In the Colonies, at least in Canada, there are a good many of us who believe, not in the expansion of England, but in the multiplication of Englands, and to whom Imperial Federation, or any scheme for the political re-absorption of an adult and distant Colony into its Mother Country, appears totally impracticable. Yet we regard the Mother Country not only as the object of our filial affection and pride, but as the centre of our civilization, feel a practical as well as a sentimental interest in everything that touches her, and tremble at her danger as at our own. We look on from a distance, it is true; and though the cable transmits to us the news, it does not, nor do even the newspapers and the correspondents, transmit to us the mind of England. In this respect our judgment may be at fault. On the other hand, we are out of the fray; we stand clear of English parties; we care for nothing but the country; we see, while those immediately engaged do not see, the heady current of faction, ambition, chimerical aspiration, political fatalism, and disunionist conspiracy hurrying the nation towards a bourne which all the speakers and writers on the Franchise Bill and the Redistribution Bill, by the vagueness of their speculations on the practical results, proclaim to be unknown. The electorate, that is to say, the government—at least the body by which the government is appointed and its policy is determined—is undergoing reconstruction on the largest scale. Yet we look in vain, even in the speeches of the great statesman who is the author of these measures, for any forecast of their practical effect, of the influence which they will have on the character of government, or of the sort of policy which they will produce. Able and impressive as the speeches may be, there is little in them but philanthropy and arithmetic, neither of which is politics. The effect of the Redistribution Bill especially is evidently a matter of the merest conjecture. Lord Salisbury thinks that it will act in one way, and Mr. Chamberlain that it will act in another. The first considers it favorable to aristocratic reaction, the second considers it favorable to authoritative democracy. The Bill is a leap in the dark. In any case less important than that of a reconstruction of the national institutions, safe experiments would probably precede sweeping change. A new mode of paving would be tried first in one or two streets; a new mode of cultivation would be tried first in one or two fields. But if you proposed to try the Redistribution Bill in one or two specimen districts, a chorus of scornful reprobation would arise from all parties, sects, and ambitions. Nor would any voices be louder than those of some who are foremost in hailing the advent of political science, and preaching the necessity of a scientific method in all things. This is not a deliberation on the amendment of national institutions; it is a battle of parties.