Title: Imperial Federation: The Problem of National Unity
Author: George R. Parkin
Release date: February 26, 2014 [eBook #45025]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45025
Credits: Produced by James McCormick
{ii}
This Edition is intended for circulation only in India and the
British Colonies
{iii}
Macmillan's Colonial Library
London
1892
No. 143
{iv}
'I tell you that when you study English history you study not the past of England only, but her future. It is the welfare of your country, it is your whole interest as citizens that is in question while you study history. How it is so I illustrate by putting before you this subject of the Expansion of England. I show you that there is a vast question ripening for decision, upon which almost the whole future of our country depends. In magnitude this question far surpasses all other questions which you can ever have to discuss in political life.'
{v}
THIS book has been written at the request of many friends who think that a useful purpose will be served by putting the facts and arguments which it embodies into a connected form, where they will be easily accessible to the ordinary reader, and where either their fallacies may be exposed or their truth find a wider recognition. In most of the chief centres of the British world both at home and abroad I have found men of all classes, and not seldom large masses of men, who agreed on the whole with the line of thought which I here try to follow; agreed, too, with an intensity of belief and a warmth of enthusiasm which are, I think, rarely found except in connection with great and true causes. This concurrence of other minds has deepened the profound conviction which I have long felt that the completion of a closer and permanent political unity between the British communities scattered throughout the world should be a first aim of national statesmanship, and might {vi} become, if its advantages were clearly understood, a supreme object of popular desire.
It is essentially a subject for full and free discussion. Permanent national unity for British people can only be based on an agreement of opinion among at least the larger self-governing communities that the union is for the common good. That there should be an absolute unanimity of consenting opinion among the populations of the communities concerned we have no reason to hope. It has never occurred in any large national consolidation hitherto, and it is not likely to do so now. The continued unity of the Empire is a political question involving immense issues, and divergent opinions may be assumed from the start. Indeed, it becomes more evident from day to day, to those who watch carefully the current of events, that the end can only be gained—as great ends have ever been gained—after a severe struggle between contending forms of thought. The provincialism which has uniformly resisted large national organization; the pessimism which sees danger in every new form of political evolution; the repugnance to change in an old country with forms of government more or less fixed; the crudeness of political thought and want of national perspective in young communities; the ignorance which begets inertia: all these exist and must be combated. In this struggle the better cause, the strongest arguments, the deepest convictions, the most {vii} strenuous moulders of public opinion, will win. Mere circumstances will never shape themselves for the required solution. A policy of drift will never result in united strength. Growth may be an unconscious process—organization can only be the result of a conscious effort. No thinking man today would wish to see the American Republic resolved into its original sovereign states, Germany into its kingdoms, small principalities, and duchies; Canada into its distinct provinces; Italy into its cities. Yet none of these would now be what they are had their fortunes been left to the drift of circumstances alone. Their history proves that the ideals of the clearest minds, backed up by intense convictions and resolute effort, are essential to the attainment of the highest political organization. Circumstances or the course of events may thwart human effort or favour it, but they can never take its place as a complete substitute.
The further consolidation of the Empire depends in great measure upon the answer given to two questions. Is it for the advantage of the different communities that they should remain together? and, granting an affirmative answer to this, does the problem of further unification on a mutually satisfactory basis present difficulties which transcend the resources of British statesmanship?
These questions roughly indicate the line of enquiry which I wish to follow. Behind them lies an issue {viii} which British people throughout the world will soon be forced to recognize as infinitely surpassing in momentous significance any upon which their political thought and energy are now being spent. We may not unreasonably believe that the movements at present going on in the mother-land and the colonies are only supplying us with the political formulae required for grappling with the higher national problem.
It seems like sheer political blindness not to perceive that in different parts of the Empire forces are now actively at work which may at any moment precipitate a decision of this great question; movements in progress which, it seems safe to say, must of necessity lead up to a decision within a time measured at the very most by one or two decades.
Nations take long to grow, but there are periods when, as in the long delayed flowering of certain plants, or in the crystallization of chemical solutions, new forms are taken with extreme rapidity. There are the strongest reasons for believing that the British nation has such a period immediately before it. The necessity for the creation of a body of sound public opinion upon the relations to each other of the various parts of the Empire is therefore urgent. In stating the case for British Unity I have constantly found myself merely linking together arguments already used by thinkers in many parts of the Empire. {ix} Any apology on my part for thus making use of other men's thoughts, is unnecessary. Earnest believers in a great cause only wish that the grounds of their belief should be made known as widely as possible.
No one can be more conscious than myself of the incompleteness of the statement which I have tried to make. But even a partial study of a great subject may serve a useful purpose. If what is here said furnish to the advocates of National Unity some texts upon which they may enlarge and improve, if it provoke that honest criticism which leads to a firmer grasp of truth, I shall be more than satisfied.
{x}
{xi}
{1}
THE glory of the British political system is often said to lie in the fact that it is a growth; that it has adapted itself, and is capable of continuous adaptation, to the necessities of national development. The fact is proved and the boast is justified by British history, but behind them, no doubt, is a race characteristic. A special capacity for political organization may, without race vanity, be fairly claimed for Anglo-Saxon people.
The tests which have already been, or are now being, applied to this organizing capacity are sufficiently striking and varied. In the British Islands themselves a gradual and steady process of evolution, extending over hundreds of years, has led up from the free but weak and disjointed government of the Heptarchy period to the equally free but strong and consolidated government of the United Kingdom. In the United States, within little more than a hundred {2} years, we have seen one great branch of the race weld into organic unity a number of loosely aggregated provinces under a system which now extends over half the area of a great continent. Twenty-five years ago the process was repeated on the other half of the American continent. In the face of difficulties, by many believed to be insuperable, Canada, stretching from ocean to ocean a distance of nearly 4000 miles, has become a political unit, and already exhibits a cohesion which small European States have often only gained after long periods of internal and external conflict.
On another continent Australians, dealing with provinces larger in area than European empires, are grappling courageously with the problem of political combination, and the universal confidence felt in the ultimate success of their efforts shows what reliance is put upon the strength and efficiency of the race instinct. In South Africa and the West Indies the considerable intermixture of coloured races complicates the question, but here too the forces which make for unity are more or less actively at work.
Speaking generally we may say that in the long course of Anglo-Saxon history whenever the need of combination has arisen the political expedient has been devised to match the political necessity. This capacity for adequate organization has been the keynote of distinction between the democracy of our race and all the democracies by which it has been preceded.
There is reason to think that this organizing quality {3} is one which has given effectiveness to all others. The steadiness of the advance which the race has made in social and industrial directions has depended upon the security given by political organization at once comprehensive, flexible, and strong. No other branch of the human family has ever been so free to apply itself to the higher problems of civilization.
All the conditions of the world at the present time point to the conclusion that further progress must be safe-guarded in the same way. On the one hand, we see an extraordinary organization of military power and a widening of military combination among European nations to which the past furnishes no parallel, and which suggest hitherto unheard-of possibilities of conflict or aggression. On the other hand, the vast extension of industrial and commercial interests among British people, without any parallel in the previous history of the world, seems to demand a corresponding widening of the political combination which is required to give them security.
Meanwhile the amazing spread of the race has become the main fact of modern history—the one which assuredly will have the most decisive influence on the future of mankind. Only within the last hundred years, one might almost say within a still narrower limit of time, has this been fully realized. The tentative efforts of Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, and French to dominate the new continents opened up by the discoveries at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries did not {4} receive a decisive check till towards the end of the eighteenth. Then the new tide fairly began to flow. The flux of civilized population, by which new and great centres of human activity are created, has since that time been so overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon that nearly all minor currents are absorbed or assimilated by it. Teuton, Latin, Scandinavian, with one or two limited but well-defined exceptions, lose their identity and tend to disappear in the dominant mass of British population which has flowed, and continues in scarcely abated volume to flow, steadily away from the mother islands to occupy those temperate regions which are manifestly destined to become in an increasing degree centres of the world's force.
With abundant space on which to expand, increase has been rapid, and it would seem that in mere mass of numbers English-speaking people are destined at no distant date to surpass any other branch of the human stock.
That an expansion so vast should bring in its train a new set of political problems, with a range wider than any that had gone before, is only natural. That new hopes should be conceived from this wonderful change in the balance of the world's forces; that new plans should be devised to utilize it, as other expansions have been utilized, for the good of our race and of mankind, is equally natural.
It is almost needless to point out that the conditions incidental to this expansion were at first misunderstood. The ignorance of public opinion as to the true {5} relations between mother-land and colonies, seconded by the blindness and obstinacy of politicians waging a bitter party fight, produced in 1776 the great schism of the Anglo-Saxon race. Chatham, Burke, and many of the clearest minds of England, believed that the American Revolution was unnecessary—in America itself there was a large, and for a long time a preponderant party, which held that in constitutional change a way of escape could be found from Revolution. The worse counsels prevailed, and Revolution took the place of Reform and Readjustment. It is, no doubt, idle to speculate upon the results which might have followed from a different line of action; if the statesmen of that day had proved equal to the task of dealing with the political problem with which they were confronted. The idea that the separation of the United States from Great Britain was a pure gain to either country or to the world may, however, be distinctly challenged.
It may easily be imagined that the earlier ripening of public opinion in England upon the question of slavery, and the earlier solution found for it on peaceful lines, might have helped to solve the problem at an earlier stage in America as well, and thus prevented the frightful catastrophe of the War of Secession in 1865. The close and intimate political reaction upon each other of the two greatest Anglo-Saxon communities, the one with its higher standard of statesmanship and public morality, the other with its more active liberalizing tendencies, might have been in the highest {6} degree healthful for both. United with all others of their own race and language, British people might have been able, in self-sufficing strength, to withdraw almost a hundred years earlier than could otherwise be possible from the entanglements of European politics, and to be free to devote all their energies to the maintenance of peace, and the development of industry, commerce, and civilization. Qualifications to these views will, of course, present themselves to every mind, and it is not necessary to press them too far or to quarrel with the course of history. Much more important is it to observe its results and learn the lessons which it teaches.
We now see that the bifurcation of Anglo-Saxon national life which took place in 1776 was of all other events in modern history the one most pregnant with great consequences. The war of the Revolution led primarily to the foundation of the Republic of the United States. Its significance, however, is not exhausted by this fact, great though it is. The reflex action upon the thought and policy of Britain involved consequences as important and far-reaching. Revolution for once in our development had taken the place of Evolution, but in the end enabled the latter to resume its steady course. The revolt of the American colonies led to the closer study of the principles which must control national expansion. Britain strove, and not in vain, to acquire the art of bringing colonies into friendly relation with the national system. The nation-building energy of her people remained unimpaired, {7} and though one group of colonies had been lost, others, extending over areas far more extensive, were soon gained. Under new principles of government these were acquired, not to be lost, but retained as they have been up to the present time. Is that retention to be permanent? Is it desirable? Can the colonies be brought, and ought they to be brought, not merely into friendly relations, but into organic harmony with the national system? Has our capacity for political organization reached its utmost limit? For British people this is the question of questions. In the whole range of possible political variation in the future there is no issue of such far-reaching significance, not merely for our own people but for the world at large, as the question whether the British Empire shall remain a political unit for all national purposes, or, yielding to disintegrating forces, shall allow the stream of the national life to be parted into many separate channels.
Twenty-five years ago it seemed as if English people, and it certainly was true that the majority of English statesmen, had made up their minds definitely as to the only possible and desirable solution to this great national problem. The old American colonies had gone, and had remained none the less good customers of the mother-country for having become independent. Very soon, it was sincerely believed, the whole world would be converted to Free Trade, and with universal free trade and the universal peace which was to follow, nothing was to be gained from retaining the colonies, {8} while the colonies themselves were expected to look eagerly forward to complete political emancipation as the goal of their development. A few brilliant writers in the press, a few eloquent speakers on the platform, gave much vogue to these views. The correspondence of prominent public men which has since come to light, the recollections of men still living, furnish convincing proof that this opinion was widely accepted in official circles. A governor, leaving to take charge of an Australian colony, was told even from the Colonial Office that he would probably be the last representative of the Crown sent out from Britain. This tendency of official thought found its culmination when, in 1866, a great journal frankly warned Canada, the greatest of all the colonies, that it was time to prepare for the separation from the mother-land that must needs come. The shock which this outspoken declaration gave to Canadian sentiment, built up as it had been on a century of loyalty to the idea of a United Empire, was very great. That statesman and journalist alike had misconceived the temper of the British as well as of the colonial mind was soon made manifest. This was shown by the almost universal applause which greeted the passionately indignant protest of Tennyson, when, in the final dedication to the Queen of his Idylls, he wrote:—
'And that true North[1], whereof we lately heard
A strain to shame us—keep you to yourselves: {9}
So loyal is too costly! friends, your love
Is but a burden: break the bonds and go!
Is this the tone of Empire! Here the faith
That made us rulers! This indeed her voice
And meaning, whom the roar of Hougoumont
Left mightiest of all nations under heaven!
What shock has fooled her since that she should speak
So feebly?'
At once it became clear that here the real heart of Britain spoke—that poet rather than politician grasped with greater accuracy the true drift of British thought.
It is not too much to say that from that day to this the policy of separation, as the true theoretical outcome of {10} national evolution, has been slowly but steadily dying. John Bright held the theory in England almost up to the end of his great career. Goldwin Smith advocates it in Canada still. Of their views I shall have more to say later. But among conspicuous names theirs have stood practically alone. Politicians in Britain do not wish, and if they wished, would scarcely dare, to advocate it on public platforms. Separation may come under the compulsion of necessity, from the incapacity of statesmen to work out an effective plan of union, or as the result of national apathy and ignorance—not because it is desired, or from any theoretical belief in its advantage to the people concerned.
If we lay aside, however, the question of national feeling, or national interest, and look upon the matter as simply one of constitutional growth and change, it is little wonder that the statesmen of that earlier period took the view they did.
I have in my possession a document which seems to me of much historical interest in this connection as furnishing concrete evidence of the direction of political thought at the period to which I have referred. It is the printed draft of a Bill prepared with great care more than twenty-five years ago by Lord Thring, whose long service as Parliamentary counsel to successive Cabinets has given him an experience in the practical forms of English legislation quite unrivalled. The Bill was intended to be a logical sequel to those measures of Imperial legislation by which responsible government was {11} granted to the Canadian and Australian colonies. The new constitutions had then been in operation for some time in several of the great colonies, and already no slight friction had occurred in the endeavour to adjust Imperial and Colonial rights and responsibilities upon a clear and well-understood basis. Moreover, the continued formation of new colonies and the desire of certain Crown colonies to attain to responsible government suggested a fundamental treatment of the whole question of colonial relations. The Bill therefore embodies an attempt to put upon a just basis the relations between Britain and her colonies at each period of their growth, and to state clearly their mutual obligations and mutual duties.
It naturally provides in the first place for the government of settlements in their earlier stages of growth under the absolute jurisdiction of the Crown.
In the next place, the transition of such a Crown settlement into the rank and status of a colony with responsible government is not left to be decided by agitation within the colonies or by irregular pressure in other directions, such as lately took place in the case of Western Australia; but it is made to depend on a definite increase of European population and other conditions equally applicable to all colonies alike. With the grant of responsible government, however, comes a clear division between imperial and local powers, and an equally definite distribution of burdens; the guarantee to the colony of protection from foreign aggression being contingent upon the contribution by {12} the colony of the revenue or money required for defence in fair proportion to its wealth and population.
Lastly, 'as the natural termination of a connection in itself of a temporary character' (to use the words of the preface to the Bill), provision is made for the formal separation of a colony and its erection into an independent state when its people feel equal to under-taking the full range of national responsibility. Direct provision is made for independence only at the colony's own request, but it is suggested that separation might be brought about by coercive proclamation on the part of the mother-country in case the colony fails to perform the national duties which it accepted with responsible government.
The interest of this proposed legislation seems to me to lie in the proof which it furnishes that the grant of responsible government was by no means regarded as giving finality to national relations, but only as marking a stage in colonial development. The view thus taken by Lord Thring in England was the view taken by Joseph Howe in Canada, to whose opinions I shall have occasion hereafter to refer.
The merit of the Bill lay in the fact that it placed upon a defined and easily understood footing the relations of mother-land and colony so long as they remained together; and provided a constitutional way of escape from the connection when it had ceased to give satisfaction to either party. Its peculiarity, indicative of the opinions prevailing at the time, is that no notice is taken of the possibility of a colony rising {13} to a place of greatness and power inconsistent with a strictly subordinate colonial relation, and yet desiring to perpetuate its organic connection with the nation.
The constitution of the United States provides that new settlements, though thousands of miles from the centre of government, and as truly colonies as those of Britain, shall rise from the condition of territories into that of states, under which they enjoy the full national franchise, and assume a full share of national responsibility. In a like manner Lord Thring's Bill fairly faced the fact that for communities such as those which British people were forming, the colonial stage was temporary and transitional, and it provided, in a different sense, but in accord with existing conditions and beliefs, a fixed goal for colonial aspirations, and a fixed limit to the responsibilities of the mother-land.
The framer of this Bill is now, I have reason to think, among those who believe that a very different end of colonial development is both desirable and practicable. Such a reversal of opinion is the natural outcome of the extraordinary changes which have passed over the national life. The extension of commercial and industrial relations, the growth of common interests, the increased facility for communication, above all, the retention in the colonies, under their new systems of free government, of a strong national sentiment, and the absence of the anticipated desire to break the national connection, have thrown new light upon the whole question.
{14}
In that new light it now seems that there is an argument well nigh unanswerable, which goes to prove that so far from being a matter of indifference, the separation from the Empire of anyone of our great groups of colonies would be an event pregnant with anxieties and possible disaster alike to the colonies and to the mother-land, and so far from being the natural line of political development, that separation would be as unnatural as it is unnecessary. It is this thought that has given birth to the idea of national federation, to the conviction in many minds that the chief effort of our national statesmanship should be directed to securing the continued unity of the wide-spread British Empire, to resisting any tendency towards that disintegration which a generation ago was looked forward to with comparative unconcern. This is not the thought of mere theorists or enthusiasts. Statesmen and thinkers of the first rank both in the mother-land and the colonies, while reserving their judgment as to the lines on which complete unity can be gained, have strongly affirmed their belief that it is the true goal for our national aspirations, that the question is one of supreme concern for the whole Empire, and that the problem must soon be grappled with in practical politics.
Not the creation, but the preservation of national unity, is the task which thus confronts British people, which they must accept or refuse. Unity already exists: it is the necessary starting-point of every discussion. It will prove, if need be, an incalculable assistance {15} towards the attainment of the completer unity at which we aim. But the existing unity is crude in form, one which in its very nature is temporary and transitional, one which ignores or violates political principles ingrained in the English mind as essential to any finality in political development, and which already results in gross inequalities in the conditions of citizenship throughout the Empire.
The logic by which this position is proved seems irresistible in its appeal to the mind of the ordinary British citizen. It is well to be clear on this point.
The essence of British political thought, the very foundation upon which our freedom, political stability, and singular collective energy as a nation have been built up, may be expressed in two words—Representative Government. The loyalty of the subject and the faithfulness of the ruler spring alike from this. The willingness to bear public burdens, the deep interest in public affairs, the close study and careful application of political principles which distinguish the people of our race from all others, and the advance of the whole body politic towards greater individual freedom combined with greater collective strength, are all direct outgrowths of Representative Government. Other races may work out other systems and attain greatness in doing so; we have committed ourselves to this, so far as dealing with our own people is concerned. From the local board which settles the poor-rate or school-tax for a parish, to the Cabinet which deals with the highest concerns of the Empire and the world, {16} this principle is the central element of strength, since it is the ground on which public confidence is based. A British subject who has no voice in influencing the government of the nation throughout the whole range of its operation has not reached that condition to which the whole spirit of our political philosophy points as the state of full citizenship. We are on absolutely safe ground when we say that great English communities will not permanently consent to stop short of this citizenship, nor will they relegate to others, even to a majority of their own nationality, the uncontrolled direction of their most important interests.
With certain qualifications, introduced to mitigate the glaring anomaly of the situation, the great self-governing colonies of the Empire are in fact now compelled to allow many of their most important affairs to be managed by others. Canada, with a commercial navy which floats on every sea, holding already in this particular the fourth place among the nations of the world, has a voice in fixing international relations only by the courtesy of the mother-land, and not by the defined right of equal citizenship. Australia, occupying a continent, with vast and growing commercial interests, is in the same anomalous position. English-speaking, self-governing populations, amounting in the aggregate already to nearly a third of the population of the United Kingdom, and likely within little more than a generation to equal it, with enormous interests involved in nearly every movement of national affairs, {17} have no direct representative influence in shaping national policy or arranging international relations.
The almost perfect freedom they enjoy in the control of local affairs accentuates rather than mitigates the anomaly. By accustoming them to the exercise of political rights it makes them impatient of anything which falls short of the full dignity of national citizenship.
No one who understands the genius of Anglo-Saxon people can believe that this state of affairs will be permanent. No one who sympathizes with the spirit which has constantly urged forward British people on their career of political progress can wish it to be so. Great countries with an assured future cannot always remain colonies, as that term has hitherto been understood. The system which persists in making no other provision for them is on the point of passing away.
It is sometimes urged that freedom from national burdens should be enough to reconcile colonists to any lack of representation in national counsels; that if they have no sufficient share of Imperial Government they are at least rid of Imperial anxieties; that wise direction of affairs may, in any case, be looked for from the mother-land. But no immunity from public burdens, can compensate for the loss of a share in the higher life of the nation and the higher dignity of full citizenship: no honourable career can result from a readiness to shirk responsibility: a willingness to rely upon others to do our {18} work or protect our interests is not the spirit which has built up or will perpetuate the power of our race. Such argument may suit the infancy of colonies; applied to their adolescence it is degrading, since it implies a mean and contented dependence. If the greater British colonies are permanently content with their present political status they are unworthy of the source from which they sprang. It will not be so. The spirit of independence has developed, not degenerated, in the wider breathing space of new continents. A very little further growth, increasing the complication and aggravating the anomaly of the existing situation, will bring us to a stage where that spirit will no longer endure the restraints now put upon it by practical difficulties of political organization, and where those difficulties must be swept away by the gathering force of national instincts and necessities. About the direction of change there may be a question; about the certainty of change there can be none.
But the argument is equally strong when we reverse our attitude, and place ourselves in the position of the taxpaying citizens of the United Kingdom. There are probably few of these who are not at times filled with a glow of pride and enthusiasm when they think of the vast extent of those colonies, which, planted by British energy, held through years of conflict by British courage, and proudly inheriting British traditions, are rising to pre-eminence in every quarter of the globe.
{19}
This pride and enthusiasm have very positive and practical issues. The citizen of the remotest colony knows that should an enemy wantonly attack his frontier—should port or city be threatened by a hostile force—almost within twenty-four hours, as soon as telegraph could summon or steam convey them, British sailors or British soldiers would be pouring thither, as ready to fight and die for that particular bit of soil as for the shores of England itself. But the sentiment which makes this possible is balanced and qualified by very different considerations. The citizen of the United Kingdom has often been compelled to regard the colonies as great dependencies which increased his responsibilities and multiplied his difficulties without returning to the mother-country, under their present organization, strength in men or resources, or even in exclusive commercial advantage. Every new colony or colonial interest was to him something new to defend, and augmented the burden of Empire.
Yearly the vast expense necessary to provide adequately for national responsibilities increased, and added itself to the weight of taxation incident to an advanced civilization and complex social system. While forced to bear the chief burden of the taxation required for national defence, the people of the British Islands could see that the mass of the colonists benefited by this protection already possessed, or were likely before long to possess a higher average of wealth and comfort than the mass of the people {20} who bestowed the benefit. Looking forward little more than a generation he could foresee a time when the colonists whose commerce was protected would equal in number the whole home population which gave the protection, when the volume of colonial commerce itself would surpass that of the mother-land.
It requires little argument to prove that the anomaly of leaving one part of a nation to bear a disproportionate share of the burdens of the whole is as inconsistent with Anglo-Saxon ideas of government as the exclusion of the colonies from a proportionate voice in the conduct of national affairs.
An effective method of illustrating this anomalous condition of the Empire and of British citizenship at the present time is to consider the immediate change which takes place in the political privileges and responsibilities of a man who shifts his residence from the mother-country to Canada, Australia, or any other great colony. He crosses the ocean, perhaps, to carry on in another part of the Empire the business of the the bank, or commercial house, or shipping firm with which he is connected here. Such of his interests as require national protection remain the same, and continue to enjoy security under the British flag. He continues to take precisely the same interest as before in the national welfare. But he loses at once the right to influence national policy by his vote, and at the same time he drops his old responsibilities of citizenship, since he no longer pays the same proportion {21} of the taxes which make the nation strong to protect him.
Take again a crucial case as applied to the working man. In Australia one finds nearly 100,000,000 of sheep. The shepherding and shearing of these sheep, the packing, carriage, and shipping of their wool, give employment to a large section of the industrial population. Nearly all this wool finds its market in England, where the manufacture of a portion of it gives employment to an immense population in centres such as the West Riding of Yorkshire and parts of Scotland. The safety of this wool in passing from the Australian centre of production to the British centre of manufacture is essential to the prosperity of the people in both. To this end Australian ports are made strong at Australian expense and British ports at British expense. So far all is fair and the distribution of the burden on industry is equal. But between the two countries lie 12,000 miles of sea to be guarded, and this is effectively done at enormous naval and military expense, the burden of which, however, is almost exclusively borne at the British end of the line. The proportion paid by the Australian workman is comparatively insignificant. Yet he is the one who earns the higher wages and feels the pressure of taxation less.
I have heard a working man in a large public meeting in Australia assert that the position viewed from this aspect was unfair, and he added that he personally was far better able to bear an equal share {22} of national burdens as a working man in Australia than he had ever been as a working man in Britain. He was certainly as competent to exercise the national franchise.
The illustration thus taken from a single colony and a single department of industry has, of course, a wide application. Whether viewed, then, from a purely British or a purely colonial standpoint there are unanswerable reasons, and they are equally unanswerable from either side, which point to an early modification of the national system.
Especially is it to be noted, however, that the circumstances which have developed this great problem have not arisen, like many other political problems, from injustice or mismanagement in the past, or from any causes tending to provoke mutual recrimination. Through the simple processes of growth and change, the conditions which satisfied the demands of national life in the past have become insufficient to satisfy its necessities for the future. Nothing could possibly be more helpful for the solution of the question than this fact, that men are able to approach it entirely free from party feuds and local animosities.
Why, it may be asked, have not the inconsistency and the temporary character of the existing national system been all along obvious to every one? Why does the public attention require to be directed to facts so manifest? Perhaps the best answer is to be found in the wonderful rapidity of the changes which have been going on, and the intense {23} absorption of British people, both at home and abroad, in the actual processes of national evolution, which left no time for studying their indirect results.
Within the last century, and mainly within the last half century, the United Kingdom has passed through the most strenuous period of industrial development known in the history of nations. The social system has been revolutionized by an extraordinary increment of wealth, an immense increase of population, and its concentration in towns, with all the difficult problems which these changes involve. Political thought has had enough to do to adjust the balance between decreasing rural and increasing urban constituencies—to meet the wants of a democracy advancing in prosperity and intelligence, to maintain an equilibrium between new and conflicting forces. Moral effort has been strained to the utmost in dealing with education, sanitation, social reformation, and kindred questions, a deepening sense of public responsibility in such matters going hand in hand with an almost paralyzing increase in the masses to be dealt with. Under such circumstances it is scarcely to be wondered at that British people within the United Kingdom have been too much absorbed in what was directly before them to weigh carefully the results of what was going on abroad; that even when most active in external as well as internal affairs they seem to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind.'
{24}
In the colonies the preoccupation of thought and energy has with equal reason been as complete. It is scarce fifty years since the Canadian provinces obtained local self-government. The last half century has witnessed the growth of a most complete system of municipal and provincial institutions, crowned by a great act of constructive statesmanship in Confederation. The organization of half a continent on material lines has kept pace with each step in political construction. Railroads, canals, telegraphs, postal facilities, steamboat communication, all the machinery of modern civilization, have been widely applied to an immense area.
In Australia movement has been even more rapid and engrossing. Melbourne has changed in fifty years from a village of a thousand inhabitants to a city of 500,000. Australian commerce, in its infancy when the Queen came to the throne, now equals that of the United Kingdom at the same date. New Zealand, then the home of mere savages, has already a British population which exports annually £10,000,000 worth of the products of civilized labour. In South Africa half a continent is being organized under conditions of extreme difficulty.
In the rush of progress so swift as this, the mass of men are conscious chiefly of the work immediately before them. But as this work grows under their hands, the vast external interests are created, and the wide external connections grow up, which compel attention to the larger problems which they involve.
{25}
The local politician, as provinces consolidate, is, by a process of natural compulsion, changed into the statesman with a national and international range of political vision.
It seems almost superfluous to point out that in striving for closer consolidation British people would be following strictly along the lines of the most striking national movements of modern times. They would be merely keeping abreast of the spirit of the age.
For the idea of national unity the people of the United States twenty-five years ago made sacrifices of life and money without a parallel in modern history. No one now doubts that the end justified the enormous expenditure of national force. 'The Union must be preserved' was the pregnant sentence into which Lincoln condensed the national duty of the moment, and to maintain this principle he was able to concentrate the national energy for a supreme effort. The strong man who saved the great republic from disruption takes his place, without a question, among the benefactors of mankind.
Germany struggled through years of difficulty, conflict, and swaying tides of national passion towards the ideal of a united fatherland. The ideal has been realised; the men who made its attainment possible have won, not merely the gratitude of their countrymen, but the world's respect as well; even their acts of despotism are forgiven and more than half forgotten in the momentous significance of their one supreme {26} achievement. Today it seems as if their work of consolidated strength was the best guarantee of Europe's peace.
Cavour's statue stands in the squares of Italian cities—his name lingers in Italian hearts. To Tuscan, Lombard, and Neapolitan alike he is 'our great Cavour'—the man whose courageous genius found a basis in facts for the conception of Italian unity, whose patient and resolute diplomacy made possible the satisfaction of the national aspiration.
Canada has placed first on her roll of greatness the statesman, to whom she mainly owes the achievement of Federal unity. Thus beyond a doubt the men who have graven their names most deeply on the history of our time are those who have carried out in many lands and under varying conditions the work of national consolidation. American unity, German unity, Italian unity, Austro-Hungarian unity—the expansion of Russia without loss of unity—these are the accomplished facts of our time which we have to face. More than this. We do not need the philosophical historian to tell us, for the process is going on under our own eyes, that a governing tendency of the age is towards the union of many states into combinations of nearly equal strength—sometimes by fusion, sometimes by federation, sometimes by alliance. On the practical equipoise of two such great groups the equilibrium of Europe at this moment depends. Race adds its influence to the tendency. Pan-Sclavism—Pan-Latinism—Pan-Teutonism {27} are more than names. They are forces which play their part in moulding the destinies of nations and governments. The aspect of the whole world irresistibly suggests the thought that we are passing from a nation epoch to a federation epoch. That British people should fall in with this tendency is in the strict line of historical continuity. 'From clans in the north,' it has been truly said, 'and from a heptarchy in the south, England and Scotland grew into nations and thence into one nation.' In the great offshoots of the race abroad the tendency is renewed, and each step prepares the way for another and greater effort. To consolidate the empire which Chatham founded is the one manifest opportunity remaining in the British world for British statesmen to place their names in our history beside those of the greatest of the statesmen of the past.
For the mother-land an organized national unity means, not degradation from her imperial position, but a frank acceptance of the facts of national growth, and the greater dignity which would come from acknowledged leadership of the free communities which have grown up around her.
Prussia gained, instead of losing, in dignity, when many of the higher functions of her historic parliament became merged in those of the Reichstag of the German people, when she gave up her individual place as a nation in Europe to assume the leadership of the German Empire. So would it be with Great Britain.
{28}
For the colonies national unity means independence: not 'virtual' independence, as their present ill-defined condition is sometimes spoken of, but the manly and sufficient independence which comes from asserted rights and assumed responsibilities.
There are two kinds of independence. The first is that of the son grown restless under tutelage, who throws himself off, more or less recklessly, from the family connection, refuses family advice or assistance, and takes the chances of life on his own account. Given, on the one hand, overbearing and unsympathetic parents anxious to retain their control till the last moment, or, on the other, children filled with ignorant self-conceit and consequent discontent, and independence of this first type is the natural result. Sometimes it is justified, and succeeds; sometimes it is born of blind stupidity and makes lamentable shipwreck. But this is not the ideal or the only form of independence. Given reason, due consideration, mutual regard for rights on both sides, and the family tie becomes a partnership which combines the advantages of all the liberty required for full development with the unity of action and counsel which assures strength. It produces a great Rothschild firm, each head of which is free to work out his own views at his own centre of the world's finance, but each in touch with the other for counsel or action, each making use of the business machinery established by all the rest, and thus securing incomparable business advantages for all. So in a wider sphere it produces the nation—the great {29} American Republic—the Swiss, Germanic, or Canadian Confederation; each state or group of states working independently within its own well-defined sphere of influence; each taking its share as freely in the equally well-defined but wider orbit of a large national life.
Our admiration is not given to the independence of the American state, or the Canadian or Australian province when holding aloof from union, where we feel that a spirit of petty provincialism is at work. Nor can it be reasonably given to the independence of the Greek state impatient of any control beyond that which is found within a city's walls. At least, in this case, if we admire, we pity still more, for the lack of the power to preserve the liberty which the city had created. We reserve our admiration for the reasoned and secured independence of a state whose members have abandoned the petty side of their individuality, and displayed that political self-restraint, sagacity, and largeness of view which is implied in wide organization for the attainment of great ends.
It is to this independence of partnership that a real national unity would lift the colonies of the British Empire. Doubtless it would at first be the partnership of junior members. More than this could not reasonably be expected. But the position need not be an irksome one.
One primary principle reason approves and experience recommends for our guidance in attempting to outline the form of union which will best be adapted {30} to the genius of the British people. For all its communities there should be the utmost freedom of individual action which is consistent with united strength. Apparently this condition will be best fulfilled under some form of Federal connection.
[1] Lord Dufferin dedicated a Canadian edition of his 'Letters from High Latitudes' in the words 'To that true North.' I cannot refrain from connecting with these lines one more association which will, I feel sure, in Canadian hearts at least, add a tender grace to the vigorous thought of the poet and the delicate compliment of the politician. I am able to do so through the accident of a conversation with the late Rev. Drummond Rawnsley, of Lincolnshire, a connexion and intimate friend of Lord Tennyson, whom I happened to meet some years since at the house of a common friend, Professor Bonamy Price, at Oxford. Introduced to him by our host as a Canadian, I was informed by him of a fact which he felt sure would interest all Canadians. The Poet Laureate, with whom he had lately been staying, had told him that when the articles referred to had appeared in the Times, Lady Franklin, who was then a guest in his house, and who felt the most intense interest in the future of Canada, had been filled with indignation at the wrong which they did to English sentiment and to Canadian loyalty, and had strongly urged upon him the duty and propriety of giving utterance to some sufficient protest. Being in the fullest sympathy with Lady Franklin's views, the poet acted upon this suggestion and the lines were written. I do not think any private confidence is violated in mentioning the facts told to me on such unquestionable authority. It seems well that Canadian people should know when reading these lines, that behind the poet's brain was the woman's heart, and that a lady whose name is held in highest honour wherever the English language is spoken, and wherever heroism and devotion touch the human heart, is thus connected by the subtle thread of sympathy and the golden verse of our greatest poet with their own loved land.
{31}
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.