Will Jonathan buy our colony?
The telegraph yesterday renewed the report of the “willingness” of the British government to sell this colony to the Americans. As this last dispatch comes through the cable, and bears the respectable endorsement of the New York Herald or one of its voracious contemporaries, we need hardly say that its authority cannot be doubted for a moment.
The fact is, England is “going to smash” and we should not be surprised to learn soon that she had decided to sell or give away all her colonies, and perhaps relinquish her hold upon Ireland and Gibraltar at the same time.
Money is so scarce in London at present writing that the bank charges 21⁄2 per cent per annum on every dollar it loans.
The British government is so “hard-up” that it has paid off only $140 million of its national indebtedness in the past 10 years; its people only pay an import duty on seven different articles, instead of on twice as many thousand under the old tariff system.
Unhappy, poverty-stricken, bankrupt old mother! The million or two dollars your good cousin Jonathan would pay for this miserable strip would go a long way toward helping you over your mountain of difficulties, and assisting you to start afresh with a clean balance sheet!
The fact is, England can’t afford to support her colonies any longer. Just look at the shameful manner in which she has thrown off Canada! She created that country into a dominion, and has since dispatched an army of 30,000 soldiers and three fleets of war vessels to assist the Fenians in their next raid upon that doomed territory.
And then glance at Ireland! What is Great Britain doing there? Why, to show her anxiety to let the “Green Isle” slide, great ironclads patrol the Irish coast, garrisons of soldiers occupy all the towns — sent there, we have not the slightest doubt, to await the arrival of the proper moment to proclaim a republic.
To be sure, a few blathering “Finnegans” are “gobbled up” occasionally; but that is only a blind to deceive the English people, who require to be gradually brought to understand the economical policy of the present ministry.
To let the knowledge burst too suddenly upon them might “raise their dander.”
Gibraltar, another source of expense, will have to go, too. Perhaps Jonathan would like to buy that rocky promontory and convert the Mediterranean into an American lake. As England is “hard up” and “on the sell,” why shouldn’t Jonathan make an offer for it?
And then there’s Australia; that continent might be had for a small consideration. Indeed, we are not sure but if a sufficiently large sum were tendered for the “tight little isle” itself, that the offer would not be accepted.
“Every man has his price,” Walpole said; and why not every nation?
To come nearer to home, again, cannot our readers see that the policy of the government toward this colony is a get-rid-of-it one? And in order that Jonathan may not have the shadow of a pretext at a future period for “walloping” his poor old mother, on the pretence that he has not had his money’s worth, a splendid iron-clad, called the Zealous, is anchored at Esquimalt, and an order has gone forth to spend a couple million of dollars in the construction of a dry dock, with the evident design of throwing the ship and the dock over to the States as “boot” if the American government consents to take us?
That Great Britain is trying to get rid of us is quite clear. With money at 21⁄2 per cent, per annum, she must sell to meet her liabilities or go into liquidation.
The question, therefore, is not so much what England will take, as what Uncle Sam is willing to give for us? And after the transfer shall have been made, and we shall have become an integral part of the “Universal Yankee Nation,” every mother’s son of us holding a full share in the great national stock (vulgarly termed debt), nobody can loll of how many billions of dollars, and when we shall have exchanged our hard gold for greenbacks, worth 74 cents on the dollar, and shall have secured protection and prohibition, and paid taxes on everything but the air we breathe, what a lucky, jolly set of dogs we will be, to be sure! The Daily British Colonist and Victoria Chronicle Aug. 14, 1867