Milner's Mentor:
George Parkin and the Imperial Federation Movement

William Christian
University of Guelph
Canada

On 7 May 1874 a tall, lanky Canadian schoolmaster rose in the Oxford Union to propose a motion. Herbert Asquith, the future prime minister, was president and in the chair. The motion read as follows: 'That in the opinion of this house a closer union than at present exists between England and her Colonies is essential to the highest future prosperity of both, and should, as soon as possible, be effected by such an Imperial Federation as will secure the representation of the more important Colonies in the Imperial Council.' (Raleigh Parkin: Vol. 9)

The debate was continued on 15 May, when Asquith himself left to the chair to take part in the debate. When the votes were counted, Parkin had carried the day twenty-eight to six. It was, apparently, the first and only time that Asquith ever suffered defeat on a motion for which he was a principal speaker. (Raleigh Parkin: Vol. 9)

After the first evening of debate Parkin was approached by an undergraduate who was previously personally unknown to him. As he recalled the incident about twenty years later: ' I am not likely to forget my first meeting with [Milner] when we were at Oxford together. It was at the Union; I had been leading a Debate on Imperial Federation, and many young fellows, now prominent in the Empire, had taken part in it. When the evening's debate was over Milner came up to me, gave me his card, asked me to breakfast with him, adding that he would try to get ten or twelve of the best men to join us and try to see if something practical might not be evolved from what we had been discussing. We met and talked, and I cannot but think that our discussions have had their influence in the world.' (Raleigh Parkin: Vol. 10)

The meeting took place two days later, after Parkin had dined with his friend Thomas Raleigh at Balliol. After the meal, Parkin spent the evening in Raleigh's rooms with Asquith and Milner. According to Milner's biographer, 'The meeting led to a close friendship and to the germination of what was to become the guiding principle of Milner's public life.' 1 It was a debt that Milner freely acknowledged. Just before setting out to take up his new post in South Africa, Milner wrote to Parkin in 1897: 'We are both busy men with so little time for writing, yet there are so many things I always want to discuss with you. My life has been greatly influenced by your ideas, & in my new post I shall feel more than ever the need of your enthusiasm & broad hopeful view of the Imperial future.' (Parkin Papers: 11, 3279-3286)

Who was this schoolmaster and how, over the next half-century, did he have, in co-operation with Milner, an influence on the future shape of the British empire?

George Robert Parkin was born 8 February 1846 in the small farming community of Salisbury, New Brunswick, the thirteenth child of an emigrant farmer from Yorkshire who had come to the new world to improve his prospects.

With a $60 scholarship Parkin entered the small University of New Brunswick in September 1864. He had come from a pious family background, but a decisive event in his life, was meeting John Medley, the Anglican bishop, who quickly took a lively interest in the young man. Sixty years of age when Parkin met him, Bishop Medley had studied at Oxford and become a convert to the Tractarianism of the Oxford Movement. (Fairweather: 15-24) Medley was deeply opposed to the materialism and commercialism of the age, and taught the young man that it was his Christian mission to fight against these evils, which were leading to the decadence of the Anglo-Saxon race. Parkin soon began to advocate the imperial-national mission of Medley. Despite the present phenomenal growth of the Empire, he believed, Great Britain must carry along with her conquests and commercial triumphs 'that true missionary spirit which brought God's truth to the nations' or 'sink into ruin and decay.' The Christian responsibility of the Anglo-Saxon race, he confided, 'is a matter on which I feel very deeply, especially with regard to India.'(as quoted in Cook: 128-9)

Medley's influence opened Parkin to the teachings of Thomas Carlyle and his acolyte, Anthony Froude. For Carlyle, history taught that the Anglo-Saxon peoples had a moral, civilizing mission to bring peace, order and justice to the world, and to form the centre of a new empire united by blood.. 'Carlyle's influence cannot be overstated. As a major prophet of his age, millions looked to him for guidance.' (Thompson: 23-4) Carlyle's vision of the empire as an empty land waiting to receive the emigrants from Britain's crowded factories and unsanitary cities found an echo in Froude. Following T.W. Thompson in James Anthony Froude on Nation and Empire: a Study in Victorian Racialism (1987) I shall call the view espoused by Carlyle and Froude and followed by Parkin racialism rather than racism. Racialism in this sense means a belief that 'racial hierarchies were mutable, not fixed; and if conditions which had given rise to racial greatness disappeared, racial decline followed.' (Thompson: vii) For Froude, the Anglo-Saxons were a race, and their character had been forged from years of experience, culminating in the purifying religious effects of the Reformation. John Bull, its symbol, 'displayed the qualities of honesty, sincerity, and morality. While not intellectually inclined, he possessed the more important qualities of character and steadiness.' (Thompson: 32)

From several passages in Parkin's diaries in the early 1870s we know that he read Carlyle extensively and deeply. He was powerfully affected by Cromwell (Parkin Papers: 77, 25744) and he struggled spiritually to see how the examples of the great could inspire his own life and sense of mission. He contemplated the life of Moses as a inspiration to his own vocation: 'It is always interesting to study the story of a great man's life. The human heart ever gives a loyal and instinctive homage to the world's great workers - proving that in our inmost hearts we know that our chief business here in the world is to work - and that he is the real king and chief and leader of men who can do that business best. To the Christian this interest is infinitely deepened and intensified when the life he studies has been not only great but good...' But he also reminded himself that the work of the great man and the great prophet was not an easy one. The creative thinker and the hero was often misunderstood by his contemporaries and was condemned to a lonely struggle. 'Moses went forth to his work - to human eyes a hopeless task - alone. But those who were for him were stronger than those that were against him and he triumphed. What a lesson should this be to us. The man who has right on his side - that is, who has God on his side - is always in the majority, even though all the world be against him.' (Parkin Papers: 77, 25746) It was a lesson that would reassure him in his own heroic, though sometimes lonely, struggle on behalf of imperial federation. In a diary entry marked 'Suggested by Froude,' he reminded himself that the courage of the early Protestants at the time of the Reformation 'which carried men triumphantly through the pains of a terrible death at the stake was not inspired by an intellectual belief in a creed, but by a heartfelt faith in the truth and power and mercy of Almighty God, which made all the pains which man could inflict of small moment compared with his first indignation at hypocrisy and lying beliefs.' (Parkin Papers: 80, 26442)

By 1873 these calls to great deeds in the name of Christ had made the young man deeply spiritually troubled and restless; Medley wisely suggested that he take a year's leave of absence from his school-teaching and study at Oxford. As well as encouragement, Medley contributed £15 and letters of introduction. On 11 October 1873 he matriculated at Oxford, the same day as Cecil Rhodes. One of the first lectures Parkin attended at Oxford was John Ruskin's on Art, and his spiritual idealism responded to Ruskin's call for young men to work on his road at Hinksey. 'Even digging, rightly done,' Ruskin told the undergraduates, ' is at least as much an art as the mere muscular art of rowing.' (Hunt: ?)

During the Christmas vacation, he attended the headmasters's conference, where he met one of its founders, Henry Thring of Uppingham school, perhaps the most famous of the Victorian educational reformers. Thring invited him to visit his school, (Parkin Papers: 61, 17429) and in March 1874 he spent five days there, and was deeply affected by the experience. This is not the place to investigate Thring's influence over Parkin's educational ideas; rather we are concerned with Thring's impact on Parkin's politics, and it was barely two months after this visit to Uppingham that Parkin moved his famous resolution in the Union.

No one who reads Thring's letters to Parkin could be unaware of the headmaster's fierce hatred of Gladstone, with 'his furious cuttlefish performances, vituperative revenge and utter inability to distinguish between lying and truth,' 'M.O.G. Murderer of Gordon,' (Parkin Papers: Edward Thring to Parkin, 5 March 1885, 3, 620-3) 'the very incarnation of selfish weakness, mad-drunk on the praise of fools.'(Parkin Papers: Edward Thring to George Parkin, 4 February 1886, 3, 689-91) Thring believed that Gladstone's Little England philosophy was political and economic suicide as well as moral cowardice in the face of the great decadence that was threatening England. Both Thring and Parkin agreed that Tennyson's Idylls of the King, in its portrait of a society that was being slowly undermined by sexual license and moral depravity, spoke directly to contemporary Englishmen. As well, Thring impressed on Parkin that technology had changed the dynamics of the empire. Parkin wrote in his diary of 'Mr. Thring's idea of the new creation of the world in modern times, by crushing it as it were into smaller compass through the operation of Railways and telegraphs etc.'(Parkin Papers: 61,17833) This made a decisive difference in political possibilities.

When he wrote Thring's biography a quarter of a century later, he portrayed the schoolmaster as a visionary genius who had fought to realize his vision of a new form of education in the face of determined opposition from petty men. Parkin made Thring's vision of a morally regenerated and political united British Empire the subject of his moral crusade, and it was doubtless this ethical passion that commended his arguments to his fellow undergraduates at the Oxford Union when he proposed his motion on imperial federation.

When his year at Oxford was finished, Parkin returned to Fredericton where he tried to implement Thring's educational ideals of a small, residential school, but after considerable effort and expenditure, Parkin concluded that New Brunswick was an inhospitable environment for such a school. He continued to seek an outlet for his righteous reforming zeal in his support for missionary societies and the temperance movement.

After a decade of struggle against the philistines of New Brunswick to transform Canadian society through education, a new vista opened for him when, on 29 July 1884, when the Imperial Federation League formed in London with the Right Hon. W.E. Forster as president. In his opening remarks, Forster, a former Gladstone cabinet minister, rejected the little England idea that the country would be richer if she let the colonies go. This was the route to national degradation, the loss of power, even the ability to make money. Instead , as the colonies became stronger and richer in comparison to England, it was necessary to create a new federated basis for the Empire 'framed on the principle of perfect equality.' (Forster: 28) W.H. Smith, a former member of Disraeli's cabinet, then moved: "That the political relations between Great Britain and her Colonies must inevitably lead to ultimate Federation or disintegration. That in order to avert the latter, and to secure the permanent unity of the Empire, some form of Federation is indispensable." (W.H. Smith in Foster: 30) The motion was then supported by Lord Rosebery and Sir Charles Tupper, the Canadian High Commissioner. The general principles of the League were formally accepted at a second meeting held in London on 18 November. A Canadian branch under the presidency of Dalton McCarthy was formed the next year in Montreal on 9 May 1885 with Parkin a founding member. The meeting set as its mission 'that the mother country and the colonies may remain perpetually under a common sovereignty, a United Empire in its foreign affairs, with constitutional liberty for every part as regards internal administration, a re-adjustment of the several constitutional authorities of the Empire should, as occasion arises, be made in such manner as to increase the practical efficiency of Imperial unity.' (IFL in Canada: 2)

The creation of the League and its Canadian branch gave Parkin a new outlet for his ethical energies. He spoke frequently on behalf of the new movement and began to feel restless in Fredericton. The opportunity for action came in the summer of 1886 when two of his regenerating missions coincided: he was given a place as a delegate to the British and Colonial Temperance Congress in London and as a Canadian representative to the convention of the Imperial Federation League. At the Temperance meeting he put forward the suggestion that the problem of drunkenness needed to be resolved on Imperial lines, a comment which provoked the Times to remark that imperial 'federation by means of temperance legislation is surely an entirely novel idea... [and] strikes us as a singularly impractical one.' (As quoted in Cook: 149) However, as we will see, this emphasis on the moral foundation of imperial union was not simply quirky, but instead stemmed from Parkin's most deeply rooted idea, that imperial federation was a moral, more than a political or economic idea. At the Imperial Federation League meeting itself from the 1st to the 3rd of July in the Exhibition conference rooms, Parkin spoke briefly but brilliantly. Sir Sandford Felming, whom Parkin had met on the voyage to England declared it 'the speech of the morning' and Professor John Seeley, whom he met for the first time said 'that in it we heard the tone of the coming federated parliament.' (Quoted in Cook: 149) He received numerous speaking offers, made important contacts such as John Colomb, A.H. Loring, Moreton Frewen and H.O. Arnold-Foster. He also renewed his acquaintance with Milner. He was back in the UK in December, lecturing again on the theme of imperial federation. After more successful speaking engagements, he was approached at the League meeting of 31 July 1888 by Downes Carter, mayor of Melbourne and president of the League for the colony of Victoria with the offer of £400 if he would undertake a lecture tour of Australia and New Zealand.

In 'The Reorganization of the British Empire' (Parkin, 1888),Parkin put forth the case for imperial unity. He spoke of 'the Anglo-Saxon race' which had expanded throughout the world, overwhelming and absorbing all the elements with which it interacted. England itself, Parkin argued, quoting Matthew Arnold with approval, was becoming 'The weary Titan, with deaf/Ears, and labor-dimmed eyes,/Staggering on to her goal,/Bearing on shoulders immense,/Atlantean, the load/Well-nigh not to be borne/Of the too vast orb of her fate.' It was necessary, therefore, to draw on 'the vigor of colonial life, the expansion of colonial trade and power, the greatness of the part which the colonies are manifestly destined to take in affairs...'

As a great trading Empire, Britain formed a new unit based on the new inventions of the telegraph and the steam engine. The latter required a world-wide network of coaling stations to prosecute or protect commerce in an age of steam. However, Parkin's view of Imperial federation was not an Imperial Zollverein, let alone an Imperial Kriegsverein. Imperial federation was about morality and the 'conviction that Anglo-Saxon civilization is a thing distinct in itself and with a mission in the world... Standing face to face, as she does, with almost every uncivilized and unchristian race on the globe, Great Britain needs to concentrate her moral as well as her political strength for the work she has to do. Neither British statesmen nor British Christians can afford to lose one fraction of the moral energy which is becoming centralized in the great colonies.'

His aim, as critics such as Andrew Carnegie realized, was not the same as the United Empire Trade League, a body, according to Carnegie, 'that attends strictly to business; there is no sentiment about it; trade all over, and nothing but trade.' (Carnegie: 490) By contrast, the aim of the Federationists was 'to draw together the masses of all English-speaking countries, and to make them feel that they are really members of the same undivided race, and share its triumphs; that all English-speaking men are brothers who should rejoice in each other's prosperity, and be proud of each other's achievements.' (Carnegie: 491) However, Carnegie, like most of the opponents of Imperial federation, demanded details and institutional arrangements, and plans for their accomplishment. This Parkin and most 2 of the other Imperial federationists, resolutely refused to provide, fearing that the larger issue of the quest for the moral and spiritual unity of the Empire would get bogged down in criticism of the details. It was these points that Parkin hammered away at again in again anywhere he could get an audience, no matter how small.

Early in 1889 Parkin set out with a series of meetings across Canada, then headed for Australia and New Zealand. Parkin left home on his forty-third birthday to set out on a life, as he put it, 'of a wandering Evangelist of Empire.' His trip to the antipodes was a qualified success. He made important contacts, and addressed innumerable meetings, some enthusiastic, others more critical. He was somewhat frustrated with the Australians who often seemed more concerned with their own potential federation than with the larger problems of Empire with its attendant moral responsibilities. The following report from the Sydney Morning Herald is typical: 'You say Canada for the Canadians and Australia for the Australians (great and continued applause). He scorned the words and the thought (applause and groans). Was the first voice of the Colonies going to be the voice of selfishness? (applause and interruption). Was it going to be the mistaken voice of limitation? (applause and interruption).' (Willison: 68) Later, Parkin concluded that a federated Australia would be more inclined to imperial federation. He then began to advocate the federation of these colonies, a position also share by Rhodes and Milner in reset of South Africa.

On the completion of his trip round the world, landing in Plymouth on the 25th of October, he could now better understand C.W. Dilke's anecdotal account of his own tour of the English-speaking countries in 1866 and 1867, published as Greater Britain: 'If I remarked that climate, soil, manner of life, that mixture with other peoples had modified the blood, I saw, too, that in essentials the race was always one...' Dilke had written.' In America, the peoples of the world are being fused together, but they are run into an English mould: Alfred's laws and Chaucer's tongue are theirs whether they would or no.' (Dilke: ix) A second point that Dilke emphasized coincided with Parkin's moralizing and reforming inclination. For Dilke believed that the United Kingdom was in a state of decline: 'Many who are well aware of the power of the English nations are nevertheless disposed to believe that our own is morally as well as physically, the least powerful of the sections of the race or, in other words, that we are overshadowed by America and Australia.' (Dilke: 546) What mattered, therefore, was not the continued dominance of England: '...the power of English laws and English principles of government is not merely an English question - its continuance is essential to the freedom of mankind.' (Dilke: 546)

Parkin also now clearly understood the significance of Professor J.R. Seeley's The Expansion of England (1883). Seeley had quipped in the book that the British Empire seemed as if it had been acquired in a fit of absence of mind, but he believed that is preservation was an urgent practical and moral matter. Parkin himself paid tribute to Seeley's influence on him and the Imperial federation movement as a whole.

For the next six years he made England his base, living mainly at Dovercourt and Harwich, and undertaking a strenuous series of lecture tours and writing in the cause of imperial federation as a full-time paid publicist for the League. His normal pattern was to give four lectures a week, supplemented by press conferences and interviews and meetings with prominent citizens who might be persuaded to endorse imperial federation either in a letter that Parkin could read to his audience, or by the appearance on the platform at a lecture. For example, in January 1891 he spoke in Southport on the 12th, Southampton on the 15th, a chamber of commerce on the 21st, the YMCA in Southport on the 24th, talked to the heir to the Hawaiian throne on the 25th, went to Liverpool on the 26th to speak to the Conservative Club, addressed the Chamber of Commerce on the 28th, spoke in Bristol on the 29th and went to Leeds for the 30th. (Parkin Papers: 63, passim)

Parkin was an extremely effective public speaker, though, as the Toronto Globe suggested, he gained his points as much by his enthusiasm as by his arguments. 'His favourite position while talking was with his body inclined towards his audience and his left foot forward as though to prevent his precipitation over the edge of the platform; his left hand resting on the table and his right behind his back. Under the fervour of his feelings he frequently faced the stage and gesticulated with his arms, but the posture described would be returned to, and his clear-cut arguments or impassioned sentiments accompanied by a slow rocking motion of his body . . . there could hardly be two opinions as to his eloquence. There was little humour in it, but the breadth of his knowledge of his subject seemed to envelop him, and thoughts crowded in upon him faster than his lips could emit them. His oratory was a transubstantiation – the facts converted into speech, all warm, alive, and coloured as they fell out.' (Toronto Globe: 162)

Parkin also liked to address workingmen's clubs, since he saw imperial federation as a policy that better served workingmen's interests than socialism, either because it guaranteed them a source of raw materials (and thus prevented layoffs) or because it gave them the opportunity to emigrate to areas where the living conditions were more salutary and the wages were higher. In addition, he prepared a map of the British Empire designed to show its geopolitical unity. Prepared with the Edinburgh mapmaker J.G. Bartholomew, The British Empire Map of the World on Mercator's Projection the eight foot by five foot map was designed to show the geopolitical unity of the empire for schoolchildren and workingmen. The Empire shone forth in bright red and pink, in contrast to the the drab grey-green of the rest of the world. He also wrote a school text, Round the Empire, intended to promote imperial sentiment in the young.

The Canadian general election of 1891 was a decisive event for the Imperial federation movement. Prime Minister Macdonald, ageing and ill, ran his last campaign in defence of the Imperial connection in opposition to Wilfrid Laurier's policy of unrestricted reciprocity with the United States. The campaign provoked Goldwin Smith, who never needed much incitement to put pen to paper, to write Canada and the Canadian Question, the most powerful presentation of the case that Canada's future lay, not with the British Empire, but within the orbit of the United States. Smith was a formidable adversary. The former Regius Professor of History at Oxford had settled in Toronto after a stint at Cornell, and became the most prominent journalist and controversialist in Canada, though his writings still had a considerable following in the United Kingdom. Smith had never abandoned his Little England belief that colonies were fruit that would drop from the imperial tree when ripe, and saw Canada's continued association with the British Empire as the source of unnecessary tariff barriers between Canada and the USA, as well as a needless irritant to Anglo-American relations. The unity of the English-speaking peoples, which Smith also sought, would, he argued, be best served by the disappearance of Canada as a separate political unit in North America. It would also help, Smith thought, in the assimilation of those recalcitrant and unprogressive French Canadians. The United States had shown in Louisiana what it could do with such a cultural minority.

On 2 May 1892 Parkin responded with his best book, Imperial Federation: The Problem of National Unity. It was a plea for what he called the 'permanent national unity for British people.' (Parkin, 1892: vi) The possibility of new larger political entities had been demonstrated by the United States, Russia, and the Austro-Hungarian empire, and these units had been created in part from the emergence of a new concept of race, such as pan-Slavism. The same spirit plus a desire on the colonies to assert the independent status by assuming their fair share of responsibility for the expense and defence of the empire.

To those who argued that colonies were expensive and unnecessary, Parkin replied that 'safe trade' rather than fair trade or free trade ought to be the guiding concept of the empire. The empire's chief units - Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India - were tied by mutual bonds of trade, but the presence of coaling stations in Nova Scotia, British Columbia, South Africa and New Zealand created the possibility of world-wide naval protection. The completion of the railway across Canada allowed much faster access for British troops to the Far East, should they be needed, and the completion of the Pacific cable from British Columbia to Australia would give secure communications throughout the empire. Cheap ocean transport, cheaper telegraph rates and cheaper postage made it possible for people throughout the empire to keep in touch. Many other groups also contributed to unity. 'The philanthropic and social movements which originate in the old lands or the new find an almost immediate reflection or response in the other. Pan-Anglican Synods, Oecumenical Councils, and General Assemblies, together with the great Missionary and Bible Societies, keep in closest touch with the religious thought and activities of the British world. The British Association for the Advancement of Science meets in Montreal, and finds itself as much at home there as in London, Edinburgh, or Dublin. Competitions of skill in arms or in athletics add their manifold links of connection.' (Parkin 1892: 38-9) A common imaginative unity arises from a shared literary tradition. But the main justification for a united empire is the confidence in the social and Christian progress of the British nation and a belief that the Anglo-Saxon peoples can be trusted 'to use power with moderation, self-restraint, and a deep sense of moral responsibility; if we believe that the wide area of our possessions may be made a solid factor in the world's politics, which will always throw the weight of its influence on the side of a righteous peace, then it cannot be inconsistent with devotion to all the highest interests of humanity to wish and strive for a consolidation of British power.'(Parkin 1892: 48-9)

In 1893 the Imperial Federation League succumbed to an internal coup and was dissolved, and with it Parkin's source of income. Parkin was suddenly faced with serious financial difficulties. Now Milner stepped in and took charge. After a brilliant undergraduate career, Milner had enjoyed a meteoric rise. He was appointed principal private secretary to Goschen when he became chancellor of the exchequer, and was so successful that in 1889 he was made under-secretary of finance for Egypt, then practically a British colony. He rescued Egypt from bankruptcy (and made a personal fortune in the process). He returned to England in 1892, and became chairman of the board of inland revenue. Early in 1893 he heard one of Parkin's lectures, and was so impressed that he wrote to Parkin to congratulate him and to assure him that some steps would be taken to allow Parkin to continue his lecturing and writing on behalf of imperial federation. 'With some reasonable regard to the extent of my means, I am quite willing to give practical evidence of the sincerity of these convictions. If there were 20 men in England prepared to put their hands in their pockets in order to endow you (ill) as a professor of this subject, I should be willing to be one of the 20. If there were only 10, I should still make an effort to be one of 10.' (Parkin Papers: Alfred Milner to George Parkin, 24 April 1893, 8, 2248-55) On 28 April he noted in his diary that he had spoken to Milner about his financial arrangements, and again on 6 May when he lent Parkin £75. By 27 May, the financial and administrative genius had completed his task, and Parkin noted: 'A word from Alfred Milner today with the important news that he has secured the £500 a year for three years for me. This is a great cause for thankfulness. With less worry I ought to do a great deal more work.' (Parkin Papers: 63, 18265) The terms were very generous. Parkin was to devote the bulk of his time and energy to promoting the cause of closer imperial ties as he saw fit, and was he was 'free to make any arrangements he please with the League, or any other body, & to accept any sums that may be offered to him for speeches or writing, or generally to earn any money he may over & above the sum thus guaranteed.' (Parkin Papers: 'Memorandum of a conversation between Mr. Brassey, Mr. Parkin & Mr. Milner the 1st June 1893,' 8, 2256-2261)

Parkin believed that the empire had reached a critical time and that there were only two alternatives: slow disintegration or tighter union. So he proposed 'a policy of gradual but steady adaptation of existing national machinery to the new work which must be done.'( Parkin 1892: 303) One suggestion was to bring colonial and English statesmen together, an idea which suggests the colonial conferences that began with the Diamond Jubilee. But the important work, Parkin still believed, was to create 'the warmth of national passion.' Books on geography and maps should be established in public-reading rooms and working-men's clubs; imperial history and geography should be taught to school children; the cheapest possible postal and telegraph communications should be established. 'Our freedom, our national traditions, our institutions, our Anglo-Saxon civilization, are the common heritage of all. It is the business of all to labour for their maintenance and for their security,' he concluded.

In February 1895, he published The Great Dominion, a book about Canada that began as a series of articles for the Times. The book constituted a survey of the various regions of the country and an argument that they constituted a geopolitical unity, in contrast to Goldwin Smith's contention that the various regions of Canada were more closely aligned with their continuous American neighbours than they were with their fellow countrymen. As a contemporary reviewer observed: 'The tone and substance of Mr Parkin's remarkable book are favourable to the future of the Great Dominion, and in this respect provide us with a hopeful contrast to the pessimism of Mr Goldwin Smith, whose brilliant writing on Canadian affairs only too commonly appears to proceed from a mind influenced by bodily dyspepsia.'(The Derbyshire Advertiser 17 May 1895)

By this point, Parkin's financial difficulties had increased to dangerous levels. He had acquired debts of £800, some contracted in the imperial federation cause, others in connection with a biography of Edward Thring that he had agreed to write at his late friend's behest. Milner helped out with financial advice, a not inconsiderable aid remembering Milner's genius in this area. As Milner later put it to him: '...you must be above absolute pecuniary embarrassment and obligations. The labourer is worthy of his hire, & a man like you, though he may never be rich, ought not to be poor. The community owes you a sufficient maintenance, & both for your sake & that of your family you are bound to take it, wherever you can honourably get it. I am sure you will be a soldier of the Empire wherever you are.'(Parkin Papers: Alfred Milner to George Parkin, 22 June 1898, 12, 3611-22)

Parkin was also offered a Scottish seat in the Liberal interest in the united Kingdom parliament, an offer that was accompanied by a promise of a financial guarantee of £500 per annum. However, Parkin did not feel that he could accept a position that would so seriously compromise his independence. He would have most liked a staff position on the Times and, although he talked to Moberly Bell about the possibility, nothing certain was forthcoming, though he was asked if he would be interested in going to South Africa as a special correspondent. Willison: 117) Instead, he decided to accept the offer of a secure position as principal of Upper Canada College, a boys school in Toronto, and in 1895 he departed for Toronto in the hope of settling down, recovering his strength and restoring his financial position.

Epilogue:
Parkin's association with Milner scarcely ended when he left for Toronto. Over the next seven years, Milner and Parkin often exchanged letters, mostly on political matters. However, on the 26th of March 1902, Cecil Rhodes died and the content of his will became known, the centrepiece of which was his bequest that established the famous scholarships. When Parkin was in London in June of that year he was approached by Lord Grey, former Governor-General of Canada, and asked if he would undertake to implement the scholarships. (Willison: 152) He was interviewed by a committee that contained several old friends from the Imperial federation movement, Lord Rosebery, Lord Grey, Lord Milner, Dr Jameson, Sir Lewis Mitchell, Mr Alfred Beit, and Mr Bourchier F. Hawksley. They assured him that, in his new post, he would have ample freedom of action and a generous income and allowances.

On 1 August, at the age of 56, he accepted, and asked the Board of Governors for permission to resign his post at Upper Canada. For the next eighteen years he devoted his considerable energy to pursuing this unique opportunity to bring unity to the English-speaking world around spiritual and educational ideals. In many important ways, Parkin's work for the Rhodes' Trust, of which Milner was the most interested and active member, was a continuation of his efforts to promote the unity of the English-speaking peoples under another guise. In this work Parkin was a brilliant success, and more than amply repaid the confidence that Milner had shown in this "solider of the empire.' In 1919, at the age of 73, he announced his intention to retire from his post as organizing secretary. Milner was then Colonial Secretary and arranged that Parkin become a Knight Commander of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George.

When Sir George died in 1922, his association with Milner had last almost half a century. Although the two men never became close personal friends, they had qualities that supplemented one another. Milner was the organizer, the brilliant administrator, clear and analytical in his thought, and, thanks to these qualities, independently wealthy. Parkin was the visionary, the indefatigable orator, the dreamer, the wandering evangelist of empire. Together they did much to bring the English-speaking peoples closer. (See the assessment by Parkin's son, Raleigh Parkin: Vol. 9)

Footnotes:
1 Marlow, Milner: Apostle of Empire, 4. Marlow, however, mistakenly attributes the meeting to an earlier debate: '...Milner first met him [Parkin] at a debate in the Union when Parkin spoke in opposition to a motion, moved by Asquith, that 'the disintegration of the Empire is the true solution of the colonial difficulty.' ...Milner first met him [Parkin] at a debate in the Union when Parkin spoke in opposition to a motion, moved by Asquith, that 'the disintegration of the Empire is the true solution of the colonial difficulty.' Another biographer agrees that this was an important moment in Milner's life: 'It was a happy circumstance, from Milner's standpoint, that just when he was becoming interested in the British Empire there should have arrived at Oxford a young Canadian, who was absorbed in the future development and co-operation of a group of nations of which his motherland, Canada, was an important member... few men in Britain or in the Dominions have every worked more whole-heartedly for Imperial Federation than he did.' Evelyn Wrench, Alfred Lord Milner: The Man of No Illusions, 1854-1925, (London, 1958), 43 *
2 Parkin's friend, Thomas Raleigh was an exception. As he wrote Parkin 24 January 1889: 'I want the Federationalists to deal with certain definite points. Popular representation of the colonies in London appears to me impossible, or, if possible, very undesirable. Representation of governments is possible, but difficult if it involves, to my mind, the recanting of our central government, by the creation of an Imperial Executive, not dependent on the balance of parties in England - and this again, any way you work it, involves the abolition of the House of Lords. Moreover, Federation implies that the House of Commons and the colonial legislatures are to accept some limitation of their existing independence, if e.g. we have a system of defence, contributions must be assessed by imperial authority, and voted by the local taxing authorities.' NAC MG30 D44 Sir George Parkin Papers Vol.5 Pgs.1581a-1581d *

References:
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