Canadian experience leads us to think that Australian Federation would lend itself to national union in another way. In Canada before 1867, the date of Confederation, the Colonial Office was continually appearing as a factor in provincial politics. Whatever trouble arose, Downing Street was to blame, and party passion vented all its bitterness upon this official representative of England's policy. It is safe to say that Confederation eliminated the Colonial Office as an active, or at any rate, an irritating factor from Canadian party politics. It was found that by far the larger number of those questions which gave rise {214} to friction with the Colonial Office were transferred to the domain of the Dominion government; that the difficulties were such as were necessarily incident to the management of a large state; that Canadians had to fight out among themselves disputes once fought out with an English minister. It is a striking fact that since Canada attained to a united voice on public questions, since confederation imposed upon her the necessity of dealing with internal difficulties and forming a large judgment on common affairs, not only has no serious difficulty arisen with the Colonial Office, but the deliberately expressed opinion of the Canadian Government has, as a rule, given a general direction to British policy in dealing with external matters which concerned Canada. In one or two of the Australian colonies the Colonial Office is still heard of occasionally as it was in Canada thirty or forty years ago; the Colonial Secretary of the day is a frequent subject of political lampoon; denunciation of his policy is a part of the stock-in-trade of the party politician. To say that this denunciation is affected rather than real is not enough; it is at times a very real irritant between English and Australian feeling. The federation of Australia will, in my opinion, remove this irritant as federation did in Canada, and by eliminating petty differences enable people to take larger views and have fewer suspicions in national affairs. If the Federal Government of Australia reserve the right, as Canada has done, to appoint the governors of provinces, there will {215} be no opportunity for disputes such as that which arose with Queensland a few years ago. If the right be not reserved, a colony will have little room to complain about the manner of its exercise by the Colonial office.