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.

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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.

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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