sible appearances of an economical contract; but all this is dissipated if once its nature be examined; then are we led to see that it is a contract which has no bonds, and which is, moreover, of an unjust nature.

It must not be forgotten, for instance, that the policy here advocated gives to England entire command of the sea and of the various small colonies and outposts: the part of the contract to be performed by the larger colonies being solely the defence of their own coast-lines. As one and all of these thrive by commerce, it is, to say the least, inconsistent for them to give up the guardianship of this commerce entirely to another. Suppose England, hard pressed in India, determined to withdraw her support from Hong Kong, the merchants of Sydney would at once discover that a severe blow had been dealt to their prosperous activity. Their only possible reply is, England has not maintained her part of the contract; we are absolved from ours, and need not protect our port.' Whether the result thus ensuing would benefit Sydney or not is a problem of no uncertain solution. Yet it is a result of the absence of all bonds or ties in the contract.

In regarding this contract people are apt to overlook the fact that these communications' are as important to the colonies themselves as to the mother country. Captain Colomb, writing of the Defence of the Empire, once remarked, 'If a colony has no commerce, no trade, and no interests beyond its own boundaries, it will have done its duty if it provides forces sufficient to protect its own territory'-an opinion in no wise to be contravened.

it

But

may with force be asked, 'Where is such a colony to be found?' The Sydney Morning Herald, reviewing this same author's work, reiterates this faulty view:

We need not follow Captain Colomb further, unless it be to record another disagreement between us. He believes that any ex

pense incurred in repairing 'the state of the Imperial roads' ought to be shared by the colonies. We think not. We impose no burden on the mother country for the maintenance of our safety ashore, and so long as we are integral portions of the Empire we believe it is her duty to keep the roads in repair. Her honour, wealth, and supremacy are dear to us all, but they concern herself first and principally. Our share in the obligation we willingly do, and to the statesmen of Great Britain we look for the rest.

But the taxpayers of England might with much reason reply: 'We impose no burden on the colonies for our safety ashore, but so long as we are integral portions of the Empire we believe it to be the duty of the colonies to assist in keeping the road in repair. The honour, wealth, and supremacy of England go hand in hand with those of her colonies, and it is as much the duty of the one as of the other to help maintain them, so long as the burden involved is in strict proportion to the amount of these attributes enjoyed by each portion.' It is clear that every colony has a duty to perform in seeing that its communications are duly cared for.

Suppose that, while the British fleet is engaged in clearing the seas in other parts, a hostile squadron succeeded in temporarily blockading Melbourne. In such case Victorians would experience the fact that their best interests were other than a mere defence of their territories. They would discover that they had a strangely direct and palpable share in that commerce whose life is o the waters; and that to cut them off from this was to cut them off from what was as necessary to their prosperity as the soil they were successfully defending. The maintenance of the inviolability of their abodes is not the only duty or interest of Englishmen. They are a race living by communicating with one another. It is essential that their abodes be inviolable, but it is no less essential that the communications between these abodes be assured. The economical 'value

of a cornfield is not only that it will or does produce corn, but that it have assured access to a market.

A man may possess 100,000 sheep on the Chatham Islands, and may have warehouses stored with the wool of twenty years, and may be able to defend this against all comers, but if he have not means to transport this wool to a market it remains on his hands a useless and unprofitable burden. Is he then merely to say to a merchant: 'If you choose to come here and ship my wool to a market and bring me back the price thereof, then will I engage to provide a harbour for your vessels '? Will he not be wiser in his generation, and take guard that no possible 'interests' of the shipowner shall supersede his own? Will he not, while yet there is time, join with the shipowner and enter into such partnership or contract as shall induce identity of interests and insure mutual advantages? And will he not endeavour further to guarantee the success of the venture by securing access to the market for the freighted vessel? The British Empire at the present embraces the market, the ship, and the stored wool. Combine these in one organisation, and certain profit is the result; leave them isolated, each to work the one against the other adopt, that is, the 'discrete theory' -and certain loss will ensue.

Thus it is that in discovering any scheme for the organisation of the self-preservative power of the British Empire, its unity, its consolidation takes first place. Defence, as we shall come to see, is not only rendered thereby far more efficient, but far more economical. There can be no reasonable doubt of the fact that, under the conditions of the present and of the immediate future, the best prosperity of every portion of the British Empire rests and has its sole trustworthy basis in the maintenance of the unity of that Empire. And the unity of the Empire im

plies unity of contribution, together with an equal distribution of security. The safety of Hong Kong is a factor in the prosperity of Sydney; no less is the security of Calcutta essential to the present mercantile development of Melbourne. And these conditions are reciprocal in effect. Yet, according to the 'discrete theory,' Hong Kong has no kind of permanent claim that the market of Sydney will remain open. England may be maintaining the communications' between them successfully, but Sydney may fail through bad counsel or inadvertence, through lethargy or inability, to keep her port open; and a profitable trade is at once put an end to because it rested on a contract whose foundations were faulty. Again, to take a further instance, such contract gives no manner of security to Sydney that the port of Melbourne will be kept open. In such contracts there is an utter want of cohesiveness, of solidarity, of unity. They are, in reality, a disconnected congeries of contracts, each of some colony with a mother country, but no care taken that the one colony have any connection with the other.

In Fallacies of Federation we find the righteous assertion, 'So long as any colonies are British colonies the British Government is bound to protect them and would protect them in time of war.' Now if the British Government is bound to protect them in time of war it has a right to protect them: and, as a consequence, if the colonies fail to aid her in so doing she is forced, of her duty, to adopt her own measures. At the present, then, theoretically speaking the British Parliament apparently declines to compel any colony to defend itself (however much it may invite' them); for this would be imposing on a colony sacrifices of a particular kind without the consent of the colonists. Nevertheless is any colony, not acting up to this invitation and refusing to make

such sacrifices, sinning against its fellow-citizens by deducting for its own protection Imperial forces. And if the arrangements for this defence lapse, as at present, into the hands of the Home Government; if it be held, as is at present the case, that any colony that likes may defend itself, but any that does not care to do so will fall to the care of the Home Government; then, in all such cases, the Home Government takes entire charge of such colonies in all matters affect ing defence, and they cease to have any equitable voice in the manner and mode of the consolidation of the war strength of the Empire. Under present circumstances, then, any colony may defend itself or not according to its own sweet will. But colonies that do not defend themselves, at once fall to the care of the Home Government, and in so doing resign all right to self-government in regard to measures and means of defence. And a resignation of such rights is totally inconsistent with the perfected development of an English community however much it may consist with its embryotic growth. That the development of many of our colonies is fast approaching conscious maturity is proved by the energetic measures many have taken in furtherance of their due security.

What we have called the 'discrete theory' is indeed founded in the main on the fallacious appearances of present conditions; public opinion is apt to forget that the British Empire is a creation of yesterday; a child of the nineteenth century; that thus, as must needs be the case in moments of growth and transition, the present state of things is altogether abnormal and to a great degree anomalous. Men have now to legislate and plan, not for what they see at the present moment, but for what they can best conjecture will, in the immediate future, issue from beneath these appearances. Now so far as the statistician

can tell, so far as any reasonable forecasts of the future are possible, so far is it safe to assert that the populations of our various colonies are destined to steady increase: and this means that the maintenance of the communications will become more and more a colonial, or as some would have it an Imperial, and less and less an English question.

The

This steady increase is no matter of mere hope. It has passed from the keeping of the enthusiastic visionary to that of the matter-offact statistician. The period of excessive emigration has ceased. first half of this century saw, both in England and generally throughout Europe, a rapid increase of population. A natural relief appeared in extensive emigration. The United States and the various English colonies became suddenly and speedily peopled. The more rapid strides in prosperity of the emigrant in his new estate; the meteor-like reappearance in Europe, with amassed fortunes of miraculous size, of the few emigrants who had been blessed by luck; the discovery of El Dorados, reported and even real; and above all that great magnet of men, the reputed superiority of distant and unknown lands; all these gave to this stream of emigration an abnormal impulse, and the remedy for overpopulation was soon found to have done more than cure the complaint: and, in the nature of things, a revulsion set in. Nevertheless there remains the undeniable effect. The European population of our colonies now equals that of the British Isles at the beginning of this century. Sixty years of prosperity increased that home population to 30,000,000. The colonists are undoubtedly prosperous, and have every prospect of so continuing : so that the end of the century should see the provinces of the Empire boasting as large a population as that of the central citadel at the present time.

over

The Empire is in a period of transition, the nature of which can be recognised. No scheme which does not acknowledge this undeniable fact can stand the strain even of the proximate future. And in discussing the needs of the Empire for its defence in war, for the right ordering of its powers of self-preservation, a scheme must be devised in accordance with this acknowledgment, if future success is to be looked for.

It behoves us, then, to consider what are the latent powers of the constitution which, if we are earnest in that high resolve to work as Englishmen work, we must needs adopt as our means to meet the necessities of new contingencies as they arise.

We have seen that the interests and prosperity of every British citizen rest on two bases: the inviolability of his abode and the maintenance of the communications of the Empire. But we have seen that the question is altogether an Imperial one; that local efforts will avail little unless united the one to the other by some bond of union. When we are told, for instance, that all that is needed is the carrying out of such Acts as the Naval Defence Act of 1865, we reply: Ay, but somebody must see that this Act does not remain a mere dead letter. Somebody must be responsible that colonies do avail themselves of this Act. Even the inviolability of the abodes is only safe under the aegis of a central Imperial authority. There must be an acknowledgment of the essentially concrete nature of the elements and interests to be dealt with. And this is yet more evidently the case with the maintenance of the communications of the Empire. Colonial governors are now officially instructed to use their best endeavours for the suppression of piracy.' At once we see a tacit acknowledgment of even the local importance of a maintenance of these communications.

A central Imperial power is, then, necessary to the safety of the Empire. Its duties will be threefold. Firstly, to see that abodes able to defend themselves do so. Secondly, to see that abodes unable to defend themselves are aided sufficiently to render them inviolable. Thirdly, to insure the safety of the communications of the Empire. And it is generally acknowledged that in a majority of cases the best defence is counter attack; consequently such a central power should, in addition, be armed with means of counter attack. In plain terms, then, some constitutional authority must be found which shall be possessed of the requisite powers and supplied with the requisite force to attain four cardinal objects: to compel local defence when possible; to defend localities unable to defend themselves to guard the seas; and to deal a blow at an enemy.

We have, then, to go to the Constitution with two needs to be satisfied. In the first place for a paramount authority; and in the second, for a force which shall embody the power, and enable the activity of such an authority. It is perhaps simpler to turn our attention in the first place to the force, to its amount, and to the supply of this amount. A useful scheme must not only suit the circumstances of the case, but it must also meet the needs of the case. In a previous article details were given of the kind of force necessary, together with its needful bases of defence, repair, and replenishment. Over and above the efforts of localities there is needed an Imperial force, whose cost and proportions it is necessary to estimate.

The regular army requisite for strictly Imperial purposes is one which shall be sufficient to garrison the great Imperial dockyards, such strategic outposts as Gibraltar and Aden, such coal-yielding stations as Labuan and Natal and Esquimault, such harbours of refuge for our

navy, we

commercial fleet as Hong Kong or the Feejees, together with such convenient bases for naval stores as strategy may require in addition. It may be assumed very fairly that a force on a 'peace' establishment of 50,000 men would suffice, and these, with all their accessories of stores, ordnance, pensions, and what not, would cost, according to what is at present paid for the British regular army, about 4,000,000l. per annum. Again, regarding the present expenditure for the British may see that a considerable proportion may be deducted as fairly to be assigned to the local defence of the British Isles-that, in short, a sum of 10,000,000l. per annum may fairly be adopted, by way of example, to supply an efficient force, both naval and military, sufficient for Imperial purposes in times of peace. The expenses of war are of course additional; but it has to be remembered that both the chance and the amount of such contingent expenses will be greatly diminished by the existence of an efficient and recognisable germ of military force. It is to be noticed too that there is nothing to prevent the embodiment in such force, or rather addition to it, of local defence schemes, which, as in England with her neighbours in Europe, necessitate extra precautions.

The local defence must be entrusted to forces on the militia and volunteer principle. Such forces cost little and are only permanently employed during actual war, to replenish the ranks of and generally support the regular forces. But the scale of sacrifice for each country in regard to local defence varies greatly. This maintenance of the inviolability of the abodes is a task of vastly different proportions in the different cases. The Canadian, for instance, has to make far larger sacrifices than the Victorian. India already devotes 15 millions sterling each year for local defence.' But

if the sacrifices involved by residence in any particular locality are greater, so in proportion should that residence be more profitable. But again, here the value of an Imperial connection may be seen. Thus if the local defence of England cost more than that of New Zealand, yet does New Zealand profit by the prestige of her connection with England. Did she stand by herself she would discover that in the face of the warlike Maori, or the ambition of powerful States, her position in the loan market would be very different to what it now is. Consequently it seems profitable for each part of the Empire even to contribute a something towards the extra sacrifice involved by the circumstances of their position as other parts of the Empire. England supports what are termed her reserve forces, numbering 340,000, at an annual cost of under 1,400,000l. On the basis of the expenses of the reserve forces in England, then, we may assume as a reasonable charge for local defence a contribution of I per cent. on the annual revenue, and in order to supply the 10,000,000l. to contribute to the support of an Imperial force, the present revenues of the British Empire would be chargeable at the rate of 6 per cent. per annum, according to the scale we have assumed for argument's sake, this latter sum to be paid up in full by each local Government, but the former sum merely to mark the limit of expense required. Until local defence to that amount be provided, no aid of any kind can be had from the Imperial forces.

The scheme is of course put forward merely by way of example. But it is well to notice how the burden of self-preservation is adjusted in other lands. We may take two groups of countries resembling in many ways our various colonies. We may take the small States of Europe, or again the