ll remains to be told.
It is not usually noticed that Disraeli's famous phrase "these wretched
colonies will all be independent too in a few years, and are a
mill-stone round our necks,"[31] was used in connection with Canadian
fishery troubles, and belongs to this same region of imperial
pessimism. There is, however, another less notorious but perfectly
explicit piece of evidence betraying the fears which at this time
disturbed the equanimity of the founder of modern imperialism. He had
been speaking of the attempts of liberalism to effect the
disintegration of the Empire; but the speech, which contained his
counter-scheme of imperial consolidation, was itself an evidence of
doubt deeper than that harboured by his opponents. "When those subtle
views were adopted by the country, under the plausible plea of granting
{256} self-government to the Colonies, _I confess that I myself thought
that the tie was broken_. Not that I for one object to
self-government. I cannot conceive how our distant colonies can have
their affairs administered except by self-government. But
self-government, in my opinion, when it is conceded, ought to have been
conceded as part of a great policy of Imperial consolidation."[32]
Disraeli was speaking of the views on colonial government, which he had
held, apparently at the time when Grey and Elgin introduced their new
system. That system had since been developed under Gladstone's
supervision; and, in 1872, the date of Disraeli's speech, it presented
not fewer, but more decided signs of colonial independence. Yet the
statesman who accused the Whigs and Liberals of planning the disruption
of the Empire, never attempted, when in office, to stay the decline of
imperial unity by any practical scheme of federation, and must be
counted either singularly indifferent to the interests of the empire,
or sceptical as to its future. A few years later, when the Imperial
Titles Bill was under discussion, Disraeli again revealed a curious
disbelief in, or misunderstanding of, the character of the
self-governing colonies. He had been {257} challenged to defend his
differentiation of the royal title in India from that authorized in the
rest of the British Empire. It would have been easy to confess that an
imperial dignity, appropriate to the East, would have been singularly
out of place in communities more democratic than Britain herself. But
he chose to argue from the unsubstantiality of separate colonia