Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, was cooling his heels in lords’ waiting-rooms in London, America was treated exactly as Ireland was—­that is, discriminated against in every way; not allowed to manufacture; not permitted to trade with other nations, except under the most vexatious restrictions; and the effort was continued to make her a mere agricultural producer and a dependent.  All that England cared for us was that we should be a market for her manufactures.  This same selfishness has been the keynote of her policy down to the present day, except as the force of circumstances has modified it.  Steadily pursued, it has contributed largely to make England the monetary and industrial master of the world.

With this outline I pass to her present condition and outlook.  The dictatorial and selfish policy has been forced to give way somewhat in regard to the colonies.  The spirit of the age and the strength of the colonies forbid its exercise; they cannot be held by the old policy.  Australia boldly adopts a protective tariff, and her parliament is only nominally controlled by the crown.  Canada exacts duties on English goods, and England cannot help herself.  Even with these concessions, can England keep her great colonies?  They are still loyal in word.  They still affect English manners and English speech, and draw their intellectual supplies from England.  On the prospect of a war with Russia they nearly all offered volunteers.  But everybody knows that allegiance is on the condition of local autonomy.  If united Canada asks to go, she will go.  So with Australia.  It may be safely predicted that England will never fight again to hold the sovereignty of her new-world possessions against their present occupants.  And, in the judgment of many good observers, a dissolution of the empire, so far as the Western colonies are concerned, is inevitable, unless Great Britain, adopting the plan urged by Franklin, becomes an imperial federation, with parliaments distinct and independent, the crown the only bond of union—­the crown, and not the English parliament, being the titular and actual sovereign.  Sovereign power over America in the parliament Franklin never would admit.  His idea was that all the inhabitants of the empire must be citizens, not some of them subjects ruled by the home citizens.  The two great political parties of England are really formed on lines constructed after the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832.  The Tories had been long in power.  They had made many changes and popular concessions, but they resisted parliamentary reform.  The great Whig lords, who had tried to govern England without the people and in opposition to the crown in the days of George III., had learned to seek popular support.  The Reform Bill, which was ultimately forced through by popular pressure and threat of civil war, abolished the rotten boroughs, gave representation to the large manufacturing towns and increased representation to the counties, and