periments,
and free room to indulge it as largely as ever they pleased. As Mr.
Seeley says, the American Union 'is beyond question the state in which
free will is most active and alive in every individual.' He says this,
and a few pages further on he agrees that 'there has never been in any
community so much happiness, or happiness of a kind so little
demoralising, as in the United States.' But he proceeds to deny, not
only that the causes of this happiness are political, but that it is
in any great degree the consequence of secession. He seems to assume
that if we accept the first proposition, the second follows. That is
not the case. Secession was a political event, but it was secession
that left unchecked scope and, more than that, gave a stimulus and an
impulse such as nothing else could have given, to the active play and
operation of all the non-political forces which Mr. Seeley describes,
and which exist in much the same degree in the colonies that still
remain to us. It is the value that we set on alacrity and freshness of
mind that makes us distrust any project that interferes with the
unfettered play and continual liveliness of what Mr. Seeley calls free
will in these new communities, and makes us extremely suspicious of
that 'clear and reasoned system,' whatever it may be, to which Mr.
Seeley implores us all to turn our attention.

[2] The story has been recently told over again in a little
volume by Mr. C. J. Rowe, entitled _Bonds of Disunion, or
English Misrule in the Colonies_ (Longmans, 1883). The title
is somewhat whimsical, but the book is a very forcible and
suggestive contribution to the discussion raised by Mr.
Seeley.

II.

We shall now proceed to inquire practically, in a little detail, and
in plain English, what 'clear and reasoned system' is possible. It is
not profitable to tell us that the greatest of all the immense
difficulties in the way of a solution of the problem of the union of
Greater Britain into a Federation is a difficulty that we make
ourselves: 'is the false preconception which we bring to the question,
that the problem is insoluble, that no such thing ever was done or
ever will be done.' On the contrary, those who are incurably sceptical
of federation, owe their scepticism not to a preconception at all,
but to a reasoned examination of actual schemes that have been
proposed, and of actual obstacles that irresistible circumstan