ABSTRACT
The average Englishman of 1852 and even the average Conservative could hardly be said to have regarded the large number of small white communities scattered about the world under the Union Jack with any swelling Imperial pride. Thanks largely to persistent Radical criticism, the “man in the street” when thinking of colonies was apt to think rather of the expense, jobbery, and dangers attending their control than of the “glory” they bestowed upon the Mother Country of an Empire “upon which the sun never sets.” Molesworth, unlike most of his brother Radicals, did not regard the gradual drifting away of the self-governing colonies into independence as inevitable or desirable, and could not accept the common Radical view that England would gain from Colonial independence. Molesworth’s Imperialism was of the disconcertingly robust kind which accompanied admission of the colonists’ claims to complete self-government with the requirement that they should undertake their own defence at their own cost.
