April 22, but an answer two days later conveyed the satisfactory intelligence of the willingness of the New South Wales Government to co-operate fully. For all practical purposes of State business, therefore, such colonial centres as Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Wellington, Hobart, and Perth were as close to the metropolis as a provincial town in England itself. Within a few hours the popular will of the Australians upon a definite scheme could be fully ascertained. Under such circumstances, mutual action, based upon common deliberation, was possible from one end of the Empire to the other. In the future it is reasonable to anticipate from the proceedings of the Conference itself that communication, whether by post or telegraph, will be still more cheap and quick, and so the deliberations of any future Conference or meeting will be more readily known and canvassed in our Colonies than at present. Time and space have been annihilated, and one of the far-reaching results of this annihilation will be, we may believe, to further the ends of the British Empire.

At the very outset, the discussion was withdrawn from the range of purely speculative and academical inquiries and narrowed down to hard matters of business. The topic of Imperial Federation was studiously omitted as one for which the Colonies were not yet ripe. In his circular to the Colonial Governments, the Secretary of State for the Colonies defined last November the scope of the Conference. Taking as his text the passage in the Queen's speech on the Prorogation of Parliament, in which the conviction was expressed that "there was on all sides a growing desire to draw closer in every practicable way the bonds which unite the various parts of the Empire," he drew attention to "two leading subjects for consideration, Imperial Defence, and Imperial Inter-communication," at the same time adding that “it was not impossible that there might be some other important question which, in the general opinion of the Colonial Governments, might properly and usefully be brought under consideration." But he deprecated the discussion of any of the subjects falling under the range of what is known as Imperial Federation, there having been no expression of colonial opinion in favour of any steps in that direction. The discussion, therefore, without being unduly limited and restricted, was put upon a feasible and practicable basis to begin with, and it is certainly profitable to set the results of the Conference side by side with the text of the original instructions. For this purpose alone it is worth while to quote the weightier passages of the Despatch. A great deal of misconception appears to have prevailed on the subject of the function, character and constitution of the Conference. A wellknown writer in the June Fortnightly, p. 825, observed that "the

Conference which has been held lately was nominally a general conference with the self-governing Colonies, but practically it was an Australian Conference, and, for the present, it would seem that the chief strength that can be gained from our colonial possessions for general Imperial defence, must come from Australia." With all due deference to the writer in the Fortnightly, whose knowledge of "Greater Britain" is confessedly great and trustworthy, it is necessary, nevertheless, to traverse this statement. In the first place the Conference was not "nominally a general Conference with self-governing Colonies." In reality it represented fully the Crown Colonies as well. It was the object of those who issued the original summons to collect evidence first-hand from every group and section of our Colonies. Considering how deeply Hong-Kong, Singapore, Columbo, and other strategic and commercial points are concerned, it was advisable to take into our confidence every representative man, official and unofficial, who could best explain local interests. From the Crown Colonies, therefore, there came thirty-three gentlemen, nominated by the Crown, or invited by the Secretary of State. The Natal Legislative Council elected their own representative, and commissioned him, as their delegate, to explain a most difficult and embarrassing class of difficulties in South Africa. Natal, like Western Australia, cannot yet be classed amongst the self-governing Colonies, yet the Conference would have been incomplete without Mr. John Robinson, Mr. Forrest, and Mr. Burt, just as it would have been incomplete without Mr. C. Washington Eves, and Sir J. H. Lefroy as the delegates of Jamaica and the Bermudas. It is impossible not to notice the extreme care and solicitude of the Government to avoid even the appearance of dictation on the important subject of the composition of the Conference. The Right Hon. E. Stanhope and Lord Harrowby made their position as clear and definite as possible, and the Times fairly expressed the general official sentiment when it wrote, "It is all important that colonial views should be expressed by persons who are undoubtedly colonial representatives, and as little as possible through those who might be regarded as the nominees of the Crown." So it was that in the case of Natal, Mr. John Robinson was a better delegate than either Sir Theophilus Shepstone or Mr. Greenacre or Sir John Akerman, for example, who are local men of ability and eminence, but too intimately connected with the executive. The very last thing the Government would have desired in a Colonial Conference would have been to rush a decision by means of nominee members.

Part of the legacy of the abortive South African Confederation Bill was to prove the extreme sensitiveness of colonists on their constitutional rights and prerogatives. It was apprehended (1874

1876) that the Confederation scheme of Lord Carnarvon was being forced upon South Africa by means of a preliminary Conference consisting of Crown nominees from Natal, the Transvaal (then a British possession), and the Cape itself. The Molteno Cabinet proved restive, and the whole Bill, misapprehended from the very beginning, met with an undeserved fate.

The Imperial Conference was "broad-based upon the people's will," as far as colonists were concerned. As was natural in such a composite assembly as this Conference, where, by the way, there was no attempt at proportional representation-the whole Dominion of Canada with its four millions being represented by only two members, Sir Alexander Campbell and Mr. Fleming, whilst the Australian Colonies had seventeen-the delegates from the self-governing Colonies spoke with the greatest power and influence, just as they represented the greatest amount of wealth and a more completely emancipated Government, and, as it happened, Australia was very fully represented. But to argue that the Canadian Dominion and South Africa were behindhand in the part they took, and in the responsibilities they assumed, because they had fewer delegates, or because they said or promised less than Australia, is slightly misleading. The delegates were there to explain situations and marshal facts, as well as to promise subsidies. The Cape delegates were able to point out that the duties of guarding a Kaffir frontier involved a severe annual impost upon the colony. In 1880 the estimated cost of the organization for the current financial year was £217,151, under the following heads of expenditure:

The nominal strength of the Colonial army was not less than 115,285 men, composed as follows:

Reverting to history, the South African delegates might also have explained the fact that the Basuto War, in which, according to some colonists, the Colonial Government had been severely handicapped by an unsympathetic "Kimberley" policy, had involved them in a debt of five millions, under which they still groaned. The same arguments from internal military expenditure which the Cape Colony might use were at the disposal, in the same way, of the Natalians. Putting the South African by the side of the Australian case it was scarcely fair, therefore, to demand a subsidy from the Cape towards Table Bay defences and Simon's Town fortifications on the same scale as might be expected from the unembarrassed Australian Colonies for the defence of King George's Sound or Thursday Island. We all knew that the "Island Continent" has thriven and advanced far more rapidly than South Africa, but one reason why it has done so may be found in the absence of desolating frontier feuds with aborigines. No fierce clans like those of the (ever-increasing and irrepressible) Kaffirs at the Cape have hindered the growth of Victoria or New South Wales. Before we judge, therefore, whether Australia deserves the reputation of being our only real helpmate in defence schemes, it is necessary to recall past history and to consider collateral responsibilities. One consideration which tells in favour of South Africa, and excuses her apparently niggardly attitude in Imperial contributions towards defences is this. Every year that the Colonists there are keeping order on the frontier, and guarding the gate to the interior, they are giving security to British capital invested in the country, and opening a wider field for manufactured goods amongst the numberless Kaffir races who throng the reserves, villages, and borders of the British possessions. Farther a-field, there is the possibility of a still greater market towards Bechuanaland and the interior, and this native market may be more profitable to the British manufacturer than any an Australian can show. So in the apportionment of contributions amongst the Colonies it is very necessary to consider their present military duties, and always to keep the fact prominently before us that the Canadian Dominion and South Africa have calls upon them on their frontiers which Australia has not. It is impossible, of course, to underrate Australian loyalty, or to ignore all those ethnic affinities which bring them in greater agreement and harmony with the mother country than could be expected in Dutch South Africa, or along the valley of the St. Lawrence; but in balancing local and imperial responsibilities, and drawing up an estimate of imperial duties in such a matter as defence, the vote of Australia, willing and generous as it is, for armaments and defences, for ships and torpedoes, is in reality nothing more than

a kind of set-off against that permanent military charge which for many years past has been weighing down Canada and the Cape.

With regard to the Dominion it may be observed that the whole country has long been divided, for military purposes, into twelve districts, the reserve militia numbering 655,000 men, and the active militia 45,000 men, making up 700,000 in all. In this force are included 61 batteries of garrison-artillery, and 16 of fieldartillery, and 40 troops of cavalry. There are two royal schools of gunnery in addition to a Royal Military College. That the military organization of the Dominion is an effective one, has been proved on many occasions, and especially in the case of the Riel rebellion.

From a constitutional point of view the Colonial Conference noted both a beginning and a consummation, and stands out, therefore, as a landmark in our constitutional history. It contained within itself, although in an informal and unostentatious way, the seeds of a Future Federal Council which should grow up with our Empire, and follow the expansion of our race. By its thoroughly representative character it included all parts. At the same time it marked, by the very presence of the delegates from the self-governing Colonies, a completed stage and a constitutional climax in our colonial history, where there could be said to exist a certain amount of finality. Yonder the colonists, entrusted with fully responsible governments, had completed their Temple of Liberty; and here, in classic England, they were to begin afresh and lay the foundation-stone of a new imperial fabric. At present we may not see the end of our new and contemplated political structure in its full and completed shape, just as we may not grasp the minutia and the architectural details of the Imperial Institute soon to be built at South Kensington; but, somehow or other, we feel we are moving upon right lines of consolidation in accordance with national sentiment and development. Political reconstruction must be very slow and gradual, and a very wide margin left for chance. Impressed with the magnitude of their task, and knowing full well the countless difficulties in their way, the originators of the Colonial Conference intended the attitude of the delegates to be simply tentative and experimental. Although definite and practical action might arise from their deliberations, still they were to carry on the fore-front of their programme consultation, and not action.

Again, this Colonial Conference was, in reality, the outcome of previous meetings and of previous national celebrations. It was part of a general movement, fostered by Royal hands, in accordance with popular sympathies. It is impossible, in reality, to