SIR CHARLES DILKE ON IMPERIAL FEDERATION

New Zealand Mail, 20 August 1902, Page 17

SIR CHARLES DILKE ON IMPERIAL FEDERATION

WE MUST WAIT ON THE COLONIES

(From Our Special Correspondent.) 1

<,. ■ LONDON, June 27. , Lnarles Dilke has addressed a letter to the Metropolitan Radical Association in winch the following passage concerning Imperial Federation occurs:—-“I festr that a good deal of harm is being dona here by attempting to press views which are not well thought out, and which are in advance of colonial opinion on the subject. Home Rule all round for the principal parts of the United Kingdom is being advocated, for example, in connection with a scheme of Imperial Federation. But subordinate Parliaments, or even less than Parliaments, such as are being advocated for the principal parts of the United Kingdom,'cannot be offered to the great self-governing colonies; and while it would be conceivable that the detached self-governing colonies, New Zealand and N ewfoundland, might come into such a scheme—though doubtful, I think, as regards New Zealand—it is impossible to offer it to the or to the Dominion. Aloreover, those who advocate schemes of Imperial Federation are wont to forget that India, with by far the larger part of the population of the Empire—lndia, which pays more than one-third of the cost of the armies of the Empire—must be consulted before any such scheme is put forward with any chance of adoption by responsible statesmen. The Dominion of Canada might conceivably be willing to come into a federation scheme if her assent were bought by trade arrangements which would enhance the cost of living in this country. But it is, in my opinion, useless to consider the difficult problem thus presented when one knows that the Commonwealth of Australia would not be willing to diminish the virtually sovereign character which in practice her Parliament has assumed.”