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ART. VII.—1. Essays, Addresses, and Translations. By the 4th Earl of Carnarvon. Edited by Sir Robert G. W. Herbert, G.C.B. Privately printed. 1896.

2. The Defence of the Empire; a Selection from the Letters and Speeches of the 4th Earl of Carnarvon. Edited by Lieut.Colonel Sir George Sydenham Clarke, K.C.M.G., &c, London, 1897.

3. Problems of Greater Britain. By the Right Hon. Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, Bart., M.P. London, 1890.

4. A Short History of British Colonial Policy. By Hugh E. Egerton. London, 1897.

HE summer of 1897 will long be remembered by English

THE su mom the visit to the mother country of representatives

from all parts of that British Empire, beyond seas, which is practically the growth of the Queen's reign. Not even in the Exhibition year of 1851 did the provinces as well as the capital witness so various and picturesque a delegation of colours and creeds, of interests and nationalities. These incidents in the year of the Royal Commemoration, being of no ordinary or fugitive significance, furnish apt occasion for a review of the historic events or of the personal agencies at home and abroad which have chiefly contributed to the building up during the last half-century of the colonial Empire of England as well as to the familiarization of the insular mind with the size, variety, value, and many-sided interest of the Greater Britain which lies under other suns.

Before attempting such an enquiry, it may be well compendiously, but as far as possible precisely, to let the most recently accessible facts and figures testify to the diversified magnitude of the interests and opportunities, of which the newer and greater Britain represents the sum. Briefly, then, this empire consists of 9,000,000 square miles; being a fifth part of the habitable globe. As Sir Charles Dilke puts it, this area is equal in extent to nearly three Europes; its revenues amount to some two hundred and ten millions sterling. Including, for the moment only, India, which in other respects does not come within the scope of these remarks, the total of our foreign Imperial area would be 11,000,000 square miles; that is, ninety-one times the surface extent of the mother country. Our colonial dominions alone are seventyseven times greater than the mother country. These lands, lying in every latitude, produce all possible commodities of life and trade. They supply half the sea-borne commerce of the world. There are no richer wheat granaries, wool markets,

timber forests, and diamond fields than those of Greater Britain. In tea we are fast approaching the first place. In sugar we have few successful rivals; in coal, iron, and copper we hold our own with all mankind. In respect of tobacco, India and Jamaica produce qualities which come next after those of Havana and Manilla, which are even beginning to compete with them. Our coffee, though in comparison with that of Brazil and Java small in bulk, is of the finest quality known. Thus the outlying portions of the British Kingdom, not only provide careers inaccessible at home for every class and every grade of intelligence and aptitude in the community, they would also, as regards food supply, enable us, if we pleased, to be independent of any foreign source.

While the mother country itself territorially represents almost an insignificant part of Imperial Britain, a more concrete and picturesque idea of the place filled in the world's story by the colonial Empire of Great Britain may be formed from the calculations of the Imperial Federation League, now transformed into the British Empire League. Our colonial dominions, then, are five times as large as was the empire of Darius the Great; they are four times larger than that of ancient Rome; they exceed by an eighth in size the empire of Russia; they contain 230 millions more people than the Russian empire. They are sixteen times as great as that of France; they are forty times as great as that of Germany. The possessions of the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, are not traversed till after seventeen days' continuous railway journeying. Yet these only amount in size to one-third of the Empire of Great Britain.

As Greater Britain comprises every variety of race and religion, of climate and of natural products, so is it an illustration and epitome of all those diversities of political constitution, of social economy, of legislation and government which the mind. of man has devised, or centuries of tradition have matured. From the absolutism that controls India to the democracy of South Australia and Ontario, more forms of Government than were ever passed in review by Aristotle, by Bacon, by Sir Thomas More, or by Machiavelli, are actively illustrated on the soil over which our flag floats. These polities, if under that head all varieties of control be included, are estimated by the authors of the Colonial List' at forty-two. The chief divisions into which these administrations may be grouped pregnantly suggest the progressive enlightenment and emancipating influences of Great Britain as a colonizing power. Eleven colonies possess to-day elective assemblies for legislation and full self-government, after the pattern of the mother country.

country. Even where these privileges have not yet been conceded, in all their constitutional completeness, there are only five colonies without some form of representation, or in which the official administrator sums up in himself the legislative as well as the executive power of the State. Of that condition of affairs, Gibraltar, Labuan, St. Helena, and the South African Settlements of Basutoland, and Zululand are instances. regards Gibraltar, it is doubtful whether it comes entirely within this category; during the seventies, delegates from the Rock visited London, to confer with the Colonial Office on certain recently issued Ordinances, and to discuss several matters connected with them, of which smuggling was one. The present chairman of the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company, Sir Thomas Sutherland, as one interested in, and practically conversant with, the needs of our Mediterranean fortress, strongly impressed on Mr. Francis Francia, the leader of the deputation, and upon his colleagues, the expediency of some sort of local body which might at least be the channel for communicating to the Governor the requirements of the settlement and the public opinion of its unofficial and chiefly commercial members. If full effect has not even yet been given to this advice, the views of the scorpions' on all municipal and some Imperial affairs now find more of organized expression in official quarters than they once did, with the result that the friction and misunderstanding which brought about the deputation of 1873 do not seem to have recurred.

Although our colonial fellow-subjects are, as to numbers, divided in nearly equal proportions between the self-governed and the Crown-ruled countries in respect of area, the former represents two-thirds of the area of the whole quantity. To regard the matter arithmetically, a comparison of population statistics between Great Britain and Greater Britain, yields results exactly opposite to those supplied by a comparison of areas. The colonial population has, indeed, increased from 15 millions in 1881 to 20 millions now. It remains still less by 18 millions than the population of the mother country, taking the latter at 38 millions. The inhabitants of the colonial capitals may seem to be fewer than the size of the towns themselves would lead one to expect; they are not fewer than might be inferred from the fact that the chief colonial products are at present raw materials rather than manufactured articles. The colonial populations vary from Melbourne with close on half a million inhabitants, to Wellington (N.Z.) with close upon thirty-three thousand. Indeed, the limit of thirty thousand, which Wellington passes, is exceeded by only thirty-four towns.

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The extreme youth of the countries now spoken of is not always realized by Englishmen; it explains fully the comparatively low numbers of the dwellers in colonial towns. For all human purposes, Australia is not half a century old. She did but begin in 1851. John Pascoe Fawkner, one of the founders of Melbourne, was still alive when the Duke of Edinburgh, in 1860, visited the Antipodes. Fawkner's colleague in his work, Henty, and slightly Fawkner's senior, only died fifteen years ago-in 1882. What is really remarkable is, not that the capitals of Greater Britain have fewer inhabitants than those of Great Britain, but that, with an export trade chiefly, if not exclusively, one of unmade materials, their population has increased so fast as actually has been the case. This trade in the materials for manufacture indicates the present wealth and contains the prophecy of the increasing resources and power of Greater Britain beyond the sea. While what is called the object-lesson in all things pertaining to Greater Britain, given by the Royal Commemoration of last summer, is still fresh in many minds, the growing popularity of the Colonies as the adopted homes of Englishmen may be tested by something more practical and less fleeting than the applause and enthusiasm which on the memorable June 22nd, 1897, welcomed the representatives of colonial power on their progress through the London streets, from Prime Ministers and officers commanding colonial troops, down to buglers or drummer-boys. In 1837 the number of British-born emigrants to the Colonies was 35,264; of these 29,884 went to North America, and 5,054 to Australasia. During the past six decades these figures have steadily increased. The latest returns available, which may be spoken of as those of 1897, show the British emigrants to our North American Colonies to have risen to 15,267, those to Australasia to have risen to 10,354; while our other colonies, chiefly South Africa, receive 24,594.

The reign, therefore, has witnessed an augmentation of nearly 50 per cent. of British additions to Greater Britain abroad. That, of course, means something like a corresponding diminu tion in the yearly totals of British-born settlers in the lands of the United States; though on this point the only comparative estimate accessible is too obviously conjectural to admit of reproduction here. Other memories may well have mingled with the recognition of these facts, and have had their place in explaining the remarkable manifestation of Imperial sentiment and interest that will always be associated with the year 1897. Without anticipating the subject of Imperial defence, the practical unity of mother country and Colonies is shown by

the

the fact that the past sixty years of the present reign have witnessed, with the exception only of the naval stations at Halifax and Cape Town, the withdrawal of Imperial troops from the self-governing Colonies. Thus the policy which between 1837 and 1849 was denounced as impracticable, or, should it be tried, as sure to lead to the disintegration of the Colonial Empire, has proved not only possible but successful and safe. In November 1886, during the Secretaryship of State of the late Mr. E. Stanhope, and under the presidency of the present Lord Knutsford, the most important event in the recent history of the mutual relations of Great Britain and Greater Britain took place. At a conference between the Whitehall officials and colonial representatives, the details of the naval defence of the Colonies by the mother country, and the contributions of the former to the expenditure for that purpose were settled, the most important decision arrived at being the increase of the Australasian squadron by fast cruisers and torpedo-gunboats. Before that, the Colonies had given proof of their capacity to do something more than repel a possible invasion of their own shores. During both our earlier and later military operations of the eighties in Afghanistan; at the beginning of our Egyptian complications in 1882; during the campaign that ended at Tel-el-Kebir; during the subsequent struggles with the Soudan dervishes, the Horse Guards received offers from Canadian and Australian volunteers to serve under the old flag. When, again, in the spring of 1885, Mr. Gladstone's 11,000,000l. credit-vote, to be divided between Egypt and India, as well as the occupation by Russian troops of Penjdeh, reminded us that we might be on the eve of a struggle which would tax the energies of the whole Empire, troops, fully equipped at colonial expense, were at once placed at the disposal of the mother country.

Nor is it only their militant patriotism or their commercial opportunities and success that have inspired the present generation of Britons with an appreciation, at once proud and fond, of those kindred communities from which they are divided by oceans, but no longer by sentiment. All the earliest, not a little of the later, colonial history of Great Britain is an appeal to those qualities of enterprise, endurance, resourcefulness, and, notably, moral and philanthropic earnestness, which are bright points in the Anglo-Saxon character and annals. Sir George Cornewall Lewis has defined a colony as a body of permanent settlers from a distance, expelling or outnumbering the natives among whom a settlement is made. The definition is not entirely satisfactory, no matter to which

of

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