necessary as a preliminary stage, and apt, because it is so obvious, to overshadow higher considerations. And yet a federation of South Africa, radiating from the Transvaal and containing all the elements of inequality and exclusiveness which marked the Transvaal Government, was not so very remote in the days before the war. A federation of South Africa might still, in conceivable circumstances, be the greatest misfortune which could happen. There is no special magic in the word itself. A true federation under the British flag implies far more than the harmony of the contracting Governments, and when it comes upon South Africa it must mean the practical consolidation there of the British position, the consummation of the ideal of justice and equality for which the war was fought, the strengthening and simplification in that part of the world of the machinery of the Empire.
IV.
The question of the ultimate relations between South Africa as a whole and the Mother Country possesses peculiar snares and pitfalls for the student of colonial development The old conception of an Imperial federation is passing away—the conception, that is, of a hard and fast system of obligation and contribution to an omnipotent Imperial Government in London. In such a system there was no room for a constructive local patriotism; and in two different parts of the Empire, at least, local patriotism has recently assumed proportions which can neither be neglected nor crushed. Modern thinkers are seeking to turn to good account the nascent spirit of nationalism which is already conspicuous in Australia and Canada. A new ideal is making its way, in which the great groups of Colonies shall be the partners, and not the subject States, of an organic Empire, free to develop to the utmost their own defensive and industrial and commercial resources, indissolubly bound together by the ties of common interest and common sentiment.
