338 Timehri. 



population, with ocean steamers crowding its waterways, and with a 

 trunk railway line carrying down both the wealth of the interior to the 

 coast and also a large part of the international trade of Northern South 

 America. Should we not then work out our own destiny like other con- 

 tinental countries ? It is outside my scope to touch upon this colony's 

 development, but let us look at actual facts. Supposing that the West 

 Indies, even excluding Jamaica, with their total revenue (I quote 1910-11 

 figures) of £1,490.000 against ours of £5b3,000 and their total trade of 

 £11,300,000 against ours of £3,570,000, say, "Well, we shall forma 

 political union without you.' - would not we find it very difficult to make 

 our bargains with the outside world possibly against their united 

 strength ? Would it not be better to join with them at least until we are 

 big enough to stand alone, and have an influential voice in making a 

 collective bargain ? We now find it beneficial to ourselves to join with 

 them in holding these various conferences, in making Keciprocity agree- 

 ments and, as I hope, in joining in a common Chamber of Commerce. 

 We may find it expedient to join in a Customs Union, in a common 

 Court of Appeal, and in various other possible ways. 



Imperial Consolidation. 



Surely, then, the sequence of commercial and political development 

 applies to us as much as to others. But in order adequately to consider 

 the subject to get the right perspective, we must glance for a moment at 

 Imperial politics. The British Empire differs from all the great Empires 

 of the past in its recognition that its colonies are not tributary subjects 

 but are free people entitled to their own rights and liberties. This recog- 

 nition was first brought home to England by the loss of what are now 

 the United States in 1775. but the full acceptance of it may be said to 

 date from the great report of Lord Durham on Canada in 1837, which 

 has been aptly described as the Magna Charta of the British colonies. 

 From that time England has nursed its colonies through childhood's 

 years, and as they have reached adolescence she has sent them forth as 

 nations into the world, so that each can say, as Kipling has it, 

 '■' Daughter am I in my mother's house, but mistress in my own.'' Or to 

 take another simile, we may liken the present position to that of a solar 

 system with each planet or dominion revolving on its own axis, projected 

 by the centrifugal force of the Mother Country on the one hand ami 

 drawn by the attraction of body to body, of kin to kin, on the other, and 

 thus by the counteraction of these contending forces held in a state of 

 unstable equilibrium. 



Unstable Equilibrium. 



How long is this equilibrium going to last ? Can we remain in this 

 position for ever ? Lord Bosebery has put the matter very definitely : 

 " It is absolutely impossible for you to maintain in the long run your 

 present loose and indefinable relations to your colonies and preserve these 

 colonies as part of the Empire." 



This view, I think, is generally accepted, and so we have two schools 

 of thinkers, firefly, " centrifugal " or nationalist ones who see each 



