and effect all the phenomena of human history, we must accept it, and if we accept we must teach it. The mere fact that it overthrows social organizations can not affect our attitude. The rest of society can reject or ignore, but we must follow the new light no matter where it leads. Only about two hundred and fifty years ago the common sense of mankind, supported by the authority of revealed religion, affirmed the undoubted and self-evident fact that the sun moved round the earth. Galileo suddenly asserted and proved that the earth moved round the sun. You know what followed, and the famous "E pur si muove." Even if we, like Galileo, should be obliged by the religious or secular authority to recant and repudiate our science, we should still have to say as he did in secret if not in public, "E pur si muove."

Those of us who have reached or passed middle age need not trouble ourselves very much about the future. We have seen one or two great revolutions in thought and we have had enough. We are not likely to accept any new theory that shall threaten to disturb our repose. We should reject at once, and probably by a large majority, a hypothetical science that must obviously be incapable of proof. We should take the same attitude that our fathers took toward the theories and hypotheses of Darwin. We may meantime reply to such conundrums by the formula that has smoothed our path in life over many disasters and cataclysms: "Perhaps the crisis will never occur; and even if it does occur, we shall probably be dead." To us who have already gone as far as we set out to go, this answer is good and sufficient, but those who are to be the professors and historians of the future have got duties and responsibilities of a heavier kind than we older ones ever have had to carry. They can not afford to deal with such a question in such a spirit. They would have to rejoin in Heine's words:

Also fragen wir beständig,

Bis man uns mit einer Handvoll
Erde endlich stopft die Maüler,
Aber is das eine Antwort?

They may at any time in the next fifty years be compelled to find an answer, "Yes" or "No", under the pressure of the most powerful organizations the world has ever known for the suppression of influences hostile to its safety. If this association should be gifted with the length of life that we all wish

for it, a span of a century at least, it can hardly fail to be torn by some such dilemma. Our universities, at all events, must be prepared to meet it. If such a crisis should come, the universities throughout the world will have done most to create it, and are under most obligation to find a solution for it. I will not deny that the shadow of this coming event has cast itself on me, both as a teacher and a writer; or that, in the last ten years, it has often kept me silent where I should once have spoken with confidence, or has caused me to think long and anxiously before expressing in public any opinion at all. Beyond a doubt, silence is best. In these remarks, which are only casual and offered in the paradoxical spirit of private conversation, I have not ventured to express any opinion of my own; or, if I have expressed it, pray consider it as withdrawn. The situation seems to call for no opinion, unless we have some scientific theory to offer; but to me it seems so interesting that, in taking leave of the association, I feel inclined to invite them, as individuals, to consider the matter in a spirit that will enable us, should the crisis arise, to deal with it in a kindly temper, and a full understanding of its serious dangers and responsibilities.

Ever truly yours,

HERBERT B. ADAMS, Esq.,

HENRY ADAMS.

Secretary, etc., American Historical Association.

III.-RISE OF IMPERIAL FEDERALISM.

By Prof. GEORGE B. ADAMS, of Yale University.

The question of the relation of England to her colonies is one which has been long under discussion. Until very recently it has been discussed from one side only, and that a side presenting, as it would seem to Americans, unnecessary practical difficulties. The problem has been to devise methods by which a national government could be so extended as to make it an imperial government, administering the affairs of a wide empire. It is not strange that so difficult a problem has found no satisfactory solution in something more than a hundred and fifty years of discussion and experiment.

The American Revolution was the result of a clumsy experiment which is not likely to be repeated, but the result, instead of aiding the solution of the difficulty, seems to have hindered it. It seems to have led to the belief that the colonies were all destined to become independent; that as soon as they should become strong enough they would inevitably demand to be recognized as separate and autonomous nations, and that this must be granted them. This feeling was strengthened by a variety of circumstances between 1835 and 1870, like the Canadian rebellion, the granting of responsible government to a number of the larger colonies, the rapid development of Australia, and the trade theories of the Cobden school. In the decade between 1860 and 1870 unusual interest was excited in colonial questions by a conjunction of events, of which the most important were the supposed danger to Canada from the civil war in the United States, the Maori war in New Zealand, and a series of letters by Prof Goldwin Smith, published in the Daily News in 1862, and immediately collected into a book called The Empire, which attracted much attention and which contained a vigorous and plausible argument in favor of the

dissolution of the Empire. But notwithstanding the continued growth of the belief in the ultimate independence of the colonies-in 1865 two prominent Englishmen suggested the adop tion by Parliament of plans, which they published, by which the independence of a colony might be legally declared whenever it should wish-the country was somewhat startled to find in 1869-1870 that Mr. Gladstone's ministry was apparently on the verge of carrying this theory into practice and turning the larger colonies adrift without waiting for them to express a desire for independence. This was at least the result to which a large portion of the people of England believed the policy of the cabinet was tending.

The first definite suggestion of imperial federation as a method for the organization of the Empire was an outgrowth of the discussion which the Government's colonial policy excited at this time. The credit of this suggestion must be given to Mr. Edward Jenkins, the author of Ginx's Baby, who published an article entitled "Imperial federalism" in the January number of the Contemporary Review for 1871, and followed that with a second and still more definite article in the April number. In the colonial discussions of the preceding ten years there had been many passing references to the possibility of a federal organization for the Empire. What Mr. Jenkins did was to give greater definiteness and an air of practicality to what had been before merely a vague ideal. He performed also no slight service in bringing together two words which had been for a long time in separate use in colonial discussions, and so coined a most effective phrase-imperial fed. eration-which helped to crystallize the ideas, and became the watchword of the friends of the unity of the Empire.

The movement still lacked, however, one most important support in the eyes of the average Anglo-Saxon. It had not as yet received the sanction of anyone who could be called a "practical statesman." This lack was supplied in November, 1875, by Mr. W. E. Forster, who announced, in an address delivered in Edinburgh, his belief in the feasibility and wisdom of imperial federation. Progress in public favor, however, still continued slow, in spite of a more or less constant discussion of the subject, until early in the eighties, when the difficulties crowding upon the Empire in both its foreign and colonial interests created a strong, though apparently temporary, current in favor of some immediate action. It was under