"A CONSTITUTIONAL DREAM."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10026, 23 April 1910, Page 4

"A CONSTITUTIONAL DREAM."

Sir Gilbert Parker's gloomy reflections on Imperial Parliamentary Federation constitute a very notable renunciation. Tfte more clearly so because he has found a close -fitting name for Imperial Federation, calling it. "a great constitutional dream," and its protagonists, Service of Victoria, and Hofmeyer, of South Africa, "great dreamers." Nothing could be apter than this description, nothing Aruer than the rueful admission that fulfilment of the "dream" is even farther off than when its champions were active. Empire federation on the specific lines laid down by the Imperial Pederationists, or on any scheme involving compulsory cooperative legislative action, has all along been many times an impossibility. To begin with, it would mean such a preponderance for the United Kingdom in the councils of the Empire as would speedily drive the other constituent countries into revolt against their hopeless, helpless feebleness. Suppose it did not have that effect. It would still necessitate colonial sacrifices of independence of policy to an intolerable extent. The colonial presence in a Federation of Empire might provoke a jingoistic | Imperial Government to become embroiled in international quarrels, if not wars, which otherwise it would evade. And a certain consequence of the mistaken union would be interference with colonial tariff policy. The thing would never work. It would cut across the grain of instinctive Jtsritish tendency and demand, which is that each country be left free to manage its own affairs, and work out its local destiny, while admitting and honoring every obligation to Empire which national loyalty requires. In short, it was a dream. Si; Gilbert Parker's admissions indicate that the dreamers are awaking to these realities of affairs are recognising that they have been the spokesmen of vain imaginings.