Now there are, roughly speaking, three types of overseas “possessions.”  They may be either (1) territory that was originally practically unoccupied and that was settled by the imperial people, or (2) territory with a barbaric population having no national idea, or (3) conquered states.  In the case of the British Empire all three are present; in the case of the French only the second and third; in the case of the Russian only the first and third.  Each of these types must necessarily follow its own system of developments.  Take first those territories originally but thinly occupied, or not occupied at all, of which all or at least the dominant element of the population is akin to that of the “home country.”  These used to be called by the British “colonies”—­though the “colonies” of Greece and Rome were really only garrison cities settled in foreign lands—­and they are now being rechristened “Dominions.”  Australia, for instance, is a British Dominion, and Siberia and most of Russia in Asia, a Russian Dominion.  Their manifest destiny is for their children to become equal citizens with the cousins and brothers they have left at home.

There has been much discussion in England during the last decade upon some modification of the British legislature that would admit representatives from the Dominions to a proportional share in the government of the Empire.  The problem has been complicated by the unsettled status of Ireland and the mischief-making Tories there, and by the perplexities arising out of those British dependencies of non-British race—­the Indian states, for example, whose interests are sometimes in conflict with those of the Dominions.

The attractiveness of the idea of an Imperial legislature is chiefly on the surface, and I have very strong doubts of its realisability.  These Dominions seem rather to tend to become independent and distinct sovereign states in close and affectionate alliance with Great Britain, and having a common interest in the British Navy.  In many ways the interests of the Dominions are more divergent from those of Great Britain than are Great Britain and Russia, or Great Britain and France.  Many of the interests of Canada are more closely bound to those of the United States than they are to those of Australasia, in such a matter as the maintenance of the Monroe Principle, for example.  South Africa again takes a line with regard to British Indian subjects which is highly embarrassing to Great Britain.  There is a tendency in all the British colonies to read American books and periodicals rather than British, if for no other reason than because their common life, life in a newish and very democratic land, is much more American than British in character.

On the other hand, one must remember that Great Britain has European interests—­the integrity of Holland and Belgium is a case in point—­which are much closer to the interests of France than they are to those of the younger Britains beyond the seas.  A voice in an Alliance that included France and the United States, and had its chief common interest in the control of the seas, may in the future seem far more desirable to these great and growing English-speaking Dominions than the sending of representatives to an Imperial House of Lords at Westminster, and the adornment of elderly colonial politicians with titles and decorations at Buckingham Palace.