February 24, 1916. 
LAND AND WATER 
THE GREAT SECESSION. 
By Neoimperialist. 
THE essence of the Imperial Task is to complete 
the safeguards of union in liberty. We dare 
never again risk any tragedy of disintegration 
like that of the Great Secession of 1776. Such 
a catastrophe may well seem unthinkable to- those who 
sec such abundant e\'idence of the strengthened fellowship 
of the Five Nations. But again sentiment is not. Govern- 
ment. Itmust be remembered that the issues may never 
be so crystal clear as in this present war. Should any 
cause of quarrel on some such lines as that threatened 
with America in i8c)5 again arise where the issue does not 
involve such a fundamental challenge to liberty, there 
might well be danger. At any rate, we must leave no 
tares among the fine grain now sowing. 
If the tangled history of thu troubles that led to the 
Declaration of Indepentlence be examined, it will be 
found that it resulted rather from lack of foresight and 
political wisdom and experience than from any tyranny 
on the one side, or any lack of good-will or rather the 
existence of any serious ill-will on the other. As a fact, 
apathy and indifference, which is so easily born of irre- 
sponsibility, was the pre\-ailing mood among the colonists. 
Those who give their minds to this important 
question of the settlement of the Imperial problems 
are encouraged by the profoundly different temper 
and conditions which now prevail. Towards the 
end of the eighteenth century the American colonies — 
Virgmia, Louisiana, Maryland, New England, New 
York — were entirely disunited, distracted by incredible 
jealousies. The meanest limitation of outlook had been 
bred by the purelj' commercial views of life and admini- 
stration which they had naturally adopted, and, under 
the shelter of the British Government, had never found 
compelling reason to modify. Tiieir sectionalism was 
carried to such a pitch that they would not even help 
each other or organise a common defence against the 
Indian raiders or the threat of the French. 
The truth is, . that while the colonists had carried 
out from England a certain general idea of the 
principles of representative government, they had 
never made more than a merely local application of them. 
A common danger would have organised them into a 
united American nation if they had not been cossetted 
by Great Britain assuming the full responsibility of their 
defence. As it was they were merely a collection of 
inconsiderable and relatively impotent provinces. All 
American problems, the chief problem of defence and 
questions relating to any but merely local aspects of 
trade and matters of purely local administration, had 
been left to the King's Government in London. They 
laboured under most of the disadvantages of decentralisa- 
tion without the advantages of responsible freedom. 
They formed not a state nor a nation, but a mere collec- 
tion of hostile crowds, and it \\as more or less as crowds 
that they revolted, as \\'ashington found in the heart- 
breaking task with which he was confronted when 
organising them after the Declaration into an ordered 
and disciplined State. 
As a contrast to all this we have now in free alliance 
with Great Britain, four politically self-conscious nations 
whose several provincial Governments have been welded 
by a deliberate and reasoned process under the hammer 
of experience into a coherent whole. While Grenville 
in England and General Amherst in America were 
unable to find any central authoritative body to treat 
with, but were bandied about from one independent 
local assembly to another, four fully accredited executives 
are available to treat with the Governments of Great 
Britain. 
As regards the vital matter of defence, we may recall 
that while the Americans of those days had actually to 
be paid by the Government of Great Britain to defend 
their own territories, to-day the four nations freely send 
admirably equipped expeditionary forces to the other 
end of the earth at their own charges. Again, from the 
side of the mother country there is a complete abandon- 
ment of all ideas of dominion, po.ssession, coeixion. If 
a loose terminology, fruitful parents of cloudy thought, 
still encourages certain survivals of false ideas, they are 
rapidly disappearing. It must indeed be realised by 
our overseas brethren that we are almost too sensitive 
about wounding their susceptibilities. 
We may well recall that such an unlightened states- 
man as Burke could think of nothing more liberal than 
a policy of divide ct impcra with regard to the various 
colonics. Since Lord Durham's Hash of sympathetic 
genius contrived the Canadian settlement and the tact 
of Lord Elgin equitably administered it, we have 
learnt many things. Mid- Victorian statesmen looked as 
a matter of course to the day when the colonies, develop- 
ing into considerable and politically self-conscious nations, 
would demand their complete independence. Truly we 
builded better than we knew. The links of Empire 
have been welded stronger by every concession. So 
much more powerful is fellowship than force. This single 
fact is of all the most significant in view of the demands 
that must be made upon us by the dominions in fulfil- 
ment of their obvious destiny. 
We have had experience. We have also vision. 
There is indeed much in current history to comfort those 
who realise that not by trade alone do nations live ; 
that a fundamental ideal which burns away dross and 
lights to a better path is an essential preliminary to just 
go\ernment. None doubts now the existence of such an 
ideal which is far above all merely selfish and sectional 
interests, even if, in human fashion, it also embraces them. 
What then in brief are the lessons that can be learnt 
from the Great Secession? First, that altogether too 
much has been made of the money question. There can 
be no doubt, as the latest historical researches abundantly 
prove, that Great Britain throughout the controversy 
was most patient, even if, judged by the standards of our 
time, her statesmen were rather undiscerning. She never 
put forward much less pressed, a claim for taxes for 
imperial defence, but joy a part only of the money neces- 
sary to secure the safety of the American settlements 
against their neighbour enemies. It is often forgotten 
that Grenville was not in the least intransigeant about 
the Stamp Act or the Tea Duties. He offered to accept 
any alternative plan to be devised by the colonists them- 
selves for raising the necessary funds, only declaring the 
simple truth that Great Britain impoverished by the 
Seven Years War, could no longer be responsible for the 
entire cost of American local defence. He even considered 
the question of American representation in the British 
Parliament. It was a curious leap of imagination for so 
conventional a statesman, and he was overwhelmed with 
eloquent ridicule by Burke, who with the essential 
conservatism of his temper resented the considerable 
reforms which he rightly foresaw would be necessary in 
the British Parliament. Perhaps we cannot fairly 
blame Bukke for not seeing so much further than the 
horizon of this time, but it is likely that had he supported 
instead of opposed Grenville's liberal idea the fatal 
schism in the Anglo-Saxon race would never have taken 
place. 
Again it is not always realised that there was in 
general no passionate anger against the mother country 
and no spontaneous demand among the colonists for 
secession. A capable energetic miniority of extremists 
adroitly handled an apt occasion of quarrel provided by 
the blunders of unseeing statesmen. Apathy and in- 
difference was indeed the general atmosphere, while the 
considerableloyalistminority was too far away from home 
and too distracted in council to prevent the catastrophe. 
Even a year after Lexington it was with difficulty that 
the Declaration was carried and that only as the price 
of the active help of France for the Secessionists' cause. 
It seems clear that if the colonists had even gone part of 
the way to solve their own American problems and had 
organised themselves into a nation the fatal breach would 
have been much less likely to occur. The catastrophe 
was inevitably the result of the facile policy of drift. 
Great Britain must not after a century's added experience 
and the chaos of an even more exhausting war repeat 
her mistake. 
