ORGANIZING THE EMPIRE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—I am perfectly willing to let my views speak for themselves ; what truth they may contain must be able to bear the brunt of adverse criticism. On one or two points, however, you will pardon me for correcting you.
1. I am not seeking " to place every colony in the precise posi-
tion occupied by Ireland just before the Union." That position, if we recollect that politically Ireland is simply England's oldest colony, was almost precisely such as the colonies now occupy, with self-government at home, but no representation in the Parliament of the mother country. From that position I seek to extricate them, by giving the latter, without suppressing the former.
2. I do not, that I am aware, seek " to plunge the British Empire into the scrape out of which the American Union is ex- tricating itself." If I have read aright the history of the Union, and especially of its Secession War, that " scrape " consisted in the growth at the South of a determination, which had to be put down by force, to substitute for an organized national unity a group of allied States,—in other words, for what I advocate that which you propose.
3. I do not " require the Peers to forego all control over Imperial policy." I said distinctly (see p. 70) that the House of Lords would form, "at least for the present, a quite sufficient ' other House' to the Imperial Commons." Indeed, I consider that the House of Lords usually knows more on colonial subjects than the House of Commons, and it is on this account that no remodelling of that House (by means of colonial peerages, which have been advocated by some, or otherwise) appeared to me, in view of the question I was treating, to require present consi- deration.—Your obedient servant. J. M L. Lincoln's Inn, January 22.
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