Page:The empire and the century.djvu/186

 who declared that they would soon be independent, the wish was father to the thought. They longed to get rid of the burden of preferential trade, and believed that it would only disappear with independence. Hence the men who belonged to, or who were brought up in, the preferential period tended to become Little Englanders. As soon, however, as Colonial Preference was abolished, and instead of relying on the dangerous bonds of so-called commercial interests, we relied on the nobler nexus of a common race, a common language, common institutions, and a common loyalty to the Empire, our relations with the Colonies at once began to improve. The statesman who grew up under these conditions, and who did not find the supposed interests of the Colonies impeding commerce at every turn, became Imperialist in the true sense.

Perhaps the most striking example is that offered by Lord Beaconsfield himself. With his usual quickness and agility of mind, he was able to throw off the effects of the epoch in which he grew up. While England and he were Protectionists, he believed, as I have shown, that the Colonies were nothing but a burden. After the nation had adopted Free Trade and he had acquiesced in the change, he became an Imperialist who did not wish that the 'wretched Colonies' should become independent

V.

I cannot, I regret to say, find space to deal except very slightly with my contention that the colonial Empires of the past, such as Spain, Holland, and Portugal, withered away because they persisted in treating their Colonies as tied houses, and could not realize that the only true foundation of Empire is liberty, commercial and political. I must be content to record the opinion that the attempt to establish a system of commercial exclusiveness within those Empires greatly helped to produce the decay from which they suffered. Other causes, no doubt, contributed, but this