ing it is left to those who live in the Mother-land to bear. To give a plain illustration of the effects of this existing arrangement—any man who lives at home and pays taxes bears his share of the cost of the fleet; but if he transfers his abode to Canada, for example, he continues, of course, to be a British citizen and as such entitled to the same naval protection for his oversea trade and business as at home, but he at once ceases to pay one farthing toward the provision of the fleet, and so gets all the advantages of predominant sea-power for nothing. The Colonies are cities of refuge for those who desire to belong to a great Empire free of the cost necessary to provide, not only for its security, but for the protection of their trade and commerce on any and every sea in which they choose to do business. At Charing Cross the Canadian Government have an office, and the passers-by can read in the windows that a great attraction offered to induce people to transfer themselves from the United Kingdom to the Dominion is "Light Taxation." That is a perfectly true statement, because a Canadian citizen of Empire pays nothing towards the upkeep of Empire, such as the diplomatic, consular, and naval or military services, while sharing equally with those at home, who bear the whole cost, all the security and advantages these services confer. There is no other empire or nation in the world where the resources of only a part bear the entire cost and responsibility of providing what is necessary to secure against attack the existence of the realm as a whole, or the retention of any one of its several component portions.
This is so extraordinary a feature of the internal arrangements of our Empire that it is most desirable to understand the main causes which have led up to such a singular state of things.
When Nelson died, British outlying possessions were few and far between. In the temperate regions there was a small penal settlement at the Antipodes, and in America a small community, mostly French, settled in the neighbourhood of the fortress of Quebec. There was nothing else in temperate zones. In the tropics
