A standing and permanent organisat

Concession of independent legislatures to all the most important
colonies, the idea of summoning representatives to the Imperial
Parliament is, indeed, as one high colonial authority has declared it to
be, a romantic dream. If the legislature of Victoria is left to settle
the local affairs of Victoria, the legislature of the United Kingdom
must be left to settle our local affairs. Therefore the colonial members
could only be invited to take a part on certain occasions in reference
to certain imperial matters. But this would mean that we should no
longer have one Parliament but two, or, in other words, we should have a
British Parliament and a Federal Council. [3] _Constitutions of the
Britannic Empire_ (1872), p. 43. Another consideration of the highest
moment ought not to be overlooked. In view of our increasing population,
social complexities, and industrial and commercial engagements of all
kinds, _time_ is of vital importance for the purposes of domestic
legislation and internal improvements. Is the time and brainpower of our
legislators, and of those of our colonies too, to be diverted
perpetually from their own special concerns and the improvement of their
own people, to the more showy but less fruitful task of keeping together
and managing an artificial Empire? VI. Eight or nine years ago Mr.
Forster delivered an important address at Edinburgh on our Colonial
Empire. It was a weighty attempt to give the same impulse to people's
minds from the political point of view as Mr. Seeley tries to give from
the historical. Mr. Forster did not think that 'the admission of
colonial representatives into our Parliament could be a permanent form
of association,' though he added that it might possibly be useful in the
temporary t