Preference as they are to-day. The best men did not, as now, look forward to an Imperial union in which the British communities oversea would some day claim an equal share with the Mother Country, but to complete independence like that of the United States.
IV.
Still greater political harm was done in the Mother Country by the system of Colonial Preference. All true Imperialists must have deplored the harsh and pessimistic things said about the Empire by our public men in the past—^by Conservatives as much as by Radicals. During the period of Colonial Preference there was no public sympathy with the Colonies, and though the bulk of the people may have been, and I believe were, determined to maintain the Empire, almost all the audible voices were raised against its continuance. The Colonies, that is, were profoundly unpopular. Sir Spencer Walpole, in the last two volumes of his admirably fair and lucid work, has brought together a number of expressions of opinion hostile to the Empire, which I will quote to show how deep was the feeling. For example. Lord Beaconsfield, writing in 1852, told Lord Malmesbury: 'These wretched Colonies will all be independent in a few years, and are a millstone round our necks.' The Duke of Newcastle declared that he should see a dissolution of the bond between the Mother Country and Canada with the greatest pleasure. Sir Henry Taylor wrote: 'As to the American Provinces, I have long held and have often expressed the opinion that they are a sort of damnosa hereditas.' Even Lord Salisbury, when Lord Robert Cecil, said in the House of Commons that 'it might be fairly questioned whether it had been wise originally to colonize the Cape and New Zealand, and whether, looking back on all the results, we have been repaid for the great cost and anxiety which they had entailed.' Sir George Come wall Lewis was even more pessimistic:
