in this most feverish region, I consider it to be always my duty to furnish you with as faithful a record as possible of our diagnostics.  And, after all, may I not with all submission ask, Is not the question at issue a most momentous one?  What is it indeed but this:  Is the Queen of England to be the Sovereign of an Empire, growing, expanding, strengthening itself from age to age, striking its roots deep into fresh earth and drawing new supplies of vitality from virgin soils?  Or is she to be for all essential purposes of might and power, Monarch of Great Britain and Ireland merely—­her place and that of her line in the world’s history determined by the productiveness of 12,000 square miles of a coal formation, which is being rapidly exhausted, and the duration of the social and political organization over which she presides dependent on the annual expatriation, with a view to its eventual alienization, of the surplus swarms of her born subjects?  If Lord J. Russell, instead of concluding his excellent speech with a declaration of opinion which, as I read it, and as I fear others will read it, seems to make it a point of honour with the Colonists to prepare for separation, had contented himself with resuming the statements already made in its course, with showing that neither the Government nor Parliament could have any object in view in their Colonial policy but the good of the Colonies, and the establishment of the relation between them and the mother-country on the basis of mutual affection; that, as the idea of maintaining a Colonial Empire for the purpose of exercising dominion or dispensing patronage had been for some time abandoned, and that of regarding it as a hot-bed for forcing commerce and manufactures more recently renounced, a greater amount of free action and self-government might be conceded to British Colonies without any breach of Imperial Unity, or the violation of any principle of Imperial Policy, than had under any scheme yet devised fallen to the lot of the component parts of any Federal or imperial system; if he had left these great truths to work their effect without hazarding a conjecture which will, I fear, be received as a suggestion, with respect to the course which certain wayward members of the Imperial family may be expected to take in a contingency still confessedly remote, it would, I venture with great deference to submit, in so far at least as public feeling in the Colonies is concerned, have been safer and better.

[Sidenote:  ‘Separation’ and ‘annexation.’]

You draw, I know, a distinction between separation with a view to annexation and separation with a view to independence.  You say the former is an act of treason, the latter a natural and legitimate step in progress.  There is much plausibility doubtless in this position, but, independently of the fact that no one advocates independence in these Colonies except as a means to the end, annexation, is it really tenable?  If you take your stand