More than this, interference leads to failure. In 1849, the British Privy Council drafted a bill for the federation of the Australian colonies. It was not made by those for whose use it was intended. {213} Its clauses did "not show any close grip of the subject, or sign that their authors realized how they could be worked in practice."[213-1] Nothing came of the plan. The only purpose it served was to illustrate the futility of one Pan-Angle nation acting for another. In 1819-1820 began the Britannic immigrant occupation of South Africa.[213-2] In 1875 the British Isles government suggested that the various colonies in South Africa should be combined.[213-3] Viewed in the knowledge of to-day it almost appears such a step would have been advisable. The best intentions must be imputed to the outside government. Had this action been advocated by the South Africans, some kind of joint government might have resulted. Since it was not, the plan was merely a source of increased hard feeling between colonists of Dutch and British descent, and is to be included with other instances of British interference which were the major causes of the long and bitter Great Boer War. Each of these nations, Australia and South Africa, when it was ready and in its own way, produced for itself a plan of common government. A Britisher in the highest administrative office in South Africa wrote in 1907: "It is a modern axiom of British policy that any attempt to manage the domestic affairs of a white population by a continuous exercise of the direct authority of the Imperial Parliament, in which the people concerned are not represented, is, save under very special circumstances, a certain {214} path to failure."[214-1] American experience goes still further. There, every community is represented in every government having legislative jurisdiction over it. Yet it has been proved advisable to leave certain spheres of legislation solely to the wishes of the community affected. For many years the British Isles has been the Pan-Angle nation which, from its position, was most tempted to interfere with the affairs of the others. The lessons its failures set forth may be taken to heart by the younger nations as they grow in strength. Neither America, nor Canada, nor Australia, nor South Africa, nor New Zealand, nor Newfoundland can at any time in their future afford to make the mistake of trying to compel one of the six other nations. An advantage of numbers, or position, or wealth, may lie at some time with anyone of them. On that one, then, will rest the obligation of keeping its hands off the others. Particularly does this apply to that one of us whose very existence is due to its revolt against interference, but hardly less to those others of us whose more peaceful origins were made possible by an already won revolution.