PROPOSED DUAL ORGANIZATION OF 3fANKIND. 435 



diflferent footing. The former might be said to aim at selfishly- 

 exploiting the outlying country because he hoped, after a few- 

 years, to return to Europe and there enjoy his gains. The same 

 could not be said of the colonist, for he cast in his lot with the 

 new country, hoping there to establish a new home for his de- 

 scendants and to build up a new commonwealth. 



If the same movement is regarded from the standpoint of the 

 duties and interests of European states, it is evident that both the 

 fortune-hunter and the colonist needed, at first, the support and 

 protection of the state from which they went forth. The whole 

 movement of discovery and settlement appears, in this point of 

 view, as a manifestation of growing social power in western 

 Europe, and the nations there are seen to have made, in the first 

 instance, a great expenditure of energy and capital for which they 

 never received any return. The relation was one of parenthood, 

 and therefore one of sacrifice on the part of the mother countries. 

 This relation was, however, obscured by traditions and accepted 

 notions of national aggrandizement and glory, and by notions 

 about commerce which were accepted as axiomatic. These no- 

 tions drove the great states into policies of conquest, exclusion, 

 monopoly, and war with each other. As a consequence, the whole 

 grand movement came to be regarded by European statesmen 

 from the standpoint of gain to European nations, and they adopted 

 sordid measures for snatching this gain from each other. Those 

 statesmen assumed that Europe was the head of the world, and 

 they allotted the outlying regions among themselves with no re- 

 gard for the aborigines, and very little regard for the colonists. 

 The body of relations which was established between the Old 

 World and the New, under this theory, constituted the colonial 

 system. 



It can not be denied that the colonial system stands in history 

 as an attempt to exploit the outlying continents for the benefit of 

 Europe. Thousands of lives and millions of capital were ex- 

 pended in the effort to perfect the system, and in that struggle to 

 steal each other's colonies which the system caused. The logical 

 outcome was the ambition of each competitor to win universal 

 dominion for itself, and to impose a balance-of -power policy on 

 each of the others. The system had its doctrines too ; some old, 

 some new : " He who holds the sea will hold the land " — " Trade 

 follows the flag." The English colonial system was far less op- 

 pressive and more enlightened than that of any other nation. It 

 alone was founded on real colonization and aimed to create new 

 commonwealths. It was therefore the one under which the system 

 first broke down, for it contained a fatal inconsistency in itself. 

 It educated the colonists to independence, and it was certain that 

 they would go alone as soon as they were strong enough to do so. 



