IMPERIAL FEDERATION.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 November 1915, Page 7

IMPERIAL FEDERATION.

To the Editor. Sir,—The announcement that Mr. Massey and Sir Joseph Ward .are going Home- (in conjunction with representatives of the other British Colonies), to consult with the Imperial Government, is of great interest to all, and the results may have a far-reaching and abiding influence on our nation's history. It is therefore interesting to i.ote that that great Victorian statesman and Imperialist,' Benjamin Disraeli, Earl Beaconsfield, .suggested the desirability of such an interchange of views between the Mother Country and the colonies as far back as 1851. On Dec. ft of that year, writing to the Earl of Derby, he says: — "It is impossible to reconstruct our colonial system, or, rather, Empire, by freeing the colonics of all duties, or .some other mode and conceding to them as represented in the Imperial Parliament the vacancy occasioned by the disfranchised boroughs, so bringing in a third ejement formally into the House and healing that too obvious division iind rivalry between town and country?" And on December 18, 1851, he says, writing to the same: "I can't help thinking that if this move were matured it might tranquiliso the colonies, revive their affection for the metropolis and widen the basis and sympathies of our party. The colonies are interested in all questions of peace and war, and if they had as it were, their ambassadors sitting in our Senate, their hearts would be with us in a struggle. It must bo an organic principle that they are not to be liable for any portion of the public debt.'' I think that in these paragraphs will probably be found the first germ of the idea of Imperial federation, which has been so long in the air, but which will apparently take some definite shape in the very near future. I may add that my authority for the above is Moneypeiiny and Buckle's ''Life of Disreali," a copy of which is in the Public Library, 't am, etc., C. E. B. New- Plymouth, Nov. 18.