11. (See page 32).

Colonies relieving the Mother Country from the "Strain of surplus Population."—America, herein, no substitute for Colonies.—It has been shallowly urged by the Goldwin Smith School, that the vast benefits Colonies confer on the Mother Country in relieving her from that fearful "strain of surplus people," which some millions more of accumulated Population must have subjected her to, would have been just as fully and effec- page 86 tually conferred on her if she had had no Colonies—inasmuch as, in that case, she would have been relieved of the "strain of surplus people" by the United States. But, a familiarity with Emigrants and Emigration shows us that the vast majority of those who in the last forty years have moved from the Mother Country to her Colonies have been those who have chosen British Colonies for their new homes either because they had a fear or horror of democratic institutions, or because they had a dread or dislike of sinking their nationality, and changing their old imperial flag—they have been Emigrants, in fact, who, had there been no British Colonies to go to would, for the most part, have stayed at-home.

Again, any argument based on the asumption that it would have been equally beneficial to the Mother Country whether her surplus hordes had found homes in her own Colonies or in the United States, is radically false, and for this reason:—it is mainly the blood and vigour which America has drawn off from Great Britain, during the last half century, which has enabled America to swell into the rude aggressive power she is:—if all British Emigrants who have left our shores in the last half century had spread themselves over our own Emigration Fields in Canada, in Africa, in Australasia, instead of going, for the larger part, to the United states, Jonathan would not now have been thinking of sending in to Mr. Bull a certain heavy bill, headed "Damages per Alabama,"—a bill which may yet have to be discharged in blood.

The Goldwin Smith School assert, too, that in the matter of creating or extending our Over-sea Trade the United States would have done for us all which Colonies have done for us—or, in other words, that we should have had as large an Over-sea Trade without Colonies as with them. But, for the very same reasons why and wherefore the United States could not have relieved the Mother Country from her Strain of People," they could not have created for and supplied her with her Colonial Trade.

Again, not only is it politically better for our Emigrants to be spread over the world as British subjects in British communities, than that they should be concentrated in America, as Citizens of a Foreign page 87 Power, but it is economically and industrially better—if we had had no Colonists in Australasia where would our wool and gold have come from?