In this conception the Crown became the chief visible link of Empire. Autonomists believed that 'His Majesty's Government' should remain a manifold power. 'We all claim to be His Majesty's Government,' declared Sir Wilfrid at the Conference of 1907. The Government at Sydney was as much His Majesty's as the Government at Westminster. The Canadian Privy Council was as much His Majesty's as the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. The tendency in the Dominions had been to magnify the powers of the king, who was equally their king, and to lessen the powers of the parliament elected in the United Kingdom. In fact the Crown became, if the metaphor is not too homely for such great {289} affairs, a siphon which transferred power from His Majesty's Government in the old land to His Majesty's Governments in the Dominions. It was, however, not enough to have independent control. It was equally necessary, as the other half of the policy of co-operation, to provide means for securing united and effective action. These were provided in many forms. High commissioners and agents-general became increasingly important as ambassadors to London. Departments of External Affairs ensured more constant and systematic intercourse. Special conferences, such as the Naval Conference of 1909 in London, or the several exchanges of visits between the Australian and the New Zealand ministers, kept the different states in touch with each other. But by far the most important agency was the Colonial or Imperial Conference, now a definitely established body, in which Dominions and Kingdom met on equal footing, exchanged views, and received new light on each other's problems. Thus the question of co-operation between the Five Nations became much like the problem which faces any allies, such as those of the Triple Entente, save that in the case of the British Empire the alliance is not transitory and a {290} common king gives a central rallying-point. Nowhere has this free form of unity, as unique in political annals as the British Empire itself, received clearer expression than in the words of Edward Blake in the British House of Commons in 1900: For many years I for my part have looked to conference, to delegation, to correspondence, to negotiation, to quasi-diplomatic methods, subject always to the action of free parliaments here and elsewhere, as the only feasible way of working the quasi-federal union between the Empire and the sister nations of Canada and Australia. A quarter of a century past I dreamed the dream of imperial parliamentary federation, but many years ago I came to the conclusion that we had passed the turning that could lead to that terminus, if ever, indeed, there was a practicable road. We have too long and too extensively gone on the lines of separate action here and elsewhere to go back now. Never forget--you have the lesson here to-day--that the good will on which you depend is due to local freedom, and would not survive its limitation.