adopt."

This also was the view of the framers of the South African Union. The
circumstances of South Africa enabled them to carry it into effect. For
all its extent, South Africa is geographically a single, homogeneous
country with no marked internal boundaries. It is peopled by two white
races everywhere intermixed in varying proportions and nowhere separated
into large compact blocks. The immense preponderance and central
position of the Rand mining industry makes South Africa practically a
single economic system. The very bitterness of the long political and
racial struggle which had preceded intensified the argument for really
effective union.

If we compare the conditions in the United Kingdom with those of the
Dominions it is obvious at once that there is no possible analogy with
the conditions of Canada or Australia, but a considerable analogy with
South Africa and New Zealand. The British Isles are but little larger
than the New Zealand group, and much more compact and homogeneous. Their
close economic intercourse, the presence of two races with a history of
strife behind them, but compelled by their inextricable geographical
blending to confront the necessity of union, are reproduced in the
conditions of South Africa. In so far then as the Colonial analogy bears
upon the question at all, it cannot be said to be in favour of Federal
Home Rule any more than of Separatist Home Rule. The most it can fairly
be said to warrant is the establishment of provincial councils with
powers akin to those of the South African Councils. For such councils,
built up by the federation of adjoining counties and county boroughs,
carrying out more effectively some of the existing powers of those
bodies, and adding to them such other powers, legislative or
administrative, as it may be convenient to bestow on them, a very strong
case may be made on the grounds of the congestion of Parliamentary
business. But that has nothing to do with Home Rule, either Separatist
or Federal.

But if the congestion of Parliamentary business might be appreciably
relieved by some such provincial bodies--larger "national" bodies would
only duplicate work, not relieve it--the true remedy for the confusion
of principles and objectives which, rather than the mere waste of time,
is the chief defect of our Parliamentary system, lies in a proper
separation of the local affairs of the United Kingdom from the general
work of the Empire, in other words, in som