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CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER II FEDERATION 31 CHAPTER. III DEFENCE 59 CHAPTER IV. THE UNITED KINGDOM 103 CHAPTER V. CANADA 115 CHAPTER VI. FRENCH CANADA 153 CHAPTER VII. MR. GOLDWIN SMITH 163 CHAPTER VIII. AUSTRALIA. TASMANIA. NEW ZEALAND. .192 {xii} CHAPTER IX. PAGE SOUTH AFRICA. THE WEST INDIES 232 CHAPTER X. INDIA. 243 CHAPTER XI. AN AMERICAN VIEW 253 CHAPTER XII. FINANCE 271 CHAPTER XIII. TRADE AND FISCAL POLICY 278 CHAPTER XIV. PLANS. CONCLUSION 296 MAP Commercial and Strategic Chart of the British Empire, on Mercator's Projection ..End of book.
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THE PROBLEM OF NATIONAL UNITY
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
THE glory of the British political system is often said to lie in the fact that it is a growth; that it has adapted itself, and is capable of continuous adaptation, to the necessities of national development. The fact is proved and the boast is justified by British history, but behind them, no doubt, is a race characteristic. A special capacity for political organization may, without race vanity, be fairly claimed for Anglo-Saxon people.
The tests which have already been, or are now being, applied to this organizing capacity are sufficiently striking and varied. In the British Islands themselves a gradual and steady process of evolution, extending over hundreds of years, has led up from the free but weak and disjointed government of the Heptarchy period to the equally free but strong and consolidated government of the United Kingdom. In the United States, within little more than a hundred {2} years, we have seen one great branch of the race weld into organic unity a number of loosely aggregated provinces under a system which now extends over half the area of a great continent. Twenty-five years ago the process was repeated on the other half of the American continent. In the face of difficulties, by many believed to be insuperable, Canada, stretching from ocean to ocean a distance of nearly 4000 miles, has become a political unit, and already exhibits a cohesion which small European States have often only gained after long periods of internal and external conflict.
On another continent Australians, dealing with provinces larger in area than European empires, are grappling courageously with the problem of political combination, and the universal confidence felt in the ultimate success of their efforts shows what reliance is put upon the strength and efficiency of the race instinct. In South Africa and the West Indies the considerable intermixture of coloured races complicates the question, but here too the forces which make for unity are more or less actively at work.