COLONIAL DEFENCE.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXI, Issue 26, 5 April 1862, Page 3

COLONIAL DEFENCE.

[From the Home News."] Mr. Adderley lias lately published a letter, addressed to Mr. Disraeli, on what he considers some fundamentally erroneous principles of our colonial system, and on what he would propose as remedies for the evils which he points out. He has since given an exposition of his views on several important colonial questions in a lecture which he delivered at Saltley. In a leading article the Daily News thus speaks of Mr. Adderley's essay : —

" Mr. Adderley has clearly shown by his interesting resume of colonial history, especially by the early History of the United States, that our present system is founded upon principles directly tho reverse of those which originally guided the colonial policy of this country. Following the example of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Godley, he has conclusively proved that under the old system the British colonist was not only willing to provide for his self-defence, but considered it one of his noblest privileges, and that at a time when the political rights of the colonists were much less extensive than they are at present. But in these days the British colonist not only claims the right of political independence, even to tho extent of protecting the productions of the colony against those of the mother country, but clamours for subsidies to promote public works, and troops to put down riot or to repel invasion. It i 9 impossible to doubt the demoralizing effect of such a system j and Mr. Adderley is right in urging, even at the present crisis, the necessity of an immediate change. The idea of self-govern-ment involves that of self-sufficiency. The colonies may indeed expect the forces of the empire to rally round them at need, and they must be expected (o rally round the Imperial standard themselves when needed. But the one is no more to be expected than

the other. Community cannot be one-sided. The colonies cannot take the privileges and leave to England the duties of freedom. The rights of freedom, to use Mr. Gladstone's words, entail its duties nko, and the one cannot long be possessed without the other. A free country undertaken for is not really free. It is for the interest of England's colonies more

than for her own that in their separation from the mo her country they should lose none of the privileges of citizenship, of its labours any more than its enjoyments."

The Times also refers, in a tone of approval, to the views maintained by Mr. Adderley. In a leader pub-

ished in its issue of January 24, the Times says :—: —

"It by no means follows that, even if our colonies should be called upon to undertake their own defence in time of peace, and to look only for such assistance as we can spare in time of war, they would think the union with Englimd burdensome and oppressive. They might, indeed, occasionally find themselves engaged in wars for quarrels in which their peculiar interests were not involved ; but against this evil are to be set the considerations that, except in the case of America, they have no civilized continental neighbours, and are, therefore, protected from the dangers of war by our maritime superiority. In the case of a quarrel with America our colonies, if not the pretext, are almost sure to be the cause of the war. Our experience has shown that against American enemies England ia strong enough by land to protect them. On the other hand, the colonies gain by remaining part of the British Empire all the innumerable advantages which attend on large states as compared with small ones. The American Government arrested citizens of the Confederate States in the territory of New Granada, in defiance of tho law of nations, and with the most perfect impunity ; but the American Government would offer no insult to colonial territory or property of Great Britain itself. The knowledge that they cannot be involved in war while England remains at peace is a tower of strength to our colonies, and saves them from heavy expenditure and loss of life. The balance is sufficiently loaded in favour of

the colony and against the mother country without our undertaking, as a part of the metropolitan relation, the defence of territories scattered all over the earth, richer than ourselves in money, abounding in brave and high-spirited men, and ready and willing to use both, unless we insist on relieving them from the duty of preserving their territory from insult in time of peace and from invasion in time of war."

American Chaeactek. — Whatever may be the intrinsic merits of the Americans, it is certain that they show their worst aide to the world. The key to their character seems to be in a too overweening confidence, a too self-reliant independence. This is a trait often seen in those who have been the architects of their own fortunes, and who have come to consider success, apart from the means by which it is attained, as the essential point, to care more for what they have done than for what they are. Such a tendency becomes enormously exaggerated when it is common to a whole nation. Then it will produce its best and worst effects. We see its good side in the self-reliant, upright New Englander, the true child of the Puritans, firm and posaesaing in himaelf resources to meet all consequences. Such a man can in a great degree dispense with the restraints which men born in greater dependence on the past and on others cannot afford to neglect. We see the bad side of the same tendency in the vulgar and boisterous politician, who has freed himself from principle in freeing himself from tradition, and is indolent to all established things in earth and heaven. We see it in the travelled and over-polished man who cannot conceal a perpetual consciousness that he is a citizen of the greatest nation in the world ; who is indeed cosmopolitan, but only because he has the impudence to override all distinctions ; who adapts himself to the ways of all men only by following his own 5 who speaks all languages fluently, by the easy method of despising their niceties. Men of this aort cast off old checka and cannot supply new ones, so that they run into any kind of extravagance. No ordinary man can altogether cut himself free from petty conventional restraints without finally breaking away from the more essential ones which hold the world together. To be able to stand alone without the aid of tradition or of the re9t of the world is the high reward of those who have laboured honestly and painfully to deserve their freedom. To those who have the reward without having earned it for themselves, freedom is its own punishment ; just as intellectual faith becomes a slavery if not deserved by intellectual labour. We know little of the character of the best part of American society. The rowdy element, the offensive egotism, the self-asaertion of the worst and lowest, comes to the surface. The reason is that constitutions cannot be made to order. They must grow up by continual adaptation to the changing exigencies of social tendencies. These cannot be provided for beforehand; and a constitution framed beforehand, no matter with how much wisdom and integrity, breaks down in practice, the more surely in proportion to its exactness. The American political system has provided itself with no checka upon tho lawlesa mob, before which it haa set too many temptations to be self-indulgent. It is well for a country which makes its own precedents and its own political morality, that its downward progress must in the end be stopped by a collision with nations which adhere to the old civilization. — Examiner.

Climate of England. — Of all the climates of Europe, England seems to me to be most fitted for activity of mind, and the least suited to repose. Tho alternations of a climate so various and rapid constantly awaken new sensations, and the changes of the sky from dry ness to moisture, from the blue ethereal to cloudiness and fogs, seems to keep the nervous system in a constant state of excitement. In the changeful and tumultuous atmosphere of England to be tranquil is a labour, and employment is necessary to ward off the attacks of ennui. The English nation is pre-eminently active, and the natives of no other country follow their object with so much force, fire, and constancy. — Sir H. Davy. Tyrannnical Anglo-Norman Kings. — " There can," observes Lord Brougham, in his work on "The British Constitution," "be no creation of national vanity more groundless than the notions which represent our ancestora as enjoying more freedom, and their princes as holding a more limited authority, than was known in the feudal monarchies of the neighbouring nations/