orous language, Goldwin Smith wrote a book, the object of which
was to show how desirable it was that this Empire should be gradually
but steadily reduced to the sweet simplicity of two islands. Similar
views prevailed very generally in the Manchester school. Cobden
frequently expressed them. The question of the colonies, he
maintained, was mainly a question of pounds, shillings, and pence; he
proved, as he imagined, by many figures that they were a very bad
bargain; and he expressed his confident hope that one of the results
of free trade would be 'gradually and imperceptibly to loosen the
bands which unite our colonies to us.' About our Indian Empire he
entertained much stronger opinions. He described it as a calamity and
a curse to the people of England. He looked on it, in his own words,
'with an eye of despair,' and declared that it was destroying and
demoralising the national character. It was the belief of his school
of politicians that all the nations of the world would speedily follow
the example of England and adopt a policy of perfect free trade; that
when all men were able to sell their industries with equal facility in
all countries, it would become a matter of little consequence to them
under what flag they lived, and that this complete commercial
assimilation would soon be followed by a general movement for
disarming, which would put an end to all fear of future war.

Many politicians who certainly cannot be classified with the
Manchester school held views tending in some degree in the same
direction. Even Sir Cornewall Lewis in his treatise on the 'Government
of Dependencies,' which was published in 1841, summed up the
advantages and disadvantages of a great empire in a manner that gives
the impression that in his own judgment the disadvantages on the whole
predominated. In the Autobiography of that great writer and excellent
public servant Sir Henry Taylor, who for many years exercised much
influence in the Colonial Office, we have a curious picture of the
opinions which were held on this subject about thirty years ago, both
by Sir Henry Taylor himself and by Sir Frederick Rogers, who was at
this time permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. They
both agreed that all our North American colonies were a kind of
_damnosa hereditas_, and that it was in a high degree desirable that
they should be amicably separated from Great Britain. Sir Henry Taylor
wrote his views on the subject with great fra