The Express.
London, England, 1853-01-03 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, JANUARY 3.

THERE is scarcely an office in our Administration
which a man of imagination and adventurous spirit
might not glow at the thought of holding under so
singular a conjuncture of affairs as the present.
What a season for the Foreign Secretary—the na-
tional honour and safety being placed mainly io his
keeping, while slurs is the only constitutionalGloveni-
ment in Europe! What a season for the Lord
Chancellor, when radical law reform is inevitable!
What a season fur the home Minister, with our pro -
pertly, and our demand for Education, and our
bee% nig Church, and our new militia; and for
the Chancellor of the Exchequer with our
new guld and our Free Trade—our dimi-
nishing numbers and increasing wealth ! and
fur our naval and military ministers, with so much
to be done, and little time to do it in. It might
rouse any man's spirit to have such work and re-
sponsibility offered him as belongs to any of these
offices ; but perhaps there is one office more imposing,
if not more enviable, than any of them—that of the
Colonial Secretary. Perhaps there is no function of
them all that will so thoroughly put • man to the
proof as this. We do not mean that it will prove
whether one man, temporarily occupying an office in
London, can properly rule forty-three colonies.
That is an impossibility on the face of it. What we
shall see is, whether the Minister understands the
nature of colonisation under the changes of our
time, and has any idea what to do, er to attempt.
Rave we paid attention enough to a fact inciden-
tally mentioned by President Flumintx in his recent
Message—that the United States cannot possess any
colonies? It is obvious, the PRESIDENT tells us, that
the attempt to throw open the eastern parts of Asia
" could be made by no power to so great advantage
" as by the United States, Whose constitutional sys-
" tem excludes every idea of distant colonial depen-
" denies." What a vast change in human affairs
is quietly intimated in these few words—taken, as
they must be, io connexion with the exploring ten-
dencies and active habits of the Amerisan people.
Seeing their squadron about to depart for Japan,
with this declaration fresh in all minds, and observ-
ing, at the same time, a Russian expedition setting
forth to wateh the American, we are led irresistibiy
to think of what colonisation meant once, and what
it means now ; and what it is, therefore, that our
Colonial Minister must attend to.

The very word is derived from the idea of tillage.
When the earth was obscurely known, and very par-
tially peopled, the idea of colonisation might well be
that of tillage; and inevitable was the advance from
tillage to commerce; and, as a consequence of com-
merce, came, after lapse of ages, that change which
is taking place now, and on the management of
which human happiness in every region of the globe
henceforth depends. The plain but pregnant truth
—too little attended to—is that the mouths of all
known large rivers are taken possession of; and thus
colonisation, according to the old ideas of it, is at an
end. It needs no showing that colonies must be
seated either on islands or at the mouths of large
rivers. Islands are soon exhaustible, except in cases
of very peculiar production ; and navigable rivers
an inestimable. Putting Africa aside, on account
of its unmanageable climate, the Columbia river was
the last to be appropriated; and hence the bitterness
of the Oregon dispute. Look at the large rivers in
all the outlying countries of the world, and what do
we see? Every where, in new regions, we find one
of two things at the mouth of a great river—a
Russian fort, or an American factory. Neither of
these powers can colonise, according to our ideas of
colonisation. The Russian method of government is
not ono which can be used on a large scale beyond
her own boundaries. She can manage a fort on the
Red River, and a fur-trading settlement in a high
latitude, and a fortified village on • convenient bay
on the eastern shore of the Caspian but au organised
community far from home could not continue Russian.
And the Americans must annex, if they do anything
of the kind at all. They must grant a representation,
and an equal share in the Government, instead of
treating new lands as dependencies ; and for this
purpose, their new lands must be near home. But,
while desiring the consolidation of the West under
their own institutions, they are all the more eager
to form commercial connexions elsewhere, because
they can do nothing else. Hence it is that in all
new places where we do not light upon the Rus-
sians, we find the Americans. They were trading
with the whole eastern coast of China while we were
restricted to Canton. They saw the value of Singa-
pore, as the key to the whole commerce of the East-
ern seas, while we thought of nothing there beyond
pearl-Aiello. Our explorers, penetrating to the
heart of Africa from the north or west, meet, in the
very middle of the continent, Americans selling their
wares, which they have somehow brought up
from the south. So be it. Their enterprise and industry
deserve commercial success ; and that success is, di-
rectly or indirectly, an advantage to everybody. If
it were not so, we might leave it to Russia to look
after the affair. The most despotic of governments,
acting as police towards the most democratic of na-
tions, may save us from all trouble of the sort, espe-
cially as we know that the United States can have no
colonies, and cannot supersede our commerce but by
our own faults. We need not trouble ourselves to be
jealous, as Russia is, or seems to be.
But America is jealous too. Wo would not be-
lieve it on any other authority than her own : but the
New York Herold furnishes as with a curious state-
ment of the suspicions entertained at Washington
with regard to the designs of France and England
about colonising the western world. The French
are accused of a deep and persevering scheme to
steal a march upon the Americans in Mexico—to
settle a state there, and " annex " it to France. It is
difficult to believe this, seeing neither reason nor
evidence to confirm the story ; and perceiving that
we are charged with plots which are abundantly ab-
surd. Not only are we supposed to covet Cuba, but
we are declared to be in a state of public disgrace
about our designs on Hayti !—an ignominy of which
we were not aware. "We have exposed," says the
New York Herald, "the secret diplomacy which
" has been at work, through the agents of France
" and of Great Britain, to procure a footing on the
" island for their respective governments."
But then, again, this acoonilioo of ours, France, is
jealous in her turn—jealous onus. There is hardly
a more carious experience for an Englishman than
living in Cairo or Alexandria for a month or two,
bearing what the French and British say of each
other there,—the French accusing us of wanting, not
only to secure the passage to India, but to appropriate
Egypt bodily—Thebes, Pyramids, Red Sea, and all;
while the English point out that the French consider
the whole of the north of Africa as their own, as they
have appropriated • part. They think in Egypt one
more large ri‘er is to be had yet anti vehement are
the disputes on the spot as to who shall have it.

All these incidents show that instead of colonising
in the old ways men are spreading themselves over
the earth in a different manner and for new pur-
poseslt is not the land that is in question in our
y,imit the people. Russia dreads the settlement or
intercourse of republicans so near the boundaries of
her despotism • and she wants only land enough for
a fort here and there to keep the extremely modern
Americans in check. They, again, want only land
enough for factories, and they are alous only in a
westerly direction,_ though a undantly enter-
prising and secret, between the Capes of Hope and
Horn. The French have France to attend to first,
and North Africa next. Spain and Portugal seem
to be doing their best to lose their few colonies.
Other countries seem to r on trading very quietly.
High over all, as to colonial possession, is Great Bn-
tain, too high for jealousy, too high for fear of anything
but her own folly, too high not to owe an example to
the world of how to over-rase the changes of that
world. Mistress of the seas, with her forty-thros
colonies scattered over the globe, as pledges of her
power and her quality, has she or has she not a
Minister who can duly serve her by fitly serving
them' This is the question which a man C..! adven-
turous mint may burn to answer by his deeds. Such

an one will see and remember that the secret of
American power and success is, unquestionably, in a
republican respect for men as men (leaving out sow
the consideration of complexion) : and the
reason of our ill-success for a century past
with our colonies, lies in our contempt for
distant The broadest hint ever

it fellow-subjects. _
given to us, or any people, on this head was given us
by the Americans themselves, some eighty years ago.
Have we the lesson still to learn? or may we
hope for a Colonial Minister who knows that it will
not do now to force convicts upon good people be-
cause they are colonial, —to play at foot-ball with
constitutions because they are colonial,—to neglect
remonstrances, and break promises, and delay busi-
ness, and utter insults, because they are all about
colonial matters ? If we have a Minister who can
see this he can see more. Ho may perhaps see what
is the right time and method for withdrawing the
hand of authority from any colony who can govern
itself better than he can govern it. lie will see that
every thing really good may be obtained from a
satisfied, a good-humoured colony, while nothing but
mischief can be reaped from a discontented one. He
will see that the time for sowing the earth with war-
fare, as the Greeks did, is over; that the time for
sowing the earth with metropolitan subjection, as
the Romans did, is over; that the time for sowing
the earth with crime, as we ourselves have done, is
over; and that the time is come for aiding our de-
pendencies to establish themselves u communities,
related to ourselves and to each other by whatever
is held in common by all—mind, manners, language,
and
.political principles—and independent in those
particulars in which each is the best judge of its own
interests. It is enough to inspire any man to think
that it may be in his power, while smiling at the
jealousies of all nations, to raise the dignity and in-
fluence of our own by making Canada communica-
tive, and Jamaica courteous, and the Cape sympa-
thising, and Ceylon grateful, and Van Dieman's
Lind cordial, and New Zealand satisfied, and Hong
Kong healthful and helpful, and all happy, and our
best allies, as the best friends of parents are their
own grown-up children—and the better, the older
they grow. As in our own island, the Sovereign has
ceased to think about the proprietorship of t he soil in
the relation between the government and the people,
so it is not the territory which is now important to
the nation at home, but the colonists; the fellowship
and no longer the property. To see this, and to work
out the view in act is a high task for the most
aspiring statesman.