ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES.
The far-sighted Disraeli could not correctlv forecast the future of the colonies. '•"These' wretched aolonies," he exclaimed to Lord Malmesbury, " will all be independent in a few years, and are a millstone round our necks!" Lord Salisbury, not yet free from the pessimism of his melancholy youth, assured the House, of Commons that it might fairly be questioned whether we had been well advised to colonise the Cape and New Zealand. France was' assured by Voltaire that her loss of Canada was no loss at all; and Bismarck, in similar mood, exclaimed, "1 don't want any colonies at all.' Their only use is to provide sinecures." What would Barnstaple say tocher member if now he- stood up in the Commons and said, as he once did, that it would pay us better if, instead of giving £3,000,000 to Canada with a view to seT3ara"m tr her from the United States, we cave' her £10,000,000 in order to unite them'' That was the spirit in which the sovereignty of the Fiji Islands was refused the non-extension policy in Africa decided upon by the Privy Council, and the lonian Isles ceded to Greece. _____
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New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 13030, 22 November 1905, Page 3 (Supplement)
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195ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES. New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 13030, 22 November 1905, Page 3 (Supplement)
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