73
colonies, settlements and other extraneous parts, but
as a grand marine dominion, consisting of our pos-
sessions in the Atlantic and in America, united into
a one empire, into a one centre where the seat of
government is.” * The Preface to the second part of
his work was dated November 1774, and in this
volume he wrote that ¢ A British union of all the
British Dominions, by admitting the American colonies
into Parliament, has been now for near twenty years
repeatedly recommended to this country by those who
knew the circumstances of both countries as they stood
related to and connected with each other’? ‘I very
seriously recommended such a British union,” he wrote
on an earlier page, as the only sure means which
would prevent the certain alternative of an American
union distinct from and independent of Great
Britain.’ Edmund Burke ridiculed any plan which
would have involved holding elections through the
length and breadth of great spaces on the other side
of the Atlantic and transporting the elected members
across the ocean to sit in a House of Commons in
London as wholly impracticable, if only on account of
the time which must have been spent in the process ;
and impracticable it must surely have proved, hadit
been put to the test, in the eighteenth century. Nor in
the later generations of the Empire, though difficulties
of distance have been and are being largely removed,
has colonial representation in the House of Commons
of the Mother Country ever commended itself, except
1688-1783
Ls The Administration of the British Colonies, Part 1 (fifth edition,
(774), p- 10.
2 Juid., Part II (1774), p. 82.
8 Ibid., p. 8.