The Lyttelton Times. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1905. THE LIBERALS AND THE COLONIES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIV, Issue 13889, 25 October 1905, Page 6

The Lyttelton Times. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1905. THE LIBERALS AND THE COLONIES.

Loed Roskbert was concerned less about equelobing Mr, B. B. Wise than about, impressing the electors of tho Mother Country in his speech at Edinburgh, but it is an easy matter nowadays to meet the accusation that -the Liberals have no interest in the Empire. Five years ago Mr Chamberlain could carry England with the cry that every vote given for the Liberals was a vote against the Empire, but since then the electors have discovered by hand' experience that votes given for the Tories were votes for denominational education, for Chinese labour in South Africa, and for the brewers. Lord Rosebery was sufficiently accurate when he declared that the Empire had been built up -on Liberal principles. It is an old cry that the Liberals wanted to-get rid of the colonies, but it was not true. Neither party had cause to congratulate itself on the colonial administration of the middle of last century. <f To govern our forty-three colonies, scattered over the face of the globe,” said Sir Rioba-rd Molesw-orth once, “ inhabited by men differing in race, language and religion, with; various institutions, strange laws and unknown customs, the stair ht the Colonial Office consists only of five superior and twenty-three inferior functionaries.” Mr Morley, in his life of Gladstone, has taken some trouble te ascertain precisely what were the views expressed by the great Liberal leader on the subject of colonial government in the days when the Mother Country cared least for the colonies. Gladstone became Colonial _ Secretary in 1845, but we find him a member of the Committee on the Colonisation of New Zealand in 1840, and voting, too, in favour of the reservation of all unoccupied lands to the Crown. He did, indeed, at one time consider the colonial connection one of duty rather than advantage, but he seems to have come to saner views quite early in his career. Speaking on the Canada Bill in 1840, ho declared that Britain had nothing to gain by maintaining the union with the colonies in opposition to the deliberate and permanent conviction of the people of the colonies themselves, and at all times he'seems to have held that the moral and social tie was tho really valuable bond of Empire. He protested especially against the fallacy of “preparing” colonies for self-government. The modern colonists, he eaid, after quitting the Mother Country, instead of keeping their hereditary liberties went out to Australia and New Zealand to be deprived of them, and then, after perhaps fifteen or twenty years of waiting, had a portion given back with magnificent language about the liberality of Parliament in conceding free institutions. In the meantime they wore being “fitted” to receive the liberties they bad previously enjoyed. It was Disraeli, and not Gladstone, who declared, half • a century ago, “ These wretched colonies will be- a.ll independent, .too, in a few years, and are a millstone 'round bur necks.” 11 2J s ™orienco has m-ov-a/L’ ’

Gladstone at Chester in 1855, “that if you want to strengthen the connection between the colonies and this country, if you want to see British law held in respect and British institutions adopted and beloved in thcY colonies, never associate with them the hated name of force and coercion exercised by us, at a distance, over their rising fortunes. Govern them upon a principle of freedom.” We anay dismiss the matter now with Mr Morley’e own comment on these speeches. “On© feels a curious irony,” he says, “in tho charge engendered by party heat or malice, studiously and eoandalonaly careless of facts, that Mr Gladstone's policy aimpd at getting rid of the colonies. As if any other policy than that which ha so ardently enforced could possibly have saved them.” Whatever may have been tho position in 1860, there is no doubt as to the party which is cut of sympathy with the colonies now! The fiscal question is a matter apart, a matter to be decided by negotiation. The only important question of administration that has arisen in recent years is the Chinese labour question, and in that the Conservatives openly defied the unanimous eentdment of the free colonies. The ‘ ‘ Times ’ ’ has the audacity to say that the Transvaal’s decision was taken “on the same autonomous principle prevailing already in all the sfelf-go-verning colonies.” ; This is surely a wilful and ludicrous travesty of tho truth. The Liberal record may be bad, but it includes nothing so dishonourable as this flagrant sale of a British colony.