$SS THE OLD POUCY AND THE NEW. 1780 reyolution in the minds of Englishmen. To those who are familar with the literatnre of the eighteenth century re- lating to the colonies^ that of the present day is something' more than refreshing. The newspaper and magazine writers The old of former times looked upon the distant possessions of England as so many fields for comic satire;* norelists sought material in them for the romance of crime and. stirring adventures in low life ; political economists studied their annual lists of imports and exports^ in order to cal- culate their precise value to the mother country. There was no dream then of Imperial Federation ; there was no and the talk about Greater Britain and the Expansion of England; there were no schemes for bringing about a closer union between the colonies and the mother country. Their politics were treated with contempt; their social status was regarded with scorn and aversion ; their manufactures were sternly prohibited; their commerce was strangled by the Trade Tempom and Navigation laws ; and so little were they valued as component parts of the empire that one wrong-headed Minister after another was suffered to goad the greatest of them into rebellion by a series of hostile measures — and that^ too^ at a time when the capture of a small island in the tropics by the French or Spaniards, would have set the nation in a flame.
- The Whitehall Evening Poet, 2l8t November, 1786, published the
following verses on the proposed Expedition to Botany Bay : — Lei DO one think mnch of a tilffing expense ; Who knows what may happen a hundred yean hence ? The loss of Ameiioa what can repay T New colonies seek for at Botany Bay. Of those precious souls who for nobody care, It seems a large caiiB^ the Kingdom can spare ; To ship off a gross or two make no delay, They cannot too soon go to Botany Bay. They go of an Island to take special chaiige, Much warmer than Britun and ten times as large ; No custom-house duties, no freightage to pay, And tax-free they'll live when at Botany Bay. Digitized by Google
