INTRODUCTION WHEN viewed from the national standpoint of the inestimable benefit of binding the Empire together in permanent union, no political subject is probably of greater and more supreme importance, and of wider interest to the whole British people, than the one which has received the comprehensive and expressive designation of Imperial Federation.' To the inquiry of what it is, I reply by answering in a sentence that it is the government of the Empire by the Empire for the Empire. The idea is not new. A hundred years ago Burke dreamed of its accomplishment, which in his own day appeared to be impracticable, owing to the physical impediments of distance, and the consequent impossibility of obtaining the necessary means of |