tures at length appeared ; Latin was reserved for theology, history and science ; for purposes of popular literature men wrote in their everyday speech. The Bible was translated into English, and the King's Courts developed an English law distinct from the law elsewhere. Of this nationalising tendency the monarch became the heir and the exponent. Papacy and Empire lost ground as the cos- mopolitan ideals receded into the background ; and the national kings gained at their expense. They also gained at the expense of their subjects. Mediaeval Parliaments and systems of estates were discredited in the fifteenth century. They had not saved France in the Hundred Years' War nor England in the Wars of the Roses. The lesson in both cases was the need of the strong government which the monarchy alone could provide. Other tendencies fostered the idea. Men Geographical wanted peace and order to study the new ideas Discoveries. , , ^^ . - , -^ of the Renaissance, and to pursue new avenues of wealth opened up by geographical discovery. The advent 40 The Early Tudors, of the Ottoman Turks had blocked the old trade routes to the East through the Mediterranean ; and the search after new- ways to the Indies led Diaz to double the Cape and Columbus to discover the West Indies. Kings were the patrons of all these enterprises, and to kings men looked for commercial treaties and navigation laws. Richard III. showed some appreciation of these needs by establishing consular agents in foreign countries ; but Henry VII. developed the policy by his encom-age- Henry VII. ment of Cabot, his Magnus Intercursus with the Netherlands, and his Navigation Acts. He avoided serious wars abroad, and kept peace at home by his Star Chamber and laws against livery and maintenance. With Parliament he could dispense when he was safely seated on the throne, and the Church offered no resistance. The early years of Henry VIII. mark a reaction to a less wise policy. The young king was tempted by his vanity, by Wolsey, and by the new-found strength of his realm to " ^^^' play a brilliant part in European politics ; and Wolsey was led in the same direction by his wonderful gift for diplomacy, and his natural ambition to be Pope. A cardinal of the Catholic Church found it hard to keep his gaze fixed on one kingdom , and to Wolsey the European stage was the absorbing object, while to Henry VII. England had been all-important. This policy was abandoned on Wolsey's fall in 1529. From that date Henry VIII. on the whole, and Eliza- beth after him, reverted to the more insular, national policy of Henry VII. Their prime object was to strengthen their rule at home and to encourage the maritime rather than the Con- tinental expansion of England's influence. Henry VIII. was the most flamboyant exponent both of the nationalising forces then at work and of the new autocracy. The great surviving exception to nationalism Henry VIII. was now the Catholic Church ; and Henry, instigated in the first instance by a merely personal question, the divorce of Catherine of Aragon, went on to repudiate all foreign control over the Church in England. He was to make that national, too, and his path was all the more pleasant because in his eyes and in the eyes of many of his subjects " royal " and " national " were The Keformation. almost interchangeable terms. Thus the Reformation Parhament of 1529-36 repudi- ated the Papal jurisdiction and made Henry supreme head of Reformation and Reaction. 41 the English Church ; all payments to Rome were forbidden ; and all recourse to the Papal court prohibited. The monas- teries, which were peculiarly international institutions, were destroyed, and some steps were taken to set up a national standard of faith. The Reformation meant much more than this. On its spiritual side it was a revolt of the individual against the col- lective control of the Catholic Church, and of a laiiy, growing in intelligence, against the sacerdotal tutelage of the Middle Ages. With the last Henry had some sjTupathy, and many measures were passed in his reign against clerical privilege. The Church was deprived of its independent right of legisla- tion, spoiled of its wealth, and limited in its jurisdiction. But Henry's belief in individualism was limited to himself. No one else was allowed to indulge in private judgment, and the royal control over Englishmen's conscience was not less severe than had been that of the Pope. It was left for Somerset, the Protector of the realm, during his first years Edward VI. of Edward VI.'s minority, to try the experi- ment of leaving men to think as they liked ; and the treason and heresy laws were repealed in 1547. The experiment did not succeed, and even Somerset came to the conclusion that disruption could only be avoided by setting up a national standard of uniformity, and compelling all men to conform. So the first Act of Uniformity, enforc- ing the first Book of Common Prayer, was passed in 1549. The Church service in England was nationalised and clothed in the national tongue. Somerset's successor, Warwick, made the uniformity more rigid and the doctrine more puri- tan by his second Act of Uniformity and Second Book of Common Prayer in 1552. But the harshness of his rule, the fanaticism of the Protestants, and the Mary. violence of his attempt to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne at Edward's death in 1553 provoked a reaction which brought Mary to the throne and enabled her to undo not only Edward VI.'s but her father's work. The Papal restoration was, however, ruined by excess of persecution ; and the burning of three hundred Protestant martyrs including Hooper, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer finally turned the heart of England from the Roman Catholic faith. Another cause of alienation was the foreign auspices under which Catholicism was restored. Mary was half a Spaniard and 42 England under Spanish Control. despised the English. She had no sympathy with insular prejudice, and thought that only under the aegis of Spain would England and the Catholic faith be secure. She married her cousin, Philip 11. , and although there were paper guarantees for English independence, Englishmen could not feel sure that England would escape the fate of the Netherlands, which had also been brought under Spanish dominion by marriage. Mary thus gave the final touch to English national Spanish Control, spirit; and the foreign influence which marred her reign produced a resentment far fiercer than had the alien domination of Henry III.'s advisers. For England gained nothing by the Spanish marriage. Philip II. refused to declare war on Scotland in the interests of England, but forced Mary into declaring war on France in his own. Spaniards shared in English trade, but Englishmen were rigidly excluded from the Spanish colonies, and even pro- hibited from trading with those of Spain's ally, Portugal. They had to content themselves with the Arctic Ocean and with attempts to open up a north-east or a north-west passage and trade overland with Russia and Central Asia. I The Spanish and Portuguese monopoly of the New World was based on Papal sanction, for Alexander VI. had divided the new discoveries between the Spaniards and the Portuguese. It was impossible for a good Roman Catholic to dispute this award ; and accordingly it became increasingly difficult for English sea dogs to remam good Catholics. The passion for adventure on the Spanish Main proved stronger than their faith ; and the south and south-west counties of England, which had been strongly Catholic, became the nurseries of aggression on the Papal proteges. With all this Mary was completely out of touch. The loss of Calais The loss of Calais, in 1558 put the seal on the failure of her policy ; and the nation hailed with delight the acces- sion of a sovereign who boasted of being " mere English," and had less foreign blood in her veins than any English monarch since Harold. The death of Mary without issue removed Ehzabeth. of itself the shackles of Spain, and Elizabeth's first work was to break the control of Rome. Parliament in 1559 finally repudiated all foreign jurisdic- tion over the Church in^ England, and declared Elizabeth its supreme governor. A new '■ Act of Uniformity was passed; and the Second' Prayer Book of Edward VI. was The Triumph of English Nationality. 43 revived with some modifications. Elizabeth's via media was not that of Henry VIII. His had been a compromise between Roman CathoHcism and Lutheranism ; hers was more like a compromise between Lutheranism and Calvinism. It would have been considered extreme ten years before ; it was now a via media because other proposals were even more extreme. Her government had as much trouble with Puritans as with Papalists ; but her religious settlement was capable of assum- ing various shades of colour according to the changing moods of national feeling ; and Low Church, High Church and Broad Church have all had their turns as exponents of the national religion. The Nationalisa- The important thing from the political point tion of the of view is that it was a national settlement, and Church. j^^^ ^j^g dictated from Catholic Rome, Cal- vinistic Geneva, Lutheran Wittenberg or Zwinglian Zurich. The English Church may have become insular for the time, but it accorded none the less with the national temperament. England had asserted its independence of control in Church as well as in State ; it had claimed the right of moulding its eccle- siastical destinies as well as its secular fate. " An English (Jhurch for the English people " was the motto of the Eliza- bethan settlement ; and the national overcame the universal idea even in the religious sphere. The year 1559 marks the complete and final triumph of English nationality within the realm of England. The question for the future was its expan- sion into an empire. CHAPTER IV. THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. 1559—1800. The assertion of " England for the English " England and i-epresented the first part of Elizabeth's Scotland. ^ ■, t • • a ri programme, and foreign mfiuence was speedily eliminated from both Church and State. Her next step was to secure Britain for the British. Little had been done by his successors to carry out Edward I.'s idea of union between England and Scotland, until Henry VII. negotiated a marriage between his elder daughter Margaret and James IV. of Scot- land. Even this had slight immediate effects. James IV. and James V. preferred the old alliance with France and the Pope to friendship with their kinsman on the English throne ; but the death of James V. while at war with England in 1512, and the succession of his infant daughter Mary suggested a renewal of Edward I.'s designs. The English claim to suzerainty was again put forth, and attempts were made to conclude a marriage between Mary and Edward VI. Protector Somerset had excellent ideas of uniting the two realms into " the Empire of Great Britain " ; but his methods of wooing were unpalat- able, and after Pinkie (1547) Mary was sent to France and betrothed to the Dauphin (afterwards Francis II.), while her French mother ruled in Edinburgh. Scotland seemed more committed to France than ever ; and if Francis II. and Mary should have a son to rule in France and Scotland, the prospects of a British Empire would be dark indeed. Fortunately for England and Great Britain ReformrUon^ the Scots loved French no better than English domination, and national animosity was turned away from England towards France. Religion came to aid the process ; the great obstacle to Henry VIII. 's and Somerset's schemes had been the Catholic Church in Scotland. But Great Britain and Ireland for the British. 45 John Knox arose, and Calvin captured Scotland's mind and heart. The Church fell in 1559, but the reformers needed aid against their French and Catholic sovereigns ; and aid could only be forthcoming from their old enemy of England. It was a critical moment in the history of the Empire. Hcotland had not been of much account in the councils of Europe except as a check to England's greatness. Now, if Scot- ^'^French!^*^^ land and England allied, a new power would be formed, Elizabeth's government rose to the occasion. Help was sent to the Scottish Protestants, the French were turned bag and baggage out of North Britain, the Scots were left to govern themselves, and England at last felt safe on her northern borders — at least from French invasion. There was no attempt to impose an English Ireland, domination across the Tweed ; but Ireland for the Irish was never considered a possible policy by Elizabethan statesmen, Ireland had no native government to command respect, and her religion was a further cause of irritation. The so-called conquest of Ireland by Strongbow in the reign of Henry II, had effected little. The Anglo-Norman adventurers became more Irish than the Irish themselves, and English influence was limited to the districts round Dublin called the Pale. Henry VII. had done something to draw closer the connection',by means of Poynings' Laws, which subjected the Irish Parliament to the English Privy Council ; and Henry VIII. in the later years of his regn was made King instead of merely Lord of Ireland and began that process of converting Irish chiefs into English peers, which eventually divorced the people of Ireland from their natural leaders. Irish wealth and culture, which have been greatly underrated, attracted English adventurers, and while the eagles of enterprise plumed their wings for the Spanish Main, the vultures swooped down upon Ireland. Hence followed an interminable series of barbarous wars from which Spain and the Papacy sought to make their profit at England's expense ; and it was not till the very close of Elizabeth's reign that Mount] oy succeeded in crushing O'Neill's great rebellion of 1598, and defeating the most serious attempt at invasion made by Spain, Ireland provided the least glorious and least ^of £^0"" knd °° successful sphere for the expansion of England. The real success of Elizabeth's reign was expansion on the sea. The preceding reigns had been 46 England appropriates the Sea. studded with solitary adventures in various directions, and the Eeformation, which released Englishmen from the observance of Alexander VI.'s award of the New World to Spain and Por- tugal, began the era of English trade with the new found lands. In 1549, Sebastian Cabot, who had sailed to America fifty-two years previously, was created Grand Pilot of England, and a voyage of discovery to find a north-east passage to India resulted in Archangel being reached by Richard Chan- Chancellor's ^^YloT, and in the foundation of an English trade with Russia. The spirit of adventure was ready, and men willing and able to undertake these adventures were not lacking. Young men of good family from Cornwall and Devon joined forces and equipped privateers which preyed impartially upon all shipping that passed up the Narrow Seas. It was legitimate enough in the case of ejiemies, but friends also were plundered, and from the later years of Henry VIII. bickerings over this piracy occupied no small part of the time of English, Spanish and French diplomatists. English sea- men justified their spoliation of Spanish ships by their exclusion from the Spanish Main and the treatment of English merchants in Spain. Gradually the scope of their operations The Elizabethan ^^g^^gj across the sea. Elizabeth was bea-Dogs. . ,. ., • • -sr •> not niclmed to mamtam Mary s veto on English enterprise ; and had she wished, she could hardly have prevented all her subjects' escapades. They well under- stood, however, that the Queen, favour them as she might, neither would nor could protect them, for Spain and England were still, to use the convenient fiction employed by diploma- tists, at peace. If piracy developed faulty morals and " sea divinity," it produced the best seamanship in the world, and the excellent naval traditions bequeathed to England by Henry VIII. were also substantial foundations on which to build. There were at least four classes of naval Hawkins. pioneers of Empire in the days of Elizabeth. The first is represented by John Hawkins ; he went armed but desired peace and profits, and not war ; he found his most profitable cargoes were black men's bodies, and so v/ent man-hunting on the West African coast, and then man-selling in the Spanish colonies. Two voyages he made in 1562 and 1564 without disturbance ; on a third voyage in 1567 his small squadron was treacherously attacked by a Spanish fleet in the Spanish port of San Juan de Ulua or The Elizabethan Voyages, 47 Ulloa, on the coast of Mexico ; and Hawkins San Juan deUlua. himself barely escaped with less than half his men. Philip II. had determined to preserve his monopoly of the New World, and Hawkins and his fellows now abandoned trading for the method and aims of the second school. These, succeeding to the former trader,«, Drjike. have been classed as pirates, but there is a world of difference between them and Captain Kidd. It was not really piracy they waged but war, only war officially unavowed because it did not suit Elizabeth yet to break with Spain ; and side by side with their condemnation as pirates must be placed their claim to be considered patriots. Drake was the most famous of this school ; his motives were hostility to Spain, desire for plunder, and revenge ; for the ex- pedition of Hawkins which ended at San Juan de Ulua had been Drake's first voyage, and he remembered it long. Funds to equip Drake's profitable expeditions were readily forthcoming ; the Queen herself took shares in the " Golden Hind's " great voyage round the world in 1577-80, reaped a dividend of several hundred per cent., and disregarded Philip's demand for restitution. There was now no pretence of trade ; the tiny but heavily-armed ships of the adventurers were intended to fight. But in course of time Spanish harbours in the West were strongly fortified, and Spanish " plate ships " sailed under powerful guard ; buccaneering dividends began to dwindle. Peaceable trading became once more the fashion, and since that was dangerous in the West Indies men began to seek new markets and new ways to the East Indies. The voyage round the Cape of Good Hope was wearisome ; there must, men thought, be a shorter route by the north. They began to sail first North-East and then North- West, and the The North- West ij^a'that there was a " North- West Passage " led to many expeditions into those icy waters of the Arctic Ocean which bear English names to-day — Baffin Bay, Hudson Bay, and Davis Strait. The North- West Passage remained undiscoverable, but the results of the long and strenuous search for it gave England tome sort of a prior claim upon Canada and the North generally. Then came the last and fullest development ^^^dei°"'^^ of the Elizabethan expansion, the attempt to plant " Colonies " for England, to be markets for English merchants even as Spain's colonies were markets for her merchants. Humphrey Gilbert first took up 48 First Attempts at Colonisation. the idea, and in 1583 lie planted an unsuccessful co^.ony in Newfoundland. His half-brotlier Walter ^'e7* h°^ Kalegli twice repeated the experiment on a part of the American coast which EKzabeth christened " Virginia " ; his first expedition in 1585 returned home next year, and a second in 1587 disappeared utterly, only a vague tradition of massacre by the Indians surviving. It is just as well to bear in mind that at the death of Elizabeth England occupied not a foot of soil beyond the British f eas. The Comparative "^^^ results of the failure to colonise are Failure of Eliza- not far to seek. England was fortunately too bethan Colonies, weak to undertake State colonisation ; it had to be attempted by individuals and by private funds, and the arm of the State was powerless to protect or aid ilie colonist. Again, Elizabethan England was obsessed by the idea of Eldorado ; men wanted gold mines, new markets for trade, and new routes to the wealth of India — none wanted the hard and bitter agricultural toil necessary in a newly formed community. Finally, the colonists who were sent out to earn dividends for the promoters and, incidentally, a living for themselves, were either ne'er-do-wells or unemployed — dis- reputable failures or " sturdy beggars." England was as yet too thinly peopled to admit of the wholesale em'gration of able-bodied agriculturalists, and until it was willing to supply such material of good quality her attempts at colonisation would result in little. The last of the gold-hunting expeditions of Elizabeth's reign was Ralegh's voyage to Guiana in 1595, which had a disastrous and disgraceful sequel twenty years after. The founding of the East India Company in IGOO 1 e ' as n la jj^gj-j^g ^}^g commencement of a new period in Company. \ which trade was conducted upon business-like lines and colonisation upon common-sense principles. The true age of colonisation begins with the The Stuarts, advent of the Stuarts. Undesignedly they provided a powerful motive for the expansion of England. The religious settlement of 1559 had determined the question of foreign control, but it had not decided the differences in the English Church. The tide was setting strongly towards a presbyterian, non-episcopal form of church government. Elizabeth regarded the movement as anti- monarchical, and her sentiments did not differ from those of James I. when he said " no bishop, no king." But she had a The Stuarts and the Puritans. 49 strong hold over tlie national mind, and the breach between the monarchy and the Presbyterians did not become irreparable during her reign. The Stuarts had not the same solid founda- tions ior their authority ; and they began to rely on theory, the divine liereditary right of kings to govern, irrespective of their capacity to rule or the wishes of their subjects. This brought them into violent collision with their parliaments, and the struggle soon assumed a theological colour. Episco- pacy was necessarily monarchical ; Parliamentarism and Presbyterianism seemed natural allies. A Presbyterian minister had called James " God's silly vassal," and James said he would harry them out of the land. Neither side believed in toleration ; Parliament wished to make the church Presby- terian, the Crown was determined to keep it episcopal. There was not room for two parties with exclusive ambitions in one body politic, and thousands of Puritans crossed the Atlantic to found a state where they could worship themselves, and compel others to worship, as they pleased. Their motives were liardly amiable, but they were conscientious ; and they were a far more solid equipment for colonists than the speculative passions which had inspired the Elizabethan projects. These men would not be deterred because no dividends were in sight. They went out into the wilderness with a grimmer and more enduring purpose. The present divergence between English and American {see p. 79) is a strange fulfilment of the aims of the only colonists who set forth not to reproduce but to reverse the conditions they left behind, not to expand the England that they knew, but to create a new and different community. The first attempt of James's reign was, however, more like a relic of the Elizabethan epoch — the plantation of Virginia in 1607. In 1606 James I. issued a charter authorising a " planta- tion " between the Nova Scotia and the South Carolina of to-day. In 1607 an expedition reached " Virginia," Ralegh's old colony, and founded Jamestown. The Virginia. plan and objects of the new colony were purely Elizabethan, but as time went on the proprietors despaired of dividends ; the more useless of the colonists died of starvation, or were massacred by the Indians, and the less useless turned from prospecting for gold to growing food-stufts, and after some time spent in making and breaking constitutions Virginia began to flourish. The importation of the tobacco pla nt and negro-slaves to cultivate it materially helped to increase the prosperity and population of the colony. do New Englaiid. It devoted little time or energy to disputes on theological or constitutional matters, remained Anglican and aristo- cratic, treated the Indians as human beings, and had a comparatively uneventful history. The other colonial seed in North America ^Farhfrs*^ was planted in 1620 under very different circumstances. The sect known as " Brown- ists," from which sprang the later Independents, had found refuge in Holland from their religious troubles in England ; but in 1620 about a hundred of them sailed in the " Mayflower " to North America, landing at Cape Cod and founding New Plymouth. They had chosen no favoured place wherein to settle ; the climate was severe, the soil was not over-fertile, and the Indians were given no cause to be New England, friendly. But they had come in search of freedom to worship as they pleased, they were not the failures or social refuse of England, and they were the best material for colonists yet discovered. Until Charles I. commenced his course of personal government, the " New England " progressed but slowly, but after 1629 it was swollen by fugitives from the system of Laud and the Courts of High Commission and Star Chamber, and also by an influx of fresh colonists under a charter granted to the Massachussetts Com- pany in 1629. By 1640 some forty thousand Englishmen were settled along the three hundred miles of coast between Ports- mouth and Newhaven. They, too, prospered by fishing and trade, but their mainstay was still agriculture. A religious tyranny worse than Laud's was established ; the Indians were gi-adually expropriated and New England experienced such warfare with them as Virginia never knew. The internal history of the colony was stormy, and the success of the Puritan Revolution in England temporarily checked Puritan emigration. Nevertheless the population increased, a flourish- ing trade was at length established between the English colonies and their Dutch and Swedish neighbours. These neighbours were subdued during the first Dutch war of Charles II. 's reign, and the new English colonies of Other Colonies. New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware were formed, while to the south of Virginia North and South Carolina grew up. The Pilgrim Fathers, too, had not been the only religious refugees from England, and a colony for Roman Catholics had been founded by Lord Baltimore in Maryland during the reign of Charles I. Civil Wars mid Commercial Rivalries. 51 Meanwhile a momentous change of policy was efEected, which was destined to remain virtually intact for nearly two centuries. It had only an indirect connection with The Civil Wars, the familiar incidents of seventeenth century English history. There were echoes of the civil war across the sea especially in the West Indies where Koundheads and Cavaliers fought battles of their own. But they were comparatively faint. The interests of the new colonies in the Old World struggle may have been greater than appears on the surface ; and the triumph of Charles I. and Laud might have led to an attempt to suppress the Puritans in America. As it was, they were left to develop in comparative peace ; and apart from Cromwell's conquest of Jamaica, the main interest lies in the external relations between Great Britain and the colonies — a sphere in which home governments, whether Puritan or Cavalier, pursued considerable continuity of policy. Englishmen had grown more sober and Growth of the b^siness-like, and a thoroughlv mercantile spirit pervaded the ettective part of the nation — the part that was strongest in Parliament. The age of religious wars closed with the Treaties of Westphalia (1648), and the wars which succeeded were wars of commerce and national expansion in which religion played no part. London merchants had long been jealous of the rise of Dutch prosperity and commerce ; the two nations had come into violent contact in more than one colonial quarter of the globe ; and English merchants and statesmen seemed suddenly to realise the fact that their Dutch rivals carried practically all the trade of Western Europe and its colonies, and that this gigantic monopoly was absorbing all the profits from the colonies which they had financed. The common ties of religion and of government (1650-1660) could not keep the Protestant Eepublics of England and the United Provinces from each other's throats ; as soon as the remnant of the Long Parliament could get its hands free from civil war, it passed the Navigation Act of 1651, and began to prepare for hostilities with the Dutch. This famous Act of Parliament required ^Acfo7il51.°° *^^^ ^^^ 8°°^^ imported into England from Asia, Africa, or America should be imported direct in ships owned, manned, and commanded by English- men. The mercantile middle class wanted some immediate and tangible return from the colonies they saw growing up, and 52 The Navigation Ads. the Dutch remonstrated in vain at the heavy blow dealt to the carrymg trade, which was the very lifeblood of Holland. The resulting war (1652-4) was really indecisive ; and though the English Republic carried its points and showed the world that the Dutch could be beaten decisively on their own element, another struggle was certain so soon as the combatants could recover strength. The Restoration effected singularly little change in England's foreign and colonial policy. The legislation of the Common- wealth and Protectorate was treated as invalid ; but the mer- cantile element was almost as strong under Charles II. as under Cromwell, and a fresh Navigation Act was passed in 1660. It enacted that sugar, tobacco, and a few other The Act of 1660. " enumerated " articles should be exported by English colonies "only to England or some other colony, and also that all goods imported by a colony must be imported from England. A thud clause was substantially a re-enactment of the previous Act of 1651. The effect of these Acts was considerable Effects of the although it, too, has been exaggerated. There iNavjgation Acts. r i i • i ^ ?r t i i was far less trade with the Engnsh colonies in 1660 than there was a century later, and the application of the Act would largely depend upon the colonial Governors, who could usually be persuaded or coerced. In any case the mother country had in 1660 very scanty means of enforcing lier will upon her colonies. Nevertheless, the Dutch lost at a l)low a proportion of their trade variously estimated at one- tenth to one-seventh, and it was not long before England's commerce began to benefit correspondingly. Much has been said as to the deleterious effect of the Navigation Acts upon colonial commerce, but little has been or can be proved. If the colonist might export his sugar, rice, and tobacco to Eng- land only, he had a practical monopoly of the home market in those articles ; and ilmerican trade and shipping grew and flourished apace. It is in his dealmgs with Ireland and Scot- Ireland in the i^j^^ ^^^^ Cromwell most strikingly antici- 1 / tu Lentury. , , , , . ^ -' pated later developments. He is greater as a Unionist than as 'an Imperialist, though his methods of Union were hardly such as commend themselves to modern statesmen. Nevertheless, it was Cromwell who first summoned a united Parliament 'of ^Great Britain and Ireland. Neither country had profited much by the rule of the first two Stuarts, and Ireland under the Stuarts. 53 both were in open rebellion when Charles I. lost control of affairs. James I.'s plantation of Ulster (1610), if not very happily inspired, had at any rate lasting results. The planters came from the class of men who were behig harried out of I']ngland and were founding the North American colonies ; and sturdy Presbyterians from Scotland and London made prosperous Ulster out of the forfeited lands of the rebel earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell. Wentworth (1G32-1G-10) did his best to foster Irish industries and commerce ; but he was more anxious to reduce the Anglo-Irish gentry to order and subservience than to mitigate the lot of the Rebellion dispossessed Irish peasant and persecuted Roman Catholic ; and as soon as the English government was paralysed by the conflict between Crown and Parhament (1641) the native Irish rose in wild revolt to avenge upon their oppressors the barbarity with which they had themselves been subdued. A hideous massacre followed, and for eight years Ireland weltered in an unfathomable anarchy of Royalist, Roman Catholic, Parliamentary and Presbyterian factions. At length, in 1649, the iron hand of Oliver Cromv/ell was laid upon the distracted country. At Wexford and Drogheda no quarter was given; Ireland was crushed under the weight of the CromwelUan settlement, which provided an effective Protestant garrison quartered on the lands of the Irish peasant; and thirty members from Ireland were sum- moned to sit in the Parliament of 1654 at Westminster. This Union disappeared at the Restoration, but Charles II. found it inadvisable to disturb the Cromwellian settlers on Irish land, and in fact it was Cromwell's soldiers and their descendants who prevented Ireland in 1689 from falling com- pletely into the hands of James II. That king's Roman Catholic zeal, and his breach with the whole English nation, led him to appeal to the Roman Catholic Irish ; and his lord- deputy, Richard Talbot, Duke of Tyrconnell, raised the standard " Now or never, now and for ever." Louis XIV, sent assist- ance, but James IL was no match for William of Orange, and the battle of the Boyne (1690) sealed the supremacy of the English in Ireland. The struggle ended with ^^Trer/""^'' the " Broken Treaty " of Limerick (1691), the breach of which was more the fault of the Irish Protestant Parliament than of William, and for a century Ireland was treated as a conquered country. Few conquered countries, indeed, have been treated with less generosity ; her 54 Scotland in the Seventeenth Century. religion and her commerce were alike oppressed. Koman Catholics were excluded from political influence and from many of the professions. Every sort of inducement, material and immoral, was offered to those who would abandon their faith. • Irish industries were suppressed at the dictation of rival English manufacturers, and her commerce was regulated so that it might not compete with England's. Partly from religious, partly from commercial motives, England did its best in the early part of the eighteenth century to complete the ruin of Ireland. Fortunately for Scotland, it could make the ^Stuarts. ^^ ^*^^^^ ^^^^ respected by those who recognised no argument but force. James I. had sensible ideas of a union between England and Scotland, resembling those of Protector Somerset. But his own tact- lessness and the fierce jealousy of the English Parliament ensured the failure of a project by which England would have gained more than it did at the Union of 1707. Charles I. was even less successful ; and his attempt to force a Laudian Liturgy upon the Presbyterian Church provoked the National League and Covenant, and the Bishops' wars. In the Civil Wars the Scots first intervened to defeat Charles I., and then sent the first of a long line of Scottish armies into England pledged to the Stuart cause. Religion caused the reversion of policy ; Cromwell's army repudiated Presbyterianism, while Charles I. made terms with it, and his son subscribed the Covenant. Neither benefited by this forced conversion ; at Preston (1048), at Dunbar (1G50), and at Worcester (1651) the Ironsides vanquished one Scottish party after another ; and Scotland, like Ireland, was driven into the Cromwellian union. It, too, was dissolved at the Restoration ; ^^Unfon!''^ but Scotland was no happier under Charles 11. than under Cromwell. The Protector had been fairly tolerant ; Charles II. 's government in Scotland fell foul of the Covenanters, and rebellions and raids became the order of the day until the Revolution. The Presbyterian kirk was thenceforth the established Church of Scotland, but it was hardly the church of the Covenanters. The mercantile secular spirit had invaded Scotland and weakened if not softened, the dour temper of the " old priest writ large." Scotland was becoming interested in colonial adventures, and it was the failure of one of these, the Darien Scheme, that brought matters The Act of Union. 55 to a crisis. The Union of 1603 had been merely personal and not parliamentary. Scotland had agreed with England in excluding James 11. in 1688 ; but both Mary and Anne were Stuarts, and there was no guarantee that Scotland would agree with England in 1714 to exclude the Stuart, and accept the Hanoverian dynasty. There might again be two kings on the two sides of the borders, and the nascent unity of Great Britain might be rent in twain. England in the throes of the struggle with Louis XIV., who had recognised the Old Pretender as England's rightful king, felt the danger more keenly, perhaps, than Scotland ; but Scotland, too, had something to gain by closer union with England, and something to lose by the disso- lution of existing ties. The gifts which England had to give, and Scotland was now beginning to value, were commercial- inclusion in the benefits of the Navigation Laws and freedom of trade with England. England, which rigidly refused to share these privileges with Ireland, was not anxious to share them with Scotland. But Scotland had weapons which could not be despised, and the Scottish Parliament passed an Act of Secmity which threatened the dynastic union of the two countries on the death of Anne, unless security were given for the preservation of the religious and commercial claims of Scotland. England at first replied with defiance, but in the end cooler counsels prevailed, and on May 1, 1707, England and Scotland became the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Scotland was to retain her own legal system, law-courts, and established church ; she was to enjoy the same commercial privileges as England, and to pay a share in taxes much smaller than her share in parliamentary representation {see p. 81). The price was none too liberal to pay for the control to be exercised over Scotland by a Parliament in which the Scottish members would be numerically insignificant ; but Scots have found ample compensation for the control which England exercises over them in the influence which they exert upon the destinies of England and the Empire. By this Union the chief danger which ^^^ness'""'' threatened the Kevolution Settlement of 1688 was averted. The principal point in that Revolution was to establish parliamentary govern- ment in England, that is to say, a constitution m which the ministers or executive are responsible to, and con- trolled by, the legislature. The Great Rebellion had made 56 The Revolution and the War of SpanisJi Succession. permanent inroads upon the powers asserted by James I. and Charles I. The claims of the Crown to legislate by proclamation, to tax independently of Parhament, and to enforce its edicts by means of the Star Chamber and Com-t of High Commission, had gone for ever. But Charles II. 's ministers were responsible to him, and not to Parliament, and in the last four years of his reign he had shown that it was still possible to rule for some time without a Parliam.ent at all. Even the Revolution did not completely solve the problem. William III. was his own Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary ; he could not coerce Parliament, but Parliament found it difficult to coerce him. The facts that Anne was incom- petent and the first two Georges aliens did more than the Revolution to establish Cabinet rule and Parliamentary power. Even then George III. was able to impose his ministers on Parliament and his policy on the people. Still more halting were the results of the Revolution in the Colonies of North America. There, as in England, James II. had sought to over- 1 ide the legislatures and govern as a despot ; and there, too, it was hoped that the Revolution would establish legislative control over the executive. In this it failed decisively ; colonial executives remained responsible to English govern- ments and not to local legislatures, and therein lay the seed of the American Revolution. The War of the ^"^ some respects the most important effects Spanish of the English Revolution were felt in foreign Succession, politics. It transferred England from the side of Louis XIV. to that of his enemies ; instead of the Treaty of Dover we have the Battle of Blenheim, and England became the protagonist in the struggle which saved Europe from Bourbon dictation. Another result was by the capture of Gibraltar and Minorca to establish British influence in the Mediterranean, the importance of which Cromwell had seen and Charles II. had neglected when he abandoned his wife's dowry of Tangier. Commercially the war of the Spanish Succession may be regarded as a triangular duel between England, France, and the Dutch, in which England's ally fared worse really though not ostensibly than her enemy ; and Holland lost more in this war, in which she was successful, than she did in her wars with England in which she was defeated. The upshot of the war and of the Treaty of Utrecht, which brought it to a conclusion, was to leave England and France the chief rivals in OOTninercial and colonial expansion. England and France in the New World. 5? Eivalry between Fortunately for the British Empire the two England countries viewed the situation in a very and France, difierent light. France produced great Empire builders in Montcalm and Dupleix, peers of Wolfe and Clive ; but she produced no Pitt nor even a Walpole. Her eyes were averted fi'om the New World, and her energies wasted on struggles in the Old. Englishmen were perhaps helped in resisting the temptation to squander men and money on the continent by the reflection that such efforts would turn to the benefit of Hanover which they did not love, and would not expand that colonial trade on which their hearts were set. Walpole feared war, because he feared a Jacobite restoration by French arms ; he was for peace at any price and for com- merce at any price save that of war. He did something to foster colonial trade and nothing to stir colonial animosities, and the foundation of Georgia by General Oglethorpe during his regime added the last to the thirteen colonies and rounded them off against Spain. But he did not consider the illicit trade which English merchants pursued with Spanish America worth a war ; he was driven into it against his will (1739) and then from power (1742). This Anglo-Spanish war expanded into the general war of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) during which England was threatened by the Jacobite rising of '45, and Holland was overrun by the French under Marshal Saxe. In India England's possessions were with difficulty retained, nothing was gained in America, and the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle concluded the war on the status quo. It had been fought on the old tradi- tional lines of alliance between England and the Hapsburgs against France, modified by the fact that a Bourbon and not a Hapsburg now ruled Spain. A diplomatic revolution pre- ceded the next war, Maria Theresa of Austria, conscious that England would never help her to recover Silesia from Frederick the Great of Prussia, struck a bargain with France ; and England, seeing that Austria would no longer guarantee Hanover against France, formed an alliance with Frederick who kept Europe occupied while England waged the really important struggle in India and North America. Here the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had hardly War— 1756^1763 ^®®^^ ^ ^^^^®- '^^^ French in ^Canada were seeking to join hands with their brethren in Louisiana, and by means of a chain of posts along the Mississippi valley to shut in the British Colonies between the AUeghanie,. 58 Party Politics tinder George 111. and the sea. In India the fate of British dominion trembled in the balance. Pitt grasped the situation, and while France was fighting Frederick, Canada and India were won for the British Empire (Quebec 1759, Plassey 1757, Wandewash 17G0). Nor were these the only gains ; Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica and other West Indian Islands were added to the dominions of the crown, and only the fall of Pitt prevented the permanent acquisition of Havana and the Philippine Islands, which were restored to Spain at the Peace of Paris (1763). The resignation of Pitt in 1761 ushers in a Party Politics, squalid period of English party politics. The Whigs had almost exhausted their mission, but there was no one to take their place. Pitt believed in efficiency irre=5pective of party, and would have chosen colleagues from every political section. George III. from different motives also disliked the Whig domination ; nurtured on Bolingbroke's '■ Patriot King," and urged by his mother to " be a king," he wanted to rule through ministers and not George III. to be ruled by ministers. He tried to break up the incipient solidarity of Cabinets, and to convert his ministers into mere heads of departments, who should be in constant consultation with him, but not with one another. The condition of English poHtics favoured his schemes ; he could never have managed a House of Commons with the nation at its back, but the Commons between 1761 and 1784 represented few people except themselves. The franchise and redistribution reforms which Cromwell had passed were treated as null at the Restoration, and a few pocket borough- mongers returned a majority of the House of Commons. The party which controlled most of these boroughs was itself split into factions ; there were the Bedford Whigs, more illiberal than the Tories, the Grenville Whigs, the Rockingham Whigs, inspired by Burke and more progi-essive than most, and the personal followers of Pitt. They could rarely be brought to act together ; and having no particular principles, members from all these sections fell victims to the seductions held out by George III., when he took a leaf from the book of the Whig magnates, and by similar methods created a party of " King's Friends " in the House. Gradually by borough-jobbing and backstairs intrigues he developed this party until in 1770 he forced a minister of his own upon the House of Commons in the person of Lord North. He could not have done it without some popular support ; and in spite of Wilkes and the " North American and Irish Independerice. 59 Briton " George was not unpopular. Unlike his grandfather and great grandfather he was born a Briton and gloried in the name. He could speak English and liked English ways ; lie was honest, hard-working and none too clever. He was like an ordinary English farmer seated on the throne, and he preferred to dine ofi boiled mutton and turnips. The War of ^^^^ ^^^^^^ advantages George III. was able American to govern England, and there is little evidence Independence, that his policy was unpopular before it failed. The story of his dealings with America is told in the succeeding chapter ; on the legal and constitutional aspect there is a good deal to be said for George III.'s contention, but while all things may have been lawful all things were not expedient ; and all the precedents in the world do not atone for the disruption of the Empire. Nor was the loss of the American Colonies the sole result of George III.'s mistakes. English influence on the continent was almost annihilated, and nearer home Lord North had to give Ireland legislative independence, ^ because he had no force to pit against the ParHam^nt. ^^^^^ volunteers. So " Grattan's Parliament " came into existence in 1782. Ireland, of course, had had a parliament of her own almost as long as England ; but since 1494 it had been subject to the English Privy Council, and in 1719 this subordination was made even more explicit. Now (1782) the Irish Parliament was declared to be on an equal footing with the English ; it was completely independent. No English Act could hmit or take away its powers, or legislate in any form for Ireland. The two countries ceased to have any legislative connection, and were only bound together by the fact that they had a common king. Yet this was not Home Rule ; Ireland could make her own laws but could not govern herself. Her governors were appointed by the British Ministry and responsible to Downing-street ; no vote of the Irish ParHament could ensure their dismissal. Ireland was still administered by English Ministers, and more or less in accord- ance with English ideas. For practical pmposes the Irish Parliament was merely a debating society which represented a small proportion of the population. Until 1793 only Protes- tants could vote, although three Irishmen out of every four were Catholic ; so long as it lasted only Protestants could sit, and three-quarters of the House of Commons were nominated by a hundred landlords. The independent Irish Parliament, the theme of a thousand glowmg tributes, was '• the corrupt con- 60 The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. clave of an exclusive caste." That such a body should have done anything at all to remove the Roman Catholic disabilities is* wonderful, and its efforts at reform constituted but a feeble argument against the Act of Union. This was perhaps the greatest work of the The Younger Pitt, younger Pitt. After the fall of North in 1782, two brief Whig ministries under Rockingham and Shelburne, and the unprincipled coalition of Fox and North, George III. found his man and his match in Pitt, who at the general election of 1784 secured a greater amount of popular support than any other minister of George III. The King got rid of the Whig domination, but only to find a master in Pitt, and Pitt could rule because he was supported by the Commons and the country. He started as a peace and reforming minister, and excellent measures were carried to improve our trade with France and government of India, while settlements were made in Sierra Leone and New South Wales. But the French Revolution (1789) crossed his path and diverted the whole of Pitt's energies to the task of self-defence first against the Revolution and then against Napoleon. All ideas of reform were scattered to the winds ; reaction and repression reigned in England while revolution reigned in France. In the war The Eevolution- which broke out in 1793 England failed igno- ary and miniously on land, but more than compensated Napoleonic Wars, for it by her victories at sea. The French Revolutionary navy was almost destroyed on the " glorious first of June," 1794. The Dutch fleet which France pressed into her service was shattered at Camperdown and the Spanish off Cape St. Vincent in 1797, while a similar fate overtook the French Mediterranean fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. When Napoleon looked to Denmark and the Northern Powers, the battle of Copenhagen (1801) averted the danger from that quarter; Trafalgar (1805) disposed of the French and Spanish fleets which Napoleon had re-created, and in 1807 Canning seized a second Danish navy. The phrase " Napo- leon in search of a fleet " summarizes a good deal of his foreign policy; and when he could not find a fleet he tried to rum Great Britam by the " Continental System," expressed in the Berlin and Milan decrees, which materially contributed to his own downfall. The command of the sea which thus passed to Great Britain bore fruit in further expansion of the Empire. In India Wellesley extended British dominion on all sides without The Irish Act of Union. 61 material interference from the French. Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope were captured from the Dutch. Malta and the Ionian Isles strengthened our position in the Expansion. Mediterranean, and the occupation of Mauri- tius, the Isle de Bourbon, the Seychelles and Amirante Islands fortified our communications with the East, while most of the French West Indian Islands were acquired, but restored (like Bourbon) in 1 815. The war, originally under- taken in self-defence, confirmed and extended the maritime and colonial supremacy of Great Britain which had first been definitely secured in the Seven Years' War. England's weak spot throughout the earlier ^IrelanT^^' stages of the crisis had been Ireland. Eevolu- tionary opinions gained a foothold in the Protestant North, but the chief danger came from the rising of the Catholic peasantry in the South. The French expedi- tions designed to co-operate with the rebels fortunately failed, and the rebellion was finally crushed at Vinegar Hill (1798). Both the foreign danger and the difficulty of carrying reform in the Irish Parliament convinced Pitt of the necessity for Parliamentary Union. He held out hopes of Koman Catholic emancipation, but was foiled by the obstinacy of George III., and the Union was thus robbed of much of its beneficent efi!ect. The means by which it was carried cannot be justified except on the ground that only by such means could it be carried at all. The borough mongers were losing valuable property, and although that property was not legitimate, they would not part with vested interests without compensation. The Act which was passed in 1800 gave Ireland one hundred seats in the House of Commons, and thirty-two in the House of Lords. Twenty- eight were filled by temporal peers elected for life by their fellow peers, and four by spiritual peers who disappeared with the disestablishment of the Irish church in 1869. The Scottish Union had been one of consent ; the same cannot be said of the Irish. Ireland's Parliament did not represent the Irish people, and even it had bcpu cajoled by unworthy methods, while the boon which might have reconciled the nation to the loss of legislative independence was withheld until fresh seeds of strife and roots of bitterness had been implanted in the Irish mind. The expansion of England which has been so successful at the expense of coloured races begat harder prob- lems when it took place at the expense of a white and civi- lised "people; the Union with Scotland only sucQeeded because 62 Imperial Unity and National Aspirations. England gave up the attempt to expand into Scotland at Scotland's expense ; and the great Imperial task of the nine- teenth century was how to harmonise the the 19th century. The problem of ^^^j^^ ^^ ^^iq Empire with the national aspira- tions of states which Britons had founded across the seas or brought by conquest within the bounds of British dominion. The natural introduction to the history of that problem is the story of the one great failure in the making of the Empire. CHAPTER V. THE ONE DISRUPTION. Causes of the Quarrel. England's relations with its Colonies in America during the second half of the eighteenth century are, like its dealings with Ireland, generally regarded as British failures. The lack of cohesion shown in the seventies of the eighteenth century between three million of Britons oversea and nine millions at home is not an inspiring topic. Most people avoid it or hasten to lay all the blame on the king and his ministers and to pass by. The responsibility resides really in certain traits that have been most dearly prized by English- men as a whole, namely English Protestantism and English love of freedom. Both these were greatly accentuated by the revolution of ir)88. The New England Colonies would have liked to assert their autonomy then and there {see p. 56), and were only restrained by the firm hold maintained on Canada by despotically governed France. Effects of the Once all fear of the French was removed Conquest of by the conquest of Canada, the two great Canada. prosperous and most English Colonies, Mas- sachusetts and Virginia, insensibly resumed the notion of throwing of¥ their dependence on the motherland. Their destiny was now free. Whatever happened to England would not affect them very seriously. They needed neither English aid nor English patronage. The adult instinct of independence was strong among the most virile individuals in both these typical communities. This instinct was not shared by most of the colonists. -On the contrary, a large majority Public Opinion in persevered in lip service to King George the American until long after the first hostilities broke Colonies. out. But they all liked their king at a dis- tance ; they were shocked by what they hsard of the cor- ruption and intrigue that surrounded Parliament, and as soon 64 English and American Ideas. as a conflict seemed inevitable between their material interest and their loyalty to a government six weeks away, the active spirits who are the effective force in politics — the lawyers, the politicians, the ministers, the town councillors and the school- masters — these men determined that the time had come to sever a connection that no longer involved mutual support. The loyalists were from the first placed in a very awkward position. The vast majority of Americans played a waiting game, but showed a more demonstrative sympathy, as was natural, with the noisier party. In England, since the Seven Years' War, there P^int o?View ^^^ arisen among the directing classes a deter- mination to remodel existing arrangements and to find a scope for America in a new imperial scheme of revenue and defence. Unless the Colonies meant trade monopoly and military support we might as well have no Colonies at all. That was George's view, to which most of his subjects would have subscribed in 1770. The cause of the revolt may be briefly summed up in this way : that neither the effective desire of the Americans to preserve the connection, nor the effective desire of the British to compel them to mamtain it was strong enough to resist the strains which became percep- tible only after the removal of the French menace by the peace of 17C3. The English are a sufficiently schismatic and indi- vidualistic people, but the Americans both by birth and habit and by their colonial divisions far more so; and they had no suflicient reservoir of stored-up regard or affection for the old country to counteract the strong tendency to separation. The particular strahis, apart from his- The Real Issues, tory, economics and geography in the wider sense, which caused the severance, were not in reality by any means so terrible as they have often been represented. Free from Continental fears, America wanted more independence and wanted to make taxation purely local. England, on the other hand, had developed a debt and with it an imperial sense. It wanted to assess the Americans for a small amount of Parliamentary taxation in order to provide the nucleus of a colonial army. It also wanted to create an American civil list in order to pay the Colonial governors and judges direct so as to have the imcleus of an imperial class of high officials over in America. " We are to have a British bureaucracy over us," said the American demagogues. Hitherto there had really been no control at all, and British adminis- Taxing the Colonies. 65 tration in the thirteen colonies had either not existc ! or had been purely nominal. The fear in America now was that the customs and Admiralty regulations were going to be enforced. Briefly, it seemed as if the connection Taxation. between the mother country and her colonies was about to be emphasised in the man- ner that Walpole had always so strongly deprecated, namely, by increased taxation. Taxation had hitherto been evaded, and, in fact, hardly felt at all. Now, when America was far more restive and uncontrollable than ever before, the English ministers were inspired to apply this curb. The glorious war being over, the time had come, said Grenville in effect, to talk about payment. " Taxation no Tyranny " wrote Dr. Johnson, to which America replied in the " Farmer's Letters " and Tom Paine's " Common Sense," in which the benefits of commercial connection v/ith England were searcli- ingly criticised. The system in force hitherto had been System.' soniething of this kind. The colonies had to send all their raw materials to England, and import English manufactures exclusively. On the other hand, the West Indies had to buy lumber and provisions from the colonies, and England had to buy tobacco in Virginia and Maryland exclusively. The direct revenue from customs was very small, and amounted to barely half the sum it cost to collect. The regulations, it seems, had always been inter- preted by Americans to include unlimited opportunities for smuggling. England then, in 1765, determined to put down this free trade, and further imposed a small stamp duty on all transfers of property and written agreements. The first decision might have done considerable injury to the carrying trade of Nev/ England ; but the Stamp The Stamp Act. Act could hardly be considered a severe imposition by anyone ; morcovei", it was ac- companied l)y a proposal that if the Colonies would suggest an alternative scheme of taxation, equally remunei-ative, the measure should be abandoned. A huge outcry, utterly dis- proportionate to the injury, and accompanied by serious riot ing, marked the first attempts to enforce the act in November, 1765. The Stamp Act was repealed next session, though this repeal was accompanied by an act affirming as a general prin- ciple the right of Parliament' to ^^'^ the Colonies. The general ' -' V 66 The 'partimj of the ways. wisli in England was to propitiate America, and the repeal was welcomed there with extravagant acclamation. But the explosion had already done serious Its Eesults. damage. Abstract theorists had arisen in America, too, who maintained that taxation and representation must go together — an idea so revolutionary and suggestive of reform as to be very unpalatable to English politicians ; for, if the Colonies were unrepresented in Parlia- ment, so it might be urged in reply were the vast majority of Englishmen. But the agitation had done more harm still in the taste it had given disorderly mobs for looting the property of wealthy Anglicans and Tories, and the extent to which it had filled the taverns with constitutional lawyers and stump poli- ticians. Amid all the clamour the threat might have been discerned pretty clearly : leave us alone, or we shall cut adrift. The subsequent rhetoric of Chatham and Burke (vastly en- couraging as it doubtless was to the revolting colonists), was idle vapouring for the most part in such a crisis — as useless as a prayer for calm during the first puffs of a hurricane. Wiser in reality was the counsel of Dean Tucker, who said " if the Colonies want to go, let them go." England as a v/hole was ignorant, indifferent, over-confident, and thought little of the colonists at all except in the light of customers of uncertain civilisation and colour. The Americans, on the other hand, were refractory and contemptuous ; and if one pretext failed they were quite capable of finding another. Hitherto they had been disunited, but they were already as three to nine, a native stock, three or four generations out, greatly hardened and strengthened by the conditions of colonial life, not anxious for political change, but resolute, under no conditions, to sub- mit to foreign dictation or to oversea orders. The Authors of '^^^® rebellion was the work of an active the movement minority in the tAvo most highly organised of for Independence, colonial groups, in Virginia and New England, where the descendants of the original colonists were now prospering. In addition to Massachusetts we must include in New England New Hampshire, Connecticut and Ehode Island. The last two colonies were practically self-governing, for they chose their own governors and had none of the chronic ground for complaint which constant friction with representa- tives of the Crown was apt to engender. The Colonies as a v/hole were substantially prosperous and happy. They were men in shirt sleeves, nearlv all of them, English countrv folk The Boston Tea-PaHy. 67 at the core, with the advantage of being able to read and write, but they had been long enough in the country to forget their relationships at home. Massachusetts and Virginia took the lead, and were the first to vote for independence in June, 1776 ; but, even in these Colonies conservatives who wanted to keep things as they were were very numerous. Unfortu- nately for themselves, they were unorganised, and their superior wealth excited the cupidity of the mobs who howled against the tyranny of the British Parliament. All the " friends of Britain " who were known to be unable or un- willing to retaliate were disarmed and cruelly intimidated at an early period of the controversy by these fierce patriotic mobs. The radicals, consequently, took the reins from the first, ran the preliminary congresses of 1774 and 1775 and organised armed opposition. For the moment after the repeal of the Stamp The Tea Duties. Act things were quiescent. But the colonists had already begun to formulate theories of resis- tance and to defy authority. When, therefore, in 1767, Town- shend thought to repeat Grenville's experiment of 1765 in' a safer form by imposing duties on tea and other commodities when imported into the Colonies, the latter soon showed that their objection to external taxation was quite as serious as that to internal. The winds which had slumbered in the colonial cave were soon roaring again. A circular letter of appeal for resistance was sent out to the various colonial assemblies from Boston. Samuel Adams, Henry Otis, and other demagogues were once more joyously at work. Again there was a reign of riot and outrage, this time more violent than Eesistance and ^^^^^^ culminating in the burning of the kmg s revenue cutter, and the tossmg oi a cargo of tea into the water (December 16, 1773). No government could bear this tamely. The port of Boston was closed ; the charter of Massachusetts was forfeited ; appoint- ments and renewals of judges and other officers were vested in the Crown, and offenders might, at the discretion of the Crown, be removed to England for trial. Two British regiments were sent from Halifax to Boston, where they had, in March, 1770, been a collision between the soldiery and the mob, resulting in a loss of three lives, grandiloquently referred to as the "Boston Massacre. ' ' The other Colonies made Boston's cause their own, and, with the exception of Georgia, sent representatives to a congress held at Philadelphia in 1774 to consider the situation. d2 68 The war fever and the Whigs. Sinister events now moved apace. At- A^imosif tempts at reconciliation, the removal of all the duties except that on tea, and assur- ances that no more would be imposed, proved futile. On the colonial side there were still plenty of men like Dickenson and Galloway who desired peace with justice ; but there were also men like Samuel Adams who, though they still felt it politic to wear the mark of loyalty, were resolved that there should be no peace. Of the two men who might have mediated, Chatham was lying a cripple in body if not in mind, while Franklin, the American Solon, discredited by his use of stolen letters, had been estranged for ever from the royal cause by the abuse showered on him in council on account of that misdemeanour by the coarse lips of the sycophant Wed- derburn. The Germanic temper of George had now been fatally awakened, and he had the great body of opinion on his side. The pride of the imperial people had taken fire at the insult- ing violence of backwoodsmen, whom their arrogance regarded as humble subjects of the British crown. The Anglican clergy preached everywhere against rebellion ; so did John Wesley. The merchants were divided, but the majority, perhaps, hoped for a rise in prices to follow the outbreak of war, while the Tory squires and the common people everywhere in England and Scotland were for vigorous repression. On the American side platforni and pulpit spouted the fire of colonial patriotism. Burke, in pamphlets pregnant with lofty, undying wisdom, pleaded for reason, moderation and peace. The only possible chance of a quick peace ^Sf" ?^- was to take strong coercive measures at once, and to preserve at all hazards the advantage that accrued to England by the possession of a naval base. But America had so many friends in England who wanted to use the revolt as a political lever, that no combined policy could be adopted with sufficient definiteness, constancy or vigour. There were Whigs in Parliament who referred to Washington's army as " our army," and to the American cause as " the cause of liberty " ; they did all in their power to dis- courage enlistments, and in various ways so thwarted and vexed the government that the success of the Americans was by many people ascribed to their assistance. The difficulty of getting the recruits to make the long voyage was sufficiently great as it was ; the soldiers enlisted were half-hearted in the struggle from Howe downwards, and a total force of upwards I^he First Blows. 69 of 30,000 was only raised by hiring foreign troops from Hesse and Hanover, and from other German states to the number of 20,000. Another disabihty from which Great Britain suffered at this pai-ticular crisis was the strong dearth of adniinistrativii and strategic, or indeed any kind of military genius. The .Secretary at War was Lord George Germaine, a man whose own mihtary career had been tainted with grave suspicion of cowardice, a cold formalist without the redeeming features of method and exactitude, and wholly incapable of inspiring colleagues or subordinates with enthusiasm. The Commander- in-Chief, after the recall of the essentially second-rate General Gage, was Sir William Howe, an inert, pleasure-loving man, with little but tactical knowledge and personal courage to recommend him. What was worse, his sympathies were in a gi-eat measure with the colonials, and he had not yet learned the simple lesson that, however desirable compromise and con- ciliation may be, the lukewarm conduct of a war is the worst possible way in which to obtain them. More than one of his fiascos can hardly be explained except on the theory that he dreaded a decisive victory. General Gage, who had replaced Hutchin- bf un'^^ son as governor of Massachusetts, wrote home that the situation required 20,000 men. Dartmouth, the secretary upon whom colonial affairs devolved, repudiated such an estimate as preposterous. In February, 1775, -^orth, the English Prime Minister, with the king's assent, proposed further measures of conciliation to the effect that any colony should be exempt from taxation which should make a satisfactory contribution for purposes of com- mon defence and civil government. But before these pro- posals reached the various colonial assemblies (in which they received but scant attention) British authority in America had been openly challenged. The first gun was fired at Lexington, near Boston, on April 19, 1775, Gage had detached a force to capture military stores accumu- B^uik!r° mri*^ ^^^^^ ^y *^^® colonists at Salem, some twenty miles awa3^ Heie and at Bunker Hill, on June 17, Gage's regulars, fighting in regulation close order, suffered heavily at the hands of the " embattled farmers," and the English were convinced that the rebels wei'e not " the dis- orderly rabble too many supposed." This was the beginning of the process which rendered Boston untenable by the British army, though it was not until Maich 17, 1776, that the opera- *0 The Declaration of Independence. tions conducted by George Wasliington (who had been ap- pointed commander of the rebel forces in the previous June) compelled Howe finally to evacuate the town. In the mean- time (December, 1775) two of the rebel leaders, Benedict Arnold and Richard Montgomery, had made a daring assault upon the slender British garrison in Canada, which was only repulsed by the extraordinary activity and resourcefulness of the British governor, Sir Guy Carleton. These prelinn'nary conflicts in both cases may Results. be regarded as presages ; on the one hand, of the courage sho\vn by the colonial volun- teer riflemen behind cover, and of their eventual success in repelling the regulars, notwithstanding their inferiority in the open field ; on the other, of the failure of the colonists to shake the hold which the British government had obtained on Canada and had consolidated by the politic (though to the Americans obnoxious) concessions of the Quebec Act [see p. 262). Nothing decisive bad occurred in the first year of the war, but the English and their opponents alike are seen com- mitting their characteristic mistakes, in the first instance of relying too much upon the loyalists, in the second of relying too much upon undisciplined men. The one great and unmis- takable gain to the rebel cause had been Washington's accept- ance of the command in chief. Henceforth the war divides itself into three natural divisions : the conflict for the Hudson, marked by the early successes of Howe and 'the disaster of Saratoga ; the Delaware campaigns ; and the final struggle for the south. The colonists were sufficiently encouraged as things were in July, 1776, to issue a The Declaration pj-odamation in the form of a Declaration of ot Independence. \ i .r. ^r- • • Independence, drawn up by the Vngmian, Thomas Jefferson, whom the Democratic party in America revered as its father. This rhetorical document, commencing in the metaphysical spirit of that age with abstract doctrines of human equality and inalienable rights (penned by a slave owner), proceeds to level charges against the king and his government some of which were well founded, while others injure by their untruthfulness or exaggeration the cause which they were designed to serve. Bv this time Howe, who had established wIshinTon ^^^ '^^^® ^* Halifax, had over 30,000 men at his disposal. In August, 1776, he routed Washington and drove him from Long Island. The evacua- Trenton, Princeton and Brandywine. 71 tion showed Washington at his best, the soul of resist- ance under difficulties ; but is certain that if Howe had pur- sued with energy, the American Army could have been des- troyed. By the middle of September the British were in occupation of New York — the American force again being allowed to escape unharmed. Many have thought that Howe deliberately nursed the rebellion in the interest of the Whig political party. It seems more probable that he was actuated in part by constitutional half-lieartedness and slackness, in part by a deluded idea of conciliating the rebels by his half- lazy forbearance. What he had gained by seizing New York was lost in a great measure by Washington's success- ful night attack upon the Hessians at Tren- 'princTton"'^ ton, and by a well-designed flank assault on three British regiments at Princeton. Howe captured Fort Washington and secured Rhode Island. But the essential thing was not merely to gain and hold the lower Hudson Valley, but to clear the American troops from West Point and the Highland passes, and to extend an arm to Burgoyne, who was working down from Canada by the old route of Lake Champlain. The object of this move was to isolate the New England colonies, and it depended for success upon a co-operating force ascending the Hudson to cS^ar-n' 3"^"^ ^^''^^^^^^' ^^"'§ mainly to the blunder- ° ' ing of Germaine at the War Office and his neglect to supply Howe with full particulars of the in- tended movement, bat partly also to the lack of energy and strategic insight of Howe, and partly peihaps to the super- session of Carleton by Burgoyne, immeasurably his inferior m forest or guerilla generalship, the scheme proved very disas- trous. In the meantime Howe had left Clinton to command in New York and had set out for the Chesapeake with his main army, in order, if possible, to seize and occupy Philadelphia, the largest American city at the time, though far less impor- tant than New York from a strategic point of view. Washington was heavily defeated on the Brandywine river, where he had posted himself to cover the town, and Brandywine. his army might have been utterly de- stroyed but for the inexplicable slackness and self-satisfaction of Howe, Cornwallis now garrisoned Phila- delphia, while the bulk of our army under Hov/e was stationed at Germantown. three miles away. Defeated in an attempt 72 Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga. to surprise the camp there, Washington took up his winter quarters at Valley Forge, fifteen miles north-west. While these operations were in progress, Burgoyne, with a force of nearly 8,000 men, was sailing down Lake Champlain. He forced the Americans to evacuate Ticonderoga, and defeated them with lo is. But after leaving the lake he got entangled in the swamps and forests and surrounded by increasing swarms of riflemen, he had in the middle of October, 1777, to surrender at Sara- toga with his whole army. Clinton had been Saratoga. prevented from rendering any effective assist- ance by Howe's demands for reinforcements at Philadelphia (where Howe and his officers seem to have been amusing themselves with every kind of dissipation) ; and Burgoyne, terribly encumbered by his artillery train, was both outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, not by Gates, the nominal American commander, but by his able subordinates, Arnold, Morgan and Stark. There was nothing in this surrender of Its Effects. Saratoga to prevent ultimate success in repressing the revolt so far as the Ameri- cans alone were concerned. They were already very much depressed by the course events were taking. Money was scarce and credit bad. Desertions were of almost everyday occurrence, and Washington, v/ith a famine in his camp at Valley Forge, was reduced in the winter of 1777-8 to fear a general mutiny and dispersion. With the utmost diffi- culty he persuaded Congress to set on foot, in place of a militia, which was always moulting, a continental army, under a. longer term of enlistment and a regular discipline. The importance of Saratoga lay almost wholly in its effect upon the policy of foreign nations. France, in particular, now grasped the opportunity of revenge for the loss of Canada and all the humiliation inflicted on her by Chatham. Spain, too, hoped now oj- never to regain Gibraltar and Minorca. England's naval base would thus be iniperilled. The Americans were heartened to make a permanent league. Kebcllion, which a year before had been a contemptible pigmy, had now developed into a giant. Franklin had already been received with France supports enthusiasm in France at the new year of the Colocists. ,„__ ,. r ,1 i ■ 1/77 as the envoy of the American people. The pleasure taken in his -wTitings and thosa of Tom Paine was hardly lesa than that excited by Jefferson'fei rhetorical France supports the Colonies. 73 jDreamble to the Declaration of Independence. The delight expressed upon the receipt of the news of Burgoyne's defeat, early in December, 1777, culminated in the overt treaty of alliance which was signed and sealed between representatives of France and the United States just two months later. Fac- tion at home magnified the causes of dissatisfaction abroad. These were considerable, and were due in a measure to the narrow obstinacy and corruption of the king's system of government by influence. But they were exaggerated absurdly by alarmists who said that if America were subjugated England would not long remain Howe's Eecall. free. One good result of the growing dis- satisfaction was that Howe w^as recalled. He returned to England in May, 1778, richer in money than in laurels, and it was fairly said that the only bays he could enjoy were those which drew his coach. He was replaced by Clinton, a much better, if less amiable, soldier. During June and July, 1778, a last attempt v/as made at conciliation, North going so far as to propose the repeal of the obnoxious tea duty, the surrender of all taxation except for the regulation of trade, and the appointment of commissioners with full powers to put an end to hostilities, grant pardons, and treat with Congress on any terms short of independence. The refusal of Congress to Hsten to these Exasperation Proposals marked the end of the war in white gloves. By the way in which it treated Burgoyne's men after the surrender of Saratoga, Congress had already imported an uncivilised element into the war ; this was continued in the descents made by Clinton upon several parts of the American coast. At the ?ame time a more intense spirit of hatred and revenge began to animate the proceedings of the Whigs and revolutionaries on the one hand and the loyalists or Tories on the other. Ferocious, confiscatory, and other laws were passed by Congress, and ihe social boycott of Tory doctors, teachers and traders became complete. A good many loyalists were deported to the back country. Some were actually executed as traitors. Many escaped with retreating British armies and sought refuge in Canada, England and the West Indies. Had Clinton been able to prosecute the wearing out process with the same opportunities and the same military and naval resources that Howe had at his disposal, the proba- bihty is that he would have succeeded — at least for a time. 74 The War spreads. Nothing short of a huge army of occupa- the°War.°^ tion could have held the country for long now that the heart of the people had been alienated and the loyalists disarmed. But unfortunately for George, whose kingly obstinacy had by this time been seriously enlisted in the struggle, England was no longer able to contract the sphere of operations. The years 1778 and 1779 saw a gradual extension of the area of the war. Admiral D'Estaing, with a French fleet and some 4,000 men, began manoeuvring round Sandy Hook in the summer of 1778, and encouraged his American allies in a confident hope that Ehode Island was to be recovered forthwith. But eventually he sailed off for the West Indies without having accomplished anything. The Americans were furious, and many reflected upon the defection as a kind of retribution on them for having contracted an unholy alliance with the secular enemy. The same year, 1778, before its close witnessed an extension of the war westward, where the American, George Clarke, secured the newly settled districts and the old French forts of the Ohio valley for Con- gress, and southward, where the British had at length deter- mined to second the efforts of the loyalists, to occupy Georgia, and to make Charleston a new base of operations. Savannah was captured, and the combined effort of the French and Americans to retake it during the winter of 1778-9 proved a complete failure. The campaign of 1 780 was opened by Clinton with an attack u^Jon the hitherto impregnable fortress of Charleston. The success of the British fleet in entering the harbour sealed the fate of the town, and on May 12, 1780, the whole garrison (6,000 men) surrendered. In June, 1780, Clinton returned to New ^tlTtouih!' York, leaving Cornwallis to command in the Carolinas. The character of the war, of which the south was henceforth the principal scene, was now changed. The roadless swamps made heavy columns useless, and so for the flrst time we find two lightly equipped armies, well disciplined and well and energetically com- manded. On the British side, Cornwallis had shown that he had grasped the truth, so distasteful to Howe and Burgoyne, that if the rebellion were to be crushed it must ^^'g'^^ ^ ^^ crushed by a resolute, persistent and rapid series of blows. His opponent, Nathaniel Greene, was a skilled soldier, strong in military theory and second only to Washington as a commander. The loyalists Great Britain isolated hij European action. 75 in the south were eag^er for the revenge which now seemed assured. War was too often made the pretext for scenes of rapine and cruelty. Opposition in South Carolina could only be maintained on the frontiers. Congress sent a force in relief under Gates, " the hero of Saratoga," but this was routed at Camden, and Gates fled with a mere handful of men. The only rebel achievement to balance this was a frontier victory by guerilla troops over Ferguson, one of Corn- wallis's ablest colonels, at King's Mountain, October 7, 1780. This, however, was important, as it not only brought back a number of disheartened leaders again into the field, but it pre- cluded for the time at any rate any chance of Cornwall is advancing through the Carolinas and Virginia in order to join hands with Clinton. Early in 1781 Cornwallis lost an import- ant detachment of 800 under Tarleton, a good sectional com- mander, at Cowpens, and Cornwallis's victory over Greene at Guildford in February, 1781, in the course of his driving opera- tions, was equally if not even more costly. His small force had been successively weakened, and he depended more and more upon the co-operation of the navy for reinforcement and supply. It was now, therefore, that French aid uropean becanle supremely important. Subiect to Intervention. . ^ -^ f w i • <- i the staymg power or Washmgton, whose depot at Valley Forge had been again and again on the verge of dissolution, the future of America had in fact been decided by European diplomacy. The wished-for treaty between France and Spain, by which the latter country was to have Gibraltar and the right tank of the Mississippi was con- cluded on April 22, 1779. In the meantime, Frederick the Great persuaded Catherine of Russia to assert the " Armed Neutrality " against the English right of search and seizure of neutral commerce ; and France, Spain, N^^ t n^^ Prussia, Sweden, Denmark and other countries gladly promised their adherence. Holland, by aiding Paul Jones, the successful American privateer, by encouraging a scheme of alliance with America, and also by refusing to support England against France, as bound by treaty, provoked England to war. English naval supremacy was threatened at a time when the necessity of constant communication between Charleston and New York was most essential. Chatham's great plan of bottling up the French fleet at Brest or in the Mediterranean was 76 The Surrender of Cornwallis at YorUown. neglected with fatal results. The Comte de Grasse sailed with a large French fleet in March, 1781, and efiected a junction with a French naval force in the West Indies "^^Sel^PoweT^^ owing largely to Eodney's preoccupation with the loot of St. Eustatius, the great entrepot of smuggled goods, the spoil of which was estimated at four milHon pounds. The navy had the casting vote in the contest, and at the critical moment it allowed the French fleet to co- operate with the rebels. Cornwallis at- "^^ return to Cornwallis in the Caro- tempts the con- linas. This general, finding himself too quest of Virginia, weak to do anything further without rein- forcement, decided after February, 1781, to leave Carolina, efiect a junction with Benedict Arnold (who had transferred his services from Congress to George III.) in Virginia, and attempt the conquest of that province, apart from further aid from Clin- ton, who disliked the scheme, though it was approved by the Cabinet at home. Operations in Carolina were in consequence contracted to a defence of Charleston. Cornwallis and Arnold joined forces at Petersburg in Virginia on May 20, 1781. Washington and Eochambeau decided to reinforce Lafayette, against whom the operations of Cornwallis were primarily directed. This decision was affirmed by the uninterrupted control which the French fleet had obtained of Chesapeake Bay. A squadron, under Comte de Barras, had slipped in here while De Grasse was keeping the main British fleet in play outside (September 5, 1781). Cornwallis was manoemTed into a peninsula between the York and Yorktown. James rivers and entrenched himself at Yorktown. Washington and Lafayette were soon blocking the neck of the peninsula with 16,009 men, rather more than half of which were French. It was now merely a question of holding out in what proved to be the vain hope of relief. The defences of Cornwallis were battered to pieces by the hostile artillery, while his men were too much weakened by illness and privation to resist an onslaught (nearly 3,000 out of 7,000 were unfit for duty). Accordingly on October 19, 1781, Cornwallis surrendered Surrender * ^^^ ^^^^ force to the Americans, his seamen and ships to the French. The British fleet with Clinton and relief arrived five days later. Bewildered and depressed by rumours of disaster in every Bphore of a conflict against half the world in arms — Hyder Peace with Independence. 77 AH in India, Minorca taken, Gibraltar in extremities, the British West Indies melting away, Ireland turbulent and apparently spoiling for revolt — the English End of the War. Cabinet was incapable of reacting against such a shock. The king was overwhelmed, North resigned, and the American colonies were free. Rockingham was rapidly succeeded by Shelburne as premier, but Shelburne was equally anxious for peace, and a provisional treaty was signed on November 30, 1782, though this could not be fully operative until peace was made between Great Britain and America's alhes. This was simplified by the defeat of De Grasse by Rodney, and still more by that of the Spaniards and French at Gibraltar in September, 1782. Six months before England had seemed worsted in every quarter. Now, though defeated in America, she was victorious in Europe. The avowed object of France had been to secure the independence of the United States, and this point was now substantially gained. The chief object of Spain had been to expel the Eng- lish from Gibraltar, and this point was now decidedly lost. Neither of the conspirators in the end derived very much benefit from their vindictive and hypocritical league. Great Britain, which had seemed on the verge of utter ruin, got rid of an incubus, and secured a peace not wholly inglorious. Position of the ^^^ chioi advantage accrued to the Ameri- Independent cans, who had decided to set up house- Colonies, keeping for themselves, and had done it pretty easily, without exerting themselves to the utmost, but relying, as they safely could, upon the universal sympathy in Europe (based upon envy and hatred of Great Britain) which their efforts excited. That the movement was not pre- mature was shown by the germination of democratic ideas which went on during the conflict. These were soon to develop freely. But for the moment the condition of the colonists was unhappy. Cohesion among the Colonies seemed problem- atic. Congress was thoroughly discredited, and proved as unable to pay or reward its own veterans or carry out its obligations in regard to the private property of British subjects as it had been to fulfil its engagements with the veterans of Burgoyne. Elation was the last emotion experienced by Americans at the conclusion of the peace. The more heroic spirits among the rank and file had perished. The old colonial standards had vanished, leaving a void. It was difficult even to get together a quorum in Congress to ratify the peace. It 78 The United Etnpire Lo~ was at this crisis that the disinterested patriotism of Geoi'ge VVashingtou stood his country in most splendid stead. England completely falsified the prediction The Aftermath, that the loss of its Colonies would prove the beginning of a general collapse, nor did the power of the Crown suffer any such terrible eclipse from the failure as the Whigs had anticipated. The loss was a gain in disguise so far as military strength or commercial profit were concerned {see p. 232). If the Colonies could not be preserved as a clear field for trade monopoly, let them go and be confeder- ated was a sentiment as common as it was kingly ; and the decision once made, the first American minister, John Adams, was received by George III. with the utmost affability. The parting was inevitable, no doubt. What was deplorable was the whole manner of it, and the train of bitter animosity which it left behind. Lacking in imagination as to the future of the Colonies, as in knowledge and interest in their past. English- men luffled American feeling already sore by the profound indifference with which they treated the separation ; and American resentment, though it had far less rational basis, long survived that maintained by the Spanish colonists against their mother country. This was partly due, perhaps, to the British retention of Canada which Franklin had done his utmost to avert. Opinion in England might easily have been influenced in favour of withdrawal from the American continent altogether. But policy in this point was controlled by honour. The chief sufferers by the revolution were '^ ke^Lo^lliftr' *^^® American loyalists, the Emigres of the movement, but Emigres in this case for whom there was no hope of return. They represented a third of the population and far more than a third of the wealth of the com- munity. They were brave and honest men who were ])roud of the great and free Empire to which they belonged, who had no desire to shrink from the burden of maintaining it, who remembered with gratitude all the English blood that had been shed round Quebec and Montreal, and who, with nothing to hope for from the Crown, were prepared to face the most brutal mob violence and the invectives of a scurrilous Press, to risk their fortunes, their reputations, and sometimes even their lives, in order to avert civil war and ultimate separation. Most of them ended their days in poverty and exile, and as the supporters of a beaten cause history has paid but a scanty The United States of America. 79 tribute to tlieir memory; but they comprised some of the best and ablest men America has ever produced, and they were contending for an ideal which was at least as worthy as that for which Washington fought. But Congress would hear of no amnesty and mocked at the idea of indemnifying the van- quished party, who were called upon to testify their attach- ment to the old country and the old regime by going into exile. Thousands of them settled in Canada and Nova Scotia {see p. 263). Hundi-eds went to the West Indies. Some found posts in England. Sums to the extent of three and a half millions were disbursed by the British Government in their l)ehalf, but as is commonly the case with such disbursements, a clean distribution proved no easy matter. It is significant of the development of America ^iSerfnUation° *^^^^' ^P^^'^ from the radical lawyers and political pastors, the two chief groups who had effected its independence — namely, the Virginia squires, whose pride revolted against absentee government, and the Massachusetts yeomen, who were jealously apprehensive of the infringement oi their charter rights — should both have virtually disappeared in the course of the century that followed the war. For a time it seemed that the United States must evidently fulfd the manifest destiny of England to expand its language, laws, political and religious ideas and modes of thought. English thought had a great flowering time in New Eng- land sixty to seventy years after the revolt. Since that date the United States of America, a veritable colluvies (jentium, has become far more continental in thought and manner. Policy, law, education, religion and society are becoming rapidly less exclusively English, and new ideas in spelling may not improbably in the near futiu'e lead to an increasing deviation of literature and speech. CHAPTER VI. SCOTLAND. There are few more fruitful studies in com- Conflicting parative politics than the contrasts presented by England's relations with her American colonies and her relations with Scotland, Ireland and Wales. In all these multiform relations there have been fissiparous and solidifying tendencies at war with one another. In Ireland, and to a less extent in Wales, the centrifugal and centripetal forces have ever ebbed and flowed. In our last chapter we have seen the triumph of political differentiation and disunion : in the present we trace the gradual victory of the countervailing process of assimilation. The history of modern Scotland dates Scotland in 1707. from the Union with England in 1707. Before that time, Scotland was a poor and backward country, large portions of which were in a state of barbarism akin to that of Morocco to-day. Since the Union Scotland has made steady and even rapid progress in all the arts of civilisation, and now ranks as one of the richest countries, for its size, in the world. The first steps towards restoring order had been taken before the Union. The Presbyterian form of religion had been definitely recognised, and established by the State in 1690, and the long and painful struggle to revive Episcopacy on the English model was abandoned for ever. Later, in 1712, this settlement of the religious difficulty was completed by a Toleration Act, to protect the Episcopalians. A second vital reform had been effected in 1696, when the Estates ordained that every parish should provide a school- house and pay a schoolmaster. Elementary education was thus made universal in Scotland nearly two centuries before The Scottish Union and reaction. 81 England adopted a similar system, and the value of these parish schools in training the Scottish people cannot be over- estimated. But the Union had to be effected before Union ° Scottish energies could have free play. Tliis memorable treaty opened the trade with Eng- land and her Colonies to Scottish merchants, who had hitherto been shut out, save in the days of the Commonwealth {see pp. 54-5). For these trading privileges alone was Scotland willing to surrender her independence, and she made a good bargain. The two parties were very unequally matched. In population Scotland had perhaps only 1,200,000 to the (),000,000 in England and Wales. In revenue Scotland had, after raising her land tax to the English scale, about £160,000, when England and Wales had over £5,600,000 ; the Scottish land tax was to bring in about a fortieth as much as the land tax yielded in England- — or half as much as was j)aid by Norfolk alone. To compensate Scotland for assuming even so trivial a share of the joint national debt, England gave her £400,000. Scottish representation at Westminster was not, moreover, determined on a basis of wealth. Scotland sent forty-five members to the House of Commons and sixteen representative peers, elected for each Parliament, to the House of Lords — forming, roughly a twelfth of each branch of the legislature. The Union, like all great measures, evoked Reaction. much resentment. The loss of independence, though it did not affect the Established Presbyterian Church or the Law, rankled in many minds, and brought a considerable accession of strength to the Jacobite cause. The Episcopalian Church favoured the Pretender, whose father and uncle had tried so hard to con- firm its privileges now lost. The Highland clans were divided by ancient feuds ; the Campbells under the Duke of Argyll supported the Government, but most of the other clans were Jacobite at heart. In the Lowlands many people, who would take no active part in a rising, had for the old Stuart House a sentimental affection, which became stronger after the death of Anne, and the accession of a German-speaking King. Edinburgh suffered by the closing of the Parliament House, and the consequent emigration of many rich people to London. The increase of taxation necessitated by the terms of the Union was keenly felt, since trade did not grow immediately nor benefit all classes alike. Moreover, the free importation The Jacobite rebellions. of English goods caused some temporary loss to Scottish manufacturers. The extension of the English malt tax to Scotland in 1713 was violently denounced. The tax was so un- popular and so burdensome that it could not be levied. Wal- pole then suggested an alternative excise on beer^but finally enforced the malt tax, despite the riots in Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1725. The high duties on French goods led to smuggling, which was not condemned by public opinion ; the lynching of C'aptain Porteous at Edinburgh in 1730 arose out of the execution of a smuggler. All these causes combined to encourage the Jacobite party in their schemes Division in Scot- j^^ ^^^^^^ g^^^ ^ ^^j ^j j^- f ^7^5 ^nd tish opinion. Trr^,- <• -i t t 1 • r 1745 failed to enlist the active support of the nation as a whole. The gulf between Highlands and Lowlands, or between Presbyterians and Episcopalians, was too wide in either case to be bridged. The commercial class wanted peace, and the established Kirk regarded the Stuarts with traditional distrust ; without the help of these important sections, the Jacobite party could not resist the English army. Moreover, the Highlanders who formed the bulk of the insurgent arm.y in both risings were feared and despised by the Ijowlanders, who had for centuries suffered from their lawless raids into the plains. Much as the Hano- verian rule was disliked, it was felt to be preferable to the anarchy of the old Stuart days. The Jacobite rebellions afforded the Govern- o/the^nf hbnds ^^®'^* ^^^ opportunity for dealing with the problem of the Highlands, which Crom- well and Monk had conquered but had not had time to subdue. After the rising of 1715-G was over, an Act was passed for disarming the clans. It proved ineffective, but the roads constructed by General Wade between 1726 and 1737 to connect the various military stations — Eoads. such as Fort William, built by Monk, and Fort Augustus, erected by Wade himself — made the Highland glens for the first time accessible to regular troops, and thus weakened the power of the clans. An armed police, knov>^n as the Black Watch, was recruited from the loyal clansmen to check highway robbery and cattle-lifting, which were especially prevalent at this time. After the final rout of the Jacobites at Culloden in 174G, drastic measures were taken to pacify the Highlands once for all. The rebels were mercilessly hunted down by General Hawley, under the direc- TJie pacification of the Hit/Jdands. 83 tion of the Duke of Cumberland. The insurgent cliiefs were executed or driven into banishment, and their estates were confiscated — tlie rents going to form a fund for developing the Highlands. A more stringent Disarming Act was passed and enforced. The wearing of the Highland dress was forbidden under severe penalties. More important still, by Lord Hard- Hereditary wicke's Acts of 1747, the hereditary juris- Jurisdictions dictions of the chiefs, though expressly re- abolished, gg^.^g^ ^y ^j^g 4^^ Qf Union, were abolished together with the distinctive Highland clan tenure, and the ordinary judicial, police and land system of Scotland was extended to the Highlands. The chiefs, who received about £150,000 as compensation for their lost privileges, became land- lords, the clansmen their tenants, and the interests of the two classes rapidly diverged. The landlords soon ^nlfLamlbrdf ^^g^^^ *« ^^^^^^ ^^^^'"^ ^^'^^^ ' ^^'^ ^^^ ^'^^^- ants, who were as a rule indifferent cultiva- tors, could not pay and were evicted to make room for new men, or, as was frequently the case, for sheep which began to replace black cattle in the Highlands. Many High- landers emigrated to America ; many took service in the Highland regiments raised by Pitt during the Seven Years' War. The (Jliurch made special efforts to educate the children. The whole situation changed so rapidly that the Highlands under George III. were as peaceful as any other pait of Scotland, as D]-. Johnson found when he made his tour to the Hebrides in 1773. The Government, however, did not deem it prudent to allow of the enrolment of a Scottish Militia \mtil 1797, though the suspicion thus cast on the loyalty of the Scottish people was much resented. Freed from the Highland menace, the Prosperity of the L^^j^j^j^ from 1750 onwards experienced Lowlands. . , , r -,*;.! a contuiuous growth of prosperity. At the ITiuon Edinburgh, the largest town in Scotland, had only 30,000 inhabitants ; Glasgow had only half as many, Aberdeen and Dundee barely a third. The only im- portant manufacture was that of linen, and even this was sorely hampered by the restrictions placed on its export by the English Navigation Acts. Agriculture, even in the Lowlands, was in a very backward state, as compared with that of Eng- land. The Union, in opening trade with England and the American colonies, gave new impetus to Scottish industry. Glasgow at once took a livelv interest in the tobacco trade. 84 Economic development of Scotland. and was able in 1718 to send ships of her own across the Atlantic. Linen weaving, hitherto a home industry, began to be carried on in factories at Glasgow, while Industries *^^® neighbouring Paisley became noted for its thread and its shawls. Calico printing was introduced at Glasgow in 1742. Perth began to be famous for its dyeing houses and bleach works, Dundee for its sailcloth. These and other industries were encouraged by the Board of Trustees for Manufactures, established in 1727,and endowed with £2,000 a year under a clause of the Treaty of Union. The towns of central Scotland grew rapidly. Glasgow trebled its population in eighty years, and laid the foundations of its future success both as a port and as a manufacturing centure. The dredging of the Clyde was begun ; by 1775 ships of light draught could reach the Broomielaw. A canal joining Clyde and Forth was made at the instance of the Board of Manufacturers (1762-8). Soon the Glasgow district began to rival Lancashire in the textile trades. New Lanark was founded by David Dale. The steam engine was used as a motive power in cotton spinning from 1792. Turkey-red dyeing became an important industry. The coal and iron mines of Lanark and Ayrshire were developed. In 1760 the famous Carron Works were established to smelt native iron ore, and from these beginnings sprang the vast engineering trades of the Clyde. A little steamboat was constructed by Symington as early as 1803, and Bell's Comet propelled itself by steam on the Clyde in 1812. While industry was thus leaping ahead, Agriculture, agriculture was being transformed by the patient endeavours of various societies, and of public-spirited landowners, assisted by the fact that every Scottish farmer, however poor, had had a sound elementary education at his parish school. The Society of Improvers in Agriculture was at work in the Low- lands from 1723 ; the Highland Society performed similar services for the ruder north from 1784. English farmers were engaged to teach the tenantry ; Elnglish ploughs were imported to supersede the primitive implements hitherto in use. The potato was grown on a large scale from about 1740 ; the turnip was introduced later. Much distress and discontent was occasioned by the growth of sheep farmmg, which led, as in the Highlands, to many harsh evictions, attended in' Galloway by riot. The dispossessed tenants drifted to the towns or Political lethargy. emigrated. But the farming class was, as a whole, much richer at the end of the eighteenth century than it had been at the begimiing, and the State had now begun to show an interest in the farmer's welfare, through the Board of Agriculture of which Sir John Sinclair was the leading spirit. After Culloden, Scotland sank into politi- Conditions. ^^^ torpor. The old electoral system, which had, like the Church and the courts, been unaffected by the Union, was based on a very narrow franchise. The thirty members representing the Scottish counties at Westminster had in 1788 a total electorate of about 2,600. On an average, there were eighty electors in each country ; Aberdeen had as many as one hundred and seventy- eight, Bute as few as twelve. The franchise v/as restricted to those who held land directly of the Crown — or, as in Sutherland, of a feudal magnate owning a whole shire — and whose estates were, if of ^FrlncTise^ recent origin, worth £400 a year or, if of ancient descent, worth about £100 a year. By a technical device, the " superiority " or tenure-in-chief entitling to the franchise might exist apart from the land. By making fictitious grants of parcels of his land, securing fresh Crown charters for the grantees, and then obtaining from them a regrant of the actual lands in question, a great landlord could, and often did, create faggot voters. These holders of " naked superiorities " appear at the end of the century to have formed nearly half the electorate. The great landlords through them exercised a preponderating influence over the county elections. The ordinary farmers had nothing to do with politics. It was much the same in the burghs. Edinburgh returned one member, and the sixty-five other royal burghs, arranged in groups, returned The Burghs, fourteen members. But there was no popular election. The burgh members were chosen by the corporations, which were for the most part self-elected oligarchies and which gradually fell under the control of the Crown or of neighbouring landowners. In 1831 it was calcu- lated that only 1,303 persons had even a nominal share in all the burgh elections. More votes were cast at a single by- election in Westminster than in a Scottish general election. With a franchise like this it was easy for the Government to manage and control Scottish representation. The Duke of Queensberry at the Union, John Duke of Argyll and his 86 Scottish Memhers of Parliament. brother, the Earl of Islay (later Duke t»f Argyll), under Walpole and Newcastle, and Henry Dundas (later Lord Melville), under George III., acted successively Patronage and ^^ ^j^^^ Americans would call the political Lorruption. ,1 <• oi i i t i • r • boss 01 Scotland, it was their busmess not only to see that the constituencies re'urned friends of the Government but also to buy over and keep in good humour the Scottish members as a body. Dundas, who described him- self once as "a cement of political strength " for Pitt's ministry, showed pecuHar skill in managing the Scottish repre- sentatives. In 1802, for instance, he arranged matters so that, out of the 45 Scottish members returned, only two were Whigs. The secret of his success lay not so much in his personal charm of manners as in his command of patronage, which he used solely for political purposes. He was for many years the dominant member of the Board of Control for India, established by Pitt in 1784. Adventurous young Scotsmen who desired employment under the East India Company had to apply to Dundas, through a Scottish member, and were appointed for the member's sake. It was the same in each office that Dundas held by turns. In the army, the navy, the colonial service, he found innumerable posts for friends and dependents of his Scottish colleagues ; he did not disdain, when his own patronage list ran short, to importune fellow ministers to give places to Scotsmen in whom he was interested. The public services were thus filled with educated young men who had no chance of a career in Scotland, and at the same time the Scottish members were kept faithful to the Government. However, they were not unmindful of their L'oui'hSelbers.'^"^"*):'?' ^^^^^ ^lioagh they voted for any cabinet that was m power and were soundly abused by English contemporaries for their ser- vility and lack of principle, they always acted as a body in opposing any scheme for increasing taxes in Scotland or in securing an equal share with England of any reforms that might be attempted. They were quick to resent any slight on Scotland ; thus when after the Porteous riots the angry Court desired to humiliate Edinburgh by removing its gates, the Scottish members, though obedient and mostly well paid followers of Walpole, raised so strong an opposition that the punitive measures had to be reduced to a mere fine. It must be said, too, that Scotland did not stand in such need of social reform as England, inasmuch as the old Scottish Estates had in 'Movements of Public Opinion. 87 the generation before 1707 adopted many useful measures. A Poor Law of 1672 permitted parishes to rate themselves for poor relief, and collections were regularly taken at the church doors for the same object. The land laws were comparatively liberal, and the local courts were fairly accessible and cheap. There were occasional murmurs from the Iviots. body politic. Thus GlasgOAV, almost alone among the burghs, protested against the American war, which ruined her trade with the Colonies. In 1773 there had been " meal mobs " on Tayside — riots of town artisans Avho thought that the high price of bread was due to the excessive export of grain. In 1779 there were serious riots in Edinburgh and Glasgow, caused by dislike of the proposed measure for abolishing Catholic disabilities ; but these dis- turbances were not so dangerous as the Gordon riots in London in 1780. These were rare exceptions to the political lethargy that generally prevailed. The withdrawal of the prohibition against wearing the tartan in 1783 and the restoration of the forfeited Jacobite estates in 1784 removed much soreness among the old Highland gentry. Economic development and ecclesiastical controversy occupied the attention of the Scottish people to the exclusion of politics for many years after the Forty-five. The French Revolution was not withont /crftatioi ^^'^ ^^^^^ °*^ Scotland, as on other countries. " * In December, 1792, Edinburgh was startled by the holding of a Convention organized by the Society of Friends of the People, which was in touch with the Jacobin Club at Paris. It was the first meeting of the un- enfranchised that had been held in Scotland for generations, and it excited much alarm among the governing class. Thomas Muir, a young advocate who was vice-president of the Society and took the lead at the meeting, was tried in August, 1793, and sentenced to fourteen years' transportation for sedition. Other delegates also received heavy sentences ; Fysslie Palmer, an English Unitarian minister at Dundee, was among them. The movement was checked for the time, but the sedition trials sowed discontent, which was voiced by Henry Erskine, Dean of Faculty, or leader of the Scottish Bar, and a few other Whigs, and which ultimately grew into an agitation for Parliamentary reform. Party feeling ran so high that Erskine was not re-elected Dean by his fellow advocates in 1796. But the Whig revival continued and was much assisted The Political Revival of Scotland. by the Edinburgh Review, founded in 1802 by Sydney Smith, and edited after the first few months by Jeffrey. The distress caused by bad trade after 1815 accentuated the discontent. Weavers' strikes in 1812 had already shown that new problems wore arising out of the industrial movement, as in England. The Manchester tumult of " Peterloo," 1819, had its Scottish counterpart in a working men's demonstration at Bonnymuir, outside Glasgow, in 1820, which was checked by an imposing but perhaps unnecessary show of force, and for taking part in which three men were tried and hanged. Another sign of the awakening of Scottish opinion to the questions of the day, was the evangelical and social work of Chalmers among the Glasgow poor (1815-23). At last in 1832 Scotland shared with Eng- ^''EeTrm'^'^ land and Ireland the benefits of the Eeform Act. For the first time in history Scotland was now given popular representation. In the counties £10 freeholders and £50 leaseholders received the fran- chise. The holders of " naked superiorities," less fortu- nate than the English borough owners, were refused com- pensation for the loss of their rights. In the burghs £10 leaseholders were to elect the members. Eight additional burgh seats were created. Edinburgh was allotted two members ; Glasgow, hitherto sharing one member with three other and much smaller burghs, was to have two members of its own ; Perth, Aberdeen and Dundee were to return one apiece. Three of the old royal bm'ghs were merged in counties ; the remaining fifty-eight, in groups, were to elect sixteen members. A year later the burgh administration was drastically reformed by the Scottish Municipal Corporations Act, under which ratepayers were to elect the councillors who had hitherto elected each other. From this time Scotland took as active a ^LTlmpo^rfance!"^!^^^^ ^^ ^"tish poHtics as any other part of the United Kingdom and its members were divided by the ordinary party lines. It was signifi- cant of a complete change of sentiment that when Lord Aberdeen became Premier in 1852, no one complained of him because he was a Scotsman ; nearly a century before Lord Bute, on assuming office, had been assailed with coarse invective as much on account of his nationality as for his subservience to George III. and his mother. Fifty-three years later, one Scotsman, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, The Religious Revival. succeeded another, Mr. A. J. Balfour, in the highest office of the Crown. Scottish influence at Westminster increased through the nineteenth century with the growtli of the popu- lation. Under the Reform Act of 1867, Scotland gained seven members — two for the counties, one for the Border Burghs, one more apiece for Glasgow and Dundee, and two for the Scottish Universities, which were now represented for the first time in the House of Commons. The Redistribution Act of 1885 gave Scotland twelve more members, bringing the total to seventy-two ; thirty-nine sit for the counties, thirty- one for the burghs ; Glasgow has seven members, Edinburgh four, Dundee and Aberdeen two apiece. . The franchise was widened in 1867 and 1885 throughout the kingdom {see p. 163). Parallel with the political revival and R^evlval^ not unconnected with it came a great re- ligious revival, which occupied the Scottish public through many years of the nineteenth century. The Established Presbyterian Church had not included all Presbyterians from the outset, and it suffered from various small secessions duiing the eighteenth century. These were mainly due to dislike of the Acts of Anne (1711-12) requiring Presbyterians as well as Episcopalians to abjure the Pretender, and restoring the right of lay patrons to nominate ministers. Some opponents of lay patronage, headed by the brothers Erskine, seceded after 1732 and formed the Lay Patronage. Associate Presbytery, which was especially strong in Fife and the neighbouring counties ; others left the Church in 1761 and formed the Relief Pres- bytery. A strong minority within the Church continued to assert the universal right of presbyteries to choose their ministers, and resented the intrusion of men nominated bv patrons. Thomas Chalmers, whose preaching did much, as he hoped, to " excavate the heathen " of Glasgow, between 1815 and 1823, took the lead of the Evangelical or Non- intrusion party in the General Assembly from 1828, wlien he became Professor of Divinity at Edinburgh. The reform of the burgh corporations, which had a share in electing to the General Assembly, indirectly helped the Evangelicals to secure a fuller representation on that body. In The Veto Act. 1^34 they carried in the Assembly the Veto Act, which encouraged the presbyteries to mak<; full use of their formal right to confirm nominations made by patrouy, iind thus convert that right into a veto, Tho legality 90 The Free Kith. of the Veto Act as affecting patrons' rights was denied by the Court of Session in the Auchterarder case, 1838. Lord Kinnoul had nominated a Mr. Young to this parish ; the majority of the presbytery had refused to " call " him, but without assigning a reason. It was held by the court that such a refusal was invalid. The House of Lords in 1839 con- firmed this decision. Nevertheless, the General Assembly cou' '^^^o^lsS'*^^^" tinned to encourage presbyteries to thwart the lay patrons, and it imposed disciplinary measures on those ministers and presbyteries that favoured lay patronage, or, as in the Strathbogie case, that obeyed the court. The judges for their part issued injunctions against the refractory Assembly and its adherents. The Church and the law were in direct antagonism. Peel's Government declined to change the law, or to consider the Claim of Eight formulated by the Assembly in 1842. The Royal letter to the Assembly of 1843 bluntly reminded the Scottish Church that it was established by law and owed its rights and property to law, and that it could not place itself above the law. This letter, dated May 15, removed all hope of a compromise. Three days later, when the General iissembly met, the retiring Moderator, Dr. Welsh, read the Protest drawn up in 1842, and then left the hall, followed by Chalmers, Candlish, Brown, and hundreds of other resolute Evangelicals. The seceders marched in procession through the streets to Tanfield Hall, and there constituted the The Free Kirk, first Free Assembly, with Chalmers ; as its first Moderator. '" We are not Voluntaries," • said Chalmers in his address : " we quit a vitiated Church ; we should rejoice in returning to a pure one." About 450 ministers resigned their offices and stipends in the Establishment to join the Free Church thus solemnly founded. The disruption took from the Established Church many oi its ablest and most earnest ministers, and a large proportion of its congi-egations, especially in the Highlands. The new Church was speedily organized on a secure basis through the efforts of Chalmers ; in the first year of its existence, £382,000 was raised for its sustentation fund, its schools and its missions, and for the new churches that had to be built. When Chalmers died, in 1847, the future of the Free Church was already assured. In the year of his death, another considerable Church outside the Establishment v/as formed by the union of Other Presh/ferian churches. \\] several older bodies of aeceders in the United Presbyterian Church. This was based on the Voluntary principle and re- pudiated all connection with the State ; the byterian^Cbt^rch; fo^^^ders of the Free Church, on the other hand, ' believed in Establishment, holding that the State should maintain the Church but that the Church should be free to make her own laws and determine her own doctrines. The difference between the two Churches was illustrated when the Free Church accepted State grants for denominational schools from 1846-7, while the United Presbyterian Church declined them. As time passed, however, Voluntaryism gained ground in the Free Church. Lay patronage was abolished in the Established Church by an Act of 1874, but the reform had come too late to bring back the Free Churchmen. On October 31, 1900, after long negotiations, the majoritv Amakamation ^^ .^'^^ '^''% ^^"^'^^^ amalgamated with the of the Free and United Presbyterians m what has since been United Presby- styled the United Free Church. A minoritv of terian Churches. Yvee Churchmen declined to abandon the" old Covenanting tenets, and, in a law suit which was taken to the House of Lords, established their technical right to the propertv of the Free Church. The Government now intervened. ■ A Royal Commission reported in April, 1905, that the remnant of the Free Church was too small to carry on the work done by the whole Church before 1900, and that a statutory Com- mission should be appointed to divide the Church property between the majority and the minority. A Bill giving effect to these recommendations was passed in the same year, and the Commission has since divided the buildings and funds be- tween the old Free Church and the new United Free Church. By the same Bill the Established Church was released from the formula prescribed for all ministers by the Act of 1693, and was left free to define its confession of faith for itself — a second point in the old Evangelical programme, not less im- portant than the abolition of lay patronage. The Established Church, momentarily stunned by the Disruption, had very soon recovered itself, and in the last sixty years has rivalled the non-established Churches in energy, scholarship and breadth of view. It claims about half the population as adherents. In the nineteenth century Scotland >^hared bw'SJTre^ss *^ ^^^® ^^^ ^^ ^^® economic and social prc- gress of Great Britain. Her population had grown by at least a third since the Union, and was 92 The Development of tjie Clyde. in 1801 returned at 1,608,420. By 1901 it had grown nearly three-fold to 4,472,103. In that year, for the first time in history, Scotland was more populous than Ireland, which a hundred years before had had four times as many inhabitants as the northern kingdom. This vast increase of population was due to the continued growth of manufactures in Southern Scotland, and especially in the Clyde valley, which gradually rose to the first j)lace as a ship-building centre. One notable pioneer of the modern Clyde shipping industry was George Burns, who ran a fleet of steamships from 1830, and who, Clyde Shipping, in conjunction with Samuel Cunard, founded the Cunard Atlantic service, carrying the American mails, in 1840, with four steamers built by Napier. The first screw-steamer was built on the Clyde in 1850 ; ten years later the first Clyde-built ironclad was launched at Go van ; and in 1874 the first steel warship was launched at Dumbarton. An enormous industry, lining the Clyde below Glasgow with shipbuilding yards, has developed from these beginnings ; the Tyne alone can rival it. The engineering trades of the Clyde have had a parallel Railways. growth, encouraged by the spread of rail- ways from 1827, when a steam railroad for carrying minerals was opened near Glasgow. Edinburgh and Glasgow were connected by rail in 1842, Edinburgh and Berwick in 184G. Five companies now work nearly 4,000 miles of railways in the country. The Forth Bridge, completed in 1889, is the most remarkable of many modern engineering triumphs in Scotland. The census of 1901 showed that 186,108 persons were engaged in the various Scottish iron and steel industries — nearly half as many more than were employed twenty years earlier ; about half the number were living in Lanarkshire. Mining at the same date afforded occu- Coal Iron and ^^-^^^ f^^, ^^^^^^ 112,000 people ; the Scottish other Industries. -t^ , . . ' • i , i r ,i coal mmers formed an eighth of the army of British coal miners. The cotton trades of Lanark, Ayr and Renfrew employed 27,850 persons, the woollen trade of the Border counties 27,400, the flax and linen trades, chiefly in Forfar and Fife, 28,850, and the silk trade, mainly in Lanark, 2,800 ; but these numbers showed a con- siderable decrease since 1881. Other important industries are leather, in Lanark and Edinburgh ; paper, in Edinburgh, Lanark and Aberdeen ; chemicals, in Lanark and Ayr ; glas - Industrial Scotland and the Highlands. and pottery, rubber and vulcanite, in Edinburgh ; floorcloth, in Kirkcaldy ; and mineral oil products, in Linlithgow and Lanark. Glasgow, the centre and mainspring of Clyde industry, has multiplied its inhabitants five- Glasgow, fold since the Reform Bill. Then it was a town of about 150,000 people, or thrice as many as it had in 1785 ; at the close of 1907 the city had a popula- tion of 803,187, and was thus the second largest city in the British Empire (excluding India). Its municipal policy has been peculiarly bold and enterprising since 18G6. In 1906 Glasgow stood fourth on the list of British ports in respect of the value of goods imported and exported. At the close of 1907 Edin- burgh had 341,967 inhabitants, Aberdeen and Dundee about 175,000 each, Paisley 79,363. As in other civilised States, the urban population of Scotland has grown far more rapidly than the rural ; in 1901 nearly 70 per cent, of the people lived in towns. The Highlands have not shared in the The Highlands, general prosperity. Since 1847, when Queen Victoria set the fashion by going to stay in the Highlands, they have become a popular holiday resort, and large tracts have been set apart for deer forests. The crofting population suffered much through the failure of the kelp industry, rendered obsolete by the progress of chemical science, and latterly has been placed under the special care of a Congested Districts Board, which endeavours to promote agriculture and fishing in the Highland counties. It may be added that the old Gaelic language is still spoken by more than half the people in Ross and Cromarty, Inverness and Argyll, but most of those who speak Gaelic know English too. In the whole of Scotland in 1901 28,106 persons were returned as speaking Gaelic only ; but 202,700 spoke both Gaelic and English. The figures attest the thoroughness of the work done by schools and church missions in civilising the Highlands since 1745. Among the social changes of the nineteenth • ■^EducrtTor'^ century in Scotland the development of a poor law system and the progress of educa- tion are perhaps the m.cst notable. Poor relief was volun- tary under the old law of 1672, but when the towns began to increase rapidly in population, the voluntary system proved inadequate. In 1840 it was found that half the population was living^in^ parishes wheie^no compulsory assessment for 04 Poor-laws, Education and S'elf-Governm.ent. relief had been adopted. The potato famine of 1845, from which Glasgow and the Highlands suffered severely, demon- strated the need for the general and compulsory Poor Law which was enacted in 1845 ; the pauperism existing in 1855-9 was estimated at about 4 per cent, of the population, but it is now barely half as much, though the cost of relief has doubled. In education Scotland has fully maintained the lead which the enlightened policy of her old Parliament had given her. '^rhe parish schools which had existed since 1090, together with the four ancient Universities of St. Andrew's, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, had made Scot- Universities, land an educated nation. It was the task of the nineteenth century to improve and develop this admirable system. The Universities were reorganised in 1858 and in 1890 by Commissions, and were much strengthened both by State grants and by private muni- ficence ; the Carnegie trust of £2,000,000, for promoting university education, has been the largest of many gifts from public spirited Scotsmen. The elementary schools have since 1872 been administered by elected School Boards, the character of the religious teaching being detexmined locally. Many secondary and technical schools have been founded, and those of old foundation have been much improved, so that Scotland now possesses an educational system which may compare with that of any other country. The special needs of Scotland continue to be T a'^i^t recognised by special legislation. The office " ' of Secretary for Scotland, combined with that of Lord Advocate after the Union, was revived in 1885, and for some years the work of examining private Bills has been done by Commissions sitting in the Scottish cities instead of by a Parliamentary Committee at Westminster. After two cen- turies, Scotland enjoys to the full all the rights that she retained at the Union, and has also benefited to a remarkable degree by the close and friendly intercourse with England that the Union rendered possible for the first time. The suc- cess of that measure has been largely due to the fact, that under the 'ormal and legal supremacy of the Imperial Parlia- ment, Scotland has been practically gove ned by Scotsmen and in accordance with Scottish ideas. CHAPTER VI r. IRELAND. Brief reference has already been made to the nominal con- quest of Ireland under Henry II., to its real conquest under Elizabeth, and to the circumstances under which it recovered its legislative independence in 1782 {see pp. 45, 52-4, 59-62). For the last seventeen years of the eighteenth The Irish Union, century the only link between the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland was the fact that George III. wore the crown of both. On an important ques- tion, the Regency of the Prince of Wales owing to the incapacity of the unfortunate king through insanity, the two Parliaments had taken opposing views. The French Revolution, which had little effect on popular opinion in England, had in Ireland inspired the men who led the Rebellion of 1798 in alliance with the revolutionary leadei-s of France, Under these cir- cumstances it is not surprising that Pitt should have fallen back on the old idea of Union. England and Scotland had become one country. Why should the process of amalgama- tion rest here ? The Irish Act of Union passed the Parliaments of both countries, and with the birth of the new century was born a iiew country — " The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland." Unfortunately, the old problems remained and the old quarrels continued. It is clear that the international position Defects of the ^^^^^^^ -^ impossible for Pitt to see any other •Union. , . ^^ ^^ . ,. ■ • alternative to Union. But m one respect, Pitt is justly blameworthy. The greatest bribe, and one he very properly offered, was not paid. This was the eman- cipation of the Catholics from the last fetters of that savage " Penal Code '.' which had once treated thern as if they 96 Ireland since the Union. had been noxious beasts. As long as no Catholic could sit in Parliament, only a fraction of Ireland was united to Great Britain. In other respects, too, the Union M^as incomplete at first and was only completed by steps that were deeply injurious to Ireland. Still further, Ireland was throughout the nineteenth century the object of special legislation — very different from that applied to Scotland — by the United Parliament. She has received equal treatment only where equal treatment has been hardest for her to bear, namely, in the yearly budgets since 1853. That there has been no real union is proved by the simple fact that at the present time four-fifths of the Irish members demand " Home Kule " for Ireland. The instinct of race, the feeling that a separate nation should have a separate government, even hatred for England — a sad though perfectly natural heritage from a past which is discreditable to us — all combine to create this demand. The Irish say, and there is no gainsaying the statement, that England has either never understood Irish problems or, imderstanding them, has resisted the solutions demanded by the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of Ireland, and has only grudgingly and in a piecemeal fashion conceded them, not to expedite justice, but to conciliate anger and to dimmish the motives for that form of retaliation which English law calls crime but Irish opinion far too readily con- dones as warfare. On the other hand is another fact which The Irish again admits of no dispute. In the interests of Ireland, just as much as in her own interests, Great Britain cannot permit Ireland to be an independent country. As such she would be the easy prey of the first great power that quarrelled with her, or the facile tool of the first to quarrel with Great Britain. The history of the foreign relations of Scotland before the Union of the Crowns in 1603, is too full of warning to be misunderstood. The geographical position of Ireland makes political union with the larger island inevitable. '" The ocean," said Grattan, " protests against separation, and the sea against union," and if the improve- ments in the means of communication have weakened the protest of the sea, the policy of foreign nations has tended to strengthen that of the ocean. The Irish question is obviously a difficult one, but the nineteenth century made it easier by putting out of court two impossible solutions. Political independeuctj has now no supporters worth »;onciliation or The Irish Difficulty. 97 argument, even if they were open to either. On the otlier hand , the need of Ireland for special treatment and the capacity of Irishmen to apply it are being more and more widely recog- nised. It is no longer a sign of weakness — or worse— to hold that Ireland should be governed by Irish ideas. The records of Colonial stability, resourcefulness and patriotism are steadily creating an impression nearer home, and the em- phatic expressions of Colonial opinion in favour of a more generous Irish policy have helped to make Ireland the object of national endeavour rather than of party recrimination. Sir John Davies, an Englishman who held Ireknr ^"S^^ °^°® ^^ Ireland, wrote in 1G12 his " Dis- coverie " of the reasons why English rule in Ireland had hitherto failed. They were two in number : Ireland had never been thoroughly conquered and had never been equitably treated. There was never an English force competent to hold all Ireland, and therefore to kill the " mere Irishry " was held to be no crime, since it only diminished the odds against the English. The alternative throughout has been to plant in Ireland an " English garrison," not of soldiers but of landlords and officials. Thus there were two Ireiands : the one native and Catholic, depiived of all influ- en(4e in the government and despoiled of nearly all proprietary rights in the soil ; the other British by birth or extraction, Protestant, official and landowning. The two groups were never quite exclusive, especially in commercial and industrial circles ; influential leaders of the garrison and advocates of the English connection have been Catholic landlords. Great leaders of the Irish do not fit into the classification : O'Con- nell and Parnell, both considerable landlords, belonged to different religions, and Thomas Davis, a fine poet and great journalist, was a Protestant member of the professional classes. This notwithstanding, the two Ireiands stand in clear contrast. But this division is not complete ; it applies Ulster. to more than three-quarters of Ireland, but not to half of Ulster. There live Protestants who are not official and a tenantry which is not Catholic. The Plantation of Ulster {see p. 53) involved an extrusion of natives almost as extensive as the extermination of the Red Indians from the North American Colonies. It was the only part of Ireland really colonised, and Irish history would have been more peaceful and Irish problems less complex, if the same ruthless methods had either been applied throughout ^(8 Orange and Green. the island or not applied at alL As it was, side by side with the mercurial imaginative Celt was planted a population dour, thrifty, matter-of-fact, alien in race, religion, temperament and tongue ; and Ireland was cursed with a hatred sometimes smouldering, sometimes fanned to massacre and war. In 1641 the natives massacred their intruding taskmasters ; in 1649, at Drogheda and Wexford, Cromwell's soldiers massacred their rival rebels. In 1689 the Catholic Celts rose against the Protestant Scots and English, and in 1690 the latter retaliated under William of Orange at the JBoyne. It was civil war in Ireland, and Orange became the emblem of the antipatliy between the north-east and the rest of the Emerald Isle. The antagonism is not so brutal as it was, and the growth of com- mon interests among the working classes has modified religious hatred. But Ulster still sends Members to Parliament to resist the demands of the rest of Ireland, and to repudiate not only the government of Ireland by Irishmen but its govern- ment by Englishmen according to Irish ideas. At the side of the Irish shamrock flourishes the Scottish thistle's seed. Li 1801, it was only English Ijeland that iTeland.' *° '"'^^ i'«^^^>' ^^"^^^^ ^^ ^^^^t Britain simply because it had never been really sundered from it. Deliberate oppression of Irish Ireland and avowed preferential treatment of English Ireland almost cea'sed with the Union, but the inequalities and inequities whicli existed in 1801 were not for a long time freely removed. The political history of Ireland in the nineteenth century is con- cerned with the way in which the Irish people and the Irish representatives at Westminster have wrung concession after concession from British Cabinets. The weapons have been crime and agitation in Ireland, and Parliamentary opposition in London. By fair means and foul, Ireland has occupied the lion's share of public attention and Parliamentary discussion, and with beneficial results to herself. In forming an opinion on the methods of the Irish agitators, it should be remem- bered that both Peel and Gladstone acknowledged the effec- tiveness of those which were offensive cr criminal. The first great victory was Catholic eman- EmandpaUon. cipation. The Penal Code had been dropped or discarded, but in all parts of the United Kingdom Catholics were still under weighty disabilities. They could^ not, for example, sit in either House of Parliament ; tHey could not hold certain offices. These disabilities were the Roman CathoUc Emancipation. 99 relics of former antagonisms, and came down from a time when they were regarded as necessary safeguards in a Protestant country against the political claims of an alien church. It was, however, a more important question in Ireland, and the Irish under the leadership of Daniel O'Connell established in 1823 a powerful organisation which set the first example of peaceful, constitutional agitation. O'Connell was a typical Irishman, with the organising genius and political astuteness of an Englishman. He built up his Catholic Association on the basis which comprehended nearly all Ireland — the peasants led by their parish priests. The Government proscribed it, and he reformed it, with his keen legal mind, by a flimsy evasion of the words of the Act that deceived nobody though it thwarted the Government. A considerable English party in the Commons, supported by Canning, had been trying in vain since the Union to carry emancipation, but Wellington and Peel successfully opposed it. O'Connell's agitation forced their hands, and they in turn compelled George IV. to drop objections which certainly sound oddly in our ears, coming from such a man. The decisive moment was when 0'( 'Onnell, ineligible as a Catholic, was elected for Clare, in spite of all the influence that the landlords could bring against him. The forty shilling " freeholders " (not really such in English eyes) had been deliberately multiplied since 1793, because their votes were always at the disposal of their landlords. O'Conhell and .the priests altered this. Out of 8,000 electors, all but 200 were forty shilling freeholders, and O'Conneirs majority on the third day was so overwhelming that his oppo- nent, Vesey Fitzgerald, withdrew. O'Connell claimed his seat, and was, of course, refused it ; but v/ithin a year, in March, 1829, the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed. It was, however, followed by an Act which restricted the Irish fran- chise to real freeholders of not less than £10 annual value. The English Government could no longer tolerate the Irish peasant as a voter, but the means adopted to get rid of him were disastrous. Nov/ that the landlords had no political use for them, they v/ere evicted in great numbers, and this still fuither aggravated the agrarian problem. In the Tudor periol, the Church of the Irish "'^ n^eknf '° ^^^- - followed the example of the Church in England. It accepted the headship of the English crown and adopted the doctrine and ritual of the Anglican Church. As the narrow limits of the Pale were 100 The Church in Ireland- extended, tlie Anglican Churcli in Ireland enlarged its borders ; and, in 1613, when the first Parliament of all Ireland assem- bled, the process was completed. In England, the bulk of the people transferred their fealty to the new Church ; the Catholics were merely an oppressed minority, some of whom frankly held views which would have made toleration difficult even in a more enlightened age. In Ireland, the new Church was officially associated from the first with the Enghsh garri- son, and the native population remained true to the old faith. Even the shameful " Penal Code " made no impression on this fidelitv, and at the Union the Established Church of Ireland, though it drew its tithes from the whole of its soil, was the Church of a small minority. It did not even embrace the whole of the " garrison," of which the Presbyterians of Ulster, planted there by James I., formed an important section. Pitt, who had certainly contemplated Catholic Emancipa- tion as one of the conditions of the Union, seems to have gone even further, and to have desired to support the Catholic Church bv payments from the State. If he had to give way on emancipation, the chance of carrying " concurrent endow- ment," as it was called, was not worth more than a hint as to its equity. In efEect, the Act of Union made matters worse ; for, by uniting the Estabhshed Chui'ches, it made it possible to resist all attempts at reform of the Irish Church on the gromid that attacks on the English Church w^ould inevitably follow. No other plea was indeed worth considera- '^^^'d*^^ ^}t^ ^^^^^' ^'^ 1^34, a religious census of Irelnnd lishment showed that the Catholics numbered nearly six and a-half millions, the Churchmen 853,000, and the Dissenters 665,500. In 41 parishes there was not a single Churchman ; in 165 others there were fewer than tAventy-five Churchmen ; m 157 the incumbent did not live in his parish, and no service was performed. The total revenue of the Irish Church was £865,525. The tithe was paid everywhere ; very often in such small sums that a number of families would together owe but a few pence. On one occasion, the peasantry saw the horse of their Catho- lic priest seized for tithe by the Anglican vicar, and inci- dents like this naturally engendered deadly hatred. Im- mediately after r'atholic Emancipation, a " tithe war " set in, The tithes could not be collected even by the Goverijf DisestablisJiment. 101 nient, which was obhged to lend one million pounds to the suffering clergy. Tithe-collectors and clergymen were mur- dered and assaulted. Bad as this was, reformers found it impossible to do much to remedy the indefensible system which gave rise to it. In 1833, the Irish Church Temporalities Act made som.e reforms in the internal organisation of the Church. It reduced the bishoprics and abolished unnecessary livings, but it left the reduced Church in possession of the old revenues. In 1838 a fuither step was taken. Tithes paid by the tenants were changed into a rent-charge paid by the landlords, who received one-fourth of it for their trouble in collecting it. Both these Acts, said Gladstone, deliberately wasted the revenue of the Church to make it appear less unproportioned to its position and duties ; in both of them there had been clauses applying surplus revenues to secular purposes for the good of Ireland, but the House of Lords struck them out. The Irish complained that they still paid the tithes in the shape of rent, and it was probably true. In any case the Irish Church still maintained its indefensible position, a rich alien State-supported Church in a poverty-stricken country. Thirty years passed before this perfectly reasonable ground of complaint was removed by Gladstone. His first words after being commanded in 1868 to form his first ministry, were " My mission is to pacify Ireland," and his first mission- ary enterprise was to disestablish the Irish Church, still leaving it with an income adequate to its needs, but applying its surplus revenues to the improvement of certain administra- tive services in Ireland (1869). In the following year (1870) Gladstone made QutstioS*^ the first adequate attempt to deal with the Irish land question. A great part of the soil of Ireland is owned in very large estates and cultivated in very small holdings. The owners in most cases are the heirs and successors of the Englishmen among whom the confiscated lands were divided at the successive periods of conquest ; the cultivators are the native Irish whose ancestors were thus displaced. The memory of these confiscations is still vivid. Moreover, the confiscated lands were not the property of the old Irish chiefs in the sense in which they became the pro- perty of the new English landlords. They were tribal lands the cultivators of which had a very distinct right in their holdings. The Irish have held very tenaciously to the tra- dition of thebe rights, and the Undloixlb huve publied to the 102 The Land Quediun. very extreme the fights of property as known to English law, and obtained from a friendly legislature modifications of that law favourable to themselves and only applicable to Ireland. There are tv/o reasons why a system which has not been unfavourable to the tenant-farmer in England has been ruinous to his class in Ireland. The English landlord supplies many things with the land ; farmhouse and buildings, hedges, and drains. The Irish landlord supplies Irish Land Law. nothing but the soil. The reason is that in law everything which is fixed in the soil belongs to the owner of it ; rightly so in England because he had placed the fixtures there, but most unjustly in Ireland, because they were the work of the tenant at his own expense. An English landlord has to place these things there because he could never find a yearly tenant to rent his land unless he did. In Ireland the absence of them makes no such difference. Two-thirds of the population is agricultural. Manufactures hardly exist outside Belfast, Dublin and a few other towns near them. There are very few coal mines, and the working of such coalfields as are known is hindered by the worst rail- way system in existence. Right through the nineteenth cen- tury the demand for land was the demand for permission to live, and the rents offered by the cultivators had no relation to the economic value of their farms. They Avere habitually in arrear with their rents, and were often compelled to owe one payment (the " hanging gale ") so that the landlord had them at his mercy. Consequently, the proceeds of a good year were always swallowed up by rent. To make an improvem-ent was to invite eviction, for it would raise the letting value of the land, and there was always someone willing to come in at the higher rent. One other bad point of the system was the Absenteeism, absenteeism of the landlords. In 1880, one- fifth of Ireland was o-svned by 2,793 persons, not one of whom had ever set foot in the country ; over one and a quarter million 'acres more were owned by 180 persons who only paid infrequent visits to their estates. " Middle- men," often four or five of them, stood between these absent owners'^and the actual cultivators; or at best the estate was managed by an agent, whose interest depended upon the amount of the rent-roll he exacted. Economically, the system was the worst conceivable both for landlords and tenants. High nominal rents and lov/ actual Agrarian Crime and Cuercion. 103 receipts had deeply embarrassed many of the landlords. The poor yield of the overcropped and ill used soil kept the cultiva- tors on the poverty line. In 1846 the staple food crop of the Tl P t t people failed, and the fact that it was the Famine.^ potato is significant of the wretched condition of the masses. They died of hunger by scores of thousands, in spite of noble charity and effusive Government aid. Hundi-eds of thousands of the survivors emigrated, and the population which had been eight millions in 1841 gradually sank to four millions in 1901. What were the remedies ? From the land- Evictions, lords' point of view they were few and simple. Small farms did not pay ; large farms might. Corn and potatoes rarely paid, especially after Free Trade was introduced ; large pasture farms did. These results could only be obtained by evicting the small tenants, and between 1849 and 1885, nearly 110,000 famiUes were turned out of their homes. Large tracts of Ireland looked as if they had been swept bare by a hostile army. Men could not raze houses fast enough, and machines were invented to do it. Force with law behind it was met by force with pubHc opinion behind it. Agrarian crime — the murder and illtreatment of landlords, agents, and tenants who took Agrarian Crime ^^^^^^ vacant by eviction—flourished every- a,nd Coercion. , ^ . •^. ... ^ -^ where. It is impossible not to condemn it, but men to whom eviction meant death by starvation must be expected to brave death by the gallow^s, especially when the one is almost certain to follow, and the other, thanks to a favourable jury, is almost certain to be escaped. In the period, 1800 to 1887, there were no fewer than sixty- six Acts specially directed against agrarian crime in Ireland, some of them so severe that their like must be sought in the worst features of Russian rule in Poland. They were necessary, if the law as it then ex- isted was to be carried out, and this is the first duty of a governm.ent. Very slowly was it made clear that force alone would not do, and that the second duty of a government must be attended to — the revision of the law in favour of the injured classes. When Thomas Drummond, the only Englisli official who has ever won the affections of an affectionate race, wrote to the magistrates of Tipperary in 1838 " Property has its duties as well as its rights," his letter was suppressed for containing such a startling statement. A little later, in 1852, 104 Remedial Measures. The Times said " tile name of an Irish landlord stank in the nostrils of Christendom." . From the tenant's point of view the reme- ^™Tenants ^ ^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^° ^®^^ ^^^^ simple. If he could be made into the owner of his holding, not by robbing his landlord of it, but by purchasing it under some easy scheme of instalments, that would be most to his mind. Failing this, he wanted by law certain advantages which some tenants, chiefly in Ulster, obtained by custom : the famous "Ulster tenant right " or " the three F.'s," Each of them involved some diminution of the legal rights of landlords, so that Lord Palmer ston said " Tenant right is landlord wrong." Hence the introduction of them was bitterly opposed by the landlord class in the Parliament. The tenant wanted : (1) to be secured in his holding so long as he paid the rent agreed on between his landlord and himself ; (2) to receive compen- sation on giving up his holding for any improvements he had made in it ; (3) to have " a fair rent," fixed by some authority instead of a " rack-rent " determined by fierce competition. ]n LSTO, Gladstone conceded the first de- The Land Act?, mand to the extent of giving the tenant evicted for any other cause than non-payment of rent, or refusal to accept reasonable conditions desired by his landlord, a compensation for disturbance according to a given scale. The second demand was granted to yearly tenants but not to leaseholders. The third and most considerable demand was not conceded till 1881, when a tribunal was erected to fix rents judicially. Tenants could also agree to sell their interest in their holdings to a new tenant, nor could the land- lord refuse to accept this new tenant except on reasonable grounds. The new Land Court was soon flooded with applica- tions to fix fair rents, and the result was a general though not great lowering of rent. The rent was to remain as fixed for 15 years, but in 1887, after a very severe winter and a general refvisal of rents, except such as the tenants themselves con- sidered fair (the " Plan of Campaign "), the Conservative Government was obliged to re-open the question of rents aheady judicially fixed, and also to admit leaseholders to the benefits of the Act. There had been more evictions in 1882 than in any year since 1852-5. Things were almost as bad as ever, the great Land Act notwithstanding. Men, whom General Buller described as on the point of starvation, were ruthlesslv evicted. Recent Land Acts. 105 , ^ It is often objected against the system rhase! '^^^^^^ *^^^ ^c<^« established that there are two owners of each farm, the hindlord and the tenant, and that consequently each fails, through this dual ownership, to do what the best interests of the nation demand —to make the farm as productive as possible. The single ownership of the landlord having produced misery, discord and crime, often through causes inherent in the system and not to be laid on the shoulders of individual landlords, the only other alternative is to get the single ownership trans- ferred to the cultivator. John Bright had long advocated this remedy, and the " Bright clauses " of the Act of 1870 enabled some tenants to buy their holdings. In 1885, by Lord Ashbourne's Act, the sum of five million pounds (increased to ten millions in 1889) was to be devoted by the Treasury to pay- ing the purchase price of farms, and the new cultivating owners were to repay the State by forty-nine yearly payments of four per cent, of the purchase price. By 1891 over 25,000 holdings were being purchased by their cultivators on such terms. A later act somewhat checked progress by changing the payment to the landlords from cash to securities which began to fall in value owing to the South African War. This led to the comprehensive act of 1903. Act cf ' 100;J ^^ ^"^^^^ ^^ ^^°^^ fixed to the amount of money which the Treasury may advance to enable farms to be purchased by their present tenants. Land- lords were tempted to sell by a bonus of twelve per cent, on the purchase price to be paid by the State. Tenants were tempted to buy by a reduction of the yearly payment to three and a-quarter per cent, of the purchase price, though the payments now last for 69| years. By March 31st, 1906, 85,638 agreements to purchase had been made at a total purchase price of nearly 33 million pounds, which is about one-third of the total estimated value of the soil of Ireland. The old competition for the use of land con- tinues, and is raising prices; prospective tenants are often willing to pay sitting tenants very large sums merely to let them change places ; the closing of English ports to cattle from certain foreign countries is leading to a great demand for pasture lands, and this again is rousing old agrarian animosi- ties in the form of " cattle driving." Evicted tenants are clamouring for reinstatement, and the Land Courts are crowded with cases awaiting decision. On the whole, however, con- 106 Irish Poverty and Taxation. siderable improvement is manifested ; the end of the long agrarian struggle, if not in sight, is at any rate being approached ; and the darkest page of Irish history, red with blood and black with infamy, has been turned. There is a sad contrast between the glowing accounts which earlier writers have given of the economic possibilities inherent in the soil, climate and people of Ireland, and the actual facts of the last seventy or eighty years. Arthur Young thought that Ireland could support a population of 100 millions ; much later De Beaumont put the figure at "25 millions. These estimates belong to the age before the great econo- mic changes which have so profoundly modified the life of the great nations. Uninspiring as is the account of the whole D^fdcts ^^ Ireland, outside the limited manufacturing district between Dublin and Londonderry, there are large areas in the west and south-west, the " con- gested districts," which are so poverty-stricken and hopeless that a special board has been established to deal with them. Not one quarter of the Irish race can, at present, live in Ire- land. There is a Greater Ireland beyond the Atlantic ; there the expatriated Irish flourish under another flag, and nothing is more remarkable than their intense hostility to England unless it be the liberality with which they send their savings over to Ireland to support their aged and to transport their capable relatives. One cause of the poverty of Ireland is now Taxation. admitted to be the fact that she has been steadily overtaxed. At the Union it was agreed that fiscal union should only take place when the debts of the two countries were in the ratio of 2 to 15, but this was accomplished not by decreasing the debt of Great Britain l)ut by increasing that of Ireland. It was Gladstone who first brought the two countries under the same system of taxation (with a few unimportant variations) by extending the income- tax to Ireland in 1853. Ireland is overtaxed in proportion to England just because she is poor. Indirect taxes, e.g., those on tea, tobacco and alcoholic drinks, always press most heavily on the poorer classes who spend a very large propor- tion of their incomes upon them. Unfortunately the United Kingdom cannot do without these indirect taxes, and they must be the same throughout or there would be the danger of a vast smuggling trade. Ii^ 1795, the population of IreUnd was about Political Relations with Great J^ritain. 107 the same as in 1895, five and a-half millions ; in 1795 each inhabitant paid 9s. 2d. a year in taxes, in 1895 this had in- creased to 49s. 6d. If £12 is allowed as tax-free income to every person, and the rest of his income is called his taxable income, then the taxable income of Great Britain is 1,092 million pounds, and of Ireland 15 million pounds. Of this the amount actually taken in Great Britain in 1895 was 117 million pounds and in Ireland 11 J million pounds. These are very serious figures. No distinction is made in law, for the budget applies equally all round, and such exceptions as exist are in Ireland's favour. Ireland at present could only escape by consuming less of the heavily-taxed commodities, tea, tobacco, and spu-its. Another plan, already carried out on a small scale, would be to make grants from the Imperial Exchequer. It is really a very perplexing problem, which would not altogether cease to exist if Ireland were placed in the position of one of our self-governing colnoies. A few words only can be devoted to the great Relations Be- question thus indicated. Just as the agrarian ween -ng an ii^j^ead runs throughout the economic history and Ireland. <■ t i i • i • i " 01 Ireland m the nmeteenth century, so the thread of her relation to the larger island runs throughout her political history. The Irish had no voice in making the Union, and from the first began to organise a political party pledged to demand its repeal. The practice of governing Ireland without the slightest reference to the views and wishes of the Irish members gave the Union from the first the appearance of a transparent device for securing the predominance of England and the English garrison. It is true that in 1801 the Govern- ment of England was not democratic, and the wishes of the English people had no more direct effect on legislation than the wishes of the Irish people. But so late as 1880-2, when a great minister with a large majority was giving the world a stimu- lating example of democratic government, the minister respon- sible for Ireland never deigned to consult a single Irish member, not even those of his own party, on Irish business. Under such circumstances, the demand for the repeal of the Union is not surprising, and has for half a century been supported by the bulk of the Irish people. Daniel O'Connell turned immediately after AgitatlSr^ his victory in 1829 to attempt to obtain the repeal of the Union by the same means which had been successful in winning Catholic Emancipation. In 108 The Repeal Agitation and Young Ireland. Ireland he formed a vast organisation — the Repeal Associa- tion ; he addressed numerous monster meetings, marshalled with military precision and conducted with the seemly orderli- ness of religious assemblies ; in England he supported the Whig party, and hoped for repeal as the price of his support and as a concession to the solid demand of the Irish nation. He was so sure of success that he promised repeal for 1843. One section of his supporters was in favour of an appeal to force, and all of them would have followed O'Connell if he had made it, though in fact he was strongly opposed to any unconstitu- tional methods. The Government, in 1843, made prepara- tions for the civil war which, to them, seemed imminent, and then suppressed at the last moment, a proposed meeting at Clontarf. O'Connell ordered the meeting to he abandoned, and the hundreds of thousands who were marching towards the place obeyed him. This was a splendid testimony to O'Connell's power v/ith the Irish people, but it was the last of his triumphs. He had loaded the cannon and then blown out his match. He died in 1847 ; his son, John, was altogether incapable of carrying on his work ; the physical force party, " Young Ireland," made a ridiculous attempt at a rising in 1848 ; and for a long time Ireland was too stricken by the evil consequences of the famine to support a vigorous agitation for repeal. One side of the movement bore fruit in later years. The " Young Ireland " party had contained a number of brilliant writers connected with a newspaper, The Nation, founded to advance their views. Much of their writing was more than good journalism. " Young Ireland " knew no dis- tinction of creed : but Catholic and Protestant, the cotter of the west and the artisan of the north, nnist unite for the one thing they had in common — their native land. Their Pro- testant poet, Thomas Davis, wrote— Fruitful our soil where honest men starve ; Empty the mart, and shipless the bay ; Out of our want the Oligarchs carve ; Foreigners fatten on our decay ! : ; Disunited, •', . ; Therefore bliglited, ^ Ruined and rent by the Englishman's sway ; ■ - Party and creed "^ For once have agreed ' Orange and green will carry the day. Bojme's old water Red with slaughter. Now is as pure as an infant at play. 8o, in our souls. Its history rolls. And Orange and Green will carry the day. The Fenian Movement and Home Rule. lOO In 1859, two survivors of the " Younp; ^Movmiierit" Ii'^land " party founded a new society, the Irish Revohitionary Broth^hood, to agitate for repeal. The society, generally known as the Fenian Society, soon grew very powerful. It, too, had its newspaper. The Irish People, published in Dublin. Two crimes, one in Man- chester and the other in London, both committed in attempts to rescue Fenian prisoners, have cast a stigma on the Fenians. Nevertheless, Isaac Butt, the lawyer who defended some of them in Dublin, was converted by their character and conduct from an opponent to an advocate of repeal, and became the first leader of the Home Rule Party in the House of Commons. A young Irish Protestant landlord, educated at Cambridge and long resident in England, was attracted to the study of Irish questions at the same time and by the same means. As the Fenians converted Butt, so they converted him, and gave to Ireland, in Charles Stewart Parnell, one of the most remarkable political leaders that have ever entered the House of Commons. Further, the intensity of the Fenians, shown in their speeches from the dock, which resemble the speeches of martyrs not of criminals, attracted the attention of English- men towards Irish questions, and it followed, of necessity, that they soon began to wear another aspect. Gladstone expressly admitted this in 1808 ; and the legislation of 1869-70 was the result. The modern phase of the repeal move- Home Eul^, ment is associated with the term " Home Rule," used to denote the policy of the Home Government Association founded in Dublin in 1870. It embraced many Protestants from the first, and soon obtained the allegiance of the moderate Fenians. Up to 1874, the Irish members had been known by English party names. In that year, however, fifty-eight Irish " Home Rulers " entered the House of Commons under the leadership of Butt. At first they supported the Liberal Party, but Parnell in 1875 started a movement towards independent and hostile action. This split the new party, but in the end Parnell's policy prevailed, and in the Gladstone Parliament of 1880 he led sixty Irish members as part of the opposition, and'^^in* 1885 it was the hostile vote of the* Home ;^Rulers that defeated" Gladstone's government. The last extension of the franchise had largely increased the Irish electorate, and in the new Parliament the forces were exactly balanced : Liberals 335, Conservatives 110 Gladstone's Home Bule Bills. 249, Irish Home Rulers 86. As some English Liberals sup- ported them, the Home Rulers were in a position to play the political part which the Labour Party in some of our Colonies has found so effective. The weakest point in their position was the strenuous resistance of Ulster, the most prosperous part of Ireland, to any form of Home Rule ; and their plea that Home Rule meant Rome Rule caused thousands of British Nonconformists to vote against their party. Apart from the merits of the case, on which opinions are still strongly divided, the strategical position of the Irish soon led to important events. It is known now that a responsible leader of the Conservative Party, with the knowledge of Lord Salisbury, in July 1885, before the general election, took steps which can be interpreted to mean that he did not look upon accommodation with the Home Rulers as beyond the region of discussion. After the election, in December, Gladstone privately informed his leading supporters that he would not become Prime Minister unless the Liberal Party would sup- port " a plan of duly guarded Home Rule." The split in the Ijiberal Party, the long wrangle over the Home Rule Bill, its defeat, the split in the Irish Party, the triumph of Gladstone in 1892, his second Home Rule Bill, its success in the Commons and defeat in the Lords, Gladstone's retirement, and the long tenure of office by the Unionist Party, from 1895 to 1905 — this long chain of events is too recent and too complicated to be more than mentioned. The probable future of the Home Rule governm^ent movement is also beyond our scope. Wliat- ever it may be, the one great outstanding fact is that Ireland started the new century with hopes that are daily bearing fruition. It is one of the most satisfactory features of the present situation that it owes much of its hopefulness to legislatioii passed by the Conserva- tive Party. The Land Purchase Act of 1903 has been men- tioned. In 1898 Ireland received the system of Local Govern- ment already established in England, thus removing one of the most obvious signs of her political inferiority, and giving her people an opportunity of obtaining an education in practical politics. In 1899, a Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction was established, which enabled Sir Horace Plunket to do better as a responsible minister work which he had been most assiduously doing since 1895 as a private individual. Wherever in Ireland a gi'oup of private persons, or a local Industrial Development. Ill governing body, starts out to develop the economic resources around them, they have the help, advice, and financial assist- ance of the new department. Irish capital is beginning to find industrial openings in Ireland, instead of being used mainly in the London money market ; the more successfully every industrial opening is pursued, the easier will it be to finance the great agrarian revolution which the Land Purchase Act of 1903 has made possible. CHAPTER VIII. WALES, MAN AND THE CHANNEL ISLANDS. Three outlying portions of the Kingdom, each with a dis- tinctive character and special history of its own, have yet to be considered. In race and, to a large extent still, in language, they stand apart from England, and all three, in varying degrees, possess institutions of their own. The primitive inhabitants of Wales and of ^'''^of'"watt"'*'*^^*' greater part of Britain appear to have been the non-Aryan people known as Picts, Several centuries before the Cliristian era they were conquered by the Goidels, the first wave of the Celtic movement westward which spread further to Ireland, Man and the Highlands of Scotland, as is shown by the Goidelic or Gaelic languages of those countries. The Goidels in turn were conquered, not very long before the Koman invasion, by another C-eltic people, the Brythons, who have given their name to the whole island. The Welsh race to-day represents an amalgam of the three original races, affected to some extent by later Saxon, Dane, Norman, Flemish, Irish and English invasions or settlements. It fell to the Brythons, on the departure of the\rro-s£'ons^^^® Romans in the fifth century, to defend '' "" the province against Picts and Scots from the north, and Angles and Saxons from over sea. The legen- da-y Arthur is said to have led ihem. A more real figure is Cunedda, who is said to have commanded the forces along the Roman Wall in the fifth century, and from whom the princes of North Wales (Gwynedd) traced their descent. For a time the Brythons held lheir own against the invaders. But the Saxon victory at Deorham, 577, cut off the Brythons of Wales from the Celts in Cornwall, and the Anglian victory at Chester, 616, severed the Brythons from their kindred in Strathclyde, the legion between Mersey and Clyde, which still shows ir^ Wales in the Middle Ages. 113 place-names such as Cumberland traces of its old Cymric or Celtic population. Cadwaladr, the last Cymric prince who could claim to be ruler of Britain, died about 661. Towards the end of the eighth century, Offa, King of Mercia, felt strong enough to mark a permanent frontier between England and Wales, constructing the earthwork known as Offa's Dyke from the Dee to the Wye. Thenceforward, Wales was clearly a separate country. The Norman Conquest of England was the Saxons. But it was the prelude to a deliberate and irresistible conquest of their own country. From Chester and Shrewsbury as bases, bands of Norman adventurers pushed forward into Wales, making good each step by building a strong castle ; they were helped to a large extent by the incessant blood feuds between the native chief- tains. Rhuddlan, Montgomery and Cardiff castles were among the more notable outposts, from which the Normans operated, assisted now and then by regular invasions con- ducted by the king. The reign of Hemy I. saw the whole of Wales, except Gwynedd, or what is now the counties of Carnarvon, Anglesey, and Merioneth, subject to his vassals, Norman or Welsh. These Lords Marchers, as they were called, exercised over their vassals a com- M ° hers ^ plete feudal sovereignty such as was un- known in England, save perhaps in the anarchy of Stephen's reign. That anarchy encouraged the Welsh to revolt, so that Henry II. had to subdue the country anew, though he could not destroy the independence of Gwynedd. Under John and Henry III. , Llewelyn (d. 1240), the last great prince of Gwynedd, contrived to hold his own by ally- ing himself with the discontented baronage of England ; three clauses of Magna Carta (Nos. 56-58) show that Llewelyn extorted concessions to Wales in that famous treaty between king and people. His grandson Llewelyn also sided with the t, ward 1. s ij^j-Qj^g against the king and allied himself with Simon de Montf ort, who promised him the hand of his daughter Eleanor. After the fall of Simon, Llewelyn was yet strong enough to conclude, in 1267, a favourable peace with Henry, by whicli he Avas recognised as feudal superior of almost all the Welsh barons. The peace did not last long. Edward^I., soon after his accession, gave shelter to Llewelyn'^^ 114 The Conquest by Edward I. rebellious brother David, and declined to restore Llewelyn's bride Eleanor, who had been captured off Scilly oh her way to Wales. Llewelyn, for his part, intrigued with the DeJVIontfort faction against the king. War broke out in 1276, and in 1277 Edward, with a large army and a fleet blockaded the Welsh prince in the Snowdon range. Llewelyn did homage to Edward and married his bride Eleanor in the king's presence at Worcester, 1278. But disputes soon arose. Llewelyn and his brother David were reconciled, and in 1282 headed another revolt. Edward then advanced and again blockaded Llewelyn in Snowdon. The prince broke out w^ith a small force, but was killed in a skirmish in the Wye valley on December 10, 1282. His brother, David TIL, succeeded him as prince of Gwynedd, the last of his line ; he was soon betrayed into English hands, tried as a baron before the Parliament at Shrewsbury, and hanged as a traitor in October, 1283. The Principality, so long independent, was The Principality, now annexed to the English Crown, and was conferred in 1301 upon the king's younger son Edward, who was born at Carnarvon. Edward lost no time in organising the conquered land. By the Statute of Rhuddlan, 1284, he set up the shires of Anglesey, Car- narvon, and Merioneth in what had been Gwynedd, Flint- shire in what had been the '" Four Hundreds," Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire in his crown estates in the south. Pem- broke and Glamorgan had long been regarded as counties. The six new shires, which did not yet correspond precisely with the present counties, were placed under English law, save in regard to the inheritance of land. The justice of Snowdon was to administer the law — not the courts at Westminster. The estates of the Lords Marchers remained as before, subject to their feudal jurisdictions, in which English law and Welsh custom were strangely intermingled. Wales had been con- quered, but not yet reduced to order. The last serious insur- rection took place as late as 1400, under Owain ab GrulTydd, lord of Glyndwrdwy, in the upper Dee valley, one of the few rich Welsh landowners. Wales had sympathised with Richard II. hi his troubles and was restive under the Lancastrian ( Council, of which Hotspur was president. Owen Glendower. Owain proclaimed a national revolt, and by skilfully avoiding pitched battles and intriguing with the English faction, the Percies and Mortimers, opposed to Henry IV., he was able for some years to maintain his ground The Union of Wales with England. 115 as '■ Prince of Wales." He made a treaty with France, which sent troops to help him in 1405, with little success ; he ob- tained the support of the Avignon Pope, and thus gave the rising an ecclesiastical flavour, as England onlv recognised the Roman Pope. Gradually, however, the Lancastrian forces subdued South Wales and drove Owain into Snowdon. He was still at large in 1416, and is believed to have had a peaceful end. Owain was a distant cousin of Owain Tudor, who went to the court of Henry V. , and after his death married his widow, Catherine of Valois. The grandson of Owain Tudor and Catherine was Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who ascended the throne as Henry VII. . In the fifteenth century Wales, like England, ^*\val'*^'^ ° ^""'^^ ^ P^^^" ^° disorder. The independent courts Avith England, ^f the Lords Marchers, numbering nearly 150, were so many centres of disturbance. They carried on private wars ; they harboured rogues and felons, whom the law of the land could not touch. Edward IV. made some attempt to control them, but it was reserved foi- the Tudors to complete the work begun by Edward I. Henry VII. established on a permanent footing the Council of Wales and the Marches, first created in 1478, and extended its sway over the English border counties, with headquarters at Ludlow. Appeals lay from the Marcher courts to this poAver- ful body, corresponding to the Star Chamber in England. A further step was taken by Henry VIII. in 1535, when Wales was incorporated with England, and the Lords Marcherships were either added to the existing shires or formed into the five new shires of Brecknock, Radnor, Montgomery, Denbigh and Monmouth. The Lords Marchers were deprived of all but certain manorial rights. For the first time Wales received full representation in Parliament. Another statute in 1543 lega- lised the Council of Wales and also set up a separate legal system, with courts known as " The King's Great Sessions in Wales," and arranged in four circuits. At the same time the old Welsh land-tenure, under which estates were equally divided among the heirs, was replaced by the English tenure , under which the eldest son succeeded to his father's property. This Tudor system, so far as it gave Wales courts of her own, lasted until 1830, when Wales was definitely brought within the jurisdiction of the English courts. The Council of Wales, however, shared the unpopularity of the Star Chamber, and was abolished at the Revolution of 1G88. 116 The Religious Revival of Wales. These sweeping Tudor reforms, which gave SlSiVry.^^^^"^^^^- lif« ^"^^ property to the humblest Welshman, brought peace to Wales at last. The Reformation, attended by the suppression of the monasteries, raised no disturbances. The gentry profited by the distribution of the monastic lands, and their tenants acquiesced in silence. Puritanism appears, however, to have made no headway ; though one at least of the " Martin Marprelate " pamphleteers, John Penry, was a Welshman. In the civil wars, the Welsh gentry took the king's side, and supported him to the last. One or two Welsh castles held out for months after the sur- render of Oxford to the Parliament. Two years later South Wales rose in sympathy with the Presbyterian and Royalist movement against the Independents and the army. Poyer's stubborn defence of Pembroke (May- July, 164.8) delayed Cromwell's march northward and gave Hamilton and his Scots time to reach Preston. But Wales settled down peacefully under the Commonwealth. With their innate conservatism, the Welsh gentry were naturally Jacobites at heart after the Revolution, but though a few took part in the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745, the Principality as a whole remained quiet, sunk in what appeared to be a lasting torpor. Nevertheless, the awakening of Wales awakTSn"' c^^tes from the first half of the eighteenth century. It was due to a remarkable reli- gious movement akin to that of Methodism in England. The Welsh (■liurch, though revived for a time under Laud's direction, had lapsed into a state of ignoble sloth ; Noncon- formity had made little progress, especially in North Wales, and could claim barely an eighth of the poj)ulation as adherents. But, under the first and second Georges, the preaching of Griffith Jones, Howell Harris, Daniel Rowlands and others stirred the Welsh people as they had never been stirred since the loss of their independence. Like Wesley, the preachers regarded the Church with affection, but were forced in the end to establish a separate organisation, the Welsh Calvinistic ^.^ . Methodist Church, which finally left the irwai™''^ Welsh Church in 1811. The Indepen- dents and the Baptists also grew rapidly in numbers and influence, and by the end of the century Wales was pulsating with religious enthusiasm such as she had never known before. The progress was continued ; the 105 Nonconformist consn-egations in the Wales of The Educational Movement. 117 1742 had increased to 2,927 in 1861. The Welsh Church soon began to reorganise itself, although technically it is only four dioceses of the Church of England, and at length recog- nised the necessity of appointing Welsh-speaking bishops and c ergymen. Its four dioceses, St. David's, LlandafE, St. Asaph, and Bangor now contain about 950 beneficed clergy. . Out of this religious movement grew an Pro^ress^ equally remarkable educational movement. Griffith Jones had been moved by the ignorance and illiteracy of the farmers and labourers to found a " circulating school " in his parish of Llandowror, in Carmarthenshire. Here adults as well as children received elementary instruction for a portion of the year. The school proved an immediate success, and similar schools sprang up elsewhere, so that at Jones's death, in 1761, there were as many as 218, with about 10,000 pupils. Sunday schools were also started in the latter part of the century, and spread over the whole of Wales, owing much to the efforts of Thomas Charles of Bala. The Nonconformist bodies founded colleges for the training of their ministers ; the Brecon Memorial College dates from 1755, the Baptist College, Cardiff, from 1807. The Church was moved by the activity of the rival bodies to establish St. David's College, Lampeter, in 1827, mainly for Welsh Churchmen. Such was the begin- ning of the educational revival in Wales, which has made a very rapid advance in the last forty years. School boards were established in most places under the Act of 1870. A complete system of secondary education has been organised under the Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 1889, in advance f>f England. University colleges were established by voluntary eft'ort at Aberystwith (1872), Cardiff (1883) and Bangor (1884), and State assistance was secured for them in 1882. The three colleges were united in the University of Wales, which received a charter in 1893. Recently, the Board of Education has con- stituted a separate department for controlling the schools and colleges of Wales. The religious and educational movement? Movomenf '^ in modern Wales have had the further effect of emphasising the consciousness of nation- ality. Great efforts have been made to check the decline of the old language, threatened both by the increasing immigration of English people and by the teaching of English in the schools. It would appear that these efforts 118 Educaiional and Material Progress. have been successful, for, although the proportion of its two million inhabitants who know no English — about fifteen per cent, in 1901 — is declining, the proportion of those who speak Welsh is fairly constant and includes about half the inhabitants. The wealthier classes no longer regard Welsh as a vulgar idiom, but often have it taught to their children ; the poor are now enabled to learn Welsh to some extent in the schools. The growth of the Welsh language movement is illus- trated by the large numbers of newspapers, periodicals and books printed in Welsh. It has been fostered, on the literary side, by the modern revival of the National Eisteddfod, which concentrates once a year the activities ex- The Eisteddfod, pressed in innumerable literary societies (often attached to churches and chapels) and in local Eisteddfodau all the year round. The chairing of the bard in the presence of a vast concourse at the Eisteddfod is an annual function that does much to stimulate the study and practice of the typical Welsh forms of poetry, and prizes are also awarded for prose writings and for works on the history of the nation. The importance and value of these festivals, ill which music, literature and art are honoured, cannot be over-estimated. The national awakening has also found expression in politics, by the rise of a distinct Welsh party which, though acting with one English party, concentrates its energies on promoting the special interests of its country. The spiritual revival of Wales in the last century and a-half has been accompanied, and no doubt largely assisted, by a remarkable growth of material prosperity. Agriculture is still the chief industry, but in the south coal Material mines, ironworks and tinplate works give developmeut. . ' ^ ^ , ^ , . *= , employment to a large population ; and Cardiff has rapidly grown to be one of the great ports of the world. In 190G it cleared a heavier tonnage than any other port in the United Kingdom ; and Welsh steam coal is un- rivalled for its quality. The Isle of Man. The Isle of Man is another old Celtic d^tr'^s kingdom which, though conquered by suc- cessive alien invaders, still retains in some degree its ancient language, and, unlike Wales, has preserved a certain amount of independence. It lies in the middle of the The Geography and History of the Isle of Man. 119 Irish sea, roughly equidistant from Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland. Each of these countries in turn has influenced its fortunes. The island is 34 miles long and varies in width from 8 to 12 miles ; its area is 227 square miles. The island is traversed diagonally from north-east to south-west by a mountain range, with a narrow valley across the centre and fertile plains at either end. The mountains rise abruptly from the coast, which is famed for its fine cliff scenery. The climate is noted for its mild and even temperature, due to the Gulf Stream. A few lead mines have been worked within the past two centuries ; agriculture and fishing are the only natural indus- tries. But the chief occupation of the bulk of the islanders for the past century has been that of entertaining summer visitors, who flock in hundreds of thousands from the North of England and elsewhere to the Manx pleasure resorts. Man was converted by early Irish mission- Its History, aries. The Welsh are said to have held it fi-om the sixth to the tenth centuries. The island, like all the neighbouring lands, was attacked by the Vikings, and early in the tenth century was permanently occu- pied by Norse settlers. It was ruled for the next 350 years by petty kings, acknowledging the supremacy of Norway ; the Norse institutions set up by them — the Tynwald Court, or legis- lature, the two deemsters or judges, and the six sheadings into which the island is divided for administrative purposes — still survive. The Norse Kings of Man, of whom Orry is said to have been the first, ruled over all the Hebrides until 1165, when a partition was made, Man retaining only the Southern Hebrides — the " Sodorenses insulae " whose name is preserved in the title of the Bishop of Sodor and Man. After the sea fight off Largs, 1263, in which Alexander III. of Scotland defeated Hacon of Norway, Man and the Hebrides became subject to Scotland. The dispute as to the Scottish succession after 1290 led to English intervention in Man, • ^ ''"^ ^y but the island was not definitely occupied by the EngHsh until 1343, when it was taken by Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, whose ancestor had married the daughter of one of the last Norse kings. After changing hands several times, Man was granted by Henry IV, to Sir John Stanley in 1406, to be held of the English Crown for the service of rendering two falcons at each coronation. The Tynwald was now revived, and the lord's power greatly strengthened. At the Reformation the monasteries were dissolved one by one, 120 Its Acquisition hy the Croivn. apparently without disturbance, though more slowly than in England. From 1595 to 1610 Man was administered by Crown nominees, while a family dispute as to the thrEfrls of inheritance of the fifth Earl of Derby (Stanley) Derby. was being determined. In 1610 the sixth Earl obtained from James I. a new grant of the island, which was confirmed by Act of Parliament. Under the seventh earl, James, Man was held for the king against the Parliament, but after the earl's execution in 1651, the Commonwealth occupied the island without opposition, and granted it to Thomas, Lord Fairfax. At the Restoration the eighth Earl of Derby recovered his father's estates, includmg Man. Disregarding the English Act of Indemnity, he had William Christian tried and executed for complicity in' the sur- render of 1651 ; for this illegal act he was censured by the Privy Council and compelled to make redress to the victim's family. ... In the eighteenth century the island, which the Cm^ii ' ^^^ ^^^"^ ^ popu'ation of about U,000, in- creased in prosperity. This was in part due to the Act of Settlement of 1704 by which the farmers, till then leaseholders at will, became perpetual tenants paying low quit rents. The island also benefited as a headquarters of smuggling, which was openly conducted on a large scale, and as a place of refuge for debtors, who, under a Manx law of 1737 — not repealed till 1814 — were exempt for arrest for debts contracted in other countries. Smuggling was stopped in 1765, when the third Duke of Atholl, whose father had inherited the island in 1736, was mduced to sell his sove- leigu rights to Great Britain for the sum of £70,000 and an annuity of £2,000 a year to the Duke and Duchess. The import of foreign goods into Man was restricted, and an efficient preventive service established. The fourth duke tried to upset the bargain of 1765 and, after many years of importunity, secured from Pitt in 1805 an additional grant of one-fourth of the customs revenue for ever. The Atholl family connection ceased under an Act of 1825 empowering the Treasury to pur- chase the lord's manorial and other remaining rights ; the purchase price was £417,144. To recoup itself, the Treasury retained all the surplus revenues. Since that time, Man has been administered by Constitution a'Lieutenant-Governor,appointed by the Crown, with wide powers of control over the official Council and the House of Keys which comprise the Tjmwald. In Manx Institutions. The Geography of the Chanriel Islands. 121 1 866 , after much controversy, the Treasury sanctioned an arrange- ment by which the island pays £10,000 a year to the Imperial Exchequer and disposes of the rest of its revenue as the Tyn- wald thinks fit. The House of Keys was at the same time made an elective body. The population in 1901 was 54,752. Half the people were living in the towns of Douglas — with a population of 19,223 — Kamsey and Peel. A sixth were of alien birth. Fifty-nine persons were returned as speaking Manx only, while 4,598 spoke English and Manx. The Manx language is decaying, but laws have still to be promulgated both in English and in Manx on the Tynwald Hill, in the centre of the island. The population slightly declined between 1891 and 1901, but it had grown by a third since 1821. The revenue is mainly derived from customs duties, which correspond in the main to those of Great Britain. There are few taxes, and the rates are very low, so that many retired business men from the North of England settle in the island. The -Channel Islands. The Channel Islands form another outlying Conditions. possession of the English Crown. They lie in the Bay of St. Michel, off the north- western coast of France. Jersey, the largest and most southerly of the group, has an area of nearly 45 square miles, and had in 1901 a population of 52,576. Guernsey, 20 miles to the north-west, has an area of 30^ square miles ; its popu- lation in 1901 was 43,042. Alderney, with Berhou, the most northerly of the group, which is only a few miles west of Cape La Hogue, has an area of about 3 square miles, and 2,062 inhabitants. To the east of Guernsey are several small isles — Great Sark and Little Sark, with a combined area of about 2 square miles and a population of 504 ; Herm, Jethou and Brechou, with a total area of 400 acres and a population of 30. The islands are famous for their rocky coasts, for their mild and equable climate, and for the richness of their vegetation, which is unequalled in Northern Europe. Jersey has one large town, St. Helier, which contains 27,866 inhabitants, or more than half the population, and is a mi itary station of some import- ance. The chief town of Guernsey, St. Peter Port, also a military station, is two-thhds the size of St. Helier, with 18,264 inhabitants ; St. Sampson,' with 5,614 inhabitants, is another Guernsey town, lying a few miles north of St. Peter Port 122. Iheif Products and Constitution. The land is split; up among many small proprietors. Owing to this and the climate, the chief industry of the islands is market gardening. Immense quantities of early vegetables and fruit are cultivated under glass for the English market. Dairy farmiiig is also carried on, and the island breed of cows is noted. The islands also benefit by their popularity with English and French people as a holiday resort, at all times of the year. The islands are the only portion of the old Constitution. Buchy of Normandy which has been retained by the English Crown. Many of the people still speak the old Norman-French, especially in the smaller islands and in the country districts, and the old Norman institutions are still maintained. The islands are virtually self-governing. Guern- sey, which for administrative purposes includes the smaller islands to the east and north, has a Lieutenant-Governor, appointed by the Crown, and an assembly called the States. The States comprise the Bailiff, or President of the Royal Court of Justice, the Procureur or Attorney-General, the beneficed clergy, the twelve jurats, elected for life, who assist theBailif?, and twelve delegates elected at sho.t intervals. In Jersey, which is also under a Lieutenant-Governor, the States are composed of the Bailiff, the twelve beneficed clergy, the twelve jurats, twelve constables elected every three years, and fourteen deputies elected at similar intervals. The ordinances or decrees of the States, unless sanctioned by the Crown, are valid for three years only. English Acts have to be registered by the States before becoming law in the islands. The Lieu- tenant-Governors have power of veto, but disputes between the executive, directed from London, and the legislature, seldom occur and are adjusted without much difficulty. French and English are both used in the States. The islands are subject to the supreme appellate jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ; and the records of that court contain many interesting arguments on the constitutional position of the islands. The islands have played no great part in History. history. They were acquired from Brittany. by William, Duke of Normandy and after- wards King of England. They were definitely attached to the EngUsh Crown by John, when he lost the rest of his Duchy. Under a Papal Bull, they were regarded as neutral territory fiom the fourteenth to the seventeenth cen- llidury oj the Chanml Islunds. 12') tury, but this neutrality was not always respected by French corsairs and adventurers, especially during the Wars of the Roses. At the Reformation the islands embraced the new religion ; Jersey was reconciled to the Church of England by Bandinel, and took the Royalist side in the Civil War ; Guern- sey, on the other hand, clung to its Presbyterianism and declared for the Parliament. In the end, Jersey, after serving as a refuge for Prince Charles and other Royalist exiles, had to surrender to the Commonwealth forces in 1651. In the French wars of the eighteenth century the islands were noted as the headquarters of smugglers and privateers. The French made one serious effort in 1781 to capture Jersey, but were foiled in the moment of victory by the gallantry of Major Peirson. In the nineteenth century the islands formed a con- venient refuge for Frenchmen, whether monarchists or repub- licans, driven from home by successive revolutions. Victor Hugo, the most illustrious of them, lived for many years at St. Peter Port. CHAPTER IX. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. . The Unification We have now sketched the development of the Qf ^jjg various parts of the British Isles to the ri IS 1 s es. pqJj-^|. g^^ which it becomes inextricably woven into the common history of the United Kingdom and subject to the common control of the Imperial Parliament. It would be absurd to maintain that those dominions of the Crown have had no history since their respective unions with England ; and the last three chapters have attempted to indicate the important points in their individual careers. But the Acts of Union, together with other forces, economic and social as well as political, have brought them all under the common influ- ences described in the following pages. The industrial revolu- tion, comm.ercial expansion, and political emancipation have a^ffected in greater or less degree all the component parts of the United Kingdom. In the half-centurv which followed the loss ^t^on^orBritain ' ''^ ^^^^' American Colonies, (Ireat Britain took on 1770-1820. ' her modern shape. The great transformations * of history have required long periods to work themselves out, and it would be easy to exaggerate the changes even of this mighty epoch of vitality and growth, and still easier to underestimate the strength and variety of the forces which had prepared the way for it. Yet, notwithstanding these qualifications, it remains true that the things most character- istic of the many-sided life of to-day belong essentially to the half-century which was ushered in by the greatest blow ever struck home to our country {see pp. 78, 232). One of these characteristic features is that Great Britain purchases the greater portion of her food and raw materials from abroad by The Old Indtistrial England and tlie "New. 125 the sale of her manufactures, and that these manufactures are, in the main, produced in vast establishments in large towns by workpeople, whose interest in the raw materials of their industry and in the wonderful machines which make them uj) is limited to the receipt of wages fixed beforehand by a contract with the owner of both. It requires a steady effort of the imagination to picture an England in which these things did not exist. They did not exist in the Great Britain whose crown George III. received from George II. ; they did exist in it when he handed on that crown to George IV. The system oi which they are essential features is S stem*""^' sometimes called the "capitalistic system," not because capital played no part, or only a minor part, in the system which it displaced, but because the most striking feature of the new system was the great aggregations of capital in the hands of a comparatively small number of " captains of industry." This name is perhaps most frequently used by those who dislike the system and wish to see it transformed into something different and, as they hope, better, and is, therefore, hardly so good as its other name, the " factory system," based on the circumstance, which was new, that industry came to be carried on in large factories. The change itself is so important, and took place so rapidly, as to deserve a special name, and the name which Arnold Toynbee gave it has come into general use. It is, therefore, spoken of as The Industrial Revolution. In the middle of the eighteenth century >opuktTon ^^^ population of England was Gi millions. about one-half of whom lived south and east of the line of the Trent, Avon and Severn. The most thickly peopled part was a broad belt stretching east and west from Yarmouth to Exeter, but the part in which popula- tion was growing most rapidly was (excluding London aiid its district) a belt of land stretching from Birmingham, in the centre of the former belt, northwards towards Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. A " cross-post " was established between Plymouth and the North, evidently to meet the demands of the growing population along the nev/ route. This broad account of the distribution of population throws into strong relief the contrast between the old England and the new. The economic basis of the former was corn and wool, of the latter coal and iron. The economic centre of gravity has shifted from the fertile uplands and rolUng downs 126 Doniemc Maiiujadares. qi the South and East to the coalfields of the Midlands and the North. Commerce, important as it was then, was not, as it is now, the means by which our population is fed and clothed. Had England in 1750 been suddenly surrounded by Roger Bacon's wall of brass, she would have been greatly incom- moded but not extinguished. The farmer-spinner would have done more farming and less spinning ; the cottager- weaver would have spent more time in his garden and less at his loom. The specialisation of industries had already gone far enough to make a sudden change difl&cult ; then came the Industrial Revolution which made it impossible. The manufactures of England were cari'ied The Domestic ^^^ under the Domestic System, i.e., in the Manufacture ho^^^*^ of the worker and not in the factory of the master. There are many such domestic workers to-day, as an observant eye would soon see in any town or village in England, but they are rarely found at work on the great staples of trade. In the eighteenth century England had i)ut one staple manufacture — the woollen industry. Its importance had long been typified by the wool-sack which formed the seat of the Lord Chancellor. Its method had long been crystallised into the English word for an unmarried woman — ■" spinster." In Goldsmith's Good Natured Man, published in 1768, Mr. Croaker, who represents a permanent type, gi-oans over the signs of decay. " I have seen a lady dressed from top to toe in her own manufactures formerly," he says, and rudely, and, it is to be hoped, unfairly, adds that now " there's nothing of their own manufactures about them, but their faces." Mr. Croaker's ladies belonged indeed to a type long anterior to the domestic system, when textile goods were not only made but also used at home. The manufactures of cotton and iron were then in their early stages, but they too, where carried on, were domestic industries. Wolverhampton made " every manufacture in brass and iron," and obtained its rav/ material, iron, from the forges scattered over the district. " In this country every farmer has one forge or more, so that the farmers carry on two very different businesses, working at their forges as smiths, when they are not employed in the fields as farmers." The great domestic industry was that of turning wool into cloth, and so expeditiously could it be done that once, at Newbury, a gentleman supped at night wearing a coat which had been wool on a sheep's back at sunrise. i'hc One Btaple Manufacture of England. 127 The woollen manufacture was so wide- Industry" spread that " every liamlet and village resounded with the clack of the handloom " and " the great sheet-anchor of all cottages and small farms was the handwheel." There are few of the towns and villages mentioned in Defoe's well-known Tour in which the manu- facture is not noted. There were, however, five districts in which it vv^as carried on as the staple manufacture: (1) the Eastern counties ; (2) the West Riding ; (3) Lancashire ; (4) the Somerset- Wiltshire borders, and (5) Devonshire. Each district had its centre in a large town — Norwich, Leeds, Man- chester, Frome and Exeter. Norwich was the weaving centre of a large district, in which 120,000 people were employed. The clothiers of Frome and other towns sent out v/ools into the villages to be spun, and brought it back as yarn ready for their looms. In Yorkshire the clothiers of the Halifax district fetched their ov/n wool from market and carried the finished cloth to the great cloth market at Leeds. Here it was that the traveller saw " the houses full of lusty fellows, some at the dye- vat, some at the loom, others dressing the cloths, the women or children carding or spinning, all employed from the youngest to the oldest ; scarce anything above four years old but its hands were sufficient for its own support." The finished cloth was, earlier in the century, sent by the Leeds merchants on packhorses to the fairs, which were then of great importance as distributi:og centres, but the demand for transportation soon called into existence a body of carriers, v/hereupon the " outriders " of the merchants travelled for orders only, and the goods were conveyed by the new carriers. In the chief centres of each district there were buyers for London and continental houses, the agent of one continental house at Halifax buying £00,000 worth of cloth every year. Still, the chief market for English cloth was Eng- land itself, and the preservation and increase of this inarket was thi end at which the commercial legislation of the century v^^as aimed. The expansion of manufactures in England Expansion of ^^^^^ preceded by an expansion of her oversea Markets. trade. Adam Smith, m In 6, when the two movements were in simultaneous progress, enunciated in his Wealth of Nations the proposition that the extent to which any manufacture can be divided into separate processes in order to enlarge the output while decreasing the ^28 The Introduction of Macliinery. cost of each unit manufactured is limited by the extent of its market. As long as the whole of the machinery necessary for the manufacture of cloth could be purchased by a cottager and accommodated in his cottage, an increase of output could be obtained at best only at a constant price, by attracting more and more labour. With the growth of commerce the market for English cloth grew too, and in a remarkable anonymous pamphlet published in 1701 we find the very arguments in favour of admitting foreign goods which Adam Smith made classical, together with a prediction that the extended market thereby obtained would lead to the invention of machinery. It is important to distinguish between a tool and a machine; each of them abridges and ^racliLerv faciUtates the processes of industry ; each of them allows a given result to be obtained with less human effort. But the number of tools cannot be increased without equally increasing the number of workers, and hence there is always a limit to the amount of raw mateiial that can be Avorked up. The weaver was also a farmer, because, however industriously his household spun, they could not keep his loom supplied with yarn : he, of course, tried to purchase yarn from the spinsters of his neighbour- hood, but the constant demand for yarn kept up its price and thus again limited the expansion of the industry. Machinery does not take the place of the tool, for it is a tool ; it takes the place of the man. John Wyatt, therefore, in 1735 aptly described his new invention as a machine '' to spin without fingers." In 1905 there were five million spindles added to the English cotton trade ; in 1705 that, if it could have happened at all, would have involved the addition of five million spinners. The whole population of England then would have been quite unable to cope with an addition to industry which now takes place without attracting much attention, except in a few Lancashire towns. That is what the Industrial Revolution has enabled us to do, and the fact may perhaps lend an additional interest to an outline (1) of its progress and (2) of its immediate results. The Industrial Revolution began with a The^developnient gg^-igg of inventions which established an exotic manufacture, ii^dustry on English soil. It had taken centuries to enable this countiy to work up its own raw material, wool, into cloth ; in barely two generations it was turning a raw material, every ounce of which had to be im- The Devehpment of Cotton Spinniiig. 129 ported, into fabrics whioli were clothing the world. Since the middle of the seventeenth century '' cotton- wool " had been used in Lancasliire to make the warp of heavy calicoes, the weft being spun from linen yarn imported from Ireland. These coarse fabrics found no favour with the ladies, whose '' passion for their fashion " made them prefer the wonderful fabrics of India. In that country the cotton manufacture was a domestic industry, and the tools used in it had remained practically u.nimproved for centuries. Yet it was long before Knglish machinery could turn out fabrics comparable to those produced by Indian fingers. This Lancashire cotton manu- facture was carried on as a domestic industry. There were five operations between the pod and the finished article : ( 1 ) clearing the cotton of seed ; (2) carding it — that is, turning th(^ shapeless mass into flat masses with the fibres running one way ; (:}) roving, by which this mass was turned into a number ol thick loosely-twisted ropes ; (4) spinning, by which the rovings became yarn, and finally (5) weaving the yarn into cloth. The first necessity was to accelerate the processes of roving and spinning, inasmuch as one weaver could keep three spinners , hard at work ; but the first invention was shuttle.''"" J^l^" ^^y's " %^"S shuttle " (1738), which enabled one weaver, instead of two as before, to weave the widest cloth. This invention, by widening the existing gap between the supply of yarn and the demand for it, led to the invention of spinning machinery. Both roving and spinning were done on the spinning wheel by the same woman, being in fact the same operation repeated. About 1764, James Hargreaves, a weaver living near Black- burn, made a machine which he called the "s^ir^'no-^ ' spinning jenny," the one wheel of which 'enny."" could tiu'n as many as sixteen spindles. It did not, however, perform the preliminary operation of roving, which limited its usefulness. Moreover it was only a tool, required no motive power which the spinners could not supplv, and was, therefore, an improvement on the equipmeot of the domestic worker. Arkwright's invention, re-invention or improvement (it is not easy to decide on his exact merits) in 1769 of the process of spinning by rollers was the first step towards the factory system. In 1771, in partnership with Need and Strutt, he erected at Cromford, in Derbyshire, the first cotton mill in which roller spinning was done by water-power. It will be seen 130 Many Inventions. Lancashire. that eacli new invention necessitates an improvement in the earlier stages of the manufactm-e if it is to be fully utilised. Arkwright's new " water frame," as Arkwiight s -^ ^^^^ called, did both roving and spinning, inventions. . , ' but his machines would have been idle most of the time if he had not invented or improved (for again his claims are contentious) the carding machi)ie. In 1779 Samuel Crompton's " mule " combined the principles of the water frame and the spinning jenny i}i one machine. ^^^^ml\e^'^ The effect of all these inventions was obvious. The demand for weavers grew enormously ; the weaver-farmers gave up farming and filled their houses and barns with looms, but the equilibrium between the two branches of the manufacture was now broken from the other end. In 1785 Samuel Cartwright, a clergyman, having been told by several " practical " manufacturers that no improve- ments in weaving were possible, set to work ^owerloom ^"^ invented the power loom, which was still further improved by " a dissolute but in- genious workman " named Johnson. All the operations j^er- formed in England were now done by machinery, and a constant succession of improvements — 140 were patented between 1800 and 1836 — both increased the quantity and improved the quality of the work turned out at a given cost. South Lancashire Arkwright, as we have seen, used water- the centre of power to turn his machines, and many cotton cotton mills had been built where water-power was manufacture, available by 1787. They were, therefore, not confined to Lancashire, and though they never crossed the Pen- nines, they could be found as far south as Berkshire. The climate of South Lancashire is, however, exactly suited to the production of cotton goods. The humidity of its atmosphere allows the characteristic " kinkiness " of the cotton fibre to be best utilised. Therefore, another limit soon began to make itself felt — the available water-fall was soon monopolised ; there were three hundred mills on the tiny Irwell and its tribu- taries alone. Moreover, the people had to be taken to the places where power was available. In 1782 James Watt first applied the power of steam to produce rota- ^and'^Sterm'^ • tory motion ; in 1785 he erected his first steam engine in a cotton mill at Papplewick, and in 1790 Ai'kwright, the organising genius of the cotton industry, made cotton goods by steam-driven machinery The Importance of Cotton. " J 31 It was years before the new motive power, steam, superseded the old one, falHng water ; nor is this surprising since so much capital had been sunk in the erection of water-driven cotton mills. The cotton industry was not created by the steam engine but by the spinning jenny and its developments. In 1800 there were but thirty-two steam-engines in Manchester, and twenty in Leeds, their average horse-power being only 14. The fact has already been emphasised Cotton imports, that all the raw material of this premier manufacture of England has had to be imported, and this fact has had an enormous influence on the economic and social development of the Colonies which wc had lost in 1783. In the following year an American ship arrived at Liverpool having on board eight bags of cotton, which were seized, imder the provisions of the Navigation Acts, on the ground that cotton was not a product of the United States. Up to this time our raw cotton had been im- ))oitod from the Levant, the West Indies and >South America, the total import in 178() being only 20 million lbs. in 1832 the United States exported upwards of 320 million lbs. of raw cotton, of which Great Britain alone took 228 million lbs. and France 78 million lbs. In 1822, a French botanist found cotton growing wild in the streets of Cairo, tJiough in the time of PJiny it had Ixhmi cultivated for industrial puiposes. It was again cult ivated, and Fgypt soon began to achl a small ((uota to the enormous British s. weight oC raw cotton yearly. The growth of the cotton maiuifactui'e is manufacture. ^''^® "^°^^ striking feature of the Industrial Kevolution. The new machines were, of course, applied to other textile fabrics, but the effect of the cotton industry was to check at first the expansion of the woollen industry, because the newer and cheaper fabric could be substituted for the older and dearer. More- over being old the woollen industry was conservative, and adopted new machines but slowly; its widespread distribu- tion also operated against rapid concentration in large towns. Yorkshire streams offered an abundant supply of the motive power first applied, and the Yorkshire coalfield an equally abundant supply of the second. Hence the old industi-y was gradually uprooted from the hundreds of villages and market towns in which it had long prospered, and became centred F2 132 The Steam Engine. in the woollen towns of the West Eiding. Here, too, it is likely, the competition of the rival industry across the hills raised the wages of labour and compelled the manufacturers to ]-esort to machinery. It is, of course, obvious that the rapid progress of the textile industries must have reacted on every sphere of industrial activity, and a little reflection will suggest those in Avhich its influence would be felt soonest and most forcibly. The vast mills and the new towns, with their teeming populations of artisans, required large numbers of bricklayers and carpenters ; the making of the new machines themselves employed large engineering establishments, which, again, demanded largely increased supplies of iron. Within a radius of thirty miles of Manchester in July, 1835, one hundred and seventy firms were erecting mills and ordering steam engines developing 7,500 horse-power in the aggregate. Iron ceased to be a domestic manufacture settled in wooded districts like Ii-on and coal. Surrey and Sussex, for after various attempts it had been discovered how to smelt it with coal. Anyone who, standing at the niouth of an English juinc, ])icks out of the bucket which has just reached the surface a mass composed partly of coal and partly of iron ore, understands more clearly than any form of woi-ds can render it the twin foundation of industi'ial England. Again, these various products, raw cotton, cotton goods, coal, iron ore, pig iron, machines, bricks, &c., had to be transported, and the old roads arid the old vehicles soon proved inadequate. The first improve- ment was the construction of canals, now so little used in com- parison that until we see them marked on Canals. a special map it is difficult to realise their luunber and length. That the railway grew up on the basis of the new industries is shown by the facts that the first railway line was for transpoiting coal from Stockport to Darlington, and the first railway engine was George Stephenson's " Rocket," which ran Railways. between Liverpool and Manchester. The ramifications of the new system are endless, and it is impossible to do more here than suggest the main lines on which it developed as a whole and its latoi' effects on the social order. Changes such as these could not take place withou.t leading to important modifications of the structure of society. Their results can be summed up by saying that the Indus- The Growth of Capiialistic Organisation. 133 trial Revolution led to the capitalistic ov factory system of [jroduction. The influence of great masses of ca))ital had ,„, , , indeed long been felt in the commercial world, of canitalism ^"'^I'c companies tradnig or bankmg on a large scale were familiar enough. Even pro- duction on a large scale — large, that is, in comparison with the ordinary run of things — had been tried. "'Jack of New- bury " had a hundred looms in his factory so far back as the time of Henry VIII., and Sir Thomas Lombe had a large silk mill at Derby early in the eighteenth century. That the latter was " a curiosity of a very extraordinary nature," as Defoe calls it, is evident, however, from the many descriptions we have of it in the books of the time, all telling us of its engine containing " 2(),58() wheels and 97,746 movements which work 73,72(5 yards of silk thread every time the water-wheel goes round, which is three times in one minute'". It was in a " house live or six storeys high," a veritable factory, and six mills wore built at Stockport on the same model. But no industrial levolution could ever have grown out of this ca[)ita]isation of the silk industiy ; tlie demand for its pioducts was too limited l)V reason of their price. When the new machinery removed all practical limits to the sup})ly of cheaj) cotton fabrics, there was no practical limit to the demand for thctn. The capitalistic system then became inevitable, and foj- two reasons. First,- because great masses of capital were now indispensable. The cheap and siinple tools in a cheap and tiny cottage had once sufficed. A cotton mill erected at Staleyljridge in 1835 cost the following sums : — Buildings for containing tlie machinei'v £30,000 Engine house, boiler house and gas house .3,000 Two steam engines, of 110 horsp-power each 8,800 Heating and lighting apparatus 2,400 40,000 mule spindles 11, 500 Machines for preparing the cotton 12,000 1,280 power looms with appurtenances 18,000 Contingencies 2, .300 Total cost of factory £88,000 One inventor is said to have spent £.}00,000 in experiments ; for one of his machines he charged a royalty of £1,000, yet a manufacturer, when the patent had but six months to run, found it profitable to buy a machine. In the second place, the organising ability of the new capitalists was just as essential as theii- money. . A mill 134 The Industrial Revolution and the Working Classes. like the one just described does not run of its own accord, and the skill and acumen necessary to keep it running are not common characteristics of mankind. At capitalists ^I'st, the new men were drawn from the old ranks, and improved on their former status in nothing but wealth. Theii' sons, born to coarse habits and bred to luxury, not infrequently had careers which are vividly epitomised in the Lancashire proverb, " Clogs to clogs is three generations.'' The worst of these cotton barons were hardly an improvement on the worst of the feudal barons of an earlier age, but the type rapidly improved. The best of them enteied Parliament after the Reform of 1832 ; the new industiy had already given Sir liobcrt Peel to British statesmanship, and was soon to give Richard Cobden. During the last three- quarters of the nineteenth century the manufacturers of the North contributed as largely to the welfare of their country as they did to its wealth. „„. It is impossible iti this place even to outjine Avorkine classes ^^^^ effects of the Industrial Revolution on the working classes. These effects are summed up by saying that, as the result of it, they began to occupy that relation to capitalistic production which they hold to-day. 'j'hen^ are jnauy who think that the modern organisation of industry is radically unsound, and we shall, in a .subsequent cha[)tef, have to (;onsider their ciiticisms of the present system and their proposals for introducing a new one (.srr pp. 202-213). We are here concerned only with the effects of the Industrial Revolution up to the time when it had become firmly estabhshed. The working classes were, of course, in a new posi- tion, without experience and without leaders. They were placed, too, under disadvantages which have since been removed. They had no share in the parliamoitary system, and they were prevented by law from forming combinations to further their own industrial claims. Any number of labourers could, of course, ask for an advance of wages separately, but to combine to do so in a body was a legal offence, which could be, and was, severely punished. In 1825, the repeal of the Combination Laws allowed Trade Unions to come out into the open instead of being conducted with the secrecy of an anarcliist plot, but notwithstanding tiie re[)eal, the most atrocious case — the tJ'ansportation of the six Dorsetshire labourers for meeting to discuss means of getting an increase of wages — occurred in 1833. The language of the judge in passing sentence, and of Wages and Hours of Labour. \:\') The Times in commenting npon it, reveals aii attitude of liostility and alarm which was as devoid of justification as it was of insight. Even when the existence of the Unions was declared legal tlieir aims were unanimously declared im- possible of i-ealisation. They stuck to their task, with results which we could not now be persuaded to regret or relinquish. Some of these results liave lieen achieved in co-operation with workers and thinkers drawn from all ranks of society. The earlier results of the great changes soon made it evident that conditions of labour could not be left entirely to the hig- gling of the market. The treatment of children can only be adequately described as murderous. Sixty- Child labour, nine hours' work a week was exacted from children of the tenderest years, and they were kept to their work when tired and sleepv bv an instrument which would have disgraced a cotton plantation. It is useless to blame their parents. Children's wages were a necessary addition to the family budget ; and the parents, even when they hated to do it, could not disregard the demand of the mill owners for child labour. In the absence of any power of resistance on the part of the workers, the conditions were set by the worst masters. All could get the newest and best machinery; the demand for the products was such that all could find a market, and therefore those masters did best who exacted most from their " hands." The wages were probably „^ , , not lower than could have been earned ^^of^^rk ''^^^^^^^^ the old system; but other conditions were less favourable. In 151 cotton mills in Lancashire in 1833 there were 48,645 operatives who, in the month ending May 4, worked on an average 68-G5 hours a week and earned on an average 125" 13d. a week. Males over eighteen numbered 13,740 and females 14,821 ; males from fourteen to eighteen numbered 4,353 and females 5,190 ; boys under fourteen numbered 5,941 and girls 4,600. The average weekly earnings of the children were 46"35d. We shall have occasion to see how deeply laVsTmrT *^^ Industrial Revolution affected our national life by giving rise to problems which the insti- tutions and ideas of the old order were incapable of solving. It had been taken for gTanted that the State should regulate every detail of industrial life. In some of our Colonies to-day the State interferes to fix wages, and this is considered to be very " advanced " legislation, but it was one of the duties oi loft Sidle Control (ivd Laissez-faire. the Justices of the Peace in England from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. But the means which the State had of enforcing these iudustrial regulations had broken down. It had relied partly on the guilds and partly on the Justices. The former were obsolete and the latter independent and in- rlifferent. The Industrial Revolution began at a time when English statesmen were absorbed in foreign politics ; its later stages coincided with the prevalence of a powerful school of }>olitical thinkers who advocated the policy of laissez jaire. That policy was not rigidly carried out, and, so far as it was carried out, it was applied to men who were not in a condition to make the best use of it. The old policy (ti interference had been futile ; the new policy of non-interference soon proved impossible. So it has come about that one of the most hopeful results of the Industrial Revolution is that the policy of State interference has been re-affirmed, established on a rational basis, and made to reflect the deliberate will and purpose of the people. CHAPTER X. COMM ERCTAL EXPANSION. The Industrial Revolution had been pre- Industiy and ^^^^^ ^^^^^ facilitated bv an expansion of commerce. n ■ • i n i" • • British Commerce, and in its turn was followed by a further and still more rapid growth of trade. Industry and commerce are joint results of the same group of economic forces. As soon as a nation increases its supplies of the raw materials of wealth, the motive to industry is quickened into activity. Noav a man can only become rich by turning raw materials into hnished goods and finding a profitable market for them. When they are sold he is in a position to go through the process again, or rather he is (continually produc- ing and continually selling — a stream of raw materials pours into his factory and a stream of finished goods issues forth into his market. He may, and often does, especially in the earlier stages, when he is building up his business, produce more in order to be able to sell more cheaply and therefore more extensively, or the stimulus to production may come fi'om the other side — a larger market giving hitn larger and larger orders. He has to arrange his supply of goods so as exactly to meet the demand for them. But, taking the world us a producing and selling unit, it is clear that the supply of goods and the demand for them are not two different things, as they are for each individual producer, but one and the same thing. Hence increased production and increased trade go together, for the separation of employments compels all pro- ducers to be traders. The Industrial Revolution made the commercial expansion of England possible because it gave her more things to sell ; it also made it necessaryjjecausi? she had 138 Tlie Growth of British Commerce. now more things to buy. The great result of the changes we have ah'eady described was that England became dependent England becomes °^ foreign countries for the essentials of dependent on existence — food to eat and raw materials to food and raw work up. Her ever-increasing nuiltitudes of material from workers demanded an ever-increasing supplv of each, and she was enabled to pay for them because her finished products were greedily demanded by foreign nations who had more food and raw materials than they could themselves consume. And what is true and obvious when England is contrasted with other countries, is just as true, though not quite so obvious, when one group of producers in England is contrasted with all the other groups therein. A man can only produce more on condition that he sells more, and he can only sell more on condition that he buys more, and a trading nation is only a group of trading individuals. This is the simple explanation of the commercial expansion which followed the Industrial Revolution. It would be interesting if this expansion exports." could be illustrated by reliable figures, but unfortunately the onh^ available figures are very confusing and inexact. When the tables tell us that in 1783 exports were 12| million pounds and in 1792 just 'over 22 millions, they only tell us that there had been a considerable increase in the bulk and weight of the goods exported. For these values were " official values," which were calculated from an old book of rates, and were, on the whole, Year. Imports. Exports. Year. 1801 Imports. Exports. 1701 5-0 6-6 31-8 35-4 1711 4-4 5-7 1811 26-5 28-9 1721 5-4 6-8 1821 30-8 51-5 1731 6-7 7-2 1831 4n-7 71-4 1741 7T> 8-!» 1841 64-4 117-0 1751 7-3 11-2 18.51 110-5 214-4 17«1 8-7 13-4 18(il 217-5 159-r. 1771 11-t 14-(; 1871 331-0 283-(i I7SI III !)-2 1881 3H7-0 297- 1 i7;ii 17-2 2()(» 1891 435-4 309- 1 (1) 5-G.= £5,000,000. and so on — the nearest £100,000 being given. (2) Up to and including 1771, the figures refer only to England, thenco up to 1791 to C4reat Britain, onwards to the United Kingdom. (3) In 1853 the expoi-ts in "official" values =-242-1, in 1854 in '' real or computed " values they-lloO ; the tremendous fall is iinf, in the trade, but is due to the different method of measuring it, Thr C'dHiir.^ o/ ihc Corn Lairfi. 130 far out and in some particular cases incredibly inexact. For 1800 the official value of the imports was 30'fi million pounds, of the exports 43 "1 ; the real values are said to have been 55 "4 and 55"8 millions respectively. As the new century advances the figures get more reliable, though imports are given in "official values " as long as duties were levied on them. After the tariff was simplified, a great change in the method of keeping the accounts was made in 1854, and this vitiates all comparisons between years before and after that date. The preceding table therefore, until after 1854, must be taken as only indicating and not exactly measuring the growth of British commei-ce. The growing dependence of this country The Corn Laws, on foreign sources for her food supplies was viewed with great alarm by many people. A Committee of the House of Commons reported in 1813 that the value of the foreign corn imported in the twenty-one years from 1792-1812, was 58| million pounds, and that not- withstanding this importation the average price had been 77s. 3d., and during the last four years 105s. 3d. They thought that the interposition of Parliament was necessary to ap])lv some remedy for evils of such great prejudice to the public welfare. The remedy they proposed was protection ; as long as wheat was under 105s. 2d. per quarter it was to pay a duty of 24s. 3d. ; if it rose above 105s. 2d. the duty was to fall to 2s. Gd., and if it went to 135s. 2d. the duty was to be (5d. only. Parliament did not at the time adopt the proposal since the average price of wheat for 1812 had been 126s. (kl. The effect of this high price had been to bring much grass land under the plough, and therefore to increase rents. A rapid fall in price, which set in in 1814, therefore alarmed the landed interest, which was then dominant in Parliament, and in 1815 a " Corn Law " was passed. Until wheat was 67s. per quarter in the home market none could be imported ; at that price colonial wheat could come in duty free ; when the price rose to 80s. foreign wheat could also come in duty free. It is not easy at first to see that such a law could be sup- ported by any argument worth a moment's consideration The advocates of the various Corn Laws of this period (for it is impossible to go through their numerous modifications) relied on the following arguments : — (1) It was essential that the country should be independent of foreign supplies of food. Hence Lord John Russell thought 140 xirguments iu their /avoiir. that " corn was an exception to the general rules of political economy," and Lord Melbourne that " to leave the whole Arguments in agricultural interest without protection " was their favour : " the wildest and maddest scheme " conceiv- (1) Independence able. Most of the imports came from the necessary. ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ north of Europe, and the whole of that territory had been, and might again be, in the hands of an enemy who would scruple at nothing to defeat us. Moreover this corn belt was subject to much the same vicissi- tudes of climate, so that the whole available harvest might be a bad one, when in self-defence the corn countries might be obliged to prohibit the exportation of corn, and this country would then suffer from a famine. The argument was then nearer to the facts than it is to-day, but even then the answer was that our fleet had kept the seas open to our traders right through Napoleon's supremacy on the Continent, and that, as a matter of fact, the necessary corn had come in, and this was indeed one of the things of which most com])laint was jnade. ^ . , (-) 'rh(> paramount obiect of being inde- C2) Protection ior i , c <• • i'- t i • the farmers. P«'"'i^''>t of foreign supplies of corn during war could only be secured if the home producer was piotected from foreign competition during peace. He would then sow as nmch corn as the population needed, and hence there would always be enough land under tillage to supply our fullest needs. This argument was usually carried further, and in view of the national importance of the object aimed at, it was asserted that the nation should by law secure to the wheat grower '" a remuneiating price.'' The Committee of 1813 regarded about lOijs. as the price which was necessary to bring the fainier to his country's aid, but the Act of 1815 fixed on the more modest sum of 80s. The fixing of a remunerating price by law would protect the farmer against low prices and the consumer against high prices. It was assumed that, if the remunerating price was higher than would be the market piice under fj-ee trade, the labourers would not suffer as their wages would rise in proportion. Moreover, assured of protection against the foreigner, the farmers would grow so much corn that the price would be as low as could be desired in good seasons, while in bad seasons the high price of home-grown corn would open the ports to supplies from abroad. (3) The landed interest needed protection because it was subject to burdens which fell on it exclusively. The chief of Object ions to the Corn Laics. 141 them was tlie poor rate which, under the sad and vicious system then prevalent, was a great burden. Then there was (o) Compensation ^^^^ la,^^f^ tax, the malt duty, and some others. to the landed - It is not true that these burdens fell exclu- interest for its .sivelv on land, but a fair-minded opponent burden of rates, r 2^ n t ^i • / t-^ -i 01 the Lorn Laws, the economist David Ricardo, thought that they pressed so much more on land than on other forms of property that he advocated a fixed '■ countervailing duty " of 5s. a quarter as a set-ofT. (4) An equivalent ^^) "^^^^ advocates of the Corn Laws asserted for the duties on that protection of the farmer was equitable manufactured inasmuch as the manufacturing industries ar ic es. ^ere protected by the tariff from foreign com- petition. It is true that this tariff was very comprehensive, so that on one occasion a mummy imported from Egypt was duly classed as a manufactured article and paid an import duty of £200. These are arguments which have some substance, con- sidered in the light of contemporary economic conditions, and they account for the fact that men whose independence, fairness and humanity are as far beyond question as their statesmanship long held to the Corn Laws. Still, it is un- deniable that the bulk of the supporters of the Corn Laws were men whose financial interests were served by their maintenance, and who knew quite clearly that this was so. Byron's scathing lines on the " tmcountry gentlemen " could be justified by quotations from the indiscreet words of mem- bers of this class, as well as by inevitable deductions from theii- deeds. Lord John Russell was right when, in his famous " Edir:burgh letter,'' of November, 184r>, he declared that the repeal of the Corn Laws would strengthen the political position of the aristocracy by divorcing their social position from an intimate connection with the misery of the poor. The arguments against the Corn Laws a^'^SnsTtfie ^^^'® ^^ ^^° kinds : (i.) those used against any Corn Laws, limitation of the freedom of trade and (ii.) those used against this particular limitation of free trade in corn. The former will come better when the introduction of free trade is being described. The chief of the particular objections were as follows : — ( 1 ) Tf this country is not a regular customer of the corn countries, she will find that when her own harvest fails she will either be unable to get airj' corn or will have to pay very heavily for it. 142 nrUisJi Tariff History. (2) These huge intermittent purchases of corn at high prices lead to the exportation of bulhon to pay for the corn, and this deranges the financial system with disastrous results. (3) Under a regular trade the corn would be paid for by manufactures ; therefore the prohibition to import corn was equally a prohibition to export manufactures. This was an unfair interference of the State in the interests of one class, and against those of another. The manufacturers, on the other hand, were accused of vaulting ambition. They wanted, said one speaker in the House of Commons, to manu- facture for the whole of Europe ! The favoured class, more- over, was just the class w^hich needed favour least of all — the landlords. The farmers did not benefit, but actually lost by the Corn Laws, since their rents were fixed on the assutnption that price.s would be high, and a plentiful harvest hit them very hard. (4) It was' not true that the landed interest had burdens peculiar to itself, and, if it were, the proper remedy was a readjustment of the tax system, not the granting of a right to rccouj) the loss by plundering the rest of the community. As a matter of fact the repeal of the Corn Laws did not take place until considerable progress had been made m the direction of free trade, as the governing principle of our commercial policy. It will be best, then, to turn our attention to this wider topic till the question of the Corn Laws came up under Cobden's leadership for its final solution. In the reign of James I. it had been Tariff history, decided in Bate's case that the imposi- tion of import duties was within the Royal prerogative, and in 1608 the tariff was settled by the Royal " Book of Rates." The object of the tarif! was to collect a revenue, yet its industrial effects were not ignored, since some of the leading merchants were consulted as to the new duties. In 1635 a new book was compiled " for the better balancing of trade in relation to the impositions in foreign parts upon the native commodities of the kingdom," and also for adding £70,000 a year to the revenue. Down to the beginning of the nineteenth century financial considerations governed the successive additions to the tariff. Constant wars increased the national expenditure, and since the existing direct taxes were cumbrous and unproductive, the readier method of the customs duty was applied. As the tariff grew by successive Complexity and Simplification of the Tariff. 143 additions it at last became unwieldy and complicated. The duty payable on any article in 1785 had to be painfully ex- tracted from no fewer than sixty-eight Acts UrTffi^ of Parliament. A cargo of 2,000 ells of Russian linen had to pay a total duty of £69. 17s. compounded of ten imposts varying in date from 1661 to 1783 ; and the duty thus collected had to be divided amongst seven different branches of expenditure. In 1787 this vast mass of tariff legislation was consolidated and there- fore simplified, but even then it contained 1,414 different duties witli all sorts of complications and preferences. The wars of the Revolutionary period defeated Pitt's intentions of further reform, and many new duties for revenue purposes were imposed on the top of the consolidated duties of 1787, thus bringing back much of the old confusion. In June, 1815, the month of Waterloo, there were one thousand one hundred Customs Acts in force, " All these," says the first Customs Report, " with the additions between 1815 and 1825 were repealed on July 5, 1825, by one Act (6 Geo. IV., c. 105), in which four hundred and forty-three statutes were enumerated and the i-est repealed by a general definition ; thus sweeping away all the laws of the Customs accumulated during the space of five hundred and fifty years." The tariff was simpli- fied, but it remained as comprehensive as ever, Tariff reform, for the duties of 1825 occupy one hundred and fifty-two closely printed pages of a folio Blue- book. While the officials were simplifying the tariff in the interests of efficiency, a growing body of statesmen and practical men were advocating an entirely new departure — free trade, r 7 7 ■ '^he argument for free trade had been NaHons. '^^ developed by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, with a trenchant vigour never since surpassed by any of his followers. Not that he hoped for the establishment of free trade in this country ; to expect that, he said, was as absurd as to expect that a Utopia would one day be established in it. He miscalculated the eft'ect of his great work. It inuncdi- atoly made Pitt his disciple, though in free trade, as in parlia- mentary reform, Pitt allowed the French Revolution to drive him from his best ideals. When the restoration of peace thrust this unwelcome disturber aside, the idea of free trade revived, ajid was supported by [iiiskisson. under whom tlie alKililion (tf the old ,s\-,-,teni began. 144 The Movement towards Free Trade. Adam Smith had been pessimistic because movement ^^^ thought that the interest of the mer- chants and manufacturers would always be thrown on the side of the tariff. The Merchants' Petition to the House of Commons, in 1820, in favour of free trade is an indication that the arguments of the Wealth of Nations had convinced practical men that free trade was the best policy for them as well as for the nation. The manufac- turers had a double interest in the removal of restrictions. Their workers would get their food cheaper, and their efficiency would be increased without additional cost to the masters. The incontrovertible fact that imports of food stuffs would be paid for by exports of manufactures promised them what they most needed — a larger foreign market. With these interests behind it, the cause of free trade made rapid progress. There were three stages in the introduction of free trade, each connected with the name of a gieat statesman. Com- mercial Reform was begun by Huskisson, carried very far by Peel and consummated by Gladstone. The theoretical basis was worked out by contemporary writers like Sir Henry Parnell, whose work on Financial Reform, published in 1832, supplied the principles on which Peel acted, while the admin- istrative details were provided by great public servants like James Deacon Hume and J. M'Gregor, who were successively permanent heads of the Board of Trade. Huskisson, pupil of Pitt and student of Huskisson. Adam Smith, became President of the l^oard of Trade in 1823, Peel being at the time Home Secretary. Huskisson's views were far more advanced than his legislation, and he is by no means to be credited with the introduction of free trade. He modified the Navigation Laws (see pp. 51-2), the original purpose of which was political rather than commercial, by arranging reciprocal concessions with other countries. He removed most of the prohibitions from the tariff on the ground that they were " a premium on mediocrity." He fixed upon 30 per cent as the maximum duty. H an article required more protection than this it was not worth protecting, and in fact could not in most cases be protected, because "a high duty was invariably defeated by smuggling— the extent and ingenuity of which are hard for us to realise to-day. He also reduced the duties on raw materials ; that on wool from foreign countries was reduced fiuui one penny loone halfpenny a lb., and if iin[K)rted from PeeVs Tariff Reforms. 145 a colony came in duty free. " Satisfied," as he said, " that the general rule of free competition is the best for all trades as it is certainly the best for the public," he stood strongly for reform, and achieved as much as circumstances would permit. In 1840 the House of Commons appointed posed ki^ 1840 ^ Committee to inquire into the tariff. It heard a great body of evidence, and finally reported, briefly but pregnantly, against the existing system, as (1) presenting neither congruity nor unity of purpose ; (2) being devoid of general principles; (3) aiming at incompatible ends ; and (4) protecting a great variety of particular interests at the expense of the revenue. M'Gregor proposed in his evidence to substitute (1) twenty leading heads for the 1,200 separately rated articles ; (2) 10 per cent, as the maximum duty on manufactures, with an exception of 20 per cent, for a few reared under jjrotection ; (3) 2| per cent, ad valorem on raw materials ; and (4) 8s. a quarter on corn. He esti- mated that the change would increase the customs revenue from £22,900,000 to £28,800,000, besides reducing the cost of collection very considerably. Peel became Prime Minister in 1841, and in reel's mecasures. 1842 introduced his first great reform of the tariff. Leaving the Corn Laws untouched for the present, he went nearly as far as M'Gregor had proposed. He airanged the articles in twenty groups ; he removed all ])rohibitions ; he reduced the duties on seven hundred and fifty articles ; the maxinmm duties were — on raw materials — 5 per cent., on partly manufactured articles 12 per cent., on wholly manufactured articles 20 per cent. So far there was no repeal — some duty, however small, was levied on every import. In 1845, repeal became the order of the day. The duties on over four hundred minor articles and on a few leading articles — hemp, flax, raw silk, hides, indigo, skins, furs, oils, and saltpetre — were abolished, and in 184<) the Corn Laws weic repealed and also all duties on aniinals and meat. The repeal of the Corn Laws was the th^^re'aToVthe ^''^'^^ "* ^^^ Anti-Corn Law League. ItTis Corn Laws, true that the failure of the potato crop in the autumn of 1845 hastened on the final triumph by providing both Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel with a favourable opportunity of announcing a decision already inevitable. Cobden had acutely prophesied this very result. " Three weeks oi showerv weather when the wheat is 146 The Repeal of the Corn Laws. in bloom or ripening, would repeal these Corn Laws," he said in June, 1845 ; and in September came '"' the rain that rained away the Corn Laws." The League had at first been supported mainly by the middle-classes and the dissenters ; it was largely identified with Manchester and the manufacturers, and the cotton-lords were no more populai- than the landlords. But Cobden's arguments and Bi'ight's eloquence, ably seconded by the arguments and the eloquence of men hardly inferior to them, had by the middle of 1845 made a sensible impres- sion on the farmers, while physical sufferings had made the woi'king-classes, though they had as yet no votes, a factor to be reckoned with as they had been in 1832. The chief thing was that the leaders of both political parties were being converted to the policy of repeal. Gladstone long wavered, advocating free trade, as was acutely remarked, in his arguments and protection in his parentheses. Lord John Russell, the advocate of a small fixed duty, was finally convinced that corn was no exception to the laws of political economy at the very moment when such a conviction happened to be the best weapon for defeating his political opponents. Palmerston had talked free trade as far back as 1828, though he had since supported the Whig policy of a duty. Sidney Herbert was moving in company with Gladstone, and came slowly to the conclusion that protection of the landed interest was not a part of the Constitution, and not essential to Conservatism. The growing force behind the League, the growing conviction in the minds of the leaders who really counted, would soon have carried repeal without a potato famine and even without Peel. The victory came earlier because the potato- famine compelled Peel to decide. The arguments on which Peel had rested Peel'a conversion, his defence of the Corn Laws had one by one to be given up as his slow, but sure and perfectly conscientious intelligence found that they had no real basis. That to lower the price of corn by repeal- ing the CoL-n Laws would make no difference to the working- classes, because wages would be lowered in propor- tion, had been his sheet-anchor in the debate of 1839. In 1842 he had relied on the equity of the Corn Law as counter- vailing the special burdens on agriculture, and on its necessity as the premium paid during peace and good harvests for sufficient supplies of corn during war and bad harvests. Ho had learned by b'~'15 that high wages meant low cost of labuur ; The Aholiliiw of Diihcfi on Manulacbirca. 11 7 that the special burdens on land only existed in the imagina- tions of the landlords, and even if thev^ had existed were to be remedied by a redistribution of the burden ; and that the rapid improvements in the means of ocean transport were lessening our dependence on the corn belt of Europe and throwing open to us the vast fertile wheat areas of America and our own colonies. The destruction of one great food-stuff, the The Act of 1846. potato, made it inevitable that the ports should be freely opened to supplies of another kind, to which they had long been closed by the Corn Law. To reimpose the Corn Law when the crisis was past would be impossible. The Tory party split into two parts, but Peel, aided by many Tories and most of the Whigs, carried the Act of 1846 which provided for the rapid reduction of all duties on corn to a registration duty of one shilling a quarter on Febi'uary 1, 1849. Twenty years later this was dropped too, and corn came in absolutely free of duty. , Tn 1853 Gladstone became Chancellor of budgets. '^ the Exchequer, and his budget of that year was the first of the wonderful series which made him the greatest financier his country has ever produced. During his first period of office as Chancellor he was struck with the extraordinary increase in the revenue- producing powers of the tarift", as it was simplified and narrowed l)y successive changes. From 1832 to 1841, £2,000,000 of duties had been imposed, and over £3,380,000 remitted ; levenue from them had increased £1,710,000, and the exports £15,150,000. From 1842 to 1853, £1,030,000 of duties had been imposed, and £13,240,000 remitted, the revenue from them had increased £2,660,000, and the exports £43,040,000. The obvious inference was that commercial reform meant greater ability and greater willingness to pay taxes, and any Chancellor of the Exchequer would have been led to continue the process which eased his task so much. Gladstone, when once con- vinced as to his principles, was never half-hearted in his application of them. He made " a sweep, summary, entire and absolute " of all duties on manufactures. Only twenty-six groups of duties remained, and of these several were to dis- appear at fixed dates. The duties that were left were for revenue purposes only, and were imposed on commodities not produced at home, e.g., tea, or to countervail excise duties on articles produced at home, e.g., beer. The abolition of over 148 Free Trade and its Results. four liundred protective duties, cost the revenue less than one and a-half milHon. In 1849, the Navigation Acts were re- Na^^gationLaws. P^^led ^^^^'^. ^eing in operation for nearly two centuries. They probably contributed in their earlier years to the growth of British shipping, though opinions differed as to their efficacy even in the seven- teenth century (p. 52). In the nineteenth, they had become fetters on the movements of trade, and their repeal was the more necessary after the repeal of the Corn Laws. Since their repeal the trade of the United Kingdom has grown enormously, but the proportion of the work of carrying our oversea trade done by British ships has also increased notwithstanding the repeal of the Navigation Acts, from fifty-nine per cent, in 1854 to seventy per cent, in 1902. " Free Trade " is only a popular epithet, " Fi-eo Trade." and no terse yet exact phrase has ^been invented which exactly describes the fiscal system thus slowly built up after a century of argu- ment and experiment. Duties are imposed under it which, in the year ending March 31, 1907, yielded £32,894,030, and some of the most productive of these duties are on staple foods like tea and sugar. Its distinguishing feature is that it completely avoids giving any advantage to the home pro- ducer over any of his foreign or colonial competitors. So carefully does it hold the balance between them that the excise duties on alcoholic liquors are slightly lower than th corresponding customs duties in order to compensate the home producer for the inconvenience he has to endure in meeting the requirements of the revenue officials. The growth of Great Britain in popula- Its results. tion, oversea trade, financial stability and wealth since the middle of the nineteenth century is a powerful argument for the soundness of the fiscal system elaborated by Peel and Gladstone. Dming the period since 1902, while the merits of the system have been under discussion, our oversea trade has expanded in a phenomenal manner. The arguments in favour of changing it owe their influence to causes which are, perhaps, political rather than economic in character. There are some valid arguments in favour of introducing a protective system in a young country, and also in favour of retaining an existing protec- tive system in an old countrv, thoun-h in both cases there are DcirlopDienf oj (\)}iinninic(tiion8. M'^ weiglity counter arguments wliich most English economists think ought to prevail. But the purely economic argument in favour of introducing a protective system into an old, developed country which has long had a "'' free-trade " system is com- paratively weak. If this change is to be made, it must be because the political advantages of the alternative system outweigh its economic disadvantages. Kevolution in Many factors co-operate to produce a methods of sound and expansive industrial system, and transport. ^j^^,^, jjjj^-^ ^^^^^ determine each other in a way that can be realised as the result of close inquiry, more easily than it can be indicated in words. The capacity to pro- duce goods, which was given by the Industrial Eevohition, was set free from all unnecessary restraints by the gradual intro- duction of Free Trade, the stimulating effect of each instal- ment being the chief practical argument in favour of the next and larger enfranchisement. Both would have been compara- tively useless but for the happy coincidence that the methods of transporting goods were revolutionised along with the revolu- t ion ill the method of producing them. The roads of England, in the middle of Canals and mac- , i • i ; ^i , • -i adamized roads, ^'l^^. eighteenth century, were m a vile con- dition, partly from bad methods of construc- tion and indifference to their importance, but chiefly because no effective system of administering them had been built up. When Arthur Young, whose maledictions on English roads are frequent and hearty, got to France he found the roads there magnificent, though they were obtained by methods that Englishmen would not have tolerated for a day. Before any great improvement was made in English roads, the growing needs of industry had been met by the construction of canals ; the first, authorised in 1755, being made to carry coal into Manchester. Early in the next century, no place south of Durham was more than fifteen miles distant from water conveyance. In 1811, John Macadam reported to Parliament his improved method of making roads with small angular stones welded into a mass, a service for which he was properly rewarded with a grant of £10,000. " Mac- adamised " roads are perhaps even more important now than then, but canals became of minor importance on the introduc- tion of railways, though with better methods of towing boats they seem likely to come into greater use again for heavy goods for which sjieed in transit is not requisite. ]I)0 f'a/lvun/.'^ and SirfDii.'ihips. The railroad is too familiar to need descrip- Railroads. tion. Rails as a method of reducing friction were used for horse-drawn wagons in Tyne- side collieries as early as 1676. At the end of the eighteenth century, James Anderson advocated their use on the main roads all over the country, since one horse could pull on rails as much as fifty on an ordinary road. Cygnot, a Frenchman, had invented, in 1760, a steam-propelled vehicle to run on an ordinary road. The two ideas were put together in England by 1802, when a locomotive made by Trevithick ran on a tramway at Merthyr, but its load and speed were small. In 1825, George Stephenson used iron rails for the line from Stockton to Darlington, and StenhTnson n^ade a locomotive which successfully hauled a considerable train of wagons. " I am sorry to find the intelligent people of the North country gone mad on railways," wrote Lord Eldon. The great improvement of 1830, when Stephenson's " Rocket " ran on the new line from Liver])ool to Manchester in two and a-quarter hours, set England, and, indeed, all the leading countries hard at work on building railways. The inevitable speculation came, and in the lailway mania of the forties much effort was mis- dii-ected and capital lost. In 1854 there were 8,054 miles of lailway in the United Kingdom, witli a .paid up capital of 286 millions sterling, earning over 20 miUions yearly, with working expenses of {) millions, and a net profit of 11 millions. The effect on the industrial expansion of the country was enormous. Gladstone once carefully estimated the rela- tive importance of free-trade and railways in contributing to the growth of our industry and wealth. He came to the conclusion that free trade contributed 70 per cent., and rail- ways 30 per cent. His opinion is, of course, valuable and instructive, but it is impossible to apportion the credit so nicely as this because other factors count so much. The rapid overland transit of goods and Steamships, letters had given the captains of industry a wonderful additional advantage, which was increased again by the introduction of the steamship. In 1833 the first steamer, the " Royal William," crossed the Atlantic from Nova Scotia to Gravtfsend in twenty-two days. In 1838 the " Sirius " and the " Great Western " raced westward across the Atlantic, steaming over 200 miles on their best days, and reducing the time to fifteen days. s on the Groivth of the Empire. 151 In 1840 the Cunard line was established (see pp. 92, 277), and the " Britannia " did the eastward voyane in ten days. These were tiny ships, measured by modern standards, but they led the way to the vast liners of modern times. ^, ^, , . Meanwhile " King Steam's " efforts to aid The Electric . .,'='. . . , ., Telegraph. ^'^ commercial expansion were being seconded by a still more wonderful rival. In 173G, an electric current had been sent some distance" along pack-threads. A century later, in July, 1837, the first telegraphic message was transmitted by the Wheatstone- Oooke system, between two London stations on the London and North Western Railway. In August, 1858, Queen Victoria and President Buchanan exchanged messages across the Atlantic. In 1865, Downing-street and Calcutta were made as close together as Downing-street and Bucking- ham Palace had been in the older age {see p. 228). These improvements have made the world marked. ^^® great market. The London merchant and the Manchester manufacturer can master, over their breakfasts, the chief movements of yester- day in every trading centre of the world. The economic effect of this has been very important. Production on a large scale was the outcome of the Industrial Revolution. At first it was production for an unknown market. But now that London and New York, Berlin, and Calcutta, Paris, and Melbourne, New Orleans and Montreal, Valparaiso and Pekin, for all the purposes that determine the direction which pro- ductive effort shall take in the near future, are as close together as houses in the same street, the uncertainties of industry and commerce which spring from ignorance of distant movements of supply and demand, have been reduced to a minimum. These economic changes have largelv made ]Sh'Emph-e. *^^^ ^i-^tM^ Empire what it is to-day. " While its claims had been " pegged out " before the close of the Napoleonic era, they were only made effective by occupation in the period which followed Waterloo ; and the history of the Colonies is mostly covered by the nineteenth century. T'hc development of material resources consequent upon the revolution of British industries and expansion of British commerce produced a rapid growth of population (see p. 186) which peopled British colonies. Commercial expaiT- sion had another result ; the greatest cities of the Empire are now ports dependent on the sea for their existence and on sea-borne trade and naval strength for their prosperity. CHAPTER XI. 'OLITIC AL EMANCI PATION. Political effects M o less momentous than the conversion of of the economic England from an argicultural into a manu- changes. facturing country, or the expansion of the media)val town market into the world market of to-day was the political emancipation of the mass of the British people. To some extent the movements overlapped in point of time ; but, speaking broadly, the economic preceded and produced the political revolution. According to feudal theory the pos- session of land was the basis of political rights ; and long after the feudal ages a " stake in the countiy " was regarded as the only title to political privilege. The idea yet survives ; no amount of intelligence, and no amount of wealth will give a man a vote unless that wealth is translated into terms of owneiship or occupation of lands or buildings. Not man- hood, but land and Avhat is built thereon, is still the basis of the suffrage in the British Isles. Nevertheless, the old feudal conception has been expanded mitil it almost coincides in its practical application with the idea of manhood suffrage ; and this transfor?nation of the political monopoly of the landtMl interest was intimately coimected with the economic revolu- tion which substituted the " cash-nexus," as Carlyle called it, for land tenure as the prime factor in political society. • The House of Commons has been an in- The Electorate, tegial part of the English Constitution since the " Model Parliament" of 1295 {see pp. 32-3). From its earliest days it has been a representative body, gTving greater or less effect to the wishes of the electors, and having power to bind them by its votes. The countv electors wcjc at fiist all who had a right to The Gounty and Borough Fmnrlme. IH/ attend the count v court, which we may look upon as the hical government of the shire. Apparently this rather vague elector- ate became in practice those who were counties^ actually present, so in 1430, the first franchise Act was passed, to shut out "the people of small substance, or of no value," who " pretended a voice equivalent .... with the most worthy knights and esquires." Henceforth no one could vote unless he held " a free tenement to the value of forty shillings by the year, at the least, above all charges." The '"forty shilling freeholders" — the '■ yeomen " famous both in war and agriculture — would have grown very numerous in course of time, owing to the in- crease of population, and the fall in the value of the shilling, but foj' the fact that this movement was more than revensed by the growth of large estates when wool became the most profit- able agricultural product. No othei- way of holding land conferred a vote, (."opyholders, leaseholdeis, and ten«iits-at- will had no vote, no matter how^ nuich rent they paid. At the time when the House of Coni- boroughs^ "^^"■'' ^^^'^ acquiring a strong position in the constitution, the boroughs were, as a rule very small places. Woodstock, near Oxford, may serve as an illustration of the kind of town which sent two burgesses to Parliament, and thus had as much voting power as the whole of Yorkshire. The selection of towns to send burgesses depended on the King, often, in practice, even on the sheriff, and the list was modified from time to time by omissions and additions. Of the way in which borough elections were con- ducted very little is known'; the only clearly ascertained point, that the fixing of the electorate was a matter of local custom, giving rise to a great variety of qualifications. Cromwell made considerable reforms, but, to Clarendon's regret, they were dropped at the Restoration and the system, with all its anomalies and inequalities, became fixed. So early as the reign of William III. it was pointed out that there was a rapidly growing divergence between the actual constituencies and the real centres of wealth and population. The smallness of the boroughs had mattered little so long as resistance to the royal will was the chief task of the House of Commons. But after 1088, there were two parties anxious to control the House of Commons by indirect means — the Whig Lords and the Crown, and then the small boroughs gave them their opportunity. By about 1820, when economic forces had grouped the popula- 154 The old Electoral System. tioii along other lines, the parliamentary system had become so bad that an account of it is as amusing as it is amazing. Anomalies of We may suppose, borrowing a common the unreformed though useful illustration, that a foreigner, electorate. Jiaving learned to admire our parliamentary system from afar, had landed in England towards the close of the eighteenth century to stud>' its actual working. He would have found '" a green mound," *' a stone wall with three niches in it," " a noble park " — and park, niches, and mound each returned two burgesses to Parliament. As a contrast he would have found large towns full of busy people who returned no members. In one '" borough " he could have seen the solitary elector take the chair at a formal meet- ing of the electors, propose, second and put his own nomina- tion, and duly carry it unanimously. He could have made the acquaintance of a noble lord, the type of many, who employed and dismissed eleven members of Parliament just as he employed and dismissed his footmen and his grooms. He would have learned that there was nothing to prevent an English constituency from being the private property of the King of France, as indeed some of them were of the Nabob of Bengal. He would have found numerous boroughs where the election of a member was a matter of bargain and sale, carried on by a professed class of boroughmongers, and even one (Sudbury) Avhich, seeking its best market, publicly advertised itself as for sale. In somewhat larger towns he would have found a paternal government shepherding a crowd of excise officers to the poll, and electors openly selling their votes to the highest bidder. He would have "been told that all this was against the law, but also that the most strenuous of the buyers was the King himself. There was no end to the anomalies in England, but had the inquiring foreigner gone to Scotland he would have found that even the pretence had been given up, and that a general election there attracted no more atten- tion than an auction (see pp. 85-G). Finally he would have learned that six thousand people returned an absolute majority of the House of Commons, a]id that William Pitt had proposed to reform the system by allowing the rotten boroughs to sell themselves once for all to the government, and that, Prime Minister as he was, his proposal had been scouted. A House of Commons elected under such a system was bound to become a hot-bed of corruption. Even the Long Parliament was tainted with it, and the first parliament Political Corruption. 155 after the Restoration earned and deserved the name of the " Pension Parliament. " Sir Robert Walpole turned the bribery of members into one of the most useful corniption^"^ branches of politics as understood by that " crafty and vulvar animal, the politician," to use Adam Smith's plain words. Members who had bought their constituencies sold their constituents. Horace Walpole tells how the Government obtained the consent of the House of Commons to the preliminaries of peace in 1762. " A shop was publicly opened at the Pay Office, whither the members flocked and received the wages of their venality in bank-bills, even to so low a sum as £200, for their votes on the treaty. £25,000, as Martin owned, v/ere issued in one morning ; and in a single fortnight a majority was purchased to approve of the peace." The accounts of the Secret Service money for the year show that this account, even if exaggerated, is well founded. There is one unimpeachable witness to what went on. In a letter to Lord North, when Prime Minister, in 1781, occurs this passage : " Mr. Robinson sent me the list of speakers last night, and of the very good majority. I have this morning sent him £6,000 to be placed to the same purpose as the sums transmitted on August 21." The writer was George 111., who called the English Constitution (»f liis ;lay " the most perfect of human formations." Kedeomin- ^^"' "^'■-'''■^' Molh-T ol Paili.Mni.-nls li;i.| 'feakiTes"^' f^"''" '"^" ''^i' ^avs. When we consider. however, how slowly we ])rogress even now that parliaments are chosen by an electorate practically co- extensive with the manhood of the nation, and bribery, even where it exists, is driven underground by law and public opinion and so hardly affects the larger results of the parlia- mentary system, we shall see more clearly how the old rotten system not only did not drive the nation to destruction, but existed alongside of much that was sound and noble, so that the evil could be cut away leaving the social structure intact. It was said by a competent authority of the nineteenth centurv that the House of Commons was better than the best man in it. And in the eighteenth century the member who had coiiuptcd others and was himself corrupt, had, for his leaders, at least some men who were aflame with high ideals and whose integ- rity was unimpeachable. The two Pitts, Edmund Burke, Charles Jan.es Fox, and George Canning would have purged any assembly of its grosser elements, while among the 156 Beginnimjs of the Reform Movement. rank and file behind them were occasionalh^ a Romilly and a Wilberforce. The accession ot the younger Pitt to the ^^°7e^rm. ^°' Pi-emiership in 1783 was soon followed by the coherence of the personal groups that had hitherto fought for the hands of their leadej-s into the two great parties — tlie Whigs and the Tories. It is often asked whether the two-party arrangement of politicians is essential to the successful working of a ])arliamentary system. The question obviously does not permit of a definite answer, but it is more than a coincidence that the cleavage in our own House of Commons soon made Parliamentary reform possible, by making it part of the programme to which the Whigs had pledged themselves. The movement for reform began as early as 1745, and in its earliest stages received the powerful support of the elder Pitt. George II. well expressed the stimulus which " the Great Commoner " gave to English politics when he said that Chatham had taught him to look elsewhei'c than in the House of Commons for the sense of his ])oople. Ill 17*.'2 the Society of the Friends of the People was foi'Hicd 1o advocate reform. Charles James Fox gave it his sup))ort. iiiid one of the earliest members of the Society was his ])olitical i)U])il and heir, Charles (rrey, who, as Farl ihvy, was the head of the Whig Cabuiet which passed the Ileform Bill of 1832. At the l>eginning of the nhieteenth century, however, the bulk of both parties were opposed to reform The vounger Pitt had changed his mind. He had been convinced, iie said, by the opposition of England to Jacobinism, that no reform was necessary— an intellectual process which it is hopeless to attempt to explain. When the young Whig, Lord John Russell, third s(m of the Duke of Bedford, introdticed a motion in favour of reform, he was denied the use of the party " whip '\in its support. Canning was against it, and 1;he Duke of Wellington bluntly expressed the Tory view by a paneg3''ric on the existing system, in November, 1830. But the movement had made enormous strides before the end of George IV. 's reign ; and even the Lords were surprised at Wellin.gton's impolitic declaration, which led to the fall of his ministry. Peel, always " right-headed and 1^831^2^° liberal,'' was moving cautiously towards re- form, but he now preferred to stand by his leader. The new Prime Minister, Earl Grey, took ofiice pledged to reform, and he had the great advantage of the support of The Reform Act of 1832. 157 the new King, William IV. He offered a minor post m his ministry to Lord John Russell, who had distinguished him- self, since he first entered the House in 1nt, there was no need for change ; (2) that in giving the franchise regard should be had not nunely to the fitness of the person receiving it, but also to the influence of his class on the general well- being ; (o) that no one class must be allowed voting power enough to enable it to swamp the rest. ^. ,. . The Ministrv resigned and Earl Russell Disraeli s Act ,. •^^ ,"■ i p ' ^^■ i-r i of 1867 practically retired from public life, having " through storm and sunshine .... built up a great reputation." Lord Derby became Prime Minister, with Disraeli as his lieutenant in the House of Commons. With the defeat of the Bill, as in 1831, the great power which moulds the legislature, made itself felt. Even Gladstone had perhaps under-estimated the demand for reform. " C'ertainly as far as my constituents go there is no strong feeling for reform amongst them," he had said to the Speaker in private conversation before the meeting of Parlia- ment. The defeat of the Bill and Lowe's bitter language made a great change. A Reform League was formed and r'allel a a;reat meeting in HA'de Park. The iJovernment closed Disraeli's Act of 1867 and the Ballot Act of 1872. 103 the Park, and the exckidecl demonstrators tore down the railings and took possession. The new Government was pledged to reform, some reform, and announced in the Queen's speech that they would freely extend the franchise, but without unduly disturbing the existing distribution of political power. The upshot of the matter was the " Representatiovi of the People Act " of 18(57, which went further than had been proposed even by Bright. In boroughs, household suffrage was established ; in counties, an occupation franchise of £12 ; in both a lodger franchise of £10. In England, six boroughs returning two members and five boroughs return- ing one member, were totally disfranchised; thirty-five boroughs returning two members were deprived of one member each. Of these fifty-two seats, nine were given to new boroughs, nine distributed amongst the large towns, one given to London University, and twenty-five to the counties. This was a loss of eight seats, of which Wales got one, and Scotland seven, 'i'he Act inci-eased the electorate of the United Kingdom from J ,:Ui4,000 to 2,44«,000, in a population of 30,400,000. The Act of 1867 remained unaltered until The Ballot Act. 1884. It left one great class unenfranchised — the agricultm-al labourer. Year after year Mr. (afterwards Sir George) Trevelyan introduced motions for ex- tending the county franchise, only to lose them by large though gradually falling majorities. Gladstone became Prime Minister in 1868 on the defeat of the Conservatives in the general election of that year. In 1871 the Ballot Act provided a necessary complement to the extension of the franchise. '' All the highest abstract arguments were against secret voting," says Lord Morley, and Gladstone, who in 1831 had fulminated against the proposal to include vote by ballot in the Reform Bill, long remained unconvinced. Indeed, even after voting for his own bill, he noted in his diary that his mind was satisfied, but " as to feeling, a lingering reluct- ance." But, to quote his biographer again, " experience showed that without secrecy in its exercise, the ballot was not free." The Lords rejected the bill, but yielded in 1872 to the unmistakable feeling in its favour. The operation of the bill has proved that the real basis of the opposition to it was unfounded. When Gladstone became Prime Minister again in 1880, the question of the extension of the franchise was con- sidered ready for solution. In introducing the Bill in 1884 g2 164 Enfranchisemenl of the AgricuUim^Lahourer^^ hT^hasiseT'the view with which twenty years before he- ad shocked tlve political world, reviving, as he wa^ told, the The Reform Act ^^ (jigcuPS admission to the franchise now as °*' ^^''"- it was discnssed fifty years ago, when Lord John Russell had to state, with almost ^f^^^^^ exnected to add in the three kingdoms ha f-a-miUion to .ae expectea to au question of nicely calculated r f m 1 ak: mv stand u^on the bi.ad principle that the e f anchisenient of capable citizens, be they few or be they the e ^t^^^^, ^j^^^^ ^ ^J go nuich the better-is an addition ^X:::f^:of l^state^; Capacity ^o-tizenship hit^er^ l.„l hppii connected with the possession of a stake in tne conntn " and the battle of reform had been fought around the vak.e of tie stake which would prevent a man from attempldn., to ruin his country. No appreciable sign of natrnal downfall being at hand to encourage opposition to the ;?oposa toTit the rni^l householder a vote, the anti-reformer K-?X"rth bms\ecrme'?aw. and settled the basis which remains unaltered t^o-d^a,-. ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^.^^^ .„ „„, Thee.isung constituency, but he may l>ave votes m Imnchiso laws. separate constituencies. The right to a vote depends on'the voter's name being on the regist^r^o IT .„ „^f ;t tlipre (lUn counties it ne is tne noiaei If Ta'^d • W TiS^^tTLl shillings Hear annual value ot lana , ^oj^ copyhold of £o ; (c) a ::d an gi" a mala vote in a constituency he never visits except to^record it. No better illustration could b^ given of the elcdlei t English plan ot building new wings to our old poht":r stlturi ratLr than razing the whole to bu.ld on a "™etel832, the Counties of England and Wales retunied 94 members and the boroughs 41.5 ; under t*"; ^ct of 18. 2 The Existing Political System. 165 ol course, mean that the country has gained at the expense of the towns, but that scores of small boroughs have become absorbed for electoral purposes in county divisions, which therefore require a larger number of representatives. The system is not perfect now, and is not likely ever to be so. It frequently happens tiiat a Government has a majority in the House of Commons altogether disproportionate to its majority in the country, but generally this has the effect of making it very cautious in its legislation, and so is an imper- fection which may easily be over-rated. ,4t the beginning of the nineteenth century, a mere handful of people elected more than half the House of Commons. In the general election of 190(), nearly six million votes were cast in a population of about forty-three- and a-quarter millions. In Great Britain, where there are nearly seven and a-half million private dwelling houses, nearly five and a-half million votes were cast. The old unity of the State has thus been restoratkm. restored. Edward I. expressed his ideal of Parliament in a fine maxim of the Roman Law : " That which concerns all should be considered by all." That maxim was literally carried out, for the " full county court," which elected the knights of the shire, con- tained, or was supposed to contain, the " reeve and four best men " of every township, and thus brought even the villeins into the system (p. 33). These classes were all connected with the land ; but gradually the possession of land conferring political rights was restricted to a comparatively few and usually rich landowners, by whom England was ruled from 1660 to 1832 ; and Parliament no longer represented a unity of classes. The process of political emancipation gradually reintroduced into the parliamentary system the elements which had been ex- truded. The King no longer rules " two nations," " the in- cluded and the excluded," as Bright called them, " the rich and the poor " as Disraeli called them. A general election is now a solemn appeal to a responsible people. ..; The will of the majorit}^ of the electors Results. is the driving force in English politics. Unless this were so, the extension of the franchise would have been meaningless. Much facile ridicule has been poured on this method of government by counting heads, but two things are clear concerning it. (1) It has driven out of our minds the notion of appealing to physical force on any political question, while in earlier periods this 166 The Practical Meaning of Democracy. appeal was readily made, and even duiing the nineteenth century was entertained on the one side by the unbending Tories, and on the other side by the " physical-force " Chartists; (2) democracy has not so much abolished monarchy and aris- tocracy as assimilated whatever elements of permanent value they contained. An Englishman of consummate ability wields a jDolitical influence of which any despot would be glad ; the best men, acting singly or in groups which they themselves have formed, have all the powers of an aristocracy in its original and highest sense. That all this power, is unknown to the constitution does not make it any the less real, but it does make it more valuable because its basis has to be reason and consent rather than privilege and compulsion. One other remark may be made : the appeal to the elec- torate comes at the end of a long and richly educational debate, and is organised by political pai-ties each of which has its traditions and its ideals. Politics in the party sense is war- fare, and success in war demands capable leadership, and capable leaders can only be had on one condition — that they are allowed to lead. These men are essential to the working of the political machinery, and theii' trained capacity, matured by the responsibilities of leadership, steadies and rationalises our politics. . The extension of the franchise was opposed ^people." ^ ^^^ ^^^® ground that it would lead to " the arbitrary rule of the poor and uneducated masses," an " ochlocracy," as Polybius calls it, and that such rule would be fatal to national stability. " The people who live in small houses " now have the vote in far larger numbers than Lowe feared or Bright contemplated. They are moulded by all sorts of influences, the noble aud per- manent of which have just been indicated. Hence they are not arbitrary. Neither do they rule. The will of the majority of the electors is the driving force in English politics, but the constitution does not recognise it, and indeed knows nothing of it. A customs officer might be well aware that every elector in the country had voted for a given import duty on corn, but he would not therefore demand it from the captain of the next corn ship which arrived from the Argentine. A policeman would neither arrest a man because everybody thought him guilty, nor release him because everybody was convinced, he was innocent. Before it can have any eft'ect upon action, the will of the people has to be the will of the Central Government. CHAPTER XII. CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. 'VliQ will of tlic majority of the electors has "^Sove^eiffr^ been described as the driving force in English politics, because, sooner or later, it must find expression in legislation or administration. This is shortly expressed by saying that the majority of the electors is the F'olitical Sovereign of the United Kingdom. The word "sove- reign," familiar as it is to everybody, requires, on this very grou]id, to be carefully examined. In ovovy fully-developed State there must 1)e a definite p(MS(>n or grou]) of persons whose commands are habitually obeyed by ;)1! the other members of the comnuinity. The woik of go\('!iiiiig a modern State employs a vast number of persons, from admirals and generals down U> policemen and postmen, and there must be a known authority to whose com- mands all these functionaries render unquestioned obedience. Then there are commands which are not issued only to servants of the State, but are intended to be obeyed at all times and in all places by all the inhabitants of the State, and these general commands are known as laws. The commanding person or group of persons is the " Sovereign " ; the other members of the community are " Subjects." Unless this distinction is as clear cut in practice as it has been made in theory, order and progress are at an end. If two different groups of subjects within the same state recognise two different sovereigns, there is no other way out of the difficulty than Civil War. But the political sovereign of the United Sovereign Kingdom has none of these marks of sove- reignty. Its will can only be inferred in a vague and general way, and even if it could be ascertained with minute exactitude, the majority has no means, short of physical force, of compelling anyone teheed it. Foreigners, observing 168 Political mid Legal Sovereignty. the unerring certainty with which the poHtical sovereign does obtain the carrying out of its will, are sometimes tempted to think that " the sovereign people " of revolutionary ideals is here realised. Even the profound English thinker, John Austin, who discussed the idea of sovereignty with wonderful acumen, attributed a share of it in this country to the elec- torate, and that, too, long before the Reform Act of 1867. He was attempting to talk law and politics at the same time, and that cannot be done. But we want to use the word " sovereign," both in law and in politics, and the best way is to use an adjective along with it. The political sovereign we already know. The legal sovereign we have yet to ascer- tain. Then, most interesting of all, wc have to see how the will of the latter is made to coincide with the will of the former. The group of authorities and institutions through which the legal sovereign acts may be referred to, in more familiar terms, as the Central Government. It is a definite grou[) of known persons ; its The Central (.ommands are law ; if disobeved bv any LTOvernment. . • i i i ^ • ' subject it has at its back a definite and power- fu' macliiuoiv for coercing and punishing him. There is no limit to its power, except the hmits set by nature itself. It can do anything, according to an old epigram on the subject, except make a woman a man or a man a woman. PoM^erful as it is, it would break to pieces immediately if it did not act according to rules and methods which its subjects could understand and so make stal)lc arrangements for their future conduct. No government is free from this necessity, and in this sense Russia and the United Kingdom both have con.stitutions. It is quite a common thmg, however, for a constitution to be j)laced beyond the control of the Central Government. This means that the political sovereign has definitely appointed means of making its will known for the higher purposes of gove nment. In the United Kingdom no such means are adopted, and no such gradation of powers is laid down. The same routine is followed in authorising a tramway in Oxford and in revolutionising the agrarian system of Ireland. When a command or an act of the Central (xovernment is criticised as unconstitutional, it only means, and can only mean, that the critic does not approve of it. When brought before him in a Court of law, a judge may say of it, with the approval of every- body, that it is monstrous, and then punish the subject for dis- obeying it. Executive and Legislature. 1()0 The Central Government has the obvious atdLeifslation ^^^^ °^ administering the existing body of laws and thus preserving the State from internal disruption ; akin to this is the task of defending the State from external foes. In performing these tasks it has to do things, and is from this point of view called the administra- tion or executive. But no existing body of laws is exactly adapted to satisfy existing needs, and even if it were so at any given time, the progress of society would soon disturb the equilibrium. New needs have to be provided for, and new ideals striven after, and this is done by making new laws, from which point of view the Central Government is spoken of as the legislature. The unity and supremacy of the Central Gov"rnDi nt Government have been strongly insisted upon for two reasons. First, because it is the legal theory and corresponds to an obvious political necessity. It used to be taught that the English Government was a nicely poised system of independent parts constructed to secure the liberty of the subject and the contents of his pocket, and this erroneous view prevailed at a time when both were singularly insecure. It is a view suggested, indeed, by the surface facts, but ignorant of the underlying unity. The second reason for insisting on the unity of the Central Government is that, in practice and not merely in theory, it is becoming truer every day that in this country administration and legislation are the work of a known and definite group of persons. Still, for convenience, we may, with Blackstone, consider the execu- tive and the legislature as '" two branches " of the " supreme power." The Executive is " the Crown in Council '"' ; the legislature is " the Crown in Parliament. " The Crown is the formal, and the Cabinet the real, link between the two. To any one but a lawyer the term '" sove- The Monarchy, reignty " necessarily implies a personal, sole sovereign — a monarch. The high attributes which, from the point of view of political theory, have been here attached to sovereignty, are more than matched by the high prerogatives which, in legal theory, are attributed to the wearer of the English crown. Every Act of Parliament is an expression of his will assented to by both Houses ; every single act of administration, from the arrest of a suspected criminal to the declaration of a war, is in express terms his act. The formula is carried out logically and minutely ; his image and 170 Tlir. Altfihutcs oj Ihr Sovcrritpi. superscription appear on every coin, his monogram on every mailcart. Even where the ordinary citizen does not see the dignified symbol of national unity, the law sees it. " Houses of Parliament " is merely the popular name for " His Majesty's Palace at Westminster." The newspapers tell us that there has been a " Cabinet Council," a common phrase for " a meeting of His Majesty's Servants." But all this is as nothing to other attributes of the wearer of the Crown. The King never dies ; the King can do no wrong. Even freedom from the common lot of man is not enough to make him capable of all the duties of his high office, so he is also omnipresent throughout the British Empire, and is every day plaintiff in a thousand suits and president of a hundred courts. The English are eminently a practical race, and all these prerogatives and attributes serve a distinctly practical end, namely to realise that ideal sovereignty which, as we have seen, is an essential condition of order and progress. These prerogatives and attributes have a Its History, long and deeply interesting history. They are the product of (1) the feeling of our forefathers, beautifully expressed in Beoimlf, the first gi-eat poem of the Saxon tongue, that their Kings were divine by descent and sacred by virtue of their office ; (2) the powers actually exer- cised by later kings who were born rulers and strenuous asserters of their rights at a time when other parts of our con- stitutional machinery were non-existent or inefficient ; (3) the theories of the great lawyers, from the time of Henry II. on- wards, whose practical aim was to make the King superior to the feudal baronage. Along with the struggle to create these prerogatives there has gone on the struggle to take the exercise of them out of the hands of the actual wearer of the Crown to whom they are attributed. They cannot now be exercised by the Crown in person or on its own initiative. The Crown can only act by a written document countersigned by a minister who is responsible for its contents. It can only legislate by assenting to a document, known as a " Bill," drawn up by Parliament. What is the '" Comicil ? " The only Council Coundl^ whose meetings are officially recorded is the Privy Council, of which three things are to be noted : (1) the King himself is present ; (2) hardly anyone else is present ; and (3) its acts are always quite formal and in all important cases, e.(j., the dissolution of a parliament, always The Crown in Council. 171 concern acts known to have been decided upon somewhere else. We hear of an eminent scientist, or writer, or artist hav- ing been made a Privy Councillor, but he is never asked for advice and never offers it. Yet this practice illustrates more clearly than anything else the unbroken chain of development which links us to the earliest traditions and habits of our race. We cannot go back to a time when the King was without a body of wise and eminent men {sapientes et opti- nmtes, or in one Anglo-Saxon word, the Witenagemot) to give him advice ; further, we have only to go back a few years, less than a century, to come to a time when the King could and did please himself as to whether he adopted it. This Council in its fullest form has always Its Development, been a large body whose members were scattered over the whole land. Such a Council would be useless in an emergency, or where unanimity and secrecy were essential, as they very frequently are in the work of governing. A smaller working Council, easy to get together, was necessary ; and its composition was obvious. No king is able, and few kings have desired, to do the whole work of governing. He must parcel it out, and entrust chosen servants {ministri, ministers) to do all the detail work, only referring to him for decision on important points. Now these responsible ministers, each master of a department of govern- mental work, will make an excellent Council. This then is what happened. A small Council (the Coticilium secretum) is the efficient body ; the wise and good men (the Magnum Concilium) only meet on rarer and greater occasions ; and the members of the smaller Council are always members of the larger one. At first all that can be said is that the larger body is called together for more important purposes than the smaller, and there is no rigid distinction between the kinds of work they do. For example, under Edward I. the smaller body framed a law — a legislative act, and the larger body decided the terms of a letter to the Pope — an executive act. P)Ut finally the division of duties became clear. The Clreat Council, reinforced as will be seen (p. 173), by the addition of representatives of shires and boroughs, became the Houses of Parliament and obtained con- trol of legislation . The Secret or Privy Council was restricted to administration. During the Tudor period the Council, busy and efficient as it was, was merely the instrument of^the royal will, and was entirely independent of Parliament. This dual 172 The Crown in Parliament. relation, dependence on the Crown and independence of Parliament, continued until after the Restoration, but when Charles I. in 1641 offered the Chancellorship of the Exchequer to Pym, the leader of the majority in the House of Commons, he marked out, without meaning it, the line of future political development. At this point, then, it will be convenient to turn to the Crown in Parliament. The open, conscious, and direct alteration Parliament, of the law of the land, either by abrogation, modification, or addition can only be effected by an Act of Parliament, which always begins by reciting the purpose of the act, and then continues : " Be it enacted by the King's Most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons — and by authority of the same, as follows." There are, then, three parties to the passing of an Act of Parliament, the Crown, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. The share of the Crown is now limited to expressing assent to a " Bill " as it comes before it from the two Houses, and so turning it into an " Act." From the Revolution of 1688 to 1707, the Crown exercised its prerogative of vetoing a Bill, that is of refusing its assent, but since Queen Anne, in 1707, vetoed the Scotch Militia Bill, the royal veto has never been exercised. Before 1688, and as far back as the beginning of our Parliamentary system, the Crown not only assented or dissented but determined to some extent also the character of the legislation to which it did assent, and this command of the Crown over legislation goes further back still to the times before Parliament when the will of the King, duly announced and attested, was law, that is, was acted upon by the law-courts. From the nature of the case, little is known during the dis- cussion of any proposed piece of legislation as to what effect the wishes of the Crown may have had upon its details as they come before Pailiamcnt. After the two Houses have done witli it, it \\i\r- only- one course — assent. The parliamentary system had its origin in. Its Origin. and has throughout been moulded by, the financial necessities of the Crown. If the Crown could have carried on the work of governing from re- sources entirely at its own disposal, it might have gone on nearly to our own day, as some European monarchs did, with only a small body of ministers who were entirely creatures of its own will or whim. ■' War," it is said, speaking of the The House of Com/mom^. 173 infancy of political societies, " begat the King." As these societies matured, war also begat the Parliament. The Houses of Parliament have, like the Cabinet, gradually emerged out of the Great Council of the early Kings. These Kings had one great incentive to calling a Great Council. When their ordinary sources of revenue were insufficient, when they could not " live of their own," as the phrase then fan, they summoned their tenants-in-chief together to grant them an " aid," a tax that is of a given amount on every unit ■of land they held of the King. By the end of the twelfth 'century, the private resources of the King, together with these feudal aids, again proved insufficient, and other forms of property, collectively called moveables or personal property, or rather the owners of such property, had to be called upon to contribute to the royal needs. Fortunately, the theory that assent was necessary was carried over from the taxation of the baron's land to that of the merchant's goods and the towns- man's furniture. At first, it took the form of assenting to the valuation of his property made by local representatives of the royal authority. The great step was taken, after certain preliminary advances, in 1295, when Edward I., instead of sending his officials into the localities, gathered representatives of the localities into one central taxing assembly at West- minster {see also pp. 32-3). The chief local areas were then, as now, the shire and the borough, each of The House of ^j^j^]^ looked upon as a whole, was a c^m- Oommons. .' ^, ^ , ,. e ,^ ee mumtas. The representatives oi the com- munities," originally added on to the Great Council as a reinforcement to make taxation easier and more productive, at last split off into a separate assembly, the House of Com- mons, the original element of the Great Council continuing it^ existence as the House of Lords. As the result of a long struggle, only concluded within the. memory of men still living, the House of Commons acquired the right of determining the kind and amount of all taxa- tion and of the ways in which it shall be spent. In 1407, it was decided that the Lords could not originate a grant for acceptance by the Commons; in 1625, the Commons asserted that a grant of two " subsidies " was theirs ; in 1678, they successfully claimed that grants " ought not to be changed or altered by the House of Lords " ; in 1861, the right of rejecting a financial proposal, asserted by"" the Lords in 1860, was effectively denied to them by the simple 174 The House of Lords. device of including all the grants for the financial year in one bill. In regard to all other bills, the House of LordT^ ° Lords has and exercises rights equal to those of the House of Commons. It can amend or reject them at its pleasure. It contains three groups : (1) English peers ; (2) most of the English bishops of the Anglican Church ; (3) sixteen representatives of Scotch peers elected for each parliament and twenty-eight representatives of Irish peers elected for life. The bishops and the representative peers together form only a small fraction of the whole. The way in which the English peerage developed is very interest- ing, and in order to trace it we have, as always in English con- stitutional history, to go back to the Great Council of the twelfth century. That Council consisted of tenants-in-chief Its History. of the Crown. If all of them had come, the meeting would have been enormous, and on the only known occasion on which all were summoned, the Great Council met on Salisbury Plain. Moreover, when their aids became fixed in amount and occasion there was no need to summon them all, even if it had been practicable. Wlien, therefore, the King wanted advice and not money, he could summon whom he wished, and naturally summoned only the more important. Hence there was marked of? a class of " greater barons," each of whom was summoned, more or less often, entirely at the King's discretion, to the Great Council. Within these, too, there was marked off a small number who, having been " girt with the sword of a county," became " Earls," merely a title of dignity, for " baron " was long not a title of honour but a description of a particular kind of t(niant. In 1321, nine earls and ninety barons were summoned ; in 1325, four earls and forty barons. But the titles and privileges connected with the holding of great estates as tenants-in-chief of the King tended to become liereditary, just as the estates themselves had done — so that by the time of Edward III. during the period when the Great Council definitely became a Parliament divided into two Houses, the discretion of the King came to an end ; the peers of Parliament became a distinct class, all other tenants- in-chief sank into the class of ('ommoners, and the right to attend })arliament passed by descent along with the lands and the title. Charles I. atten)pted to withhold the right The Groiotlh of ParUuineni. J 75 of attending parliament from the Earl of Bristol, but was defeated. In 1856 an attempt to create a peer for life, a peer, that is, whose title and right to a seat in the House of Lords should die with him, was also defeated. The nucleus of the House of Lords was then a knot of great landholders, and this origin is kept in memory to-day by the selection of new titles of nobility from some estate or locality. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, the Kings began to create barons by letters patent, that is by conferring on favoured com- moners a title of nobility which, whether they were land- holders or not, gave them, as it does now, a seat in the House of Jjords. Earl Roberts of Kandahar and Viscount Kitchener of Khartoum do not sit in the House of Lords as owners of land in those far-off cities, but as persons on whom the rank of noblomen has been fitly bestowed. But so late as 1669 it was claimed that the owner of a particular estate, simply because it was one of the old baionies, had therefore a right to a peerage and a seat in the Lords ; and one or two people still call them- selves barons on that ground. The claim was refused, not because it was absurd, but because the practice had been" dis- continued for many ages and so not fit to be revived." The old framework of the constitution was upremacy restored in 1660, but within a generation it had been proved that in all other respects the Restoration was really a very complete change. The House of Commons never lost the strength and influence which the quarrel with Charles I. had given it. It began to control the way in which its grants should be spent, and it passed bills in direct opposition to the King's wishes. The royal power over it was thus reduced to the right of dissolving it, and dispensing with its assistance as long as the royal purse could be filled from other sources. The appearance of permanent party divisions is a still clearer proof of the change, for these would have been meaningless under the old conditions. The supremacy of Parliament and the division into parties had very important results on the Privy Council, which had, of course, been restored in 1660. Charles 11. deliberately made it a numerous body, not that it might form powerful committees, each superintending a department of administra- tion, but that he might use its bulk as an excuse for con- centrating all real power in the hands of a few trusty personal adherents. This group came to be called the '" Cabinet Council." 176 Constitutional Relations. The ^lecessity of obtaining the support of The Cabinet. Parhament made it essential that the members of the Cabinet should also be members of either House, and this, in turn, could only be effective if, being members of the party in the majority in the Commons, they could command its support. Mixed Cabinets of Toiies and Whigs j)roved a failure under William 111. ; under Anne the Cabinet became clearly what it is to-day, a group of mem- bers of the same political party. But it was still really the working section of the Privy Council, for the Sovereign presided over its meetings, and members of the Privy Council, who belonged to the opposite party, and did not hold any office, could, and on a famous occasion at the end of Anne's reign did, claim the right to be present. George I. ceased to take part in Cabinet T\rf.,;J!!!^^ Councils because he could not understand English, and his English-speaking successors never went back to the old practice, and this finally severed the Cabinet from the Privy Council. Until the younger Pitt's accession to office, the Cabinet was not a unit, but a group of ministers individually responsible to the King, accepting orders from him, and not responsible to Parliament in our sense. Walpole had been Prime Ministec in fact, partly per- haps because he would tolerate only subordinates, but also because he anticipated the truth expressed by the younger Pitt in 1803, that the office of Prime Minister was " an absolute necessity in the conduct of the affairs of this country." The struggle for the Reform Act of 1832 "c'^bi°et ^ settled the relations between the various parts of the constitution. The will of the Cabinet must prevail if two conditions are clearly satisfied beyond dispute : (1) the Cabinet is supported by a majority in the House of Commons, and (2) this majority corresponds to a majority of the electorate ; though the will of the Cabinet may prevail without this second support, provided that the will of the Cabinet coincides with the will of the House of Lords. When the Cabinet, the Commons and the electors were agieed we saw the Crown prepared for a wholesale crea- tion of peers {see p. 157), and the House of Lords passing a bill thoroughly obnoxious to a majority of its members. The Crown after 1832 still had the right of dismissing ministers even though they had the support of a majority in the House of Commons, but the futility of doing this was so obviously The Influence of the Electors. 177 established after Melbourne's dismissal by William IV. in 1834 that the right was never again exercised. Every extension of the franchise has been System ^ followed by a closer organisation of the party system. Lowe's sarcastic advice after 1867 was " Let us educate our masters," meaning the electors. That is now being done on a scale not contemplated, perhaps, by Lowe. But the electors have not only been educated, they have been organised. This has meant, first, that the electors have to be informed in broad outlines of the proposals of the leading statesmen, and secondly, that the wishes of the electors, which are constantly brought to the notice of these leaders in familiar and unmistakable ways, play a great part in determining what these proposals shall be. No more exact statement can be made of the way in which it comes about that a given change is suggested, planned, discussed and finally passed. It satisfies a demand supposed to be made by a majority of the electors, and it does so in a way determined by a body of statesmen who have obtained high rank by being thought to have deserved it. It was the natural result of the great measure The Electorate, of 1832, that the leading statesmen of both parties were led to appeal to the enlarged electorate. This appeal took the form of promised legislation. It was assumed, rightly enough, that improved laws would be a factor in leading to improved conditions. Sir Robert Peel's " Tam worth manifesto " of 1834, very plainly marks the change of spirit. In form merely a letter addressed to his constituents, it was in fact the appeal of a great party leader for the support of the electorate on the ground that he would remedy abuses and introduce reforms. If he had been speaking for himself alone, the " Tamworth manifesto " would have been of no particular value. But it was rightly taken to mean that, as leader of his party, it embodied the policy which would be pursued by that party if it obtained a majority in the House of Commons. In 1846 things had come so near to existing con- ditions that Peel carried with him the majority of his sup- porters in the House of Commons in a complete change of attitude towards the Corn Laws. Repeatedly throughout the century we find illustrations of both the processes which com- bine to make the English system. Powerful leaders change their views, and carry with them great sections of their sup- porters : a small section advocates some desirable change and 178 IJnilii and Power of the Cahbiet. gradually grows into a large mass of educated public opinion powerful enough to compel the leaders to accept the policy as part of theii- programme. A very incomplete idea of the system is obtained if, on the one hand, the authority and capacity of the political leaders are underestimated, or if, on the other hand, the agencies by which public opinion reacts on the views and conduct of the leaders are regarded as lying outside any explanation of the working constitution of to-day. The will of the majority of the electorate, as the Caw'net^'^ ascertained by a general election, is thus made to coincide with the will of the Cabinet, and this solution of the world-old problem of democracy has, at any rate, the merit of being successful. Because it is so consti- tuted, the Cabinet has come to be the Central Government. Its unity is represented by its chief member, now officially as well as popularly known as the Prime Minister. The rela- tions between the Prime Minister and his colleagues differ probably from Cabinet to Cabinet, but there is clearly trace- able throughout the period since 1832 a growth of the Cabinet into unity not only because it represents a single political party with a known and traditional policy, but also because of the growing importance of the Prime Minister. Gladstone said tc Sir Robert Peel, after the latter's defeat in 1846, '■ Your government has not been carried on by a Cabinet, but by the heads of departments each in communication with you." The Melbourne government, on the contrary, had been " a mere government of departments without a centre of unity." George III. had been the centre of a similar system, and it had failed to secure either efficient administration or wise legislation. A large electorate, educated by a host of active leaders and able writers into a sense of its powers and its needs, demanded a better system, and has obtained it. The Cabinet is obviously supreme over administration, for its decisions are immediately and of course clothed with the legal forms necessary to give them effect. With regard to legislation the case is different. The Cabinet and jj^^.^ ^j^^ decision of the Cabinet can onlv L,egislation. • i i c i i tt "r become law with the consent of both Houses of Parliament. The difference however constantly tends to diminish. The majority in the House of Commons is, like the Cabinet, a reflection of the majority of the electors. It may disapprove of some executive action already done by the Labinet or of some detail in a law which it proposes to carry. The Control of the Cabinet over Parliament. 179 But in disagreeing, it is faced with a great difficulty ; a defeated Cabinet must resign. In countries where party divisions are more numerous and less rigid, this does not matter very much, for a new combination of ministers can usually be found, and, indeed, has to be found because the Representative Chamber is elected for a fixed period. In England, how- ever, it is impossible to replace a defeated Cabinet from the ranks of the same party in the Commons. A fresh Cabinet must come from the opposite party, and this leads at once to a general election. From this there follows the feature of our parliamentary system which is becoming more and more marked — the !-upremacy of the Cabinet in the House of Commons. Its pro- posals may be modified as the result of pressure from its own side of the House, but it has to consent to each alteration, and the fact remains that if the Cabinet decides to stand or fall by any clause, it nearly always stands. The last time a Cabinet fell by the defection of its own supporters was in 1886. The prin- ciple of the defeated bill — Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill — had, however, not been placed before the country as a definite part of the legislative programme of the Liberal Party. This fact justified the defection and the country ratified it. Even so it is clear that the ultimate result has been to enforce the paramount necessity of avoiding such defections in the future. This can only be done in one way, happily a good one. The electorate must be taken into the confidence of the leaders at an earlier stage, and this implies a training of the people in the formation of political opinions which in the end must prove invaluable. The Cabinet and "^^^^ position of the Cabinet with regard to the House of the House of Lords undoubtedly varies with Lords. the political character of the Cabinet. That this is mischievous is now very generally conceded, and the late Prime Minister announced a definite scheme for remedying it. While acknowledging that it is their duty to accept legislative proposals which have the support of the majority of the electorate, the Lords naturally claim to be the judges as to whether this support is given. It is not the English plan to have a general election to decide the details of one given measure. As we have seen, this is the work of the Cabinet, and the proposal to modify the equal voice of the Lords is a simpler plan than any of the proposed modifications of th(^ way in which the House of Lords is composed. Sir Henry 180 The Law and the Law Courts. Campbell-Bannerman proposed that after a given series of joint Committees of both Houses had been held at given inter- vals, the will of the House of Commons should prevail in the absence of a settlement through this plan. If his proposal were accepted, the Cabinet, whichever party were in power, would be the legal sovereign because it would be the undisputed interpreter of the will of the political sovereign, that is, of the majority of the electorate ; at present this condition is only fulfilled when a Conservative Government is m office. THE .JUDICIAL SYSTEM. ) By the judicial system of a coimtry is meant its series of courts and judges and its modes of conducting trials. The efficiency of the system is tested by the ease, cheapness, accm'acy and im- partiality with which it deals with the cases that come before it. In all these respects the English system has won the admir- ation of the world. In its existing forms, and still more in its formulas, it bears evi.dent traces of its growth out of very ancient ideas and custo'ms. The nineteenth century, which reorganised so much of our constitutional machinery, also produced considerable changes in the judicial system, but here, as elsewhere the study of the past is the only sure clue to the present. The Crown as Every case that «omes before a court of the Fountain law involves some real or alleged breach of Justice. Qf contract, the non-fulfilment of a duty imposed by law upon the accused party whereby the accusing party is injured. If the duty is one which is imposed upon each subject with regard to all other subjects, so that when anyone breaks it, society, as a whole, is injm-ed, the breach of duty is a crime. So when A deliberately sets fire to B's hay- rick, A is not permitted to escape by paying B the value of the hay, nor B to condone the matter by accepting it. Society, as we know it. could not exist if such occiu-ences were, as was once the case, so lightly settled ; and the matter comes into court as Rex V. A, where the King acts as the representative of :SOciety. But if A has purchased the hay and declines to pay for it, then the duty which A has broken is one which ■refers only to B, and the case comes into court as a civil action, B V. A, and here B can forgive the debt, or A pay it, without .consulting the court. The point of contact between the ;two cases is tli^t in each of them the judge acts as the deputy of Development of the Law Courts. 181 the Crown and does work which in theory can only be done by the Crown. We can go back to a time when the King did the work, or rather some of it, himself. James I., who had very exalted notions of his prerogative, desired to do some of it, but was plainly told that he could not, and wisely refrained from pur- suing his attempt. The theory that the King was the fountain of justice was one that cut clean across old notions and powerful claims, but the Kings and their lawyers gradually made it prevail : the Kings, because, as Henry IT. frankly said, justice was a great source of revenue ; the lawyers, because a sound legal system could only be built on the basis that some known and recognisable individual should have the ultimate voice in the settlement of all cases. Here, however, as in legislation and adminis- The Law Courts, tration, we cannot go back to a time when the King was not assisted by a body of counsellors. At first the same council served for all functions, but judicial duties require special knowledge and trained judgment, and what eventually happened was that certain sections of the Great Council split off into law courts, which became fixed in the metropolis. These courts were (1) the Exchequer Court which d'3alt with revenue cases, (2) the King's Bench which dealt with " pleas of the Crown," cases, that is, in which the King prosecuted as the representative of society, or, in one word, crimes, and (3) the Court of Common Pleas which tried dis- putes between subjects. These Courts were all in existence by the end of the thirteenth century, and the first and second soon began in very clever ways to steal business from the third, so that in the end any court could try any civil action. The way to the complete acceptance of the Chancery. theory was originally blocked by the existence of numerous local courts, some popular and others feudal in origin. They were brought into it by a simple plan. In both cases the theory was that the law was the will of the King, and there was, therefore, no reason why the law should only spring from one of these two sources. Con- sequently, the Lord Chancellor, as the Keeper of the King's conscience, gradually came to hold another Court, the Court of Chancery, which was intended to do right when the Common Law (for Statutes at this time were not yet a regular source of new and improved laws) was harsh or incompetent. And though there was no law administered in the Court of Chancery 182 Local and Central Courts. but only equity, this Court, too, in time came to judge by a rather hard and fast set of rules. There were, moreover, many other courts and judges at different times, some of which, as the famous Star Chamber, were abolished ; others, as the old County Courts, gradually fell into disuse. The system was clearly ready for the reform effected by a series of Acts in the nineteenth century, chiefly the Judicature Act of 1873. The new system is, in outline, as follows :— ^^S ^stlm °^ l.~Local Courts witli Local Judges : (1) For criminal cases there are the Justices of the Peace, sitting weekly in Petty Sessions or four times a year in Quarter Sessions ; or, in large towns, paid magistrates, called Stipendaries or Recorders, who take the place of the unpaid Justices of the Peace. Since 1907 there has also been a Court of Crimmal Appeal. (2) For civil cases, there are the new County Courts, estab- lished in 1 846, for the speedier settlement of claims for small debts. 11.^ — TJie Central Courts in London. The Act of 1873 blended all the old Central Courts into one " Supreme Court of Judicature," and then cut this into two parts : (1) the High Court of Justice, itself divided into divisions bearing the names of the old Central Courts, and (2) the Court of Appeal. It was at first intended to abolish the legal functions of the House of Lords, but this part of the scheme was not carried out, and the House of Lords remains the final Court of Appeal. As a matter of fact, when the House of I^ords meets to act as a Court, only the Lord Chancellor and certain " law-lords " attend, and the other members stay away. When once appointed, the Judges of the Supreme Court are almost entirely inde- ^'jffXdi.^es"'' pendent of the King, the Cabinet, Parliament " ' and the people. They can only be removed by the King on an address from both Houses of Parliament. (3) At stated times in each year the judges of the High Court go " on circuit " round the Counties, but except that they sit outside jjondon, and hear local causes, their position and lionours aic tlie same as when they ai'e sitting in London. The people have their share, and that an Trial by -lury. important one, in the working of the judicial system. Whenever a person accused of a crime denies the charge, the evidence for and against him is examined under the direction of the judge by opposing lawyers, and the question of his guilt is decided l)y a ciiminal jury of twelve The Church oj Ew/land. JS.''* responsible male citizens, unless the offence is not of a serious nature and the accused elects to have it decided by the magis- trates. So in most civil cases the facts of the case and the amount of damages are determined by a civil jury. The jury has an interesting but rather obscure history, into which we cannot go further than to say that this work of the English citizen in the administration of the law is linked step by step with the most ancient customs of our race. Before law was the King's will, before justice was his prerogative, there was a time when law was the custom of the people, and justice the expression of their opinion on the case before them. The jury has done important service in maintaining the liberties of the English people, though at times it has acted unjustly and tyrannically. There is no need now for the jury as a bulwark of our liberties, and its abolition is sometimes urged on the ground that it is clumsy and antiquated. It serves however a very useful purpose, not directly contemplated by the law, which ought to ensure its contiimance. It brings thousands of responsible citizens into contact with the failures of society, and so is nourishing that feeling of corporate responsil/ility for their existence which is a growing and useful force. THE CHURCH. We have, finally, to consider the Crown in another aspect. The King is the " Supreme Governor of the Church of England." No- where in the Dominions beyond the seas does the same rule hold. In Ireland, the similar tie between the Crown and the Church was broken in 1869. In Scotland, where some rela- tions between Church and State still exist, the power of the Crown is much smaller and the Church itself quite different in doctrine and discipline. In Wales, the Church is in a small minority, and is regarded as an alien institution. Even in England, large bodies of Christians are organised in Churches which are outside " the Church," and have no special connec- tion with the State. Kelations with the State they must have for, as corporations or legal persons, they stand in some respects in the same position as individuals. The Church of England has relations with the State peculiar to itself ; it is the National Church, " and as such is built into the fabric of the State." At the present time each individual English- Lilbert*^^ man is given full liberty to form and almost complete liberty to expound his opinions on that most vital of all matters— his religion. If, however, he 184 The Meanimi of '■' Established Church :' not expressly claim to be excluded from the National Church, the law regards him as a member of it. This liberty to remain outside it, and to persuade others to do the same, has been fully granted only within times still recent, and it was only, as it were, the other day when this liberty ceased to carry with it disabilities that were often very onerous. This serves to remind ns that at one period in our history it was a matter of accepted belief and practice that the State had the right, and was indeed bound by the duty, of determining what religious opinions should be held by its subjects. The Church of England is called the '" Estab- ^^^ Chfrch'^""^ ^^^^^'^ Church," . because of the following points : — (1) Its doctrines and ritual, or at any rate, the form of words in which they are expressed, have been settled and can only be altered by Act of Parliament. The Book of Common Prayer, which contains the religious doctrines of most Englishmen in words which all of them cherish for their singular fitness and beauty, is itself the schedule of an Act of Parliament. (2) Its chief dignitaries, the archbishops, bishops and deans, are appointed by the Crown on the advice of the Pi'ime Minister. The areas of then' spiritual jurisdiction are settled and changed only by Acts of Parliament. Their relations to each other depend, too, on the sanction of the State. (3) Its assemblies, the two (Convocations of Canterbury and York, .are summoned by the Crown, and their decisions are only valid after receiving its consent. (4) That part of the income of the Church which accrues from tithes is collected under obligations imposed by law on the tithe-payers. Originally tithes were the free gifts of the faithful, and when the faithful came to include everybody, there was much reason in the intervention otthe State to make them obligatory and certain, thereby giving to the Church an income which enabled it to fulfil its historical mission to spread civilisation and culture as well as beliefs. They are not paid now exclusively to the Church, but are often the property of lay- men. In all cases they are a rent-charge on income derived from land, and as by this time they have been allowed for in the price paid for land when it has changed hands, they cannot be said to press on those landowners who are not churchmen. To abolish them would be to make landowners a handsome present. The proposal to divert them, as was done in Ireland, to secular purposes has no serious support. CHAPTER Xlil. LOCAL GOVERNMENT. The Central Government of a State miglit ■'^"LoraTS-^'''^ undertake to perform all the work of govern- Governinent. ing its subjects, and if the State is a very small one it may succeed well enough in the task. If, however, the area to be controlled is extensive and the popula- tion numerous, the Central (Tovernment, even if it controls everything, must delegate a great deal of the work to local agents, responsible to it alone, and obedient to its orders. This foi-m of govei-nment, a bureaucracy as it is called, has its advantages so long as the officials which control it are keen to do the work well, and the subjects, seeing it done well, are indifferent to their exclusion from the management of the smallest affairs of their common life. In fact, howevej', no Central Government finds it necessary to attempt to do all the work of governing. Even a centralised despotism, whose only object is to maintain its own position intact, finds that there is much that it can hand over to its subjects without prejudice to its own interests. Moreover, in every Western country the actual mode of carrying on the government is the result of a long history, in the earlier stages of which it is clear that local life was strong, vigorous and autonomous. The Central Government has been superimposed on this local government, and notwithstanding that the former has become the more important because its powers and its tasks are greater, the latter has everywhere survived and in the leading countries has been organised so as to satisfy modern requirements. In a country like England, where the ulti- Advantapes of ^^^^^ central authority is the electorate. Local Local belt- /-, , ,-n ■ , . Government. Government serves a still more important purpose. It trains the political intelligence of the electors by giving them an interest in the management of affairs which touch them closely and which are readily 186 Changes in the Population. intelligible to them. The thousands of men and women who serve on local governing bodies acquire a knowledge of the problems and difficulties of government, which they could get in no other way. Responsibility is added to enthusiasm, and our political life is steadied by the existence of this large class of local representatives. Before turning to the system of local govern- Effecta of the nient,it will be useful to indicate its connection Industrial • i i • t ^■ ■ i ^ Revolution. with the great economic and political changes previously described. The connection is plain at a glance. The Industrial Eevolution increased the need for a sound system of local government by intensifying the evils which were caused by its absence, and by providing it with plenty of fresh work to do. The political revolution determined the important fact that the system of local govern- ment should be parallel to the system of central government, that is, tliat it should be based on a scries of elective authorities. The Industrial Revolution caused a remark' - I'otml ti m ''''^'''' "ici'jase in the population of this countiy . The population nearly doubled itself during the reign of George III., being about 07 millions in 17(30, and twelve millions in 1821, and it more than doubled in the next sixty years. Still more important, from the ])rescnt ])oiiil of view, was the way in which this raj)idly growing population grouped itself under tlie stress of the new economic forces. England and Wales may be divided into four districts : ( I ) London ; (2) Large towns with a population of 20,000 and upwai-ds ; (3) Small towns, 2,000 to 20,000 ; (4) Rural districts, including towns of less than 2,000. The population of England and Wales was thus distributed amongst the groups :— 1801. 1871. (1) 958,863 3,251,913 (2) 1,445,290 (>.54(i,027 (3) 1,211,092 2,775,739 (4) 5,277,291 10,137,987 8,892,536 22,712,266 Soon itfltM" th<^ census of ]871 the system of local govern- ment was improved, or at any rate increased, by the institution of Sanitary Districts. The name of the new bodies indicates ilie importance of the work they had to do. The figures illus- trate its extent, for the problems of local government increase m importance and difhculty as population crowds into small tteforms in Local Government. IS? areas. Insanitary conditions which may be httle moretha*a nuisance in a village, become a danger when the village grows into a town, and things which the villagers can obtain for them- selves, as water, or can do without, as pavements and street lamps, must be provided for the townsfolk. As the century wore on, the effect of the economic changes on e \ura ^j^^ rural districts became more and mote obvious. In 1801, 59-3 per cent, of the popu- lation lived in the rural districts, in 1871 only 44"G per cent. This " Kural Exodus " is not peculiar to this country, for it is just as marked a feature in Germany and the United States. Here, however, we have only to observe its influence on the system of local government. It was thought and hoped that the " flight from the land," as the Germans have more tersely called it, might be checked somewhat if the people in the rural districts had a more direct voice in their own common local life. This was the idea behind the " Parish Councils Act " of 1894, so that both by its constructive and its destructive results the Industrial Kevolution has shaped our system of local government, by providing manifold problems clearly within its recognised sphere. It is not merely a coincidence that the Eesults of great extensions of the parliamentary fran- Emancipation. chise were in each case followed by great reforms of local government. In 1835 the government of the municipalities, in 1872 the administration of sanitary laws, in 1888 the government of the counties, were improved by laws which were only further applications of the discovered truth that democracy was a practicable, as well as an inevitable, form of government for all purposes in this country. The Industrial Revolution raised problems which society will be long in solving, but it has already given rise to forms of government which will be capable of testing any sug- gested solution without looking to any other compulsion, to use Oliver Cromwell's great phrase, " than that of light and reason." A clear outline of the problems involved Local Govern- ^^^ |^g obtained by supposing that a system of local government is to be established in a country which has hitherto not possessed one. The following points would have to be settled : — (1) The areas most suitable as spheres of local government would have to be chosen, and it is not easy " to cut and carve kingdoms 188 Problems of Local (Jovermnetit. like Dutch cheeses," as a statesman said in the eighteenth century, wlien the task was often attempted. The areas to be chosen may be ah-eady there as the result of history, e.g., the Enghsh shire and the French province, or they may be made for the occasion, e.g., the Enghsh " Union," and the French department. But, as we have ah-eady seen, economic forces move the population to be governed into groups which cut across the boundaries given by history, as London has spread itself into four counties, and these new groups are of primary importance in modern life. Moreover, the line between town and country became hard to draw when it was no longer necessary to live behind the shelter of the town walls, and it has become harder still since the railway and the electric tramcar have enabled people to live far out of the towns in which they work. It is impossible, therefore, to find a unit of local government which shall be as uniform as the yard or the gallon. But, supposing this unit of area to have been selected the next problem is (2) to determine whether Groups' these units shall be separately governed for all local purposes, or whether they shall be grouped into larger areas for more important purposes, and, if so, what shall be the relation between the autho- rities of the units and the authority of the larger group. This relation may be one of independence or subordination for some or all purposes. (3) The areas having been fixed, and grouped and graded if so determined, the next point to settle is how the local authorities are to be ap- ^^^ E?eS' ^^^ pointed. The alternatives are selection by the central authority and election by the inhabitants of the locality. Both methods commonly exist side by side on the Continent, and the former has only recently been entirely replaced in England by the latter. The advan- tage of appointment from the centre is that the authorities will be salaried experts under strict supervision, but in practice this is apt to result in a dull and irresponsible bureaucracy — a form of government particularly detested at any rate in Eng- land. If the authorities are elected, the qualifications of members and voters have to be fixed, and the constitution of the governing body to be determined. None of these are easy tasks, but they are Division ot ligl^t compared with others that immediately follow, for (4) the whole work of governing has to be divided between the central and the local authorities. Relations heWun Local and Central Government. 189 This division diil[ers widely from time to time within the same country, and from country to country at tlie same time. The Carrying of letters in London was at one period of the seven- teenth century undertaken by the City authorities ; it is now jealously restricted to the Central Government. The relief of the poor is supervised to-day in Western Australia by the State Government, in England it is purely a local matter. The actual division, then, is never made on theoretical grounds ; it is partly dictated by convenience or necessity, and is partly the result of history. Even with the ground clear for the establish- ment of the best system, mere theory would prove a ver}'' inefficient guide. All *that it could say would be that if a matter exclusively affects the inhabitants of a given area it should be left to the local authority of that area. Hence there is an obvious need for the establishment of different areas for different purposes. Yet it is obvious too, that, in a country with a crowded and migratory population, it will not be easy to find matters which exclusively affect the inhabitants of any given area. The paving, cleansing and lighting of the streets of a town are perhaps exclusively the concern of its inhabitants, since visitors who disapprove of them have an easy remedy ; they may then be left to the unfettered decision of the town authorities, but in most matters, and particularly in sanitary work, it is obvious that a minimum of requirements must be fixed by a higher authority which is empowered to see that it is observed. (5) This involves the settlement of the relations between the central government and the ^tJfe Cent7il'' elected local authorities. Apart from the Government, coercive power which it necessarily pos- sesses, the central government, through the traditions, experience and equipment of its various depart- ments, is naturally better qualified to judge of the larger aims to be pursued, and the best means of attaining them. " Power," said J. S. Mill, " may be localised, but knowledge _to be most useful must be centralised." Under modern conditions it is impossible to allow local governing bodies to be absolutely independent, but the degree of dependence and the modes of maintaining it are capable of indefinite variations. (6) Lastly, it need hardly be said that the carrying on of local government is expensive, and the ways in which local governments shall raise the necessary funds, and the financial relations between the localities and the centre have to be determined. 190 The English Counties. It is obvious that local government bristles Growth^ with difficulties even when the ground is clear for the establishment of a system based on the experience of other countries. Until recently local govern- ment in England was a chaos that baffled long study, much more succint description. It had grown up without any attempt to see that it grew towards a rational, convenient and well- connected system. Since 1888 great changes have been made in this direction. We have, then, to indicate the way in which the existing English system solves the problems of Local Government. (1) The areas within which local authorities Historical ^^^. entrusted with the administration of local affairs are of two kinds, which may be conveniently distinguished as (a) historical or natural, and {h) modern or artificial, though any attempt to make the distinction rigid would be absurd. The historical group is enumerated in the opening words of the most famoiis biography in the English language : '" 8anmel Johnson was born at Lich- field in Staffordshire. . . . His baptism is recorded in the register of St. Mary's Church in that city." The shire or county, the city or borough, and the parish, are areas which go back to the earliest ages of our history, and as far back as we can trace them we find them to be not only centres of local life, but areas of local government ; to-day their work as such is greater than ever, and far better organised. The English counties are familiar to all, Counties. because they are important enough to claim, and large enough to get, a distmct place on the map. Some of them, e.g., Norfolk, Middlesex, and Wiltshire, have names which would indicate the fact, even if it were not known from other sources, that they were once the territories of peoples who were politically independent, how- ever closely akin by blood and language. Those counties, again, which have taken their name from a town, e.g., Bed- fordshire, Hertfordshire, seem from their names to have had an artificial origin, and were probably carved out for administra- tive and military pm-poses by the conquering kings of Wessex. In any case, they existed long before the Norman Conquest, and each of them had in its " shire moot " its own organ of local government, and its own connecting link wdth the central government. The need for local government was not then keenly felt over such a large area as a countv, for local interests The Justices of the Peace. 191 were much more circumscribed. Moreover, what England needed was a strong central government, and as the influence of the central government made itself more and more felt, what happened to the county as an organ of local govern- ment was simply that the local authorities within it^became merely the local agents of the central government. Still the English spirit of independence also found expression even here, and the final result was that these "^"'pTace! *^'^ ^°°^^ ^Sents of the central government, the Justices of the Peace, governed the counties in practical indepeiidence of the central authorities. This peculiarly English system lasted right down to our own day. Until 1888, bodies of gentlemen who, after appointment by the Crown became independent of its authority, ruled and taxed the inhabitants of the counties, and did it, on the whole, well and economically. The reason Avas that their work as local administrators Avas gradually tacked on to their original work as magistrates, and as the administration of justice was always under the control of persons appointed by the central government, they kept both kinds of worlc. Even in 1888, the Justices were not entirely dij5connected from functions involv- ing the levying of a rate. It remains to bo noted thai, the 52 " geography-book counties " are increased to (12 " iidniiiiis trative counties "' for puT'poscs of \ova\ governtncnt. Soinf famous old sub-divisions of counties, the three " |»ails " of Lincoln, the three " ridings " of Yorkshire, the soke of t*et<'r- l)orough, and the Isle of Ely are admin istiative counties. Suffolk and Sussex are split into two, and London and the Isle of Wight are distinct counties — making the 62. The aggregation of people in an area enor- Coianty Boroughs mously increases the work of local government. Boroughs. Hence there are 76 large towns which are called " county boroughs " because, for purposes of local government they are almost independent of the counties in which they are geographically situated, and have all the local powers of a county. This indeed illustrates how the boroughs originated in local aggregations of people, who gradually became " free of the shire," that is, got out of the control of the shire official, the sheriff, and were connected directly with the central government. They did this in each case by means of a bargain with the King, who sold them a charter and with it powers of self-government. The " freemen " of the borough elected the corporation which governed it, and as a 192 The Borough and the Parish. rule no man could be a freeman unless he was a member of one of the guilds which regulated the trades carried on in the borough. Corrupt for parliamentary purposes, we have already seen them to have been, and for purposes of local government they were equally corrupt and inefficient. Plymouth with a population of 75,000 was ruled by 437 freemen ;. Portsmouth with a population of 45,000 by 102 freemen. Moreover, towns however large, which had no charter, had to be content with a parish organisation. The Reform Act which abolished the political corruption of the boroughs was followed by the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, which reformed the muni- cipal government by sweeping away most existing anomalies and giving to each borough a proper constitution. The work was well but incompletely done, and was finished by the Muni- cipal Corporations Act of 1883. A borough is now any place subject to the provisions of that Act ; any place can petition for a charter placing it in the list of boroughs, and if it has a population of over 50,000 it can, on petition, become a county borough. Nineteen of the most ancient of them are either " Counties of Cities " or " Counties of Towns '\i (though not necessarily also County Boroughs), and these are ([iiite in- dependent of the County in which they are situated. The Parish is the smallest area of local The Parish. government. It corresponds to, and is gener- ally the successor of, the " township,'" the smallest administrative area of the Anglo-Saxon system, which, on the introduction of an organisation to pro- vide for the spiritual needs of the newly converted Anglo- Saxons, was naturally selected as the ecclesiastical unit. The Parish then was the township in its ecclesiastical aspect. We see that " parish " and " town " (a shortened form of " township ") are the same in Chaucer, for his " poore persoun of a toune " is a parish priest, or vicar as we should say. After the Norman Conquest the township became the manor of a feudal superior, but gradually the local autonomy which it had lost as township it regained, under the leadership of the priest, as a parish. At first the assembly of the parishioners in the " vestry," presided over by the priest, was for ecclesiastical purposes only, but these were wider then than now. Relief of the poor was a spiritual duty enforced in the parishes by a rather feeble ecclesiastical machinery, and when under Eliza- beth it became a civil duty enforced by officials and sup- ported by a rate, the parish was made the unit for poor law Tlie Union and the District. 193 purposes, and started on a new career as an area of local ^government. The second group of areas was formed in Unions^' the nineteenth century. The parish had failed as a poor-law area, and when the poor law was reformed in 1834, parishes were grouped into " Unions " for poor-law purposes. Then, when the adminis- tration of a code of sanitarv laws was enforced, the work was added to that of rural Unions, and in towns to the munici- pal authorities if they existed, or to specially elected authorities if they did not. These Unions and Sanitary Districts cut across county boundaries, and so were artificial areas. The practice of creating a new sort of " district " for any new purpose of local government was followed in the '■' school districts " which administered the Education Acts. Recent legislation has aimed at simplification of areas and unity of administration. The boroughs have their own ■organisation. The county has its own ; so has the rural parish. Between the County and the Parish there Trban and Rural ^^^^ ^^^^^ established the " County District," Districts. , . . . . , c£ XT 1 T^- . • i ?5 which IS either an Urban District or ■a " Rural District." The Urban District, as its name in- 'dicates, is more closely populated than a Rural District. It may be e.g., some small country town with a long history behind it, or a village which is growing into a large town, because some mines or mills have been opened in its neigh- bourhood. The effect of density of population on forms of local government is clearly seen. An Urban District has many of the powers of a borough, and many have all by -delegation, and a borough is always an Urban District even if it is also a County Borough. On the other hand, the Rural District is always a Poor Law Union and the same authority -acts in both capacities, whereas in an Urban District there i.g always a separate authority for Poor Law purposes. They are the successors of the Unions and Sanitary Districts, but by rearrangement of boundaries each District is now in one •administrative County, so that the old " hundred " of our Saxon ancestors has been re-introduced at the end of the nineteenth century. Shire, Hundred, and Township, each with its moot, are parallel to County, District, and Parish, each with its Council. To complete the parallel, there is now, as^ then, the borough, breaking off from the organisation suitable to a scattered, agricultural population to live its own ]94 County and Borough Councils. life under its own authorities ; and finally, London, which in the time of our Saxon forefathers was already large enough to be treated as a hundred is now large enough to be a County in itself, sub-divided into twenty -nine " Metropolitan Boroughs." (2) The County has not onlv work of its ^X Areas. °^ own to do, but it has disciplinary and supervisory powers over the District and the Parish. " In fact it is made the duty of the County Council to see that the new system of local government works properly all over the Country." A County Borough has, of course, no sub-divisions to control, the urban parish having no powers of local government unless, as in a few cases, it is large enough to be a poor law union by itself. (3) In ail local government areas the govern- Popular Election, ing authority is now an elected council, except in parishes with a population of less than 300, when it may, instead, be a legally summoned meeting of the whole body of ratepayers. The franchise includes all ratepayers, the qualification for membership is an easy one to get, and women are now eligible (1908). County Councils have one-third as many co-opted aldermen as . they have councillors. In boroughs the aldermen are chosen from the elected councillors, and others are then elected to the vacant seats. No member of a local governing body has any executive power as such ; the work is divided amongst committees, but no committee can act by itself. The Council is the responsible authority ; it is a body corporate or legal person, capable of owning property and of suing and being sued in a court of law. In practice, an able and devoted chairman either of a Committee or a Council, has a great deal of very real power and influence, but the executive work of local administration is carried on by paid officials. (4) The chief matters which are adminis- Functions of Local ^g^g^ in England by local authorities are Authonties. ^^^ Education, (6) Public Health, (c) Eoads and Streets, and {d) Poor Ptelief. As a rough statement it may be said that Education is controlled by the County Councils, though many boroughs and urban districts have control of elementary education ; the administration of the Public Health and Building Laws by the District Councils ; main roads by County Councils, by-roads and streets by District Councils ; and the Poor Laws by the Unions— remem- bering, of course, that many Borouglis are Counties, all are Local Government Duties and Powers. 195 Urban Districts, and that all Rural Districts are also Unions. Anything like a detailed account would be impossible here, even if each of the local areas we have described did uni- formly the same work. In fact they do not. No detailed account of the work of any given local body w^ould serve as a standard for any other of its own class. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the Central Government has wide powers of delegating certain kinds of work to the County Councils, the County Councils to the District Councils, and the District Councils to the Parish Councils, and this power of delegation is not uniformly exercised. The second, and far more important, reason is that there is a clearly marked distinction between two kinds of work done in England by local authorities. Each of them has (1) duties which it must perform, and (2) fowers which it may exercise. Centuries ago the Londoners declared they would have *' no King but the Mayor''; a few years ago an English states- man declared " We are all Socialists now." The old spirit which stood sturdily for local independence, and the modern spirit which stands for organised control of the conditions of life, are enabled to work together for the common good by this distinc- tion between the duties and the powers of our local authorities. When the State takes over a new function Fresh additions qj. enlarges the operation of an old one, the functions. actual administration is often handed over to a local goyerning body. In the nature of things, the work has to be done on the spot ; knowledge of local needs and conditions is necessary, and is already possessed by local residents who are able and willing to carry out the new work. Recently, in England, the State has tentatively undertaken to find work for the unemployed. The task, though implied in a very old law, is a new one in fact, and has been added to the sphere of local government. Very frequently, too. Parlia- ment simply empowers such local authorities to do certain things if they choose to do them, e.g., to establish a public bath, or if they are asked to do them by their constituents, e.g., to form a public library. Around the circle of things which they must do there are numerous concentric circles of things which they may do. . . In this way there is obtained a series of Le^eSatlon. administrative experiments whereby local bodies learn from each other the best method of doing their work. This permissive legislation allows h2 196 Local Option and Comiyulsion. localities to practise their own views as to the rate at which they will encroach on the sphere of private enter- prise, which is so serious a matter that it ought not to be nndulv hurried. Experience will gradually determine what things a local governing body can do to the satisfaction of all concerned, and the circle of compulsory duties will therefore probably grow larger as time goes on. There are some things which must be done if our common life is to be merely toler- able. The causes of disease can best be eliminated by the expert administration of a code of sanitary laws ; ignorance and its inevitably evil consequences can best be overcome by a system of public education. In this class of things the law must prescribe and enforce the necessary minimum, and it is by far the easier and more effective method to do the thing by public authority than to punish the citizen for not doing it himself. William Shakespeare's father, if he lived to-day, would not be given the opportunity of incurring the two fines which are recorded against him, nor would Dr. Johnson, on arriving in a town when it was dark, be afforded the facilities for discovering that it was Edinburgh which were open to him in 1773, when the anxious Boswell wished that his famous guest could have been " without one of his five senses upon this occasion." An Englishman is not compelled to use water, but he is compelled to have a sufficient quantity of it available in or near his house, though whether the supply shall be owned as well as enforced by a local governing bodv is a matter of local arrangement. He is compelled to learn to read, but whether he shall be supplied with books and papers from a public library is again left to the locality in which he lives. The State, acting through local authori- Municipalisation. ties is here seen to be making life tolerable, according to our modern views of what is necessary to make it so. We are slowly but surely coming: to the conclusion that this is too low a limit of State activity. The idea which is altering our whole outlook on politics, is nowhere better expressed than in a sentence trans- lated by a great Englishman from the greatest Greek : " The State is created for the maintenance of life, but when once established has a higher aim." This higher aim, in English local government, is taking the form of transferring to public ownership and control the supply of indispensable commo- dities and services which must in any case be monopolies, CetUral Control over Local Government. 197 and which, in private hands, may have opportunities of exacting an unfair toll This '*' municipal sociaHsm " is vigorously attacked, but the attack is directed not so much against the theoretical advantages of public ownership, as against the inefficiency and wastefulness of the public bodies in whom the ownership is vested. The remedies are to revert to private ownership, or to insist upon efficient and economical public control ; but the commercial criteria which apply to private ownership do not apply without qualification to public ownership, while it is confusing to call funds raised by a company "capital" and funds raised for the same purpose by a public body " debt." (5) The connection between the Central Connection and the Local Authorities in England is CeutmUnd Local f^™^^^ ^^ ^^^^ 1"^^^-"- ^^^^T local govern- Authorities. ing body, from the primary assembly of half-a- dozen parish ratepayers to the London County Council representing as many millions, does the work entrusted to it by Parliament. It may do it ill or well, but it can never da more. Any act, however trifling, which goes beyond its sphere is illegal and punishable ; as on the other hand is the refusal to do any act specifically appointed to be done by Act of Parliament. Of legislation by local bodies there is no trace. They may make bye-laws, but only for clearly defined purposes, and when made they have to receive the sanction of Parlia- ment ; but they have no more ]50wer to change the law than a private individual, and are under the same obligation to obey it as he is. This is the first of the two links. The second is the relation of every local authority to one or more depart- ments of the Central Government, the chief of which is the Local Government Board. Exactly the same rule, however, holds good here. The authority of these central departments is strictly legal ; it is granted, defined and limited by Act of Parliament. The Local Government IBoard was established in 1871, on the urgent recommendation of a The Local Roval Sanitary Commission, " to constitute Crovernmenti i • i ' , i Board. and give adequate strength to one central authority," above the then existing chaos of local authorities. The Board, on the usual English plan, is not a Board but an individual, its President, who is always a Cabinet Minister. Its authority is ample. Acts of Parliament fre- quently empower it to make regulations for particular purposes which have the effect of a statute unless a Court of Law 198 Local Government Finance. determines that they are ulira vires, which of course it could not do with a statute. It gives advice to local authorities. It brings pressure to bear on authorities whose administra- tion is lax and inefficient. Its consent is necessary before they can raise loans, and its xatification is required for many of their decisions. It audits their accounts. It reports each year on the v/hole sphere of local government, and, finally, the Cabinet rank of the President enables him to secure fresh legislation when it is needed. The Board of Education controls the Educlt^o°rTra°de educational system of the country, and the and Agriculture. County Councils and other educational autho- rities are subordinate to it. Moreover they must obey it, for they draw a large part of their income as educa- tion authorities from its grants, the conditions of which it can determine. Its President, who is again the Board, is a Cabinet Minister. The Board of Agriculture, the Board of Trade, and the Treasury have smaller but similar powers in relation to local authorities. (G) The work of local government entails Local Finance, a very heavy expenditure. In the year ending March 31, 1904, the aggregate in- come of the local authorities of England and Wales was £133,657,825. The national revenue for the same year was £151,339,277, and if the share of England and Wales is assumed to be fom--fifths, it is seen that the local income is considerably larger than the national revenue. In 1868 the national revenue w^as £69 "6 million, four-fifths of which is £55 "7 million, and in that year the income of the local authorities of England and Wales was only £30" 1 million. There are four main sources of local revenue, and their yield in 1903-4 was : — ^ (1) Public Rates 52,941,665 (2) Local Taxation Duties and Government Grants 15,613,892 (3) Revenues from Undertakings 24,284.200 (4) Loans 31,279,470 In 1868 rates yielded £16'2 million, and loans 5'5 millions ; the second item hardly existed, yielding only £1*2 million, and there is no separate item in the accounts for " revenues from undertakings." In 1903-4, the local authorities spent over £21*5 millions in repayment of loans, and raised £31*3 millions of new loans, their total outstanding loans amounted to £394 millions, of which £187 millions had been spent on remunera- tive undertakings. The Burden of the Rates. 190 Local authorities levy their direct contri- Rates. butions by means of rates. A rate is a sum of money demanded by a local authority from the occupier of a separate piece of " real " property, i.e., land and buildings. It is always so much in the £ multiplied by the number of £ at which the property is rated, which always bears a known relation to its annual rent. When a local authority needs a larger income it can do either or both of two things : (1) raise the rateable value of properties wherever possible ; (2) raise the rate in the £. But the former has a definite limit — the rent, and when it fails or is not enough, the second course has to be adopted, and a proof of the recourse that has been had to it lies in the fact that in the thirty years ending 1903-4, the rateable value of property increased only 68.4 per cent, while the rates increased 175"8 per cent. Hence local burdens are increasing much faster than local resources, and the problem of readjusting the burdens and increasing the resources is becoming very urgent. Before referring briefly to suggested 'reme- Remunerative ^-^^ ^^^^ obvious remark must be made. Expenditure. ' iSo lar as a man when he pays a rate pur- chases a commodity {e.g. a supply of water), or remunerates a service [e.g. the removal of refuse), or repays capital which he has invested, along with his fellow-ratepayers, in a capitalistic enterprise {e.g. municipal trams) which is yielding him a profit, he cannot be regarded as paying a tax. If the rates of each ratepayer are in proportion to his share of the benefits con- ferred, and if efficient administration makes the latter worth the former, there is no ground of complaint. But when the burdens are without equivalent benefits {e.g., the poor rate), or the benefits though real are equally diffused {e.g., the reduction of the death and disease rate through increased expenditure on sanitation), it is clear that they should be distributed accord- ing to abihty to bear them. Kates are paid by the occupiers of real -•^""^^"^^ °^ property. The owners of real property (ex- cept when they also occupy it) do not con- tribute directly to local taxation. Personal property is not taken into account in fixing rates. Proposals for the reform of local taxation aim at (1) rating the owners of real property, (2) levying a contribution from personal property. Inasmuch as both sources are freely tapped for national purposes, the end is often sought by the simpler process of turning local into 200 Pro-posed Remedies. national burdens. The expenditure on education, and the relief of the poor, are suggested as ready for transference. It is frequently urged, as against the pro- Taxation of posal to rate the owners of real property, that Ground \ alues. ^. , . r i ■ r ' i the owner of a farm or oi the site oi a house pays all the rates, because the total amount which the tenant is prepared to pay in order to have land to cultivate or a roof over his head, is always rent plus rates, and that, therefore, any addition to the rates must decrease the rent as every diminu- tion of rates must increase the rent. This might be true if there were no such things as leases, and if tenants always had an alternative farm or house to go to. These conditions are rarely fulfilled, but even if they were, and it was quite certain that the owner of the site of a house in a growing town always paid all existing rates, that would not alter the fact that the rates he pays are always far less than the increased rent which the mere growth of population enables him to obtain without exertion or sacrifice on his part. xVnd as it is certain that he does not pay all the rates, the proposal to levy a special rate on him is founded on the equities of the case. The diffi- culty is that in many instances he would have no difficulty in adding the new rate to the old rent. The proposal to rate personal property PersonS^ProTerty. ^^'^^^® ^^^^ ^^ *^® ^^^* *^^^^ ^^^ occupation of houses of the same annual value by A and B in the town X is at best only a rough test of their ability to contribute to the local revenue. A may be a struggling chemist .in the High-street, and B a prosperous doctor in the suburbs, yet they may pay exactly the same rates. To the national revenue each contributes in proportion to his real ability as measured by his net income during life, and the net value of his property, real and personal, after death. It was not intended that local rates should be levied only on real property ; but personal property, or moveable property as it is often called, easily evades taxation by local authorities. If it is to be made contributory to local needs it can only be done through the agency of the central government. Various methods of doing this have been adopted. The English method is for the officials of the Inland Revenue to collect ^ L^ca/llfte'l °^ certain taxes which are additional to those of the same kind collected for national pur- poses. Certain licences and additional duties on beer and spirits are thus collected and handed over to the Councils of The Duties of the State. 201 the counties in which they are collected. Certain " death duties " on personal property are also earmarked for local purposes, but the basis of distribution is different. In the year ending March 31, 1907, the total amount thus distributed amongst the local authorities was £8,639,130. ^' Underlying these questions of rates and The Broad Issue, municipalisation is the broad issue which com- prehends in one form or another nearly all the problems of domestic politics, national as well as local. It is difficult to justify the municipalisation of tramways on prin- ciples distinct from those on which is advocated the nationa- lisation of railways ; and the taxation of ground values is equally a national and a local question. Central government and local government are two functions of the State ; and our attitude towards both is determined more or less by our conception of its social duties which now remain to be discussed CHAPTER XIV. SOCIAL PROBLEMS. Central and local government are the two How wiU gj,eat functions of the State, and the chief Its^PowJr T^ domestic issue of the nineteenth century was whether they should be controlled by a privi- leged class or by the popular will. The question still admits of academic discussion ; but for all practical purposes it has been decided by the political emancipation described in a pre- vious chapter ; and to it has succeeded the distinct but no less important question as to what use should be made by the people of the power they have secured. This problem has infinite aspects ; but most of its domestic ramifications can be traced back to the roots of Industrial Revolution and Commercial Expansion which have produced similar problems in Canada (pp. 301-2), in Australia (pp. 389-90), and in New Zealand (pp. 462-8), as well as m the British Isles. The amount of wealth created, the material basis of our civilisation, has greatly increased. According to the best National Wealth, authorities, the accumulated stock of wealth ^'*i in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the nineteenth century was worth £2,000 milUon ; at the begin- ning of the twentieth it was worth £15,000 million. No arithmetic, it is true, can compute the advantages which have been derived from the extension of political power to nearly all adult male citizens, and the free recognition of each individual's right to act for himself within definite limits pre- scribed to all for the good of all. But, "problem^^ notwithstanding this wonderful material and moral advance, it is admitted on all hands that large sections of the population have derived little or no advantage from it. " The submerged tenth " are Individualism and Socialism. 203 very insufficiently provided with the necessaries of physical existence ; above them is a still larger class who do obtain food, clothing and shelter in sufficient quantities to keep them efficient, but obtain them at a cost in effort which leaves them limp and stagnant in the sordid environment to which they are accustomed. The study of these obvious defects in our social organisation constitutes what is called the " Social Problem." Now the recognition of a problem involves the conception of a solution. There was a time when no problem was recognised, and no solution hoped for. The defects were then regarded as the unavoidable result of the life of man in society, and both man and society as the result of forces entirely beyond human control. That frame of mind has happily vanished. It is recognised that there is no need for such vast defects, though there are profound divergencies of opinion as to the way to remove them. One preliminary remark is necessary to those who enter upon the study of these opposing principles. The practical student has no use whatever for either vilifica- tions or glorifications of existing institutions. The two con- trasted theories which we are to discuss are often championed by men whose complacency or intemperance puts them out of court ; the scientific student can only regard these views as sug- gested solutions of a problem and not as weapons of warfare. These theories differ with regard to their a^nd^Salists I'^^i^nce upon State action as a mode of removing the evils which both recognise. Those who believe that State action should be reduced to a minimum are Individualists ; those who believe that it should be increased to a maximum are Socialists. The latter term includes— or, rather, has included at different periods — various schools of thought which differed considerably both in their proposals and in their principles. So far as purely economic matters are concerned, the modern Socialist of any school or any country is a Collectivist. The means of pro- ducing wealth are as essential to human existence as air, and, like it, should be at the disposal of all, and this, they say, can only be the case when they are the property of all. There is one curious, and, at first sight, Common in- ^inconsistent, feature about these doctrines, spiration of both. ^ , ^i i i •- • I*ar apart as they seem, each draws its ni- spiration from the same sources. Each of them claims to be, as it were, the heir of the nineteenth century. In politics, democracy • in science, evolution — such was the result of that 204 CoUectivist Ideals. wonderful epoch, so far as single phrases can express it. Both schools are based on democracy in politics, and both claim to indicate the right line of social evolution. Both agree that there are many things to be remedied and that remedies are available, and ought to be sought for and applied. Both agree, further, that the goal at which they aim is far distant, and can only be reached by the gradual modification of existing institu- tions and conditions. The fact that they have so much in common may be taken as affording some reason to suspect that the antagonism between them can be merged in a doc- trine which includes them both. We begin with Collectivism, the economic ^the'conti^ent! ^^^^ ^^ *^'® Socialism which has had its armies of adherents on the Continent. In Germany, France, Italy, Belgium and Austria the Socialists are organised into political parties which carry on an active propaganda and are influencing more and more the Governments and Legislatures of their countries. In France, hitherto the classic land of individualism, the Cabinet of M. Clemenceau formed in the autumn of 1906, contains three Socialists. One of them, M. Millerand, as Minister of Com- merce and Industry in the Cabinet of M. Waldeck-Rousseau, formed in June, 1899, introduced a series of laws in the interests of labour which marked a new era in French legislation. In Germany the Socialists have an enormous influence in the country, and would have in the Legislature if it were of the kind to which we are accustomed. In every country the Socialist party has a minimum programme of legislation which it would carry into effect at once if it obtained power. These minima vary from country to country, for Socialism takes the existing results of civilization as its basis. It is political and human as well as economic, and claims to fuse the most sublime ideals. Hence it has to start from different levels in different countries. It has to accustom the Englishman to an amount and kind of official intervention which a German even now takes for granted ; it has to introduce the latter to a practical responsi- bility for his political opinions to which the former has long been used. The maximum programme is, on the other Its Ideals. hand, the same everywhere, and is formu- lated in words which translate each other. Historically the demand and the words go back to the Manifesto, issued by Marx and Engels towards the end of 1847 Marx and James. 205 to guide the unenfranchised working-classes in the revolt which was preparing. " The proletariate will use its political Karl Marx. supremacy to \\T:e3t, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all in- struments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariate organised as the ruling class." The pro- gramme of the English Social Democratic Federation afliims " That the emancipation of the working-class can only be achieved through the socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and their subsequent control by the organised community in the interests of the whole people." The French Socialist Party, whose leader, till the unifica- tion of all the groups in 1905, was the brilliant orator and writer, M. Jaur-l's, declared at Tours in Jaures. 1902 : " Just as all the citizens have and handle in common, democratically, political power, so they must have and handle in common economic power, the means of production. They must themselves appoint the heads of work in the workshops, as they appoint the heads of government in the city, and reserve for those who work, for the community, the whole product of work. . . , There is only one way of assuring the con- tinued order and progress of production, the freedom of every individual, and the growing well-being of the workers ; it is to transfer to the collectivity, to the social community, the owner- ship of the capitalistic means of production." The Industrial Revolution entirely Political Freedom changed the outward aspect of the mecha- ^'^ Slaverv.™^° ^"^is"^ ^7 which wealth is produced, leaving its motive power — the desire for personally appropriated wealth — unchanged. The revolution contem- plated by Collectivism will demand an entire change in the motive power, without necessarily involving any modifi- cation of the machinery. The fairly equal diffusion of wealth throughout society might have been effected in time, just as the fairly equal diffusion of political power has been effected, if industry on a grand scale had never been evolved, but the Industrial Revolution, by making Capitalism possible, has made Collectivism inevitable. This will be seen (the argu- ment runs) by considering a concrete case. Politically, French- men are absolutely free and equal. Side by side with this politi- cal freedom there exists an economic slavery which is as real :205 A Pradi'--2^ Example. as slaverv ever was. Sugar, to the modem Frenchman, is a nece5.sit_v. yet the whole of the vast apparatus reqtiisite for the production of sugar is absolutely owned and disposed of by a small group of individuals. When it comes to voting, the Frenchman is as free as the swallow ; when it comes to making and eating sugar he is a slave. Hence at Saint Mande in 1896, the French Socialists decreed the nationahsation of the sugar industry. M. Millerand said that it was ""' incontestably ripe for social appropriation because, monopolised in a few hands, yie!d:r:L' :*:- n-ii.ag-e:; va^: profits,, characterised at once by the priri-jnr.g '.'I :*- ir.:- :^::-,v:-" and the immense concentration of its capital, ir is Tr-:;o-;.i-'.;v ntted to supply a fertile and easy subject for social 2i:'3!:a-?:r.enL." Fao- — ; :::- these supplv the CoUectivists ^'A:^?Se^;"' "^^^^ ''' ' ''^ their "argument that Col- °^ ~ ' lectivism i.-r in- end towards which the natural processes of economic evolution are conducting society. Sup- pose such*an industry as sngar-making to become the abso- lute property of one man who dies intestate and without heirs (and the supposition is sufficiently real to be instructive), so that the whole industry escheats to the State. What would be altered ? The industry would go on. under its new master and manager, the State, and the profits would be disposed of for the benefit of the community. What the State would have to do, under our snpposition, it will be compelled to do by forces too strong to be resisted. L'avenir c'est a nam — the future is ours — said the great Socialist Saint-Simon on hi.s deathbed. This line of argument apparently leads to the conclusion that* as Collectivism is inevitable, Collectivists are useless. We misht as well form a party to advocate the imperative necessitv for breathing air. In fact, however, the conception of Collectivism as the inevitable outgrowth of existing conditions is entirelv baseless. Collectivism is merely one possible alternative to the existing system, as individualism is another. Its strength rests on the justness of its criticisms of the exist- ing svstem, and on the adequacy of its own proposals as a remedv for admitted defects. Collectivism is seen at its best in its efiective criticisms of the capitalisrlc organisation of industry, but its efiectiveness as a criticism does not estab- lish its claim to be a substitute. The first charge brought against the existing system is that it is inequitable. I'ntil recently this charge was made so em- Collectmst Criticisms of the Capitalistic System. 207 phatically as to amount to accusing society of the deliberate and necessary immolation of the working classes — the " pro- Charges against letariate "'—by their employers— the "bour- the existmg geoisie." In Marx's Manifesto the condition system : of the former is unfavourably contrasted with (1) Its Inequity, ^j^^^ ^f ^j^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^.^^ j^ j^^^ 1^^^^^ impossible to maintain these earlier crudities, which credit the whole existing system with conditions only realised in the very worst forms of " sweating"; and though it is even now held that " the capitalist mode of production, when left to itself, has for its result an increase of physical misery," the remedial effects of Trade Unions and legislation are admitted, and the charge reduced to inequity. Whatever the wages of a worker may be, they are always less than the value of the product he creates by his labour. This difference (mehrwerth, " surplus value ") goes to the capitalist. The labourer is at a great disadvantage, since, in attempting to claim a share of this surplus value which he has created, he runs the risk of losing even the wages he is allowed to take, and this leaves him helpless as against his employer. Equity demands that the labourer shall enjoy the whole produce of his labour, and under Collectivism he will do so. The effect of capital in increasing the output of the labourer for a given effort is, of course, admitted, but the mass of concrete goods (tools, machines, buildings, &c.) which con- stitute capital all go back through various forms till they are seen to be nothing but the results of ordinary labour applied to the free gifts of nature. Hence there is no ethical founda- tion for the claim of the capitalist to a share in the produce. The labourer cannot do without capital ; he can and will do without the capitalist. The work of organising the agents of production so as to make the product as great as possible will have to be done under Collectivism, and will have to be adequately remunerated, but the acquisition of an income merely as owner of them, independent of personal service, will The second charge is that the present (2) Its Wasteful- system is wasteful. Production is carried on Inefficiency. ^*^^ ^^^ unknown market of indefinite extent by capitalists competing blindly for the largest possible share of a trade which they can neither estimate nor control. The cutting of prices which ensues, necessitates a con- tinual extension of the scale of industry; profits per cent, grown ing smaller, the capital involved must become larger, and the 208 Evil Effects oj Competition. capitalistic system is continually outgrowing the organising capacity of the capitalists. Hitherto the results have been '"crises," which reduce the present system to an absurdity, since widespread misery results from an overproduction of goods. In many countries to-day there is a marked tendency of capitalists to combine rather than compete. This, if done intelligently, will prevent crises, but only by enslaving the consumer as well as the labourer. Even in the absence of crises, the chaige of wastefulness would not lose its force. At present there comes between the producer of an article and its consumer a series of middlemen, who add nothing to its utility as a com- modity, and live merely by enhancing its price as it passes through their hands. Further, the maintenance of the system of private property in the agents of production entails an enormous wasteful expenditure in maintaining a legal and punitive system to enforce it. Economic effort is everywhere wasted or misdirected. The third charge against the existing (^^ EffeSr"""^^ system is that it lowers the level of civi- lization by devoting the great majority of the citizens to a precarious struggle for the means of exis- tence which blunts their higher faculties. The man who succeeds in the struggle, " the self-made man," is often, if not inevitably, a hard man ; in any case, he succeeds at the expense of others, since he can only succeed by paying them less than they have earned. Hence capitalism degrades the capitalists, for it turns the essentially peaceful work of producing com- modities to satisfy the needs of man into a brutal struggle for the acquisition of wealth to satiate his greed. It degrades the labourer by making him the serf of a machine, by confining him to a soul-destroying routine, by robbing him of any interest in his work except that of doing just enough not to lose his place. It degrades society as a whole by allowing the existence of two extreme classes each of which is a drag on its forward movement, at one end of the scale the hopeless poor, at the other the shameless rich. The ultimate remedy proposed is, as we I he Remedy J^ave seen, the collective ownership of the means of producing wealth, the collective organisation of industry for the good of all, and the distri- bution of the product, which only becomes private pro- perty after distribution, according to a scale to be collectively determined. Let us try to realise this by going back to Conditions of success jul Collectivism. 209 M. Millerand's sugar industiy which is ripe for the change. The few capitalists who now own and control the industry are ex- propriated. Every machine and building, every ounce of raw material and finished product, becomes State ^ExaSpll! Pi-opei-ty; every official, high and low, becomes a State official ; the amount of sugar to be produced is determined by a State department. But what has been profit disappears as such, and reappears as cheaper sugar for the consumers, higher wages and better conditions for the producers, and lower taxes for everybody. The private good of a few is superseded by the common good of the many, and after the expropriated few had died off, it would appear incredible to a generation accustomed to the new plan that the system they had discarded had ever been allowed to exist. Let us suppose, further, that this iso- Q„J„Hi° lated act of socialisation gives no shock buceess. , . , . , ® , . , to other mdustries, that the national credit is unimpaired, that the change takes place, there- fore, without friction. What will be the test of success ? Simply this, that along with the socialisation of the inanimate agents of production — the capital, there has proceeded the socialisation of the animate agents of production, the labourers. Collectivism, as we have said, demands no change in industrial forms. Even to-day, a cursory inspection of a dockyard or a tramway system does not indicate unmistakably whether it is a public or a private concern. What demands close atten- tion is that, in a socialised industry, the motive that now necessitates efficiency is absent, and has got to be replaced by one equally powerful or society will lose, not gain, by the change. The existing system imposes on most of us the necessity of working, and to a necessity there is no alternative. Collectivism preaches the duty of work, and will exact from every able- bodied adult, says Bebel, a certain amount of work " in agricul- ture, handicraft, or manufacture "^ — a division of occupations which may or may not include the all-important services of wives and mothers. It contemplates, therefore, a quasi- military organisation of industrial enterprise with a strict enforcement of discipline. Thus a bill lately introduced in the House of Commons by an English Socialist to provide work for the unemployed imposed a new penalty on those whose lack of employment is clearly their own fault. Now discipline depends in the long run on the power of en- forcing it being placed in the hands of those whose interest it 210 Guarantees for Efficiency. is to see that it is enforced. In a military organisation it becomes increasingly harder, as we cHmb higher in the scale of ranks, to determine breaches of duty and Discipline" ° Wb' the adequate punishment therefor, and this difficulty is increased by the fact that the highest officials do not willingly punish their immediate inferiors whose social position is hardly distinguishable from their own. In the lower ranks of the new industrial order, the new motive, fear of punishment, may be as effective as the old one, prospect of starvation. In the higher ranks, the probability is less, and in the highest of all there will be no one to inflict it except the people acting through their repre- sentatives, and in any case it will only be inflicted after the mischief has been done. As a deterrent against inefficiency the new system would be in no better position than those portions of the existing system which are similarly organised. Industrial efficiency, let alone progress, depends on the " captains of industry." The highest official in every industry will have to determine its output for a given period. Just as now the Secretary for War, has, ultimately, to say how many cartridges, or the Postmaster-General how many stamps, shall be produced in a year, so under Collectiv- ism some individual must say how many shoes shall be pro- duced. Unless the whole system is to come to grief this equali- sation of supply and demand must, on an average, be done as well as it is done now. It is done now with the certain know- ledge that personal well-being depends upon it being done accurately. It will be done then with the certain knowledge that social well-being alone is at stake. The question is whether such guarantees as now exist for the care of public interests in departments like the War and Post Offices can be made adequate or appli- '^^ EffidenJjr ^^^1® *° ^^® ^^^^^ol® ^^^^^ o^ production and distribution. Many officials, it is true, are keen in the pursuit of the public good, but this keenness bears ascertain though indefinite relation to their own advancement and emoluments and has not prevented the recurrence of gross abuses. The point which demands emphasis is now, it is hoped, quite clearly defined. The new sys- Psvcholoey system, in demanding the socialisation of labom-, demands a new psychology widely different from that which sees nothing immoral in defrauding the State of its income-tax or seeking sinecures. In time it may come, and no valid argument against the final triumph of The Individualist Argument. 211 Collectivism can be drawn from its absence to-day. On the other hand, the long lapse of time which the change apparently demands, relegates the new Eden to ages somewhat distant, "t If every individual was perfect the State Individualism, would disappear, for there would be no reason for its existence. This is the basis of many'celebrated theories as to the origin of the State. Hobbes, Locke and Kousseau all look on the State as the necessary corrective of the imperfections of the individual. The modern individualist is pledged to no particular theory as to the origin of the State, but he has very clear views as to its destination. The name of his faith suggests the first article of his creed. Society is only an aggregate of individuals, and no individual is or can be removed, by the simple fact of living in society, from the operation of those general laws which determine the lot, not only of individuals, but of societies considered as units. Now science has demonstrated that the race is improved by the inability of weak individuals to stand the strain of fight- ing their environment. Nature never intervenes between them and it to modify the issues of the strife, and her im- partiality is not cruelty but perfect wisdom. For conduct and its consequences are never divorced ; the reward for right conduct and the punishment for wrong conduct are both inevit- able, and both necessary, in the best interests of the race, since they produce good results not otherwise obtainable. Every- thing which limits the free play of individuality is a mistaken policy. Trade-unionism, especially of the " new " variety, is as injurious as State interference, from which it is only nomi- nally distinguishable. It is objected that the good results of trade-unionism and State-interference are unmistakable. Since a line of action that achieved no good results whatever would not be persisted in by anyone, the individualist admits the results, and even the goodness of them, but adds that better results would have been achieved by individual action, which could have had no accompanying evil results, whereas the evil results of interference are just as unmistakable, and nothing but cowardice in the face of a democratic franchise prevents us from admitting this to be the case. Individualism is consistent with a strong Its Value. , sense of existing evil. Herbert Spencer says : " Unquestionably the existing type of social organisation is one which none who care for their kind can contemplate with satisfaction ; and unquestion- ably men's activities accompanying this type are far from being 212 Man and the State. admirable." It is consistent too, as we see in another able individualist, Mr. Wordsworth Donisthorpe, with a belief that there is a future before society in which even the labourer will have competence and comfort, and shai-e in knowledge, refine- ment and the higher civilization. Still it dwells strongly and rightly on two facts : (1) the existing organisation yields, on the whole, results which are none the less marvellous be- cause they are too obvious to be marvelled at, and (2) the im- provement in the condition of the working-classes, which even the Socialists admit, has been subsequent in time to the re- moval of restrictions on their freedom of action and their former disabilities compared with the wealth-owning classes. It is also doing good service in two ways : (1) by criticising the results achieved by existing modes of governmental action, it prevents a too ready acquiescence in further extensions of it ; (2) by laying stress on personality as the source and sign of improvement it directs attention to the real test of progress. A sure instinct leads us to value " the still, strong man," and he has observed to little advantage who has not found him in every walk of life. The antithesis between collectivism and 'VT"th r^ individualism is a mistaken one as soon as it is used to imply that the well-being of society depends on a choice being made between them. The phrase, " The Man versus the State," the title of Herbert Spencer's trenchant and able attack on State interference, really involves a conception which, inevitable as it must seem to the biologist, is bound to appear futile to the historian. To him the State is not something objective and external to man, with divergent interests and coercive power, for the State con- sists of men and includes women. He does, indeed, trace in each country the history of a great antagonism — " the Subject versus the Sovereign." and the great result of his- tory in our own country has been to develop a form of govern- ment which makes this very antagonism a means of pro- gress. The Conservative attacks a Liberal Government in order to defend the British State. Between these surface antagonisms, which do not disturb the fundamental harmony, is the Man in the State. For the present we have to accept as Conclusion. fundamental the fact that the ownership of capital gives a claim, enforceable at law and backed by an overwhelming public opinion, to a share of the produce. Assuming perfect competition, it can be shown that The Common Denominator. 213 each agent of production obtains its own contribution to the product. Hence a society based on private property and actuated by enlightened self-interest, would be not only efficient but just. The statement that the capitalistic form of industry leads inevitably to the degradation of the labourer is un- supported by theory and inconsistent with fact. On the other hand, there are at present Competition Kiany people who cannot fulfil the first con- dition of individualism. They have no power to compete, and it is absurd to say that this lack of power is their own fault and is receiving its due punishment. They are even too weak to form voluntary combinations to advance their own interests. The competition of capitalists is another condition of individualistic theory which is growing more and more at variance with facts. Capital is becoming impersonal, and capitalists are showing an increasing dis- position to combine. At one end there is no power, and at the other no wish, to compete. We have then, when confronted by these The Object of the obvious facts of the modern world, to fall the Individual ^ back on ancient conceptions, or to look for guidance to experiments in politics else- where {see pp. 423-4). There is no antagonism between the indi- vidual and the State, because the function of the State is to make individualism possible. The factory '' hand " of to-day is in a far better position than his predecessor of a century ago. He can develop his individuality to an extent then impossible. This opportunity to develop is a product of many factors, but it is not possible to deny that amongst them, are the combinations which he has formed to help himself, and the rules which the State has enacted with regard to the conditions under which he shall work. It is mere bondage to words which looks upon deliberately chosen limitations of individual action as " sla- very " ; for on the one hand that term is closely associated with some aspects of purely individualistic organisation, and on the other, economic Socialism can be advocated on the ground that it is necessary in the best interests of moral and intellectual individualism. But it is worse still to regard limi- tations of individual action as ends in themselves, the more or less of which is to be decided by the competition of politicians. Their only sanction is that limitation in some directions gives power to expand in other and more fruitful, ways, and this sanction should be rigidly enforced by a public opinion indiffe- rent to the claims of rival dogmas. CHAPTER XV. PROBLEMS OF FOREIGN POLICY. The Basis of the ^® have discussed the sCcial problem whieli Empire's lies at the root of our domestic politics, and Foreign Policy, i^^-e now turn from the relations of the State'to individuals to the relations of States to one another. There are two branches of this subject : the relations of Great Britain with foreign powers and her relations with her self-governing colonies (Chap. XVI.). The foreign policy of the Empire is still conditioned mainly by the affairs of Europe. There are several reasons for this. First, and above all, the welfare of Great Britain is intimately bound up with the maintenance of Euro- pean peace ; the bulk of her commerce is still conducted with European countries, which are her best customers and her keenest rivals in trade. A war in Europe, involving Great Britain, would profoundly affect the whole Empire, because Great Britain supports almost unaided the whole burden of Imperial defence, except in India. Secondly, the great problems of Asia and Africa with which British statesmen are largely concerned,, cannot be solved without reference to Europe ; the peaceful development of Africa in modern times has been effected entirely by means of European agree- ments, and similar diplomatic methods are of necessity being applied to the more difficult questions arising in Asia, British activity in both continents would be much impeded were not Great Britain on good terms with the European Powers that are also interested in these parts of the earth — notably France, Germany and Russia. Thirdly, the greater colonies, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, are to a large extent relieved by their geographical positions from the ordinary complications of foreign policy. Canada has only one neighbour, the United States. Australia and New Zealand merely touch the fringe 0/ European politics, Peace the first of British Interests. 215 tiirough occasional negotiations as to outlying French and German colonies in the Pacific. South Africa has little to do with German South-West Africa, cut off as it is by the Kalahari desert from the settled districts under British rule ; its relations with Portugal, though more intimate, are economic rather than political, and affect only the Transvaal and Rhodesia, much of whose commerce passes through the Portuguese ports of Delagoa Bay and Beira, and many of whose native labourers are recruited in the Portuguese province of Mozambique. For all these reasons. Imperial foreign policy is still centred in Europe and has to do mainly with European problems as they affect Great Britain. The chief preoccupation of British ministers Peace. is to keep the peace, and peace, as many suc- cessive Foreign Secretaries have seen, is best maintained by preserving the existing system. Great Britain is in principle opposed to any alteration of the map of Europe, having no motive for aggressive action on her own part and discountenancing it on the part of others. Since 1871, when Alsace and Lorraine were forcibly taken from France and added to Germany, this principle of the status quo has been generally observed in Europe, largely through the mfluence of this country. The one serious attempt at a drastic change, made by Russia in Turkey after the successful cam- paign of 1877, was thwarted by Great Britain, at whose instance the Sultan retained Macedonia instead of having to cede the larger part of it to Bulgaria. British foreign policy in this connection has a twofold aspect. First, it u directed towards the formation of good understandings between the Great Powers. It has achieved in recent ^^^^France"^'*^ years a new and cordial relationship with France, reflected in a settlement of many outstanding differences as to colonial questions — boundaries in West Africa (pp. 711-13), the Newfoundland fisheries (p. 324), the administration of the New Hebrides (p. 402) — and as to the grave problems of Egypt (p. 734) and Morocco. It has developed within the last year (1907-8) the basis of an With Russia, agreement with Russia, the old ally of France, and this again has taken definite shape in a delimitation of the shares which the two Powers will take in the development of Persia, Afghanistan and other semi-civilised countries on the frontiers of India (p. 595). With Austria and with Italy, Great Britain has long been on good terms, and the 216 The Empire's relations with European States. immediate problem before the Foreign Office is to form closer relations with the third member of the Triple Alliance, Germany, the strongest military power of Germany. Europe and the most active commercial rival of this country. With all these five Powers Great Britain has long co-operated more or less actively in the Concert of Europe, which has attempted from time to time to deal with the Eastern Question, and with the subsidiary pro- blems of Morocco and Egypt. " Meanwhile, Great Britain has been careful to preserve intimate relations, through diplomacy or through royal marriages, with the smaller European States. Scandinavia. The Scandinavian monarchs are all allied to the British Koyal Family, and the peaceful character of the separation of Norway from Sweden was in no small degree attributable to the efforts of Great Britain, and to the choice by Norway of a Danish prince, married to a British princess, as its new king. Great Britain has a traditional interest in the independence ^BeMum''^ of Holland ; it is bound by treaty to uphold the neutrality of Belgium, as constituted by the Eevolution of 1830. A connection of many centuries ensures British interest in the independence of Portugal and her African possessions, and the old alliance be- Portugal tween this country and Spain has been much strengthened by King Alfonso's marriage with a British princess. Switzerland has the moral support of Great Britain, as well as that of other Powers. Greece enjoys a similar international guarantee, but Great Britain has been foremost in protecting her interests and occasionally extending her boundaries. The careful maintenance of good relations with these smaller States assists Great Britain in her task of preserving the balance of power, and at the same time often proves of value in larger questions, such as those of the Baltic and the Mediterranean. The goodwill of Portugal, it may be noted, was helpful to the British in the Boer War, facilitating the passage of troops through Beira and limiting the use made by the Boers of Delagoa Bay. Similarly, it is important to Great Britain, as a Mediterranean Power, holding Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus and Egypt, to be on good terms with Spain and Greece. In the Baltic, again, our friendship with the Scan- dinavian States enables us to uphold the right of ships of all nations freely to use this land-locked sea. : The Eastern Question. 217 The one question of some urgency in Europe ^One^t^on"' ^^ *^^^ °^ Turkey and the Balkans. Great Britain, though for generations an ally of the Porte, had in recent years, through Gladstone's example and influence, adopted a critical attitude towards the Sultan on account ©f his chronic maladministration and the massacres of Christians by Mohammedans which he had permitted from time to time. Nevertheless, the traditional British policy of maintaining the integrity of the Ottoman Empire was un- changed. Turkey under weak Ottoman rule did not menace the security of the Eastern Mediterranean, and remains a free and profitable field for British commerce. Besides, it was generally feared that the Powers could not agree on a peaceful division of the Turkish dominions if it w^ere resolved to bring the rule of the Turk to an end. Hence Great Britain had steadfastly supported the international supervision of Turkish affairs exercised more or less mildly by the Powers in concert since 1878. The situation had, however, been gradually changed for the worse by the ambition of small neighbouring States, Greece to the south, and Bulgaria and Servia to the north ; their influence had fostered revolutionary movements in Macedonia to a degree never before known, Macedonia. and the unrest in this province has weakened the Empire. Diplomacy had been incessantly occupied for years with this Macedonian problem, but had attained no result. The Concert had not indeed been entirely unanimous in its many protests addressed to the Sultan. Germany consistently followed the policy of supporting the Sultan's authority, and endeavouring to modernise his Em- pire ; German officers reorganised the Turkish army ; German engineers and contractors built a railway from the Sea of Marmora, opposite Constantinople, across Anatolia to the foot of the Cilician Gates, and intend to carry it on to Mesopotamia. The effect of German action was to neutralise or at least to weaken the control of Europe, and led the Powers to try milder methods of abating the unrest and dissatisfaction in Turkey, in co-operation with the Sultan. It was generally agreed among European statesmen that the Greek and Bulgarian bands infesting Macedonia must be checked, and Great Britain until lately took the lead in advocating firm measures against them, even though the Sultan's power were thereby streng- thened. The gradual consolidation of the Turkish military 218 The Balkan Peninsula and Morocco. forces by means of tlie new Anatolian railway tion o°Turkey! ^^^ *^® Hedjaz railway from Damascus towards Mecca is becoming obvious, and as the Power chiefly interested in Egypt on the one hand and the Persian Gulf on the other, Great Britain is necessarily con- cerned as to the future of Arabia and Mesopotamia under Turkish rule. The whole situation in Turkey has, how- Bevolution ®^^^' ^^^^^ transformed by the recent revolu- tion of the " Young Turks," supported by the army against the despotic and corrupt rule of the Sultan and his favourites. The Sultan has been forced to grant a constitu- tion under which all Turkish subjects, irrespective of race or religion, are to enjoy equal rights, and to be represented in a Parliament. The revolution has brought a sudden truce to the racial conflict in Macedonia, and restored peace and order, for the time at least, in that much troubled province. Euro- pean diplomacy thus seems to be unexpectedly relieved of its irksome task. It is too soon yet to say whether the revolution is likely to effect a permanent reorganisation of the Turkish Empire on a modern basis in which the Christians of various races would co-operate with the Mohammedans who have long treated them as inferiors. Were Turkey rightly governed, it might play a very considerable part in the Near East, and might endeavour to reassert its claims in Bosnia, Crete, Cyprus and Egj'pt, among its other lost provinces; fearing this possibility, Austria in the autumn of 1908 annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, while Bulgaria declared its independence, and Crete its union with Greece. These changes await the sanction usually accorded by the Concert to the fait accompli. A similar problem, of equal difficulty but Morocco. of less importance, is presented nearer home by Morocco. Here, again. Great Britain, in concert with the other Powers, endeavours to maintain the integrity of a decrepit and anarchical Mohammedan State. The issue is complicated by the special claims to an influence in Morocco which are put forward by France — claims which Great Britain has recognised by treaty in return for the French recognition of our special claims in Egypt. The British Foreign Office had a delicate task in supporting France without appearing to withstand the legitimate pretensions of other Powers, and especially Germany, to retain their full com- mercial privileges — commonly called the right of the " open Foreign Policy relating to North Africa. 219 door " — in Morocco. France, as the mandataiy of Enrope, has conducted a campaign in Western Morocco for the pur- pose of restormg order round the treaty port of Casablanca and preparmg the way for the estabhshment of a native police under French and Spanish officers in that and other treaty ports. The civil war between partisans of rival sultans, Mulai Abd-el-Aziz and Mulai Hafid, in which at the time of writing Mulai Hafid seems to have won, and a rebellion in the north-east combine to make the future of Morocco very uncertain. The general object of Great Britain is to prevent any European Power from becoming involved in Moorish internal politics, and to preserve the independence of Morocco while encourag- ing administrative reforms. It is difficult, however, to carry out such a policy while Morocco is a prey to anarchy, and the Moorish problem thus forms a continual menace to the peace of Europe. In the rest of Africa British diplomacy has few troubles. A series of international agreements concluded within the past twenty years has determined the general poHcy of Europe to- wards the African natives and divided the continent between the European Powers. The special protectorate of Great Britain over Egypt is described elsewhere {see pp. 714-35). The North African province of Tripoli is still held by Tripoli. the Sultan of Tm'key, but is coveted by Italy, while its southern portions are claimed by France under an agreement with Great Britain. The future of Tripoli, though not in itself a rich or promising country, may occasion international , difficulties, so that Great Britain steadfastly opposes all attempts to change its o\Miership. The Congo Free State, created by the Berlin Conference of 1885, and placed under the Se. personal rule of King Leopold IL, of Belgium, has involved itself in controversy with Great Britain, because it is alleged to have violated its charter by misgovernment of the natives and by undue restriction of the rights of foreign traders Belgium has now resolved to take over the Congo Free State from King Leopold, but the humanitarian and commercial grievances of which GreatBritain complains may not be lessened by the change. If Africa has now receded into the back- Western Asia, ground of diplomacy, Asia is attracting more and more attention. In Western A&ia the task of British statesoien is to keep the approaches to India 220 British Influence in the Persian Gulf, clear of foreign rivals. In Eastern Asia, their task is to pre- serve the '■ open door " to the illimitable markets of China. The western problem centres in the Persian '^^^(^^if^*'^ Gulf. For generations past the commerce of the CtuH has been monopolised bv British and Indian merchants ; to protect that commerce British warships have regularly patrolled the Gulf, suppressing piracy and now and then intervening on behalf of some native ruler friendly to Great Britain, like the Sultan of Muscat, or the Sultan of Koweit. In return for these services to peace and order, Great Britain asserts the claim that the political situation in the Gulf shall never be altered without her consent. Bygone Russian efforts to form a semi-commercial, semi-political con- nection, by means of a railway, with the Gulf ports of Persia, and present German schemes for extending the projected Mesopotamian railway to the Gulf shore through the little independent state of Koweit, have been viewed with equal disfavour by the British Government. The recent Russo- British agreement has removed the first danger, since Russia has recognised the prior claim of Great Britain to a dominant position in Southern Persia. But the German project, which had the Sultan's support because he was anxious to regain control of Koweit, was only postponed, and might be revived when the railway reaches Bagdad. Meanwhile the British flag has no rival in Gulf waters. No trouble is likely to arise from Arabia, the south-eastern coast of which, from Aden to Bahrein, is under British protection — Muscat being subject to a joint Franco- British control. South-Eastern Persia, the trade of which is almost entirely with Great Britain and India, is closely watched by British consuls. Baluchistan, again, is under a British protectorate. Afghanistan is virtually neutralised by the Russo-British agreement. Thus the western neighbourhood of India, for the moment, offers no prospect of a political dis- turbance. The vast and little known desert regions of Tur- kestan, separated from Northern India by the huge rampart of the Himalayas, seem unlikely to play any part in history, while Tibet, further south, has been neutralised like Afghanis- tan, by arrangement between Great Britain and Russia. The foreign relations of India, which have so long given cause for anxiety, have rarely been so apparently peaceful {see pp. 595-6). In further India, again, our friendly understanding with France about Siam has reacted favourably on the whole region under British rule. The Eastern provinces of Siam have been The Far East. 221 peacefully incorporated with French Tndo-China, while three of the northern Malay States, which are either neutral, like Tringganu, or dependent on 8iani, like Kedah, Siaiu. seem likely soon to be brought under British control, like the Federated Malay States to the south of them {see pp.648-50). Virtually the whole of the narrow Malay Peninsula from Burmah to Singapore will thus be placed under British administration. The shores of the Indian Ocean from Zanzibar round to Singapore are dominated by Great Britain, save for the Dutch island of Sumatra, with its half-subdued native state, Achin. In the Far East, Great Britain has to face The Far East, larger issues and many keen and povv^rful rivals. Her policy towards China has always been based on trade. To secure fair treatment for her traders and her other subjects, whether con.suls or missionaries, has been the sole purpose of Great Britain. Within recent years the aggressive action of other Powers, which have determined for themselves spheres of influence in China, and have occupied portions of the Chinese coast, has temporarily diverted Great Britain from her old course. Territory has been leased at Weihaiwei at the southern corner of the Yellow Sea, and atlvow- loon, opposite Hong Kong (pp. 658-9). But the course of events, and especially the Russo-Japanese War, has deterred Europe generally from extending these occupations. The European Powers, with America and Japan, are now inclined to content themselves with maintaining the commercial privileges pro- mised to them by China in successive treaties, the last and most comprehensive of which followed the European expedi- tion to Pekin in consequence of the Boxer movement against foreigners (1900). Europe, too, is watching with some concern the new commercial activity displayed by Japan in China. Great Britain, through her alliance with Japan, is deeply interested in this question. It seems unlikely that Great Britain will be called upon to defend Japan against attack from the West, or that Japan will ever be asked to support the British power in India. But Japanese relations with China, especially in regard to Southern Manchuria, where Japan exercises a kind of military protectorate, may create diplomatic difficulties for Europe, and therefore for Great Britain. Hitherto the survey of Great Britain's complex foreign policy has revealed no question affecting the larger self- governing colonies. But with China and Japan they are 222 The Politics of the Pacific. directly concerned. The emigration of Chinese and Japanese labourers to British Columbia and to Australia is bitterly re- sented by the peoples of those colonies, inas- ^"^ \^,, ^ much as yellow labour competes on unequal terms with white and cannot be absorbed into the body politic (see pp. 394-5). On the other hand, China and Japan, as independent States, might regard it as an unfriendly act if their subjects were excluded simply on the ground of race. It is therefore of profound import- ance to the colonies in the Pacific that Great Britain should be on such good terms with China and Japan as to be able to induce them to restrict emigration. The " yellow peril " may or may not have been exaggerated, but it seems a real danger to Australians and Canadians, who have tried to avert it by im- posing a heavy poll tax and an educational test on Asiatic immigrants (pp. 200, 397). In the case of Japan, the British alli- ance has led to a friendly compromise, by which the Japanese Government agrees to discourage Japanese from immigrating in large numbers to British Columbia, despite the treaty of 1905 giving Japanese the same rights in British dominions as British subjects enjoy in Japan. China has not yet agreed to any such restriction, though the Chinese immigrants in British colonies are far more numerous and perhaps keener economic rivals of the British workman than are the Japanese. The colour question has been complicated still further by the emi- gration of British Indians to South Africa, as well as to Canada (p. 632). They excite as vigorous an opposition from colonial labour as other Asiatics, though they are subjects of the British Crown. European interests in the Pacific {see also The Pacific. PP- 758-64) seem unlikely to conflict seriously with those of Great Britain. The islands and archipelagos are widely scattered, and their ownership has been finally determined. America in the Philippines and Hawaii, America and Germany in Samoa, Germany in the Marshall group, France at Tahiti, are far removed from one another and from British islands. The partition of New Guinea with Germany and Holland excited some anxiety at the time, but the British section of the island, now known as the territory of Papua, and administered by the Australian Government, will take many years to develop, and its rulers are on good terms with their German neighbours since there is plenty of work for both. The trouble- some question of the New Hebrides, where British and French North and South America. 223 settlers^^nder no definite form of government were striving each to oust the other, has been solved by the estabhshment of a joint Franco-British control. The Commonwealth has long objected to the French penal settlement in New Cale- donia, because escaping convicts have from time to time made their way to Australia and given trouble to the police authori- ties. But the nuisance is slight and has been abated m recent years {see pp. 381, 402). In North America, British diplomacy is solely North America, concerned to maintain good relations between Canada and Newfoundland and the United States. For generations the French claims to fishing privileges in the'south-west of Newfoundland were a standing difliculty, which retarded the development of the colony and caused much ill-feeling. These, however, have at last been amicably settled, like so many other questions, by the new and friendly understand- ing between Great Britain and France {see pp. 324-5). No other European Power has any territorial claims in North America ; the Dominion tariff may occasion disputes with Europe, but these Canada will probably arrange for herself. The United States and Canada, again, have no outstanding territorial differences. The settlement by arbitration of the Alaska boundary removed the last of them. The Atlantic coast fisheries, however, still afford matter for dispute, involved with the tariff question, and the American claim to a share in the Newfoundland fisheries under a treaty of 1818 still causes some friction with that colony, which may be ended by arbi- tration before the Hague Tribunal. The British West Indies have not afforded any work for diplomacy in recent times, though the completion of the Panama Canal may increase their importance. South America, too, has ceased to occasion South America, anxiety to Great Britain. The boundaries of our only colony, British Guiana, have at last been fixed by arbitration with Venezuela and Brazil. The development of the South American Republics into powerful and prosperous communities has caused the abandon- ment of any aggressive designs against their independence that may have been formed by European Powers. Great Britain has from Canning's time cordially supported the Monroe doctrine that the United States should prevent further European aggression on the American continent. But there is no reason to suppose that the Monroe doctrine will ever 224 The Empire and the Navy. again be challenged, as it was by Napoleon III. in his Mexican expedition. From this sketch of the various questions '^'"^Erirf '^' ^* ^^^^^® "^ various parts of the world it will be seen that the peace of the Empire mainly depends upon the ability of Great Britain to keep the peace of Europe. So long as Great Britain is in friendly relations with the other European Powers, she can readily adjust any differ- ences that may arise between them and the Colonies or India. Her alliance with Japan preserves peace in the Far East ; her good understanding with the United States prevents disputes from becoming serious in the Western hemisphere. The longer peace lasts, the less likely it is to be interrupted. But it would be affectation to deny that Great Britain, like the other Euro- pean Powers, finds her ultimate claim to respect in her over- whelming navy, which is maintained at a strength slightly in excess'of that of any other two Powers combined, and is sup- ported by consideralDle land forces and many fortified harbours and coaling stations throughout the Empire [see pp. 736-04). It has long been felt by statesmen in Great Britain that the defensive forces of the Empire, which assure the security of all its parts, should be supported by the Empire, and that the burden should not be almost entirely borne by Great Britain. India has always had to bear the cost of her own army and navy and other public services (pp. 606-11). In the Colonies, however, the matter has not always been viewed in the same light. The nature and distribution of this Imperial How it IS burden were well shown in the statement, for 1905-6, laid before the Colonial Conference of 1907. For the Imperial Navy, Great Britain was taxed at the rate of 15s 5id. a head ; the seven chief self-governing colonies were taxed at the average rate of 6d. a head — Austra- lia giving Is. 3Jd., New Zealand 10|d. (increased in 1908 to nearly 2s. 3d.), Natal 7^., the Cape 5d., Newfoundland 3id., and the Transvaal and Canada nothing. In other words, the United Kingdom contributed £33,389,500, while the seven Colonies, with nearly a third of its population, gave £384,243. The cost of the land forces of the Empire was distributed some- what less unevenly. Great Britain was taxed at the rate of 13s. 9|d. a head, while the Colonies were taxed at 3s. llf d. a head. Newfoundland alone gave nothing ; the Cape gave 4s. 7]d., Canada 4s. 6Jd., New Zealand 4s. 3fd., Australia British and Colonial Contributions. 225 3s. 9id., Natal 2s 4d., and the Transvaal 2s. OJd. a head. Many authorities contend, however, that the Colonies have far greater need of naval than of military defences, since all the commu- nications between the scattered Colonies are by sea and all of them depend largely on their maritime trade, though to a less extent than usual in the case of Canada. If the cost of the British Navy is regarded as an insurance premium on the commerce of the Empire, its present distribution shows that, among the preferences which the mother country at present accords to her colonies over foreign countries, not the least is the payment of ninety-nine hundredths of the price for the security of their external trade ; and in addition the mother country bears the whole burden of the interest on the debt incurred in wars which made possible the existence and development of the colonies. The question whether the colonies can co-operate further with Great Britain in supporting the Imperial Navy is thus likely to come to the front in future discussions on Colonial preference. An invincible navy is ad- mitted by men of all parties to be the indispensable basis of British foreign policy, and the chief guarantee of the peace of the Empire. Dne general word of warning with regard to The Awakening fQj,gigrn policv is suggested bv recent events. 01 ihe iiast. rni • " i^ t ' t The amazmg progress of Japan, rumours oi refoi-m in China, the constitutional movement in Persia and the revolution in Turkey have naturally appealed to the sympathies of the liberty-loving people of the British Empire. But it m.ust not be supposed that these manifestations are without their serious import for the future. Similar move- ments, not unconnected with the triumph of the Asiatic over the European in the Russo-Japanese War, are not viewed with the same unmixed satisfaction when they occur in British India ; and the enthusiasm with which the United States fleet has recently been welcomed in New Zealand and Australia had its root in grave apprehensions of a common danger to the Anglo-Saxon race. The slumbering East has woke again, the passive Oriental has begun to act, and the tide which has flowed from West to East for nearly foui- centuries seems to slacken. The triumph of Japan in 1904 — perhaps the most significant event of this generation — killed at one blow the grandiose schemes for the partition of China into European spheres of influence about which every publicist was writing some ten years ago ; and revivals in the Nearer East may do I 2% Tlie Revival of the East. fhe samr-loTtlie proiected exploitation of Asia Minor. The ;u t of Japanese forms of art and physical exerc.se the despatch of Mussulman missionaries to Great Britam arra the bui Idmg o mo;.^es on English soil are doubtless slight and ridiculous r:r Z^, are signs of a breeze from the Eastman v^^ is idle to imagine that the revivmg energies of the Oiiental 4 11 alwavs b^ limited to constitutional movements agains Ms mvn governments and to hostilities agamst the enemies o the Br tifh Empire. It would be one of the ironies of which m'torv i fidl, f Europe, havmg determined to settle its own di;% bv P aceful ai'i^itration, found itself face to face with ^^l arms, borrowed and bought -m the^^est aj.. used to impress upon Europe the maxims wmch Emope im pressed on the rest of the world. CHAPTER XVL DOWNING STREET AND THE COLONIES. (1) — Conditions of Colonial Expansion. In a short street leading from Whitehall to St. James's Park, is a small house almost inevitably overlooked by strangers who come to search for it. It is known to the Downing Street, postman simply as " 10, Downing Street " ; it is sought out by visitors as the official residence of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the centre from which power has gone forth to the ends of the earth. It is not, however, with the Prime Minister or with " 10, Down- ing Street " that we are now immediately concerned, but with his subordinate, the Colonial Secretary, whose office is close by. The Prime Minister represents the unity of the Einpire and is now the President of the Imperial Conference {see p. 776) ; but the every-day representative of the Colonies is the Colonial Secretary, and it is through him that " Downing Street " has come to be the not over-affectionate synonym for such control as the Central Government exerts in Colonial affairs. From 1801 to 1854 the Secretary of State ^stSr^^ for War, who must not be confounded with the Secretary at War, though nobody quite knew the difference, was also Secretary of State for the Colonies. During the Crimean War he absorbed the Secretary at War and ceased to have anything to do with the Colonies, which henceforth were a separate department of the administration under a Secretary of State for the Colonies. He is always a member of the Cabinet, and an Under-Secretary represents the department in the chamber in which the Secretary does not sit. On his advice the Crown can disallow i2 228 The Approximation of British Dominions. any^d^i^ialkw^venint^ ^^'f^l'ft'^^Z due form. He is thus the embodiment of the connection between the United Kingdom an^\l^^^^°!°^^''- . ^^,, .^ the \ttention has ah-eady been drawn to tlie Annihilation of economic effects of the revolution in the nieans SP^^^- of transportation {see pp. 149-51). For busi- i,ess purposes, the most remote centres are practically next door to each other. The political effects of this revo ution h : wT-t as striking. Ihe South African Wa. il u^^^^^^^^^^^ one side of this change. The -^^iT^vrva t ^ a^^ miles from the seat of government, but th s vast d stance added nothing to the real difficulties of the contest^ I was far easier to send an army to the Cape at tne ena oi 7e 19th ce tury than to the Low Countries at its begmning. DMes m^^^^^^ still, but they do not come now fronr aeo^Zln The last of this kind of hindrance o effective Pernnt^i;t has vanished since by wireless te W^y a fommander can receive general instructions ^-^ ^^ ^^^ ment and direct the movements of troops mr e othe side of the earth as he sits in his cabin m the ^^^ ^dle of the A lantic. So long as one essential condition - -f f^^ -^^^^^^^^^^ is no more debarred from active ^^-^^^^'^''''Y\^'^^^^^ Empire than if it were a continuation of Cornwall. This essent ai S io is that the Empire should continue to -tain com- mand of the ocean routes which connect its con- Command of gtituent parts, or along which its oversea trade *^'' ^'^- is carried. As the " dominions beyond the seas " have developed until they have rightly takerr their place fthe s vie and title of the Crown, this condition has assumed s exis1h4 ^oL and urgency, and presents important pomts Xch have received and will require further notice (.ee pp.224-5 — "— "SzrEVd 1... ... .!..«;"" The Example example of ordered progress the world Has of England. ^^gr seen She has ever been at work Britaiii's Colonial Advantages. 229 past. It is this assured basis at home which has enabled Eng- land to girdle the globe with her over-sea domains. It is a sure instinct, and not a fanciful analogy, which speaks of the " motherland " and her " daughter-states," for motherhood implies strength and capacity, pride and affection, and no nation can become the source of successful colonies unless she has these attributes. " Plantations " {i.e., Colonies), said Bacon, at the time when Colonial enterprise was first becoming the dominant note of English pohcy, " are amongst Ancient, Primitive and Heroicall Workes." It may take, and has taken in our case, many years for the exercise of these attributes to become conscious and constant, but through all our national blundering towards a true conception of the potency of our Colonies and Domains, they may be seen at work ; on rare occa- sions the whole nation has felt their influence ; at all times there have been clear-sighted statesmen who were moved by them. ( England, however, has been fortunate in Opportunities ^®^ opportunities as well as in her powers. The first great movement from Europe towards the newly-discovered lands, or towards old lands by newly- discovered routes, was followed by the epoch of the great European wars which had their origin in the territorial ambi- tions of the rulers of the Continent. England did her share of the land fighting, but found her true sphere on the sea. Mistress of this, she became mistress of any of the over-sea territories of the European nations which she cared to attack, and made the position of her own absolutely secure. Napoleon boasted that he would recapture Pondicherry on the banks of the Vistula. As a matter of fact he lost France in the attempt, but a score of Jenas would not have disturbed the slumbers of a single English colonist. When Europe had settled down after 1872 to a political system which promised to be stable and peaceful and has, so far, kept the promise, England had occu- pied all the most suitable sites, except those which were secured from European attack by the '*' Monroe doctrine " announced by the new giant of the West. Most of Africa remained, and a hurried scramble for it ensued. But to assume political control of vast tracts of territory is not to found colonies, and the partitioning of Africa has only added to the pre-eminence of England as the great coloniser. Grermans and Italians leave their homes by thousands, but only to seek shores where the Anglo-Saxon race can welcome them to a political 230 Economic Basis of the Empire. freedom and an economic opportunity which they could not enjoy at home. Conditions of ^^^^ history of colonisation shows that to successful be successful a colony must answer some Colonisation, economic end. It has got to pay a man, in the long run, to become a colonist or he stays at home. Other motives may prompt the earlier colonists ; love of adven- tme, desire for religious freedom, national ambition, have all been operative as motives to found colonies, but the only force which can ensure their permanence is their capacity to afford to the colonists the material requisites of an ordered social life. If they do this on the whole better than the motherland, they continue to draw an increasing stream of emi- grants from its shores, and may then become colonies in the highest sense. This depends, however, on many other condi- tions, chief among which is the position of the colonists with regard to the native races of the colony. A settlement of ten thousand white men occupying an area sparsely peopled by coloured inhabitants occupies a far different position from the same number surrounded by hordes of natives. This is true whether the natives are peaceful or warlike, industrious or in- dolent, apt at assimilating such Western ideas as are suitable to them or stubbornly conservative of their own. The Motherland remains responsible both in international law and to her own public opinion for the conduct of those of her citizens who have gone to territories over which she claims to be suzerain. And if she still keeps her political authority over her colonists, she is equally bound to fulfil towards them the obliga- tions which it confers. Hence the character and the numbers of the native population (or of an inferior race introduced for economic purposes) have much influence upon the character of the colony. {2)— Outlines of Colonial Developm3nt. mi- -o J * .V, England's first colonising period had ended, Ars? Colli^' as It seemed, disastrously for herself and, as Period. it proved, beneficially for the world {see pp. 77-9). England's loss was Europe's gain, for it opened up a vast continent to the peaceful exploitation of a new people with English blood in their veins and English in energy and outlook : and it enabled this process, so fraught with good for the world's future, to go on far removed from the dangerous The Anti-Colonial Era. 231 complexity of European politics. The result has been that the Anglo-Saxon race now bestrides the Atlantic and the Pacific and thrusts two powerful limbs down into the only other ocean highway that is of any importance. So far as human eyes can see the future will lie in the hands of this great race ; a healthy rivalry in the arts of peace and a solid union against the horrors of war will make it lord of the ages. For a long time after 1815 colonial expansion was either distasteful or indifferent to most Englishmen. This may be accounted for in many ways, and there is neither need nor cause for blame. For one thing geographical distance was an obstacle which was only swept away by the development of com- munications described in a previous chapter {see pp. 149-151). The physical difficulties which were insuperable in the period of Colonial neglect, and therefore mainly caused it, do not exist for us. It is easy now to blame the men of the early CoToniri^Neglel Victorian age for neglecting the Colonies. They must, however, have felt much as Charles Lamb felt when, in 1822, he wrote his delightful letter •"toB. F., Esq., at Sydney, New South Wales." He has "■ compunctious visit- ings " at his long silence, but writing is no easy task. " The weary world of waters between us oppresses the imagination. It is difficult to conceive how a scrawl of mine should ever stretch across it. It is a sort of presumption to expect that one's thoughts should live so far. It is like writing for posterity. Cowley's Post-Angel is no more than would be expedient in such an intercourse." We have our " Cowley's Post-Angel," and it tells Australian Rhodes Scholars in Oxford the result of a cricket match in Sydney before their friends have all cleared off the field. There were other reasons for this indif- Behef in ference to the Colonies. Just before the reparation. e ^ „ ■ r-t ^ ■ revolt of the American Colonies, a great French statesman, Turgot, had compared colonies to fruits which drop from the parent tree when they are ripe. The issue of that conflict had seemed to set the seal of experience on this celebrated maxim, and it appeared to be the height of un- wisdom to make the establishment of colonies a part of English policy. It would simply be to sow that others might reap. Again, the main reason for the earlier colonial policy had been frankly utilitarian and commercial. The American Colonies down to 1776, and such Colonies as had remained 232 British Trade and the British Flag. to us since, were strictly fettered in their trade and industry in the supposed interests of the Mother Country. Nothing dealt a severer blow to the old commercial Coraraercial ^^^^ protective svstem than the discovery that the loss of our American Colonies was fol- lowed by a great expansion of our trade with them. It was, said Arthur Young to a notable Frenchman on whom he called during his celebrated Tour, " one of the most remarkable and singular experiments in the science of politics that the world has ever seen; for a people to lose an empire— thirteen provinces— and to Gain by that loss an increase of wealth, felicity and power." The loss, of course, only led to the- gain bv making a huge breach in a vicious system ; it was also due in great measure to the enormous increase in England's wealth-producing capacity brought about by the Industrial- Revolution. The United States could not sell us the vast supplies of cotton and other raw materials which we needed without becoming an extensive purchaser of our own products.. Still, the fact that the former colonies re- Views of Cobden iviained commerciallv still a part of England, and Adam Smith. ^^ Cobbett put it,^was, as it then seemed, a strikinf^ testimony to the needlessness of further colonial expansioii. If the trade came, what did it matter whether or not the English flag flew over the territorial areas which fed it ? So Cobden, who took this view, could write of the Colonies and the army as vicious things which must be dis- carded. Both were costly and robbed industry of the one thing needful— capital, and the colonies that remained were a chief bulwark of the commercial system he spent his life m destroy- ing The text-book of the new ideas was the Wealth of Nations, which was growing under Adam Smith's hand in a quiet Scotch fishing town, while Colonists and Englishmen, with anger m their hearts, were quarrelling their way into civil war. And the last lines of that masterlv exposition, destined to be more influential over English policy and English thought than any other single work ever published, were : " If any of the provinces of the British Empire cannot be made to contribute towards the support of the whole Empire, it is surely time that Great Britaiix should free herself from the expense of defending those provinces in time of war, and of supporting any part of their civil or military establishments in time of peace, and endeavour to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances." Colonial Emancipation. 233 England '^^^^ problems which faced English states- immersed in men for half a century after Waterloo were such Domestic Pohtics. as effectually turned their eyes away from colonial enterprise. Domestic questions supplied them with abundant material for disputation and effort. One great problem, the extension of the franchise, has been dealt with (pp. 152-1G6), and the mere recollection of the fact that it was only one among many branches of domestic policy goes far to- wards explaining why it was that the attention of Englishmen was only slowly drawn to the Colonies. It is no coincidence, but a natural consequence, that after the reforming energy of Gladstone had settled the main questions which the century had brought into the forefront of political controversy, the colonist problem should appear above the horizon. , But when this took place it was seen that Colonial p'eriod ^^^® conditions of that problem had been directly determined by the course of that very domestic policy which had hitherto concealed it from view. The political emancipation of the British people at home led naturally to the political emancipation of the British Colonies. Under the old colonial system, as Adam Smith points out, " in everything except their foreign trade, the liberty of the English Colonists to manage their own alTairs was complete." After the loss of the American Colonies the English government entered upon a policy which was intended to prevent a recurrence of the mishap. Instead of taxing the Canadian Colonies by measures passed at home, part of their revenue was provided from the home exchequer ; so that the demand for self-government, to which William IV. refers in language that would have sounded somewhat strained in the mouth of Louis XIV., could be refused with some plausibility. The difficulties in Canada at the opening of Queen Victoria's reign led to the mission of Lord Durham, whose famous Report — '■ the Magna Carta of the Colonies " — recommended the grant of self-government ; and the Canadian Union Act of 1840 gave the United Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada an executive responsible to an elected legislature (see pp. 270-3). Economic '^^® change to a regime of self-govern- Reasons for the ment in such colonies as were suited for it change. ^^s intimately connected with the change to a free trade policy in the Mother Country. One of Huskis- fion's reasons for his reforms was that to remove the restric- tions on Colonial trade would.enable Canada to compete successj- 234 Classification of Colonies. fully with tlie United States. It was, on tie other lia^d the fears of Canada that she could not successfully compete with the United States after the introduction of free trade m England, which led to the extension of the rights ot selt- government to cover, with some not very important reserva- tions, the regulation by a self-governing Colony of ^^^ ?^" custom duties. Responsible government was fully recognised in Canada in 1847, in Newfoundland and in Australia (except Western Australia) in 1855, m New Zealand soon afterward, in CaDc Colony in 1872, in Western Australia m 1890, and m Natal in 189.3, and in the Transvaal and Orange River C olony in 1906-7 In 1F52, just after the first grant of full self-govern- ment to a Colony, Disraeli wrote to Lord Malmesbury : i he^^e wretched colonies will all be independent too m a few years and are a millstone round our necks.'' Tlie Tory ^otec^^^^ was as pessimistic in 1852 as the Radical f^'^f t^-^d^^'" ,^°^^^^^: hcnd been in 1836. The near future was to show, both m tne motherland and in her daughter-states now wedded to a noble destinv, that to make a people responsible for its ownlfuture is the" surest way to establish an abiding polity. (3) ThcEdsiing Cohnia^ System. For our purposes, the Colonies may be most \\"d'lrS profitably LxaLned from two points of v.ew: points of view, (a) the ecofiomic, when we consider the enas they are intended to serve, and the motives which drew settlers to them; (b) the political, when we consider the way in which the work of governing them is dnided between the Colonists and the Mother Country. The groups into which they fall from these points of view agree with one another in such a way as to render it certam that f^JJ-^' dence is not accidental. It is due to the fact that over-sea possessions serve two very different purposes They may be areas in which the homeland reproduces itsel m a its e seii- tial features, so that a new colonist finds himself at home immediately. Similarity of climate and productions and the complete or almost complete absence of a native population can alone provide this opportunity. Dissimilarity of climate and productions and the presence of a numer- ous native population lead to a completely different t> pe of Colony. Here the white race simply takes the lead by vntue of its superior intelligence and efficiency. If, on the one hand. Economic and Political Distinctions. 235 the colonists exploit the natural resources of the country for their own benefit, they render, or should render, the not inadequate return of raising the country to a higher grade of civilisation. It is obvious that colonies thus distinct economically must be distinct politically ; the former can work the political institutions to which the colonists have been accustomed at home ; the latter cannot be left to the con- trol of the exploitive colonists, but the civilising side of the work must be enforced and controlled from home. It must be remembered that any classi- and^xtmns^ fication of the Colonies is made merely to guide the student to a clearer appreciation of the problems of colonial government. There has been a continuous development as well as a continuous expansion of the British Empire, and the latter is not so noble a cause for national pride as the former. To annex a continent is a great thing ; to make an Australian Commonwealth out of it is a greater ; the one has been done many times by many people ; the other, only one among several similar achievements, is the crowning glory of our own race. This development cuts across any attempt at classification, and in thus dividing the Empire for purposes of study we are only examining types and not tabulating results. A. From the economic point of view, our Colonies fall into four classes : — (1) Factories or Trading Centres, which Factories. facilitate the collection of goods for ship- ment to the Mother Country and the dis- tribution of the goods imported thence in exchange. Our Indian Empire began with the establishment of such a factory at Surat in 1613. Madras was founded in 1639, Bombay acquired in 1661 and Calcutta in 1690 [see p. 573). Our earliest rivals as colonising powers never got beyond this conception of a colony until it was too late to reverse the decline to which it led. To the Dutch the colony " was primarily a trading station. A State might grow up as best it could under the shadow of the factory." The importance of such commercial centres is as great now as it was at the beginning of commercial expansion, as is shown by Hong-Kong and Singapore {see pp. 645, 658). The type remains and contributes its share to our imperial position, but is dwarfed because of its political insignificance. 236 Colonial Types. Protectorates (2) Ii^ modern times it is impossible ta and Spheres of be content with factories. Trade is con- Influence, ducted on an immensely greater scale, and the Mother Country needs huge supplies of raw materials for her manufactures and of food for her people. This means that trading centres would be an inadequate provision for the future; the whole area which feeds them and is fed by them must be controlled. We cannot wait for time and opportunity to expand a factory into a colony. Trade can now only develop when modern means of transportation are at its command, and no railway would ever be built in an area of which the political control was disputed. Hence the numerous British " Pro- tectorates " and " Spheres of Influence," particularly in Africa, which are obviously destined to ripen into important, sources of the primarv necessities of our national well-being (see pp. 690-712). (3) Of greater importance, at any rate for ^Colonfer" ^^^ present, are the Colonies of the West In- dian type, "Exploitation Colonies" q,s they are often called. Here the number of English inhabitants is far greater than in Protectorates or spheres of influence, and to them the colony is a true home. Their object, however, is to make the greatest possible use of the native or other coloured inhabitants in working up the native products. The English inhabitants are the captains and corporals of in- dustry ; the natives are the privates. History shows that there are many difficulties in dealing with Colonies of this type. At one time the negroes of the West Indies were the slaves of the planters. When William Pitt introduced the Income Tax into our fixed system in 1798 he estimated that four million pounds out of a total national income of about one hundred millions was drawn from the West Indies. Slavery was abolished in 1833, and though the planters received twenty million pounds as compensation, the subsequent history of the Colonies has not been wholly happy, especially since the introduction of free trade in England. (4) Economicallv the highest type of ^CoWr* ^°^^^y ^^ *^^ "Settlement Colony," one, that is, in which the homeland is reproduced by settlements of Colonists who seek to establish permanent homes. England has had the rare good fortune to obtain practically the whole of the available area best suited to serve this purpose. Two conditions are necessary : the native Self-Governing Cohnies. 237 problem must be absent or of very manageable proportions, and the climate and productions must be such as the Colonists are accustomed to. In the great Dominions of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand these conditions are exactly fulfilled, and there is no need to wonder that their people desire to develop economically on lines quite parallel to those of the Mother Country. In South Africa, the conditions are not so completely fulfilled, and economic considerations complicate political difficulties already very great. B. Political From the political point of view a Colony ^^^CoWr °^ ^« ^^^fi"^^ ^^ " ^"y P^^'^ ""^ ^'^ Majesty's dominions, exclusive of the British Islands and of British India." If a group of contiguous Colonies formerly independent of each other (as those in North America previous to 1807 and in Australia previous to 1900) has united under a Central Authority (as the Dominion of Canada and the Commonwealth of Australia) it counts hence- forth as a single Colony. There are fifty-five separate Colonies according to this definition, and they are divided into (1) a small group of Self-Governing Colonies, and (2) a much larger group of Crown Colonies. (1) The Self-Governing Colonies are : — The Dominion of Canada. Newfoundland. The Commonwealth of Australia. The Dominion of New Zealand. Cape Colony. Natal. The Transvaal. The Orange River Colony. Each of these has a system of domestic ^^in^'ccIio°n ^'"" government exactly parallel to that of the British Islands. The Crown is represented by a Governor or Governor-General, the House of Lords by a Senate or Legislative Council, the House of Com- mons by a Legislative Assembly. In each of them there is a Cabinet, consisting as in England, of a Prime Minister appointed by the Governor, who is at the same time the leader of that political party which has a majority in the Lower House, and of other ministers, each at the head of a department, selected 238 Crow/i Colonies. by the Prime Minister from leading men of his own party. As in England, the Lower House is solely responsible for financial measures, and the Ministry resigns when it is defeated there. The Self-Cxoverning Colonies thus have most of the attri- butes of modern independent States. Of recent years this has become still more true. They can enter into certain special treaty relations not only with each other but also with foreign States. It has even been proposed that Canada should have a separate representative at Washington, at any rate for these purposes, and there seems no valid reason against it ; for if a Canadian representative would obtain better results for Canada by virtue of closer acquaintance with Canada's needs and problems, no one would raise the merely technical objection that only an independent State can have an independent embassy at a foreign Court. These Colonies started with a great advantage ; their past is our past, and equally with our- selves they were entitled, and were permitted, to utilise all the economic and political lessons which that past has taught us. (2) The Crown Colonies belong in almost Crown Colonies, every case to one of the three lower economic types. Exceptions, as Gibraltar, are due generally to the fact that the Colony is of a special non- economic type (Gibraltar being a military and naval post). In the Crown Colonies, the control of the home government over Colonial affairs is close and direct, and is exercised by the Governor vfho is appointed by and is responsible only to the CroAvn. Thev fall into three groups, marked by an ascend- ing participation of the Colonists in the government of the Colony, but never reaching the stage of government by ministers responsible to the people. 1. In a few Colonies, as Gibraltar, the Governor exercises all authoritv both legislative and executive ; so far as the Colonists are concerned he is a constitutional monarch ; on the other hand he is the salaried servant of the Crown, receiving instructions from a Cabinet Minister responsible to the House of Commons. 2. In seventeen Colonies, the Governor is aided in the administration by an Executive Council, and by a Legislative Council in the making of laws, but both Councils are nominated hy the Ci'own. 3. In the remaining Crown Colonies, the Executive Council is nominated by the Crown, but the Legislative Council is wholly orjpartially elected by the Colonists. Imperial Sovereignty. 239 There is thus no hard and fast rule for determining the con- stitution of a British Colony. Our colonial development has been the work of the men who have been sent out to administer the Colonies. Our Colonial system, such as it is, has been ham- mered out on the anvil of experience not evolved from first principles assumed to lie at the basis of successful colonisation. „,.,,. , No British Colon v, whether it be a Continent The Authority of r r ,-n -i , • the Crown and oi' o^l.Y ^ few acres of fortified rock, is an in- the Imperial dependent State. Over all of them the autho- i'arhament. j.^^^ q{ ^\^q Crown stretches as surelv as it over Cornwall or Staffordshire. The British Empire is some- times said to be a very loosely constructed mechanism of government. The very reverse is true. There is never any doubt about its working. In all Colonies, just as in England, every act of legislation and administration is in express terms the work of the Crown. To begin with, the British Parliament can and does pass legislation which binds the Idw courts even of the Self-Governing Colonies. It was an act of the British Legisla- ture which, in 1900, concluded the gi-eat work of the unifying the Australian Colonies into the Commonwealth of Australia. Further the Act of a Colonial Legislature requires the consent of the governor as representing the Crown. Acting under the orders of the Crown, he may withhold his assent, but even if he gives it, the Crown may go behind his assent and disallow the Act. Every Colonial Governor is appointed by the Crown, and no colony has any power of dismissing him or even of con- trolling his actions. It is obvious that such a system requires statesmen to work it, for everything depends on the skill and insight of those who are responsible. Foreigners see our Self-Governing Colonies passing laws which put heavy import duties on British goods, and laws which prevent coloured British subjects, and even Englishmen themselves in some special cases, from landing in a British Colony {see p. 397). They are surprised, for it seems to negative the very idea of a colony. It means, however, that the gift of self-government is not a timid concession hedged about with all sorts of limitations, but an integral part of a healthy system, the detailed working of which may produce anomalies and surprises, but the large result of which is seen in the splendid patriotism of the Empire. Nevertheless the anomalies are inherent in the system. They arise for the most part from the logical antithesis between 240 N ationalisiu and Imperialism. the national ambitions of the great self-governing Colonies and the determination to maintain the unity of the Empire. Throughout its component parts differences Nationalism m ^£ physical, economic and sometimes racial the Empire. ',.-.' , , ., conditions set up a general tendency towards political diffeientiation ; and we have seen those tendencies result in the separation of the American Colonies from the Mother Country. Thoy are not so strong elsewhere ; but even in Canada, in spite of its loyalist history and present attach- ment to the imperial connection, there aie Americanising forces {see p. 297) ; and in South Africa the children of English emigrants become Afrikander rather than English. That Canada is a nation is the constant boast of Sir Wilfrid Lau'rier, and Mr. Deakin was recently reported to have said that Aus- tralia could not ultimately be content to accept defence at any other hands than her own. Conscious of their capacity to manage their own attairs, these great self-governing Colonies will be content with little short of the rank of national and almost independent States. But side by side with this development there has always been a harmonising and assimilating force ; and Scotland is its best example. The marvellous progress of com- Imperialism. munications have brought the most distant Colonies into ever closer touch with one another and Great Britain ; the traditions of the Empire and the pro- tection its naval strength affords are not advantages which any Colony will lightly cast au^ay, and there are many ways in which the Colonies can utilise the experience and resources of the Mother Country. Canada and more recently (October 1908) the Transvaal have referred differences between their Upper and Lower Houses to the law officers of the Crown in England ; and it would be in keeping with the history of the British Constitution if in unsuspected ways like this there grew the silent fabric of the organisation of the Empire. For, while the bonds of authority have been relaxed the tie of sentiment has grown stronger ; and recent events have shov/n that danger not merely to the Mother Country but to ajiy part of her Dominions will evoke enthusiastic sympathy and support throughout the Empire. Whatever may be the fate of the various proposals for its organisa- tion on a federal tasis, confidence in that imperial sym- pathy and support will be an incalculable and an abiding source of strength. Problems of Empire. 241 Whether it can be materialised into constitutional arrange- ments for the ever^'day administration of the Empire in times Relations be- °^ peace is another question. It is clear tween Downing enough that self-governing States will not Street and the tolerate the intervention of Downing Street Colonies. j^^ ^j-^^-j. ^lomestic, and perhaps less and less in their external, affairs ; for the Colonial Secretary is not responsible to them, and over him they have no consti- tutional control. Before any scheme of federation could be formulated it would be necessary to ascertain : (1) whether under any circumstances or at any price the Colonies would relinquish any part of their autonomy ; (2) how much repre- sentation and influence in Downing Street the Colonies would require to induce them to submit to its decisions ; (3) how much unity of control could thereby be established ; (4) whether such representation and influence could be made com- patible with Great Britain's control over its own responsible ministers and over the taxes which it pays. From control by this centralised authority there would naturally be excluded most of the rights of self-government which have already been con- ceded to the Colonies. But the Mother Country has still much to share and give away ; the Central Government still directs the diplomacy of the Empire, decides all questions of war and ])eace, and determines the size and operations of the Navy. The meagreness of the Colonial contributions to the Imperial Navy {see pp. 224-5), in fact, results, partly at any rate, from the imperfect control which T'donial Governments exercise over ihe expenditure of such contributions as they make ; Centval verms | ^j argument runs in a vicious circle For Colonial Control. ^ ^ x) -x • x • x i xi - Great Britani retams control, partly oe.cause unity of direction is essential in war as well as in diplomacy, partly because it pays the piper and can therefore call the tune. The creation of separate naval forces limited to local defence— an Australian squadron anchored off Australian coasts, a South African flotilla tied to Table Bay, and a Canadian fleet to Halifax oj- Esquimalt — offers no solution of the problem ; for a slightly superior enemy could make a tour of the Empire and defeat them in detail. On the other hand, an Imperial Navy can only be main- tained by Imperial taxation levied at the discretion of an Imperial Government ; and America was lost because the Imperial Government sought to impose taxes for Imperial purposes. Would any Colony consent to be taxed for any 243 The Question of Federation. purpose by anyone except itself ? Yet if (rreat Britain dele- gated to an Imperial Council, in which the Colonies were adequately represented, a share in the control T^ation °^ Imperial diplomacy and of questions of war and peace, the Colonies would have to concede to the same body some voice in their taxation, or at least to pro- vide for Imperial purposes taxes, the amount of which would not be under their control ; and it is an axiom that the strength of any federation depends upon the willingness of the federating States to surrender powers to the Federal authority. Such steps as seem practicable amid these difficulties are discussed in the concluding chapter of this book. P "blT Definite proposals by respoiisible statesmen must await the ripening of public opinion at home and in the Colonies ; in the latter it is more likely to ripen in the direction of something like a league or permanent alliance for specific purposes than of a further centralisation of powers in the hands of Downing Street. But the future organisation of the Empire can best be considered after we have dealt with the history of its various States and Colonies. BOOK II. THE SELF-GOVERNING STATES. I.— C AXAI ) A AN I ) NE WF( ) UNDLAXl). TI.— THE COMMONWEALTH OE AUSTRALIA III.— THE DOMINION OF NEW ZEALAND. IV.— THE ^OUTH AELICAN COLONIES. I. THE DOMINION OF CANADA and NEWFOUNDLAND. CHAPTER I. PHYSICAL CONDITIONS. Extent. The self-governing colony of Newfound- land and the Dominion of Canada occupy the northern part of North America, outside the United States Territory of Alaska and the Danish possession of Greenland. This vast section of the Empire stretches for over 3,000 miles from west to east, and for over 2,000 miles from north to south. The southern boundary is 49°N. in the west and centre (latitude of Paris), but in the east it extends as far south as 42°N. in the Lake Peninsula (latitude of Rome). Including the uninhabited Arctic islands the total area is three and three-quarter million square miles. This is very nearly the area of Europe, and more than thirty times that of the British Isles. The general configuration is characteristic of North America as a whole. Belts of higher land border both the west and east coasts — the Western Cordillera and the Eastern Highlands — and a vast lowland stretches between them. The Eastern Highlands are not so lofty ^fhlands" '^^" continuous as the Western Mountains, nor even as the Eastern Highlands of the United States, of which they are a continuation. They are broken by the St. Lawrence Gulf, leading to the estuary and river of that name. This is reached by the Cabot strait to the south, or Belle Isle strait to the north, of Newfoundland, which they sever from the mainland. The Gaspe and Nova Scotia peninsulas. Cape Breton Island, the Bay of Chaleurs and the Bay of Fundy, as well as the peninsulas and bays of New- foundland, exhibit the pi-evailing south-west to north-east direc tion which characterises the feature lines of this highland. 246 Lowlands, Lakes and Rivers. The Great Lowlands of Canada is broken b j t'^^o ^^^^% the waters of Hudson Bay, which penetrate Canada '^ southwards far into the interior. The feature and structure hues run roughly parallel to its shores. There is a gentle slope, varying from 200 to 400 miles in breadth, from the coast to the "Height of Land," i.e., the rather indefinite dividing line between the streams which flow to Hudson Bay and those which flow to the ocean. The whole of Eastern Canada and most of Central Canada was once covered by a great ice sheet. Through glacial erosion little soil has been left on the old crystalline rocks round Hudson Bay, and the morainic debris has been heaped up in great rings of heights beyond, arranged in rough con- centric lines. Between these heights and along the junction of the old sedimentary rocks with the still more ancient crystal- line ones, is the chain of vast lakes connected with the Mac- kenzie, Nelson, and St. Lawrence systems. The Saskatchewan-Nelson system flows from Lakes and ^j^^ Rockv Mountains, at first as the Xorth and XtlVerS. r, 1 r. ■ 1 1 -1 1 South Saskatchewan, right aci'oss the western plains through Lake Winnipeg ; from Lake Winnipeg to Hudson Bay the river is called the Nelson. This lake also receives the Red River, which flows northwards across the dry bed of a former glacial lake, now filled with alluvial matter whose fertility has been one of the great assets of the province of Manitoba. The Peace-Mackenzie river flows from the Rocky Moun- tains northwards, receiving tributaries from the Rockies and draining the Athabasca, Great Slave, and Great Bear Lakes. It enters the frozen Arctic Ocean, and is of little value as a waterway except for a few months in summer. South of the Height of Land, and between The St. ]^ and the Eastern Highlands, is the St. sysxlm^ Lawrence system. Though navigation is inter- rupted by ice for about five months of the year, this is one of the most important water routes of the world. The five Great Lakes, of which Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario are partly in Canada, have an area of nearly 100,000 square miles. The rapids of St. Mar}^ between Lakes Superior and Huron, are avoided by the Sault Sainte Marie or Soo Canal ; and the great waterfall of Niagara, between Lakes Erie and Ontario, bv the Welland Canal. After leaving Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence pass-v through the picturesque and wooded The Si. Laurence and the Rockies. 247 Thousand Islands, becomes narrower, and falls occasionally over rapids beside which canals have been constructed. Below the Lachine Rapids, the lowest, the island of Mount Royal is formed where the Ottawa river enters the St. Lawrence, over 1,400 miles from the head of Lake Superior. Here is built Montreal, the largest city of Canada, and a port of first- class rank. The Ottawa leads by its tributary the Rideau and canals to Lake Ontario (see p. 317) ; and it is also proposed to cat a canal capable of floating ocean-going steamers between the main stream and Lake Huron. The St. Lawrence and the Ottawa are thus the chief natural routes to the far west. After leaving Montreal the St. Lawrence widens to the shallow Lake St. Peter, which has been dredged to keep pace with the increasing draught of ocean liners and allow them to reach Montreal. South of Montreal is a natural furrow which con- tains Lakes George and Champlain, and is drained by the Riche- lieu into the St. Lawrence. Through the southern part of this furrow the Hudson flows to the Atlantic, thus providing convenient access to Lakes Ontario and Erie by the Mohawk valley. This forms a fourth natural route of primary import- ance converging on Montreal, and its unrivalled command of these great routes helps to explain the prosperity of the city. The Western Mountain or Coi-dilleran area ^ Moxintafn" consists of a series of chains of ridges and Area. valleys running from north to south. The easternmost chain, which rises steeply above the plains, is known as the Rocky Mountains throughout its entire length, but the other members of the system have a great variety of names. This mountain barrier is very difficult to cross from east to west, and long prevented overland expansion to the Pacific. The Columbia, Fraser, Stikeen, and Skeena rivers, flowing to the Pacific, all rise in the eastern part of the system, not far from streams flowing to the Mackenzie and Nelson ; while routes of greater or less difficulty cross the passes between these systems and zigzag down steep sided narrow valleys, or canyons. In the north the headwaters of the Yukon lead to the Behring Sea. The western valleys of the Cordilleran area open to the Pacific. Many were covered by the sea where the ice which once filled them melted, and form fiords resembling those of Norway, Scotland (see p. 14), and New Zealand (see p. 427). Seawards, Vancouver and the Queen Charlotte Islands are the exposed peaks of a coastal chain which has mostly been submerged. 248 Heat and Cold, Wind and Rain. These western mountains form a climatic barrier. To the east the fairly uniform height makes for fairly uniform conditions at a given time. The absence of east-west barriers permits the passage of cold winds from the north and warm winds from the south, causing great and rapid changes of temperature. The vast mass of land produces an extreme climate, relatively cold in winter and hot in summer ; but its severity is modified by sea influences in the east, and to some extent by the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay in the interior. Thus, while in latitude r)0"N. the period with a mean temperature below freezing point is not much over two months in the east, and on the Pacific coast is only a few days, it is nearly four months round Winnipeg. On the other hand, v/hile few parts of the east have over two months in summer with a mean temperature of 70°F., and the Pacific coast has about one, round Winnipeg there are over three months. The Pacific has, therefore, an equable climate quite different from the extremes of the centre and the east. These conditions of temperature determine Rain'^ the distribution of atmospheric pressure and the direction of the wind. In winter over the cold interior lies a high pressure system, with winds blowing outwards, the area of highest pressure extending from Lake Winnipeg along the Great Lakes and the Mackenzie basin. This shifts towards the ocean in spring, when low pressure conditions prevail round the base of the Rockies. This draws chinook winds over the mountains and also relatively moist air from the east, producing the opportune rainfall of late spring and early summer. In late summer and autumn the low pressure passes east-north-east over Hudson Bay, and the north of the Atlantic. Except in the far north Canada lies in the region of the westerly storm winds. The main tracks of barometric minima pass over it near its southern boundary, especially along the St. Lawrence basin. With the exception of the south of British Columbia, the Lake Peninsula, and the Atlantic Provinces, Canada lies normally on the northern side of the passing storm centre. The result is that northerly winds prevail over most of the Dominion. As they are blowing from cooler to warmer regions, they arc dry except in the extreme east where they come oversea ; and the rainfall map shows that the heaviest rainfall occurs near the coasts and diminishes to- wards the interior. Only a small part of the south of the Climatic and Economic Regions. 24f> eastern region has a rainfall of over 40 inches. The heaviest precipitation in Canada is found on the western slopes of the western mountains, where the south-west winds are drawn far to the north as in Europe. In the interior the mountain area is very dry, but considerable rain and snow fall on the higher parts of the Rockies. A word must be said of the warm dry chinook winds which blow in the plains east of the Ilockies. The air is drawn over the mountains, losing its moisture as it ascends, and heated by compression as it descends. These warm dry winds cause snow to disappear with great rapidity. Within the range of their actio'n, that is for about two hundred miles east from the base of the Rockies, fodder can be obtained nearly all the year round. The importance of this both for stock and agriculture is obvious. The south-west winds of the west coast cause a westerly drift of warmer surface water, and this keeps the western ports of Canada ice-free. On the east coast the winds generally blow parallel to the Labrador coast, driving cold surface water as v/ell as cold air southwards. The eastern ports, with the exception of St. John in New Brunswick, and Halifax in Nova Scotia, and others on the Atlantic sea-boaid and on the Bav of Fundy, are icebound in winter ; so that the St. Lawrence as well as the rivers of the plains in higher latitudes are in- accessible from the sea for several months. Li Central and Eastern Canada the winters are too severe for the sowing of winter wheat, and in the forest zone winter is the lumbering season. The logs are hauled over the frozen ground to the banks of the rivers and lakes, to be carried down by the spring floods when the ice melts. The vast area of British North America ^p'Sfnnnfi;^^ may be divided as follows: (1) the cold ii.conomic ■' . . . r i Regions. arctic and sub-arctic region of tundra, where the mean monthly temperature is never over 50° ; (2) the cool temperate belt with very cold winters and warm summers, covered with dwarf and open woods ; (3) the warm temperate belt with very cold winters and hot summers, covered with dense forests. All these have a low summer rainfall, and comparatively little snow in winter (under 5 or 6 ft.) — a total precipitation of 10-25 inches. Li the east region (2) gradually passes into (4) the regions of South Labrador and Quebec with less extreme winter and summer temperatures, with a heavier rainfall (25-35 inches) and over 250 Eastern Canada and Neivfoundland. 7 ft. of snow ; here and there the forest is denser than in (2). (5) The Maritime or Atlantic Provinces have still less extreme tem])eratures, and a snowfall of less than 7 ft., but a heavier rainfall (over 35 inches) with a more northern type of forest, now partly cleared. (G) The Lake Peninsula, the most southern part of Canada, is differentiated from (3) by its heavier rainfall (25- 40 inches), but its southern forest is being cleared. (7) The ex- treme south-western grassy plains are distinguished from (3) by their very low rainfall, which prevents the gi'owth of forests. (8) The Mountain Area with its great varieties of climate, dry valleys and wet exposed mountain slopes, can be sub- divided into many climatic districts, but broadly we may distinguish between a northern area with northern forests, and a soutliern with a cordilleran forest. The conditions generally speaking become milder and more moist from east to west. If we approach C*anada from the Atlantic Canlar ^y ^^^^"^ ^^^^ ^^^^^^' ^'^^^ ^^^" ^^- La\\Tence estuary, we have different physical regions to right and left. On the north the land rises steeply from the coast to the undulating highlands of the Labrador peninsula, which is composed of old rocks, thinly covered with soil, and supporting a forest of some density in the south. The east coast of Labrador is fiorded, and its many fishing stations are very busy in summer. The coast belongs to Newfoundland, the hinterland to Canada. On our left, to the south, the country has a well-marked ridge and valley struc- ture, which can be traced in the chief peninsulas and bays. With them should be compared the peninsulas in the west and east of Newfoundland ; the Bay of Fundy, which almost cuts off Nova Scotia from the miainland ; the Bay of Chaleurs and the Gaspe peninsula. -^ „ -11 J The same south-west to north-east direction Newfoundland. . ,. , . , • !• i • ,i of gull and pennisula is found m the mountain ranges, valleys and long lakes of Newfoundland. This island is difficult to cross from south-east to north-west, except where rivers have cut their way across the ranges. All the routes have been determined by these features. The surface of the island is covered with forest,which adds to the difficulty of com- munication, but yields valuable lumber. In Newfoundland the sea is liardly less valuable than the land ; and up till now has been more carefully exploited. The cold Arctic currents brim; minute organisms which feed inexhaustible shoals of fish Lower and, Upper Canada. 251 in the waters over the shallow Newfoundland Banks. Ever since their discovery these have attracted fishing fleets from all the maritime countries of Europe. More recently they have led to disputes with France and the United States {see pp. 324, 327). . In the Atlantic Provinces the most Provinces!'' fertile and settled areas are round the Bay of Fundy, with rich meadows and apple orchards. The high tides of the bay carry shipping far in- land, and prevent its being blocked by ice in winter. Halifax, at the centre of the Atlantic Coast of Nova Scotia, is the best natural port in America The coal mines round Sydney in Cape Breton Island are also very valuable, while the low- lying Prince Edward Island has been called " the garden of Eastern Canada." Proceeding by the St. Lawrence we reach UpperCanada. ^^^® ^"°^^ °^ Quebec, the commercial import- ance of which may be increased by the diffi- culty of dredging the river above it so as to keep pace with the greater draught of ocean liners and enable them to reach Montreal (see p. 247). The Lake or Niagara Peninsula, between Lakes Erie, Ontario and Huron is the most southern and the most pros- perous part of Canada. The hot summers bring to perfection the grape, peach, apricot, and many othei- fruits. Hence the cities of Toronto and Hamilton, on Lake Ontario, and London, in the heart of the peninsula, have sprung up. Ottawa, the Dominion capital, is on the river Ottawa. A centmy ago British North America consisted of four natural divisions (1) the colony of Newfoundland; (2) the three Atlantic provinces, peopled mainly along the coast ; (3) Quebec or Lower Canada, peopled chiefly along the St. Lawrence ; and (4) Ontario or Upper Canada, the settled Lake peninsula. Between the forests of the Atlantic Provinces and Quebec, a long journey either by sea or by land is necessary. Quebec and Ontario have now become practicallv continuous, but a great stretch of almost uninhabited rocky land separates them from the newer settlements of Central C*anada. The discovery of valuable minerals, however, may lead to the development of population in this intermediate area. Here the land is rapidly being broken and Plains*'^^ settled by an agricultural population along the southern margin of the forest zone and the 252 The Central Plains, British Cohimhia, and the North -West. richer part of the grass belt, especially in the Red River valley (see pp. 246, 280). Cultivation rapidly spreads as railways are built across these undulating plains, and now three provinces, Manitoba (capital Winnipeg), Saskatchewan (capital Regnia), and Alberta (capital Edmonton) have been organised. Population diminishes in density towards the drier areas of the south-west, where the rainfall is insufficient forcrops and agri- cultural pursuits give place to cattle-raising occupations. The discovery of coal and other minerals near the Rockies has, however, led to the development of a new area of population between Lethbridge and Calgary in Alberta. British Columbia the western province, C \ h' comprises the mountainous lands between latitude 60°N. and the frontier of the United States. It has been opened up by railways and is gradually being settled along the valleys of the Fraser and Columbia rivers and their tributaries — districts famous for their fish, fruit, and lumber. The mineral wealth — gold, silver, lead, coal — is attracting settlers to such centres as Rossland. Vancouver has grown up on Burrard's Inlet as the western terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and a port for trans-Pacific liners. The capital of the province, Victoria, at the south of Vancouver Island, is its rival, and is situated near the Nanaimo coal fields and the naval station of Esquimalt. Yukon, the mountainous area north of OO'^'N., has rich gold mines round Dawson, where the Klondike river enters the Yukon. The North-west Territories, which stretch from the Mackenzie delta to Labrador, consist of tundra and open forest, and are peopled by a few Eskimos, Indians and fur traders. •CHAPTER ir. FRENCH AND BEITISH, 1534 1763 The discovery of Xewfoundland (.see p. 320) The first ^^..^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ followed by further explora- tions m the direction or Canada, but in loo4 Jacques Cartier, of St. Malo, reached the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and in 1535 sailed up it as far as Montreal. In 1540 he established a settlement near Quebec, but this and other colonising projects formed by the Huguenots in the sixteenth century failed. In 1 604, however, Pierre de (hia, Sieur de Mouts, a gentleman of the household of King Henry IV. of France, founded Port Poyal on Annapolis Basin. Tour years later Samuel de Champlain, his lieutenant, set up the fieur-de-lys on the rock of Quebec, and founded wliat was for a century and a-half the capital of the French Empire in Xorth America. The colony soon excited the jealousy of the English settlements to the south ; in 1G13 Capt. Samuel Argall of Virginia sacked Port Eoyal, and from that date there was rarely peace along the frontier line. In 1628 Gervase Kirke, with the help of some French Huguenots, sank the French naval force in the St. Lawrence, and in 1629, with his son, Sir David Kirke, captured Quebec. The whole of New- France passed under English rule, but everything was restored by Charles I. when peace was signed, and the struggle had to be re-fought in the eighteenth century. As in all young settlements, especially in The St. Lawrence, a large country, the rivers were the chief roads. From Montreal to Quebec the St. Lawa-ence was like a street, with houses and farms on both sides. The land was granted in long strips, each with a frontage on the river, and stretchirg back several miles. When a farm was divided the new owner was alwnys given 254 The Seigniors, the Habitants and the Church. an outlook on the river, and to-day, as one sails up -the St. Lawrence, one of the first things which strikes the eye is the long, ribbon-like farms, often not more tlian a few yards wide, which stretch back so far inland. These farms extended from a little above Montreal to about forty miles beyond the city of Quebec, and ran back some fifteen or twenty miles to the Laurentian mountains. It was then, as it is now, a pleasant land, a land of apple orchards and waving wheat and meadows of deep grass, growing narrower and narrower as the hills slope dow^n towards the water, till at last the great bulk of Cap Tourmente shoulders itself into the river and cuts off further progress. The land was settled under what is known ^'\® m"^ °^ as seigniorial tenure. In theory this was much the same as the feudal tenure under which land was held in France, l)ut in practice the results in Canada were very different, and it is a mistake to speak of the French Canadians as groaning under the same tyranny as the peasants of old France. The French peasant was almost helpless under the sway of his feudal lord; he was taillaUe et cor ve able a merci, " taxable and workable at his master's will"; the Canadian had from the first security of tenure, and prized no title so highly as that which he still retains of the habitant, the dweller on the soil. If he owed to his lord certain duties, they pressed on him but lightly. It is true that he was compelled to take his corn to be ground at the seignior's mill ; l)ut then this meant that the seignior was compelled to keep up a good mill, which, in a new country, was more often a burden than a privilege. Often the seignior found his honours so expensive that he was glad to sell out to one of his wealthy tenants, so that no social barriers divided the seignior and the habitant, and, as a rule, the kind- est and tenderest feelings characterised their relations. After the British conquest, nothing frightened the Canadians so much as the thought that this system might be changed ; and though in 1854 the English system of holding land in free- hold "was introduced into the province, many of the habitants still prefer to pay rent to their former seigniors. The objects of the French in settling in The Influence of (^'anada had been chiefly to convert the the Church. jj^^-.-^j^g ^^^(j i-Q trade with them in furs. The Eoman Catholic Church had great 'influence. The settlers were carefully picked, and no heretic was allowed to enter. This greatly hindered the growth of the country, and is the chief reason why it grew so much more slowly than did the French Colonial Ambitions. 255 English Colonies to the south. This great influence of the Church in Canada endures to-day ; not even the doctor, or the notaire, or the Member of Parliament has so much in- flueuce in the Quebec village as has Afonsieiir le Cure. Probably in no other spot in the world has the Church such unquestioned power, and one result of this is seen in the moral and law-abiding nature of the habitants. It is true that the Church has not alwa^'s helped tliem to get as good an education as their English fellow-citizens : but she has taught them to be good fathers and mothers, good husbands and wives, good children and kindly neighbours. But though the French, descendants for French Colonial ^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^.^ ^f peasants from Normandy Ajubitions. 1 !)• 1 1 r .1 • i> and 1 icardy, were proud oi their farms, there was in their blood a roving strain which sent many of the young men off to the woods to shoot and hunt. These trappers, known as coureitrs dc hois, often became as wild as the Indians themselves, married squaws, and settled down among the red men. This roving side of their life fitted in well witli the plans of the French Government. Even in its decay the gOAcrnment of the Bourbon kings was majestic, and dreamed of nothing less than the conquest of the whole of America north of the Spanish possessions. Thus all along the Pdver St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes forts were placed at the most important points — at Niagara, con- trolling the trade of the upper lakes ; at Detroit, where the western Indians came with their furs ; at Michillimakinac — on the straits of Makinac joining Lakes Huron and ^Michigan — perhaps the most important natural strategic point in North America. Further soutli, where the headwaters of tlie St. Lawrence approach those of the JNIississippi, were other small forts, the most important of which. Fort I>u Quesne, was on the site of the modern city of Pittsburg, in the fork of the two rivers which unite to form the Ohio. This had been built by the French in 1754, and was the key to tlie west, out of which some of the richest states in the American Iie}>ublic have since been car\ed. Further down the IMissis- sippi were other settlements, the most important of which was New Orleans, near its mouth. In 171'-^' France had ceded to Great ^ Utrecht! °^ 1 Britain, by the Treaty of Ttrecht, the great north-western district, drained by the rivers which flow into Hudson Bay, and also the province of Acadia, comprising the present Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and part of the State of Maine. But to the north the French 256 The Seven Years' War. still held the Island of Cape Breton, on which they built the great fortress of Louisbourg ; from its splendid harbour privateers sallied forth to prey on the rising commerce of New England and Xew York. Thus, when the Seven Years' War began, of the three great water-ways into the heart of the continent, the French held the ]\Iississippi and the St. Lawrence ; only the third and least important, the Hudson liiver, was in the hands of Great Britain. During the early part of the war the War. ''' ^'^''^^^^§'^ lay with the French. Though only about 65,000 in number, they were accustomed to living and lighting in the bush ; above all, they were strictly obedient to the orders of their Governor and of the military commander. On the other hand, the British colonies, though their population was about twenty times as great, were divided into thirteen separate commonwealths, each to a great extent master of its own affairs, and each intensely jealous of the other. Those to the south were too far distant from the scene of war to take much part in it ; the Quakers of Pennsylvania found that fighting was not only contrary to their principles but a source of great expense and annoyance ; Xew York would not move unless Xew England did her duty ; and Xew England was resolved not to let the whole burden of the war fall on her shoulders. Yet, though the French, acting vigorously under a united authority, were everywhere successful at first, their successes were more brilliant than solid in reality. In a conflict between 65,000 and 1,250,000, the odds were obviously in favour of the big battalions. " The French," says Carlyle, " have distinct orders from court, and energetically obey the same ; the English have indistinct orders from nature, and do not want energy or mind to ol)ey these." It is probable that in the end, after many a hard blow, the English colonies would have learned the lesson of unity, and won the day. But tlie issue was not left to them ; just at this time, while the French government was in a state of unparalleled confusion, while army and navy were administered at the bidding of a vain and foolish woman, there rose to control of the resources of England the greatest war minister slie has ever had. William Pitt kissed hands as one of the two Secretaries of State on June, 29, 1757 ; in civil affairs everyone, from a bishop to a tide-waiter, was appointed by his colleague, the Duke of Xewcastle ; but the control of the forces by land and sea was in the hands ot Pitt alone, and he at once organised a combined attack on the French possessions in America. The Campaign Montcalm and Wolfe. 257 In 1758 Louisbourg was taken by a fleet of 1758 ' under Admiral Boscavven, known by his sailors as "Foul-weather Jack," and an army under Major-Gen, Jeffrey Amherst. In this expedi- tion was noticed the new spirit which Pitt had breathed into his men. Soldiers and sailors are usually jealous of each other, but not a ripple marred the harmony of the relations between Amherst and Boscavven. On Lake Ontario, Col. Bradstreet, a brave New England veteran, captured Fort Frontenac, the French naval base, on the site of the modern Kingston, and the French fleet lying tliere ; in it were found vast quantities of stores and provisions which had been gathered to victual tlie western forts during the winter, and all the presents intended for the Indians. Later in the year Gen. Forbes, advancing from Philadelpliia, pushed on through the autinnn rains to Fort Du Quesne. The French garrison, in want of the provisions captured at Fort Frontenac, and deserted by the Indians, abandoned their post. Thus, though the French general, Montcalm, and his second in command, De Levis beat oft" with heavy loss an attack made on them at Ticonderoga by a force of British regulars and colonial militia which advanced up the Hudson, the hopes of France had been shattered by the end of 1758. With one hand she had held the great West, with the other the Atlantic; in this one year both had been lopped oft". It only remained for Pitt to strike at the heart. In 1759 a three-fold attack was planned, Wolfe ^° One army advanced against Niagara and the western country, and after a brave defence the French were forced to surrender. A second, under Gen. Amherst, moved up the Hudson and captured Ticonderoga. Meanwhile the French general, feeling that it was above all things necessary to keep a footing in the colony, concentrated his forces at Quebec. Six miles below the city the river Montmorenci falls into the St. Lawrence, plunging over a cliff 265 ft. in height. Along the six miles between the cataract and the city Montcalm drew up his men. The position was naturally strong, and he strengthened every mile of it with the most carefully -devised earthworks. Pitt had given the command of the attacking force to Major-Gen. Wolfe, a brilliant soldier only thirty-two years of age, who had been the soul of the attack on Louis- bourg in the previous year. The fleet was under the command of Admiral Saunders, who cordially and effectively co-operated 258 The Phifis of Ahrafidnt. with the land forces. Wolfe was strong in his absolute con- trol of the river and the harbour of Quebec, which enabled him to divide his troops,, putting some opposite the city at Point Levis, others on the' Island of Orleans, and a third division beyond the Mo?i;tffiorenci. In reality they were not divided at all. The whole basin of tlie harbour and its shores formed his camp, and its various parts were connected by the river, the best of all roads. He was thus able to move his men hither and thither at their ease, seated comfortably on shipboard ; he threatened to attack, now here, now there ; and as often as he threatened, the soldiers of Montcalm were compelled to toil after him on land in the heat of a Canadian summer. Yet so obstinate was the defence of Montcalm and so strong was his ])Osition that Wolfe began to despair. An attack on the Montmorenci was l)eaten off with heav}' loss, and to add to his misfortunes, the young General liimself fell ill. At last, at the cud of August his three "'"ITi ^^h^"^ °^ lirigadiers suggested an attack somewhere' above the city. Wolfe agreed, chose the spot and worked out the details of a plan at once simple and ingenious. On the night of September 12 the troops, which had been quietly gathered on shipboard, were carried by the fleet some miles above the city. Here they embarked in boats and dropped down the river with the ebb tide. On their way they were hailed by a sentry, but an otlicer who spoke French succeeded in per- suading him that they were a convoy of provision boats which the French were known to be expecting. At last they reached the chosen spot, known then as the Anse du Foulon,. but ever since as Wolfe's Cove, a little bay running into the land, where the cliff is less steep and where a rocky path leads up to the stretch of level ground, called after an eai'ly French settler the Pldins of Abraham. Up the steep clitf they climbed, never knowing whether a volley from the top or a shower of stones might not sweep them back into the river. Montcalm has been blamed for not defending the spot more strongly, but it has been proved that he had wished to send one of his bravest regiments, that of Guienne, to camp in the vicniity, but that the order liad been countermanded by the Governor, an honest but weak-minded Canadian named A^audreuil. The only guard was a small picket, led by an incompetent officer named De Yergor, who at the moment of Wolfe's attack was fast asleep. The surprise was com- plete. Vergor sprang out of bed and ran off in hi« shirt,. The Death of Wolfe. 259 but was wounded in the heel and captured. By morning Wolfe had 4,829 men drawn up in battle array, of whom 0,111 were in the firing line. At the moment of the surprise, Montcalm was in his camp on the other side of the city, across the little River St. Charles. He gathered his men with all speed, and in the early morning rushed to the attack. , The numbers on each side were about equal, Defeat*' though the French had more in the firing line ; but the British were seasoned troops, while the French were a mixture of regulars, militia and Indians. The French advanced gallantly, but in some disorder, with loud shouts, and firing as they came. The British stood firm and silent, though men fell fast, till the enemy were within forty yards. Then from tliat thin red line burst a volley so well delivered that it seemed like a single shot. As the smoke cleared the French could be seen lying in heaps. In vain Montcalm, conspicuous on liis black charger, galloped hither and thither to restore order. Another volley completed the rout. The British advanced, at first in good order, then in a headlong rush. Drawing their broadswords, the Highlanders chased the fugitives to the edge of the city ditch. In the moment of victory Wolfe fell. One of the first shots fired had broken his wrist, but he tied his handkerchief round the wound and pressed on ; another shot struck him in the side, but he was still staggering on when a third pierced his lungs, and he fell. Asked if he would have a surgeon, he refused, knowing that all was over. A moment later, the cry of triumph came from one of his officers: "They run, they run 1" " Who run ? " he asked faintly. " The French, Sir. Egad ! they give way everyv/here." " Go, one of you, to Gen. Bjurton," replied the dying man, "tell him to march Webb's regin.ent down to Charles Biver, to cut off their retreat from the Bridge." Then, turning on his side, like a child lying down to sleep, he murmured : " Now, God be praised, I die content." A moment later he was dead. His brave opponent, too, had been shot through the body, but stayed himself up on his horse till within the city, assuring the women who screamed at the sight of his blood that it was nothing. On the morning of the next day he died, and was buried in the grave which a bursting British shell had dug for him in the little church of the TJrsulines. In later years the chivalry of the conquerors erected on the brov/ of the cliff, from which he Jaad so often watched the k2 The Surrender of Quebec. 260 Surrender of Quebec. ships of his rival, a monument to the two lieroes which bears the inscription : — WOLFE AND MONTCALM. Virtus mortem comraunem, Famam historia, Momentum posteritas dedit.* The victory by no means entailed the surrender of Quebec ; but the Governor, De liamezay, was old and timorous. Vaudreuil had lost his nerve ; the brave and skilful De Levis had been sent off to Montreal to watch the approach of Amherst. On hearing of the defeat he came tearing down to the scene of action, gathering troops as he came ; he met and rallied the routed army; his vanguard was within a few miles of the city when news came that De Eamezay had on the morning of the 18th surrendered the city to Brigadier-Gen. Townshend. De Levis at once retreated to INIontreal, where he and Vaudreuil reorganised their forces, and in the spring, as soon as the melting snows left the roads clear, came down with 10,000 men to make a last attempt. Outside the walls of Quebec he defeated Gen. Murray, the British commander, in what is called sometimes the Battle of Ste. Foy, and some- times the Second Battle of the Plains of Abraham. But Murray, though defeated, was in no mood to repeat the error of De Eamezay ; he held fiercely at bay behind his ruined walls, and a fortnight later the arrival of a British fleet forced the 'French to raise the siege. De Levis again retreated to Montreal, on which during the summer three British armies converged. One under Gen. Murray came from Quebec, one under Brigadier Haviland advanced by the line of Lake Champlain and the Ptichelieu, and the third under Gen. Amherst came down the St. Lawrence and ran the rapids with signal bravery and success. At Montreal on September 8, 1 760, Vaudreuil and De Levis, and all that was left of their gallant little army, laid down their arms and became prisoners of war. Three vears later, bv the Treatv of ^^pL1s''^°* Paris, signed on February 10, 1763,"^ the surrender was confirmed. Canada, Cape Breton, and the islands in the gulf, and all the vast territory between the Mississippi and the Atlantic, were re- linquished to Britain. Of all her American empire France • Their valour gave them a common 4eath history a commOQ glory ; posterity ^ epjrimon monument. The Peace of Paris. 261 retained only the two little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon as a shelter for the fishing Heet which the coast towns of Normandy and Brittany sent yearly to the banks of Newfonndland. To the Canadians good terms were given. Those who desired to do so were allowed eighteen months to sell their goods and to return to France ; but of this permission only a few of the upper classes availed themselves. To those who remained was granted that which they prized above all, " the liberty of the Catholic religion." Murray, who had been in command since the autumn of 1759, and whose justice and kindliness had already made him beloved by the habitaiits, was made the first governor of the new province. CHAPTER in. THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM, 1763-1837. The war-worn Canadians settled down Canada settles willingly enough under the mild rule of the Brilish rule conqueror. So docile and obedient were they that Governor Murray soon came to prefer them to the English and American immigrants, whom he describes as " men of mean education, either young or in- experienced, or older men who had failed elsewhere . . . the most immoral collection of men I ever knew." The efforts of the newcomers, however, soon led to a great increase in the commerce of Canada, and Murray's judgment was probably prejudiced by the soldier's contempt for the trader. Two lines of policy were open to the Alternative British Government. One was that which icies. iJnssia has adopted toward the Poles, and which Germany is using to-day toward the French of Alsace and Lorraine. It might have endeavoured to destroy the laws and language of tlie Canadians and to force on them the laws and the language of Britain. After some hesitation, it preferred to leave their institutions untouched, and to trust to their gratitude and their affection to make them faithful British subjects. The result is that there is in Canada to-day a solid block of nearly two million French- speaking subjects of His Majesty, living under a code of laws largely French. From the first Murray treated the Cana- The Quebec Act. dians with kindness ; and when he returned to England in 1766, his successor, Sir Guy Carleton, who like himself had fought under Wolfe, was even more generous. In 1774, with his approval, the British Parliament passed the Quebec Act, which has ever since been regarded by the French- Canadians as their Great Charter. By it they were confinned in the right to worship according to the Roman Catholic faith, and to hold land under the seigniorial system. Indeed, while in criminal matters the more merciful law of England was introduced, the French The War of American Independence. 2G3 civil law was retained in full, and forms the basis of the present code of the province of Quebec. Hardly had Great Britain thus proved her The War of aenerosity when the revolt of the thirteen American lade- * • i ■ i i i^ mi pendenee. American colonies broke out. ihese were very anxious for the Canadians to join them, but the habitant hated the Bostonnais, as he called them, Iniowing that they would, if they had the chance, make short work of his Church and of his laws. Thus, when the rebels in- vaded Canada, the habitants refused to aid them. The invaders were at first successful. They captured j\Iontreal (Novem- ber 13, 1775), and Carleton only escaped by the aid of Capt. Bouchette, a brave Canadian who paddled him down the St. Lawrence through the American sentries, using his hands as paddles to move more quietly, while Carleton lay fiat hi the bottom of the canoe. But, once the Governor had reached Quebec, the American success came to an end. He was a line soldier and defended the city so vigorously that one American General, Montgomery, like Carleton liimself an old soldier of Wolfe, was defeated and killed (December .31, 1775) ; and though the other, Benedict Arnold, showed great bravery and besieged the city all winter, he too was compelled to retreat in the spring, while in the summer of 1776 Carleton attacked him on Lake Champlain and defeated him with the loss of his whole fieet. At the end of the war, when, with the '■^^ire^^JJ^aUhnr' ^'^^^I-' °^' ^'^aiice and Spain, the colonies had won their independence, those who during the fight had remained loyal to the Empire were harshly treated by the victors and many of them were forced to migrate to Canada. Here they were given lands and money by the British Government and enabled to start life anew. ]\Iany settled on the banks of the Eiver St. John, in what is now the province of New Brunswick {see p. 278) ; others went to the fertile district between the French settle- ments and the American border, which has ever since been known as " The Eastern Townships." Further west, other Loyalists settled in what is now the province of Ontario — at Kingston, on the site of the old French Fort Frontenac, along the Bay of Quinte, and at York (now Toronto). The descen- dants of these United Empire Loyalists, as they were called, still play a prominent part in Canadian life and have done much to promote the spirit of sturdy loyalty to the British Crown for which such cities as Toronto and Kingston are •conspicuous {sec also pp. 80, 81). 264 TU Constituiional Act of 1791. But, though the Loyalists had fought tional Act The Constitu- fo^. British connection and upheld the ideal of 1791. ^^ ^ united Empire, they were strong believers in the riglit of colonists to manage their own local affairs. They soon found fault witli the personal rule of Carleton, who in 1786 had returned with the title of Lord Dorchester to the province, and asked that their representatives should share in the government of the country. As a result, in 1791 the British Government passed the Constitutional Act. By this that part of Canada now known as Ontario was made into a separ- ate province, with the name of Upper Canada. In this British law was established. In the rest of the province, known as Lower Canada, the habitants were allowed to keep their cherished laws and customs. To both ])rovinces was given a representative Assembly. The government thus consisted of a Governor appointed nominally by the King, but really by the Colonial Office, of an L^pper House, known as the Legislative Council, and of the Eepresentative Assembly. The French-Canadians at first had no desi re for such an Assembly , which they called " une machine Anglaise j^oiir nous taxev " (an English device to get taxes out of us) ; but tlie British Government decided that, as representation was being given to L^pper Canada, the French would not be fairly treated unless they received the same. The new constitution did not work well. Tlie Governor, who was supposed to take the place of the King, was really responsible to the Colonial Office, and though Downing Street {see p. 227), as it came to be called from the situation of the office, did its best, its knowledge of Canada and of Canadian conditions was not great. The other departments were still worse, and on one occasion the Admiralty sent out, for use in a war-ship on the fresh-water Lake Ontario, a com- plete collection of casks and buckets for storing fresh water ! But Canadian dislike of Downing Street Sed Spates ^^''^'^ ^^^ ^ ^""® silenced by the roar of battle. Ever since 1793 Great Britain had been at war with France, and the conflict had grown fiercer since the resources of France were controlled by the genius of Napoleon. The merchants of the United States at hrst made large profits by selling supplies to both combatants, but soon Napoleon began to capture all ships which traded with England, and En^dand, in reply, seized on all ships which traded with France. The United States were thus very angry with both, and they had a further cause of quarrel with Britaiu Tlie War against the United States. 265 because that country insisted on searching American ships for British deserters, an operation often carried out with great liarshness and even brutality. At last, in 1812, the United States declared war against Great Britain. On sea the Americans, who had some very powerful frigates, were at first victorious in a series of single-ship actions, Init in June of the next year Captain Broke, of the " Shannon," turned the tables V)y capturing the " Chesapeake " and bringing her captive into Halifax harbour. Later on, the British Navy, which was by far the larger, swept American commerce so utterly from the seas that three thousand American merchantmen were captured and American exports were brought down from $100,000,000 to $8,000,000 {see p. 325). The main effort of the Americans was ctnld? °" clirected against Canada. Luckily for it the chief frontier States, New York and New England were opposed to the wai*; but even so, the odds were strong against Canada. The story of the war is very hard to follow, for attacks were made by both sides all along the frontier from Montreal to Detroit. On July 11, 1812, the American General Hull invaded Canada from Detroit, and issued a proclamation promising " peace, liberty and security " to all who would accept American rule. Throughout the war the Americans showed a touching faith in the virtue of proclamations, and really in many cases believed that they had a mission to rescue Canada from the tyranny of Britain. Finding no support in Canada, Hull returned to Detroit. Upper Canada was at this time governed by a brave and skilful soldier, Sir Lsaac Brock. With about seven hundred white troops and rather more tlian six Imndred Indians he followed Hull and besieged Detroit. Hull had twice as many men and his cannon were heavier and more numerous ; but he and his troops were in deadly terror of the Indians and on August 16 he surrendered. If Brock had been allowed to follow up his success he might have kept the enemy on the run ; but he was subject to the orders of the Governor-General, Sir George Prevost, who just at this moment, in the hope of putting a stop to the war, proposed to the Americans an armistice. Prevost had made himself beloved by the French-Canadians, and in time of peace might have been a successful Governor ; but all through the war he showed such a faculty for doing the wrong thing that eventu- ally he was recalled to England to be tried for incompetence ; he fell sick and died of a broken heart before the trial took place, 266 The Campaign of 1813. During the armistice the Americans brought up men and artillery. For a time they and Brock faced each other across the Niagara river, but on October 12 they forced a landing at the Canadian position of Queenston Heights. Brock was shot dead, with his last breath calling to his men to push on. The battle seemed won by the Americans, but Gen. Sheaffe came up with reinforcements and drove them down the hill into the river, where it rushes at its fiercest after its leap over the falls. In 1813 the fortunes of war varied, of ISir'^"" ^^ ^^^® beginning of the season the Americans gained control of Lake Ontario and, sailing across it, captured York, the capital of Upper Canada (April 27). Greatly to their disgrace, they looted and burned the Parliament buildings, and destroyed much private property. Soon afterwards, they defeated the British at Fort George, on the Niagara frontier (May 27), and drove them back to Stony Creek, near the present town of Hamilton. Here the British turned to bay, and, led by Col. John Harvey, made a night attack, driving the enemy back in confusion (June 5). The next fight was at Beaver Dams, also in the Niagara district, where in a forest of beech-trees Lieut. FitzGibbon, with less than fifty men, mostly daredevil Irish, and a few Indians, ambushed and captured nearly six hundred Americans. Shortly before (May 29) Prevost in person had attacked the American naval base at Sackett's Harbour, on Lake Ontario ; but, just as his troops were on the point of carrying the town, he drew them off and re- embarked. Further west, the defeat of the British fleet on Lake Erie, in a fight in which, after a desperate struggle, nine American vessels under Commodore Perry annihilated six British vessels under Capt. Barclay (September 10), compelled the British army under Col. Procter to retreat, for fear of being cut off from its base of supplies at Detroit. Through the summer Procter had been aided by the Shawnee Indians, under their chief Tecumseh, one of the noblest men whom the red race has produced. Tecumseh was in no mood to retreat, and bitterly upbraided Procter, but not even his comparison of that officer to " a fat dog witli his tail between his legs " roused him to fight. The retreat was slow and disorderly, and the American general "Harrison was soon at his heels, with a force chiefly composed of Kentucky rifle- men, who were well accustomed to bush-fighting with the Indians. At Moravian Town, on the Thames Piiver, Procter was forced to turn and fight ; lint his men, outnumbered, End of the War. 267 vveaiy, and without contideuce in their leader, were soon routed. Tecumseh and his Indians fought hard, and the chief died on the held (October 5). Meantime, the Americans had sent two armies against Montreal. On October 25 one of these, while marching north from Lake Champlain, was met at the little river Chateauguay l)y Col. de Salaberry at the head of three hundred French- Canadian rolHffeurs, and, though ten times as numerous, was utterly routed. On November 11, the other army, which was making its way down the St. Lawrence, was met and defeated at Chrysler's Farm, and on the next day, hearing of the British victory at Chateauguay, retired in confusion. In 1814 the hardest fighting was on The End of the ^^j,^ Niagara frontier. Here, on the evening of a sultry day in July, Gen. Drummond, the new British commander-in-chief, with about 1,800 men, was attacked by 4,000 Americans at Lundy's Lane. For three hours they fought, the thunder of the Falls of Niagara sounding in their ears above the roar of the artillery. The British guns were captured, but the infantry held their ground stubbornly till reinforcements came up, and the fight went on till midnight, when both sides ceased from sheer exhaustion (July 25). Next day the Americans fell back, and on the 27th re-crossed the river. The capture of Napoleon and his exile to Elba now allowed Britain to devote her energies to the struggle in America. On August 24 a British force defeated the Americans, under the eyes of President Madison himself, at Bladensburg, on the Potomac River, and, pushing on, captured Washington and burnt its public buildings, in reprisal for the American conduct at York. In September Prevost led 11,000 of the best troops in the British Army to attack Plattsburg, but the bravery of the American garrison and tlie irresolution of Prevost gave the Americans a complete victory, in spite of the superior numbers and experience of the British rank and file. By this time both sides were weary of war, and on December 24, 1814, peace was signed at Client. By its terms each party retained what it had before the war. .To Canada the war was her baptism of fire ; by it she won that self-respect, those tiuditions of brave deeds done in defence of hearth and home, which are a nation's greatest asset. When the war was over the Canadians ^'^^belUon ^^' ^S^^^ ^^''^^ leisure to feel discontented with the system under which they were governed. A governor sent out from England necessarily needed advice 268 Papineau's Rebellion, and naturally took it from his Council. Thus the Council, consisting of a few men appointed for life and responsible only to the Crown, carried on the government of the country. In Lower Canada the question was complicated by the fact that the Council were nearly all English, the Assembly nearly all French. The English were not always tactful or conciliatory, and the airs assumed by some of tliem enraged the French, whose complaints found a voice in Louis Josepli Papineau, a great orator, without much strength of mind or moderation. The Assembly passed laws and the Council or the governor vetoed them. The governor and his Council suggested that money should be spent in certain ways ; the Assembly refused to give a penny. At last Papineau began to talk of armed rebellion. But at that the priests, who had great influence among the habitants, and many of whom had previously been on his side, deserted him. The British Government had treated them with great kindness, and they were not ungrate- ful. The result was that of all the thousands who had cheered his wild words only four or five hundred followed Papineau into rebellion. Papineau himself hesitated at the last moment and ded to the United States, while his followers were easily defeated (1837). Upper Canada had seen the same growth Cornea™' °^ ^^® P°^^®^" °^ ^^^® Council. Its chief men were descendants of the United Empire Loyalists, and were very proud of the fidelity to Britain wliieli they had showed from 1812 to 1814. Their leaders were Dr. John Strachan, the Anglican Bishop of Toronto, a Scotchman from Aberdeen, as fearless and uncompromising as a bit of his native granite, and John Beverley Eobinson, tlie Chief Justice, one of the noblest men whom Canada has produced ; but among their supporters were many who desired power simply to get for themselves money, land and social distinction. Owing to their forming a somewhat exclusive little social set, they became known by their opponents as the " Family Compact." Those who hoped for a change were led by William Lyon Mackenzie, a hot-tempered Scot, who was never so happy as when he found a grievance. Wiser and more moderate were Eobert Baldwin and M. S. Bidwell, who saw that the root of the evil lay in the possession of power by a Council which it was almost im- possible to call to account. They urged that the Governor should be reduced to the nominal position of the King in England, and that he should be allowed to act only on the advice of a Council, which should be responsible to the Mackenzie's Rebellion. 2()9 Assembly and should be compelled to retire if it lost the confidence of the majority of that body. These reformers were, of course, accused by the " Family Com[.)act" of being- disloyal ; and, though this was untrue of Baldwin, some of his supporters were so disgusted with the irresponsible rule of the Council that they would have welcomed union with the United States. The chief practical grievance of the R s"i s^""^ reformers was the land question. By the Constitutional Act of 1791, whenever Crown lands were granted to anyone, a portion equal to one- seventh of the amount granted was to go to the support of " a Protestant clergy." At first the Church of England claimed the whole of this, but later on the Presbyterian Church of Scotland was admitted to a share. But this system worked very badly. The Church did not farm its own land. Nobody wanted to buy it, for free land could be got from the Government. So the " clergy reserves," as they were called, remained untilled and overgrown with forest, preventing the making of roads and hindering the growth of villages. Other land had been granted by the "Family Compact" to themselves and to their supporters ; indeed, many of these grantees had so much that they became land-poor — i.e., they had not enougli money to develop it, and so the land remained uncultivated upon their Jiands. Finally, Mackenzie, soured by defeat in ^if^i^^iv^^^'^ an election, tried to raise a revolt. In Rebelhon. ^, , mot^ -, 11 uccember, loo", he gatlrered" several hundred men outside Toronto, and if he had marched at once on the city might have taken it. But his gathering was a mob and not an army, and he was forced to delay. Meanwhile, the militia of the province, many of whom wanted reform of some kind, but only if it could be won by peaceful means, gathered to the rescue of the city, and his mob was soon dis- persed. Mackenzie Hed to the United States, where he suc- ceeded in gathering, in Buffalo and the other Lake towns, a rabble of the lowest elements of the population, who in 1838 and 1839 made attacks on the Canadian frontier. For these attacks the Government of the United States was not re- sponsible. Those who made them were simply pirates, and some of them who were captured were justly executed. CHAPTEE IV. UNION AND CONFEDERATION, 1837-1867. Discontent in Canada. The reign of Queen Victoria thus opened in Canada with universal discontent and not a little bloodshed. Everybody who visited the country at this time was struck by its bound- less resources, but still more by the bitter party hatreds of the people, their lack of enterprise and of hope- fulness, and, in the country parts, by the fierce and furious drinking. Almost the only good roads in the pro- vince were in the district around the modern city of London, where the eccentric but energetic Col. Tal])ot, an English officer of good family, had founded a colony and ruled it 'va ith despotic sway. A journey from Niagara to Hamilton, a distance now travelled in little more than an hour, took in 1838 from ten in the morning till nearly midnight, and there was not a good inn on the road. The rebellions of Papineau and Mackenzie had at least the merit of making the British Government feel that something must be done. In May, 1888, the Earl of Durham was sent out as High Commissioner to report on the state of the Canadas, and the report which early in 1839 he presented to the British Government pro- duced a great effect. . p , . " In Lower Canada," he said, " I ex- pected to find a contest between a Govern- ment and a people : I found two nations warring in the bosom of a single State ; I found a stiuggle not of principles, but of races." In Upper Canada the Family Compact " by means of . . . its influence in the Executive Council . . . wielded all the powers of Government . . . Successive Governors, as they came in their turn, are said to have either submitted quietly to its influence or, after a short and unavailing struggle, to have yielded to this well-organised party the real conduct of affairs. The Bench, the magistracy, tlie high offices of the Episcopal Church, and a great part of Lord Durham'' s Report. 271 the legal profession, are filled by the adherents of this party ; by grant or purchase they have acquired nearly the whole of the waste lands of the province ; they are all-powerful in the chartered banks, and, till lately, shared among themselves almost exclusively all offices of trust and profit." Thus, with the rest of the population cut off from all share in govern- ment, and with the rulers sliovving little anxiety to help newly arrived emigrants, it was no wonder that " under such circumstances there is little stimulus to industry or enterprise, and their effect is aggravated by the striking con- trast presented l)y such of the United States as border upon this province, and where all is activity and progress." Durham's remedy for this state of ^^Reort''' ^^^^^"^ ^^'^^ "Responsible Government," the solution advocated by lialdwin and IMdwell. The Executive — -i.e., the Council of Ministers wlio carried out the work authorised by the Legislature — must be made responsible to it, and hold otiico only so long as they possessed the confidence of the majority of that bod}'. Thougli Durham admired the simple, kindly nature of the habitants, he also thought that " sooner or later the English race was sure to predominate even numerically in Lower Canada, as they predominate already by their superior know- ledge, energy, enterprise and wealLh." Ho lioped that the English of botli provinces would unite to keep down and finally to absorb the French. " If the population of U[)per Canada is rightly estimated at 400,000, tlie English inhabi- tants of Lower Canada at 150,000 and the French at -loOjOOO, tlie union of the two provinces would not only givea clear Englisli majority, but one whicli would be increased every year by the intluence of English emigration." As a means to this absorp- tion, he for a time favoured the federal union of British North America, but, seeing that this' was impossible without better means of travel and of transport from one province to the other, he recommended as the best practicable course tlie legislative union of Upper and Lower Canada. J- 1 g J 1^ Before this was carried out, a new and energetic Governor, Charles Poulett Thomson, was sent out to get the Canadians to agree. Thomson, who landed in Septiembei', 1839, was a business man who had been a member of the British House of C'om- inons and who was much better fitted to deal with the Canadians than the honest but unbusiness-like soldiers whom the Government had been in the habit of appointing. In spite of delicate health, he got through an enormous amount of 272 Responsible Government. work. He persuaded both provinces to agree to the union. He introduced a system of local or municipal government which enabled the various parts of each province to look after tlieir own local affairs, and by so doing to get a training in the methods of government. He put the granting of land on a better system, and planned important public works. He quieted the agitation about the clergy reserves. He even found time to go down to Nova Scotia, and to settle a quarrel between the Council and the Legislature. In August, 1840, in recognition of his services, he was created Lord Sydenham. But he never sat in the House of Lords, for while riding in the streets of Kingston, which he had made the capital of the united province, he was thrown from his horse, broke his leg and died of the shock on September 19, 1841. " Eesponsible Government " meant that tlie Governor was responsible to somebody. But was it to the Colonial Office or to the Canadian Legislature ? Sydenliam settled this for the time by governing so tactfully and so well that both the Colonial Oflice and the Legislature were glad to give him a free hand. But soon after his death the question of which of the two responsibilities was the greater came to the front. -r, T.. , T^ ^. Contrarv to Durham's expectations, Political Parties. ., t-i t'i r i i i • -I the Lnghsh reiused to combine against the French. They were split up into several sections — the Conservatives, mainly composed of the old "Family Compact" party; a large party of moderate Liberals, led by Baldwin, who were inclined to sympathise with the French ; and an extreme wing of liadicals, which, soon after tlie death of Sydenham, began to develop, and which about 1850 took the name of the " Clear Grits.'' This allowed the French minority to throw themselves on the side of whichever of the English parties would make the best bargain with them. Sir Charles Bagot, the next Governor, was forced to take some of them into his executive council ; Sir Charles Metcalfe, his successor, fought hard against this, but was forced in 1845 to restore to the French the right to the use of their language in the printing of Government papers and reports. With tlie coming of his successor, Lord Elgin, the French won their way back to a position of equal rank and influence with the English. With this struggle was bound up the Eesponsible ..oi^tion of the question of "Eesponsible Government. „ , „ ,A, ^^ i t7i • Government. When Lord Elgin gave his full support to the Beforni party, which included the majority of the Frencli, he at the same time acknowledged The Movement for Union with the United States. 273 that in all matters which concerned Canada alone he would be responsible solely to his Canadian advisers, though he reserved for himself the right to veto or to refer to the Colonial Office any measures whicli he considered opposed to the interests of the Empire as a whole. Kingston soon proved too small for a ^emo™To* ^^V'^^^^^ fi»d in 1844 the seat of goverinnent Ottawa ^^''^'^ changed to Montreal, the chief commer- cial city. In 1849 the Reformers, who were in a majority, brought in a bill for compensating those in Lower Canada who had lost property in the rebellion of 1837. There was little doubt that under its terms many rebel sympathisers, and perhaps a few rebels, would be paid for their losses. This raised a tremendous uproar among those who had given their time and their moi^y and risked their lives to put down the rebellion. When Lord Elgin gave his assent to the bill, a mob, which included some of the chief men of the Conservative party, set fire to the Par- liament buildings, and burnt them to the ground. Lord Elgin was stoned and pelted with rotten eggs as he drove through the city, and for some days the rioting continued. As a result of this disgraceful conduct and of the weakness shown by the police of Montreal, the Legislature decided to sit for alternate periods of four years at Toronto and Quebec. This proved to be so inconvenient that at last the question was referred to the Queen, who chose Ottawa, at the mouth of the Rideau River, as the permanent capital. But the main difficulty which Lord Elgin The Movement j^fij to face was a movement for union ^''th'^ Un^r^r^ ^^^^^^ ^^^ United States which grew out States. of the trading conditions of the time. At first Canada had been forced by the Navigation Acts to send her chief exports to the Mother Country. In particular, all her lumber had been sent to Eng- land, where it was needed for ship-building. In return for this restriction, colonial timber, wheat, and many other articles were allowed to pay much less duty on entering Britain tlian was the wheat of the United States or the timber of Norway and Sweden. In other words, there was preferen- tial trade between Britain and her colonies. As late as 1843 this preference on Canadian wheat and flour had been largely increased, with the result that much of the money of Canada had been invested in flour-mills. But in 1846 Great Britain repealed the Corn Laws and entered upon the policy of Free Trade which she has ever since maintained. This was ruin to 274 Macdo7iald, Cartier, and Brown. the colonial miller and wheat-grower, particularly as the Navi- gation Laws were still in force restricting his trade. Besides, these frequent changes in tlie English policy made the colonial hesitate to put his money into ventures liable to be ruined in a year or two by some change which might be good for England but were very bad for him. The result was that in 1849 many of the chief men of Montreal signed a manifesto urging annexation to the United States as the remedy for these evils. Lord Elgin, however, soon found a better cure. In the same year the Navigation Laws were repealed and Canada was allowed to trade with all the world. In 1854 he did still better, and succeeded in making with the United States a Eeciprocity Treaty, by which the farmers, lumbermen, miners and tishermen of both nations could trade freely with eacli other. , About this time three remarkable men lolitical came to the front in Canadian politics. John Alexander Macdonald was a Con- servative who in 1837 had shouldered his musket against the rebels. But he was wise and tolerant, and saw that Canada was made up of two races, each of which must in many things give way to the other. He had great skill in seeing when the country was really ripe for a reform and in putting that reform into popular shape. To carry out great and wise measures he did not hesitate to play upon the weak- nesses of men. It was also of great help to him that he had a charming manner and never forgot a face. About the same time the leadership of the French-Canadians passed into the hands of George Etienne Cartier. He had been a rebel in 1837, bub soon repented of his folly and became a loyal sub- ject. Like Macdonald, he saw that the two races and the two religions could only live together under a policy of give and take. In 1854 these two men made an alliance, which enabled them to govern the country during the greater part of the time till the deatli of Cartier in 1873. Their tendency to carry on the government without making the necessary reforms was remedied by the character of their great oppo- nent, George Brown, the leader of the Grits. He was a Scot who had come to Canada as a young man, and had founded in Toronto the Glohc newspaper, which gradually gained great influence. He was an opponent of privileges of all kinds — social, religious or political. He saw that the lioman Church had great ^irivileges, and he fought against them. He saw that the clergy reserves gave great privileges to the Church of England, and he fought against tliem. Abolition of the Clergy Reserves and the Seigniorial System. 275 Thus he raised the questions which Macdonald settled. The one was a great agitator, the other a great statesman. Brown was a man of violent temper, and many of tlie things which he said, especially against the Eoman Catholic Church, were neither true nor wise ; but without him Canada would still be discussing problems which have long been settled, and if the things which he said against the JRoman Church were often too bitter, we must remember that at that time the leaders of that Church were often narrow and bigoted, and that in the inteiests of Canada tlieir narrowness and bigotry had to be resisted. By 1854 Brown had made the country feel ^t^"^?f pV°" °* that the question of the clergy reserves could R^eserveT""^ only be settled by taking away the land from the Churches and giving it to the municipali- ties to use for education and charity. This was done in 1854 by Macdonald and Cartier, in spite of the protests of Dr. Strachan, who never knew when he was beaten, and it proved a splendid thing both for the country and for the Churches. The great majority of the clergy took this loss in the most Christian spirit, feeling that what was bad for the country could not be good for them. In the same year Macdonald and Cartier Abolition of abolished the seigniorial system in Quebec. ^^Sysfein"^ '^^^^^ system had for a long time worked well {see p. 254), but now that railways were being built and many of the young men were looking abroad for a living, the heavy tax which had to be paid to the seignior whenever land changed hands had become a burden, and the system was abolished. The seigniors were given compen- sation, and the habitants were encouraged to buy their land outright, but many of them still prefer to pay a rente constituee in the old way. But another question was coming up. In Deadlock ^841 the number of members given to Upper Two^^anadas. ^''^"^da had been the same as that given to Lower Canada, in spite of the larger popula- tion of that province. But, owing to immigration, in 1852 the Up]>er Province had sixty thousand more inhabitants and in 1861 nearly three hundred thousand more than the Lower. To remedy this anomaly, Brown proposed that each pro^'ince should be represented in accordance with its population. But the French-Canadians who had been unjustly treated at the beginning only smiled when the boot was on the other man's foot. Cartier said frankly in the 276 The Federal Conference. House that the excess in Upper Canada had no more right to be counted than so many cod-fish in the Bay of Gaspe. As lie and Macdonald had a majority, composed of a few from Upper Canada and nearly all the representatives from Lower Canada, the Upper Province got more and more angry, but could do nothing. At last the majority grew so narrow that Soluti n ^^^ ^^^*^ years, two general elections were held and three governments defeated ; neither side could get support enough to carry on the goveinment for more than a few months. Cartier, Brown and Macdonald saw that the crisis had come. They determined to unite and to seek a solution of their difficulties in a federal union of the British North American Provinces. A. T. Gait, the Finance Minister, who had long favoured such a federation, brought Brown and Cartier together, and they resolved to make the attempt. Macdonald at first hesitated, but was forced to join the movement. A conference was held at Charlottetown, between the Canadian delegates and others from the Atlantic Provinces, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, in some of which the question of confederation had already been discussed. Then they adjourned to Quebec (October 10-28, 186-4) and worked out a scheme. Though Macdonald had not come into the coalition as soon as Brown or Cartier, his skill in managing men and in knowing just how far to go made hiru much the most valu- able man at the A'arious conferences. The delegates were assisted in every way by the British Government, and it was largely by its aid that the difficulties whicli arose in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were overcome. Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland dropped out, but on March 29, 1867,the British Parliament passed the British North America Act, which had been drawn up by representatives from Upper and Lower Canada, the Maritime Provinces and the Mother Country. On July 1, 1867, the Dominion of Canada came into being, and the day has ever since been kept a public holiday. There were, of course, deeper reasons for FedeSJr ^''i'^ei'ation than the deadlock between Upper and Lower Canada, Liberals and Conservatives. From 1860 to 1865 a great war was waged in the United States, and Canada was afraid that, once the war was over, the Americans would turn against her the great armies they had levied. This feeling was increased by the invasion of Canada in 1866 by a number of disbanded Nova Scotia. 277 American soldiers of Irish descent who had retained their ancestral hatred of Great Britain. Moreover, the Americans had decided not to continue the Keciprocity Treaty of 1854, and the Canadians felt that the best way of getting a new market for their produce would be by a union with the sister provinces. T-T cj .- To the new Dominion the Atlantic Nova Scotia. t. • ._ i i i ^ -,■ ■ rrovinces were a most valuable addition. Nova Scotia had belonged to Great Britain since 1713. Halifax, its capital, had been founded in 17-49, a Nova Scotia Legislature liad been convened there on 2nd October, 1758, and during the wars of the American Ptcbellion and of 1812 it had been tlie chief naval base in North America. For a time the main industries were fishing and lumbering, the liardships of which led to so much drinking that, according to Joseph Howe, "rum and politics" were the two curses of Nova Scotia. Farming was for a time neglected, but in 1818 the publication of a series of letters signed "Agricola," but really written by John Young (1773-1837), helped greatly to develop the agriculture of the province. Between 1800 and 1830 the province received a large accession of Highland emi- grants, who have ever since been the backbone of the province and have there maintained, to a higher degree than anywhere else in Canada, the Scotch love for education. These settled largely in the county of Pictou, and in Cape Breton, which had Ijeen made a separate province in 1784, but was reunited to Nova Scotia in 1820. The system of government had been the same as in the other provinces, and nowhere else had the " Family Compact " been so strong or so able. But after a long agitation, led with eloquence and statesmanship by Joseph Howe, responsible government had been granted in 1848. Thanks to the moderation shown on both sides, this boon was won by the Atlantic Provinces witliout bloodshed. Nova Scotia also took the lead in connecting the scattered North American provinces with each other and with the Mother Country. Through no fault of hers, the negotiations for an intercolonial railway binding the Atlantic Provinces in Canada fell through; but the Cunard Line of ocean steamers was a more successful project. {See pp. 05, 277, 318.) Howe had also taken tlie lead in advocating a great North American Union, but at the time of the actual negotiations he was not in Nova Scotia, and they were carried through to success by the skill and courage of his great rival, Dr. (new Sir Charles) Tupper. ^78 Neiv Brunswick. New Brunswick, which had been first New_ colonised by British settlers in 1761, was separated from Nova Scotia in 1784, after the coming of the United Empire Loyalists. Its great industry was lumbering, and it suffered terribly from forest fires. It was also much involved with the United States over the boundary between it and the State of Maine, a question which more than once brought the British and American governments to the verge of war, but was settled by the Ash- burton Treaty in 1842. Responsible government was won in 1848 by the efforts of several able men, of whom the chief was Lemuel Allen Wilmot. Since 1785 the capital has been at Fredericton, at the head of navigation on the St. John Eiver, but the chief town is St. John, at the river's mouth. The principal part in bringing the province into the Confederation was taken by Peter Mitchell and Leonard Tilley. CHAPTER V. THE EXPANSION OF CANADA, 1867—1907. Except perhaps in Ontario, there was at Sir John ^^st little enthusiasm for the new union. Alexander ^i. • i j- i i- i i Macdonald. '^^ remained a tederatiou on paper, regarded with distrust l)y various elements of the population. That fear suhsided, and it is due largely to the mingled caution and daring of tSir John Macdonald that a con- sciousness of national unity sprang up. The chief desire of Ontaiio was for honest administration. Of this it was sure when, under Macdonald's influence, it had elected as Premier his namesake, John Sandfield ^Macdonald, tlie most thrifty and economical of Canadian statesmen. Quebec was fearful that the new federation- might conceal an attack on its cherished rights and privileges. Put once the influence of Macdonald and of Cartier had put at the head of her affairs P. J. Chauveau, the friend of Papineau, the singer of the brave deeds of 1837, ihe habitant felt that his interests were safe. Nor was the English minority less pleased with one who had married an English wife, and who had been for years the organiser of education on broad and tolerant lines. Py the wise choice of these two men, Sir John Macdonald secured from the first the goodwill of the two chief provinces. iJifficulties soon arose in Nova Scotia, Difficulties with ^^jjgj.Q jj^ forgetful of his former advocacy Nova Scotia. „ . i " . • j ..i ^ • i - of union, and smarting under the triumph oi liis old opponent Tupper, had since 1865 been fighting con- federation and, on its accomplishnrent, set up the standard of repeal. His fiery eloquence roused all tlie local patriotism of the Nova Scotians, all their latent distiu^t of the Canadians. At the first election after Confederation, of thirty-eight mem- bers elected to the local Legislature, thirty-six were pledged to work for repeal; of the nineteen members sent to the Federal House at Ottawa, Sir Charles Tupper alone was in favour of federation. But when Howe had visited England, and, 280 Expansion towards the West and North. after splendid efforts, found it impossible to persuade the British Government to reopen tlie question, he I'ealised that the situation must be accepted. Whatever his faults, Howe was devotedly loyal to British connection, and scornfully refused to follow those of the repeal party who talked of annexation to the United States. The financial terms of the Union were in some respects unfair to Nova Scotia. He easily persuaded Sir John Macdonald to grant " better terms." Then he entered the Federal Cabinet, and did all he could to make the Union a success. Upon him there broke such a storm of obloquy throughout his native province that he sank to death under the blow ; l)ut his work was done, and at the election of 1872 Nova Scotia returned, not one, but eighteen supporters of Sir John Macdonald. Meanwhile the building of tlie intercolonial railway (p. 277) had been pushed forward, and in 1876 its completion gave to the western provinces a frontage on the Atlantic and harbours open throughout the year. But before the Dominion had thus won an The Great outlook toward Europe she had entered upon engagements which brought her face to face with Japan and with the Orient. Early in the nineteenth century the Earl of Selkirk (1771-1820), an enthusiastic and philanthropic Scotch nobleman, had settled a little colony on the banks of the lied Kiver. The remainder of the great West, from the Lake of the Woods to the Eocky Mountains, and from the American border to the Arctic Ocean, had been left to the Indians and to the hunters and trappers of two companies — the Hudson Bay Company, which ever since the days of King Charles II. had claimed ownership of tlie West, and the North-West Com- pany, which had been at first the rival of the H.B.C., but afcer a bitter struggle had united with it in 1820. These companies had treated the Indians with great kindness, but, knowing that the advent of white settlers would drive the fur-bearing animals further and further north and west, had discouraged colonists and spread the most gloomy reports of the country. Many of their employes, both French and Scotch, had married Indian women. Their descendants were known as half-breeds, or Metis Further north the unknown shores of TheHudson ^|^g Arctic had tempted explorers ever Bay Company. ^.^^^^ ^j^^ ^^^^^ ^^ q^^^^^^ Elizabeth, and the names of Davis, Hudson, Mackenzie, Back, Franklin, McClin- tock commemorate the deeds of brave men, most of whom The Hudson Bay Conifamj. 281 gave up their lives in their endeavour to pierce the veil which shrouded the frozen north. The perils encountered by such heroic souls were not likely to attract the ordinary colonist, and tlie rest of the Dominion knew little of, and cared less for, the north-west territories ; but the leaders of both Canadian parties saw, though the rank and file did not, that upon the acquisition of this territory depended the future of Canada. No one had more strongly advocated this than George Brown, and he took a prominent part in the negotiations by which in 1870 Canada purchased the whole vast area from the Company. The Company retained and still retains its trading rights, and in the wildest parts of the great West the letters "H.B.C." are still the forerunners of civilisation. Unfortunately the Canadian Government acted with great want of tact in taking over the new territory. The foolish conduct of their surveyors, and of the first governor who was sent out, friglitened the previous settlers, especially the half-breeds, and under the leadership of one of their number, named Louis Eiel, they set up a pro- visional government and refused to acknowledge the authority of Canada. On the arrival of an armed expedition led by Col. (now Lord) Wolseley, they dispersed, Kiel fleeing to the United States. The fertilit}^ of the territory thus acquired has surpassed the wildest dreams. In 1870, when the dis- content had been crushed, the district settled by Lord Selkirk was made into tlie Province of Manitoba. Further west the population grew so large in what was in 1870 the home only of the Indian and of the hunter, that in 1905 two new provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, were created out of pai't of the territory bought Ijy far-seeing statesmen from the Hudson Bay Company. In 1871 British Columbia entered the British Dominion. Bold French explorers had Columbia. . ■ i • • , • ^i . • n tried in vani to pierce the mountain wall which shuts off the Pacific Province from the great central plain. At last Alexander Mackenzie, a stalwart Highlander in the employ of the North-West Company, setting out in October, 1792, from Fort Chippewyan on Lake Athabasca, ascended the Peace River, and thence, after many hardships, reached the Pacific Coast. He recounts how he took a quantity of raw vermilion, mixed it with grease, and smeared in great letters on the face of a cliff overlooking the ocean the words : " Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three." 282 Frontier Disputes. About the same time England and Spain Coast. The Pacific j-K^arl}^ went to war over the Pacific coast, sliips of the latter nation having attacked and captured some British traders at Nootka Sound, on Vancouver Island. An agreement was finally reached, by which all unoccupied territory on the Pacific coast was to be free to the inhabitants of either nation. This practically threw open to settlement the whole vast district from Cali- fornia to Alaska. I-ater on, when settlers began to come into this region, much of it was • claim.ed by the United States. It had^ already been decided (1818) that from the Lake of the Woods, at the western limit of what is now the Province of Ontario, the boundary should run, as iar as the Piocky Mountains, along the 49th parallel of North latitude. Great Britain claimed that thence the frontier line should trend to the south and follo^v the course of the Columbia Eiver. The United States claimed all the country west of the Piockies as far north as Alaska, which was then owned by Ptussia and extended south to the parallel of 54° 40'. All tlirough the Western States was heard the cry '■Pifty-four- forty, or fight." At length, in 1846, arbitrators decided that the boundary line should continue along the 4yth parallel to the coast, and thence through the Fuca Straits to the I'acific Ocean. Soon a new dispute arose as to which of the thiee channels through the Puca Straits was meant. On this depended the possession of the Ishmd of San Juan, important strategically as commanding the principal channel. Both claimed it, and neither M'onld yield. Por a time it was under dual ownership, and the two great English-speaking nations seemed to be on the verge of war because a Bjitish pig trespassed on American soil and was shot by an indignant American patriot. The trouble was patched up at the time, but not settled till 1872, when the German Emperor, who had been selected as arbitrator, decided in favour of the American claim. Meanwhile in 1856-7 gold had been dis- D' c ° ries covered in the sands of the rivers Eraser and Thompson, and there was a rush to the province almost as sudden as that to California in 1849. Much gold w^as found, l)ut the district was terribly rough and hard, and many a hapless prospector lost his life on the upper reaches of the Noi-th Thompson. In the hope of controlling the gold-diggers more easily, the mainland was in 1858 separated from Vancouver Island and made into a separate pro\ince with the name of British Columbia ; but Railway Folic ij and Protection. 283 this division did not work well, and in 1866 they were again united under the name of British Columbia, but with Vic- toria on Vancouver Island as their capital. Railway Policy. ,, ?''^^*" ^^'^ stipulations made by British Columbia on entering the Dominion was that within two years a railway binding her to the eastern provinces should be begun. The Dominion at first thought of carrying out this work as a (Tovernment undertaking, as was being done with the Intercolonial, but afterwards decided to entrust the work to a company. Two com- panies were projected, one of which was proved to have subscribed large sums of money to the funds of the Con- servative Party. The conduct of Sir John Macdonald in thus accepting money from men to whom he had it in his power to give or to refuse such great advantages was rightly censured. He was compelled to resign, was defeated at a general election, and from November, 1873, to October, 1878 the Liberals were in power, under the premiershi]) of Alexander Mackenzie (1822-1892). He was cautious and thrifty, but did not fully see that a new country needs a bold and far-seeing policy, even when that policy entails great expense and sacrifices. In 1875 he founded the Eoyal Military College at Kingston, many of whose graduates have laid down their lives for the Empire, and "in 1877 Sir A. T. Cralt, appointed by his Government, got the better of the United States in an arbitration as to the value of the American share in Canadian fisheries (p. 324). But he refused to spend enough money on the proposed railway to the Pacific, and brought British Columbia to the verge of secession. Moreover, all through his Premiership Canadian farmers and manufacturers suffered from " hard times," and though this was really due to business causes, which affected the United States as well, people naturally became discontented, and lis- tened to the promises of the Conservatives that under the new policy of Protection which they advocated, the tall chimneys of factories would spring up all over the land, the farmers would get better prices for their crops, and the depression would pass away as though at tlie wave of an enchanter's wand. Thus, at the election of 1878, Sir John Macdonald was restored to power with a large majority. Canadians felt that at this time the Macdonald and Conservative Party represented the wider Protection. , 3 .^ i- n ^•' 1 -i 1 rni ■ hope and the fuller national ideal. ilns wider ideal was emphasised by Macdonald wlien to his policy, of Protection he gave the . name of '•'The Naoioral 284 The Canadian Pacific Railway. Policy," claiming that only by protecting the Canadian manufacturer from undue competition could Canada attain that differentiation of industries which is essential to national greatness. The farmers acquiesced, believing that even if manufactured articles became dearer, tliey would be repaid by the better prices which tlie more prosperous manufacturing population would he able to pay for their crops. The company, whose dealings with The Canadian c^jj. Jq\^^ Macdonald had caused his fall, ^*Com any!*^ had soon afterwards been dissolved. Mack- enzie had gone back to the earlier policy of Government construction of the Pacific Pailway, and had tried to join by short stretches of railway the great lakes and rivers which lie along the route. This policy the Conservatives at first continued, but soon returned to the idea of a great company. In 1881 such a company — the Canadian Pacific Kailway Company — was formed and set about the work with great energy and skilL Pew thought that they would succeed. English financiers laughed at tlie audacity of a colony building over three thousand miles of railway through country most of which was an uninliabited wilderness. The engineering difliculties were enormous, and nibre than once the company was within an ace of ruin. The Government had given to them $25,0OU,O0(), twenty-five million acres of land, and the completed sec- tions of the railway, which were worth at least S25,O00,000 more. This proved inadequate, and more than once further aid became necessary. Out of the ruck of conmionplace politicians and financiers, four men stand out— Sir John Macdonald, Sir Charles Tupper, Sir George Stephen and Sir Donald Smith. Sir Donald Smith, now Lord Strathcona, had been originally a servant of the Hudson's Bay ('ompany, and had come into notice at the time of Eiel's rebellion, when, with a mixture of coolness and tact, he had saved the lives of numerous prisoners. At the time of the " Pacific Scandal" he had opposed Macdonald, but now they stood shoulder to shoulder in the promotion of this great national work, into which both he and his cousin, Sir George Stephen, afterwards Lord Mount Stephen, put every penny of their great fortunes. Equal praise must be given to Macdonald and to Tupper who risked their political reputations in the face of enormous odds. Very graphic are the stories which men still living can tell of stormy Cabinet meetings, when all the infinite address of IMacdonald, all the bull-dog coiirnge of Tupper, Loim RieVs Rising. 285 were needed to overcome the opposition of more timorous colleagues, while white-faced directors prowled up and down in the corridors, knowing that upon the issue of that secret debate it dej^ended whether they would be millionaires or bankrupts. At length all obstacles were overcome, and on November 7, 1885, at Craigellachie, in the Selkirk Moun- tains, Sir Donald Smith drove home the last spike of the transcontinental line. . It was not yet completed when its mili- Sfsin^ tary value was proved. When Manitoba was made a province the Metis were provided for, but no such provision was made for the half-breeds of the territories further west. Year after year went by, white settlers kept coming in, and the half-breeds grew more and more anxious that their title to their farms should be con- hrmed. The Canadian Department of the Interior showed great stupidity ; even Sir John Macdonald, in the scanty time which he was able to devote to the subject, could not induce tliem to do anything of value. At last, in despair, the half- breeds sent a deputation to their old leader Kiel, which walked 700 weary miles to his home in Montana. At their request he returned to Canada and again put himself at their head, but he was fliglity and headstrong, and seems to have had the wild idea of setting up a Kingdom of God on the banks of the Saskatchewan Eiver, with himself as dictator. Things went from bad to worse, and on March 26, 1885, a party of mounted police, accompanied by a few volunteers, were attacked at Duck Lake by a superior force of half-breeds, and forced to retreat with loss. At once the news was flashed over Canada. The half-breeds were few in number, but there were some o 5,0 00 Indians scattered over Manitoba and the North- West. If these could be persuaded to join Eiel, Canada was doomed to suffer the unnameable horrors of an Indian rising. Luckily the dealings with these old lords of the soil had in the main been just. A few took the war-path and there was one horiil)le massacre at Frog Lake, but the majority of the Indians remained peacefully on tlieir ranches. It sliows the growth of Canada, that whereas the rebellion of 1870 had been put down largely by British regulars, this much larger and more formidable rising was quelled by Canadian volun- teers. Against the rebels, whose headquarters were at Batoche, were sent troops to the number of about 6,000, under the command of Major-Gen. Middleton. This officer suffered a severe check at Fish Creek, and an unprovoked attack by one of his subordinates on an unoffending Cree chieftain, Poun4' Sir John Macdonald/s last. Triumph. ijaaker, was repulsed with loss at Cut Knife Creek. After receiving reinforcemsnts, Middleton pushed on to Batoche, where, after three days' fighting, a charge which might just as w^ell have been made three days before scattered the rebels. A few^ days later IJiel was taken prisoner, tried on a charge of high treason and executed. ]\Iuch sympathy vras felt for him in the province of Quebec, where the tires of racial feel- ing for a time blazed high. With him were hanged eight Indians who had been concerned in the Frog Lake massacre. Throughout the campaign the Canadian forces exhibited great bravery and cheerfulness in the face of hardship. But the whole revolt, with its attendant loss of life and pro- perty, mighc have been averted had the Department of the Interior consented to remedy the undoubted grievances of the half-breeds. In 1887 Sir John ]Macdonald was again laSrium'^'h -'^"ccessful at the General Election, though riump . ^^^^ Lil)erals tried to make a party cry out of the execution of Eiel. Desperate at their long sojourn in opposition, many Liberals now took up the scheme of commercial union with the L^nited States. Finding that this brought them under the charge of disloyalty, and that many of the party disliked the scheme, they changed the name, and advocated unrestricted reciprocity with the Piepublic. But it was impossible to rebut the charge that unrestricted reciprocity in trade with the L^nited States meant discrimina- tion agamst the mother country, and Sir John Macdonald bitterly denounced the " veiled treason " of the Liberal leaders. Greatly as unrestricted reciprocity with the United States would have benefited the Canadian farmers, they rejected the bait and at the General Election of 1891 stood firm to British connection, the Conservatives triumphing on a platform of " The Old Flag, the Old Leader and the Old Policy." Later in the same year Sir John Macdonald died (June 6). " A British subject I was born, a British subject I will die," had been his Ijoast throughout the campaign. In his last and greatest fight his faith in Canada and in the British Empire had been seen at its best. He had defeated his enemies on the ground which they themselves had chosen, and he died in the consciousness of victory. At his death the Conservative party fell Sir Wilfrid ^^ pieces and presented to the workl the ugly spectacle of a party washing in public its dirty linen. AVhen a Premier speaks of his colleagues .as a "nest, of traitors" the end is not far off, and in Sir Wilfrid Laurier. 287 1896 the Liberals, led by Mr. (now Sir) Wilfrid Laurier, were returned to power. By this time the Liberals had seen tlie folly of coquetting with the United States, and m 1897 boldly ventured to give a trade preference to the mother country. This was the policy of whicli Sir John Macdonald had ap- proved, but wliich he had never ventured to put into operation, and the Conservatives bitterly accused their successful rivals of having caught them while bathing and stolen their clothes. In 1900, 1904, and again in 1908, the Liberals were victorious. Their administration has been in many ways efficient and progressive. The agriculture of the country, and its means of transport, have been wisely and generously aided (see pp. o02-319). The introduction of Imperial penny post- age in 1898, which has greatly strengthened the links binding the settlers in the new lands to tlie mother country, was largely promoted l)y Sir William I\Iulock, tlie Canadian Postmaster-General. Since the victory of 189G the country enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity until 1908, and, in addition to the efficiency of much of their administration,,the Liberals have had the great advantage of being al;>le to use the argument of " the full dinner-pail." During his long tenure of power. Sir Wilfrid Laurier has certainly been the most picturesque, and in some respects the most praiseworthy, of colonial states- men. In 1^897, at the Jubilee of Queen A^ictoria, his hand- some presence and statesmanlike speeches made hhn easily the first of the Colonial Premiers. In 1899, when the war in South Africa broke out, the Canadian contingents which were sent to the help of Britain showed the same cheery bravery as in 1885. When the news came of their gallant though unsuccessful charge at Paardel)erg, and of their share in the surrender of General Cronje a week later, a thrill passed through the country. At last her sons had been privileged to die for the Empire. It is not too much to say that it was felt by the nation to be her baptism into a new com- munion, the seal of her rise from the status of a colony to that of a daughter nation, and from the day that Canadians and Highlanders fought side by side on the veldt, Canada feels that she has attained lier majority. CHAPTEE VI. THE DOMINION AND THE PROVINCES. The various elements of which Canada I'ederal ^^ composed, and especially the presence in tlie province of Quebec of a solid block of French Eoman Catholics, made it necessary in uniting the provinces to find a form of union which should give free play to local interests and even to local prejudices. This form was found in what is known as the federal system. There are twp main principles on which States may unite, tlie federal and the legislative. In a legislative union like those of Scotland with England, and Ireland with Great Britain (see pp. 81, 95-8), all power centres in a single Legislature or Parliament. This Parliament may, of course, delegate certain powers to other bodies, as it does in England to the County Councils ; but it could, if it liked, take away their powers to-morrow, or abolish them altogether. The greatest example of a federal union is that of the United States. Here each of the States keeps certain powers for itself, and gives up certain others to the federal Legislature, but such as it keeps for itself cannot be taken away from it by the federal authority. From very early times there had been Early attempts .^ttempts to 'federate tlie liritisli donunions at federation. .^^ ^^^^^^ America. In 1690 Sir Francis Nicholson, Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, proposed such a union against the French and Indians, but the Colonies were too jealous of each other. In 1754 a Congress was held at Albany, at which the celebrated Benjandn Franklin submitted a plan which was equally unsuccessful. In 1784, after the revolt of the American Colonies, Col. Morse, of the Koyal Engineers, proposed such a union "for the preservation of the frag- ments of British power upon this continent " ; oddly enough, he thought that the best place for the capital would be in the Canadian Federation. 289 island of Cape Breton. Later on federation was at several times urged by the United Empire Loyalists and their descen- dants, and in 1838 by Lord Durham. But to unite such widely scattered provinces, sej^arated by trackless forests, would have been liut a paper union until railways were built connect- ing them. Even in 1867 the railways had not been built, Init fear of the United States forced the provinces to unite first and build afterwards. Thus Canada is a federation, but a federa- '^the^Unitr/^ tion of a special kind. At the time the States. Dominion was being ibrmed, the United States were just ending a great war, the cause of wliich was a dispute whether the States which had formed the Union had the right to leave it if tliey saw fit. The Southerners claimed that they had a right to resume their independence and to form a new Confederacy of their own ; the North claimed that the States had sunk their indepen- dence in the nation, and had no more right to leave it than a hand would have to sever itself from the body. Neither would yield, and the result was four years of terrible war. Canada resolved that this should not happen to the new Dominion, and therefore went on the opposite principle to that of the Americans. They had given up certain powers to the central Government, leaving tlie rest to the individual States. In Canada the provinces kept certain powers, but gave up all the rest to the central Government, and it was expressly stated that any power not reserved by the provinces should belong to the Dominion. Thus Canada has a much stronger central Government than has the United States. When the Australian Commonwealth was formed, the desire of the States to preserve their independence was stronger, and they preferred to adopt a compromise between the American and the Canadian plan (see p]x 380-4.) But within certain limits the provinces are Dominion and ^^-j^ gupi-eme, and there have always been two Ri'^hts parties in Canada, one upholding " Provin- cial Piig'nts," the other trying to give as much power as possible to the federal authorities, t^p to the death of Sir John Macdonald, the Conservatives under his leadership believed in the latter policy, the Liberals in the former. Since his death there is no longer any such definite political division on the matter. If the Dominion considers a law passed by one of the pro- vincial parliaments to be against the interests of the whole Dominion or of the British Empire it hastheright to disallow it, 290 The Constitutional Powers of the Dominion. British Columbia has twice passed Acts restricting the immi- gration of the Japanese, and the Dominion has on each occa- sion vetoed this measure. This jiower can of course, only he exercised rarely and for very important reasons. More often a province passes a law which Pnv^^CouncU ^^ considers to be within its poweis, but which the Dominion considers to conflict with a Dominion law. In such a case, if the two Govern- ments, after talking it over, cannot agree, the matter is submitted to the Supreme Court of Canada. From its deci- sion appeal may be made to the Judicial Committee of His Majesty's Privy Council, which sits in London. During tlie last forty years many cases have been l)rouglit l)eforo tliat body, and the exact meaning of the Ihitisli North America Act and the exact line of division between the powers of the Dominion and the provinces has Ijeen worked out. On the whole, the Judicial Committee has tended to uphold the powers of the provinces as against the Dominion. In Aus- tralia the power of appealing to the I'rivy Council is mucli more limited, and that Commonwealtli prefers to have its con- stitution interpreted by a Supreme Court of its own. But most Canadians thought that they were wise in keeping as an umpire in these disputed questions the Judicial Committee, whose knowledge and impartiality no one could impugn. Perhaps tlie chief matter which tlie Judicial Committee has settled was the boundary line l)etween Ontario and Mani- toba. In this dispute Sir Jolm Macdonald took strongly the side of Manitoba, while the interests of Ontario were upheld by its Premier, Sir Oliver Mowat. After years of negotiation, in which extremely bitter feeling rose between the provinces, the claim of Ontario was fully sustained. What then, are the main lines of the The Dominion cUvision of power between the Dominion and Its Powers. > , , ^. o rp ^i t^ • • and the provinces ? lo the Domnnon are expressly assigned all matters having to do with (1) the public debt and property, (2) tlie regulation of trade and commerce, (3) the raising of money by any mode or system of taxation, (4) the borrowing of money on the public credit, (5) postal service, (6) the census and statistics, (7) militia, military and naval service and defence, (8) the fixing of, and providing for, tlie salaries and allowances of civil and other officers of the (rovernment of Canada, (9) beacons, buoys, lighthouses and Sable Island, (10) navigation and shipping, (11) quarantine and the establishment and maintenance of marine hospitals, (12) sea-coast and inland fisheries, (13) ferries between a province and any British or foreign country, and The Powers of the Provinces. 291 between two provinces, (14) currency and coinage, (15) bank- ing, incorporation of banks, and the issue of paper money, (16) savings banks, (17) weights and measures, (18) bills of exchange and promissory notes, (19) interest, (20) legal tender, (21) bankruptcy and insolvency, (22) patents of inven- tion and discovery, (23) copyrights, (24) Indians and land reserved for the Indians, (25) naturalisation and aliens, (20) marriage and divorce, (27) the criminal law, except the constitution of courts of criminal jurisdiction, but including the procedure in crnninal matters, (28) the establishment, maintenance and management of penitentiaries. And also, as has Ijeen said, all matters not expressly given to the provinces. To the provinces were given control over The Powers of y^) the amendment from time to time, not- tne rrovmces. ^ /, , ,. ,, . . ,, -r. -v-r . . withstanding anything m the B.N.A. Act, of the Constitution of the province, except as regards the ofKice of Lieutenant-Governor, (2) direct taxation within the province, in order to the raising of a revenue for pro- vincial purposes, (3) the borrowing of money on the sole credit of the province, (4) the establishment and tenure of provincial ottices and the appointment and payment of pro- vincial officers, (5) the management and sale of the public lands belongiog to the province and of the timber and wood thereon,''' (6) the establishment, maintenance and manage- ment of public and reformatory prisons in and for the province, (7) the establishment, maintenance and management of hos- pitals, asylums and eleemosynary institutions in and for the province, other than marine hospitals, (8) m-jnicipal insti- tutions in the province, (9) shop, saloon, tavern, auctioneer and other licences, in order to the raising of a revenue for provincial, local or municipal purposes, (10) local works and undertakings other than such as are of the following classes, {a) lines of steam or other ships, railways, canals, telegraphs and other works and undertakings connecting the province with any other or others of the provinces, or extend- ing beyond the limits of the province, {h) lines of steam- ships between the province and any British or foreign country, (c) such works as, though wholly situate within the province, are before or after their execution declared by the Parliament of Canada to be for the general advancement of Canada or for the advantage of two or more of the provinces, (11) the incorporation of companies with provincial objects, (12) the solemnisation of marriage within the province, (13) property and civil rights within the province, (14) the administration *But see p. 292. 292 Federal and Provincial Finance. of justice within the province, inchidiug the constitution, maintenance and organisation of provincial courts, both of civil and of criminal jurisdiction, and including procedure in civil matters within those courts, (15) the imposition of punishment by line, penalty or imprisonment for enforcing any law of the province made in relation to any matter coming within any of the classes of subjects enumerated in this section, (16) geneially all matters of a merely local or private nature within the province, (17) in and for each province the Legis- lature may exclusively make laws in relation to education, subject to ceitain provisions, of which the chief is that " Nothing in any such law shall prejudicially affect any right or privilege with respect to denominational schools which any class of persous have by law in the province at the union." Which of these powers have really^ Taxation and pj-oygcj important ? All Governments need ' money. This the Domuiion may raise by direct or by indirect taxation or by an excise. As yet it has not ventured on direct taxation, such as an income-tax would be, and mo.st of its revenue is obtained from indirect taxation, i.e., from ciistoms dues levied on foreign goods conung into the country. This method of raising money is forbidden to the provinces. Within the bounds of the Dominion, as within the bounds of the United States or of Great Britain, trade is free. Direct taxation in the shape of an income-tax is also little used in the provinces. They get their revenues cliietly from(l)certain sums which are paid them yearly in accordance with the B. N. A. Act by the Dommion Government, in return for their having given up the right of levying excise and customs, (^) money from the issuing of licences, especially for the sale of liquor, (3) money from the sale of Crown Lands. This last item means that in all the provinces with the excep- tion of Prince Edward Island there are still large tracts of laud owned by ihe British Crown. In Ontario, Quebec, XoAa Scotia and New Brunswick these have been given to the province. Much of this land is proving valuable, some for agriculture, some for its minei-als, some for its timber, and by its sale or rent a large income accrues to the provinces. In British Columbia the Crown Lands are owned by the province, which has, however, granted some to the Dominion in return for certain concessions. In the three praiiie provinces the Crown Lands aie owned by the Dominion, which gives to the piovinees large subsidies in return. As the provinces increase in population and as, in accordance with present tendencies, the Government interferes with more and more relations of life, it becomes more expensive The Administration of Justice and JSdiccation. '^ 293 to cany on. At several times since federation, and especially in 1906, the scale has been revised and the sums given to the provinces have been largely increased. The amount from the sahj of licences increases but slightly ; that from the sale or lease of Crown Lands is increasing, but even in so large a country as Canada there is of course a limit to the land, and this source of revenue is not inexhaustible. Some of the pro- vinces have already tried other methods ; British Columbia has an income-tax, and Ontario imi)0ses death duties. , . By the clauses relating to the admini- stration of justice all tlie chief judges are appointed and paid by the Domhiion, but the nundjer and the powers of all courts, save the Supreme Court of Canada, are decided by each province for itself. Judges are appointed for life, and can only be removed by im- peachment before Parliament, a process never attempted since federation. The credit of the Canadian Bench and Bar stands high. Appointed for life, the judges do their duty without fear or favour, as in England. In this Canada is far ahead of the United States, where many of tiie judges are elected by popular election for a term of years, and are afraid to give an unpopular verdict. Each provhice has developed its own system of civil law. The criminal law is the same throughout all the provinces, and is modelled on that of England ; so also is the civil law, except in the province of Quebec, where it is a compilation resembling in many respects the Code Napohon of France. „, ,. The chief matter left in the bauds of the iiiducation, . • i i.- r^ i i • provmces is education. It would in many ways have been better to have had a single system of primary schools. They would then have l)een a powerf id intiueuce in building up national spirit. Besides, as the ablest men naturally gravitate to Ottawa, education would have been in the hands of the best men, not of the second best. But the racial and religious feelings of Quebec were too strong to make any such arrangement possible, and it was left to the provinces, with provisions making it impossible for any one race or religious body to crush out the schools of any other. The Boman Catholics have to some extent separate schools, either by law or by custom, which are supported by the province or by the municipality. In Quebec tlicre are two schoolboards, one for Protestant schools and one for Koman Catholics. All the provinces have made great sacrifices in the cause of education, and the Canadians are an extremely well-educated people. In 1901 76 p°r cent, of the whole population could read and write, and of those over five years of age 86 per cent. The 294 The U'pper House. universities were nearly all founded by one or other of the religious bodies, but some of them, such as the University of Toronto have severed their connection with the Church which founded them, and are supported either by the province, as is the case with Toronto University, or by private gifts, as in the case of Dalhousie. The Canadian Constitution consists partly The Governor- ^f ^jjg British North America Act and of Ji!!^l^f'v,„'l^ some slight amendments which have been tiie oenaie. . iiiic i n introduced, and also ot a gi'eat number oi ua- written laws and customs, some of which have grown up in Canada and others of which have been adopted from England. Thus, nowhere iu the Act, or even in the written instruc- tions to the Governor-General, will it be found that he is to rule only with the consent of his Executive (jouncil, or Cabinet. Yet, as a matter of fact, ho does nothing except at their bidding. Any intiuence which he has over them is because of his character or his wisdom ; direct power he has none. At the time of the framing of the Act great attention was paid to the composition of the Senate, or upper house. Senators are appointed for life by the Governor-General in Council — i.e., by the Premier — twenty-four each from Ontario, Quebec, the Atlantic Provinces, and an increasing number from the West. They were to act as a revising chamber, securing the country by wise amendment from the effects of hasty and ill-considered action on the part of the Lower House. They were also to represent the provinces, and by the equality of numl)er from each section to em- phasize the importance of provincial rights. In the election of members to the Lower House the principle of repre- sentation by population was conceded. Quebec was given 65 members, and the other provinces are represented in proportion. But in the Senate the federal principle of equality between the federating colonies was introduced, though not so fully or so logically as in the United States, where every State has two senators, from little Rhode Island or Xevada to Pennsylvania or New York. The Senate has not justified the expectations of its founders. Sir John Mac- donald impaired its influence by selecting defeated Conserva- tive candidates or wealthy manufacturers wlio had made con- tributions to the funds of the party. Sir Wilfiid Laurier has hardly inqjroved roatters, and the Canadian Senate is at present not taken seriously even by itself. During the rule of the Conservatives it did practically as it was told by the Premier. When the Liberals came into power it blocked everything it could. But as fast as Conservatives died off they were The Provincial Parliaments and Local Government. 295 replaced by Liberals, and the Senate is at present as com- plaisant to Sir Wilfrid Laurier as it once was to Sir John Macdonald. Thus, with a Governor-General, who is Commons ^^^^'^^^ "^°^^ important socially than politi- cally, and a Senate which does what it is told, Canada is perhaps the most democratic country in the world. All power centres in the House of Commons, which is elected for live years (it generally sits for four) on a franchise which practically gives a vote to every male of twenty-one years old and upwards. The parties are strictly controlled by their leaders, so that the amount of power pos- sessed by the Premier is very great. In both the Senate and the House of Commons either the French or the English language may be used, and all State papers are printed in both languages. In the provinces the svstem of crovern- ^'^'llments^*'^' ment is much the same. ^ The Lieutenant- Governors are appointed by the Premier, and are purely figureheads. In most of the provinces there is only one House, but in Quebec and Nova Scotia there is still a Legislative Council. In Nova Scotia vigorous attempts have been made to get rid of this feature of the Constitution, but though members of the Council pledged to vote for its abolition were appointed, once in office they have refused to perform so suicidal an act. The older provinces, especially Ontario, Government ^^^^® ^'^^^ ^^^^ organised systems of local or municipal government. In Ontario every town of over 10,000 is called a city, and has its local affairs carried on by a mayor and aldermen, usually elected for one year, but in some of the larger cities for two. While the mayor is eligible for re-election, there has been a feeling in favour of passing the honours round, so that long terms of office are not common. Towns, which must have over 2,000 inhabitants, also have their local government. The country parts are divided into counties, which conduct their local affairs by means of a warden and councillors, and eacli county is divided into townships, each of wliich has a reeve and councillors. These little organisations are a very good school for politicians, but there is really no need for so many governing bodies ; and the chief objection to tlie sug- gestion that senators should be elected is that Canada has too many elections as it is. CHAPTER VII. POLITICAL PARTIES AND PROBLEMS. Every politician prefers to he in power Political rather than in opposition. If there is in his nature a touch of dishonesty, to that extent his methods in gaining and in retaining power will be dishonest also. In a new country where the absence of a large leisured class makes it necessary to pay members of Parliament, it becomes for the poor member an absolute necessity to keep his seat; failuie to do so means destitution not only for himself, but for his wife and family. The result is that a Government becomes unwilling to introduce new measures of importance, unless there is an obvious and general public desire for them. Unless led by a strong leader it tends to preserve the status quo, and to devote its time to perfecting its party organisation and to making itself popular by the distribution of favours to individuals and localities, without much regard to the general interests of the country. Meanwhile the Opposition endeavours to win popularity by letting in the light of day upon such practices. The objection to this is that wlien an (Opposition devotes its time to finding scandals, even the good deeds of the Government are mis- represented, and there grows up an atmosphere of suspicion and of slander. In its attitude on matters of public policy an Opposition is torn by two conflicting ideas. On the one hand it tends to take up any new idea which it hopes may be popular, and on the wings of which it may soar into office. Thus in 1878 the Conservatives adopted the policy of Protec- tion, and in 1891 the Liberals that of unrestricted reciprocity. On the other hand this tendency to what is called kite flying in the hope of catching a favourable breeze is curbed by the unwillingness of the individual meiiibers to risk their seats. Canada's Future. 297 Tlie usual result is that new ideas are rather The Attitude of dreaded by party leaders, aud that the chief Parties towards , Vc-i" i. i-i . -,■ . new Ideas currents or thought which are to direct the future will be found in the speeches and writings, not of politicians, but of independent thinkers and publicists. Tiius the great question of Imperialism, of the proper position of Canada within the Empire, was long discussed by such independent Ijodies as the Imperial Federa- tion League without much encouragement from political leaders who afterwards became its loudest advocates. Similarly, the consciousness of Canadian Nalionalism, now felt equally by both parties, was promoted by a body of young men who called themselves the " Canada First " Party, and who were attacked with equal vigour by both Liberals and Conservatives. Tlie most important question is natur- Canadaand the ^^^ q^^^ ^^ Canada's political future. Three United btates. ,• "^ , ■ r, i> i ^- ^ lines liave ever since Coniederation been open to her: Independence; closer union with the Mother Country ; and closer union with the United States. To take the last-named alternative first, it is clear that after the last great tight of Sir John Macdonald in 1891 all danger of peace- ful annexation to the LTnited States passed away. If Canada ever becomes part of the United States it will only be as the result of conquest, and a war between the two great Englisii- speaking nations is becoming more and more unlikely, while the growth of Canada makes its outcome more and more uncertain. Sucli danger as there is lies rather in the social aud industrial Americanisation of Canada. In spite of some unfavourable symptoms, it is to.be hoped that Canada will be strong enough to resist this tendency, and that there will be on the continent of North America two great nations working out by diherent methods and along diflerent lines the great problems of democracy. Independence has long been the dream The Dream of ^,f ^^ French- Caiiitdians, and, with the Independence. ^^ £ ^^ i. • c i growth of the country, is now favoured by many of the British stock. Papineau and some of the more ardent of his followers cherished the idea of a French- Canadian Repuljlic on the banks (jf the St. Lawrence, but even if such an ideal were desirable it is so obviously impossible that we need not stop to consider it. Sir John Macdonald always scouted the idea of Canadian independence, saying that her proximity to the United States made it merely " fancy politics." With the growth of the country it is no longer so inipossil)le. Canada feels that she is outgrowing the colonial 298 Relations with the Mother Country. status, that even such control as is now exerted by the Colonial Otfice belongs to an obsolete order of things. More and more slie is making np her mind not to be contented with any truncated independence, any incomplete national ideal. But many of the best minds dread a steiile indei)endence, and feel that it would leave the country exposed, if not to the conquest, at least to the overwhelming intiuence of the United States ; and also that to cut themselves off from the glorious traditions which are so valualjle an influence in the life of the British people would be a counsel of despair. " We too are heirs of Runny mede," sang the American Whittier ; and if the Americans, sundered from the Empire by two wars and by a century of misunderstandings, feel that the}'* are still thus linked to the past of Britain, how much more has Canada a right to those traditions ! Those in favour of closer connection with The Prospect of the Mother Country desire to reconcile the ^^ wWi^the"" '^'^^'"^ ''^ independence with that of Imperial MotW Country, -'"i^y. They are groping towards a new con- ception of the word Empire, a word which, while flattering our lust of power, has the disadvantage of having always hitherto implied one strong central Govern- ment, which is just the thing most dreaded by the colonies. If some form of permanent alliance can 1)e made, if we can imitate the virtues and avoid the weaknesses of the old Greek Delian League, then we shall have solved the problem of " Imperium et Libertas." At present a large party in Britain is seeking to bring about such a closer union l)y some form -of Preferential Trade within the Empire, l)y extending the preferences which Canada and Australia now give to the Motlier Country, and by changing the Tariff policy of Great Britain so as to admit of her giving a return preference to her Colonies. On this question much may be said on both sides. But greatly as a preference in the Britisli market would l>enefit the Canadian farmer, there is no fear that if Britain refuses to change her policy the result will be the death of Canadian loyalty. Canada fought on the side of Great Britain in 1812, when she enjoyed a ])reference in the British market ; she fought beside Great Britain in 1901, when there was no such preference. Pre- ferential trade may or may not be a good thing, but it is not, and never has been, the foundation-stone of Canadian loyalty. In 1897 a great step was taken towards the realisation of this ideal of complete nationality, when the Mother Country denounced her commercial treaties with Belgium and Germany French Canadian Ideas. 299 because they stood in the way of her acceptance of the Cana- dian offer of preferential trade. Further progress was made in 1905 when Canada relieved the Mother Country of the expense of maintaining the great Imperial fortresses of Halifax and Esquimalt, which are now kept up and garrisoned solely by Canadian troops paid by Canadian money. The command of the Canadian forces has sinc(^ 190;) been vested in Canadian officers, and there are signs of a desire to create the beginnings of a navy. The chief stumbling-block to closer con- 'T^f ^'^"i*"'^^ of nection between Canada and the rest of tlie CanaSs Empire lies in the attitude of the French Can- adians. The habitant is loyal, but his loyalty is to Canada. Were his country invaded, even though l^y France, he would iight as V)litliely in defence of his cherished rights and privileges as he did wdien the bugles blew at Chateauguay. But he has a fear, perhaps exaggerated, of losing the local autonomy which he won with so much difficulty, and dreads a union which might entail the sending of Canadian troops to light in quarrels in which he has little or no interest. To the British connection he is devotedly loyal, regarding it as the safeguard of his language, his religion and liis laws. Annexation to the United States he knows would seal their death-warrant, for under the American Constitution no reli- gious establishment is allowed, nor the use in Parliament or in the Law Courts of any language but EngKsh. Independence he dreads, for fear the British majority, increasing faster and faster with the development of the West, might curtail his privileges, if it did not destroy them. There was truth in the famous saying of Sir Etienne Tache, Premier of Canada in 1856-7 and 1864-5, and a colonel in the Canadian volunteers, when, in answer to a charge of disloyalty, he proudly replied, " If ever the British flag ceases to wave over Canada, the last shot in its defence will be fired l;)y a French-Canadian." The chief internal prol)lems are those Domestic connected with the great advance of the country m po])ulation, and its still greater advance in wealth. In addition, there is the old question of the relations between French and British Canadians. There is little social fusion between them, the antagonism being not only racial but religious. But the acerbity which long characterised their relations is dying down. Protestant and Catholic no longer show their religious fervour l)y breaking each other's heads, and French and British, though they rarely intermarry, are coming to have mutual respect and a measure 300 Domestic Problems. of mutual confidence. Racial fusion will not come for centu- ries, Init there is already an entente cordiale, which has l>een fostered liy the growth of the national consciousness and will grow stronger with time. It is also a curious effect of good coming out of evil that the inability or reluctance of the Englishman to learn French has forced the French to learn English. Every prominent Frenchman is to-day bi-lingnal ; Sir Wilfrid Laurier is the greatest Canadian orator in l)otli languages. Both races, lioth languages and both religious systems have their part to play in the l)uilding up of the nation ; and the mingled poetry and prudence of the French- man may, perhaps be destined to counteract the influence of the American upon Canadian national character. Political Purity. A problem, which concerns not Canada alone, )»ut every democracy, is the depth of the roots which have been struck by political corruption. The Government in power possesses means of rewarding its followers wdiich ensure to it the support of those to whom politics is an affair of loaves and fishes. One of the greatest needs of Canada was met in 1908 by the creation of a Civil Service Commission to take appointments out of the hands of politicians and make them, as they are almost wholly in Britain and to a large extent in the United States, the reward of merit shown in examina- tions. Previously active work in an election was often the best way of gaining a position, or, once there, of attaining promotion. The Public Works Department controls the ex- penditure of enormous sums (^f nioupy, and many contracts have l)een given to men whose chief merits were their fidelity to the party in power and their subscriptions to its funds. Better laws would do something to cure this evil ; but it can only be rooted out by the growth of a higher standard of honour among the people and especially among the official classes. The growth of large j^rivate fortunes, ^^^Mwa''s^°^ and of vast corporations controlled l)y one or two men, has brought home to Canadians the need for public supervision. When it is in the power of one man or of a small group of men to throw tens of thousands out of employment, or to disorganise the greatest railway in the country, it is felt that the Government must step in to regulate and supervise. Hence a number of questions are being discussed at present, some of which have even been debated in Parliament. Should the State own the railways ? If so, should it work them, or should it let out State Control and Labour Politics. 301 their working to a company? So many unsuitable appoint- ments have been made to the Intercolonial Eailway by poli- ticians, its route was so often diverted to win not passengers but votes, that few now wish direct control of the railways by Parliament, but many think that the State should take over the lines and work them through an independent Commission. At present parts of the Grand Trunk I'acitic Eailway are being built and will be owned by the Government, though they are to be leased to the company whicii is building the rest of the line. Much good has lieen done through the appointment by the Federal Government of a Eailway Commission, which has extensive powers, among others that of fixing rates which may not be exceeded, powers in which the railway comp;inies have cheerfully acquiesced. In Ontario a provincial board has power over local lines,dealing chietly with the electric tramways which are a feature of Canadian life, and which are yearly stretching further and further, binding the smaller towns and villages to the great centres. Tlie same province has taken the bold step of Iniilding a provincial railway and has also placed under provincial conr ol a part of the rich mining lands which have recently be- a ,^!cned at Cobalt, though leasing their working to a company. The same principle is also being discussed with respect to the telegraj)hs and telephones, which in Canada are at present con- trolled by private companies. Sir William Mulock, who was I*ostmaster-General from 1897 to 1905 and Minister of Labour from 1900 to 1905, was in favour of tlie Government acquiring and working them as part of the postal system, but to this change Sir Wilfrid Laurier is strongly opposed. These are instances of the tendency to Labour increase State control and to check the predatory tendencies of individuals. There can hardly be said to be as yet any body of Socialist or Socialistic thought l)ehind them. There are at present very few Labour members in the House of Commons, and though a Labour party has l)een organised, the great influence of the farmers makes it improbalile that Canada will follow the example of Australia, wliere power is much more centred in a few large cities {see pp. 377-9). Meanwhile, this growing ten- dency to public control and even to public ownership is proviiig a source of great perplexity to the Conservative party. Since 1878 its affiliations have lieen with the manufacturers and with the Canadian Pacific Eailway,' both of which bodies are naturally enemies to public ownership. On the other hand, it comprises, especially in Ontario, a strong Eadical wing, whose 302 The Political Oullooh. -policy is. almost avowedly modelled on that of the Indepen- dent Laliour party in England, and on the socialistic legisla- tion of New Zealand (pp. 464-8). It is a curious proof of how little there is in a name that the Liberals uphold the status quo, while the Conservatives are coquetting with the most Radical proposals. The reluctance of the established politi- The Problems ^^^^ parties to deal with great questions in of the Future, ^i • • e i r^ \ i. i.i their miancy lays Lanaua open to the danger tliat problems may grow up and become so compli- cated that statesmen with the 1 >est intentions may be unable to grapple with them ; a pessnnist might say that the greatest danger of Canada to-day is that in the twentieth century she may go the same road that the United States went in the nineteenth ; that she may develop great material prosperity, may show the greatest intelligence, versatility and daring, may cover half a continent with the material elements of civilisation, may produce wealth and the means of wealth in ever greater profusion, but may not produce either poli- ticians or publicists capable of grappling with the prol)lems to which wealth gives rise. On tlie other hand the history of the Britisli Empire, the history of Canada herself, is a history of dangers grappled with and prol)lems solved. Previous chapters show that Canada has in the past settled racial, religious and educational questions, some of which still perplex the states- men of the British Isles.' She has few unemployed, and still fewer unemployables. One may walk the streets of her cities from dawn to dusk and see not one of the hungry, hopeless faces wdiich are so evident in London or in Glasgow. Above all, her people are proud of her and look forward to the future with that high confidence which breeds success. In dealing with her new problems she has the advantage of the dearly-bought experience of Great Britain and the United States. We must hope that she will develop men gifted with the same insight and the same high ideals as inspired her leaders in the past, and that the fancies which now frighten and perplex will be dispersed as easily and as completely as were the shadows which surrounded her dawn. CHAPTEE VIII NATURA.L RESOURCES. Canada is and has long been a nation of Agriculture and farmers. But to talk of her as the " Granary Manufacturer. c j_i t^ ■ „ ■ • i i -i or the Empire gives a wrong idea both of her character and of her aspirations. A nation com- posed only of farmers would be terribly slow and impro- gressive, just as a nation of manufacturers would prolmbly l)ecome so degenerate in health and physique that it would fall an easy prey to its neighbours. A great nation must have differentiation of interests, must have within its borders farmers, merchants, manufacturers. But while this is theideal for which Canada is striving, it is none the less true that on the produce of her farms depends her prosperity. If she has a good crop of wheat and fruit, if her cheese and butter and eggs have sold well, then her farmers can afford to buy the manufactured goods of Toronto and Montreal. Thus the whole nation is bound together, and a shortage in the western wheat crop would throw out of employment thousands of men in Ontario and Quebec. The farming of the habitant in the province "^^'of FarS^"' of Quebec was for a long time of a very simple kind. He grew enough wheat lo grind at the seignior's mill into Hour for himself and his numerous family, enough oats to feed his h(jrses, ke})t enough cattle to supply his family with milk and butter and an occasional roast of beef or veal, enough sheep to give him s])ring lamb or autumn mutton, and sufficient wool for the good wife to spin in the long winter evenings. He even grew his own tol)acco, usually so strong that a Canadian poet represents the devil coming to carry off a notorious vagabond, but Hying iu fear at the smell of the tabac Canadien which he is smoking. This simple, self-sufficing life is passing away, farming is pur- 304 Agricultural Development. sued on a larger and more scientific scale, more of the crop is sold, and the money spent on luxuries from the city. The butter of Quebec, made in well-ordered and well-inspected creameries, is famous in Canada, and is shipped in large quantities to the British market. Ontario has a still larger quantity of Mani?oba ^^'"'^ suitable for farming. The western peninsula around London and Brantford is especially fertile. In 1906 the amount invested in lands, farm-buildings, implements and stock in this province alone was $932,488,069 (£192,075,734), a sum larger than that invested in the manufactures of the whole Dominion. Though more is heard of Manitoba and the great West, and though the vast plains of the prairie provinces are rapidly filling up with settlers from England, Scotland and the United States, the value of the farm products of Ontario is still greater than that of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta taken together. Only Manitoba produced more wheat than Ontario in 1906, while of barley, oats and roots Ontario yielded more than all the rest of Canada, and is still far ahead of any other province in the production of horses, cattle and sheep. At the same time Ontario has for a generation seen many of her sons emigrate to Manitoba, called partly by desire for fresh land and partly by the strange charm of the West. Since 1S71 her farming population has increased but little, though improvements in method have doubled the output and more than doubled its value. Since 1900 there has been found north of the Height of Land (see p. 246), a wide belt of fertile land said to contain not less than 16,000,000 acres, and here to-day the old process of settlement is being repeated ; little clearings are being made among the bushes, little log-huts and large barns are being erected ; not only in the West, but in New Ontario and New Quebec, as this district is called, is being heard — " The tread of pioneers, Of nations yet to be ; The first low wash of waves where soon Shall roll a human sea." For some time after their purchase in 1870 from the Hudson Bay Company (see p. 281) the prairies did not attract a large population, and the settlers suffered from lack of a market. In 1885 they were at their last gasp, and the war (see p. 285), in which they sold their crops at high prices to the troops, enabled them to tide over a very trying Progressive Methods. 305 time, i'roin that date till about 1900 progress was slow but steady, since then it has been by leaps and bounds. Alberta was long the ranching country, cattle and horses roamed on the great tracts of land around Calgary, and Edmonton was little more than a Hudson Bay Co. post. Now where forty years ago the liutiklo grazed, where fifteen years ago a few cow- boys " rounded up " the f riglitened cattle, fields of waving wheat stretch to the horizon. Edmonton is a city of 15,000 people and growing yearly by thousands. In 1906 the number of immigrants into the West was 189,00-1, of whom 80,796 were from the British Isles; between 1901 and 1906 the population of Manitoba and the two prairie provinces increased from 419,512 to 808,863. Not only is the population increasing, j^^.^i?^! Ijut, as has been said, methods are steadily Methods. . ' . i^ ^i • ^ i-^ • i improvmg. ror this great credit is due to the Federal and to the Provincial Governments, especially to the present Federal Administration. The Minister of Agri- culture, the Hon. Sydney Fisher, an Englishman by biith and a graduate of Cambridge, has done mucli to teach the benelits of science and of co-operation, and he has been helped greatly by his subordinates, of whom the chief has Ijeen an able and energetic Scot, Prof. James W. Ilobertson the pioneer of tlio movement. At Ottawa is an experimental farm where all manner of experiments are tried, the results of which are com- municated to the farmers. Several of the provinces have similar farms, and also support agricultural colleges, of which the most celebrated is that of the Ontario Government at Guelph, which draws students from all parts of North and South America. The scope of the work done here has lately been enlarged by the generosity of Sir William C. Macdonald, a wealthy Canadian manufacturer, born in Prince Edward Island, w^ho has spent money freely and wisely to help the farmers of tlie country. One of the chief lessons taught by Prof. Kobertson has been the need of co-operation. Its advantages have been especially manifest in all branches of dairying, hi almost every town- ship of Ontario and Quebec there is now either a cheese- factory or a creamery. These collect the milk, so that instead of each farmer having to take his milk to the factory, he has only to put it at his door in cans specially provided, and later on to call at the factory to take away the skimmings for his pigs and calves. In Ontario and Quebec, and even in Manitolia and the West, farmers are coming to rely less and less on their wheat 306 WJieat, Fruit-Farmmg, and Timber. crop alone ; nearly all raise stock or pigs, grow oats, barley and roots, and raise poultry. The latter industry, in England usually regarded as a small perquisite for the I'armer's wife, is in Canada often the most paying branch of the farm life. In Ontario the growing of peas, beans, Indian corn and other vegetal:)les for canning is greatly increasing. „ . f . Fruit-farming is also a large industry. ^rui- arming, j^^ ^^^.^ Ontario outranks the other prov- inces. In 1901 she produced over 13,000,000 bushels of the 18,626,000 bushels of apples grown in the Dom- inion, nearly all the peaches, and 23,000,000 of the 24,302,634 bushels of grapes. Almost finer are the apples of Nova Scotia, where in spring-time in the Annapolis valley, as Howe said long ago, " a man may ride for fifty miles beneath the apple blossoms." In the valleys of British Columbia, especially that of the Okanagan Kiver, peaches and plums are grown ; this industry has made great strides since the last census, now that co-operation in collecting the crop aad the growth of branch railways are making it easier to luring the fruit to market. The great difference between the farming of Great Britain and of Canada is that in the colony almost every farmer owns his own land ; save in Ontario the tenant farmer is almost non-existent, and even there the proportion is six owners to one tenant. The great majority of the fanns are from 50 to 200 acres in size, except in the prairie provinces, where 240 acres is the average. „. , Though much has been wasted, the uncut timber of Canada still exceeds in value that of any other country in the world. Fires, due to carelessness, have swept away whole forests ; settlers have burnt lumber worth thousands of dollars to grow a few potato3s on the land cleared, but in spite of this Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia still have vast forests, and both the Provincial and Federal Oovern- ments are taking measures to stop the needless destruction which has gone on and to begin reforestation. The mountains of British Columbia are covered with the stately Douglas fir {Pseudotsuga Donglasii) which grows to a height of 300 ft. Lumbering has always been the main business of New Brunswick, while Ontario and Quebec export pine, and are now finding in their stores of spruce and poplar, till recently little valued, a new source of wealth in the production of pulp for paper-making. The trees are felled in the autumn and winter, and hauled to the bank of the nearest Coal. 307 stream, down which they are carried by the spring freshets ; then the logs are gathered and made into rafts, wliich are floated or towed down the river to Ottawa, or Three Rivers, or Miramichi. In the old days most of this lumber was sent as squared tunber to Great Britain, and many were the fortunes thus made. ]>ut now nearly all of it is sawn in Canadian saw-mills into deals and laths, and so more men are employed in the counti-y. More and more, too, of the furniture used in Canada is being made in her own factories. Of the lumber exported about half is sent to the United States, the rest to Britain. Much of the pulp is used in the country, the rest is exported to the United States. In 1901 the value of the timber known to have been cut in Canada was $51,082,689 (£10,510,841) ; in addition, an unknown quantity was used by the farmers. Of this, Ontario produced over $21,000,000 and Quebec $19,000,000. ^ , ,,• Tlie l)ituniinous coal of Cape Breton Coal Mmes. , , , ^ ^, ^. has l)een known from very early times. Indeed, it could hardly l)e otherwise, for to this day as one sails into Sydney harbour one sees the outcrop on the cliffs. In 1672, Nicholas Denys, a Frenchman, one of the earliest white inhaliitants of the island, pul)lished at Paris a "geographical and historical description" of it, which speaks of the coal. In 1711, Sir Hovenden Walker, who had led an expedition against Quebec to disgrace and shipwreck, Ijrought the remnants of his fleet to Sydney harljour, where, lie tells us, " the coals are extraordinary good and taken out of the cliffs with iron crows only and no other labour." After the British conquest the mines were worked sometimes by the G-overnment on its own account and sometimes by individuals. In either case a large royalty went to the Lieutenant- Governor, and production was thus discouraged, so that in 1784 only 1,190 chaldrons of coal were sold and in 1820 only 6,000. Id 1827 all the mines of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia were most iniquitously handed over by the Crown to the Duke of York, and transferred by that Royal spend- thrift to his creditors. Some of these formed a company known as the General Mining Association, which from 1827 to 1857 controlled the mines of Nova Scotia. Under them sales of coal increased from 12,000 tons in 1827 to 120,000 in 1857. In that year all mines still unopened were taken away from them and leased to independent companies. During the continuance of the Reciprocity Treaty (1854-1866) with the United States the sales went up rapidly, but on its repeal a long period of depression ensued. In 1893 all the 308 Iron and Gold. mines of the Sydney coalfield not owned by the successors of the General Mining Association were leased to a newly- formed company, and since then the production has enormously increased. On the west coast of the island new and valuable mines have lately been opened up. On the mainland of Nova Scotia, especially in the neigh1iourhood of Pictou and of Springhill, excellent coal is mined. No coal worth speaking of has yet been found in Ontario or Quebec, or the prairie provinces, though in the north of Ontario there are said to l)e signs of its presence, which further surveys along the line of the Grand Trunk Pacific (see p. 316) may yet confirm. In Manitoba lignite of fair quality is found and is used for fuel. In Ikitish Columbia good bituminous coal has been mined in Vancouver Island ever since 1850, in which year an Indian chief turned up at Fort Victoria with liis canoe full of coal, taken from the mines where the city of Nanaimo now stands. All through the Eocky Mountains, from the American border to the Peace River country, coal is found, and is said to include several seams of good anthracite. In 1896-7 an especially rich field was discovered in the Crow's Nest Pass, and has proved most productive. In 1871 671,000 tons of coal were mined in the Dominion, in 1901 5, .'521,715, and in 1905 8,775,983, of which rather more than two-thirds came from Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. Iron ores of various kinds occur throughout the Dominion, but in spite of bounties from the Federal Government are not very extensively worked. Red hematite is mined in Ontario, to the north of Lake Superior, and ai Sault Ste. Marie (usually known as the Soo) are large l)last-furnaces and steel mills. Two companies produce pig-iron and steel at Sydney and North Sydney, Cape Breton, chiefiy from ore brought from the Wabana mines off the coast of Newfoundland. Counting Newfoundland ore as foreign, in 1904 there were made in Canada 46,445 tons of pig-iron from Canadian ore, and 226,989 tons from foreign ore, while 73,900 tons were imported. . , Gold is found in all the provinces, especially in Nova Scotia and British Columbia. In 1897 the Yukon region was reported to be " full of gold," and a rush to it was made, in spite of the difficulties of transit, and still more those of procuring food. As a result, the production of gold in Canada has increased from 22,941 oz. in 1871 to 862,000 oz. in 1901 ($2,174,412 to $24,128,593) ; of this British Columbia and the Yukon Territory are the largest producers. Fisheries. 309 But tliongh the Yukon still produces largely, its export is declining and is now only al)out tliree-iifths of the yield in 1900. Practically all known metals and minerals and^Petrd^eum ^^^^' ™"^6^ "^ •^"*^ ^"^ oilier part of the country, especially in the Rocky Moun- tains. Since 1905 all Canada has lieen talking of the rich find of silver at Cobalt in Northern Ontario. In the same province, at and around Sudbury, are the richest nickel mines in the world. Most of these are in the hands of American capitalists, and the product is shipped to that country. In the western part of Ontario, near Sarnia, are a number of petroleum wells, Init the yield as yet is but a trifle of that from the neighbouring fields in the United States. , . Canada's iisheries are also extremely valuable, though they have proved a plenti- ful source of trouble with the United States. Nova Scotia fits out a large fisliing fleet, part of which sails to the banks of Newfoundland, the rest remaining in the coast waters of the province. In all the Atlantic Provinces, particularly Nova Scotia, lobster-canning is an important industry; in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island oysters are especially good and plentiful The fisheries of the Gulf of St Lawrence still draw many of the French-Canadians, though the onceprolific whalefisheryis extinct. Along the coast of British Columl)ia, with its numerous rivers, large quantities of salmon are caught and canned. In the same province, vessels are fitted out for the seal fishery in the Behring Sea. This sea the United States endeavoured to declare a mare claiisum, their private property, and between 1890 and 1896 many Canadian sealers were seized. The Canadian Govern- ment protested, the matter was referred to arbitration, and in 1897 Canada was awarded $461,000, which was paid after much undignified grumbling. All the Great Lakes are full of whitefish (Coregonus chipeiformis), and salmon trout (Scdve- linus 7iamaycicsh), Siud in countless lakes and streams trout of various kinds, salmon, bass, &c., are found. In fact, the whole country is a paradise for sportsmen. In 1904 the value of the fish sold in Canada was $23,516,439, of which $10,759,029 was exported. This does not include the catch of private sportsmen, or of farmers along the banks of rivers, which must have l)een worth many thousands more. French Canada has l;)een called " a Jesuit mission grafted on a fur-trading post." Fur lured the first settlers to Canada. It produced the French coureur de hois. To procure it the Hudson 310 Fur and Feathers. Bay Company was founded. To control the fur trade men fought and died from tlie lied Eiver to the Eocky Moun- tains. In 1904 the fur exported from Canada was valued at over $2,000,000. Most of this is gathered by Indians in the far o^orth and sold to the factors of the H.B.C. As settle- ment progresses the fur- trader and the hunter are driven further and further afield, but to this day there are valleys in the Rocky Mountains where the " fool-hen " are so tame that they can be knocked down with a stick, and in every province good shooting can be found within driving distance of the railway. In Ontario, north-east of Lake Simcoe, the provincial Government has set aside a large area known as the Algonquin National Park, where the wild animals and the trees are left in their natural state, and where no shooting is allowed, though permission to tish is easily detained. In the llocky Mountains the Dominion Government has a similar park at Banff. But natural advantages are of little avail unless there are roads, railways and steamers to bring the worker to the land and to the mine, and to transport his produce to the great markets of the world. CHArTER IX. MANUFAGTUKES, COMMERCE AND TRANSPORTATION. Under the old colonial system the trade The Naviga- ^^ q^^ Colonies was controlled by the tion Acts. |^j;Qt]^yj. Country. The chief laws regulating trade were the Navigation Acts, passed in 1651 and 1660 (pee pp. 52-3 and 67), and frequently amended. This control has been spoken of, especially by American historians anxious to justify their rebellion, as due to the wish of Great Britain to make nse of her Colonies to her own advantage. But while British merchants sometimes induced the British Parliament to put down a colonial industry which was competing with them, as when in 1732 New England was forbidden to export lieaver hats, the ideal on which this system was founded was really that of binding together the Mother Country and the Colonies by ties of mutual advantage and profit. If Britain forbade certain branches of colonial trade, she gave bounties to others, especially to the production of all articles suitable for naval stores. After the re^'olt of the American Colonies this policy was kept up in the Colonies which remained. The West Indies, which had got their thuber from the American Colonies, were forced to get it from Canada, in spite of the distance. Nor was this plan greatly resented l»y the Colonies. It hardly figures at all among the Canadian grievances. Indeed, the right to regulate their own trade was one of the last things claimed Ijy Canadian Eeformers. In 1839 Joseph Howe wrote to Lord John Russell four open letters putting with great force the case for allowing the Colonies to manage their own local affairs, but he distinctly admits the right of the Imperial Legislature to control the conmiercial policy of Nova Scotia. But in 1346, at the acces- sion to power of Lord John Russell and the coming of Lord 312 Protection and Colonial Preference. Grey to the Colonial Office, the bounties were taken off colonial products. To impose restrictions while taking oft bounties was so manifestly unfair that in 1849 the Navigation Laws were repealed, though not till much discontent had been aroused in Canada. That the Colonies migiit later on take advantage of their freedom to lay taxes on British goods does not seem to have occurred to the British statesmen of the time, who were so impressed with the advantages of Pree Trade that they looked forward to its universal adoption. „ -a- y. f I'Ht in 1859 this very thing happened. A. T. Gait, the Canadian Finance Minister, brought in a tariff of a distinctly protective character, and L)acked it up by the argument that it was necessaiy to encourage the nascent Canadian manufactures. The Duke of Newcastle, at the Colonial Office, protested, but Gait replied that " Self-government would be ntterly annihilated if the views of the Imperial Government wore to be preferred to those of the people of Canada." It was the death stroke to the old theory of Empire. In 1878 the government of Sir John Macdonald greatly increased the protective duties. The Atlantic Provinces had previously had a very low tariff, and that of Canada had been about 11 h percent., with a large list of articles admitted duty free ; but all the provinces, with the exception of New l]runswick, supported Macdonald {sie p. 283). The new policy was based on what is called " scientific protection," with high duties on all goods capable of being manufactured in the country and free admission of raw materials. Whether or not as a result of this policy, Colonial ,j^ distinct increase took place in the number and variety of Canadian manufactures. This tarifl*, with some small changes, remained in force till the victory of the Liberals in 1896. They had always been strong advocates of Free Trade, but, feeling that the manufacturers wouhl be greatly injured by any sudden and violent change, contented themselves with reducing or abolishing the duties on a number of unimportant articles and with giving to imports from Great Britain a preference of 12i- per cent., raised latel- on to 25 per cent., and still later to "^o per cent. In 1907 the manner of granting tlie preference was altered, but it was left at about its old rate. This preference was intended, on the one hand, to show Great Britain that Canada was not ungrateful for her aid in the past ; on the other hand, it was to stimulate the flow of British goods to Canada. This was Trade and Manufactures. 313 especially desirable, as at the time many of the ships which carried wheat and cattle from Canada to England were forced, to come liack almost empty, and so to charge the Canadian merchants freight sufficient to repay them for two voyages. From both points of view the results have been excellent. The How of British goods into Canada, which had decreased from $43,418,015 in 1884 to $38,717,267 in 1894, rose in 1906 to $83,229,256. At the same time the greater proximity of the United States, and the greater similarity of tlieir climate and of their methods of farming, has, in spite of a hostile tariff, caused the imports from that countrv to increase still more rapidly, from $50,492,826 in 1884 to $53,034,100 in 1894, and to $208,721,601 in 1906. The prosperity of a country is often foreign and measured too much by the amount of its foreign trade. Canadian manufacturers are as yet, for tlie most part, content if they can supply the home market. This they are doing to nn increasing extent. Of the $600,000,000 worth of manufactured goods consumed yearly in Canada about $500,000,000 are produced in the country ; l)ut a desire for further protection is loudly ex- pressed. The chief manufactured articles imported are agri- cultural implements. Steel rails, machinery, cutlery and other goods made of iron and steel form the largest item of import, and are brought mainly from the United States. In 1904, of imports of these articles into Canada worth $44,093,576, nearly 69 per cent, came from the United States and only 23^ per cent, from Britain. -J. - Manufactures centre in Ontario and Quebec, though those of Nova Scotia are not unimportant, and the iron industries at Sydney are the largest in the Dominion. The chief factories are at Toronto and Montreal, Ijut others are scattered through the provinces. Toronto has long been a distributing centre for the farming country round, but till recently the goods distri- buted were the products of the factories of Montreal, Great Britain and the United States. Of late years, however, more and more of these goods are the produce of the factories and mills in the outskirts of the city. In many ways the trade of Canada would seem to flow naturally from north to south. Ontario still buys her coal in Ohio and Pennsylvania ; British Columbia sends her minerals to AVashiugton and Montana. But Canada has spent great sums of money to ensure that the streams of trade may flow east and west instead of north and south, 314 Comnmnications. in order that as much of it as possible may remain within her owa borders and that as much as possible of the rest may go across the sea to Great Britain. No country has a more complete system Waterways. _^^ waterways; they lead past Montreal and Toronto through Lakes Huron and Superior, then by a chain of lakes and rivers to Lake Winnipeg, and thence by the Nelson to Hudson's Bay, or by the Saskatchewan to the very base of the Bockies (see p. 246). Countless other rivers may be studied on the map which make the whole country a perfect network. Between 1840 and 1850, when tlie larger rapids and waterfalls had Ijeen overcome l»y canals, and the channel of the St. Lawrence had l)een deepened, it was hoped that the wdieat of the American west would seek the sea by the St. Lawrence route. But the great development of railways, in which the United States had the start, completely shattered the Canadian hopes. „ ., Not till 1836 was the first railway ai ways. opened in Canada. On July 23 of that year a line, sixteen miles in length, was opened by the Governor-General, Lord Gosford, between La Prairie on the St. Lawrence and St. John's on the Richelieu. The coaches were at first drawn by horses, but in 1837 steam was substituted. Fifteen years later the Colonies making up the present Dominion contained only fifty miles of railways. In 1851 a great change took place. In that year (1) an Act was passed by the Canadian Legislature for the construction of a railway through the two Canadas ; (2) the Canadian Rail- way Committee had under consideration a Bill providing for the construction of a railway through British territory to the Pacific coast ; (3) delegates from Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia went to Great Britain to negotiate for the construction of a railway connecting Canada and the Atlantic Provinces. Thus from 1851 date the three greatest Canadian railways, the Grand Trunk, the Canadian Pacific and the Intercolonial. Prom 1851 to 1854 Francis Hincks was Premier of Canada, and with him began that interest in rail- ways which every succeeding Government has been compelled to take. The present Grand Trunk Railway has The Grand a^-own out of the amalgamation 'of a Trunk Kailway. ^ , „ , . t i o -^ t e number or Jmes. In Ibol a line trom Montreal to Toronto was proposed. Soon after, the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railway, from Portland in the State of Maine to the Canadian border, was leased for 999 years. In The Grand Trunk Railways. 315 1853 the section from Portland to Montreal was opened ; in 1856, that from Montreal to Toronto; in 1858, that fnim Toronto to Sarnia ; in 1879 two American lines were bonght, giving a route from Sarnia to Chicago; in 1882 the Great Western system, which controlled 900 miles in western Ontario, was absorbed. In 1906 the Grand Trunk Eailway system controlled nearly 4,000 miles of line, of which the 333 miles from Toronto to Montreal was double-tracked. From Confederation till the building of the Canadian Pacific this railway controlled the traffic of (Ontario. Its management was directed from London, and was often extremely indifferent to the comfort of its passengers and to the interests of its shippers. Its unpopularity was one of the chief causes which led Ontario to welcome the coming of the Canadian Pacific. In 1896 its head offices were removed to Montreal, and it has since become much more efficient and prosperous. At various times during its construction it was helped by the Canadian Government both with money and land ; in all, it is said to have received aid amounting to $16,000,000. Its construction was marked by great extravagance and mis- management, and for a long time no interest was j)aid to the shareholders ; many English families were ruined, and this failure was the reason why for many years English capitalists were unwilling to invest money in Canada. Under better management and with the increased prosperity of the country it has begun to pay, and much of the stock which had been flung aside as mere wastepaper has proved valuable. In 1860 much excitement was caused by the opening, by H.R.H. The Prince of Wales, now His Majesty King Edward, of the Victoria Bridge over the St. Lawrence at Montreal. The liridge, which is owned by the Grand Trunk, was at first tubular, and was considered a wonderful engineering feat. It was 9,18-t ft. in length and cost ^6,300,000. Since then the tubular form has proved unsatisfactory, and it is now open, like other modern bridges. The Intercolonial Eailwav was long Tlie Intercolo. talked of as a necessity for binding together mal aiw^y. ^^^ scattered provinces, but its construc- tion was delayed by the refusal of the Imperial auth()rities to give a guarantee. At Confederation its building was made a condition by the Governments of the Atlantic Pro- vinces, and work was a!t once begun with Mv. (now Sir) Sandford Fleming as engineer-in-chief. To follow the direct route was impossible, a portion of the territory having been adjudged by the Ashburton Treaty to the American State of ^16 The Intercolonial, Pacific, and Northern tla'i Maine. The next best route would have been by the valley of the Eiver St. John, but the Imperial Government, which wanted the line for military purposes, decided that this would bring it too near to tlie American l_»order. The " North Shore " route by the Bay of Chaleurs was finally chosen. This won an Imperial guarantee, but greatly lengthened the line. In 1875 the branch across Prince Edward Island was com- pleted ; in 1876 the main line was opened from Halifax to Eiviere du Loup ; in 1879 the branch of the Grand Trunk from that point to Levis was purchased ; in 1898, by the pur- chase of the Drunnnond County Railway and by arrangements made with the Grand Trunk, it secured an entrance into Montreal. In 1906 it controlled 1,484 miles of line. Theearlystoryof the Canadian Pacific Rail- RaiWs.' :^^'^>^ ^^^^ ^l^'^a^^y I'^e^ <^ol^^ (P- 28-1)- Though in grants of money, of land and of com- pleted portions of the line, and in subsequent guarantees of interest this railway has cost the Canadian Government alone no less than $100,000,000, no money has been better spent. No other public work in Canada can be compared with it in importance. Even greater than the energy which went to its building are the enterprise and sagacity which kept it in operation through the lean years of 1885-95. It now controls over ten thousand miles of railway between Halifax and Vancouver, ond has large and well-equipped lines of steamers running across the l*acific and Atlantic oceans (see p. 818). In 1904 a Bill was passed in the House of Commons incorporating the Grand Trunk Pacific Rail- way, an undertaking almost equal in size to the Canadian Pacific. AVhen conqjleted it will include a line from Atlantic to Pacific, with branches running north and south. Starting in New Brunswick, the line will run up the valley of the St. John, through northern Quebec and Ontario to Winnipeg ; across the prairies to Edmonton, and through the Rockies to Princa Rupert on the Pacific, keeping to the north of the Canadian Pacific. In its construction the Government has abandoned the old policy of land grants in favour of that of guaranteeing the interest on the bonds (debentures) of the company. The section from Quebec to Winnipeg is to be built and owned by the Government, though leased to the company. Meanwhile, Messrs. Mackenzie and Mann, ^^® ^^"^^^^"^ two Ontario contractors, have been buying Railway^ and building railways in every province of the Dominion, and are gradually binding them together into a third great system, the Canadian Northern. In Watertouys. JJl? addition to scattered portions in the West, they have noA' an uninterrupted line from Port Arthur on Lake Superior to Edmonton. When these new lines are completed Canada will no longer be open to the charge of possessing length witliout breadth, and the old sneer of the opponents of Confederation, who compared her to a tapeworm, and to a bundle of lishinfr- rods tied together by the ends, will lose its point. In 1867 Canada possessed 2,087 miles of railway, in 189G 16,387, in 1906 25,663, and many thousands more were either under construction or contracted for. p , In spite of the great development of rail- ways the rivers are still of great importance. There is hardly a lake or river, from the Bras d'Or in Cape Breton to the Mackenzie and Yukon, on which steamers do not ply. The natural obstacles have been overcome by canals, on which over £23,000,000 have been spent, chiefly since Federa- tion. The &t. Lawrence Canal system from Lake tSuperior to tide-water at Montreal overcomes a difference of about 600 fl., and has a minimum depth of 14 ft. The chief links in this system are the Lachine Canal around the Lachine Eapids above Montreal, the Welland Canal overcoming the Niagara I'alls, the construction of which was the great work of Upper Canada between 182*4 and 1829, and the Sault Ste. Marie Canal, between Lakes Superior and Huron (see pp. 246-7). This was begun in 1887 and opened in 1895. Up to that date the only canal was on the American side, and vessels loaded witli western grain had for this mile of their course to pass through American territory. After the war of 1812-15 Great Britain decided that it would be wise to have a back-door between Toronto and Montreal, in case the Americans should again seek to control the line of the St. Lawrence. Accordingly the Rideau pystem was planned, connecting Kiugston and Ottawa by means of the Cataraqui and Eideau Rivers. The work was carried out by Col. l*>y, of the lioyal Engineers, in memory of whom Ottawa was for many years known as Bytown. The first stone was laid in 1827, the system was finished in 1834, and in 1857 was given by the Imperial to the Canadian authorities. Ottawa and Montreal are connected by a number of small canals, and the same system is practically prolonged by the canals on the Richelieu, which enable the logs of the upper Ottawa river to be sent by water to Lake Champlaiu, and thence to New York. One great desire of Canada has always been to get a shorter route for her western wheat to tide-water. The saving of 318 Oversea Connections. time and distance is all-important to the western farmer, who wishes to get his grain to market in the year that it is grown, instead of having to see it stored in elevators till the next spring or autumn. With this end in view work was begun on the Trent Valley system, connecting Lake Ontario with the Georgian Bay (an arm of Lake Huron), but the canals are still small and incomplete. Another similar route which has been surveyed is one joining Ottawa and the Georgian Bay by means of French Biver, Lake Nipissingand the Ottawa Kiver. The engineering difficulties are great, but not greater than have been overcome elsewhere, and a look at the map will show how much distance would be saved. So great is this desire that an increasing quantity of grain is taken to the Georgian Bay ports by water and thence by rail to Montreal. The Grand Trunk has now two separate lines engaged in this work. r, r,. In si)ite of the importance of the Ocean Steamers. , i . n i • i home market, Canada is a very large exporter, particularly of farm produce. While Keciprocity with the United States was in force (1854-1866), most of this was sent to that country, but since then a series of protective measures has more and more shut Canadian produce from the American market. In consequence, the need of quick and frequent transport to the markets of Britain has been felt. The first to inaugurate a regular service between the two continents was Mr. (afterwards Sir) Samuel Cunard, of Halifax, who in 1839 formed a company which in 1840 began to ply between Liverpool, Halifax and Boston, and which still continues as the great Cunard Line. In 1854 the Allan Line began to run from Montreal, and in 1856 com- menced a regular service, which is still maintained. In 1901 the Canadian Pacific Eailway bought a line, which they have since greatly improved and enlarged. In 1889 the Canadian Pacific also began running steamers be tween Vancouver and Yokohama, which have ever since given a fortnightly service of such excellence that it has largely cut out the American lines from San Francisco. On the Atlantic the chief ports are in summer Montreal and Quebec, in winter Halifax and St. John. From June t(t October the shorter route to the north of Newfoundland through the Straits of Belle Isle is used ; for the rest of the year the southerly route through the Cabot Straits. Though the Canadian Government has spent great sums on deepening the channel between Montreal and Quebec, it is douhttul if, with the increasino- size of modern steamers, a Atlantic Ports. 319 fast service to Montreal can be maintained (see pp. 247, 251). Montreal, however, will always be the chief port for freight. The route to Halifax and St. John is nearly one thousand miles shorter than that to New York, and, with the growth of the Canadian railways, it is not improbable that these ports will attract much of the traffic which now goes to the American sea-board. Discovery. CHAPTEE X. NEWFOUNDLAND. It is highly probaljle that some of the early Norwegian voyagers from Iceland or Greenland, such as Lief, son of Eric the Eed, may liave pushed as far \yest as Labrador and Newfoundland, but their discoveries were not followed up, and the curtain closed down on America for nearly five centuries. But in the spring of 1497, when all the world was agog with the discoveries of Columbus, Henry VII., King of England, sent out John Cabot, an Italian sailor in his service, to make discoveries in these new lands of the West. Many think that Cabot's landfall was at Cape Breton, " the nose of North America " ; but all good Newfoundlanders claim that it was at Cape Bonavista, and in 1897 they celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of the event. In 1501 a Portuguese navigator named ar y yag s. Qgj.j-gpg^i landed on the shore of either Newfoundland or Labrador and carried off some of the natives to sell in the slave market of Lisbon. Two of his ships returned in safety, but to this day no man knows what became of Caspar Cortereal. In the next year his brother Miguel fitted out an expedition to look for him, l:»ut off the coast of Newfoundland his ship, too, disappeared for ever. Cabot's son Sebastian is said on insufficient authority to have made several voyages to Newfoundland, and in 1527 Lord Edmund, Queen Catherine Howard's father, Ijegged Wolsey to be allowed to join a proposed expedition to New- foundland, " with divers ships and captains and soldiers in tliem," and thus find his wife and children meat and drink. This expedition was not made, but in 1536 Armagil Wade, who has been absurdly called " the English Columbus," sailed in the " iNLinion " from Gravesend and visited Cape Breton and Newfoundland. The object of all these voyages, how- ^TilherSs^"*^ ^^^^'' ^^^^ "*^^ ^^ discover new lands or found colonies, but to find a new passage to the East Indies ; and if any settlement was made at this Early History. 321 time in Newfoundland, it was for temporary fishing purposes. (Gradually the value of these fisheries off the coast and on the Grand Banks to the south-east hecame well known, and hardy sailors from all the nations of Western Euro])e came in their ])rown-sailed fishing-smacks in search of cod. It was the French who first turned these fisheries to account, and in 1524 a ship of Rouen, laden with Xewfoundland fish, was captured by the P^nglish. Similar captures soon became regular incidents of any wars between France and England or Spain ; and in 1542 a Spanish force met the French fishing fleet returning from Newfoundland, and captured most of the eighty or a hundred vessels of which it consisted. Two years later the English captain John Winter endeavoured, but a]iparently without success, to repeat this exploit. By this time the English had established a footing in the Newfound- land fishery ; it Avas exem]ited by an Act of 1541 (33 Henry A'lIT. c. 2) from the restrictions imposed on other fisheries ; iind in 1549 (2 and 3 Ed. VI. c. 6) the ofiicers of the Admiralty were prohibited from levying fines, dues, or tolls u]ioii tlu" Newfoundlaud fishermen. In 157tobert Gillespie) Keid, a Scotch Canadian who had fouglit his way up from being a working-man, and had made a large fortune by contracting in Canada and elsewhere, the island weathered the financial storm of 1895. The early experience of Newfound- land with railway promoters had been so unsatisfactory that in 1890 the Government determined to build and to operate their own railway system. In the following years, with Mr. Eeid as contractor, the Government built a railway across the island, from Port-aux-Basques, on the south-west coast,, to St. John's, a distance of 528 miles. Other contracts were made with Mr. Eeid, and the old fort- nightly service to Halifax, which had been Newfoundland's only means of communication, other than telegraphic, with the outside world, was replaced by a steamer running three times a week between Port-aux-Basques and Sydney in Cape Breton. Just at this time the above-mentioned misfortunes had left the Government no money to run the railway (the greater part of which passed through uninhabited country) or to attract settlers. A contract was therefore made with ]\Ir. Pieid hy which he assumed control of the railway, of the steamers between Port-aux-Basc[ues and Sydney, of those which had been established between St. John's and the chief bays and outposts of the island, of the electric trams in St. John's, and of various other Government works. In return for this he was granted enormous tracts of land, quite undeveloped, but said to be rich in minerals and timber. To gi^^e so much power to one man was, no doubt, to run a great risk ; but Sir James Winter's Government considered that the circumstances justified the acceptance of the risk, and Mr. Pteid's honesty and ability were not seriously dis- puted. Sir Eobert Bond, however, the leader of the Opposition, who had materially assisted in tiding over the difficulties by raising loans abroad for tlie colony and its Savings Bank, resisted the arrangement on the grounds of public policy, and made it the principal issue of the General Election of 1900. The financial crisis being now Recent Developments. 327 past, the inajoriLy of the electors considered Mr. Eeid's privi- leges disproportionate to his services, and returned Sir Robert Bond to power. In 1901 an Act was passed resuming the fee-simple of the railway, telagraphs and lands, and giving Mr. Eeid compensation for the loss of his vested interests. Recent Under Sir Eobert Bond (who again won Developments. ^^^^ general election of 1904, but tied with the opposition under Sir Edward Morris in 1908, the colony prospered. Copper had long been mined at Tilt Cove, and latterly the Canadian steel-making companies at Sydney have got most of their ore from the island of Wabaiia, near St. John's ; other mines are being opened ii]i along the west coast. TAimljer, though not of first-rate quality for Iniilding, is plentiful and well suited for the making of paper-pulp, and several large paper-making iirms arc now established in the colony. Although much of the farm produce is importeil from Canada., and manufactured goods are brouglit in about equal proportions from Canada, the United States and Great Biitain, the commerce of Newfound- land has within six years increased by thirty per cent. Its revenues have exceeded its expenditure and the surplus has liecn devoted to building up a reserve fund for emergencies, or returned tlic works. But the great industry of Newfoundland F^bhen'' ^'^ ^^^^^ ^^^^' ^^^'^^i''^«- The cod-lishery falls into two l)ranches, that carried on through the summer on the Banks, and the shore fisheries, engaged in by smaller Ijoats whicdi put out before dawn and return to har])Our in the evening. The tish is dried in the sun, with the addition of a little salt, and sent off to Europe, es])ecially to the Eonuui Catholic countries of S]>aiu and Portugal. Not only does Newfoundland ]K>ssess this inexhaustible treasure, liut in the ca]»lin and herring which visit her shores in the spring she has a monopoly of thel)est l»ait, and in her disputes with the Americans has found the threat of cutting olf their supply oi' l)ait a useful weapon. In 190.3-6 the products ol' the cod made up 68 per cent, of the island's total exports. ,, , „ , . Lobster-canning is also carried on, beal-tishino;. t £ ^ i. • ■ i i.- " and of late an mcreasmg number ot tourists have come to Newfoundland to shoot deer (cariboo), and to fish for trout and salmon. During the spring the chief industry is the killing — fishing, as it is called — of seals. These are not the fur-seals, which are found on the other side of America, near Alaska, but another species whicli is killed for its oil. Early in the spring, as the ico Ijegins to 328 Imperial Defences and Communications. float down the coast of Labrador, the hardy fishermen go out in steamers as far as these can Ite driven through the loose ice, and then follow the seals on foot. In 1906 the catch was o-tl.SoG seals. Part of the coast of Labrador is under the rule of Xewfoundland, and the frontier line between it and the Canadian hinterland is still in dispute. The inhal)itants are a few Eskimo and Indians, with here and there a trapper or fisherman, or a Hudson Bay Company post ; but timber has l^een, and minerals may be, found in the disputed territory, so that the two Governments are now taking steps to settle the question. In 1897 a branch of the Naval Eeserve Imperial De- ^^,.^g established in Newfoundland, and is now lences and Com- ^ , ■ ^ i i i i .• i munications. ''^'Out six hundred strong. II need arose it could be greatly enlarged, lor Newfound- landers are to a, man loyal to the great Alother across the sea. Since 186G NewfoundLmd has been the Anglo-American enable Company's half- way house to America, and many schemes have l>een projtosed for a steamship line from St. John's to Calway or some other port on the west ol' Ireland. If with this line could be joined the projtosed tunnel Itotwcfn Newfoundland and Canada under the Straits of Belle-Isle, and, perhaps, one uniting England or Scotland with Ireland, the sea-passage Itetween England and America would be reduced to three days, or even less. Such a knitting together of the cords of Empire would be of the greatest importance. II. THE CO.AIMONWEALTH OF AUSTRAIJA. CHAPTER T. PHYSICAL FEATURES. The Continont of Australia compiises the '^'"^^uTtmlL"* ''^ three large islands of Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania, and many smaller islands risinij; above the Australian Continental ])latfoiin. This [)lat form extends from the e([uator half-way to tlie South PoK', and, except the western and noith-eastern parts of New Cuinea, the whole of it is British. We shall here confine our attention to the islands of Australia and Tasmania, which constitute the f Commonwealth of Australia. The island of Australia has an area of over 2,900,000 square miles, that of Tasmania 2(5,000 square miles. Australia is 2,400 miles from west to east and nearly 2,000 miles from north to south. It consists of three well-marked divisions : the Western Tableland, the Great Central Plains and the Eastern Highlands. The Western Tableland consists of a mass '^m^n'r*^*" of arch;pan lock, above which the sedimentary Tableland. ' / strata — among them the l)arren desert sand- stone-lie more oi- less horizontally. In structure it may be compared with the gieater part of Africa, but its general elevation is much lower, being little over 1,500 ft. It rises in a fairly steep escarpment above the western and northern coastal plains ; only here and there along this margin, and in the centre, does it reach a level more than 2,000 ft. above the sea, from which in the north-west and in the south it rises abruptly. It has not yet been thoroughly explored ; the difficulties are due to climate and not to the physical features, the general character of which we know. A few rivers rise in 330 The Great Plains and the Eastern Highlands. and flow from it ; the Swan in the South, tlie Gascoyne and the Ashburton in the centre, and the Fitzroy in the north-west flow westwards, while intermittent rivers start in the east but rarely reach the great central plains {see also pp. 419-20). These Great Central Plains stretch from the north to the south. They are penetrated by three marked inlets. On the north the shallow Gulf of Carpentaria extends ^^^?Sn?''*'^^^^i' inland; while on the south the Spencer and St. Vincent Gulfs mark the south-eastern end of the tableland, where it joins the outlier of the South Australian Highlands {see p. 419). Owing to climatic con- ditions the plain can be divided into three parts ; the north is comparatively wet, the centre arid, and the south moist. In the north the Flinders River flows to the Gulf of Carpen- taria ; in the centre Diamentina and Cooper's Creek flow south-westwards to Lake Eyre, whose shores lie some 40ft. ))elow sea-level ; in the south the Darling-Murray and its tiibutaries from the Eastern Highlands flow into the Alex- aiidrina Lake, a large navigal)le sheet of water with a long aim known as the Cooi'ong. The Eastern Highlands form a denuded highland area and iKtt a nionntain range. They start at Cape York in the nortli, and extend southwards with varying widtli to TT?„v,i!f„!i!," ^^'iss Strait, beyond which thev rise again in Highlands. -mi ^ i "' i • ■ i ■ 1 asmania. i hey are broadest near the m k U I le where tliey are diained by the Burdekin and the eastern Fitzroy. In the north and south they become narrower and, on the whole, loftier, the highest region being that of the Kos- ciusko mass in the south-east, where Mount Townsend rises to 7,250 ft. The steep rise of these Highlands above the narrow eastern coastal area is most marked in New South Wales. Although they are not very lofty, they form difficult barriers to overcome. " Deep water- worn gorges nearly everywhere cut into a maze of narrow cliff -sided ridges ; there are few passes ... to cross you must, as a rule, climb over the top." On the western side the slope is much more gradual and is drained by the long rivers which flow across the Central Lowlands (see pp. 418-19). Many recently volcanic hills exist to the west of this region in western Victoria. East of the mainland from 10°S. to 20°S. ^Reef '"^^'' stretches the great barrier reef made of coral, at distances from the coast which vary from 25 to 150 miles. It is difficult to cross except in openings Wind and Weather. 331 opposite the great rivers and forms a natural break- water to the coastal waters of Queensland. The whole of Australia lies between lO'^S. and 40°S. It is thus almost entirely within the belt of the south-east trade winds and calms of the horse latitudes. Only Climate. in the winter months do the stormy west winds seriously affect the southern part of the con- tinent. In the summer the extreme north is so heated that the north-east trade wind is drawn across the equator and forms the north-west monsoon. The south, therefore, receives winter rains and has the Mediterranean type of Rainfall. climate, while the north margin has summer rains of a true monsoonal character. On the east coast the south-east trade-winds dominate and, owing to the lioight of the Eastern Highlands barrier, they may deposit rain at all seasons. The rainfall is, however, slight in winter and is heaviest in the summer months, when the land is gi-eatly heated and the air above it tends to rise into higher altitudes. From the centre to the heights of the western margin rain is rare, save when summer thunder- storms are drawn into the desert, usually from the Tuonsoon area. On the west coast the region of the north- west stormy winter rains extends almost as far north as the southern limit of the north-west monsoon winds of summer. Hence the margins of Australia are fairly well watered except the middle of the west coast and the middle of the south coast, where the Great Bight curves northwards. The weather of Australia is dominated by Anti-cyclones, a series of high-pressure systems (anti- cyclones) moving from west to east. They are most marked in winter, least marked in summer. Between two such high-pressure systems are low-pressure troughs, opening to the north on the north side and to the south on the south side, and on these much of the rainy weather of Australia depends. During the passage of one of these inverted V-depressions in the south the wind may suddenly change, within a few hours, from a hot, dry, north wind from the interior to a cold, moist southerly wind from the southern ocean, known as a southerly " burster.'' While in the higher parts of south- Temperature, eastern Australia the winter cold is sufficient to permit snow to lie on the ground for some considerable time, the temperature over the greater part of 332 The Rainfall and its Effects. the continent rarelv falls below 50°F. in mid-winter, and hence the heat is sufficient at all seasons for the growth of plants. It must be remembered that during the southern sum- mer the earth is nearest the sun, and consequently, other things being equal, the southern summers should be relatively warmer than the northern. On the other hand, the summer is shorter than in corresponding northern latitudes, and the mass of water in the southern hemisphere makes the average conditions more equal. Australia is a sufficiently large land area to have very high temperatures in the interior in summer. Even at an elevatioji of 2, KM) ft. at Alice Springs the mean temperature for January is 85'4°F. Speaking generally we may say that lack of moisture and not an un- favourable temperature explains the unproductive character <»f part of the continent. The economic conditio] is of Australia depend very largely on rain. Where this is under JO in., little or no use can at present be made of the land, though on Conditions Government farms in Queensland and else- where excellent results have been produced when the ramfall has been as low as 5 in. The soil receiving from 10 in. to 20 in. may be described as the sheep area; that receiving from 20 in. to 30 in. the wheat belt; that receiving from 30 in. to 40 in. can produce maize, and the marginal lands which receive over 40 in. can gi-ow sugai", providetl the temperature is sufficiently high (sec pp. 371, 410-11). In South iVustralia, however, land with from 12 to 20 in. rain- fall is classed as wheat land, while outlying wool stations abound on land with a lower rainfall. The forests are most abundant in the south- Flora and Fauna westregion of winter rains. where the^tall jarrah and karri gum-trees or eucalypts attain agreat height, and foiin useful hardwood trees ; in the south-eastern region, where they receive both winter and sunimei rains; along the east coast, where the blue and other gums flourish ; and in the wet and hot north tropical lands. In the interior vast areas are co\'ered with scrub of dwarf gums (mallee scrub) or acacia (mulga and other scrub) " providing wattle for hurdles and (like mulgaj drink for man and food for stock." The native fauna of Australia is peculiar. It is noted for its marsupials, but the most important mam- mals have been introduced since the European occupation. Of these the chief are the camel in the desert, the merino and other sheep of the grass-lands, the horses and cattle. The Geographt/ and Australian History. 333 mineral wealth of the continent is described in a subsequent chapter (see pp. 406-7, 412-14). Influence of Geo- '^^ ^^ South Africa, small communities graphical Con- ^^'st grew up round harbours situated amid ditions on the the more fertile parts of the coastal plains. A^Salfa ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^"^^^^ districts is greater, and the character of the harbours better in the case of Australia. The coastal plains of New South Wales are penetrated by the magnificent harbour of Port Jackson. The great valley of Victoria is cut in half by Port Phillip, and Spencer's Gulf and the St. Vincent Gulf run far into tlie South Australian highlands. The Swan river in Western Australia and the lower courses of the Brisbane and other rivers of Queensland cross the fertile coastal plains. In such favoured spots each of the six Australian capital cities naturally gi-ew up. Sydney on Port Jackson in New South Wales and Melbourne on Port Phillip in Victoria are each great cities with over half a million inhabitants, roughly two-fifths of the population of their State. Adelaide, with its Outer Harbour and its ports of Largs Bay and Port Adelaide on St. Vincent Gulf, has over two-fifths of the population of South Australia. Perth on the Swan river in Western Australia and Brisbane on the Brisbane river in Queensland are not such natural centres as the capitals of the other three States, and they have rivals in other parts of the coast, or in the case of West Australia in the mining centres of the interior ; Perth and its suburbs, however, contain about one-fourth of the population of West Australia. In Tasmania, while Hobart on the Derwent is the capital, the town of Launceston on the Tamar facing Victoria is almost equal to it in importance (see pp. 377-9). These fertile parts are, however, separated Communications, by wide stretches of what was long almost uninhabited land, and is still in many parts but sparsely peopled. Until railways were constructed the sea and not the land routes were the natural, easiest and quickest ways of communication. Even to-day Western Australia is remote from the rest of the continent (see p. 393), and this has led to the demand for a linking up of its railways with those of the east by carrying the line from Kalgoorlie eastwards across the tableland. It was natural that each large fertile area should become the nucleus of a separate colony, and just as natural, now that railways have united them, that a federal commonwealth should have been established. 33-1 The Railivays of Australia. The continent is now opened up by rail- Eailways. ways between the chief centres of the south- east. They run from the margin of the tableland north of Lake Eyre through Adelaide to Melbourne, and thence to Sydney, Brisbane and Rockhampton. From the last three and from Townsviile three lines extend far into the interior of New South Wales and Queensland respectively, and bring them into touch with the coast. Smaller lines cross the sugar plantations round Mackay and Bowen in Queens- land, and run inland from Caii-ns and Cooktown in the north- east and from Normanton near the Gulf of Carpentaria. In Western Australia a line runs from Perth southwards over the coastal plain of Bunbury and the Blackwood river, south-south- eastwards to Albany on King George's Sound, eastwards across the plateau to Coolgardie, Kalgoorlie, Menzies and Laverton, and northwards to Northampton, with a branch from Gerald- ton, running far into the interior to Nannine on the Murchison gold field. There are proposals to continue the Coolgardie rail- way eastwards to South Australia, and the South Australian line northwards to meet a short railway which runs inland from Palmerston on Port Darwin on the north coast. In Tasmania Launceston is connected with Hobart by railway, and other shorter lines have been constructed. CHAPTER ir. THE DISCOVERERS : DE QUIROS, TASMAN, DAMPIER, COOK. If we look at a map of the world, we see Why was Aus- ^^^^^ j-j^g ,,^,i|, ^^ -^^ northern half is taken tralia colonised -.i .1 i i^- i_ c ^ ■ ^ n so late'' ^^P ^^'^^^^ ^^^"^ huge continent ot which we call the western tliii'd Europe and tlie rest Asia. To the south-west, joined to it only by the narrow isthmus of Suez, lies Africa. To the south-east, connected by a long chain of islands with narrow straits l)Qtween them, lies Australia. Apart from all these land masses, cut off by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, are the twin Americas. Seeing these things, and knowing that civilisation grew up along the southern shores of Asia and Europe, how are we to explain the fact that the Americas were colonised from Eairope nearly three hundred years Ijefore Australia ? There are three very good reasons. In tlie first place, the Malayan islands, that are the nearest land to Australia, are more fertile and attractive than the mu^thern shores of Australia itself, which oftered comparativ^ely slight induce- ments to migration. (The present natives of Australia proljably came across from the Malay islands, but they were driven over by stronger tribes.) In the second place, the sea-folk of the Indian Ocean, as far as we know, lived in its north-western corner, and thought themselves heroes if they sailed as far as Java. And thirdly, when European voyagers did reach the Australian coasts, they lit upon the northern and western sides ; while it is only the eastern and south-eastern coasts that are likely to attract any one coming in from the sea. So Australia was left to itself for many The Aborigines, centuries ; and in it there were also left to themselves two races of men who had settled there in the days before history began. In those days southern India was filled witli tribes which are now confined chiefly to 336 Australian Aborigines. its hill country, of the stuck we call Dravidian (see p. 561), some of wliuin found their wny acrosK the Bay of Bengal to Malaya. TIk'v spread along the islands, intermarrying with the iu- ha1»itants — frizzy-haired blacks like the Papuans of to-day — and expelling some of the weaker Itlaeks, who were forced over Torres Straits into Australia. Then behind them into the islands poured the copper-coloured Malays (who are still there), and in their turn drove the Dravidians over the Straits ; they chased the earlier immigrants south across Bass Straits into Tasmania, and themselves spread abroad in the larger country, undisturbed for thousands of years. Of the Tasmanian " blackfellows " we Eaces ""^^ know little. Very few of them were left when the white men came, and those few (as we shall see later on) died off quickly and are now extinct. But the Australian " blackfellows " — who are really only chocolate-lirown — became a most interesting nation. When they left Asia they had only learnt to hunt, and none of them managed to invent even the simplest kind of agricul- ture, so tliat they were entirely dependent on the wild animals and fruits that the land provided. The.se being scanty, except in extraordinarily good seasons, their life became mainly a struggle to avoid starv^ation and to make the most of the food supply. They split up, therefore, into small communities, each keeping a large hunting district jealously to itself, and each governed by its own camp-council administering laws intended to keep the tribe as well supplied with good huntsmen as possible. The marriage laws, especially, were most ingeniously contrived : a man of one totem must marry wives of another, and the children would belong to a third. As you might kill, but not oat, the animal which was your totem, a man could thus pro- vide food for his family without interfering witli Ids own supply. ( )ne result of the i.solation of small tiibes Language. in large districts was that each gradually developed a language of its own. In ;in area of Queensland less than three hundred miles S([uare seven different languages are spoken, one of them in five different dialects, by tribes none of which have more than three hundred members. They are very complicated languages, too ; few have a word for numbers higher than two, or can express one higher than five (two-two-one), but they give separate names to every creek and mound and track in the district, even to every large tree ; and the grammar has as many cases and Porbujnese and Spanish Discoverers. *^^T uumbers as Greek, besides plenty of tenses and moods, and includes pronoun-endings that distinguish between a man close in iiont of you, close behind you, or some way off. So the blackfellow must have plenty of intelligence ; indeed, if one had to live in the country as it was by nature, without being allowed to cultivate it, it would be hard to improve much on the blackfellow 's arrangements. To this country, sparsely inhabited by The Discoverers : isolated tribes that had seen little of each Portuguese. other and, probably, nothing of outsiders for thousands of years, white men seem first to have come early in the sixteenth century. The Portuguese, at any rate, were in New Guinea by 152(3 ; and, unless the fringing coral reefs of Torres Straits scared them, as they scared the Dutch eighty years later, they must have known something of the Queens- land coast. They had good reason to look for it. The old map-makers liked to nudce their maps symmetrical, and liad a theory that only equal areas of land and water could keep the earth properly Ijalanced. So, lief ore the discovery of America, they used to fill the western half of their maps with Europe and Africa enclosing the ]\Iediterranean, and put in the eastern half Asia and an " unknown continent," enclosing the Indian Ocean. At first this imaginary land joined the south of Africa to Sumatra. When it was disco^'ered that Africa was a peninsula, tjie "unknown land" was shifted eastwards, and ma'de to stretch across the South Pacific from Java south- east to Tierra del Fuego. The Portuguese, therefore, wouhl naturally be on the look-out for a big stretch of land south of New Guinea. But, if they .found it, they kept quiet about it — and ibr anotlior good reason. T'hey had agreed with the Spaniards that all new lands on the Pacific found to the west of 1-17 'E. should be Portuguese, and those east of that line Spanish (see p. 6G0). On tluit understanding nearly the whole eastern coast of Australia would Ijelong to Spain,yind the Portu- guese were not inclined to give their rivals new territory. The Spaniards, however, had their sus- Spanish. picions, and sent many expeditions across the Pacific from their South American ports, but in one way or another these all kept too far to the nortli- wards. The I'ortuguese, Magellan (who came through the Straits that bear his name) had made no headway in those southern latitudes against the perpetual westerly winds, and so had borne away nortli-west till he hit the Philip- pines. The Spaniard, Mendana, in the course of three voyages, not only discovered and tried to colonise the 338 Dutch Exploraiwn. Solomons, but sighted so many small islands on his way over that geographers believed firmly in the " Tei-ra Australis Incognitct " for nearly two hundred years thereafter. And De Quiros, Mendana's second-in-command in 1595, ten years later took an expedition himself across the Pacific; he tried hard to get southwards, but was forced back within the tropics for want of wood and water, and at last came to a great bay with much land at the back of it, which he felt sure was the long-sought continent. He founded a town there, calling it New Jerusalem ; then a sort of mutiny broke out in his fleet, and he had to sail back to I'eru ; while his second-in-command, Luiz de Torres, took his own ship round tlie new land (it was only one of the New Heln-ides), and then sailed westwards home through a tangle of small islands and along the south coast of New Guinea. Quet^iy enough, he actually sighted the Australian coast, and passed through the strait now called after him without knowing it ; while De Quiros, who had stopped short at an island nearly fifteen hundred miles away, spent the rest of his life in writing memo- rials to the King of Spain about " the fourth part of the world, the unknown Austrialia, very rich and fertile." For he had culled his discovery Austrialia dd Es'piritu Santo ("the Austrian land of the Holy Ghost "), l)ecause the Spanish King was of Austrian descent. But all that is left of the name now is its last two words, which are tlie name of the largest of the New Hebrides. AVhile Torres was imagining the coast Dutch. of Australia to be a line of islands, other explorers . were taking the islands of Torres Straits to be solid land. I'ortugal and all its possessions had in 1580 been secured by Philip II., and the Portuguese islands of the Malay Archipelago not long after fell into the hands of Spain's great enemies, the Dutch. The}^ in 1602, founded a Dutch East India Company, with its headquarters at Batavia, in Java. Seek- ing a route thence to the " unknown south land," their little exploring ship, the " Duyfken," in 1606 crept along the south coast of New Guinea as far as the strait ; but somehow it missed the opening, and went on southwards right down the west coast of the Cape York peninsula, till shallowing water and broadening mud-flats made it evident that there was no way to the ocean there. So its captain turned back to Batavia and reported *' no waterway south of New Guinea" — and it took one hundred and sixty-five years to correct that mistake. Hartog, Van Diemen, and Tasman. 339 Still, the Dutcli did a good deal for Australian discovery. They found that the best way to Batavia was to thrust their ships, after leaving the Cape of Good Hope, down into the track of the westerly winds that always blow south of latitude 36° or so, and steer due east for about four thousand miles, then turning up to the north. A glance at the map will show that ships trying to follow these directions were certain sooner or later to find themselves on the western coast of Australia. Captain Dirk Hartog, in the ship " Eendragt," was the first to dotliis ; and in the next twelve years (1616-1628) many Dutch captains and ships left their names on patches of the coast, from Nuyt's Archipelago, in South Australia, right round to Arnhem Land in the Northern territory. But these discoveries were to them part of " The Known South Land " or " New Holland," and the Terra Australis Incognita was still thought of as lying across the South Pacific from New Guinea eastwards. In 1636 Antony van Diemen came to Tasman. Batavia as Governor-General of the Dutch Indies. He was anxious to enlarge his country's possessions and increase her wealth, and he began at once a search for the unknown land, in hopes that it might prove as rich in minerals as Peru. An expedition which he sent along the track of the "Duyfken" failed because its captain was killed by natives in New Guinea. Then he fitted out a more important one, which was bound, if it followed his instructions, either to find the " South Land " or to reach Chili. Abel Tasman, already an experienced explorer, was given command. In obedience to orders he sailed to Mauritius, struck south into the belt of westerly winds that sailors call " roaring forties," and then let himself be carried east. iVs a natural result he came upon Tasmania, sighting its west coast first, and following the shore-line round till he found a land- ing place on the south-east corner. The landing party reported that they had seen no people, but had found footprints like the claws of a tiger and tall trees with steps cut in their bark five feet apart, which seemed to show that the inhabitants were giants. So Tasman merely sent his carpenter ashore with a pole and a Dutch flag ; when that had been hoisted he stood north along the coast till head winds forced him east to the open sea. In nine days he sighted land again. This time it was the South island of New Zealand, close to what is now the town of Hokitika. He sailed along it till he found a bay safe for anchorage, but natives in canoes attacked his landing piirty 340 The English Voyages ; Dampier. and killed three men, so that he called the place " Murderers' Bay," and made hasty sail again. He followed the shore line of the North island to its northern extremity, stood across to Tonga, and then made back to Batavia by the north side of New Guinea. Within eight months he was at sea again, commissioned to look once more for the strait that the " Duyfken " had failed to find ; but liy some ill luck he made again the old mistake, and the only result of the voyage was an almost accurate chart of Australia's northern and western coasts. The net result of his explorations was this : there was cer- tainly a long stretch of coast line dotted with islands reaching from New Guinea to Nuyt's Archipelago, of which the new land of tigers and giants (Van Diemen's Land Tasman named it, but we call it Tasmania) might be an extension. During the next hundred years geographers came more and more to believe that this was not a solid shore line, but only the edge of a great group of islands, probably with a passage through it about longitude 137° ; it is on this passage, by the way, that Swift locates Lilliput. As for the second discovery, the land of dangerous natives (called at first Staaten Land, and later on New Zealand), Tasman and everybody else down to 1769 believed that it was the western edge of the Terra Australis itself : but there were no ardent exploring Governors after Van Diemen, and the South Pacific was left alone for many years. One Englishman, however, found his way Dampier. to Australia before the seventeenth century was over. William Dampier was one of a crew of buccaneers who thought profit might be made out of plundering Dutch traders in the Eastern seas, and came looking for safe harbourage on the New Holland coast. But both on that voyage and when sent from England with a King's ship, the "Koebuck," to explore the country deliberately, he found nothing desirable. The land was sandy and water- less, the natives were unfriendly and disgusting, the timber was stunted, and sharks were the only delicacy he could find to eat. So he went off to the tropical splendours of Timor and New Guinea, and Australia was left untroubled for another seventy years. It so liappened that during those years Cook. Britain was establishing herself as the ruling power at sea. And when at the close of the Seven Years' war our Admiralty had to find employment for a number of experienced sailors, the idea of using them on Cooh and Banks. 341 scientific explorations came into favour. In tlio first three years of peace three expeditions were sent to the Pacific, under Captains Byron, Wallis and Carteret, but all three kept to the tropics. In 1768, however, Lieutenant James Cook, who was taking a party of astronomers in the "Endeavour" to Tahiti to observe a transit of Venus, was ordered to make search during his return voyage for the Terra Australis. He found no signs of it for seventeen hundred miles south of Tahiti ; then, turning west, he came upon land near Tasman's second dis- covery, and followed its shores riglit round till he had proved that it was only a couple of islands Next he meant to explore Tasman's first-seen land. But close to the Tasmanian coast a southerly gale drove him from Iiis course, and on April 19, 1770, ho sighted the long stretch of sandhills at Australia's south- eastern corner. At once he determined to make north along this new land. On the 28th he anchored in Botany Bay, and spent a week there trying to find out something about the country and the natives ; then he sailed north again, observing the coast closely, and nearly lost his ship on the Barrier Beef above Cairns ; and finally, coming round Cape York into waters already charted by the Dutch, he learnt that the new coast line he had just discovered must be the eastern side of New Holland, and took posession of it for Britain by the name of New South Wales, Cook tliought little of his discovery. He Banks. even apologized to the Admiralty for not finding something better; and when sent out again he spent his time in the same old useless hunt for a continent between New Zealand and South America. But on the " Endeavour," working as botanist of the expedition, was a rich young man much interested in science, Joseph Banks by name ; and he did not forget New South Wales so easily. He had been most active in exploring Botany Bay, and in his enthusiasm seems to have exaggerated what he really saw there — for on his authority it was stated again and again in England tliat round the bay there was " abiiudance of grass " and " the finest meadows in the world," not to men- tion " a deep, black mould, fit for the production of grain of any kind." This was a very different story from Dampier's, and from the telling of it dates European interest in the future of Australia. Banks became, in later years, influential and prominent among British scientific men, and was made President of the Eoyaf Society. But his interest in Australia grew always. It was due to his persuasion tliat Englislunen_ settled there at all ; 342 Banks s Services to Australia. only his influence prevented its abandonment within twenty years. Everyone — Ministers at home, Governors and settlers out there — consulted him about all sorts of things. He prac- tically chose most of the early Governors, and provided them with farming experts to improve the land and explorers to enlarge its bounds. For fifty years he was the best friend Australia had, and it is hardly too much to say that he alone secured it for the Empire. CHAPTEK 111. THE EARLY YEARS (1788—1831 : PHILLIP, MACQUARIE, WENTWORTH). Governors : Captain Arthur Phillip, R.N 1788—1792. Captain John Hunter, R.N 1795—1800. Captain Philip King, R.N 1800—1800. Captain William I'.hgh, R.N 1806—1808. Major-General Lachlan Mac(juarie 1810 — 1821. jNtajor-General Thomas Brisbane 1821 — 1825. Lieutenant-General Ralph Darling 1825 — 1831. Licntenanf- (,'o7^ernorft {Tasnuinia) : Colonel Thomas Davey, R.M 1813—1817. Colonel WilUam Sorell 1817—1824. Colonel George Artliur 1824—1836. Tlu' years sucrccdiiiLi,' ('(Kik's first voyage Colonising wore for England full of political turmoil, Projects. culminating in the war of American Inde- pendence. And one of the first results of that war was to flood England with convicted criminals. Since the days of Charles I it had been the English custom to make use of certain classes of prisoners by sending them to work as bondmen in the West Indies and the colonies of Xorth America : when those colonies revolted they naturally ceased to take tlie prisoners, who accumulated in the gaols at home. In 1779 a committee of the House of Commons was discussing how best to dispose of them, when Joseph Banks suggested the use of them to occupy the new lands Cook had discovered; but nothing could l;>e done just then. When the war ended, the feeling of the successful revolutionists against those of their fellow-countrymen who had remained loyal to Britain was so strong that homes had to be found for the lovalists outside the United States ; and James Matra, who .^44 The Convict Setttemeni. had sailed on tlie " Endeavour," proposed to plant them in Xew South Wales as landowners, l^ringiu^- over Chinese and Kanakas to work for them. The French, however, were also thinking about making a settlement in the South Pacific, and their navy was then strong enough to annex any unprotected British outpost. Matra, therefore, asked the British Govern- ment for protection, and after much bargaining it was agreed that Britain would guarantee the new settlement from harm if it would accept convict labour instead of Kanakas. But the bargaining had taken so long that all the loyalists had settled elsewhere (see pp. 78, 263, 278) ; and so the actual peopling of New South Wales began with convicts only. On May 12, 1787, the first fleet sailed Phillip. from England for Australia. It was com- manded by Captain Arthur Phillip, whom Lord Sydney, the British Home Secretary, had specially chosen for the work — an ailmirable choice for a most difficult task. He had to take safely to an unknown country, twelve thousand miles off, inhabited only by probably hostile natives, more than one thousand people, most of whom were criminals and liad no intention of working more than they could help. By their work alone he had to grow crops, raise cattle, l)uild houses, create a settlement from the very beginning ; also lie had to keep them in order. After an eight months' voyage he reached ]jotany 15ay, to find that Banks had been badly mistaken about its fine meadows and rich soil. Its shores were nothing but swamps and sand, and the bay itself an unsafe anchorage. A noble harbour was soon found close by, and on one of its coves he began to build the town of Sydney; but along its rocky shores no successful farming could be done, and when he at last did discover fertile soil at the head of it he dis- covered, too, that there was not a single farmer among the rnen he had brought out. But we neetl not consider his troubles in Obstacles to detail. He and his successors for the next Success : twenty years were concerned almost entirely amine. ^^^-^^^ "^^^^^ problems — the difficulty of pro- curing food and the difficulty of maintaining discipline. For a long time food had to be imported from South Africa and China, and the whole settlement was again and again put on short rations. Store ships were wrecked ; ships that brought more convicts arrived safely. Phillip explored the country inland, and found a fine river (the Hawkesbury) some forty miles away, on which he gradually settled farmers ; but their crops were often destroyed by floods, and good harvests paid better The New South Wales Corps. 345 when turneci into spirits than when sold a.s Hour. The (iovernor had also at the earliest possible moment occupied Norfolk Island, which proved so fertile that he was almost persnaded to transfer the whole colony thither. Some food reached Sydney from that quarter, but the colony did not become self-supporting until after 1807. The difficnlty of maintaining discipline The Convicts, was even harder to surmount. In the first place, the convicts were a very mixed lot. Men were transported in those days for political offences, as well as for crimes we now think trivial, and it was practically impossible to deal justly with an indiscriminate crowd of murderers, forgers, poachers, pickpockets, republicans a,nd Irish " Home Eulers." The evident remedy was to isolate the different classes, and the early Go\ernors encouraged as much as possible exploration along the coast, in order to find other places where a small convict population could be settled. The important points were a good harbour to ensure commu- nications by sea, a fertile patch of soil to provide the settle- ment with food, and a belt of barren or rocky country inland to prevent the prisoners from escaping that way. So young ad^•enturers were allowed to go where they liked by sea ; but journeys inland from Sydney, past the Hawdcesluiry (beyond whicTi rose a rocky tableland cut up with gorges fifteen hun- dred feet to tw(t th(Uisaiid feet deeji) were discouraged — the barrier was too useful to be broken. Much more uncontrollable than the con- The New South victs were the convict- guards. Phillip had Wales Corps. y^Qf\ marines, but they were too valuable to be spared from home for long. So the British Government allowed a Major Grose to raise a regiment for the special y»urpose of maintaining order in New South Wales. Now, men become soldiers usually iu the hope of fighting and winning glory — that, at least, is one of their motives. But men who enlisted in this " New South Wales Corps " could have no such motives : they could never be anything but gaolers. So it came about that the officers of the corps joined it purely as a monetary speculation, hoping to make fortunes in Australia as other men had done in India ; while the rank and file were men of such bad character that no real regiment would admit them. Not long after the corps reached Sydney Phillip left, and Major Grose took charge till the next Governor arrived — which was, unfortunately, some years later. The hold the corps thus gained on the colony was not relaxed for twenty years. Phillip's plans and regulations were cast 346 Explorations of Bass and Flinders. aside; the officers o-ranted themselves what o;ood land there was, took the best convicts to work it, and sold the produce to the community at exorbitant prices. Nothing, they found, brought in such high profits as " rum " (the name given to spirits of all kinds). They imported it : they taught the farmers liovv to distil it.* When Governor after Governor tried to prohibit its sale, they disobeyed and defied them. Their friends in England procured Governor Hunter's recall in 1800 ; their own ingenious torments drove his successor. King, to resign : against Bligh the unshakable tliey mutinied, and held him prisoner for two years. Not till they were recalled from the colony was there any cliance of orderly growth and genuine prosperity. Two episodes only of the time deserve Fhnders. special notice. One was the exploring work of George Bass and Matthew Flinders along the Australian coast. Bass in 1797 took a whale-boat along the shore-line south and west to Western Tort, destroying thereby the illusion (shared by (^ook and most other people ui> to tiiat time) that Tasmania was simply the southern end of Australia. In 1798 he and his friend Flinders mapped the Tasuumian coast completely, explornig the rivers Tamar and Derwent on their way. Within the next five years Flinders (for Bass went off to Chili and was never heard of again) made a careful survey of the whole c(jast-line from Cape Leeuwin past Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria, meeting on his way a French exjiedition tliat Napoleon had sent to spy out the new land. For the F'rench were mucli interested in Australia. They were exjiloring tlic neigh- bouring seas in Cook's time ; a French shi]) was only a week l)ehind Phillip at Botany Bay ; an expedition in 1792 left French names all over southern Tasmania, and the one that Flinders met did the same between Ca[»e Howe and tlie Leeuwin — but here the English names have been replaced wherever Englishmen were the first discoverers. And when Flinders sailed for home in 180:'), and had to touch at Mauritius {>icc p. 755), the F'rench Governor imprifconed him and sent his maps to Paris, where they were published as French discoveries with F>ench names. The immediate result of FTinders' work was that Governo]- King, partly from feai- of F'rencdi annexation, and partly to isolate the most troublesome of his convicts, made settlements on the Derwent and Tamar, which afterwards became the towns of Hobart and Launceston. Hunter had already made The superintendent uf the great gaol owned the public-house outside its Foundation of the Shcepfarming Industry. 347 one at Newcastle, at the mouth of the viver which bears his name : and tlie home authorities attempted to occupy Port Phillip for the same purpose, but -the party they sent out grew disgusted with it, and went to Hobart instead. The second episode, the mutiny against Bligh and Bligli, brings us in contact with the founder Macarthur. of Australia's greatest industry. John Mac- arthur M^as a lieutenant in the New South Wales Corps, and got large grants of farming land in Grose's time. But he was an experimenter at heart, and soon came to the conclusion that the colony was admirably suited for sheep. He imported from the Cape Colony a few of the rare and valuable Spanish merino breed, obtained more from the flocks of King G-eorge III, and persuaded the British authorities to make Governor King grant him a block of valualJe land which had previously been reserved for State cattle. At the same time he sympathised with and supported his old Corps in all its quarrels with the Governors. Conse- quently, when Bligh came out resolved to crush the Corps, Macarthur and he became at once bitter enemies. At a critical moment Bligh put Macarthur under arrest. Macarthur called the Corps to his aid ; its C(jmmander Major Johnston, marching his men to Government House, seized and deposed Bligh ; and for two years the Corps' officers ruled the colony at their will. But that was tlieir last exploit. The Macquarie. British Government, scandalised at such open defiance of authority, determined to make a clean sweep of the old administration. Hitherto they had chosen naval men for Governors, as good discipli- narians who could keep a gaol in order ; and their plan had failed, they thought, because the soldier-garrison resented the rale of a naval officer. In future a soldier was to command ; and appointments in Australia soon became tlie usual reward of men who had done good work in the Peninsular War. Moreover, the place was to be a gaol no longer. The trans- ported convict, instead of being kept always under severe restraint, was to be encouraged to earn his freedom as soon as possible by good conduct, and might then settle down as a prosperous and respected citizen. Colonel Lachlan Mac- quarie, the first of the soldier-governors, was enthusiastic about this idea ; the troubles of his ten years' rule came about chiefly because his encouragement of " emandpists " (the freed convicts) was resented by the officials and ex-officers of the Corps who were still the most influential settlers. 348 Macquarie's Poticij. Not being a gaoler, Macquarie at once set The Inland to work to open up new land for settlement. Plains. The Blue Mountains, that barren range beyond the Hawkesbury, which had hitherto been the colony's western boundary, were soon crossed ; Blax- land, avoiding the gorges which had entangled his few prede- cessors, clinil)ed and kept to the liighest ridge of the plateau, and came down on tlie other side into well-watered, grassy valleys. Ev^ans, following Blaxland's track (wliich is still used by main road and rjiilway), eniergetl on nolde plains and found two fine rivers running into the interior, to which lie gave the Governor's two names. A few years later John Oxley opened up more plain country along another large river, the Peel ; and in the upshot Macc[uarie, who had found the settlement measuring fifty milco by forty, extended it to three hundred miles by four liundred before he left. Over this territory he began to weave a The network of roads and to build schools and Emancipists. Lliurches for the convenience of settlers. Also, he began to reconstruct local society Ijy aecting also the western coast on his Avay home, and reached England full of enthusiasm about a. noble river he had seen there — the Swan. Now England in those years was astir with philosophies of reform. The coming leaders in politics and literature discussed and advocated the reform of nearly everything ; and one of their favourite proposals was the founding of new colonies, in which their theories might be carried out without hindrance. So the news of this fertile but empty region within the British dominions was very wel- come. One of the reformers, James Peel, planned a novel colony at once. The Government should give him and his friends four million acres in Western Australia, to which he would send out at least ten thousand peopleand set them tohorse and cattle breeding, and the growing of sugar, flax, cotton and tobacco. The Government had no idea of being so generous. Jame. • i > .• * gration. The immigrants of Brisbane s time were young men with money, who took up land of their own ; consequently, as Wakefield truly said, no one coldd get free men to work for him, and convict labour was not satisfactory for many reasons. At Bourkc's suggestion, therefore, half the money received from land sales was used to pay the passage of immigrant artizans and labourers. In a few years the new- comers had taken over most of the trades that had i)reviously been left to convicts or ex-convicts, and it was fijund possible to abolish the "assigned servant" syHtem. At the same tbne Bourke was constantly urging the homo Goverinuent to look after its own criminals instead of Hooding Australia with them: the House of Commons appointed a Committee to make thorough inquiry, and its reports showed that England benefited little by transportation, wliile the colonies were being demoralized. A few large landowners in Australia at first feared that, when there were no more convicts, labour would become scarce and dear. But the colony was at the same time de- manding self-government by an elected legislature ; " no one," said leading members of the House of Commons, " would let a convict colony govern itself"; the choice was quickly made, and in 1840 transportation to the mabdand of Australia was abolished. The inlluence of the West and South Aus- The Lands of Iralian experiments definitely showed itself the Colony, in the development of the land question. Brisbane and Darling, as has been already said, granted land to settlers in proportion to their expendi- ture and the number of their " assigned servants," besides selling it at five shillings per acre for country land and a little more for land near Sydney. Outside the " settled districts " — " the nineteen counties," surveyed within a radius of about one hundred and fifty miles from Sydney — no land could be disposed of. Bourke was ordered to grant no more land — those who wanted some must buy it ; and soon after ihe n2 356 The Beijimmigs of Victoria. founding of South Australia the price was raised to twelve shillings per acre, in order not to compete with that colony. But while this price was not unfair for farm- lands near townships, it was manifestly an absurd one for the great areas of pasturage needed by stockowners. So they began to move beyond the " settled districts " into the ill-watered plains of the Darling-Muiray basin, " squatting " on a well-grassed area till the grass gave out and the water- holes were dried up, and then moA'ing on to another. They were trespassers, but tliat did not matter : the Government could not afford to ruin the wool industry by prosecuting them. Bourke, however, compromised % dividing the " unsettled" region into pastoral districts, and charging each squatter £10 for a licence to trespass within a district. Under this system nearly the whole of the Darling-Murray basin was by 1843 in the occupation of a few hundred squatters. By that time the Colony had acquired a Batman and new province. Arthur's Tasmania, as has Fawkner. been said, was not an inviting liome for free men. Tlie colonists began to look else- where, and naturally bethought themselves of the little- known coast-belt across Bass Straits. Twice already attempts to occupy it had failed because the pioneers had pitched on unpromising localities. But in 1834 the Hentys, who had come in the first place to Western Australia and moved tu Launceston, settled on Portland Bay as a depot for pro- visioning their whaling ships. Almost aithe same time John Batman, already notal)le for liis exploits against bushrangers and blackfellows, formed an association to occupy Port Phillip : the next June his ship lay in Yarra mouth, and he was bargain- ing with the blacks for nearly one thousand square miles of land. Scarcely had he left the bay to sail for Hobart, where he hoped to persuade Arthur into confirming his purchase, when Fawkner, a Launceston journalist, brought another party across the straits, sailed into Port l*hillip and up the Yarra, and pronqjtly made a settlement at tidewater head without troubling himself about blackfellows or governors. Of course disputes followed. Batman The Settlement claimed the ground by light of discovery and of Port Phillip. purchase, Fa^vkner by right of occupation. Governor Arthur said it was beyond his jurisdiction. Governor Bourke, as his* duty was, warned all parties that they were trespassing. The Britisli Government lorbade the occupation altogether. Then Bourke who, in dealing with the colonists, had been bound to obey orders, The Grant of Refresentative Government. 357 showed his common-sense by persuading the Colonial Oltice to give way. The men were there, he said, and would stay there, in spite of any regulations ; it would be l^etter to legalise their position and secure control of the settlement. So in 1836 an administrator was sent to Port Phillip, and the next year Melbourne was founded. Fawkner and his friends bought land there and became the fatliers of the city, and Batman's party were given large areas for pasturage in the noble plain country west of Geelong. While all this was happening on the Mitchell's south coast, the inland regions of the new Explorations. settlement were being opened up by the ex- plorations of Sir Thomas Mitchell. When Bourke came out, the known territory of Eastern Australia was shaped something like half a spider ; from its body, the "Nineteen Counties," Cunningham's tracks went north, (Xxley's and Sturt's north-west and west, and Hume's south- west. Mitchell, as surveyor-general, determined to connect these struggling linos. He began by completing the survey of the Upper Darling and its tributaries : in 1836 he connected Oxley's Lachlan with Sturt's JMurrumbidgee and Murray, iden- tified the mouth of the Darling, and turned back up the Murray towards the route taken by Hume {sec pp. 348-9). Then ho struck south by the Loddoii to the Wimmera through country that threw him into raptures ; " of this Eden " he says, " it seemed I was the only Adam," and much more equally poetical. Eventually he emerged at Portland Bay, scaring the Hentys considerably, and made his way ]>ack to Sydney across the upper Loddon and the Goulburn, " over tlowery plains and green hills, fanned by the breezes of early spring." No Avonder tluit population soon followed in his tracks ! By 1842, therefore, New South Wales was The Constitution a well-rounded, fast-growing colony, free from of 1842. the curse of transportation and apparently blessed with large areas of good land. So Wentworth and his friends obtained at last their demand for self-government, and the nominee Council of Darling's and Bourke's time was changed to one of thirty-six: members, twenty- four of whom were elected by such colonists as had either £200 worth of laud or lived in a house wortli £20 a year. To this Council was given full power of legislation within the colony, and full control of all revenues except those received from land ; and, as the high qualification for voters made the squatting and landowning interest predominant in it, land questions from the first took up most of its time. Wentworth, 358 The Squatters. as spokesman for the squatters, demanded low prices and local control ; it was grotesque, he said, to offer them pasturage at £l an acre, and unjust that Gipps and they themselves should not be able to hx the Scinatters. the price of land in their own colony. Gipps admitted the first charge, but argued that there was no need to sell the outback lands at all yet. As for the second, he denied altogether that the Colony's lands belonged to the few settlers who happened to be in it ; they had been secured for the Empire by the use of British troops and the naval strength of Britain, and ought to remain under British control for the good of the Empire; indeed, lie thought })ritain was generous in devoting all hind moneys to expenditure within the Colony. It is probably lucky that (5i})ps held this view personally. For every Ih'itish politician and the British rarliament agreed with him, while the ( 'olonial Legislature was unanimous against him ; so that his neutrality would have turned against the Home authorities all that bitter feeling whicli was, in fact, concentrated upon him. One of his strongest opponents was Eobert Lowe, afterwards Viscount Sheibrooke ; and those who have read Lowe's speeches against the Ileform Bills of the sixties {see p. 162) can imagine the acrid vigour of his attack when he was younger and less restrained ])y liis surroundings. Gipps, who had to be his own Prime JMinister without the advantage of being able to reply in debates, fought on till Sir Bobert I'eel's resignation in l846 established a Liberal Ministry in Down- ing-street, and filled the Colonial Olfice with Wakelield's friends ; then he resigned and went home to die. The new regime was inclined to give Aus- The " Exiles " and tralia nearly all it wanted. Gipps' successor, the Anti-Trans- ^j^. (jharles Fitzroy, cared only for an easy por a ion eague. j.^^^ _^^^^^| ^|^^ Council soon controlled the finances almost absolutely, while the squatters were given a lease of their runs with the right to buy them later on at the bare value of the land. The colonists did not know, how- ever, that it was intended to exact a price for this freedom, and were aghast when it was proposed at home to revive trans- portation. The squatter-led Council, indeed, rather favoured the proposal, since it would supply them \vith more cheap labour ; but the townsfolk and artizans, whose interests did not lie in that direction, and who were already proud of their new home, resented the idea savagely. Earl Grey, the new Colonial Secretary, began by sending out " exiles " — men who, after a term of imprisonment at home, had received a The End of Transportation. 359 pardon conditional on their going to some British Colony and staying there. As far as Australia was concerned, tliey were free, and their entry couhl not be prevented ; but wlien Earl Grey went a step further and sent out ticket-of-leave men, the whole Colony was at once in an uproar. When the first ship bringing these men anchored in Port Jackson, the Sydney townsfolk crowded to the landing-place to resist the disembarkation of its passengers. Melbourne followed suit, and soon it became known that the same scheme liad been tried at Capetown in South Africa and had been resisted in the same way {see p. 490). Tlie ships were quietly sent on to ]\loreton Bay, where labour was badly needed on any terms. But since the question had been brought up again, it must be settled once for all, thought the Sydney men ; tliey formed an Anti-Transporta- tion League, forced the Council to pass resolutions refusing flatly any kind of convict under any conditions, and includecl Tasmania within tlie sphere of their operations. Since Governor Arthur's time Tasmania The Freeing of had every year come more and more under Ihe Tasmania. tlmmb of " convictism." Franklin, Arthur's successor (better known in England after- wards as an Arctic explorer), tried vainly to reform tlie prisoners by mildness; Wilmot, who came next, theorized over them ; Denison liad superintended convicts in the Englisli dockyards, and was sent out to organise similar labour at tlie other end of the world. Moreover, theie Avas an excess of material t(j hand. Since the mainland was freed in 1840 the island had to take more than ever, until iiearly half her adult males were prisoners. In 1S4G it was proposed t(» abandon Xorfolk Island, which had hitherto been a depot for the worst cases — like Port Arthur, but more so — and transfer its inhabitants to Tasmania. That overstrained the free men's sufferance ; they practically drove Wilmot out of the colony, and forced Earl Grey to promise that transportation should be stopped. When he tried to evade the question they joined hands with the Sydney leaguers, bombarded Grey with petitions, and at last persuaded his successor, Sir John Pakington, to renounce formally and for ever the right to send convicts to any Australian colony. Western Australia, however, which was cut off from the other settlements by impassable deserts, was allowed to go on receiving them at its own request. AVhile the Sydney Council and townsfolk were occupied with these struggles against Gipps and Grey they had their hands full also with an internal quarrel. The settlers at 3(^0 Tlic SeparaUon of Victona. Port Phillip had from the first disliked their enforced con- nection with Sydney, and hankered after independence. The old colony was certainly overgrown. To The Separation administer from Sydney the local affairs of a Port Phillip. scattered population, stretching across an area eleven degrees by fourteen (about the size of of Gej'inany and Austria put together), was becoming im- possilde. In 1840 a British Commission recommended the division of this area for land purposes into three, with centres at Jirisbane, Sydney and Melbourne respectively. This would have been a fairly even partition, but would have included in the Port Phillip division lands, south of the Murrumbidgee, which were owned and had been settled by Sydneysiders years before Melljourne existed. Accordingly protests from Sydney caused an alteration of the boundary to that which still exists between New South Wales and Victoria, and Melbourne accpiired a lasting grievance. To the elected Council of 1843 Port Phillip sent a quarter of its members. P)Ut this concession was worse than useless. Mellxjurne business men would not leave their aflairs for five months to go and l)e outvoted at Sydney, so Sydney men had to be chosen; and when Earl Grey promised some sort of redress and then forgot all about it, the indignant Melbournians elected him, explaining that their member might just as well be in London as in Sydney for all the good he was. Immersed in his 'transportation scheme and eager to appease colonial feeling where he could, Grey asked the British Board of Trade (strengthened by three experts in colonial affairs) to report generally on the government of Australia. In 1849 the report was made. It reconmiended that Port Phillip be made a separate colony ; that the Councils of the various Colonies be allowed to draw up their own con- stitutions and submit them to tlie British Government ; that the land revenue be mainly used to establish a good scheme of local government ; and tliat customs, the post office, rail- ways, shipping and a few other subjects should be put under the control of a " General Australian Assembly." Tliis early attempt at federation was dropped there and then, but the rest of the report was embodied in an Act wliich the Imperial Parliament passed next year ; and in 1851 four colonies set to work to make constitutions — New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia and the new Port Phillip colony, hencefortli to be known as Victoria. CHAPTER V. COLD AND EXPLOEATIUNS. Ill more tlian one way the yeau 1851 is a tuiiiiug-point in Australian history. It saw the final veto put on transporta- tion to the Australian mainland ; it saw the meeting of the four Councils which were to draw u]) the new self-governing constitutions ; but, before either of these achievements, it witnessed the discovery of the first Australian gold-diggings. The search for gold has always a unique The attraction and overmastering fascination for men who of the Diggings, are not very stolid, or very self-controlled, or extremely well-contented with their lot. Foi- s<»m(' years after its first discovery in any country Jnen can find it lying on or close to the surface of the ground, nn'xcd with the sand or gravel of stjeani-beds, from which it is separated with very simple apparatus ; and there is always a market for it at a steady price. Of course, if men are stupid or very un- lucky they may not find it at all. On the other hand, they may find enough in half-an-hour to make them rich for life ; and a quiet, persevering digger, who uses his common-sense, usually manages to keep himself going till he hits upon a nugget or rich patch. When the surface gold has been all taken, mining for the underground deposits becomes as i)rosaic and expen- sive as any other sort of mining ; but the first few years on a new diggings are full of excitement and adveiiture, and attract reckless and discontented and venturesome spirits from all the world over. In 1848 there had been a rush of this sot " Rushes " ^^ California, and among the adventurers from Australia was one Edward Hargravcs. He could not help noticing, as he worked in the Californian gullies, how. like they were to the gulHes of the Macquarie River below Bathurst ; the likeness haunted him, and drove him back to 362 The Goldflelds of Victoria and New South Wales New South Wales ; and on February 12, 1851, he found gold in Summerhill C*reek. Up and down the valleys he went, dis- covering gold everwhere ; then back to Sydney to bargain with the Government ; and by June every tributary of the Macquarie, and gullies from end to end of the Di^dding Range, were full of farmers and labourers and townsfolk of every profession. The excitement spread to Victoria. Melbourne, in the first pride of its freedom from Sydney rule, found its population disappearing into the hated northern colony, and offered a reward of £200 for the first gold found in Victoria. On the instant came the response. Before the end of the year the New South Wales fields were half-forgotten for the renown of Ballarat and Mount Alexander and Bendigo, where men came trooping in, a hundred a day, and made £30 to £40 a day for weeks at a time. Melbourne and Geclong were empty ; the squatters' sheep had no shearers, the farmers' wheat had no reapers ; little Tasmania lay almost deserted,for eleven thousand men crossed the Straits in seven months. Bread went up to 20d. the quartern loaf in Melbourne, and Avas far dearer on the diggings. And early in 1852 the crowds of Australian diggeis were swam])ed in the crowds of immigrants from Europe and America, that nearly doubled the population of Victoria Avithin the first year, and (what was more important) intro- duced an undisciplined, non-British element which made it very difficult to keep order. In New South Wales, where the fields were The Immigrant scattered from end to end of the main range. Diggers. separated fi'om each other by hmidreds of miles of rough country, distant from Sydney, and frequented mostly by men who already belonged to the colony, there was Httle trouble. An inrush of ten or twelve thousand diggers was easily handled by a Government which already controlled a population of two hundred thousand. But the Victorian administration, only just formed, and designed for a scattered population of about seventy thousand, was suddenly confronted with crowds of excited immigrants swarming over gold-fields close to each other and to Melbourne ; a riot, say, at Mount Alexander would at once infect Ballarat on the one side and Bendigo on the other, and its leaders could have marched fifty thousand men against Melbourne within a week. Not all the diggers were turbulent. Those from England often brought their families, and showed an intention of settling The Enrela Stochodc. 363 down as residents. But 1848 had been a year of revolutions in Europe, mostly unsuccessful ; some of the immigrants, therefore, were refugees from the vengeance of the Govern- ments they had failed to overturn, and were in a mood to quarrel with any Government. The incoming Tasmanians, too, included many ex-convicts, and round the mass of diggers, who spent or lost their money as casually as they had won it, hovered a swarm of criminals preying on their care- lessness and ready for any ill-doing. Actual crime, of course, was not hard to deal with, because it was to the interest of the diggers themselves to prevent it, and they helped the officials wilHngly ; but should diggers and officials be at odds, order would not be easy to maintain. The occasion soon came. The New iSoutli '''stockadr" '^ Wales Government was taxing its diggers thirty shillings a month, and the Victorian followed suit. But the northern diggers were mostly local men, as has been said, and their money was only going to pay expenses in their own country ; of the southern a large majority were birds of passage, not at all interested in the welfare of the colony they happened to be in. Also the fee itself, though a mere trifle to a lucky digger, was large for an unlucky one. The British Government advised the Victorian Council to abolish this inequitable fee, and replace it by a duty on all exported gold ; only goldwinners would thus be taxed, and the money would be collected in Melbourne, where law could be enforced quietly. The Council did nothing. Then the miners began to riot ; Bendigo refused to pay more than ten shillings a month, and declined to obey a Council for which miners had no votes. Troops were sent out from England to restore order, and the arrival of a new Governor (the last one having made himself unpopular), was calming the malcontents, when a Ballarat miner was killed, and a corrupt magistrate refused to convict the murderer. There was a riot, and a rush to Ballarat of the discontented from other fields ; these formed themselves into a " Reform League," demanded the abolition of fees {"■ no taxation without repre- sentation " was their motto), and announced that men refus- ing to join them would not be protected against violence. Almost immediately the movement fell under the control of political refugees, mostly foreigners, who seized the opportunity to proclaim an independent " Republic of Victoria," and fortified themselves in a stockade on the Melbourne road. This development, however, alienated the large body of diggers ; 364 The Transformation of Australia. a small force of soldiers stormed the stockade early on a Sunday morning, and the revolt was at an end. Hotham, the recently arrived Governor, soon took measures to remedy the miners' legitimate grievances. The proposed ex- port duty on gold became law ; the fee was lowered to twenty shillings a year, and every man who paid it was given a vote for his diggings. But the " Eureka Stockade," though foolish and un-Australian from start to finish, became and remained for many years a watchword of liberty. It had been the im- potent result of a foreign revolt against a locally elected Council, and the soldiers who took it were called in by that Council ; the popular imagination transformed it, illogically enough, into an Australian Bunker Hill {see p. 09), a brave uprising of Victorians against British military rule. Just for that reason it has needed more detailed explanation tlian its actual importance deserved. The Trans- "^'^^^ colonies in which gold was found wore forraationof not the only ones to profit l)y tlie discovery. Australia. Tasmania, though it lost a tliird of its popula- tion, yet was cleaner thereby, since it tlius got rid of many ex- convicts ; and Tasmanian vegetables and timber fetched high pi'ices on the diggings. So did South Australian wheat ; and New South Wales profited almost as much by selling cattle and sheep to the Victorian diggers as by the gold found on its own fields. Australia began to pass out of the pastoral and primitive stages of civilization ; the construction of railways began, and the founding of Universities and Museums ; cou- victism was barred out for ever, except among the far-distant West Australian fringe of settlers. And the constitutions, which but for the gold-discoveries would have been drawn up by and for a squatters' oligarchy, were now so shaped tliat with little alteration they have lasted through the successive developments of one of the most democratic governments in the world. Before we deal with these constitutional de- ' °"l841-1855 ^^' velopments, we must take up the history ot South Australia from the arrival of Governor George Grey in 1841. At that time the young colony was nearly bankrupt through the quarrels and misman- agement of his predecessors. His first remedy was to cut down all expenses, especially on public works, so that the labourers had no inducement to stay in Adelaide. At the same time work was being provided for them in the country ; for, Sir George Grey and South Australia. 365 although the Grovernment was still compelled to charge a high price for land, private owners were eager to get rid of theirs at any sacrifice, and young New South Wales squatters were cross- ing the border to breed stock along the lower Murray. Rich mines, also, first of silver-lead, then of copper, were discovered in the ranges ; and, whereas in 1841 four-sevenths of the popu- lation lived in Adelaide, four years later less than a third were townsfolk. By that time Grey had been sent ofl hurriedly to New Zealand (see p. 442). But South Australia remained quietly prosperous, and in 1851 was given a partly representative Council like its eastern fellows. The explora- tions of E. J. Eyre (1838-41), and of Charles Sturt (1844-5) seemed to disclose a permanent barrier of waterless desert on the west and north ; indeed, the hardships of Sturt's Murray voyage {sec p. 349) would have passed for pleasures in that fiery journey to Central Australia which shattered his health and left him permanently blind. So South Australians devoted themselves to making the most of their strip between the Murray and St. Vincent's Gulf. The gold-rush passed them by, but brought great profit to their farmers ; and the quieter of the lucky Victorian diggers, who preferred to put their money into land but found Victorian soil mostly pre-empted by squatters, invested their gains in farms in South Australia. So the colony, small in area and occupied in Constitlftions smaller holdings than its neighbours, became the home of a calm, but — for the times — extreme, democracy. The Constitution it chose in 1855 pro- vided for an Assembly elected by all adult male residents, and a Council elected in one l)ody by the whole colony, voters requiring a small property qualification. Victoria and Tas- mania also required a certain amount of property as a qualifica- tion for Council voters, but were divided into several elector- ates ; New South Wales, where Wentworth (now a strong Conservative), had still much influence, preferred that its Councillors should be nominated by the Governor — i.e., by the Ministry in office — for life. The Assembly in all these three colonies was to be elected by voters with a small property qualification. With a few alterations all four schemes, which had been devised in Australia, were accepted and made law by the British Parliament ; and in 1850 Australia east of 129° was free to administer its own internal affairs. Not yet, however, were the boundaries of the colonies finally settled. New South Wales, whose farming settle- 366 Thr Birth <>/ Qaccnslnnd. merits were still for the most part comprised within tlie " nineteen counties," had a flourishing offshoot further north The birth of i^^ ^^^^ valley of the Brisbane, separated by Queensland, steep hill country from the great squatting areas 18.39. Qf i[^Q Darling Downs. As long as the squatters maintained their connection with Sydney by the inland routes southwards, Brisbane remained unimportant. But when they took to using the eastern passes to the coast, the " Moreton Bay district " individualized itself, and began to demand separation for the same reasons which had actuated Port Phillip. The Colonial Office during the forties was in favour of making Brisbane the centre and capital of a colony running back from the coast between 26'^ and 30°S., and founding yet another colony further north from a base at Port Curtis. But this last was to be a convict settlement, and Australian feeling forbade it. In the end, after much bargaining and petitioning, New South Wales consented to let go her territory north of the Dumaresq River, provided that all the land as far as Cape York came under the new colony's rule ; and so was born the colony of Queensland, which is still somewhat hampered by its magnificent distances and by the fact .that its northern tropical area has to be administered from a capital down in the south-eastern corner, nearly a thousand miles away. Explorations • "^^^ great northern colony thus created Leichhardt, was not quite unknown. As early as 1829 a Gregory, Stuart, military station liad been established at Port 1843—1862. Essington, almost in the centre of Australia's north coast, but within the jurisdiction of New South Wales. When Port Phillip grew restive in 1843, the New South Wales Council thought to balance the probable loss of that district by opening up this half-forgotten northern appendage, and organized an expedition under Sir Thomas Mitcliell to reach Port Essington from Bourke. While red tape delayed its start- ing, Ludwig Leichhardt took an expedition of his own (1843-5) from the Darling Downs to the foot of Cape York Peninsula, across to the Gulf of Carpentaiia, and thence to Van Diemen's Gulf, passing for two-thirds of his journey througli fine pastoral country. Mitcheirs expedition { 1845-6), too, though it wandered through central Queensland without ever reaching the northern sea, discovered excellent grasslands there. A later trip (1848) in which Leichhardt hoped to traverse the continent from the Darling Downs to Perth ended in disaster ; the whole party simply disappeared, and no trace of it has ever been found Pegging out Claims. 367 since. But A. C. Gregory, who was sent out to look for the miss- ing men, zigzagged still more across the inland plain (1855-8) and finally came out into South Australia via the lake country which had hitherto been thought barren. His report of it stimulated John McDouall Stuart, a pupil of Sturt's, to in- vestigate the lakes carefully, and at last to strike due north for the Timor Sea ; two years saw failures, but in 1862 he won through. Meanwhile Victoria had not been idle. To ^""'isecT-^l^^'"'' ^^'"^ wealthy and ambitious men of Melbourne it seemed a generous and patriotic use for their money to explore still further the resources of Australia ; and they began by establishing a depot on Cooper's Creek (near the terminus of Sturt's disastrous 1844-5 journey), from which fresh exploiations might start. But they chose their leader badly, and his impatience ruined cveiything. Biurke quarrelled with his subordinates, would not wait for his supplies, and made a mad dash for the Gulf of Carpentaria — absolutely contrary to his instructions — with only three companions. They reached it, and so beat Stuart in the transcontiiuMital race by more than a year ; but accidents, delays, and mis- managenu'nt ])reveuted them from meeting the main body again on their return, and three of the four, including Burke and Wills, died of starvation simply because they did not know how to utilize the food-resources of the bush. i Directly the news of their disap})earance ^''" Uif liiid" °^ leached Melbourne, relief expeditions were organized with all speed ; these, starting from north, east, south, and south-west towards the same goal, opened up the greater part of the still unexplored back-country, and set the various colonies agape for the possession of such valuable land. Victoria, of course, could not hope for any addition to her territory, but her adventurous younger sons made cattle-stations all over the new lands, and developed much of western Queensland with Victorian gold. South Australia demanded that her boundaries should be extended to the north coast, so as to give her the regions opened up by the South Australian, Stuart. Queensland objected that such an extension would cut her ofi' from the rich plain-country south- west of the Gulf, which her explorer Leichhardt had discovered. In the end a compromise was arranged ; Queensland gained three degrees of longitude westward ; South Australia received a strip of country on her west which still belonged, nominally, to New South Wales ; and the area north of lat. 26° and 368 Western Australia. between long. 129° and 138°, henceforth called the " Northern Territory," was given into South Australia's charge, but not united to her territory. Western ^^^ colony lay slumbering all these years — Australia, and many more— far from all the turmoil of 1835—1899. ^}je diggings and the clamour of legislative debate. Western Australia (which for practical purposes con- sisted of Perth and two or three townships near it, a military station at Albany on King George's Sound, and a couple of patches of settlement on the intervening coast) was for a long time hardly regarded as a colony at all ; it was rather an occupation of the territory just genuine enough to warn other nations off it. Grey in 1838-9 tried to explore its north- western districts, and Eyre in 1840-1 toiled along the shores of the Great Bight ; but it so happens that both on the north- west and on the south, Western Austraha is edged by a barren coast-belt, the more fertile country lying some distance inland. So the colonists reconciled themselves to isolation, and, since they could not compete for free immigrants against the greater attractions of the eastern settlements, accepted the British Government's offer of convicts. This class of labour kept the colony going for eighteen years ; but its use angered the other Australian colonies, and Victoria even proposed to boycott the offending community. For this and other reasons transporta- tion was abolished there also in 18G8, and the colony was given the sort of government that New South Wales had in 1842. Slowly the area of settlement began to enlarge. John Forrest discovered the southern belt of fertile soil, his bjother some years later opened up the northern ; in this gold was found at Kimberley, and prospects of a second field were re- ported eastwards of Perth. Stirred with the hope of better fortunes, the colonists (all Australia backing them) asked and received self-government and the control of the whole huge area into which they had scarcely bitten (1890); almost immediately Coolgardie was discovered, and Kalgoorlie next, and field after field of patchy but enormous wealth. As in the eastern States the inrush of diggers, and the riches they produced, inspired every sort of enterprise. The older settled areas are now progressive farming districts ; agriculture is advancing almost up to the boundaries of the goldfields ; numbers of miners have settled on the land, numbers of farmers have an in- terest in the mines ; and increasing communication and com- munity of interests have donp much to modify the old an- tagonism^ between the miners and the agriculturists, CHAPTER Vr. SELF-GOVERNMENT. (1856-1900). It would be impossible to give here a thrneTcobnies. 'l^tailed account of the history of Australia during the forty years which followed the grant of the constitutions. Five small communities, each clustered round a seaport jealous of the other four seaports, made clumsy experiments in the management of huge, scantily populated areas of country, of whose quality and climatic con- ditions they understood but little. They were left almost entirely to themselves, for the British Government had hand(;d over control with a sigh of relief and a half-expressed wish not to be bothered with them again. The chief prol)lems with which they had to deal were connected with the land, im- migration, education, communications, and fiscal policy. That is, they had to find out how they might best (a) use the land of their colony to the best advantage : (b) induce settlers of the right sort from other countries to help them in doing so : {(■) train their children for the same work : {d) keep open communications with those who weie actually at work on tlie land, and with the rest of the world : (e) arrange taxation so as to make all the citizens comfortable, and as many as possible prosperous. Add to these five the problem of getting the parliament most capable of solving them, and we have the work with which, for those forty years, Australia principally occupied itself. But the attempt to deal with such questions all at once con- fused men's minds ^o much that no ^olon^• developed a definite 370 The Problem of the Land. party system, such as Great Britain possesses ; the leading poHticians were supported now by one set of men, now by another which had previously opposed them, and coahtions— - which, according to DisraeH, England does not love — have been a common phenomenon in Australian politics from the first. Ministries, in fact, that had no coalition at their back were mostly short-lived. New South Wales, in spite of several such arrangements, had twenty-eight Ministries in forty years, and South Australia forty-six (compare p. 449). The typical Land Act of the early seif- leeisfation governing period is the New South Wales Act of 1861. The old land-policy of settling farmers near the coast and leaving the out-back country to be leased by squatters was upset by the gold rushes. Gold might be found anywhere ; wherever it was found; a township sprang up, and food and fodder must be raised close at hand to supply it. So the squatter had to give up the best patches of his run to anyone who proposed to farm them, provided that the appli- cant guaranteed to live on his 1)lock and " improve " it by fencing and tillage. Many hard workers got farms i?i this way, aTid the colony prospered through their efforts ; but many idlers simply claimed ]>atches of the best soil or tlu^ best- watered land on a run, and waited till the worried squatter ])aid them to go away. The scpiatters, too, to guard against being thus victimised, cither persuaded a dummy selector to claim the patches they wished to retain for their OAvn use, or borrowed money from the banks to buy all they could, so leaving them- selves without any savmgs to keep them going when the seasons were bad. In spite of these and many other defects the system was maintained till 1885, when all runs leased from the State were cut in half, and the squatters given undisturbed tenure of one-half for a definite period of years ; and more recent Acts have introduced systems of leasing even the farm- lands rather than selling them, and of allowing people to take up only blocks which have been properly surveyed and valued. Victoria passed its Act of a similar character in 1862 : but the evils were not so patent, since the goldfields (which deter- mined the position of the townships, and therefore of the blocks required for farming) were not near the big stations ; the richer squatters, too,had been given their runs in the pioneer times, so they were not open to " selection." South Australia had no goldfields, and had already a law allowing the Govern- ment to resume leased land at six months' notice, so that it The Torrens Act. ■ 3-71 was easy to find farmland for anyone who wanted it. Queens- land had enormous vacant areas of pastoral country inland, and of farmland on the coast, so that it was many years before the interests of classes began to clash. The coastbelt, within and outside the tropics, was found suitable for the growing of cotton and considerable areas were planted chiefl} in Southern Queensland. Sugar cane plantations also were for nearly forty years successfully worked by " Kanaka " labour ; there were, however, few Kanakas in Queensland, and that name is a misnomer {see pp. 410, 761). One of the most useful land-laws in the world, ^''^ "A^t.""'^"" " Probably, stands to the credit of the first South Australian parliament. This M^as the Torrens Act, so called after its author, under which the owner of any piece of land may have his right to it registered in a Land Registrar's office, and so make it indisputable. If he sells it, or mortgages it, these transactions are also registered. As the other colonies have passed similar Acts, and most of the privately-owned land in Australia has been registered under them, a buyer of land can at once find out who owns it, and whether it can be legally sold to him, without the compli- cated researches and frequent disputes which often accom- pany land sales in older countries {see also p. 459). The immigration problem was a double one Imniigration. — how to get the right sort of immigi'ant, and how to keep out the wrong. Most of the colonies for many years " assisted " imniigration by paying out of public funds the passages from England of artizans and servants. This system had been inaugurated in New South Wales by Governor Bourke (see p. 355), and was continued till 1888, when politicians reckoned that enough immigrants could be obtained without assistance. South Australia dropped it about the same time, but Queensland, whose huge fertile areas are always hungry for settlement, went steadily on, as did Westein Australia. Victoria had ceased to give assistance very early, the gold-rushes bringing her all the immigrants slie wanted. Of one immigrant race Australia soon had Chinese enough. The Chinese came thronging in immigrants. .^ \i n ^ ii j- • i i r • after the nrst gold discoveries, and, by living under conditions that white men would not accept, and taking trouble that white men would not take, made themselves extremely unpopular. On several diggings anti-Chinese riots 3?2 Yellow Lahour and Education. broke out, and the cry " The Chinese must go " became a democratic watchword. But these early arrivals were not settlers, and did go of their own accord as soon as they had made enough money. In 1878, however, a fresh stream of Chinese began to flood the towns, settling down as market- gardeners and furniture-makers in dwellings that were usually crowded, dirty, and ill-drained. Sydney and Melbourne found themselves infested with Chinese, in whose quarters low- class whites were provided with all sorts of degrading vice. After several conferences between the Premiers of the various colonies (which incidentally paved the way for Federation), it was agreed to put a heavy poll-tax on Chinese immigrants; and within the last ten years, the immigration of other Asiatic races being also considered undesirable, all*new arrivals who are not certainly Europeans or white Americans have been made to pass an educational test which is so devised as to Iceep out the undesired. The third problem, the educational, was the Education. cause of many severe parliamentary fights and much ill-feeling. But the result was very much the same in all the colonies. Primary education is free, except in Tasmania. Every child must attend some school, unless it is being taught by a tutor or governess ; but public money is used only to support those schools which the State itself controls ; and in them no denominational form of religion may be taught by the State-paid teachers, though clergymen are allowed to have classes of children of their own church in the school-buildings, in some colonies during, in others after, school-hours. This compromise was accepted by all churches except the Roman Catholic ; that church prefers to teach its children entirely in schools of its own, and is aggrieved because no colony grants public money in their support. Otherwise education is not a partizan problem. Four Universities (Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Hobart), each receiving a grant of money from its own State Govern- ment, control higher education ; the road to these from the primary State schools is opened differently in different States, New South Wales preferring State High Schools, the other States giving scholarships which State school pupils may hold at private schools. " Technical " instruction in agriculture, mining, and various trades is well maintained in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, the other States being less forward in this particular. Raikvay iDeveh'pmcnt. %1^ The problem of providing communications, Railways. though hardly a political one (except in so far as railways and bridges might chance to be constructed more freely in districts whose members supported the Government of the day), had to be faced by the local parliaments. The population was too scattered and too small to permit the successful carrying out of the British system, under which the ratepayers of a district look after their own roads, and railways are made by private companies wherever they can hope to make a profit out of the traffic. The ])ig main roads, therefore, of eastern Australia had, before the coming of self-government, been made at first by convict labom-, then out of the revenue from land sales, in both cases under Government control ; and the parliaments, when they came, for many years retained responsibility for keeping them in lepair and for making new ones. In 184G men began to talk of lailways, and a company was foi'med in Sydney ; but before work was seriously started the gold rushes broke out and took away all the labourers, and in 1854 the two existing private comj^anies were bought out by the New South Wales Govern- ment, which has constructed all the lines in its State except two short ones on the southern and western border. In Mel- bourne, where the rich goldfields provided more private wealth, private companies were a little more successful, and one was not absorbed by the Government till 1878. The other States followed suit slowly ; in 1870 there were not a thousand miles of railway in all Australia ; but after 1875 construction went on rapidly, and in lOOO fifteen thousand miles were open for traffic. A great deal of this was not at first profitable, and the whole of it had been built with ]x)rrowed money fiftv years after the first Australian line was opened, nearly £i:i2, 600,000 (close on three-fifths of the whole public debt) had been thus borrowed, and only one of the States was really making a profit on its railways, over and above the interest charges which companies call profit. But the country bene- fited enormously ; traffic across the Dividing Range, on the inland side of which lie the large areas of fertile soil, has been simplified and cheapened, the produce of rich mines in out- of-the-way places has been easily brought to the seaboard, and the necessaries of life made readily procurable by the miners. One serious defect has arisen in some States from the fact that the chief city, in which the legislature sits, is a seaport ; the railways from the interior, instead of reaching the 374 Telff/mpJ/s and Tariffs. sea at the nearest or easiest point, have been made to converge as much as possible on the capital, which has thus absorbed practically the whole of the trade in the State, and has become over-swollen in proportion to the rest of the population.* Postal and telegraphic communication was Tefeg^aph Lhfe. *^^"^ ^^^® ^^^^ ^ P^^^^i^ matter. In 1856 mail- steamers were already running to and from England, and three Colonies had telegraph services. The great feat in this line stands to South Australia's credit. Poor and empty as she was in 1870, with a population about the size of Cardiff's administering a territory nearly as large as British India, she set to work to construct a telegraph line across Australia from north to south, through nearly two thousand miles of country that only one white man had ever crossed before, while everything needed for the work had to be fetched either from Adelaide or from Port Darwin. In less than two years the work was done, and the overland line connected with a telegraph cable from .lava through which messages could he sent to England. The money for this and most of the othei' Tariffs. great public works constructed in Australia was, as we have already seen, borrowed from British capitalists. But the money needed for carrying on the ordinary work of government must, of course, be raised from the resident population by some form of taxation. In any new country the simplest form of taxation is a duty on imports ; it is easily collected, because the few seaports can be properly supervised, while it might be very difficult to follow each separate resident to his home and collect money from him there. A " revenue " tariff, therefore — a list of duties on imported articles that would yield plenty of revenue — formed part of each Australian State's machinery from the beginning of self-government. And in New South Wales, which was inainly a farming and mining State, and which soon got into the bad habit of using as ordinary revenue the proceeds of its land sales, the tariff — until the eighties — was designed almost entirely to bring in revenue. But in Victoria farmlands were scarcer, and the immigrant diggers, when they had won enough gold, went into the towns and took up again their old trades ; they were quick to see that, by raising the duties on such im- ports as they themselves could produce, prices could be raised until the imported articles would become dearer than their pro- * See the note on Australian towns appended to this chapter. Conflicts between Upper and Lower Houses. 375 ducts, and they demanded incessantly through their repre- sentatives in parhament that this should be done. Of course men, who did not produce anything that could be thus pro- tected, had no desire to pay more than they could help for what they must buy ; so the fight waxed bitter, and even Governors were drawn into it and recalled for becoming partizans. In the end, however, Victoria became a highly protectionist colony, and all the others, except New South Wales, more or less adopted the same pohcy ; and even New South Wales, though ostensibly adhering to free trade, retained in her tariff several duties which were found to give a good deal of pro- tection to certain local industries. It is perhaps only natural that the most *\;efbrm ^^^ exciting political struggles of those forty years should have concerned the sixth problem, that of getting satisfactory parliaments. The " Upper Houses " ])iovided by the (Constitutions of 1850 were meant to be brakes on the legislative wheel, and came into conflict with the more ])opularly elected Assemblies over almost every new measure of imjKntance. The nominee chambers of New South Wah's and Queensland could be mastered, and were mastered on occasions when they were evidently thwarting the deliberate will of a majority in their States, by the nomination of additional miMnbers who favoui-ed the blocked reform. The elected (/ouncils were harder to manage, as their constituencies could not be widened except by an Act which they themselves must agree to pass. There was a great fight in Victoria in 1877, when, because the Council refused to pass estimates which included money for paying members of Parliament, the Gra- ham Berry Ministry dismissed nearly all the better-paid civil servants on what was for many years remembered as " Black Wednesday." The Governor sided with the Ministry, and was accordingly recalled by the Imperial Government : Graham Berry even went to England to ask that the State Constitution should be altered by the Imperial Parliament : but in the end the Council gave way, and members have ever since been paid. Still, that did not alter the narrow franchise for Council voters. The same difficulty has cropped up again, and not in Victoria only ; even in 1907 South Australia was in turmoil for many months because its Council, originally the most democratic of all, stood out against reforms for which the majority of the citizens had voted at several elections ; and that trouble was scarcely settled before Queensland went through a Ministerial crisis 376 Sir Henry Parkes and a general election, because its Council threw out an import- ant Bill. The truth is that the less democratic classes find it more and more difficult to elect to the Assemblies members who sympathise with them, and so, naturally perhaps, use the Councils to hamper the sometimes excessive radicalism of the Lower Houses. If the friction, which has occurred of late becomes recurrent there is a possibility that Upper Houses may disappear (in the States) altogether, as they have in most of the provinces of Canada {see p. 295). Some politicians, 0^ ^11 ^li© men who led parties and shaped and Australian administration during those forty Sir Henry Parkes. yg^rg few deserve lasting remembrance outside their own States. Sir John Robertson's name is connected with the New South Wales land legislation of 1861, and that of Sir Kichard Torrens with the admirable South Australian Act. William Bede Dalley, an eloquent lawyer and patron of young authors, came to sudden fame when in 1885, as acting-Premier, he dispatched the first -colonial contingent of troops to fight side by side with British troops at Suakin. George Higinbotham, " the highest type of intelligence and integrity yet vouchsafed to Australia," might have been her most notable political leader if he could have brought himself a little more into touch with the crowd ; as it is, he will be remembered cliiefiy be- cause of his strenuous protests whenever the Colonial Office seemed to be interfering with Victorian self-government. The one groat man, worth calling a statesman for his wide outlook and grasp of politics beyond as well as within Australia, was a farm-labourer from Warwickshire who kept a Sydney toy-shoj) in the forties, ran a daily newspaper in the fifties, and developed into the cleverest parliamentary leader and most effective speaker (in spite of great natural disadvantages) that Australia has yet known. To explain Sir Henry Parkes is impossible. His faults, both public and private, wore so many and so serious, that in one light he seems a compound of John Wilkes and Mr. Micawber. He was neither a master of finance jior an originator of reforms. But he had an almost unerring judgment about the usefulness of men and the timeliness of measures, and complete confidence in his judgment ; when he took up a cause, he carried it to victory, using colleagues or throwing them aside with equal indifference, handling Parlia- ment and the public with equal skill, conciliatory or defiant as he saw need, but never a backslider or a coward. He came into public life as a leader of the Anti- Transportation more- and his WorJc. 377 ment, fouglit Wentworth bitterly over his attempts to make the Constitution of 1856 ohgarchic, and not long afterwards quarrelled with his own constituents because they were blind to the value of assisted immigration. Taking office in 1866, he passed the colony's first useful Education Act, supplementing it in 1880 witli the still existing Act, which is a pattern for other States to follow; and in the same term of office (1878-1883, in coahtion with Sir John Robertson) he reformed the colony's electoral system, administered the first check to Chinese im- migration, and inaugurated valuable social reforms. His fourth Ministry (1887-1889) removed the State railways from pohtical influence to the control of expert Commissioners, subjected all important public works to the scrutiny of a non- partisan Committee, practically ended Chinese immigration, and carried through the first naval agreement with the British Admiralty. In his fifth (1889-91) he made Federation a certainty. Add to this record of public work — which may almost be called the permanent substructure of his State's political mechanism — his perpetual care to maintain sound constitu- tional principles in a country impatient of order and fond of experiment, and his power of forming lasting friendships with such men as Carlyle, Browning, Tennyson, and Bright; and we understand how, in spite of all his faults, he must still be reckoned the greatest Australian yet known, with the pos- sible exception of Wentworth. A NOTE ON AUSTRALIAN TOWNS. Australia has remarkably few towns of any great size. Only four in the whole Commonwealth— Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Brisbane — pass the one hundred thousand limit of population. Only eighteen more pass the ten thousand limit. And yet one of the most obvious faults about the settlement of Australia is the congestion of its inhabitants into small areas : for the two great cities, Sydney and Melbourne, are swollen out of all proportion to the country population for which they cater. They are, in fact, an illustration of the way in which trade has for too many years overshadowed production — the merchants, concentrated in the State's principal seaport, controlling State politics and public works, and forcing the producer to bring his goods to market where it suits them, not him. Sydney and its neighbourhood have attracted thirty-five per cent, of the inhabitants of New South Wales because it has been the seat of government; and the legislatiue — composed mainly of Sydney folk and dominated by Sydney interests — has so built and managed the railways as to brmg nearly all the State's produce to it for shipment, whether or no the growers had nearer and easier routes to other ports. Melbourne's history is much of the same kind ; but the shape of Victoria and the proximity of the great goldfields made the process a more natural one, so that the pro- portioQ — forty-two and a third per cent. — is even larger than Sydney's. 378 Note on Australian Towi Speaking roughly, there are three reasons for the existence of Australian towns. They are either ports or mining centres, or farming centres. If ports, they are usually on rivers which the sailing ships of fifty years ago could enter, and as high up as those ships could go. Melbourne and Brisbane are where they are for this reason : so are Maryborough, Bundaberg, and Rock- hampton in Queensland, most of the N.S.W. north-coast townships, and Launceston in Tasmania. And this has resulted in considerable incon- venience : for the larger steamers of to-day either cannot get up the rivers — in v/hich case goods have to be trans-shipped at the river mouth at great expense — or are brought up along dredged and excavated channels which were costly to make and costly to maintain. Only two towns in all Austra- lia are on good natm-al harbours, Sydney and Hobart ; there are other good harbours, but the vested interests of the old " head- of- navigation " townis, or the jealousy of the State capital, keep them idle. Of these Gladstone on Port Curtis is the most conspicuous ; Bowen on Port Denison, starved out by the superior nifluence of the inferior port, Townsville, is another ; while the neglect of Twofold Bay, once the port of the Monaro district, is due to the concentration of all inland trade in New South Wales on Sydney. A few ports — e.g., Fremantle (W.A.), Port Pii-ie (S.A.), Geelong (V.), Towns- ville (Q.) — make the best of poor natural harbourage because the districts at their back need ports so badly. Of the mining towns Ballarat and Bendigo in Victoria owe then origui to gold, Newcastle and Lithgow in N.S.W. to coal. Broken Hill to silver. New South Wales has no purely gold towns, the fields lying, as a rule, within reach of aheady established farmmg centres. Thus Ophir and the Turon diggings helped Bathurst to grow instead of becoming new centres them- selves. So Mount Morgan in Queensland, though the iwOte extent of tlic operations there makes a town of the place, is really a feeder to Rockhamp- ton ; but at Gympie and Charters Towers, to which no already established si;ttlement was handy, new towns sprang up and have become permanent. Gold is also responsible for Beaconsfield in Tasmania and Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia ; coi^per has to its credit only Cobar (N.S.W.) and Chillagoe (Q.) ; the N.S.W. im iield feeds the nearest farming centre, Inverell. The ease of Newcastle is worth noting. The oi'igmal port f)f the Hunter River was, as on other rivers, at the head of navigation — Mor])eth, forty miles upstream and clo.se to the important farming centre of Maitland. Newcastle was made by its coal, and was tlius retidy to hand wlien the altered conditions of navigation demanded a port at the river mouth. The position of the distributing centres in the various farming districts was usually determined by the simultaneous existence of (i.) permanent water, (ii.) land above flood level, (iii.) a specially rich or open patch of till- able country. Bathurst (N.S.W.) is a good example ; Maitland was in- tended to be, but the high land of the Government township was too far from water for the early settlers, and they made their village on the actual bank of the Hunter, regardless of possible floods — and have been flooded out many times since, costing the Government much money to reinstate and protect them. Albury (N.S.W.), Wangaratta and Seymour (V.) are at spots where the Sydney to Melbourne road crossed various streams. Toowoomba (Q.) is at the head of the pass by which the squatters of the Darling Downs brought their wool to Brisbane. The recently started manufacturing industries of Australia have set them- selves down in towns already established, so as to be close to their market ; but one small village — Lithgow, in N.S.W. — is growing to townhood pri- marily for manufacturing reasons ; its easily won coal, neighbouring iron and limestone deposits, and moist cool climate, are attractuig industries of all sorts, including woollen mills, the first blast-furnace in Australia, the smelters which deal with Cobar copper, and an arsenal for the Common wealth. and Distribution of Population. 379 To sum up, the following table shows the distribution of the Australian townsfolk — though the word cannot be used in the English sense, for most of the included towns have only from five thousaad to ten thousand people : — Popvlalion in Thousands. New 1 South Victoria Wales. Queens- land. South West Aus- Aus- tralia. 1 tralia. Tas- mania. Capital and port 539 526 5 34 112 67 29 69 132 58 44 29 176 1 82 10 4 38 '4 I '.'. 3 .. 35 25 3 Other mining towns Farming centres 12 Total iStato poiuilation Percentage townsfolk to total 709 672 1,527 1,238 46 54 203 535 49 193 124 384 262 50 47 75 180 42 Note (a) that Newcastle is included among the coal towns, not among the ports ; (6) that the NJ^.^V. farmmg centres owe something to gold, and mucli to their greater age ; (c) that Ipswich (Q.), which is included among the farmmg centres is an important coal town also ; [d) that tlie figures, based as tliey arc on Hic populations of townships with Jive thouh-and or more inhabitants, are only rough guides to the state of a country of very small towns. Compare, for instance, the results obtainctl from the above table with those obtained when all the N.S.W. municipali- ties are included : — I'mcnUKjc 0/ I'apKfdfi Nor Soidh Wales centres. As above. All Municipalities. ( 'apital . . Otbcr i>()r Co.-il I own Oil linn 11 g <■ 35-2 •3 4.4 35-2 2 4-4 4-5 ,7 46-4 53-6 (;i-() 38-4 '(Vj(.al I ownsfolk Total countryfolk [Most of the smaller ports are really dairying centres.] The coii'ccted Victorian proportions are townsfolk, 59-4 ; countryfolk, 40-6. But if we wish to compare the " urban " and " rural " populations from a European standpoint, the figures in the first table will give us the truer idea ; for it is obvious that the inhabitants of townships below four thousand at any rate, should properly be counted as rural folk. CHAPTER VII. FEDERATION AND THE CONSTITUTIONS Almost from its foundation the internal Separatist conditions of Australia tended to divide it innuences. . i • • t among dinerent governmg authorities. It was too large, in the first place, to be satisfactorily administered from a single centre ; the urgent need of money to provide the simplest necessaries of civilized life made each isolated group of settlers jealous if their contribution to the revenue was not spent close to their own doors ; the sending of convicts to some parts and not to others created antagonisms of pride between Adelaide and Melbourne, on the one hand, and Sydney, Brisbane, and Hobart, on the other. The whole tendency of local politics was to divide the coast up among small, quarrel- ling States, each centred on its own seaport. Seen from London, on the other hand, the country seemed just the place for a single centralised rule. In tlie convict days it was imperative that there should be one supreme authority ; when transportation ended, it seemed absurd that a population of two or three hundred thousand, all engaged in much the same occupations, should really want moie than one legislature to look after its needs. So, although the British Government in 1850 recognized five Australian colonies and foreshadowed a sixth, it saw no reason why in a few years they should not willingly reunite for most purposes of government ; it did its best to m'ge on them the creation of a Federal Assembly, and for a time insisted on calling the Governor of New South Wales *' Governor-General of Her Majesty's Australian possessions." But the opposing influences were too strong. Victoria was too purse-proud. South Australia too democratic, Queensland — when it was born — too youthfully independent, to combine jigain for any purpose with tlic '" mother-colony " of New South Wales, whicli in its turn looked down on them as farvcnvs and on little Tasmania as hardly yet cleansed of convictism. Cetitrifugal arid Centripetal Forces. 381 From 1857 to 1870 schemes were put forth, considered some- times, dropped always. In 1871 came a sudden breeze of desire to lower against each other the customs duties which each colony was levying independently ; but that required an Act of the Imperial Parliament, and by the time it was passed the breeze had died away. Internal politics became more than ever anti-federal. But, isolated though she is by nature, pressure. Australia could not perpetually remain un- affected by the world outside. China sent immigrants whom she disliked, and neighbouring islands began to fill suspiciously with French and German traders. France had seized Tahiti in 1842 and New Caledonia in 1853 ; Germans were occupying Samoa and settling in the islands north-east of New Guinea ; Fiji, it was rumoured, might any day be annexed by the United States. This, the most im- mediate danger, was averted by a British annexation of the group in 1874. Another panic began in 1878, and, though Britain refused to annex New Guinea, she made commercial treaties with Tonga and Samoa, land persuaded France to neu- tralize the New Hebrides {see pp. 222-3, 758-Gl). In 1883 New Guinea came to the front again ; a German " Colonial League " demanded its annexation, and Queensland hurriedly annexed on its own account (as it had already done in 1873) all of the island that did not belong to the Dutch. The Imperial Government, however, was unsympathetic and more anxious for Germany's goodwill than for Australia's ; and some muddled diplomacy ended in Germany's getting a large share of the island and the group north of it, while Australia was put (jff with a fragment of what she had claimed, and a ])iece of advice (given by Lord Derby) that the six colonies had better federate if they wanted their demands attended to. Now, at an intercolonial Conference in 1881 aSn.*""'^ (called to consider the Chinese question), Henry Parkes had already suggested the crea- tion of a central authority to deal with just such matters ; in answer to Lord Derby the idea was revived, and shaped into a " Federal Council," to which four of the colonies sent dele- gates for many years. But Parkes would have none of it ; he saw that it was too restricted in its powers to be useful, and too unrepiesentative (being elected by the parliaments, not by the people) to be popular, and under his influence New South Wales stood aloof. Meanwhile questions of defence cropped 382 Colonial Co-operation and the Labour Party. up ; the Colonies agreed to share the cost of hiring from the British Admiralty a small squadron especially 1887. to guard the Australian coast, and General Edwards strongly advised that similar joint action should be taken in the matter of land defences. About the same time an agreement was reached on the methods of excluding Chinese immigrants ; and it was to com- munities thus imbued with the desire for co-operation that Henry Parkes unexpectedly appealed, on October 24, 1889, "to set about creating a great national Government for all Australia." The answer was innnediate, but incomplete. A Convention in which New Zealand, as well as all Australia, was represented drew up an elaborate constitution which was to be submitted to all the State Parliaments for approval or amendment. And straightway a new obstacle reared itself. Jealous as the manufacturers and merchants Labom'Varty!^ of the several States were of each other, their feeling did not extend to their employees. The employer was a good deal bound down to the place he lived in ; the employee was free to migrate from city to city, wherc- ever the pay was best. Inland, beyond the seaport influence, this freedom was even greater, and for shearers and miners it ))lurred State boundaries altogether : the federal spirit spi-ead among the labour unions long before it reached tlit^ ('m])loying classes. When the London dockers' strike of 1• ^ nothmg to do with it. White is only a short way of saying " European." And " European " in- cludes the descendants of the Europeans who, hundreds of years ago, colonised America. It is a racial distinction that Australians try to draw ; they wish to have as fellow-citizens only those whose minds are accustomed, by the inheritance of training from many generations of ancestors, to the motives and ideas which they themselves inherit. Foolish people The ProUem of a " White " Australia. 395 (there are some in every community) talk about the " in- feriority " of the " coloured " or " Asiatic " races. The sensible Austrahan does not talk like that. He says simply that he wants people living beside him and help'ng to make his laws whose ideas at bottom are of the same kind as his own. The ideas of the Japanese or Chinese or Hindus, for instance, about women are quite different from those of Enghshmen ; and, in Japan a man's first duty is to his parents, his wife com- ing a long way behind them and even his (and her) children. The European order is very different : and it is the difference that matters. Even if it could be proved conclusively that the non-Em-opean idea was the better, it would be no easier and no wiser for people holding the two ideas to live side by side. But, it may be said, people of these foreign "^'^fi,"^*^?"^""^ races live in England, and no harm is done. Objection. m, ■ , i p r i • That IS because there are very few of them m proportion to the great mass of English folk, and because they have no influence in making the laws. In Australia it is a ^ general principle that those who have lived in the country six months, if they are British subjects (two years, if they are not), may become electors and so have a voice in law-making ; and India, China and Japan are so close and so full of people who would like to live in the Commonwealth that in a few years, if there were no restriction on immigration, a large proportion of the voters would be men holding such alien ideas as have been already mentioned. Again, to England go, as a rule, only the richer and better- educated of the Asiatic races ; but to Australia would come crowds of the poorer and more slovenly, who content themselves with little food and a life that we should call unhealthy. Thus they can work for low wages ; if they were let in, Australians who wanted work would have either to accept the same low wages, on which they could not live healthy lives, or to go workless. Attempts are often made to show that this leap lowering of wages is the only genuine reason for Australia's objection to Asiatic immi- grants. That is not true. It would be truer to say that the desire for cheap labour is the only reason why anyone wants Australia to admit Asiatics. And while a few employers still hanker after coloured immigration (more did till they found the higher-paid white labour far more satisfactory), the bulk of Australians believe that cheap labour is either bad labour or badly-paid labour ; and they think it possible so to 396 White and Coloured Immigration. arrange things that any one man's wages shall be high enough to provide him with sufficient nourishment of all sorts for body and mind, yet not so high that his fellows shall be stinted of what he produces. Cheap Asiatic labour would interfere with that arrangement. But while many Australians object to the Asiatic because he lowers wages, practically all object because he does not fit in to a European civilization ; and it is for this reason that the Commonwealth insists on remaining a " White Australia." Now comes in the problem — How is Australia to keep out the immigrants she does not want ? Against her wish the outside world alleges two strong objections ; in the first place she is very empty, and in the second place she belongs to the British Empire, which also includes India and other Asiatic possessions, and is allied with Japan, We have said that every civilized com- problem munity has the right to exclude foreigners. But that right is something like the right of a landowner to use his land, or leave it unused, at his pleasure. In an old and long-occupied country such a right is taken for granted. In a new land, where a few years ago there were no landowners, there is always a feeling that the owner of an estate ought to use it so as to benefit the country at large {e.g., by getting crops ofE the fertile soil, and ntjt leaving it for sheep to graze on) ; and, as we saw in the last chapter, the Australian States consider themselves justified in compelling owners, either by resumption or taxation, to make fit use of their land. The world is now beginning to argue in the same way about the occupiers of new territory. Australians are conceded, for the present, the right to reserve their country for themselves and those whom they choose to admit ; but it is felt that they should try to bring it into use for the world's benefit, not simply sit down on the edge, like dogs in the manger, and refuse to let anyone use it at all. The fact that they insist on keeping out certain races should make them all the more eager to induce others to settle there. So Australia's first solution of her problem Immigration, is the encouragement of white immigration. This she is very anxious to develop ; but at once difficulties spring up. For English immigrants, whom she especially needs, Canada is a competitor much nearer home, and much better able to offer cheap land and other attractive inducements. In Canada there are great areas, never yet occupied, which belong to the Dominion Government ; in Exclusion Tests. 397 Australia most of the easily-reached good land must be bought back from private owners, and even then will belong to the separate States, not to the Commonwealth. The central Canadian Government, therefore, has only to compete with six small Australian State agencies — which are also competing with each other — and can easily outbid them. Yet, as we shall see in the next two chapters, the immigrant to Australia, when he gets there, is likely to become as prosperous as his brother who went to Canada, and perhaps more comfortable. Another great difficulty in Australia's way is the mistaken notion in many minds about her supposed restrictions on immigration. The actual laws are: (1) that labourers may not be brought out to take the place of others who are on strike ; (2) that, if labourers are brought out under contract, the contract must promise them the wages current in the district to which they are going. There are no other restric- tions on British labourers ; and on all other British immi- grants, under contract or not, and on "white" labourers coming out of their own accord, there are no restrictions at all. But when some Australian States passed laws '^^'^ Tesr^*''''' keeping out " coloured " immigrants, the British Government refused to confirm them because it would not let one part of the Empire say openly that inhabitants of another part sliould not enter it. So, as a com- promise, it was arranged that Australia should be allowed to keep out anyone who could not write a short piece of dictation in some European language. Australians have always disliked this arrangement, feeling it a sham ; for the test is never applied, and is not meant to be applied, to a white immigrant, and a " coloured " one is always so tested that he cannot help failing. Malicious people, however, have asserted that British immigrants have reason to be afraid of the test ; it is quite un- true, but it has possibly prevented some British folk from coming to Australia {see also pp. 239, 631-2). These difficulties make the growth of the Australian popula- tion slower than it should be. And meanwhile other nations look enviously on the huge territory which is held, three- quarters empty, by a few millions of Britons. Defence. We need a second solution of the problem for immediate use ; the few millions must make themselves able, if possible, to ward off attempts by those nations to occupy any part of the continent. Now Australia has hitherto trusted entirely to Britain for defence. A few States bought small gunboats some years ago, which trained a few 398 Australia and the Navy. men ; and all the States have spent money on harbour forti- fications and small battalions of militia and volunteers. The Federal Government took these over in 1901, and tried to make an organised Federal army out of them, but without much success. For defence by sea everything was left to the British squadron in the Pacific, whose headquarters are at Sydney. The idea at the back of this system was tliat Australia had no reasons of her own for fighting, and ought therefore to be defended by Britain if British policy involved the Empire in Avar ; but the States agreed to provide themselves with forces sufficient to guard against any small raid until the British fleet could come to the xQ&cwe {see also pp. 224-5, 241-2,739-40). At the same time, Australians did not like ^greeuTenis *^® feeling that they were entirely dependent on an outside force for complete defence. So in 1887 an agreement was made with the Admiralty by which Australia hired a small squadron (five cruisers and two gun- boats) to guard her own coastline in time of war, when the Imperial squadron might be called away. The squadron was hired because Australia, though still too poor to build ships for herself, could manage to pay something yearly towards their cost and maintenance ; but the contrivers of the plan hoped from the first that in the end Australians would be able to build and man their owti squadron. In 1903 a new agreement provided for the realisation of one of these hopes and seriously endangered the other. The hiring of a special squadron came to an end. Instead of that, Australia agreed to pay £200,000 towards the expenses of the Imperial squadron, provided it was kept at a certain strength, and the Admiralty agreed to train in four of the vessels as many Australians as they could. This arrangement will some day give Australia a large body of well-trained seamen ; but it gives her no ships of her own to man with them, and so makes her merely a crew-supplier to the British fleet. At the same time it has become inconvenient to the Admiralty to keep powerful ships-of-war in Australian waters when they would be much more useful at home ; and so both sides are at present bargaining for a new arrangement which will suit each better. The only certainty is that no arrangement will suit Australians which does "not give them at least a small squadron of their own to guard their own coasts and employ their own sailors ; for the Imperial squadron, though it may not, by the present agreement, be sent away to England, might in war-time be wanted anywhere _bet ween Madagascar and Kamtchatka. Lmid Defences. 399 With the British fleet to engage an enemy's Land Defence battle-fleet, the local squadron to meet any small raiding squadron, and a local militia to drive back the raiders if they managed to land, the defences of Australia might seem fairly complete. But this presupposes that such an attack would be only a side-issue in a big war waged against the Empire for other reasons. Australia's real defence- problem, as has been already said, is how to ward off another nation's attempt to occupy part of the continent which is at present hardly used at all. And it is complicated by the fear that in such a case Britain might not be very willing to help. There are influential men in London who do not sympathise with the doctrine of a " White Australia." If another nation were to occupy a strip of the almost deserted northern and north-western coastline, would the British people, who have to pay heavily for their wars, willingly engage in war and send their fleet to battle merely to keep Australia white ? Of course, there would be war if the other nation tried to annex territory ; but suppose it simply sent men there, said that they were willing to become British subjects, and claimed that they must be allowed to live peaceably on the land they were occupy- ing ? That may be improbable, but Australians have to con- sider the idea. Their answer is that, in the first place, it be- comes all the more necessary to have the beginnings of a fleet of their own ; and, in the second place, an army of their own is just as urgently needed. Now Britain, with a popula- tion of forty-two millions, has paid heavily to keep up an army of 280,000. On those lines Australia would only be able to get an army of 30,000 men at most, to defend three milHon square miles of country. It is therefore proposed that, in^ stead of employing a few men to do army work for the rest— which has been the English plan — Australians should hence- forth be themselves their own army, by submitting to regular training between the ages of twelve and twenty-six and keep- ing themselves fit to march, to obey orders and to shoot straight for the following fifteen years or so. Under such a scheme, when it was in full working order, there would be always about a sixth of the whole population — the men between twenty and forty — ready to fight at very short notice in defence of the country, without calling on Britain for aid. Take now the second objection to a White ^hfEmpire.^ Australia— that Australians have as fellow- subjects in the Empire the Indian peoples, and as its allies the Japanese, and yet exclude both allies and 400 Australia and the Unity of the Empire. fellow-subjects from the Commonwealtli. This raises the most difficult question that British statesmen have to consider. What do we mean by the " unity of the Empire ? " There is a great deal of nominal unity. Umtv^ Every part of it acknowledges the rule of King Edward, who is directly represented in each part by a Governor, or Governor-General, or Viceroy. And these representatives have, even in the self-governing parts, the nominal power of vetoing, or reserving for further consideration by the authorities at home, all bills passed by the legislature in their section of the Empire. In practice that means very little. Governors have instructions to reserve bills on certain subjects ; but, when the freely elected parliament of a self-governing colony has decided on a law, it is hazardous for a body of men in London, who are in no way responsible to the colony, to say the ]aw shall not be so. So the British Government rarely runs the risk, and each of the greater colonies is as a rule absolutely undisturbed in its law- making. When a bill has to be vetoed, the home authorities take great trouble to show the colonial Government what evil effects on the Empire as a whole its passing would have ; and the latter either yields to the argument, or submits un- willingly because a quarrel with the mother-country would be far worse than the loss of the bill. Sometimes a compro- mise is possible, as we have seen in dealing with the " dictation test"; though, as in that case, neither side gets much satis- faction out of the compromise. Now " White Austraha " means that Exclusion of Australia is determined to exclude all the Subjects. coloured races of India and Further India, of Africa and America, whether or no they are within the British Empire and so fellow-subjects of the King. But if England were to make laws forbidding Scots or Irishmen to become residents of London, there could be no " United Kingdom." What, then, if Bengalis and Kaffirs can be excluded from Australia, do we mean by the " unity of the Empire " ? Some politicians say " The British Government should exercise its power of vetoing the colonies' exclusion laws." But if it did, what would liajjpen ? Australians may compromise about the method, but will not-compromise about the fact of exclusi 'U ; and it is the one subject on which they would rather quarrel with the mother-country than give in. They believe, too, that in South Africa — :n Natal and the Transvaal, at any rate — and in western Canada (in all white colonies, that is, to which Asiatic Colonial and Imperial Interests. 401 labour can be brougiit quickly and easily) the bulk of the British population agrees with them ; and it is becoming clear that, if the Empire is to be kept together, it must, in this matter at least, be kept together on their terms. But we are getting ou'side the problems of Australia. How to balance colonial against British influence in deciding the Empire's policy is a task for the wisest heads the Empire can fnd. Yet we may remember tl^at it was a future Prime Minister of Australia who, twenty-one years ago, told the Con- ference of 1887 :— " We hope that, from this time forward, colonial policy may be considered Imperial policy ; that colonial interests will be considered and felt to be Imperial interests ; that they will be carefully studied, and that, when once they are understood, they will be most determinedly upheld." And it was the same statesman, Mr, Deakin, who at the last Conference strongly advocated an " Imperial Secretariat," that is, a body of men from the different self-governing colonies, each knowing his own colony well and in touch with its Govern- ment, who could explain to the British Government at any time of need exactly what his fellow-citizens knew or thought about the matter in hand {see pp. 769-76). We have dealt with the problems of immigration and defence in connection with " White Australia." They would, of course, exist if there were no such doctrine ; but because of it, they are much more urgent and much more difficult to solve. It would be quite easy, for instance, to fill northern Queensland and the Northern Territory with coloured labourers ; it is much more difficult to fill those regions with white workers — though it must be said that, except along the comparatively narrow coastbelt, their climate is much less tropical than their posi- t'on on the map would indicate. Except during the short rainy season, life within the ranges is very much like life any- where else in the Australian interior ; and, now that a Federal law has forbidden the employment of Kanaka (South Sea Islands) labourers on the Queensland sugar-plantations, it is being discovered that a good deal of their work can be done by machinery, and the rest is not so terrible for white men who live, work and eat sensibly. Another external problem which Australia ^p .-^V^" has to settle concerns her relations with the neighbouring islands in the Pacific, Seventy years ago Britain might have had them all for the asking : 402 Australia and the Western Pacific. indeed, in several cases, their inhabitants asked her to annex, and were refused. Then France and Germany and the United States came colony-hunting, and group after group of the islands was taken. This worried Australians for two reasons. In the first place, if France or Germany, say, were at war with Britain, they could launch an attack against Australia much more easily from a well-provisioned and fortified harbour in one of the groups belonging to them than from their more distant possessions in Asia or Africa ; so a sound defence scheme became of more immediate importance. In the second place, France took to populating her nearest island, New Cale- donia, with her convicted criminals, who again and again escaped to Australia and gave trouble there. It was from the conferences held to discuss these difficulties that the idea of Federation became popular. In the end, the islands have been divided among the various nations on the express condition that convicted criminals shall not be sent to them ; so that part of the problem is settled for good. The one group still un- annexed has been put under the supervision Hebrider °^ Britain and France jointly, on such terms as ensure equal rights and duties, as far as pos- sible, to citizens of both nations. And though Australians would naturally have preferred to see all the near groups under the British flag, their only real remainmg worry is the exposure to attack from foreign harbom-s close at hand. Of the relations between the Commonwealth and British groups only two things need be said : that the trade between them is somewhat hampered by Australia's protective duties, since the islands grow by Kanaka labour many things that Australia is trying to grow by white ; and that groups like the Solomons and New Hebrides, whose only link with the outer world is the steamer-traffic between them and Australia, are administered from the quite disconnected Fiji group, instead of from their trade-centre, Sydney {see pp. 222-3, 760-1). If their administrator lived in Australia, in touch with the Government of the Commonwealth on whose shipping companies they de- pend for trade, it would be easier to prevent friction and to consolidate the Empire in the Pacffic. To one of the islands — or part of one — Papua. Australia stands in the relation of owner. Her newly-acquired colony of Papua is that south-eastern piece of New Guinea which Lord Derby was persuaded to save from annexation by Germany ; this was done at Australia's request, and the three eastern States contri- Imverial Federation and Preferential Trade. 403 buted to the expenses of government. It was natural that when AustraHa became a single Commonwealth the territory should be handed over to the Federal Government directly it was ready to take the responsibility. Under direct British rule the administration's one object was to preserve peace among the natives, and between them and the few white im- migrants. The Australian administrators are attempting to make the land more useful by introducing new crops and better methods of tillage, taking lessons in the business from the rulers of British Malaya ; but the natives are as well looked after as ever, and no one is allowed to bargain with them for land or to disturb the arrangements already made for their welfare. Questions of Of the one important external problem that federation and has not yet been mentioned we can say little, preferential since it has unfortunately been mixed up with party politics in Great Britain. Australians, like the citizens of all the self-governing colonies, have for many years discussed how to bind the fabric of the Empire more closely together. And the general conclusion they have reached seems to be that (a) the political connection cannot at present be made closer, because the self-governing colonies are not pre- pared to sacrifice any governing power until they have proof that the central authorities understand them better ; (6) a con- nection for defence purposes is also impossible, because the use of army and navy must naturally be controlled by the power that pays for them, and so the colonies would always be outvoted by Britain {see pp. 224-5, 240-1) — whose rulers, as aforesaid, the colonies do not altogether trust ; (c) the commercial bond can be tightened, by arrangements which would allow each part of the Empu'e to trade with other parts more profitably than with outsiders. In pursuance of this policy Canada and Australia let in British manufactures at lower duties than are charged on other goods of the same sort ; also Australia and South Africa give each other " preference " on certain pro- ducts, and Australia is bargaining with New Zealand and Canada for similar preferences. But the fiscal policy of Britain has, since 1846, been to let in the goods of any nation or colony untaxed, except a few articles, such as alcoholic liquors and tobacco which are only taxed for revenue purposes ; and the British people has not yet made up its mind to alter this policy. Until this is done, and a tax is put on certain foreign imports, preference to the colonies is, of course, impossible. CHAPTER X. INDUSTRIES AND PRODUCTION. Rows of figures are dry reading ; but this chapter needs some as a text, and we must consider the meaning of the following tables : — PRODUCE OF THE COMMONWEALTH. Amount Produced Annually. Proportion Exported. Per Cent. Value of Exports in £100,000. Wool 66 million bush. 13 „ 9 „ 147 ., lbs. „ galls. ... 3,616,050 oz. £3,037,000 worth 2.978,000 „ 2,436,000 „ l,10t),000 „ 419,000,000 supfl. ft. ... Nearly aU. 45 Hardly any. 45 14 ... 87 Nearly all. 76 35 Nearly all. 35 201 Wheat Oats 58 Butter Wine 27 1 Frozen Meat Gold 16 133Jt Silver-lead 29 23 Coal 8-J- Tin lOi Timber Horses Fruit 3 Hides & Skins ... 14* Total Annual Value of Attstbalian Exports (in million £.) Pastoral 24 Mineral 22 Agricultural 7 Farmyard and Dairying 3 Forest 1 Manufactures 1 58 [All these figures are averages obtained from the statistics of the years 1904-6, those for 1907 not being available. Wheat-export figures include flour.] Wool Growing. 405 If some of these figures look small, we must remember that they represent the work of only four million people — not as many as there are in London {see p. 421). It is no^. the actual figures, however, but their proportions of which we need take note just now. For they indicate the sources of Australian wealth, and the industries in which Australians are for the most part engaged. Wool comes first in value, as in time. From Wool-growing, the days when Macarthur established his merino flock at Camden Park, sheep have been Australia's stand-by. Given grass and water, the sheep does the rest, roughly speaking ; it goes to and fro on its own legs, costing nothing for freight ; it does not escape to the bush and run wild, like cattle or horses ; its increase is fairly rapid, and its wool gives a yearly income quite apart from the actual carcase value. Also the Australian climate improves wool in many ways ; good as Spanish merino wool always was, in Australia it has become longer, softer, and more elastic, and the weight of fleeces has been considerably increased by the care and skill of breeders. In years when such a thing was much needed, wool gave Australia an exportable product— something of value to send home in return for the implements and food- stufls and clothes which had to be sent out in those days from home. For the first century of the colony's life the wool- grower was both pioneer and principal mamstay of trade ; only since then, and mainly in the western State, has the miner taken his place. The disadvantage of this comparatively simple method of acquiring wealth was that everything depended on the weather. That need not have been so, of course ; it was quite open to the squatter to spend some of his profits in a good year on works for the storage of water against coming droughts. But, as we have already seen, he rarely owned the huge blocks of land on which his flocks were pastured ; the necessary labour was not easily obtainable ; and it was far easier, in such a sunny climate, to chance the weather and hope to make up losses, if they occurred, when the next rains fell, and the grass sprang to luxuriance again. Meanwhile money could be bo.Towed from the bmks on not too hard terms. To this there could be but one end ; as the better country was taken over for other purposes, and the profits of good years showed less and less balance over the repayments that had to be made for previous losses, station after station fell into the hands of 406 Its Present and its Future. ^^ the banks, and squatter after squatter either disappeared or became merely manager for a bank, to be retrenched in the next drought. As long, however, as droughts were short and money easily obtained in Britain, the wool industry progressed despite changes of ownership, until in 1891 Australia held more than one hundred and six million sheep. Then began the long succession of bad seasons that culminated in the great drought of 1902 ; then too, began the days of " tight " money, British capitalists finding that they had lent more to Australians — both to the States and to private corporations — than was at all advisable. In 1893 the crash came, and banks and firms and individuals suffered together ; there was no money to spare even for the most necessary precautions against a water-famine, and the sheep died in hundreds of thousands. By 1901 thirty- four millions were dead, as well as all the natural increase ; one year later the flocks of the Commonwealth numbered only half what they were at their maximum. Yet, so great is the natural increase directly food and water are available that in 1 90G the numbers were eighty-four millions, and the value of the exported wool had gone up from £12,740,172 in the drought year, 1902, to £22,038,031 in 1906. Never again will fortunes be made as easily from wool as they were in the days before 1851. There is keener competition for good land, and the squatter is being driven far inland to areas on which only eight or ten inches of rain fall in a year. But for the man with money and expert knowledge woolgrowing is a sounder investment than ever. On what is left of the stations that used to border the inland rivers, as they emerged from the foothills of the main range, irrigation makes it possible to rear far more sheep at far less risk than on the huge blocks of older days. And even in the dry interior, if a man will but spend money on conserving what rain he gets in the sudden infrequent storms, the thrusting of the railways inland and the soon-to-be-undertaken locking of the Darling and other rivers of the plains give him cheaper and quicker transit to market for his wool. The happy-go-lucky days of chance-earned fortunes are gone ; but the industry is being more surely estab- lished on the only basis possible — hard work scientifically directed to a definite end. Next to wool comes gold. 1 f wool has been Gold-mining. Australia's stap'e industry, gold has been its most successful advertisement. The story of its discovejy in payable quantities has already been told. Gold Mining. 407 Since then Australia has yielded nearly £500,000,000 worth of the metal, Victoria contributing more than half the quantity. The real value of this gold has been, not the money it is worth, but the immigration it has attracted ; in Victoria itself, for instance, during the years 1904-G the average yield was :— Wool £3,542,120) , , , , , p , , o 9qf;\i99 ( oufc of an avcrago total Wheat ::::::::::::::::::::: lf,tnl i p-duct-vaiuo of £24,327.790. If we could reckon up the amounts lost in gold-mining, the actual profits of the industry would be small ; but it was gold that brought to Victoria its population, and with it the power to produce from less than one-thirtieth of the Commonwealth's area more than a quarter of its product. Since 1898 the Western Australian fields, which had then been known for about eleven years, have topped the Victorian gold-yield yearly, and now more than double it ; in 1906 they produced £7,000,000 worth out of the total Commonwealth yield of £14,600,000. In the end they may be of some such use to Western Australia as the eastern fields were to Victoria ; but their position handicaps them — Ballarat and Bendigo are surrounded by tillable lands, but Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie are several hundred miles away from the farmland of their State. In Queensland Gympie and Mount Morgan and Charters Towers have attracted immigrants from oversea, but not one of these three goldfields is alluvial, and it it doubtful how far they have helped to increase the agricultural population of the State. South Australia alone has had no du-ect benefit from gold; but the indirect benefits already touched on {see pp. 365, 391) were of great value. Alluvial gold-mining has another good quality — it is a poor man's industry. This was well shown in New South Wales in 1894, after the crash of 1893, when mines requiring capital to work them had to shut down or restrict operations, so that the yield of silver, lead, tin and other minerals fell off by at least a third — and the gold-yield, stimulated by the rush of un- employed to the diggings, nearly doubled itself. After wool and gold we notice a great fall- "Wheat-growing. ing off in the export figures. That is because the bulk of these two products is exported, while of other products (except some minerals) a great deal is retained for local consumption. Out of sixty-six million bushels of wheat, for instance, not thirty million bushels were exported, and only sixty-six million lbs. of butter out of one 408 Wheat Growing. hundred and forty-seven million ; so that the Common- wealth's grain-crops and dairy-products are not so unimpor- tant, compared to its wool and gold, as the figures would seem to show. And when we remember that wheat-growing and dairy-farming on a large scale began quite recently in Aus- tralian history, we shall understand that they may yet become as wealth-producing as the older occupations. Wheat-growing was for many years the specialty of Victoria and South Australia, which supplied, as far as they could, the deficiencies of the other States. Thus in 1891 these two States produced twenty million bushels out of Australia's total of twenty-five million. Ten years later they were still harvesting twenty million, but the total yield for the Commonwealth was more than thirty-eight million ; and now New South Wales and Victoria contribute about one-third each to the total. South Australia giving about a quarter. In Queensland, the farmers believe dairying and other cro]^s to be more profit- able than wheat ; while the size of Tasmania and the lack of settlement in Western Australia make the yield in these States small in comparison {see p. 420). Compared with the amount of wheat the world manages to consume yearly, Australia's figures look small ; in 1903, the best year she has had, she exported one twenty-fifth of the world's supply. But her trade in grain is only beginning. As happens in all new countries, growers have taken as little trouble as possible, trusting to the natural fertility of the virgin soil. Since the various Governments established model farms in suitable districts, at which scientific systems of farming are tested and taught, it has been found possible to increase considerably the yield from a given acreage — at Bathurst (New South Wales), for instance, in a year when only sixteen and a-half inches of rain fell, the Government farm grew (on a commercial scale) twenty-four bushels of wheat to the acre, while neighbouring farmers on far better soil won only five ; and similar results have been obtained on the State farm at Rome in Queensland. When once this lesson is learnt, in wheat-growing as in wool-growing, the Common- wealth will take its place as one of the greatest agricultural countries of the world, i Dai tying as an exporting industry began Dairying. about the same time as wheat-growmg. In 1891 barely four million lbs. of butter were sent to England ; next year the quantity was doubled ; in Dainj Farming and Frozen Meat. 409 1906 the export was seventy-five million lbs. This is the staple industry of the whole east coast, until we reach the tropics ; indeed, one of its most striking developments is the steady replacement of cane fields and even wheat by dairy- farms in northern New South Wales and southern Queens- land. The whole progress has been made possible by the factory system, under which a group of farmers sends milk to a centrally-placed factory, where butter can be produced of uniform quality in great quantities, and forwarded easily to the refrigeratmg chambers of the steamer that carries it to London. Along the north coast of New South Wales, for instance, factories situated on the river banks load butter into the freezing chambers of coastal boats, which in their turn discharge their cargo straight into the freezing cham- bers of the big mail-boats as they lie at the wharf in Sydney harbour. Another of the group of industries which Frozen meat, sprang up in the early nineties is the trade in frozen meat. In the old days, squatters who found their runs overstocked with sheep early in a dry season had but two alternatives — to let the surplus die, or to boil them down for tallow. In 1882 New Zealand graziers tried the experiment of exporting frozen carcases to England ; New Zealand, however, had large flocks of crossbred sheep, more nearly of the size to which the English consumer is accus- tomed than were the small merino sheep of Australia. So the Australian trade, which began to assume importance in 1892, has never caught up that of New Zealand, although a large number of Shropshire and Lincoln rams have been imported for the special purpose of encouraging farmers in the highland districts to keep flocks of crossbreds. Until this habit spreads widely (as, with the beginnings of closer settlement, there are signs that it will), Australia's meat-export trade disposes mainly of surplus stock — as is shown by the fact that in the drought year, 1902, nearly £1,700,000 worth of frozen meat went home, while the next year's exports, when graziers were looking everywhere for stock to utilize their freshly springing pastures, dwindled by a third. The export of frozen beef, mostly from Queensland, is par- ticularly affected in this way ; in 1901-2 more than £2,200,000 worth went to England; in 1905-6 less than £900,000 worth, though the number of cattle had increased by about fifteen per cent. 410 Horse- Breeding and Sugar-Groiving. Among the smaller primary industries four may be par- ticularly noted. Horses fit for the saddle and for light harness thrive better in Australia, perhaps, than anywhere else in the world, and great trouble has been taken for many years to improve the breed. India has Horse-breeding, always been a sure market, the Australian horse being there known as a " Waler," because New South Wales is the chief horse-breeding State ; but South Africa absorbed many during the Boer War, Japan has recently taken to buying largely, and Germany is beginning to buy. This is one of the older industries, wliich grew rapidly till 1891 and has since then remained almost stationary, with a slight increase in the last two years ; the three eastern States hold eighty per cent, of it, but the uplands of the Northern Territory may yet rival their best horse-bieeding country. Sugar is Queensland's substitute for the wheat Sugar-growing, of the southern States (p. 371). The industry suffered for a long time from the State's vary- ing policy as regards Pacific islands labour ; and even when the Federal Parliament gave four years' notice of its abolition, many cane-growers still hoped to get the decision annulled. The area under cultivation, however, has increased steadily since 1902 from a hundred and five to a hundred and fifty thousand acres, yielding respectively eight hundred and twenty-five and nineteen hundred and fifty thousand tons of cane. The increase has been almost wholly in Queensland, old plantations in New South Wales being turned into dairy farms as fast as new sugar plantations were formed. There are three well-marked zones of sugar-land : the tropical zone Hes between lat. 16° and lat. 19°, the sub-tropical stretches from 19° to 26°, and the cool zone comes as far south as 31°. In the last there has never been any diffi- culty about labour — white men, with a few Hindus and aborigines, have done all the work. The sub-tropical belt, which includes the important districts of Childers, Bundaberg and Mackay, used to employ white and coloured labour in almost equal proportions. In the north, on the Herbert and Johnstone Rivers and the lands round Cairns and Port Douglas, nine-tenths of the work used to be done by coloured labourers, and the problem of filling their places is more diffi- cult ; but it has already been found that men who live and work steadilv, altering their habits and hours of labour to Fruit Groiving. 411 suit the climate, produce both better and quicker results than coloured labour did. On the rich volcanic soils of the coast ranges large areas of land suitable for general farming can be selected ; and on these the extra plantation hands required will doubtless establish homes and cu'tivate the soil between the crushing seasons. A considerable population, partly connected with the mining and timber industries, is already settled there. So it seems probable that the northern canefields will be supplied with labour just as the far inland stations are supplied with shearers. Cane-growers have yet much to learn from scientific experts. The irrigation of canefields has only just begun ; and a great deal of drudgery, for which white labour is not very suitable, can be saved by the adoption of recently invented machinery. Australia grows almost enough sugar for its own consumption but a good deal grown by cheap labour is imported for refining, and the export trade is handicapped, since Fiji and Java, growing their cane with cheap black labour, under- bid Australian sugar in the world's markets. Orchards and vineyards are still few and Fruit-growing, far between, considering how well they flourish on the slopes of the main range, and along the river banks wherever irrigation is practised. Tasmania has devoted itself to apple growing with such success that during apple harvest the mail steamers go out of their usual course to Hobart to fetch away the crop. One or two irrigation settle- ments on the lower Murray help to supply the Commonwealth with dried fruit — sultanas, apricots, peaches and currants — and much land lit for this use can be found on the eastern edge of the great plains. The cold-climate fruits (apples, cherries, raspberries and gooseberries) do well on the higher parts of the range extending into Queensland, especia ly round Stanthorpe, while fifty to eighty miles away on the coast-belt oranges flourish near Sydney and pine-apples and bananas further north. Queensland orchards all along the Eastern sea-board supply tropical and sub-tropical fruits ; and the Queensland banana crop, coming mainly from the coast north of Townsville, is practically a Chinese perquisite. Since Australia has to import a great part of the fruit she consumes, it may seem strange that more settlers do not turn their attention to orchard work. In practice, however, there are two disadvantages : as compared with the lazier forms of wheat-growing at present in vogue it demands more and 412 Vineyards and Forestry. steadier labour, and keeps the grower waiting longer for his return. Most small holdings in the Commonwealth are still owned by men with very little capital and hardly any scientific training for their work ; ' they need a crop to sell the first year, and they set about getting it by the old rule-of-thumb methods. As the cultivator's position and education are improved, fruit- growing will take its proper place as a great Australian in- dustry. Vineyards date from 1828, when the first Wine- growing, slips from European vines were set out in the valley of the Hunter. Later on the Murray valley was found also suitable, and South Australia took to employing her German immigrants in wine-growing. Now Tasmania is the only State without vineyards, but the Hunter and Murray valleys, and the hill-slopes behind and north of Adelaide in South Australia, are still the centres of production ; South Australia has the lion's share of the export trade, the other wines going mostly in local consumption. As in nearly all the other primary industries, Australian success in wine-growing is handicapped by want of expert knowledge, and needs only that to become more marked and permanent. Australian timber is at present the cause of Forestry. much disputing. The hardwoods of Western Australia (jarrah and karri) supply a third of the Commonwealth's product, and the bulk of its export ; but along the eastern ranges occur " vine- scrubs " or jungle containing soft-woods of great commercial value, which unfortunately occupy just such patches of rich vol- canic soil as are needed for agricultural settlement. And the settler, if he acquires a block of this land, will not wait to cut and market the standing timber ; he fells it, burns it off, and is in a fever till a crop is in the ground. 1'hus Australia loses much natural wealth, which might be saved but for the States' hunger for population and the people's hunger for land. If this hunger can be satisfied elsewhere — say, by resuming larger areas of land already cleared, instead of throw- ing open the still untouched forests — Australia's softwoods may become as well-known and as profitable as her hardwoods are. « Of the minerals, other than gold, a short Mmera s . notice must suffice. Coal is at present a New South Wales product in the main, dug from seams which underlie all the State's eastern watershed between Port Stephens and Bateman's Bay. The actual mining districts Minerals, 413 are Newcastle and Maitland, iii the Hunter valley ; Lithgow, in the range north-west of Sydney; and North Illawarra, twenty- five to fifty miles south of Sydney. Coal is also being mined directly beneath Port Jackson, at a depth of three thousand feet. In Victoria large deposits of " brown coal " and lignite occur, and a few seams of black coal in southern Gippsland, similar to those which are being worked on the Clarence River (New South Wales) and at Ipswich (Queensland). New South Wales is responsible for eighty-eight per cent, of the Common- wealth's coal supply and Queensland, which possesses large coalfields still unworked, for seven per cent. Silver and lead come chiefly from the p^ri' ^%f' " mother-State," out of the famous Broken Copper, lin. tt-h t • -i ^ cm Hill district ; but the west coast of Tasmania and the inland slopes of the range behind Cairns in North Queensland are also noticeably productive. The same districts in the two States last mentioned yield much copper, which is everywhere associated with gold as lead is with silver. There is also a copper patch round Cobar, far out in the great plain of New South Wales ; but the State which has benefited most from its copper mines is South Australia, which has practically no other metal deposit, and which has produced more than sixty per cent, of Australia's total copper output. Tin is Tasmanian, too ; but Queensland (from the backlands of Cairns), northern New South Wales (from the north-western slopes of the main range), and Western Australia materially help the output. Iron, though it is only now being smelted Iron. for manufacture, has long been known to exist in extensive deposits in every State but Victoria. Those easily workable are found on the north coast of Tasmania, and on both sides of the main range in New South Wales, near Mittagong and Orange. Lithgow is the first centre of Australia's iron manufactures, and because of it is to be the Commonwealth's first Arsenal. Other forms of the Commonwealth's mineral wealth are the zinc ores of Broken Hill ; the tungsten ores (scheelite and wolfram) of northern New South Wales and north Queensland ; the salt deposits of Lake Fowler on Yorke Peninsula (South Australia) ; the kerosene shale beds in the ranges north-west of Lithgow ; and the opal deposits at White Opals. CliSs, west of the Darling, at Lightning Eidge, in the basin of the Namoi, and at Fermoy 'and Opalton in western Queensland, where some 414 Manufactures. of the finest opal in the world is found. Many other minerals occur widely throughout Australia, but, except the sapphires and some other precious stones in Queensland, have not yet been worked on a commercially important scale {see pp. 418-19). The manufacturing industries of the Com- Manufactures. monwealth are still in their infancy. Roughly speaking, before Federation it was found more profitable to employ labour on the production of raw material for export, and to import manufactures in return, than to work up Australian material on the spot. Victoria, however, encouraged local manufacturers by a protective tariff, and four of the ^ other States slowly followed her example, leaving New South Wales alone as a free-trade State. This difference of policy hampered Federation a good deal ; but as soon as Australia began to feel herself a nation, it was seen that mere monetary profit was less important than the power to supply her own wants without depending on impoi-fcs from twelve thousand miles away. The Common- wealth's first tariff, therefore, was avowedly protective, and the revision of it just completed (1908) emphasizes its protec- tive character. For many years, however — perhaps always, for the reason given in connection with sugar-making (pp. 410-11) —few Australian manufactures (unless we include in that des- cription flour and tallow) will be exported ; and employment will be, as it is, found chiefly in working up for local use local raw material of clothes, food, and furniture. CHAPTER XI. THE AUSTRALIANS AND THEIR PLACE IN THE EMPIRE. Let us now sketch a picture of the "all-British" continent as it exists to-day. Figures will help us again — not that they need be learnt, but because (as was said in the last chapter), they give an easily-grasped idea of the way in which Australians occupy themselves, and the value of their work. Let us therefore study the following tables : — Emjiloymeiit. Pastoral Industries Agriculture Dairy-farming, &e Mining Forestry and Fisheries Manufactures Trading and Finance Professions Domestic Service Transport & Communication Minor Industries Proportion of Workers Employed. Per Cent. Value of Product. Per Cent. 22 23 8 20 3 24 TABLES OF COMPARATIVE STATISTICS. Occupations. U.K. Per Cent. France. Germany Per Cent. Per Cent. *U.S. Per Cent. Aus. Per Cent. Agriculture (incl. pastoral and dairying) Manufactimng Commerc© 17* 52 51 24 43 28 8 2G 12 25 16 13 Note the overlarge proportion, in Australia, of commercial men to producers. 416 Australian Occupations. We note first of all, in order to understand clearly what these figures mean, that the " workers " are rather less than half the total population, the rest of it being classed by statisticians as " dependents " on the actual breadwinners. About two- thirds of Australian men and boys, and one-fifth of the women and girls, are classed as workers — about two per cent, of the workers being children under fifteen, most of whom were helping their fathers on farms and dairies. It must also be remembered that " manufactures " include such work as saw- milling, butter-making, chafi-cutting and printing news- papers. We shall see from the first table how valuable pastoral and mining industries are to a young, thinly settled country ; with comparatively few employees they yield disproportionately large results. But for that very reason they are less helpful when a country has got its start and needs more population. Then it is agriculture and manufacturing that must be stimu- lated, because they employ a much larger number of workers. That is why the States now take such trouble to bring in agricultural immigrants, and the Federal Parliament uses the tariff to encourage manufacturers. We shall see also that there is practically no No leisured jgisured class in Australia, a most important fact. About one-thiid of the male popula- tion is under fifteen years of age ; that is also the proportion of non- workers to workers among the males. The few men too old to work may be balanced against the few children who are counted as workers. And it is interesting to note that out of ever}^ hundred workers ten are employers, sixty-seven emploj^ees, and the remaining twenty-three work on their own account or help their relatives. The geographical features of Australia ^^PlahJ's*'^^^ have already b„^en outhned (pp. 329-30). The Great Central Plains we must picture as almost wholly given up at present to sheep and cattle ; but with this exception, soon to become an im- portant one, that wherever permanent water can be guaran- teed there agriculture, either in the form of orchards or of wheat-fields, will oust the live-stock directly it is assured of cheap carriage to a good market. And tlie permanent water is there, if only people will trouble to bore for it. For along the edge of the tableland, where it slopes off into the plains, a stratum of extremely porous sandstone crops out in a belt The Artesian Area. 417 \rtesian Belt sometimes five, sometimes nearly seventy miles wide ; from every stream that flows across this belt much of its water soaks away as if into a sponge ; and the water-laden rock, dropping sharply from its outcrop beneath harder shales and limestones, presently spreads itself out flat under the whole extent of the westward plains. Within this " artesian area " we may put down a bore anywhere and find water rushing to the surface, some- times from four thousand feet down, sometimes from only twelve hundred or so — warm water, often, and some- times charged with mineral properties, but generally good water that will grow any crop the climate allows. Unfo: tu- nately the artesian area is not co-extensive with the plains. But it does cover the greater portion of them : if we draw a line through Moree (New South Wales) to Warren and Nyngan, and then round by the Bogan and Darling to and along lat. 31° and 30° till we are well past Lake Eyre — the whole plain-country north of that line is artesian right to the Gulf of Carpentaria, except that the dry area of the Northern Territory takes a large bite out of western Queensland. Within the artesian area New South Wales has about three hundred bores, with a flow of over one hundred and sixty million gallons a day ; Queensland has at least six hundred, giving four hundred million gallons ; in South Australia fifteen of the most successful bores yield seven million. So the average yield seems to be from four hundred and fifty thousand to six hundred and fifty thousand gallons a day — not enough to set a river going, but enough to establish gardens and orchards and to water great flocks and herds, without counting on anv rain- fall at all. Here and there out of the great level stretch Mining Centres, rise low hills that have been stiffened against the general smoothing-down by the impregna- tion of their rock-stuff with mineral deposits. In most cases silica or iron is the hardening agent ; but the exceptions are of immense value. At Broken Hill the stiffening is ore of silver and lead ; at Gobar (New South Wales) and ( 'loncurry (Queens- land), copper ores ; at White Cliffs (New South Wales), and a dozen or so places in Queensland, the silica takes the valu?ble form of opal. But the rule is, no hills, no minerals ; and the mass of the plain-country must be sheep-country for ever, patched with small areas of intensive cultivation round the artesian bores. 418 Eastern Australia. In tlie Eastern Highlands or tableland Tableknd"^ ^® must distinguish between its eastern, or coastal gullies, worn deep under high cliff- sided, flat-topped spurs, and its western slopes, whose rivers run more gently through valleys and upland plains of a more European type. Along the coastal belt, both in the lower gullies and wherever the rushing rivers have room to spread their alluvium between the spur-ends and the sea, is the land of dairies and of cane-fields, according to climate. In the higher gulHes and on the spurs, especially where they ara capped by some volcanic deposit {e.g., the Dorrigo in New South Wales, and the Atherton and Evelyn plateaux in northern Queensland), grows 1 he valuable timber. Minerals are scarce in these parts, except coal, which is almost purely a coastal product ; yet there are a few rich goldfields, round Araluen in southern New South Wales and Hillgrove in northern, and especially in Queensland {see pp. 406-7). The western ^^^^ *^® western slopes are the cream of slopes of the the continent. Their lower border is the Eastern great wheat-belt— in southern Queensland it Tableland. extends almost to the summit of the plateau ; their upper valleys are full of small farms, and ought soon to be full of orchards ; and everywhere they are highly mineralized. From Melbourne to Mudgee gold is found in almost every gully ; all the famous early diggings, except Ballarat — which is only just south of the watershed — are on these inland slopes, Bendigo, the Ovtns, Lambing Flat and the Turon. Copper is mined south of Bathurst, and silver has been rained north of it ; iron is found all through that district in huge deposits, waiting for the establishment of the industries that shall make the mining of it profitable ; on the edge of the plains, beyond Parkes, there is platinum. Further north, from Armidale in New South Wales to Warwick in Queensland, tin ores lie thick in all the western gullies, with silver, aluminium and diamonds to help on the districts' prosperity {see p. 413). The extremities Berbaps the most wonderful of all are the of the tableland's two ends — Tasmania and the ranges Eastern behind Cairns. There we have tin and copper Highlands. ^^^^ silver-lead all profusely jumbled up to- gether, with gold-fields handy; the northern end boasts wolfram and molybdenite also as commercial products of value, and there is hardlv a metal, even the rarest, which cannot be found Its North and South Extremities. i:W somewhere in the Chillagoe district. Indeed, it would be hard to find anywhere in the world a more valuable strip of country — if only there were direct communication with the great world-markets — than the tableland for about fifty miles on each side of lat. 17°. At its coastal foot are the cane-fields of Cairns and Geraldton ; bananas and cotton and coffee flourish above and behind them ; fields and plantations both have been hewn out of the noble forest-belt which for one hundred miles runs parallel with the coast, and climbs almost from the seashore to and over the range-top three thousand feet above. Its higher levels are the Atherton and Evelyn scrubs, already mentioned, rich volcanic areas in a climate well fitted for white men's working. Beyond them stretch comparatively barren slopes and gullies, crammed with the mineral wealth we have just described, and the pastoral country to north and west and south-west is, so to speak, littered with gold. In 1906 about four thousand miners took from that strip of tableland more than a milUon pounds worth of mineral, chiefly with the most simple and primitive appliances. To complete the picture, two regions — the Ja^tern°pur. south-eastern spur of the Eastern Tableland and the Western Tableland — have yet to be described. The country between Port Phillip and St. Vincent's Gulf (p. 330) seems to be a much-worn-down spur of the eastern plateau, and its products are distributed in much the same way. On the coastal slopes dairying is in favour, orchards and vineyards occupy the upper inland valleys, and the wheat-growers are spreading over the whole basin of the lower Murray wherever they can get enough water. Victoria has a patch of forest on the Otway Ranges, quite unconnected with the main highlands. The minerals (see pp. 407, 413-14) occur in or near the low ranges which represent the core of the vanished tableland. The low western tableland comprises nearly ^TabkW™ ^^^^^ Australia ; yet very little can be added to the description already given (p. 329). The vast interior — bounded, roughly speaking, by lats. 18° and 31° and longs. 121° and 135° — is a plateau with neither river- system nor mountain-system, partially barren desert, and mainly useless except where rich gold-fields occur along a north and south line of granitic upheaval passing from Esperance Bay through Kalgoorlie to Nullagine on the upper De Grey. This is bounded by a belt of good pastoral pa 420 The Northern Territory and Western Australia. country, watered by fine rivers, not far from which passes another Hne of granitic upheaval through Southern Cross to Cue and the upper Ashburton. Along the outer edge of this belt of pastoral country, and throughout the narrow and less fertile coastal plain, artesian water can also be obtained. Apart from the pastoral and mining industries, only two districts of this huge region are of any importance — the broad tropical peninsula that ends off the Northern Territory, and the e X or lein ^jj^gg^j south-western corner of the continent. The first, long neglected because the poorest and thriftiest of the States had it in charge, is still very little known ; its coast is fitted for the usual class of tropical pro- ducts, its uplands breed good cattle and horses, not to mention buffalo. As for minerals, it has most that Chillagoe has (p. 419) ; but Chinese prospecting has eaten away the surface patches, and no systematic search has yet been made to prove their existence in commercial quantity. The other district was for many years all Alban n • t^i^re was of Western Australia. It consists of the Darling Range and its foothills, border- ing the coast from Geraldton (not to be confused with Geraldton, Queensland) to Albany. On the range south of Perth is carried on a third of Australia's timber industry ; coal and tin are mined in the southernmost valleys ; the wheat- lands are east and north of Perth. Elsewhere, among the valleys by which streams from the inland plateau penetrate the range, orchards and dairy-farms nestle ; but the greater part of Western Australia's agricultural produce is consumed within the State. Its possibilities are, however, great. Droughts are there unknown ; it has a regular rainfall of more than 20 in. over an area double the total area of Victoria, and a rainfall of between 10 in. and 20 in. over an area equal to Victoria and New South Wales combined. Its average yield of wheat per acre is second only to that of Queensland and is subject to but slight vicissitudes ; it is now exported to Europe as well as to the Eastern States of Australia. Farm- ing now extends almost to the borders of the goldfields; more timber is exported than from any other Australian State, and dairying and fruit-growing are being rapidly developed. The importance attached to its agriculture is illustrated by the fact that it has just erected at a cost of £350,000 a rabbit-proof fence over two thousa..d miles long. The Prospects of Australia. 421 Nevertheless, Eastern Australia remains tlie most important factor in the continent. Its principal needs are scientific tillage, an adequate storage of the water, which in reality abounds over or under almost its whole area, and a sufficient market for its wares. As long as the great markets of the world cluster round the North Atlantic, the handicap ih^e Pacific^ ^^ distance will be heavy, and Australia must depend on its own population for consuming all produce that it cannot grow cheaply or well enough to defy the competition of countries nearer the market-centre ; if, therefore, it wants to increase its products {see p. 404), immigrants must be had at all costs to people it more densely. Some writers, however, anticipate a day when the Pacific, not the Atlantic, will be the inhabited world's centre of gravity. The prospect would not be contemplated with much equanimity by Britain or by Europe or even by white races generally; for such a transference of gravity would enormously increase the influence of the Asiatic in the politics of the world. The facts that man mast live on land, that there is much more land in the Atlantic than in the Pacific hemisphere, and that communities are developing as fast along the shores of the Atlantic as along those of the Pacific, render the contingency distant if not improbable. But in view of it, it is well to know that we have only sciatched the skin of Au-;tralia's wealth, and that the Emphe has there, stored away again-t emergencies, huge resources. ;:; As far as figures are concerned, Australia Its production, has more (-heep than any other country, and twenty per cent, of the world's flocks. One-fifth of the world's annual gold-yield comes from it, but only six per cent, of the silver, five per cent, of the copper and tin, and not quite nine per cent, of the lead. The figures may look small, but they represent the produce of about |- per cent, of the world's population, and the Austialian's individual produc- tivity is illustrated by this table of external trade per head ; — Imports. Exports. Total. £11 19 £8 12 5 1 4 8 15 1 £20 11 Germany United States 6 9 5 2 5 6 11 10 5 7 13 6 Australia 10 3 25 4 Australia's place within the Empire is, of course, more important. It producesforty per cent, of the wool, ten per 422 Australians Place in the Empire. cent, of the wheat, seventeen and a-half per cent, of the gold, six per cent, of the apples, five per cent, of the butter, and nearly five per cent, of the wine, imported into the United Kingdom. Sydney has a more valuable shipping trade than any British port except London, Liverpool, and Hull ; Glasgow comes next, then Melbourne, then Southampton, though the actual tonnage Its debt. of vessels engaged in the foreign trade cleared and entered at the ports of the Empire gives a somewhat different result. Australia stands high in another way also ; her States, municipalities, and public Trusts have borrowed nearly £258,000,000, mostly from British capitalists — every Australian, that is, owes about £63 on the pubhc account or about two and a quarter times the amount owed by every Briton, and interest on that amount has to be pro- vided out of his pocket either by taxation or in railway fares and water rates. The British debt of twelve hundred and fifty-eight millions or so is made up of seven hundred and forty millions for war expenditure incurred during the past (in creating those conditions which alone made colonial development possible), about forty-nine millions for permanent public works (military and other) managed by the State, and four hundred and sixty-nine millions for works carried on by municipalities and other public authorities. The Austra- lian two hundred and fifty-eight millions have gone almost entirely in the construction of public works — railways, water- works, harbours,, roads, schools, a few forts, and so forth — of which the bulk are now paying or beginning to pay for them- selves, just as railways in England pay dividends to their share- holders. Putting this in another form, each inhabitant of the United Kingdom owes, on public account, £17 for expenditure on wars, and £1L 12s. for public works, perhaps a half of which pay some interest on their cost. So that he provides by taxa- tion for the interest on £22. 16s. The Australian owes, on public account, £63 for public works, of which seventeen- twentieths produce revenue to meet the interest on their cost. Thus he provides by taxation for the interest on about £10, and gets the rest of the interest from payments for railway travelling, water, harbour dues, &c., which in Britain he would be making to private companies. So, while Great Britain supplies Australia with capital at cheaper rates than it could be obtained elsewhere and is the best market for Australian export-;, Australia not only helps Australian Experbnents and Ideas. 423 to furnish the Englishman with wool fox his clothes/gold for his trading and butter for his meals, but gives him also a sure in- vestment for his spare cash. And yet the chief importance of the Commonwealth to the Empire has still to be explained. For wool and gold, commerce and manufac- legiXtloT tiures, are not the end and aim of our existence ; they are just aids, necessary or useful, to a healthy and a happy life. Of health and happiness different races have different ideals, as we saw when talking of the reason why Australia excludes Asiatics ; and the history of each race is reallv the story of its widening ideals and its attempts to realise them. Thus all through the history of England the nation was struggling towards greater freedom — free- dom from the tyranny of feudal overlords, then freedom from a single ruler's despotism, then freedom from the overpowering influence of a few great landowners — until thirty or forty years ago the ideal had come to be that every Briton should be as little as possible trammelled by any laws except those which forbade him to injure another man physi- cally, and those which bade him pay a little towards the main- tenance of the public service. Across the Atlantic the United States, another community, mainly British in race, carried out the individualistic idea more thoroughly, and its own people are a little frightened about the result. Almost complete freedom from law made by the community at large has turned out to mean almost complete subjection to orders given by a certain number of the richest and cleverest men in the community ; which, whether it is beneficial or not, is not freedom at all. Australians have watched this experiment v/ith a great deal of interest. Their own conditions of life are similar enough to make it possible that the same fate would befall them. It was, however, found impossible, almost from the beginning, to build the necessary railways in the American or English fashion, by private enterprise ; and the central Government in each Australian State was compelled to take over that work. Start- ing from that, Australia has gradually but deliberately launched out on an experiment of exactly the opposite kind. That they may not have to obey the orders of leaders whom they did not choose — however wise those leaders may be — Australians prefer to bind themselves more closely by public law, even in matters which other British communities have left untouched by legislation. An Australian may not buy his goods freely from anywhere in the world ; if he buys certain goods from 424 Liberty and State Control. manufacturers outside Australia, he pays a fine in the shape of an import duty ; if he buys from foreigners rather than from British manufacturers, he pays a heavier fine. In most States he may not pay his workmen the wages he hkes, even if he can get them to agree ; he must pay what a judge, or a committee of employers and workmen, thinks a fair rate of wages on which the workman can live with comfort. If he owns land, and leaves it unused or used only for grazing when it is fit for tillage, his State Government can make him sell it at its value, and may then split it up among men who will use it better. In each case the law is intended to make things better for the community at large, even though it interferes with the indivi- dual's wishes. This does not sound like freedom. But, in the first place, freedom is not an end any more than wool-growing is ; it is an aid to happy life, and there may be better aids. And, in the second place, we cannot have absolute freedom : and it may be safer to obey laws that we can help to make than orders which we have nothing to do with giving. At any rate, Australia, like New Zealand, is making this experiment {see pp. 462-8). And on the results in Aus- tralia, when they have been tested by time, much of the Empire's future welfare may depend. If it turns out that under the Australian system more people are really free and happy than under the American or even the British, every man in the world with British ideals will owe Australia a great d-ebt for her courage ; if it is found that public laws after all cramp the individual as much as private compulsion, Austra- lians will have warned their fellow-citizens of the Empire off a dangerous course. At present their pursuit of health and happiness has everything in its favour ; there is no set form of society, such as cannot be disturbed without dangerous up- heavals ; the soil is fertile, the climate is so equable that people can sleep out of doors all the year round in all but a very small portion of the continent. And they are experimenting care- fully and deliberately, in the belief that a clever man is better employed making laws for his fellows than making a fortune for himself ; that a citizen owes certain personal duties to the State, besides the mere duty of paying other people to do things for it ; and that a man is happiest himself, and most useful to his country, when he is allowed, and has been trained, to do the work' for which he is natm^ally fitted, under pleasant and healthy conditions and without fear that other men's greater riches or cunning may rob him of his due reward. III. THE DOMINION OF NEW ZEALAND. CHAPTEE I. PHYSICAL FEATURES. l\ew Zealand, like the British Islands, is Area. an archipelago. It consists of two large and several smaller islands. The two largest are the North Island and the South Island (or the Middle Island as it is officially termed), separated from each other by Cook Strait. The existence of this strait is of great importance as facilitating communications, e.(j., between Napier and Nelson, Wellington and Christchurch ; but for it these sea voyages would be many times longer than they are. The two islands together contain ninety-nine per cent, of the land of New Zealand. The North Island has an area of 44,408 square miles, the South Island an area of 58,525 square miles, and Stewart Island, separated from South Island by Foveaux Strait, an area of GG5 square miles. The length of these three islands is abcjut eleven hundred miles, or nearly twice that of Great Britain. The breadth varies from forty-six to two hundred and fifty miles, and no place is more than seventy-five miles from the sea. The smaller islands of the group are the Auckland, Camp- bell, Chatham, Antipodes and Bounty Islands. The small Kermadec Islands (five miles square), though outside the limits of the archipelago, and the Cook Islands (150 square miles), some two thousand miles distant from Auckland are politically included in New Zealand, whose total area is thus 104,751 square miles, or some seventeen thousand square miles less than that of Great Britain and Ireland. 426 Physical Features of the North Island. New Zealand is extremely mountainous, the Island. plains being few and small relatively to the size of the country. A continuous mountain chain runs for two hundred miles through the east of the North Island and for five hundred and twenty miles through the South Island. A great part of the North Island is volcanic ; and on its west coast the extinct volcano of Mount Egmont (8,260 ft.), with its snow-covered cone of perfect symmetry, forms a great circular protrusion. The north of the island consists of a long, narrow, irregular and much indented peninsula, which runs for over three hundred and fifty miles north-west from the mountain core. This peninsula is almost cut in two by Manukau Harbour on the west and Hauraki Gulf on the east. On the narrow isthmus which joins the two halves of the peninsula is built Auckland, the largest town of New Zealand, among extinct volcanoes. In the volcanic districts of the centre al-e numerous picturesque lakes, such as Rotorua and Tarawera. The volcanoes of this region are now quiescent, but in 188G a' violent eruption destroyed the famous pink and white sinter terraces and gi'eatly altered the topography of the district. Farther south is Lake Taupo, a large regular expanse of water drained to the south by the Waikato, the chief river of New Zealand. South of this lake rise the active volcanic cones of Tongariro (7,515 ft.) and Ruapehu (9,008 ft.), separ- ated from Mount Egmont by the broad Wanganui valley. Through the lowland formed by this chain of lakes and rivers runs the railway line from Auckland, skirting the base of Tongariro and Ruapehu, to Wellington, the capital. Welling- ton is built on Port^Nicholson, one of the bays formed at the southern end of the North Island by the submerged valleys between the ranges of the eastern mountain system. These ranges slope down to the high east coast which is broken by Hawke's Bay, and by Poverty Bay. On the rolling grassy land of Hawke's Bay is situated Napier, and on Poverty Bay lies Gisborne. In the South Island the mountain system is Island both broader and higher. The parallel ranges in the north form peninsulas on the south side of Cook Strait. The valleys between have been drowned, and form the picturesque sounds, on which are built Picton, at the head of Queen Charlotte Sound, Nelson, at the head of the wide Tasman Bay, and Blenheim, at the mouth of the Wairau Tlie Plains and Mountains of the South Island. 427 river. It is towards the north that the mountain system of South Island attains its greatest height in Mt. Franklin (10,000 ft.) and Mt. Hochstetter (11,200 ft.). Of the rivers rising in this mountain system the Buller and the Grey, which flow to the west coast through rich mineral regions, are the most important. Westport, at the mouth of the Buller, Greymouth, at the mouth of the Grey, and Hokitika are the chief towns in the west. Thoy are cut ofE from the plains and ports of the eastern coast by the long line of the Southern Alps, which is ^^^ PkinT.^'''^ everywhere difficult to cross. The Otira gorge affords a difficult route from this western region to the Waimakariri river and the Canterbury plains, which form the largest lowland of New Zealand and lie at the eastern base of the Southern Alps ; they are bounded on the south by a volcanic mass which makes the Otago peninsula, and are broken on the north by the similar formation of Banks peninsula. In the northern half of this lowland region isChristchurch, withLyttelton as its port, and in the southern Timaru and Oamaru. Still farther south, beyond a spur of the Southern Alps is another lowland, in which are situated Dunedin and Port Chalmers, on the harbour of Otago. Christ- church, Lyttelton, Timaru, and Oamaru, are the chief outlets for the produce of the Canterbury plains, which rise gradually in the west to the majestic Southern Alps. These mountains, which run southwards from the Otira Gorge and culminate in Aorangi (Mount Cook; 12,350 ft.), contain ^^Lakes^"^ many glaciers, of which the largest, the Tasman Glacier, is eighteen miles long and from three to four miles wide. On the west side several of these glaciers descend to the level of 600 ft. above the sea. They are the remains of the once vast icefields which ex- cavated a series of long, narrow, deep, steep-sided, pictur- esque valley lakes, resembling those of the Scottish Highlands and those at the northern and southern bases of the European Alps. Among these lakes are Wanaka and Wakatipu, drained by the Clutha, and Te Anau, drained by the Waiau. The same ice sheet greatly deepened the The fiords. western valleys of the Southern Alps, which open to the coast. In the south these have been filled by the sea, forming a magnificent series of fiords^ which are only rivalled by those of Norway, British Columbia and Southern Chile. These fiords further resemble each other in 428 Tlie Climate of New Zealand. being situated on west coasts in the track of prevailing westerly storm winds which bring rain at all seasons, but especially in winter. New Zealand lies between latitudes 34i^°S. Climate. and 47^r°S., that is, almost in those of Japan and Italy in the northern hemisphere. To both of these countries it has a certain structural resemblance, a long mountain system being in each case flanked by younger volcanic rocks. The climate of New Zealand resembles that of Italy rather than that of Japan, but is more equable and moister, as New Zealand is exposed to the influences of a wide ocean on every side. The north of the North Island has a typical Mediterranean climate with long summers and wet winters. Outside this area, the greater part of New Zealand has a climate resembling, but much clearer than, that of Western Europe, between the north of Portugal and the south of Ireland. Wind and rain. Lying in the track of the westerly storms it receives rain at all seasons. These westerly storm winds are stronger in the southern hemisphere than in the northern, owing to the difference in the relative distribu- tion of land and water. Very heavy rains fall on the western slopes of the Southern Alps, which deflect the winds upwards into higher and colder regions of the atmosphere, and cause much of the moisture to fall as rain. The descending winds on the lee side of the mountains are consequently dry. They become warmed by compression as they descend, like those known as foehn winds in Switzerland and as Chinook winds, in the North American prairies {see p. 248). In New Zealand they are called " north- westers." They blow most strongly during November and December, and often injure the ripening grain before it is reaped in January and February. The wet windward slopes of the Southern Alps are densely forested, as in the corresponding region of British Columbia. Cattle graze in the high mountain meadows above the tree line. A great contrast is presented by the grassy or cultivated plains of the leeward side. In these the rainfall is under 30 in. and cereals do well. In the North Island, where the mountain system is in the east and is narrower, lower and less con- tinuous, the distribution of the rainfall is more uniform. The greater part of the ' North Island receives over 40 in. of rain, exrept'in the districts which form the hinterland of Wanganui and Hawke's Bav. Vegetation and Natural Products. 429 New Zealand appears to have been originally covered by a dense forest bush of evergreen timber ; and even in the now treeless plains of Otago traces of forest trees are found. But this forest has been undergoing a process of destruction for a long period. Forest fires have lielped to des- Vegetation troy it and, at a later period, large areas have been cleared for settlement. Recently, how- ever, large forest reserves have been created by the Govern- ment for the preservation of native timber, and the settlers themselves have planted a number of Australian gums and pines. The existing forests of New Zealand have a dense undergrowth of shrubs and ferns, the tree ferns growing to a height of 30 ft. or 40 ft. and forming a beautiful feature. In the North Island the noblest forest tree is the kauri pine, which yields a liquid resin ; this solidifies with exposure or age, and the large areas in the north, which were once covered with this pine, are valuable for the gum embedded in the ground where the trees have fallen and rotted away. Another vegetable product of importance is phormiiun, or New Zealand hemp ; it is chiefly used in making binder twine, the export of which rose between 1896 and 1906 from £33,000 to £776,000. The treeless dry Canterburv Plains make a both for wool and mutton. The mutton is frozen and exported in special refrigerating chambers. Agri- culture is gradually developing, and the export of dairy pro- duce, butter and cheese is now worth some £2,000,000 a year. The favourable conditions of climate and soil give a very high yield per acre for the cereal crop (wheat, oats, barley), New Zealand being superior in this respect to any other part of the southern hemisphere. In the North Island subtropical fruits and crops can be raised. The mineral wealth of New Zealand is great. Mineral Wealth. ^,^j^ j^ ^^^^^^^ .^ .^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^f ^j^_^ ^.^^^^^^ ^-^^^ and other rivers of the south of the South Island, from which it is obtained by dredging. It is mined in the north-west of South Island, round Hokitika, Greymouth, and Westport. Excellent coal is abundant in the same region and coal mining is now one of New Zealand's largest industries. Gold also occurs in the basins of the river flowing to the Firth of Thames in North Island ; but these alluvial deposits are not so import- ant as the quartz mining in the goldfields of Coromandel county and especially Waihi, CHAl'TER 11. MAOEIS AND EARLY SETTLERS. _. „ . The early history of Kew ZeaLand is shrouded in mystery. Some writers have contended that there was an aboriginal race, of whom nothing is known except that they hunted the moa, but who are now absolutely extinct, unless, indeed, the Morioris of the Chatham Islands are descended from them. Others believe that the Maoris were themselves the moa hunters, and that the Morioris are a branch of the same race. In- numerable theories, most of them fantastic, have been pro- pounded as to their origin, but it is certain that the IVIaoris belong to the great Polynesian family ; colour, language, traditions and customs are practically identical ; but beyond that nothing can be said with certainty. Their own traditions, as far as they go, are Their settle- perfectly clear. They tell us how" their mentinlsew ^ . t i • i ti i tt i • Zealand I ancestors lived m a place called Hawaiki. Driven thence by civil war, they took refuge in their canoes and steered towards the rising of the Southern Cross, in search of an island of which they had heard which abounded in the precious greenstone (pounamu) ; for the maoris value greenstone as Europeans do gold. They landed at various points in the north part of New Zealand, drew up their canoes on the beach, let loose their dogs, and planted the seeds they had brought with them. Ei'om the parties that came in the several canoes were descended the various tribes which peopled the country. Tlie genealogical sticks, carved for the chiefs by the tohungas or priests show that the immi- gration took place at least fourteen generations ago. Unfortunately this goes but a little way towards clearing np the mystery. Some writers have attempted to identify Hawaiki with Hawaii, others with Savaii, but the natives of Hawaii have a similar legend of how they came from Hawaii Maori Civilisation and Religion. 431 and called their new home after their old one ; and the natives of Savaii tell mudi the same story ; in other words, they are all various forms of one legend. The utmost that can be said is that they may have stopped at some island on the way, but even if that conld be identified, we have no evidence that amounts to proof as to their original starting point. Nor can anything more definite be decided as to the time. Various dates between B.C. 2000 and a.d. 1450 have been suggested, the latter being probably more nearly correct. Nearly all the Maoris settled in the ^^^Tti^n'^^^' ^<^^"tl^ Island ; comparatively few penetrated further south. The state of Maoriland in some respects reminds us of Germany as described by Tacitus. The fortified pas bear some resemblance to the raths with which travellers in Ireland are familiar, although of course they contained no place for keeping cattle. Each tribe was independent, and tribal wars were incessant. Cultiva- tion was rude in the extreme, fern root, rats, birds and shell- fish being the ordinary food. Metals were unknown ; but the art of carving in wood was carried out with marvellous skill and ingenuity. Weapons and ornaments were made from the native greenstone, sometimes merely chipped into shape, but more often beautifully polished. Stone adzes were fastened to sticks as handles, the fibres of the native flax being used to tie theni fast. Great canoes were hollowed out of the trunks of trees by burning and cutting, and then elaborately carved. The glory of each tribe was its whare-puni, or meeting house, with panels fantastically carved, representing the ancestors and genii of the house. The native dress was composed of flax mats, beautifully woven, sometimes ornamented with feathers, sometimes with dog-skin. -r, ,. . Their mythology bore some resemblance Eehgion, . ^.i i. / • j. n mi . ° to that 01 ancient Greece. ihel'e were families of gods and giants, and every object in nature had its presiding spirit. There was Ra, the god of day and light; and Po, of night and death ; Maui, whose strength had drawn up the North Island from the bottom of the sea (whence it was called " Te Ika a Maui," that is, " The Fish of Maui "), but who had vainly striven tO win immortality for man by a struggle with the goddess of death ; and there were gods of every wind. The most powerful deity was Tu, the lord of strength and war, who was worshipped in various aspects, like the Egyptian sun god. Idolatry was hardly known ; but prayer — at least, in the form of incantations— was offered by the tohuuga at every solemn moment of life. 432 Native Customs. Children were baptised in the name of Tu. The Maoris professed a belief, in a life after death, the soul being sometimes spoken of as passing northwards to its old home in Hawaiki. The great institution of their religion was tapu (or taboo) ; perhaps sanctiii/ is the nearest English equivalent to it. To violate tapu was the most heinous of crimes. A newly- born child was tapu until it was baptised. Chiefs were so sacred that the houses where they slept, the food they touched, even articles of properly they laid claim to, were tapu. Witchcraft, the evil eye and such-like superstitions were as universal amongst the Maoris as amongst other uneducated races, the power of the tohungas being strengthened by what may have been ventriloquism. One of the duties of the tohunga was to tattoo the young people. Girls were tattooed only on the lips ; boys all over the face. The instrument used was a small stone adze ; and blue paint, made out of the pulverised charcoal of the veronica, sometimes mixed with tlie ashes of the aweto (or vegetable caterpillar) was rubbed into the wound. The slightest insult was enough to light ^"'Ss''"'^ the spark of war, and when once it was kindled it was kept alive by iitit, or family vengeance. Fighting was considered the profession of a gentleman, weaving and cultivation being left to slaves and women. But the native character was not without beauty. Even their communistic manner of life had its advantages. Hospitality was universal, and the greatest reproach to a man was to call him a miser. Like most primitive tongues, the Maori language was first put into writing by the missionaries. Many of the Maori names of places are merely descriptions of some natural object, and should be written as compound words — thus, Wai-tangi, "weeping water," is a name common to many waterfalls. The intricacies of native law concerning the tenure of land were most perplexing. All land belonged to tribes, or to branches of tribes ; the actual possession by one individual did not prevent the chief personally, and all the other members of the tribe collectively, from having rights over it. The right to the tribal estate depended on an infinite variety of circumstances — occupation, descent, conquest (where one tribe actually seized and held as their own the land which had belonged to another), intermarriages and other causes arising out of the peculiarities of native custom. The failure to realize this has been the cause of many of the conflicts between the natives and the European settlers. Discovery and Settlement by Europeans. 433 It has been said that both French and The Arrival of Spanish naviirators visited New Zealand in the Europeans, ^j^^ sixteenth century, and in a Dutch atlas published before 1G3S an indistinct line is marked " Zelandia Nova" ; but the first European who can be proved to have seen the country was Tasman {see also p. 339). He arrived from Tasmania in 1642, and sailed up the west coast to the North West Cape, which he named Maria Van Diemen. His chart is in many respects remarkably correct ; but he never discovered the strait that separates the two islands, and fancied that the country which he saw was part of a southern continent, to which "the name of " Staaten Land " had been yiven ; he, therefore, marked it " Staaten Land." When tlie error was corrected, it was again called New Zealand. ^ , . _ , Nothing further was heard of the country Captain Cook. ^^^^^.^ ^^^^ ^^^.^^^ ^^ ^.^^p^^.^^ ^^^^ r^^^^^ intrepid explorer paid five visits to New Zealand. He cir- cumnavigated the islands and made careful surveys ; many mountains, headlands and inlets still bear the names he gave. He first landed at Tauranga, on the east coast of the North Island, on October 8, 1769 ; on January 30, 1770, he hoisted the flag of Great Britain on a hill overlooking the sound which he named after Queen Charlotte. According to the maxims of international law tlien in vogue, this gave to England an inchoate right to the ownership of the newly- discovered country, which, however, could not become com- plete without actual occupation. During his visits several unfortunate encounters with the natives took place, with regard to which he cannot ]je held free from blame ; but he conferred some lasting benefits on New Zealand, as he left behind him pigs, potatoes and other valuable plants. Before Captain Cook's first visit was over, the French explorer, De Surville, had landed in the north ; he was followed by Du Fresne and others. But the visits of the French navi- gators have left no permanent mark; with few exceptions the names they gave to various spots are forgotten. „ . g . After that time many other ships arrived, andby the beginning of the nineteenth century several Europeans had settled in New Zealand. Their num- bers rapidly increased. Whaling and sealing stations were established in the south, and a trade sprang up with the rising settlements of Australia. The stone age of New Zealand was over ; the natives were bartering their timber, flax and potatoes for axes, muskets, cotton and spirits, the white men who had settled amongst them frequently acting as agents for their 434 Early Settlers and Missionaries. adopted couritiyinen. It must be admitted that the intlueuce of the European visitors was not for good. All writers con- fess that their treatment of the natives forms a dark page in liistory ; nor can nuich be said for the character of those early settlers. j^jgg. ^ . Soon, however, there was another and a nobler immigration. To Samuel Marsden, a New Soutli Wales chaplain, belongs the honour of having been the pioneer of missions in New Zealand. The first Christian service was held on Christmas Day, 1814; the Wesleyan mission was founded eight years later, and the Eoman Catholics commenced their labours in 1838. Thus two streams of in- fluence were brouglit to bear upon the natives. Arduous though the work of the missionaries was, their untiring devo- tion bore fruit. Cannibalism and slavery were .abolished, agriculture was improved and education introduced. Many Maoris professed Christianity, and amongst the eye-witnesses who have borne testimony to the good work done by the missionaries was Charles Darwin. On the other hand, the natives, armed with muskets and inflamed with drink, had their worst passions aroused; the tribal quarrels which had been comparatively harmless in former times, became wars of extermination. As immigra- T , tion increased, moreover, lawlessness grew Lawlessness. / ir i ^\ -n e more rampant. Kororareka, on the Bay ot Islands, which had by 1825 grown into a town, was a verit- able Alsatia of the Pacific. A few efforts were made by the authorities in England and Australia to introduce some sort of law and order ; the Governor of New South Wales appointed magistrates at Kororareka, and imperial statutes were passed giving the Australian courts jurisdiction over British subjects in New Zealand. But such measures were ineffectual, and New Zealand remained without a government. In 1831, an adventurous Frenchman, Baron de Thierry, took the title of " King of New Zealand," and attempted to set up his court at Hokianga. Though his project failed, it was not without some important results. A French man-of- war arrived about the same time ; and some of the missionaries, seenig the possibility of French annexation, advised the chiefs to sign a petition to King William the Fourth, praying for the establishment of a Britisli Protectorate. Though this was not actually granted, it led to the appointment of a British Eesident at the Bay of Islands in 1833. He conceived the idea of federating the Maoris into a Native State, under the title of "The United Tribes of New Zealand," with a Hag, a E. G. WaJcefield and the New Zealand Company. 435 Parliament and a constitution; but the scheme was a ailure. Meanwhile other causes were at work, hastening matters to a crisis. For some time the minds of people both in England and France had been directed towards colonisation. As early as 1825 a company had been formed in London, and in the following year a party of emigrants was sent out; but they were not pleased with the country to which they had come, and all but four left. After a loss of £20,000 the company was dissolved. One of the most prominent of those who "^*w^l^^u^°" took part in the emigration movement in VVakelieid. j;^g|^j^,| ^^.^^ Edward Gibbon Wakefield. He disapproved of the haphazard way in which emigration had up to that time been conducted, and desired to substitute for it an ordered system of colonisation. He urged that a colony should not be composed of chance elements, but should reproduce the gradations of English society in due proportion; and that land, instead of being freely granted in large tracts, should be sold in small lots at a sufficient price, part of the purchase money being applied to the promotion of emigration and the improvement of • means of communication in the colony. This latter view was earnestly put forward by the Colonisation Society, which was formed in England in 1830, and was partially adopted m some of the Australian settle- ments soon afterwards (sec p. 353). In 1837 Wakefield and some others ^Land C^m^an''*^ founded the New Zealand Association, with the object of colonising the country. Tliis speedily collapsed, but in its place rose the New Zealand Land Company. Its scheme of action was to buy land from the Maoris and sell it in England to intending settlers, the price to be sufficient to pay the passage of emigrant labourers, to provide churches, schools and roads, and to give a fair profit to the shareholders. The Government and the mis- sionaries, who feared that it would give rise to native trouliles, opposed the project. Wakefield, however, resolved to act without Government aid, and sent out his brother, Col. Wakefield, as agent, who at once commenced bargaining with some of the chiefs, and afterwards claimed that he had pur- chased millions of acres for some muskets, rolls of calico and other articles of trade, the value of which was estimated at some £9,000. The compan}^, without waiting to hear whether their agent had succeeded or failed, despatched a large party of emigrants, who arrived at Port Nicholson, in Cook Straits, on January 22, 1840. 436 Annexation hy Great Britain. French Rivalr louring this time the French had not been ^" inactive. The Xanto-Bordelaise Company was founded about the same time as the New Zealand Asso- ciation. In 183(S, Langlois, the captain of a French whaler, purchased some land at Akaroa in the South Island from the natives, returned to France, and sold it to the Nanto-Borde- laise Company. At the instigation of Baron de Thierry, the French Government signed a convention with the company, which was thenceforth to be known as " La Compagnie Fran(;aise de la Nouvelle Zelande." The Eoman Catholic bishop and priests, who arrived in New Zealand the same year, were Frenchmen, and French annexation had become more than a possibility. Another influence was also at work. Adventurers in Aus- tralia claimed to have made enormous purchases of land in New Zealand. Sir G.Gipps, the Governor of New South AVales, fore- saw the troubles which these claims might cause, and on his advice the Queen issued a Proclamation in 1839, stating that she would not recognise as valid any titles not derived from, or confirmed by, herself. Indeed, if all these claims had been enforced, the whole country would have been insufficient to meet them ; and as there was no authority to appeal to, blood- shed would probably have been the result of the attempt. This state of things led the missionaries Annexation by ^^ ^|^^ ^^ ^ ^ ^ f ^^ country was Great Britain. ^. . ^^ . t J annexation by Ji,ngland. More than that, it forced the hands of the British Government. Capt. Hobson, E.N.. was sent out as consul with a commission to annex New Zealand, and to assume the office of Lieutenant- Governor, under the superior authority of the Governor of New South Wales. He landed at Kororareka on January 29, 1840. The English missionaries urged the native chiefs to assent to the annexation, and at their instigation the Treaty of Waitangi was executed on February 6. The effect of this treaty, which was signed by nearly all the great chiefs, was that (i) the New Zealand chiefs ceded to the Queen full sovereignty over the islands (ii) Great Britain guaranteed to the chiefs " full, exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates, forests, fisheries and other properties which they may collectively or individually possess, so long as it is their wish and desire to retain the same in their possession. But the chiefs of the United Tribes and the individual chiefs yield to Her Majesty the exclusive right of pre-emption over such lands as the proprietors thereof may be disposed to alienate, at such prices as may be agreed upon The Treaty of Waitangi. 437 between the respective proprietors and persons appointed by Her Majesty to treat with them in that behalf," (iii) Great Britain granted the natives all the rights and privileges of British subjects. On May 21, the Queen's sovereignty was proclaimed by virtue of the Treaty, and in the following month formal possession was taken both of the South Island and of Stewart Island. The English Government were only just F™>f!ftf;rJ!^f. i» time. In July two French vessels arrived i rench attempts. , -^ . • . ^^ at tlie Bay or Islands, with instructions to annex the whole country. They were clearly too late to do anything in the North Island ; but Hobson, seeing that trouble might arise with regard to the South, promptly de- spatched a vessel to Akaroa to complete the British title by actual occupation. When the French arrived there, on August 15, they found that the British flag had been hoisted five days previously, and a Court of Petty Sessions had been established. Thus ended the attempt to make New Zealand a dependency of France. Most of the French settlers returned at once to Europe. The French claims at Akaroa were ultimately bought up by the New Zealand Company. On May 3, 1841, a fresh Patent was signed by Her Majesty, creating New Zealand a separate colony, with Capt. Hobson as its Governor, Governor Hobson. CHAPTEE III. THE CROWN COLONY, 1840-1852. The history of New Zealand is as diversi- fied as that of Switzerland. Each settlement, like each Swiss canton, has had its own characteristics and its own life. It is only possible here to narrate some of the more important events which affected the Colony as a whole, and to glance in passing at those which were of merely local interest. New Zealand was of necessity at first a purely Crown Colony, with no representative element in its constitution. The Governor was assisted by a Legislative Council, com- posed of six nominated members, of whom three (the Colonial Secretary, Attorney-General and Treasurer) formed the execu- tive. In the letters patent the North Island was called New Ulster, the South New Munster, and Stewart Island New Leinster — names which never attained popularity and were soon disused. In 1 841 the Chief Justice (Sir Wm. Martin) and the Attorney- General (Mr. Swainson) arrived. The}' were not only men of character and intellect, but also learned lawyers ; and during the first session of the Legislative Council an ad- mirable series of ordinances was passed, adapting English law to the requirements of a young colony. Amongst other beneficial changes, many of the archaic intricacies of English conveyancing were swept away. The next year Dr. Selwyn, who had been appointed Bishop of New Zealand by letters patent, landed. He was the first and last to hold the title, for the power of the Crown to appoint a bishop by letters patent ceased as soon as the Colony became possessed of a Legislature ; and the Anglican Church, free to manage its own affairs, divided the Colony into several dioceses. The Natives and their Lands. 439 „. ^.^ - Governor Hobson remained but a short time at Kororareka (or Russell, as it was afterwards named), and soon fixed his seat of government on the Hauraki Gulf, where Auckland now stands. During his brief term of office, he was beset with difficulties on every side. The Imperial Government did not supply him with funds sufficient to carry on the ordinary functions of government, still less to purchase from the natives land on which to place colonists. The two local sources of revenue — customs and land sales — brought in little ; and the Government was on the verge of bankruptcy. But all his other troubles were outweighed by a weary struggle with reference to the land question, into The Land ^^j^j^j^ y^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^ ^ ^^XQ New Zealand Uuestion. „ ,t i / • i j^ i- Company. He was determmed to carry out the spirit of the Queen's proclamation of 1839 and the Treaty of Waitangi. The Legislative Council passed an ordinance declaring that in future purchases no title could be recognised until approved by the Government, but that the Government Commissioners might, if they saw good reason, ratify purchases previously made. For this purpose the Secretary of State (Lord Stanley) agreed to send out a Com- missioner, Mr. Spain. Although his investigations were necessarily laborious, the natives generally waited for his de- cision, and abode by it when given. The Company, on the other hand, vehemently denounced the '' mischievous Treaty of Waitangi," which, they said, could not be treated as anything more than a praiseworthy device for amusing and pacifying savages for the moment. They objected to being called upon to prove that the natives understood the contracts they were alleged to have made, or that the vendors had, ac- cording to native customary law, a right to sell. They attempted to make fresh purchases without the consent of the Government ; sent men to make surveys of land, which the natives protested they had not sold, without waiting for Spain's award ; and despatched shiploads of emigrants to take possession of land which they believed they had purchased before they started, but found on their arrival still occupied by the native proprietors. The Port Nicholson Settlement, which was moved to the lower end of the harbour and named Wellington, rapidly grew into a town ; in 1841 a settlement was formed at Taranaki, chiefiy by emigrants from Devon, and hence called New Plymouth ; and in the following February Nelson, the third of the principal settlements founded by the Company, was established in the north of the South Island. 440 First Hostilities between Natives and Settlers. In September, 1842, Governor Hobson Actmg-Governor ^^j^^ Shortland, the Colonial Secretary, bnortland. i • • i. i ^i , ^i ^r administered the go\ernment until the arrival of Capt. FitzRoy in November, 1843. During his administration occurred the first outbreak of actual hostilities between the settlers and the natives. The Company claimed that their purchase of Nelson included the Wairau, a rich district seventy miles distant. The native chiefs, Te Eau- paraha and Rangihaeata, maintained that it did not, but as usual expressed themselves willing to await Spain's investigation and abide by his award, and urged that, until that sliould have been made, no survey should be undertaken. Nevertheless, the Company sent forty ni en to complete the survey. The natives removed the surveyors' tents and valuables from the land they claimed as their own, and burnt a reed hut which the surveyors had erected. The magistrate at Nelson immediately issued a warrant for the arrest of the chiefs on a charge of arson, and went witli a party of fifty armed men to execute it. A shot was fired — accidentally, it is said — by one of the magistrate's followers, where- upon the firing became general, amongst the victims being a daughter of Rauparaha. The Maori loss M'as five killed and eight wounded ; on the English side twenty-two were killed and five wounded, nine of those slain having been killed after being taken prisoners, according to the Maori custom of " utu," or vengeance for the death of a chief's daughter. Governor FitzRoy was a gallant sailor overnor ^^^j ^^ honourable gentleman, who proved his ability by his career both before and after his term of office in New Zealand. But as Governor of New Zealand he was placed in circumstances which made success well-nigh impossible. The settlers at Wel- lington and Nelson, enraged by the recent events at the Wairau, demanded the punishment of the instigators of the' massacre ; FitzRoy, believing that the English had been the wrongdoers at first, and realising that a general native rising might result in the annihilation of the settlements (which only numbered about twelve thousand persons all told, scattered from Kororareka to Akaroa), refused to take action, thereby making all the settlers on Cook Straits his enemies. At New Plymouth the Company claimed to have purchased seventy thousand acres from the natives. Spain reduced this to sixty thousand. FitzRoy, after making careful inquiries, revised the commissioner's award, and cut down the claim to less than four thousand. This decision had the unfortunate Financial and other Troubles. 441 result of making the New Plymouth settlement impossible, for the land thus granted was insufficient for its maintenance. Jjut in the North matters were still worse. At Kororareka actual war (not, however, connected with the land question) broke out. The natives, commencing by cutting down the British flagstaff, ended by burning the town ; the settlers with difficulty escaped to Auckland. Troops and guns were brought from Australia, but for a time their efforts at capturing the native pas were ineffectual. The fears which the natives not unreasonably entertained that the British Government in- tended to set aside the treaty and to seize all their lands, were rapidly uniting them against the settlers. Financial troubles were also pressing. The Governor attempted to relieve the pecuniary embarrassment of the settlers by abolishing Customs duties and imposing a property and income tax instead; but, finding that impossible, he was obliged to revert to Customs duties. At another time, yield- ing to popular demand, he consented to waive the pre- emptive right of the Crown on land sales at Auckland, and to allow private persons to purchase direct from the natives, on payment of a duty of ten shillings an acre ; and then, as the intending purchasers were still unsatisfied, he' reduced the duty to a penny. The bills which Shortland had drawn on the Imperial Treasury had been dishonoured, nor could money be raised by loan. The Governor, unable to pay salaries, passed an ordinance authorising the issue of debentures. This was disallowed by the Home Government, and FitzKoy was soon afterwards recalled. Few men have played so prominent a part ^'' firTTerm^^'' "^ British Colonial history as Sir George Grey. Besides the work which he performed in South Africa and Australia, he twice filled the office of Governor of New Zealand, and afterwards became Superinten- dent of a province, a prominent politician, and Premier of the Colony. He possessed not only great ability but also a charm of manner which captivated all whom he came across. More than that, he had the gift of sympathy, which enabled him to enter into the spirit of other races than his own. Maori chiefs were always happy in reciting to him their old romantic legends, many of which he translated into English, in language almost as poetic as the original. The one great blot on his character was a lack of straightforwardness which at times led him into courses which his most ardent admirers can hardly justify, 442 Sir George Greifs First Governorship. ^. „ Having been appointed to succeed Governor uccess. YiizRoy, Sir George (then Capt.) Grey arrived at Auckland in November, 1845. His position from the first was easier than that of his predecessor. He had about one thousand troops to support him ; he was authorised to draw on the Imperial Treasury for the necessary funds, and in- structed to pacify the feelings of the natives by giving them public assurance that the conditions of the Treaty of Waitangi would be scrupulously fulfilled. He lost no time in paying the debentures issued by FitzRoy, forbidding the purchase of land from the natives by private persons, and prohibiting the sale of firearms to the nativfes. The war in the North was speedily ended. Disturbances which had broken out near Wellington were also quelled. Laud purchase went on steadily and peacefully, amongst the tracts which Sir George Grey acquired being the district of the Wairau (which Spain had decided had never been purchased) and some of the land near New Plymouth which FitzEoy had given back to the natives. Meanwhile, ever since the Treatv of Wai- ^he^Treaf "S* ^^"S*' oP^^^^n in the Imperial I^uliament Waitangi. with reference to New Zealand had been divided. One party (which included Lord Derby and Mr. Gladstone) maintained that as far as England was concerned there was not a more strictly and rigorously binding treaty than that of Waitangi ; the other, of which Lord Grey was the leader, considered that the savage inhabi- tants of New Zealand had themselves no right of property in land which they did not occupy, and that " what had been called the Treaty of Waitangi " should be disregarded. In 1846, Lord Grey having become Secretary of State, sent out new instructions to Sir George Grey directing him to seize all lands claimed by the natives except patches of potato ground and other spots of which they were in actual occupa- tion. This despatch called forth a vehement protest from the Chief Justice, the Bishop and those who had taken part in persuading the chiefs to sign the treaty ; and it was after- wards revoked. Lord Grev also secured the passing of an I^cStuTon^ ^^^ establishing a Constitution for the ons 1 u ion. q^jq^^^^ According to his plan there were to be two Provinces — New Ulster (the northern half of the North Island) and New Munster (the rest of the Colony), each with its House of Representatives, Legislative Council and Lieutenant-Governor; and besides these, a General Colonisation of the South Island. 443 Assembly of two Houses and a Governor-in-Chief to manage the affairs of the whole Colony. This scheme was too elabo- rate for the ininiediate requii-ements of the country, and another Act was passed postponing its operation for six years; but it was evident that the time was approaching when a radical change must be made in the form of government. Tliere had always been a difficulty in governing Wellington and Nelson from Auckland. FitzKoy had endeavoured to meet this by appointing a Superintendent of the Soutlieru Settlements. But now the whole aspect of affairs was altered; the South Island was being occupied. c ,, -r 1 ^ It will always be a subject of wonder why South Island. ,, tvt v i , ^ '' i ^i • the JNew Zealand Company commenced their operations in the North and not in the South Island, which appears much more suited for pioneer settlement. The open grass country was ready for pasture, and could be tilled with- out the labour of clearing the forest ; the Maori population was so sparse that a native difficulty could hardly arise. In fact, it would be difficult to find a spot in the world where the Wakefield system would have had a better chance of being carried out in its entirety. Yet for many years the whole South Island, with the exception of a strip adjoining Cook Straits, remained void, the only occupants, besides, per- haps, a couple of hundred Maoris and about fifty Frenchmen at Akaroa, being a few scattered farmers, whalefishers and sailors. Soon after the disruption of the Established Church of Scotland, however, a society was formed, Its Colonization ^j^Hy^i u rpj^^ j^ay Association for Promoting 'Set'tlers! ^^^^ Settlement of a Scotch Colony in Otago, New Zealand," and four hundred thousand acres were purchased by the New Zaaland Company from the natives, the Government waiving its right of pre-euiption. In ] 847 matters were so far arranged that a public meeting was held at Glasgow at which the details of the scheme were explained. It was announced that one hundred and forty-four thousand six hundred acres had been surveyed and divided into two thousand four hundred properties, each property to consist of sixty and a quarter acres, of which one-quarter acre was to be in the proposed city, ten acres in the suburbs and fifty in the country. The price of each property was to be £120. 10s.; of this amount three-eighths were to be devoted to the expenses of immigration, two-eighths to surveys and roads, two-eighths to the New Zealand Company, and one- eighth to religious and educational purposes. Two hundred properties were to be open for selection by intending pur- 444 The Canterbury Association chasers, one lumdred were assigned as a municipal estate, one hundred as a religious and educational endowment, and two hundred to the New Zealand Company. On March 23, 1848, the "John Wiclif" arrived with Capt. Cargill (the otlicial agent) and ninety immigrants ; they were followed on April loth by the "Philip Lang" with the Eev. Dr. Burns (a nephew of the poet) and two hundred and thirty-six others. The city was called Dunedin, and Scottish names were reproduced throughout the district. Although the proposed plan had to be much modified, and time has wrought many changes, the Provincial District to this day retains many of its original characteristics, and the people of Dunedin are justly proud of their beautiful city. The Church of England soon followed the The Canterbury example of the Free Kirk. " The Canter- saocia ion. ^^^,^ Association," in which the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Lyttelton and other prominent church- men took an active part, was formed with the object of founding a settlement in which the predominant intiuence should be Anglican. In 1849 the Association purchased from the New Zealand Company about two millions five hundred thousand acres, which included the remaining claims of the Nanto-Bordelaise Company. According to the scheme, rural lands, in sections of not less than fifty acres, were to be sold at £3 per acre ; of this, ten shillings was to go to the cost of forming the settlement and paying for the land, £1 to the Eeligious and Educational Fund, £1 to the Immigration Fund and the remaining ten shillings to roads, bridges, &c. The price of a half acre allotment in the city was to be £24. Tliese sums were all paid by the first settlers. It was a fundamental idea of the settlement that it should not consist merely of labourers but should also include men of superior education. The district was appropriately named Canterbury, the city Christchurch and the port Lyttelton. Here, as in Otago, it was found impossible to carry out the original idea without many changes, but the carefully laid-out city, with parks and gardens, cathedral and well-endowed educational institutions, still bears witness to the zeal and wisdom of the founders of the settlement. In 1850 four ships bearing eight hundred " Canterbury Pilgrims " started from England ; the first of these arrived on December 16th, and the others soon after. The Canterbury settlement progressed rapidly ; within two years the popula- tion had increased to three thousand four hundred. Although the founders of both Otago and Canterbury thought more of RepreSentatii)e Govefnmerd. 445 agriculture than pasture, it was soon found that the open plains and mountain sides were eminently suited for sheep, especially merinos ; many Australian sheep farmers came over and joined the settlements, and wool became the chief export of New Zealand. It was but natural that the residents in A Constitution w-^q^q newly-occupied districts should join ° * the people of Wellington in demanding something in the nature of representative government. The Act which suspended the operation of Lord Grey's constitution enabled the Governor to take steps in that direction ; Sir G. Grey resolved to avail himself of this power. In 1848 he passed an "Ordinance to provide for the establishment of Provincial Legislative Councils." There was to be a General Assembly, consisting of a Legislative Council nominated by the Crown, and an Assembly elected by the several provinces into which the Colony might be divided; and unicameral Provincial Councils, of which one-third should be nominated by the Crown and two-thirds elected. Sir G. Grey imme- diately nominated five councillors for the Province of New Munster. The new system, however, did not give general satisfaction. One cause of friction was that the Provincial Councils were not empowered to legislate on matters affecting Crown Lands. In 1853 Sir G. Grey issued regulations fixing the price of land at ten shillings an acre. This was contrary to the spirit of the Wakefield system, on which the southern settlements were founded. At the time it \\\as considered a " liberal " measure, but so strangely has feeling altered that it has been one of the " liberal" cries in later years to break up the large estates which Sir G. Grey's regulations brought into existence. , , In 1848 a shock of earthquake vibrated ^ ' from Taranaki to the north of the South Island. It had always been known that New Zealand was liable to such visitations ; but this was so severe that nervous people at Wellington began to tliink of abandoning the settlement. Another, the effects of which were even more disastrous, occurred in 1855, and for many years after that no one at Wellington ventured to erect brick buildings ; the town was entirely constructed of wood. Gradually, however, as the misfortunes of former years were forgotten, it came to be thought that the danger of fire was more practical than the remote contingency of an earthquake ; hence brick and concrete are now generally employed in large buildings, though most dwelling-houses are still built of wood. Earthquakes, 446 End of the New Zealand Company. however, have done serious damage in other parts of the country ; the spire of Christchtirch Cathedral has twice beeii thrown down and lesser buildings have suffered. The New Zealand Company, wliich had End of the become hopelessly insolvent, surrendered its ompany. chfi^ter in 1850, and was wound up. Its debt to the Imperial Government was extinguished by Act of Parliament ; and the Colony purchased its lien on the colonial lands for £200,000. CHAPTEE IV. CONSTITUTIONAL GOVEENMENT, WAE AND PROGEESS, 1852-1867. The Constitu- tion Act. The year 1852 marks an epoch in the history of New Zealand. The six years during which Lord Grey's constitution was suspended having elapsed, tlie Imperial Parliament, at the instigation of the Colonial Secretary, Sir John Ptikington, passed a new Constitution Act. By this Act the Colony was divided into six provinces (Auckland, New Plymouth, Wel- lington, Nelson, Canterbury and Otago), each with a superin- tendent and council elected by the people ; and the govern- ment of the whole Colony was vested in a Governor nomina- ted by the Crown, and a Parliament. This consisted of a Legislative Council nominated liy the Goveruor and holding their seats for life, and a House of Pepresentatives, composed of thirty-seven members elected every five years. All adult males who were British subjects and had resided for a cer- tain time, and who were possessed of a freehold worth £50 a year, or a leasehold of the annual rental of £10 a year, were entitled to become voters both for the House of Pe- presentatives and the Provincial Councils. It may be doubted whether a constitution Defects in the jjetter suited to the requirements of the time Pr^vtndaW ^ould have been devised. Yet it contained two elements of weakness. In the first place, it was almost inevitable that a struggle should arise between the Central and the Provincial Governments, and that ultimately either the Central Government should oust the Provincial, or the provinces should become indepe-ndent States bound together only by a federal bond. At first the latter seemed more probable. The power of dealing with Crown lands, which by the Constitution Act had been reserved to the Central Government, was soon wrested from it by the 448 Provincialism and Native Affairs. provinces. As there were no railways or telegraphs, and communication with Auckland (the seat of Government) was difficult, people looked all the more to their own local legis- lative body. The history and circumstances cf the various provinces were so different that each regarded interference in its affairs with jealousy. In one respect, however, Proviu- cialism wrought its own destruction. As new settlements grew up, they broke away from the existing provinces and formed fresh ones. Thus the province of Hawke's Bay was carved out of Wellington, Marlborough out of Nelson, South- land out of Otago, and Westland out of Canterbury. This constant sub-division destroyed the idea for which the early Provincialists had laboured. „ . The second element of weakness was the Native Affairs. ^^^-^-^^-^ ^f ^^.^^^^^ ^c^^-^^^ ^^ j^Iaoj-js possessing the necessary qualitications might claim to be registered as voters ; but as hardly any did pos.'^ess them the whole native race was practically unrepresented, although at this time they formed the large majority of the population and paid about half the taxes. To meet this difficulty native affairs were left under the control of the Governor personally. Such a system — tliough not un- paralleled elsewhere — would require a man of cons\immate tact to work successfully. It would have been hard indeed for a Governor to act on the advice of his ministers with reference to other matters and to take a course opposed to them in one of the most important political questions with which he had to deal. The Constitution Act was proclaimed on End of Sir January 17, 1853. Soon afterwards. Sir ^' ^TerL G.Grey issued regulations defining the bound- aries of the provinces and providing for the conduct of elections ; and the Provincial Councils at once came into existence. On the last day of that year Sir G. Grey left New Zealand having been appointed Governor of Cape Colony. All classes of the community presented liim with farewell addresess of a most cordial character Under his adminis- tration the solvency of the Colony had been restored, peace, had been maintained, and the European population had more than doubled. During the two years following, whilst The Parliament (j^^^^^^i Wynyard was administering the °f N«^ ^^^^^°^- Government, the Constitution Act was slowly and painfully being got into working order. The Parliament met at Auckland on May 24, 1§54. The change Minidenal insfabilitt/ ami Mriori deterioration. 449 fi'cun the old system, which involved the removal of the councillors appointed by the Crown and the substitution of a Parliamentary Ministry, gave rise to many disputes. At first it was not even clearly understood whether tlie Act granted Responsible Government or merely representative institutions. There was another difficulty wliich arises in all Colonial Legis- latures, Although the Constitution may be as close a copy of the Englisli system as circumstances will permit, the absence of clear dividing lines makes party Government much more difficult. Local jealousies and personal feeling often take the place of more important questions, and divide members into temporary groups. Hence Ministries are short- lived, and so-called coalitions are perpetually being formed ; politicians who are at one time bitterly opposed to each other will soon afterwards work harmoniously together as members of a new Cabinet. These features were present in a marked degree in the early days of the New Zealand Parliament {(■oniimre p. 370). Amongst the prominent politicians of that time may be mentioned J. E. FitzGerald (Superintendent t)f Canterbury and first Premier of the Colony), Sir William Fox, Sir Edward Stafford, Sir Charles Cliftbrd (the first Speaker of the House of Representatives), and Sir F. Weld (afterwards Governor of several other colonies). Edward Gibbon Wake- field, who had come to reside at Wellington, was also a mem- ber of the first Parliament. It was an ill day for the native race Devdo^m'ents ^^^^^" ^^^ ^- ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ Zealand. Even those who attempted to carry out his policy lacked that power of sympathy which was one of the chief causes of its success. They made, it is true, occasional presents of money and goods which pauperised rather than benefited the recipients of their bounty ; but they did not seek to elevate the natives or draw them within the influence of British law. Education was neglected, magistrates were not appointed. The best class of Maoris saw with alarm the deterioration of their race. In defiance of law, but without any restraint, many Europeans debauched the natives by selling them spirits ; others, who had formed alliances with native women which had been regarded as marriages, shame- lessly deserted their wives and half-caste children. Whilst the European population was rapidly growing the number of the natives was stationary, if not decreasing. The wise ordi- nance of Sir G. Grey forbidding the sale of firearms was first evaded and then revoked ; tribal disputes again broke out in which the Government declined to interfere. At last 450 OiUbreak of the Maori Wars. the natives resolved to draw closer together and, imitating the Israelites in the time of Samuel, to cement their union by Whero Whero ^^^^^"^S" ^ ^^^"S- Their choice fell on a celebrated chief, Te Whero Whero, who in 1857 was hailed as " Potatau, the King." It cannot fairly be said that this M'as at the time an act of rebellion ; it was rather the expression of a desire to establish in native districts a settled government resembling that which the Europeans possessed elsewhere. Nevertheless, after war had broken out, it formed a rallying point for the natives, and thus drew many into the straggle who might otherwise have held aloof. The northern tribes, however, never joined in the movement. The new Governor, Col. Gore Browne, ^°]Br"wn?°''^ arrived in September, 1855. For some time he endeavoured to keep the control of native affairs in his own hands, and even proposed to estab- lish a council to assist him, which should be responsible to him and not to Parliament ; but the difhculty of sucli a course was apparent, and native affairs fell more and more under the control of the Ministers. The land question was again prominent. Although the natives had already sold millions of acres at prices varying from tenpence to half-a- farthing an acre, the settlers, especially at New Plymouth, were constantly clamouring for more land. In 1859 the Goveiiior went to New Plymouth, and asked the natives whether they would consent to sell a piece of land at Waitara, to the north of New Plymouth. One of them, a man named Teii-a, offered to do so ; the chief, Te Kangitake, protested that the land was not Teira's, but was held according to native custom by tribal tenure, and that he, Outbreak of ^s chief of the tribe, would not consent to the WarT «^^e- Though the Governor had shortly before stated that the innnediate consequence of an attempt to acquire Maori lands without previously satis- fying the native claims would be a universal outbreak, yet he now resolved to disregard Te Eangitake's protest, and buy the land from Teira alone. In this course he acted with the cordial approval of the Ministry. Sir A¥m. Martin, Bishop Selwyn, and others in vain urged tliat there should be a legal inquiry as to the ownership of the land. The Governor paid a deposit of money to Teira, proclaimed martial law, sent surveyors on to the land under military protection, and when the natives attempted to resist wrote to England and Australia for fresh troops. So commenced the Taranaki wars whicli, witli oeca- Native Tactics. Sir George Grey's second Term. 451 The English forces, which consisted of ''^^^foSe?^"^ regulars, bluejackets and (Colonial militia, were vastly superior in numbers, and possessed artillery and rifles of the newest pattern. The natives had but a small number of their former foes, the Wailvato (now nnited to them by the King movement), to assist them, and were armed only with old-fashioned muskets.* Yet for a time the progress of the English was slow. The brown-skinned natives, clad in tlax mats, could glideunobserved through forests which were almost impassable to a British regiment. Their ^as were cleverly constructed. The English frequently spent vast labonr and some loss of life in their eftbrts to sap and storm them, only to find at last that the; enemy had quietly slipped out at the rear and left them the barren glory of capturing a deserted pa. There were, how- ever, some weak points in the JMaori tactics which were to the advantage of the English. The pas seldom contained adetjuate stores of provisions or water, and opportunities of cntting off the enemy's supplies were frequently neglected ; nor were the IMaoris good marksmen. For some time the English forces were commanded by (reneral Pratt; in 1861 General Cameron took his place. (/Jovernor Browne, believing that disaffection was spreading through the whole native population, wrote home begging that more troops might be sent, so as to sul>due the Maoris once and for all. The Duke ot Newcastle, the last to hold the j(tint Secretaryship for War and the Colonies, observing that the Imperial Government had already despatched 9,000 men and advanced about half a million of money, became alarmed, recalled Governor Browne and sent Sir George Grey back to New Zealand to help the Colony out of its difficulties. Sir George Grey resumed office on October G^i*''?^'"^^Sd "' ^^^^' -^'"^ ^ ^"^^*^ ^^ seemed not improbable term ''"^ ^^^^ ^^''^ efforts might bring about a lasting- peace. He attempted to revert to his former policy by dividing the native part of the country into districts, presided over by native magistrates, who, with the assistance of local councils, might enact laws which, when approved by the Governor, would be binding. He investi- gated the Waitara purchase ; found that Teira had not even a possessory title, since Te Eangitake, besides his authority as chief, was in actual occupation of part of the land Teira pur- * At no time during the wars in New Zealand were there more than 2,000 Maoris under arms, though in the Waikato campaign there were 10,000 Imperial trcopH in the Colony, and about, an equal number of th«? local forcoe. 452 Defeat of the Waikato Maoris. Defeat of the Waikato Maoris. ported to sell ; and announced his intention to give back the land to its owners* Unfortunately, however, owing partly to delays for which Sir George Grey was not responsible, and partly to the fact that another piece of land (Tataramaika) to which the natives also laid claim had just been seized and occupied by soldiers, this act of justice came too late. The second Taranaki War broke out in Ta^anaki'^War ^^^^'- ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ ''^^ ' ^^^^ ®'^"^^ >''^''^" saw the connnencement of war in Wai- kato. Sir George Grey thinking that an outbreak was possible, prepared for it l)y employing soldiers to make a, road from Auckland into the Waikato district. It is difficult now to say whether this course was wise or not ; it certainly made the natives regard his peaceful overtures with suspicion. On July 9th, Sir George Grey called on all the natives residing near Auckland either to surrender their arms and swear allegiance to the Queen, or to retire beyond the Maunga- tawhiri Eiver (a tributary of the Waikato). (Jn the 12th, General Cameron crossed the INlaungatawhiri with a force of three hundred and eighty men, and commenced Iniilding a redoubt. This was the Eubicon, and was regarded by the natives as a, declaration of war. The country was open and the hastily-constructed and ill-provided i^as ought to have offered but slight obstacles to British artillery and skilful tactics. Yet the war dragged on wearily. It was not until November that the liangiriri Pa was taken by a force of twelve hundred men, and Ngaruawahia, which had been the headquarters of King Tawhiao (who had lately succeeded his father Votatau) was occupied by British troops. At the end of March, 1864, General Cameron heard that the natives were preparing to make a stand at (Jrakau, three miles from Te Awamutu. The pa stood on a long rolling mound. Xorthwards, the land sloped down to a patch of forest ; to the south rose an irregular ridge, (hi this spot the natives, under their leader Kewi, hastily constructed rifle-pits and defences. General Carey resolved to make an attack with a force of thirteen hundred men. The defend- ing party, including women and children, cannot have amounted to more than one-third of that number. Yet, in spite of these fearful odds, with no better defences than flax * It may here be mentioned that this unfortunate piece of land was confis- cated after the second Taranaki War ; and that evidence given before the Land Court in 1866 elicited the fact that, apart from othor consideration?, Te liangjtake's hereditary claim to it was better than Teira's. The Gate Pa. 453 and tern and their hand weapons, did the natives through two terrible days and nights— supported by nothing but a few gourds and raw potatoes, and without a drop of water — drive back one after another the assaults of the attacking party. By the end of that time, however, the sappers had done their work. Strong reinforcements arrived. A breach was made, and cannon brought up so as to bear directly on the native force. Then the General, struck with admiration at the gallantry of the little defending party, called on them to sur- render, under a solemn promise that their lives should be spared. To this Iicwi replied : " Ka wha wliai tonu, akc, ake, ake '" (" VVc will fight to the end for ever, for ever, for ever! ") Once more the General urged them at least to save the lives of the women and children by sending them into the English camp. But the old warrior merely answered : " Maori women tight like Maori men." Carey then ordered an assault. Attack after attack was driven back by the wearied and famishing IMaoris ; and only when their ammunition was almost spent did they commence their final retreat. Some- how or other a body of the natives did force their way out, and, under a terrible ami galling tire from the English troops, reach the swamp below, and th\is escape down the river, taking with them a number of their women and children. This practically brought the war to an end, as far as the Waikato was concerned. B>' virtue of an Act passed l;»y the Colonial Parliament, nearly twelve hundred thousand acres of native laud were c(»ntiscated. Some of this was after- wards restored ; on the rest were formed settlements of soldiers and others. „,, ,„ But the war had by this time spread into Operations? '^® i overty Bay district, where the natives liad lieeu assisting their Waikato friends. On April 21st General Cameron transferred his headquarters to Tauranga and resolved to attack a sti'ongly fortiHed pa in the neighbourhood. The native defences, which consisted of a palisaded redoubt guarded by an entrenched line of rifle-pits, had been erected on a narrow ridge of high ground between two swamps, which formed a kind of gateway or passage between two tracts of land, and has, therefore, been called the Gate Pa. The English force, consisting of about seventeen hundred regulars, besides seamen and marines, attacked the spot at daylight on April 29th. Tlie pn. cannot have contained more than two hundred natives. After a time a breach was made, and a. storming paity led up to it from the front. All tiring having ceased, they 454 Hauhauistn. imagined that the pa had been deserted; but when they came close to the fortifications, a tremendous fire was sud- denly poured forth upon them. A panic seized the English troops. Their officers (who stood firm; tried in vain to rally them. They turned and fled, leaving a score of their comrades dead or wounded behind them. During the night the Maoris stealthily escaped, creeping away in small bodies. This incident, however, formed but a temporary check to the English advance. In the following month the fortified ^xt of Teranga fell, in which the natives lost one hundred and fortj-five killed and wounded. The remnant then sued for peace, and more land was confiscated. -, , . Shortly before this a moveiueni b;nl Hauliauisui. -^ , ,, ^r • ^ ■ u commenced among the Maoris which wds destined to lead to lamentable results. A prophet arose and preached a new religion in which a few traces of Christianity and a few more of Mormonism were blended with wild and barbarous fanaticism. It was at first called " Pai Marire," but became better known as Hauhauism from the shouts which accompanied the savage orgies of its votaries. Tribe after tribe renounced Christianity and adop- ted the new faith. Bishop Selwyn and the missionaries, whose influence had been much weakened by the war, looked on in helpless sorrow. Some tribes, indeed, stood firm, notably those in the far north and in the neighbourhood of AVellington ; but during the campaign in the east (which followed that in AVaikato) nearly all the natives who were opposed to the English were Hauhaus. On the west coast, also, the war dragged on, until in 1866 General Chute marched with a strong force from the south through the forest to the ^ east of Mount Egmont up to New Plymouth, and thence round the coast to Wanganui, destroying all the ]\Iaori cultivations and 2MS on the way. Though some natives managed to escape their power was broken ; the second Taranaki War was brought to an end, and another large tract of land was confiscated. ... Meanwhile fresh complications had arisen, lutiiodtv "^^^^ views of Sir George Grey and the Ministers were frequently at variance. The difficulty of divided authority became more pressing whilst actual war, conducted by Imperial troops, was going on. Sir George Grey was anxious that the Ministry, who possessed the power, should also bear the responsibility. That, however, could only remove the diflficulty to one point farther ; for, as Mr. Cardwell, when Secietary of State, re- Constitutional Disputes. Gold Discoveries. 455 marked in a despatch, it was anomalous that if New Zealand was to be regarded as an independent country with the right of conducting its affairs according to its own judgment, it should also have a governor, a general and an army fur- nished Ijy England. The Premier, Sir F. Weld, proposed the hold course of requesting that the English troops should be withdrawn and the war conducted by Colonial forcss aided by native allies. This, which was called the " self-reliant policy," was ultimately adopted. But this was not the only trouble. The Governor's rela- tions were even more strained with the generals in command than with the Ministry. The exact constitutional position of an imperial officer conducting a campaign in a colony pre- sided over by a governor and commander-in-chief is hard to define ; nor had (leneral Cameron been so successful as to defy opposition. The Governor re|)orted to the (Colonial ( >ttlce, now distinct from the A¥ar < )ttice to wliicli the General sent his complaints. In this weary disjiute the Ministry generally sided with the Governor. In 1865 General Cameron resigned and left the Colony. General Chute was appointed in his place, but matters were not improved, and the angry correspondence continued. ^. . It is pleasant to turn from the sad tale of war to the brighter aspects of Colonial his- tory. During Sir George Grey's second administration the country had undergone a transformation. It had long been known that gold existed in many parts of both islands. As early as 1852 diggers had been at work at Coromandel and other spots in the North ; soon afterwards discoveries were made at Nelson, which were more successful; and in 1858 a rich deposit was found at Lindis, in Otago, which led to a burst of temporary prosperity followed by much disappoint- ment. But these were unimportant compared with the great discoveries which were soon to take place. In 1861 a man named Gabriel Bead, digging with a common knife at Tuapeka, near the present town of Lawrence, in Otago, extracted £25 worth of gold in a single day. The news spread like wildfire. Goldseekers from all parts of the world rushed to New Zea- land. The European population of the Colony at the end of 1860 was estimated at eighty-four thousand; three years later that number had been doubled, and the output from Otago alone amounted to the value of £2,000,000. Nor was this all. In 1865 another rich field was opened on the West Coast, the export from which soon equalled that from Otago ; and, not long aftc]-, auriferous reefs and valuable deposits were ealand Gold fh Ids. Weninijton made the L'a/jitul. found in the Province of Auckland. Eailways began to be constructed and trade developed. Thus, whilst the general Government was, owing to the unhappy war, get- ting into deeper financial difficulties (so much so that in 1867 the Treasurer reported that the e.\penditure exceeded the income by £1,000 a day}, individual prosperity increased lupidly. In one respect New Zealand has l>een singularly fortunate in its mineral discoveries. It lias frequently hap- pened elsewhere tliat mines liave been found in districts where there is nothing else to make life attractive ; hence, when they are exhausted, the country is deserted. The mines in New Zealand are in a healthy climate, amidst beautiful scenery, near to fertile land well suited for agriculture and pasture. When the rush is over and most of the miners flrift away, some remain as settlers and add to the permanent prosperity of the country. The mining is varied, the precious metal being found sometimes close to the surface, sometimes in the beds of rivers, l)ut more ofcen in deep alluvial deposits oY in quartz reefs, where the operations are of a more perma- nent character. Life on the goldfields was rough an a permaiienl Laud ('ourt was established in w Iiidi llic judges The Land Court and Native Rights. 457 were empowered to investigate all claims to ownership, accord- ing to native customary law, and to see that they were satisfied, before issuing a Crown grant. Since then, the Crown's right of pre-emption has been dormant. Excellent in principle though this Act was, it cannot ])e said tliat its operation fulfilled the hopes of its framers ; the investigations were necessarily prolonged, and too often it happened that the crowd of natives who had been brought together by a sitting of the Land Court frittered away the purchase money before ^^ ^. -^. , the sale was completed. Another Act passed rsative Hights. , . ,, . .' , ,, ^t ^- ■!-»• i ^ * during this period was the Native Kights Act, by which the position of natives as British subjects was made clear; and by an Act which came into operation in 1868 four native members, elected on a special franchise, were added to the House of IJepresentatives. Since then, some Maoris have been nominated to the Upper House ; otliers have bp.en appointed members of the Executive Council, CHAPTER V. THE PUBLIC WORKS POLICY, 1868-1886. End of Grey's second Term. A Colonial Governor's term of office does not usually extend beyond six years. It is, therefore, not strictly correct to say, as some have done, that Sir George Grey was recalled. He was not reappointed, and on February 5, 1868, Sir George Bowen assumed oflice in his stead. But no subsequent Governor has ever filled Sir (leorge Grey's place in the histoDy of the Colony ; and henceforward, interest centres rather in the Parliamentary Buildings than in Government House. The wai-, wliirh seemed to have ended, tliTwar' ^"■'•^^^' ""'' '^^''^^'^ ^'^ ^^^^ both in the east and in the west. Nearly all the Imperial troo])S having left Xew Zealand, it was conducted by Colonial forces (^commahded by Sir G. Whitmore and Col. McDonnell) and native allies led by two chiefs, Kemp and Eopata. In th(3 west the natives were gradually driven inland, and at length the Hauhau cliief Titokowaru Hed to the mountaius, where it was not thought necessary to pursue him. hi the east, however, the disturbances were more serious. In 1865 a chief named Te Kooti had been arrested im susjucion, and, with a number of others, banished to the ( 'hatham Islands, where they were kept as prisoners. In 1868 Te Kooti seized a schooner, and the whole party (one hundred and sixty-three men, sixty-four women and seventy- one children) escaped, landed at Poverty Bay and made their way into the interior. Thence Te Kooti returned to the coast, fell upon a village and massacred thirty-four Euro- peans and thirty-seven natives. A strong force was sent after them. Te Kooti, driven from one post to another, took refuge at Ngatapa, which was almost impregnable as a fortress, but ill supplied with food or water. However, after hard fighting, the outer line of entrenchments was taken, and the defending party, worn out with hunger and thirst, deter- mined to evacuate the fortress, letting themselves down I hi- Ti' Kootl and Tairlilao. Dnmcstlc ]ir(anHS. 'I")'.) cliir by ropes. They were pursued, and many of them captured ; the prisoners were brought back, stripped and shot, and their bodies hurled over the precipice. But Te Kooti escaped. For more than two years he was hotly pursued through thewildsof theUriwera mountains, but never captured. At last, an almost solitary fugitive, he took refuge in Tawhiao's country, where he was no further molested. Many years afterwards he received a pardon. King Tawhiao. King Tawhiao took no part in these wars, but remained quiet in his own terri- toiy. His policy was to form a boundary line beyond which no European might pass or land be sold, but never to commit any act of hostility against the Crown. The (lovernment were discreet enough to respect the boundary, and for several years the " King Country " remained an almost unknown tract. Tawhiao abandoned his policy of seclusion in 1883, when the natives of the King Country offered to sell land for settlement on condition that no spirituous liquors were sold in the district. An amnesty was proclaimed, the Governor was hospitably received in Kawhia, and Tawhiao liimself visited England. , , _ , The year 1870 was for several reasons 1870-'> '*■ Period of great importance to New Zea- land. The war was brought to an end and the last regiment of Imperial troops left the Colony Parliament was unusually active. Amongst the politicians of the period may be mentioned Sir i)onald Maclean, who proved himself to be a Native Minister of remarkable talent and discretion, Sir F. Whitaker, Sir J. Hall, Sir H. Atkinson and Sir Julius Vogel. Bills were passed for the founda- tion of a university, for voting by ballot, for the establishment of a (xovernment insurance office, and for the registration of title tf» land according to what has been called the "Torrens" system {see p. 371). Two years later a public trustee was appointed. The great advantage of liaving trust estates managed l»y a permanent responsil)le oflicial has been gradually more and more realised, until the value of the property held by the laiblic trustee now exceeds £-l,()00,000, and the plan was adopted in England in 1907. ..p ii- ^'^^^ these measures were, for the time \\T '? " t^V'^, at least, thrown into the shade by the far Works IAmicv- , , • , n i i -r, i greater change which was called the rub- lie Works Policy." In 1870 the general and provincial debt of the Colony amounted to about £7,000,000, some of which had been expended in objects M'hich fairly 4()(> "Puhlic Worlx^' Policij. .[()()] lidon oj iJic Prooiiicial Si/slcni. come under the term colonisatioD. ^ir J. Yogel then proposed to borrow £10,600,000, and force on the pro- gress of the Colony by a vast scheme of public works and assisted immigration. The idea was hailed with acclamation. An epoch of extraoidinary prosperity commenced. The anxiety of war was over, borrowed money was being ex- pended freely, the prices for New Zealand's principal ex- ports — wool and wdieat — continued high in the London market. All that farmers had to do was to take up land, till it, and in a year or two find that the profit from their crops more than paid foi' the fee simple of their holdings. Although the export of gold fell off, it was compensated for Ijy the increase in wool ; and minor exports, such as fiax and gum, developed even more rapidly. The revenue of 1873 was more than double that of 1871. immigration prospered. A society was formed in London, under tlie direction of the Duke of Manchester, called the " Emigrants' and Colonists' Aid Cor- poration," which is said to have l>een the onl}- association of the sort whoso lal)Ours have ended satisfactorily to both share- holders and colonists. They purchased one liundred thousand acres of ricli forest land in the province of AVellington, on which they established a special settlement. Several parties of Scandinavians also came out and formed villages, which have since grown into fiourisliing towns,surrounded by thickly- populated farming districts. One result of tlie Public Works I'olicv • Abc.4it.on oi the ^^.^^ ^j^^ abolition of the Provincial system. Provincial System. „ . ,.;' , llie immediate cause was a ditiiculty about tlie disposal of the Crown Lands. It w'as part of Sir .lulius A'ogel's sclieine that the railways should be paid for by the increased value of the adjoining lands ; but while the lands l^elonged to IIk^ Provinces that was impossible. Even apart from this, it is doubtful whether the Pi'ovincial system could have lasted much longer. As communication im- proved, and settlement extended, the advantage of a centralised Government became apparent. However, the Provincialists did not give in without a struggle. Sir George Grey, who was then living in retirement on an island in the Hauraki Gulf, re-entered political life, as Superintendent of tlie ProN ince of Auckland and menilier of the House of Peprescn- tatives. His eloipience, and tlie earnestness of the Otago members, delayed for a time the passing of the Bill, but at length it was carried during the session of 1876. At the same time provision was made for local government by the estaltlisliiiuMit of Count v Councils. E(h(cation. Economic Depressimi and Remedial Measures. 401 In 1877 a uniform system of education for ak^sTiT^' ^'^^^ ^""^'^^^ Colony was inaugurated— free, ^ducatk)iT compulsory and secular. Occasional efforts have since been made to introduce the reading of the Bible into the (xovernment schools, or to subsidise denominational institutions, l)at they have never succeeded, and the existing system satisfies the large majority of every section of the community with the sole exception of the memlters of the Roman Catholic Church. They are so zealous for the religious training of their children that, though obliged to contribute to the secular schools, they maintaui schools of their own in all the chief centres of population . By 1879 the tide of prosperity turned. D?pZ.Ton. Jhf P'-i'rt? °f Colomal products begaa to fall rapidly, and the value ot land went down in proportion. Men who had bought farms during the years of prosperity, borrowing part of the purchase money, ibiind that their land was barely worth the mortgage. By an unfortunate coincidence, other events occurring just then in distnnt parts of the world, such as the failure of the Glasgow Biink, had serious effects in New Zealand. Besides tliat, many of the large Government undertakings were completed : work became scarce ; navvies, brought out to make the rail- ways, joined the ranks of the unemployed. Tlie Govern- ment, having to pay interest on the £13,000,000 which had lieen borrowed under the l*ublic Works policy, were ol»ligcd to resort to severe retrenchment, even reducing tiie salaries of nil civil servants by ten per cent. Yet tliis period of depression was not an unmixed nielTaures. *'^'^- ^^ ^^'^ V^'M^' to turn their attention to new fields of enterprise, of which the natural lichiiess of the country afforded many. The coal mines began to be worked more energetically. The export of frozen mutton, which was ere long to develop into an im- portant industry, was inaugurated. Direct steam communi- cation with England was commenced. Xew manufactures sprang up. At an exhibition which was held at Wellington in 1884, visitors from beyond sea looked with astonishment at the quality and variety of the Colonial pioducts, and began to wonder whether the tales they had heard of financial depression could be true after all. (JHAl»TEli Yl. PARTIES AND TOLITICS, 1886-1908. It is incviiable that in a country like IState Activity. ]sc\\ Zealand the sphere of Government should be more extended than in Eng- land. In an old country, where there are a A^ast number nl' wealthy, experienced and ])hilanthropic individual?, more can 1)0 left to private elfort tlian in a colony wliere capital is limited, population scanty, and a leisured class does not exist {nrmjxire pp. ;]()l-2, :).S8, 41G, 4:i3-4). iNIoreover, where the Government is the one great landowner the duty ol" developing their own estate naturally ilevolves ujion them, and the influence of this fact is far-reaching. Legislation, too, is much more active in a Colony than in the Mother Country. The Imperial Parliament, over- burdened with other duties, is wont to put aside measures which in New Zealand are brought foi'wanl, discussed and passed without difficulty. Foi' instance, proposals for a criminal code have been made in England J'or about half a century, but the matter gets no further ; in New Zealand an admirable code has been in force for many years. It is to be regretted that the terms Party Names. Conservative and Liberal have iDeen intro- duced into New Zealand politics. So far as they have; any meaning, it is so dii'terent from that which is understood in England that they are often purely misleading. A party which carries secidar education, trien- uial Parliaments and manhood suffrage may be called Con- servativ^e ; Protection and the exclusion of aliens may be considered Liberal measures {see p. 302). L)uring the first thirty-tlNe years of the New Zealand Parliament, there were no fewei- than twenty-fiAC Govern- ments, none of which lasted four years. Yet writers speak of the time between 1870 and 1890 as " the period of the (>)n- tinuous Ministry.'" The explanation of this apparent paradox BaUance and Seddon. Wometi's Suffrage. 463 lies in the fact that the changes were caused rather by personal and temporary considerations than by the compe- tition of fixed principles. Indeed it may almost be said that the only real changes of Government during the twenty years were when Sir C4eorge Grey assumed office in 1877 and re- linquished it in 1879, and when Sir E. Stout and Sir J. A-^ogel came into power in 1884 and resigned in 1887. The year 1891, however, may be taken as marking a Seddon^" turning point. Mr. Ballance became Premier with a large majority, and after his death in 189^) his policy was continued by Mi*. Seddon, whose remark- able ability and energy carried all before him until his death in 190G. Although the germ of many recent enactments may be traced in measures passed before 1891, it is nevertheless true that from that year dates New Zealand's legislative activity in the direction which has been called " liadical," " Socialistic " or " Progressive." The leading features of this policy may be classified under the headings of Constitu- tional Changes, Taxation, Land Laws, Labour, Old Age Pen- sions, Local Option, and vSocial affairs. The (.'onstitution has several times been ^°clfan"tT" m"tlified. In 1879 triennial Parliaments '^ ^ <= ' and maidiood suffrage were established ; but as the property qualification for votei's also remained, it was still possible for a man to have more than one vote. This was finally al)olished in 1896. The fianchise was con- ferred on women in 1893.* The number of Members of the House of Kepresentatives has ])een fixed at 80, of whom 76 are Europeans ; each electoral district returns one menil)cr. The numbers of the Legislative Council are still unlimited ; but by an Act of 1891 Councillors arc appointed for seven years only. Members of the Council receive a salary of £200 a year ; Members of the House of Representatives, £oOO. The incidence of taxation has formed as Taxation . bitter a subject of controversy in New Zealand as elsewhere. Previous to 1892 there was a "Property tax" — that is to say, a tax of one penny in the pound was levied on all property, with an exemption up to £500. This had the advantage of simplicity, but taxpayers complained, on the one hand, that the more they improved their land the more they were taxed, even although the * It may here be mentioned that the addition of the female voiu has uot caused any appreciable chanj^'e in the strength of political parties. The number of male voters exceeds that of female ; the proportion of those on the rolls who actually vote is about the same in both sexes. 464 Taxation and the Land. improvements had not begun to be remunerauve, and, on the other, that whilst farmers were heavily burdened, professional men, whose incomes might be larger, were let otf almost free. At the same time there was a popular cry for a progressive tax "in order to burst up large estates," and for a penalty on absenteeism. To meet these complaints the property tax was abolished in 1891 and land and income taxes substituted. By the present law an ordinary land tax is levied on all land, taken at its unimproved value, and a graduated tax, com- mencing at one-sixteenth of a penny in the pound on estates amounting to £5,000 in value and increasing up to threepence on those amounting to £210,000, with an additional fifty per cent, on all persons who have been absent from New Zealand for a year, and an income tax of sixpence in the pound on incomes between £300 and £1,000, and one shilling on those exceeding that sum. "With regard to land legislation, it must Land Laws, be remembered that the aspects of the ques- tion which have come prominently forward in Xew Zealand are totally different from those which are commonly discussed in the Mother Country. The laws of landlord and tenant are much the bame in New Zealand as in England, but they are comparatively unimportant, as there is very little private letting of rural land ; owners usually occupy their own holdings. The discussion which lias arisen has usually been as to the way in which (.'rown lands should be alienated and closer settlement promoted. One result of Sir George Grey's policy was that large estates, main- taining a scanty population, came into existence. There are some who are of opinion that large holdings were the most suitable at a certain stage of the Colony's develoitment, and that, when settlement progressed, they would probably have been gradually subdivided, as occasion required ; but land reformers such as Mr. Ballance, Mr. Seddon, and notably .Sir J. INIackenzie, were resolved to hasten the process by resuming the larger estates, and to prevent the creation of similar ones in land subsequently alienated. Under the " Liind for t:ettlement Acts," land which w„*<.L. **'^A * '• tlie Government consider is required for bettlement Acts. ,. ^ , ^ , ■ \ ■ ^ closer settlement may be acquired m much the same way as land may be taken for a railway in England — that is, by v(jluntary treaty with the owner, if possible; if not, by compulsion, the price being fi.xed by arbi- tration. T,iberal allowance is madt^ to the disposse^sefl owner In retain liio liomeslraii itnd \\ii;il \miuM in Kn^bMid Ik; vmu- Crown Lands and Labour Legislation. 465 sidered a good-sized holding, amounting to one thousand acres of first-class land and a larger area if the land is of inferior quality. It is only fair to add that in nearly every case the Government have found the owners willing and even anxious to sell. About a million acres have thus been acquired. The land so purchased is then let by the Government for a term of nine hundred and ninety-nine years in small farms at a rental estimated at about five per cent, on the value. As there is no provision for revaluation, this is, in fact, much the same as an old English quit rent. As to the Crown lands still unalienated. Crown Lands, there had for some years been a growing feeling in favour of granting leases rather than parting with the freehold. At one time a middle course was adopted, by letting land for ever, subject to periodical revaluations, the lessee being allowed to purchase the freehold on certain conditions. Since 1892, however. Crown lands have usually been let on the same terms as those repurchased, the farms varying in size from six hundred and forty to two thousand acres according to the quality of the land. The Acts also provide for sales of the freehold for cash, and for leases with a purcliasing clause, in special cases. A system of village settlements has also been tried — fortunately not on the communistic principle which has been tried and failed in otlier parts of the Empire, but in separate holdings. This lias met with some success, but has not been so popular as the framers of the scheme expected, m, y. , 13. V ^ further 1 tenefit has been conferred on the farming class liy the establishment of a State Bank through which settlers can l)orrow money, on the security of their holdiiigs. at the nominal rate of six per cent., of which £5 is really interest and £1 goes tinvards a sinking fund, so that the whole debt is wiped out in thirty-six and a half years. , Under the general heading of " labour Le"islcation. haws " may be classed such matters as regulations for the inspection of factories, (he ht,»urs of labour, the employment of women and children and the compensation of workmen for accidents ; but the most interesting branch is the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, which has attracted so much attention as at any late a bold attempt to put an end to the terrible evils of strikes. The establishment of Government Courts to arbi- trate ill trade disputes had been tried in other countries, but had never nut with n)ucli .success, one or other of tlic }»arties 4<)(» Compulsori/ Arbitration. to the quarrel usually decliniug to submit their case to the Court. Mr. W. P. Keeves, who was at that time a Minister in Mr. Seddon's Government, conceived the AXiSbn ^^^^^ ^^ arming the Court with compulsory powers, so that either side might compel the other to come before it, and its award might be enforced like a judgment of the Supreme Court. The measure introduced by him came into force in 1895 ; since then it has frequently been amended. By the present law either employers or workmen may form themselves into "industrial unions," which may be registered and thereby become, in fact, corporations capable of suing and being sued. Any registered union of workmen, or any trade union, may enter into an agreement with an employers' union, or with an employer, as to " any matter affecting an industrial matter " (for instance, as to scale of wages, hours of labour, or the num- ber of apprentices allowable), and the agreement will become binding for three years. Should they fail to form an agree- ment, either party may take tlie other before a Board of Con- ciliation (of which there are now six, for different parts of the ( 'olony) and the award of the Board becomes liinding for at least three years, and for such further tinu; until the Board, lui.ving re-heard the case, decides to alter it. There is, how- ever, a further right of appeal to the Arbitratiiui Court, which is coni])Ose(-l of a Judge of the Supreme Court sitting witli assessors. The powers of these (Jourts ava drastic: disobedience to their awards may be punished with fine or imprisonment. They may even order an employer to reinstate a dismissed Avorkman, or in future to give a preference to members of a trade union. In a word, although they cannot prevent an employer from closing his business and going away, they may prohibit him from conducting it on any lines except those which they approve. Those who favour the measure point with tiiumph to the fact that it has become increasingly popular ; that large num- , . bers of cases are brought before the Boards s wor 'ing. ^^^ ^^^ Court, and that there has been no strike or lock-out since it became law. On the other hand, it is urged that the act has been in operation during a period of great pirosperity, and nearly all the decisions have been in favour of the men, whereas it still has to stand the test of times of adversity and unpopular decisions ; and that at any rate a longer time must elapse liefore it ciin be ]n'onounced an assured succes.s. U has also been raid lJi;it the numl)er of cases which have l>ecu decided includes (^(il Age Pen^ionft. 407 some trivial disputes \vliich would have been speedily si'ttled and forgotten if there had not been the temptation to take the other side into Court. Besides this, the old Liberal school of thought, which objects on principle to the continual inter- ference of Government in private aliairs, has not wholly died out, even in New Zeahmd. ,,,, . ,, . The system of Old Age Pensions was Old Age Pensions. , ii- i i • i ono i • i.i i i established m 1898, and snice then has been considerably extended. Every person of the age of sixty-live who has resided in the Colony for twenty-live years, who lias not been in prison for more than hvc years of that period or for more than four months during the last twelve years of it, who has not deserted his wife (or her husband, as the case may be), and has, in the opinion of the magis- trate, lived a sober and reputable life, is entitled to a pen- sion if his other income does not exceed £60 and his accu- mulated property does not exceed £260. If his income from other sources does not exceed £34 a year, and if his accumu- lated ])roperty does not exceed £.'")0, lie receives a pension oi" £26 a year ; but for every £1 of income he possesses over £34 a year, and for every £10 of accumulated proper!}' over £r>0, the pension is reduced by £1. The main objections brought forward to the sclieme are (1) that where there are sons and daughters well able to pay for the support of their aged parents the burden sliould iall on them rather than on strangers ; (2) that it discourages thrift, as a man Avill not lay by if he knows that the result will merely be to reduce his pension; and (3) that the charge, which already exceeds £250,000 a year, will steadily increase until it becomes too serious a strain on the finances of the Colony. To these objections some bold llieorists openly answer that thrift is a bad thing, as it is better- for the country that money should ])e put in circulation than hoarded; others, wh() do not go so far, urge that in the majority of cases it will rather encourage thrift, for u man will realise that if he lays l)y an income of £;54 foi' liimself he will, witli the assistance of his pension, be able to spend his declinijig years in comfort ; that it is not fair to class the whole sum as increased expenditure, as it will, in many cases, reduce other forms of charitable aid; and tiiat it is not likely to in- crease ^^ery far beyond its present figure — or, at any rate, not so as to be beyond the capabilities of the growing wealth of the country. Another interesting piece of recent legislation has been the establishment of local option as to the sale of liquor. 408 Tenipcranre and other Social LeyisJation, Under the Act of 1893 a poll is taken triennially, the time for taking it and the area of the licensing district (except in the case of cities, where the whole city forms ^°Prohfwtion^"*^ "^^'^ district) l)eing the same as for Parlia- mentary elections. The voters then decide whether the existing number of licences shall be continued or be reduced, or whether the sale of liquor shall be prohibited altogether. An absolute majority of votes is sufficient to carry continuation or reduction ; a majority of three-fifths is necessary to carry prohibition. If no such majority is obtained matters go on as before. In 1905 prohibition was carrietl in three out of the sixty-eight districts, in 191)8 in six more, and it is a remarkable fact that even in 1905 more votes were given for prohibition tlian for either continuance or reduction. It seems quite possible that ere many years have elapsed prohibition may be carried throughout a large part of the country. Q • 1 Important legislation has also been eifected Legislation concerning social affkirs. As long ago as " ' 1881 an Act was pas.sed legalising the adoption of children. Adoption cannot, of course, aifect the succession to a title, or a settled estate ; but for otiuM* purposes the adopted child ceases in the eye of the law to belong to its natural parents, and becomes the offspring of the adopting ones. It is universally admitted that this act has been l)eneficial. jNIarriage with a deceased wife's sister became legal in 1880, and the logical corollary — marriage with a deceased husband's brother — in 1900. The causes fo)- divorce have been widely extended, and petitions for dissolu- tion of marriage are rapidly on the increase. New Zealand has also followed some of the Continental nations in allowing Icgitimatio jycr svhsfqiicns matrlmonium,. The other events of the last twenty years ^^to-dr^^"*^ may be passed over rapidly. It has been a period of unbroken ^^eace and unchecked development. All possibility of native troubles has passed away ; a new generation has grown up to whom the story of the war is a vague tradition. Maliutu, son of Tawhiao, has been a Minister of the Crown, and has sat in the Legislative Council ; Hone Heke, whose grandfather pulled down the British flag at Kororareka, is a member of the House of Repre- sentatives. Railways are being made through the King Country, and the Governor of the Colony was cordially wel- comed by^the Uriwera tribe when he made a tour tlirough their district. The Maoris live in a state of material prosperity, TJie Moon's of To-ddy. -lOO but no friend and admirer of the race can look on their present condition with complete satisfaction. For many years the sales Present condition of native land went on rapidly, the vendors and prospects of too often, in a generous, thriftless way, squan- the Maoris. Bering the money as soon as they obtained it. At last, in 1900, when only about five million acres were left, the Government took the matter in hand, forebade the further alienation of the freehold, and provided for the leasing of the remaining lands through native committees. But this has not removed the difficulty. The idleness encouraged by wealth brings evils of its own ; drink and disease have played havoc among the Maoris. There is, however, a brighter side to the native question. The recent census returns show that their numbers are now on the increase. Hauhauism has dis- appeared ; temperance and a desire for a more healthy life seem to be gaining ground. Education extends rapidh', and more than six thousand native children are attending schools, while some are at superior colleges preparing for the Univer- sity. One may hope, therefore, that at least a proportion will pass safely through the dangerous process of civilisation, and permanently take the place in society for which the a])ilities and high qualities of the race so eminently fit them. Meanwhile, the decline of the Maoris has population, made New Zealand the most purely Brifsh in b'ood of all the co onies. The proportion of foreign immigrants is slight, and even the Irish have not migrated to New Zealand in great innnbers. The population which in 188G amounted to five hundred and ninety thousand (omitting Maoris), is now nearly nine hundred and fifty thou- sand. The increase is due partly to immigration, partly to natural causes. But here, as elsewhere, the birth rate fell rapidly until the last few years. This filling up of the country has natm-ally produced a movement for expansion ; and New Zealand has twice ex- . tended its borders ; first in 1887 by the addi- New*Zealan^ ^'^^^ °^ ^^^® Kermadec Islands (a small group six hundred miles to the north of the Colony), and secondly in 1901 by the annexation of the Cook and othei- tropical islands containing an area of about two hundred and eighty square miles. These tropical dependencies are gov- erned through resident Commissioners ; but there is a Federal Council of the Cook Islands which legislates for the whole group except Nine, which has a resident Commissioner and a 470 Tdlilicid and ]earing in mind that it (•oujse, takes no note of the large mimber of factories, products of which are consumed in the Colony : — ] , Total ex Frozen meat. Wool. ' Gold, 4,391,8481,041,428 ti,7()5,6,'55i2,270,904 BiUter. 1,251,993 2,877,031 Cheese. Kauri- sum. £ ports of N.Z. produce. £ til Imports. 281,716 130.166 431,323 9,177,336 7,137,320 I,.'560,235 341,002 [522,486 17.840,346|l.5,211,403 During the same period the amount of land in cultivation has risen from eleven to over fourteen million acres, the receipts of the Government railwavs from £1,286,158 to £2,624,600, Edncatlon. 471 and savings banks deposits from five to eleven millions. Almost as remarkable has been the development in recent years of New Zealand's educational facilities. In December, 1906, there were eighteen hundred and forty-seven public primary schools and three hundred and eight private schools besides a hundred village schools for Maoris. Higher educa- tion is provided by means of twenty-six endowed colleges and grammar schools, and at the apex of the system is the Uni- versity of New Zealand. Like the Commonwealth of Australia {see pp. 423-4) the Dominion of New Zealand is making ex- periments, social, economic, and political, which, whether by way of warning or example, cannot fail to be of increasing interest and importance to the mother country. IV. SOUTH AFKICA. CHAPTER I. PHYSICAL FEATURES. The name South Africa may be used in Area. different senses. In the wider political sense it includes the country from the south coast as far north as 8°S., where a break occurs in the con- tinuity of British territory. From a physical point of view the Congo-Zambesi divide (about 12°S.) is the appro- pi'iate northern limit. In the narrower sense South Africa excludes all the lands north of the Zambesi. In the following pages the term is to be understood in its wider political sense. South of the Congo-Zambesi divide there are about two million square miles of land, of which over one million and lifty thousand square miles are British territory. Jii llie south this territoi-y stretches across the continent from the west to the east coast. In the centre and north it is hemmed in by the possessions of Portugal in the east, German East Africa and the Congo state (Belgian) in the north, and Angola (Portuguese) and German South-west Africa in the west. The eastern boundary closely coincides with the edge of the higher ground, but includes Lake Nyasa and the Shiie river. The western boujidary is drawn through a desert in the south and through comparatively little known open wood- lands in the iiorth. South Africa is a tableland of which a Configuration. <-onsiderablc j)art is more than 4,000 ft.'above sea level. These elevated regions, wliich are the healthiest parts, are separate*! from each othei- by ri\er basins or desert areay, some of whieh hmcIi Minttifa/n.'i, Uiifts, (Hut Kopjes. 41 3,000 ft. in elevation. The Zambesi divides the higher parts of Northern Rhodesia from the higher parts of Southern Rbode.sia. The latter are separated by the Limpopo from the High Veld, which extends almost continuously through the south-east and south of the continent, where it is locally known as the Upper Great Karroo. Bechuanaland, which is considerably lower, connects the High Veld with tlie higher lands of Damaraland and Namaqualand, whicji ar(> mainly German. . . , Throughout this area there is an abrupt Ranges" and difficult rise from the coastal plains, which are narrow in the west but wider in the east, north of Delagoa Bay. In the south-east, however, the edge of the high plateau comes close to the coast, and the rise is rapid from the lagoon-fringed coast of Natal to the lofty Drakensbergen Mountains, which rise to over 10,000 ft. In the extreme south two mountain ranges, the Zwartebergen and the Langebergen, run parallel to the coast and form lofty })a7'apets. The former is bounded by a coastal plain in the south. Between the Zwartebergen and the foot of the escarp- ment of the High Veld is the Great Karroo. Between the Zwartebergen and the Langebergen is the Little Karroo, drained by the Gaiiritz and its tributaries. North of the eastern continuation of the Langebergen system (known as the Outeniquas mountains), is the Long Kloof, drained by the Komannassie river. In the south-west these east and west ranges are intersected by others which run north and south. This gives the topography of this part of South Africa a very complicated character. '^^8 -it On the tableland the rocks are lying The Veld. almost horizontally. Through these hori- zontal strata the rivers cut deep, steep-sided valleys, which, until they are bridged, act as formidable barriers to communication. Roads have to descend a steep slope to a drift or ford, and must then ascend again on the opposite side up an equally steep incline. The surface of the Veld is undulating or flat, and often diversified with hills, or kopjes, forming tabular (tafelkop) or pointed pyramids [spitskop). The sharpness of the features depends chiefly on the rainfall of different areas. In Natal, where the rainfall is abundant, the forms are much more rounded than in the centre, where it is scanty. In the rainy regions water erosion is the chief sculpturing agency. In the centre and 474 Climatic Conditions. west, wind action becomes more important than rain action, with the result that the hills or kopjes tend to rise sharply above fairly flat and uniform surfaces. In the Basuto Highlands in the south-east, where the land is highest (reaching 11,000 or 12,000 ft. in the Mont aux Sources or Giant's Castle), as well as on the eastern and southern margin, a capping of hard resistant volcanic rock has prevented rapid erosion, and has contributed to the formation of a steep escarpment. The general character, therefore, of South African topography is fairly uniform. Flat-topped surfaces with steep sides everywhere predominate. The gentle rounded slopes which are familiar in wetter lands occur mainly in the east. The regional divisions of South Africa are Climate. largely controlled by the varied climatic con- ditions found in an area which extends fi-om 34°S. on the west and 30°S. on the east to 10°S. These lati- tudes are similar to those of Australia and of Africa north of the Gulf of Guinea. The tropic of Capricorn cuts .South Africa into two not very unequal parts. The great elevation of the land neutra- lises the effect of low latitude in winter. In summer the lack of cloud and moisture allows the surface of the land to become very highly heated in spite of its elevation. The winters on the whole are colder than those of Australia, but the summers are not much less hot. There is a great contrast in the temperature ot the east and west coasts. On the east coast, with prevailing south-east winds, the temperature is fairly equable and high at all seasons. On the west coast the prevailing winds blow parallel to or off the land, causing an up- welling cold current, which brings a great volume of cold water from considerable depths of the ocean to the surface, and chills the air immediately above it. This affects the land for a few miles inland, and reduces the temperature at all seasons. Compare the figures for the follow- ing places in nearly the same latitude : — — Lat. S. PortNolloth 29°16' Kimberley... 28°43' Durban 29°51' Height! Warmest ft. i month r° 40 60-1 4040 75-8 2b0 76-6 Coldest month Range, M«^° Rainfall annual ^^^^^^^ Temp. 54-2 ' 5-9 i 67-5 2-1 5()-2 25-6 64-8 19- 64-6 I 12- 70-8 I 41-6 ! The Rainfall and its Effects. 475 South Africa lies in the track of the south- Eainfall. east trades. The rainfall consequently tends to diminish from east to west. The largest amount ; of rain falls in summer when the pressure over the land is low. The eastern escarpment is high and the land slopes steadily downwards to the west. The fact that the highest land is on the windward side obviously makes the rainfall very high (about 40 in.) on the eastern slopes. The rainfall diminishes so rapidly from the edge of the escarpment westwards that the centre and west are almost rainless, and form a semi-desert region (under 5 in.). The only exception to this is found in the extreme south-west coi'iier, which is far enough south to he within the belt of stormy westeily winds in winter. This wetter region (20in. to 40 in.) does not extend far north, and only the southern coastal strip is affected. In the extreme south there is little difference between the amounts of summer and winter rainfall. The summer rainy season is short and the total precipita- tion is but small. All over South Africa, therefore, the forested area is small and confined to the wettest parts. Vegetation. In the south the Knysna and Transkei forests are in the region which receives rain at al seasons. \n the east the forest is generally open and confined to the lower lands which form the bush veld, though there are extensive forests in the Houtboschbergen towards the north- east of the Transvaal. These open woods become thicker and extend farther inland in the Zambesi basin, where the summer rainfall is considerably heaviei-. The high veld is everywhere dry, and forms a not very rich grass land. This becomes in- creasingly poor towai'ds the west, and desert conditions prevail in the Kalahari region. With the exception of its mineral wealth South Africa possesses no remarkable natural advantages. Its interior is difficult of access owing to the tabular con- Conditions figuration already described. Its rivers act rather as obstacles than as aids to com- munication, and its vast areas of desert and semi-desert in- crease the difficulties of transport. These are intensified by the prevalence of diseases which prove fatal to horses, and even in recent years, to oxen, which are the chief transport animals. Railways are the best means of conveyance, but the cost of good fuel and the scarcity of water make the running expenses heav}', while the centres of population are generally small and 476 Geographical Infli at long distances from each other. The leading exports are small in bulk and weight, and are tlierefore not a very re- munerative freight. South Africa was first occupied by the Dutch as a refresh- ment and refitting station on the route to and from the East Intluence of Ii^^ies {see p. 479). Dutch settlement ex- Geography on panded from Cape Town on Table Bay across South African tlie plain to the Drakenstein (p. 481), and History. ^Yien along the valleys north and south of the Langebergen. White settlement grew round three natural centres : ( 1 ) the better watered south-west region with Avinter rains (Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Paarl, Malmesbury) ; (2) the well-watered south-east round Algoa Bay (Port Elizabeth, East London, Grahamstown) ; and (3) Port Natal in the east (Durban, Pictermaritzburg). A low woodland region with a dense native population separated the two latter regions. The centres on the ])lateau all j^osscss some obvious geo- gia|)hical advantage. The feitilc C^aledon valley formed the nucleus of the Orange River Colony. The eastern Jligh Veld north of the Vaal River and the higher southern region which is fed with streams from the Hand formed the 'J^rans- \';ial. The local grouping of ])0])ulation has been largely deter- mined by the location of diamonds and gold {see pp. 510- ~)\i')). Jvound the diamond mines Kimberley has grown, and the gold mines of the Rantl have created Johan.ncsburg, the largest and richest city of South .Vfrica. As in Australia {see pp. 377-80), the lack of comnumica- tions which isolated the various groups of settlers determined the rise of the separate states and post- [)oned their federation. Now that the various divisions arc in much closer touch Avith each other, the probability is that a federated or unified South Africa will be called into existence. South Africa guards the ocean route to India and Australia, and must be held by Britain at all costs. Should the Suez Canal be closed by European war the unity of the Empire would depend on the command of this ocean route, which is therefore of the highest possible strategic importance. CHAlTEi; II. THE NAT1\E KACE,S AND CAPE COLONY UNDEK DU'i'CH RULE. 8()Utli Atrica possesses three great ualive The Bushmen, races — the ]>ushiiien, the Hottentots and the Bantu. Of these the Bushmen, or the Abatwa, as the Bantus call them, are the aljorigines. In appearance they are of small stature and }cllo\vish brown in colour, with tlat noses and receding chins. Their heads are covered with little detached tufts of short 1 ilack hair, and, like the ancient Britons, they paint their bodies, using soot or coloured cla}'. They are too remote from civilised life ever to l.te reclaimed from wildness, but they possess the com- pensating virtues of the savage — extraordinary keenness ol sight, unerring instinct for the trail, and untiring energ}' in t he chase. By the time that we begin to know the countr\- the}' had already succumbed to later and stronger races. They continued to exist chieHy in the deserts and wilder parts, as the}- ^lo to this da\-. Formerl}' they lived liy hunting, Ijut when the spread of colonisation drove away the game the}' were compelled to resort to cattle robbery, and thus inflicted lieav}' losses on the settlers. In reprisal they were relentlessl}' tlestroyed both b}' the wliite and the black races, and, in their turn, took their revenge b}' acts of dreadful cruclt}'. In w^ar- fare, as in hunting, they relied chiell}- on ])oisoned arrows, which niade them feared by the boldest of their enemies. Long centuries of oppression have made them irreclaimabl}' savage, yet there are some indications tliat they were once more civilised. Some of them employ themselves in sculp- ture, and others show considerable skill in rock painting. Their language is degenerate, like themselves. It abounds in curious clicks and in deep guttural sounds. Until the nineteenth century the Hotten- The Hottentots, tots were the dominant native race in the greater part of .South Africa. They wuic found chiefly near the sea-coast and along the course of the Orange and Vaal Ivivers. Though slighth' made, like the 478 Bushmen, HoUentols, and Banlus. Bushmen, they are taller and better formed. Their colour varies from yellow to olive. Their language is quite distinct in structure from that of the Bushmen : it possesses few clicks and none of the deep gutturals. When the Dutch first settled in the country the Hottentots possessed large flocks and herds and moved from place to place in search of pasture. But the character of their tribes varied very greatly. Some of them, like the Naraaquas, were large and ])0Nverful; others, like those found by the Dutch near Cape Town, were extremely poor and miserable. They were a race easily reduced to servi- tude, not so much from lack of courage, as from want of mili- tary organisation and of capacity for war. The third great native race inliabiting The Banlus. South Africa are the Bantus, who differ in a very striking manner from the two former. They bear evident traces of mixed descent from races dissimilar in bodily appearance and in powers of mind. They are largely and strongly made, with features \"arying from the Asiatic to the Negro t}'pe. In colour the}' are generall}' deep black, thcuigh some are onl}" moderately brown. When first known they not only ])0s- sessed flocks and herds, like the Hottentots, but also culti- %ated the soil and had some skill in metal-work. While the r>ushmen know only the temporary authority of parents over their young children, and the Hottentots give only a limited obedience to their chiefs, the Bantus are under very strict rule, and possess, in addition, an elaborate system of law This organisation is useful in times of war, and they are intensely warlike, and would undoulitedly have possessed themselves of the whole of South Africa if the European races had not intervened. They came originally rrom the north-east, and by the middle of the seventeenth century had reached the southern coast, which they occupied westward as far as the mouth of the Kei. To this race belong such famous ])eoples as the Kaffirs, the Bechuanas, the Basutos, the Pondos, the Zidus and the Matabele. The first European to sight the Cape of European Good Hope was the Portuguese seaman iscovery. Bartholomew Diaz, who was driven from the mouth of the Orange River far south by a northerly gale and regained the African coast somewhere east of Cape Agulhas. On his return voyage he rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1487, and named it the Cape of Storms. The Por- tuguese King, John II., however, renamed it the Cape of Omxl Hope, because he expected to find beyond it the road lo the J Portuguese and Dutch. 479 Indies. Ten years later Vasco da Gama sailed round it and succeeded in reaching India. From this time the Cape became familiar as a landmark on the eastern voyage. But the Por- tuguese made no attempt to found a settlement on the South African coast. Their vessels, after touching at St. Helena, were accustomed to run to ]\lozambique, and if short of provisions or injured by tempests they had a port of refuge at Delagoa Ba}\ Moreover, the natives were known to be unfriendly. In 1510 Francisco d'Almeida, the Viceroy of the Indies, attempted to chastise the Hottentots at Table Bay, but was defeated and slain with sixty-tive of his followers. From this time until the Dutch settlement no Europeans willingly remained long in the country. Towards the close of the sixteenth century, tionof thJ'c'i't '^^^'"^« ^^ ^^^^ seizure of Portugal and its ape. gQ]^Qj-j|gg i^y Spain (1580), the Portuguese ^vero in\'ol\ed in war with the English and Dutch, who l»eg;in to wrest from them their eastern trade. The Dutch vessels made frequent use of Taljle Bay as a calling station. This was more necessary for them than for the Portuguese, for while the Portuguese route to India lay between Mada- gascar and the mainland, the Dutch, whose destination was usually Batavia, preferred rounding the southern end of Madagascar to navigating the dangerous Mozambique Channel. They thus had no intermediate port like Mozambique, for Mauritius, which they occupied in 1638, could not afford them the supplies they needed. In 1602 the Dutch East India Com|)any was formed, t\yo years after its Euglish rival. Fifty years later the need of having supplies in readiness for their ships, and perhaps the fear of lieing forestalled by the English, with whom they were at war, deterndned them to make a permanent settlement. On April 6, 1652, the Dutch East India Com]>any established a station at Cape Town, centred round Fort Good Hope, under the command of a ship's surgeon, Jan van Riebeck. The settlement was regarded simply as a small official outpost, and Van Riebeck, who, as its head, enjoyed the naval rank of Commander, was subordinated to the admiral of every visiting fleet. As a port of refreshment for passing ships Cape Town served admirably. Vegetables were grown in large quantities to serve as an antidote to scurvy and large numbers of oxen and sheep were obtained from the Hottentots by barter. Tlie Colony grew slowly, owing to the fact that it was only designed for a victualling station. At first it w^as occupied entirely ])y servants of the Company. But thougli it served 480 The. SfUlrrs and the. HotteiiMs. well the purpose of its foundation, it was found to be extremely expensive. In 1 655 the directors, in order to lessen the expense, resolved to allow a few free fami- '^'seSlers^'* lies to settle in the neighbourhood of the fort. These settlers were to pay a land tax to the Company, to supply it with provisions on favour- able terms, and to purchase from it sucli live stock as they required. This class of free farmers, which afterwards became known as burghers, were still subject to the go^'ernnlent of the Company, but they were not in its employ. The first settlers of this kind received allotments of land early in 1657, and were all of them former servants. For a long time the burghers were chiefly recruited from the Company's servants, although other settlers were also at times encouraged to emigrate from Europe. In 1658 the introduction of negro slaves supplied them with the la]>our which the Hottentots from their lazy temperament were unfitted to give. But although this expedient lightened the difficulties of the settlers at the time, it was a bad and dangerous resource. The climate is not unfitted for white labour, and the introduction of negroes has greatly increased the difficulty of the race question. The first colonists were established at '^^^Watf"*"* Eondeljosch and at Groeneveld, on the other side of the Liesbeek. The consequence of this extension of the Colony was the first Hottentot War. The Hottentots were exceedingly discontented at finding themselves shut out from part of their former pasture-lands, and in 1659 several petty skirmishes took place. The result was indecisi^'e, but in the following year the natives almn- doned their claim to the enclosed lands and peace w^as con- cluded. In 1672 the Dutch East India Company purchased from some of the native chiefs the whole of the country from Saldanha Bay to False Bay for a small sum, and in the same year a small settlement was made at Hottentots' Holland, on the north-east shore of False Bay. In 1673 the second and last Hottentot war broke out. It was brought about by the destruction of big game by the burghers in the neighbour- hood of the Berg Hiver. This was resented Ijy Gonnema, chief of the Cochoquas, and in July he murdered eight l)urghers whom he found hunting. The war lasted for four years before Gonnema in 1677 purchased peace by the payment of a small tribute. Its most serious feature was the stoppage of the supply of cattle from the Hottentot tribes beyond the Cochoquas. A large numlier of oxen and sliee]) wore rcr^uirod at ('ape Town to su]»ply the Company's Van der Slel and the Hwjuenots. 481 ships. Hitherto the Government had relied on trade with the natives, the burghers being encouraged to turn their attention to agriculture and raising vegetables. From this time it was felt that they must also be encouraged to breed cattle, and that in order to ensure a sufficient sui)])ly the number of settlers must be largely increased. In January, 1678, land was leased to two Development of burghers at Hottentots' Holland tov feed- tne Colony, . » , „, , lug cattle. Inese men were the pioneer graziers in South Africa. But the dangers and discom- forts of frontier life made it ditticult to extend the area of settlement. ]\Iuch of the credit of establishing the Colony on a firm basis is due to Simon van der Stel, who was installed as Commander on October 12, 1679, and raised to the rank of Covernor in June, 1601. He disco\ ered the l)eautiful valley of Stellenbosch in his first year of office and within twelve months had settled nine Dutch families \vithin its borders. In 1687 he named and colonised the new settlement of Drakenstein, on the Berg Iii\er. He used every effort to secure suitalJe colonists, and his task was made easier liy the revocation of the Edict of Nanles in 1680 by Louis XI V., which furnished a stream of French Protestant- refugees. Nearly two hundred landed between 1688 and ImmfrTntB ^^^^ '^"*^ ''^^'^ P^^^^^d at Stellenbosch and* Drakenstein. These French settlers became eventually mcorporated with the existing population, but none the less their introduction had important effects. From the first they showed great impatience under the paternal system of government pievalent in the Colony. They found them- selves surrounded by restrictions, which, Ijelouging to a different social system, galled them far more than the Dutch settlers, and they brought from France that dislike of the inter- ference of the central authority and that love of provincial organisation which characterised the French Huguenots. F'rom this time the relations between the authorities at Cape Town and the outlying burghers were never so cordial as before, and even Simon van der Stel, who Differences ^^^ ^^^^ particularly beloved by the free settlers, was much less popular during the years preceding his retirement in 1699. Matters grew worse during the rule of his son and successor, Adrian van der Stel. The burghers complained that he made use of his office to obtain improper trade advantages for himself. They complained to the supreme Council of Seventeen in 1706, and the Governor, learning this, immediately committed 482 South African Pioneers. sojiie of them to prison. This attack on their personal liberty caused a rising at Stellenbosch, and in 1707 the Company decided in favour of the burghers by depriving the Governor of office. His immediate successors pursued a policy more acceptable to the free settlers and, l)y the direction of the Company, showed great consideration for their needs. In the meantime the growth of the Expansion. Colony had begun in earnest. In 1700 the settlers ascended the second step of the great South African plateau by the colonisation of AVaveren, a tract of country in the modern district of Tulliagh, watered by the upper course of the Little Berg liiver. Erom the beginning of the eighteenth century the increase of ]»opul;!,- tion no longer depended on immigration, liut was ensured ))y the excess of l^irths ov(^r deaths. Instead of immigrants fresh from civilisation, the pioneers were now inured to the wilderness and in love with its free life. They comprised the three great classes of which primitive societies are composed. The advance guard cwisisted of the hunters, who covered enormous tracts of country in pursuit of game, and particularly of elephants for the sake of their ivory. Then came the graziers, for from 1700, when the Council of Seventeen allowed Hunters, fw ^ time free trade with the natives, cattle- Graziers and breeding became the favourite pursuit of the Agriculturists, burghers. These occupied districts of 5,000 or 0,000 acres as cattle farms, and, aftei- obtaining tho sanction of Government, paid n yearly rent of £5, irrespective of the qualify of the land. Finally there was a third class of colonists who generally followed the cattle-breeders, and, occupying farms on the same terms, Ituilt more substan- tial houses ; besides raising cattle, they also culti^•ate(l the soil. During the first half of the eighteenth century the colonists extended in two directions, eastward and north. From llielieck's Kasteel they passed northward lieyond the Berg liiver, eventually rea,ching Kle^ihant's liiver. From Waveren Ihey descended the Bi-ecde southwards, and from Hottentots' Holland, the Zonder Einde eastwards until they reached the coast. In 1745 they crossed the Gamtoos, and by 1775 they had reached the Fish River. Northwards towards the interior their limits were less definite, but they gradually penetrated beyond the Great Karoo into the central plateau where the Nieuweld Range and the Sneeuw Bergen long fixed their boundaries. In 1778, however, Plettenlierg's lieacon, not far from the modern Oolcsberg, market I the nurllicrii limit of the Colnnv. ConstUutioncil Development. 483 This great development of the Colony ren- Local tiered it impossible to administer the out- AdministratiOD. , . t , • , (• r-, m t • lymg districts rrom Cape Town, and, in consequence, between 1682 and 1685 a system of local administration was introduced by Simon van der Stel for the district of Stellenbosch, which was afterwards extended to other districts as they were formed. It consisted of a land- drost, or high bailifl', appointed by the Governor and Council of Policy, who looked after the Company's interests and property. There was also a body of heemraden, usually five or six in num])er, who, together with the landdrost, formed a court for dealing with civil cases and with local administra- tive matters. In more important civil cases an appeal lay to the High Court of Justice at Cape Town, which con- tained a certain proportion of burgher councillors, two out of twelve from 1658 to 1G75, three from 1675 to 1786, and after 178G six, or one half the entire number. Neither the heemraden nor the burgher (councillors were elected by the burghers, but were selected by the Governor and (Jouncil of Policy from a list chosen l.>y their respective courts. Thus the English system' of clec.'tivi; represeuitation was unknown in the Colony. Theearlierprogressofthe Colony was considerably aided by the ravages with which a European disease afflicted the Hottentots. Two great outbreaks of small-pox in 1713 and 1755 almost, annihilated the strongest and most formidable tribes, leaving only a feeble-s]>irited remnant and a depopulated country. The Bushmen, however, escaped the ravages of the pesti- lence and, as they increased rapidly in numbers, they Tlie Halcyon eventually caused gieat trouble. But for Period of o\er half-a-century the native question he- Dutch Rule, came imiinportant. The government of Ryk Tulbagh, extending from 1751 to 1771, is regarded as the halcyon period of Dutch rule in South Africa. He won the confidence and esteem of the colonists by his upright and disinterested government. For a time there seemed perfect concord between the Company's servants and the free farmers. This state of things did not continue ^^^ffl^*^^!?"^^^ under his successor, Van Plettenberg, who Dxmculties. j^^j^ ^^^^ ^.jj^ ^^^. ^j^^^^^ j^.^ officials were permitted to extort bribes from the settlers and the whole of. the administration became infected with favouritism and corruption. The political parties in the United Netherlands began to reproduce themselves in Soutli Africa. So early as 1749 the Prince of Orange, after being r2 484 Domrtith and Native Trouhlcs. restored to the oflice of Stadtholder, or supreme magistrate, was created chief director and Govenior-tTcneral of the l^kst India Company. From that time, if not even earlier, the Company's servants at the Cape belonged to the Orange l>arty ; and when dissensions broke out anew under \a\\ Plettenberg, the burghers generally embraced the principles of the republican party, chief among which was a strong belief in local self-government. The example of the American Eevolation had a great effect upon them, and they began to give prominence to new ideas of their rights and lil)erties: They particularly desired to have elected rejiresentatives in the Government, and in 1781 demanded the admission of burgher members into the Council of Policy. In Van Plettenberg's time a fresh cause "^ro^Wesmth ^f discontent, which' touched the frontier farmers closely, gave practical importance to their new ideas. On the north they found themselves harassed by the P>ushmen, who, on the disappearance of the game, were forced to subsist l)y cattle-stealing. On the east they began to come into conflict with the warlike Kaffir triV)es, who had long lieen pressing south and west. So early as 1736 a party of elephant-hunters, headed by Hermanns Hubner, had been treacherously destroyed by the Kosas, the southernmost section of the Bantus, and in 1778 the farmers near the Fish Ei^'er, which bounded the eastern frontier, complained to Van Plettenlierg that the same tribe were lifting their cattle. In the following The First and y^ar some Kosa clans crossed the Fish Second Piver into the Colony and spread over the Kaffir Wars, present districts of Somerset East and Al- bany. They remained there for two years, when they were driven out by a commando under a liorder farmer. Van Jaarsveld, who thus ended the first Kaffir war with the aid of his fellow farmers and with the approval, rather than the assistance, of the Cape Town Government. In 1789 the Kosas again crossed the Fish Eiver, and this time the Council of Policy roused the indignation of the burghers l)v weakly permitting them to remain in possession of the territory between the Fish and the Cowie Elvers. The consequence was that constant quarrels culminated in 1793 in the second Kaffir war. The Kosas swept the country westward from the Kowie to the Zwartkops, gathering a vast liootj in cattle and putting to death several farmers by torture. Though fol- lowed by a commando as far as the Buffalo Elver, they secured most of the booty, and in No\eml)er the The Lafii Daijx oj Ihdrh UuU. 185 Goveninient again coiicluiled an unsatisfactory peace l>y ceding to the Kosas the whole of the Zuurveld — that is, the district between the Fish Eiver and Bushman Eiver. A still more serious difference was caused by the tendency of Government to assign the entire blame for the rupture to the colonists, whom they accused of ill-treating the Kosas. There had certainly been individual cases of violence, but these were by no means confined to one side, nor were the farmers strong enough to l»e magnanimous. Underlying these and later differences was a fundamental divergence of view in regard to the character of the Kosas. While the farmers were totally lacking in sympath}- with the natives, the central Government was absurdly in error in persistently ignoring the warlike and predatory nature of the Kaffir tribes. Decline of the ^^J this time other causes more generally East India affecting the Colony had made the East Company. India Company unpopular. During the war of American Independence the IJutch had fought against England and, in consequence, their trade with .the East had been almost annihilated. It never recovered, and, as Cape Colony was prohibited from trade with foreign nations, it suffered severe commercial distress. By 1794 the credit of the East India Company was exhausted, while gold and silver had almost disappeared from the Colony, llepeated demands for representation in the Council of Policy had met with no response, and the Government was neither able nor willing to assist the frontier districts in their difficulties with the natives. In consequence, in 1795 the l)urghers of GJraaff-Eeinet and Swellendam, districts then Internal ^.^^ larger than at present and comprising the whole of the eastern half of the Colony, finally threw off the yoke of the Company, and, in imita- tion of the revolutionary party in the home country, dis- played the tricolour in opposition to the orange cockades of the Company, and declared themselves " Nationals." Thus the decay of the East India Company and internal dissen- sions made the English conquest easy. But the acquisition of Cape Colony brought with it the inheritance of all those difficulties which the Netherlands East India Company had failed adequately to meet. CHAPTER TIT. CAPE COLONY UNDER BRITISH RULE. {ci) Internal History of the Colony. The first The first Englishman to sight the Cape Englishmen at of Good Hope was Sir Francis Drake, in the Cape. 1580, during his voyage round the world, and he styles it "the fairest cai)e we saw in the whole circumferenee of the earth." The first to land there was Janit^s Liiucaster, in 1591, who remained in Talile Bay for a month, on his way to the Indies. The foundation of the l^nglish J-Cast India Company in 1600 was soon followed l»y a keen appre- ciation of the dangers of allowing a rival nationality to establisli a station in the neighbourhood of the Cape, on ac- count of the command it would gi\e of the route to India. In 1G20 two sea-captains, Andrew Shilling and Humphrey Kitzherhert-, desiring to forestall the Dutch, fonnally took possession of Tal)le Bay and the continent adjoining in the name of King James. This action, however, was not followed np by the home government, and in 1052, duriug war with England, the Duix-h settlement was finally made. So long as the war lasted the Dutch setthns were seriously appre- liensive of an attempt at conquest, but the acquisition of St. Helena by the English Conq)any in 1651 furnished the English with an intermediate station for India, and, liy disinclining them to undertake the expense of a second, helped to secure the Cape from their attacks. Eroni 1674 the long alliance Ijetween the two Powers, which was con- tinued during the greater part of the eighteenth century, pre\-ented further alarms; ])ut when war again broke out, in 1780 Connnodore Johnstone, at the head of an English squadron, was only prevented from attacking Cape Town by the presence in these seas of the French Admiral, Suffren. The English I^ 1795 the attempt was renewed with Conquests of better success by Admiral Elphnistone. A 1795 and 1806. landing was effected at Simon's Town in False Bav on July 14th, and the Dutch Governor, Abraliam Sluysken, capitulated on Septemlter 15th, when the military The British Conquest of the Cape. 487 commander of the English forces, Majov-Gen. James Craig, was installed as English Governor. The two districts which had revolted froni the government of the Dutch East India Company speedily su])niitted in consequence of the con- eilliatory measures of the English authorities — Swellendam in Xovemher, 1795, aiid Graaff-Eeinet in August, 1796. In May, 1797, Craig was succeeded by Earl Macartney, who restored civil government in place of military rule. In February, 1803, in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty of Amiens the country was restored to the Batavian rie])ublic. The old Dutch East India Company had disappeared and the Colony was made a direct de]>endency. When war broke out again, a fleet under !Sir Home Pophan) disembarked ;■.. force of over four thousand men under Sir David Baird, which forced Cape Town to surrender on January 10, 1806, after defeating a, ver}- inferior Dutch force two days earlier at the Battle of Blueberg. The Colony was finalh' ceded by a r-on^"ention dated August 13, ]81+, ^^■hif■h was ratified liy the T'ongress of Vienna in 1815. On first acquiring Cape Colony the English Sv?Colon* Government preserved the Dutch system ' ' of local administration unchanged. In mat- ters affecting 'the Colony the power of the GoM'rnor was entirely unlimited except l)v the control of the Secretary for War, and the laws of the Colony were enacted in the form of pi-oclamations issued liy his authority. In 1825, howcAcr, after an atlenqil-on t,he part, of Lord C'harles Somerset, Gover- nor from 1814 till 1826, to suppress the frectlomof tlie Press a Council of six was a|)pointe(l to adA ise and assist him, con- sisting of the chief military and civil officers of the Colon}'. These were all appointed by the Crown and remo^'a])le at pleasure. The laws of the Colony, instead of taking the form of proclamations, l)ecanie ordinances of the Governor in Council. Finally, on the instalment of Sir Benjamin DTrbun^ as Governor in January, 1834, the (Jolony obtained the regular' constitution of a Crown Colony. A Legislature was formed composed of the Governor, the military officer next in rank, the Government Secretary, the Treasurer-General, the Attorney-General and of from fi^■e to seven other members chosen for life l)y the Governor from among the most respect- able inhabitants. In 1838 the unofficial memliers lost their life tenure and were ordered to hold office during the King's pleasure. There was also an Executive Council, consisting of four high officers of the Government. This form of govern- ment was retained for nearly twenty years. Its chief defect was 48rtli. Although this gave greater security of tenure, it enhanced ^■ery much the burden laid on the more valual>le farms. The second grievance was the manner in which the farmers were called to account and fined for acts committed against the Hottentots. Tender Lord Charles Somerset this grievance was intensified l-y the emjdoyment^ of Hottentots as police. In 1815 a farmer was killed in resisting arrest l>y the native police and in conse- quence a few of the farmers on the eastern frontier took up arms, lait were easily repressed. The execution of five of the leaders at Slachter's Nek on March 9,1816, was an act of mistaken severity, which did indeed produce temporary quiet, but at the price of lasting resentnient. British Settlers Until 1820 there were few British settlers and Institutions in South Africa. In the years 1820 and 1821 introduced. nearly fi air thousand were placed in the frontier district of AlViany. The settlers consisted of a majority of Englishmen, with some Scots and Irish, and a few Welsh. Although the emigrants, many of whom were skilled workmen, did not at first, prove very successful as farmers, eventually they settled down — chiefiy round Grahamstown. Henceforth the white population of Cape Colony was no longer composed only of Dutch and Germans, and the advent of English colonists was soon followed by the adoption of English local administration. In 1827 the Dutch landdrosts and heemraden, who had charge of matters of justice and finance, were superseded by resident magistrates, justices of the peace, and civil commissioners. In the same year Dutch was definitely superseded by English as the sole official language, and remained ;uperpeded until Dutch Diseonli'ii/ ((ml ihe (hnit Tirk. 480 1882, when the two tongues were placed on an equality in Parliament, the law courts and the public offices. These changes in administration, though "^O^ ^r^^''"^ almost unavoidaljle, were not received ^»ues ion. ^^.^j^ much favour 1)y the bulk of the colonists. Another cause of discontent was found a few years later in the manner in which slavery was aljolished in the ( 'olony. Slaves had been introduced during the Dutch period. The native Hottentots were so a\erse from laltour that it was unprofitable toforce them to undertake it. In consequence, slaves were imported, chiefly from Madagascar and Malaya. But the temperate climate of the Cape rendered it possilile for Euro- peans to act as labourers, and slaves were, therefore, only in- ferior substitutes for these. In ISOO the English Clovernment prohil)ited further importation. From this period onwards ihere were constant projects foi' gradual emancipation, which were hampered by the necessity of obtaining the appro\'al of the home government. Alost of the slave-owners were in favour of the eventual abolition of slavery. But in August , 1833, the English Parliament decreed that slavery should cease in Cape Colony on DecembtM- 1, 1834. Much distress was caused by the suddenness of the emancipation and by the inadequacy of the compensation grant, which only amounted to about one-third the computed xdlwe. of the slaAcs. The increase of vagrants was also felt to lie a consideral>le hardship, and one which it was found impossilile to redress l»y law owing to the serious diflbrences lietween various sections of the community as to the liest method ol' proceeding. An even more serious cause of irritation ''^^Trek^^^ to the population of the eastern part of the Colony was l,he attitude of the English at home in persistently regarding the Kaffirs as a peaceful race injured by the aggressions of their white neigii- iiours, and particularly by the conduct of Lonl (Uenelg, th(^ Se('rel,aiy for War, aft,er the sixth Kaffir war (1834-5), ill compelling the retrocession to the Kaffirs of tlie new province. Queen Adelaide, between the Koiskama and the Kei, and in permitting the Kattirs to settle close to the frontier {see p. 494). The settlers complainetl that they were infested by armed Imnds of l)lacks, plundering at will the inhabitants, who feared prosecution if they should resist. In consequence, some of the bolder spirits conceived the project of emigrating beyond the bounds y the apprehensions of the English Home Government. But the occasion was unfortunate, for the emigrants left the Colony with bitter feelings of resentment, which were intensified by the endeavours of the English Government to prevent these mcjv^ements and tojiinder fresh emigrants from joining the commandos. The Grant 01 Indirectly the Great Trek also did Representative good by calling the attention of statesmen Government, in England to the government of Cape Colony itself. The colonists for many years had desired to have a ^^nce in managing their affairs, Init the home govern- ment was held l)ack partly by the apprehension of race difficulties l)et^veen the English and Dutch, partly by the differences between the colonists themselves as to the most de- sirable form of administration. Lord John Eussell's ministry 1-ook up the matter seriously when they came into power in 1846, l)ut owing to the delay caused l)y the seventh Kaffir war (p. 495) the Constitution was not finally settled until May 1, 1 85-3. The grant of representation was probably hastened by a, remarkable expression of the strength of public opinion. A few years earlier, when the Colonial Secretary, in 1849, attempted to make the Cape a penal settlement, and actually sent a. .shipload of convicts to Table Bay, so strong was the feeling manifested that the Governor, Sir Harry Smith, de- lated the landing of the convicts until he had connnunicated witli the Home (Jovernment, and they, in deference to the opposition, directed them to lie sent on to Van Diemen's Land see p. 359). The Constitution of 1853 was, tlierefore, ^'''^ STsS''*''''' intended to allow public feeling to mani- fest itself in a regular way. It provided for a Parliament consisting of a Legislative Council and a Hoirse of Assembly. The Legislative Council was composed of fifteen elected members, seven from the eastern antl eight from the western province. It might he dissolved with the Assembly, but if not, eight of its members, four from each province, were re-elected at the end of five years, and thenceforward mem- bers retired at the end of ten vears from election. TheA' ^vere Responsible Government. 491 required to hold unmortgaged landed pro])6rty to the extent of £2,000, or property of all kinds of the unencuml»ered value of £4,000. The House of Assembly e< )nsisted of forty-six membe)'s returned l)y ('ape Town, which had four mendiers, and by (iraharnstown andthe twenty districts, which had two each. The qnalification for this Chaml)er and for tlic right of voting for mendiers of either Council or Assenii)ly was the possession <»f property of the yearly value of £25 or an annual salary of £50. The Governor might dissolve both Chamlters at plea- sure, or the House of Assem])ly alone. He was to convene Parliament at least once a year, and the del)ates and pro- ceedings were to be in English. The Colonial Secretary, the Attorney-General, the Treasurer-General and the Auditor- General, who held their appointments from the Crown and were not responsil)le to Parliament, were to have the right of taking part in the del)ates in either House, bnt had no votes. Acts passed by both Chamt)ers were sul)ject to two vetoes, that of the Governor and that of the Crown, which had, how- ever, to be exercised within two years after the Acts reached England. Moreover, the Legislature was given the power, subject to these vetoes, of making alterations in the Constitu- tion of the Colony. This Constitution was the most liberal which up to that date had been granted to any English Colony, and it was received with great satisfaction. But although it provided for a free manifestation of the popular will, the Execu- tive, hj which that will would have to be carried out, was still entirely independent of the I^egislature and was not responsible to it for jiny disregard of its wisht^s. The Legis- lature could not enforce the removal of ministers in whom it had no confidence, and still less fill their pLiees with those of its choice. A little more than eighteen years later the Govm-nment S^^^ ^f Responsible government was added — i.e., of a government in which the Executive was controlled by the electorate through their Legislature. Responsible government had been discussed as early as 1855, but it was then opposed by the English settlers in the eastern part of the Colony, because they feared that the Dutch in the older part of the Colony would control the government and hinder progress. By 1872 these differences had largely dis- appeared and in that year it was provided by an act passed at the Cape and assented to by an Order in Council that the Executive Council or Cabinet should be chosen from the party commanding a majority in the Legislative Assembly. 492 The Afrikander Bond and the Progressives. This great measure determined Cape government as it has existed uninterruptedly until the present day. In ] 882 the Dutch language was ])ermitted in Parliament. In 1892, in order to lessen the strength of the native vote, the franchise was restricted to adult male suljjects who could sign their names and write down their addresses and employments and who occupied house property worth £75 or received £50 a year as wages or salary. In 1904 a Kedistribution Bill effected considerable alterations in the electoral districts and tended to equalise the value of votes. At the present day the Legisla- tive Council contains twenty-six members returned by seven electoral provinces, by Griqualand West and by British Bechuanaland ; and the Assembly one hundred and seven repre- senting the country districts and towns of the Colony. The Cabinet usually contains six or seven members, including the Premier, the Colonial Secretary and the Treasurer. There exist at the present time in Cape Parties^ Colony two great political parties — the Bond and the Progressives. The Bond was formed in 1882, when the first Afrikander Bond Congress was held at Graalf-Reinet ; the Progressives did not finally take shape until 1898, when they became a solid party in consequence of the reaction occasioned by President Kruger's anti-British policy. The Bond soon developed an organisation including ( 'apo Colony, the Orange Free State, and Transvaal, but some- what later the Bond in Cape Colony severed its connection with the two republics on account of the open hostility which they manifested towards England. This party has for its aim the development of the spirit of nationality in South Africa. It desires to secure for the country complete control at least over its internal affairs. This party, whose real head until 1898 was Mr. Hofmeyr, was in office from 1884 to 1890, when Mr. JIhodes came into power. He also enjoyed Mr. Hofmeyr's support, but as an ally, not as a member of the party, until in 1895 his complicity in Jameson's Raid broke the connectiou. He was succeeded as Prime Minister on his resignation in January, 1896, by Sir Gordon Sprigg, at the head of a ministry drawn from both parties. The increasing differences in South Africa drove Sir Gordon Sprigg to take up a position antago- nistic to the Bond and in consequence he was defeated in the general election of August, 1898. In October he resigned, and was succeeded by Mr. Philip Schreiuer. who was a member of the Bond and who remaiuod in office till 1900. The party of Cape Coloni/ to-day. 493 Mr. Rhodes when in power attached great weight to the poli- tical and material development of South Africa, but dwelt like- wise on its position as a part of the British Empire, conceiving that the only chance of effectual union was under the protection of a Power which could assist its development and protect it from aggression on the part of the Great Powers who were partitioning the rest of Africa. While in opposition betweenl898 and 1900 these principles were clearly developed and enumerated by the Progressive party, who took that name because they thought the Bond reactionary and not awake to the importance of rapid development. During the Great War (see pp. 505-9) the Kecent uoithern parts of the Colony were seriously 18 ory. .effected and a section of the Dutch population showed considerable sympathy with the republics. In conse- quence the Bond became divided and a Moderate ministry came into office under Sir Gordon Sprigg in June, 1900. Tn the following year parliamentary government was in abeyance owing to the prevalence of martial law. At the close of the war many members of the Progressive party urged the formal suspension of the Constitution, Imt Mr. Chamberlain wisely refused to sanction so extreme a measure. In 1904 the I'.oiid miscalculated its strength and drove Sir Gordon Sprigg from otfice. The General Election terminated in the victory of the Progressivi^ party, and Dr. Jameson l)ecame Prime Minister. He retained office until early in 1908, when, having been defeated at the polls, he was succeeded by the Hon. J. F. X. Merriman. Cape Colony has no State Church, but a State*" sum of about £4,000 is appropriated annually to the Dutch Reformed, Episcopalian, Presby- terian, and Roman Catholic bodies. In accordance with an act of 1895 this sum is being gradually reduced. The Colony con- tains two sees, Capetown and Grahamstown. The first Bishop of C^apetown was Robert Gray, consecrated in 1847. In 1853 the diocese of Grahamstown was separated from Capetown and in 1873 that of St. John's, Kaffraria, from Capetown {see p. 523). (b) The Eastern Frontier and the Kaffir Wars. The province of British Kaffraria was formed after a long series of wars between the colonists on the eastern borders and the Kaffir branch of the Bantu race. The tribes innnediatel}' in contact with the others were the Kosas, who at the close of the eighteenth century reached as far westward as Buslmiau 494 The Kaffir Wars. Kiver. The proldem they presented wiis one of the Tuost serious dithculiies inherited 1ty the EnglisJi Government. The first and second Kaliir wars, which took place during the J)utch rule, have already been noticed together with the retrogression of the frontier from the Fish to Bushman River (p. 484). , . Th(; third Kaffir war took place in Warg**^ .1799 a]id the natives overran the Zuurveld and the district of Graafi-Eeinet. Peace was made in October, when, to the indignation of the farmeis, large presents were made to the chiefs and they were allowed to keep their plunder. The fourth Kaffir war broke out in 1811. It was occasioned l)y the Kosas seeking to extend west of the Gamtoos and was ended in March, 1812, by their being driven out of the Zuurveld and across the Fish Eiver. In 1819, in the fifth Kaffir war, Government acted with no less vigour. To put a stop to cattle-plundering they had entered into friendly relations with Gaika, the principal chief of the Kosas west of the Keiskama. In 1818 he was defeated l)y his uncle, Ndlamlje, in the great battle of Ama- linda and sought the assistance of the English Government. Troops were sent to his aid, and in revenge Ndlambe poured his forces into the Colony. They were completely defeated in an attack on Grahamstown in April, 1819, and the Governor, Lord Charles Somerset, annexed the country between the Fish and Keiskama to serve as a military frontier, retain- ing the Fish as the boundary of the Colony propei". in addition he settled a colony of nearly four thousand English enn'grants in the Zuurveld, henceforth known as the district of Albany, to act as a bulwark against the Knitirs, The settlement was marked by the foundation of Jsathursl, and of I'ort Elizabeth. Ho far the new Government had acte he leceived the missionaries of the Paris Evangelical Society. His relations with The (Jreat Tick and the appearance of the Boers and the Boers north of the Orange River with the British, .^j^^^.^^j j^-^ position. In 1837 he concluded a friendly agieement with their leadei-, Pieter Retief, and in 1843 he made a treaty with the Cape governor. Sir George Napier, by which the extwit of his territory was defined. His boundaries were the Orange River- from its source to the (-aledon, and a line about thirty miles west of the (^aledon. But the native ideas of sovei-eignty were tribal rather than territorial, and in consequence Moshesh became involved in constant disputes. In 1848 Sir Harry Smith annexed the territory between the Orange and Yaal, and persuaded Moshesh to recognise England's authority. He followed up this step in 1849 by reducing the extent of Basutoland us defined by the Napier treaty, and fixing a new boundary known as the Warden line. The English in consequence became involved in disputes with Moshesh, which ended in the first Basuto war and led to the withdrawal of the British from the north of the Orange River. On June 30, 1851, a small force was worsted by the Basutos at Viervoet. A more serious engagement at Berea on December 20, 1852, was indecisive, but Moshesh immediately sought peace, judging it dangerous to provoke England too far. Basutoland taken On the abandonment by England of the under British territory north of the Orange in 1854 [see p. Protection. 523^^ Moshesh promptly extended his boiders at the expense of neighbouiing chiefs. Difficulties with the V.^>^ Ifs' Exist int] Or(/anisa/ion. Orange Free .State on the subject of marauding and of bound- aries led to war in 1858, in 1865-6, and in 1867-8. In the last war Moshesh came near destruction, when the High Commissioner for South Africa, Sir Philip Wodehouse, intervened and proclaimed his people English subjects in March, 1868. On February 12 the treaty of Aliwal North was signed between the High Commissioner and the Free State, by which the Caledon was made the western boundary of Basutoland from Kornet Spruit to its source. Annexation and 111 l^^''^ Moshesh died, and in April, Present 1871, Basutoland was annexed to Cape Condition. Colony and divided into four magisterial districts. Bantu law was recognised, and a hut tax imposed. In April, 1880, an attempt to disarm the inhabitants caused a revolt and led to the transfer of the country in 1884 to the Imperial Government. The territory is governed by a Eesident Commissioner under the High Commissioner for South Africa, who legislates for it by proclamation. The chiefs adjudicate on cases between natives with a right of appeal to the magistrates' courts, where all cases between Europeans and natives are brought. The financial condition]of Basutoland is satisfactory ; the revenue for the financial year of llH)7-8 was £110,529, mostly derived from the Hut Tax and Customs duties ; and although the expenditure was £126,603, there is no public debt, and the Treasury has an approximate balance of £150,000, partly invested in railway works and other securities. Maseru, the seat of government, has a railway connection with the general South African railway system ; and during the year 1907-8 the government expended £-16,000 in public works, mainly on the improvement of roads and bridges. There are twelve thousand scholars in the various missionary schools, which received in 1907-8 an education grant of £12,000. {d) The Northern Frontier. On the north the vague l»oundarv andorualand existing at the close of the Dutch rule long remained unaltered. In 1847 Sir Harry Smith extended the frontier to the aek the Mantati horde, the van of the great exodus westward from the power of the Znkis, and thus saved themselves from destructioi). From the time of the Uieat Trek in 18o(> l)oth Gi-iquas and Bechnanas were fre(juently in\olved in dispuh^s with the Boers, who endeavoured to ])re\ent white hunters and traders ]iassing througli the Bechuana lands into the interior. In 1871, after the discoxery of diamonds, (Iriqnalaud West was annexed to the British Crown, and in 1880 it was incor- porated in Cape Colony. In 1884 the appearance of Boer adventurers occasioned the establishment of a protectorate in Bechuanaland as far north as the 22nd parallel of latitude. In 1885 the part south of the Molopo was termed British Bech- uanaland and formed into a Crown Colony, and in 1890 the protectorate was extended to the Zambesi. In 1895 the Colony was annexed to the Cape, while the whole of Northern Bechuanaland, from the Molopo to the Zam])esi, still remains a protectorate. (e) Railway System of Cape Colony. The great period of railway development was sulisequent to 1875. There now exist three systems — the Western, the Eastern and the JNIidland — starting from the three great ports, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London. The first railway in the Colony was commenced in 1859. It ran from (Jape Town through Stellenbosch and the Paarl to Wellington, a distance of sixty-three and a-half miles, and was the propeity of the Cape Town J Railway & Dock Company. It was continued after 1875 to Worcester and Beaufort West, reaching Kim- berley in 1885. In 1890 it was extended to Vryl)urg and ]\Iafekiug, whence it connects with the lihodesian Railway at Bulawayo. The Midland system starts fi-oni Port Eli;^a- lieth and runs by Cradock and Naauwpoort to Nerval's Pont on the Orange Eiver, whence it proceeds through the Crange Eiver Colony to Johannesburg and Pretoria. The Eastern system starts from East London, crosses into the ( )range Free State near Bethulie, and effects a junction with the Midland system at Springfontein. Almost the whole of these railways are owned and worked by government. CHAPTEK IV. BOERS AND BRITONS IN SOUTH AFRICA, 1836-1908. South Africa and With the commencement of the Great Trek the Home in 1836 the history of Cape Colony ceased Government, ^o be the history of "the whole of the European colony in South Africa ; and it is necessary, therefore, to trace separately some of the general political and economic questions which affected South Africa as a whole before passing from the history of C^ape Colony U) the se])arate histories of its various offshoots. Not that the pioblems ;it issue changed in character at the time of the Trek. T'lie chief questions after the Ureat Trek, as before, wore the treatment of the native races and the relation of the colonists to the home government. This second issue is not [)rimarily a race question. It is not properly a question of the treatment of Dutch colonists by an English Government, for, as we have seen, it existed in an acute form when the home government was still the Dutch East India Company. But since the English acquisition of Cape Colony, or rather, perhaps, since the settlement of Albany in 1820 the racial element has made the question more difficult. At times the disputes liavc taken a distinctly racial form, while at others the whole body of colonists have been at variance with the home authorities. The chief responsibility for the Great The Trek has frequently been laid on the Missionaries, „iissionaries. The earliest missionary in South Africa ^vas the Mora\'ian, George Schmidt, who settled on tlieZonder EindeFdver in 1737. Seven years later hislabours were cut short by ecclesiastical jealousy on the part of the Dutch ministers, and it was not until 1702 that the Mora- vians were able.to resume work. Their laljours were chieHy among the Hottentots, for whom they established stations at Exeter Hall and Downing Street. 501 Genadendal, at Mamre, and atEnoii in Uitenhage. In 1790 the T>ondon Missionary Society commenced its labours at Bethels- dorp, the Wesleyans began in 1816, the Glasgow Missionary Society in 1821, and the Paris Evangelical Society in 1829. Many great names, including those of Eobert Moffat and David Li^■ingstone, have been numbered among the mis- sionaries in South Africa. No class of men can compare with them in self-devotion and in loftiness of purpose ; but the great detect of many was imperfect education, which prevented them taking a sufficiently judicial view of the native question. Devoting tlieir lives without reserve to the welfare of the native races among whom they laboured, the less wise of them were too apt to take the positions of partisans not merely of the black man against the white, but even of one native chief against another. This was the more unfortunate as public opinion in England was utterly uninformed and the missionaries commanded an audience whose ears were shut to other representations. They condemned, frequently with justice, the harshness and arbitrary dealings of border farmers, but too often they ignored or condoned the bloodthirstiness and want of good faith of the predatory and warlike Katfir tribes, l^ndoubtedly the low opinion held of the colonists in England was largely due to missionary representations, and no result coidd have been more unfortunate for colonist and native alike. Kar less excusable than the attitude of Sakes''"^ ^^^^' ^^^is^^narics was the neglect of the Colonial Office to make itself acquainted with the real conditions in South Africa. Anumber of peimancnt officials, Jiominally controlled by a Secretary of State chosen chiefly with regard to his influence in the English Parliamejit, decided questions of thefirst moment on general abstract princi- ples without modifying them to suit the actual state of affairs. They contennied and neglected the advice of their own civil and military officers who knew tlie country and its people, and even suffered them to be sacrificed to ignorant popular clamour without attempting their defence. We speak of the past. These conditions cannot recur, for England is now too keenly interested in her colonies to l»e complacent to official incompetence. ^, . ^. When the Great Trek commenced the ofSb " English Government endeavoured to hinder fresh emigrants from joining the com- mandos. The subsequent collisions with the Zulus in Natal and with the ]\ratabele near the Orange Eiver(.03 ihe English forces in South Africa were ([uite inadequate to maintain authority north of the Orange Kiver. The Colonial Secretary, Lord Grey, was dismayed and determined that Smith had been too forward in his policy of annexation. In consequence Sir Harry was recalled early in 1852. The Orange Eiver territory desired to hecome a self-governing colony under the English supremacy. But this idea found no fa\our at home, and, in spite of the disapproval of thi; (.'ape colonist, the sovereignty of the Orange Kiver was abandoned in Eebriiary, 1854 (p. 528). So ended the Hrst attempt to reunite South Africa. Sir George Grey's i^^^t though for the time the idea of federation union was abandoned, the reasons in scheme. favour of it remained equally forcible. The division made the native question infinitely more difficult by preventing the establishment of a common policy, while the control of the sea-border hj the English made the Boer repulilics financially and economically dependent. In December, 1854, Sir George Grey became Governor of Ca])e Colony. He was jjerhaps the greatest of South Afritsan statesmen. He made two very important proposals. In the first place, he grasped clearly the importance of widen mg by means of fresh settlements the area occupied by white colonists, particularly in the eastern part of South Africa, where the Zulus had made the country a sparsely inhabited wilderness. But the dread of expansion prevalent in England at that time made the realisation of this idea hopeless. The districts were ((uickly repeopled by the prolific native races and the oppor- tiniity was permanently lost. His other conception was that of federating the existuig English possessions for common action in regard to questions affecting the whole country. In addition, it might be })0ssible to include the Orange Free State, which could har5). This action brought Frere into conflict \\iththe Zulus, who threatened the Transvaal border. Realising that a catastrophe at some time was ine\ italjle, he boldly insisted on the abandonment of the Zulu military system and, on the tacit refusal of ('etewayo, determined on war. This step was appro\ ed in South Africa, liut i-ondemned in England, and Frere, >vhile retained as Go^eruor of Cape CJolony, was superseded as High Commissioner !>}• Sir Garnet W'olseley. The repudiation of Frere was not the sole work of either political party in England. In 1S79 the Conservative Ministry censured him for his conduct with regard to the Zulus, while a year later their Liberal successors recalled him from South Africa. He left South Africa amid the regret of both English and Dutch. In 1879 he wrote : " L^nless my countrymen are much changed they will some day do me justice. I shall not leave a name to be permanently dis- honoured." It is now generally recognised that he had a juster conception of the needs of South Africa than any other Englishman of his time. Difficulties with the Transvaal. 505 T ^ »,, , Tlie events of the next few years, which Later Attempts r j- , -j- a ^^ k c ■ at federation. ^*^^'^^ ^ disastrous period m South African history are described in a subsequent chapter (see pp. 536-7). The heightened animosities within the country seemed to preckide all hope of concord and federation. At the same time the immense industrial development of South Africa was making for union and contributed to revive the movement towards federation. In February, 1888, a con- ference of delegates from (Jape Colony, Natal, and the Orange Free State was held at Cape Town t6 discuss federation on a basis of internal free trade between the colonies and states of South Africa and of a uniform tariff on imports from other countries. Only the South African l{e])ul)lic held aloof. In March, 1880, a new coll^■ention of the three states met at iJloemfuiiteiii, but the. Xatal delegjiLes withdrew liecause they did not wish to niise their low tariffs. A Customs Union Bill, however, was ])assed liy the Cape I'aiiianient, ;ind the scheme embodied was shortly after acce}ite by (Jecil Rhodes while he was Prime Minister of Cape Colony Iroin 1890 to 1896, and he did much to widen the political aims of the party supporting this movement and to include in it men of varying shades of opinion. In 1898 Xatal entered the Customs Union. The prelimi Iw the Transvaal alone the reactionaiv naries of the government of President Kruger set itself in Great War. determined opposition to the politico-economic movement in 1896. The Jameson Raid had rekindled old aiiimosities and had peisuaded the '^I'ransvaal and the Orange Free State that the English (lovernment had designs on their independence. In 1897 Lord Rosmead retired and Sir Alfred Milner succeeded him as High Commissioner. In a few months he came to the conclusion that the attitude of President Kruger was full of danger to England's supremacy in South Africa and he did not hesitate to manifest his dis- approval of the President's support.crs within and Avithout Cape ( 'olony and to speak openly of the possibility of war. In 1899 the conflict between the reactionary commeicial and ])olitical ideas of the Transvaal (lovernment and tlic new aspirations of Rhodes and the Progressive party throughout South Africa became so sharp that the Home Government was obliged to intervene on the question of the d}Tiamite monopoly. A little later the greater question of the position of English residents in the Transvaal was raised. The distrust of England made 506 The Great Boer War. negotiation difficult, and the resolution of the Orange Free State to support the Transvaal extended the dispute to the whole of South Africa. The concession of the franchise in the Transvaal to recent English settlers was the chief point at issue. On this question the conference held at Bloemfontein in June, 1899, between Sir Alfred Milner and President Kruger failed to come to an agreement. It became necessary to prepare for the eventuality of war l)y sending troops to the Cape. Unfortu- nately the arrival of troops reacted adversely on the situation. It was undoubtedly essential to garrison Cape Colony and Natal, luit. it was an error of judgment to })lace the a\-ailable forces on the frontier, where, although they wove not strong enough to defend the integrity of the English colonies, their presence was regarded as a threat. On October 9th the Transvaal issued an ultimatum requiring that all pending disputes should be settled by arbitration and that all troops on the 1)orders should be instantly withdrawn. The demands were refused and on October Tlth war V)egan. The English authorities were caught British unready partly because the military efficiency of the Boers had been under- estimated. There were strong political i-easons for keeping the -war out of the British t^rritoi}', on account of the large Dutch populal.ioi) in Cai>c Colony and Xortliern Natal ami on a,ccount of the ]iossi1)le effect on the natives. Fbit, in warfare it is folly to subordinate military to political considerations, and from a, niibt;iiy ]ioint of ^'iew the Natal frontier was in- defensible willi the forces available. Sir George White, who had only five thousand men distrilaited between Ladysmith and Dundee, was compelled to concentrate on Ladysmith after a successful action at Talana Hill on the part of the British right. Hazarding an action at Lombard's Kop on the 29th, he was defeated and shut \\\) in Ladysmith. On the western frontier Colonel Kekewich was shut up in Kimberley with over two thousand men, and Col. Baden-Powell in Mafeking with fifteen hundred. The determined resistance of these towns saved the situation. On the southern frontier of the Orange Free State several minor commandos threatened Cape Colony with invasion, but the greater part of the military force of the Boers was occupied in the sieges. Magersfontein, Such was the condition of affairs when Stormberg. Gen. Buller landed at Cape Town at the Colenso and Jigad of an army corps and took over the tipion kop. ^.jj.gi command. He divided his forces into three columns, despatching Lord Metbuen with seven thousand British Reverses. 507 five hundred men to relieve Kiniberley, directing Gen. Gataere with four thousand to proceed to Queenstown to repel the Free State in^'aders, and sending Gen. Clery to Natal to under- take the relief of Ladysmith. Lord Methuen, after dislodging two large Boer detachments from Belmont and Enslin on November 23r(l and 25th, fought a serious engagement on the 28th at the Modder Eiver with the Boer covering force of eight thousand men under Gen. Cronje. After ten hours' hard fighting Cronje retired. On December 11th Methuen failed to force Cronje's entrenched position at Magersfontein, and was compelled to withdraw 1 tehind the Modder Itivei', with the loss of Gen.Wauchope and over ninehundred and fifty men. Gataere had fared no better. (Jn Decemlter 10th he was repulsed in a night attack on Stormberg and driven back to Molteno with a loss of over seven hundred men. In the meantime the situa- tionhad become so serious in Natal that at the closeof November Biiller had repaired tliither hims(df to direct operations. On December loth he was defeated by Louis l>otha in an attempt to cross the Tugela River at Colenso, losing ten guns and eleven hundred men. Six weeks later a second aljtempt to force the line of the Tugela failed after a disastrous action at Spion Kop on -lanuary 24tb,aii(l a third effort on Feliruaiy 5th was equally unsuccessful. In the meantime, the seriousness of the thVSde° position was fully realised in England, and preparations were made for despatching larger forces to South Africa. On January 10th, 1900, Lord Roberts landed at Cape Town with Lord Kitchener as his chief of staft" and with extensive reiuforcenumts, and after three weeks spent in organising the colonial forces, improvising mounted infantry l)y drafting detachments from the foot regiments, and arrang- ing an adequate transport system, commenced the movement which changed the whole face of the war. He had at his disposal a mobile force of thirty-five thousand men and one hundred guns. On Felu-uary 9th he arrived at the Modder Eiverand, entering the Orange Free State, seized the passages over the Eiet and Modder Rivers, and threatened Cronje's communications with Bloemfontein. On February 15th Gen. French, who had distinguished himself in defensive operations in the neighbourhood of Colesljei-g, relieved Kimberley after a great cavalry march, in which he passed Paardeberg. round the Boer position at Magersfontein. Cronje, who had remained inactive at Magers- fontein until too late, attempted a hazardous retreat across the front of the English force. He was intercepted at 508 The Later Phasrs- of the War. Paardeberg on the Modeler, and though he beat ofi' a desperate attack by Lord Kitchener on the 18th, he was compelled to surrender on the 27th with four thousand and sixty-nine men and six guns. The news of liis peril drew oft' most of the Boer force before Ladysmith and enabled Buller to break through T>^^;^t ^t T „A^ the investment on Feltruarv 28th, after Eehef of Lady- ^ r. i -• t .. i^ i • smith and desperate hghtmg. in spite of his numerous Mafeking ; and repulses and heavy losses, he preserved to the occupation of last the confidence of his troops and kept up Pretoria. ^j^^-j, ^^^f^j^^fe On March 13th Iioljerts entered Bloemfontein, and on June 5th he occupied Pretoria witlioul resistance. On May 17tli Mafeking was relieved. In November Lord Iiol>erts handed over TheWar ^jj^ command to Lord Kitchener. It was thought with the occupation of the capitals the war would come to an end, but it was soon dis- covered that it had only changed its character, and that it could not Ite terminated except l>y an effectiAC occupation of the entire country. Cluerilla tactics, in which De Wet, Delarey and Louis Botha particularly distinguished themselves, proved extremely difticult to meet. At the close of 1900 it was found necessary to send thirty thousand mounted men to South Africa as reinforcements. Concentration Early in 1901 Lord Kitchener coneen- camps and trated his scattered garrisons in central blockhouses, positions, and began to collect the non- combatants in concentration camps, with a view to wasting the held of war and making subsistence impossible for the commandos. This policy was not very successful owing to the impossibility of carrying it out effectively, l)ut, on the other hand, an invasion of Cape Colony by De Wet in Feli- ruary failed completely. Towards the middle of the year Lord Kitchener commenced to divide up the area by chains of blockhouses by means of which the movements of the Boers could be observed and contained. During this period the English detachments, accustoming themselves to the con- ditions, were increasing in a marked degree their mol )ility and general efficiency. Moreover, the Boer forces, having no reserves, became depleted by incessant warfare in which every reverse meant a loss which was irreparable. With the l)eginning of 1902, having completed the iso- ■^"^ W°^ ^^^ lation of the various districts by means of chains of posts, Lord Kitchener commenced to sweep them one by one by a series of drives, employing an overwhelming force. This S}slem finally woi(- down The Consolidation of South Africa. 509 resislanco, though when hostHil.it's ceased there were still about eighteen thousand Boers in the held. At the beginning of 1902 there were over a quarter of a million men under Kitchener's command, including a corps of five thousand surrendered burghers at Pretoria, under (ien. Vilonel, anxious to terminate the miseries of the war. Peace was finally ratified on May 31, 1902, the British Government undertaking to restore representative institutions in the Transvaal and the Orange Eiver Colony as soon as possible. The closer At the close of 1 902 Mr. Chaml )erlain visited union of South Africa in order to promote reconcilia- South Africa, tion, anil during liis visit urged the considera- tion of federation on the colonists. An Inter-Colonial Council of the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies was created in 1903 to control railways and some other matters closely affecting the two colonies; and a convention of July, 1900, esta1)lished the South Africa Customs Union, which includes Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange River Colony, the Transvaal, South Rhodesia, North-Western Ithodesia (Barotseland), and the Bechuanaland, Basutoland, and Swaziland Protectorates. Politically, too, the movement towards amalgimation has advanced apace. As in Canada, the grant of self-government (see pp. 530, 539) has converted racialism into nationalism, and enabled two once hostile peoples to combine in a common ambition. Similarity of economic interests and of policy towards the natives of Africa and immigrants from Asia has created a keen desire for closer union among the various Colonies ; and a conference sat first at Durban and then at Capetown in October-December, 1908, to consider tlie question of federation or unification. The preponderance of opinion is said to have been in favour of unifi- cation such as that which united England and Scotland in 1707. E ven Natal, which might naturally have desired a Federal sol u tion to protect its predominantly British population against Dutch control, appreciated the advantages of a unitary constitution which would avoid the expense of maintaining two sets of Legislative and Executive authorities and the difficulty of allocating powers between the Federation and its constituent states. The issue is still (December, 1908) undecided ; but there is reason to hope that the immediate future will see a United South Africa taking its place in the Empire side l)y side with the Dominions of Canada and New Zealand and the Commonwealth of Australia. CHAPTER V. ECONOMIC FACTORS. Gold •^^ ^^^^ important than the pohtical issues described in the last chapter, and inextricably interwoven with them, have been the economic factors in the history of South Africa. Gold has been one of its products from very ancient times, and in the neighbourhood of Zimbabwe in Riiodesia may be seen traces of gold mining at a period of which we have no historic record. The ancient belief of the early Dutch explorers of the existence of a city named Mono- niotapa, of fabulous wealth, may have originated from legends of Zimbabwe. But for long the gold-bearing countries were in the possession of the warlike Bantu tribes, and the know- ledge of theii- riches was lost. In 1845 the German geologist, Von Buch called attention to the presence of gold-bearing strata in South Africa. In Decembei', 1867, another German travellei-, Karl Mauch, reported at Pretoria Discoveries ^'^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ discoveied rich and extensive goldfields in the Tati district, situated in the extreme south-west of the present province of Rhodesia. in consequence, the London and Limpopo Mining Company was formed in 1868, and in the following year its chief manager, Sir John Swinburne, reached the Tati. The mines, however, though promising, did not prove' remunerative, and no great progress was made. In 1869 Thomas Baines, the traveller, discovered the Mashona goldfields in what is now Eastern Rhodesia. It is also said that gold was found in the Transvaal on the site of Johannesburg as early as 1854, but the Boers passed laws making prospecting illegal. The Zoutpans- These laws were repealed in 1868 at the in- berg and stance of Pretorius on account of the desperate ■"^kT^T^ financial condition of the State, and in the same year the Malmani goldfields were dis- covered in the Marico district. In the next few years Edward Button found gold in the district of Zoutpansberg — in 1869 The Gold Mines of South Africa. 511 in the Sutherland Hills, the Klein Letaba goldfield ; in 1870 in the Murchison range, the Selatie goldfields ; and in 1871 at Eersteling, the Marabastad goldfield. In the last year he also discovered gold in the Lydenburg district. In 1871 the first gold law was passed by the Volksraad. In 1875 gold was found in the district south of Lydenburg, 'which in 1882 was named de Kaap, wlien mining was begun in earnest. In 1885 the famous Sheba mine was discovered, and the town of Barberton sprang up with five thousand inhabitants. „, „ , ^ , - In the meantime, in 1884, the discovery of Ine iiand Gold- it ^ • ,^ tit-, , " i mines S^'*^ ^^^'^ made ni the Witwatersrand district, and shortly afterwards it was found (hat tiie beds of conglomerates or ([uartz pebbles, which are comnion in the district, were ri(;li in gold. These gold-bearing conglomerates are the peculiarity of the Rand goldfields, and furnish an enormous supply. On July 18, 1886, the Rand goldfield was proclaimed, and before the end of the year Johannesburg was founded. From that time the Rand has been the centie of political aufl eccjnoniic ijiterest in Sou.tli Africa, and Johannesburg has become the greatest of its cities. In 1904 it had a ])opulation of over one hundred and fifty- eight thovisnnd 0(). At (li(> conclusion of the \v;ir, consideiable difiicu.lty was found in providing a supply of labour, owing to othei- employments liein.i; op(-n fo the natives. In li*04 the e.\-j)eriment of ('hincscs labour was tried, and was financially successful. Labmar '^ ^^^^' however, since been decided, both in England and the Transvaal, to abandon the experiment. The decisive reason was not so much dislike of the conditions under which the Chinese worked, which were (•apable of being made tolerable, as apprehension of the social danger of making a great industry dependent on the presence of an alien and undesirable race. Both Natal and the Transvaal have already found the problem of an Asiatic population extremely serious, and there was a general feeling in the colony that reliance on imported Asiatic labour ought to be avoided. In addition to the mines in the Transvaal ^^Sd!^" the territory of Rhodesia has developed a gold mining industry of first rate importance. In 188(! the riold Fields of South Africa T'ompany was formed by C^ecil Kliodes and (.*. D. Rudd, and on October o, 1888, 512 Tlte Diamonds of Kimberley. Lobengula granted the company an exclusive concession of all mining rights in his territory. During the next ten vears extensive goldfields were discovered, both in Mashona- iand and Matabeleland, and at the present time the work of prospecting is still enlarging the gold area. The output for 1907 amounted to 612,052 oz., valued at £2,178,886, or double the amount produced in 1904. The principal mining districts at present worked are those of Bvdawayo, Gwelo, Salisbury, Umtali, Hartley, Lomagundi, Mazoe, Victoria, Gwanda, SebakM^e, and Selukwe. The first diamonds discovered in South Diamonds. Africa were found in 1867 on the banks of the Orange River in the Hopetown district. Two years later the Star of South Africa, which weighed 831 carats, was bought from a Hott(»nt(anic action, and that the blue subsoil was still richer than the surface vellow. Barnato was one of the first to under- Co'pper and Coat 513 stand this, and his financial success was largely due to his acuteness. At an early period the claims passed into the possession of various companies, which in their turn were absorbed by the Barnato Diamond Company, founded in 1881, and the De Beers Company, formed in 1880 by associating a number of smaller companies, with which Cecil Rhodes was associated. On March 13, 1888, after a long struggle these com- panies agreed to amalgamate under the name of the De Beers Consolidated Mines Company, and from this time the concern has been managed as a trust, the output being limited in order to keep up prices. In 1906 the value of the diamonds exported was £9,257,000. Diamonds have also been found at Jagers- fontein and other mines within the Orange Free State, and more recently in the Transvaal, in the Pretoria district, where in 1905 the product amounted to nearly £1,000,000. Although the presence of copper in Little and^Tin Namaqualand was known to the Dutch in the seventeenth century, no serious attempt at mining was made until 1852, when operations were begun at Springbokfontein.' Soon afterwards a host of prospectors and explorers poured into the country, and for three years there was a burst of wild speculation, succeeded by a period of depression in 1855. The Cape firm of Philips and King, however, developed two very profitable mines, those of Spring- bokfontein, and Spektakel, They subsequently transferred their property to the Cape Copper Mining Company, which in 1869 commenced the construction of a narrow gauge railway from Port Nolloth to Ookiep. The Concordia mine, developed by Prince, CoUison, & Co., of Cape Town, passed subsequently to the Namaqualand Mining Company, which is still actively engaged in the district. Copper mines are also worked at Messina in the north of the Transvaal, and valuable deposits have been discovered in Northern Rhodesia on the Kafue River, and in various parts of Southern Rhodesia. Some tin mines are being successfully worked near Potgieters-Rust in the Transvaal. Among those products which assure the Coal. commercial prosperity of South Africa, coal is probably the most important. In Cape Colony there are collieries in the Stormberg Mountains, in the neighbourhood of Indwe and Molteno. Coal is the principal mineral at present worked in Natal, where it exists in large quantities, and is of excellent quality. In the 514 Cattle Breeding and Wool Growing. Transvaal coal is mined on the East Rand at Middelburg, on the border of the Orange River Colony, and at other places. In the Orange River Colony there are mines at Vierfontein near Kroonstad, at Heilbron, and at Viljoen's Drift on the Transvaal border. In Rhodesia the coal resources are very great. Large beds of coal exist in the Wankie district. . . The resources of Cape Colony are chiefly Farming^" pastoral and agricultural. The principal pas- toral pursuits are the breeding of horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and ostriches. The original Cape horse is said to have been a cross between a North African barb and a Persian Arab. Frequent importations from England took place between 1815 and 1850, and the breed gradually improved. The Cape horse became well known, and for a time there was a laige export trade to India. Latterly, how- ever, the breed has deteriorated, though the Cape horse is still the best in the country. Horses are chiefly bred in the Colesberg district in Cape Colony, and also in the districts cast of Winburg in the Orange River Colony. Cattle are bred in all pai-ts of Cape Colony breeding ^^^'^ invariably thrive, though the country still feels the effects of the ravages of rinder- pest of 1897-8. The chief native breeds are the Afrikander, a beast with upstanding horns : the Mashona cattle, which are small and fatten rapidly ; the Angoni, still smaller with a hump well-placed on their shoulders; the Zulu cattle, small, with thick horns, and very good trekkers ; and the Hottentot, big, rough, and badly shaped, with long legs and enormous horns. In addition. Shorthorns, Devons, Herefords, Dexter-Kerrys, Jerseys, Guernseys, and Frieslands have all been imported and thrive in the Cape Colony and Natal ; but they gradually lose their original characteristics. Sheep and goat farming are usually pur- growing. ^^^®^ together. The best known varieties of sheep are the Merino and the Afrikander, or fat-tailed sheep, which is the sheep of the country. The chief object is the production of wool, and in consequence in most sheep-farming districts the Merino is preferred. The best wool comes from the western province of Cape Colony, but wool-growing is also important in the Orange River Colony and Natal, and engages attention in all the colonies. The two chief bieeds of goats are the Angora and Cape goats. Ostriches, Cereals, and Wine. 515 Ostrich farming is an industry which farming originated in South Africa, though now pursued in America and Australia also. It did not come into vogue until about 1860, when the zeal of the hunters threatened to exterminate the breed. By 1865 the industry had become recognised, and in 1904 there were tliree hundred and fifty-eight thousand ostriches in Cape Colony. In the other South African colonies the land and climate are little adapted for carrying on the industry, but ostriches are found wild in Southern Rhodesia. Cereals, Although South Africa is on the whole Vegetables and better adapted for pasture than for agri- hvmt. culture, yet the agricultural products arc also important. In Cape Colony, Government Agricultural Schools have been founded at Elsenburg and Somerset East. Wheat is grown in Caledon, Paarl, Malmesbury, Calvinia, Namaqualand, Queenstown, Albert, and Piquetberg ; barley in Malmesbury, Robertson, Caledon, Bredasdorp, Riversdale, Piquetberg, Cape, and Swellendam ; oats in Caledon, Paarl, Malmesbury, and Piquetberg ; oat-hay in Cape, Malmesbury, Cradock, Oudtshoorn, Paarl, Stellenbosch, Uniondale, and East Griqualand ; and rye in Clanwilliam, Malmesbury, and Piquetberg. Indian corn or maize thrives all over the country, while potatoes and other European vegetables also grow plentifully, and tobacco is cultivated in several districts, particularly in the valley of Oudtshoorn. Almost all kinds of fruit grow in Cape Colony, the species varying according to the height of the land above the coast; and the export trade, both in fresh and dried fruits, is rapidly increasing. The manufacture of wine and brandy is grow'inff confined to the west districts of the Cape, Stellenbosch, Paarl, Malmesbury, Worcester, Robertson, and Tulbagh. The grape vine was first intro- duced from Europe in 1653 by the early settlers. In 1659 brandy wine was manufactured, in 1681 brandy was made, and in 1684 Governor Van der Stel laid out the famous Government wine farm at Constantia. From that time the cultivation of the vine has been of great importance to Cape Colony. The chief varieties are white wine, Hermitage, and Pontac. Natal for agricultural purposes is divided into three zones —the coastlands, the midland districts, and the upper 516 Agriculture in Natal, the Orange River and the Transvaal. districts. For a distance of twenty-five to thirty miles from the sea the land bears tropical and semi-tropical produce such as tea, coffee, sugar, and bananas, as ^'^ N^tal^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ kinds of ordinary farm and garden produce except cereals. On the alluvial flats oat-hay, maize, potatoes, and sweet potatoes thrive. The midland districts are separated from the lowlands by a narrow belt of country, which is used for cattle farming and gi-azing. They possess black and red loamy soils, as well as clay soils, where all kinds of European cereals and root crops may be grown and stock raised. In the upper districts sheep-farming and cattle rearing are the main industries, while wheat is grown on many farms for local consumption, though the attacks of rust and mildew have tended to decrease the quantity. The districts of Vryheid and Utrecht, recently added to Natal, are great farming districts. In Zululand, which is also a fine agricultural and stock-raising country, the farming industry is chiefly in the hands of the natives. The two chief industries of the Orange Eiver River cilon?^ Colony are agriculture and stockfarming. The country is situated on a great inland plateau from three to four thousand feet above sea level. The whole of the territory is divided into farms varying in extent from two hundred to twenty thousand acres. The eastern district is extremely fertile, and is full of rocks containing large quantities of phosphate of lime, which automatically fertilises the land as it crumbles under the action of the weather. The country is, however, afflicted with droughts, hailstorms, and locusts, which inflict much damage on the farmer. The southern and western parts of the colony are less fertile, and suffer from want of water. The north-eastern districts are devoted chiefly to cattle, sheep, and horse-breeding. The Transvaal, like much of South Transvaal Africa, is better suited for pasturage than for agriculture. The best districts for cereals are Pretoria, Rustenburg, Marico, Lydenburg, and Potchefstroom, while tobacco, sugar, coffee, bananas, pine- apples a,nd oranges are successfully grown in the Zoutpans berg. The Transvaal is divided into three geographical zones, the high veld, lying from east to west, is healthy and bracing, and is the watershed of the country; the middle veld is suitable for horses and sheep, except in the rainy season, when they must be removed to the high veld to avoid fever. Where Economic Conditions in Rhodesia. 517 there is water it is favourable for agriculture, but the greater part is deficient in a natural supply. The low veld is unsuit- able for Europeans, and its agricultural capabilities have there- fore remained largely undeveloped. Southern Khodesia has suffered extremely Rhodesia. from the cattle disease which first made its appearance in 1902, but the country is now entirely free from it, and the number of cattle belonging to natives increased between 1902 and 1907 from fifty-six thousand to one hundred and eighty thousand. Rhodesia is a specially good stock country ; it is open, well-watered, and suitable for cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. Summer crops onl}', such as maize, Kafiir corn, potatoes and tobacco, can be grown with great success without irrigation, while wheat, oats and barley, which flourish in the winter months, require irrigation to bring them to maturity. Agriculture has made great progress in the territory, chiefly throughout the Eastern province. Portuguese, CHAPTER yi. NATAL. The country of Natal was so named by Dutch and' the Portuguese seaman, Vasco da Gama, Natives in becavise he first sighted it on his way to India Natal. ^^ Christmas Day, 1497. From that time the Portuguese used the name for the district extending from the mouth of the Bashee River to the Blufi headland. The Dutch and English navigators, however, employed the name for the country between the Umzimvubu and Tugela rivers. In 1689 the Netherlands East India Company bought the shores of the Bay of Natal from the leading chief of the neigh- bourhood, but made no attempt to establish a settlement. The district was densely peopled with Bantu tribes, very different from the nomadic Hottentots round Cape Town. These tribes would have made the support of a settlement an anxious and expensive task. Natal continued to nourish a dense population, until the development of the military power of the Zulus, early in the nineteenth century, changed the condition of affairs. By 1824 the great Chaka had completed the desolation of Natal. The few natives who were left subsisted on fish and roots, or were driven to cannibalism. The districts between the Tugela and Umzimvubu were desert, and it was certain that no native race would re-people a district so near the Zulu kraals. The English, however, were bolder, and in Stfit August, 1824, a small party under Henry Francis Fynn obtained a grant from Chaka of the port of Natal and the surrounding district, and at a later date of the country from Natal southwards to the Umzinikulu River. With Chaka's permission the white men gathered followings of natives, and gi-adually assumed the Disasters in Natal: 519 position of petty chiefs. The Cape Government did not look on the adventurers with favour, and Dingaan, who assassinated Chaka in 1828 and succeeded him, was in turn disappointed at their inabiUty to act as mtermediaries between him and the colonial authorities. They thus lived in constant alarm, regarded with unfriendly eyes by the Colonial Secretary, and purchasing Dingaan's patronage by assisting him in his wars. In 1835 they resolved to lay out a town and to call it D'Urban after Sir Benjamin D'Urban, the Governor of Cape Colony, and petitioned him that the district between the Tugela and the Umzimkulu might be made a colony and named Victoria. D'Urban supported their request, but the Secretary for War and the Colonies, Lord Glenelg, refused his consent to any colonial extension. In the meantime the Dutch farmers were M Zulu assacres. also interested in the country. In 1834 a party from Cape Colony paid a visit of inspec- tion, and in October, 1837, a division of the great body of emigrants {see p. 490) who eventually founded the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, arrived at Natal, under Pieter Ketief, from Thaba Ntshu, on the other side of the Drakensberg. Dingaan received him in a friendly manner, and towards the close of the year he returned with a large body of immigrants. But Dingaan, though ostensibly amiable,was in reality alarmed at the prospect of white immigration. On February 6, 1838, having lulled suspicion by the basest treachery, he massacred sixty-six Europeans, headed by Retief, who had visited his kraal at Umgungundhlo\ai to restore some stolen cattle. On the 17th a second massacre took place at Weenen, the place of weeping. On hearing the news Commandants Potgieter and Uys hastened to their countrymen's assistance, while the English traders from D'Urban also prepared to act. Neither party was successful. On April 11, Potgieter and Uys fell into an ambush and lost ten men, including Uys himself. Six days later the native levies of the traders, fifteen hundred strong, together with seventeen Englishmen, were lured across the Tugela and destroyed after a desperate resistance, only foui" Englishmen and five hundred blacks escaping. This Zulu victory was followed by the destruction of D'Urban. In May Potgieter and a large body re- 'dTv^^ ^ crossed the Drakensberg northwards ; but the other emigrants resolved not to quit Natal, and they were reinforced by fresh arrivals from Cape 520 Natal hecomes a British Dependency. Colony. In November Andries Willem Jacobus Pretorius arrived in Natal and was elected Commandant-General. On December 16, which is now kept as a public holiday, he utterly defeated the Zulus at Blood River, and killed over three thousand of them. Dingaan was forced to flee northwards, and about April, 1839, his younger brother Panda revolted against him with a large number of the incorporated Zulus, and sought the assistance of the emigrants. On January 30, 1840, his followers inflicted a decisive defeat on Dingaan's army at Magongo, near the Umkuzi river. Pretorius then declared the country between the Buffalo and the Tugela on the north and the Umzimvubu on the south, the property of the colonists. This district formed the republic of Natal, f N ^^1 ^^ divided into three magisterial and ecclesiastical districts, Pietermaritz, Weenen and Port Natal. An extremely democratic constitution was formed. The supreme legislative and administrative authority was entrusted to a volksraad of twenty-four members,elected by the whole body of burghers. All measures of importance were sub- mitted for ratification to the body of settlers, at a meeting called a public. As a result extreme disorder prevailed, and the posi- tion of the colonists was rendered more difficult by the resolu- tion of the Enghsh Government not to tolerate interference on their part with the natives on the eastern frontier of Cape Colony. Towards the close of 1840 the emigrants b*\he"Brrtiih" became involved in hostilities with the natives in Pondoland on their southern frontier, and the Cape Government in consequence resolved to intervene. At first the burghers prepared to defend their independence by arms. In May, 1842, an English force occupied Durban, where they were hard pressed by the farmers, until relieved by the arrival of reinforcements at the end of June. This was followed by a temporary agreement on July 14, by which the burghers recognised the Queen's authority. A period of anarchy followed, and by the close of 1843 large numbers of the emigrants had retired across the Drakensberg. In May, 1844, Natal was declared a dependency of the Cape, with a Lieutenant-Governor, and a separate judicial, financial, and executive organisation. The Lieutenant-Governor was to be aided by an executive council of not more than five members, who were to recommend to the Governor and legisla- tive council of Cape Colony such laws as they thought necessary. Native Troubles under British Rule. 521 On August 21, Sir Peregrine Maitland, the Cape Governor, defined the boundaries of Natal. On the north the boundary declared by Pretorius remained unchanged, but on the south the district between the Umzimvubu and the Umzimkulu was added to Pondoland. In 1866 a portion of this territory, forming the county of Alfred, was annexed to Natal. With this exception the boundaries remained constant, until after the conclusion of the Great War, when in 1903 the counties of Utrecht and Vryheid and part of Wakkerstroom were acquired from the Transvaal. The first question with which the new Locatfons^ British administration had to deal was the settlement of the Bantu, a few of whom had remained in the country during the Zulu domination, while many others had entered it since Dingaan's defeat. They were assigned seven locations, comprising altogether about a sixth of the area of the Colony, and in 1849 Kaffir law and customs, with the authority of the chiefs, were declared lawful within the locations in spite of the strong disapproval of the Natal officials, who, however, succeeded in obtaining the appointment of European magistrates in the largest locations. At the close of the year a hut tax of seven shillings was levied on the blacks. The growth of Natal as a European oTNa°aT^ colony was exceedingly slow. In 1852 only eight thousand out of one hundred and twenty-one thousand inhabitants were of European descent, in spite of the arrival of five thousand six hundred emi- grants in the preceding four years. This was partly due to the presence and protection of a large native population, partly to the preference of the Boer farmers for greater political independence. Emigrants from England came slowly, while the natives, relieved from the dread of the Zulus, increased with astonishing rapidity. In 1873 Langalibalele, a chief of the Amahlubi of great influence, rose against government interference, and came into collision with a white force while removing across the Drakensberg into Basutoland. He was, however, arrested and his tribe dispersed. In consequence of attention thus called to the condition of the natives in Natal, Sir Garnet Wolseley was sent out in 1875 as tem- porary Governor to investigate matters, and subsequently the power of the chiefs was greatly limited by placing them more directly under the European superintendence. 522 The Grant of Representative and Responsible Government. Separation from Constitutionally Natal remained depen- Cape Colony, and dent on Cape Colony until July, 1848, when Representative j^ ^g^g given a separate legislature, nominated by the Crown. Ordinances passed by this body required confirmation by the Governor-General and the Crown. In 1854 preparation was made for the establishment of repre- sentative government by ordinances granting municipal government to towns of over one thousand inhabitants, and creating county councils, corresponding nearly to the divisional councils of Cape Colony. On July 15, 1856, Natal was made a separate colony with a Governor appointed by the Crown. The Legislative Council consisted of sixteen members, of whom four were official, eight elected by county, and four by borough constituencies. The elected members held their seats for four years. Acts passed by the Council could be vetoed by the Crown within two years of their receipt in England. The qualification for the franchise was the possession of fixed property to the value £50, or the tenancy of property with an annual rental of £10. . Tn 1881 the head of the colony was pro- Gov^^nment ^'tioted from the rank of Lieutenant-Governor to that of Governor, while, with some changes in numbers, the Legislative Council continued till 1883, when it was raised to thirty members, of whom twenty-three were elective. In 1893 responsible government was intro- duced after it had been urged for some time by a number of the colonists, headed by Sir John Kobinson,who were influenced by the example of Cape Colony. The Legislature was divided into two bodies, a Legislative Council and a Legislative Assembly, which together were termed the Parliament. The Legislative Council, or upper house, was composed of eleven members, a number since increased to thirteen. These members are nominated for ten years by the Governor on the advice of his ministers. Every member must have reached the age of thirty, must have resided for ten years in the colony, and must possess fixed property of the value of £500. The Legislative Assembly was composed of thirty-seven members chosen by the electors of thirteen electoral districts. After the addition of Zululand in 1897, and of the districts of Vryheidand Utrecht in 1903, the number was raised to forty- three. The franchise is the same as that fixed in 1856. The assembly must be dissolved at the end of four years, and may be dissolved at any time by the Governor. Like the EngHsh Native and Ecclesiastical Affairs. 525 House of Commons, it originates all money bills and sends them up to the Council, which may reject, but may not amend them. The ministry is appointed by the Governor, and holds office during the King's pleasure, or until it loses its majority in Parliament. The ministers, who must all be members of the Legislature, were originally five in number, ))ut have since been increased. Indian and In I860 the growing industries of the Native colony — sugar, coffee, cotton, and arrowroot^ Difficulties. caused the first importation of coolies or indentured labourers fi'om India. The immigration has con- tinued steadily since, and as the coolies almost always remain in the colony as " free " Indians, it has added a new feature to the race problem {see p. 632). The difficulty of admitting Asiatics as electors was seen immediately after the grant of responsible government, and in 1894 a bill was passed to pre- vent them in future obtaining the franchise. The native question is, however, perhaps even more difficult. In 1906 a great Zulu rising took place in March under the chief, Bam- baata, but was put down later in the year after serious fighting in the Mome Valley on June 10, in which Bambaata himself was slain. Ecclesiastically Natal was originally part lSs!°^^ of the diocese of Cape Town, but in 1853 it was formed into a separate bishopric (p. 493). The first bishop was John William Colenso, famous for his support of Langalibalele- and of Cetewayo, and for his views in regard to the historical accuracy of the historical books of the Old Testament. In 1863 his metropolitan, Robert Gray, Bishop of Cape Town, who strongly disapproved of his views on Scripture, cited him for heresy and declared him deposed. Colenso disregarded the sentence, and was declared excommunicate by Bishop Gray. He then appealed to the Crown and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council pro- nounced the whole of Gray's proceedings null and void in 1864. Two years later the Master of the Rolls, Lord Romilly, also gave judgment in his favour in a suit arising out of the refusal of the trustees of the Colonial Bishoprics Fund to pay Colenso his stipend. Gray, however, was supported by the English bishops, who in 1869 consecrated W. K. Macrorie Bishop of Maritzburg ; while Colenso's later years were embittered by the animosity roused among the colonists by his championship of the Zulus. 524 Chaka, Dingaan, and Cetewayo. Zululand. G fch f th ^* *^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^® eighteenth century Zulu Power ^^^® dominant tribe in modern Zululand was the Umtetwa, dwelling on the lower part of the White and Black Umvolosi. The Zulus on the upper White Umvolosi were tributary to Dingiswayo, the chief of the Umtetwa. Dingiswayo had lived in Cape Colony in his youth, and there learned the advantages of military organisation. On becoming chief he divided his young men into regiments distinguished by their names and the colour of their shields. On his death at the hand of an enemy about 1818, he was succeeded by one of his generals, the famous C%aka, already chief of the Amazulu. From him the whole confederacy took the name of Zulus. Chaka. Unlike Dingiswayo, Chaka was cruel and ruthless. From his accession he devoted himself to rapine and conquest. He perfected the discipline of his troops and armed them with the stabbing assegai, with its short handle and heavy blade. He swelled the numbers of his warriors by incorporating the young men of the con- quered tribes. His ferocity caused him to be styled the " Hyena Man," while from his size he was called the " Great Elephant." During his rule he destroyed three hundred tribes, and depopulated the country inland to the Drakensberg from the confines of Cape Colony on the south and__west, to the swamps of the Maputa on the north. In 1828 Chaka was assassinated by his Dingaan. brother and successor Dingaan. Ten years later Dingaan treacherously murdered the Boer envoys, and was in consequence overthrown at Magongo in 1840 {see pp. 519-520). He perished soon after on the border of Swaziland. In February Panda, Dingaan's brother, was installed chief, but as a tributary of the republic of Natal. His territory consisted of the land between the Buffalo and Tugela, and the Black Umvolosi, from the Drakensberg to the sea. When the English took over Natal Panda was restored to independence by a treaty dated October 5, 1843, at the same time ceding St. Lucia Bay to the English. While he ruled Panda kept faith and Cetewayo. peace, but as he gi'cw old the country was troubled by his warlike son Cetewayo. In December, 1856, Cetewayo defeated and slew his brother Umbulazi in a great battle on the Tugela. In 1872 Panda died. The Zulu Wars. 525 and Cetewayo, who had already re-established Chaka's military system, began to treat the English government with contempt. In addition the Boers from the Transvaal had begun to settle in the modern districts of Utrecht and Vryheid, part of which was claimed by Cetewayo. The annexation of the Transvaal b}'^ the English in 1877 involved them in the dispute. Matters came to a head on December 11, 1878, when an ultimatum was presented to Cetewayo at the instance of Sir Bartle Frere, demanding among other things that the Zulu regiments should be disbanded (p. 504). Early in January, 1879, three colunms Isandhlwana under the command of Lord Chelmsford entered and Rorke's Zululand. On January 22 the Zulus stormed •^"**- Lord Chelmsford's camp, while he was absent with the greater part of his force. Of seven hundred Europeans, only about forty escaped. At Korke's Drift, however. Lieutenant Chard with only one hundred men, held the passage of the Buffalo, repulsed a detachment of four thousand victorious Zulus, and saved Natal from invasion. Ulundi and the Taught caution by this lesson, the incorporation of English defeated the Zulus at Kambula Zululand. p^j^p Qj^ March 29, and at Ginginhlovo on April 3, and finally overthrew them at Ulundi on July 4. This last fight destroyed the Zulu military system and ended the war. On August 28 Cetewayo was captured. In Septem- ber the country was divided into thirteen tribal districts, each ruled by a chief. This arrangement proving anarchical, Cetewayo was restored in January, 1883, but it was found that defeat had destroyed his authority, and he was compelled to flee. In 1884 the Boers set up the New Republic in Western Zululand, which became merged in the Transvaal in 1888. Finally in May, 1887, Zululand was declared to be English territory, and a resident commissioner was stationed at Eshowe. On December 30, 1897, the country was formally joined to Natal. CHAPTER VII. THE ORANGE RIVER COLONY. The territory now occupied by the Orange River Colony, between the Vaal and Orange Rivers, was completely devas- tated towards the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth century by tribes fleeing over the Drakensberg to the north- west, from the Zulu impis {see p. 489). The desolation was completed and made permanent when the Matabele fixed their dwellings on the Marikwa to the north of the Vaal. The Orange River Colony owes its origin to a "^theCofon party of Boer farmers, under Commandant Hendrik Potgieter, who left Cape Colony in the Great Trek {see pp. 489, 519) early in 1836 to seek independence in the North. Between the Vaal and Vet rivers the Matabele assailed them, destroyed a number, and swept away a!l their cattle. The survivors escaped, after beating off the Matabele, to Thaba Ntshu, aided in their retreat by another band of emigrants from Graaff Reinet under Gerrit Maritz. With extraordinary sphit Potgieter returned reinforced by fresh emigrants, and after defeating the Matabele in January, 1837, foimded the town of Winburg, named in commemoration of their victory. In the summer, with only one himdred and thirty-five mounted burghers, he attacked the Matabele in their home, on the Marikwa, and after nine days fighting drove them beyond the Limpopo. Already in December, 1836, the emigrants had formed a Volksraad, consisting of seven persons, who were at once a legislature and a supreme court of justice ; and on June 6, 1837, they adopted a provisional constitution by which they recognised the Dutch law, and vested the executive power in a commandant-general. fShortly before a considerable party Britons and Boers in the Orange River Territory. 527 under Peter Eetief removed to Natal. Most of these were murdered by Dingaan in February, 1838, and on receiving the news Potgieter hastily marched to avenge their death. On returning he proceeded to the Mooi River, north of the Vaal, and for some years the fortunes of \\\^ Winburg burghers were associated with those of the Potchefstroom settlers {see p. 532). Numerous emigrants from Cape Colony establXed followed the first trekkers, and many of them settled between the Modder and Orange, where they became involved in disputes with the Griquas, who claimed the sovereignty of these districts, and who were ruled by Adam Kok at Phillipolis. In June, 1845, the Cape governor, Sir- Peregrine Maitland, arranged that the land between the Riet and Modder should be assigned to the European settlers, who should be governed by an English officer with a commission from Adam Kok. The land south of the Riet was reserved for the Griquas. Major Warden was appointed commissioner, fixed his headquarters at Bloem- fontein, and received his instructions from Cape Town. This arrangement worked well, for the emigrants most strongly opposed to English control removed to the Transvaal, while those remaining settled down peacefully. ■p ■ . n In February, 1848, however, Maitland's retirement of the successor, Sir Harry Smith, declared all the Winburg and territory between the Orange and Vaal ^°SaGfs°°'^ rivers, as far east as the Drakensberg, English territory, under the name of the Orange River Sovereignty. This pleased the settlers between the Riet and Modder, who disliked being governed, even nominally, by a native, but it was very much disliked by the settlers at Winburg, who were by this time accus- tomed to self-government. Together with the Potchefstroom farmers they attempted to resist, and under the younger Preto - rius compelled Major Warden to capitulate at Bloemfontein. On August 29, however, they were defeated at Boomplaats after an engagement in which plenty of corn-age was shown on both sides {see p. 502). The farmers who deshed independence now retii-ed beyond the Vaal (p. 533), and the new British possession was given a regular government. It had already Or<^anisation of ^^en divided into four districts — Bloemfon- the'brange River toin, Caledon River, Winburg, and Vaal River. Sovereignty, q^ March 14, 184'J, a Legislative Council was 528 The Organisation of the Orange Free State. created consisting of the English resident, the magistrates administering the four districts, and two unofficial members for each district, nominated for three years from among the landowners of the district by the High Commissioner. The High Commissioner had a veto upon all enactments, and the native chiefs exercised full control over their own people in the reserves. The chief event of the history of the ^Lord^^reT ^ Sovereignty was the first Basuto war in 1851-2 {see p. 497) which finally determined the colonial secretary, Lord Grey, to abandon the Orange River territory, to the annexation of which he had agreed unwillingly. In spite of the fact that a considerable number of Englishmen had settled in the coimtry, and in spite of the vehement protests of these men, and of the Boers who had supported the government, the country was declared independent by the Convention of Bloemfontein, arranged by Sir George Russell Clerk and signed on February 23, 1854, and the country was evacuated by the English troops on March 11. By April the constitution of the Orange Free^sSf ^^^^ ^*^^® ^^'^ formed. All persons of European blood, after six months' resi- dence, were to enjoy the full rights and fulfil the duties of burghers. The legislative authority was vested in a single chamber, termed the Volksraad, composed of members, returned by each village and field cornetcy and holding their seats for four years. At the end of two years half of the original Volksraad, selected by lot, were to retire. Mem- bers were required to be at least twenty-five years of age, to possess fixed property of the value of £200, to have been resident in the country for twelve months, and never to have incurred punishment for crime. The executive authority was entrusted to a President, to be elected by the burghers from a list of names submitted by the Volksraad. His term of office was five years, at the end of which he might be re- elected. He had the power of declaring war and making treaties, but required to have his acts and appointments ratified by the Volksraad. He could propose laws, but possessed no veto, and could be suspended from office by the Volksraad by a bare majority of votes. Its military "^^^ organisation of the Free State character and was largely military. Every man between its politics. |;he ages of sixteen and sixty was liable Political Parties in tlie Free State. 529 to military service, and had to be mounted and armed at his own expense. The burghers of each ward elected a field- cornet, and those of each district a commandant. In time of war the commandants elected a general, who was assisted by a council of war, consisting of the State president, the com- mandants, and the field cornets. In spite of its military character, the constitution guaranteed individual liberty, freedom of the press, and security of property. The first president of the State, elected in May, 1854, was Josias Philip Hoffman, a man of philanthropic views. His dealings with the natives made him so unpopular that in February, 1855, he was compelled to resign, and was succeeded by Jacobus Nicholas Bosliof, who in turn, wearied by opposition, resigned in June, 1859. There existed at this time three parties within the country, the party in power, who favoured the autonomy of the Free State, an English party strongly hostile to President Boshof, and a considerable minority of burghers in favour of union with the South African Republic. Proposed union Various attempts were made to unite with the the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Transvaal. under one government, and in December, 1859, Marthinus Wessel Pretorius, the President of the Trans- vaal, was also elected President of the Free State. His efforts to bring about a union were thwarted by dissensions within the Transvaal, and in April, 1864, he was succeeded by the great Jan Hendrik Brand. The desire for union with the Trans- vaal or Cape Colony was prompted mainly by the dangers to which the State was exposed from the ^wars" ° Basutos, with whom an unsuccessful war was waged in 1858 {see p. 498). But under the presidency of Brand the power of the Free State developed, and its forces triumphed in the wars of 18G4-5 and 1867-8, at the conclusion of which Basutoland was placed under the protection of the English Government. In the meantime the Free State had been fie'lds^Sute. steadily advancing westwards, where dwelt the Griquas and other small tribes. In 1861 the government purchased a tract of territory comprising the dis- trict of Phillipolis from Adam Kok, one of the Griqua chiefs. The determination of the extent of his rights over the territory he ceded, however, involved the state in long controversies with the other Griqua leaders, and especially with Nicholas Waterboer, which became acute after the discoverv of dia/Uiondti 530 Relations with the Transvaal and Great Britain. in Griqualand West in 1867. The territory in dispute included that on which Kimberley now stands, and ahnost the whole of the country east of the Vaal. In May, 1870, the Orange Free State undertook the government of the diamond fields, but in October, 1871, Su: Henry Barkly after arbitration [see p. 512) annexed the territory of Nicholas Waterboer, giving it the name of Griqualand West, and fixing the boundary by pro- clamation nearly at its present limits. In July, 1876, a sum of £90,000 was paid to the Free State as compensation for the peremptory natm-e of some of the proceedings. A diamond mine was also left to them at Jagersfontein within their territory. The quarter of a century succeeding the ^TransTaal "^^^"^ ^^^^ ^ period of quiet prosperity and progress for the Free State. On July 14, 1888, President Brand died, and on January 11, 1889, President Reitz was elected his successor. In February, 1896, he was in turn succeeded by President Steyn. In 1889 the main trunk railway of Cape Colony was extended to Bloemfontein, and in 1891 to the northern frontier at Viljoen's Drift on the Vaal River. At the close of 1895 the fair prospect was over- cast by the apprehensions excited by the Jameson raid. In March, 1897, Kruger visited Bloemfontein to discuss the pro- spects of a closer alliance, and in the following month a defen- sive alliance between the two states was published. On the other hand, in regard to its own affairs, the Orange Free State showed itself conciliatory towards the English Government. In December, 1897, the period of naturalisation was reduced from five to three years, and persons exercising the franchise were only required to take an oath of allegiance to the State, without renouncing their nationality. When war was in sight, however, the Free The War of 1899- State threw in its lot with the Transvaal. ^^an/TanTof''"' ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^' ^^^^' *^® ^^^^ ^^*®^ ^^^^^ Responsible ^^^ military preparations. The State suffered government, little from the war until Lord Roberts' advance and the capture of Cronje's army (p. 508). After the occupation of Bloemfontein Lord Roberts, on May 28, 1900, formally annexed the Orange Free State, which was re-named the Orange River Colony. But annexaticm did not end the war, which laid waste great parts of the Colony. After its conclusion on June 24, 1902, Lord Milner was a[) pointed Governor, assisted by nominated Legislati^'e and \ The Constitution of the Colony. 531 \ \ Executive Councils. In June, 1907, responsible government was established. A Legislative Council was created consisting of eleven members, at first nominated, but afterwards elective, and a Legislative Assembly of thirty-eight members, elected by British male white subjects, who have resided for six months in the Colony and are over twenty-one years of age. The first general election under the new system resulted in the return of an overwhelming majority of Boer members, and a ministry which included Christian de Wet, the most brilliant of the Free State's generals in the war, was installed in office under the Crown. CHAPTER VIII. THE TRANSVAAL. At the beginning of the nineteenth The Natives, century, the modern Transvaal, the coun- try between the Vaal and the Limpopo, was, like the territory which is now the Orange River Colony, occupied by various Bantu tribes. But about 1822 they were swept away by the Mantatis, a horde of refugees from the spears of the great Chaka, and their destruction was completed five or six years later by the Matabele, a part of the Zulu army who, under Moselekatse, broke away from Chaka and destroyed the eastern Bechuana tribes. The Matabele settled on the banks of the Marikwa, where they remained until the advent of the Boers, keeping the country a desert from love of rapine, and from fear of attack by the Zulus. The territory of the Transvaal had long settfememi ^^^"^ known to Boer hunters, but it was first occupied by settlers at the time of the Great Trek. When the Matabele assailed the emigrants south of the Vaal River, the Boers under Commandant Potgieter retaliated by attacking Moselekatse on the Marikwa, and inflicting such heavy losses on him that he fled beyond the Limpopo (p. 526). The way was thus clear for settlement, of the republic" ^^^ in 1838 Potgieter, after fighting without much success against the Zulus in Natal (p. 519), founded Potchefstroom on the Mooi River, and with his followers settled in the country between the Magaliesberg and the Vaal. In 1845 he sent out strong detachments north and east with a view to getting within reach of Delagoa Bay. A large party from Potchefstroom and Winburg founded The Constitution of the Sovih African Republic. 533 Andries, Ohrigstad, and Lydenburg, while another detach- ment, under Potgieter himself hitherto, settled in the Zoutpans- berg. The proclamation of English sovereignty over the country south of the Vaal River in 1848 (p. 527), brought about a further emigration to the Magalies Berg, headed by A. W. J. Pretorius. On January 17, 1852, the Sand River Convention was signed, under the terms of which the farmers north of the Vaal were acknowledged to be an independent people, and it was succeeded by fiesh emigrations from the Orange River Sovereignty. At this time the Republic was divided into Constitution. ^^^ districts — Potchefstroom, Lydenbm-g, Zoutpansberg, and Rustenburg. In 1849 the code of Thirty-Three Articles was adopted by the Volksraad. It w^as termed a constitution, but was in reality rather a collection of general principles of procedure in civil and criminal law. The Thii-ty-Three Articles, moreover, did not meet with universal acceptance, and in 1857 a more formal constitution was framed by a Representative Assembly of twenty-four members. By it the legislative authority was vested in a Volksraad, composed of members of European blood elected for two years. They were to be owners of landed property within the Republic, over thii-ty years of age, and electors of tliree years' standing. The administration was carried on by the President, chosen by the people, and an Executive Council appointed by the Volksraad. The military head of the Republic was the Commandant-General, elected bv the burghers bearing arms, and receiving his instructions from the President in the time of war. The Republic was divided into field cornetcies, each consisting of from sixty to one hundred and twenty households. Every group of six field- cornetcies had a commandant. The Republic was also divided into districts for judicial and fiscal purposes. Each district had a landdrost and a board of heemraden elected by the people. On January 5, 1858, the representative assembly chose Marthinus Wessel Pretorius to be President. He was the eldest son of the old leader, A. W. J. Pretorius, who died in 1853. The constitution of 1857, which was originally adopted by the Potchefstroom district only, was accepted by the Zout- pansberg district in January, 1858. The Lydenburg district, however, including Utrecht, declared itself a separate state in January, 1857, and was not united to the rest of the Republic until April, 1860. At the same time Pretoria, founded in 1855, 534 Domestic and other Troiibles. was chosen as the seat of government. The burgher franchise, or right to take part in elections for the President and Volksraad was granted to all white persons over twenty-one years of age, who had been born withm the State, who possessed landed pro- perty within it, or who had resided within it for a year. An oath of fidelity to the government and of obedience to the laws was likewise required from naturalised burghers. -, • -1 The chief events in the earlier years ''"war" of ^1^6 ^outh African Republic were un- important wars with the Bechuana tribes on the western frontier, who rapidly recovered after the removal of Moselekatse and resented the imposition of a labour tax by the Boers, The attack on the Bakwena in 1852 has become famous on account of the destruction of the property of the famous missionary. Dr. Livingstone, who was settled among them at Kolobeng. This occurred during the hostilities, and was ascribed by Livingstone himself to the Boers, but by them to a band of marauders, who anticipated their occupa- tion of Kolobeng. Between 1860 and 1864 a period of civil war ensued which injured the prestige of the republic in the eyes of both Euro- peans and natives. It was ended by the general acceptance of the younger Pretorius as President, with Paul Kruger as Commandant-General. The Transvaal After the discovery of diamonds in the and the neighbourhood of the lower Vaal in 1867, diamond mines, ^j^g Transvaal Government endeavoured to extend its authority over the diamond fields between the Vaal and the Harts. In June, 1870, the Volksraad were unwise enough to grant a monopoly of mining privileges to a company. In consequence the independent miners repudiated the authority of the Transvaal Government. In 1871 the case was submitted to arbitration, which resulted in a decision adverse to both the Transvaal and the Orange Free State {see p. 530). In consequence of the dissatisfaction with the award, Pretorius was compelled to resign, and was succeeded as President on July 1, 1872, by Thomas Fran9ois Burgers. During Burgers's presidency the difficulties labourT stem ^^^^^ ^^® natives became acute. The Boers of the Transvaal had adopted a method of obtain- ing native labour by means of a system of apprenticeship, which was analogous to slavery in the two essentials that the labour was compulsory and unpaid, while it differed from slavery in lasting only for a period at the end of which, iu The first Annexation of the Transvaal. 535 some cases at least, the apprentice was given a few head of cattle. The system was not in itself vicious, but there were undoubtedly many individual instances of harsh treatment and oppression. The chief fault lay in the unsympathetic attitude of the Boers towards the natives. This affected very seriously their relations with the neighbouring tribes. On the north and east they were surrounded by warlike races, with whom they were on bad terms, and whom they were not strong enough to overawe. A serious quarrel arose between them and Cetewayo, the Zulu King, in regard the^Zulul! *^ *^® possession of the lands of the Blood River, and in connection with the Swazis, whom the Boers supported against the Zulus. The burghers had no fear of Zulu attack, and indeed their modern weapons and their method of fighting on horseback gave them an immeasurable superiority over any native infantry force, however numerous and brave. But they were less efficient in attack, their small numbers making them averse from risk- ing serious loss, except in a great emergency. In 1876 an expedition against Sekukuni, a Bupedi chief in the Lydenburg district, ended in complete failure. The war was pursued by means of a band of foreign filibusters, who committed acts of great cruelty. The situation yearly became worse. The central government was too weak to control its subjects, while the warlike preparations of Cetewayo threw Natal into great alarm. Finally the Colonial Secretary, Lord Annexation of /-< i i ;• the Transvaal. < ^n^arvon, resolved on annexation, an extreme remedy, but one desired by a minority within the republic itself in view of the growing anarchy. On April 12, 1877, Sir Theophilus Shepstone pro- claimed the annexation in the Church Square in Pretoria, on the grounds that anarchy was prevalent, and that the failure' against Sekukuni threatened a general native war. The country was renamed the Transvaal Territory. If this step had been followed by careful and conciliatory action things might have gone well. But Shepstone was not a very suitable administra- tor, because he was connected with Natal, which led the Boers to regard him with distrust, and he was succeeded by Sir Owen Lanyon, who believed in coercive methods. In July, 1878, a number of the Boers set out their grievances in a peti- tion. They complained that the promises made at the time of annexation had not been fulfilled, that the Volksraad had not been summoned, that no constitutiun^of any kind had been 536 TJie Boer RevoU and Majuba Hill given them, and that they had not been protected against Sekukuni. In April, 1879, Sir Bartle Frere visited the Trans- vaal, where the malcontents had assembled in camp, and made some impression though he failed to win them over. Immediately afterwards he was replaced as High Commissioner by Sir Garnet Wolseley who overcame and captm-ed Sekukuni in November. In September the Transvaal received the con- stitution of a Crown Colony with a nominated legislature. This did not satisfy the burghers, who, The Boer rising, moreover, expected further concessions from Gladstone's Government, which came into office in April, 1880. In July Sir George Colley succeeded Wolseley, but he brought no grant of independence. On Dingaan's Day (December 16) the flag of the Republic was hoisted at Heidelberg and Kruger, Pretorius, and Joubert, were elected to carry on the government. Potchefstroom and Pretoria were beleaguered, and on December 20 a small English detach- ment was forced to surrender at Bronkhorst Spruit, forty miles from Pretoria, after losing more than half its number killed and wounded. On January 28, 1881, Sir George Colley attempted to force his way into the Transvaal from Newcastle, in Northern Natal, but was repulsed at Laing's Nek with a loss of two hundred men out of a force of fourteen hundred. On February 7 he was again beaten back at Ingogo. On the night of February 26 he renewed the Majuba Hill, attempt, occupying Majuba Hill in the dark- ness. On the morning of the 27th the Boers ascended the northern side maintaining a deadly fire, and drove the English troops from the summit. General Colley was himself among the slain. . This unfortunatt; moment was taken deuce \-estored. ^^ make concessions which before had been refused. On March 21 an armistice was concluded, and two days later the Boers were granted complete self-government under the suzerainty of the Queen of England. In August the Convention of Pretoria was signed by which native interests were guaranteed, the control of foreign affairs was reserved to the English government, and a British resident was to be placed in Pretoria. The republic was designated the Transvaal State. Much might be said for the terms arranged, but little for the time chosen for making them. The restored republic was reduced in size by the exclusion of Swaziland from its limits. Very soon private adventurers began settling beyond the western boundary of the The Rand and its ProUemS. 63t state in the territory of the Barolongs, where they formed the republics of Stellaland and Goschen. In February, 1884, the Convention of London was concluded, by which the title of South African Republic was restored, and it was empowered to con- clude treaties and engagements with foreign states and native tribes, on condition that they were first approved by the Crown. By this convention also the State's limits extended in the west to include a good part of the Stellaland Republic. In 1888 an addition was also made to the territory on the south-east, where the provinces of Utrecht and Vryheid were incorporated. These provinces had formerly been part of Zululand, and in 1884 had been formed by the Boers into the New Republic. In 1894 they also obtained the administration of Swaziland. , For some years the Transvaal State, railway?." under the presidency of Paul Kruger, was hampered by serious financial embarrass- ments, which made it difficult to support the expenses of administration. This position was altogether changed by the discovery of the Rand goldfields in 1886 and the foundation of Johannesburg (p. 511). From that time the South African Republic was beset with difficulties of a different kind. The old condition of isolation from the outside world ];)assed away. In 1887 a railway was opened through Portuguese territory, from Louren^o Marques to Komati Poort on the Transvaal frontier. By 1895 it was extended to Pretoria, while the capital was also connected with the Cape by the line from Bloemfontein, which joined the line from Loiu-en^o Marques in the Rand district. From the commencement of the com- Uitlanders. mercial development of the Transvaal, the increasing numbers of foreigners engaged in industrial pursuits, or uitlanders as they were termed, caused great difficulty. 'The Boer attitude is easy to under- stand. They had the natural dislike of a rural for a town population. They felt that most of the uitlanders understood nothing of the conditions of the country, and did not intend to make it their permanent home. Moreover, most of them were not land or mine owners. Though half the land and nine- tenths of the property had passed out of the hands of the burghers before the close of the century, they were not owned by the uitlanders, but for the most part by the great companies to whom the development of the country was due. On the other hand the uitlanders had considerable cause for com- plaint. Prosperity had not improved the Transvaal adminis- 538 Krurjerism and the Jameson Raid. tration. The resolute refusal of the burghers to give it their attention, and their love of local autonomy had left it largely in the hands of foreign officials, and it was by no means free from corruption. The old fashioned policy, inherited from the times of the Dutch Company, of granting exclusive trading concessions to private individuals, inevitably led to bribery and intrigue. The monopolies included railways, dynamite, spirits, sugar, jam, paper, and other articles in general use. In addition the franchise was made more difficult to obtain. In 1882 the necessary period of residence was increased from two to five years, and in 1890 ten years was fixed as the term for the full franchise. In 1892 the uitlanders formed the Ttansvaal National Union, with a view to concerted action with I'egard to their grievances. The policy of President Kruger, moreover, Kruger. was one of isolation. He wished so far as possible to separate the Transvaal from the rest of South Africa, especially that part under English rule. In this attitude he was opposed to the wishes of a strong party among the Transvaal Boers, headed by Pieter Joubert, who desired the pursuit of common Dutch interests throughout South Africa. Kruger, however, controlled the administration. In 1892 he imposed a new and high tariS on goods from Cape (Colony, and in 1895, in order to oblige importers to use the Delagoa Bay railway, he endeavoured to cut off all intercourse bv closing the drifts of the Vaal River. In addition the uit- landers were severely treated. In 1894 some English subjects were forced to serve on commando. The intervention of the English Government was necessary to ensure their protection, and to procure the reopening of the Vaal drifts. Feeling against the Transvaal administration became so strong that the Cape Prime Minister, Cecil Rhodes, considered that it might be possible to overthrow it by force. The attempt was made prematurely by Dr. ® T)a'd^^°° Jameson, who crossed the border and marched on Johannesburg in December, 1895, expecting the uitlanders to rise. On January 2, 1896, he was forced to smrender at Doornkop, having by his ill-advised action immensely strengthened the position of the Transvaal Govern- ment. The High Commissioner, Sir Hercules Robinson, was actually on his way to Pretoria at the time, to enter into negotiations in regard to the uitlanders. He found his task too difficult, and contented himself with securing the peace of the coimtry by warning the uitlanders against resistance. lu Conquest and Conciliation. 539 1897 Sir Alfred Milner became High Commissioner, and he made strong representations concerning the position. In May, 1899, the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, pro- moted a conference between Sir Alfred Milner and President Kruger at Bloemfontain on the snbject of amending the fran- chise law. Kruger was willing to reduce the period of residence to seven years, but demanded in return concessions which would have made the Transvaal independent. Through the discussion of these conditions the question of the franchise became merged into the larger question of English authority. Finally British suzerainty was formally denied. A f u War broke out in October 1899 (see pp. 505 9) ErpubHc. ^'^^ i" ^^3^' 1^00' I^ord Roberts entered the Transvaal from the Orange River Colony in co-operation with General Buller's force, which crossed the Natal border early in June. From this time the Transvaal became the chief seat of the war. Lord Roberts occupied Johannesburg on May 31, and entered Pretoria on June 5. On September 1 the Transvaal was annexed to the English dominions. At the conclusion of the war Lord Milner was appointed Governor of the Transvaal, on June 21, 1902, with nominated Executive and Legislative Councils. In August, 1903, Swaziland was given a separate administration. . The English government at the conclusion and^Eespontille ''^ P*^^*^^ undertook to restore representative government. government as soon as possible, and they were mindful of their pledge. A system of government for the Transvaal was promulgated by letters patent on March 31, 1905. It was intended to provide representa- tive institutions and to serve as an intermediate stage to the establisliment of responsible government. But after the Liberal Government came into power in England, this scheme was superseded on December 6, 1900. by the grant of full respon- sible government with a legislature consisting of a Council of fifteen members nominated by the Governor but ultimately to become elective, and an Assemply of sixty-nine members, elected by a franchise including every white male British sub- lect who possessed a six months' residential qualification. As there was no native franchise all native territories, such as Swaziland, were retained under the direct control of the Crown. Under the new constitution General Louis Botha became the first Prime Minister of the Transvaal, and his government made a graceful acknowledgment of the liberalitv v.'ith which they had been treated by presentmg to the Crown the finest jewel in the world. CHAPTER IX. KHODESIA AND NYASALAND. By successive stages we have traced the expansion of British sovereignty from Table Bay over Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange River Colony, and the Transvaal. It has been a gradual though fluctuating advance from south to north, and its latest phase has brought it into contact with earlier British enterprise in Central Africa and points towards connections with British influence in the east and north. Rhodesia is now conterminous with Nyasaland, and may ere long enjoy direct communication with Uganda (pp. 694-9) and the Sudan (pp. 727-35). I. — Rhodesia. Until the nineteenth century the inhabit- Mashonas ^j^^g ^f Rhodesia were the Mashonas and Matabele. Makololos, who were a pastoral people, un- warlike, and clever workers in iron. In 1837 they were disturbed by the advent of the Matabele. This tribe was originally part of the Zulu army, which broke away northward under Moselekatse about 1817, ravaging and destroy ing, until they reached the country north of Pretoria. Twenty years later the founders of the Transvaal drove them north of the Limpopo (p. 532), where they established themselves in the neighbom-hood of the Matopo Hills, forcing the Mashonas to take refuge in the mountains of modern Mashonaland, and the Makololos to cross the Zambesi. In 1869 Moselekatse died, and in 1870 he was succeeded by his son Lobengula. In 1887 and' 1888, after the discovery of The British ^q\^ qj-^ the Rand, numbers of European ^CoSptny?^ prospectors entered Matabeleland and Mashonaland. In 1888 Matabeleland and Mashonaland were declared to be within the British sphere of influence. At the same time, to prevent the encroachments of other European powers, J. S. Moffat, the assistant The Foundation of Rhodesia. 541 British Commissioner in Beohuanaland, made a treaty with Lobengula, by which that chief agreed not to enter into any treaty with a foreign power, and not to sell or alienate any part of his territory. This treaty was prompted by Cecil Rhodes, then Prime Minister of Cape Colony, who, with the assistance of Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, obtained the con- cession of a monopoly of mining from Lobengula on October 3, 1888. A year later the gi-eat seal was affixed to the charter of the British South Africa Company. Its object was to develop and administer the resources of the region of South Africa lying immediately north of British Bechuana- land, to the north and west of the South African Republic, and to the west of the Portuguese dominions. In February, 1891, the charter was extended to cover the territory then under British influence north of the Zambesi, with the exception of Nyasaland. The directors included the Duke of Fife, the Duke of Abercorn, and Cecil Rhodes. The company was granted sovereign rights with regard to its territories, subject to the general control of the Secretary for the Colonies. The administrative system of the company was prescribed by Orders in Council of Mav 9, 1891, and July 18, 1894. In June, 1890, a pioneer column of about n,^"!!f;„„ one hundred and eighty Europeans entered (Jccupation. T,rii o j r ,,.,-, the Matabele country. It established forts at Tuli, Victoria, and Charter, and on September 11, reached its destination, the present town of Salisbury. At the same time Dr. Jameson and a few others proceeded to Manicaland on the Portuguese frontier, where they made a treaty with Umtassa, the chief of the district. This caused considerable fiiction with the Portuguese, culminating, in May, 1891, in a skirmish in which the Portuguese were defeated, and in a treaty in June by which the frontier was finally settled. The development of the new settlement was rapid. A town speedily grew up at Salisbury, immigrants poured into the country, and companies were formed to exploit the gold reefs, on condition of making over to the South Africa Company one half of their shares. In 1893, however, the prospect was Matabele War. ^'^uded by the outbreak of the first Matabele war. The Mashonas, relying on white protection, threw ofE theii- subservience to the Matabele and even stole their cattle. The Matabele retahated by 542 The Matahele Wars. attacking the Mashonas round Victoria, and were in turn driven off by Dr. Jameson. All demands for reparation were fruitless. Lobengula was undoubtedly desirous to keep the peace, but he dared not acknowledge the right of the English to protect the Mashona. To leave matters as they were was impossible. The impis of the Matabele were a standing menace to the whole of Mashonaland. In September a force of six hundred and sixty white men from Salisbury and Victoria began their advance on Buluwayo, well-armed and supplied with maxim guns. They were commanded by Major Forbes. On September 25, they repulsed five thousand Matabele at Shangani E iver, and on November 1 , they routed a force of seven thousand at the Bembezi River. After this they occupied Bulawayo without opposition. They found it deserted and in flames, but they also found there unharmed two white traders whom Lobengula had protected to the last.. A force of four hundred and forty Europeans under Colonel Goold Adams joined them from Tuli on the southern border a few days/later. The king himself had fled northwards. His request for terms, accompanied by a present of £1,000, was intercepted by two dishonest scouts of the Bechuanaland border police, and a rash pursuit terminated in disaster to a reconnoitring party, thirty-four strong, under Major Allan Wilson, who were overwhelmed by numbers, and cut off to a man, fighting to the last with extraordinary gallantry. Early in 1894 Lobengula died of dy sentry. The result of the war was that Matabeleland Organisation passed under the administration of the Com- Matabeleland. V'^^'^Y- The administration was regulated by an Order in Council dated July 18, 1894. The administrator was appointed by the Company, subject to the approval of the Secretary for the Colonies. He was assisted by an Executive Council, and if he acted in opposition to their will he was required to state his reasons to the High Commis- sioner at Cape Town. Dr. Jameson, already administrator of Mashonaland, was appointed administrator of Matabeleland also. The seat of government remained at Salisbury, and on November 14, the High Commissioner, Sir Henry Loch, issued a proclamation making Matabeleland a subordinate district. Towns were laid out at Bulawayo and at Gwelo, between Bulawayo and Salisbury. In 1894 the country made remarkable progress, and Buluwayo grew with extraordinary rapidity. In 1895 the name of Rhodesia The Jameson Raid and the Boer War. 543 was officially given to the country. In that year, however, an outbreak of rinderpest made it necessary to destroy a great quantity of cattle. This exasperated the Matabele, who resented also the compulsory labour Matabele rising, i^. ^^^ mines, although this was very fairly paid. On December 29, Dr. Jame- son started on his foolhardy raid into the Transvaal, which terminated in his surrender at Doornkop. The effect on the Matabele was very unfortunate, and precipitated a rising which was perhaps inevitable at some time or other. There is no indication that the rule of the Company was harsh, or that the majority of the settlers abused their position, but the Matabele had been too long accustomed to plunder and con- quest to become peaceable subjects. In March, 1896, they rose and killed many isolated settlers. For some weeks Bulawayo was in a state of siege, but by October the danger was over, and at the close of the month Cecil Rhodes, un- armed, ventured into the midst of the Matabele in the Matopos and arranged a settlement. A rising in Mashonaland in June was easily put down. From that time until the outbreak of Great Boer War. parative tranquillity followed. Rhodesia was not the scene of serious hostilities in the Great War itself, though the effect on the country was considerable in retarding its development and putting a stop to much of its industry. At the beginning of the war the Transvaal Boers attempted to invade Rhodesia by way of Tuli, but were restrained by a small force commanded by Colonel Plumer, who also succeeded in holding the Bulawayo Railway for some two hundred miles south of the Rhodesian border, and finally in penetrating within forty miles of Mafeking, in the relief of which place he co-operated in May, 1900. From this time until the close of hostilities the frontier was only troubled by the occasional appearance of commandoes seeking to avoid the British columns. The Jameson raid put a stop to negotia- Svelopment ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ *'°^^ ^^ progi'css, for bringing the Bechuanaland Protectorate under the administration of the Company. In addition, the control of the Imperial Government over Rhodesia was increased by an Order in Council of October 20, 1898, creating a Resident Commissioner, appointed and paid by the Crown, for the S44 The Constitution and Railways of Rhodesia. territory south of the Zambesi, styled Southern Rhodesia, and entrusting the military forces to an Imperial Commandant- General. Four elected members were added to the five nominated members of the Executive Council. The powers of the Resident Commissioner were confined to the territory south of the Zambesi, because, for purposes of administration, the territory north of the Zambesi had been divided into two administrative districts, styled North-eastern and North- western Rhodesia respectively. The administration of these districts was finally settled by an Order in Council of December, 1899, which granted the Company administrative powers over the whole of Barotseland under the name of North- western Rhodesia, and a second of February, 1900, which gave them, with the title of North-eastern Rhodesia, the remainder of British Central Africa, with the exception of the territory adjoining Lake Nyasa. Each of these provinces is governed by an administrator. In 1903 Southern Rhodesia was given a Legislative as well as an Executive Council ; the members of the Executive Council were to be not less than four, appointed by the Company with the approval of the Crown, while the legislature was composed of seven elected members and seven (reduced to six in 1908) nominated by the Company. In the meantime measures were taken to la. ways. improve the communications with the out- side world. As early as 1890 Rhodes obtained the extension of the Cape Town railway from Kimberley to Vryburg, and afterwards to Mafeking. The Bechuanaland Railway Company was incorporated in May, 1893, which afterwards became the Rhodesia Railway Company. In November, 1897, the railway from Cape Town to Mafeking was extended to Bulawayo and on May 24, 1899, a railway was completed from Salis- bury to Beira through Portuguese territory. But while these undertakings were in progress Cecil Rhodes conceived the more magnificent project of carrying the main trunk line from Bulawayo to the Zambesi, and thence to Lake Tanganyika. He desired eventually to establish railway com- munication between north and south Africa, .The Cape ^^^ contemplated the possibility of con- Cairo scheme, structing a line throughout the length of Africa, from the Cape to Cairo. In 1898 he vainly endeavoured to obtain the support of the credit of the home Government, but, undeterred, he proceeded with his The Cape to Cairo Railway Project. 545 project as a private enterprise of the Rhodesia Railways Company. The line from Bulawayo to Gwelo was begun on May 30, 1899, but it was brought to a standstill in a few months by the outbreak of the J, , South African war. The directors of the Rhodesia Railways Company, however, con- structed a line from Salisbury to Gwelo, while war was raging, and completed the line from Bulawayo to Gwelo in December, 1902, thus connecting Cape Town and Beira. On May 9, 1901, finding the route to the Zambesi by Gwelo too difficult, the directors began to construct a line to Wankie, opened on September 21, 1903, and on April 25, 1904, the Zambesi was reached. By April, 1905, the Victoria Falls were bridged, and in June, 1905, the railway reached Kalomo the capital of North-western Rhodesia, while in August, 1906, it was opened for traffic as far as the Broken Hill Mine, three hundred and seventy-four miles from the Victoria Falls. It is intended to carry the line to Chenobie on the Lukanga River, where there are rich deposits of copper ore. From Chenobie the line may be extended in an '^^^nhT''*' easterly direction to the south end of Lake Project. Tanganyika, and thence through German territory along the eastern shore of the lake, or connect with a line of steamers on the lake, resuming at the northern end, or, thirdly, proceed along the western shore of Lake Tanganyika through the Congo Fi-ce State. The rail- way may also be connected with the contemplated Congo Free State system, which it is intended to carry to Redjaf on the Nile. The railway from Cairo at present extends to Khartoum, and between Redjaf and Khartoum it is jjossible to employ river transport until the completion of a line. Thus the Cape to Cairo project, which was ridi- culed as visionar}% is, in reality, perfectly practicable, al- though the line cannot be constructed entirely upon English territory. But as England would control the greater part of its length as well as its two extremities, she could hardly fail to exercise a predominating influence in its direc- tion. A transcontinental telegraph line has already been constructed. The prosperity of Rhodesia has been retarded by two great causes, the one serious but temporary, the great South African \Var which cut it off from the Cape, and exposed jt to the danger T 546 Rhodesian Resources. Liv ing stone' s Explorations. ^ of invasion — the other, more permanent, the difl&culty of obtaining an adequate supply of labour. It is probable that with the extension of the railway into ,^^® Central Africa this latter difficulty will be natural resources , , rri j. • • i of Rhodesia. ^^^g^v overcome. The country is so rich that it must eventually be a source of enormous wealth to its inhabitants. Besides the large output of gold, other minerals have been discovered in large quantities, including silver, copper, chrome, iron, lead, and, above all, coal. A company has been formed to mine the coal fields at Wankie, throughout an area of six hundred square miles. The country also furnishes tobacco, rubber, cotton, and all kinds of grain. It is an excellent cattle country, and its altitude makes it suit- able for the fruits and vegetables of southern Europe. In Southern Rhodesia the districts into which the provinces of Matabeleland and Mashonaland have been divided are in charge of civil Commissioners as in a Crown Colony. Public works and survey departments have been organised, and municipalities established at Bulawayo and Salisbury. Schools have been opened and churches built, the Church of England, the Dutch Reformed Church, the Wesleyans, and the Roman Catholics being all represented. In 1891 the diocese of Mashonaland was formed. II. — The Nyasaland Protectorate. The British Nyasaland Protectorate is not, XToSas' ^ike the other British dominions, described in this section, the result of expansion from the Cape. But that expansion has brought it into close connection with those dominions and made it practically part of the South African system. It is bounded on the west by North-eastern Rhodesia, and on the east by Portuguese East Africa and Ger- man East Africa, from which it is divided by LakeNyasa. Living- stone was the first European to traverse this part of Africa. In 1853, 1854, and 1858 he explored the country of the Zambesi, and in 1859 he traced the course of the Shire River as far as the Murchison Rapids. In 1861 he assisted the Universities Mission under Bishop Mackenzie, to establish themselves at Magomero to the east of the Shire highlands, and then explored the western shore of Lake Nyasa. The mission station was soon abandoned, but in 1866 Livingstone again reached Nyasa after following the -course of the Rovuma, pressed westwards to Lake Bang- The Development of Nyasaland. 547 weolo, and thence journeyed north until he reached Lake Tanganyika. In 1871 Stanley found him at Ujiji on the east shore of Tanganyika, still intent on travel, and early in 1873 he died at Chitambo, south of Lake Bangweolo. His labours ,,. . gave an enormous impulse to British Missions missions and British trade. In 1875 the Free Church of Scotland sent an expedition which proceeded up the Shire to Lake Nyasa, where they eventually established a station at Bandawe on the west shore of the lake. A year later the Church of Scotland planted a station at Blantyre in the Shire highlands, while in 1885 the Universities Mission made its headquarters at Likomo, an island on Lake Nyasa. In 1895 the diocese of Likomo was created and Chauncy Maples consecrated first bishop. Unfortunately he was drowned in Lake Nyasa later in the same year. The efforts of the missions were supplemented in 1878 by the formation of the African Lakes Company, designed to establish a great trade route to Central Africa by the way of the Zambesi, the Shire, and .the two great Afric L k I-iakes, Nyasa and Tanganyika. The chair- Company. '""^^^ *^^ *^6 company, Mr. James Stevenson, privately undertook the cost of construct- ing a road between Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika, the only considerable distance where water portage was lacking. In 1887, however, marauding bands of slave traders began to devastate the northern end of Lake Nyasa and laid siege to Karonga, the station of the Company there. In consequence the Company was involved in a war, which lasted for two years until the conclusion of a satisfactory peace on October 22, 1889. In addition the jealousy of the Portuguese was aroused, and they endeavoured to close the Zambesi besides sending an armed expedition into the Shire country. The acting British consul promptly declared a protectorate over the Makololo country, and the Shire Hills north of the Ruo. The matter was finally settled, after severe "tt? pStu*al *^^^s^*^^^' ^y *^^ Anglo-Portuguese treaty of and Germany. June, 1891, by which the free navigation of the Zambesi, the Shire, and their afHuents was secured and the limits of the English and Portuguese spheres of influence defined. A year earlier, on July 1, 1890, the English and German Governments came to an agreement concerning the northern limit of English influence, which was fixed at a line between Nyasa and Tanganyika, a T 2 548 The Freseni State of the Protectorate. little north of the Stevenson Road {see ip. 693). Finally the north-western boundary was defined on May 12, 1894, by an agreement with the Congo Free State. In the spring of 1891 a British protectorate ^ ^^ *of ^a "^^" ^^^ formally proclaimed over Nyasaland and Protectorate and the Shire district, under the title of British its development Central Africa Protectorate, while the re- of the country, jj^^inder of the English sphere of influence was placed under the management of the British South Africa Chartered Company, and at a later date formed into the terri- tory of North-eastern and the protectorate of North-western Rhodesia. The first English Commissioner in British Central Afr ca was Sir Harry Johnston, who found his time fully occupied in checking the incursions of the slave-raiders, and in establishing internal tranquillity. By the close of 1895 he had accomplished his task, and in 1896 he returned to England. The value of his work is attested by the subsequent quietness of the country. In March, 1904, the country was transferred from the control of the Foreign to that of the Colonial Office ; in September, 1907, it was renamed the Nyasaland Protec- torate and placed under a governor and commander-in-chief with nominated Executive and Legislative Councils. The country has a total area of 43,608 square miles, and a popula- tion of nearly six hundred Europeans, over five hundred Asiatics, and nearly a million natives ; its chief products are coffee, cotton, and tobacco. A railway was completed in April, 1908, from Port Herald near the Portuguese boundary to Blantyre. It will eventually be extended to Lake Nyasa, which is navigated by eight small steamers. BOOK III. INDIA, THE CROWN COLONIES, AND OTHER DEPENDENCIES OF THE EMPIRE. I.— THE EMPIRE OF INDIA. II. -THE EAST INDIES. IIL— THE WEST INDIES. IV.— BRITISH EAST AND WEST AFRICA. v.— BRITISH RULE IN EGYPT AND THE SUDAN. YL— THE SEA-LINKS OF THE EMPIRE. THE EMPIRE OF INDIA. CHAPTER I. PHYSICAL FEATURES. . India, the central peninsula of Southern °^Area,^" Asia, consists of four fairly well-marked div'- sions : (1) a mountainous mass of great height. and breadth, which completely encircles the rest of India except along the seaboard, guards the land approach from the north- west, and on the east forms (2) the region of Burma, with which may be associated Assam and Chittagong. This moun- tainous mass is joined by (3) the low alluvial Indo-Gangetic or Hindustan plain to (4) the peninsular tableland known as the Deccan. The political boundary is drawn in the moun tain region which is known as the Kirthar, Sulaiman and Hindu Kush Mountains in the west, and as the Himalayas in the centre and east. The area of the British provinces and the feudatory or native states is 1,767,000 square miles. ^.^ ,^. , The approaches to India both by land Access. ^^^^ ^^^ ^^'® "^®^y ditncult, and consequently, in spite of its physical and ethnological diver- sities, India is a region in itself, sharply cut ofi from the rest of the world. The land routes must cross lofty passes and icy wastes in the north, arid and difficult desert country in the west, or in the east a succession of steep densely forested ranges with deep valleys and torrential rivers. On two sides India is accessible by sea, but the low sandy coasts of the deltaic alluvial lands provide few good harbours ; the best of them are Karachi, Calcutta and Rangoon, each a tidal harbour situated on a great delta. Moreover, the regular west 552 Approaches hy Sea and Laiid. coast of the Deccan tableland is backed by steep escarpments, though from the east it is easily accessible by railways, roads and rivers. Bombay harbour, sheltered by islands, has only replaced the old Dutch Surat on the Tapti in importance since routes were carried from it up the steep escarpment of the Western Ghats. Calicut, opposite the Palghat gap in the southern tableland, has always been of importance as a trading centre on the coast of Malabar; but Madras, on the surf- beaten Coromandel coast, has only recently been made a good harbour by the construction of great breakwaters. The first of the four great divisions of (1) The Land jj^^jj^ commands all the approaches to the country by land. If it were possible to rise high above the Pamir plateau, to the north of India, and obtain a bird's-eye view of Asia, we should see that from the Pamirs, which form a kind of centre, great moun- tain barriers stretch away, ever widening, to the south- west, the south-east, and the north-east, enclosing between them three great lowlands. That fo the east is Chinese Turkestan, an arid region almost shut in by mountains, with rivers which disappear in the sandy wastes after irrigating small oases at the mouths of the valleys by which they leave the mountains. That to the west is the lowland of Turan, very similar in character, crossed by the Amur (Oxus) and Syr (Jaxartes) rivers, which reach the great lake of Aral. This lowland stretches far westwards and northwards round the north of the Caspian Sea, through Kussia into the heart of Em-ope. Across Turan a lowland route leads to the ^^^rJontk^^'* very base of the mountains which separate Turan from the third of these great lowlands, alluvial Hindustan ; but, starting from this base, two hundre^® keeping of the Company to be thereafter Company* governed by, and in the name of, the Crown. The transition had been long foreseen. The Charter of 1793 had extended the rule of the Company " without prejudice to the claims of the public." The Act of 1813 had laid down the constitutional principle of "the undoubted Sovereignty of the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in and over the said territorial acquisitions"; and in 1833 an Act which deprived the Company of its trading character described its members as " Trustees for the Crown of the United Kingdom." Finally, in 1858, an Act was passed vesting the control of Indian affairs in a Secretary of State assisted by a council ; and on Nov. 1st a Eoyal Proclamation was issued stating the prin- ciples upon which the government would be administered (see pp. 598, 603). One of the first changes was to repudiate The pohcy of ,.|^g doctrine of " lapse." Lord Canning issued non-annexation. ^^^^.^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^^.^^ ^^^^^^ ^^ j^^.^ assuring each ruler that " on the failure of natural heirs, the adoption by yourself and future rulers of your state of a successor according to Hindu law and the customs of your race will be recognised and confirmed." The policy of the Empire since then has been to preserve existing native states, instead of annex- ing them, as in the case of Oudh, for misrule. The Gaekwar of Baroda, for instance, was tried in 1874 on a charge of attempt- ing to poison the British resident at his capital. He was found guilty, and his act was held to be one of hostility against the British Government and a breach of the loyalty due from him to the Crown. He was thereupon deposed, but a young relative was allowed to succeed. So, too, upon the death in 1868 of the Raja of Mysore, whose territories had been administered by British officers since 1831 (seep. 589), the Government recognised the claims of an adopted son ; and at his majority, in 1881, he was installed by Lord Ripon m the full government of his dominions. The last instance of the same policy of non-annexation occurred in 1891, when James Wallace Quinton, the Chief Commissioner of Assam, was murdered at Manipur. Lord Lansdowne, then Governor- General, punished the ruling chief, but the state was left independent, though placed under the supervision of a Govern- 694 Burmese and Afghan Wars. Eeeent exten- Nevertheless, the British frontier has been sions of British considerably extended since the Mutiny, dominion. Lord Lawrence himself, whose name is asso- ciated with the policy of non-intervention, freed the Duars from tribute to Bhutan in 1864. By the exertions of SirRobert Sande- man British control was extended over the whole of Baluchistan, right up to the Persian and Afghan frontiers. Only the north- eastern districts are included in British Baluchistan and directly administered by Great Britain, the remainder being under the Khan of Kalat, who is the head of a loose confederacy ; he, however, is paid a subsidy and is aiijenable to the control of the Governor-General's agent. British troops occupy Quetta, which guards the Bolan Pass. A still greater extension was made in the East by the annexation of Upper Burma. King Theebaw had waded through bloodshed to Burma. his throne in 1878, and had treated the Indian Government with persistent insolence. At length, in 1885, Lord Dufierin demanded a settlement of ac- counts. Ten thousand troops were assembled under General Prendergast, Mandalay was occupied with little resistance, and Burma became a province of the Indian Empire. It was more difficult to suppress the guerilla bands of dacoits, but Lord DufEerin succeeded with the help of Sir Charles Crosthwaite. . These annexations were provoked by Af^hanis^tan ^^'^'" °^ advancing rivals. In 1878 it was " ■ ascertained in England, notwithstanding liussian assurances to the contrary, that a Russian envoy had been received by the Amiv in Afghanistan. The Amir was pressed to receive a British envoy, and as he refused war was declared. The British troops entered Kabul and a now Amir was placed on the throne. The troops then withdrew and Sir Louis Cavagnari was left behind as envoy, only to be treacherously slain. Kabul was again occupied, and a new claimant, Al)dur Piahman, who remained Amir till his death in 1901, was installed as ruler of Afghanistan. A brigade under General Burrows suffered a disastrous defeat on 27 July, 1880, at Maiwand, near Kandahar, from Aiyub Khan, brother of the deposed Amir ; but Sir F. (afterwards Earl) Roberts with ten thousand men covered the distance of over three hundred miles from Kabul to Kandahar in thirty days and defeated the Afghan troops. Afghanistan was then evacuated, but owing to further advances on the part of Russia, a Com- mission was appointed in 1885 to lay down the boundary line between the territories of Russia and Afghanistan. Relations with Russia and with France. 595 Eussiau troops, however, attacked the frontier post at Penjdeh, and Mr. Gladstone at once demanded and received a unani- mous war vote from the House of Commons. The native princes also rallied round the Empire with offers of assistance, but timely concessions by Eussia happily averted war. The Durand Agreement of 189-'^) fixed a line of demarcation between India and Afghanistan, by which the tribesmen on onr frontier were brought under our exclusive influence. The un- ruKness of these wild Patans provolced the Chitral expedition in 1895, and the Tirah campaign against the Afridis in 1897 ; and Lord Curzon, in 1901, appointed a Chief Commissioner, with a staff of ofl&cers selected for their capacity to deal with frontier problems, to administer the frontier districts and control these tribes. The recent visit of the present Amir, The present state j^-^^^y^^. Hahman's son, to India has .assured ofatfairs. j^.^^^ ^^ ^^.^^ unassailable strength of British supremacy, and his word of advice to the Mohannnedans of India was to remember that zeal for their faith should be tempered with loyalty to their rulers. He has every reason to remain a firm friend and ally of England, and so preserve his state from falling between the contending inte- rests of two European powers in the East. Eussia has ad- vanced east through tlie natural course of expansion and necessity for defence against uncivilised foes. Her further advance is now stayed by the O.kus and frontier of Afghanistan ; and by the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 she declared Afghanistan outside the Russian sphere of influence, and under- took to conduct all her political relations with it through the intermediation of Great Britain. The North- West frontier^was further protected in the same Convention by Russia's recog- nition of the British sphere of mfluence in South-Eastern Persia. The Eastern Similar agreements have secured the borders and Northern of the Indian Empire on the East and North. Frontiers. The annexation of Upper Burma m 1885 had really been precipitated by the ncAvs that France, which had established an Eastern Empire in Tonkin and Cochin China, was developing an interest in Siam and Burma. The Siamese question caused great friction in 1894-5, but eventually, in 1896, it was agreed that Central B'mm—i.e., the Valley of the Menam — should be neutralised, and that east of it should be a French and west a British sphere of influence. On the north the mission to Tibet in 1904 resulted in the guarantee by Tibet and China that no foreign power should interfere in Tibet, while Great Britain undertook then, as in Afghanistan, not to 596 The Expansion of India. meddle with domestic matters or to amiex territory. Finally, in 1905, the Anglo-Japanese alliance provided an additional guarantee for the maintenance of general peace in Eastern Asia and in India. . The external position of India is thus of Ind^'^^ stronger at the present moment than it has ever been before, and the limits of its expan- sion appear to have been reached. It is an Empire within an Empire, and this fact was recognised when in 1876 the title of Empress was conferred by Act of Parliament on Queen Victoria. The jurisdiction of the Viceroy extends beyond the boundaries of India itself, and it is necessary to say a few words about these outlymg possessions, dependencies, and spheres ,of influence. The most westerly is Aden, the only fortified pomt between Egypt and Bombay; Aden. with Perim, a small island used as a coaling station at the entrance to the Red Sea, it is attached to the Presidency of Bombay. It was first occupied by the British m 1839, but its importance dates from the opening of the Suez Canal, and it is now a great coaling station and an invaluable Hnk in the chain of communications, not only with India, but with Australia, New Zealand, the Far East and East Africa. The hinterland and the British sphere of influence along the southern coast of Arabia have been delimited by agreement with the native chiefs and their suzerain the Sultan of Turkey. Off this coast Great Britain has also possessed the Kuria Muria Islands Socotra. since 1854, and Socotra, over which a formal protectorate was proclaimed in 1886, since 1834. British interests m the Persian Gulf, which are also under the control of the Indian Government, have already been described {see p. 220). In the Arabian Sea the Laccadive islands, about two hundred miles from the Malabar coast, belong to The Laccadive, ^^^ Presidency of Madras, while the Maldives Andaman and are tributary to Ceylon {see p. 642). In the Nicobar Islands. Bay of Bengal are the Andaman and Nicobar islands ; the former are used as a convict station, where Lord Mayo, Governor-General of India from 1869, was murdered on a visit of inspection in 1872. Ceylon is not a part of the Indian Empire {see pp. 636-42) ; nor are the two Hima- layan States of Nepal and Bhutan, both of which, however, maintain fi-iendly relations with it, while Bhutan co-operated in the recent mission to Tibet. CHAPTEli VI. THE GOVERNANCE OF, INDIA AND RELATIONS WITH NATIVE STATES. (1) The Centkal Government. The gradual The fuu7idations of the present system of ad- supersession of ministration, which were laid by Warren Hast- the Company by ij^gg, have already been described (see pp. 580-1 ). the Crown. rj-j^^ Regulating Act of 1773 asserted the supreme control of Parliament and the Crown ; and Pitt's Bill of 1784 finally placed the affairs of the East India Company under the direct supervision of the King's Government through a Board of Control {see p. 584). The trading privileges of the Company were at the same time waning to their fall. In 1813 the import and export trade, with the exception of tea, was freed from the monopoly of the Company. Twenty years later the remaining monopoly of the China trade was taken away. The inchoate condition of the law of India — consisting as it did of Hindu law, Mohammedan law, English statute law and regulations of the Governor-General's Council — was recog- nised by the appointment of a legal member to the Council, whose duties were confined solely to the subject of legislation ; but it was not until 1853 that the Legislative Council became distinct fj-om the Governor-General's Executive Council. The Secretary of The Secretary for State for India, created State and his by the Act of 1858, is a Cabinet Minister Council. directly responsible to Parliament for all his acts and for every order he may send to India. His Council, the composition of which has been modified by the Act of 1907, may now consist of fourteen members, nine of whom must have served or resided in India for ten years, terminating not more than five years before theii' appointment as members of the Council. The ordinary term of office is seven years, but may be extended. The relations of the Secretary of State 598 The Secretary of State and the Viceroy. to his Council are " intricate, but in substance tbe Council are only a consultative body, while the power and respon- sibility rests with the Secretary of State." He decides by a vote of the majority of the Council all questions of expenditure, but in specified questions he can act on his own responsi- bility, and on a question of peace or war he can direct the Government in India without consulting his Council. A constitutional hmit was placed to his powers by the Act of 1858, which provides that, "except for preventing or repelling actual invasion of His Majesty's Indian dominions or urgent necessity the revenues of India shall not, without the consent of both Houses of Parliament, be applicable to defray the expenses of any military operation carried on beyond the external frontiers of such possessions by His Majesty's forces." As guardian of the revenues of India, he presents annually to Parliament a financial statement, as well as a report on the moral and material progress of India. He can raise no loan ill England without the consent of Parliament. All laws and regulations passed in India have to be submitted to him, and the Crown may, through him and his Council, signify approval or disapproval thereof. ^^ ^ The term Viceroy, iisually applied to the j.ne (jovernor- Governor-General, is not recognised by any his Council Commission or Act. It was, however, the term used in the Queen's Proclamation of 1858, and is the term most appropriate to the Governor- (Jeneral as representative of the Sovereign. The Viceroy's Executive Council at present consists of six members, with the Commander-in-Chief in India as a seventh or extraordinary member. Tlie business of the Council is distributed between nine departments — Finance, Foreign, Home, Legislative, Pevenue and Agriculture, Public Works, Commerce and Industry, Army, and Military Supply. The Viceroy takes personal charge of the Foreign Department. The Army Department was, prior to 1902, under the charge of a military member of the Viceroy's Council. The Com- mander-in-Chief had always been appointed an extraordinary member of Council. Lord Kitchener objected to the inter- vention between himself, as Commander-in-Chief, and the \'iceroy of a military member, and to the criticism by such a member of his proposals. The control of the entire military administration of the Army was, therefore, in 1905 placed under the Commander-in-Chief, and the military member of Council became a member for Supply dealing with all sub- sidiary matters not of a purely military character. The Judicial System of India. 599 The Legislative Council consisted until 1909 ^^^Councir*'''^ of the Governor-General, the Commander-in- Chief and the six ordinary members of the Ex- ecutive Council, with sLxiteen additional members nominated by the Viceroy under the India Councils Act of 1902. The work of the Legislative Council was till 1909 strictly limited to legis- lation. It is now intended to mcrease its numbers without destroying the official majority, to introduce an elective element, representing various classes, into the Council, and to empower it to discuss financial and other public afEairs and make recommendations to the Government. High Courts of Justice for India were estab- '^^Sst'em''^ lished by an Act of 1861 at Calcutta, ^^ ' Madras, Bombay, and Allahabad, all under charters from the Crown ; the fii-st three absorbed the old Supreme Courts created in 1773. From these Courts an appeal lies in certain cases to the King in Council, that is, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (see pp. 779-80). The judges are appointed by the Home Government, and cannot exceed fifteen for each Court. One third of the High Court judges must be barristers or advocates of the United Kingdom of not less than five years' standing, and one-third Indian civil servants of not less than ten years' standing. In the Panjab and Burma there are chief Courts with three or more judges, and in the minor provinces there are Appeal Courts presided over by one or more Judicial Commissioners. The Penal Code, Codes of Civil and Criminal Procedure and other enactments have introduced a definite system of law for Europeans and natives alike, but the Succession Act of 1865 is almost exclusively restricted to Europeans; where Indians alone are concerned, questions of inheritance, succession, marriage, and in some cases contracts, are decided by Hindu or Mohammedan laws. Local or even personal customs are also applied. (2) Provincial and Local Government. India, apart from the Native States, is p .^ divided, into thirteen provincial Governments and administrations — (1) Madras, (2) Bombay, (3) Bengal, (4) Eastern Bengal and Assam, (5) the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, (6) the Panjab, (7) Burma, (8) the Central Provinces and Berar, (9) the North-West Frontier 600 Provincial and Local Government. Province, (10) Ajmir-Merwara, (11) Coorg, (12) British Balu- chistan, and (13) the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Province of Madras, larger than Prussia and Denmark to- gether, and that of Bombay, larger than Sweden, have each a Governor with an Executive and a Legislative Council. Bengal, the Panjab, the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, and Burma, are administered by Lieutenant-Governors, each with a Legislative (and since 1909 an executive) Council. In 1905 fifteen districts of East Bengal were united with Assam, and formed into a new province under a Lieutenant- Governor with a Legislative Council. The Central Provinces are under the administration of a Chief Commissioner, who since 1903 also administers Berar ; the Andamans are also under a Chief Commissioner,, while Coorg is ruled by the Resident at Mysore. Ajmir-Merwara and Baluchistan are each under an agent to the Governor-General. The new North- West frontier Province formed by Lord Curzon is under a Chief Commissioner [see p. 595). i The provinces of India are sub-divided into Districts about two hundred and fifty-nine separate administrative charges called districts. Each of the large provinces has on an average about forty-eight districts ; but in Madras the districts are larger and only number twenty-one. Each district is on an average about the size of an English county, and in the Provinces of Bengal, Madras, Bombay and Agra is under the control of a Col- lector-Magistrate. In the other provinces, which used to be known as non-regulation provinces, the District Officer is designated Deputy-Commissioner. The District Officer is supported by Assist- ^^Offi Jet"^* ants, by a larger number of Deputy Collectors who are almost all natives of India, and by the chief executive officers, such as the District Superin- tendent of Police, the District Surgeon and the Engineer; there is also a Civil and Sessions Judge for each district. The District Officer is the direct centre through which the government of India is administered. He is responsible for the peace of his District, and can invoke military aid in case of disturbance. He is an executive officer respon- sible for the revenue collections as collector, and he con- trols the operations of the police as magistrate. This union of functions is considered by many to be inadvisable, but the ^ people are accustomed to it, and the orthodox official view ^^ that no change should be made. Mctlwds of Administration. 60l The Assistant Collectors are members of the Assi^ants ^^^^^ Service, who number for all India about one thousand. Only a sufficient number of junior Civilians are maintained as Assistants to provide training for the higher administrative posts [see also p. 608). These Assistants, after they have qualified by passing exam- inations in the languages of the District, and in civil, criminal and revenue law, are generally placed in execu- tive charge of a division of a District. Each division is further divided mto five or more sub-divisions, each in charge of a native officer or tahsUdar. The detail work of the entire magisterial and revenue administration falls on this native tahsildar. He directly supervises the details of revenue collection, watches the condition of the crops, and estimates the ability of the cultivators to pay full revenue, or the necessities which demand its remission. He can check oppression and suppress peculation, and the welfare of the villagers rests largely in his keeping. The primary work of collecting the revenue ^°^TaxeT°^ when not permanently settled, as it is in Bengal, in one-third of Madras, and in parts of the United Provinces, is done in each village by the village headman and the village accountant, the latter of whom usually holds his appointment hereditarily. The revenue accounts are of the most elaborate description. The holding of each tenant is surveyed and delineated on Government maps, and every detail connected with it is examined at a yearly settlement by the Collector. It is by the continual supervision of the Collector and his Assistants alone that fraud can be detected, and the great body of cul- tivators protected fr'om unjust demands and extortion. (3) Revenue and Taxation. The great source of revenue is the land, ^T°r ^d°™ ^*"°'^^ ^''^^^^^^ "^*^^'® ^^^''^^ £17,000,000 annually * ^ ^" ■ is collected, an amount almost equal to the expenditure on the Army. Tliis land revenue is one-quarter of the entire revenue of India. The revenue, not permanently settled, is assessed at intervals of twenty or thirty years ; it is fixed at from one-third to one-half of the actual or esti- mated rental. The Famine Commission of 1878 calculated that the portion taken as revenue all over India was from 602 The Incideiice of Taxation. three to eight per cent, of the gross outturn. A resolution of the Government in ly02 stated : — (1) That in areas where the state receives its land revenue from landlords, progressive moderation is the keynote of the policy of the Government, and that the standard of fifty per cent, of the assets is one which is most uniformly observed in practice, and is more often departed from on the side ot deficiency than of excess. (2) That in areas where the state takes the land revenue from the cultivators the proposal to fix the assessments at one-fifth of the gross produce would result in the imposition of a greatly increased burden upon the people. (3) That over-assessment is not, as alleged, a general or widespread source of poverty and indebtedness in India, and that it cannot fairly be regarded as a contributory cause of famine. Taxation in India was stated by Sir Henry Fowler, during the debate in Parliament on the financial statement of the Secretary of State in 190G, to bear less upon the people than taxation in any other country which provides statistics. In India only one-quarter of the revenue Taxation. is derived from taxation, whereas in England five-sixths of the revenue comes from tliat source. This contribution to the Indian revenue is at the rate of 3s. 6d. per head of the population, but of this Is. lOd. per head comes from the land revenue, which is considered to be rent and not of the nature of a tax. If the land revenue be deducted, the taxation comes to no more than Is. 8d. per head of the population. The only tax which is said to press heavily upon the agriculturists is the salt tax. Salt is not only a necessity of hfe in the East, but a necessity of the great agricultural industry of the country, because cattle require it to keep them in health. Since 1903-4 this tax has been reduced by two million sterling. It now repre- sents a taxation of only 4d. per head of the population, but officers who have had personal knowledge of the hardships it inflicts outside the mere payment of the tax will agree with the recent opinion of the Secretary of State for India, that if financial considerations permit, it should be further diminished; and in 1907-8 the salt tax was reduced from one and a half to one rupee per maund (a maund=82 lb.), at an annual sacrifice of £1,266,700 of revenue. *" An income tax of two per cent., that is5id. in the pound, is levied on non-agricultural incomes of not less than a thousand India under Native Rulers. 603 rupees (£66. 18s. 4d.), or more than two thousand rupees (£133. 6s. 8d.) ; this excludes the great bulk of the population. On similar incomes of over two thousand °o?revenur' rupees this rate is two and a half per cent., or 6d. in the pound. Eevenue is also derived from opium, from customs, from sale of forest produce, from interest on loans, and income from irrigation works, railways and other departmental receipts. (4) The Native States. Over one-third of the area of India and over one-fourtli of its inhabitants are included under what may be called foreign territory, consisting of more than six hundred separate states. Some of these states comprise only a few vilhiges, some are as large as British provinces. Nine of them, in- cluding Haidarabad (which is as large as Great Britain), Mysore, Gwalior, Kashmir, Baroda, Travancore, Jaipur, Jodh- pur (or Marwar) and Udaipur, occupy more than half the total area of all these states, while of the rest tliere are not fifty with a population exceeding a hundred thousand. Over these native states there is "a paramount power in the British Crown, of which the extent is wisely left undefined. Tliere is a subordination in the native states which is understood but not explained." These states are under the rule of chiefs, sometimes called feudatory, sometimes called protected, princes in subordinate alliance witla the supreme Government. Tiiey were in many cases formed out of the territories which successful soldiers of fortune secured for themselves on the break up of the Moghul Empire. In other cases, such as Udaipur, Marwar and Jaipur, these native states have been preserved to the descendants of ruling chiefs, who trace back their descent to the early Aryan conquerors. Lord Wellesley, at the beginning of the Previous atti- nineteentli century, sought to secure the peace *" them.^'^ ^ ^^ India by bringing the then independent states under treaties of subsidiary alliance, whereby troops were provided for their defence, and the pay of these troops was guaranteed by the states. During the period from 1814 to the Mutiny the policy of tlie Government was to isolate the states which had not been ceded or annexed, and tlius make them subordinate to the supreme British power. When the Crown assumed tlie government of India there was established over these stales, in the words of Lord Canning, " a reality in the suzerainty of 604 British Authority in the Native States. the Sovereign of England which has never before existed, and is not only felt but eagerly acknowledged by the chiefs." They have all gradually acquired their present position, not in consequence of any definite declaration, but in conse- quence of " a gradual change in the policy pursued towards them by Government." The treaties, grants and dealings of Government must, therefore, " be read as a whole, like the decisions of case-made law, in order to arrive at any definite idea of the position now held by the rulers of these states." These chiefs of the native states are, '^^'osuion'^"' in fact, allies under the suzerainty of the Emperor of India. The states possess no international existence, nor can they without permission employ in^ their services anj'one but a native of India. Jurisdiction over British subjects is generally prf)hibited, and criminals punishable for offences committed in British India have to be surrendered to I^)ritish officers. Although the King's writ does not run in these native states, the British Government exercises, through a IJesident, jurisdiction over such British subjects as may reside or be employed there. Should the rule of a feudatory prince prove lawless he can be deposed, as was the Gaekvvarof Baroda(p. 593). The supreme Government reserves to it-elf the right to settle any disputed succession ; it can repress disorder and suppress misrule and interfere to secure religious toleration, and can check gross infringement of the laws of public morality. The rulers of these states cannot, without permission,raise internal defences. They retain a limited inimber of troops, and the duty of maintaining and paying ibr subsidiary forces was impressed on the large states, such as Haidavabad, Mysore, Travancore, Gwalior, Indore and Baroda. In 1903 the feudatory arndes amounted to over one hundred and thirty-six thousand men, most of them merely armed retainers or military police. Gwalior has about ten thousand troops, of which about half are cavalry, all fairly well disciplined, and several batteries of artillery. Lord Dufferin accepted the offer of the The Native feudatory states to aid in Imi^erial defence. States and the ■, •'. , , . , , ^ ^ . , Empire. ^^^^ special contingents, known as Imperial Service troops, were selected from the more important states and placed under the supervision of British officers. These special contingents now number 19,000 men, under twenty-one British officers, and many of them have seen service in the frontier campaigns and in China. Lord Curzon recently formed a special corps of cadets from Opinion in the Native States. 605 a limited number of selected members of the aristocracy of India, so that they may receive an education fitting them for a place in the Imperial army as British otticers. Tliese cadets are chiefly recruited from colleges set apart for the education of heirs or relatives of the feudatory chiefs. One such college was founded by Lord Mayo at Ajmir for the education of cadets of the chief families of Itajputana, an example followed by the establishment of the Eajkumar College at Eajkot, and others at Lahore, Indore and Eaipurin the Central Provinces. „ Within the native states lives still much and loyalty. ^^ mediaeval India. There " the battle with cruelty, superstition, callous indifference to the security of the weaker and poorer classes, avarice, cor- ruption, disorder in all public affairs and open brigandage is by no means over at the present day." Nevertheless the people of the East love the pomp and glamour of Oriental display that still surrounds their own rulers, and the more conservative of the chieftains look with dread to the approach of the levelling tendencies of a western material civilisation. Possibly their conservatism may also act as a check on revolutionary tendencies in other parts of India, just as the native states served, in the words of Lord Canning, as a breakwater at the time of the Mutiny against the surging storm around them. There are substantial as well as senti- mental reasons for their loyalty. The Imperial army guaran- tees them absolute protection from invasion. They also gain the advantages arising from the commercial development of India, its sea-borne trade, and rapidly developing system of intercommunication by roads and railways. And, however much the ruling chiefs may cling to the traditions and customs of the past, they all feel pride in being sovereign allies of the Crown. This sentiment of loyalty, which infuses the East with a fervour almost religious in the intensity of its enthu- siasm, has inspired the Gaekwar of Baroda, and more recently his Highness the Aga Khan, to express a hope that in the future a non- political regency may be established in India " with a descendant of the Sovereign as a permanent Prince Regent." CHAPTER VII. THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE AND THE ARMY. In the early days of the Company its the^Com" ^ *^' civil officers were divided into writers, factors and merchants. A writer after five years' service received £10 and a merchant who was a member of Council £80 yearly. If the Company's officers made fortunes they made them by engaging in private trade or by receiving presents and gifts from native powers, and not infrequently by more questionable means. Clive, during his second adminis- tration, strove to suppress these evils by prohibiting the receipt of presents and the pursuit of private trade, and at the same time fixing salaries at more reasonable figures. The Regu- lating Act of 1773 established a Supreme Court at Calcutta, under Sir Elijah Impey and three judges, with the avowed object of having jurisdiction over the Company's servants to prevent bribery and extortion. The superior officers of the Company were required to enter into covenants bindmg them- selves not to trade, not to receive gifts or presents, and to sub- scribe for pensions. The service thus became known as the Covenanted Civil Service of India. To that service, by the Act of 1793, all the principal civil appointments in India were reserved and appointments were made by nomination of the Court of Directors in England. An Act was passed in 1833 that distinc- The Civil Service tions of race or religion should not disqualify * '"°]^a^ives'^ ° ^^^ subject of the King from being appointed to the Covenanted or the uncovenanted ser- vices in India if he was eligible according to the rules ; this the Directors, in a despatch to the Governor-General in India, explained as meaning " that there shall be no governing caste in India." The despatch further stated that under the earlier system certain offices were appropriated to the natives, while from certain others they were debarred ; not because these latter belonged to the Covenanted Service, and the former did Development of the Indian Civil Service. GOT not, but because the average amount of native qualifications could only be presumed to reach a certain limit. " It is this line of demarcation which the present enactment obliterates, or rather, for whicji it substitutes another, wholly irrespective of tlie distinction of races. Fitness is henceforth to be the criterion of eligibility." The system of nomination was abohshed by Present method ^^^ Government of India Act of 1853, and 01 selection. . i /-, , i c-i • appomtments to the Covenanted Service were thrown open to competition among natural born subjects of the Sovereign, including natives of India. Regulations for admission to the service were made in 1854 by a committee presided over by Lord Macaulay, and since 1858 the examinations have been under the direction of the Civil Service Commission. At present candidates who are suc- cessful in the competitive examination in England remain there for one year to study the law of India and the chief language of the province to which they are appointed. In India their pay commences at four hundred rupees monthly, the rupee since 1899 being valued at Is. 4d. (p. 617). They are entitled to an annual pension of £1,000 at the end of twenty- one years' active, and twenty-five years' total, service. Provisions for The Civil Service Act of 1861 specially re- appointing served to members of the Covenanted Service natives. all the more important civil posts in the " re- gulation " provinces, while a proportion of military officers are still appointed to civil posts in the frontier provinces. It was considered in 1870 that this Act did not provide sufiiciently for the employment of natives in the higher branches of the service. An Act was therefore passed declaring 'that it was expedient that additional facilities should be given for the employment of natives of proved merit and ability, and that the Government of India should not be restrained by the Act of 1861, or by any pre- vious law, from appointing any native of India to any post in the Civil Service although such native shall not have been admitted under the system of competition in England. It was, however, directed that natives of proved merit and ability could only le selected under rules prescribed by the Governor-General in Council and sanctioned by tlie Secretary of State. Eules were accordingly framed in 1879, during the Government of Lord Lytton ; but they were found not to work satisfactorily, and failed to secure properly qualified men. 608 The Provincial Service and the Examination Systein. The Secretary of State thereupon appointed a commission " to devise a scheme which might reasonably be hoped to possess the necessary elements of finality and to do full justice to the claims of natives of India to higher em- ployment^ in the Civil Service." This commission, which contained six native gentlemen out of a total of fifteen members, reported unanimously that it was necessary to retain the examination in England for the selection of candidates for the " chief administrative ap- The Provincial pointments and such a number of the smaller Civil Service. ^ . , , ■■,■, , , apponitments as will ensure a complete couise of training for junior civilians." Officers thus selected by examination in England were then formed into the Indian Civil Service, and a second service was established for each province, called the Provincial Service, and recruited almost entirely from natives of the province, who were to hold the higher appointments of the uncovenanted service and a num- ber — about one-sixth — of the appointments ordinarily reserved by law or practice to the Covenanted Service (pp. 600 — 1). The entire position was again reviewed in The proposal for 1893, when the House of Commons passed a simultaneous resolution, somewhat hastily, " that all examinations^in ^^^^^^ competitive examinations heretofore India. ^^^-^^ ^^ England alone for appointments to the Civil Service of India shall hence- forth be held simultaneously in India and England, such examination in both countries being identical in their nature." Lord Kimberley, in asking the advice of the Govern- ment of India on this resolution, stated that, in his opinion, " it is indispensable that an adequate number of -the Civil Service shall always be Europeans and that no scheme would be admissible which did not fultil that essential condition." The Government of India answered that for the last twenty years it had " assiduously endeavoured to promote the entrance into the higher offices of the Indian Public Service of duly qualified natives ; the necessities of our position in the country continue to limit the possibilities of such admission." Finally the Government of the day decided not to take any steps to give effect to the resolution of the House of Commons. At present out of one thousand three hun- The racial dred and seventy higher appointments with appointments, salaries over £800 a year, one thousand two hundred and sixty-three are held by Euro- peans, five by Eurasians and ninety-two by natives. Of posts bearing salaries of from £60 to £800 a year over Beginnings of the Indian Army. 609 sixteen thousand are held by natives, over five thou- sand by Eurasians and five thousand by Europeans. The High Courts have each at least one Indian judge, most of the civil Courts are presided over by natives, and the municipal and local fund boards are largely native. The proportion of Englishmen employed is less than one to every thousand square miles of country, and about one thousand Englishmen repre- sent in India the executive of the supreme Government. There is a strong feeling among the Moham- medans'" medans that they are not duly represented in the administration. The Hindus everywhere more readily assimilate Western education and easily win in the struggle for office. The Mohammedan is often poor and more often proud. He is compelled by Mohammedan senti- ment to complete his study of the Koran in the original Arabic before he commences to study the secular subjects required in competition for Government ofiice. The difficulty was seen in 1883, when Sir Syed Ahmad Khan founded a college for Mohammedans at Aligarh in the United Provinces, with English professors to teach the learning of the West and native professors to give religious instruction ; and the Amir of Afghanistan during his recent visit to India inspected the college, and paid a glowing tribute to its value. A few highly-trained English oflficers, scat- thllncMaTlrm^ *®^®^ sparsely throughout the country, are ' responsible for the good government of the people, most of whom have never seen a soldier and care not who their rulers be so long as they themselves are allowed tu gather their crops in peace. The mass of the people willingly leave to their rulers the task of defending the country from invasion and of preserving law and order. The nucleus from which the Company's army grew in Bengal was a guard of honour given to the Governor at Hughli of one ensign and twenty men. The first European regiment of the Company was formed out of a few surviving soldiers of the King handed over to it by Charles 11. in 1668 along with Bombay. At Madras it was not until 1748, after the commencement of the war between France and England, that a body of Sepoys or sipuhis was raised and a European force formed from recruits taken or pressed from the ships on the coast. An Act of 1754 gave the Company power to try its officers by court martial. By 1756 the British troops in Bengal had risen to four com- panies of European infantry, one company of artillery, and 610 British and Native Forces in India. two companies of militia, ofl&cered by civil servants. Lord Cornwallis, in 1786, was empowered to grant commissions in the regular army to the Company's officers ; and the Company three years later received authority by Act of Parliament to grant commissions and to raise troops, not exceeding two thousand men, who were to be recruited and trained by the Crown, the Company paymg a fixed sum for each soldier. After the Mutiny the British troops in India The existing -^gj^ raised to sixty-three thousand, with the establishment ^.rtillery almost entirely m their hands, while the native army was reduced to one hundred and thirty-five thousand. The advance of Russia on the frontier of Afghanistan in 1885 caused considerable additions to be made ; and the British troops in India now number seventy- five thousand officers and men exclusive of the three thousand British officers in the Indian army. In the latter the native troops number one hundred and fifty- eight thousand ; and there are in addition nineteen thousand Imperial Service troops {see p. 604), thirty-three thousand native reservists and a similar number of volunteer efficients. The total mihtary expendi- ture in 1906-7 was just under twenty millions sterling. The full value of this can be best estimated by comparing it with the expenditure for Eussia of thii'ty-nine millions, for Germany of thirty-two and a-half millions, for France of twenty-seven and three-quarter millions, for the United Kingdom of over thirty- one and a-half millions, and with that for Japan of less than five millions, exclusive of extraordinary war expenditure. The expense of recruiting and training European troops for service in India is met by a capitation charge of £7. 10s. on every soldier sent to serve m India. Comparatively reckoned, this army of India The latest reorganization. is the smallest in the world, consisting as it does of less than two hundred and fifty thou- sand troops with but five hundred guns and a reserve of only twenty-five thousand for a population of three hundred millions, or about one soldier for every twelve thousand of the pojiulation, while in France there is one soldier out of every six male adults. The Indian army is chiefly recruited from the hardier races of Pathans, Gurlchas, Sikhs, Dogras, Jats, Pan- jabis, Mohammedans, Marathas and Rajputs, as well as some of the cdstes of Madras, where the material is of very varied standards of excellence. In 1903 the infantry battalions and the cavalry were renumbered Lord Kitchener s Reorganisation. fill so as to eliminate every territorial distinction, and the troops placed in divisions similar to those in which they would be drawn for war. Lord Kitchener has recently reorganised the array under two commands, the Northern and Southern, each controlled by a general officer and staff. The Northern com- mand, with its headquarters at Kawal Pindi, comprises the Peshawur, Rawal Pindi, Lahore, Meerut and Lucknow Divi- sions and the Kohat, Bannu, and Derajat Brigades. The Southern command, with its headquarters at Poona, is com- posed of the Quetta, Mhow, Poona and Sikandarabad Divi- sions, and the Burma and Aden garrisons. '' We are now attempting " said Lord Kitchener in March, 1907, " to form divisions, self-contained in all respects, which, when ready to take the field, would leave behind sufficient troops to provide for order and tranquillity in the areas from which they are drawn. The idea is to establish divisions en echelon, one behind the other, on the various railway lines, so as to provide for rapid concentration in time of war." x2 CHAPTER VIII. INDUSTRIES, COMMERCE, AND COMMUNICATIONS. India of the past was an India where the Past and chief cities were often merely the fortified camp- ing grounds of invading armies, many times changed for new sites at the whim of a ruling prince or emperor. The wealth of the country was lavished on the building and adorning of palaces, tombs or temples, many of which are still preserved as monuments of a mediaeval past. The cul- tivators of the soil fortified their villages, and behind walls or thick hedges of impenetrable growth resisted the perennial roving bands of marauders or the tyrannic demands of the tax collector. Each village remained self-contained, shut ofi from its neighbour, supplying its wants by its own village artizans, who were often paid from the grain heap at harvest time. When we think of India of to-day, we think of Cal- cutta, the second city in the British Empire, with its crowded shipping and smoke-vomiting factories ; we think of Bombay with its spinning and weaving mills, its dockyards and ship- ping, and its Parsi merchant princes ; and not least we think of Madras, where the English have been at home for over two hundred and fifty years ; we think of its sea-washed harbour, its growing trade and its teeming bazaars. Through the sea ports of India one-tenth of the whole trade of the British Empire now passes. This sea-borne trade is more than one- third of the trade of the Empire outside the United Kingdom ; it is greater than that of Australia and Canada combined, and within the Empire India's sea-borne trade is second only to that of the United Kingdom. To build up this colossal trade everything, from roads to railways, fi-om nrigation of the crops to canals for transport, as well as telegraphs and all the appli- ances of modern commerce, has been evolved under the security of British rule in little more than half a century. Agricultural Finance, G13 The great source of India's wealth is, and al- Agriculture. ways has been, her soil, which supports a popu- lation increasing at the rate of two millioa souls a year. The value of the annual crop is estimated at two hundred and forty-five million pounds sterling {see p. 602). ' In its production are employed five times the population of Great Britam. The land itself is gradually improving in value, and as a consequence the indebtedness of the cultivators tends likewise to increase. It is a result common to both east and west. Mr. Theodore Morison has recently shown that, as far as figures can be trusted in comparmg rural indebtedness in India with that in Europe, '' the advantage is at present slightly on the side of the Indian agriculturist." He finds that, while in Europe eighty per cent., in India two-thirds of the cultivators are normally in debt. In Europe the demand, in order to raise and Sca°e ^ *^® cultivators from this condition of indebted- encouragement, ness, has been for land banks and for State aid. In India also efforts have been made to prevent the land passmg out of the hands of the cultivators on account of this indebtedness. The Deccan Relief Acts of 1879 and 1881 restore the land to the tenant after it has been cultivated for seven years for the benefit of the foreclosing moneylender. For the Panjab an Act has recently been passed making the maximum period of mortgage twenty years, and this Act has been extended to parts of the United Provinces at the request of the people. An Act of 1904 pro- vided for agricultural banks in order, in the words of Lord Curzon, " to make the cultivating classes themselves the lenders, improving their credit, developing their thrift and training them to utilise for their own benefit the great ad- vantages which the experience of other countries has shown to lie in the principle of mutual co-operation." Further to improve the condition of agriculture, a College Farm and Research Station has been established in 1904 at Pusa in Bengal to test crops and seeds, and to provide training in improved agricultural methods for approved native students ; and the Government has recently set asida ijl33,333 a year to establish and maintain agricultural colleges in each province. The mass of people, however, who are 'nd tTs engaged in agriculture are settled in scattered and small villages where the old economic conditions are still in force, and there is little opportunity for any extended system of co-operation. Nine-tenths of the 614 Industrial India. people live in villages of less than five thousand inhabi- tants, among whom there is but little necessity for divi- sion of labour and but little need for exchange. India during the j)ast two hundred years has been left hopelessly be- hind in a world contest where her handicrafts and want of co-operation for distribution have to contend against the machinery, combination and capital of the West. In many of the industries of India the same primitive tools and appliances are used as \vere in vogue thousands of years ago. The Indian weaver still employs his clumsy hand-loom, while by the use of an improved loom, such as is used in Japan and else- where, his efficiency "might be increased one hundred per cent., and with the increase he would be able to compete with the factories of Europe." The Principal of the Art School at Calcutta inspected thousands of native looms without dis- covering a Hy shuttle, which in England one hundred years ago increased the efficiency of labour threefold {see p. 129). But in large towns, where division of labour Manufactures, and the utilisation of capital are possible, the industries of India are steadily ad- vancing. There is no reason why capital should noc develop the vast natural resources of the country and the industry of her teeming millions until with her cheap labour she could hold her own against all western or far eastern com- petition. The products of cheap labour will, however, always be liable to be met with protective duties in white countries, and as the standard of comfort rises in India the cheapness of her labour will tend to dimmish ; in October, 1908 a Com- mission reported in favour of limitmg the hotirs of children under foiuieen years of age to six a day, and of " young persons " over that age to twelve. There are now tw^o hun- dred and ten cotton mills in the country — of which seventy per cent, are m Bombay — employing nearly two hundred thousand persons. There are thirty-nme jtite mills in Calcutta employing nearly one htmdred and fifty thousand people. The paid-up share capital and debentures of these cotton and jute mills, of which nearly all are owaied by joint-stock companies, amounts to over twenty milhon pounds. India suppUes nearly all the foreign demand for raw jute, and the value of the export rose between 1905 and 1907 from seven to seventeen million pounds ; the export of raw cotton (nearly j&fteen million pomids) is hardly less important. The paper mills of India furnish the Government offices with much of their stationery, and twenty-seven breweries provide half The Resources and Needs of Iiidia. CIS the malt liquor used by European soldiers, whilethe tea industry, especiallyin Assam,maintainsa vast army of coolies. Therailway workshops employ sixty-seven thousand people ; but the remain- ing mdustries, which may be said to be of any importance as supporting more than twenty thousand people, are merely con- cerned in the first stages of preparing raw material for export. Bengal produces about eighty-five per cent, of the present output of Indian coal ; and this, with what Minerals. comes from the Central Provinces, Haidarabad, Assam and the Rewah State, supplies almost all the coal for the railways. Iron is raised in Bengal and Orissa ; and in the Raipur and Chanda districts of the Central Provinces an enormous body of hematite with sixty-eight per cent, of ii'on has recently been rendered workable by the accessibihty of coal. At Sibi, on the Bengal-Nagpur Railway, extensive iron and steel works are now being erected, where coal from the Jheria fields will be utilised. Gold to the value of over two and a half million pounds was extracted in 1904 in Mysore, and reef mining has been commenced in Haidarabad, but the total output has declined in recent years. Petroleum and rubies from Burma support increasing indus- tries, as do also manganese and mica from Madras^ the Central Provinces and elsewhere. The salt mined in the Salt Range, and also that evaporated round the coast, forms an important product. Lord Rothschild stated before the Currency Ual Commission in 1898 that the one great want of India was the development of her indus- tries. He held that any amount of capital could be found in Europe — under generous treatment — for this purpose ; and Prof. Marshall, in his evidence before the same Commission, emphasised the need of India for this capital. There would be no lack of interest in the affairs of India if foreign capital could be attracted for the exploitation of her resources. The day is passing, if not already past, when the influx of capital and the growth of private enterprise should be regarded with suspicion. The employment of foreign capital has been deplored, but, in the words of Lord Curzon, " Where without it would have been Calcutta ? Where Bombay ? Where would have been our railways, out shipping, our river navigation, our immense and prosperous trade ? And why should a different argument be applied to India from any other country in the world? The whole industrial and mercantile world is one 616 Financial Situation. great field for the tiUer to till," With its vast trade India has built for itself a financial position which Sir Kobert Gifien, when considering a deficit of a few millions sterling in twenty years' administration, declared to be exceedingly prosperous. He pointed out a fact of primary importance in Indian finance when he said that " some of the mischief in dealing with Indian financial affairs seems to me to arise from the hurry to make good a deficit which in the circumstances of a country like India can only be attempted by slow degrees." This importa- tion of capital is absolutely essential to India's progress, and it is futile to complain of the consequent payment of interest as a drain on the resources of the country. The sea-borne trade of India has multi- ■^X^'ortf^ plied fourfold since the transfer in 1858 of its government to the Crown. The exports have advanced forty-four and a half pin- cent, and the imports forty-eight and a half per cent, during the last five years, while the gold and silver realised, outside currency, increased at the rate of £9,000,000 yearly. The chief exports are raw cotton, raw jute, raw hides and skins, tea, opium, tobacco, seeds and grain. The principal imports are manufactured goods, manufactured cotton, woven goods, mineral oils, metals, hard- ware and cutlery, imports which, with organisation and capital, could to a great extent be made the product of native industry The present exports exceed the imports by twenty millions. The home charges, which this excess of exports has to meet, amounted in 1905-6 to £17,ti66,000. The interest due on capital spent on State and guaianteed railways is nearly six and three-quarter millions, payments for interest on debt, pensions and other charges over five millions, and expenditure fcr military charges over six millions. Part of this excess of export over import takes the form of payment for the service of expert British administration ; but Prof. Marshall, in his evidence before the Currency Commission in 1899, considered this advantage to be one vast unreckoned import which, "oii the whole, I think very cheap." Interest on capital, moreover, has always to be paid to countries which abound in accumu- lated capital and from new countries whose development is immature ; and, as pointed out by Sir Robert Giffen, "there is nothing in excess of exports over imports to indicate special circumstances of prosperity or adversity." One of India's greatest financial difficulties in the past has been the currency. The principal coin in use is the silver rupee, which is now worth Is. 4d. ; salaries are fixed in rupees, Indian Currency and Railways. 617 and the largest sums calculated by lacs and crores, a lac being one hundred thousand and a crore ten million rupees. The rupee, however, originally supposed to be ciirrenc Worth 2s., was subject to continual fluctua- tions in value, thus disturbing the rate of exchange and embarrassing commercial relations. For a long time before 1893 its tendency was to fall. In that year the Indian mints, which had been open by law to the unre- stricted coinage of silver into rupees, were closed, with a view to fixing the exchange. The rupee reached its lowest in 1894, when it was worth httle more than a shilling. Since then it has risen, and by 1898 it became almost stable at Is. 4d. An Act of 1899 made the British sovereign legal tender at the ratio of fifteen rupees to the sovereign, and the coinage of silver into rupees was resumed, but only to a limited amount. To guard, however, against a renewal of the former violent fluctuations, it was decided to treat the profits of this coinage as a special Gold Reserve Fund to be invested in England, and to be utilised only for the purpose of maintaining the rate of exchange. The total amount of this fund in England and in India at the end of March, 1907, was over sixteen millions ; and these reforms have given a security to India's commercial transactions which they never enjoyed before, and helped to cure that fluctuation of exchange which troubled India's governors and critics a generation back. The railways, canals and forests of India Edilways. are under the direct control of Government, and yield a net revenue of five millions sterling, an increase of one million and a quarter sterlmg in five years. There are now some thirty-two thousand miles of railway open ; one thousand miles are bemg laid yearly, and the total expenditure is now represented by some two hundred and eighty millions sterling. They pay on the whole more than five per cent, on the capital outlay. This capital was raised on a guarantee from Govenmient, or by loan, or by advances from revenue. The guaranteed rail- ways worked at a loss to the Government until 1900 ; by 1905 they showed a profit of two millions sterling. Most of these railways have now been acquired by the Government. It was proposed to spend thirty millions sterling, at the rate of ten millions yearly, on increasing the present railway mile- age. The .sum for 1907-8 has been reduced to nine millions. 618 Indian Famines. but upon the recommendation of a recent committee it is likely to be largely increased in the next few years. Railways in India not only add to the military strength of the Empire, but they aid commerce by bringing surplus crops to the seaports and to the centres of distribution. In times of famine they are invaluable for the purpose of distributing food from places of plenty to tracts suffering from want of rain. They act further as a palliative of famine by stimulating the production of non-food crops, such as jute, which are exported and render the population less dependent on one form of agriculture. Canals act not only as a palliative, but as a Famines. preventative of famine in bringing water from a permanent source of supply to districts where the local rain is precarious. Districts in nearly every Province, which have a normal rainfall of from 15 to 30 inches, are liable to famine from its failure or uneven distribution. There have been no fewer than twenty severe famines in the one hundred and thirty years between 1770 and 1900. They began with the great famine which spread over the lower valley of the Ganges in 1770, when one-third of the teeming population of Bengal is believed to have perished without relief. In 186G, in Orissa, nearly a million sterling was spent on relief, and yet it was estimated that nearly one-third of the population died. Two years later the same calamity fell on Rajputana, Ajmir and parts of the North- West Provinces. In 1876-7 a terrible scarcity spread over the greater part of South India, extending ]ater to parts of the Central and United Provinces. It was this famine that led the Government to declare " human life shall be saved at any cost and effort," and later on to the appointment from England of a Commission to report on the whole question of rehef and protection. In 1896-7 the rainfall was deficient all over India, and famine afflicted the United Provinces, Bombay, Madras, the Deccan, the Central Provinces, the Panjab and part of Bengal; eight millions sterling were spent on relief, yet the death rate rose five millions above the average, wliile the birth rate fell by two millions. In the past fifteen years three terrible famines have followed in close succession, but in nearly all cases a wise and timely expenditure kept down the deaths. In Bombay, in 1900, full relief was with- held too long, and many fell a prey to cholera. Four Commissions have inquired fully mto the best means of dealing with famine ; the first in 1868, a second in 1878, Irrigation Works and Canals. 619 another in 1898, and the last in 1900. A code laying down the principles on which relief should be given was prepared in 1883, and this has been amended from irHff'^foif ° ^™^ ^° ^AmQ under the teaching of experience. It now embodies an elaborate plan of cam- paign against famine which has worked with great efficiency. But one of the chief results of these commissions has been to establish works of irrigation as the primary pre- ventative. The irrigation canals that have been made in India are almost wholly British work. The Upper Ganges Canal, which has been in use since 1854, has 459 miles of main canals and 4,467 miles of distributing channels ; the vSirhind Canal, finished in 1887 at a cost of one and three- quarter millions sterling, has 319 miles of main channel ; the Chenab Canal, completed in 1900 at a cost of two millions, 427 miles of main channel and 2,379 miles of secondary chan- nels. In South India the Godavari supplies 503, the Kistna 309, and the Kaveri 544 miles of main canals. All these canals are perennial sources of irrigation, provided with weirs and headworks ; but in the Panjab and Sind there are inundation canals which are only supplied during the annual rise of neighbouring rivers, such as the Sutlej and the Indus. The net profit on these irrigating canals was over half a million sterling in 1906-7 ; and their enormous civilising benefit, by turning millions of acres of arid land into rich arable fields, outweighs all objections raised on the ground that " irrigation does not pay its way." The amount spent up to March, 1906, on '^ t d canals has been thirty-two millions sterling, yielding a return of seven and three-quarters per cent. This capital has provided over 50,000 miles of canals and distributories, giving a perennial supply of water to twenty-one and a half million acres. The Irrigation Com- mission of 1901-3 recommended that an additional thirty millions sterling should be spent during the succeeding twenty years in canals and distributories to irrigate six and a half million acres more. It has been shown by Lord Curzon that during the next twenty years there will be an army of two hundred and eighty thousand workmen employed for two hun- dred and fifty days in each year in the construction of new works of water supply. Among the more important works of irri- gation now under construction may be mentioned the Jehlam Canal and the Upper Swat Canal project, which is to 620 Stale Forests. cost £1,186,666 and to irrigate three hundred and eighty-two thousand acres. At Chakdara the scene of fierce fighting a few years ago, there will soon arise great engineering under- takings for the headworks, and at Dargai there will be a new cataract formed of a 300 ft. fall. In South India a tunnel one and a quarter miles long was driven through the Vv'estern Ghats to bring the waters of the Periyar river to the dried-up lands of Madura and Eamnad. In the Swat Valley project a tunnel five thousand feet long will have to be driven through the granite and hard quartz-mica schist of the Mala- kand range. The whole wild tract from Abazai to the Indus should then be covered with smiling crops, and the fierce fighting frontiersmen become peaceful peasants. The State forests of India cover now an Forests. area of 200,000 square miles. They yielded in 1905-6 a net revenue of £1,775,000, of which one- third came from Burma ; and they produce sixty-six milhon cubic feet of timber. In the face of figures such as these it is sufficiently obvious that, under British rule, a fertile field has been secured for capital and industry, only requiring enterprise and co-operation to enable the wealth and resources of India to be utilised for the benefit of her ever increasing population. CHAPTER IX. THE NATIVE MOVEMENT. India, to those who know its history, is a ^utkiif India." ^^^^^ ^^^'^^ oppression of the agricultural population, religious feuds, racial warfare, in- ternecine strife and anarchy are only stayed by the strength of British supremacy. For the execution of the task she has assumed in India, England now stands trustee to civilisation. Should the British Empire ever willingly withdraw from the governing of India with a full knowledge of the fact that India would then sink back into the gloom of a mediaeval barbarism, it would forfeit all claim to self-respect and to the regard of the civihsed world. When and if India gathers herself into a nation and learns the difficult lessons of self-government and self-control, the terms upon which British rule is exercised may have to be reconsidered. In the meantime, we have to discuss the fact stated by Mr. Morley in 190G, " that everyone — soldiers, travellers and journaHsts — they all tell us there is a new spirit abroad in India." This new spirit in India is what is called the National Movement. It is no mushroom growth ; it is the result of British dominion in India, and its roots go back a century or more. When the English came to India they found it little more than a geographical expression. Hori- Past conditions, zontal as well as vertical lines of division pro- hibited any sort of unity ; the vague Moghul suzerainty barely concealed the diversities of an infinite num- ber of states, within each one of which religion, race and caste separated one section of the people from another. There were no common ideals or methods of thought, but only varieties of caste and religious prejudice. There was no possibility of common action, and therefore no such thing as public opinion. In circumstances like these all forms of popular self-govern- ment are out of the question, and despotism is inevitable. A G22 Tlie Unification of India. somewhat similar alienation of class from class necessitated arbitrary rule in France before the Revolution, and the violence of that movement was due, not to political theories, but to the mutual suspicion existing between class and class and arising from the long absence of common action in local and national affairs. The fault of the old regime in France was that ^of Britfsh ?ulf ^^ ^^^ nothmg to mitigate this aloofness or to foster those habits of p ol itical communion which early produced a public opinion in England and made its constitutional development so comparatively peaceful and free from social hatreds. The same charge does not lie against British dominion in India. Taught by her own experience, or perhaps unconsciously applying her own ideas, Great Britain has in India eschewed the Machiavellian maxim divide et impera, and has encouraged unifying tendencies with results which are now becoming apparent. Englishmen are doing for India what the Normans did for England. By the steady pressure of one government actuated, roughly speaking, by one general set of principles and ideas, the manifold divergen- cies of the conquered people were gradually smoothed away. As the Norman did not look at England from the West Saxon, the East Anglian or the Northumbrian point of view, so the Englishman has not ruled India from the standpoint of the Brahman or the Mohammedan, the Bengali or the Maratha. To all alike he has appKed the principles of English law and government, and to some extent the ideas of Western morality. The efforts of missionaries, even when they have not converted the natives to Christianity, have weakened the hold of the caste system, and undermined customs which separated one class from another. Material as well as moral civilisation has tended to break down this isolation ; every railway built, every canal constructed has facilitated and compelled increased communication between caste and caste, creed and creed, one locality and another ; and in the Indian army all territorial designations have been obliterated {see p. 611). With the removal of these barriers, the Indian's consciousness quickens and expands. He is educated into a realisation of things beyond his village or his caste, develops a dim conception of India, and begins to appreciate the difference between it and other countries. Public opinion becomes possible, interest in politics increases, and a desire for some share in the management of affairs is wakened. Indian Nationalism and its Limitations. 623 Growth of When this amalgamation of provincial diver- political sities and expansion of local consciousness took consciousness, place in England, the conquering Normans were absorbed and English nationality was formed. The racial, religious, moral and climatic gulf between England and India prohibits a similar solution of the problem, deprives the native movement of such leadership as ahens like Simon de Montfort gave to the English people, compels it to rely on Oriental statesmianship, and tends to promote the solidarity of the East. The recent Russo-Japanese war was watched in India with an intensity of mterest due less to the Anglo- Japanese alliance than to the fact that the Japanese are Asiatics ; and the result of that conflict gave added confidence to the growing political consciousness of the Indian people. Nor is it likely to be. weakened by the general awakening of Islam and its apparently sudden bent towards parliamentary institutions, though as yet the Mohammedans in India have studiously held aloof from the more recent manifestations of the native movement. Present limits Here we touch its weakest point. Caste has of the not yet expanded into nationality, and it may movement. be doubted whether the ideal of some at any rate of the leaders of the native movement is not to substitute Bengali for British domination rather than to give a real self-government to all the races of India. Efforts to spread the agitation south and west have not met with much success. Burma, the Deccan, the Rajputs and the Sikhs are almost untouched, and the Native States seem as impervious to revolutionary ideas as they were in the days of the Mutiny. Until the movement has made some terms with the Moham- medans, and brought the Deccan, Sikhs, Rajputs, not to men- tion the hill tribes and Native States, into luie, it is too early to describe it as national or India as a nation. So far there have been only tendencies m that direction, tendencies which have much to overcome before they reach their goal. In one respect they may ease the minds of those responsible for India's government ; an India conscious of nationality would not tolerate foreign invasion with the passive indifference of old when conquest only meant a change of tyrant for the cultiva- tors of the soil. India would have much to lose ; and the more its people are educated up to a realisation of the differ- ence between the British and other political systems, the less likely are they to desire the substitution of any other sove- 624 The Education of India in English. reignty for that of the Empire, within the bounds of which it has been found possible to establish so many forms of self- government and to gratify so many national aspirations. To the development of India's aspirations forecast ^ Great Britain has offered encouragement, tem- pered by a desire to keep tliem within practi- cable limits. Even so far back as 1833 Macaulay, then newly made member of the Supreme Council in India, looked for- ward to it when he said" it may be that the public mind of India may expand under our system until it has outgrown that system ; that by good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government ; that having been in- structed by European knowledge they may in some future day demand European institutions. Whenever it comes it will be the proudest day in English history. To have found a people sunk in the very lowest depths of slavery and superstition, and to have ruled them so as to have made them desirous and capable of all the privileges of citizens, would, indeed, be a title to glory all our own." The Court of Directors in 1830 decided that Tndia" ^^ *^® education of the people of India should follow on English lines, and that English should be introduced gradually as the language of public business. The Directors then expressed their desire that Indians should be educated so as to qualify them " by their intelhgence and morality for high employments in the civil administration of India." It may be that they desu-ed a cheap administration, but that has not influenced the result. The Act of 1833 de- clared that no native of India should on that account be dis- qualified from holding any office under the Government. Through Macaulay's influence it was decided that the educa- tion of Indians should be conducted solely through the medium of English, for it was his opinion that " the languages of Western Europe civilised Russia, and I cannot doubt that they will d*. for the Hindu what they have done for the Tartar." Lord William Bentinck two years later ruled that all the funds at the disposal of the Government for instruction should be bestowed on EngHsh education alone. Lord Hardinge in 1844 gave a considerable impulse to the desire for English education by announcing that in nominating Indians to posts in the civil employment a preference would be given to those who had received an English education. A despatch of the Court of Directors in 1854 stated that every opportunity should be Universities, Colleges, and Schools. 625 given to the higher classes of Indians for the acquisition of a liberal European education, " the effects of which may be ex- pected slowly to pervade the rest of their fellow countrymen." In the same year a Department of Public atS Schools Instruction was formed, and universities after the model of the old examining University of London were founded at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay — afterwards at Lahore (the Panjab University) and Allahabad. These universities, like their model, long contented themselves with conducting examinations. But the example of London was again followed when in 1904 an Act of the Governor- General's Council made provision for university teaching. Other educational reforms were discussed at the Simla Educa- tional Conference of 1901 and embodied in a resolution of the Government issued by Lord Curzon. As a result increased attention is being paid to primary, commercial, agricultural and technical education ; and an Indian Institute of Science has been estabhshed at Bangalore. There are now over a hundred and fifty thousand institutions educating some five million students. Seventy per cent, of these are maintained or aided by the State ; and improved methods are steadily being applied in teaching both in English and m the vernacular. There are at present, according to the last census returns, eighty-six males out of every ten thousand of the population literate in English, a number almost double what it was ten years ago. Of the Hindus there are sixty-four, of the Sikhs fifty-two, of the Mussulmans thirty-two literate per ten thou- sand. Two-fifths of the Parsis are literate in English, and out of every ten thousand there are one hundred and thirty- two Jains and twenty-four Buddhists likewise literate. The most educated of Indians to-day admit that the tendency of English education has been, in the words of Mr. Gokhale, an able exponent of their views, " towards the liberation of the Indian mind from the thraldom of old-world ideas and the assimilation of all that is highest and best in the life and thought and character of the West." Nevertheless the mass of the people are still fettered by differences social, religious, and racial, which make the realisa- tion of nationality a far-oS dream. " Seven children out of eight," says Mr. Gokhale, " in India are growing up to-day in ignorance and darkness, and four villages out of five are as yet without a school-house." It was once hoped that education would somehow filter down to the inass of the people. The 626 The Indian National Congress. last census returns show that ninety per cent, of the male popu- lation and ninety-nine per cent, of the female are still unable to read and write. Much remains yet to be done for primary education, and the native movement of to-day wisely presses this fact upon the attention of Government. But, although only a little more than one million of the populace can read and write English, fifteen millions can read and write the ver- naculars, and they are gradually becoming instructed through their own literature and through the Press. The educated class in India are the only class which can unitedly express any political opinion, but their opinion should not be too hastily accepted as that of the whole country. The demand for -^ National Congress of delegates fiom various National Self- parts of India commenced in 1885 to meet Government, annually. In 1907 the Congress claimed that the people of India should have self-government like the United Kingdom and the Colonies. IVIr. Gokhale, m a recent lecture before the East India Association, held that the realisation of this ideal must necessarily be slow, but that the educated classes wanted India " to be a prosperous self-governing integral part of the Empire like tlie Colonies." Lord lieay replied : " The claim that India should be governed as a self-govern- ing colony is a claim which seems to me unreasonable. ... I ask any Indinn whether he can possibly contemplate with tlie condition of the masses as they are that they should be entrusted with the exercise of the franchise. ... I do not think that such change in the Constitution as would limit in any way the influence of Parliament over the Secretary of State and the responsibility of the Secretary of State to Par- liament would be accepted by the people of this country, how- ever ignorant they may be of the condition of the Indian people, and, in consequence, cautious in their judgment on Indian affairs." Mr. Morley, speaking in Parliament in 1906, said it was a fantastic and ludicrous dream to imagine that British institutions could be transplanted wholesale into India, and that hurry or precipitancy in forcing the legitimate claims of India could "only have tlie effect, the inevitable effect, of setting the clock back." - Mr. Gokhale has also advocated a closer union and H^du*?^ between Hindu and Mohammedan, and a closer union between the subdivisions of Hindus, as preliminaries to any advance towards unity, and has drawn a picture of the chaos out of which nationality would in the future have to be evolved. On the one side was the prestige Load Government and Popular Representation. 627 of a mighty Empire, with its power of organisation, discipline and practical capacity, on tlie other side an educated class determined to rise to a ])Osition worthy of respect Ly civilised people, and in the middle " the great mass of the Indian people lying inert for centuries, deplorably divided and subdivided, with hardly any true sense of discipline, plunged in ignorance and poverty and wedded to nsagcs and institntions not calcu- lated to favour combined action." The Mohammedans have recently placed before the Government their claims for consideration as being one-fifth of the entire population of India. They have formed associa- tions with the avowed object of promoting loyalty to the British Government and of advancing their own right of pro- portionate representation in any scheme for Governnfent *^® further employment of Indians in the service of Government. Lord Minto in 1906, in reply remarked that the initial rungs in the ladder of self- government were to be found in the municipal and district boards contemplated in 1870 by Lord Mayo, who hoped to awaken a political spirit among the people by giving them an interest m and supervision over the management of local funds devoted to education, sanitation, medical charity and local public works. Lord Ripon in 1882 desired to advance the political training and elevation of the people by associating them more fully in the work of municipal and local boards ; and a fair amount of progress has been made in building up a civic conscience in India. There were in 1906 seven hundred and forty-nine municipalities, whose members are chiefly native and non-official, controlling a population of nearly seventeen millions and an income of nearly three millions sterling. There are also in almost all districts of British India local district boards which are to a large extent represen- tative. As stepping stones towards national self-government elected representatives have been admitted to the legislative councils, leaving the officials a bare majority ; and E°eSenuS '' ^^ "'S^ V *"'« "^«™ movement that elected members should also be admitted to the executive councils of the Viceroy and Governors of the provinces. This would not be in accordance ,with constitu- tional practice in the rest of the British Empire, but this objec- tion would not lie against the contemplated nomination of native members by the Crown. The essential element in any scheme 628 Native Participation in Government. of representation must be the adequate protection of the varied interests of the different sections of the people, which can only be done by some system of proportional representation. Sir Charles Crosthwaite has recently pointed out the fact, which overshadows this whole movement for elective representation, that " to every man of India of high birth and old-established rank, whatever may be his race or religion, the idea of can- vassing inferiors for votes, or even of proposing himself as a candidate for their choice, is repugnant." There is, however, a strong distinction between the ideal of popular self-government and the view that educated men in ^, . „ India should be given a larger representation Native Civil ^i .i • i.i, i • r. i.- Servants y ^*^^^ possess m the higher executive posts under Government. The idea under- lying this movement was well expressed by Lord Dalhousie when he said that " we cannot and we ought not to anticipate that India shall be in all times coming wholly incapable of being admitted to a share of the government of itself in unison with its British conquerors." On the other hand, the Duke of Argyll, when Secretary of State, reminded the Government of India that although the intention of the statute of 1870 was to give additional employment to natives of proved merit and ability, " it should never be forgotten, and there should never be any hesitation in laying down the principle that it is one of our first duties to the people of India to guard the safety of our dominion. In the full belief in the beneficial character of our administration and in the great probability that in its cessa- tion anarchy and misrule would reappear, the maintenance and stability of our rule must ever be kept in view as the basis of our policy, and to this end large proportions of British functionaries in the more important posts seem essential." As the result of prolonged discussion and consideration one- sixth of the posts in the Indian Civil Service have been opened Extension of to native candidates who are recruited from Native the Provincial service {see above, p. 608). Fur- Employment, ther action in the matter has been taken by the Secretary of State for India, who proposed in Parliament, in December, 1908, to increase the numbers and enlarge the scope of the Viceroy's Legislative and the Provincial Councils, to facilitate the entrance of elected native representatives, and 'to nominate a native to the Viceroy's Executive Council. Lord Morley had previously appointed two natives to serve on the Secretary's Council m London. Nothing calculated^to Spheres for Native Enterprise. 029 increase the education of the people and fit them to combine mider some system of unity will be left undone from fear of untoward results. British rule has already bestowed on India the best of its educational training, and it has not hesitated to grant free speech, a free Press and the right of public meeting, fully conscious that the result would be the frankest expression of popular aspirations. To those who view the present position of India from a pvu'ely academic standpoint, it may seem that the best service Other fields for ^^^ educated people could render to their the Native country would be to utilise their advantages Movement, more freely than they do for the furtherance of its material and intellectual advance. While much is being done by Indian scholars for the study of the religious thought, philosophy, and classical literature of their own country, much remains for them to do towards the advancement of historical research on modern lines and for the preservation and refijiement of their vernacular languages. The future of India can best be served by warfare against the prevailing ignorance and superstitions of the mass of the people, by a crusade against debilitating and debased customs, by a deve- lopment of India's latent capabilities for industry and com- merce, and by fostering the principles of co-operation, mode- ration and compromise. CHAPTER X. INDIA'S PLACE IN THE EMPIRE. .J, India, as constituting an Empire in itself, of In^a^'"^ liolds, formally at any rate, a unique position among the dominions of the Crown. The sovereignty of the King-Emperor over the ceded and con- quered territories in India flowed from the principle that no subject can acquire dominions except on behalf of the Crown. Every settlement made and every State conquered or ceded became, from the very fact that the Company owed allegiance to the Sovereign, part of the kingdom of that Sovereign ; as for the protected States, they " appear to present a peculiar case of conquest operating by assumption and acquiescence." The Royal Titles Act of 1876 conferred no power upon the Empress of India beyond that which she had before enjoyed as Queen. The use of the words " empire " and " imperial " grew up in the reign of Henry VIII., who, by asse];ting that his was an imperial crown, meant that it was independent of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope ; but his efforts to secure an authority transcending that of kings and resembling that of the old Roman Emperors were not permanently success- ful, and the powers of an Emperor are unknown in British law. Nevertheless, the use of the title with regard to India serves to mark a real distinction. The Sovereign's power in India, although exercised through Ministers responsible to the Imperial Parliament, is as despotic, so far as the people of India are concerned, as the powers of the Roman imperator, and his rule may properly be called imperiutn. In the rest of his dominions, with some numerous but small exceptions, that word is singu- larly inappropriate to the authority exerted. There is another more technical distinction between India and the other do- minions of the Crown. Elsewhere, when the Crown acts in an executive and sometimes in a legislative capacity, it does The Claims and Disabilities of India. 631 so nominally through, the Privy Council ; for India the medium is the Council of the Secretary of State, which is a much more active body than the Privy Council. It is really the Secretary's Cabinet, and the fact that he alone of ministers has such a cabinet emphasises India's importance ; a similar body attached to the Secretary for the Colonies might perhaps be advisable {see pp. 769-777). India has been claimed by Lord Curzon as ^co^siderati^n.° " ^^^^ Po^^^ical and imperial centre of the British Empire ; there lies the true fulcrum of dominion, the real touchstone of our Imperial greatness or failure," and India once lost, " our sun would sink to its setting." At any rate, as Freeman once pointed out, it would be strange if, in any conception of Empire, India should be left out. The same point was made by Lord Salisbury in 1891, when he stated that any common principle of foreign policy throughout the British Empire would necessitate " a balance and approve- ment of the voting value of the various elements of which the Empire is composed, and when you come to tot up that calculation you cannot leave our Asiatic dependencies out of sight." The inhabitant of India is in all respects a Restrictions on British subject. He can be, and has been, elected gratTon'inThe ^^ ^^® ^"^^^1^ ^^^^^ ^^ Commons ; the Universi- Colonies. ties and professional schools of England are freely open to him ; yet, as Mr. Morley has expressed it, "a bar sinister is placed in some British Colonies upon many milUons of the King's subjects." Not only in Africa, but in Australia and New Zealand — as well as in the United States and British Columbia — there is a fixed determination to preclude Asiatics from competing with white labour ; and Mr. Chamberlain expressed in 1904 his sympathy with every effort to stay the overflowing immigra- tion of India into South Africa, which might, if unchecked, drive the white inhabitants out of political existence. This exclusion of Asiatics from self-governing colonies is not due exclusively to colour or caste prejudice {see pp. 394-6). The colour prejudice exists at home merely as a modern gi'owth arising from the facts of conquest. It does not exist to any great extent among the lower classes, nor among those who have never been brought into contact with the East. It becomes more pronounced as a factor in the struggle for existence where the white man is brought closest into con- 632 Indians in the Transvaal. tact with the vast population of the East. It rises to its height in the United States and in the West Indies, where the race pressure is keenest. . . The question, so far as it relates to Asiatics, the i'raiisvaal" ^^^ taken its acutest form in the Transvaal, where a series of enactments under the old regime restricted and penalised the Indian population. This policy has been contmued since the Boer War and the grant of responsible government. In 190G it was enacted that . Asiatics should be allowed to reside permanently in the Trans- vaal only on being registered, and on receiving a certificate, to be checked yearly. To obviate fraud and false personation, it was further provided that the certificate, as well as the register, should record not only the name but also the ten digit finger print of the holder of the certificate. While the Transvaal is, per- haps, justified in exacting such finger prints as are really necessary for the identification of registered persons, this last requirement has given deep offence, because the ten-digit finger print is only taken elsewhere from criminals who have to be identified from all the world. Strong representations against it have been made in England as well as India, and there has been much friction in the Transvaal. That Govern- ment has, of course, no desire to brand the Indians as criminals, but the antipathy to an immigration which might add to the racial complexities of South Africa and undermine the white standard of comfort and wages, is too pronounced to admit of an issue from the present conflict which shall be entii-ely satis- factory to the natives of India. The question of registration is only one point ; the Indians also complain of civil disabilities in respect of trade, education, the use of facihties of locomotion by road and railway, and exclusion from the municipal and political franchise, as well as social disabilities fatal to the maintenance of the social system to which they have been accustomed in India, and to the perpetuation of which in South Africa the South Africans have an msuperable objec- tion. In all matters of Imperial Defence the ImperiarDe'ience.Supreme Government must guide the course of India's policy. The British Empire has the huge land frontier of India to defend, where her navy is powerless. It is therefore necessary that the British Army in India should be maintained at a high standard of efficiency. A.nd, besides the burden of defending a country India's Relatione with the Empire. 633 nineteen hundred miles from north to south and east to west, the army in India is often requisitioned for the general defence of Imperial interests. The despatch of over thirteen thousand British officers and men and nine thousand native followers, with vast quantities of arms and ammunition, from India during the Boer War enabled Ladysmith to hold out and saved Natal. To China thirteen hundred British troops and twenty thousand native troops went to save the Legations of Pekin in 1900, while the Maharaja Sindhia equipped and took there a hospital ship. The resources of the Indian feudatories i&ative offers, are, moreover, yearly being offered more liberally to the service of the Crown, both in India and abroad. The Nizam of Haidarabad volunteered the fullest aid in money and troops in 1885 at the time of the Russian outrage at Pendjeh. The chiefs of GwaHor, Bikanir, and Idar have fought side by side with British soldiers, while the Imperial Service troops, numbering nearly twenty thousand men, are capable of much expansion, and have already seen fighting in China, Chitral, Tirah and Somaliland. In all cases where Indian troops are used for service outside India the cost has to be borne by the Imperial Government. In any Imperial union for defence it would have to be re- membered that the whole of India's sea-going trade is insured from risks by British ships. The Indian Royal Royal Marine ^3,rine consists of only ten sea-going vessels, six inland and harbour vessels, a submarine flotilla and some few steamers and launches. India is at once the largest producer of food ^"^"^ dfc ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^'^^^ material in the Empire, and one of the largest consumers of manufactured products. She is, therefore, an important factor in all questions of trade within the Empire. At present the only export duty is one on rice, mostly from Burma, which has been defended on the ground that it is paid by the British or foreign importer. With regard to imports, the Indian Tariff Act of 1894 re-imposed an old duty of five per cent, ad valorem on almost all articles ; on most classes of iron and steel, however, the duty is only one per cent. Only a few of these imports, such as spirituous liquors, petroleum, sugar, metals and cotton piece goods yield any customs revenue of importance. The duty on imported cotton manufactures was fixed at three and a half per cent. ad valorem in 1896, and an excise duty was imposed on the higher 634 Questions of Fiscal Polic>/. classes of cotton goods manufactured in India. The object of this combination of import and excise duties was to provide revenue without giving protection against Lancashire manufactures. Grains and pulse are admitted free, but the import is prac- tically nil, even in times of famine. Half of the exports from India are practically raw materials which are admitted duty free into the consuming markets ; the remainder pay only moderate duties or, as in England, have purely revenue duties India's total export of private merchandise Exports. (excluding re-exports. Government stores, and treasure) for 1906-7 was estimated at £115,388,000, or nearly eight shillings per head of the popula- tion. Nearly twenty-seven per cent, of these exports go to the United Kingdom, eleven to Germany, eleven to China (including Hong Kong), nine to the United States and six to France. Ceylon takes three per cent., and the Straits Settle- ments another three. India supplies raw jute for the world, and takes one-quarter of the export trade of Lancashire. While nearly three-quarters of the exports of India go to countries other than England, sixty-six per cent, of her imports come from England, so that any increase of her purchasing power en- ables her to take a larger amount of imports from England. Therefore the more India exports the more it is to the advantage of England. If India, however, granted a preferential Indian Govern- tariff to British imports it is contended that ment towards she would be gratifying a customer who only preferential takes one-quarter of her produce at the ex- trade, pense of customers who buy three-quarters ; and that this discrimination would provoke retaliation on the three-quarters of her produce (mostly raw material) now admitted duty free by other countries. The Govern- ment of India, therefore, after considering the resolution of the Colonial Prime Ministers in 1902 on the subject of Imperial tariffs, stated that they desired to avoid all tariff wars, and that in their opinion it would be a calamity if India were involved in such struggles with tlie important purchasers of her goods. The Secretary of State, in his speech on the Indian Financial Statement of 1906, also urged that India was a debtor country, and should by all means endeavour to increase her exports. Extremists among the educated classes in India advocate a boycott of British and foreign goods Indian Civilisation. 635 and the imposition of protective or prohibitive duties in the interests of " Swadeshi " or " own country " industries. Lord Curzon, throughout his term of office '^alue^lf Ma.^ ^^ Viceroy, pleaded incessantly for a fuller and wider recognition of the fact that " planted as we have been by Providence upon the throne of the Indies, we are trustees for the world of a hteratui-e and archaeology, a history and an art that are among the priceless treasures of mankind." These words recall the long vista of the past civilisation of India ; the wide range of Vedic literature ; the burial mounds covering the relics of Buddha, where the origins of art and architectm-e in the East are to be traced on sculptured gateways, telling of Persian, Assyrian and Graeco- Roman influences ; Hindu temples and Mohammedan mosques ; the monumental forts, palaces and tombs of the Moghul Emperors, the master builders of Indo-Saracenic architecture ; the dream-like beauties of the Taj Mahal, a priceless treasure ; and the tomb of Akbar now restored to the full dignity of its design. Not the least of the services rendered to the Empire by a long series of rulers of India, from Warren Hastings to Lord Curzon, have been their efforts to preserve and to restore the literary, archseological and artistic monuments of a civilisa- tion more ancient and in many respects more interesting than that of any other dominion of the British Crown. II. THE EAST INDIES. CHAPTER I. CEYLON. In spite of its proximity to India, Ceylon lias had a distinct history of its own, and is separately administered under the Colonial and not the Lidia Office. Geogra- Featurt^s P^iically it is severed from India by the Palk Strait, but the chain of sandy shoals which crocses the strait and is known as Adam's Bridge, prohibits its navigation by any but the small steamers which pass through the Paumban chamiel. If the sea fell five fathoms, Adam's Bridge would be an isthmus ten miles wide ; and ocean steamers running east and west have to pass south of Ceylon, and generally call at Colombo, which owes its greatness as a port to this fact. Ceylon lies between the latitudes of 5 deg. 54'N. and 9°5rN. and the longitude of 79°42'E. and 81°55'E. ; its length is two hundred and seventy miles, its breadth one hundred and forty, and its area — about equal to that of Scot- land or Holland and Belgium — is twenty-five thousand three hundred and sixty-five square miles. The south of the island is a mountain mass reaching a height of over 8,000 ft. and sloping steeply down to a coastal plain ; the north is a low tableland rising at first gently from the sea and then more steeply to the southern highlands. The most interesting of these mountains is Adam's Peak (7,320 ft.), on the summit of which is a footprint supposed by Buddhists to be Buddha's, and by Mohammedans to be Adam's. Rain is precipitated by the contact of the north-east and south-west monsoons with Racial Factors in Ceylon. 637 these mountainSj and the rainfall in some places in the moun- tains exceeds an average of 200 inches, while districts with less than 50 inches are reckoned arid. But the rivers which rise in these mountains do not, except the Mahaweli Ganga (200 miles), exceed eighty-five miles in length. The sea moderates the temperature which is less than that in'many parts of India ; at Colombo the mean monthly temperature m the shade never exceeds 80 deg. The earliest inhabitants of Ceylon belonged stnhakse ^^ ^ prehistoric race now represented by the fast dwindling Veddas or wild men of Ceylon. Its history begins with the arrival about 543 B.C. of a prince from North India who was the founder of the first known dynasty in the island. He and his successors, with the help of Tamil colonists from South India, overcame the aborigines and estabhshed settled government and civilisation. Mahinda, the son of the Indian Emperor, Asoka, introduced Buddhism in the year 246 B.C. A branch of the tree under which Buddha sat, while he thought out the Buddhism. doctrines he afterwards spread over North India, was planted in 245 B.C. at Anurad- hapm-a, the old capital of Ceylon, and the tree which grew from it is still venerated by Buddhists throughout the East. The Sinhalese, who now number over two and a-half millions of the population, are supposed to be descendants of these settlers from North and South India, and their language belongs to the Aryan group. Of the Sinhalese ninety-one per cent, are Buddhists and the remainder Chris- tians. The early history of Ceylon and of its one hundred and seventy-four native kings has been preserved in a long metrical chronicle called the Maha Vansa, Early History, which has been continued down to a.d. 1798. The Tamils from South India, who established dynasties in the island in the third century B.C., waged wars incessantly with the Sinhalese settlers. By the beginning of the sixteenth century the Tamils had gained possession of the greater part of the island, while the Sinhalese kings reigned in the south and west. The sea ports of Ceylon remained in the possession of Arab traders who introduced into the island the Mohammedan religion, and their descendants are settled in all the chief trading centres, especially on the east and west coasts. The rich trade of the island remained for centuries in the hands of the Arabs. It was to Ceylon that the wealth, the '638 Arabs, Portuguese and Dutch. silks and spices of the Far East were brought by Chinese mariners, there to be bartered for tlie goods of the West. ]\Iarco Polo, towards the end of the thir- 'j'ifr^ ^'^^Jf? teenth century, tells strange stories of the and Marco Polo. . , , , . ■" , • ^ i i c- • i i ^i island having once been visited by buibad the Sailor. There in the mountains was to be seen " the sepulchre of our first father Adam, and some of his hair and of his teeth and the dish from which he used to eat." Marco Polo no doubt here described the relics of Buddha which he heard the island contained. For long years the sacred tooth of Buddha was preserved at Kandy, until it was carried away by the Portuguese. Ibn Batuta, a IVIoor from Tangiers, narrates how in 1374 the seashore was " covered with cinna- mon wood, which the merchants of Malabar transport without any other price than a few articles of clothing." Colombo, the present capital, was even in his time " the finest and largest city in Serendib " (an old name for the island. The Portuguese first landed in Ceylon Tlie Portuguese, in 1505, and the native Chronicle, Paja- valiya, says they were a race " of very white and beautiful people, who wore hats and boots of iron and never stop in one place .... and they had guns, with a noise louder than thunder, and a ball shot from one of them, after traversing a league, will break up a castle of marble." Tliey formed a settlement at Colombo in 1517 for the purpose of trade. There they cruelly persecuted the natives who would not become Christians, plundered and destroyed the Buddhist shrines, and carried off to Goa the sacred relics. The Sinhalese kings and their subjects soon found it advisable to embrace Christianity and to take new Portuguese names, many of which still survive in Ceylon. They, however, never relaxed their struggle for indepen- dence, and often inflicted severe defeats upon their Portuguese persecutors. The Dutch appeared off the coast in 1602, ^^ C? b? ''' ^^^^ ^^^^ *^^®"^ ^^^ Sinhalese gladly made alliance. In 1658 the Portuguese were driven out of the island and the Dutch monopolised the cinnamon trade. In 17-4:2 they planted by forced labour the waste along the sea coast with cocoanuts, so that now along the south-west for a hundred miles there runs a stately and unbroken grove of palm trees. The British East India Company during the war with Holland captured in 1782 the Dutch settlement at Trincomalee, which was, however, recaptured by the Fiencli and restored to Holland. It was again captured by CoL Ceylon organised as a Crown Colony. G39 James Stuart, in 1795, on the renewal of the war between the British and the Dutch, and in 1796 Colombo surrendered. All the Dutch settlements were ceded to the Conquel'f En-lish, and in 1802 by the Peace of Amiens.. Ceylon was formally annexed to their Britisli Crown. The native chiefs still maintained a sovereignty in their mountain fortresses until 1815, when the ruthless barbarisms and cruelties of their king made war inevitable. Kandy, the last stronghold of the last of the long dynasty of kings of Ceylon, was captured, the king deposed, and by treaty with the native chiefs the island became a Crown Colony. Ceylon is the chief Crown Colony in the Or-^anisa^K)!! Empire. It is controlled by the Crown through ° ' the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and is administered by a Governor with an Executive Council con- sistmg of the Governor, the Colonial Secretary, the Officer commanding the troops, the Attorney-General, the Controller of Revenue and the Treasurer. The Legislative Council con- sists of seventeen members ; five of them are members of the Executive Council, four are official members and eight- are un- official, representing different interests, classes and races ; all are nommated by the governor. The island is divided into nine provinces, each under a Government Agent and his assistants. Local affairs, such as sanitation, are controlled by three muni- cipalities and eighteen local boards. The colony is garrisoned by a force of Indian troops (which have replaced the British troops) of two thousand five hundred men. Three- foirrths of the cost of this defensive force is contributed by Ceylon, the contribution being fixed at nine and a-half per cent, of the general revenue. Colombo Harbour is strongly defended on the most modern scientific principles, the Colony furnishing the batteries and the Imperial Government the armaments. There is a Supreme Court of Justice with The administra- original criminal jurisdiction and power of tion 01 Justice. , ^ ■ i r xi i • i- • -i i hearuig appeals from the subsidiary civil and criminal courts. There are also district courts with civil and criminal jurisdiction, courts of request and police courts for the trial of minor civil and criminal cases. Under an Ordinance of 1871 village councils were established for the local trial of petty offences and civil disputes, with power to make rules, with the approval of the Executive Council, for the carrying out of local improvements. The law administered is based on the Eoman-Dutch law, introduced 640 Co§ee and Tea Planting. by the Dutch, but now greatly modified by English law and local ordinances. There is a criminal code based on the Indian penal code, and the law of criminal and civil procedure has been codified. The Europeans number only six thousand five hundred out of an entire population of four millions. More Eeligioa and ^^i^^n half the inhabitants profess the faith of iica ion. jjufiJiiism ; about a million are Hindus, two hundred and seventy-five thousand Mohammedans and three hundred and ninety thousand are Christians. There are three hundred thousand pupils receiving instruction, or about 1 in 14 of the population. The Government restricts its expendi- ture chiefiy to the support and extension of vernacular educa- tion, English-teaching schools being largely self-supported. Although the coffee shrub was first in- Coffee planting, troduced by Arab traders, very little trade was done in it by either Sinhalese, Portu- guese or Dutch ; and it was not until 1825 that the first coffee plantation was opened at Kandy. The cultivation increased rapidly, and by 1870 there was an export trade of four millions sterlinfr. There were then 176,000 acres under cultivation, yielding on a full-bearing crop twenty-five per cent, on the outlay. Cheap Tamil labour flowed in from South India, a railway was opened from Colombo to Kandy in order to aid the growing industry, which was further fostered by a great rise in the price of coffee abroad. Within ten years from 1869 ten square miles of virgin forest in the district of the Wilder- ness of the Peak were opened up for the cultivation of coffee, and over 4,000,000 acres of land were sold by the Government to capitalists with an ample hope of profit on the iuvestment. There was, however, all this time an in- Substitufciou of gidious fungoid growth (Hemileia vastatrix) Tea for Cotiee. ^.^.ggpij^g o^,,j. ^^j^g coffee i)lant. It arose in one centre and then spread far and wide, attacking plants new and old, weak and vigorous, with equal impartiality. Estates were sold recklessly and fortunes were lost; even when cinchona was tried it was attacked and the industry failed. The old coffee shrubs were then grubbed out, tea was planted, new machinery introduced and the labourers taught a new industry. From an export of 23 lb. of tea in 1876 the industry has grown and thriven until the export has reached an estimated value of four millions sterling. Tea now represents sixty per cent, of the value of the exports from Ceylon and products of the cocoa nut over twenty-two per The Fitmnces of Ceylon. G4i cent. Eubber has lately been planted, in conjunction with tea and cocoa, and its cultivation is likely Other Products, to become a valuable industry. There are now almost four hundred thousand labourers from India employed on the tea and coffee plantations, serving under no system of indentures, and free to quit after a notice of one month. More than one-fourth of Ceylon is now under cultivation. There are over 700,000 acres under rice cultiva- tion, 460,000 under tea, 880,000 under cocoanuts, 104,000 under rubber, while cinnamon, cocoa, tobacco and coffee are also important industries. The gems of Ceylon have become proverbial. Precious Stones, and although no diamonds have been found, the country near Ratnapura, the City of Gems, is rich in sapphires, rubies, catseyes and other precious stones. There are now about four hundred gem quarries in the island and one thousand seven hundred plumbago mines. The pearl fisheries of the Gulf of Manar on the west coast belong to Government, and were in 1905 leased at 310,000 rupees annu- ally for a term of twenty years to an English company. ■ '. The revenue of Ceylon is mainly derived from customs duties and receipts from railways, which between them make up fifty-six per cent, of the entire income. Port ExpendUu^e*^ and harbour dues, monopoly of the sale of salt, land sales, spirit licences and sales of stamps and Government timber are the other chief sources of revenue. On most articles imported there is a duty of 5.j per cent, ad valorem imposed, but on cotton the duty is four per cent., while on articles such as rice, provisions, tobacco, specific duties are levied, and machinery, unwrought iron and steel, and coal are admitted free. The public debt of the Colony, now over five milUons sterling, has been incurred in the construc- tion of public works of improvement, including five hundred and ninety-seven miles of railway, two thousand five hmi- dred miles of telegraphs, waterworks, and the improvement of the Colombo Harbour. On the railways over five and a-half millions sterling have been expended, and on Colombo Harbour two and a-half milHons sterling. There have been constructed at Colombo two breakwaters enclosing a harbour of one square mile, a graving dock, coaling depot and fishery harbour ; the port is rapidly increasing and nearly three thousand steamers call there annually. The harbour at Trincomalee, which is probably the most perfect natural harbour hi the East, is G42 The Maldive Islands. accessible in every weather, being almost landlocked and measuring about two miles each way. Unfortunately it is out of the way for vessels trading between the West and Far East or AustraHa and remains unused ; and its naval and military stations were removed in 1905. Some four hundred miles west and soutli- The ]\Ialdives. west of Ceylon lie the Maldive Islands, a group of atolls or rings of coral, Avhich are tributaries of the Empire. The Sultan of the Maldives sends an annual embassy and present to the Governor of Ceylon as represent- iig the King. The inhabitants are principally of Sinhalese descent with an admixture of Tamils ; their language is a dialect of Sinhalese, though traders understand some Tamil, a;id Mohammedanism is their religion. The principal island is^Male, where produce consisting of dried fish, cocoanuts, cowrie shells, tortoiseshell, woven mats, yarn and cloth, is collected for export. CHAPTER II. THE MALAY STATES. (I) The Straits Settlements. The rise and growth of British power in and^lfutclf Eastern Asia form one of the latest chapters in our Colonial history. The wealth of the " Spice Islands " had attracted the first Portuguese voyagers at the dawn of the sixteenth century to the great chain of islands that stretches from the Malay Peninsula towards New Guinea on the east and towards China on the north. In 1511 Albuquerque captured the old and famous port of Malacca, which some ranked with Orm.uz and Aden as one of the " three keys of the East." Portuguese influence rapidly spread through the whole of Malaya to the Moluccas. It declined as rapidly a century later when the Dutch came to wrest the Eastern trade from Portugal, and from their first factory, set up at Bantam in Java in 1596, extended their power throughout the Archipelago, with outlying posts in Formosa and Japan. Rival English traders found their way to En h^shSets Malaya within a few years. James Lancas- ter, acting for the East India Company, established a factory at Bantam in 1002 and brought back next year a great cargo of pepper as an earnest of the rich trade that was to be developed. But the Dutch were better supported from home, and commanded more capital and more ships than the English. The keen competition between the two nations for trade and dominion, despite an abortive agree- ment of 1619 for sharing the profits and the perils of Far Eastern commerce, soon ended in the triumph of the Dutch. The summary execution in 1623 of English traders "^i^® massacre ^^^ alleged consiHracv to seize a Dutch fort, which IS remembered as the massacre of Amboyna, disheartened the English, who could get no redress. From this time the East India Company vir- y2 G44 The Earliest British Settlements. tiially abandoned the struggle for the " Spice Islands " and concentrated its attention on India. The English factory at Bantam was maintained for a time and regarded as the centre of the Company's operations in the East. But the Dutch cap- tured it in 1682, leaving to the English only the small factories at Fort Marlborough near Bencoolen, and at Indrapura, on the west coast of Sumatra. For a century these were the only English outposts beyond India. Settlement on "^^^ gi'owth of the China trade enforced the ]\ralay the need for a convenient station where Peninsula. English merchant vessels might call for wood and water on their way between Canton and Calcutta. The East India Company, made dominant in India by the genius of Clive and Hastings, at length determined to renew its efforts in Malaya on a modest scale. A settlement on the western coast of the Malay Peninsula was obviously required. This long narrow tongue of land, stretchmg 12 deg. south- eastward from Burma and Siam, forms, with Sumatra on its west, the Malacca Straits, the natural trade route between India and China. Sumatra was partly controlled by the Dutch"; Malacca, long the chief port on the Malay coast, had been held by them since 1640. The East India Company fixed on the island of Penang, at the northern end of the Straits and some two hundred and fifty miles north-west of Malacca, as a desirable station. Francis Light, a merchant captain trading with the native state of Kedah, secured the cession of Penang from the Raja and hoisted the British flag Penang. there, August 11, 1786. He re-named it Prince of Wales's Island, on the eve of the Prince's birthday. The cession was confirmed by treaty m 1791 and ex- tended in 1800 to cover a strip of the mainland coast, two miles away. This strip has since been known as Province Wellesley, after the Marquis Wellesley, then Governor-General of India. Kedah by treaty was to receive in return an annual subsidy of ten thousand dollars. Penang was intended from the first to be a free port ; import duties were imposed only for a few years. It was used for a time as a penal settlement for Bengal, from 1796. The status of the Colony was raised in 1805, when it became a presidency under Philip Dundas as Governor, subject to the Governor-General in Bengal. Stamford Raffles was assistant secretary to Dmidas. Malacca was the next Malay port to be acquired. In the war with Holland [see pp. 60-1, 486-7), an Indian expedition Malacca and Singapore, 645 under Captain Newcome and Major Brown attacked and captured Malacca in August, 1795. Kestored to the Dutch at the peace of 1802, it was recaptured in 1807. Malacca. The old Portuguese walls were destroyed, and preparations were made to transfer the inhabitants to Penang, which was to secure the remains of Malacca's decaying trade. The project was not carried out, chiefly owing to Raffles' efforts. Malacca remained under a British resident until 1818, when, in accordance with the terms of peace, it was again handed back to the Dutch. It was finally acquired by treaty in 1825, the Dutch taking in ex- change the old English factories in Western Sumatra, where Sir Stamford Raffles had rendered services second only to those he performed in Java and Singapore. The loss of Java '^^® third and most important of the Straits and the gain Settlements, Singapore, was founded in 1819 of Singapore, by Sir Stamford Raffles, whose government of Java during the English occupation of 1811-16 forms one of the most instructive chapters in the history of native ad- ministration. The Malays were treated with sympathy ; their institutions were utilised instead of being destroyed ; their lands were granted them on leases which enabled them to benefit by their own improvements ; and forced labour and feudal dues were abolished. The fruits of the extraordinary hold which Raffles secured over the natives of Java were sacrificed by its restoration to the Dutch, and next to the American colonies Java is the greatest of the " lost posses- sions " of the Empire. Raffles occupied Singapore on January, 30, 1819, by virtue of a treaty with the local chief, the Dato Temenggong — a treaty confirmed a weelc later by his over-lord, the Sultan of Johore, the State embracing the southern ex- tremity of the peninsula, off vrhich lies Singapore. Colonel Farquhar, Resident of Malacca until its second restoration to the Dutch, beame first administrator of the new Colony. It had been, according to Malay annals, the S^sfi-a^'ort ^^^* °^ ^ g^"®^^ P^^^'®^' "^ ^^® twelfth and thir- " " teenth centuries. In 1819 it was inhabited only by a few pirates. But its fine harbour and its unique position at the narrow southern entrance of the Straits through which Indo-Chinese commerce must pass, added to the fact that it was always a free port, rapidly brought settlers and trade to Singapore. Penang and Malacca were administered at a loss, but Singapore soon became self- The Straits Settlements as a Croivn Colony. supporting, as Raffles had predicted. It liad by 1824, when it was formally ceded to Great Britain, a population of ten thousand, which was trebled in the next twelve years. Its shijDping trade in 1835-6 was nearly twice as large as that of Penang and Malacca together. For four years Singapore was, for administrative purposes, controlled by its founder, Sir Stamford Raffles, the Resident at Bencoolen. It was placed in 1823 under the direct supervision of the Bengal Government. The organisation The three Colonies of Penang, Malacca, of the Straits and Singapore, were in 1826 united as the Settlements. Incorporated Settlements, with a Governor residing at Penang, and subject as before to the govern- ment of Bengal. The seat of government was transferred in 1836 to Singapore, now unquestionably the predominant partner. On April 1, 1867, the final step was taken in the recognition of the Straits Settlements as a separate Crown Colony, with Sir Harry Ord as its first governor. The Colony has since received several small additions. The most important of them is the district of the Bindings, a strip of land on the west coast of the peninsula, eighty miles south of Penang, with the Pangkor and Sembilan islands opposite. These islands had been ceded by Perak in 1826 but had not been occupied; they were ceded anew m 1874 with the strip of coast by the Sultan of Perak, in the treaty of Pangkor. The outlying island group, kno-wn as Cocos or Keeling {see p. 758), annexed in 1857 and governed from Ceylon after 1878, was placed under the control of the Straits Settlements in 1886 ; and Christmas Island (p. 758) was added to the Colony in 1889, the year after its occupation, and annexed to Singapore in 1900. Lastly, Labuan {see p. 656), the only British Crown Colony in Borneo, was transferred to the care of the Straits Settlements at New Year, 1907. The total area of the Colony is now about sixteen hundred square miles. -^ The Straits Settlements lie entirely within ^^f Sin-a "o^re?" ^^^® tropics. Singapore is but one degree north ° ' of the equator. It is a large island, with an extreme length of twenty-seven miles, and an extreme breadth of fourteen miles, and a total area, including minor islets, of two hundred and six square miles. It is mostly flat, with a few low hills. On the north it is separated by a channel, three- quarters of a mile wide, from the mainland of Johore. On the south lies the town of Singapore, on a broad crescent-shaped bay which forms a natural harbour and is protected by small islands fhe Physical Geography of the Straits Settlements. 64t to the south. This harbour is always filled with the shipping of all nations. The southern horn of the bay is occupied by forti- fications. A short railway traverses the island, from Singapore town to the point opposite Johore town. The climate is healthy for the tropics, as the great heat is tempered by the sea breezes. The mean rainfall is heavy, amounting to ] 18 inches in 1906, or more than thrice as much as that of the British Isles. Malacca is one liundred and ten miles north- of Malacca; west of Singapore, on tlie east shore of, and almost half -way up, the Straits. The water shoals off the town, so that even small vessels have to anchor more than a mile away. The town lies at the mouth of a small river. Some of the houses are built out over the sea. At the south end is the iiesident Councillor's house on a hill ; below it is the old Dutch Stadt House, and above it are the ruins of the Portuguese cathedral, once the scene of the labours of the Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier. The town is the capital of a provmce, having a coast line of forty-two miles and varying in width from eight to twenty-five miles, with a total area of six hundred and fifty-nine square miles. It is densely wooded, but, where cleared, is extremely fertile. The mean ramfall in 1906 was a third less than that of Singapore. Next in order, one hundred and eighty miles of the Dindings, further up the Straits, is the district of the iaSce Ve'ifesley! bindings. Including the scattered islands o& its coast, it has an area of two hundred and sixty-five square miles. It is noted for its fine har- bour at Lumut, the seat of administration. Eighty miles further north is Penang. Georgetown, the capital, is situated on the east side of the island, whose steep wooded hills rise to 2,750 feet at their highest point. Province Wellesley, on the mainland opjDOsite, is, like the Dindmgs and Malacca, a densely wooded country, rising gradually from the sea towards the lofty hills which form the backbone of the peninsula. The shore is fringed with palms, beyond which are rice fields, with low hills and forest at the back. It is very fertile, and the cultivated area is proportionately larger than in the other mainland settlements, Penang has almost as moist a climate as Singapore. The Straits Settlements are governed from Singapore by a Governor, with two Resident Councillors stationed at Malacca and Penang respectively. There is an Executive Council 648 Economic Conditions. of eight members and a Legislative Council of eight o£&cial and seven unofficial members, appointed by the Crown ; the Government Singapore and Penang Chambers of Commerce population, and have the right to nominate one unofficial mem- economic ber apiece. The population, mainly Chinese, conditions. Malays and Tamils, in 1901 was 572,249, of which Singapore had 228,555, Malacca 95,487, and Penang 248,207. The thi-ee chief towns have municipalities. The pros- perity of the Settlements is mainly due to their ports, which act as distributing centres for the commerce of the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and the other Dutch possessions, Borneo, and the countries bordering the China Sea. Singapore has the largest docks in the Far East, to supplement its harbour ; these docks, constructed by the Tanjong Pagar Company, were lately taken over by the Government, the price fixed by the arbitrators in 1900 being £3,318,837. The volume of trade carried on here and at Penang, the natural outlet for the tin mines in Perak, is very great. In 1906 the imports of merchandise from abroad into the Straits Settlements were valued at £37,082,597, and the exports abroad at £32,815,236, excluding specie and the coasting trade ; 57 "8 per cent, of the imports came from, and 485 per cent, of the exports went to. Great Britain and other parts of the Empire. The main article of export is tin ; next in importance come tropical produce like pepper and spices, copra, sago, tapioca, coffee, preserved pine- apples, gambler, gum copal, rattans, and rubber, which is now receiving much attention. The Colony had in 1906 a revenue of £1,122,136 and an expenditm'e of £1,088,955. It was then, and had for years been, free from debt. The unit of currency is the silver dollar, the value of which was fixed at 2s. 4d. in January, 1906 ; the sovereign was made legal tender in the same year. (2) The Federated Malay States. The Federated States have a coast line of Area. one hundred and ninety miles on the west, and of one hundred and tlihty miles on the east of the peninsula. Their total area is estimated at twenty- six thousand three hundred and eighty square miles ; Pahang, by far the largest, contains fom-teen thousand square miles, Perak six thousand live hundred and eighty, Selangor three thousand two hundred, and Negri Sembilan two thousand six hundred square miles. The climate has been described by a Physical and Racial Factors in the Malay States. 649 friendly observer as that of "a perpetual Turkish bath " ; the average shade temperature varies from 80 to 85°F., the mean rainfall in the hilly interior from 100 to 200 inches. It is not, however, an unhealthy climate for Europeans who observe the necessary precautions. The southern Malav Peninsula is a country crmUtloSi. °^ ^^^^^ ^'^^ forests. ' Down the centre of it runs a lofty range, with peaks rising to an altitude of 7,000 feet. The hills are rich in tin, and the low- lands are extremely fertile, producing various kinds of tropical foodstuffs, dyes and spices. Many considerable rivers have their source in this range, and flow east and west through the dense tropical forests and jungles that cover most of the country; many of them are navigable fifty miles from the sea for steamers of light draught, and form natural highways of trade. The main work of British administrators has been, after restor- ing order, to supplement the rivers by roads and railways, so that the natural resources of the country might be cheaply and easily developed. The population is mixed, owing to constant immigration from Malaya, China and India. The aborigines have retreated to the central forests. The ^•Sion*^ Malays, who probably came from Southern India through Sumatra in the early middle ages, form the largest section of the population ; they have professed the Mohammedan faith since the thirteenth cen- tury. The Chinese, who opened the tin mines and have done much to promote agriculture and trade, are as numer- ous as the Malays. The third important element in the popu- lation is that of the Tamil coolies from Southern India, who come to the peninsula in large numbers to work on the planta- tions. British intervention in the affairs of the intervention Malay States began in the early seventies of the nineteenth century. The old native rule had degenerated into anarchy, largely owing to the presence of large and powerful bodies of Chinese tin miners, who quarrelled among themselves or promoted factions among the Malays. The Government of the Straits Settlements ignored the troubles of its neighbours until they began to affect British interests. In 1871 some Selangor pirates attacked a British trading boat and fired on a British warship, ''which promptly demolished their forts. At the same time, a violent struggle^between two Chinese factions was proceeding in Perak; the Chinese in 650 Their Federation iinder British Protection. Penang took an active part in this civil war, and the beaten party sought refuge on British territory, or resorted to piracy and preyed on British commerce. Sir Andrew Clarke, who took up his post as Governor of the Straits Settlements in Novf^m- ber, 1873, was instructed to employ British influence for the restoration of order in the native States. In 1874 he induced the native rulers to accept British Eesidents^n the case of Perak by the treaty of Pangkor, in the cases of Selangor and Sungei Ujong, in the country now called Negri Sembilan (or Nine States) by a display of force against pirates. In Perak there was much disaffection and the first Resident, Mr. Birch, was murdered, November 2, 1875, by a local chief. A mili- tarv expedition had therefore to be sent to pacify the country. A smaller expedition was sent at the same time to Negri Sem- bilan, with such good effect that six of the nine little States in that country agreed to federate under one ruler by 1877 ; the union of the nine was not completed till 1895. Selangoi enjoyed comparative peace from the first. The fourth of the States now federated, Pahang on the east coast, accepted British protection under a Resident in 1888 ; a rebellion which followed was easily suppressed. The whole of the peninsula south of the lying within the British sphere of influ- ence since the Anglo-French agreement of May, 189G, as to Siam. By a later agreement, of April, 1904, Great Britain disclaimed any wish to annex the northern Malay States which, including the territories of Kedali and Patani, are subject to Siamese control. The southern states fall into three cate- gories. Kelantan and Trengganu, forming the north- east section, were recognised as independent by the Anglo-Siamese treaty of Bangkok, 1820, confirmed in 1856. Johore, at the southern end of the peninsula, has self-government under a British j)ro- tectorate. The four other States — Pahang on the east between Trengganu and Johore, and Negri Sembilan, Selangor and Perak, named in their order as one goes northwards along the west coast — are protected States administered for their native rulers by British Residents. Under these Residents, the four States Organisation of ^apidlv advanced in prosperity, while retain- the Federated . ^ ■{ . ,. • .-, i.- tt -t •+ States. '^^S their native institutions. Uniiormity and economy of administration were secured by the federation of the States fi-om July 1, 1896. At Government and Natural Products. 651 the head of the federation is a Resident-General, stationed at Kuala Lumpur, the chief town of Selangor. He controls the four Eesidents and is himself subject to the Governor of the Straits Settlements, who is High Commis- sioner for the Federated Malay States. The native rulers and then- officials have been encouraged to take an interest iu the administration, and two inter-State conferences have beeu held for them, in 1897 and in 1903. For many years the States have been entirely free from debt, and have built up an elabo- rate system of roads and railways out of revenue, mainly owing to the high prosperity of the tin-mining industry. The estimated population of the Federated revenlTe and ^*^^*^^ "^ ^^*^^"^ ^^^'^'^ 800,000— Perak having products. -100,000, Selangor 210,546, Negri Sembilan 119,454 and Pahang 100,000. In Perak and Selangor, the Chinese outnumber the Malays, as the tin mines in those States have been worked for a long period by Chinese immigrants. For the same reason those two States are the most flourishing of the four. Out of their abundant sur- plus of revenue over expenditure, Selangor and Perak have been able to make up the deficit in the revenue of Pahang, the only State that does not yet pay its way. The total revenue in 1875 of Perak, Selangor and Sungei Ujong, the first of the Negri Sembilan States to receive a Resident, was only £81,000. In 1905 the revenue of the Federated States was £2,795,869, as against an expendi- ture of £2,402,879, leaving a handsome surplus. Perak con- tributed slightly over half the total revenue, Selangor rather more than a third, and Negri Sembilan a tenth ; Pahang's revenue was £61,642, showing a deficit of £79,310. The main source of revenue is an export duty on tin, which was exported to the value of eight millions sterling in 1905. A little gold is mined in Negri Sembilan and Pahang. The rubber industry is bemg developed in all the States with gi-eat rapidity. The Federated States own and work a mSTrogresl railway system connecting the three western States with Province Wellesley on the north — Kuala Prai, opposite Penang, being the terminus — and with JohoreBharu" opposite Singapore island on the south, A branch line from Malacca connects with this main trunk line, which will have a total length of about five hundred Jmiles. A network of roads, thirteen hundred and fifty miles in length, has 652 Johyre. been constructed, with eleven hundred miles of bridle paths. The Federated States possess a regiment, the Malay State Guides, nine hundred strong, lecruited from Indians, and a body of Indian and Malay native police num- bering two thousand three hundred. These armed forces have fortunately proved siifhcient to maintain order ; indeed, no serious disturbances have been reported for many years. Since the abolition of debt-slavery by Sir Hugh Low hi Perak in 1884, the condition of the native population has steadily improved, and the demand for labour generally exceeds the supply. Education is spreading rapidly. The three older States were educatmg fifteen thousand children m about two hundred and fifty schools in the year 1905. The dependent State of Johore, at the Jobore. southern ejid of the Malay Peninsula, is admmistered by its own Sultan, with the help of a few English employees. Great Britain has a treaty right, which it has never exercised, to appouit a British Agent. Johore has a coast fine of two hundred and fifty miles and an area of about nme thousand square miles. The population is estimated at two hundred thousand, of whom three- fom-ths are Chhiese. Johore is less momitainous than the States to the north, but, like them, is covered with forest or jungle. In the river valleys and on the coast near the capital of Johore, which faces Smgapore island, pepper and gambler are grown by Chmese settlers, and rubber plantations have been started. The revenue is said to be about £150,000 a year. The new railway just built by the Federated Malay States tlirough Johore is expected to develop the re- soui'ces of this httle-k]lo^^T^ coimtry. Johore's exports to Smgapore m 1906 were valued at about a million sterling, and comprised gambler, black pepper, areca nuts, copra, tapioca, tin ore and rubber. Its trade seems capable of very consider- able expansion. Johore toA\m, reached by steam ferry from the island, is a favomite place of resort for holida^^-makers from Smgapore CHAPTER III. THE FAR EAST. The Far East is not an exact expression, but it may con- veniently be used to distinguish lands washed by the Eastern Pacific from those washed by the Indian Ocean, and British possessions east, from those west, of Singapore. These far eastern lands of the empke fall under two heads — British Borneo and British possessions in China. (1) British Borneo. Physical Features The island of Borneo, the largest in the and Native world except New Guinea, is a mountainous Inhabitants, country, especially towards the north. There the mountains approach so near the sea that the rivers are unimportant. Down the west coast, and notably in Sara- wak, where the central range is at a greater distance from the sea, there are several large rivers, of which the Rejang is navigable for one hundred and fifty miles. The shores are low and marshy, and there are few good natural harbours, owing to the presence of sandbanks. The lowlands are mostly covered with jungle and forest but, where cultivated, prove extremely fertile. The country is rich in minerals, especially coal, gold and manganese. It is inhabited by a variety of races ; Malays and Kadayans, who are Mohammedans, predominate near the coast, while pagan tribes, the Bisayas, Dusuns and Muruts, inhabit the interior. There are many Chinese immigrants, especially in the towns and the mining camps. The climate is hot and very moist, but not unhealthy for Europeans. Borneo attracted both Dutch and Enghsh nr51° :to°+^„„ traders early in the seventeenth century. Urgamsation. t-,- • i • i t • <• • ^ -Neither nation made good its footmg, and renewed efforts in the eighteenth century proved vain. Only in the nineteenth century did both Great Britain and Holland succeed in establishing permanent colonies in Borneo, 654 Sarawak and Rajah Brooke. which divide the island unequally between the two Powers. Great Britain controls the north and west of Borneo, forming rather more than a fourth of the whole area. This is divided into (a) the State of Sarawak, with (b) the island of Labuan lying off the Brunei coast, (c) the Sultanate of Brunei, and {(l) the State of North Borneo, having in all an area of seventy- seven thousand square miles. The whole territory was formerly governed by the Sultans of Brunei, who by successive grants have ceded it into British hands. Labuan, a former Crown Colony, is nov/ incorporated, for administrative purposes, with the Straits Settlements, from which it is distant seven hundred and twenty-five miles. Brunei is governed, like the Federated Malay States, with the advice of a British Eesident, controlled from Singapore. North Borneo is governed by the British North Borneo Company and Sarawak by its Kajah, Sir Charles Brooke ; both are under British protection. The oldest of these British settlements is (f() Sarawak. Sarawak founded in September, 1841, by James Brooke. After retiring from the Indian army, Brooke had gone on a yachting tour in Ma- laya, in search of adventure such as might serve the interests of his country. He visited Sarawak, then a provmce of Brunei, in 1839 and, on his return the following year, helped the Malay ruler Pangeran Muda Hassim, a nephew of the Sultan of Brunei, to suppress a revolt. For his services Brooke obtained the governorship of the district of Sarawak, and established him- self at Kuching, on the Sarawak river. Supported by the Malays, land Dyaks and Chinese, and encouraged by the occa- sional visits of British warships in quest of pirates, Brooke held his own. In 1843 the Sultan granted him the J^^J'^^ Sarawak govenorship in perpetuity. An in- sui'rection at Brunei was crushed in 1846 by a naval force under Sir Thomas Cochrane. As a result of this, the Sultan ceded the island of Labuan to Great Britain by treaty, and Sir James Brooke, or Rajah Brooke, as he was now called, was appointed Commissioner, and later Governor of the new Colony. In 1851-3 the rajah's methods of rule were so sharply criticised by a section at home that Lord Aberdeen appointed a commission to inquire into the subject. Its report, presented in 1855, was on the whole favourable. Meanwhile the Sultan granted the Rajah ■^sS°k°^ another slice of territory, bringing Sarawak rule northward to the Rejang river, for Expansion and Present State of Sarawak. 655 a subsidy of £1,000 a year. A Sarawak Council, of two English officials and four native chiefs, was nominated in 185G to assist the Rajah, and a company was formed in London to exploit the abundant resources of the State. All the Rajah's work Avas almost undone in February, 1857, when the Chinese gold miners, excited by the intrigues of a secret society at Canton, rose in revolt, sacked and burnt Kuching and killed some Englishmen. The Rajah fortunately escaped and, on the arrival of a ship with supplies, was able to take the offen- sive and drive the rebels across the border. Since that time there has been no serious disturbance in Sarawak. Its bounds were further enlarged in 1861 by the acquisition of the Sago districts. In 1862 Great Britain formally acknowledged the independence of Sarawak. Rajah Brooke retired to Devon- shire and died in 1868, bequeathing Sarawak to his nephew, the present Rajah, Sir Charles Johnson Brooke. Under his rule the State has gTown considerably. A hundred miles of coast line northward up to the Baram river were acquired in 1882, and further annexations in 1885, 1890 and 1905 absorbed most of what remained of the Sultanate of Brunei. The area of the State is now estimated to ])e forty-two thousand square miles, and its coast line is three hundred and eighty miles in length. In 1888 all doubt as to the status of Sarawak was removed by its being placed under British protection, Sarawak is still, as it has always been, rresent absolute monarchy, with an administra- CondltlOnS. . ■, m, -r. • i nr n r'1 1 IT tive council. The Rajah Muda, Charles Vyner Brooke, administers the government for his father, the Rajah. The population, roughly estimated at half a million, is mixed. The capital, Kuching, has twenty-five thousand inhabi- tants ; Sibu, a large Chinese settlement on the Rejang river, and Muka, on the river of that name, are also important places. The principal industry is gold mining, carried on by Chinese labour under European supervision at Bau and Bidi in Upper Sara- wak. The rubber trade is being developed. The other chief products exported in 1907 were sago, white pepper, gutta and gambier. Antimony ore is also exported from time to time in large quantities, but is no longer smelted in the country. The foreign export trade for 1907 was valued at £751,280, the import trade at £573,019. The State has a revenue of about £150,000 ; the taxes on opium and arrack sellers, gambling houses, and pawnshops are farmed, as in the Malay States. There are no railways and few roads. The many rivers, large 656 Lahian and Brunei. and small, give easy communication by boat with almost every part of the territory. Tbe Crown Colony of Labuan island lies six (h) Labnan. miles away from the Brunei coast, off the mouth of Brunei Bay. It has an area of about thirty square miles, and its population in 1901 was 8,411, of wiiom a fifth were Chinese. Labuan is noted for its excellent port, Victoria Harbour, and for its coal mines, which are now supplemented by the coal from a mine at Brooketon, on the opposite coast. There is a railway, ten miles along, between the coal mines and the harbour, which serves as a collecting station for Borneo produce destined for the Singapore market and as a port of call. Since 1869 Labuan has been self-supporting. From 1889 to 1905 it was administered by the Governor of North Borneo. In 1906 it was placed under the Governor of the Straits Settlements, and at New Year, 1907, was definitely incorporated with that Colony. Labuan had in 1905 a revenue of £5,489, against an expenditure of £7,216. Its export trade was valued at £150,000, and ships of a total tonnage of 320,404 were entered and cleared. It is a small but useful outpost of the Empire. Next to Sarawak, as one goes north- east- {(■) Brunei, wards along the coast, comes the pro- tected State of Brunei. Eepeated annexations by Sarawak in the south and North Borneo on the north have left to this Sultanate only about three thousand square miles of territory, and a population estimated at twenty-five thousand , mostly Malays and Kadayans. It has a coast line of about fifty miles romid Brunei Bay. In 1888 the Sultan placed himself under British protection, and on January 2, 1906, he signed a treaty, similar to those concluded with the Malay States, agreeing to govern with the advice of a British Resident. The first work of the Resident has been to remove the monopolies that fettered all trade, except in rice. A loan of 200,000 dollars from the Federated Malay States formed the basis of the new system. The soil is fertile, but little culti- vated. The Brooketon coal mine, already mentioned under Labuan, is in Brunei, but has been worked by the Rajah of Sarawak for twenty years past. The capital, Brunei, has ten thousand inhabitants. The northern end of Borneo, from Brunei ^^Borne^^ on the west to St. Lucia Bay on the east, is governed by the British North Borneo British North Borneo. 657 Company, under a Royal Charter of ISTovember 1st, 1881. This company was formed, with a capital of two millions sterling, to acquire the territorial rights which the Sultans of Brunei and Sulu had ceded to a syndicate in 1877-8. It has since extended its sphere, and now controls an area of thii-tv- one thousand square miles, with a coast line of nine hundred miles. The southern boundary was fixed by agreement with Holland in 1891. Like Sarawak, North Borneo was placed under British protection in 1888. It is administered for the London Court of Directors by a Governor, who must be approved by the Colonial Secretary. The Company does not engage in trade. North Borneo is very mountainous ; there is conditions ^^^ peak, Kinabalu, thirteen thousand seven hundred feet high. The interior is mostly forest and jungle. There are several good harbours on the coast, especially Sandakan on the east and Jesselton on the west. Sandakan harbour runs inland for seventeen miles, and has a comparatively narrow entrance. On its shore stands the capital, Sandakan, which is almost midway between Hong Kong and Singapore, each about one thousand miles away. North Borneo is estimated to have a population of only one hun- dred and eighty thousand, including eighteen thousand Chinese. Consequently its resources are not yet fully developed. Gold has been found, and coal and manganese are being worked in considerable quantities. Tobacco, rubber and cocoanut plan- tations have been developed with success, and a trade in timber, salt fish and birds' nests has sprung up with Hong Kong and Singapore. A railway has been built on the west coast from Brunei Bay through Beaufort to Jesselton, and an inland line from Beaufort to Tenom is to be extended across the island to the east coast. The annual revenue is about £120,000, apart from the proceeds of land sales. The exports were valued at £505,400 in 1907. They have grown steadily for many years, and point to the increasing prosperity of the State. (2) The British in China. Though constantly visited by European traders since the early sixteenth century, China proved impregnable to would- be settlers. The little island of Macao, near Canton, was held by the Portuguese on sufferance, and the Dutch settlement in Formosa was a failura 658 The British in China. The first real European colony in China Hong Kong, was Hong Kong. This desert island, off the' mouth of the Canton river, was ceded to Great Britain in January, 1841, as part of the spoils of victory in the war that broke out in 1840. A piece of the mainland, half a mile away, the peninsula of Kowloon, was acquired in 1860 by the treaty that closed the war of 1857- 60. This mainland territory, then less than three square miles in area, was greatly extended in 1898. The whole district facing Hong Kong, from Mirs Bay on the east to Deep Bay on the west, with all the islands round, was then leased to Great Britain for ninety-nine years. Within this area of three hundred and seventy square miles lay the Chinese city of Kowloon ; it was stipulated that this should continue to be governed by Chinese officials, but the stipulation soon ceased to be operative. Hong Kong is a hilly island, stretching eleven The Tort. miles east and west, and having a width that varies from two to five miles. Its area is about twenty-nine square miles. Its granite hills rise to a height of 2,000 feet, sheltering the harbour that is formed by the island on the south and Kowloon peninsula on the north. At the foot of the hills, along the harbour, is the city of Vic- toria, one of the greatest ports in the world. Hong Kong has no history, apart from its trade. As a free port it has pro- gressed with the gradual development of Chinese commerce, and Chinese merchants have settled there in large numbers to enjoy the security of British rule. It has long been a centre for the vast emigration traffic from China to all the Malay ports and further afield. Its shipping trade has developed rapidly in the last ten years. The total tonnage of ships entered and cleared was given as 32,747,268 in 1906, or almost twice as much as the tonnage for 1897. Hong Kong, according to the latest official figures, is ranked as one of the six greatest ports of the world. Hong Kong is administered by a Governor, ^SituaUon^^ with an Executive Council of six official and two unofficial members, and a Legislative Council of seven official and six unofficial members — -three of whom are Crown nominees. The population in November, 1906, numbered 319,803— all Chinese, except 12,415, of whom a third were British, and another third European or American subjects ; in addition there were 8,835 soldiers and sailors, Hong Kong and Weihaiwei 659 The population of the leased territory. New Kowloon, was estimated at 89,000 additional to the figures just given. The revenue in the same year was slightly over 7,000,000 dollars (or £700,000) and the expenditure was a little less. The Colony had a debt equal to two years' revenue. Its political and military importance is obvious. It is the headquarters of British power in the East, being the chief British naval station in those waters and having a garrison of four thousand men. China also leased to Great Britain the terri- Weihaiwei. tory of Weihaiwei on the coast of the pro- vince of Shantung, on July 1, 1898, for so long a period as Eussia should hold Port Arthur on the opposite northern side of the Gulf of Pechili ; but the substitution of Japan for Eussia as tenant of Port Arthur has apparently not affected the British title to Weihaiwei. The leased territory lies in latitude 37°30' N., longitude 122°10' E., and comprises the Island of LiuKung and a belt of land ten English miles wide along the entire coast line. The total area is about two hundred and eighty-five square miles, and the estimated population is one hundred and fifty thousand. In addition to the leased territory there is a zone of influence lying east of the meridian 121°40, extending over an area of fiiteen hundred square miles, which has been reserved for defensive purposes, but which is administered by China.. Weihaiwei is very picturesque, and has proved to be an admirable sanatorium both for naval men and for Europeans resident in North China. At fii'st under the Admiralty, and then under the War Office, it was transferred to the Colonial Office in 1901, and has since been ruled by a civil Commis- sioner. A deficiency of revenue has been made up by Imperial grants. The chief port in the territory has been named Port Edward, and there is regular steam communication with Shanghai. It would seem natural to include Shanghai, Shanghai. for to the prosperity of its foreign settlement Englishmen have contributed very largely indeed. But the settlement is an international institution, under the protection of the Cous:uls. and does not form part of the British Empire. III. THE BRITISH WEST INDIES Situation and Physical Conditions. When Columbus discovered the New World, in October, 1492, he believed that he liad reached India, and he died in that belief. By a Papal Bull of Marcli 2, 1493, an imaginary line was drawn from the North Bole to the South Bole, starting one hundred degrees west of the Azores, and discoveries to the east of that line were to belong to Spain, and those to the west of it were to belong to Portugal. This arrangement was moditied by the treaty of Tordesillas, signed June 7, 1494, whereby Bope Alexander's line of de- marcation was moved three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Azores. By the terms of this agreement the frontier of Northern Brazil ended at the Oyapok river, and there the " Indias Occidentaes," or West Indies, began. Hence a great part of America came within the latter designation. By degrees the application of the name has been narrowed down until it has come to include only the islands of the Caribbean Sea and the neiglibouring countries on the main- land.* *An elaborate West Indian atlas was compiled by Thomas Jefferys, geographer to George III., and published in 1780. In a " General View of the West Indies " which accompanies the maps, the following statement is made respecting what is cahed the Gulf of Mexico, but ought, the writer holds, to be called the West Indian Sea :— "To this vast gulf the S^janiards have retained the name of West Indies, leaving that of North ani South America to the two opposite continents, Under this name they comprehended all the coast of the mainland which lies adjacent to it, as well as all the islands, the chains of which seem to keep back the sea which beats with violence against this part of America. It is in one of these islands of the most northern chain, the little isle of Gaanahani, at present uninhabited, that the discovery was first made of the West Indies. This gulf is the centre of the most extensive as well as most precious trade of America, and which surpasses, at least in riches, that of the East Indies. The appellation of West Indies, in its whole extent, has been adopted by the EngUsh, the Dutch, and all other navigators; and the merchants, in conforming to it, have obliged geographers to divide America into three parts, North America, the West Indies, and South America." Physical Features ; Volcanoes. 661 Tlie West Indian possessions of Gl-reat Britain lie scattered between latitude 10 deg. to 27 deg. north and longitude 57 deg. to 85 deg. west. The.y are grouped under eight separate governments, as follows : — 1. The Leeward Islands, viz., Antigua, St. Kitts (or St. Christopher's), Nevis, Anguilla, IMontserrat, Dominica, JUir- buda, Piedonda, and the Virgin Islands including Tortola and numerous islets (Capital, St. John's, Antigua). 2. Barbados (Capital, Bridgetown). 3. The Windward Islands, comprising the colonies of (i.) Grenada (Capital, St. George's) ; (ii.) St. Vincent and the Grenadines (Capital, Kingstown, St. Vincent) ; and (iii.) St. Lucia (Capital, Castries). 4. The Bahama Islands (Capital, Nassau in New Tfovi- dencc). 5. British Honduras ((Japilal, Belize), on the Bay of Hon- duras. 6. British Guiana (Capital, Georgetown), on the north- east of South America. 7. Trinidad, with Tobago. (Capital, Port of Spain, Trinidad.) 8. Jamaica, with the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands (Capital, Kingston). The British islands in the Caribbean Sea Volcanoes. are mainly of volcanic origin.* Some, like St. Kitts and Antigua, are partially covered by coral limestone. The rocks in Ijarbados are of the tertiary period, and coral reefs skirt the greater portion of the coast of the island for three miles seawards. The Bahama islands have accretions of long coral reefs. Most of the islands liave mountain ranges rising to considerable heights. The Western Peak of the Jamaica Blue Mountains is 7,423 ft. high. Even Barbados, regarded relatively as a flat country, attains a height of 1,104 It. On the islands, rivers, streams imd springs abound, and in Jamaica the Black and Cabanitta Pivers are navigable by small craft for some miles. Numerous picturesque waterfalls, especiall}' in Jamaica, and one or more sulphur springs, are to be found in almost every island. The craters of volcanoes, extinct or dormant, exist in many of the colonies. In 1692 a terrible earthquake engulfed Port lioyal in Jamaica ; and on January 14th, 1907, Kingston, was wrecked in a few seconds, in an appalling way. In 1902 * The late Professor Angelo Heilprin, the American scientist, called the Caribbean Sea the American Mediterranean, a name which seems likely " to stick," as an alternative to that which is almost the only survival of the pre- dominance of the Caribs in those parts. 662 Temperature, Rainfall and Hurricanes. the Soufrik-e at St. Vincent devastated a large part of tlie colony, killing 2,000 people.* As in 1812, when there was a like eruption, the volcanic dust was, in 1902, blown over to Barbados, for a time obscuring daylight there. On the other hand, the Soufri^re of St. Lucia has continued mildly active with remarkable equableness for centuries. Tlie Pitch Lake of Trinidad covers an area of 1 14 acres, providing asphalt for the streets of many European and American cities, and bring- ing in a revenue of £40,000 a year to the Government of the colony. Dominica has a boiling lake on its Grand Soufriere, and Grenada has the Grand Etang and Lake Antoine. The Pitons, two conical rocks oir the south-western coast of St. Lucia, lift their peaks to heights of 2,4Glft. and 2,610 ft. respectively. Lying witliin the Tropics, in the very deep Climate. waters of the Caribbean Sea, the islands enjoy one continuous sunnner varied only by rainy and dry seasons. The mean temperature is 78°E. at sea-level, where each capital town is situated, the heat being tempered by sea-breezes called " The Doctor " in " Tom Cringle's Log." In the higher lands, of course, a cooler atmosphere is found throughout the group; but it is only in Jamaica that these lands are inhabited or cultivated to any extent. Over live hundred square miles of that island are at an elevation of more than 2,000 ft., and they are traversed for the most part by excellent roads. Here the temperature rarely falls below 60 deg. or rises above 75 deg. The Bahama Islands, situated larthest to the north, although low-lying, have a " winter," when the thermometer goes as low as 54 deg. The average rainfall varies from 46 in. in Antigua, which is subject tu drought, to 112 in. in St. Vincent and 120 in. in Dominica. In Barbados the mean annual rainfall is a little over 50 in. and this island enjoys an excellent water supply, distributed by subterranean watercourses. The hurricane season is supposed to com- Hurricanes. meuce on 1st, and to last until the end of October. During that period the premium for insurance upon ships is doubled. From time to time terrible devastation has been wrought by those violent storms, which have destroyed much property and have caused many deaths, as did that at Barbados in 1831. Tlie rich soils of the various islands are well adapted to the cultivation of most of the products of tropical countries. The * This eruption was concurrent with tlie awful calamity at Martinique when tlie town of St. Pierre was wholly destroyed, with 35,000 people. British Guiana and Honduras. 663 sugar-cane grows in every island. Cocoa is now largely produced in Trinidad, Grenada, Jamaica, Dominica, and St. Lucia. Cotton flourishes in Barbados, St. Products. Vincent, St. Kitts, Antigua, Montserrat, Anguilla, Nevis, and otlier islands. Bananas, oranges and other fruits form stnjjle products of Jamaica. Limes are largely exported from Montserrat and Dominica. The Bahamas export pines and other fruits, and sisal liemp, but the main industry of the colonists is the sponge fishery. Salt is the chief product of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Jamaica rum is famous as a high-class spirit. Manjak and tar are products of Barbados, and petroleum is found in Trinidad. British Guiana (90,500 square miles) and Physical Condi- British Honduras (7,560 square miles) have tions of British Ywxch. in common with the island colonies in Houdums climate, soil, and natural features, but, from their larger size, their possibilities are on a far greater scale. British (hiiana abounds in rivers ; some, like the Demerara, Essequibo and Berbice, are considerable in size and give their names to three divisions (once separate Colonies) of the Colony. Among many physical features of interest are the Kaieteur Falls, on the Potaro Eiver with a sheer drop of 740 ft. and a further fall of 00 ft.,* and Mount Roraima, 8,000 ft. high, the top of which was long lielieved to be inaccessible, but which has been scaled of late years by Sir Everard im Thurn and a few others. The mean temperature is 82 deg. The rainfall has been as low as 50 in. in LS91 and as higii as VM in. in 1893. f The greater part of the cultivation of the Colony is on the low-lying lands of the sea-coast, where sea defences at the front and dams at the back to keep off the waters from 'the savannahs, with the need also for a system of drainage, add to the cost of cultivation. Hitherto, only the slightest of shocks of earth- quake have been known in I'.ritisli Guiana, and it has also been free from de^•astation by hurricanes. British Honduras, like lUitish Guiana, has a low-lying coast line, with high lands in the interior of the Colony. Its principal rivers are the Belize, Hondo and New Eiver. '■■■ The word Kaietrio- is given above as the name in common use. Dr. Carl Bovallius, of the University of Upsala, who has for years lived among the Indians of Central and South America, says that the name should be Kaieiu/J-, tuk being the Indian word for fall. The word signifies "Old Man's Fall." t A rainfall like that in 1893 gives point to the local saying that the year is divided by two long rainy seasons and a short one. In the first six months of 1907 98 in. of rain fell at Georgetown. 664 West Indian History. Mahogany, logwood and tropical fruits are its principal exports. The temperature ranges from 50 to 98 deg., but the heat is tempered by sea-breezes. The average rainfall is 81 in. The Cockscomb mountains rise to a height of 4,000 ft. Breaking up the ^^^^^^P ^^'^ annexation in 1580, of Portugal Spanish Monopoly and the Portuguese possessions to the Spanish of the New Crown, seemed to complete the Spanish World. claim to a monopoly of the New World and its trade. From tlie time of the discovery, however, that claim had not been admitted by the kings of Prance and England, and towards the end of the sixteenth century the revolted Hollanders also disputed it. The fame of the vast wealth that was being poured into Spain from the New AVorld excited the enterprise of the mariners of England, and of those of Devonshire especially. Of the latter, Capt. John Hawkins made voyages to the coast of Guinea, where he freighted his ship with Africans, then carried them to the island of Hispaniola and sold them into slavery to the Spanish colonists, and thus began the English trade in African slaves. Things went fairly well with the English adventurers until 1568, when Hawkins and his kinsman, young Capt. Francis Drake, were treacherously set upon by the Spaniards at St. John d'Ulloa Drake, or San Juan de Ulua (fifteen miles south of Vera Cruz in Mexico) and despoiled of their goods. Drake on this occasion narrowly escaped with his life. Failing to ol>tain redress for the loss he suffered, Drake vowed that he would right himself by his own hand, and this he did full well. With the help of others who adventured their money, while he found the men and led the expedition, the future naval hero jdundered the Spanish settlements and otherwise inflicted great injury upon them. This was all done at his own personal risk, for it was not until 1585 that he commanded a fleet in the Caril)bean Sea by virtue of a commission from Queen Elizabeth. Philip II. of Spain gave as one of his reasons for sending the Armada of 1588 against England, the depredations by the English upon the Spanish settlements in America. Wlien the Spanish fleet did arrive in the Channel, besides the Admirals Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, there were several captains of ships who had taken part in the struggles in the Caribbean Sea, and had made it a training place for the English Navy. After the Armada many an Englisli adventurer sailed for the West Indies, where plunder was sought with varying Drake, Ralegh and the Beginnings of British Dominion. 065 success. The general result was the weakening of the power of Spain in that region, by intlicting heavy losses upon the settlements, by capturing Spanish vessels, and by keeping the colonists in a constant state of alarm. Fortune, however, forsook the expedition wliich sailed in 1595, under Drake and Hawkins, when an unsuccessful attack was made upon San Juan in Porto llico. Into the sea near that town the body of Hawkins was dropped on November 15, 1595. On January 29, 15 90, Drake's body was also consigned to the deep, to the eastward of the Castle of St. Philip, at Porto I'ello. It is notable that in 1590, the year after the failure of Drake and Hawkins at San Juan, George Clifford, the adventurous Earl of Cumberland, took Porto Pico and shipped the garrison off to Cartagena. In 1595 Sir Walter Palegh visited the Ralegh. West Indies in search of M Dorado. He spent some time at Trinidad, where he left his ships while he and (jthers found their way up the (Jrinoco liiver in barges and boats. Tlie friendly relations with the aborigines established by Palegh on this occasion and on his subsequent voyage to the West Indies in 1017-18, were of great service to the English, when they sought to found colonies in Guiana. Palegh intended to start an English colony on the banks of the Crinoco. His purpose was frustrated by a series of adverse events, culminating in his imprisonment in the Tower of London. Even when there immured he sent messages to the Indians of Guiana. The attempts of Charles Leigh, in 1604-05, and of Pobert Harcourt, of Stanton Harcourt, in Oxfordshire, in 1609-17, to found settlements on the Wiapoco, or Oyapok, in Guiana, ])roved failures, although the colonists were welcomed by the Indians for Palegh's sake. Between 1620 and 1032 Capt. lioger North, who had been one of Sir AValter Palegh's com- rades in that fatal voyage of 1017-18, made various attempts to colonise on the left bank of the Piver Amazon, but without success. Capt> Thomas Warner was one (^f those The Mother ^^.j^^ accompanied Capt. Poger North to the WeTlndies! Amazon in 1020. When North left the Amazon for England he appointed Capt. Thomas Paintou as deputy-governor of the settlement. I'ainton, in friendly talk, advised Warner to attempt a settlement at St. Christopher's Island, in tlie Caribl>ees; and there in 1623 Warner founded the Mother Cohju)- of Ijuth the English and the French dominions in the (^,'ariljbean Sea. 666 The earliest Oohnies ; St. Kitts. (1) The Leeward Islands. This mother colony uow forms one of the Leeward Islands which comprise the Presidencies of Antigua, St. Kitts-Nevis- Aaguilla, Dominica, Montserrat, and the Virgin Islands. The Islands, which formerly were separate Colonies, each ha\'iiig its own Go\'ernment,\vcre constituted into a single Federal Colony in 1871 by Act of rarliament (34 and 35 Vict, cap. 107). There is a Federal Legislaxive ("ouncil, consisting of eight officials and eight electivcs — three for Antigua, three for St. Kitts-Nevis and two for Dominica. There are no electi\'es for Montserrat and the Virgin Islands, whicli are represented by their Com- ndssioners, who sit in the Council as two of the officials. The Goveruor-in-Chief, whose lieadcj[uarters are at Antigua, is President of the Federal Council. Besides the I'ederal Council there are local legislati\c bodies, excepting in the Virgin Islands, for wliidi the ( !overnor-in-('hicf makes tlie laws. Disestablislmicnt and ilisendowment are being gradually carried out in the Leeward Islands. Elementary education is denominational and State-aided, and except in the Virgin Islands and INIontserrat, provision is made for secondary edu- cation. The Im[)erial Departnu-*nt of Agriculture, under Sir Daniel Morris, has done much to promote the cidtivation of cotton and other products. St. Christopher's Island, connnijidy c.dled St. Kitts. St. Kitts, was settled in 1G23 b\' a part}' of Englishmen under Cai)t. (afterwards Sir) Thomas Warner, who " thought it would be a very con- venient place for ye planting of toljaccoes, which tlien was a rich commoditie." In 1625 a Norman gentleman, I'ierre Belain, Sieur d'Esnambuc, put in at St. Kitts after liaving had a severe light near one of the Cayman Islands with a Spanish ^■essel. He was invited by the English to settle on the island, as the Caribs were expected from the neighbouring islands to avenge tlie expulsion of their country- men by the English. The Caribs came, as expected, and were defeated by the Europeans. In 1027 the Island was divided between the two parties, the English taking the middle portion and French the two ends. It was further agreed that, sliould war break out between the parent States, the colonists should remain at peace. In 1629 a Spanish fleet, under Admiral Frederigo de Toledo, attacked the colonists, carried off some and shipped away others, while a remnant iled to the woods and others escaped to neighbouring islands, later on to return to their plantations. Nevis and Antigua. 667 Notwithstanding some differences, the two nations lived peacefully together nntil 1666, From that time until 1713, when, by the Treaty of Utrecht, the whole of the Island was ceded to Great I>ritain, there were frequent struggles for mastery, with varying success. In 1782 St. Khts was captured by the French, but was restored to Great I'ritain in the following year. The chief town of the island is Basseterre with a population of about ten thousand. Tobacco, cotton and indigo were the articles first cultivated by the colonists ; but in time, as in tlie other West Indian Colonies, sugar became the great staple. Nevis was first settled in 1628 by some Nevis. ])lanters from St. Kitts. Its prosperity was interrupted in 1629 by the Spanish fleet, which visited it before attacking St. Kitts. It sul)sequently suffered much from Freneh invasions, while of hurricanes and earthquakes it has had its sliare. On April :50, 1680, James- town, its first capital, was engulfed with its inhabitants ; in 1737 a terrible blight destroyed vegetation of all kinds ; and in ] 772 was the great hurricane. On the other hand, in spite of all its trials the Colony prospei-ed highly during the days of slavery. The IJoyal African Company made Nevis the slave market for the Leeward Islands, and the island was for a short time the seat of go\ernnient for the group. In little Nevis was born Alexander Hamilton, the archbuilder of the Federal Government of the United States, and at Nevis Horatio Nelson was married, in March, 1787, to Frances Woolward, then the widow of Dr. Nisl)et. The chief town is Charlestown with a population of about iifteen hundred. "Antigua was settled in 1632 by colonists Antigua. from St. Kitts, led by Capt. Edward Warner, eldest son of Sir Thomas Warner. The settlers were for many years harassed by incursions of the Cari])S, who, in 1640, carried oh' the Governor's wife and two children. After the triumph of the parliamentary party in England, a large numlier of Iloyalists found a home in Antigua, as well as in St. Kitts and Nevis. The French captured Antigua in 1666, but restored it in the ibllowing year. Its colonists subsequently joined those of Barbados in several expeditions against the French settlements. The most terrible earthquake that visited Antigua was that on February 8, 1843, when most of the sugar works were thrown down, and the cathedral in St. John's and several churches and chapels in the island were destroyed, besides 668 MontserrcU and the Virgin Islands. houses and other buiklings mnumerable. Distressing droughts were frequent in former times. So great was the scarcity of wat.er in 1731 that a single pail of it sold for 3s. In 1789, rain did not fall for seven months, causing the destruction of the canes, while animals perished for want of water. A system of water conser^•ancy has since greatly benefited the island. On December 7, 1710, Daniel Park, Governor of the Leeward Ishands, was slain at St. John's, in an uprising of the colonists. In view of the ill-fated man's outrageous mis- conduct, the Home Government issued a general pardon to all concerned in his death. At English Harbour, where a dock- yard was maintained down to the latter years of the nineteenth century, and where Nelson, Prince William Henry (after- wards William IV.), and many a na^'al hero foregathered, another tragedy was enacted in 1798. There Lord Camelford, as superior in rank to Lieut. Peterson, of the navy, shot the latter dead on his refusing to obey an order. At a subsequent court-martial the deed was held to be justified in the cause of discipline. The sugar industry of Antigua had been reduced to extremities, but a revival has taken place since the aboli- tion of bounties and the introduction of the central factory system. In 1632, Montserrat was settled by colo- Montserrat. nists from St. Kitts, most of whom were Irishmen and Roman Catholics. The island was for years regarded as an Irish rather than an English colony. Montserrat was from time to time taken by the French, who were welcomed by the Irish. Many Irish names are yet borne by the inhabitants, including those of mixed race and the blacks. It was of the blacks of this island that the story used to be told how, as a ship came into port with passengers from Ireland, the latter were hailed by black boatmen who had caught the Irish brogue : " All, Paddy, how are you ? " " Oh ! Y're become black already," exclaimed one of the newcomers. The cultivation ot the lime-tree has brought Montserrat world-wide fame for its lime-juice; and sea-island cotton is rapidly becoming another substantial item of its exports. Some of the Virgin Islands belong to '^Islliidf" Denmark. Of those belonging to Great Britain the principal is Tortula. There the Commissioner resides, and administers the affairs of the Dominica and Barbados. GGO group, under the direetiou of the Goveruor-in-fliief at Antigua. Prince Maurice, brother of Prince Pupert, lost his life in 16r)2 in a hurricane off these islands. The right to the possession of Dominica Dominica. was long in dispute between France and Great P.ritain. At last, in 1748, the island was declared to belong to the Caribs, and to be "neutral" between tlie two European Powers. Then, from 1756 to 180.5, there was fighting for it at intervals, it being in the end retained under the British flag. Survivals from the French rule are to be found in the observance of the Poman Catholic religion and the use of a patois of the French language by a majority of the inhabitants. It was off Dominica, on April 12, 1782, that Podney gained his victory over De Grasse, thereby enabling the British Government to make peace with its enemies on honourable terms (see p. 77). The cultivation of cocoa, limes, spices, and tropical fruits has taken the place of sugar ; and this fine island seems again to have entered upon a period of prosperity. (2) Baebados. Barbados is noted on several maps of the sixteenth cen- tury under the name of Bernados, San Bernado, and, as early as 1542, as Barbudoss. It was ne^■er a dwelling-place of the Caribs, though they visited it from time to time to hunt wild hogs, which came from swine left at the island by the Portuguese mariner who is said to ha\-e gi\-en the island its name. -p. In 1605 a >essel, named the " Olive Blos- Settlement. s^^^^^ ''^'^'' ^i^' Alexander Barbados. Cochrane and Sir George Beckwith set out on their victorious expedition against the French islands in 1809, the inhabitants of Bridgetown, the capital of the island, have seen fleets and squadrons assembled in Carlisle Bay for the protection of the English Colonies in the "West Indies and for expeditions against those belonging to foreign Bowers. In some of these expeditions the Barbadians played an active part, and in 1804 the merchants of the Colony made a present to the British Government of the " Barbados " frigate, which did good service in capturing French privateers. From Sir George Ayscue to Lord Dun- donald, most of the famous admirals of Britain, including Benbow, Hawke, Ilodney, Jervis, Collingwood and Nelson, have anchored in Carlisle Bay. It was here that Nelson in 1777, as a middy in the " Lowestoffe," first saw service in the AVest Indies. Here it was that, annoyed with some of the local authorities for their not supporting him, wlicn cajjtain of the "Boreas," in enfoiving the Navigation Acts, he date! his 6?2 Barbadian InstittUions. letters from "Barbarous Island" to his "Dearest Fanny" the little widow Nisbet at Nevis; and here it was that, us Admiral Lord Nelson, in the "Victory," he anchored in June, 1805, on his arrival from Europe in chase of the combined French and Spanish fleets : and hence he sailed, after the briefest stay, for Trinidad, where he luid hoped to make the Gulf of Paria as famous as the Nile. Carlisle Bay, called for a short time Doucaster Bay, after another title of the Lord Proprietor and also called Hawley Bay during the Commonwealth, is thus a classic spot in British naval story. ' , ,. Barbados has possessed representative in- Barbadian , ■. ,• 1 11 ,■ r ■. Institutions, stitutions and annual elections from its earliest settlement; and, with the single exception of the Bahamas, is the only colony in the Caribbean Sea that retains the once prevalent constitution of Governor, Council and Assembly. In 1660 the annual election of the Assembly was established by statute. To bring the Legis- lature into touch with the Government, an Executive Com- mittee was instituted in 1881, which iuckides, besides the Governor's Privy Councillors, four JMembers of Assembly and one ]\lember of the Legislati\e Council, nominated by the Governor. The pri\'ilege of appointing the Treasurer of the Colony w^as confirmed to the Assembly by Queen Anne. Barbados being now one of the most thickly peopled spots in the world, with an abundant supply of labourers of African descent, it is hard to realise the extent to which, in the seventeenth century, white bond-servants were employed and with what severity they were worked. Besides these, numbers of English, Scotch and Iiish, taken prisoners during the Civil War and after Monmouth's rebellion and the Jacobite risings, were shipped to Barbados and other plantations. Taken altogether, the planters seem to have treated their African slaves well, which may account for the fact that there is to-day no more patriotic person than the Black Barbadian. The Church of England, established and endowed, con- tinues to be the State Church of " Little England " as of Old England, and Barbados has a bishop of its own. Education, elementary, secondary and first grade, is State-aided, and Barbados has been singularly fortunate in having enjoyed the presence of such educators as Binder, liawle, ]\[itchinson and Horace Deighton, and such institutions as Harrison College, the Lodge School and Codrington College. Barbados, like its neighbours, ^v•as almost Agricultural enished down by the operation of bounties Iroductb. upon foreign sugai-. The abolition of that Barbadian Products : Sugar and Eminent Men. 673 system of fiscal warfaro, more dest^ueti^•e than military war- fare, has given a ehauee of life to the sngar industry. A great many years ago, writers alxmt Uarbadcs used to foretell that the productiveness of the isLmd would shortly cease, as the soil would be soon worn out. On the contrary,, by the application of science to agriculture, the island has produced much larger crops than in those days. A crop of 22,000 tons was considered very large at the time of the emancipa- tion of the slaves ; now anything under 50,000 tons is con- sidered only moderate. Excellent sea-island cotton is nov/ grown there, and thi.'^ may ere long )»ecome a considerable item of export, as it used to bo in the seventeenth century. Whatever changes may take place in the agriculture of the Colony, however, Barbados, by its outstandhig situation in the Caribbean Sea, will alwavfj be a centre of commerce in tlie AVest Indies. From its overflowing population — in 1907 ^^'^■J^^'^'^^ o\-er twelve hundred to the square mile — this a loa . Colony has helped to people the neighbouring Indies, foreign as well as British. Since 1G65, when Sir ■dohn Colleton and Sir John Yeamaus, two leading planters of Barbados, took a number of colonists to found a settle- ment at Cape Fear, in Carolina, numbers of the islanders have removed to the United States. And here it may be noted that Barbados was the only place ever visited by the father of his country, George Washington, outside of the LTnited States. While Barbados has sent her sons to fill the highest places in the neighbouring colonies, and also in the East, she htis given many officers to the British Navy and Army, while others have adorned the learned professions. Two Barbadians — Hampden of Hereford, and Hinds of Norwich — sat as bishops in the House of Lords at the same time. A head master of the Charterhouse (Elder) and an editor of Tke Times (Chenery, the Arabic scholar) were Barbadians ; and Sir Arthur Pigott, Attorney-G-eneral of England in "All the Talents" ]\Iinistry( 1806), wa.^ of Barbadian parentage. (o) The Windward Islands. The Government of theAYindward Islands includes Grenada, St. Vincent and St. Lucia, with their dependencies. The islands are not federated like the Leeward Isles, but are separate Crown Colonies, grouped together under a Governor- in-Chief whose headquarters are at Grenada. St. Vincent and 674 The Windward Islands. St. Lucia have their own administrators, subordinate to the Governor. Grenada and St. A'incent formerly enjoyed repre- sentative government, but St. Lucia has always l^een a Crown Colony. The three islands weie at one time inhabited by Caribs, ■with St. Vincent as their stronghold. Tliere a race of black Caribs also grew wg from the intermixture of the aboriginal Caribs with some Africans who were shipwrecked on the island in the seventeenth century. In St. Vincent alone is there now a remnant of the Caribs, and even tliose are of mixed descent. The struggle between the Fj-ench and British for the posses- sion of these islands, and especially for St. Lucia, lasted lor years. In 1795 and 1796 all the three islands suffered the horrors of an insurrection stirred up by A^ictor LIugues, who had come out to Guadeloupe as a representative of the National Convention. In St. Lucia and Grenada Lrench possession has left its mark upon the leligion'^ and the language of t!ie peasantry, the majority of whom are Eoman Catholics and speak a French jjo/of-?. The Windward Islands form a See of the Anglican Church, Avhich is administered by the Bishop of Barbados. The Roman Catholics of these islands come within the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Port of Spain in Trinidad. Disestablishment and disendowment have been carried out in Grenada and St. Vincent ; but in St. Lucia both the Iloman and Anglican Churches receive grants from the Legislature. Elementary and secondary education are state-aided in these islands, but Grenada has some Government schools for elementary educa- tion. An attempt to fuund an English colony Grenada. at Grenada was made by some London merchants in 1609. Tlie Caribs, however, instigated by the Spaniards at Trinidad, set upon the colonists and killed some, and those who survived returned to England. Du Parquet, a nephew of d'Esnambuc {sec p. 6(jG), founded a French colony at Grenada in 1650. The Caribs were soon deci- mated by the French, and the name la Morne des Smiteurs, or Leapers' Hill, which survives to this day in the name of the town of Sauteurs, bears testimony to the determination of some of the Caribs to cast themselves into the sea rather than remain subject to the French. By 1762, when it surrendered to a British force under Commodore S wanton, Grenada had "begun to flourish, and it continued to prosper under British rule. In 1779 the island was retaken by the French, after a Grenada and St. Vincent. 675 gallant resistance b}^ the Governor, Lord Macartney, wlio afterwards declined the Governor-Generalship of Bengal; but it was restored to Great Britain in 1783. Grenada suffered extremely from the terrible insurrection of 1795-6, during which Lieutenant-Governor Niuian Home and several of the principal inhabitants were slaughtered. The famous case of Campbell versus Hall, i)i which Lord Mansfield delivered judgment against the Crown, originated in this island. The result was that Grenada and the other islands ceded in 1763 escaped liability to pay the 4i per cent, duty, which Barbados and the older British islands had to pay till 1838 (see p. 671). The cultivation of cocoa and spices has made Grenada one of the most prosperous spots in the Empire. Its happy con- dition is, in part, due to the presence of a large body of peasant proprietors. Like St. Lucia, it has several good harbours. 8t. George's, its capital, was at one time the head- quarters of the Eoyal Mail Steam Packet Company. In 1660, an agreement was made between 8t. Vincent, the French and English on the one hand, and the Caribs on the other, that the latter should be left in possession of St. Vincent and Dominica, while the Europeans might make settlements on the other islands. The French and English, ne^'ertheless, kept nibbling at St. Vincent, even though in 1718 they agreed, at Aix-la- Chapelle (p. 669), that the island should be " neutral." When it was captured by the Britisli in 1762, it contained eight hundred whites and three thousand slaves. Like Grenada, St. Vincent suffered greatly from the insur- rection of 1795-96. "When the revolt was suppressed, five thousand Caribs were transported .to Piuatan, off the Mosquito Coast. Besides having its share in the hurricanes that have ravaged other colonies, such as those of 1780 and 1898, the island has suffered from two appalling eruptions of the volcano known by its French name of Soufriere, in 1812 and 1902. Latterly the Soufriere has been quiescent, and the island is rapidly recovering from the devastation of 1902. Long famous for its arrowroot, St. Vincent promises to p>ro- duce a considerable quantity of sea-island cotton, the culti- vation of which has been fostered by the Imperial Department of Agriculture. The long-continued and fierce struggle for St. Lucia. the possession of St. Lucia between the French and the British nations ended only on June 22, 1803, when j\Iorne Fortunee was carried by storm and z2 676 St. Lucia and the BaJiamas. the island was surrendered unconditionally to Commodore Sir ►Samuel Hood and General Grinfield. The "Faithful" Island, as the Xational Convention had styled it in 1791, was held by Lord Eodney to be of high strategical importance ; and General Xogues, Governor in 1803, had suggested to Bona- parte, then First Consul, that St. Lucia might be made " the Gibraltar of the Gulf of Mexico." In quite recent times the line harbour of Castries was made a naval station and was fortified accordingly ; but in 1906 the Imperial troops were withdrawn from the Colony. The port of Castries is mucli frequented by steamers in need of coal. Only a comparatively small portion of the island has hitherto been brought under cultivation : and, thougli the central factory system was introduced several years ago, sugai- lias not been largely exported. The cultivation of cocoa is, however, on the increase. Eoads are much needed for the development of St. Lucia's al)undant resources. Her geo- graphical situation and good harbours are bound to give this island increased trade, as the commerce of tlie West Indies develops. English commercial law was introduced in 1827, -and a new Charter of Justice was granted in 1831. English pro- cedure and rules of evidence in criminal cases were adopted in ISo."), and trial by jury in criminal cases was instituted in 1848. The use of the French language in the Courts was abolished in 1848. In 1879 a code of civil laws, framed upon the principles of the old French law of the island, with local modifications, came into force. Its authors were Sir William Des A^oeux, then Administrator of the CJovernment, and Chief Justice Armstrong, both of whom had l)een meml>ers of the Canadian Bar. In 1851 an Electoral INIunicipal Council was granted to Castries ; this has since been replaced by a. Town Board.. (4) The Baham.\.s. Although the Bahamas were the first part Their History, of the Xew World discovered by Columbus in 1492, the Spaniards did not occupy them, but carried away the Indians to San Domingo to woi'k in the mines or to dive for pearls. It was not until the seventeenth century that the islands were frequented by Acssels from Ber- muda, for the gathering of salt at Eleuthera. In 1670 the proprietors of Carolina obtained a grant of the islands from Charles II., on a favourable report "of them made by Capt. Sayle, who had been shipwrecked at one of the islands, named Pfodwis and Institidions of the Bahamas. 677 by him New Providence. On it is situated the pi-esent capital, Nassau. After being plundered by the Spaniards in 1(J84, New Pro- vidence was re-settled in 1690. In 1703 the colony was plundered by French and Spaniards, who carried off the ( Jovernor and many negroes ; I'eturning later in the year they abducted the remaining blacks. In 1708 the settlement was deserted, and the Bahamas then became a nest for pirates. In 1718, however, ('apt. Woodes Rogers, who in 1709 had rescued Alexander Selkirk from the island of Juan Fernandez, was sent out as GoAcruor of the Bahamas, with a sufficient force to suppress the pirates, a service which- was promptly effected by that old buccaneer. In 1776 Nev»r Providence was taken by an American Ecvolutionary squadron under Com- modore Hopkins, but no garrison was left behind. The Spanish took the island in 1781, but in 1783 it was re-taken by American Loyalists under Col. Ddvaux. During the American Civil War, Nassau was much used by blockade- runners. It is now a fashionable winter resort for Americans i'rom both Nortli and South. The exports consist mainly of sponges, Products. fruits and sisal hemp. Little cotton is culti- vated, although cotton grown in the island has long been held in the highest estimation. Its cultivation Vv-as carried on by American Loyalists from Ceorgia, who settled in the Bahamas after the peace of 1783 (sec also pp. 79, 263, 278), In 1786 seeds of the cotton so grown were sent to Governor Tatnall of Georgia, and to others of that State, The Bahama plant " adapted itself to the climate, and every successive year, from 1787 onwards, saw the long staple cotton extending itself along the shores of South Carolina and Georgia." The Bahamas have a representative Legis- Institutions. lature of the old kind, a Governor, Council and Assembly ; there is also an Executive ( 'ouncil. Na.ssau is the seat of an Anglican bishopric, but dis- est^ablishment and disendowment have almost been completed. Unsectarian elementary schools are provided by the Govern- ment where education is free. Some other schools receive Statti aid, and there are three schools for higher education in Nassau. (5) British Honuur.\.s. British Honduras is the outcome of a settlement on the IJiver Belize, made by retired bucx^aneers, under Willis, who in 1640 was driven by the French out of Tortuga, of whicli •'Bulletin No. 33 (189G) of the Department of Agriculuire, U.S.A." 678 British Honduras. he had been elected Governor by his English comrades in 1638. The settlers cut mahogany and logwood and traded witli the North American Colonies and witli History. the Dutch of Ouragoa, Subject in a measure to the intervention of the Governor of Jamaica, the settlers lived for a number of years under a primitive system of self-government. When seiious trouble arose the Governor of Jamaica sent a \varship to Ijelize to restore order. The Spaniards highly resented the settlement by the IJaymen, and time after time they tried to destroy it. The Baynien at one time were so hlled with despair by these frequent attacks, that they contemplated abandoning the settlement. In 1798, however, under the leadership of Colonel Thomas Barrow, their Superintendent, assisted by Capt. Moss, of the sloop-of-war Merlin, and a small number of soldiers, the colonists inflicted a decisive defeat upon a Spanish force of two thousand troops sent in thirty-one vessels under Field-Mar- shal Arthur (/Niel, Captain-General of Yucatan, for the capture of Belize. From tliat fateful September 10, 1798, British Honduras has remained undisturbed under the British flag. Besides mahogany, logwood, and cedar, : Tracle and Honduras produces much tropical fruit, the uommerce. i , ■ p ^ • ^ • i i . marketing of which is arranged by two syn- dicates. The trade of the Colony is steadily growing. The colonistsarenaturallyanxious togetat the rich lands and forests of the interior and are desirous of developing the country by means of railways. In 1907 a line to Stann Creek was begun by order of the Secretary of State. The settlement was governed by a Supeiin- Institutions. tendent, subordinate to the Governor of Jamaica, until 18C2, when it was declared to be a Colony, to be administered by a Lieutenant-GoAernor, under the Governor of Jamaica. In 1884 it was made an independent Colony. There is a Legislative Council, consist- ing of five unofficial members and three officials besides the Governor, who presides. The affairs of Belize and of other towns are administered by local boards. The Anglican and Presbyterian Churches have been dis- established and disendowed, and no grants are made for religion. During the episcopate of ])r. Ormsby, from 1884 to 1907, the number of clergy increased from two in })riests' orders in the Colony and two on the Isthmus of Tanama, to eighteen in priests' and four in deacons' orders. Elementar}- schools are State-aided, the denominational system prevails, and provision is made for secondarjy education. History and Development of British Guiana. 079 (6) British CJuiaxa. The country known since 1831 as liiitisli Its History. Oiiiana, wliich consists of Demerara, Esse- <|uibo and ]>erbice, liad been three several times in the tem[)orary possession of Great Britain before it was finally ceded by Holland in IS 14. Tlie old Dutch settlements therein comprised had made little progress until the middle of the eighteenth century, when Demerara and Essequibo were thrown open to all nations. Many persons then came from tlie British West Indies, anc! especially from Barbados, who established plantations of sugar-cane, coffee and cotton on the rich coast lands aiid the banks of the rivers. Many more came when in 178^^ Tobago was ceded to France. By 1803, when the settlements capitulated to a British force, colonists in Guiana owed British merchants about ten millions sterling. Area and '^^^^ boundaries of British Guiana having Development. ^^^-^^^ settled with Venezuela by the award of the arbitration tribunal at Paris in 1899, and with Brazil by the award of the King of Italy in 1904, the area of the Colony is now estimated at nearly ninety thousand five hundred square miles. Of this only one hundred and thirty square miles are under cultivation, or thirty-six square miles less than the area of Barbados.* One of the causes of this lack of development was the restrictive Crown Lands regulations which existed from 18o9 to 1887. During the forty-eight years (jf the continuance of that system, besides grants of small plots in towns, only twenty-two grants of Crown land were made in out-districts, of which two were to sugar plantations. Not a single East Indian or Chinese name appeared among the grantees. During that period about thirty thousand coolies returned to India, some of whom might liave remained in the Colony had land been easily obtainable. They took with them about £500,000 in cash, and it cost about £300,000 to send them back. At the instance of ISir Charles liruce, then Government Secretary, more liberal regu- lations came into force in April, 1890. Under these two hundred and fifty-seven grants were issued within eight years. Under regulations made in 1898, one thousand seven hundred and forty grants liad been issued to March 31, 1907, while the taking up of Crown lands has since been * Sir Charles Bruce stated the case admirably when he pointed out that, while British Guiana is as large as Great Britain, the area cultivated is only equal to the size of the Isle of Wight. 680 Church, Education, avid Prodiwts. continuous. In these regulations provision Wc'is made for grants o\' homesteads, at the instance of Sir Hemy Eovell, then xVttorney - General. The reduction in the price of Crown lands has, at the same time, had its influence u])on the price demanded by private owners. The establishment i>f [teasant proprietors now goes stead- ily on, man\' of the holdings being planted with rice. With a population of only three souls to the square mile, the chief want of British Guiana is immigra- tion, „, , , British Guiana is the See of an Anglican Education. Bishopric, established in 1842, and filled for fifty years continuously by Di-. William Piercy Austin, the first Bishop ; but since 1899 the Church has been disestablished and disendowed. Elementary educa- tion is denominational and State-aided. Secondary education is provided at the Queen's College, which is maintained by the Colony, at a grammar school carried on by the Boman ( 'atholic clergy, and b}' private enterprise. In the early years of the nineteenth cen- Products. tur}- cotton and coffee were extensively culti- \ ated ; but, in the course of time, the vast production of cotton in the United States and of coffee in Brazil led the planters of Guiana to substitute the •sugar-cane for those products. Thenceforward sugar-making became the great business of the Colony, and Demerara ''crystals" became a standard for high-class sugar in the markets of the world. The planters of the Colony have continually adopted meclianical and other improAcmeuts in the tillage of their fields and in tlie manufacture of their sugars. The aid of chemistry is also utilised, and in this direction good service has been rendered by the Directoi- of Science and Agriculture in the colony. The export of timl)e]- dates from 1804. Among the woods of the Colony is the world-famous Greenheart, which is much in demand for harbour works. Balatta, allied to rubber, has been an item of export since the 'sixties of the nineteenth century. Eubber itself (scqrium) is indigenous to the country and its cultivation has been begun. AVhen the French occupied the Colony in 1782. they planted rice in Essequibo to feed the troops. The rice industry of the Colony must, however, be regarded as an outcome of the immigration of East Indians, which since 1842 has been promoted by the planters for the supply of labourers to the sugar estates. Bice promises to be a rWid of the sugar industry. The mining industry was Political Organisation. 681 long kept back on account of tlie question of boundaries with Venezuela. From 1886, however, when (Jovernor Sir Henry Irving obtained the authority of the Home (iovernment to issue licences for gold-seeking, the gold industry has become an important factor in the opening up of the interior of the Colony. Want of means of transit and want of capital have delayed the development of the gold and dianKjnd industries, but that gold and diamonds do exist has been demonstrated beyond dispute. The Legislature of Ihitish (juiana is a Institutions, survival from Dutch rule. The Court of Policy makes the general laws of the Colon}^ but, when expenditure has to be provided for, six Financial Representatives elected by qualified voters join the Court of Policy, and the body thus asseml)led is called the- Combined Court. The Court of Policy consists of eight elective-s and eight officials. The Governor is one of the latter and is the President of each Court. There is also an Executive Coun- cil. Ptoman-Dutch law, modified by Orders in Council and Colonial ordinances, prevails in civil matters. The lawjof inherit- tance of North Holland rules in Demerara and Essequibo, and that of South Holland in Berbice. The P^nglish language was substituted for the Dutch in legal proceedings in 1812. The first trial by jury in a criminal case took place on January 26, 1847. J , Georgetown, the capital of the Colony, Government. ^''"'^^ constituted a municipality in 1837. It has a population of about sixty thousand Lying about 5 ft. below high-water mark at spring tides, and within a few degrees of the Equator, the sanitary condition ot the city is exceptionally good for a tropical town, thanks to the vigilance and good management of the municipality and its town superintendent. New Amsterdam, the second town of the Colony, is the capital of Berbice. It was made a municipality in 1891. Village councils were established in 1892, under a law framed by Sir John Carrington, then Attorney-General, and sanitary districts liave been worked under the supervision of the Central Board of Health. A Local Government Ordinance was passed in 1907, at the in- stance of Dr. Godfrey, the Surgeon-General. Tliis measure materially extended tlie scope of local administration. Village administration has in recent years been greatly improved, under the watchful control ot the Central Board of Health and its officers. 682 Spaniards and French in Trinidad. (7) Trixidai" and Tobago. Trinidad and Tobago were united into one colony from January 1, 1889, liy Order-in-Council under Act of I'arlia- ment 50 and 51 Yict., cap. 4-4. Tobago became a ward of the united Colony from January 1, 1899, by virtue of an Order- in-Council of' October 20, 1898. After its discovery in 1-498 the Spaniards Trinidad, made various attempts to settle upon the island, but wei'e driven off by the Indians, three nationalities of which dwelt there, namely, Caribs, Arra- \vacks and Sapoyes, or Xcpoyes. In 1587, however, there -vvas a great battle fought between the Caribs and tlie other Indians, when the Caribs suffered a crushing defeat and the victors were themselves exhausted. Then, in 1592, came Don Antonio de Berrio y Oruna, who made a settlement at •St. Joseph, ard kept it by playing off the Indians against one another. The English and the Dutch attticked the Spaniards from time to time, and Sir Walter Ealegh spent some weeks •at the island on his two voyages to the West Indies. In the first half of the seventeenth century two unsuccessful attempts fo found English colonies at Trinidad were made by agents of the Earl of Warwick, who had obtained from the Earl of Pembroke an assignment of the latter's grant of the island. Tlie Spanish settlers achieved a higli repu- ■ Spaniards, tation for their cocoa and tobacco ; but, other- ^Ikielish'^ wise, the Colony did not make much progress until 1783, when it was thrown open to settlers from all countries, with the sole condition that they must be Eoman Catholics. Numbers of persons there- upon resorted to Trinidad : and at the French devolution colonists poured in from San Domingo, Martinique and Guadeloupe, making the island a French, rather than a Spanish, colony under Spanish rule. In 1797 Trinidad surrendered to a British force under Sir Ealph Abercromby and Admiral Harvey, and Sir Thomas Picton was appointed Governor of the island. He was one of the most efficient Governors Trinidad axex- had, but his services there ha\'C been c^uite overlooked on account of the case of Luiza Calderon, who unhappily was put to the torture by the operation of the Spanish law which was then in force, Trinidad is a solidly prosperous Colony. r'^°(?fc"'^^^ It has a large sugar industry and a larger on 1 ions, ^^^ more profitable cocoa industry. There is a considerable l)ody of peasant proprietors. Its famous Pitch Lake vields a handsome revenue to the Government. Economic and Political Situation ; Tobago. <)83 Its railways, becrun by Sir James Loiigdeii and pushed on- by Sir Henry Irving, are a valuable asset and a ])rospective source of income. Its situation near the mouths of the Orinoco must eventually make tin's noble island a centre of com- merce. The establishment of a peasantry was much fostered during the government of Sir Arthur Gordon (Lord Stan- more), and especially so in the ward of Montserrat, where Mr. Eobert j\Iitchell, then chief of the Crown Lands Depart- ment, did excellent service in causing a number of s<[uatters to get legal titles for their holdings. As in British Guiana, the question of labour supply has been an important one in Trinidad. In 1806 a shipload of Chinese was imported, but the venture proved a signal failure. Since 184.") a regular supply of coolies has been obtained from the East Indies, while a temporary revival of Chinese immi- gration was more successful. Some liberated Africans and many labourers of African descent from Barbados, Grenada, and other Colonies have found a home in the island. From the time of its cession Trinidad has Institutions, been governed as a Crown Colony. The Legislative Council consists of the Governor,, as President, and ten oflficials and ten non-officials. There is- also an Executive Council. As might be expected in a Colony where so many of the early settlers came from Spain and France, the majority of the inhabitants are Eoman Catholics, and the city of Port of Spain is the seat of a Eoman Catholic archbishop, whose diocese includes Grenada, St. Lucia and Tobago. Trinidad has, however, an Anglican bishop. French is spoken by many of the npper classes and a patois of that language by a large number of the labouring classes. A large number of schools — some secular, but the majority- denominational — ])rovide elementary education. The Poyal College, maintained by the Colony, with its affiliated insti- tutions, supplies the higher education, and valuable scholar- ships are awarded from the public revenue. Two attempts to found an English colony Tobago. at Tobago were mads in the early years (jf the seventeenth century, Ijut both were frus- trated l)y the Caribs, The Dutch, the French and the Engli.sh fought strenuously for the possession of the island in the second half of the seventeenth century. In the latter part of the eighteenth century there was more lighting between French and British. Surrendered to a British force in 1762, it was ceded to Great Britain in 176.'>. Cap- tured by the French, after a gallant resistance, in 1781, it 684 The Coiiquest of Jamaica. was ceded to France in 1783. In defending the cession of Tobago on that occasion, in the House of Lords, the Earl of Shelburne said : " The cession of Tobago, it had been said, would be the ruin ot the English cotton manufacture. He replied that the English cotton manufacture liad been great belbre Tobago was an English possession, while the islands restored to England were just as well adapted to the cultiva- tion of cotton as Tobago." In 1793 Tobago was captured by a British force, l)ut was restored to France in 1802. In 180o it was again taken, and was finally ceded to Great Britain in 1814. Since then it has experienced the ups-and-downs of most of the British West Indian Colonies. Its union with Trinidad has given Tobago a fresh start and a ho]>eful outlook for the development of its plentiful resources. Although .Tuan Fernandez was the island of Alexander Selkirk, the colonists of Tolmgo claim, and with good leason, that theirs is Eobinsun Crusoe's island as depicted by Defoe. Certainly Juan Fernandez is not an island near the Orinoco, ^vhile Tobago is. (8; Jamaica. After their lamentable failure at Hispan- Its History. tola, Benn and Yenables, to save their expedition from l)eing abortive, took posses- sion of Jamaica with but slight resistance from the Spanish settlers. Cromwell at first undervalued Jamaica, but the more the Spaniards showed a disposition to retake it, the more active was he in providing for its retention and colonisation. His appeal to the New Englanders to settle there met with scant success, Imt colonists were obtained from England, Scotland, Ireland and the AVest Indian Islands. Disease played havoc among the troops, for it was tlie rainy season when, in 1655, the conquest was made. There was also a want of food, and, altogether, the pioneers of settlement had a very hard time of it. In these circumstances the right man appeared in Col. Edward IrOyley. an old Ca^'alier who had taken service under the Brotector. That resolute soldier not only suppressed mutiny and kept order among the colonists, but*^ dealt Spanish invaders from Cuba a swashing blow in 1658 at Eio Nuevo, and so cleared the island for English colonisation, while, at the same time, he wiped out the dis- grace of the failure at Hispaniola in 1655. Fear that Charles 11. would restore Jamaica to Spain retarded the settlement of the island for a short time after the Bestoration ; but, the Merrie Monarch determined to Natural Products and the Buccaneers. 685 retain, and showed anxiety to foster, ii. On July 8, 1G70, by the Treaty of Ma(h'id, -Jamaica, which was regarded by the ►Spaniards as '-the navel of tlie Indies,"' was finally ceded to England. Cocoa and indigo were the chief cultivation Y^^Tn^*^ of the earliest colonists, but in a few years icissi u es. g^jg.^^. ])ocame the staple product, and long continued to be so. In tlie eighteenth century a number of valuable plants, including coffee and breadfruit, were introduced into the ('olony, and when the troubles of the French Eevolution befell San Domingo a great impetus was given to the production of sugar and coffee in Jamaica. In the days of slavery vast wealth was acquired by planters and merchants alike, but when the emancipation took place the planters and freedmen did not adapt themselves to the clianged conditions, and there was a great falling off in the staple products. Trom 84,750 hogsheads of sugar and 17,725,731 lb. of coffee exported in 1834 the ship- nients had fallen in 1850 to 37,188 hogsheads of sugar and 3,430,228 11). of coffee. The fortunes of Jamaica had sunk very low when in 1868 Governor Sii- John Pet^r Grant decided that the Colony should subsidise a line of steamers for the development of the fruit trade with the United States. The result has been far-reaching and of great advantage to the Colony, although the idea of restoring prosperity to Jamaica by the cultivation of bananas was much ridiculed at the time. " In 1901 the Imperial Direct Line of steamers was subsidised in order to establish a fruit trade between Bristol and Jamaica. For this service payment ot £40,000 a. year is made, half by the Imperial (lovernmentand half by the Government of Jamaica. The benefits of the fruit trade ;u'e largel}' shared by the peasant pro[)rietors, who now form an important part of the community. Much has been done in recent years to advance agriculture. At Kingston, Hope, and Castleton cinchona gardens have been established, and at the Hope Gardens a limited number of young men are trained in the elementary principles of agri- culture and in its practice. Jamaica now produces the best cigars made within the Empire. In the seventeenth century and the earlier The Buccaneers yeaj-y of the eighteenth Jamaica had other Slav^-tode iGsoiirces than agriculture. In time of war (Jovernors issued commissions to privateers, notahly to Sir Henry Morgan ; and in time of peace as well iis war buccaneers freelv resorted to Port Pioyal. When, by the Physical and Political Misfortunes. Treaty of Utrecht, Great Britain obtained the right to supply tlie Spanish colonists with slaves, Jamaica was made the ■ entrcjJot for this business, which added much to the commerce of the Colony by giving facilities for disposing of British manufactures to the Spaniards. But, while the Colony pros- pered mightily, it had its trials and troubles. From time to time there were insurrections among t)ie slaves. There were risings of the Maroons, or runaw^ay slaves, and their descen- dants, who had established themselves in mountain fast- nesses.'-' Besides other storms, some fifteen violent hurri- canes have ravaged the island from 1712 to 1903. The hurricane of 1780 was accompanied by an ^"i^th^ulkes"^ earthquake, and a tidal wave, the joint effects of v.'hich simply wiped out the little seaport of Savanna-la-Mar. Of earthquakes there have been several. Two of them have been appalling catastrophes. In 1692 Jamaica was visited by an earthquake which not only engulfed the greater part of Port Eoyal, built on a sandbank", but did even greater damage proportionately throughout the island. The wreck of Kingston by earthquake on Janiiary 14, 1907, is too recent to need description. On that occasion the inhabitants of Kingston, under the leadership of Sir Alexander Swettenham, met their calamity with admirable orderliness and fortitude. The way in which yellow fever decimated the white inhabitants and swept off the Imperial troops in old days is graphically described in " Tom Cringle's Log,'' a book that gives a picture of Jamaica life in the days of slavery. From 1664, w^hen the first Assembly met, DTvelo"mif ^^'^'^^ *° 1^^^' ^''^^"^^ Jamaica became a Crown Colony, the colonists enjoyed repre- sentative government. During the government of Charles Howard, Earl of Carlisle, 1678-1680, the Legislature success- fully resisted his endeavours to impose upon the colonists the system known in Ireland as Poynings' Law. For fifty years the Assembly refused to grant a permanent revenue to the Crown, but yielded in 1728, when the Home Government con- ceded, what the colonists had long sought, that the laws of England which had up to that time been applicable to Jamaica, should be and continue laws of Jamaica for ever. The House of Assembly claimed and exercised the powers of the British House of Commons. It impeached Governors ; it summoned to its bar a Commander-in-Chief, Gen. Hugh Lyle Carmichael, and, with the support of the Imperial Government, compelled • The Spaniards seem to have regarded the fugitive slaves as Marans, or Moors. Abolition of Slavery and Suspension of the Constitution. 687 his unwilling attendance and an apology. It also called before it the Chief Justice, but gained nothing by its motion in that case ; for Judge Jackson appeared at the bar and firmly but respectfully declined to give his reasons for his decision in a cause affecting a member of the House. Only after five disso- lutions of the House itself and the intervention of the Home authorities, did it cease actively to resent what it considered a grave breach of its privileges, when bailiffs executed a writ against one of its members by seizing his coach-horses. Time after time did it expel members of its body, sometimes in batches and including more than one Attorney-General of the Colony. The Assembly established its right to initiate ^loney Bills and would not suffer the attempts made from time to time by the Council to amend them. In 1775 it petitioned the Crown on behalf of the North American colonists and boldly deplored the polic}- of the British Cabinet. As the abolition of slavery approached, the The Abolition Assembly grew extremely sensiti^■e about the avery. intervention of the Home Government in matters of a domestic nature ; it resented interposition, on behalf of missionaries, with regard to registration of slaves, and the application of Canning's resolution for the amelioration of their condition. When the wretched condition of the prisons Differences with ^^ Jamaica forced Parliament to pass the Act Government. ^^ ^^^S, "for the Better Government of Prisons in the West Indies," the Assembly resolved that it was aii infringement of their rights, that they would vote no more supplies than were necessary to maintain the public credit, and that they would not pass any more laws until the imperial Act had been repealed. A deadlock in public lousiness followed. Whereupon Mr. Labouchere, the Under-Secretary for the Colonies, on April 9, 1839, intro- duced into the House of Commons a Bill to suspend the Con- stitution of Jamaica. The measure was opposed by Sir liobert Peel, who quoted Canning's opinion, that " nothing sliort of absolute and demonstraljle necessity should induce him to moot the awful question of the transcendental power of Par- liament over every een completed ; but the Church in its impoverished condition has, under the able guidance of Archbishop Xuttall, shown more signs of vitality than in the days of its temporal prosperity. Elementary schools, both secular and denominational, are State-aided. There is provision for secondary education, and several schools for the training of teachers have been established. There l)ave leen incorporated from time ^epe°