that the formation of our League may be not only premature, but prejudicial to our cause.

Why, they say, alarm the colonists and the people of the United Kingdom by asking either one or the other to incur any sacrifices for the sake of union? Why not wait till some colony proposes to depart ?

My reply is, I am anxious to avoid such proposal; and though I do not deny that some sacrifices are required, I maintain that they are but slight in comparison to the advantages which both parties will gain. Nothing can be bought for nothing in this world, but the consolidation of the realm can now be bought for little. What is the cost? To us at home, the acknowledgment that our fellowcountrymen over the seas have the right to express an opinion upon matters which may drag both them and us into war; to them, the obligation to consider whether they will not pledge themselves to an expenditure for defence which they have already shown their willingness to incur.

These are the sacrifices required for the formation of a Colonial Board of Advice, or the tentative Council above described. But, if the experiment succeeds, to what may we hope it will lead ? At any rate to a saving of cost; not merely to an illustration of the old axiom that union is strength, but also to the proof that union is economy.

Strength in this case means economy, for there is nothing so costly as war, and an organisation for common defence will be both for the United Kingdom and for the colonies an almost certain insurance against war. We shall not have the wish to attack, and we shall be too strong to be attacked. The real danger is not that we may act too soon, but too late; not that action will be premature, but that it may have been postponed too long. If we wish to lose our colonies, we cannot more surely attain our desire than by the continuance of our present colonial policy, or rather by persisting in the refusal to have any policy at all.

It matters little that we talk about the blessings of union and our determination to preserve it, when the only rational explanation of what we do, or rather of what we do not do, is that we expect disunion.

I am not finding fault with the Government. Lord Granville and Lord Derby may have been long in making up their minds what course to take in South Africa or in the Pacific, but they may allege in defence that the country has not known its own mind. The fact is, public opinion, though powerful, requires and indeed expects to be guided. The power of public opinion over all rulers, over kings and emperors, and ministers and parliaments, is the great political fact of this age; but I believe governments, or at any rate our Government, will more and more find that not only in colonial, but also in

foreign, and even in domestic, affairs it is their duty and their interest not to wait on public opinion, but to attempt to guide it. But, however this may be, this halting, half-hearted uncertainty has the worst possible effect in the colonies. They do not know what we mean to do, and not even whether we mean to keep them or not, and so they embarrass us by isolated action.

Queensland had little confidence in British care for Colonial interests or in British sympathy with Colonial aspirations, and so she acted for herself. I read, a day or two ago, a telegram stating that at a meeting in Toronto Mr. Blake, the eloquent leader of the Liberal party in the Dominion, had demanded the power for Canada to make her own treaties. If this be true, it means that Mr. Blake is making a demand which implies disunion, and which would not be entertained by the United States or by any Federation now existing; but would he have made this demand if he knew that the principle of participation by Canada in Imperial foreign policy was admitted?

Again, as regards the irritation caused in Australia by the German annexations, it seems to me to be quite as much against the way they have been made as against the actual annexations. It is not so much that Victoria and Queensland fear the acquisition by Germany of tropical islands in the Pacific, as the fact that they suppose that we at home are leaving them alone with Germany, and letting Prince Bismarck do what he thinks fit.

For my part I am grateful to Prince Bismarck: he at any rate has a policy, and by carrying it out he is forcing us to make up our minds. He has made British public opinion speak out, and I rejoice at the action of the Government at St. Lucia Bay, and at the steps which we may hope they are taking to prevent the annexation of the Samoan Islands by Germany and the New Hebrides by France.

There is only one other objection to which I will allude. The members of the Federation League are told that we have no precedent in our favour; that a world-wide confederation with seas separating its members is a novelty in history. Yes, it may be a novelty; but there is another novelty, and that is the political effect of steam and electricity. This is not the time for alarm at novelties; the air is full of them. The new forces of civilisation are at work, and we in England at any rate are making a new departure. Let us be as little enslaved by precedent in our colonial policy as in our domestic legislation. But there is one feeling which is not new. Patriotism is not a novelty, nor, let men say what they will, is patriotism worn out. Are we the fellow-countrymen of our kinsmen in the colonies? Are we and they determined to continue to be fellow-countrymen? Do we and they love our country and care for its welfare? Do we and they believe that this welfare depends on the maintenance of union, and are we and they determined to maintain it?

These are questions which the new and the old electors of our ancient House of Commons and the voters for the newly-formed Colonial Parliaments alike will have to answer. They are questions which it will be the privilege and the duty of our two millions of new voters to assist in solving. Let these questions be asked by the opponents of federation as well as by its advocates. I do not fear the reply. W. E. FORSTER.

POSTSCRIPT.

Since most of the above was written, Mr. Murray Smith, the Agent-General for Victoria, has received a despatch from Mr. Service, the Premier of his colony, giving his views on federation.

This despatch has already been published, but it seems to me so important that my readers should look at this matter from a colonial point of view, that I must beg them to reperuse it in connection with the remarks I have made, and for which I cannot but be glad to find so much confirmation from so high a colonial authority. Mr. Service, writing from Melbourne on the 20th of November, after saying that he wishes to explain the considerations which had influenced him to authorise Mr. Smith, not only to attend the last conference of the Federation League, but to give a general support to the movement, writes as follows:

The chief of those considerations is the very anomalous position which these colonies occupy as regards respectively local government and the exercise of Imperial authority. In regard to the first, the fullest measure of constitutional freedom and Parliamentary representation has been conceded to the more important colonies; but,. as regards the second, we have no representation whatever in the Imperial system. Subjects of this part of the Empire may be deeply interested in the action or, it may be, the inaction of the Imperial authorities, but they have no voice nor vote in those councils of the Empire to which Her Majesty's Ministers are responsible; thus, in all matters in which the exercise of the Imperial authority has interests for them, that authority is, to all intents and purposes, an unqualified autocracy; on the one hand, we are under constitutional government, on the other under an antiquated autocracy or bureaucracy.

The weakness of this position has at times been most disadvantageously apparent, and its humiliation keenly felt. Lately, more especially, when policy of the highest concern to the Australasian colonies has had to be administered by the Imperial Government, we have occupied the position of outside petitioners to the Colonial Office, with scarcely more influence than a county member of the House of Commons. I thankfully acknowledge the courtesy extended by the Colonial Office to yourself, as well as, I believe, to the other Colonial Agents-General; but it is something more than concessions of courtesy that is needed. Colonial interests are sufficiently important to entitle us to some defined position in the Imperial economy--to some tangible means of asserting, if necessary, our rights.

It may be difficult to say in what way so vast and scattered an Empire can be federated; but any scheme that may be decided upon, while it cannot take from us anything that we at present possess, must give to the colonies more tangible influence, and more legal and formal authority, than they have now. I, therefore, had no hesitation in directing you to give a general support to the idea, guarding, of course, our local self-government.

A further consideration is that Victoria, and I am sure Australasia, is and always has been heartily loyal both to the Throne and the Empire-a national sentiment which has never failed to express itself on every suitable occasion. The notion, before now openly propounded by Professor Goldwin Smith and others, of disinteQ

VOL. XVII.-No. 96.

grating the Empire by cutting off the colonies, has, I am persuaded, little sympathy from Australasiars-nor is this altogether a matter of sentiment; but we believe that the colonies, justly and wisely governed, may be tributaries of strength to the parent State; that they and it may be mutually recipients of numberless advantages. I am sure that I speak the mind of the colonists generally in expressing our desire to remain, as now, an integral portion of the Empire; and it is in this view, therefore, that I desire to support the movement for Imperial Federation.

I have the honour to be, Sir, your most obedient servant,

JAMES SERVICE, Premier.

A WORD MORE ABOUT AMERICA.

WHEN I was at Chicago last year, I was asked whether Lord Coleridge would not write a book about America. I ventured to answer confidently for him that he would do nothing of the kind. Not at Chicago only, but almost wherever I went, I was asked whether I myself did not intend to write a book about America. For oneself one can answer yet more confidently than for one's friends, and I always replied that most assuredly I had no such intention. To write a book about America, on the strength of having made merely such a tour there as mine was, and with no fuller equipment of preparatory studies and of local observations than I possess, would seem to me an impertinence.

It is now a long while since I read M. de Tocqueville's famous work on Democracy in America. I have the highest respect for M. de Tocqueville; but my remembrance of his book is that it deals too much in abstractions for my taste, and that it is written, moreover, in a style which many French writers adopt, but which I find trying -a style cut into short paragraphs and wearing an air of rigorous scientific deduction without the reality. Very likely, however, I do M. de Tocqueville injustice. My debility in high speculation is well known, and I mean to attempt his book on Democracy again when I have seen America once more, and when years may have brought to me, perhaps, more of the philosophic mind. Meanwhile, however, it will be evident how serious a matter I think it to write a worthy book about the United States, when I am not entirely satisfied with even M. de Tocqueville's.

But before I went to America, and when I had no expectation of ever going there, I published, under the title of A Word about America,' not indeed a book, but a few modest remarks on what I thought civilisation in the United States might probably be like. I had before me a Boston newspaper-article which said that if I ever visited America I should find there such and such things; and taking this article for my text I observed, that from all I had read and all I could judge, I should for my part expect to find there rather such and such other things, which I mentioned. I said that of aristocracy, as we know it here, I should expect to find, of course, in the United States the total absence; that our lower class I should expect to find