Imperial Federation: The Problem of National Unity

by George R. Parkin

For the idea of national unity the people of the United States twenty-five years ago made sacrifices of life and money without a parallel in modern history. No one now doubts that the end justified the enormous expenditure of national force. 'The Union must be preserved' was the pregnant sentence into which Lincoln condensed the national duty of the moment, and to maintain this principle he was able to concentrate the national energy for a supreme effort. The strong man who saved the great republic from disruption takes his place, without a question, among the benefactors of mankind.

Germany struggled through years of difficulty, conflict, and swaying tides of national passion towards the ideal of a united fatherland. The ideal has been realised; the men who made its attainment possible have won, not merely the gratitude of their countrymen, but the world's respect as well; even their acts of despotism are forgiven and more than half forgotten in the momentous significance of their one supreme {26} achievement. Today it seems as if their work of consolidated strength was the best guarantee of Europe's peace.

Cavour's statue stands in the squares of Italian cities—his name lingers in Italian hearts. To Tuscan, Lombard, and Neapolitan alike he is 'our great Cavour'—the man whose courageous genius found a basis in facts for the conception of Italian unity, whose patient and resolute diplomacy made possible the satisfaction of the national aspiration.

Canada has placed first on her roll of greatness the statesman, to whom she mainly owes the achievement of Federal unity. Thus beyond a doubt the men who have graven their names most deeply on the history of our time are those who have carried out in many lands and under varying conditions the work of national consolidation. American unity, German unity, Italian unity, Austro-Hungarian unity—the expansion of Russia without loss of unity—these are the accomplished facts of our time which we have to face. More than this. We do not need the philosophical historian to tell us, for the process is going on under our own eyes, that a governing tendency of the age is towards the union of many states into combinations of nearly equal strength—sometimes by fusion, sometimes by federation, sometimes by alliance. On the practical equipoise of two such great groups the equilibrium of Europe at this moment depends. Race adds its influence to the tendency. Pan-Sclavism—Pan-Latinism—Pan-Teutonism {27} are more than names. They are forces which play their part in moulding the destinies of nations and governments. The aspect of the whole world irresistibly suggests the thought that we are passing from a nation epoch to a federation epoch. That British people should fall in with this tendency is in the strict line of historical continuity. 'From clans in the north,' it has been truly said, 'and from a heptarchy in the south, England and Scotland grew into nations and thence into one nation.' In the great offshoots of the race abroad the tendency is renewed, and each step prepares the way for another and greater effort. To consolidate the empire which Chatham founded is the one manifest opportunity remaining in the British world for British statesmen to place their names in our history beside those of the greatest of the statesmen of the past.

For the mother-land an organized national unity means, not degradation from her imperial position, but a frank acceptance of the facts of national growth, and the greater dignity which would come from acknowledged leadership of the free communities which have grown up around her.

Prussia gained, instead of losing, in dignity, when many of the higher functions of her historic parliament became merged in those of the Reichstag of the German people, when she gave up her individual place as a nation in Europe to assume the leadership of the German Empire. So would it be with Great Britain.

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For the colonies national unity means independence: not 'virtual' independence, as their present ill-defined condition is sometimes spoken of, but the manly and sufficient independence which comes from asserted rights and assumed responsibilities.

There are two kinds of independence. The first is that of the son grown restless under tutelage, who throws himself off, more or less recklessly, from the family connection, refuses family advice or assistance, and takes the chances of life on his own account. Given, on the one hand, overbearing and unsympathetic parents anxious to retain their control till the last moment, or, on the other, children filled with ignorant self-conceit and consequent discontent, and independence of this first type is the natural result. Sometimes it is justified, and succeeds; sometimes it is born of blind stupidity and makes lamentable shipwreck. But this is not the ideal or the only form of independence. Given reason, due consideration, mutual regard for rights on both sides, and the family tie becomes a partnership which combines the advantages of all the liberty required for full development with the unity of action and counsel which assures strength. It produces a great Rothschild firm, each head of which is free to work out his own views at his own centre of the world's finance, but each in touch with the other for counsel or action, each making use of the business machinery established by all the rest, and thus securing incomparable business advantages for all. So in a wider sphere it produces the nation—the great {29} American Republic—the Swiss, Germanic, or Canadian Confederation; each state or group of states working independently within its own well-defined sphere of influence; each taking its share as freely in the equally well-defined but wider orbit of a large national life.

Our admiration is not given to the independence of the American state, or the Canadian or Australian province when holding aloof from union, where we feel that a spirit of petty provincialism is at work. Nor can it be reasonably given to the independence of the Greek state impatient of any control beyond that which is found within a city's walls. At least, in this case, if we admire, we pity still more, for the lack of the power to preserve the liberty which the city had created. We reserve our admiration for the reasoned and secured independence of a state whose members have abandoned the petty side of their individuality, and displayed that political self-restraint, sagacity, and largeness of view which is implied in wide organization for the attainment of great ends.