COLONIAL FEDERATION.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 242, 19 September 1872, Page 5

COLONIAL FEDERATION.

[From the Argus )

It ww but the other day that Lord Kimberley aud Mr Knatchbull-Hugessen were protesting their ardent affection for the Colonies as an integral portion of the empire ; and how we have the leailer of the Tory party deolaring to a.-great gathering of working men at the Crystal Palace that the second great object which he and hh political friends have at heart is to maintain the empire intact, and that, in his opinion, no Minister of Great Britain " cpn d> his duty who omits any opportunity of reconstructing as much as possible our Colonial Empire, and of responding to those distant sympathies wliich are a source of incalculable strength and happiness to the laud"." This declaration, we are told, was received with cheers ; and we can readily understand that they were both fervid aud sincere, for to the working classes, of the mother country her Co'onies are a land of promise. They are the patrimony of the disinherited of fortune. To the inhabitants of a couple of narrow islands, in which every rood of land has passed iuto the possession of a small and privileged class, and upon the very highways and public thoroughfares of which, if a man loiters, he is liable to be ordered to •'move on," or to be apprehended as a vagrant, Canada and Australia present themselves as the possible home of themselves or of their childreu. There, at least, the earth hunger of the landless may be appeared, and .the artisan who wearies of the gloom and squalor incidental to the back streets of an English city, may not , despair of seeing the bright sunshine of an Australian sky, sifted through the green leaves of a viue of his own planting, clamber' ng orcr a cottage of his own erecting, in the midst of a pot of land of his own procuring Some of Mr Disraeli's project* for effecting' "a great Imperial consolidation" may not be such us colonists would approve ef, or as experience would be likely to sanction ; but the sentiment which pervades his declaration is admirable. And perhaps there can be no more effectual guarantee for the consolidation he desires, aud for the ptrmanency of the union, . than the prevalence of the Imperial sentiment in the minds of those who are entrusted with the Government both of the mother country and of its colonies. For this will inspire mutual consideration and mutual respect, the conviction of a common interest, the pride generated by the participation in a common history and a common destiny, and the ambition to rise to the grandeur of an Imperial policy in dealing with all questions affecting the honor and the integrity of- the empire.^ Hitherto, as was pointed out by Mr Huutington at Canada, at the annual diunsr of the ' Colonial Institute, the colonial mind has been " disturbed and disconcerted " by the uncertainty and vacillation which have marked the policy of the governing classes at home with respect to casting loose or drawing closer the bonds of union between the mother country and the outlying portions of the British dominions. Happily, we may regard that uncertainty as entirely dissipated, and it would be unjust not to acknowledge our obluations to the members of that institute for having assisted to bring about a healthy change in public opinion in Great Britain on the subject of the unity of the empire; or, perhaps, it would, be more correct to say, for having quickened into active life the dormant sentiment of the people with regard to. it. As an evidence of the spirit of kindness and conciliation in which the Imperial Government is anxious to act towards these Colonies in particular, the Times points out that the Earl of Kimbcley's circular despatch intimates, in an indirect and inferential, sort of way, that " if the Australian Legislatures, after mature deliberatibnV should petition the Home Government for a repeal of the law against differential duties, the concession must eventually be made." At the same time a confident hope is expressed that this concession would be met by a corresponding display of good feeling towards the mother country, and .would not be abused by making it the pretext for " adopting intercolonial reciprocity in a protectionist sense as, distinct from a simple customs union."