ial local governments with somewhat wide county
council powers. There is, lastly, the purely unitary government of the
two islands of New Zealand. Each of these types is the outcome of
peculiar geographical, economic, and historical conditions. To
understand the federal system of Australia it is essential to remember
that till comparatively recent times Australia consisted, to all
intents, of four or five seaport towns, each with its own tributary
agricultural and mining area, strung out, at distances varying from 500
to 1300 miles, along the southern and eastern third of a coast line of
nearly 9000 miles looped round an unexplored and reputedly uninhabitable
interior. Each of these seaports traded directly with the United Kingdom
and Europe in competition with the others. With economic motives for
union practically non-existent, with external factors awakening a
general apprehension rather than confronting Australia with any
immediate danger, it was impossible to find the driving power to
overcome local jealousies sufficiently to secure more than a minimum of
union. The Commonwealth Constitution is a makeshift which, as the
internal trade of Australia grows and as railway communications are
developed, will inevitably be amended in the direction of increasing the
power of the Commonwealth and diminishing that of the States. In Canada
the economic link between Canada proper and the Maritime Provinces was,
before Confederation, almost as weak as that of Australia. British
Columbia, which it was hoped to include in the Confederation, was then
separated by a journey of months from Eastern Canada, and was, indeed,
much nearer to Australia or New Zealand. Quebec, with its racial and
religious peculiarities, added another problem. That the Confederation
was nevertheless such a close and strong one was due both to the menace
of American power in the south, and to the terrible example of the
weakness of the American constitution as made manifest by the Civil War.
Yet even so, Sir John Macdonald, the father of Confederation, frankly
declared the federal constitution a necessary evil--

"As regards the comparative advantages of a Legislative and a
Federal Union I have never hesitated to state my own opinions....
I have always contended that if we could agree to have one
government and one Parliament ... it would be the best, the
cheapest, the most vigorous, the strongest system of government we
could