servants. And thus results the impossibility of that equal distribution of privileges and of responsibilities wherein lies the advantage of local self-government. Into one or other of the two classes of colonies thus distinguished those sometimes technically termed mining and trading colonies are, according to circumstances, likely to pass. The trading colony, so long as it is a mere factory or emporium of commodities, differs but little from the settlements of Europeans within the bounds of foreign states such as China, sometimes loosely spoken of as colonies of Europeans. The term internal colonization is occasionally used of schemes for promoting the prosperity of thinly-peopled and unfertile areas in some European states. The military colonies planted by Austria along her southern frontier serve a useful and very obvious purpose.
The Colonial Office List arranges British dependencies under three heads, according to their governmental relations with the English Crown. Officially, British “colonial possessions” are either:—1. “Crown colonies, in which the Crown has the entire control of legislation, while the administration is carried on by public officers under the control of the Home Government; 2. Colonies possessing representative institutions but not responsible government, in which the Crown has no more than a veto on legislation, but the Home Government retains the control of public officers; 3. Colonies possessing representative institutions and responsible government, in which the Crown has only a veto on legislation, and the Home Government has no control over any officer except the governor. . . . Under responsible government the executive councillors are appointed by the governor alone with reference to the exigencies of representative government, the other public officers by the governor on the advice of the Executive Council. In no appointment is the concurrence of the Home Government requisite.” Some of the dependencies ranked here as Crown colonies can be called colonies only in a very loose sense. Military stations, such as Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, are convenient both to the navy and the commercial marine as coaling stations or ports for repair and for provisioning. The distinction between classes 2 and 3 is manifestly temporary, in most cases at least; there being, for example, no reason why an agricultural colony like that at the Cape, at present without “responsible government,” should not ere long possess that privilege. India, a “Crown colony” in the list, is rarely spoken of under that name; the enormous numerical disparity between the handful of resident Europeans and the millions of civilized natives makes it seem incongruous to put India under the same category as Canada or Victoria, and to some extent justifies the recent adoption of the title “Empress of India” by the Queen.
It is rather the force of circumstances than the consistent maintenance of any definite policy that has shaped the relation of England to her various dependencies. But the colonial policy of the future has of late been largely debated, and with widely divergent issues. The “colonial system” so long maintained by England, as well as by all other powers, has been finally abandoned. No one now claims that the mother country has the right, still less that in self-defence she is bound, to restrict and hamper the trade of the colony for her own benefit; nor are there now found many to advocate the differential duties in favour of colonial produce, which that ancient system rendered all but necessary. Many, indeed, go to an opposite extreme, and argue that for both sides it would be better that the interdependent relation should be totally sundered, and each colony, as soon as possible, left to shift for itself. The trade of neither party, it is alleged, gains anything by the maintenance of the connection; the European state is exposed to needless risk in time of war by her responsibility to her scattered dependencies, and to additional expense in providing against that risk; while the colonies are liable to be dragged into wars with which they have no concern. The good-will arising from the sense of common origin would, it is said, amply maintain all the mutual advantages enjoyed under the present system, and would secure a virtual confederacy. The democratic experiments some of our colonies have been freely permitted to carry out, and their trade legislation, divergent from that of England, the incorporative federation of contiguous colonies, and the withdrawal of royal troops from the most developed colonial communities, are by many regarded as actual steps taken in the direction of an eventual separation. To another class of theorizers it appears that a “personal union,” the entire legislative independence of the colonies with allegiance to the sovereign of the old country, would better secure the well-being of the several parts of the empire thus constituted; while again others contend that the interests of England and of her possessions abroad, and the cause of freedom and civilization throughout the world, would gain if the bonds of relation were yet more closely drawn together, and if provision could be made for the representation of the colonies in the imperial parliament. Meanwhile, that parliament is supreme over the whole British empire; all the proceedings in the colonial legislatures are liable to be annulled by the Crown. The Crown appoints all governors, is the supreme fountain of justice, and has the sole right of declaring peace and war save in so far as that power is, under certain conditions, delegated to the Governor-general of India; while the admitted aim of colonial policy is to develop the colonies socially, politically, and commercially quite as much as if their ultimate independence were the end contemplated.
Whether European Governments systematically encourage or repress emigration, it is clear that the overgrowth of population in the more densely-peopled centres of the old civilization must continue to send forth emigrants and to increase the already rapid growth of the existing colonies. It is significant for the future of European colonization that, of available territory in the temperate regions of America and Australasia (the temperate portions of Central Asia being, as inaccessible, ill adapted for European settlements), eighty per cent. is calculated to belong to the Anglo-Saxon race; and while the colonies of the English-speaking race have welcomed industrious men of all nationalities, tongues, and religious and political prepossessions, the colonial institutions, even where they differ most widely in their administration from those of England, bear an unmistakably English stamp, and have been manifestly moulded by an English spirit.
See Heeren, Geschichte d. Europ. Staatensystems u. seiner Colonien, 1809; H. Merivale, Lectures on Colonization and the Colonies, 1839–41, new edition, 1861; Arthur Mills, Colonial Constitutions, 1856; Sir E. Creasy, Imperial and Colonial Constitution of the Britannic Empire, 1872; W. E. Forster, Our Colonial Empire, 1875.
The following table, which is based on the latest returns and estimates, indicates the extent and population of the colonial possessions of the various European countries, but does not include any colony that was settled before the 15th century:—
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GREAT BRITAIN. Area - Population. Eng. sq. miles. Europe Heligoland (German coast) 5 2,000 Gibraltar (Spain) 2 15,000 Malta, &c. (Mediterranean) 115 150,000 N. America Dominion of Canada 3,500,000 4,000,000 Newfoundland 40,000 161,000 Bermudas 24 12,000 "West India Islands, various 14,000 1,2:0,000 Honduras (Central America) 13,500 25,000 Carry forward 3,567,1576 5, 61 5, 000
