UNITY OF THE EMPIRE.
This question has been in a course of rapid clearing during the last few
years, and the successful establishment of the Imperial Federation
League has given an orderly procedure in every way promising. The object
aimed at is, that the empire shall have that political binding which
will give to it the maximum of power and influence possible under all
its circumstances. Above fifteen years ago some few of us--very few they
then were--first seriously raised this question at Home in the Royal
Colonial Institute. We had the smallest of audiences then. It is
marvellous to look back now upon that indifference. I recollect that
about ten years ago, when the movement was just beginning to look
serious to those outside of us, a leading Paris paper devoted an article
to the subject, remarking that if Great Britain persevered so as to
unite her empire as sought, the balance of the world's power would be so
seriously disturbed as to call for an international reconsideration of
that subject.
The progress as yet has been chiefly negative, but it has been great.
Modes entertained at first have been discarded. This may be said of
superseding the present Imperial Parliament by a pro re nata Federal
Assembly; and it may be equally said of an influx of proportionate
colonial representatives into the Home House.
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