Canada perseveringly keep up protective tariffs against the interests of the mother country; nothing can show more clearly than this the complete autonomy they practically enjoy. By degrees England is withdrawing the troops with which she has provided her colonial territories for their defence.[1] She is leaving them to defend themselves. On the other hand, it is clear enough that she can rely on nothing but their good will for efficacious help in case of a war which threatened her alone, or even in case of any enterprise for the common good.[2] The Crown has not even reserved the ownership of free lands, a right which the government of the United States, a purely federal authority, has kept in respect of the territories and new states admitted to the union. And a fortiori the Crown has not in the colonies, as it has in England, the right of eminent domain.
At present, or at least in the near future, Ave must look upon the colonies not even as provinces in possession of self-government, but as almost sovereign states connected with the mother country only by race, language, and common associations.
- ↑ In 1870 troops were withdrawn from New South Wales.
- ↑ Not long ago when the Fiji Islands were to he occupied, Lord Carnarvon asked the Australian colonies, who were much interested in this occupation, to contribute an insignificant sum to the expenses of the government of the Islands. England would have taken the larger share. The colonies refused. Again we know that the reclamations of the United States after the War of Secession were founded chiefly on the fact that the authorities of Melbourne had allowed the Shenandoah to repair in their harbour. The arbitrators took this view, but it was England and not the Australian colonies which paid the indemnification.
