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with the formation of the Colonial Society (later the Royal Colonial
Institute) and the controversy over, the Government loan to clew
Zealand. It was stimulated from the literary side by Charles
Dilke'o Greater (1868),, J. A. rroudo'n Occeenna and J. R.
Seeleyto Exrtnrion of Enngland, It overflowed party barriers with
the attachment of W. E. Z'orster and the' Earl of Booebery to the
Imperial Federation League founded in 1884. Improved communications
drew together the different parts of the Empire #- no one speaker
said in 1892 of the Empire,, . "., a vast outspread of English people
drawn closer every year by steam and electricity. " 0) A speaker at
an Imperial Federation League rzooting)marvolled at the fact that,
#%**in one of the remotest of our Welsh villages, in a tiny
grocers shop$ he found a tinned lobster which had cone all the
way from'23ritiah Columbia. " (2)
Imperial federation involved a
number of schemes for the political unification of the Empire,
none of which came near to realisation; they could be countered
effectively by Imperialists who pointed to ties of contiment, race
and 3nngua
.
The othor problem was the importance of Imperial
trade in a period of frequent dopreaaiono and intonaitiod foreign
competition. Trade arguments were much more plausible in relation
to the white colonjoa than hon applied to Africa, though oven hero
1) Society for the Fropogation of the Gospel, Annual Bn rtn, 1892«
(2) Quoted in Co onweali lot February 189Q0