attach to the principal offices of state to afford opportunity for the exercise of constructive capacity, which is hardly possible under the daily harassment of the politico-municipal labours of a colonial minister in the present state of things." And then Sir Henry, after asserting, of course, that other people's ideas of federation were quite impracticable, but that "the union and consolidation of the three colonies to which this paper refers could be carried into effect within a year," winds up with this very pretty display of blue-fire: "The United Provinces would rise, as it were, in a summer day, to an equality with old historical nations, and the flag of the Southern Cross would soon be known in every port of the civilised world."
Sir Henry Parkes is admittedly the shrewdest of Australian politicians, the typical "old parliamentary hand" south of the Line. And yet as soon as he takes to constitution-mongering his vanity bubbles forth like a boy's. There we see him, the political Bottom the Weaver, with his new and moving drama in which he is to play all the principal rôles, and, as the Lion, will roar you "an 'twere any nightingale." It is perhaps from a sense of the innate and boundless vanity of poli-
