342 Timehri. 



those difficulties were properly realised by the people at home and not 

 even by members of the West India Committee who had been for a 

 long time away from the West Indies. They, of course, knew that 

 Jamaica was as far away from British Guiana as Gibraltar was from 

 England. The chief objection that he saw to Federation was that it 

 meant the weakening of local Government. It meant the determina 

 tion of important matters by an Executive or Legislature not fully 

 in touch with local conditions and requirements. (Hear, hear.) There- 

 fore he would rather strive, at present at least, for uniformity and 

 combination without a definite Federation of widely-scattered and isolated 

 units. He was therefore relieved to find that Mr. Davson was very 

 nearly in agreement with him on that point, if not quite. With the 

 exception of British Guiana they were speaking entirely of islands, and 

 could they call to mind a successful Federation of a number of islands or 

 countries separated by water ? The successful Federations that they had 

 before them to-day were Austria-Hungary — it did not hold very tightly 

 together he admitted — they had the German Empire, and that was a 

 wonderfully successful Federation, the reason, he believed, being that it 

 was a thorough commercial Union, for it was the great Customs Union 

 of the German Empire that gave its people a common interest. Then 

 they had Australia, a Continent and a successful Confederation, but 

 the efforts to join New Zealand to it were unsuccessful ; and even 

 Tasmania could not be brought in. Then they had South Africa, a 

 purely continental Confederation of a compact block of land, and that 

 he thought also would be successful. Then they had also the Confedera- 

 tion of Canada, the one they as Britishers were all so proud of ; but 

 even Canada had so far failed to attract Newfoundland, the island lying 

 very near her coast. The West Indian islands were very widely 

 separated by the length of time it took to travel from one to another 

 and they were further separated by the fact that there was no West 

 Indian community of sentiment and ideas. (Hear, hear. • 



Federation Severed by Water. 



Therefore he was very much afraid that real Federation was a thing 

 not to be realised in their time at any rate. He would give them one other 

 instance of how water seemed to sever Federation in our own country 

 between Great Britain and Ireland. There they had a thorough Federa- 

 tion between England, Scotland and Wales, but Ireland would always be 

 separated and the splitting of it from the other three communities was, as 

 they probably knew, now giving rise to such terrible and serious commo- 

 tion and discussion at home. (Hear, hear. ) He hoped they did not think 

 he desired to throw cold water on Mr. Davson's proposals. He thought 

 them excellent, but he thought the best way of knitting together the 

 different Governments more closely was gradually to do so by those con- 

 ferences that they had begun with the Quarantine Conference. (Hear, 

 hear.) The latter Conference had been one of the most successful that 

 had been ever held, for although he was living right on the other side of 

 the world still he saw from the papers he read what a terrible thing 



