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.

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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