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CHAPTER XIX

GREATER BRITAIN: THE SELF-GOVERNING COLONIES

The Tradition of Political Freedom. - Our description of the British political system cannot justly be brought to a close without a word of comment on the governmental institutions and problems of the British Empire. After all, the United Kingdom, while in most respects separate and self-contained, is only part of a political dominion that extends over almost one fourth of the earth's habitable surface, and that controls the destinies of more than one fourth of the world's population. Relatively, the Roman Empire was a more colossal power, for in the days of its splendor it embraced practically the entire civilized world. Measured absolutely, however, the British Empire transcends all political creations of both past and present times.

Speaking broadly, the peoples living under the British flag to-day are as prosperous, as contented, as free, and as jealous of their rights as any other great group of peoples in the world. They dwell in every clime; they belong to almost every race; they represent every conceivable stage of culture; they have every possible economic interest; the proportion of people of European stock is hardly greater than it was a century and a half ago. Yet the ties that hold the Empire together have been proved stronger than even the optimists, in pre-war days, supposed them to be. The reasons why they are so cannot be considered here. They run the gamut of blood relationship, cultural connections, trade and business advantages, desire for protection, and what not. But at bottom is the cardinal fact that, on the whole, the British Empire has been, in the past hundred years, wisely, and even beneficently, governed. Great outlying dependencies have been transformed into what are to all intents and purposes free states; peoples upon whom it has not been deemed safe or wise to confer full rights of self-government have been given partial rights; peoples in a still more backward condition have been governed firmly but honestly, and usually to their own great advantage, by English administrators.

From the beginning England, in contrast with other expanding nations, permitted her colonists to have a voice in their own government; and yet it was only by bitter experience that even she was made to see that colonial autonomy, far from being inconsistent with true imperial power, may be made its surest basis. It is interesting to note what a modern scholar, who writes from the English standpoint, has to say upon this subject. "When the outpouring of Europe into the rest of the world began, the British peoples alone had the habit and instinct of self-government in their very blood and bones. And the result was that wherever they went, they carried self-government with them. . . . In the eighteenth century, and even in the middle of the nineteenth century, Britain herself and the young nations that had sprung from her loins were almost the only free states existing in the world. It was because they were free that they throve so greatly. They expanded on their own account, they threw out fresh settlements into the empty lands wherein they were planted, often against the wish of the mother country. And this spontaneous growth of vigorous free communities has been one of the principal causes of the immense extension of the British Empire. Now one of the results of the universal existence of self-governing rights in the British colonies was that the colonists were far more prompt to resent and resist any improper exercise of authority by the mother country than were the settlers in the colonies of other countries, which had no self-governing rights at all. It was this independent spirit, nurtured by self-government, which led to the revolt of the American colonies in 1775, and to the foundation of the United States as an independent nation. In that great controversy an immensely important question was raised, which was new to human history. It was the question whether unity could be combined with the highest degree of freedom; whether it was possible to create a sort of fellowship or brotherhood of free communities, in which each should be master of its own destinies, and yet all combine for common interests. But the question (being so new) was not understood on either side of the Atlantic. Naturally, Britain thought most of the need of maintaining unity; she thought it unfair that the whole burden of the common defense should fall upon her, and she committed many foolish blunders in trying to enforce her view. Equally naturally, the colonists thought primarily of their own self-governing rights, which they very justly demanded should be increased rather than restricted. The result was the unhappy war, which broke up the only family of free nations that had

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yet existed in the world, and caused a most unfortunate alienation between them, whereby the cause of liberty in the world was greatly weakened. Britain learned many valuable lessons from the American Revolution. In the new Empire which she began to build up as soon as the old one was lost, it might have been expected that she would have fought shy of those principles of self-government which no other state had ever tried to apply in its oversea dominions, and which seemed to have led (from the imperialistic point of view) to such disastrous results in America. But she did not do so; the habits of self-government were too deeply rooted in her sons to make it possible for her to deny them self-governing rights in their new homes. On the contrary, she learnt, during the nineteenth century, to welcome and facilitate every expansion of their freedom, and she gradually felt her way towards a means of realizing a partnership of free peoples whereby freedom should be combined with unity. Its success (although it must still undergo much development) has been strikingly shown in the Great War." 1

The Self-Governing Dominions: General Features. From the point of view of their political status, the far-flung lands composing the British Empire to-day aside from the United Kingdom itself— fall into four main groups: (1) the self-governing dominions, (2) the crown colonies, (3) the protectorates, and (4) India, which, while partaking of the characteristics of a crown colony and of a protectorate, is neither, but is rather a "dependent empire," with internal organization and external relationships peculiar to itself. The self-governing dominions are five in number: the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Union of South Africa, the Dominion of New Zealand, and the Colony of Newfoundland. Their aggregate area in 1914 was 7,500,000 square miles, or a little more than one half of the entire Empire, including India - more than three fourths, if India be left out of the reckoning. Their total white population was about 15,000,000, as compared with 46,000,000 in the United Kingdom.

The student of government discerns at a glance two striking facts about these five great regions. The first is that, although they are parts of what custom compels us erroneously to call an empire, they are, for most purposes, independent nations. The second is that all are, in everything but name, republics, — with parliaments elected on democratic suffrages and with responsible executives similar to the working executive in the 1 R. Muir, Character of the British Empire (London, 1917), 9–12.

mother country. They have their own flags, their own armies, their own navies; they amend their own constitutions and make their own laws, with a minimum of interference from London; they appoint their own officers (except the governors-general, whose functions are almost as purely formal as those of the English king); they levy their own taxes; they freely impose protective duties on imports from the mother country and from other parts of the Empire; they make no compulsory financial contributions to the mother country, not even to help pay the interest on indebtedness incurred generations ago in protecting these very colonial possessions; they are not required to contribute to the upkeep of the navy, which is still the great defender of them all; although technically "at war" whenever the United Kingdom is in that state, they are not obliged to send a man or a ship or a shilling. In short, their purely political connection with the mother country is extremely slight. Almost the only tangible evidence of it is their inability to send ministers and consuls of their own to foreign countries and to pursue an independent foreign policy. The right of the crown to disallow their legislative acts,' the right of Parliament to legislate for them, and even the right of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to hear appeals from their courts,3 are less frequently exercised as time goes on. Indeed, of late the dominions have been allowed to negotiate separate commercial treaties and other international agreements; for example, the Canadian-French commercial treaty of 1907 was negotiated by plenipotentiaries named by the Dominion government, although furnished with credentials from the king-in-council. In view of this increased control over foreign affairs, Canada, in 1909, established a new ministry of external relations." 4

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The Dominion of Canada. Having observed these facts about the self-governing dominions in general, we may look a little more closely into the form and character of government in

1 1 Legally, the crown, acting on the advice of the ministers and through the agency of the governor-general, can disallow any colonial legislation. The power is so seldom exercised that the colonial parliaments rarely have any practical regard for it in the enactment of laws. Since 1867, for example, only six or eight Canadian acts have been disallowed.

Since 1778 the recognized principle has been that Parliament has a right to enact measures of any sort relating to the colonies except bills imposing taxes for the purpose of revenue. No parliamentary act applies to the colonies unless it is so specified in the measure; and very few acts do so apply.

3 See p. 218.

A good brief account of the political development of the self-governing colonies is Lowell, Government of England, II, Chap. lv. See also A. J. Herbertson and O. J. Howard, The Oxford Survey of the British Empire (Oxford, 1914).

three of the principal countries, Canada, Australia, and South Africa. Canada is of special interest, not only because in both area and population it is the greatest of the dominions, but also because of its nearness to, and its close relations with, the United States. As might be expected, its governmental system affords many points of comparison and contrast with our own. The very first fact to be noted, indeed, is that, like the United States, but unlike England, Canada is organized on a federal plan; that is, the powers and functions of government are divided by a written constitution between a central or national government on the one hand and a number of regional or provincial governments on the other. In its present form the Canadian confederation dates from 1867, when, at the request of the colonists themselves, the parliament at London passed the British North America Act bringing together four formerly separate colonies Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia in the new "Dominion of Canada." As population spread westward in later decades other provinces were created by the Canadian parliament, very much as our own western states were admitted to the Union by Congress; so that since 1905 the Dominion has consisted of nine provinces, besides the Yukon and Northwest territories.

Long before the act of union the original states obtained representative government; and after 1840 the most advanced ones also got responsible government, i.e., a system under which the ministries became responsible, as the ministry is in England, to the elected legislature. There was, therefore, no question when the plans for the new federation were drawn up as to the general form which the government should take. The English system served as the model; the American was drawn upon at certain points to round out the scheme, and especially to harmonize it with the federal principle. The essential features of the Dominion government can be presented briefly. The formal executive head is the governor-general, who is appointed in London, nominally by the king, but actually by the cabinet, and usually for five years. To him it falls to play substantially the rôle played in the mother country by the sovereign, with the difference that certain powers, e.g., the veto, which have become obsolete in the royal hands are sometimes, although seldom, exercised by the colonial dignitary. The working executive is the group of men - 23 in number, in 1917 comprising technically the privy council, but actually the cabinet, whose members get their places in substantially the same way that English cabinet

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