PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE.
Reserve in Australasia, the fact that, as the Times Toronto correspondent tells us, the British Budget is looked upon by Canadians not so much as a warning as a suggestion of duty, are indications of Colonial opinion which will bear fruit in due course.
We in the mother country have hardly begun to appreciate the broad distinction between Imperial business and domestic business, and still less to contemplate the possibility of classifying into three divisions the business which we have been always accustomed to see dealt with in the House of Commons. To the Colonial mind, or to the mind of one who has travelled much in the Colonies, such distinctions are easy. Every Canadian has lived for thirty years past (as every Australian will live henceforward) under three Parliaments the Provincial Parliament, the Dominion Parliament, and the Imperial Parliament, in the last of which at present he is not represented. When we have seen that it is possible to distinguish clearly the class of business to be handed over to a Scotch, Irish, Welsh, or English legislature by the existing Parliament, and not till then, shall we be able to grasp what is meant by Imperial Federation.
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