252 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A father may assist his son by supplying him with the capital needed 

 to carry on his business. Thus it is entirely with the mother country's 

 money that the first colonial banks are founded. As the colony grows 

 wealthier and the business of the banks extends, colonial shareholders 

 purchase stock in it, but the number of British shareholders remains 

 considerable. A typical example is that of the Bank of New Zealand, 

 from two fifths to one half of whose shares are (or in 1888 were) held 

 in the United Kingdom. In the older or wealthier colonies of New 

 South Wales and Victoria the number of English shareholders may be 

 smaller, though still large. A still larger proportion of the shares of 

 the great colonial steamship companies, amounting possibly to three 

 fourths or nine tenths of the whole, is held (chiefly by commercial men 

 and firms) in Great Britain. Many commercial undertakings in all the 

 colonies are engineered entirely by English capital (not included in the 

 two thousand millions). The Canadian transcontinental railway; rail- 

 ways, electric tramway lines and silver mines in Tasmania; the Mid- 

 land Railway and also copper mines in New Zealand; the gold mines in 

 western Australia to such an extent that much more English capital is 

 said to pour into that colony than gold flows out of it — are only a few 

 colonial enterprises that would never have been undertaken but for 

 the mother country's aid. Some of these are lucrative, others not; 

 some have been abandoned, and others belong to a still darker class. 

 "Uncounted millions of capital have been raised in the central money 

 market of London, only to be fooled away in ill-conceived and mis- 

 directed enterprises abroad," says Lord Brassey. Nor are the losses 

 confined to questionable undertakings. Two great Australasian banks 

 have frittered away their entire capital of four and three millions, re- 

 spectively, and it may he assumed that the British investor has borne 

 one half of the losses. Of half a dozen smaller colonial banks a similar 

 tale might be told. Father and son have to share in one another's 

 adversit}', as in one another's prosperity. 



The socialistic movement in England has lately so strongly reacted 

 on the relations of the Imperial Government with the colonies that the 

 Secretary of State is believed to be willing to employ the resources of 

 the empire to assist backward colonies. He has invited English capital- 

 ists to aid the declining West Indies, and a leading firm has offered to 

 invest a million in the sugar industry if a guarantee of sufficient returns 

 is given. The constitution of the projected Australian Federation 

 contains a novel analogous provision, permitting the commonwealth to 

 aid its needy provinces. The growing unity in the social organism as a 

 whole is accompanied by an increasing unity in its component parts. 



The mother country continues to defend its colonies, as animals 

 defend their young and parents their children. But the polyp does 

 not defend its offspring, nor did the earliest colonizing powers succor 



