GREAT BRITAIN AND HER COLONIES.

Auckland Examiner, Volume III, Issue 141, 12 March 1859, Page 5 (Supplement)

GREAT BRITAIN AND HER COLONIES.

attempt we have hitherto succeeeded extremely well, and that if we have not succeeded, as some people say, in creating a vast confederacy nor, as others will have it, in making the colonies integral parts of these islands for political and commercial purposes, we have at any race, raised up a number of States which promise to be faithful copies of their parent, and which being freed from our protection from the necessity of supporting a large military force, enter upon their career with every possible advantage. Some persons may, indeed, regret and not without reason, that policy has been to extend the limits of our State beyond the narrow dimensions of these islands, and thatwe should be destined to contemplate the progress of America, the population of which will soon equal our own, and then go on, according to all appearance, at a rate which will in the course of a hundred years, and therefore possibly in the lifetime of some now living on this earth, amount to between three and four hundred millions, without the possibility of giving to our own nation a similar expansion. We shall have founded many Americas in that time—colonies which will be far advanced towards the position of first-rate States, butwe shall still, in all probability, be cooped up within these narrow islands with only such a population as their resources strained to the uttermost will be able to support. Here is undoubtedly the weak part of our system. Our colonists are, in one sense, our fellow-subjects —that is, they are subjects of the same Crown, but of a Crown, placed at the head of distinct Legislatures and communites ; and what is still worse, the inhabitants of one colony have absolutely no political relation whatever with the inhabitants of another. They are each of them closely connected with the parent State, uot perhaps so much, after all, as the result of any political combination, as because London is the great mart for the produce of all the countries in the -world, and provides the greater part of the capital required for developing the recources of remote and struggling communities. But the connexion between one colony and another has hitherto been very slight indeed. We should much question if a single ship has ever sailed direct between Canada and Australia, and among colonies of the same group the similarity of products offers but little temptation to an intercolonial trade. They have no power to make alliances with each other, and, indeed, the central authority which exists at home is of itself a considerable obstacle in the way of federal action.

Now, we consider the state of things we have been describing as very much to be regretted. It might be difficult to persuade the people of the Uuited Kingdom to descend from their imperial position, to convert the House of Commons into merely a loeal assembly, and to submit all taxation for Imperial purposes to a congress in which the colonies - should be represented according to their population. It might be difficult to persuade the colonies to purchase the right of becoming really integral parts of the empire at the price of bearing a part in its defence, and therefore we fear thatwe must go on in our present system of creating vitually independent States, now scarcely allies, and some day or other probably powerful rivale. Still, we rejoice to see anything which shows any wish on the part of our colonists, in whose hands the matter now entirely lies, to draw closer in any way the ties which unite them to us, aud, above all, to each other. It may appear a slight matter, but we are disposed to attach considerable importance to the very uncomfortable position in which a successful colonist from Canada, Australia, or the Cape finds himself on his return to the mother country. He has fought the battle of life successfully, and comes back to his native country with a disposition to please and to be pleased. The climate, in the first place, is apt to dissapoint him. The skies appear grayer, the mornings rawer, the evenings colder, and the sun paler than he remembers them. His friends have some fallen too low for him to wish to have anything to say ta him. His blooming Mary has married somebody else, and is the happy but not very slender mother of a thriving family. If he goes into the country he is repelled by the morgue of the neighbouring squireens ; if he takes np his abode in London he is overlooked in the bustle, and lives as solitary in the crowd as if he were still under the shadow of his own gum trees. After a certain amount of this discipline he returns to his country a saddler if not a wiser mau. He is still a subject of the Queen, but no longer a fellow-subject in heart at least, English squires and London Amphitryons. We rejoice to hear that the colonists of Austsaliaand New Zealand are about to take this matter into their own hands, that they held a meeting about it a few days ago, and that they intend by united action to do what they ecn to alleviate their sufferings. We heartily wish success to this sensible movement, and trust that our visitors from New Zealand and Australia may find in this way a means of making London a little more interesting and amusing to each other than we fear it has hitherto proved.— Times.

As the relation of Great Britain to her colonies developes itself day by day, it is found to be one of the strangest and most anomalous bonds that ever united distant people under the same Crown. We believe it would be extremely difficult, certainly, so far as our researches go, we have found it absolutely impossible to produce any parallel for it in ancient or modern history. We do not now speak of the Crown colonies, whose relations to the mother country are simple and obvious enough, but of those colonies which enjoy representative assemblies and responsible Government. It is much easier to say what they are not than what they are. They are not Satrapies, as the Presidencies of India are, for their Goverhment is not now, happily for us all, administered from home, but in and by themselves. They are not allies, for there exists no treaty between them and us, and though in case of war we are bound to defend them, if invaded, there is not, so far as we are aware, any reciprocity in the obligation. Neither can they be likened to the provinces and municipalities of the Roman Empire, for they bear no portion of tbe Imperial burdens, and are freed, as we have said, from the control of officers delegated from the Central Administration ; still less are they with all submission to Sir James Stephen, members of a great federation, such as that of America or Switzerland ; for, if the Central Government has no control over them, neither have they any voice in the councils of the Central Government. They arc subjects of the same Sovereign, but have no attribute of federation.

Nothing has hitherto been less preceived or allowed for by the m other country than one of the first and most necessary results of this very peculiar position of the colonies which may perhaps be best defined by saying that it has been the object of our legislation and policy to create across the ocean as many little Englands as we can, to which the Queen shall stand as Dearly as possible in tbe same relation which she occupies with regard lo theUuited Kingdom. We are happy to think that in this