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SIR CHAELES BRUCE^ G.C.M.G., ON 



temper of Empire as a temper whicli encourages and promotes 

 the development of the resources of each constituent part in 

 the interest of all. The cleavage between the Dominions and 

 the Crown Colonies and India in respect of their political 

 relations to the United Kingdom had its origin in the factors of 

 natural environment that distinguish the temperate and tropical 

 zones. 



The new Imperialism is dominated by two main ideas — closer 

 union with the Dominions in the temperate zones and the 

 economic interdependence of the Dominions with the tropical 

 Crown Colonies and India. The international struggle for the 

 control of the tropics has brought home to us that no aggrega- 

 tion of nations in temperate zones can constitute a self-sufficing 

 and self-contained Empire. It has forced us to realise the 

 extent to which the great staples of the world's commerce come, 

 not from the temperate regions but from the tropics. They fall 

 generally under three heads, agricultural and forest resources, 

 mineral resources, and power resources. The agricultural and 

 forest resources may be divided into two main groups, articles that 

 enter into the primary and constant use of every family, even 

 the poorest ; and raw materials for manufacture upon an 

 adequate and constant supply of which a vast majority of the 

 wage-earning inhabitants of the United Kingdom and of the 

 temperate zoties generally depend for the means of existence. To 

 the former group belong, among many other products, sugar, tea, 

 coffee, cocoa, spices, rice, bananas and citrus fruits, and tobacco ; 

 while to the latter belong cotton, rubber, fibres and oils. Among 

 the commodities of the former group, sugar holds the first place, 

 not only on account of the variety of its uses, but by reason of 

 the many subsidiary agencies and interests dependent on its 

 manufacture, cultivation and distribution. Lord Beaconsfield, 

 in his life of Lord George Bentinck, picturesquely described 

 the importance of the sugar industry : " Sugar has been 

 embarrassing, if not fatal, to many Governments. Strange that 

 a manufacture which charms infancy and soothes old age should 

 so frequently occasion political disaster." And again, " Singular 

 article of produce ! What is the reason of this influence ? It 

 is all that considerations mingle in it : not merely commercial, 

 but imperial, philanthropic, religious ; confounding and crossing 

 each other, and confusiug the legislature and the nation, lost in 

 a maze of intersecting and contending emotions ? " Since these 

 words were written, they have gained a much wider significance. 

 "With the abolition of slavery and other economic changes, the 

 cost of labour in production and local transport threatened to 



