world are to be found. The South African colonists look to the watershed of the Zambesi as their northern limit, thus including a vast area from 34° to 18° south. The Australian colonists claim for themselves the fee simple of the South Pacific, and assign no limit to their legitimate influence. The white population in these three quarters of the globe numbers about 10,000,000 souls. These groups are as distinct as possible from the Crown colonies which are governed directly from home, such as Mauritius, Hong Kong, or Ceylon, and also from Natal and Western Australia, which are within a short distance of full enfranchisement. In the case of Natal the presence of a large native element and the unsettled aspect of politics in the south-east of Africa have delayed the gift of Responsible Government. In Western Australia the paucity of the colonists themselves and the undeveloped condition of a huge territory have induced the Crown to retain its hold over the executive powers'. In course of time the reasons for keeping these two colonies in a state of nonage will have disappeared, and they will be classed with their neighbours as Responsible Colonies, with an executive removable at will. Such colonies to a great extent hold their destinies in their own hands. As homes of the great English-speaking race they have preserved the laws, customs, literature, and constitution of the parent country.

(2) Great Britain lost her earliest Colonial Empire in 1783, when the American colonies on the eastern sea-board of the Atlantic raised the flag of independence. This empire dated from the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and was founded partly by religious refugees, Puritans or Roman Catholics, and partly by merchant-venturers and persons who obtained patents and charters from the Crown.

A Bill to introduce Responsible Government in this colony is now before the Imperial Parliament.

When this domain passed out of her power Great Britain set to work to build up a second. The colonisation of Australia began five years (1788), and that of South Africa twelve years (1795) after the date of American independence. This second empire is before us now, and will repay the closest study and attention. Its whole area is about ten millions of square miles, its population 315 millions. It is a complex study, and must be approached in detail. India is a problem in herself, so is Malaya. The Crown colonies, wherever they are situated, present a diversified picture of Crown rule in numerous parts of the globe. But the three great groups of colonies included under the Canadian Dominion, the Cape Colony, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania, and New Zealand, command our first attention as colonies in the strictest sense of the word. represent, as Professor Seeley puts it, the 'overflow of the British nation into distant lands.' England, therefore, is in no vain sense the 'mother of nations.' Her insular position has given her unrivalled opportunities for extending her rule, of which she has availed herself to the uttermost. Although part and parcel of the European system, she has been enabled to look on or take part in continental wars without the sense of deadly, imminent risk to her national liberties. She has held a vantageground of observation, as it were, and profited by her neighbours' wrangles. When the Mediterranean ceased to be the highway of nations and the paths of the Atlantic were open, England and Holland took a leading position.

They

(3) To understand more precisely what British colonisation is, we may contrast it with that of other European nations, such as Spain, Portugal, Holland, and France, who have founded Colonial Empires. As a colonising power Portugal may be said to have long since become effete.

Excepting a few trading and commercial ports, with a nominal suzerainty extending over some area around them, she has no possessions at all. Madeira is a Portuguese possession lying outside Europe, but the very mention of this beautiful island calls up a picture of a nerveless and languishing colonial life. Portugal's claims to parts of Africa on the Congo (somewhat summarily disposed of at the Berlin Conference of 1883), and to the country round Delagoa Bay and along an extended littoral both on the south-east and south-west of Africa, are shadowy and unreal. She has no genuine colonising energy, and her officials sit at the receipt of custom and live on the industry of other nations. Moreover her possessions lie chiefly in tropical and subtropical countries where Europeans cannot thrive. Once she boasted of a magnificent American empire in Brazil, but this was lost to her in 1822. Contrary to general rule, this empire long preserved the monarchical principle, and was governed by a constitutional sovereign of the house of Braganza. The Portuguese colonial policy was the same as that which prevailed amongst their European neighbours, and the fact that the monarchical principle survived was in reality an accident and brought about by affairs in Europe. Brazil became the home of the royal family of Portugal and an integral portion of the 'United Kingdom of Portugal, Algarves, and Brazil' (1815). The separation between the European and American parts of this united kingdom took place seven years later. In every sense of the word Brazil is a greater Portugal.

(4) The greatness of Spain as a colonising power has long since passed away. She left ruined cities and broken dynasties in Mexico and Peru during the period of her first conquests. Spain governed South America for the good simply of Spaniards at home. At one time she

seemed to uphold a 'Munroe doctrine' for South America. The whole continent was regarded as an integral portion of the Spanish monarchy, whither it could import all its cumbrous and stately methods of government. Every appointment in South America was filled up from Madrid, to the exclusion of colonial - born Spaniards. At the same time the Madrid government raised up a colonial aristocracy which, when it came to the point, and Spain was embarrassed by European complications, headed a revolution and created Republics. From Upper Peru. or Bolivia arose Simon Bolivar, the hero of Spanish colonial emancipation. The example of the United States in throwing off the British yoke in 1780-90 was contagious. For many years, however, the Spanish Colonial Empire remained in chaos and disorder, differing greatly from the orderly progress of Brazil under constitutional monarchy. Thus the days of the magnificent Spanish viceroyalties, with all their intrigues, nepotism, corruption, and court favouritism, passed away never to return. Spain never learned the art of maintaining free dependencies. She had no chance of learning her lesson twice as England has learnt it after bitter examples.

(5) Holland colonised in North and South America and in the Indian Archipelago. Her most valuable possessions at one time were Berbice and Demerara. But in North

America the Dutch settlements at Fort Nassau in New Jersey, the Isle of Manhattan, and along the Delaware, were almost immediately swallowed up by the New England colonists. At the beginning of this century she had a strong position at the Cape of Good Hope, but England supplanted her here in 1795. In reality the Cape of Good Hope was governed directly by the Netherlands East India Company, which discouraged genuine colonisation and ruled despotically and by privilege. When Englishmen came to the Cape greater local

freedom and fuller municipal power followed in due time. In the east, and especially in Java, where they have faced a native problem, the Dutch have been more fortunate. The Island Continent of Australia (once called New Holland), New Zealand, and Tasmania (first known as Van Diemen's Land) are proofs of Dutch enterprise in the southern seas, and of their explorations from 1606 to 1642.

(6) At present the two chief colonising powers in Continental Europe are France and Germany, and of the former it has been said that they have colonies but no colonists, and of the latter that they have colonists but no colonies. Since they lost their North American possessions the French have ceased to be successful colonists. There is no room or opportunity for a second Acadian life. All that is left them of their magnificent Canadian dominions are two small fishing islands, St. Pierre and Miquelon, off the coast of Newfoundland, where the Breton and Biscayan fishermen salt their cod and recruit their fleets. It is a pitiful remnant of a great transatlantic empire which appealed so often to the imagination of such men as Coligny, Richelieu, and Montcalm. Algeria is at present France's chief colony, but, like Hindostan, it will never be a country adapted for European colonisation. There is a curious admixture there of Eastern and Western nationality; but a Frenchman can never become an Algerine, as British immigrants, when they reach our colonies, become Canadians or Australians. The country has proved a good training-ground for French generals, and militarism flourishes better there than trade, husbandry or agriculture. Colonial life, pure and simple, seems distasteful to the modern Frenchman. Conquest by force of arms is hardly more to his liking, as the expeditions to Madagascar, Tonquin, and the East have lately proved; for he has failed even here, and the French