FEDERATION.
THE central internal fact, then, which must soon bring about a
decisive change in our system of national organization is the
necessity that British people in all parts of the Empire should
have, if they are to remain together and so far as circumstances
permit, full and equal privileges of self-government and
citizenship. The political instinct which works in this
direction nothing can resist, for it has become innate in all
that is best in our race. The colonist who is permanently
content with less has lost no small part of the spirit of his
ancestors.
The central external fact which points to federation rather than
separation as the form which that change should take is the
necessity for joint defence of great common interests, and the
joint management of international relations.
It may be fairly claimed that in accepting the federal idea
Anglo-Saxon peoples have reached the crown of their political
achievement, inasmuch as it offers a compromise between
excessively centralized systems of government, which gave
strength at the {32} expense of local freedom, and those other
systems which for the sake of local freedom sacrificed the
strength which was necessary for their own preservation. The
liberty of the small Greek Republic was in some aspects a
glorious thing contrasted with the despotisms around it, yet we
cannot but remember that for want of power to combine that
liberty was crushed beneath the heel of the foreigner.
Federalism is the device by which organized democracy, without
giving up anything essential to liberty, is placed in a position
to wrestle on even terms with organized despotism.
An Australian writer has lately defined very justly the true
reason for the application of the Federal principle. 'It may be
said,' he remarks, 'that federation becomes desirable where, on
the one hand, the country is too enormous in extent and too
diverse in conditions for its internal affairs to be
satisfactorily managed by one central government, while, on the
other hand, the communities have certain common interests best
served by their coming together, or are confronted by common
dangers if they keep apart.' Never in the history of the world
were these conditions more completely fulfilled than in the case
of the British Empire. But objections to a federal organization
for the Empire are at once raised. 'The areas and communities to
be dealt with are too vast, the problem too complex, and the
consequent difficulty of giving an adequate organization too
great for such a plan to be thought of.' To this it may be
answered {33} that the growth of the United States has widened
political horizons. It has proved that immense territorial
extent is not incompatible, under modern conditions, with that
representative system of popular government which had its birth
and development in England, and its most notable adaptation in
America. It has shown that the spread of a nation over vast
areas, including widely-separated states with diverse interests,
need not prevent it from becoming strongly bound together in a
political organism which combines the advantages of national
greatness and unity of purpose with jealously guarded freedom of
local self-government. So that if the birth of the American
Republic suggested the confident inference that the inevitable
tendency of new communities was to detach themselves like ripe
fruit from the parent stem, the circumstances of its growth have
done much to dissipate the idea. The United States have
illustrated on a great scale the advantages of national unity;
their example has pointed the way to its attainment. That
example has been followed in one great British community; it is
being adopted in another.
But in the United States, in Canada, in Australia it is urged,
we have continental contiguity. The British Empire is too large,
its parts, separated by oceans, are unfitted for government
under a common federal system. We can at least answer that the
standard of possible size for a nation has steadily enlarged in
the course of history. For a federal system the unit may be
small or large, there seems {34} to be a measure by which to fix
the possible size of the unit in any case. The breadth of
interest is this measure. In a United British Empire each of the
federated countries, as commercial communities, would have
interests all over the world, and having such interests would
have a justification for being units in a world-wide Oceanic
Empire.
For great trading communities, moreover, we must remember that
oceans do not divide. The almost instantaneous transmission of
thought, the cheap transmission of goods, the speedy travel
possible for man, have revolutionised pre-existing conditions in
commerce and society, once more widening our horizon. The fact
lies at the very basis of our national prosperity; it is
recognised in the every-day transactions of commercial life. Why
should it not be admitted among the ordinary considerations of
political life as well?
Communities so remote from each other as those which compose the
Empire, it is said again, 'cannot have those common interests
which are necessary to give cohesion to a nation.' Let us
consider the point.
I go into a woollen mill in Yorkshire or the south of Scotland.
Its proprietor, a great organizer of industry, shows me over the
vast establishment, from the warehouse where the bales of wool
are being packed as they arrive after their long voyage from the
antipodes, through the washing, combing, spinning, weaving,
dyeing, and pressing rooms till we come to the show rooms where
the completed goods are awaiting sale and shipment to the
furthest {35} corners of the world. He tells me that any
circumstance which checked the steady supply of the raw material
even for a few weeks would leave all this extensive and
complicated mass of machinery idle; would throw his employees,
numbered by thousands, out of employment; would bring himself
face to face with ruin and his people with want. Any
circumstances which checked the steady shipment of the
manufactured goods to distant markets would produce consequences
scarcely less immediate or less disastrous. I find the
proprietor day by day anxiously watching the reports of the wool
sales in London, and through them anything that affects the wool
trade in Sydney, Melbourne, or Dunedin. Clearly this man and
those who work for him must look far afield, if they consider
all the conditions upon which their prosperity depends. They are
types which represent many millions of people in the United
Kingdom.
I go to Australia or New Zealand, and find myself the guest of a
squatter on his remote station. The sheep in his flocks number
perhaps a hundred thousand. He shows me his station houses, his
shearing sheds, his wool sheds, his vast paddocks enclosed with
hundreds of miles of wire fencing, all his extensive plant, his
horses, his shepherds, his band of shearers. He has to fight
against drought; swarms of rabbits may threaten him with ruin;
his year's clip of wool may, as the result of past disasters, be
mortgaged to the Banks. But if the telegraph tells him that wool
is rising in the London market, that the {36} factories at Leeds
and Halifax and Huddersfield are running at their utmost
capacity, that Yorkshire is prosperous, he is cheerful and faces
his difficulties with a hopeful mind. A good year's sales will
repay him for his risks and recoup him for the losses of the
past. Cut this man off from access to the home markets for a few
months, block the ports from which he ships his wool, or break
the line of his communication, and his industry is paralysed,
his workmen without pay; the bank which backs him and stakes
much on the prosperity of him and his like may close its doors.
Here manifestly is a man who, with his organized army of
industry, from the shepherd who tends the sheep to the lumper
who handles the bales at the docks, has interests which extend
further than his immediate neighbourhood.
I go on board one of the great liners which run between
Australia and England, and which may be taken to represent the
third great form of British industry. Down in her hold, forming
the chief part of her cargo, are several thousand bales of wool.
When she returns the wool will be replaced by manufactured
goods. The profits of the company which owns and manages her
depend upon the prosperity of the great manufacturing
communities at home and the great producing areas abroad; upon
the pressure of outward and homeward trade. Upon the absolute
safety from hostile attack of this vessel and her like in
passing over many thousand miles of sea depends once more the
industrial security of the vast multitudes of human {37} beings
for whom and between whom she carries on exchange.
Can community of interest and mutual dependence be more complete
than this? Of the man who produces the raw material, the man who
works it up, and the man who carries between them, can we say
where the interest of the one begins and the other ends? Yet
what has been said of one raw material of production and
manufacture may be said of a hundred. What has been said of wool
may be said of wheat, for artizans must be fed while they work,
and more and more English people at home will have to depend on
English people abroad for their supplies of wheat. It may be
said of meat, which every year, in increasing quantity, Canada,
New Zealand, and Australia send to the mother-land.
No limit can be put to the range of common interest between
communities of which one devotes its industry chiefly to
supplying the raw material of commerce, the other to its
manufacture.
This community of industrial interest is strengthened by a
thousand influences which give community of thought in almost
every relation of life, and must be reckoned among the forces
which make for cohesion.
The population which flows into the waste places of the colonies
comes chiefly from the motherland, not driven out by religious
persecution or political tyranny, but impelled by the spirit of
enterprize or in search of the larger breathing and working
space of new countries. In almost every case the emigrant {38}
makes a new bond of friendly connection. He leaves the old
Britain without any feeling of bitterness, and often with
friendly aid; he finds a welcome as well as a home in the new
Britain beyond the seas. There the links of connection multiply
and strengthen. Cheaper ocean transport, cheaper postage,
cheaper telegraph rates, are constantly making it easier for him
to keep in touch with the old home. His daily or weekly paper
has its columns of English news, keeping him well informed about
all that most closely concerns the nation's life. The best
products of the best minds of the motherland furnish his chief
intellectual food, and form the basis of his education. Cheaper
and cheaper editions poured out by competitive publishers in the
centres of cheap production bring all the master minds who have
spoken or written in the English tongue within easy reach even
on an Australian station or a Canadian prairie. The tick of the
telegraph keeps the financial and speculative interests of the
whole outlying Empire in almost instant touch with those at the
centre. The philanthropic and social movements which originate
in the old lands or the new find an almost immediate reflection
or response in the other. Pan-Anglican Synods, Oecumenical
Councils, and General Assemblies, together with the great
Missionary and Bible Societies, keep in closest touch the
religious thought and activities of the British world. The
British Association for the Advancement of Science meets in
Montreal, and finds itself as much at home there as in {39}
London, Edinburgh, or Dublin. Competitions of skill in arms or
in athletics add their manifold links of connection. It seems as
if Pan-Britannic contests of the kind on a great scale might yet
revive the memories of the old Greek world. Already corps of
riflemen or artillerymen meet in friendly competition year by
year at Wimbledon, Bisley, or Shoeburyness.
The young Australian or Canadian who begins to practice with the
cricket-bat or oar is already in imagination measuring his skill
and strength against the best that Great Britain can produce,
nor has the cricketer or oarsman of the United Kingdom gained
his final place in the athletic world till he has tested his
powers on Australian fields or Canadian waters. The eager
interest with which in either hemisphere the tour of a selected
team or the performance of a champion sculler is watched from
day to day is a curious proof of the intimacy of thought made
possible by existing means of communication.
The great labour conflicts of the past two or three years have
furnished striking examples of the vital sympathy which springs
from nationality and close social and commercial connection.
During the Australian strike of last year, day after day, by
message and manifesto, each party to the contest strove to bring
over public opinion in Great Britain to its side, while the
funds raised on the one side of the world today were on the
morrow giving support and encouragement to those they were
intended to assist at the other. Once more there is the sense of
common {40} and equal ownership of great national memories and
names. The people of the great colonies have never broken with
national traditions. They are able to enter without reserve into
that passionate affection with which Shakespeare and Milton,
Scott and Burns, loved their native land, even while pointing
out her faults. The statue of a national hero, like Gordon,
finds its place as naturally on a square of Melbourne as on
Trafalgar Square itself. Equally in place are the memorial
tablet to an Australian statesman in the crypt of St. Paul's
beside the tombs of Nelson and Wellington, or the memorial
service at Westminster to a statesman of the Empire who did his
work in Canada.
It may be asked whether it can be supposed that the great
colonies, widely separated as they are, will ever learn to think
and act together politically; whether, for instance, Australians
can ever be expected to take interest in Canadian fishery
disputes, or Canadians sympathize in Australian excitement about
New Caledonia or New Guinea. 'Canada and Australia,' says Mr.
Freeman, 'care a great deal for Great Britain; we may doubt
whether, apart from Great Britain, Canada and Australia care
very much for one another. There may be American States which
care yet less for one another; but in their case mere continuity
produces a crowd of interests and relations common to all. We
may doubt whether the confederation of States so distant as the
existing colonies of Great Britain, whether the bringing them
into closer relations with one another as well as with Great
Britain, will at all {41} tend to the advance of a common
national unity among them[1].'
The question thus raised is an interesting one, not to be
dismissed in a word. Some force is given to it by the wide
separation of the colonies from each other, and the lack of
intercourse in the past. But anyone who watches colonial
questions closely sees that great changes are taking place. Till
a very few years ago Canada looked to Australia only eastward
across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The Dominion has now
become like Australia, a state upon the Pacific, with interests
in that ocean which are sure to become very considerable. Lines
of steamship, postal, and cable communication between the two
countries are already in contemplation. The safety of such
routes would of itself form a great common interest. Passing
through the centre of the Pacific it would tend to create those
national interests which would increase British influence in
that ocean--an end very much in Australasian thought.
On the Atlantic Canada is extending her trade relations with
another group of colonies, the West Indies. This trade promises
to develop greatly in the future, for as one country is in the
temperate zone and the other in the tropics, each seems the
natural complement of the other in range of production. The
opening of a Panama route would give the Australian colonies a
profound interest in the strength of the British position in the
West Indies.
{42}
Australia and New Zealand, again, have a substantial interest in
the political fortunes of South Africa, since in that country is
the most vulnerable point of their most important trade route.
In the _Naval Annual_ for 1890 Lord Brassey estimates the
outward-bound Australasian trade which passes the Cape at twenty
millions sterling per annum, and uses the statement to enforce
his views as to the national importance of making perfectly
secure our position at this great turning-point of the world's
commerce.
But I do not wish to lay undue stress upon these facts, which
are only intended to be illustrations of the existence and
growth of common interests between different groups of colonies.
They are suggestions of future possibilities rather than
powerful factors in the present.
It is more pertinent to measure the strength of the forces which
at the present time make effectively for national cohesion.
Nobody doubts that if today either Canada or Australia were
attacked by any foreign power the whole might of Great Britain
would be put forth to protect them. As little doubt can there be
that if Britain were wantonly attacked and engaged in a struggle
for existence, each of these great colonies would be ready with
such assistance as it could give. Race sentiment and national
honour, to say nothing of self-interest, would combine, as
things now stand, to make these results as certain as anything
can be in human affairs. The common {43} bond with the
mother-land seems to me a guarantee of sufficient unity between
the colonies--not so close, not so instinctive, it is true as
the more direct tie, but still amply sufficient to give
effective national cohesion. All the colonies are parts of the
same great body; all would alike suffer from the weakness of the
whole. All would gain indefinitely from united strength.
'In their case,' to repeat what Mr. Freeman says of the United
States, 'mere continuity produces a crowd of interest and
relations common to all.' But if Mr. Freeman reflects that
seventy-seven per cent. of Australia's trade, eighty per cent.
of New Zealand's trade, eighty-five per cent. of South Africa's
trade, fifty per cent of Canada's trade, finds its way backward
and forward over the vast oceans which separate these colonies
from Britain, or from each other, he will be forced to admit
that mere distance of separation produces, if not a crowd of
interests and relations, at least a few interests and relations
common to all which are practically predominant. No states of
the American Union have an interdependence of financial and
commercial relations proportionally so exclusive and complete as
those which exist between New Zealand, Australia, South Africa,
or even Canada and Great Britain. 'It is hard to believe,' adds
Mr. Freeman, 'that states which are united only by a sentiment,
which have so much, both political and physical, to keep them
asunder, will be kept together by a sentiment only.' Mr. Freeman
has evidently not studied {44} the facts of colonial trade, or
the relations of English and colonial industry[2].
Another practical aspect of the question naturally appeals
strongly to many minds. We are the most strenuous working race
of the world, and the problems of labour fill a large place in
our thoughts of the present and the future. Not only to hold our
own in the keen competition going on with the rest of the world
in both manufacture and the production of raw material, but also
to reach the higher ideal formed of the life possible for a
working man, we seek to make as light as may be the burdens
which industry must necessarily bear. In all countries no small
portion of these are such as are imposed by the needs of
national organization--burdens which no country has ever yet
escaped, or ever will. In national unity we may have all the
advantages and resources of co-operation utilized to this end on
a vast scale; one diplomatic and consular service; one fleet
instead of several; ports and docks defended at the common
expense for the good of all. Under any well-considered scheme it
is certain, so far as defence is concerned, that all parts of
the Empire would secure {45} a maximum of protection at a
minimum of cost, and the same would hold good in regard to other
forms of necessary national expense. A nation economizing
expenditure in these directions could enlarge it for objects
which tended to the common good, and brought advantages within
the reach of the masses, cheap postage, cheap telegraphy, cheap
transit of every kind. Combinations undertaken for ends such as
these could have no savour of an aggressive Imperialism.
To provide for the safety of industry is not Jingoism. Richard
Cobden was not under a Jingo influence when he said that he
would willingly vote £100,000,000 for the Navy rather than see
it unable to fulfil its task of giving security to British
commerce. His was rather the expression of strong English common
sense, which faces facts and the actual conditions of life. Lord
Rosebery is not a Jingo when he suggests that British people can
best secure peace by 'preponderance.' The strength of a United
Empire would be no more than equal to the increasing tasks which
are laid upon it. The fear that Federation with the strength
which it gave would make British people the bullies of the world
appears absurd. If we have powerful athletic sons we do not cut
their muscles or reduce their physique lest they should use
their splendid strength to injury of their neighbours; rather do
we train them to use it in noble ways--to be foremost in toil,
to help the oppressed, to defend the defenceless, to be the
strong arbiter between contentious disputants. So with the
nation. Doubtless vast {46} strength, without an adequate
controlling moral force, has in it a temptation and a danger.
But surely the remedy lies in deepening the moral sense, not in
limiting or diminishing the material strength of the nation.
To the Christian, the moralist, the philanthropist, no
inspiration could be greater than that which might well spring
from observing the growing strength of the Empire, and from
reflection that this immense energy might be turned in
directions which would make for the world's good. And strength
beyond all other nations British people must have if they are to
face in its fulness the work they have to do. As the outcome of
that intense life which has specially characterized the last two
hundred years they find themselves front to front with the whole
world on every great sphere of action or field of
responsibility. They have to face and boldly play their part in
the large and complex problems of European politics, when the
might of enormous armies stands ready to enforce the decisions
of an alliance or the will of a despot. Commerce, extending to
the remotest islands or penetrating to the heart of uncivilized
continents, makes almost co-extensive with the globe those
ordinary interests of British people which require protection.
Three hundred millions of mankind, who do not share British
blood, of various races and in various climes, acknowledge
British sway, and look to it for guidance and protection; their
hopes of civilization and social elevation depending {47} upon
the justice with which it is exercised, while anarchy awaits
them should that rule be removed. Through commerce and
widespread territories the nation is brought into constant
intercourse and often into the most delicate relations with
almost every savage race on the globe, thus standing almost
alone of European nations on that border-land where civilization
confronts barbarism, of all positions in which a nation can be
placed perhaps the one most weighted with responsibilities and
most pregnant with possibilities of good and evil. To this
position the world's history offers no parallel; beside it
Rome's range of influence sinks into comparative insignificance.
But to understand all that it means we must remember that along
with this mighty growth of power there has been a steady growth
of a public conscience, which holds itself responsible not only
for national acts, but for national influence; which refuses to
shut its eyes to abuse of power, but rather looks upon power as
a sacred trust, to be used for worthy ends. Therein lies the
justification of our national greatness, and of the wish that it
should be maintained.
'We sailed wherever ship can sail,
We founded many a noble state;--
Pray God our greatness may not fail
Through craven fear of being great.'
This is the poet's thought and prayer. May it not rightly be the
thought and prayer of every British citizen? We have assumed
vast responsibilities in the {48} government of weak and alien
races, responsibilities which cannot now be thrown off without a
loss of national honour, and without infinite harm to those
under our rule. A nation which has leaning upon it an Indian
population of nearly 300,000,000 over and above the native races
of Australasia, South Africa, and many minor regions, must
require, if stability and equilibrium are to be maintained, an
immense weight of that trained, intelligent, and conscientious
citizenship which is the backbone of national strength. It needs
to concentrate its moral as well as its political strength for
the work it has to do.
If we really have faith in our own social and Christian progress
as a nation; if we believe that our race, on the whole, and in
spite of many failures, can be trusted better than others, to
use power with moderation, self-restraint, and a deep sense of
moral responsibility; if we believe that the wide area of our
possessions may be made a solid factor in the world's politics,
which will always throw the weight of its influence on the side
of a righteous peace, then it cannot be inconsistent with
devotion to all the highest interests of humanity to wish and
strive for a consolidation of British power. It is because I
believe that in all the noblest and truest among British people
there is this strong faith in our national integrity, and in the
greatness of the moral work our race has yet to do, that I
anticipate that the whole weight of Christian and philanthropic
sentiment will ultimately be thrown on the side of national
unity, as opening {49} up the widest possible career of
usefulness for us in the future; inasmuch as it will give us the
security which is necessary for working out our great national
purposes.
The praises of the Federal system of the United States are much
dwelt upon now that it has been justified by triumphing over the
difficulties and dangers of a century. It seems the natural and
easy outgrowth of the circumstances in which the original
colonies found themselves at the close of the Revolution. The
conditions under which it was created and exists are pointed out
as ideally favourable for national unity on a federal
basis--contiguity, common interest, sentiment based on a common
history, and other facts and considerations of a parallel kind.
Far different from this did the task of framing the Federal
Constitution seem to those who had it in hand. It has been
described by Mr. Bryce as 'a work which seemed repeatedly on the
point of breaking down, so great were the difficulties
encountered from the divergent sentiments and interests of the
different parts of the country, as well as of the larger and
smaller states.' The same writer adds: 'The Convention had not
only to create _de novo_, on the most slender basis of
pre-existing institutions, a national government for a widely
scattered people, but they had in doing so to respect the fears
and jealousies and apparently irreconcileable interests of
thirteen separate commonwealths, to all of whose governments it
was necessary to leave a sphere of {50} action wide enough to
satisfy a deep-rooted sentiment, yet not so wide as to imperil
national unity.'
Yet once more we read of difficulties curiously like those which
are urged as making British unity impossible now. 'Their
geographical position made communication very difficult. The sea
was stormy in winter, the roads were bad, it took as long to
travel by land from Charleston to Boston as to cross the ocean
to Europe, nor was the journey less dangerous. The wealth of
some states consisted in slaves; of others in shipping; while in
others there was a population of small farmers,
characteristically attached to old habits. Manufactures had
hardly begun to exist. The sentiment of local independence
showed itself in intense suspicion of any external authority;
and most parts of the country were so thinly peopled that the
inhabitants had lived practically without any government, and
thought that in creating one they would be forging fetters for
themselves.'
Difficulties, then, are no new thing in national organization.
They may be, as they have been, but the spur to the determined
will of nation or individual. They are to be measured by the
resources at our disposal with which to confront them.
Admitting the difficulties involved in framing a Federal system
we must at the same time remember the long and peculiar training
which our race has had in dealing with them. Acute minds have
been turned upon the problem, systems have been framed and
adopted by vast populations, and time has tested {51} the
results. The experience of the United States extends over more
than a century of strenuous national life and wonderful growth.
In the light of that experience, and to meet her own
necessities, Canada faced the question a quarter of a century
ago, and framed a system which works well and gives assurance of
permanence. Encouraged by these examples, Australia is taking
steps to frame a similar union. Thus three great
English-speaking communities have had their thoughts fixed with
anxious attention upon Federal problems. In forming or in
carrying on these three great English-speaking federations,
fundamental principles have been so exhaustively studied and so
thoroughly tested that the conditions that must control Federal
organization may now be stated with a very considerable degree
of accuracy. Germany, Switzerland, and Austro-Hungary all
furnish data which assist in making conclusions definite. An
adoption of Federalism is therefore no longer a leap in the
dark. The losses and gains which it involves can be weighed and
measured.
With such a range of history and experience to fall back upon it
ought to be possible for a practical self-governing people to
distinguish between the relations they wish to control through
the smaller machinery of local government, and those they are
content to submit to the larger machinery of a central
government: to draw, in short, a true line of division between
those interests which are peculiar to each {52} member of the
Federation and those which are common to all.
In this connection Professor Ransome has stated what seems to me
a striking and most suggestive view. He points out that the
geographical relations of the great divisions of the Empire lend
themselves naturally to Federal organization on a large scale. A
primary difficulty in all federations, as I have said, is to
draw a sufficiently defined line between those local questions
in the settlement of which communities, and most of all
Anglo-Saxon communities, will brook no interference from
outsiders, and those other questions in which all have a common
interest, and are content to have only a proportionate voice.
Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa, have each
internal problems of their own to wrestle with, which each can
solve only for itself, and about which it would resist dictation
or resent even advice from all or any of the others. Such are
the relations of French and English in Canada; of white and
coloured labour in Australia; of Boer and Englishman in South
Africa; of Irish Home Rulers and Unionists in the United
Kingdom. But the fact that Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and
South Africa lie in different quarters of the globe at once
distinguishes broadly all questions of this kind, and diminishes
the probability of conflict. On the other hand the very distance
of separation makes it impossible, except by united action, to
deal adequately with the vast interests common to all. To draw
the line of {53} distinction between things purely local and
such as are general in status thus widely separated would be
much easier than to do the same for the contiguous sovereign
states of the American Republic, or the contiguous provinces of
Canada or Australia. The very diversity and peculiarity of local
interest simplify the task.
It is to be noted, also, that in forming a British Federal
system we should be relieved from what was the most difficult
problem which presented itself to the framers of the American
constitution. It was necessary to create a head for the state,
and a method was devised with elaborate caution for doing this
in freedom from the storms of party passion. In actual working
that system has broken away from the original intention of its
authors, and more than once the quadrennial selection of a party
head to the American Republic has put a heavy strain upon the
machinery of national government.
The British nation, on the other hand, has a head which commands
reasoned and personal allegiance in all parts of the Empire.
Under it the popular will reaches its end with less friction
than under any other method yet devised. The system has been
proved capable of easy and satisfactory application to the wants
of the colonies, even under a federal organization such as that
of Canada. The possession of such a starting-point will prove of
enormous practical advantage in facing the problems of national
organization.
{54}
The fact that the constituent elements of the proposed
federation are not at the same stage of political development
naturally occurs as a difficulty. Canada, in having a fully
matured internal system, is riper for federation than Australia,
Australia than South Africa, South Africa than the West Indies.
The circumstance is often urged as a conclusive argument for
delay: it is sometimes represented as an insuperable obstacle to
any present progress towards closer unity. The condition is no
new one to existing federal systems, nor has it proved an
obstacle of importance to the framing of an adequate
constitution. Both the United States and Canada have a carefully
arranged system by which their younger communities are admitted
by successive stages into fuller privileges of citizenship, each
as it reaches a fixed period of maturity becoming entitled to
the full franchise of state or province. As well argue that a
man must not admit his eldest son into partnership until the
youngest has come of age, as claim that Canada, with its
constitution already consolidated by a quarter of a century's
history, must still wait another quarter or half century for its
rightful position in the nation to which it belongs because the
West Indies and South Africa have not been able to work their
way through certain stages of political evolution. Strange,
indeed, would have been the political position of the United
States had they waited to frame their federal system till
Colorado was on a level with Massachusetts. For a nation {55}
like ours, constantly expanding, and with possibilities for
further extension even greater than the United States, common
sense would seem to indicate the maturity of the first great
colonies, the period when they might fairly be expected to
desire some final decision about their national destiny, as the
time when the basis of a Federal system, applicable on a fixed
principle to all, should be determined. They are then free, as
each advances to maturity, to choose between independence and
entrance into the national system.
The concession of Responsible Government to the colonies was an
important, but by no means a final step in political
development. From some points of view the change seemed to
superficial observers very closely akin to the concession of
independence. It gave the absolute control of local affairs, the
power of levying taxes, and of applying the proceeds; but the
higher functions of government, it must be remembered, still
remained with the central power. Not only was this so, but the
responsibilities of independence were clearly not imposed in the
same proportion that its privileges were granted.
In the minds of some colonists and more Englishmen I have found
a belief, or rather a suspicion, that any closer union than at
present exists could only be effected by taking away from the
colonies some of the self-governing powers which they now
possess. That this is necessary is clearly a mistake, and one
which probably arises from the erroneous impression about {56}
the degree of self-government which a colony enjoys. Not the
resignation of old powers, but the assumption of new ones, must
be the result of Federal union. A colony has now no power of
making peace or war; no voice, save by the courtesy of the
mother-country, in making treaties; no direct influence on the
exercise of national diplomacy. Admitted to an organic union,
its voice would be heard and its influence felt in the decision
of these questions. To the Imperial Parliament, that is, as
things now stand, to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, is
reserved the right to override the legislation of a colony, just
as, for example, the Parliament of the Dominion has the right to
override the legislation of a Canadian Province. But as the
Canadian feels in this no sense of injustice or tyranny, since
he is represented in the superior as well as in the inferior
Legislature, so the colonist would feel no loss of political
dignity if he had his true place in the higher as well as in the
lower representative body. With enlarged powers, it is true, the
colony would have to accept enlarged responsibilities. In human
affairs the two invariably and rightly go together[3]. If,
instead {57} of federation, a colony chose independence, it
would evidently be compelled at once to assume the control of
all questions now reserved for Imperial treatment, and the
corresponding burdens now provided for at Imperial expense. In a
closer union the larger control and the larger responsibility
would be assumed in partnership rather than individually. Surely
this is not subtracting anything from the power of
self-government. It is the means of making it complete.
Shall it, then, be separation or closer union? Shall we face the
dangers which few can deny will be incident to the
disintegration even by Act of Parliament and mutual consent of
the greatest nation of the world; or shall we choose, as a wiser
alternative, to confront, as in the past, the difficulties of
such political reconstruction or adaptation as is required to
meet new national needs? This is the question which not merely
may arise, but certainly must arise within a very measurable
time to be settled by British people in all parts of the world.
It has been said that all great movements which affect the
condition of peoples are originated and carried forward by the
combination of two forces: the force of conviction, which comes
from reason, and the force of enthusiasm, which is born of
sentiment. It is generally supposed that Anglo-Saxon people are
most strongly influenced by reason, by arguments directed to
their intelligence. Yet it may be doubted if in any race,
sentiment plays a more decisive part in {58} moulding public
action. It lives in the pages of Milton, Shakespeare, Scott,
Burns, Tennyson, and in distant lands loses none of its power to
stir men's hearts. It has profoundly influenced Canadian history
for more than a hundred years. It flames up in every colony when
a crisis arises when British honour is at stake.
Millions of people in distant parts of the world glory in the
right to speak of England, Scotland, or Ireland under the tender
name of home. A sentiment indeed, but a mighty power. It is true
that the term 'loyalty,' as it has usually been applied to
British colonies and colonists in their relations to the United
Kingdom, is in some ways becoming an obsolete and unmeaning
term. A larger loyalty which has in it no suspicion of
dependence is taking its place. It is one which implies
faithfulness to the great nationality to which we belong, its
heart, indeed, and its greatest traditions in Britain, but its
mighty limbs and no small share of its hopes for the future on
the world's circumference. It is at the bar of this loyalty that
the Briton at home as well as the Briton abroad must be judged.
The sentiment on which it partly rests is one we need not fear
to count upon, and it has its limits only with the British
world. It has been proof against the defects of an illogical
system: it will prove the main element of cohesion in a true
system. But we need not fear to turn away entirely from
sentiment to study the dry facts of material interest which each
of the greater communities of the Empire has in National Unity.
[1] _Britannic Confederation_, p. 54.
[2] Since the above was written we have been called upon to
lament the great loss which English literature has suffered in
Mr. Freeman's death. I cannot but think that the critical
attitude which he took towards British unity is explained by a
remark which I have lately found in his _Impressions of the
United States_. He says, 'Greatly to my ill-luck, I am wholly
ignorant of all things bearing on commerce, manufactures, or
agriculture.' Are not these the questions which really dominate
British national development?
[3] 'No community which is not primarily charged with the
ordinary business of its own maintenance and defence is really,
or can be, in the full sense of the word, a free community. The
privileges of freedom and the burdens of freedom are absolutely
associated together. To bear the burden is as necessary as to
enjoy the privilege, in order to form that character which is
the great necessity of freedom itself.'--Mr. Gladstone before
the Colonial Committee, 1859.
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