Now of all qualities which is the one men most need? To the absence of what quahty are popular distresses mainly at- tributable? What is the quality in which the improvident masses are so deficient? Self-restraint — the abiUty to sacri- fice a small present gratification for a prospective gi'eat one. A labourer endowed with due self-restraint would never spend liis Saturday-night's wages at the pubUc-house. Had he enough self-restraint, the artizan would not live up to his income during prosperous times and leave the future unprovided for. More self-restraint would prevent imprudent marriages and the growth of a pauper population. And were there no drunken- ness, no extravagance, no reckless multiplication, social miseries would be trivial.
Consider next how the power of self-restraint is to be in- creased. By a sharp experience alone can anything be done. Those in whom this faculty needs drawing out — educating must be left to the discipHne of nature, and allowed to bear the pains attendant on their defect of character. The only cure for imprudence is the suffering which imprudence entails. Nothing but bringing him face to face with stem necessity, and letting him feel how unbending, how unpitying, are her laws, can improve the man of ill-governed desires. As already shown (p. 324), all interposing between humanity and the conditions of its existence — cusliioning-off consequences by poor-laws or the like — serves but to neutralize the remedy and prolong the A A 354 NATIONAL EDUCATION.
evil. Let us never forget that the law is — adaptation to cir- cumstances, be they what they may. And i^ rather than allow men to come in contact with the real cii-cumstances of their position, we place tliem in artificial — in false circumstances, they will adapt themselves to these instead; and will, in the end, have to undergo the miseries of a re-adaptation to the real ones.
Of all iucentives to self-restraint, perhaps none is so strong as the sense of parental responsibility. And if so, to diminish that sense is to use the most effectual means of preventing self- restraiut from being developed. We have ample proof of this in the encouragement of improvident marriages by a poor-law; and the effect which a poor-law produces by relieving men from the final responsibihty of maintaining their children, must be produced in a smaller degree by taking away the responsibUity of educating their children. The more the state undertakes to do for his family, the more are the expenses of the married man reduced, at the cost of the unmarried man, and the greater be- comes the temptation to marry. Let not any think that the offer of apparently gratuitous instruction for his offspring would be of no weight with the working man deliberating on the pro- priety of taking a wife. Whoever has watched the freaks which strong passion plays in the councils of the intellect — has marked how it will buUy into silence the weaker feeUngs that oppose it — how it will treat shghtingly the most conclusive adverse evi- dence, whilst, in urging the goodness of its own cause, " trifles light as air are confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ" — whoever has marked this, can hardly doubt that, in the delibera- tions of such an one, the prospect of public training for children would in no small degree affect the decision. Nay, indeed, it would afford a positive reason for giving way to his desires. Just as a man at an expensive dinner will eat more than he knows is good for him, on the principle of having his money's worth, so would the artizan find one excuse for marrying in the fact that, unless he did so, he would be paying education- rates for nothing.
Nor is it only thus that a state- education would encourage NATIONAL EDUCATION. 355 men to obey present impulses. An influence unfavourable to the increase of self-control would be exercised by it throughout the whole of parental life. That powerful restraint which the anxiety to give children schooling now imposes upon the im- provident tendencies of the poor, would be removed. Many a man who, as things are, can but just keep the master)' over some vicious or extravagant propensity, and whose most efficient curb is the thought that if he gives way it must be at the sacrifice of that book-learning which he is ambitious to give his family, would fall were this curb weakened — would not only cease to improve in power of self-control as he is now doing, but would probably retrograde, and bequeath his offspring to a lower in- stead of a higher phase of civihzation.
Hence, as was said, a government can educate in one direc- tion only by Mweducating in another — can confer knowledge only at the expense of character. It retards the development of a quality universally needed — one in the absence of which poverty, and recklessness, and crime, must ever continue; and all that it may give a smattering of information.
What a contrast is there between these fatile contrivances of men and the admirable, sUent-working mechanisms of nature! Nature, with a perfect economy, turns aU forces to account. She makes action and re-action alike useful. This strong af- fection for progeny becomes in her hands the agent of a double culture, serving at once to fashion parent and child into tlie desired form. And beautiful is it to see how the most power- ful of instincts is made the means of holding men under a disci- pUne to which, perhaps, nothing else could make them submit. Yet this skilf idly- devised arrangement statesmen propose to dislocate, confidently opining that their own patent apparatus will answer a great deal better!
Thus, ia the present, as in other cases, we find the dictate of the abstract law enforced by secondary considoations. The 356 NATIONAL EDUCATION.
alleged right to education at the hands of the state proves to be untenable; first, as logically committing its supporters to other claims too absurd for consideration; and again, as being inca- pable of definition. Moreover, could the claim be estabhshed, it would imply the duty of government despotically to enforce its system of disciphne, and the duty of the subject to submit. That education ought not to be dealt in after the same manner as other things, because in its case " the interest and judgment of the consumer are not sufiicient security for the goodness of the commodity," is a plea with most suspicious antecedents; having been many times employed in other instances, and many times disproved. Neither is the implied assumption that the " interest and judgment " of a government would constitute a sufficient security admissible. On the contrary, experience proves that the interests of a government, and of all the insti- tutions it may set up, are directly opposed to education of the most important kind. Again, to say that legislative teaching is needful, because other teaching has failed, presupposes a pitiably narrow view of human progress; and further, involves the strange scepticism that, though natural agencies have brought the enlightenment of mankind to its present height, and are even now increasing it at an unparalleled rate, they will no longer answer. The belief that education is a pre- ventive of crime, having no foundation either in theory or fact, cannot be held an excuse for interference. And, to crown all, it turns out that the institution so much longed for is a mere dead machine, which can only give out in one form the power it absorbs in another, minus the friction — a thing which cannot stir towards effecting this kind of education without abstracting the force now accomplishing that — a thing, there- fore, which cannot educate at all.
CHAPTER XXVII.
GOVERNMENT COLONIZATION.
A COLONY being a community, to ask whether it is right for the state to found and govern colonies, is practically to ask, whether it is right for one community to found and govern other communities. And this question not being one in which the relationships of a society to its own authorities are alone involved, but being one into which there enter the interests of parties external to such society, is in some measure removed out of the class of questions hitherto considered. Nevertheless, our directing principle affords satisfactory guidance in this case as well as in the others.
That a government cannot undertake to administer the affairs of a colony, and to support for it a judicial staff, a constabulary, a garrison, and so forth, Avithout trespassing against the parent society, scarcely needs pointing out. Any expenditure for these purposes, be it like our own some three and a half miUions sterhng a year, or but a few thousands, involves a breach of state-duty. The taking from men property beyond what is needful for the better securing of their rights, we have seen to be an infringement of their rights. Colonial expenditure can- not be met without property being so taken. Colonial expen- diture is therefore unjustifiable.
An objector might indeed allege, that by maintaining in a settlement a subordinate legislature, the parent legislature does but discharge towards the settlers its original office of protector, and that the settlers have a claim to protection at its hands. But the duty of a society towards itself, that is, of a govern- 358 GOVERNMENT COLONIZATION.
ment towards its subjects, will not permit the assumption of such a responsibility. For, as it is the function of a govern- ment to administer the law of equal freedom, it cannot, without reversing its function, tax one portion of its subjects at a higher rate than is needful to protect them, that it may give protection to another portion below prime cost; and to guard those who emigrate, at the expense of those who remain, is to do this. Manifestly, the guardianship which a nation in its corporate ca- pacity extends to each of its members, is limited by conditions. The citizen must defray his share of the expenses, must agree to perform certain political duties, and must reside -within spe- cified geographical boundaries. If he prefers to go elsewhere, it may be presumed that he has duly considered, on the one hand, the benefits promised by his contemplated emigration, and on the other, the evils attending loss of citizenship, and that the prospective advantages of a change preponderate. At any rate he cannot show that, by refusing to send out officers to the antipodes to take care of him, society violates a recognised or impUed contract.
Moreover, colonial government, properly so called, cannot be carried on without transgressing the rights of the colonists. For if, as generally happens, the colonists are dictated to by authorities sent out from the mother country, then the law of equal freedom is broken in their persons, as much as by any other kind of autocratic rule. If, again, they are allowed to administer their own affairs, the parent state retaining only a veto-power, there is still injustice in the assumption of greater freedom by the members of the old community than is conceded to those of the new one. And if the new community is as com- pletely self-governed as the old one, then, politically speaking, it is not a colony at all, but a separate nation. In one way, however, legislative union between a parent state and its colo- nies may be maintained without breach of the law; namely, by making them integral parts of one empire, severally represented in a united assembly commissioned to govern the whole. But theoretically just as such an arrangement may be, and even car- GOVERNMENT COLONIZATION. 359 ried out though it is hy France, it is still too palpably impolitic for serious consideration. To propose that, whilst the Enghsh joined in legislating for the people of Austraha, of the Cape, of New Zealand, of Canada, of Jamaica, and of the rest, these should in turn legislate for the English, and for each other, is much Uke proposing that the butcher should superintend the classification of the draper's goods, the draper draw up a tariif of prices for the grocer, and the grocer instruct the baker in making bread.
Hence, the poUtical union of a parent state with a colony is inadmissible; seeing tliat, as usually maintained, such union necessarily infringes the rights of the members of both com- munities, and seeing that it cannot be made just without at the same time being made absurdly unfit.
It was exceedingly cool of Pope Alexander YI. to parcel out the unknown countries of the Earth between the Spaniards and Portuguese, granting to Spain aU discovered and undis- covered heathen lands lying west of a certain meridian drawn through the Atlantic, and to Portugal those lying east of it. Queen Elizabeth, too, was somewhat cool, when she empowered Sir Humphrey GUbert " to discover and take possession of re- mote and heathen countries," and "to exercise rights, royal- ties, and jurisdiction, in such countries and seas adjoining." Nor did Charles II. show less coolness, when he gave to Winthrop, Mason, and others, power to " kill, slay, and de- stroy, by all fitting ways, enterprises, and means whatsoever, all and every such person or persons as shall at any time here- after attempt or enterprise the destruction, invasion, detriment, or annoyance of the inhabitants," of the proposed plantation of Connecticut. Indeed, aU colonizing expeditions down to those of our own day, with its American annexations, its French oc- cupations of Algiers and Tahiti,^ and its British conquests of Scinde, and of the Punjaub, have borne a very repulsive 360 GOVEENMENT COLONIZATION.
likeness to the doings of buccaneers. As usual, however, these unscrupulous acts have brought deserved retributions. Insatiate greediness — a mere blind impulse to clutch whatever lies within reach — has generated very erroneous beliefs, and be- trayed nations into most disastrous deeds. " Men are rich in proportion to their acres," argued pohticians. " An increase of estate is manifestly equivalent to an increase of wealth. What, then, can be clearer than that the acquirement of new territory must be a national advantage?" So, misled by the analogy, and spurred on by acquisitiveness, we have continued to seize pro- vince after province, in utter disregard of the losses uniformly entailed by them. In fact, it has been inconceivable that they do entail losses. That the addition of anything must enrich seems so self-evident a truth, that it has never struck men to ask what happens when the thing added is a minus quantity. And even now, though doubt is beginning to dawn upon the public mind, the instinctive desire to keep hold is too strong to permit a change of policy. Our predicament is Hke that of the monkey in the fable, who, putting his hand into a jar of fruit, grasps so large a quantity that he cannot get his hand out again, and is obUged to drag the jar about with him, never thinking to let go what he has seized. When we shall attain to something more tban the ape's wisdom remains to be seen. Happily the old piratical spirit is on the decline. A conquest is no longer gloried in as a national aggrandisement. Our last Indian annexation was lamented as an unfortunate necessity. Experience is fast teaching us that distant dependencies are burdens, and not acquisitions. And thus this earhest motive for state-colonization — the craving for wider possessions — will very soon be destroyed by the conviction that territorial ag- gression is as impolitic as it is unjust.
Whilst the mere propensity to thieve, — commonly known under some grandiloquent alias, disguised by glittering false- GOVERNMENT COLONIZATION. 361 hoods, and made sublime in men's eyes by the largeness of its aims, — has been the real prompter of colonizing invasions, from those of Cortez and Pizarro downwards, the ostensible purpose of them has been either the spread of religion or the extension of commerce. In modem days the latter excuse has been the favourite one. To obtain more markets — this is what people have said aloud to each other, was the object aimed at. And, though second to the widening of empire, it has been to the compassing of this object that colonial legislation has been mainly directed. Let us consider the worth of such legislation. Those holy men of whom the middle ages were so prolific, seem to have delighted in exhibiting their supernatural powers on the most trifling occasions. It was a common feat with them, when engaged in church -building, magically to lengthen a beam which the carpenter had made too short. Some were in the constant habit of calhng down fire from heaven to light their candles. When at a loss where to deposit his habiliments, St. Goar, of Treves, would transform a sunbeam into a hat-peg. And it is related of St. Columbanus that he wrought a miracle to keep the grubs from his cabbages. Now, although these examples of the use of vast means for the accomphshment of insig- nificant ends are not quite paralleled by the exertions of govern- ments to secure colonial trade, the absurdity attaching to both differs only in degree. An expenditure of power ridiculously disproportionate to the occasion is their common characteristic. In the one case, as in the other, an unnatural agency is em- ployed to effect what a natural agency would effect as weU. Trade is a simple enough thing that wiU grow up wherever there is room for it. But, according to statesmen, it must be created by a gigantic and costly machiaery. That trade only is advantageous to a country which brings in return for what is directly and indirectly given, a greater worth of commodities than could otherwise be obtained. But statesmen recognise no such limit to its benefits. Every new outlet for Enghsh goods, kept open at no matter what cost, they think valuable. Here is some scrubby little island, or wild territory — unhealthy, or 362 GOVERNMENT COLONIZATION.
barren, or inclement, or uninhabited even — which by right of discovery, conquest, or diplomatic manoeuvring, may be laid hands on. Possession is forthwith taken; a high salaried go- vernor is appointed; officials collect round him; then follow forts, garrisons, guardships; from these by-and-bye come quar- rels with neighbouring peoples, incursions, war; and these again call for more defensive works, more force, more money. And to all protests against this reckless expenditure, the reply is — " Consider how it extends our commerce." If you grumble at the sinking of £800,000 in fortifying Gibraltar and Malta, at the outlay of ^£130,000 a year for the defence of the Ionian Islands, at the maintenance of 1200 soldiers in such a good- for-nothing place as the Bermudas, at the garrisoning of St. Helena, Hong Kong, Heligoland, and the rest, you are told that aU this is needful for the protection of our commerce. If you object to the expenditure of;£l 10,000 per annum on the government of Ceylon, it is thought a sufficient answer that Ceylon buys manufactures from us to the gross value of £240,000 yearly. Any criticisms you may pass upon the policy of retaining Canada, at an annual cost of £800,000, are met by the fact that this amounts to only 30 per cent, upon the sum which the Canadians spend on our goods ^. Should you, imder the fear that the East India Company's debt may some day be saddled upon the people of England, lament the outlay of £17,000,000 over the Aifghan war, the sinking of £1,000,000 a year in Scinde, and the swallowing up of untold treasure in the subjugation of the Punjaub, there still comes the everlasting excuse of more trade. A Bomean jungle, the deserts of KafBcaria, and the desolate hills of the Falkland Islands, are all occupied upon this plea. The most profuse ex- penditure is forgiven, if but followed by an insignificant demand for merchandise; even though such demand be but for the sup- ply of a garrison's necessities — glass for barrack windows, starch for officers' shirts, and lump-sugar for the governor's table — all ' For these and other such facts, see Sir W. Molesworth's speeches delivered during the sessions of 1848 and 18i9.
GOVERNMENT COLONIZATION. 363 of which you shall find carefully included in Boai-d of Trade Tables, and' rejoiced over as constituting an increase in our exports.
But not only do we expend so much to gain so little, we absolutely expend it for nothing; nay, indeed, in some cases to achieve a loss. All profitable trade with colonies will come without the outlay of a penny for colonial administration — must flow to us naturally; and whatever trade will not flow to us naturally, is not profitable, but the reverse. If a given settlement deals solely with us, it does so from one of Iwo causes: either we make the articles its inhabitants consume at a lower rate than any other nation, or we obhge its inhabitants to buy those articles firom us, though they might obtain them for less elsewhere. Manifestly, if we can undersell other pro- ducers, we should still exclusively supply its markets, were the settlement independent. If we cannot undersell them, it is equally certain that we are indirectly injuring ourselves and the settlers too; for, as M'Oulloch says: — "Each country has some natural or acquired capabilities that enable her to carry on certain branches of industry more advantageously than any one else. But the fact of a country being undersold in the markets of her colonies, shows conclusively that, instead of having any superiority, she labours under a disadvantage, as compared with others, in the production of the peculiar articles in demand in them. And hence, in providing a forced market in the colonies for articles that we should not otherwise be able to dispose of, we really engage a portion of the capital and labour of the country in a less advantageous channel than that into which it would naturally have flowed." And if to the injury we do ourselves by manufacturing goods which we could more economically buy, is added the injury we suiFer in pacifying the colonists, by purchasing firom them commodities obtainable on better terms elsewhere, we have before us the twofold loss which these much-coveted monopolies entail.
364 GOVERNMENT COLONIZATION.
Thus are we again taught how worthy of all reverence are the injunctions of equity, and how universal is their applica- bihty. Just that commercial intercourse with colonies which may be had without breaking these injunctions, brings gain; whilst just that commercial intercourse which cannot be so had, brings loss.
Passing from home interests to colonial interests, we still meet nothing but evil results. It is a prettily sounding expres- sion that of mother-coimtry protection, but a very delusive one. If we are to believe those who have known the thing rather than the name, there is but little of the maternal about it. In the Declaration of American Independence we have a candid statement of experience on this point. Speaking of the king — the personification of the parent state, the settlers say: — " He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
" He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their sub- stance.
" He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.
" He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdic- tion foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their pretended acts of legislation: — - " For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.
" For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inliabitants of these states.
" For cutting oflf our trade with all parts of the world.
" For imposing taxes upon us without our consent.
" For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by Now, though tyrannies so atrocious as these do not com- GOVERNMENT COLONIZATION. 365 monly disgrace colonial legislation in the present day, we have but to glance over the newspapers published in our foreign possessions, to see that the arbitrary rule of the Colonial Office is no blessing. Chronic irritation, varying in intensity from that of -which petitions are symptomatic, to that exhibited in open rebellions, is habitually present in these forty-six scattered dependencies which statesmen have encumbered us ■with. Two outbreaks in fifteen years pretty plainly hint the feeling of the Canadas — a feeling still extant and growing, as recent events testify. Within the same period the Cape Boers have revolted thrice; and we have just had a tumultuous agi- tation and a violent paper war about convicts. In the West Indies there is universal discontent. Jamaica advices tell of stopped supplies, and state-machinery at a dead lock. Guiana sends Uke news. Here are quarrels about retrenchment; there, insurrectionary riots; and anger is everywhere. The name of Ceylon calls to mind the insolence of a titled governor on the one side, and on the other the bitterness of insulted colonists. In the Australian settlements, criminal immigration has been the sore subject; whilst from New Zealand there come protests against official despotism. All winds bring the same tale of a negligence caring for no expostulations, impertinence without end, blunderings, disputes, delays, corruption. Canadians complain of having been induced by a proffered privilege to sink their capital in flour-mills, which subsequent legislation made useless. With an ever-varying amount of protec- tion, sugar-planters say they do not know what to be at. South Africa bears witness to a mismanagement that at one time makes enemies of the Griquas, and at another entails a Kaffir war. The emigrants of New Zealand lament over a seat of government absurdly chosen, money thrown away upon use- less roads, and needful works left undone. South Australia is made bankrupt by its governors extravagance; lands are apportioned so as to barbarize the settlers by dispersion, and labourers are sent out in excess, and left to beg. Our Chinese trade gets endangered by the insulting behaviour of military 866 GOVERNMENT COLONIZATION.
officers to the natives; and the authorities of Labuan make their first settlement in a pestilential swamp.
Nevertheless, these odd results of mother-country protection need not surprise us, if we consider by whom the duties of maternity are discharged. Dotted here and there over the earth, at distances varying from one thousand to fourteen thousand miles, and to and from some of which it takes three- quarters of a year to send a question and get back an answer, are forty-six communities, consisting of different races, placed in different circumstances. And the affairs of these numerous, far-removed communities — their commercial, social, political, and religious interests, are to be cared for — by whom? By six functionaries and their twenty-three clerks, sitting at desks in Downing Street! being at the rate of 0"18 of a functionary and half a clerk to each settlement!