424 SECTIONAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



many that the British Association has found itself able to include the 

 subject in its programme, for few questions of its kind are more com- 

 plex, and any light which can be thrown upon it to-day will be valued 

 as a contribution to the work of consolidating and strengthening our 

 Empire State. 



The complexity of the topic is at once apj^arent when we search for a 

 definition of the status implied in Imperial Citizenship. ' Citizen ' per se 

 has a wider connotation than ' resident.' It suggests certain privileges 

 and certain responsibilities, enjoyed and shared in common by all who 

 call themselves citizens. A citizen, as we understand the term, has a 

 right to enter any part of his State, and has when resident the same 

 rights to live, to earn a livelihood, to be protected by the laws, to 

 vote for the Legislature and to sit in the Legislature, on the same con- 

 ditions as his neighbours. He is also required to obey the laws, to 

 pay taxes, and to share in the defence of the country on the same 

 conditions as his neighbours. This, you will probably agree, is a 

 minimum statement of the rights and duties of a citizen in any area 

 in his State, whether he was born in that area or migrated from another 

 part of the same State. It provides, in otlier words, a working definition 

 of citizenship as a status. 



Is there anything which can be defined in corresponding language if 

 for ' State ' we substitute ' British Empire ' ? We know that in practice 

 there is not. A Maori or a Punjabi coming to Hull would be admitted, 

 and would acquii'e the British citizenship enjoyed by all other natural- 

 born subjects of the Crown in this city. But if he went to certain other 

 parts of our Dominions he would not be allowed to acquire the same 

 status as his neighbours; he might even be refused admission. 

 Similarly, a native of Hull, migrating to Toronto or Melbourne, would 

 soon find himself in possession of the same civic rights as the established 

 residents of those cities ; but if he went to the Transkei territories of 

 Cape Colony he would have to accept certain special disabilities ; and 

 if he went to India he would be ineligible for certain privileges open to 

 Indians. For these various restrictions there are different reasons, and 

 in every case an explanation. But I am not concerned for the moment 

 with their reasonableness or otherwise ; I am merely making the point 

 that Imperial Citizenship, as a status of universal and uniform validity 

 throughout the Empire, does not exist. Its sphere is subject to large 

 reservations, geographical and ethnical. 



In the circumstances, how could it be otherwise? The British 

 Empire has been described as a great slice, like a gigantic geological 

 section, cut through the whole social and racial stratification of the 

 world, the various strata representing different types of civilisation, 

 bewildering in their variety. At one end of the section is our own 

 Anglo-Saxon type. Adjoining it are the debris of Asiatic cultures, far 

 moi'e ancient tlian our own, but also more rigid and less progressive. 

 Then comes the theocratic mass of Islam, heterogeneous to a degree, 

 but at one for the Koran and its sword. And so on, until we ultimately 

 traverse the primitive society of the Bantu races in Africa, and reach 

 at the further limit of the section the pure barbarism of the Australian 

 aborigines or the Bushmen of the Cape. 



