CHAPTER II - OUR NATIONAL POLICY, 1815-1868

Summary

CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE

As the intention of my work is to illustrate a phase of colonial policy during the second half of the Victorian era, it may be thought irrelevant to dwell on the conditions of national life which determined the policy of the first half of that era in England. My reply must be that the colonial policy I propose to illustrate grew out of the national policy that preceded it; and I hope to show that the principles which worked out the social and economic salvation of England by methods appropriate to the national environment are capable of working out equally beneficent results by methods appropriate to the group of constituent parts of the Empire with which I am dealing.

The policy of England during the period following the Treaty of Paris in 1815 was dominated by the cult of Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform. It became a dogma of political faith that Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform constituted a trinity one and indivisible. In the leisure of peace a multitude of minds found time to survey the condition of the people, to recognise that the material and moral improvement of their condition constituted the only legitimate charge on the revenues derived from their labour in the development of national resources, and to realise from the experience of the past that the adjustment of this charge could only be effected through the agency of a reformed legislature.