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 exists, but it must be a thousandfold stronger before we can talk about the fact. Unity, in a word, must precede union. For the Empire is an organic growth, and any form we impose upon it must be adequate to its living movement, otherwise, instead of chain-mail, we shall have a strait waistcoat. Supineness is bad, but in this connection it is infinitely less dangerous than haste. The South African Federation Act of 1877 fell stillborn, because South Africa was not ripe for any such development. The incident has a moral in connection with any scheme for the federation of the Empire. A rigid system applied prematurely will either be inoperative, and so bring the ideal into discredit, or it will curb and choke the life, and produce monstrosity instead of growth.

But the movement towards unity is there all the same, and conditions are beginning to adapt themselves. Distances grow less yearly, and the insularity of both England and the Colonies becomes daily weaker. The centrifugal forces are slackening, and the centripetal are increasing. It is important to provide channels for the new current to flow in, for though, if it be a real current, it will sooner or later make a course for itself, yet the breaking down of barriers means delay, and involves a waste of energy which might have been better expended. It is an encouraging sign of the times that some of our foremost constitutional lawyers, such as Mr. Haldane and Sir Frederick Pollock, should have devoted much thought to devising methods of constitutional union. We have also taken certain tentative steps in practice. The Defence Committee has power to call colonial members to its deliberations; and, moreover, by cutting into the old autonomy of the Cabinet, it has paved the way for a further reform. More important still is the Conference of Colonial Premiers, which a resolution, passed at the last Conference in 1902, decreed should assemble at least every four years. Colonial contributions to Imperial defence, and the practice of communicating certain treaties to