EXPANSION OF ENGLAND THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND TWO COURSES OF LECTURES BY Sir J. E. SEELEY, K.C.M.G., Litt.D. EEOIUS PKOFESSOE OP MODEBN HISTOBT IN THE UNIVEESITY OF CAMBEIDOE FELLOW OF GONVILLE AND CAroS COLLEGE ; FELLOW OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL 80CIETY, AND HONORARY MEMBER OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1905 All rights reserved LIBRARY UNIVEIft] c-P I'ALIFORtf SANTA BARBARA PREFACE 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 Commerce. CONTENTS COUESE I LECTURE I PAGE Tendency in English History . 1 LECTURE II England in the Eighteenth Century . . 20 LECTURE III The Empire ...... 44 LECTURE IV The Old Colonial System . . . .66 LECTURE V Effect of the New World on the Old . . 90 LECTURE VI Commerce and War . . . . .114 LECTURE VII Phases of Expansion ..... 138 LECTURE VIII Schism in Greater Britain .... 164 Vlll THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND COURSE II LECTURE I TARE History and Politics ..... 189 LECTURE II The Indian Empire . 207 LECTURE III How we Conquered India .... 228 LECTURE IV How we Govern India . . . 251 LECTURE V Mutual Influence of England and India . 272 LECTURE VI Phases in the Conquest of India . . . 294 LECTURE VII Internal and External Dangers . . . 317 LECTURE VIIJ Recapitulation ...... 340 FIRST COURSE LECTURE I TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 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 something that might be called a moral. Some large conclusion ought to arise out of it j 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 prominent as history advances. Some countries, such as Holland and Sweden, might pardonably regard their history as in a manner wound up. They were once great, but the conditions of their greatness have passed away, and they now hold a secondary place. S> B 2 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 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, 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 concerning 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 off? 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 steadily 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 question brings to mind those lines of Wordsworth : I TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTOEY 3 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," Roused 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 — Well ! this sad fate, which is " not to be thought of," is just what befalls, if not the stream itself of British freedom, yet the reflection 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. Hitherto 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 1 ? If they lead to no great truths having at the same time scientific 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, 4 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 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. Those vague flourishes usually consisted in some reference to what was cal-led 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 in 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 i TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 5 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 connection with each other than that they happened often to appear together in history ; sometimes the softening of manners, sometimes mechanical inventions, sometimes religious toleration, sometimes the appearance of great poets and artists, sometimes scientific discoveries, sometimes constitu- tional liberty. It was assumed, though it was never proved, that all these things belonged together and had 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 principle of freedom of thought, and trace all the consequences that will follow from that. Scientific discoveries 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, modern aspect ; this change then we might call the advance of civilisation. But political 6 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lbct. liberty has no connection with all this. There was liberty at Athens before Plato and Aristotle, but afterwards it died out ; liberty at Eome 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 Renaissance, but no Dante after it. If we analyse this vague sum-total which we call civilisation, 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 part is only indirectly con- nected 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 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 un- conscious 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 I TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTORY I mutual dealings. 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 intrigues 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\ofca\ov/j.ev fier evTekeias icai (f)i\oao(f)ov/ji€v avev fiaXa/clas ? 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 pro- gress 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 separately the important subjects which were omitted in that scheme. I consider therefore that history has to do with the State, that it investigates the growth and changes of a certain corporate society, which acts through certain functionaries and certain assemblies. By the nature of the State every person who lives in a certain territory is usually a member of it, but history is not concerned with individuals 8 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 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 proportion, not to their intrinsic merit, but to their relation to the State. Socrates was a much greater man than Cleon, but Cleon has a much greater 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 1 is much more definite than it might at first 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 1 The words which jump to our lips in answer are Liberty, Democracy 1 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 I TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 9 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 if they did not first acquire it — for us. In later times there has been a movement towards something which is often 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 affairs. 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 centuries, 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. I 10 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. There is something very characteristic in the indifference which we show towards this mighty phenomenon of the diffusion of our race and the I 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 betray by our modes of speech that 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 reflection 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 fore- ground and suffering what we call the English possessions to escape our view in the background of the picture. I TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 11 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 Raleigh, 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 interruption 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 seven- teenth century and the Stuart dynasty. The second was the creation of a still larger Britain compre- hending 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 12 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect, large extent by Englishmen and subject to the Crown, and a fifth great territory also subject to the Crown and ruled by English officials, 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 ? First let us look at their population, which, the territory being as yet newly 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 than the population of Swit- zerland. 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 nearly a hundred and ninety-eight millions, and the native states in India which look up to England as I TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 13 the paramount Power had about fifty-seven millions in addition. The total makes a population roughly equal to that of all Europe excluding Russia. 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 who 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 are in general three ties by which states are held together, community of race, community of religion, community of interest. By the first two our colonies are evidently bound to us, and this fact by itself makes the connection strong. It will grow indissolubly firm if we come to recognise also that interest bids us maintain the connection, and this conviction seems to gain ground. When we inquire 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 estimate the Empire not by population but by territorial area. Ten millions of Englishmen beyond 14 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 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 importance 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, but 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 millions. These figures may perhaps strike you as rather overwhelming than interesting. You may make it a question whether we ought to be glad of this vast increase of our race, whether it would not be better for us to 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- £ TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 15 time is the immense importance of this increase. Good or bad, it is evidently the great fact of modern English history. And it would be the greatest mistake to imagine that it is a merely material fact, or that it carries no moral and intellectual con- sequences. People cannot change their abodes, pass from an island to a continent, from the 50th 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 to lonely sheep-walks in countries where aboriginal savage tribes still wander, 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 connection has been maintained and has become closer, England itself will not be very much modified and transformed 1 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 16 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. empty countries by the nation which happened 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 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 population 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 I 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 I TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 17 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 mind a doubt, a misgiving, which affects our whole forecast 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 the solution of this question lies that moral which I said ought to result from the study of English history. It is an old saying, to which Turgot gave utterance a quarter of a century before the De- claration of Independence, " Colonies are like fruits which cling to the tree only till they ripen." He added, " As soon as America can take care of herself, she will do what Carthage did." What wonder 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 1 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, c 18 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 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 between them. The four groups of colonies may become four independent states, and in that case two 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 independence. In any case the English name and English institutions 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 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 I TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 19 very remote from each other. In that case England will take rank with Kussia and the United States in the first rank of state, measured by population and area, and 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 secession of our first colonies was not a mere normal result of ex- pansion, like the bursting of a bubble, but the result of temporary 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 absorbed 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 and in occasional allusions to the eighteenth century, what a faint and confused impression that period has left upon the national memory. In a great part of it we see nothing but stagnation. The wars seem to lead to nothing, and we do mot perceive the working of any new political ideas. That time seems to have created little, so that we can only think of it as pros- perous, but not as memorable. Those dim figures George I. and George II., the long tame administra- lect. ii ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 21 tions of Walpole and Pelham, the commercial war with Spain, the battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy, the foolish Prime Minister Newcastle, the dull brawls of the Wilkes period, the miserable American war ; — everywhere alike we seem to remark a want of great- ness, a distressing commonness and flatness in men and in affairs. 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 Revolution. But what is the English eighteenth century, and what has come of it? What was ap- proaching then 1 But do we take the right way to discover the unity of a historical period 1 We have an unfortunate habit of distributing historical affairs under reigns. We do this mechanic- ally, as it were, even in periods where we recognise, nay, where we exaggerate, 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 miscon- ception, 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 George 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 22 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 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 considering them and analysing them closely. When with respect to any event Ave 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 produced. In this way each event takes the character 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 1 ! 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 Revolution. 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 con- nected with each other; those which are chrono- logically 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 the complex events give their names to the parts, as the simpler events II ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 23 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 hear their significance written on their face, and the connection 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 that we feel that embarrassment and want 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 would be interested in the period if he 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 eighteenth century, 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 Revolution of 1688 and ends with the peace of 1815. Now what are the great events during this period 1 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. 24 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LBOT. 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 earlier wars. For England has now for the first time a standing army and navy. The great English navy first took definite shape in the wars of the Commonwealth, and the English Army, founded on the Mutiny Bill, dates from the reign of William III. Between the Bevolution and the Battle of Waterloo it may be reckoned that we waged seven great wars, of which the shortest lasted seven years 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 burden which they laid upon the country. Before this period England had of course often been at war ; still at the commencement of it England had no consider- able 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 millions. 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 nation could not meet at once; but an enormous amount 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 ii ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY 25 spent on war during 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 docs 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 of 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 Eevolution 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 shall always remember, because it was the war of Marlborough's victories. It lasted eleven years, from 1702 to 1713. The -j next great war has now passed almost entirely out of memory, not having brought to light any very great commander, nor achieved any definite result. But we have all heard speak of the fable of Jenkins' ears, and we have heard of the battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy, though perhaps few of us could give a rational account either of the reason for fighting 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 26 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 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 imagin- ations. 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 his own. 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 eight years, from 1775 to 1783, 1 Mark how the uneuthusiastic Walpole writes of them : " Intrigues of the Cabinet or of Parliament scarcely existed at that period. All men were, or seemed to be, transported with the success of their country, and content with an Administration which outwent their warmest wishes 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 convince posterity that such a display of immortal actions as illustrate the following pages is not the exhibition of a fabulous age." II ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 27 was indeed ignominious enough in America, but in its latter part it spread into a grand naval war, in which England stood at bay against almost all the world, and in this, through the victories of Rodney, 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 these wars together, or to look for any unity of plan or purpose pervading them. If such a thought did occur, we should probably find ourselves hopelessly baffled in our first attempts. In one war the question appears to be of the method of suc- cession 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? 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 every- where, at Madras, or at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, or on the banks of the Ohio. Thus Macaulay says in speaking of Frederick's invasion of 28 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 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 appearance which these wars present. 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 both 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 centuries, 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 ofjpgantic rivalry between England and France, a kind of second n ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY 29 Hundred Years' War. In fact in those 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 im- pression in the minds of those generations, that England and France always had been at war and s/ 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 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 recurrence of war with France have been a mere accident, arising from the nearness of France and the necessary frequency of collisions with her 1 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 30 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. of the European states as the great struggle with Napoleon. But when this truce was over we may almost regard all the wars which followed as con- stituting one war interrupted by occasional pauses. At any rate the three 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 par- ticularly 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 perversity which leads us to overlook the grandeur of that phase in our history, while we fix our eyes upon petty domestic occurrences, parliamentary quarrels, party intrigue, 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 consider- able 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 II ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 31 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, 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 Virginia sent a body of 400 men under the command of George Washington, then a very young man and a British subject, to attack it, and how Washington was surrounded and forced to capitulate. We have 32 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. • heard too of the defeat and death of General Braddock in the same parts. Still better do we remember the struggle between Dupleix and Clive in India, the defence of Arcot 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 modern 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 statesman 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 as- sisted 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 after-swell of the great disturbance that had so recently been stilled? It was not for a moment dissembled that France now in our hour of distress took vengeance for what 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 n ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 33 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 with other wars which are going on at the same time. Such immense complex medleys are characteristic of the eighteenth century. What, for instance, can the capture of Quebec have to do with the struggle of Frederick and Maria Theresa for Silesia 1 In such medleys there is great room for historical mistakes, for premature 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 Catholicism. 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 decisive duel between England and France for / * the possession of the New World. It was perhaps / D 34 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. scarcely perceived at 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 possession 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. IWe 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 competitor 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 this, that about the same time that James I. was giving charters to Virginia and New England the French were founding farther 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 Frenchman La Salle, by one of the greatest feats of discovery, made his way from the Great Lakes to the sources of the Mississippi, and putting his boats upon the stream descended the whole vast river to the Gulf of Mexico, laying open a great territory, which immediately afterwards became the French colony of Louisiana. Such was the relation of France and England in North America, at the time when the Revolution of 1688 opened II ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 35 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 Mississippi. A political prophet comparing the prospects of the two colon- ising 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 abnormal 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 byj Frenchmen; Frenchmen first perceived that it was feasible and saw the manner in which it could be done ; Frenchmen first set about it and advanced 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 36 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 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. 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 and England fought a second Hundred Years' War. This is the ultimate ex- planation, but the true ground of discord was not always equally apparent even to the belligerents themselves, and still less to the rest of the world. For as in other ages so in this, occasional causes of difference frequently arose between such near neigh- bours, 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 back- II ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 37 ground, because France has fairly lost her hold both upon 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 her 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. But in our wars with Louis XIV. before and 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. The colonial question had indeed been growing in magnitude throughout the seventeenth century, while the other burning question of that age, the qu arrel of the two Churches, had been falling 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 38 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. in the interest of religion to have stood side by side, are found waging furious war upon each other as rival colonial Powers. Now it was by the great discovery and settlement of Louisiana in 1683 that France was brought into the forefront 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 America as the "first intercolonial war," the colonial question is not very prominent. But it is prominent in the second, which has been called the War of the Spanish Suc- cession. 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 inter- fered 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 x how the war broke out. You will find that it was precisely 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 England were colonial, namely, the conquest of Acadio and the Asiento contract, 1 Better still in Europaische Oeschichte im 1 8ten Jahrhunderte, by C. v. Noonlen, in which book that great European transition is for the first time adequately treated. II ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 39 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 Eevolution 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 himself destined to find at last his prison and his grave. Thus when in 1798 he was put in charge for the first time of the war with England, he begins by examining 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, during 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 suffered. His mind is preoccupied Avith other thoughts. He remembers how France once seemed on the point of conquering India, until England : checked her progress ; accordingly he decides and convinces the Directory that the best way to carry on 1 In his Corsican period he had actually dreamed of entering the Anglo- Indian service and coining back a rich nabob. See Jung, Lucien Bonaparte et ses Memoires i. p. 74. 40 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leoT. 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 disappointment that France cannot spare them Bonaparte, but only General Humbert with eleven i 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 — Citoyen Tipou, as he was called — had been defeated and slain some time before, and General Baird had moved with an English force up the Ked Sea to take part with General Hutchinson in the expulsion of the French from 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 from the beginning had such a naval superiority, that Napoleon could never again succeed in making his way back into the New World. Never- theless I believe that it was intended by Napoleon to be so. In the first place look at the origin and it ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY 41 cause of it. It was at the outset a war for Malta. By the treaty of Amiens, England had engaged with- in a given time to evacuate Malta, and this for certain reasons, which need not here be discussed, she afterwards refused to do. Now why did Napoleon want her to leave Malta, and why did she refuse to do so 1 It was because Malta was the key of Egypt, and she had good reason to believe that he would in a moment reoccupy Egypt, and that the struggle for India would begin again. Thus the war was ulti- mately 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 after- wards 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 planned. 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 42 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 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. 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 merely to mean 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 Revolution. 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 policy of England in that century is of less import- ance than its colonial policy. It really means that the European policy and the colonial policy are but different aspects of the same great national develop- ment. And this, nay even more than this, is what I desire to show. This single conception brings II ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 43 together not only the European with the colonial affairs, but also the military struggles with the whole peaceful expansion of the country, with that indus- trial 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 natural, 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 colonisa- tion. 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 LECT. Ill THE EMPIRE 45 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 born in one spring would be dedicated to some deity, who was supposed to accept emigration in lieu of sacrifice ; l the votaries accordingly, when 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 airoiKia, though the word is translated colony, was essentially different in fact from the modern colony. By a colony we understand a community which is not merely dei'iva- tive, but which remains politically connected in a relation of dependence with the parent community. Now the Greek cnroi/cla 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 1 Thus Paulus : Magnis periculis adducti voveliant Jtali quaecunque proximo vere nata essent apud se anirualia iramo- laturos. Sed quom crudele videretur pueros ac puellas innocentes interficere, perductos in adultam aetatem velabaut atque ita extra fines suos exigebant. 46 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect 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 de- pendency. 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 primitive system of the Greeks has not been revived in modern times. The colonisation which began with the discovery of Columbus, or more strictly with the conquest of the Canaries by Bethen- court in 1404, has been on a vast scale ; it has peopled a territory more extensive a hundredfold than the few Mediterranean islands and peninsulas which those primitive Greek adventurers occupied, yet nowhere, I think, did the mother-state willingly allow its emigrants to form independent communities. Whatever license might be allowed to the first adventurers, to a Cortez or Pizarro, whatever formid- able powers of levying 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 Ill THE EM PIKE 47 little to have occurred to the Spanish or Portuguese or Dutch or French or English Governments that their emigrants could pretend to independence on the ground that they were hidden away in the Pampas of South America or in the Archipelagos of the Pacific Ocean. The modern 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 con- trast between the humane wisdom of the ancient world and the tyranny of the Gothic Middle Ages ! The Goth never relaxes for any distance his barbar- ous system of constraint ; the mild intelligent Greek, guided by nature, perceives that the grown-up child has a right to be independent, and so he blesses him and bids him farewell." Perhaps if we examine the circumstances of the modern colonisation we shall see that it grew as inevitably 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 Colombus it may be re- marked that he needs the help of the State at every 48 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 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 proving to the Sovereigns that the territory he dis- covers 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. Fre- quently he lays down 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 modern 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 Ill THE EMPIRE 49 of emigration. 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 under- took to form a new city (ttoXl?,) 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 modern 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 French- men 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 organisation of the modern State admits of unbounded territorial ex- tension, while that of the ancient State did not. The Greek 7ro7u