The Leeward Isles in the West Indies were federated in 1871. The Windward Isles in 1885. The Federation of the Dominion of Canada dates from 1867. The Federation of South Africa might have dated from 1859, but for the insensate folly of English politicians who overruled the instinct of the Queen and the urgent representations of Governor Grey. The greatest administrative change, however, of the reign was the transfer after the Mutiny of the administration of the Indian Empire from the East India Company to the Crown. What with protectorates and annexations, we have added to the territory sheltered by the Union Jack in the course of Her Majesty's reign dominions nearly double the area of the whole Indian Empire as it existed in 1837. There is nothing approaching to this record in the history of the world. The facts of the growth of the Empire are familiar enough; but what, it will be asked by the ill-informed, had the Queen to do with it? Much more than has yet appeared, or will be allowed to appear in her lifetime. For nearly half her reign the Queen was almost the only person in the Empire who seemed to care to keep it together. The work of building up these vast dependencies, of weaving together into selfgoverning federations these nascent Commonwealths, has not been due to fortuitous circumstance. Paley constructed from the existence of a watch the theory of a Providence. It hardly needs a political Paley to infer the existence of a StatesmanQueen from the growth and consolidation of the Empire. During her sixty years' reign the Queen has seen thirty Colonial Secretaries come and go. Some of them were indifferent as to whether the Empire withered or expanded. Others were sworn advocates of the policy of reducing our responsibilities. Very few were really sincerely desirous of extending, federating, or developing the great trust which they were appointed to administer. Yet, despite all difficulties, the Empire has grown, and is growing, at a rate which is at once the envy and the despair of all nations. It would be, of course, absurd to attribute that mighty impulse which is vitalising whole continents with the seed of Empire to any individual, even the most exalted. A world-movement like this is the visible embodiment and incarnation of the genius, of the instinct, and of the necessities of a race. But it may fairly be claimed that during the last sixty years no one mind has contributed so much helpful guidance, generous stimulus, and sage control to the great expansive impulse of this country as that of Her Majesty. Colonial Secretaries have come and Colonial Secretaries have gone; but behind and above and beyond every Colonial Secretary there has ever been the Sovereign, with a continuous policy of her own, steadfastly adhered to under all difficulties, and skilfully carried out under successive Ministries, without ever straining, much less violating, the strictest rules of the Constitution. It is of course impossible to reveal to the world more than a mere suggestion of the marvellous fashion in which Her Majesty has succeeded in ruling as well as reigning in this realm of England. "The Queen reigns, she does not govern," is true. But it would be truer still to say the Queen does not govern, she reigns and she guides. Thirty or forty years since the nation, so far as it could make itself articulate through the mouths of its elective spokesmen, was practically unanimous. Whigs and Tories were alike impatient of the yoke of Empire. Disraeli, afterwards to be the most conspicuous convert and blatant disciple of the Queen whom he proclaimed Empress, was in those distant days a more uncompromising Little Englander than Mr. Labouchere. It was he who spoke of those wretched colonies which hang like a millstone round our neck. Mr. Cobden was in the heyday of his power. The Conservatives vied with the Liberals in deprecating any extension of the Empire. Moralists and political economists agreed in decrying Imperialism. But although Whigs and Tories, Lords and Commons, Press and People, all seemed banded together against the Empire, she who wore the purple never faltered in proclaiming her faith in the destinies of her people and in her loyalty to the civilising sovereignty of which her Throne was the symbol. Loyally abiding by all the rules of the game, the plucky little lady who had. every one against her bided her time, seized her opportunities, and making up by influence what she lacked in power, had at last the supreme satisfaction of seeing the whole nation acclaim as the truth that which she almost single-handed maintained in the councils of the Realm. What she wrote, what she said, is hidden from our eyes. What the others wrote and said, is it not chronicled in the innumerable volumes of Hansard, the broad-acred expanse of journalistic broadsheets? Yet the noisy-talking multitude which had at its disposal all the publicity of the press and all the power of Parliament has been beaten. Nay, more than beaten. It has been converted, in spite of itself, by the invincible force of events interpreted and applied by the lone "Widow of Windsor." Next century, when our children or grandchildren read the secret history of the reign, they will understand better than we can ever do how large and potent a share the Sovereign had in making the Empire over which she was anointed Queen. They will be able to read her private memoranda, her confidential correspondence, and the minutes of Ministerial interviews. In them they will discover the secret of much that at present would appear to be almost incredible were it not that " use lessons marvel." We have grown so accustomed to seeing the course of public policy deflected by an agency which, like the law of gravitation, is as potent as it is invisible, that we think nothing of the fact that "we are all Imperialists now-a-days"-even including so faithful a Cobdenite as Mr. John Morley himself. "Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here! By bravery's simple gravitation drawn !” In the great tug of war between the politicians and the Monarchy over the policy of the Empire, the Monarch has triumphed all along the line. No doubt in Emerson's familiar phrase "she hitched her wagon to a star." That is to say, she succeeded in converting her most determined opponents, because the force of things, the law of national growth, the exigencies of a rapidly increasing population, all fought for her as the stars in their courses fought against Sisera and his host. But hers was the instinct or intuition which enabled her to perceive where the governing forces lay, to discern them where they worked hidden from the eyes of politicians, and to identify herself boldly with them when they were almost universally discredited by the sagacious counsellors who surrounded the Throne. It is very difficult to make the ordinary citizen of to-day understand the kind of talk that was habitual among the officials of Downing Street on this subject only thirty years ago. It is hardly too much to say that the note of the Colonial Office in the sixties was flat treason to the Empire. The officials in the first half of the sixties were Sir Henry Taylor and Sir F. Rogers, better known as Lord Blachford. In the autobiography of Henry Taylor we have the frankest possible expression of opinion on the part of the chiefs of the Colonial Office that the Empire should be broken up, and that the Crown was working against the interests of the Realm by its ceaseless effort to develop Colonial loyalty. What, for instance, can be more explicit than this extract from a letter written by Henry Taylor to the Duke of Newcastle, February 20th, 1864 :— "As to our American possessions (including, of course, the great Dominion of Canada, to which indeed the writer was previously referring)-As to our American possessions, I have long held and often expressed the opinion that they are a sort of damnosa hereditas, and when your Grace and the Prince of Wales were employing yourselves so successfully in conciliating the colonists, I thought that you were drawing closer ties which might better be slackened, if there were any chance of their slipping away altogether. I think that a policy which has regard to a not very far off future should prepare facilities and propensities for separation. . . . In my estimation the worst consequence of the late dispute with the United States (about the Trent) has been that of involving this country and its North American provinces in closer relations and a common cause. . . . All that I would advocate is a preparatory policy, loosening obligations and treating the repudiation by the colonists of legislative and executive dependence as naturally carrying with it some modification of the absolute right to be protected." Again he wrote, March 25th, 1865, to say that he looked in vain to find any mutual interest between Canada and Great Britain : "The North American, like the Australian colonies, and like the Cape, have very naturally renounced all consideration of English interests, and renounced and resented every exercise of English power, so often as it conflicted in the slightest degree with colonial interests or sentiments. If (notwithstanding the Irish element in their populations) they have any sentiment of attachment to England (which I doubt) it is one which is ready to be converted into actual animosity on the slightest conflict of interests or interference with independent action." In a subsequent letter this typical Downing Street Official pleaded for the abandonment of Canada, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and all the North American Colonies. Even Halifax was not wanted. "If we had nothing to protect and nothing to quarrel about in these parts might not our navy be content with Bermuda?" Nor was this the mere eccentricity of an individual. Sir F. Rogers (afterwards Lord Blachford) wrote to Sir H. Taylor: "I go very far with you in the desire to shake off all responsibly governed colonies; and as to North America, I think if we abandon one we had better abandon all." "Better abandon all "-that was the note of Downing Street. Was there not urgent need that at Windsor we should have a more Imperial spirit than that which used the Colonial Office to alienate the Colonies? In studying any subject, from the Queen upon her throne to the beggar on the dunghill, the easiest and most natural method of beginning it to start from the place where we happen to be standing at the moment. Therefore, in illustrating the influence of the Queen upon the development of the Empire, I shall jump into the middle of the subject from the jumping-off point presented by the topic of the present hour. The one Imperial question that has been this year before the country is the South African question. The arrival of Mr. Rhodes, the reappointment of the Select Committee, the agitation in South Africa, lead us naturally to consider this as of all others the Imperial problem of the hour. I propose, therefore, to judge the rival factors in our Constitution from the standpoint of South Africa. It is a touchstone as good as any other. It has been with us long enough to afford ample opportunity of testing and proving the comparative wisdom and unwisdom of the Sovereign and her subjects. I shall not attempt an exhaustive survey; but, accepting the test which contemporary history or the daily newspaper brings to my hand, I apply it to the conduct of the Monarch and her Elected Councillors in a great crisis of the Empire, with results which, I venture to believe, will somewhat surprise those amongst us who are still under the sway of the delusion that vox populi is necessarily vox Dei when it is opposed to the will of the Monarch. I am not for a moment pretending that the Sovereign is infallible, neither am I going to maintain that the Queen has always been wiser than her subjects. It would indeed be difficult to do so just after the public confession made by the Prime Minister that in the one great war of the reign we had "backed the wrong horse," a blunder for which the Queen was equally responsible with her people. The Crimean crime was a folly, not to say a frenzy, which carried away Court, Cabinet, and populace. But I think it will be admitted, even by the most prejudiced opponent of the hereditary Monarchy, that in the crucial case of South Africa, at the turning point of its destiny, wisdom lay not with the Elect of the People, but with that "accident of an accident," the crowned heir of a hundred Kings. D I. THE KEYSTONE OF THE IMPERIAL ARCH. South Africa, it is now universally admitted, is the keystone of the Imperial arch. The byway of the Suez Canal possesses a certain importance in times of peace, but from the point of view of the Empire in times of storm and stress and war it can hardly be said to count as an available factor in our national resources. With the Cape it is far otherwise. Whether we have regard to India or to Australia and the fair lands of far Cathay, the Cape is the universal stepping-stone of the world-wandering Briton. Without the Cape the world-empire which our fathers have reared, and which we their sons are rapidly filling with English-speaking homes, would be impossible. Plant the Tricolour or the German Eagle on the slopes of Table Mountain, and our communications with our nascent Commonwealths in Australia would exist but by sufferance of Paris or Ber with regard to In the sument of the possession of enabled us to may easily. will save it it only as a tion, a dock and repair, or arms, the imeyrie from sible to swoop the trade world, that is essential to neither our our trade except on sufout a coaling mon's Bay been forgotten except Lord Churchill, of the spleen, SOUTH AFRICA IN 1854. NATAL UES Zulus PORTU lin. Its value India is vital. preme mo Mutiny the South Africa save India. It happen that it again. Nor is coaling stafor refitting as a place of pregnable which it is pos could exist ferance with station at Si has never who, in a fit was willing to South Africa hand over to Germany in return for a free hand in Egypt. Even in the darkest hour of Little Englandism, the coaling station at Simon's Bay was admitted to be indispensable. But it is now recognised that the coaling station irreducible minimum entails much more than an allotment garden on the toe of the continent. Who says coaling station must say Cape, who says Cape must say the Colony, and who says the Colony must say South Africa up to the Zambesi. Nor is it merely for the sake of the coaling station that South Africa has come to be regarded as indispensable. The world is filling up. Great tracts have been pegged out by hostile and rival Powers within which no British emigrant need apply. South Africa is the temperate end of the one great continent that awaits to be colonised and civilised. We have but scratched its surface as yet, but it has poured out diamonds as from the mines of Golconda, while the fabled river of Pactolus is thrown into the shade by the auriferous splendour of the Rand. So generally |