§ 2. Present and Future Need for Co-operation.

The aid that is required is not simply to meet an unforeseen and temporary emergency not likely to recur; the need for aid is not only pressing, but it is a permanent and growing need; and the aid from the colonies to be effective must be aid in proportion to their wealth and population, and must grow with their growth.

In the last resort, therefore, such aid-adequate aid-can only be afforded, whatever form it may take and whatever the conditions of control adopted, by the consent of the colonies to the imposition of new taxation for the purpose. The continuous expense of defence can only be met from a continuous revenue. How, then, is this consent to be obtained? What reasons are to be brought to bear on the colonial democracies to induce them to take up this new burden?

It needs no showing that the aid of the colonies must be voluntary. In all the essential elements. affecting their economic interests the self-governing colonies are practically independent nations. They can impose what taxes they please—even protective duties against the mother country-and they can make any experiments they choose in industrial legislation. They have full command over their lands, labour, and capital. For this country to insist on the payment of "ship-money" would be more likely, as in the past, to arouse civil war than to further national defence.

§ 3. Defence a Primary Duty for every Nation.

It may, perhaps, be thought that this insistence on the de facto national independence of the selfgoverning colonies is fatal to the request for aid for imperial defence. The cause generally assigned by recent writers for the revolt and final separation of the thirteen American colonies is the growth of the idea of nationality; and the immediate occasion of the revolt was the attempt to raise revenue ostensibly for imperial defence. How, then, shall we venture to propose to the present colonies similar contributions for similar purposes?

The answer is that the recognition of the idea of nationality carries with it the recognition of the primary duty of defence.

Let it be supposed that the ultimate goal of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa is in each case national independence; and that through fear of imperilling this issue they refuse to contribute a proportionate share to imperial defence. The only possible alternative is that they themselves must provide for their own defence, and for the enforcement of their rights and privileges against foreign powers. If, then, the colonies recognise this primary national duty there can be no question that they must also provide an effective naval force. They must follow the example of the United States in defence if they elect to follow that example in independence. With the best of good will the United Kingdom cannot undertake for the future to keep up

alone the sea power of the empire; and if the empire is broken up, and for nominal sovereignty an alliance is substituted, the other allies must bear their share.

The point is that whatever the degree of national independence claimed for the colonies, the time has come when each and all must consent to provide a revenue for maritime defence.

If Canada, for example, in the future becomes an independent nation or joins the United States, she must, in either case, contribute to the maintenance of naval power; and if she elects to remain an effective part of the British Empire this obligation is in no way diminished.

§ 4. Imperial Co-operation most Efficient and

Economical.

Fortunately, with the growth of freedom and selfgovernment, there has been also a growth of imperial as well as of national sentiment, and at present there is no question either of breaking away from the United Kingdom or of amalgamation with foreign

states.

And it is easy to see from general considerations that the local defence of the seaboard of the colonies will be best promoted by a close organisation with the British navy.

If the self-governing colonies accept the principle that they ought to contribute in proportion to their wealth and population to the naval defence of the Empire, if they are willing to provide an adequate revenue for the purpose, they would no doubt desire

that the most effective use possible should be made of their contributions.

If each colony aims, in the first place, at securing only its own local defence, or the trade routes in which it is most concerned, if it insists that its own contributions shall be spent entirely under its own control, there will be a loss of economy and a loss of efficiency. The solution suggested in Adam Smith's scheme of imperial federation is found in the principle of representation. He uses the term "the States general" of the empire, but it is not essential to the principle that it should take that form. What is needed is that each colony should in some way have a share in the control and the management of imperial defence. And as an ideal this plan seems much to be preferred to the adjustment of local expenditure to local needs. Defence is eminently a duty of the central government, and in any real empire there must be some such central authority.

It is also obvious that if the colonies contribute to an imperial navy they must have a voice in the uses to which it shall be put. But this can only mean that they have a voice in the appointment of the central authority which must decide on peace and war, and on the questions on which the issue depends.

At the same time, we are warned by history, and by the actual growth of institutions, that the approach to an ideal must be made by tentative steps. Adam Smith was no advocate of systems meant to be established by sudden revolutions. He looked on colonial

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representation as the natural development of the British constitution. And, applying his methods and ideas, there is no reason why the colonies should not begin, in the matter of their contributions to the naval force of the empire, by making provision for local needs and special trade routes. On this plan they would follow the lines of historical development. If we go far enough back we find that in England, not only particular localities, but even particular traders, and in some cases particular bishops, made their own contributions of ships of war for the protection of property and trade.'

Those who prefer modern science to ancient history for the suggestion and clarification of ideas, may be referred to the laws of biological development; the highest organism in its embryonic stages goes through all the forms of previous existence, the only difference being that the changes of centuries are compressed into hours or moments. If the colonies begin with the methods of the Saxon period we may be sure they will rush over the intervening centuries, if only they know, consciously or unconsciously, the final type to which they ought to move.

§ 5. Sources of Revenue for Imperial Defence.

If the colonies undertake to make continuous contributions to the naval forces of the empire, it

1 See Stubbs's Constitutional History, vol. i. pp. 105, 117, 593. In Saxon times each shire was bound to furnish ships in proportion to its number of hundreds; the shire was in origin an under-kingdom, and in the twelfth century the ships of different localities sailed under their own local magnates as captains.