62 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



an impartiality and inexpensiveness that will insure to every citizen 

 the enjoyment of the most elementary of all rights — the right to 

 justice. 



Side by side with the process of differentiation within colonies 

 rose up an integration of colonies with one another, which also re- 

 peats the history of the mother country. The same principles of au- 

 thority and consent, again in unequal proportions, are blended here. 

 It was by conquest that the seven old English kingdoms were welded 

 into a united England, Strathclyde incorporated, Ireland annexed. 

 By force disguised as bribery, aided by the patriotic or interested 

 efforts of a few nobles and placemen and in opposition to the will of 

 the inhabitants, Scotland and Ireland were joined to England. Some 

 four or five groups of British colonies have reduplicated, or are now 

 reduplicating, a parallel development. In North America it was 

 preceded and accompanied * by altercations among the different 

 colonies. Boundary disputes repeat old English intertribal strug- 

 gles. Tariff wars are now waged, and commercial reciprocity treaties 

 contracted, between contemporary colonies. New Haven and Con- 

 necticut, which consisted of towns federated by consent, were united 

 by force. Voluntary alliances against the Indians or to conquer 

 Canada, or involuntary unions under despotic rulers, associated 

 larger or smaller North American groups from Maine to Maryland. 

 The loose confederation of 1781 was too voluntary to last. The final 

 federation that superseded it had a large element of latent force 

 mixed with consent. It was hardly less a conquest of the North by 

 the South than that of the Heptarchy by Wessex. The Constitution 

 is a monument of Southern ascendency. So it was that, for seventy 

 years off and on, the United States was governed by a Southern 

 oligarchy, whether under the hegemony of Virginia or of South 

 Carolina. The dominion of Canada means (even under a French 

 premier) the dominion of Ontario, with Quebec bribed, and New- 

 foundland not bribed enough, to enter. In 1876 the ten New 

 Zealand provinces were amalgamated under a central Government 

 which for many years remained that of the earlier-settled North 

 Island. A federation of the Australian colonies planned seven years 

 ago under the auspices of protectionist Victoria, is likely to succeed 

 under the leadership of free-trading New South Wales. Mr. Rhodes 

 is advising the federation of the British colonies of South Africa; 

 forty years ago a federation of all the South African states was de- 

 signed by Sir George Grey, then high commissioner, but with little 

 patriotism and still less wisdom, for at that time it necessarily im- 

 plied the dominance of the Dutch element. In 1846 that far-seeing- 

 statesman had projected a union of the South Sea Islands with New 

 Zealand. Only four years ago the same aged prophet of federation, 



