It is no answer to say, with Mr. Forster, that 'English-speaking men and women look at life and its problems, especially the problems of government, with much the same eyes everywhere.' For the purposes of academic discussion, and with reference to certain moral generalities, this might be fairly true. But the problems of government bring us into a sphere where people are called upon to make sacrifices, in the shape of taxation if in no other, and here English-speaking men and women are wont not by any means to look at life and its problems, from George Grenville's Stamp Act down to the 333 articles in the tariff of Victoria, with the same eyes. The problems of government arise from clashing interests, and in that clash the one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin is the resolution not willingly to make sacrifices without objects which are thought to be worth them. If we can both persuade ourselves and convince the colonists that the gains of a closer confederation will compensate for the sacrifices entailed by it, we shall then look at the problem with the same eyes: if not, not. Englishmen at home withdrew the troops from New Zealand because we did not choose to pay for them. Englishmen in Canada and Victoria do their best to injure our manufactures because they wish to nurse their own. The substance of character, the leading instincts, the love of freedom, the turn for integrity, the taste for fair play, all the great traits and larger principles may remain the same, but there is abundant room in the application of the same principles and the satisfaction of the same instincts for the rise of bitter contention and passionate differences. The bloodiest struggle of our generation was between English-speaking men of the North and English-speaking men of the South, because economic difficulties had brought up a problem of government which the two parties to the strife looked at with different eyes from difference of habit and of interest. It is far from being enough, therefore, to rely on a general spirit of concord in the broad objects of government for overcoming the differences which distance may chance to make in its narrow and particular objects. If difficulties of distance, we are asked by the same statesman, 'have not prevented the government of a colony from England, why must they prevent the association of self-governing communities with England?' But distance was one of the principal causes, and perhaps we should not be far wrong in saying that it was the principal cause, why the time came when some colonies could no longer be governed from England--distance, and all those divergencies of thought and principle referred to by Mill, which distance permitted or caused to spring into existence and to thrive.