Oceana, or England and her Colonies

Preface

. I have explained so fully in this work my reasons for writing it, that a further account of those reasons would be super fluous. I might therefore, so far, let it go out into the world on its own merits, without an additional word. Some kind of preface, however, is recommended by custom, to which it is always becoming to conform. I avail myself therefore of the opportunity, first, to thank Lord ELPHINSTONE, who was my companion during the more interesting part of my journey, for the use which he has allowed me to make of his portfolio of sketches ; and secondly, to request my Colonial readers, when they find me quoting anonymous opinions or conversations, to abstain from guesses, which will necessarily be fruitless, at the persons to whom I am referring. The object of my voyage was not only to see the Colonies themselves, but to hear the views of all classes of people there on the subject in which I was principally interested.

Where there is obviously no objection, or where I have reason to know that the speakers themselves entertain no objection, I give the names myself. Where I do not give the names, although I introduce nothing which was not said to mo by someone worth attending to, I have involved my de scription with details of time, place, circumstance, ancl initials, all or most of which are intentionally misleading. J. A. E. Oxslow Gardens : December 5, 1883. CONTENTS.

Chapter I. Page

The dream of Sir James Harrington— The expansion of the English race — The American colonies — Second group of colonies — Colonial management—Policy of separation — The England of political economists- Population and national greatness — Popular desire for union — Indiff ference of statesmen — Difficulties — The problem not insoluble . . V 1

Chapter II

The Children of the Sea — The 'Australasian' — Company on board — Storm in the Channel — Leave Plymouth — Great Circle sailing — Sea studies — Emigrants — An Irishman's experience — Virgil — Metaphysical speculations — Old measurement of time — Teneriffe— Bay of Santa Cruz — Sunday at sea — Approach to the Cape 16

Chapter III

The Cape Colony — The Dutch settlement — Transfer to England — Abolition of slavery — Injustice to the Dutch — Emigration of the Boers — Efforts at reconquest — The Orange River treat}- — Broken by England — The war — Treaty of Aliwal North — Discovery of diamonds — Treatjagain broken — British policy at Kimberley — Personal tour in South Africa — Lord Carnarvon proposes a Conference — Compensation paid to the Orange Free State — Annexation of the Transvaal — War with the Dutch — Peace — Fresh difficulties — Expedition of Sir Charles Warren 32

Chapter IV

Arrive at Cape Town — A disagreeable surprise — Interviewers — State of feeling — Contradictory opinions — Prospects of Sir Charles Warren's expedition — Mr. Upington — Sir Hercules Robinson — English policy in South Africa 53

Chapter V

The Indian Ocean — Xew Year's night at sea — Extreme cold — Wave and currents — The albatross — Passengers' amusements — Modern voyages — The 'Odyssey' — Spiritual truth — Continued cold at midsummer . . C2

Chapter VI

First Sight of Australia — Bay of Adelaide — Sunday morning — The harbourmaster — Go on shore — The port — House- — Gardens — Adelaide City — The public garden-* — Beauty of them— Xew acquaintances — The Australian magpie — The laughing jackass — Interviewers — Talk of confederation — Sail for Melbourne — Aspect ofthe coast — Williarnstown . CONTENTS VI

Chapter VII. Page

Landing at Melbourne— First impression of the city — Sir Henry Loch — Government House— Party assembled there— Agitation about New Guinea— The Monroe doctrine in the Pacific— Melbourne gardens- Victorian societv — The Premier — Federation, local and imperial — The Astronomer Roval— The Observatory— EngUsh institutions reproduced — Proposed tour in the Colony— Melbourne amusements— Music— The theatre— Sunday at Melbourne— Night at the Observatory . . .81

Chapter VIII

Expedition into the interior of the Colony— Mr. Gillies— Special train- Approaches to Ballarat— The rabbit plague— A squatter's station— Ercildoun and its inhabitants— Ballarat— Gold mining— Australian farms— A cottage garden— Lake and park— Fish and flower culture— • Municipal hospitality . . . . ..... Kl

Chapter IX

Bendigo — Sandhurst — Descent into a gold mine — Hospitalities — Desire for confederation — Mount Macedon — Summer residence of the Governor — Sir George Vcrdon — St. Hubert's — Wine-growing — Extreme heat — Mr. Castella — Expedition to Fernshaw — Gigantic trees — A picnic — A forest lire — Return to Melbourne « .115

Chapter X

Colonial club— Melbourne— Political talk — Anxieties about England — Federation — Carlyle's opinions — Democracy and national oh racter — Melbourne society — General aspects — Probable future of the Colony 129

Chapter XI

The train to Sydney — Aspect of the country — Sir Henry Parkes — The Australian Club — The public gardens — The Soudan contingent — Feeling of the Colony about it — An Opposition minority — Mr. Dalley — Introduction to him — Day on Sydney Harbour — The flag-ship — Sir James Martin — Admiral Tryon — The colonial navy — Sir Alfred Stephen — Sunday at Sydney — Growth of the town — Excursions in the neighbourhood — Paramatta River — Temperament of the Australians .... 139

Chapter XII

Visit to Moss Vale — Lord Augustus Loftus — Position of a Governor in Xew South Wales — Lady Augustus — Chinese servants — English newspapers — Dinner-party conversations — A brave and true bishop — Sydney harbour once more — Conversation with Mr. Dalley on Imperial Federation — Objections to proposed schemes — The Xavy — The linglish flag . 171

Chapter XIII

Alternative prospects of the Australian colonies — Theory of the value of colonies in the last century — Modern desire for union — Proposed schemes — Representation — Proposal for Colonial Peers — Federal Parliament impossible — Organised emigration — Danger of hasty measures — Distribution of honours — Advantages and disadvantages of parly government in colonies — Last words on South Africa .... CONTENTS VII

Chapter XIV Tage

Sail for New Zealand — The 'City of Sydney' — Chinese stewards — An Irish priest — Miscellaneous passengers — The American captain and his crew —The North Cape — Climate and soil of New Zealand — Auckland — Sleeping volcanoes — Mount Eden — Bishop Sclwyn's church and residence — Work and wages — The Northern Club — Hospitalities — Harbour works — Tendency to crowd into towns — Industries — A Senior Wrangler Sir George Grey — Plans for sightsceing ....... 198

Chapter XV

Tour in the interior of the North Island — Aspect of the country — A colonial - magnate — Federal inn, and the conditions of it — The Maori — Cambridge at the Antipodes — The Waikato Valley — Colonial administration — Oxford — A forest drive — The Lake Country — Rotorua — Ohinemutu — The mineral baths — A Maori settlement — The Lake Hotel .. . . 219

Chapter XVI

Koad to the Terraces — The Blue Lake — Wairoa — An evening walk — The rival guides — Native entertainments — Tarawara Lake — A Maori girl — The White Terrace — Geysers — Vulcanic mud-heaps — A hot lake— A canoe ferry — Kate and Marileha — The Pink Terrace — A bath — A boiling pool — Beauty of colour — Ket urn to Wairoa and Ohinemutu . , . 239

Chapter XVII

Ohinemutu again — Visitors — A Maori village — An old woman and her portrait — Mokoia island — The inhabitants — Maori degeneracy — Return to Auckland — Rumours of war with Russia — Wars of the future — Probable change in their character ....... -252

Chapter XVIII

Sir George Grey's Island — Climate — House — Curiosities — Sir George's views on Cape politics — His hobbies — Opinions on federation — Island retainers — Their notion of liberty — Devotion to their employer — Birds and Animals — Expedition into the interior — A Maori dining-hall — Shark-fishing — Caught in a storm — Run for the mainland — A New Zealand farm and its occupants — End of visit to Sir George — Auckland society — Professor Aldis — General impression on the state of New Zealand — Growth of state debt and municipal debt — Seeming approach of war — Part}- government ... . . . . 2C2

Chapter XIX

Sail for America — The 'Australia' — Heavy weather — A New Zealand colonist — Easter in the Southern Hemisphere — Occupations on board — Samoa — A missionary — Parliamentary government in the Pacific Islands — A .young Australian — The Sandwich Islands — Honolulu — American influence — Bay of San Francisco ..... 289

Chapter XX

The American Union — The Civil War and the results of it — Effect of the Union on the American character — San Francisco — Palace Hotel — The Market — The clubs — Aspect of the city — Californian temperament — CONTENTS VIII TkCV. The Pacific Railway— Alternative routes— Start for New York—Sacra mento Vallev— The Sierra Nevada— Indian territory— Salt Lake— 1 ho Mormons— The Rocky Mountains— Canon of the Rio Grande— Ihe prairies— Chicago— New York and its wonders— The ' Etruria —Fastest passage on record — Liverpool °

Chapter XXI

The English Empire more easily formed than preserved— Parliamentary party government— Policv of disintegration short-sighted and destructive—Probable effect of separation on the colonies— Rejected by opinion in England— Democracy— Power aud tendency of it— The British race —Forces likely to produce union— Natural forces to be trusted— Unnatural to be distrusted— If England is true to herself the colonies will be true to England •i*jU ILLUSTRATIONS. Hot Speihgs, New Zealand Title-page Lake Eoior.UA, fbom Ohinemutu, New Zeala-.;d . . Frontispiece Sydney Gaudens Tj }a** Pa9e lii Sia Geokoe Grey's House, New Zealand . . „ ,* 217 Hinemoia's Bath, New Zealand , .. 23° The Wthite Terrace, New Zealand . . . ,, » 21G The Pink Tereace, New Zealand , •■ 2o0 A Scene at Ohinemctu, New Zealand . . . „ „ 251 A Maori Banquet Hall, New Zealand . . . ,, „ Oceana.

Chapter I

The dream of Sir James Harrington — The expansion of the English race — The American colonies — Second group of colonies — Colonial management — Policy of separation — The England of political economists — Population and national greatness — Popular desire for union — Indifference of statesmen — Difficulties — The problem not insoluble. In the seventeenth ceiitury, when the once brilliant star of Spain was hastening to its setting, when the naval supremacy which Spain had once claimed and made her own was transferred to Great Britain and Holland, and when the superior power of Great Britain, her insular position and her larger population, had assured to her rather than to the Dutch Re public the sceptre of the sea, Sir James Harrington, in a sketch of a perfect commonwealth, half real, half ideal, which he addressed to the Protector, described the future destiny which he believed to be reserved for the Scotch, English, and Anglo-Irish nations. ' The situation of these countries, being islands (as appears by Venice how advantageous such an one is to the like government), seems to have been designed by God for a com monwealth.

And yet Venice, through the straitness of the place and defect of proper arms, can be no more than a commonwealth for preservation ; whereas Oceana, reduced to a like government, is a commonwealth for increase, and upon B OCEANA 2 the mightiest foundation that any has been laid from the beginning of the world to this day — Illam arcta capicns Neptunus compede stringit, Hanc autem captus glaucis amplcctitur uluis. The sea gives the law to the growth of Venice, but the growth of Oceana gives the law to the sea.' In the two centuries and a half which have passed over us since these words were written, the increase of Oceana has exceeded the wildest dream of the most extravagant enthusiast. Harrington would have been himself incredulous had he been told that, within a period so brief in the life of nations, more than fifty million Anglo-Saxons would be spread over the vast continent of North America, carrying with them their religion, their laws, their language, and their manners ; that the globe would be circled with their fleets ; that in the Southern Hemisphere they would be in possession of territories larger than Europe, and more fertile than the richest parts of it ; that wherever they went they would carry with them tlie genius of English freedom.

Yet the vision is but half accom plished. The people have gone out, they have settled, they have cultivated the land, they have multiplied, and although the population of Great Britain and Ireland is now seven-fold greater than it was in the Protectorate of Cromwell, the number of our kindred in these new countries is already double that which remains in the mother country ; but Har rington contemplated that Oceana would be a single common wealth embraced in the arms of Neptune, and the spell which can unite all these communities into one has not yet been discovered. The element on which he calculated to ensure the combination — the popular form of government — has been itself the cause which has prevented it. One free people can not govern another free people. The inhabitants of a province retain the instincts which they brought with them.

They can ill bear that their kindred at home shall have rights and liberties from which they are excluded. The mother country struggles to retain its authority, while it is jealous of extend ing its privileges of citizenship. Being itself self -governed, its NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES 3 i elected rulers consider the interests and the wishes of the electors whom they represent, and those only. The provincial, or the colonist, being unrepresented, suffers some actual in justice and imagines more. He conceives that he is deprived of his birthright. He cannot submit to an inferior position, and the alternative arises whether the mother country shall part with its empire or part with its own liberties. Free Athens established a short-lived dominion. Her subordinate states hated her and revolted from her, though the same states submitted quietly immediately after to the Macedonian despotism.

Republican Rome conquered the civilised world, but kept it only by ceasing to be a republic. Venice, which Har rington quotes, reserved her constitution for herself, ruling her dependencies by deputy. They envied her liberties. They did not share in her glories or her wealth, and she ceased to be what Harrington calls her, even a commonwealth for preserva tion. The English in North America had little to thank us for. Many of them had fled thither to escape from religious or political tyranny. They had forgotten their resentment. They were attached to the old home by custom, by feeling, by the pride of country, which in Englishmen is a superstition. They were bitterly unwilling to leave us. But when we refused them representation in the British Legislature, when English ministers, looking only, as they were obliged to look, to the British constituencies, hampered their trade, tied them down under Navigation Laws, and finally would have laid taxes on them with or without their own assent, they were too English themselves to submit to a tyranny which England had thrown off.

The principles established by the Long Parliament were stronger than national affection. The first great branch of Oceana was broken off, and became what we now see it to be — the truest, in the opinion of some, to the traditions of Harrington's commonwealth, and therefore growing or to grow into the main stem of the tree. But the parent stock was still prolific. The American provinces were gone. New shoots sprang out again, and Oceana was reconstituted once more ; this time, in a form and in a quarter more entirely suited to our naval genius, in the b OCEANA 4 great islands of the South Sea, and at the south point of Africa commanding the sea route to India. The mistakes of George the Third and Lord North were not repeated in the same form, but the spirit in which they were made reappeared, and could not fail to reappear.

The Colonial Minister at home and the Colonial Office represent the British Parliament. The British Parliament represents the British constituencies, and to them and to their interests, ancl their opinions, the minister, whoever he be, and to whatever party he belongs, is obliged to look. The colonies having no one to speak for them, were again sacrificed so long as it was possible to sacrifice them. They were used as convict stations till they rose in wrath and refused to receive our refuse any more. Their patronage, their civil appointments, judgeships, secretaryships, ifcc, were given as rewards for political services at home, or at the instance of politically powerful friends. It cannot be other wise : so long as party government continues, and Secretaries of State have the nomination to public offices, they are com pelled (as a high official once put it to me) ' to blood the noses of their own hounds.' Willingly enough they surrendered most of these appointments when the colonies claimed them.

It is possible that for the governorships which the Crown retains, the fittest men to occupy them are bond fide sought for ; yet it is whispered that other considerations still have weight. Nay, when one such appointment was made a few years back, we were drawn into a war in consequence, because some one was the greatest bore in the House of Commons, and there was a universal desire that he should be sent elsewhere. More serious were the differences which rose continually between the mother country and the colonists respecting the treatment of the native population, whether in Africa, Aus tralia, or New Zealand. The colonists being on the spot, desired, and desire, to keep the natives under control ; to form them into habits of industry, to compel them by fear to respect property and observe the laws.

Naturally too, being them selves willing to cultivate the soil, they have not looked very scrupulously to the rights of savages over fertile districts of MANAGEMENT OF NATIVE RACES 5 which they made no use themselves nor would allow others to use them ; and sometimes by purchase, sometimes by less respectable means, they have driven the natives off their old ground and taken possession of it themselves. The people at home in England, knowing nothing of the practical difficulties, and jealous for the reputation of their country, have obliged their ministers to step between the colonists and the natives: irritating the whites by accusations either wholly false or beyond the truth, and misleading the coloured races into acts of aggression or disobedience, in which they look for support which they have not found.

Never able to persist in any single policy, and producing therefore the worst possible results, we first protect these races in an independence which they have been unable to use wisely, and are then driven ourselves into wars with them by acts which they would never have committed if the colonists and they had been left to arrange their mutual relations alone. The situation has been extremely difficult. It cannot be wondered at, that when war followed on war in New Zealand and South Africa, and British money was spent, and British troops were employed in killing Maoris and Caffres who had done us no harm, and whose crime was believed by many of us to be no more than the possession of land which others coveted, public opinion at home grew impatient. Long bills for these wars appeared in the Budgets year after year.

Political economists began to ask what was the use of colonies which contributed nothing to the Imperial exchequer, while they were a constant expense to the taxpayer. They had possessed a value once as a market for English productions, but after the establishment of free trade the world was our market. The colonies, as part of the world, would still buy of us, and would continue to do so, whether as British dependencies or as free. In case of war we should be obliged to defend them and to scatter our force in doing it. They gave us nothing. They cost us much. They were a mere ornament, a useless respon sibility : we did not pause to consider whether, even if it were true that the colonies were at present a burden to us, we were entitled to cut men of our own blood and race thus adrift OCEANA after having encouraged them to form settlements under our flag.

Both parties in the State had been irritated in turn by their experience in Downing Street, and for once both were agreed. The troops were withdrawn from Canada, from Aus tralia, from New Zealand. A single regiment only was to have been left at the Cape to protect our naval station. The unoccupied lands, properly the inheritance of the collective British nation — whole continents large as a second United States— were hurriedly abandoned to the local colonial govern ments. They were equipped with constitutions modelled after our own, which were to endure as long as the connection with the mother country was maintained ; but they were informed, more or less distinctly, that they were as birds hatched in a nest whose parents would be charged with them only till they could provide for themselves, and the sooner they were ready for complete independence, the better the mother country would be pleased.

This was the colonial policy avowed in private by responsible statesmen, and half confessed in public fifteen years ago. And thus it seemed that the second group of territorial ac quisitions which English enterprise had secured was to follow the first. The American provinces had been lost by invasion of their rights. The rest were to be thrown away as valueless. The separation might be called friendly, but the tone which we assumed was as offensive to the colonists as the intended action was unwelcome, and if they were obliged to leave us it would not be as friends that we should part. The English people too had not been treated fairly. A policy so far reaching ought to have been fully explained to them, and not ventured on without their full consent. A frank avowal of an intention to shake the colonies off would have been fatal to the ministry that made it.

Ambiguous expressions were ex plained away when challenged. We were told that self-government had been given to the colonies only to attach them to us more completely, while measures were taken and language was used which were indisputably designed to lead to certain and early disintegration. The intention was an open secret among all leading states- POLICY OF SEPARATION 7 men, if it can be called a secret at all, and in the high political circles the result was regarded as assured. ' It is no use,' said an eminent Colonial Office secretary to myself when I once remonstrated, 'to speak about it any longer. The thing is done. The great colonies are gone. It is but a question of a year or two.' Those were the days of progress by leaps and bounds, of ' unexampled prosperity,' of the apparently boundless future which the repeal of the Corn Laws had opened upon British industry and trade.

The fate of Great Britain was that it was to become the world's great workshop. Her people were to be kept at home and multiply. With cheap labour and cheap coal we could defy competition, and golden streams would flow down in ever-gathering volumes over -landowners and mill owners and shipowners. . . . The ' hands ' and the ' hands' ' wives ancl children ? Oh yes, they too would do very well : wages would rise, food would be cheap, employment constant. The colonies brought us nothing. The empire brought us nothing, save expense for armaments ancl possibilities of foreign complications. Shorn of these wild shoots we should be like an orchard tree pruned of its luxuriance, on which the fruit would grow richer and more abundant. It was a fine theory, especially for those fortunate ones who could afford parks and deer forests and yachts in the Solent, who would not feel in their own persons the ugly side of it.

But the wealth of a nation depends in the long run upon the conditions, mental and bodily, of the people of whom it consists, ancl the experience of all mankind declares that a race of men sound in soul and limb can be bred and reared only in the exercise of plough ancl spade, in the free air and sunshine, with country enjoyments and amusements, never amidst foul drains and smoke blacks and the eternal clank of machinery. And in the England which these politicians designed for us there would be no country left save the pleasure grounds and game preserves of the rich. All else would be town. There would be no room in any other shape for the crowded workmen who were to remain as the creators of the wealth. What England would become was to be seen OCEANA already in the enormously extended suburbs of London and our great manufacturing cities : miles upon miles of squalid lanes, each house the duplicate of its neighbour; the dirty street in front, tlie dirty yard behind, the fetid smell from tho ill-made sewers, the public house at the street corners.

Here, with no sight of a green field, with no knowledge of flowers or forest, the blue heavens themselves dirtied with soot— amidst objects all mean and hideous, with no entertainment but the music hall, no pleasure but in the drink shop — hundreds of thousands of English children are now growing up into men and women. And were these scenes to be indefinitely multiplied ? Was this to be the real condition of an ever-increasing portion of the English nation? And was it to be supposed that a race of men could be so reared who could carry on the great traditions of our country 1 I for one could not believe it. The native vigour of our temperament might defy the influence of such a life for a quarter or for half a century. Experience, even natural probability, declared that the grand children of the occupants of these dens must be sickly, poor and stunted wretches whom no school teaching, however excellent, could save from physical decrepitude.

The tendency of people in the later stages of civilisation to gather into towns is an old story. Horace had seen in Rome what we are now witnessing in England, — the fields deserted, the people crowding into cities. He noted the growing degeneracy. He foretold the inevitable consequences. Non his juventus orta parentibus Infecit æquor sanguine Punico, Pyrrhumque et ingentem cecidit Antiochum, Ilannibalemque dirum : Sed rusticorum mascula militum Proles, Sabellis docta ligonibus Versare glebas, et severæ Matris ad arbitrium recisos Portare fustes.1 1 They did not spring from sires like 'hesc, The noble youth who dyed the seas With Carthaginian gore ; Who great Antiochus overcame, And Hannibal of yore j THE ENGLISH RACE 9 And Horace was a true prophet. The Latin peasant, the legionary of the Punic wars, had ceased to exist.

He had drifted into the cities, where he could enjoy himself at the circus, and live chiefly on free rations. The virtue — virtus — manliness was gone out of him. Slaves tilled the old farms, Gauls and Spaniards and Thracians took his place in the army. In the Senate and in the professions the Roman was supplanted by the provincial. The corruption spread. The strength which had subdued the world melted finally away. The German and the Hun marched in over the Imperial border, and Roman civilisation was at an end. There is not much fear in England (spite of recent strange political phenomena) that we shall see idle city mobs sustained on free grants of corn ; but a population given over to em ployments which must and will undermine the physical vigour of the race, generations of children growing under conditions which render health impossible, will come to the same thing.

Decay is busy at the heart of them, and the fate of Rome seemed to me likely to be the fate of England if she became what the political economists desired to see her. That ' man shall not live by bread alone ' is as true as ever it was ; true for week days as well as Sundays, for common sense as for theology. These islands cannot bear a larger population than they have at present without peril to soul and body. It appeared as if the genius of England, anticipating the inevitable increase, had provided beforehand for the distribution of it. English enterprise had occupied the fairest spots upon the globe where there was still soil and sunshine boundless and life-giving ; where the race might for ages renew its mighty youth, bring forth as many millions as it would, and would still have means to breed and rear them strong as the best which she had produced in her early prime.

The colonists P.ut they of rustic warriors wight The manly offspring learned to smite The soil with Sabine spade, And faggots they had to cut to bear Home from the forest whensoe'er An austere mother bade. — Martin's Horace, Odes iii. C, OCEANA I might be paying us no revenue, but they were opening up the face of the earth. By-and-by, like the spreading branches of a forest tree, they would return the sap which they were gathering into the heart. England could pour out among them, in return, year after year, those poor children of hers now choking in fetid alleys, and, relieved of the strain, breathe again fresh air into her own smokc-encrusted lungs. With her colonies part of herself, she would be, as Harrington had foreshadowed, a commonwealth resting on the mightiest foundations which the world had ever seen.