What was the problem confronting the merchant adventurer of the sixteenth century? There were newly-discovered foreign lands containing, as he believed, precious metals and stones and spices, and inhabited by savages or semi-savages. If other traders got those stones, it was quite evident that he could not. His colonial policy, therefore, had to be directed to two ends: first, such effective political occupation of the country that he could keep the savage or semi-savage population in check, and could exploit the territory for its wealth; and, secondly, such arrangements as would prevent other nations from searching for this wealth in precious metals, spices, etc., since, if they obtained it, he could not.
That is the story of the French and Dutch in India, and of the Spanish in South America. But as soon as there grew up in those countries an organized community living in the country itself, the whole problem changed. The Colonies, in this later stage of development, have a value to the Mother Country mainly as a market and a source of food and raw material, and if their value in those respects is to be developed to the full, they inevitably become self-governing communities in greater or less degree, and the Mother Country exploits them exactly as she exploits any other community with which she may be trading. Germany might acquire Canada, but it could no longer be a question of her taking Canada’s wealth in precious metals, or in any other form, to the exclusion of other nations. Could Germany “own” Canada, she would have to “own” it in the same way that Britain does; the Germans would have to pay for every sack of wheat and every pound of beef that they might buy, just as though Canada “belonged” to England or to anybody else. Germany could not have even the meagre satisfaction of Germanizing these great communities, for one knows that they are far too firmly “set.” Their language, law, morals, would have to be, after German conquest, what they are now. Germany would find that the German Canada was pretty much the Canada that it is now—a country where Germans are free to go and do go; a field for Germany’s expanding population.
As a matter of fact, Germany feeds her expanding population from territories like Canada and the United States and South America without sending its citizens there. The era of emigration from Germany has stopped, because the compound steam-engine has rendered emigration largely unnecessary. And it is the developments which are the necessary outcome of such forces, that have made the whole colonial problem of the twentieth century radically different from that of the eighteenth or seventeenth.
I have stated the case thus: No nation could gain any advantage by the conquest of the British Colonies, and Great Britain could not suffer material damage by their “loss,” however much this would be regretted on sentimental grounds, and as rendering less easy a certain useful social cooperation between kindred peoples. For the British Colonies are, in fact, independent nations in alliance with the Mother Country, to whom they are no source of tribute or economic profit (except in the way that foreign nations are), their economic relations being settled not by the Mother Country, but by the Colonies. Economically, England would gain by their formal separation, since she would be relieved of the cost of their defence. Their loss, involving, therefore, no change in economic fact (beyond saving the Mother Country the cost of their defence), could not involve the ruin of the Empire and the starvation of the Mother Country, as those who commonly treat of such a contingency are apt to aver. As England is not able to exact tribute or economic advantage, it is inconceivable that any other country, necessarily less experienced in colonial management, would be able to succeed where England had failed, especially in view of the past history of the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and British Colonial Empires. This history also demonstrates that the position of British Crown Colonies, in the respect which we are considering, is not sensibly different from that of the self-governing ones. It is not to be presumed, therefore, that any European nation would attempt the desperately expensive business of the conquest of England, for the purpose of making an experiment with her Colonies which all colonial history shows to be doomed to failure.
What are the facts? Great Britain is the most successful colonizing nation in the world, and the policy into which her experience has driven her is that outlined by Sir C. P. Lucas, one of the greatest authorities on colonial questions. He writes, speaking of the history of the British Colonies on the American continent, thus:
It was seen—but it might not have been seen had the United States not won their independence—that English colonists, like Greek Colonies of old, go out on terms of being equal, not subordinate, to those who are left behind; that when they have effectively planted another and a distant land, they must, within the widest limits, be left to rule themselves; that, whether they are
