Imperial position, would pass away before the end of another generation under conditions of peace and by the natural operation of economic and social forces.[1] Unless the Mother Country and the Colonies can unite their energies at no distant period and help each other to develop their resources, there is unfortunately little likelihood of any flaw being found in this argument Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, speaking as an orthodox economist, and with unrivalled authority as an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, has recently warned us that it will be absolutely impossible for the Mother Country to sustain alone the future burthen of Imperial defence. The opinion of observers like Mr. Leonard Courtney, that 'our supremacy must pass away,' is determined by the same considerations. The general disbelief of foreign observers in the permanence of the British Empire rests upon like reasons. They still agree with Turgot that 'Colonies are fruits which cling till they ripen'; and anticipate in our case, after the dropping of the fruit, the decay of the tree. Even a not unfriendly observer like the German economist. Professor Fuchs, of Freiburg, whose exceedingly far-sighted book[2] anticipated many of the commercial arguments for fiscal reform so far back as 1898, writes in the special preface to the recent English translation of his work: 'The statesman of whom I spoke twelve years ago seems to have come at last. The ftiture must show whether it is not already too late.' It is a pregnant reflection when we remember the immense extent of relative ground we have lost in the intervening period.
It will be objected at once that numbers are not everything. They are not everything. But they are
- ↑ Germany is already spending upon her navy as much as we spent in any year up to Queen Victorians first Jubilee; the United States naval estimates are already as large as ours were in any year up to the outbreak of the Boer War.
- ↑ 'Die Handelspolitik Englands under seiner Kolonien,' von Dr. Carl Johannes Fuchs ('Schriften des Vereins füir Socialpolitik,' Leipzig, 1893).
