hich are neither one nor the other, where
our own people have been settled and have been granted the land in
possession with the control of an insubordinate population, themselves
claiming political privileges which had to be refused to the rest. This
was the position of Ireland, and the result of meddling theoretically
with it ought to have taught us caution. Again, there are colonies like
the West Indies, either occupied originally by ourselves, as Barbadoes,
or taken by force from France or Spain, where the mass of the population
were slaves who have been since made free, but where the extent to which
the coloured people can be admitted to share in the administration is
still an unsettled question. To throw countries so variously
circumstanced under an identical system would be a wild experiment.
Whether we ought to try such an experiment at all, or even wish to try
it and prepare the way for it, depends perhaps on whether we have
determined that under all circumstances the retention of them under our
own flag is indispensable to our safety.

I had visited our great Pacific colonies. Circumstances led me
afterwards to attend more particularly to the West ladies. They were the
earliest, and once the most prized, of all our distant possessions. They
had been won by the most desperate struggles, and had been the scene of
our greatest naval glories. In the recent discussion on the possibility
of an organised colonial federation, various schemes came under my
notice, in every one of which the union of the West Indian Islands under
a free parliamentary constitution was regarded as a necessary
preliminary. I was reminded of a conversation which I had held seventeen
years ago with a high colonial official specially connected with the
West Indian department, in which the federation of the islands under
such a constitution was spoken of as a measure already determined on,
though with a view to an end exactly the opposite of that which was now
desired. The colonies universally were then regarded in such quarters as
a burden upon our resources, of which we were to relieve ourselves at
the earliest moment. They were no longer of special value to us; the
whole world had become our market; and whether they were nominally
attached to the Empire, or were independent, or joined themselves to
some other power, was of no commercial moment to us. It was felt,
however, that as long as any tie remained, we should be obliged to
defend them