Page:The empire and the century.djvu/71

And the main political fact of recent years has been the growing unimportance of representative assemblies, constructed on the old lines, and a tendency to delegate power to the executive, without requiring a constant oversight by an elected body. The tendency has dangers as well as merits, but it is impossible to deny its reality; and in such circumstances it would scarcely be wise to add to existing anomalies by the creation of another impotent legislature. But even granting the value of the federal ideal, we are faced with two potent centrifugal forces—distance in space and disparity in development. Before federation or anything like it is possible, certain conditions must be present. There must be a comparatively uniform development throughout the Empire, the different parts which make the federal units showing a certain level of civic well-being. One State may be richer than another, or may base its wealth on different grounds; but all must have attained to a certain height of self-conscious national life, otherwise they will enter the federation on different terms, and instead of harmony will find abiding discontent. Some speedy means of transit, again, is necessary between the units of so vast an Empire, otherwise the federal machinery will break down from sheer exhaustion. To be compelled to come at the present rate of travel from Vancouver, or Wellington, or Johannesburg, to attend a common council, would strain the loyalty of any statesman. More vital still, the population of the Empire, and notably of Britain, must become more mobile and elastic, shaping their daily interests to accord with the wider conception of patriotism. Till a man sends his son as readily to a post at Melbourne or Ottawa as at Sheffield, till we see a continual coming and going between English and colonial society, till the rich man has his country house or shooting-box as naturally in the Selkirks or on the East African plateau as in Scotland, we shall not see those common interests which are necessary for a common administration. The impulse to federation