Greater Britain
TextCHAPTER XIV.
AUSTRALIA
PACING the deck with difficulty as the ship tore through the lava-covered seas, before a favoring gale that caught us off Cape Lewin, some of us discussed the prospects of the great south land as a whole.
In Australia, it is often said, we have a second America in its infancy; but it may be doubted whether we have not become so used to trace the march of empire on a westward course, through Persia and Assyria, Greece and Rome, then by Germany to England and America, that we are too readily prepared to accept the probability of its onward course to the Pacific.
The progress of Australia has been singularly rapid. In 1830, her population was under 40,000; in 1860, it numbered 1,500,000; nevertheless, it is questionable how far the progress will continue. The natural conditions of America in Australia are exactly reversed. All the best lands of Australia are on her coast, and these are already taken up by settlers. Australia has three-quarters the area of Europe, but it is doubtful whether she will ever support a dense population throughout even half her limits. The uses of the northern territory have yet to be discovered, and the interior of the continent is far from being tempting to the settler. Upon the whole, it seems likely that almost all the imperfectly-known regions of Australia will in time be occupied by pastoral crown tenants, but that the area of agricultural operations is not likely to admit of indefinite extension. The central district of Australia, to the extent, perhaps, of half the entire continent, lies too far north for winter rains, too far south for tropical wet seasons, and in these vast solitudes agriculture may be pronounced impossible, sheep-farming difficult. As far as sufficient water for sheep and cattle-stations is concerned, there will be no difficulty in retaining this in tanks or raising it by means of wells, and the wool, tallow, and even meat, will be carried by those railways for which the country is admirably fitted, while the construction of locks upon the Murray and its tributaries will enable steamers to carry the whole trade of the Riverina. So far, all is well, but the arable lands of Australia are limited by the rains, and apparently the limit is a sadly narrow one.
Once in awhile, a heavy winter rain appears to fall in the interior; grass springs up, the lagoons are filled, the up-country squatters make their fortunes, and all goes prosperously for a time. Accounts reach the coast cities of the astonishing fertility of the interior, and hundreds of settlers set off to the remotest districts. Two or three years of drought then follow, and all the more enterprising squatters are soon ruined, with a gain, however, sometimes of a few thousand square miles of country to civilization.
Hitherto the Australians have not made so much as they should have done of the country that is within their reach. The want of railroads is incredible. There are but some 400 miles of railway in all Australia – far less than the amount possessed by the single infant State of Wisconsin. The sums spent upon the Victorian lines have deterred the colonists from completing their railway system: £10,000,000 sterling were spent upon 200 miles of road, through easy country in which the land cost nothing. The United States have made nearly 40,000 miles of railroad for less than £300,000,000 sterling; Canada made her 2000 miles for £20,000,000, or ten times as much railroad as Victoria for only twice the money. Cuba has already more miles of railroad than all Australia.
Small as are the inhabited portions of Australia when compared with the corresponding divisions of the United States, this country nevertheless to English eyes is huge enough. The part of Queensland already peopled is five times larger than the United Kingdom. South Australia and West Australia are each of them nearly as large as British India, but of these colonies the greater part is desert. Fertile Victoria, the size of Great Britain, is only a thirty-fourth part of Australia.
In face of the comparatively small amount of good agricultural country known to exist in Australia, the disproportionate size of the great cities shows out more clearly than ever. Even Melbourne, when it comes to be examined, has too much the air of a magnified Hobart, of a city with no country at its back, of a steam-hammer set up to crack nuts. Queensland is at present free from the burden of gigantic cities, but then Queensland is in greater danger of becoming what is in reality a slave republic.
Morally and intellectually, at all events, the colonies are thriving. A literature is springing up, a national character is being grafted upon the good English stock. What shape the Australian mind will take is at present somewhat doubtful. In addition to considerable shrewdness and purely Saxon capacity and willingness to combine for local objects, we find in Australia an admirable love of simple mirth, and a serious distaste for prolonged labor in one direction, while the down-rightness and determination in the pursuit of truth, remarkable in America, are less noticeable here.
The extravagance begotten of the tradition of convict times has not been without effect, and the settlers waste annually, it is computed, food which would support in Europe a population of twice their numbers.
This wastefulness is perhaps, however, in some degree a consequence of the necessary habits of a pastoral people. The 8000 tons of tallow exported annually by the Australias are said to represent the boiling down of sheep enough to feed half a million of people for a twelvemonth.
Australian manners, like the American, resemble the French rather than the British – a resemblance traceable, perhaps, to the essential democracy of Australia, America, and France. One surface point which catches the eye in any Australian ball-room, or on any race-course, is clearly to be referred to the habit of mind produced by democracy – the fact, namely, that the women dress with great expense and care, the men with none whatever. This, as a rule, is true of Americans, Australians, and French.
Unlike as are the Australians to the British, there is nevertheless a singular mimicry of British forms and ceremonies in the colonies, which is extended to the most trifling details of public life. Twice in Australia was I invited to ministerial dinners, given to mark the approaching close of the session; twice also was I present at university celebrations, in which home whimsicalities were closely copied. The governors’ messages to the Colonial Parliaments are travesties of those which custom in England leads us to call “the Queen‘s.” The very phraseology is closely followed. We find Sir J. Manners Button gravely saying: “The representatives of the government of New South Wales and of my government have agreed to an arrangement on the border duties…” The “my” in a democratic country like Victoria strikes a stranger as pre-eminently incongruous, if not absurd.
The imitation of Cambridge forms by the University of Sydney is singularly close. One almost expects to see the familiar blue gown of the “bull-dog” thrown across the arm of the first college servant met within its precincts. Chancellor, Vice-chancellor, Senate, Syndicates, and even Proctors, all are here in the antipodes. Registrar, professors, “seniors,” fees, and “petitions with the University seal attached;” “Board of Classical Studies” – the whole corporation sits in borrowed plumage; the very names of the colleges are being imitated: we find already a St. John‘s. The Calendar reads like a parody on the volume issued every March by Messrs. Deighton. Rules upon matriculation, upon the granting of testamurs; prize-books stamped with college arms are named, ad eundem degrees are known, and we have imitations of phraseology even in the announcement of prizes to “the most distinguished candidates for honors in each of the aforesaid schools,” and in the list of subjects for the Moral Science tripos. Lent Term, Trinity Term, Michaelmas Term, take the place of the Spring, Summer, and Fall Terms of the less pretentious institutions in America, and the height of absurdity is reached in the regulations upon “academic costume,” and on the “respectful salutation” by undergraduates of the “fellows and professors” of the University. The situation on a hot-wind day of a member of the Senate, in “black silk gown, with hood of scarlet cloth edged with white fur, and lined with blue silk, black velvet trencher cap,” all in addition to his ordinary clothing, it is to be presumed, can be imagined only by those who know what hot winds are. We English are great acclimatizers: we have carried trial by jury to Bengal, tenant-right to Oude, and caps and gowns to be worn over loongee and paejama at Calcutta University. Who are we, that we should cry out against the French for “carrying France about with them everywhere”?
The objects of the founders are set forth in the charter as “the advancement of religion and morality, and the promotion of useful knowledge;” but as there is no theological faculty, no religious test or exercise whatever, the philosophy of the first portion of the phrase is not easily understood.
In no Western institutions is the radicalism of Western thought so thoroughly manifested as in the Universities; in no English colonial institutions is Conservatism so manifest. The contrast between Michigan and Sydney is far more striking than that between Harvard and old Cambridge.
Of the religious position of Australia there is little to be said: the Wesleyans, Catholics, and Presbyterians are stronger, and the other denominations weaker, than they are at home. The general mingling of incongruous objects and of conflicting races, characteristic of colonial life, extends to religious buildings. The graceful Wesleyan church, the Chinese joss-house, and the Catholic cathedral stand not far apart in Melbourne. In Australia, the mixture of blood is not yet great. In South Australia, where it is most complete, the Catholics and Wesleyans have great strength. Anglicanism is naturally strongest where the race is most exclusively British – in Tasmania and New South Wales.
As far as the coast tracts are concerned, Australia, as will be seen from what has been said of the individual colonies, is rapidly ceasing to be a land of great tenancies, and becoming a land of small freeholds, each cultivated by its owner. It need hardly be pointed out that, in the interests of the country and of the race, this is a happy change. When English rural laborers commence to fully realize the misery of their position, they will find not only America, but Australia also, open to them as a refuge and future home. Looming in the distance, we still, however, see the American problem of whether the Englishman can live out of England. Can he thrive except where mist and damp preserve the juices of his frame? He comes from the fogs of the Baltic shores, and from the Flemish lowlands; gains in vigor in the south island of New Zealand. In Australia and America – hot and dry – the type has already changed. Will it eventually disappear?
It is still an open question whether the change of type among the English in America and Australia is a climatic adaptation on the part of nature, or a temporary divergence produced by abnormal causes, and capable of being modified by care.
Before we had done our talk, the ship was pooped by a green sea, which, curling in over her taffrail, swept her decks from end to end, and our helmsmen, although regular old “hard-a-weather” fellows, had difficulty in keeping her upon her course. It was the last of the gale, and when we made up our beds upon the skylights, the heavens were clear of scud, though the moon was still craped with a ceaseless roll of cloud.
CHAPTER XV.
COLONIES
WHEN a Briton takes a survey of the colonies, he finds much matter for surprise in the one-sided nature of the partnership which exists between the mother and the daughter lands. No reason presents itself to him why our artisans and merchants should be taxed in aid of populations far more wealthy than our own, who have not, as we have, millions of paupers to support. We at present tax our humblest classes, we weaken our defenses, we scatter our troops and fleets, and lay ourselves open to panics such as those of 1853 and 1859, in order to protect against imaginary dangers the Australian gold-digger and Canadian farmer. There is something ludicrous in the idea of taxing St. Giles‘s for the support of Melbourne, and making Dorsetshire agricultural laborers pay the cost of defending New Zealand colonists in Maori wars.
It is possible that the belief obtains in Britain among the least educated classes of the community that colonial expenses are rapidly decreasing, if they have not already wholly disappeared; but in fact they have for some years past been steadily and continuously growing in amount.
As long as we choose to keep up such propugnacula as Gibraltar, Malta, and Bermuda, we must pay roundly for them, as we also must for such costly luxuries as our Gold Coast settlements for the suppression of the slave-trade; but if we confine the term “colonies” to English-speaking, white-inhabited, and self-governed lands, and exclude on the one hand garrisons such as Gibraltar, and on the other mere dependencies like the West Indies and Ceylon, we find that our true colonies in North America, Australia, Polynesia, and South Africa, involve us nominally in yearly charges of almost two millions sterling, and, really, in untold expenditure.
Canada is in all ways the most flagrant case. She draws from us some three millions annually for her defense, she makes no contribution toward the cost; she relies mainly on us to defend a frontier of 4000 miles, and she excludes our goods by prohibitive duties at her ports. In short, colonial expenses which, rightly or wrongly, our fathers bore (and that not ungrudgingly) when they enjoyed a monopoly of colonial trade, are borne by us in face of colonial prohibition. What the true cost to us of Canada may be is unfortunately an open question, and the loss by the weakening of our home forces we have no means of computing; but when we consider that, on a fair statement of the case, Canada would be debited with the cost of a large portion of the half-pay and recruiting services, of Horse Guards and War Office expenses, of arms, accouterments, barracks, hospitals, and stores, and also with the gigantic expenses of two of our naval squadrons, we cannot but admit that we must pay at least three millions a year for the hatred that the Canadians profess to bear toward the United States. Whatever may be the case, however, with regard to Canada, less fault is to be found with the cost of the Australian colonies. If they bore a portion of the half-pay and recruiting expenses as well as the cost of the troops actually employed among them in time of peace, and also paid their share in the maintenance of the British navy – a share to increase with the increase of their merchant shipping – there would be little to desire, unless, indeed, we should wish that, in exchange for a check upon imperial braggadocio and imperial waste, the Australians should also contribute toward the expenses of imperial wars.
No reason can be shown for our spending millions on the defense of Canada against the Americans or in aiding the New Zealand colonists against the Maories that will not apply to their aiding us in case of a European war with France, control being given to their representatives over our public action in questions of imperial concern. Without any such control over imperial action, the old American colonists were well content to do their share of fighting in imperial wars. In 1689, in 1702, and in 1744, Massachusetts attacked the French, and, taking from them Nova Scotia and others of their new plantations, handed them over to Great Britain. Even when the tax-time came, Massachusetts, while declaring that the English Parliament had no right to tax colonies, went on to say that the king could inform them of the exigencies of the public service, and that they were ready “to provide for them if required.”
It is not likely, however, nowadays, that our colonists would, for any long stretch of time, engage to aid us in our purely European wars. Australia would scarcely feel herself deeply interested in the guarantee of Luxembourg, nor Canada in the affairs of Servia. The fact that we in Britain paid our share – or rather nearly the whole cost – of the Maori wars would be no argument to an Australian, but only an additional proof to him of our extraordinary folly. We have been educated into a habit of paying with complacency other people‘s bills – not so the Australian settler.
As far as Australia is concerned, our soldiers are not used as troops at all. The colonists like the show of the red-coats, and the military duties are made up partly of guard-of-honor work, and partly of the labors of police. The colonists well know that in time of war we should immediately withdraw our troops, and they trust wholly in their volunteers and the colonial marine.
As long as we choose to allow the system to continue, the colonists are well content to reap the benefit. When we at last decide that it shall cease, they will reluctantly consent. It is more than doubtful whether, if we were to insist to the utmost upon our rights as toward our southern colonies, they would do more than grumble and consent to our demands; and there is no chance whatever of our asking for more than our simple due.
When you talk to an intelligent Australian, you can always see that he fears that separation would be made the excuse for the equipment of a great and costly Australian fleet – not more necessary then than now – and that, however he may talk, he would, rather than separate from England, at least do his duty by her.
The fear of conquest of the Australian colonies if we left them to themselves is on the face of it ridiculous. It is sufficient, perhaps, to say that the old American colonies, when they had but a million and a half of people, defended themselves successfully against the then all-powerful French, and that there is no instance of a self-protected English colony being conquered by the foreigner. The American colonies valued so highly their independence of the old country in the matter of defense that they petitioned the Crown to be allowed to fight for themselves, and called the British army by the plain name of “grievance.”
As for our so-called defense of the colonies, in war-time we defend ourselves; we defend the colonies only during peace. In war-time they are ever left to shift for themselves, and they would undoubtedly be better fit to do so were they in the habit of maintaining their military establishments in time of peace. The present system weakens us and them – us, by taxes and by the withdrawal of our men and ships; the colonies, by preventing the development of that self-reliance which is requisite to form a nation‘s greatness. The successful encountering of difficulties is the marking feature of the national character of the English, and we can hardly expect a nation which has never encountered any, or which has been content to see them met by others, ever to become great. In short, as matters now stand, the colonies are a source of military weakness to us, and our “protection” of them is a source of danger to the colonists. No doubt there are still among us men who would have wished to have seen America continue in union with England, on the principle on which the Russian conscripts are chained each to an old man – to keep her from going too fast – and who now consider it our duty to defend our colonies at whatever cost, on account of the “prestige” which attaches to the somewhat precarious tenure of these great lands. With such men it is impossible for colonial reformers to argue: the stand-points are wholly different. To those, however, who admit the injustice of the present system to the tax-payers of the mother-country, but who fear that her merchants would suffer by its disturbance, inasmuch as, in their belief, action on our part would lead to a disruption of the tie, we may plead that, even should separation be the result, we should be none the worse off for its occurrence. The retention of colonies at almost any cost has been defended – so far as it has been supported by argument at all – on the ground that the connection conduces to trade, to which argument it is sufficient to answer that no one has ever succeeded in showing what effect upon trade the connection can have, and that as excellent examples to the contrary we have the fact that our trade with the Ionian Islands has greatly increased since their annexation to the kingdom of Greece, and a much more striking fact than even this – namely, that while the trade with England of the Canadian Confederation is only four-elevenths of its total external trade, or little more than one-third, the English trade of the United States was in 1860 (before the war) nearly two-thirds of its total external trade, in 1861 more than two-thirds, and in 1866 (first year after the war) again four-sevenths of its total trade. Common institutions, common freedom, and common tongue have evidently far more to do with trade than union has; and for purposes of commerce and civilization, America is a truer colony of Britain than is Canada.
It would not be difficult, were it necessary, to multiply examples whereby to prove that trade with a country does not appear to be affected by union with or separation from it. Egypt (even when we carefully exclude from the returns Indian produce in transport) sends us nearly all such produce as she exports, notwithstanding that the French largely control the government, and that we have much less footing in the country than the Italians, and no more than the Austrians or Spanish. Our trade with Australia means that the Australians want something of us and that we need something of them, and that we exchange with them our produce as we do in a larger degree with the Americans, the Germans, and the French.
The trade argument being met, and it being remembered that our colonies are no more an outlet for our surplus population than they would be if the Great Mogul ruled over them, as is seen by the fact that of every twenty people who leave the United Kingdom, one goes to Canada, two to Australia, and sixteen to the United States, we come to the “argument” which consists in the word “prestige.” When examined, this cry seems to mean that, in the opinion of the utterer, extent of empire is power – a doctrine under which Brazil ought to be nineteen and a half times, and China twenty-six times as powerful as France. Perhaps the best answer to the doctrine is a simple contradiction: those who have read history with most care well know that at all times extent of empire has been weakness. England‘s real empire was small enough in 1650, yet it is rather doubtful whether her “prestige” ever reached the height it did while the Cromwellian admirals swept the seas. The idea conveyed by the words “mother of free nations” is every bit as good as that contained in the cry “prestige,” and the argument that, as the colonists are British subjects, we have no right to cast them adrift so long as they wish to continue citizens, is evidently no answer to those who merely urge that the colonists should pay their own policemen.
It may, perhaps, be contended that the possession of “colonies” tends to preserve us from the curse of small island countries, the dwarfing of mind which would otherwise make us Guernsey a little magnified. If this be true, it is a powerful argument in favor of continuance in the present system. It is a question, however, whether our real preservation from the insularity we deprecate is not to be found in the possession of true colonies – of plantations such as America, in short – rather than in that of mere dependencies. That which raises us above the provincialism of citizenship of little England is our citizenship of the greater Saxondom which includes all that is best and wisest in the world.
From the foundation, separation would be harmless, does not of necessity follow the conclusion, separation is to be desired. This much only is clear – that we need not hesitate to demand that Australia should do her duty.
With the more enlightened thinkers of England, separation from the colonies has for many years been a favorite idea, but as regards the Australias it would hardly be advisable. If we allow that it is to the interest both of our race and of the world that the Australias should prosper, we have to ask whether they would do so in a higher degree if separated from the mother-country than if they remained connected with her and with each other by a federation. It has often been said that, instead of the varying relations which now exist between Britain and America, we should have seen a perfect friendship had we but permitted the American colonies to go their way in peace; but the example does not hold in the case of Australia, which is by no means wishful to go at all.
Under separation we should, perhaps, find the colonies better emigration-fields for our surplus population than they are at present. Many of our emigrants who flock to the United States are attracted by the idea that they are going to become citizens of a new nation instead of dependents upon an old one. On the separation of Australia from England we might expect that a portion of these sentimentalists would be diverted from a colony necessarily jealous of us so long as we hold Canada, to one which from accordance of interests is likely to continue friendly or allied. This argument, however, would have no weight with those who desire the independence of Canada, and who look upon America as still our colony.
Separation, we may then conclude, though infinitely better than a continuance of the existing one-sided tie, would, in a healthier state of our relations, not be to the interest of Britain, although it would perhaps be morally beneficial to Australia. Any relation, however, would be preferable to the existing one of mutual indifference and distrust. Recognizing the fact that Australia has come of age, and calling on her, too, to recognize it, we should say to the Australian colonists: “Our present system cannot continue; will you amend it, or separate?” The worst thing that can happen to us is that we should “drift” blindly into separation.
After all, the strongest of the arguments in favor of separation is the somewhat paradoxical one that it would bring us a step nearer to the virtual confederation of the English race.