CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 DA 16.S45 1883 
 
 3 1924 027 933 997 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027933997 
 
EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. 
 
VttaahtiOst : 
 
 PBINIED JBY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SON^ 
 AT THK UNIVEBSITY PEESS. 
 
THE 
 
 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND 
 
 TWO COURSES OF LECTURES 
 
 BY 
 
 J^Ef SEELEY M.A. 
 
 liEOraS PEOFEBSOB OF MODEEN HISTORY IN THE UNITEBSITT OF OAMBKIDGE 
 
 FELLOW OF GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE FELLOW OF THE BOTAL 
 
 HI6T0BICAL SOCIETY AND HONOHAKY MEMBEE OP THE 
 
 HISTOEICAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHnSEIIS 
 
 BOSTON: 
 EGBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1883 
 
 Y 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY^ -'- 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 In preparing these lectures for the press I 
 have been much indebted to Professor Cowell, 
 who was good enough to take an interest in 
 that part of them which relates to India, and 
 to Mr Cunningham, the author of that most 
 interesting book, The Growth of English Industry 
 and Convmerce. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 COURSE I. 
 LECTUEE I. 
 
 PjLGR 
 
 faisDmihz in English History ' . j 1 
 
 LECTUEE II. 
 
 > England in the Eighteenth Century . . . .,17 
 
 LECTUEE IIL ^, 
 
 The Empire (' 37 ' 
 
 LECTUEE IV. -^ 
 
 The Old Colonial System . 56 
 
 LECTUEE V. ^^ 
 
 Effect of the New World on the Old .... 77 
 
 LECTUEE VL 
 Commerce and War . 98 
 
 LECTUEE VIL /""^ 
 
 Phases of Expansion 119 | 
 
 LECTUEE VIII. 
 2> Schism in Greater Britain ... 141 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 COURSE IL 
 
 LECTUilE 1. 
 History and Politics 163 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 The Indian Empire .^ . . 179 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 How WE Conquered India . . .• , . . . 197 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 How WE Govern India 217 
 
 LECTURE t. 
 Mutual Influence of 'England and India . . . 235 
 
 LECTURE VL 
 Phases in the Conquest op India 254 
 
 LECTURE Vll. 
 Internal and External Dangers 273 
 
 LECTURE Vlll. 
 Recapitulation 293 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTOnT. 
 
 It is a favourite maxim of mine that history, while it 
 should be scientific in its method, should pursue a practical 
 object. That is, it should not merely gratify the reader's 
 curiosity about the past, but modify his view of the present 
 and his forecast of the future. Now if this maxim be 
 sound, the history of England ought to end with some- 
 thing that might be called a moral. Some large conclusion 
 ought to arise out of it; it ought to exhibit the general 
 tendency of English affairs in such a way as to set us 
 thinking about the future and divining the destiny which 
 is reserved for us. The more so because the part played by 
 our country in the world certainly does not grow less pro- 
 minent as history advances. Some countries, such as Hol- 
 land and Sweden, might pardonably regard their history as 
 in a manner wound up. They were once great, but the con- 
 ditions of their greatness have passed away, and they now 
 hold a secondary place. Their interest in their own past 
 is therefore either sentimental or purely scientific ; the only 
 practical lesson of their history is a lesson of resignation. 
 But England has grown steadily greater and greater, 
 S. L. 1 
 
2 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leci. 
 
 absolutely at least if not always relatively. It is far greater 
 now than it was in the eighteenth century; it was far 
 greater in the eighteenth century than in the seventeenth, 
 far greater in the seventeenth than in the sixteenth. 
 The prodigious greatness to which it has attained makes 
 the question of its future infinitely important and at the 
 same time most anxious, because it is evident that the 
 great colonial extension of our state exposes it to new 
 dangers from which in its ancient insular insignificance 
 it was free. 
 
 The interest of English history ought therefore to 
 deepen steadily to the close, and, since the future grows out 
 of the past, the history of the past of England ought to 
 give rise to a prophecy concemiag her future. Yet our 
 popular historians scarcely seem to think so. Does not 
 Aristotle say that a drama ends, but an epic poem only 
 leaves ofif? English history, as it is popularly related, 
 not only has no distinct end, but leaves off in such a 
 gradual manner, growing feebler and feebler, duller and 
 duller, towards the close, that one might suppose that 
 England instead of steadUy gaining in strength had been 
 for a century or two dying of mere old age. Can this be 
 right ? Ought the stream to be allowed thus to lose itself 
 and evaporate in the midst of a sandy desert ? The ques- 
 tion brings to mind those lines of "Wordsworth : 
 
 It is not to be thought of that the flood 
 Of British freedom, which to the open sea 
 Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity 
 Hath flowed 'with pomp of waters unwithstood ', 
 Boused though it be full often to a mood 
 ■Which spurns the check of salutary bands, 
 That this most famous stream in bogs and sands 
 Should perish, and to evil and to good 
 Be lost for ever — 
 
I.] TENDENCY IN ENGHSH HISTOEY. 3 
 
 Well! this sad fate, which is 'not to be thought of, is 
 just what befals, if not the stream itself of British freedom, 
 yet the reflexion of it in our popular histories. 
 
 Now suppose we wish to remedy this evil, how shall we 
 proceed ? Here is no bad question for historical students 
 at the opening of an academic year, the opening perhaps 
 to some of their academic course. You are asked to think 
 over English history as a whole and consider if you cannot 
 find some meaning, some method in it, if you cannot state 
 some conclusion to which it leads. HiVherto perhaps you 
 have learned names and dates, lists of kings, lists of 
 battles, and wars. The time comes now when you are to 
 ask yourselves. To what -end ? For what practical purpose 
 are these facts collected and committed to memory? If 
 they lead to no great truths having at the same time scien- 
 tific generality and momentous practical bearings, then 
 history is but an amusement and will scarcely hold its own 
 in the conflict of studies. 
 
 No one can long study history without being haunted 
 by the idea of development, of progress. We move onward, 
 both each of us and all of us together. England is not 
 now what it was under the Stuarts or the Tudors, and 
 in these last centuries at least there is much to favour 
 the view that the movement is progressive, that it is 
 toward something better. But- how shall we define this 
 • movement, and how shall we measure it ? If we are to 
 study history in that rational spirit, with that definite 
 •object which I have recommended, we must fix our minds 
 on this question and arrive at some solution of it, We 
 must not be content with those vague flourishes which the 
 old school of historians, who according to my view lost 
 themselves in mere narrative, used to add for form's sake 
 before winding-up. 
 
 1—2 
 
i EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 These vague flourishes usually consisted in some 
 reference to what was called the advance of civilisation. 
 No definition of civilisation was given; it was spoken 
 of in metaphorical language as a light, a day gradually 
 advancing through its twilight and its dawn towards its 
 noon ; it was contrasted with a remote ill-defined period, 
 called the Dark Ages. Whether it would always go on 
 brightening or whether, like the physical day, it would 
 pass again into afternoon and evening, or whether it would 
 come to an end by a sudden eclipse, ^as the light of 
 civilisation in the ancient world might appear to have 
 done, all this was left ia the obscurity convenient to a 
 theory which was not serious, and which only existed for 
 the purpose of rhetorical ornament. 
 
 It is a very fair sample of bad philosophising, this 
 theory of civilisation. You have to explain a large mass 
 of phenomena, about which you do not even know that 
 they are of the same kind — but they happen to come into 
 view at the same time — ; what do you do but fling over 
 the whole mass a word, which holds them together like 
 a net? You carefully avoid defining this word, but in 
 speaking of it you use metaphors which imply that it 
 denotes a living force of unknown, unlimited properties, 
 so that a mere reference to it is enough to explain the 
 most wonderful, the most dissimilar effects. It was used 
 to explain a number of phenomena which had no further 
 apparent connexion with each other than that they happened 
 often to appear together ia history ; sometimes the soften- 
 ing of manners, sometimes mechanical inventions, some- 
 times religious toleration, sometimes the appearance of 
 great poets and artists, sometimes scientific discoveries, 
 sometimes constitutional liberty. It was assumed, though 
 it was never proved, that all these things belonged together 
 
I.] TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTOEY. 5 
 
 and liad a hidden cause, which was the working of the 
 spirit of civilisation. 
 
 We might no doubt take this theory in hand, and 
 give it a more coherent appearance. We might start 
 with the one idea of freedom of thought, and trace all 
 the consequences that will follow from it. Scientific dis- 
 coveries and mechanical inventions may flow from it, if 
 certain other conditions are present ; such discoveries 
 and inventions coming into general use will change the 
 appearance of human life, give it a complicated, modem 
 aspect; this change then. we might call the advance of 
 civilisation. But political liberty has no connexion with 
 all this. There was liberty at Athens before Plato and 
 Aristotle, but afterwards it died out ; liberty at Rome when 
 thought was rude and ignorant, but servitude after it 
 became enlightened. And poetical genius has nothing to 
 do with it, for poetry declined at Athens just as philosophy 
 began, and there was a Dante in Italy before the Renais- 
 sance, but no Dante after it. 
 
 If we analyse this vague sum-total which we call civili- 
 sation, we shall find that a large part of it is what might 
 be expected from the name, that is, the result of the union 
 of men in civil communities or states, but that another 
 ^art is only indirectly connected with this and is more 
 immediately due to other causes. The progress of science, 
 for example, might be held to be the principal factor in 
 civilisation, yet, as I have just pointed out, it by no means 
 varies regularly with civil well-being, though for the most 
 part it requires a certain modicum of civil well-being. 
 That part of the human lot 'which laws or kings can cause 
 or cure' is strictly limited. Now history may assume a 
 larger or a narrower function. It may investigate all the 
 causes of human well-being alike; on the other hand 
 
C EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot.; 
 
 it may attach itself to the civil community and to the 
 part of human well-being which depends on that. Now 
 by a kind of unconscious tradition the latter course has 
 more usually been taken. Eun over the famous histories 
 that have been written ; you will see that the writers have 
 always had in view, more or less consciously, states and 
 governments, their internal development, their mutual deal- 
 ings. It may be quite true that affairs of this kind are not 
 always the most important of human affairs. In the period 
 recorded by Thucydides the most permanently important 
 events may have been the philosophical career of Socrates 
 and the artistic career of Phidias, yet Thucydides has 
 nothing to say of either, while he enlarges upon wars and in- 
 trigues which now seem petty. This is not the effect of any 
 narrowness of view. Thucydides is alive to the unique glory 
 of the city he describes ; how else could he have written 
 <f>i\oicaXovfi€V fier evreXeia'} Kal <j)i\oiro(f)Oi}iJ,ev avev fiaXa- 
 KLU'; ? nay, so far as that glory was the result of political 
 causes he is ready to discuss it, as that very passage shows. 
 It is with purpose and deliberation that he restricts himself. 
 The truth is that investigation makes progress by dividing 
 and subdividing the field. If you discuss everything at 
 once, you certainly get the advantage of a splendid variety of 
 topics; but you do not make progress; if you would make 
 progress, you must concentrate your attention upon one 
 set of phenomena at a time. It seems to me advisable to ' 
 keep history still within the old lines, and to treat separ- 
 ately the important subjects which were omitted in that 
 scheme. I consider therefore that history^has to do with the 
 State, that it investigates the gro-\Yth and; changes of a 
 certain corporate society, which acts through certain func- 
 tionaries and certain assemblies. By the nature of the 
 State every person who lives in a certain territory is usually 
 
I.] TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTOEY. 7 
 
 a member of it, but history is not concerned with individ- 
 uals except in their capacity of members. of a State. That 
 a man in England makes a scientific discovery or paints 
 a picture, is not in itself an event in the history of 
 England. Individuals are important in history in pro- 
 Iportion, not to their intriasic merit, but to their relation 
 Ito the State.\ Socrates was a much greater man than 
 Cleon, but Cleon has a much grestter space in Thucydides. 
 Newton was a greater man than Harley, yet it is Harley, 
 not Newton, who fixes the attention of the historian of 
 the reign of Queen Anne. 
 
 After this explanation you will see that the question I 
 raised, What is the general drift or goal of English history? 
 is much more definite than it might at fiurst sight appear. 
 I am not thinking of any general progress that the human 
 race everywhere alike, and therefore also in England, may 
 chance to be making, nor even necessarily of any progress 
 peculiar to England. By England I mean solely the state 
 or political community which has its seat in England. 
 Thus strictly limited, the question may seem to you perhaps 
 a good deal less interesting; however that may be, it 
 certainly becomes much more manageable. 
 
 The English State then, in what direction and towards 
 what goal has that been advancing? The words which 
 jump to our lips in answer are Liberty, Deinocracy! They 
 are words which want a great deal of defining. Liberty 
 has of course been a leading characteristic of England as 
 ' compared with continental countries, but in the main 
 liberty is not so much an end to which we have been 
 tending as a possession which we have long enjoyed. The 
 struggles of the seventeenth century, secured it — even 
 they did not first acquire it — for us. In later times there 
 has been a movement towards something which is often 
 
8 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 called liberty, but not so correctly. We may, if we like, 
 call it democracy; and I suppose the current opinion is 
 that if any large tendency is discernible in the more recent 
 part of English history, it is this tendency, by which 
 first the middle class and then gradually the lower classes 
 have been admitted to a share of influence in public 
 afifairs. 
 
 Discernible enough no doubt this tendency is, at least 
 in the nineteenth century, for in the eighteenth century 
 only the first beginnings of it can be traced. It strikes 
 our attention most, because it has made for a long time 
 past the staple of political talk and controversy. But 
 history ought to look at things from a greater distance and 
 more comprehensively. If we stand aloof a little and 
 follow with our eyes the progress of the English State, the 
 great governed society of English people, in recent cen- 
 turies, we shall be much more struck by another change, 
 which is not only far greater but even more conspicuous, 
 though it has always been less discussed, partly because it 
 proceeded more gradually, partly because it excited less 
 opposition. I mean the simple obvious fact of the 
 extension of the English name into other countries of the 
 globe, the foundation of Greater Britain. 
 
 There is something very characteristic in the indif- 
 ference which we show towards this mighty phenomenon 
 of the dififusion of our race and the expansion of our state. 
 We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half 
 the world in a fit of absence of mind. While we were doing 
 it, that is in the eighteenth century, we did not allow it 
 to affect our imaginations or in any degree to change our 
 ways of thinking; nor have we even now ceased to think of 
 ourselves as simply a race inhabiting an island off the 
 northern coast of the Continent of Europe. We constantly 
 
1,] TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 9 
 
 betray by our modes of speech tliat we do not reckon our 
 colonies as really belonging to us; thus if we are asked 
 what the English population is, it does not occur to us to 
 reckon-in the population of Canada and Australia. This 
 fixed way of thinking has influenced our historians. It 
 causes them, I think, to miss the true point of view 
 in describing the eighteenth century. They make too much 
 of the mere parliamentary wrangle and the agitations about 
 liberty, in all which matters the eighteenth century of 
 England was but a pale reflexion of the seventeenth. They 
 do not perceive that in that century the history of England 
 is not in England but in America and Asia. In like 
 manner I believe that when we look at the present state 
 of affairs, and still more at the future, we ought to 
 beware of putting England alone in the foreground and 
 suffering what we call the English possessions to escape 
 our view ia the back ground of the picture. 
 
 Let me describe with some exactness the change that 
 has taken place. In the last years of Queen Elizabeth 
 England had absolutely no possessions outside Europe, for 
 all schemes of settlement, from that of Hore in Henry 
 VIII's reign to those of Gilbert and Kaleigh, had failed 
 .alike. Great Britain did not yet exist; Scotland was a 
 " separate kingdom, and in Ireland the English were but a 
 colony in the midst of an alien population still in the tribal 
 stage. With the accession of the Stuart family commenced 
 at the same time two processes, one of which was brought 
 to completion under the last Stuart, Queen Anne; while the 
 other has continued without iaterruption ever since. Of 
 these the first is the internal union of the three kingdoms, 
 which, though technically it was not completed till much 
 later, may be said to be substantially the work of the 
 seventeenth century and the Stuart dynasty.. The second 
 
10 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lboi, 
 
 was the creation of a still larger Britain comprehending 
 vast possessions. beyond the sea. This process began with 
 the first Charter given to Virginia in 1606. It made a 
 great advance in the seventeenth century ; but not till the 
 eighteenth did Greater Britain in its gigantic dimensions 
 and with its vast politics first stand clearly before the 
 world. Let us consider what this Greater Britain at the ' 
 present day precisely is. 
 
 Excluding certain small possessions, which are chiefly \ 
 of the nature of naval or military stations, it consists 
 besides the United Kingdom of four great groups of 
 territory, inhabited either chiefly or to a large extent by 
 i^iglishmen and subject to the CfS^fraj-and a fifth great 
 territory also subject to the Crown and ruled hjr English 
 ofiicials, but inhabited by a completely foreign race. The 
 first four are the Dominion of Canada, the West Indian 
 Islands, among which I include some territories On the 
 continent of Central and Southern America, the mass of 
 South African possessions of which Cape Colony is the 
 most considerable, and fourthly the Australian group, to 
 which, simply for convenience, I must here add New 
 Zealand. The dependency is India. 
 
 Now what is the extent and value of these possessions? i 
 First let us look at their population, which, the territory .1 
 being as yet newlj;- settled, is in many cases thin. The 
 Dominion of Canada with Newfoundland had in 1881 a 
 population of rather more than four millions and a half, 
 that is about equal to the population of Sweden ; the West 
 Indian group rather more than a million and a half, about 
 equal to the population at the same time of Greece ; the 
 South African group about a million and three quarters, ; 
 but of these much less than a half are of European blood ; ^ 
 the Australian group about three millions, rather more 
 
I.] TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTOEY. 11 
 
 than the population OKgmtzerl^Sl This makes a total 
 of ten millions and three quarters, or about ten millions 
 of English subjects of European and mainly English blood 
 outside the British Islands. 
 
 / The population of the great dependency India was 
 
 I nearly a hundred and ninety-eight millions, and the native 
 states which look up to England as the paramount Power 
 had about fifty-seven millions in addition. The total 
 makes a population roughly equal to that of all Europe 
 
 ' Bxcluding Eussia. 
 
 But of course it strikes us at once that this enormous 
 Indian population does not make part of Greater Britain 
 in the same sense as those ten millions of Englishmen whp 
 live outside of the British Islands. The latter are of our own 
 blood, and are therefore united with us by the strongest tie. 
 The former are of alien race and religion, and are bound to 
 us only by the tie of conquest. It may be fairly questioned 
 whether the possession of India does or ever can increase 
 our power or our security, while there is no doubt that it 
 vastly increases our dangers and responsibilities. Our 
 colonial Empire stands on quite a different footing ; it has 
 some of the fundamental conditions of stability.. There a re 
 
 ^ in general three tie s_by which states are held toget her- 
 community of race, community of religion, community of 
 
 * JT)it.prpgf-. By the first two our colonies are evidently 
 bound to us, and this fact by itself makes the connexion • 
 strong. It will grow indissolubly firm if we come to 
 recognise also that interest bids us maintain the connexion, 
 and this conviction seems to gain .ground. When we in- 
 quire then into the Greater Britain of the future we 
 ought to think much more of our Colonial than of our 
 Indian Empire. 
 
 This is an important consideration when we come to 
 
12 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 estimate the Empire not by population but by territorial 
 area. Ten millions of Englishmen beyond the sea, — this 
 is something ; but it is absolutely nothing compared with 
 what will ultimately, nay with what will speedily, be seen. 
 For those millions are scattered over an enormous area, 
 which fills up with a rapidity quite unlike the increase of 
 population in England. That you may measure the im- 
 portance of this consideration I give you one fact. The 
 density of population in Great Britain is two hundred and 
 ninety-one to the square mile, in Canada it is not much 
 more than one to the square mile. Suppose for a moment 
 the Dominion of Canada peopled as fully as Great Britain, 
 its population would actually be more than a thousand 
 millions. That state of things is no doubt very remote, 
 biit an immense increase is not remote. In not much more 
 than half a century the Englishmen beyond the sea- 
 supposing the Empire to hold together — will be equal in 
 number to the Englishmen at home, and the total will 
 be much more than a hundred milKons. 
 
 These figures may perhaps strike you as rather over- 
 whelming than interesting. You may make it a questioi*.; 
 whether we ought to be glad of this vast increase of our 
 race, whether it would not be better that we should 
 advance morally and intellectually than in mere population 
 and possessions, whether the great things have not for the 
 most part been done by the small nations, and so on. But 
 I do not quote these figures in order to gratify our national 
 pride. I leave it an open question whether our increase is 
 matter for exultation or for regret. It is not yet time to 
 consider that. What is clear_in the.mean time is -the 
 immense importance of this increase. Good or bad, it ja 
 evidently ihe ^eat fact of modern English history. And it 
 would be the greatest mistake to imagine that it is a merely 
 
I.] TENDENCY IN ENGLISH BISTORT. 13 
 
 material fact, or that it carries no moral and intellectual 
 consequences. People cannot change their abodes, pass 
 from an island to a continent, from the 60th degree of 
 north latitude to the tropics or the Southern Hemisphere, 
 from an ancient community to a new colony, from vast 
 manufacturing cities to sugar plantations or lonely sheep- 
 walks in countries where aboriginal savage tribes still wan- 
 der, 'without changing their ideas and habits and ways of 
 thinking, nay without somewhat modifying in the course of 
 a few generations their physical type. We know already 
 that the Canadian and the Victorian are not quite like the 
 Englishman ; do we suppose then that in the next century, if 
 the colonial population has become as numerous as that of 
 the mother country, assuming that the connexion has 
 been maintained and has become closer, England itself 
 will not be very much modified and transformed ? Whether 
 good or bad then, the growth of Greater Britain is an 
 event of enormous magnitude. ^ 
 
 Evidently as regards the future it is the greatest event. 
 But an event may be very great, and yet be so simple that 
 there is not much to be said about it, that it has scarcely 
 any history. It is thus that the great English Exodus is 
 commonly regarded, as if it had happened in the most simple, 
 inevitable manner, as if it were merely the unopposed 
 occupation of empty countries by the nation which happen- 
 ed to have the greatest surplus population and the greatest 
 maritime power. I shall show this to be a great mistake. 
 I shall show that this Exodus makes a most ample and a 
 most full and interesting chapter in English history. I 
 shall venture to assert that during the eighteenth century 
 it determines the whole course of affairs, that the main 
 struggle of England from the time of Louis XIV. to the 
 time of Napoleon was for the possession of the New 
 
14 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 World, and that it is for want of perceiving this that 
 most of us find that century of English history unin- 
 teresting. 
 
 The great central fact in this chapter of history is that 
 we have had at different times two such Empires. So 
 decided is the drift of our destiny towards the occupation 
 ' of the New World that after we had created one Empire 
 and lost it, a second grew up almost in our own despite,;;' 
 The figures I gave you refer exclusively to our second 
 Empire, to that which we still possess. When I spoke of 
 the ten millions of English subjects who live beyond the 
 sea, I did not pause to mention that a hundred years ago 
 we had another set of colonies which had already a popu- 
 lation of three millions, that these colonies broke off from 
 us and formed a federal state, of which the population 
 has in a century multiplied more than sixteenfold, and 
 is now equal to that of the mother country and its colonies 
 taken together. It is an event of prodigious magnitude 
 not only that this Empire should have been lost to us, 
 but that a new state, English in race and character, should 
 have sprung up, and that this state should have grown in 
 a century to be greater in population than every European 
 state except Russia. But the loss we suffered in the 
 secession of the American colonies has left in the English 
 
 o 
 
 mind a doubt, a misgiving, which affects our whole fore- 
 cast of the future of England. 
 
 ./ For if this English Exodus has been the greatest 
 
 English event of~the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries^ 
 the greatest English question of the future must be what 
 is to become of our second Empire, and whether or no it 
 may be expected to go the way of the first. In thel 
 solution of this question lies that moral which I said ought 
 to result from the study of English history. 
 
I.] TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTOKY. 15 
 
 It is an old saying, to which Turgot gave utterance a 
 quarter of a century before the Declaration of Independence, 
 ' Colo nies _a re like frnits which cling to the tree onl y till 
 they ripen.' He added, 'As soon as America can take 
 care of herself, she will do what Carthage did.' What 
 ■Wdnder that when this prediction was so signally fulfilled, 
 the proposition from which it had been deduced rose, 
 especially in the minds of the English, to the rank of a 
 demonstrated principle ! This no doubt is the reason why 
 we have regarded the growth of a second Empire with 
 very little interest or satisfaction. 'What matters,' we have 
 said, 'its vastness or its rapid growth ? It does not grow 
 for us.' And to the notion that we cannot keep it we have 
 added the notion that we need not wish to keep it, because, 
 with that curious kind of optimistic fatalism to which 
 historians are liable, the historians of our American war have 
 generally felt bound to make out that the loss of our colonies 
 was not only inevitable, but was even a fortunate thing 
 for us. 
 
 Whether these views are sound, I do not inquire 
 now. I merely point out that two alternatives are before 
 us, and that the question, incomparably the greatest 
 question which we can discuss, refers to the choice 
 bfetween them. The four groups of colonies m^y become 
 four independent states, and in that case tyro of them, 
 the dominion of Canada and the West Indian group, will 
 have to consider the question whether admission into the 
 United States will not be better for them than independ- 
 ence. In any case the English name and English insti- 
 tutions will have a vast predominance in the New World, 
 and the separation may be so managed that the mother- 
 country may continue always to be regarded with friendly 
 feelings. Such a separation would leave England on the 
 
16 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. i. 
 
 same level as the states nearest to us on the Continent, 
 populous, but less so than Germany and scarcely equal to 
 France. But two states, Russia and the United States 
 would be on an altogether higher scale of magnitude, 
 Russia having at once, and the United States perhaps 
 before very long, twice our population. Our trade too 
 would be exposed to wholly new risks. 
 
 The other alternative is that England may prove able 
 to do what the United States does so easily, that is, 
 ? hold together in a federal union countries very remote 
 from each other. In that case England will take rank 
 with Russia and the United States in the first rank of 
 state, measured by population and area, aij.d, in a higher 
 rank than the states of the Continent. We ought by no 
 means to take for granted that this is desirable. Bigness;, 
 is not necessarily greatness ; if by remaining in the second 
 rank of magnitude we can hold the first rank morally and 
 intellectually, let us sacrifice mere material magnitude, 
 But though we must not prejudge the question whether 
 we ought to retain our Empire, we may fairly assume 
 that it is desirable after due consideration to judge it. , 
 With a view to forming such a judgment, I propose 
 in these lectures to examine historically the tendency 
 to expansion which England has so long displayed. We 
 shall learn to think of it more seriously if we discover it to 
 be profound, persistent, necessary to the national life, and 
 more hopefully if we can satisfy ourselves that the secessio^ 
 of our first colonies was hot a mere normal result of ex- 
 pansion, like the bursting of a bubble, but the result of tem-» 
 porary conditions, removable and which have been removed. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 ■ ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 It was in the .eighteenth century that the expansion of 
 England advanced most rapidly. If therefore we would 
 understand the nature of that expansion, and measure how 
 much it ahsorbed of the energy and vitality of the nation, 
 we cannot do better than consult the records of the 
 eighteenth century. Those records too, if I mistake not, 
 will acquire new interest from being regarded from this 
 ■point of view. 
 
 I constantly remark both in our popular histories 
 md in occasional allusions to the eighteenth century what 
 a faiat and confused impression that period has left upon 
 the ;national memory. In a great part of it we see 'nothing 
 but jgtagnation. The wars seem to lead to nothing, and 
 we do not perceive the working of any new political 
 ideas. That time seems to have created little, so that we 
 can only think of it as prosperous, but not as memorable. 
 Those dim figures George I. and George II., the long 
 tame administrations of Walpole and Pelham, the com- 
 Hiercial war with Spain, the battles of Dettingen and 
 Fontenoy, the foolish Prime Minister Newcastle, the dull 
 s.L. 2 
 
18 
 
 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leoi. 
 
 brawls of the Wilkes period, the miserable American war; 
 everywhere alike we seem to remark a want of gteat- 
 ness, a distressing commonness and flatness in men and 
 in aflfairs. But what we chiefly miss is unity. In France 
 the corresponding period has just as little greatness, but it 
 has unity; it is intelligible; we can describe it in one 
 word as the age of the approach of the Kevolution. But 
 what is the English eighteenth century, and what has 
 come of it? What was approaching then? 
 
 But do we take the right way to discover the unity of 
 a historical period? 
 
 We have an unfortunate habit of distributing historical 
 affairs under reigns. We do this mechanically, as it were, 
 even in periods where we recognise, nay, where we ex- 
 aggerate, the insignificance of the Monarch. The first 
 Georges were, in my opinion, by no means so insignificant 
 as is often supposed, but even the most influential sovereign 
 has seldom a right to give his name to an age. Much 
 misconception, for example, has arisen out of the expression. 
 Age of Louis XIV. The first step then in arranging and 
 dividing any period of English history is to get rid of such 
 useless headings as Reign of Queen Anne, Reign of Greorge I., 
 Reign of George II. In place of these we must study to 
 put divisions founded upon some real stage of progress 
 in the national life. We must look onward not from king 
 to king, but from great event to great event. And in 
 order to do this we must estimate events, measure their 
 greatness; a thing which cannot be done without con- 
 sidering them and analysing them closely. When with 
 respect to any event we have satisfied ourselves that it 
 deserves to rank among the leading events of the national 
 history, the next step is to trace the causes by which it 
 was pi:oduced. In this way each event takes the character 
 
II.] ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 13 
 
 of a development, and each development of this kind 
 furnishes a chapter to the national history, a chapter 
 which will get its name from the event. 
 
 For a plain example of the principle take the reign 
 of George III. What can be more absurd than to treat 
 this long period of sixty years as if it had any historical 
 unity, simply because one man was king during the whole 
 of it ? What then are we to substitute for the king as a 
 principle of division ? Evidently great events. One part 
 of the reign will make a chapter by itself as the period of 
 the loss of America, another as that of the struggle with 
 the French Eevolution. 
 
 But in a national history there are large as well as 
 smaller divisions. Besides chapters there are, as it were, 
 books or parts. This is because the great events, when 
 examined closely, are seen to be connected with each 
 other; those which are chronologically nearest to each 
 other are seen to be similar ; they fall into groups, each 
 of which may be regarded as a single complex event, and 
 I the complex events give their names to the parts, as 
 the simpler events give their names to the separate 
 chapters, of the history. 
 
 In some periods of history this process is so easy that 
 we perform it almost unconsciously. The events bear their 
 significance written on their face, and the connexion of 
 events is also obvious. When you read the reign of 
 Louis XV. of France,, you feel without waiting to reason 
 that you are reading of the fall of the French Monarchy, 
 But in other parts of history the clue is less easy to find, 
 and it is here tha;t we feel that embarrassment and want 
 i of interest which, as I have said, Englishmen are conscious 
 of when they look back upon their eighteenth century. 
 In most cases of this kind the fault is in. the reader ; he 
 
 2—2 
 
20 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 would be interested'ia the period if be had the clue to it, 
 and he would find the clue if he sought it deliberately. 
 
 We are to look then at the great events of the eirfA- 
 eenth cent-ury, examine each to see its precise significance, 
 and compare them together with a view to discovering 
 any general tendency there may be. I speak roughly 
 of course when I say the eighteenth century. More 
 precisely I mean the period which begins with the Revo- 
 lution of 1688 and ends with the peace of 1815. Now 
 what are the great events during this period ? 'There 
 are no revolutions. In the way of internal disturbance 
 all that we find is two abortive Jacobite insurrections 
 in 1715 and 1745. There is a change of dynasty, and 
 one of an unusual kind, but it is accomplished peacefully 
 by Act of Parliament. The great events are all of one 
 sort, they are foreign wars. 
 
 These wars are on a much larger scale than any which ; 
 England had waged before since the Hundred Years' War 
 of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They are also 
 of a more formal business-like kind than earher wars. 
 For England has now for the first time a 'standing armyi 
 and navy.- The great English navy first took definite 
 shape in the Wars of the Commonw^alHi, and the Engli^ 
 Army, founded on the Mutiny Bill, dates from the reign of 
 William III. Bepf?§en the Revolution and the Battl^ 
 of Waterloo it may "be reckoned that we waged seven 
 great wars, of which the shortest lasted seven yearg^and 
 the longest about twelve. Out of a hundred and twenty- 
 six years, sixty-four years, or more than half, were spent in 
 war. 
 
 .That these wars were on a greater scale than any 
 which had preceded, may be estimated by the burdeii' 
 which they laid upon the country. Before this period' 
 
II.] ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 21 
 
 England had of couTse often been at war ; still at the com- 
 mencement of it England had no cousiderahle debt — her 
 debt was less than a million — but at the end of this period, 
 in 1817, her debt amounted to eight hundred and forty" 
 Iflillions. And you are to beware of taking even this large 
 amount as measuring the expensiveness of the wars. 
 Eight hundred and forty millions was not the cost of the 
 wars ; it was only that part of the cost which the natioa 
 could not meet at once ; but an enormous anaount had 
 been paid at once. And yet this debt alone, contracted in 
 a period of a hundred and twenty years, is equivalent to 
 seven millions a year spent on war dtiring the whole time, 
 while for a good part of the eighteenth century the whole 
 annual cost of government did not exceed seven millions. 
 
 This series of great wars is evidently the characteristic 
 feature of the period, for not only does it begin with this 
 period, but also appears to end with it. Since 1815 we 
 have had local wars in India and some of our colonies, but 
 cf struggles against great European Powers, such as this 
 period saw seven times, we have only seen one in a period 
 more than half as long, and it lasted but two years. 
 
 Let us pass these wars in review. There was first the 
 European war in which England was involved 'by the 
 •'Berolution of 1688. It is pretty well remembered, since 
 the story of it has been told by Macaulay. It lasted eight 
 years, from 1689 to 1697. There was then the great war 
 called from the Spanish Succession, which we Shalt always 
 Remember, because it was the war of Marlborough's 
 victories. It lasted eleven years, from 1702 to 1713. The 
 next great war has now passed almost entirely out of 
 memory, not having brought to light any very great com- 
 mander, nor achieved any definite result. But we have all 
 heard speak of the fable of Jenkins' ears, and we have 
 
22 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [leot- 
 
 heard of the battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy, thougii 
 perhaps few of us could give a rational account either of 
 the reason for fightiag them or of the result that came of 
 them. And yet this war too lasted nine years, from 1739 
 to 1748. Next comes the Seven Years' War, in which we 
 have not forgotten the victories of Frederick. In the 
 English part of it we all remember one grand incident, 
 the battle of the Heights of Abraham, the death of 
 Wolfe, and the conquest of Canada. And yet in the 
 case of this war also it may be observed how much the 
 eighteenth century has faded out of our imaginations. We 
 have quite forgotten that that victory was one of a long " 
 series, which to contemporaries seemed fabulous, so that 
 the nation came out of the struggle intoxicated with glory, 
 and England stood upon a pinnacle of greatness which she 
 had never reached before. We have forgotten^how through 
 all that remained of the eighteenth century the nation 
 looked back upon those two or three splendid years* as 
 upon a happiness that could never return, and how long it 
 continued to be the unique boast of the Englishman 
 That Chatham's language was his mother-tongue 
 And Wolfe's great heart compatriot with hisowa.__^ 
 
 This is the fourth war. It is in sharp contrast with the 
 fifth, which we have tacitly agreed to mention as seldom as 
 we can. What we call the American war, which from the 
 first outbreak of hostilities to the Peace of Paris lasted 
 1 Mark how the uneuthusiastio Walpole writes of them: 'Intrigues of 
 the Cabinet or of Parliament scarcely existed at that period. AH men were, 
 or seemed to be, transported with the success of their countiy, and 
 content with an Administration which outwent their warmest wi^es or 
 made their jealousy ashamed to show itself. One episode indeed there 
 was, in which less heroic affections were concerned... it will diversify the 
 story, and by the intermixture of human passions serve to oouyinoe 
 posterity that such a display of immortal actions as illustrate the 
 following pages is not the exhibition of a fabulous age.' 
 
II.] EHGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUET. 23 
 
 eight years, Trom 1775 to 1783, was indeed igaominlous 
 enough in America, but in its latter part it spread into a 
 grand naval war, in which England stood at bay against 
 ahnost all the world, and in this, through the victories of 
 Eodney, we came off -with some credit. The sixth and 
 seventh are the two great wars with Revolutionary France, 
 which we are not likely to forget, though we ought to keep 
 them more separate in, our minds than we do. The first 
 lasted nine years from 1793 to 1802-, the second twelve, 
 from 1803 to 1815. 
 
 Now probably it has occurred to few of us to connect 
 
 •ithese wars together, or to look for any unity of plan or 
 |)urpose pervading them* If such a thought did occur, 
 we should probably fiiid ourselves hopelessly baffled in our 
 
 ' „first attempts. In one war the question appears to be of the 
 
 ' method of succession to the Crown of Spain, in another 
 war of the Austrian succession and of the succession to the 
 
 '., Empire. But if there seems so far some resemblance, 
 what have these succession questions to do with the right 
 of search claimed by the 'Spaniards along the Spanish 
 Main, or the limits of Acadie, or the principles of the 
 French Revolution 1 And as the grounds of quarrel seem 
 quite accidental, so we are bewildered by the straggling 
 haphazard character of the wars themselves. Hostilities 
 may break out in the Low Countries or in the heart of 
 Germany, but the war is waged, so it seems, anywhere or 
 everywhere, at Madras, or at the mouth of the St Lawrence, 
 or on the banks of the Ohio. Thus Maeaulay says in 
 speaking of Frederick's invasion of Silesia, ' In order that . 
 he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to 
 defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and 
 red men scalped each other by the Great Lakes of North 
 America.' On a first survey such is the confused ap- 
 pearance which these wars present. 
 
24 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 But look a little closer, and after all you will discover; 
 some uniformities. For example, out of these seven wars 
 of England five are wars with France from the beginning, 
 and hoth the other two, though the belligerent at the 
 outset was in the first Spain and in the second our own 
 colonies, yet became in a short time and ended as wars 
 with France. 
 
 Now here is one' of those general facts which we are 
 in search of. The full magnitude of it is not usually 
 perceived, because the whole middle part of the eighteenth 
 century has passed too much into oblivion. We have not 
 forgotten that there were two great wars with France just 
 about the junction of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- 
 turies and two other great wars with France about the 
 junction of the seventeenth and eighteenth, but we have 
 half forgotten that near the middle of the eighteenth 
 century there was another great war of England and 
 France, and that, as prelude and afterpiece to this war, 
 there was a war with Spain which turned into a war with 
 France, and a war with America which turned into a war 
 with France. The truth is these wars group themselves\ 
 very symmetrically, and the whole period stands out as an 
 age of gigantic rivalry between England and France, aii 
 kind of second Hundred Years' War. In fact in thosfr 
 times and down to our own memory the eternal discord of 
 England and France appeared so much a law of nature 
 that it was seldom spoken of. The wars of their own 
 times, blending with a vague recollection of Cr^cy, Poictiers 
 and Agincourt, created an impression in the minds of those 
 generations that England and France always had been at 
 war and always would be. But this was a pure illusion. 
 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries England and 
 France had not been these persistent enemies. The two 
 
,1.] ENGLAND IS THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUET. 25 
 
 states had often been in alliance against Spain. In the 
 seventeenth century an Anglo-French Alliance had been 
 almost the rule. Elizabeth and Henri IV. are allies, 
 Charles I. has a French queen, Cromwell acts in concert 
 with Mazarin, Charles II. and James II. make themselves 
 dependent upon Louis XIV. 
 
 But may not this frequent recuiTence of war with 
 France have been a mere accident, arising from the near- 
 ness of France and the necessary frequency of collisions 
 with her? On examination you will find that it is not 
 merely accidental, but that these wars are connected 
 together in internal causation as well as in time. It is 
 rather the occasional cessation of war that is accidental; 
 the recurrence is natural and inevitable. There is indeed 
 one long truce of twenty seven years after the Peace of 
 Utrecht ; this was the natural effect of the exhaustion in 
 which all Europe was left by the war of the Spanish 
 Succession, a war almost as great in comparison with the 
 then magnitude of the European states as the great 
 struggle with Napolecn. But when this truce was over 
 we may almost regard all the wars which followed as 
 constituting one war interrupted by occasional pauses. At 
 any rate the thrde wars between 1740 and 1783, those 
 commonly called the War of the Austrian Succession, the 
 Seven Years' War and the American War, are, so far as 
 they are wars of England and France, intimately connected 
 together and form as it were a trilogy of wars. I call your 
 attention particularly to this, because this group of wars, 
 considered as one great event with a single great object 
 and result, supplies just the grand feature which that time 
 seems so sadly to want. It is only our own blindness and 
 peWersity which leads us to overlook the grandeur of that 
 phase in our history, while We fix our eyes upon petty 
 
26 EXPANSION 03? ENGLAND, [lect. 
 
 domestic occurrences, parliamentary quarrels, party in-, 
 trigue, and court-gossip.^ It so happens that the accession 
 of George III. falls in the middle of this period, and seems to 
 us, in consequence of our childish mode of arranging history, 
 to create a division where there is no real division, but rather 
 unusually manifest continuity. And as in parliamentary and 
 party politics the accession of George III. really did make 
 a considerable epoch, and the temptation of our historians 
 is always to write the history rather of the Parliament than 
 of the State and nation, a false scent misleads us here, and 
 we remain quite blind to one of the grandest and most 
 .memorable turning-points in our history. I say these wars 
 make one grand and decisive struggle between England 
 and France. For look at the facts. Nominally the first 
 of these three wars was ended by the Treaty of Aix-la- 
 Chapelle in 1748. Nominally there followed eight years 
 of peace between England and France. But really it was 
 not so at all. Whatever virtue the treaty of Aix-la- 
 Chapelle may have had towards settling the quarrels of 
 the other European Powers concerned in the war, it scarcely 
 interrupted for a moment the conflict between England 
 and France. It scarcely even appeared to do so, for the 
 great question of the boundary of the English and French 
 settlements in America, of the limits of Acadie and Canada, 
 was disputed with just as much heat after the Treaty as 
 before it. And not in words only but by arms, just as 
 much as if war were still going on. Moreover what I 
 remark of the American frontier is equally true of another 
 frontier, along which at that time the English and French . 
 met each other, namely in India. It is a remarkable, 
 little-noticed fact that some of the most memorable 
 encounters between the English and the French which 
 have ever taken place in the course of their long rivalry. 
 
II.] ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUET. 27 
 
 some of the classic occurrences of our military history, took 
 place in these eight years when nominally England and 
 France were at peace. We have all heard how the French 
 built Fort Duquesne on the Ohio Kiver, how our colony of 
 Virghiia sent a body of 400 men under the command of 
 George Washington, then a very young man and a British 
 siijiject, to attack it, and how Washington was surrounded 
 and forced to capitulate. We have heard too of the defeat 
 and death of General Braddock in the same parts. Still 
 better do we remember the struggle between Dupleix and 
 CEve in India, the defence of Axcot and the deeds which 
 led to the founding of our Indian Empire. All these 
 events were part of a desperate struggle for supremacy 
 between England and France, but you will find that most 
 of them took place after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 
 1748 and before the commencement of the second war in 
 1756. 
 
 We have then one great conflict lasting from 1744 or a 
 little earlier to the Peace of Paris in 1763 through a 
 period of about twenty years. It ended in the most 
 disastrous defeat that has ever, in modem times, been 
 suffered by France except in 1870, a defeat which in fact 
 sealed the fate of the House of Bourbon. But fifteen 
 years later, and just within the lifetime of the great states- 
 man who had guided us to victory, England and France 
 were at war again. France^entered into relations with, 
 our insurgent colonies, acknowledged their independence, 
 and assisted them with troops. Once more for five years 
 there was war by land and sea between England and 
 France. But are we to suppose that this was a wholly 
 new war, and not rather a sort of afterswell of the great 
 disturbance that had so recently been stilled? It was 
 not for a moment dissembled that France now in 
 
28 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 our hour of distress toojs vengeance for wliat she had 
 suffered, from us^ This was her revenge for the loss of 
 Canada, namely, to create the United States. In the 
 words which on a later occasion became so celebrated, she 
 'called a new world into existence to redress the balance of 
 the old.' 
 
 Thus these three great wars are more clearly connected 
 . together than they might appear to be. But how closely 
 connected they are we shall not see until we ask ourselves 
 what the ground of quarrel was, and whether the same 
 ground of quarrel runs under all of them. At first sight it 
 appears to be otherwise. For the war of England and 
 France does, not at any time stand out distinct and isolated, 
 but is mixed up mth other wars which are going on at the 
 same time. Such immense complex medleys are charac- 
 teristic of the eighteenth century. What, for instaiiee, 
 can the capture of Quebec have to do with the struggle of 
 Frederick and Maria Theresa for Silesia ? Jn such med- 
 leys there is great room for historical mistakes, for pre- 
 mature generalisation. What is really at issue may be 
 misunderstood ; as for instance, when we remark that in 
 the Seven Years' War all the Protestant Powers of Europe 
 were ranged on one side, we should go very far astray if 
 we tried to make out that it was Protestantism that 
 prevailed in India or in Canada over the spirit of Ca- 
 tholicism. ^ 
 
 I said that the expansion of England in the New- 
 World and in Asia is the formula which sums up for 
 England the history of the eighteenth century. I point 
 out now that the great triple war of the middle of that 
 century is neither, more nor less than the great decisi-^e 
 duel between England and France for the possession of 
 the New World. It was perhaps scarcely perceived at 
 
II.]. ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUET. 29 
 
 the time, as it has been seldom remarked since ; but the 
 explanation of that second Hundred Years' War between ■ 
 England and France which fills the eighteenth century 
 
 ' is this, that they were rival candidates for the posses- 
 sion of the New World, and the triple war which fills the 
 middle of the century is, as it were, the decisive campaign 
 in. that great world-struggle. 
 
 I- We did not take possession of North America simply 
 because we found it empty and had more ships than 
 other nations by which we might carry colonists into it. 
 Not indeed that we conquered it from another Power 
 which already had possession of it. But we had a com- 
 petitor in the work of settlement, a competitor who in 
 some respects had got the start of us, namely France. 
 
 The simple fact about North America is thisrthat about 
 the same time that James I. was giving charters to 
 Virginia and New England the French were founding 
 further North the two settlements of Acadie and Canada, 
 and again, about the time that William Penn got his 
 Charter for Pennsylvania from Charles II., the French- 
 man La Salle, by one of the greatest feats of discovery, 
 
 I made his way from the great lakes to the sources of the 
 Mississippi, and putting his boats upon the stream de- 
 scended the whole vast river to the, Gulf of Mexico, laying 
 open a great territory which immediately afterwards be- 
 came the French colony of Louisiana. Such was the 
 relation of France and England in North America at the 
 time when the Kevolution of 1688 opened what I have 
 called the Second Hundred Years' War of England and 
 France. England had a row of thriving colonies lying 
 from North to. South along the Eastern coast, but France 
 had the two great rivers, the St Lawrence and the Missis- 
 sippi, A political prophet comparing the prospects of the 
 
30 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 two colonising Powers at the time of the Revolution, and 
 indeed much later, might have been led by observing what 
 an advantage the two rivers gave to France to think that 
 in the future North America would belong to her rather 
 than to England. 
 
 But now it is most important to observe further 
 that not only in America, but in Asia also, France and 
 England in that age advanced side by side. The conquest 
 of India by English merchants seems a unique and ab- 
 normal phenomenon, but we should be mistaken if we 
 supposed that there was anything peculiarly English 
 either in the originality which conceived the idea or in 
 the energy which carried it into execution. So far as\ 
 an idea of conquering India was deliberately conceived, 
 it was conceived by Frenchmen; Frenchmen first per- 
 ceived that it was feasible and saw the manner in which 
 it could be done; Frenchmen first set about it and ad- 
 vanced some way towards accomplishing it. In India'' 
 indeed they had the start of us much more decidedly than 
 in North America ; in India we had at the outset a 
 sense of inferiority in comparison with them, and fought in 
 a spirit of hopeless self-defence. And I find, when I study 
 the English conquest of India, that we were actuated 
 neither by ambition nor yet by mere desire to advance our 
 trade, but that from first to last, that is, from the first 
 efforts of Clive to the time when Lord Wellesley, Lord 
 Minto and Lord Hastings established our authority over 
 the whole vast peninsula, we were actuated by fear of the 
 French. Behind every movement of the native Powers we 
 saw French intrigue, French gold, French ambition, and 
 never until we were masters of the whole country got rid 
 of that feeling that the French were driving us out of it, 
 which had descended from the days of Dupleix and 
 Labourdonnais. 
 
n.] ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUET. 31 
 
 This fact then that both in America and in Asia France 
 and England stood in direct competition for a prize of 
 absolutely incalculable value, explains the fact that France 
 aad England fought a second Hundred Years' War. This 
 is the ultimate explanation, but the true ground of discord 
 was not always equally apparent even to the belligerents 
 t^pmselves, and still less to the rest of the world. For as 
 in other ages so in this, occasional causes of difference 
 fi?equently arose between such near neighbours, causes 
 often sufficient by themselves to produce a war; and it was 
 only in those three wars of the middle of the eighteenth 
 century that they fought quite visibly and apparently on 
 the question of the New World. In the earlier wars of 
 William III. and of Anne other causes are more, or certainly 
 not less, operative, for the New World quarrel is not yet at 
 its height. And again in the later wars, that is the two. 
 that followed the French Eevolution, the question of the 
 New World is again falling into the backgrbund, because 
 Fmnce had fairly lost her hold both upoh America and 
 India, and can now do no more than make despairing 
 efforts to regain it. But in those three wars between 1740 
 and 1783 the struggle, as between England and France, is 
 entirely for the New World. In the first of them the 
 issue is fairly joined; in the second France suffers herv- 
 fatal fall ; in the third she takes her signal revenge. This 
 is the grand chapter in the' history of Greater Britain, 
 for it is the first great struggle in which the Empire fights 
 as a whole, the colonies and settlements outside Europe 
 being here not merely dragged in the wake of the mother- 
 country, but actually taking the lead. We ought to 
 register this event with a very broad mark in our Calendar 
 of the eighteenth century. The principal and most 
 decisive incidents of it belong to the latter half of the 
 reign of George II. 
 
32 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 But in our wars with Louis XIV. beforehand in our 
 wars with the French Revolution afterwards it will be 
 found on examination that, much more than might be 
 supposed, the real bone of contention between England and 
 France is the New World. Th'e colonial question had 
 indeed been growing in magnitude throughout the seven- 
 teenth century, while the other burning question of that 
 age, the quarrel of the two Churches, had been falUng 
 somewhat into the background. Thus when Cromwell made 
 war on Spain, it is a question whether he attacked her as 
 the great Catholic Power or as the great monopolist of the 
 New World. In the same age the two great Protestant 
 Powers, England and Holland, who ought in the interest of 
 religion to have stood side by side, are fotmd waging 
 furious war upon each other as rival colonial Powers. 
 Now it was by the great discov^g;^ and settlement of 
 Louisiana in 1683 that France was broiight into the fore- 
 front of colonial Powers, and within six years of that event 
 the Hundred Years' War of England and France began. 
 
 In the first war of the series however, though it 
 stands marked in histories of North Amierica as the ' first 
 intercolonial war,' the colonial question is not very promi- 
 nent. But it is prominent in the second, which has been 
 called the War of the Spanish Succession. We must not 
 be misled by this name. Much has been said of the 
 wicked waste of blood and treasure of which we were 
 guilty, when we interfered in a Spanish question with 
 which we had no concern, or terrified ourselves with a 
 phantom of French Ascendency which had no reality. 
 How much better, it has been said, to devote ourselves 
 to the civilising pursuits' of trade ! But read in Ranke' 
 
 1 Better still in Europaische Geechichte im ISten Jahrhunderte, by 
 C. y. Noorden, in -which book that great European transition is for the 
 first time adequately treated. 
 
.n.] ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH OENTUET. 33 
 
 how the war broke out. ^ You will find that it was prer 
 cisely trade that led us into it. The Spanish Succession ' 
 touched us because France threatened by establishing her 
 .influence in Spain to enter into the Spanish monopoly of 
 the New World and to shut us irrevocably out of it. 
 Accordingly the great practical results of this war to 
 Ei^land were colonial, namely, the conquest of Acadie and 
 the Asiento contract, which for the first time made England 
 on the great scale a slave-trading Power. 
 
 Not less true is it of our wars with the French Revo- 
 lution and with Napoleon, that the possession of the 
 New World was among the grounds of quarrel; As in the 
 American war France avenges on England her expulsion 
 from the- New World, so under Napoleon, she makes 
 Titanic efforts to recover her lost place there. This indeed 
 is Napoleon's fixed view with regard to England. He sees • 
 in England never the island, the European State, but 
 always the World-Empire, the network of dependencies 
 and colonies and islands covering every sea, among which 
 he was hjuffself destined to find at last his prison and his 
 grave. rThus.when in 1798 he was.. put in charge^ f6r the 
 first time of "the war with England, he begins by examin- 
 ing the British Channel, and no doubt, glances at Ireland. 
 But what he sees does not tempt him, although a few 
 months afterward Ireland broke out in a terrible rebellion, 
 durmg which 'if the conqueror of Italy had suddenly landed 
 at the head of a French army, undoubtedly he would have 
 struck a heavier blow at England than any she has yet 
 sufiered. His mind is preoccupied with other thoughts. 
 He iremembers how France once seemed on the point of 
 conqueriQg India, until England^ checked her progress; 
 
 1- In his Cbrsican period he had actually dreamed of entering the 
 Anglo-Indian serriee and coming hacl? a rich naboh. See Jung, Lueieft 
 Bonaparte et ses Memmres i. p. 74. 
 
 S. L. 3 
 
Si EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [Mci. 
 
 accordingly he decides and cGnvinces the Directory that 
 the best way to carry on the contest with England is by 
 occupying Egypt, and at the same time by stirring up 
 Tippoo Sultan to war with the Calcutta Government. 
 And he actually carries out this plan, so that the whole 
 struggle is transferred from the British Channel into the 
 boundless spaces of Greater Britain, and when the Irish 
 shortly afterwards rise, they find to their bitter .disap- 
 pointment that France cannot spare them Bonaparte, but 
 only General Humbert with eleven hundred men. 
 
 When this war was brought to an end by the treaty of 
 Amiens in 1802, the results of it were such as to_^make 
 a great epoch in the history of Greater Britain. In the 
 first place Egypt is finally evacuated by France, that is 
 to say, Bonaparte's grand scheme of attack against our 
 Indian Empire has failed, his ally Tippoo — Gitoyen Tipou, 
 as he was called — had been defeated and slain some time 
 before, and General Baird had moved with an English 
 force up the Red Sea to take part with General Hutchinsoa 
 in the expulsion of the French firom Egypt. In the colonial 
 world at the same time England remained mistress of 
 Ceylon and Trinidad. 
 
 But the last war, that which lasted from 1803 to 1815, 
 was this in any sense a war for the New World ? It does 
 not seem to be so ; and naturally, because England firom 
 the beginning had such a naval superiority, that NapoleoE 
 could never again succeed in making his way back into 
 the New World. Nevertheless I believe that it was 
 intended by Napoleon to be so. In the first place look 
 at the origin and cause of it. It was at the outset a war 
 for Malta. By the treaty of Amiens, England had engaged 
 within a given time to evacuate Malta, and this for certain 
 reasons, which need not here be discussed, she after- 
 
11.] ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTTJET. 35 
 
 wards refused to do. Now why did Napoleon want her 
 to leave Malta, and why did she refuse to do so ? It was 
 because Malta was the key of Egypt, and she had good 
 reason to believe that he would in a moment reoccupy 
 Eg^t, and that the struggle for India would hegin again. 
 Thus the war was ultimately for India, though it was 
 diverted into Germany by the Third Coalition. Moreover, 
 though by the retention of Malta we did effectually and 
 once for all ward off this attack, yet we did not ourselves 
 know how successful we had been. We still believed India 
 to be full of French intrigue; we believed the Mahratta 
 and Afghan princes and the Persian Shah to be puppets 
 worked by the French, as indeed they had many French 
 officers in their service. Probably the great Mahratta War 
 of 1803 seemed to Lord Wellesley to be a part of the 
 war with France, and probably Arthur Wellesley believed 
 that at Assaye and Argaum he struck at the same enemy 
 as afterwards at Salamanca and Waterloo. The fact is 
 that Napoleon's intention in this war is obscured to us by 
 the grand failure of the maritime enterprise which he has 
 planned, and the grand success of the German campaign 
 which he has not plaimed. He drifts in a direction he 
 ■does not intend, yet the Continental System and the 
 violent seizure of Spain and Portugal (great New World 
 Powers) show that he does not forget his original object. 
 Moreover, Colonel Malleson shows in his Later Struggles 
 'Of France in the East, what a destructive privateering war 
 the French were able to keep up in the Indian Ocean from 
 their island of Mauritius long after their naval power 
 had been destroyed at Trafalgar, It was by the conquest 
 ■of this island and its retention at the Peace by England 
 that the Hundred Years' War of England and France for 
 the New World came to an end. 
 
 3—2 
 
36 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND.. [leoi. ii. 
 
 This general view of the wars of the eighteenth century- 
 will show you that more is meant than might at first 
 appear by the statement that expansion is the chief 
 character of English history in the eighteenth century. 
 At first it seems to mean merely that the conquest of 
 Canada, India and South Africa are greater events in 
 intrinsic importance than such European or domestic 
 events as Marlborough's war, or the succession of the House 
 of Brunswick, or the Jacobite rebellion, or even the war 
 with the French Eevolution. It means in fact, as -you will 
 now see, that these other great events which seem to 
 have nothing to do with the growth of Greater Britain, 
 were really closely connected with it, and were indeed only 
 successive moments in the great process. At first it may 
 seem to mean that the European policgr of England in that 
 century is of less importance than its colonial policy. It 
 really means that the European policy and the colonial 
 policy are but different aspects of the same great national 
 development. And. this, nay even more than this, is what 
 I desire to show. This single conception brings together 
 not only the European with the colonial affairs, but also 
 the military struggles with the whole peaceful expansion of 
 the country, with that industrial and commercial growth, 
 which during the same century exceeded in England all 
 previous example. But in order to understand this it will 
 be necessary for us to examine the peculiar nature of the 
 English colonisation of the New World. | 
 
LECTURE III, 
 
 THE EMPIRE. 
 
 The expression 'Colonial Empire' is familiar to us, and yet 
 there is something strange in the juxtaposition of words. 
 The word Empire seems too military and despotic to suit 
 the relation of a mother-country to colonies. 
 
 There are two very different kinds of colonisation. 
 First there is a kind, which may be called natwral 
 in the sense that it has manifest analogies in the 
 natural world. 'Colonies are like fruits which only cling 
 till they ripen,' said Turgot. Colonisation, say others, is 
 like the swarming of bees ; or it is like the marriage and 
 migration to another house of the grown-up son. And no 
 doubt history furnishes us with real examples of such easy 
 and natural colonisation. The primitive migrations may 
 often have been of this kind. In the first chapters of 
 European history, in the earliest traditions of Greece and 
 Italy, which show us the Greco-Italian branch of the Aryan 
 family in the act of occupying the territory which was 
 afterwards to be the scene of its greatness, we see this 
 easy process going on under the influence of primitive 
 ideas. We read of the institution called ver sacrum, by 
 which all the children bom in one spring would be 
 dedicated to some deity, who was supposed to accept. 
 
38 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [leoi. 
 
 emigration in lieu of sacrifice*; the votaries accordingly, 
 -nrhen they grew up, were driven across the frontier, and 
 sometimes they settled and founded a city on the spot 
 where an animal accidentally overtaken on the journey, in 
 whom they saw a guide sent by the god, had chanced 
 to stop. From such a sacred animal we are told that some 
 cities, e.g. Bovianum and Picenum, received their name. 
 
 This may be called perhaps natural colonisation, but 
 out of such a system there could grow no colonial empire. 
 Accordingly the Greek dtroiKia, though the word is 
 translated colony, was essentially different in fact from 
 
 r the modem colony. By a colony we understand a com- 
 munity which is not merely derivative, but which remains 
 
 \ politically connected in a relation of dependence with the 
 parent community. Now the Greek d-n-oiKia was not such 
 a dependent community. Technically it was entirely 
 independent of the mother-state, though the sense of 
 kindred commonly held it in a condition of permanent 
 alliance. The dependency indeed was by no means 
 unknown to the Greeks. Subordinate governments were 
 often among them established by a State in a community 
 outside itself. But among the Greeks the dependency was 
 not a colony, as the colony was not a dependency. 
 
 The Latin colonia was no doubt dependent enough, but 
 it was an institution so peculiar, being a sort of contrivance 
 for the purpose of garrisoning conquered territory without 
 the expense of maintaining an army in it, that we need 
 not discuss it further here. 
 
 It is a remarkable and fundamental fact that the old 
 
 1 Thus Paulus: Magnis perioulis adduoti vovebant Itali guaeoungue 
 prozimo vere nata esseut apud se animalia immolatnios. Sed quom 
 cradele yideretttr pueros ao puellas irmocentes interficeie, peiductos in 
 adultam aetatem velabant ati^ue ita extra fines suos exigebant. 
 
III.] THE BMPIEE. 39 
 
 primitive system of the Greeks has not been revived in 
 modem times. The colonisation which began with the dis- 
 covery of Columbus, or more strictly with the conquest of 
 the Canaries by Bethencourt in 1404, has been on a vast 
 scale; it has peopled a territory more extensive a hundred- 
 fold than the few Mediterranean islands and peninsulas 
 which those primitive Greek adventurers occupied, yet 
 nowhere, I think, did the mother-state wiUingly allow 
 its emigrants to form independent communities. What- 
 ever license might be allowed to the first adventurers, to 
 a Cortez or Pizarro, whatever formidable powers of levy- 
 ing armies and making war or peace might be granted, for 
 example, to our East India Company, the State nevertheless 
 retained invariably the supreme control in its hands, except 
 where a successful rebellion forced it out of them. Though 
 it seems not to have occurred to Corinth that it could 
 possibly carry on government at the distance of Sicily, on 
 the other hand it seems just as little to have occurred to 
 the Spanish or Portuguese or Dutch or French or English 
 Governments that their emigrants could pretend to inde- 
 pendence on the ground that they were hidden away 
 in the Pampas of South America or in the Archipelagos of 
 the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 The modem system may be less natural if by 'natural' 
 we mean 'instinctive,' but if we mean by it 'reasonable,' 
 which is surely different, we must not call it unnatural 
 simply because it is not the system of bees or of plants. 
 At any rate let us not take up at once the scolding strain, 
 and say; 'See the contrast between the humane wisdom 
 of the ancient world and the tyranny of the Gothic Middle 
 Ages! The Goth never relaxes for any distance his bar- 
 barous system of constraint; the mild intelligent Greek, 
 guided by nature, perceives that the grown-up child has a 
 
40 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 right to be independent, and so he blesses him and bids 
 him farewell.' 
 
 Perhaps if we examine the circumstances of the modem 
 colonisation we shall see that it grew as iaevitably out of 
 them as the instinctive system grew out of the conditions 
 of the ancient world. 
 
 The appropriation by a settled community of lands 
 on the other side of an ocean is wholly different from 
 the gradual diffusion of a race over a continuous territory 
 or across narrow seas. Slight motives calling into operation 
 moderate forces may suffice for the latter, but the former 
 demands a prodigious leverage. In the life of Columbus 
 it may be remarked that he needs the help of the State 
 at every turn. It is the State which has equipped him and 
 paid the expense of the discovery. Moreover when the 
 discovery is made, it is observable that no irresistible impulse 
 prompts the Europeans to take advantage of it. When 
 the floodgates are thrown open, there is no stream ready to 
 flow, for in Europe at that time there was no superfluous 
 population seeking an outlet, only individual adventurers 
 ready to go in search of gold. Columbus can make no 
 progress but by proviag to the Sovereigns that the territory 
 he discovers will yield revenue to them. In these circum- 
 stances the State, as its help was always needed, had the 
 less difficulty in maintaining its authority. 
 
 We may observe also that the modern State almost 
 necessarily colonises in a different way, because its nature 
 is different from that of the Greek State. The Greek 
 mind identifies the State and City so completely that 
 the language, as you know, has but one word for both. 
 Aristotle, though he knew of country-states such as 
 Macedonia and Persia, yet in his Politics seems almost to 
 omit them from consideration. Frequently he lays down 
 
III.] THE EMPIRE. 41 
 
 principles from which it appears that he could not bring 
 himself to regard them as states in the proper sense of the 
 ■word, because they were not cities. The modern idea on 
 the other hand — few of us know how modem it is, or how 
 gradually it has been formed — is that the people of one 
 nation, speaking one language, ought in general to have 
 one government. 
 
 Now it is evident that these different ideas of the State 
 involve of necessity different ideas of the effect of emigra- 
 tion. If the State is the City it follows that he who goes 
 out of the City goes out of the State. Hence the Greek 
 view of the colony was natural to the Greeks, for those 
 Greeks who undertook to form a new city (7rd\t?) did ipso 
 facto and inevitably undertake to form a new state. But 
 if the State is the Nation (not the Country, observe, but 
 the Nation), then we see a sufficient ground for the 
 universal usage of modem states, which has been to regard 
 their emigrants not as going out of the State but as 
 carrying the State with them. The notion was, Where 
 Englishmen are there is England, where Frenchmen are 
 there is France, and so the possessions of France in North 
 America were called New France, and one group at least 
 of the English possessions New England. 
 
 It is involved in this, but it is so important that it 
 must be stated separately, that the organization of the 
 modern State admits of unbounded territorial extension, 
 while that of the ancient State did not. The Greek ttoXc;, 
 as it actually was a city, could not be modified so as to 
 become anything else. I must never be tired of quoting 
 that passage of the Politics which is so infinitely important 
 to the student of political science, where Aristotle lays it 
 down that the State must be of moderate population 
 because ' who could command it in war, if the population 
 
42 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 were excessive, or what herald short of a Stentor could 
 speak to them? (rt? Se Krjpv^ /j.tj Srei'Topeios ;).' The 
 modem State, being already as large as a country, 
 would bear to become larger. Either it had no national 
 assemblies, as was practically the case with France and 
 Spain, or its national assembly, as in the case of England, 
 was representative, that is to say, was expressly contrived 
 to overcome the difficulty of bringing together the whole 
 body of the citizens. 
 
 I have indulged in these general reflexions upon the 
 nature of modem colonisation in order that we may 
 understand what our Empire is, and how it necessarily 
 came into existence. There might easily have been a 
 great emigration from England which would not in any 
 way have enlarged the English State. For by Greater 
 Britain we mean an enlargement of the English State and 
 not simply of the English nationality. It is not simply 
 that a population of English blood is now found in Canada 
 and in Australia, as in old time a Greek population was 
 spread over Sicily, South Italy and the Western Coast of 
 Asia Minor. That was an extension of ttieNationalitybjit 
 not of the State, an extension( wfaich gave noliew"s& engthy/ 
 and did not in any way help the Greek name when it was 
 attacked and conquered from Macedonia. In like manner 
 at present we see a constant stream of emigration from 
 Germany to America, but no Greater Gennany comes into 
 existence, because these emigrants, though they carry with 
 them and may perhaps not altogether lose their language 
 and their ideas, do not carry with them their State. This 
 is the case with Germany because its emigration has 
 happened too late, when the New World is already carved 
 into States, into which its emigrants are compelled to 
 enter, as with Greece it was the result of a theory of the 
 
/ 
 
 III.] THE EMPIEE. 43 
 
 State, which identified it with the City. But Greater 
 Britain is a real enlargement of the English State; it 
 carries across the seas not merely the English race, hut the 
 authority of the English Government. We call it for , 
 want of a better word an Empire. And it does resemble 
 the great Empires of history in this respect, that it is an 
 aggregate of provinces, each of which has a government 
 which is sent out to it from the political head-quarters 
 and which is a kind of delegation from the supreme 
 government. But yet it is wholly unlike the great 
 Empires, of the Old World, Persian or Macedonian or 
 Eoman or Turkish, because it is not in the main founded 
 on conquest, and because in the main the inhabitants of 
 the distant provinces are of the same nation as those of 
 the dominant country. It resembles them in its vast 
 extent, but it does not resemble them in that violent 
 military character which has made most Empires short- 
 lived' and liable to speedy decay. ' 
 
 We may see now out of what conditions it arose. It is 
 the- only considerable survivor of a family of great 
 Empires, which arose out of the contact of the Western 
 States of Europe with the New World so suddenly laid 
 open by Vasco da Gama and Columbus. What England 
 did, was done equally by Spain, Portugal, France and 
 Holland. There was once a Greater Spain, a Greater 
 Portugal, a Greater France and a Greater Holland, as well 
 as a Greater Britain, but from various causes those four 
 Empires have either perished or have become insigmficant. 
 Greater Spain disappeared and Greater Portugal lost its 
 largest province Brazil half a century ago in wars of 
 independence similar to that which tore from us our 
 American colonies. Greater France and a large part of 
 Greater Holland were lost in war and became merged 
 
44 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 in Greater Britain. Greater Britain itself after suffering 
 one severe shock has survived to the present day, and 
 remsfins the siagle monument of a state of the world 
 which has almost passed away. At the same time it differs 
 in a very essential point from some of those Empires. 
 
 The countries which were suddenly thrown open to 
 Europe at the end of the fifteenth century fall into three 
 classes. Vasco da Gama threw open countries in which for 
 the most part ancient and extensive states existed, such as 
 the adventurers did not for a long time think of subverting. 
 Columbus on the other hand discovered a Continent in 
 which only two such states appeared to exist, and even 
 these were soon proved to have no solidity. The contact 
 which Columbus established, being the most strange and 
 violent which ever took place between two parts of the 
 human family, led to a fierce struggle and furnished one of 
 the most terrible pages to the annals of the world. But in 
 this struggle there was no sort of equality. The American 
 race had no more power of resisting the European than 
 the sheep has of resisting the wolf. Even where it was 
 numerous and had a settled polity, as in Peru, it 
 could make no resistance; its states were crushed, the 
 ruling families extinguished, and the population itself re- 
 duced to a form of slavery. Everywhere therefore the 
 country fell into the hands of the immigrating i-ace, and was 
 disposed of at its pleasure as so much plunder. The im- 
 migrants did not merely, as in India, gradually show a great 
 military superiority to the native race, so as in the end to 
 subdue them, but overwhelmed them at once like a party of 
 hunters suddenly-assailing a herd of antelopes. This was 
 the case everywhere, but yet the countries of America also 
 fall into two classes. There was a great difference between 
 the regions of Central and Southern America, which fell 
 
III.] THE EMPIRE. ' 45 
 
 principally to the Spanish and Portuguese, and the North 
 American territories which fell to England. In Mexico, 
 Peru and some other parts of South America the native 
 population, though feeble compared to the Europeans, was 
 not insignificant in numbers ; it was counted by millions, 
 had reached the agricultural stage of civilisation, and 
 had cities. But the tribes of Indians which wandered 
 over the territories of North America, which now belong 
 to the United States and the Dominion of Cana,da, were 
 much more insignificant. It has been estimated that ' the 
 total Indian population within the territory of the United 
 States east of the Rocky Mountains, did not at any time 
 subsequent to the discovery of America exceed, if indeed 
 it even reached, three hundred thousand individuals.'. 
 Accordingly whereas in New Spain the European, though 
 supreme, yet Hved in the midst of a population of native 
 Indians, the European in North America supplanted the 
 native race entirely, pushed it ever further back as he 
 advanced, and did not blend with it at all. 
 
 It was ultimately the fortune of England to acquire the 
 most important share both of what Vasco da Gama and of 
 what Columbus laid open. On one side has grown up her 
 Indian, and mainly on the other her Colonial Empire. But 
 of the latter group of countries, the countries wanting in 
 strong states, England occupied those which were com- 
 paratively empty, and the Australian territory which has 
 since fallen to her is in the same condition. This fact 
 has an all-important consequence. 
 
 I remarked before that Greater Britain is an extension 
 of the English State and not merely of the English 
 nationality. But it is an equally striking characteristic of 
 .Greater' Britain' that nevertheless it is an extension of the 
 English, nationality. When a nationality is extended with- 
 
46 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [leoi. 
 
 out any extension of the State, as in the case of the Greek 
 colonies, there may be an increase of moral and intellec- 
 tual influence, but there is no increase of political power. 
 On the other hand when the State advances beyond the 
 limits of the nationality, its power becomes precarious and 
 artificial. This is the condition of most empires ; it is the 
 condition for example of our own empire in India. The 
 English State is powerful there, but the English nation is 
 but an imperceptible drop in the ocean of an Asiatic 
 population. And when a nation extends itself into other 
 territories the chances are that it will there meet with 
 other nationalities which it cannot destroy or completely 
 drive out, even if it succeeds in conquering them. 
 When this happens, it has a great and permanent difficulty 
 to contend with. The subject or rival nationalities cannot 
 be perfectly assimilated, and remain as a permanent cause 
 of weakness and danger. It has been the fortune of 
 England in extending itself to evade on the whole this 
 danger. For it has occupied parts of the globe which were 
 so empty that they offered an unbounded scope for new 
 settlement. There was land for every emigrant who chose 
 to come, and the native races were not in a condition 
 sufficiently advanced to withstand even the peacefizl com- 
 j)etition, much less the power, of the immigrants. 
 
 This statement is true on the whole. The English 
 Empire is on the whole free from that weakness which has 
 brought down most empires, the weakness of being a mere 
 mechanical forced union of alien nationalities. It is some- 
 times described as an essentially feeble union which could 
 not bear the slightest shock, with what reason I may 
 examine later, but it has the fundamental strength which 
 most empires and some commonwealths want. Austria for 
 instance is divided by the nationality-rivalry of German, 
 
in.] THE EMPIRE. _ 47 
 
 Slav, and Magyar; the Swiss Confederation unites three 
 languages, but the English Empire in the main and broadly 
 may be said to be English throughout. 
 
 Of course however considerable abatements are to be 
 made. It is only in one of the four. great groups, namely, 
 in the Australian colonies, that the statement is true 
 almost without qualification. The native Australian race 
 is so low in the ethnological scale that it can never give 
 the least trouble, but even here, since we reckon New 
 Zealand in this group, we are to bear in mind that the 
 Maori tribes occupy the Northern island in some force, 
 much as in the last century the Highland Clans gave us 
 trouble in the northern part of our own island, and the 
 Maori is by no means a contemptible type of man. Never- 
 theless the whole number of Maories is not supposed to 
 exceed forty thousand and it is rapidly diminishing. 
 When we turn to another group, the North American 
 eolonies, included principally in the Dominion of Canada, 
 we find that the nucleus of it was acquired originally 
 not by English settlement but by the conquest of French 
 settlements. At the outset therefore the nationality- 
 difficulty, instead of being absent here, was present in 
 the gravest form. The original Canada of the French was 
 afterwards known as Lower Canada, and since the esta- 
 bhshment of the Dominion it has borne the name of the 
 Province of Quebec, It has a population of nearly a million 
 and a half, while the whole Dominion does not contain four 
 milUons and a half. These are Frenchmen and Catholics 
 in the midst of a population mainly English and Protes- 
 tant. It is not so long since the inconvenience of this 
 alien population -was felt in Canada by discords essen- 
 tially similar to those which the nationality-question has 
 created in Austria and Russia, The Canadian Eebellion 
 
48 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lem, 
 
 which marked the iirst years of the reign of Queen 
 Victoria, was in fact a war of nationality in the British 
 Empire, though it wore the disguise of a war of liberty, as 
 Lord Durham expressly remarks in the opening of his 
 famous Eeport on Canada: 'I expected to find a contest 
 between a government and a people ; I found two nations 
 warring in the bosom of a single state ; I found a struggle 
 not of principles but of races.' It is however to be 
 remarked on the other side that here too the alien element 
 dwindles and is likely ultimately to be lost in the English 
 immigration, and also that its animosity has been much 
 pacified by the introduction of federal institutions. 
 
 In the third or West Indian group also the differences 
 of nationality are considerable. Here almost alone in our 
 Empire are to be traced the effects of the peculiar 
 phenomenon of the history of the New World, negro 
 slavery. Here it first appeared on a considerable scale, as 
 the immediate result of the discovery of Columbus, So 
 long as it lasted, it did not call into existence* the , 
 nationality-difficulty, for a thoroughly enslaved nation, is a 
 nation no longer, and a servile insurrection is wholly 
 different from the insurrection of an oppressed nationality. 
 But when slavery is abolished, while the slaves themselves 
 remain, stamped so visibly in colour and physical type 
 with the badge of their different nationality, yet now 
 free and laying claim to citizenship, then it is that the 
 nationality-difficulty begins to tlireaten. But in the 
 West-Indian group such difficulties for the present do not 
 take a serious form, because the colonies are in the main 
 dispersed in small islands and have no community of 
 feeling. 
 
 It is in the fourth or South African group that the 
 nationality-difficulty is most serious. It is here a double 
 
ni.] ■ THE EMPIEE. ' 49 
 
 difficulty, There have been two conquests, Ihe one super- 
 induced upon the other. ' The Dutch first settled them- 
 selves among the native races, and then the Dutch colony 
 •was conquered by England. So far the case may seem 
 to resemble that of Canada, where the French settled 
 among the Indians and were then conquered by the 
 English. But there are two differences. In the first place 
 the native tribes of South Africa, instead of disappearing 
 and dwindling before the whites, greatly outnumber them, 
 and show a power of combination and progress such as the 
 Red Indian never showed. Thus in the census of 1875 
 I find that the Cape Colony had a total population of 
 nearly three quarters of a million, but two out of the 
 three quarters were native and only one European. Aud 
 behind this native population dwelling among the settlers 
 there is an indefinite native population extending without 
 limit into the interior of the vast continent. Biit secondly 
 the other difficulty, which arises from the fact that the 
 settlers themselves were at the outset not J-iiglish but 
 Dutch, does not diminish or tend to disappear as it has 
 done in Canada. In Canada there took place a rapid 
 immigration of English who, showing themselves in a 
 marked degree more energetic than the French and in- 
 creasing much faster, gradually gave the whole community 
 a predominantly English character, so that in fact the 
 rising of the French in 1838 was the convulsion of despair 
 of a sinking nationality. Nothing similar has happened in 
 South Africa, no rapid English immigration has come to 
 give a new character to the community. 
 
 These are the abatements which must be made to the 
 
 general proposition that Greater Britain is homogeneous in 
 
 nationality. They need not prevent us firom laying down 
 
 this general proposition as true. If in these islands we 
 
 S.L. 4 
 
50 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lE'pi;- 
 
 feel ourselves 'for all purposes one nation, though in Wales, 
 in Scotland and in Ireland there is Celtic blood and Celtic 
 languages utterly unintelligible to us are still spoken, so in 
 the Empire a good many French and Dutch and a good 
 many Caffres and Maories may be admitted vrithout 
 marring the ethnological unity of the whole. 
 
 This ethnological unity is of great importance when we 
 would form an opinion about the stability and chance of 
 (Juration of the Empire. The chief forces which hold a 
 community together and cause it to constitute one State 
 are three, common nationality, common religion, and 
 common interest. These may act in various degrees of 
 intensity and they may also act singly or in combination, 
 Now when it is argued that Greater Britain is a union 
 which will not last long and will soon fall to pieces, the 
 ground taken is that it wants the third of these binding 
 forces, that it is not held together by community of 
 interest. 'What,' it is said, 'can the inhabitants of 
 Australia and New Zealand, living on the other side of 
 the Tropic of Capricorn, have in common with ourselves 
 who live beyond the 50th degree of north latitude? 
 Who does not see that two communities so remote fit)m 
 each other cannot long continue parts of one political 
 whole?' Now this is a very important consideration, 
 especially as it is backed by the impressive fact that our, 
 American Colonies did in the last century find their union 
 with us intolerable. But, allowing its importance, we 
 may remark that, even if this bond is wanting, the other 
 two bonds which hold states together are not wanting..' 
 Many empires in which hostile nationalities and religions 
 have been but artificially united have nevertheless lasted 
 several centuries, but Greater Britain is not a mere 
 empire, though we often cajl it so. Its union is of the more 
 
m.] •" THE EMPIRE. 51 
 
 vital kind. It is united "by blood and religion, and tliough 
 circumstances may be imagined in which these ties might 
 snap, yet they are strong ties, and -will only give way before 
 some violent dissolving force. 
 
 I have enlarged in this lecture upon the essential 
 nature of our colonial Empire, because there is much 
 •aftbiguity both about the word ' colonial ' and about the 
 word ' Empire.' Our colonies do not resemble the colonies 
 •which classical students meet ■with in Greek and Roman 
 history, and our Empire is not an Ei](q)ire at all in the 
 / ordinary sense of the word. It does not consist of a 
 / congeries of nations held together by force, but in the main 
 of one nation, as much as if it were no Empire but an 
 ordinary state. This fact is fundamental when we 
 look to the future and inquire whether it is calculated for 
 duration. 
 
 But I have also enlarged upon the whole class of 
 Empires which sprang out of the discovery of the New 
 World, to which class our own Empire belongs, in order 
 that we may understand the past. England in the 
 eighteenth century is regarded, I said, too much as a 
 European insular State and too little as an American and 
 Asiatic Empire; in short, we think of Great Britain 
 too much and of Greater Britain too little. But the mis- 
 conception spreads further, for in that century there is also 
 a Greater France, a Greater Holland, a Greater Portugal 
 and a Greater Spain, and all these we overlook as we over- 
 look Greater Britain. 
 
 Here is a fundamental characteristic of the European 
 States during the eighteenth and seventeenth centuries, 
 which is seldom borne in mind, namely that each of the 
 five Western States has an Empire in the New World at- 
 tached to it. Before the seventeenth century this condition ' 
 
 4—2 
 
S2 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lSci. 
 
 of things -was but beginmng, and since the eigBteeiith it 
 has ceased again to exist. The vast immeasurable results 
 of the discovery of Columbus were developed with extreme 
 slowness, so that the whole sixteenth century passed away 
 before most of these natiotis bestirred themselves to claim 
 a share in the New World. ' There existed no independent 
 Holland till near the end of that century, so that a fortiori 
 there could be no Greater Holland, nor did either England 
 or France in that century become possessors of colonies. 
 France did indeed plan a settlement in North America, as 
 the name Carolina, derived from Charles IX. of France, still 
 remains to prove, but the neighbouring Spaniards of 
 Florida interfered to destroy it. A little later Sir Walter 
 Ealeigh's colony in the sahie neighbotu-hood disappeared 
 altogether, leaving no trace behind it. Accordingly during 
 almost the whole of that century the New World remained 
 in the possession of the two States which had done most to 
 lay it open, viz., Spain and Portugal, Spain looking chieffy 
 towards America and Portugal towards Asia, until in 1580 
 the two States coalesced in a union which lasted sixty 
 years. The Dutch mads their grand entrance into the 
 competition for empire in the seven years from 1595 to 
 1602, and they were followed by France and England in 
 the early years .of the seventeenth century, that is, in the 
 reign of our King James I. 
 
 Again in the nineteenth century the competition of 
 these five states in the New World ceased. It ceased from 
 two causes, wars of independence, in. which Transatlantic 
 colonies severed themselves from the mother-country, and 
 the colonial conquests of England. I have described 
 already the Hundred Years' War in which Greater France 
 was swallowed up in Greater Britain ; Greater Holland in 
 like manner suffered serious diminution, losing the Cape 
 
ill.] THE EMPIBE. 53 
 
 of Good Hope and Demerara to England, though even now 
 a -Greater Holland may be said to exist in the magnificent 
 ■dependency of Java with a population of not less than 
 nineteen millions. The fall of Greater Spain and Greater 
 Portugal has happened in the present century within the 
 life-time of niany who are still among us. If we estimated 
 occurrences less by the excitement they cause at the 
 moment and more by the consequences which are certain to 
 follow them, we should call this one of the most stupendous 
 events in the history of the globe, for it is the beginning of 
 the independent life of almost the whole of Southern and 
 Central America. It took place mainly in the twenties of 
 this century, and was the result of a series of rebellions 
 which, when we inquire into their origin, we find to have 
 arisen out of the shock given to Spain and Portugal by 
 Napoleon's invasion of them, so that in fact one of the 
 chief, if not the chief, result of Napoleon's career has been 
 the 'fall of Greater Spain and Greater Portugal, and the 
 independence of South America. '^ 
 
 The result of all these mighty revolutions — of which 
 however I fancy that few of you know anything — is that 
 the Western States of Europe, with the exception of 
 England,.have been in the main severed again from the 
 New "World. T^js-^f course is only roughly true, ^ain 
 stilk possesses TCuba and Porto E,ico7 Portugal still has 
 large African possessions, France has begun to found a new 
 Empire in North Africa; Nevertheless these four states 
 have materially altered their position in the world. They 
 have become in the main purely European States again as 
 they were before Columbus crossed the Atlantic. It is 
 ieasy to show you the immense magnitude of this change.' 
 Spain has lately passed through a disturbed time. She ex- 
 pelled a Bourbon sovereign and tried for a time the experi- 
 
54 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND, [leoi, 
 
 ment of a Eepublic. This change was doubtless very 
 serious in the peninsula, but it produced wonderfully little 
 excitement in the world at large. Now if anything similar 
 had happened in the eighteenth or in the seventeenth 
 century, the shock of it would have been felt over a great 
 part of the planet. From Mexico to Buenos Ayres, from 
 above the Tropic of Cancer to below the Tropic of Capri- 
 corn, every territory probably would have been convulsed 
 with rebellion and civil war. In like manner the recent 
 ■calamities in France would in the eighteenth century have 
 shaken the St Lawrence, the Great Lakes of North America 
 and the Mississippi, and have influenced the policy of 
 princes in the Deccan and the valley of the Ganges, nay 
 perhaps have altered the balance of Hindostan. As it was, 
 those calamities were nearly confined to France itseK; 
 elsewhere sympathies were excited, but interests were not 
 touched. 
 
 Thus then the seventeenth and still more the eight- 
 eenth century are a period when the New World was 
 attached in a peculiar way to the five Western States of 
 the European system. This attachment modifies and 
 determines all the wars and negociations, all the inter- 
 national relations of Europe, during that period. In the 
 last lecture I pointed out that the struggle between 
 England and France in those centuries cannot be under- 
 stood so long as we look at Europe alone, and that the 
 belligerents are really the World-Powers, Greater Britain 
 and Greater France. , Now I remark that in like manner 
 during the same period we must always read for Holland, 
 Portugal and Spain, Greater Holland, Greater Portuga. 
 and Greater Spain. I remark also that this state of things 
 has now passed away, that the Spanish Empire, and in the 
 main also the Portuguese and Dutch Empires, have gone 
 
III.] THE EMPIEE. 55 
 
 the same way as the Empire of France, But Greater 
 Britain still remains. And thus we perceive the historical 
 origin and character of this Empire. It is the sole sur- 
 vivor of a whole family of Empires, which arose out of the 
 action of the discovery of the New World upon the peculiar 
 condition and political ideas of Europe. All these Empires 
 were beset by certain dangers, which Greater Britain 
 alone has hitherto escaped, though she too has felt the, 
 shock of them and is still exposed to them, and the 
 great question now is whether she can modify her de- 
 fective constitution in such a way as to escape them for 
 the future. 
 
. LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM, 
 
 I EEMAEKED that ancient Greek colonisation, compared 
 ■with the modem system, might be called in a certain 
 sense the natural system. And yet the modem system 
 might be represented as natural also. The Greeks regard 
 the State as essentially small, and infer that a surplus 
 population can only be accommodated by founding another 
 State. But is there anything necessarily unnatural in the 
 other view that the State is capable of indefinite growth 
 and expansion? The ripe fruit dropping from the tree and 
 giving rise to another tree may be natural, but so is the 
 acorn spreading into the huge oak that has hundreds of 
 branches and thousands of leaves. If Miletus among its 
 daughter-cities may remind us of the one, England expand- 
 ing into Greater Britain resembles the other. 
 
 And yet surely there must be something unnatural in 
 the system against which our own colonists revolted a 
 hundred years ago and the colonists of Spain and PortugjJ. 
 a few years later. 
 
 The truth is that the simple idea of expansion has 
 seldom been conceived or realised clearly. 
 
 Let us work out a little in our minds the conception 
 of a Greater Britain, of the English State extended in- 
 definitely without being altered. The question is often 
 
LEOT.iT.] THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM. 57 
 
 asked, What is the good of colonies ? but no such question 
 could possibly be raised if colonies 'really were such a 
 simple extension of the mother-state. Whether this ex- 
 tension is practicable may be questioned, but it cannot be 
 questioned that if it were practicable it would be desirable. 
 
 We must begin by recognising, that the unoccupied 
 territory of the globe is to those who take possession of it 
 so much wealth in the most absolute sense of the word. 
 The epitaph which said that to Leon and Aragon 
 -Columbus gave a new world was almost literally true- 
 He conferred upon certain persons a large landed estate, 
 and if, as the result, many poor people did not become 
 rich and many unfortunate people prosperous, the fault 
 jnust have lain in the distribution or administration of the 
 wealth which he conferred. By this discovery the nations 
 of Europe came in for a landed estate so enormously large 
 that it might easily have converted every poor man in 
 Europe into a landed proprietor. 
 
 But one thiag was necessary before all this wealth 
 could be reduced into possession and enjoyment. Property 
 can exist only unde rthe guardianshi p of_t>iR S*'"t.e. In 
 order therefore -^FtEe laiids of the New World might 
 become secure enjoyable property. States must be set up 
 in the New- World. Without the State the settler would 
 _ run the risk of being murdered by Indians or attacked 
 by rival settlers of some hostile nationality. On the other 
 hand suppose the reign of law and government established 
 in the New World, as in Europe, so that property is 
 equally secure, then the poor man in Europe who finds. 
 ■ Jife painful and the acquisition of land in these crowded 
 countries utterly beyond his power, has only to transfer 
 Hmself to the New World, where land is cheaper, and he 
 is at once enriched as njuch. asif he had received a legacy. 
 
58 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [micT. 
 
 Thus "there can be no dispute about the value of 
 organised States in' the less crowded parts of the globe', 
 Eut why should these be our own colonies? There is 
 nothing to prevent the emigrant from settling in a colony- 
 belonging to some different European State or ia an 
 independent State. Why need we trouble ourselves there- 
 fore to keep up colonies of our own ? 
 
 This is a strange question, which would never be asked 
 in England but for an exceptional circumstance. Most 
 people like to live among their own countrymen, undef 
 the laws, religion and institutions they are accustomed to. 
 They place themselves moreover most really and practically 
 at a disadvantage by going to live among people who 
 speak a different language. As a matter of fact we do 
 not find that, the course of emigration being free, any 
 large number of Englishmen yearly settle in those NeW 
 World States which are really foreign, that is, in the South 
 American Republics or in Brazil or in Mexico. There 
 would be no question at all about the value of colonies, and 
 we should all as a matter of course consider that only by 
 means of colonies was it possible to bring the wealth of the 
 New World within the reach of our population, if if were 
 not for the existence of the United States. But the United 
 States are to us almost as good as a colony ; our people 
 can emigrate thither without sacrificing their language or 
 chief institutions or habits. And the Union is so large 
 and prosperous and fills our view so much, that we forget 
 how very exceptional its relation to us is, and also that if it 
 is to us almost as good as a colony this is only because it 
 was constructed out of English colonies. In estimating the 
 value of colonies in the abstract, we shall only confuse our- 
 selves by recollecting this unique casej we ought to put the 
 United States entirely out of view. 
 
IV.] THE OLD eOLONIAL SYSTEM. 59 
 
 \ Considered in the abstract then, colonies are neithen 
 more nor less than a great augmentation of the nationals 
 estate. They are lands for the landless, prosperity and : 
 wealth for those in straitened circumstances. This is a, 
 very simple view, and yet it is much overlooked, as if 
 somehow it were too simple to be understood. History 
 offers many examples o^ nations cramped for want of 
 room; it records in many cases how they swarmed irre- 
 sistibly across their frontiers and spread like a deluge over 
 neighbouring countries, where sometimes they found lands 
 and wealth. Now we may be very sure that never any 
 nation was half so much cramped for want of room in the 
 olden time as our own nation is now. Populations so 
 dense as that of modern England are a phenomenon quite 
 new at least in Eurtpe. We continually speak of our 
 country as crowded, and, since the rate of increase of popu- 
 lation is tolerably constant, we sometimes ask with alarm 
 what will be its condition half a century hence, 'The 
 territory,' we say, 'is a fixed quantity ; we have but 120,000 
 square miles ; it is crowded already and yet the populatioi^ 
 doubles in s«me seventy years. What will become of 
 us?' N«w here is a duribus example of our habit of 
 leaving our colonial possessions out of account. What! 
 our country is small; a poor, 120,000 square miles? I 
 find the fact to be very different.', 'I' find that the territory 
 governed by the Queen is of almost boundless extent. 
 Let us deduct from the vast total India, as not much 
 open to settlement; still the territory subject. to the Queen 
 is much greater than that of the United States, though 
 that is uniformly cited as the example of a country not 
 crowded and in which there is boundless room for expansion. 
 It may be true that the mother-country of this great 
 Empire is crowded, but in order to relieve the pressure it is 
 
I V V 
 
 6d EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leoi. 
 
 not necessaiy for us, as if we were Goths or Turcomans, to 
 seize upon the territory of our neighbours, it is not necessary 
 even to incur great risks or undergo great hardships ; it is 
 only necessary to take possession of boundless territories in 
 Canada, South Africa and Australia, where already our 
 language is , spoken, our religion professed and our laws 
 established. If there is pauperism in Wiltshire and 
 Dorsetshire this is but complementary to unowned wealth- ^ 
 in Australia; on the one side there are men without 
 property, on the other there is property waiting for men. 
 And yet we do not allow these two facts to come together 
 in our minds, but brood anxiously and almost despairingly 
 over the problem of -pauperism, and when colonies are 
 mentioned we ask, What is the good of colonies ? 
 
 Partly no doubt this is due simply to a want of system 
 in our way of thinking on subjects of this kind, but partly 
 also it is evident that colonies have never been regarded 
 in England as a simple extension of the English State and 
 nation over new territory. They have been thought of no 
 doubt as belonging to England, though precariously, but at 
 the same time as outside of England, so that what goes 
 out of England to them is in a manner lost to England. 
 This appears clearly from the argument which is often 
 urged against emigration on any large scale, viz., that 
 it might be good for the emigrants, but that it would be 
 ruinous to England, which would be deprived of all the 
 best and hardies^^ part of its population — deprived, for it is 
 not imagined that such emigrants could remain English- 
 men, or be still serviceable to the English commonwealth. 
 Compare this view of emigration with that taken in the 
 United States, where the constant movement of the popu- 
 lation westward, the constant settlement of new Territories, 
 which in due time rise to be States, is not regarded as 
 
lY.] TH^ OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM. 61 
 
 either a symptom or a cause of weakness, not at all as a 
 draining-out of vitality, tut on the contrary as the greatest 
 evidence of vigour and the best means of increasing it. 
 
 We have not really then as yet a Greater Britain,; 
 When I speak of the creation of Greater Britain during the 
 eighteenth century I in a certain sense exaggerate. In 
 our colonial Empire was laid .the foundation of a Greater 
 Britain, and a Greater Britain may in the end arise out of 
 it, but nothing of the kind was originally intended, nor 
 later was the true significance of what had taken place 
 perceived. A colony was not really thought of as an ex- 
 tension of the mother-state, but as something different. 
 What then was the precise conception formed of a colony? 
 We find ourselves forced to ask this question again. 
 
 I have pointed out already that in the sixteenth century- 
 there was no natural overflow of population from Europe 
 into the New World. Europe was not oVer-peopled ; there, 
 was no. imperious demand for more room. Why theni 
 should the conception, so natural to us in these days, of ai 
 territorial extension of the State occur to those who lived 
 at the time of the discoveries ? We see on the contrary , 
 that contemporary statesmen were puzzled to decide what 
 use could be made, and even doubted whether any use could 
 be made, of the new lands. Sebastian Cabot is encouraged 
 by Henry VII., until it is found that he does not bring 
 back spices; then he is neglected, and abandons England 
 for the Spanish service'. Thus the same cause which 
 made it necessary to call in the help of the State led to a 
 peculiarly materialistic view of thfi-^srork of settleiiient.! 
 What the State wanted was /revenue,") hence it became!, 
 necessary to regard the new ebuatrr^rather as so much i 
 1 Sohanz, Englische HandeUpoliti ;. Eead the whole chapter entitled, * 
 
 Die Stellung der.beiden ersien Tudors 
 
 ',u den Entdechungen. 
 
62 .'EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect.: 
 
 ■wealtH to be transported into Europe than as a new seat 
 for European civilisation. 
 
 ' I spoke before of natural colonisation, intending such- 
 colonisation as results from the spread of a race over an 
 unbounded territory at a time when political institutions 
 are in their infancy.. The colonisation of the sixteenth 
 century is curiously different, It arises from the discovery 
 of remote regions of unknown, wealth by nations ac- 
 customed to a limited space and to a rigorous government. 
 As in the former kind the State scarcely appears, but indi- 
 viduals or rather tribes accomplish the work, and in making 
 a new settlement make a new state, in. the latter kind the 
 State takes the lead, superintends the settlement, recnutS 
 for it, holds jt-in subjection when it is made, and as a con- 
 sequence looks to make a profit out of it/. At first sight 
 this latter system might seem less materialistic than the 
 other, for it conceives the State as resting not upon mere 
 locality but upon kindred, but it becomes more material- 
 istic in practice because it looks at the colony purely with 
 the eyes of the Government, and therefore from a purely 
 fiscal point of view." Hence in the first settlement of 
 America the conception of a Spanish colony as an ex- 
 tension of Spain was mixed up with a different cotiception 
 of it as a possessioh belonging to Spain. And whereas the 
 first conception, though it was formed instiactively, yet 
 answered to nothing in experience, — for who had ever 
 heard of two parts of the same State separated by the 
 whole breadth of the Atlantic Ocean ? — the second con- 
 ception was less embarrassing in practice because it was 
 by no means new. There had been examples in the • 
 Middle Ages of European States possessing 'flependenaegZ 
 separated from them by the sea, and I dare say it might 
 be possible to show that the Spanish Council of the Indies 
 
cr.] ^ THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEia. 63 
 
 was guided at times by the precedents afforded by the 
 Bepublic of Venice in its dealings with Candia and with its 
 dependencies in the Adriatic. The Venetian conception of 
 a dependency was purely selfish and commercial. So far 
 from thinking of it as forming part of the Eepublic, they 
 ]fegarded it as Rfi_T innr.li live stock forming part of the, 
 wealth of th e Bep ublic. Thus it was by confounding 
 together two theories radically inconsistent with each 
 other that the modem colonial system, first formed by 
 Spain and adopted with more or less modification by the 
 other powers of Europe, came into existence. 
 
 Now we have this conception more or less distinctly in 
 our minds whenever we ask the question. What is the 
 good of colonies? That question implies that we think 
 of a colony, not as part of our State, but as a possession 
 belonging to it. , For we should think it absurd to raise 
 such a question about a recognised part of the body 
 politic. Who ever thought of inquiring whether Cornwall 
 or Kent rendered any sufficient return for the money 
 which we lay out upon them, whether those counties were 
 worth keeping ? The tie that holds together the parts of 
 a nation-state is of another kind; it is not composed of 
 considerations of profit and loss, but is analogous to the 
 family bond. The same tie would hold a nation to its 
 colonies, if colonies were regarded as simply an extension 
 of the nation. If Greater Britain in the full sense of the 
 phrase really existed, Canada and Australia would be to us 
 as Kent and Cornwall. But if once we cease to regard a 
 colony in this way, if we consider that the emigrants who 
 have gone forth from us have ceased to belong to our 
 community, then we must form some other conception of 
 their relation to us. And this must either be the old 
 Greek conception which tr-eats them as grown-up children 
 
64 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND, [lEfci, 
 
 who have married arid settled at a distarice, ko 'fhat the 
 family bond has dissolved away by the mere necessity of 
 circumstances, or if the coimexion is maintained, as the. 
 modern States insisted on maintaining it, it must change' 
 its character. It must rest on interest. The questioii 
 must be asked, What is the good of the colony? and it 
 must be answered by some proof that the colony considered 
 as a piece of property, or as an investment of public money, 
 pays. 
 
 Now this may be a very good basis for the union of 
 two countries provided the benefit received from the union 
 is'mutual. In this case it constitutes a federation, and there 
 are many instances in which without any tie of kindred 
 countries have been held together in such a union simply 
 by the sense of a common interest< Among these instances 
 ^are Austria and Hungary, the German^ French and Itahad 
 cantons of the Swiss Confederations , Such would be the 
 case of our own Empire if not only w6 ourselves felt' that 
 pur colonies paid, that is, that we reaped some advantage 
 from them which we should cease to reap if they became 
 independent, but also the colonies felt that the mother* 
 v^untry paid, and that they gained something by the 
 connexion with it. M And in the present day it is quite 
 easy to imagine sucn a sense of common interest existing 
 between us and even the remotest of our colonies, because 
 in the present day distance has been almost abolished by 
 steam and electricity. But in the first ages after the 
 discovery of the New "World such a common interest was 
 less possible. The Atlantic Ocean was then for practical , 
 purposes a far deeper and wider gulf, across wldch any : 
 reciprocal exchange of services could not easily take iplaxie, 
 And so the old colonial systenKin general had not the 
 character of an equal federation. ■ 
 
IT.] THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM. 65 
 
 It is the custom to describe the old colonies as sacri- 
 ficed to the mother-country. We must be careful not to 
 admit that statement without qualification. It is supposed ' 
 for iostance that the revolt of our own American colonies 
 was provoked by the selfish treatment of the mother- 
 country, which shackled their trade without rendering them 
 any benefit in return for these restraints. This is far from 
 being true. Between England and the American colonies 
 there was a real interchang e of services.. E ngland gave 
 defence in return for^ trade-privi leges. In the middle of 
 the last century, at the time when the American quarrel 
 began, it was perhaps rather the colonies than the mother- 
 country that had fallen into arrear. We had been involved 
 in two great wars mainly by our colonies, and the final breach 
 was provoked not so much by the pressure of England upon 
 the colonies as by that of the colonies upon England.- If we 
 imposed taxes upon them it was to meet the debt which 
 we had incurred in their behalf, and we saw with not un- 
 jiatural bitterness that we had ourselves enabled our colonies 
 to do without us by destroying for their in terest the French 
 power4n North America. "'. 
 
 Still it was true of the old colonial system in general 
 that it placed the colony in the position not so much of a 
 state in federation as of a conquered state. Some theory 
 of the kind is evidently implied in the language which is 
 commonly used. We speak of the colonial possessions of 
 England or of Spain. Now in what sense can one popula- 
 tion be spoken of as the possession of another population ? 
 The expression almost seems to imply slavery, and at 
 any rate it is utterly inappropriate ' if it merely means 
 that the one population is subject to the same Government 
 as the other. At the bottom of it certainly was the idea 
 that the colony was an estate which was to be worked for 
 the benefit of the mother-country. 
 
 S. L, „ 5 
 
66 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND., [lbot. 
 
 The relation of Spain to its colonies had become a type 
 which other states kept before their eyes. A native popu- 
 lation reduced to serfdom, in some parts driven to compuL. 
 sory labour by caciques turned into state-officials, in other 
 parts exterminated by overwork and then replaced by 
 negroes; an imperious mother-country drawing from the 
 colony a steady revenue and ruling it through an artful 
 mechanism of division, by which the settlers were held in 
 check by the priesthood and by a serf-population treated 
 paternally that it might be available for that purpose, such 
 was the typical colonial system. It was wholly unfit to be 
 a model to such a colony as New England, which paid no 
 revenue, where there were neither subject Indians nor 
 mines of gold and silver. Nevertheless governments could 
 not afford to forget the precedentof pr ofitable colonies, and 
 I find Charles II. appealmg to it in 1663. It became an 
 established principle that a colony was a possession. 
 
 Now it is essentially barbaric that one community 
 should be treated as the property of another and the fruits 
 of its industry confiscated not in return for benefits con- 
 ferred but by some absolute right whether of conquest or 
 otherwise. Even where such a relation rests avowedly upon 
 conquest it is too immoral to last long except in a barbarous 
 state of manners. Thus for example we may have acquired 
 India by conquest, but we cannot and do not hold it for our 
 own pecuniary advantage. We draw no tribute from it; 
 it is not to us a profitable investment; we should be 
 ashamed to acknowledge that in governing it we in any 
 way sacrificed its interest to our own. A fortiori then it is 
 barbaric to apply such a theory to colonies, for it is to treat 
 one's own countrymen, those with whom we have no con- 
 cern at all except on the ground of kindred, as if they 
 were conquered enemies, or rather in a way in which a 
 
IF.] THE OLD COLONIAIi SYSTEM. 67 
 
 civilised nation cannot treat even conquered enemies. And 
 probably even in the old colonial system such a theory 
 was not consciously and deliberately adopted. But since 
 in the sixteenth century there was no scruple in applying 
 it to conquered dependencies, and since the colonies of 
 Spain were in a certain sense conquered dependencies, 
 we can understand that unconsciously, unintentionally the 
 barbaric principle crept into her colonial system, and that 
 it lurked there and poisoned it in later times. We can 
 understand too how the example of Spain and the pre- 
 cedents set by her influenced the other European States, 
 Holland, France and England, which entered upon the 
 career of colonisation a century later. "^M 
 
 In the case of some of these States, for example 
 France, the result of this theory was that the mother- 
 country exercised an iron authority over her colonies. In 
 Canada the French settlers were subject to a multitude of 
 rigid regulations from which they would have been free if 
 they had remained in France. Nothing of the kind 
 certainly can be said of the English colonies. They were 
 subject to certain fixed restrictions in the matter of trade, 
 but apart from these they were absolutely free. Carrying 
 their nationality with them they claimed everywhere the 
 rights of Englishmen. It has been observed by Mr.Meri- 
 vale that the old colonial system admitted no such thing 
 as the modem Crown Colony, in which Englishmen are 
 governed administratively without representative as- 
 semblies. In the old system assemblies were not formally 
 instituted, but grew up of themselves because it was the 
 nature of Englishmen to assemble. Thus the old historian 
 of the colonies Hutchinson writes under the year 1619, 
 'This year a House of Burgesses hroke out in Virginia.' 
 And assuredly the Home Government in those times did 
 
 5—2 
 
68, EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [lect, 
 
 not sin by too much interference. So completely were 
 the colonies left to themselves that some of them, especial- 
 ly those of New England, were from the very beginning- 
 for most practical purposes independent States, As early 
 as 1665, only forty years after the first settlement and a 
 hundred years before the Declaration of Independence, I 
 find that Massachusetts did not regard itself as practically 
 subject to England. 'They say,' writes a Commissioner', 
 'that so long as they pay the fifth of all, gold and silver, 
 according to the terms of the Charter, they are not 
 obliged to the King but by civility.' 
 
 Thus our old colonial system was not practically at all 
 tyrannous and when the breach came the grievances of \ 
 which the Americans complaiaed, though perfectly real, 
 were smaller than ever before or since led to such mighty 
 consequences. The misfortune of that system was not 
 that it interfered too much, but that such interference as it' 
 admitted was of an invidious kind. It claimed very little, 
 but what it did claim was unjust. It gave unbounded 
 liberty except in one department, namely trade, and in 
 that department it interfered to fine the colonists for the 
 benefit of the home traders. Now this was to put the 
 mother-country in a false position. It put her forward as | 
 claiming to treat the colonies as a possession, as an estate 1 
 to be worked for the benefit of those Englishmen who 1 
 remained at home. No claim could be more invidious. ' 
 If it was not quite the claim that a master makes upon a 
 
 > Calendar of State Papers; Colonial, December, 1665. He adds : THm' 
 say they can easUy spin out seven years by writing, and before that time a 
 change may come: nay, some have dared to say, "Who knows what the 
 event of this Dutch war may be? They furnished CromweU with many 
 instruments out of their corporation and college, and soUcited him by one 
 Mr Winsloe to be declared a Free State, and now style and believe them- 
 selves to be BO, 
 
IV.] THE OLD COLONIAIi SYSTEM. 69 
 
 slave, it was at least similar to that which an absentee 
 landlord makes upon tenants in whom he takes no further 
 interest, and yet even the absentee landlord if he gives 
 nothing else does at least give the use of land which was 
 really his own. But what — a Massachusetts colonist might 
 say — has England given to us that she should have 
 this perpetual mortgage on our industry? The Charter 
 of James I. allowed us the use of lands which James I. 
 never saw and which did not belong to him, lands too 
 which without any Charter we- might perhaps have 
 occupied for ourselves without opposition. 
 
 Thus this old system was an irrational jumble of two 
 opposite conceptions. It claimed to rule the colonists 
 because they were Englishmen and brothers, and yet it 
 ruled them as if they were conquered Indians. And 
 again while it treated them as conquered people, it 
 gave them so much liberty that they could easily rebel. 
 
 I have shown how this strange hybrid conception of 
 colonies may have originally sprung up. It is not very 
 difficult perhaps to understand how the English after once 
 adopting may have retained it and may have never seen 
 their way to a better conception. In the then condition 
 of the world if the English had thought of reforming their 
 colonial system, their most natural course would have been 
 to cast off the colonies altogether. For the analogy of 
 grown-up sons and daughters applies very properly to the 
 case of colonies which are so remote from the mother- 
 country that they have come to have wholly different 
 interests. All practical union, and therefore all authority 
 on the part of the mother-country, fall into abeyance in 
 these circumstances, and the Greek system is then most 
 appropriate, which gives complete independence to the 
 colony but binds it in perpetual alliance. Now in the 
 
70 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND, [iBot. 
 
 seventeenth century at least in ordinary times our colonies 
 were practically too remote for union. This is so true 
 that the difficulty is rather to understand how the seces- 
 sion of New England can have been delayed so long, 
 but I imagine the retarding cause was the growth of the 
 French Power in North America towards the end of the 
 seventeenth century. After the great colonial struggle 
 of France and England had fairly begun, the colonies were 
 drawn somewhat nearer to us than before, and we can 
 imagine that if Canada had not been conquered from the 
 French in 1759, and if the struggle with France instead of 
 coming to an end had grown more intense, the colonies 
 would have issued no Declaration of Independence, and 
 our connexion with them might have been put on a 
 better footing instead of being dissolved. As it was, 
 the need of union was at first not felt, it was then felt 
 strongly for a time, and then by a sudden deliverance all 
 pressure was removed, so that the thought of a reformed 
 colonial system gave way at once to the dream of in- 
 dependence. 
 
 In these circumstances the old colonial system would 
 naturally be retained as long as possible by the mother- 
 country, because it was dangerous to touch it, because the 
 least alteration would snap the tie that held the colonies 
 altogether. The invidious rights were doggedly main- 
 tained simply because they existed, and because no altera- 
 tion for the better was thought possible. 
 
 Probably also no healthier relation could then be even 
 clearly conceived. I have described colonies as the natural 
 outlet for superfluous population, the resource by which 
 those who find themselves crowded out of the mother- 
 country may live at ease without sacrificing what ought 
 to be felt as most valuable, their nationality. But how 
 
IV.] THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM. 71 
 
 could such a view occur to Englishmen a century ago ? 
 England in those days -was not overpeopled. The whole 
 of Great Britain had perhaps not more than twelve million 
 inhabitants at the time of the American War. And if 
 even then there was more diffused prosperity in the colonies 
 than at home, on the other hand the love of native soil, the 
 dominion of habit, the dread and dislike of migration, were 
 infinitely greater. We are not to suppose that the steady 
 stream of emigration to the New World which we witness 
 has been flowing ever since there was a New World, or 
 even ever since we had prosperous colonies. This move- 
 ment did not begin till after the peace of 1815. Under 
 the old colonial system circumstances were quite different, 
 and may be illustrated by what we know of the history 
 of the New England colonies. Of these we learn that from 
 their commencement in 1620 for twenty years until the 
 meeting of the Long Parliament immigration did indeed 
 flow in a steady stream, but for a quite special reason, viz., 
 because the Anglican Church was then harsh, and New 
 England afforded a refuge for Puritanism and Brownism or 
 Independency. Accordingly we are told that as soon as 
 the Long Parliament met this stream ceased to flow, and 
 that afterwards for a hundred years there was so little 
 immigration into New England from Old England that it 
 was believed not to balance the counter-movement of 
 colonists quitting the colony ', 
 
 1 ' The accessions which New England henceforward (i.fe. after 1640) 
 received from abroad were more than counterbalanced by perpetual 
 emigrations, which in the course of two centuries have scattered her sons 
 over every part of North America and indeed of the globe. The immi- 
 grants of the preceding period had not exceeded twenty-five thousand, 
 a primitive stock, from which has been derived not less perhaps than a 
 fourth part of the present population of the United States.' Eildreth, 
 Hist, of U. S. I. p. 267. 
 
72 EXPANSION OP ENGLAHD. ' [mo*. 
 
 These were circumstances in which, though there might 
 be colonies, there could be no Greater Britain. The 
 material basis of a Greater Britain might indeed be laid, 
 that is, vast territories might be occupied and rival nations 
 might be expelled from them. In this material sense 
 Greater Britain was created in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries. But the idea that could shape the 
 material mass was still wanting. Towards this only one 
 step was taken, namely, in laying down the principle that 
 colonies did in some way belong together with the mother- 
 country, that England did in some sense go with them 
 across the sea, and that they could not cease to be English 
 but through a war. 
 
 And what is true of the English colonies ,in the 
 eighteenth century is equally true of the colonies of other 
 States. Greater Spain, Greater Pcrrtugal, Greater Holland, 
 and Greater France, were all, as much as Greater Britain, 
 artificial fabrics, wanting organic unity and l ife. 
 
 Consequently they were all short-lived, and Greater 
 Britain itself appeared likely to be short-lived. It seemed 
 indeed likely to be more short-lived than many of its rivals. 
 The Spanish colonies in America, which had been founded 
 a hundred years before the English, did not break off so 
 soon. The Declaration of Independence of 1776 was not 
 only the most striking but also the first act of rebellion on 
 the part of colonies against mother-countries. 
 
 Nor did Greater Britain ultimately escape this danger 
 by any wisdom in its rulers. When the utter weakness of 
 ; the old colonial system had been exposed, we did not abandon 
 i it and take up a better. A new Empire gradually grew 
 up out of the same causes which had called into existence 
 the old, and it grew up under much the same system. We 
 had not learnt from experience wisdom, but only despair. 
 
IT.] THE OLD COLONIAIi SYSTEM. 73 
 
 We saw ttat under that system we could not permanently 
 keep our colonies, but instead of inferring that the system 
 must be changed we only inferred that sooner or later the 
 colonies must be lost» 
 
 Then came in the forties of this century the victory of 
 free-trade. Among other restraints upon trade it con- 
 demned in toto the old colonial system. This system was 
 abolished, but at the saite time the opinion g rew up that 
 o ur colonies were useless^ and that the sop tipr thr^y w&rp 
 emancipated ^jihe bfetter. A nd this doctrine would have 
 been obviously sound, if the general conditions of the world 
 had remained the same in the nineteenth century as they 
 were iSx the eighteenth and seventeenth. Our forefathers 
 had found that they could make no ixse of colonies except 
 by extracting trade-advantages from them. What then 
 could remain to the mother-country when her monopoly 
 was resigned ? 
 
 There followed a quiet period in which the very 
 slender tie which held the Empire together suffered no 
 strain. In these favourable circumstances the natural 
 bond was strong enough to prevent a catastrophe. 
 Englishmen in all parts of the world still remembered 
 that they- were of one blood and one religion, that they had 
 one history and one language and literature. This was 
 enough so long as neither colonies nor mother-country 
 were called upon to make very heavy sacrifices each 
 for the other. Such a quiet time favours the growth of 
 a wholly different view of the Empire. This view is 
 founded upon the consideration that distance has now no 
 longer the important influence that it had on political 
 relations. 
 
 In the last century there could be no Greater Britain 
 in the true sense of the word because of the distance 
 
74 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [leoi. 
 
 between the mother-country and its colonies and between 
 the colonies themselves. This impediment exists no 
 longer. Science has given to the political organism a new 
 circulation, which is steam, and a new nervous system, 
 which is electricity. These new conditions make it 
 necessary to reconsider the whole colonial problem. They 
 make it in the first place possible actually to realise the 
 old Utopia of a Greater Britain, and at the same time they 
 make it almost necessary to do so. First they make it 
 possible. In the old time such large political organisms 
 were only stable when they were of low type. Thus 
 Greater Spain was longer-lived than Greater Britain 
 precisely because it was despotically governed. Greater 
 Britain ran on the rock of parliamentary liberties, which 
 were then impossible on so great a scale, while despotism 
 was possible enough. Had it then been thought possible 
 to give parliamentary representation to our colonists, the 
 whole quarrel might easily have been avoided. But it was 
 not thought possible; and why? Burke gives you the 
 answer in the well-known passage in which he throws 
 ridicule upon the notion of summoning representatives from 
 so vast a distance. This notion has now ceased at any rate 
 to be ridiculous, however great the difficulties of detail may 
 still be. Those very colonies which then broke off from us 
 have since given the example of a federal organisation, in 
 which vast territories, some of them thinly peopled and 
 newly settled, are held easily in union with older com- 
 munities,, and the whole enjoys in the fullest degree 
 parliamentary freedom. The United States have solved 
 a problem substantially similar to that which our old 
 colonial system could not solve, by showing how a State 
 may throw off a constant stream of emigration, how from a 
 fringe of settlement on the Atlantic a whole Continent as 
 
IV.] THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM. 75 
 
 far as the Pacific may be peopled, and yet the doubt never 
 arise whether those remote settlements will not soon claim 
 their independence or whether they will bear to be taxed 
 for the benefit of the whole. 
 
 And lastly what is thus shown to be possible appears 
 now to be much more urgently important than in the last 
 
 I century. For the same inventions which make vast 
 political unions possible tend to make states which are on 
 the old scale of magnitude unsafe, insignificant, second- 
 rate. If the United States and Russia hold together for 
 another half century, they will at the end of that time 
 completely dwarf such old European States as France and 
 Germany and depress them into a second class. They will 
 do the same to England, if at the end of that time England 
 
 ^ still thinks of herself as simply a European State, as the 
 old United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland such as 
 Pitt left her. It would indeed be a poor remedy if we 
 should try to face these vast states of the new type by an 
 artificial union of settlements and islands scattered over 
 the whole globe, inhabited by different nationalities and 
 connected by no tie except the accident that they happen 
 all alike to acknowledge the Queen's authority. But I 
 have pointed out that what we call our Empire is no such 
 
 ; artificial fabric, that it is not properly, if we exclude India 
 
 ' firom consideration, an Empire at all, that it is a vast ■ 
 English nation, only a nation so widely dispersed that 
 before the age of steam and electricity its strong natural 
 bonds of race and religion seemed practically dissolved by ' 
 distance. As soon then as distance is abolished by science, 
 as soon as it is proved by the examples of the United 
 States ahd Russia that political union over vast areas has 
 begun to be possible, so soon Greater Britain starts up not 
 only a reality but a robust reality. It will belong to the 
 
7.6 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [ieot. it. 
 
 stronger class of political unions. If it will not be stronger 
 than the United States, we may say with confidence that 
 it will be far stronger than the great conglomeration of 
 Slavs, Germans, Turcomans and Armenians, of Greek Chris- 
 tians, Catholics, Protestants, Mussulmans and Buddhists, 
 which we call Russia, 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 EFFECT OF THE NEW WOELD ON THE OLD. 
 
 In a former lecture I pointed out how much unity is given 
 to the history of England in the eighteenth century, how 
 all the great wars of that time are shown to belong together 
 and fall into a connected series, if you remark the single . 
 fact that Greater Britain during that period was establish- t 
 ing itself in opposition to Greater France. And I have 
 since proceeded further in the same traia of reflexion 
 by remarking that during the eighteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries it is not Englgjid and France only that have 
 great colonies but Spain , Portugal and H olland also. You 
 will, I think, find it very helpful in studying the history of 
 those two centuries always to bear in mind that through- 
 out most of that period the five states of "Western Europe 
 all alike are not properly European states but world- 
 states, and that they debate continually among themselves 
 a mighty question, which is not European at all and 
 which the student with his eye fixed on Europe is too apt 
 to disregard, namely the question of the possession of the 
 New World. 
 
 This obvious fact sufficiently borne in mind gives much 
 unity to the political history of those nations and reduces 
 
78 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 to a simple formula most of their wars and alliances. 
 But I now proceed to show, especially with respect to 
 England, that the European States were greatly modified," 
 not only in their mutual dealings with each other, but 
 internally in the nature of each community, by their con- 
 nexion with the New World. It will be found that the 
 modern character of England, as it has come to be since 
 the Middle Ages, may also be most briefly described on the 
 whole by saying that England has been expanding into 
 Greater Britain. 
 
 Two great events happened within thirty years of each 
 other, the discovery of the New World and the Kefor- 
 mation. These two events closely involved with two 
 others, viz., the consolidation of the great European States 
 and the closing of the East by the Turkish Conquest, 
 caused the vast change which we know as the close of the 
 Middle Ages and the opening of the modem period. But 
 of the two leading events the one was of far more rapid 
 operation than the other. The Reformation produced its 
 effect at once and in the very front of the stage of history. 
 For more than half a century the historical student finds 
 himself mainly concerned with the struggle between the 
 Habsburg House and the Reformation, first in Germany, 
 where it is assisted by France, then in the Low Countries 
 where it is helped sometimes by France sometimes by 
 England. Meanwhile the occupation of the New World is 
 going on in the background and does not force itself upon 
 the attention of the student who is contemplating Europe. 
 The achievements of Cortez and Pizarro do not seem to 
 have any reaction upon the European struggle. And per- 
 haps it is not till near the end of the sixteenth centuiy^ 
 when the raids of Francis Drake and his fellows upon the 
 Spanish settlements in Central America mainly contributed 
 
I 
 
 v.] EFFECT OF THE NEW WOKLD ON THE OLD. 79 
 
 t() decide Spain to her great enterprise against England, 
 perhaps it is not till the time of the Spanish Armada, that 
 the New World begins in any perceptible degree to react 
 upon the Old. 
 
 But from this time forward European affairs begin to 
 be controlled by two great causes at once, viz., the Reform- 
 atiqp and the New Worlds and of these the Reformation 
 acts with diminishing force and the New World has more 
 and more influence. It is characteristic of the seventeenth 
 century that these two causes act throughout it in com- 
 bination. This is illustrated, as I mentioned above, by 
 Cromwell's policy of war against Spain, which is double- 
 faced and, while it seems to be a blow of Protestantism 
 against Catholicism, is really a stroke for territory in the 
 New World, so that it results in the conquest of Jamaica. 
 It is illustrated too by -the alliance of France and England 
 against Holland in 1*672, when one Protestant Power 
 assails another with the pointed approbation of the Crom- 
 wellian statesman Shaftesbury, because they have rival 
 interests in the New World. But by the end of that 
 century the Reformation as a force in politics has declined, 
 and in the eighteenth century the ruling infliience is 
 throughout the JS'ew World. This is what gives to that 
 century the prosaic commercial character which distin- 
 guishes it. The religious question with all its grandeur 
 has sunk to rest, and the colonial question, made up 
 of. worldly and material considerations, has taken its place. 
 
 Now the New World, considered as a boundless territory 
 open to settlement, would act in two ways upon the 
 nations of Europe. In the first place it would have a 
 purely political effect, that is, it would act upon their 
 Governments. For so much debatable territory would be 
 a standing . cause of war. It is this action of the New 
 
80 EXPANSION OF EJSGLAND, [leot. 
 
 World that we have been considering hitherto, while we 
 have observed how mainly the wars of the eighteenth 
 century, and particularly the great wars of England and 
 France, were kindled by this cause. But the New World 
 would also act upon the European communities themaelve^ 
 modifying their occupations and ways of life, altering their 
 industrial and economical character. Thus the expansion 
 of England involves its transformation. 
 
 England is now preeminently a maritime, colonising and 
 industrial country. It seems to be the prevalent opinion 
 that England always was so, and from the nature of her 
 people can never be otherwise. In Eiickert's poem the 
 deity that visited the same spot of earth at intervals of 
 five hundred years, and found there now a forest, now a 
 city, now a sea, whenever he asked after the origin of what 
 he saw, received for answer, 'It has always been so, and 
 always will be.' This unhistorical way of thinking, this 
 disposition to ascribe an inherent necessity to whatever we 
 are accustomed to, betrays itself in much that is said about 
 the genius of the Anglo-Saxon race. That we might have 
 been other than we are, nay that we once were other, is to 
 us so inconceivable that we try to explain why we were 
 always the same before ascertaining by any inquiry whether 
 the fact is so. It seems to us clear that we are the great 
 wandering, working, colonising race, descended from sea- 
 rovers and Vikings. The sea, we think, is ours by nature's 
 decree, and on this highway we travel to subdue the earth 
 and to people it. 
 
 And yet in fact it was only in the Elizabethan age that 
 England began to discover her vocation to trade and to the 
 dominion of the sea. 
 
 Our insular position and the fact that our island 
 towards the West and North looks right out upon the 
 
T.] EFFECT op THE NEW WORLD ON THE OLD. S^ ' 
 
 Atlantic Ocean, may lead us to fancy that the nation must 
 always have been maritime by the necessity of ths case. 
 We entered the island in ships and afterwards we were 
 conquered by a nation of sea-rovers. But after all England 
 is not a Norway ; it is not a country which has only narrow 
 strips of cultivable land, and therefore forces its population 
 /to l^ok to the sea for their subsistence, England in the 
 L time of the Plantagenets was no mistress of the seas ; in 
 fact she was scarcely a maritime state at all. Occasionally 
 i in war-time we find medieval England in possession of a 
 considerable navy. But as soon as peace arrives the navy 
 dwindles away again. The constant complaints of piracy in 
 the Channel show how little control England was able tq 
 exercise even over her own seas. It has been justly re^ 
 marked that as the Middle Ages know of no standing army, 
 so, excepting the case of some Italian city-states, they know 
 of no standing fleet. Over and over again in those time^ 
 this decay of the navy recurs. Then when a new war broke 
 out the Government would issue a general licence to all 
 merchant-ships to act as privateers, and the merchant-ships 
 would respond to it by becoming not merely privateers but 
 pirates. In fact, though under the Plantagenets the English 
 nation was. more warlike in spirit than it has beeii since, 
 yet it is observable that in those days its ambition was 
 directed much more to fighting by land than by sea, The 
 glories of the English army of those days greatly eclipse 
 those of the English navy ; we remember the victories of 
 Crdcy and Poitiers, but we have forgotten that of Sluys. 
 
 The truth is that the maritime greatness of England is 
 of much more modem growth than most of us imagine. It 
 dates from the civil wars of the seventeenth century and 
 from the career 'of Robert Blake. Blake's pursuit of 
 Prince Rupert through the Straits of Gibraltar up the 
 s. L. 6 
 
82 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 eastern coast of Spain is said to have been the first 
 appearance of an English fleet in the Mediterranean after 
 the time of the Crusades. There are no doubt naval heroes 
 older than Blake. There is Francis Drake, and Richard 
 Grenville, and John Hawkins. But the navy of Elizabeth 
 was only the English navy in infancy, and the heroes 
 themselves are not far removed frorh buccaneers.- Before 
 the Tudor period we find only the embryo of a navy. 
 In the fifteenth century English naval history, except 
 during the short reign of Henry V., shows only feeble- 
 ness ; before that too feebleness is the rule and efSciency 
 the exception, until we arrive at the reign of Edward I., 
 who was the first to conceive even the idea of a standing 
 navy. 
 
 And not in maritime war only but in maritime discovery, 
 in maritime activity of all kinds the greatness of England 
 is modem. In the great unrivalled explorations of the 
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we did no doubt some- 
 thing, but we had no pretension whatever to take the lead. 
 It is true that we made a promising commencement. A 
 ship from Bristol was absolutely the first to touch the 
 American Continent, so that there were English sailors 
 who saw America proper a year or so before Columbus 
 himself. At that moment we seemed likely to rival Spain, 
 for if the commander Cabot ' was no Englishman, neithei' 
 was Columbus a Spaniard. But we fell behind again; 
 Henry VII. was unwisely parsimonious, Henry Till, was 
 caught in the vortex of the Reformation, In the first 
 
 1 John Cabot was an Italian, by citizenship a Venetian, bnt if his son 
 Sebastian was born after the father settled in Bristol, and if the son not 
 the father coinmanded the ship, the whole achievement might be made 
 out to be English. The evidence however points the other way. Seethe 
 discussion in HeUwald, Sebastian Cabot. 
 
v.] EFFECT OP THE NEW WORLD ON THE OLD. 83 
 
 generation of great discoverers there is no English name. 
 Frobisher, Chancellor and Francis Drake did not appear 
 on the Ocean till Columbus had lain for half a century in 
 his grave. Among naiti^s of maritime renown whether 
 in war, discovery or colonisation, before the time of the 
 Spanish Armada England could not pretend to take any 
 high rank. Spain had carried off the prize, less by merit 
 than by the good fortune which sent her Columbus, but 
 the nation which had really deserved it was beyond dis- 
 pute Portugal, which indeed had almost reason to complain 
 of the glorious intrusion of Columbus. Even against him 
 she might urge that if the object was to find the Indies she 
 took the right way and found them, while he took the 
 wrong way and missed them*. After these nations, and in 
 quite a lower class, might be placed England and France, 
 and I do not know that England would have a right to 
 stand before France. This is somewhat disguised in 
 our histories by the natural desire of the historians to 
 make the most of our actual achievements. In later 
 times, after our maritime supremacy had once'^begun, we 
 should be surprised at any nation competing with us for 
 the first place, whereas we are content to appear as spirited 
 aspirants venturing to contest the preeminence of Spain 
 after she has enjoyed it for the best part of a century. 
 And even at the end of the sixteenth century when a large 
 part of the American Continent has been carved out in 
 Spanish vice-royalties, and Portugal has sent out governors 
 to rule in the Indian Ocean, when Spanish missionaries 
 
 ^ Even if it were answered in his behalf that it is better to be wrong 
 and find America than to be right and find India, Portugal might answer 
 that she did both, since in the second voyage made from Lisbon to India 
 she discovered Brazil, only eight years after the first voyage''of Coluinbus, 
 and would undoubtedly have discovered it, if Columbus had never been 
 bom. 
 
 6—2 
 
84 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND, [iBd*, 
 
 have visited Japan, "when the great poet of Portugal has 
 led a literary career for sixteen years and -written an epic 
 poem in regions which to. former poets had seemed fabu- 
 lous, even as late as this the English are quite begiimer£( 
 in the maritime career and have as yet no settlements. 
 
 But irona. naval affairs let us turn to manufactures and 
 commerce. Here again we shall find that it. is not a 
 natural vocation, founded upon inherent aptitudes, that 
 has given us our success in these pursuits. In manu- 
 factures our success depends upon our peculiar relation 
 to the great producing countries of the globe. The 
 vast harvests of the world are reaped in countries 
 where land is wide and population generally thin. 
 But those countries cannot manufacture their own raw 
 materials because all hands are engaged in prodijcing and ~- 
 there is no surplus population to be employed in manu- 
 facture. The cotton of .America ajid wool of Australia 
 therefore come to England where ,not only such a surplus 
 population .exists but where also the great standing in- 
 strument of manufacture, coal, is found in abundance and 
 near the coast, Now all this is modem and most of it very 
 modem. The reign of coal began with machinery, thatis, 
 in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The vast 
 tracts of production were not heard of till the New World 
 had been laid open, and could not be used freely tall two 
 centuries and a half later, when railways were introduced, 
 Evidently therefore the basis of our manufacturing greatness 
 could not be laid till very recent times. The England of 
 the Plantagenets occupied a wholly different economical 
 position. Manufactures were not indeed wanting, but the 
 nation v.'as as yet so far from being remarked for its restless 
 industry and practical talent that a description written in 
 the fifteenth century says that the English ' being seldom 
 
v.] EFFECT OS" THE NEW WOELD ON THE OLD. 85 
 
 fatigued, •with hatd labour lead a life more spiritual and 
 refined\' In the main England at that time subsisted upon 
 its lucrative intercourse {magnus intercursus) "with Flanders. 
 She produced the wool which was manufactured there; she 
 was to Flanders what Australia is now to the West Riding. 
 London was as Sydney, and Ghent and Bruges were as 
 Leeds and Bradford. 
 
 This continued in the main to be the case till the 
 Elizabethan age. But then, about the time that the 
 maritime greatness of England was beginning, she began 
 also to be a great manufacturing country. For the manu- 
 factures of Flanders perished in the great catastrophe of the 
 reHgious war of the Low Countries with Spain. Flemish 
 -manufacturers swarmed over into England, and gave a 
 new life to the industry which had long had its centre at 
 Norwich. There began what may be called the Norwich 
 period of our manufacturing history, which lasted through 
 the whole seventeenth century. The peculiarity of it was 
 that in this period England manufactured her own product, 
 wool. Instead of being mainly a producing country as 
 before, or mainly a manufacturing country as now, she was a 
 country manufacturing what she herself produced. 
 
 So much for manufactures. But the present industrial 
 greatness of England is composed only in part of her 
 greatness in manufacture. She has also the carrying trade 
 of the world and is therefore its exchange and business- 
 centre. Now this carrying trade has come to her as the 
 great maritime country ; it is therefore superfluous to 
 remark that she had it not in the Middle Ages, when she 
 
 ^ Fortescue, quoted by Mr Cngningham, Growth of English Industry 
 and Commerce, p. 217. Besides being indolent and contemplative, tbe 
 Englishman of the fifteenth century was preeminent in ^^^t? ^'Ud 
 totally devoid of domestic affection ! See Gairdner's pSmietten, 
 vol. ret. Intr. p. Ixiii. 
 
86 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [leci. 
 
 had not yet become a maritime country. Indeed in those 
 times a carrying trade can hardly be spoken of. It implies 
 a great sea-traffic, and a great sea-traffic did not begin till 
 the New World was thrown open. Before that event 
 business had its centre in the central countries of Europe, 
 in Italy and the Imperial Cities of Germany. The great 
 business men of the fifteenth century were the Medici of 
 Florence, the Fuggers of Augsburg, the founders of the 
 Bank of St George at Genoa. 
 
 In the Middle Ages England was, from the point of 
 view of business, not an advanced, but on the whole a 
 backward country. She must have been despised in the 
 chief commercial countries ; as now she herself looks upon 
 the business-system and the banking of countries like 
 Germany and even France as old-fashioned compared to 
 her own, so in the Middle Ages the Italians must have 
 looked upon England. With their city- life, wide business- 
 connexions and acuteness in affairs they must have 
 classed England, along with France, among the old-world, 
 agricultural, and feudal countries which lay outside the 
 main-current of the ideas of the time. 
 
 Nor when the great change took place, which left Italy 
 and Germany in their turn stranded, and turned the whole 
 course of business into another channel, are we to suppose 
 that England stepped at once into their place.' Their suc- 
 cessor was Holland. Through a great part of the seven- 
 teenth century the carrying trade of the world was in the 
 hands of the Dutch, and Amsterdam was the exchange of 
 the world. It is against this Dutch monopoly that England 
 struggles in Cromwell's time and in the earlier part of 
 the reign of Charles II. Not till late in that century 
 does Holland begin to show signs of defeat. Not till then 
 does England decidedly take the lead in commerce. 
 
v.] EFFECT OF THE NE^W "WOELD ON THE OLD. 87 
 
 And thus if we put together all the items we arrive at 
 the conclusion that the England we know, the supreme 
 maritime commercial and industrial Power, is quite of 
 modem growth, that it did not clearly exhibit its principal 
 features till the eighteenth century, and that the seven- 
 teenth century is the period when it was gradually as- 
 suming this form. If we ask when it began to do so, the 
 answer is particularly easy and distinct. It was in the 
 Elizabethan Age, 
 
 Now this was the time when the. New World began 
 to exert its influence, and thus the most obvious facts 
 suggest that England owes its modern character and its 
 peculiar greatness from the outset to the New World. 
 It is not the blood of the Yikings that makes us rulers of 
 the sea, nor the industrial genius of the Anglo-Saxon that 
 makes us great in manufactures and commerce, but a much 
 more special circumstance, which did not arise till for 
 many centuries we had been agricultural or pastoral, 
 warlike and indifferent to the sea. 
 
 In the school of Carl Kitter much has ^een said' of 
 three stages of civilisation determined by geographical con- 
 ditions, the potamic which clings to rivers, the thalassio, 
 which grows up around inland seas, and lastly the 'oceanic. 
 This theory looks as if it had been suggested by the change 
 which followed the discovery of the New World, when 
 indeed European civilisation passed from the thalassic to 
 the oceanic stage. Till then trade had clung to the Medi- 
 terranean Sea. Till then the Ocean had been a limit, 
 a boundary, not a pathway. There had been indeed a 
 certain amount of intercourse across the narrow seas of 
 the North, which had nourished the trade of the Hanseatic 
 League. But in the main the Mediterranean continued to 
 1 See Pesohel, Alhandlungen gw Urd-iind Vdlkerkimde, p. 398. 
 
88 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lbot. 
 
 be the head-quarters of industry as of civilisation, and the 
 Middle Age moved in the groove of the ancient world in 
 this respect that Italy in both seemed to have a natural 
 superiority over the countries on this side of the Alps. 
 France and England had no doubt advanced greatly, but to 
 the Italian in the fifteenth century they still seemed com- 
 paratively barbarous, intellectually provincial and second- 
 rate. The reason of this was that for practical purposes 
 they were inland, while Italy reaped the benefit of 
 the civilising sea. The greatness of Florence rested 
 upon woollen manufactures, that of Venice, Pisa and 
 Genoa upon foreign trade and dependencies, and all this 
 at a time when France and England comparativBly were 
 given up to feudalism and rusticity. By the side of 
 the Italian republics France and England showed like 
 Thessaly and Macedonia in comparison with Athens and 
 Corinth. 
 
 Now Columbus and the Portuguese altered all this by 
 substituting the Atlantic Ocean for the Mediterranean Sea 
 as the highway of commerce. From that moment the reign 
 of Italy is over. The relation of cause and eif ect is here in 
 some degree concealed by the misfortunes which happened to 
 Italy at the same time. The political fall of Italy happened 
 accidentally just at the same moment. The foreigner crossed 
 the Alps ; Italy became a battle field in the great struggle 
 of France and Spain; she was conquered, partitioned, 
 enslaved ; and her glory never revived afterwards. Such a 
 catastrophe and its obvious cause, foreign invasion, blinds 
 us to all minor influences which might have been working 
 to produce the same effect at the same time. But assuredly 
 had no foreign invasion taken place, Italy would just then 
 have entered on a period of decline. The hidden source 
 which fed her energy and glory was dried up by the dis- 
 
v.] EFFECT OF THE NEW WOELD ON THE OLD. 89 
 
 covery of the New World. She might be compared to one 
 of those seaports on the coast of Kent from which the sea 
 has receded. Where there had once been life and movement, 
 silence and vacancy mast have set in throughout the great 
 city republics of Italy, even if no stranger had crossed the 
 Alps. The Mediterranean Sea had not indeed receded, 
 but it had lost once for all the character which it had had 
 almost from the days of the Odyssey. It had ceased to be 
 the central sea of human intercourse and civilisation, the 
 chief, nay, almost the one sea of history. It so happened 
 that soon after commerce began to cover the Atlantic, it 
 was swept out of the Mediterranean by the besom of the 
 Turkish sea-poVver. Thus Eanke remarks that the trade 
 of Barcelona seemed .to be little affected by the new dis- 
 coveries, but that it sank rapidly from about 1529 in 
 consequence of the maritime predominance of the Turks 
 caused by the successes of Barbarossa, the league of 
 France with Solyman, and the foundation of the Barbary 
 States. So clearly had the providential edict gone forth 
 that European civilization should cease to be thalassic and 
 should become oceanic. i 
 
 I The great result was that the centre of movement and 
 i intelligence began to pass from the ■ centre of Europe to 
 \,its Western Coast. Civilisation moves away from Italy and 
 Germany ; where it will settle is not yet clear, but certainly 
 further west. See how strikingly this change stands out 
 from the history of the sixteenth century. At the begin- 
 ning of that century all the genius in the world seems to 
 live in Italy or Germany. The golden age of modem art 
 is passing in the first country, but if there are any rivals 
 to the Italian painters they are German, and Michael 
 Angelo is obliged at least to reason with those who prefer 
 the maniera tedesca. Meanwhile the Reformation belongs 
 
90 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 to Germany. For France and England in ttose days it 
 seems sufficient glory to have given a welcome to the 
 Renaissance and to the Reformation. But gradually in 
 the latter part of the sixteenth century we become 
 aware that civilisation is shifting its head-quarters. Italy 
 and Germany are first rivalled and then eclipsed; 
 gradually we grow accustomed to the thought that great 
 things are rather to be looked for in other countries. In 
 the seventeenth century almost all genius and greatness is 
 to be found in the western or maritime states of Europe. 
 
 Now these are the states which were engaged in the 
 struggle for the New World. Spain, Portugal, France, 
 Holland and England have the same sort of position with 
 respect to the Atlantic Ocean that Greece and Italy had 
 in antiquity with respect to the Mediterranean. And they 
 begin to show a similar superiority in intelligence that 
 Greece and Italy showed. Vast problems of conquest, 
 colonisation and commerce occupy their minds, which 
 before had vegetated in a rustic monotony. I have already 
 shown you at length what an effect this change had upon 
 the English nation. The effect produced upon the Dutch 
 was quite as striking and much more rapid. The Golden 
 Age of Holland is the first half of the seventeenth century. 
 Let us examine for a moment the causes which produced 
 its prosperity. 
 
 The Low Countries which revolted against Spanish 
 rule in the early, part of the reign of our Queen Elizabeth 
 were, as you know, not merely the seven provinces which 
 afterwards made the Dutch Republic and now make the 
 Dutch Monarchy, but those other provinces which now 
 make the kingdom of Belgium. It was the latter group 
 which at the time of the rebellion were most prosperous. 
 They were the great manufacturing region, the Lancashire 
 
v.] EFFECT OF THE NEW WOELD ON THE OLD. 91 
 
 or "West Riding of the Middle Ages. The former group, 
 the Dutch proviaces, were then of much less importance. 
 They were maritime and chiefly occupied in the herring 
 fishery. Now the result of the Eehellion was that Spain 
 was able to retain possession of the Belgian group, which 
 from this time is known as the Spanish Low Countries, 
 but she was not able to hold the Dutch group, which after 
 a war which seemed interminable she was forced to leave 
 to their independence. Now during the struggle the 
 prosperity of the Belgian Provinces, as I have pointed 
 put, was ruined. The Flemish manufacturers emigrated 
 and founded the woollen manufacture of England. But 
 the maritime provinces, poorer at the outset, instead of 
 being ruined grew rich during the war, and before it was 
 ended had become the wonder and the great commercial 
 state, of the world. How was this ? It was because they 
 were maritime, and because their sea was the highway which 
 led to the New World. As they had devoted themselves 
 earlier to the sea, they had the start of the English, and 
 their war with the Spaniards proved actually an advantage 
 to them, because it threw open to their attack all the 
 thinly-peopled ill-defended American Empire of Spain. 
 The world was astonished to see a petty state with a 
 barren soil and insignificant population not only hold its 
 own against the great Spanish Empire, but in the midst 
 of this unequal contest found a great colonial Empire of 
 its own in both hemispheres. Meanwhile the intellectual 
 stimulus which the sea had begun to give to these Western 
 States was nowhere more manifest than in Holland. This 
 same small population took the lead in scholarship as in 
 commerce, welcomed Lipsius, Scaliger and Descartes and 
 produced Grotius at the same time as Piet Hein and 
 Van Tromp. 
 
92 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND, [lBot. 
 
 This is tlie most startling single instance of the action 
 of the New World. The effects produced in Holland 
 were nothing like so momentous as those which I have 
 traced in England, for the greatness of Holland, wanting 
 a basis sufficiently broad, was short-lived, but they were 
 more sudden and more evidently referable to this single 
 cause. 
 
 Sudh then was the effect of the New World on the Old. 
 It is visible not merely in the wars and alliances of the 
 time, but also in the economic growth and transformation 
 of the Western States of Europe. Civilisation has often 
 been powerfully promoted by some great enteiprise 
 in which several generations continuously take part. 
 Such was the war of Europe and Asia to the ancient 
 Greeks; such the Crusades in- the Middle Ages. Such 
 then for the Western States of Europe in recent centuries 
 has been the struggle for the New World. It is 
 this more than anything else which has placed these 
 nations, where they never were before, in the van of 
 intellectual progress, and especially it is by her success 
 in this iield that our own country has acquired her 
 peculiar greatness. 
 
 I will conclude this lecture with some temarks on the 
 large causes which in the struggle of five states left the 
 final victory in the hands of England. Among these five 
 we have seen that Spain and Portugal had the start by a 
 whole century, and that Holland was in the field before 
 England. Afterwards for about a century France and 
 England contended for the New World on tolerably equal 
 terms. Yet now of all these states England alone remains 
 in possession of a great and commanding colonial power. 
 Why is this ? 
 
 We may observe that Holland and Portugal laboured 
 
7.] EFFECT OF THE NEW WOELD ON THE OLD, 93 
 
 under the disadvantage of too small a basis, The decline 
 of Holland had obvious causes, which have often been 
 pointed out. For her sufferings in a war of eighty years 
 with Spain she found the compensations I have just de- 
 scribed. But when this was followed first by naval wars 
 with England and then by a struggle with France which 
 lasted half a century, and she had now England for a rival 
 on the seas, she succumbed. At the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century she shows symptoms of decay, and at 
 the Treaty of Utrecht she lays down her arms victorious 
 indeed but fatally disabled. 
 
 The Portuguese met with a different misfortune. From 
 the outset they had recognised the insufficiency of their 
 resources, regretting that they had not been content with 
 a less ambitious course of acquisition on the northern 
 coast of Africa. In 1580 they suffered a blow such as has 
 not fallen on any other of the still existing European states, 
 Portugal with all her world-wide dependencies and com- 
 mercial stations fell under the yoke of Spain, and under-, 
 went a sixty years' captivity. In this period her colonial 
 Empire, which by becoming Spanish was laid open to the 
 attacks of the Dutch, suffered greatly ; Portuguese writers 
 accuse Spain of having witnessed their losses with pleasure,, 
 and of having made a scapegoat of Portugal ; certain it is 
 that the discontent which led to the insurrection of 1640, 
 and founded a new Portugal under the House of Braganga, 
 was mainly caused by these colonial losses. Yet the in- 
 surrection itself cost her something more in foreign posses-, 
 sions; she paid the Island of Bombay for the help of England. 
 Nor could the second Portugal ever rival the first, that nurse 
 of Prince Henry, Bartholomew Diaz, Vasco da Gama, Magel- 
 haens and Camoens, which has quite a peculiar glory in 
 the history of Europe. 
 
94 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lwi. 
 
 Be it remarked in passing that this passage also of 
 the history of the seventeenth century shows us the 
 New World reacting on the Old. As the rise of Holland, 
 the great occurrence of its first years, so the Eevolution 
 of Portugal, which occupies the middle of it, is caused by 
 the influence of the colonies. 
 
 As to the ill-success of Spain and France, it would no 
 doubt be idle to suppose that any one cause will fully 
 explain it. But perhaps one large cause may be named 
 which in both cases contributed most to produce the 
 result. 
 
 Spain lost her colonial Empire only, as it were, the other 
 day. Having founded it a century earlier, she retained it 
 nearly half a century later than England retained her first 
 empire. Compared to England, she has been inferior only 
 in not having continued to found new colonies. And this 
 was the effect of that strange decay of vitality which over<r 
 took Spain in the latter half of the sixteenth century. The 
 decline of population and the ruin of finance dried up in her 
 every power, that of colonisation included. 
 
 No similar decline is observable in France. France lost 
 her colonies in a series of unsuccessful wars, and perhaps you 
 may think that it is not necessary to inquire further, and 
 that the fortune of war explains everything. But I think 
 I discern that both States were guilty of the same error of 
 policy which in the end mainly contributed to their 
 failure. It may be said of both that they ' had too many 
 irons in the fire.' 
 
 There was this fundamental difference between Spain 
 and France on the one side and England on the other that 
 Spain and France were deeply involved in the struggles, of 
 Europe, from which England has always been able to hold 
 herself aloof. In fact, as an island, England is distinctly 
 
v.] . EFFECT OF THE NEW "WOBLD ON THE OLD. 95 
 
 nearer for practical purposes to the New World, and 
 almost belongs to it, or at least has the choice of belonging 
 at her pleasure to the New World or to the Old. Spain 
 might perhaps have had the same choice but for her con- 
 quests in IteCly and for the fatal marriage which, as it were, 
 wedded h^r to Germany. In that same sixteenth century 
 in which she was colonising the New World, Spain was 
 merged at home in the complex Spanish Empire, which was ■ 
 doomed beforehand to decline because it could never raise 
 a revenue proportioned to its responsibilities. It was almost 
 bankrupt when Charles V. abdicated, though it could then 
 draw upon the splendid prosperity of the Netherlands; 
 when, soon after, it alienated this province, lost the poorer 
 half of it and ruined the richer, when it engaged in 
 chronic war with France, when after eighty years of war 
 with the Dutch it entered upon a quarter of a century of 
 war with Portugal, it could not but sink, as it did, into 
 bankruptcy and political decrepitude. These overwhelming 
 burdens, coupled with a want of industrial aptitude in the 
 Spanish people, whose temperament had been formed in a 
 permanent war of religion, produced the result that the 
 nation to which a new world had been given could never 
 rightly use or profit by the gift. 
 
 In the case of France it is still more manifest that she 
 lost the New World because she was always divided be- 
 tween a policy of colonial extension and a policy of European ' 
 conquest. If we compare together those seven great wars 
 between 1688 and 1815, We' shall be struck with the fact 
 that most of them arfe double wars, that they have one as- 
 pect as between England and France and another as be- 
 tween France and Germany. It is the double policy of 
 France that causes this, and it is France that suffers by it. 
 England has for the most part a single object and wages 
 
96 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [moi. 
 
 a single war, but France wages two wars at once for two 
 distinct objects. When Chatham said he would conq^uer 
 America in Germany he indicated that he saw the mistake 
 which France committed by dividing her forces, and that 
 he saw how by subsidising Frederick to make France 
 exhaust herself in Germany, while her possessions in 
 America passed defenceless into our hands. Napoleon in 
 like manner is distracted between the New World and the 
 Old. He would humble England; he would repair the 
 colonial and Indian losses of his country. But he finds 
 himself conquering Germany aud at last invading Kussia, 
 His comfort is that through Germany he can strike at 
 English trade, and through Russia perhaps make his way 
 to India, 
 
 England has not been thus distracted between two 
 objects. Connected but slightly with the European system 
 since she evacuated France in the fifteenth century, she 
 has not since then lived in chronic war with her neighbours. 
 She has not hankered after the Imperial Crown or guaran- 
 teed the Treaty of Westphalia. When Napoleon by his 
 Continental System shut her out from Europe she showed 
 that she could do without Europe. Hence her hands 
 have always been free, while trade of itself inevitably drew 
 her thoughts in the direction of the New World, In the 
 long run this advantage has been decisive. She has not 
 had to maintain ai^ European Ascendency, as Spain and 
 France have had; on the other hand she has not had 
 to withstand such an Ascendency by mortal conflict within 
 her own territory, as Holland and Portugal, and Spain also, 
 have been forced to do. Hence nothing has interrupted 
 her or interfered with her, to draw her off from the quiet ' 
 progress of her colonial settlements. In one word, out of 
 the five states which competed for the New World success • 
 
v.] EFFECT OF THE NEW WOULD ON THE OLD. 97 
 
 has fallen to that one — not which showed at the outset the 
 strongest vocation for colonisation, not which surpassed the 
 others in daring or invention or energy — but to that one 
 which was least hampered by the Old World. 
 
 s. L. 
 
LECTUEE VI. 
 
 COMMERCE AND WAB. 
 
 ( Competition for the New World between the five western 
 maritime States of Europe; this is a formula which sums 
 up a great part of the history of the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries. It is one of those generalisatioiis 
 which escape us so long as we study history only in single 
 states. 
 
 Much would be gained if the student of history would 
 look at modem Europe as he has already the habit of 
 looking at ancient Greece. Here he has constantly before 
 him three or four different states at once, Athens, Sparta, 
 Thebes, Argos, not to mention Macedonia and Persia, and 
 is led to make most instructive comparisons and most 
 useful reflexions upon large general tendencies. This is 
 entirely owing to the accident that Greece was not a 
 State but a complex of States, which fact our historians do 
 not perceive clearly enough to conclude, as in consistency 
 they ought, that they ought not to write a history of 
 Greece at all but separate histories of Athens, Sparta &o. 
 
LEOT. Ti.] COMMEBCE AND WAE. 99 
 
 Let me ask those of you who know Grecian history to apply 
 to these Western States the mode of conceiving to which 
 you have accustomed yourselves. You have been in the 
 habit of thinking of a cluster of States gathered round 
 a common sea, which is studded with islands and which 
 has on the other side of it large territories imperfectly 
 known and inhabited by strange races. You have thought 
 of all these States together, and not merely of each by 
 itself, you have traced the general results produced upon 
 the Hellenic world as a whole by all the intricate play 
 of interests between the several Hellenic city-states. Now 
 the five States we have in view, Spain, Portiigal, France, 
 Holland and England were ranged in like manner on the 
 North Eastern shore of the Atlantic Ocean, and had 
 in like manner a common interest in what that Ocean 
 contained or hid. If the States seem to you so large, 
 the Ocean so boundless, and the settlements so scat- 
 tered that you cannot bring them into one view, make 
 an effort, bring them into the same map and draw the 
 map on a small scale. -But your great effort must be 
 to raise your head above the current of mere chronological 
 narrative, to apply a fixed principle to the selection of 
 facts, grouping them not by nearness in time, nor by their 
 personal biographical connexion, but by the internal affinity 
 of causation. This great struggle of five States for the 
 New World differs fi:om the struggles of those old Greek 
 States in this, that it is not isolated. It was superinduced 
 by the discovery of Columbus upon other struggles, them- 
 selves sufficiently complicated, which were going on within 
 the European States; in particular it is entangled with 
 the great religious struggle of the Keformation. Alto- 
 gether what a tangled web ! Now in a case like this 
 what shall science do ? Surely the first thing will be to 
 
100 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 separate and arrange together all the effects ■which can 
 be traced to any one cause. In order to do this it must 
 evidently neglect chronological order; it must break the 
 fetters of narrative. Following this method it will see in 
 the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as 
 I have pointed out, two grand causes, each followed by its 
 multitude of effects, viz. the Reformation and the attraction 
 of the New "World ; these two grand causes it will study 
 separately, tracing each through the long series of effects 
 produced by it, and then perhaps, but not till then, 
 it will consider the mutual action of the two causes 
 upon each other. It is our business at present to consider 
 separately the effects produced on the five Western States 
 by the attraction of the New World. 
 
 Now why should the New World have produced any 
 further effect upon those States than simply to rouse them 
 to a new commercial activity, and perhaps more gradually 
 to enlarge their ideas by enlarging their knowledge? That 
 it did produce this latter effect I explained in the last 
 lecture by pointing out how in the course of the sixteenth 
 century the centre of civilisation moves from the Mediter- 
 ranean to the neighbourhood of the Atlantic, so that 
 whereas in the earlier years of it the eye turns always 
 to Italy or Germany where the Raphaels and Michael 
 Angelos, the Ariostos and MacchiaveUi's, the Diirers and 
 Hiittens and Luthers live, at the end of it and in the 
 seventeenth century the eye turns just as naturally West- 
 ward and Northward. We see Cervantes and Calderon in 
 Spain, Shakspeare and Spenser and Bacon in England; 
 Scaliger and Lipsius, then Grotius arise in Holland, 
 Montaigne and Casaubon in France, the destinies of the 
 world are in the hands of Henry IV., Queen Elizabeth, the 
 Prince of Orange, and as time goes on we grow more and 
 
Ti.] COMMERCE AND WAE. 101 
 
 more accustomed to expect everything great in, this 
 quarter and to regard Italy and the Mediterranean as 
 out of date. So much was natural. The contact of the 
 New World might have been expected to produce this 
 effect, for as we have always been accustomed to trace 
 ancient civilisation to the influence of the Mediterranean, 
 we are prepared to find that the Atlantic, when once 
 it becomes a Mediterranean, that is, when once lands are 
 laid open on the further side of it, should produce similar 
 effects on a grander scale. But it does not at once appear 
 why any further effects should be produced. To under- 
 stand this we must consider the peculiar nature of the 
 contact between the New World and the Old and, now 
 that we have looked a little into modem colonisation, we 
 are in a condition to do so. 
 
 Let us think how the New World might have acted 
 on the Old quite otherwise than as it did. What if 
 America had been found to be full of powerful and 
 consolidated States like those of Europe ? Then our 
 relations with it would have been similar to our present 
 relations with China or Japan. Our advances might have 
 been met with a certain prudery, as by China; in that 
 case the result would either have been non-intercourse 
 or some attempt, successful or otherwise, to force inter- 
 course upon them. Or the American States might have 
 proved open-minded and liberal like the Japanese; then 
 there might have followed intercourse, exchange of ideas, 
 and mutual benefit. But in either case it does not appear 
 that important political consequences would have followed, 
 for in those days, while communication was so diflScult, 
 it is not likely that any fusion of the European political 
 system with the American system, any alliances o£ European 
 with American States, would have taken place. The two 
 
102 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lbct, 
 
 worlds would have remained aware of each, other, yet 
 almost closed to each other, in a relation less like that 
 we now see between England and China or Japan than 
 that of England with the same countries or with India and 
 Persia during the seventeenth century. 
 
 Well! there were no such consolidated States in 
 America except in Mexico and Peru, where they were 
 overwhelmed in a moment by the Spanish adventurers. 
 Hence the New World had not the power it would 
 otherwise have had of keeping the Old at arm's length. 
 And the consequence was that there began between the 
 Old World and the New an emigration. 
 
 Now this by itself is a great fact. It implies that the 
 Atlantic had become not merely a Mediterranean but 
 something more. To the Greeks the Mediterranean gave 
 trade, intercourse with foreigners, movement and change 
 of ideas, but it did not, unless perhaps at a certain time, 
 afford a means of unbounded emigration. Emigration 
 there was, but on a scale not only inferior but inferior 
 in proportion. Political Powers, some of them exclusive, 
 guarded the opposite shore. But even this fact is rather 
 social than political. Emigration is in itself only a private 
 affair; it does not, as such, concern Governments, and 
 though it may produce a great effect upon them, as for 
 example the Puritan emigration to New England produced 
 no doubt a perceptible effect in our civil troubles, yet this 
 effect is only indirect. 
 
 Governments might have shut their eyes to all the 
 affairs of the New World. In that case the great ad- 
 venturers would perhaps have set up kingdoms for them- 
 selves, and the reaction of the New World upon the Old 
 would have been confined within narrow limits. The 
 Continent of America was so roomy, so thinly peopled, 
 
Ti.] COMMEECE AND WAK. 103 
 
 that the action of such adventurers, whatever it might 
 have been, would have had no remote consequences, and 
 the Governments of Europe might have looked on without 
 anxiety. The New World would then have exerted as 
 httle influence upon the Old as, for example, the South 
 American States now exert upon Europe. . Kevolutionary 
 violence may rage there, but it rages unheeded and its 
 effects evaporate in the boundless territory peopled by so 
 few inhabitants. 
 
 By considering thus what might have been we are 
 brought to discern the critical point in the course which 
 was actually pursued. The New World could not but 
 exert a strong influence, but it need not have exerted, 
 directly at least, any, properly politi9al influence upon the 
 Old. It was made into a political force of the most 
 tremendous magnitude by the interference of the Euro- 
 pean Goveriiments, by their assuming the control of alL 
 the States set up by their subjects in it. The necessary 
 effect of this policy was to transform entirely the politics 
 of Europe, by materially altering the interest and position 
 of five great European States. I bring this fact into 
 strong relief because I think it has been too much over- 
 looked, and it is the fundamental fact upon which this 
 course of lectures is founded. In one word, the New 
 World in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries does 
 not lie outside Europe but exists inside it as a principle of 
 unlimited political change. Instead of being an isolated 
 region in which higtoiy-isTlbt yet interested, it is a present 
 influence of the utmost importance to which the historian 
 must be continually alive, an influence which for a long 
 time rivalled the Reformation, and from the beginning 
 of the eighteenth' century surpassed the Eeformation, in 
 its effect upon the politics of the European States. 
 
lOi EXPANSIOiT OF ENGLAND. [i^ci, 
 
 Historians of those centuries have kept in view maialy 
 two or perhaps three great movements, first, the Eeforma- 
 tion and its consequences, secondly, the constitutional 
 movement in each country leading to liberty in England 
 and to revolution through despotism in France. They 
 have also considered the great Ascendancies which from 
 tinie to time have arisen in Europe, that of the House of 
 Austria, that of the House of Bourbon, and again that of 
 Napoleon. These great movements have been, as it were, 
 the framework in which they have fitted all particular 
 incidents. The framework is insufficient and too ex- 
 clusively European. It famishes no place for a multitude 
 of most important occurrences, and the movement which it 
 overlooks is perhaps greater and certainly more continuous 
 and durable than any of those which it recognises. Each 
 view of Europe separately is true. Europe is a great 
 Church and Empire breaking up into distinct kingdoms 
 and national or voluntary Churches, as those say who fix 
 their eyes on the Reformation; it is a group of monarchies 
 in which popular freedom has been gradually developing 
 itself, as the constitutional- lawyer says; it is a group of 
 states which balance themselves uneasily against each 
 other, liable therefore to be thrown off its equilibrium by 
 the preponderance of one of them, as the international 
 lawyer says. But all these accounts are incomplete and 
 leave almost half the facts unexplained. We must add, 
 'It is a group of States, of which the five westernmost 
 have been acted upon by a steadfast gravitation towards 
 the New World and have dragged in their train great New 
 World Empires.' 
 
 I have already applied this observation to the eighteenth 
 century and shown you how it explains the perpetual 
 struggles which that century witnessed between England 
 
Ti.] ■ . COMMEECE AND WAE. -105 
 
 and France. These struggles, I am persuaded, are treated 
 by historians of the Balance of Power from a point of 
 view much too exclusively European. This strikes me 
 particularly in the picture they give of the career of 
 Napoleon. They see in him simply a ruler who had the 
 ambition to undertake the conquest of all Europe and who 
 had the genius almost to succeed in this enterprise. Now 
 the main peculiarity of his career is that, though he did this, 
 he did not inteiid it but something different. He intended 
 ,to make great conquests, and he made great conquests, but 
 the conquests he made were not those he intended to make. /. 
 Napoleon did not care about Europe. ' Cette meille Europ6 
 m'ennuiel he said frankly. • His ambition was all directed 
 towards the New World. He is the Titan whose dream it 
 is to restore that Greater France which had fallen in the 
 struggles of the eighteenth century, and to overthrow that 
 Greater Britain which had been established on its ruias. 
 He makes no secret of this ambition, nor doeS he ever 
 renounce it. His conquests in. Europe are made, as it were, 
 accidentally, and he treats them always as a starting-point 
 for a new attack on England. He conquers Germany, but 
 why ? Because Austria and Russia, subsidised by England, 
 march against him while he is brooding at Boulogne over 
 the conquest of England. When Germany is conquered, 
 what is his first thought ? That now he has a new weapon 
 against England, since he can impose the Cbntinental 
 System upon all Europe, Does he occupy Spain and 
 Portugal ? It is because they are maritime countries with 
 fleets and colonies that may be used against England. 
 Lastly, when you study such an enterprise as the Russian 
 expedition you are forced to admit either that it had no 
 object or that it was directed against England. But this 
 view escapes most historians because from, the outset they 
 
106 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lbot. 
 
 have underestimated the magnitude of that great historical 
 cause, the attraction of the New World upon the Old. To 
 them colonies have seemed unimportant because they were 
 distant and thinly peopled, as it were, inert, almost lifeless 
 appendages to the parent-states. And true it is that they 
 received very little direct attention in the head-quarters of 
 politics. In London or Paris no doubt few people troubled 
 themselves with the affairs of Virginia and Louisiana; there 
 no doubt domestic topics absorbed attention, and politics 
 seemed centered in the last parliamentary division or the 
 ' last court intrigue. But the eye is caught by what is on 
 the surface of things, not by what is at the bottom of them ; 
 and the hidden cause which made Ministers rise and fall, 
 which convulsed Europe and led it iato war and revolution 
 was, far more than might be supposed, the standing rivalry 
 of interests in the New World. 
 
 But if this is so, it ought to be applicable to the seven- 
 teenth century as well as to the eighteenth. In the 
 history of the relation of the New World to the Old the 
 three centuries, the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth, 
 have each their marked character. The ^ixfeenth century 
 may be called the Spain-and-Portugal period. As yet the 
 New World is monopolised by the two nations which 
 discovered it, by the country of Vasco da Gama and the 
 adopted country of Columbus, until late in the century 
 Spain and Portugal become one State in the hands of 
 Philip II. In the seventeenth century the other three 
 states, France, Holland and England, enter the colonial 
 field. The Dutch take the lead. In the course of their war 
 with Spain they get possession of most of the Portugu^e 
 possessions, which have now become Spanish, in the East 
 Indies ; they even succeed for a time in annexing Brazil. 
 France and England soon after establish their colonies in 
 
Ti.] ■ COHMEECB AND WAB. ■ 107 
 
 North America. From this time then, or almost from this 
 time, we may expect to trace that transformation in the 
 politics of Europe which I showed to be the necessary con- 
 sequence of the new position assumed by these five states. 
 During the course of this century a certain change takes 
 place in the relative colonial importance of the five States. 
 Portugal declines ; so later does Holland. Spain remains 
 in a condition of immobility ; her vast possessions are not 
 lost, but additions are no longer made to them, and they 
 remain secluded, like China itself, from intercourse with 
 the rest of the world. England and France have both 
 decidedly advanced; Colbert has placed France in the 
 first rank of commercial countries, and she has explored 
 the Mississippi. But the English colonies have decidedly 
 the advantage in population. And thus it is that the 
 eighteenth century witnesses the great duel of France and 
 England for the New World. 
 
 I exhibited that great duel early in this course in 
 order to show you at once by a conspicuous instance that 
 the expansion of England has been neither a tranquil 
 process nor yet belonging purely to the most recent times 
 that throughout the eighteenth century that expansion 
 was an active principle of disturbance, a cause of wars 
 unparalleled both in magnitude and number. I could 
 not at that stage go further, but now that we have 
 analysed the attraction of the New World upon the Old in 
 general and upon England in particular, now that we have 
 considered the nature and intensity of that attraction, we 
 axe in a condition to trace further back and even to its 
 beginning the expansion of England into Greater Britain.' 
 
 It was in the Elizabethan age, as I showed, that 
 England first assumed its modem character, and this 
 means, as I showed at the same time, that then first it 
 
108 EXPANSION OF ENGLAOT). Iiion 
 
 began to find itself in the main current of commerce, and 
 then first to direct its energies to the sea and to the New 
 World. At this point then we mark the beginning of the 
 expansion, the first symptom of the rise of Greater 
 Britain. The great event which announces to the world 
 England's new character and the new place which she is 
 assuming in the world is the naval invasion by the Spanish\, 
 Armada. Here, we may say decidedly, begins the modern 
 history of England. Compare this event with anythii^ 
 that preceded it in English history; you will see at once 
 how new it is. And if you inquire in what precisely the 
 novelty consists you will arrive at this answer that the 
 event is throughout oceanic. Of course we had always 
 been an island; of course our foreign wars had always 
 begun at least on the sea. But' by the sea La earlier 
 times had always been meant the strait, the channel, 
 or at most the narrow seas. Now for the first time it is 
 different. The whole struggle begins, proceeds and ends 
 upon the sea, and it is but the last act of a drama which 
 has been played not in the English seas at all but in the 
 Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico. The 
 invader is the master of the New World, the inheritor of 
 the legacies of Columbus and Vasco da Gama ; his main 
 complaint is that his monopoly of that New World has 
 «been infringed; and by whom is the invasion met? Not 
 by the Hotspurs of medieval chivalry, nor by the archers 
 who won Cr^cy for us, but by a new race of men such as 
 medieval England had not known, by the hero buccaneers, 
 the Drakes and Hawkins, whose lives had been passed in 
 tossing upon that Ocean which to their fathers had been 
 an unexplored, unprofitable desert. Now for the first time 
 might it be said of England — what the popular song 
 assumes to have been always true of her — that ' her march 
 is on the Ocean wave.' 
 
Ti,] COMMBECE AND WAE,. 109 
 
 But there is no Greater Britain as yet; only the 
 impulse has been felt to found one, and the path has been 
 explored which leads to the transatlantic seats where the 
 Englishmen of Greater Britain may one day live. While 
 Drake and Hawkins have set the example of the rough 
 heroism and love of roaming which might find the way 
 into the Promised Land, Humphrey Gilbert and Walter 
 Ealeigh display the genius which settles, founds and 
 colonises. In the next reign Greater Britain is founded, 
 though neither Gilbert nor Raleigh are allowed to enter 
 -into it. In 1606 James I. signs the Charter of Virginia,'^ 
 •and in 1620 that of New England. And now very 
 speedily the new life with which England is animated, her 
 new objects and her new resources are exhibited so as to 
 attract the attention of all Europe. It is in the war of 
 King and Parliament and afterwards in the Protectorate 
 that the new Englis;h policy is first exhibited on a great 
 scale. Under Cromwell England appears, but prema- 
 turely and on the unsound basis of i mperialism, such as 
 she definitely became under William III. and continued 
 to be throughout the eighteenth century, and this, is 
 England steadily expanding into Greater Britain. 
 
 It seems to me to be the principal characteristic of this 
 phase of England that she is at once commercial and 
 warlike. A commonplace is current about the natural 
 connexion between commerce and peace, and hence it has- 
 been inferred that the wars of modem England are 
 attributable to the influence of a feudal aristocracy. 
 Aristocracies, it is said, naturally love war, being in their 
 own origin military; whereas the trader just as naturally 
 desires peace that he may practise his trade with^iater- 
 ruption. A- good specimen of the a priori method of 
 -reasoning in politics! Why! how came we to conquer 
 
no EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leoi. 
 
 India ? Was it not a direct consequence of trading with 
 India ? And that is only the most conspicuous illustration 
 of a law which prevails throughout English history in the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the law, namely, of 
 the intimate interdependence of war and trade, so that 
 throughout that period trade leads naturally to war and 
 war fosters trade. I have pointed out already that the 
 wars of the eighteenth century were incomparably greater 
 and more burdensome than those of the Middle Ages. In 
 a less degree those of the seventeenth century were also 
 great. These are precisely the centuries in which England 
 grew more and more a commercial country. England 
 indeed grew ever more warlike at that time as she grew 
 more commercial. And it is not difficult to show that a 
 cause was at work to make war and commerce increase , 
 together. This cause is the old colonial system. 
 
 Commerce in itself may favour peace, but when com- 
 merce is artificially shut out by a decree of Government 
 from some promising territory, then commerce just as 
 naturally favours war. We know this by our own recent 
 experience with China. The New World might have 
 favoured trade without at the same time favouring war, if 
 it had consisted of a number of liberal-minded States open 
 to intercourse with foreigners, or if it had been occupied by 
 European colonies which pursued an equally liberal system. 
 But we now know what the old colonial system was. We 
 know that it carved out the New World into territories, 
 which were regarded as estates to be enjoyed in each case 
 by the colonising nation. The hope of obtaining such 
 splendid estates and enjoying the profits that were reaped 
 from them constituted the greatest stimulus to com- 
 merce that had ever been known, and it was a stimulus 
 which acted without intermission for centuries. This vast 
 
Ti.] COMMEECE AND WAS. Ill 
 
 historic cause had gradually the effect of bringing to an 
 end the old medieval structure of society and introducing 
 the industrial ages. But inseparable from the commercial 
 stimulus was the stimulus of international rivalry. The 
 object of each nation was to increase its trade not by 
 waiting upon the wants of mankind but by a wholly 
 different method, namely, by getting exclusive possession 
 of some rich tract in the New World. Now whatever may 
 be the natural opposition, between the spirit of trade and 
 the spirit of war, trade pursued in this method is almost 
 identical with war and can hardly fail to lead to war. 
 What is conquest but appropriation of territory? Now 
 appropriation of territory under the old colonial system 
 became the first national object. The five nations of the 
 West were launched into an eager competition for terri- 
 tory, that is, they were put into a relation to each other 
 in which the pursuit of wealth naturally led to quarrels, , 
 a relation in which, as I said, commerce and war were 
 inseparably entangled together, so that commerce led to 
 war and war fostered commerce. The character of the 
 new period which was thus opened showed itself very early. 
 Consider the nature of that long desultory war of England 
 with Spain, of which the expedition of the Armada was 
 the most striking incident. I have said that the English 
 sea-captains were very like buccaneers, and indeed to 
 England the war is throughout an industry, a way to 
 Wealth, the most thriving business, the most profitable 
 investment, of the time. That Spanish war is in fact the 
 infancy of English foreign trade. The first generation of 
 Englishmen that invested capital put it into that war. As 
 now we put our money into railways or what not ? so then 
 the keen man of business took shares in the new ship 
 which John Oxenham or Francis Drake was fitting out at 
 
112 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lboi. 
 
 PlynioutL., and which was intended to lie in wait for the 
 treasure galleons, or make raids upon the Spanish towns in 
 the Gulf of Mexico, And yet the two countries were for- 
 mally not even at war with each other. It was thus that 
 the system of monopoly in the New World made trade and 
 war indistingnishable from each other. The prosperity of 
 Holland was the next and a still more startling illustratiofi 
 of the same law. What more ruinous, you say, than a long 
 war, especially to a small state ? And yet Holland made 
 her fortune in the world by a war of some eighty years with 
 Spain. How was this ? It was because war threw open 
 to her attack the whole boundless possessions of her anta- 
 gonist in the New World, which would have been closed to 
 her in peace. By conquest she made for herself an Empire 
 and this Empire made her rich. 
 
 These are the new views which begin to determine 
 English policy under the Protectorate. From the poiat 
 from which we here regard English history, the great occur- 
 rence of the seventeenth century before 1688 is not the Civil 
 War or the execution of the King, but the iatervention 
 of Cromwell in the European war. This act may almost 
 be regarded as the foundation of the English World- 
 Empire. It was of so much immediate importance that it 
 may be said to have decided the fall of the Spanish Power. 
 Spain, which less than a century before had overshadowed 
 the world, is found soon after lying a helpless prey to the 
 ambition of Louis XIV. Perhaps the turning-point is 
 marked by the Revolution of Portugal, which took place in 
 1640. Then began the fall of Spain. But for twenty years 
 from that time she struggled with her destiny, and the 
 internal troubles of her rival France had caused a reaction 
 in her favour. At this crisis then the interference of Crom- 
 well was decisive, Spain fell never to rise again, and no 
 
VI.] COMMERCE AND WAE. 113 
 
 measure taken by England had for centuries been so 
 momentous. 
 
 But it marks the rise as well as the fall of a World- 
 Power. England by this time has learned to profit by the 
 example of Holland, and follows her in the path of com- 
 mercial empire. The first Stuarts, though it was in their 
 time that our first colonies were founded, show, I think, 
 no s^ns of having entered into the new ideas. They 
 abandon the Elizabethan system, and set their faces towards 
 the Old World rather than the New. But this reaction 
 comes to an end with the accession to power of the party 
 of the Commonwealth. A poUcy now begins which is not, 
 to be sure, very scrupulous, but is able, resolute and suc- 
 cessful. 
 
 It is oceanic and looks westward, like the policy of the 
 later years of Elizabeth. Here for the first time the New 
 World reacts upon the Old by actual personal influence. 
 Dr. Palfrey has traced in a very interesting manner what I 
 may call the New England element ia our Parliamentary 
 party. New England was itself the child of Puritanism, 
 and of Puritanism ia that second form of Independency to 
 which Cromwell himself adhered. Accordingly it took 
 a very direct part in the English Eevolution. Several 
 prominent English politicians of that time may be men- 
 tioned who had themselves lived in Massachusetts, e.g. Sir 
 Henry Vane, George Downing, and Hugh Peters, Crom- 
 well's chaplain. Now too the great English navy, so famous 
 since, begins to rule the seas under the command of Kobert 
 Blake. The navy is now and henceforth the great instru- 
 ment of England's power. The army — though it is more 
 highly organised than ever before, and has in fact usurped 
 the government of the country and placed its leader on 
 the throne ; this army falls with a great catastrophe and 
 S.L. 8 
 
114 EXPAJNSION 01' ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 is devoted to public execration, but-the navy from this time 
 forward is the nation's favourite. Henceforward it is a 
 maxim that England is not a military state, that she ought 
 to have either no army or the smallest army possible, but 
 that her navy ought to be the strongest in the world. 
 
 From our point of view the colonial policy of Cromwell 
 does not attract us by any marked superiority either in 
 morality or success to that of the Kestoration, but rather 
 as the model which Charles II. imitates. Moral rectitude 
 is hardly a character^tic of it, and if it is religious, this 
 perhaps would have appeared, had the Protectorate lasted 
 longer, to have been its most dangerous feature. Nothing 
 is more dangerous than Imperialism marching witii an idea 
 on its banner, and Protestantism was to our Emperor Oliver 
 what the ideas of the Revolution were to Napoleon and his 
 nephew. The success too of this policy is of the same 
 Napoleonic type. England had become for the moment a 
 mihtary State, and necessarily assumed a fer grander posi- 
 tion in the world than she could maintain when she dis- 
 banded- her army and became constitutional again. It has 
 been happy for the Protectorate that it came to an end 
 before its true character was understood. By the law of 
 its nature it was drawn towards war. It is an illusion to 
 suppose that th« Puritanism of the Protector or of his party 
 was analogous to modem Liberalism, and therefore inspired 
 a repugnance to war. Read Marvell's panegyric on him. 
 The virtuous poet predicts that Oliver will be ere long 'a 
 Caesar to Gaul and a Hannibal to Italy.' Does the pros- 
 pect shock him ? Not at all ; lest his hero should falter in 
 the course, he exhorts him to ' march iadefiitigably on' and 
 bids him remember that 'the same acts that did gain a 
 power must it maintain'. Nor when we examine the Pro- 
 tector's foreign policy do we find him unmindful of this 
 
VI.] COMMEBCE AND WAE. 115 
 
 principle. He seems to look forward to a religious war, in 
 which England will play the same part in Europe that he 
 himself with his Ironsides has played in England Some 
 of his modem admirers have perceived this. 'In truth,' 
 writes Macaulay, 'there was nothing which Cromwell had, 
 for his own sake and that of his family, so much reason to 
 desire as a general religious war in Europe. . . Unhappily for 
 him he had no opportunity of displaying his admirable 
 m£itary talents except against the inhabitants of the British 
 isles.' We may well, I think, shudder at the thought of 
 the danger which was removed by the fall of the Protectorate. 
 On the side of the Continent this imperialist policy 
 was developed but imperfectly, but on the side of the New 
 [World, where it was borne upon the tide of the time, it 
 went further and had more lasting consequences. Here 
 indeed Cromwell's policy is only that of the Long Parlia- 
 ment before him and of Charles II. after him. It has 
 indeed a peculiarly absolute and unscrupulous tinge. Qf 
 his own pure will, without consulting directly or indirectly 
 the people, and in spite of opposition in his Council, he 
 plunges the country into a war with Spain. This war is 
 commenced after the manner of the old Elizabethan sea- 
 rovers by a sudden descent without previous quarrel or 
 declaration of war upon St Domingo. I remember hearing \ 
 a predecessor of my own, Sir J. Stephen, say in this 
 place that if any of his hearers had a taste for iconoclasm, 
 he could recommend him to employ it upon the buccaneer- V 
 ing Cromwell. Perhaps this may seem too severe, when 
 we remember the lawlessness of all maritime war at that 
 time. What I wish you to remark is the continuity that 
 holds together this Cromwellian policy with the Eliza- 
 bethan, and equally with the policy which the nation 
 pursued in the eighteenth century, when in 1739 it went to 
 
 8—2 
 
116 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 wax again to break the Spanish monopoly. In all these 
 cases alike you see the close connexion which the old 
 colonial system established between war and trade. 
 
 But the great characteristic of this Commonwealth 
 period and of the whole middle part of the seventeenth 
 century is not war with Spain, but wax with Holland- If 
 Cromwell's breach with Spain shows most strikingly by ite 
 violent suddenness the spirit of the new commercial pohcy, 
 yet it is capable of being misinterpreted. For Spain was 
 the great Catholic Power, and therefore it might be 
 imagined that our war with her was caused by the other 
 great historic cause which then acted, by the Eeformation, 
 and not by the New World. But what of our war with 
 Holland? Had the Reformation been the dominating 
 cause in the seventeenth century, we should have seen 
 England and Holland in permanent brotherly alliance. It 
 is the great proof that this cause is fast giving way to the 
 other, viz., the great trade-rivalry produced by the New 
 World, that all through the middle of the seventeenth 
 century England and Holland wage great naval wars of a 
 character such as had never been seen before. These wars 
 are not sufficiently considered as a whole, and therefore are 
 explained by causes which in fact were only secondary. 
 This is especially the case with the war of 1672, for which 
 Charles II. and the Cabal are responsible. It is cited as a 
 proof of the reckless immorality of that Government that 
 it combined with the Catholic Government of Louis XIV, 
 to strike a deadly blow at the brother Protestant Power, 
 and that it did so for a dynastic interest, for the purpose 
 ■of overthrowing the oligarchic or Louvesteiri faction and 
 raising to power Charles II.'s nephew, the young Prince of 
 Orange. And no doubt Charles II. had this object. 
 Nevertheless there was nothing new at that time either in 
 
VI.] COMMBECE AND WAE. 117 
 
 war with Holland or alliance with France. Instead of 
 suddenly reversing the foreign policy of the country, Charles 
 here followed precedents set by the Commonwealth and 
 by Cromwell, for the former had waged fierce war with 
 Holland, and the latter had entered into alliance with 
 France. Accordingly the Government was supported by 
 some of those who inherited the tradition of the Common- 
 wealth. Anthony Ashley Cooper, a man of Cromwellian 
 ideas, supported it by quoting the old words Delenda est 
 Carthago. In other words : ' Holland is our great rival in, 
 trade, on the Ocean and in the New World. Let us \ 
 destroy her, though she be a Protestant Power, let us '■■ 
 destroy her with the help of a Catholic Power'. These 
 were the maxims of the Commonwealth and of the Pro- 
 tector, because, Puritans though they were and though 
 they had risen up agaiost Popery, they understood that in < 
 their age the struggle of the Churches was falling into 
 the background, and that the rivalry of the maritime 
 Powers for trade and empire in the New World was taking 
 its place as the question of the day. 
 
 And thus we are able to fill up the large outline of the 
 history of Greater Britain. We saw in the Elizabethan 
 war with Spain the movement, the fermentation out 
 of which it sprang. Under the first two Stuarts we see it 
 actually come into existence by the settlement of Virginia, 
 New England and Maryland. At a later time, in the 
 eighteenth century, we saw it, now more mature, engage 
 in a long duel with Greater France. Now we see a new 
 great development which occupies the interval. This is 
 the foundation of the English navy and the great duel 
 with Holland. It covers the middle of the seventeenth 
 century, it embraces our first great naval wars, and 
 the following acquisitions; Jamaica conquered under 
 
118 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND, [leot. ti. 
 
 Cromwell from Spain, Bombay received by Charles II. 
 from Portugal, New York acquired also by Charles II. 
 from Holland. 
 
 This great struggle with Holland is followed by a 
 period of close alliance with Holland, represented in the 
 career of William of Orange. From our point of view this 
 appears as a temporary revival of the Eeformation-contest, 
 By the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes the world 
 is thrown back into the religious wars of the sixteenth 
 century. The New World passes for a time into the 
 background ; once more the question is of Catholicism or 
 religious freedom. Once more therefore the two Pro- 
 testant Powers stand shoulder to shoulder against France. 
 William rules both countries and the trade-rivaliy is 
 adjourned for a time. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 PHASES OF EXPANSION. 
 
 The object I professed to set before myself in these 
 lectures was to present English history to you in such a 
 light that the interest of it instead of gradually diminish- 
 ing should go on increasing to the close. You will 
 perceive by this time in what way I hope to do this. 
 It is impossible that the history of any state can be 
 interesting unless it exhibits some sort of development. 
 Political Ufe that is uniform has no history, however 
 prosperous it may be. Now it appears to me that English 
 historians fail in the later periods of England because 
 they have traced one great development to its completion 
 and do not perceive that, if they would advance further, 
 they must look out for some other development. More or 
 less consciously they have always before their minds the 
 idea of constitutional liberty. This idea suffices until they 
 reach the Revolution of 1688, perhaps even until they 
 reach the accession of the House of Brunswick. But after 
 this it fails them. Not that d^erolopment ceases in the 
 English Constitution at that point, nor even that to the 
 political student it becomes less interesting. But it begins 
 to be gradual and quiet; the tension is relaxed; dramatic 
 
120 EXPANSION OF ENULAND. [lect. 
 
 incident henceforth must be looked for elsewhere. Our 
 historians are not sufficiently alive to this. It may he 
 true that George III.'s use of royal influence attained in an 
 insidious way objects similar to those which the Stuarts 
 tried to reach by prerogative or by military force. But 
 when Wilkes and Home Tooke, Chatham and Fox are 
 brought forward to play the parts of Prynne and Milton, 
 Pym and Shaftesbury, the interest of the reader grows 
 languid. He seems to have before him the feeble second 
 part of some striking story. Those parliamentary struggles 
 which in the seventeenth century were so intense seem, 
 when repeated in the eighteenth, to have something con- 
 ventional about them. 
 
 The mistake, according to me, lies in selecting these 
 struggles to fill the foreground of the scene. It is a 
 misrepresentation to describe England in George in.'s 
 reign as mainly occupied in resisting the encroachments 
 of a somewhat narrow-minded king. We exaggerate the 
 importance of these petty struggles. England was then 
 engaged in other and vaster enterprises. She was not 
 whoUy occupied in doing over again what she had done 
 before; she was also doing new and great things. And 
 these new things had vast consequences, which have 
 changed and are at this day changing the face of the 
 world. It is the historian's business then to open a new 
 scene, and to bring into the foreground new actors. 
 
 I have now brought out in strong relief this new 
 development in English history. I have shown that in the 
 same seventeenth century when England at home was vic- 
 toriously reconciling her old Teutonic liberties to modem 
 political conditions and finding a place in England for the 
 professional soldier and for the religious dissenter, she was 
 also at work abroad. She, along with the other four 
 
vn.] PHASES OP EXPANSION. .121 
 
 western States of Europe, was founding an empire in 
 tte New World. I have shown also that, though she began 
 this work later than some other States and did not for a 
 long time make strikingly rapid progress in it, yet in the 
 end she left all her rivals behind, so that she alone now 
 remains in possession of a great New World empire. Now 
 it was in the eighteenth century, just when the struggle for 
 liberty was over, that she began thus to take the lead in the 
 New World, and it is now, in the nineteenth century, that 
 she finds herself called upon to consider what new shape 
 she shall give to the Empire she possesses. It plainly 
 follows that here is the new development we are in seai'ch 
 of, the development which ought to make the principal 
 study of historians from the time when they find constitu- 
 tional liberty a completed development and therefore an 
 exhausted topic. For here is a development which ever 
 since the seventeenth century has been steadily growing in 
 magnitude, here is a development which binds together 
 the future with the past. 
 
 If then we give it the principal place we escape the 
 perplexity into which most historians fall, who strangely 
 find the history grow less and less interesting as England 
 grows greater and greater. But at the same time we 
 shall find much rearrangement necessary. For we shall 
 have adopted a new standard of importance for events, 
 and a new principle of grouping. Colonial affairs and 
 Indian affairs are usually pushed a little on one side by 
 historians. They are relegated to supplementary chapters. 
 It seems to be assumed that affairs which are remote from 
 England cannot deserve a leading place in a history of 
 England, as if the England of which histories are written 
 were the island so-called and not the political union named 
 after the island, which is quite capable of expanding so as 
 
122 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 to cover half the globe. To us England ■will be wherever 
 English people are found, and we shall look for its history in 
 whatever places witness the occurrences most important to 
 Englishmen. And therefore, as in the periods when the 
 liberties of England were in danger we seek it principally 
 at Westminster in the Parliamentary debates, so in these 
 peiiods of which the characteristic is that England is ex- 
 panding into Greater Britain, English history will he 
 wherever this expansion is taking place, even when the 
 scene is as remote as Canada or as India. We shall avoid 
 the error commonly committed in these later periods of 
 confounding the history of England with the history of 
 Parliament. The rearrangement which such a change will 
 involve may aflect especially the nineteenth and eighteenth 
 centuries. But in the seventeenth century also, though we 
 may not wish to displace the accepted arrangement, which 
 has reference to the straggle for liberty with the Stuart 
 Kings, yet we must keep in our minds at the same time 
 another arrangement founded on the principle of marking 
 the stages in the advance of Greater Britain. 
 
 The accepted arrangement is according to reigns and 
 dynasties, and under each sovereign it ranks as the principal 
 occurrences the dealings of the sovereign with Parliament. 
 On this system the leading demarcations are the accession 
 of the House of Brunswick, and beyond that the accession 
 of the House of Stuart, and in the middle the Great 
 Interregnum and the Eevolution of 1688. We make far 
 too much of these demarcations even when they are un- 
 objectionable. We imagine a much greater difference than 
 really existed between the age of George I. and that of 
 Queen Anne, between that of William III. and that of 
 Charles II., between the Restoration and the Common- 
 wealth, between the age of James I. and the Elizabethan 
 
Tii.l PHASES OF EXPANSION. 123 
 
 age. The Eevolution was not nearly so revolutionary, nor 
 the Restoration so reactionary as is commonly supposed. 
 But if once we begin to think of England as a living 
 organism, which in the Elizabethan age began a process of 
 ezpansion, never intermitted since, into Greater Britain, 
 we shall find these divisions altogether useless, and shall 
 feel the want of a completely new set of divisions to mark 
 the successive stages of the expansion. 
 
 I have already pointed out some of the principal of 
 these divisions. But it will be well to present a connected 
 view of English history as it appears when arranged on 
 this principle. 
 
 The history of the expansion of England must neces- 
 sarily begin with the two ever-memorable voyages of 
 Columbus and Vasco da Gama in the reign of Henry VII. 
 From that moment the position of England among countries 
 was entirely changed, though almost a century elapsed 
 before the change became visible to all the world,/ln our 
 rearrangement this tract of time forms one period, the 
 characteristic of which is that Epgland is gradually finding 
 out her vocation to the sea/ We pass by the domestic 
 disturbances, political,religious and social, of that crowded 
 age. We see nothing of the Reformation and its con- 
 sequences. What we see is simply that England is slowly 
 and gradually taking courage to claim her share with the 
 Spanish and Portuguese in the new world that has been 
 thrown open. There are a few voyages to Newfoundland 
 and Labrador, then there is a series of bold adventtires, 
 which however proved not to have been happily planned. 
 Our explorers naturally but unfortunately turned their 
 attention to the Polar regions, and so discovered nothing 
 but frozen Oceans, while their rivals were making a trium- 
 phal progress 'on from island unto island at the gateways 
 
124 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lsci, 
 
 of the day.' Next comes the series of buccaneering raids 
 upon the Spanish settlements, in, the course of which the 
 English earned at least a character for seamanship and 
 audacity. 
 
 The Spanish Armada marks the moment when this 
 period of preparation or apprenticeship closes. The internal 
 modification in the nation is now complete. It has turned 
 itself round, and looks now no longer towards the Continent 
 but towards the Ocean and the New Worid. It has 
 become both maritime and industrial. 
 
 On the other system of arrangement the accession of 
 the House of Stuart is thought to mark a decline. The 
 Tudor sovereignty, popular and exercised with resolution 
 and intelligence, makes way for a monarchy of divine 
 right, pedantic and unintelligent. This may be, but in 
 our view there is no decline, there is continuous develop^ 
 ment. The personal unlikeness of James and Charles to 
 Elizabeth is a matter of indifference. The foundation of 
 Greater Britain now takes place. John Smith, the Pilgrim 
 Fathers, and Calvert establish the colonies of Virginia, 
 New England, and Maryland, of which the last marks its 
 date by its name, taken from Queen Henrietta Maria. 
 
 Greater Britain henceforth exists, for henceforth Eng- 
 lishmen are living on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. 
 It received at once a peculiar stamp from the circumstances 
 of the time. Greater Spain had been an artificial fabric, to 
 which much thought and skilfal contrivance had been 
 applied by the Home Government. Authority, both civil 
 and ecclesiastical, was more rigorous there than at home. 
 This was because the Spanish settlements, as producing a 
 steady revenue, were all-important to the mother country. 
 The English settlements, not being thus important, were 
 neglected. This had a momentous result owing to the 
 
vii.] PHASES OF EXPANSION. 123 
 
 discord just then springing up in England. Colonies, if 
 not sources of wealth, might at least be useful as places of 
 refage for unauthorised opinions. Half a century before 
 the voyage of the Mayflower ,Coligny ' had given this turn 
 to colonisation. He had conceived that idea of toleration 
 along with local separation of rival religions, which was 
 afterwards realised within France itself by the Edict of 
 Nantes. How different, be it said in passing, would the 
 world now be if a Huguenot France had sprung up beyond 
 the Atlantic ! The idea of Coligny was now realised by 
 England.** As her settlements were made at a critical mo- 
 ment of dissension, an impulse to emigration was supplied 
 which would not otherwise have existed, but at the same 
 time there was introduced a subtle principle of opposition 
 between the New World and the Old. The emigrants- 
 departed with a secret determination, which was to bear 
 fruit later, not of carrying England with them but of 
 creating something which should not be England. 
 
 The second phase of Greater Britain was brought on by 
 the military revolution of 1648. After the triumph of the 
 Commonwealth at home, it had to wage a new war with 
 royalism by sea. From our point of view this second 
 contest is more important than the first; for the army 
 created by Cromwell was destined soon to dissolve again, 
 but the maritime power organised by Vane and wielded by 
 Blake is the English navy of all later time. Our maritime 
 ascendancy has its beginning here. 'At this moment,' says 
 
 1 See an excellent account of his schemes in Mr Beaant's Coligny. 
 
 2 In the charter of Ehode Island 1663 it is expressed distinctly. 
 Eeligipus liberty is granted 'for that the same by reason of the remote 
 distances of those places mil, as We hope, be no breach of the unity 
 and uniformity established in this nation.' Charles II. in his religious 
 policy seems always to keep his maternal grandfather in view. 
 
126 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 Banke, 'England awoke more clearly than ever before to a 
 consciousness of the advantage of her geographical position, 
 of the fact that a maritime vocation was that to which she 
 was called by nature herself.' Cromwell's attack upon the 
 Spanish Empire and seizure of Jamaica, the most high- 
 handed measure recorded in the modem history of 
 England, is the natural effect of this new consciousness 
 awakening at a moment when England found herseK a 
 military State. 
 
 The next phase is the duel with Holland. This belongs 
 most peculiarly to the first half of the reign of Charles 11., 
 when it fills the foreground of the historic stage ; but it 
 had begun long before at the massacre of Amboyna in 
 1623, and had grown in prominence under the Common^ 
 wealth. It may be said to end in the year 1674, when 
 Charles II. withdrew from the attack on Holland which he 
 had made in combination with Louis XIV. That was a 
 great moment of glory for Holland, when in such extreme 
 danger she found a new champion in the family which had 
 saved her before, when a new Stadtholder, a second William 
 the Silent, stood in the breach to withstand the new inva- 
 sion. Nevertheless it was the beginning of the decline of 
 Holland. For in this second great struggle of the Dutch 
 Bepublic, though she showed the old heroism, she could not 
 have all the old good fortune. She could not again posi- 
 tively prosper and grow rich by means of war, as she had 
 done before. This time she was at war not with Spain, the 
 possessor of infinite colonies, which she could plimder at 
 leisure, but only of France ; her fleet did not now sweep 
 the seas unopposed, but was confronted with the powerful 
 navy of England ; and the very source of her wealth, her 
 mercantile marine, was struck at by the English Navigati<m 
 Act. Accordingly though she saved herself and after- 
 
VII.] PHASES OP EXPANSION. 127 
 
 wards had another age of great deeds, the decay of Holland 
 bejpns now to set in ; it becomes visible to all the world 
 at the death of her great Stadtholder, the last of the old 
 hne, our William III. England, richer by nature, and not 
 tried by invasion, begins now to draw ahead, and the 
 6aXa(7ffOKparia of Holland terminates. 
 
 The reign of Charles II. stands out in the history of 
 Greater Britain as a period of remarkable progress*. It 
 was then especially that the American Colonies took the 
 character which they had when they attracted so much 
 attention in the next century, of an uninterrupted series 
 of settlements extending from South to North along the 
 Atlantic coast. For it was in this reign that the CaroUnas 
 and Pennsylvania were founded and that the Dutch were 
 expelled from New York and Delaware. Considered as a 
 whole and judged by the standard of the time, this American 
 settlement begins now to be most imposing. Its distinc- 
 tion is that it has a population which is at once large and 
 almost purely European. Throughout the Spanish settle- 
 ments the Europeans were blended and lost in an ocean of 
 Indian and half-Indian population. The Dutch colonies 
 naturally wanted population, because the Dutch mother- 
 country was so small ; they were generally little more than 
 commercial stations. The French colonies, which now 
 begin to attract attention, were also weak in this respect. 
 Already in the dawn of French colonial greatness might 
 be perceived a deficiency in genuine colonising power, 
 and perhaps also that slowness of multiplication which has 
 characterised the French since. The row of English cole- 
 nies on the Atlantic was perhaps already the most solid 
 
 ^ 'The spirit of enterprise,' writes Mr Sainsbnry, 'and the desire for 
 colonisation appear to have been almost as strong at that period as in the 
 days of Elizabeth and James.' 
 
128 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 achievement in the way of colonisation that any European 
 state could boast, though it would seem insignificant enough 
 if judged by a modern standard. The whole population at 
 the end of Charles IL's reign was about two hundred 
 thousand, but it was a population which doubled itself 
 every quarter of a century. 
 
 What now is the next phase of Greater Britain ? It 
 enters now upon a period of resistance in conjunction with 
 Holland to the aggressions of Greater France created by 
 Colbert. From our point of view the administration of 
 Colbert means the deliberate entrance of France into the 
 competition of the Western States for the New World, 
 France had not been much, if at all, behind England in her . 
 early explorations. Jacques Cartier had made himself a 
 name earlier than Frobisher and Drake, Ooligny had had 
 schemes of colonisation earlier than Raleigh. Acadie and 
 Canada were settled and the town of Quebec founded under 
 the guidance of Samuel Ohamplain about the time of the 
 voyage of the Mayflower. But as usual her European en- 
 tanglements checked the progress of ij^rance in the ISev 
 World. The Thirty Years' War had given her an oppor- 
 tunity of laying the foundation of a European Ascendancy. 
 All through the middle of that century she was engaged ia 
 almost uninterrupted European war. Of the great Spanish 
 estate which is in liquidation she leaves the colonial part 
 to Holland and England, because she naturally covets for 
 herself that which lies close to her frontier, the Burgunc''"an 
 part. In the days of Cromwell therefore she has fallen some- 
 what behind in the colonial race. Mazarin seems to have 
 little comprehension of the oceanic policy of the age. But 
 as soon as he is gone, and the war is t)ver, and a tranquil 
 period has set in, Colbert rises to guide her into this new 
 path. He appropriates all the great commercial'mventions 
 
TII.1 PHASES OF EXPANSION. 129 
 
 of the Dutch Republic, particularly the chartered Company, 
 He labours and for a time with success to give to France, 
 the State preeminently of feudalism, aristocracy and chivalry, 
 an industrial and modem character such as the attraction 
 of the New World was impressing upon the maritime states. 
 He figures in Adam Smith as the representative statesman 
 of the mercantile system, and indeed, as the minister of 
 Louis XIV., he seemed to embody that perversion of the 
 commercial spirit which filled Europe with war, so that, as 
 Adam Sinith himself says, 'commerce, which ought 
 naturally to be, among nations as among individuals, a 
 bond of union and friendship, has become the most fertile 
 source of discord and animosity.' 
 
 We have remarked that the seventeenth century is 
 controlled by two great forces, of which one, the Eeforma- 
 tion, is decteasing, while the other, which is the attraction 
 of the New World, increases, and that the student must 
 continually beware of attributing to one of these forces 
 results produced by the other. Thus under Cromwell, as 
 Tunder Elizabeth before him, the commercial influence works 
 disguised under the religious. When now later in the 
 century the duel between the two Sea-Powers is succeeded 
 by their alliance against France, we have once more to 
 unravel the same tangle of causation. This alliance en- 
 dured through two great wars and through two English 
 reigns, and it seems, when we trace the growth of it from 
 n74 to the Eevolution of 1688, to be an alliance of the 
 two Protestant Powers against a new Catholic aggression. 
 For in those years there set in one of the strangest and most 
 disastrous reactions that history has to record. The Revo- 
 cation of the Edict of Nantes revived the politics of the 
 sixteenth century. Coinciding nearly in time with the 
 accession of the Catholic James II. in England, it created 
 
 S.L. 9 
 
130 ■ EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lbci. 
 
 a world-wide religious panic. History seemed to be rolled 
 back just a century, the age of the League, of Philip 11. 
 and William the Silent seemed to have returned, at a time 
 when it was thought that the balance of the Confessions 
 had been established firmly thirty years before ia the 
 Treaty of Westphalia, and when the age had during those 
 thirty years been drifting in the other direction of colonial 
 expansion. The ideas of Colbert seem suddenly to be for- 
 gotten, the wealth he has amassed is wasted, the navy he 
 has founded is exposed to destruction at La Hogue. It is 
 against this Catholic Revival that England and Holland 
 first form their alliance. 
 
 But it was only for a moment, and less really than 
 apparently, that the New World was thus pushed' into the 
 background. If we trace history upward instead of down- 
 ward, if we look from the Treaty of Utrecht back upon the 
 alliance of the Sea Powers which triumphed there, we see 
 an alliance of quite a different kind. There has been no 
 breach of continuity ; Marlborough has the same position 
 as William, and the alliance is still directed against the 
 same Louis XIV. But the religious warmth has faded out 
 of the war, which now betrays by the settlement made at 
 Utrecht its intensely commercial character. That war has 
 such a splendour in our annals, and the title we give it, 
 'War of the Spanish Succession,' has such a monarchical 
 ring, that we think it a good sample of the fantastic, bar- 
 baric, wasteful wars of the olden time. It is of this war 
 that 'little Peterkin' desires to know 'what good came of 
 it at last.' In reality it is the most business-like of all our 
 wars, and it was waged in the interest of English and Dutch 
 merchants whose trade and livelihood were at stake. All 
 those colonial questions, which had been setting Europs at 
 discord ever since the New World was laid open, were 
 
vii.] PHASES OF EXPANSION. 131 
 
 brought to a head at once by the prospect of a union 
 between France and the Spanish Empire, for such a union 
 would close almost the whole New World to the English 
 and Dutch and throw it open to the countrymen of'Colbert, 
 who were at that moment exploring and settling the 
 Mississippi. Behind all the courtly foppery of the Grand 
 Sifecle commercial considerations now rule the world as they 
 had never ruled it be^re, and as they continued to rule it 
 through much of the prosaic century that was then opening. 
 
 In the midst of this war a memorable event befel 
 which belongs to this development in the fullest sense, the 
 legislative union of England and Scotland. Read the history 
 of it in Burton ; you will see that it marks the beginning 
 of modern Scottish history, just as the Armada that of 
 modem English history. It is the entrance of Scotland 
 into the competition for the New World. No nation has 
 since in proportion to its numbers reaped so much profit 
 from the New World as the Scotch, but before the Union 
 they had no position there. They were excluded from the 
 English trade, and the poverty of the country did not 
 allow them successfully to compete with the other nations 
 on their own account. In William III.'s reign they made 
 a great national effort on the plan then usual. They 
 tried to appropriate to themselves a territory in the New 
 World. They set up the Darien Company, which was to 
 carve a piece for the benefit of Scotland out of the huge 
 territory claimed by Spain as its own. This enterprise 
 failed, and it was out of the excitement and disappoint- 
 ment caused by the failure that the negotiations arose 
 which ended La the Union. England gained by the Union 
 security in time of war against a domestic foe ; Scotland 
 gained admission into the New World. 
 
 In the history of the expansion of England one of the 
 
 9—2 
 
133' EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 — \ 
 greatest epochs is marked by the Treaty of Utrecht. In \ 
 
 our survey this date stands out almost as prominently as 
 the date of the Spanish Armada, for it marks the begin- 
 ning of England's supremacy. At the time of the Armada 
 we saw England entering the race for the -first time; 
 at Utrecht England wins the race. Then she had the 
 audacity to defy a power far greater than her own; and her 
 success brought her forward and gave her a place among 
 great states. She had advanced steadily since, but in the 
 first half of the seventeenth century HolUnd had attract- 
 ed more attention and admiration, and in the secbnd half 
 France. From about 1660 to 1700 France had been the 
 first state in the world beyond all dispute. But the Treaty' 
 of Utrecht left England the first state in^ the world, and 
 she continued for some years to be first without a rival. 
 Her reputation in other countries, the respect felt for her 
 claims in literature, philosophy, scholarship and science 
 date from this period. If ever, it was after this time that 
 she held the same kind of intellectual primacy which France 
 had held before, - Much of this ; splendotd: was transient, 
 but England has remained ever since that date on a higher- 
 level than ever before. It has been universally allowed 
 ever since that no state is more powerful than England. 
 But especially it has been admitted that in wealth and 
 commerce and in maritime power, no state is equal to her. 
 This was partly because her rivals had fallen off in pow6r, 
 partly because she. herself had advanced. 
 
 The decline of Holland had by this time become 
 perceptible. So long as "William lived, she enjoyed the 
 benefit of his renown. But in Marlborough's time and 
 from that time forward languor and the desire of repose 
 grow upon her. Her powers have been overstrained in war 
 with France and in competition with England. Never 
 
.vii.] PHASES OF EXPANSION. 133 
 
 again doe^ she display Eer old "energy. Thus the old 
 rival has fallen behind. The new rival, France, is for the 
 moment overwhelmed by the disasteiS'of tlMi^aii,a^ she, 
 whose affairs thirty years before had heenJ^fciii|^ffl^j|r by 
 the greatest financier of the age, is no^H | pmnfedF^m '^ 
 bankruptcy she will carry with her *fflH^^E.evolution. 
 •Her bold snatch at the trade of the New Wtfrld has not 
 succeeded. She has in a sense won Spain, but not that 
 which made Spain valuable, viz., a share in the American 
 monopoly. Some part of the loss was indeed soon to 
 be repaired. France was soon to show much colonial 
 -enterprise and intelligence. Dupleix in India, La 
 Galissonifere in Canada, the Bailli Suffren on the sea, were 
 to carry the name of France high in the New World and 
 maintain for a long time an equal competition with 
 England. But at the moment of the Peace of Utrecht so 
 much could hardly have been foreseen. Fresh from her 
 victories, England seemed at that moment even greater 
 than she was. 
 
 The positive gains of England were Acadie or Nova 
 Scotia and Newfoundland (surrendered by France) and 
 the Asiento Compact granted by Spain. In other woudB, 
 the first step was taken towards the destruction of Greater 
 France by depriving her of one of her three settlements, 
 Acadie, Canada, and Louisiana, in North America. Arid 
 the first great breach was made in that intolerable Spanish 
 monopoly which then closed the greater part of Central 
 and Southern America to the trade of the world. England 
 was allowed to furnish Spanish America with slaves, and 
 along with slaves she soon managed to smuggle in other 
 commodities. 
 
 I must pause here for a moment to make a general 
 observation. You will remark that in this survey of the 
 
134 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 growth of Greater Britain I do not make the smallest 
 attempt either to glorify the conquests made or to justify 
 the means adopted by our countrymen, any more than when 
 I point out that England outstripped her four rivals in the 
 competition I have the smallest thought of claiming for 
 England any superior virtue or valour. I have not called 
 upon you to admire or approve Drake or Hawkins or 
 the Commonwealth or Cromwell or the Government of 
 Charles IL Indeed it is not easy to approve the conduct 
 of those who built up Greater Britain, though there is 
 plenty to admire in their achievements, and much less 
 certainly to blame or to shudder at than in the deeds of 
 the Spanish adventurers. But I am not writing the 
 biography of these men; it is not as a biographer nor as a 
 poet nor as a moralist that I deal with their actions. I am 
 concerned always with a single problem only, that of 
 causation. My question always is, how came this enter- 
 prise to be undertaken, how came it to succeed ? I ask it 
 not in order that we may imitate the actions we read of, 
 but in order that we may discover the laws by which 
 states rise, expand and prosper or fall in this world. In 
 this instance I have also the further object, viz., to throw 
 light on the question whether Greater Britain, now that it 
 exists, may be expected to prosper and endure or to fall. 
 Perhaps you may ask whether we can expect or wish 
 it to prosper if crime has gone to the making of it. But 
 the God who is revealed in history does not usually 
 judge in this way. History does not show that conquests 
 made lawlessly in one generation are certain or even 
 Ukely to be lost again in another : and, as government is 
 never to be confounded with property, it does not appear 
 that states have always even a right, much less that they 
 are bound, to restore gains that may be more or less ill- 
 
VII.] PHASES OP EXPANSION. 135 
 
 gotten. The Norman conquest was lawless enough, yet it 
 prospered and prospered permanently; we ourselves own 
 this land of England by inheritance from Saxon pirates. 
 The title of a nation to its territory is generally to be 
 sought in primitive times, and would be found, if we could 
 recover it, to rest upon violence and massacre; the 
 territory of Greater Britain was acquired in the full light 
 of history and in part by unjustifiable means, but less 
 unrighteously than the territory of many other Powers, 
 and perhaps far less unrighteously than that of those 
 states whose power is now most ancient and established. 
 If we compare it with other Empires in respect of its 
 origin, we shall see that it has arisen in the same way, 
 that its founders have had the same motives and these 
 not mainly noble, that they have displayed much fierce 
 covetousness, mixed with heroism, that they have not 
 been much troubled by moral scruples at least in their 
 dealings with enemies and rivals, though they have 
 often displayed virtuous self-denial in their dealings 
 among themselves. So far we shall find Greater Britain 
 to be like other Empires, and like other states of 
 whose origin we have any knowledge ; but its annals are 
 on the whole better, not worse, than those of most. They 
 are conspicuously better than those of Greater Spain, 
 which are infinitely more stained with cruelty and rapacity. 
 In some pages of these annals there is a real elevation of 
 thought and an intention at least of righteous dealing, 
 which are not often met with in the history of colonisation. 
 Some of these founders remind us of Abraham and Aeneas. 
 The crimes on the other hand are such as have been al- 
 most universal in colonisation. 
 
 I make these remarks in this place because I have now 
 before me the greatest of these crimes. England had 
 
136 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [lecj. 
 
 taken some share in the slave-trade as early as Elizabeth's 
 age, when John Hawkins distinguished himself as the 
 first Englishman who stained his hands with its atrocity. 
 You will find in Hakluyt his own narrative how he came 
 in 1567 upon an African town of which the huts were 
 covered with dry palm-leaves, how he set fire to it, and 
 out of ' 8000 inhabitants succeeded in seizing 250 persons, 
 men, women and children.' But we are not to suppose 
 that fi:om that time until the abolition of the slave trade 
 England took a great or leading share in it. England 
 had then, and for nearly half a century afterwards, no 
 colonies in which there could be a demand for slaves, and 
 when she acquired colonies they were not mining colonies 
 like the first colonies of Spain, in which the demand for 
 slaves had been urgent. Like our colonial empire itself, 
 our participation in the slave-trade was the gradual growth 
 of the seventeenth century. By the Treaty of Utrecht it 
 was, as it were, established, and became ' a central object 
 of English policy'.' From this date I am afraid we took 
 the leading share, and stained ourselves beyond other 
 nations in the monstrous and enormous atrocities of the 
 slave-trade. 
 
 This simply means that we were not better in our 
 principles in this respect than other nations and that, 
 having now at last risen to the highest place among the 
 trading-nations of the world and having extorted the 
 Asiento from Spain by our military successes, we acci- 
 dentally obtained the largest share in this wicked com- 
 merce. It is fair that we should bear this in mind while 
 we read the horror-striking stories which the party of 
 Abolition afterwards published. Our guilt in this matter 
 
 1 The phrase is borrowed from Mr Leoky. See History of England 
 in the Eighteenth Century, ii. p. 13. 
 
■m.] PHASES OF EXPANSION. 137 
 
 was shared by all the colonising nations ; we were not the 
 inventors of the crime, and, if within a certain period we 
 were more guilty than other nations, it is some palliation 
 that we published our own guilt, repented of it and did at 
 last renounce it. But taken together the whole successful 
 development which culminated at Utrecht secularised and 
 materialised the English people as nothing had ever done 
 before. Never were sordid motives so supreme, never was 
 religion and every high influence so much discredited as 
 in the thirty years that followed. There has been a 
 disposition to antedate this corruption, and to attribute it 
 to the wrong cause. It was not so much after the 
 Restoration, as after the Revolution, and especially after 
 the reign of Queen Anne, that cynicism and corruption 
 set in. In his well-known essay on 'the Comic Dramatists 
 of the Restoration' Macaulay attributes to the Restora- 
 tion the cynicism of four writers, Wycherley, Congreve, 
 Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, of which writers three did not 
 write a play till several years after the Revolution ! 
 
 We have arrived then at the stage when England in 
 the course of her expansion stands out for the first time as 
 the supreme maritime and commercial Power in the World. 
 It is evidently her connexion with the New World that has 
 given her this character, and yet she did not yet appear at 
 least to ordinary eyes as absolutely the first colonial Power. 
 In extent her territories were still insignificant by the side 
 of those of Spain and much inferior to those of Portugal. 
 They were but a fringe on the Atlantic coast of North 
 America, a few Western Islands and a few commercial 
 stations in India. What was this compared with the mighty 
 viceroyalties of Spain in Southern and Central America ? 
 And, as I have said before, France as a colonial Power might 
 seem in some respects superior to England; her colonial 
 
138 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [ieot. 
 
 policy might seem more able and likely in the end to be 
 more successful. 
 
 The next stage in the history of Greater Britain is one 
 which I have already surveyed, Holland being now in., 
 decline, the rivalry of England is henceforth with Spain 
 and France, Powers henceforth united by a Family Com- 
 pact. But the pressure of it falls mainly on France, since it 
 is France not Spain that is neighbour to England both 
 in America and in India. That duel of France and 
 England begins which I have already described. The 
 decisive event of it is the Seven Years' War and the new 
 position given to England by the Treaty of Paris in 1762. 
 Here is the culminating point of English power in the 
 eighteenth century; nay, relatively to other states Eng- 
 land has never since been so great. For a moment it 
 seems that the whole of North America is destined to be 
 hers, and to make for ever a part of Greater Britain. Such 
 an Empire would not have been greater in mere extent 
 than that which Spain already possessed ; but in essential 
 greatness and power how infinitely superior ! The Spanish 
 Empire had the fundamental defect of not being European 
 in blood. Not only did the part of the population which 
 was European belong to a race which even in Europe 
 appeared to be in decline, but there was another large part 
 which had a mixture of barbarism in its blood and another 
 larger still whose blood was purely barbaric. The English 
 Empire was throughout of civilised blood, except so far as it 
 had a slave-population. But the example of antiquity shows 
 that a separate slave-caste, discharging all drudgery and 
 unskilled labour, is consistent with a very high form of 
 civilisation. Much more serious is the deterioration of the 
 national type by barbaric intermixture. 
 
 In this culminating phase England becomes an object 
 
VII.] PHASES OF EXPAKSION. 139 
 
 of jealousy and dread to all Europe, as Spain and afterwards 
 France had been in the seventeenth century. It was 
 about the time when she won her first victories in the 
 colonial duel with France, that an outcry began to be raised 
 against her as the tyrant of the seas. In 1745, just after 
 the capture of Louisburg, the French Ambassador at St 
 Petersburg handed in a note in which he complained of 
 the maritime despotism of the English, and their purpose 
 of destroying the trade and navigation of all other nations; 
 he asserted the necessity of a combination to maintain the 
 maritime balance. England's former ally joins in the com- 
 plaint, for there appeared about the same time a pamphlet 
 entitled 'La voix d'un citoyen d Amsterdam' in which the 
 cry Delenda est Carthago formerly raised by Shaftesbury 
 against Holland is now echoed back by a certain Maubert 
 against England. 'Mettons nous,' he exclaims, 'avec la 
 France au niveau ,de la Grande Bretagne, enrichissons- 
 nous de ses propres fautes et du d(51ire ambitieux de ses 
 Ministres.' And then he suggests a Coalition for the pur- 
 pose of procuring the repeal of the Navigation Act. From 
 this time till 1815 jealousy of England is one of the great 
 motive forces of European politics. It led to the inter- 
 vention of France ia America, and to the Armed Neutrality; 
 later it became a kind of passion in the mind of the First 
 Napoleon, and lured him gradually on, partly against his 
 will, to make the conquest of Europe. 
 
 So far we have traced a course of uninterrupted con- 
 tinuous expansion. Slowly but surely England has grown 
 greater and greater. But now occurs an event wholly new 
 in kind, a sudden shock, proving that in the New World 
 there might be other hostile Powers beside the rival States 
 of Europe. The secession of the American colonies is one 
 of those events the immense significance of which could not 
 
140 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect'. vir. 
 
 even at the moment be overlooked. It was felt at the time to 
 be pregnant with infinite consequences, and this has proved 
 to be true. But the consequences have not been precisely 
 of the kind that was expected. It was the first stirring 
 of free will on the part of the New World. Since Columbus 
 discovered it, and since the Spanish Adventurers ruthlessly 
 destroyed whatever germs of civilisation it possessed, the 
 New World had remained in a kind of nonage. But now 
 it asserts itself ; it accomplishes a revolution in the European 
 style, appealing to all the principles of European civilisa- 
 tion. This was in itself a stupendous event, perhaps in 
 itself greater than that French Revolution which followed 
 so soon and absorbed so completely the attention of man- 
 kind. But it might have seemed at the moment to be' the 
 fall of Greater Britain, For the thirteen colonies which 
 then seceded were almost all the then colonial Empire of 
 Britain. And their secession seemed at the moment a 
 proof demonstrative that any Greater Britain of the kind 
 must always be unnatural and short-lived. Nevertheless 
 a century has passed and there is still a Greater Britain, 
 and on more than the old scale of magnitude. 
 
 This event will be the subject of the next lecture. 
 
LECTURE VIII. 
 
 SCHISM IN GREATER BRITAIN. 
 
 As objects change their outline when the observer changes 
 his point of view, so the history of a state may be made to 
 take many forms. The outline I have given of English 
 history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is 
 very different from that with which we are familiar, because 
 I have taken a point of view from which many things 
 seem great that before seemed small and many small that 
 seemed great, whUe some things are now outline that were 
 shading and others are shading that were outline. 
 
 And yet most people think of history as if its outline 
 were quite fixed and unalterable. Details, they think, 
 may be more or less accurate, more or less vivid, in this 
 historian or in that, but the framework must be the same 
 for all historians. In reality it is just this framework, the 
 list of great events which children learn by heart, that is 
 unfixed, unstable, alterable, though it seems made of cast- 
 iron. For what makes an event great or little ? Is the 
 accession of a king necessarily a great event? At the 
 moment it seems great, but when the excitement it causes 
 has subsided it may appear to have been in the history of 
 the country no event at all. This principle consistently 
 
142 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lbct. 
 
 applied would produce a revolution in our ideas of history. 
 It would show us that the real history of a state may be 
 quite different from the conventional, since all or many of 
 the events that have passed for great may be really un- 
 important, and the truly important events may be among 
 those which have been slightly or not at all recorded. 
 
 We must have then a test for the historical importance 
 of events, and to apply this test will be a principal part of 
 the historian's task. Now what test shall we apply? 
 Shall we say, ' The historian should make prominent those 
 events which are interesting? But surely an occurrence 
 may be interesting biographically, or morally, or poetically, 
 and yet not interesting historically. Shall we say then, 
 ' He is to give to events the importance they were felt to 
 have at the moment when they happened, he is to revive 
 the emotion of the time ' ? I maintain that it is not the 
 business of the historian, as we so often hear, to put his 
 reader back in the past time, or to make him regard events 
 as they were regarded by contemporaries. Where would 
 be the use of this ? Great events are commonly judged 
 by contemporaries quite wrongly. It is in fact one of the 
 chief functions of the historian to correct this contem- 
 porary judgment. Instead of making us share the emotions 
 of the passing time it is his business to point out to us 
 that this event, which absorbed the public attention when 
 it happened, was really of no great importance, and that 
 event, though it p&,ssed almost unnoticed, was of infinite 
 consequence. 
 
 Of all events of English history it is perhaps the 
 American Eevolution which has suffered most from the 
 application of these wrong tests. Considered as a mere 
 story or romance it is not so very interesting. There is no 
 very , wonderful generalship, no very glorious victory on 
 
Till.] SCHISM m GEEATEE BEITAIN. 143 
 
 either side, and of all heroes Washington is the least 
 dramatic. We forget that what is not very, thrilling as 
 story may be of profound interest as history. It marks 
 our blindness to this distinction that we rank the French 
 Revolution because of its abundance of personal incidents 
 so much before the American. But I think the other 
 cause of error I spoke of operates in this case even more 
 fatally. The historian must not indeed be a novelist, 
 but it is as bad, if not worse, for him to be a mere news- 
 paper politician. The average contemporary view of a 
 great event is almost certain to be shallow and false. And 
 yet it seems to be the ambition of our historians to esti- 
 mate the American Eevolution just as they would have 
 done had they been members of Parliament at the time of 
 the administration of Lord North. Instead of trying to 
 give the philosophy of it and to assign to the event its due 
 importance in the history of the world, they seem always 
 making up their minds how it would have been their duty 
 to vote at this stage of the proceedings or at that, on the 
 Repeal of the Stamp Act or the Boston Port Bill or the 
 Compromise Act. I call this the newspaper view of affairs. 
 It waits upon the parliamentary debates, and has an eye to 
 -the fate of the Ministry and to the result of the next 
 division. In particular it takes up and dismisses questions 
 as they come, and on each it contents itself with the 
 smattering of information which may suffice for the short 
 space that the question may remain under discussion. 
 All this may be well enough in its place, but it produces 
 the most melancholy effect in historical writing. And yet 
 in the modem periods of England history seems to aim 
 only at perpetuating such ordinary superficial views of the 
 moment. It is deeply infected throughout with the 
 commonplaces of party politics, and in discussing the 
 
144 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [iect, 
 
 greatest questions seems always to take for its model the 
 newspaper leading-article. 
 
 What then is the true test of the historical importance 
 of events ? I say, it is their pregnancy, or in other words 
 the greatness of the consequences likely to follow from 
 them. On this principle I have argued that in the 
 eighteenth century the expansion of England is historically . 
 far more important than all domestic questions and move- 
 ments. Look at the great personage who dominates English 
 politics through the whole middle period of that century, 
 the elder Pitt. His greatness is throughout identified with 
 the expansion of England; he is a statesman of Greater 
 Britain. It is in the buccaneering war vdth Spain that he 
 sows his political wild oats ; his glory is won in the great 
 colonial duel with France ; his old age is spent in striving 
 to avert schism in Greater Britain. 
 
 Look now at the American Revolution. In pregnancy 
 this event is evidently unique. So it has always struck 
 impartial observers at a distance. But the newspaper 
 politicians of the day had no time for such large views. 
 To them it presented itself only in detail as a series of 
 questions upon which Parliament would divide. These 
 questions came before them mixed up iuextricably with 
 other questions, often of the pettiest kind, yet at the 
 moment not less important as practical questions of party 
 politics. It is well known that the Stamp Act passed at 
 first almost without notice. A Parliament which dis- 
 cussed one night the Address, another night listened to 
 declamations on the back-stairs influence of Bute and 
 covert attacks on the Princess Dowager, another night 
 excited itself over Wilkes and General Warrants, found on 
 the Order of the Day a proposal for taxing the colonies, 
 ^nd passed it as a matter of course with as little attention 
 
VIII.] ' SCHISM IN GEEAXEB BEITAIN. JiS 
 
 as is now givento the Indian Budget; This is deplorably 
 enough, though it may be difficult to remedy. But what 
 excuse can there be for introducing into history such a 
 preposterous confusion of small things with great ? And 
 yet consider whether by our artless phronological method, 
 and by. the slavish obsequiousness with which our hisT 
 torians follow the order of business fixed by Parliament, we 
 do not really make much tie same mistake in estimating 
 the American Kevolution that was made by those who pgssT 
 ed the Stamp Act with scarcely a division. The American 
 question is introduced in our histories almost as irrationally 
 as it was introduced at the time into Parliament; it i^ 
 introduced without any preparation, and in mere chronp^ 
 logical order among other questions wholly unlike it. 
 What is the use of history, if it does not protect us in 
 reviewing the past from those surprises which in the 
 politics of the day arise inevitably out of the vastness and 
 multiplicity of modem states? And yet the American 
 Revolution surprises us now in the reading as much as it 
 did onr forefathers when it happened. We too, as we read, 
 have our heads fall of Bute's influence, of the King's 
 marriage, of the King's illness, of Wilkes and General 
 Warrants, when suddenly emerges the question of taxing 
 the American Colonies. Soon after we hear of discontent 
 in the colonies. And then we say, just as our forefathers 
 did. By the way what are these colonies, and how did they 
 come into existenpe, and how are they governed? The 
 historian, just as a daily paper might da, undertakes tq 
 post us up in the subject. He stops and inserts at this 
 point a retrospective chapter, in which he informs us that 
 the country really has, and has long had, colonies in Nortti 
 America! He imparts to us just as much information 
 about these colonies ^.s ma,y. enable us to understand^ the 
 
 S. L. 10 
 
146 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lbct. 
 
 debates now about to open on the repeal of the Stamp 
 Act, and then, apologising for his departure from chrono- 
 logical order, he hurries back to his narrative. In this 
 narrative he seems always to watch proceedings from the 
 reporters' gallery in the House of Commons. You would 
 think it was in Parliament that the Revolution took place. 
 America is the great question of the Rockingham Cabinet, 
 then later of the North Cabinet. The final loss of America 
 is considered very important because it brings down the 
 North Cabinet. 
 
 When he relates the conclusion of the Treaty of 1783, 
 the historian will no doubt pause for a moment and insert 
 a solemn paragraph upon the event, which he will re- 
 cognise as momentous. He will explain that colonies 
 always secede as soon as they feel themselves ripe for 
 independence, and that the secession of America was no 
 loss but rather a gain for England. Hereupon he dismisses 
 the subject, and henceforth you hear as little of America 
 from him as you heard before the troubles began. New 
 subjects have cropped up in the House of Commons. He 
 is busy with the stormy debates on the India Bill, the 
 struggle of young Pitt with the Coalition, the Westminster 
 Election, and a little later the Regency Debates. For the 
 English historian is as much fascinated by Parliament, and 
 pursues all its movements with the same reverential at- 
 tention, as the old historians of France show in following 
 the personal movements of Louis XIV. When at last he 
 reaches the wars of the French Revolution, and the great 
 struggle of England with Napoleon, then indeed he leaves 
 behind him finally the inglorious campaigns of Burgoyne 
 and Cornwallis, and rejoices once more to have to record 
 really great events and the deeds of great men. 
 
 Now I do not think I risk anything by saying in con- 
 
wii.] SCHISM IN GEEATEE BEITAIN. 147 
 
 tradiction to all this that the American Eevolution, instead 
 of being a tiresome unfortunate business o^which the story 
 may be despatched in a very brief narrative, is an event not 
 only of greater importance but on an altogether higher level 
 of importance than almost any other in modern English 
 history, and that it is intrinsically much more memorable 
 to us than our great war with Revolutionary France, which 
 indeed only arrives to be at all comparable to it through 
 the vast indirect consequences produced necessarily by a 
 war on so large a scale and continued so long. No doubt 
 it is much more stining to read of the Nile, Trafalgar, the 
 Peninsula and Waterloo than of Bunker's Hill, Brandy- 
 wine, Saratoga and Yorktown, and this not only because we 
 like better to think of victory than of defeat, but also 
 because in a military sense the struggle with France was 
 greater and more interesting than that with America, and 
 Napoleon, Nelson, and Wellington were greater commanders 
 than those who appeared in the American Revolution. But 
 events take rank in history not as they are stirring or 
 exciting, much less as they are gratifying to ourselves, 
 but as they are pregnant with consequences. 
 
 The American Revolution called into existence a new 
 state, a state inhOTting the language and traditions of 
 England but taking in some respects a line of its own, in 
 which it departed from the precedents not only of England 
 but of Europe. This state was at the time not large in 
 population, though it was very large in territory, and there 
 were many chances that it would dissolve again and never 
 grow to be very powerful. But it has not dissolved; it 
 has advanced steadily, and is now, as I have said, superior 
 not only in territory but m population also to every v 
 European state except Russia. Now it is by this result ' 
 that I estimate the historic importance of the Revolution, 
 
 10—2 
 
148 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND, [mot, 
 
 Sinde it is with the rise and deTelopment of states that 
 history deals, ^ 
 
 I have called attention to a series of events, the Spanish 
 Armada, the colonisation of Virginia and New England, 
 the growth of the English navy and trade, Cromwell's 
 attack on Spain, the naval wars with Holland, the colonial 
 expansion of France and decline of Holland, the maritiine 
 supremacy of England from the Peace of Utrecht, the duel 
 of England and France for the New World, I have shown 
 that these events taken together make up the expansion of 
 England, that during the seventeenth century this develop- 
 ment is necessarily somewhat hidden behind the domestic 
 struggle of the nation with the Stuart kings, but that in 
 the eighteenth century it ought to be brought into the 
 foreground of history. Now in this series the next event 
 is the Schism, the American Revolution, and the historic 
 magnitude of this event is as much above that of most 
 earlier events; in our history as Greater Britain is greater 
 than England. 
 
 For its magnitude is not to be estimated by inquiring 
 whether Howe and Comwallis were great generals, or 
 whether Washington was or was not a man of genius! 
 And in universal history it is scarcely less great than in 
 the history of England. The foundation in new territory 
 ' of a state of fifty millions of men, which before many 
 years will be a hundred millions, this by itself is far 
 above the level of all previous history. No such event 
 jhad occurred before in full daylight either in the New 
 ^ World or in the Old. Such a state has ten times the 
 population that England had at the Eevolution of 1688, 
 and twice the population that France had at the Eevo- 
 lution of 1789. This fact, if it stood by itself, would he 
 enough to show that time has brought us into a period of 
 
vm.]; SCHISM IN GEEATEE BEITAIN. 149 
 
 greatei* magnitudes and higher numbers than past'history 
 has dealt with. But it does not stand by itself. Bigness 
 no doubt is not necessarily greatness, and in Asiatic 
 history, though not in European, much larger figures may 
 be met- with, for India and China have a populatioii not 
 less than five times as large as the United States, But 
 the peculiarity of this state lies as much in its quality as 
 in its magnitude. Hitherto, unless we except the im- 
 perfectly knowa case of China, all states that have been of 
 very large extent have been of low organisation. 
 
 It had been the boast of England to show how liberty, 
 such as had been known in the city-states of Greece and 
 Italy, might be maintained in a nation-state of the modem 
 type. Now the new state founded in America inherited 
 this discovery, both the theory and the practice of it, and 
 has devised all the modifications that were necessary for the 
 application of it to a still larger territory; The consequence 
 is that this new large state, while in extent it belongs to 
 the same class as India or Russia, is in point of liberty at the 
 opposite end of the scale. Hegel described the history of 
 ■the world as a gradual development of human free wily 
 According to him there are some states in which only one 
 man is free, others in which a few are free, others in 
 which many.- Now if we were to arrange states in a 
 series according to the extension of the spirit of freedom, 
 we should put most of the very large states of the world 
 at the lower end of such a scale. But no one would i 
 hesitate to put this very large state, the United States, at/ 
 the opposite end, as being beyond question the state iai 
 which free will is most active and alive in every in- 
 dividual. 
 
 Here is a result which is great, and not merely big ! 
 But to Englishmen the American phenomenon ought 
 
150 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [mci. 
 
 t6 be infinitely more interesting and important than to 
 the rest of mankind because of the unique relation 
 in which they stand to it. There is no other example 
 in history of two great states related to each other as 
 England and the United States are related. True, 
 the South American Republics have sprung from Spain, 
 and Brazil from Portugal in the same way, but they 
 cannot be called great states; and besides, as I have 
 said, the South American population is to a very large 
 extent of Indian blood. But this great state, sprung from 
 England and predominantly English in blood, is not 
 practically separated from* us, as their former colonies are 
 separated from Spain and Portugal by remoteness of 
 space, but by reason of the immense expansion and ubi- 
 quitous activity of both nations is always close to us, always 
 in contact with us, exerts a strong influence upon us by the 
 strange career it runs and the novel experiments it tries, 
 while at the same time it receives from us a great influ- 
 ence in many ways, but principally through our literature. 
 There is no topic so pregnant as this of the mutual in- 
 fluence of the branches of the EngUsh race. The whole 
 future of the planet depends upon it. But if so, what 
 are we to think of the treatment which ihe American 
 Revolution receives from our historians? One would 
 think that the importance of the event in English 
 history and in universal history were no concern of 
 theirs. They despatch it very summarily. They treat 
 us to a constitutional discussion of the right of taxation 
 and to some glowing descriptions of Chatham's oratory; 
 in due time they describe the war, apologise for our 
 defeats, make the most of our successes, tell some anec- 
 dotes of Franklin, estimate the merits of Washington, and 
 then dismiss the whole subject, as if it were tedious and 
 
Vin.] SCHISM IK GBEATEE BBITAIN, 161 
 
 did not interest them. A very minor question in the long 
 Stuart controversy would occupy them longer, the adventures 
 of Prince Charles Edward would rouse their imaginations 
 more, the inquiry who was the author of Junius would 
 excite a more eager curiosity. Is there not something 
 wrong here ? Is it not evident that we have yet to learn 
 what history is, that what we have hitherto called history 
 is not history at all, but ought to be called by some other 
 name, perhaps biography, perhaps party politics ? History, 
 I say, is not constitutional law, nor parliamentary tongue- 
 fence, nor biography of great men, nor even moral philo- 
 sophy. It deals with states, ifc investigates their rise 
 and development and mutual influence, the causes which 
 promote their prosperity or bring about their decay. 
 
 But in these lectures on the Expansion of England the 
 American Kevolution is to be discussed in one aspect only, 
 viz., as the end of our first experiment in expansion. Like 
 a bubble. Greater Britain expanded rapidly and then 
 burst. It has since been expanding again. Can we avoid 
 the obvious inference ? 
 
 It is constantly repeated, as if it were beyond dispute^ 
 that the secession of the American colonies was an 
 inevitable result of the natural law which prompts 
 every colony, when it is ripe, to set up for itself, and 
 that therefore the statesmen of George III.'s time who 
 are responsible for it, George Grenville, Charles Town- 
 shend, and Lord North, can be charged with nothing 
 more serious than hastening perhaps by a little an un- 
 avoidable cajtastrophe. Now on this head I need add but 
 little to what I have said already. So long as a colony is 
 regarded as a mere estate out of which the mother-country is 
 to make a pecuniary profit, of course its allegiance is highly 
 precarious, of course it will escape as soon as it can. In 
 
152 . EXPAKSION OF ENGLAND, Tmot. 
 
 triitli tte illustration drawn from the grown-up son is not 
 half strong enough for such a case. On that system a 
 i3olony is not treated as a child but as a slave, and it will 
 emancipate itself from such a yoke, not with gratitude as 
 a grown-up son may do, but with indignation that it 
 should ever even in its weakness have been treated so. 
 The secession of the American colonies therefore was 
 perhaps inevitable, but only because, and so far as, they 
 were held under the old colonial system. 
 
 r I have explained how difficult it was at that time to sub- 
 stitute a better system, but a better system exists, a better 
 feysteni is practicable now." There is now no reason why a 
 colony after a certain time should desire emancipation; nay, 
 even in- that age the practice of our colonial government 
 Was much better than the theory. We are not to suppose 
 that the colonies rebelled against English rule simply aS 
 such. The Government against which they rebelled was that 
 of George III. in his first twenty years ; now that period 
 istands marked in our domestic annals too for the narrow- 
 mindedness and perverseness of Government. There was 
 
 ' discontent at home as well as in the colonies. Mansfield 
 on the one side of politics and Grenville on the othet 
 had just at that time given an interpretatioB of our 
 liberties which deprived them of all reality. It was this 
 new-fangled system, not the ordinary system of EngUsh 
 Government, which excited discontent everywhere alike, 
 which provoked the Wilkes agitation in England at the 
 same time as the colonial agitation beyond the Atlantic. 
 But the malecontents in England had no such simple 
 remedy as lay at the command of the malecontents of 
 Massachusetts and Virginia. They could not repudiate 
 the Government which roused their sense of injury. 
 
 It was not then simply because they were colonies that 
 
Viii.]:; SCHISM IN GBEATEE -BEITAIN. 153 
 
 Our colonies rebelled. It was l)ecause they -vi^ere colonies 
 under the old colonial system, and at a moment when 
 that system itself was administered in an unusually narrow- 
 tninded and pedantic Way. But I observe next that any 
 general inference drawn from the conduct of these colonies 
 is open to objectionj because they were not normal but very 
 peculiar colonies. ' 
 
 The modern idea of a colony is that it is a community 
 formed by the overflow of another community. Over-> 
 crowding and poverty in one country causes, we think, 
 emigration to another country Which is emptier and richer. 
 I have explained that this Was not the nature of our 
 American colonies, England^ on the one hand was then 
 not overcrowded. On the other hand the eastern coast 
 of North America, where the colonies were settled, was not 
 specially attractive by its wealth. It was no Eldorado, no 
 Potosi, and in the northern part it was even poor. 
 Why then did colonists settle in it? They had one 
 predomiha,nt motive, and it was. the same which Moses 
 yieged to Pharaoh for the Exodus of the Israelites. ' We 
 must go seven days' journey into the wilderness to offer a 
 sacrifice unto the Lord our (jod.' Keligion impelled them. 
 They wished to live on beliefs and to practise rites which 
 were not tolerated in England. This indeed was not the 
 case everywhere alike. Virginia of course was Anglican. 
 But the New England colonies were Puritan, Pennsylvania 
 Was Quaker, Maryland was Catholic, while of South 
 Carolina we read** that 'the Churchmen were not a third 
 part of the inhabitants ' and that ' many various opinions 
 had been taught by a multitude of teachers and ex- 
 
 1 Compat'e the cliaptei in Adam Smith; Df the motives for establish- 
 ing new colonies. 
 
 » Hildieth n. p. 232. 
 
154 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [mct. 
 
 pounders of all sorts and persuasions.' Thus the old 
 emigration was a real exodus, that is, it was a religious 
 emigration. Now this makes all the difference. The 
 emigrant who goes out merely to make his fortune may 
 possibly in time forget his native land ; but he is not likely 
 to do so; absence endears it to him, distance idealises it; 
 he desires to return to it when his money is made, he 
 would gladly be buried in it. There is scarcely more than 
 one thing that can break this spell, and that is religion. 
 BeKgion indeed may turn emigration into exodus. Those 
 who leave Troy caiTying theif gods with them can resist 
 no doubt the yearning that draws them back ; they can 
 build with confidence their Lavinium or their Alba or 
 even their Rome in the new territory unJiallowed before. 
 For I always hold that religiom is the great state-building 
 principle ; these colonists could create a new state because 
 they were already a church, since the church, so at least I 
 hold, is the soul of the state ; where there is a church a, 
 state grows up in time ; but if you find a state which is 
 not also in some sense a church, you find a state which is 
 not long for this world. 
 
 Now in this respect the American colonies were very 
 peculiar. How is it possible to draw from their history 
 any conclusion about colonies in general? In particular 
 how can you argue from their case to the case of our 
 present colonies which hEl^ve grown up since ? In those 
 colonies there was from the oytset a spirit driving them to 
 separation from England, a principle q,ttracting them and 
 conglobing them into a pew union among themselves. I 
 have remarked how early this spirit showed itself in the 
 New England colonies. No doubt it was not present in 
 all. It was not present in Virginia, but when the colonial 
 discontents, heated by the pedantry of Grenville and Lord 
 
Till.] SCHISM IN GEEATEB EEITAIN. 155 
 
 North, burst into a flame, then was the -moment when 
 Virginia went over to New England, and the spirit of the 
 Pilgrim Fathers found the power to turn offended colonists 
 into a new nation. 
 
 But what is to be found similar to this in our present 
 colonies? They have not sprung out of any religious 
 exodus. Their founders carried no gods with them. On 
 the contrary they go out into the wilderness of mere 
 materialism, into territories where as yet there is nothing 
 consecrated, nothing ideal. Where can their gods be but 
 at home ? If they in such circumstances can find within 
 them the courage to stand out as state-builders, if they 
 can have the heart to sever themselves from English 
 history, from all traditions and memories of the island 
 where their fathers lived for a thousand years, it will 
 indeed be necessary to think that England is a name which 
 possesses sadly little attractive power. 
 
 I think then that we mistake the moral of the 
 American Revolution when we infer from it that all 
 colonies — and not merely colonies of religious refugees 
 under a bad colonial system — fall off from the tree as soon 
 as they ripen. And in like manner perhaps we draw a 
 wrong inference, and omit to draw the right inference, 
 from the prosperity which the United States have enjoyed 
 since the secession. I suppose there has never been in 
 any community so much happiness, or happiness of a kind / 
 so little demoralising, as in the United States. But the 
 causes of this happiness are not political. They lie rooted 
 much deeper than the political institutions of the country. 
 If a philosopher were asked for a recipe to produce the 
 great^at amount of pure happiness in a community he 
 would say. Take a number of men whose characters have 
 been formed during many generations by rational liberty, 
 
156 - EXPANSION OF ENGLAND*': [i^™. 
 
 Berioug religion;, and strenuous labour. Platfe these men in 
 a wide territory, where no painful pressure shall reach 
 them, and where prosperity shall be withia the reach of 
 all. Adversity gives wisdom and strength, but with pain ; 
 J)rosperity gives pleaslire, but relaxes the character. Ad- 
 versity followed after a time by prosperity, this is the 
 recipe for healthy happiness, for it gives pleasure without 
 speedily relaxing energyi And it is a better recipe still if 
 the prosperity at last given shall not be given too easily 
 and unconditionally. Now these are the conditions which 
 have produced American happiness* Characters formed in 
 a temperate zone, by Teutonic liberty and Protestaat 
 religion ; prosperity conferred freely but in measure, and 
 on the condition not only of labour but of the use of inteU 
 ligence and ingenuity. 
 
 This recipe will produce happiness, but only for a time; 
 only as long as the population bears a low proportion to the 
 territory. For a long time.it was supposed that' America 
 had some magic secret by which she avoided all the 
 evils of Europe. The secret was simple; prosperous 
 conditions of life and strong characters. Of late yeai'S 
 the Americans themselves have awakened from the dream>. 
 that their country is never to be soiled with the crimes and 
 follies of Europe. They have no enemies, but yet they 
 have had a war on a scale as gigantic as their teiritoiy,; 
 which Mr Wells reckons to have cost in four years a million: 
 lives and nearly two thousand millions of pounds sterling ; 
 they have not kings, and yet we know that they have had 
 regicide. Nevertheless the reputation and the greatness of 
 the United States stand now perhaps higher than ever. 
 But insensibly their pretensions have changed their charac- 
 ter. Now it is said that no state was ever so powerful, 
 that it is or will be the dominating state of the worlds in 
 
viit] SCHISM IN GBBATEB BEITAIN. 15? 
 
 otter words it is classed among other states, but at the 
 head of them. Its pretension used to be wholly diiferent. 
 It used to claim to be unique in kind; to be a visible 
 proof that the states of Europe with their vaunts of 
 power, their haughty Governments, their wars and their 
 debts, were on the wrong road altogether ; that happiness 
 and virtue hold a more modest path ; and that the best lot 
 for a state is not to be great in history, but rather to haye 
 no.' history at all. 
 
 American happiness then is in no great degree the 
 consequence of secession. But does she owe to secession 
 her immense greatness ? 
 
 When we look back over the stages of her progress we 
 are able easily to discover that she has been in several 
 points remarkably favoured by fortune. Imagine for in- 
 stance that the original colonies, instead of lying in a com- 
 pact group alotig the coast, had been scattered over the 
 Continent, and had been separated from one another by 
 other settlements belonging to other European states. 
 Such a difference might have made the growth of the 
 Union impossible. Imagine again that the French colony 
 of Louisiana, instead of failing miserably, had advanced 
 steadily in the hundred years between its foundation and 
 the American Revolution. This colony embraced the val- 
 ley of the Mississippi. Had it been successful it might 
 easily have grown into a great French state held together 
 through its whole length by its immense river. Or again 
 suppose it had passed into the hands of England ! It was 
 Napoleon who, by selling Louisiana to the United States, 
 made it possible for the Union to develop into the gigantic 
 Power we see. 
 
 StUl it is evident that the United States has found 
 the solution of that great problera of expansion on a 
 
158 EXPAKSION OF ENGLAND. [tEei. 
 
 vast scale, which we have seen all the five "Western nations 
 bf Europe in succession failing to solve. We saw them 
 starting with the notion of an indefinite extension of the 
 state, but we saw them almost in a moment lose their 
 hold of, this conception and take up instead an extremely 
 opposite conception, out of which grew the old colonial 
 system. We saw them treat their colonies as public estates, 
 of which the profits were to be secured to the population 
 of the mother country. We saw at the same time thai 
 this system could never be represented as anything but a 
 makeshift, so that under it there always lurked the despair 
 of any permanent possession of colonies. We saw fi:om 
 this cause and from others Empire after Empire in the 
 New World dissolve. Our own first Empire was among 
 these. But we have since come into possession of a new 
 one. In the management of this we have been careful 
 enough to avoid the old error. The old colonial system is 
 gone. But in place of it no clear and reasoned system has 
 beeti adopted. The wrong theory is given up, but what is 
 the right theory? There is only one alternative. If the 
 colonies are not in the old phrase, possessions of England, 
 1' then they must be a part of England ; and we must adopt 
 this view in earnest. We must cease altogether to say 
 that England is an island off the north western coast of 
 Europe, that it has an area of 120,000 square miles and a 
 population of thirty odd millions. We must cease to think 
 that emigrants, when they go to colonies, leave England or 
 are lost to England. We must cease to think that the 
 history of England is the history of the Parliament that 
 sits at Westminster, and that affairs which are not discussed 
 there cannot belong to English history. When we have 
 accustomed ourselves to contemplate the whole Empire 
 together and call it all England, we shall see that here too 
 
VIII.] SCHISM m GEEATEE BEITAIN. 159 
 
 is a United States, Here too is a great homogeneous 
 people, one in tlood language religion and laws, but dis- 
 persed over a boundless space. We shall see that, though 
 it is held together by strong moral ties, it has little that 
 can be called a constitution, no system that seems capable 
 of resisting any severe shock. But if we are disposed to 
 doubt whether any system can be devised capable of holding 
 together communities so distant from each other, then is 
 the time to recollect the history of the United States of 
 America. For they have such a system. They have 
 solved this problem. They have shown that in the present 
 age of the world political unions may exist on a vaster 
 scale than was possible in former times. No doubt our 
 problem has difficulties of its own, immense difficulties. 
 But the greatest of these difficulties is one which we make 
 ourselves. It is the false preconception which we bring to 
 the question, that the problem is insoluble, that no such 
 thing ever was done or ever will be done; it is our 
 misinterpretation of the American Revolution. 
 
 From that Eevolution we infer that aU distant colonies, 
 sooner^Or later, secede from the mother-country. We 
 ought to infer only that they secede when they are held 
 under the old colonial system. 
 
 We infer that population overflowing from a country 
 into countiies on the other side of an ocean must needs 
 break the tie that binds them to their original home, 
 acquire new interests, and make the nucleus of a new 
 '.Sfete. We ought to infer only that refugees, driven across 
 the ocean by religious exclusiveness and carrying with them 
 strong religious ideas of a peculiar type, may make the 
 nucleus of a new state. This remark is confirmed in an un- 
 expected manner by the history of the secession of Southern 
 and Central America from Spain and Portugal. Here, to 
 
160 .■ EXPANSION OP BUaLAND, : [lecti 
 
 be sure, thefe "was Catholicism on both sides of the ocean; 
 but Gervinus remarks that in reality the religion of those 
 regions was Jesuitism, and that accordingly the suppression 
 of the Jesuits gave a moral shock to the population which 
 he reckons among the leading causes of disruption, 
 
 Lastly, we infer from the greatness of the United 
 States since their secession that the division of states, 
 when they become overlarge, is expedient, But th^ 
 greatness of the United States is the best proof that a 
 state may become immensely large and yet prosper. The 
 Union is a great example of a system under which an 
 indefinite number of provinces is firmly held together 
 ■without any of the inconveniences which have been felt in 
 pur Empire. It is therefore the visible proof that those 
 inconveniences are not inseparable firom a large Empire, 
 but only from the old colonial system. 
 
 But the expansion of England has been twofold. 
 Hitherto we have considered only the expansion of the 
 English nation and state together by means of colonieSj 
 What are we to think of that other and much ■ stranger 
 expansion by which India with its vast population has 
 passed under the rule, of Englishmen ? 
 
SECOND COUESE. 
 
/' 
 
 LECTUEE I. 
 
 HISTORY AND POLITICS. 
 
 Historians are sometimes ridiculed for indulging in 
 conjectures about what ■would have followed in history if 
 some one event had fallen out differently. ' So gloriously 
 unpractical ! ' we exclaim. Now it is not for the sake of 
 practice, but for the sake of theory that such conjectures 
 are hazarded, and I think historians should deal in them 
 much more than they do. It is an illusion to suppose 
 that great public events, because they are on a grander 
 scale, have something more fatally necessary, about them 
 than ordinary private events; and this illusion enslaves 
 the judgment. To form any opinion or estimate of 
 a great national policy is impossible so long as you 
 refuse even to imagine any other policy pursued. This 
 remark is especially applicable to an event so vast and 
 complex as the Expansion of England. Think for a 
 moment if there had been no connexion of England with 
 the New World! How utterly different would have been 
 the whole course of English history since the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth ! No Spanish Armada would have come 
 against us, and there would have been no Drake and 
 
 11—2 
 
IGi EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leci. 
 
 Hawkins to withstand it. No great English navy would 
 have grown up. Blake would not have fought with Van 
 Tromp and De Kuyter. The wars of the Long Parliament 
 and Charles II. with Holland, the war of Cromwell with 
 Spain, would never have taken place. The country would 
 not have amassed the capital which enabled it to withstand 
 and at last to humble Louis XIV. The great commercial 
 corporations would not have arisen to balance the landed 
 interest and transform the policy of the state. England 
 would not have stood at the head of all nations in Queen 
 Anne's reign, and we should have had a wholly and entirely 
 different eighteenth century. Ev^ything in short would 
 be utterly unlike what it is ; and you may be tempted to 
 ridicule the whole speculation as unprofitable, because 
 infinite. 
 
 But yet it is the most practical of all speculations, 
 and for this reason. All this vast expansion, all these 
 prodigious accretions which have gathered round the 
 original England in three centuries are yet not so com- 
 pletely incorporate with England that we cannot con- 
 template shaking ourselves free from them and becoming 
 again the plain England of Queen Elizabeth. The growth 
 of our Empire may indeed have been in a certain sense 
 natural; Greater Britain compared to old England may 
 seem but the full-grown giant developed out of the sturdy 
 boy ; but there is this difference, that the grown man does 
 not and cannot think of becoming a boy again, whereas 
 England both can and does consider the expediency of 
 emancipating her colonies and abandoning India. We do 
 not, as a matter of fact, think of Canada as we think of 
 Kent, nor of Nova Scotia as of Scotland, nor of New South 
 Wales as of Wales, nor of India as of Ireland. We can 
 most easily conceive them separated from us, and, if we 
 
I.] HISTORY AND POLITICS. iGo 
 
 chose, we could most easily bring about the separation. 
 Nay more, many authorities actually recommend us to do 
 so. We are forced then to pass some judgment on the 
 expansion of England considered as a whole. Is it a 
 transient development, like the expansion of Spain ? Was 
 it even a mistake from the beginning, a product of mis- 
 directed energy ? Nations can and do make mistakes. 
 They are guided often by blind passion or instinct, and 
 there is no reason in the nature of things why their 
 aberrations should not continue for ages and lead them 
 infinitely far. And thus it is conceivable that England 
 ought from the beginning to have resisted the temptations 
 of the New World, that she ought to have remained the 
 self-contained island she was in Shakspeare's time — ' in a 
 great pool a swan's nest ' ; or at least that it would have 
 been fortunate for her to have lost her Empire as France 
 did, or when she lost her first colonial Empire not to have 
 founded a new one. 
 
 But if this be so, or even if it may be so, what an 
 enormous intricate and at the same time what a momentous 
 problem is before us ! If we have thus wandered from 
 the true path, or if only we ought now to strike into a 
 wholly new path, how prodigiously important is the fact ! 
 How much it surpasses in importance all those questions 
 of home politics which absorb our attention so much! 
 Many of us elude this consideration by a very confused 
 argument. We say ' Let us mind our own affairs and not 
 concern ourselves with remote countries, which are beyond 
 our comprehension, and which it was a misfortune for us 
 ever to become connected with.' But if this really was a 
 misfortune, if our empire really is so much too large for us, 
 then the question is infinitely more urgent and instant 
 than if it were otherwise. For then we cannot too soon 
 
166 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 resolve to free ourselves from an encumbrance which will 
 assuredly entail disaster upon us, then we ought to devote 
 ourselves to the vast and delicate problem of destroying our 
 Empire, until it is fairly achieved. And thus in any case we 
 have here by far the largest of all political questions, for if 
 our Empire is capable of further development, we have the 
 problem of discovering what direction that development 
 should take, and if it is a mischievous encumbrance, we 
 have the still more anxious problem of getting rid of it, 
 and in either case we deal with territories so vast and 
 populations which grow so rapidly that their destinies are 
 infinitely important. . 
 
 I say, this is a political problem, but is it not also 
 a historical problem ? Yes, and the main reason why 
 I have chosen this subject is that it illustrates better 
 than any other subject my view of the connexion be- 
 tween history and politics. The ultimate object of all 
 my teaching here is to establish this fundamental con- 
 nexion, to. show that politics and history are only diBfer- 
 ent aspects of the same study. There is a vulgar view 
 of politics which sinks then into a mere struggle of 
 interests and parties, and there is a foppish kind of his- 
 tory which aims only at literary display, which produces 
 delightful books hovering between poetrj' and prose. 
 These perversions, according to me, come from an un- 
 natural divorce between two subjects which belong to 
 each other. Politics are vulgar when they are not Hberal- 
 iscd by history, and history fades into mere literature 
 when it loses sight of its relation to practical politics. 
 In order to show this clearly, it has seeined to me a 
 good plan to select a topic which belongs most evidently 
 to history and to politics at once. Such a topic pre- 
 eminently is Greater Britain. What can be more plainly 
 
I.] HISTOEY AND POLITICS. 167 
 
 political than the questions What ought to be done with 
 India ? What ought to be done with our Colonies ? But 
 they are questions which need the aid of history. We 
 cannot delude ourselves here, as we do in home questions 
 of franchise or taxation, so as to fancy that common sense 
 or common morality will suffice to lead us to a true 
 opinion. We cannot suppose ourselves able to form a 
 judgment, for example, about Indian affairs without some 
 special study, because we cannot help seeing that the 
 Indian races are far removed from ourselves in all physical, 
 intellectual, and moral conditions. Here then we see how 
 politics merge into history. But I am even more anxious 
 to show you by this example how history merges into 
 politics. The foundation of this Empire of ours is a 
 comparatively modem event. If we leave out of account 
 the colonies we have lost and think only of the Empire 
 we still possess, we think of an Empire which was founded 
 almost entirely in the reigns of George II. arid George III. 
 Now this is the period which students avoid as being 
 too modern for study; this is the period which classic 
 historians avoid, and which accordingly passes in the 
 popular mind for an uneventful period of uniform pros- 
 perity and civilisation. I have complained that our 
 historians all grow languid as they approach this period, 
 that their descriptions of it are featureless, and that 
 accordingly they lead their readers to think of English 
 history as leading up to nothing, as a story without a 
 moral, or as like the Heart of Midlothian, of,ATfiich the 
 whole last volume is dull and superfluou^^^ou see then 
 how I thiak this evil may be cured. I shof you mighty 
 events in the future, events of which, as furare, we know 
 as yet nothing but that they must come and that they 
 must be mighty. These events are some further develop- 
 
168 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 ment in the relation of England to her colonies and 
 also in her relation to India. Some further develop- 
 ment, I say, for evidently the present phase is not 
 definitive; but what the development will be we cannot 
 yet know. Will there be a great disruption? Will 
 Canada and Australia become independent States ? Shall 
 we abandon India, and will some native Government at 
 present almost inconceivable take the place of the Viceroy 
 and his Council ? Or will the opposite of all this happen? 
 Will Greater Britain rise to a higher form of organisation ? 
 Will the English race, which is divided by so many oceans, 
 making a full use of modem scientific inventions, devise 
 some organisation like that of the United States, under 
 which full liberty and solid union may be reconciled with 
 unbounded territorial extension ? And secondly shall we 
 succeed in solving a still harder problem? Shall we 
 discover some satisfactory way of governing India, some 
 modus Vivendi for two such extreme opposites as a ruling 
 race of Enghshmen in a country which they cannot 
 colonise, and a vast population of Asiatics with imme- 
 morial Asiatic traditions and ways of life? We do not 
 know, I say, how these problems will be solved, but we 
 may be certain that they will be solved somehow, and we 
 may be certain from the nature of the problems that the 
 solution of them will be infinitely momentous. This 
 then is the goal towards which England is travelling. 
 We are not then to think, as most historians seem to 
 do, that all development has ceased in English history, and 
 that we have arrived at a permanent condition of security 
 and prosperity. Not at all; the movement may be less 
 perceptible because it is on a much larger scale ; but the 
 changes and the struggles when they come — and they 
 will come-Ejrwill be on a larger scale also. And when 
 
I.] HISTOEX AND POLITICS. 169 
 
 the crisis arrives, it will throw a wonderful light back 
 upon our past history. All that amazing expansion which 
 has taken place since the reign of George II., and which 
 we read of with a kind of bewildered astonishment, will 
 begin then to impress us differently. At present when we 
 look at the boundless extent of Canada and Australia 
 given up to our race, we are astonished, but form no 
 definite opinion. When we read of the conquest of India, 
 two hundred millions of Asiatics conquered by an English 
 trading company, we are astonished and admire, but we 
 ioha no definite opinion. All seems so strangef^ and 
 anomalous that it almost ceases to be interesting. We 
 do not know how to judge of it nor what to think of it. 
 It will be otherwise then. Time will reveal what was 
 really solid in all this success, and what was not so. We 
 shall know what to think of that great struggle of the 
 eighteenth century for the possession of the New World, 
 when the event has shown, either that a great and solid 
 World-State has been produced, or that an ephemeral 
 trade-empire, like that of old Spain, rose to fall again, 
 either that a solid union between the West and East, 
 firuitful in the greatest and profoundest results, was 
 effected in India, or that Clive and Hastings set on foot 
 a monstrous enterprise which, after a century of apparent 
 success, ended in failure. 
 
 This lesson time will teach to all alike. But history 
 ought surely in some degree, if it is worth anything, to 
 anticipate the lessons of time. We shall all no doubt be 
 wise after the event; we study history that we may be 
 wise before the event. Why should we not now form an 
 opinion about the destiny of our colonies and of our Indian 
 Empire ? That destiny, we may be sure, will not be 
 decreed arbitrarily. It will be the result of the working 
 
170 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 of those laws which it is the object of political science to 
 discover. When the event takes place, this will be visible 
 enough; all will see more or less clearly that what has 
 happened could not but happen. But if so, the students of 
 political science ought to be able to foresee, at least in out- 
 line, the event while it is still future. 
 
 Now do not these considerations set the more recent 
 history of England in a new light? I have shown you 
 England in the latter part of the sixteenth century enter- 
 ing upon a wholly new path. I have traced the stages of 
 its progress in this path through the seventeenth century 
 and the prodigious results which followed in the eighteenth. 
 I have pointed out that we are still in a state of things 
 which is evidently provisional, of which some great 
 modification is evidently at hand. It follows from all this 
 that the modem part of English history presents to us a 
 great problem, one of the greatest problems, in political 
 science. And thus I show you history merging in politics. 
 I show you the reigns of George II. and George III. not as a 
 mere by-gone period, whose quaint manners and fashions 
 it is a delightful amusement to revive with the imagina- 
 tion, but as a storehouse of the materials by which we are 
 to solve the greatest and most urgent of all political 
 problems. In order to understand what is to become of 
 our Empire we must study its nature, the causes which 
 support it, the roots by which its life is fed ; and to study 
 its nature is to study its history and especially the history 
 of its beginning. 
 
 We have been told for a long time past by fashionable 
 writers that history has made itself too solemn and 
 pompous, that it ought to deal in minute, familiar, vivid 
 details, in fact that it ought to be written just in the style 
 of a novel. I will pause once more to tell you what I 
 
I.] HISTORY AND POLITICS. 17X 
 
 think of this view, which has been of late so prevalent. I 
 do not deny the criticism on which it is founded, I fully 
 admit that history should not be solemn and pompous, 
 and I admit that for a long time it was both. But 
 solemnity is one thing, and seriousness is quite another. 
 This school argue that' because history should not be 
 solemn, therefore it should not be serious. They deny 
 that history can establish any solid or important truths ; 
 they have no conception that any great discoveries can 
 ever come out of it. They can only see that, it is ex- 
 quisitely entertaining and delightful to call the past into 
 life again, to see our ancestors in their costume as they 
 lived, and to surprise them in the very act of doing 
 their famous deeds. I find their theory stated with the 
 most ingenuous frankness by Thackeray in the opening to 
 his lectiire on Steele, a passage which almost every one 
 has read and I fancy almost every one has thought very 
 shrewd and true. 
 
 He says, 'What do we look for in studying the history 
 of a past age ? Is it to learn the political transactions and 
 characters of the leading public men ? is it to make our- 
 selves acquainted with the life and being of the time ? If 
 we set out with the former grave purpose, where is the 
 truth, and who believes that he has it entire ? ' And then 
 he goes on to declare that in his opinion the solemn 
 statements which we find in books of history about public 
 affairs are all nonsense, and would not bear any sceptical 
 examination. He refers by way of example to Swift's 
 Conduct of the Allies and Coxe's Life of Marlborough, and 
 you see that it is from works of that extremely old- 
 fashioned cast that he has formed his idea of what history 
 is. But now, political history being all nonsense, what are 
 we to substitute for it ? 
 
172 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 Thackeray tells us that we are 'to make ourselves 
 acquainted with the life and being of the time.' What 
 does this mean ? He goes on to explain. 'As we read in 
 these delightful volumes of the Tatler and Spectator, the 
 past age returns, the England of our ancestors is revivified. 
 The Maypole rises in the Strand again in London, the 
 churches are thronged with daily worshippers ; the beaux 
 are gathering in the coffee-houses, the gentry are going to 
 the drawing-room, the ladies are thronging to the toy-shops, 
 the chairmen are jostling in the streets, the footmen are 
 running with links before the chariots or fighting round 
 the theatre doors. I say the fiction carries a greater 
 amount of truth in solution thaj^ the volume which 
 purports to be all true. Out of the"fictitious book I get the 
 expression of the life of the time ; of the manners, of the 
 movement, the dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the 
 ridicules of society — the old times live again and I travel in 
 the old country of England. Can the heaviest historian do 
 more for me ?' 
 
 That a great novelist should think thus is in itself 
 almost a matter of course. The great engineer Brindley, 
 being asked for what purpose he supposed rivers to have 
 been created, answered without the least hesitation. To 
 feed canals! Thackeray, being asked why Queen Anne 
 lived and the English under the Duke of Marlborough 
 fought the French, answers candidly. It was that I might 
 write my delightful novel of Esmond. Of course he 
 thought so, but how could he, with his keen sense of 
 humour, venture to say so ? You see, he appeals to our 
 scepticism. He does not deny that history might be 
 important if it were true, but he says it is not true. He 
 does not believe a word of it. 
 
 Well ! if so, what should we do ? Must we take the 
 
I.J HISTOBY AND POLITICS. 173 
 
 course he points out to us ? Must we give up history as a 
 serious study but keep it as a delightful amusement, 
 turn away from European wars and watch the ladies 
 thronging to the toy-shops, cease studying what sort of 
 government our ancestors had and inquire rather what they 
 had for dinner ? I tell you there is another and a much 
 better course which leads in quite the opposite direction. 
 If history for a long time has been, as it has been, untrue 
 and unsatisfactory, correct it, amend it. Make it true and 
 trustworthy. There is no reason in the world why this 
 should not be done, or rather it has been done already for 
 the greater part of history, and only remains undone in 
 those more recent periods which students have neglected. 
 It seems not to be generally known how much the study of 
 history has been transformed of late years. Those charges of 
 untrustworthiness, of pompous and hollow conventionality, 
 which are vulgarly made against history, used to be well- 
 grounded once, but are in the main groundless now. History 
 has been in great part rewritten ; in great part it is now 
 true, and lies before science as a mass of materials out of 
 which a political doctrine may be deduced. It is not now 
 pompous and solemn, but it is thoroughly serious, much 
 more serious than ever. Here then is the alternative 
 which lies before you. Instead of ceasing to regard history 
 seriously, as Thackeray advises you, regard it more 
 seriously than before. Instead of holding that you cannot 
 find the truth and therefore may as well cease to seek it, 
 consider that the truth is hard to find and therefore must 
 be sought all the more diligently, all the more laboriously. 
 For observe that if once we grant that historic truth is 
 attainable, and attainable it is, then there can be no further 
 dispute about its supreme importance. It deals with facts 
 of the largest and most momentous kind, with the causes of 
 
174 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 the decay and growth of Empires, with war and peace, with 
 the sufferings or happiness of millions. It is by this 
 consideration that I merge history in politics. I tell 
 you that when you study English history you study not 
 the past of England only, but her future. It is the wel- 
 fare of your country, it is your whole interest as citizens 
 that is in question while you study history. How it 
 is so I illustrate by putting before you this subject 
 of the Expansion of England. I show you that there is 
 a vast question ripening for decision, upon which almost 
 the whole future of our country depends. In magni- 
 tude this question far surpasses all other questions which 
 you can ever have to discuss in political life. And yet 
 it is altogether a historical question. The investigation 
 of it requires not only some knowledge, but I may almost 
 say a full knowledge of the modem history of England. For, 
 as I have pointed out, England has been entirely engaged 
 for the last three centuries in this expansion into Greater 
 Britain. If therefore you would discern in outline the future 
 of Greater Britain you will have to master almost the whole 
 history of England in the last three centuries. Only enter 
 upon these inquiries, only undertake to make up your 
 minds upon the colonial question and the Indian question ; 
 you will find, that you are led back from question to 
 question and from one department of affairs to another, 
 until you discover that these two questions bring the 
 whole modem history of England in their train. And not 
 only is this one way of grasping English history, but it is 
 the best way. For in history everything depends upon 
 turning narrative into problems. So long as you think of 
 history as a mere chronological narrative, so long you are 
 in the old literary groove which leads to no trustworthy 
 knowledge, but only to that pompous conventional ro- 
 
I.] HISTOET AND POLITICS. 175 
 
 mancing of which all serious men are tired. Break the 
 drowsy spell of narrative; ask yourself questions; set 
 yourself problems ; your mind will at once take up a new 
 attitude ; you will become an investigator ; you will cease 
 to be solemn and begin to be serious. Now modern 
 English history breaks up into two grand problems, the 
 problem of the colonies and the problem of India. 
 
 Moreover all those considerations which make the 
 universal study of history imperative in all countries where 
 there is popular government, operate in England far more 
 strongly than in any other country. For this immense 
 expansion of our race has the effect of making English 
 politics most bewilderingly difificult. I take it that every 
 other country, France, Germany, the United States, every 
 country except perhaps Kussia, has a simple problem to 
 solve compared with that which is set before England. 
 Most of those states are compact and solid, scarcely less 
 compact, though so much larger, than the city-states of 
 antiquity. They can only be attacked at home, and 
 therefore their armies are a kind of citizen soldiery. Now 
 distant dependencies destroy this compactness, and make 
 the national interest hard to discern and hard to protect. 
 Because of our scattered colonies it is easy for an enemy 
 to strike at us. If we were at war with the United States, 
 we should feel it in Canada, if with Eussia, in Afghanistan. 
 But this external difficulty is less serious than the 
 internal difficulties which arise in a scattered empire. 
 How to give a moral unity to vast countries "separated 
 from each other by half the globe, even when they are 
 inhabited in the main by one nation ! But even this is not 
 the greatest of the anxieties of England. For besides the 
 Colonies, we have India. Here at least there is no com- " 
 munity of race or of religion. Here that solid basis which 
 
176 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [lbct. 
 
 is formed by immigration and colonisation is almost en- 
 tirely wanting. Here you have another problem not less 
 vast, not less diflficult, and much less hopeful than that of 
 the colonies. Either problem by itself is as much as any 
 nation ever took in hand before. It seems really too much 
 that both should fall on the same nation at the same 
 time. 
 
 Consider how distracting must be the effect upon the 
 public mind of these two opposite questions. The colonies 
 and India are in opposite extremes. Whatever political 
 maxims are most applicable to the one, are most inapphc- 
 able to the other. In the colonies everything is brand-new. 
 There you have the most progressive race put in the cir- 
 cumstances most favourable to progress. They have no past 
 and an unbounded future. Government and institutions 
 are all ultra-English. AH is liberty, industry, invention, 
 innovation, and as yet tranquillity. Now if this alone were 
 Greater Britain, it would be homogeneous, all of a piece ; 
 and, vast and boundless as the territory is, we might come 
 to understand its affairs. But there is at the same time 
 another Greater Britain, surpassing this in population 
 though not in territory, and it is everything which this is 
 not. India is all past and, I may almost say, no future. 
 What it will come to the wisest man is afraid to con- 
 jecture, but in the past it opens vistas into a fabulous 
 antiquity. All the oldest religions, all the oldest customs, 
 petrified as it were. No form of popular government as 
 yet possible. Everything which Europe, and still more 
 the New World, has outlived still flourishing in full 
 vigour; superstition, fatalism, polygamy, the most primi- 
 tive priestcraft, the most primitive despotism; and 
 threatening the northern frontier the vast Asiatic steppe 
 with its Osbegs and Turcomans. Thus the same nation 
 
I.] mSTOEY AKD POLITICS, 177 
 
 which reaches one hand towards the futTire of the globe and 
 assumes the position of mediator between Europe and the 
 New World, stretches the other hand towards the remotest 
 past, becomes an Asiatic conqueror, and usurps the succes- 
 sion of the Great Mogul, 
 
 How can the ^ame nation pursue two lines of 
 policy so radically different without bewilderment, be de- 
 spotic in Asia and democratic in Australia, be in the East 
 at once the greatest Mussulman Power in the world and 
 the guardian of the property of thousands of idol-temples, 
 and at the same time in the West be the foremost champion 
 of free thought alid spiritual religion, stand out as a great 
 military Imperialism to resist the march of Russia in 
 Central Asia at the same time that it fills Queensland 
 and Manitoba with free settlers ? Never did any nation 
 certainly, since the world began, assume anything like so 
 much responsibility. Never did so many vast questions in 
 all parts of the globe, questions calling for all sorts of 
 special knowledge and special training, depend upon the 
 decision of a single public. It must be confessed that 
 this public bears its responsibility lightly! It does not 
 even study colonial and Indian questions. It does not 
 consider them interesting, except in those rare cases when 
 they come to the foreground of politics. When the fate 
 of a Ministry is concerned they are found intensely 
 interesting, but the public does not consider them 
 interesting so long as only the population of India, the 
 destiny of a vast section of the planet, and the future of 
 the English state itself, are concerned. As to India, 
 Macaulay writes thus: 'It might have been expected 
 that every Englishman who takes any interest in any 
 part of history would be anxious to know how a handful 
 of his countrymen separated 'from their home by an 
 s. L. 12 
 
178 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. j. 
 
 immeiise ocean, subjugated in the course of a few years 
 one of the greatest empires in the world. Yet unless we 
 greatly err, this subject is to most readers not only insipid 
 but positively distasteful,' 
 
 The acquisition of India by England, as part of that 
 expansion which in the last two centuries has so profoundly 
 modified our state, will be examined in the succeeding 
 lectures. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE INDIAN EMPIRE. 
 
 As formerly the Colonial Empire, so now the Indian Empire 
 is to be considered only so far as it illustrates the general 
 law of expansion which prevails in the modern part of 
 English history. It will be considered not in itself, but 
 only in its relation to our own state. It will be con- 
 sidered historically, that is, in the causes which produced 
 it, but also politically, that is, in regard to its value or 
 stability. 
 
 From this point of view we shall not find it convenient 
 to observe chronological order. Our acquisition of India 
 was made blindly. Nothing great that has ever been done 
 by Englishmen was done so unintentionally, so accidentally, 
 as the conquest of India. There has indeed been little 
 enough of calculation or contrivance in our colonisation. 
 When our first settlers went out to Virginia and New 
 England, it was not intended to lay the foundations of a 
 mighty republican state. But here the event has differed 
 from the design only in degree. We did intend to estab- 
 lish a new community, and we even knew that it would be 
 republican in its tendency; what was hidden from us was 
 
 12—2 
 
180 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 only its immense magnitude. But in India we meant one 
 thing, and did quite another. Our object was trade, and in 
 this we were not particularly successful. War with the 
 native States we did not think of at all till a hundred 
 years after our first settlement, and then we thought only 
 of such war as might support our trade ; more than half a 
 century passed before we thought of any considerable 
 territorial acquisitions ; the nineteenth century had almost 
 begun before the policy of acquiring an ascendency over 
 the native states was entered upon; and our present 
 supreme position cannot be said to have been attained 
 before the Governor-Generalship of Lord Dalhousie little 
 more than a quarter of a century ago. All along we have 
 been looking one way and moving another. In a case like 
 this the chronological method of study is the worst that 
 can be chosen. If we were to trace ths history of the 
 East India Company from year to year/carefully putting 
 ourselves at the point of view of the Directors, we should 
 be doing all in our power to blind ourselves. For it has 
 not been the will of the Directors, but other forces over- 
 ruling their will, forces against which they struggled in 
 vain, by which the Indian E&^e has been brought into 
 existence. For this reason it is almost necessary, as for 
 other reasons it is convenient, to begin at the other end, 
 and before considering how the Empire grew to its 
 present greatness to inquire what at the present moment 
 it actually is. 
 
 We call this Empire a conquest, in order to mark the 
 fact that it was not acquired in any degree by settlement 
 or colonisation, but by a series of wars ending in cessions of 
 territory by the native Powers to the East India Company. 
 But let us be careful how we take for granted that it is a 
 conquest in any more precise sense of the word. 
 
n.] THE INDIAN EMPIRE. 181 
 
 Above I criticised the term 'possessions of England, 
 "«'hich is so commonly applied to the colonies. I asked, if 
 by England be meant the people inhabiting England and 
 by the colonies certain English people living beyond the 
 sea, in what sense can one of these populations be said to 
 belong to the other? Or if by England you mean the 
 English Government, which is also ultimately the Govern- 
 ment of the colonies, why should we speak of the subjects 
 of a Government as its possession or property, unless 
 indeed they became its subjects by conquest ? Now this 
 criticism does not directly apply to India, because India did 
 come under the Queen's government by conquest. India 
 therefore may be called a possession of England in a sense 
 which is not applicable to the Colonies. Nevertheless the 
 word conquest, which, like most of the vocabulary -of war, 
 has come down to us from primitive barbaric times, may 
 easily be misunderstood. We may still ask in what sense 
 England can be said to possess India. What we possess we 
 devote in some manner to our own enjoyment. If I own 
 land, I either take the profits of the harvest, or, if I let the 
 land to a farmer, I- get rent from it. And in primitive times 
 the conquest of a countiy was usually followed by possession 
 in some literal sense. Sometimes the conquerors actually 
 became landlords of the conquered territory or of part of 
 it, as in that conquest of Palestine which we read of 
 in the Book of Joshua, or in those Roman conquests where 
 a certain extent of confiscated land was often granted out 
 to a number of Roman citizens. Now assuredly India 
 is not a conquered country in this sense. England has not 
 seized lands in India, and after displacing the native pro- 
 prietors assigned them to Englishmen. There is another 
 sense in which we may conceive the condition of a con- 
 quered country. We may think of it as tributary or 
 
182 EXPAii[SION OP ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 paying tribute. Only we must be careful bow we under- 
 stand the expression. If it merely means that the people 
 pay a tax, in other words that they meet the expense of 
 their own government or of the army that protects their 
 frontier, there is nothing in this peculiar to a conquered 
 people. 
 
 Almost every people in some form or other pays the 
 expense of its own government. If the word 'tributary' is 
 to be equivalent to 'conquered' or 'dependent,' it must 
 mean paying something over and above the expense of its 
 government. We have an example of such a tribute in 
 modern Egypt. The government of Egypt is in the hands 
 of a Khedive who pays himself handsomely out of the 
 pockets of the people, but Egj^t is tributary to the Sultan 
 of Turkey, that is, it pays to him a sum which does not in 
 any shape return to the country, but simply marks its 
 relation of dependence upon the Sultan. 
 
 Such a tribute as this would mark that the country 
 which paid it was a possession of the country which re- 
 ceived it, because it seems analogous to the rent which a 
 tenant farmer pays to the landowner. Is India then 
 tributary in this sense to England? Certainly not, at 
 least not directly or avowedly. Taxes are raised of course 
 in India, as taxes are raised in England, but India is no 
 more tributary than England itself. The money drawn 
 from India is spent upon the government of India, and no 
 money is levied beyond what is supposed to be necessary 
 for this purpose. 
 
 Of course it may be and often has been argued that 
 India is in many ways sacrificed to England, and in par- 
 ticular that money is under colourable pretexts extorted 
 from her. I am not now concerned with this question, 
 because I am inquiring simply what is the relation 
 
II.] THE INDIAN EMPIEE. 183 
 
 established by law between India and England, and not 
 how far that relation may by abuse have been perverted. 
 India then is not a possession of England in the sense of 
 being legally tributary to England, any more than any of 
 our colonies are so. 
 
 The truth is that, though the present relation between 
 India and England was historically created by war, yet 
 England does not at least openly claim any rights over 
 India in virtue of this fact. In the Queen's proclamation 
 of November 1st, 1858, by which the open assumption of 
 the government by the Queen was announced, occur the 
 express words 'We hold ourselves bound to the natives 
 of our Indian territories by the same obligations of duty 
 which bind us to all our other subjects.' That is, conquest 
 confers no peculiar rights, or India is not for practical 
 purposes a conquered country. 
 
 In fact, though the advance of civilisation has not 
 as yet abolished wars nor even perhaps diminished the 
 frequency of them, yet it has very much transformed 
 their character. Conquest is nominally still possible, but 
 the word has changed its meaning. It does not now mean 
 spoliation or the acquisition of any oppressive lordship, so 
 that the temptation to make conquests is now very much 
 diminished. Thus our possession of India imposes upon 
 us vast and almost intolerable responsibilities; this is 
 evident ; but it is not at once evident that we reap any 
 benefit from it. 
 
 We must therefore dismiss from our minds the idea 
 that India is in any practical sense of the word a posses- 
 sion of England. In ordinary language the two notions of 
 property and government are mixed up in a way that 
 produces infinite confusion. When we speak of India as 
 'our magnificent dependency' or^lhe brightest jewel in 
 
184: EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [mot. 
 
 the English diadem,' we use metaphors which have come 
 down to us from primitive ages and from a state of society 
 which has long passed away. India does indeed depend 
 on England in the sense that England determines her 
 condition and her policy and that she is governed by 
 Englishmen, but not in the sense that she renders service 
 to England or makes England directly richer or more 
 powerful. And thus with respect to India as with respect 
 to the colonies the question confronts us on the threshold 
 of the subject. What is the use of it ? Why do we take 
 the trouble and involve ourselves in the anxiety and 
 responsibility of governing two hundred millions of people 
 in Asia ? 
 
 Now in respect to the colonies I argued that this 
 question, however naturally it may suggest itself, is perverse, 
 unless it can be shown that our colonies are too remote 
 either to give or receive any advantage from their 
 connexion with us. For they are of our own blood, a mere 
 extension of the English nationality into new lands. If 
 these lands were contiguous to England, it would seem a 
 matter of course that the English population as it increases 
 should occupy them, and evidently desirable that it should 
 do so without a political separation. As they are not 
 contiguous but remote, a certain diflSculty arises, but it is 
 a difficulty which in these days of steam and electricity 
 does not seem insurmountable. Now you see that this 
 argument rests entirely upon the community of blood 
 between England and her colonies. It does not therefore 
 apply to India. Two races could scarcely be more alien 
 from each other than the English and the Hindus. 
 Comparative philology has indeed discovered one link that 
 had never been suspected before. The language of the 
 prevalent race of India is indeed of the same family as 
 
II.] THE INDIAN EMPIRE. 185 
 
 our own language. But in every other respect there is 
 extreme alienation. Their traditions do not touch ours at 
 any poiut. Their religion is further removed from our 
 own even than Mohammedanism. 
 
 Our colonies, as I pointed out, were in the main planted 
 in the emptier parts of the globe, so that their population 
 is for the most part either entirely English or predomi- 
 nantly so. I pointed out that this was not the case with 
 the colonies of Spain in Central and Southern America, 
 where the Spanish settlers lived in the midst of a larger 
 population of native Indians, whom they reduced to a kind 
 of serfdom. Here then are two kinds of dependency, of 
 which the one is much more closely cognate to the mother 
 country than the other. But both are connected by real 
 ties of blood with the mother country. Now India belongs 
 to neither class, because its population has no tie of blood 
 whatever with the population of England. Even if colonies 
 had gone out from England to India, they must have 
 continued insignificant in comparison to the enormous 
 native population ; but there have been no such colonies. 
 England is separated from India by one of the strongest 
 barriers that nature could set up between the two countries. 
 Nature has made the colonisation of India by Englishmjpn 
 impossible by giving her a climate in which, as a rule, 
 English children cannot grow up. 
 
 And thus, while the connexion of England with her 
 colonies is in the highest degree natural, her connexion 
 with India seems at first sight at least to be in the highest 
 degree unnatural. There is no natural tie whatever 
 between the two countries. No community of blood ; no 
 community of religion, for we come as Christians into 
 a population divided between Brahminism and Moham- 
 medanism. And lastly no community of interest, except 
 
186 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 SO much, as there miist be between all countries, viz. the 
 interest that each has to receive the commodities of the 
 other. For otherwise what interest can England and 
 India have in common ? The interests of England lie in 
 Europe and in the New World. India, so far as so isolated 
 a country can have foreign interests at all, looks towards 
 Afghanistan, Persia and Central Asia, countries with which 
 except through India we should scarcely ever have had any 
 communication. 
 
 The English conquest of India has produced results 
 even more strange than the Spanish conquest of America, 
 though the circumstances of it were, I think, considerably 
 less astonishing and romantic. Whether we think of it 
 with satisfaction or not, it is the most striking and remark- 
 able incident in the modern part of the history of England. 
 In a history of modem England it deserves a prominent 
 place in the main narrative, and not the mere digression or 
 occasional notice which our historians commonly assign to 
 it. But how important it is we shall not see so long as we 
 only consider its strangeness ; we must also bear in miad 
 its enormous magnitude. Much has been written to show 
 the immensity of the task we have undertaken in India ; 
 yet with surprisingly little effect. Figures seem only to 
 paralyse the imagination when they pass a certain magni- 
 tude, and thus while in our domestic politics we grow the 
 more interested the larger the question at issue is shown to 
 be, we cease to be interested when our Empire with its 
 much vaster interests is brought before us. Point out that 
 this Indian Empire is something like what the Eoman 
 Empire was at its greatest extension, and that we are 
 responsible for it ; the only effect produced is a disinclin- 
 ation to attend to the subject. Can we seriously justify 
 this ? I fancy we are in some degree misled by an impres- 
 
Ji.] THE INDIAN EMPIEE. 187 
 
 sion that in the outlying parts of the world large dimensions 
 are a matter of course and make no difference. Thus if 
 India is large, Canada and Australia are still larger, and yet 
 we do not find that the affairs of Canada and Australia 
 require much of our attention. True, hut we overlook an 
 important distinction. In Canada and Australia the territory 
 is vast, but the population exceedingly small ; the country 
 also is not merely distant from us, as India is, hut also 
 distant from all the great Powers with which we might 
 possibly engage in war. India really belongs to quite a 
 different category of countries. It is a country as populous 
 and in some large regions more populous than the most 
 thickly peopled parts of Europe. It is a country in which 
 we have over and over again had to wage war on a grand 
 scale. Thus in the second Mahratta war of 1818 Lord 
 Hastings brought into the field more than a hundred 
 thousand men. And, distant as it may seem, it is by no 
 means out of the range of European politics. Thus through- 
 out the eighteenth century it was part of the chess-board 
 on which Franc© and England played out their game of 
 skni. Again since about 1830 India, and India almost 
 alone, has involved us in differences with Russia, and given 
 us a most iatimaite interest in the solution of the Eastern 
 Question. 
 
 India therefore is rather to be compared to the 
 countries of Europe than to the outlying, thinly peopled 
 countries of the New World. Let us then contemplate a 
 little the magnitude of this Empire, and take some pains 
 to realise it by comparing it to other magnitudes with 
 which we are familiar. Let us think then of Europe 
 without Russia, that is, of all that system of countries 
 which a few centuries ago formed almost the whole scene 
 of civilised history, all the European countries of the 
 
1S8 EXPANSIOK OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 Eoman Empire plus the whole of Germany, the Slavonic 
 countries which are outside Russia, and the Scandinavian 
 countries. India may be roughly said to be about equal 
 both in area and population to all these countries taken 
 together. This Empire, which we now govern from Down- 
 ing Street and whose budget forms the annual annoyance 
 and despair of the House of Commons, is considerably 
 larger and more populous than the Empire of Napoleon 
 when it had reached its utmost extent. And, as I have 
 said already, it is an Empire of the same kind, not some 
 vast empty region like the old Spanish Dominion in South 
 America, but a crowded territory with an ancient civilisa- 
 tion, with languages, religions, philosophies and literatures 
 of its own. 
 
 I think perhaps it may assist conception if I split up 
 this immense total into parts. The reason no doubt why 
 the thought of all Europe together impresses us so much, 
 is that there passes before the mind a series of six or seven 
 great states which must be added together to make up 
 Europe. Our conception of Europe is the sum of our 
 conceptions of England, France, Germanj', Austria, Italy, 
 Spain, and Greece. Perhaps the name India would strike 
 as majestically upon the ear, if in like manner it were to 
 us the name of a grand complex total. Let me say then that 
 in the first place it has one region which in population far 
 exceeds any European State except Russia, and exceeds 
 the United States. This is the region governed by the 
 Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. Its population is stated 
 actually to exceed 66,000,000 on an area considerably less 
 than that of France. Then come two other regions which 
 may be compared with European States. These are the 
 North West Provinces, which answer pretty well to Great 
 Britain without Ireland, being in area somewhat smaller. 
 
n.] THE INDIAN EMPIRE. 180 
 
 but somewhat more populous. Next comes the Madras 
 Presidency, larger in area — being about equal to Great 
 Britain with Ireland — but less populous, being about equal 
 in population to the Kingdom of Italy. The population in 
 all these three cases rises far above 20,000,000. Then come 
 two provinces in which it approaches 20,000,000, the Punjab, 
 which is somewhat superior in population to Spain, and 
 the Bombay Presidency which is slightly inferior, though 
 in area it is equal to Great Britain and Ireland. In the 
 next class come Oude, which is rather superior, and the 
 Central Provinces, which are about equal, to Belgium and 
 Holland taken together. These provinces together, with 
 some others of less importance, make up that part of India 
 which is directly under English government. But the 
 region which is practically under English supremacy is 
 still larger. When we speak of the Empire of Napoleon, 
 we do not think only of the territory directly governed by 
 his officials; we reckon-in States nominally sovereign, 
 which were practically under his ascendancy. Thus the 
 Confederation of the Rhine consisted of a number of 
 German states, which had by a formal act consented to 
 regard Napoleon as their Protector. Now England has a 
 similar dependent confederation in India, and this makes 
 an additional item which, reckoned by population, is 
 superior to the United States. 
 
 Is it possible that besides our terrible hive of population 
 at home, giving rise to most anxious politics, and besides 
 our vast colonial Empire, we are also responsible for another 
 Empire densely peopled and about equal to Europe 1 Is it 
 possible that about this Empire we neither have, nor care 
 to acquire, the most rudimentary information ? Would it 
 be possible for us, even if we did try to acquire such in- 
 formation, to form a rational opinion about affairs so 
 remote and complicated ? 
 
130 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 There have been great Empires before now, but the 
 government of them has generally been in the hands of 
 a few experts. Rome was forced to commit her Empire to 
 the care of a single irresponsible statesman, and could not 
 •even reserve for herself her old civic liberties. In the 
 United States we do indeed see a boundless dominion 
 successfully guided under a democratic system. But the 
 territory in this case, extensive though it be, is all compact 
 and continuous, and the population however large it may 
 come to be, will still be in the main homogeneous. If the 
 United States should come iuto the possession of countries 
 separated from her by the sea and of different nationality, 
 her position iu the world would be at once essentially 
 altered. What is unprecedented ia the relation of England 
 to India is the attempt to rule, not merely by experts, but 
 by a system founded on public opinion, a population not 
 merely distant, but wholly alien, wholly unlike in ways of 
 thinking, to the sovereign public. Public opinion is neces- 
 sarily guided by a few large, plaiu simple ideas. When 
 the great interests of the country are plaia and the great 
 maxims of its government unmistakable, it may be able 
 to judge securely even in questions of vast magnitude. 
 But public opinion is liable to be bewildered when it is 
 called on to enter into subtleties, draw nice distinctions, 
 apply one set of principles here and another set there. > 
 Such bewilderment our Indian Empire produces. It is so 
 different in kind both from England itself and from the 
 Colonial Empire that it requires wholly different principles 
 of policy. And therefore public opinion does not know 
 what to make of it, but looks with blank indignation and 
 despair upon a Government which seems utterly un-English, 
 which is bureaucratic and in the hands of a ruling race, 
 which rests mainly on military force, which raises its 
 
ii.J THE INDIAN EMPIRE. 101 
 
 revenue, not in the European fashion, but by monopolies 
 of salt and opium and by taking the place of a universal 
 landlord, and in a hundred other ways departs from the 
 traditions of England. 
 
 And it may be asked, For what end? As I have 
 remarked, the connexion itself is not directly profitable 
 to England. We must look therefore to advantages 
 Avhich may come to us indirectly from it. We find then 
 that the trade between the two countries has gradually 
 grown to be very great indeed. The loss of the Indian 
 trade which might follow if the country fell again into 
 anarchy or under a Government which closed its harbours^ 
 to our merchants, would amount to £60,000,000 annually.t 
 But we are to set over against this advantage the great 
 burden which is imposed by India upon our foreign policy. , 
 In the present state of the world a dependency held by 
 military force may easily be like a mill-stone round the 
 neck of a nation. For it may lock up an army which the 
 nation may grievously need for other purposes or even 
 for defence. We all conceive with what satisfaction 
 Bismarck at the present moment sees France undertaki^^ 
 schemes of conquest in Africa and Asia. Now if England, 
 which is not a military state, had in reality to hold down 
 by English military force a population of two hundred 
 millions, it is needless to say that such a biirden would 
 overwhelm us. This is not so,fowmg to a fundamental 
 peculiarity of the Indian Empire upon which I shall 
 enlarge later, the peculiarity namely that in the main 
 England conquered India and now keeps it by means_orj 
 Indian troops paid with Indian money. We keep there 
 only an army of 65,000 men. But this is by no means 
 the whole of the burden which India lays upon us. 
 India, at the same time that she locks up an army. 
 
192 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 more than doubles the difficulty of our foreign policy. 
 The supreme happiness for a country of course is to be 
 self-contained, to have no need to inquire what other 
 nations are doing. Very wisely did Washington advise his 
 countrymen to retain this happiness as long as they 
 could. England cannot well enjoy it, but if she did not 
 possess India she might enjoy it comparatively. Her 
 colonies as yet have for the most part only peaceful or 
 insignificant or barbarous neighbours, and our old close 
 interest in European struggles has passed away. But we 
 continue to be anxiously interested in the East, Every 
 movement in Turkey, every new symptom in Egypt, any 
 stirring in Persia or Transoxiana or Burmah or Afghanistan, 
 we are obliged to watch with vigilance. The reason is that 
 we have possession of India. Owing to this we have a 
 leading position in the system of Asiatic Powers, and 
 a leading interest in the affairs of all those countries 
 which lie upon the route to India, This and this only 
 involves us in that permanent rivalry with Russia, which 
 is to England in the nineteenth century what the com- 
 petition with France for the New World was to her in the 
 eighteenth. 
 
 My object in this lecture is to put before you the 
 Indian question in its broad outlines. I have put together 
 at the outset some considerations which might incline us to 
 take an anxious or desponding view of it. If it is doubtful 
 whether we reap any balance of advantage from our Indian 
 I^Empire, and if it is not doubtful that it involves us in 
 ' enormous responsibilities and confuses our minds with 
 problems of hopeless difficulty, may we not feel tempted to 
 exclaim that it was an evil hour for England when the 
 daring genius of Olive turned a trading company into a 
 political Power, and inaugurated a hundred years of con- 
 
11.] THE INDIAN EMPIRE. 193 
 
 tinuous conquest ? Must we not at least hold, as many 
 among the distinguished statesmen who have devoted their 
 lives to Indian aifairs have held, that the Empire is 
 ephemeral, and that the time is not far off when we must 
 withdraw from the country ? 
 
 On the other hand the vdsest men may easily be 
 mistaken when they speculate on such a subject. The 
 end of our Indian Empire is perhaps almost as much 
 beyond calculation as the beginning of it. There is no 
 analogy in history either for one or the other. If the 
 government of India from a remote island seems a thing 
 which can never be permanent," we know that it once 
 seemed a thing which could never take place, until it did 
 take place. At any rate if the Empire is to fall, we ought 
 to be able to point already to proofs of its decline. Proofs 
 certainly we can show of the immense difBculties it has 
 to contend with, but scarcely symptoms of anything which 
 can be called decline. And again if we should admit, or 
 not deny, that England has not been repaid in any way 
 for the trouble that this dependency has cost her, the 
 admission by itself would have no practical importance. 
 Between such an admission and any practical project 
 such as that of abandoning the Empire there is a gulf 
 fixed. 
 
 It is possible to hold that England would be better off 
 now had she founded no such Empire at all, had she re- 
 mained standing, as a mere merchant, on the threshold of 
 India, as she stands now on that of China. But the 
 abandonment of India is an idea which even those who 
 believe that we shall one day be driven to it are not 
 accustomed to contemplate as a practical scheme. There 
 are some deeds which, though they had been better 
 not done, cannot be undone. A time may conceivably 
 s. L. ]3 
 
194 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect, 
 
 come when it may be practicable to leave India to 
 herself, but for the present it is necessary to govern her 
 as if we were to govern her for ever. Why so? Not 
 mainly on our own account. Some tell us that our 
 honour requires us to maintain the acquisition which our 
 fathers made with their blood, and which is the great 
 military trophy of the nation. To my mind there is 
 something monstrous in all such notions of honour; they 
 belong to that primitive and utterly obsolete class of 
 notions, of which I have spoken before, which rest upon a 
 confusion between the ideas of government and property. 
 Nothing is to be considered for a moment but the well- 
 being of India and England, and of the two countries 
 India, as being by much the more nearly interested, by 
 much the larger, and by much the poorer, is to be con- 
 sidered before England. But on these very principles, 
 and especially on account of the interest of India, it is 
 impossible for the present to think of abandoning the 
 task we have undertaken there. We might do so if our 
 own interest alone were considered. Not that it would 
 be easy, now that such a vast trade has grown up and such 
 vast sums of English money, particularly in these latest 
 years, have been invested in the country. But it would be 
 possible. On the other hand if we consider the interest 
 of India, it appears wholly impossible. Much may be 
 plausibly alleged against the system under which we 
 govern India. It may be doubted whether it is altogether 
 suited to the people, whether it is not needlessly expensive, 
 and so forth. We may feel a reasonable anxiety as to 
 \?hat will come in the end of this unparalleled experiment 
 But I think it would be a very extreme view to deny that 
 our Government is better than any other which has existed 
 in India since the Mussulman conquest. If it should 
 
II.] THE INDIAN EMPIRE. ^195 
 
 ultimately fail more than any one imagines, we could 
 never leave the country in a state half so deplorable as 
 that in which we found it. A very moderately good 
 Government is incomparably better than none. The 
 sudden withdrawal even of an oppressive Government is a 
 dangerous experiment. Some countries no doubt there 
 are, which might pass through such a trial without fall- 
 ing into anarchy. Thinly peopled countries, or countries 
 whose inhabitants had been long accustomed to much 
 freedom of action, might be trusted no doubt to devise for 
 t^bemselves very speedily as much government as might be 
 necessary. But what a mockery to lay down such proposi- 
 tions with India in view ! When we began to take posses- 
 sion of the country, it was already in a state of wild 
 anarchy such as Europe has perhaps never known. What 
 government it had was pretty invariably despotic, and 
 it was generally in the hands of military adventurers, 
 depending on a soldiery composed of bandits whose whole 
 vocation was plunder. The Mahratta Power covered the 
 greater part of India and threatened at once Delhi 
 and Calcutta, while it had its head-quarters at Poonah, 
 and yet this power was but an organisation of pillage. 
 Meanwhile in the North Nadir Shah rivalled Attila or 
 Tamerlane in his devastating expeditions. It may be 
 said that this was only a passing anarchy produced by the 
 dissolution of the Mogul Empire. Even so, it would show 
 that India is not a country which can endure the with- 
 drawal of Government. But have we not a somewhat 
 exaggerated idea of the Mogul Empire? Its greatness 
 was extremely shortlived, and in the Deccan it seems 
 never really to have established itself. The anarchy 
 which Olive and Hastings found in India was not so 
 exceptional a state of things as it might seem. Probably 
 
 13—2 
 
196 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. ii. 
 
 it was much more intense at that moment than ever before, 
 but a condition, of anarchy seems almost to have been 
 chronic in India since Mahmoud, and to have been but 
 suspended for a while in the Northern half by Akber and 
 Shah Jehan. 
 
 India then is of all countries that which is least capable 
 of evolving out of itself a stable Government. And it is to 
 be feared that our rule may have diminished what little 
 power of this sort it may have originally possessed. For 
 our supremacy has necessarily depressed those classes which 
 had anything of the talent or habit of government. The 
 old royal races, the noble classes, and in particular the 
 Mussulmans who formed the bulk of the oflScial class under 
 the Great Moguls, have suffered most and benefited least 
 from our rule. This decay is the staple topic of lamenta- 
 tion among those who take a dark view of our Empire; 
 but is it not an additional reason why the Empire should 
 continue ? Then think of the immense magnitude of the 
 country; think too that we have undermined all fixed 
 moral and religious ideas in the intellectual classes by 
 introducing the science of the West into the midst of 
 Brahminical traditions. When you have made all these 
 reflexions, you will see that to withdraw our Government 
 from a country which is dependent on it and which we 
 have made incapable of depending upon anything else, 
 would be the most inexcusable of all conceivable crimes 
 and might possibly cause the most stupendous of all 
 conceivable calamities. 
 
 Such then in its broad outline is the Indian Question 
 of the present day. In what way did such a question 
 grow up ? How did we come into possession of a depen- 
 dency so enormous ? 
 
Li;CTU.RE III. 
 
 HOW WE CONQUERED INDIA. 
 
 The question how we conquered India does not at all 
 resemble the questions which I raised in the last course. 
 Our colonists in the new world occupied to be sure a vast 
 territory, but it was comparatively an empty territory. The 
 difficulties they encountered arose not so much from the 
 natives, as from the rivalry of other European nations. By 
 what degrees and from what causes we gained the advantage 
 over these rivals, I partly discussed. It was a question to 
 which the answer was not at once obvious, but at the same 
 time not extremely difficult to find. On the other hand it 
 is at first sight extremely perplexing to understand how 
 we could conquer India. Here the population was dense, 
 and its civilisation, though desc£nding_ along a different 
 stream of tradition, was as real and ancient as our own. 
 We have learnt from many instances in European history 
 to think it almost impossible really to conquer an intelli- 
 gent people wholly alien in language and religion from its 
 invaders. The whole power of Spain could not in eighty 
 years conquer the Dutch provinces with their petty popu- 
 lation. The Swiss could not be conquered in old time, nor 
 
198 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [mot. 
 
 the Greeks the other day. Nay, at the veiy time when we 
 made the first steps in the conquest of India, we showed 
 ourselves wholly unable to reduce to obedience three 
 millions of our own race in America, who had thrown off 
 their allegiance to the English Crown, What a singular 
 contrast is here ! Never did the English show so much 
 languid incompetence as in the American War, so that it 
 might have seemed evident that their age of greatness was 
 over and that the decline of England had begun. But 
 precisely at this time they were appearing as irresistible 
 conquerors in India, and showing a superiority which led 
 them to fancy themselves a nation of heroes. How is the 
 contradiction to be explained ? 
 
 History is studied with so little seriousness, with so 
 little desire or expectation of arriving at any solid result, 
 that the contradiction passes almost unremarked, or at most 
 gives occasion to a triumphant reflexion that after all there 
 was life in us yet. And indeed it may seem that, however 
 difficult of explanation the fact may be, there can be no 
 doubt of it. Over and over again in India, at Plassey, at 
 Assaye, and on a hundred other battle-fields, our troops 
 have been victorious against great odds, so that here at 
 least it seems that we may indulge our national self-com- 
 placency without restraint, and feel that at any rate in 
 comparison with the Hindu I'aces we really are terrible 
 fellows ! 
 
 But does this hypothesis really remove the difficulty ? 
 Suppose that one Englishman is really equal as a soldier 
 to ten or twenty Hindus, can we even then conceive the 
 whole of India conquered by the English ? There were 
 not more thau twelve millions of Englishmen at the time 
 when the conquest began, and it was made in a period 
 when England had other wars on her hands, Olive's career 
 
III.] HOW WE CONQtFEBED INDIA. 199 
 
 falls partly in the Seven Years' War of Europe, and the 
 great annexations of Lord Wellesley were made in the midst 
 of our war with Napoleon. We are not a military state. 
 We did not in those times profess to be able to put on foot 
 at any moment a great expeditionary army. Accordingly 
 in our European wars we usually confined ourselves to 
 acting with our fleet, while for hostilities on land it was 
 our practice to subsidise any ally we might have among 
 the military states, at one time Austria, at another Prussia. 
 How then in spite of all this weakness by land could we 
 manage to conquer during this time the greater part of 
 India, an enormous region of nearly a million square miles 
 and inhabited by two hundred millions of people ? What a 
 drain such a work must have made upon our military force, 
 what a drain upon our treasury ! And yet somehow the 
 drain seems never to have been perceived. Our European 
 wars involved us in a debt that we have never been able to 
 pay. But our Indian wars have not swelled the National 
 Debt. The exertions we had to make there seem to have 
 left no trace behind them. 
 
 It seems then that there must be something wrong' in 
 the conception which is current, that a number of soldiers 
 went over from England to India and there by sheer 
 superiority in valour and intelligence conquered the whole 
 country. In the last great Mahratta war of 1818 we had, 
 it appears, more than a hundred thousand men in the 
 field. But what ! that was the time of mortal exhaustion 
 that succeeded the great Napoleonic War. Is it possible 
 that only three years after the battle of Waterloo we were 
 at war again on a vast scale and had a much greater army 
 in India than Lord Wellington had in Spain? Again 
 at the present moment the army kept in foot in India 
 amounts to two hundred thousand men. What! two 
 
200 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leoi. 
 
 hundred thousand English soldiers ! And yet we are not a 
 military State ! 
 
 You see of course what the fact is that I point at. 
 This Indian army, we all know, does not consist of English 
 soldiers, but mainly of native troops. Out of 200,000 only 
 65,000, or less than a third, are English. And even this 
 proportion has only been established since the mutiny, 
 after which catastrophe the English troops were increased 
 and the native troops diminished in number. Thus I find 
 that at the time of the mutiny there were 45,000 European 
 troops to 235,000 native troops in India, that is, less than 
 a fifth. In 1808 again I find only 25,000 Englishmen to 
 130,000 natives, that is, somewhat less than a fifth. The 
 same proportion obtained in 1773 at the time of the 
 Regulating Act, when British India first took shape. 
 At that date the Company's army consisted of 9000 
 Europeans and 45,000 natives. Before that I find the 
 proportion of Europeans even lower, about a seventh ; and 
 if we go back to the very beginning we find that fi:om the 
 first the Indian army Was rather a native than a European 
 force. Thus Colonel Chesney opens his historical view of 
 it in these words: 'The first establishment of the 
 Company's Indian Army may be considered to date fi-om 
 the year 1748, when a small body of sepoys was raised at 
 Madras after the example set by the French, for the 
 
 defence of that settlement At the same time a small 
 
 European force was raised, formed of such sailors as could 
 be spared from the ships on the coast and of men 
 smuggled on board the Company's vessels in England by 
 the crimps.' 
 
 In the early battles of the Company by which its 
 power was decisively established, at the siege of Arcot, 
 at Plassey, at Buxar, there seem almost always to 
 
111.] HOW WE CONQUEEED INDIA. 201 
 
 have been more sepoys than Europeans on the side of 
 the Company. And let us observe further that we do 
 not hear of the sepoys as fighting ill, or of the English 
 as bearing the whole brunt of the conflict. No one who 
 has remarked the childish eagerness with which historians 
 indulge their national vanity, will be surprised to find that 
 our English writers in describing these battles seem unable 
 to discern the sepoys. Read Macaulay's Essay on Olive; 
 everywhere it is ' the imperial people,' ' the mighty children 
 of the sea,' 'none could resist Olive and his Englishmen.' 
 But if once it is admitted that the sepoys always out- 
 numbered the English, and that they kept pace with the 
 English in efficiency as soldiers, the whole theory which 
 attributes our successes to an immeasurable natural supe- 
 riority in valour falls to the ground. In those battles in 
 which our troops were to the enemy as one to ten, it will 
 appear that if we may say that one Englishman showed 
 himself equal to ten natives, we may also say that one 
 sepoy did the same. It follows that, though , no doubt 
 there was a difference, it was not so much a difference of 
 race as a difference of discipline, of military science, and 
 also no doubt in many cases a difference of leadership. 
 
 Observe that Mill's summary explanation of the con- 
 quest of India says nothing of any natural superiority on 
 the part of the English. ' The two important discoveries 
 for conquering India were : 1st, the weakness of the native 
 armies against European discipline, 2dly, the facility of 
 imparting that discipline to natives in the European 
 service.' He adds: 'Both discoveries were made by the 
 French.' 
 
 And even if we should admit that the English fought 
 better than the sepoys, and took more than their share in 
 those achievements which both performed in common, it 
 
202 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [i.ect. 
 
 remains entirely incorrect to speak of the English nation 
 as having conquered the nations of India. The nations of 
 India have been conquered by an army of -which on the 
 average about a fifth part was English. But vre not only 
 exaggerate our own share in the achievement; we at 
 the same time entirely misconceive and misdescribe the 
 achievement itself. For from what race were the other 
 four-fifths of the army drawn ? From the natives of India 
 themselves ! India can hardly be said to have been con- 
 quered at all by foreigners; she has rather conquered 
 herself If we were justified, which we are not, in personi- 
 fjTng India as we personify France or England, we could 
 not describe her as overwhelmed by a foreign enemy; we 
 should rather have to say that she elected to put an 
 end to anarchy by submitting to a single Government, even 
 though that Government was in the hands of foreigners. 
 
 But that description would be as false and misleading 
 as the other, or as any expression which presupposes India 
 to have been a conscious political whole. The truth is 
 that there was no India in the political, and scarcely in 
 any other, sense. The word was a geographical expres- 
 sion, and therefore India was easily conquered, just as 
 Italy and Germany fell an easy prey to Napoleon, because 
 there was no Italy and no Germany, and not even any 
 strong Italian or German national feeling. Because there 
 was no Germany, Napoleon was able to set one German 
 state against another, so that in fighting with Austria or 
 Prussia he had Bavaria and Wurttemberg for allies. As 
 Napoleon saw that this means of conquest lay ready to 
 his hand in Central Europe, so the Frenchman Dupleix 
 early perceived that this road to empire in India lay 
 open to any European state that might have factories 
 there. He saw a condition of chronic war between one 
 
m.] HOW WE CONQUEEED INDIA. 203 
 
 Indian state and another, and he perceived that by inter- 
 fering in their quarrels the foreigner might arrive to hold 
 the balance between them. He acted upon this view, and 
 accordingly the whole history of European Empire in India 
 begins with the interference of the French in the war of 
 succession in Hyderabad that broke out on the death of 
 the great Nizam ul Mulk (1748). 
 
 The fundamental fact then is that India had no 
 jealousy of the foreigner because India had no sense what- 
 ever of national unity, because there was no India and 
 therefore, properly speaking, no foreigner. So far, as I 
 have pointed out, parallel examples may be found in 
 Europe. But we must imagine a much greater degree of 
 political deadness in India than in Germany eighty years 
 ago, if we would understand the fact now under consider- 
 ation, the fact namely that the English conquered India by 
 means of a Sepoy army. In Germany there was scarcely 
 any German feeling, but there was a certain amount, though 
 not a very great amount, of Prussian feeling, Austrian 
 feeling. Bavarian feeling, Suabian feeling. Napoleon is 
 able to set Bavaria against Austria or both against Prussia, 
 but he does not attempt to set Bavaria or Austria or 
 Prussia against itself To speak more distinctly, he 
 procures by treaties that the Elector of Bavaria shall 
 furnish a contingent to the army which he leads against 
 Austria ; but he does not, simply by offering pay, raise an 
 army of Germans and then use them in the conquest of 
 Germany. This would be the exact parallel to what has 
 been witnessed in India. A parallel to the fact that India 
 has been conquered by an army of which four-fifths were 
 natives and only one-fifth English, would be found in 
 Europe if England had invaded France and then by offer- 
 ing good pay had raised an army of Frenchmen large 
 
204 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leoi, 
 
 enough to conquer the country. The very idea seems 
 monstrous. What ! you exclaim, an army of Frenchmen 
 quietly undertake to make war upon France ! And yet, if 
 you reflect, you will see that such a thing is abstractedly 
 quite possible, and that it might have been witnessed if 
 the past history of France had been different. We can 
 imagine that a national feeling had never sprung up in 
 France ; this we can easily imagine, because we know that 
 the twelfth century is full of wars between a king who 
 reigned at Paris and another who reigned at Rouen. But 
 let us imagine further that the different Governments 
 established in different parts of France were mostly foreign 
 Governments, that in fact the country had been conquered 
 before and was still living under the yoke of foreign rulers. 
 We can well understand that if in a country thus broken 
 to the foreign yoke a disturbed state of affairs supervene^ 
 making mercenary war a lucrative profession, such a 
 country might come to be full of professional soldiers 
 equally ready to take service with any Govenmient and 
 against any Government, native or foreign. 
 
 Now the condition of India was such as this. The 
 English did not introduce a foreign domination into it, for 
 the foreign domination was there already. In fact we 
 bring to the subject a fixed misconception. The homo- 
 geneous European community, a definite territory possessed 
 by a definite race, in one word, the Nation-State, though 
 we assume it as if it were a matter of course, is in fact 
 much more exceptional than we suppose, and yet it is upon 
 the assumption of such a homogeneous community that all 
 our ideas of patriotism and public virtue depend. The 
 idea of nationality seems in India to be thoroughly con- 
 fused. The distinction of national and foreign seems to be 
 lost. Not only has a tide of Mussulman invasion covered 
 
in.] HOW WE CONQUEEED INDIA. 205 
 
 the country ever since the eleventh century, but even if we 
 go back to the earliest times we still find a mixture of 
 races> a domination of race by race. That Aryan, Sanscrit- 
 speaking race which, as the creators of Brahminism, have 
 given to India whatever unity it can be said to have, 
 appear themselves as invaders, and as invaders who have 
 not succeeded in swallowing up and absorbing the older 
 nationalities. The older, not Indo- Germanic race, has in 
 Europe almost disappeared, and at any rate has left no 
 trace in our European languages, but in India the older 
 stratum is everywhere visible. The spoken languages 
 there are not mere corruptions of Sanscrit, but mixtures of 
 Sanscrit with older languages wholly different, and in the 
 south not Sanscrit at all. Brahminism too, which at first 
 sight seems universal, turns out on examination to be a 
 mere vague eclecticism, which has given a show of unity 
 to superstitions wholly unlike and unrelated to each 
 other. It follows that in India the fundamental postulate 
 cannot be granted, upon which the whole political ethics 
 of the West depend. The homogeneous community 
 does not exist there, out of which the State properly so 
 called arises. Indeed to satisfy ourselves of this it is 
 not necessary to travel so far back into the past. It is 
 enough to notice- that since the time of Mahmoud of 
 Ghazni a steady stream of Mussulman invasion has poured 
 into India. The majority of the Governments of India 
 were Mussulman long before the arrival of the Mogul in 
 the sixteenth century. From this time therefore in most 
 of the Indian States the tie of nationality was broken. 
 Government ceased to rest upon right; the State lost its 
 right to appeal to patriotism. 
 
 In such a state of affairs what is called the conquest of 
 India by the English can be explained without supposing 
 
206 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 the natives of India to be below other races, just as it 
 does not force us to regard the English as superior to other 
 races. We regard it as the duty of a man to fight for his 
 country against the foreigner. But ■what is a man's 
 country? When we analyse the notion, we find it pre- 
 supposes the man to have been bred up in a community 
 which may be regarded as a great family, so that it is 
 natural for him to think of the land itself as a mother. 
 But if the community has not been at all of the nature of 
 a family, but has been composed of two or three races 
 hating each other, if not the country, but at most the 
 village has been regarded as a home, then it is not the 
 fault of the natives of it that they have no patriotism but 
 village-patriotism. It is one thing to receive a foreign 
 yoke for the first time, and quite a different thing to 
 exchange one foreign yoke for another. 
 
 But, as I have pointed out, the surprising feature in the 
 English conquest of India is not so much that it should 
 have been made, as that it should have cost England no 
 effort and no trouble. The English people have not paid 
 taxes, the English Government has not opened loans, no 
 conscription was ever introduced, nay no drain of men was 
 ever perceived, and no diflSculty was ever felt in carrying 
 on other wars at the same time, because we were engaged 
 in conquering a population equal to that of Europe. This 
 seems at first sight incredible, but I have already given the 
 explanation of it. As to the finance of all these wars, it 
 falls under the general principle which applies to all wars 
 of conquest. Conquest pays its own expenses. As 
 Napoleon had never any financial difficulties, because he 
 lived at the expense of those whom he vanquished in war, 
 so the conquest of India was made, as a matter of course, 
 at the expense of India. The only difficulty then is to 
 
m.] HOW WE CONQUEEED INDIA. 207 
 
 understand how the army could be created. And this 
 difficulty too disappears, when we observe that four-fifths 
 of this army was always composed of native troops. 
 
 If we fix our attention upon this all-important fact 
 we shall be led, if I mistake not, to perceive that the 
 expression 'conquest', as applied to the acquisition of 
 sovereignty by the East India Company in India, is not 
 merely loose but thoroughly misleading, and tempts us to 
 class the event among events which it in no way resembles. 
 I have indeed remarked more than once before that 
 this expression, whenever it is used, requires far more 
 definition than it commonly receives, and that it may bear 
 several different meanings. But surely the word is only 
 applicable at all when it refers to some action done to one 
 state by another. There is war between two states; the 
 army of the one state invades the other and overturns the 
 Government of it, or at least forces the Government to 
 such humiliating terms that it is practically deprived of 
 its independence; this is conquest in the proper sense. 
 Now when we say that England has conquered India, 
 we ought to mean that something of this sort has 
 happened between England and India. When Alexander 
 the Great conquered the Persian Empire, there was war 
 between the Macedonian state and the Persian, in 
 which the latter was subjugated. When Caesar conquered 
 Gaul, he acted in the name of the Eoman Republic, holding 
 an office conferred on him by the senate and commanding 
 the army of the Eoman state. But nothing of this sort 
 happened in India. The King of England did not declare 
 war upon the Great Mogul or upon any Nawab or Eajah in 
 India. The English state would perhaps have had no 
 concern from first to last in the conquest of India but for 
 this circumstance, that it engaged five times in war with 
 
203 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 France after the French settlements in India had become 
 considerable, and that these wars, being partly waged in 
 India, were in a certain degree mixed up with the wars 
 between the East India Company and the native Powers of 
 India. If we wish clearly to understand the nature of the 
 phenomenon, we ought to put this circumstance, which was 
 accidental, on one side. We shall then see that nothing 
 like what is strictly called a conquest took place, but that 
 certain traders inhabiting certain seaport towns in India, 
 were induced, almost forced, in the anarchy caused by the 
 fall of the Mogul Empire, to give themselves a military 
 character and employ troops, that by means of these troops 
 they acquired territory and at last almost all the territory 
 of India, and that these traders happened to be English- 
 men, and to employ a certain, though not a large, pro- 
 portion of English troops in their army. 
 
 Now this is not a foreign conquest, but rather an in- 
 ternal revolution. In any country when government breaks 
 down and anarchy sets in, the general law is that a 
 struggle follows between such organised powers as remain 
 in the country, and that the most powerful of these sets up 
 a Government. In France for instance after the fall of the 
 House of Bourbon in 1792 a new Government was set up 
 chiefly through the influence of the Municipality of Paris; 
 this Government having fallen into discredit a few years 
 later was superseded by a military Government wielded 
 by Bonaparte. Now India about 1750 was in a condition 
 of anarchy caused by a decay in the Mogul Empire, which 
 had begun at the death of Aurungzebe in 1707. The 
 imperial authority having everywhere lost its force over so 
 vast a territory, this general law began to operate. Every- 
 where the minor organised powers began to make them- 
 selves supreme. These powers after the fashion of India 
 
in.] HOW WE CONQUEEED INDIA. 209 
 
 were most commonly mercenary bands of soldiers, com-- 
 manded either by some provincial governor of the falling' 
 Empire, or by some adventurer who seized an opportunity 
 of rising to the command of them, or lastly by some local 
 power which had existed before the establishment of the 
 Mogul supremacy and had never completely yielded to it. 
 To give an example of each kind of power, the state of 
 Hyderabad was founded by the satrap of the Great Mogul 
 called the Nizam, the state of Mysore was founded by th& 
 Mussulman adventurer Hyder Ali, who rose from the ranks 
 by mere military ability, the great Mahratta confederacy 
 of chieftains headed by the Peishwa, a Brahminical not a 
 Mussulman Power, represented the older India of the time 
 before the Mogul. But all these powers alike subsisted 
 by means of mercenary armies, they lived in a state of 
 chronic war and mutual plunder such as, I suppose, has 
 hardly been witnessed in Europe except perhaps in the 
 dissolution of the Carolingian Empire. 
 
 Such a state of affairs was peculiarly favourable to the 
 rise of new powers. In other circumstances conquest pre- 
 supposes what I may call a capital fund of power. No one 
 can undertake it that does not already possess a recognised 
 authority and an army. In those circumstances it was 
 otherwise. Hyder Ali had nothing but his head and 
 his right arm, and he became Sultan of Mysore. For 
 mercenary armies were everywhere; they were at the 
 service of every one who could pay them or win an 
 influence over them; and any one who commanded a 
 mercenary army was on a level with the greatest potentates 
 of India, since in the dissolution of authority the only force 
 left was military force. 
 
 Now among the different local powers in India, which 
 in such peculiar circumstances might strike for empire 
 s. L, 14 
 
aiO EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leoi. 
 
 •with some chance of success, were certain merchants who 
 had factories in the seaport towns. They were foreigners 
 indeed but, as I have pointed out, this could make no 
 difference in India, where most Governments were foreign, 
 where the Great Mogul himself was a foreigner. Much 
 rhetoric has been spent on the miraculousneas of the 
 fortune of the East India Company. It is true that there 
 had been no previous example of such a fortune, and that 
 for this reason it would not have occurred to any one to 
 predict such a fortune. But it was not miraculous in the 
 sense of being hard to account for or having no visible 
 cause. For the East India Company had really some 
 capital to start with. It had a command of money, it had 
 two or three fortresses, the comcmand of the sea, and it 
 had the advantage of being a corporation, that is, it was 
 not liable to be killed in battle or to die of a fever. 
 We are not much astonished when an individual rises 
 from some private station into empire over a great 
 territory, because this has happened often.. And yet 
 intrinsically it ig much more astonishing. That the 
 younger son of a poor nobleman in Corsica should control 
 the greater part of Europe with despotic power, is ia- 
 trinsically hx more wonderful than that the East India 
 Company should conquer India, for Bonaparte began 
 without interest, without friends, without a penny in his 
 pocket, and yet he not only gained his empire but lost 
 it again in less than twenty years. In like manner the 
 rise of Hyder Ali, or of Scindiah, or of Holkar, was more 
 wonderful and demanded more of the special favour of 
 fortune than the rise of the East India Company. You 
 see that I wish yOti to place this event in a different class 
 of events from that in which it is commonly placed. 
 It is not the conquest of one state by another. I\ is 
 
nt] HOW "WE CONQUEEED INDIA. 211 
 
 not an event in which two states are concerned, at 
 least directly ; it is not an event belonging to the foreign 
 department. It is an internal revolution in Indian 
 society, and is to be compared to one of those sudden 
 usurpations or coups d'etat, by which a period of dis- 
 turbance within a community is closed. Let us imagine 
 for a moment that the merchants who rose to power 
 had not been foreign at all, the nature of the event is not 
 thereby altered. We may suppose that a number of 
 Parsee merchants in Bombay, tired of the anarchy which 
 disturbed their trade, had subscribed together to establish 
 fortresses and raise troops, and then that they had had the 
 good fortune to employ able generals. In that case they 
 too might have had their Plassey and their Buxar; they 
 too might have extorted from the Great Mogul the 
 Dewannee, or financial administration of a province, and 
 so laid the foundations of an Empire, which might in time 
 have extended over all India. In that case we should 
 have had substantially the same event, but it would have 
 appeared clearly in its true light. We should have 
 recognised it as having the nature of an internal revolution, 
 as being the effect of the natural struggle which every 
 community makes to put down the anarchy which is 
 tearing it to pieces. 
 
 In such an event as that there would have been nothing 
 very miraculous, and yet the rise of the East India 
 Company was much less miraculous. For the Company 
 was closely connected with Europe, and could call in the 
 military science and discipline of Europe, which was 
 evidently superior to that of India, That same Frenchman 
 Dupleix, who laid down so clearly the theory of the 
 conquest of India, perceived that the native armies 
 could not for a moment stand before European troops, 
 
 14—2 
 
212 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [mot, 
 
 but he perceived also that the native of India was quite 
 capable of receiving European discipline and learning to 
 fight with European efficiency. This then was the talis- 
 man which the Company possessed, and which enabled it 
 not merely to hold its own among the Powers of India but 
 to surpass them, — not some incommunicable physical or 
 moral superiority, as we love to imagine — ^but a superior 
 discipline and military system, which could be communi- 
 cated to the natives of India. 
 
 Beyond this they had another great advantage, They 
 did not, to be sure, represent the. English State, but yet 
 their connexion with England was of infinite service to 
 them. They had indeed to procure in the main for 
 themselves the money and the men by which India was 
 conquered. But as a chartered Company which had the 
 monopoly of English trade in India and China, they were 
 an object of interest to the English Government and to 
 Parliament. It several times happened that the war by 
 which they acquired Indian territory wore the appearance 
 before the English public of a war between England and 
 France, and was therefore heartily supported by the nation. 
 This is a fact of fundamental importance, which has not 
 often been sufficiently considered. The English conquest 
 of India began not in some quarrel between the Company 
 and a native Power. It began in an alarming attempt 
 made by the French to get control over the Deccan, and so 
 among other things to destroy the English settlements at 
 Madras and Bombay, by interfering in the question of the 
 Hyderabad succession. Our first military step in the East 
 was to defend ourselves against the French attack. And 
 from that time for nearly seventy years, that is, to the end 
 of the war with Napoleon, our wars in India never ceased 
 to wear more or less the appearance of defensive wars 
 
III.] HOWWE CONQUERED INDU. 213 
 
 against France. The effect of this was that, though they 
 were not waged in the name or at the expense of the State, 
 yet they seemed to a certain extent national wars, wars in 
 which England was deeply concerned. To a considerable 
 extent therefore the Company's troops were aided by Royal 
 troops, and from 1785, when Lord Cornwallis went out 
 as Governor-General, an English statesman of mark was 
 sent out to preside over the political and military affairs. 
 The attacks that were made upon the Company in 
 Parliament, the vote of censure moved against Lord Clive, 
 the impeachment brought against Hastings, the successive 
 ministerial schemes for regulating the Company's affairs, 
 one of which in 1783 convulsed the whole political world 
 of England, all these interferences contributed to make 
 our Indian wars seem national wars, and to identify the 
 Company with the English nation. In this way the 
 Company was practically backed by the credit and renown 
 of a first-class European state, though at the same time 
 that state contributed little to the wars by which the 
 Company acquired territory. 
 
 The words 'wonderful,' 'strange,' are often applied to 
 great historical events, and there is no event to which they 
 have been applied more freely than to our conquest of 
 India. But an event may be wonderfiil or strange without 
 being necessarily at all difficult to account for. The 
 conquest of India is very wonderful in the sense that 
 nothing similar to it had ever happened before, and that 
 therefore nothing similar could be expected by those who 
 for the first century and a half administered the affairs of 
 the Company in India. No doubt Job Charnock, or Josiah 
 Child, or Governor Pitt of Madras (grandfather of the 
 great Lord Chatham) or perhaps Major Lawrence, never 
 dreamed that we should one day suppress the authori|ty 
 
214 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [tae*. 
 
 alike of the Peishwa of the Mahrattas and of the Great 
 Mogul himself. But the event was not wonderful in the 
 sense that it is difficult to discover adequate causes by 
 which it could have been produced. If we begin by 
 remarking that authority in India had fallen on the ground 
 through the decay of the Mogul Empire, that it lay there 
 waiting to be picked up by somebody, and that all over 
 India in that period adventurers of one kind or anoHier were 
 founding Empires, it is really not surprising that a mer- 
 cantile corporation which had money to pay a mercenary 
 force, should be able to compete with other adventurers, 
 nor yet that it should outstrip all its competitors by 
 bringing into the field English military science and 
 generalship, especially when it was backed over and over 
 again by the whole power and credit of England and 
 directed by English statesmen. 
 
 The sum of what I have urged is that the conquest of 
 India is not in the ordinary sense a conquest at all, because 
 it was not the act of a state and was not accomplished by 
 the army and the money of a state. I have pointed this 
 out in order to remove the perplexity which must be 
 caused by the statement that England conquered India, 
 that is, a population as large as that of Europe and many 
 thousand miles oif, and yet that England is not a military 
 state, though this enormous conquest was achieved by 
 England without any exhausting effort and without any 
 expense. The explanation of this contradiction is that 
 England did not in the strict sense conquer India, but that 
 certain Englishmen, who happened to reside in India at 
 the time when the Mogul Empire fell, had a fortune like 
 that of Hyder Ali or Runjeet Singh and rose to supreme 
 power there. 
 
 But yet of course in its practical result the event has 
 
ra.] • HOW WE CONQTJEEED INDIA. 215 
 
 proved to be a conquest of India by England. For now 
 that the process is complete and the East India Company 
 has been swept away we see that Queen Victoria is 
 Empress of India, and that a Secretary, who is a member 
 of the English Cabinet and sits in the English Parliament, 
 is responsible for the administration of India. England 
 as a state did not make the acquisition, yet it has fallen 
 to England. This is merely an exemplification of the 
 general principle, which, as I pointed out above, has 
 governed all the settlements of Europeans outside Europe 
 since the time of Columbus. However far they roamed, 
 however strange and wonderful was their success, they 
 were never able at the outset to shake off their European 
 citizenship. Cortez and Pizarro trampled under their 
 feet the Governments they found in America. With 
 scarcely an effort they made themselves supreme wherever 
 they came. But though they could set at nought in 
 Mexico the authority of Montezuma, they could not resist 
 or dream of resisting the authority of Charles V. who was 
 on the other side of the Atlantic. The consequence was 
 that whatever conquests they made by their own unassisted 
 audacity and effort were confiscated at once and as a 
 matter of course by Spain. So with the English in India. 
 After 1765 the East India Company held nominally a high 
 office in the Empire of the Great Mogul. But it was 
 asserted at once by the English Parliament that whatever 
 territorial acquisitions might be made by the Company 
 were under the control of Parliament. The Great Mogul's 
 name was scarcely mentioned in the discussion, and the 
 question seems never to have been raised whether he 
 would consent to the administration of his provinces 
 of Bengal, Behar and Orissa being thus conducted under 
 the control of a foreign Government. The Company 
 
216 JIXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lkotJ m. 
 
 made part of two states at once. It was a Company 
 under a Charter from the King of England; it was a 
 Dewan under the Great Mogul. But it swept away the 
 Great Mogul, as Cortez swept away Montezuma; on the 
 other hand it submitted all its boundless acquisitions 
 meekly to the control of England, and at last, when a 
 centuiy was completed from the battle of Plassey, it 
 suffered itself to be abolished and surrendered, India to the 
 English Government. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 now WE GOVEEN INDIA. 
 
 I HAVE considered tlie nature of the relation in which India 
 stands to England and have tried to explain how this 
 relation could spring up without a miracle. We may 
 now advance a step and form some opinion on the 
 question whether that relation can endure without a 
 miracle, as it was created without one, or whether we 
 ought to regard the government of India hy the English 
 as a kind of political tour de force, a matter of astonish- 
 ment while it lasts, but certain not to last very long. For 
 the great diflSculty which the student has to contend with 
 in studying Indian affairs is the dazzling effect of events 
 so strange, so remote, and on a scale so large, by which he 
 is led to think that ordinary causation is not to be ex- 
 pected in India, and that in that region all is miraculous. 
 The rhetorical tone ordiaarily adopted in history favours 
 this illusion; historians are fond of parading all the strange 
 and marvellous features of the Indian Empire, as if it were 
 less their business to account for what happens than to 
 make it seem more unaccountable than before. 
 
 Thus we come to thuik of our ascendancy in India as 
 an exception to all ordinary rules, a standing miracle in 
 
218 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND, [leoi. 
 
 politics, only to be explained by the heroic qualities of 
 the English race and their natural genius for government. 
 So long as we take this view, it is of course impossible 
 for us to form any opinion concerning the duration of it. 
 What was a miracle at the beginning is likely to continue 
 so to the end. If ordinary laws are suspended, who shall 
 say how long the suspension is likely to last ? Now I have 
 tried to look calmly at our Empire in its beginning. I have 
 examined the conquest of India and have found that it is 
 indeed miraculous in the sense of being unlike our experi^' 
 ence — the revolutions of Asiatic society would naturally 
 be unlike those of Europe — ^but that it is not miraculous 
 in the sense of being unaccountable, or even difficult to 
 account for. I now inquire whether our government of 
 India is miraculous in this sense. 
 
 It must certainly appear so, if we assume that India is 
 simply a conquered country and tbe English its conquerors. 
 Who does not know the extreme difficulty of repressing the 
 disaffection of a conquered population? Over and over 
 again it has been found impossible, even where the 
 superiority both in the number and efficiency of troops 
 has been decidedly on the side of the conquerors. When 
 the Spaniards failed in the Low Countries, they were 
 the best soldiers and Spain by far the greatest state in 
 the world. For the instinct of nationality or of separate 
 religion more than supplies the place of valour or of 
 discipline, being diffused through the whole population 
 and not confined to the fighting part of it. Let us compare 
 the parallel case of Italy. Italy corresponds in the map' of 
 Europe to India in that of Asia. It is a similar peninsula 
 at the south of the Continent with a mighty mountain 
 range above it and below this a great river flowing firom 
 west to east. It is still more similar in the circumstance 
 
HI.] HOW ■WE CONQUEEED INDU. 219 
 
 that for many centuries it was a prey to foreign invaders. 
 No long time ago Italy was sutject to the ascendancy 
 and partly to the actual rule of Austria. Its inhabitants 
 were less warlike, its aarmies much less efficient than 
 those of Austria, and Austria was close at hand. And 
 yet, though fighting at ;so much disadvantage, Italy has 
 made herself free. In the field she was generally defeated, 
 but the feeling of nationality was so strong within and 
 attracted so much sympathy without, that she has had 
 her way, and the foreigner has left her to herself. Now 
 in every point India is more advantageously situated with 
 respect to England than Italy with respect to Austria, 
 She has a population about eight times as great as that of 
 England ; she is at the other side of the globe ; and then 
 England does not profess to be a military state. Yet 
 to all appearance she submits to the yoke ; we do not hear 
 of rebellions. In conducting the government of India we 
 meet with difficulties, but they are chiefly financial and 
 economical. The particular difficulty which in Italy was 
 too much for Austria we do not encounter ; we do not feel 
 the difficulty of repressing the disaffection of a conquered 
 nationality. Is not this miraculous ? Does it not seem as 
 if all ordinary laws were suspended in this case, or as if 
 we might assume that there are no bounds either to the 
 submissiveness of the Hindu or to the genius for govern^ 
 ment of the English ? 
 
 What I urged above may partly prepare you for the 
 answer which I make to this question. In the question 
 it is assume'd, first, that India constitutes a nation- 
 ality, secondly, that this nationality has been conquered 
 by England; now both these assumptions are wholly 
 unfounded. 
 
 First the notion that India is a nationality rests 
 
220 EXPANSION OF ENGtiAND. [mot. 
 
 upon that vulgar error which political science principally 
 aims at eradicating. We in Europe, accustomed to see 
 the map of Europe divided into countries each of which 
 is assigned to a peculiar nationality, of which a special 
 language is the badge, fall into a profound miscon- 
 ception. We assume that wherever, inside or outside 
 of Europe, there is a country which has a name, there 
 must be a nationality answering to it. At the same time 
 we take no pains to conceive clearly or define precisely 
 what we call a nationality. We content ourselves with 
 remarking that we in England should be most unwilling 
 to be governed by the French, and that the French would 
 be sorry to be governed by the Germans, and from these 
 examples we draw the conclusion that the people of India 
 must in like manner feel it a deep humiliation to he 
 governed by the English. Such notions spring from mere 
 idleness and inattention. It does not need proving, it is 
 sufficient merely to state, that it is not every population 
 which constitutes a nationality. The English and the 
 French are not mere populations; they are populations 
 united in a very special way and by very special forces. 
 Let us think of some of these uniting forces, and then ask 
 whether they operate upon the populations of India. 
 
 The first is community of race, or rather the belief in a 
 community of race. This, when it appears on a large scale, 
 is identical with community of language. The English are 
 those who speak English, the French those who speak 
 French. Now do the inhabitants of India speak one 
 language ? The answer is, No more, but rather less, than the 
 inhabitants of Europe speak one language ! So much has 
 been said by philologers about Sanscrit and its affinities 
 with other languages, that it is necessary to remark that it 
 is an Qbvious community of languages, of which the test 
 
IV.] HOW "WE GOYEEN INDIA, 221 
 
 is intelligibility, and not some hidden affinity, that acts as a 
 uniting force. Thus the Italians regarded the Austrians 
 as foreigners because they could not understand German, 
 without troubling themselves to consider that German as well 
 as Italian is an Indo-Etiropean language. There is affinity 
 among several of the languages of India, as among those of 
 Europe, The Hindi languages may be compared with the 
 Eomance languages of Europe as being descendants of the 
 ancient language, but the mutual affinity of the Bengali, 
 the Marathi, the Guzerati does not help to make those 
 who speak them one nation. The Hindustani has sprung 
 out of the Mussulman conquest, by a mixture of the 
 Persian of the invaders with the Hindi languages of the 
 patives. But in the South we find a linguistic discrepancy 
 jn India greater than any which exists in Europe, for the 
 great languages of the South, Tamil, Telugu, Canarese, are 
 not Indo-European at all, and they are spoken by popular 
 tions far larger than those Finns and Magyars of Europe 
 whose language is not Indo-European. 
 
 This fact is enough by itself to show that the name 
 India ought not to be classed with such names as England or 
 France, which correspond to nationalities, but rather with 
 such as Europe, marking a group of nationalities which 
 have chanced to obtain a common name owing to some 
 physical separation, Like Europe it is a mere geographic 
 expression, but even so, it has been much less uniformly 
 used than the name Europe. Europe at any rate has been 
 used in much the same sense since the time of Herodotus, 
 but our present use of the word India is not perhaps very 
 old. To. us indeed it seems natural that the whole country 
 which is marked off from Asia by the great barrier of the 
 Himalaya and the Suleiman range should have a single 
 name. But it has not always seemed so. The Greeks had 
 
222 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lbct. 
 
 but a very vague idea of this country. To them for along 
 time the word India was for practical purposes what it was 
 etymologically, the province of the Indus; When they aay 
 that Alexander invaded India, they refer to the Punjah. 
 At a later time they obtained some information about the 
 valley of the Ganges, but little or none about the Deccan. 
 Meanwhile in India itself it did not seem so natural as 
 it seems to us to give one name to the whole region. 
 For there is a very marked difference between the north- 
 em and southern parts of it. The great Aryan com- 
 munity which spoke Sanscrit and invented Brahminism 
 spread itself chiefly from the Punjab along the great valley 
 of the Ganges, but not at first hx southward. Accordingly 
 the name Hindostan properly belongs to this Northern 
 region. In the South or peninsula we find other races and 
 non-Aryan languages, though Brahminism has extended 
 itself there too^ Even the Mogul Empire in its best time 
 did not much penetrate into this region. 
 
 It appears then that India is not a political name, but 
 only a geographical expression like Europe or Africa, It 
 does not mark the territory of a nation and a language, but 
 the territory of many nations and many languages. Here 
 is the fundamental difference between India and such 
 countries as Italy, in which the principle of nationality has 
 asserted itself. Both India and Italy were divided among 
 a number of states, and so were weak in resistance to the 
 foreigner. But, though divided by organisation, Italy was 
 one by nationality. The same language pervaded it, and 
 out of this language had sprung a great literature, which 
 was the common possession of the whole peninsula. India, 
 as I have pointed out, is no more united by language than 
 Europe is. 
 
 But nationality is compounded of several elements, of 
 
n'.] HOW WE GOVEBN INDIA. 223 
 
 which a sense of kindred is only one. The sense of a 
 common interest and the habit of forming a single political 
 whole constitute another element. This too has been very 
 weak, though perhaps it has not been altogether wanting 
 in India. The country might seem almost too large for 
 it, but the barrier which separates India from the rest of 
 the world is so much more effective than any barrier 
 between one part of India than another, that in spite of all 
 ethnical and local divisions some vague conception of India 
 as at least a possible whole has existed from a very ancient 
 time. In the shadowy traditionary histoiy of the times 
 before Mahmoud of Ghazni it is vaguely related of this 
 king and that king that he was lord of all India ; the do- 
 minion of some historical princes in the first Mohammedan 
 period, and finally the Mogul Empire, was approximately 
 universal. But we must not exaggerate the greatness of 
 the Mogul Empire or imagine that it answers in India to 
 the Roman Empire ia Europe. Observe how short its 
 duration was. We cannot put the very commencement of 
 it earlier than 1524, the date of the capture of Lahore by 
 Baber, that is, in Henry VIII.'s reign. When Vasco da 
 Gama landed in India it had not begun to exist, and its 
 marked and rapid decline begins in 1707, that is in Queen 
 Anne's reign. Betweeit these dates there is less than two 
 centuries. But next observe that the Mogul Empire cannot 
 be properly said f o have existed from the moment when 
 Baber entered India, but only from the moment when the 
 Indian dominion of the Moguls became extensive. Now 
 at the accession of Akber, which was in 1659 or the year 
 after that of Queen Elizabeth, this Empire consisted simply 
 of the Punjab and the country round Delhi and Agra. It 
 was not till 1576 that Akber conquered Bengal, and he 
 conquered Sind and Guzerat between 1591 and 1594. 
 
221 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 His empire was now extensive, but if we consider 1594 
 instead of 1524 as the date of the commencement of 
 the Mogul Empire, we reduce its duration to little more 
 than a century. 
 
 Next observe that even at this time it by no means 
 includes all India. To imagine this is to confuse India 
 with Hindostan. Akber's dominion in 1595 was limited 
 by the Nerbudda, and he had not yet set foot in the 
 Deccan. He was Emperor of Hindostan, but by no means 
 of India. In his later years he invaded the Deccan, and 
 from this time the Mogul pretensions began to extend to 
 the Southern half of India. But it cannot be said that 
 anything like a conquest of the Deccan was made before 
 the great expedition of Aurungzebe in 1683, From this 
 time we may, if we choose, speak of the Mogul Empire as 
 including the Deccan, and therefore as uniting aU India 
 under one Government, though the subjection of the 
 Deccan was chiefly nominal, for the Maihratta Tower was 
 already rising fast. But thus the duration of the Empire is 
 reduced to a mere moment, for the Mogul Emperors 
 purchased this extension of their dominion by the ruin of 
 the Empire. Within twenty-four years decay had become 
 visible, and, as I take it, directly in consequence of this 
 ambitious expedition. The Empire had always wanted a 
 sufficient nucleus, and its powers were -exhausted by thist 
 unwise attempt to extend it. 
 
 On the whole then it may be said that India has never 
 really been united so as to form one state except under 
 the English. And they cannot be said to have accom- 
 plished the work until the Govemor-Greneralship of Lord 
 Dalhousie thirty years ago, when the Punjab, Oude and 
 Nagpore were iucorporated with the English dominions. 
 
 Another leading element of nationality is a, common 
 
IV.] HOW WE GOVEEN INDIA. 225 
 
 religion. This element is certainly not altogether want- 
 ing in India. The Brahminical system does extend over 
 the whole of India. Not of course that it is the only 
 religion of India. 'There are not less than fifty millions of 
 Mussulmans, that is, a far greater number than is to be 
 found in the Turkish Empire. There is also a small 
 number of Sikhs, who profess a religion which is a sort of 
 fusion of Mohammedanism and Brahmiaism ; there are 
 a few Christians, and in Ceylon and Nepaul there are 
 Buddhists. But Brahminism remains the creed of the 
 enormous majority, and it has so much real vitality that 
 it has more than once resisted formidable attacks. One of 
 the most powerful of all proselytising creeds, Buddhism, 
 sprang up in India itself; it spread far and wide ; we have 
 evidence that it flourished with vigour in India two 
 centuries before Christ, and that it was still flourishing 
 in the seventh century after Christ. Yet it has been 
 conquered by Brahminism, and flourishes now almost in 
 every part of Asia more than in the country which pro- 
 ' duced it. After this victory Brahminism had to resist the 
 assault of another powerful aggressive religion, before 
 which Zoroastrianism had already fallen and even Christi- 
 anity had in the East had to retreat some steps, Mo- 
 hammedanism. Here again it held its own; Mussulman 
 Governments overspread India, but they could not convert 
 the people. 
 
 Now religion seems to me to be the strongest and most 
 important of all the elements which go to constitute 
 nationality; and this element exists in India. When it 
 is said that India is to be compared rather to Europe than 
 to France or England, we may remember that Europe, 
 Considered as Christendom, has had and still has a certain 
 unity, which would show itself plainly and quickly enough 
 s. L. 15 
 
226 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lbct. 
 
 if Europe were threatened, as more than once it was 
 threatened in the Middle Ages, by a barbarian and heathen 
 enemy. It may seem then that in Brahminism India has a 
 germ, out of which sooner or later an Indian nationahty 
 might spring. And perhaps it is so; but yet we are to 
 observe that in that case the nationality ought to have 
 developed itself long since. For the Mussulman invasions, 
 which have succeeded each other through so many cen- 
 turies, have supplied precisely the pressure which was most 
 likely to favour the development of the germ. Why did 
 Brahminism content itself with holding its own against 
 Islam, and not rouse and unite India against the invader ? 
 It never did so. Brahminical Powers have risen in India. 
 A chieftain named Sivaji arose in the middle of the 
 seventeenth century, and possessing himself of one or two 
 hill-forts in the highlands behind Bombay, founded the 
 Mahratta Power. This was a truly Hindu organisation, 
 and, as its power increased, it fell more and more under the 
 control of the Brahmin caste. The decline of the Mogul 
 Empire favoured its advance, so that in the middle of the 
 eighteenth century the ramifications of the Mahratta 
 confederacy covered almost the whole of India. It might 
 appear that in this confederacy there lay the nucleus of an 
 Indian nationality, that Brahminism was now about to do 
 for the Hindus what has been done for so many other 
 races by their religion. But-nothing of the kiiid happened, 
 Brahminism did not pass into patriotism.__ Perhaps its 
 facile comprehensiveness, making it in reality not a 
 religion but only a loose compromise between several 
 religions, has enfeebled it as a uniting principle. At any 
 rate it appears that in the Mahratta movement there 
 never was anything elevated or patriotic, but that it con- 
 tinued from fijst to last to be an organisation of plunder. 
 
.IT.] HOW WE GOVEEN INDIA. 227 
 
 There is then no Indian nationality, though there are 
 some germs out of which we can conceive an Indian 
 nationality developing itself. It is this fact, and not some 
 enormous superiority on the part of the English race, that 
 makes our Empire in India possible. If there could arise ■ 
 in India a nationality-movement similar to that which we 
 witnessed in Italy, the English Power could not even make 
 the resistance that was made in Italy by Austria, but must 
 succumb at once. For what means can England have,' 
 which is not even a military state, of resisting the rebellion 
 of two hundred and fifty millions of subjects ? Do you 
 say, as we conquered them before, we could conquer them 
 again ? But I explained that we did not conquer them. 
 I showed you that of the army which won our victories 
 four-fifths consisted of native troops. That we were able 
 to hire these native troops for service in India, was due to 
 the fact that the feeling of nationality had no existence 
 there. Now if the feeling of a common nationality began to 
 exist there only feebly, if, without inspiring any active desire 
 to drive out the foreigner, it only created a notion that it 
 was shameful to assist him in maintaining his dominion, 
 from that day almost our Empire would cease to exist. 
 For of the army by which it is garrisoned two-thirds 
 consist of native soldiers. Imagine what an easy task the 
 Italian patriots would have had before them, if the 
 Austrian Government which they desired to expel had 
 depended not upon Austrian but upon Italian soldiers ! 
 Let us suppose — not even that the native army mutinied 
 — but simply that a native army could not any longer be 
 levied. In a moment the impossibility of holding India 
 would become manifest to us. For it is a condition of our 
 Indian Empire that it should be held without any great 
 effort. As it was acquired without much efibrt on the 
 
 15—2 
 
228 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 part of the English state, it must be retained in the 
 same way. We are not prepared to bury millions upon 
 millions or army upon army in defending our acquisition^ 
 /"The moment India began really to show herself what 
 I we so idly imagine her to be, a conquered nation, that 
 I moment we should recognise perforce the impossibility of 
 Vetaining her. 
 
 And thus the mystic halo of marvel and miracle which 
 has gathered round this Empire disappears before a fixed 
 scrutiny. It disappears when we perceive that, though we 
 are foreign rulers in India, we are not conquerors resting 
 on superior force, when we recognize that it is a mere 
 European prejudice to assume that since we do not rule hy 
 the will of the peoj^e of India, we must needs rule against 
 their will. The love of independence presupposes political 
 consciousness. Where this is wanting, a foreign Govern- 
 ment will be regarded passively, and such a Government 
 may continue for a long time and prosper without exerting 
 any extraordinary skill. Such a passive feeling towards 
 Government becomes inveterate in a country that has 
 been frequently conquered. Governments most oppressive 
 have often continued for centuries, and that though they 
 had no means of resisting rebellion if it should arise, simply 
 because it did not enter into the habits of the people 
 to rebel, because they were accustomed to obedience. 
 Read the history of the Russian Czars in the sixteenth 
 century. Why did a great population submit to the furious 
 caprices of Ivan the Terrible ? The answer is plain. They 
 had been trampled under, foot for two centuries by the 
 Tartars, and during that period they had acquired the 
 habit of passive submission. 
 
 Now ought we not to expect the population of India to 
 be in a similar condition of feeling? Of liberty, of 
 
IV.] HOW WE GOVBEN INDIA. 229 
 
 popular institutions, there exists scarcely a trace in the 
 ■whole extent of Indian history or tradition ? The Italians 
 had the Roman Republic behind them, and it "was by 
 reading Livy to the people that Rienzi roused them to 
 rebellion. No Indian demagogae could find anything 
 similar to read to the people. And for seven hundred 
 years when the English arrived, they had been governed 
 not only by despots but by foreign despots. It would be 
 marvellous indeed if in such a country the feeling could 
 have sprung up that Government exists for and depends on 
 the people, if a habit of criticising Government, of medita- 
 ting its overthrow, or of organising opposition against 
 it, could have sprung up. Nations have, as it were, very 
 stiff joints. They do not easily learn a new kind of move- 
 ment; they do whfit their fathers did, even when they 
 fancy themselves most original. It has been pointed out 
 that even the French Revolution strangely resembled some 
 earlier chapters in the history of France, Certainly the 
 Italian nationality-movement resembles earlier Italian 
 movements that go back beyond the age of Dante. Now 
 by this rule we should expect to find the Indian popula- 
 tion silently submitting to whatever Government had the 
 possession of power, even though it were foreign, as our 
 Government is, and even though it were savagely op- 
 pressive, which we think our Government is not. 
 
 Our Government of India would be a miracle on two 
 conditions. First, if the Hindus had been accustomed to 
 be ruled only by their own countrymen, and were familiar 
 with the idea of resisting authority. This is not the case 
 of the Hindus, and accordingly they submit, as through- 
 out history vast populations have been in the habit of. 
 submitting to Governments which they could easily over- 
 throw, as the Chinese at the present day submit to a 
 
230 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [LBCTi 
 
 Tartar domination, as the Hindus themselves submitted 
 to the Mogul domination before the English came. Indeed 
 this example of the Moguls is well adapted to show 
 that our ascendancy over the Hindus is no proof of any- 
 supernatural statesmanship in us. For one cannot read 
 the Mogul history without being struck with the very 
 same fact which surprises us in the history of the English 
 rule, viz,, that the Moguls too conquered almost without 
 apparent means. Baber, the founder of the Empire, did 
 not come with a mighty nation at his back, or leaning on 
 the organisation of some powerful state. He had inherited 
 a small Tartar kingdom in Central Asia, but he had lost 
 this by an invasion of Osbegs. He wandered for a while 
 as a homeless adventurer, and then got possession of 
 another small kingdom in Afghanistan. Nothing could 
 be slighter than this first germ of empire. This Tartar 
 adventurer ruling Afghans in Cabul founded an Empire 
 which in about seventy years extended over half India, and 
 in a hundred years more extended nominally at least over 
 the whole. I do not say that the Mogul Empire was ever 
 comparable for greatness or solidity to that which we have 
 established, but like our own, even more than our own, it 
 seems built up without hands. The Company had at least 
 English money, English military science, and the immor- 
 tality of a corporation. Baber and his successors had none 
 of these resources. It is difficult to discover any causes 
 which favoured the growth of their Empire. All we can 
 say is that Central Asia swarmed with a wandering popu- 
 lation much inclined to the vocation of mercenary soldiers, 
 which passed very readily for pay and plunder into the 
 service of the ruler of Cabul. 
 
 Secondly our rule would be wonderful if the two 
 hundred million Hindus had the habit of thinking all 
 
iv.] HOW WE GOVEEN INDIA. 231 
 
 together, like a single nation. If not, there is nothing 
 wonderful in it. A mere mass of individuals, unconnected "^ 
 with each other by any common feelings or interests, is I 
 easily subjected, because they may be induced to act/ 
 against each other. Now I have pointed out how weak 
 and insufficient are the bonds which unite the Hindus. If 
 you wish to see how this want of internal union has 
 operated in favour of our rule, you have only to read the 
 history of the great Mutiny. It may have occurred to you 
 when I said that a mutiny or even less than a mutiny on 
 the part of our native troops would be instantly fatal to our 
 Empire, that just such a mutiny actually happened in 1857 
 and yet that our Empire still flourishes. But you are to 
 observe that I spoke of a mutiny caused by a nationality- 
 movement spreading among the people and at last gaining 
 the army. The mutiny of 1857 was not of this kind. It 
 began in the army and. was regarded passively by the 
 people ; it was provoked by definite military grievances, 
 and not by any disaffection caused by the feeling of 
 nationality against our Government as foreign. But now 
 let us ask ; in what way was this mutiny, when once it had 
 broken out, put down ? I am afraid the only opinion 
 that has ever obtained in England has been that it was 
 Crushed by the prodigious heroism of the EngUsh and 
 their infinite superiority to the Hindus. Let me read 
 you the account which Col. Chesney gives of the matter 
 in his ' Indian Polity.' After remarking that an intensely 
 Strong esprit de corps had sprung up in the Bengal Army 
 —for observe that the Bombay and Madras armies were very 
 slightly concerned in the mutiny — an esprit de corps which 
 was purely military and actually opposed to the feeling of 
 nationality, since it welded together the Hindu and the 
 Mussulman elements, (so that Col. Chesney remarks : ' In 
 
232 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 ill-disciplilie, bitterness of feeling against their masters, and 
 confidence in their power to overthrow them, there was 
 nothing to choose between Hindu or Mussulman ') he goes 
 on to point out by what counter-movement this movement 
 was met. 'Fortunately the so-called Bengal Presidency 
 was not garrisoned wholly by the regular army. Four 
 battalions of Goorkhas, inhabitants of the Nepalese Hima- 
 laya, who had been kept aloof from the rest of the army, 
 and had not imbibed the class-feeling which animated that 
 body, with one exception stood loyal; the conspicuous 
 gallantry and devotedness to the British cause displayed 
 by one of these regiments especially won the admiration of 
 their English comrades. Two extra-regiments of the line, 
 which had been recruited from the Punjab and its neigh- 
 bourhood, also stood firm. But the great help came fi-om 
 the Punjab Irregular Force, as it was termed, a force 
 however which was organised on quite as methodical and 
 regular a footing, was quite as wellrdrilled and vastly 
 better disciplined, than the regular army. This force 
 consisted of six regiments of infantry and five of cavalry, 
 to which may be added four regiments of Sikh local 
 infantry, usually stationed in the Punjab. These troops 
 were directly under the orders of the Government of that 
 province, and not subject to that centralised system of 
 administration which had a share in undermining the 
 discipline of the regular army. It was with these troops 
 and the handful of Europeans quartered in the upper part 
 of India that the rebellion was first met. Meanwhile the 
 sympathies of the people of the Punjab were enlisted on 
 behalf of their rulers. A lately conquered people, whose 
 accustomed occupation had been, superseded by the dis- 
 bandment of their army, they entertained no good will to 
 the Hindustani garrisons which occupied their country, and 
 
n] HOW WE GO VEEN INDIA. 233 
 
 welcomed with alacrity the appeal to arms made them to 
 join in the overthrow of their hereditary enemies. Any 
 number of men that could he required was forthcoming, 
 and the levies thus raised were pushed down to the seat of 
 war as fast as they could be equipped and drilled. And 
 on the reorganisation of the Bengal army these Punjab 
 levies have formed a large component part of it.' 
 
 You see, the mutiny was in a great measure put down by^ 
 turning the races of India against each other. So long as~ 
 this can be done, and so long as the population have not 
 formed the habit of criticising their Government whatever 
 it be and of rebelling against it, the government of India 
 from England is possible, and there is nothing miraculous 
 about it. But, as I said, if this state of things should alter, 
 if by any process the population should be welded into a 
 single nationality, if our relation to it should come to 
 resemble even distantly the relation of Austria to Italy, 
 then I do not say we ought to begin to fear for our 
 dominion, I say we ougWrto cease at once to hope for it. 
 I do not imagine that the danger we have to apprehend is 
 that of a popular insurrection. In some of the alarmist 
 literature, for instance, in Mr Elliot's book entitled, ' Con- 
 cerning John's Indian Affairs ', I find harrowing pictures of 
 the misery of the poor ryot, and then the conclusion drawn 
 as a matter of course that this misery must lead to an ex- 
 plosion of despair, by which we shall be expelled. Whether 
 the descriptions are true this is not the place to inquire ; 
 but granting the truth of them for argument's sake I do 
 not find in history that revolutions are caused in this way. 
 I find great populations cowering in abject misery for 
 centuries together, but they do not rise in rebellion ; 
 no, if they cannot live they die, and if they can only just 
 live, then they just live, their sensibilities dulled and their 
 
£84 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [lect.it. 
 
 very -wishes crushed out by want. A population that 
 rebels is a population that is looking up, that has begun to 
 hope and to feel its strength. But if such a rising took 
 place, it would be put down by the native soldiery, 
 .so long as they have not learned to feel themselves 
 brothers to the Hindu and foreigners to the English- 
 man that commands them. But on the other hand if this 
 feeling ever does spring up, if India does begin to breathe 
 as a single national whole — and our own rule is perhaps 
 doing more than ever was done by former Governments to 
 make this possible — then no such explosion of despair, even 
 if there were cause for it, would be needed. For in that 
 case the feeling would soon gain the native army, and on 
 the native army ultimately we depend. We could subdue 
 the mutiny of 1857, formidable as it was, because it spread 
 through only a part of the army, because the people did 
 not actively sympathise with it, and because it was possible 
 to find native Indian races who would fight on our side. 
 But the moment a mutiny is but threatened, which shall be 
 no mere mutiny, but the expression of a universal feeling of 
 nationality, at that moment all hope is at an end, as all 
 desire ought to be at an end, of preserving our Empire. Eor 
 we are not really conquerors of India, and we cannot rule 
 her as conquerors ; if we undertook to do so, it is not 
 necessary to inquire whether we could succeed, for we 
 should assuredly be ruined financially by the mere 
 attempt. 
 
LECTUEE V. 
 
 MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA. 
 
 In the last two lectures I was engaged in showing that the 
 conquest of India and the government of it by the English 
 have in a certain sense nothing wonderful about them. 
 We may fairly be proud of many particular deeds done by 
 our countrymen in India and of many men who in India 
 have shown a rare energy and talent for government, but it 
 is a mistake to suppose that the Empire itself is a standing 
 proof of some vast superiority in the English race over the 
 races of India. Without assuming any such vast superiority 
 we are able to assign causes which are sufficient to account 
 alike for the growth and for the continuance of that 
 Empire. It is not then wonderful, if by wonderful be 
 meant simply miraculous, or difficult to account for by 
 ordinary causation. 
 
 Nevertheless there is a sense in which it is not only 
 wonderful, but far more wonderful than is commonly under- 
 stood. It is wonderful rather in its consequences than in 
 its causes. In other words, it is great in the peculiarly 
 historical sense, for the pregnancy of events, as we re- 
 
238 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 marked, is what gives them historical rank. By applying 
 this test we raised the rank of several events in English 
 history, especially the American Kevolution, which for 
 want of dramatic or romantic interest are too little studied. 
 Let us now remark that the Indian Empire, however it 
 may seem less marvellous on close examination than at 
 first sight, will be found to gain in historic interest, as 
 much as it loses in romantic. 
 
 A vast Oriental Empire is not necessarily at all an 
 interesting or a particularly important thing. There 
 have been many such Empires in Asia, which historically 
 are less important than a single Greek or Tuscan city- 
 republic. That they have been of wide extent, or even of 
 long duration, does not make them interesting. Generally 
 when we examine them we find that they are of a low 
 organisation, and that under their weight the individual 
 is crushed, so that he enjoys no happiness, makes no 
 progress, and produces nothing memorable. And perhaps 
 when first we turn our thoughts towards our Indian 
 Empire, we may receive the impression that it is not 
 intrinsically more interesting than the average of such 
 overgrown Asiatic despotisms. We trust indeed that, 
 thanks to the control of English public opinion, it may 
 stand at a higher level of intelligence, morality, and philan- 
 thropy than the Mogul Empire which it has succeeded. 
 But at best we think of it as a good specimen of a bad poli- 
 tical system. We are not disposed to be proud of the suc- 
 cession of the Great Mogul. We doubt whether with all the 
 merits of our administration the subjects of it are happy. 
 We may even doubt whether our rule is preparing them for a 
 happier condition, whether it may not be sinking them 
 lower in misery, and we have our misgivings that perhaps 
 a genuine Asiatic Government, and still more a national 
 
■v.] MUTUAL' INFLUENCE OP ENGLAND AND INDIA. 237 
 
 Government springing up out of the Hindoo population 
 itself, might in the long run be more beneficial because 
 more congenial, though perhaps less civilised, than such a 
 foreign unsympathetic government as our own. 
 
 But let us consider that it is not quite every Empire 
 which is thus uninteresting. The Roman Empire for 
 example is not so. I may say this now without fear, 
 because our views of history have grown considerably less 
 exclusive of late years. There was a time no doubt when 
 even the Roman Empire, because it was despotic and in 
 some periods unhappy and half-barbarous, was thought 
 uninteresting. A generation ago it was the reigning 
 opinion that there is nothing good in politics but liberty, 
 and that accordingly in history all those periods are to be 
 passed over and, as it were, cancelled, in which liberty is 
 not to be found. Along with this opinion there prevailed 
 a habit of reading history, as we read poetry, only for an 
 exalted kind of pleasure, and this habit led us, whenever 
 we came to a period in which there was nothing glorious or 
 admirable, to shut the book. In those days no doubt the 
 Roman Empire too was condemned. The Roman Republic 
 was held in honour for its freedom ; the earlier Roman 
 ■Empire was studied for the traces of freedom still 
 discernible in it. But we used to shut the book at the end 
 of the second century, as if all that followed for ■ some ten 
 centuries were decay and ruin ; and we did not take up the 
 story again with any satisfaction until the traces of liberty 
 began to reappear in England and in the Italian republics. 
 I suppose I may say that this way of regarding history is 
 now obsolete. We do not now read it simply for pleasure, 
 but in order that we may discover the laws of political 
 growth and change, and therefore we hardly stop to inquire 
 whether the period before us is glorious or dismal. It is 
 
238 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [mct. 
 
 enough if it is instructive and teaches lessons not to he 
 learned from other periods. We have also learnt that there 
 are many other good things in politics besides liberty ; for 
 instance there is nationality, there is civilisation. Now 
 it often happens that a Government which allows no 
 liberty is nevertheless most valuable and most favour- 
 able to progress towards these other goals. Hence the 
 lioman Empire — not only in its beginnings but in its 
 later developments up to the thirteenth century — is now 
 regarded, in spite of all the barbarism, all the superstition, 
 and all the misery, as one of the most interestirfg of 
 all historical phenomena. For it is perceived that this 
 Empire is by no means without internal progress, without 
 creative ideas, or without memorable results. We discern in 
 it the embryo of that which is greatest and most wonder- 
 ful, namely, the modern brotherhood or loose federation of 
 civilised nations. And therefore, though it was a great 
 Empire and though it was despotically governed, it is 
 studied with infinite curiosity and attention. 
 
 This difference between the Roman Empire and other 
 Empires founded on conquest, arises from the superiority in 
 civilisation of the conquerors to the conquered. A great 
 conquering race is not usually advanced in civilisation. 
 The typical conqueror is some Cyrus or Zinghis Khan, that 
 is, the chieftain of a hardy tribe, which has been steeled by 
 poverty and is tempted by plunder. Before such a conqueror 
 the advanced civilisation is apt to go down, so that in history 
 we see civilisation often conquered, sometimes holding its 
 ground, but not very often making great conquests, until 
 in recent times the progress of invention strengthened 
 it by giving it new weapons. The great conquering 
 race of history has been one of the least progressive, 
 the Turcomans. It was from this race mainly, from 
 
v.] ■ MUTUAL INFLUENCE OP ENGLAND AND INDIA. 239 
 
 t^e--hive of tribesmen, who in Central Asia furnished 
 mercenary armies to all the ambitious kings of Asia, 
 that Baber and Akber drew the force with which they 
 ^^eonquered India. Such is the ordinary rule, but when an 
 exceptional case does occur, when high civilisation is 
 spread by conquest over populations less advanced, the 
 Empire thus formed has a very peculiar interest. Of 
 such a nature for instance was the conquest of the 
 East by Alexander the Great, because the Macedonians 
 through their close relationship with the Greeks brought 
 all Hellenism in their train. Accordingly, though the 
 kingdoms of the Diadochi were in themselves but 
 military despotisms of a low type, yet the strangest and 
 most memorable effects were produced by the fusion 
 of Greek with Oriental thought. Still more remarkable, 
 because it lasted much longer and because it is much 
 better known, is the effect produced upon the nations of 
 Europe by the conquests of Rome. In fact this great 
 phenomenon stands out in the very centre of human history, 
 and may be called the foundation of the present civilisa- 
 tion of mankind. 
 
 Now it will make all the difference if the English 
 conquest of India is to be classed along with the Greek 
 conquest of the East and the Roman conquest of Gaul and 
 Spain and not along with those of the Great Turk and the 
 Great Mogul. If it belongs to the latter class, we shall not 
 be misled by any mere splendour or magnitude, but shall 
 pronounce it to be a phenomenon of secondary interest, 
 belonging to the history of barbarism rather than to that 
 of civilisation. In the former case we shall be prepared to 
 place it among the transcendent events of the world, those 
 events which rise as high above the average of civilised 
 history as an ordinary Oriental Empire falls below it. 
 
240 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 There need be no question about the general fact that 
 the ruling race in British India has a higher and more 
 vigorous civilisation than the native races. We may say 
 this -without taking too much to ourselves. The English, 
 as such, are perhaps not a race of Hellenic intelligence ' 
 and genius, but the civilisation they inherit is not simply 
 their own. It is European civilisation, the product of the 
 united labour of the European races held together and 
 animated by the spirit of the ancient world. What do we 
 see on the other side ? What estimate shall we form of 
 the native civilisation of India 1 
 
 As I have said so often, India is not one country, and 
 therefore it has not one civilisation. It has not even so 
 much unity as it seems to have, for Brahminism by its 
 peculiar trick of absorption and assimilation has brought 
 together under one name forms of civilisation which are 
 really diverse. If we look below the surface, we find two 
 distinct layers of population, a fair-skinned and a dark- 
 skinned race. The two layers are visible almost every- 
 where; the dark layer preponderates in the South; it is 
 outnumbered but clearly visible in Bengal; it is evanescent 
 perhaps higher up the Ganges ; but that the two races did 
 really blend almost all over India appears from the fact 
 that no language is now spoken which is a mere corruption 
 or dialect of Sanscrit, as French and Italian are dialects of 
 Latin. Every Hindi language, even when its vocabulary is 
 most exclusively Sanscrit, has inflexions and forms which are 
 non-Aryan'. Now in estimating the civilisation of India 
 we must begin by taking account of this fundamental dis- 
 tinction of race. The dark-skinned race is in many 
 parts not civilised, and ought to be classed as barbarous. 
 Mr B. H. Hodgson says, 'In every extensive jungly or hilly 
 tract throughout the vast continent. of India there exist 
 ' Stated on the authority of Professor Cowell. 
 
V.J ^ MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA. Ml 
 
 hundreds of thousands of human beings in a stat6 not 
 materially different from that of the Germans as described 
 by Tacitus'. 
 
 We are to distinguish again between the Hindu races 
 proper and the great Mussulman immigration. There 
 are not less than fifty millions of Mussulmans ia India, 
 and of these a large proportion consists of Afghans or 
 Pathans, Arabs, Persians, and Turcomans or Tartars who 
 have at different times entered India either with, or in 
 order to join, the armies of the Mussulman conquerors. 
 Here we may expect to find, as everywhere in the Mussul- 
 man worlds a sort of semi-civilisation, certain strong virtues 
 but of a primitive kind, in short an equipment of ideas 
 and views not sufficient for the modem forms of society. 
 
 Then finally we come to the characteristically Indian 
 population, the Aryan race which descended from the 
 Punjab with the Sanscrit language on its lips, which 
 spread itself mainly along the valley of the Ganges, but 
 succeeded in spreading its peculiar theocratic system over 
 the whole of India. Perhaps no race has shown a greater 
 aptitude for civilisation. Even its barbarism, as reflected 
 in the Vedic literature, is humane and intelligent. And 
 after its settlement in India it advanced normally along 
 the path of civilisation. Its customs grew into laws, 
 and were consolidated in codes. It imagined the division 
 of labour. It created poetry and philosophy and the 
 beginnings- of science. Out of its bosom sprang a mighty 
 religious reform called Buddhism, which remains to this 
 jday one of the leading religious systems of the world. So 
 far then it resembled those gifted races which created our 
 own civilisation. 
 
 But the Aryan race did not make so much progress in 
 India as in Europe. As it showed in India an extreme 
 
 s. L. 16 
 
243 / • ■ EXPANSION OF ENGLAND, • [r^ct. 
 
 incapacity for writing history, so that no record of it 
 remains except where it came in contact with Greek or 
 Mussulman invaders, we can only conjecture the causes 
 that may have retarded its progress. But the great 
 religious reform after some centuries of success for some 
 reason or other failed; Buddhism was expelled. The 
 tyranny of the priestly caste was firmly established. No 
 great and solid political system grew up ; there was little 
 city-civilisation. And then came the scourge of foreign 
 conquest. 
 
 Subjection for a long time to a foreign yoke is one of 
 the most potent causes of national deterioration. And the 
 few facts we know about the ancient Hindus confirm what 
 we should conjecture about the moral effects produced 
 upon them by their misfortunes'. We have in the Greek 
 writer Arrian a description of the Indian character, which 
 we read with surprise, He says, 'they are remarkably 
 brave, superior in war to all Asiatics ; they are remarkable 
 for simplicity and integrity; so reasonable as never to 
 have recourse to a law-suit and so honest as neither to 
 require locks to their doors nor writings to bind their 
 agreeraents. No Indian was ever known to tell an un- 
 truth.' This description has no doubt an air of exaggeration 
 about it, but, as Elphinstone remarks, it shows that an 
 extraordinary change has passed over the Hindu character 
 ^ince it was written. Exaggeration consists in exhibiting 
 the real features larger than they ought to be. But this 
 description exhibits on an unnatural scale precisely the 
 features that are wanting in the modem Hindu character. 
 MCodern travellers therefore are found to exaggerate the 
 very opposite features. They accuse the Hindu of want 
 
 1 See this subject treated at much greater length by Professor Max- 
 MuUer in his recently published volume, ' What tan India teach m ?' 
 
v.] MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA. 343 
 
 of veracity, want of valour, and extreme litigiousness. 
 But the change is precisely such as might naturally 
 be produced by a long period of submission to the 
 foreigner. 
 
 On the whole then we find in India three stages of 
 civilisation, first that of the hill-tribes, which is barbarism, 
 then that which is perhaps sufficiently described as the 
 Mussulman stage, and thirdly the arrested and half- 
 crushed civilisation of a gifted race, but a race which has 
 from the beginning been in a remarkable manner isolated 
 from the ruling and progressive civilisation of the world. 
 Whatever this race achieved it achieved a long-time ago. 
 Its great epic poems, which some would compare to the 
 greatest poems of the West, are ancient, though perhaps 
 much less ancient than has been thought, so too its systems 
 of philosophy, its scientific grammar. The country has 
 achieved nothing in modem times. It may be compared 
 to Europe, as Europe would have been if after the irruption 
 of barbarians and the fall of ancient civilisation it had 
 witnessed no revival, and had not been able to protect 
 itself against the Tartar invasions of the tenth and 
 thirteenth centuries. Let us suppose Europe to have 
 vegetated up to the present time in the condition in 
 which the tenth century saw it, exposed to periodical 
 invasions fi:om Asia, wanting in strongly marked nations 
 and vigorous states, its languages mere vernaculars not 
 used for the purposes of literature, all its wisdom enshrined 
 in a dead language and doled out to the people by an 
 imperious priesthood, all its wisdom too many centuries 
 old, sacred texts of Aristotle, the Vulgate, and the Fathers, 
 to which nothing could be added but in the way of 
 commentary. Such seems to be the condition of the 
 Aryans of India, a condition which has no resemblance 
 
 16—3 
 
244 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND, [^ci. 
 
 whatever to barbarism, but resembles strikingly the 
 medieval phase of the civilisation of the West. 
 
 The dominion of Rome over the western races was the 
 empire of civilisation over barbarism. Among Gauls and 
 Iberians Rome stood as a beacon-light; they acknow- 
 ledged its brightness, and felt grateful for the illuminatioji 
 they received from it. The dominion of England in India is 
 rather the empire of the modem world over the medieval. 
 The light we bring is not less real, but it is probably less 
 attractive and received with less gratitude. It is not a 
 glorious light shining in darkness, but a somewhat cold day- 
 light introduced into the midst of a warm gorgeous twilight. 
 
 Many travellers have said that the learned Hindu, even 
 when he acknowledges our power and makes use of our 
 railways, yet is so far from regarding us with reverence 
 that he very sincerely despises us. This is only natural. 
 We are not cleverer than the Hindu ; our minds are not 
 richer or larger than his. We cannot astonish him, as 
 we astonish the barbarian, by putting before him ideas that 
 he never dreamed of He can match from his poetry 
 our sublimest thoughts ; even our science perhaps has 
 few conceptions that are altogether novel to him. Our 
 boast is not that we have more ideas or more brilliant 
 ideas, but that our ideas are better tested and sounder. 
 The greatness of modern,, as compared with medieval or 
 ancient, civilisation is that it possesses a larger stock of 
 demonstrated truth, and therefore infinitely more of prac- 
 tical power. But the poetical or mystic philosopher is by 
 no means disposed to regatd demonstrated truth with 
 reverence ; he is rather apt to call it shallow, and to sneer 
 at its practical triumphs, while he revels for his part in 
 reverie and the luxury of unbounded speculation. ' 
 
 We in Europe however are pretty well agreed that the 
 
v^' MUTUAL iNFLtJENCK OF ENGLAND AND INDIA. 245 
 
 treasure of truth which forms the nucleus of the civilisation 
 of the West is incomparably more sterling not only than 
 the Brahminic mysticism with which it has to contend, 
 but even than that Roman enlightenment which the old 
 Empire transmitted to the nations of Europe. And there- 
 fore we shall hold that the spectacle now presented by 
 India of a superior civilisation introduced by a conquering 
 race is equal in interest and importance to that which the 
 Roman Empire presented. Moreover the experiment is 
 tried on a scale equally large. This Empire is usually judged 
 by its immediate effect on the welfare of the inhabitants. 
 It has removed evils of long standing, says one; it has 
 introduced new evils, says another. This whole contrO' 
 versy puts on one side the most characteristic work of our 
 Empire which is the introduction in the midst of Brahmin- 
 ism of European views of the Universe. No experiment 
 equally interesting is now being tried on the surface of the 
 globe. And when we consider how seldom it is put in the 
 power of a nation to accomplish a task so memorable, we 
 shall learn to take an eager interest in the progress of the 
 experiment, and to check the despondency which might 
 lead us to ask what profit accrues to ourselves fi:om all 
 this labour that we have undertaken under the sun. 
 - And now let us take note of a great advantage which 
 we enjoy in working at this task. It comes to light when we 
 compare our Empire vnth the Roman. Rome was placed 
 in the midst of its Empire, was subject to an overwhelming 
 reaction from it, and was exposed to all the dangers which 
 threatened it. England on the other hand is singularly 
 disengaged from this enormous Empire which it governs, 
 and feels but a slight reaction from it. 
 
 Every historical student knows that it was the incubus 
 of the Empire which destroyed liberty at Rome. Those 
 
246 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [j^cr, 
 
 old civic institutions, which had nursed Roman greatness 
 and to which Rome owed all the civilisation which she 
 was to transmit to the countries of the West, had to be 
 given up as a condition of transmitting it. She had to 
 adopt an organisation of, comparatively, a low type. Her 
 civiHsation, when she transmitted it, was abeady in decay. 
 In a great part of the Empire her very language was 
 worsted in the competition by the Greek, so that the 
 Emperor M. Aurelius himself writes his Meditations in 
 Greek. The Roman religion instead of making converts 
 fell into neglect, and in the end gave way to a reli^on 
 which had sprung up in a distant province of the 
 Empire, There came a time when almost all that was 
 Roman in thought and feeling seemed to be dead in the 
 Empire of Rome, when its Emperors were like Oriental 
 kings and wore the diadem. We know now that this was 
 not so, and that Roman influence, the Roman tradition 
 continued to sway the European mind for many centuries. 
 But their sway was exerted secretly, through law and 
 through Catholicism, at a later time through the Renais- 
 sance in literature and art. Think how different would 
 have been the course of modem European history if 
 the mother- city of its civilisation, instead of being in 
 the midst of the nations it educated, instead of suffering 
 in their discords and convulsions, instead of receiving as 
 much barbarism from them as it gave civilisation to them, 
 had stood outside, enjoying an independent prosperity, 
 developing its own civilisation further with an unabated 
 vigour of youth all the while that it guided the subject 
 nations. 
 
 The Roman Empire is in this respect a somewhat 
 extreme case, because the conquering Power was so re- 
 markably small compared to the empire it attached to 
 
v.] . MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA. Ui 
 
 itself. The light radiated not from a dountry but from a 
 city, which was not so much a shining disk as a point of 
 intense light. The Eoman Republic had institutions 
 which were essentially civic, and which began to break 
 down as soon as, they were extended even to the whole 
 of Italy. But even where the conquering Power has a 
 much broader basis, it is commonly, altogether transformed 
 by the effort of conquest. The wars by which the conquest 
 is made, and then the establishments necessary to maintain 
 the conquest, call for a new system of government and 
 finance. Of all the unparalleled features which the 
 English Empire in India presents, not one is so unique as 
 the slightness of the machinery by which it is united to 
 England and the slightness of its reaction upon England.; 
 How this peculiarity has been caused I have already 
 explained, I have shown that our acquisition of India was 
 made by a process so. peculiar that it cost' us nothing. 
 Had England as a state undertaken to subvert the Empire 
 of the Great Mogul, she would have destroyed her own 
 constitution in the process, no less than Rome did by the 
 conquest of Europe. For she would evidently have been 
 compelled to convert herself into a military state of the 
 most absolute type. But as England has merely inherited 
 the throne which was founded in India by certain English- 
 men who rose to the head of affairs in time of anarchy, she 
 has been but very slightly disturbed in her domestic 
 affairs by this acquisition. It has modified no doubt, as I 
 have said, her foreign policy in a great degree, but it has 
 produced no change in the internal character of the 
 English state. In this respect India has produced as 
 little effect upon England as those Continental States 
 which have been in modem times connected with England 
 in what is called a personal union, Hannover uijderthe 
 
248 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND, [^<^- 
 
 Georges, or Holland under William III, The consequence 
 is that in this instance the operation of the higher civilisa- 
 tion on the lower is likely to be far more energetic and 
 continuous than in those ancient examples of the Roman 
 Empire or the Greek Empire in the East. In those cases 
 the lower civilisation killed the higher in the same moment 
 that the higher raised the lower towards its own level, 
 Hellenism covered the East, but the greatness of Greece 
 came to an end. All nations crowded into the Eoman 
 citizenship; but what became of the original Romans 
 themselves ? England on the other hand is not weakened 
 at all by the virtue that goes out from her. She tries to 
 raise India out of the medieval into the modem phase, 
 and in the task she meets with difficulties and even incurs 
 dangers, but she incurs no risk whatever of being drawn 
 down by India towards the lower level, or even of being 
 checked for a moment in her natural development. 
 
 This has been the result; but for a long time it was 
 uncertain that the result would be such. In the history 
 of British India there are two most interesting chapters — 
 I should say that in the whole history of the world there 
 are no chapters more instructive — in which we learn, 
 first how a mischievous reaction from India upon England 
 was prevented, secondly how European civilisation was 
 after much delay and hesitation resolutely brought to 
 bear upon India. The first chapter embraces chronologically 
 the first half of George III.'s reign, that stormy period of 
 transition in English history when at the same time America 
 was lost and India won. It covers the two great careers of 
 Olive and Hastings, and the end of the struggle is marked 
 by the reign of Lord Comwallis, which began in 1785. 
 The second chapter embraces about the first forty years 
 of the present century, and the crowning point of this 
 
y.] ■ MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA. 249 
 
 development is the Governor-Generalship of Lord William 
 Bentinck. For in the Indian Empire Lord Comwallis aiid 
 Lord W. Bentinck have been the two great legislators 
 after Hastings, as Lord Wellesley, Lord Hastings and Lord 
 JDalhousie have been, after Olive, the great conquerors, 
 and when we consider, as we are doing now, the progress 
 of civilisation in the Empire, the great legislators naturally 
 demand our attention most. 
 
 First then let us take note of the reaction which at the 
 beginning India threatened to have upon England, and 
 how this danger was averted. The literature of the 
 seventies and the eighties of the eighteenth century is 
 full of that alarm which found its strongest expression in 
 the speeches of Burke against Warren Hastiags. England 
 had taken a sudden plunge into the unknown abyss of 
 Hindu politics. Englishmen were becoming finance 
 ministers or comma,nders of mercenary troops to Mussul- 
 man Nawabs, and were bringing back to England the 
 plunder of the Mogul Empire, acquired no one knew how. 
 There were two dangers here, first lest the English 
 character should be corrupted, for those who take the 
 most favourable view of the Hindu character would admit 
 that Hindu politics in the last century were unspeakably 
 corrupt,, secondly, lest the wealthy adventurers, returning 
 to England and entering into English political life with 
 ideas formed in Asia, should upset the balance of the 
 constitution. This was particularly to be feared under 
 the old electoral system, which allowed so many seats in 
 Parliament to be put up to sale. Moreover in an age when 
 Government derived its chief power from patronage, there 
 was a danger lest one of the contending parties should 
 make a snatch at the vast patronage of India, a prize 
 which, whether it fell to the King or to the Whig part}--, 
 would probably make its possessor supreme in the State. 
 
250 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. fi^C*.' 
 
 To give you a specimen of the fears which were enters 
 tained by leading men I will read a passage from William 
 Pitt's motion for parliamentary reform made in 1782. He 
 said, 'Our laws have with a jealous care provided that no 
 foreigner shall give a single vote for a representative in 
 Parliament; and yet we now see foreign princes not giving 
 votes but purchasing seats in this House, and sending 
 their agents to sit with us as representatives of the nation. 
 No man can doubt what I allude to. We have sitting 
 among us the members of the Kajah of Tanjore and the 
 Nawab of Arcot, the representatives of petty Eastern 
 despots; and this is notorious, publicly talked of and 
 heard with indifference; our shame stalks abroad in the 
 Open face of day, it is become too common even to excite 
 surprise* We treat it as a matter of small importance 
 that some of the electors of Great Britain have added 
 treason to their corruption and have traitorously sold their 
 votes to foreign Powers ; that some of the members of our 
 Senate are at the command of a distant tyrant; that our 
 Senators are no longer the representatives of British 
 virtue but of the vices and pollutions of the East*. 
 
 The great incidents of this struggle are, the fall of 
 the Coalition Ministry on the India BiU of Fox and the 
 passing of the India Bill of Pitt, the trial of Warren 
 Hastings, the succession of Lord Comwallis to the Governor 
 Generalship, and the administrative reform carried out by 
 him in India. I merely touch these great occurrences 
 to mark their significance and to show what results flowed 
 from them. If I went into detail I might show that 
 much was unreasonable in the clamour raised against 
 the India Bill of Fox, and that there was much un- 
 reasonable violence in the attacks made upon Hastings. 
 I might also criticise the double system introduced by the 
 
v.] MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA. 251 
 
 India Bill of Pitt. But, taking a broad view, it must h& 
 said that the particular dangers feared were Very success- 
 fully averted, that Lord Comwallis established a title to 
 gratitude and Edmund Burke to immortal glory. For the 
 stain of immorality did pass away as by magic from the 
 administration of the Company under the rule of Lord 
 Comwallis, a lesson never to be forgotten was taught to 
 Governors General, and at the same time the political 
 danger from the connexion with India passed away. 
 
 England had broken the toils that threatened to 
 imprison her. But how far was she, who had so stoutly 
 refused to be influenced by India, entitled to influence India 
 in her turn. We could not fail to see the enormous differ- 
 ence between our civilisation and that of India, we could 
 not fail on the whole greatly to prefer our own. But had 
 we any right to impose our views upon the natives? We 
 had our own Christianity, our own views of philosophy, of 
 history and science ; but were we not bound by a sort of 
 tacit contract with the natives to hold all these things 
 officially in abeyance ? This was the view which was taken 
 at first. It was not admitted that England was to play the 
 part of Rome to her empire; no; she was to put her 
 civilisation on one side and govern according. to Indian 
 ideas. This view was the more winning as the new and 
 mysterious world of Sanscrit learning was revealing itself 
 to those first generations of Anglo-Indians. They were 
 under the charm of a remote philosophy and a fantastic 
 history. They were, as it was said, Brahminised, and would 
 not hear of admitting into their enchanted Oriental 
 enclosure either the Christianity or any of the learning of 
 the West. 
 
 I have not space left in this lecture to do more than 
 indicate how we were gradually led to give up this view and' 
 
252 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. ' [leck 
 
 to stand out boldly as teachers and civilisers. The change 
 began in 1813 when on the renewal of the Company's 
 charter a sum was directed to be appropriated to the 
 revival of learning and the introduction of useful arts and 
 sciences. Over this enactment an Education Committee 
 wrangled for twenty years. Were we to use our own 
 judgments, or were we to understand learning and science 
 in the Oriental sense ? Were we to teach Sanscrit and 
 Arabic, or English ? 
 
 Kever on this earth was a more momentous question 
 discussed. Under Lord William Bentinck in 1835 the 
 discussion came to a head, and by a remarkable coincidence 
 a famous man was on the spot to give lustre to and take 
 lustre from a memorable controversy. It was Macaulay's 
 Minute that decided the question in favour of English, In 
 that Minute or in Sir C. Trevelyan's volume on Education 
 in India you can study it. Only remark a strange over- 
 sight that was made. The question was discussed as if the 
 choice lay between teaching Sanscrit and Arabic on the 
 one hand, or English on the other. All these languages 
 alike are to the mass of the population utterly strange. 
 Arabic and English are foreign, and Sanscrit is to the Hindus 
 what Latin is to the natives of Europe. It is the original 
 language out of which the principal spoken languages have 
 been formed, but it is dead. It has been dead a far longer 
 time than Latin, for it had ceased to be a spoken language 
 in the third century before Christ. By far the greater part 
 of the famous Sanscrit poems and writings philosophical or 
 theological were written artificially and by a learned effort, 
 like the Latin poems of Vida and Sannazaro. Now over 
 Sanscrit Macaulay had an easy victory, for he had only to 
 show that English had poetry at least as good, and phi- 
 losophy history and science a great deal better. But why 
 
v.] MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA. 263 
 
 should there be no choice but between dead languages ? 
 Could Macaulay really fancy it possible to teach two hun- 
 dred and fifty millions of Asiatics English ? Probably not, 
 probably he thought only of creating a small learned class. 
 I imagine too that his own classical training had implanted 
 in his mind a fixed assumption that a dead language is 
 necessary to education. But if India is really to be en- 
 lightened, evidently it must be through the medium 
 neither of Sanscrit nor of English, but of the vernaculars, 
 that is Hindustani, Hindi, Bengali &c. These, under some 
 vague impression that they were too rude to be made the 
 vehicles of science or philosophy, Macaulay almost refuses 
 to consider, but against these bis arguments in favour of 
 English would have been powerless. 
 
 But though this great oversight was made — it has since 
 been remarked and, since the education dispatch of Sir 
 Charles Wood in 1854, in some measure repaired — 'the 
 decision to which Macaulay's minute led remains the great 
 landmark in ,the history of our Empire considered as an 
 institute of civilisation. It marks the moment when we 
 deliberately recognised that a function had devolved on 
 us in Asia similar to that which Rome fulfilled in Europe, 
 the greatest function which any Government can ever be 
 called upon to discharge. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 PHASES IN THK CONQUESX OF INDIA. 
 
 The sum of what I have laid before you up to this 
 point is that in India a result has been produced by causes 
 less wonderful than is commonly supposed, which result is 
 in magnitude more wonderful, and in the consequences 
 which may possibly flow from it far more wonderful and 
 great, than is imagined. But in showing how such a 
 result could be produced without a miracle I have laid 
 stress upon another peculiarity of this Empire which is of 
 fundamental importance, namely the slightness of the 
 machinery which connects it with England. Let us now 
 remark that in this respect our Indian Empire resembles 
 our colonies. There is of course this vast difference that 
 our chief colonies determine in most matters their own 
 policy through Governments which spring up by a con- 
 stitutional process out of the colonial assembly, and that 
 India has no such independent initiative, the Viceroy 
 himself being liable to be overruled by the Indian Secretary 
 at home. But at the same time there is this great re- 
 semblance, that India, like the colonies, has been held, at 
 
IJIOT. VI.] PHASES IK THE CONQUEST OF INDIA. 255 
 
 arm's-length, that its Government has never been suffered 
 to approach the Home Government so closely as to blend 
 with it, or to modify its character, or to hamper its inde- 
 pendent development, India is both constitutionally and 
 financially an independent Empire. If the Empire of the 
 Great Mogul had continued in its original vigour up to 
 the present time, no doubt in foreign affairs the history 
 ef England would differ considerably from what it is. 
 Several of our wars with France would have taken a 
 different turn, especially that war of which the Egyptian 
 expedition of Bonaparte was a main incident. We can 
 imagine too that the Crimean War would not have happened, 
 and that we should not have taken the interest we did in 
 the recent Eusso-Turkish War. But the constitution of 
 the English state would have been precisely what it is, and 
 our domestic history would have run almost exactly the 
 same course. Only once, I think, namely in 17S3, has 
 India come quite into the foreground of parliamentary 
 debate and absorbed the attention of the political world. 
 Even in the Mutiny of 1857, deeply as our feelings were 
 stirred, the course of home politics was not affected by the 
 ^.ffairs of India. 
 
 Accordingly if the Indian Empire were lost the im- 
 mediate and purely political effects of the change would 
 not be great. A Secretaryship of State would disappear ; 
 the work of Parliament would be lightened. Our foreign 
 policy would be relieved of a great burden of anxiety. 
 Otherwise little would immediately be changed. In this 
 respect I say the Indian Empire resembles the colonies, and 
 we are led to perceive a universal characteristic of that 
 expansion of England which is the subject of these lectures. 
 I have remarked before that this expansion does not seem 
 at first sight to be of the nature of organic growth. When 
 
256 EXPANSION 01", ENGLAND. ..[lect; 
 
 tlie boy expands into the man, the boy disappears. He 
 does not increase by an accretion visibly different from th^ 
 original boy and attached to him so as to be easily peeleql 
 off. But it is in such a way that England seems to have 
 increased. For the original England remains distinctly 
 visible at the heart of Greater Britain, she still forms a 
 distinct organism complete in herself, and she has not even 
 formed the habit of thinking of her colonies and her Indian 
 Empire along with herself. 
 
 Turgot compared colonies to fruit which hangs on 
 the tree only till it is ripe. And indeed it might seem 
 natural to picture the aggregate of English communities 
 rather as a family than as an individual. We may say 
 that the England of QueeQ_ Elizabeth's time has now 
 a large family scattered over distant seas, that this family 
 consists for the moSt part of thriving- colbnies, but that 
 it includes also a coi-poration which had the good luck in 
 the course of its trade to become ruler of a vast country. 
 There is no objection to such an image, provided it is re- 
 garded only as an image, and is not converted by sleight of 
 hand into an argument. But we know that a family, at 
 least in the present state of society, is always tending 
 towards practical dissolution. It is a close union so long as 
 the children are young; it becomes a federation, and at last 
 a loose federation, as they grow up; finally, in the present 
 state of society, as the grown-up sons disperse or emigrate 
 in quest of a livelihood and the daughters are married, it 
 often ceases practically to be a federation or even a perma- 
 nent alliance. Now we may call our Empire a family, but 
 we must not without further investigation assume that it 
 will have the fate which cannot even be said generally to 
 attend literal families, but which attends them in the very 
 peculiar form of society in which we happen to live. The 
 
VI.] PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA. 257 
 
 dissolving causes which act upon families do not act in an 
 equal degree upon states, and, what is especially to be ob- 
 served, they do not act upon them nearly so much as they 
 used to do. In the time of Turgot and of the American 
 Kevolution there was much force in the comparison between 
 a distant dependency^and a son who had left home and so 
 practically passed out of the family. But there is much 
 less force in it at the present day, when inventions have 
 drawn the whole globe close together, and a new form of 
 state on a larger scale than was known in former ages has 
 appeared in Russia and the United States. 
 
 This consideration should make us hesitate in drawing 
 the obvious conclusion from the great fact that the con- 
 nexion of England with her colonies and her Indian Empire 
 has been all along so remarkably slight. Above I pointed 
 out with respect to the colonies that, though their con- 
 nexion with the mother-country was loose at the outset, 
 so that the secession of the American colonies was a 
 natural effect of the causes then in operation, yet the 
 connexion does not steadily grow slighter and slighter, but 
 on the contrary increases and becomes closer. The colonies 
 have practically approached much nearer to us, all that 
 was invidious in the old colonial* system has been repealed, 
 and they have now become a natural outlet for a super- 
 fluous population, whereas in the old time, when there was 
 as yet no surplus population, they were peopled principally 
 by discontented refugees, who bore a grudge against the 
 country they had left. A similar law governs our con- 
 nexion with India. The machinery by which the con- 
 nexion is maintained is slight. England has not allowed 
 herself to be hampered by her relation to India. Enor- 
 mous as the dominion is, England remains what she was 
 before she acquired it, so that, as I have said, the connexion 
 S, L. 17 
 
258 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leci, 
 
 could be broken any day, though it has lasted a hundred 
 years, without any violent wrench or any dislocation in our 
 domestic system. But if it be inferred from this that a 
 connexion so slight must sooner or later snap, before we can 
 admit such an inference we/jnust consider another question. 
 In which direction is the tendency ? Does the slight con- 
 nexion grow looser and looser, or does it on the other hand 
 tighten with time ? And here again, as in the case of the 
 colonies, we shall find that the general tendency of our age, 
 which brings together what is remote and which favours 
 large political unions, operates to strengthen rather than 
 to weaken the connexion between England and India. 
 
 MaccuUoch, in the Note on India in his edition of 
 Adam Smith, speaks of the trade between England and 
 India about 1811, that is in the days of the monopoly, as 
 being utterly insignificant, of little more importance than 
 that between England and Jersey or the Isle of Man. 
 Now if trade be one of the principal bonds which unite 
 communities together, we shall have some criterion of the 
 tendency and of the strength of the tendency, whether 
 towards union or towards separation, between England and 
 India, by comparing the present with the former state 
 of the trade between the two countries. It was supposed 
 in old times that the Hindus had unalterable habits, and 
 therefore that they would never become consumers of 
 European produce. But now instead of Jersey or the Isle 
 of Man we compare our trade with India to that with the 
 United States and France, that is, with the greatest 
 commercial communities, and we find that thousrh indeed 
 we receive from India much less than from them (thirty- 
 two millions, as against thirty-nine from France and not 
 less than a hundred and three from America in 1881) yet 
 India comes next to them as an exporting country, and on 
 
VI.] PHASES m THE CONQUEST OP INDIA. 259 
 
 the other hand India heads France and all other nations 
 except the United States as an importer from England, for 
 she took in the same year twenty-nine millions, whereas 
 the countries which came next, that is, Australia and Ger- 
 many, took twenty-one and seventeen respectively. 
 
 Now here is a prodigious advance which has been made 
 in the present century, and it measures, you will observe, 
 the gradual approach of the two populations towards each 
 other, not their gradual separation from each other. And 
 thus, though politically the direct effects of disruption 
 would not be great, economically they would be enormous. 
 For we are to remember that it is owing to the political 
 connexion between the two countries that this commercial 
 intercourse has been allowed to exist, and that it would 
 cease perhaps if India became independent, and certainly 
 if she passed into the hands of another European Power 
 such as Russia. At the beginning of the century indeed 
 we might have severed ourselves from India with little 
 anxiety, and those struggles with France about our com- 
 mercial factories at Madras, Bombay and Calcutta may 
 seem to have had no sufficient motive, since the trade 
 carried on at those stations was but insignificant. It is no 
 longer so; the commercial stake we have in India is now 
 very large; that is, we are more closely bound to India than 
 we were. Look again at the moral approach that England 
 has made towards India during the same time. Originally 
 we had no sort of interest in the affairs of the Hindus 
 among whom we had stationed commercial agencies. The 
 Mogul Empire or the dissolution of the Mogul Empire did 
 not concern us. It was no affair of ours whether the 
 Hindus had a bad Government, or had no Government at 
 all and were merely the prey of armed plunderers. Even 
 when we began to conquer them, it was not- on their 
 
 17—2 
 
260 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 account but partly to resist the French, partly to protect 
 our factories from sudden attack. For a long time after 
 the Company had become a sovereign' Power, this in- 
 difference on our part to the welfare of the natives con- 
 tinued. Adam Smith, writing in the eighties or about the 
 end of the reign of Warren Hastings, says that there 
 never was a Government so wholly indifferent to the 
 welfare of its subjects. This was only the natural conse- 
 quence of the false, position in which a trading company 
 suddenly turned into a Government found itself. The 
 anomaly and the effect of it could not but last as long 
 as the Company. But since 18-58 it has been removed. 
 The very appearance of a selfish object is gone. The 
 Government is now as sincerely paternal as any Government 
 can be, and, as I explained, it has abandoned the affec- 
 tation of not imparting the superior enlightenment we 
 know ourselves to possess on the ground that the Hindus 
 do not want it. 
 
 At the same time the introduction of the telegraph 
 and the shortening of the voyage to India, first by the 
 overland route and since by the Suez Canal, has brought 
 India much more within reach of England. It has often 
 been contended that the effect of this change is bad, that 
 the constant interference of Downing Street and still 
 more of English public opinion is mischievous. Let this be 
 granted for argument's sake. Whether it be desirable or 
 undesirable that iitiiiiA should be more closely united with 
 India, is not now the question. What concerns us at 
 present is the fact that, for good or for evil, the connexion 
 of England with India does not diminish but increases. 
 fc<^ Once more, let us remark the speed with which our 
 intercourse with India increases. Mr Cunningham in his 
 volume lately published, entitled 'British India and its 
 
VI.] PHASES m THE CONQUEST OF INDIA. 261 
 
 Rulers' compares the increase of the foreign trade of 
 India between 1820 and 1880 with that of the foreign 
 trade of Great Britain itself in the same period. This 
 last increase has often excited astonishment: English 
 foreign trade rose from about 80 to about 650 millions 
 sterling. But Mr Cunningham points out that the 
 increase of Indian trade in the same period has been even 
 greater, and, as of course the foreign trade of India is 
 principally with England, it follows that the tendency to 
 commercial union between the two countries is pro- 
 digiously strong, so that fifty years hence, if no catastrophe 
 takes place, the union will be infinitely closer than it is 
 now. 
 
 If we combine all the facts I have hitherto adduced 
 in order to form a conception of our Indian Empire, the 
 result is very singular. An Empire similar to that of 
 Rome, in which we hold the position not merely of a 
 ruling but of an educating and^civilisiug race (and thus, as 
 in the marriage of Faust with Helen of Greece, one age is 
 married to another, the modem European to the medieval 
 Asiatic spirit) ; this Empire held at arm's length, paying no 
 tribute to us, yet costing , nothing except through the 
 burden it imposes on our foreign policy, and neither 
 modifying nor perceptibly influencing our busy domestic 
 politics ; this Empire nevertheless held firmly and with a 
 grasp which does not slacken but visibly tightens; the 
 union of England and India, ill-assorted and unnatural as 
 it might seem to be, nevertheless growing closer and closer 
 with great rapidity under the influence of the modern 
 conditions of the world, which seem favourable to vast 
 political unions ; all this makes up the strangest, most 
 curious, and perhaps most instructive chapter of English 
 history. It has been made the subject of much empty boast- 
 
233 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. 
 
 ii)g, while those who have looked deeper have often been 
 disposed to regard the whole enterprise with despondency, 
 as a kind of romantic adventure which can lead to nothing 
 permanent. But as time passes it rather appears that we 
 are in the hands of a Providence which is greater than all 
 statesmanship, that this fabric so blindly piled up has a 
 chance of becoming a part of the permanent edifice of 
 civilisation, and that the Indian achievement of England 
 as it is the strangest, may after all turn out to be the 
 greatest, of all her achievements. 
 
 At this point again we are led to turn our eyes from 
 the present to the past and to inquire how it could happen 
 to us to undertake such an enterprise. I devoted a 
 lecture to the historical question by what force we were 
 able to subdue the people of India to our government ; 
 but this question is different. That was the question, 
 how ? this is the question, why ? We see that without 
 any supernatural force or genius it was possible to raise 
 such an Empire, but what was the motive which impelled 
 us to do it ? How many lives, some of them noble and 
 heroic, many of them most laborious, have been spent in 
 piling up this structure of empire ! Why did they do it ? 
 Or if they themselves looked no further than their instruc- 
 tions, what was the motive of the authority that gave 
 them their instructions ? If this was the Company, why 
 did the Company desire to conquer India, and what could 
 they gain by doing so ? If it was the English Government, 
 what Gould be its object, and how could it justify such 
 an undertaking to Parliament ? We may have been at 
 times too warlike, but the principal wars we have waged 
 have borne the appearance at least of being defensive. 
 Naked conquest for its own sake has never had attractions 
 foi- us. What then did we propose to ourselves ? 
 
Ti.] PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDU. 263 
 
 The English Government assuredly has gained nothing 
 through this acquisition, for if it has not hampered their 
 budgets by the expense of conquest, on the other hand it has 
 not lightened them by any tribute. If we hope to discover 
 the guilty party by the old plan of asking Cui bono ? that 
 is, Who profited by it? the answer must be, English 
 Commerce has profited by it. We have here a great 
 foreign trade, which may grow to be enormous, and this 
 trade is secured to us so long as we are masters of the 
 Government of India. Here no doubt is a substantial 
 acquisition, which stands us in good stead now that we 
 find by experience how tenacious of protection foreign 
 Governments are. May it then be assumed that this trade 
 has been our sole object aU along ? 
 
 The hypothesis is plausible, and it is made more 
 plausible still when we remark that our Empire began 
 evidently in commerce. To defend oar factories and for 
 no other purpose we took arms in the first instance. Our 
 first wars in India, as they belong to the same time so 
 belong evidently to the same class, as our colonial wars 
 with France. They were produced by the same great 
 cause on which I have insisted so much, the competition 
 of the Western states for the wealth of the regions dis- 
 covered in the fifteenth century. We had trade-settle- 
 ments in India as we had trade-settlements in America. 
 In both countries we encountered the same rivals, the 
 French. In both countries English and French traders 
 shook their fists at each other from rival commercial 
 stations. In America our New England and Virginia 
 stood opposed to their Acadie and Canada; and similarly 
 our Madras, Calcutta and Bombay stood opposed in India 
 to their Pondieherry, Ghandernagore and Mahee. 
 
 The crisis came in America and India at once between 
 
264 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leo*. 
 
 1740 and 1760, when in two wars divided by a very 
 hollow and imperfect peace these two states struggled for 
 supremacy, and in both quarters England was victorious. 
 From victory over France in India we proceeded without 
 a pause to empire over the Hindus. This fact, combined 
 with the other fact equally striking of the great trade 
 which now exists between England and India, leads very 
 naturally to a theory that our Indian Empire has grown 
 up from first to last out of the spirit of trade. We may 
 imagine that after having established our settlements 
 on the coast and defended these settlements both from 
 the native Powers and from the envy of the Frenchy we 
 then conceived the ambition of extending our commerce 
 further inland ; that perhaps we met with new States, 
 such as Mysore or the Mahratta Confederacy, which at 
 first were unwilling to trade with us, but that in our eager 
 avarice we had recourse to force, let loose our armies upon 
 them, broke down their custom-houses and flooded their 
 territories in turn ^ith our commodities, that in this way 
 we gradually advanced our Indian trade, which at first was 
 insignificant,, until it became considerable, and at last, when 
 we had not only intimidated but actually overthrown 
 every great native Government, when there was no longer 
 any Great Mogul or any Sultan of Mysore or any Peishwa 
 of the Mahrattas or any Nawab Vizir of Oude or any 
 Maharajah and Khalsa of the Sikhs, then, all restraints 
 having been removed, our trade became enormous. 
 
 But it will be found on closer examination that the 
 facts do not answer to this theory. True it is that our 
 Empire began in trade, and that lately there has been an 
 enormous development of trade. But the course of affairs 
 in history is not necessarily a straight line, so that when 
 any two points in it are determined its whole course is 
 
Ti.] PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA. 265 
 
 known. The truth is that if the spirit of English trade 
 had been thus irrepressible and bent upon overcoming 
 all the obstacles which lay in its path, it would not have 
 raised wars in India, for the main obstacle was not there. 
 The main obstacle to English trade was not the jealousy 
 of native Princes, but the jealousy of the East India 
 Company itself. Accordingly th^re ,has been no corre- 
 spondence in time between the increase of trade and the 
 advance of conquest. 
 
 Our trade on the contrary continued to be insignificant 
 in spite of all our conquests until about 1813, and it began 
 to advance tvith great rapidity soon after 1830. These 
 dates point to the true cause of progress in trade, and they 
 show that it is wholly independent of progress in conquest, 
 for they are the dates of the successive Acts of Parliament 
 by which the Company was deprived of its monopoly. 
 Thus it appears that, while it was by the East India 
 Company that India was conquered, it was not by the 
 East India Company, but rather by the destruction of the 
 East India Company, that the great trade with India was 
 brought into existence. Our conquests in India were 
 made by an exclusive chartered Company, but our Indian 
 trade did not greatly prosper until that Company ceased 
 practically to exist. 
 
 In order to make this clearer it will be convenient here 
 to give such an outline of the history of the East India 
 Company as may mark the principal stages of its progress 
 and those alone. The East India Company then came 
 into existence in the year 1600, that is, near the end of 
 Queen Elizabeth's reign. In the view we are now taking 
 of the expansion of England it deserves note that this 
 occurrence took place just at that tirne and at no time 
 either earlier or later. England, we have seen, assumed 
 
2fi6 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lec*. 
 
 its modern, that is, its maritime and oceanic, character 
 about the time of the Spanish Armada, since it was then 
 that its first race of naval heroes appeared, and then 
 too that it made its first attempts to colonise America. 
 If this general statement be true, we ought to look in 
 this period also for our first settlements in India. Just 
 in this period we find them, for the creation of the East 
 India Company took place twelve years after the defeat of 
 the Armada. 
 
 It was created for trade, and it remained devoted to 
 trade for a hundred and forty-eight years. During this 
 period several important occurrences in its history took 
 place, but none so important as to deserve our attention 
 here. It was in 1748 that the disturbances occurred in 
 the Deccan which forced the Company to undertake on 
 a considerable scale the functions of government and war. 
 Then began its second and memorable period, which is 
 nearly as long as the first; it embraces a hundred and 
 ten years and ends with the abolition of the Company 
 by Act of Parliament in 1858. It is this second period 
 alone with which we are concerned at present. In order 
 to understand the course of development we must endea- 
 vour to subdivide it. 
 
 It happens accidentally that there is a certain regularity 
 in the course of events over a great part of this period, 
 which rarely occurs in history and which is very helpful to 
 the memory. The Company being dependent on Parlia- 
 ment for a renewal of its Charter and its affairs having 
 since 1748 taken such a strange turn, it was natural that 
 Parliament should grant the renewal only for a definite 
 term, and at the end of the term should reconsider the 
 condition of the Company and make alterations in its 
 organisation. In this way the Company became subject 
 
VI.] PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OP INDIA. £67 
 
 to a transformation which was strictly periodic and re- 
 curred at absolutely equal intervals. These intervals were 
 of the length of twenty years beginning with Lord North's 
 Eegulating Act in 1773. If then we bear this date in 
 mind, we acquire at the same time four other dates which 
 of necessity are of primary importance in the history of 
 the Company. These are 1793, 1813, 1833 and 1853. 
 
 We shall find these five dates quite as important as we 
 might expect, and they form a very convenient framework 
 for the history of the Company. The first is one of the 
 most important of all. If 1748 marks the beginning of 
 the movement which led to the creation of British India, 
 1773 may be said to mark the creation itself of British 
 India. In that year began the line of Governors-General, 
 though for a long time they had not the title of Governor- 
 General of India but only of Bengal; then too was founded 
 the Supreme Court of Calcutta. The enormous danger 
 which attended the new state of our Indian affairs was at 
 the same time met, and the root of corruption cut through, 
 by the abolition of the power in the Company's affairs of 
 the share-holders or so-called Proprietors. 
 
 The next renewal in 1793 is less important, though 
 the debates which then took place are interesting now for 
 the picture they present of the phase of Anglo-Indian life 
 when it was brahminised, when the attempt was made to 
 keep India as a kind of inviolate paradise, into which no 
 European and especially no missionary should be suffered 
 to penetrate. But the date 1793 is itself as important as 
 any other, being the date not merely of a renewal of the 
 Charter, but also of the famous Permanent Settlement of 
 Bengal, one of the most memorable acts of legislation in 
 the history of the world. 
 
 It was at the next renewal in 1813 that the aged 
 
268 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [leoi. 
 
 Warren Hastings, then in his eightieth year, came from 
 his retirement to give evidence before the House of 
 Commons. This date marks the moment when the mo- 
 nopoly begins to crumble away, when the brahminical 
 period comes to an end and England prepares to pour 
 the civilisation, Christianity and science of the West into 
 India. 
 
 In 1833 the monopoly disappears and the Company 
 may perhaps be said practically to have ceased to exist. 
 Henceforward it is little more than a convenient organisa- 
 tion, convenient because of the tradition it represents ^ 
 and the experience which it guards, by means of which 
 India is governed from England. At this time too the 
 systematic legislative labours of our Indian Government 
 begin. 
 
 Finally 1853 is the date of the introduction of the 
 system of appointment by competition. That old question 
 which had convulsed England in 1783 and which states- 
 men had been afraid to touch since, the question who 
 should have the patronage of India or how it should be 
 dispensed without shaking the constitution of England, 
 was in this way solved. 
 
 But here we are reminded that history cannot for a 
 very long time proceed in this regular manner so con- 
 venient to our memories. The convulsion of 1857 put a 
 final end to this periodicity, and 1873, the centenary of the 
 Regulating Act, is no great Indian date. 
 
 It appears from this outline that 1813 is the date 
 when the monopoly was first seriously curtailed and 1833 
 the date when it was destroyed. Now Macculloch when 
 he speaks of the utter insignificance of our old trade with 
 India has before him the statistics up to the year 1811, 
 and the statistics which show so vast an increase in the 
 
Ti.] PHASES m THE CONQUEST OP INDIA. 269 
 
 modem trade refer to the years after 1813, and especially 
 to those after 1833. In other words, so long as India was 
 in the hands of those whose object was trade, the trade 
 remained insignificant; the trade became great and at last 
 enormous, when India began to be governed for itself and 
 trade-considerations to be disregarded. This might seem 
 a paradox, did we not remember that in dismissing trade- 
 considerations we also destroyed a monopoly. But there 
 is nothing wonderful in the fact that an exclusive 
 Company, even when its first object is trade, carries on 
 trade languidly, nothing wonderful in a vast trade springs 
 ing up as soon as the shackles of monopoly were removed. 
 
 On the other hand we do not find that the increase of 
 trade corresponds at all to the augmentation of our terri- 
 torial possessions in India. 
 
 There have been four great rulers in India to whom 
 the German title of Mehrer des Reichs or Increaser of the 
 Empire might be given. These are Lord Clive, the 
 founder, Lord Wellesley, Lord Hastings and Lord Dalhousie. 
 Roughly it may be said that the first established us along 
 the Eastern Coast from Calcutta to Madras; the second 
 and third overthrew the Mahratta power and estabhshed 
 us as lords of the middle of the country and of the Western 
 side of the peninsula, and the fourth, besides consolidating 
 these -conquests, gave us the northwest and carried our 
 frontier to the Indus. There were considerable intervals 
 between these conquests, and accordingly they fall into 
 separate groups. Thus there was a period of conquest 
 between 1748 and 1765, which we may label with the 
 name of Clive, a second period beginning in 1798, which 
 may be said to have lasted, though with a long pause, till 
 about 1820 ; this period may bear the names of Wellesley 
 and Lord Hastings; and a third period of war between 
 
270 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [iect. 
 
 1839 and 1850, but of this the first part was unfortunate, 
 and only the second part led to conquests, of which it fell 
 to Lord Dalhousie to reap the harvest. 
 
 Now there was no correspondence whatever in time 
 between these territorial advances and the advance of 
 trade. Thus we remarked how insignificant the trade of 
 India still was in 1811, and yet this was shortly after the 
 vast annexations of Lord Wellesley. On the other hand 
 trade took a great leap about 1830, and this is one of the 
 peaceful intervals of the history. About the time of the 
 mutiny annexation almost ceased, and yet the quarter of 
 a century in which no conquests have been made has been 
 a period of the most rapid growth in trade. 
 
 And thus the assertion which is often made and which 
 seems to be suggested by a rapid survey of the history, 
 the assertion namely that the Empire is the mere result 
 of a reckless pursuit of trade, proves to be as untrue as the 
 other assertion sometimes made, that it is the result of a 
 reckless spirit of military aggression* 
 
 Our first step to empire was very plainly taken with 
 a view simply of defending our factories. The Madras 
 Presidency grew out of an effort, which in the first instance 
 was quite necessary, to protect Fort St George and Fort 
 St David from the French. The Bengal Presidency grew 
 in a similar way out of the evident necessity of protecting 
 Fort William and punishing the Mussulman Nawab of 
 Bengal, Surajah Dowlah, for his atrocity of the Black 
 Hole. 
 
 So far then the causation is clear. In the period 
 which immediately followed, the revolutionary and corrupt 
 period of British India, it is undeniable that we were 
 hurried on by mere rapacity. The violent proceedings of 
 Warren Hastings at Benares, in Oude, and Rohilcund 
 
VI.] PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA. 271 
 
 were of the nature of money-speculations. If the later 
 history of British India had been of the same kind, our 
 Empire might fairly he said to be similar to the Empire of 
 the Spanish in Hispaniola and Peru, and to have sprung 
 entirely out of the reckless pursuit of gain. 
 
 But a change took place with the advent of Lord 
 Cornwallis in 1785. Partly by the example of his high 
 character, partly by a judicious reform, which consisted in 
 making the salaries of the servants of the Company 
 considerable enough to remove the excuse for corruption, 
 he purged the service of its immorality. From that time 
 it has been morally respectable. Now among the conse- 
 quences of this change we might expect, if gain were the 
 principal inducement to conquest, to see the aggressions of 
 the Company cease. For not only had its agents from 
 this time a character to lose, but it was also impossible 
 for it to engage in purely wicked enterprises of conquest, 
 since under the double government introduced by Pitt in 
 1784 it would have had to make the English Ministry its 
 accomplice. Now the English Ministry may be supposed 
 capable of crimes of ambition, but hardly of corrupt 
 connivance at the sordid crimes of a trading-company. 
 
 The truth is that from the time of Pitt's India Bill the 
 supreme management of Indian affairs passed out of the 
 hands of the Company. Thenceforward therefore an enter- 
 prise begun for purposes of trade fell under the manage- 
 ment of men who had no concern with trade. Thence- 
 forward two English statesmen divided between themselves 
 the decision of the leading Indian questions, the President 
 of- the Board of Control and the Governor-General, and as 
 long as the Company lasted the leading position belonged 
 rather to the Governor-General than to the President of 
 the Board. . Now it was under this system that the 
 
272 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. Ileoi. vi. 
 
 conquest of India for the most part was made, and it is 
 certain that in this period the spirit of trade did not 
 preside over our Indian affairs. 
 
 With the appearance of Lord Wellesley as Governor- 
 General in 1798 a new era begins in Indian policy. He 
 first laid down the theory of intervention and annexation. 
 His theory was afterwards adopted by Lord Hastings, who, 
 by the way, before he became Governor-Generalhad opposed 
 it. Later again it was adopted with a kind of fanaticism 
 by the last of the Governors-General who ruled in the 
 time of the Company, Lord Dalhousie. 
 
 Now this is the theory which led to the conquest of 
 India, I have not left myself space in this lecture to 
 examine it. I can only say that it does not aim at 
 increase of trade, and that accordingly, instead of being 
 favoured, it was usually opposed by the Company. The 
 Company resisted Lord Wellesley and censured Lord 
 Hastings; if they were strangely compliant in dealing 
 with Lord Dalhousie, it is to be remarked that in his time 
 the directors had practically ceased to represent a trading 
 Company. The theory was often applied in a most high- 
 handed manner. Lord Dalhousie in particular stands out 
 in history as a ruler of the type of Frederick the Great, 
 and did deeds which are almost as difficult to -justify as the 
 seizure of Silesia or the Partition of Poland. But these 
 acts, if crimes, are crimes of the same order as those of 
 Frederick, crimes of ambition and of an ambition not by 
 any means purely selfish. Neither he nor any of the 
 great Governors-General since Warren Hastings can be 
 suspected for a moment of sordid rapacity, and thus we 
 see that our Indian Empire, though it began in trade and 
 has a great trade for one of its results, yet was not really 
 planned by tradesmen or for purposes of trade. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DANGERS. 
 
 Foe estimating the stability of an Empire there are 
 certain plain tests which the political student ought td 
 have at his fingers" ends. Of these some are applied to 
 its internal organisation, and some to its external condi- 
 tions, just as an insurance company in estimating the 
 value of a life will take the opinion of the medical officer, 
 who will feel the candidate's pulse and listen to his 
 heart, but they will also inquire how and where the 
 candidate lives, and whether his pursuits or habits expose 
 him to any peculiar risks from without. Now I have 
 partly applied the internal test. The internal test of the 
 vitality of a state consists in ascertaining whether or no 
 the Government rests upon a solid basis. For in every 
 state besides the two things which are obvious to aU, viz., 
 the Government and the governed, there is a third thing, 
 which is overlooked by most of us and yet is usually not 
 difficult to distinguish, I mean the power outside the 
 Government which holds the Government up. This power 
 may be slight or it may be substantial, and according to 
 its solidity, or rather according to the ratio of its strength 
 S.L. 18 
 
274 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leoi. 
 
 to that of the powers which tend to overthrow the Govern- 
 ment, is that Government's chance of duration. KTow 
 I made some inquiry into the strength of the supports 
 upon which the Government in India rests, but rather 
 with a view of explaining how it stands now than whether 
 it is likely to last a long time. Let us reconsider then 
 with this other object the conclusions at which we 
 arrived. 
 
 We found that the Government did not rest, as in 
 England, upon the consent of the people or of some division 
 of the people which has created the Government by a con- 
 stitutional process. The Government is in every respect, 
 race, religion, habits, foreign to' the people. There is only 
 one body of persons of which we can positively aflEirm that 
 without its support the Government could not stand; 
 this is the army. Of this army one part is English, and 
 might be trusted to stand by the Government in all 
 circumstances, but it is less than a third part of the whole. 
 The other two-thirds are bound to us by nothing but their 
 pay and the feeling of honour which impels a good soldier 
 to be true to his flag. This is our visible support. Is 
 there beyond it any moral support which, though in- 
 visible, may be reckoned upon as substantial ? Here is a 
 question which affords room for much difference of opinion. 
 We are naturally inclined to suppose that the benefits we 
 have done the country by terminating the chronic anarchy 
 which a century ago was tearing it in pieces, and by 
 introducing so many evident improvements, must have 
 convinced all classes that onr Government ought to be 
 supported. But such a presumption is very rash. The 
 notion of a publito good, of a common weal, to which all 
 private interests ought to be subordinate, is one' which we 
 have no right to assume to be current in such a popula- 
 
VII.] , INTERNAL AND EXTEENAL DANGEES. 275 
 
 tion as that of India. It seems indeed to presuppose 
 precisely what we have found to he wanting, that is, a 
 moral unity or nationality in India. This being absent, 
 we ought to presume that instead of considering what 
 benefits our rule may confer upon, the country in general, 
 each class or interest inquires how it separately is affected 
 by our ascendancy, the Mussulman how his religion, the 
 Brahmin how his ancient social supremacy, the native 
 prince how his dignity, is affected by it. The great 
 benefit which we have conferred upon the country at large 
 in putting down general plunder and the omnipotence of 
 a mercenary soldiery is enjoyed perhaps mainly'a. clas"s fey, 
 which, though the most numerous, yet has Httle influence 
 and a short memory, that class so characteristic of India, 
 the small cultivators whose thoughts are absolutely wrapt 
 up in the difficult problem of existing, whose utmost am- 
 bition extends only to keeping body and soul together^ 
 Those who used to be plundered, tortured, massacred in 
 the chronic wars, ought no doubt to bless us; but the 
 plunderers, the murderers are not likely to do so; and 
 these, it may be, form the more influential class. It is 
 certain in fact that all those who under the old rule of 
 the Moguls used to be influential in India, those who used 
 to monopolise official posts, those who belong to the race 
 which used to rule and represent the religion which used 
 to dominate, all those therefore whose opinion of us might 
 be expected to be politically important, have suffered by 
 our ascendancy; and that all our philanthropic attempts to 
 raise the native races have had the effect of depressing 
 them, and that to such an extent that vast numbers of them 
 have been reduced to the greatest distress. The subject 
 has been discussed in Dr Hunter's book on the Mussul- 
 mans of India. In these circumstances it would be very 
 
 18—2 
 
276 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [i^ci. 
 
 rash to assume that any gratitude which may have been 
 aroused here and there by our administration can be more 
 than sufficient to counterbalance the discontent which we 
 have excited among those whom we have ousted from 
 authority and influence. 
 
 It remains then that our power rests on an army, and 
 on an army of which two-thirds are in relation to us 
 mere mercenaries. This may seem a slight support, 
 especially for so vast an authority, but we are to consider 
 on the other hand what is the force of opposition which 
 has to be overcome. And we find a population which by 
 habit and long tradition is absolutely passive, which has 
 been dragonnaded by foreign military Governments, until 
 the very conception of resistance has been lost. We find 
 also a population which has no sort of unity, in which 
 nationalities lie in layers, one under another, and lan- 
 guages wholly unlike each other are brought together by 
 composite dialects caused by fusion. In other words it is 
 a population which for the present is wholly incapable of 
 any common action. As I said, if it had a spark of that 
 corporate life which distinguishes a nation, it could not be 
 held in such a grasp as we lay upon it. But there is no 
 immediate prospect of such a corporate life springing up in 
 it. In the meanwhile our Government seems in ordinary 
 times sufficiently supported. It is considerably stronger 
 in many respects than it was at the. time of the mutiny. 
 The proportion of English to native troops in the army is 
 larger, and many precautions suggested by the mutiny 
 itself have been taken. A mutiny might happen again, 
 but so long as it is a mere mutiny there seems no reason 
 why it should be fatal to our power. The native troops 
 want native leadership, and so long as they find no 
 effective support in the people, so long as thdir own 
 
VII.] : INTEENAl AND EXTEENAL DAKGEES. 277 
 
 objects continue to be, as they were in the last mutiny, 
 wholly unpatriotic and selfish, so long as they can be 
 disbanded and replaced by another native army, the 
 position looked at purely from within seems tolerably 
 secure. But this statement at the same time brings to 
 light certain dangers. In the first place what is said of 
 the passive habits of the native population applies only 
 to the Hindus. The Mussulmans have in great part 
 different habits and different traditions. They do not 
 look back upon centuries of submission, but upon a period 
 not so long past when they were a ruling race. Secondly 
 we are to remember that, much as unity may be wanting, 
 one kind of unity, that of religion, is not wanting. There 
 is the powerful and active unity of Islam ; there is the 
 less active but still real unity of Brahminism. In Dr 
 Hunter's book on the Indian Mussulmans there is a 
 chapter entitled 'the chronic conspiracy within our 
 territory', in which is described the religious agitation 
 which under the influence of Wahabite preachers con- 
 stantly rouses against our Government (according to 
 Dr Hunter, but others deny this) just that part of the 
 population which has the proudest memories and there- 
 fore the keenest sense of indignation against the race 
 that has superseded them. Brahminism, though a 
 tenacious, is a much less inspiring religion. Still we all 
 remember the greased cartridges. The mutiny of 1857, 
 though mainly military, yet had a religious beginning. 
 It shows us what we might expect if the vast Hindu 
 population came to believe that their religion was attacked. 
 And we are to bear in mind that the Hindu religion is 
 not, like the Mohammedan, outside the region which 
 science claims as its own. We have always declared that 
 we held sacred the principle of religious toleration, and on 
 
278 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. ti-Eor. 
 
 that understanding we are obeyed ; but what if the Hindu 
 should come to regard the teaching of European science &s 
 being of itself an attack on his religion ? 
 
 Great religious movements then seem less improbable 
 than a nationality-movement. On the other hand the 
 religious forces, if they are livelier, neutralise each other 
 more directly. Islam and Hinduism confront each other, 
 the one stronger in faith, the other in numbers, and 
 create a sort of equilibrium. Is it conceivable that we 
 may some day find our Christianity a reconciling element 
 between ourselves and these contending religions ? We are 
 to remember that, as Islam is the crudest expression of 
 Semitic religion, Brahminisih on the other hand is an 
 expression of Aryan thought. Now among the religioBS 
 of the world Christianity stands out as a product of the 
 fusion of Semitic with Aryan ideas. It may be said 
 that India and Europe in respect of reKgion have both 
 the same elements, but that in India the elements 
 have not blended, while in Europe they have united in 
 Christianity. Judaism and classical Paganism were in 
 Europe at the beginrdng of our era what Mohammedanism 
 and Brahminism are now in India; but in India the 
 elements have remained separate, and have only made 
 occasional efforts to unite, as in the Sikh religion and in 
 the religion of Akber. In Europe a great fusion took 
 place by means of the Christian Church, which fusion has 
 throughout modern history been growing more and more 
 complete. 
 
 Such then is the appearance which our Empire wears 
 when it is looked at by itself and with reference only to 
 the internal forces which play upon it in India. But in 
 order to form any estimate of its chance of stability it is 
 equally important to consider what influences afiect it from 
 without. 
 
Til.] INTEBNAI AND EXTEENAL DANGEES. 279 
 
 Few countries known to history have been so isolated 
 as India. Between NearchuSj the Admiral of Alexander, 
 and Vasco da Gama no European conamander navigated 
 the Indian Ocean, but the Arabs appear to have made 
 naval descents on Sind as early as the time of the Caliph 
 Omar. With this exception the only traceable foreign 
 relation of India except towards the North has been with 
 Java, and here the influence Went forth from India, for we 
 find in the Kawi language of Java the strongest traces 
 both linguistic and literary of Hindu influence. What the 
 sea is to the peninsula that to the plain of the Ganges is 
 the enormous barrier of the Himalaya. It has the effect 
 of making India practically rather an island than a 
 peninsula. On this side too Indian influence has gone 
 forth into Central Asia, for it is to the north and the east 
 that Buddhism went forth to make its extensive conquests. 
 But on this side too there have been no political relations, 
 no wars or invasions of which we have any authentic 
 knowledge, except at a single point. 
 
 We can easily imagine therefore that the isolation of 
 India was tor thousands of years complete, and indeed the 
 natives told Alexander, the Great, when he appeared 
 among them, that they had never been invaded before. 
 
 But this isolation came to an end at last, because after 
 all India is not an island. It has one vulnerable point. 
 There is one point at which the mountain barrier can be 
 penetrated. It can be invaded from Persia or from Central 
 Asia through Afghanistan. Accordingly the whole history 
 of the foreign relations of India up to the time of Vasco da 
 Gama centres in Afghanistan. We may reckon perhaps 
 eight great invasions by this route. 
 
 The first is the most memorable of all, but no history 
 of it remains.. The Aryan race must have entered by this 
 
280 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [wcr. 
 
 route, or perhaps we must say that the Aryan race must 
 have come into existence here. The Afghans themselves 
 are Aryan by language, and the correspondence in certain 
 matters between the Zendavesta of Persia and the Vedas 
 of India leads us to place the original Aryan home of the 
 Sanscrit-speaking race somewhere on the frontier of India 
 and Persia. 
 
 - The next invasion was that of Alexander the Great, 
 famous enough in historyj for it first threw open the door 
 of India to the Western world. But it had no permanent 
 consequences, since the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom, which 
 for a time maintained a footing in India, came to an end 
 in the second century before Christ. 
 
 The third wants a history almost as much as the first. 
 It is the so-called Scythian invasion, or series of invasions of 
 the first centuries after Christ^ All-important as it is to 
 students of Sanscrit literature, it need not detain us here. 
 
 Then comes the invasion of Mahmoud of Ghazni (a. d. 
 1001). This is one of the most important, because it is at 
 once the end both of the isolation and of the independence 
 of India and also what may be called the practical discovery 
 of India for the rest of the world. Mahmoud is to India, 
 as it were, Columbus and Cortez in one. Since his time 
 foreign domination has never been interrupted, and the way 
 to India through the Khyber Pass has been a beaten road 
 trodden by many adventurers. In several respects too 
 Mahmoud is a precursor of the Great Moguls. He is by 
 birth a Turk, he has a petty throne in Afghanistan, and he 
 is irresistibly impelled to the conquest of India by his 
 Mussulman faith and by the near neighbourhood of the 
 shrines of idolatry. In all these points he resembles 
 Baber. 
 
 The fifth great invasion was that of Tamerlane in 1398. 
 
tn.] IHTEENAli AND EXTBENAL DANGERS. 281 
 
 It was purely destructive, but tas an importance of its own, 
 which however we shall understand better when we are in 
 a condition to compare it with the seventh and eighth 
 invasions. 
 
 Then Comes the invasion of Baber in 1524 and the 
 establishment of the Mogul Empire. What Mahmoud had 
 begun he and his successors carried out with more con- 
 tinuousness. Their empire was similar to the Mussulman 
 Empires which had preceded it, but firmer and more con- 
 solidated. 
 
 The seventh and eighth are desolating incursions like 
 that of Tamerlane. The one was undertaken by Nadir 
 Shah, the tyrant who seized the throne of Persia on the 
 fall of the Soft dynasty ; it took place in 1739, when the 
 Mogul Empire was already in full decline. The other 
 took place in 1760 ; the author of it was Ahmed Shah 
 Abdalij head of an Empire of Duranis, whose headquarters 
 were in Afghanistan ^ 
 
 Such are the principal invasions which India has 
 suffered. A review of them shows that, though India has 
 but this one point at which she is vulnerable by-l^id,-yet 
 at this point she is very vulnerable indeed. For a long 
 time indeed it seems that the way to invade her was not 
 discovered, but at least from the time of Mahmoud of 
 Ghuzni she has become peculiarly liable to invasion and 
 her history has been completely determined by it. For 
 she has shown extremely little power of resistance. The 
 history of India up to and outside of the English 
 conquest may be thus briefly summed up. It consists 
 in the first place of two great Mussulman conquests and 
 of a great Hindu reaction against the Mussulman power, 
 which took shape in the Mahratta confederacy ; the two 
 conquests were both made from Afghanistan; in the 
 
282 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. lusat. 
 
 second place, of the destruction of the two great Moham- 
 medan Powers in succession and the decisive humilia- 
 tion of the Mahratta Power; this was acomplishedhy 
 three other invasions from Afghanistan. That you may 
 understand how this is so I will ask you first to examine 
 the fall of the Mogul Empire, that is, the second of the 
 great Mussulman Powers., The ultimate cause of its fell, 
 was perhaps the unwise attempt of Aurungzebe to extend 
 it over the Deccan ; accordingly its decline began visibly at 
 Aurungzebe's death. But the decisive blow which was 
 mortal to it, which converted it from a sick man to a 
 dying man, was the devastating invasion of Nadir Shah, 
 who came down through Afghanistan in 1739. He sacked 
 Delhi, and so completely plundered the treasury that the 
 Mogul Government was never able to raise its head again. 
 In precisely the same way the Mahratta Power, just at the 
 moment when it seemed on the point of uniting aU India^ 
 was broken by the descent of Ahmed Shah Abdali from 
 Afghanistan and by the fatal battle of Paniput (in which 
 200,000 men are said to have fallen) in the year 1761, 
 that is, when the English were already making themselves 
 masters of Bengal. And it appears to me that, as these 
 two invasions were fatal to the Moguls and the Mahrattas, 
 so the earlier invasion of Tamerlane at the end of the 
 fourteenth century crushed the earlier Mussulman Power, 
 which just before under Mohammed Toghlak had reached 
 its greatest extension. 
 
 But now, as Mahmoud of Ghazni threw open India 
 to invasion from the north, Vasco da Gama opened it 
 to maritime invasion from Europe. This was, though it 
 did not seem so at the time, the greater achievement 
 of the two. For Mahmoud only established a connexion 
 between India and the Mussulman world of Western and 
 
vn.] INTEENAL AND EXTEENAL DANGEES, 283 
 
 Central Asia, but Vasco da Gama for the first time since 
 Alexander the Great connected it with Europe, and this 
 time it was Europe christianised and civilised. This could 
 not be remarked a,t the time because, while Mahmoud 
 came as a mighty conqueror, Vasco da Gama was but a 
 humble navigator. His discovery for a very long time led 
 tO' no political results. There followed a century which 
 I called the Spanish-Portuguese age of colonial history. 
 Almost throughout the sixteenth century the whole 
 newly-discovered oceanic world was in the hands of 
 two nations, and the Asiatic half of it almost exclusively 
 in the hands of the Portuguese. But in the last years of 
 that century the Dutch succeeded in taking their place. 
 As to the English, when the seventeenth century opened, 
 they were still but timid interlopers encroaching a little in 
 India upon the monopoly of the Dutch. 
 
 I explained above how at the end of the seven- 
 teenth century England and France had begun to take in 
 the colonial world the position which had belonged in 
 the sixteenth century to Spain and Portugal, and how the 
 whole eighteenth century is filled with the struggle 
 of these two nations for supremacy in it. In 1748 this 
 struggle breaks out violently in India, and it has already 
 become clear to Dupleix that the struggle is political 
 not merely commercial, and that the prize is nothing 
 less than an Indian Empire. Here then is a momentous 
 turning point in the history of Indian foreign relations; 
 Hitherto she had been connected with the outer world 
 only through Afghanistan; henceforth she is to be con- 
 nected with it also by the sea. 
 
 This new connexion, once established, for a time 
 eclipses the old, especially in the eyes of the English 
 conquerors themselves.. As I have said before, the enemy 
 
284 , EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [mwu' 
 
 whom the English for a long time continued to dread 
 most in India was their earliest enemy, France. Invasions 
 from Afghanistan had not indeed ceased. Nadir Shah's 
 invasion took place only nine years before that year 1748, 
 from -which we date the rise of the British Empire. The 
 invasion of Ahmed Shah Abdali took place thirteen 
 years later. But these occurrences did not much attract 
 the attention of the English. For we are to bear in mind 
 that, though they had begun to conquer, they did not yet 
 dream how far their conquests would carry them. 
 Because they were now firmly planted as territorial rulers 
 in the neighbourhood of Fort StjGeorge and Fort William, 
 they did not as a matter of course think themselves 
 responsible for all India, or study comprehensively the 
 relations of the country considered as a whole to the outer 
 world. The affairs of Afghanistan or the Punjab seemed 
 almost as much beyond their horizon as those of the 
 Turkish Empire. 
 
 But towards the end of the eighteenth century a 
 change took place in the view of the English, Hitherto 
 they had looked most anxiously towards Madras and the 
 Deccan. Their main fear was lest the French might 
 make some new alliance with one of the native princes of 
 the South, might help him with arms and officers or with 
 a fleets while he descended upon Madras. This was what 
 actually took place in that war with France which grew 
 out of the American Eevolution, and" never perhaps were 
 we so hard pressed in India. Hyder Ali descended upon 
 the Carnatic to the gates of Madras, and from the sea the 
 greatest of all French sailors, the Bailli de SufPren, 
 co-operated with him. But fifteen years later the whole 
 face of our foreign relations in India was changed by 
 Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition.. French policy here 
 
vn.] INTEBNAL AND EXTEENAL DAKGERS. 285 
 
 took a new direction. It did not indeed break off from its 
 old connexions in the Deccan, . Tippoo was expected to be 
 as useful to the Directory as his father Hyder had been to 
 Louis XVI. But at the same time Bonaparte's occupation 
 of Egypt and his campaign in Syria, movements which 
 were avowedly aimed at England, seemed to show that he 
 had conceived the design of attacking our power in India 
 from the north. Then for th^first time we remembered 
 Nadir Shah and Ahmed Shah Abdali ; then for the 
 first time we began to look anxiously, as we have so often 
 looked since, towards the Khyber Pass, towards Zemaun 
 Shah, who at the end of the eighteenth century sat 
 in the seat of Ahmed Shah at Cabul, and towards the 
 Court of Persia. 
 
 This then is the second great phase of the foreign 
 poliSy of our Indian Empire. It is marked by the 
 celebrated mission of Malcolm (afterward Sir John) to the 
 Persian Court in 1800. Never before had we had 
 occasion to study what I may call the balance of Asia, or 
 to inquire quid Tiridaten terreat, what thoughts agitate 
 the mind of the Persian king. But observe it is not the 
 secret influence of Russia that is feared, but that of France. 
 I said before that perhaps the Duke of Wellington con- 
 sidered himself to be fighting the French at Assaye, not 
 less than that at Waterloo. In like manner you will find 
 that Malcolm in his Persian negotiations has Napoleon and 
 the power of France, not at all that of Russia in his 
 mind. 
 
 But in this second phase, though we have begun to 
 look towards Afghanistan, we have not ceased to be afraid, 
 as in the first phase, of French influence in the South. 
 The life of this same Sir John Malcolm illustrates this. 
 He was selected for the Persian mission on account of the 
 
286 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leoi. 
 
 distinction he had won just before in the war against 
 Tippoo Smltan of Mysore.. Now this is a war against 
 the Prench almost as truly as that earlier war in which 
 Clive first distinguished himself. Tippoo himself was 
 understood to be hand-in-glove with the Directory: 
 Bonaparte is his ally, as Suffren had been his father's; 
 The French called him Citoyen Tipou. And what is th« 
 Nizam doing ? It was with the Government of the 
 Nizam at Hyderabad that the French had had their 
 earliest connexion half a century before. They knew 
 even better than the English how to conquer India, 
 and that the secret lies in training sepoys and putting 
 them under European leadership. We find that now in 
 1798 there is in the Hyderabad country a force of 14,000 
 men, who are disciplined and commanded by French 
 officers. A certain Haymond is in command of them, and 
 we read in Kaye's Life of Malcolm that 'assignments 
 of territory had been made by the Nizam for the pay of 
 these troops. Foundries were established under competent 
 European superintendence. Guns were cast. Muskets 
 were manufactured. Admirably equipped and disciplined, 
 Raymond's levies went out to battle with the colours 
 of Revolutionary France floating above them and the cap 
 of liberty engraved on their buttons.' Now so long as 
 our nominal ally the Nizam supported such a force and 
 Tippoo was avowedly in concert with France, our position 
 in the Deccan was not so materially changed from what 
 it had been when our Indian quarrel with France first 
 began. It was still possible that the tables might be 
 turned on the English in 1798 by Raymond's force, as they 
 had been turned on the French before by Clive at Arcot. 
 At this juncture the young Malcolm was sent to Hyderabad, 
 and he succeeded in disbanding this French force, or, as 
 he himself calls it, 'expelling this nest of democrats.' 
 
VII. ]". INTEBNAL AND EXTEENAL DANGEES. 287 
 
 Thus we have two phases of the foreign policy of 
 British India. At first it has but one enemy outside 
 India, namely France, and it expects the attack of this 
 enemy only in one quarter, namely, the Deccan. In the 
 second phase it has still the same enemy, who works in 
 the sam« way, but his power has become far wider. He 
 has formed, or is supposed to have formed, relations with 
 other Asiatic Powers outside India. These Powers are 
 the Afghans and the Persians, and after the Treaty of 
 Tilsit in 1807 there is added to these another Power, 
 European indeed but beginning already to overhang Asia, 
 a Power which is now named for the first time in the 
 history of British India, Russia. 
 
 This second phase is brought to an end by the fall of 
 Napoleon. With him fell completely, though it would be 
 rash to say finally, the influence of France upon India. 
 Her exclusion was secured by the capture of the Mauritius 
 in 1810 and by the retention of the island at the general 
 peace. 
 
 There followed a pause in our foreign affairs. Our 
 Empire had no important foreign' relations for about 
 twenty years. And then began a new phase. Another 
 European Power takes the place of France as our rival 
 in Asia. This Power is Russia. 
 
 In the whole history of Greater Britain from'^'its 
 commencement at the end of Elizabeth's reign we may 
 perhaps distinguish three great periods. There is first 
 the seventeenth century, in which it rises gradually from a 
 humble position to preeminence among colonial Empires. 
 There is next that duel with France both in America and 
 Asia, of which I have said so much. This occupies the 
 eighteenth century. But this too passed, and we have 
 entered upon a third phase, which according to the fashion 
 
283 , ErPANSION OP ENGLAND. [mot. 
 
 of historical development, began to form itself long before 
 the second phase was over. In this third phase the 
 English world-empire has two gigantic neighbours in the 
 West and in the East. In the West she has the United 
 States and in the East Russia for a neighbour. 
 
 These are the two States which I have cited as 
 examples of the modem tendency towards enormous 
 political aggregations, such as would have been impossible 
 but for the modem inventions which diminish the diffi- 
 culties caused by time and space. Both are continuous 
 land-powers. Between them, equally vast but not con- 
 tinuous, with the ocean flowing through it in every 
 direction, lies, like a worlds Venice, with the sea for streets. 
 Greater Britain. 
 
 This third phase may in a sense be said to have begun 
 with the American Revolution, but it is more just to 
 consider it as dating only from about the thirties of the 
 present century. For the great destiny that was reserved 
 for the United States did not become manifest tiU long 
 after its independence was established. That great 
 emigration from Europe which is the cause of its rapid 
 progress, did not begin till after the peace of 1815, and in 
 the twenties again its importance in the world was vastly 
 increased by the South American Revolution and the 
 establishment of republican government in Spanish 
 America, an event which placed the United States in a 
 lofty position of primacy on the American Continent, 
 Now it was about the same time that the great extension 
 of Russia in the East took place. The moment when we 
 began to feel keenly the rivalry of Russia in the East is 
 very plainly marked on the history of British India. It 
 was in 1830 that Russia in her progress touched the 
 Jaxartes, and soon after she reduced Persia to a condition 
 
VII.] INTEKNAL AND EXTEENAL DANGEES. 289 
 
 which we might take to be one of practical dependence. 
 When therefore in 1834 and again in 1837 Mohammed 
 Shah of Persia led an army into Afghanistan, we believed 
 we saw the hand of Russia, as thirty years before we had 
 seen the hand of Napoleon when any movement took 
 place in the same region. At this moment begins a new 
 and stormy period in our Indian history, which may be 
 said to extend to the mutiny, that is, over twenty years. 
 This period witnessed a series of wars, in the course of 
 which we conquered the whole north-west, annexed the 
 Punjab, Sind and Oude, and at last aroused a disquiet in 
 the minds of our Hindu subjects which issued in the 
 mutiny. These disturbances seem traceable in the main 
 to the alarm caused by Russia. For it was this alarm 
 which led to the disastrous expedition into Afghanistan, 
 and it was in the effort to restore our damaged reputation 
 that the conquest of Sind was made, and it seems likely 
 also that if these disturbances in the north-west had not 
 thus been commenced, the Sikh wars might never have 
 happened. 
 
 Lord Auckland, we are now very sure, did not take 
 the right way in 1838 to meet the danger he foresaw. 
 Perhaps he exaggerated the danger ; perhaps even now 
 after forty years more have passed and the advance of 
 Russia in Central Asia during that time has been beyond 
 all anticipation, we still exaggerate the danger. But the 
 historical sketch of the foreign relations of India which 
 I have given in this lecture shows that there exists a 
 prima facie case for alarm, which cannot but produce a 
 prodigious effect. That case rests upon the simple fact 
 that our three predecessors in the Empire of India, the 
 Mahrattas in 1761, the Moguls in 1738, the older 
 Mussulman Empire in 1398, all alike received a mortal 
 < s. L. 19 
 
290 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [lect.' 
 
 blow from a Power which suddenly invaded India through' 
 Afghanistan, and that on two other occasions quite distinct 
 from these invaders from Afghanistan, viz. Mahmoud of 
 Ghazni and Baber, have founded Empires in India. 
 
 I call this a prima facie case for alarm. It is nothing 
 more. Such reasonings per enumerationem simplicem 
 can establish only that there is ground for instituting 
 an examination, though unfortunately when history is 
 brought to bear at all upon politics, which happens 
 but rarely, it is commonly done in this random way. 
 We cannot argue from the Moguls and Nadir Shah 
 to the English and Russia. It would be easy perhaps 
 to show that the Mogul Empire never had a solidity 
 at all approaching that of the English Empire, and we 
 might point out also that when Nadir Shah came to 
 Delhi the Empire had already been in manifest decay 
 for thirty years. With lespect to Russia on the other 
 hand it would be easy to show that it is a Power wholly 
 different in kind from those Powers, generally more or less 
 Tartar, which have invaded India, a Power certainly, far 
 greater and more solid than most of them, but still so 
 different that we cannot assume it to be equally capable' 
 of invasion and conquest at a prodigious distance. In 
 short, history proves nothing more than that the way to 
 India lies through Afghanistan. Whether a Power such 
 as Russia can successfully attack by this route a Power 
 such as British India, is a question upon which historical 
 precedents throw no Ught whatever. It can be answered 
 only by analysing and estimating the military resources, 
 both moral and material, of the two Powers. 
 
 But it may be asked, How is it possible to question 
 Russia's power or her will to make distant conquests? 
 Has she not conquered in the North the whole breadth of 
 
vn.] INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DANGEES. 291 
 
 Asia and in the centre has she not penetrated to 
 Samarcand and Khokand ? What Power ever equalled 
 her in successful aggression ? But we must pronounce no 
 man happy, Solon said, till we have seen his end. Can 
 such a career continue indefinitely when Russia shall 
 have been thoroughly Europeanised at home ? As soon as 
 her political awakening is complete, must not a trans- 
 formation of her foreign policy take place ? 
 
 On the other hand it may be said, Who can question 
 the ability of England to contend with Russia ? But as I 
 have argued, England is very distinct from British India. 
 Russia may be rich enough to conquer vast regions at a 
 distance of thousands of miles, but England is not. 
 British India must in the main defend herself; that is, 
 she can have English troops, but she must pay for them. 
 
 We must ask then. What is the, inherent strength of 
 British India ? And thus its stability depends upon its 
 being strong enough to withstand those internal dangers 
 I spoke of complicated with the external danger from 
 Afghanistan. We were able to put down the mutiny, and 
 perhaps we could defeat a Russian army of invasion. But 
 what if a mutiny and a Russian invasion came together ? 
 What if our native army, in some fit of disaffection or in 
 some vague hope of profiting by a change, should prefer 
 the Russian service to the English ? This is the danger 
 which since about 1830 has been foreseen. The Govern- 
 ment can hold its own within and also without. But it 
 has little strength to spare, and must guard itself anxiously 
 against any coalition between its domestic and its foreign 
 enemies. 
 
 Other combinations may be imagined which would be 
 extremely dangerous. Thus it is sometimes argued that 
 sooner or later we must lose India because sooner or later 
 
 19—2 
 
292 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. vn. 
 
 some war in Europe will force us to withdraw our English 
 troops. It is true that without those troops we cannot 
 keep India, and yet some great sudden attack upon our- 
 selves, such as an invasion of England, might compel us to 
 send for them. It is however also true that such a danger 
 is not at present to be foreseen, for what enemy could 
 invade us but France ? Now sixty-eight years have passed 
 since we last fought the French; our old hostility to France 
 has become a matter of ancient history; and the aggressive 
 power of France has much declined. 
 
 But the subject is too large for the space I am able to 
 give to it, and I must ask you to be content with this 
 imperfect outline. 
 
LECTURE VIII. 
 
 RECAPITULATION. 
 
 We have now dwelt for a long time on that extraordinary 
 expansion which has had the effect that, considered as a 
 state, England has left Europe altogether behind it and 
 become a world-state, while, considered purely as a nation, 
 that is, as speaking a certain language, she has furnished 
 out two world-states, which vie with each other in vigour, 
 influence and rapidity of growth. We have inquired into 
 the causes, traced the process, and considered some of 
 the results of this expansion. It remains then in this 
 closing lecture to gather up the impressions we have 
 received into a general conclusion. 
 
 There are two schools of opinion among us with respect 
 to our Empire, of which schools the one may be called 
 the bombastic and the other the pessimistic. The one 
 is lost in wonder and ecstasy at its immense dimensions, 
 and at the energy and heroism which presumably have 
 gone to the making of it; this school therefore advocates 
 the maintenance of it as a point of honour or sentiment. 
 The other is in the opposite extreme, regards it as foiinded 
 in aggression and rapacity, as useless and burdensome, a 
 kind of excrescence upon England, as depriving us of 
 the advantages of our insularity and exposing us to wars 
 and quarrels in every part of the globe; this school there- 
 
r 
 / 
 
 294 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [m:ct. 
 
 / fore advocates a policy whicli may lead at the earliest 
 possible opportunity to the abandonment of it. Let us 
 consider then how our studies, now that they are con- 
 cluded, have led us to regard these two opposite opinions. 
 We have been led to take a much more sober view 
 of the Empire than would satisfy the bombastic school. 
 
 W At the outset we are not much impressed with its vast 
 
 extent, because we know no reason in the nature of 
 
 things why a state should be any the better for being 
 
 large, and because throughout the greater part of history 
 
 > very large states have usually been states of a low type. 
 
 I) Nor again can we imagine why it should be our duty 
 to maintain our Empire for an indefinite time simply out 
 of respect for the heroism of those who won it for us, 
 or because the abandonment of it might seem to betray a 
 want of spirit. All political unions exist for the good 
 of their members and should be just as large, and no 
 larger, as they can be without ceasing to be beneficial. It 
 would seem to us insane that if the connexion with the 
 colonies or with India hampered both parties, if it did 
 harm rather than good, England should resolve to main- 
 tain it to her own detriment and to that of her depen- 
 dencies. We find too a confusion of ideas hidden under 
 much of the bombastic language of this -school, for they 
 seem to conceive of the dependencies of England as of so 
 much property belonging to her, as if the Queen were like 
 some Sesostris or Solomon of the ancient world, to whom 
 'Tarshish and the isles brought presents, Arabia and 
 Sheba offered gifts,' whereas the connexion is really not of 
 this kind at all, and England is not, directly at least, any 
 the richer for it. And further we have ventured to doubt 
 that the vastness of this Empire necessarily proves some 
 invincible heroism or supernatural genius for government 
 in our nation. Undoubtedly some facts may be adduced 
 
 e: 
 
VIII.-] EECAPITULATION. 2D5 
 
 to show natural aptitude for colonisation and a faculty of 
 leadership in our race. A good number of Englishmen 
 may be cited who have exerted an almost magical 
 ascendancy over the minds of the native races of India, 
 and in Canada again, where the English • settlers have 
 competed directly with the French, they have shown a 
 Doarked superiority in enterprise and energy. But though 
 there is much to admire in the history of Greater Britain, 
 yet the preeminence of England in the New World has 
 certainly not been won by sheer natural superiority. In 
 the heroic age of maritime discovery we did not greatly 
 shine. We did not show the genius of the Portuguese, and 
 we did not produce a Columbus or a Magelhaen. When 
 I examined the causes which enabled us after two centuries 
 to surpass other nations in colonisation, I found that we 
 had a broader basis and a securer position a t home than_ _ 
 PortugaT^HTHolland, an.d that we were less involved in 
 great European entefprrs^s than Efaaice-aBdr^pa in. In like . 
 manner whSiHHffquIred how we~could~canqii5r, and that 
 with little trouble, the vast country of India, I found that 
 after all we did it by means mainly of Indian troops, to 
 whom we imparted a skill which was not so much English 
 as European, that the French showed us the way, and. that 
 the condition of the country was such as to render it 
 peculiarly open to conquest. 
 
 Thus I admitted very much of what is urged by the 
 pessimists against the bombastic school. I erideavoured 
 to judge the Empire by its own intrmsic merits and to see 
 it as it is, not concealing the inconveniences which may 
 attend such a vast expansion or the dangers to which it 
 may expose us, nor finding any compensation for these in 
 the notion that there is something intrinsically glorious in 
 ,an Empire 'upon which the sun never sets,' or, to use 
 another equally brilliant expression, an Empire 'whose 
 
296 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lec*. 
 
 morning drum-beat, following the sun and keeping com- 
 pany with the hours, encircles the globe with an unbrokea 
 chain of martial airs.' But though there is little that is 
 glorious in most of the great Empires mentioned in history, 
 since they have usually been created by force and have 
 remained at a low level of political life, we observed that 
 Greater Britain is not in the ordinary sense an Empire at 
 all. Looking at the colonial part of it alone, we see a 
 natural growth, a mere normal extension of the English 
 race into other lands, which for the most part were so 
 thinly peopled that our settlers took possession of them 
 without conquest. If there is nothing highly glorious in 
 such an expansion, there is at the same time nothing 
 forced or unnatural about it. It creates not . properly an 
 Empire, but only a very large state. So far as the ex- 
 pansion itself is concerned, no one does or can regard it 
 but with pleasure. For a nation to have an outlet for its 
 superfluous population is one of the greatest blessings. 
 Population unfortunately does not adapt itself to space; 
 on the contrary the larger it is the larger is its yearly 
 increment. Now that Great Britain is already full it 
 becomes fuller with increased speed ; it gains a million 
 every three years. Probably emigration ought to proceed 
 at a far greater rate than it does, and assuredly the 
 greatest evils would arise if it were checked. But should 
 there be an expansion of the State as well as of the 
 nation? 'No,' say the pessimists, 'or only till the colony 
 is grown-up and ready for independence.' When a meta- 
 phor comes to be regarded as an ai'gument, what an irre- 
 sistible argument it always seems ! I have suggested that 
 in the modern world distance has very much lost its effect, 
 and that there are signs of a time when states will be 
 vaster than they have hitherto been. In ancient times 
 emigraAts from Greece to Sicily took up their independence 
 
vin.] EECAPITULATION. 297 
 
 at once, and in those parts there were almost as many 
 states as cities. In the eighteenth century Burke thought 
 a federation quite impossible across the Atlantic Ocean. 
 In such times the metaphor of the grown-up son might 
 well harden into a convincing demonstration. But since 
 Burke's time the Atlantic Ocean has shrunk tiU. it seems 
 scarcely broader than the sea between Greece and Sicily. 
 Why then do we not drop the metaphor? I have urged 
 that we are unconsciously influenced by a historic parallel 
 which when examined turns out to be inapplicable. As 
 indeed it is true generally that one urgent reason why 
 politicians should study history is that they may guard 
 themselves against the false historical analogies which 
 continually mislead those who do not study history ! 
 These views are founded on the American Kevolution, and 
 yet the American Revolution arose out of circumstances 
 and out of a condition of the world which has long since 
 passed away. England was then an agricultural country 
 by no means thickly peopled; America was full of religious 
 refugees animated by ideas which in England had lately 
 passed out of fashion; there was scarcely any flux and 
 reflux of population between the two countries, and the 
 ocean divided them with a gulf which seemed as unbridge- 
 able as that moral gulf which separates an Englishman 
 from a Frenchman. Even then the separation was not 
 effected without a great wrench. It is true that both 
 countries have prospered since, nevertheless they have had 
 a second war and may have a third, and it is wholly 
 an illusion to suppose that their prosperity has been caused 
 or promoted by their separation. At any rate all the 
 conditions of the world are altered now. The great causes 
 of division, oceans and religious disabilities, have ceased to 
 operate. Vast uniting forces have begun to work, trade 
 and emigration. Meanwhile the natural, ties which unite 
 
298 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leci. 
 
 Engllslimeii resume their influence as soon as the countett 
 acting pressure is removed, I mean the ties of nationality, 
 language and religion. The mother-country having once 
 for all ceased to be a step-mother, and to make unjust 
 claims and impose annoying restrictions, and since she 
 •wants her colonies as an outlet both for population and 
 trade, and since on the other hand the colonies must feel 
 that there is risk, not to say also intellectual impoverish- 
 ment, in independence, since finally intercourse is ever 
 increasing and no alienating force is at work to coun- 
 teract it, but the discords created by the old system pass 
 more and more into oblivion, it seems possible that our 
 colonial Empire so-called may more and more deserve to 
 be called Greater Britain, and that the tie may become 
 stronger and stronger. Then the seas which divide us 
 might be forgotten, and that ancient preconception, which 
 leads us always to think of ourselves as belonging to 
 a single island, might be rooted out of our minds. If 
 in this way we moved sensibly nearer in our thoughts and 
 feelings to the colonies and accustomed ourselves to think 
 of emigrants as not in ai^'way lost to England by setthng 
 : in the colonies, the result might be, first that emigration on 
 a vast scale might become our remedy for pauperism, and 
 secondly that some organisation might gradually be arrived 
 at which might make the whole force of the Empirs 
 available in time of war. 
 
 In taking this view I have borne in mind the 
 example of the United States. It is curious that the 
 pessimists among ourselves should generally have been 
 admirers of the United States, and yet there we have the 
 most striking example of confident and successful ex- 
 pansion. Those colonists which, when they parted from 
 us, did but fringe the Atlantic sea-board and had but 
 lately begun to push their settlements injbo the valley, of 
 
vin.] EECAPITULATION. 299 
 
 the Ohio, how steadily, how boundlessly, and with what 
 steadfast self-reliance have they advanced since! They 
 have covered with their States or Territories, first the 
 mighty Mississippi valley, next the Eocky Mountains, and 
 lastly the Pacific coast. They have made no difficulty of 
 absorbing all this territory; it has not shaken their 
 political system. And yet they have never said, as among 
 us even those who are not pessimists say of the colonies, 
 that if they wish to secede, of course they can do so. On 
 the contrary they have firmly denied this right, and to 
 maintain the unity of their vast state have sacrificed 
 blood and treasure in unexampled profusion. They firmly 
 refused to allow their Union to be broken up, or to listen 
 to the argument that a state is none the better for being 
 very large. 
 
 Perhaps we are hardly alive to the vast results which 
 are flowing in politics from modern mechanism. Through- 
 out the greater part of human history the process of state- 
 building has been governed by strict conditions of space. 
 For a long time no high organisation was possible except 
 in very small states. In antiquity the good states were 
 usually cities, and Rome herself when she became an 
 Empire was obliged to adopt a lower organisation. In 
 medieval Europe, states sprang up which were on a larger 
 scale than those of antiquity, but for a long time these too 
 were lower organisms and looked up to Athens and Rome 
 with reverence as to the homes of political greatness. 
 But through the invention of the representative system 
 these states have risen to a higher level. We now see 
 states with vivid political consciousness on territories of 
 two hundred thousand square miles and in populations 
 of thirty millions. A further advance is now being 
 made. The federal system has been added to the re- 
 presentative system, and at the same time steam and 
 
300 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 electricity have been introduced. From these improve- 
 ments has resulted the possibility of highly organised 
 states on a yet larger scale. Thus Russia in Europe has 
 already a population of near eighty millions on a territory 
 of more than two millions of square miles, and the 
 United States will have by the end of the century a popula- 
 tion as large upon a territory of four millions of square 
 miles. We cannot, it is true, yet speak of Russia as 
 having a high type of organisation; she has her trials 
 and her transformation to come, but the United States 
 has shown herself able to combine free institutions in the 
 fullest degree with boundless expansion. 
 
 Now if it offends us to hear our Empire described in 
 the language of Oriental bombast, we need not conclude 
 that the Empire itself is in fault, for it is open to us to 
 think that it has been wrongly classified. Instead of 
 comparing it to that which it resembles in no degree, 
 some Turkish or Persian congeries of nations forced 
 together by a conquering horde, let us compare it to the 
 United States, and we shall see at once that, so far from 
 being of an obsolete type, it is precisely the sort of union 
 which the conditions of the time most naturally call into 
 existence. 
 
 Lastly let us observe that the question whether large 
 states or small states are best is not one which can be 
 answered or ought to be discussed absolutely. We often 
 hear abstract panegyrics upon the happiness of small 
 states. But observe that a small state among small 
 states is one thing and a small state among large states 
 quite another. Nothing is more delightful than to read 
 of the bright days of Athens and Florence, but those 
 bright days lasted only so long as the states with which 
 Athens and Florence had to do were states on a similar 
 scale of magnitude. Both states sank at once as soon as 
 
Tin.] EECAPITULATION. 801 
 
 large country-states of consolidated strength grew up in 
 their neighbourhood. The lustre of Athens grew pale 
 as soon as Macedonia rose, and Charles V. speedily 
 brought to an end the great days of Florence. Now 
 if it be true that a larger type of state than any 
 hitherto known is springing up in the world, is not this a 
 serious consideration for those states which rise only to 
 the old level of magnitude ? Bussia already presses some- 
 what heavily on Central Europe ; what will she do when 
 with her vast territory and population she equals Germany 
 in. intelligence and organisation, when all her railways are 
 made, her people educated, and her government settled on 
 a solid basis, — and let us remember that if we allow her 
 half a century to make so much progress her population 
 will at the end of that time be not eighty but nearly a 
 hundred and sixty millions. At that time which many 
 here present may live to see, Russia and the United 
 States will surpass in power the states now called great as 
 much as the great country-states of the sixteenth 
 century surpassed Florence. Is not this a serious con- 
 sideration, and is it not especially so for a state like 
 England, which has at the present moment the choice in 
 its hands between two courses of action, the one of which 
 may set it in that future age on a level with the greatest of 
 these great states of the future, while the other will reduce 
 it to the level of a purely European Power looking back, as 
 Spain does now, to the great days when she pretended to 
 be a world-state. 
 
 But what I have been saying does not apply to India. 
 If England and her colonies taken together make, 
 properly speaking, not an Empire but only a very 
 large state, this is because the population is English 
 throughout and the institutions are of the same kind. 
 In^ India the population is wholly foreign and the 
 
302 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 institutions wholly unlike our own. India is really an 
 Empire and an Oriental Empire. It is in relation to India 
 especially that the language of the bombastic school 
 o£fends us, and that we are struck by the misconception 
 which is betrayed in their highflown imagery borrowed 
 from the ancient world. And here we cannot on looking 
 more closely into the phenomenon reconcile ourselves to it 
 by discovering that, though it has not the romantic great- 
 ness attributed to it, yet it has a solid value and utility 
 to us which is of another kind altogether. 
 
 Gradually and in recent times a great trade between 
 India and England has sprung up, but even this, as I 
 pointed out, was hardly contemplated by those who had 
 the principal share in founding the Indian Empire. And 
 it is diflScuIt to see what other great advantages we reap 
 from it, so that we ask ourselves in some perplexity, what 
 made us take the trouble of acquiring it. Historically the 
 answer is, that in our great colonial struggle with France 
 we were led into wars which left us in possession of 
 territories in the neighbourhood of Calcutta and Madras 
 that we then proceeded to organise our government of them, 
 that we successfully purged away the corruption which had 
 sprung up in the first period of. conquest, and created an 
 administration that was pure and under the direct control 
 of the Government at home; but that afterwards there 
 arose a line of Governors-General who on high grounds of 
 statesmanship were favourable to annexation. The policy 
 now adopted was not sordid, but it may have been 
 ambitious and unscrupulous. If we are to think, as Mr 
 Torrens* imagines, that Pitt and Lord Wellesley in secret 
 deliberation determined to replace the American colonies 
 by an Eastern Empire, such an idea, according to the view 
 taken in these lectures, belongs to an unsound and 
 
 1 T!ie Marquis Wellesley, by W. M, Toirens, M.P. Vol i. p. 128. 
 
vm.] EECAPITULATION. 303 
 
 chimerical system of politics. But ostensibly the policy 
 was justified by arguments chiefly of a philanthropic 
 kind, and they were arguments of such strength that it 
 was difficult to resist them. It was not to be denied that 
 a most deplorable anarchy reigned in India. Here and there 
 a tyranny arose which had some degree of stability, though it 
 was almost always a military government of the lowest type. 
 But over the greater part of India there prevailed a system 
 which it would be appropriate to call not government of a 
 low type but robbery of a high type. Occasionally in 
 Europe, as in some Highland clans or among the Western 
 buccaneers or those ancient pirates of the Mediterranean 
 whom Pompey was commissioned to suppress, robber-bands 
 have had almost the magnitude and organisation of states, 
 but they never have reached the scale of the robber-states 
 of India. The Mahrattas levied their chout, a sort of 
 blackmail, all over India, and at a later iime the Pindarrees 
 surpassed the Mahrattas in cruelty. Now this anarchy 
 arose directly out of the decline of the authority of the 
 Great Mogul. It was possible of course for the English to 
 wash their hands of all this, to defend their own territories, 
 and let the chaos welter as it would outside their frontier. 
 But to Governors-General on the spot such a course might 
 easily seem not just but simply cruel. Aggrandisement 
 might present itself in tbe light of a simple duty, when it 
 seemed that by extending our Empire the reign of robbery 
 and murder might be brought to an end in a moment and 
 that of law' commenced Accordingly Lord Wellesley laid 
 it down that there had always been a paramount Power in 
 India, that such a paramount Power was necessary to the 
 
 ^ 'It is a proud phrase to. use, but it is a true one, that we have 
 bestowed blessings upon miLlionB....The ploughman is again in every 
 quarter turning up a soil which had for many seasons never been stirred 
 except by the hoofs of predatory cavalry.' Lord Hastings, February, 1819. 
 
304 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [ieot, 
 
 country, and that it became the duty of the Company, now 
 that the power of the Mogul had come to an end, to save 
 India by assuming his function. 
 
 And thus we founded our Empire, partly it may be out 
 (of an empty ambition of conquest and partly out of 
 !a philanthropic desire to put an end to enormous evils. 
 IBut, whatever our motives might be, we incurred vast 
 responsibilities, which were compensated by no advantages. 
 We have now acquired a great Indian trade, but even this 
 we purchase at the expense of a perpetual dread of Russia 
 and of all movements in the Mussulman world and of 
 all changes in Egypt. Thus a review of the history of 
 British India leaves on the mind an impression quite 
 different from that which our Colonial Empire produces. 
 The latter has grown up naturally, out of the operation of 
 the plainest causes ; the latter seems to have sprung from 
 a romantic adventure; it is highly interesting, striking 
 and curious, but difEcult to understand or to form an opinion 
 about. We may hope that it will lead to good, but hitherto 
 we have not ourselves reaped directly much good from it. 
 
 I have shown you however that, though it may be 
 called an Oriental Empire, it is much less dangerous to us 
 than that description might seem to imply. It is not an 
 Empire attached to England in the same way as the 
 Roman Empire was attached to Rome ; it will not drag us 
 down, or infect us at home with Oriental notions or 
 methods of Government. Nor is it an Empire which costs 
 us money or hampers our finances. It is self-supporting^ 
 and is held at arm's length in such a way that our destiny 
 is not very closely entangled with its own. ^ 
 
 Next I have led you to consider what may be the effect 
 of our Indian Empire upon India itself. We perhaps have 
 not gained much from it ; but has India gained ? On this 
 question I have desired to speak with great diffidence. . I 
 
vm.] EECAPITULATION. 305 
 
 have asserted confidently only thus much, that no greater 
 experiment has ever been tried on the globe, and that the 
 effects of it will be comparable to the effect of the Roman 
 Empire upon the nations of Europe, nay probably they 
 will be much greater. This means no doubt that vast 
 benefits will be done to India, but it does not necessarily 
 mean that great mischiefs may not also be done. Nay, if 
 you ask on which side the balance will incline, and 
 whether, if we succeed in bringing India into the full 
 current of European civilisation, we shall not evidently be 
 rendering her the greatest possible service-I should only 
 answer, 'I hope so; I trust so.' In the academic study 
 of these vast questions we should take care to avoid the 
 optimistic commonplaces of the newspaper. Our Western 
 civilisation is perhaps not absolutely the glorious thing 
 we like to imagine it. Those who watch India most im- 
 partially see that a vast transformation goes on there, 
 but sometimes it produces a painful impression upon 
 them ; they see much destroyed, bad things and good 
 things together ; sometimes they doubt whether they see 
 many good things called into existence. But they see 
 one enormous improvement, under which we may fairly 
 hope that all other improvements are potentially included, 
 they see anarchy and plunder brought to an end and some- 
 thing like the immensa majestas Romanae pacts established 
 among two hundred and fifty millions of human beings. 
 
 Another thing almost all observers see, and that is that 
 the experiment must go forward, and that we cannot leave 
 it unfinished if we would. For here too the great uniting 
 forces of the age are at work, England and India are 
 drawn every year for good or for evil more closely to- 
 gether. Not indeed that disuniting forces might not 
 easily spring up, not that our rule its||f may not ppssibly 
 be calling out forces which may ultimaitdy tend to dis- 
 
 20 
 
306 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 ruption, nor yet that the Empire is altogether free from 
 the danger of a sudden catastrophe. But for the present 
 we are driven both by necessity and duty to a closer 
 union. Already we should ourselves suffer greatly from 
 disruption, and the longer the union lasts the more 
 important it will become to us. Meanwhile the same is 
 true in an infinitely greater degree of India itself. The 
 transformation we are making there may cause us some 
 misgivings, but though we may be led conceivably to wish 
 that it had never been begun, nothing could ever convince 
 us that it ought to be broken off in the middle. 
 
 Altogether I hope that our long course of medita- 
 tion upon the expansion of England may have led you 
 to feel that there is something fantastic in all those 
 notions of abandoning the colonies or abandoning India, 
 which are so freely broached among us. Have we 
 really so much power over the march of events as we 
 suppose? Can we cancel the growth of centuries for a 
 whim, or because, when we throw a hasty glance at it, it 
 does not suit our fancies? The lapse of time and the 
 force of life, 'which working strongly binds,' limit our 
 freedom more than we know, and even when we are not 
 conscious of it at all. It is true that we in England have 
 never accustomed our imaginations to the thought of 
 Greater Britain. Our politicians, our historians still think 
 of England not of Greater Britain as theii; country ; they 
 still think only that England has colonies, and they 
 allow themselves to talk as if she could easily whistle 
 them off, and become again with perfect comfort to herseK 
 the old solitary island of Queen Elizabeth's time, 'in a 
 great pool a swan's nest.' But the fancy is but a chimera 
 produced by inattention, one of those monsters, for such 
 monsters there are, which are created not by imagination 
 but by the want of imagination ! 
 
o' 
 
 vin.] BECAPITULATION. 307 
 
 But though this is a conclusion to which I am led, 
 it is not the conclusion which I wish to leave most strongly- 
 impressed on your minds. What I desire here is not so 
 much to impart to you a just view of practical politics as a 
 just view of the object and method of historical study. 
 My chief aim in these lectures has been to show in what 
 light the more recent history of England ought to be re- 
 garded by the student. It seems to me that most of our 
 historians, when they come to these modern periods, lose 
 the clue, betray embarrassment in the choice of topics, and 
 end by producing a story without a moral. I have argued 
 in the first place that history is concerned, not mainly 
 with the interesting things which may have been done by 
 Englishmen or in England, but with England herself 
 considered as a nation and a state. To make this more 
 plain I have narrated nothing, told no thriUing stories, 
 drawn no heroic .portraits, I have kept always before you 
 England as a great whole. In her story there is little 
 that is dramatic, for she can scarcely die, and in this 
 period at least has not suffered or been in danger of 
 suffering much. What great changes has she undergone 
 in this period 1 Considerable political changes no doubt, 
 but none that have been so memorable as those she 
 underwent in the seventeenth century. Then she made 
 one of the greatest political discoveries, and taught all the 
 world how liberty might be adapted to the conditions of a 
 nation-state. On the other hand the modern political 
 movement, that of Reform or Liberalism, began not in 
 England but on the Continent, from whence we borrowed 
 it. The peculiarly English movement, I have urged, in 
 this period has been an unparalleled expansion. Grasp 
 this fact, and you have the clue both to the eighteenth and 
 the nineteenth centuries. The wars with France from 
 Louis XIV. to Napoleon fall into an intelligible series. 
 
308 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [leot. vin. 
 
 The American Revolution and the conquest of India cease 
 to seem mere digressions, and take their proper places in 
 the main line of English history. The growth of wealth, 
 commerce and manufacture, the fall of the old colonial 
 system and the gradual growth of a new one, are all easily 
 included under the same formula. Lastly this formula 
 binds together the past of England and her future, and 
 leaves us, when we close the history of our coimtry, not 
 with minds fatigued and bewildered as though from 
 reading a story that has been too much spun out, but 
 enlighteL.3d and more deeply interested than ever, because 
 partly prepared for what is to come next. 
 
 I am often told by those who, like myself, study the 
 question how history should be taijght. Oh, you must 
 before all things make it interesting ! I agree with them in 
 a certain sense, but I give a different sense to the word 
 interesting, a sense which after all is the original, and 
 proper one. By interesting they mean romantic, poetical, 
 surprising; I do not try to make history interesting in 
 this sense, because I have found that it cannot be done 
 without adulterating history and mixing it with falsehood. 
 But the word interesting does not properly mean romantic. 
 That is interesting in the proper sense which affects our 
 interests, which closely concerns us and is deeply im- 
 portant to us. I have tried to show you that the history of 
 modern England from the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury is interesting in this sense, because it is pregnant with 
 great results which will affect the lives of ourselves and 
 our children and the future greatness of our country. Make, 
 history interesting indeed ! I cannot make history more 
 interesting than it is, except by falsifying it. And therefore 
 wh^n I meet a person who does not find history interesting, 
 it does not occur to me to alter history, — I try to alter him. 
 
 OAIIBBIDQB : PBINIBD BS 0. J. OH.TI, U.A. & SON, AT THE UNIVEBSITY PRESS. 
 
308 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. wn. 
 
 The American Revolution and the conquest of India cease 
 to seem mere digressions, and take their proper places in 
 the main line of English history. The growth of wealth, 
 commerce and manufacture, the fall of the old colonial 
 system and the gradual growth of a new one, are all easily 
 included under the same formula. Lastly this formula 
 binds together the past of England and her future, and 
 leaves us, when we close the history of our country, not 
 with minds fatigued and bewildered as though from 
 reading a story that has been too much spun out, but 
 enlighten 3d and more deeply interested than ever, because 
 partly prepared for what is to come next. 
 
 I am often told by those who, like myself, study the 
 question how history should be taijght. Oh, you must 
 before all things make it interesting ! I agree with them in 
 a certain sense, but I give a different sense to the word 
 interesting, a sense which after all is the original, and 
 proper one. By interesting they mean romantic, poetical, 
 surprising; I do not try to make history interesting in 
 this sense, because I have found that it cannot be done 
 without adulterating history and mixing it with falsehood. 
 But the word interesting does not properly mean romantic. 
 That is interesting in the proper sense which affects our 
 interests, which closely concerns us and is deeply im- 
 portant to us. I have tried to show you that the history of 
 modern England from the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury is interesting in this sense, because it is pregnant with 
 great results which will affect the lives of ourselves and 
 our children and the future greatness of our country. Make 
 history interesting indeed ! I cannot make history more 
 interesting than it is, except by falsifying it. And therefore 
 when I meet a person who does not find history interesting, 
 it does not occur to me to alter history, — I try to alter him. 
 
 OAUBBIBOD : PBINIBD BT 0. J. OLAY, M.A. & BON, AI IHB UNIVERSIIT PBESS.