Colonial Ties Quotes

We esteem our connection with and dependence on Great Britain as one of our greatest blessings; and apprehend the latter will be sufficiently secure, when it is considered that the inhabitants in the colonies have the most unbounded affection for his majesty’s person, family and government, as well as the mother country, and that the subordination to the parliament is universally acknowledged.

Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

When I grew up in Tasmania, you thought that London was home. You waited to go to England as soon as you graduated, in my case on a ship bound for London via Genoa.

In my last I contended that none of those ties which are necessary to bind a people together and make them one, existed between the colonists and Mexicans.

Though Great Britain could do perfectly well without her colonies, and though on every principle of morality and justice she ought to consent to their separation, should the time come when, after full trial of the best form of union, they deliberately desire to be dissevered—there are strong reasons for maintaining the present slight bond of connection, so long as not disagreeable to the feelings of either party.

My family come from Cyprus. Both my father and my grandfather worked on the British bases there, and as the British government granted independence to Cyprus, they granted British passports to those who worked with them.

The people of the Falkland Islands, like the people of the United Kingdom, are an island race. They are few in number but they have the right to live in peace, to choose their own way of life and to determine their own allegiance. They way of life is British; their allegiance is to the Crown. It is the wish of the British people and the duty of Her Majesty's Government to do everything that we can to uphold that right. That will be our hope and our endeavour, and, I believe, the resolve, of every Member of this House.

We must have cohesion, the unbreakable bond between metropolitan France and her overseas territories.

When I was a child in the 1940s and early 1950s, my parents and grandparents spoke of Britain as home, and New Zealand had this strong sense of identity and coherence as being part of the commonwealth and a the identity of its people as being British.

My conception of dominion status implies present ability to severe the British connection if I wish to.

Why on earth do we want closer connection with England? We have little in common with English people except our language. We are fast becoming an entirely different people.

If the people in Britain knew the nature and disposition of the New England people as well as we do they would not find so many friends in England as I suppose they do.

Although she [America] might have had pressing provocations, yet she ought to have looked to this country as the guardian power to which she was indebted not only for her comforts, not only for her rank in the scale of civilization but for her very existence.

As we grew to love South Australia, we felt that we were in an expanding society, still feeling the bond to the motherland, but eager to develop a perfect society, in the land of our adoption.

Convinced that the attachment of colonies to the metropolis, depends infinitely more upon moral and religious feeling, than political arrangement, or even commercial advantage, I cannot but lament that more is not done to instill it into the minds of the people.

My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron.