AN IMPERIAL CONFEDERATION.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4377, 31 March 1875, Page 3

AN IMPERIAL CONFEDERATION.

(From the Australasian.)? The question of an Imperial Confederation is one which, unfortunately, appears more formidable the more closely it is approached. As an idea nothing can bo more fascinating ; as an aspiration none better deserves to bo cherished. To weld together the whole of the scattered dependencies of an empire, “the roll of whoso morning drums, following the rising sun, encircles the world with a strain of martial music,” into one homogeneous whole, would be an act of splendid statesmanship. To construct an Anglo-Saxon Areopagus, comprising representatives of the race from the five great divisions of the globe, would be an achievement so magnificent as to secure the undying fame of th'e man whose genius should bo adequate to the' task of ' conceiving and of executing it. But the more the subject is illuminated by discussion, the more serious appear to bo the difficulties by which it

is surrounded. And these, instead of diminishing, as might have been ’ hoped for, by lapse of time, are aggravated by it. For experience only serves to show us how selfish, petty, and provincial are the aims and public policy of individual colonies, how jealous they are of each other, and in what a peddling spirit their legislation and administration are administered by the crude, untrained, and imperfectly informed minds of their ruling politicians. What can be more pitiful, for example, than the'antagonism which has grown up between these portions of her .Majesty’s dominions in relation to their different fiscal systems ? If colonies so closely related, geographically, commercially, and socially, cannot agree upon a common tariff and a Customs union, what hope is there of accomplishing the federation of the whole Empire ? Again, what could be more sordid, or more thoroughly penetrated by sentiments appropriate to the village huckster, than the hard bargain which has just been driven with the Dominion Government in British North America by the 50,000 inhabitants of British Columbia ? The former held it to be a matter of vital necessity to establish the outposts of the Dominion on the shores of the Pacific. But the handful of people scattered over a territory of 200,000 square miles would only come into the Dominion on condition that the latter would make, at its own cost, a railway between two points in British Columbia, so as to open up the local trade, and would also undertake to clear a waggon road from the Lakes to the coast; while at the same time the transcontinental line is to be completed in sixteen years. While all large questions are surveyed from this narrow and local standpoint, we are precluded from taking a hopeful view of the question of Imperial Confederation. Our race appears to be one which is incapable of appreciating , great ideas, and of subordinating individual selfishness to national grandeur. In the estimation of the colonial settler, the formation of a good road to the nearest market town is a matter of incalculably higher importance than the unification of the Empire ; and his patriotism is not unfroquently bounded by the dog-leg fence which encircles the plot of land he has torn from the wilijitmess. This disagreeable fact is apt to be overlooked by those who, like the members of the Eoyal Colonial Institute, enter upon the discussion of “ The Permanent Duron of " the Empire,” with an honest and sincere desire to see it brought about, and with a more generorts confidence in the intelligence and public spirit of the British subjects in all parts of the realm than the circumstances of the case really warrant, Mr. Labilliere’s paper with the above title, which was read at tiro institute on the 19th of January, contained much that we can agree with, and its publication in the mother country could hardly fail to be beneficial by assisting to keep the colonies prominently before the public eye. He observed that “ the Imperial question resolves itself into two heads of inquiry 1. Is it desirable that the Empire shall remain permanently united ; and if so, what must be the ultimate bond of political union—the formof government —which is to weld it into one great power?” As to the first, there is, happily, no division of opinion, whatever temporary favor Professor Goldwin Smith’s doctrines may have met with, by a limited number of politicians, when the novelty of his theories and the strong appeal they made to the mercenary instincts of a mercantile people obtained for them an evanescent popularity. But the second question is one which Mr. Labilliere has by no means succeeded in solving. He says ; —“ To give all parts of the Empire a voice in its government a truly Imperial Parliament 'would have to be created ; the present Parliament being left to occupy itself with the concerns of Great Britain and Ireland, which monopolise its attention and supply it with more business than it can conveniently get through.” Now to imagine the oldest and proudest Parliament in the world abdicating its supremacy and submitting to play a purely secondary role in the Empire, is a flight of fancy of which we may admire the boldness, while we cannot conceal our astonishment at the want of judgment it displays. And we are somewhat surprised to find the proposition supported by Mr. J. D. Wood, who spoke of the English, Irish, and Scottish Parliaments having merged into the Imperial. Legislature, and of the Keichsrath which is paramount in Germany. ‘ But the analogy breaks down in an important particular. The national Parliaments of. what is now the United Kingdom, like the representative bodies in the different states of Germany, were co-equal in point of rank and authority, and legislated for coterminous countries. In our case, it is proposed to set up a Parliament composed very largely of what would be regarded as novi homines of doubtful antecedents, and to give it a higher status than the House of Lords and House of Commons. And this in a country of which the working classes are so enamored of rank and wealth that, in the exercise of household suffrage, and with the protection of the ballot, they have just elected a popular Chamber which is more conservative in character and policy than any House of Commons since the -Reform Bill era. However, the public discussion of such topics is of considerable advantage, even if it did nothing more than make known to the British Government and people the national sentiments and Imperial sympathies of Australian colonists, as indicated by the emphatic declaration oi Mr. N. B. Strangways, of Adelaide, that “if the late difficulty with the United States on the Alabama question had been determined by the feeling of colonists, England would not,have been bounced out of three and a half millions of money by Yankee bluster ” —a declaration, it is added, which was received with much cheering.