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PREFACE contained in this volume are valuable contributions to the study of those national problems which we must solve on our way to a really United Empire. Others present a personal view of the present national outlook, which deserves the careful consideration of voters, anxious to exercise the franchise wisely on great public issues.

On one of the most vexed and difficult problems connected with the Federation of the Empire, Mr. Brassey has taken the lead in laying down and advocating a definite policy of reconstruction. It has long been apparent that the Imperial Parliament, as at present constituted, is unequal to the double task of managing the affairs of a world-wide Empire while also performing the minor functions which in Federated States are assigned to the individual communities of the Federation. The attempt to do this double work has ended in an almost hopeless congestion of Parliamentary business, which at once weakens general policy and paralyses local improvement. Mr. Brassey has not hesitated to point out that some devolution of local and municipal legislation, on lines similar to what has been carried out so successfully in Canada, must take place within the United Kingdom before a place can be found for Colonial representatives in a Parliament competent to deal with the affairs of a world-wide Empire. He has claimed that Federal Government for the United Kingdom is not merely the best corrective for partial and inadmissible Home Rule demands, but is a necessary step in the process of further national evolution. There is strong reason to believe that time will prove the truth of this contention.

It will be seen that in the great debate concerning ix