Page:The Life and Times of Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt.djvu/372

LIFE AND TIMES OF SIR A. T. GALT The further negotiations with the United States, and the attempt to negotiate commercial agreements with West Indian and South American communities will be discussed in a later chapter.

This steady assumption of greater powers was only one side of the change in colonial relations. Self-government brought new responsibilities as well as new privileges. Throughout the sixties the question of the share the colonies should take in their own defence was the most vexed of all imperial issues and not least so in Canada.

The question came under discussion because of two reasons. The first was the rapid and unquestioned growth in the population and wealth of all the leading colonies; the fifties were years of expansion and prosperity great, if not unchequered, for them all. The second was the change which had been effected in other phases of imperial policy, which involved readjustments in defence relations. Under the old colonial system, it has been seen, the object of empire was held to be trade advantage; the means was stringent political supervision of the colonies by the Mother Country, and the burden of military and civil expenditure assumed by the Mother Country was a debit entry set off against the gain assumed to come from colonial monopoly. Now the trade monopoly had practically disappeared; the leading colony was even claiming and using the power to tax and exclude British goods from its market. Political control was rapidly disappearing; only in foreign affairs was there any substantial survival. It was inevitable that men in Great Britain should ask, why keep up the burdens when the benefits had gone?

Under the First Empire, the old colonies, as men of the Adderley and Godley school were fond of reminding their degenerate successors, were accustomed to bear a great share of their own task of defence. The American 334