’Not merely that, but the new one has to be of a different design, adapted to a fresh, most likely a severer, set of circumstances.  A man who refused to utilise the wisdom and resources of his age in machinery, would be regarded as a madman.  It is the same in the economy of the human family; to dread wise and ordered change is to court trouble.’

Thus, Sir George reasoned that we had arrived at an epoch of federation, the application of which would be something new, only the conditions needing it had not arisen before.  The ancients had not discovered the art of securing political representation, or, what the moderns called the principle of federation.  It was not necessary for the ancients, as it had become for the moderns.  Simply, the conditions of the world had changed, and that on two planes.

In the past, there had been the continual discovery and peopling of new countries.  No more remained to be discovered; no corner of the globe remained unknown to us.  We knew what each nation was engaged in doing, and we were able to estimate, with some measure of assurance, what it would continue doing.  Next, the mass of the people had gained a potent voice in the management of affairs.  Democracy was coming to the throne, if it had not quite grasped all the trappings.

The key of what was to be, rested in those two facts, which made the world so different a working-machine from what it had been.  And the using of the key was primarily confided to the Anglo-Saxon race, since it occupied the greatest extent of the globe, and included what was ripest and best in democracy.

‘Everywhere,’ Sir George showed, ’our people are working, with might and main, to develop the resources of the earth.  They are characterised by a common language, a common literature, and common laws.  Shakespeare, Milton, the riches of our classic literature, belong as much to these new nations over-sea, as they do to the Mother Country.  The men and women of Anglo-Saxon stock carry with them, wherever they go, the one faith of Christianity.

’Really, there could not be anything but a unity, a oneness, in the whole structure upon which the race rests.  If the progress, in natural federation, has been so great, through years when South Africa, or New Zealand, was far distant from England, when there were no swift steamers and no cables under the sea, what must it now become?  Such wonderful changes has modern science brought about, that the peoples of Greater Britain and America are next-door neighbours to the folks in the Old Country.

’Nay, daily and hourly counsel goes on between all parts of the world, bringing the wisdom of the whole to each point.  Communities, separated by seas and continents, are able to discuss with each other, on the minute, what action is for the highest interests of all.  It is impossible that the federation we see existing in the incessant congress of the civilised world, can ever be gone back upon.’