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PREFATORY ESSAY
doubt the advance in the use of telegraphic communication. Any system of common government between the mother country and the British colonies, other than that of a vague dynastic union, was manifestly impossible so long as communication between the parent State and her offspring was a matter of weeks or months. Of course, notwithstanding all the improvements in railway and steamship communication, the mileage distance between the mother country and her colonies forms a grave difficulty in the way ot any possible Federation; but this difficulty nowadays is insignificant compared with what it was in 1875Thanks to submarine telegraphy, any event of public interest which occurs in Great Britain is known at once in every important colony. In the same way, the main incidents of colonial life are read and commented on at home almost simultaneously with their occurrence. The variations of public opinion in Great Britain and in all the self-governing colonies of Greater Britain are discussed simultaneously in every part of the British Empire. Joint administration conducted by telegraphy cannot, for various reasons, be ever as satisfactory as joint administration by oral methods and personal intercourse. Still, the former system of administration is conceivably possible, while the latter is at present manifestly impossible. What, however, is even more important than the increased facility of communication between all parts of the British Empire is the extent to which this facility of communication has tended to weld Great Britain and Greater Britain into one people, with common thoughts, common interests, and common ideas. All families which have relatives settled in the colonies must be aware that, though mutual affections might remain undiminished, the interest in each other’s fortunes felt by the members of a family, residing some at home, some in the colonies, tended formerly to decrease with the lapse of years. But when the papers report every morning to every British town of importance in each quarter of the globe the news of what has passed on the preceding day, whether in the mother country or in her dominions beyond the four seas, the common interest in each other’s doings and sayings, which binds together men of the same race and country, is far less liable than it was heretofore to diminish in strength. To a great extent the British race, whether at home or abroad, has, owing to the advance in telegraphy, become again one community, united by other ties besides those of a common language and a common ancestry. We have seen how this rapidity of communication works in practice by the experience of the South African War. It needs no saying that the war would not have excited the intense sympathy displayed by the Colonies if the defeats, victories, sufferings, and triumphs, not only of the British army, but of the Colonial contingents, had not been made known to them day by day in the order of their occurrence. Wb must not seem to undervalue the military assistance afforded by these contingents, if we regard as a yet more important result the way in which this assistance has tended to strengthen the influences which work for Imperial Federation. There are grave practical difficulties which attend the formation of any working scheme for carrying out the idea of the Federation of the British Empire. But it is a striking fact that, for the first time in British annals, this idea has commended itself to popular favour both at home and in the colonies. It has always seemed to the present writer that the political economists who contend that selfinterest is the factor which determines national policy are equally in the wrong with the school who contend that sentiment—using the word in no offensive sense—is the mainspring of human action. It would be more correct to say that the world is governed by a combination of self-interest and sentiment, the relative power of each factor being subject to certain variations, but always tending to revert after each variation to a status of equality. Hostile critics would urge that the sentiment which supports Federation cannot last, as it is based on no foundation of self-interest. In our view this assertion is erroneous. The British colonies have manifestly an interest in Federation, on the assumption that it is essential to colonial independence and is calculated to facilitate a Customs Union. The workingclasses in the United Kingdom have at the first sight no interest in a Customs Union, which they have been led to believe would not only violate the principles of Free Trade, but would raise the price of the articles they mainly consume. Of late, however, there have been indications that this belief is no longer so widely or so enthusiastically entertained as it used to be by the electorate of the mother country. The British working-man would be far more blind to his own interest than he is commonly supposed to be if he had failed to note the fact, that under unrestricted competition a number of British industries
