Imperial Federation by George R. (George Robert) Parkin

Author:George R. (George Robert) Parkin [Parkin, George R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783337741716
Google: 8itWwgEACAAJ
Publisher: hansebooks
Published: 2019-02-07T02:41:38+00:00

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CHAPTER VII

MR. GOLDWIN SMITH.

No discussion of the relation of Canada to the Empire, much less any more general discussion of British unity, would be complete which omits special reference to Mr. Goldwin Smith and the views on national questions which he has for many years persistently and strenuously advocated. To these views he has challenged attention anew in his latest volume, Canada and the Canadian Question, which may fairly be supposed to condense all that can be said in favour of the separation of Canada from the Empire, and generally in support of that form of national disintegration which is involved in the great colonies becoming separate states or annexing themselves to other nations. Very considerable interest is given to this latest utterance of Mr. Smith from the fact that he is almost the last conspicuous representative of a school of thinkers which twenty-five or thirty years ago appeared likely to dominate English opinion on colonial affairs.

To these men the United Kingdom was, and was to be, sufficient unto itself; the outlying portions of the Empire were but incidental and temporary {164} connections; the greater colonies were to be voluntarily dropped when they had developed strength to stand alone, or as convenient opportunities to get rid of them arose.

The splendid edifice of Empire built up by the toil and statesmanship of generations was an illusion which gave nothing more than a false prestige; its dissolution was to herald the dawn of a better day.

It will be generally admitted that in England this school of thought is practically dead. In his vigorous and persistent attempt to revive it in Canada Mr. Smith has met with little success. That one of the most brilliant writers and masters of style in the English world should in a distant colony have devoted well-nigh twenty years of his life to weakening the political bond between Britain and that colony with practically no visible result, is of itself a phenomenon which indicates the true tendency of national life. But that in the pursuit of his fixed idea Mr. Smith has done much harm is, I think, scarcely open to doubt. Both in Britain and the United States he has produced false impressions on Canadian affairs. The useful efforts which he has made for the elevation of journalism and for the purification of public life in Canada, the greater service which he might have done in giving high ideals to the Young Dominion, have been neutralized or made impossible by his intellectual slavery to a set of ideas which rendered him incapable of entering into or sympathizing with the deeper motives of {165} Canadian life. A great contemporary thinker and satirist, James Russell Lowell, made the 'barbed arrows of his indignant wit' the terror of corrupt politicians, while still retaining the love of the people whom he served. This he did in virtue of his constant sympathy with national aspirations and the firm faith in his country's future which shines through every page of his bitterest criticisms.

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