There are other important advantages which have been derived by the self-governing Dominions from the connexion with the United Kingdom. Apart from the possibility of development in security from external influences which is the chief boon conferred by British control, these countries have profited by the free use of British capital, in some cases assisted by guarantees of government loans by the Imperial Parliament, by a steady stream of British immigration, and by the protection afforded in foreign countries to the persons and interests of British subjects of Colonial origin by the diplomatic and consular officers of the United Kingdom. In the first two cases the advantage derived has been mutual: the Colonies have paid the interest on the loans contracted by them, the emigrants have flourished and benefited themselves, and indeed often those whom they left in the mother country. But that a benefit is mutual does not alter the fact that it is advantageous, and while precision of valuation is impossible, it is quite certain that neither loans nor population would have been forthcoming from the United Kingdom in equal measure and on equal terms to countries not under the British Crown. In the case of the advantages conferred by the use of the diplomatic and consular service and of in the last resort the authority and power of the United Kingdom the gain must be considered as being wholly on the one side. The people of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Newfoundland, and South Africa have thus enjoyed in China, in the Turkish Dominions, in Morocco, in Siam, and in Persia the valuable exterritorial privileges assured to British subjects, privileges which as independent powers they could hardly have won for themselves, while in the rest of the world the representatives of the United Kingdom have in matters great and small, in questions of trade and of personal liberty, vindicated with constant vigilance the rights of British subjects of Colonial origin.1 The wrongs of Canadian sailors in Uruguay and of a shipping firm of New South Wales in the Marshall Islands have been redressed as 1 See Mr. Borden's speech in Canadian House of Commons, Dec. 5, 1912.

effectively as any grievances of British subjects pertaining to the United Kingdom, and the whole cost of the diplomatic and consular services has been borne by the Government of the United Kingdom, without complaint or hesitation.

It would of course be idle to pretend that the advantage of the connexion of the Colonies with the United Kingdom has been all on the one side. It has been clear gain to the latter to have a fair field for investment and for emigration in lands which are under the British Crown. It has always been a cause for national pride that the United Kingdom has colonies in number and extent far superior to that of any other country and that the British Empire is the greatest known to history, and if this was the case in the days when it was believed that in time of stress no military aid could be expected from the Colonies, the feeling has been greatly intensified by the decision of the Dominions in the case of the Boer War and in far greater measure in the case of the European War to aid the mother country with all their resources and power. It was indeed not believed by any sane statesman that the stress of a European war would reveal any flaw in the unity of the Empire; the conception that the British Dominions would seize the opportunity of a struggle involving the existence or at least the independence of the mother country to declare themselves independent was a chimera which could be hatched only in a disordered brain, but it was legitimate to feel doubt how far these Dominions would feel themselves bound to take active part in a war which was brought on without consultation with them being possible and under conditions which they inevitably could hardly completely realize. The analogy of the Boer War was clearly not conclusive. In that case the feeling of the Dominions had been attracted to the support of the Uitlanders in the South African Republic, many of whom were of Colonial origin. The long drawn out negotiations had been followed by them with care, and the struggle assumed in their eyes an effort to secure constitutional liberties on reasonable terms. Moreover, the war appeared to have been deliber

ately forced on the British Government by the republics at a time when the British preparations for war were quite incomplete, and when war was not desired by the British people or Government. The jealousy of foreign powers was observed, and it was felt just and proper to assist fellow colonists in South Africa when the Cape and Natal were invaded by enemy forces. Nor can it be overlooked that to many of those who volunteered the conflict afforded prospects of excitement and enterprise welcome to the bold and hardy characters of young Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders. In point of fact events showed that the Dominions realized the seriousness of the issues in the European War, and recognizing that liberty and democracy were on their trial, responded to the need by organizing with all seriousness and earnestness forces on a scale wholly unexpected alike by the British people and by the enemies of the allied powers.

The response of the Dominions at the hour of greatest peril may be deemed sufficient answer to the theory that the Dominions seek independence of the mother country and desire to set themselves up as independent nations. The difficulties in the way of such ambitions are obvious and important, even assuming, as it can doubtless be safely assumed, that the United Kingdom would not seek to deny independence to any Dominion which deliberately decided that such independence was desirable, after the whole question had been submitted to the free judgement of the electorate under a democratic franchise. In the case of the Australasian Dominions, the presence of a great power of the first rank with a large population and no large available territories for that population to occupy would compel an independent Australia to rely for security upon an alliance with one or other of the only powers whose aid could possibly preserve the country from annexation in whole or part, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Alliance with the United Kingdom after a declaration of independence would only be procured on terms which would be at least as onerous as the form er

connexion under a common Crown, and despite the wave of enthusiasm which passed through Australia on the occasion of the visit of the United States fleet in its famous cruise to Japan, it would be rash in the extreme, as is clearly recognized in the Commonwealth, to assume that the great republic would for no obvious advantage to itself undertake the grave task of defending a distant ally whose territory is singularly open to attack and whose resources are still comparatively undeveloped. The independence of New Zealand and South Africa would of course be still less capable of defence. With Canada matters are different, for commercial considerations present great possibilities of advantage from the union of the Dominion with the United States, and the fact that the establishment of close reciprocity between the two countries might result in annexation was recognized in 1891 by no less cool a judgement than that of the Hon. Edward Blake, when he found himself unable to persist in the policy of the Liberal party in Canada in favour of close trade connexions with the United States.1 Twenty years later the same issue divided Canada into two hostile camps, and a scheme of reciprocity resulted in the defeat by an overwhelming majority of a Government which had seemed perfectly secure of office, and which in its general policy had certainly never shown itself deficient in sense of Imperial obligation. It appears clear, therefore, that the destiny of Canada, despite the great influx of American citizens to take advantage of its wealth in farm lands, does not point to absorption in the great republic, nor is it certain that the ideal of such absorption is looked upon in the United States with as much favour as at an earlier date, partly no doubt because any attempt to assimilate so vast an accession of territory might alter beyond recognition the fundamental divisions of American party politics.

But if independence is not the ideal of responsible statesmen in any Dominion, and if dreams of independence are only vaguely held here and there among isolated units of 1 Cf. Sir C. Tupper, Recollections of Sixty Years, pp. 304 seq.

the population of these Dominions, it is a different thing with the growth of national feeling in the Dominions. The rise of such a feeling was quite inevitable and in every way desirable: it was present in germ from the beginning of self-government, but it has come to fuller development only since the people of the Dominions realized that national development was only possible under conditions showing national spirit. It was unquestionably right that in the early days of her history Canada should devote her resources to providing means of transport to unite the east and west of the Dominion rather than to equipping armed forces on land and on sea, and that Australia should bend its efforts to subjugating nature rather than to providing the fleet without which her coasts would be overrun by others desirous of sharing the potential riches of the country. But the scanty resources which rendered this policy desirable and right were not compatible with that self-reliance which must characterize a real nation. There is on record a striking recognition of this fact in the report of certain members of the Victorian Royal Commission on federation in 1870.1 It was there pointed out that the Colony of Victoria and the other Australian Colonies were in many respects separate States connected only by a personal tie with the United Kingdom, with parliamentary institutions of their own, with an executive entirely of local appointment with the exception of the Governor, with separate revenues, and even with separate armed forces, and it was suggested that the grant by the Crown of the power of making independent treaties was all that was required to set the Colonies up as independent States united to the United Kingdom only by the possession of a common Sovereign in a relation analogous to that which formerly existed between the Ionian Islands and the British Crown. But the framers of these proposals, who included Sir G. Berry and Sir Gavan Duffy, were evidently conscious that the armed forces which the Colonies possessed were not of the character suitable to the protection of an independent nation, for they pinned

1 See Responsible Government, iii. 1155.