The Other Empire

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 86, 2 July 1927, Page 10

The Other Empire

Britain’s Crown Colonies The representatives of our Crown Colonies are meeting in conference at Downing Street, amid, I am afraid, the general inattention of the general public, wrote a special correspondent in a’ recent issue of “The Daily Mail.” The average British citizen is not profoundly interested in the Colonial Empire. To him “the Colonies” are the Dominions, much to the annoyance of the inhabitants of those important States. When he talks of the Empire he thinks primarily of Canada, Australia. South Africa and New Zealand, with some reference to India. He scarcely realises that -we have another Empire with an area ~reater than that of India and many more people than all the Dominions combined. The administrators or representatives of this Third Empire have been assembled at Westminster—for the first time —to confer with the Colonial Secretary. It is, in fact, the true “British Empire.” The Dominions do not bear that character and do not altogether admire the term. At the Imperial Conference last autumn the Mother Country and the self-governing States were officially certified to be an alliance or association of equal natio-.s. In the present session the “Imperial Parliament” has calmly gone out of existence. It is now only the Parliament “of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

Nevertheless this local Legislature can make laws for double as many people as all the Parliaments of all the Dominions together. Over these fifty or sixty millions of whites, blacks and browns in the King’s “possessions” scattered over Africa, Asia, and Oceania the Government of “Great Britain and Northern Ireland” exercises authority by means of the quiet gentlemen, with cheeks lined and seared by tropic suns, who are spending their days in Downing Street with, it may be hoped, an occasional afternoon off at 1-lu.lingham and Ranelagh.

Pessimists tell us that the British self-governing c nmunities will presently drift asunder. Canada will annex itself to the Uniter States, Australia will set up as a Republic, India will drive us forth.

I do not believe that these calamities are likely to occur. But even if they did we should still be one of the greatest of world-States if we retained the Crown Colonies and Dependencies. We should still have vast territories abutting on all the oceans, able to supply us with most r" the materials we need, and doing a trade already amounting to £ 500 million a year, which might be almost indefinitely increased.

Much of this immense territory is what Joseph Chamberlain called an undeveloped estate. Joint effort, scientific and economic, such as is being inaugurated in the present Conference, will expedite the development. We must welcome and encourage the work. We are all proud of the British selfgoverning Empire. Do not let us be unmindful of the British dependent Empire, which will also be eventually autonomous, though the time for that is not yet.