For the mother-land an organized national unity means, not degradation from her imperial position, but a frank acceptance of the facts of national growth, and the greater dignity which would come from acknowledged leadership of the free communities which have grown up around her. Prussia gained, instead of losing, in dignity, when many of the higher functions of her historic parliament became merged in those of the Reichstag of the German people, when she gave up her individual place as a nation in Europe to assume the leadership of the German Empire. So would it be with Great Britain. {28} For the colonies national unity means independence: not 'virtual' independence, as their present ill-defined condition is sometimes spoken of, but the manly and sufficient independence which comes from asserted rights and assumed responsibilities. There are two kinds of independence. The first is that of the son grown restless under tutelage, who throws himself off, more or less recklessly, from the family connection, refuses family advice or assistance, and takes the chances of life on his own account. Given, on the one hand, overbearing and unsympathetic parents anxious to retain their control till the last moment, or, on the other, children filled with ignorant self-conceit and consequent discontent, and independence of this first type is the natural result. Sometimes it is justified, and succeeds; sometimes it is born of blind stupidity and makes lamentable shipwreck. But this is not the ideal or the only form of independence. Given reason, due consideration, mutual regard for rights on both sides, and the family tie becomes a partnership which combines the advantages of all the liberty required for full development with the unity of action and counsel which assures strength. It produces a great Rothschild firm, each head of which is free to work out his own views at his own centre of the world's finance, but each in touch with the other for counsel or action, each making use of the business machinery established by all the rest, and thus securing incomparable business advantages for all. So in a wider sphere it produces the nation--the great {29} American Republic--the Swiss, Germanic, or Canadian Confederation; each state or group of states working independently within its own well-defined sphere of influence; each taking its share as freely in the equally well-defined but wider orbit of a large national life.