390 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



COLONIES AND THE MOTHER COUNTRY (III). 



By JAMES COLLIER 



THE relations between a great state and its subject peoples will vary 

 according to the status of these, as the relations between father an$ 

 son differ according as the latter is self-supporting or still under tutel- 

 age. Roman provinces under the empire were classed as imperial when 

 they were directly controlled by the Emperor, or senatorial when they 

 were governed by the Senate and possessed a simulacrum of self-govern- 

 ment. The dual status in this mother country of nearly the whole world 

 foreshadows all subsequent relationships between a mother country and 

 its dependencies. Spain and Portugal governed their colonies imperi- 

 ally, appointing all officers, immediately or through their representative 

 mediately enacting all laws, and leaving almost as little freedom to 

 their own countrymen as to the down-trodden indigenes. More hu- 

 manely, indeed, but in spite of conceded French citizenship and 

 theoretical equality, the French have ruled their scattered dependencies 

 with as little of the reality of public life. The Dutch colonies are 

 similarly controlled. The British Empire presents a variegated picture 

 where every color is blended and every form of policy known among 

 men is displayed. From it alone an Aristotle might delineate the meta- 

 physics of government or a Spencer construct its physics. In Egypt 

 and Crete, with practical possession, imperial England is vassal to the 

 Sultan, and she now holds the conquered Soudan jointly with Egypt, 

 but acknowledges no suzerainty. She is herself suzerain of the two 

 South African Boer republics and regent of Zanzibar. In her magnifi- 

 cent dependency of India, 692 sovereignties and chiefships form a 

 'protected' girdle around her own possessions, or interlace or approach 

 them. Between these beneficent despotisms and the free states of Aus- 

 tralia, South Africa or North America there seems to be every possible 

 variety of mingled absolutism and self-government. Certain territories 

 are governed by chartered companies; one (Rhodesia) by a chartered 

 company under the control of the Crown. Three native territories are 

 governed by officers under the High Commissioner of South Africa; 

 four others by the officers of Cape Colony. The status of Crown 

 colonies administered more or less directly by the Imperial Government 

 is almost as various. One colony may be dependent on another, as 

 Natal was for years on Cape Colony. Others exhibit in an ascending 

 scale the acquisition of the attributes of self-government. The gover- 

 nor rules at first alone despotically, then with an executive council, next 



