Even with these concessions, can England
keep her great colonies? They are still loyal in word. They still affect
English manners and English speech, and draw their intellectual supplies
from England. On the prospect of a war with Russia they nearly all
offered volunteers. But everybody knows that allegiance is on the
condition of local autonomy. If united Canada asks to go, she will go. So
with Australia. It may be safely predicted that England will never fight
again to hold the sovereignty of her new-world possessions against their
present occupants. And, in the judgment of many good observers, a
dissolution of the empire, so far as the Western colonies are concerned,
is inevitable, unless Great Britain, adopting the plan urged by Franklin,
becomes an imperial federation, with parliaments distinct and
independent, the crown the only bond of union--the crown, and not the
English parliament, being the titular and actual sovereign. Sovereign
power over America in the parliament Franklin never would admit. His idea
was that all the inhabitants of the empire must be citizens, not some of
them subjects ruled by the home citizens. The two great political parties
of England are really formed on lines constructed after the passage of
the Reform Bill of 1832.
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