sailing out on a lake like this in a small boat in the moonlight. And one of them proposed to give up his native country in order that he might marry an English girl. And I think it is the same girl that now has to give up her native country-for a time— for the sake of her children. Were you ever at Ellesmere, Lady Sylvia?'

Lady Sylvia had never been to Ellesmere, but she guessed why these things were spoken of. As for Bell, she was putting the gathered flowers in a book; they were for her children.

We drove back to dine in the large saloon, with its flashing lights and its troop of black waiters. We were more than ever impressed by the beautiful attire and the jewelry of the ladies and gentlemen who were living in Saratoga; and in the evening, when all the doors of the saloons were thrown open, and when the band began to play in the square inside the hotel, and when these fashionable people began to promenade along the balcony which runs all round the intramural space of grass and trees, we were more than ever reminded of some public evening entertainment in a Parisian public garden. Our plainly dressed women-folk were out of place in this gay throng that paced up and down under the brilliant lamps. As for our ranch-woman,

she affected to care nothing at all for the music and this bright spectacle of people walking about the balcony in the grateful coolness of the summer night, but went down the steps into the garden, and busied herself with trying to find out the whereabouts of a katydid that was sounding his incessant note in the darkness. was it they played? Probably Offenbach; but we did not heed much. The intervals of silence were pleasanter.

What

But was it not kind of those two gentlemen, both of whom wore ample frock-coats and straw hats, to place their chairs just before us on the lawn, so that we could not but overhear their conversation? And what was it all about ?

'Pennsylvania's alive-jest alive,' said the eldest of the two. 'The miners are red-hot-yes, Sir! You should have heerd me at Maunch Chunk-twenty thousand people, and a barbecue in the woods, and a whole ox roasted-biggest thing since "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." When I told 'em that the bloated bond-holders rob

bed 'em of their hard-earned wages, to roll in wealth, and dress in purple and fine linen, like Solomon in all his glory, and the lilies-of-the-valley, you should have heerd 'em shout. heerd 'em shout. I thought they would tear their shirts. The bond is the sharpp'inted stick to poke up the people.'

'And how about Philadelphy?' says the other.

'Well, I was not quite so hefty there. There's a heap of bonds in Philadelphy; and there's no use in arousing prejudices -painful feelings-misunderstandings. It ain't politics. What's good for one sile ain't good for another sile You sow your seed as the land lays; that's politics. Where people hain't got no bonds, there's where to go in heavy on the bond-holders. But in Philadelphy I give it to 'em on reform, and corruption, and the days of the Revolution that tried men's souls, and that sort o' thing-and wishin' we had Washington back again. That's always a tremendous p'int, about Washington; and when people are skittish on great questions, you fall back on the Father of his Country. You see-'

'But Washington's dead,' objected the disciple.

'Of course he's dead,' said the other, triumphantly;' and that's why he's a living issue in a canvass. In politics the deader a man is, the more you can do with him. He can't talk back.

And about Massachusetts now?' the humble inquirer asked.

'Well those Yankees don't take too much stock in talk. You can't do much with the bonds and corruption in Massachusetts. There you touch 'em up on the whiskey and the nigger. The evils of intemperance and the oppressions of the coloured brother, those are the two bowers in Massachusetts.'

'Rhode Island?'

'Oh, well, Rhode Island is a one-horse State, where everybody pays taxes and goes to church; and all you've got to do is to worry 'em about the Pope. Say the Pope's comin' to run the machine.'

Then these two also relapse into silence, and we are left free to pursue our own speculations.

And indeed our chief manageress and monitress made no secret of her wish to leave Saratoga as soon as possible. We

had taken it en route out of mere curiosity; it was obvious to her that she could gain no moral here to preach at the head of her poor pupil. These lights and gay costumes and languid quadrilles were the mere glorification of idleness; and she had brought this suffering one to America to show her -in our rapid transit from place to place -something of the real hardships that human nature had to fight against and endure, the real agony that parting and distance and the struggle for life could inflict on the sons and daughters of men. Saratoga was not at all to her liking. There was no head for any discourse to be got out of it. Onward, onward, was her cry.

So it was that on the next day, or the next again, we bade farewell to this gay haunt of pleasure, and set out for grimmer latitudes. We were bound for Boston. Here, indeed, was a fruitful theme for discourse; and during the long hours, as we rolled through a somewhat Bavarian-looking country-with white wooden houses set amid that perpetual wooden forest that faded away into the hills around the horizon-we heard a great deal about the trials of the early settlers and their noble fortitude and self-reliance. You would have fancied that this lecturess was a passionate Puritan in her sympathies; though we who knew her better were well aware that she had a sneaking liking for gorgeous ritual, and that she would have given her ears to be allowed to introduce. a crucifix into our respectable village church. That did not matter. The stern manners and severe discipline of the refugees were at the moment all she could admire, and somehow we began to feel that, if it had not been for our gross tyranny and oppression, the Mayflower would never have sailed.

But a graver lesson was still to be read to us. We could not understand why, after

a time, the train was continually being stopped at short intervals, and we naturally grew impatient. The daylight left us, and the lights in the carriage were not bright enough to allow us to read. We were excessively hungry, and were yet many miles. away from Boston. We had a right to speak bitterly of this business.

Then, as the stoppages became more lengthened, and we had speech of people on the line, rumours began to circulate through the carriages. An accident had happened to the train just ahead of ours. There was a vague impression that some one had been killed, but nothing more.

It was getting on toward midnight when we passed a certain portion of the line; and here the place was all lit up by men going about with lanterns. There was a sound of hammering in the vague obscurity outside this sphere of light. Then we crept into the station, and there was an excited air about the people as they conversed with each other.

And what was it all about? Queen T-— soon got to know. Out of all the people in the train, only one had been killed-a young girl of fifteen she was travelling with her father and mother; they had not been hurt at all. The corpse was in a room in the station; the parents were there too. They said she was their only child.

We went on again; and somehow there was now no more complaining over the delay. It was past midnight when we reached Boston. The streets looked lonely enough in the darkness. But we were thinking less of the great city we had just entered than of the small country station set far away in the silent forest, where that father and mother were sitting with the dead body of their child.

(To be continued.)

ABOUT the end of the year 1869

much anxiety was felt, not only in political circles but throughout the country, on account of the supposed desire of several members of the Liberal Government to detach the colonies from the empire.† The denials which were made, and the discussions in Parliament which ensued, are matters of history. They did not very much change the impression which previously existed, except to remove apprehension of immediate hostile action against the colonies.

Mr. Disraeli, in the address which he delivered to the Conservative Association at the Crystal Palace on the 24th of June, 1872, commented on the action which the Liberals had taken towards disintegrating the Empire. He said:

'If you look to the history of this country since the advent of Liberalism forty years ago, you will find that there has been no effort so continuous, so subtle, supported with so much energy and carried on with so much ability and acumen, as the attempts

*[This paper on the subject of Imperial Federaion, by the Premier of New Zealand and one of the eading statesmen of the Empire, may be read as a pendant to the articles of Mr. Goldwin Smith, Sir Francis Hincks, and Mr. Elihu Burritt, recently published in this Magazine.-ED. C. M.]

+ If there is any lesson which we should draw from the loss of the United States, it is the misfortune of parting from those colonies in ill-will and irritation. We parted with those great colonies because we attempted to coerce them; and if we now part with our present colonies it will be because we expel them from our dominion. The circumstances are different, but the result will be the same, and that result must be the bitter alienation and undying enmity of these great countries. For my own part, I see with dismay the course which is now being taken, a part at once cheeseparing in point of economy, and spendthrift in point of national char

acter.

I will be no party to it, and I beg to enter my humble and earnest protest against a course which I conceive to be ruinous to the honour and

fatal to the best interests of the Empire.Lord Carnarvon in the House of Lords, February, 1870.

of Liberalism to effect the disintegration of the Empire.'

He then commented upon the ability with which the effort was sustained. Self-government, he considered, was granted to the colonies as a means to the end. He continued:

'Not that I for one object to self-government. I cannot conceive how our distant colonies can have their affairs administered except by self-government. But self-government, when it was conceded, ought, in my opinion, to have been conceded as part of a great policy of Imperial consolidation. It ought to have been accompanied by an Imperial tariff, by securities to the people of England for the enjoyment of the unappropriated lands which belonged to the Sovereign as their trustee, and by a Military Code, which should have precisely defined the means and the responsibilities by which the colonies should have been defended, and by which, if necessary, this country should call for aid from the colonies themselves. It ought further to have been accompanied by the institution of some representative council in the metropolis, which would have brought the colonies into constant and continuous relations with the Home Government. Well, what has been the result of this attempt during the reign of Liberalism for the disintegration of the Empire? It has entirely failed. But how has it failed? By the sympathy of the colonies with the mother-country. They have decided that the Empire shall not be destroyed, and, in my opinion, no Minister in this country will do his duty, who neglects an opportunity of reconstructing as much as possible our colonial empire, and of responding to those distant sympathies which may become the source of incalculable strength and happiness to this land.'

. .

Probably there was no part of the Conservative programme that more powerfully appealed to the masses of the people than this indirect pledge to respect the integrity of the Empire, for the feeling was very general that the Liberals did not care how soon it was broken up. Since the accession of the Conservative Government to office, they have scarcely ever failed on any available public opportunity to express the high

It will be interesting to consider whether those utterances have had more meaning than mere grace and compliment. Seven years since, the feeling was wide-spread that the Government desired to detach from the Empire the colonies* not held for military purposes. New Zealand was virtually given to understand that she was at liberty to secede from the Empire; and in Canada and at the Cape of Good Hope† the respective Governors discussed the separation of the colonies as a contingency neither remote nor improbable. Lord Kimberley, the Secretary of State for the Colonies who preceded Lord Carnarvon, has, however, frequently stated that it was not the policy of his Government to throw off the colonies. No one would presume to doubt his Lordship's assertion, and it was made in a manner meant to convey that it expressed the truth both in letter and spirit. It is generally understood that individually some of the members of the late Government looked upon the colonies as sources of weakness, and it is scarcely unfair, in the face of these supposed individual opinions, and of Lord Kimberley's specific declarations, to come to a conclusion that the subject was discussed in Cabinet, and at some time or other a decision arrived at, that whatever the individual opinion of some of Her Majesty's Ministers might be, the Government should not adopt as their policy the disintegration of the Empire. But without any policy of

Throughout the rest of this paper, unless the context otherwise implies, the word 'colonies' will be used to designate the constitutional colonies and the dependencies which are likely to become constitutional colonies.

+ In North America, we have unmistakable indications of the rapid establishment of a powerful independent State. In Australia, it is probable that its several settlements, with their great wealth and homogeneous population, will see their way to a similar condition. In New Zealand, the severance is being accomplished under very painful circumstances. In Jamaica, where responsible government was wholly inappropriate, it has ceased to be. In this colony I cannot think that any desire exists for its transfer to the rule of another power, neither can I think that, with its scanty resources and its divided population, it would desire to stand alone.-Extract from speech of His Excellency the Governor of the Cape of Good Hope (Sir P. Wodehouse), delivered January 25, 1870.

Even the Spectator, one of the most able, earnest, and thorough-going supporters of Mr. Glad

ister the law as it stood, a strong conviction might have been entertained that the colonies would in course of time be detached from the Empire, and that the sooner the result ensued the better.

Now, Lord Beaconsfield's utterances mean otherwise. He looks forward to the colonies becoming more valuable to the the Empire. He had nothing, he said at a banquet given to Her Majesty's Ministers by the Lord Mayor in 1875, to add to his previously expressed views, 'that we should develop and consolidate our colonial empire; that we should assimilate not only their interest, but their sympathies, to the mother-country; and that we believe they would prove ultimately, not a source of weakness and embarrassment, but of strength and splendour to the Empire.' In Lord Kimberley and Lord Carnarvon we have the representatives of opposite points of view. Lord Carnarvon administers the Colonial Department as if he thought the colonies would remain with the Empire. He has asserted on several occasions an authority for the Colonial Department which his predecessor would not have claimed. It would be wrong to attribute to Lord Kimberley either indolence or indifference. He administered the Colonial Office not without exerting authority, but exerting it in a manner that indicated his

stone's Government, felt constrained to accept this view of the situation. Take the following passage for example :

Ministers have changed their policy, have changed it very abruptly, and have changed it for the best of all reasons-because they had begun to discover that their line was not the line of the people of England, and would, if pushed to its logical results, end in events which would bring down the bitter displeasure of the people of England. Unless the colonies clearly understand this, we shall not reap half the benefit of the change, and therefore it is that we wish the only reasonable and intelligent rationale of this sudden change of front to be clearly understood there. This is, in fact, a deathbed repentance made in the moment of its dissolution-far be it from us to anticipate that distant event--but a repentance that came only just in time to secure its salvation, to assert the most emphatic popular condemnation of its policy towards New Zealand. Had the colonial agitation and request for peaceable separation come, we at least entertain no doubt that even Mr. Gladstone's popularity would not have sufficed to save the Ministry.'-Spectator, May 21, 1870.

aim to fit the colonies for a career of independence. Lord Carnarvon administers the department not only without a thought to such a change, but he constantly gives recurring evidence that he considers the colonies permanently bound to the Empire. South Africa has presented to him a most delicate and difficult problem. He might He might have temporarily dealt with it by refusing to recognise its gravity. But he has conscientiously grappled with it, and its various phases have found him not unprepared. It is probably reserved to him to complete the work of consolidation in Africa which he has so well begun. Then will belong to him the proud reflection that he stands alone in the character of his work-that no one before him, by peaceful means, has ever succeeded in consolidating such vast territories as those of Canada and South Africa. The reflection may nerve him to the larger task of consolidating the Empire. The annexation of Fiji and of the Transvaal Republic strikingly illustrates the difference, wide as the poles asunder, between the policies of the Liberals and Conservatives. The two administrations to which we have so lengthily referred thus typify opposite points of the colonial question.

It is not, of course, to be supposed that the desire to see the colonies separated, or indifference to such a result, is shared in by all Liberals. On the contrary, amongst the Liberals the colonies have strong supporters. There has been no more powerful utterance in favour of confederation than the address delivered by Mr. Forster, at Edinburgh, in November, 1875, though much of the force was lost by the unfortunate declaration that if a colony wished to separate he would be no party to preventing it. Mr. Childers, again, must be credited with a high opinion of the value of the colonies. He has never abated the early interest he took in them, and probably commands from them more personal support than any other English statesman.

Mr.

Magniac, Sir R. Torrens, Mr. Mundella, Mr. McArthur, and Mr. Kinnaird, have stood forward at various times as earnest advocates of colonial interests, and Sir John Lubbock has lately given evidence of the same goodwill by laborious investigations, the results of which have been published in these pages. It is generally understood by the colonists that the colonies remain

colonies because it suits them and the mother-country that they should so continue. It is equally generally supposed that if the colonies wished to secede they would not be forced to remain-that they are free to go. From this has followed the widespread feeling that the independence of the colonies is merely a question of time; and the colonists are insensibly imbibing that belief. If it is meant to retain the colonies, can any words do justice to the folly and the wickedness of training the people to a false belief as to their future institutions, of teaching them to expect that for which they ought not to look; of leading them along a path at some point of which the destiny they are taught to believe in must be overthrown?

The practical follows the theoretical, and the colonies involuntary exercise their power in the direction in which they believe their destiny tends. It is difficult to establish that the question is urgent. It cannot be made to appear urgent in the ordinary sense. It cannot be said, 'If you neglect to deal with this question during this or that session, calamity will arise before you meet again.' But is that not urgent, the delaying to do which means in years to come a compound interest of calamity? The question is urgent in the sense that the forest-planting question is urgent. You may destroy forests and neglect to replace them, and the middle-aged may not live to suffer in consequence. But the time will come when the country will suffer, when regularly-flowing rivers will become fitful torrents, when the earth, deprived of its moisture and its soil washed into the ocean, will cease to produce as it did before the hand of man commenced to destroy without concurrently reproducing. Who could point to the exact time when destruction exceeded desirable limits and reproduction became an imperative necessity? Even so, who can say when it may be too late to deal with the colonial question? In calmness and repose it may be easily dealt with. But when immediate urgency appears, when angry passions are aroused, when it will b perceived that the course of legislation during the long past, and the direction in which men's minds have been trained, have all converged to a future disintegration, what hope then without disaster to preserve the unity of the Empire?