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Questions of Empire 
 
 I BY 
 
 LORD ROSEBERY 
 
 S&P 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO c 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Ltbrwry of Conpre"*' 
 
 two Copies Received j 
 JAN 24 1901 
 
 . Copy nght_ entry 
 ^Sau^- 2.5; /^o / j 
 
 SECOND COPY 
 
 l\vt 
 ^6* 
 
 Copyright, 1001, 
 By Thomas Y. Crowell & Company. 
 
RECTORIAL ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 
 GLASGOW 
 
 NOVEMBER THE SIXTEENTH 
 
 Nineteen Hundred 
 
 (3) 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 
 
 Mr. Principal, Ladies, and Gentlemen, this is a 
 pleasant stage in life for many reasons. I had hoped, 
 indeed, that to-day we should have been graced by the 
 presence of our honored and venerated Chancellor, one 
 of the oldest and kindest of my friends, but domestic 
 anxiety at the last moment kept him away. It is rare, 
 I believe, that a Chancellor comes to preside over a Bee- 
 tor's address, — there is, perhaps, some fear of a violent 
 conflict of jurisdiction, — but I should have been all the 
 more honored and pleased by his presence, for I should 
 always be pleased to find him by my side at any period 
 of my life, or in any capacity, as he is a noble and genial 
 specimen of the best type of a Scottish gentleman. 
 Long may he occupy his illustrious chair. And then, on 
 the other hand, there are my young constituents ; not 
 merely those who voted for me, but those who voted 
 against me, as well as those who from their unlucky 
 juniority had not the opportunity of doing either. So I 
 stand before you to-day with much gratitude and affec- 
 tion. I have only known in my life two sorts of con- 
 stituents, the municipal and the academical. Both have 
 been kind to me. Neither has ever rejected me. And I 
 am proud to come and thank you for the great majority 
 by which you elected me last autumn. There is no more 
 generous or inspiring a constituency than the youth of a 
 
 (5) 
 
6 QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 
 
 University; trained like intellectual athletes for the 
 struggle with the world; straining for the combat, and 
 scornful of its obstacles or its wounds : their hopes and 
 triumphs and sorrows before them. Through the great 
 gate you see the world spread out, and you are eager to 
 be in it. Do not hurry ; you will be in it soon enough. 
 
 In the full swell of a Roman triumph the victor had 
 always a monitor at hand to remind him that he was 
 mortal. And the winning candidate, if he be prone to 
 exultation in his Rectorial Election, has soon to face a 
 spectre which will promptly reduce his hilarity. I need 
 scarcely say that I allude to the Rectorial Address. The 
 wisest of all your Rectors — I mean Adam Smith — gave 
 a supreme proof of his sagacity by never delivering one at 
 all. We should all of us, perhaps, follow his example, 
 if we dared, or if we honorably could. It is, I admit, a 
 great occasion, if one feels inspired for it. But if not, 
 it is little less than a nightmare. It is not a speech, it 
 is not a sermon, it is not a lecture. It is by tradition too 
 long to be light, too short to be exhaustive. It is some- 
 thing sui generis, and I am glad that the genus is not ex- 
 tensive. I cannot even affect to regret that this specimen 
 is my last. 
 
 What is the nature of this formidable deliverance? 
 I think that it is sometimes misunderstood. Men of 
 eminence are apt to give their faint recollections of a 
 classical education, or to deliver some glowing rhetoric 
 on the training of the mind. Either course is beyond 
 many of us, and this is not, perhaps, to be regretted. 
 Why do you elect a man a Rector ? It is very rarely 
 because of qualifications which would enable him to de- 
 liver either of the discourses that I have mentioned. It 
 is singular, indeed, to note how seldom you choose a man 
 of literary eminence to the Lord Rectorship. One reason 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 7 
 
 may be that lie does not show such good sport as a poli- 
 tician. A politician means a fight. A man of letters 
 usually means a triangular fight, if a fight at all. This is 
 obvious enough. But may there not be another reason 
 still ? The outward and visible result of a Rectorial Elec- 
 tion to the vulgar and gentile mind is the delivery of a 
 Rectorial Address. We in the inner circle of course know 
 better : we know that he is elected to serve on University 
 Courts, and to be an active and intelligent officer of the 
 University. But for that other object it seems to me 
 that you deliberately choose men out of the world, from 
 amid the strife of men, the jangle of tongues, the stress 
 of affairs, and bid them come as Rectors to your aca- 
 demic groves to speak to you of what they know, of that 
 with which they are conversant, and not so much with 
 the subjects with which you deal yourselves. 
 
 And I am strengthened in this opinion by the fact that 
 one of the few literary Lord Rectors of recent years pur- 
 sued this very course — I mean Thomas Carlyle. The 
 other day I had in my hand the spare, pathetic notes 
 which he used for his discourse, all the more pathetic as 
 that day of triumph was on the edge of his wife's grave. 
 That discourse dealt not with the abstract, but with the 
 concrete, with practical advice for study and conduct, 
 drawn from his own experience of life in a conversa- 
 tional style. In all the mass of rectorial addresses it is 
 the least elaborate, the most solemn, and the most 
 telling. 
 
 I have thought, then, that I would best serve you, my 
 young constituents, by speaking to you of a subject 
 which affects us all and with which I have had something 
 though not much, to do, — a concrete contemporary sub- 
 ject, which fills all minds at times, which will increasingly 
 fill yours. I wish to say something to you of that British 
 
8 QUESTIONS OF EMPIBE. 
 
 Empire of which we are the tenants in fee, of which we 
 inherit the responsibility and the glory. It is so vast a 
 topic that I can only tonch a fringe, I can only deal with 
 considerations which directly affect yourselves. It is in 
 the strict sense a political subject, but it is outside party 
 politics and can and should be treated without affecting 
 the most sensitive apprehension. But even here I must 
 make a single exception ; for there are some to whom the 
 very word is abhorrent ; to whom at any rate the word is 
 under suspicion. It bears to them some taint of disa- 
 greeable association. They affect to see in it danger of 
 braggadocio or aggression. Personally I do not share 
 their suspicions. Still it is not the word but the thing 
 that I value. I admit that the term has been constantly 
 prostituted in Britain as well as elsewhere. And yet we 
 cannot discard it, for there is no convenient synonym. 
 If any other word can be invented which as adequately 
 expresses a number of states of vast size under a single 
 sovereign I would gladly consider it. But at present 
 there is none. And in the meantime the word " Empire " 
 represents to us our history, our tradition, our race. It 
 is to us a matter of influence, of peace, of commerce, of 
 civilization, above all a question of faith. 
 
 But it is also a matter of business, a practical affair. 
 You have received from your forefathers this great ap- 
 panage ; no one outside an asylum wishes to be rid of it. 
 The question, then, at this time is simply how to do the 
 best with it. That is a tremendous problem, so tremen- 
 dous that you and I and all of us have to take our share 
 of it. And all of us in this hall, rich or poor, young or 
 old, clever or dull, can do something, each in his line of 
 life, like bees in their cells, to make this Empire surer, 
 better, and happier, even if only by being honest, indus- 
 trious citizens ourselves. Moreover, the Empire never 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 9 
 
 needed such loyal service so much as now. Never did it 
 so urgently require the strenuous and united support of 
 its subjects. For in the present state of the world an 
 active vigilance is more than ever required. We have to 
 make sure of our equipment. This we are apt to take 
 for granted. On the contrary I maintain that there is 
 much to overhaul, to examine, and to reconsider ; that 
 what would have kept the Empire together in the days 
 when we had an unenvied monopoly of colonies and 
 when armaments were both less vast and less menacing 
 will not suffice now ; that there is a disposition to chal- 
 lenge both our naval and commercial position which re- 
 quires our utmost vigilance ; that we may have to test 
 our training, our habits, our character, our capacity for 
 work by severer standards than have hitherto been ap- 
 plied ; that we must be called upon for effort and sacrifice 
 if we wish to maintain our place ; that we must be pre- 
 pared, in a word, to set our house in order and to con- 
 sider whether what has sufficed in the past will suffice in 
 the future. 
 
 What is this Empire ? 
 
 The last calculation seems to be this : that its area is 
 between eleven and twelve millions of square miles, and 
 that its subjects number in round figures some four 
 hundred millions. The details in so spacious a summary 
 matter little. It is already beyond comprehension. And 
 yet one cannot but pause for a moment to reflect that 
 but for a small incident — the very ordinary circumstance 
 of the acceptance of a peerage — this Empire might have 
 been incalculably greater. Had the elder Pitt, when he /' 
 became First Minister, not left the House of Commons, 
 he would probably have retained his sanity and his 
 authority. He would have prevented, or suppressed, 
 the reckless budget of Charles Townshend, have induced 
 
10 QUESTIONS OF EMPIBE. 
 
 George III. to listen to reason, have introduced repre- 
 sentatives from America into the Imperial Parliament, 
 and preserved the thirteen American colonies to the 
 British Crown. Is it fanciful to dwell for a moment on 
 what might have happened? The Reform Bill which 
 was passed in 1832 would probably have been passed 
 much earlier, for the new blood of America would have 
 burst the old vessels of the constitution. It would have 
 provided for some self-adjusting system of representa- 
 tion, such as now prevails in the United States, by which 
 increasing population is proportionately represented. 
 And at last, when the Americans became the majority, 
 the seat of empire would perhaps have been moved 
 solemnly across the Atlantic, and Britain have become 
 the historical shrine and the European outpost of the 
 world empire. 
 
 What an extraordinary revolution it would have been 
 had it been accomplished ! The greatest known without 
 bloodshed; the most sublime transference of power in 
 the history of mankind. Our conceptions can scarcely 
 picture the procession across the Atlantic, the greatest 
 sovereign in the greatest fleet in the universe, Ministers, 
 Government, Parliament departing solemnly for the other 
 hemisphere, not, as in the case of the Portuguese sov- 
 ereigns, emigrating to Brazil, under the spur of necessity, 
 but under the vigorous embrace of the younger world. 
 It is well to bridle the imagination, lest it become fan- 
 tastic and extravagant. 
 
 Moreover, it is a result to which we can scarcely ac- 
 climatize ourselves, even in idea. But the other effects 
 might have been scarcely less remarkable. America 
 would have hung on the skirts of Britain and pulled her 
 back out of European complications. She would have 
 profoundly affected the foreign policy of the mother 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIBE. 11 
 
 country in the direction of peace. Her influence in our 
 domestic policy would have been scarcely less potent. 
 It might probably have appeased and even contented 
 Ireland. The ancient constitution of Great Britain would 
 have been rendered more comprehensive and more elastic. 
 On the other hand, the American yearning for liberty 
 would have taken a different form ; it would have blended 
 with other traditions and flowed into other moulds. 
 And, above all, had there been no separation, there 
 would have been no war of Independence, no war of 
 1812, with all the bitter memories that these have left 
 on American soil. To secure that priceless boon I could 
 have been satisfied to see the British Federal Parliament 
 sitting in Columbia Territory. It is difficult indeed to 
 dam the flow of ideas in dealing with so pregnant a 
 possibility. But I restrain myself, because I know that 
 I am dreaming, and that an historical dream, though not 
 a bad relaxation in itself, should not be allowed to be- 
 come a nightmare. I acknowledge, too,, that this is what 
 is called an academical discussion. But where should 
 one be academical if not in the ancient University of 
 Glasgow ? 
 
 Let us then return to earth, or at any rate to that 
 large proportion of it which is covered by the Union 
 Jack. I have, before wandering into the Empire as it 
 might have been, given you the broad aspect of the Em- 
 pire as it is. Now, for my purpose it is not important 
 to consider whether this Empire is greater or less than 
 others, for it is impossible to compare states. Mere 
 area, mere population, do not necessarily imply power ; 
 still less do they import the security and contentment of 
 the inhabitants. But my main reason for discarding rel- 
 ative proportions is very different. We have to consider 
 not others, but ourselves. It is not alien Empires which 
 
12 QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 
 
 
 should concern us, except when they menace or compete. 
 Our first main necessary responsibility is to our own. 
 It is so vast, so splendid, so pregnant, that we have to 
 ask ourselves : Are we adequate to it ? Can we discharge 
 our responsibility to God and to man for so magnificent, 
 so populous a proportion of the world ? 
 
 Our answer, offhand, is ready and simple. We are 
 adequate. We do discharge our responsibilities. We 
 are a conquering and imperial race. All over the world 
 we have displayed our mettle. We have discovered and 
 annexed and governed vast territories. We have circled 
 the globe with our commerce. We have penetrated the 
 pagan races with our missionaries. We have inoculated 
 the universe with our institutions. We are apt indeed 
 to believe that our soldiers are braver, our sailors hardier, 
 our captains, naval and military, skilfuller, our states- 
 men wiser than those of other nations. As for our con- 
 stitution, there is no Briton at any hour of the day or 
 night who will suffer it to be said that there is any that 
 approaches it. 
 
 All this is in a measure true, I hope; at any rate I 
 am not here to dispute it. When indeed I remember 
 some episodes during the past twelve months, I feel that 
 it is hardly possible to exaggerate the courage and 
 character of our nation; the brave boys at the front, 
 the silent endurance at home ; I cannot think of these 
 without emotion, as well as with admiration and with 
 pride. But our boasts, even if they be true, do not con- 
 tain the whole truth. It would be well enough if we could 
 lie on a bank of asphodel, basking in our history, our 
 glory, and our past. That, however, is not possible. Never 
 was it less possible than now. Fifty years ago we had 
 to face a world that was comparatively inert. Europe 
 was concerned with Europe and little more. The armies 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 13 
 
 of Europe were relatively small and not wholly dispro- 
 portionate to ours. The United States had no army. 
 Ten or twelve years later a terrible convulsion rent the 
 great Republic, and for a moment her hosts were num- 
 bered by the million. That baleful flame shot up to 
 heaven and sank down when the agony was overpast, 
 but its memory remained a portent. Twenty years later 
 a national war arose between France and Germany, 
 which produced a potent German Empire, and converted 
 all the nations of Europe into passive armies. We 
 remained complacent in the confidence that these storms 
 could not pass the Channel. The Channel has indeed 
 done much for us. It has often protected us from the 
 broils of the Continent. It has been our bulwark, 
 though heedless speculators have sought to undermine it. 
 But it cannot guard us from the peaceful attacks of 
 trained and scientific rivalry in the arts of peace. It 
 cannot protect us against the increasing subtlety and 
 development of the arts of war. 
 
 There is a further and perhaps a mightier change in 
 the conditions of the world during the past half-century. 
 Fifty years ago the world looked lazily on while we dis- 
 covered, developed, and annexed the waste or savage 
 territories of the world. All that is now changed. The 
 colonial microbe has penetrated almost every empire 
 except that of Charles V., which has outlived it; and 
 even here I must except his Netherland provinces. 
 France, in the last ten or fifteen years, has annexed per- 
 haps a quarter of Africa, and has made a considerable 
 irruption into Asia. Germany has shown no less a 
 desire to become a colonizing nation. Russia pursues 
 her secular path of unchecked absorption, constantly 
 attracting fresh bodies into her prodigious orbit. Italy 
 has been bitten by the same desire for expansion. The 
 
14 QUESTIONS OF EMPIBE. 
 
 United States finds itself sitting like a startled hen on 
 a brood of unnumbered islands in the Philippine group. 
 All this is well and fair enough, but it changes our 
 relation to the world. Every mile of unmapped country, 
 every naked tribe of savages, is wrangled over as if it 
 were situated in the centre of Europe. The world has 
 shrunk into a continent of ascertained boundaries. The 
 illimitable and the unknown, the happy field of dreams, 
 have disappeared. That is a blow to imagination, but 
 it is not a fact of substantial importance to us, who do 
 not desire to increase our territories. Indirectly, how- 
 ever, it raises a number of delicate and disputable points. 
 Moreover, a colonial passion is apt to cause an ill feel- 
 ing, composed of envy, jealousy, and other hostile tend- 
 encies towards the ancient colonial empire. This again 
 does not signify, provided we realize it, and do not de- 
 serve it, and are ready to deal with it. 
 
 Then again there is the question of trade. Foreign 
 countries used to sneer at trade. It was considered be- 
 low the dignity of warlike races. We were described as 
 a nation of shopkeepers. Now every nation wishes to 
 be a nation of shopkeepers. This new object is pursued 
 with the intelligent purpose which was once applied to 
 the balance of power. That is a great change. We 
 once had a sort of monopoly ; we now have to fight for 
 existence. 
 
 I summarize these various circumstances, to show 
 how greatly the conditions of our commonwealth and 
 its relations to the outer world have become modified. 
 Some of these changes have passed almost unperceived. 
 I call attention to them, to demonstrate the necessity 
 of our asking ourselves this vital and imperative ques- 
 tion: Have our state machinery and methods been ex- 
 amined and remodelled in view of them ? If not, no 
 time should be lost. 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE 15 
 
 After all, a state is in essence a great Joint Stock 
 Company with unlimited liability on the part of its 
 shareholders. It is said, and said with truth, that diffi- 
 cult as it is to make a great fortune, it is scarcely less 
 difficult to keep it. With even more of accuracy the 
 same may be said of a business. A fortune without care 
 is apt to disappear, as snow wastes away in a languid 
 thaw. And a business depends on incessant vigilance, 
 on method, on keeping abreast of the times. A business 
 in these days can live but a short time on its past repu- 
 tation, and what is true of a business is true of an 
 empire. It is found out to be a sham : its aims, its gov- 
 ernment, its diplomacy, are seen to be out of date by 
 watchful rivals ; an excuse is found for a quarrel (and 
 such excuses are easy) ; the empire is tested, and fails, 
 and succumbs. 
 
 As in a business, too, a periodical stocktaking is nec- 
 essary in a state. So far as mere money is concerned, 
 this is regularly done. We know, with some accuracy, 
 our income, our expenditure, and our debts. But money, 
 though a national necessity and a valuable international 
 weapon, is not everything. A business house in these 
 days looks over its managers and its agents, and con- 
 siders whether they continue efficient. It surveys its 
 methods and compares them with those of its rivals ; it 
 discards those which are obsolete and adopts all im- 
 provements. If it does not do this, it is doomed. This 
 sort of stocktaking is unknown to the British Empire. 
 The ordinary Briton thinks it is needless. He says 
 comfortably that we have won Waterloo and Blenheim 
 and Trafalgar, and have produced Nelson and Welling- 
 ton and Roberts ; we have plenty of trade and plenty of 
 money ; how on earth could we do better ? And this 
 fatal complacency is so ingrained that some despair of 
 
16 QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 
 
 a remedy until we are awakened by a national disaster. 
 .For an empire, like a business, if neglected, may become 
 obsolete. 
 
 Take the example of Prussia — for I know no other so 
 striking — of the necessity of constant vigilance in the 
 strict maintenance of a state. Though he began to reign 
 over little but an inland spit of sand, her Great Frederick 
 raised her to be the most formidable power in Europe. 
 So he left her when he died in 1786. And yet, twenty 
 years afterwards, owing to the neglect and inadequacy of 
 his successors, she had almost ceased to exist. She was 
 wrecked, and dismembered, and prostrate ; she ceased to 
 have a voice among the nations. That interval was 
 short, for the catastrophe brought out the real resources 
 of the national character. You will see in Konigsberg, 
 which some of you perhaps venerate as the home of 
 Kant, the little room — at the end of a long hall, chosen 
 for that reason so that none might overhear — the little 
 room where the heroic and saintly Queen Louise worked 
 for the regeneration of the country. But here again, as 
 in the most Teutonic transactions, her statesmen were not 
 satisfied with stop-gap reform. They went to the root of 
 the matter. They indeed effected a sane, simple, and 
 momentous amendment in their army system. But they 
 went much further. Stein and his compeers saw that a 
 malady which had almost produced dissolution required 
 a drastic remedy. They had the courage to face it. At 
 great sacrifice, with natural grumblings and moanings, 
 still audible to us, they cut the feudal system out of the 
 body politic. The remedy was severe, but it saved the 
 patient. In no other country but Prussia would such a 
 course, even under such circumstances, have been possi- 
 ble. But the North German when he sees that things 
 go wrong will at once return to first principles. So 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 17 
 
 Prussia was saved, and emerged once more a first-rate 
 power. Then there was another interval on which it is 
 not necessary to dwell. And again, with the aid of 
 trained, able servants not afraid to face heroic measures, 
 she emerged more puissant than ever before. Can there 
 be a clearer instance of the building up of a power by 
 vigilant care, of its quick destruction by neglect, and 
 of its recovery by a return to the secret of its original 
 success ? 
 
 The first question, then, as I have said, which we must 
 put to ourselves, and we cannot put a more momentous 
 one, is : Are we worthy of this prodigious inheritance ? 
 Is the race which holds it capable of maintaining and 
 developing it ? Are we, like the Eomans, not merely a 
 brave, but also a persistent, business-like, alert, govern- 
 ing people ? And if we can answer this affirmatively, as 
 I hope we can, we have these further questions to ask 
 ourselves : Are we going the right way about our work, 
 and are our methods abreast of our time ? 
 
 I do not profess to ask these questions to-day, still 
 less to answer them. But I suggest that you should ask 
 them of yourselves, for they concern you all. You cannot, 
 indeed, give a full or adequate answer ; but the questions 
 will recur to you as long as you live. At different 
 periods of life you will give different answers, but no 
 one can attempt a complete reply. Even if the nation 
 chose to ask them of itself, I suppose it would only 
 appoint a Royal Commission, which would produce a 
 library of bluebooks when we were in our graves. And 
 yet the nation might do worse. Suppose when it decen- 
 nially takes stock of its population, that it took stock of 
 a little more. Suppose, when it numbered the people, 
 that it tested their plight ; that it inquired if their con- 
 dition were better or worse than ten years before ; and 
 
18 QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 
 
 so as to the position of our industries, of our education, 
 of our naval and military systems. Suppose that the 
 State did at some such periods demand an account of each 
 of its stewards. The general result would probably be 
 satisfactory ; but it may be predicted with much more 
 certainty that weaknesses, and abuses, and stagnation 
 would be discovered — an ill condition, which is apt 
 when neglected to be contagious and dangerous. 
 
 The nation does, indeed, confess itself from time to 
 time spasmodically through the newspapers. But that 
 impulse, sincere though it be, is apt to disappear with 
 the stress which inspired it. It is not sustained or busi- 
 ness-like. It evaporates in a committee, or in some new 
 ecstasy. Dogged, unrelenting, unreserved self-examina- 
 tion there is none ; perhaps none is possible. The 
 churches, it is true, are always demanding it — all the 
 more honor to them. But the adverb " always " contains 
 the secret of their want of success, or of their only par- 
 tial success. They are always, necessarily, doing it, so 
 they necessarily deaden their effect ; it is their business 
 to do it, and so men pass on. The shadow of the future 
 is as vain as all other shadows. Prosperity, while it 
 endures, is the drug, the hashish, which blinds the 
 patient to all but golden visions. And yet we are near- 
 ing an epoch of no common kind, short indeed in the 
 lives of nations, but longer than the life of man, when 
 we may well pause to take stock. Within six weeks we 
 shall have closed the nineteenth century, and have 
 entered on a new one for better or for worse. It is, of 
 course, only an imaginary division of time, though it 
 seems solemn enough, for we are on a pinnacle of the 
 world's temple where we can look forward or look back. 
 
 What will that twentieth century be ? What will be 
 its distinctive note ? Of the nineteenth we may say 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 19 
 
 generally that it has been an era of emancipation, con- 
 siderable though not complete. Nations, as a rule, have 
 been sorted into boundaries more consonant with their 
 aspirations and traditions than was formerly the case. 
 The tyranny of sects, in Britain, at any rate, has partially 
 abated. The undue pressure of government has dimin- 
 ished. Slavery has disappeared. All over the world 
 there have been great strides towards freedom ; and, 
 though inadequate, they have been so considerable as to 
 produce for a moment an apathy of self-satisfaction. 
 But the twentieth ! What does it bear in its awful", 
 womb? Of one thing only can we be certain — that it \ 
 will be a period of keen, intelligent, almost fierce inter- \ 
 national competition, more probably in the arts of peace \ 
 even than in the arts of war. How, then, should we pre- | 
 pare for such an epoch and such a conflict ? 
 
 It is a matter in which Universities have a deep con- 
 cern. For there is one fact, at any rate, to which we 
 cannot be blind. The first need of our country is a want 
 of men. We want men for all sorts of high positions — 
 first-rate men, if possible ; if not, as nearly first rate as 
 may be. The supply of such men is never excessive, but, 
 as the Empire has increased, so has the demand, and the 
 supply seems to be much less elastic. In other words, 
 the development and expansion of the Empire have pro- 
 duced a corresponding demand for first-rate men, but the 
 supply has remained, at best, stationary. Of course we 
 do not employ all those that we have, for by the balance 
 of our constitution, while one half of our capable states- 
 men is in full work, the other half is, by that fact, stand- 
 ing idle in the market-place with no one to hire them. 
 This used to be on a five years' shift, but all that is now 
 altered. Anyhow, it is a terrible waste. But, putting 
 that incident apart, even among the fixed eternal stars 
 
20 QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 
 
 of the public service there is not a sufficient supply of 
 men for the purposes of government. I could name a 
 typical diplomatist, a typical soldier, a typical civil ser- 
 vant, and could say of each of them that could he be 
 multiplied by forty the market would not be glutted. I 
 am not gloomy about all this. I believe that the men, or 
 something of the kind, are there ; the difficulty is to find 
 them. The processes of discovery and selection are apt 
 to lead to jobbery, so we employ the slow ladder of a 
 fixed service and of promotion by seniority. Now a 
 senior is a very good thing, but I am sure that I shall 
 have the unanimous approval of my constituents in say- 
 ing that a junior is a better — wherever, at any rate, 
 physical strength and activity are required. Our civil 
 service is a noble one, perhaps matchless — certainly 
 unsurpassed. Its zeal and capacity for its special work 
 are admirable. Its members are loyal to all chiefs and 
 strenuous to help them. But it does not give us what 
 we want for the elastic needs of the Empire. A service 
 of that kind, however excellent, and perhaps because it 
 is excellent, is apt to become a caste. Moreover, the ad- 
 mittance to it is by brain-work alone. Now brains, 
 though necessary and desirable, are not everything ; for 
 administration under varying climes and circumstances, 
 what I may call wild administration, you want much 
 more. You want, for this purpose, force of character, 
 quick decision, physical activity, and endurance of all 
 kinds, besides, if possible, the indefinable qualities which 
 sway mankind. You want men who will go anywhere at 
 a moment's notice and do anything. These qualities 
 cannot be tested by civil service examiners. And yet we 
 have a good deal of dare-devil, adaptable raw material on 
 hand. Some of the young generals, who have come 
 through the arduous experiences of this war, will be fit 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 21 
 
 for almost anything that they may be called on to do. 
 But these have been seasoned by the severest of training, 
 and we cannot often afford such an education. 
 
 This dearth of men, as I have said, concerns you 
 directly, for you are part of the coming generation, and 
 I hope that there may be among my constituents some 
 of these necessary men. But this at any rate is clear, 
 that it is the function of our Universities to produce 
 such men. 
 
 And this leads me to another question. Are we setting 
 ourselves sufficiently to train such men ? I doubt it. 
 The most illustrious of our public schools has no modern 
 side. Oxford and Cambridge still exact their dole of 
 Latin and Greek. I cannot believe from the imperial 
 point of view, having regard to the changed conditions 
 of the world, that this is necessary, or adequate, or wise. 
 I concede Latin as a training instrument and a universal 
 language. But how about Greek ? It is perhaps the 
 noblest of tongues : it enshrines perhaps the noblest of 
 literatures. To learned men it is a necessity. But must 
 it be a part of the necessary equipment of the ordinary 
 youth of the nineteenth century, who has so much to 
 learn in order to be equal to his age ? Heine once 
 remarked with sardonic humor : " How fortunate were 
 the Romans, that they had not to learn the Latin gram- 
 mar, for if so they would not have had time to conquer 
 the world." Well, I pass the Latin grammar with a 
 gloomy respect, but I will say that the Greek grammar, 
 except in the learned professions, seems to me a heavy 
 burden for our Empire, subject as it is to eager and 
 intelligent competition. I think that when our national 
 ignorance of foreign languages has become not merely a 
 by-word but almost a commercial disaster we might 
 reconsider part of our educational apparatus. This is 
 
22 QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 
 
 no new question. Thirty-three years ago it was raised 
 at Edinburgh by one who was not merely a remarkable 
 statesman, but a brilliant scholar. He had been a 
 famous classical tutor ab Oxford, yet nevertheless he 
 protested against our educational bondage to the dead 
 languages. The same protest is being raised in Edin- 
 burgh again to-day, but this time by the voice of the 
 mercantile community. The leading bodies of that call- 
 ing lately appointed a committee to consider the subject 
 of commercial education. Their report is well worth 
 reading. They speak of the ancient tongues with 
 courtesy and respect, but they demand something more 
 practically useful, less divorced from every -day life. For 
 one thing, they urge with earnestness the better teach- 
 ing of modern languages. There is required, they say, 
 on the part of the educational authorities, an admission 
 that a man may be an educated and even a cultured gen- 
 tleman, although he has not seriously studied Latin or 
 Greek; and they further point out that both France and 
 Germany possess invaluable literatures, with the advan- 
 tage that they are in languages which are living and not 
 dead. I agree with them in thinking that for the pur- 
 poses of the present age, especially for the merchant and 
 the politician, there is required a more modern education, 
 more especially as regards languages. I do not pretend 
 that a modern education will necessarily produce the 
 men you need for all purposes of administration. No ; 
 but it will help you to train them, it will give them the 
 weapons of life, it will give you citizens who are so far 
 capable of meeting the new requirements of the world. 
 
 I must not expatiate. I will merely say that we want 
 good men for the public service ; that the demand has 
 grown with the growth of the Empire, and that the sup- 
 ply has failed to keep pace with it. I doubt, moreover, 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 23 
 
 whether we are going the right way to rear such a supply. 
 But that is only a small part of the question of race. In 
 reality we do not depend so much on our governments as 
 would seem to be the case. Looking back over the past 
 century, there is one luminous fact — how little the 
 Anglo-Saxon nations depend on their governments, or 
 owe to them. The people wield their own destinies ; 
 they walk their own paths. The governments are pass- 
 ing signs; as it were the cockades of different colors 
 which used to be worn, and which denoted the parties to 
 which the wearers belonged. And this view of the case 
 incalculably enhances the importance of our race problem. 
 Our people in the main govern themselves — let them be 
 worthy governors ; mentally and physically let them 
 be worthy of their high destiny. 
 
 But education, as I have said, is only a part of our 
 race problem. An empire such as ours requires as its 
 first condition an imperial race — a race vigorous and 
 industrious and intrepid. Are we rearing such a race ? 
 In the rural districts I trust that we are. I meet the /A 
 children near Edinburgh returning from school, and I 
 will match them against any children in the world. But 
 in the great cities, in the rookeries and slums which still 
 survive, an imperial race cannot be reared. You can 
 scarcely produce anything in those foul nests of crime 
 and disease but a progeny doomed from its birth to mis- 
 ery and ignominy. That is a rift in the cornerstone of 
 your commonwealth, but it brings some of you directly 
 into its service. For many here are reared to the service 
 of medicine. They will be physicians, surgeons, medical 
 officers, medical inspectors. Kemember, then, that where 
 you promote health and arrest disease, where you convert 
 an unhealthy citizen into a healthy one, where you exercise 
 your authority to promote sanitary conditions and sup- 
 
24 QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 
 
 press those which, are the reverse, you in doing your duty 
 are also working for the Empire. " Sanitas sa?iitatum, om- 
 nia sanitas," said one of your dead Bectors, and he did 
 not greatly exaggerate. Health of mind and body exalt 
 a nation in the competition of the universe. The sur- 
 vival of the fittest is an absolute truth in the conditions 
 of the modern world. Even if our schools and univer- 
 sities train the national mind efficiently, the national 
 body may not be neglected. Another of your dead 
 Bectors declared, in a phrase scarcely less famous than 
 Lord Beaconsfield's, that the schoolmaster was abroad — 
 meaning that he was active. Let us hope that we may 
 soon feel that the medical officer is abroad with sufficient 
 power in his arm, power which he must derive from pub- 
 lic opinion as well as from his central or municipal em- 
 ployers. 
 
 And there are other relative questions which we can- 
 not ignore. How do we stand with regard to those 
 healthy, hardy, frugal virtues which mean so much, 
 physically and morally, to a people ? Whether an in- 
 sidious and excessive luxury is not prevalent among us ; 
 whether the passion for wealth, its influence, and the 
 worship it receives, be not a danger; whether, indeed, 
 our land is not becoming the playground and pleasance 
 of the plutocrats of all nations, in itself a symptom not 
 wholly bad, but yet not wholly good, for a plutocracy is 
 one of the most detestable of all dominations ; these are 
 grave questions with which we are confronted. Against 
 this apparent luxury we set the rough manliness of our 
 sports, our cricket, our football, our hunting. That in 
 itself is no adequate answer, for even healthy sport, like 
 other good things, may be overdone. But, looking back 
 at the past as a guide for the future, I ask myself what 
 was the secret of the marvellous success of the Scottish 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 25 
 
 people during the last century in Scotland itself, in Eng- 
 land, and in the outer Britains ? It was not achieved in 
 purple and fine linen, in soft raiment, or in kings' houses. 
 No ! their poverty was equal to their patriotism : their 
 energy to both. How did they succeed ? By intense 
 industry, by severe frugality, by constant adaptability to 
 all circumstances and all conditions, however rigorous 
 and novel they might be. And so it was that they 
 raised Scotland to wealth and Scotsmen to power, and 
 made both Scotland and her sons the objects of that 
 jealousy and suspicion which are some of the sincerest 
 testimonies to success. 
 
 I have spoken of their intense industry, and this leads 
 me to another question. Do we work hard enough ? — 
 or rather, as I would put it, Are we thorough enough ? 
 That was a great word, " thorough/' bequeathed to us by 
 one of the most memorable of British statesmen : a great 
 word, not as he used it, but a word in itself which should 
 thrill through all mankind from the age of reason to 
 the shadow of death. But fortune, success, and well- 
 being are apt to make us forget it. I doubt if Jeshurun, 
 in his proverbial prosperity, kicked thoroughly ; it was 
 probably a sort of elegant flourish. And now we cannot 
 but observe that it is beginning to be hinted that we are 
 a nation of amateurs. Is this true ? If so, it is not 
 merely a grave charge, but an obvious danger. Let us 
 test it in passing. For example, we are warriors, and 
 merchants, and statesmen. Are we as thorough masters 
 of these crafts as we should be ? Wars, for example, 
 always find us unprepared. I dare say no more, but so 
 much is incontrovertible. And yet, on the other hand, 
 I cannot help suspecting that in the most consummate 
 military administration which now exists, nothing is 
 left to chance which can be guarded against by fore- 
 
26 QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 
 
 thought. Then, again, in statesmanship (I speak, of 
 course, of all our statesmen of all parties), do we conspicu- 
 ously shine ? Are we business-like and thorough ? Do 
 we anticipate or follow events ? Are our ministries not 
 overwhelmed by the treble task of departmental adminis- 
 tration, of preparing policies, and of oratorical combat, 
 inside and outside Parliament? We have abroad the 
 reputation of being subtle, unscrupulous, and of corrupt- 
 ing the universe with our gold. But, as a matter of 
 fact, we are never subtle, seldom unscrupulous, and have 
 no gold which Parliament would allow to be used in 
 corruption. It is almost a reproach to the honorable 
 statesmanship of Great Britain that abstaining as it 
 does, voluntarily or involuntarily, from these successful 
 qualities, it should have managed to earn all the oppro- 
 brium attached to them. Then is our policy sufficiently 
 persistent and continuous to ensure success ? I cannot 
 give an answer to so broad a question on this occasion. 
 But, as in the military case, I will cite another Power. 
 There is one signal quality which I specially admire in 
 the policy of Russia. It is practically unaffected by the 
 life of man or the lapse of time — it moves on, as it were, 
 by its own impetus ; it is silent, concentrated, perpetual, 
 and unbroken ; it is, therefore, successful. But I must 
 pass from these arts, for such topics verge on that for- 
 bidden territory which no Rector can touch and survive. 
 Commerce, however, comes fairly within my limits as a 
 bond of Empire, and affects our University, which stands 
 aloft in such a teeming mart. Here, then, is, at any 
 rate, ample opportunity for taking stock and considering 
 methods. I cannot enter into the discussion whether 
 there is cause for alarm as to the future of our trade ; 
 there is no time for that nor is this the place. But it 
 may fairly be alleged that there are disquieting symptoms. 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 27 
 
 Whether these symptoms be truthful indications or not, 
 they are at any rate worthy of careful, incisive investi- 
 gation. In some quarters such indications are never 
 neglected. I am greatly struck by a passage in the 
 report of the United States Consul at Chemnitz, cited in 
 the pamphlet in which our University sets forth its re- 
 quirements. "If an industry in Germany languishes," 
 he says, "immediately a commission inquires into the 
 causes, and recommends remedial measures, among which 
 usually is the advice to establish technical or industrial 
 schools, devoted to the branch of business under consid- 
 eration." In a word, they go to the root, to the principle, 
 to the source. This is thoroughness, this is the scien- 
 tific method applied to manufacture, and we see its suc- 
 cess. The Americans, I gather, have hitherto applied 
 themselves rather less to the principles than the applica- 
 tions of science. I do not pretend to say which are 
 right. The Germans are alarmed at the development of 
 American commerce, and we are alarmed at both. At 
 any rate, both in Germany and the United States you 
 see an expenditure and a systematic devotion to com- 
 mercial, and technical, and scientific training. I know 
 that much is done, too, in Great Britain. But I doubt if 
 even that is carried out in the same methodical way ; nor 
 is there anything like the same lavish, though well-con- 
 sidered expenditure. It always seems to me as if in 
 Germany nothing, and in Britain everything, is left to 
 chance. Nothing but a miracle can stop us, think the 
 Germans, when they have completed their preparations. 
 We shall have our usual miracle, thinks the cheerful 
 Briton, as he sets out a good deal in arrear. With the 
 same intelligent persistence with which the German 
 makes war, he has entered on the peaceful conflict of 
 commerce, and therefore has achieved the same brilliant 
 
28 QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 
 
 success. We need not envy that success, we do not 
 grudge it ; but it is well to observe it, and to note its 
 causes. 
 
 Commerce, then, is a bond of Empire which this Uni- 
 versity by its training may do much to strengthen. The 
 mercantile committee at Edinburgh demand, indeed, that 
 to our Universities shall be added a commercial faculty 
 which would stimulate the commercial side in our sec- 
 ondary schools, and which would be of substantial im- 
 portance in attracting to the University men who are 
 about to enter on a commercial life. They " believe that 
 a University education would be of the greatest service 
 to the men who are to occupy the chief position in large 
 commercial undertakings. 77 Our University has not as 
 yet seen its way, where so much has to done, to take this 
 new and important step. It has done much, it is doing 
 much, but it is well aware of its weakness. It is now 
 appealing for aid to place itself on a properly scientific 
 footing, a footing adequate to its position in this great 
 commercial community, which so greatly needs and which 
 can so fruitfully utilize opportunities of technical and 
 scientific training. It will not, I think, appeal to the 
 second city of the Empire in vain. 
 
 But the newest of our universities has advantages 
 which are denied to the more ancient with regard to 
 modern requirements. For the practical purposes of the 
 present day a university which starts in the twentieth 
 century has a great superiority over a university founded 
 in the fifteenth; more especially when it is launched 
 with keen intelligence of direction and ample funds, as 
 is the new University of Birmingham. These practical 
 universities are the universities of the future, for the 
 average man who has to work for his livelihood cannot 
 superadd the learning of the dead to the educational re- 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 29 
 
 quirements of his life and his profession. There will 
 always be universities, or at any rate colleges, for the 
 scholar, the teacher, and the divine ; but year by year 
 the ancient universities will have to adapt themselves 
 more and more to modern exigencies. And where so 
 much has to be absolutely novel it is perhaps easier to 
 begin than to remodel or adapt. So that the new uni- 
 versities which do not require for their utilitarian pur- 
 poses hoary antiquity or ancient prescription will have 
 an advantage over the venerable schools which have for 
 centuries guarded and interpreted and transmitted the 
 accumulated treasures of erudition. 
 
 There was a time, long years ago, when the spheres of 
 action and of learning were separate and distinct ; when 
 laymen dealt hard blows and left letters to the priest- 
 hood. That was to some extent the case when our oldest 
 universities were founded. But the separation daily 
 narrows, if it has not already disappeared. It has been 
 said that the true university of our days is a collection 
 of books. What if a future philosopher shall say that 
 the best university is a workshop ? And yet the latter 
 definition bids fair to be the sounder of the two. The 
 training of our schools and colleges must daily become 
 more and more the training for action, for practical pur- 
 pose. The question will be asked of the product of our 
 educational system : " Here is a young fellow of twenty ; 
 he has passed the best years of acquisition and impres- 
 sion ; he has cost so much ; — what is his value ? for what 
 in all the manifold activities of the world is he fit ? " 
 And if the answer be not satisfactory, if the product be 
 only a sort of learned mummy, the system will be con- 
 demned. Are there not thousands of lads to-day plod- 
 ding away, or supposed to be plodding away, at the 
 ancient classics who will never make anything of those 
 
30 QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 
 
 classics, and who, at the first possible moment, will cast 
 them into space never to reopen them ? Think of the 
 wasted time that that implies ; not all wasted perhaps, 
 for something may have been gained in power of applica- 
 tion, but entirely wasted so far as available knowledge is 
 concerned. And if you consider, as you will have to 
 consider in the stress of competition, that the time and 
 energy of her citizens is part of the capital of the com- 
 monwealth, all those wasted years represent a dead loss 
 to the Empire. 
 
 If, then, these recent events and the present condi- 
 tions of the world induce thinkers and leaders in this 
 country to test our strength and methods for the great 
 — but, I hope, peaceful — struggle before us, they must 
 reckon the training of man. On that, under Providence, 
 depends the future, and the immediate future, of the 
 race ; and what is Empire but the predominance of race ? 
 
 How is that predominance to be secured ? Remember 
 the conditions : nations all becoming more dense and 
 numerous, and therefore more hungry and more difficult 
 to satisfy ; nations more and more educated and intelli- 
 gent, more observant of each other ; nations more and 
 more alive fco their substantial interests and capable of 
 pursuing them ; nations, therefore, increasingly aware 
 of the vital necessity of a healthy, growing commerce, 
 and fiercely determined to obtain it ; nations more and 
 more civilized, and therefore less and less anxious for 
 the wager of battle, but still ready even for that, if it 
 be necessary for their new objects. After all, when you 
 have reduced all this to its last expression, it comes to 
 this — the keener and more developed intelligence of 
 humanity, stimulated by competition and enhanced by 
 training. It is with that intelligence that we have to 
 struggle and to vie. 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 31 
 
 This conflict we have no reason to fear, if we choose 
 to rouse ourselves. We have, I believe, the best natural 
 material in the world. But I doubt if we are sufficiently 
 alive to the exigencies of the situation. It is perhaps 
 well to revel in a sunburst of prosperity and of high 
 wages. It may be well to owe much of that prosperity 
 to an unbounded exportation of coal, of which we have 
 a large but limited supply, and which is vitally neces- 
 sary to us as the element of existence. It is well in a 
 time of stress to send a host of spirited volunteers to 
 the front, to admire their hereditary valor, and to wel- 
 come them back. It is well to be convinced that we are 
 the finest fellows on the earth, and supreme on the seas. 
 If that be the truth it is comfortable enough. But the 
 mere exhilarating impression is scarcely sufficient. If 
 it were founded on hard, tested facts it would be emi- 
 nently satisfactory. But is it ? 
 
 There is no disparagement implied in the criticism 
 of this attitude. There is only a sense of the heedless 
 self-confidence of strength. Our people do not realize 
 the actual closeness of competition, and the cold, elabo- 
 rate, vigilant science which that fact involves. The cal- 
 culating tortoise in these days will always overtake the 
 exuberant hare ; and yet even the tortoise will seek to 
 improve his pace. Everything that survives becomes 
 refined to an art. Take your games as an instance. 
 Chess, I suppose, was in its inception an artless diver- 
 sion. It now taxes the most acute minds, and elicits 
 new powers from the brain. The first cricketer, as I 
 judge from portraits, played with an elementary club, 
 which would now be wholly incompetent to defend a 
 wicket for an instant. But football affords an even 
 stronger illustration. I suppose it began in the childish 
 propensity to play with a ball, and the boyish anxiety to 
 
32 QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 
 
 kick anything. But it has developed into a science. I 
 know of no sport which affords such lessons for national 
 success as Association football. I do not indeed under- 
 stand the refinements of the game. But the meanest in- 
 tellect can grasp that it implies incessant watchfulness ; 
 that its essence is an alert combination of all powers for 
 one object; that indolence or selfishness are fatal ; that 
 the player indeed who does not do his best to cooperate 
 or who plays for his own hand must necessarily be out- 
 lawed. So it is with nations. If they desire to survive 
 they must constantly sharpen their intelligence and 
 equipment. They need the constant cooperation of the 
 government with the governed ; of science and vigilance 
 with commerce ; of the teachers with the taught, and 
 with the age in which they teach. 
 
 Remember too this historical fact. We belong to a 
 nation which has ever been ambitious. Under the great 
 Edwards and Harries and the mighty reign of Elizabeth, 
 ambition grew and swelled and has never had leisure to 
 shrink. But ambition, though an exulting, is an exact- 
 ing virtue. It is made of stern stuff ; it cannot endure 
 apathy or even content. It exacts constant sacrifice and 
 untiring endeavor. Planting a flag here and there, or 
 demarcating regions with a red line on a map, are vain 
 diversions if they do not imply an unswerving purpose 
 to develop and to maintain. But maintenance requires 
 that we shall be alive to all modern methods. Yet we 
 are apt to forget this, and to imagine that our swaddling 
 clothes will suffice for our maturity. 
 
 I urge you then, gentlemen, to realize in your own 
 persons and studies the responsibility which rests on 
 yourselves. You are, after all, members of that com- 
 pany of adventurers (used in the Elizabethan and not 
 the modern sense) which is embarked in the business of 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 33 
 
 carrying this British Empire through the twentieth cent- 
 ury. Each of you has his share in that glorious heritage, 
 and each of you is answerable for that share. Be, then, 
 practical partners, intelligent partners, industrious part- 
 ners, and so you will be in the best sense practical, in- 
 telligent, industrious imperialists. Be inspired in your 
 various callings with the thought of the service that you 
 can do to your country in faithfully following your pro- 
 fession, so that in doing private you are doing public 
 duty too. The Church, the Law, and Medicine, those 
 chaste and venerable sisters, will, I suppose, claim most 
 of you, and in the service of each you have ample oppor- 
 tunities of rendering service to the commonwealth. The 
 Law is the ladder to Parliament ; and the tribunal of 
 appeal is, and I hope will increasingly be, a constitu- 
 tional bond of Empire. The missions of the Churches, 
 and the Churches themselves, apart from their sacred 
 functions and home labors, which directly serve the state 
 so far as they raise their flocks, have incalculably aided 
 in the expansion, consolidation, and civilization of the 
 Empire. And Medicine should tend and raise the race, on 
 which all depends. For from my point of view there is 
 not a close in the darkest quarters of Glasgow, or a 
 crofter's cabin in the Hebrides, which is not a matter of 
 imperial concern, quite as truly, in its proportion and 
 degree, as those more glowing topics to which that ad- 
 jective is too often limited. 
 
 And mark this : in all that I have said there is no . 
 word of war, not even the beat of a drum, or the distant J 
 singing of a bullet. To some the Empire is little else, ' 
 and that makes many hate the word. That is not my 
 view. Our Empire is not founded on the precedents as- 
 sociated with that name. It is not the realm of conquest 
 which that term has been used to imply. It has often 
 
 LofC, 
 
34 QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 
 
 used the sword, it could not exist without the sword, but 
 it does not live by the sword. Defence and readiness to 
 fight are vital enough in their way, but not less vital is 
 the civil and domestic side : the commerce, the education, 
 the intelligence, the unceasing leaven of a high and the 
 sour decadence of a low ideal. War and conquest can 
 fill the lives of but a part of the nation: a sane and 
 simple duty to the Empire may well inspire the whole. 
 And when we work in that spirit we should receive 
 grace from the idea, from that glorious vision trans- 
 formed into fact — the British Empire. 
 
 Remember how incomparably Shakespeare described 
 it: 
 
 " This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, 
 
 This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
 
 This other Eden, demi-paradise, 
 
 This fortress built by Nature for herself 
 
 Against infection arid the hand of war, 
 
 This happy breed of men — this little world, 
 
 This precious stone set in the silver sea, 
 
 This blessed spot, this earth, this realm, this England." 
 
 And yet that was only the source and centre of what we 
 now behold, which has soared so far beyond whatever 
 Shakespeare can have conceived. 
 
 How marvellous it all is ! Built not by saints and 
 angels, but the work of men's hands ; cemented with 
 men's honest blood and with a world of tears, welded by 
 the best brains of centuries past ; not without the taint 
 and reproach incidental to all human work, but con- 
 structed on the whole with pure and splendid purpose. 
 Human, and yet not wholly human, for the most heedless 
 and the most cynical must see the finger of the Divine. 
 Growing as trees grow, while others slept ; fed by the 
 
QUESTIONS OF EMPIRE. 35 
 
 faults of others as well as by the character of our 
 fathers ; reaching with the ripple of a resistless tide over 
 tracts, and islands, and continents, until our little Britain 
 woke up to find herself the foster-mother of nations and 
 the source of united empires. Do we not hail in this 
 less the energy and fortune of a race than the supreme 
 direction of the Almighty ? Shall we not, while we 
 adore the blessing, acknowledge the responsibility ? And 
 while we see, far away in the rich horizons, growing gen- 
 erations fulfilling the promise, do we not own with resolu- 
 tion mingled with awe the honorable duty incumbent on 
 ourselves ? Shall we then falter or fail ? The answer 
 is not doubtful. We will rather pray that strength may 
 be given us, adequate and abundant, to shrink from no 
 sacrifice in the fulfilment of our mission ; that we may 
 be true to the high tradition of our forefathers; and 
 that we may transmit their bequest to our children, aye, 
 and, please God, to their remote descendants, enriched 
 and undefiled, this blessed and splendid dominion. 
 
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