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(Monition anb (Monhl (Sotanntonf :
A LECTURE
BY
JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES, A.M.,
Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy, Queen’s College, Galway.
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
DUBLIN YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION
IN CONNEXION WITH THE
UNITED CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND,
IN
THE
METROPOLITAN HALL, OCTOBER the 26th, 1864.
THÉ RIGHT HON. JAMES WHITESIDE, M.P.,
IN THE CHAIR.
��COLONIZATION
AND
COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
I propose to invite your attention this evening to the subject
of colonization and colonies. I have selected this subject
because it seems to me to offer, at the present time, some as
pects of more than usual interest. It is no exaggeration, I
think, to say that this country—indeed that the world—has
arrived at a critical epoch in colonial affairs. In the progress
of colonizing enterprise we have reached, or almost reached,
a point at which further progress in the same pursuit must
become impossible, for the sufficient reason that the field for
its exercise will soon cease to exist. The earth, indeed, is
still very far from being full; but glance over the map of the
world, and outside tropical regions say where the country is
to be found which has not already been occupied and settled
by man—in which, at least, the germ of political society has
not been planted. I think you will find that North-Western
America is now about the only considerable space of which
this description can, with approximate truth, be given, and
already the work of colonization is busy there : “ A region,”
says Mr. Merivale, in the last edition of his important work,
“ of no small interest to observers of our times, as affording
the last open field for European emigration. The remainder
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
of the extra tropical world is now filled up [occupied ? ]. No
other site is left for the foundation of future empires. Its
occupiers will be the latest adventurers in that vast work of
European colonization which began scarcely four centuries
ago. The duty left for future time will be only to fill up
the outlines already traced in days of more romantic ad
venture.”*
But again, in a political point of view also, we have arrived
at a critical stage in colonial history. You are probably
aware that within the present year the British colony of
Canada has taken a step which is virtually an act of sove
reignty. It has undertaken, of its own motion, without con
sultation with the mother country, to reform, in the most
radical and sweeping fashion, its political system, and, not
content with this, it makes overtures to all the other Ameri
can colonies to enter with it into a single grand federation—
a federation, the mere magnitude of which, should the plan,
as seems probable, take effect, must, one would think, effec
tually unfit the new state for the position of even nominal
dependence.! Indeed, as regards this point, the promoters of
the scheme—though they have quite recently somewhat
changed their language J—have made no secret of their
* “ Colonization and the Colonies.” By Herman Merivale, A.M.,
Professor of Political Economy. New Edition, 1861, p. 116.
t “ British North America will become the fourth maritime power
in the world. England, France, and the United States will alone
have a marine superior to ours. Isolated from one another, we could
claim only a very low place among nations; but bring us together,
and there is no country, save England, to which we owe birth—save
the United States, whose power is derived from the same parent
source as our own—save France, from whom many of those here
present have sprung, can take rank before us.”—Colonel Grey at the
Montreal dinner.
J See post, pp. 45, 46,
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
0
aspirations. “ Whether the day for its accomplishment has
yet arrived,” said Mr. Brown, the minister who originated
and has taken the most prominent part in bringing forward
this grand scheme—“ whether the day for its accomplishment
has yet arrived is a fit subject of inquiry; but, assuredly, no
Canadian has a claim to the name of statesman who has not
looked forward to the day when all the British portion of this
continent shall be gathered into one. . . . We must look
forward to the day when the whole of British America shall
stand together, and, in close alliance and heartiest sympathy
with Great Britain, be prepared to assume the full duties and
responsibilities of a great and powerful nation.” Such are
the plans now formally promulgated, and such is the language
now publicly uttered by the leading men of Canada. The
tone adopted towards Great Britain is indeed respectful, and
even cordial. There is no formal defiance of her authority :
there is only the quiet assumption that she will, as a matter
of course, acquiesce in the nullity of her own supremacy.
And Great Britain does acquiesce. From no British states
man of the least mark, from no political party here of the
slightest weight, has any sign proceeded of opposition, or
even of protest, against the impending revolution.
It seems, then, that, both as regards the external conditions
of colonization and the political principles on which colonies
are ruled, we have reached a critical stage in colonial history ;
and it has therefore occurred to me that a brief retrospect of
the past course of colonial enterprise and government might,
at the present time, possess some interest for this Society.
Such a retrospect can, of course, only be—if for no other
reason, because of the limitations in point of time which an
address of this kind imposes—of the most imperfect and
summary kind : still I venture to hope it may not prove
altogether uninstructive. When a great and pregnant change
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
is approaching, there is an advantage in reverting our gaze
from the present and future to the past, and in tracing the
causes, many of them perhaps scarcely perceived at the time,
which have at a distance prepared and led up to the catas
trophe. The crisis, thus regarded, shapes itself before our
mental eye in its true proportions. We can appreciate its
meaning and drift, and are enabled to estimate at something
like their real value the importance of the issues it involves.
And here, to mark in some degree the limits within which
I propose to confine myself in this address, it may be well if
I state at the outset the sense in which I use the word
u colony.” I take the definition given by Sir G. C. Lewis:—
“ A colony properly denotes a body of persons belonging to
one country and political community, who, having abandoned
that country and community, form a new and separate society,
independent or dependent, in some district which is wholly
or nearly uninhabited, or from which they expel the ancient
inhabitants.”*
You will observe that, according to this definition, whole
sale migrations of entire peoples—such as took place on a
great scale on the breaking up of the Roman Empire—do not
constitute colonization ; for here it is not a body of people
belonging to a political community who abandon their original
country, it is the community itself. Again, the definition
excludes from the category of colonies such dependencies as
British India, where the bulk of the inhabitants have never
migrated from any given political community, but are a com
posite body, made up partly of the aboriginal people, and
partly of immigrants who have reached the country at various
times and from various quarters, the English forming quite
an inconsiderable fraction of the whole. For the same
* “ Essay on the Government of Dependencies.” By G. C. Lewis,
Esq, 1841, p. 170.
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
7
reason, all mere military stations, such as Malta and Gibraltar,
must be excluded from the category of colonies proper. On
the other hand, the definition does not exclude cases which
some people might regard as inconsistent with the idea of
a colony. The body of persons who migrate and form
the new society may be either “ independent or dependent.”
In modern times, indeed, the idea of political dependency
has come to be very generally associated with the conception
of a colony ; but it is no necessary part of that conception ;
nor was the word so understood in ancient times. All the
more celebrated colonies, for example, of the Greeks and
Phoenicians, the two greatest colonizing nations of antiquity,
were, in a political sense, absolutely independent of the mother
state. In short, if you desire to form a true idea of a colony,
you have only to follow the fortunes of a swarm of bees.
The swarm leaves its parent hive—the original community__
it coheres in a distinct society; it settles in a new locality,
either previously unoccupied, or from which it has expelled
the former inhabitants : what may be the nature of its further
connexion with the mother hive it is not necessary to con
*
sider: whatever this be, the swarm is not the less a true
image of a colony proper. Such were the colonies founded
by the Greeks and Phoenicians in ancient times on the islands
and along the shores of the CEgoean and Mediterranean Seas ;
such, in modern times, were those founded by Spain, France,
and England in the New World; and such are those
which we are even now building up in Australia and New
Zealand.
Having thus determined the proper sense of the word
“ colony, we now proceed with our review, taking as its
starting point what may be regarded as the opening of modern
colonization, the discovery of America. That supreme event
had no sooner happened than the leading nations of Europe—
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Dutch Republic—
hastened to the scene of action, eager to assert, each for
itself, a right to a place in the greatest field ever thrown open
to human energy and ambition. The numerous enterprises
which followed are among the most striking and picturesque
episodes in history, and are, doubtless, familiar to most of
those whom I address, associated as they are with the wellknown names of Cortez, Pizarro, Cabot, Drake, Raleigh,
Gilbert, and, in later times, the Pilgrim Fathers, William
Penn, and others. The movement, begun in the sixteenth
century and continued to the present time, has now, as I
have just remarked, all but completed its work of scattering
the seeds of political society over the habitable globe.
The career of modern colonization has thus extended over
nearly four centuries. We shall find it convenient to divide
this term into three periods—the first extending from the
conquest of the New World down to the American War of
Independence ; the second, from the date of that event to the
year 1830 ; and the third, from the year 1830 to the present
time.
Contemplating the first of these periods—that which extends
from the conquest of the New AVorld down to the American
War of Independence—we are struck with the predominance
of the purely commercial, or perhaps it would be more cor
rect to say, the purely monetary, spirit of its colonization—a
feature which distinguishes it alike from the present age and
from the age of Grecian and Roman colonization which
had preceded it. The spirit of that epoch is, I say, dis
tinct from that of the present age ; for, although doubtless
commerce has not been absent from the aims of colonizing
adventurers in recent times, and although, in the event,
colonial enterprise has powerfully promoted commercial ex
pansion, still if we look to the motives of the actual emigrants
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
9
—still more if we look to the legislation of Parliament—we
shall find that commerce has occupied, in connexion with
recent schemes of colonization, quite a secondary place. The
true character of that movement, as I shall hereafter show,
has been industrial and social—its chief aim being to provide
an outlet for the surplus population and capital of the old
country—a motive which, by a singular coincidence, it shares
with the earliest historical colonization—that of Phoenicia and
Greece. As for the colonization of Rome, it was, as is well
known, essentially military and imperial; the colonies of
Rome having little of the character of industrial and trading
settlements, and being, in truth, mainly garrisons planted in
the countries which she had conquered.
What, then, distinguishes the colonization of the first
period of modern colonial history, is the intensely commer
cial, or, rather, as I have phrased it, monetary spirit in
which it was conceived.
*
The impulse under which the
discovery of the New World took place may typify for us
the motives under the influence of which its subsequent colo
nization, for at all events two centuries, was carried on.
That impulse had its source in an intense fhirst for the
precious metals ; for, as you will remember, the voyage of
Columbus was undertaken in the hope of finding a passage
by a western route to the East Indies—then supposed to be
of all the world the region richest in gold and silver. The
desire for metallic wealth, strong at all times, seems at this
particular epoch to have been exceptionally powerful. Not
only did it inspire the adventure which resulted in the great
discovery; it was among the principal causes which hurried
* It ought to be observed that there are to this statement some
notable exceptions, more particularly in English colonization. With
New Englanders, for example, it was always a boast that “ they were
originally a plantation religious, not a plantation of trade.”
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
across the Atlantic the eager emigrant crowd who peopled
the western world when it was found. And when at length
settlements were established, and the business of colonial
legislation began, we find the same passion governing with
no less powerful sway the councils of statesmen and
princes.
The passion for the precious metals was thus, at this period
of the world, for whatever reason, driven to excess; and, as
sometimes happens, the prevailing crave was exalted into
a dogma. It was proclaimed on high authority, that all
wealth, properly so called, consisted in gold and silver.
The doctrine found a favourable audience ; it was accepted;
and for some two centuries held its ground—held its ground,
not as the tenet of a sect, or as the belief of a particular
people, but as a truth, adopted in good faith, and systemati
cally acted on by all the leading nations of Europe.
Wealth was thus held to consist in the precious metals;
and wealth was power. It followed that the great object of
statesmanship should be to increase in the statesman’s coun
try the stock of gold and silver. Colonial policy was moulded
under the influence of this view. Colonies were valued, not
for their social advantages, as opening a new career to a
superabundant population at home—indeed superabundance
of population was, according to the notions of that time, an
impossible contingency—not for the economic gain of sup
plying our wants at cheapened cost, not even for the impe
rial reason, as extending the range of national power,—but
simply and solely as they could be made the means of in
creasing the nation’s supply of gold and silver.
*
* “ The maintenance of ^the monopoly has hitherto been the princi
pal, or, more properly, the sole end and purpose of the dominion
which Great Britain assumes over her colonies.”— Wealth of Nations,
p. 277 (M'Culloch’s Edition).
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
11
Let me here endeavour to convey, in as few words as I
can, a general idea of the nature of the expedients by which
it was attempted to give effect to this view. They would
naturally vary according to circumstances. Where the colo
nies were themselves productive of the precious metals, the
legislator would go direct to his object; on the one hand
encouraging mining pursuits, on the other excluding foreign
nations wholly from the colonial trade. In this way, while
he developed the “ wealth” of the colonies to the utmost, he,
at the same time, secured to the mother country its entire
appropriation. Where this was not the case—where the
colonies did not yield gold or silver—then a more circuitous
course would be necessary. Foreign trade would not here
be proscribed (for it was only through foreign trade that
colonies, which did not themselves contain the precious
metals, could perform the function required of them) : it
would be “ regulated”—exportation would be encouraged,
importation controlled, so as on the whole to make debtors
of foreign nations, and leave a “ balance” of gold and silver,
which might be directed to the home country.
But it will be well to observe somewhat more in detail the
actual working of the system. And to this end we may take
the cases of Spain and England. For the purpose of reaping
the promise of the accepted creed the position of Spain was
the most favourable which it is possible to conceive. The
portion of the New World which fell to her lot was rich in
the precious metals beyond former experience. It was also
an advantage of her position, regarded from the same point
of view, that her government was despotic, as thus no con
stitutional obstacle could stand in the way of her statesmen
to hinder them from giving the fullest effect to their policy.
They availed themselves of this liberty to the utmost. All
intercourse of foreigners with the colonial subjects of Spain
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
was interdicted under capital penalties.”* The intercolonial
trade was placed under the severest restrictions. Not only
was the industry of the colonies excluded from many branches
of manufacture carried on in the mother country, but even
the culture of the vine and the olive was prohibited under
severe penalties; and in this way capital and industry were,
from lack of other channels, forced into mining pursuits.
Lastly, by a regulation, which, for its mischievous absurdity,
has, I think, scarcely a parallel even in the history of com
mercial legislation, the whole colonial trade, the better to
bring it under the eye of the Spanish Government, was
required to pass through a single port in Old Spain. And
what was the result of this thoroughgoing application of the
principles of the commercial system to conditions so singu
larly favourable for the experiment ? It is written in the
early arrest of all healthy progress in the Spanish colonies,
and in the rapid decline, so long as the system was persisted
in, of the trade and power of Spain. “ Sixty years after the
discovery of the New World,” says Robertson, “the number
of Spaniards in all its provinces is computed not to have
exceeded fifteen thousand.” More than two hundred years
afterwards—that is to say, about the middle of the seven
teenth century, “ when,” according to the same authority,
“ the exclusive trade to America from Seville was at its
height,” the freight of the two united squadrons of “ galleons ”
and “ flota,” as they were called—the sole medium by which
the legal traffic of Spain with her colonies could be carried
on—the freight, I say, of these united squadrons did not
exceed 27,500 tons — less than a twentieth part of what
England now sends to the single port of Melbourne—scarcely
* Subsequently commuted to imprisonment for life. “ They even
shunned the inspection of strangers,” says Robertson,” and endea
voured to keep them from their coasts.”
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
13
more than the burden of a single vessel, the Great Eastern,
now in the mercantile marine of England.
This was the extent of the legitimate trade of Spain with
her colonies when the old colonial policy had reached its
height : it by no means, however, represented the whole of
her colonial trade. By much the most important portion
was carried on by the smuggler. “ The contraband trade of
the Spanish colonies,” says Mr. Merivale, “ became in the
early part of the last century [some fifty years previous to
the culminating period of the exclusive system just referred
to] the most regular and organized system of that kind which
the world has ever witnessed. The English led the way in it.
.......... The Dutch, French, and other nations seized on their
share of the spoil. Jamaica and St. Domingo became com
plete entrepôts for smuggled commodities, whence they were
transported with ease to the continent.......... Buenos Ayres
rose from an insignificant station to a considerable city, merely
from being the centre of the contraband traffic between
Europe and Peru. The Spaniards guarded their coasts with
an expensive maritime force, while they resorted in the inte
rior to the strange measure of making smuggling an offence
cognizable by the Inquisition. But all such efforts were
fruitless to check the force and violence of the ordinary trade.
The flotas and galleons sank to insignificance ; and their
owners were glad to make these licensed squadrons serve for
introducing the contraband commodities of other nations.”*
Such was the apotheosis of the commercial system in the
instance of a nation, fitted above all others, by extraordinary
privileges of position, for realising in an eminent degree the
benefits which that system promised, and which stopped at
no interference with the industrial freedom of its subjects,
however extravagant or however violent, which seemed adap* “ Colonization and the Colonies.” pp. 15, 16.
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
ted to give to it practical effect. Let us now turn to England,
not less a stickler than Spain for exclusive principles in com
mercial policy, but differing from Spain in this respect, that
she did not command the same advantages for their practical
enforcement.
For, in the first place, there was this capital circumstance
distinguishing the colonies of England from those of Spain :
the English colonies were destitute alike of gold and silver
mines. England, therefore, could only hope to accomplish
the great end at which all colonial legislation then aimed—
the augmentation of her stock of the precious metals, by indi
rect methods. The expedients which she actually adopted
for this purpose may be summed up under the four following
heads :—
First : She reserved to herself the monopoly of all those
colonial staples which served as raw material for her manu
factures. By this means she expected, in cheapening the
cost of her manufactures, to undersell foreigners, to extend
her exports, and thus to draw to herself gold and silver
through the balance of trade.
Secondly: She excluded from the colonial markets all
foreign manufactures and other products which came into
competition with her own.
Thirdly: She prohibited the colonists from engaging in
any manufacture which was carried on in the parent-state :
according to the oft-quoted remark of Lord Chatham, the
colonists had no right to make so much as a nail for a horse
shoe.
On the other hand, in compensation for these restrictions
on the commercial liberty of the colonists, the mother coun
try was content to impose some fetters on herself, giving to
the colonists the monopoly of her markets as against foreigners
for such commodities as she in her wisdom permitted them
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
15
to produce. By this means it was expected that mother
country and colony would play into each others’ hands, reci
procally support each other, and, at the expense of the
foreigner, draw boundless wealth to themselves through the
balance of trade.
*
Such was the general scope of the English colonial system.
The restrictions it embodied were indeed sufficiently vexa
tious and mischievous : nevertheless, if we look to the sub
stance rather than to the form—to the practical effect rather
than to the theoretic purpose, of her regulations, we shall be
disposed to say that the colonies of England enjoyed—at all
events by comparison—a very goodly amount of commercial
freedom. No attempt, for example, was made by Great
Britain to exclude her colonies from the trade with foreign
nations ; it was only sought to “ regulate ” that trade ; nor
did she forbid her colonies from trading freely with one
another. Further, the absurd expedient adopted by Spain
of requiring her whole colonial trade to pass through a single
Spanish port, had no counterpart in the colonial system of
England, which at least left open the trade, under whatever
restrictions, to all British subjects upon equal terms. Besides,
not a few of those restrictions, which looked harsh on paper,
were found in practice to be sufficiently harmless, often pre
scribing to the colonists a course which would have been
equally adopted without any such prescription. Of this cha
racter were the laws directed against colonial manufactures—
laws which, of course, the colonists never thought of violating
while they had more profitable means of employing their
capital in other pursuits. “ Such prohibitions,” says Adam
Smith, “ without cramping their industry, or restraining it
from any employment to which it would have gone of its
own accord, are only impertinent badges of slavery, imposed
* “ Wealth of Nations." Book IV, Chapter VII, Part III.
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
upon them without any sufficient reason by the groundless
jealousy of the merchants and manufacturers of the mother
country.”*
But between the colonization of Spain and that of England
there was a difference deeper and more radical than gold and
silver mines, or any mere commercial legislation—powerful
as no doubt these causes were—could bring to pass ; a dif
ference, which did far more than any incidents to which I
have yet referred, to produce that broad contrast in the
subsequent colonial careers of the two countries which is one
of the most striking facts in the history of that time.
The government of Spain was a highly despotic and cen
tralized system : the government of England was popular and
free, and gave scope to local institutions ; and these charac
teristic attributes of their respective governments were trans
ferred, in even an exaggerated form, to the possessions of the
two countries in the New World. The colonial government
of Spain stands out a singular and portentous phenomenon in
history. At its head the Royal Council of the Indies, an
autocratic body in which the king presides, having its seat at
Seville in Old Spain, exercises supreme control in the last
resort over every department of colonial administration.
Under the Royal Council come the Viceroys of Mexico and
Peru, governing through a strongly organized bureaucracy
nominated by themselves, and composed exclusively of na
tives of the mother state—within their own precincts, says
Robertson, as despotic as the monarch of Spain himself. The
government thus constituted, the Feudal System and the
Romish Church take their place side by side in the full matu
rity of their mediaeval pretensions—the Feudal system, with
its narrow maxims, its strict entails, its various anti-commer
cial and anti-industrial incidents ;—the Church, served by a
* “ Wealth of Nations,”p. 261.
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
hierarchy of numerous orders, the great majority of whom
are, by a preposterous policy, consigned to spend their time
in religious houses, consuming in celibacy and idleness the
wealth of a country which calls aloud on all sides for popu
lation and the hand of labour. By a curious—I imagine a
unique—act of condescension, the Church in the American
possessions of Spain acknowledged the supremacy of the civil
power ; but not the less is she impelled by her old instincts,
*
and acts her old part. In fine, to complete the picture, the
Inquisition is seen to rise, scowling, with ill-omened aspect,
from its gloomy portals, over the nascent civilization of the
New World, f
And now contrast with this the broad features of popular
liberty disclosed in the early charters of the English colo
nies—meagre but unanambiguous witnesses of the genius
which there presided. The first Charter of Massachusetts
“gave power for ever to the freemen of the company to
elect annually from their own number a Governor, DeputyGovernor, and eighteen Assistants, on the last Wednesday of
Easter Term ; and to make laws and ordinances—not repug
nant to the laws of England—for their own benefit, and the
government of persons inhabiting the territory.”! The Con
necticut Charter is drawn up upon the same model its
framer being charged to comprise in it “ liberties and pri
vileges not inferior or short to what is granted to the
Massachusetts.’^ In the southern colonies, though the form
of government is different, the spirit which animates it is the
same. Thus Lord Baltimore, the founder of Maryland, is
authorized “ by and with the advice, assent, and approbation*
§
* “ Robertson’s History of America,” vol. iv., pp. 45-46.
t “ Robertson’s History of America,” book viii.
J Palfrey’s “New England,” vol. i, p. 291.
§ Ibid, vol. ii, p. 573.
B
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
of the freemen of Maryland, or the greater part of them, or
their delegates and deputies, to enact any laws whatever,
appertaining either unto the public state of the said pro
vince, or unto the private utility of particular persons,”* and
so of the others. In not a few of those early charters,
indeed, representative government is not expressly men
tioned ; but, as Mr. Merivale points out, only because this
was “ assumed by the colonists as a matter of right.” In
these cases, “ houses of representatives” used—to borrow the
quaint language of a historian of the time—to “ break out”
in the colonies on their settlement;! the doings of which
houses, although without warrant in any written consti
tution, were, as a matter of course, recognised by the govern
ment at home. Political powers of the most extensive kind
—often without any limit whatever, other than those implied
limits which the fact of allegiance involved—were thus
freely conferred on the early English colonists. Nor did
they remain unexercised.
Whether “ breaking out,” or
established by formal authority, the colonial assemblies
from the first assumed to themselves, in all that related to
their internal interests, the most complete powers of govern
ment.
That this was so is indeed obvious on the most cursory
reading of the colonial history of these times. The most
striking fact connected with the early English colonies is, the
extraordinary variety of political institutions which prevailed
in them. Take, for example, the subject of religion—a
subject in reference to which it was a grand object of the
governments of England at this time to enforce uniformity.
* “ The Art of Colonization.” By Edward Gibbon Wakefield,
p. 229.
t As, for example, in the settlement of Providence. See Palgrave’s
“ New England,” vol. i, pp. 423-25.
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
19
In the colonies there are as many religions predominant as
there are religious denominations amongst the colonists.
Thus, in the New England colonies, we find Puritanism in
the ascendant; in Virginia and Carolina, the Cliurch of
England is established by law ; in Pennsylvania, Quakerism
prevails; while for Roman Catholics, Maryland is the land
of promise. Whatever in effect was the religious belief
prevailing in a colony, that was reflected in its legislative
assembly, and embodied in its laws. And, as it was with
religion, so it was with all other matters connected with the
colony’s internal concerns ; for example, with the laws of
inheritance, and with what has been made the subject of so
much discussion in late times—the disposal of its waste
lands, and the mode of dealing with native tribes. In the
regulation of their external commerce, indeed, the colonies,
as you will have gathered from what I have already said,
were content to submit to the central government; but in
all else they were their own masters. Like the Corcyroeans
of old, they could boast that they relinquished their country,
“ in order to be equal in right with those who remain, not to
be their slaves.”
It was these things still more than the discrepancies in the
commercial codes of the two countries, which brought out
the broad contrasts between English and Spanish coloni
zation. From the first, the Spanish colonists fell under the
blight of an all pervading despotism ; while the colonists of
England—whom the tyranny of Charles and Laud never
reached—masters of their persons and property, thought
and spoke, laboured and traded, under the inspiring con
sciousness of liberty. Hence it happened that, while the
colonies of Spain, albeit embracing the richest portions of
the New World—rich with the products of the tropics, as
well as with that on which she set more store, the precious
�20
COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
metals—languished in the midst of their marvellous re
sources, and never prevented, or even for a moment retarded,
her decline, the colonies of England, almost from their first
establishment, steadily progressed, exhibiting at the close of
their dependent career an example of rapid and brilliant
progress, such as the world had not hitherto witnessed;
and finally, on their severance from the mother country,
taking rank among nations almost at once as a first-class
power.
So far, then, as to the first period of colonial history which
I proposed to examine. Henceforward I shall confine myself
exclusively to the examples of colonization and colonial
policy furnished by Great Britain. I have taken the Ame
rican War of Independence as an epoch ; because, while it
terminates the political connexion of Great Britain with her
most celebrated colonies, it also marks a change of vital
moment in her colonial policy. Up to that time, the colonies
of England, though controlled in their external commerce,
yet as regarded their internal affairs—in all that related
to their most intimate concerns—were emphatically selfgoverning. Thenceforward, until quite recent times, the
government of the colonies was carried on in England
through the Colonial Office, a department of State con
ducting its affairs through an organization analagous to that
employed by the Royal Council of the Indies. A cen
tralized bureaucracy thus took the place, in English colonial
affairs, of the municipal system of the earlier period. It
will be worth while to consider here what the causes were
which led to this remarkable change.
In the first place, then, the War of Independence, and its
unlooked-for issue, produced in England a feeling of pro
found mortification—an exacerbation of temper, which natu
rally lent itself to arbitrary measures. England—so the case
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
21
was put by her statesmen—had conceded to her North
American colonies almost complete self-government. Under
her liberal treatment and fostering care, those colonies had
grown in population and wealth with unexampled rapidity—
had in a century and a half attained to the stature of a
nation. And what was the result ? What was the return made
to England for this liberal treatment ? That the moment
these dependencies were invited to contribute towards a reve
nue, from the expenditure of which they had profited scarcely
less than the mother country herself—a revenue which had
more than once been spent in wars waged for their de
fence, and which had resulted in their aggrandisement—
that moment these favoured dependencies repudiated the
just demand, rebelled against their indulgent protector, and
asserted their independence. It was thus that the question
of colonial government presented itself to the mortified
spirit of Englishmen after the loss of a colonial empire, on
the retention of which, it was at that time very generally
thought, England’s rank in the scale of nations depended.
It was, then, not unnatural, that the resolve should be taken
to tighten the bond of dependence in the case of such colonies
as still remained ; nor were other events wanting about this
time to strengthen this disposition.
The French Revolution was, as you know, on the point of
breaking out. The catastrophe no sooner came than a vio
lent reaction in English political opinion set in—a reaction
which has left deep traces on the political history of that
time. The liberal party, as favourers of the French Revo
lution, were stricken with hopeless unpopularity. The Tories,
led by Pitt, now scared from his liberal creed, were carried
to power by immense majorities. The whole thought and
passion of the nation were exhausted in antagonism to
France and French principles, and whatever in any way
�22
COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
favoured popular right was looked on as infected with the
fatal taint. Colonial Government could not but follow the
general tendency. In the colonies, as elsewhere, liberal
institutions fell under discredit, and the rights of the colo
nists receded before the pretensions of the central power.
But there was one cause more potent for this result than
all the rest. It was about this time that England founded
her first convict colony. The practice of transporting crimi
nals to remote dependencies — a practice not unknown to
anticpiity—had indeed been adopted by Great Britain, in
common with other European countries, in the times ante
rior to the American revolution; but it was then confined
within narrow limits. In Maryland, for example, which in
those times was one of the principal receptacles of this class
of emigrants, the proportion of convicts to the whole popu
lation did not, in the middle of last century, exceed two per
*
cent.
The practice, however, did exist. Now, by the result
of the revolutionary struggle, this outlet for the criminals of
England was suddenly cut off; and this at a time when, no
doubt in consequence of the same event, the prisons of Eng
land were extraordinarily full. A pressing practical problem
was thus presented to the statesmen of England—a question
which, much as it has since been discussed, cannot yet be
said to be fully solved—how is England to dispose of her
criminals ? In an evil hour the idea suggested itself of
establishing a penal settlement. The connexion of the two
events is sufficiently indicated by their chronological sequence.
The peace of Paris, by which the independence of the United
States was recognised, was signed in 1782. The first penal
colony of England was founded in New South Wales in 1788.
Ere many years had passed, there was witnessed, for the first
time in history, the unedifying spectacle of a community in
* “ Colonization and Colonies,” p. 350, note.
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
23
which the bulk of the population were felons serving out the
period of their punishment. From that time until quite
recent years, the practice of penal colonization became a
settled portion of the policy of Great Britain.
Now, I need not tell you that this use of colonization was
quite incompatible with the idea of colonial self-government.
Colonies in which the majority of the inhabitants were felons
of the deepest dye clearly could not be trusted with political
rights. And the precedent established in those cases, as you
will readily understand, quickly reacted upon the general
system of our colonial government.
*
The establishment of
the Colonial Office, which took place in 1794, may be re
garded as the external symbol of the change.f
The practice of penal colonization, concurring with the
other influences I have mentioned, thus definitively deter
mined the course of English colonial policy in the direction
of centralization and absolutism ; and this was about the
least serious of the evils which that system entailed. It
brought colonization itself into disrepute. It corrupted the
whole tone of English thought on the subject. It may be
doubted if even yet we have fully recovered from its effects.
* “ It is a remarkable fact, that until we began to colonize with
convicts towards the end of the last century, the imperial power of
England never, I believe, in a single instance attempted to rule locally
from a distance a body of its subjects who had gone forth from Eng
land and planted a colony.”—Wakefield’s “Art of Colonization,”
p. 228.
t Previous to this time the business connected with the colonies,
which was almost exclusively commercial, had been assigned first to a
Board, and afterwards to a permanent Committee of Privy Council,
which had the management of “ Trade and Plantations.” For a short
interval, indeed, during the American struggle—from 1768 to 1782—
a Secretary of State for the American Department existed : it was the
office of this functionary which Burke’s Bill abolished. See Lewis’s
“ Government of Dependencies,” pp. 160-62.
�24
COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
The plan of penal colonization, it is true, presents certain
obvious advantages of an economic kind: let us, by all
means, recognize them. It secures to the colony an ample
supply of that of which colonies have most need—labour; it
secures to it also, besides this, cheap means of production—
cheap to the colony, but very far from cheap to the taxpayers
of the mother country, who bear the expense of transporting
and guarding these promising emigrants—it secures, I say,
to the colony, in addition to this cheap means of production,
a market for its products in the large government expendi
ture which the military and police establishments, indispen
sable to such settlements, always entail. It confers these
advantages, and by this means it galvanizes into a precocious
prosperity the settlements which are the victims of the
loathsome patronage. But what an idea must our statesmen
have had of the art of colonization—of what Bacon calls
“the heroic work” of building up new nations—when they
turned for the materials of the structure to the hulk and
gaol! “Imagine,” said Dr. Hinds, “the case of a house
hold most carefully made up of picked specimens from all
the idle, mischievous, and notoriously bad characters in the
country! Surely the man who should be mad or wicked
enough to bring together this monstrous family, and to keep
up its numbers and character by continual fresh supplies,
would be scouted from the society he so outraged—would be
denounced as the author of a diabolical nuisance to his
neighbourhood and his country, and would be proclaimed
infamous for setting at nought all morality and decency.
What is it better, that, instead of a household, it is a whole
people we have so brought together, and are so keeping up ?
that it is the wide society of the whole world, and not of a
single country, against which the nuisance is committed ?”
But the evils of convict settlement did not end here. We
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
25
know that the existence of slavery in a country is able, by
its vile associations, to degrade honest industry, and make
men ashamed of useful occupations : in like manner, the
practice of convict settlement brought discredit upon the
whole art and business of colonization. That “ heroic work ”
became associated in men’s minds with ideas of infamy and
crime. This aspect of the case is brought out, not less
strongly than quaintly, by Charles Lamb, in a letter addressed
to a friend in the “ Hades of Thieves ”—the upper world alias
for New South Wales. He thus describes, in his grotesquest
vein, the conditions of a society in which, not in theory but
in fact, la propriété est le vol. “1 see,” he says, “ Diogenes
prying among you with his perpetual fruitless lantern. What
must you be willing to give by this time for the sight of an
honest man ! You must have almost forgotten how we look.
And tell me what your Sydneyites do ? Are they th—v—ng
all the day long ? Merciful heaven ! what property can stand
against such depredations ! The kangaroos—your aborigines
—do they keep their primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted,
with those little short fore-puds, looking like a lesson framed
by nature to the pickpocket. Marry, for diving into fobs,
they are lamely provided à priori, but if the hue-and-cry
were once up, they would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters
as the expertest locomotor in the colony. We hear the most
improbable tales at this distance. Pray, is it true that the
young Spartans among you are born with six .fingers, which
spoils their scanning ? It must look very odd, but use
reconciles. For their scansion it is less to be regretted ; for,
if they take it into their heads to be poets, it is odds but
they turn out, the greatest part of them, vile plagiarists. Is
there any difference to see between the son of a th—f and
the grandson ? or where does the taint stop ? Do you bleach
in three or four generations ? I have many questions to put,
�24
COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
The plan of penal colonization, it is true, presents certain
obvious advantages of an economic kind: let us, by all
means, recognize them. It secures to the colony an ample
supply of that of which colonies have most need—labour; it
secures to it also, besides this, cheap means of production—
cheap to the colony, but very far from cheap to the taxpayers
of the mother country, who bear the expense of transporting
and guarding these promising emigrants—it secures, I say,
to the colony, in addition to this cheap means of production,
a market for its products in the large government expendi
ture which the military and police establishments, indispen
sable to such settlements, always entail. It confers these
advantages, and by this means it galvanizes into a precocious
prosperity the settlements which are the victims of the
loathsome patronage. But what an idea must our statesmen
have had of the art of colonization—of what Bacon calls
“the heroic work” of building up new nations—when they
turned for the materials of the structure to the hulk and
gaol! “Imagine,” said Dr. Hinds, “the case of a house
hold most carefully made up of picked specimens from all
the idle, mischievous, and notoriously bad characters in the
country! Surely the man who should be mad or wicked
enough to bring together this monstrous family, and to keep
up its numbers and character by continual fresh supplies,
would be scouted from the society he so outraged—would be
denounced as the author of a diabolical nuisance to his
neighbourhood and his country, and would be proclaimed
infamous for setting at nought all morality and decency.
What is it better, that, instead of a household, it is a whole
people we have so brought together, and are so keeping up ?
—that it is the wide society of the whole world, and not of a
single country, against which the nuisance is committed ?”
But the evils of convict settlement did not end here. We
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
25
know that the existence of slavery in a country is able, by
its vile associations, to degrade honest industry, and make
men ashamed of useful occupations : in like manner, the
practice of convict settlement brought discredit upon the
whole art and business of colonization. That “heroic work”
became associated in men’s minds with ideas of infamy and
crime. This aspect of the case is brought out, not less
strongly than quaintly, by Charles Lamb, in a letter addressed
to a friend in the “ Hades of Thieves ”—the upper world alias
for New South Wales. He thus describes, in his grotesquest
vein, the conditions of a society in which, not in theory but
in fact, la propriété est le vol. lí I see,” he says, “ Diogenes
prying among you with his perpetual fruitless lantern. What
must you be willing to give by this time for the sight of an
honest man ! You must have almost forgotten how we look.
And tell me what your Sydneyites do ? Are they th—v—ng
all the day long ? Merciful heaven ! what property can stand
against such depredations I The kangaroos—your aborigines
—do they keep their primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted,
with those little short fore-puds, looking like a lesson framed
by nature to the pickpocket. Marry, for diving into fobs,
they are lamely provided a priori, but if the hue-and-cry
were once up, they would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters
as the expertest locomotor in the colony. We hear the most
improbable tales at this distance. Pray, is it true that the
young Spartans among you are born with six fingers, which
spoils their scanning ? It must look very odd, but use
reconciles. For their scansion it is less to be regretted ; for,
if they take it into their heads to be poets, it is odds but
they turn out, the greatest part of them, vile plagiarists. Is
there any difference to see between the son of a th—f and
the grandson ? or where does the taint stop ? Do you bleach
in three or four generations ? I have many questions to put,
�28
COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
transportation pleaded that it conferred a double benefit—at
once a relief to the mother country and a boon to the colony.
Whately replied that it was doubly cursed, demoralizing
mother country and colony together—the former by accus
toming her to meet temporary exigencies by a recourse to
radically vicious expedients—expedients which, opening to
criminals an almost assured road to prosperity, involve a
permanent encouragement to crime ; and the latter, by cor
rupting their national life at its source. In the wide range
of that great man’s intellectual activity there is surely no
topic on which his remarkable powers have been exerted
with more signal success, or been productive of greater or
more lasting utility.
Colonization had, as I have said, at this time reached the
nadir of its decline. The colonial reformers proposed to
rescue it from its degradation, and re-establish it in the
grandeur of its true proportions before the English people.
Since the subject had last seriously attracted the attention of
political thinkers, Political Economy had taken rank among
the sciences. The most eminent of those who took part in
the new movement—Wakefield, Torrens, Charles Buller, Sir
William Molesworth, Whately—had mastered the new know
ledge, and approached the subject of colonization with all the
advantage which this acquisition conferred. For the first
time something like a sound and complete theory of coloniza
tion was put forth—sound at least, I do not hesitate to say,
in all its essentials. The theory has now little more than an
historic value : still the large space which it for many year3
filled in colonial politics, and the great practical results which
have flowed from it, will perhaps justify an attempt to state
briefly its leading principles.
The fundamental cause, and the justification of coloniza
tion are to be found in the laws of population and capital.
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
29
In old countries population and capital tend to become re
dundant. Of this there is abounding proof. The redun
dancy of capital in old countries is evinced by many obvious
circumstances—for example, by the difficulty of employing
advantageously—by the low rate of profit which it brings—
by its constant exportation for investment to other lands.
The redundancy of population is even a more patent fact.
Which of us has not painful experience that “ all the gates
are thronged with suitors,” that “ all the markets overflow ” ?
As to the facts, therefore, there can be no doubt. The cause
has been traced by Political Economy to the limited quantity
and capacity of that agent from which ultimately the ele
ments of subsistence and the materials of wealth are drawn
—the land of the country. Now, in new countries these
conditions of production are exactly reversed. Fertile land
exists there in abundance, while capital and labour are scarce.
Seen in this light, the true remedy for our evils at once ap
pears. It is, that what is in excess in each should be brought
to supplement what is deficient in each ; in a word—that we
should colonize. “When I ask you,” said Charles Buller, in
that great speech which gave an earnest of future statesman
ship which the gifted orator was never destined to fulfil,
“ when I ask you to colonize, what do I ask you to do, but
to carry the superfluity of one part of our country to repair
the deficiency of the other—to cultivate the desert by apply
ing to it the means that lie idle at home ; in one simple
word, to convey the plough to the field, the workman to his
work, the hungry to his food.”
But at this point I fancy I hear the familiar ring of a wellknown objectionWhat! encourage the bone and sinew,
and industrial enterprise, and accumulated wealth of the
country, to leave itI Well, I will meet the objection frankly.
I would by all means encourage the bone and sinew, and
�30
COLINIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
industrial enterprise, and accumulated wealth, of old countries
to leave them for the purpose of colonization; and I would
do so in order to increase in those very countries, bone and
sinew, and industrial enterprise, and accumulated wealth.
If you think this paradoxical, I will ask you to consider a
*
familiar case. The United States are colonies of England,
founded by the exportation thither, some two centuries ago,
of those elements of material prosperity which I have named.
Do you think that England is now the poorer for that ex
portation ? Suppose this argument against exporting bone
and sinew had prevailed in the seventeenth century, and that
the British American Colonies had never been planted, do
you think that the England of our day would support, in
consequence, a larger population in greater affluence ? It is
surely unnecessary to remind you that the colonies of Eng
land—I mean the countries planted and peopled by England,
whether now politically connected with her or not—are as
necessary to the support of her people as the soil on which
they tread. It is an obvious fact that England, from her
own soil, is physically incapable of giving subsistence to the
human beings who now cover her surface; and that if she
has been rendered capable of supporting her present immense
population, and supporting them in such comfort as they
enjoy, this is due principally to the fact that she has for
centuries been a colonizing country. She has sent abroad
her sturdy and enterprising sons to countries abounding in
all that she has needed; and the descendants of those emi* The paradox, still so mysterious to many people, was propounded
and solved by Franklin a century ago. “ There are supposed,” he
said, “ to be now upwards of one million souls in North America ; . .
and yet, perhaps there is not one the fewer in Britain, but rather the
more, on account,” he adds, “ of the employment the colonies afford
to manufacturers at home on account, we should now prefer to sav,
of the cheapened subsistence with which they supply them.
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
31
grants are now at once the most constant customers for her
products, and the surest caterers for her wants. She has
parted with her bone and muscle, and industrial enterprise,
and accumulated wealth, and the result is she has multiplied
indefinitely all these elements of her greatness. Colonization
thus confers a double benefit: it relieves the old country
from the pressure of its superabundant population, and gives
a field for its unemployed capital; while, at the same time,
by opening up new lands, and placing their resources at her
disposal, it widens indefinitely the limits which restrain her
future growth.
Well, this point having been made good—a basis for their
activity having been found in the nature of the case—the
colonial reformers had next to deal with the practical ques
tion, How is colonization to be carried on? By what means are
men and capital to be transferred from one end of the globe
to the other—men, that is, of the right quality, in the right
proportions, keeping in view always the great ultimate end—
the founding of a new nation ? The solution of this problem
propounded by the reformers was as follows :—First, they
maintained that the lands of a new colony, instead of being
granted away gratuitously with lavish profusion, as had been
the almost universal practice of the English governments up
to that time, should be sold, and sold at a substantial and a
uniform price.
*
Secondly, they insisted that the proceeds of
the land sales should be employed as an emigration fund to
assist the poorer classes in emigrating. Thirdly, they urged
* The reader, who desires to inform himself on the doctrine, once
so warmly debated, of a “ sufficient price ” for colonial land, is re
ferred to Wakefield’s “Art of Colonization,” Letters xlvii.-lii.; and,
on the other hand, to Merivale’s “ Colonization and the Colonies,”
Lectures xiv.-xvi.; also to Mill’s “ Principles of Political Economy,”
book i., chap. viii.
�32
COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
that this assistance should be given with discrimination—that
is to say, that the emigrants should be selected—the condi
tions of age, sex, health, respectability, &c., being taken ac
count of with a view to the needs of new colonies. And,
fourthly, they contended for the principle of colonial selfgovernment. Thus, to recapitulate—the sale of wild land at
a uniform price, the application of the proceeds to assist emi
gration, the selection of the emigrants, and self-government
for the colonies—these may be taken as the cardinal points
in the reformers’ charter. They did not indeed comprise the
whole programme of the reformers—at least of the more
sanguine of the group, in whose fervid imaginations the art
of colonization grew rapidly into a wonderfully elaborate and
complete system. For these visionaries—as I think I may
now venture to call them—the ideal of an English colony
was England herself in little, transferred to the other side
of the globe—an epitome, perfect in all its parts, of the
society from which it issued—England, with its capitalists
and labourers, its hierarchy of ranks, its hereditary aristo
cracy, its landed gentry, and, of course, its Established
*
Church —transferred complete, as by the enchanter’s stroke,
to the pastoral wilds of Australia ! The idea was a taking,
perhaps a noble one; unfortunately it has not proved prac
tical. The progeny is, in fact, turning out something very
different from the parent’s image. In place of feudal subor
dination there is democracy; in place of a high electoral quali
fication, manhood suffrage; in place of primogeniture, equal
* This was, I believe, the original idea, which however in the end
developed into something more reasonable as well as more liberal—
“that of established churches.” “As a colonizing body,” says Mr
Wakefield, “composed, like the legislature, of people differing in
creed, we determined to assist all denominations of settlers alike, with
respect to religious provisions. We have assisted Roman Catholics
according to their numbers, and the Church of Scotland on the same
�33
COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
division of property; in place of state churches, voluntary
religious associations. In fact, the ducklings are rapidly taking
the water; but if they are, it is scarcely, methinks, for us to
act the idle part of the nursing hen moralizing from the
*
brink.
principle.” He adds the following creditable anecdote. “ Among the
first emigrants to New Zealand were some Jews, who asked as, ‘with
bated breath and whispering humbleness,’ if a pr iest authorized to kill
animals for meat according to Jewish custom, could have accommo
dation in the ships. We treated the inquiry as a request, and granted
it with alacrity, taking care besides that every arrangement should be
made to satisfy their religious scruples. The Jews of England have
since done the New Zealand Company’s settlements more than one
service.”—“ Art of Colonization,” pp. 56, 57.
* “ And even supposing this aristocratic reverie capable of being
accomplished, what interest have the English people in its accom
plishment? Why should they desire to plant among the communities
of the New World a hostile outpost of feudalism and privilege, the
source of division, jealousy, and war ? What reason have they to fear
the sight of great commonwealths based on free reverence for equal
laws, and prospering without lords or dependents ? Why should they
look with jealous malignity on the mighty development of the AngloSaxon race, emancipated from Norman bonds, over a continent which
its energy and patience have made its own ? Why should they desire
to thwart the manifest designs of Providence, which has willed that a
new order of things should commence with the peopling of the New
World? ....
“ By the issue of their enterprise, victorious though chequered, vic
torious though now wrapped in storm, man has undoubtedly been
taught that he may not only exist, but prosper, without many things
which it would be heresy and treason to think unnecessary to his exis
tence here. It is a change, and a great change ; one to be regarded
neither with childish exultation nor with childish fear, but with manly
reverence and solicitude, as the opening of a new page in the book of
Providence, full of mighty import to mankind. But what, in the course
of time, has not changed, except that essence of religion and morality
for which all the rest was made ? The grandest forms of history have
waxed old and passed away. The English aristocracy has been grand
C
�34
COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
But leaving these refinements of political speculation, re
specting which opinions will naturally differ, the four posi
tions which I have stated furnished at least a sound basis for
practical work. Sustained as these positions have since been
by fuller discussion, as well as by the severer test of actual
experiment, they may now be taken as the admitted and ap
proved groundwork of the colonizing art.
*
The colonial reformers of 1830, I have said, propounded
a theory: they were, however, very far from being mere
theorists: their aims were essentially practical; and they
were eager to proceed from speculation to action.
and beneficent in its hour, but why should it think that it is the expi
ring effort of creative power, and the last birth of time? We bear,
and may long bear, from motives higher perhaps than the public
good, the endless decrepitude of feudalism here; but why are we
bound, or how can we hope, to propagate it in a free world?”—“The
Empire,” by Goldwin Smith, pp. 142-145.
* “ Let us divest it ” [the modern scheme of systematic coloniza
tion,] says Mr. Merivale, “of the too exact form in which it has been
presented by some of its supporters; let us dismiss all idea of a pre
cise proportion between land labour and capital, an exclusive employ
ment of the land fund on emigration, and of a ‘ mathematically ’
sufficient price; let us consider its principles as confined to the sale
of land at as high prices as can reasonably be obtained, and the strict
devotion of the proceeds to a few essential purposes, among which the
supply of labour holds the principal place; let us consider it, moreover,
as chiefly applicable to colonies raising large quantities of exportable
produce, and perhaps also to other colonies so distant from the mother
country, that the stream of emigration needs to be artificially directed
to them; let us, I say, subject the theory to all the qualifications I
have suggested, although not all of them with equal confidence, and
we cannot then fail of being struck with its simplicity, its facility of
adaptation, its high practical utility. Never was there a more remark
able instance of the success of a principle against all manner of mis
apprehension—against the fear of innovation—against corrupt inte
rests—against the inert resistance which all novelty is sure to encoun
ter.”—“ Colonization and the Colonies,” pp. 427, 428.
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
35
Among their first converts was Lord Howick, the present
Earl Grey, who early in 1832, before he had been a year in
office, took the first great step in the right direction, by pro
mulgating regulations whereby, in the principal colonies of
England, the sale of waste land was substituted for the
irregular practice of gratuitous grants ; and whereby further,
in two important colonies—New South Wales and Van Die
man’s Land—the purchase money thus obtained was directed
to be used as a fund for assisting emigration. This was the
first victory of the reformers ; the second occurred some four
years later. It consisted in the appointment—made while Earl,
then Lord John, Russell held the seals of the Colonial Office
—of the Land and Emigration Commissioners, as a machinery
for superintending and generally promoting emigration.
These were important achievements ; but the reformers
naturally desired some fairer field for the trial of their prin
ciples than settlements already saturated with the dregs of a
convict emigration. They aspired to be themselves the founders
of colonies. The site which they selected for their first experi
ment was South Australia. In 1836, the Act of Parliament
was passed by which that model colony was founded.
*
* I say “model” colony; for, although it is true that the Wakefield
School were far from satisfied with the degree of recognition obtained
for their views in the original constitution, it is beyond question that
it embodied the most important of their characteristic doctrines: on
the whole, too, and notwithstanding the first break down, they have
no reason to be dissatisfied with the result of the experiment. “ Not
withstanding,” says Mr. Wakefield, (“Art of Colonization,” p. 50)
“this grievous mistake, and the numerous mistakes into which the
Commissioners fell, the plan worked even better than its authors now
expected. A fine colony of people was sent out; and, for the first
time, the disposal of waste land, and the emigration of shipfulls of
labourers to the other side of the world, was managed with something
like system and care.” And see Merivale’s “ Colonization,” &c. New
edition, Lecture xvi. and Appendix.
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
From this point the new principles steadily gained ground.
In 1837, the New Zealand Association, with Mr. Baring,
afterwards Sir Francis, at its head, was formed for the purpose
of colonizing New Zealand in conformity with the new doc
trines. After a prolonged controversy with more than one
government, it at length succeeded, in 1846, in obtaining
from Parliament charters for the settlement of Wellington,
Nelson, and New Plymouth. Within a few years Canterbury
and Otago were added to the achievements of the Association in.
the same region. Meantime the principles of the reformers,
respecting the disposal of the public land and the trans
mission of emigrants, modified, it is true, to meet the views,
of successive Colonial Secretaries, were adopted for all the
Australian colonies. Thus rapidly were the fortunes of
English colonization retrieved. In 1830, the colonies were
spoken of in leading reviews as “ unfit abodes for any but
convicts, paupers, and desperate and needy persons.” Before
five years had passed, the best minds in England, had' iden
tified themselves with the cause of colonization; within,
twenty years a whole group of new colonies were founded,
which are now amongst the most interesting and promising
which own allegiance to the British Crown. The Coloniza
tion Society had done its work.
*
It had, perhaps, done more than its work—more, at least,
than many of those who took part in its early delibera
tions had consciously aimed at.
Among the numerous
* “Like most- projects based on theory,” says Mr. Merivale, “how
ever far-sighted and comprehensive, the so-called South Australian, or
Wakefield scheme of colonization, took in practice a different course
from what its inventors anticipated, and its results were in many
respects curiously divergent from those with a view to which it was
constructed. But it would be a great error to infer on that account
that it was unsuccessful; on the contrary, there arc in history very
few instances to be found in which a system, devised in the closet by
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
37
reforms comprised in the programme of the colonial refor
mers, self-government for the colonies occupied a principal
place. In this, too, the reformers have succeeded—succeeded
beyond their hopes—succeeded, it may yet prove, beyond
their wishes.
During that period in which the colonies were ruled
through the Colonial Office—that is to say, from 1794 down
to quite recent times—there was maintained in many of the
Colonies a make-believe of self-government. The colonies,
many of them at least, received so-called “ constitutions.”
These constitutions, however, notwithstanding that they in
general comprised a representative assembly, in fact signified
extremely little. The representative assemblies had no sub
stantial functions. The real powers of government lay in
an Executive Council—a council of which the members,
nominated directly or indirectly by the Colonial Minister,
and holding office during his pleasure, were entirely inde
pendent of the representative bodies, and might, and fre
quently did, set them at defiance, and govern in direct oppo
sition to their views. This was the state of things which
prevailed in the so-called “representative colonies” of Eng
land down to 1846. But in that year a change took place :
the reformers were strong enough to carry a measure, by
which representative government in Canada was converted
from a sham into a reality. The principle, once made good,
was rapidly extended ; and I believe, at the present time, the
Cape of Good Hope is the only considerable English colony
studious men, and put in execution in a new and distant world, which
those men had never seen, has produced such extensive and beneficial
results.”............ “ It is not too much to say,” he adds, “ that the
success of our Australian colonies is in a very great measure attribu
table to their lessons.”—“ Colonization and the Colonies.” New
edition, 18G1, p. 470.
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
in which responsible government, in the fullest sense of the
word, does not prevail.
*
The mode in which this pregnant change was effected is
deserving of attention, as illustrating the vast consequences
which, in political affairs, sometimes depend upon apparently
trivial circumstances. Formerly, on the nomination of mem
bers to the Executive Council, the appointment was made
“ during pleasure”—the pleasure, that is to say, of the Colo
nial Office ; the practical effect being that the members held
office during life. But from the time that the new measures
came into force, the words “ during pleasure” were omitted ;
and instead, the members were appointed on the under
standing, that they should hold their posts only so long as
they retained the confidence of the colonial assemblies. The
change, almost infinitessimal in appearance, amounted in its
consequences to a revolution; for it at once brought the
executive into subordination to the legislature. Power and
patronage passed in a moment from the Colonial Office to the
the colonial assemblies. The Council might still be appointed
by the Home Government; but it could only exercise its
powers in conformity with the views of the local body. In
this way, after the lapse of a century, has Great Britain
come round in her colonial policy to the point from which
she started. In early times self-government used, as we
saw, to “break out” in the English colonies—the natural
outcome where two or three Englishmen met together to
build up society in a new land; and now, after much
groping amongst other systems, the country has returned
to its primitive faith. Reason and experience have set their
seal on what was at first prompted by the instincts of
free men.
• “ Colonization and Colonies.” Appendix to Lecture xxii.
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
39
And now, availing ourselves of the light which we derive
from this rapid survey of the past, let us endeavour to appre
ciate the character of the crisis in our colonial history in the
midst of which at the present moment we find ourselves.
One inference forces itself upon us at the outset. Of the
reasons which have in former times prevailed for holding
colonies in subjection, not one can now be considered tenable.
One after another, the objects for the sake of which our
colonial empire was created have, with the progress of eco
nomic and political knowledge, been given up. Let us glance
at these objects in succession ; and first, tribute may receive
a passing mention. Tribute—for which, with ancient states
men, dependencies of all kinds were chiefly valued, and
which has been enforced in modern times by some European
nations—never filled a large place in the colonial programme
of England. Once indeed she made the attempt to tax her
colonies for her own benefit; but the result of that experi
ment has not tempted her to repeat it. At present it is
scarcely necessary to say, that the idea of obtaining tribute
from a British colony is one which has no place in the
thoughts of any British statesman. So far from this, the
tables have been turned : it is we who pay the tribute—a
tribute amounting, in average years, to some £4,421,000
annually : what it will reach this year, when the New Zealand
*
war bill is paid, is what I will not venture to conjecture.
* “ Having reference to the expenditure of 1857, which is the latest
account in a complete form we have in our possession, we find the
imperial cost to have been £4,115,757, and the average of five years
previously £4,421,577; but we should not forget that this amount,
large as it may appear, is only some important portion of the whole
sum. The colonies have shared, in no inconsiderable measure, in the
£12,608,000 we have expended on the navy, and one million on the
packet service.”—“Our Colonies, their Commerce and their Cost,” by
Henry Ashworth, p. 8.
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
On the other hand, commercial monopoly was long, as we
have seen, a leading object with those who built up and
maintained our colonial empire. “ The only use,” said Lord
Sheffield, in a debate during the American War of Inde
pendence, “the only use of the American colonies is the
market of their commodities and the carriage of their pro
duce
and on this basis was erected that complicated system
of prohibitions bounties and differential duties, of which, in
a former part of this address, I attempted to sketch the out
line. But free trade has wholly and for ever removed the
ground from this elaborate and time-honoured structure.
We do not any longer ask—we certainly do not receive—
from our colonies any commercial advantages which are not
equally open to the whole world, which we should not equally
command though the political connexion were severed to
*
morrow.
The commercial reason for holding colonies in
subjection, therefore, like the financial one, has passed away.
But another use for colonies was in progress of time dis
covered : they might be turned to account as receptacles for
the criminals of the mother country—convenient sewers for
her moral and social offscourings. I have shown you what
was the result of this elevated and hopeful view of the colo
nizing art. I will only now add, that penal colonization,
long condemned by the best minds of the nation, as well as
by a disastrous experience, has of late years—less, it is morti
fying to think, from an enlightened policy than under stress
of necessity—been in practice abandoned. One example,
indeed, of a penal colony under British dominion still exists—
Western Australia; but this remaining blot, thanks to the
* “ No one now really doubts,” says Mr. Merivale, “ notwithstand
ing the hostile tariff of the States, that the separation of our North
American colonies has been, in an economical sense, advantageous
to us.”
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
41
rough lesson we have just received from a precocious pupil
■in the art politic, it seems probable will soon be removed.
*
Well, the object oi finance, the object of commercial mono
poly, the object of gaol convenience—all those objects, in short,
which had served in former times as reasons for our colonial
empire, had one after another been given up; yet the struc
ture remained—remained, not only without support from any
grounds of solid reason, but charged with an extraneous
burthen of £4,500,000 sterling, spent annually in keeping it
in repair. People began to ask cui bono ? Various answers
were returned. One writer said we took out the value in
prestige.f According to another, the colonial empire was to
be regarded as a great political gymnasium, in which the
people of this country might practice the art of governing
nations, and cultivate the “ imperial sense ”—an endowment,
which, it was alleged, was worth the money, j Just two years
ago, a high authority propounded a more tangible doctrine.
The political connexion was justified by Mr. Merivale on the
* “ A sinister system of education, under which the tutor tries to
force upon the pupil moral and social poison, which the pupil struggles
to reject.”—Prof. G. Smith in Daily News.
f “ The ablest of my critics tells me in good plain English that
what he thinks so valuable and wishes so much to preserve is ‘ appa
rent power.’ . . . When we see through the appearance of power,
and coolly own to ourselves that we do see through it, will not our
enemies have the sense to do the same? Wooden artillery has been
useful as a stratagem in war; but I never heard that it was useful, or
that anything was risked by a wise commander to preserve it, after the
enemy had found out that it was wooden.”—The Empire, p. 32.
t The following is, perhaps, the neatest statement of the imperial
doctrine of noodledom. “ There is not [in Canada] a grievance to be
alleged or even whispered against the Imperial Government, the purely
nominal but beneficent suzerainty of which keeps the political machinery of
the colonies in working order."—Times’ American Correspondent.—So
much virtue, it seems, there is in a name.
�42
COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
ground that colonies are valuable as a field for emigration ;
*
the implication, of course, being that the condition of depen
dency constitutes an attraction for emigrants. In the keenly
felt need of a working theory of empire the idea was eagerly
taken up. The Times, of course, welcomed the opportune
discovery. Even the cautious Economist became enthusiastic
in contemplating “ the amount of vivifying hope inspired in
our working classes here by the knowledge that they can at
any moment take refuge in a world of comparative plenty
within the limits of the British Empire.” The theory wanted
nothing but a basis, in fact: in this, however, it was
deficient.
The emigration returns give no evidence of the alleged
preference of our emigrating classes for countries which are
still under British rule : on the contrary, the immense majo
rity of those who emigrate from the British isles pass, by
choice, outside the limits of the British empire. Even of
those who emigrate, in the first instance, to British depen
dencies, a large proportion subsequently leave them, and pass
into independent countries. The stream of emigration from
Canada to the United States has lately become so large, that
the Canadian people, like ourselves, have become apprehen
sive of depopulation, and only the other dayf a select com
mittee was appointed by the Canadian Legislative Council to
report on the best means of at once attracting emigration
and stopping this drain. Now, we may explain these facts as
we please; but facts they are; and in the presence of such
facts, it does seem somewhat preposterous to put forward the
preference of our emigrating classes for British rule as a
reason for maintaining our colonial empire. Would there
* Paper on “ The Utility of Colonization,” read before the British
Association, 1862.
f 16th May, 1864.
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
43
not, in truth, be more colour of reason in the converse of the
argument ?
We have not yet exhausted the motives to imperial rule.
The change in our commercial policy has, as we have seen,
disposed of one—the principal—ground on which, in modem
times, the theory of colonial empire has been sustained—the
supposed advantages of commercial monopoly. But is it
certain that this change, while removing one, has not fur
nished us with another and a more valid reason for main
taining our supremacy ? If empire were justifiable on the
principles of commercial monopoly, is it not, now that those
principles are exploded, justifiable for the enforcement of
free trade ? Having adopted free trade for ourselves, have
we not a right—is it not our duty as an imperial nation—to
see to it that the same beneficent principle which we have
established at home, shall also be the law throughout the
widely scattered regions over which we have planted our
race ? There is no doubt that, some twenty years ago, as
the approaching triumph of free trade menaced the founda
tions of the received colonial doctrines, this view presented
itself to the minds of some of our most enlightened states
men ; * and eminently just and reasonable as the end aimed
* “ This advantage,” said Sir C. Lewis, writing in 1841, “ is at
present a substantial one; but it is an advantage which is founded
exclusively on the perverse folly of independent states in imposing
prohibitory and protective duties on one another’s productions.........
When civilization shall have made sufficient progress to diffuse gene
rally a knowledge of the few and simple considerations which prove
the expediency of the freedom of trade, and when consequently inde
pendent states shall have abandoned their present anti-commercial
policy, the possession of dependencies will no longer produce the
advantage in question. The advantage consists in possession of a
specific against the evils arising from an erroneous system of policy.
Whenever the errors of the policy shall be generally perceived, and
the system shall be exploded, the specific against its evil effects will be
valueless.”—“ Government of Dependencies,” pp. 229-230.
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
at is, and holding out, as it does, the prospect of large bless
ings to the community of nations, such an object might seem
not altogether unworthy of being made the logical basis of
imperial rule. But here we are met by another principle
equally reasonable, equally just, and far more imperative—a
principle which also, after full consideration, we have delibe
rately adopted—the principle of colonial self-government.
Are we prepared, frankly and in good faith, to give effect
to this principle ? If so, the question seems to be resolved.
Self-government means government in accordance with the
views of the persons governed. If the colonists, therefore,
desire a free trade policy, under a regime of self-government,
free trade will be adopted, whether they are nominally our
subjects or not. If not, then, our imperial pretensions not
withstanding, free trade will be set at nought, and protection
will be established. This is, in fact, what in some instances
has happened. Canada has employed the legislative powers
which she received from Great Britain to lay protective
duties on British manufactures. Canada has led the way,
and Australia bids fair to follow in her steps.
And now I think we may see where it is that the course
of our colonial history has at length landed us. People are
asking whether we are to retain or part with our colonies.
It appears to me that to discuss this question now is much
like discussing the propriety of locking the stable door after
the steed has gone forth. No doubt, the British colonies
still, in strict constitutional doctrine, owe allegiance to the
British crown: to withhold this allegiance would be rebel
lion. But bring the question to any practical test, and let us
see what the value of this much prized supremacy amounts
to—in what tangible circumstances Great Britain impresses
her will upon her colonies ; and, on the other hand, what
the attributes of sovereignty are which these communities do
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
45
not possess—which they do not at this moment actually exer
cise.
I have just adverted to our failure to maintain in them
the principle of free trade—so just and reasonable a claim.
Again : in conceding to them self-government, it was hoped
that the mother country might yet reserve to herself the control
of the colonial waste lands—“ territories,” said Mr. Wake
field, u which the nation had acquired by costly efforts, as a
valuable national property, which we have every right in
justice, and are bound by every consideration of prudence,
to use for the greatest benefit of the people of this country.”
But one of the first uses which the emancipated legislatures
made of their newly acquired power was to possess them
selves of this national property— a possession in which they
have not been since disturbed. Once more, it was thought
not unreasonable that, having undertaken their defence, we
should have a voice in determining the amount of military
force they should maintain. But here too our expectations
have been falsified. For the last two years the Home govern
ment, backed by the Times, have in vain employed alternate
entreaties and threats to induce the Canadians to augment
their military force. Thus in their commercial policy, in
their territorial policy, in what we may call their foreign
policy (since the view taken of their military requirements
would depend upon their opinion as to external dangers) the
colonists, in the teeth of example, advice, and remonstrance
—remonstrance rising sometimes almost to menace—have
deliberately pursued their own way.
And now look at what is going forward in British North
America. Some half-dozen colonies have appointed deputies
to meet and decide upon a constitution under which they
propose to coalesce into a nation. That, in a word, is the
scope of this movement ; and if that be not an act of the
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
highest sovereignty, then it is difficult to imagine what sove
reignty means. The Canadian leaders indeed assure us, as I
observe from intelligence quite recently received, of their
firm purpose that the North American colonies shall remain
integral portions of the British Empire; but they do not tell
us in what particulars they are prepared to defer to imperial
authority. They will probably be content, as hitherto, to
receive our advice, on the condition of being permitted to
decline it when it happens not to coincide with their own
views, and they will doubtless have no objection to receive
our assistance in fighting their battles. On these or some
tantamount terms, they are content to remain for ever loyal
subjects of the British Crown. But what does a good cause
gain by professions of “ ironical allegiance ? ”* Disguise it as
they will, under whatever constitutional figments and sound
ing phrases, the work on which they are engaged is the same
work which some eighty years ago was consummated on no
remote scene—when the thirteen united colonies, having
achieved their independence, met together to do that which
is now the business of Canadian statesmen—to make them
selves a nation.
My case might seem here complete; but within the last
week intelligence has reached this country which furnishes a
fresh illustration of the nature of our imperial rule so appo
site to my present theme, that, though at the risk of pro
* Howmuch more really dignified is language like the following:—
“We have come to feel that we can no longer call upon the people of
England to tax themselves for our benefit; we have arrived at that
time of life when it is humiliating to have everything done for us, and
when we ought to assume burdens and not shrink from responsibilities
of a national character. Out of this Union a colossal power will arise
on the American continent, with one foot on the Pacific, another on
the Atlantic.”—The lion. Mr. Archibald, leader of the Opposition in
Nova Scotia at the Montreal dinner.
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
47
longing unduly this address, I am unable to resist the tempta
tion of bringing it before you.
I just now stated, as you will remember, that Western
Australia formed at present the single instance among all our
colonies of a convict settlement.
For some years this
circumstance has been a source of constant discussion be
tween the Home government and the other—that is to say
the Eastern—Australian colonies. As I have already re
marked, transportation from a certain point of view has
undoubtedly something to recommend it. The mother coun
try by its means certainly gets rid of a very undesirable
portion of her population ; while for the emigrant, if his
object be simply to make a fortune with all convenient speed,
and return to his native country or migrate elsewhere, it is
beyond doubt an advantage—more especially in a very
sparsely peopled country—to be assured of a constant sup
ply of able-bodied labour. On the other hand, if the colonist
intends to make the colony his country and home, it seems
equally natural that he should object to the practice of let
ting loose periodically upon the infant community gangs of
the picked ruffians of the parent state. Whether the former
considerations have influenced the Western Australians I do
not undertake to say; but it is certain that a large number
amongst them have welcomed this species of immigration.
On the other hand, the Eastern colonies have long vehe
mently protested against transportation in every form. Now,
here perhaps it will occur to you that, the case being so, there
is no reason that both parties should not be satisfied ; but at
this point a hitch occurs. The Eastern colonies, two of which
are the gold-producing districts of New South Wales and
Victoria, offer far greater attractions to the convict class—as
to other classes—than the bare and unpromising desert to
which the convicts are sent; and, accordingly, so soon as the
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
term of their sentence is expired, large numbers migrate to
the Eastern colonies. The colony which profits by their ser
vices is thus, so soon as those services cease to be profitable,
relieved of their presence—a circumstance which we may
well believe does not detract from the popularity of the sys
tem in this colony. It seems that, according to the evidence
of Mr. Newlands and Mr. Torrens, both for a long time
magistrates of Southern Australia, and the latter a member
of the Legislative and Executive Councils, “ within three
years after the resumption of transportation to Western.
Australia, over one thousand conditionally pardoned and
ticket-of-leave men found their way from that colony to
Adelaide, and the result was a rapid increase of violent
assaults, robberies, and burglarious crimes.”* Now I think it
must be confessed that such, a state of things constitutes a
very substantial grievance. But sentiment is also mixed up
with the opposition of the Eastern Australians to the contin
uance of this system. “ Generations,” they say, “are spring
ing up which will call Australia their birthplace, and will
make it their home. To them it is fatherland, and they see
clearly enough that a great career lies before it.” “ For this
reason,” adds an eloquent colonial writer, “ we are jealous
of the fail- fame of the land; and we are unwilling that
colonies which contain within themselves the seeds of great
nations, should have their name and history associated with
convictism in any form. We ask, and we have a right to
ask, why should we in this colony, who from the first have
strenuously resolved that the convict element should have
no place here, have the scum of England’s moral impurity
thrown down at our next door?” The outside world will
make no nice distinctions between Eastern and Western,
free and penal, Australia. They will only know that convicts
* Letter of Mr. M'Arthur in the Daily News.
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
are deported to Australia, and the word for them will cover
all the colonies. “ Therefore,” say the colonists, “ we suffer in
reputation by even the remotest contact with the evil thing.”*
I confess it seems to me that language such as this does
honour to the people from whom it proceeds, and expressing,
as it does, the unanimous feeling of communities which do
not number less than a million and a-half of people, ought
to have weighed for something against the eager demand for
convict labour of a few thousand Western Australians!
hastening to be rich. But it seemed otherwise to the British
Government. Last summer the determination was taken to
continue transportation to Western Australia on the same
scale as formerly. The Home Government and the people of
the Eastern colonies have thus been brought into distinct
collision ; and now I beg you to observe the illustration this
has furnished of the value of our imperial rule.
By the last Australian mail a minute has arrived from the
Victorian Government, in which its Chief Secretary, after
premising that it has been forced upon the attention of him
self and his colleagues that further remonstrance is useless,
goes on to say—“ The time has arrived when it is incumbent
upon us, in the exercise of our powers of self-government, to
initiate legislation, in connexion with the colonies whose in
terests are alike affected, for our common protection.” He
then announces that the Victorian Government has invited
the co-operation of each of the other colonies interested, with
a view to framing a measure “ prohibitive of all intercourse
whatever with Western Australia,” “ in order that her posi
tion as the only convict colony may be distinctly marked
* The South Australian Register, 26th March, 1864.
t The number of inhabitants in Western Australia, excluding con
victs and their families, is, according to Mr. Torrens’ computation,
six thousand.
D
<r
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COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
further, he gives notice that the Victorian Government will,
at the expiration of six months from the 1st November, cease
to contribute to the annual mail packet subsidy, unless upon
the condition that the packets shall not touch at any port in
Western Australia.
Such is the point at which this painful controversy has
arrived. And now, can any one doubt what will be its ter
mination ? Absolute unanimity, it seems, prevails on the
subject in all the eastern colonies. Under these circum
stances, is it conceivable that the Home Government should
persist in forcing on a quarrel with our own kindred in such
a cause—that they may have the privilege of discharging at
their doors the scum of our criminal population ? Of course
no such fatuous act will be committed. Of course the Home
Government will succumb. But what a comment does this
supply on “ the beneficent suzerainty ”! In North America
the British colonies have initiated action among themselves
to form a new state. This may be an act of sovereignty, but
it is, at all events, a neutral act; but how shall we charac
terize a proceeding in which colonies meet together to concert
measures distinctly and avowedly to nullify the policy of the
imperial state ? Supposing these colonies were formally in
dependent, what other course would they, in like circum
stances, pursue than that which they are now actually pur
suing—namely, look out for alliances amongst communitip.«
similarly affected to counteract a policy which aggrieved
them ?
Look, then, at the position in which we stand. We have
abandoned all the objects for the sake of which our colonial
empire was founded. We are unable to impress our will
upon our colonies in any particular, however in itself reason
able, or just, or apparently necessary for their safety or ours.
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
51
Wholly irrespective of our wishes, they enter into alliances,
unite and separate, dispose of their lands, recast their consti
tutions, and even combine for the avowed purpose of thwart
ing our designs. When things have reached this pass, it
seems rather idle to ask—Are we to retain our colonies ?
Betain our colonies 1 What is there left to retain ? “Retain
the privilege of spending yearly £4.500,000 sterling on their
protection, and receive in requital prohibitive tarins and
“ ironical allegiance ” ! But I shall not be guilty of the pre
sumption of venturing farther into an argument which has
already been exhausted by the writer who has made this
subject his own. Two years have just passed since Professor
Goldwin Smith, in a series of letters, which in argumentative
ability, masculine eloquence, and satiric rerre, have rarely
been equalled in the literature of politics, forced this subject
on the attention of the people of this country—torced it on
their attention, let me say, with true patriotic boldness, at a
time when ~ leading ” journalists thought only of tabooing it
as an inconvenient topic, and judicious politicians gladly
avoided a questkm from which, while no political capital was
to be reaped, much unpopularity might easily be incurred.
Profesor Smith may congratulate himself upon a triumph
speedier and more complete than often falls to the lot of
political jr.nova.rorg- Before six mouths had passed, the
Tonian T dandy if not in deference to his teaching, at all
events in perfect conformity with the policy he had just pro
pounded amid the all but universal protests of the Press,
were conceded to Greece amid the not less general applause
of the nation, This, it must be owned, is a singular testimony
to political forecast; and the whole course of events in the two
years that have since elapsed, has but served to strengthen
it. Already ^me of our statesmen of greatest promise have
�52
COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
given in their adhesion to his views ; and the “ leading
*
journal,” which attacked him with even more than its wonted
insolence, now, with characteristic effrontery, adopts his
opinions as those “ which have constantly found utterance in
the Times.”\
* For example, Lord Stanley, in his recent speech at King’s Lynn,
thus expressed himself:—“ In British North America there is a strong
movement in progress in favour of federation, or rather of union in
some shape. In Australia I believe the same feeling exists, but not
so deeply, and though it has not assumed a practical form, I think
that tendency ought to be encouraged in both one and the other case
(hear, hear). We know that those countries must before long be inde
pendent states. We have no interest except in their strength and well
being.”—Times, 20th October, 1864.
t “ The power we desire to exercise [over the North American
colonies] is entirely a moral one, and, strong or weak, the dependency
that wishes to quit us, has only solemnly to make up its mind to this
effect. . . . The Admiral was severe on those who entertain the
opinions which have constantly found utterance in the Times, that the
colonies and the mother country will cease to be united when the
common interest ceases.”—Times, 15th October, 1864.
A union between political societies, based upon community of in
terest, to be dissolved at the wish of either party, and to be enforced
exclusively by moral sanctions—this (by whatever name it may be
called) constitutes in fact an alliance between independent nations,
not the relation of an imperial to a dependent state. (See Austin’s
Jurisprudence, vol. i., pp. 208, 209, and Lewis’s Government of Depen
dencies, pp. 2, 3). Such was the relation subsisting between the states
of ancient Greece and their independent colonies; such is that into
which any two sovereign states of Europe may at any time enter
without derogation from the sovereignty of either; and such, in fine,
has been that which has been contemplated and distinctly described
by those who have advocated “ colonial emancipation.”
The form in which, two years ago, the above opinions “ found ut
terance in the Times ” was as follows :—“ We may as well declare at
once, for the benefit of Americans and Spaniards, Russians and Ionians,
Sikhs and Sepoys, that England has no thought of abandoning her
�COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
53
The British Empire—let me here state for what it is worth
the conclusion to which serious reflection has guided me—the
British Empire, such as it has hitherto been known in the
world, has reached its natural goal. That British power, or
that the influence of British ideas, will in consequence suffer
declension, is what at least I, for one, do not believe. Con
templating our career as a whole, it seems to me that we
have out-grown the restraints and supports of our earlier
state, and are now passing into a new phase of existence.
Instead of a great political, we shall be a great moral, unity ;
*
bound together no longer indeed by Imperial ligaments sup
plied from the Colonial Office, but by the stronger bonds of
blood, language, and religion—by the common inheritance of
laws fitted for free men, and of a literature rich in all that
can keep alive the associations of our common glory in the
past. Thus sustained and thus united, each member of the
great whole will enter without hindrance the path to which
transmarine possessionsand then, with a delicate allusion to the
moral force doctrine, “ So far from believing in her own decline,
England believes that she was never more powerful than now, or more
capable of holding what she has won."—(Times, 4th Feb., 1862). It is
true the writer, at the conclusion of a long tirade conceived in this
spirit, adds the remark:—“ No one, we believe, in this country desires
to keep them against their will.” But this is merely a specimen of
the self-stultification into which writers fall, who, without any clear
and self-consistent view, charge themselves with the task of finding
arguments in defence of prevailing prejudices.
* “ If people want a grand moral unity, they must seek it in the
moral and intellectual sphere. Religion knows no impediment of
distance. The dominions of science are divided by no sea. To re
store, or pave the way for restoring, the unity of long-divided Chris
tendom, may seem the most chimerical of all aspirations, yet perhaps
it may be less chimerical than the project of founding a world-wide
state.”— The Empire, page 86.
�54
COLONIZATION AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
its position and opportunities invite it; while all will co
operate in the same work of industrial, social, and moral
progress; exchanging freely—let us hope, in spite of some
present indications to the contraiy—exchanging freely our
products and our ideas—in peace good friends and customers,
and firm allies in war.
��<1
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Colonization and colonial government: a lecture
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Cairnes, John Elliott [1823-1875]
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Place of publication: [Dublin]
Collation: 54 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Lecture delivered before the Dublin Young Men's Christian Association in connection with the United Church of England and Ireland at the Metropolitan Hall, October 26th, 1864. Essays previously published in a variety of journals and books, which are listed in the Acknowledgements section. The Right Hon. James Whiteside, M.P. in the chair. Includes bibliographical references. Professor Cairnes's forename is incorrectly spelt as Elliot on the front cover.
Please note that this pamphlet contains language and ideas that may be upsetting to readers. These reflect the time in which the pamphlet was written and the ideologies of the author.
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Colonialism
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Conway Tracts
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Text
Jfcmtog c&cmngfi fur fljt fwrgk
DISCOURSE
DELIVERED BY
SIR JOHN BOWRING
AT
ST. MARTIN’S HALL,
ON
FEBRUARY 17, 1867.
ALSO
THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS
OF
J. BAXTER LANGLEY, Esq., M.R.C.S., F.L.S.
LONDON :
TRUBNER & CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1867.
Price, 2d.
a
A.
•
SIAM AND THE SIAMESE
�Ji
I
1^
�J. Baxter Langley, Esq., said—
I congratulate myself that in assembling for the sixth time to con
tinue these services, under the title of Sunday Evenings for the
People, and I am sure you will unite in congratulating me on the fact
that the attendance of those whom I see around me in such large
numbers, indicates that these services meet an obvious want of the
people of London. It has been my custom to notice in my opening
address some of the events of the preceding week, and though on this
platform we know no politics, and have no antagonism to any estab
lished creed, it is my duty to recognise the fact that on Monday
evening when the Minister of the Crown brought forward the pro
gramme of the Session ; he alluded to a condition of things which I
think germaine to the matter which we in assembling here have in
hand, and which has a bearing on what we have undertaken here.
'1 he passage' is as follows : —
“ Since 1832 this country has, no doubt, made great progress; but it is during
the last ten years that that progress has been most remarkable. I will not now
attempt to inquire into the particular causes that have brought about this great
advance, but It bink I may say there is one : overeign cause which is at the bottom
of everything, we suggest, and that is, the increased application of science to
social life. (Hear hear.) We are all familiar with the material results which
that application of science has produced. They are prodigious, but in my mind
the moral results are not less remarkable. That revolution in locomotion which
would strike us every day as a miracle if we were not familiar with it, has given
to the great body of the inhabitants of this country in some degree the enlighten
ing advantages of travel. The mode in which steam power is applied to the
printing press in this country produces effects more startling than the first dis
covery in the loth century. It is science that has raised wages ; it is science
that has increased the desires and the opportunities of labour ; it is science that
has enobled labour.”
Here we have sought to erect a Church for the future. Recognizing
the advantage of the services in the ordinary churches, we feel that
they do not meet the exigencies of the people at large. There is too
much disposition to regard science as antagonistic to religion ; but
here we make science the handmaid of religion. We do not seek to
oppose the churches, but we seek to supplement them; and since
literature and the fine arts have an elevating and enobling effect on
all who come in contact with them, we seek to supply, by the aid of
the most eminent men in every branch of science, the information
which cannot fail to be valuable, leaving you to apply the truths
which they will teach ; and asking you to unite with us in seeking to
develope our organization, which in the future shall produce greater
results than we can even foresee in the present.
�Ml
�SIR JOHN BOWRING’S DISCOURSE
OX
SIAM AND THE SIAMESE.
Between the two most peopled andmost powerful empires that the world
has ever known—China, with a population of wore than 400,000,000
of human beings, and the British Empire in India, with scarcely
less than half that number, there is a tract of country sometimes called
a Peninsula, but erroneously so, inhabited by three nations—the Annamites—commonly called Cochin Chinese, by the Burmans, and by the
Siamese. The Siamese are the most advanced and civilized of these peo
ples, having a language and literature of their own, occupying a terri
tory of about 250,000 square miles, maintaining a population of
from five to six millions. There is a Siamese manuscript, some
centuries old, giving an account of their earliest introduction to the
European world, and it seems that in those remote times a French
ship visited that country. The captain made his way to the capital,
and was introduced to the Sovereign of Siam. He, with very natural
patriotism, talked to the Siamese of the greatness of the country
from which he came. He described Paris, no doubt, somewhat
in a romantic style, as if “ all its streets were paved with gold,
and all its folks were witty.” But certainly he did inspire the minds
of the King and people of Siam with a desire to know more of
the wondrous land of the West. And the narrative is interesting.
The King determined to send an embassy to France, and to re
present in that embassy whatever was honorable to and characteristic
of the Siamese kingdom, and prominent amongst the officials was, as
was customary in those times, a mag’ician, who was considered an
important member in the staff of an ambassador. Even at the
present day it is not an unusual thing to nominate men acquainted
with the arts of necromancy to accompany official travellers ; and the
�6
Siam and the Siamese.
man selected on this occasion is reported to have been one of the
most eminent of his class. When the vessel which conveyed the
ambassy reached the coasts of France there was a terrible storm, and
the magician was requested to use his superhuman power that they
might arrive safely on land. And he is said to have subdued the
winds and the waves, so that the vessel reached its destined port
in safety ; then inquiry was made of him as to the influences which
had enabled him to still the adverse elements ; he said it was because
he was empowered to unite the influences of the French with those of the
Siamese that the storm abated, and the vessel arrived unharmed. I
will read from the document the statement which the ambassador
made on returning to the Siamese Court:—
“ They were admitted to the presence of the King, and the King or
dered a company of 500 French soldiers, all good marksmen, to
be drawn up in two ranks, facing each other, 250 on each side.
They were commanded to fire. They fired, and each soldier lodged
his ball in the musket barrel of the soldier opposite. The King
asked the Siamese ambassador if there were any sharp-shooters as
good in Siam; and the ambassador replied that the King of Siam
did not esteem this kind of skill as worth much in war. The King
of France was displeased, and asked what kind of skill the King of
Siam did esteem, and what kind of soldiers he did appreciate ?
The ambassador replied, “The King admires soldiers who are well
skilled in the magical arts ; and such as, if good marksmen like your
Majesty’s soldiers here, should fire at them the bullets would not
touch their bodies. His Majesty the King of Siam has soldiers who
can go unseen into the midst of the battle, and cut off the heads of the
officers and men in the enemy’s ranks, and return unmolested. Ho has
others who can stand under the weapons of the enemy to be shot at
or pierced with swords and spears, and yet not receive the least
wound or injury. Soldiers skilled in this kind of art he values very
highly, but he keeps them for his special use in his own country."’ When
the French King heard this he was unwilling to have the trial made ;
but the ambassador said, “You need not fear: they have an art by
which they can ward off your bullets.” They were ordered to come forth,
and they came. The French soldiers all fired several rounds,
some at a distance, some near, but the powder would not ignite, and
the guns made no report. The magician desired the French soldiers
not to be discouraged : “ They shall fire and the guns shall go off. ”
They fired—all the balls fell to the ground before they reached the
Siamese soldiers, of whom not one was struck.”
Such was the first state of relations between Siam and
France; and I have no doubt that the European credulity
was almost as great as the Siamese. But Siam has long
been an object of interest to Europeans. There is an account
of a conversation between Mr. Boswell and Dr. Johnson, in
which the latter declared that the Siamese might have sent missions
�Siam and the Siamese.
7
to Europe, but that the Europeans had never sent missions to the
Siamese. It is surprising that a man of such universal knowledge
should have made so strange a mistake. There have been many
missions from Europe to Siam. The most illustrious of Portuguese
poets, Camoens, was wrecked in the Meinam river, of which he gives
a poetical picture, and he is said to have escaped with his Lusiads
in his hand. And the Portuguese have left in that country re
markable vestiges. With them all objects of commerce or conquest
were subordinate to purposes of conversion. I found in that country
Catholics bearing Portuguese names, and representing the traditions of
many generations, who wore Portuguese garments, and were proud
to trace their origin to the Portuguese of the 16th century. The
Dutch never went to Siam to convert anybody or anything, except
to convert men and merchandise into money as fast as was
possifre. They have left there no names, no traditions, and no marks
of any influence. I saw the ruins of their factories, but I never
heard in Siam a Dutch name or a Dutch word. The Spaniards
frequently and vainly tried to establish themselves in Siam. They
made elaborate efforts, and one of their expeditions cost seventy
thousand dollars, and is much vaunted in the history of the Philip
pines, whence the envoys took their departure. But the most remarkble fact in Siamese history is the attempt made in the reign of the
King whom the vanity and prostration of his courtiers called the
“Grand Monarque ” to cultivate and perpetuate relations with
France. A man named Faulcon was wrecked on the coast, and made
his way to the Siamese Court. He brought with him European civi
lisation, and exercised so wide an influence that he became the Prime
Minister of the country. The news of his good fortune reached Eu
rope, and it was thought in France that through his agency and
his zeal for Catholicism, French rule and Papal authority might
be established in Siam. A remarkable letter was written by the
famous French Minister Colbert, and a large number of gentlemen
went to Siam, and were received in a very friendly spirit. The
ambassador’s name was Chaumont, and he published a re
markable account of his reception in Siam. As I had the good
fortune to follow in his steps, I was struck with the fact that the
court ceremonials and the manners of the Sovereign and the people
had undergone few changes in the course of two centuries. As soon
as the Siamese discovered that the purpose of the Pope and the
monks was to tamper with their religion, and that of the King
and his representatives was to interfere with their Government, a re
bellion broke ont. Faulcon was executed, the monks and foreigners
were exiled, and from that time Siam seems to have been forgotten
for something like a century and a half. But it was known to be a
a rich and progressive country, and in process of time successive
attempts were made to open negociations and establish commerce
with the Siamese government and people. It is not necessary
�Siam and the Siamese.
to trouble you with the detail of the causes which led to the
failure of four expeditions from England and two from the United
States. They had very little effect, and the project had apparently
fallen into abeyance, when it was my privilege to receive Her Ma
jesty’s commands to take steps if an opportunity offered for the
establishment of amicable and trading intercourse with Siam. I
was fortunate in having had much previous correspondence
with the King, who is one of the most extraordinary men
with whom in the course of my life I have ever come into
contact. He was the eldest legitimate son of the King of Siam,
but when his father died he, being under age, was superseded by an
illegitimate brother, who seized upon the Government. And to protect
himself from the perils to which the heir to an oriental throne is
always exposed when that throne is occupied by an usurper, he
‘ ‘ made himself holy ”—that is to say, he entered into a Buddhist
temple. There he remained eleven years, and devoted himself to the
study of literature, science, and the acquirement of a knowledge of
the sacred languages, the Pali and the Sanscrit. He also found
time to learn the English and the Latin. On the death of his bro
ther which happened too suddenly to enable him to convey the sceptre
to his own descendants, the nobility and the people demanded the
proclamation of the legitimate King, who was made the ruler of the
country; and it was through his influence that Siam was thrown
open to the commerce not only of Britain but of the world. In
1855 I had the satisfaction of entering into a treaty of friendship
and commerce with that country. In those days the whole shipping
trade of Siam was represented by 20 vessels — one half foreign
and the other Siamese. Now 400 cargoes are annually shipped
from Bangkok alone. Before proceeding to Bangkok I wrote to
the King stating that our public relations were of a very unsatis
factory character, but that I wished to approach him in a friendly
spirit; that I had a force which I had no desire to display;
but if he would meet me and enable me to show him
that our interests were his and that his interests were ours,
if I should persuade him that we were made rather to love than
to hate, rather mutually to serve and conciliate than to distrust and
repel each other, I hoped he would allow me to present my cre
dentials at his Court; that I would come with a large force, if neces
sary for my purpose, but that I would much rather appeal to his
feelings of respect for the position of the country which I repre
sented. I implored him to allow me to come in amity. The Ameri
can missionaries, wiih whom I was in correspondence, did not
encourage us. They thought, whatever assurances I might have
received from the King, that I should be met with a feeling of repug
nance. I had better hopes, and I went. We reached the mouth of the
Meinam Rxver, of which the Siamese are very proud—-as all nations
are proud of their rivers I We English boast of our “Silver Thames”
whose silver indeed is somewhat tarnished! The Portuguese
�Siam and the Siamese.
daunt their “ Golden Tagus”, though gold is no longer found in
its sands. We have all heard of the love of the people of Egypt
for the Nile ; and one of the most emphatic benedictions I remember
is that, when I gave three or four pence to a poor Arab woman for
holding my horse, she said, “May you always be blessed by Allah as
he blessed the sources of the Nile.” So in India the Ganges is regarded
as blessed by the Godhead and as blessing those who have had the
privilege of dying on its shores. I have seen Christians, Mahommedans,
and Jews bathing together in the waters of the Jordan, and uniting in
common thanksgiving that they have been permitted to enjoy so
great a glory. Chinese poetry is full of the Yang-tze-Kiang—“ the
Son of the Ocean.” Nor are these feelings confined to the ancient
world : the Americans of the North sing the praises of their Missisippi
and Missouri ; and those of the South of the Amazon and the Plate.
The Siamese call their Meinam the “ Mother of Waters.” When w®
reached the mouth of that river, we were told “ you must not
enter it with your ships of war.” So the King sent down a fleet of the
most splendid galleys, like coronetted dragons, beautifully gilt
and painted; and I was told to “ Come up in these galleys, and
abandon your ships of war.” I said, “ I shall accept your attention
and come in your galleys, and the ships shall follow ; and you must
tell your people that I am coming as a friend and not as a foe.”
And the King issued a proclamation declaring that we were coming
not as an enemy to humiliate, but as a friend to extend friendship.
We had many difficulties as to receptions and invitations, but the
King requested me to come to meet him in his palace at midnight.
A magnificent palace it is ' He said, “I want to see you as a friend,
and now I wish you to assent to one condition : in your country
people wear swords in the presence of the Sovereign, but that is
against our custom.” I said, “Undoubtedly I am bound to pay your
Majesty all the attention that I pay to my own Queen, and the wearing
of a sword is a point of etiquette.” He said, “It is never the case at our
Court.” But I was able to give evidence that the point had been con
ceded at the reception of the ambassadors of Louis XIV.; and
the King allowed that, as the British Queen was at least as great a
Sovereign as the French King, her envoys had a claim to every honor
which had ever been granted And so I and my suite were received
in the Great Hall, standing erect and wearing our swords, while the
Siamese dignitaries lay prostrate on their faces, and not one of* them
dared to lift his head to the King, who sat upon a superb throne.
The ceremonies being over, the King asked me to come to him in the
palace. I went and found the King of Siam (whom a short time
before I had' seen encumbered with the robes of royalty, with bright
gems glittering from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet)
with nothing on him but his shirt. He had a child upon his knee,
and the only thing it wore was a garland of white flowers upon its
head. I contrasted the grandeur and glory of the Monarch with th®
simplicity and the affection of the tender parent, and the latter appeared
to me more worthy of homage than the potent King. I spoke of ths
�10
S'/CJ nt and Ihe Si a mete.
Meinam. It is a wonderful river. It is somewhat like the Nile, its yellow
waters being fringed with emerald banks fertilized by its inundations. I
don t know whether it is more attractive by night or by day. By niomt
the fire flies cover the trees with marvellous splendour, the loud noise of
the Ghik lizard is heard, and animal and insect life is as vital as by day ;
when beautiful birds, and beetles, and butterflies are full of activity; and
fish that speak, and fight, and travel by land, and strange reptiles and
quadrupeds abound. Siam gives great evidence of Chinese influenc n
Chinese houses, with their led and yellow ornaments, are seen ail
along the banks of the Meinam. The Chinese are the great civilizers
of the East, and a million and a half of them are settled in Siam.
They are the most advanced, industrious, persevering and economical
of all the oriental nations. Bangkok is an aquatic City, almost all
the houses are on the water, and when the inhabitants shift their
residences, they move their entire habitations up and down the river.
And as the Siamese are proud of their rivers, they are also proud of
their towns. One is called the town of ten million elephants, one
is the town of pure gold, another, the town of the diamond walls,
another, the celestial hill, another, the paradise of Archangels ! This
may be vanity, but it is a very common and natural one. Does not
a Swiss exalt in the grandeur of his native mountains ? and I once
met with an Icelander who said “How can you tolerate a country in
which there are no snow storms?”
The Siamese religion is more identified with the national character
aud customs than any other religion in the world. I speak of Budd
hism. I cannot go into the details of that religion, for they occupy
sixty volumes, but I will point out some of its characteristics as
evidence of the fact that no religion ever exercised a great influence
over millions of men unless there were in it many elements of truth
and wisdom ; and if, instead of attacking everything which they find
in the religion of foreign nations, missionaries would recognize
that we are not the monopolists of truth and wisdom, but, that truth
and wisdom are to be found elsewhere, many stumbling blocks would
be removed which now arrest their way. Buddhism is, as I have said,
a part and portion of the social institutions of the land, and has a strong
hold upon the feelings of the people. No man enters upon or enjoys
the rights of citizenship till he has passed a certain time in a Buddhist
Convent, and has gone through a certain religious examination.
Th£ maintenance of the temples and of the priestsis wholly depen
dent upon public opinion. There are in Bankok 1,000 wats or tem
ples, and 10,000 bonzes or priests, and these wats have cost more
than ten millions of dollars, and are supported by voluntary contribu
tions, giving about a million dollars a year. The priests come forth
every morning from their convents, they are not allowed to ask for
contributions, and they are not permitted to thank the donors. They
bear a wallet for articles of food, and a cruise for drink, and they
find at every dooi' a contribution waiting their arrival. Given by
the people without asking, it is received from them without thanks.
The great outlines of Buddhism are, that every child is born purs
�Slum and ths Siamese.
11
that life is a scene of discipline, and that after infinite processes of
purification man will be absorbed in the divinity. If there be much in
Buddhism that represents the ignorance of dark ages, there is much
that even we might study, and study for our instruction. And Budd
hism, like Brahminism, like Christianity itself, is, under the influence
of philosophic discovery, being rescued from the false teachings of the
half-instructed or the wholly uninformed Let me give you a few
w'ords of wisdom from Buddhist books :—
“ Wherever* a single ray of divine wisdom penetrates there is wor
ship, there is praise in honour of the universal sovereign.”
“ How shall words exhibit the infinities of the mysterious creation,
where every atom emanates from all, and all is traceable in every atom,
united in one mysterious whole!”
Very beautiful are some of the speculations into the infinity of
Bpace and time—
A Phra obtained from Buddha the power of travelling two millions
and a half of miles in the time that a shot arrow takes in passing
through the shadow of a palm tree. He travelled at this rate for
10 years in search of infinite space ; he made no perceptible progress ;
he continued for hundred years, then for a thousand, then for ten thou
sand, then for a hundred thousand years, at the rate of two and a
half millions of miles in a second, and he returned disappointed to
earth, not having approached even the border of infinity.
Another sage applied to Buddha to know something about eternity,
and Buddha pointed to a rock of granite sixteen miles long; that
rock he said would be touched once in ten thousand years by the hem
of a spiritual visitant’s muslin garment; and when, by such visits
and by such attrition, the rock shall be reduced to the size of a nut,
then you may begin to have some notion of eternity.
Patience under suffering and submission to authority are among
the prominent teaching of Buddhism. I knew a priest who held his
forefinger for hours in the flame of a lamp till the first two joints
were burnt away.
Time only allows the mention of a few of the peculiar usages of the.
Siamese. At the birth of child, the mother is placed for some days
before a fire, from which she suffers so much, that frequently death
follows. The next stage in the life of the child is the ceremonial
of the top-knot. The hair is gathered together, and the rites con
nected with the removal of the knot, which generally takes*place
about the age of thirteen, constitute an epoch of existence. The
next stage is marriage, which is carried on as it is in China, by those
who are employed by the friends of the parties, and who are supposed
to know the condition and circumstances of both families. The marriage
is performed with the most elaborate ceremonies. As regards death,
in the case of persons of high distinction, a funeral pile is made, on
which the body is placed, and some of these erections cost thousands
of pounds. A great many of the treasures which had belonged to the
deceased are placed on the pile, and are collected with the ashes of
the dead, and sent to the surviving friends of the deceased.
�12
Siam and the Siamese.
The claims of the female aristocracy are manifested in a curious
way. It is the practice in China for ladies of rank to make them
selves useless. Their finger nails are allowed to grow to a length of
5 or 6 inches,and they never go to bed without having them care
fully covered up. But the ladies of Siam have a still stranger habit
of exhibiting their emancipation from labour. Their elbows are con
torted and turned outward, so that deformity is one of the recom
mendations of a Siamese lady. No doubt you have heard of the
reverence with which the white elephant is held in Siam. The
stable is beautifully adorned ; he is magnificently caparisoned ; is fed
on the sugar-cane ; he has nobles constantly in attendance ; and he
never goes forth unaccompanied by bands of music. Among the
presents given to me for our Queen was a gold box, with a golden
key, contaning a few hairs of the white elephant’s tail, which the
King deemed to be the most precious of all the royal gifts. The
white elephant is believed to be one of the resting places of Buddha
in his transmigration through the dominions of earth. The Siamese
invariably place high value upon white animals. The white
elephant, white monkey, and the white deer, are peculiarly prized.
I dont know whether this was the inspiration of my friend Words
worth, when he wrote of the “ white doe ” of Rylstone.
I found in Siam an instructive application of the decimal system—
one of the most useful discoveries of human intelligence, and one of
the most valuable auxiliaries to human progress, as without it we
could scarcely penetrate into the realms of geological and astrono
mical discovery. The Siamese distinguish the varieties of rank by
cyphers. No arithmetic oan represent that of the sovereign. The
second king stands at 100,000 ; the half-brother at 50,000; a son, in
office, at 40,000 ; out of office at 15,000. The highest lady in tie
land at 10,000 ; the next in rank only at 600. Then, remote cousins
of royalty stand at 599 and so down to the lowest denomination.
The value of a living being—in other words, the compensation to
be obtained for the loss of such—is regulated by law, and reduced
to English money, may be thus represented :—
Male 1 to 3 months old ..
3 to 4 years
>>
'
Maximum value 26 to 40 do.
86 to 90 do.
ff
Baby value „ 91 to 100 do.
Value of female baby
16s.
55s.
154s.
16s.
11s.
6d. Females..............
Od.
„ 21 to 30 yrs.
Od.
„ 86 to 90 do.
6d.
,. 91 to 100 do.
Od.
11s.
44s.
132s.
11s.
8s.
Od.
Od.
Od.
Od.
3d.
The allotted time is exhausted. I will, therefore, merely add
|
that I am much obliged to ycu for your attendance, and for your
kind attention, and if you should think that anything which I have
said affords you new materials for thought, new motives for the
exercise of candour and charity in the estimate of other nations and
other religions, I shall rejoice.
The service concluded with a selection of sacred music.
A. Macpherson Walker, Printer, 75, Fleet Street, E.C.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Siam and the Siamese : A discourse delivered by Sir John Bowring at St. Martin's Hall, on February 17 1867
Creator
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Bowring, John
Langley, J. Baxter
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 12 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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Trubner & Co.
Date
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1867
Identifier
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G5692
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Colonialism
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (Siam and the Siamese : A discourse delivered by Sir John Bowring at St. Martin's Hall, on February 17 1867), identified by <span><a href="www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Colonialism
Conway Tracts
Thailand