Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 57.djvu/259

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
COLONIES AND THE MOTHER COUNTRYI.
249

foundation, but the British Parliament twice granted considerable sums to initiate it and carry it on; the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel aided, and the benevolence of philanthropic England contributed largely to its success. Not till 1818—more than half a century after the conquest—did the revenue of Canada balance its expenditure. The convict colony of New South Wales was, of course, entirely of state origin. Stores of every kind, together with cattle and seeds, were sent out at the beginning, and long continued to be sent out to it. The first governor was granted a space of two years to make it self-supporting, but the growth of a convict colony is abnormally slow, and the civil and military establishments for thirty-four years continued to be a drain on the British exchequer to the extent of over ten millions. Even now one of the oldest and best of existing British colonies, with an area of over three hundred thousand square miles, does not produce the breadstuff's needed for its own consumption. The Cape of Good Hope, of mixed Dutch and French origin, was first made a truly British colony by the dispatch of six thousand emigrants at the cost of the mother country—a cost much greater than was anticipated. When the Transvaal was forcibly annexed by England, the stepmother country advanced a sum of £90,000 to rescue the quondam republic from its financial difficulties. In 1895 Parliament voted three millions for the building of a railroad in British East Africa. Uganda is supported by a British subsidy. Algeria is a manufactured colony, which has all along had to be supported by its creator. Apart from the cost of their civil and military establishments, France has to subsidize her colonies to the extent of over four millions sterling, partially expended in reproductive public works. Even tiny New Caledonia costs France half a million, one half of which, it is true, is expended on the convict establishment.

Most colonies at their beginning are burdensome to the mother country. Years after its foundation South Australia fell into such embarrassment that its governors had to draw on the imperial exchequer for nearly a million. In 1831 the expenditure in Cape Colony was still in excess of the revenue. Sierra Leone had to be aided by a parliamentary grant year after year. No wonder the Colonial Office complained that colonies were expensive to keep up. In German Africa the revenue does not meet the expenditure. The Congo Free State does not pay its way. On the other hand, Congo Française has a substantial surplus. Western Australia was another exception to the rule. There the Imperial Government announced that it would contribute nothing to the foundation of the colony, which was to be self-supporting from the first. Private capitalists were to arrange for the emigration of ten thousand persons in four years. Lands were granted to the emigrants on a scale of extravagance which long hampered the