* L E s T WE FORGET!* 237

that cling to the tree only till they ripen." This was the view
of Whitehall. A policy of veiled but deliberate disintegration
was adopted. "It 'is no use to speak about it any longer,*
a Colonial Office official said to the historian Froude. "The
thing is done. The great Colonies are gone. It is but a question
of a year or two."1

But the colonists themselves, though they had no love for
Whitehall and resented interference, wished to remain British.
They wanted to enjoy their lands of promise under the flag
their fathers had known. In other words, they were sentimental
about patriotism. They refused to view it like superior folk in
England as an old-fashioned thing to smile at. Few in numbers
and without electoral influence, their protest would have availed
nothing but for one of those inexplicable movements that occur
in the lives of great nations.

It came not from the ruling classes but from the common
people. For those who thousands of miles away were building
new and freer Englands were their own kith and kin. They had
left home in poverty and obscurity: years later their success
had gladdened the humble kinsmen they had left behind. Fresh
settlers were always following the old. There was formed
a link of sentiment and hope between working-class homes in
Britain and thriving townships and farms in Canada and
Australia. The rich and powerful might have no use for the
self-governing colonies. To the poor they seemed the promise
of a happier future: an appeal from the black chimneys, the herd
life of the slum, the selfishness of the lords of rustic England
with their closed parks and game preserves.

It was only after 1867, whecuthe artisan householder received
the vote, jhat this feeling became a political factor. Yet it was
already a rallying point for all not content to subscribe to the
utilitarian thesis. The British middle-class were not all bagmen
and cotton-spinners: there was Norse blood in their veins and
an ineradicable love of adventure which kept cropping up under
their maxims of shopkeeping prudence. Buying in the cheapest
market and selling in the dearest was not everything. And as
foreign tariffs rose against British manufacturers and the em-
ployment of the crowded city population became ever less secure^
more and more questioned whether the utilitarian basis of the
economists was not too narrow and whether the time had not

xy. A. froude^ Oceana^ 7.