see that he morally owes a portion of Great Britain's National Debt; but that would depend very much upon how the obligation might be placed before him.

As regards contribution towards current imperial expenses, his attitude is resolute and clear. He recognises the necessity for defence against possible attack, and that such defence costs money. To the Canadian the question is far more simple than to the Australian, and Canada has found it expedient to adopt what is practically a form of conscription as a safeguard against possible attack from the United States. But the Australian has no such towering neighbour, and very much overrates the imperial connection as his only possible source of danger. If attacked by a foreign power it could only be, he alleges, because that power would be at war with Britain upon some question to him at once trivial and unintelligible. He cares not personally one straw who owns Constantinople, or who dominates Egypt, because his trade with India is but small, and his route does not lie through the Suez Canal. His trade with Britain and with Europe does, but then there is always the alternative Cape route. But he altogether forgets that he would be exposed to at least equal perils were his political connections with Great Britain severed. What guarantee would he have that foreign nations would leave him in undisturbed possession of a vast continent were the protection of Great Britain withdrawn? How would he fare in a war with France or Germany, or even with China?

He realises that his continued progress must largely depend upon his ability to borrow largely and at a cheap rate; but he avers that he can do so, not because he flies the Union-Jack, but because British capitalists are familiar with the vast resources of his colony, and that they would continue to lend upon the strength of these resources. They have lent freely to corrupt, ill-governed, nondescript South American republics. Why not to republics peopled and governed by men of British race? But here again he overlooks much that is important. There is such a thing as borrowing too dear. The South American States have, for years, been borrowing upon exorbitant terms, have nearly all proved unable to meet even the interest upon their loans, and are hovering upon the brink of bankruptcy. Even supposing that colonies converted into republics could borrow, is it to be supposed that they could borrow at present rates? And from another point of view, is it conceivable that British capital would flow in to aid industrial enterprises, as it now does, were it being invested in infant republics?

As regards his commerce, the Colonial takes the broad platform that Great Britain would continue to trade as freely with young republics as with dependent colonies. That is doubtless mainly true. But how about that trade if British capital were withdrawn or sparingly and dearly lent His imports would be rigidly gauged by his exports, and how could the latter be increased or even maintained without help? Let him remember that, as matters stand, British commerce is very far from being mainly dependent upon the Colonies, whereas Colonial trade is most distinctly mainly dependent upon Great Britain. It would be a bad thing for Britain to lose or to cripple her Colonial trade, but it would be more

than a bad thing for the Colonies: it would be commercial ruin. Remove the British-owned ocean-going ships from Melbourne or Sydney, and what would remain ?

Nay, let the Colonial rather strive to realise that separation from Great Britain would entail stagnation and loss upon a scale which it is pitiful to contemplate. If he be driven to independence, by force of circumstances or by delay, amounting to refusal on the part of Britain to receive him into federation with her, then indeed must the burthen be borne, the loss and the stagnation endured. But, in the meanwhile, let him be somewhat more outspoken as to his willingness to accept federation if offered to him, realising that it is not the sort of proposal which a great nation can be expected to make where there is a chance of refusal.

(iii.) POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS (viewed from Great Britain).

Of existing Great Powers but one, the United States, can be said to enjoy absolute immunity from attack, unless, indeed, the States themselves deliberately provoke a conflict. They have a vast continuous area, affording sufficient scope for all reasonable national dreams of expansion for many centuries to come. They are ruled by the same laws and speak the same tongue. They come up, as near as may be, to even Professor Freeman's exacting definition of an "ideal nation." Great Britain, whose empire extends, in a confused sort of way, over three times the area and five times the population, is so far from enjoying similar immunity that she may fairly be described as the most vulnerable of all and the worst prepared to repel attack. Her own shores are rather supposed to be, than known to be, safe; that is, they are still guarded by the power which has maintained them inviolate in the past-a powerful fleet. But her outlying dominions can, by no stretch of imagination, be even supposed to be safe. It would be hard to point out a single one that is safe-unless, perhaps, Gibraltar. And this insecurity springs from two causes, the one obvious, the other not quite so self-evident. Geographical situation is, of course, the obvious cause, and, necessarily, a permanent one, to be remedied only by increased speed of communication. The other cause lies in the ill-defined haphazard nature of her tenure of the most important of her possessions. Of course I allude more particularly to the Colonies; but even India is in the same category.

From time to time the entire patrimony of the British race has been made over in free gift to a few millions of settlers, and these are now practically as much masters of 8,000,000 square miles of territory as Great Britain herself is of the 121,000 square miles contained in the United Kingdom. Of this clear convincing proof was given in the replies returned by the various Colonial Governments to a circular sent to them by a strong committee of both Houses of Parliament asking for grants of land suitable for emigration upon a large scale. These replies were a distinct refusal all round, the clearest explanation whereof was given by Sir Henry Parkes, the Premier of New South Wales, viz., that such a proposal was utterly inconsistent with the Australian watchword, "Australia for the Australians." This, it might be thought, would

have exhausted English patience. But not at all; the emigration scheme was dropped, that was all. And, as though to justify the Colonial attitude, within two years of this incident, Great Britain conceded her last remaining million acres to forty thousand settlers in West Australia. It is not, of course, pretended that any of the Colonies have gone the length of closing their ports to would-be immigrants; nay, they encourage what are deemed to be immigrants of the right sort, that is with money in their pockets, or skilled artisans (in moderate numbers), or domestic female servants (to any extent). But these are precisely the very persons whom the mother-country can least spare.

Now, is it not high time to let it be known to the dominant democrat labour factions in all the Colonies, that neither is Australia for the Australians, nor Canada for the Canadians, nor South Africa for the South Africans, but that all these belong to, and are "for the entire British race"? And how accomplish this so effectually as by re-absorbing these somewhat self-assertive offshoots into a re-organised, federated empire? To deprive them by force of rights already conceded is out of the question. What other alternatives exist, except to allow them to drift off or break off into complete independence?

Perhaps the greatest of all advantages foreshadowed by a perfected federal policy is that, whereas a dislocated empire is a source of weakness, a securely-knit empire would be as a tower of irresistible strength. At present Britain's foreign policy really consists in playing one Great Power off against another, whilst she plays herself off as occasion may appear to offer. She is not powerful enough to hold her Empire in the teeth of the World; she knows it, and they know it. But a Britannic Confederation would be under no necessity to follow any such hide-andseek tactics. It would from the very outset be quite strong enough to assert itself, and, if need were, to hold its own against anything short of a universal coalition-an eventuality which need hardly be taken into account. Can any reasoning man pretend that Britain would not gain enormously in political power by exchanging her present status, as harassed guardian of a confused string of possessions, for one where she would figure as Parent and Premier State in a world-wide and powerful Britannic Confederation?

(iv.) POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS (viewed from the Colonies).

It has already been pointed out that the Colonial could not safely, or even securely, rely upon immunity from attack from one of the Great Powers were British protection withdrawn. But even supposing that by making concessions and by skilful diplomacy, the Colonies did contrive to secure a peaceful existence, what would their status in the World be? Each group would necessarily be at the expense of providing and maintaining an army and a fleet, and of organising and paying for a wide-spread Consular service, just as the impoverished South American republics have had to do. And what force would their diplomatic utterances carry, say, in Paris or in Berlin? Or how would Canadian rights in Behring Sea or Australian rights in the Pacific be enforced? To whom would, or could, the travelling Colonial apply for redress or assist

ance, say, in Chili or in Persia, or anywhere else? To his consul? He might just as well apply to the nearest telegraph-post. The United States is powerful enough. Yet, during the Argentine Revolution of July 1890, I have seen the British Consulate at Rosario literally besieged by American citizens begging for British safe-conducts. France is powerful enough. Yet, during the last Chilian civil war, I have seen French subjects arrested and otherwise annoyed (until a French warship appeared upon the scene) to an extent which, had they been British subjects, would have brought the guns of H. M. S. Warspite to bear upon the Intendencia at Valparaiso. Germany is powerful enough. Yet she was fain to beg permission (during the same war) of the British Foreign Office to place her subjects resident in Chili under British protection. Let the colonial be well-assured that there is no such passport throughout the entire World as to be able to declare “I am a British subject." I grant that, as matters now stand, it would not add to his dignity abroad to explain that he was a Canadian or a Queenslander. But the amended form, "a subject of the Britannic Confederation," would very soon be understood as synonymous with Noli me tangere. Indeed, from this political point of view, the Colonies have vastly more to gain than even Great Britain herself.

NOTES ON THE INHABITANTS OF THE HIMALAYAS.
(Read at Meeting of British Association, 1891.)

BY COLONEL TANNER.

THE inhabitants of the Himalayas may primarily be divided into three or four divisions, distinguished more particularly from each other by their religion, and this without taking any account of their origin, whether Aryan or Mongolian for the religion of Asiatics forms the basis of their mode of thought and of most of their customs, and in some cases is so mixed up with their laws that their domestic life is almost, if not quite, governed by its tenets. I will, therefore, sketch out from west to east the localities occupied by Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and indefinite idolatrous mountaineers, whom one is pretty sure to encounter on the Northern Frontier of India.

The Mohammedans occupy the extreme west of the Himalayan regions, and as Sunis form the greater number of the inhabitants of Kashmir proper and of the Indus valley west of Bunji. Largely mixed with Shiahs, they hold Gilgit and Hunza and all Dardistan, by which name I mean the mountain tracts to the west of Gilgit, but nowhere else along the thousand miles between Kashmir and Assam are they to be found, except here and there, as individual or isolated families brought amongst the Hindus or Buddhists by accident.

The Hindus occupy the greater portion of Kumaon, Kangra and all Nipal, as well as the small principalities which form the Simla Hill States, and Kulu also, though in the latter country they can scarcely be called orthodox, and in reality, so far as I am aware, are Sudras, or of

the lowest class. The history of the many Hindu principalities scattered along the "middle mountains " of the Himalayas is to be found in various Government offices, where many valuable records touching the Himalayan tribes have long been hidden away from public scrutiny. Here I can only say that many of the families of the rajas or chiefs have occupied their present abodes for twenty, and even thirty, generations, notwithstanding the political vicissitudes of the times following the different changes of Mohammedan, Sikh, and Gurkha rule borne by their ancestors. The old feudal castles of these chiefs present many interesting architectural features, except in those instances where hideous so-called European dwellings-often tin-roofed-have been built up over sites but lately occupied by Saracenic and Hindu buildings.

Buddhists hold in the Western and Central Himalayas the exposed elevated tracts to the north of Kashmir, Gurhwal, Kumaon, and Nipal, and occupy the whole of Bhutan.

And lastly I will name Idolaters, of various ill-defined religious or non-religious sects, who inhabit the unknown semi-independent States to the eastward of Bhutan, on both banks of the Sanpo, and the drainage areas of those rivers, unknown to us except in name, which empty themselves into the lower reaches of the Sanpo, between Sadya and Gyala Sindong. These latter, whom I by courtesy call idolaters, should, in fact, be classed amongst those who hold no religious belief whatever, and who, at most, have an indefinite conviction that some unseen malevolent power moves about in the thunder-cloud and tempest, amidst the glaciers, and in dark forbidding places of the earth, whom it might be as well occasionally to propitiate by the offering of the least valuable of their goods.

Of the four divisions into which I arbitrarily dispose of the inhabitants of the Himalayas, the Hindus and Suni Mohammedans are the best known to us, for they have been our constant study for nearly three hundred years, and, as a fruit of such study, we, as the rulers of a great Asiatic possession, have learnt how so to conduct our intercourse with them, generally as rulers, but sometimes as allies and friends, that our just and firm sway is in this age marked by an ever-increasing confidence on both sides. Our toleration of their peculiar and sometimes repugnant prejudices and customs has gained for us the respect, and almost the love, of a great number of the Queen's Asiatic subjects; but with respect to the other divisions I have named, we are not so fortunate; we are much in the dark as to their modes of thought, both from religious and secular points of view, and until we learn more about them we shall continually lay ourselves open to such disastrous rebuffs as we have lately experienced at Manipur.

In the States contiguous to the north of Kashmir, besides the wellknown Suni sect of Mohammedans, we have in addition Shiahs, and a sub-division of the same sect, vaguely known to us as Maulais, followers of Ali, who, by some curious concatenation of circumstances, regard as their spiritual head or Pope a refugee Persian Prince residing in Bombay,

1 A very convenient term used by Mr. Drew.