When then we hear of “Imperial Federation,” we first wish to know the meaning of the word “imperial;” next we wish to know the meaning of the word “federation.” I once defined “a federal government in its perfect form” as “one which forms a single state with regard to other nations, but which consists of many states with regard to its internal government.” And I have seen that definition quoted with approval by advocates of Imperial Federation[3]. It has been argued that a federation that answers my definition is already formed--perhaps not by the whole of the Queen’s dominions, but by “the United Kingdom, the Dominion of Canada, the different Australian colonies, New Zealand, and the Cape.” From such a list I could not have left out the Kingdom of Man and the Duchy of Normandy--that part of it I mean which clave to its own dukes and remained Norman, when the rest submitted to a foreign king and became French. Nor are we told whether India, Heligoland, Gibraltar, and a few other places, are parts of the federation or not. Now the singular thing is that some of those who look upon the connexion of the United Kingdom with the other parts of the Queen’s dominions as being already a federal union are fully sensible of the fact which at once shuts out the federal relation. “The United Kingdom,” it has been well put, “keeps to itself, and absorbs within itself, the foreign policy of the whole realm.” The word “realm,” commonly used as equivalent to “kingdom,” seems here to be used as equivalent to “empire,” and the relation here described may be fairly called Imperial. The same fact has been put yet more strongly; “As regards internal affairs the colonies have self-government. As regards foreign affairs, they are subjects, not merely of the Queen, but of our Parliament--that is of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, or rather of such of those inhabitants as are voters.”