nevertheless remain the most eloquent and
exalted expression of wise colonial policy that is to be found in our
language. If it was not till a generation later that he applied the same
arguments to the case of Ireland, the arguments nevertheless did apply
to Ireland almost word for word. Proximity to the Mother Country does
not affect them. Mr. Gladstone attacks the problem on its human side,
showing that coercive government is always and everywhere bad for those
who administer it, and bad for those who live under it, expensive,
inefficient, demoralizing, and that the longer it is maintained the more
difficult it is to remove. He condemns the fallacy of preparing men by
slow degrees for freedom, and the "miserable jargon about fitting them
for the privileges thus conferred, while in point of fact every year and
every month during which they are retained under the administration of a
despotic Government renders them less fit for free institutions." As to
cost, "no consideration of money ought to induce Parliament to sever the
connection between any one of the Colonies and the Mother Country," but
the greater part of the cost, he urged, was due to the despotic system
itself. His words are more applicable to the Ireland of to-day than the
Ireland of the middle of the nineteenth century, for it is one of the
many painful anomalies of Irish history that that country, at the lowest
point of its economic misery, was paying a relatively enormous
contribution to Imperial funds, and, incidentally, to the colonial vote,
while the Colonies were maintained at a loss correspondingly large, and
at times even larger.[31] But cost is, after all, a very small matter.
The first consideration is the character and happiness of human beings,
and here Gladstone's words, like Durham's, have a universal application.
If the reader cannot study them at length in Hansard, he should read
the great speech on the New Zealand Bill in 1852, and Lord Morley's
masterly summary of others. I conclude with a passage quoted by him from
a platform speech at Chester in 1855, the year when the Australian
Constitutions were sanctioned. "Experience has proved that if you want
to strengthen the connection between the Colonies and this country, if
you want to see British law held in respect, and British institutions
adopted and beloved in the Colonies, never associate with them the hated
name of force and coercion exercised by us at a distance over their
rising fortu