THE COLONIAL CONFERENCE.
QIE WILFRID LAURIER„the senior Prime Minister KY of the daughter-nations of the Empire, struck exactly the.right note when he told his audience in the City that all dread lest the Conference should end in failure must be put aside. "Failure there shall not be. There will not be any such word as failure in connexion with the Conference of 1907." He went on to explain that though the holies of those ardent and enthusiastic Imperialists who in their eagerness would endeavour to bind the future, perhaps by saddling the present with intolerable conditions, might not all be realised, yet the Conference would demonstrate to the world and to ourselves that the British Empire is a living entity. " It will clear the atmosphere, it will separate the practical from the senti- mental, it will show what is possible and what is not possible, it will show What can be done, and, more important yet, in my humble judgment, it will show what is to be avoided." The very composition of the Conference, he continued, ensured its success. Later on Sir Wilfrid illustrated what he meant by asking who would have thought five years ago, when we were contemplating the Conference which is in session to-day, that two of its members would be Dr. Jameson and General Botha, one coming as Prime Minister of the Cape and the other as Prime Minister of the Transvaal. The passage which follows is so striking that we must give it in Sir Wilfrid's OWIL words :- "In 1902 a strong pressure was put upon the British Govern- ment to suspend the Constitution of the Cape Colony. The British Government would. not listen to any such thought ; they did more—the British Government did not hesitate, four years after the war, to give the full citizenship of the British Empire to the Colony of the Transvaal. I tell you this—when I think upon matters of this kind, I, coming from French Canada, can express an opinion. There was only one nation in the world who could have dared to do what Britain has done, and that nation is England. Now, the wisdom of this policy has been fully vindicated. It had been vindicated many years before, when the British Government did not hesitate to give to Canada—to French Canada—the same power, the same privileges Which have been given in South Africa; and, if any- thing could justify the wisdom of such a policy, it was the words that I was proud to hear yesterday from my friend Dr. Jameson —words which filled my heart—to the effect that possibly at the next Conference we may have a united South Africa repre- sented here. It is possible that at the next Conference we may have another Confederation within the British Empire com- posed of the Cape, of Natal, of the Orange Colony, of the Trans- vaal, of Rhodesia, and of other domains yet to be added as time goes on. This is truly Imperial policy, and, so long as the British Empire is maintained upon these lines, I venture to assert that it rests upon foundations firmer than the rock and as endurable as the ages."
What Sir Wilfrid Laurier meant both by his abstract propositions and by his concrete example is quite clear. We need have no fear for the British Empire as long as the spirit which pervades and animates it is the spirit which is alive to-day,—the spirit of freedom and the desire for unity. As long as that spirit and that desire can be maintained we need not fret because the pace of development is slow, or because anomalies and incon- veniences exist in this or that aspect of the relations between the component parts of the Empire. The spirit of freedom and the desire for unity will overcome any evils that these anomalies and inconveniences may breed. We may go . further, and may point out how these two principles compensate and balance each other in the great organism of the Empire. The principle that each part of the Empire must be free to manage its own affairs and shape its own destiny is controlled by the determination to maintain the bond of union at all costs. On the other hand, the desire for union is pre- vented from being turned into too close or too exacting a tie by the observance of the principle of liberty. By trusting boldly to the spirit of liberty we avoid what history shows is one of the greatest dangers of extended empire,—the jealousy of the men at the centre for those at the circumference. Such jealousy need net necessarily be a narrow or personal jealousy in order to do injury. Not less harmful are the anxiousness and suspicion which are afraid of this or that community becoming too, strong, lest in its strength it should wax proud and unreasonable, and thus upset the equilibrium of the Empire. Happily, we have been singularly free in the Motherland from any such sentiments as these. No modern Machiavelli has ever been allowed to suggest that Canada or Australia could become prematurely too strong or too prosperous, and in this way endanger the guiding influences exerted from home. The cynical maxim of "Divide and rule" has never for a moment clouded our relations with the daughter-States. If it had, we should not have fostered and encouraged the creation of those two great federations—the Dominion and the Common- wealth—but should have tried to keep the provinces and States apart in order that we might deal the more easily with them. Happily, as we have said, no voice worthy of attention has ever suggested that a united Canada or a united Australia might be less tractable members of the Empire. Instead we have desired their union, and also the union of South Africa, in order that even greater and wider powers of self-government might be assumed by the larger communities. We have aimed at building up daughter-States which shall one day be great enough to meet the Motherland on absolutely equal terms, not at gathering round us smaller, and therefore weaker and more dependent, States.
While acquitting the Motherland of anything approach- ing jealousy or suspicion in her dealings with the Colonies during the last fifty years, we may with equal truth praise the daughter-nations for exhibiting no trace of jealousy towards the Homeland. Doubtless the Colonies have often been annoyed and irritated by what they have sometimes fairly and sometimes unfairly regarded as neglect, but we can remember no occasion on which of recent years any responsible man or body of men in the Colonies has shown anything in the nature of real suspicion of the Mother- country, or has accused her seriously of attempting to exploit the Colonies for her own selfish benefit. Taking it at the strongest and worst, the critics of Colonial action here have never really done more than accuse the Colonists of a certain blindness to our home needs, and to the immense responsibilities involved in our position in Europe and in our trusteeship of the Empire as a whole. On the other hand, the worst that has been seriously urged against the Mother-country in the Colonies is that we do not understand them and their aspirations, and that we fail to realise and give weight to the tremendous future which is before them, and which, like all young communities, they have to face. But though we may tell the daughter-nations that they do not realise fully how we stand at any given moment, and though they may tell us that we do not see what their future is going to be, this impatience of incomprehension on either side has never gone more than skin-deep, nor will it go deeper as long as we respect their liberty and they respect ours, and as long as with that respect goes the aspiration for the maintenance of Imperial unity which affects men of all parties, both here and in the Colonies.
Robert Lowe in a moment of pessimism—and pessimism was his forte in politics—once said in the House of Commons that we had lost one half of the Empire through an attempt of the Mother-country to tax the Colonies, and that the rest would be lost by an attempt of the Colonies to tax the Mother-country. That is a striking example of pessimistic antithesis, but we are convinced that it is no more than rhetoric. Certain of the Colonies, no doubt, desire to see us alter our basis of taxation, and at first are inclined to fret when they hear that we do not desire to do so. We are convinced, however, that the moment they realise that any attempt is being made to get them to coerce the majority of the people of the Mother. country, they will repudiate with indignation any desire to dictate in a matter so purely of domestic concern as the raising of revenue.
Here is to be found one of the great advantages conferred by a Colonial Conference. It shows quite clearly that refusals to adopt this or that course or policy are not due to any want of sympathy with Imperial aspirations, but come from a perfectly different set of reasons,—reasons which, whether right or wrong, are not based in the least degree on indifference to Colonial opinion or to the welfare of the Empire. We can quite understand a Colonial statesman who has never been in England getting possessed by the idea that Britons at home, when they repudiate some policy which is specially dear to him, must do so because they are callous or indifferent to the fate of the Empire. When, however, be either attends a Conference here, or learns the way in which the matter is approached by our politicans or our leaders of public Opinion, he very s000 comes to underatand that, no matter how wrong we may be in repudiating his favourite policy, we do it because we are unconvinced of its advantages, not because we do not care for the object aimed at. In the same way British statesmen, by coming in contact with statesmen from the daughter-nations or by [studying expressions of Colonial opinion inside and outside the Conference, get to know that claims made in the Colonies which they were apt to think were selfish or unjust or unreasonable are in reality made in perfect pod faith. In a word, a, Conference is a lesson in political charity, and makes men understand that freedom i the very life-breath of the Empire, and further, that, in spite of any pedantic or doctrinaire objection§ to the contrary, it is quite possible te maintain freedom for the component parts of that Empire along with very real unity. And hers comes in Sir Wilfrid Isturier's dictum. He tells us, as quoted above, that the Conference "will [thew what can be done, and, more important yet, in my humble judgment, it will show what is to be avoided." The great thing to be avoided is placing any limitation, sir even strain, upon the principle of liberty. We have no hesitation in saying that freedom is greater than Free-trade, and we expect and believe that Protectionists, whether here or in the Colonies, will say also that freedom is greater than Protection.
We have written on the subject of the Colonial Con- ference in a style which we fear some of our readers may think not altogether well fitted to a subject which eheuld stir the blood like a trumpet. We can assure them, how- ever, that we have done so not because we remain unmoved by the momentous thoughts which the Conference calls before us. If we have avoided rhetoric, it is because we realise that for a theme so magnificent reticence is alone appropriate. If we are silent, the silence is born of pride, not of indifference. That for which we feel "as a lover or a child," and in the future of which we believe so deeply, must not be vulgarised by the noisy eulogies which are associated with lower and less sacred themes. Sacrifice, not the pomp of panegyric, is what is demanded from those who love the Empire.
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