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



In the last resort all interests are subsidiary to the vital interest 

 of defence. All recent schemes of colonial defence are based 

 on the principle of concentrating imperial forces at strategic 

 bases. In the event of dangerous local disturbances or of 

 foreign invasion, it is for the colonies to apply for aid from the 

 nearest naval or military station, and to depend on their own 

 police or territorial force during the period that must elapse 

 before their requisition can be complied with. The success 

 of this system obviously depends on adequate telegraphic 

 communication. 



Of Defence. 



It is evident that on adequate defence and protection the 

 success of a policy of developing the resources of each con- 

 stituent part of the Empire in the interest of all depends, and 

 it remains to consider the true temper of Empire in the 

 distribution of the burden of territorial defence and the pro- 

 tection of sea-borne commerce. The struggle for the control of 

 the tropics which has proved our tropical possessions to be of 

 political and commercial necessity has made it abundantly clear 

 that naval supremacy is the condition of our tenure of them. I 

 do not propose to discuss the principles of their defence, or any 

 scheme of operations subordinate to those principles. But the 

 questions of the incidence of the burden of imperial defence and 

 of the basis of contribution are now demanding a solution with 

 insistence. In a note to a leturn published by the Colonial 

 and War Department in 1829, it is stated that " it has never 

 been a principle of British rule to require that the Colonies 

 should provide for their military defence," but at the same time 

 the return showed that the Colonies did practically contribute 

 £335,000 in the form of personal allowances called colonial 

 allowances. To understand the significance of the return we 

 must remember the source from which the expenditure on 

 military and naval defence was originally provided. 



Eeference has been made to the old colonial system of 

 commercial monopoly. It was out of the profits of this 

 monopoly, in the extensive interpretation of the term indicated, 

 and by the profits of the monopoly of the ocean and coasting 

 trade secured by the navigation laws, that the cost of defence 

 was met. Bacon, in addition to his essay on Empire, wrote an 

 essay on Plantations, using the word in a sense much more nearly 

 approaching the interpretation we now give to the word 

 Empire than the sense in which he used the term. A 



