achieved substantial freedom, without dissolving nominal ties; the other subordinate possessions are aspiring to it, while, on the other hand, this privilege of local independence has enabled England to assimilate with ease many feudatory States2 into the body politic of her system.'
Here then is the theory that Britons are a race endowed, like the Romans, with a genius for government, that our colonial and imperial policy is animated by a resolve to spread throughout the world the arts of free self- government which we enjoy at home,3 and that in truth we are accomplishing this work.
Now, without discussing here the excellencies or the defects of the British theory and practice of representative self-government, to assert that our 'fixed rule of action' has been to educate our dependencies in this theory and practice is quite the largest misstatement of the facts of our colonial and imperial policy that is possible. Upon the vast majority of the populations throughout our Empire we have bestowed no real powers of self-government, nor have we any serious intention of doing so, or any serious belief that it is possible for us to do so.
Of the three hundred and sixty-seven millions of British subjects outside these isles, not more than ten millions, or one in thirty-seven, have any real self-government for purposes of legislation and administration.
Political freedom, and civil freedom, so far as it rests upon the other, are simply non-existent for the over- whelming majority of British subjects. In the self-governing colonies of Australasia and North America alone is responsible representative government a reality, and even there considerable populations of outlanders,4 as in West Australia, or servile labour, as in Queensland, temper the genuineness of democracy. In Cape Colony and Natal recent events5 testify how feebly the forms and even the spirit of the free British institutions have taken root in States where the great majority of the population were always excluded from political rights. The franchise and the rights it carries will remain virtually a white monopoly in so-called self-governing colonies, where the coloured population is to the white as four to one and ten to one respectively.
In certain of our older Crown colonies there exists a representative element in the government. While the administration is entirely vested in a governor
2. Feudally subject states. between the British and the Dutch Afrikaners, or 3. 'The British Empire is a galaxy of free States,' Boers, who had settled in regions of South Africa. said Sir W. Laurier in a speech, 8 July 1902 [Hob- Cape Colony and Natal, former British colonies son's note]. Sir Wilfred Laurier (1841-1919), now part of modern-day South Africa, were sites of Canadian political leader. long-standing friction between the British and the 4. Foreigners denied full citizenship. Boers. 5. The Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. fought
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1634 / EMPIRE AND NATIONAL IDENTITY
appointed by the Crown, assisted by a council nominated by him, the colonists elect a portion of the legislative assembly. The following colonies belong to this order: Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, Bahamas, British Guiana, Windward Islands, Bermudas, Malta, Mauritius, Ceylon.
The representative element differs considerably in size and influence in these colonies, but nowhere does it outnumber the non-elected element. It thus becomes an advisory rather than a really legislative factor. Not merely is the elected always dominated in numbers by the non-elected element, but in all cases the veto of the Colonial Office is freely exercised upon measures passed by the assemblies. To this it should be added that in nearly all cases a fairly high property qualification is attached to the franchise, precluding the coloured people from exercising an elective power proportionate to their numbers and their stake in the country.
The entire population of these modified Crown colonies amounted to 5,700,000 in 1898.6
The overwhelming majority of the subjects of the British Empire are under Crown colony government, or under protectorates. In neither case do they enjoy any of the important political rights of British citizens: in neither case are they being trained in the arts of free British institutions. In the Crown colony the population exercises no political privileges. The governor, appointed by the Colonial Office, is absolute, alike for legislation and administration; he is aided by a council of local residents usually chosen by himself or by home authority, but its function is merely advisory, and its advice can be and frequently is ignored. In the vast protectorates we have assumed in Africa and Asia there is no tincture of British representative government; the British factor consists in arbitrary acts of irregular interference with native government. Exceptions to this exist in the case of districts assigned to Chartered Companies, where business men, animated avowedly by business ends, are permitted to exercise arbitrary powers of government over native populations under the imperfect check of some British Imperial Commissioner.
Again, in certain native and feudatory States of India our Empire is virtually confined to government of foreign relations, military protection, and a veto upon grave internal disorder, the real administration of the countries being left in the hands of native princes or headmen. However excellent this arrangement may be, it lends little support to the general theory of the British Empire as an educator of free political institutions.
Where British government is real, it does not carry freedom or self- government; where it does carry a certain amount of freedom and self- government, it is not real. Not five per cent, of the population of our Empire are possessed of any appreciable portion of the political and civil liberties which are the basis of British civilisation. Outside the ten millions of British subjects in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, no considerable body is endowed with full self-government in the more vital matters, or is being 'elevated from the position of inferiority to that of association.'
This is the most important of all facts for students of the present and probable future of the British Empire. We have taken upon ourselves in these little islands the responsibility of governing huge aggregations of lower races in all parts of the world by methods which are antithetic to the methods of government which we most value for ourselves.
6. In all essential features, India and Egypt are to be classed as Crown colonies [Hobson's note].
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Late Victorians
The state of mind prevailing during the final decades of the nineteenth century was characterized previously (in the introduction to the Victorian age) as typical neither of the earlier Victorians nor of the twentieth century. As a result of their between-centuries role, writers of the 1880s and 1890s are sometimes styled 'Late Victorians'?a perfectly legitimate label, chronologically speak- ing?and sometimes (more ambiguously) 'the first of the 'moderns.' ' In this anthology, we retain as Late Victorians those writers who made their chief contribution before 1900. And we reserve for the twentieth century a number of writers already on the scene in the last two decades of Victoria's reign whose work achieved particular prominence in the twentieth century: these are William Butler Yeats, Joseph Conrad, A. E. Housman, and Thomas Hardy. The treatment of Hardy's writings exemplifies this principle. He was born fifteen to twenty years before most of the writers of the eighties and nineties, and his last two great novels, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, were published in 1891 and 1896 respectively. But since it was only after 1900 that Hardy made his name as a poet, we include him in the twentieth century, even
