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COLONY

with emigration, it is perhaps natural for the mother-country to regard her colonies primarily as affording an outlet for her own surplus population. As a matter of fact, the inhabitants of Australia are almost exclusively British; so, too, are the inhabitants of Canada, with the notable exception of the province of Quebec, which remains to this day thoroughly French in language, in religion, and in sentiment. At the Cape, again, the descendants of the Dutch settlers still form about one-half of the whole population. But when the statistics of emigration are looked into, it will be found that the United States prove much more attractive than all the colonies added together. In 1887 the total number of emigrants from the United Kingdom, of British and Irish origin, amounted to 281,487, of whom as many as 72 per cent. selected the United States; while only 34,183, or 12 per cent., went to the Australasian colonies, and 32,025, or 11 per cent., to British North America. Nor was that year at all exceptional. The census returns of the United States in 1880 show 2,772,169 persons born in the United Kingdom; while the corresponding figures are 912,935 for all the Australasian colonies, and 470,092 for Canada; total 1,383,027, or less than half the number in the United States. The home government has taken no measures to direct emigration to the colonies, beyond establishing in 1886 an Emigrants' Information Office in London, for the collection and publication of trustworthy information. Queensland alone gives free passages. Natal and Western Australia give assisted passages to farm labourers and domestic servants. See EMIGRATION.

The tie between the mother-country and the colonies is more manifest in the case of commerce. The old practice has long ago been abandoned of compelling the colonies to trade only with the mother-country; and those of them that are selfgoverning have even been allowed to impose protective tariffs against British manufactures. But, nevertheless, the trade of Britain with her colonial possessions has maintained itself more steadily than her trade with the rest of the world. During the fourteen years from 1872 to 1886, the imports into the United Kingdom from British possessions (including India), notwithstanding the fall in value, increased from £79,372,853 to £81,884,043, while the proportion of these imports to the total imports rose from 22 to 23 per cent. the same period the exports to British possessions increased from £65,609,212 to £82,067,711, while their proportion to the total exports rose from 21 to 31 per cent. Taking the returns from colonial sources, 42 per cent. of the aggregate trade of all the colonies in 1886 was conducted with the mother

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country. Such, expressed in dry figures, is the meaning of the maxim that 'trade follows the flag. Though statistics are not so readily obtainable, there can be no doubt that the investment of British capital in the colonies, and the consequent return of interest, forms a bond of a still closer nature than the interchange of commodities. In 1886 the aggregate public debt of all the colonies (excluding India) amounted to about 245 millions sterling.

The most interesting question that remains to be considered is the political relation between the colonies and the mother-country. Not so many years ago it was tacitly assumed that the grant of responsible government to the greater colonies implied the further concession of complete independence whenever the colonies should care to demand it. History seemed to afford support for no other conclusion. Quite apart from the case of the United States, it was argued that any form of political union was impracticable between members

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of a state scattered over such immense distances and with such divergent interests. Above all, it was doubted whether the slender link existing could stand the strain of a great European war. What concern has Canada with Constantinople, or Australia with Afghanistan? But there were always some to whom such calculations appeared to be a base abandonment of England's historic place among nations; and the colonists themselves have always professed the most perfect loyalty to the British connection, exactly in proportion as they have been intrusted with autonomy in their own local affairs. Canadian voyageurs took a prominent part in Lord Wolseley's boat expedition up the Nile in 1884; and a battalion of 800 volunteers from New South Wales fought by the side of British soldiers round Suakin in 1885. The sense of distance has been largely obliterated by the marvellous progress of steam and electricity. circumnavigation of the globe is now accomplished as easily and as frequently as was the grand tour in the 18th century. Many of the younger politicians make it part of their education to visit India, Australia, and Canada; the colonists, too, have ceased to be strangers in England-'home,' as they always call it, though born thousands of leagues away. In this connection the future historian will not think it beneath his dignity to record the beneficent influence of cricket. An English team first went to Australia in 1862; while Australian elevens have played on equal terms with the best cricketers of England in every alternate year since 1878. The increase of intercourse has brought with it an increase of mutual knowledge and of mutual respect. The holding of a great exhibition of colonial and Indian produce at South Kensington in 1886, and the plan of commemorating the jubilee of the Queen by an Imperial Institute, have given concrete expression to the feeling of solidarity that was everywhere growing. Few persons, either in England or in the colonies, would now be found to advocate the weakening, still less the severing, of the present political ties.

With regard to the scheme known as Imperial Confederation, less agreement is to be found. It may be suspected that many of its British supporters have been influenced chiefly by their greater dislike of separation; while in the colonies it has nowhere been received with enthusiasm. The essence of the scheme is that the existing parliament of Great Britain and Ireland should divest itself of its sovereignty in favour of a federal council, formed by election out of all the constituent parts of the empire. To this council would be delegated the initiative in foreign affairs, the power of treatymaking, the right of declaring war, with the control of the army and navy that necessarily follows therefrom. Putting aside the difficulties that would arise from the inequality of the colonies among themselves, it is easy to see that Britain must, for a long time to come, exercise the decisive preeminence in such a council.

In the meantime something has already been done, and more may be, to strengthen the position of the colonies in the English political system. Canada, the Australasian colonies, and the Cape, each have an agent-general resident in London, whose functions are steadily growing in dignity. It has become the custom for every new Colonial Secretary to invite the agents-general to a ceremonious reception on his appointment; they are consulted, either singly or collectively, in all matters affecting the colonies which they repre

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It is not impossible that their status may ultimately develop into something intermediate in authority and honour between the council of the India Office and the corps diplomatique. The elastic powers of the Privy-council might easily be utilised

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