forgotten, that to procure the support of O'Connell's tail, they have surrendered the government of Ireland and the direction of the nation to the Popish faction, whose bond of cement is the repeal of the Union, that is, the dismemberment of the empire. True, by establishing a free trade in timber, we should annihilate the industry of our North American Colonies, and throw them at once into the arms of the United States, and cut off at once 600,000 tons of British shipping, and altogether extinguish both our maritime superiority and national independence. True, by equalizing the duties on Foreign and British sugar, we should utterly destroy our West India Colonies, and perpetuate that hideous tearing of 200,000 negroes from the shores of Africa, which we have professed ourselves so anxious to prevent. But what does all that signify?—the urban constituencies must be propitiated; a few stray seats at the next election may turn the balance in favour of the Destructive or Conservative party; and the cry of cheap sugar and cheap bread may catch these stray votes and cast the balance.
It is childish to descant always upon the weakness and imbecility of ministers, or suppose that a tortuous policy, so flagrantly dangerous and impolitic as that which we have just been considering, is to be ascribed to the mere recklessness or want of capacity of our present rulers. It is perversity in the public mind which is the real source of the evil—it is the short-sighted views of the numerous constituencies that have so long rendered a remedy impossible. The colonies are wholly unrepresented in the House of Commons; the ten-pounders have the disposal of the majority of the seats in that Assembly; to buy cheap is their immediate interest, and it matters little to the short-seeing masses what effect that cheap buying may ultimately have upon their own or the national interests. Here is the true secret of colonial misgovernment; we are governed by masses who think only of buying cheap, and the interest of the colonies is to sell dear. Eight years ago we foresaw, and distinctly predicted this effect, as necessarily flowing from the Reform Bill.
All the colonial calamities that have since occurred are but the accomplishment of our predictions in this particular.[1]
The colonies were not actually represented under the old constitution, but they were virtually so, because colonial wealth found an easy entrance into Parliament through the means of the close boroughs. The Whigs have destroyed that avenue for colonial representation in the House of Commons; time will show whether they have not destroyed with it the colonial empire and national independence of Great Britain.
- ↑ Blackwood's Magazine, September 1831, vol. xxx. p. 436.
