The Expansion of England by John Morley

Eight or nine years ago Mr. Forster delivered an important address at Edinburgh on our Colonial Empire. It was a weighty attempt to give the same impulse to people's minds from the political point of view as Mr. Seeley tries to give from the historical. Mr. Forster did not think that 'the admission of colonial representatives into our Parliament could be a permanent form of association,' though he added that it might possibly be useful in the temporary transition from the dependent to the associated relation. In what way it would be useful he did not more particularly explain. The ultimate solution he finds in some kind of federation. The general conditions of union, in order that our empire should continue, he defines as threefold. 'The different self-governing communities must agree in maintaining allegiance to one monarch -- in maintaining a common nationality, so that each subject may find that he has the political rights and privileges of other subjects wheresoever he may go in the realm; [4] and, lastly, must agree not only in maintaining a mutual alliance in all relations with foreign powers, but in apportioning among themselves the obligations imposed by such alliance. '[5] It is, as everybody knows, at the last of the three points that the pinch is found.

The threatened conflict between the Imperial and the Irish parliaments on the Regency in 1788, 1789 warns us that difficulties might arise on the first head, and it may be well to remember under the second head that the son of a marriage between a man and his sister-in-law has not at present the same civil right in different parts of the realm. But let this pass. The true question turns upon the apportionment of the obligations incurred by states entering a federal union on equal terms. What is to be the machinery of this future association? Mr. Forster, like Mr. Seeley, and perhaps with equally good right, leaves time to find the answer, contenting himself with the homely assurance that 'when the time comes it will be found that where there's a will there's a way. ' Our position is that the will depends upon the way, and that the more any possible way of federation is considered, the less likely is there to be the will.