This elimination of the Imperial Factor is precisely that which is the least desired by those who see our Imperialism to mean the continuance of obedience to the just traditions of British Law and Government.  The granting of a Charter to a Company lends the authority (or the appearance of it) of the Queen’s name to acts of the responsible heads of that company, which may be opposed to the principles of justice established by British Law; and such acts may have disastrous results.  It is to be hoped that the present awakening on the subject of past failures of our government to enforce respect for its own principles may be a warning to all concerned against any transgression of those principles.

Continental friends with whom I have conversed on the subject of the British Colonies have sometimes appeared to me to leave out of account some considerations special to the subject.  They regard British Colonization as having been accomplished by a series of acts of aggression, solely inspired by the love of conquest and desire for increased territory.  This is an error.

I would ask such friends to take a Map of Europe, or of the World, and steadily to regard it in connection with the following facts.  Our people are among the most prolific,—­if not the most prolific,—­of all the nations.  Energy and enterprise are in their nature, together with a certain love of free-breathing, adventure and discovery.  Now look at the map, and observe how small is the circumference of the British Isles.  “Our Empire has no geographical continuity like the Russian Empire; it is that larger Venice with no narrow streets, but with the sea itself for a high-road.  It is bound together by a moral continuity alone.”  What are our Sons to do?  Must our immense population be debarred from passing through these ocean tracts to lands where there are great uninhabited wastes capable of cultivation?  What shall we do with our sons and our daughters innumerable, as the ways become overcrowded in the mother land, and energies have not the outlets needful to develop them.  Shall we place legal restrictions on marriage, or on the birth of children, or prescribe that no family shall exceed a certain number?  You are shocked,—­naturally.  It follows then that some members of our large British families must cross the seas and seek work and bread elsewhere.

The highest and lowest, representing all ranks, engage in this kind of initial colonization.  Our present Prime Minister, a “younger son,” went out in his youth,—­as others of his class have done,—­with his pickaxe, to Australia, to rank for a time among “diggers” until called home by the death of the elder son, the heir to the title and estate.  This necessity and this taste for wandering and exploring has helped in some degree to form the independence of character of our men, and also to strengthen rather than to weaken the ties of affection and kinship with the Motherland.  Many men, “nobly born and gently nurtured,” have thus learned self-dependence, to endure hardships, and to share manual labour with the humblest; and such an experience does not work for evil.  Then when communities have been formed, some sort of government has been necessitated.  An appeal is made to the Mother Country, and her offspring have grown up more or less under her regard and care, until self-government has developed itself.