Statute Of Westminster
Commonwealth Emerges from Empire
Whatever may be Great Britain’s role in the future of world relations, she is assured immortality by the many institutions affecting the rights of man which she has either pioneered or invented. And of all of them, the British Commonwealth and Empire stands out as a unique phenomenon in the history of political institutions.
The British Commonwealth and Empire has as little resemblance to the great empires of Greece and Rome as it has to the more modern empires established by, say, France, Spain and Portugal. It contains not only a group of peoples of widely differing race and of every creed, but has within its orbit a variety of modes of government which surveyed overall provide an almost complete history of the British concept of man’s rights, and his development towards his exercise of those rights. Side by side with great self-governing Dominions, which are as democratic in their constitutions as the Mother Country herself, are colonies governed more or less directly from Whitehall, dependencies, and protectorates, and all benefiting from the interplay of that special relationship which has been created and which operates on the same kind of basis that members of a family employ to regulate their relationships within the close circle of kinship.
The Commonwealth and Empire which exists today has no relationship with the first colonial empire which was dissolved by the Treaty of Versailles of 1783. This earlier empire dated from the great territorial discoveries made in the closing years of the fifteenth century, pioneered by the Portuguese, and by the Spaniards who gave their support to immigrant Genoese navigators of outstanding skill and courage. For simultaneously with the expeditionary voyages of Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus, the Cabot brothers, sailing out of Bristol, made discoveries scarcely less important than the Cape route to India or the existence of the Indies. But there was this difference between them: the Portuguese took advantage of the opportunities opened to them by da Gama, and the Spaniards of Columbus’s discoveries, while the English did not follow up the lead given by John and Sebastian Cabot.
It was only when the Tudors began to encourage their subjects to study the art of navigation that England began to take part in a renewal of the maritime enterprise which had been one of her main characteristics before the generally debilitating influences of the Plague took effect in the fourteenth century. The interest which was engendered during the early decades of the sixteenth century was further encouraged by the Reformation, which prompted opposition to the bigoted Catholic influence of Spain. This, coupled with a strong desire for wealth, and a resurrected love of adventure, provided further boosts. So, in 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert founded a settlement in Newfoundland, and Raleigh did the same in Virginia. However, these settlements were not permanent, and it was not until 1606 that James I granted a charter to the Virginia Company for the colonization of the territory, which was initiated in the following year.
While it was economic considerations which underlay the colonization of Virginia, New England was settled purely as the result of the operation of religious prejudice. The 143 Brownists whom the Mayflower carried across the Atlantic in 1620 were seeking a refuge in which they could worship as they pleased away from the restrictions of those who disagreed with their religious views. These Pilgrim Fathers founded the colony of New Plymouth, while the great Puritan exodus of 1629 led directly to the establishment of Massachusetts, and the persecution of Roman Catholics, eight years later, resulted in the founding of Maryland. Largely as the result of migrations from Massachusetts, other colonies were founded, and it was thus that quite peaceably the foundations of the present United States were laid.
While this had been going on on the mainland of North America, an English settlement had been set up in the Bermudas, which had been annexed to the Crown in 1609. Between 1623 and 1650 settlements had been made in the West Indies in St Kitts, Barbados, Nevis, the Bahamas, Antigua and Monserrat. Then in 1650 came the first colonial possession by conquest, Jamaica, taken from the Spanish. This marked the beginning of a contest between the powers of the Old World for ascendancy in the New World.
This new policy was initiated when, under Cromwell, England was at the height of her military and naval power. The restored Charles II carried on what Cromwell had begun, with the founding of North and South Carolina, New Jersey, and New Netherland, the latter being captured from the Dutch in 1664, and renamed New York. These were followed by Penn’s founding of Pennsylvania in 1682 in the reign of James II, and then within six years the struggle with France, which was to last off and on for more than a century, was initiated with the accession of William and Mary.
The real crux of this long and bitter struggle from the English point of view was not whether French hegemony in Europe should be prevented from succeeding, but whether the English or the French should dominate North America and India. The Treaty of Utrecht, made in 1713, foreshadowed the final outcome of that struggle. By the annexation of Gibraltar and Minorca, Great Britain gained command of the Mediterranean, while the cession of Acadia, as Nova Scotia was then called, by France and her recognition of British rights in Hudson Bay was a significant pointer to the way the tide was running in North America.
The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 settled nothing, though its aim, as affecting Britain and France, was to bring about an end to the struggle in India and North America, and within eight years the two powers were at one another’s throats again. In this interim the French in America attempted to encircle the British colonies and cut them off from access to the West. Had their scheme succeeded the British would have found themselves shut in, perhaps for all time, in a narrow strip between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic, and might even have had to yield their foothold there. That disaster was averted by Wolfe’s capture of Quebec in 1759. The resulting agreement gave the British Canada, and ousted France utterly from control in that area of the continent.
It is felt by some historical commentators that the removal of the French from Canada was a mixed blessing for the British. They argue that had the French remained in Canada and the Spanish in Florida, which had also been ceded to Britain, the American colonists might have protested against the fiscal policies of Westminster, but they would not have dared to take the action they did, for fear of being ultimately overwhelmed by these two powers when they had cut themselves off from Britain.
As to the reality, what began as a domestic quarrel drifted into a civil war, and the civil war expanded into a European contest. With the active assistance of France, Spain and Holland, and with the moral support of the League of Northern Powers, the thirteen colonies wrested their independence from a Britain hard pressed on three fronts, America, India and the Mediterranean.
By the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 3 September, 1783, Britain was compelled to acknowledge the independence of the colonies, to return Florida and Minorca to Spain, and Tobago, St Lucia, Goree, Senegal and certain parts of India to France. Thus the first British colonial empire was virtually shattered.
If by a colony is meant a land occupied by Britons whose intention is to make it a permanent settlement, then after Versailles, Britain had only one colony left, Newfoundland. Canada was as yet a colony of Frenchmen living under the British flag, with a few British fishermen and traders in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and the Hudson Bay area. There were a few British settlers in the Bermudas and the West Indies, Gibraltar still gave Britain the entry and exit to the Mediterranean, and there were settlements at Gambia and on the Gold Coast, which had originally been Dutch. St Helena also remained to Britain, and in India Warren Hastings was successfully to foil French efforts to regain their position prior to 1763; but except for Newfoundland there was not a real British colony existing.
The French had first begun to take a serious interest in India in the first half of the seventeenth century. Between 1604 and 1666 they had established five companies there, and by the end of the century had firmly planted themselves in Pondicherry, the Ile de France and Reunion. When France and England, in the middle of the following century, became involved in their struggle for supremacy outside Europe, thanks to the genius of Clive and the valour of Coote, the English East India Company emerged triumphant in 1763. The destruction of the French military establishments in India left the field open for a contest which though not desired by the British, was nevertheless inevitable, between the Company and the native princes. It involved the whole of India, except Bengal, which Clive had already won for Britain at Plassey.
This contest was to last for nearly thirty years, during which some of the greatest names in British empire-building were active, Warren Hastings and the Wellesley brothers among them. One result of the mutiny of 1856 was the transference of the rule of the East India Company in India to the British Crown. Twenty years later Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India.
Meanwhile in Canada a great change was being effected. When the American colonies seceded, Canada, though under British rule, was a French colony. After 1783 a large body of American loyalists, to whom the independent states no longer afforded a home, fled over the Canadian border, and to them the home government made generous grants of land and money.
Under one flag, one governor, one council, one code of laws and one constitutional system, there were now living side by side two peoples, one French and Roman Catholic, the Other British and Protestant. Recognizing the difficulties this entailed, in 1791 Pitt brought in the Canada Act which divided the country into two colonies, the original French province of Quebec, and the more recent British province of Ontario. Each was to have its own Governor, assisted by a nominated Executive Council and a Legislature of two houses, a nominated council and an elected House of Representatives.
For a time this arrangement worked, but the fact that the Act of 1791 gave the local Legislature no control over the Executive led to ultimate conflict between the two which developed into armed rebellion. This led the home government to suspend the constitution in 1838, and to despatch Lord Durham to inquire into the situation.
The Durham Report remains one of the most important documents in the constitutional history of Britain’s overseas Empire (see “The Durham Report“). Durham recommended the union of the two colonies, an increase in the number of the Legislative Council, a reform of municipal government, a civil list, and above all that the colonial Executive should be made responsible to the colonial Legislature. “The Governor”, he wrote, “should be instructed that he must carry on his Government by heads of departments in whom the United Legislature shall repose confidence.” This principle constitutes the charter of British colonial self-government.
In 1840 the Union Act was passed. In it there was curiously no mention made of the responsibility of the Executive, but the English Cabinet system was implicit in the new constitution. This was made absolutely clear when the Governor was instructed in 1847 to “act generally on the advice of the Executive Council” whose members must have the confidence of the Assembly. Thus the principle of responsible government was established for the first time in an English colony.
It is strange to think that American independence led directly to the founding of the second great power of the British Commonwealth. On gaining independence, the Carolinas refused to continue to receive deported British convicts. Australia, rediscovered by Captain Cook in 1769, appeared to offer excellent facilities for this purpose, and in 1788 the first ship-load of felons was shipped to the Antipodes and landed in Botany Bay. Such was the inauspicious beginning of the colony of New South Wales. In 1821, however, the colony was thrown open to free immigrants, and so rapid was the growth of the free population that by 1859 four more Australian colonies had been founded. Meanwhile, New Zealand, in 1840, had been declared British.
Constitutionally the history of Australia and New Zealand is virtually a repetition of that of Canada. By an Act of 1850, New Zealand, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Queensland adopted responsible government between 1854 and 1859, while Western Australia followed in 1890. In South Africa, fierce struggles with the natives resulted in the founding of settlements there. But the British had been early forestalled in South Africa by the Dutch, and a struggle between the two colonizing powers was inevitable. This came in the long-drawn-out contest which, after three years, in 1902 ended in the decisive defeat of the Boers.
Long before this, responsible government on the customary pattern had been granted to the older British colonies, and the agglomeration was finally welded into a whole in 1910. The union of the South African colonies was itself a variation of the movement for federation which had been gradually developing in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, where responsible government had been found incapable of solving many important questions that confronted the colonies as they expanded. In 1867, Canada had become a federal Dominion under the British Crown, with a nominated Senate, an elected House of Commons, a Privy Council and a responsible Cabinet. But more than half a century was to elapse before Australia and New Zealand followed suit.
All this was of apiece with the assumption more generally accepted in England than in the colonies that it was the duty of the parent state to educate the dependent communities in political statecraft, and to maintain the fostering connexion only until the colonies were strong enough to stand alone. But the last twenty years of Victoria’s reign witnessed the dawn of a new era in world history. European polity suddenly expanded into world polity. The rapid rise of Germany as a colonial power stimulated the spirit of imperialism elsewhere.
The British colonies were not slow to see that it would be in their interest to remain component and self-governing units within an Empire rather than to plunge into world politics as independent but relatively insignificant states. From 1887 onwards they began to be tentatively summoned to take their part in the councils of the Empire. A Colonial Conference in London coincided with the queens golden jubilee, while in 1894 and 1897 similar conferences met in Ottawa and in London, the latter being marked with a fervour for imperial unity.
Even greater progress was recorded in this respect by the meeting in 1902, when the colonial statesmen gathered to pay their homage to a new king. The fervour had somewhat abated when the conference next met in 1907, yet it registered two important stages in the evolution of the Empire: the conference changed its name to imperial instead of colonial, and it decided to meet regularly every four years.
But it was the participation of the dominions in the First World War which profoundly modified their status alike in the British Empire and in world politics. They passed from the position of protected colonies to that of participating nations. From this it was but a short step to the Statute of Westminster of 1931 which laid down the principle of dominion status. The Statute declared that the dominions are “autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations”.
Never before in history has such an organization of nations existed; and none but the British genius could have given birth to it, nor brought to it the maturity and stature which it manifests to-day. No matter what the future may hold, if it can continue to uphold the principles by which it has functioned up to now, it cannot fail to continue to wield the tremendous influence for good in the affairs of mankind which has been its supreme achievement in the past.