16
Studies in Constitutional Law
[part i
The proposal to unite them in one vast federation governed by the Parliament at Westminster, where their delegates would sit, has not the slightest chance of success;[1] the idea originates with a few isolated publicists who are endeavouring to arrest a separatist movement to which the English Government itself has given the first impulse.
- ↑ See as to this subject Seeley’s interesting volume, The Expansion of England, 1883.
Since these lines were written, the partisans of federation have made noisy, but I think vain efforts to overcome the indifference of the mother country, and to persuade the great colonies to favour a federal system. They have lauded up to the skies the spontaneous act of sending reinforcements from Australia to the English army in Egypt. They took advantage of the curiosity and interest excited by the Colonial and Indian Exhibition to found a permanent Institute of that name, which languishes under the presidentship of the Prince of Wales. Besides this, conferences with colonial agents have been set on foot; they are carried on with a good grace on either side, but both sides have taken good care not to put forward any proposition suggestive of a federative connection. Lord Rosebery, speaking on November 16th, 1887, before a Scotch branch of the Imperial Federation League, declared that any proposition for this end would be considered by the colonies as a return to that same spirit of domination, which in former days caused the mother-country to lose the North American provinces. He added that no plan of union had the slightest chance of being accepted unless the colonial agents themselves took the initiative.
The colonial agents have carefully avoided taking this initiative. They expressed the wish to have the colonies mentioned with India in the Queen’s title, but this was a mere act of courtesy, which in no way affected colonial independence. Of the other matter treated of in the conferences, only two are thoroughly and practically political. The Australians and the mother-country have agreed to maintain a fleet for Australasia at their common expense;
