Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/251

 has been created purely by what I must call continuous "foreign pressure," both external and internal.

We thus see how difficult are the steps necessary to federate two or three contiguous self-governing colonies. How, then, can we expect at a bound to federate the Empire? For my own part, I do not believe it is possible to create an Imperial Parliament in the true sense of the term—a great Council of the Empire sitting in London and controlling all imperial, as distinguished from local, legislation and administration. From my point of view, the enormous amount of "foreign pressure" necessary to produce so vital a change in the Constitution would be much more likely to disrupt the outlying members. People who talk lightly of the task do not seem to me to realise what would be the immediate effect of their panacea. Even Mr. Jenkins freely concedes that Imperial Federation is a misnomer without Imperial Free-trade, which would mean to such a colony as Victoria the immediate loss of about a million and three-quarters sterling in Customs Duties. Is it possible even to conceive the misery that would result, and the wholesale destruction of vested interests, by the substitution for this of its equivalent in direct