d its problems, from
George Grenville's Stamp Act down to the 333 articles in the tariff of
Victoria, with the same eyes. The problems of government arise from
clashing interests, and in that clash the one touch of nature that
makes the whole world kin is the resolution not willingly to make
sacrifices without objects which are thought to be worth them. If we
can both persuade ourselves and convince the colonists that the gains
of a closer confederation will compensate for the sacrifices entailed
by it, we shall then look at the problem with the same eyes: if not,
not. Englishmen at home withdrew the troops from New Zealand because
we did not choose to pay for them. Englishmen in Canada and Victoria
do their best to injure our manufactures because they wish to nurse
their own. The substance of character, the leading instincts, the love
of freedom, the turn for integrity, the taste for fair play, all the
great traits and larger principles may remain the same, but there is
abundant room in the application of the same principles and the
satisfaction of the same instincts for the rise of bitter contention
and passionate differences. The bloodiest struggle of our generation
was between English-speaking men of the North and English-speaking men
of the South, because economic difficulties had brought up a problem
of government which the two parties to the strife looked at with
different eyes from difference of habit and of interest. It is far
from being enough, therefore, to rely on a general spirit of concord
in the broad objects of government for overcoming the differences
which distance may chance to make in its narrow and particular
objects.

If difficulties of distance, we are asked by the same statesman, 'have
not prevented the government of a colony from England, why must they
prevent the association of self-governing communities with England?'
But distance was one of the principal causes, and perhaps we should
not be far wrong in saying that it was the principal cause, why the
time came when some colonies could no longer be governed from
England--distance, and all those divergencies of thought and principle
referred to by Mill, which distance permitted or caused to spring
into existence and to thrive.

The present writer claims to belong as little to the Pessimist as to
the Bombastic school--to borrow Mr. Seeley's phrase--unless it is to
be a Pessimist to seek a foothold in positive conditions and to insist
on facin