Nobody has explained what is to be the sanction of any decree, levy, or ordinance of the Federal Council; in other words, how it would deal with any member of the Confederacy who should refuse to provide money or perform any other act prescribed by the common authority of the Bund. If anybody supposes that England, for instance, would send a fleet to Canada to collect ship-money in the name of the Federal Council, it would be just as easy to imagine her sending a fleet in her own name. Nothing can be more absurd than any supposition of that kind, except the counter-supposition that no confederated state would ever fail to fall cheerfully in with the requirements of the rest of them. Mr. Forster has an earnest faith that the union would work well, but that does not prevent him from inserting a possible proviso or understanding that 'any member of the Federation, either the mother country or any of its children, should have an acknowledged right to withdraw from the mutual alliance on giving reasonable notice.' No doubt such a proviso would be essential, but if a similar one had been accepted in America after the election of President Lincoln, the American Union would have lasted exactly eighty years, and no more. The catastrophe was prevented by the very effective sanction which the Federalists proved themselves to possess in reserve. What is the common bond that is to bring the various colonies into a federal union? It is certain that it will have to be a bond of political and national interest, and not of sentiment merely, though the sentiment may serve by way of decoration. We all know how extremely difficult it was to bring the provinces of Canada to form themselves into the Dominion. It is within immediate memory that in South Africa, in spite of the most diligent efforts of ministers and of parliament, the interests of the Cape, of Natal, of Griqualand, and the two Dutch republics were found to be so disparate that the scheme of confederation fell hopelessly to pieces. In Australia the recent conference at Sydney is supposed to have given a little impulse towards confederation, but the best informed persons on the spot have no belief that anything practical can come of it for a very long time to come, if ever,--so divergent are both the various interests and men's views of their interests. Three years ago a conference of all the Australian colonies was held to consider the adoption of a common fiscal policy. The delegates of New South Wales, South Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, and Western Australia voted in favour of a resolution which recommended the appointment of a joint commission to construct a common tariff, but Victoria voted in a minority of one, and the project was therefore abandoned. If there is this difficulty in bringing the colonies of a given region into union, we may guess how enormous would be the difficulty of framing a scheme of union that should interest and attract regions _penitus toto divisos orbe_.