8
BRITISH COLONIAL POLICY
Greece caused, as we may read in Thucydides, such moral and material disintegration as could only lead to the general doom of the Hellenic States as direct factors in political history.
The Roman Colonies were more complex in character, but, in their earliest and latest forms, they were methods of securing the peace of districts by settling in them old soldiers with certain rights to land. The nearest modern equivalent to a Roman colonia is afforded by Cromwell’s military settlements in Ireland . 1 2
In modern times the Spanish Colonies were, in fact, dependencies, conquered by the forces of the Crown, and where a limited number of Spaniards found a new home. The Dutch Colonies, on the other hand, were trade factories, established on lines of which the British East India Company’s forts are the best known example. British Colonies differ from all these. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, in his Government of Dependencies} defines a colony as “a body of persons belonging to one country and political community, who, having abandoned that country and community, form a new and separate society, independent or dependent, in some district which is wholly or nearly uninhabited, or from which they expel the ancient inhabitants.” If the aim of language be to make clear practical distinctions, the remark may be ventured that the above definition stands at once condemned. The Latin colonia, in all its phases, I think, connoted some kind of political dependence, and no advantage is gained by including the quite distinct connotation of the Greek àiroada. According to Lewis’ definition, the United States are a British Colony and Natal is not. Moreover, at the present day, we should not speak of colonists as “ abandoning ” the Mother country. For practical purposes, a colony may be defined as a community, politically dependent in some shape or form, the majority, or the dominant portion, of whose members belong by birth or origin to the Mother country, such persons having no intention to return to the Mother
1 Military settlements upon the same lines were attempted in Cape Colony and New Zealand, but were not upon the whole attended with much success.
2 p. 168, 1891 edition, with introduction and notes by C. P. Lucas.