the difference between two utterly distinct proposals which are likely to be confounded. I add only one warning. Vast territories have been united, both on the Federal system, as in the United States, and on the system of more thorough union into a single body, as in the Empire of old Rome. But hitherto they have always been continuous territories. Provinces and states, however distant, have been physically one; they shade off gradually into one another; it is possible to walk from the furthest point at one end to the furthest point at the other. It seems another thing to unite in the same way a mass of territories, not only at vast distances from one another, but utterly isolated. Carthage, Venice, Genoa, have held a scattered dominion of this kind; but it has been merely a dominion. With them there was no federal tie, no political communion of any kind; there was simply the uncontrolled authority of the ruling city. The question is whether federation or any other form of political union is possible among members so widely scattered. It may be true that it takes no longer time now to go from New Zealand to Westminster than it took to go from Shetland to Westminster at the time of the Union of Great Britain. But Shetland and Westminster, though not parts of one continuous territory, are parts of one geographical whole. There are no foreign waters to cross, no foreign lands to pass by, on the road between them. I am not, I must end by again saying, here either to recommend any practical course or to dissuade from any practical course. My business is a lowlier one. One part of it is the pedantic business of calling attention to a process which is very needful before we begin to discuss any practical course, the process of finding out exactly what it is that we have to argue for and against. I am not arguing for or against federation or any other scheme; I simply point out what federation is, and what are the difficulties about it. I am trying to show what is the real meaning of that or of any other word, and thereby to avoid the confusion of thought and often of action which follows when a name which has been long used to mean one thing is suddenly turned about to mean something else. Another part of my business is to suggest real analogies and to warn against false ones. I have referred largely to the experience of political communities in ages very distant from our own time and on a scale very different from the political communities of our own time. I wish to point out the real, instructive, practical, likeness which, with a little pains, may be seen through much real and more seeming unlikeness. Above all, I wish to point out that some of the great inventions of modern times, which might at first sight seem to sever us more utterly than ever from those small and ancient commonwealths, have really brought us nearer to them. The great lesson of history is that the nature of man, at any rate of civilized European