etting up
in London of a new Parliament, in which the United Kingdom and all the
colonies where white men predominated would be represented according to
population. This Parliament would have power to frame policies, to make
laws, and to levy taxes for the whole Empire. To the colonist it offered
an opportunity to share in the control of foreign affairs; to the
Englishman it offered the support of colonies fast growing to power
and the assurance of one harmonious policy for all the Empire. Both in
Britain and overseas the movement received wide support and seemed for a
time likely to sweep all before it. Then a halt came.

Imperial federation had been brought forward a generation too late to
succeed. The Empire had been developing upon lines which could not be
made to conform to the plans for centralized parliamentary control.
It was not possible to go back to the parting of the ways. Slowly,
unconsciously, unevenly, yet steadily, the colonies had been ceasing
to be dependencies and had been becoming nations. With Canada in the
vanguard they had been taking over one power after another which had
formerly been wielded by the Government of the United Kingdom. It
was not likely that they would relinquish these powers or that
self-governing colonies would consent to be subordinated to a Parliament
in London in which each would have only a fragmentary representation.

The policy of imperial cooperation which began to take shape during
this period sought to reconcile the existing desire for continuing the
connection with the mother country with the growing sense of national
independence. This policy involved two different courses of action:
first, the colonies must assert and secure complete self-government on
terms of equality with the United Kingdom; second, they must unite as
partners or allies in carrying out common tasks and policies and in
building up machinery for mutual consultation and harmonious action.

It was chiefly in matters of trade and tariffs that progress was made
in the direction of self-government. Galt had asserted in 1859 Canada's
right to make her own tariffs, and Macdonald twenty years later had
carried still further the policy of levying duties upon English as well
as foreign goods. That economic point was therefore settled, but it was
a slower matter to secure control of treaty-making powers. When Galt and
Huntington urged this right in 1871 and when Blake and Mackenzie pressed
it ten years later,