Of course it may be that the tune of “Rule Britannia” may have come to mean the rule, not of the Great, but of the Greater Britain. Only we are again followed by the difficulty of settling what the Greater Britain is. India and its Empire are, to say the least, a puzzle. But passing by that difficulty for a moment, there is to be in any case a Federation of some kind, a Federation of very scattered members, members which have hitherto looked up to a common parent as their abiding head, in truth their abiding ruler. And now that head, that ruler, is asked to do what no ruling state in the world has ever been asked to do. I feel certain that not a few of those who talk about an Imperial Federation of the English-speaking people use those words as having, perhaps a high-sounding, perhaps a patriotic ring, but without ever stopping to think what the words which they use, if they imply anything, really do imply. Yet the word “Federation” has a meaning. Different federations may take, and have taken, very different shapes, but, if they are to be federations at all, one thing is of the very essence. The states that unite to make the federation, while they keep certain powers in their own hands, give up certain other powers to a central body, a body which speaks and acts in the name, not of this or that state, but of the whole body of states. And the powers that they give up to this central body are those powers which are strictly national, those in the exercise of which the nation, as such, comes across the other nations and powers of the world. This nation, any other nation, cannot have any dealings with the State of New York; all its dealings must be with the United States of America. Now we, this kingdom of Great Britain, have been for a good while accustomed to hold the same position in the world as the United States of America, and we have been withal accustomed to hold it for a much longer time than the United States of America have. Are we willing to give up this position, and to sink to the position of the State of New York or the State of Delaware? For this is what Federation really means. Some other conceivable form of union may conceivably mean something else; but it is Federation that is talked of, and this is what Federation means. Hitherto the Parliament of Great Britain, that is the King, Lords, and Commons of Great Britain, has been a sovereign assembly, an assembly which knows no superior on earth and which knows no limit to the range of its powers. If Great Britain becomes one member of a Federation alongside of the British colonies in Australia and Canada, the Parliament of Great Britain will cease to be all this; it will become a subordinate legislature, like the legislature of the State of Rhode Island or of the Canton of Schwyz, a legislature which can deal only with its own subordinate range of subjects, and may not meddle with that higher range of subjects which it has given over to the Federal power. The question indeed may further arise whether any Great Britain, any Parliament of Great Britain, should be allowed to remain at all. It may be thought fairer, nay, it may even be in the interest of Great Britain itself as getting it more votes in the Federal body, that Great Britain should no more be heard of, and that England, Scotland, and Wales, nay, for ought I know, Wessex and Mercia, Lothian and Gwynedd, should all enter the Union as separate States. I am not arguing for or against all this. I only again ask whether those who talk about Imperial Federation have always weighed all these chances, and also how far any of them is consistent with the tune of “Rule Britannia.”