nion had been in existence, and had tried to alter
the Act, that would have been the signal for South Africa to walk out
of the union. We may look at such contingencies in another way. Great
Britain, according to a statement made by Mr. Gladstone in the last
session of parliament, has spent more than twelve millions sterling
on frontier wars in South Africa during the eighty years that we have
been unfortunate enough to have that territory on our hands. The
conduct of the colonists to the natives has been the main cause of
these wars, and yet it is stated that they themselves have never
contributed more than L10,000 a year towards military expenditure on
their account. Is it possible to suppose that the Canadian lumberman
and the Australian sheep-farmer will cheerfully become contributors to
a Greater British fund for keeping Basutos, Pondos, Zulus quiet to
please the honourable gentlemen from South Africa, especially as
two-thirds of the constituents of these honourable gentlemen would be
not Englishmen but Dutchmen? Yet if the stoppage of supplies of this
kind would be one of the first results of the transformation of the
mother country into the stepmother Union, what motive would South
Africa have for entering it? On the other hand, is there any reason to
suppose that South Africa would contribute towards the maintenance of
cruisers to keep French convicts and others out of the Pacific, or
towards expeditions to enable the Queensland planters to get cheap
labour, or to prevent Australian adventurers from land-grabbing in New
Guinea? If it be said that the moral weight of a great union of
expanded Englishmen would procure a cessation of the harsh or
aggressive policy that leads to these costly little wars, one can only
reply that this will be a very odd result of giving a decisive voice
in imperial affairs to those portions of our people who, from their
position and their interests, have been least open to philanthropic
susceptibilities. It is perfectly plain that the chief source of the
embarrassments of the mother country in dealing with colonies endowed
with responsible government would simply be reproduced if a Federal
Council were sitting in Downing Street in the place of the Secretary
of State.

The objections arising from the absence of common interest and common
knowledge may be illustrated in the case of the disputed rights of
fishery off Newfoundland. It has been suggested by Lord Grey that in
such a matter