THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW. VOL. CLVI. No. 6.-DECEMBER 1901. THE PARADOX OF LIBERAL IMPERIALISM. THE Liberal party can scarcely look back upon the past five years with any degree of satisfaction. The foreign policy of England during that time has been conducted on principles which may be praiseworthy and enlightened, but which are certainly not Liberal. Yet some of the strongest supporters of that policy and of its disastrous results have been men who sit on the Front Opposition Bench. As for the record of the present Government in home affairs, perhaps the less said about it the better. The time, indeed, has not been propitious for what our leading newspaper elegantly calls "fiddling" with social reform. And we who think that this kind of "fiddling " is all-important to the people of this country and this Empire, are compelled sorrowfully to admit that neither at the present moment, nor for years to come, is there the slightest chance of anything substantial being done to ameliorate social conditions or to rectify social abuses. Monopolists will continue to grind the faces of the poor; taxation will continue to be imposed on those least able to bear it; the governing classes (for there are still "governing classes") will continue to govern in their own interests and those of their friends, fortified by an abundance of that kind of patriotism which is so sustaining because other people pay for it. And why? There is only one reason: South Africa, that land which to Mr. Froude seemed, twenty years ago, to be "lying under a curse," lies to-day under the blackest curse in its history, and has succeeded in dragging England with it under the same dark shadow. Yes; it is useless to deny that the war has changed the face of politics in England for years to come; it has VOL. 156.-No. 6. 2 S shattered, for the time being, the once great Liberal party; and one begins to doubt whether we shall ever know that party again as we once knew it, united, coherent, possessed by common ideals, penetrated by common enthusiasms. Let it at once be said that South Africa was only the proximate, and not the ultimate, cause of the split in the Liberal party. The ultimate cause was, of course, the conflict of opinion among Liberals on what has come to be known as "Imperialism." We are all tired of the word "Imperialism," and of so-called definitions of the word, which define nothing. Suffice it to say that there are Liberals who have accepted this new gospel-it only dates from D'Israeli's day and who have labelled themselves, or have been labelled, Liberal Imperialists; and there are Liberals who have frankly rejected it, and who have been styled "Little Englanders," though, for a reason to be shown presently, we shall here call them simply "Non-Imperialists." Now let us mark time for a moment. Lord Rosebery has recently told us that the issue on which these two parties are divided is the issue as between an "insular" view of national affairs and a broad, comprehensive, and truly Imperial view. It is curious that a man of Lord Rosebery's experience and judgment should make such a profound mistake. On that issue there is no division in the Liberal party. There is not, one imagines, a single Liberal of any importance who is, strictly speaking, a "Little Englander "-i.e., one, briefly, who holds that England would be better, politically and economically, without its colonies and dependencies over sea. There are Non-Imperialists in the party, but there are no "Little Englanders." We who are Non-Imperialists have as fervent a faith in Greater Britain and in the destiny of the AngloSaxon race as the most "patriotic" Jingo of them all; and we are Non-Imperialists simply because we have seen more and more clearly of recent years that what is called Imperialism is essentially anti-Liberal. Perhaps we do not talk quite so much about the greatness and the glory of the British Empire as our Imperialist friends; but, like Mr. Watts-Dunton's gipsy and the sunset, while they enjoy talking about it" we "enjoy letting it soak in." commend that distinction between the two parties to Lord Rosebery as being more true to the facts than the one he has given us. However, to come back to our argument, the most interesting political question of the immediate future is, which school of thought is to win the allegiance of the Liberal party as a whole, Imperialist or Non-Imperialist? The Tory Press tells us, in its assertive way, that Imperialism is bound in the nature of things to win; that the Imperialist leaders are to rally round them "all that is best and soundest" in English Radicalism; and that the result is to be a strong and united "National Liberal party," which even the Times will be able to regard with a certain amount of satisfaction. All We this may be true, but we who are Non-Imperialists can hardly be expected to believe it. On the contrary, we believe that the "main stream of Liberalism" does flow in the direction indicated by Mr. Morley and Mr. Courtney, rather than in that indicated by Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Henry Fowler. We believe, indeed, that a healthy Liberalism is incompatible with Imperialism, and that what is called Liberal Imperialism is, to put the matter briefly, a complete contradiction in terms. What, then, is our charge against the so-called Liberal Imperialists? Simply this: that so long as they remain in the region of the abstract their sentiments are so innocuous that the most pious Liberal can, as a rule, subscribe to them with an unruffled conscience; but when they descend to the concrete, they not only fail to abide by these enlightened sentiments, but they are found to be active supporters of lines of policy and conduct which can be demonstrably shown to be inconsistent with acknowledged Liberal principles. After all, vague generalities are of almost no value. They must be brought to the test of the concrete case. And so we propose to submit the opinions of Liberal Imperialists to this test and to see how they emerge from it. South Africa is, of course, our concrete case. How do Liberal Imperialists stand with regard to it? Let us see. We suppose Lord Rosebery's phrase "A free, tolerant, and unaggressive Empire," sums up not only what Imperialists would wish the British Empire to be, but what they actually believe it to be at the present moment. It is indeed a beautiful phrase, "free, tolerant, unaggressive." Unfortunately this phrase can be, and in point of fact is, used by the most eccentric chauvinists quite innocently and conscientiously. These kind of people revel in beautiful phrases, and are (teste D'Israeli) proverbially indifferent as to whether they correspond to, or have any relation with, facts or not. In the matter of South Africa, then, have we really been "free, tolerant, unaggressive"? The adjective "free" may be dismissed from the discussion as being irrelevant, though it may be as well to remark that the suspension of the constitution in Cape Colony, one of the most significant results of our South African policy, suggests that the word should be taken with saving qualifications. But "tolerant and unaggressive"! Now, surely, there is some mistake here. Mr. Chamberlain is an extremely clever and successful man; he has certain qualities which many of our enthusiastic Radical friends who invariably lose their temper when they speak of him would do well to cultivate but he is perhaps the last person in this world whom any of us would describe as "unaggressive" or "tolerant." And Mr. Chamberlain stands for the last five years of our policy in South Africa. If there is any merit attaching to the results of that policy, he has it; if there is any merit attaching to that policy— a country drenched in blood and tears, a great colony inexorably "slipping from our grasp "-it is his. But let us not wilfully deceive ourselves. The whole course of the Chamberlain-Kruger negotiations was marked by a tone and temper on the part of the Colonial Secretary which was aggressive, intolerant and irritating in the extreme. Mr. Kruger had his faults, too; but that is beside our present point. There never were a series of despatches penned by an English minister less informed by the spirit of tolerance than those sent by Mr. Chamberlain to President Kruger during 1896–99. They were not even decently polite. And what did this signify? It surely signified that there was constantly present in Mr. Chamberlain's mind the impertinent idea that it was not necessary to be either tolerant or polite when dealing with a small and weak power. "Unaggressive," says Lord Rosebery. But Mr. Chamberlain constantly increased his demands on President Kruger, notwithstanding the fact that these demands, many of them, were such as we should not have dared to make on a great Power, and that, to make the thing respectable, Mr. Chamberlain had to put forward the allegation that the Transvaal was a vassal State, an allegation which, as Sir Edward Clarke said, was "a denial of fact and a breach of national faith." "Tolerant "tolerance denotes a certain forbearance towards, nay, a certain sympathy with, ideals which are opposed to one's own. We have a certain ideal of government, the French have another, the Russians another, the Boers another; yet how often have we heard supporters of Mr. Chamberlain and of this war argue that because the Boers had, for example, an "oligarchical" government, therefore it was our duty to show them our own supposed better way? It is a truism, of course, that a good government is one that the people of the country consider to be good; yet we have constantly the sad spectacle-as in South Africa of Englishmen going round the world, settling here and there, and raising an indignant howl if they do not find, so to say, Trial by Jury, a House of Lords, and an Established Church in full swing in the country of their adoption. Superior virtue is an admirable thing: but let us have some of Lord Rosebery's "tolerance" for those unfortunate creatures who are not in the same state of grace as we. And if it be argued, as it legitimately may be argued, that the presence of a large number of subjects of Great Britain in the Transvaal, men who were allowed by the Transvaal Government to enter the country and settle there for the purposes of trade and commerce-gave us an additional right to see that they were properly treated by the Government of that country, let us never forget that we had practically forfeited that right by the criminal conduct of many of these citizens, in attempting, with the aid and approval of the Prime Minister of the Queen in Cape Colony, to capture the Transvaal by force of arms. The Prime Minister of Cape Colony directed an invasion of the territories of the South African Republic; we exculpated him of "dishonourable conduct" in the House of Commons; we hushed up the enquiry into the circumstances of that invasion at the critical moment for a reason still unknown to the public: did not this give President Kruger's Government an additional claim on our tolerance and forbearance? Mr. Chamberlain admitted that it did; but his despatches never breathed that sweet reasonableness which the occasion seemed to demand. And so, looking at the whole matter as dispassionately as possible, we are compelled to the conclusion that, in our dealings with the late South African Republic, that unaggressive and tolerant spirit was absent which would have informed them if we had been negotiating with a great Power, and which we all think so admirable in any circumstances. But there is behind this a more serious question. If one principle more than another has characterised Liberal foreign policy in the past it has been that of the supremacy of moral considerations over considerations that are material or political. This marks it off sharply from traditional Tory foreign policy. The honest Tory recognises no right but that of might, no consideration except one: the (supposed) material interests of his country. As Lord Salisbury has recently pointed out, the one question to be asked concerning any course of action in foreign affairs is, "Is it likely to further British interests?", the question "Is it right?" being, doubtless, only for persons of the type of the nursemaid who occasionally crosses the mind" of the Prime Minister. Well, that is the Bismarckian theory, and there is a good deal to be said for it, but it is not Liberalism. We do not say that the principle of the supremacy of right has always been acted upon by Liberal statesmen in their foreign relations; but it is the ideal of Liberalism. And here is the important point-out of this ideal has been born the regard which Liberals have always had for small nationalities. They have always looked with sympathy on the efforts of a small people rightly "struggling to be free," on the ground that a great nation has no moral right to extinguish the life of a little one in order to advance her own material interests, any more than a strong individual has the right to take the life of a weak one for the same purpose. This, then, is the Liberal tradition: a scrupulous regard for the rights of small peoples, and a sympathy with their aspirations for distinct national life. We have said above that Imperialists "are found to be active supporters of lines of policy and conduct which can be demonstrably shown to be inconsistent with acknowledged Liberal principles." Is it necessary to point out that the policy of the Government in regard to the late South African Republics has been wholly inconsistent with this particular Liberal principle? In the conduct of the negotiations before the war broke out, in our contemptuous refusal to treat with the Boers except on terms of un |