Imperial Federation: The Problem of National Unity

by George R. Parkin

Speaking generally we may say that in the long course of Anglo-Saxon history whenever the need of combination has arisen the political expedient has been devised to match the political necessity. This capacity for adequate organization has been the keynote of distinction between the democracy of our race and all the democracies by which it has been preceded.

There is reason to think that this organizing quality {3} is one which has given effectiveness to all others. The steadiness of the advance which the race has made in social and industrial directions has depended upon the security given by political organization at once comprehensive, flexible, and strong. No other branch of the human family has ever been so free to apply itself to the higher problems of civilization.

All the conditions of the world at the present time point to the conclusion that further progress must be safe-guarded in the same way. On the one hand, we see an extraordinary organization of military power and a widening of military combination among European nations to which the past furnishes no parallel, and which suggest hitherto unheard-of possibilities of conflict or aggression. On the other hand, the vast extension of industrial and commercial interests among British people, without any parallel in the previous history of the world, seems to demand a corresponding widening of the political combination which is required to give them security.

Meanwhile the amazing spread of the race has become the main fact of modern history—the one which assuredly will have the most decisive influence on the future of mankind. Only within the last hundred years, one might almost say within a still narrower limit of time, has this been fully realized. The tentative efforts of Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, and French to dominate the new continents opened up by the discoveries at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries did not {4} receive a decisive check till towards the end of the eighteenth. Then the new tide fairly began to flow. The flux of civilized population, by which new and great centres of human activity are created, has since that time been so overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon that nearly all minor currents are absorbed or assimilated by it. Teuton, Latin, Scandinavian, with one or two limited but well-defined exceptions, lose their identity and tend to disappear in the dominant mass of British population which has flowed, and continues in scarcely abated volume to flow, steadily away from the mother islands to occupy those temperate regions which are manifestly destined to become in an increasing degree centres of the world's force.

With abundant space on which to expand, increase has been rapid, and it would seem that in mere mass of numbers English-speaking people are destined at no distant date to surpass any other branch of the human stock.

That an expansion so vast should bring in its train a new set of political problems, with a range wider than any that had gone before, is only natural. That new hopes should be conceived from this wonderful change in the balance of the world's forces; that new plans should be devised to utilize it, as other expansions have been utilized, for the good of our race and of mankind, is equally natural.

It is almost needless to point out that the conditions incidental to this expansion were at first misunderstood. The ignorance of public opinion as to the true {5} relations between mother-land and colonies, seconded by the blindness and obstinacy of politicians waging a bitter party fight, produced in 1776 the great schism of the Anglo-Saxon race. Chatham, Burke, and many of the clearest minds of England, believed that the American Revolution was unnecessary—in America itself there was a large, and for a long time a preponderant party, which held that in constitutional change a way of escape could be found from Revolution. The worse counsels prevailed, and Revolution took the place of Reform and Readjustment. It is, no doubt, idle to speculate upon the results which might have followed from a different line of action; if the statesmen of that day had proved equal to the task of dealing with the political problem with which they were confronted. The idea that the separation of the United States from Great Britain was a pure gain to either country or to the world may, however, be distinctly challenged.

It may easily be imagined that the earlier ripening of public opinion in England upon the question of slavery, and the earlier solution found for it on peaceful lines, might have helped to solve the problem at an earlier stage in America as well, and thus prevented the frightful catastrophe of the War of Secession in 1865. The close and intimate political reaction upon each other of the two greatest Anglo-Saxon communities, the one with its higher standard of statesmanship and public morality, the other with its more active liberalizing tendencies, might have been in the highest {6} degree healthful for both. United with all others of their own race and language, British people might have been able, in self-sufficing strength, to withdraw almost a hundred years earlier than could otherwise be possible from the entanglements of European politics, and to be free to devote all their energies to the maintenance of peace, and the development of industry, commerce, and civilization. Qualifications to these views will, of course, present themselves to every mind, and it is not necessary to press them too far or to quarrel with the course of history. Much more important is it to observe its results and learn the lessons which it teaches.

We now see that the bifurcation of Anglo-Saxon national life which took place in 1776 was of all other events in modern history the one most pregnant with great consequences. The war of the Revolution led primarily to the foundation of the Republic of the United States. Its significance, however, is not exhausted by this fact, great though it is. The reflex action upon the thought and policy of Britain involved consequences as important and far-reaching. Revolution for once in our development had taken the place of Evolution, but in the end enabled the latter to resume its steady course. The revolt of the American colonies led to the closer study of the principles which must control national expansion. Britain strove, and not in vain, to acquire the art of bringing colonies into friendly relation with the national system. The nation-building energy of her people remained unimpaired, {7} and though one group of colonies had been lost, others, extending over areas far more extensive, were soon gained. Under new principles of government these were acquired, not to be lost, but retained as they have been up to the present time. Is that retention to be permanent? Is it desirable? Can the colonies be brought, and ought they to be brought, not merely into friendly relations, but into organic harmony with the national system? Has our capacity for political organization reached its utmost limit? For British people this is the question of questions. In the whole range of possible political variation in the future there is no issue of such far-reaching significance, not merely for our own people but for the world at large, as the question whether the British Empire shall remain a political unit for all national purposes, or, yielding to disintegrating forces, shall allow the stream of the national life to be parted into many separate channels.

Twenty-five years ago it seemed as if English people, and it certainly was true that the majority of English statesmen, had made up their minds definitely as to the only possible and desirable solution to this great national problem. The old American colonies had gone, and had remained none the less good customers of the mother-country for having become independent. Very soon, it was sincerely believed, the whole world would be converted to Free Trade, and with universal free trade and the universal peace which was to follow, nothing was to be gained from retaining the colonies, {8} while the colonies themselves were expected to look eagerly forward to complete political emancipation as the goal of their development. A few brilliant writers in the press, a few eloquent speakers on the platform, gave much vogue to these views. The correspondence of prominent public men which has since come to light, the recollections of men still living, furnish convincing proof that this opinion was widely accepted in official circles. A governor, leaving to take charge of an Australian colony, was told even from the Colonial Office that he would probably be the last representative of the Crown sent out from Britain. This tendency of official thought found its culmination when, in 1866, a great journal frankly warned Canada, the greatest of all the colonies, that it was time to prepare for the separation from the mother-land that must needs come. The shock which this outspoken declaration gave to Canadian sentiment, built up as it had been on a century of loyalty to the idea of a United Empire, was very great. That statesman and journalist alike had misconceived the temper of the British as well as of the colonial mind was soon made manifest. This was shown by the almost universal applause which greeted the passionately indignant protest of Tennyson, when, in the final dedication to the Queen of his Idylls, he wrote:—