INTRODUCTORY

7

nailed to the mast the flag of British naval and colonial supremacy, we have travelled far from the period of laissez- aller. It is difficult to give a name to the new policy. The word “ Imperial ” has too military a suggestion. Perhaps the words “ Greater Britain ” best describe the new point of view. A world-empire, the separate parts of which are being more and more closely linked by the discoveries of science, enjoy­ing in each separate part absolute independence, connected, not by coercion or paper bulwarks, but by common origin and sympathies, by a common loyalty and patriotism, and by common efforts after common purposes, such, amidst much to alarm and to disturb, is the apparent outcome of history, the Colonial policy with which Great Britain will enter upon the untrodden paths of a new century.

It is necessary, before dealing with British Colonial policy, to explain what is meant by a British Colony. The Colony, as we understand it, is, it must be remembered, a new thing in history. The Greek Colony was, as its name (a7r ouda) 1 half implies, politically an independent community. It has been admirably described by Archbishop Whately. 2 “ An ancient Greek Colony was like what gardeners call a layer, a portion of the parent tree with stem, twigs and leaves embedded in fresh soil, till it had taken root and then severed.” Its ties with the Mother country were merely those of religion and race. Such ties, however, counted for much with the Greeks of the best period. The reason of this kind of colonization is not far to seek. It lay in the inability of the Hellenic mind to conceive of a Greek state as anything except a city or polis. The passage in the “ Politics,” 3 in which Aristotle enforces the necessity of its not being too large for a herald’s voice to encompass, will be familiar to many. It would seem, however, as though, under the impulse of blood relationship, the independent Greek communities were very nearly forming powers resembling in many ways the British Empire of to­day. Unfortunately, the Athenian democracy grasped at a tyrannisé and the shock thus given to the conscience of

1 “from home." 2 Note to Bacon’s Essay “ on Plantations.”

3 Book VII. ch. iv. 4 rupawlôa. lx ere r! 'X ô-PX n , v > Thuc. III. ch. xxxvii.

Definition of British Colony.