stic school, would be to bring about
that disintegration of the Empire which the same school regard as the
crown of national disaster.

It would be a happy day for the Peace Society that should give the
colonies a veto on imperial war. It is true that during the Indian
Mutiny New South Wales offered to send away the battery for which it
paid, but when the despatch actually took place it was furious.
Australia has militiamen, but who supposes that they can be spared in
any numbers worth considering for long campaigns, and this further
loss and dislocation added to those which have been enumerated by Mr.
Forbes? Supposing, for the sake of argument, that Australia were
represented in the body that decided on war, though we may notice that
war is often entered upon even in our own virtuous days without
preliminary consent from Parliament, nobody believes that the presence
of Australian representatives in the imperial assembly that voted the
funds would reconcile their constituents at the other side of the
globe to paying money for a war, say, for the defence of Afghanistan
against Russia, or for the defence of Belgian neutrality. The
Australian, having as much as he can do to carry on from hand to
mouth, would speedily repent himself of that close and filial union
with the mother country, which he is now supposed so ardently to
desire, when he found his personal resources crippled for the sake of
European guarantees or Indian frontiers. We had a rather interesting
test only the other day of the cheerful open-handedness that English
statesmen expect to find in colonial contributions for imperial
purposes. We sent an expedition to Egypt, having among its objects the
security of the Suez Canal. The Canal is part of the highway to India,
so (shabbily enough, as some think) we compelled India to pay a quota
towards the cost of the expedition. But to nobody is the Canal more
useful than to our countrymen in Australia. It has extended the
market for their exports and given fresh scope for their trade. Yet
from them nobody dreams of asking a farthing. Nor do the pictures
drawn by Mr. Forbes and others encourage the hope that any Ministry in
any one of the seven Australian Governments is likely to propose
self-denying ordinances that take the shape of taxes for imperial
objects. 'He is a hard-headed man, the Australian,' says Mr. Forbes,
'and has a keen regard for his own interest, with which in the details
of his business life, hi