e not part of the same public; they do not discuss
and deliberate in the same arena, but apart, and have only a most
imperfect knowledge of what passes in the minds of one another. They
neither know each other's objects nor have confidence in each other's
principles of conduct. Let any Englishman ask himself how he should
like his destinies to depend on an assembly of which one-third was
British-American and another third South African and Australian. Yet
to this it must come, if there were anything like fair or equal
representation; and would not every one feel that the representatives
of Canada and Australia, even in matters of an imperial character,
could not know or feel any sufficient concern for the interests,
opinions, or wishes of English, Irish, or Scotch?'[6] Tariffs, as we
have seen, are one question, and the treatment of native races is
another, where this want of sympathy and agreement between Englishmen
at home and Englishmen in the most important colonies is open and
flagrant.

[6] J. S. Mill _On Representative Government_, pp. 317, 318.

The actual circumstances of federal unions justify Mill's remark on
the impossibility of meeting the conditions of such polities where the
communities are separated by half the globe; nor does the fact that
New Zealand is now only forty days from the Thames make any
difference. The districts of the Aetolian, and the towns of the
Achaean, League were in effect neighbours. The Germanic Confederation
was composed of kingdoms and principalities that are conterminous. The
American Union is geographically solid. So are the cantons of the
Swiss Confederation. The nine millions of square miles over which the
British flag waves are dispersed over the whole surface of the globe.
The fact that this consideration is so trite and obvious does not
prevent it from being an essential element in the argument. Mr.
Seeley's precedents are not at all in point.

It is no answer to say, with Mr. Forster, that 'English-speaking men
and women look at life and its problems, especially the problems of
government, with much the same eyes everywhere.' For the purposes of
academic discussion, and with reference to certain moral generalities,
this might be fairly true. But the problems of government bring us
into a sphere where people are called upon to make sacrifices, in the
shape of taxation if in no other, and here English-speaking men and
women are wont not by any means to look at life an