PRINCIPLES OF COLONIAL POLICY. 449 served. The second Mr. Pitt was near enlisting under the same banner; at the outset he sought, by the favour of Lord Rockingham, a seat for Cambridge*, and so would have been, had he succeeded in his overture, a follower of Mr. Fox instead of his opponent. In this there would have been no compromise of principle; as a son of Chatham, from enlargement of mind and progressive tendencies, Mr. Pitt must be ranked among liberal statesmen. Indeed, antecedent to the French revolution, hardly any other noticeable party existed; the Jacobite Tories, in any force, had not bent their stiff necks to the Hanoverian sceptre, and continued obdurate in the old ways; but all that were eminent or influential in their avowed principles, politicians or public writers, were favourable to progress. Principles of Colonial Policy. - Mistaken Apprehensions from the Severance of the American Colonies. - Origin of the Question of Parliamentary Reform. - Effects of the Anti-Catholic Riots of the Protestant Association. — Commencement of Concessions to Ireland; Removal of Restrictions on her Commerce. ·Cry in Dublin for Free Trade" and the Abolition of Obstructions to Irish Industry. 66 THE colonies and foreign dependencies of States have originated in various causes-political, penal, moral, and economical. Sometimes ambition prompted a state to seek more extended rule, or, it might be, impelled it in the same course in the vindication of national wrongs, and * The Quarterly Review, Sept. 1855, p. 528. G G the necessity of obtaining better security for its people, its commerce, and independence. Frequently external acquisitions have had their source in domestic strife and anarchy, in religious dissensions and persecution, in the thirst for gold, in the need of a remote settlement for the reception of criminals, or in the wants and natural desires of mankind to multiply their means of comfort and enjoyment. In the numerous colonies and vast territorial dependencies of Great Britain, all these different modes of acquirement have been in active operation; but the last, which originate in the exigencies and laudable efforts of a nation to improve its condition, form undoubtedly the most allowable and defensible pretexts for an extension of external dominion. A community is overpeopled; it is oppressed by superfluous wealth and industry; or it may be distracted by irreconcilable internal divisions: what resort, under these disturbing influences, is more likely to afford relief than to plant out-for the unhappy to seek new and quieter homes, and the unemployed and superopulent new fields for the exercise of their industry and the productive investment of capital? Colonisation on these principles has the same foundation as the domestic usages of civil life. It is only the state following the example of individuals in their private relations. A family is large; it is inconvenienced by the number, adolescence, or restlessness of its members. They marry, or seek new homes; that is domestic colonisation, by which the paternal hearth is relieved, and. all who belonged to it probably made happier. National colonisation has similar beneficial results; it tends to the relief of the mother-country, and to the creation and increase of independent states, as the marriages and severance of the members of a family do of individuals. ADVANTAGES OF COLONIAL ENTERPRISE. 451 Both originate in the laws and exigencies of nature; and, under ordinary circumstances, both tend in like manner to the advancement of human felicity. The United States of North America have practically exemplified all that is here sought to be explained. Through all the vicissitudes of their history, whether dependent or free, they have been a source of benefit to England. By their first settlement the parent state was relieved; they were an outlet for its political and religious discontents, and opened a new and boundless field of industrial enterprise. The rupture of their allegiance neither destroyed nor impaired the salutary relations previously subsisting, but augmented and accelerated their development. The wrong, if any was attempted on either side,for Britain had excusable, though mistaken, inducements for seeking to perpetuate her transatlantic supremacy, was not in the resistance of the AngloAmericans, but in the coercive efforts of England to prolong her dominion beyond its natural term of duration. The error was a parental one; and, to return to the preceding illustration, is like that of parents who would keep their children in perpetual pupilage, inhibit them from freedom, separate location, and the setting up for themselves in the world. The empire continues to reap the fruits of the colonial enterprise of our ancestors two centuries past. American independence has been no draw back on this country. The United States are still our best friends and customers, and more than any other still contribute to our manufacturing and commercial prosperity. Suppose America had never been colonised, and helped forward by British settlers; suppose the development of her natural resources had been left to the Red Indian — to merely her own aboriginal agency-what beneficial re lations is it likely would have now subsisted between her and England? Would a population have arisen to take annually from eight to ten millions in value of British produce and manufactures? Oh! no; she would in all likelihood have remained as destitute and as unprofitable a connexion as the Pampas or Patagonia now is. Suppose a less extreme case, that she had not been left in her infant efforts wholly unaided by European arts, capital, and civilisation, but that France or Holland had taken the start of England in her reclamation and settlement, we should, in this case, have suffered serious detriment. We should have lost all the advantages of first occupation and first impressions; of planting the English language, English habits, tastes, and wants, among a vast and unknown population, by which the dependence of the Western world has been far more beneficially, and, it is likely, more permanently, guaranteed, than it ever could have been by British tax-collectors or British grenadiers. Besides establishing a present lien and future preference in the development of new countries, our first occupation of them conferred other national benefits. Our colonial policy may not have been the best; it may have partaken largely of the narrow spirit of the age; but it has always been more liberal than that of any other European state. At no period of history did we ever go openly to war against the natural fertility of the soil, to stint Europe in the supply of colonial products. But this was done by the Dutch, who actually rooted up the spice trees of the Philippine Islands, lest Europe should be too abundantly supplied, and at too cheap a rate, with mace, nutmegs, and cloves. The policy of Spain was still more execrable. South America, in her hands, was no better than a vast prison-house: it was hermetically sealed against all the rest of Europe; sealed, not only against COLONISATION BENEFICIAL TO BRITAIN. 453 European commodities, but European ideas. Strangers were all but excluded, and it was with great mistrust and difficulty that travellers could obtain an insight into her code of prison discipline. Her tyranny was twofold; extending over the minds of the people, as well as the natural capabilities of the country. The colonial policy of France hardly offers a brighter page. Indeed, France has only just begun to master the rudiments of commercial legislation, either in her domestic or external policy. But these have been the chief colonising states, next to ourselves. And what, it may be asked, would have been the probable consequences on the weal and progress of England, or even on the colonies themselves, had they been allowed to anticipate us in the possession of our colonial empire? Had Jamaica and Barbadoes, Virginia and Massachusetts, been first theirs, instead of ours? Had the spirit which revoked the edict of Nantes, and established the Inquisition, been allowed to extend its withering influence over their future destinies, in place of the spirit of Queen Elizabeth and Oliver Cromwell, would the colonies have been what they are, or would England have been what she is, so rich and powerful, so supreme in commerce and industry? Or, more important than these, would Britain have commanded, to the same extent, the means of national happiness? To these questions it is hardly likely there can be great discrepancies in the answers. But throwing aside their political bearings; abstaining from all dilation on the degree in which British Colonies have undoubtedly contributed to the commercial opulence, maritime strength, and greatness of the empire; and on the obvious fact that a great empire, governed on moderate and enlightened principles, is, wherever its sway extends, a great blessing to the world;-leaving these fertile themes to the elo |