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After the breach between the American colonies and the mother-country, the system of transportation to the Transatlantic plantations ceased; it was in the succeeding years that the foul holes called prisons, killed their thousands, and "jail-fever" its tens of thousands.
The strongly protectionist character which the English colonies assumed at a time when England had committed herself to the most extreme free-trade policy tended no doubt to separation, and when the English Government adopted the policy of withdrawing its garrisons from the colonies, when the North American colonies, with the full assent of the mother-country, formed themselves into a great federation, and when a movement in the same direction sprang up in Australia, it was the opinion of some of the most sagacious statesmen and thinkers in England that the time of separation was very near.
The most striking feature of this war was the loyalty and enthusiasm displayed by the colonies in the cause of the mother-country. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand vied with each other in sending volunteers to fight for and uphold the rights of their fellow-colonists in South Africa, thus giving to the world such an evidence of the unity of the British Empire as it had never before seen.
Before the commencement of the present disturbances, the coercive power of the mother-country had always been able to restrain those factions from breaking out into any thing worse than gross brutality and insult. If that coercive power were entirely taken away, they would probably soon break out into open violence and bloodshed.
The concession of preferential duties in favour of England by some of our most important colonies, the small subsidies made to the maintenance of the British navy, and the far more important military assistance given by the colonies to the mother-country in the Egyptian and the South African wars are indicative of the feeling of closer unity which has grown up between England and her colonies, and in addition to the appointment of Agents-General, the introduction of a few eminent colonial judges into the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which is the Supreme Court of Appeal of the Empire, has given the colonies some real representation in Imperial affairs.
Legislation was directed toward a monopoly of its external trade; the places in its government afforded posts of value for occupants from the mother-country; and the colony was looked upon, as the sea still so often is, as a fit place for those who were ungovernable or useless at home.
Indeed, from the standpoint of Realpolitik, it might be argued that in the case of America self-government was shown to be a dangerous gift; for the American colonies, which alone among European settlements had obtained this supreme endowment, were the first, and indeed the only, European settlements to throw off deliberately their connection with the mother-country.
We younger sons, indeed, declared bitter war against the mother-country long before our conservative old province ever dreamed of secession. For Maryland was well pleased with his Lordship's government. I fear that I got at King William's School learning of a far different sort than pleased my grandfather.
Nothing short of a military despotism could maintain the connection of such an island with a mother-country more than three thousand miles distant; and accordingly we find the captain-general of Cuba invested with unlimited power. He is, in fact, a viceroy appointed by the crown of Spain, and accountable only to the reigning sovereign for his administration of the colony.
Practically Massachusetts was almost independent of the mother-country. Its people were purely English, of sound yeoman stock, with an abundant leaven drawn from the best of the Puritan gentry; but their original character had been somewhat modified by changed conditions of life.
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