he organised haste with which Russia prepared to send to sea swift
cruisers equipped in America, when trouble with England seemed
imminent in 1878. We have a vast fleet, no doubt, but not vast enough
both to picquet our own coast-line with war-ships against raids on
unprotected coast-towns, and besides that to cover the great outlying
flanks of the Empire. These hostile cruisers would haunt Australasian
waters (coaling in the neutral ports about the Eastern Archipelago),
and there would be scares, risks, uncertainties, that would derange
trade, chill enterprise, and frighten banks. Another consideration,
not mentioned by Mr. Forbes, may be added. We now do the carrying
trade of Australasia to the great benefit of English shipowners (See
_Economist_, August 27, 1881). If the English flag were in danger from
foreign cruisers, Australia would cease to employ our ships, and might
possibly find immunity in separation and in establishing a neutral
flag of her own.

Other definite evils would follow war. The Australasian colonist lives
from hand to mouth, carries on his trade with borrowed money, and pays
his way by the prompt disposal of his produce. Hence it is that the
smallest frown of tight money sends a swift shock, vibrating and
thrilling, all through the Australasian communities. War would at once
hamper their transactions. It would bring enhanced freights and
higher rates of insurance to cover war risks. This direct dislocation
of commerce would be attended in time by default of payment of
interest on the colonial debt, public, semi-public, and private. As
the vast mass of this debt is held in England, the default of the
Englishmen in Australia would injure and irritate Englishmen at home,
and the result would be severe tension. The colonial debtor would be
all the more offended, from his consciousness that 'the pinch which
had made him a defaulter would have a purely gratuitous character so
far as he was concerned.'

'I, at least,' says Mr. Forbes, in concluding his little forecast,
'have the implicit conviction that if England should ever be engaged
in a severe struggle with a Power of strength and means, in what
condition soever that struggle might leave her, one of its outcomes
would be to detach from her the Australian colonies' (_Nineteenth
Century_, for October 1883). In other words, one of the most certain
results of pursuing the spirited foreign policy in Europe, which is so
dear to the Imperialist or Bomba