TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE COLONIES AND THE EMPIRE.
THE country read with a glow of pride and satis- faction Mr. Chamberlain's heartfelt and stirring words in regard to the Colonies and their devotion to the Empire and the Mother-country. But if Mr. Chamberlain's references to Colonial feeling rang sound and true, as unquestionably they did, so also did an interjection made by Sir John Brunner. "What," asked Mr. Chamberlain, "has brought these younger nations to Great Britain's aid and induced them to spring to arms even before you called upon them ? " And Sir John Brunner answered, "liberal policy." If by that Sir John Brunner meant, as presumably be did mean, liberal policy, not in any mere party sense, but a policy based on Liberal principles, upon true freedom, and upon whole-hearted trust, he was unquestionably right. The present war has shown us in the most striking and vivid way that the great Whig statesmen who first instituted the principles of freedom and self- government upon which the Empire rests, and the statesmen of all parties, without distinction, who since then have loyally followed out and developed those prin- ciples, have performed a service of incalculable value to the English-speaking kin. Perhaps no nobler and better proof could be found in the history of mankind of the wisdom of loyally and unreservedly and trustfully following out the great principle of freedom which the English race have made their own. When the principle of giving entire self-government to the Colonies was adopted, the pessimists of the day prophesied that such rashness could only end in one way. "If," said they, "you allow self-government on such an ample scale, and admit the principle that the Colonies may govern them- selves and dispose of their own destinies, you make complete separation only a question of time. You are now granting everything the Colonies ask, even in cases where you feel that the demand is wrong. When, then, the Colonies ask to go and to set up for them. selves you will be quite unable to refuse them ? " Even when faced with this abstract dilemma the Whig advo- cates of Colonial freedom did not shrink, but replied that even if the Colonies should seriously, and meaning what they asked, demand separation, separation should be reluctantly, but none the less ungrudgingly, yielded to them. For that answer the Whig statesmen of the "forties" and " fifties " were called harsh names, and even now are unfairly judged. Yet in their answer is contained the inner secret of the Empire. It is on the knowledge that the right of self-government and the right of controlling their own destinies is unconditional and unlimited that the pas- sionate loyalty of the Colonies rests in the last resort. They could not love the Motherland so well, loved they not freedom more. At some distant day the three or four free nations of the Empire—we are delighted to see that Mr. Chamberlain, following Mr. Kipling, hailed them as nations, for such they are and have a right to be named —may, nay will, voluntarily lay aside a portion of that freedom, and, joining with the Mother-country, which will make a similar sacrifice, will, like the States of the American Union, formally as well as practically abandon the right of secession under any cir- cumstances whatever. But this consummation will only be reached when Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa have reached such a position in population and power that they as Federal units can be considered as comparable to the United Kingdom. Meantime, we and they are per- fectly content with the bonds that bind us now,—the common citizenship, the common reverence to the Queen, the common submission to the ideals of a well-ordered free- dom, the common resolve to stand shoulder to shoulder against wrong and oppression. And let no man after this year dare to say that those bonds are not strong enough and worthy enough. It may he that in time to come we shall make less clumsy and more mobile links, but stronger we shall not make, for have not these proved stronger than death ? They have drawn men to lay down their lives in a cause which the foolish and the vain, the self- deceiving critic and the over-positive philosopher declared was not a quarrel with which the Colonists were con- cerned, but which the more clear-sighted Colonists, since they were not sophisticated by over-refinement, knew well enough was theirs and freedom's.
We have seen how Liberal principles and a Liberal policy have availed to give us the perfectly voluntary and also most important help bestowed by the Colonies. But it is not only here that the working of these principles and this policy are to be seen at the present moment. They are involved in, and are of the very essence of, the struggle with the Boers. President Kruger has resolutely set his face against applying to the problem presented by the grievances of the Outlanders the Liberal principles upon which the Empire is founded, while we slowly, tentatively, and at first somewhat half-heartedly have insisted on the recognition of these principles. The result has been a struggle which, expressed in its simplest terms, is a struggle whether the whole of the white people in the Transvaal, and not merely a section of them, and that the smallest section, shall be self-governing. If President Kruger had adopted the Liberal policy, who can doubt that he would at this moment be ruling over a people rich and contented and perfectly willing to accept a very large measure of Boer authority in the Government in exchange for the recognition of the rights of the non-Boer population ? There might have been a Dutch executive in Pretoria as there is a Dutch executive at the Cape, but the British would have resented the one no more than under ordinary conditions they do the other, for they would regard both as the fair and reasonable result of political equality. In a word, if President Kruger and the Boers would only have applied to their polity the principles which we have applied to ours in the Empire as well as at home, South Africa would not now be in- volved in the horrors of war, but every day the self- governing and so reconciled Outlander would be growing more reasonable and more loyal to the State which had shown a liberal policy towards him, and allowed him to share in the work of government.
Before we leave the subject of the Colonies we desire to touch on a point which we wish to develop further and in more detail at a later period, but which even now may be usefully spoken of. It is the erection of a monument to the men of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, and the other British Colonies and possessions who have fallen in the defence of the Empire. There must be placed in the heart of London, and on the best site that can be found, cost what it may, a monument, voted by Parliament, on which our greatest artists in marble and in metal shall lavish all their skill. It must be a monoment so beautiful and so conspicuous that no Colonist who visits the cradle of the race shall be able to miss seeing it, and to feel his blood stirred by what it records, while every Englishman, Scotchman, and Irishman who passes it by shall recall what the daughter lands have done for their mother in her need. Whether the designer will make a pedestal with four side figures of New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and South Africa at each angle we shall not presume even to canvass, but there ought at any rate to be an inscription in three languages, telling how, why, by whom, and for whom the monument was erected. And it seems to us, though this may not prove to be the better opinion, that it should be written in French, and in Dutch, as well as in English, for many of the brave Canadians at the front not only speak French but speak no English. Again, we must never forget that there are Dutch-speaking men and men of Dutch blood at this moment fighting the battle of the Empire, and they deserve to have their deeds recorded in their own tongue. In any case, the inscription should record the names of those who died to help the Empire and to defend the principles of freedom, and above those names might be written : "We could not have loved the Empire and the Motherland so well, loved we not freedom more." " Pro patria, pro imperio, pro libertate," that must be the essential note of the monument to our Colonists, which shall recall in London for all time how the Motherland feels when the daughter States gather round her.
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