He must have been an incorrigible believer whose faith in the old colonial system was not shaken by this series of cataclysms. Turgot's famous dictum, "Colonies are like fruits which cling to the tree only till they ripen," uttered in the middle of the eighteenth century, seemed now to have been irrefutably proved. As if more proof were needed, in 1837 rebellion raised its head in Canada, and Lord Durham, who was sent to investigate, reported that the Canadian colonists should be granted responsible self-government. One by one the British colonies of Canada, New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania, New Zealand, Cape Colony, and Queensland received self-government, during the two decades that followed Lord Durham's report, and many Englishmen assumed that self-government was a step toward emancipation. Disraeli wrote to the British foreign minister, in 1852, "These wretched colonies will all be independent too in a few years, and are a millstone around our necks. Gladstone sonorously expressed his conviction, in April, 1870, that colonies grow "until they arrive at that stage of their progress in which separation from the mother-country inevitably takes place"; in the past they have done so by bloodshed, in the future the mother-country should gracefully and peaceably surrender her authority.3

Even more devastating was the change in economic facts and theories in the century from 1775 to 1875. Colonial rebellions might shatter the pillars, but these economic changes swept away the foundations, of the old mercantilist colonial system. The altered facts of the economic situation may be considered first. The invention of spinning machines, power-looms, steam engines, and new metallurgical processes brought about an Industrial Revolution in England during this epoch. (As the secrets of the inventions were at first carefully guarded, and as establishment of steam-power factories was in any case difficult for economically backward peoples, England during the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century was almost unrivalled in the manufacture of machine-made textiles, chiefly cotton cloth, and of iron 'Seeley, Expansion of England, p. 15.

'Monypenny and Buckle, Life of Disraeli, III, p. 385.

Numerous quotations in similar vein are given by C. A. Bodelsen, Studies in Mid-Victorian Imperialism (N. Y., 1925), and by Professor R. L. Schuyler in "The Rise of Anti-Imperialism in England," Pol. Sci. Quart., XXXVII, pp. 440-71, and "The Climax of Anti-Imperialism in England," ibid., XXXVI, pp. 537-60.

and hardware, which could be sold at less than hand-made goods. Governmental restriction of colonial markets for such goods was quite unnecessary as long as English industry could undersell its lagging foreign competitors. Moreover, to sparse colonial populations less of such goods could be sold than to populous European nations. What the facts of the economic situation demanded, from the English manufacturer's point of view, was free access to European markets and indifference to colonial aggrandizement. The facts demanded a new political economy, antithetical to the principles of mercantilism

By one of the most fateful coincidences of history, a new political economy was at hand, ready for application. Turgot and the French Economistes or Physiocrats in the third quarter of the eighteenth century had already sketched in broad lines a political economy of individual freedom which was summed up in the phrase, "laissez-faire." Adam Smith, father of the classical political economy in England, had expounded somewhat similar, but more convincingly elaborated doctrines in The Wealth of Nations (1776). Greater gain, he argued, was to be obtained by free trade, permitting natural specialization of industry, than by mercantilist regulation of commerce. Some interference with commercial liberty (the Navigation Act) might be justified on the grounds of national defense, but, and this is the important point, it was certainly unprofitable economically. Applying his principles specifically to colonies, Smith asserted that although natural colonial trade would be profitable to all countries, attempts to monopolize colonial trade cause "mere loss instead of profit" to the "body of the people." The overgrowth of British colonial trade had sucked capital away from other branches of business and caused decay in Britain's general foreign trade. Then, too, the colonies were a heavy burden on the national exchequer. From an economic point of view, he concluded, Great Britain would profit by abandoning her empire.1

The truth of this bold statement seemed to be demonstrated when, after the successful rebellion of the American colonies, Great Britain's exports to the United States rose to higher figures than had been attained before the revolution. Later British economists of the classical school, Malthus, Ricardo, James Mill, J. R. McCulloch and others, made the economic value 'Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. IV, ch. vii.

of free trade and the economic absurdity of Mercantilism fundamental principles of orthodox political economy. Cobden and Bright popularized the principles of free trade in their great campaign against the Corn Laws. Manufacturers fell into line. It is perhaps significant that the free trade movement became known as "the Manchester school," or simply "Manchesterism,' taking its name from the city which was truly the heart of the cotton industry. Protective duties were taken off 750 articles in 1842 by Peel. The Corn Laws, emblematic of the old system, fell in 1846, and with them vanished the duties on about 150 other articles of food, raw materials, and manufactures. The Navigation Laws, enforcing a mercantilist policy toward shipping, were repealed in 1849. Shortly afterwards, Gladstone's reforms of 1853 and 1860 and the removal of the import duty on timber in 1866 demolished the last ramparts of English mercantilism.

While the doctrine of free trade was undermining the economic foundations of colonial imperialism, philosophical and political radicalism attacked the system from another angle. The doctrines of individual liberty, democracy, and cosmopolitanism which gradually gained popularity among radical thinkers in the early nineteenth century, and among other classes subsequently, were decidedly anti-imperialistic in their original tendency. Jeremy Bentham, father of British Philosophical Radicalism, expressed his views in a letter entitled Emancipate Your Colonies, addressed to the French National Convention in 1793 and published in 1830. Colonies, he held, were not only unprofitable, but involved great military and naval expense, danger of foreign war, and political corruption in the mother country. James Mill contributed an article on "Colony" to the 1818 supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, stressing the expense and corruption and enmities arising from the old colonial system, and condemning particularly the prevalent practice of settling convicts in colonies.

Far from convincing the masses, in the first half of the nineteenth century, these anti-colonial doctrines were long shared only by a handful of progressive thinkers; nevertheless their influence widened by degrees. Remarkably effective in the work of propaganda was the firebrand Richard Cobden, the popular apostle of free trade and pacifism, the man who called the British

government "a standing conspiracy to rob and bamboozle the people.' This fearless iconoclast assailed British rule in India as utterly unprofitable and unnatural. "Ultimately, of course, he predicted, "Nature will assert the supremacy of her laws and the white skins will withdraw to their own latitudes; leaving the Hindoos to the enjoyment of the climate to which their complexion is suited"; but in the meantime possession of India would breed "all kinds of trouble, loss, and disgrace," it would cost blood and gold; it might demoralize the British government just as Greece and Rome were corrupted by the East. Recognizing the strong hold, however, which colonialism still had upon popular sentiment, even in 1842, Cobden declared: "The colonial system, with all its dazzling appeal to the passions of the people, can never be got rid of except by the indirect process of freetrade, which will gradually and imperceptibly loose the bonds which unite our colonies to us by a mistaken attitude of selfinterest."' 2

As years rolled by the movement gained momentum. Soon we find, in 1862-3, an Oxford professor of history, Goldwin Smith, proclaiming in a series of letters to the Daily News that although colonies were once profitable, in days of commercial monopoly, there was no longer any reason for retaining them, now that "trade is everywhere free, or becoming free"; England should adopt a policy of emancipating her colonies. Such views were by no means allowed to pass unchallenged, but they were shared by more than one official. Henry Thring, Home Office Counsel, who drafted legislation for the Government, proposed in 1865 that any colony at maturity should be permitted, as a matter of course, to become independent. Herman Merivale, permanent under-secretary for colonies from 1848 to 1860, accepted the doctrine that colonies eventually secede. Moreover, "with the colonial trade thrown open and colonization at an end, it is obvious that the leading motives which induced our ancestors to found and maintain a colonial empire no longer exist." 4 His successor from 1860 to 1871, Sir Frederic Rogers

1

1 Cf. Cobden's pamphlet, How Wars are got up in India (London, 1853), pp. 255-7.

'Morley, Life of Cobden, I, p. 230.

For a less inadequate summary of Goldwin Smith's views and influence, Bee Bodelsen, op. cit., 52-7.

Cited in Bodelsen, op. cit., p. 35.

(Lord Blachford) said he always believed-so strongly that he could "hardly realize the possibility of anyone seriously thinking the contrary-that the destiny of our colonies is independence. Another Colonial Office official, Sir Henry Taylor, in 1864 referred to the British possessions in America as "a sort of damnosa hæreditas." 1

ANTI-IMPERIALISM IN THE MID-VICTORIAN AGE

The increasing prevalence of anti-imperialistic views helps to explain what would otherwise seem like astonishing indifference to colonial expansion in Victorian England, prior to the 'seventies and 'eighties. After the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, which had brought Heligoland, Malta, Tobago, St. Lucia, Mauritius, Trinidad, Guiana, Cape Colony and Ceylon into the fold, British colonial expansion was singularly sluggish for more than half a century. To be sure, the Indian realm was consolidated and expanded; Aden (1839) and a few other strategic points on the route to India were appropriated; the Australian colonies grew inevitably, New Zealand was annexed (1840), the Fiji Islands (1874) likewise, and Singapore (1819), and Hongkong (1842); while in Africa Natal was annexed in 1843, Basutoland in 1871, and Griqualand in 1874. But this record of expansion from 1815 to 1875 is indeed meagre, compared with the vast gains of later years. And especially it must be emphasized that during this period in numerous instances the British government exhibited a positive distaste for colonial aggression." A few specific instances will enforce this point. The first attempts of British settlers in Natal to obtain British protection met with discouraging rebuffs, and only after much hesitation did Lord Stanley, then secretary of state for the colonies, consent to annexation of Natal in 1843, In the case of New Zealand likewise, Downing Street stubbornly opposed projects of colonization and annexation was delayed until 1840, when there was good reason to fear that France might steal a march on her inactive rival.1 A little later, Great Britain amiably

Quotations from Schuyler, loc. cit. His articles and Bodelsen, op. cit., may be referred to for scholarly estimates of the anti-imperialist agitation. 2 Cf. Sir Charles Bruce, The Broad Stone of Empire (1910), I, ch. 4. * Egerton, Short History of British Colonial Policy, pp. 343-5. 'State Papers, XXIX, 1111-4. Rusden, History of New Zealand, I, p. 241.