The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Volume 1, 1917-1918Various
History
The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Volume 1, 1917-1918
Various
Wisconsin -- History -- Periodicals
Upon the capitalists thus far-sighted and enduring rested the full
burden of development. The region was autonomous in its relation to
the British Empire, but its non-resident creditors mapped out its
future, not its settlers as in Australia. Capital under such
circumstances looks for large rewards, and in this case expects to
secure them by control of the natural resources, when these have been
made available by the incoming of settlers. Youngest of the frontiers,
the working of the old factors in this new relationship remains a
question. One would expect economy and efficiency in planning, but
possible conflicts between the resident community and its creditors
over the division of the proceeds. The settlers that it seeks are of
the most independent type, men not with energy alone, but with some
small capital of their own. It offers them not only economic
opportunity but also political privileges. How such a population will
react under a system which restricts politics one degree more than
they are restricted in Australia, by excluding the larger lines of
local development such as transportation, is one of the interesting
questions of tomorrow. One might look for some clue in the history of
the American colonial proprietorships, but how far the intelligent
study of those experiments will have enabled the proprietors of
Rhodesia to avoid their mistakes, and how far the changed conditions
created by two centuries of the most rapid change the world has seen,
will modify the interworking of similar forces, no one can tell.
In organization, Canada is today, of course, like Australia, but
whereas the commonwealth of Australia is but recent and was formed
only after the scaffolding of development had been created, the
Dominion of Canada was created in season to direct the most active
period of frontiering. During the most significant period, therefore,
Canada has had an organization that resembled our federal states. The
resemblance, however, is partly superficial; in Canada the specified
powers belong to the provinces, the undefined powers to the Dominion.
Neither provinces nor Dominion, moreover, have possessed the legal
inviolability of absolute sovereignty. The credit of all has been
protected by the judicial unity of the empire, and the stability of
the currency has not been a subject for politics. Diplomacy, also, has
belonged to the mother country, although the proximity of the United
States has not allowed it to be the blank it was so long in its
Australian sister-colonies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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