strange career it runs and the novel experiments it tries.' These novel experiments in government, institutions, and social development, are the most valuable results, as many think, of the American state, and they are the results of its independence. Yet independence is what Mr. Seeley dreads for our present colonies, both for their own sake and ours. If any one thinks that America would be very much what she now is, if she had lost her battle a hundred years ago and had continued to be still attached to the English crown, though by a very slender link, he must be very blind to what has gone on in Australia.[2] The history of emigration in Canada, of transportation in New South Wales, and of the disastrous denationalisation of the land in Victoria, are useful illustrations of the difference between the experiments of a centralised compared with a decentralised system of government. Neither Australia nor Canada approached the United States in vigour, originality, and spirit, until, like the United States, they were left free to work out their own problems in their own way. It is not the republican form of government that has made all the difference, though that has had many most considerable effects. Independence not only put Americans on their mettle, but it left them with fresh views, with a temper of unbounded adaptability, with an infinite readiness to try experiments, and free room to indulge it as largely as ever they pleased. As Mr. Seeley says, the American Union 'is beyond question the state in which free will is most active and alive in every individual.' He says this, and a few pages further on he agrees that 'there has never been in any community so much happiness, or happiness of a kind so little demoralising, as in the United States.' But he proceeds to deny, not only that the causes of this happiness are political, but that it is in any great degree the consequence of secession. He seems to assume that if we accept the first proposition, the second follows. That is not the case. Secession was a political event, but it was secession that left unchecked scope and, more than that, gave a stimulus and an impulse such as nothing else could have given, to the active play and operation of all the non-political forces which Mr. Seeley describes, and which exist in much the same degree in the colonies that still remain to us. It is the value that we set on alacrity and freshness of mind that makes us distrust any project that interferes with the unfettered play and continual liveliness of what Mr. Seeley calls free will in these new communities, and makes us extremely suspicious of that 'clear and reasoned system,' whatever it may be, to which Mr. Seeley implores us all to turn our attention.

II.

We shall now proceed to inquire practically, in a little detail, and in plain English, what 'clear and reasoned system' is possible. It is not profitable to tell us that the greatest of all the immense difficulties in the way of a solution of the problem of the union of Greater Britain into a Federation is a difficulty that we make ourselves: 'is the false preconception which we bring to the question, that the problem is insoluble, that no such thing ever was done or ever will be done.' On the contrary, those who are incurably sceptical of federation, owe their scepticism not to a preconception at all, but to a reasoned examination of actual schemes that have been proposed, and of actual obstacles that irresistible circumstances interpose. It is when we consider the real life, the material pursuits, the solid interests, the separate frontiers and frontier-policies of the colonies, that we perceive how deeply the notions of Mr. Seeley are tainted with vagueness and dreaminess.

The moral of Mr. Seeley's book is in substance this, that if we allow 'ourselves to be moved sensibly nearer in our thoughts and feelings to the colonies, and accustom ourselves to think of emigrants as not in any way lost to England by settling in the colonies, the result might be, first, that emigration on a vast scale might become our remedy for pauperism; and, secondly, that some organisation might gradually be arrived at which might make the whole force of the empire available in time of war' (p. 298). Regarded as a contribution, then, to that practical statesmanship which is the other side of historical study, Mr. Seeley's book contains two suggestions: emigration on a vast scale and a changed organisation. On the first not many words will be necessary. They come to this, that unless the emigration on a vast scale is voluntary, all experience shows that it will fail inevitably, absolutely, and disastrously: and next, that if it is voluntary, it will never on a vast scale, though it may in rare individual instances, set in a given direction by mere movement of our thoughts and feelings about the flag or the empire. It is not sentiment but material advantages that settle the currents of emigration. Within a certain number of years 4,500,000 of British emigrants have gone to the United States, and only 2,500,000 to the whole of the British possessions. Last year 179,000 went to the United States, and only 43,000 to Canada. The chairman of the Hudson's Bay Company the other day plainly admitted to his shareholders that 'as long as the United States possessed a prairie country and Canada did not, the former undoubtedly offered greater advantages for the poorer class of emigrants.' He would not force emigrants to go to any particular country, 'but everything else being equal, he would exercise what moral influence he could to induce emigrants to go to our own possessions' (Report in Times, November 23, 1883). The first step, therefore, is to secure that everything else shall be equal. When soil, climate, facility of acquisition, proximity to English ports, are all equalised, it will be quite time enough to hope for a change in the currents of emigration, and when that time comes the change will be wrought not by emotions of patriotic sentiment, but by calculations of prudence. No true patriot can honestly wish that it should be otherwise, for patriotism is regard for the wellbeing of the people of a country as well as affection for its flag.

Let us now turn to the more important question of some organisation by which the whole force of the empire might be made available in time of war. Our contention is not that the whole force could not, might not, or ought not to be made available. So far as these issues go, the answer would depend upon the nature and the stress of the contingencies which made resort to the whole force of the empire necessary or desirable. All that we argue for is that the result will never be reached by a standing and permanent organisation. Mr. Seeley does not himself attempt to work out any clear and reasoned system, nor was it his business to do so. Still it is our business to do what we can to take the measure of the idea which his attractive style and literary authority have again thrown into circulation in enthusiastic and unreflecting minds. Many