Proceedings of the Society. 353 



connect it with the countries behind at a cost which it was within the 

 means of the colony to pay, the whole problem would be settled and 

 there could be no question that they must have a railway. It must be 

 i|iiite obvious to anybody who thought of it that it would never do to 

 have a railway which would practically bankrupt the colony. 



West Indian Federation". 

 There was another subject which wa* also coming prominently 

 before the public and which he thought the Society might consider. 

 That was the question of the federation of the West Indies. It was a 

 subject that had been considered from time to time ; it had at one time 

 bulked largely in the public eye, and interest in it had then waned, but 

 the subject now seemed to be attracting a good deal of attention. It was 

 a very important subject and one which they might with advantage 

 consider. His own opinion, he was bound to say. was that eventually 

 there must come federatien of the West Indies, and he did not see how it 

 could be prevented. Federation was in the air. It was a movement 

 which had affected all the world, not only in politics but in other depart- 

 ments of life. For example, it had affected the commercial life of the 

 whole world, as they saw in the creation of limited liability companies. 

 Those of them who had got as far as middle age could remember the 

 time when enterprises were carried on by individuals or a number of men 

 in partnership, but that had been very largely changed, and in place of 

 individuals carrying on commercial enterprises they were now being 

 carried on by limited liability companies. And as they knew, that move- 

 ment had atfected this colony in common with the rest of the world. It 

 was a movement that was affecting this colony and all the West Indian 

 colonies in every department of life, and they could not escape it The 

 advantages of united action were so obvious that it was being taken 

 advantage of all over the world. In politics the movement was very 

 pronounced. It was seen in the Union of the Dominion of Canada, the 

 great Australian Commonwealth, and only the other day in the Union 

 of South Africa. And the movement not only atfected their own 

 Empire but vvas exemplified in the union of what was now the German 

 Empire. It would thus be seen that this federal movement had been 

 spreading over the world, and it did not appear that the West Indies 

 could any more escape it than any other part of the world, and could no 

 more resist it than one could resist the How of the Demerara river. It 

 therefore seemed to him that the West Indies must in due course become 

 a West Indian Dominion just as the North American colonies had become 

 the Canadian Dominion. How long that would be was another matter. 

 It would not be very soon and whether he or many of those present 

 would live to see it was a t|uestion, but that it would come and must 

 come he had no doubt. 



One objection which had been made, and which he had heard many 

 times, was that they could not federate the West Indies because the 

 various colonies had different interests. That was of course so. Each 

 colony had its own particular industries and interests and those interests 

 in every case were not identical with the others. But they had the same 



