The difficulty in establishing a federation is, that neither the United States nor England would be willing to surrender its national individuality and rank in the same degree of statehood as Canada, Australia, or one of the minor colonies or dependencies of either of the first-named countries. A federation places each independent state, politically at least, upon an equal footing, and the disparity of population, or territory (to say nothing of prestige) is too great to render such a plan practicable.[4]
A third method of creating a union between these nations is by a treaty binding upon all of {156} them, by which certain rules shall be established regulating their relations towards each other, but not to foreign nations. This I believe furnishes practical means of establishing a permanent and substantial understanding, entente, or union between the English-American people; and when I have used the terms "union," "alliance," and the like, in the preceding parts of this book, I mean that, whatever it may be called, it shall be created by a written instrument, and attested by a legal, constitutional, and binding treaty between all of the English and American powers and colonies.
By this method a union can be established without forming a federation—which means too much on the one side, in the surrender of position and individuality by the United States and England—while mere vague, indefinite expressions of sympathy and ephemeral good feeling, on the other, accomplish too little. It is too much to demand or expect a federation; while a mere moral entente falls short in effectiveness and practical result. We have already passed through the stage of an entente consisting of mutual good-will, interest, forbearance, and respect; we have a good and solid knowledge of each other, so that we are now ready to cement this feeling by measures which will bring us so close together as to be practically one people.
I therefore open a conservative method—a compromise between a federation and mere verbal expressions of good-will, which can be consummated by a treaty authorised by the people of the United {157} States and by the Parliament of Great Britain, and by the peoples of all the colonies of both nations, and which shall embrace the following subjects:
First: The Dominion of Canada voluntarily to divide itself into such different states, geographically arranged, as its citizens desire, in proportion to population, and each state to be admitted as a full member of the American Union in accordance with the conditions of the Constitution of the United States.
Second: To establish common citizenship between all the citizens of the United States and the British Empire.
Third: To establish absolute freedom of commercial intercourse and relations between the countries involved, to the same extent as that which exists between the different States constituting the United States of America.
Fourth: Great Britain and the United States to coin gold, silver, nickel, and copper money, not necessarily displaying the same devices or mottoes, but possessing the same money value, and interchangeable everywhere within the limits covered by the treaty; and to establish a uniform standard of weights and measures.
Fifth: To provide for a proper and satisfactory arbitration tribunal to decide all questions which may arise under the treaty.
I shall proceed to give in detail my reasons for each of these propositions. I am conscious that this general plan may be, in many of its details, susceptible to criticism. But it furnishes a basis {158} for discussion and amendment. I give it as a whole. Mould it, shape it, until it is symmetrical, and its dimensions rise as sublime and majestic as the greatest monuments of ancient and modern liberty. Magna Charta and the Constitution of the United States were formed to establish, and have preserved, the principles of liberty, justice, and equality among the Anglo-Saxon race.