Page:What colonial preference means.djvu/6

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pursued by the Mother Country for the benefit of her children beyond the four seas. Nor does anyone at home desire to take back anything that has been given, or to limit the freedom of these great new English communities. Rather it is the universal wish to see them acquire every fresh liberty they may want, if they are still hampered in any way by old traditions. With the passage of time we hope to see the Colonies becoming great States within the British Commonwealth. As years go on we look to our children becoming our allies—under a common Crown, and to our race in our own dominions, and we may even hope in America, not only progressing morally, socially, and economically, but enforcing a Pax Britannica throughout the world. This is a great ideal for us all to strive for. Yet it is what Lord Rosebery has called sane Imperialism, devoid of covetousness or envy of other peoples' prosperity or possessions, and free from the slightest taint of that music-hall Jingoism which is so painful a growth of late years. We are all content with our family estate, and while we mean to hold it against all comers, our chief desire is for its rapid development.

As we grow older we all become aware in our home circles that the younger generation thinks that their parents fall behind the age and become old-fashioned in ideas, while the elders think that the young wish to go too fast, and that they are thus liable to fall into errors which experience has shown to be the lot of young men in a hurry. This condition of things is repeated on a far larger scale in our Imperial family. Our colonists think the old folk at home have fallen into the vale of years, if they have not reached their dotage, and that all wisdom is to be found among the younger generations across the seas. But (as Jowett remarked to the undergraduate who obtruded his opinion among grave and reverend seniors) we are none of us so wise as we think, even the