■394 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION E. 



Kingdom is no longer at the centre. It has taken its place on 

 the orbit as one of the dominions, revolving like Canada, Australia, 

 New Zealand and South Africa round the British Crown. This 

 is a change of the most fundamental character, involving a scheme 

 'of administration entirely without precedent. 



We have only to glance at some of the practical suggestions 

 that have been made in the past few decades to realise the futility 

 of attempting to use traditional imperial machinery for adminis- 

 tering the British Empire, as we understand it and think of it 

 to-day. In Charles II. 's time colonial affairs were administered 

 by a committee of the Privy Council. It has been proposed, 

 therefore, to revive the imperial authority of that council and 

 include within it Agents-General from the colonies. Another 

 proposal was made to expand the House of Lords. A third, to 

 make use of the House of Commons by admitting representatives 

 from the outlying parts of the empire. 



Apart from all detailed objections to such schemes — and 

 they are manifold — Lord Milner has exposed their futility 

 in an article contributed to the " Standard of Empire " on 

 the " Meaning of the Wider Patriotism." " The failure of past 

 attempts at imperial organisation is due to our imperfect grasp 

 of the wider patriotism," he says. " In practice we are always 

 slipping back to that antiquated conception of the Mother Country 

 as the centre of a political system with the younger States revolving 

 round it as satellites. Against that conception the growing pride 

 and sense of independence of the younger States revolts. That 

 revolt is sometimes falsely regarded as evidence of a desire for 

 separation. But the two things are not really identical. Indeed 

 it may be said that the spirit of independence in the several States 

 is a necessary stage in the evolution of a new form of union." 

 Precisely. That is the language of a man who has had colonial 

 as well as British experience, and who knows that whatever be the 

 constitution ultimately contrived for uniting the Empire, it must 

 be a constitution which works in harmony with the rising sense of 

 nationality that prevails in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and 

 South Africa. 



But it is in the assertion of this sense of nationality that we find 

 the vital principle of the new imperialism which makes the empire 

 of to-day so essentially different from any other empire of the 

 past 2000 years. Hitherto nationality and empire have been 

 incompatible. It was the rise of nations in the middle ages that 

 undermined the Imperial Dominion of the House of Hohenstauffen. 

 In the Spanish, French, and Dutch Empires of modern times there 

 was no thought of recognising, much less encouraging, national 

 aspirations ; and though statesmen of the 18th century knew it 

 not, on either side of the Atlantic, it was at root the assertion of 

 nationality that underlay the struggle of the American colonists 

 against England. Not even Pitt had any idea then that nationahty 

 in America was compatible with imperial sovereignty in England. 



