Being a paper read before the Toronto Branch of the Imperial Federation TORONTO: WILLIAMSON & CO., Library Univ. of Western Ontario 9.28. ONVINCED that to Canadians, of the present generation especially, nothing can, from a public point of view, be of more importance than that we should possess an adequate appreciation of the essen tial features and the advantages of the British institutions, and for of popular liberty, under which we live, as compared with the institutions of the Americans, the writer of the present paper ventures to publish it as a very modest contribution towards that end. It at all events points out some of the more obvious characteristics of our British parliamentary system, as contrasted with the Congressional system of the United States. THE BRITISH VERSUS THE AMERICAN SYSTEM OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT. HE policy of Imperial Federation, or consolidation, involves necessarily very different considerations to the people of one part of the Empire, to what it does to those of another. To us in Canada it seems an almost universal opinion that this policy pre sents itself as the only practicable alternative to that of continental union, or, as it is perhaps somewhat unfairly called, annexation to the United States. This being the case, I trust that the subject of this paper will not be considered foreign to the proceedings of a Canadian branch of the league. Nothing can be more certain than that, should the policy of continental union prevail, Canadians must come under the national |