FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
expenditure on the Navy and Army has been very heavy. We have been passing through a period of great commercial prosperity, so that until the imposition of the extra taxation necessitated by the war the burden has been little felt. But it is unreasonable to expect that this prosperity will continue, and when the depression comes we in the mother country shall begin to realise that the cost of defending the Empire is becoming too heavy for the people of these little islands alone. We shall have to appeal to our Colonies to help us to maintain that command of the sea which is being seriously threatened by the shipbuilding activity in Germany, Russia, and the United States, and which is absolutely vital to our national existence.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier's declarationBut we cannot expect the help of our Colonies without giving something in return. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, in the Dominion House of Commons on the 14th of March, 1900, said, 'If our future military contribution were to be considered compulsory a condition which does not exist I would say to Great Britain, "If you want us to help, you must call us to your Councils."' This demand can only be met by the establishment of an Imperial Parliament in which every part of the Empire which bears its fair share of Imperial burdens will be represented. But though events are tending rapidly in this direction, neither in the mother country nor in the Colonies are we ripe for so great a constitutional change at this moment, and any attempt to rush the Colonies, and to take undue advantage of the feeling evoked by the danger to our Empire in South Africa, would be a grave blunder. Mr. Seddon's proposal to form an Imperial
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