Imperial Federation: The Problem of National Unity

by George R. Parkin

It is to this independence of partnership that a real national unity would lift the colonies of the British Empire. Doubtless it would at first be the partnership of junior members. More than this could not reasonably be expected. But the position need not be an irksome one.

One primary principle reason approves and experience recommends for our guidance in attempting to outline the form of union which will best be adapted {30} to the genius of the British people. For all its communities there should be the utmost freedom of individual action which is consistent with united strength. Apparently this condition will be best fulfilled under some form of Federal connection.

[1] Lord Dufferin dedicated a Canadian edition of his 'Letters from High Latitudes' in the words 'To that true North.' I cannot refrain from connecting with these lines one more association which will, I feel sure, in Canadian hearts at least, add a tender grace to the vigorous thought of the poet and the delicate compliment of the politician. I am able to do so through the accident of a conversation with the late Rev. Drummond Rawnsley, of Lincolnshire, a connexion and intimate friend of Lord Tennyson, whom I happened to meet some years since at the house of a common friend, Professor Bonamy Price, at Oxford. Introduced to him by our host as a Canadian, I was informed by him of a fact which he felt sure would interest all Canadians. The Poet Laureate, with whom he had lately been staying, had told him that when the articles referred to had appeared in the Times, Lady Franklin, who was then a guest in his house, and who felt the most intense interest in the future of Canada, had been filled with indignation at the wrong which they did to English sentiment and to Canadian loyalty, and had strongly urged upon him the duty and propriety of giving utterance to some sufficient protest. Being in the fullest sympathy with Lady Franklin's views, the poet acted upon this suggestion and the lines were written. I do not think any private confidence is violated in mentioning the facts told to me on such unquestionable authority. It seems well that Canadian people should know when reading these lines, that behind the poet's brain was the woman's heart, and that a lady whose name is held in highest honour wherever the English language is spoken, and wherever heroism and devotion touch the human heart, is thus connected by the subtle thread of sympathy and the golden verse of our greatest poet with their own loved land.

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CHAPTER II.

FEDERATION.

THE central internal fact, then, which must soon bring about a decisive change in our system of national organization is the necessity that British people in all parts of the Empire should have, if they are to remain together and so far as circumstances permit, full and equal privileges of self-government and citizenship. The political instinct which works in this direction nothing can resist, for it has become innate in all that is best in our race. The colonist who is permanently content with less has lost no small part of the spirit of his ancestors.

The central external fact which points to federation rather than separation as the form which that change should take is the necessity for joint defence of great common interests, and the joint management of international relations.

It may be fairly claimed that in accepting the federal idea Anglo-Saxon peoples have reached the crown of their political achievement, inasmuch as it offers a compromise between excessively centralized systems of government, which gave strength at the {32} expense of local freedom, and those other systems which for the sake of local freedom sacrificed the strength which was necessary for their own preservation. The liberty of the small Greek Republic was in some aspects a glorious thing contrasted with the despotisms around it, yet we cannot but remember that for want of power to combine that liberty was crushed beneath the heel of the foreigner. Federalism is the device by which organized democracy, without giving up anything essential to liberty, is placed in a position to wrestle on even terms with organized despotism.

An Australian writer has lately defined very justly the true reason for the application of the Federal principle. 'It may be said,' he remarks, 'that federation becomes desirable where, on the one hand, the country is too enormous in extent and too diverse in conditions for its internal affairs to be satisfactorily managed by one central government, while, on the other hand, the communities have certain common interests best served by their coming together, or are confronted by common dangers if they keep apart.' Never in the history of the world were these conditions more completely fulfilled than in the case of the British Empire. But objections to a federal organization for the Empire are at once raised. 'The areas and communities to be dealt with are too vast, the problem too complex, and the consequent difficulty of giving an adequate organization too great for such a plan to be thought of.' To this it may be answered {33} that the growth of the United States has widened political horizons. It has proved that immense territorial extent is not incompatible, under modern conditions, with that representative system of popular government which had its birth and development in England, and its most notable adaptation in America. It has shown that the spread of a nation over vast areas, including widely-separated states with diverse interests, need not prevent it from becoming strongly bound together in a political organism which combines the advantages of national greatness and unity of purpose with jealously guarded freedom of local self-government. So that if the birth of the American Republic suggested the confident inference that the inevitable tendency of new communities was to detach themselves like ripe fruit from the parent stem, the circumstances of its growth have done much to dissipate the idea. The United States have illustrated on a great scale the advantages of national unity; their example has pointed the way to its attainment. That example has been followed in one great British community; it is being adopted in another.