Household Guest (Volume 3) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: selves, except by courtesy or special arrangement. Commercially, Great Britain is treated by them as if she were a forcign country, and she puts them on the same plane with forcigners. According to free trade there are no nations. Clearly the present condition is not one that has in it the elements of consistency or permanency. It is a condition of unstable political equilibrinm and that always engenders an uneasiness and a restlessness and doubt as to the future most unfavorable to harmonious development. Its only explanation and defence is that it is a transient stage in a long process. It is the result of our political growth, but we are still growing and the elothes that fit us to-day will cramp us to-morrow. Men everywhere are beginning to feel that the present condition is unsatisfactory. They demand that the nominal union shall be made real, that for every privilege there shall be a corresponding responsibility, for every right a corresponding duty, for every burden a corresponding share of power. These men are called Imperial Federationists. They are in no hurry, and have no objection to be called nick-names. They think that five millions of Canadians, for instance, ought not to be satisfied much longer with political dependence or inferiority, and that they are as competent to share in the supreme work of government as three millions of Scotchmen or five millions of Irishmen. What are thcir aims and plans ? They have no cut and dried scheme. Some of them therefore dislike the term Federation, for it implies that they are in favor of a federal system and no other. Some of them also dislike the term Imperial, as it has a flavor of Absolutism. Britain has never been an empire. It has been a free commonwealth for centuries. But they care little for names. They love thcir f...