126 CANADA AND THE EMPIRE.

a necessity that the barbarous old method should
give way to more enlightened treatment. Gradually
Britain was forced to realise that the enterprise of
these vigorous young communities commanded a
higher destiny than that of merely filling her coffers,
and, as the conviction grew in strength at home,
so did the independence and nationality of the
colonies grow abroad.
The first step along the new path of British
colonial policy, once taken, was an irrevocable one,
and everybody knows the result of Lord North's
effort to retrace it in his dealings with the
American colonies. It was the first and last
attempt to turn back ; it was the death blow of the
old school of colonial policy. Since that day have
arisen the great self-governing colonies.
The British colonial policy under which they
grew, though in many respects shifting and variable,
 has been marked by one constant trend,
namely, the gradual relaxation of those irksome
bonds which were the relics of the old colonial
school, and their replacement by the gift of the
fullest powers of self-government that are compatible
 with the inability of the colonies to defend
themselves. In short, colonial policy for a century
past has been shaped to make the ties binding
colonies and Mother Country as light, as elastic,
and as non-galling as they can be made. And
under this wise policy, it is through no pampered
infancy that the colonies have won to their manhood.
 Sent forth early to make their way in the