DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Treasure %oom 
 
THE DREAM 
 
 OF 
 
 AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 ARTHUR BENNETT. 
 
 LONDON: 
 Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Limited, 
 I, Stationers' Ham, Court, E.C. 
 Warrington: "Sunrise" Publishing Co. 
 1893, 
 
THE "SUNRISE 
 
 PRINTED HY 
 
 T BUSHING CO., 
 December, 1892. 
 
 WARRINGTON. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 DEDICATION Ill 
 
 FOREWORDS V 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 JOHN BULL AND HIS FAMILY 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE " WE ARY TITAN'S " VOW 18 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE DAWN OF AN IDKA 31 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM 56 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE 115 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 "THE FEDERATION OF THE WORLD" \T2 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/dreamofenglishmaOObenn 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 In secret I have nursed a dream, 
 
 In silence I have seen it grow : 
 If, in the telling, it should seem 
 
 A thing of folly, he it so. 
 Yel fain am I to "serve the state," 
 
 And faith in England feeds my pen 
 And so my dream I dedicate 
 
 To 
 
 But not to Englishmen alone : 
 
 Three nations share our destiny, 
 And continents rejoice to own 
 
 The same stupendous rule as we; 
 "Humanity" itself, I hold, 
 
 " Is hanging breathless on" our "fate" 
 And so my dream, "in trembling told," 
 
 To these 1 also dedicate. 
 
FOREWORDS 
 
A people's voice! we are a people yet. 
 
 Tho* all men else their nobler dreams forget, 
 Confused by brainless mobs and lawless Powers : 
 Thank Him who isled ns here, and roughly set 
 His BritoD in blown seas and storming showers, 
 Wehavea voice, with which to pay the debt 
 01' bonndless love and reverence and regret 
 To those great men who fought, and kept it ours. 
 And keep it ours, God, from brute control : 
 Statesmen, guard ns, guard the eye, the soul 
 Of Europe, keep our noble England whole. 
 And save the one true seed of freedom sown 
 Betwixt a people and their ancient throne. 
 That sober freedom out of which there springs 
 Our loyal passion for our temperate kings ; 
 For. saving that, ye help to save mankind 
 Till public wrong be crumbled into dust, 
 And drill the raw world for the march of mind. 
 Till crowds at length be sane and crowns be just. 
 
 Ode on tlir Urut/i of the Thilte of Wellington i Tennyson, 
 
 As for the Colonies, we purpose through Heaven's 
 blessing to retain them a while yet ! Shame on us for un- 
 worthy sons of brave fathers if we do not. Brave fathers, 
 by valiant blood and sweat, purchased for ns, from the 
 bounty of Heaven, rich possessions in all zones : and we, 
 wretched imbeciles, cannot do the function of administering 
 them? And because the accounts do not stand well in the 
 ledger, our remedy is, not to take shame to ourselves, and 
 repent in sackcloth and ashes, and amend our beggarly 
 imbecilities and insincerities in that as in other depart- 
 ments of our business, but to fling the business overboard, 
 and declare the business itself to be bad ? We are a hopeful 
 
eel of heira fco a big fortune! It docs not suit our Manton 
 gunneries, grouse-shootings, rnousings in the City : and like 
 spirited young gentlemen we will give it up, and let the 
 attorneys take it? . . . They are portions of the general 
 Earth, where the children of Britain now dwell ; where the 
 gods have so far sanctioned their endeavour, as to say that 
 they have a light to dwell. England will not readily admit 
 that herown children are worth nothing but to he flungoul 
 <>i' doors! England looking on her Colonies can say : " Here 
 are lands and seas, spice-lands, corn-lands, timber-lands, 
 overarched by zodiacs and stars, clasped by many-sounding 
 seas: wide spaces of the Maker's building, fit forthecradle 
 yel of mighty Nations and their Sciences and Heroisms. 
 Fertile continents still inhabited by wild beasts are mine, 
 into which all the distressed populations of Europe might 
 pour themselves, and make at once an Old World and a New 
 World human. By the eternal fiat of the gods, t his must yet 
 one day he: this, by all the Divine Silences that rule this 
 I 'inverse, silent to fools, eloquent ami awful to the heartsof 
 the wise, is incessantly at this moment, and at all moments, 
 commanded to begin to be. Unspeakable deliverance, and 
 new destiny of thousandfold expanded manfulness for all 
 men, dawns out of the Future here. To me has fallen the 
 godlike task of initiating a 11 that : of me and of my Colonies, 
 the abstruse Future asks, ' Are you wise enough for so sub- 
 lime a destiny ? Areyon too foolish ?' " 
 
 Latter-Day Pamphlets: Carlyle, 
 
 Till t he war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags 
 
 were furl'd 
 In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. 
 
 Jjocksley If a U .• Ten nyson , 
 
THE 
 
 DREAM OF AN 'ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 JOHN BULL AND HIS FAMILY. 
 
 John Bull was getting old. And he had a 
 verv large family. And he was very proud of 
 them. Some of them were growing up to 
 maturity, and were like their father every inch. 
 Some of them were only children. Some of 
 them he had kidnapped, some of them he had 
 adopted, and some of them w T ere born to him in 
 lawful wedlock. But he loved them everyone. 
 
 There was Taffy, who lived under the same 
 roof, and was, * with one exception, the 
 oldest of them all. He was, however, rather 
 bigoted in his opinions, and had a stupid 
 way of talking in a language which nobody 
 
 1 The Channel I.-iands. 
 
2 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 bat himself could understand ; was fond of 
 cheese and chapels, was supposed to have a taste 
 for poetry, and had begun to develop a decided 
 objection to paying his debts. But he was a 
 very worthy fellow in the main, The spirit of 
 his mountains was reflected in his character. He 
 had a passionate love of freedom ; had fought 
 long and earnestly to retain it ; and, failing 
 through no fault of his own, had finally made 
 friends with his conqueror, stood by his side on 
 many a bloody battle-field, and proved himself, 
 in a hundred ways, a most useful member of 
 the family. 
 
 There w T as Sandy, whom John had vainly tried 
 to thrash, and who, at last, became a member of 
 the family by giving John a king, and virtually 
 annexing him, a circumstance of which he 
 naturally boasted. Anyhow, the two agreed 
 remarkably well, and all that Sandy asked was to 
 be left to his bagpipes, his Burns, and his 
 whisky; to keep the "Sawbath ;" and to be able to 
 drive a keen bargain. He was very brave, this 
 Sandy. The struggles of his early years had left 
 their mark upon him ; in war, his charge was 
 always of the fiercest ; and every realm in 
 Europe had felt the prowess of his sword, and 
 
JOHN BULL AND HIS FAMILY. 
 
 shuddered at the summons of his pibroch. And 
 in peace he had his " victories no less renowned 
 than war." To every shore his sons had pene- 
 trated, and every wind had listened to the strains 
 of " auld lang syne." And, wherever he went, 
 he always seemed to prosper, and, however long 
 he lived, he never ceased to think of the hills his 
 feet had trod in childhood, and the kirk 
 beneath whose ivied shade the ashes of his sires 
 reposed. 
 
 Then there was Pat, a quarrelsome fellow who 
 had had a very unhappy time of it. John had 
 stolen him, and treated him shamefully into the 
 bargain. He had left him to starve, and robbed 
 him, beaten him, and fondled him in turn ; and, 
 finding him refractory in consequence of his 
 wretched bringing up, he had used the rod and 
 almost spoilt the child. Latterly, he had fed 
 him with sweetmeats one day and skilly the 
 next. And Pat was sullen and dissatisfied be- 
 cause he was misunderstood. A better fellow 
 never breathed when rightly treated. He was 
 the soul of hospitality, as frank and open as the 
 day, brimming over with wit and good nature, an 
 orator without an equal, and a patriot to the back- 
 bone. Moreover, he was animated by a courage 
 
THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 which adversity was impotent to tame. But 
 John had driven him into desperate courses ; he 
 had ceased to respect the Commandments, and, 
 in his anger, more than once had stained his 
 hands with blood. He talked about abandoning 
 the family, and either throwing in his lot with 
 Brother Jonathan, or setting up house for himself. 
 As usual, John had recognized his folly when the 
 mischief was accomplished, and was doing every- 
 thing he reasonably could to atone for his blunders. 
 But Pat was sullen, and had stipulated for terms, 
 as the price of his reconciliation, which John, in 
 common prudence, could not see his way to grant. 
 
 The four resided in the same establishment. 
 But John had many children who had left him, 
 and started branch establishments across the sea. 
 And he had added to his family a multitude of 
 every creed and colour, and in every continent, 
 and was doing his best to see to their education 
 and to fill his pockets at their expense. 
 
 There was Canada, his eldest daughter ; and a 
 strappinglassshe was. For she had been reared amid 
 the snows of a northern climate, accustomed from 
 the cradle to bear all sorts of weather, and to face 
 all sorts of danger, forced, in her girlhood, to 
 fight for her very existence, and neglected and 
 
JOHN UULL AND HIS FAMILY. £ 
 
 snubbed until she began to grow to maturity, and 
 to excite the envy and the admiration, not alone 
 of Brother Jonathan, but of every other nation 
 capable of appreciating beauty, admiring high 
 spirit, or — shall it be said? — coveting the enormous 
 estate which was her dowry. 
 
 Close beside her lived her little sister, New- 
 foundland, a young lady who liked a good deal of 
 her own way, and pretended to be rather fond of 
 the aforesaid Brother Jonathan, a gentleman who 
 understood the art of ogling. 
 
 Further off was Australia, who inhabited a 
 continent every inch of which belonged to her, a 
 continent which she considered to be altogether 
 too valuable to be set apart for the criminals 
 whose room her worthy father much preferred to 
 their company. Australia was not less beautiful 
 than Canada, and she dwelt in a serener clime. 
 And oceans sundered her from every neighbour, 
 and her youth had been comparatively peaceful, 
 and, amid her flocks and herds, or wading through 
 her rivulets bestrewn with gold, she had become 
 a very rich and independent damsel indeed. 
 
 She had a sweetly pretty sister called Tasmania, 
 who lived in the same climate, and much resembled 
 her father ; and another, still more lovely, called 
 
THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN'. 
 
 New Zealand, whose home was in some islands 
 several hundred milts away. 
 
 There was Africa, a big, dark girl with 
 
 mystery in her eyes ; a girl who had a sublime 
 
 contempt for draperv, but loved to adorn her 
 
 duskv limbs with feathers and with dia- 
 
 monds. It was only of late that people 
 
 had begun to take much notice of her. 
 
 She was an outcast in the family of nations, 
 
 and they had been content to leave her to hunt 
 
 the lions in her trackless wildernesses, and to 
 
 murder the missionaries who had come to teach 
 
 her their ll philosophy of clothes." But John 
 
 had cast wistful eyes upon her for many years, 
 
 and he was a good deal put about when Johnny 
 
 Schmoker and Johnny Crapaud commenced to 
 
 pay her attention, together with eligible Italy, 
 
 and dapper little Belgium, and bankrupt Portugal, 
 
 and " the unspeakable Turk/' with various other 
 
 less important suitors. Johnny Crapaud seized 
 
 one hand and Johnny Schmoker the other ; Italy 
 
 asked for a lock of her hair ; Belgium wanted a 
 
 bangle ; and poor little Portugal (who was of a 
 
 passionate turn) grew quite excited because she 
 
 would not give him all he asked lor. But John, 
 
 with his usual effrontery, managed to get his arm 
 
JOHN BULL AND HIS FAMILY. J 
 
 round her waist ; and, although they agreed to 
 share her love ana tolerate each others rivalry 
 without calling for coffee and pistols, it seemed 
 manifest that the arrangement could not last very 
 long. 
 
 There was India, a swarthy maiden who was 
 continually falling out with her own fingers 
 and thumbs, and whom John had taken upon 
 himself to reduce to reason. ] He would have 
 told you that he had gone to visit her from mo- 
 tives of benevolence. Cynics might have thought 
 that the jewels which adorned her ancient shrines, 
 the cotton which flourished in her plantations, 
 the tea which decked her mountain slopes, and 
 the fruit, and grain, and skins, and ivory which 
 abounded within the borders of her " coral 
 strand " had something to do with the matter. 
 But philanthropists always are misunderstood. 
 And it must, in common fairness, be admitted 
 that, when once he had subdued her. John treated 
 her remarkably well. With a tact which she 
 
 1 " I was speaking of the English spirit of colonisation one day at a 
 l°cturc, and in the course of my remarks on the subject, I took the 
 liberty of Baying", not without a slight touch of satire : ' When John 
 Bull makes colonies, it is for the good of the natives.' • For their 
 goods ! ' cried a jolly Biiton from the gallery." 
 
 The Dear Neighbours I— Max O'Rell. 
 
b THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 was not slow to appreciate, he allowed her to 
 retain her rings and ornaments, to cling to the 
 castes she cherished with a folly second only to 
 his own — for there were castes, alas ! in John 
 Bull's island, too — and, in short, to walk with 
 little hindrance in the immemorial ways. But 
 he showed her a more excellent way. And, 
 under his firm, but fatherly, rule, she gradually 
 became less prone to let her u angry passions 
 rise ;'' she began to learn the arts of civilization ; 
 to eschew the barbarism of a tragic past ; and 
 to turn her weary eyes from the waning " Light 
 of Asia " to the waxing u Light of the World." 
 John had great hopes for India. 
 
 Nestling at her naked feet, was sunny Ceylon, 
 whose breath was sweet with spices, and, across 
 the adjacent bay, there crouched benighted 
 Burmah, and the busy settlements along 
 the Straits, with part of savage Borneo, 
 and little Labuan, and wild New Guinea 
 (half in love with Johnny Schmoker), and, 
 further north, a "Heathen Chinee" who 
 was known to everybody as Hong Kong. 
 Then there were Jamaica and her sisters, 
 with their woolly-headed children and their 
 teeming sugar-fields, and, in the same local- 
 ity, Guiana, with her gold, and cotton, and 
 
JOHN BULL AND HIS FAMILY. 
 
 tobacco, and, half hidden in her forests of 
 mahogany, her neighbour, Honduras. Close by, 
 there lay the beautiful Bermudas, and every- 
 where one came upon some minor member 
 of the family — Heligoland, that faced the might 
 of Germany unmoved (exchanged, of late, for 
 some six hundred thousand miles of Africa, for 
 John had always an eye to a bargain) ; 
 a favourite little Man who had a pleasant 
 home of his own in the middle of the 
 private family fish-pond ; the lovely Jersey 
 and her next-of-kin ; Gibraltar, on her rocky 
 seat, and Malta, in the Middle Sea, and 
 Cyprus, " an enchanted island ;" with arid Aden, 
 and the wicked Andamans, and sweet Mauritius, 
 and her friends, the Seychelles, and the happy 
 islets of Fiji — not to mention Master Lagos, the 
 lonely Falklands, the hermit, Ascension, and mel- 
 ancholy saint Helena. And even these did not ex- 
 haust the list, for half the icy shores of Greenland 
 owned John's sway, and scores of less important 
 places were included in bis scattered family, and 
 stood like sentinels in every sea to guard his 
 interests and uphold the honour of his flag. 
 
 More than three hundred and fifty million sons 
 of Adam (as good people murmured), or descend- 
 
IO THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 ants of the ape (as learned men, with quite un- 
 necessary emphasis, affirmed), abode upon his 
 vast estates, and still the cry arose, " Yet there is 
 room !" for those estates were fifty-two times the 
 size of Germany, fifty-three times the size of 
 France, and larger than three Europes ; they 
 occupied eleven million miles ; and they covered 
 one-fifth of the world's entire area. "The time 
 would fail me to tell of" their immense resources 
 — of their inexhaustible fertility, their unparalleled 
 diversity of climate, and their rich variety of 
 soil. Upon them, as John loved to claim, 
 "the sun never set ;" he had " dotted over the 
 surface of the whole globe with " his " possessions 
 and military posts, whose morning drum -be at 
 following the sun, and keeping company with the 
 hours, circled the earth with one continuous and 
 unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." 
 The colonies of Greece were insignificant beside 
 the colonies of John, and "regions Crcsar never 
 knew " were proud to own him as their lord and 
 master. The Celestial Empire, with its hoary 
 civilizations, could not hold a candle to his 
 own, despite the overwhelming numbers of 
 its pig- tailed population ; and " Holy 
 Russia," though in area she ran John close, 
 was crushed beneath a cruel despotism, and 
 
JOHN BULL AND HIS FAMILY. II 
 
 cowered amid her steppes, or shivered in her 
 northern snows, a realm without a soul. 
 The only other realm deserving to be named 
 with John's belonged to Brother Jonathan, and 
 that was barely more than a fourth of the size. 
 Small wonder, then, that John was given to 
 boasting, for he was the owner of " an Empire 
 of liberty extending into every quarter of the 
 globe," and almost everything the heart of man 
 could wish for might be had within the borders 
 of his vast domain. 
 
 But, proud as the old man was of his pos- 
 sessions, he had never fully realized his wealth 
 until, one day, his children agreed to send to 
 the metropolis a few specimens of their enter- 
 prize, and ask him to examine them for 
 himself. And so he visited the palace 
 which their skill and patriotism had reared, 
 and saw, in admirable sequence, all the 
 riches which his affluent prairies and broad 
 forests yielded, and the dazzling treasures which 
 the gnomes had hidden for his delight in dusky 
 mines, or strewn along swift water-courses, and 
 all the countless trophies of the chase, the 
 shining harvests of the sea, the fabrics woven 
 on immemorial looms, in climes afar, and the 
 
12 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 products of swart handicraftsmen and of pale- 
 faced artizans whose cunning had not failed them 
 though ten thousand miles divided them from 
 home. And, wiping his brow with the exertion 
 of merely visiting it all, John murmured with 
 the Queen of Sheba — for he was rather proud of 
 his knowledge of Scripture — that "the half" had 
 "not been told" him; no, nor the twentieth part. 
 
 They called this family gathering in his 
 ancient capital the " Kith and Kineries ;'' 
 and John, as the band struck up " God Save The 
 Queen," walked proudly from the flashing 
 fountains, and the golden archways, and the 
 diamond-fields, and all the rich display of wool 
 and cotton, and of fruit and corn, and, with a 
 voice that was husky with emotion, murmured, 
 u Bless you, my children ! " 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE " WEARY TITANS " VOW. 
 
 John woke up, one morning, in a fever. He 
 had previously been fidgeted a good deal by the 
 turn affairs were taking. Whilst he was hugging 
 the idea to his breast that he was a very fortunate 
 old gentleman to be the possessor of so fine an 
 estate, some of his advisers had been trying to 
 prove that he was in his dotage, and that all his 
 ideas as to the value of that estate were illusory. 
 One of them had announced that his Empire was 
 a l " barbarous, blood-stained fetish," u a Cerberus 
 of which India, Australia, and Canada were the 
 three unnatural heads." 2 Another had said 
 that he should not object to the loss of Canada in 
 the least, and that it would be better for him and 
 better for her ; and 3 a third had calmly recom- 
 mended her to throw in her lot with Brother 
 Jonathan, and leave John to himself. 4 A fourth 
 
 1 Mr. Cobden. 2 Mr. Bright. 3 Sir C. W. Dilko. 4 Professor 
 Freeman, 
 
14 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 had preached the startling doctrine, " Perish 
 India," and many others had enunciated scarcely 
 less unpatriotic views. Even so great a statesman 
 as Lord Palmerston had been infected by the 
 prevailing indifference. " Come upstairs with 
 me, Helps, when the council is over," said he, 
 on taking the post of Colonial Secretary. " We 
 will look at the maps, and you shall show me 
 where these places are." And many stoutly 
 maintained that the Empire was an incubus. 
 
 It was pointed out to John that his children 
 did not contribute anything to his exchequer, 
 but, on the contrary, were a continual drain upon 
 his resources ; that they increased a hundredfold 
 his liability to war, and were not of any substantial 
 advantage to him in time of peace. The gold 
 which poured into his pockets upon the adoption 
 of free trade had rather tended to confirm their 
 arguments ; and they did their best to show him 
 that it was his duty to make his island " the 
 workshop of the world," and that his highest 
 ambition might be limited to seeing it become 
 " a nation of shop-keepers." With the ships of 
 all lands in his ports, and the red fires of a 
 thousand Infernos roaring in his pleasant shires, 
 and covering his smiling fields with smoke, why 
 
THE " WEARY TITAnV VOW. 1 5 
 
 should he trouble himself about his children 
 oversea ? — what had he to do with the Greater 
 Britains that were gradually arising in fairer 
 climes and under sunnier skies ? 
 
 " Clink your money-bags, John Bull, and let tho Empire fall " 
 
 was the sage advice they gave him ; and the wonder 
 was that both money-bags and Empire did not go 
 together, so assiduously had they endeavoured 
 to befool him. 
 
 Bur, somehow, he did not see it. Year by year 
 his broad dominions grew, and every year he 
 learned to prize them more. The roar of the 
 furnace and the whirring of the loom hai not, as 
 yet, become the sammuin bonu/n of the old man's 
 dream ; and it gradually dawned on him that 
 the stones which his pseudo-statesmen " re- 
 jected " might one day "become the head 
 of the corner." And the more he thought 
 the matter over the more he was satisfied 
 that, in spite of all their sinister prognostic 
 cations, Oceana was a heritage too noble to be 
 flung aside. And he began to nurse a secret dream 
 that Destiny had wondrous things in store for 
 him and her. At first, he felt a little ashamed of 
 it in face of the opinions of " these philosophical 
 ani academical Radicals who were the friends of 
 
1 6 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 " every country but their own." He had been 
 taught to regard them as " men of light and 
 leading," who were quite above such petty pre- 
 judices as patriotism, and based their arguments 
 upon a certain unassailable science known as 
 political economy; and they had promised him a 
 reign of universal brotherhood if only he could 
 see his way to take the tax off corn. It was a 
 " philosophy " with large " assumptions," and 
 the facts did not appear to bear it out ; but 
 that, of course, was " so much the worse for 
 the facts." 
 
 Happily, there were certain individuals in 
 John's household who did not pretend to be 
 philosophers, and were content with being 
 Englishmen ; and some of these were bold enough 
 to make a stand against the new gospel. 
 
 " Wo " were " not cotton-spinners all, 
 And " some " loved " England and her honour yet." 
 
 And they believed in her expansion, and had 
 faith in her future, and vaguely saw that 
 Oceana yet might dominate the world. 
 
 And presently there arose a man who grasped 
 the splendour of the conception to the 
 full. Thev called him " Dizzv " and, at first, 
 
THE " WEARY TITANS " VOW. I J 
 
 mistrusted him ; but seldom in his history 
 had any of John's children wrought for him so 
 well. He added largely to John's heritage ; he 
 called the dusky sons of India from their eastern 
 home to show John's rivals that behind him stood a 
 force whose limits none could measure, and of 
 whose existence they had scarcely dreamed ; with 
 wonderful diplomacy, he stopped the haughty 
 Czar of all the Russias at the gates of Constanti- 
 nople, and brought us "peace with honour" and 
 without a blow ; and then he unfolded a new 
 banner, and, with admiring eyes, John read upon 
 its splendid folds the noble motto, il Empire and 
 Liberty." 
 
 But " Dizzy " (now an Earl) had neglected 
 John's domestic comfort somewhat, and, once or 
 twice, he had blundered by his over-boldness. 
 And John's children were " mostly fools," as 
 one of them had told him, and, in an evil 
 hour, they turned poor " Dizzy " cut of Downing 
 Street. 
 
 And, thenceforward, John had never had any 
 peace, nor any honour either, for the matter of 
 that. Day by day he had arisen to read of some 
 catastrophe. Now it was Pat who was in a pickle. 
 
1 8 THE DREAM OE AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 Then it was Africa that was in a ferment. He 
 seemed to be always fighting, and never getting 
 any benefit from the strife. A realm as large as 
 France was lost under circumstances of accumu- 
 lated disaster and disgrace. A city as big as 
 Bristol was reduced to ashes. An army was 
 annihilated in the deserts of the Soudan ;> and a 
 dozen little armies left to almost certain death in 
 scattered garrisons unnumbered miles away. To 
 crown the shameful tale, the knightliest of 
 England's sons was sent to guard a jewel on the 
 breast of Africa, and left to perish there ; 
 whilst British blood was shed like water in a war 
 against a nation " struggling to be free." More- 
 over, India's tranquillity had been disturbed by 
 constant apprehensions that the Russian bear was 
 prowling on her northern borders with malevolent 
 intent, and, once, her warders met him face to 
 face and almost came to blows. 
 
 No wonder that John's sleep had been restless ; 
 that he had been disturbed by horrid dreams ; 
 and that he sighed for the servant on whose grave 
 the primroses were blossoming. Eut when, upon the 
 morning I have mentioned, he discovered that the 
 " Grand Old Man", who had told him that Pat's 
 favourite representative was " marching through 
 
vow. 19 
 
 rapine to the disintegration and dismemberment 
 of the Empire ", had suddenly resolved to join 
 him in the march, and that the two had sworn 
 eternal friendship, his indignation knew no 
 bounds. And he promptly sent the " Grand 
 Old Man " about his business. 
 
 And everything seemed to get on much better 
 without him. John's taxes lessened and his debts 
 decreased. His trade expanded and his Empire 
 grew. In less than six years, more than two million 
 square miles had been added to his territory. And 
 there was not any war, nor any insult either. All 
 nations knew that it was dangerous to treat him 
 with contumely now. And hence he was at 
 peace with all, and prospered mightily. And, 
 free from the nightmare which had afflicted him 
 when hands less capable were at the helm, John 
 was able to turn his thoughts to " the old house 
 at home," and to set it in order by effectuating 
 various economies and not a few most valuable 
 reforms. Across the Channel, too, affairs were 
 growing gradually brighter. The phantom of an 
 independent parliament on College Green had 
 almost ceased to trouble him. And John began 
 again to " take ; ' his " ease, eat, drink, and be 
 merry." 
 
 But he was astounded, one day, to read, at 
 
20 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 breakfast, that the separation which had been 
 temporarily averted at home seemed imminent 
 abroad. There was another " Grand Old Man " 
 across the sea. For many years he had been 
 the chosen citizen of Canada — l4 the Chief," 
 they fondly called him— and well and wisely had 
 he exercised the trust. But Brother Jonathan 
 had fallen in love with that northern damsel. 
 And this is how he wooed her : 
 
 1 LOVE-SONG. 
 
 "0 Canada, sweet Canada, 
 
 Thou maiden of the frost, 
 From Flatteiy Cape to Sable Cape 
 
 With love for thee we're crossed. 
 We could not love thee less nor more, 
 We love thee clear to Labrador ; 
 Why should we longer thus be vexed ? 
 Consent, coy one, to be annexed. 
 
 " Canada, sweet Canada, 
 
 Our heart is always true ; 
 You know we never really cared 
 
 For any one but you. 
 Your veins are of the purest gold 
 (We've mined them some, the truth be told), 
 True wheat are you, spite chaff and scorn, 
 And 0, your dainty ears (of corn). 
 
 1 I am indebted for these clever verses to the " Century." The 
 author is Charles Henry Thelps. 
 
THE " WEARY TITAN'S " VOW. 2 1 
 
 " Canada, sweet Canada, 
 
 John Bull is much too old 
 For such a winsome lass as you, — 
 
 Leave him to fuss and scold ; 
 Tell him a" neighbour "you will be, 
 He loves you not so much as we ; 
 Fair maiden, stand not thus perplexed, 
 Come, sweetheart, come and be annexed." 
 
 But she had rejected his advances with contempt. 
 However, her coyness only seemed to stimulate 
 his ardour, and he resolved, at all hazards, to gain 
 his end. So he harassed her fishermen, and 
 plagued her farmers, and refused to allow her to 
 sell in his markets unless she would trade with 
 him on terms which she denied to John, thinking, 
 in this manner, to starve her into submission. 
 
 But her " Grand Old Man ' exposed the 
 artifice, and refused with scorn to treat John Bull 
 so shabbily. And John's heart throbbed and his 
 eye moistened to see " the Chief " denounce 
 the treason, and proudly tell his fellow- 
 countrymen : " A British subject I was born, a 
 British subject I will die." And, though it 
 pinched their pockets, and imposed upon them 
 no small sacrifice, the majority of the children of 
 Canada stood by him bravely, and declared that 
 
2 2 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 they, too, would have been ashamed to turn their 
 backs upon their father in this fashion. 
 
 John Bull, however, was greatly exercised by 
 the discovery that some of them had been 
 disposed, under stress of circumstances, to con- 
 template desertion. He had watched the 
 Elections with breathless interest, and his heart 
 was in his mouth until the result had been 
 announced. And, even then, he was not bv anv 
 means satisfied. The majority was small. The 
 ruse of Jonathan had evidently been to some 
 extent successful. It was patriotism verms " the 
 almighty dollar," and the latter began to tell. 
 " Suppose," thought John, " that it should 
 triumph ? Suppose my northern daughter should 
 be lured ' by sordid means and mecenary proffers ' 
 from her ' allegiance.' Suppose she should 
 indulge in a runaway match, and marry for 
 money ? " 
 
 And the old gentleman was sorely troubled by 
 the prospect. And, to make matters worse, at 
 this particular juncture, Death stepped in and 
 robbed her of her ablest counsellor. " The 
 Chief " had fallen in the hour of victory, but 
 further dangers threatened, and there was not 
 anybody competent to take his place. 
 
THE " WEARY TITAN'S " VOW. 2j 
 
 And, in the midst of John's anxieties on account 
 of Canada, her little sister, Newfoundland, began 
 to give herself airs. Many years before, when her 
 island home was one huge wilderness, Johnny 
 Crapaud had acquired, by treaty, certain rights of 
 fishing there which were innocuous in her 
 infancy, but which began to operate very in- 
 juriously as she gradually grew in wealth and 
 enterprize. She was not mistress on her own 
 shores, and she naturally felt the hardship. Her 
 fishermen and those of France were frequently 
 coming into collision, and it was only owing to 
 the tact of the naval officers of John and Johnnv 
 that an open rupture was avoided. Various 
 means had been tried to compose the quarrel, 
 but hitherto without avail. At this junc- 
 ture, the Marquis of Cum-g ratio- Salisbury, who 
 was iapidly becoming the great international 
 peacemaker, hit upon the happy expedient of 
 referring the dispute to arbitration That Johnny 
 had treaty rights which John was bound in honour 
 to respect was indisputable. That Johnny was 
 disposed to insist upon them to the full was not 
 less clear. That thev were irksome to Newfound- 
 land was evidenced by her chronic irritation. 
 Unquestionably, then, the wisest course was to 
 obtain an authoritative definition of Johnny's rights, 
 
24 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 and afterwards to endeavour to arrange with him 
 for their surrender at a reasonable price, or in 
 exchange for a reciprocal concession in some 
 other quarter of the globe. In the meantime, 
 John was bound to carry out his ancient covenant, 
 and to insist upon the preservation of order. 
 
 But Newfoundland suddenly became intract- 
 able. She declined to pass the necessary act to 
 enable John to put the treaty in force. And, 
 when he calmly, but firmly, explained that this 
 was his absolute duty, and that the only alternative 
 was to go to war with Johnny without a leg to 
 stand upon, she became hysterical, and called 
 him names, and, like a naughty child, began to 
 say she wouldn't play, and would run away to 
 Uncle Jonathan. 
 
 John was much upset by her attitude. He 
 was very fond of her, admired her spirit, and 
 sympathized with the difficulties of her situation. 
 But what was he to do ? At last, she sent some 
 of her most trusted advisers to the bar of his 
 Gilded Chamber to plead her cause, and patiently 
 the peers of England heard their tale. And 
 everything that it was possible to do to soothe 
 her injured feelings and convince her of her 
 
THE " WEARY TITAN'S ' VOW. 25 
 
 father's love was freely done ; but John made it 
 very clear that he must observe his obligations, 
 and that he had expected Newfoundland, as a 
 dutiful daughter, to assist him in the task. 
 
 To add to Newfoundland's vexation, he had 
 refused to ratify a treaty which she had made 
 with her uncle in regard to their commercial 
 intercourse, as he considered that it was grossly 
 unfair to Canada. And in this matter, at any 
 rate, she reallv had not anyone to blame but 
 herself. She had obstinately declined to throw 
 in her lot with her big sister, and now, of course, 
 she had to pay the penalty. And John was 
 doubtless in the right. But the situation was 
 very grave, and, though he would rather have 
 permitted Newfoundland to quit the paternal 
 roof and fly to Brother Jonathan, or start in life for 
 herself, than have broken faith with his friend 
 and neighbour, Johnny, he regarded the pos- 
 sibility with feelings of the keenest pain. 
 
 Ultimately, however, Newfoundland began to 
 show her better side, and, after a good deal of 
 unnecessary ill-blood had been engendered, she 
 offered, through her ambassadors, to submit to 
 the conditions which John declared to be essential 
 
26 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 in order to secure a satisfactory settlement of the 
 dispute. And they returned convinced, he 
 thought, that, though his manner might have 
 seemed a trifle harsh, at first, his only object, 
 all along, had been to do his best for all 
 concerned, and, especially for her, his suffering 
 and high-spirited daughter. And everything 
 seemed about to come to a happv ending. 
 
 But, much to John's surprise, Newfoundland 
 ostentatiously refused to carry out the bargain 
 made on her behalf, and some of those who 
 made it did not seem to care to keep it, and aided 
 her in further complicating matters which were 
 difficult enough already. John gave them time, 
 but he did not waver in his fixed resolve to let 
 his foolish daughter see that, as long as she 
 remained a member of the family, she must abide 
 by its regulations ; and that, if she expected him 
 to grant her absolute freedom, and to take upon 
 himself the whole responsibility, she was mightily 
 mistaken. She paid practically nothing towards 
 the cost of his army and navy ; his enormous 
 debt had been in part incurred for her security ; 
 and it was rather too much to want him to go to 
 war with Johnny for a cause in which her rights 
 were not by any means established, and to indulge 
 
THE " WEARY TITANS " VOW. 2J 
 
 in a struggle to the death for a daughter who 
 treated all his wishes with disdain. 
 
 But from the other side of the world came 
 happier tidings. The various states of Austra- 
 lasia, dissatisfied with the semi-union which had 
 existed since the creation of the Federal Council, 
 had met in solemn conclave and agreed to join in 
 forming one great Commonwealth. The unani- 
 mity which they displayed surprised the most 
 sanguine of their admirers, and everything seemed 
 to promise that the great step which had been 
 taken so successfully by Canada would be 
 imitated by her southern sister with equally 
 desirable results. 
 
 But John regarded their proceedings with some 
 misgiving. They did not seem to recognize him 
 very much in the matter, he thought. They did 
 not appear to desire to have the benefit of 
 appealing to his high courts of law ; they decided 
 to appoint their own governors ; the name they 
 had chosen for their united state smacked 
 strongly, John considered, of republicanism ; and, 
 although they professed effusive loyalty to their 
 Sovereign, they evidently thought that they were 
 quite able to take care of themselves. They 
 were unnecessarily anxious to quit the paternal 
 
28 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN*. 
 
 leading-strings, and apparently prepared to 
 disclaim the old gentleman altogether when thev 
 had got all thev could out of him. And the 
 union which John regarded with unmingled satis- 
 faction as a prelude to a grander union still, he 
 could not choose but see, might also be the 
 stepping-stone to that disruption the possibility 
 of which he had begun to regard with nothing 
 less than dismay. But, even here, there was an 
 unexpected hitch. The leader of the movement 
 was defeated at the polls ; the solitary realm in 
 Oceana which had followed John's example and 
 espoused free trade turned round, at last, and 
 joined the rest in putting on the iron jacket 
 of protection, which rather made him take his 
 arm away ; and the states which had sworn 
 eternal sisterhood seemed quite content to let it 
 rest with swearing, whilst l one of them displayed 
 a wish to cut herself in pieces, and asked him to 
 approve the deed. 
 
 In India, moreover, there arose a cry for 
 greater powers of self-control. Some of her 
 children began to whisper in her ear that it was 
 a piece of impudence for John to govern her, and, 
 of course, a number of busybodies, who bubbled 
 
 1 Queensland, 
 
THE " WEARY TITANS " VOW. 20, 
 
 over with a sham philanthropy, and had, for 
 some lime past, been telling her that she 
 was just as wise as anybody else, had heartily 
 abetted them in their demands. And some 
 of those demands were conceded, perhaps 
 rightly. But there were not wanting those who 
 saw in these concessions "the beginning of 
 the end." 
 
 And John was very much upset. Here was 
 Paddy half prepared to leave him, Canada won- 
 dering whether she would not " have to make other 
 arrangements," Newfoundland crying like a spoilt 
 child, and Australia assuming an independent swag- 
 ger which was, to say the least of it, a little unbe- 
 coming. Meantime, Africa showed a disposition to 
 burn the old man in effigy every time he ventured 
 to deny her the particular piece of candy she was 
 asking for ; and, in the dusky bosom of his foster- 
 daughter, India, there were slumbering passions 
 which a syllable might rouse; whilst Holy Russia — 
 that "divine figure from the north" — was occu- 
 pied in creeping stealthily nearer, and whispering 
 treason in her ear continually. And one of 
 John's poets — one of the best and wisest of 
 
30 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 them — told him, quite solemnly, that he was a 
 " weary Titan," 
 
 " Staggering on to " his " goal ; 
 Bearing on shoulders immense, 
 Atlantean, the load, 
 Well-nigh not to be borne, 
 Of the too vast orb of " his " fate." 
 
 " A ' weary Titan,' am I ?" said John. " They 
 shall see !" And he bravely staggered on, and, 
 as he staggered, a dim vision of the glory of the 
 goal was suddenly vouchsafed to him ; and he 
 squared his shoulders, and bent his back to the 
 burden, and vowed that he would not 
 
 '• bate a jot 
 Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer 
 Eight onward ; " 
 
 and that he, who had built this world-wide 
 Empire, would take care to see the matter 
 through. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE DAWN OF AN IDEA. 
 
 John Bull pondered long and deeply. He had 
 any number of advisers, and they nearly all 
 advised him differently. 
 
 As to Pat's affairs, they waxed quiet fierce in 
 their differences. They were, however, divided 
 into two main classes. First there were the 
 Home Rulers, embracing everybody from the 
 Earl of Rosebery to the " Uncrowned King." 
 Upon one point they were all agreed, and that 
 was that the only plan which had ever been 
 produced wasouiet impracticable. It is true that 
 the bulk of Pat's representatives had, originally 
 professed to regard it with favour, and had made 
 the welkin ring with their praises of the " Grand 
 Old Man." But the other of the two great 
 divisions — the Unionists had all along declared 
 that these professions were not to be relied upon ; 
 and one or two of the less discreet of Pat's 
 
32 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 advisers had accidentally let it out that they 
 regarded the Bill which had been offered 
 as merely an instalment. And, when the " Un- 
 crowned King's " intrigue with Kitty O'Shea 
 was discovered, the insincerity of their previous 
 declarations was made as clear as noondav. 
 
 It transpired that, at the very time that they had 
 given John to understand that the Bill was to be 
 taken as a final settlement of old scores, they 
 had, behind his back, with one accord united in 
 deciding to accept it " pro tanto" only ; and both 
 sections of the solid party which events had 
 split in pieces had begun to stipulate for 
 conditions, as the basis of any future scheme, 
 which the " Grand Old Man " had reso- 
 lutely, up to now, declined to grant. And as 
 for the " Uncrowned King " — uncrowned in two 
 senses, alas ! by this — he commenced to ask for 
 a measure which was scarcely distinguishable 
 from downright separation. He had announced, 
 some years before, that he would never be content 
 until he had " destroyed the last link which " kept 
 Pat "bound to" John ; and, although he had 
 denied the words at the time, everybody began 
 to realize how true they were, and that the 
 
THE DAWN OF AN IDEA. 33 
 
 " Uncrowned King," like most of his followers, 
 was not to be trusted. 
 
 As to the u G. O. M.," he admitted that his 
 Bill was " dead,'' but he did not seem to have 
 any other Bill to offer in its place ; and his sup- 
 porters were quite content to be like infants 
 
 " crying in the night, 
 * * * 
 
 And with no language but a cry." 
 
 And a very foolish cry it was — so foolish that, 
 as the day of reckoning approached, they 
 decided to supplement it by a " Variety Pro- 
 gramme," and to promise everything that anybody 
 liked to ask for. 
 
 But one of them was not so docile as the rest. 
 His name was Mr. Asguith, and the name was 
 somewhat significant of the character. The 
 former scheme had been described by a clever 
 young person known as " Grandolph " as the 
 product of " the united genius of Bedlam and 
 Colney Hatch " -what was the next to be like ? 
 he enquired. But nobody could tell him. And 
 John Bull was requested to " open " his " mouth 
 and shut" his " eyes, and see what the king " 
 would " send " him. 
 
34 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 The Unionists, as well as the Home Knlers, 
 were considerably divided in opinion, and, at 
 first, bad been considerably more so. Thev 
 embraced everybody from " Joe " : Chamberlain, 
 as he was popularly called, to Colonel Saunderson. 
 There was not any very material difference 
 between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Asqnith or 
 the Karl of Koseberv ; and, if Pat had kept his 
 temper and exercised a little common sense, it is 
 more than likelv that he would soon have got a 
 measure of Home Rule which would have satisfied 
 all that was reasonable in his demands without 
 endangering the safety of the rest of the family, 
 or the liberties of any portion of the Irish people. 
 But there was another element in the Unionist 
 camp. As Parnell was to Rosebery, so was 
 Saunderson to Chamberlain. The " Uncrowned 
 King " insisted upon practical independence — 
 Colonel Saunderson resented the slightest altera- 
 tion of the status quo. And, in the meantime, they 
 all quarrelled among themselves. 
 
 And, in il United Ireland," everything was 
 hopelessly divided. To begin with, out of a 
 population of barely five millions, l two declared 
 
 1 See Mr. Gladsf no's speech t Spital. on the 29th November, 18'J!, 
 and his article enii.led " A Vindication of Huweiiule" in the North 
 American Review for October, 1892. 
 
THE DAWN OF AN IDEA. 35 
 
 that they would not submit, on any terms, to 
 such a scheme as the rest demanded ; and so 
 much in earnest were the men of Ulster thev that 
 ultimately held a great Convention, at which 
 twelve thousand delegates attended, and resolved, 
 without a single dissentient voice, that, if a Parlia- 
 ment on College Green should be established, 
 they would refuse to take any part in the election 
 of its members, would decline to pay its taxes, 
 and would offer to all its decrees a passive 
 resistance, to be followed, it was understood, if 
 needful, by the fierce arbitrament of arms. So 
 that the men who, it was said, were going to 
 pacify Ireland, proposed to commence the process 
 by waking a hundred dormant animosities, and 
 arraying two millions of the population— and 
 those the very cream of them — in deadly opposi- 
 tion to the dictates of the new assembly, and in 
 armed antagonism to its laws. They called this patri- 
 otic fever' 1 Ulsteria," but it appeared to have in- 
 fected the best part of a province ; and a similar 
 Convention met in Dublin to prove that there were 
 many thousands in the South and West who were 
 suffering from the same complaint. And none 
 but fools were blind to it, and none but quacks 
 proposed to cure it by the antiquated process 
 known as bleeding. 
 
36 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 The other three millions were divided into any 
 number of hostile sections. There were, to begin 
 with, the Parnellites and the Anti-Parnellites 
 who hated each other like poison, and whose 
 chief amusement seemed to be to break each 
 others heads. 
 
 But the Anti-Parnellites were sub-divided into 
 half a dozen factions who were scarcely less op- 
 posed to each other than they were to the Parnell- 
 ites. There were the McCarthytes — thefollowers 
 of the " nice old gentleman for a tea-party ;'' the 
 Healyites— led by the chief of M the gutter 
 sparrows;" the Dillonites — who believed in the 
 lugubrious John ; the O'Brienires — who 
 worshipped the Hero of the Breeches ; 
 and the u Walshers"' — who denounced from 
 the altar the men who dared to vote against 
 their nominee. And, whilst new schisms were 
 arising almost every day in one or other of the 
 various wings of this heterogeneous army, the 
 two million Loyalists, impelled by the common 
 danger, drew closer together, and the rabid 
 Orangeman was aided heart and soul by the most 
 moderate and respectable and law-abiding men in 
 the island. 
 
THE DAWN OF AN IDEA. 
 
 .V 
 
 It seemed to nearly all the wisest of John's 
 counsellors — without distinction of party —that. 
 in face of all these facts, it would be nothing 
 short of madness to relinquish the imperial 
 control ; and, whatever might be ultimately 
 possible in the shape of a development of 
 local self-government, for the present, what was 
 wanted was '' the reign of law,' 1 assisted by the 
 operation of philanthropy, and rendered easy by 
 beneficent reform. 
 
 But, in regard to Oceana, a score of oracles 
 were ready with their rival schemes. Some 
 asserted, point blank, even yet, that John would 
 be better without any Empire at all ; and a foolish 
 person known as " Labby," who was principally 
 famous for his antediluvian witticisms and the 
 pertinacity with which he pried into other people's 
 business, had declared that he wished from the 
 bottom o^ his heart that Newfoundland would 
 ' cut the painter," as then perhaps some of the 
 rest of the family might follow suit. Even of those 
 who admitted that the colonies were valuable, not 
 a few believed that it was quite impossible to 
 permanently weld them into one. In the mean- 
 time, all they had to suggest was that John should 
 cultivate an interchange of courtesies ; that he 
 
38 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 should send his princes to the ports of Oceana 
 with soft words and flattering speeches, and 
 decorate her citizens with titles and with stars of 
 honour, and encourage them to enter the imperial 
 army or navy, or the diplomatic service, and 
 permit her barristers to practice in the imperial 
 courts of law, and her judges to be eligible for 
 seats upon the English bench. They added that 
 it would be wise for him to send as governors 
 his ablest men ; that in every way that was 
 possible he should be guided by the wishes of 
 his children, and should, whenever asked, at once 
 relax still more the slender bonds which kept his 
 numerous family together. It was the principle 
 of postponing the inevitable bv a policv of u soft 
 sawder," and savoured somewhat overmuch, John 
 thought, of begging his children not to forsake 
 their poor old father in the time of his gray hairs. 
 
 He was fully prepared to do everything he 
 reasonably could to foster filial affection, and 
 declared his willingness to consider all or any of 
 these suggestions ; but he was not slow to 
 recognize that, if his familv were only to be kept 
 together by sops and sentimentalities, they would 
 not keep together verv long. A policy of 
 porridge was only fit for national babyhood. 
 
THE DAWN OF AN IDEA. 39 
 
 As his children reached maturity, they would 
 naturally wish to leave the nursery ; they would 
 ask to learn the business, to have a stake in it, 
 and, perhaps, to be admitted into partnership. 
 
 But such of them as seemed disposed to con- 
 template a partnership at all were only willing to 
 do so upon the lines of limited liability. They 
 were not averse from calling the tune, but they 
 objected to paving the piper. As long as John 
 would do exactly what they told him and defrav 
 the whole cost out of his own pocket they voted 
 him a very worthy old gentleman. Whenever 
 he ventured to assert his paternal authority they 
 began to growl ; and, if he dared to hint that, he 
 should expect them to contribute to the expenses 
 of the establishment in the profits of which they 
 were all so ready to share, they commenced to talk 
 very largely of starting in business for themselves. 
 
 This was ungrateful, to say the least of it. To 
 found the Empire which his sons inhabited John 
 had incurred a debt of something like eight 
 hundred million pounds, and, as security for this, 
 he had originally had a mortgage on the whole 
 estate ; but, partly under the advice of Cobden 
 and other gentlemen as glib of speech as they 
 were short of foresight, and partly under an 
 
40 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 impulse of good nature which was equally 
 unusual and unbusinesslike, he had handed over 
 to a mere handful of his descendants the bulk of 
 his security, freed from any liability for the debt, 
 and had taken the entire burden upon his own 
 shoulders. Moreover, in the breadth of his 
 unwise benevolence, he had given to them the 
 right to shut their markets in his face, and even, 
 if they chose, to refuse admission to his toilworn 
 emigrants, though millions of square miles were 
 still unoccupied and he was almost crowded out 
 at home. Nor was this all. For their security 
 as much as for his own, he launched a mightv 
 fleet equipped with all the deadly requisites of 
 war, and towards its maintenance he paid per 
 year about a pound to every sixpence paid by all 
 of them combined, and this although, out of an 
 annual total trade throughout the whole of 
 Oceana of seven hundred and forty-four millions 
 of pounds, considerably more than half was a 
 trade in which the colonies were interested just as 
 much as he, and considerably more than a quarter 
 a trade in which he had no personal interest at all. 
 Furthermore, his army was at their free disposal 
 in any time of need, and it was from his capacious 
 pocket that the cost of keeping up, in every 
 country on the globe, a diplomatic service came 
 
THE DAWN OF AN IDEA. 41 
 
 — a service under which — l as one of his advisers 
 had reminded him — every son of Oceana got 
 " the full advantage of being a citizen of one of 
 the oldest, r'chest, and most powerful Empires 
 in the world without, directly or indirectly, paying 
 one penny -piece for the privilege." 
 
 And yet his children snapped and snarled at 
 him, and, if he ventured to assert the least 
 authority, began to bluster like a parcel of 
 rebellious school-boys, and to declare that they 
 would not submit to his impudence any longer. 
 He sometimes wondered what they would have 
 thought if he had taken them at their word, and 
 said, as one of the watery wits who swore by Mr. 
 Bright until he proved himself worth swearing 
 by— the great " Sir Wilfrid " — had said of Erin : 
 " Wayward sister, go in peace !" He felt that his 
 offspring had not adequately realized what leaving 
 him would mean. It would mean, of course, as 
 much increase of dignity as was implied in the 
 right to manage their own affairs. But it would 
 mean the abandonment of the privileges of a world- 
 wide citizenship. It would mean the cost of the 
 establishment of separate navies which, palpably, 
 
 1 For fuller details in regard to these matters see tlu able article by 
 Sir John Colomb, K.C.M.G., M.P. in " Britannic Federation." 
 
4^ THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 could not protect their commerce like the fleet 
 whose vessels cruised beneath the " meteor flag" 
 on every sea, and were backed bv the whole 
 force of the Empire. It would mean the drying 
 up of " the golden stream " of British credit. 
 And it would mean the probable restriction of 
 the trade between the various members of the 
 family, and the certain expenditure upon the 
 consular service which every branch of it would 
 individually need. And, last of all, it would mean 
 the loss of" prestige which must inevitably follow 
 the process of disintegration, and the possibility 
 of quarrel with a dozen rival nations once allied. 
 But John was well aware that all the advantages 
 were not upon one side. If his children saved 
 millions of money everv year, and gained in 
 credit, in wealth, and in security by a union to 
 the maintenance of which they scarcely paid a 
 cent, he was able to draw from them his 
 food supply and the raw material necessary for 
 his industries, and need not starve though all the 
 other nations closed their doors to him. And 
 they furnished him, in every quarter of the globe, 
 with ports to which his fleet might sail for 
 victuals and for armaments, and thus protect, in 
 time of war, the ships upon whose safe arrival he 
 depended for his daily meal. 
 
THE DAWN OF AN IDEA. 43 
 
 The fact was that enormous advantages accrued 
 to all parties from the connection, and the more 
 clear-headed of John's children had begun to see 
 it plainly enough. It was only the " Labbys " 
 and the Lawsons here, at home, who dreamed of 
 doubting it bv this, and nobodv cared verv much 
 lor the opinions of gentlemen " of that ilk." And 
 pretty much the same applied throughout the 
 Empire. The ablest brains in Oceana'were alive 
 to their unparalleled good fortune, and saw that, 
 great* as were the benefits arising from the present 
 svstem, under an amended system, benefits im- 
 measurably greater would arise. Their trade 
 might be conducted on more equitable terms 
 and undergo unlimited expansion. The crowded 
 populations of the mother country might find 
 accommodation in new lands, beneath the 
 same old flag, and send their English brethren 
 food and raw material, and buy from them their 
 countless manufactures in return. Her armies 
 welded into one, her fleets increased and rendered 
 homogeneous, and her defences worked in con- 
 cert from a common centre, Oceana might 
 become invulnerable — able to laugh at the verv 
 suggestion of attack, and to form a League of 
 Peace which might enforce its will throughout 
 the world. 
 
44 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 And, after all, blood was thicker than water, 
 and, in spite of the grumbling of John's children, 
 they were really very fond of him. And, 
 although they kept their purse-strings pretty 
 tight, and were quite willing to accept advantages 
 for which they did not pay, their selfishness was 
 mainly on the surface. If their ears were tickled 
 by the jingle of their guineas, their hearts were 
 swaved by nobler impulses ; and, now and then, 
 the spirit of their father ran like fire through 
 their veins, and everybody felt that, if clanger 
 threatened him, John had not far to look for 
 friends. And, when he had to face a savage 
 horde in the Soudan, and was on the very verge 
 of a bloody war with Russia, it had brought tears 
 into his eyes to find how ready they were 
 to assist him — how Australia had equipped 
 an army and despatched it with unanimous en- 
 thusiasm ; how Canada had offered to do the same 
 at a moment's notice ; how in Africa a kindred 
 impulse had arisen ; and how even India 
 had given her gold and gems, and mustered 
 swarthy armies to defend the sunny realm which 
 John had ruled so wisely, and for which he 
 had shown himself prepared to make so many 
 sacrifices. 
 
THE DAWN OF AN TD^A. 45 
 
 And once, at his request, their statesmen 
 gathered in his old metropolis to talk the matter 
 over with his own, and voted funds to help him 
 to maintain the fleets and fortresses which were 
 of such enormous service to them both. 
 And, although there had been some differ- 
 ences of opinion at this great Council of his 
 children, and although the sum was small, it was 
 offered in a frank and friendly spirit, and was a 
 step, at any rate, in the right direction. And 
 this gathering— one of the wisest of the many 
 wise achievements of the patriotic statesman on 
 whose shoulders " Dizzy's " mantle seemed to 
 have fallen — had suggested infinite possibilities 
 to John. 
 
 And, as a permanent memorial of the fiftieth 
 anniversary of the accession of Queen Victoria to 
 the throne of all these rising realms, the jovial and 
 sagacious prince who had visited and knew them 
 all had suggested that the " Kith and Kineries " 
 should be succeeded by a palace reared in per- 
 petuity to house the industries of Oceana, and 
 exhibit in her capital a continuous object-lesson 
 to the sons and daughters of the island, and to 
 the pilgrim children whom the love of home 
 drew oft-times thitherward. And the children 
 
46 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 took the project up with more enthusiasm than 
 the father, and each contributed a share, and, in 
 due season, there arose an institution which, in 
 all that mighty city, every inch of which was 
 sacred to the man with eyes to see, was not sur- 
 passed for interest and significance. 
 
 And some could see in it u the unit of imperial 
 federation," and imagined that, beneath its roof, 
 the representatives of Oceana might meet in fre- 
 quent council, and unite to graduallv knit the 
 scattered empire into one stupendous whole. 
 
 There were many other schemes proposed, 
 however, as means of uniting John and his 
 family more closely. Some were in favour 
 of establishing a separate Council of Advice, 
 upon the principle of the Indian Council. 
 Some suggested that Colonial Peers should sit 
 in the House of Lords, and the Marquess of 
 Cum- ci rano- Salisbury had, with his usual sagacity, 
 introduced a scheme embodying this idea, 
 though, unluckily, it never got beyond the pre- 
 liminary stages. Some, again, desired that the 
 Agents-General of the various colonies, or other 
 persons duly chosen for the post, should 
 sit upon the Privy Council, and some 
 that thev should sit within the Cabinet itself. 
 
THE DAWN OF AN IDEA. 4/ 
 
 Many went, at once, for larger schemes — for 
 annual conferences such as that to which allu- 
 sion has been made, and even for the 
 creation o[ a new assembly — a sort of Imperial 
 Council or Parliament, intended specially to 
 manage all imperial affairs. 
 
 However, most of these schemes were flouted 
 by nearly all responsible statesmen, and their 
 advocates were usually held up as visionaries 
 by nearly all practical men. But the practical 
 men have been the mistaken men in all ages, and 
 the dreamers are the men who lead the way. And 
 one thing, at all events, seemed pretty certain. 
 There was, in every part of Greater Britain, as 
 there was at home, a growing feeling in favour 
 of unity; and, a few years earlier, a statesman 
 whose name deserves to be held in eternal 
 honour by all patriotic citizens — the famous 
 " Buckshot " Forster, who, bv the way, like 
 " Bloody " Balfour, was one of the best friends 
 that Pat, who christened him, had ever had — 
 assisted by a few far-sighted men of both parties, 
 and aided by the more sagacious statesmen in the 
 younger lands beyond the sea, had met to declare 
 that some form of Imperial Federation was 
 necessary in order to permanently maintain the 
 
48 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 unity of the Empire, and, of course, to form the 
 customary League. 
 
 But, in the meantime, John had other problems 
 to disquiet him. If there were one thing that he 
 loved more than another, it was the church of 
 his fathers. And he began to fear that her days 
 were numbered. Distracted by internal differ- 
 ences, and badgered by a score of jealous sects, 
 she seemed, in spite of her renewed activity, to 
 be tottering slowly to her fall. And the land 
 was torn with fierce religious jealousies, and, 
 disgusted by the shameful spectacle of those 
 whose creed was love indulging in such bitter 
 hatreds, and fettering the minds of men in 
 shackles of such mediaeval shape, the thoughtful 
 portion of John's children were seeking " new 
 lamps for old," and turning from the tumult of 
 the churches to the great silences of Nature. 
 And some of them, in their despair, had banished 
 God from it, and looked out upon the star-lit 
 universe with eyes all dimmed with tears. 
 
 And then there was the ever-present problem 
 of the poor. Under the firm and peaceful 
 guidance of a Ministry who knew their own 
 mind, and carried out a fair, and bold, and 
 
THE DAWN OF AN IDEA. 49 
 
 systematic policy, Johns trade, depressed for 
 years, had grown '* by leaps and bounds." And 
 in all his factories the hum of vast machinery was 
 heard ; his furnaces were red both night and 
 day ; and over every sea his vessels flew with 
 bales of costly merchandise. And the poor were 
 growing richer, and a brighter prospect seemed 
 to open out for every class and interest in John's 
 busy little island. 
 
 But the minds of the toilers were in a ferment. 
 Enfranchised ere their education was complete, 
 they felt theii power before they were properly 
 competent to use it. They were the prey to reck- 
 less demagogues, and frequently put forth demands 
 which it was quite impossible to grant. And, if 
 their wishes were refused, they generally said 
 good morning, and got drunk upon the subject. 
 And, if others had the hardihood to step into 
 their shoes, they did their utmost to intimidate 
 them ; and the boycotting which had been the 
 bane of Pat began to blight the growing hopes 
 of John. Capital and Labour, instead of work- 
 ing amicably together, were in a state of chronic 
 antagonism. Strikes were of frequent occurrence. 
 One day a great city had to go without its gas. 
 Next, a score of mighty steamers were allowed to 
 
50 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 lie in dock with nobody to unload them. The 
 trains were stopped at a moment's notice on a 
 busy line, and clerks and porters had to man the 
 engines and unload the trucks. On another occa- 
 sion, the London omnibuses ceased to run, and its 
 five millions of citizens were suddenly left to their 
 legs again. And, now and then, the colliers would 
 put on their coats, the forges and the factories 
 would be deprived of coal, and thousands of poor 
 people who had not any interest in the quarrel 
 were doomed to shiver wretchedly by empty 
 grates. And all of them seemed blind to the 
 fact that, if they persevered in these experiments, 
 the trade of England would infallibly be driven 
 away to other realms, and Capital refuse its aid 
 where Labour asked its own conditions, and 
 absolutelv wished to " rule the roost." 
 
 But, unreasonable as many of his workers 
 were, John could not blame them overmuch. 
 For centuries their lot had been the lot of 
 slaves, and, even now, one-tenth of them, it was 
 said, were on the brink of beggary. " The 
 Bitter Cry of Outcast London " was ringing in 
 John's ears ; he had been taken, with an aching 
 heart, through " Darkest England ; " and the old 
 man was not surprised to find that those who 
 
THE DAWN OF AN IDEA. 5 1 
 
 dwelt in it should seek by every means, legitimate 
 or otherwise ; to find their " way out." And, 
 though, doubtless, this was " the best of all 
 possible worlds," and his own little island the 
 best of all possible countries, it did seem strange 
 to him, sometimes, that, whilst his income 
 grew, and his resources multiplied, and he 
 had millions of acres oversea which were 
 capable of producing enough to keep a population 
 many times as large as his own in comfort, aye, 
 and luxury, one tenth of them were practically 
 starving ; that the great majority lived in homes 
 that were little better than hovels, and ate, and 
 drank, and played football, and brought large 
 families into the world, and then were put into 
 their coffins, and were often glad to get there ; 
 that not a dozen in a hundred knew what 
 wholesome food, and pleasant dress, and elegant 
 surroundings meant ; and that even these, in 
 their sober moments, were fain to admit that they 
 throve by trickery, and flourished by a flagrant 
 disregard of everything but self. 
 
 11 What is the use of all my broad dominions if 
 they will not keep my family in comfort ? " said 
 John. " I may make peace with Pat, and 
 Canada, and Australia, and all my other children 
 
52 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN'. 
 
 may join the firm— nay, my very churches may 
 grow sane again, and work in harmony ; but I 
 shall never be satisfied as long as any son of mine 
 is doomed to pass his prime in the slums, and to 
 end his days in the workhouse." 
 
 And he pondered long and earnestly. Here 
 were four problems, at least, which intimately 
 affected himself, and any one of which seemed 
 hard enough to solve. And, beyond them, was a 
 world which trembled ever on the verge of war, 
 and groaned beneath intolerable burdens, and 
 some part of which was always dreaming how it 
 best might cheat some other part, though God had 
 " made of one blood all" the " nations/' and had 
 meant them to be brothers, and to " dwell 
 together in unity." 
 
 It was a pitiable spectacle. And half the 
 remedies his counsellors suggested only seemed 
 to make the matter worse. He wished with all 
 his heart to be just to Pat, but he could not see 
 the force of allowing him to play with powder, 
 and imperil both his own existence and the safety 
 of the common household. He would have 
 gladly given him a Parliament if only he could 
 have seen his way to do so without involving him 
 in greater difficulties than ever, and hopelessly 
 
THE DAWN OF AN IDEA. 53 
 
 endangering the peace of Taffy, and Sandy, and 
 himself. 
 
 He longed to make his children partners in the 
 business, but he felt that this was out of the 
 question unless they were willing to share in 
 the losses as well as the profits, and to cease 
 to iill their pockets by closing their doors to 
 his goods. 
 
 He was sick of the quarrels of the churches, and 
 prayed that they might be composed ; for 
 he could not bring himself to think that all these 
 bickerings were necessary outcomes of the 
 " New Commandment ;" or that the followers of 
 Christ were well employed in burning each other 
 (either here or hereafter), whilst " the poor " 
 were u always with " them, and the beings who 
 were made u a little lower than the angels" 
 reeled. " back into the beast." 
 
 And he yearned to see his humblest children 
 prosperous, and the good things of life more 
 equally divided, and the gulf which yawned be- 
 tween the " classes and the masses" bridged ; but 
 he failed to see how any could thrive if his mines 
 and mills were closed, and all his vessels idle ; or 
 how the injustice to Hornyhand would justify an 
 
54 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 injustice to Midas. He wanted all to be happy, 
 but it puzzled him to know how everybody could 
 be equal. He sought to elevate the low, but he 
 did not desire to debase the exalted. 
 
 And it ill became him to attempt to put the 
 world in order with his family in such a state. 
 
 Were there not any means by which these 
 various ends might all be compassed ? Was it 
 not possible to harmonize Home Rule and 
 Unionism, " Empire and Liberty," religious 
 harmony and individual freedom, Socialism and 
 4( Take Care of Number One ? " And might he 
 not, in looking to his own necessities, be indirectly 
 helping others too ? 
 
 "That man's the best Cosmopolite 
 Who loves his native country best," 
 
 said John, as he thought the matter over. And 
 gradually there dawned upon his troubled con- 
 sciousness a new idea. He slapped his thigh 
 with the greatest vigour, and got up from his seat 
 beside the fire, and, in a fit of genuine excitement, 
 went out into the open fields. And, all at once, 
 the sky grew strangely blue to him. And the 
 tramps that passed him on the road turned 
 
THE DAWN OF AN IDEA. 55 
 
 suddenly to stalwart yeomen, comfortably clad, 
 and blithe as larks or linnets. And someone 
 happened to remark that it would be a good thing 
 if his other island could be swallowed by an 
 earthquake. And John promptly told him that he 
 was talking nonsense. And then he met a man 
 who said that the Church was in a bad way and 
 the State no better ; that Newfoundland was 
 going to leave him ; and that things were look- 
 ing very black in Canada, and that Australia was 
 getting mightily independent, and that " Holy 
 Russia " was only biding her time to pounce on 
 India, and that we were on the eve of a frightful 
 European war. And John blurted out that the 
 man was an idiot. And that night he went to 
 bed happy. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 
 
 First of all, John turned his attention to un- 
 lucky Fat. Things were looking brighter in the 
 green island. Whilst the " t^crovvned King" 
 was battling with " the gutter sparrows/' 
 11 Bloody " Balfour was steadily proceeding with 
 his work ; and, in the angry hours in which his 
 " minions " were engaged in keeping the 
 ''patriots" from each other's throats, his 
 sister was distributing, with wise discrim- 
 ination, help to every one who needed it. 
 The coffers of the League were exhausted, 
 and its dupes were left to starve ; but John Bull 
 put his hand in his pocket and kept the wolf from 
 the door, and "Bloody" Balfour was his 
 almoner. 
 
 And work was plentiful, and trade improved, 
 and through the wildest wastes in all the land 
 were heard the whistle of the railway train, the 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 57 
 
 click of picks, and all the sounds of honest 
 toil. The mountain solitudes were linked to 
 mighty cities, and the pulse of Commerce once 
 again began to throb by lonely inlets and 
 romantic rivers, and underneath the shadow of 
 deserted hills. In the congested districts, thanks 
 to the development of the fisheries, the con- 
 solidation of the smaller holdings, the improve- 
 ments in the breeds of the live stock, the 
 encouragement of local industries, the opening 
 out of the quarries and the mines, and the further 
 generous improvements in the laws on land, the 
 people wore a more contented air, and in every 
 county in the Emerald Isle the tenants were buy- 
 ing their farms and settling happily upon the 
 soil. Whilst the few were fighting — flinging 
 lime, or hurling paving-stones, or brandishing 
 shillelaghs — the multitude were growing quite 
 indifferent to all their vulgar outcry, and were 
 often enough disposed to exclaim : 
 
 " A plague on both your houses ! " 
 
 Indeed, by the time the Elections came, a 
 large number who had formerly been resolutely 
 hostile to the Union and its advocates decided to 
 vote for the friends of " Bloody " Balfour rather 
 than for the so-called followers of the " nice old 
 
58 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 gentleman for a tea-party," or for boulcl " Jack" 
 Redmond and the party who had stood, in his 
 disaster, by the " £7?/crowned King." And, had 
 it not been for Taffy and Sandy, who had got 
 Mr. Gladstone on the brain, and the newly- 
 enfranchised rustics, who knew more about bacon 
 than politics, the Unionists would, no doubt, 
 have been returned by an immense majority. 1 
 
 John felt like kicking both Taffy and Sandy, 
 and he cursed his own fatuity in having given 
 Hodge a vote before teaching him his alphabet. 
 But here was that dreadful "G.O.M." in power 
 again with a small majority. And, of course, he 
 had to introduce another Home Rule Bill, and, 
 in spite of the six years which had been given 
 him to think the matter over, it was not any 
 better than the first. As every one who had made 
 a study of his character had prophesied, the con- 
 cessions which he made were nearly all conces- 
 sions to John's enemies. Whilst mild young Mr. 
 Maden had been winning an election by a policy 
 of " Gas and Water"; and whilst Sir Charles 
 Russell had been insisting on the right of veto, 
 and the power of the Imperial Parliament to over- 
 ride the Parliament on College Green ; and whilst 
 
 1 This paragraph was written before the Elections. 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 59 
 
 Sir George Otto Trevelvan, after several years of 
 squirming, was declaring that the authority of the 
 Imperial Parliament must be " not only nominal 
 and theoretical, but also real, practical, and 
 genuine, controlling every other body and 
 authority whatsoever," with the same effusive 
 unreliability as he had shown in declaring that not 
 until his " every faculty" had been "strained to 
 the uttermost " would he consent to the " confes- 
 sion that the Liberal Party was a Home Rule 
 party " ; and whilst Sir William Vernon Harcourt 
 had been "cultivating his own fireside," and 
 bitterly denouncing M Fenian Home Rule," and 
 proclaiming that " the principle for which the 
 Liberal Party had contended had been the right 
 of the Irish people to manage their own 
 affairs, subject, always subject, to the control 
 of the Imperial Parliament," the men who 
 could see through an open door continued to 
 declare that this was so much nonsense ; and 
 that, if any of the men who preached it honestly 
 believed it, they were nothing more nor less than 
 " blind leaders of the blind," and that probably 
 both would " fall into the ditch." They remem- 
 bered how u the stripling," Mr. Harrison, had 
 said that of all statesmen who had ever lived the 
 
60 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 " G.O.M." was the one who was l< most squeezable 
 upon an emergency." They remembered how 
 he had yielded, step by step, to all Pat's previous 
 demands. They remembered how the Clerken- 
 well Explosion had frightened him into disestab- 
 lishing the Irish Church ; how the reign of 
 the Moonlighter had been followed by the 
 passing of the second Land Act ; and how 
 the fact that there were eighty-six Obstructionists 
 elected to oppose him in the House of Com- 
 mons had suddenly converted him to Home 
 Rule. They knew how he had cringed before 
 the warriors of the Mahdi, and retired be- 
 fore the soldiers of the Czar. Majuba Hill 
 was burnt upon their memories, and the sequel 
 to the ignominious peace that followed it was a 
 standing illustration of the risk of putting any 
 trust in Mr. Gladstone's word. Defeated three 
 times by the Boers, he gave them back their 
 freedom, but professed that we retained our 
 power ; that the Loyalists who had spent their 
 money in the country on the faith of England's 
 word, and the native tribes who trusted us, and 
 begged us not to hand them over to their 
 ancient foes, might make their minds quite easy, 
 for the Queen was still the suzerain of that far 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 6l 
 
 realm, and he had taken ample guarantees for 
 their protection, and for the maintenance of the 
 imperial sway. But sensible people shook their 
 heads, and said, with " Punch," that suzerain was 
 "bad change for a sovereign." 
 
 And so indeed it proved. In a few months, 
 all his elaborate stipulations had been set aside, 
 and even the shadowv semblance of a prerogative 
 which had merelv been retained to tickle the ears 
 of the electors was suddenly dropped like a hot 
 potato, for (( the Boers had good rifles, and knew 
 how to use them," and the niggers were naked, 
 and had to be content with prayers. And 
 could he be trusted (in face of opposition) to in- 
 sist upon the supremacy of the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment, and the protection of the rights of the 
 Loyalists of Ireland, any more than he had in- 
 sisted upon the suzerainty of the sovereign, and 
 the protection of the rights of the Loyalists of 
 the Transvaal ? He told them that it was a 
 monstrous calumnv to sav that Pat desired his 
 independence, and he waxed exceedingly indig- 
 nant when the standard bearers of the Union 
 Jack declared that he and those who fol- 
 lowed him were Separatists ; but every one 
 who understood the temper of the Irish 
 
62 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 leaders know that practical separation was 
 their object, and every one who knew the Scotch, 
 and Welsh, and ! so-called English who composed 
 his motley crew were quite aware that they would 
 get it, if unhappily his Bill became an 
 Act, though it would doubtless be specially 
 labelled, like a sort of political oleomargarine. 
 For these Irish " patriots," who cooed like turtle 
 doves on British platforms, brandished their 
 shillelaghs and cried our for Parliaments " as 
 free as air " at home. And their motto was 
 " Ireland a nation," and their programme was to 
 hoist " the green above the red," and on it to 
 display " a harp without a crown." And they 
 were masters of the situation. Seven years 
 before, the " G.O.M." had said that, if the 
 Liberal party were returned " in a minority which 
 might become a majority by the aid of the Irish 
 vote," and " called upon to deal with this great 
 constitutional question of the government of 
 Ireland," in spite of the many admirable qualities 
 of the said Liberal party, " in such a position as 
 that, it would not be safe for it to enter upon the 
 consideration of the principles of a measure with 
 respect to which, at every step of its progress, it 
 
 1 " Are you a Home Ruler ? " Some one once inquired of Lord 
 Tennyson. " No," said the great poet ; "lam an Englishman." 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 63 
 
 would be in the power of a party coming from 
 Ireland to say ' Unless you do this, and unless 
 you do that, we turn you out to-morrow ! ' And 
 such was the position now. "Unless" he did 
 " this and unless " he did u that," he was liable 
 to be kicked from office at a moment's notice 
 And, of course, he did it. 
 
 Had he had the manliness to tell them to their 
 face that, sink or swim, he should not make any 
 further surrender to their insolent requests ; had 
 he had the pluck to sav, at any point in all his 
 long descent, Cl Thus far and no farther," he 
 might have won the admiration of his bitterest 
 enemies, and he and they, uniting, might have 
 passed a measure such as Ireland really needed 
 — not designed to satisfy a wild demand, but 
 simply to secure that justice should be done to 
 all, and nothing more nor less, although the 
 country seethed with simulated passion, and her 
 swarm of noisy " patriots " did their worst. 
 
 But this was not the old man's way. And 
 John Bull saw with horror that the new measure 
 gave Pat power to work his will across the 
 Channel, and still left him master here ; that 
 it handed Ulster over, with her well-earned 
 
64 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 gold, to pay the piper while he smoked his pipe, 
 and drank his whisky, and danced to the old 
 rebellions time ; that the promised safeguards 
 were so many mockeries ; that the bulk of the 
 old restrictions were withdrawn ; that the simple 
 meaning of the matter was that a country 
 within a score of miles of Britain was to be 
 made as independent as a colony ten thousand 
 miles away ; and that the only material difference 
 consisted in the fact that the two main things 
 she wanted — the power to establish a church 
 and control the education of the young, and the 
 power to shut our exports out by heavy duties, 
 were withheld, apparently in order to afford a 
 footing for another agitation, and an opportunity 
 for the " mimbers " who remained at Westminster 
 to tantalize us till we turned them out of doors, 
 and wiped our hands of the ''distressful country " 
 altogether. 
 
 Men had looked to the Madens, the Russells, and 
 the Harcourtsto protest against'thegovernmentof 
 Ireland accordingto!rishideas"andtoremind th^m 
 of their vow to have nothing to do with " Fe i in 
 Home Rule " ; but Mr. Maden, and " Sir Charles," 
 and, of course, s ir George ' >tto Trevelyan, and 
 all the minor crowd of Braggadochios trooped 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 65 
 
 valiantly into the lobby with turned coats again. 
 As for "Sir William," he was so busily occupied in 
 tomahawking everyone who had the slightest 
 vestige of principle left that he appeared to have 
 quite forgotten that he had once declared that 
 " Irish ideas" were entirely opposed to " Imperial 
 ideas ;" and that, " if they were to govern Ireland 
 according to Irish ideas, he feared that they 
 would find themselves reduced to the consequence 
 of not governing Ireland at all." It is astonishing 
 what short memories some politicians have. 
 
 The Redmondites, although they swore a good 
 deal, of course accepted this five-sixths of the 
 loaf "pro tanlo " ; the Healyites, the Dillonites, 
 theO'Brienites, the " Walshers," and last— and 
 least — the McCarthyites, calmly put their tongues 
 in their cheeks, winked at each other, and did 
 the same. Taffy (yearning to despoil a church) 
 was quite prepared to vote the scheme a 
 masterpiece ; and Sandy (pondering over 
 the pious sentiments with which " Auld 
 Willie " had concluded his great speech upon 
 the introduction of the Bill) shook his head 
 rather gravely, and — imitated Taffy. Here 
 and there an Englishman was found with 
 manliness enough to refuse to be juggled by 
 
66 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 a peroration into bartering a birthright, and 
 with sturdy sense enough to say that, if this 
 were what was meant by giving Pat lt the right 
 to make his own canals and railways " — for 
 thus Home Rule had often been defined — he 
 might keep to his jaunting cars. But the bulk 
 of them had been so well schooled by Mr- 
 Schnadhorst, had so many selfish ends to 
 serve, and, withal, believed so superstitiously 
 in " the Fetish " (who dwelt at Hawarden) 
 u to the fools " (who dwelt in all local- 
 ities) that they answered to the crack of the 
 Whip with the obedience of a regiment of 
 soldiers, *And, when the tellers reappeared, it 
 was evident that, in spite of all prognostications 
 to the contrary, the " G.O.M." had won. 
 
 And then there came a solemn moment for 
 the Gilded Chamber. For weeks the air had 
 
 1 Some of my readers may think that I have taken a too gloomy 
 view of the probabilities of the situation. I have done so intentionally, 
 in order to show that, even if matters come to the worst, there is not 
 any occasion for despair. I am not without hops that, in spite of 
 present appearances, there may still be found in the House of Commons 
 sufficient independent members of the Liberal party to throw out (as in 
 1886) any Bill which is calculated to endanger the unity of the Empire, 
 or the safety of any section of the people of Ireland, and so to relieve 
 the House of Lords from the odium which, in these enlightened days, 
 so frequently attaches to the performance of the most palpable public 
 duty. 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 6 J 
 
 been thick with threats against that venerable in- 
 stitution, and, though everybody knew that, if ever 
 there were a time in its history in which it was 
 its absolute dutv to insist upon an appeal to the 
 people, that time had come, the party hacks 
 denounced it by anticipation as the foe of liberty, 
 and vowed, in every dialect of Billingsgate, that, 
 if it dared to be anything better than an echo to 
 the brazen voice of Demos, it was doomed, and 
 nothing ecu Id save it. But, in spite of all 
 the uproar, it did exactly what those who knew 
 the nature of an English gentleman believed it 
 would do. It did its duty. With calm indiffer- 
 ence to the rabble bellowing about its doors, and 
 heedless of the dreadful fate in store, it rejected, 
 well-nigh by its unanimous vote, this bastard 
 Bill which was born of the ill-assorted union of 
 English renegades and Irish traitors, and declared, 
 in tones of more than all the ancient majesty, 
 that, whether it were " mended or ended," 
 
 " As long as " it remained, it " must speak free " ; 
 and that never would the Second Chamber pass a 
 Bill of such a character until the people knew its 
 meaning, and expressed their willingness to ratify 
 it clause bv clause. 
 
 The Separatists were beside themselves with 
 
68 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 rage, and defiantly refused to dissolve. They 
 brought in various other measures— some wise, 
 some foolish — and the wise ones (provided that 
 they had been sufficiently before the country) the 
 peers at once approved, and the foolish ones (in 
 spite of much abuse) they promptly vetoed. And 
 then the Government determined to play their 
 trump card — to rob property of its sole remaining 
 franchise, and afterwards appeal to the country 
 with the cry of " Home Rule for Ireland, and 
 down with the House of Lords." 
 
 But, somehow, the Lords were not in (he least 
 bit frightened. And, when a measure which was 
 known as the One Man One Vote Bill came up 
 for their consideration, they quietly pursued the 
 very same course as that which they had followed 
 w r ith such good results in the case of the 
 County Franchise Bill, and said that they were 
 perfectly willing to assent to it provided that it 
 were coupled with an honest Redistribution Bill, 
 and that one vote meant one value. Now, at the 
 present time, Pat had twenty members more than 
 he was properly entitled to, and, of his total 
 representatives, the thriving towns of Ulster did 
 not get their due proportion, whilst the rebel 
 centres in the South and West got more than theirs. 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 69 
 
 One Kerry voter was almost as powerful as two 
 Antrim voters, and two voters in Derry had less in- 
 fluence than one in Lomrford ; whilst one vote in Kil- 
 kenny was equal to fully a score in Belfast. Had 
 London been treated with the same regard as 
 Galway, she would have had over two hundred 
 representatives instead of sixty-two. And these 
 discrepancies were not confined to Ireland. 
 Taffy, with his Radical proclivities, had three 
 members too many, and John, so staunch in his 
 Conservatism, had twenty-three too few. To take 
 another illustration, one vote in Radical Durham 
 was worth as much as six in Conservative North- 
 West Manchester. Sandy got his share, and 
 nothing more nor less ; but even these were 
 not distributed fairly as between the High- 
 land crofters and the Glasgow artisans. In 
 every portion of the Kingdom similar anomalies 
 prevailed, and, by the most elementary principles 
 of fair play, it was evident that these anomalies 
 ought to be removed. But the Parnellites and 
 all the other " ites " who claimed to be Pat's 
 representatives knew that it meant the loss of 
 over twenty votes to them ; and Taffy knew that 
 it meant the loss of some to him ; and the 
 u G.O.M." was well aware that what he might 
 gain by sweeping wealth and education from the 
 
JO THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 register he would lose by treating every man the 
 same. And, although the principle for which 
 the peers contended was absolutely just, the 
 Separatists would not swallow it. Their so-called 
 zeal for parliamentary reform was but a dodge 
 for jerrymandering the Constitution, and past 
 experience had taught them to believe in the 
 infinite gullibility of " that great ass, the public " ; 
 and so they added to the charge that the House 
 of Lords had declined to split the Kingdom 
 without giving the people a voice in the bargain 
 the charge that it had refused to admit that one 
 Irishman was equai to one and a quarter 
 Scotchmen, and one Welshman to very 
 nearly two Londoners. Of course they had 
 another war or two to add to the list of 
 their achievements, and were able to tell the 
 electors that trade was rapidly decreasing ; that 
 taxes had risen ; that the Emerald Isle was drift- 
 ing gradually back to anarchy ; that Russia had 
 pounced upon the Pamirs ; that Johnny Crapaud 
 was undoing all that we had done in Egypt ; 
 that already they were embarked upon a '" policy 
 of scuttle " ; that Uganda had been only saved 
 because the Earl of Rosebery — who ought to 
 have been a Unionist, as, indeed, in all Im- 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. J\ 
 
 perial affairs he was — had let them plainly see that, 
 if they decided to abandon it, he should feel it to 
 be his duty to forthwith abandon them ; 
 and that in every quarter of the globe the 
 enemies of England were growing bolder, and 
 the fame of England waxing dim. 
 
 And they buttered their addresses with mil- 
 leniums, and flavoured their speeches with the 
 <4 fruits of" a " philosophy " which taught them 
 that "honesty " was " the worst policy," and that 
 the true way tobe happy was to "bear false witness 
 against " their neighbours, and to " covet or 
 desire other men's goods. " They got their 
 Dissenting friends who professed neutrality to 
 push them in their periodicals, and paste 
 electioneering placards on their chapel doors ; 
 and, when Dissenting pastors came from Ireland 
 to plead the northern cause, they published letters 
 telling them to stop at home, and that it was very 
 wrong to talk politics unless they talked as 
 Mr. Gladstone told them. 
 
 And another device, which had been first 
 essayed at Newcastle, became extremely popular. 
 It was to hold prayer meetings in order to assist 
 in securing the return of the Gladstonian 
 
J2 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN*. 
 
 candidate, especially if he happened to be a 
 distinguished Agnostic, just as they enthusiastically 
 supported the Temperance candidate, especially 
 if he happened to be a brewer. Ah, me ! 
 Surely " God must needs laugh outright, 
 could such a thing be, to see his wondrous 
 Manikins here below ! " 
 
 But John Bull's anger had been slowly 
 rising. He was sick and weary of such cant, and 
 tired of seeing Oceana everlastingly in tears, and, 
 of late, whenever the " G.O.M." got up to make 
 a speech, he remembered the Duke of Welling- 
 ton, and, with a gesture of impatience, turned 
 contemptuously away and muttered, " Words, 
 words, words ! ' If Pat persisted in making a 
 nuisance of himself after all that John had done 
 for him, he would teach him better manners ; and, 
 if Taffy and Sandy declined to help him to 
 maintain the Empire which was theirs as much as 
 his, he would maintain it himself. It was all 
 nonsense to rate at the Gilded Chamber for 
 doing what he placed it there to do. He was 
 not going to "sell Ulster into slavery," and to 
 give to Pat, under the guise of local government, 
 the right to snap his fingers in his face. It 
 was absurd to bother about restricting one man 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 73 
 
 to one vote if one man's vote were sometimes 
 worth as much as twenty. And Russia was not 
 going to have India, nor Johnny Crapaud to thrust 
 him out of Egypt ; and, even for the pleasure of 
 being governed by " Mr. Gladstone and Master 
 Herbert," he was not prepared to see his com- 
 merce falling off, his expenses increasing, and his 
 sleep continually disturbed by the nightmare of 
 ignoble yielding or unnecessary war. 
 
 And, with a voice which now, at any rate, there 
 was not any possibility of mistaking, he once 
 more sent the "Grand Old Man" about his 
 business. And Sandy, to his great delight, con- 
 siderably helped him in the task, and Pat re- 
 turned an added number of good fellows to 
 represent him whose hearts were broad enough 
 to embrace Oceana without in any way forgetting 
 Erin, and who were as loyal to the Crown as 
 John himself. And even Taffy, given over as he 
 had been, of late, "to a sour and jealous 
 political Nonconformity," began to show his 
 better side, and manifest some glimmering of a 
 desire to assist the old man in maintaining 
 the dignity of the family and the safety of the 
 estate. 
 
 The "Grand Old Man "retired, in a huff, to 
 
74 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN'. 
 
 Hawarden, and betook himself to bis Homer. 
 And he spent the remainder of his life in writing 
 post cards, adding to the literature of his country, 
 and seeking to make peace between Science and 
 Religion. All men had all along admired the spot- 
 lessness of his domestic life and character; all men 
 were proud of his immense attainments and 
 his boundless versatility ; and, now that he 
 had ceased to interfere with politics, all men 
 began to like him, and to admit that he 
 really was a " Grand Old Man " after all. 
 And, in the tranquil splendour of his clos- 
 ing years, they quite forgot the clouds and storms 
 w 7 hich marred the fame of his meridian ; and John 
 Bull agreed with Sandy that he had no 
 doubt, done his best, and had honestly meant to 
 serve his country, even when he wounded her the 
 most. 
 
 And, once again, John called to power the 
 " Markiss " and his nephew, and the Cabinet 
 who knew their own minds, and believed in 
 justice to everybody — even to the man who had a 
 balance at his banker's. There was not any 
 shirking of responsibility, or any repetition of 
 the " policy of scuttle." 
 
 " Pray God our greatness may not fail 
 Through craven fears of being great " 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 75 
 
 had been the cry of the singer who had put 
 John's highest dreams to deathless music ; and, 
 1 although the " G.O.M. " had done his best to im- 
 press upon John's mind the idea that, try as he 
 would, he was unequal to the task of governing 
 so vast an Empire, John did not falter. He 
 w T as developing a soul above the counter, and 
 every day increased his faith in his imperial 
 destiny. Once more u the meteor flag " com- 
 manded universal honour, and the name of 
 Englishman became the passport to the world's 
 esteem. There was not any longer any risk of 
 war. And trade again revived. And Oceana 
 still expanded. And several legacies of trouble 
 were disposed of to the general satisfaction. The 
 Russian Bear no longer prowled amid the 
 Himalayas, and the Gaulish cockerel no longer 
 crowed above the pyramids of Egypt. And, in 
 exchange for some small concession in the far 
 Pacific, Johnny Crapaud was willing to forego 
 his ancient rights to the Newfoundland fisheries ; 
 and. to everyone's satisfaction, the Cabinet 
 succeeded in crowning the settlement of the 
 dispute bv persuading Newfoundland to join 
 the great Canadian Federation, and thus 
 
 1 See article on "England's Mission" in "Nineteenth Century" for 
 September, LQ78, and the first Midlothian Speech, 25th November, 187U, 
 
J 6 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 retain her local liberty, and gain the strength 
 which came> of closer union with the grandest 
 colony which John possessed. Another source 
 of friction which had sorely interfered with the 
 relations which existed between Canada and 
 Brother Jonathan — the question of the rights of 
 each to fish for seals in Behring's Sea — was 
 amicably settled by the arbitration which the 
 "Markiss" had suggested ere he handed over 
 his portfolio, and both abided honourably 
 by the award. The ills of Queensland 
 had been remedied by the simple process of 
 dividing it into two separate provinces, with 
 separate governments, each represented in one 
 central assembly which included all the sister 
 states; for the Commonwealth of Australasia had, 
 at last, become, by a judicious policy of give and 
 take, a thing accomplished, and right glad was 
 John to hear of it. 
 
 In domestic policy they were not less fortunate. 
 Without having made any extravagant promises, 
 or bribed the voters by flinging broadcast offers 
 which they knew that they would never be able 
 to fulfil, they quietly persisted, as aforetime, in 
 following the path of peaceable reform. 
 
 They were especially successful in their treat- 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. J J 
 
 ment of the Labour Question. What John Bull 
 wanted was a party which would be frankly demo- 
 cratic without ceasing to be imperial. He had clung 
 to the Radicals because they seemed to recognize 
 the aspirations of the working-classes more fully 
 than their rivals. He had preferred the Conserva- 
 tives because of their superior foreign and colonial 
 policy. But neither side was quite in harmony 
 with his opinions. As there seemed to be 
 more hope that the Conservatives would 
 become Reformers than that the Radicals would 
 become Imperialists, his sympathies had in- 
 creasingly tended in the direction of the new 
 Conservatism which was the offspring of the 
 union of the better class of Liberals with the 
 broader-minded Tories. For John Bull was an 
 Imperialist to the backbone, but, some- 
 how, more and more he felt that he was drifting 
 into sympathy with Socialism. And he wished, if 
 possible, to reconcile the two. The Conservatives 
 had never faltered in their love for the Empire, 
 and, at times, indeed, had carried it to rather 
 foolish lengths, and led him into that Im- 
 perialism on the spree which was known as 
 Jingoism. But, in spite of Radical profes- 
 sions of exclusive sympathy, and their claim 
 
J& THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 to be the patentees of every possible reform, it 
 was a fact that the working-men of England owed 
 the bulk of the legislation which affected their 
 happiness at home and in the workshop to the 
 party who were supposed to be their enemies. 
 They did not, for a moment, attempt to compete 
 with the Radicals in the sphere of sweeping 
 constitutional changes — which usually left men's 
 daily comforts pretty much in the same position 
 as before — but thev did claim, and they claimed 
 justly, to have proved by the record, at any rate, 
 of their more recent legislation, that they were 
 animated bv a genuine desire to promote the 
 welfare of all classes, and, most of all, the working- 
 classes. 
 
 In a noble Manifesto issued ere his earlier 
 Government dissolved, Lord Salisbury had 
 plainly said that they had now the power 
 to get whatever they desired in the shape of 
 legislation, and, although he did not pat their 
 every fad and nostrum on the back, or flatter 
 them untd they did not wish to work at all, he 
 showed, as he had shown before, that every 
 well-considered measure which seemed likely to 
 promote their real interests without endangering 
 the safety of the State would claim his best 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 79 
 
 attention, and would, with due precautions, be 
 enrolled upon the Statute Book. And many 
 measures of this character resulted from the 
 labours of the Commission which he had 
 previously appointed to enquire into the 
 question ; and, among them, was a Bill for 
 the establishment of Boards of Conciliation, 
 which did much to put an end to strikes 
 and a Bill to regulate the hours of labour 
 in accordance with the exigencies of particular 
 times, and trades, and places, and always with a 
 due regard to the maintenance of our manufactur- 
 ing supremacy. And, thanks to Free Education, 
 which he owed to the efforts of the Unionists, 
 and to the Technical Education with which they 
 had supplemented it, John still more than held 
 his own with his continental rivals, whilst his 
 broadening knowledge kept him free from snares 
 which wily politicians once had laid to lead his 
 feet astray. 
 
 These useful measures were succeeded, thanks 
 to Mr. Chamberlain, by a liberal scheme of 
 National Insurance, by which the workers of 
 the realm received a stipulated sum in time 
 of sickness or of accident, and, at ages varying 
 with their contributions to the State Insurance 
 
80 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 Fund, were guaranteed a comfortable income for 
 the rest of their lives. It added to the taxes, 
 but it began, at once, to diminish the poor rates ; 
 and it saved the nation from the scandal of seeing 
 some of its most honest and deserving toilers 
 buried in a pauper's grave. 
 
 Temperance was promoted, not by wholesale 
 robbery, but by the growth of knowledge, coupled 
 with such legislation as the exigencies of the case 
 required. The power of licensing was handed 
 over to the various local councils, under careful 
 stipulations to prevent abuse, and Sunday Closing 
 also was a matter which John thought it best to 
 leave to them. The man who liked his glass of 
 " good old English ale " could get it still, and he 
 got it pure, and the man who found Elysium in 
 lemonade no longer sought to force it down the 
 throats of those who didn't. England was 
 gradually growing " sober," but England was 
 not ceasing to be " free." 
 
 The reasonable form of local option had been 
 simplified and rendered capable of very wide 
 extention by the scheme of local government 
 which crowned the legislative programme of the 
 Cabinet, and dwarfed, in its results, the whole of 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 5 1 
 
 their previous achievements. It is not too much 
 to say that John was delighted with the scheme. 
 For it was a step in the direction of the new idea 
 which had come to him, in his bewilderment, 
 like a gleam of sunshine ; and it more than won 
 again for those who carried it the love which 
 they had not deserved to lose. There was a certain 
 word in John's vocabulary which he had often 
 used, but hitherto had never comprehended. 
 The word was Federation, and it proved a 
 perfect talisman ; and the new idea was that in 
 that word, when rightly understood, the clue to 
 all his difficulties lay. But nobody appeared to 
 understand it. Even those who talked about it 
 most had often not the faintest glimmering of 
 what it really implied. And none of them ap- 
 peared to adequately realize its possibilities. 
 
 The dictionary defined it as " a union for pur- 
 poses of government," but this might have meant 
 anything or nothing. In its largest sense, it really 
 meant union for common purposes — liberty in matters 
 of separate concern. And there was not anv 
 earthly reason why it should be limited to 
 " purposes of government ; ' in the sense in 
 which that term was generally used. People 
 vaguely talked about a federated Empire. Let 
 
82 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 them have a federated England first. For John 
 had come to see that the principle was of 
 practically universal application, and might assist 
 him in the solution of almost every conceivable 
 dilemma. And he had felt that, if he could 
 get his statesmen to apply it, by wav of 
 experiment, on a small and easy scale, and 
 let them see how well it worked at home, it 
 would not be hard to persuade them to extend 
 the experiment. Now, there was already a species 
 of federation, in this new and fuller meaning of 
 the word, at work in every corner of Great 
 Britain. It had commenced with the creation of 
 Town Councils, Each of these had liberty to 
 manage the affairs of its own particular neighbour- 
 hood, but all of them were one, at Westminster, 
 in managing the affairs of the Empire. There 
 was union for common purposes, and freedom in 
 matters of senarate concern. 
 
 But this was only a loose and somewhat illogical 
 application of the principle, and it was only when 
 the Unionists had supplemented Town by 
 County Councils that the system gained co- 
 herence, and stood upon a satisfactory basis. 
 Each town was interested in many matters which 
 related to itself alone, and these were left to the 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 83 
 
 Town Council ; but, as each town was also in- 
 terested in the affairs of its own particular county, 
 each was represented on the County Council, 
 whilst both were represented in the Parliamenc at 
 Westminster. 
 
 But, just as everv town had matters which did 
 not concern either County Council or Imperial 
 Parliament, so every district, and nearly every 
 village, had affairs peculiarly its own to see to, and 
 rightly claimed the power to manage them itself. 
 And, therefore, on resuming office, the Govern- 
 ment who gave the County Councils rounded off 
 their work by granting District Councils when the 
 villages were too small to need a separate 
 organization of their own, and Village Councils 
 where the circumstances of the case demanded 
 it. And the various Village, District, or County 
 Councils in any given area were permitted to 
 specially combine, at any time, for common pur- 
 poses, an enlargement of the federal principle 
 which led to most desirable results. 
 
 The scheme was simultaneously applied in 
 England, in Scotland, and in Wales. And, 
 throughout the three countries, every county was 
 completely federated, and every part of it en- 
 dowed with power, and with the requisite 
 
84 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 machinery, to manage all affairs of purely local 
 interest, subject to the intermediate authority of 
 the larger bodies, and to the supreme control of 
 the Imperial Parliament itself. 
 
 But there was still the question of Ireland to 
 consider. And, in considering that, John Bull 
 saw his way to a further development of the 
 federal idea which would solve his own immediate 
 difficulty, and form a stepping-stone to another 
 and a larger federation still. 
 
 Now, just as there were many questions which 
 concerned the village, the town, the district, or 
 the county only, or some particular group of 
 villages, districts, towns, or counties, so there were 
 many questions which concerned each nation 
 only ; and, if it were logical to apply the principle 
 so fully to the lesser areas, it was not less logical 
 to apply it to the larger. And among the men 
 who most admired the previous work of Mr. 
 Balfour there were not a few who thought that, 
 in his introduction of the Bill to give to Pat the 
 privilege of County Government, he had missed 
 an opportunity. It was palpable to all who 
 looked at things dispassionately that there was an 
 element of reason in the cry for Home Rule. 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 85 
 
 When men enquired what sense there was in 
 sending Pat to London every time he wanted to 
 promote some purely local improvement scheme it 
 puzzled the most ardent Unionist to tell them. 
 Mr. Balfour had himself admitted the grievance, 
 and one of his latest Bills, before the defeat 
 of the earlier Unionist Government, had been 
 drawn with a view to removing it. Ulstermen 
 confessed that the existing system was an incon- 
 venience, to put it mildly ; and Loyalists who 
 would have fought against an independent Parlia- 
 to the death were quite prepared to admit that 
 Irishmen were capable of dealing with Private 
 Bills, at any rate, in Dublin. 
 
 But Mr. Balfour had merely suggested that local 
 enquiries should be held, and that the Bills them- 
 selves should still be relegated to Westminster. 
 And there were not a few who thought that, in 
 his County Government Bill, he had also erred by 
 introducing some superfluous restrictions, and by 
 subjecting the actions of the Irish County Coun- 
 cillors to the check of the Criminal Judges in- 
 stead of to the check of some suitable central 
 board. It was a provision introduced in order to 
 promote impartiality, and it was well adapted to 
 secure that end ; but it lent itself too readily to 
 
86 THE DREAM OF AK ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 misconstruction, and it was not recommended by 
 the nickname which was speedilv applied to it — 
 the " Put 'Km in the Dock Bill." 
 
 There were many Unionists who, in the earlier 
 stages of the Home Rule controversy, had de- 
 clare:! their readiness to delegate to provincial, 
 or even to national, boards a certain measure of 
 authority, subject always to the absolute 
 supremacy of the Imperial Parliament ; and 
 "Joe" Chamberlain, in particular, had boldly 
 announced his adhesion to a policy of some such 
 character as this. The unparalleled success of 
 Mr. Balfour had diverted the public attention, 
 for a time, from these proposals. He had shown 
 so plainly that the government of Pat from 
 Westminster was not only possible, but easy, and 
 that, in the hands of men of resolution, Ireland 
 need not any longer " block the way," that 
 Unionists were inclined to let well alone. 
 
 But, the more they thought of it, the more they 
 saw 7 that possibly a broader policy might lead to 
 even happier results. It was absurd to try to 
 satisfy the politicians who were related to 
 the daughters of the horseleach ; but might 
 thev not, by yielding what was fair in their 
 
THE FEDERATION OP THE KINGDOM. 87 
 
 demand, remove the sole remaining semblance of a 
 wrong ? It would be a piece of monstrous tvranny 
 to. band the men of Ulster over to their 
 tender mercies unprotected ; but Ulster had not 
 any right to rob the rest of Ireland of anything 
 rhat she could fairly claim. To a measure such 
 as Mr. Redmond asked, or Mr. Gladstone offered, 
 she was justified in offering whatever resistance 
 lay in her power ; and, in the event of its becom- 
 ing law, most people agreed with " Grandolph " 
 that " Ulster" would "fight, and Ulster" would 
 "be right." But, against a measure such as this, she 
 would not have the need, or feel the inclina- 
 tion, to rebel. Nay, was it not as much in 
 her own interest as in the interest of the sister 
 provinces ? If she did resist it, her blood would 
 be upon her own head ; but those who under- 
 stood her best believed that her good sense would 
 welcome it. Pat should have his County, his 
 District, and his Parish Councils, like the 
 other members of the family ; but their deeds 
 should be revised, instead of by the Judges, by a 
 National Council, elected by the whole of Ireland, 
 and subject to the control of the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 John favoured this solution of the difficulty all 
 
88 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 the more because both Taffy and Sandy were be- 
 ginning to ask for a certain amount of Home 
 Rule for themselves. Each of them had long 
 complained that, in purely national affairs, they 
 were both continually out-voted by the rest ; 
 and so much had Sandy felt the hardship that he 
 had formed a special Home Rule Association of 
 his own in order to secure fair-play. It met, at 
 first, with little sympathy, for, unhappily, John's 
 ministers seem quite incapable of realizing that 
 the people are dissatisfied until the people begin 
 to make themselves objectionable — a fact which, 
 by the way, should always be remembered in ex- 
 tenuation of the many crimes attributed to Pat. 
 The "G.O.M." had snubbed the new Association, 
 and, of course, his worshippers had done the 
 same. And the leading Unionists ignored it, 
 though it was manifest to the people of a lesser 
 order of intelligence that its aim was logical; and 
 that, upon the lines suggested by some of its sup- 
 porters, Home Rule might pass, by an almost 
 impalpable transition, out of the region of projects 
 which were wild, and dangerous, and revolution- 
 ary into the region of Conservative, and gradual, 
 and logical reforms. 
 
 To exclude from Westminster the Irish mem- 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 89 
 
 bers, as the "G.O.M." had first proposed, was 
 evidently to inflict a grievous wrong on Pat, and 
 to insist on taxing him without allowing him a 
 voice in the disposition of the money raised was 
 worse than separation pure and simple, and must 
 inevitably lead to it ; for this was the very rock 
 on which John lost his noblest Colony. To 
 everybody save the •" G.O.M. " the thing was 
 plain ; and, had it not been lor the fact that, in 
 deference to the universal feeling, he had changed 
 his mind upon this, as on so many other subjects, 
 Home Rule would never have been listened to 
 at all. 
 
 But his subsequent proposal had only made the 
 matter worse. As a means of conciliating such 
 of his followers as regarded the Irish members as 
 a nuisance, and simply supported Home Rule in 
 the hope of getting rid of them— and there were 
 many of this sort, though they did not often 
 own it — he had proposed to reduce the number 
 of their representatives in the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment to something less than forty. But 
 this was a remedy which was worse than 
 the disease. If it disposed of John's com- 
 plaint by depriving Pat of an advantage 
 to which he was certainly not entitled, 
 
90 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 it made, at once, for Pat another bran-new 
 grievance by depriving him of the proportion he 
 could fairly claim. It was removing one in- 
 justice only to create another, and was a sort of 
 logic which was suited to the character of the 
 philanthropists who shuddered with horror at the 
 thought of turning a man out of doors who owed 
 his landlord six vears rent, or locking up the 
 wretch who amused himself by maiming cattle 
 and shooting old men in the legs, but rather 
 liked the thought of letting old ladies die of 
 starvation because they could not get their dues, 
 and shooting down the men of Ulster because 
 they loved the Empire and were loyal to the 
 Queen. 
 
 The Unionists, of course, protested, and 
 proved again that they were better friends to 
 Pat than those who fawned on him by insisting 
 that, in any Bill which might be passed, he should 
 be represented in the same proportion as the 
 rest of the family. But, if it were unjust to 
 even dream of any other treatment, it was 
 ridiculous to allow him to govern himself, and, at 
 the same time, to have the right to inter- 
 fere with them. And, although his voice and 
 Vote might be restricted to imperial affairs, he 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 9I 
 
 could use them as a lever to promote his private 
 ends, and could prevent the representatives of 
 Taffv, and Sandy, and John from carrying out 
 their local legislation by the simple expedient of 
 defeating them on some imperial question. The 
 whole proposal bristled with anomalies, and was 
 calculated to produce the maximum of friction 
 and the minimum of benefit ; and its rank in- 
 justice would materially affect them all. 
 
 There was only one way out of the difficulty. 
 It would have saved the " G.O.M." from half his 
 troubles, and would have turned a scheme which 
 nearly everyone in England looked upon as 
 treason to the Empire into a scheme which 
 nearly everyone in England would have recog- 
 nized as eminently sane. But the " G.O.M. " 
 appeared to be quite unable to grasp it, and the 
 bulk of his advisers were as blind as he. The 
 Unionists, with some exceptions, either did not 
 understand it, or were afraid to mention it for 
 fear of misconstruction, or were so content with 
 Chaos that they did not care to tread the road 
 which led to Cosmos, or so wrapped up in the 
 United Kingdom that they never gave a thought, 
 except by way of peroration, to the possibility of 
 a United Empire. The plan which men of every 
 
92 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 party deemed a triumph of constructive states- 
 manship when carried out in Canada, and hailed 
 with acclamation in Australia, and had spent 
 much blood and gold to try to consummate in 
 Africa, and counted wisdom of the highest type 
 among the tiny islets in the Caribbean Sea, they 
 never seemed to dream of as a possible solution 
 of the evils which prevailed at home. 
 
 But John was wiser than his leaders, and, to 
 him, absorbed in the idea which had come so 
 opportunely, the path to follow was quite unmis- 
 takable. Imperial Federation had been, as yet, 
 a vague conception which had won his sympathies, 
 but which he did not rightly comprehend ; but 
 the w 7 ay to it lay plainly through domestic feder- 
 ation. The federal principle would solve the 
 troubles of his little Kingdom just as it had 
 solved the troubles of his Great Dominion, and 
 just as it was solving the trcublesof Australia, and 
 just as it was going to solve the feuds between the 
 hostile races at the Cape. And it would pave 
 the way to a United Empire. Beneath its 
 magic touch, the " paper union " of the rival 
 realms at home would deepen gradually into " a 
 union of hearts," and "the union of hearts" 
 which was practically all that held the colonies 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 93 
 
 together would be complemented by a union on 
 a grander scale than any he had ever dreamed of 
 up to now — 
 
 11 A union of hearts, and a union of hands, 
 
 A union none " should " sever ; 
 A union of homes, aiid a union of lands, 
 
 And the flag of our union for ever." 
 
 Anyhow, he would make the experiment. He 
 would not any longer preach a gospel he was in- 
 disposed to practice, and prescribe for others 
 remedies he hesitated to apply to himself. And 
 he had made it evident to his friends, the Union- 
 ists, before restoring them to favour, that he 
 should expect them to proceed on broader lines 
 than heretofore ; and that, much as he admired 
 them, and warmly as he recognised the splendid 
 service they had rendered in the past, he should 
 like them better if they would recall their earlier 
 pledges, and not mistake quiescence for content 
 across the Channel, or think, because Taffy and 
 Sandy usually obeyed the law, that they were 
 absolutely satisfied with its provisions, and per- 
 suaded that the present Constitution was beyond 
 amendment. 
 
 " Joe " Chamberlain was foremost in pro- 
 
94 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 moting the new policy. Indeed, it largely 
 owed its origin to him, though, in the tumult 
 of the intervening controversy, he had ap- 
 peared, for a time, to have somewhat lost 
 sight of it. And, put as he was so well quali- 
 fied to put it, his sturdy phalanx in the 
 army of the Union had hailed it readily as offering 
 a via media safe to tread, and leading plainly to 
 desirable results. And, although a few Con- 
 servatives of the fossil order were disposed to 
 deprecate the scheme, the bulk of them had long 
 outgrown their ancient prejudices, and begun 
 to see that 
 
 " That man's the true Conservative 
 
 Who lops the moulder 'd branch away," 
 
 or grafts upon the ancient tree some healthy 
 sapling suited to the time. And, just as they had 
 accepted the County Franchise when they knew 
 that it would be coupled with Redistribution, and 
 just as they had swallowed Free Education when 
 they saw their way to do it without unfairness to 
 the voluntary schools, so they were quite pre- 
 pared to grant Home Rule as soon as it had 
 ceased to be a danger to the Empire, and could 
 be carried out on safe, and moderate, and reason- 
 able lines. 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 95 
 
 And, in obedience to John's behest, they put 
 their heads together and produced a Bill. It 
 was delightfully simple, and everybody took 
 to it at once. Nay, many of the enemy, 
 quite weary of their wandering in the politi- 
 cal wilderness, united in promoting it ; and 
 some, indeed, of the " Irreconcilables," grown 
 tired of following the phantom of a Parliament 
 they felt that they would never get, were good 
 enough to speak of it with favour, and it w r as 
 carried through both Houses w 7 ith unusual eclat. 
 
 The scheme was, briefly, this : One Man One 
 Vote was coupled with One Vote One Value, 
 and embodied in an Act which divided the whole 
 Kingdom into equal electoral districts, subject to 
 readjustment after every Census. This meant 
 that Pat's proportion of members was much re- 
 duced, and Ulster's share of these substan- 
 tially increased ; and that Taffy, and Sandy, and 
 John received exactly the number to which they 
 were respectively entitled. 
 
 The operation of the Act was specially sus- 
 pended until another Act had been passed extend- 
 ing to Ireland a system of Village, District, and 
 County Councils, upon similar lines to the system 
 
96 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 already adopted in England, Scotland and Wales, 
 but with special safeguards to prevent abuse ; 
 and this was followed, in the same Session, by an 
 1 Act which authorized the members representing 
 each of the four countries to sit in their respective 
 capitals as National Councils, at the beginning 
 of every year, to deal with questions which 
 were outside the scope of the Village, the District, 
 or the County Councils, and yet of purely national 
 concern. These were easily defined, in spite of 
 Mr. Gladstone's non possumus. For example, 
 they took over all the functions of the Local 
 Government Boards, and were empowered to 
 pass canal and railway bills, and to deal with 
 private legislation generally. 
 
 In Ireland, the functions lately vested in the 
 Congested Districts Board were delegated to 
 their care, and the various Land Acts had operated 
 so effectually, and removed so many sources of 
 
 1 This is the suggestion of a writer in the " Weekly Despatch," and 
 is merely an extension of Mr. Blight's idea that the members of the 
 different countries should act as Grand Committees to deal with the 
 details of the various Bills in which they were locally interested. It 
 has been received with favour by the Scottish Home Rule Association, 
 and is adopted here on account of its simplicity. Special representatives 
 to sit in the National Councils could, of course, be separately appointed, 
 if preferred, and the number need not necessarily be limited to the 
 number cf representatives in the Imperial Parliament. 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 97 
 
 friction, that, even in questions appertaining to the 
 soil, thev were entrusted with a certain amount 
 of legislative and executive authority, whilst the 
 actions of the County Councils were controlled by 
 them instead of bv the Irish Judges. This power 
 of control applied to all lour countries. Exactly as 
 the Town, the Village, and the District Councils 
 were made subordinate to the County Councils, so 
 the County Councils were subordinate to the 
 National Councils, and the National Councils, in 
 their turn, to the Imperial Parliament. 
 
 In England, and Scotland, and Wales, the 
 people were so much accustomed to self-govern- 
 ment that there was little fear of an abuse of any 
 of the privileges thus conferred. In Ireland, 
 however, the case was different. But, when all 
 the Acts came simultaneously into operation, and 
 the earliest National Council met in Dublin, it 
 was found, as a consequence of the readjustment 
 of electoral areas, and the growth of the 
 Conservative instinct which had resulted from the 
 creation of a peasant proprietary, and the gradual 
 reaction in the minds of a people who were 
 simply sick of hunting a mirage, that fully 
 half of its members were Unionists, and 
 most of these Conservatives ; and that violent 
 
98 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 or confiscatory legislation was almost out 
 of the question. But, to u make assurance 
 doubly sure," precautions had been taken to 
 prevent precipitate action, and a body cor- 
 responding somewhat with the grave and well- 
 fed individuals who are known as aldermen was 
 appointed as a sort of Second Chamber. They 
 were elected by the National Councillors, but 
 sat for a longer term, and retired in regular 
 rotation. 
 
 But the one paramount safeguard was to be 
 found in the maintenance of the undisputed and 
 indisputable supremacy of the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment. The English, Scotch, and Welsh National 
 Councils acted with the sobriety and good sense 
 which had been generally expected of (.hem. But 
 there was, of course, at first, some litt'e friction in 
 the Irish Council. People who have been 
 for centuries divided do not work together 
 with perfect smoothness all at once, and 
 attempts were made, at times, to go be- 
 yond the sphere assigned, and to carry various 
 measures which were ill-advised. When this 
 was so, the Second Chamber generally did its 
 duty. But once or twice it failed, and then the 
 Viceroy, acting on instructions from the 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 99 
 
 Central Cabinet, forthwith proceeded to impose 
 his veto. And the friction lessened every year. 
 When the Councillors from the four countries 
 assembled annually at Westminster as Mem- 
 bers of the Imperial Parliament, they were 
 seldom called upon to interfere with local mat- 
 ters, though, of course, they had the power ; and 
 they were thus enabled to devote to the discussion 
 of more weighty subjects the time which their 
 importancehadsolongdeserved. AndtheCotincils 
 ultimately acted with such circumspection that 
 their functions were one by one extended until 
 the very Redmondites admitted that they could 
 not reasonably ask for more. The principle of 
 unity for common purposes and liberty in matters 
 of purely separate concern w T as liberally applied, 
 and its success had soon been put beyond dispute. 
 Never had the four adjacent realms been so 
 united, and never had they heen so proud of 
 themselves and of each other. Pat had not 
 ceased to be an Irishman, nor Sandy to revere 
 the " land of the mountain and the flood," nor 
 Taffy to proclaim to all the world how proud he 
 was to w T ander " among" his " ancient mountains, 
 and in " his " lovely vales," and least of all had 
 John forgotten to be true to ''Shakespeare's home, 
 
IOO THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 and Alfred's realm." But all of them were one 
 in love for each other, and in love for the Greater 
 Englands, and the Greater Irelands, and the 
 Greater Scotlands, and the Greater Waleses to 
 whose shores so many of their children sailed. 
 
 John's " tight little island" was now so 
 adequately organized that he began to make the 
 federation he had gradually achieved the basis of 
 a scheme which had been hovering vaguelv in 
 his mind ever since the happy morning when he 
 had kindled to enthusiasm at the dawn of the idea 
 which had already solved the Irish problem, and 
 enabled him to put the whole of his internal 
 system of government upon a satisfactory footing. 
 More and more, as he reflected on the sorrows of 
 his poorer children, and the gross disparities 
 existing in the life around him, had he turned 
 towards Socialism as the only way to remedy the 
 wrong. But Socialism, with him, was quite 
 compatible w 7 ith rank Conservatism. He loathed 
 to hear the ribald orators who flung their mud at 
 everybody better than themselves, and knew 
 that half of them were quite as selfish as the men 
 whom they denounced. He could not bear to 
 listen to the fierce attacks upon the folk whose 
 only fault consisted in their extra business capacity. 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. IOt 
 
 or their good fortune in inheriting the gold 
 bequeathed them by their sires. To propose to 
 suddenly appropriate their goods and chattels, or 
 to carry off their cash bags and bestow them on 
 the multitude, appeared to him a piece of simple 
 robbery, and the lock-ups or the lunatic asylum 
 was the proper place for the men who preached 
 such dangerous doctrines. And, when they backed 
 their arguments with dynamite, their necks were 
 in the noose before thev knew it. Good never 
 came of evil, and the happier England which he 
 longed so ardently to see must not be founded 
 on a policy of wholesale plunder, or accelerated 
 bv the deadly lo<nc of the bomb. 
 
 But tli ci c was not any earthly reason why he 
 should not cautiously extend the Socialism which 
 prevailed already in so many of his towns. They fur- 
 nished cemeteries for the accommodation of their 
 dead — why should thev not build houses for 
 the accommodation of their living ? They 
 made their own gas, and supplied their own 
 water, and paved their own streets, and provided 
 their own parks, and baths, and libraries — 
 why should they not also work their own tram- 
 ways, provide their own theatres, and manu- 
 facture goods for exportation, or for inter- 
 
1 62 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 change with other places? It was only an 
 extension of a principle already recognized, and, 
 as they gradually increased its application, they 
 would find employment, not for a few dozen 
 officials, artizans, and scavengers, as now, but for 
 a few hundreds, and, ultimately, as the various 
 industries were one by one acquired, for the 
 whole population. Their profits would enable 
 them to pay to all whom they employed a liberal 
 wage, and leave a handsome surplus to expend 
 upon municipal improvements, and to use in the 
 reduction, and the ultimate extinction, of 
 the rates. Each business would be taken 
 over at a proper price ; the managers and 
 men might still be utilized, and paid accord- 
 ing to the value of their services ; and 
 the transformation might be slowly brought 
 about without the slightest friction, without in- 
 justice to the rich, with immeasurable advantage 
 to the poor, and with incalculable benefit to the 
 life of each municipality. The whole system 
 might be worked, in every centre, on a federal 
 basis, and the danger which some dreaded that 
 Socialism might reduce all men to a dead level 
 of mediocrity would be avoided by the fact that 
 the ablest men in every branch of industry would 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. I03 
 
 be appointed by their fellow townsfolk to the 
 most important posts. Everybody would be 
 happy, but everybody would not be equal. 
 
 And, just in the same way, the Village Councils 
 might rent the land, or purchase it outright, and 
 work it on the most accepted principles, diverting 
 the people from the towns by paying them a 
 decent wage, and applying the profits, for agricul- 
 ture, properly adapted to the altered circum- 
 stances of the time, may still be made to pay, to 
 the improvement of the locality, and the promo- 
 tion of the physical and intellectual recreation of 
 all the villagers. 
 
 The various towns and villages might inter- 
 change their products, and send the surplus into 
 other counties, or to other realms, and the task 
 of regulating the exchange would naturally 
 devolve upon the Countv and the National 
 Councils. 
 
 It seemed, undoubtedly, a big experiment, but 
 the machinery was readv to hand, the 
 public mind was ripe for some reform, and, in the 
 absence of a reasonably moderate scheme, might 
 fly, in its impatience, into methods which 
 were rashly revolutionary. To carry out 
 
104 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 the plan in its entirety would doubtless be the 
 work of years. But in every town the leaven was 
 already working, and John had confidence in his 
 idea, and saw in it the ultimate solution of the 
 social difficulty. 
 
 Already, in addition to its earlier triumphs, 
 it had shown John how to save his oldest 
 and his dearest institution from destruc- 
 tion, and had given to the United Kingdom 
 a United Church. The miracle had been 
 achieved with little help from Parliament, 
 but one or two sagacious bits of legislation had 
 helped to clear the way for it. 
 
 It was the tithes which gave the cry for Dis- 
 establishment its greatest force, and, though the 
 Act which had removed them to the shoulders of 
 the landlords had materially abated a grievance 
 concerning which there had been much complaint, 
 they were still unpopular, and the tenants had to 
 pay them still in the shape of an additional rent, if 
 not in the older and more irritating form. But 
 it was evident that they were never likely to be 
 regarded with any superfluity of favour, and 
 many thought that thev should cease to be paid 
 at all. Now there was only one equitable 
 mode of dealing with them, and that was to 
 
the Federation of the kingdom. 105 
 
 commute them. With state assistance this was 
 easily accomplished, and everybody hailed the 
 arrangement as an honest settlement of an 
 ancient difficulty. And the measure intro- 
 duced to take away the scandal which had 
 arisen from the fact that the livings of the 
 churches sometimes fell into hands unworthy of 
 the sacred charge was followed by another, 
 which, under proper limitations, gave the 
 people of each parish power to choose their 
 own minister. Moreover, the ordinances of the 
 church were rendered more elastic, and there 
 was not any room for the scenes which had 
 formerly arisen between the Ritualists and the 
 Evangelicals, for the views of each were 
 harmonized, and every congregation was em- 
 powered to choose a pastor suited to its individual 
 tastes. A reasonable ceremonial lent its charm to 
 every service, but no longer was " the heart of 
 the matter " lost in the mere mummery ol outward 
 show. And the Church was doing itsduty nobly. 
 It had ceased to proselytize, and begun to practice. 
 Its ministers no longer gave themselves airs 
 and talked through their noses. Instead of 
 snubbing those who did not quite agree with 
 them, except when they required their money or 
 
106 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 desired their votes, they frankly owned that every 
 man had a perfect right to entertain his own 
 opinion, and to worship the Common Father in 
 the manner suited to his need. Instead of rousing 
 in the breast of everv chapel-goer a double love for 
 his somewhat narrow creed by the increasing 
 narrowness of theirs, and wounding his pride by 
 their exclusiveness, or patronizingly inviting him 
 to own himself a heretic, and creep back, like a 
 silly sheep, to the fold which he had only left 
 because " the hungry sheep" looked " up, and " 
 were "not fed," they said that he was welcome there, 
 and they would willingly receive him. But they 
 added now, that, in order to save the scandal 
 which the spectacle of a divided Christendom 
 afforded, they were quite prepared to come down 
 from the pinnacle of their superiority, and to 
 make all reasonable concessions, and, if only he 
 could see his way to do the same, they would 
 willingly meet him half w T ay. 
 
 So much had they improved that many thought 
 it possible for some, at least, of the Dissenting 
 bodies to be absorbed into the bosom of the 
 Mother Church, and many of the rising race who 
 had been born in the shadow of some village 
 Bethel dear to the hearts of the previous 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. IOJ 
 
 generation preferred the grander service of the 
 little edifice about whose soft gray walls "the 
 rude forefathers of the hamlet " slept, and found in 
 its new ritual the spiritual solace and the 
 intellectual nutriment which they had failed to 
 find elsewhere. 
 
 But this ideal was too noble to be realized at 
 once. There were difficulties all round. A portion 
 of the Church itself insisted very foolishly upon 
 some rather childish notion known as apostolical 
 succession, and some of its members thought that 
 the baptismal water was more efficacious than the 
 sacrificial blood. The Wesleyans attached 
 immense importance to a principle which was 
 known as instantaneous conversion. The Primi- 
 tives were fond of noise, and the Baptists of bath- 
 ing. The Congregationalists mixed Mr. Glad- 
 stone with the matter. The Salvationists had 
 boundless faith in somewhat inartistic banners, 
 and instruments of music which were usually out 
 of tune. The Catholics believed too much, 
 and the Unitarians too little. Of the two 
 hundred minor sects or so, each laid its special 
 stress upon some indispensable (but absolutely 
 unimportant) detail ; and, in face of all this, 
 amalgamation was evidently impossible, at any 
 rate for the present. 
 
IOS THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 But, if amalgamation were impossible, it did 
 not follow that federation was the same. 
 
 11 If my crowd of churches differ on a dozen 
 points," said John, " there are quite as many 
 points concerning which they all agree. If some 
 are lifted by the savour of incense, and the sound 
 of music, and some regard them both as the in- 
 ventions of the Evil One, they each believe that 
 drunkenness is fatal to the nation's welfare. If 
 some delight in drawling disquisitions from the 
 lips of clerical young graduates, and some are 
 quite content with listening to lay preachers, who 
 occupy the pulpit on Sunday and mend their neigh- 
 bour's boots next day, both believe that immorality 
 is eating into England's life. If some could 
 never stand set prayers, and others are irritated 
 by the extemporaneous irrelevance which too 
 often takes their place, both know that it is right 
 to minister to the sick, and to visit the afflicted, 
 and to feed the poor, and to seek by every 
 reasonable means to make life happier and easier 
 for the needy and the suffering. In the crusade 
 against vice, and intemperance, and slavery, and 
 cruelty to animals and men, and in the task of 
 carrying to the heathen, at home and abroad, the 
 rudimentary principles of Christianity, they may 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. 109 
 
 surley work together. These purposes are com- 
 mon to them all. There is not room for any- 
 marked divergence of opinion here. And division 
 weakens them. And every double organization 
 for one object is a waste of energy. They need 
 not listen to the same preachers, or attend the 
 same services, or conform to the same ritual, or 
 swallow the same creed ; but in the practical 
 Christianity which displays itself in honest work 
 for the amelioration of the human lot ; in the 
 1 pure religion and undefiled ' which ' is to visit 
 the fatherless and the widows in their affliction,' 
 they are one at heart, and might be one in effort 
 and in organization. And, if the absorption 
 by the mother church of all the lesser churches 
 is not yet possible, the federation of the churches 
 on such lines as these may surely be achieved, 
 and, probably, may pave the way to a United 
 Christendom. Anyhow," said John, " suppose 
 we try it." And try it he did. 
 
 All the temperance societies, and all the 
 societies for the promotion of purity, and all the 
 societies for the spread of education, and all the 
 societies for the suppression of slavery (white 
 and black), and nearly all the societies for the 
 alleviation of human suffering in its divers 
 
110 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN*. 
 
 other forms which had existed in connection 
 with the various churches were amalgamated, 
 each separate religious body being represented 
 on the committees and boards of management 
 in proportion to its members and its contribu- 
 tions. And all, being animated by one purpose, 
 worked amicably together. Missionaries no 
 longer fought their battles out before astounded 
 Heathendom. The apostles of the rival creeds 
 chose different localities, and so arranged their 
 programmes as to avoid collision or encroachment 
 on each others preserves. In the whole range of 
 social, educational, intellectual, lecreative, and 
 philanthropic activity, the members of the several 
 denominations worked together. The village 
 church and chapel would unite in arranging 
 winter lectures, concerts, debates, and entertain- 
 ments ; in organizing united cricket teams, 
 and in providing libraries, reading rooms, 
 gymnasiums, and village clubs, sometimes 
 in concert with the Village Councils, and 
 sometimes on independent lines. In the towns, 
 the twenty various sects would do the same. 
 And the local federations would unite in 
 periodically sending representatives to the 
 great district or national congresses upon 
 the questions which were under their im- 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE KINGDOM. I I I 
 
 mediate care. And nearly all the different reli- 
 gious bodies soon discovered that upon a score 
 of subjects thev could work in harmony, and 
 greatly gain in strength, without the sacrifice of 
 any single article of any single creed. And 
 soon they got to understand each other, and 
 to tolerate each others views, and even to discern, 
 at last, that, after all, the essence of the creed of 
 Christendom was unity, and not dissension — love, 
 and not hatred. Their points of difference 
 speedilv diminished their points of contact 
 rapidly increased, and they presently began to 
 exchange pulpits, and to have United Services. 
 Indeed, they found, at last, that they had so much 
 in common that their federation had become a 
 mere arrangement for the better management of 
 the local affairs of the one church with the 
 thousanJ ramifications— the great democratic 
 Chinch of England, which regulated its ritual in 
 accordance with the preferences of each locality, 
 and was broad enough to embrace all who 
 believed in human brotherhood and followed in 
 the steps of Christ. 
 
 Each church selected its own rector or vicar, 
 and the ranks of eligible candidates were swollen 
 by the admission of the pastors of all the various 
 
J 12 THE DREAM OF AX ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 dissenting bodies, which made the curates look to 
 their preaching, and the dissenting students to 
 their Greek ; and each could change the chosen 
 one whenever the majority of the parishioners 
 believed a change to be desirable. Some churches 
 were high, some low, some broad, and each was 
 able to adopt, from the amended Book of 
 Common Prayer, a form of service suited to its 
 individual preferences. 
 
 These rectors and vicars appointed their own cu- 
 rates, and met, at stated intervals, in every diocese, 
 for mutual deliberation, under the presidency of 
 a bishop chosen for a definite term by the votes 
 of all the ministers in the diocese. And 
 democracy prevailed in church and state alike. 
 And, consequently, each reflected England's life, 
 and each was representative of its ideals. 
 
 Thus the union which good souls had dreamed 
 of in the shadow of the hills of Switzerland was 
 gradually realized in the shadow of the hills of 
 England. The Scottish Presbyterian Churches 
 had previously united underasimilar arrangement, 
 and so the cry for Disestablishment was dis- 
 posed of to the general satisfaction. And Sandy 
 now threw in his lot with John, upon a federal 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 1 73 
 
 basis, and the English and the Scottish Churches, 
 whilst retaining various local customs and privi- 
 leges, were substantially one. As for Taffy, he 
 had made such a pother about the question that 
 John Bull had said, at last, with ill-concealed 
 disgust, " He won't be happy till he gets it," and 
 thrown to him the sop he clamoured for, 
 declaring: that he would leave him to his cheese 
 and his chapels. And then Taffy became a Con- 
 servative, and he and John were better friends 
 than ever. And, of course, like Sandy, he feder- 
 ated with the English Church. 
 
 Pat's Protestant descendants likewise feder- 
 ated, first among themselves, and then with 
 the Church of England. The Church of Rome in 
 all these realms still held aloof; but, mixing, as 
 its members did, with Protestants of every shade 
 in works of charity, it learned to understand 
 them better, and to hate them less, and, now that 
 its opponents were united, it began to feel its weak- 
 ness more, and to doubt the wisdom of maintain- 
 ing so tenaciously the old unbending attitude. 
 Perhaps the Pope was not infallible, after all, 
 and possibly the truth might lie between the two 
 extremes. And then there came a Cardinal ot 
 Newman's type, and, feeling to the full the evils 
 
114 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 of the long division, he set himself to see if it 
 might not be healed. The English Church 
 responded to his invitation to discuss the points 
 of difference, and gradually a scheme was framed 
 which brought them into closer touch, and ulti- 
 mately led to a United Christendom. 
 
 But, ere that consummation came, the new 
 idea which had put John's house in order, made 
 Pat happy and contented, and for ever stopped 
 the empty jangle of the rival creeds, had wrought 
 an even grander transformation in the destinies of 
 Oceana. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 
 
 In order to tell the story with due sequence, 
 we shall be obliged to retrace our steps a little ; 
 in fact, to go back to the foundation of the Im- 
 perial Federation League. That body had done 
 a good deal to give expression to the vague con- 
 ception which had slowly taken root in the brains 
 of a few deep thinkers who could see beyond the 
 immediate strife of parties, and all the hideous 
 turmoil of the hour, and ponder carefully the 
 problem of the Empire's future fate — that Em- 
 pire which had grown to its gigantic size in spite of 
 the supineness of the so-called statesmen who 
 had spent their time in petty squabbles over 
 trifles here at home — the " Little Englanders " 
 who never looked beyond their noses, and had 
 instincts of the " beaver " species only. The 
 thought had first been launched in London, at 
 some meetings held in 1869. Inch bv inch it 
 " won its widening way," but few, at first, were 
 
J 1 6 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 found to speak of it with favour, or, indeed, to 
 turn their thoughts to it at all. 
 
 The Royal Colonial Institute had kept the new- 
 born flame alive ; but, with the founding of the 
 League, it began to burn with an increasing 
 ardour, and to throw an unexpected light upon the 
 darkness of the coming time. A number of 
 eminent colonial statesmen promptly offered 
 their adhesion to the principle, and several leading 
 men at home had lent it the benefit of their advc- 
 cacv. The sending to the Soudan of an army 
 from Australia had helped it on " by leaps and 
 bounds''; the ''Kith and Kineries" had given 
 it a mighty stimulus ; and when Lord Salisbury, 
 at the League's request, had summoned to the 
 capital, as previously described, a Conference of 
 all the leading Colonies, it really looked as if the 
 project which had originally claimed such scant 
 consideration was making genuine headway. An 
 Empire Club was founded, and the Imperial In- 
 stitute succeeded it. Many Liberals had begun 
 to speak of the idea in sympathetic terms, and the 
 Conservatives at once enrolled it on their party 
 programme. " Empire and Liberty " was taking 
 tangible shape, at last, and a fancy which had 
 hitherto been looked upon as the monopoly of 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. J 1 7 
 
 the dreamer was slowly, but surely, coming 
 '• within the range of practical politics." 
 
 And the war of tariffs, which had waxed increas- 
 ingly severe, was working strongly in the same 
 direction, though on somewhat different lines. 
 The Fair Trade League had been inaugurated at 
 about the same time as the League with larger 
 objects, and a wider platform ; and, at the root of 
 its policy, was a scheme for the preferential treat- 
 ment of the Colonies in their trade relations with 
 the Mother Country. But the Fair Trade League 
 had displayed the cloven hoof of Protection too 
 boldly to win the popular support, and, mainly 
 as the result of Brother Jonathan's determined 
 effort to exclude our trade, and to ruin Canada 
 unless she would consent to forswear her ancient 
 fealty, it was followed by another organization, 
 on less objectionable lines, which was known as 
 the United Empire Trade League. The policy 
 which it announced was to develop " by all 
 possible means the commercial relations between 
 the Mother Country and the Colonies, and be- 
 tween the Colonies themselves." The importance 
 of this policy was declared to be paramount. 
 Some of the foremost of John Bull's political 
 advisers at once enrolled themselves as members; 
 
I 1 8 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN'. 
 
 three colonial premiers, three ex-premiers, a 
 number of other high colonial dignitaries, and 
 more than three hundred members of the various 
 Parliaments of Oceana were on its General 
 Councils; and, in the course of a few months, 
 three thousand influential citizens had given it 
 the sanction of their names. 
 
 But many saw, in the new League, the 
 same cloven hoof of Protection, though 
 the difference between the two associations 
 was that, with the first, Protection was a 
 policy, and with the second, " a hateful 
 incident" only. Unhappily, Free Trade had be- 
 come a fetish, and the man who would not fall 
 down and worship it was commonly regarded as 
 a fool. It did not matter that every nation in the 
 world, and all our leading Colonies, with one 
 exception (soon to follow their example) were 
 resolutely opposed to it. So much the worse for 
 them. And the opinion of " the civilized world," 
 which John was asked to accept as conclusive 
 in regard to Home Rule, he was politely reques- 
 ted to treat with absolute contempt in regard to 
 his commercial policy. And to accuse a man of 
 entertaining the idea of " taxing the food of the 
 people " was tantamount to calling him a rogue. 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. I 1 9 
 
 John Bull was positively terrified lest he should 
 lay himself open to this dreadful accusation, but 
 the good old soul had entirely overlooked 
 the fact that, at that very moment, he was 
 taxing the food of the people to the tune of 
 several millions every year. But the taxes were 
 mainly on tea, and coffee, and cocoa, and fruit, 
 each one of which had become a necessity in every 
 home of the United Kingom — as much a necessity 
 as the immortal loaf itself; and to have remitted the 
 duties on these might incidentally have assisted 
 India, and Jamaica, and the other Colonies in the in- 
 creasing struggle for existence ; and to aim at 
 helping Oceana by such expedients as these was 
 evidently not to be thought of. 
 
 John's children suffered, but it could not honestly 
 be said that the English landlord pocketed the 
 proceeds, or that the English manufacturer de- 
 rived the most shadowy semblance of advantage 
 from the tax, and therefore it was perfectly de- 
 fensible in itself, and, moreover, necessary as a 
 means of raising revenue. 
 
 " But why not raise the revenue by taxing the 
 products of my enemies rather than those of my 
 friends?" John pertinently asked. "Assuming 
 that these several millions are absolutely requisite, 
 
120 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 and that it is even permissible to ' tax the food of 
 the people ' in order to obtain them, why should 
 I not remove the duty from the tea, and the coffee, 
 and the cocoa, and the fruit which the Colonies 
 are so eager to send me to the wheat of Brother 
 Jonathan, who bars his gates against me, and seeks, 
 1 by sordid means and mercenary proffers, to lure ' 
 my children ' from their allegiance ? ' Suppose I 
 raise exactly the same amount as at present — not 
 a penny more or less— in this way, how will the 
 cost of living be affected ? Does it make any 
 difference to a man if he loses a farthing on his 
 bread, and gains it on his tea? In short, 
 would not his position be precisely the same, 
 whilst India and Jamaica would be better off, 
 and Canada delighted to supply the wheat 
 which had previously come from the United 
 States, and, in exchange, to lower her tariff, 
 and give us preference in her markets over all 
 the rival suitors for her trade ? I can quire see 
 that Protection for Protection's sake is a fallacy, 
 that it is best to ' buy in the cheapest market,' and 
 that I should be a fool for doing otherwise ; but 
 am I not a bigger fool for taxing myself in a man- 
 ner so unfortunate that I offend my children, do 
 not in any way benefit myself, and lose my lever- 
 age for bringing other nations to their knees ? More- 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 121 
 
 over, apart from all these considerations, if, by the 
 establishment of a tariff, I pay more for what I 
 buy, do I not recoup myself by paying less in taxes? 
 And are you quite certain that Brother Jonathan, 
 and Johnny Crapaud, and Johnny Schmokerj 
 and all the other members of the family of nations 
 are such fools as von say ? Doubtless we ! are 
 the people, and wisdom ' will ' die with ' us, but 
 it sometimes takes a wise man to be a fool ! " 
 
 At this John Bull's advisers would grow frantic. 
 " What ! " they cried. " Reverse the policy 
 of Bright and Cobden ? Forsake the prin- 
 ciples of Adam Smith ? " — forgetting that 
 almost every principle that Adam Smith had 
 ever preached they had begun to violate ; 
 and that Mr. Bright's opinion on the greatest 
 question of the day they were in the habit 
 of treating with contemptuous unconcern. 
 " Why, you will raise the price of the four pound 
 loaf, and" — this with a veritable shudder — " put 
 money into the pockets of the landlord !" They 
 left the poor farmer, who was being slowly bled 
 to death, quite out of the question, perhaps be- 
 cause he happened to be a Conservative ; but 
 the fact that the landlord might possibly 
 derive some small advantage from the scheme 
 
122 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 appeared to settle the matter. Whoever else 
 might gain or lose, not one penny should go into 
 the pockets of the individuals who " toil not, 
 neither do they spin " ; but spend their lives and 
 fortunes in looking after the welfare of their 
 estates, supporting charities, and bearing all "the 
 slings and arrows of outrageous fortune " simply 
 because they happen to be the sons of their 
 fathers, and the descendants of the lords 
 of Rou. 
 
 But John was not convinced. And the mere 
 fact that he might be helping the landlords, 
 or assisting the farmers, or improving the 
 prospects of the labourers, or encouraging 
 Jamaica, or doing a good turn to his enterprizing 
 children by the waters of the far Saskatchewan, 
 did not seem to him to be by any means a con- 
 clusive argument against a scheme which would 
 bind Canada to him, and pave the way, in process 
 time, to Free Trade throughout the Empire. 
 
 11 Free Trade is a capital thing," said John. 
 "Universal Free Trade would be delightful. But, 
 if I cannot have Free Trade with all the world, 
 why should I not have Free Trade with one- 
 fifth of it ? " 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 1 2$ 
 
 And, somehow, nobody seemed able to answer 
 him. 
 
 Moreover, it grew plainer every day that the 
 only lasting bond that would keep Oceana one 
 and indivisible was the bond of self-interest. 
 The most romantic couple who ever existed 
 could not " live on love." Blood was thicker 
 than water, but gold was stronger still. 
 Sentiment was all very well in its way, but it 
 had to " plump " its " exquisite proportions on 
 bread and butter." Utility was the ultimate 
 law, and it was only when blood and senti- 
 ment were one with it that they would form 
 that " threefold cord " which " is not quickly 
 broken." Canada was, without doubt, devotedly 
 attached to John ; but even her affection had 
 shown signs of cooling when Brother Jonathan 
 began to close his markets in her face. 
 And everybody seemed to think that she would 
 finally accept the advantages he had to give, un- 
 less John offered her a quid pro quo. And, when 
 self-interest had united her to Jonathan, she 
 would soon forget that sentiment united her to 
 John. Commercial intercourse would lead to 
 political union ; patriotic impulses could not suc- 
 cessfully compete with practical advantages ; and, 
 
124 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 as soon as John's descendants commenced to 
 feel that there was not anything to be gained by 
 maintaining the connection with the head of the 
 family, or that other realms could grant them 
 better terms than he, or that they could afford to 
 shift for themselves, and figure on the world's 
 stage as independent actors in the drama of the 
 ages, they would assuredly elect to do so. The 
 ties of blood would lose their influence with the 
 lapse of years, unless, indeed, they were sun- 
 ported bv the baser ties of " filthy lucre." And 
 the flowers of loyalty and patrotism could only 
 bloom if, at the root of the imperial tree, there 
 lay community of interest. 
 
 Now, at the present time, John's family had 
 much to offer him. They might contribute to the 
 maintenance of his navy, and supplement 
 his armies by their own ; they might bear 
 their fair proportion of the cost incurred 
 on their behalf; and last, and most im- 
 portant, they might open their ports to his 
 merchandise, and treat him better than his 
 rivals, seeing how much they owed to him for his 
 protection, and how they had emerged from 
 childhood safely thanks to the incessant watch- 
 fulness of the paternal eye. 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 125 
 
 But they were eminently practical — too 
 practical to be quite fair, John thought. The 
 benefit of his protection they had already, and 
 they got it for nothing. To have repealed the 
 tariff on the goods the old man sent them would 
 have been a piece of pure philanthropy. He 
 had not anything to give them in exchange. 
 If he, on his parr, would allow them some 
 advantage over their foreign competitors, they 
 might, perhaps, be disposed to reciprocate the 
 privilege. Indeed, Canada went to the length 
 of openly announcing her willingness to do so, 
 and both Houses of her Parliament had un- 
 animously asked him to unbind their hands, 1 which 
 were tied by several foolish Treaties, in order to 
 permit of this. But, so long as he continued to tax 
 their corn, and their cotton, and their wool, 
 and allowed their rivals to supply him with those 
 commodities on equal terms, it was not likely 
 that many of them, out of pure good nature, would 
 
 1 Seethe Treaty of Commerce with Belgium, in 1862, which con- 
 tains the stipulation that "articles, the produce or manufacture of 
 Belgium, shall not be subject in the British Colonies to other or higher 
 duties than those which are or may be imposed upon similar articles 
 of British origin," a stipulation repeated in the Treaty with the German 
 Zollverein, in 1865, and extended to all countries whose Treaties with 
 the United Kingdom contain a most favoured nation clause. There 
 are upwards of twenty-two of these, so that our hands are practically 
 tied all round. 
 
126 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 feel disposed to forego the larger portion of their 
 revenue, and admit John's manufactures duty 
 free. 
 
 But, once let John afford them privileges he 
 refused to others, and they would meet him half 
 way. Both would benefit. Forthwith a chain a 
 thousandfold more strong than that of sentiment 
 would bind them to each other. Every British 
 vessel which entered their ports to bring them 
 manufactures and machinery, and to carry back 
 the produce of their pasture-lands and harvest- 
 fields, would help to knit them into one. And as 
 surely as Free Trade between Canada and 
 Brother Jonathan would lead to union, so surely 
 would Free Trade between John Bull and Oceana 
 prevent the possibility of separation. 
 
 Day by day, this dream developed in the old 
 man's mind, and more and more he longed to put 
 it into practice. But he was thwarted at every 
 turn. At the very root of its realization lay the 
 necessity of discriminating between Oceana and 
 the other nations. And, to enable this to be done, 
 it might be necessary to impose fresh duties on 
 foreign imports, or even to add another farthing 
 to the cost of the poor man's loaf. And, as I 
 have already explained, nearly all John's advisers 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 12J 
 
 regarded the mere suggestion of such a thing 
 with horror. It turned Sir William Harcourt 
 frantic ; it made Sir Wilfrid Lawson weep ; it 
 drove the Cobden Club into a delirium; and it sent 
 the " Grand Old Man ' into hysterics. It 
 even scandalized the " Standard " ; and the 
 " Markiss" himself, brave as he was, and indepen- 
 dent as he was, on most questions, scarcely dared 
 to breathe of such a thing. Once, upon the verge 
 of an Election, he had ventured to observe that, 
 in the war of tariffs, we had flung away our arms, 
 and immediately the country rang with fierce de- 
 nunciations, and, throughout the realm, a thousand 
 lying tongues began to spread the tale that he 
 desired to raise the people's bread to famine 
 prices, and to flourish on the sorrows of the 
 starving poor. 
 
 And the Empire was perishing for the sake 
 of a superstition. 
 
 But, every year, John thought more for him- 
 self, and became less amenable to party catch- 
 words, and the shibboleths which various wind- 
 bags shouted in his ears. The return of an era 
 of bad trade had troubled him, the attitude of 
 Canada had set him thinking, and in Australia he 
 saw the verv problem which distracted hi:n, and 
 
128 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 almost frightened him out of his wits, made light 
 of, and a proposal made to build a Commonwealth 
 upon these very foundations. For the sake of 
 free trade throughout Australia, free-trading New 
 South Wales had offered, through her repre- 
 sentatives, to place a tariff on the goods which 
 came to her from all the other continents. And, 
 for the sake of free trade with New South Wales 
 and with each other, the rest of the Australian 
 states seemed ready to admit each other's 
 produce duty free. Here was the whole problem 
 in a nutshell. Protectionists and Free Traders 
 alike were prepared to modify their views for 
 the sake of a compromise which would make 
 them permanently one. And, as New South Wales 
 was to Australia, so was the United Kingdom to 
 the British Empire. It was quite true that New 
 vSouth Wales had afterwards become protection- 
 ist herself, but the principle had been admitted, 
 and formed, indeed, the fundamental feature of 
 Australia's scheme. 
 
 And, whilst John Bull was weighing all these 
 matters carefully over, he was one day gratified 
 to read that the " Markiss " had consented to 
 receive a deputation from both Leagues, and 
 listen to the arguments they had to urge. And 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 1 29 
 
 thev could scarcely have gone to a better man. 
 He it was into whose hands had fallen the banner 
 bequeathed to England bv the Earl of Beacons- 
 field. He it was who had kept peace within the 
 boundaries of Oceana, and added more than two 
 million miles to John's imperial domain. And 
 he it was to whom the first Colonial Conference 
 was due — by whom the earliest decided step 
 towards Imperial Federation had been taken. 
 
 The Federationists believed that, now, a second 
 step might fittingly succeed it ; and the object of 
 their visit was to ask him to convoke another Con- 
 ference. And John looked on with much anxiety, 
 and wondered whether even his friend, the 
 " Markiss," could sufficiently emancipate himself 
 from the red tape bondage which, somehow, seemed 
 to curse the country so, as to incline his ear to their 
 request. And, much to his surprise, for no 
 other statesman had ever appeared to adequately 
 grasp the true conditions of the problem, having 
 heard their tale, and listened to the hackneyed 
 formula that they had not any cut and dried 
 scheme to lay before him, and to the wish which 
 thev expressed that he should call another Con- 
 ference, the " Markiss " told them bluntly that 
 their policy of li masterly inactivity'' was played 
 
130 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 out, and that there was not any virtue in their 
 plea. 
 
 " I think," said he, with gentle irony, " that 
 we have almost come to the time when schemes 
 should be proposed, and, without them, we 
 shall not get very far." And he boldly added 
 that, in order to create a United Empire, two 
 things were necessary— a Zollverein, or Customs 
 Union, and a Kriegsverein, or War Union. This 
 elementary proposition did not appear to have 
 occurred to, anyone before. And the frank 
 admission of facts which every statesman hitherto 
 had consistently blinked, coupled as it was with 
 warm expressions of encouragement, and a distinct 
 intimation that it would be useless to call a 
 Conference until some scheme was framed for 
 its consideration, of course, set everybody think- 
 ing. 
 
 A dav or two afterwards, the United Em- 
 pire Trade Leaguers called on him, and them 
 also he received with not a little sympathy. 
 But he did not raise delusive hopes. He 
 knew as well as most men what a howl was 
 raised if any touched, however tenderly, the 
 Free Trade fetish, for, more than once, that howl 
 had echoed ominously in his ears ; but he plainly 
 
showed that with their objects he was largely in 
 accord. He roundlv denounced the Treaties 
 thev had asked him to revoke, and practically 
 promised that, if they would win the country 
 over to their way of thinking, they might look to 
 him to be the instrument to carry out the policy 
 proposed, and so create, at any rate, the 
 Zollverein the need of which he had already 
 emphasized. 
 
 And the United Empire Trade League, en- 
 couraged bv the interview, commenced, at once, 
 the task of making converts ; and the Imperial 
 Federation League came down from the platform 
 of its platitudes, and ceased to indulge in annual 
 generalities, and retired into its shell to grapple 
 with the difficulties indicated, and endeavour to 
 propound a plan ; for he had made it plain that, 
 when this had been accomplished, he would 
 gladly ask the Colonies to meet for its consider- 
 ation. 
 
 u Alas for the vanity of human expectations ! " 
 A year or more elapsed, and they produced 
 their scheme ; but the place the " Markiss " had 
 so wisely hi led was occupied by another, and 
 u the best Government of the century " had 
 been dismissed from Downing Street, with an 
 
IJ2 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 ingratitude unparalleled in recent history. Happily, 
 
 however, in the ranks of their successors there was 
 
 one, at any rate, who cared for Oceana, and who 
 
 could 
 
 11 see 
 
 Beyond the borough and the shire." 
 
 and carrv out, as far as his coadjutors allowed, a 
 policy which did u not flinch or fail." That 
 statesman was the Earl of Roseberv — the man 
 who had saved Uganda, and simply loved Home 
 Rule because, to him, it marked a step upon the 
 road to a United Empire. 
 
 Imperial Federation had elicited his sympathies 
 from the first. He had served the League in 
 the capacity of President, and he, if anyone, 
 would naturally look upon its aims with kind- 
 ness now. The plan was duly laid befcre him, 
 and he spoke of it with favour ; but its progeni- 
 tors expressly said that the suggested Conference 
 ought not to be convened until the Government 
 were satisfied that the time was opportune, and 
 that a favourable reception of the new proposals 
 might be reasonably hoped for. 
 
 That time was not yet. Amid the hubbub 
 of domestic troubles, and the daily danger of 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 1 33 
 
 international embroilments, there was little 
 opportunity to deal with matters of such moment ; 
 and, much as the new Foreign Secretary might 
 have been disposed to call the Conference and 
 carrv out the scheme, with a divided Cabinet, a 
 precarious majority, and a ministerial life w T hich, 
 owing to the rash and foolish pledges of his 
 colleagues, was " not," by any means, " a happy 
 one," he was compelled to defer the execution 
 of the project to "a more convenient season," 
 and to urge the League to occupy the interval 
 in awakening public interest in the policy 
 proposed. 
 
 In consequence of this, ' the sister Leagues 
 
 1 For the information of any who may like to join cither of these 
 organizations, or to learn more about the policies which they respectively 
 espouse, I may say that the offices of the Imperial Federation League 
 are at 30, Charles Street, Berkeley Square, London, W., and those of the 
 United Empire Trade League at 1, Grosvenor Square, London. Communi- 
 cations addressed to the Secretary of either body will receire immediate 
 attention. All who pay an Annnal Registration Fee of a shilling may be 
 enrolled as members of the former. An Annual Subscription of five 
 shillings will entitle them to a copy of the monthly journal, and 
 for a guinea a year they will receive all the League's new literature. 
 The. qualification for a seat on the Council is an Annual Subscription 
 of two guineas. Any lady may have her name inserted on the 
 liiitannia Roll by paying a Registration Fee of two shillings per 
 annum. Six shillings will secure a copy of the journal, and a guinea 
 all literature, as well as qualify for election on the Council. The sub- 
 scription is optional in the case of the United Empire Trade League. 
 
J 34 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 redoubled their activity. Branches were es- 
 tablished speedily in all the large centres of 
 population, and all who felt a special interest in 
 the question had their names enrolled upon tbe 
 register of one, or both, of these two bodies. The 
 Federationists found valuable allies in the fair, 
 for their were many ladies high in rank and 
 influence who willingly allowed their names to 
 be inscribed upon the Britannia Roll which had 
 been specially inaugurated to enlist their 
 aid. If John Bull typified the sturdy manhood 
 and incarnate common sense which had so much 
 assisted in the birth of Oceana, Britannia typified 
 the gentler virtues which distinguished it. 
 
 •• She alone knew, of victors first and best, 
 To fold the vanquished to her pardoning breast : 
 To gather 'neath her wings, in one great brood, 
 The tribes of Man, by might, then love, subdued, 
 Mother, not Queen, calling those sons by birth 
 Whom she had conquered — linking ends of Earth." 
 
 And worthily Britannia's daughters carried out 
 their task. They gracefully dispensed the hospit- 
 alities of the old country to the visitors who hailea 
 from every part of Greater Britain. They distri- 
 buted the leaflets of the League, and, by the gentle 
 suasion which, in many ways, they knew so well 
 how best to exercise, they influenced enormous 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 1 35 
 
 numbers to espouse the cause. And, knowing that 
 the hand which rocked "the cradle" ruled " the 
 world," they trained their children from their 
 earliest years to love their broad imperial herit- 
 age, and not disgrace their ancestry by making it 
 away. " The cause was that of an Empire of 
 liberty extending into every quarter of the globe, 
 and the responsibility was to hand it down to 
 their descendants with all its ancient and bene- 
 ficent institutions unimpaired and inviolate." And 
 they realized it to the full. 
 
 And the meetings of the League, which 
 rapidly began to rank amongst the most popular 
 of public gatherings, owed much to their co- 
 operation. These gatherings differed widely 
 from the ordinary style of public meeting, and, 
 by the various attractions of their programmes, 
 drew tremendous audiences whom speeches pure 
 and simple would have scared away. In the 
 United Kingdom, orators from every part of 
 Oceana were employed to emphasize its unity, 
 and in all the Colonies enthusiastic English 
 tongues proclaimed the glory of the new idea. 
 But the meetings were not by any means confined 
 to speeches. They were interspersed with 
 patriotic songs, and on every platform in the Em- 
 
I36 THE DREAM OF AX ENGLISHMAN*. 
 
 pire might be heard the stirring strains of " Rule 
 Britannia," the music of " Killarney," or the 
 plaintive notes of <( Auld Lang Syne." From 
 many a crowded throng in far Australia rolled up 
 to heaven the stirring words : 
 
 " For a glorious charter, deny it who can, 
 
 Is breathed in the words * I'm an Englishman ;'" 
 
 and throughout the Great Dominion, like a 
 trumpet-call, 
 
 " the signal ran, 
 ' England expects that every man 
 This day will do his duty.' " 
 
 " The Minstrel Boy " would perhaps be followed 
 by the martial strains of " Scots, Wha Hae," and 
 11 Men of Harlech" by " The British Grenadiers." 
 " The Midshipmite," " The Mariners of England," 
 and " England, dear England, the Queen of the 
 World" were all in great request ; some sweet 
 Canadian boat song would be coupled w r ith the 
 airs in vogue beneath the splendours of the 
 Southern Cross ; and " Songs of Empire " would 
 be heard, in every corner of it, side by side 
 with songs from corners untold miles away. 
 But the favourite song of all was this : 
 
 " Sharers of our glorious past, 
 Brothers, must we part at last ? 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE.' | \] IJ7 
 
 Shall we not thro' good and ill 
 Cleave to one another still 1 
 Britain's myriad voices call, 
 1 Sons, be welded each and all, 
 Into one imperial whole, 
 One with Britain, heart and soul ! 
 One life, one flag, one fleet, one Throne ! ' 
 Britons, hold your own ! " 
 
 And always, whilst the surging multitudes arose 
 and bared their heads, the closing song would be, 
 11 God Save the Queen." How John Bull's heart 
 was touched, as, like the music of some mighty 
 sea, these airs, endeared to him by such sublime 
 associations, would float at once from perhaps 
 ten thousand voices, and in every eye he saw 
 the fires of patriotism flash ; and how, in every 
 zone, some gray-haired man would feel in all 
 his feeble veins new vigour as he heard 
 again the unaccustomed songs of home ; 
 and how his children would declare, with faces 
 moved to strange excitement, that, come what 
 might, they were resolved to cleave to that far 
 "isle that" knew "not her own greatness/' but 
 had given them theirs, and put into their veins 
 the rich red blood which could not brook 
 humiliation, and had never throbbed in any pulses 
 save the pulses of the free. 
 
I38 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN'. 
 
 Sometimes the meetings would be varied by 
 great lantern views of beautiful colonial 
 scenerv — the heights above Quebec, the ships 
 and shores of Sydney Harbour, the glittering 
 plains of India, the mist upon the Table Moun- 
 tain, the sugar-fields of far Jamaica, or the surges 
 thundering around some sweet Pacific archi- 
 pelago. And, in the Colonies, the youngest child 
 began to recognize and love "the stately homes 
 of England/' to marvel at the mysteries of 
 Stonehenge, to reverently call to mind the monu- 
 ments of Westminster, or climb, in thought, the 
 misty crest of Snowdon, or cross the placid 
 waters of sweet Windermere, or view the 
 sylvan loveliness of " Ellen's Isle," or, from the 
 towering heights of Carran-tual, gaze dreamily 
 upon the distant bosom of Lough Leane. 
 
 Sometimes historic scenes would be produced 
 upon the canvas, and the chivalry of England 
 influence the heart of Oceana, or the prowess of 
 colonial pioneers awake the emulation of 
 the sons and daughters of 'the Mother 
 Country. These scenes would be accom- 
 panied by recitations — " Boadicea," " The 
 Bard," "The Armada," "The Burial of Sir John 
 Moore," " The Charge of the Light Brigade," 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. I39 
 
 <l The Wreck of the Birkenhead," and others 
 which recounted noble deeds by Oceana's children 
 in all ages and in every clime, and served to keep 
 alive in all the best traditions of the race. And, 
 when the Imperial Institute was opened, it 
 became the focus of a hundred enterprizes, each 
 designed to draw the various branches of the 
 Empire closer to " the heart of oak ' from 
 whence thev drew their vigour, and derived the 
 life which showed such signs of proud develop- 
 ment. The Institute was, in itself, a permanent 
 reminder of the grandeur of the Briton's birthright, 
 and the lesson was effectually enforced in every 
 Colony by the loans it freely made of its pos- 
 sessions to the local Museums and Art Galleries. 
 In all the schools the history of England meant 
 the history of Oceana, and all geography was 
 made subservient to the fullest knowledge of her 
 vast resources, and her unexampled area. 
 
 Even in the matter of religious services the 
 new-born spirit showed itself, and to the many 
 beautiful petitions in the Book of Common 
 Prayer was added this, from the lips of " blind 
 John Milton," clearer-sighted than he had been 
 generally deemed : "Thou Who of Thy free grace 
 didst build up this Brittannick Empire to a glorious 
 
j'40 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 and enviable heighth, with all her Daughter 
 Hands about her, stay us in this felicitie." 
 
 A propaganda pushed with such consummate 
 skill, and rooted in a sentiment so strong 
 as love of race, could scarcely fail to have due 
 influence. The League found allies everywhere. 
 A thousand ready scribes in press and pamphlet 
 pushed the new idea, and endeavoured to assist in 
 shaping it. And parliamentary candidates were 
 heckled so persistently upon the question that 
 they simply had to give it their attention if they 
 hoped to have the slightest chance of victory. 
 It was not any longer needful to swear 
 adhesion to the multitudinous items in a new 
 " Variety Programme ; " but the man who would 
 not promise to promote the closer union of 
 the various parts of Oceana might as well begin 
 to " cultivate his own fireside " at once, in 
 company with that great personality who was 
 " principally remarkable for his disinterested aver- 
 sion to the British Empire." Sandy had, like 
 John, been drawn to the idea immediately. Taffy 
 half forgot his tithes in thinking of the possibilities 
 the scheme unfolded ; whilst even Pat began to 
 look on it with sympathy as soon as he perceived 
 that under it ; it might be possible for him to 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 141 
 
 have a National Council. And, presently, they 
 all united in promoting the u consummation" so 
 " devoutly to be wish'd." 
 
 Abroad, at first, the progress of the idea was 
 comparatively slow. One wicked colonial wit 
 had pictured the " dear old Mother Country," in 
 her zeal for Federation, as a spider, seeking to 
 entangle Australia in the web of her greed for 
 personal aggrandizement. But the bulk of the 
 c itizens of Oceana were very fond of John, for did 
 not his blood run in their veins, and had he not 
 brought them up, and were they not heirs to his 
 immense estate, and might they not be equal 
 partners in his world-w ide business ? For, if they 
 left their father, they would lose their interest 
 in all his great possessions, and would be abso- 
 lutely severed from each other too. And the 
 wisest of them lifted up their voices to convince 
 their countrymen that " union was strength," 
 and division weakness ; and that self-interest, 
 as well as sentiment ; and that their duty to 
 themselves, as well as their gratitude to 
 John, demanded it ; and a feeling leapt to life in 
 the breath of which all meaner motives passed 
 away. In the little isle " set in the silver sea," 
 and in almost everv land in which the immemorial 
 
142 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 banner floated, there were multitudes to whom 
 the Federation of the Empire had become the 
 watchword of the hour, and, and as soon as John, 
 in consequence of the teaching of the United 
 Empire League, began to manifest a wish to meet 
 their views in reference to the furtherance of 
 mutual trade relations, and to abandon, to some 
 extent, his old and stupid attitude upon the 
 subject of Free Trade, the minority, who cared 
 absolutely nothing for sentiment, and only clung 
 to John for what they could get out of him, 
 became as ardent advocates of federation as were 
 their more romantic brethren who believed in 
 brotherhood, and would have died for the honour 
 of the flag. 
 
 And as suddenly as Australasia had decided to 
 ignore her pettv jealousies, and submit to sundry 
 sacrifices for the sake of the common wealth, the 
 common strength, the common glory, Oceana 
 laid her little feuds and trivial internecine diffi- 
 culties by, and prepared to put the project into 
 practice. 
 
 And, at last, the Conference was called. Just 
 as the foremost statesmen in Australasia had met 
 in Sydney to pass their memorable resolutions, 
 and to frame a Bill for the constitution of an 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 1 43 
 
 Australasian Coinmonvvealth, so the statesmen 
 of the whole of Oceana — the sagest heads in 
 Canada, the wisest minds beneath the Southern 
 Cross, the empire-builders from the Cape, the 
 tawny counsellors from the banks of the 
 Ganges, with others from a score of less 
 important climes — assembled in the old 
 metropolis ; and, in the shadow of West- 
 minster, amid the memories of two thousand 
 vears, and in the cradle of the race that was 
 about to dominate the world, they met the wisest 
 men in the United Kingdom, while three hundred 
 million souls looked on with sympathy. And the 
 Emperors of Europe knew that, if the Conference 
 succeeded, they might put their swords into their 
 sheaths, as far, at any rate, as Oceana was 
 concerned ; for, if her statesmen should succeed 
 in setting up the Kriegsverein which was the 
 primary object of their scheme, the mighty realm 
 they represented would become invincible. 
 
 But, enormous as the growth of public senti- 
 ment had been, the Empire was not ripe, as yet, 
 for the fuller federation which appeared to John 
 to logically follow from the new idea. For the 
 Federation of the Kingdom had not been com- 
 pleted when the Federation of the Empire, in its 
 
144 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 first and skeleton form, was undertaken, and, 
 very sensibly, the scheme the League proposed 
 was of a comparatively unambitious nature, and 
 simply meant to lend itself, apart from any 
 reconstruction of existing institutions, to the 
 immediate exigencies of the case. 
 
 Its essential features were as follows : To 
 appoint a sort of special Cabinet, or Council, 
 consisting of the Prime Minister, the Foreign 
 Secretary, the Colonial Secretary, the Indian 
 Secretary, the Secretary for War, the First Lord 
 of the Admiralty, and the Chancellor ot the 
 Exchequer, ' together with duly accredited repre- 
 sentatives of the three groups of self-governing 
 Colonies. To endow this new Imperial Cabinet 
 with power to act in all foreign affairs, and to 
 combine the naval and military resources of the 
 Empire for the purposes of common defence. 
 This implied, of course, that the Colonies should 
 contribute to the necessary naval and military 
 outlay, and it had been originally proposed 
 that such of them as were represented in 
 the Imperial Cabinet should raise its quota in 
 the way its Parliament preferred, and that the 
 
 1 It would, I think, be well to add to these the President of the 
 Board of Trade, and perhaps the Post-Master General, 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 1 45 
 
 contributions of the various Crown Colonies 
 should be determined by the Parliament of the 
 United Kingdom. 
 
 But this appeared to not a few to be rather 
 a clumsy way out of the difficulty, and here 
 the United Empire Trade League stepped in 
 with a suggestion which was promptly taken. 
 They had found the Free Trade fetish zo en- 
 shrined in England that they had begun to 
 despair of making any headway on the lines they 
 had at first pursued. Protection in the ordinary 
 sense appeared to be impossible, at any rate as 
 yet ; and so they called to mind the famous 
 adage of Will Shakespeare : 
 
 " What's in a narre? that which we call a rose 
 By an) other name would smell as sweet," 
 
 and set themselves to gain their object by a 
 somewhat different mode. It was to ask each 
 port in Oceana to impose a small uniform 
 duty of so much per cent, upon all the goods 
 which came to it from foreign nations, and to 
 apply the proceeds to the maintenance of an 
 Imperial Army and Navy, and the cost of the 
 Consular and Diplomatic Service. Nobody could 
 accurately say that this was Protection, but it 
 answered jusi as well. 
 
J 46 THE DREAM OF AX ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 It meant that every Colony possessed, in its 
 dealings with every other Colony, and especially 
 in its dealings- with John, and Sandy, and Taffy, 
 and Pat, a distinct advantage over all its foreign 
 rivals. It gave to each a corresponding privilege 
 in dealing with the other Colonies, and the trade 
 of all developed so considerably in consequence 
 that they were more than compensated for the 
 extra price they had to pay for the diminishing 
 quantity of goods which they found it needful to 
 procure from other realms. The funds result- 
 ing from the imposition of these duties was 
 sufficient to maintain, upon a vastly better 
 footing, a naval and military organization for 
 mutual defence, with special squadrons and 
 divisions for the separate use of every 
 portion of the Empire, but all acknowledg- 
 ing the supreme authority of the Imperial 
 Cabinet, and acting under its direction in 
 time of war ; and still to so relieve the burden 
 of the tax-payers of the United Kingdom, who 
 had previously been called upon to bear 
 the weight of it almost alone, as to enable 
 the Ministry to free the country from the 
 farce of levying import duties on its tea, 
 and its coffee, and its cocoa, and its fruit, and 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 1 47 
 
 still pretending to despise the process known as 
 " taxing the food of the people." In addition to 
 creating a United Army and Navy, and drawing 
 the various parts of Oceana nearer by conceding 
 their request for preferential treatment in regard 
 to their commercial dealings, it satisfied the 
 qualms of John by giving him a boon which he 
 had vainly sighed for from the chosen champions 
 of Free Trade — the boon of " a free breakfast 
 table." 
 
 Simultaneously with this arrangement, the 
 Treaties which had tied the hands of all John's 
 children, and prevented them from favouring him 
 at the expense of h s competitors, however much 
 they might have wished to do so, were raiher 
 tardily cancelled ; and some of his descendants 
 now began to give to him much greater advantages 
 over his rivals than the advantages which were 
 involved in the imposition of the Defensive Dues. 
 One or two, at first, declined to fall in with the 
 new arrang.me it, and forfeited the differential 
 treatment which the Dues aforded to the rest ; 
 but they found that their conduct placed them at 
 such an obvious disadvantage that they were not 
 long in coming to their senses. 
 
 This scheme was carried into operation in the 
 
L48 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 earlier period of Lord Salisbury's third Ministry, 
 and, upon the whole, it worked with marked suc- 
 cess. But many felt that an Imperial Cabinet 
 alone was not sufficient. The system laid a danger- 
 ous responsibility upon a dozen individuals who, 
 however wise and patriotic they might be, were 
 apt, at times, to "take too much upon " themselves. 
 It was as if Taffy, and Sandy, and Pat had been 
 governed bv a Cabinet in which thev were each 
 represented, whilst John alone had members in 
 the House of Commons ; or as if a clique of 
 eminent Canadians had controlled the whole 
 affairs of the Dominion, whilst representa- 
 tives from only one of the Canadian provinces 
 had been allowed to meet at Ottawa. It 
 smacked too much of a benevolent several- 
 headed autocracy, belied true democratic princi- 
 ples, and lacked the moral influence which 
 came from immediate parliamentary support. 
 Moreover, India had not any representative in it, 
 and all the lesser Colonies were in the same posi- 
 tion. To John, at any rate, the scheme was 
 unsvmmetrical, and he felt that the Imperial 
 Cabinet would never stand upon a proper foot- 
 ing, and act with due authority, until it was 
 able to claim that authority directly from an 
 Imperial Parliament. 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 1 49 
 
 And 'everything which followed naturally led 
 to this, as John had all along intended. The 
 hubbub which had raged around the portals of 
 the " Gilded Chamber," though it had not scared 
 their lordships into passing schemes in which 
 they did not honestly believe, and which the 
 nation had not had the chance of ratifying, had set 
 them all a-thinking. The " Markiss," as already 
 mentioned, had, some years before, attempted a 
 reform, and, now that he was back again in 
 power, with a good majority behind him, he 
 determined to take up the task again. Both he 
 and his party had begun to see that it was well to 
 move spontaneously, and not await the kick 
 which sometimes made them move, however 
 much against their will. The " Gilded Cham- 
 ber" had emerged from an unparalleled ordeal 
 with dignity and safety, and now, if ever, was the 
 time to place it on a footing which was logical, 
 and take the venom from the taunts of its 
 opponents by initiating and accomplishing an 
 adequate reform. 
 
 It really seemed to John himself that the 
 time had come when it must be either 
 "mended or ended," and, although he was 
 very proud of it, with all its faults, he was 
 
I50 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 not slow to perceive that it was somewhat out of 
 harmonv with the spirit of the times. In the 
 ancient days it 1 ad filled its functions nobly, and 
 to the peers of England John ascribed his earlier 
 liberties. Even now, it often had to make a 
 stand against new-fangled principles that were 
 fatal to the very rudiments of freedom. In 
 its conception of the grandeur of Oceana, and 
 the di<?nitv and the dutv of maintaining it, rs 
 well as in its manners and its business 
 capabilities, it was immeasurably superior to 
 the assembly which was wont to rail at it. And 
 I question if, in its morals, which were supposed 
 to be very bad, it did not equally outshine its 
 more popular, but less efficient, rival. As to its 
 Conservatism, people seemed to forget that it 
 was just because it was Conservative that it was 
 of any use at all ; and that a Radical Upper 
 Chamber would have been a farce. The very 
 object of its existence was to prevent too rapid 
 progress, and, if it had not been Conservative, it 
 would have been superfluous. And the curious 
 part of the matter was that, although Radicals 
 were added to its roll con'inually, the bulk of 
 them no sooner passed its portals than they cast 
 their Radical proclivities aside. The " years 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. I 5 I 
 
 which bring the philosophic mind" had much to 
 answer for, and Time appeared to be distinctly 
 on the side of " our old nobility." 
 
 However, the constitution of the House was 
 certainly anomalous, and, though few were found 
 to vote for its extinction, for the Englishman 
 "dearly loves a lord," there were many who 
 were anxious for its reform. The mere fact that 
 a man was the son of his father did appear to be 
 a somewhat insufficient qualification for a seat 
 within the sacred precincts; and, whilst it was 
 recognized that propeity, and intellect, and learn- 
 ing might fitly (ill its benches, it was no doubt 
 desirable that they should contrive to get there 
 in a manner somewhat more compatible with 
 modern notions. A certain number of the peers 
 of Scotland and of Ireland were elected by their 
 fellow-peers to represent them, and so the ceni* 
 de la crime of either realm was authorized to 
 speak on its behalf. As long as the hereditary 
 principle was maintained at all, this was clearly 
 the better way in which to give effect to it, and, 
 with the approval of all parties, the principle was 
 extended to England. 
 
 Thus all the Hereditary Peers who sat in the 
 House of Lords were chosen by their fellow- 
 
152 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 peers on account of their special fitness for 
 the post ; whilst some proposed that they 
 should be elected, not by the majority 
 of the members of their own order, but 
 by the majority of their countrymen, an idea, 
 indeed, which was rapidly becoming popular. 
 The Bishops and the Law Lords were retained, 
 and the representative nature of the assembly 
 was further strengthened by an .Vet which pro- 
 vided for the creation of a limited number of 
 Life Peers, selected by reason of some special 
 service to the State, whether in the domain of 
 politics, or science, or literature, or art, or reli- 
 gion, or philosophy, or commerce, or war. The 
 " Gilded Chamber " thus became the mirror of 
 everything that was best in the life of England ; 
 enlightened bv a genuine spirit of liberty, in- 
 formed by a reasonable reverence for the past, 
 and lifted out of the pettv feuds and jealousies 
 which still, alas, continued to fester in the House 
 of Commons. And it won " golden opinions 
 from all sorts of people."' And the clamour 
 which had surged against its timeworn portals 
 gradually died away. 
 
 The happiest feature in its amended constitu- 
 tion was the introduction of Colonial Life Peers. 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. I 53 
 
 Some had, at first, demurred to this new notion, 
 though nearly all agreed that it was in everv wav 
 desirable that the opinion of the Colonies should 
 be more frequently consulted ; and that the 
 Cabinet should be able to look for advice, in 
 times of difficulty, to men familiar with the cir- 
 cumstances of the states from whence they 
 hailed. 
 
 Everything considered, the creation of Colonial 
 Life Peers appeared to be the simplest and most 
 effective preliminary step towards the solution of 
 the difficulty. Some had declared that the Colonists 
 were so essentially democratic that they did not 
 desire "to see such high dignities naturalised 
 among themselves, even in the most diluted 
 form ;" that it would be difficult to find men 
 " for such a purpose, in whom " they "would place 
 continuous confidence;" and that, "being absent," 
 the men appointed "would lose touch of popular 
 feeling." It appeared to John, however, that a 
 Life Peer raised to the House of Lords, not 
 because he was the son of his lather, but solely 
 on account of ability, reputation, and personal 
 merit, would be the possessor of a privilege which 
 even a democracy need not despise ; and 
 that, if the Life Peers were selected on these 
 
154 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 grounds alone, without any reference to con- 
 siderations of party politics, the two first of 
 the above objections would be effectually 
 dispelled. And, as to the third, it did not 
 follow that, because a man was raised to a 
 Colonial Life Peerage, he would be doomed to 
 perpetual exile. In these days of increasingly 
 rapid communication, he might frequently revisit 
 his native state ; the telegraph, like a great 
 nerve, would keen him in constant touch with it ; 
 and the time might come when he would be able 
 to talk to his constituents through the telephone, 
 and even see their forms reflected on " the disk" 
 which some had spoken of as one of the possi- 
 bilities of the future. 
 
 As to the objection that " * the number of 
 persons combining the necessary qual fications 
 could be counted on the fingers of one hand," 
 John was of opinion that his children were alto- 
 gether too modest. He was certain they had 
 scores of men who were qualified for such a post, 
 and who would be proud, and even eager, to 
 fill it. 
 
 And so he put the matter to the test. And, as 
 
 1 For a fuller statement of these various objections see Mr. Frcude' s 
 " Oceana." 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 1 55 
 
 he expected, there was not an honour which the 
 Queen was able to confjf which was so greatly 
 coveted as this. And the fame of the august 
 assemblage, with its high traditions and its 
 noble lineage, was so increased bv the admission 
 to its councils of the sagest heads and soundest 
 hearts in Oceana, that few were found to 
 question its authority, or doubt its fitness for the 
 elevated place it had to fill. It was the link which 
 united the expanded England of an epoch large 
 with all imaginable promise to the little England 
 rich in knightly deeds, and proud as if with 
 premonitions of its prime. In an age which 
 might have grown material, it kept alive the 
 spiiit of romance, the recollection of immortal 
 names, the love of chivalry ; and, whenever John 
 showed signs of sitting down among his money- 
 bags, forgetful of the larger aims, it brought him 
 to his senses, and besought him to recall 
 the past. 
 
 The House of Lords had thus become an 
 admirable Imperial Second Chamber, and, with 
 the delegation to the National Councils sitting 
 annually in London, and Edinburgh, and Dublin, 
 and Carnarvon, of the power to manage purely 
 national affairs, the way was cleared for the 
 
I56 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 immediate creation of an Imperial House of 
 Commons. 
 
 In carrying out his own domestic policy upon 
 the lines described at length in the preceding 
 chapter, and in the story of the " mending " of 
 the House of Lords, John Bull had come to the 
 very threshold of the fulfilment of the grandest 
 part of his idea, and had come by steps so natural 
 and logical that he could scarcely realize 
 himself how far he had advanced towards the 
 goal. John was exceedingly proud of the Popular 
 Assembly. It was associated with a thousand 
 stirring memories ; it had undergone the storms 
 of the centuries in safety, and issued from them 
 with increased renown ; it had become a part of 
 the very life of the nation, the pride of England 
 and the envy of the world. And though, of 
 recent years, the sacrilegious hands of some of 
 those who sat in it had robbed it of its former 
 fame ; though unseemly struggles had been 
 witnessed from its benches, and disgraceful 
 phrases bandied to and fro across its floors, it was 
 still " the Mother of Parliaments." None 
 could blot from his remembrance the great 
 traditions of its past, and not all the ribaldry of 
 the degenerate herd who treated " the Mother of 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 157 
 
 Parliaments " as a menagerie sufficed to make 
 John Bull loose faith in it, or seek to rob it of a 
 single leaf of the laurels it had won by centuries 
 of splendid service. 
 
 To even think of asking it to abnegate its 
 imperial functions in favour of some bran-new 
 body made to order, as the fussier sort of John's 
 advisers had proposed, in his opinion, savoured of 
 u rank blasphemy." It was quite another thing 
 than asking the House to delegate a portion of its 
 lesser functions to local bodies. This it had 
 done repeatedly already. It did so when it 
 granted local self-government to Canada. It did 
 so when it gave Parliaments to the provinces of 
 Australasia, and when it crowned the deed by the 
 concession of a Commonwealth. It did so when 
 it sanctioned the establishment, in the United 
 Kingdom, of Parish, and Town, and District, and 
 County, and National Councils. But it merely 
 delegated : it did not abnegate. Any of the 
 functions which it had conceded it was at liberty 
 to resume. And any of the acts of its subordinate 
 Parliaments it had power to disallow. When 
 Newfoundland had displayed a wish to laugh at 
 its decrees, at once the voice of its Ministers 
 made it manifest that its supremacy was unim- 
 
I58 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 paired. No province could repudiate its mandate. 
 If Ireland flouted Italy, the Parliament of London 
 — unlike the Parliament at Washington — was 
 quiteincapable of pleading impotence as an excuse 
 for inaction. In theory and in fact it was 
 supreme. 
 
 And so it must remain. This was at the root 
 of all John's policy. He would never have 
 conceded local government to Taffy, to Sandy, 
 or to Pat, if this had meant the sacrifice of any of 
 its old prerogatives. But he had felt, from the 
 first, that its supremacy would not continue long 
 if Pat had been excluded from his councils. And, 
 at the very root of his objections to the " dead " 
 and buried Bill of Mr. Gladstone, was the 
 circumstance that, in it, he had sought to shut the 
 door upon the Irish Members, and had failed 
 to stipulate with sufficient preciseness for the 
 continuance of an authoritv which, in their 
 absence, John was confident, could onlv prove a 
 rope of sand. It was quite true th it, in the case of 
 Pat, this meant, as 1 have previously observed, that 
 taxation would have been divorced from represen- 
 tation ; but the same was true of Oceana to a less 
 extent. She was only represented indirectly. 
 One Minister in the Imperial Cabinet, and perhaps 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 1 59 
 
 a score of peers who sat within the " Gilded 
 Chamber," was not an adequate expression of the 
 fluctuating washes of a mighty democratic state 
 like Canada, or Australasia. And, as the Empire's 
 products multiplied, and gradually made it self- 
 sufficing, the Defensive Dues would probably 
 diminish, and it might be needful to impose Im- 
 perial Taxes in their stead. 
 
 In fact, it was plain to John that, if he wished 
 his ancient Parliament to maintain its imme- 
 morial powers and dignities, he must open 
 its portals to the representatives of Oceana. 
 And, if he wished her citizens to bear in per- 
 petuity their full proportion of his burdens, 
 he must recognize their right to an adequate 
 share in his councils. 
 
 Moreover, John had a violent dislike to violent 
 measures. Democrat as he was, he was dis- 
 tinctly Conservative in his sympathies. He 
 wished to move slowly and carefully, and to be 
 quite sure that he was not moving backwards. 
 He was a reformer — not a destroyer. He did 
 not believe in revolution, but in evolution. And 
 therein lay his strength. His " freedom " slowly 
 
l6o THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 " broadened down from precedent to precedent,' 
 and even his throne was 
 
 '• Broad-based upon the people's will, 
 And compass'd by the inviolate sen." 
 
 Whilst France was vainly fuming after liberty 
 under a Republic, he was enjoving it under a 
 Monarchy. And, although he was himself a 
 Republican at heart, he somehow clung to the 
 i; Queen and Constitution." 
 
 Any measure, therefore, which could be grafted 
 on to the Constitution, or was a natural growth 
 therefrom, at once attracted him. And he would 
 have been as greatly scandalized at the thought 
 of dispensing with the Imperial Parliament as 
 he was at the thought of closing its doors to the 
 voluble gentry from across the Channel. 
 
 But, thanks to his idea, the policy which he 
 had systematically followed since the dawn of it 
 had rendered such a course unnecessary. He did 
 not need to constitute a new assembly, specially 
 designed to meet the new conditions. It was not re- 
 quisite to make a Parliament to order, as various 
 constitution-mongers wished, or to apply the 
 methods of the jerry-builder to the execution of 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. l6[ 
 
 the project of " the architects of Fate." He did 
 not want a Parliament without a history, without 
 prestige, and without traditions ; which could not 
 claim a tithe of the respect and the authority 
 attaching to the venerable institution whose 
 prerogatives it must infallibly usurp. The germ 
 of an Imperial Parliament in all its fulness was 
 already in existence. Imperial Peers adorned 
 the deliberations of the older branch of it already. 
 And nothing now remained but to ask it to 
 delegate to the National Councils of the still 
 United Kingdom, and to some of the less 
 privileged of the Colonial Parliaments, a few 
 additional duties, and to receive within its walls 
 the representatives of every part of Oceana. 
 
 And there was not anything startling in this. It 
 was a policy which might have saved the bloody 
 split between John Bull and Brother Jonathan, 
 in a preceding century, and kept Old England 
 one with New until the termination of " the 
 course of time." And it was a policy which 
 other realms had tried already. To take a 
 couple of illustrations only — the Colonists of 
 France were admitted to the Chamber of 
 Deputies ; and every one of the United States 
 
1 62 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN'. 
 
 possessed the privilege of sending representatives 
 to Washington, and every nationality beneath 
 " the Stars and Stripes " could help to mould 
 11 the Great Republic's " destinv. 
 
 All this was pretty clear. The principle was 
 admitted, and the onlv question was as to the 
 mode of its application. 
 
 First, it was decided, in accordance with 
 John's strong dislike of needless change, that the 
 present maximum number of Members of the 
 House of Commons should not be altered. The 
 number was six hundred and seventy. Alio wins: 
 for the increase of population which had taken 
 place whilst the various changes previously de- 
 scribed were in progress, this gave one member to 
 every seventy thousand of the population. And it 
 was a proportion which everybody seemed to think 
 might reasonablvbe increased. We are told that in 
 " the multitude of counsellors there is safety," 
 but the proverb is not of universal application ; 
 and John was of opinion that, if, on several 
 occasions, the Members ofthe House of Commons 
 had been less in number, they might have acted 
 with quite as much discretion. For most of them 
 wanted to talk, and not many of them had 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. \( 
 
 J 
 
 anything to sav which was worth the listening. 
 And, among them, they contrived to waste a 
 large amount of time which they ought to have 
 devoted to their beds or to their business. 
 Moreover, the proportion was small bv com- 
 parison with that of several other countries, and 
 Brother Jonathan considered his children ade- 
 qnatelv represented with constituencies twice as 
 large. And a change in this direction had been 
 on the carpets vears before — so long ago, indeed, 
 as the occasion of the passing of the County 
 Franchise Bill. 
 
 It was therefore decided to retain six hundred 
 and seventy as the maximum ; to set seventy 
 of these aside for India and the Crown Colonies ; 
 and to allot the remaining six hundred seats, in 
 due proportion, to the United Kingdom ; to 
 the Dominion of Canada ; to the Common- 
 wealth of Australasia ; to all the self-govern- 
 ing Colonies in the new South African Con- 
 federation (which embraced the Orange Free 
 State and the Transvaal) ; to the West Indian 
 Islands ; and to the various smaller Colonies on 
 whom full powers of local self-government had 
 been conferred. Among the rest, the Isle of 
 Man obtained a Member, and the Channel Isles 
 
164 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 were not less fortunate. Population was the 
 basis, and. except in isolated cases such as these, 
 it was rigidly observed. As previously explained, 
 Pat had not any longer twenty Members more 
 than he was honestly entitled to, and, of course, 
 he had not any less. And, contrary to the 
 opinions of some of his patrons, he was quite 
 equal to supplying the necessary quota for both 
 assemblies. He had more brains than the 
 14 G.O.M." had given him credit for. 
 
 And Oceana was richer in both wealth, and 
 intellect, and leisure than her children had 
 imagined ; for she also found with ease sufficient 
 patriots to meet in her Provincial Assemblies, 
 and her Central Parliaments, and in the mighty 
 Parliament which met in London too. Indeed, 
 the supply was considerably in excess of the 
 demand, and every " village Hampden " dreamed 
 of one day standing on the floors of Westminster. 
 
 The representatives of each of the self-governing 
 states were chosen in the manner each preferred, 
 but always on a very liberal franchise. Some of 
 them even sent Women Members; but the better- 
 looking of the sex preferred to attend to 
 their sweethearts, their husbands, and their 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 1 65 
 
 families, and the innovation was not popular. 
 The rose is loveliest in the garden, and the flower 
 of womanhood grows best in the refining airs of 
 home. 
 
 The seventy representatives of India, and 
 u Darkest Africa," and Borneo, and Burmah, 
 and the rest were nominated by the various local 
 governments ; and it was not proposed to place 
 them on an equal footing with the other races un- 
 til they were one in intellect, in enterprize, and in 
 sympathy with their white brothers, whose 
 ambition it had lately been, instead of killing 
 them with Maxim guns and British whisky, to 
 raise their morals and improve their education. 
 
 And so it came about that all the different 
 parts of Oceana had a voice in the shaping 
 of her fate. They helped to bear the com- 
 mon burden, and they shared in the common 
 glory. And the power of the Imperial Par- 
 liament was undiminished. Over every portion 
 of the Empire it was lord, for every 
 portion of the Empire had a voice in it. In 
 theory, all minor Parliaments and Councils 
 were its humble servants only. It could refuse to 
 ratify their laws ; and it could pass laws over-riding 
 
1 66 THE DREAM OF AX ENGLISHMAN'. 
 
 them. Nay, it could blot the Councils from ex- 
 istence, if the need arose. Bur, well-nigh without 
 an exception, they kept within their proper 
 sphere, and exercised their functions wisely. 
 And, in practice, the duties of the Imperial 
 Parliament were limited to things outside the 
 scope of any merely local power. Whatever 
 appertained to peace or war ; whatever touched 
 the Empire's dealings with outlying states ; all 
 things of international importance ; the regulation 
 of the imperial tolls, the development of the 
 imperial trade, and the harmonizing of the 
 interests of all the various federated states — these 
 were matters which were in the hands of the 
 imperial statesmen who were all as one in 
 working for the Commonwealth of Oceana. 
 
 Before this consummation came, in many of the 
 Colonies the principles of local self-government 
 had been as liberally applied as in the Mother 
 Country. Throughout the states of Australasia, 
 every district, every town, and every village 
 of sufficient size, possessed a Council of its 
 own. The same was true of Canada, and 
 of all the larger English-speaking Colonies. 
 Everv community, however small, with com- 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 1 6' 
 
 mon interests, was permitted to combine for 
 their protection, and to unite with any other 
 community in any matter of mutual concern. 
 In India and all the Crown Colonies, the internal 
 system of administration was arranged, as far as 
 possible, upon a similar basis. The only vital 
 difference was that, in the self-governing states, 
 the members of the various Councils were elected, 
 generally upon the basis of manhood suffrage ; 
 whilst, in the states which needed government of a 
 more paternal kind, they were either nominated by 
 the central authorities, or elected by a special 
 franchise, in accordance with the needs of 
 each particular locality. And, of course, as 
 knowledge spread, and civilization, step by step, 
 advanced, the liberties of every race were 
 cautiously extended, and the people's voice en- 
 dowed with constitutional methods of expres- 
 sion. 
 
 The'ultimate effect of all this was that the 
 whole of the United Empire had been federated 
 on the lines adopted in the case of the 
 United Kingdom, and possessed the requisite 
 machinery for the extension of the reasonable 
 Socialism which increasingly prevailed at home. 
 
1 68 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 Exactly as the Town, and Village, and County 
 Councils had, one by one, acquired their several 
 industries, and worked them for the common 
 good, exchanging what they had to spare with the 
 neighbouring towns, and villages, and counties ; 
 and exactly as the four adjacent countries 
 organized among themselves a larger inter- 
 change, so the towns, and villages, and districts, 
 and counties, and provinces, and states of 
 Oceana interchanged their various goods in 
 turn. John still maintained, in many things, 
 his manufacturing supremacy. He sent to 
 all his children the superior products of 
 his furnaces and looms ; but, as he could 
 not grow enough to feed himself, in spite 
 of the immense improvement which had 
 taken place in farming, his daughter, Canada, 
 supplied him with illimitable bags of wheat, 
 whilst Australasia sent him admirable mutton, 
 and Africa and India a hundred luxuries 
 peculiar to their respective climes. Each 
 found in all the others a sufficient market, 
 and each could buy from them sufficient for its 
 daily needs. The strife of Capital and Labour 
 lessened everv vear, for every man who was 
 prepared to work a reasonable time obtained an 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. 1 69 
 
 adequate remuneration, and the common weal 
 became the common policy. There was " no 
 complaining in our streets." A legal eight 
 hours limit had been rendered quite superfluous, 
 for it was found, when labour had been fully 
 organized, and all began to do their share, 
 that less than six sufficed. And every man 
 had leisure to improve his mind, and exercise his 
 body; and, instead of drudging out their "three score 
 years and ten " with stunted forms, and shoulders 
 prematurely bent, and brains as blunted as they 
 were diminutive, the sons of Oceana lived to be 
 at least a hundred, and enjoyed a hale old age, 
 uplifted by the spell of art and music, and con- 
 soled by all the tender charms of literature, and 
 saw their children springing up around them 
 beautiful in feature, strong " in form," and " in- 
 finite in faculty " — 
 
 " The fair beginners of a nobler time." 
 And, over all the length and breadth of that 
 great realm there abode a " happy and lovely 
 folk, who had cast away riches and attained to 
 wealth." 
 
 And in the higher life whose origin was earth, 
 whose object heaven, an equal change had come. 
 In every Colony, the Protestant churches followed 
 
I70 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 England's lead and federated, and in each the 
 outcome was a Church so broad in its beliefs, and 
 so inviting in its services, that it drew all men 
 unto it. 
 
 The task had been less difficult in the remoter 
 portions of Oceana than in the heart thereof. In 
 some of them the Methodists were one already, 
 and in all of them the various denominations 
 stood upon an equal footing ; whilst their differences 
 were not accentuated, as they were at home, by 
 social jealousies, and the recollection of historic 
 wrongs. Their federation in pursuit of common 
 objects led them, everywhere, to drop their 
 minor differences, and seek to find a common 
 creed. And they found it on the lines adopted 
 by the Church of England, reformed so 
 thoroughly, at last, that all men loved her, and 
 desired no sweeter social influence, and no saner 
 spiritual guide ; and, ultimately, all the great 
 colonial churches federated with the Church 
 which dated to the time of Ethelbert, and had 
 many a beautiful cathedral older than the coming 
 of the Norman King. 
 
 And so the Church of England broadened out 
 into the Church of Oceana. Attacked by that, 
 the citadels of Heathendom on every hand began 
 
THE FEDERATION OF THE EMPIRE. IJl 
 
 to totter to their fall. But from the wreck full 
 many a gentle precept was preserved, and, though 
 the fanes of India no longer teemed with grinning 
 gods and reeked with hideous ceremonies, the 
 teachings of Gautama were enshrined in the 
 temples of a nobler faith ; and many a beautiful 
 survival of the vanished rites of races feeling 
 through the darkness for " the Unknown God" 
 had been embalmed by those who followed Him 
 with clearer vision, and added to the ritual of 
 that great Church in whose broad bosom more 
 than half the sons of men had found that inward 
 peace which the world can neither give nor take 
 away. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " THE FEDERATION OF THE WORLD." 
 
 The end was just what everybody had ex- 
 pected. Shut out from the markets of the 
 United Empire, the United States began to feel 
 the pinch of poverty. Of what avail was Bro- 
 ther Jonathan's immense producing power if he 
 had lost his customers ? And he was not very 
 long in realizing, to his cost, that John Bull and 
 his family had been the biggest and the best of 
 them. Nor could he any longer swamp the 
 rising industries of Canada ; and, as for that fair 
 damsel, she was quite indifferent to the fact 
 that he still obstinately closed his doors to her. 
 The wheat with which her virgin harvest-fields 
 were white — the flocks and herds that fattened 
 on her boundless pasture-lands — were wanted, 
 now, to satisfy the growing needs of John ; and, 
 in return, her thriving population bought from him 
 the wares which, in his mills and workshops, he 
 could manufacture better and more cheaply than 
 the cleverest of his competitors. She was not 
 
11 THE FEDERATION OF THE WORLD." I 73 
 
 tempted, as she had been in the time of her 
 distress, to sacrifice her ancient loyalty, and 
 luimblv ask to be admitted into partnership with 
 Jonathan ; and that cute and pushing individual 
 began to feel that he had somewhat over-reached 
 himself. And all the hardships which his selfish- 
 ness had previously imposed upon his gallant 
 neighbour he was, at last, experiencing himself. 
 A clever pencil had portrayed him with a 
 mighty magnet in his hand — the magnet forged 
 bv one, M'Kinley — and Canada, in spite of all the 
 efforts of her patriotic counsellors to hold her 
 back, was represented as unable to resist the 
 magnet's influence, and yielding, quite against 
 her better inclinations, to the force of its insidious 
 power. 
 
 And this would probably have happened had 
 the magnet acted as its patentee designed. But, 
 like the monster made by Frankenstein, it in- 
 jured its originators most. If it operated as a 
 magnet on poor Canada, it acted as a thumb- 
 screw on Jonathan. And it tortured him so 
 much that he gradually relaxed the pressure, and 
 so, to some extent, relieved himself and her. 
 
 But, in the meantime, John had been engaged 
 
174 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 in patenting a magnet of his own. It was the 
 magnet of the new Defensive Dues. Anv trifling 
 inconvenience which it might have possibly in- 
 flicted on himself and on his family was more 
 than counterbalanced bv its numerous advantages. 
 Its influence upon the Colonies has been des- 
 cribed already. But it did not only serve to 
 draw the different parts of Oceana into closer 
 union with the Mother Country. It began to 
 operate in this direction on all the other realms 
 as well. And Brother Jonathan appeared to feel 
 it most. For it was far more powerful and 
 immeasurably larger than his own, and the 
 strength of the attraction was at once re- 
 versed. And Jonathan had ceased to act towards 
 Canada in the old o (Tensive fashion. He was not 
 anv more the hoitv-toitv suitor, conscious of his 
 wealth, and playing on the damsel's poverty. 
 He was hopelesslv enamoured of her now, and 
 would have gone down upon his knees to gain 
 her smile. 
 
 And he found his trade declining so enormously, 
 atlast,thathe humbly went to John, andaskedifhe 
 might deal again with her, providing that he would, 
 in future, deal with John and all the other mem- 
 bers of the family on equal terms. And, sup- 
 
HE WORLD. I ;5 
 
 pressing a smile, for he had seen, all along, that 
 it would ultimately come to this, the old man said 
 that, as a staunch Free Trader, he should be very 
 glad to let him do so. And Canada and her ad- 
 mirer soon made friends again. And he fell in 
 love with her more desperatelv than ever. For 
 she was indeed deserving of any man's love, and 
 to marry her would mean admission to the oldest 
 and the best-connected family in the world. 
 
 There was not one of John Bull's children 
 who would have married against his will, and 
 Canada the least of all. But when, instead of 
 asking her to join him in a runaway match, 
 Jonathan, who was a very good fellow in the 
 main, though a little worldly-minded, came 
 manfully forward, and offered his hand and 
 heart quite openly, and said that he was 
 willing to return to the bosom of the family ; 
 that he would love and cherish John Bull's 
 oldest daughter, and add his own resources 
 and his splendid fortune — splendid still, in spite 
 of all his recent losses — to the maiden's dowry 
 on the day of union, and enter into partnership 
 with the famous firm with world-wide connections 
 and a universal trade — the ancient and successful 
 firm, John Bull & Co. — why, Canada accepted 
 
}-(-) THE DREAM OF AX ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 his proposal straight away, for she had admired 
 him all along, in spite of his conceit and 
 selfishness. And, when papa's consent was 
 asked, he gave it without a word of hesitation, 
 and took the fist of Brother Jonathan, and 
 shook it till that gentleman began to " guess and 
 calculate " that the old man had muscles like 
 Atlantic cables, and hands as strong and sinewy 
 as the hands of Fate. And he marvelled much 
 to find him still so hale and hearty, in spite of his 
 great age, and all the worries which he must have 
 had in bringing up so large a family. 
 
 The immediate effect of the union was that 
 Jonathan repealed the duties he had levied on 
 the 'goods of John and his household ; that he 
 and Canada entered into the closest possible 
 relations ; that he developed an enormous trade 
 with his relatives, Australasia, India, and Africa; 
 and that all the family developed an enormous 
 trade with him. 
 
 Prior to the marriage, John had felt so con- 
 scious of his power that he had cast away all 
 thoughts of war. The smaller nations wrangled still, 
 and sometimes a sanguinary struggle would defile 
 the plains of Europe, or the hot-blooded young 
 
/ / 
 
 " THE FEDERATION OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Republics of South America would fly at each 
 other's throats ; but neither dared to think of 
 falling out with him. In close alliance with his 
 children he was safe, and India alone could 
 furnish him with armies millions strong in case 
 he needed them. His Meet, which, in times past, 
 had been counted equal to that of any two of his 
 rivals, was equal, now, to all the other navies in 
 the world combined ; and at any moment he could 
 have called into the field a force so overwhelming 
 that the mightiest of his competitors, even though 
 they were able to summon all their sons to seize 
 the sabre, and to follow where the trumpet called, 
 and were welded into quintuple alliances, might 
 have hesitated to fling down the gauntlet. And 
 so greatly had the patriotic spirit grown that all 
 his warriors were Volunteers. He had not any 
 standing army, but every man within his borders 
 would have buckled on his sword at Duty's 
 bidding. u Holv Russia/' who had laid her 
 cruel hands on China, no longer dared to 
 turn her envious eyes on India, and sought, 
 instead, to stav the chronic famine gnawing at 
 her heart, and to allay the fierce unrest which is 
 the child of tyranny, and the deadly mother of 
 assassination. John had not any grounds of 
 
IjS THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 quarrel left in Europe. And though, in Africa, 
 he had some powerful rivals, they were all afraid 
 to lav their fingers on the land which he had 
 civilized, and brought beneath the influence of 
 his flag. 
 
 Free from the risk of war himself, he might 
 have cast his armaments aside entirely had it not 
 been for the fact that, by virtue of them, he 
 became the arbiter of Europe's destinies. Long 
 years before, when Johnny Crapaud and Johnny 
 Schmoker had cherished sinister designs on 
 Belgium, he had vowed that, if either ventured 
 to assail that gallant little nation, he would 
 instantly assist the other in the task of chastise- 
 ment. But both had flinched from such a 
 prospect, and resolved to keep the peace. When 
 Germany, and Austria, and Italy had found 
 themselves opposed to France and Russia, and 
 the two had thirsted to assail the three, the 
 thought that John, who had held aloof from any 
 such alliance, and declared that " the greatest of 
 British interests " was " peace," would probably 
 throw in his lot against them had they rashly 
 ventured to " let loose the dogs of war," 
 had abundantly sufficed to " give " them 
 " pause," 
 
"the federation of the world." 179 
 
 Once, it had been on the carpet for all the five 
 to combine their forces, and to hurl them on his 
 mighty Empire and divide the spoil ; but, 
 remembering his immemorial valour, and cogni- 
 zant of his augmented strength, they had let " I 
 dare not wait upon I would." Had Brother 
 Jonathan decided to throw in his lot with 
 them, however, the herculean task would pro- 
 bably have been attempted ; but, in spite of 
 the strain of foreign blood which had got into his 
 veins, and notwithstanding all the soreness he 
 had naturally felt when John began to fight him 
 with his own weapons, there was enough of the 
 old spirit in his composition to make him ilout 
 the base suggestion with disdain, and vow that, 
 whatever quarrels he might have with John him- 
 self, he would never lift a finger to assist John's 
 enemies. And, when the two made friends, and 
 the forces who had fought so bravelv underneath 
 the Stars and Stripes were linked to those who 
 had fought so splendidly beneath the Union Jack 
 — when it was known that, in any future war, one 
 flag would float above them all — united Europe hes- 
 itated to incur their anger, and all thepettv realms 
 that had delighted in John Bull's discomfiture, 
 and lifted " their heads in the stillness to velp at 
 the English Flag," grew pale with terror if John 
 
i SO THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 looked at them ; and, dreading lest their punv 
 broils and wretched bickerings should call upon 
 their heads the wrath of that great Guardian of 
 the Peace, they had slowly ceased to strive among 
 themselves, and patched up ancient quarrels, and 
 allied themselves in order to ensure the common 
 safety. 
 
 And, if thev could not hope to wage a war of 
 weapons against John Bull and his family with 
 any prospect of success, to wage a war of tariffs 
 was more hopeless still. Discovering the truth 
 of this, and feeling the magnetic influence of the 
 Customs Union of the Central European States, 
 the whole of the outlving nations slowly gravitat- 
 ed into the charmed circle. And thus it came 
 about, in course of time, that there was Free 
 Trade throughout Europe, the British Isles alone 
 excepted. Now, the effect of commercial union 
 had nearly always been to lead to political union 
 likewise, as Jonathan and John had plainly seen. 
 Hence the M'Kinley Tariff, and the more 
 effectual Defensive Dues. The Customs Union 
 naturally ended in the federation of Germany, 
 Italy, Austria, and one or two adjacent countries ; 
 and the European Zollverein just as naturally cul- 
 minated in the formation of the United States 
 
"the federation of the world." 181 
 
 of Europe, with Russia in Asia and China as 
 Dependencies. 
 
 The same process had taken place in South 
 America ; whilst, in spite of all his rivals there, 
 John Bull had gained such a preponderating 
 influence in Africa that the various nations into 
 which the continent had been divided united 
 for common protection underneath the Union 
 Jack. 
 
 Thus, with lapse of time, the agitated continents 
 had crystallized into three enormous federations, 
 and each of these was grouped into a number of 
 smaller federations. The United Empire of 
 Great Britain (or the Commonwealth of Oceana, 
 as it was now pretty generally called), the United 
 vStates of Europe, and the United States of South 
 America were the three great divisions ; but the 
 United Empire included the United Kingdom, 
 the United States of North America, the Com- 
 monwealth of Australasia, the United States 
 of Hindustan, and the United States of Africa, 
 and each of these was similarly sub-divided. 
 The same remark applied to the United States 
 of Europe and the United States of South 
 America. Against each other all the three 
 
1 82 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 presented an unbroken front. But, in all of them, 
 the widest local liberty prevailed. John Bull espe- 
 cially had applied the federal doctrine to its fullest 
 extent. Union for common purposes — liberty in 
 matters of indn idual concern ; whatever degree 
 of freedom was possible without interfering with 
 the freedom of others — the idea was simple en- 
 ough ; but it had led him, as he had expected, to a 
 United Kingdom, a United Empire, a United 
 Church, and a United People. He had applied ir 
 with remorseless logic, for it was absolutely 
 logical ; and no principle which rests upon founda- 
 tions such as these can fail to vindicate itself, and 
 more than justify the dreams of its promoters. 
 It is only when we build upon the sand that we 
 are disappointed. 
 
 The growth of local liberty in Europe and in 
 South America had taken similar lines, and. 
 before the middle of the twentieth century, the 
 two were organized internally with almost as 
 much completeness as the mighty Commonwealth 
 they copied. 
 
 And, as for Oceana, her power had now become 
 so overwhelming that it was hopeless for either of 
 her rivals, or even for the two combined, to 
 
" THE FEDERATION' OF THE WORLD.' I 
 
 successfully oppose her on the land or on 
 the sea ; and, great as their resources were, they 
 found that there were many things produced 
 within her borders — which extended over more 
 than half the globe — that they could not success- 
 fully produce at home. But each, in like manner, 
 produced a good many things which could not be 
 produced by the other ; and so, to minimize their 
 inconveniences, they each abandoned, as be- 
 tween themselves, their high protective tariffs, 
 and there was Free Trade between Europe and 
 South America, which led, of course, to their 
 political amalgamation. 
 
 Still their commerce did not flourish. Still they 
 were pinched and punished at every turn by the 
 fact that they were debarred from trading with their 
 mighty rival. And, although they struggled long, 
 thev did not make the slightest headway. It was 
 vain for them "to kick against the pricks." And, 
 one momentous day, they telephoned to John that 
 they were weary of the struggle, and, with his 
 consent, were quite prepared to join the English 
 Zollverein. 
 
 John readily agreed, for, notwithstanding the 
 amazing capabilities of his estate, he could not 
 
184 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 conceal the fact that there were several articles 
 which they could grow with greater ease than he. 
 Moreover, he had perceived, from the first, that 
 this wculd be the outcome of his policy. 
 The principles which Bright and Cobden urged 
 had always tickled his imagination ; and, although 
 he had learnt, to his cost, that other nations 
 would not adopt them simplv because they were 
 wise and beautiful, he had never wavered in the 
 faith that they were this and more ; and had 
 ultimately come to see that, in order to make 
 sure of their acceptance, a seeming de- 
 parture from them might be justified. And he 
 had played his cards so well that the Free Trade 
 throughout the World which had, somehow, failed 
 to follow from his preaching had rapidly resulted 
 from his practice within the borders of his own 
 domain. 
 
 Need I sav what followed ? No longer 
 jealous of each other's wealth, and unable to 
 quarrel because, in the first place, one of them 
 was vastly stronger than both the others, and, 
 in the second, because they had not any longer 
 anything to quarrel about, they asked to be 
 allowed to join the Commonwealth. 
 
 The Zollverein was already an accomplished 
 
U THE FEDERATION OF THE WORLD." 185 
 
 fact, and the Kriegsverein was not any longer 
 necessary. But they all sent representatives to 
 the " Mother of Parliaments " ; and, instead of 
 the New Zealander coming to survey the ruins 
 of St. Paul's, he came to sit within the walls of 
 Westminster, and meet the Patagonian and the 
 Eskimo, the Hottentot and the Celestial, and to 
 join in their deliberations for the good of all. 
 The function of government was no longer to 
 trample on and fleece the poor, but to make 
 them richer ; no longer to pour tremendous 
 armies into some adjacent state, but to war upon 
 the wastes of Nature and to conquer them ; no 
 longer to send navies forth to batter down the 
 walls of mighty cities, but to send out fleets 
 to every port, in everv ocean, bearing all the 
 riches they required from zones less favoured, 
 and taking back their own peculiar produce 
 in return. Far-sighted men whom fools had 
 scoffed at had, time out of mind, declared that 
 the earth was capable of growing vastly more 
 than all its hungry multitudes required, and, at 
 last, the wisdom of their words was proved. The 
 Local Councils, spreading like a network over 
 every realm, had found an honest occupation 
 in developing their different resources. The 
 Village Councils supervised the cultivation of th$ 
 
I 86 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN*. 
 
 local soil, and saw to the feeding of the local 
 flocks and herds. The Town Councils forged 
 the iron, and shaped the steel, and wove the 
 wool, and spun the cotton, and attended to the 
 hundred other manufactures which the habits of 
 the people rendered necessary. And both took 
 care that every man who dwelt within their juris- 
 diction should possess a comfortable home, 
 and fare like Dives instead of famishing like 
 Lazarus. The District, National, and Continental 
 Governments were occupied in regulating the 
 relations of the various smaller bodies, and 
 in harmonizing everywhere the law of supply 
 and demand. And, in addition to providing for 
 the satisfaction of the daily wants of all their 
 citizens, they vied in the development of educa- 
 tion, the extension of science, the advancement 
 of literature, and the diffusion of the love of art. 
 And all these peaceful functions of the 
 world-wide Commonwealth " the Parliament of 
 Man " controlled, its Cabinet the central eye — 
 directed by the aggregated brain power of the 
 nations, unobscured by any mist of party passion, 
 and undistracted by the lurid spectacle of war. 
 
 And then, to crown the union of lands, 
 and continents, and races, and the union of 
 
"the federation of the world." 187 
 
 the rich and poor in one great brother- 
 hood, the whole of whom were born into the 
 common wealth — that only real wealth — there 
 came, at last, the union of the churches. The 
 efforts of the Cardinal who, as previously 
 described, had sought a basis for the fusion of 
 the two main branches of the great Church 
 Catholic, had onlv half succeeded till " the 
 Federation of the World " had come. For the 
 Roman Catholics were not confined to Oceana, 
 and, although, within her borders, they had 
 willingly combined, of recent years, with 
 those who held a different creed in a variety 
 of matters which were semi or entirely secu- 
 lar, it had been impossible for them to join 
 the English Church without detaching them- 
 selves from all their brethren in the faith in 
 all the other lands. And, whilst many had been 
 won to it bv virtue of its reasonable service and 
 its lovely ritual, there were millions still who 
 held the Pope as their religious Father, and 
 St. Peter's as the shrine of Christendom. 
 And, from motives of patriotism, if from no 
 other, the Roman Catholics were loth to join a 
 Church which they regarded as an alien. But, 
 when the governments were all united, and 
 they began to realize that, whether they were 
 
1 88 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN'. 
 
 white, or black, or red, or yellow, they were all 
 God's children, and were all one family, they 
 naturally felt that they might well be satisfied 
 with one great Church. And so the Church of 
 Rome agreed to join the Church of Oceana, on a 
 basis mutually acceptable. The Greek Church, left 
 apart, and recognizing how they overshadowed her, 
 and seeing that the two were genuinely one, de- 
 spite an elasticity of ritual which lent itself 
 to the peculiarities of every place, was not 
 very long in following the example of her 
 Roman rival ; for each had long ago rejected 
 dogmas which " the march of mind " had proved 
 untenable ; and, as in the exalted Church which 
 had become another magnet to attract them 
 both, their creeds had each been purified in the 
 furnace of Investigation, and winnowed by the 
 fan of Knowledge, and rooted in the rock of 
 Truth, and, like a " tree of life " whose 
 " leaves " " were for the healing of the nations," 
 the great Church Catholic arose in every land, to 
 be a place of peace, and rest, and aspiration in 
 the sunshine, and a never-failing covert from 
 the storm. 
 
"the federation of the world." iSq 
 
 The old world, which had so sadly stumbled 
 " on its round oi pain "—a mist of gold within 
 its eyes, a stain of blood across its breast, a load 
 of guilt upon its shoulders, and within its heart a 
 rain of bitter tears — had seemed to drink of some 
 elixir vilcv, and grow young again. The problems 
 of its infancy were forgotten in the nobler 
 problems of its prime, and, if its children wept at 
 all, they wept, like Alexander, because they had 
 not any other worlds to conquer. Happy in " the 
 love of comrades, " telling, as they sat beside their 
 great Yule fires, or lav amid the fronded foliage, 
 the strange and gruesome stories of the dreadful 
 past, they spent their lives in making all about 
 them beautiful. Their humblest industries were 
 arts, their " common tasks " were sacraments, 
 and in their veins H the ape and tiger " died, and 
 everywhere I saw the signs of " men with grow- 
 ing wings." 
 
 And some of the boldest of " the coming race" 
 were looking out upon the stars, and wondering 
 if there were worlds to conquer there. And the 
 federations which their poets sang of, now, were 
 federations of the solar system, and the union of 
 which they dreamed embraced Orion and the 
 Pleiades. For thev were gradually discovering 
 
I90 THE DREAM OF AN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 that the tiny planet on whose generous bosom 
 they had built their Earthlv Paradise was 
 but an island in the ocean of infinity, and 
 that the universe, with all its suns and stars, was 
 one. 
 
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JOHN BULL AND HIS OTHER ISLAND. 
 
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
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 "There is a distinctly pleasing ring about Mr. Bennett's 
 poetry. His verses are always thoughtful, polished and 
 vigorous, and they frequently contain a true note of inspira- 
 tion." 
 
 LITERARY OLYMPIC. 
 
 " Mr. Bennett, we are glad to say, is one of our poets who 
 does not sing for the mere sake of sound, but because he has 
 something to say, and finds it easiest and worthiest to say 
 it in verse." 
 
 MANCHESTER : 
 
 Palmer & Howe, 73, 75, & 77, Princess Street. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 
 
 Limited. 
 
 The Book may also be obtained from the " Sunrise " 
 
 Publishing Co. 
 
 For List of Lectures on Ireland and the Irish 
 Question, and other subjects political and literary, 
 address the Author, Market Gate Chambers, War- 
 rington, 
 
4-sg