14
34
15
For in less than one hundred years from the present time, the British Crown will have more white subjects of the English race. (I do not at the present moment take into account the coloured millions of India), in the Colonies than in the United Kingdom. When called upon for equitable contributions towards the maintenance of the Imperial Army and navy, and the common support and defence of the Empire, Englishmen in the Colonies will assuredly claim an adequate representation together with Englishmen in the mother-country, not indeed in the existing Houses of Lords and Commons, but in some kind of Imperial Congress. I am well aware of the manifold difficulties which surround this great question, but the consolidation of the British Empire cannot be beyond the genius and patriotism of British statesmen.*
7.
* The distance of the Colonies from the mother-country has been sometimes adduced by unreflecting persons as a fatal objection to a future confederation of the British Empire. It need scarcely be observed, however, that, not to mention the triumph of steam and of the electric telegraph over time and space, it is already a matter of far less difficulty and fatigue to travel to London from Quebec or Melbourne