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By Root 1926 0

headway at first. As late as 1868, Gladstone's government was inclined to be skeptical about the worth of the colonies. But in the early i87os it rather suddenly revived as a serious political possibility, principally because events overseas seemed to converge on a demonstration that federation was the path of the future. The Prussian defeat of France, followed by the creation of a federal German Empire, was one powerful signal. Another was the unification of Italy. A third was the victory of the North in the American Civil War. The first and last of these created powerful international rivals, both of them federal in structure.55 Moreover, the development of telegraphy and efficient steamships meant that communication with Australia was now potentially as rapid as it had been with Britain's own provinces at the time of union in 1707. At the same time, Britain fell into an economic slump that called into question earlier assumptions of prolonged industrial dominance. Calls consequently began to be heard for free trade policies to be qualified.

In the midst of such events, MacFie became the first politician to propose imperial federation in Parliament.56 He recommended that all the colonies must be represented alongside the home country in a single Council of State, which could bring political unity to the empire. But what would ensure that this unity ran deeper than politics? MacFie announced that only the abolition of "intellectual property" could meet that imperative need. By building a publishing industry that sold large editions cheaply, rather than, as the London publishers then did, small ones at high prices, the empire could be saturated with literature. Abolishing copyright would "let British literature diffuse itself naturally and acceptably throughout the Empire, the mother country becoming at length, what easily it may be rendered, the grand fountain-head of useful information and wholesome influences, from which the whole family draws refreshment."57

MacFie now returned to his magpie mode of authorship, issuing collections of materials in favor of an imperial federation that would extend and complete the unfinished project of a United Kingdom. An "imperial representative council" should be created to serve as the legislative and executive body for the empire as awhole. In effect, MacFie's proposalwas to create a "United States of the Britannic Empire," along the lines of the United States of America. This created a potential problem akin to that faced by Mathew Carey in America, of creating unity out of diversity. For MacFie and the imperialists, however, the answer was organic (that is, racial) as well as public. "We should feel, and speak, and act," he declared, "everywhere as one people." The colonies should coalesce into one body, populated by emigration from Britain. And in this light he tied his continuing distaste for copyright and the patents system to his new imperial polity Settler colonists should become full citizens in every sense, he insisted; but to achieve that Britain must destroy "the copyright monopoly, a monopoly which appears to neutralise the statesmanlike policy of sending the healthy throb of vivifying influence from the nation's heart in the largest possible measure to its remotest extremities." 58 And in manufactures, similarly, he called not for free trade, now, but for `fair trade." That is, he demanded "a small import duty on manufactures, to give a slight tilt to the safe side," in compensation for the "invention taxes" that patents represented.59 Short of some radical reconfiguration to politics and intellectual property, he warned, the colonies would surely secede and the empire collapse. "There has been aportentous change," MacFie concluded darkly. "If we do not direct it aright, it will culminate in revolution."60

This kind of conviction-whichwas often frank in its espousal of racial superiority-was central to the movement for imperial federation that now appeared. By 1884 it had given rise to an Imperial Federation League, aiming at the creation of a worldwide imperial constitution