Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 58

The Crown Colonies of Great Britain. — Introduction

page break

The Crown Colonies of Great Britain.

Introduction.

It is right that the Crown colonies should be investigated from the statistical point of view, and should yield information that will be of use for trade purposes. What are the imports ? What are the exports ? How much revenue is raised ? How stand the public debts ? At what rate are railways being pushed forward ? Does the population rapidly increase ? Let us know whether it is profitable to invest in the land ? And so on. Yet it is well to pause sometimes and to inquire also about the people: are they really happy and progressive in those things which make life worthy, pleasant, or even endurable to the poor; and do matters look as if a happy and estimable future lay before all or any of them ? In dealing with Crown colonies people at home are apt to take a very narrow and material view indeed, deliberately or unconsciously. And yet these colonies, even the smaller ones, are countries often as large and as full of people as many a place in Europe which holds a niche of its own in the world's history, and whose movements are watched and recorded by the public press of the world. These latter countries, however small they may be, are important as the homes of a people who are, or have been, factors in the political and social questions of the day. Of imports there may be none beyond those necessary for the civilised wants of a frugal race, and the exports may be equally unnoticeable, because the people are of more importance than the productions they have to dispose of. With the Crown colonies it is different; they are apt to be written and spoken of as if their productions, actual or potential, were of more importance than page 4 the inhabitants; and yet it is a fact that imports and exports, and revenue and debts, and population, may all show an increase, and the condition of the people may not be advanced, or may even have retrograded amidst all this show.

With the above reservations, the value of colonies has never been underrated by the people of the United Kingdom; no party ever existed in this country, in recent times, which had not the highest opinion, at all events, of their practical worth and of their commercial necessity. The people of Great Britain and Ireland have made immense sacrifices in the past to obtain and protect the colonies of the empire; for upwards of a century their acquisition and consolidation has been one of the objects of every popular administration, and their life has become a part of the social and industrial life of the people of the United Kingdom. Yet there are those who seem to think it quite a new and recent movement for the people of these islands to be interested in colonial questions. It may be so with certain classes of the community, whose natural sympathies and habits would have had little in common with the first struggling communities of settlers in what are now the free colonies. But since then these colonies have grown to be rich and powerful, and the fruits of labour, industry, and intelligence are abundant, and hence a sympathy among the highest classes in the land has arisen, which before lay somewhat dormant. The bulk of the people, however, are connected with the great colonies by ties of a nearer and more enduring nature, and without show and ostentation, and unknown even to their own rulers, they have always looked on them as a part of the United Kingdom, and as the inalienable inheritance of their race.

The Crown colonies are distinguished at once from the free parliamentary colonies inhabited by European races, in that they are apt to be handed over by the consent of all parties in power, and also by the public opinion of the country, to the guidance and even control of those classes and interests which have immediate dealings with them; and hence the people who inhabit them, outside of these classes, receive less sympathy and consideration from the people of the United Kingdom than they are entitled to. They have, undoubtedly, all been given systems of administration they would perhaps have in vain looked for from any other nation in a kind of liberality of government and, in particular instances, even in some power page 5 of self-development. Yet something more is needed, if not to insure prosperity and comfort to the people, at least not to hinder its establishment, its endurance, or its advance. By the side of those forms of government which secure the impartiality of criminal and civil law, and those systems of administration which make its enforcement equal for all, there are certain laws and systems which affect the material welfare of society, and which are more powerful in their operations than any other agencies established among men. The methods of taxation, and the systems regulating and affecting trade, and the laws dealing with the acquisition and the working of land and other property, may be equal for all who come within their scope and operation, and, nevertheless, they may all be so adjusted as to militate against the most elementary principles of right upon which the welfare of a community must be founded in order to thrive. They may work so as to favour monopolies. Burdens, also, may fall on certain classes whilst others are exempted. In fact, the system of government may be a just one, politically and legally, and the most suitable and the best procurable, theoretically, under the circumstances of the colony, and the administration of the existing laws may be admirable and impartial, and yet many evils may accumulate because the economic systems in operation contain within themselves elements of evil which are bound to bear evil fruit.

All this is so obvious to those acquainted with these colonies that it gives rise to a conviction in many minds that the only people fit to judge of internal affairs in any country whatever are the people who inhabit it. On the other hand, the mixed communities of races, with opposite views and often hostile interests, which inhabit some of the Crown colonies, make the full application of such views impracticable at present, or extremely difficult. It remains only for absolute justice to be dealt out to all classes equally, irrespective of race and interest.

There is a tendency among all men to form exclusive societies, but the least civilised people are the most exclusive in their views, and they desire to have but little intercourse with other races. Some Englishmen have objected to the extended views of those of their fellow-countrymen who deem the interests of other races and countries are allied to their own—men whose general opinions have made them almost as much citizens of the world at large as of their own particular land—because they feared such views tended to disarm or deaden that feeling of page 6 patriotism which is essential to the preservation of the position of their own country. But it is obvious that a great commercial and colonial country must have these cosmopolitan and less exclusive views, or its success and continuance as a centre of enterprise will not be possible. The greater success of England as a colonial and commercial power over other nations has been due to the greater respect she has, on the whole, always shown for rights she deems fundamental, and due to all mankind; and especially for the rights and welfare of those weaker races which circumstances have placed under her power and control. The greatest force in the world is man, and the more that is learned respecting him, the more it is seen that the several varieties have much in common, and that the differences so well known and so often deplored are not due to anything more than dissimilar physical and moral surroundings working throughout the ages. To deal successfully with the tropical jungles of Crown colonies, and to cultivate their heated plains, the races accustomed to the climate and inured to the toil are required, and where these fail nothing can be done. To get due value from these countries, and to develop their wealth in a solid form, the men inhabiting them must be encouraged to bear a willing hand by reaping the just reward of labour; sufficient inducements must be given them to struggle upwards to a higher standard. Stagnation or a falling away can be generally traced to a state of things which disorganises local industry. The reward of labour must leave some fair margin beyond the scanty necessities of a mere existence, or, in tropical countries at all events, it will be found the inhabitants will abandon regular work and relapse into those primitive conditions from which it is the duty of civilised and orderly Government to make efforts to reclaim them. As far back as 1824 the Report of the Parliamentary Committee on labourers' wages said:—"He, whose subsistence is secure without work, and who cannot obtain more than a mere sufficiency by the hardest work, will naturally be an idle and careless labourer." The past economic history of many of the Crown colonies may be summarised as constant endeavours to struggle against these facts and natural laws in favour of the planting and absentee interests, efforts fruitful of calamities to the colonies and to their inhabitants.

With respect to the public opinion of the Crown colonies, it is undeniably a power which in recent times is making itself page 7 more and more felt. The press in many of them has organs conducted with ability, and in some of them with singular power and conspicuous fairness; the proprietors and editors are not confined to any one race, and no one could proclaim from internal evidence the nationality of a writer. But the wants and rights of the majority of the people are not always represented in the columns of the public press in the Crown colonies, and this makes it the more necessary for the people and Parliament of the United Kingdom to pay some attention to what is passing, for they are undoubtedly responsible for the laws and systems upheld in these dependencies.

The tariff questions especially are very important, for it can be proved that the methods pursued—which date from the time of protectionist and anti-free trade policy—have been adverse to the best interests of the United Kingdom, and have hampered the development of her trade with the colonies; while, at the same time, they have been injurious to the welfare, the comfort, and the happiness of the colonists themselves. So many anti-free trade centres of commerce dispersed all over the world under the British flag have, beyond all doubt, had a most injurious effect, and have obstructed and hindered the propagation of free trade principles among the nations. Even in those colonies now possessing responsible governments the restrictive tariffs which British merchants and manufacturers so much complain of are no worse than some of those set up in certain Crown colonies to their disadvantage, and, in fact, such tariffs are often, to some extent, the legacy the Parliamentary colonies received over from the periods when they were under the direct administration of the Crown.

In a paper, which received much attention not only from every colonist, but from every person interested in colonial questions, contributed to the "Nineteenth Century Review"* by the Right Honourable W. E. Forster, M.P., it is said:—" I do not think we can expect newly formed communities to raise their revenue solely by direct taxation, but the abolition of all custom or excise, except upon intoxicating liquors and tobacco, and the general equalisation of these taxes, would make an Imperial Zollverein possible." The necessities of none of the Crown colonies require more than what is succinctly laid down here. Professor J. E. Thorold Rogers,

* February, 1885.

page 8 M.P., in his work, "Six Centuries of Work and Wages," also says (Vol. I., page 212):—"It is always difficult to raise a revenue from direct taxation in a country where industry is mainly agricultural;" but, of course, the Professor—who says elsewhere, "to tax what a man must spend is to destroy industry "—means a moderate tax, and on commodities such as Mr. Forster mentions. Mr. Leroy-Beaulieu is an admirer of the colonial capacities of Englishmen; he says that a customs charge—never imposed for protectionist purposes, and never exceeding 5 percent.ad valorem—and land revenues, are the only proper colonial taxes except those on spirits and tobacco, articles which should be charged more heavily. He goes on to say that these are the only taxes universally applied (as he describes them) in the British colonies with no ill result, and giving sufficient revenues. Most Englishmen who know the colonies will admit this statement gives a fair outline of the system that might be followed, but is not Mr. Leroy-Beaulieu had probably in view, when he wrote the above, a proposition made about that time to put into practice the system he eulogises.

The population of the twelve groups of Crown colonies (Gibraltar, Malta, Ceylon, Mauritius, Straits Settlements, Hong Kong, Fiji, Falkland Islands, the West Indian Islands and Mainland, Bermuda, St. Helena, and Western Coast of Africa), at the close of 1883, amounted to about 6,504,200. The revenues raised in 1883 amounted to £6,577,226. The public debts for the whole equalled £6,000,000. The Straits Settlements—especially Singapore—Hong Kong, Gibraltar, and Malta, are ports of call and entrepots, whose returns (when given) of total imports and exports have more reference to the trade of neighbouring and distant foreign countries with Great Britain and other nations than to the trade done within such colonies themselves. Excluding these four colonies, therefore, the total imports of the other eight groups of colonies, in 1883, amounted to £18,823,278, and their total exports were £19,430,504 (colonial returns). Of the imports the sum of £5,822,800 (Board of Trade returns) represents the value of the produce and manufactures of the United Kingdom, or about 31 per cent. The exports from these colonies to the United Kingdom direct were valued (Board of Trade returns) at £8,6o8,212, or about 45¼ per cent, of the whole. The total trade of these colonies for the year 1883 amounted to page 9 £38,253,782 (colonial returns), of which £14,431,012 (Board of Trade returns) was with the United Kingdom, or nearly 38 per cent, of the whole.

There are no returns whatever to be had respecting imports and exports at the ports of Hong Kong and Gibraltar. The Straits Settlements and Malta between them have £41,558,644 imports, and £46,736,029 exports, for the year 1883. The figures for Hong Kong and Gibraltar would probably be as much as this. As a matter of fact, such returns from these ports often only repeat one another; the same vessel, with the identical cargo on board, will sometimes enter at all of them on a single voyage, and, after coaling and discharging some cargo, clear outwards, and proceed with the remainder. The Board of Trade returns for the year 1883 show exports from the United Kingdom of British goods, for Gibraltar and Malta direct, amounting to £1,712,653, and imports therefrom to the value of £190,789. The great free trade ports of the East—the Straits Settlements and Hong Kong—took British merchandise valued by Board of Trade returns at, £5,515,478, and sent produce valued at £5,815,002 to the United Kingdom.

It will be seen that the trade of the Crown colonies is large, but, except with the great free trade Eastern ports, it is not by a long way as large as it might be. The system of tariffs—as in the West Indies, Ceylon, Mauritius, Fiji, and Malta—and the general policy pursued with regard to the natives—as in Western Africa—have much hindered material progress, and these colonies do not compare as favourably as they ought to with the colonies of foreign powers, where the policy pursued is not pretended to be entirely—if at all—in the interest of the inhabitants. Indeed, the position of the people in many of these Crown colonies is unsatisfactory, for reasons that will be shown farther on, when the colonies are separately dealt with. The taxation per head paid by the people of a colony is no more a criterion by which to form any judgment respecting it than the exports alone can be taken as a basis on which to build up a theory of the people's wealth, prosperity, and happiness. A man can better afford to save 10s. in Australasia than a Cingalese can afford to save 4d. The West India colonies export at the rate of £6 12s. per inhabitant (nearly the same rate as for the United Kingdom), and pay Government taxes at the rate of 26s. 6d. only; and yet the bulk of the people, as regards housing, food, and the page 10 common necessaries of a civilised life, are worse off than the serfs of the Middle Ages. Can they be compared for an instant with the great colony of the Cape of Good Hope, whose people export only at the rate of 70s. 5d. per head, and yet pay taxes at the rate of 87s. 1d. per head? or with the savage but vigorous natives of their own Africa? At the same time, it is a sound criterion to take the exports of a colony, if the wealth raised and exported be really raised and owned by the people. The twenty and a half millions sterling of exports from Canada in 1883 were undoubtedly, nearly all of them, the property of the Canadians themselves, and almost the whole proceeds of profits went to enrich the inhabitants. In the West Indies and other tropical colonies the people, owing to various reasons, have not the capital necessary to accomplish that work which people in more happily formed societies are expected to do for themselves. Extraneous aid from foreign capitalists is sometimes sought by, and sometimes forced on, the people of tropical countries, to assist them to cultivate their lands. Nothing is more certain than that this capital, in whatever form it comes, can permanently develop the wealth of the several colonies, because, as Professor Leone Levi says ("History of British Commerce," p. 149), "there is one unalterable law as regards wages: they depend on capital. However fertile the soil, however favourable the position of the country, however great the extent of territory, unless there be sufficient capital in hand to maintain labour, nothing can be done." But this capital can only do good permanently on condition the other elements employed in the work also receive a fair share of the profits. The wages of labour, in every instance, can be left to be settled between the employer and the employed; and where there are no inhabitants in an annexed territory, it is legitimate enough to seek for people in other countries. But the Government does not stop at this; and if there is labour to be had on the spot, but the labourer sulks at the terms offered by planters and capitalists, starveling coolies from India are sent to replace it, and the wages of labour in that colony are forced down to the lowest limits that admit of a bare existence. Taxation, also, forced from its natural channels by the exigencies of a system which has allowed predominance to absentees and their agents, has fallen almost entirely on the struggling labourers. In course of time a system, symmetrical in all its parts, has arisen on this basis. page 11 It is correct in its law and perfect in its constitutionalism; but it wants one thing—a people able to live contentedly and thrive by the sweat of its brow. Systems are worthless that do not create such men. Capital accumulates among the people in such places with extreme difficulty, because there is no margin left for the reward of thrift.

The keeping of order and the protection of private rights constitute the main work of Government, but the people have other wants with which a Government should have no concern, and when it does enter the lists monopolies and abuses grow up and abound, unless strict watch be kept; the Government after a time loses control over the instruments it has set up, and opposite results come about from those avowedly intended. The Crown colonies are full of such instances. The introduction of coolie labour into colonies where it may have been supposed to be wanted was doubtless at the beginning a well-intentioned act; the abuses that have since arisen might have been foreseen, but were not. Englishmen should not be behind foreigners in appreciating what is just. This is what Mr. Leroy-Beaulieu says on the subject:—"Cette immigration, au point de vue social, quand elle porte sur les Chinois ou sur les Indiens, a les plus déplorables résultats; ces hommes appartenant, non pas à des sociétés primitives dont les membres sont prêts à se fondre par un instinct naturel dans les sociétés plus avancées, mais à des sociétés vieilles et décrépites, conservant avec ténacité leurs habitudes et leurs moeurs." They keep also their language and their religion; having few females among them, the deplorable results to the places they are sent to are well known and are repugnant to every social sentiment. Again he says:—" Au point de vue économique, les conséquences ne sont pas moins fatales. C'est la facilité de l'immigration, qui, en partie, a été la cause de l'abandon définitif des habitations par les noirs; les planteurs n'ont plus songé à les retenir par de bons traitements et des égards" . . . "le second inconvénient économique de l'immigration, c'est qu'elle détourne les colons des améliorations nécessaires qui, en utilisant mieux le nombre de bras existants, et en perfectionnant les procédés, multiplieraient considérablement les quantités produites et le revenu net."* With refer-

* There have been rumours that a new coolie colony was to be created in Northern Queensland by the introduction of that form of servile labour. It is to be hoped free Australia will keep such a thing from its shores.

page 12 ence to labour in tropical Crown colonies generally, it is needful to draw public attention to the large employment of woman labour in that most trying of all labour—working in a cane field. This class of labour is very cheap, but it is disastrous to the community. In his work, "The State in Relation to Labour," the late Mr. Stanley Jevons said (p. 70), on the employment of mothers:—"The great evil which arises from such employment is the separation of the mother from her young children; in the case of infants who ought to be suckled the result is usually disastrous . . . a large proportion succumb, and those who by any fortunate accident of more vigorous constitution, or slightly better treatment, survive, are too often ruined physically and mentally, and grow up into a stunted and sickly generation." He shows how the German Social Science Association and the statistics of the United States Agricultural Bureaus fully support these views. After long fasting on the part of mother and infant, when at last the latter obtains the breast, the mother's body is heated and exhausted, and the worst results follow for the infant. In all the West India colonies especially, but particularly so in some of them, the enormous proportions of this evil are quite startling.

A good deal has yet to be done to perfect cultivation in many colonies, especially with regard to sugar. Immense advances have been made in Europe in recent years in the cultivation and preparation of beet sugar, and the severe competition that has arisen in the sugar markets has been due more to this than to the bounties. The fall in the price of sugar will not be entirely without compensation; it has caused it to enter into many industries, from which, in the future, it will be inseparable. From time to time, it is to be feared, blights will do more damage to colonial produce than competition; the coffee growers of Ceylon found this to be the case. An acre of land may yield a ton of beetroot sugar in three years. An acre of virgin soil gives ton of cane sugar; most of the British sugar colonies give over ton an acre. They should do better than the beet growers even with their bounties. If all the projects on foot to grow sugar in tropical colonies were to succeed, there would be some difficulty in disposing of the supply. The British sugar colonies would be thriving now if their economical and fiscal systems were not deplorably unsound. It wanted the fall in the price of sugar to demon page 13 strate beyond question this unsoundness, and it is quite certain nothing can place these colonies on the road to prosperity and stability but a commercial and economical system entirely different from that under which they now have to struggle. Free trade in land and in commerce and the tariffs of Mr. Forster quoted above, are the chief remedies wanted.

The colonies take a good deal of merchandise from foreign countries, as much in proportion to their general trade as the United Kingdom does; they have many wants foreign countries alone can supply. Those who urge a customs union between the colonies and the United Kingdom, on the basis of either party taking the produce of another, with differential tariffs against foreigners, will have many interests to deal with and to consider that are hostile to such proposals. There are some things the colonies produce for which they find advantageous markets abroad, and they are rather anxious to increase this commerce than to diminish it. Those colonies which produce wine will want the people of the United Kingdom to continue to drink it, because it does not sell so readily abroad, but for their part they will take for their own use much of the vintages of the Rhine and Bordeaux, and pay for it, if they can, in their own productions. As in the past, so in the future, those people will do the most trade who give the best and cheapest articles that may be wanted, and success will eventually depend on skill, energy, enterprise, and the highest intelligence. The parliamentary colonies are mostly (for the present) so elated over protection, which they appear rich enough to be able to bear, that any arrangement with the United Kingdom, tending to remove her free trade policy, will probably be pleasing to them, especially if it raises the price of any of their produce in British markets; if it does not do this they will not care for it, but they will not object to it, it will really matter so very little to them. It is pretty certain they will make no convention which will in any way damage their trade prospects with other countries. The great colonies are in the position to gain, whatever policy Great Britain, or indeed any other country, may follow.

Every one knows how the value of land has fallen in England; in France the fall has been 40 per cent, in some places, and a man is deemed lucky who makes per cent, out of it in that country from corn growing. Neither free trade England, by conventions with Canada and Australasia, nor page 14 protectionist France, by high duties, can cause this economical result to be reversed. If the value of land falls in the old countries, it rises in the new ones; it is only cause and effect. In the tropical colonies also, competition is intense, and, as a virgin soil accessible to labour can produce some crops 30 per cent, cheaper than the wearied soil of older colonies, the latter, like England and France, have to turn their hands to producing those other crops which the circumstances of the markets make profitable.

If any fair trade or reciprocal treaty tariffs are proposed to be imposed in the United Kingdom, it is only right it should be known at once that it will not be in the interests of the colonies that it will be done, but solely in the interests of those at home who desire protection, and whose private interests never allowed them to be really convinced that free trade was beneficial to the United Kingdom.