re society has not been graduated in
degrees, and there have not been deeper and stronger bands of coherence
than the fluctuating votes of majorities.

Times are changed we are told. We live in a new era, when public opinion
is king, and no other rule is possible; public opinion, as expressed in
the press and on the platform, and by the deliberately chosen
representatives of the people. Every question can be discussed and
argued, all sides of it can be heard, and the nation makes up its mind.
The collective judgment of all is wiser than the wisest single
man--_securus judicat orbis_.

Give the public time, and I believe this to be true; general opinion
does in the long run form a right estimate of most persons and of most
things. As surely its immediate impulses are almost invariably in
directions which it afterwards regrets and repudiates, and therefore
constitutions which have no surer basis than the popular judgment, as it
shifts from year to year or parliament to parliament, are built on
foundations looser than sand.

In concluding this book I have a few more words to say on the subject,
so ardently canvassed, of Imperial federation. It seems so easy. You
have only to form a new parliament in which the colonies shall be
represented according to numbers, while each colony will retain its own
for its own local purposes. Local administration is demanded everywhere;
England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, can each have theirs, and the vexed
question of Home Rule can be disposed of in the reconstruction of the
whole. A central parliament can then be formed in which the parts can
all be represented in proportion to their number; and a cabinet can be
selected out of this for the management of Imperial concerns. Nothing
more is necessary; the thing will be done.

So in a hundred forms, but all on the same principle, schemes of
Imperial union have fallen under my eye. I should myself judge from
experience of what democratically elected parliaments are growing into,
that at the first session of such a body the satellites would fly off
into space, shattered perhaps themselves in the process. We have
parliaments enough already, and if no better device can be found than by
adding another to the number, the rash spirit of innovation has not yet
gone far enough to fling our ancient constitution into the crucible on
so wild a chance.

Imperial federation, as it is called, is far away, if ever it is to be
realised at all. If it is