of these groups are identical in each member of the group but simply that in certain fundamentals there is a vastly greater difference between the members of one group and another than between members of the same group.

Thus India is cut off from all other groups by its vast area, its enormous population, the variability of its climate, and by its peculiar social institutions, whereas Burma and the Philippine Islands fall into one group because apart from difference of religion there are no great points of divergence which invalidate comparisons between the two territories.

There is a further point of great importance which places India in a category by itself. In any of the other groups which I have enumerated the interest of the student will be fixed upon the observation of widely different methods of administration applied to territories which in a general way have much in common. For instance in the East Indian group there is a fairly close similarity between the Philippine Islands, Java, the Malay Peninsula, French Indo-China and Burma. Yet in these countries we find a great variety of administrative systems-the Crown Colony system, Chartered Company Government, Independent Government, the Residential system, the Indian Provincial system, and the less easily defined methods of the French, the Dutch, and the Americans.

In India the character of the problem is exactly reversed, for here we find under one central administration territories as widely separated by every consideration of race and climate as the Punjab and the Madras Presidency, presenting differences as great as those existing between Russia and Portugal.

It is seen at once that what enables us to deal with India as a group is the general similarity of the administrative methods operating in a varied field, and that the group cohesion in what I have called the East Indian group depends upon the similarity of the general conditions under which a great variety of administrative systems operate.

The point which I wish to make is that for the purposes of a scientific study of colonial administration it is neces

sary to so divide the material that there is either a comparison of the results of different methods applied to broadly identical problems, or a comparison of the results of broadly identical methods in widely different circumstances.

It is the general failure to preserve one common element— either the method or the condition to be met-that has made a vast amount of recent writing on colonial administration little better than waste paper.

Perhaps the best example which can be cited of this absence of nexus is the common attempt to define the political future of the Philippines in the terms of Japanese achievement.

There is one point which I think I should deal with before I bring this paper to a close and that is to answer the question, which is constantly being urged upon the public, why, if trade is the chief object of colonization, cannot the native be left to rule his own country after his own fashion and the foreigner content himself with the commerce?

In elucidation of this point I may quote a few paragraphs from a paper which I read last year before the Royal Colonial Institute in London.

"If we go far enough back in the history of the world we may, no doubt, reach a time when it might of truth be said of every State that it had a right to its own bad government. But in order to find a period in which this proposition would hold it is necessary to go at least as far back as the time. when the whole of human society was in its tribal stage, when each community was self-supporting, and was independent, alike in the matter of supplies and markets, of all other communities-in a word, to a time when navigation and international trade had not created a wider relation than that of individuals within an isolated clan.

"From the moment when international commerce had its beginnings the question of the character of governments ceased to be a purely internal concern of each State, for there then arose a general obligation, based upon obvious considerations of expediency, that no country should maintain a government so greatly inferior to the best type known at the period as to threaten the existence of the international trade.

"There are very few conditions to which commerce cannot adjust itself. It may be disturbed by the operation of tariffs; it may be seriously affected by the insidious working of bounties on production; it feels the effects of great strikes; it is most sensitive to the influence of climate; but to those elements and to others of a similar character commerce adjusts itself by means of fluctuating prices, by the flow of capital from one country to another, and from one industry to another, and by a hundred other inner workings of its system.

"It is, however, of the utmost importance to realize that there are two conditions to the absence of which commerce cannot adjust itself—two conditions which are absolutely essential to the existence of any great commerce at the present day; one is reasonable protection of life and property, and the other is the presence in every important trade area of competent and impartial courts for the adjustment of commercial disputes and for the enforcement of contracts.

"Now these two conditions, without which modern commerce cannot exist, are precisely the conditions which native rule in the tropics never afforded; and it is ultimately to this cause that we must trace the substitution of European for native methods of administration throughout the heat belt."

The great variety of administrative methods which have been adopted by the European powers and by the United States in their various dependencies and the varying degree of success and failure which has attended their application is the material to which the student must turn if he wishes to embark upon a scientific study of colonial administration.

DISCUSSION.

POULTNEY BIGELOW, taking up the theme of Alleyne Ireland rather than the paper for which he had been booked, dwelt upon the importance of preparing the ground for scientific treatment of colonial questions.

On many vital points, said the speaker, public opinion in the United States is opposed to measures advocated by such practical students of colonial life as Mr. Ireland.

It is only necessary to mention our attitude towards missionaries, colored races, contract labor, free trade, to discover for ourselves that many matters most elementary from the point of view of the colonist become very complex when dealt with by a statesman in Washington.

Hence the great importance to this country of an impartial tribunal on colonial affairs before whom might come questions of fact regarding colonial matters.

For instance, our Philippine possessions are reported by our salaried officials as presenting a picture of progress and content.

On the other hand, a student like Mr. Ireland, who has other standards than those of Michigan or Ohio, finds them deplorable. Only an authority such as these allied societies could erect would be in a position to decide such a question to the satisfaction of the public.

Again at Panama we are spending many millions, and are creating a condition of things suggesting the worst phase of French mismanagement rather than a work of which this nation could be proud.

My own experience at the Isthmus covered but two visitsone of six weeks, the other of two days.

It is possible that what I saw and heard was fallacious. It may have done injustice to many gentlemen drawing salaries in connection with a magnificent job. My opportunities for judging were of course limited, and I wish to submit my statements to the sharpest revision at the hands of my fellowseekers after truth.

The Administration at Washington has pronounced, through many costly reports, that the work there is admirable and that all who differ from this opinion are unpatriotic and malicious.

Personally I walk through a swamp which Mr. Roosevelt sees in time of flood and declares to be a magnificent reservoir. Who am I that I should have an opinion other than my President's?

Therefore the more important that such matters be settled by a committee of our scientific societies who shall represent no other interest than love of truth.

Such a tribunal would immediately command national respect, and rank only second to that of the Hague in determining matters of the first importance.

Personally I am an "Imperialist "-if that means that it is our duty to bring happiness and prosperity to several overheated sections of the earth that have become ours since the war of 1898. I believe that the task is within our power provided that we approach it, not as politicians, but practical students of the truth.