Page 243 - clra62_0019-(GIPE)

THE RELATIVE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE 235
In one respect we are clearly better off than before.
The great competitor we had at the beginning of the
century and have had until recent years is France. At
the beginning of the century. apart from the additions
made to it by the Napoleonic wars. France was a State
of about 26,000,000 of people, occupying the most fer-
tile territory in Europe, and well advanced in arts and
manufactures. This was our rival at a time when we
had virtually a population of 11,000,000 only, that being
the population of Great Britain when Ireland was still
a serious burden and in no way a help. Now the popu-
lation in France is very much the same as the popula-
tion of the United Kingdom, and we have all the white
population in other parts of the Empire to the good.
Thus, from being a state of less than half the population
of France we have become a state very much superior
in the numbers of population.
The development of our resources has also been
much more rapid than that of France, so that alto-
gether the change in our relative positions, materially
speaking, is something enormous. As far as rivalry
with France is concerned, therefore, our position in the
world is much better for holding a Colonial Empire
than it was in the past times of our history.
The changes that are going on from day to day and
-from year to year are also to our advantage. While
France has very much the same white population now
that it had twenty or twenty-five years ago, there has
been in the same time an addition, as we have seen, of
nearly 12,000;000, or more than one-fourth of the
population of France itself, to the white population of
our Empire. The next twenty or twenty-five years in all
probability will witness a similardifference in our favour.
. France at the same time has not strengthened but
weakened itself by the addition of a vast Empire of
subject races, especially in Africa, without a good self-
'governing or self-supporting possession amongst them.
With a stationary white population she takes on her-
self the burden of a large Empire.