The Sun.
London, England, 1869-08-24 00:00:00

meekly to endure the superiority assumed Ly the
native-born Britisher over him of the colonial soil.
Nothing could be more calculated to smother at-
tachment to the Old Country—still called " Home."
But when injustice was added to indignity and ne•
glect,England soon realized the result of the national
inaptness to maintain the affections of colonists
by the war of the revolution and the severance of her
empire. That struggle was the most hideous blunder
ever perpetrated by a nation, and it had its roots in
the same feeling, or want of feeling, to estimate and
conciliate the sentiment of others. The natural
effect of time is to increasa the naive colonial popu-
lation and to lessen the tu'uber of those deeply
attached to England, the place of their birth. Time,
then, acting in conjunction with the whole structure
of English society, and the deep-seated prejudices
of the people, is certain to alienate a colony ; and
this, to some extent, has been achieved in Canada,
in Australia, and in New Zealand. The policy of
England, too, is to sever such tonne ct ion, as produc-
tive of no material advantage; forcing an outlay
while bringing no return, and dangerous in time of
war. We believe this to be a wise policy, consider-
ing the character of the English people. Had the
case been different, what an extraordinary change
would have been wrought in the world ! Let Europe
conceive all the English-speaking people combined
iutoonepower, heartily united in sympat by and inte-
rest as they might have been, but that insular pride
and prejudice effectually barred the way. Now
the situation is that England, • after having given
birth to nations greater than herself, is retreating
back to her own island, with the conviction that
her most dangerous foe is framed from the sett'e-
meuts she first created. It is better for the colo-
nies to be independent, and it is better for Eng-
land to be confined to the island her children ap-
preciate so highly. It is not good that men whose
every interest is in the settlement should call a
far-away land, Home; the very word iinelying the
feeling. of an exile, and as exiles all Englishmen
in colonies regard themselves, their own idea being
to make a mulch cow of the country, and to carry
their hoard to the land of their birth. This is
neither beneficial to the country nor to the happiness
of the individual making his life one long yearn
for home, and his residence to himself and all
around him unsettled. Nothing drains a country
like the flight of its successful men to another land
as they achieve success ; for not only does it drain
off its wealth, but its intellect as well. That blind
allegiance also to another country unfits men for
independence. They become slavish copyists;
nothing is good without the stamp of the other
land ; its tastes become their tastes, its fashions
their fashions, its vices and follies their vices and
follies, while the poverty of the imitation is con-
spicuous to the imitators, tending even more strongly
to impress them with the excellence of the original.
We may conclude with the remark that to unite
widely scattered colonists into an homogenins Em-
pire and maintain it, requires a better educated and
a higher order of inhabitants than to fuse into one
and maintain intact a continental nation such as
is open to the Great Republic. England has failed
to achieve the greater—let us hope that America
may not fail to achieve the lesser task.