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them to the empire in a space of less than twenty years a dominion of greater extent than the whole of British India, followed by the action of a host of distinguished disciples in other parts of the world, effectually stemmed the movement initiated by Cobden and Bright. A tendency which had seemed temporarily to point towards a complacent dissolution of the empire was arrested, and the closing years of the nineteenth century were marked by a growing disposition to appreciate the value and importance of the unique position which the British Empire has created for itself in the world. No stronger demonstration of the reality of imperial union can be needed than that which was afforded by the support given to the imperial forces by the colonies and India in the South African War. It remains only to be seen by what process of evolution the further consolidation of the empire will find expression in the machinery of government.

The question of self-government is closely associated with the question of self-support. Plenty of good land and the liberty to manage their own affairs were the causes assigned by Adam Smith for the marked prosperity of the British colonies towards the end of the eighteenth century. The same causes are still to be observed to produce the same effects, and it may be pointed out that since the date of the latest of Adam Smith's writings, upwards of 6,000,000 square miles of virgin soil, rich with possibilities of agricultural, pastoral, and mineral wealth, have been added to the empire. In the same period the white population has grown from about 12,000,000 to 52,000,000, and the developments of agricultural and industrial machinery have multiplied, almost beyond computation, the powers of productive labour.

INDUSTRY AND TRADE

It is scarcely possible within this article to deal with so widely varied a subject as that of the productions and industry of the empire. For the purposes of a general statement, it is interesting to observe that concurrently with the acquisition of the vast continental areas during the nineteenth century, the progress of industrial science in application to means of transport and communication brought about a revolution of the most radical character in the accepted laws of economic development. Railways did away with the old law that the spread of civilisation is necessarily governed by facilities for water carriage and is consequently confined to river valleys and sea-shores. Steam and electricity opened to industry the interior of continents previously regarded as unapproachable. The resources of these vast inland spaces which have lain untouched since history began became available to individual enterprise, and over a great portion of the earth's surface were brought within the possessions of the British Empire. The production of raw material within the empire increased at a rate which can only be appreciated by a careful study of figures.

The tropical and temperate possessions of the empire include every field of production which can be required for the use of man. There is no main staple of human food which is not grown; there is no material of textile industry which is not produced. The British Empire gives occupation to more than one-third of the persons employed in mining and quarrying in the world. It may be interesting, as an indication of the relative position in this respect of the British Empire to the world, to state that at present it produces onethird of the coal supply of the world, one-sixth of the wheat supply, and very nearly two-thirds of the gold supply. But while these figures may be taken

as in themselves satisfactory, it is far more important to remember that as yet the potential resources of the new lands opened to enterprise have been barely conceived, and their wealth has been little more than scratched. Population as yet has been only very sparsely sprinkled over the surface of many of the areas most suitable for white settlement. In the wheat lands of Canada, the pastoral country of Australasia, and the mineral fields of South Africa and western Canada alone, the undeveloped resources are such as to ensure employment to the labour and satisfaction to the needs of at least as many millions as they now contain thousands of the British race. In respect of this promise of the future the position of the British Empire is unique.

In regard to the distribution of existing industry, although the more important colonies have established manufactures of their own, of which the prosperity is assured, the general conditions have hitherto been maintained under which Great Britain has remained the manufacturing centre for the raw material of the whole. The primary production of the colonies and the industrial development of Great Britain are still, therefore, the important divisions of the subject. These subjects are dealt with elsewhere in detail.

It is not too much to say that trade has been at once the most active cause of expansion and the most potent bond of union in the development of the empire. Trade with the tropical and settlement in the temperate regions of the world formed the basis upon which the foundations of the empire were laid. Trading companies founded most of the American and West Indian colonies; a trading company won India; a trading company colonised the northwestern districts of Canada; commercial wars during the greater part of the eighteenth century established the British command of the sea, which rendered the settlement of Australasia possible. The same wars gave Great Britain, South Africa, and chartered companies in the nineteenth century carried the British flag into the interior of the African continent from south and east and west. Trading companies produced Borneo and Fiji. The bonds of prosperous trade have kept the Australasian colonies within the empire. The protection of colonial commerce by the imperial navy is one of the strongest of material links which connect the crown with the outlying possessions of the empire.

The trade of the empire, like the other developments of imperial public life, has been profoundly influenced by the variety of local conditions under which it has flourished. In the early settlement of the North American colonies their trade was left practically free; but by the famous Navigation Act of 1660 the importation and exportation of goods from British colonies were restricted to British ships, of which the master and three-fourths of the mariners were English. This act, of which the intention was to encourage British shipping and to keep the monopoly of British colonial trade for the benefit of British merchants, was followed by many others of a similar nature up to the time of the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and the introduction of free trade into Great Britain. And the Navigation Acts were repealed in 1849. Thus for very nearly two hundred years British trade was subject to restrictions, of which the avowed intention was to curtail the commercial intercourse of the empire with the world. During this period the commercial or mercantile system, of which the fallacies were exposed by the economists of the latter half of the eighteenth century, continued to govern the principles of British trade. Under this system monopolies were common, and among them few were more important than that of the East India Company.

In 1813 the trade of India was, however, thrown open to competition, and in 1846, after the introduction of free trade at home, the principal British colonies which had not yet at that date received the grant of responsible gov

ernment were specially empowered to abolish differential duties upon foreign trade. A first result of the commercial emancipation of the colonies was the not altogether unnatural rise in the manufacturing centres of a school known as the Manchester school, which was disposed to question the value to Great Britain of the retention of colonies which were no longer bound to give her the monopoly of their commercial markets. An equally natural desire on the part of the larger colonies to profit by the opportunity which was opened to them of establishing local manufactures of their own, combined with the convenience in new countries of using the customs as an instrument of taxation, led to something like a reciprocal feeling of resentment, and there followed a period during which the policy of Great Britain was to show no consideration for colonial trade, and the policy of the principal colonies was to impose heavy duties upon British trade. By a gradual process of better understanding, largely helped by the development of means of communication, the antagonistic extreme was abandoned, and a tendency towards a system of preferential duties within the empire displayed itself. At the colonial conference held in London in 1887, a proposal was formally submitted by the South African delegate for the establishment within the empire of a preferential system, imposing a duty of 2 per cent. upon all foreign goods, the proceeds to be directed to the maintenance of the imperial navy. To this end it was requested that certain treaties with foreign nations which imposed restrictions on the trade of various parts of the empire with each other should be denounced. Some years later the treaties in question were denounced, but simultaneously with the movement in favour of reciprocal fiscal advantages to be granted within the empire by the many local governments to each other, there was a growth of the perception that an increase of the foreign trade of Great Britain, which is carried on chiefly in manufactured goods, was accompanied by a corresponding enlargement of the home markets for colonial raw material, and consequently that injury to the foreign trade of Great Britain must necessarily react upon the colonies. This view was definitely expressed at the colonial conference at Ottawa in 1894, and made itself felt in the relinquishment of the demand that in return for colonial concessions there should be an imposition on the part of Great Britain of a differential duty upon foreign goods. Canada was the first important British colony to give substantial expression to the new imperial sentiment in commercial matters by the introduction in 1897 of an imperial tariff, granting without any reciprocal advantage a deduction of 25 per cent. upon customs duties imposed upon British goods. The same advantage is offered to all British colonies trading with her upon equal terms. Although in Great Britain trade is free, and customs duties are only imposed for purposes of revenue on a few selected articles, about half the national income is derived from customs and excise. In most of the colonies customs form of necessity one of the important sources of revenue. It is, however, worthy of remark that in the self-governing colonies, even those which are avowedly protectionist, a smaller proportion of the public revenue is derived from customs and excise than is derived from these sources at home. The proportion in Australasia before federation was about one-quarter. In Canada it is more difficult to estimate it, as customs and excise form the principal provision made for federal finance, and note must therefore be taken of the separate sources of revenue in the provinces. With these reservations it will still be seen that customs, or, in other words, a tax upon the movements of trade, forms one of the chief sources of imperial

revenue.

The development of steam shipping and electricity gave to the movements

of trade a stimulus no less remarkable than that given by the introduction of railroads and industrial machinery to production and manufactures. Whereas at the beginning of the nineteenth century the journey to Australia occupied eight months, and business communications between Sydney and London could not receive answers within the year, the journey can now be accomplished in thirty-one days, and telegraphic despatches enable the most important business to be transacted within twenty-four hours. For one cargo carried in the year at the beginning of the nineteenth century at least six may now be carried by the same ship, and from the point of view of trade the difference of a venture which realises its profits in two months, as compared with one which occupied a whole year, does not need to be insisted on. The increased rapidity of the voyage and the power of daily communication by telegraph with the most distant markets have introduced a wholly new element into the national trade of the empire, and commercial intercourse between the southern and the northern hemispheres has received a development from the natural alternation of the seasons, of which until quite recent years the value was not even conceived. Fruit, eggs, butter, meat, poultry, and other perishable commodities pass in daily increasing quantities between the northern and the southern hemispheres with an alternate flow which contributes to raise in no inconsiderable degree the volume of profitable trade. Thus the butter season of Australasia is from October to March, while the butter season of Ireland and Northern Europe is from March to October. In three years after the introduction of ice-chambers into the steamers of the great shipping lines, Victoria and New South Wales built up a yearly butter trade of £1,000,000 with Great Britain without seriously affecting the Irish and Danish markets whence the summer supply is drawn. These facilities, combined with the enormous additions made to the public stock of land and labour, contributed to raise the volume of trade of the empire from a total of less than £100,000,000 in the year 1800 to a total of nearly £1,500,000,000 in 1900. The declared volume of British exports to all parts of the world in 1800 was £38,120,120, and the value of British imports from all parts of the world was £30,570,605; total, £68,690,725. As in those days the colonies were not allowed to trade with any other country this must be taken as representing imperial trade. The exact figures of the trade of India, the colonies, and the United Kingdom for 1900 were: imports, £809,178,209; exports, £657,899,363; total, £1,467,077,572.

DEFENCE OF THE EMPIRE

A question of sovereign importance to the continued existence of the empire is the question of defence. A country of which the main thoroughfares are the oceans of the world demands in the first instance a strong navy. It has of late years been accepted as a fundamental axiom of defence that the British navy should exceed in strength any reasonable combination of foreign navies which could be brought against it. The expense of maintaining such a floating armament is colossal, and until within the decade of 1890-1900 it was borne exclusively by the taxpayers of the United Kingdoms. As the benefits of united empire have become more consciously appreciated in the colonies, and the value of the fleet as an insurance for British commerce has been recognised, a desire manifested itself on the part of the self-governing colonies to contribute towards the formation of a truly imperial navy. As yet the movement remains in its infancy. In 1895 the Australasian colonies voted a small subsidy of £126,000 per annum for the maintenance of an Australasian

H. W.-VOL. XXII. O

squadron, and in 1897 the Cape Colony also offered a contribution of £30,000 a year to be used at the discretion of the imperial government for naval purposes. The colonies have also contributed in some degree to their own naval defence by the erection of fortifications at selected points upon their shores. The net cost of the navy to the imperial exchequer, as estimated for the year 1900-1901 was £27,522,600. Though available for service throughout the empire, and forming the principal bulwark of colonial defence, the cost, with the trivial exceptions named, is still borne exclusively by the home government, and recruiting for the navy is carried on wholly in the British Isles.

Land defence has hitherto been regarded as forming a secondary branch of the great question of imperial defence. But though secondary it has been intimately connected with the development and internal growth of the empire. In the case of the first settlement of the American colonies they were expected to provide for their own land defence. To some extent in the early part of their career they carried out this expectation, and even on occasion, as in the taking of Louisburg, which was subsequently given back at the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle as the price of the French evacuation of Madras, rendered public service to the empire at large. In India the principle of local selfdefence was from the beginning carried into practice by the East India Company. But in America the claim of the French wars proved too heavy for Ĵocal resources. In 1755 Great Britain intervened with troops sent from home under General Braddock, and up to the outbreak of the American war the cost of the defence of the North American colonies was borne by the imperial exchequer. To meet this expense the imperial parliament took upon itself the right to tax the American colonies. In 1765 a Quartering Act was passed by which 10,000 imperial troops were quartered in the colonies. As a result of the American war which followed and led to the loss of the colonies affected, the imperial authorities accepted the charge of the land defences of the empire, and with the exception of India and the Hudson Bay territories, where the trading companies determined to pay their own expenses, the whole cost of imperial defence was borne as the cost of the navy still is, by the taxpayers of the United Kingdom. This condition of affairs lasted till the end of the Napoleonic wars.

During the thirty years' peace which followed there came time for reconsideration. The fiscal changes which towards the middle of the nineteenth century gave to the self-governing colonies the command of their own resources very naturally carried with them the consequence that a call should be made on colonial exchequers to provide for their own governing expenses. Of these defence is obviously one of the most essential. Coincidently, therefore, with the movements of free trade at home, the renunciation of what was known as the mercantile system and the accompanying grants of constitutional freedom to the colonies, a movement for the reorganisation of imperial defence was set on foot. In the decade which elapsed between 1846 and 1856 the movement as regards the colonies was confined chiefly to calls made upon them to contribute to their own defence by providing barracks, fortifications, etc., for the accommodation of imperial troops, and in some cases paying for the use of troops not strictly required for imperial purposes. In 1857 the Australian colonies agreed to pay the expenses of the imperial garrison quartered in Australia. This was a very wide step from the imperial attempt to tax the American colonies for a similar purpose in the preceding century. Nevertheless, in evidence given before a departmental committee in 1859, it was shown that at that time the colonies of Great Britain were free from almost every obligation of contributing either by personal service or money

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