every component part. Beyond the natural desire to preserve the many advantages of existing conditions, there is the sentiment of kinship, of nationality, and, perhaps, an appreciation of the Mother Country's generous treatment of her Colonies. Where a Colony has been won by conquest, England has paid for it with English lives and English money. Where it has grown as an English settlement, the initial expenses have been borne by England. In both cases the costs have often been heavy; but when success was assured, and the Colonists asked for emancipation, it has been given freely, without claim, either for the costs of administration before the Colony became self-supporting, or for the value of the permanent improvements.
It was perfectly natural that full advantage should be taken of a practically unlimited power of self-government; that nearly four hundred millions of English money should be borrowed; and that the self-governing Colonies should arrange their fiscal systems without regard to any but local interests. Now, however, the British taxpayer is beginning to feel the strain of bearing alone the ever-increasing burden of National Defence, and he also feels the inevitable result of foreign commercial rivalry. The position is difficult, but it would have been easier to-day if, when self-government was granted to the Colonies, the very reasonable condition had been laid down that, in the matter of tariff, the children should extend to the Mother Country the same consideration that was given to them.
England's position in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, is the result of operations—initiated by people in those territories—operations which have cost this country a very heavy price. It is unlikely that a self-governing Transvaal, or a self-governing South African Commonwealth, will exercise, in its dealings with these islands, a self-denial for which there is no precedent elsewhere; but now that the English people are alive to the situation will they not require that, in the grant of all future constitutions for colonial self-
