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 Federation will be placed, are very emphatically opposed to any scheme that will bind them into closer legislative union with England. Before entering upon this subject, I would warn my readers not to imagine, because they see the crudity or, if they will, the folly of this unknown colonial writer, whom I have treated as typical of the intelligent native Australian, that those to whom he more directly appeals will read his pages with their eyes. It is worse than idle for grown-up serious men to continue to play a game of political blind man's buff, when it is admitted on all hands that the relations between Great Britain and her colonies are in a tentative, if not unsatisfactory and even critical, condition. Surely we should endeavour to remove the bandages of ignorance and conventionality, so as to see one another in our true aspect.

I propose to devote the remaining pages of this chapter to the consideration of the very complex problem of the relations between the mother country and her colonies. It is a singular fact that those of the younger generation of colonists, who are to-day loudly inveighing against any scheme of Imperial federation, are simply re-echoing the outworn traditions of Downing Street. In the admir-