Difficulties, then, are no new thing in national organization. They may be, as they have been, but the spur to the determined will of nation or individual. They are to be measured by the resources at our disposal with which to confront them.
Admitting the difficulties involved in framing a Federal system we must at the same time remember the long and peculiar training which our race has had in dealing with them. Acute minds have been turned upon the problem, systems have been framed and adopted by vast populations, and time has tested {51} the results. The experience of the United States extends over more than a century of strenuous national life and wonderful growth. In the light of that experience, and to meet her own necessities, Canada faced the question a quarter of a century ago, and framed a system which works well and gives assurance of permanence. Encouraged by these examples, Australia is taking steps to frame a similar union. Thus three great English-speaking communities have had their thoughts fixed with anxious attention upon Federal problems. In forming or in carrying on these three great English-speaking federations, fundamental principles have been so exhaustively studied and so thoroughly tested that the conditions that must control Federal organization may now be stated with a very considerable degree of accuracy. Germany, Switzerland, and Austro-Hungary all furnish data which assist in making conclusions definite. An adoption of Federalism is therefore no longer a leap in the dark. The losses and gains which it involves can be weighed and measured.
With such a range of history and experience to fall back upon it ought to be possible for a practical self-governing people to distinguish between the relations they wish to control through the smaller machinery of local government, and those they are content to submit to the larger machinery of a central government: to draw, in short, a true line of division between those interests which are peculiar to each {52} member of the Federation and those which are common to all.
In this connection Professor Ransome has stated what seems to me a striking and most suggestive view. He points out that the geographical relations of the great divisions of the Empire lend themselves naturally to Federal organization on a large scale. A primary difficulty in all federations, as I have said, is to draw a sufficiently defined line between those local questions in the settlement of which communities, and most of all Anglo-Saxon communities, will brook no interference from outsiders, and those other questions in which all have a common interest, and are content to have only a proportionate voice. Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa, have each internal problems of their own to wrestle with, which each can solve only for itself, and about which it would resist dictation or resent even advice from all or any of the others. Such are the relations of French and English in Canada; of white and coloured labour in Australia; of Boer and Englishman in South Africa; of Irish Home Rulers and Unionists in the United Kingdom. But the fact that Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and South Africa lie in different quarters of the globe at once distinguishes broadly all questions of this kind, and diminishes the probability of conflict. On the other hand the very distance of separation makes it impossible, except by united action, to deal adequately with the vast interests common to all. To draw the line of {53} distinction between things purely local and such as are general in status thus widely separated would be much easier than to do the same for the contiguous sovereign states of the American Republic, or the contiguous provinces of Canada or Australia. The very diversity and peculiarity of local interest simplify the task.
It is to be noted, also, that in forming a British Federal system we should be relieved from what was the most difficult problem which presented itself to the framers of the American constitution. It was necessary to create a head for the state, and a method was devised with elaborate caution for doing this in freedom from the storms of party passion. In actual working that system has broken away from the original intention of its authors, and more than once the quadrennial selection of a party head to the American Republic has put a heavy strain upon the machinery of national government.
The British nation, on the other hand, has a head which commands reasoned and personal allegiance in all parts of the Empire. Under it the popular will reaches its end with less friction than under any other method yet devised. The system has been proved capable of easy and satisfactory application to the wants of the colonies, even under a federal organization such as that of Canada. The possession of such a starting-point will prove of enormous practical advantage in facing the problems of national organization.
{54}
The fact that the constituent elements of the proposed federation are not at the same stage of political development naturally occurs as a difficulty. Canada, in having a fully matured internal system, is riper for federation than Australia, Australia than South Africa, South Africa than the West Indies.
The circumstance is often urged as a conclusive argument for delay: it is sometimes represented as an insuperable obstacle to any present progress towards closer unity. The condition is no new one to existing federal systems, nor has it proved an obstacle of importance to the framing of an adequate constitution. Both the United States and Canada have a carefully arranged system by which their younger communities are admitted by successive stages into fuller privileges of citizenship, each as it reaches a fixed period of maturity becoming entitled to the full franchise of state or province. As well argue that a man must not admit his eldest son into partnership until the youngest has come of age, as claim that Canada, with its constitution already consolidated by a quarter of a century's history, must still wait another quarter or half century for its rightful position in the nation to which it belongs because the West Indies and South Africa have not been able to work their way through certain stages of political evolution. Strange, indeed, would have been the political position of the United States had they waited to frame their federal system till Colorado was on a level with Massachusetts. For a nation {55} like ours, constantly expanding, and with possibilities for further extension even greater than the United States, common sense would seem to indicate the maturity of the first great colonies, the period when they might fairly be expected to desire some final decision about their national destiny, as the time when the basis of a Federal system, applicable on a fixed principle to all, should be determined. They are then free, as each advances to maturity, to choose between independence and entrance into the national system.
The concession of Responsible Government to the colonies was an important, but by no means a final step in political development. From some points of view the change seemed to superficial observers very closely akin to the concession of independence. It gave the absolute control of local affairs, the power of levying taxes, and of applying the proceeds; but the higher functions of government, it must be remembered, still remained with the central power. Not only was this so, but the responsibilities of independence were clearly not imposed in the same proportion that its privileges were granted.