Greater Greece and Greater Britain; and George Washington the Great Expander of England

“As regards internal affairs the colonies have self-government. As regards foreign affairs, they are subjects, not merely of the Queen, but of our Parliament – that is of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, or rather of such of those inhabitants as are voters.”

In a rough practical sense this is true; but that it should be true, even in a rough practical sense, curiously illustrates the conventional nature of our whole system. In theory the whole foreign policy rests in the hands of the Crown. The Queen cannot pass a law or impose a tax without the consent of Parliament; she can declare war or conclude a treaty without asking Parliament about it. But, in a rough practical way, Parliament, and through Parliament the constituencies, can exercise a good deal of influence on foreign policy, though an influence much slighter and much less direct than that which they exercise on domestic policy. But the colonies can exercise no influence at all on foreign affairs; therefore they are not only subjects in the sense in which any man in a monarchy is a “subject” of the Emperor, King, or Grand-duke; they are subjects in the sense of being a society of men which is subject to another society. They are, in short, what a Greek would have called ὑπήκοοι and a Swiss Unterthanen. And, large as their actual powers of self-government are, they are all – unlike the immemorial rights of Man and Jersey – mere grants from the Crown or from the Parliament of the United Kingdom itself. And, though the exercise of the power is in some cases just as unlikely as the exercise of the power of the Crown to refuse assent to a bill that has passed both Houses, still the Parliament of the United Kingdom has never formally given up its right to legislate for any part of the dominions of the sovereign of the United Kingdom.

Practically however the chief British colonies are independent as concerns the internal affairs of each; they are practically dependent or subject only as regards the common policy of the “realm” or “empire.” And it has been said, and that not by an opponent of “Imperial Federation,” that

“These two opposing principles, subordination on the one hand, and self-government on the other – we might almost say subjection and freedom – cannot long co-exist. This imperfect, incomplete, one-sided federation must end either in disintegration or incomplete and equal and perfect federation.”

The only question is whether a federation thus limited is federation at all, and not really subjection. When we speak of “imperfect, incomplete, one-sided federation,” the adjectives destroy the substantive; they show that the relation spoken of is not a federal relation at all. All the elements of a federation are wanting. There is no voluntary union of independent states, keeping some powers to themselves and granting other powers to a central authority of their own creation. There is instead a number of dependent bodies, to which a central authority older than themselves has been graciously pleased to grant certain powers. This state of things is not federation, but subjection. It is perfectly true that an American State, as such, has no more direct voice in the foreign affairs of the American Union than a British colony has in the foreign affairs of the British “empire.” But why? The colony has no such voice, because it is a subject community and never had a voice in such matters. The American State has no such voice, because the direction of foreign affairs is one of the powers which the States have ceded to the Federal authority. But, more than this, not only has the colony no direct voice in ordering foreign affairs, itself and its citizens have no voice, direct or indirect, in choosing those who have the ordering of them. But the American State and its citizens have a direct voice in choosing those who have the ordering of the foreign affairs of the Union. The citizens of the several States, as citizens of the United States, choose the [electors of the] President, by whom foreign affairs are actually ordered. The States themselves in their Legislatures choose the Senators, by whom the acts of the President are approved or annulled. Here are two very different stories; the difference between the position of the American State and the position of the British colony is nothing short of the difference between federation and subjection.

In truth the relation between the United Kingdom and the colonies does not answer my old definition of federation which it has been said to answer. The colonies are not “states” in the sense of that definition. The “states” there spoken of are communities like the cities of Achaia, the cantons of Switzerland, the states of America, sovereign and independent communities, which, while keeping to themselves certain of the attributes of sovereignty, have by their own act ceded certain other of its attributes to a central authority⁴. The colonies are not states in this sense; instead of having granted any powers to a central authority, they have only such powers as the central authority chose to grant to them. They are not states; they are only municipalities on a great scale. I shall doubtless be told that the colonies can alter their criminal law, their marriage law, and a crowd of other laws, which a municipality at home cannot alter. But why? The colonies can do all these things, simply because Parliament has given them the power to do them; and Parliament can, if it chooses, give the same power to the Common Council of London or to the parish vestry of Little Peddlington.

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Thus far we have been dealing with a state of things which may very likely be “imperial,” but which is assuredly very far from “federal.” It is a state which – we have good authority for so saying – cannot last very long, but which must soon be exchanged either for disintegration or for federation. The question in truth comes to this; Shall an “empire” break up or shall it be changed into a federation? To speak of changing an imperfect federation into a perfect one gives a false idea of the case. What is really proposed to be done is not to change a lax confederation into a closer one or an imperfect confederation into a perfect one. It is to bring in federation, as a perfectly new thing, where at present there is no federation, but its opposite, subjection. And it is proposed to bring in federation, not only as a perfectly new thing, but under circumstances utterly unlike those under which any of the present or past confederations of the world ever came into being. The proposal that a ruling state – if any one chooses to call it so, an “imperial” state – should come down from its position of empire, and enter into terms of equal confederation with its subject communities, is a very remarkable proposal, and one which has perhaps never before been made in the history of the world. It may therefore be well to take a glimpse at the causes which have led to so unprecedented a proposal and to the unprecedented dilemma of which it forms one horn.

It is this subjection of the colonies to the mother-country which is, as I have fully argued elsewhere, the great point of difference between modern European colonies and those colonies of the elder world which have in other respects so much in common with them. While the relations between metropolis and colony are the brightest facts of Greek or Phœnician political life, in modern times the relations between mother-country and colony have often been among the darkest. The subjection of the colony is, as none see more clearly than some advocates of Imperial Federation, an unnatural thing, at the very least a thing which becomes unnatural as soon as the colony has outgrown its childhood. Then comes the alternative, “disintegration” or federation. That is, Shall the colonies part from the mother-country and become independent, or shall they remain united to the mother-country on some terms other than those of subjection? In the Greek system the alternative could not occur; where the colony was independent from the beginning, there was no room for “disintegration.” And though we are sure that the mother-country, taught by experience, would not now think of trying to keep by force any colony that wished to separate, yet “disintegration” is a process which is perhaps not to be desired in itself. It must be better either never to have been united or never to separate. The separation may be needful, but it must be something of an unpleasant wrench. The Greek system made it needless. Metropolis and colony were all the better friends because the relation of subjection had never existed between them.

But it is the other alternative of federation which we have now to discuss. Is that alternative, the substitution of federation for empire, possible? Let us at least remember that what is proposed is unlike anything that ever happened in the world before. That certainly does not of itself prove that the proposed scheme is either impossible or undesirable; still it is a fact worth bearing in mind. It is always dangerous to imagine a precedent where there is none. A perfectly new scheme should stand forth as a perfectly new scheme, as something which may commend itself by its abstract merits, but which has nothing in the way of experience to recommend it. And such is the scheme of federation between the mother-country and the colonies. No ruling state has ever admitted its subject states into a federal relation⁵. Ruling states have often admitted subject states to equal privileges with themselves; but the promotion has taken the shape, not of federation but of absorption; that is, subjects were raised to the rank of citizens. Of this Rome is the great example; her citizenship was gradually extended, first to the Italian allies – fruit of their war of independence – and then by slow degrees to the provinces also. Now the people of our colonies need no admission to citizenship. They are already British subjects; the essence of the modern colonial relation is that they remain British subjects. The inhabitants of the colonies, each man by himself, are the equals of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom; this or that colonist may be an elector in the United Kingdom; let him come and live in the United Kingdom and he may become a member of Parliament, a cabinet minister, a peer of the realm. It is only the communities, as communities, that are subject. Now it would be quite possible to unite the mother-country and the colonies in a way that might be called at pleasure the removal of subjection or its aggravation. They might be united as Rome and her Italian allies were united, as Scotland, and Ireland were united to England. They might send members to the Parliament of the United Kingdom in fair proportion to their numbers. They would then have exactly the same control over the general affairs of the kingdom, “realm,” “empire,” whatever it is to be called, which the inhabitants of the United Kingdom have now. And, considering the geography of the case, it may be that, instead of Westminster, some point, some island perhaps, more central for the whole “empire” might be chosen as the place of assembly. But, with such an union as this, the local Legislatures of the colonies must be abolished. The Parliament of the whole “empire” must legislate for the whole “empire.” The colony, in short, must rise or sink to the level of a county. The soil of the colony, the people of the colony, would receive the most perfect equality with the soil and the people of the mother-country. Subjection would be utterly done away with. Canada would be no more subject than York. But a share in the control of the affairs of the whole empire would be bought by the loss of all special control over the affairs of the colony itself. Some might think that such a price would be too dear. Self-government, the kind of self-government which the colonies have hitherto enjoyed, would come to an end. There would be only that lesser self-government which belongs to an English county or borough; the internal affairs of any colony would be legislated for by an assembly in which the members for that colony might be outvoted. Subjection, in short, formally abolished, would practically be made more complete.

I believe that nobody proposes anything like this. I feel sure that every colony would at once reject such a scheme. Still such a scheme would be the consistent carrying out of one form of union, and that the most perfect form. But it may be said, We wish to preserve the colonial Parliaments, and at the same time to have members for the colonies in the Imperial Parliament. The question would then arise, the question which arises also in the case of Ireland, Are the colonial members to have votes in the affairs of the United Kingdom? If the Parliaments of the colonies are to remain, while members for the colonies have votes in the Imperial Parliament which, it is to be supposed, is still to settle the affairs of the United Kingdom, one of two results must come. If, while the affairs of the colonies are discussed in their own assemblies, the affairs of the United Kingdom are discussed in an assembly in which the representatives of the colonies have votes, then the mother-country will in truth become dependent on the colonies. The other alternative is that the dormant power of the Imperial Parliament to legislate for the colonies, a power which has never been formally laid aside, will be called into new being whenever it suits the purposes of the members for the United Kingdom. The difficulties and confusions of such a state as this would be endless; so would be those that would follow on the scheme which would doubtless be proposed as their remedy. That would be something like this. As the colonial Parliaments settle the affairs of the colonies, so let the Parliament of the United Kingdom still settle the affairs of the United Kingdom; let the colonial members who are added to it in its “Imperial” character vote only on “Imperial” questions, and leave the affairs of Great Britain and Ireland to be settled by the members for Great Britain and Ireland. But to say nothing of the odd position of men who would be members of Parliament on one division and not members of Parliament on another, how is the distinction to be drawn? Even in a real federal constitution, where the States surrender certain named powers to the federal authority and keep all other powers, questions will arise whether this or that point is of federal or cantonal competence. How much more will such questions arise when it may be asked in almost every case of legislation, Does this matter concern the colonies or not? Would, for instance, such a question as Irish Home Rule, or any change in any direction in the relations between Ireland and Great Britain, be looked on as an “Imperial” question, or as one touching Great Britain and Ireland only⁶? It is often hard enough to settle rules for assemblies called into being for the first time; but how much harder will it be, when an assembly has had for ages an absolutely boundless range of powers, and where every member has always had an equal voice on all subjects, to bring in a new class of members who shall have votes on certain classes of subjects only, and those classes of subjects which it will be practically impossible to define.

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But, be any scheme of this kind good or bad, possible or impossible, it is not Federation. We have seen elsewhere what Federation means and how federations grow. A federal union involves a certain loss of power and position on the part of the states which unite to form it. But, as federations have been formed hitherto, that loss of power and position has either been merely nominal or else has been fully made up in other ways. When the Achaian cities, the Swiss cantons, the Batavian provinces, the American States, were threatened by enemies, whom they could resist only by union, it was worth their while to give up the independent power of peace and war; for each city or state to cleave to it would have meant for each city or state to be subdued singly. In some of these cases many of the states had never really exercised the independent powers of peace and war. There was no moment when Aargau or Indiana could have made war on its own account; and, if we say that there was a moment when Massachusetts or Pennsylvania might have done so, it was only an ideal moment which had no real historical being. In each of the great federal unions some of the members, in some of them all the members, distinctly gained in political position by entering the Union. Federation is a check on independence; but many of the states had never known separate independence. But it will be quite another thing to ask a great power, a ruling power, a mighty and ancient kingdom, which has for ages held its place among the foremost nations of the earth, to give up its dominion, to give up its independence, to sink of its own will to the level of a new State or Canton. It will be quite another thing to ask the Parliament of such a kingdom, a Parliament which has for ages been a sovereign assembly, which has for a very long time believed itself to be the first of all assemblies, a Parliament whose range of functions has been boundless, whose will has known no limit save the limits which the laws of nature impose on all wills – to ask such a Parliament as this to come down from its seat, to give up to some other assembly not yet in being the widest and greatest of its powers. In any real federation between the United Kingdom and the colonies, the Parliament of the United Kingdom would be no more than the Legislature of an American state or a Swiss canton; it would have to content itself with those lesser powers which it would not be called upon to surrender, with mere local powers over the mere local affairs of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. No voice, direct or indirect, in the great business of the world could be allowed to such a purely local body, any more than it is at this moment allowed to the Legislature of Bern or of New York. We must look things in the face, and this is what we have to look in the face. Perhaps not one man in a thousand who has chattered about “Imperial Federation” has ever stopped to think what “federation” means, any more than he has stopped to think what “empire” means. Most likely he means something quite different from the picture which has just been drawn. Most likely he thinks that Great Britain and the Parliament of Great Britain will somehow become greater by becoming parts of an “Imperial Federation.” All this confusion comes of using words without thinking of their meaning. If by “federation” is meant some wholly new device, something the like of which is not to be found either in the existing world or in any past age of the world, we can better discuss the merits of the new device if it is called by some new name of its own, rather than if it uses old names like “empire” and “federation” in some strange sense. But if by federation is meant a known political system, a system which has existed in the past and which does exist in the present, if is meant such a constitution as once was in Achaia and Lykia, as actually is in Switzerland and America, then we may undoubtedly answer that such a demand was never yet made on any ruling people or any ruling assembly, and that the Parliament and people of Great Britain will assuredly not be the first to set the world the example of accepting it. Every man of us will feel his back set up if we are asked that the Houses of Lords and Commons shall become the Senate and House of Representatives, not of “Greater Britain,” which might haply be promotion, but of a mere canton of Greater Britain, a canton keeping for its Legislature powers somewhat larger, it may be, than those of a Town Council or a Court of Quarter Sessions, but powers as essentially local and secondary in their nature. This or that American or Australian colony may be naturally glad to meet the mother-country half-way; but will the mother-country be equally glad to go and meet them? To rise to the political level of Bern and New York in the existing world⁷, of Megalopolis and Xanthos in a past world, would be undoubted promotion for Victoria or New Zealand. It would hardly be promotion for Great Britain, for England or Scotland, or for Wales either, to sink to that political level.

Now some votaries of the federal scheme seem to see all this, which its more enthusiastic partisans seem not to have thought of. Such disputants do not argue for the perfect form of Federation, the Bundesstaat, the constitution of Achaia as it was, of Switzerland and America as they are. They would have us fall back on something more like the mere Staatenbund, the type of imperfect Federation which the Seven United Provinces never threw off, but which Switzerland, after a long experience, and the United States after a short one, did throw off in favour of those more perfect forms of Federation which they at present possess. It does not perhaps quite settle the question to say that this would be indeed a step backwards. It might be argued, at least as a specimen of ingenuity in disputation, that such a lax kind of union might possibly suit a confederation whose members lie at vast distances from one another, though it has been proved not to suit confederations whose members lie close together. And then one might argue back again that the physical disunion needed of itself to be, as far as might be, counterbalanced by the closest political union. In a mere Staatenbund all difficulties about the relations of the British Parliament to the new Federal Parliament would be got rid of; for there would be no need of any Federal Parliament. But either the union would have to be so lax as to be really no confederation at all, or else, even in this less perfect union, the British Parliament would still have to give up some of its chiefest and most cherished powers. Instead of a Federal Assembly, there would be a mere congress⁸ or conference of representatives from each member of the Union, a congress meeting to discuss the foreign affairs of the Union, perhaps with power to settle them, perhaps not. At present the foreign affairs of the kingdom, and of the “empire” too, are settled by the advisers of the Crown, subject to the indirect control of the British Parliament. And in a perfect federation, a Bundesstaat, this indirect system might go on, the indirect control being of course transferred from the British Parliament to the Parliament of the whole “empire.” But in a mere Staatenbund it is hard to see how an indirect control can be brought to bear upon anybody. If the Congress is to have authority to decide in foreign affairs, it must consist of representatives of the several members of the Union. Only then where would be the authority of the Crown and the responsibility of the ministers of the Crown? And with the authority of the Crown, the authority of Parliament, of all the Parliaments, will have vanished also. The only way of giving them, or leaving them, any authority, would be the helpless plan of making the congress merely consultative. It might be a body which should simply recommend measures, and leave them to be approved and carried out by the Legislatures and Executives of the several States, or possibly of some majority of them. This is in theory a possible form of union; but it is not exactly the form most likely to lead to speedy and energetic action, if a confederation scattered over every corner of the globe should be called on to strike a sudden blow for its political being.

In short, if the Bundesstaat is out of the question, the Staatenbund is yet more out of the question. The Bundesstaat is a form of constitution which has worked well in those cases where it has suited the circumstances of the time and place in which it has been introduced. Only it is not suited to the circumstances of Great Britain and her colonies, and it is not likely to work well among them. But it is not too much to say that the Staatenbund has never yet really worked well under any circumstances, and that it is certainly not likely to work well for the first time when applied to circumstances yet more unfavourable than any under which it has hitherto been tried.

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But these are not the only difficulties about Imperial Federation. To whom is the federation to extend? To all the subjects of the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland? Or only to such of them as are European by dwelling-place or descent? Or, to come nearer to the point, we might put the question thus; Is it to take in only the subjects of the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, or the subjects of the Empress of India as well? This is a subject of some importance, about which it will be well clearly to know our own meaning. As yet, the doctrine of Imperial Federation is somewhat vague, and its objects are somewhat fluctuating. Sometimes we are told that the Imperial Federation is to be an union of all English-speaking people. The wiser advocates of the scheme see the difficulties, but they seem for the nonce to put them in their pockets. They do not talk either of a federation of all English-speaking people or of a federation of all the Queen’s dominions. They mention those parts of the Queen’s dominions, those parts of the English-speaking people, to which they wish their scheme of federation to extend, and they say nothing about any other parts of either. But this is not to go to the root of the matter, and it is humdrum work compared with the talk of the more enthusiastic votaries of “Imperial Federation.” It is to be the “federation of the Empire,” that is presumably of the whole “Empire;” and in some of the highest flights it would sometimes seem as if the “federation of the Empire,” and the “federation of all English-speaking people” were the same thing. Now about this last there are some other difficulties, of which we may say somewhat presently; at this stage the difficulty is that such a rule would not only shut out a few speakers of European tongues nearer home, it would not only shut out those uncivilized natives of colonial possessions who often save us all trouble by dying out before us, but it would further shut out the vast native population of India, a part of the subjects of the common sovereign of Great Britain and India who must be thought of one way or another. If we are to have a real federation of the Empire, the whole people of the Empire must be let in with full federal rights, as political equals of the Englishman of Britain and the Englishman of Australia. But this would be something very different from a federation of the English-speaking people. Such an enfranchisement as this would indeed be a leap in the dark, a leap such as no people ever took before. It is not for us to say what would be likely to come of it; let us rather ask those who talk about Imperial Federation whether they have thought what would be likely to come of it. Whenever the thing is to talk big about “empire,” its greatness, its “prestige,” all about the dominion on which the sun never sets, all about the drum-roll of the British army going the round of the world, then India is the dearest, the most cherished, the sublimest, part of the talk. “Imperial” interests, “imperial” greatness, “imperial” everything, seem specially at home in that land. It is the specially imperial soil. “Our Eastern Empire,” “our Indian Empire,” is the grandest subject of all for magnificent eloquence. And why? To speak the plain truth, because here the corporate Emperor “We” comes in on the grandest scale. “We” govern India; “we” hold the dominion of Aurungzebe; is not every British elector part of a great corporate Aurungzebe? But receive India to federation, and “we” cease to do all this. In a federation of the “Empire,” “we” must simply sink into the position of citizens of one or more of its states; the elector for London will be in no way privileged above the elector for Masulipatam. It may even be that the “we” shall be turned about, and that people at Masulipatam will begin to say how “we” govern England. Instead of every British elector being part of a corporate Aurungzebe, it may be that every Indian elector shall be part of a corporate William. Imperial Federation may take a shape in which England, Scotland, Canada, Australia, shall be dependencies of the Empire of India. For truly it will need some very artificial arrangement to secure even proportional representation for any of those small and distant cantons, lying so far away from the main centre of power and population. We must expect that in the Federal Assembly, “we,” even strengthened by “our” reinforcements from other English-speaking lands, will be defeated on every division by that vast majority of the people of the Empire who are not English-speaking. “Our” Imperial position will be, in truth, handed over to quite another “we,” a “we” of whom the old British and Jingo “we” will form a very small part indeed.