of federated crown colonies and lesser dependencies are to be found in the Leeward Island group of the West Indies and the federated Malay States.
This rough system of self-government for the empire has been evolved not without some strain and friction, by the recognition through the vicissitudes of three hundred years of the value of independent initiative in the development of young countries. Queen Elizabeth’s first patent to Sir Walter Raleigh permitted British subjects to accompany him to America, “with guarantee of a continuance of the enjoyment of all the rights which her subjects enjoyed at home.”
This guarantee may presumably have been intended at the time only to assure the intending settlers that they should lose no rights of British citizenship at home by taking up their residence in America. Its mutual interpretation in a wider sense, serving at once to establish in the colony rights of citizenship equivalent to those enjoyed in England, and to preserve for the colonist the status of British subject at home and abroad, has formed in application to all succeeding systems of British colonization the unconscious charter of union of the empire.
The first American colonies were settled under royal grants, each with its own constitution. The immense distance in time which in those days separated America from Great Britain secured them from interference by the home authorities. They paid their own most moderate governing expenses, and they contributed largely to their own defence. From the middle of the 17th century their trade was not free, but this was the only restriction from which they suffered. The great war with France in the middle of the 18th century temporarily destroyed this system. That war, which resulted in the conquest of Canada and the delivery of the North American colonies from French antagonism, cost the imperial exchequer £90,000,000. The attempt to avert the repetition of such expenditure by the assertion of a right to tax the colonies through the British parliament led to the one great rupture which has marked the history of the empire. It has to be noted that at home during the latter half of the 17th century and the earlier part of the 18th century parliamentary power had to a great extent taken the place of the divine right of kings. But parliamentary power meant the power of the English people and taxpayers. The struggle which developed itself between the American colonies and the British parliament was in fact a struggle on the part of the people and taxpayers of one portion of the empire to resist the domination of the people and taxpayers of another portion. In this light it may be accepted as having historically established the fundamental axiom of the constitution of the empire, that the crown is the supreme head from which the parts take equal dependence.
The crown requiring advice in the ordinary and constitutional manner receives it in matters of colonial administration from the secretaries of state for the colonies and for India. After the great rupture separate provision in the home government for the administration of colonial affairs was at first judged to be unnecessary, and the “Council[1] of Trade and Plantations,” which up to that date had supplied the place now taken by the two offices of the colonies and India, was suppressed in 1782. There was a reaction from the liberal system of colonial self-government, and an attempt was made to govern the colonies simply as dependencies.
In 1791, not long after the extension of the range of parliamentary authority in another portion of the empire, by the creation in 1784 of the Board of Control for India, Pitt made the step forward of granting to Canada representative institutions, of which the home government kept the responsible control. Similar institutions were also given at a later period to Australia and South Africa. But the long peace of the early part of the 19th century was marked by great colonial developments; Australia, Canada and South Africa became important communities. Representative institutions controlled by the home government were insufficient, and they reasserted the claim for liberty to manage their own affairs.
Fully responsible government was granted to Canada in 1840, and gradually extended to the other colonies. In 1854 a separate secretary of state for the colonies was appointed at home, and the colonial office was established on its present footing. In India, as in the colonies, there came with the growing needs of empire a recognition of the true relations of the parts to each other and of the whole to the crown. In 1858, on the complete transference of the territories of the East India Company to the crown, the board of control was abolished, and the India Council, under the presidency of a secretary of state for India, was created. It was especially provided that the members of the council may not sit in parliament.
Thus, although it has not been found practicable in the working of the British constitution to carry out the full theory of the direct and exclusive dependence of colonial possessions on the crown, the theory is recognized as far as possible. It is understood that the principal sections of the empire enjoy equal rights under the crown, and that none is subordinate to another. The intervention of the imperial parliament in colonial affairs is only admitted theoretically in so far as the support of parliament is required by the constitutional advisers of the crown. To bring the practice of the empire into complete harmony with the theory it would be necessary to constitute, for the purpose of advising the crown on imperial affairs, a council in which all important parts of the empire should be represented.
The gradual recognition of the constitutional theory of the British empire, and the assumption by the principal colonies of full self-governing responsibilities, has cleared the way for a movement in favour of a further development which should bring the supreme headship of the Imperialism.empire more into accord with modern ideas.
It was during the period of domination of the “Manchester school,” of which the most effective influence in public affairs was exerted for about thirty years, extending from 1845 to 1875, that the fullest development of colonial self-government was attained, the view being generally accepted at that time that self-governing institutions were to be regarded as the preliminary to inevitable separation. A general inclination to withdraw from the acceptance of imperial responsibilities throughout the world gave to foreign nations at the same time an opportunity by which they were not slow to profit, and contributed to the force of a reaction of which the part played by Great Britain in the scramble for Africa marked the culmination. Under the increasing pressure of foreign enterprise, the value of a federation of the empire for purposes of common interest began to be discussed. Imperial federation was openly spoken of in New Zealand as early as 1852. A similar suggestion was officially put forward by the general association of the Australian colonies in London in 1857. The Royal Colonial Institution, of which the motto “United Empire” illustrates its aims, was founded in 1868. First among leading British statesmen to repudiate the old interpretation of colonial self-government as a preliminary to separation, Lord Beaconsfield, in 1872, spoke of the constitutions accorded to the colonies as “part of a great policy of imperial consolidation.” In 1875 W. E. Forster, afterwards a member of the Liberal government, made a speech in which he advocated imperial federation as a means by which it might become practicable to “replace dependence by association.” The foundation of the Imperial Federation League—in 1884, with Forster for its first president, shortly to be succeeded by Lord Rosebery—marked a distinct step forward. The Colonial Conferences of 1887 and subsequent years (the title being changed to Imperial Conference in 1907), in which colonial opinion was sought and accepted in respect of important questions of imperial organization and defence, and the enthusiastic loyalty displayed by the colonies towards the crown on the occasion of the jubilee manifestations of Queen Victoria’s reign, were further indications of progress in the same direction. Coincidently with this development, the achievements of Sir George Goldie and Cecil Rhodes, who, the one in West Africa and the other in South Africa, added between them to the empire in a space of less than twenty years a dominion of greater extent than the whole of British
- ↑ Or “Board,” as it became in 1605.
