It has survived so long that to-day the United States is the oldest republic in the world. It has endured the strain of both foreign and civil wars. It has permitted the assimilation of vast hordes of white people, who now cherish this government as their own. This government expresses the will of eighty-one millions of whites—a majority of the English-speaking people of the world.[180-2]
Of the six Britannic nations, Canada, Australia, and South Africa have travelled through friendship and alliance to common government. Canada, apparently divided by two languages, was the first thus to establish its nationhood. Australia was the second. More recently still, South Africa, in spite of a diversity of tongues, achieved the same result.[180-3]
{181}
There are those who maintain that the six Britannic nations have not yet arrived at the alliance stage. "Everything hangs on sentiment, influence, and management."[181-1] Some recommend that an alliance should be definitely entered into.[181-2] Yet while it is true that the five younger Britannic entities are "nations, with a life, a pride, a consciousness of their own, with separate, divergent, and in some cases indeed conflicting interests,"[181-3] it seems also true that a friendly alliance does exist among them and between them and the British Isles.
It is an alliancede factoif notde jure, its terms being unwritten, unstated, and unknown. In the Colonial Conference of 1902, "To Sir Wilfrid Laurier's famous challenge, 'If you want our aid, call us to your councils,' the Colonial Secretary [Chamberlain] made an emphatic response. 'Gentlemen, we do want your aid. We do want your assistance in the administration of the vast Empire which is yours as well as ours. The weary Titan staggers under the too vast orb of his fate. We have borne the burden for many years. We think it time that our children should assist us to support it, and whenever you make the request to us, be very sure that we shall hasten gladly to call you to our councils.'"[181-4] In the South African {182} War, and more recently in their efforts in behalf of greater naval strength, the six nations behaved as allies affording inspiring examples of what they can and may again do. Certainly the political good feeling between the Britannic nations cannot be said to have progressed further than to the alliance stage, since "any political arrangement in which powers are withheld, or granted upon terms, or are subject to revision at the will of any member of the confederacy, is not a real union, but only an alliance."[182-1]
Between the United States and the British Isles are treaties that bind them into an extraordinarily close alliance—treaties which are the strongest written expressions of international goodwill.[182-2] On the even closer "understanding" between the two nations, so that they are found acting in concert in every part of the globe, it is unnecessary to dwell.
But between the United States and the younger Britannic nations, what is the relation? They are undoubtedly friendly, but where is the formal evidence of such friendliness? The five younger nations can hardly be considered partners to the alliance between the United States and the British Isles, as in making this alliance these five had no share. To form an alliance between the United States and the Britannic power, inclusive of the six Britannic nations, is now impossible, because such {183} a Britannic political entity able to ratify treaties is non-existent. Postulating an alliance among all the Britannic nations, the United States through its alliance with the British Isles may perhaps be considered as allied to the allies of its ally. As we are now organized, this is as far as we have been able to progress. It is just beyond the friendship stage.
The seven Pan-Angle nations are to-day bound together by friendship and, in some cases, alliance. They are united by sentiment only, whether it be unwritten or written. At this stage many of our groups have found themselves in the past. It has held for them two possibilities. Sentiment was the bond between Pan-Angles after the French War which ended in 1763. The bond failed to hold and separation followed. Sentiment in alliance form was tried in the Articles of Confederation in 1781. It failed; and on its ruins was built a common government. It is of no moment that sentiment in the first case was unwritten, and in the second case, written. Sentiment is not government. Need other cases of failure be mentioned? It is for us to determine whether, when our present relationships change, they give way to separation and weakness, or develop by convergence into the strength of a common government. The motto of our youngest nation points out the hope of our future, "Ex unitate vires."
[160-1] J.R. Seeley,The Expansion of England, London, 1883, pp.174-175.
[161-1] Cf.ante, p. 16.
[162-1] Jones,History of New York, ii. pp. 259,268,500,509, quoted by G. F. Parkin,Imperial Federation, London, 1892, note, p. 124.
[162-2]Cf.G. R. Parkin,Imperial Federation, London, 1892, pp. 127, 153.
[162-3] J. R. Seeley,The Expansion of England, London, 1883, p. 48.
[162-4] Alfred Caldecott,English Colonization and Empire, London, 1891, pp. 131-133.
[163-1] C.A.W. Pownall,Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, Supplement, pp. 9, 10.
[164-1] G.R. Parkin,Imperial Federation, London, 1892, p. 8.
[164-2]Ibid., p. 163.
[164-3] J.R. Seeley,The Expansion of England, London, 1883, p. 22.
[164-4] For a general account of Ireland in this connection, see Price Collier,England and the English, London, 1911, pp. 230-262; and for a constitutional discussion, Cf.Round Table, London, December 1913, pp. 1-67.
[164-5] H.S. Perris,Pax Britannica, London, 1913, p. 139.
[165-1] As Home Rule, like other political terms, has been used to denote many theorems, its meaning in any statement depends somewhat on the particular instance.
[166-1] W.H. Taft,Popular Government, New Haven, Connecticut, 1913, p. 137.
[166-2]Ency. Brit., vol. xxiii. p. 178, Letter of Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley, August 1862.
[167-1]Cf.W.H. Taft,Popular Government, New Haven, Connecticut, 1913, p.151: "It is essential . . . in the life of our dual government that the power and functions of the State governments be maintained in all the fulness that they were intended to have by the framers of the Constitution."
[168-1] Woodrow Wilson,Mere Literature, Boston, 1900, pp. 208-210.
[168-2]United Empireis also the title of the magazine published monthly by the Royal Colonial Institute, London.
[168-3] C. W. Dilke,Greater Britain, London, 1868; J. R. Seeley,The Expansion of England, London, 1883.
[169-1] G. R. Parkin,Imperial Federation, London, 1892, p. 25.
[169-2] According to H.C. Lodge—One Hundred Years of Peace, New York, 1913, p.108—September 3, 1863, was the crucial day.
[169-3]Ibid., pp. 118-119.
[171-1] Cf.Ency. Brit., vol. xxvii. p. 651.
[171-2]The Outlook, New York, December 21, 1912, p. 843: "The first Governors' Conference was called by President Roosevelt in 1908. It met at the White House to consider the subject of Conservation. So immediately evident was the desirability of co-operation that Governor Willson, of Kentucky, sprang to his feet at the close of one of the sessions and said, 'Gentlemen, let me detain you a moment.' He went to the platform and there unfolded a plan for a Conference of the Governors, to be called by themselves. This was held at Washington in 1909. The third meeting of the Governors occurred at Frankfort, Kentucky, Governor Willson's own capital, in 1911, . . . The Governors' Conference is apparently becoming something of a fixture in our political life."
[172-1]Ency. Brit., vol. xxv. pp. 480-481: Peace signed at Pretoria, May 31, 1902; self-government decreed, December 12, 1906; elections held in Transvaal, February 1907.
[172-2]Cf.Alfred Caldecott,English Colonization and Empire, London, 1891, p. 130: "Canada was a conquered possession, not a settlement, it is true; but the attempt to treat it as a conquest nearly ended in another catastrophe."
[172-3] W.T. Stead,The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes, London, 1902, p. 113.
[173-1] G. R. Parkin,Imperial Federation, London, 1892, p. 253.
[173-2]Ibid., p. 254.
[174-1]Round Table, London, December 1913, p. 112. As toChatham's plans for both Irish and American co-operation inPan-Angle government, see A. L. Burt,Imperial Architects,Oxford, 1913, pp. 28-32.
[175-1] Roundell Palmer, Earl of Selborne,Memorials: Part II., Personal and Political, London, 1898, vol. i. p. 202.
[175-2]Round Table, London, December 1913, pp. 106-122. This article should amuse all Pan-Angles by its fraternal frankness in describing the diplomacy of both British and American actors in these dramas. It also throws light on the usages of so-called "international arbitration."
[176-1] Mr. Chamberlain at Toronto, December 30, 1897, quoted by M. Victor Bérard,British Imperialism and Commercial Supremacy, trans. H. W. Foskett, London, 1906, p. 200.
[176-2]Round Table, London, September 1912, p. 722.
[176-3] At a farewell dinner given to Mr. Bryce in New York City, former American Ambassador to the British Isles Joseph H. Choate turned to the guest of honour and stated: "England has sent, will send, many Ambassadors, but there's only one Bryce in the whole list. The American people from the Atlantic to the Pacific love and honour you, sir." SeeThe Outlook, New York, May 10, 1913, p. 80.
[177-1] Mr. Bryce before the Pilgrims Club in London, November 6, 1913, quoted bySpringfield(Massachusetts)Weekly Republican, November 7, 1913.
[178-1] Francis Parkman,Montcalm and Wolfe, London, 1884, vol. i. p.3.
[178-2] C.A.W. Pownall,Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, p. 157.
[178-3]Ibid., p. 95. This is as of 1758.
[178-4] Cf.ibid., p. 125. The monument is in the Belfry Tower, the north aisle of nave.Cf.Baedeker'sLondon, 1911, p. 217. It was Lord Howe's brother, Sir William Howe, who on March 17, 1776, evacuated Boston to abandon the city to these same American Englishmen—now rebels.
[178-5] C.A.W. Pownall,Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, p. 157.
[179-1] C.A.W. Pownall,Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, p. 232.
[179-2]Ibid., p. 202.
[179-3] Woodrow Wilson,The State, 1897, rev. ed., Boston, 1911, p. 453: "Despite very considerable outward differences of social condition and many apparent divergencies of interest as between colony and colony, they one and allwanted the same revolution. . . . They did not so muchmakea common cause ashavea common cause from the first."
[180-1] See John Fiske,The Critical Period of American History, 1788-1789, Boston, 1898.
[180-2] Cf.ante, p. 81, note 1.
[180-3] P. A. Molteno'sA Federal South Africa, London, 1896, written more than three years before the Boer War, compares the then condition of South Africa with the condition of the American thirteen nations in the days covered by Fiske'sThe Critical Period of American History, contains a prophecy now fulfilled, and is a valuable comment on many of the needs of the Pan-Angle world of to-day.
[181-1] F. S. Oliver,Alexander Hamilton: An Essay on American Union, London, 1906, p. 447.
[181-2] Richard Jebb,The Britannic Question, London, 1913.
[181-3] Lord Milner, December 14, 1906, at Conservative Club, Manchester, England, in Lord Milner,The Nation and the Empire, London, 1913, p. 142.
[181-4] Richard Jebb,Studies in Colonial Nationalism, London, 1905, p.138.
[182-1] F. S. Oliver,Alexander Hamilton: An Essay on American Union, London, 1906, p. 452.
[182-2] For a history of the General Arbitration Treaty of 1911 between America and the British Isles and its full text as proposed and as ratified, see H.S. Perris,Pax Britannica, London, 1913, pp. 285-298, 801-807.
{184}
WHO, first of all, dreamed of closer union between England (or Great Britain) and its colonies we do not know. As early as 1652 there came from Barbados a suggestion. It was in no way followed up. Colonel Thomas Modyford "desires, although it may seem immodest, that two representatives should be chosen by the island to sit and vote in the English parliament."[184-1]
In the following century Benjamin Franklin devised a scheme of union and laboured to commend it to the makers of Pan-Angle history. In June 1754 he attended a conference of eleven of the colonies met at Albany to consider defence against the Indians. That matter disposed of, Franklin submitted a plan for the union of the {185} colonies.[185-1] Later in the year he wrote as follows to Shirley, Royal Governor of Massachusetts: "Since the conversation your Excellency was pleased to honor me with, on the subject ofuniting the coloniesmore intimately with Great Britain, by allowing themrepresentativesin Parliament, I have something further considered that matter, and am of opinion that such a union would be very acceptable to the colonies, provided they had a reasonable number of representatives allowed them; . . .
"I should hope, too, that by such a union the people of Great Britain and the people of the colonies would learn to consider themselves as not belonging to different communities with different interests, but to one community with one interest; which I imagine would contribute to strengthen the whole, and greatly lessen the danger of future separations. . . .
"Now, I look on the colonies as so many countries gained to Great Britain, and more advantageous to it than if they had been gained out of the seas around its coasts and joined to its lands; . . . and since they are all included in the British empire, which has only extended itself by their means, and the strength and wealth of the parts are the strength and wealth of the whole, what imports it to the general state whether a merchant, a smith, or a hatter grows rich in Old or New England? . . . And if there be any difference, those who have most contributed to enlarge Britain's empire and commerce, increase her strength, her wealth, and {186} the numbers of her people, at the risk of their own lives and private fortunes in new and strange countries, methinks ought rather to expect some preference."[186-1]
The Albany scheme failed of adoption. The race was not ripe for Franklin's foresight.[186-2] Years afterwards he wrote: "The different and contrary reasons of dislike to my plan make me suspect that it was really the true medium; and I am still of opinion that it would have been happy for both sides if it had been adopted. The Colonies so united would have been sufficiently strong to have defended themselves. There would then have been no need of troops from England. Of course, the consequent pretext for taxing America and the bloody contest it occasioned would have been avoided. But such mistakes are not new; history is full of the errors of states and princes. Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom but forced by the occasion."[186-3]
{187}
But Franklin's idea did not die. Thomas Pownall, just out from England, a man later appointed Downing Street's Governor of Massachusetts, attended the Albany Colonial Conference. He heard the deliberations and talked with the commissioners and, as he himself wrote later, then "first conceived the idea and saw the necessity of a general British union."[187-1] The acquaintance he made there with Franklin grew into closest friendship. Both men wrote in favour of colonial representation;[187-2] and present in many ways an adequate epitome of the best thought of each branch of their civilization.
Pownall recognized that the race would outgrow its London capital. In 1766 he wrote that representatives of the colonies, if apportioned according to population, would in time outnumber those of Great Britain, and "the centre of power instead of remaining fixed as it is now in Great Britain will, as the magnitude and interest of the colonies increases, be drawn out from these islands by the same laws of nature, analogous in all cases, by which the centre of gravity, now near the face of the sun, would, by an increase of the quantity of {188} matter in the planets, be drawn out beyond that surface."[188-1] This result, he thought, might be guarded against by stipulating that the colonial members were always to come to England.[188-2] A present-day Englander makes no such stipulation. Lord Milner in Johannesburg in 1904 stated: "I am an Imperialist out-and-out—and by an Imperialist I don't mean that which is commonly supposed to be indicated by the word. It is not the domination of Great Britain over the other parts of the Empire that is in my mind when I call myself an Imperialist out-and-out. I am an Englishman, but I am an Imperialist more than an Englishman, and I am prepared to see the Federal Council of the Empire sitting in Ottawa, in Sydney, in South Africa—sitting anywhere within the Empire—if in the great future we can only all hold together."[188-3]
About another objection Pownall consulted Franklin. "He had been told that if the colonists were to pay the same taxes as people in England and, like them, to send members to Parliament, equal powers of trade must be conceded. When that was done the Atlantic commerce might afterwards centre in New York or Boston, and power be transferred there from England. 'Which consequence, however it may suit a citizen of the world, must be folly and madness to a Briton.' {189} So exclaimed the Englishman who wrote to his colonial friend for a solution of the difficulty. The American-born Franklin took quite another view. He saw no difficulty at all; he replied that the fallacy lay in supposing that gain to a British Colony was loss to Britain. He maintained that the whole Empire gained if any part of it developed a particular trade, and he predicted that without a complete union, by which full and equal rights were given, the existing system of government could not long be retained. Assuming Pownall's premises to be correct he inquired, 'which is best—to have a total separation or a change of the seat of government?'"[189-1]
Soon it was too late to answer Franklin's question. A separation took place, and two supreme governments divided the responsibility of safe-guarding the English-speaking whites. As time passed, each portion of the Pan-Angles founded colonies. The American colonies were held to the American "home" states by means of a federal government The British Isles colonies have, in some instances, federated among themselves, so that to-day the Britannic power consists of six nations. And now all seven nations are appreciating how superficial are these political separations. To-day we have seven central seats of government, and after a century of peace, a new question arises—whether we should re-form our relations.
One hundred and twenty-three years after Franklin and Pownall so discussed the migration of the seat of government of the English-speaking {190} peoples, another Colonial and another Englander corresponded on the same subject. Cecil John Rhodes wrote to William T. Stead: "What an awful thought it is that if we had not lost America, or if even now we could arrange with the present members of the United States Assembly and our House of Commons, the peace of the world is secured for all eternity! We could hold your federal parliament five years at Washington and five at London."[190-1] Stead has recorded a conversation of the same year in which Rhodes "expressed his readiness to adopt the course from which he had at first recoiled—viz. that of securing the unity of the English-speaking race by consenting to the absorption of the British Empire in the American Union if it could not be secured in any other way. In his first dream he clung passionately to the idea of British ascendancy—this was in 1877—in the English-speaking union of which he then thought John Bull was to be the predominant partner. But in 1891, abandoning in no whit his devotion to his own country, he expressed his deliberate conviction that English-speaking reunion was so great an end in itself as to justify even the sacrifice of the monarchical features and isolated existence of the British Empire . . . and from that moment the ideal of English-speaking reunion assumed its natural and final place as the centre of his political aspirations."[190-2]
As Franklin and Pownall foresaw, the race {191} centre moved out of England. Emerson in 1856 realized that in America "is the seat and centre of the British race,"[191-1] a statement strengthened since by the growth of Canada. North America is now the centre of Pan-Angle civilization, and Canada is the key of the Britannic world.
The impulse to closer union has never been long quiescent. It has been active again and again in the minds of men. A century after Franklin presented his Albany plan for the race, Joseph Howe "looked upon the attainment of complete independence of local government in the colonies as but a stepping-stone to the assertion of still higher national rights, to the acceptance of still higher responsibilities; to some form of substantial union among British people, based on considerations of equal citizenship and the defence of common interests. As far back as 1854 he delivered in the Nova Scotia Legislature an address, since published . . . under the name of the 'Organization of the Empire' which … embodies most of what has since been said by the advocates of national unity. Twelve years later, when on a visit to England, he published in pamphlet form an essay bearing the same title, and giving his more fully matured views upon the question. If the genesis and enunciation of the Imperial Federation idea in its modern form is to be credited to anyone, it must be assigned to Joseph Howe for this early and comprehensive statement of the main issues involved. The study of the utterances of this great colonist, this champion of colonial rights, may be {192} commended to those shallow critics who profess to believe that the proposal for national unity is an outcome of Imperial selfishness, and that its operation would tend to cramp colonial development."[192-1]
Franklin and Pownall wrote in the days when the race knew only the English method of integration—"absorptive, incorporative."[192-2] The various American colonies had been experimenting in effecting combinations on another principle, but their successes had hardly yet proved that the same principle in extended form could be applied to the desired union between all the governments of the English-speaking race. In 1787 was drawn up the Constitution of the United States of America, and the federal method of integration was put definitely to trial. In 1801 Ireland was united to Great Britain, but not by federation. Irish members were admitted to the Parliament of the United Kingdom much after the manner in which Franklin had suggested that American members should be admitted. In the century or more since has been proved the value of federation which means neither confederation[192-3] of groups bound by treaties whereby no adequate affirmative policy or common government would be possible, nor absorption whereby local self-government would be obscured or blotted out, but an expedient combining both local freedom and central strength. The South African Colonial writing to the {193} Englander who shared his vision takes for granted a "federal parliament."
The forms Pan-Angle governments take are now two. One is the simple unitary form in which the central government is supreme within the sanction of the will of the voters expressed at the polls, any other government being a subordinate, i.e. a municipal government. The other form is not unitary, and the central government is supreme in the exercise of certain authority only, other governments being in all else supreme and autonomous partners.
The states of America, for example, and those of Australia are unitary in government. Of the seven Pan-Angle nations, three, Newfoundland, New Zealand, and the British Isles, are unitary, the central government in each being supreme over every part and in every respect.
Of the non-unitary governments there are four: the United States, Canada, Australia, and South Africa. By an accident of time and place America was the first to grapple with the problems which called for such a government. Thirteen states independent of each other and of any outside power found themselves in danger from inter-state contentions and external aggressions. Building for their very lives, they devised a form of government which has been called federal. In it each state kept most of its sovereign powers, but delegated certain others of them to a central legislature. The federation of the six Australian states followed much the same lines. In Canada and South Africa the states (in both cases called provinces) have retained less of their local autonomy. {194} The central government in the former may with some legislative difficulty and delay assume any power it desires, while in the latter unrestricted power has been lodged from the beginning in the central government. In neither of these two nations, however, has the central government assumed the exercise of its full possible power. In both it co-exists at present with the provincial governments after a federal manner, obtaining thus the advantages of federation.
For comparatively restricted areas within which problems and opinions are tolerably uniform, a unitary government satisfies Pan-Angles. States and provinces are such areas. Newfoundland and New Zealand are at present such areas. In Newfoundland the population is very sparse and the local variations are slight. It will be many years probably before there arises a need and a desire for devolution[194-1] of power from the present legislature. In New Zealand conditions are not so uniform, and although a unitary government seems satisfactory to-day, the time may readily be imagined when a denser population and conflicting interests of different sections of the country may make feasible local legislatures, each, for its allotted tasks, supreme. The only attempt so far towards that end originated outside of New Zealand and was abandoned before being put into practice.[194-2]
{195}
The unitary method of government has never proved itself able successfully to integrate areas divided from each other by distance or interests. It failed to hold together the first Britannic growth; it has been unable to bring into unity the second Britannic growth; it is acknowledged to be inadequate for such a task. Its weaknesses are evident in the British Isles. The British Isles, although no larger than many states and provinces, is composed of several sections divided by history, prejudice, and interest. These are now united into one government, in which one central legislature is supreme. Questions which may affect some one section alone are decided by the representatives of the country at large who are possibly both uninterested and uninformed. Scottish education, Welsh Church, and Irish land bills are dependent on the will of the whole British Isles,[195-1] and a multitude of strictly local affairs must wait for the attention of Parliament, since no other body has power to deal with them.
The results of this condition are two: first, a congestion of business in Parliament incompatible {196} with efficient and intelligent action; and, second, the violation of the principles of self-government producing discord between the several sections of the country. No one questions that Parliament to-day labours under the terrible disadvantage of having more to do than it possibly can accomplish. Needed and uncontended legislation is delayed for years, and such bills as are passed receive often inadequate consideration.[196-1] Though unity has up to now been preserved, the lack of local self-government has produced discords always more or less active. At times these have threatened to break out into violent disruption.
To overcome these weaknesses—to relieve the burdens of Parliament and to check the tendency to separation—many thinkers and patriots in the British Isles are convinced that some devolution of power to local legislatures cannot be long delayed.[196-2] There is talk of Irish, Scottish, and Welsh home rule. The present control of British Isles affairs by the Irish members of the House of Commons is teaching the desirability of home rule for England. Some would re-form the country into still smaller governmental sections. In the operation of any such plan a central Parliament is to be in control of certain nation-wide interests, among which would be foreign affairs and the army and navy.
{197}
"Now, what the Federalist is anxious to set up in the United Kingdom is an arrangement upon the Canadian model, in which there will be a supreme and sovereign Parliament, as at present, for the United Kingdom, and under it a certain number of subordinate parliaments, to attend to local and domestic legislation and administration. . . . No Federalist has ever suggested that Ireland should be turned into a Canada, although this accusation has occasionally been made against him by persons who have read his proposals carelessly, and have, accordingly, misunderstood their nature."[197-1]
A British Cabinet Minister, speaking in Dundee on October 9, 1913, stated: "I am perhaps at an unfortunate age for making a prophecy. I am ceasing to belong to the young men who dream dreams, and I have not yet joined the ranks of the old men who see visions; still I will run the risk of prophecy and tell you that the day will most certainly come—many of you will live to see it—when a federal system will be established in these Islands which will give Wales and Scotland the control within proper limits of their own Welsh and Scottish affairs, which will free the Imperial Parliament from the great congestion of business by which it is now pressed, and which will redound and conduce to the contentment and well-being of all our people."[197-2]
When some such re-formation of government is adopted by the British Isles, it will only be utilizing {198} the fruits of the race's experience in other parts of our civilization.
If the first steps to this "home rule all round" aimed at in the present (1914) legislation regarding Ireland prove defective, in that it concedes what isnotneeded, and denies whatisneeded, it is because the British Isles has not taken to heart the inwardness of the federal idea. Lord Dunraven pointed this out when he said that "there were only two principles on which Home Rule could be founded—the Federal system or absolute independence. The present Bill applied to neither and he could recognize in it no basis of settlement."[198-1] In the following resolution, he indicated how the question of "home rule all round" should be attacked: ". . .'The best means of arriving at a settlement by consent of the Irish political question and of the constitutional difficulties connected with it, and of securing the harmonious working of any system of self-government in Ireland and the permanency of friendly relations between the two islands is to be found in a convention, or conference, representative of all nationalities and parties in the United Kingdom, and . . . it is the duty of his Majesty's Government to take the initiative in inviting such convention or conference.'"[198-2] But the fact that a majority of the British Parliament has gone so far as to advocate any form of Home Rule is evidence of a sincere effort to meet the conditions of Pan-Angle individualism where longest suppressed, {199} and thus hasten the harmonious self-government of the British Isles.
Franklin, when he wrote to Shirley[199-1] in 1754 about the need of colonial representation to the British Parliament in London, may or may not have realized how far the gaining of that desire would fail to satisfy. His plan would not have produced a federal government for Pan-Angles. It would have created a larger unitary government than then existed. There would not have been co-ordinated spheres of governmental control. The local affairs of Pennsylvania and England, of Scotland and New York, would together have been in the hands of a Parliament composed of representatives elected from the nation at large. This would have been unacceptable to the people of England, Pennsylvania, Scotland, and New York. They would have asked for something more. A lesson can be drawn from this by those who to-day urge Australian or Canadian representation in the present British Isles Parliament. Such representation would subject Britishers to outside control of their local problems, just as to-day Englanders are affected by Irish representatives voting on local problems of England. Conversely, it would mean a continued interference in Australian and Canadian local problems by the local representatives of the British Isles—the very thing the peoples of the five new nations have already taken appropriate steps to obviate. The Irish question demonstrates that representation alone is not enough for Pan-Angles. The Irish are more than {200} fairly represented in Parliament. Still they clamour for more. That something more desired by all Pan-Angles is local autonomy.
To representation in a central legislature must be added the local control of local questions so dear to Pan-Angle individualism. This is what federalism accomplishes.[200-1] "Our Federal system is the only form of popular government that would be possible in a country like ours, with an enormous territory and 100,000,000 population. . . . But for this safety valve by which people of one State can have such State government as they choose, we would never be able to keep the union of all the people so harmonious as we now have."[200-2] "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 {201} the advantages of national greatness and unity of purpose with jealously guarded freedom of local self-government."[201-1]
The indefinite governmental relationships between the Britannic nations are to-day satisfactory to no one. Britannic closer union forms the thesis of much writing and speech making and the subject of much earnest study.[201-2] That the demands of the situation can be met adequately only by federation seems evident to many. This thought is thus expressed by Milner: "If, as I fervently hope, the present loose association of the self-governing states of the Empire grows in time into a regular partnership, it can only be, as it seems to me, by the development of a new organ of government representative of them all, and dealing exclusively with matters of common interest. It would only heighten confusion to bring representatives of the Dominions into the House of Commons. And if, as I think everyone would admit, it is impracticable to bring them into the House of Commons, they would certainly say, 'Thank you for nothing' if we were to offer them a few seats in the House of Lords."[201-3]
Mr. Winston Churchill continued in his speech at Dundee: "I tell you further that that system when erected and established will in itself be only the forerunner and nucleus of a general scheme of Imperial federation which will gather together in {202} one indissoluble circle the British people here and beyond the seas."[202-1] Rhodes wrote over twenty years ago: "I will frankly add that my interest in the Irish question has been heightened by the fact that in it I see the possibility of the commencement of changes which will eventually mould and weld together all parts of the British Empire.
"The English are a conservative people, and like to move slowly, and, as it were, experimentally. At present there can be no doubt that the time of Parliament is overcrowded with the discussion of trivial and local affairs. Imperial matters have to stand their chance of a hearing alongside of railway and tram bills. Evidently it must be a function of modern legislation to delegate an enormous number of questions which now occupy the time of Parliament, . . .
"But side by side with the tendency of decentralisation for local affairs, there is growing up a feeling for the necessity of greater union in Imperial matters. . . ."[202-2]
Not alone the federation of the Britannic nations, but the federation of the whole Pan-Angle people, {203} is the end to be sought. Behind Rhodes' "greater union in Imperial matters" lay his vision of a common government over all English-speaking people.[203-1] If we are to preserve our civilization and its benefits to our individual citizens, we must avoid frictions among ourselves and take a united stand before the world. Only a common government will ensure this.
The four federations have been the results of similar practical impulses. The separate states and provinces realized their mutual need of co-operation to avoid conflict among themselves and to withstand enemies, actual or possible, from without. In some cases one, in some cases the other, of these arguments was most pressing at the time of federation. American states were vexed by many custom houses and were endangered by European civilization and the savagery of the American Indians. Canada was split by two languages and feared the waxing strength of America. The Australian and South African internal contentions arising over customs and railway rivalries were overshadowed by ominous additions to German holdings in the South Pacific and in East and West Africa respectively. Similar reasons are adduced to-day in favour of the federation of the six Britannic nations.
The union of the "United Collonyes of New England" in 1643 appears inadequate and impotent in the light of our subsequent "closer unions." But it was the first voluntary common government instituted by separate governments of English-speaking {204} people.[204-1] The reasons for this co-operation are stated in terms worthy the attention and study of present-day Pan-Angles: ". . . and whereas in our settling (by a wise providence of God) we are further dispersed upon the sea-coasts and rivers then was at first intended, so thatt wee cannott (according to our desire) with conveniencie communicate in one government and jurisdiction; and whereas we live in compassed with people of severall nations and strange languages which hereafter may prove injurious to us and our posterity: and forasmuch as the natives have formerly committed sundry insolencies and outrages upon severall plantations of the English and have of late combined against us and seeing, by reason of the sad distractions in England, which they have heard of, and by which they know we are hindered both from thatt humble way of seeking advice, and reaping those comfortable frutes of protection, {205} which att other times we might well expect, we therefore doe conceive itt our bounden dutye without delay to enter into a present consociation amongst ourselves for mutuall help and strength in all our future concernments, thatt . . . we bee and continue one, according to the tennure and true meaning of the ensueing articles."[205-1]
Federation was evolved by our race. Though its use was only dimly understood in the years that followed 1643, its powers are now known to us. It has proved the means of welding many of our once jealous and discordant units into concentrated and self-protective powers. Applied to all our nations, federation would produce that co-operation necessary for the survival of our civilization, yielding both the freedom we demand and the strength that is indispensable—that Pan-Angle paradox of flexity and firmness.
[184-1] A. L. Burt,Imperial Architects, Oxford, 1913, p. 14; cf. pp. 14-16: "In all likelihood it was but a chance suggestion without any serious purpose behind it, for, in his subsequent career as Governor, though he erected an assembly which was not ratified by the King, he did not, as far as can be ascertained, once recur to this idea.
"It is doubtful when, or by whom, in the eighteenth century, the first suggestion of American representatives in the British Parliament was made. Though Franklin was perhaps not the first, yet his proposal is the earliest extant."
[185-1] John Bigelow,The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, New York, 1887, vol. ii. pp. 343-375, gives the plan in full.
[186-1] John Bigelow,The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, New York, 1887; "Letter of Franklin to Shirley, December 22, 1754," vol. ii. p. 384.
[186-2]Ency. Brit., vol. i. p. 832; "In him [Franklin] was the focus of the federating impulses of the time. . . . He was, first of men, broadly interested in all the colonies, and in his mind the future began to be comprehended in its true perspective and scale; and for these reasons to him properly belongs the title of 'the first American.'"
[186-3] H.E. Egerton,Federations and Unions within the British Empire, Oxford, 1911, p. 16.
[187-1] C.A.W. Pownall,Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, pp. 50-51.
[187-2]Ibid.,p. 204, andante, p. 186, note 1. One of Franklin's cleverest hoaxes was, "An Edict of the King of Prussia," 1773, proclaiming that the island of Britain was a colony of Prussia, having been settled by Angles and Saxons, having been protected by Prussia, having been defended by Prussia against France in the war just passed, and never having been definitely freed from Prussia's rule; and that, therefore, Great Britain should now submit to certain taxes laid by Prussia—the taxes being identical with those laid upon American colonies by Great Britain. Cf.Ency. Brit., vol. xi. p. 26.
[188-1] Thomas Pownall,The Administration of the Colonies, 3rd ed. (1766), quoted by C.A.W. Pownall,Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, p. 187.
[188-2] C.A.W. Pownall,Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, p. 187.
[188-3] Lord Milner, May 28, 1904, at Navy League Meeting, Johannesburg, in Lord Milner,The Nation and the Empire, London, 1913, p. 67.
[189-1] C.A.W. Pownall,Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, pp. 199-200.
[190-1] W. T. Stead,The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes, London, 1902, p. 78: "Letter of Cecil J. Rhodes dated August 19 and September 8, 1891, to William T, Stead."
[190-2]Ibid., p, 102.
[191-1] R. W. Emerson,English Traits, 1856, Boston reprint, 1894, p.261.
[192-1] G. R. Parkin,Imperial Federation, London, 1892, pp. 71-72.
[192-2] Woodrow Wilson,The State, 1898, Boston, rev. ed., 1911, p. 454.
[192-3]Ibid., p. 565.
[194-1] When a federation is built from component parts, certain powers aredelegatedby the parts to the central government. When a federation is made by dividing a unitary government, certain powers aredevolutedby the existing government to the parts.
[194-2] P. A. Silburn,Governance of Empire, London, 1910, p. 210.
[195-1] Woodrow Wilson,The State, 1898, Boston, rev. ed., 1911, p. 473, points out that of the twelve greatest subjects of legislation occupying the attention of the British Parliament during the last century—Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, the abolition of slavery, the amendment of the poor laws, the reform of municipal corporations, the repeal of the corn laws, the admission of the Jews to Parliament, the disestablishment of the Irish Church, the alteration of the Irish land laws, the establishment of national education, the introduction of the ballot, and the reform of the criminal law—only two (corn laws and slavery) would in America have been subjects for central (federal) government regulation. Prior to the American Civil War only one of these two, the former, would have been a subject for central (federal) government regulation.
[196-1] For a detailed account of the difficulties of the British Isles Parliament in this connection, cf.An Analysis of the System of Government throughout the British Empire, London, 1912, Introduction, pp. xii-li.
[196-2] Cf. "Pacificus,"Federalism and Home Rule, London, 1910; also Arthur Ponsonby, "The Future Government of the United Kingdom," inContemporary Review, London, November 1913.
[197-1] "Pacificus,"Federalism and Home Rule, London, 1910, pp. xlviii-xlix.
[197-2]The Times, London, October 10, 1913.
[198-1]The Times, London, March 3, 1913. Account of meeting of delegates of All for Ireland League, Cork, March 1, 1913.
[198-2]Ibid.
[199-1] John Bigelow,The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, New York, 1887, vol. ii. pp. 376-387.
[200-1] As federation is used in these pages for combinations of self-governing groups, no allusion is here made to any plans for uniting dependencies for administrative purposes such as that contained in C. S. Salmon'sThe Caribbean Confederation, London, 1888, or in the established grouping of dependent areas now styled "Federated Malay States "—concerning which latter, see Frank Swettenham,British Malaya, London, 1907. Such bear no comparison with self-governing federations.
[200-2] W.H. Taft,Popular Government, New Haven, Connecticut, 1913, p. 145.
[201-1] G. R. Parkin,Imperial Federation, London, 1892, p. 33.
[201-2] As an example, cf.Alexander Hamilton: An Essay on American Union, by F. S. Oliver, London, 1906.
[201-3] Lord Milner, April 28, 1910, at Compatriots' Club, London, in Lord Milner,The Nation and the Empire, London, 1913, p.454.
[202-1]The Times, London, October 10, 1913. Cf.ante, p. 197.
[202-2] Letter of Rhodes to Parnell, June 19, 1888, quoted in W. T. Stead,The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes, London, 1902, pp. 122-124. On p. 120, Stead states as to Rhodes' contribution to the Irish party: "The contract between the African and the Irishman was strictly limited to the conversion of Home Rule from a disruptive to a federative measure. It had no relation directly or indirectly to any of Mr Rhodes' Irish-African schemes. The whole story is told at length by 'Vindex' in an appendix toThe Political Life and Speeches of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, from which I quote these letters."
[203-1] W. T. Stead,The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes, London, 1902, p. 102, pp. 51-77 and other pages.
[204-1] P. A. Silburn,The Governance of Empire, London, 1910, p. 191: "Half a century before the union of England and Scotland was brought about, a union of British colonies had been successfully achieved. It was in May 1643 that a convention of colonial representatives confederated the British colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven as the 'United Colonies of New England.' The negotiations leading up to this confederation had taken six years, but when once the union was effected its advantages were felt immediately. At this time England, engaged elsewhere, had neither the time nor the inclination to interfere with her American colonies. The newly-formed confederation enjoyed almost complete liberty. A year after the union we find this confederation negotiating treaties with the French and projecting defences against the Dutch. But this, the first union of colonies in the Empire, was not a legislative one, it was simply an agreement of 'offence and defence, advice and assistance.'"
[205-1] H. E. Egerton,Federations and Unions within the British Empire, Oxford, 1911, p. 103, "Articles of Confoederation betwixt the Plantations under the Government of the Massacusetts, the Plantations under the Government of New Plymouth, the Plantations under the Government of Conecticutt, and the Government of Newhaven, with the Plantations in combination with Itt."
{206}
To maintain the individual liberty of its citizens from alien interference is the task before each of the seven Pan-Angle nations. Whether a closer union of the six units of the Britannic power is sufficient insurance of the safety of each, and whether the United States standing alone has sufficient margin of safety, are at least debatable questions. Some foreign power arguing in the negative might win. But that a closer union of the entire self-governing English-speaking race would be strong enough to protect each of its component nations is here assumed to be not a debatable question. It is here postulated that upwards of one hundred and forty-one million English-speaking whites are strong enough to hold their own against the forces of the world for considerable time to come. The problem resolves itself into a struggle for the supremacy, and finally for the survival, of the Pan-Angle civilization.
We can federate. All our past history teaches this.
The Britannic nations and America all contain an individualistic form of patriotism that lends itself to Pan-Angle federation. Just as {207} American Pan-Angle gives allegiance to the ideals behind the dull earth he calls his home, be it city, town, township or parish; so he gives a larger allegiance to his state; and a still more comprehensive loyalty to his nation of forty-eight states. Just as the Britannic Pan-Angle holds in affection his throbbing factory city, or sheep-trimmed shire, or township lush with ripening wheat; so he holds in greater affection "That blessed plot, that earth, that realm, that England," or "that" New South Wales, or "that" Saskatchewan; and in still greater affection the British Isles, or Australia, or Canada. Among the Britannic Pan-Angles is now growing a further patriotism for the ideal of a Britannic whole of which each of the six nations would be a part. Throughout the Pan-Angle world let us add to these patriotisms for our dreamed-of Britannic whole and for our United States a still larger patriotism for our English-speaking civilization, our Pan-Angle lands.
Patriotism cannot attach itself to treaties or alliances, "the very nature of an arbitration board is negative."[207-1] Nor can it profess "loyalty" to a nation not its own. A Massachusetts man cannot be loyal to New York State, nor a Victorian to New South Wales, nor an Englander to Scotland. Nor can an American be loyal to New Zealand, an Australian to South Africa, nor a Britisher to Canada. But a Massachusetts man can be loyal to America, a Victorian to Australia, and an Englander to the British Isles. And all three of these men, when their nations are part of the {208} federation of the English-speaking people, can be loyal Pan-Angles.
Expressive of multiple patriotisms fly a multiplicity of flags. Into battle alongside of the Stars and Stripes go the American state flags. They know no jealousy of the national banner. Its thirteen stripes stand for the thirteen independent nations that originally federated; its stars, now increased to forty-eight, stand each for a state now bound into the Union. It is not forgotten how the men of the flag of the Maple Leaf and those of the Four-starred and Five-starred Southern Crosses fought in South Africa alongside the men under the Union Jack. There is as yet no Britannic flag. The Union Jack is the British flag. It is not, as often called, "the English flag"; it never has been. It was formed of crosses, the emblems of three nations now united into one nation, the British Isles. As the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes were made, so we can make a Pan-Angle flag which every English-speaking man will instinctively salute. Such a flag will subtract no glory from the cherished symbols of our local prides. Loyalty to our common race in no way forbids loyalty to our present local groups. All these our flags, our loyalties, our groups, are to protect and to be protected by all Pan-Angles.
Federation can be accomplished by either of two procedures: the combination of the seven Pan-Angle nations directly, as seven independent units; or the combination of the United States and a Britannic Federation, after this latter has been formed. Arguments for Britannic federation are arguments for Pan-Angle federation. The man {209} who has persuaded himself of the soundness of the former will be in a position to appreciate the soundness of the latter. These pages are intended to set forth the necessity and inevitableness of Pan-Angle federation, by whichever method attained, and as such are in thorough accord with all efforts towards Britannic federation. Either course is possible, if delay does not furnish opportunities for our separate destruction in the meantime by some rival civilization.
All over the Britannic world are men working for "closer union." "The wisest and most farseeing Imperialists have steadily maintained that the ultimate end of the whole movement is Federation."[209-1] They are working now with only the six Britannic nations as their acknowledged field. Organized and unorganized, they are seeking patiently and intelligently for the safety of their respective nations, which they know is bound up in the safety of the whole people. They know the political ideals of their race. They know that though the unrepresented may be spasmodically willing to waive their rights in times of great common danger, they none the less believe that "taxation without representation is tyranny." These men know also that money gifts by any Pan-Angle nation to a navy controlled by another Pan-Angle nation is contrary to the political instincts of all involved. They know that "mutual funk," though it may hold their nations together for a time, is no safeguard against the future. They are working to create a political entity, able by the determination of its representatives to swing the whole of its strength {210} at once against any foe. These men have undertaken to persuade the Britannic Pan-Angle nations to put aside local prejudices and to support the whole of which each is a part.
Plans for Britannic "closer union" range from a scheme for Britannic representation in the British Parliament at London, such as Franklin advocated before the race had evolved federalism, through schemes for an alliance of the six nations with a capital outside the British Isles[210-1] to a plan for definite federation, including a new Britannic Parliament to be constituted of the representatives from each of the six nations.[210-2]
Being now in the stage of vague alliance, it may be that the Britannic Pan-Angles must accomplish definitely the alliance stage as a step on the road to federation. If so, those who favour a Britannic alliance[210-3] have the wisdom of the race on their side. But the same wisdom prophesies that the negative advantages of alliance will have to be changed later to the affirmative strength of a common government. Federation has been "the great ideal of the nineteenth century,"[210-4] and apparently continues to {211} gain advocates. Britannic "present 'imperial architects' are building more carefully and laboriously than did their predecessors."[211-1]
The greater part of the work for federation, either Britannic or Pan-Angle, has already been done for us. The explorer, the trader, the missionary, and the soldier have won for us the eminence from which we are now able to survey the world and form our plans. The statesmen who in our many legislative halls have laboured to fit forms of government to the needs of the governed have tested for us the material for our building and have discarded what was ill-suited to our purposes. The millions of individuals who have held true to their Pan-Angle ideals have bequeathed them to us for inspiration. It is for us to continue the work begun three centuries and more ago.
What remains to be done is to follow the path of our previous successes and avoid a repetition of our failures. These failures each nation can find often in the events of its own history without turning to the histories of other Pan-Angles; and these successes each nation can find in the histories of others, quite as well as in that of its own. Such seeking will make for a becoming modesty towards each other, and by it we shall lose nothing. We are not dealing in this matter with our inferiors or our betters. We are dealing with each other, to whom we cannot give, and with whom we cannot curry, favour. Conciliation among us is not less {212} necessary than compromise; without conciliation in the past we should not have framed successful constitutions. To-day, as in the folk-moots of our political ancestors,—" No man dictates to the assembly: he may persuade, but cannot command."[212-1] There is no room for hypocrisy among free whites who talk English. In our dealings with each other neither force nor intrigue should have place. Our history shows that if we adhere to these ideals we can succeed in co-operation.
We must avoid interfering with each other. Interference even when actuated by the best of motives leads, as Pan-Angles have repeatedly experienced, to disastrous frictions and ruptures. This knowledge we have repeatedly bought at great cost. So well has the lesson been learned, that even in cases where interference is constitutional and where circumstances seem to justify it, a Pan-Angle government first tries persuasion. The United States Federal Government may consider a Californian alien land act contrary to a United States treaty; the British Parliament may consider the Ulster agitation serious enough to justify coercion: both know that conciliation and persuasion are the safe and permanent means to employ to right whatever the wrong may be. Interference augments stubbornness; persuasion hastens co-operation.
More than this, interference leads to failure. In 1849, the British Privy Council drafted a bill for the federation of the Australian colonies. It was not made by those for whose use it was intended. {213} Its clauses did "not show any close grip of the subject, or sign that their authors realized how they could be worked in practice."[213-1] Nothing came of the plan. The only purpose it served was to illustrate the futility of one Pan-Angle nation acting for another. In 1819-1820 began the Britannic immigrant occupation of South Africa.[213-2] In 1875 the British Isles government suggested that the various colonies in South Africa should be combined.[213-3] Viewed in the knowledge of to-day it almost appears such a step would have been advisable. The best intentions must be imputed to the outside government. Had this action been advocated by the South Africans, some kind of joint government might have resulted. Since it was not, the plan was merely a source of increased hard feeling between colonists of Dutch and British descent, and is to be included with other instances of British interference which were the major causes of the long and bitter Great Boer War. Each of these nations, Australia and South Africa, when it was ready and in its own way, produced for itself a plan of common government. A Britisher in the highest administrative office in South Africa wrote in 1907: "It is a modern axiom of British policy that any attempt to manage the domestic affairs of a white population by a continuous exercise of the direct authority of the Imperial Parliament, in which the people concerned are not represented, is, save under very special circumstances, a certain {214} path to failure."[214-1] American experience goes still further. There, every community is represented in every government having legislative jurisdiction over it. Yet it has been proved advisable to leave certain spheres of legislation solely to the wishes of the community affected.
For many years the British Isles has been the Pan-Angle nation which, from its position, was most tempted to interfere with the affairs of the others. The lessons its failures set forth may be taken to heart by the younger nations as they grow in strength. Neither America, nor Canada, nor Australia, nor South Africa, nor New Zealand, nor Newfoundland can at any time in their future afford to make the mistake of trying to compel one of the six other nations. An advantage of numbers, or position, or wealth, may lie at some time with anyone of them. On that one, then, will rest the obligation of keeping its hands off the others. Particularly does this apply to that one of us whose very existence is due to its revolt against interference, but hardly less to those others of us whose more peaceful origins were made possible by an already won revolution.
Federation should be attained through familiar governmental forms, not through innovations. Burke knew his civilization's aversion tochangewhich "alters the substance of the objects themselves, and gets rid of all their essential good as well as of all the accidental evil annexed to them," {215} whose results "cannot certainly be known beforehand." He knew his civilization's belief inreform—" a direct application of a remedy to the grievance complained of. So far as that is removed, all is sure. It stops there; and if it fails, the substance which underwent the operation, at the very worst, is but where it was."[215-1] In thisre-form, the essence of our civilization—our language, our individualism, our standards of living based on land plenty—should be left unchanged. The new growth, federation, will "remedy the grievance complained of"—the danger of the extinction of our civilization.
Pending federation, the Pan-Angle nations must on no account weaken each other, and so the entire race, with war. Much faith is put, in these days, in arbitration, but on false presumptions. No so-called "international arbitration court" in existence has any authority whatsoever.[215-2] Such a body is of value only when it is giving advice to contestants who greatly desire to come to a friendly agreement, and who, for the sake of peace, are predisposed to take the "court's" advice. Even then its value is not great, for such contestants might very probably, without its aid, have come to a peaceable understanding. The Pan-Angle nations do most heartily desire peace among themselves. They are then the best calculated to find arbitration useful. The question thus arises whether some tribunal can be established on Pan-Angle soil, for the settlement of Pan-Angle inter-national {216} disputes. It would be a makeshift and powerless, until by the establishment of a common government it ceased to be inter-national, and became a potent source of justice under the Pan-Angle federation.[216-1] It is, however, a straw we well might grasp until we reach a firmer footing. The greatest advantage of an organized body for Pan-Angle arbitration is that from it might develop something more practicable, as from the Maryland-Virginia Conference at Alexandria in 1785[216-2] and as from the South African Railway Rates Conference in 1908[216-3] developed respectively the federations of the United States and South Africa.
Other stepping-stones ready for our use are to be found in Britannic-American conferences on matters of mutual interest. In February 1908 a conference on the conservation of the natural resources of North America was held at Washington, at which three Pan-Angle nations were represented by delegates.[216-4] Some of the subjects suitable for such discussion are forests, river flowage for power or irrigation purposes, and migrating birds. If a conference were held for mutual information on sea-fisheries, all our nations might well send delegates. A similar opportunity is afforded in the urgent need of making uniform and sensible the spelling of our language. At a meeting in connection with the Conference of Education {217} Associations in London, January 5, 1914, it was stated "that an international conference should be summoned at which all parts of the British Empire and the United States should be represented."[217-1]
However great the good resulting from such conferences in relation to their stated objects, it may some day appear insignificant compared to the assistance rendered towards producing federation.
Quicker and cheaper communication is working steadily towards better Pan-Angle understanding. International postal arrangements date only from 1874, but two-cent (penny in the British Isles, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa) postage is now so general from points within to other points within the Pan-Angle world, that by far the majority of inter-Pan-Angle letters have the advantage of that rate. Land and water telegraphs by wire and wireless are steadily linking up points further and further apart, and rates are becoming cheaper. The telephone is now a common household necessity over much of the Pan-Angle world, and bids fair in time to conquer distances as effectively as do telegraph lines. Every such agency, producing a very real "closer union," is a factor in promoting Pan-Angle federation.
The cheapness and speed of travel are increasing at rates to which no bounds can reasonably be set. Steamers, on which we so largely depend as inter-Pan-Angle carriers, yearly serve more routes, are more numerous and faster. We shift easily from one country to another as business or inclination takes us. Ambassador Page has proposed that newspaper men from the British Isles and America serve an {218} apprenticeship on journalistic staffs in each other's countries.[218-1] The imperial "grand tour" of the British Isles parliamentary party, recently completed,[218-2] gave British politicians, better than would any number of voluminous reports, an opportunity to appreciate the needs and aspirations of the five other Britannic nations. The celebration of the Centenary of Peace will this year furnish innumerable similar opportunities. Every personal acquaintance of one Pan-Angle with the country of other Pan-Angles makes for the understanding that must precede federation.
The formation of a Pan-Angle federation must depend in the end on our voters who are the source of first and final appeal in our political problems. It will be achieved when they are self-persuaded that it is desirable, that is, when they have been educated to see its necessity. Only such means of education may properly be used as will open the path to self-persuasion. Among these, two readily suggest themselves. The first is the educative work that can be done by associations of those aroused to interest in the matter. The second is the educative influence of travel and sojourn of Pan-Angles in each other's countries.
Voluntary associations established by private initiative are among us recognized means of furthering reform. Through public discussion, whether printed or spoken, they have fostered many of the great movements for which we all {219} are now grateful. "Discussion is the greatest of all reformers. It rationalizes everything it touches. It robs principles of all false sanctity and throws them back upon their reasonableness. If they have no reasonableness, it ruthlessly crushes them out of existence and sets up its own conclusions in their stead."[219-1] These associations and their beliefs, if not supplying a public need, wither and die. But if the times call for them, movements are started which pass through a regular growth from insignificance and obscurity to contempt and ridicule, followed by public opposition and finally by success. Such have been the histories of the freedom of conscience, the abolition of slavery, and a host of similar triumphs. Men of like ideals associate themselves together, take a name that proclaims their tenets, and spend their time and energy and money to set forth the truth as they see it. Everyone is given a chance to learn, but no one is compelled to believe. No purpose can be so lofty, no course of action so advantageous, that it does not need expounding. The countless peace societies and the millions spent in that cause bear witness. Meeting places must be hired, literature must be printed and posted, advertising in its many forms must not be neglected. All this means sacrifice of some sort from somebody—obviously from those who have the success of the work at heart. In every Pan-Angle nation can be found plenty of organizations which are doing on a small scale in reference to some local interest just what some non-local, inter-national organization could {220} well do on a large scale for such an ideal as Pan-Angle federation. The organization should be on an inter-Pan-Angle basis, if for no other reason than to make for uniformity in its efforts and to prevent it from slipping into local points of view. As the demand for Pan-Angle federation grows, practical politics will not remain insensible to it. Then will be the time to marshal to its aid forces such as have finally established by law the present nationhood of each of us.
In this labour of education we must work openly in the presence of each other and under the scrutiny of the nations of the world. If we were Germans or Japanese, an internationalcoupmight be accomplished by diplomatic work unknown to the voters, and the affair put through with secrecy and despatch. It is vain to wish for such a style of procedure, and we have no desire, in this case, to change from the more laborious and tedious method of popular education and individual action. So to change would demonstrate that we had lost the very essence of our civilization—the initial as well as the final control of our own destinies. We must work openly, because it is one of our inestimable privileges to make up our own minds.
Not only can individual initiative accomplish this work, it can do it better than can any other method. Ideas of state interference under the guise of public ownership are making headway all over the Pan-Angle world. One industry after another, for one reason or another, is removed from the field of private endeavour, and is run for good or ill by governments. It has never been thus with our political undertakings. The spectacle of {221} a Pan-Angle government calling on all good citizens to aid in celebrating a Twenty-first of November, or a Twenty-fourth of May, or a Fourth of July is so unheard of as to be laughable,[221-1] and it is to be hoped that in the matter of Pan-Angle federation the people will be the compelling power forcing their respective governments to action.
Of the promotion of travel and sojourn of Pan-Angles in each other's countries we have one notable example. Cecil John Rhodes, wishing to instil in the minds of Britannic Pan-Angles "the advantage to the Colonies as well as to the United Kingdom of the retention of the unity of the Empire,"[221-2] and desiring "to encourage and foster an appreciation of the advantages which I implicitly believe will result from the union of the English-speaking peoples throughout the world and to encourage in the students from the United States of North America . . . an attachment to the country from which they have sprung but without I hope withdrawing them or their sympathies from the land of their adoption or birth,"[221-3] directed the trustees of his estate to establish scholarships at the University of Oxford. Each year picked men from English-speaking lands travel to England, enrol themselves in this Pan-Angle university, and there measure themselves against representatives of all their race. At the end of three years they return to their respective countries. The book {222} knowledge they have acquired could have been furnished by any one of many universities. But Rhodes' sagacity has given them infinitely more. They have lived and studied and travelled in what is truly the Mother Country of us all. They have become conscious of their fellow Pan-Angles and have made their fellow Pan-Angles conscious of them. Their understanding and sympathy is freed for all time from narrow prejudices.