. The modern English idea is that everyone must take care of
himself. Individuals or aggregates of individuals have the world before
them, to open the oyster or fail to open it according to their
capabilities. The State is not to help them; the State is not to
interfere with them unless for political or party reasons it happens to
be convenient. As we treat ourselves we treat our colonies. Those who
have gone thither have gone of their own free will, and must take the
consequences of their own actions. We allow them no executional
privileges which we do not claim for ourselves. They must stand, if they
are to stand, by their own strength. If they cannot stand they must
fall. This is our notion of education in 'manliness,' and for immediate
purposes answers well enough. Individual enterprise, unendowed but
unfettered, built the main buttresses of the British colonial empire.
Australians and New Zealanders are English and Scotchmen who have
settled at the antipodes where there is more room for them than at home.
They are the same people as we are, and they have the same privileges as
we have. They are parts of one and the same organic body as branches
from the original trunk. The branch does not part from the trunk, but it
discharges its own vital functions by its own energy, and we no more
desire to interfere than London desires to interfere with Manchester.

So it stands with us where the colonists are of our race, with the same
character and the same objects; and, as I said, the system answers.
Under no other relations could we continue a united people. But it does
not answer--it has failed wherever we have tried it--when the majority
of the inhabitants of countries of which for one or other reason we have
possessed ourselves, and of which we keep possession, are not united to
us by any of these natural bonds, where they have been annexed by
violence or otherwise been forced under our flag. It has failed
conspicuously in Ireland. We know that it would fail in the East Indies
if we were rash enough to venture the experiment. Self-government in
connection with the British Empire implies a desire or a willingness in
those who are so left to themselves that the connection shall continue.
We have been so sanguine as to believe that the privilege of being
British subjects is itself sufficient to secure their allegiance; that
the liberties which we concede will not be used for purposes which we
are unable to tolerate; that, be