CHAPTER II.

FEDERATION.

THE central internal fact, then, which must soon bring about a decisive change in our system of national organization is the necessity that British people in all parts of the Empire should have, if they are to remain together and so far as circumstances permit, full and equal privileges of self-government and citizenship. The political instinct which works in this direction nothing can resist, for it has become innate in all that is best in our race. The colonist who is permanently content with less has lost no small part of the spirit of his ancestors.

The central external fact which points to federation rather than separation as the form which that change should take is the necessity for joint defence of great common interests, and the joint management of international relations.

It may be fairly claimed that in accepting the federal idea Anglo-Saxon peoples have reached the crown of their political achievement, inasmuch as it offers a compromise between excessively centralized systems of government, which gave strength at the {32} expense of local freedom, and those other systems which for the sake of local freedom sacrificed the strength which was necessary for their own preservation. The liberty of the small Greek Republic was in some aspects a glorious thing contrasted with the despotisms around it, yet we cannot but remember that for want of power to combine that liberty was crushed beneath the heel of the foreigner. Federalism is the device by which organized democracy, without giving up anything essential to liberty, is placed in a position to wrestle on even terms with organized despotism.

An Australian writer has lately defined very justly the true reason for the application of the Federal principle. 'It may be said,' he remarks, 'that federation becomes desirable where, on the one hand, the country is too enormous in extent and too diverse in conditions for its internal affairs to be satisfactorily managed by one central government, while, on the other hand, the communities have certain common interests best served by their coming together, or are confronted by common dangers if they keep apart.' Never in the history of the world were these conditions more completely fulfilled than in the case of the British Empire. But objections to a federal organization for the Empire are at once raised. 'The areas and communities to be dealt with are too vast, the problem too complex, and the consequent difficulty of giving an adequate organization too great for such a plan to be thought of.' To this it may be answered {33} that the growth of the United States has widened political horizons. It has proved that immense territorial extent is not incompatible, under modern conditions, with that representative system of popular government which had its birth and development in England, and its most notable adaptation in America. It has shown that the spread of a nation over vast areas, including widely-separated states with diverse interests, need not prevent it from becoming strongly bound together in a political organism which combines the advantages of national greatness and unity of purpose with jealously guarded freedom of local self-government. So that if the birth of the American Republic suggested the confident inference that the inevitable tendency of new communities was to detach themselves like ripe fruit from the parent stem, the circumstances of its growth have done much to dissipate the idea. The United States have illustrated on a great scale the advantages of national unity; their example has pointed the way to its attainment. That example has been followed in one great British community; it is being adopted in another.

But in the United States, in Canada, in Australia it is urged, we have continental contiguity. The British Empire is too large, its parts, separated by oceans, are unfitted for government under a common federal system. We can at least answer that the standard of possible size for a nation has steadily enlarged in the course of history. For a federal system the unit may be small or large, there seems {34} to be a measure by which to fix the possible size of the unit in any case. The breadth of interest is this measure. In a United British Empire each of the federated countries, as commercial communities, would have interests all over the world, and having such interests would have a justification for being units in a world-wide Oceanic Empire.

For great trading communities, moreover, we must remember that oceans do not divide. The almost instantaneous transmission of thought, the cheap transmission of goods, the speedy travel possible for man, have revolutionised pre-existing conditions in commerce and society, once more widening our horizon. The fact lies at the very basis of our national prosperity; it is recognised in the every-day transactions of commercial life. Why should it not be admitted among the ordinary considerations of political life as well?

Communities so remote from each other as those which compose the Empire, it is said again, 'cannot have those common interests which are necessary to give cohesion to a nation.' Let us consider the point.

I go into a woollen mill in Yorkshire or the south of Scotland. Its proprietor, a great organizer of industry, shows me over the vast establishment, from the warehouse where the bales of wool are being packed as they arrive after their long voyage from the antipodes, through the washing, combing, spinning, weaving, dyeing, and pressing rooms till we come to the show rooms where the completed goods are awaiting sale and shipment to the furthest {35} corners of the world. He tells me that any circumstance which checked the steady supply of the raw material even for a few weeks would leave all this extensive and complicated mass of machinery idle; would throw his employees, numbered by thousands, out of employment; would bring himself face to face with ruin and his people with want. Any circumstances which checked the steady shipment of the manufactured goods to distant markets would produce consequences scarcely less immediate or less disastrous. I find the proprietor day by day anxiously watching the reports of the wool sales in London, and through them anything that affects the wool trade in Sydney, Melbourne, or Dunedin. Clearly this man and those who work for him must look far afield, if they consider all the conditions upon which their prosperity depends. They are types which represent many millions of people in the United Kingdom.

I go to Australia or New Zealand, and find myself the guest of a squatter on his remote station. The sheep in his flocks number perhaps a hundred thousand. He shows me his station houses, his shearing sheds, his wool sheds, his vast paddocks enclosed with hundreds of miles of wire fencing, all his extensive plant, his horses, his shepherds, his band of shearers. He has to fight against drought; swarms of rabbits may threaten him with ruin; his year's clip of wool may, as the result of past disasters, be mortgaged to the Banks. But if the telegraph tells him that wool is rising in the London market, that the {36} factories at Leeds and Halifax and Huddersfield are running at their utmost capacity, that Yorkshire is prosperous, he is cheerful and faces his difficulties with a hopeful mind. A good year's sales will repay him for his risks and recoup him for the losses of the past. Cut this man off from access to the home markets for a few months, block the ports from which he ships his wool, or break the line of his communication, and his industry is paralysed, his workmen without pay; the bank which backs him and stakes much on the prosperity of him and his like may close its doors. Here manifestly is a man who, with his organized army of industry, from the shepherd who tends the sheep to the lumper who handles the bales at the docks, has interests which extend further than his immediate neighbourhood.

I go on board one of the great liners which run between Australia and England, and which may be taken to represent the third great form of British industry. Down in her hold, forming the chief part of her cargo, are several thousand bales of wool. When she returns the wool will be replaced by manufactured goods. The profits of the company which owns and manages her depend upon the prosperity of the great manufacturing communities at home and the great producing areas abroad; upon the pressure of outward and homeward trade. Upon the absolute safety from hostile attack of this vessel and her like in passing over many thousand miles of sea depends once more the industrial security of the vast multitudes of human {37} beings for whom and between whom she carries on exchange.

Can community of interest and mutual dependence be more complete than this? Of the man who produces the raw material, the man who works it up, and the man who carries between them, can we say where the interest of the one begins and the other ends? Yet what has been said of one raw material of production and manufacture may be said of a hundred. What has been said of wool may be said of wheat, for artizans must be fed while they work, and more and more English people at home will have to depend on English people abroad for their supplies of wheat. It may be said of meat, which every year, in increasing quantity, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia send to the mother-land.

No limit can be put to the range of common interest between communities of which one devotes its industry chiefly to supplying the raw material of commerce, the other to its manufacture.

This community of industrial interest is strengthened by a thousand influences which give community of thought in almost every relation of life, and must be reckoned among the forces which make for cohesion.

The population which flows into the waste places of the colonies comes chiefly from the motherland, not driven out by religious persecution or political tyranny, but impelled by the spirit of enterprize or in search of the larger breathing and working space of new countries. In almost every case the emigrant {38} makes a new bond of friendly connection. He leaves the old Britain without any feeling of bitterness, and often with friendly aid; he finds a welcome as well as a home in the new Britain beyond the seas. There the links of connection multiply and strengthen. Cheaper ocean transport, cheaper postage, cheaper telegraph rates, are constantly making it easier for him to keep in touch with the old home. His daily or weekly paper has its columns of English news, keeping him well informed about all that most closely concerns the nation's life. The best products of the best minds of the motherland furnish his chief intellectual food, and form the basis of his education. Cheaper and cheaper editions poured out by competitive publishers in the centres of cheap production bring all the master minds who have spoken or written in the English tongue within easy reach even on an Australian station or a Canadian prairie. The tick of the telegraph keeps the financial and speculative interests of the whole outlying Empire in almost instant touch with those at the centre. 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 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 {39} London, Edinburgh, or Dublin. Competitions of skill in arms or in athletics add their manifold links of connection. It seems as if Pan-Britannic contests of the kind on a great scale might yet revive the memories of the old Greek world. Already corps of riflemen or artillerymen meet in friendly competition year by year at Wimbledon, Bisley, or Shoeburyness.

The young Australian or Canadian who begins to practice with the cricket-bat or oar is already in imagination measuring his skill and strength against the best that Great Britain can produce, nor has the cricketer or oarsman of the United Kingdom gained his final place in the athletic world till he has tested his powers on Australian fields or Canadian waters. The eager interest with which in either hemisphere the tour of a selected team or the performance of a champion sculler is watched from day to day is a curious proof of the intimacy of thought made possible by existing means of communication.

The great labour conflicts of the past two or three years have furnished striking examples of the vital sympathy which springs from nationality and close social and commercial connection. During the Australian strike of last year, day after day, by message and manifesto, each party to the contest strove to bring over public opinion in Great Britain to its side, while the funds raised on the one side of the world today were on the morrow giving support and encouragement to those they were intended to assist at the other. Once more there is the sense of common {40} and equal ownership of great national memories and names. The people of the great colonies have never broken with national traditions. They are able to enter without reserve into that passionate affection with which Shakespeare and Milton, Scott and Burns, loved their native land, even while pointing out her faults. The statue of a national hero, like Gordon, finds its place as naturally on a square of Melbourne as on Trafalgar Square itself. Equally in place are the memorial tablet to an Australian statesman in the crypt of St. Paul's beside the tombs of Nelson and Wellington, or the memorial service at Westminster to a statesman of the Empire who did his work in Canada.

It may be asked whether it can be supposed that the great colonies, widely separated as they are, will ever learn to think and act together politically; whether, for instance, Australians can ever be expected to take interest in Canadian fishery disputes, or Canadians sympathize in Australian excitement about New Caledonia or New Guinea. 'Canada and Australia,' says Mr. Freeman, 'care a great deal for Great Britain; we may doubt whether, apart from Great Britain, Canada and Australia care very much for one another. There may be American States which care yet less for one another; but in their case mere continuity produces a crowd of interests and relations common to all. We may doubt whether the confederation of States so distant as the existing colonies of Great Britain, whether the bringing them into closer relations with one another as well as with Great Britain, will at all {41} tend to the advance of a common national unity among them[1].'

The question thus raised is an interesting one, not to be dismissed in a word. Some force is given to it by the wide separation of the colonies from each other, and the lack of intercourse in the past. But anyone who watches colonial questions closely sees that great changes are taking place. Till a very few years ago Canada looked to Australia only eastward across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The Dominion has now become like Australia, a state upon the Pacific, with interests in that ocean which are sure to become very considerable. Lines of steamship, postal, and cable communication between the two countries are already in contemplation. The safety of such routes would of itself form a great common interest. Passing through the centre of the Pacific it would tend to create those national interests which would increase British influence in that ocean--an end very much in Australasian thought.

On the Atlantic Canada is extending her trade relations with another group of colonies, the West Indies. This trade promises to develop greatly in the future, for as one country is in the temperate zone and the other in the tropics, each seems the natural complement of the other in range of production. The opening of a Panama route would give the Australian colonies a profound interest in the strength of the British position in the West Indies.

{42}

Australia and New Zealand, again, have a substantial interest in the political fortunes of South Africa, since in that country is the most vulnerable point of their most important trade route. In the _Naval Annual_ for 1890 Lord Brassey estimates the outward-bound Australasian trade which passes the Cape at twenty millions sterling per annum, and uses the statement to enforce his views as to the national importance of making perfectly secure our position at this great turning-point of the world's commerce.

But I do not wish to lay undue stress upon these facts, which are only intended to be illustrations of the existence and growth of common interests between different groups of colonies. They are suggestions of future possibilities rather than powerful factors in the present.

It is more pertinent to measure the strength of the forces which at the present time make effectively for national cohesion. Nobody doubts that if today either Canada or Australia were attacked by any foreign power the whole might of Great Britain would be put forth to protect them. As little doubt can there be that if Britain were wantonly attacked and engaged in a struggle for existence, each of these great colonies would be ready with such assistance as it could give. Race sentiment and national honour, to say nothing of self-interest, would combine, as things now stand, to make these results as certain as anything can be in human affairs. The common {43} bond with the mother-land seems to me a guarantee of sufficient unity between the colonies--not so close, not so instinctive, it is true as the more direct tie, but still amply sufficient to give effective national cohesion. All the colonies are parts of the same great body; all would alike suffer from the weakness of the whole. All would gain indefinitely from united strength.

'In their case,' to repeat what Mr. Freeman says of the United States, 'mere continuity produces a crowd of interest and relations common to all.' But if Mr. Freeman reflects that seventy-seven per cent. of Australia's trade, eighty per cent. of New Zealand's trade, eighty-five per cent. of South Africa's trade, fifty per cent of Canada's trade, finds its way backward and forward over the vast oceans which separate these colonies from Britain, or from each other, he will be forced to admit that mere distance of separation produces, if not a crowd of interests and relations, at least a few interests and relations common to all which are practically predominant. No states of the American Union have an interdependence of financial and commercial relations proportionally so exclusive and complete as those which exist between New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, or even Canada and Great Britain. 'It is hard to believe,' adds Mr. Freeman, 'that states which are united only by a sentiment, which have so much, both political and physical, to keep them asunder, will be kept together by a sentiment only.' Mr. Freeman has evidently not studied {44} the facts of colonial trade, or the relations of English and colonial industry[2].

Another practical aspect of the question naturally appeals strongly to many minds. We are the most strenuous working race of the world, and the problems of labour fill a large place in our thoughts of the present and the future. Not only to hold our own in the keen competition going on with the rest of the world in both manufacture and the production of raw material, but also to reach the higher ideal formed of the life possible for a working man, we seek to make as light as may be the burdens which industry must necessarily bear. In all countries no small portion of these are such as are imposed by the needs of national organization--burdens which no country has ever yet escaped, or ever will. In national unity we may have all the advantages and resources of co-operation utilized to this end on a vast scale; one diplomatic and consular service; one fleet instead of several; ports and docks defended at the common expense for the good of all. Under any well-considered scheme it is certain, so far as defence is concerned, that all parts of the Empire would secure {45} a maximum of protection at a minimum of cost, and the same would hold good in regard to other forms of necessary national expense. A nation economizing expenditure in these directions could enlarge it for objects which tended to the common good, and brought advantages within the reach of the masses, cheap postage, cheap telegraphy, cheap transit of every kind. Combinations undertaken for ends such as these could have no savour of an aggressive Imperialism.

To provide for the safety of industry is not Jingoism. Richard Cobden was not under a Jingo influence when he said that he would willingly vote £100,000,000 for the Navy rather than see it unable to fulfil its task of giving security to British commerce. His was rather the expression of strong English common sense, which faces facts and the actual conditions of life. Lord Rosebery is not a Jingo when he suggests that British people can best secure peace by 'preponderance.' The strength of a United Empire would be no more than equal to the increasing tasks which are laid upon it. The fear that Federation with the strength which it gave would make British people the bullies of the world appears absurd. If we have powerful athletic sons we do not cut their muscles or reduce their physique lest they should use their splendid strength to injury of their neighbours; rather do we train them to use it in noble ways--to be foremost in toil, to help the oppressed, to defend the defenceless, to be the strong arbiter between contentious disputants. So with the nation. Doubtless vast {46} strength, without an adequate controlling moral force, has in it a temptation and a danger. But surely the remedy lies in deepening the moral sense, not in limiting or diminishing the material strength of the nation.

To the Christian, the moralist, the philanthropist, no inspiration could be greater than that which might well spring from observing the growing strength of the Empire, and from reflection that this immense energy might be turned in directions which would make for the world's good. And strength beyond all other nations British people must have if they are to face in its fulness the work they have to do. As the outcome of that intense life which has specially characterized the last two hundred years they find themselves front to front with the whole world on every great sphere of action or field of responsibility. They have to face and boldly play their part in the large and complex problems of European politics, when the might of enormous armies stands ready to enforce the decisions of an alliance or the will of a despot. Commerce, extending to the remotest islands or penetrating to the heart of uncivilized continents, makes almost co-extensive with the globe those ordinary interests of British people which require protection. Three hundred millions of mankind, who do not share British blood, of various races and in various climes, acknowledge British sway, and look to it for guidance and protection; their hopes of civilization and social elevation depending {47} upon the justice with which it is exercised, while anarchy awaits them should that rule be removed. Through commerce and widespread territories the nation is brought into constant intercourse and often into the most delicate relations with almost every savage race on the globe, thus standing almost alone of European nations on that border-land where civilization confronts barbarism, of all positions in which a nation can be placed perhaps the one most weighted with responsibilities and most pregnant with possibilities of good and evil. To this position the world's history offers no parallel; beside it Rome's range of influence sinks into comparative insignificance.

But to understand all that it means we must remember that along with this mighty growth of power there has been a steady growth of a public conscience, which holds itself responsible not only for national acts, but for national influence; which refuses to shut its eyes to abuse of power, but rather looks upon power as a sacred trust, to be used for worthy ends. Therein lies the justification of our national greatness, and of the wish that it should be maintained.

'We sailed wherever ship can sail, We founded many a noble state;-- Pray God our greatness may not fail Through craven fear of being great.'

This is the poet's thought and prayer. May it not rightly be the thought and prayer of every British citizen? We have assumed vast responsibilities in the {48} government of weak and alien races, responsibilities which cannot now be thrown off without a loss of national honour, and without infinite harm to those under our rule. A nation which has leaning upon it an Indian population of nearly 300,000,000 over and above the native races of Australasia, South Africa, and many minor regions, must require, if stability and equilibrium are to be maintained, an immense weight of that trained, intelligent, and conscientious citizenship which is the backbone of national strength. It needs to concentrate its moral as well as its political strength for the work it has to do.

If we really have faith in our own social and Christian progress as a nation; if we believe that our race, on the whole, and in spite of many failures, can be trusted better than others, 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. It is because I believe that in all the noblest and truest among British people there is this strong faith in our national integrity, and in the greatness of the moral work our race has yet to do, that I anticipate that the whole weight of Christian and philanthropic sentiment will ultimately be thrown on the side of national unity, as opening {49} up the widest possible career of usefulness for us in the future; inasmuch as it will give us the security which is necessary for working out our great national purposes.

The praises of the Federal system of the United States are much dwelt upon now that it has been justified by triumphing over the difficulties and dangers of a century. It seems the natural and easy outgrowth of the circumstances in which the original colonies found themselves at the close of the Revolution. The conditions under which it was created and exists are pointed out as ideally favourable for national unity on a federal basis--contiguity, common interest, sentiment based on a common history, and other facts and considerations of a parallel kind.

Far different from this did the task of framing the Federal Constitution seem to those who had it in hand. It has been described by Mr. Bryce as 'a work which seemed repeatedly on the point of breaking down, so great were the difficulties encountered from the divergent sentiments and interests of the different parts of the country, as well as of the larger and smaller states.' The same writer adds: 'The Convention had not only to create _de novo_, on the most slender basis of pre-existing institutions, a national government for a widely scattered people, but they had in doing so to respect the fears and jealousies and apparently irreconcileable interests of thirteen separate commonwealths, to all of whose governments it was necessary to leave a sphere of {50} action wide enough to satisfy a deep-rooted sentiment, yet not so wide as to imperil national unity.'

Yet once more we read of difficulties curiously like those which are urged as making British unity impossible now. 'Their geographical position made communication very difficult. The sea was stormy in winter, the roads were bad, it took as long to travel by land from Charleston to Boston as to cross the ocean to Europe, nor was the journey less dangerous. The wealth of some states consisted in slaves; of others in shipping; while in others there was a population of small farmers, characteristically attached to old habits. Manufactures had hardly begun to exist. The sentiment of local independence showed itself in intense suspicion of any external authority; and most parts of the country were so thinly peopled that the inhabitants had lived practically without any government, and thought that in creating one they would be forging fetters for themselves.'

Difficulties, then, are no new thing in national organization. They may be, as they have been, but the spur to the determined will of nation or individual. They are to be measured by the resources at our disposal with which to confront them.

Admitting the difficulties involved in framing a Federal system we must at the same time remember the long and peculiar training which our race has had in dealing with them. Acute minds have been turned upon the problem, systems have been framed and adopted by vast populations, and time has tested {51} the results. The experience of the United States extends over more than a century of strenuous national life and wonderful growth. In the light of that experience, and to meet her own necessities, Canada faced the question a quarter of a century ago, and framed a system which works well and gives assurance of permanence. Encouraged by these examples, Australia is taking steps to frame a similar union. Thus three great English-speaking communities have had their thoughts fixed with anxious attention upon Federal problems. In forming or in carrying on these three great English-speaking federations, fundamental principles have been so exhaustively studied and so thoroughly tested that the conditions that must control Federal organization may now be stated with a very considerable degree of accuracy. Germany, Switzerland, and Austro-Hungary all furnish data which assist in making conclusions definite. An adoption of Federalism is therefore no longer a leap in the dark. The losses and gains which it involves can be weighed and measured.

With such a range of history and experience to fall back upon it ought to be possible for a practical self-governing people to distinguish between the relations they wish to control through the smaller machinery of local government, and those they are content to submit to the larger machinery of a central government: to draw, in short, a true line of division between those interests which are peculiar to each {52} member of the Federation and those which are common to all.

In this connection Professor Ransome has stated what seems to me a striking and most suggestive view. He points out that the geographical relations of the great divisions of the Empire lend themselves naturally to Federal organization on a large scale. A primary difficulty in all federations, as I have said, is to draw a sufficiently defined line between those local questions in the settlement of which communities, and most of all Anglo-Saxon communities, will brook no interference from outsiders, and those other questions in which all have a common interest, and are content to have only a proportionate voice. Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa, have each internal problems of their own to wrestle with, which each can solve only for itself, and about which it would resist dictation or resent even advice from all or any of the others. Such are the relations of French and English in Canada; of white and coloured labour in Australia; of Boer and Englishman in South Africa; of Irish Home Rulers and Unionists in the United Kingdom. But the fact that Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and South Africa lie in different quarters of the globe at once distinguishes broadly all questions of this kind, and diminishes the probability of conflict. On the other hand the very distance of separation makes it impossible, except by united action, to deal adequately with the vast interests common to all. To draw the line of {53} distinction between things purely local and such as are general in status thus widely separated would be much easier than to do the same for the contiguous sovereign states of the American Republic, or the contiguous provinces of Canada or Australia. The very diversity and peculiarity of local interest simplify the task.

It is to be noted, also, that in forming a British Federal system we should be relieved from what was the most difficult problem which presented itself to the framers of the American constitution. It was necessary to create a head for the state, and a method was devised with elaborate caution for doing this in freedom from the storms of party passion. In actual working that system has broken away from the original intention of its authors, and more than once the quadrennial selection of a party head to the American Republic has put a heavy strain upon the machinery of national government.

The British nation, on the other hand, has a head which commands reasoned and personal allegiance in all parts of the Empire. Under it the popular will reaches its end with less friction than under any other method yet devised. The system has been proved capable of easy and satisfactory application to the wants of the colonies, even under a federal organization such as that of Canada. The possession of such a starting-point will prove of enormous practical advantage in facing the problems of national organization.

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The fact that the constituent elements of the proposed federation are not at the same stage of political development naturally occurs as a difficulty. Canada, in having a fully matured internal system, is riper for federation than Australia, Australia than South Africa, South Africa than the West Indies.

The circumstance is often urged as a conclusive argument for delay: it is sometimes represented as an insuperable obstacle to any present progress towards closer unity. The condition is no new one to existing federal systems, nor has it proved an obstacle of importance to the framing of an adequate constitution. Both the United States and Canada have a carefully arranged system by which their younger communities are admitted by successive stages into fuller privileges of citizenship, each as it reaches a fixed period of maturity becoming entitled to the full franchise of state or province. As well argue that a man must not admit his eldest son into partnership until the youngest has come of age, as claim that Canada, with its constitution already consolidated by a quarter of a century's history, must still wait another quarter or half century for its rightful position in the nation to which it belongs because the West Indies and South Africa have not been able to work their way through certain stages of political evolution. Strange, indeed, would have been the political position of the United States had they waited to frame their federal system till Colorado was on a level with Massachusetts. For a nation {55} like ours, constantly expanding, and with possibilities for further extension even greater than the United States, common sense would seem to indicate the maturity of the first great colonies, the period when they might fairly be expected to desire some final decision about their national destiny, as the time when the basis of a Federal system, applicable on a fixed principle to all, should be determined. They are then free, as each advances to maturity, to choose between independence and entrance into the national system.

The concession of Responsible Government to the colonies was an important, but by no means a final step in political development. From some points of view the change seemed to superficial observers very closely akin to the concession of independence. It gave the absolute control of local affairs, the power of levying taxes, and of applying the proceeds; but the higher functions of government, it must be remembered, still remained with the central power. Not only was this so, but the responsibilities of independence were clearly not imposed in the same proportion that its privileges were granted.

In the minds of some colonists and more Englishmen I have found a belief, or rather a suspicion, that any closer union than at present exists could only be effected by taking away from the colonies some of the self-governing powers which they now possess. That this is necessary is clearly a mistake, and one which probably arises from the erroneous impression about {56} the degree of self-government which a colony enjoys. Not the resignation of old powers, but the assumption of new ones, must be the result of Federal union. A colony has now no power of making peace or war; no voice, save by the courtesy of the mother-country, in making treaties; no direct influence on the exercise of national diplomacy. Admitted to an organic union, its voice would be heard and its influence felt in the decision of these questions. To the Imperial Parliament, that is, as things now stand, to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, is reserved the right to override the legislation of a colony, just as, for example, the Parliament of the Dominion has the right to override the legislation of a Canadian Province. But as the Canadian feels in this no sense of injustice or tyranny, since he is represented in the superior as well as in the inferior Legislature, so the colonist would feel no loss of political dignity if he had his true place in the higher as well as in the lower representative body. With enlarged powers, it is true, the colony would have to accept enlarged responsibilities. In human affairs the two invariably and rightly go together[3]. If, instead {57} of federation, a colony chose independence, it would evidently be compelled at once to assume the control of all questions now reserved for Imperial treatment, and the corresponding burdens now provided for at Imperial expense. In a closer union the larger control and the larger responsibility would be assumed in partnership rather than individually. Surely this is not subtracting anything from the power of self-government. It is the means of making it complete.

Shall it, then, be separation or closer union? Shall we face the dangers which few can deny will be incident to the disintegration even by Act of Parliament and mutual consent of the greatest nation of the world; or shall we choose, as a wiser alternative, to confront, as in the past, the difficulties of such political reconstruction or adaptation as is required to meet new national needs? This is the question which not merely may arise, but certainly must arise within a very measurable time to be settled by British people in all parts of the world.

It has been said that all great movements which affect the condition of peoples are originated and carried forward by the combination of two forces: the force of conviction, which comes from reason, and the force of enthusiasm, which is born of sentiment. It is generally supposed that Anglo-Saxon people are most strongly influenced by reason, by arguments directed to their intelligence. Yet it may be doubted if in any race, sentiment plays a more decisive part in {58} moulding public action. It lives in the pages of Milton, Shakespeare, Scott, Burns, Tennyson, and in distant lands loses none of its power to stir men's hearts. It has profoundly influenced Canadian history for more than a hundred years. It flames up in every colony when a crisis arises when British honour is at stake.

Millions of people in distant parts of the world glory in the right to speak of England, Scotland, or Ireland under the tender name of home. A sentiment indeed, but a mighty power. It is true that the term 'loyalty,' as it has usually been applied to British colonies and colonists in their relations to the United Kingdom, is in some ways becoming an obsolete and unmeaning term. A larger loyalty which has in it no suspicion of dependence is taking its place. It is one which implies faithfulness to the great nationality to which we belong, its heart, indeed, and its greatest traditions in Britain, but its mighty limbs and no small share of its hopes for the future on the world's circumference. It is at the bar of this loyalty that the Briton at home as well as the Briton abroad must be judged. The sentiment on which it partly rests is one we need not fear to count upon, and it has its limits only with the British world. It has been proof against the defects of an illogical system: it will prove the main element of cohesion in a true system. But we need not fear to turn away entirely from sentiment to study the dry facts of material interest which each of the greater communities of the Empire has in National Unity.

[1] _Britannic Confederation_, p. 54.

[2] Since the above was written we have been called upon to lament the great loss which English literature has suffered in Mr. Freeman's death. I cannot but think that the critical attitude which he took towards British unity is explained by a remark which I have lately found in his _Impressions of the United States_. He says, 'Greatly to my ill-luck, I am wholly ignorant of all things bearing on commerce, manufactures, or agriculture.' Are not these the questions which really dominate British national development?

[3] 'No community which is not primarily charged with the ordinary business of its own maintenance and defence is really, or can be, in the full sense of the word, a free community. The privileges of freedom and the burdens of freedom are absolutely associated together. To bear the burden is as necessary as to enjoy the privilege, in order to form that character which is the great necessity of freedom itself.'--Mr. Gladstone before the Colonial Committee, 1859.

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