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<?, as it actually was a city, could not be 
 modified so as to become anything else. I must 
 never be tired of quoting that passage of the Politics 
 which is so infinitely important to the student of 
 political science, where Aristotle lays it down that 
 the State must be of moderate population, because 
 " who could command it in war, if the population were 
 excessive, or what herald short of a Stentor could speak 
 to them 1 ? (rt? 8e tcfjpvl; /j,rj ^revTopeio*; ;)." The 
 modern State, being already as large as a country, 
 would bear to become larger. Either it had no 
 
 E
 
 50 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LT5CT. 
 
 t 
 
 national assemblies, as was practically the case with 
 France and Spain, or its national assembly, as in 
 the case of England, was representative — that is to 
 say, was expressly contrived to overcome the diffi- 
 culty of bringing together the whole body of the 
 citizens. 
 
 I have indulged in these general reflections upon 
 the nature of modern colonisation in order that we 
 may understand what our Empire is, and how it 
 necessarily came into existence. There might easily 
 have been a great emigration from England which 
 would not in any way have enlarged the English 
 State. For by Greater Britain we mean an enlarge- 
 ment of the English State, and not simply of the 
 English nationality. It is not simply that a popula- 
 tion of English blood is now found in Canada and in 
 Australia, as in old time a Greek population was 
 spread over Sicily, South Italy and the Western 
 Coast of Asia Minor. That was an extension of the 
 Nationality but not of the State, an extension which 
 gave no new strength, and did not in any way help 
 the Greek name when it was attacked and conquered 
 from Macedonia. In like manner at present we see 
 a constant stream of emigration from Germany to 
 America, but no Greater Germany comes into exist- 
 ence, because these emigrants, though they carry 
 with them and may perhaps not altogether lose their 
 language and their ideas, do not carry with them 
 their State. This is the case with Germany because 
 its emigration has happened too late, when the New 
 World is already carved into States, into which its
 
 Ill 
 
 THE EMPIRE 51 
 
 emigrants are compelled to enter, as with Greece it 
 was the result of a theory of the State, which identi- 
 fied it with the City. But Greater Britain is a real 
 enlargement of the English State; it carries across 
 the seas not merely the English race, but the 
 authority of the English Government. We call it for 
 want of a better word an Empire. And it does re- 
 semble the great Empires of history in this respect, 
 that it is an aggregate of provinces, each of which has 
 a government sent out to it from the political head- 
 quarters, which is a kind of delegation from the 
 supreme government. But yet it is wholly unlike 
 the great Empires of the Old World, Persian or 
 Macedonian or Boman or Turkish, because it is not 
 in the main founded on conquest, and because in the 
 main the inhabitants of the distant provinces are of 
 the same nation as those of the dominant country. 
 It resembles them in its vast extent, but it does not 
 resemble them in that violent military character 
 which has made- most Empires short-lived and liable 
 to speedy decay. 
 
 We may see now out of what conditions it arose. 
 It is the only considerable survivor of a family of 
 great Empires, which arose out of the contact of the 
 Western States of Europe with the New World so 
 suddenly laid open by Vasco da Gama and Columbus. 
 What England did, was done equally by Spain, 
 Portugal, France and Holland. There was once a 
 Greater Spain, a Greater Portugal, a Greater France 
 and a Greater Holland, as well as a Greater Britain, 
 but from various causes those four Empires have
 
 52 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 either perished or have become insignificant. Greater 
 Spain disappeared and Greater Portugal lost its 
 largest province Brazil half a century ago in wars of 
 independence similar to that which tore from us our 
 American colonies. Greater France and a large part 
 of Greater Holland were lost in war and became 
 merged in Greater Britain. Greater Britain itself 
 after suffering one severe shock has survived to the 
 present day, and remains the single monument of a 
 state of the world which has almost passed away. 
 At the same time it differs in a very essential point 
 from some of those Empires. 
 
 The countries which were suddenly thrown open 
 to Europe at the end of the fifteenth century fall into 
 three classes. Vasco da Gama threw open countries 
 in which for the most part ancient and extensive 
 states existed, such as the adventurers did not for a 
 long time think of subverting. Columbus on the 
 other hand discovered a Continent in which only two 
 such states appeared to exist, and even these were 
 soon proved to have no solidity. The contact which 
 Columbus established, being the most strange and 
 violent which ever took place between two parts of 
 the human family, led to a fierce struggle and furnished 
 one of the most terrible pages to the annals of the world. 
 But in this struggle there was no sort of equality. 
 The American race had no more power of resisting 
 the European than the sheep has of resisting the 
 wolf. Even where it was numerous and had a settled 
 polity, as in Peru, it could make no resistance ; its 
 states were crushed, the ruling families extinguished,
 
 Ill 
 
 THE EMPIRE 53 
 
 and the population itself reduced to a form of slavery. 
 Everywhere therefore the country fell into the hands 
 of the immigrating race, and was disposed of at its 
 pleasure as so much plunder. The immigrants did 
 not merely, as in India, gradually show a great 
 military superiority to the native race, so as in the end 
 to suhdue them, but overwhelmed them at once like 
 a party of hunters suddenly assailing a herd of 
 antelopes. This was the case everywhere, but yet 
 the countries of America also fall into two classes. 
 There was a great difference between the regions of 
 Central and Southern America, which fell principally 
 to the Spanish and Portuguese, and the North 
 American territories, which fell to England. In 
 Mexico, Peru and some other parts of South America 
 the native population, though feeble compared to the 
 Europeans, was not insignificant in numbers ; it was 
 counted by millions, had reached the agricultural 
 stage of civilisation, and had cities. But the tribes 
 of Indians which wandered over the territories of 
 North America, which now belong to the United 
 States and the Dominion of Canada, were much 
 more insignificant. It has been estimated that " the 
 total Indian population within the territory of the 
 United States east of the Rocky Mountains, did not 
 at any time subsequent to the discovery of America 
 exceed, if indeed it even reached, three hundred 
 thousand individuals." Accordingly, whereas in New 
 Spain the European, though supreme, yet lived in the 
 midst of apopulation of native Indians, the European in 
 North America supplanted the native race entirely,
 
 54 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 pushed it ever farther back as he advanced, and did 
 not blend with it at all. 
 
 It was ultimately the fortune of England to ac- 
 quire the most important share both of what Vasco 
 da Gama and of what Columbus laid open. On one 
 side has grown up her Indian, and mainly on the 
 other her Colonial Empire. But of the latter group 
 of countries, the countries wanting in strong states, 
 England occupied those which were comparatively 
 empty, and the Australian territory which has since 
 fallen to her is in the same condition. This fact has 
 an all-important consequence. 
 
 I remarked before that Greater Britain is an ex- 
 tension of the English State and not merely of the 
 English nationality. But it is an equally striking 
 characteristic of Greater Britain that nevertheless it 
 is an extension of the English nationality. When a 
 nationality is extended without any extension of the 
 State, as in the case of the Greek colonies, there may 
 be an increase of moral and intellectual influence, but 
 there is no increase of political power. On the other 
 hand, when the State advances beyond the limits of 
 the nationality, its power becomes precarious and 
 artificial. This is the condition of most empires ; it 
 is the condition for example of our own empire in 
 India. The English State is powerful there, but the 
 English nation is but an imperceptible drop in the 
 ocean of an Asiatic population. And when a nation 
 extends itself into other territories the chances are 
 that it will there meet with other nationalities which 
 it cannot destroy or completely drive out, even if it
 
 Ill 
 
 THE EMPIEE 55 
 
 succeeds in conquering them. When this happens, 
 it has a great and permanent difficulty to contend 
 with. The subject or rival nationalities cannot be 
 perfectly assimilated, and remain as a permanent 
 cause of weakness and danger. It has been the for- 
 tune of England in extending itself to evade on the 
 whole this danger. For it has occupied parts of the 
 globe which were so empty that they offered an un- 
 bounded scope for new settlement. There was land 
 for every emigrant who chose to come, and the native 
 races were not in a condition sufficiently advanced to 
 withstand even the peaceful competition, much less 
 the power, of the immigrants. 
 
 This statement is true on the whole. The English 
 Empire is on the whole free from that weakness which 
 has brought down most empires, the weakness of being 
 a mere mechanical forced union of alien nationalities. 
 It is sometimes described as an essentially feeble 
 union which could not bear the slightest shock, with 
 what reason I may examine later, but it has the 
 fundamental strength which most empires and some 
 commonwealths want. Austria for instance is divided 
 by the nationality -rivalry of German, Slav, and Mag- 
 yar ; the Swiss Confederation unites three languages, 
 but the English Empire in the main and broadly may 
 be said to be English throughout. 
 
 Of course, however, considerable abatements are to 
 be made. It is only in one of the four great groups, 
 namely, in the Australian colonies, that the statement 
 is true almost without qualification. The native 
 Australian race is so low in the ethnological scale
 
 56 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 that it can never give the least trouble, but even 
 here, since we reckon New Zealand in this group, we 
 are to bear in mind that the Maori tribes occupy the 
 Northern island in some force, much as in the last 
 century the Highland Clans gave us trouble in the 
 northern part of our own island, and the Maori is by 
 no means a contemptible type of man. Nevertheless 
 the whole number of Maories is not supposed to 
 exceed forty thousand, and it is rapidly diminishing. 
 When we turn to another group, the North American 
 colonies, included principally in the Dominion of 
 Canada, we find that the nucleus of it was acquired 
 originally, not by English settlement, but by the con- 
 quest of French settlements. At the outset therefore 
 the nationality-difficulty, instead of being absent here, 
 was present in the gravest form. The original Canada 
 of the French was afterwards known as Lower Canada, 
 and since the establishment of the Dominion it has 
 borne the name of the Province of Quebec. It has a 
 population of nearly a million and a half, while the 
 whole Dominion does not contain four millions and a 
 half. These are Frenchmen and Catholics in the 
 midst of a population mainly English and Protestant. 
 It is not so long since the inconvenience of this alien 
 population was felt in Canada by discords essentially 
 similar to those which the nationality-question has 
 created in Austria and Russia. The Canadian Re- 
 bellion which marked the first years of the reign of 
 Queen Victoria, was in fact a war of nationality in 
 the British Empire, though it wore the disguise of a 
 war of liberty, as Lord Durham expressly remarks
 
 Ill 
 
 THE EMPIRE 57 
 
 in the opening of his famous Report on Canada : " I 
 expected to find a contest between a government and 
 a people ; I found two nations warring in the bosom 
 of a single state ; I found a struggle not of principles 
 but of races." It is however to be remarked on the 
 other side that here too the alien element dwindles, 
 and is likely ultimately to be lost in the English 
 immigration, and also that its animosity has been 
 much pacified by the introduction of federal in- 
 stitutions. 
 
 In the third or West Indian group also the differ- 
 ences of nationality are considerable. Here almost 
 alone in our Empire are to be traced the effects of 
 the peculiar phenomenon of the history of the New 
 World, negro slavery. Here it first appeared on a 
 considerable scale, as the immediate result of the 
 discovery of Columbus. So long as it lasted, it did 
 not call into existence the nationality-difficulty, for a 
 thoroughly enslaved nation is a nation no longer, and 
 a servile insurrection is wholly different from the 
 insurrection of an oppressed nationality. But when 
 slavery is abolished, while the slaves themsolves re- 
 main, stamped so visibly in colour and physical type 
 with the badge of their different nationality, yet now 
 free and laying claim to citizenship, then it is that 
 the nationality-difficulty begins to threaten. But in 
 the West-Indian group such difficulties for the present 
 do not take a serious form, because the colonies are 
 in the main dispersed in small islands and have no 
 community of feeling. 
 
 It is in the fourth or South African group that
 
 58 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect 
 
 the nationality-difficult) 7 is most serious. It is here 
 a double difficulty. There have been two conquests, 
 the one superinduced upon the other. The Dutch 
 first settled themselves among the native races, and 
 then the Dutch colony was conquered by England. 
 So far the case may seem to resemble that of Canada, 
 where the French settled among the Indians and were 
 then conquered by the English. But there are two 
 differences. In the first place the native tribes of 
 South Africa, instead of disappearing and dwindling 
 before the whites, greatly outnumber them, and show 
 a power of combination and progress such as the Red 
 Indian never showed. Thus in the census of 1875 I 
 find that the Cape Colony had a total population of 
 nearly three quarters* of a million, but two out of the 
 three quarters were native and only one European. 
 And behind this native population dwelling among the 
 settlers there is an indefinite native population ex- 
 tending without limit into the interior of the vast 
 continent. But secondly the other difficulty, which 
 arises from the fact that the settlers themselves were 
 at the outset not English but Dutch, does not diminish 
 or tend to disappear, as it has done in Canada. In 
 Canada there took place a rapid immigration of Eng- 
 lish, who, showing themselves in a marked degree 
 more energetic than the French and increasing much 
 faster, gradually gave the whole community a pre- 
 dominantly English character, so that in fact the 
 rising of the French in 1838 was the convulsion of 
 despair of a sinking nationality. Nothing similar 
 has happened in South Africa, no rapid English im-
 
 in THE EMPIRE 59 
 
 migration has come to give a new character to the 
 community. 
 
 These are the abatements which must be made to 
 the general proposition that Greater Britain is homo- 
 geneous in nationality. They need not prevent us 
 from laying down this general proposition as true. 
 If in these islands we feel ourselves for all purposes 
 one nation, though in Wales, in Scotland and in 
 Ireland there is Celtic blood, and Celtic languages 
 utterly unintelligible to us are still spoken, so in the 
 Empire a good many French and Dutch and a good 
 many Caffres and Maories may be admitted without 
 marring the ethnological unity of the whole. 
 
 This ethnological unity is of great importance 
 when we would form an opinion about the stability 
 and chance of duration of the Empire. . The chief 
 forces which hold a community together and cause it 
 to constitute one State are three, common nationality, 
 common religion, and common interest. These may 
 act in various degrees of intensity, and they may also 
 act singly or in combination. Now when it is argued 
 that Greater Britain is a union which will not last long 
 and will soon fall to pieces, the ground taken is that 
 it wants the third of these binding forces, that it is 
 not held together by community of interest. " What," 
 it is said, " can the inhabitants of Australia and New 
 Zealand, living on the other side of the Tropic of 
 Capricorn, have in common with ourselves who live 
 beyond the 50th degree of north latitude? Who 
 does not see that two communities so remote from 
 each other cannot long continue parts of one political
 
 60 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 whole ? " Now this is a very important consideration, 
 especially as it is backed by the impressive fact that 
 our American Colonies did in the last century find 
 their union with us intolerable. But, allowing its 
 importance, we may remark that, even if this bond 
 is wanting, the other two bonds which hold states 
 together are not wanting. Many empires in which 
 hostile nationalities and religions have been but 
 artificially united have nevertheless lasted several 
 centuries, but Greater Britain is not a mere empire, 
 though we often call it so. Its union is of the more 
 vital kind. It is united by blood and religion, and 
 though circumstances may be imagined in which 
 these ties might snap, yet they are strong ties, and 
 will only give way before some violent dissolving 
 force. 
 
 I have enlarged in this lecture upon the essential 
 nature of our colonial Empire, because there is much 
 ambiguity both about the word " colonial " and about 
 the word "Empire." Our colonies do not resemble the 
 colonies which classical students meet with in Greek 
 and Roman history, and our Empire is not an Empire 
 at all in the ordinary sense of the word. It does not 
 consist of a congeries of nations held together by 
 force, but in the main of one nation, as much as if it 
 were no Empire but an ordinary state. This fact is 
 fundamental when we look to the future and inquire 
 whether it is calculated for duration. 
 
 But I have also enlarged upon the whole class of 
 Empires which sprang out of the discovery of the New 
 World, to which class our own Empire belongs, in
 
 Ill 
 
 THE EMPIRE 61 
 
 order that we may understand the past. England in 
 the eighteenth century is regarded, I said, too much 
 as a European insular State and too little as an 
 American and Asiatic Empire ; in short, we think of 
 Great Britain too much and of Greater Britain too 
 little. But the misconception spreads further, for in 
 that century there is also a Greater France, a Greater 
 Holland, a Greater Portugal, and a Greater Spain, 
 and all these we overlook as we overlook Greater 
 Britain. 
 
 Here is a fundamental characteristic of the 
 European States during the eighteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries, which is seldom borne in mind, 
 namely that each of the five Western States has an 
 Empire in the New World attached to it. Before the 
 seventeenth century this condition of things was but 
 beginning, and since the eighteenth it has ceased 
 again to exist. The vast immeasurable results of the 
 discovery of Columbus were developed with extreme 
 slowness, so that the whole sixteenth century passed 
 away before most of these nations bestirred them- 
 selves to claim a share in the New World. There 
 existed no independent Holland till near the end of 
 that century, so that a fortiori there could be no 
 Greater Holland, nor did either England or France 
 in that century become possessors of colonies. 
 France did indeed plan a settlement in North 
 America, as the name Carolina, derived from Charles 
 IX. of France, still remains to prove, but the neigh- 
 bouring Spaniards of Florida interfered to destroy it. 
 A little later Sir Walter Raleigh's colony in the same
 
 62 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 neighbourhood disappeared altogether, leaving no 
 trace behind it. Accordingly during almost the 
 whole of that century the New World remained in 
 the possession of the two States which had done most 
 to lay it open, viz. Spain and Portugal, Spain look- 
 ing chiefly towards America and Portugal towards 
 Asia, until in 1580 the two States coalesced in a 
 union which lasted sixty years. The Dutch made 
 their grand entrance into the competition for empire 
 in the seven years from 1595 to 1602, and they were 
 followed by France and England in the early years of 
 the seventeenth century, that is, in the reign of our 
 King James I. 
 
 Again in the nineteenth century the competition 
 of these five states in the New World ceased. It 
 ceased from two causes : wars of independence, in 
 which Transatlantic colonies severed themselves from 
 the mother-country, and the colonial conquests of 
 England. I have described already the Hundred 
 Years' War in which Greater France was swallowed 
 up in Greater Britain ; Greater Holland in like manner 
 suffered serious diminution, losing the Cape of Good 
 Hope and Demerara to England, though even now a 
 Greater Holland may be said to exist in the magni- 
 ficent dependency of Java, with a population of not 
 less than nineteen millions. The fall of Greater 
 Spain and Greater Portugal has happened in the 
 present century within the lifetime of many who are 
 still among us. If we estimated occurrences less by 
 the excitement they cause at the moment and more 
 by the consequences which are certain to follow tliem,
 
 Ill 
 
 THE EMPIRE 63 
 
 we should call this one of the most stupendous events 
 in the history of the globe, for it is the beginning of 
 the independent life of almost the whole of Southern 
 and Central America. It took place mainly in the 
 twenties of this century, and was the result of a 
 series of rebellions which, when we inquire into their 
 origin, we find to have arisen out of the shock given 
 to Spain and Portugal by Napoleon's invasion of them, 
 so that in fact one of the chief, if not the chief, result 
 of Napoleon's career has been the fall of Greater 
 Spain and Greater Portugal, and the independence of 
 South America. 
 
 The result of all these mighty revolutions — of 
 which however I fancy that few of you know any- 
 thing — is that the Western States of Europe, with the 
 exception of England, have been in the main severed 
 again from the New World. This of course is only 
 roughly true. Spain still possesses Cuba and Porto 
 Rico, Portugal still has large African possessions, France 
 has begun to found a new Empire in North Africa. 
 Nevertheless these four states have materially altered 
 their position in the world. They have become in 
 the main purely European States again, as they were 
 before Columbus crossed the Atlantic. It is easy to 
 show you the immense magnitude of this change. 
 Spain has lately passed through a disturbed time. 
 She expelled a Bourbon sovereign and tried for a 
 time the experiment of a Republic. This change was 
 doubtless very serious in the peninsula, but it pro- 
 duced wonderfully little excitement in the world at 
 large. Now if anything similar had happened in the
 
 64 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 eighteenth or in the seventeenth century, the shock 
 of it would have been felt over a great part of the 
 planet. From Mexico to Buenos Ayres, from above 
 the Tropic of Cancer to below the Tropic of Capricorn, 
 every territory probably would have been convulsed 
 with rebellion and civil war. In like manner the 
 recent calamities in France would in the eighteenth 
 century have shaken the St. Lawrence, the Great 
 Lakes of North America and the Mississippi, and 
 have influenced the policy of princes in the Deccan 
 and the valley of the Ganges, nay perhaps have 
 altered the balance of Hindostan. As it was, those 
 calamities were nearly confined to France itself ; else- 
 where sympathies were excited, but interests were 
 not touched. 
 
 Thus then we see in the seventeenth and still more 
 the eighteenth century a period when the New World 
 was attached in a peculiar way to the five Western 
 States of the European system. This attachment 
 modifies and determines all the wars and negotiations, 
 all the international relations of Europe during that 
 period. In the last lecture I pointed out that the 
 struggle between England and France in those 
 centuries cannot be understood so long as we look at 
 Europe alone, and that the belligerents are really the 
 World-Powers, Greater Britain and Greater France. 
 Now I remark that in like manner during the same 
 period we must always read for Holland, Portugal, 
 and Spain, Greater Holland, Greater Portugal, and 
 Greater Spain. I remark also that this state of 
 things has now passed away, that the Spanish Empire,
 
 in 
 
 THE EMPIEE 65 
 
 and in the main also the Portuguese and Dutch 
 Empires, have gone the same way as the Empire of 
 France. But Greater Britain still remains. And 
 thus we perceive the historical origin and character 
 of this Empire. It is the sole survivor of a whole 
 family of Empires, which arose out of the action of 
 the discovery of the New World upon the peculiar 
 condition and political ideas of Europe. All these 
 Empires were beset by certain dangers, which Greater 
 Britain alone has hitherto escaped, though she too 
 has felt the shock of them and is still exposed to 
 them, and the great question now is whether she can 
 modify her defective constitution in such a way as 
 to escape them for the future.
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 
 
 I remarked that ancient Greek colonisation, com- 
 pared with the modern system, might be called in a 
 certain sense the natural system. And yet the 
 modern system might be represented as natural also, 
 The Greeks regard the State as essentially small, and 
 infer that a surplus population can only be accommo- 
 dated by founding another State. But is there any- 
 thing necessarily unnatural in the other view, that 
 the State is capable of indefinite growth and expan- 
 sion 1 ? The ripe fruit dropping from the tree and 
 giving rise to another tree may be natural, but so is 
 the acorn spreading into the huge oak, that has 
 hundreds of branches and thousands of leaves. If 
 Miletus among its daughter-cities may remind us of 
 the one, England expanding into Greater Britain 
 resembles the other. 
 
 And yet surely there must be something unnatural 
 in the system against which our own colonists revolted 
 a hundred years ago, and the colonists of Spain and 
 Portugal a few years later
 
 LECT. IV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 67 
 
 The truth is that the simple idea of expansion has 
 seldom been conceived or realised clearly. 
 
 Let us work out a little in our minds the concep- 
 tion of a Greater Britain, of the English State 
 extended indefinitely without being altered. The 
 question is often asked, What is the good of colonies ? 
 but no such question could possibly be raised, if 
 colonies really were such a simple extension of the 
 mother-state. Whether this extension is practicable 
 may be questioned, but it cannot be questioned that 
 if it were practicable it would be desirable. 
 
 We must begin by recognising that the unoccupied 
 territory of the globe is to those who take possession 
 of it so much wealth in the most absolute sense of the 
 word. The epitaph which said that to Leon and Aragon 
 Columbus gave a new world was almost literally true. 
 He conferred upon certain persons a large landed 
 estate, and if, as the result, many poor people did 
 not become rich and many unfortunate people pros- 
 perous, the fault must have lain in the distribution or 
 administration of the wealth which he conferred. 
 By his discovery the nations of Europe came in for a 
 landed estate so enormously large that it might easily 
 have converted every poor man in Europe into a 
 landed proprietor. 
 
 But one thing was necessary before all this wealth 
 could be reduced into possession and enjoyment. 
 Property can exist only under the guardianship of 
 the State. In order therefore that the lands of the 
 New World might become secure enjoyable property, 
 States must be set up in the New World. Without the
 
 68 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lbct. 
 
 State the settler 'would run the risk of being murdered 
 by Indians, or attacked by rival settlers of some 
 hostile nationality. On the other hand suppose the 
 reign of law and government established in the New 
 World, as in Europe, so that property is equally 
 secure, then the poor man in Europe who finds life 
 painful and the acquisition of land in these crowded 
 countries utterly beyond his power, has only to 
 transfer himself to the New World, where land is 
 cheaper, and he is at once enriched as much as if he 
 had received a legacy. 
 
 Thus there, can be no dispute about the value of 
 organised States in the less crowded parts of the globe. 
 But why should these be our own colonies ? There 
 is nothing to prevent the emigrant from settling in 
 a colony belonging to some different European State 
 or in an independent State. Why need we trouble 
 ourselves therefore to keep up colonies of our own ? 
 
 This is a strange question, which would never be 
 asked in England but for an exceptional circumstance. 
 Most people like to live among their own country- 
 men, under the laws, religion and institutions they 
 are accustomed to. They place themselves moreover 
 most really and practically at a disadvantage by 
 going to live among people who speak a different 
 language. As a matter of fact, we do not find that, 
 the course of emigration being free, any large number 
 of Englishmen yearly settle in those New World 
 States which are really foreign, that is, in the South 
 American Republics or in Brazil or in Mexico. 
 There would be no question at all about the value of
 
 iv THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 69 
 
 colonies, and we should all as a matter of course 
 consider that only by means of colonies was it 
 possible to bring the wealth of the New World 
 within the reach of our population, if it were not for 
 the existence of the United States. But the United 
 States are to us almost as good as a colony ; our 
 people can emigrate thither without sacrificing their 
 language or chief institutions or habits. And the 
 Union is so large and prosperous and fills our view 
 so much, that we forget how very exceptional its 
 relation to us is, and also that if it is to us almost as 
 good as a colony, this is only because it was con- 
 structed out of English colonies. In estimating the 
 value of colonies in the abstract, we shall only confuse 
 ourselves by recollecting this unique case ; we ought 
 to put the United States entirely out of view. 
 
 Considered in the abstract then, colonies are 
 neither more nor less than a great augmentation of 
 the national estate. They are lands for the landless, 
 prosperity and wealth for those in straitened cir- 
 cumstances. This is a very simple view, and yet it 
 is much overlooked, as if somehow it were too simple 
 to be understood. History offers many examples of 
 nations cramped for want of room; it records in many 
 cases how they swarmed irresistibly across their 
 frontiers and spread like a deluge over neighbouring 
 countries, where sometimes they found lands and 
 wealth. Now we may be very sure that never any 
 nation was half so much cramped for want of room in 
 the olden time as our own nation is now. Populations 
 so dense as that of modern England are a phenomenon
 
 70 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot, 
 
 quite new at least in Europe. We continually speak 
 of our country as crowded, and, since the rate of increase 
 of population is tolerably constant, we sometimes ask 
 with alarm what will be its condition half a century 
 hence. "The territory," we say, "is a fixed quantity; 
 wehave but 120,000 squaremiles; it is crowded already 
 and yet the population doubles in some seventy years. 
 What will become of us?" Now here is a curious 
 example of our habit of leaving our colonial posses- 
 sions out of account. What ! our country is small ; 
 a poor, 120,000 square miles 1 I find the fact to be 
 very different. I find that the territory governed by 
 the Queen is of almost boundless extent. Let us 
 deduct from the vast total India, as not much open 
 to settlement, still the territory subject to the Queen 
 is much greater than that of the United States, though 
 that is uniformly cited as the example of a country 
 not crowded and in which there is boundless room for 
 expansion. It may be true that the mother-country 
 of this great Empire is crowded, but in order to 
 relieve the pressure it is not necessary for us, as if we 
 were Goths or Turcomans, to seize upon the territory 
 of our neighbours, it is not necessary even to incur 
 great risks or undergo great hardships ; it is only 
 necessary to take possession of boundless territories 
 in Canada, South Africa and Australia, where already 
 our language is spoken, our religion professed, and 
 our laws established. If there is pauperism in Wilt- 
 shire and Dorsetshire, this is but complementary 
 to unowned wealth in Australia; on the one side 
 there are men without property, on the other there
 
 IV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 71 
 
 is property waiting for men. And yet we do not 
 allow these two facts to come together in our minds, 
 but brood anxiously and almost despairingly over 
 the problem of pauperism, and when colonies are 
 mentioned we ask, What is the good of colonies ? 
 
 Partly no doubt this is due simply to a want of- 
 system in our way of thinking on subjects of this 
 kind, but partly also it is evident that colonies have 
 never been regarded in England as a simple extension 
 of the English state and nation over new territory. 
 They have been thought of no doubt as belonging to 
 England, though precariously, but at the same time 
 as outside of England, so that what goes out of 
 England to them is in a manner lost to England. 
 This appears clearly from the argument which is often 
 urged against emigration on any large scale, viz. that 
 it might be good for the emigrants, but that it would 
 be ruinous to England, which would be deprived of 
 all the best and hardiest part of its population — 
 deprived, for it is not imagined that such emigrants 
 could remain Englishmen, or be still serviceable to 
 the English commonwealth. Compare this view of 
 emigration with that taken in the United States, 
 where the constant movement of the population 
 westward, the constant settlement of new Territories, 
 which in due time rise to be States, is not regarded 
 as either a symptom or a cause of weakness, 
 not at all as a draining-out of vitality, but on the 
 contrary as the greatest evidence of vigour and the 
 best means of increasing it. 
 
 We have not really then as yet a Greater Britain.
 
 72 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot, 
 
 When I speak of the creation of Greater Britain 
 during the eighteenth century, I in a certain sense 
 exaggerate. In our colonial Empire was laid the 
 foundation of a Greater Britain, and a Greater Britain 
 may in the end arise out of it, but nothing of the 
 kind was originally intended, nor later was the true 
 significance of what had taken place perceived. A 
 colony was not really thought of as an extension of 
 the mother-state, but as something different. What 
 then was the precise conception formed of a colony 1 
 We find ourselves forced to ask this question again. 
 
 I have pointed out already that in the sixteenth 
 century there was no natural overflow of population 
 from Europe into the New World. Europe was not 
 over-peopled; there was no imperious demand for 
 more room. Why then should the conception, so 
 natural to us in these days, of a territorial extension 
 of the State occur to those who lived at the time 
 of the discoveries? We see on the contrary that 
 contemporary statesmen were puzzled to decide what 
 use could be made, and even doubted whether any 
 use could be made, of the new lands. Sebastian 
 Cabot is encouraged by Henry VII, until it is found 
 that he does not bring back spices; then he is 
 neglected, and abandons England for the Spanish 
 service. 1 Thus the same cause which made it neces- 
 sary to call in the help of the State led to a peculiarly 
 materialistic view of the work of settlement. What 
 the State wanted was revenue; hence it became 
 
 1 Schanz, Englische Handelspolilik. Read the whole chapter 
 entitled, Die Stdlung dcr beiden ersten Tudors zu den Entdeckungen.
 
 IV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 73 
 
 necessary to regard the new countries rather as so 
 much wealth to be transported into Europe than as a 
 new seat for European civilisation. 
 
 I spoke before of natural colonisation, intending 
 such colonisation as results from the spread of a race 
 over an unbounded territory at a time when political 
 institutions are in their infancy. The colonisation of 
 the sixteenth century is curiously different. It arises 
 from the discovery of remote regions of unknown 
 wealth by nations accustomed to a limited space and 
 to a rigorous government. As in the former kind the 
 State scarcely appears, but individuals or rather tribes 
 accomplish the work, and in making a new settle- 
 ment make a new state, in the latter kind the State 
 takes the lead, superintends the settlement, recruits 
 for it, holds it in subjection when it is made, and, as 
 a consequence, looks to make a profit out of it. At 
 first sight this latter system might seem less material- 
 istic than the other, for it conceives the State as 
 resting not upon mere locality but upon kindred ; but 
 it becomes more materialistic in practice because it 
 looks at the colony purely with the eyes of the 
 Government, and therefore from a purely fiscal point 
 of view. Hence in the first settlement of America 
 the conception of a Spanish colony as an extension of 
 Spain was mixed up with a different conception of it 
 as a possession belonging to Spain. And whereas the 
 first conception, though it was formed instinctively, 
 yet answered to nothing in experience, — for who had 
 ever heard of two parts of the same State separated 
 by the whole breadth of the Atlantic Ocean % — the
 
 74 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 second conception was less embarrassing in practice 
 because it was by no means new. There had been 
 examples in the Middle Ages of States possessing 
 dependencies separated from them by the sea, and I 
 daresay it might be possible to show that the Spanish 
 Council of the Indies was guided at times by the 
 precedents afforded by Venice in its dealings with 
 Candia and with its dependencies in the Adriatic. 
 The Venetian conception of a dependency was purely 
 selfish and commercial. So far from thinking of it as 
 forming part of the Eepublic, they regarded it as so 
 much live stock forming part of the wealth of the 
 Republic. Thus it was by confounding together two 
 theories radically inconsistent with each other that 
 the modern colonial system, first formed by Spain and 
 adopted with more or less modification by the other 
 Powers of Europe, came into existence. 
 
 Now we have this conception more or less distinctly 
 in our minds whenever we ask the question, What is 
 the good of colonies 1 That question implies that we 
 think of a colony, not as part of our State, but as a 
 possession belonging to it. For we should think it 
 absurd to raise such a question about a recognised 
 part of the body politic. Who ever thought of 
 inquiring whether Cornwall or Kent rendered any 
 sufficient return for the money which we lay out upon 
 them, whether those counties were worth keeping? 
 The tie that holds together the parts of a nation- 
 state is of another kind ; it is not composed of con- 
 siderations of profit and loss, but is analogous to the 
 family bond. The same tie would hold a nation to
 
 iv THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 75 
 
 its colonies, if colonies were regarded as simply an 
 extension of the nation. If Greater Britain in the 
 full sense of the phrase really existed, Canada and 
 Australia would be to us as Kent and Cornwall. But 
 if once we cease to regard a colony in this way, if we 
 consider that the emigrants, who have gone forth 
 from us, have ceased to belong to our community, 
 then we must form some other conception of their 
 relation to us. And this must either be the old Greek 
 conception which treats them as grown-up children 
 who have married and settled at a distance, so that 
 the family bond has dissolved away by the mere 
 necessity of circumstances, or if the connection is 
 maintained, as the modern States insisted on main- 
 taining it, it must change its character. It must rest 
 on interest. The question must be asked, What is 
 the good of the colony 1 and it must be answered by 
 some proof that the colony considered as a piece of 
 property, or as an investment of public money, pays. 
 Now this may be a very good basis for the union 
 of two countries, provided the benefit received from 
 the union is mutual. In this case it constitutes a 
 federation, and there are many instances in which, 
 without any tie of kindred, countries have been held 
 together in such a union simply by the sense of a 
 common interest. Among these instances are Austria 
 and Hungary, the German, French and Italian cantons 
 of the Swiss Confederation. Such would be the case 
 of our own Empire, if not only we ourselves felt that 
 our colonies paid — that is, that we reaped some 
 advantage from them which we should cease to reap if
 
 76 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LEOT. 
 
 they became independent — but also the colonies felt 
 that the mother-country paid, and that they gained 
 something by the connection with it. And in the 
 present day it is quite easy to imagine such a sense 
 of common interest existing between us and even the 
 remotest of our colonies, because in the present day 
 distance has been almost abolished by steam and 
 electricity. But in the first ages after the discovery 
 of the New World such a common interest was less 
 possible. The Atlantic Ocean was then for practical 
 purposes a far deeper and wider gulf, across which 
 any reciprocal exchange of services could not easily 
 take place. And so the old colonial system in 
 general had not the character of an equal federation. 
 It is the custom to describe the old colonies as 
 sacrificed to the mother-country. We must be careful 
 not to admit that statement without qualification. 
 It is supposed for instance that the revolt of our own 
 American colonies was provoked by the selfish 
 treatment of the mother-country, which shackled their 
 trade without rendering them any benefit in return 
 for these restraints. This is far from being true. 
 Between England and the American colonies there 
 was a real interchange of services. England gave 
 defence in return for trade-privileges. In the middle 
 of the last century, at the time when the American 
 quarrel began, it was perhaps rather the colonies than 
 the mother-country that had fallen into arrear. We 
 had been involved in two great wars mainly by our 
 colonies, and the final breach was provoked not so 
 much by the pressure of England upon the colonies
 
 IV 
 
 THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 77 
 
 as by that of the colonies upon England. If we 
 imposed taxes upon them, it was to meet the debt 
 which we had incurred in their behalf, and we saw 
 with not unnatural bitterness that we had ourselves 
 enabled our colonies to do without us, by destroying 
 for their interest the French power in North America. 
 
 Still it was true of the old colonial system in 
 general that it placed the colony in the position, not 
 so much of a state in federation, as of a conquered 
 state. Some theory of the kind is evidently implied 
 in the language which is commonly used. We speak 
 of the colonial possessions of England or of Spain. 
 Now in what sense can one population be spoken of 
 as the possession of another population ? The ex- 
 pression almost seems to imply slavery, and at any 
 rate it is utterly inappropriate, if it merely means 
 that the one population is subject to the same 
 Government as the other. At the bottom of it 
 certainly was the idea that the colony was an estate 
 which was to be worked for the benefit of the mother- 
 country. 
 
 The relation of Spain to its colonies had become a 
 type which other states kept before their eyes. A 
 native population reduced to serfdom, in some parts 
 driven to compulsory labour by caciques turned into 
 state-officials, in other parts exterminated by over- 
 work and then replaced by negroes; an imperious 
 mother-country drawing from the colony a steady 
 revenue, and ruling it through an artful mechanism 
 of division, by which the settlers were held in check 
 by the priesthood and by a serf-population treated
 
 78 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 paternally that it might be available for that purpose : 
 such was the typical colonial system. It was wholly 
 unfit to be a model to such a colony as New England, 
 which paid no revenue, where there were neither 
 subject Indians nor mines of gold and silver. 
 Nevertheless governments could not afford to forget 
 the precedent of profitable colonies, and I find 
 Charles II. appealing to it in 1663. It became an 
 established principle that a colony was a possession. 
 
 Now it is essentially barbaric that one community 
 should be treated as the property of another and the 
 fruits of its industry confiscated, not in return for 
 benefits conferred, but by some absolute right whether 
 of conquest or otherwise. Even where such a 
 relation rests avowedly upon conquest, it is too 
 immoral to last long, except in a barbarous state of 
 manners. Thus for example we may have acquired 
 India by conquest, but we cannot and do not hold it 
 for our own pecuniary advantage. We draw no 
 tribute from it; it is not to us a profitable invest- 
 ment ; we should be ashamed to acknowledge that in 
 governing it we in any way sacrificed its interest to 
 our own. A fortiori then it is barbaric to apply such 
 a theory to colonies, for it is to treat one's own 
 countrymen, those with whom we have no concern at 
 all except on the ground of kindred, as if they were 
 conquered enemies, or rather in a way in which a 
 civilised nation cannot treat even conquered enemies. 
 And probably even in the old colonial system such a 
 theory was not consciously and deliberately adopted. 
 But since in the sixteenth century there was no
 
 IV THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 79 
 
 scruple in applying it to conquered dependencies, and 
 since the colonies of Spain were in a certain sense 
 conquered dependencies, we can understand that 
 unconsciously, unintentionally, the barbaric principle 
 crept into her colonial system, and that it lurked 
 there and poisoned it in later times. We can 
 understand too how the example of Spain and the 
 precedents set by her influenced the other European 
 States, Holland, France, and England, which entered 
 upon the career of colonisation a century later. 
 
 In the case of some of these States, for example 
 France, the result of this theory was that the 
 mother-country exercised an iron authority over her 
 colonies. In Canada the French settlers were subject 
 to a multitude of rigid regulations, from which they 
 would have been free if they had remained in France. 
 Nothing of the kind certainly can be said of the 
 English colonies. They were subject to certain fixed 
 restrictions in the matter of trade, but apart from 
 these they were absolutely free. Carrying their 
 nationality with them, they claimed everywhere the 
 rights of Englishmen. It has been observed by 
 Mr. Merivale that the old colonial system admitted 
 no such thing as the modern Crown Colony, in 
 which Englishmen are governed administratively 
 without representative assemblies. In the old 
 system assemblies were not formally instituted, but 
 grew up of themselves, because it was the nature of 
 Englishmen to assemble. Thus the old historian of 
 the colonies, Hutchinson, writes under the year 
 1619, "This year a House of Burgesses broke out in
 
 80 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 Virginia." And assuredly the Home Government in 
 those times did not sin by too much interference. 
 So completely were the colonies left to themselves, 
 that some of them, especially those of New England, 
 were from the very beginning for most practical 
 purposes independent States. As early as 1665, only 
 forty years after the first settlement and a hundred 
 years before the Declaration of Independence, I find 
 that Massachusetts did not regard itself as practically 
 subject to England. " They say," writes a Com- 
 missioner, 1 "that so long as they pay the fifth of 
 all gold and silver, according to the terms of the 
 Charter, they are not obliged to the King but by 
 civility." 
 
 Thus our old colonial system was not practically 
 at all tyrannous, and when the breach came the 
 grievances of which the Americans complained, 
 though perfectly real, were smaller than ever before 
 or since led to such mighty consequences. The 
 misfortune of that system was not that it interfered 
 too much, but that such interference as it admitted 
 was of an invidious kind. It claimed very little, 
 but what it did claim was unjust. It gave un- 
 bounded liberty except in one department, namely 
 trade, and in that department it interfered to fine 
 the colonists for the benefit of the home traders. 
 
 1 Calendar of State Papers ; Colonial, December, 1665. He 
 adds : " They say they can easily spin out seven years by writing, 
 and before that time a change may come : nay, some have dared to 
 say, Who knows what the event of this Dutch war may be ? They 
 furnished Cromwell with many instruments out of their corporation 
 and college, and solicited him by one Mr. Winsloe to be declared a 
 Free State, and now style and believe themselves to be so."
 
 iv THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 81 
 
 Now this was to put the mother-country in a false 
 position. It put her forward as claiming to treat the 
 colonies as a possession, as an estate to be worked 
 for the benefit of those Englishmen who remained at 
 home. No claim could be more invidious. If it was 
 not quite the claim that a master makes upon a slave, 
 it was at least similar to that which an absentee 
 landlord makes upon tenants in whom he takes no 
 further interest, and yet even the absentee landlord, 
 if he gives nothing else, does at least give the use 
 of land which was really his own. But what — a 
 Massachusetts colonist might say — has England given 
 to us that she should have this perpetual mortgage 
 on our industry 1 The Charter of James I. allowed 
 us the use of lands which James I. never saw and 
 which did not belong to him, — lands too which, with- 
 out any Charter, we might perhaps have occupied for 
 ourselves without opposition. 
 
 Thus this old system was an irrational jumble of 
 two opposite conceptions. It claimed to rule the 
 colonists because they were Englishmen and brothers, 
 and yet it ruled them as if they were conquered 
 Indians. And again while it treated them as con- 
 quered people, it gave them so much liberty that 
 they could easily rebel. 
 
 I have shoAvn how this strange hybrid conception 
 of colonies may have originally sprung up. It is not 
 very difficult perhaps to understand how the English, 
 after once adopting, may have retained it, and may 
 have never seen their way to a better conception. 
 In the then condition of the world, if the English had 
 
 G
 
 82 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 
 
 thought of reforming their colonial system, their 
 most natural course would have been to cast off the 
 colonies altogether. For the analogy of grown-up 
 sons and daughters applies very properly to the case 
 of colonies, when they are so remote from the mother- 
 country that they have come to have wholly different 
 interests. All practical union, and therefore all 
 authority on the part of the mother-country, fall 
 into abeyance in these circumstances, and the Greek 
 system is then most appropriate, which gives complete 
 independence to the colony, but binds it in per- 
 petual alliance. Now in the seventeenth century our 
 colonies were, at least in ordinary times, practically 
 too remote for union. This is so true that the 
 difficulty is rather to understand how the secession of 
 New England can have been delayed so long ; but I 
 imagine the retarding cause was the growth of the 
 French Power in North America towards the end 
 of the seventeenth century. After the great colonial 
 struggle of France and England had fairly begun, 
 the colonies were drawn somewhat nearer to us than 
 before, and we can imagine that if Canada had not 
 been conquered from the French in 1759, and if the 
 struggle with France instead of coming to an end 
 had grown more intense, the colonies would have 
 issued no Declaration of Independence, and our 
 connection with them might have been put on a 
 better footing instead of being dissolved. As it 
 was, the need of union was at first not felt ; it was 
 then felt strongly for a time, and then by a sudden 
 deliverance all pressure was removed, so that the
 
 iv THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 83 
 
 thought of a reformed colonial system gave way at 
 once to the dream of independence. 
 
 In these circumstances the old colonial system 
 would naturally be retained as long as possible by 
 the mother-country, because it was dangerous to 
 touch it, because the least alteration would snap the 
 tie that held the colonies altogether. The invidious 
 rights were doggedly maintained simply because 
 they existed, and because no alteration for the better 
 was thought possible. 
 
 Probably also no healthier relation could then be 
 even clearly conceived. I have described colonies 
 as the natural outlet for superfluous population, the 
 resource by which those who find themselves crowded 
 out of the mother-country may live at ease, without 
 sacrificing what ought to be felt as most valuable, 
 their nationality. But how could such a view occur 
 to Englishmen a century ago? England in those 
 days was not over -peopled. The whole of Great 
 Britain had perhaps not more than twelve million 
 inhabitants at the time of the American War. And 
 if even then there was more diffused prosperity in 
 the colonies than at home, on the other hand the love 
 of native soil, the dominion of habit, the dread and 
 dislike of migration, were infinitely greater. We are 
 not to suppose that the steady stream of emigration 
 to the New World, which we witness, has been 
 flowing ever since there was a New World, or even 
 ever since we had prosperous colonies. This move- 
 ment did not begin till after the peace of 1815. 
 Under the old colonial system circumstances were
 
 84 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 quite different, and may be illustrated by what we 
 know of the history of the New England colonies. 
 Of these we learn that from their commencement in 
 1620 for twenty years, until the meeting of the Long 
 Parliament, immigration did indeed flow in a steady 
 stream, but for a quite special reason, viz. because 
 the Anglican Church was then harsh, and New Eng- 
 land afforded a refuge for Puritanism and Brownism 
 or Independency. Accordingly we are told that as 
 soon as the Long Parliament met this stream ceased 
 to flow, and that afterwards for a hundred years there 
 was so little immigration into New England from 
 Old England that it was believed not to balance the 
 counter-movement of colonists quitting the colony. 1 
 These were circumstances in which, though there 
 might be colonies, there could be no Greater Britain. 
 The material basis of a Greater Britain might indeed 
 be laid — that is, vast territories might be occupied, 
 and rival nations might be expelled from them. In 
 this material sense Greater Britain was created in the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But the idea 
 that could shape the material mass was still wanting. 
 Towards this only one step was taken, namely, in 
 laying down the principle that colonies did in some 
 
 1 " The accessions which New England henceforward (i.e. after 
 1640) received from abroad were more than counterbalanced by 
 perpetual emigrations, which in the course of two centuries have 
 scattered her sons over every part of North America and indeed of 
 the globe. The immigrants of the preceding period had not 
 exceeded twenty-five thousand, a primitive stock, from which has 
 been derived not less perhaps than a fourth part of the present 
 population of the United States." — Hildreth, Hist, of U. 8. 
 L p. 267.
 
 iv THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 85 
 
 way belong together with the mother-country, that 
 England did in some sense go with them across the 
 sea, and that they could not cease to be English but 
 through a war. 
 
 And what is true of the English colonies in the 
 eighteenth century is equally true of the colonies 
 of other States. Greater Spain, Greater Portugal, 
 Greater Holland, and Greater France, were all, as 
 much as Greater Britain, artificial fabrics, wanting 
 organic unity and life. 
 
 Consequently they were all short - lived, and 
 Greater Britain itself appeared likely to be short-lived. 
 It seemed indeed likely to be more short-lived than 
 many of its rivals. The Spanish colonies in America, 
 which had been founded a hundred years before the 
 English, did not break off so soon. The Declaration 
 of Independence of 1776 was not only the most 
 striking but also the first act of rebellion on the part 
 of colonies against mother-countries. 
 
 Nor did Greater Britain ultimately escape this 
 danger by any wisdom in its rulers. When the utter 
 weakness of the old colonial system had been ex- 
 posed, we did not abandon it and take up a better. 
 A new Empire gradually grew up out of the same 
 causes which had called into existence the old, and it 
 grew up under much the same system. We had not 
 learnt from experience wisdom, but only despair. 
 We saw that under that system we could not per- 
 manently keep our colonies, but, instead of inferring 
 that the system must be changed, we only inferred 
 that sooner or later the colonies must be lost.
 
 86 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 Then came, in the forties of this century, the 
 victory of free-trade. Among other restraints upon 
 trade it condemned in toto the old colonial system. 
 This system was abolished, but at the same time the 
 opinion grew up that our colonies were useless, and 
 that the sooner they were emancipated the better. 
 And this doctrine would have been obviously sound, 
 if the general conditions of the world had remained 
 the same in the nineteenth century as they were in 
 the eighteenth and seventeenth. Our forefathers had 
 found that they could make no use of colonies except 
 by extracting trade -advantages from them. What 
 then could remain to the mother-country, when her 
 monopoly was resigned 1 
 
 There followed a quiet period, in which the very 
 slender tie which held the Empire together suffered 
 no strain. In these favourable circumstances the 
 natural bond was strong enough to prevent a catas- 
 trophe. Englishmen in all parts of the world still 
 remembered that they were of one blood and one 
 religion, that they had one history and one language 
 and literature. This was enough, so long as neither 
 colonies nor mother-country were called upon to make 
 very heavy sacrifices each for the other. Such a 
 quiet time favours the growth of a wholly different 
 view of the Empire. This view is founded upon the 
 consideration that distance has now no longer the 
 important influence that it had on political relations. 
 
 In the last century there could be no Greater 
 Britain in the true sense of the word, because of the 
 distance between the mother-country and its colonies
 
 iv THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 87 
 
 and between the colonies themselves. This impedi- 
 ment exists no longer. Science has given to the 
 political organism a new circulation, which is steam, 
 and a new nervous system, which is electricity. 
 These new conditions make it necessary to reconsider 
 the whole colonial problem. They make it in the 
 first place possible actually to realise the old Utopia 
 of a Greater Britain, and at the same time they 
 make it almost necessary to do so. First they make 
 it possible. In the old time such large political 
 organisms were only stable when they were of low 
 type. Thus Greater Spain was longer -lived than 
 Greater Britain, precisely because it was despotically 
 governed. Greater Britain ran on the rock of 
 parliamentary liberties, which were then impossible 
 on so great a scale, while despotism was possible 
 enough. Had it then been thought possible to give 
 parliamentary representation to our colonists, the 
 whole quarrel might easily have been avoided. But 
 it was not thought possible ; and why 1 Burke gives 
 you the answer in the well-known passage, in which 
 he throws ridicule upon the notion of summoning 
 representatives from so vast a distance. This notion 
 has now ceased at any rate to be ridiculous, however 
 great the difficulties of detail may still be. Those 
 very colonies, which then broke off from us, have 
 since given the example of a federal organisation, in 
 which vast territories, some of them thinly peopled 
 and newly settled, are held easily in union with older 
 communities, and the whole enjoys in the fullest 
 degree parliamentary freedom. The United States
 
 88 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lkct. 
 
 have solved a problem substantially similar to that 
 which our old colonial system could not solve, by 
 showing how a State may throw off a constant stream 
 of emigration, how from a fringe of settlement on the 
 Atlantic a whole Continent as far as the Pacific may 
 be peopled, and yet the doubt never arise whether 
 those remote settlements will not soon claim their 
 independence, or whether they will bear to be taxed 
 for the benefit of the whole. 
 
 And lastly what is thus shown to be possible 
 appears now to be much more urgently important 
 than in the last century. For the same inventions 
 which make vast political unions possible, tend to 
 make states which are on the old scale of magnitude 
 unsafe, insignificant, second-rate. If the United States 
 and Russia hold together for another half century, 
 they will at the end of that time completely dwarf 
 such old European States as France and Germany, 
 and depress them into a second class. They will do 
 the same to England, if at the end of that time 
 England still thinks of herself as simply a European 
 State, as the old United Kingdom of Great Britain 
 and Ireland, such as Pitt left her. It would indeed 
 be a poor remedy, if we should try to face these vast 
 states of the new type by an artificial union of settle- 
 ments and islands scattered over the whole globe, 
 inhabited by different nationalities, and connected by 
 no tie except the accident that they happen all alike 
 to acknowledge the Queen's authority. But I have 
 pointed out that what we call our Empire is no such 
 artificial fabric ; that it is not properly, if we exclude
 
 IV 
 
 THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 89 
 
 India from consideration, an Empire at all; that it 
 is a vast English nation, only a nation so widely 
 dispersed that before the age of steam and electricity 
 its strong natural bonds of race and religion seemed 
 practically dissolved by distance. As soon then as 
 distance is abolished by science, as soon as it is proved 
 by the examples of the United States and Russia 
 that political union over vast areas has begun to be 
 possible, so soon Greater Britain starts up, not only 
 a reality, but a robust reality. It will belong to the 
 stronger class of political unions. If it will not be 
 stronger than the United States, we may say with 
 confidence that it will be far stronger than the great 
 conglomeration of Slavs, Germans, Turcomans and 
 Armenians, of Greek Christians, Catholics, Protestants. 
 Mussulmans and Buddhists, which we call Russia.
 
 LECTUKE V 
 
 EFFECT OF THE NEW WORLD ON THE OLD 
 
 In a former lecture I pointed out how much unity is 
 given to the history of England in the eighteenth 
 century, how all the great wars of that time are 
 shown to belong together and fall into a connected 
 series, if you remark the single fact that Greater 
 Britain during that period was establishing itself in 
 opposition to Greater France. And I have since 
 proceeded further in the same train of reflection, by 
 remarking that during the eighteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries it is not England and France only 
 that have great colonies, but Spain, Portugal, and 
 Holland also. You will, I think, find it very helpful 
 in studying the history of those two centuries, 
 always to bear in mind that throughout most of that 
 period the five states of Western Europe all alike are 
 not properly European states but world-states, and 
 that they debate continually among themselves a 
 mighty question, which is not European at all, and 
 which the student with his eye fixed on Europe is
 
 LECT. v EFFECT OF THE NEW WOULD ON THE OLD 91 
 
 too apt to disregard, namely, the question of the 
 possession of the New World. 
 
 This obvious fact, sufficiently borne in mind, gives 
 much unity to the political history of those nations, 
 and reduces to a simple formula most of their wars 
 and alliances. But I now proceed to show, especially 
 with respect to England, that the European States 
 were greatly modified, not only in their mutual 
 dealings with each other, but internally in the nature 
 of each community, by their connection with the 
 New World. It will be found that the modern 
 character of England, as it has come to be since the 
 Middle Ages, may also be most briefly described on 
 the whole by saying that England has been expand- 
 ing into Greater Britain. 
 
 Two great events happened within thirty years of 
 each other, the discovery of the New World and the 
 Beformation. These two events closely involved 
 with two others, viz. the consolidation of the great 
 European States and the closing of the East by the 
 Turkish Conquest, caused the vast change which we 
 know as the close of the Middle Ages and the opening 
 of the modern period. But of the two leading 
 events the one was of far more rapid operation than 
 the other. The Reformation produced its effect at 
 once and in the very front of the stage of history. 
 For more than half a century the historical student 
 finds himself mainly concerned with the struggle 
 between the Habsburg House and the Beformation, 
 first in Germany, where it is assisted by France, 
 then in the Low Countries, where it is helped,
 
 92 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot, 
 
 sometimes by France, sometimes by England. Mean- 
 while the occupation of the New World is going on 
 in the background, and does not force itself upon the 
 attention of the student who is contemplating Europe. 
 The achievements of Cortez and Pizarro do not seem 
 to have any reaction upon the European struggle. 
 And perhaps it is not till near the end of the six- 
 teenth century, when the raids of Francis Drake and 
 his fellows upon the Spanish settlements in Central 
 America mainly contributed to decide Spain to her 
 great enterprise against England, perhaps it is not 
 till the time of the Spanish Armada, that the New 
 World begins in any perceptible degree to react 
 upon the Old. 
 
 But from this time forward European affairs begin 
 to be controlled by two great causes at once, viz. 
 the Reformation and the New World, and of these 
 the Reformation acts with diminishing force, and the 
 New World has more and more influence. It is 
 characteristic of the seventeenth century that these 
 two causes act throughout it in combination. This 
 is illustrated, as I mentioned above, by Cromwell's 
 policy of war against Spain, which is double-faced 
 and, while it seems to be a blow of Protestantism 
 against Catholicism, is really a stroke for territory in 
 the New World, so that it results in the conquest of 
 Jamaica. It is illustrated too by the alliance of 
 France and England against Holland in 1672, when 
 one Protestant Power assails another with the pointed 
 approbation of the Cromwellian statesman Shaftes- 
 bury, because they have rival interests in the New
 
 V EFFECT OF THE NEW WORLD ON THE OLD 93 
 
 World. But by the end of that century the Reform- 
 ation as a force in politics has declined, and in the 
 eighteenth century the ruling influence is throughout 
 the New World. This is what gives to that century 
 the prosaic commercial character which distinguishes 
 it. The religious question with all its grandeur has 
 sunk to rest, and the colonial question, made up of 
 worldly and material considerations, has taken its 
 place. 
 
 Now the New World, considered as a boundless 
 territory open to settlement, would act in two ways 
 upon the nations of Europe. In the first place it 
 would have a purely political effect — that is, it would 
 act upon their Governments. For so much debatable 
 territory would be a standing cause of war. It is 
 this action of the New World that we have been 
 considering hitherto, while we have observed how 
 mainly the wars of the eighteenth century, and 
 particularly the great wars of England and France, 
 were kindled by this cause. But the New World 
 would also act upon the European communities 
 themselves, modifying their occupations and ways of 
 life, altering their industrial and economical char- 
 acter. Thus the expansion of England involves its 
 transformation. 
 
 England is now pre-eminently a maritime, colonising 
 and industrial country. It seems to be the prevalent 
 opinion that England always was so, and from the 
 nature of her people can never be otherwise. In 
 Riickert's poem the deity that visited the same spot 
 of earth at intervals of five hundred years, and found
 
 94 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leOT. 
 
 there now a forest, now a city, now a sea, when- 
 ever he asked after the origin of what he saw, 
 received for answer, "It has always been so, and 
 always will be." This unhistorical way of thinking, 
 this disposition to ascribe an inherent necessity to 
 whatever we are accustomed to, betrays itself in 
 much that is said about the genius of the Anglo- 
 Saxon race. That we might have been other than 
 we are, nay, that we once were other, is to us so 
 inconceivable that we try to explain why we were 
 always the same, before ascertaining by any inquiry 
 whether the fact is so. It seems to us clear that 
 we are the great wandering, working, colonising 
 race, descended from sea-rovers and Vikings. The 
 sea, we think, is ours by nature's decree, and on 
 this highway we travel to subdue the earth and to 
 people it. 
 
 And yet in fact it was only in the Elizabethan age 
 that England began to discover her vocation to trade 
 and to the dominion of the sea. 
 
 Our insular position, and the fact that our island 
 towards the West and North looks right out upon 
 the Atlantic Ocean, may lead us to fancy that the 
 nation must always have been maritime by the 
 necessity of the case. We entered the island in 
 ships, and afterwards we were conquered by a nation 
 of sea-rovers. But after all England is not a Norway ; 
 it is not a country which has only narrow strips of 
 cultivable land, and therefore forces its population 
 to look to the sea for their subsistence. England in 
 the time of the Plantagenets was no mistress of the
 
 v EFFECT OF THE NEW WORLD ON THE OLD 95 
 
 seas ; in fact she was scarcely a maritime state at all. 
 Occasionally in war-time we find medieval England 
 in possession of a considerable navy. But as soon as 
 peace arrives the navy dwindles away again. The 
 constant complaints of piracy in the Channel show 
 how little control England was able to exercise even 
 over her own seas. It has been justly remarked 
 that, as the Middle Ages know of no standing army, 
 so, excepting the case of some Italian city-states, 
 they know of no standing fleet. Over and over 
 again in those times this decay of the navy recurs. 
 Then when a new war broke out, the Government 
 would issue a general license to all merchant-ships to 
 act as privateers, and the merchant-ships would 
 respond to it by becoming not merely privateers but 
 pirates. In fact, though under the Plantagenets the 
 English nation was more warlike in spirit than it has 
 been since, yet it is observable that in those days its 
 ambition was directed much more to fighting by land 
 than by sea. The glories of the English army of 
 those days greatly eclipse those of the English navy ; 
 we remember the victories of Orecy and Poitiers, 
 but we have forgotten that of Sluys. 
 
 The truth is that the maritime greatness of 
 England is of much more modern growth than most 
 of us imagine. It dates from the civil wars of the 
 seventeenth century and from the career of Robert 
 Blake. Blake's pursuit of Prince Rupert through the 
 Straits of Gibraltar up the eastern coast of Spain is 
 said to have been the first appearance of an English 
 fleet in the Mediterranean after the time of the
 
 96 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect 
 
 Crusades. There are no doubt naval heroes older 
 than Blake. There is Francis Drake, and Richard 
 Grenville, and John Hawkins. But the navy of 
 Elizabeth was only the English navy in infancy, and 
 the heroes themselves are not far removed from 
 buccaneers. Before the Tudor period we find only 
 the embryo of a navy. In the fifteenth century 
 English naval history, except during the short reign 
 of Henry V., shows only feebleness ; before that too 
 feebleness is the rule and efficiency the exception, 
 until we arrive at the reign of Edward I., who was 
 the first to conceive even the idea of a standing 
 navy. 
 
 And not in maritime war only but in maritime 
 discovery, in maritime activity of all kinds, the great- 
 ness of England is modern. In the great unrivalled 
 explorations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
 we did no doubt something, but we had no pretension 
 whatever to take the lead. It is true that we made 
 a promising commencement. A ship from Bristol 
 was absolutely the first to touch the American 
 Continent, so that there were English sailors who 
 saw America proper a year or so before Columbus 
 himself. At that moment we seemed likely to rival 
 Spain, for if the commander Cabot 1 was no English- 
 man, neither was Columbus a Spaniard. But we fell 
 behind again ; Henry VII. was unwisely parsimonious, 
 
 1 John Cabot was an Italian, by citizenship a Venetian ; but if 
 his son Sebastian was born after the father settled in Bristol, and 
 if the son, not the father, commanded the ship, the whole achieve- 
 ment might be made out to be English. The evidence however 
 points the other way. See the discussion in Hellwald, Sebastian 
 Cabot.
 
 v EFFECT OF THE NEW WORLD ON THE OLD 97 
 
 Henry VIII. was caught in the vortex of the 
 Reformation. In the first generation of great 
 discoverers there is no English name. Frobisher, 
 Chancellor and Francis Drake did not appear on 
 the Ocean till Columbus had lain for half a 
 century in his grave. Among nations of maritime 
 renown whether in war, discovery or colonisation, 
 before the time of the Spanish Armada England 
 could not pretend to take any high rank. Spain 
 had carried off the prize, less by merit than by 
 the good fortune which sent her Columbus, but the 
 nation which had really deserved it was beyond dis- 
 pute Portugal, which indeed had almost reason to 
 complain of the glorious intrusion of Columbus. 
 Even against him she might urge that, if the object 
 was to find the Indies, she took the right way and 
 found them, while he took the wrong way and 
 missed them. 1 After these nations, and in quite a 
 lower class, might be placed England and France, and 
 I do not know that England would have a right to 
 stand before France. This is somewhat disguised in 
 our histories owing to the natural desire of the 
 historians to make the most of our actual achieve- 
 ments. In later times, after our maritime supremacy 
 had once begun, we should be surprised at any nation 
 competing with us for the first place, whereas we are 
 content to appear as spirited aspirants venturing to 
 
 1 Even if it were answered in his behalf that it is better to be 
 wrong and find America than to be right and find India, Portugal 
 might answer that she did both, since in the second voyage made 
 from Lisbon to India she discovered Brazil, only eight years alter 
 the first voyage of Columbus, and would undoubtedly have 
 discovered it, if Columbus had never been born. 
 
 H
 
 98 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 contest the pre-eminence of Spain after she has 
 enjoyed it for the best part of a century. And even 
 at the end of the sixteenth century, when a large 
 part of the American Continent has been carved out 
 in Spanish vice-royalties, and Portugal has sent out 
 governors to rule in the Indian Ocean, when Spanish 
 missionaries have visited Japan, when the great poet 
 of Portugal has led a literary career for sixteen years 
 and written an epic poem in regions which to former 
 poets had seemed fabulous, even as late as this the 
 English are quite beginners in the maritime career, 
 and have as yet no settlements. 
 
 But from naval affairs let us turn to manufactures 
 and commerce. Here again we shall find that it is 
 not a natural vocation, founded upon inherent 
 aptitudes, that has given us our success in these 
 pursuits. In manufactures our success depends 
 upon our peculiar relation to the great producing 
 countries of the globe. The vast harvests of the 
 world are reaped in countries where land is wide and 
 population generally thin. But those countries 
 cannot manufacture their own raw materials, because 
 all hands are engaged in producing and there is no 
 surplus population to be employed in manufacture. 
 The cotton of America and wool of Australia therefore 
 come to England, where not only such a surplus 
 population exists, but where also the great standing 
 instrument of manufacture, coal, is found in abund- 
 ance and near the coast. Now all this is modern, 
 most of it very modern. The reign of coal began 
 with machinery, that is, in the latter half of the
 
 V EFFECT OF THE NEW WOULD ON THE OLD 99 
 
 eighteenth century. The vast tracts of production 
 were not heard of till the New World had been laid 
 open, and could not he used freely till two centuries 
 and a half later, when railways were introduced. 
 Evidently therefore the basis of our manufacturing 
 greatness could not be laid till very recent times. 
 The England of the Plantagenets occupied a wholly 
 different economical position. Manufactures were 
 not indeed wanting, but the nation was as yet so far 
 from being remarked for its restless industry and 
 practical talent, that a description written in the 
 fifteenth century says that the English, "being 
 seldom fatigued with hard labour, lead a life more 
 spiritual and refined." 1 In the main England at that 
 time subsisted upon its lucrative intercourse (magnus 
 intercursus) with Flanders. She produced the wool 
 which was manufactured there ; she was to Flanders 
 what Australia is now to the West Riding. London 
 was as Sydney, Ghent and Bruges were as Leeds and 
 Bradford. 
 
 This continued in the main to be the case till the 
 Elizabethan age. But then, about the time that the 
 maritime greatness of England was beginning, she 
 began also to be a great manufacturing country. For 
 the manufactures of Flanders perished in the great 
 catastrophe of the religious war of the Low Countries 
 with Spain. Flemish manufacturers swarmed over 
 
 1 Fortescue, quoted by Mr. Cunningham, Growth of English 
 Industry and Commerce, p. 217. Besides being indoleut and 
 contemplative, the Englishman of the fifteenth century was pre- 
 eminent in urbanity and totally devoid of domestic affection ! See 
 Gairdner's Paston Letters, vol. iii. Intr. p. lxiii.
 
 100 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 into England, and gave a new life to the industry 
 which had long had its centre at Norwich. There 
 began what may be called the Norwich period of our 
 manufacturing history, which lasted through the 
 whole seventeenth century. The peculiarity of it 
 was that in this period England manufactured her 
 own product, wool. Instead of being mainly a pro- 
 ducing country as before, or mainly a manufacturing 
 country as now, she was a country manufacturing 
 what she herself produced. 
 
 So much for manufactures. But the present in- 
 dustrial greatness of England is composed only in 
 part of her greatness in manufacture. She has also 
 the carrying trade of the world, and is therefore its 
 exchange and business - centre. Now this carrying 
 trade has come to her as the great maritime country ; 
 it is therefore superfluous to remark that she had it 
 not in the Middle Ages, when she had not yet 
 become a maritime country. Indeed in those times a 
 carrying trade can hardly be spoken of. It implies 
 a great sea-traffic, and a great sea-traffic did not begin 
 till the New World was thrown open. Before that 
 event business had its centre in the central countries 
 of Europe, in Italy and the Imperial Cities of 
 Germany. The great business men of the fifteenth 
 century were the Medici of Florence, the Fuggers of 
 Augsburg, the founders of the Bank of St. George at 
 Genoa. 
 
 In the Middle Ages England was, from the point 
 of view of business, not an advanced, but on the 
 whole a backward country. She must have been
 
 V EFFECT OF THE NEW WORLD ON THE OLD 101 
 
 despised in the chief commercial countries; as now 
 she herself looks upon the business-system and the 
 banking of countries like Germany and even France 
 as old-fashioned compared to her own, so in the 
 Middle Ages the Italians must have looked upon 
 England. With their city-life, wide business-con- 
 nections and acuteness in affairs, they must have 
 classed England, along with France, among the old- 
 world, agricultural, and feudal countries, which lay 
 outside the main-current of the ideas of the time. 
 
 Nor when the great change took place, which left 
 Italy and Germany in their turn stranded, and turned 
 the whole course of business into another channel, 
 are we to suppose that England stepped at once into 
 their place. Their successor was Holland. Through 
 a great part of the seventeenth century the carrying 
 trade of the world was in the hands of the Dutch, 
 and Amsterdam was the exchange of the world. It 
 is against this Dutch monopoly that England struggles 
 in Cromwell's time and in the earlier part of the 
 reign of Charles II. Not till late in that century 
 does Holland begin to show signs of defeat. Not 
 till then does England decidedly take the lead in 
 commerce. 
 
 And thus, if we put together all the items, we 
 arrive at the conclusion that the England we know, 
 the supreme maritime commercial and industrial 
 Power, is quite of modern growth, that it did not 
 clearly exhibit its principal features till the eighteenth 
 century, and that the seventeenth century is the 
 period when it was gradually assuming this form
 
 102 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 If we ask when it began to do so, the answer is 
 particularly easy and distinct. It was in the Eliza- 
 bethan Age. 
 
 Now this was the time when the New World 
 began to exert its influence, and thus the most 
 obvious facts suggest that England owes its modern 
 character and its peculiar greatness from the outset 
 to the New World. It is not the blood of the Vikings 
 that makes us rulers of the sea, nor the industrial 
 genius of the Anglo-Saxon that makes us great in 
 manufactures and commerce, but a much more special 
 circumstance, which did not arise till for many 
 centuries we had been agricultural or pastoral, war- 
 like, and indifferent to the sea. 
 
 In the school of Carl Ritter much has been said 1 
 of three stages of civilisation determined by geograph- 
 ical conditions, the potamic, which clings to rivers, the 
 thalassic, which grows up around inland seas, and 
 lastly the oceanic. This theory looks as if it had been 
 suggested by the change which followed the discovery 
 of the New World, when indeed European civilisation 
 passed from the thalassic to the oceanic stage. Till 
 then trade had clung to the Mediterranean Sea. Till 
 then the Ocean had been a limit, a boundary, not a 
 pathway. There had been indeed a certain amount 
 of intercourse across the narrow seas of the North, 
 which had nourished the trade of the Hanseatic 
 League. But in the main the Mediterranean con- 
 tinued to be the headquarters of industry as of 
 civilisation, and the Middle Age moved so far in the 
 
 1 See Peschel, Abhandlungen zur Erd-und Volkerkunde, p. 398.
 
 v EFFECT OF THE NEW WOULD ON THE OLD 103 
 
 groove of the ancient world that Italy in both seemed 
 to have a natural superiority over the countries on 
 this side of the Alps. France and England had no 
 doubt advanced greatly, but to the Italian in the 
 fifteenth century they still seemed comparatively 
 barbarous, intellectually provincial and second-rate. 
 The reason of this was that for practical purposes 
 they were inland, while Italy reaped the benefit of 
 the civilising sea. The greatness of Florence rested 
 upon woollen manufactures, that of Venice, Pisa and 
 Genoa upon foreign trade and dependencies, and all 
 this at a time when France and England comparatively 
 were given up to feudalism and rusticity. By the 
 side of the Italian republics, France and England 
 showed like Thessaly and Macedonia in comparison 
 with Athens and Corinth. 
 
 Now Columbus and the Portuguese altered all this 
 by substituting the Atlantic Ocean for the Mediter- 
 ranean Sea as the highway of commerce. From 
 that moment the reign of Italy is over. The relation 
 of cause and effect is here in some degree concealed 
 by the misfortunes which happened to Italy at the 
 same time. The political fall of Italy happened 
 accidentally just at the same moment. The foreigner 
 crossed the Alps; Italy became a battlefield in the 
 great struggle of France and Spain ; she was con- 
 quered, partitioned, enslaved ; and her glory never 
 revived afterwards. Such a catastrophe and its 
 obvious cause, foreign invasion, blinds us to all minor 
 influences, which might have been working to produce 
 the same effect at the same time. But assuredly, had
 
 104 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 no foreign invasion taken place, Italy would just then 
 have entered on a period of decline. The hidden 
 source which fed her energy and glory was dried up 
 by the discovery of the New World. She might be 
 compared to one of those seaports on the coast of 
 Kent from which the sea has receded. Where there 
 had once been life and movement, silence and vacancy 
 must have set in throughout the great city republics 
 of Italy, even if no stranger had crossed the Alps. 
 The Mediterranean Sea had not indeed receded, but 
 it had lost once for all the character which it had 
 had almost from the days of the Odyssey. It had 
 ceased to be the central sea of human intercourse and 
 civilisation, the chief, nay, almost the one sea of 
 history. It so happened that, soon after commerce 
 began to cover the Atlantic, it was swept out of the 
 Mediterranean by the besom of the Turkish sea-power. 
 Thus Eanke remarks that the trade of Barcelona 
 seemed to be little affected by the new discoveries, 
 but that it sank rapidly from about 1529, in conse- 
 quence of the maritime predominance of the Turks 
 caused by the successes of Barbarossa, the league of 
 France with Solyman, and the foundation of the 
 Barbary States. So clearly had the providential 
 edict gone forth that European civilisation should 
 cease to be thalassic and should become oceanic. 
 
 The great result was that the centre of movement 
 and intelligence began to pass from the centre of 
 Europe to its Western Coast. Civilisation moves 
 away from Italy and Germany ; where it will settle 
 is not yet clear, but certainly farther west. See how
 
 v EFFECT OF THE NEW WORLD ON THE OLD 105 
 
 strikingly this change stands out from the history 
 of the sixteenth century. At the beginning of that 
 century all the genius in the world seems to live in 
 Italy or Germany. The golden age of modern art is 
 passing in the first country, but if there are any rivals 
 to the Italian painters they are German, and Michael 
 Angelo is obliged at least to reason with those who 
 prefer the maniera tedesca. Meanwhile the Reforma- 
 tion belongs to Germany. For France and England 
 in those days it seems sufficient glory to have given a 
 welcome to the Renaissance and to the Reformation. 
 But gradually in the latter part of the sixteenth 
 century we become aware that civilisation is shifting 
 its headquarters. Italy and Germany are first 
 rivalled and then eclipsed ; gradually we grow accus- 
 tomed to the thought that great things are rather to 
 be looked for in other countries. In the seven- 
 teenth century almost all genius and greatness is 
 to be found in the western or maritime states of 
 Europe. 
 
 Now these are the states which were engaged in 
 the struggle for the New World. Spain, Portugal, 
 France, Holland and England have the same sort of 
 position with respect to the Atlantic Ocean that 
 Greece and Italy had in antiquity with respect to the 
 Mediterranean. And they begin to show a similar 
 superiority in intelligence. Vast problems of conquest, 
 colonisation and commerce occupy their minds, which 
 before had vegetated in a rustic monotony. I have 
 already shown you at length what an effect this 
 change had upon the English nation. The effect
 
 106 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 produced upon the Dutch was quite as striking and 
 much more rapid. The Golden Age of Holland is 
 the first half of the seventeenth century. Let us 
 examine for a moment the causes which produced its 
 prosperity. 
 
 The Low Countries which revolted against Philip 
 II. of Spain were, as you know, not merely the seven 
 provinces which afterwards made the Dutch Eepublic 
 and now make the Dutch Monarchy, but those other 
 provinces which now make the kingdom of Belgium. 
 It was the latter group which at the time of the 
 rebellion were most prosperous. They were the 
 great manufacturing region, the Lancashire or West 
 Eiding of the Middle Ages. The former group, the 
 Dutch provinces, were then of much less importance. 
 They were maritime and chiefly occupied in the 
 herring fishery. Now the result of the Eebellion 
 was that Spain was able to retain possession of the 
 Belgian group, which from this time is known as the 
 Spanish Low Countries, but she was not able to hold 
 the Dutch group, which, after a war which seemed 
 interminable, she was forced to leave to their inde- 
 pendence. Now during the struggle the prosperity 
 of the Belgian Provinces, as I have pointed out, was 
 ruined. The Flemish manufacturers emigrated and 
 founded the woollen manufacture of England. But 
 the maritime provinces, poorer at the outset, instead 
 of being ruined grew rich during the war, and had 
 become, before it was ended, the wonder and the 
 great commercial state of the world. How was this 1 
 It was because they were maritime, and because their
 
 y EFFECT OF THE NEW WORLD ON THE OLL 107 
 
 sea was the highway which led to the New World. 
 As they had devoted themselves earlier to the sea, 
 they had the start of the English, and their war with 
 the Spaniards proved actually an advantage to them, 
 because it threw open to their attack all the thinly- 
 peopled ill-defended American Empire of Spain. The 
 world was astonished to see a petty state with a 
 barren soil and insignificant population, not only hold 
 its own against the great Spanish Empire, but in the 
 midst of this unequal contest found a great colonial 
 Empire for itself in both hemispheres. Meanwhile 
 the intellectual stimulus, which the sea had begun 
 to give to these Western States, was nowhere more 
 manifest than in Holland. This same small popula- 
 tion took the lead in scholarship as in commerce, 
 welcomed Lipsius, Scaliger and Descartes, and pro- 
 duced Grotius at the same time as Piet Hein and Van 
 Tromp. 
 
 This is the most startling single instance of the 
 action of the New World. The effects produced in 
 Holland were nothing like so momentous as those 
 which I have traced in England, for the greatness of 
 Holland, wanting a basis sufficiently broad, was short- 
 lived, but they were more sudden and more evidently 
 referable to this single cause. 
 
 Such then was the effect of the New World on 
 the Old. It is visible not merely in the wars and 
 alliances of the time, but also in the economic growth 
 and transformation of the Western States of Europe. 
 Civilisation has often been powerfully promoted by 
 some great enterprise in which several generations
 
 108 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 continuously take part. Such was the war of Europe 
 and Asia to the ancient Greeks ; such the Crusades 
 in the Middle Ages. Such then for the Western 
 States of Europe in recent centuries has been the 
 struggle for the New World. It is this more than 
 anything else which has placed these nations, where 
 they never were before, in the van of intellectual pro- 
 gress, and especially it is by her success in this field 
 that our own country has acquired her peculiar 
 greatness. 
 
 I will conclude this lecture with some remarks on 
 the large causes which, in the struggle of five states, 
 left the final victory in the hands of England. 
 Among these five we have seen that Spain and 
 Portugal had the start by a whole century, and that 
 Holland was in the field before England. Afterwards 
 for about a century France and England contended 
 for the New World on tolerably equal terms. Yet 
 now of all these states England alone remains in 
 possession of a great and commanding colonial power. 
 Why is this? 
 
 We may observe that Holland and Portugal 
 laboured under the disadvantage of too small a basis. 
 The decline of Holland had obvious causes, which 
 have often been pointed out. For her sufferings in a 
 war of eighty years with Spain she found the com- 
 pensations I have just described. But when this 
 was followed, first by naval wars with England, and 
 then by a struggle with France which lasted half a 
 century, and she had now England for a rival on 
 the seas, she succumbed. At the beginning of the
 
 v EFFECT OF THE NEW "WORLD ON THE OLD 109 
 
 eighteenth century she shows symptoms of decay, and 
 at the Treaty of Utrecht she lays down her arms, 
 victorious indeed, but fatally disabled. 
 
 The Portuguese met with a different misfortune. 
 From the outset they had recognised the insufficiency 
 of their resources, regretting that they had not been 
 content with a less ambitious course of acquisition on 
 the northern coast of Africa. In 1580 they suffered 
 a blow such as has not fallen on any other of the 
 still existing European states. Portugal with all her 
 world-wide dependencies and commercial stations fell 
 under the yoke of Spain, and underwent a sixty 
 years' captivity. In this period her colonial Empire, 
 which by becoming Spanish was laid open to the 
 attacks of the Dutch, suffered greatly ; Portuguese 
 writers accuse Spain of having witnessed their losses 
 with pleasure, and of having made a scapegoat of 
 Portugal ; certain it is that the discontent which led 
 to the insurrection of 1640, and founded a new 
 Portugal under the House of Braganc,a, was mainly 
 caused by these colonial losses. Yet the insurrection 
 itself cost her something more in foreign possessions ; 
 she paid the Island of Bombay for the help of 
 England. Nor could the second Portugal ever rival 
 the first, that nurse of Prince Henry, Bartholomew 
 Diaz, Vasco da Gama, Magelhaens and Camoens, 
 which has quite a peculiar glory in the history of 
 Europe. 
 
 Be it remarked in passing that this passage also of 
 the history of the seventeenth century shows us the 
 New World reacting on the Old. As the rise of
 
 110 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 Holland, the great occurrence of its first years, so the 
 Eevolution of Portugal, which occupies the middle of 
 it, is caused by the influence of the colonies. 
 
 As to the ill-success of Spain and France, it would 
 no doubt be idle to suppose that any one cause will 
 fully explain it. But perhaps one large cause may be 
 named which in both cases contributed most to pro- 
 duce the result. 
 
 Spain lost her colonial Empire only, as it were, the 
 other day. Having founded it a century earlier, she 
 retained it nearly half a century later than England 
 retained her first Empire. Compared to England, 
 she has been inferior only in not having continued to 
 found new colonies. And this was the effect of that 
 strange decay of vitality which overtook Spain in the 
 latter half of the sixteenth century. The decline of 
 population and the ruin of finance dried up in her 
 every power, that of colonisation included. 
 
 No similar decline is observable in France. France 
 lost her colonies in a series of unsuccessful wars, and 
 perhaps you may think that it is not necessary to 
 inquire further, and that the fortune of war explains 
 everything. But I think I discern that both States 
 were guilty of the same error of policy, which in the 
 end mainly contributed to their failure. It may be 
 said of both that they " had too many irons in the 
 fire." 
 
 There was this fundamental difference between 
 Spain and France on the one side and England on 
 the other, that Spain and France were deeply involved 
 in the struggles of Europe, from which England has
 
 V EFFECT OF THE NEW WORLD ON THE OLD 111 
 
 always been able to hold herself aloof. In fact, as an 
 island, England is distinctly nearer for practical pur- 
 poses to the New World, and almost belongs to it, or 
 at least has the choice of belonging at her pleasure to 
 the New World or to the Old. Spain might perhaps 
 have had the same choice, but for her conquests in 
 Italy and for the fatal marriage which, as it were, 
 wedded her to Germany. In that same sixteenth 
 century in which she was colonising the New World, 
 Spain was merged at home in the complex Spanish 
 Empire, which was doomed beforehand to decline, 
 because it could never raise a revenue proportioned 
 to its responsibilities. It was almost bankrupt when 
 Charles V. abdicated, though it could then draw upon 
 the splendid prosperity of the Netherlands ; when, 
 soon after, it alienated this province, lost the poorer 
 half of it and ruined the richer, when it engaged in 
 chronic war with France, when after eighty years of 
 war with the Dutch it entered upon a quarter of a 
 century of war with Portugal, it could not but sink, 
 as it did, into bankruptcy and political decrepitude. 
 These overwhelming burdens, coupled with a want of 
 industrial aptitude in the Spanish people, whose 
 temperament had been formed in a permanent war 
 of religion, produced the result that the nation to 
 which a new world had been given could never 
 rightly use or profit by the gift. 
 
 As to France, it is still more manifest that she lost 
 the New World because she was always divided 
 between a policy of colonial extension and a policy of 
 European conquest. If we compare together those
 
 112 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 seven great wars between 1688 and 1815, we shall 
 be struck with the fact that most of them are double 
 wars, that they have one aspect as between England 
 and France and another as between France and 
 Germany. It is the double policy of France that 
 causes this, and it is France that suffers by it. 
 England has for the most part a single object and 
 wages a single war, but France wages two wars at 
 once for two distinct objects. When Chatham said 
 he would conquer America in Germany, he indicated 
 that he saw the mistake which France committed by 
 dividing her forces, and that he saw how, by subsidis- 
 ing Frederick, to make France exhaust herself in 
 Germany, while her possessions in America passed 
 defenceless into our hands. Napoleon in like manner 
 is distracted between the New World and the Old. 
 He would humble England; he would repair the 
 colonial and Indian losses of his country. But he 
 finds himself conquering Germany and at last invad- 
 ing Russia. His comfort is that through Germany he 
 can strike at English trade, and through Russia 
 perhaps make his way to India. 
 
 England has not been thus distracted between two 
 objects. Connected but slightly with the European 
 system since she evacuated France in the fifteenth 
 century, she has not since then lived in chronic war 
 with her neighbours. She has not hankered after 
 the Imperial Crown or guaranteed the Treaty of 
 Westphalia. When Napoleon by his Continental 
 System shut her out from Europe, she showed that 
 she could do without Europe. Hence her hands have
 
 v EFFECT OF THE NEW WORLD ON THE OLD 113 
 
 always been free, while trade of itself inevitably 
 drew her thoughts in the direction of the New World. 
 In the long run this advantage has been decisive. 
 She has not had to maintain a European Ascendency, 
 as Spain and France have had ; on the other hand 
 she has not had to withstand such an Ascendency 
 by mortal conflict within her own territory, as 
 Holland and Portugal, and Spain also, have been 
 forced to do. Hence nothing has interrupted her or 
 interfered with her, to draw her off from the quiet 
 progress of her colonial settlements. In one word, 
 out of the five states which competed for the New 
 World success has fallen to that one — not which 
 showed at the outset the strongest vocation for 
 colonisation, not which surpassed the others in daring 
 or invention or energy — but to that one which was 
 least hampered by the Old World.
 
 LECTURE VI 
 
 COMMERCE AND WAR 
 
 Competition for the New World between the five 
 western marftime States of Europe : this is a formula 
 which sums up a great part of the history of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is one of 
 those generalisations which escape us so long as we 
 study history only in single states. 
 
 Much would be gained if the student of history 
 would look at modern Europe as he has already the 
 habit of looking at ancient Greece. Here he has 
 constantly before him three or four different states at 
 once — Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Argos, not to mention 
 Macedonia and Persia, and is led to make most 
 instructive comparisons and most useful reflections 
 upon large general tendencies. This is entirely 
 owing to the accident that Greece was not a State 
 but a complex of States, which fact our historians do 
 not perceive clearly enough to conclude, as in con- 
 sistency they ought, that they ought not to write a 
 history of Greece at all, but separate histories of
 
 lect. yi COMMERCE AND WAR 115 
 
 Athens, Sparta, etc. Let me ask those of you who 
 know Grecian history to apply to these Western 
 States the mode of conceiving to which you have 
 accustomed yourselves. You have been in the habit 
 of thinking of a cluster of States gathered round a 
 common sea, which is studded with islands, and 
 which has on the other side of it large territories 
 imperfectly known and inhabited by strange races. 
 You have thought of all these States together, and 
 not merely of each by itself ; you have traced the 
 general results produced upon the Hellenic world as 
 a whole by all the intricate play of interests between 
 the several Hellenic city-states. Now the five States 
 we have in view — Spain, Portugal, France, Holland 
 and England — were ranged in like manner on the 
 North-Eastern shore of the Atlantic Ocean, and had 
 in like manner a common interest in what that 
 Ocean contained or hid. If the States seem to you 
 so large, the Ocean so boundless, and the settlements 
 so scattered that you cannot bring them into one 
 view, make an effort, bring them into the same map, 
 and draw the map on a small scale. But your great 
 effort must be to raise your head above the current 
 of mere chronological narrative, to apply a fixed 
 principle to the selection of facts, grouping them not 
 by nearness in time, nor by their personal biographical 
 connection, but by the internal affinity of causation. 
 This great struggle of five States for the New World 
 diners from the struggles of those old Greek States 
 in this, that it is not isolated. It was superinduced 
 by the discovery of Columbus upon other struggles,
 
 116 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 
 
 themselves sufficiently complicated, which were going 
 on within the European States; in particular it is 
 entangled with the great religious struggle of the 
 Reformation. Altogether what a tangled web ! Now 
 in a case like this what shall science do 1 Surely the 
 first thing will be to separate and arrange together all 
 the effects whioh can be traced to any one cause. In 
 order to do this it must evidently neglect chrono- 
 logical order ; it must break the fetters of narrative. 
 Following this method, it will see in the sixteenth, 
 seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, as I have 
 pointed out, two grand causes, each followed by its 
 multitude of effects, viz. the Reformation and the 
 attraction of the New World ; these two grand 
 causes it will study separately, tracing each through 
 the long series of effects produced by it, and then 
 perhaps, but not till then, it will consider the mutual 
 action of the two causes upon each other. It is our 
 business at present to consider separately the effects 
 produced on the five Western States by the attraction 
 of the New World. 
 
 Now why should the New World have produced 
 any further effect upon those States than simply to 
 rouse them to a new commercial activity, and perhaps 
 more gradually to enlarge their ideas by enlarging 
 their knowledge 1 That it did produce this latter 
 effect I explained in the last lecture by pointing out 
 how in the course of the sixteenth century the centre 
 of civilisation moves from the Mediterranean to the 
 neighbourhood of the Atlantic, so that, whereas in 
 the earlier years of it the eye turns always to Italy or
 
 VI COMMERCE AND WAR 117 
 
 Germany, where the Eaphaels and Michael Angelos, 
 the Ariostos and Macchiavelli's, the Diirers and 
 Hiittens and Luthers live, at the end of it and in the 
 seventeenth century the eye turns just as naturally 
 Westward and Northward. We see Cervantes and 
 Calderon in Spain, Shakspeare and Spenser and 
 Bacon in England ; Scaliger and Lipsius, then Grotius 
 arise in Holland, Montaigne and Casaubon in France ; 
 the destinies of the world are in the hands of Henry 
 IV., Queen Elizabeth, the Prince of Orange ; and, as 
 time goes on, we grow more and more accustomed to 
 expect everything great in this quarter, and to regard 
 Italy and the Mediterranean as out of date. So much 
 was natural. The contact of the New World might 
 have been expected to produce this effect, for, as we 
 have always been accustomed to trace ancient civilisa- 
 tion to the influence of the Mediterranean, we are 
 prepared to find that the Atlantic, when once it 
 becomes a Mediterranean, — that is, when once lands 
 are laid open on the farther side of it, — should pro- 
 duce similar effects on a grander scale. But it does 
 not at once appear why any further effects should be 
 produced. To understand this we must consider the 
 peculiar nature of the contact between the New 
 World and the Old, and, now that we have looked a 
 little into modern colonisation, we are in a condition 
 to do so. 
 
 Let us think how the New World might have 
 acted on the Old quite otherwise than as it did. 
 What if America had been found to be full of power- 
 ful and consolidated States like those of Europe 1
 
 118 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 Then our relations with it would have been similar to 
 our present relations with China or Japan. Our 
 advances might have been met with a certain prudery, 
 as by China; in that case the result would either 
 have been non-intercourse, or some attempt, success- 
 ful or otherwise, to force intercourse upon them. Or 
 the American States might have proved open-minded 
 and liberal like the Japanese ; then there might have 
 followed intercourse, exchange of ideas, and mutual 
 benefit. But in either case it does not appear that 
 important political consequences would have followed, 
 for in those days, while communication was so difficult, 
 it is not likely that any fusion of the European 
 political system with the American system, any 
 alliances of European with American States, would 
 have taken place. The two worlds would have 
 remained aware of each other, yet almost closed to 
 each other, in a relation less like that we now see 
 between England and China or Japan than that of 
 England with the same countries or with India and 
 Persia during the seventeenth century. 
 
 Well ! there were no such consolidated States in 
 America except in Mexico and Peru, where they were 
 overwhelmed in a moment by the Spanish advent- 
 urers. Hence the New World had not the power it 
 would otherwise have had of keeping the Old at 
 arm's length. And the consequence was that there 
 began between the Old World and the New an 
 emigration. 
 
 Now this by itself is a great fact. It implies that 
 the Atlantic had become, not merely a Mediterranean,
 
 vi COMMERCE AND WAR 119 
 
 but something more. To the Greeks the Mediter- 
 ranean gave trade, intercourse with foreigners, 
 movement and change of ideas, but it did not, unless 
 perhaps at a certain time, afford a means of unbounded 
 emigration. Emigration there was, but on a scale 
 not only inferior, but inferior in proportion. Political 
 Powers, some of them exclusive, guarded the opposite 
 shore. But even this fact is rather social than 
 political. Emigration is in itself only a private 
 affair; it does not, as such, concern Governments, 
 and though it may produce a great effect upon them, 
 as for example the Puritan emigration to New 
 England produced no doubt a perceptible effect in 
 our civil troubles, yet this effect is only indirect. 
 
 Governments might have shut their eyes to all 
 the affairs of the New World. In that case the great 
 adventurers would perhaps have set up kingdoms for 
 themselves, and the reaction of the New World upon 
 the Old would have been confined within narrow limits. 
 The Continent of America was so roomy, so thinly 
 peopled, that the action of such adventurers, what- 
 ever it might have been, would have had no remote 
 consequences, and the Governments of Europe might 
 have looked on without anxiety. The New World 
 would then have exerted as little influence upon the 
 Old as, for example, the South American States now 
 exert upon Europe. Eevolutionary violence may 
 rage there, but it rages unheeded, and its effects 
 evaporate in the boundless toi ritory peopled by so few 
 inhabitants. 
 
 By considering thus what might have been we are
 
 120 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 brought to discern the critical point in the course 
 which was actually pursued. The New World could 
 not but exert a strong influence, but it need not have 
 exerted, directly at least, any properly political 
 influence upon the Old. It was made into a political 
 force of the most tremendous magnitude by the 
 interference of the European Governments, by their 
 assuming the control of all the States set up by their 
 subjects in it. The necessary effect of this policy 
 was to transform entirely the politics of Europe, by 
 materially altering the interest and position of five 
 great European States. I bring this fact into strong 
 relief because I think it has been too much over- 
 looked, and it is the fundamental fact upon which 
 this course of lectures is founded. In one word, 
 the New World in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries does not lie outside Europe, but exists 
 inside it as a principle of unlimited political change. 
 Instead of being an isolated region in which history 
 is not yet interested, it is a present influence of the 
 utmost importance to which the historian must be 
 continually alive — an influence which for a long time 
 rivalled the Reformation, and from the beginning of 
 the eighteenth century surpassed the Reformation, 
 in its effect upon the politics of the European States. 
 Historians of those centuries have kept in view 
 mainly two or perhaps three great movements — 
 first, the Reformation and its consequences ; secondly, 
 the constitutional movement in each country leading 
 to liberty in England and to revolution through 
 despotism in France. They have also considered the
 
 vi COMMERCE AND WAE 121 
 
 great Ascendencies which from time to time have 
 arisen in Europe, that of the House of Austria, that of 
 the House of Bourbon, and again that of Napoleon. 
 'These great movements have been, as it were, the 
 framework in which they have fitted all particular 
 incidents. The framework is insufficient and too 
 exclusively European. It furnishes no place for a 
 multitude of most important occurrences, and the 
 movement which it overlooks is perhaps greater and 
 certainly more continuous and durable than any of 
 those which it recognises. Each view of Europe 
 separately is true. Europe is a great Church and 
 Empire breaking up into distinct kingdoms and 
 national or voluntary Churches, as those say who fix 
 their eyes on the Reformation ; it is a group of 
 monarchies in which popular freedom has been 
 gradually developing itself, as the constitutional 
 lawyer says ; it is a group of states which balance 
 themselves uneasily against each other, liable there- 
 fore to be thrown off its equilibrium by the pre- 
 ponderance of one of them, as the international 
 lawyer says. But all these accounts are incomplete 
 and leave almost half the facts unexplained. We 
 must add, " It is a group of States, of which the five 
 westernmost have been acted upon by a steadfast 
 gravitation towards the New World, and have 
 dragged in their train great New World Empires." 
 
 I have already applied this observation to the 
 eighteenth century, and shown you how it explains 
 the perpetual struggles which that century witnessed 
 between England and France. These struggles, I am
 
 122 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 
 
 persuaded, are treated by historians of the Balance of 
 Power from a point of view much too exclusively 
 European. This strikes me particularly in the 
 picture they give of the career of Napoleon. They 
 see in him simply a ruler who had the ambition to 
 undertake the conquest of all Europe, and who had 
 the genius almost to succeed in this enterprise. 
 Now the main peculiarity of his career is that, though 
 he did this, he did not intend it, but something 
 different. He intended to make great conquests, 
 and he made great conquests, but the conquests he 
 made were not those he intended to make. Napoleon 
 did not care about Europe. " Cette vieille Europe 
 m'ennuie," he said frankly. His ambition was all 
 directed towards the New World. He is the Titan 
 whose dream it is to restore that Greater France 
 which had fallen in the struggles of the eighteenth 
 century, and to overthrow that Greater Britain 
 which had been established on its ruins. He makes 
 no secret of this ambition, nor does he ever renounce 
 it. His conquests in Europe are made, as it were, 
 accidentally, and he treats them always as a starting- 
 point for a new attack on England. He conquers 
 Germany, but why 1 ! Because Austria and Eussia, 
 subsidised by England, march against him while he 
 is brooding at Boulogne over the conquest of England. 
 When Germany is conquered, what is his first 
 thought? That now he has a new weapon against 
 England, since he can impose the Continental System 
 upon all Europe. Does he occupy Spain and Portu- 
 gal 1 It is because they are maritime countries with
 
 VI COMMEKCE AND WAK 123 
 
 fleets and colonies that may be used against England. 
 Lastly, when you study such an enterprise as the 
 Eussian expedition, you are forced to admit, either 
 that it had no object, or that it was directed against 
 England. But this view escapes most historians, 
 because from the outset they have underestimated 
 the magnitude of that great historical cause, the 
 attraction of the New World upon the Old. To 
 them colonies have seemed unimportant, because they 
 were distant and thinly peopled, as it were, inert, 
 almost lifeless appendages to the parent-states. And 
 true it is that the colonies received very little direct 
 attention in the headquarters of politics. In London 
 or Paris no doubt few people troubled themselves 
 with the affairs of Virginia and Louisiana ; there no 
 doubt domestic topics absorbed attention, and politics 
 seemed centred in the last parliamentary division or 
 the last court intrigue. But the eye is caught by 
 what is on the surface of things, not by what is at 
 the bottom of them; and the hidden cause which 
 made Ministers rise and fall, which convulsed Europe 
 and led it into war and revolution, was, far more 
 than might be supposed, the standing rivalry of 
 interests in the New World. 
 
 But if this is so, it ought to be applicable to the 
 seventeenth century as well as to the eighteenth. In 
 the history of the relation of the New World to the 
 Old the three centuries, the sixteenth, seventeenth, 
 and eighteenth, have each their marked character. 
 The sixteenth century may be called the Spain-and- 
 Portugal period. As yet the New World is monopo-
 
 124 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 lised by the two nations which discovered it, by the 
 country of Vasco da Gama and the adopted country 
 of Columbus, until late in- the century Spain and 
 Portugal become one State in the hands of Philip IL 
 In the seventeenth century the other three States, 
 France, Holland, and England, enter the colonial 
 field. The Dutch take the lead. In the course of 
 their war with Spain they get possession of most of 
 the Portuguese possessions, which have now become 
 Spanish, in the East Indies ; they even succeed for a 
 time in annexing Brazil. France and England soon 
 after establish their colonies in North America. 
 From this time then, or almost from this time, we 
 may expect to trace that transformation in the 
 politics of Europe, which I showed to be the necessary 
 consequence of the new position assumed by these 
 five States. During the course of this century a 
 certain change takes place in the relative colonial 
 importance of the five States. Portugal declines ; so 
 later does Holland. Spain remains in a condition of 
 immobility ; her vast possessions are not lost, but 
 additions are no longer made to them, and they 
 remain secluded, like China itself, from intercourse 
 with the rest of the world. England and France 
 have both decidedly advanced ; Colbert has placed 
 France in the first rank of commercial countries, and 
 she has explored the Mississippi. But the English 
 colonies have decidedly the advantage in population. 
 And thus it is that the eighteenth century witnesses 
 the great duel of France and England for the New 
 World.
 
 vi COMMERCE AND WAR 125 
 
 I exhibited that great duel early in this course, in 
 order to show you at once by a conspicuous instance 
 that the expansion of England has been neither a 
 tranquil process nor yet belonging purely to the most 
 recent times : that throughout the eighteenth century 
 that expansion was an active principle of disturbance, 
 a cause of wars unparalleled both in magnitude and 
 number. I could not at that stage go further, but 
 now that we have analysed the attraction of the New 
 World upon the Old in general and upon England in 
 particular, now that we have considered the nature 
 and intensity of that attraction, we are in a condition 
 to trace further back and even to its beginning the 
 expansion of England into Greater Britain. 
 
 It was in the Elizabethan age, as I showed, that 
 England first assumed its modern character, and this 
 means, as I showed at the same time, that then first 
 it began to find itself in the main current of commerce, 
 and then first to direct its energies to the sea and to 
 the New World. At this point then we mark the 
 beginning of the expansion, the first symptom of 
 the rise of Greater Britain. The great event which 
 announces to the world England's new character and 
 the new place which she is assuming in the world, is 
 the naval invasion by the Spanish Armada. Here, 
 we may say decidedly, begins the modern history of 
 England. Compare this event with anything that 
 preceded it in English history ; you will see at once 
 how new it is. And if you inquire in what precisely 
 the novelty consists, you will arrive at this answer, 
 that the event is throughout oceanic. Of course we
 
 126 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 
 
 had always been an island; of course our foreign 
 wars had always begun at least on the sea. But by 
 the sea in earlier times had always been meant the 
 strait, the channel, or at most the narrow seas. Now 
 for the first time it is different. The whole struggle 
 begins, proceeds and ends upon the sea, and it is but 
 the last act of a drama which has been played, not 
 in the English seas at all, but in the Atlantic, the 
 Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico. The invader is the 
 master of the New World, the inheritor of the 
 legacies of Columbus and Vasco da Gama ; his main 
 complaint is that his monopoly of that New World 
 has been infringed; and by whom is the invasion 
 met ? Not by the Hotspurs of medieval chivalry, nor 
 by the archers who won Cr£cy for us, but by a new 
 race of men, such as medieval England had not 
 known, by the hero - buccaneers, the Drakes and 
 Hawkinses, whose lives had been passed in tossing 
 upon that Ocean which to their fathers had been an 
 unexplored, unprofitable desert. Now for the first 
 time might it be said of England — what the popular 
 song assumes to have been always true of her — that 
 " her march is on the Ocean wave." 
 
 But there is no Greater Britain as yet ; only the 
 impulse has been felt to found one, and the path has 
 been explored, which leads to the transatlantic seats 
 where the Englishmen of Greater Britain may one 
 day live. While Drake and Hawkins have set the 
 example of the rough heroism and love of roaming 
 which might find the wa}' into the Promised Land, 
 Humphrey Gilbert and Walter Raleigh display the
 
 VI COMMERCE AND WAR 127 
 
 genius which settles, founds and colonises. In the 
 next reign Greater Britain is founded, though neither 
 Gilbert nor Raleigh are allowed to enter into it. In 
 1606 James L signs the Charter of Virginia, and in 
 1620 that of New England. And now very speedily 
 the new life with which England is animated, her 
 new objects and her new resources, are exhibited so 
 as to attract the attention of all Europe. It is in the 
 war of King and Parliament, and afterwards in the 
 Protectorate, that the new English policy is first ex- 
 hibited on a great scale. Under Cromwell England 
 appears, but prematurely and on the unsound basis 
 of imperialism, such as she definitely became under 
 William III. and continued to be throughout the 
 eighteenth century, and this is England steadily ex- 
 panding into Greater Britain. 
 
 It seems to me to be the principal characteristic 
 of this phase of England that she is at once commer- 
 cial and warlike. A commonplace is current about 
 the natural connection between commerce and peace, 
 and hence it has been inferred that the wars of 
 modern England are attributable to the influence of 
 a feudal aristocracy. Aristocracies, it is said, naturally 
 love war, being in their own origin military ; whereas 
 the trader just as naturally desires peace, that he 
 may practise his trade without interruption. A good 
 specimen of the a priori method of reasoning in 
 politics ! Why ! how came we to conquer India 1 
 Was it not a direct consequence of trading with India 1 
 And that is only the most conspicuous illustration of a 
 law which prevails throughout English history in the
 
 128 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, — the law, namely, 
 of the intimate interdependence of war and trade, so 
 that throughout that period trade leads naturally to 
 war and war fosters trade. I have pointed out 
 already that the wars of the eighteenth century were 
 incomparably greater and more burdensome than 
 those of the Middle Ages. In a less degree those of 
 the seventeenth century were also great. These are 
 precisely the centuries in which England grew more 
 and more a commercial country. England indeed 
 grew ever more warlike at that time as she grew more 
 commercial. And it is not difficult to show that a 
 cause was at work to make war and commerce increase 
 together. This cause is the old colonial system. 
 
 Commerce in itself may favour peace, but when 
 commerce is artificially shut out by a decree of 
 Government from some promising territory, then 
 commerce just as naturally favours war. We know 
 this by our own recent experience with China. The 
 New World might have favoured trade without at 
 the same time favouring war, if it had consisted of a 
 number of liberal-minded States open to intercourse 
 with foreigners, or if it had been occupied by Euro- 
 pean colonies which pursued an equally liberal 
 system. But we now know what the old colonial 
 system was. We know that it carved out the New 
 World into territories, which were regarded as estates, 
 to be enjoyed in each case by the colonising nation. 
 The hope of obtaining such splendid estates and 
 enjoying the profits that were reaped from them, con- 
 stituted the greatest stimulus to commerce that had
 
 VI COMMERCE AND WAR 129 
 
 ever been known, and it was a stimulus which acted 
 without intermission for centuries. This vast historic 
 cause had gradually the effect of bringing to an end 
 the old medieval structure of society and introducing 
 the industrial ages. But inseparable from the com- 
 mercial stimulus was the stimulus of international 
 rivalry. The object of each nation was now to 
 increase its trade, not by waiting upon the wants of 
 mankind, but by a wholly different method, namely 
 by getting exclusive possession of some rich tract in 
 the New World. Now whatever may be the natural 
 opposition between the spirit of trade and the spirit 
 of war, trade pursued in this method is almost 
 identical with war, and can hardly fail to lead to war. 
 What is conquest but appropriation of territory? 
 Now appropriation of territory under the old colonial 
 system became the first national object. The five 
 nations of the West were launched into an eager com- 
 petition for territory — that is, they were put into a 
 relation to each other in which the pursuit of wealth 
 naturally led to quarrels, a relation in which, as I 
 said, commerce and war were inseparably entangled 
 together, so that commerce led to war and war 
 fostered commerce. The character of the new period 
 which was thus opened showed itself very early. 
 Consider the nature of that long desultory war of 
 England with Spain, of which the expedition of the 
 Armada was the most striking incident. I have said 
 that the English sea-captains were very like buc- 
 caneers, and indeed to England the war is throughout 
 an industry, a way to wealth, the most thriving 
 
 K
 
 130 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 business, the most profitable investment, of the time. 
 That Spanish war is in fact the infancy of English 
 foreign trade. The first generation of Englishmen 
 that invested capital, put it into that war. As now 
 we put our money into railways or what not 1 ! so 
 then the keen man of business took shares in the 
 new ship which John Oxenham or Francis Drake was 
 fitting out at Plymouth, and which was intended to 
 lie in wait for the treasure galleons, or make raids 
 upon the Spanish towns in the Gulf of Mexico. And 
 yet the two countries were formally not even at war 
 with each other. It was thus that the system of 
 monopoly in the New World made trade and war 
 indistinguishable from each other. The prosperity 
 of Holland was the next and a still more startling 
 illustration of the same law. What more ruinous, 
 you say, than a long war, especially to a small state 1 
 And yet Holland made her fortune in the world by 
 a war of some eighty years with Spain. How was 
 this 1 It was because war threw open to her attack 
 the whole boundless possessions of her antagonist in 
 the New World, which would have been closed to her 
 in peace. By conquest she made for herself an 
 Empire, and this Empire made her rich. 
 
 These are the new views which begin to determine 
 English policy under the Protectorate. From the 
 point from which we here regard English history, the 
 great occurrence of the seventeenth century before 
 1688 is not the Civil War or the execution of the 
 King, but the intervention of Cromwell in the Euro- 
 pean war. This act may almost be regarded as the
 
 vi COMMERCE AND WAR 131 
 
 foundation of the English World-Empire. It was of so 
 much immediate importance that it may be said to 
 have decided the fall of the Spanish Power. Spain, 
 which less than a century before had overshadowed 
 the world, is found soon after lying a helpless prey 
 to the ambition of Louis XIV. Perhaps the turning- 
 point is marked by the Revolution of Portugal, 
 which took place in 1640. Then began the fall of 
 Spain. But for twenty years from that time she 
 struggled with her destiny, and the internal troubles 
 of her rival France caused a reaction in her favour. 
 At this crisis then the interference of Cromwell was 
 decisive. Spain fell never to rise again, and no 
 measure taken by England had for centuries been so 
 momentous. 
 
 But it marks the rise as well as the fall of a World- 
 Power. England by this time has learned to profit 
 by the example of Holland, and follows her in the 
 path of commercial empire. The first Stuarts, though 
 it was in their time that our first colonies were 
 founded, show, I think, no signs of having entered 
 into the new ideas. They abandon the Elizabethan 
 system, and set their faces towards the Old World 
 rather than the New. But this reaction comes to an 
 end with the accession to power of the party of the 
 Commonwealth. A policy now begins which is not, 
 to be sure, very scrupulous, but is able, resolute, and 
 successful. 
 
 It is oceanic and looks westward, like the policy 
 of the later years of Elizabeth. Here for the first 
 time the New World reacts upon the Old by actual
 
 132 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 personal influence. Dr. Palfrey has traced in a very 
 interesting manner what I may call the New England 
 element in our Parliamentary party. New England 
 was itself the child of Puritanism, and of Puritanism 
 in that second form of Independency to which Crom- 
 well himself adhered. Accordingly it took a very 
 direct part in the English Revolution. Several pro- 
 minent English politicians of that time may be 
 mentioned who had themselves lived in Massa- 
 chusetts, e.g. Sir Henry Vane, George Downing, and 
 Hugh Peters, Cromwell's chaplain. Now too the 
 great English navy, so famous since, begins to rule 
 the seas under the command of Robert Blake. The 
 navy is now and henceforth the great instrument of 
 England's power. The army — though it is more highly 
 organised than ever before, and has in fact usurped 
 the government of the country and placed its leader 
 on the throne, — this army falls with a great catas- 
 trophe and is devoted to public execration, but the 
 navy from this time forward is the nation's favourite. 
 Henceforward it is a maxim that England is not a 
 military state, that she ought to have either no army 
 or the smallest army possible, but that her navy 
 ought to be the strongest in the world. 
 
 From our point of view the colonial policy of 
 Cromwell does not attract us by any marked super- 
 iority either in morality or success to that of the 
 Restoration, but rather as the model which Charles 
 II. imitates. Moral rectitude is hardly a character- 
 istic of it, and if it is religious, this perhaps would 
 have appeared, had the Protectorate lasted longer, tc
 
 VI COMMERCE AND WAR 133 
 
 have been its most dangerous feature. Nothing is 
 more dangerous than Imperialism marching with an 
 idea on its banner, and Protestantism was to our 
 Emperor Oliver what the ideas of the Eevolution 
 were to Napoleon and his nephew. The success too 
 of this policy is of the same Napoleonic type. Eng- 
 land had become for the moment a military State, 
 and necessarily assumed a far grander position in the 
 world than she could support when she disbanded 
 her army and became constitutional again. The 
 Protectorate was fortunate in coming to an end 
 before its true character was understood. By the 
 law of its nature it was drawn towards war. It is 
 an illusion to suppose that the Puritanism of the 
 Protector or of his party was analogous to modern 
 Liberalism, and therefore inspired a repugnance to 
 war. Eead Marvell's panegyric on him. The virtu- 
 ous poet predicts that Oliver will be ere long "a 
 Caesar to Gaul and a Hannibal to Italy." Does the 
 prospect shock him 1 Not at all ; lest his hero should 
 falter in the course, he exhorts him to "march inde- 
 fatigably on," and bids him remember that " the same 
 acts that did gain a power must it maintain." Nor 
 when we examine the Protector's foreign policy do 
 we find him unmindful of this principle. He seems 
 to look forward to a religious war, in which England 
 will play the same part in Europe that he himself 
 with his Ironsides has played in England. Some of 
 his modern admirers have perceived this. " In truth," 
 writes Macaulay, " there was nothing which Cromwell 
 had, for his own sake and that of his family, so much
 
 134 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 reason to desire as a general religious war in Europe. 
 . . . UnJiajppily far him he had no opportunity of dis- 
 playing his admirable military talents except against 
 the inhabitants of the British isles." We may well, 
 I think, shudder at the thought of the danger which 
 was removed by the fall of the Protectorate. 
 
 On the side of the Continent this imperialist policy 
 was developed but imperfectly, but on the side of the 
 New World, where it was borne upon the tide of the 
 time, it went further and had more lasting conse- 
 quences. Here indeed Cromwell's policy is only that 
 of the Long Parliament before him and of Charles II. 
 after him. It has indeed a peculiarly absolute and 
 unscrupulous tinge. Of his own pure will, without 
 consulting directly or indirectly the people, and in 
 spite of opposition in his Council, he plunges the 
 country into a war with Spain. This war is com- 
 menced after the manner of the old Elizabethan 
 sea-rovers by a sudden descent without previous 
 quarrel or declaration of war upon St. Domingo. I 
 remember hearing a predecessor of my own, Sir J. 
 Stephen, say in this place that, if any of his hearers 
 had a taste for iconoclasm, he could recommend him 
 to employ it upon the buccaneering Cromwell. Per- 
 haps this may seem too severe, when we remember 
 the lawlessness of all maritime war at that time. 
 What I wish you to remark is the continuity that 
 holds together this Cromwellian policy with the 
 Elizabethan, and equally with the policy which 
 the nation pursued in the eighteenth century, when 
 in 1739 it went to war again to break the Spanish
 
 VI COMMERCE AND WAR 135 
 
 monopoly. In all these cases alike you see the close 
 connection which the old colonial system established 
 between war and trade. 
 
 But the great characteristic of this Commonwealth 
 period, indeed of the whole middle part of the seven- 
 teenth century, is not war with Spain, but war with 
 Holland. If Cromwell's breach with Spain shows 
 most strikingly by its violent suddenness the spirit 
 of the new commercial policy, yet it is capable of 
 being misinterpreted. For Spain was the great 
 Catholic Power, and therefore it might be imagined 
 that our war with her was caused by the other great 
 historic cause which then acted, by the Reformation, 
 and not by the New World. But what of our war 
 with Holland 1 ? Had the Reformation been the 
 dominating cause in the seventeenth century, we 
 should have seen England and Holland in permanent 
 brotherly alliance. It is the great proof that this 
 cause is fast giving way to the other, viz. the great 
 trade-rivalry produced by the New World, that all 
 through the middle of the seventeenth century 
 England and Holland wage great naval wars of a 
 character such as had never been seen before. These 
 wars are seldom sufficiently considered as a whole, 
 and therefore are explained by causes which in fact 
 were only secondary. This is especially the case 
 with the war of 1672, for which Charles II. and the 
 Cabal are responsible. It is cited as a proof of the 
 reckless immorality of that Government, that it 
 combined with the Catholic Government of Louis 
 XIV. to strike a deadly blow at the brother Pro-
 
 136 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT, 
 
 testant Power, and that it did so for a dynastic 
 interest, for the purpose of overthrowing the oli- 
 garchic or Louvestein faction and raising to power 
 Charles II.'s nephew, the young Prince of Orange. 
 And no doubt Charles II. had this object. Never- 
 theless there was nothing new at that time either in 
 war with Holland or alliance with France. Instead 
 of suddenly reversing the foreign policy of the 
 country, Charles here followed precedents set by 
 the Commonwealth and by Cromwell, for the former 
 had waged fierce war with Holland, and the latter 
 had entered into alliance with France. Accordingly 
 the Government was supported by some of those 
 who inherited the tradition of the Commonwealth. 
 Anthony Ashley Cooper, a man of Cromwellian ideas, 
 supported it by quoting the old words Delenda est 
 Carthago. In other words : " Holland is our great 
 rival in trade, on the Ocean and in the New World. 
 Let us destroy her, though she be a Protestant Power ; 
 let us destroy her with the help of a Catholic Power." 
 These were the maxims of the Commonwealth and of 
 the Protector, because, Puritans though they were, 
 and though they had risen up against Popery, they 
 understood that in their age the struggle of the 
 Churches was falling into the background, and that 
 the rivalry of the maritime Powers for trade and 
 empire in the New World was taking its place as the 
 question of the day. 
 
 And thus we are able to fill up the large outline 
 of the history of Greater Britain. We saw in the 
 Elizabethan war with Spain the movement, the
 
 VI COMMERCE AND WAR 137 
 
 fermentation out of which it sprang. Under the 
 first two Stuarts we see it actually come into exist- 
 ence by the settlement of Virginia, New England 
 and Maryland. At a later time, in the eighteenth 
 century, it is seen to engage, now more mature, in a 
 long duel with Greater France. What occupies the 
 interval 1 This is the foundation of the English 
 navy and the great duel with Holland. It covers 
 the middle of the seventeenth century, it embraces our 
 first great naval wars, and the following acquisitions : 
 — Jamaica conquered under Cromwell from Spain, 
 Bombay received by Charles II. from Portugal, New 
 York acquired also by Charles II. from Holland. 
 
 This great struggle with Holland is followed by a 
 period of close alliance with Holland, represented in 
 the career of William of Orange. From our point 
 of view this appears as a temporary revival of the 
 Reformation-contest. By the Revocation of the Edict 
 of Nantes the world is thrown back into the religious 
 wars of the sixteenth century. The New World 
 passes for a time into the background ; once more 
 the question is of Catholicism or religious freedom. 
 Once more therefore the two Protestant Powers 
 stand shoulder to shoulder against France. William 
 rules both countries and the trade-rivalry is adjourned 
 for a time.
 
 LECTUKE VII 
 
 PHASES OF EXPANSION 
 
 The object I professed to set before myself in these 
 lectures was to present English history to you in 
 such a light that the interest of it instead of gradually 
 diminishing should go on increasing to the close. 
 You will perceive by this time in what way I hope 
 to do this. It is impossible that the history of any 
 State can be interesting, unless it exhibits some sort 
 of development. Political life that is uniform has 
 no history, however prosperous it may be. Now it 
 appears to me that English historians fail in the 
 later periods of England, because they have traced 
 one great development to its completion, and do not 
 perceive that, if they would advance further, they 
 must look out for some other development. More 
 or less consciously, they have always before their 
 minds the idea of constitutional liberty. This idea 
 suffices until they reach the Involution of 1688, 
 perhaps even until they reach the accession of the
 
 LECT. vil PHASES OF EXPANSION 139 
 
 House of Brunswick. But after this it fails them. 
 Not that development ceases in the English Con- 
 stitution at that point, nor even that to the political 
 student it hecomes less interesting. But it begins to 
 be gradual and quiet ; the tension is relaxed ; dram- 
 atic incident henceforth must be looked for elsewhere. 
 Our historians are not sufficiently alive to this. It 
 may be true that George Ill's use of royal influence 
 attained in an insidious way objects similar to those 
 which the Stuarts tried to reach by prerogative or 
 by military force. But when Wilkes and Home 
 Tooke, Chatham and Fox are brought forward to 
 play the parts of Prynne and Milton, Pym and 
 Shaftesbury, the interest of the reader grows languid. 
 He seems to have before him the feeble second part 
 of some striking story. Those parliamentary strug- 
 gles which in the seventeenth century were so intense, 
 seem, when repeated in the eighteenth, to have 
 something conventional about them. 
 
 The mistake, according to me, lies in selecting 
 these struggles to fill the foreground of the scene. 
 It is a misrepresentation to describe England in 
 George Ill's reign as mainly occupied in resisting 
 the encroachments of a somewhat narrow-minded 
 king. We exaggerate the importance of these petty 
 struggles. England was then engaged in other and 
 vaster enterprises. She was not wholly occupied in 
 doing over again what she had done before ; she was 
 also doing new and great things. And these new 
 things had vast consequences, which have changed 
 and are at this day changing the face of the world.
 
 140 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND « lkct. 
 
 It is the historian's business then to open a new 
 scene, and to bring into the foreground new actors. 
 
 I have now brought out in strong relief this new 
 development in English history. I have shown that 
 in the same seventeenth century, when England at 
 home was victoriously reconciling her old Teutonic 
 liberties to modern political conditions, and finding a 
 place in England for the professional soldier and for 
 the religious dissenter, she was also at work abroad. 
 She, along with the other four western States of 
 Europe, was founding an empire in the New World. 
 I have shown also that, though she began this work 
 later than some other States, and did not for a long 
 time make strikingly rapid progress in it, yet in the 
 end she left all her rivals behind, so that she alone 
 now remains in possession of a great New World 
 empire. Now it was in the eighteenth century, just 
 when the struggle for liberty was over, that she 
 began thus to take the lead in the New World, and 
 it is now, in the nineteenth century, that she finds 
 herself called upon to consider what new shape she 
 shall give to the Empire she possesses. It plainly 
 follows that here is the new development we are in 
 search of — the development which ought to make 
 the principal study of historians from the time when 
 they find constitutional liberty a completed develop- 
 ment, and therefore an exhausted topic. For here is 
 a development which ever since the seventeenth 
 century has been steadily growing in magnitude; 
 here is a development which binds together the 
 future with the past.
 
 VII 
 
 PHASES OF EXPANSION HI 
 
 If then we give it the principal place, we escape 
 the perplexity into which most historians fall, who 
 strangely find the history grow less and less interest- 
 ing as England grows greater and greater. But at 
 the same time we shall find much rearrangement 
 necessary. For we shall have adopted a new 
 standard of importance for events, and a new 
 principle of grouping. Colonial affairs and Indian 
 affairs are usually pushed a little on one side hy 
 historians. They are relegated to supplementary 
 chapters. It spems to be assumed that affairs which 
 are remote from England cannot deserve a leading 
 place in a history of England, as if the England of 
 which histories are written were the island so-called, 
 and not the political union named after the island, 
 which is quite capable of expanding so as to cover 
 half the globe. To us England will be wherever 
 English people are found, and we shall look for its 
 history in whatever places witness the occurrences 
 most important to Englishmen. And therefore, as 
 in the periods when the liberties of England were in 
 danger we seek it principally at Westminster in the 
 Parliamentary debates, so in these periods, of which 
 the characteristic is that England is expanding into 
 Greater Britain, English history will be wherever 
 this expansion is taking place, even when the scene 
 is as remote as Canada or as India. We shall avoid 
 the error commonly committed in these later periods 
 of confounding the history of England with the 
 history of Parliament. The rearrangement which 
 such a change will involve may affect especially the
 
 142 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 nineteenth and eighteenth centuries. But in the 
 seventeenth century also, though wo may not wish to 
 displace the accepted arrangement, which has refer- 
 ence to the struggle for liberty with the Stuart 
 Kings, yet we must keep in our minds at the same 
 time another arrangement, founded on the principle of 
 marking the stages in the advance of Greater Britain. 
 The accepted arrangement is according to reigns 
 and dynasties, and in each reign it ranks as the 
 principal occurrences the dealings of the sovereign 
 with Parliament. On this system the leading 
 demarcations are the accession of the House of 
 Brunswick, and beyond that the accession of the 
 House of Stuart, and in the middle the Great 
 Interregnum and the Revolution of 1688. We make 
 far too much of these demarcations even when they 
 are unobjectionable. We imagine a much greater 
 difference than really existed between the age of 
 George I. and that of Queen Anne, between that of 
 William III. and that of Charles II., between the 
 Restoration and the Commonwealth, between the age 
 of James I. and the Elizabethan age. The Revolu- 
 tion was not nearly so revolutionary, nor the Re- 
 storation so reactionary, as is commonly supposed. 
 But if once we begin to think of England as a living 
 organism, which in the Elizabethan age began a 
 process of expansion, never intermitted since, into 
 Greater Britain, we shall find these divisions alto- 
 gether useless, and shall feel the want of a completely 
 new set of divisions to mark the successive stages of 
 the expansion.
 
 vii PHASES OF EXPANSION 143 
 
 I have already pointed out some of the principal 
 of these divisions. But it will be well to present a 
 connected view of English history as it appears when 
 arranged on this principle. 
 
 The history of the expansion of England must neces- 
 sarily begin with the two ever-memorable voyages of 
 Columbus and Vasco da Gama in the reign of Henry 
 VII. From that moment the position of England 
 among countries was entirely changed, though almost 
 a century elapsed before the change became visible to 
 all the world. In our rearrangement this tract of 
 time forms one period, the characteristic of which is 
 that England is gradually finding out her vocation to 
 the sea. We pass by the domestic disturbances, 
 political, religious and social, of that crowded age. 
 We see nothing of the Reformation and its conse- 
 quences. What we see is simply that England is 
 slowly and gradually taking courage to claim her 
 share with the Spanish and Portuguese in the new 
 world that has been thrown open. There are a few 
 voyages to Newfoundland and Labrador, then there 
 is a series of bold adventures, which, however, proved 
 not to have been happily planned. Our explorers, 
 naturally but unfortunately, turned their attention 
 to the Polar regions, and so discovered nothing but 
 frozen Oceans, while their rivals were making a 
 triumphal progress " on from island unto island at the 
 gateways of the day." Next comes the series of 
 buccaneering raids upon tho Spanish settlements, in 
 the course of which the English earned at least a 
 character for seamanship and audacity.
 
 144 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 The Spanish Armada marks the moment when 
 this period of preparation or apprenticeship closes. 
 The internal modification in the nation is now com- 
 plete. It has turned itself round, and looks now no 
 longer towards the Continent but towards the Ocean 
 and the New World. It has become both maritime 
 and industrial. 
 
 On the other system of arrangement the accession 
 of the House of Stuart is thought to mark a decline. 
 The Tudor sovereignty, popular and exercised with 
 resolution and insight, makes way for a monarchy of 
 divine right, pedantic and unintelligent. Nevertheless 
 in our view there is no decline ; there is continuous 
 development. The personal unlikeness of James and 
 Charles to Elizabeth is a matter of indifference. The 
 foundation of Greater Britain now takes place. John 
 Smith, the Pilgrim Fathers, and Calvert establish the 
 colonies of Virginia, New England, and Maryland, of 
 which the last marks its date by its name, taken from 
 Queen Henrietta Maria. 
 
 Greater -Britain henceforth exists, for henceforth 
 Englishmen are living on both sides of the Atlantic 
 Ocean. It received at once a peculiar stamp from 
 the circumstances of the time. Greater Spain had 
 been an artificial fabric, to which much thought and 
 skilful contrivance had been applied by the Home 
 Government. Authority, both civil and ecclesiastical, 
 was more rigorous there than at home. This was 
 because the Spanish settlements, as producing a 
 steady revenue, were all-important to the mother- 
 country. The English settlements, not being thus
 
 vii PHASES OF EXPANSION 145 
 
 important, were neglected. This neglect had a 
 momentous result owing to the discord just then 
 springing up in England. Colonies, if not sources of 
 wealth, might at least be useful as places of refuge 
 for unauthorised opinions. Half a century before the 
 voyage of the Mayflower Coligny x had given this 
 turn to colonisation. He had conceived that idea of 
 toleration along with local separation of rival religions, 
 which was afterwards realised within France itself by 
 the Edict of Nantes. How different, be it said in 
 passing, would the world now be, if a Huguenot 
 France had sprung up beyond the Atlantic ! The 
 idea of Coligny was now realised by England. 2 As 
 her settlements were made at a critical moment of 
 dissension, an impulse to emigration was supplied 
 which would not otherwise have existed, but at the 
 same time there was introduced a subtle principle 
 of opposition between the New World and the Old. 
 The emigrants departed with a secret determination, 
 which was to bear fruit later, not of carrying England 
 with them, but of creating something which should 
 not be England. 
 
 The second phase of Greater Britain was brought 
 on by the military revolution of 1648. After the 
 triumph of the Commonwealth at home, it had to 
 
 1 See an excellent account of his schemes in Mr. Besant's 
 Coligny. 
 
 2 In the charter of Rhode Island, 1663, it is expressed distinctly. 
 Religious liberty is granted " for that the same by reason of the 
 remote distances of those places will, as We hope, be no breach of 
 the unity and uniformity established in this nation." Charles II. 
 in his religious policy seems always to keep his maternal grand' 
 father in view. 
 
 U
 
 146 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 wage a new war with royalisni by sea. From our 
 point of view this second contest is more important 
 than the first ; for the army created by Cromwell 
 was destined soon to dissolve again, but the maritime 
 power organised by Vane and wielded by Blake is the 
 English navy of all later time. Our maritime ascend- 
 ency has its beginning here. " At this moment," 
 says Ranke, " England awoke more clearly than ever 
 before to a consciousness of the advantage of her 
 geographical position, of the fact that a maritime 
 vocation was that to which she was called by nature 
 herself." Cromwell's attack upon the Spanish Empire 
 and seizure of Jamaica, the most high-handed measure 
 recorded in the modern history of England, is the 
 natural effect of this new consciousness awakening at a 
 moment when England found herself a military State. 
 The next phase is the duel with Holland. This 
 belongs most peculiarly to the first half of the reign 
 of Charles II., when it fills the foreground of the 
 historic stage ; but it had begun long before at the 
 massacre of Amboyna in 1623, and had grown in 
 prominence under the Commonwealth. It may be 
 said to end in the year 1674, when Charles II. with- 
 drew from the attack on Holland, which he had made 
 in combination with Louis XIV. That was a great 
 moment of glory for Holland, when in such extreme 
 danger she found a new champion in the family which 
 had saved her before, when a new Stadtholder, a 
 second William the Silent, stood in the breach to 
 withstand the new invasion. Nevertheless it was 
 the beginning of the decline of Holland. For in this
 
 vii PHASES OF EXPANSION 147 
 
 second great struggle of the Dutch Kepublic, though 
 she showed the old heroism, she could not have 
 all the old good fortune. She could not again 
 positively prosper and grow rich by means of war, 
 as she had done before. This time she was at 
 war not with Spain, the possessor of infinite colonies, 
 which she could plunder at leisure, but only with 
 France ; her fleet did not now sweep the seas un- 
 opposed, but was confronted with the powerful navy 
 of England ; and the very source of her wealth, her 
 mercantile marine, was struck at by the English 
 Navigation Act. Accordingly, though she saved her- 
 self, and afterwards had another age of great deeds, 
 the decay of Holland begins now to set in ; it becomes 
 visible to all the world at the death of her great 
 Stadtholder, the last of the old line, our William III. 
 England, richer by nature, and not tried by invasion, 
 begins now to draw ahead, and the OaKaacroKpaTia 
 of Holland terminates. 
 
 The reign of Charles II. stands out in the history 
 of Greater Britain as a period of remarkable progress. 1 
 It was then especially that the American Colonies 
 took the character which they had when they 
 attracted so much attention in the next century, of 
 an uninterrupted series of settlements extending 
 from South to North along the Atlantic coast. For 
 it was in this reign that the Carolinas and Pennsyl- 
 vania were founded and that the Dutch were expelled 
 
 1 " The spirit of enterprise," writes Mr. Saintsbury, "and the 
 desire for colonisation appear to have been almost as stiong at that 
 period as in the days of Elizabeth ami Jai
 
 148 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect 
 
 from New York and Delaware. Considered as a 
 whole and judged by the standard of the time, this 
 American settlement begins now to be most imposing. 
 Its distinction is that it has a population which is at 
 once large and almost purely European. Through- 
 out the Spanish settlements the Europeans Avere 
 blended and lost in an ocean of Indian and half-Indian 
 population. The Dutch colonies naturally wanted 
 population, because the Dutch mother- country was 
 so small ; they were generally little more than 
 commercial stations. The French colonies, which 
 now begin to attract attention, were also weak in 
 this respect. Already in the dawn of French colonial 
 greatness might be perceived a deficiency in genuine 
 colonising power, and perhaps also that slowness of 
 multiplication which has characterised the French 
 since. The row of English colonies on the Atlantic 
 was perhaps already the most solid achievement in 
 the way of colonisation that any European state 
 could boast, though it would seem insignificant 
 enough if judged by a modern standard. The whole 
 population at the end of Charles II. 's reign was about 
 two hundred thousand, but it was a population 
 which doubled itself every quarter of a century. 
 
 What now is the next phase of Greater Britain ? 
 It enters now, in conjunction with Holland, upon a 
 period of resistance to the aggressions of Greater 
 France created by Colbert. From our point of view 
 the administration of Colbert means the deliberate 
 entrance of France into the competition of the 
 Western States for the New World. France had
 
 vii PHASES OF EXPANSION 149 
 
 not been much, if at all, behind England in her early 
 explorations. Jacques Cartier had made himself a 
 name earlier than Frobisher and Drake ; Coligny had 
 had schemes of colonisation earlier than Raleigh. 
 Acadie and Canada were settled and the town of 
 Quebec founded under the guidance of Samuel 
 Champlain about the time of the voyage of the 
 Mayflower. But, as usual, her European entangle- 
 ments checked the progress of France in the New 
 World. The Thirty Years' War had given her an 
 opportunity of laying the foundation of a European 
 Ascendency. All through the middle of that century 
 she was engaged in almost uninterrupted European 
 war. Of the great Spanish estate which is in liquid- 
 ation she leaves the colonial part to Holland and 
 England, because she naturally covets for herself 
 that which lies close to her frontier, the Burgundian 
 part. In the days of Cromwell therefore she has 
 fallen somewhat behind in the colonial race. Mazarin 
 seems to have little comprehension of the oceanic 
 policy of the age. But as soon as he is gone, and 
 the war is over, and a tranquil period has set in, 
 Colbert rises to guide her into this new path. He 
 appropriates all the great commercial inventions of 
 the Dutch Republic, particularly the Chartered Com- 
 pany. He labours, and for a time with success, to 
 give to France, the State pre-eminently of feudalism, 
 aristocracy and chivalry, an industrial and modern 
 character, such as the attraction of the New World 
 was impressing upon the maritime states. He figures 
 in Adam Smith as the representative statesman of
 
 150 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect 
 
 * 
 
 the mercantile system, and indeed, as the minister of 
 Louis XIV., he seemed to embody that perversion of 
 the commercial spirit which filled Europe with war, 
 so that, as Adam Smith himself says, "commerce, 
 which ought naturally to be, among nations as among 
 individuals, a bond of union and friendship, has 
 become the most fertile source of discord and 
 animosity." 
 
 We have remarked that the seventeenth century 
 is controlled by two great forces, of which one, the 
 Reformation, is decreasing, while the other, which is 
 the attraction of the New World, increases, and that 
 the student must continually beware of attributing 
 to one of these forces results produced by the other. 
 Thus under Cromwell, as under Elizabeth before him, 
 the commercial influence works disguised under the 
 religious. When now, later in the century, the duel 
 between the two Sea -Powers is succeeded by their 
 alliance against France, we have once more to unravel 
 the same tangle of causation. This alliance endured 
 through two great wars and through two English 
 reigns, and it seems, when we trace the growth of it 
 from 1674 to the Revolution of 1688, to be an alliance 
 of the two Protestant Powers against a new Catholic 
 aggression. For in those years there set in one of 
 the strangest and most disastrous reactions that 
 history has to record. The Revocation of the Edict 
 of Nantes revived the politics of the sixteenth 
 century. Coinciding nearly in time with the acces- 
 sion of the Catholic James II. in England, it created 
 a world-wide religious panic. History seemed to be
 
 vii PHASES OF EXPANSION 151 
 
 rolled back just a century, the age of the League, 
 of Philip II. and William the Silent, seemed to have 
 returned, at a time when it was thought that the 
 balance of the Confessions had been established 
 firmly thirty years before in the Treaty of Westphalia, 
 and when the age had during those thirty years been 
 drifting in the other direction of colonial expansion. 
 The ideas of Colbert seem suddenly to be forgotten, 
 the wealth he has amassed is wasted, the navy he 
 has founded is exposed to destruction at La Hogue. 
 It is against this Catholic Revival that England and 
 Holland first form their alliance. 
 
 But it was only for a moment, and less really 
 than apparently, that the New World was thus 
 pushed into the background. If we trace history 
 upward instead of downward, if we look from the 
 Treaty of Utrecht back upon the alliance of the Sea 
 Powers which triumphed there, we see an alliance of 
 quite a different kind. There has been no breach of 
 continuity; Marlborough has the same position as 
 William, and the alliance is still directed against the 
 same Louis XIV. But the religious warmth has 
 faded out of the war, which now betrays by the 
 settlement made at Utrecht its intensely commercial 
 character. That war ha,s such a splendour in our 
 annals, and the title we give it, " War of the Spanish 
 Succession," has such a monarchical ring, that we 
 think it a good sample of the fantastic, barbaric, 
 wasteful wars of the olden time. It is of this war 
 that " little Peterkin " desires to know " what good 
 came of it at last." In reality it is the most business-
 
 152 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 like of all our wars, and it was waged in the interest 
 of English and Dutch merchants whose trade and 
 livelihood were at stake. All those colonial questions, 
 which had been setting Europe at discord ever since 
 the New World was laid open, were brought to a 
 head at once by the prospect of a union between 
 France and the Spanish Empire, for such a union 
 would close almost the whole New World to the 
 English and Dutch, and throw it open to the 
 countrymen of Colbert, who were at that moment 
 exploring and settling the Mississippi. Behind all 
 the courtly foppery of the Grand Siecle commercial 
 considerations now rule the world as they had never 
 ruled it before, and as they continued to rule it 
 through much of the prosaic century that was then 
 opening. 
 
 In the midst of this war a memorable event befell, 
 which belongs to this development in the fullest 
 sense, the legislative union of England and Scotland. 
 Read the history of it in Burton ; you will see that 
 it marks the beginning of modern Scottish history, 
 just as the Armada that of modern English history. 
 It is the entrance of Scotland into the competition 
 for the New World. No nation has since, in propor- 
 tion to its numbers, reaped so much profit from the 
 New World as the Scotch, but before the Union 
 they had no position there. They were excluded 
 from the English trade, and the poverty of the 
 country did not allow them successfully to compete 
 with the other nations on their own account. In 
 William Ill's reign they made a great national
 
 vii PHASES OF EXPANSION 153 
 
 effort on the plan then usual. They tried to appro- 
 priate to themselves a territory in the New World. 
 They set up the Darien Company, which was to 
 carve a piece for the benefit of Scotland out of the 
 huge territory claimed by Spain as its own. This 
 enterprise failed, and it was out of the excitement 
 and disappointment caused by the failure that the 
 negotiations arose which ended in the Union. England 
 gained by the Union security in time of war against 
 a domestic foe ; Scotland gained admission into the 
 New "World. 
 
 In the history of the expansion of England one 
 of the greatest epochs is marked by the Treaty of 
 Utrecht. In our survey this date stands out almost 
 as prominently as the date of the Spanish Armada, 
 for it marks the beginning of England's supremacy 
 At the time of the Armada we saw England enter- 
 ing the race for the first time ; at Utrecht England 
 wins the race. Then she had the audacity to defy 
 a power far greater than her own, and her success 
 brought her forward and gave her a place among 
 great states. She had advanced steadily since, but in 
 the first half of the seventeenth century Holland had 
 attracted more attention and admiration, and in the 
 second half France. From about 1660 to 1700 
 France had been the first state in the world beyond 
 all dispute. But the Treaty of Utrecht left England 
 the first state in the world, and she continued for 
 some years to be first without a rival. Her reputa- 
 tion in other countries, the respect felt for her claims 
 in literature, philosophy, scholarship and science, date
 
 154 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 from this period. If ever, it was after this time that 
 she held the same kind of intellectual primacy which 
 France had held before. Much of this splendour was 
 transient, but England has remained ever since that 
 date on a higher level than ever before. It has been 
 universally allowed ever since that no state is more 
 powerful than England. But especially it has been 
 admitted that in wealth and commerce and in maritime 
 power, no state is equal to her. This was partly 
 because her rivals had fallen off in power, partly 
 because she herself had advanced. 
 
 The decline of Holland had by this time become 
 perceptible. So long as William lived, she enjoyed 
 the benefit of his renown. But in Marlborough's 
 time, and from that time forward, languor and the 
 desire of repose grow upon her. Her powers have 
 been overstrained in war with France and in competi- 
 tion with England. Never again does she display her 
 old energy. Thus the old rival has fallen behind. 
 The new rival, France, is for the moment over- 
 whelmed by the disasters of the war, and she, whose 
 affairs thirty years before had been set in order by 
 the greatest financier of the age, is now burdened 
 with a bankruptcy she will carry with her to the 
 Revolution. Her bold snatch at the trade of the 
 New World has not succeeded. She has in a sense 
 won Spain, but not that which made Spain valuable, 
 viz. a share in the American monopoly. Some part 
 of the loss was indeed soon to be repaired. France 
 was soon to show much colonial enterprise and 
 intelligence. Dupleix in India, La Galissoniere in
 
 vii PHASES OF EXPANSION 155 
 
 Canada, the Bailli Suffren on the sea, were to carry 
 the name of France high in the New World and 
 maintain for a long time an equal competition with 
 England. But at the moment of the Peace of 
 Utrecht so much could hardly have been foreseen. 
 Fresh from her victories, England seemed at that 
 moment even greater than she was. 
 
 The positive gains of England were Acadie, or 
 Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland (surrendered by 
 France) and the Asiento Compact granted by Spain. 
 In other words, the first step was taken towards the 
 destruction of Greater France by depriving her of 
 one of her three settlements, Acadie, Canada, and 
 Louisiana, in North America. And the first great 
 breach was made in that intolerable Spanish mono- 
 poly, which then closed the greater part of Central 
 and Southern America to the trade of the world. 
 England was allowed to furnish Spanish America 
 with slaves, and along with slaves sho soon managed 
 to smuggle in other commodities. 
 
 I must pause here for a moment to make a general 
 observation. You will remark that in this survey of 
 the growth of Greater Britain I do not make the 
 smallest attempt, either to glorify the conquests 
 made, or to justify the means adopted by our 
 countrymen, any more than, when I point out that 
 England outstripped her four rivals in the competi- 
 tion, I have the smallest thought of claiming for 
 England any superior virtue or valour. I have not 
 called upon you to admire or approve Drake or 
 Hawkins, or the Commonwealth or Cromwell, or the
 
 156 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 Government of Charles II. Indeed it is not easy to 
 approve the conduct of those who built up Greater 
 Britain, though there is plenty to admire in their 
 achievements, and much less certainly to blame or to 
 shudder at than in the deeds of the Spanish adven- 
 turers. But I am not writing the biography of these 
 men ; it is not as a biographer nor as a poet nor as 
 a moralist that I deal with their actions. I am con- 
 cerned always with a single problem only, that of 
 causation. My question always is, How came this 
 enterprise to be undertaken, how came it to succeed 1 
 I ask it not in order that we may imitate the actions 
 we read of, but in order that we may discover the 
 laws by which states rise, expand and prosper or fall 
 in this world. In this instance I have also the 
 further object, viz. to throw light on the question 
 whether Greater Britain, now that it exists, may be 
 expected to prosper and endure or to fall. Perhaps 
 you may ask whether we can expect or wish it to 
 prosper, if crime has gone to the making of it. But 
 the God who is revealed in history does not usually 
 judge in this way. History does not show that 
 conquests made lawlessly in one generation are 
 certain or even likely to be lost again in another : 
 and, as government is never to be confounded with 
 property, it does not appear that states have always 
 even a right, much less that they are bound, to 
 restore gains that may be more or less ill-gotten. 
 The Norman conquest was lawless enough, yet it 
 prospered and prospered permanently ; we ourselves 
 own this land of England by inheritance from Saxon
 
 m PHASES OF EXPANSION 157 
 
 pirates. The title of a nation to its territory is 
 generally to be sought in primitive times, and would 
 be found, if we could recover it, to rest upon violence 
 and massacre ; the territory of Greater Britain was 
 acquired in the full light of history and in part by 
 unjustifiable means, but less unrighteously than the 
 territory of many other Powers, and perhaps far less 
 unrighteously than that of those states whose power 
 is now most ancient and established. If we compare 
 it with other Empires in respect of its origin, we 
 shall see that it has arisen in the same way ; that its 
 founders have had the same motives, and these not 
 mainly noble ; that they have displayed much fierce 
 covetousness, mixed with heroism ; that they have 
 not been much troubled by moral scruples, at least in 
 their dealings with enemies and rivals, though they 
 have often displayed virtuous self-denial in their 
 dealings among themselves. So far we shall find 
 Greater Britain to be like other Empires, and like 
 other states of whose origin we have any knowledge ; 
 but its annals are on the whole better, not worse, 
 than those of most. They are conspicuously better 
 than those of Greater Spain, which are infinitely 
 more stained with cruelty and rapacity. In some 
 pages of these annals there is a real elevation of 
 thought and an intention at least of righteous deal- 
 ing, which are not often met with in the history of 
 colonisation. Some of these founders remind us of 
 Abraham and Aeneas. The crimes on the other 
 hand are such as have been almost universal in 
 colonisatioa
 
 158 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 I make these remarks in this place because I have 
 now before me the greatest of these crimes. England 
 had taken some share in the slave-trade as early as 
 Elizabeth's age, when John Hawkins distinguished 
 himself as the first Englishman who stained his hands 
 with its atrocity. You will find in Hakluyt his own 
 narrative, how he came in 1567 upon an African 
 town, of which the huts were covered with dry palm- 
 leaves, how he set fire to it, and out of " 8000 
 inhabitants succeeded in seizing 250 persons, men, 
 women and children." But we are not to suppose 
 that from that time until the abolition of the slave- 
 trade England took a great or leading share in it. 
 England had then, and for nearly half a century 
 afterwards, no colonies in which there could be a 
 demand for slaves, and when she acquired colonies 
 they were not mining colonies like the first colonies 
 of Spain, in which the demand for slaves had been 
 urgent. Like our colonial empire itself, our parti- 
 cipation in the slave-trade was the gradual growth of 
 the seventeenth century. By the Treaty of Utrecht 
 it was, as it were, established, and became " a central 
 object of English policy." 1 From this date I am 
 afraid we took the leading share, and stained our- 
 selves beyond other nations in the monstrous and 
 enormous atrocities of the slave-trade. 
 
 This simply means that we were not better in our 
 principles in this respect than other nations, and that, 
 having now at last risen to the highest place among 
 
 1 The phrase is borrowed from Mr. Lecky. See History of 
 Enyland in the Eighteenth Century, ii. p. 13.
 
 Vii PHASES OF EXPANSION 159 
 
 the trading-nations of the world, and having extorted 
 the Asiento from Spain by our military successes, we 
 accidentally obtained the largest share in this wicked 
 commerce. It is fair that we should bear this in 
 mind while we read the horror-striking stories which 
 the party of Abolition afterwards published. Our 
 guilt in this matter was shared by all the colonising 
 nations ; we were not the inventors of the crime, and, 
 if within a certain period we were more guilty than 
 other nations, it is some palliation that we published 
 our own guilt, repented of it, and did at last renounce 
 it. But taken together, the whole successful develop- 
 ment which culminated at Utrecht secularised and 
 materialised the English people as nothing had ever 
 done before. Never were sordid motives so supreme, 
 never was religion and every high influence so much 
 discredited, as in the thirty years that followed. 
 There has been a disposition to antedate this corrup- 
 tion, and to attribute it to the wrong cause. It was 
 not so much after the Restoration, as after the 
 Revolution, and especially after the reign of Queen 
 Anne, that cynicism and corruption set in. In his 
 well-known essay on "the Comic Dramatists of the 
 Restoration " Macaulay attributes to the Restoration 
 the cynicism of four writers, Wycherley, Congreve, 
 Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, of which writers three did 
 not write a play till several years after the Revolu- 
 tion ! 
 
 We have arrived then at the stage when England, 
 in the course of her expansion, stands out for the 
 first time as the supreme maritime and cominei
 
 160 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 Power in the "World. It is evidently her connection 
 with the New World that has given her this char- 
 acter ; nevertheless she did not yet appear at least 
 to ordinary eyes as absolutely the first colonial 
 Power. In extent her territories were still insignifi- 
 cant by the side of those of Spain, and much inferior 
 to those of Portugal. They were but a fringe on the 
 Atlantic coast of North America, a few Western 
 Islands and a few commercial stations in India. 
 What was this compared with the mighty vice- 
 royalties of Spain in Southern and Central America 1 
 And, as I have said before, France as a colonial 
 Power might seem in some respects superior to 
 England ; her colonial policy might seem more able 
 and likely in the end to be more successful. 
 
 The next stage in the history of Greater Britain 
 is one which I have already surveyed. Holland 
 being now in decline, the rivalry of England is hence- 
 forth with Spain and France, Powers henceforth 
 united by a Family Compact. But the pressure of it 
 falls mainly on France, since it is France, not Spain, 
 that is neighbour to England both in America and 
 in India. That duel of France and England begins, 
 which I have already described. The decisive event 
 of it is the Seven Years' War and the new position 
 given to England by the Treaty of Paris in 1762. 
 Here is the culminating point of English power in 
 the eighteenth century; nay, relatively to other 
 states England has never since been so great. For a 
 moment it seems that the whole of North America is 
 destined to be hers, and to make for ever a part of
 
 VII PHASES OF EXPANSION 161 
 
 Greater Britain. Such an Empire would not have 
 been greater in mere extent than that which Spain 
 already possessed; but in essential greatness and 
 power how infinitely superior ! The Spanish Empire 
 had the fundamental defect of not being European 
 in blood. Not only did the part of the population 
 which was European belong to a race which even in 
 Europe appeared to be in decline, but there was 
 another large part which had a mixture of barbarism 
 in its blood, and another larger still whose blood was 
 purely barbaric. The English Empire was through- 
 out of civilised blood, except so far as it had a slave- 
 population. But the example of antiquity shows 
 that a separate slave-caste, discharging all drudgery 
 and unskilled labour, is consistent with a very high 
 form of civilisation. Much more serious is the de- 
 terioration of the national type by barbaric inter- 
 mixture. 
 
 In this culminating phase England becomes an 
 object of jealousy and dread to all Europe, as Spain 
 and afterwards France had been in the seventeenth 
 century. It was about the time when she won her 
 first victories in the colonial duel with France, that 
 an outcry began to be raised against her as the 
 tyrant of the seas. In 1745, just after the capture 
 of Louisburg, the French Ambassador at St. Peters- 
 burg handed in a note, in which he complained of 
 the maritime despotism of the English, and their 
 purpose of destroying the trade and navigation of all 
 other nations j he asserted the necessity of a com- 
 bination to maintain the maritime balance. England's 
 
 M
 
 162 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 former ally joins in the complaint, for there appeared 
 about the same time a pamphlet entitled "La voix d'un 
 citoyen it Amsterdam," in which the cry Delenda est 
 Carthago, formerly raised by Shaftesbury against 
 Holland, is now echoed back by a certain Maubert 
 against England. " Mettons nous," he exclaims, " avec 
 la France au niveau de la Grande Bretagne, en- 
 richissons-nous de ses propres fautes et du delire 
 ambitieux de ses Ministres." And then he suggests a 
 Coalition for the purpose of procuring the repeal of 
 the Navigation Act. From this time till 1815 
 jealousy of England is one of the great motive forces 
 of European politics. It led to the intervention of 
 France in America, and to the Armed Neutrality; 
 later it became a kind of passion in the mind of the 
 First Napoleon, and lured him gradually on, partly 
 against his will, to make the conquest of Europe. 
 
 So far we have traced a course of uninterrupted 
 continuous expansion. Slowly but surely England 
 has grown greater and greater. But now occurs an 
 event wholly new in kind, a sudden shock, proving 
 that in the New World there might be other hostile 
 Powers beside the rival States of Europe. The 
 secession of the American colonies is one of those 
 events, the immense significance of which could not 
 even at the moment be overlooked. It was felt at 
 the time to be pregnant with infinite consequences, 
 and so it has proved, though the consequences have 
 not been precisely of the kind that was expected. It 
 was the first stirring of free-will on the part of the 
 New World which had remained, since Columbus
 
 VII PHASES OF EXPANSION 163 
 
 discovered it, and since the Spanish Adventurers 
 ruthlessly destroyed whatever germs of civilisation it 
 possessed, in a kind of nonage. But now it asserts 
 itself ; it accomplishes a revolution in the European 
 style, appealing to all the principles of European 
 civilisation. This was in itself a stupendous event, 
 perhaps in itself greater than that French Kevolution, 
 which followed so soon and absorbed so completely 
 the attention of mankind. But it might have seemed 
 at the moment to be the fall of Greater Britain. For 
 the thirteen colonies which then seceded were almost 
 all the then colonial Empire of Britain. And their 
 secession seemed at the moment a proof demonstra- 
 tive that any Greater Britain of the kind must always 
 be unnatural and short-lived. Nevertheless a century 
 has passed and there is still a Greater Britain, and 
 on more than the old scale of magnitude. 
 
 This event will be the subject of the next lecture.
 
 LECTURE VIII 
 
 SCHISM IN GREATER BRITAIN 
 
 As objects change their outline when the observer 
 changes his point of view, so the history of a state 
 may be made to take many forms. The outline I 
 have given of English history in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries is very different from that with 
 which we are familiar, because I have taken a point 
 of view from which many things seem great that 
 before seemed small, and many small that seemed 
 great, while some things are now outline that were 
 shading, and others are shading that were outline. 
 
 And yet most people think of history as if its 
 outline were quite fixed and unalterable. Details, 
 they think, may be more or less accurate, more or less 
 vivid, in this historian or in that, but the framework 
 must be the same for all historians. In reality it is 
 just this framework, the list of great events which 
 children learn by heart, that is unfixed, unstable, 
 alterable, though it seems made of cast-iron. For 
 what makes an event great or little 1 Is the acces-
 
 lect. VIII SCHISM IN GREATER BRITAIN 165 
 
 sion of a king necessarily a great event? At the 
 moment it seems great, but when the excitement it 
 causes has subsided, it may appear to have been in 
 the history of the country no event at all. This 
 principle consistently applied would produce a re- 
 volution in our ideas of history. It would show us 
 that the real history of a state may be quite different 
 from the conventional, since all or many of the events 
 that have passed for great may be really unimportant, 
 and the truly important events may be among those 
 which have been slightly or not at all recorded. 
 
 We must have then a test for the historical im- 
 portance of events, and to apply this test will be a 
 principal part of the historian's task. Now what 
 test shall we apply ? Shall we say, " The historian 
 should make prominent those events which are 
 interesting ?" But surely an occurrence may be inter- 
 esting biographically, or morally, or poetically, and 
 yet not interesting historically. Shall we say then, 
 " He is to give to events the importance they were 
 felt to have at the moment when they happened ; he 
 is to revive the emotion of the time " ? I maintain 
 that it is not the business of the historian, as we so 
 often hear, to put his reader back in the past time, or 
 to make him regard events as they were regarded by 
 contemporaries. Where would be the use of this 1 ! 
 Great events are commonly judged by contemporaries 
 quite wrongly. It is in fact one of the chief functions 
 of the historian to correct this contemporary judg- 
 ment. Instead of making us share the emotions of 
 the passing time, it is his business to point out to us
 
 166 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 that this event, which absorbed the public attention 
 when it happened, was really of no great importance, 
 and that event, though it passed almost unnoticed, 
 was of infinite consequence. 
 
 Of all events of English history it is perhaps the 
 American Eevolution that has suffered most from the 
 application of these wrong tests. Considered as a 
 mere story or romance, it is not so very interesting. 
 There is no very wonderful generalship, no very 
 glorious victory on either side, and of all heroes 
 Washington is the least dramatic. We forget that 
 what is not very thrilling as story may be of profound 
 interest as history. It marks our blindness to this 
 distinction that we rank the French Eevolution, 
 because of its abundance of personal incidents, so 
 much before the American. But I think the other 
 cause of error I mentioned operates in this case even 
 more fatally. The historian must not indeed be a 
 novelist, but it is as bad, if not worse, for him to be 
 a mere newspaper politician. The average contem- 
 porary view of a great event is almost certain to be 
 shallow and false. And yet it seems to be the 
 ambition of our historians to estimate the American 
 Revolution just as they would have done had they 
 been members of Parliament at the time of the 
 administration of Lord North. Instead of trying to 
 give the philosophy of it and to assign to the event 
 its due importance in the history of the world, they 
 seem always making up their minds how it would 
 have been their duty to vote at this stage of the 
 proceedings or at that, on the Repeal of the Stamp
 
 viii SCHISM IN GREATER BRITAIN 167 
 
 Act, or the Boston Port Bill, or the Compromise Act. 
 I call this the newspaper treatment of affairs. It 
 waits upon the parliamentary debates, and has an 
 eye to the fate of the Ministry and to the result of 
 the next division. In particular it takes up and 
 dismisses questions as they come, and on each it 
 contents itself with the smattering of information 
 which may suffice for the short space that the 
 question may remain under discussion. All this may 
 be well enough in its place, but it produces the most 
 melancholy effect in historical writing. And yet in 
 the modern periods of England history seems to aim 
 only at perpetuating such ordinary superficial views 
 of the moment. It is deeply infected throughout 
 with the commonplaces of party politics, and in 
 discussing the greatest questions seems always to 
 take for its model the newspaper leading-article. 
 
 What then is the true test of the historical 
 importance of events? I say, it is their pregnancy, 
 or in other words the greatness of the consequences 
 likely to follow from them. On this principle I have 
 argued that in the eighteenth century the expansion 
 of England is historically far more important than all 
 domestic questions and movements. Look at the 
 great personage who dominates English politics 
 through the whole middle period of that century, the 
 elder Pitt. His greatness is throughout identified 
 with the expansion of England ; he is a statesman of 
 Greater Britain. It is in the buccaneering war with 
 Spain that he sows his political wild oats ; his glory is 
 won in the great colonial duel with France ; his old age
 
 168 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 
 
 is spent in striving to avert schism in Greater 
 Britain. 
 
 Look now at the American Revolution. In 
 pregnancy this event is evidently unique. So it has 
 always struck impartial observers at a distance. But 
 the newspaper politicians of the day had no time for 
 such large views. To them it presented itself only in 
 detail, as a series of questions upon which Parliament 
 would divide. These questions came before them 
 mixed up inextricably with other questions, often of 
 the pettiest kind, yet at the moment not less im- 
 portant as practical questions of party politics. It is 
 well known that the Stamp Act passed at first almost 
 without notice. A Parliament which discussed one 
 night the Address, another night listened to declama- 
 tions on the back-stairs influence of Bute and covert 
 attacks on the Princess Dowager, another night 
 excited itself over Wilkes and General "Warrants, 
 found on the Order of the Day a proposal for taxing 
 the colonies, and passed it as a matter of course with 
 as little attention as is now given to the Indian 
 Budget. This is deplorable enough, though it may 
 be difficult to remedy. But what excuse can there 
 be for introducing into history such a preposterous 
 confusion of small things with great? And yet 
 consider whether by our artless chronological method, 
 and by the slavish obsequiousness with which our 
 historians follow the order of business fixed by Parlia- 
 ment, we do not really make much the same mistake 
 in estimating the American Revolution that was 
 made by those who passed the Stamp Act with
 
 VIII SCHISM IN GREATER BRITAIN 169 
 
 scarcely a division. The American question is 
 introduced in our histories almost as irrationally as 
 it was introduced at the time into Parliament; it 
 is introduced without any preparation, and in mere 
 chronological order among other questions wholly 
 unlike it. What is the use of history, if it does not 
 protect us in reviewing the past from those surprises 
 which in the politics of the day arise inevitably out 
 of the vastness and multiplicity of modern states? 
 And yet the American Eevolution surprises us now 
 in the reading as much as it did our forefathers when 
 it happened. We too, as we read, have our heads 
 full of Bute's influence, of the king's marriage, of the 
 king's illness, of Wilkes and General Warrants, when 
 suddenly emerges the question of taxing the American 
 colonies. Soon after we hear of discontent in the 
 colonies. And then we say, just as our forefathers 
 did, " By the way what are these colonies, and how 
 did they come into existence, and how are they 
 governed 1 ?" The historian, just as a daily paper 
 might do, undertakes to post us up in the subject. 
 He stops and inserts at this point a retrospective 
 chapter, in which he informs us that the country 
 really has, and has long had, colonies in North 
 America ! He imparts to us just as much informa- 
 tion about these colonies as may enable us to under- 
 stand the debates now about to open on the repeal of 
 the Stamp Act, and then, apologising for his departure 
 from chronological order, he hurries back to his 
 narrative. In this narrative he seems always to 
 watch proceedings from the reporters' gallery in the
 
 170 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot 
 
 House of Commons. You would think it was in 
 Parliament that the Revolution took place. America 
 is the great question of the Rockingham Cabinet, 
 then later of the North Cabinet. The final loss of 
 America is considered very important because it 
 brings down the North Cabinet ! 
 
 When he relates the conclusion of the Treaty of 
 1783, the historian will no doubt pause for a moment 
 and insert a solemn paragraph upon the event, which 
 he will recognise as momentous. He will explain 
 that colonies always secede as soon as they feel them- 
 selves ripe for independence, and that the secession 
 of America was no loss but rather a gain for England 
 Hereupon he dismisses the subject, and henceforth 
 you hear as little of America from him as you 
 heard before the troubles began. New subjects have 
 cropped up in the House of Commons. He is busy 
 with the stormy debates on the India Bill, the 
 struggle of young Pitt with the Coalition, the West- 
 minster Election, and a little later the Regency 
 Debates. For the English historian is as much 
 fascinated by Parliament, and pursues all its move- 
 ments with the same reverential attention, as the old 
 historians of France show in following the personal 
 m ovements of Louis XIV. When at last he reaches the 
 wars of the French Revolution, and the great struggle of 
 England with Napoleon, then indeed he leaves behind 
 him finally the inglorious campaigns of Burgoyne 
 and Cornwallis, and rejoices once more to have to 
 record really great events and the deeds of great men. 
 
 Now I do not think I risk anything by saying in
 
 VIII SCHISM IN GREATER BRITAIN 171 
 
 contradiction to all this that the American Revolution, 
 instead of being a tiresome unfortunate business 
 which may be despatched in a very brief narrative, is 
 an event not only of greater importance, but on an 
 altogether higher level of importance than almost 
 any other in modern English history, and that it is 
 intrinsically much more memorable to us than our 
 great war with Revolutionary France, which indeed 
 only arrives to be at all comparable to it through the 
 vast indirect consequences produced necessarily by a 
 war on so large a scale and continued so long. No 
 doubt it is much more stirring to read of the 
 Nile, Trafalgar, the Peninsula and "Waterloo, than of 
 Bunker's Hill, Brandywine, Saratoga and Yorktown, 
 and this not only because we like better to think of 
 victory than of defeat, but also because in a military 
 sense the struggle with France was greater and more 
 interesting than that with America, and Napoleon, 
 Nelson and Wellington were greater commanders 
 than those who appeared in the American Revolution. 
 But events take rank in history not as they are stir- 
 ring or exciting, much less as they are gratifying to 
 ourselves, but as they are pregnant with consequences. 
 The American Revolution called into existence a 
 new state, a state inheriting the language and tra- 
 ditions of England, but taking in some respects ;i 
 line of its own, in which it departed from the prece- 
 dents not only of England but of Europe. This 
 state was at the time not large in population, though 
 it was very large in territory, and there were many 
 chances that it would dissolve again and never grow
 
 172 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 to be very powerful. But it has not dissolved; it 
 has advanced steadily, and is now, as I have said, 
 superior not only in territory but in population also 
 to every European state except Russia. Now it is by 
 this result that I estimate the historic importance of 
 the Revolution, since it is with the rise and develop- 
 ment of states that history deals. 
 
 I have called attention to a series of events, the 
 Spanish Armada, the colonisation of Virginia and 
 New England, the growth of the English navy and 
 trade, Cromwell's attack on Spain, the naval wars 
 with Holland, the colonial expansion of France and 
 decline of Holland, the maritime supremacy of 
 England from the Peace of Utrecht, the duel of 
 England and France for the New World. I have 
 shown that these events taken together make up the 
 expansion of England, that during the seventeenth 
 century this development is necessarily somewhat 
 hidden behind the domestic struggle of the nation 
 with the Stuart kings, but that in the eighteenth 
 century it ought to be brought into the foreground of 
 history. Now in this series the next event is the 
 Schism, the American Revolution, and the historic 
 magnitude of this event is as much above that of 
 most earlier events in our history as Greater Britain is 
 greater than England. For its magnitude is not 
 to be estimated by inquiring whether Howe and 
 Cornwallis were great generals, or whether Wash- 
 ington was or was not a man of genius ! And in 
 universal history it is scarcely less great than in 
 the history of England. The foundation in new
 
 VIII SCHISM IN GREATER BRITAIN 173 
 
 territory of a state of fifty millions of men, which 
 before many years will be a hundred millions, — this 
 by itself is far above the level of all previous history. 
 No such event had occurred before in full daylight 
 either in the New World or in the Old. Such a 
 state has ten times the population that England had 
 at the Ee volution of 1688, and twice the population 
 that France had at the Ee volution of 1789. This 
 fact, if it stood by itself, would be enough to show 
 that time has brought us into a period of greater 
 magnitudes and higher numbers than past history 
 has dealt with. But it does not stand by itself. 
 Bigness no doubt is not necessarily greatness, and in 
 Asiatic history, though not in European, much larger 
 figures may be met with, for India and China have a 
 population not less than five times as large as the 
 United States. But the peculiarity of this state lies 
 as much in its quality as in its magnitude. Hitherto, 
 unless we except the imperfectly known case of China, 
 all states that have been of very large extent have 
 been of low organisation. 
 
 It had been the boast of England to show how 
 liberty, such as had been known in the city-states of 
 Greece and Italy, might be maintained in a nation- 
 state of the modern type. Now the new state 
 founded in America inherited this discovery, both 
 the theory and the practice of it, and has devised all 
 the modifications that were necessary for the applica- 
 tion of it to a still larger territory. The consequence 
 is that this new large state, while in extent it belongs 
 to the same class as India or Eussia, is in point of
 
 174 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 liberty at the opposite end of the scale. Hegel 
 described the history of the -world as a gradual 
 development of human free-will. According to him 
 there are some states in which only one man is free, 
 others in which a few are free, others in which many. 
 Now if we were to arrange states in a series according 
 to the extension of the spirit of freedom, we should 
 put most of the very large states of the world at the 
 lower end of such a scale. But no one would hesitate 
 to put this very large state, the United States, at the 
 opposite end, as being beyond question the state in 
 which free-will is most active and alive in every 
 individual. 
 
 Here is a result which is great, and not merely 
 big ! But to Englishmen the American phenomenon 
 ought to be infinitely more interesting and important 
 than to the rest of mankind because of the unique 
 relation in which they stand to it. There is no other 
 example in history of two great states related to each 
 other as England and the United States are related. 
 True, the South American Republics have sprung 
 from Spain, and Brazil from Portugal, in the same 
 way, but they cannot be called great states ; and 
 besides, as I have said, the South American popula- 
 tion is to a very large extent of Indian blood. But 
 this great state, sprung from England and predomi- 
 nantly English in blood, is not practically separated 
 from us, as their former colonies are separated from 
 Spain and Portugal, by remoteness of space ; but by 
 reason of the immense expansion and ubiquitous 
 activity of both nations is always close to us, always
 
 nil SCHISM IN GREATER BRITAIN 175 
 
 in contact with us, exerts a strong influence upon us 
 by the strange career it runs and the novel experi- 
 ments it tries, while at the same time it receives from 
 us a great influence in many ways, but principally 
 through our literature. 
 
 There is no topic so pregnant as this of the mutual 
 influence of the branches of the English race. The 
 whole future of the planet depends upon it. But if 
 so, what are we to think of the treatment which the 
 American Revolution receives from our historians? 
 One would think that the importance of the event 
 in English history and in universal history were no 
 concern of theirs. They despatch it very summarily. 
 They treat us to a constitutional discussion of the 
 right of taxation and to some glowing descriptions of 
 Chatham's oratory; in due time they describe the 
 war, apologise for our defeats, make the most of our 
 successes, tell some anecdotes of Franklin, estimate 
 the merits of Washington, and then dismiss the whole 
 subject, as if it were tedious and did not interest 
 them. A very minor question in the long Stuart 
 controversy would occupy them longer, the adven- 
 tures of Prince Charles Edward would rouse their 
 imaginations more, the inquiry who was the author 
 of Junius would excite a more eager curiosity. Is 
 there not something wrong here 1 Is it not evident 
 that we have yet to learn what history is ; that what 
 we have hitherto called history is not history at all, 
 but ought to be called by some other name, perhaps 
 biography, perhaps party politics ? History, I say, is 
 not constitutional law, nor parliamentary tongue-fence,
 
 176 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 nor biography of great men, nor even moral philo- 
 sophy. It deals with states, it investigates their rise 
 and development and mutual influence, the causes 
 which promote their prosperity or bring about their 
 decay. 
 
 But in these lectures on the Expansion of England 
 the American Revolution is to be discussed in one 
 aspect only, viz. as the end of our first experiment in 
 expansion. Like a bubble, Greater Britain expanded 
 rapidly and then burst. It has since been expanding 
 again. Can we avoid the obvious inference 1 
 
 It is constantly repeated, as if it were beyond dis- 
 pute, that the secession of the American colonies was 
 an inevitable result of the natural law which prompts 
 every colony, when it is ripe, to set up for itself, and 
 that therefore the statesmen of George Ill's time 
 who are responsible for it — George Grenville, Charles 
 Townshend, and Lord North— can be charged with 
 nothing more serious than hastening perhaps by a 
 little an unavoidable catastrophe. Now on this head 
 I need add but little to what I have said already. So 
 long as a colony is regarded as a mere estate out of 
 which the mother-country is to make a pecuniary 
 profit, of course its allegiance is highly precarious, of 
 course it will escape as soon as it can. In truth the 
 illustration drawn from the grown-up son is not half 
 strong enough for such a case. On that system a 
 colony is not treated as a child but as a slave, and 
 it will emancipate itself from such a yoke, not with 
 gratitude as a grown-up son may do, but with in- 
 dignation that it should ever, even in its weakness,
 
 vin SCHISM IN GREATER BRITAIN 177 
 
 have been treated so. The secession of the American 
 colonies therefore was perhaps inevitable, but only 
 because, and so far as, they were held under the old 
 colonial system. 
 
 I have explained how difficult it was at that time 
 to substitute a better system, but a better system 
 exists, a better system is practicable now. There is 
 now no reason why a colony after a certain time 
 should desire emancipation ; nay, even in that age the 
 practice of our Colonial Government was much better 
 than the theory. We are not to suppose that the 
 colonies rebelled against English rule simply as such. 
 The Government against which they rebelled was 
 that of George III. in his first twenty years; now 
 that period stands marked in our domestic annals 
 too for the narrow-mindedness and perverseness of 
 Government. There was discontent at home as well 
 as in the colonies. Mansfield on the one side of 
 politics and Grenville on the other had just at that 
 time given an interpretation of our liberties which 
 deprived them of all reality. It was this new-fangled 
 system, not the ordinary system of English govern- 
 ment, which excited discontent everywhere alike, 
 which provoked the Wilkes agitation in England at 
 the same time as the colonial agitation beyond the 
 Atlantic. But the malecontents in England had no 
 such simple remedy as lay at the command of the 
 malecontents of Massachusetts and Virginia. They 
 could not repudiate the Government which roused 
 their sense of injury. 
 
 It was not then simply because they were colonies 
 
 N
 
 178 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 
 
 that our colonies rebelled. It was because they were 
 colonies under the old colonial system, and at a moment 
 when that system itself was administered in an unusu- 
 ally narrow-minded and pedantic way. But I observe 
 next that any general inference drawn from the con- 
 duct of these colonies is open to objection, because 
 they were not normal but very peculiar colonies. 
 
 The modern idea of a colony is that it is a com- 
 munity formed by the overflow of another community. 
 Overcrowding and poverty in one country causes, we 
 think, emigration to another country which is emptier 
 and richer. I have explained that this was not the 
 nature of our American colonies. England 1 on the 
 one hand was then not overcrowded. On the other 
 hand the eastern coast of North America, where the 
 colonies were settled, was not specially attractive by 
 its wealth. It was no Eldorado, no Potosi, and in 
 the northern part it was even poor. Why then did 
 colonists settle in it? They had one predominant 
 motive, and it was the same which Moses alleged to 
 Pharaoh for the Exodus of the Israelites. "We 
 must go seven days' journey into the wilderness to 
 offer a sacrifice unto the Lord our God." Eeligion 
 impelled them. They wished to live on beliefs 
 and to practise rites which were not tolerated in 
 England. This indeed was not the case everywhere 
 alike. Virginia of course was Anglican. But the 
 New England colonies were Puritan, Pennsylvania 
 was Quaker, Maryland was Catholic, while of South 
 
 1 Compare the chapter in Adam Smith : Of the motives for 
 establishing new colonies.
 
 VIII SCHISM IN GREATER BRITAIN 179 
 
 Carolina we read * that " the Churchmen were not a 
 third part of the inhabitants," and that "many 
 various opinions had been taught by a multitude of 
 teachers and expounders of all sorts and persuasions." 
 Thus the old emigration was a real exodus — that is, it 
 was a religious emigration. Now this makes all the 
 difference. The emigrant who goes out merely to 
 make his fortune may possibly in time forget his 
 native land ; but he is not likely to do so ; absence 
 endears it to him, distance idealises it ; he desires to 
 return to it when his money is made, he would gladly 
 be buried in it. There is scarcely more than one 
 thing that can break this spell, and that is religion. 
 Religion indeed may turn emigration into exodus. 
 Those who leave Troy carrying their gods with them 
 can resist no doubt the yearning that draws them 
 back ; they can build with confidence their Lavinium 
 or their Alba, or even their Rome, in the new territory 
 unhallowed before. For I always hold that religion 
 is the great state-building principle ; these colonists 
 could create a new state because the}' were already a 
 church, since the church, so at least I hold, is the 
 soul of the state ; where there is a church a state 
 grows up in time ; but if you find a state which is 
 not also in some sense a church, you find a state 
 which is not long for this world. 
 
 Now in this respect the American colonies were 
 very peculiar. How is it possible to draw from their 
 history any conclusion about colonies in general 1 In 
 particular how can you argue from their case to the 
 
 1 Hildreth, ii. p. 232.
 
 180 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 case of our present colonies which have grown up 
 since 1 In those colonies there was from the outset a 
 spirit driving them to separation from England, a 
 principle attracting them and conglobing them into a 
 new union among themselves. I have remarked how 
 early this spirit showed itself in the New England 
 colonies. No doubt it was not present in all. It 
 was not present in Virginia, but when the colonial 
 discontents, heated by the pedantry of Grenville and 
 Lord North, burst into a flame, then was the moment 
 when Virginia went over to New England, and the 
 spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers found the power to turn 
 offended colonists into a new nation. 
 
 But what is to be found similar to this in our 
 present colonies ? They have not sprung out of any 
 religious exodus. Their founders carried no gods 
 with them. On the contrary they go out into the 
 wilderness of mere materialism, into territories where 
 as yet there is nothing consecrated, nothing ideal. 
 Where can their gods be but at home 1 If they in 
 such circumstances can find within them the courage 
 to stand out as state-builders, — if they can have the 
 heart to sever themselves from English history, from 
 all traditions and memories of the island where their 
 fathers lived for a thousand years, — it will indeed be 
 necessary to think that England is a name which 
 possesses sadly little attractive power. 
 
 I think then that we mistake the moral of the 
 American Revolution, when we infer from it that all 
 colonies — and not merely colonies of religious refugees 
 under a bad colonial system — fall off from the tree as
 
 VIII SCHISM IN GREATER BRITAIN 181 
 
 soon as they ripen. And in like manner perhaps we 
 draw a wrong inference, and omit to draw the right 
 inference, from the prosperity which the United 
 States have enjoyed since the secession. I suppose 
 there has never been in any community so much 
 happiness, or happiness of a kind so little demoralis- 
 ing, as in the United States. But the causes of this 
 happiness are not political. They lie rooted much 
 deeper than the political institutions of the country. 
 If a philosopher were asked for a recipe to produce 
 the greatest amount of pure happiness in a community 
 he would say, Take a number of men whose char- 
 acters have been formed during many generations by 
 rational liberty, serious religion, and strenuous labour. 
 Place these men in a wide territory, where no painful 
 pressure shall reach them, and where prosperity shall 
 be within the reach of all. Adversity gives wisdom 
 and strength, but with pain; prosperity gives pleasure, 
 but relaxes the character. Adversity followed after a 
 time by prosperity, — this is the recipe for healthy 
 happiness, for it gives pleasure without speedily 
 relaxing energy. And it is a better recipe still if the 
 prosperity at last given shall not be given too easily 
 and unconditionally. Now these are the conditions 
 which have produced American happiness. Characters 
 formed in a temperate zone, by Teutonic liberty and 
 Protestant religion ; prosperity conferred freely but 
 in measure, and on the condition not only of labour 
 but of the use of intelligence and ingenuity. 
 
 This recipe will produce happiness, but only for a 
 time, only as long as the population bears a low
 
 182 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 proportion to the extent of territory. For a long 
 time it was supposed that America had some magic 
 secret by which she avoided all the evils of Europe. 
 The secret was simple ; prosperous conditions of life 
 and strong characters. Of late years the Americans 
 themselves have awakened from the dream that their 
 country is never to be soiled with the crimes and 
 follies of Europe. They have no enemies, but yet 
 they have had a war on a scale as gigantic as their 
 territory, which Mr. Wells reckons to have cost in 
 four years a million lives and nearly two thousand 
 millions of pounds sterling ; they have not kings, and 
 yet we know that they have had regicide. Neverthe- 
 less the reputation and the greatness of the United 
 States stand now perhaps higher than ever. But 
 insensibly their pretensions have changed their char- 
 acter. Now it is said that no state was ever so 
 powerful, that it is or will be the dominating state of 
 the world ; in other words it is classed among other 
 states, but at the head of them. Its pretension used 
 to be wholly different. It used to claim to be unique 
 in kind; to be a visible proof that the states of 
 Europe with their vaunts of power, their haughty 
 Governments, their wars and their debts, were on the 
 wrong road altogether; that happiness and virtue 
 hold a more modest path ; and that the best lot for a 
 state is not to be great in history, but rather to have 
 no history at all. 
 
 American happiness then is in no great degree 
 the consequence of secession. But does she owe 
 to secession her immense greatness 1
 
 vni SCHISM IN GREATER BRITAIN 183 
 
 When we look back over the stages of her progress 
 we are able easily to discover that she has been 
 in several points remarkably favoured by fortune. 
 Imagine for instance that the original colonies, instead 
 of lying in a compact group along the coast, had been 
 scattered over the Continent, and had been separated 
 from one another by other settlements belonging to 
 other European states. Such a difference might have 
 made the growth of the Union impossible. Imagine 
 again that the French colony of Louisiana, instead 
 of failing miserably, had advanced steadily in the 
 hundred years between its foundation and the Ameri- 
 can Revolution. This colony embraced the valley of 
 the Mississippi. Had it been successful it might 
 easily have grown into a great French state, held 
 together through its whole length by its immense 
 river. Or again suppose it had passed into the 
 hands of England ! It was Napoleon who, by selling 
 Louisiana to the United States, made it possible for 
 the Union to develop into the gigantic Power we see. 
 
 Still it is evident that the United States has found 
 the solution of that great problem of expansion on a 
 vast scale, which we have seen all the five Western 
 nations of Europe in succession failing to solve. We 
 saw them starting with the notion of an indefinite 
 extension of the state, but we saw them almost in a^ 
 moment lose their hold of this conception and take 
 up instead an extremely opposite conception, out of 
 which grew the old colonial system. We saw them 
 treat their colonies as public estates, of which the 
 profits were to be secured to the population of the
 
 184 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 mother-country. We saw at the same time that this 
 system could never be represented as anything but a 
 makeshift, so that under it there always lurked the 
 despair of any permanent possession of colonies. We 
 saw, from this cause and from others, Empire after 
 Empire in the NeAv World dissolve. Our own first 
 Empire was among these. But we have since come 
 into possession of a new one. In the management of 
 this we have been careful enough to avoid the old 
 error. The old colonial system is gone. But in 
 place of it no clear and reasoned system has been 
 adopted. The wrong theory is given up, but what is 
 the right theory ? There is only one alternative. If 
 the colonies are not, in the old phrase, possessions of 
 England, then they must be a part of England ; and 
 we must adopt this view in earnest. We must cease 
 altogether to say that England is an island off the 
 north-western coast of Europe, that it has an area of 
 120,000 square miles and a population of thirty odd 
 millions. We must cease to think that emigrants, 
 when they go to colonies, leave England or are lost 
 to England. We must cease to think that the history 
 of England is the history of the Parliament that sits at 
 Westminster, and that affairs which are not discussed 
 there cannot belong to English history. When we 
 have accustomed ourselves to contemplate the whole 
 Empire together and call it all England, we shall see 
 that here too is a United States. Here too is a 
 great homogeneous people, one in blood, language, 
 religion and laws, but dispersed over a boundless 
 space. We shall see that, though it is held together
 
 VIII SCHISM IN GREATEK BKITAIN 185 
 
 by strong moral ties, it has little that can be called a 
 constitution, no system that seems capable of resisting 
 any severe shock. But if we are disposed to doubt 
 whether any system can be devised capable of holding 
 together communities so distant from each other, 
 then is the time to recollect the history of the 
 United States of America. For they have such a 
 system. They have solved this problem. They have 
 shown that in the present age of the world political 
 unions may exist on a vaster scale than was possible 
 in former times. No doubt our problem has diffi- 
 culties of its own, immense difficulties. But the 
 greatest of these difficulties is one which we make 
 ourselves. It is the false preconception which we 
 bring to the question, that the problem is insoluble, 
 that no such thing ever was done or ever will be 
 done; it is our misinterpretation of the American 
 Revolution. 
 
 From that Revolution we infer that all distant 
 colonies, sooner or later, secede from the mother- 
 country. We ought to infer only that they secede 
 when they are held under the old colonial system. 
 
 "We infer that population overflowing from a country 
 into countries on the other side of an ocean must 
 needs break the tie that binds them to their original 
 home, acquire new interests, and make the nucleus of 
 a new State. "We ought to infer only that refugees, 
 driven across the ocean by religious exclusiveness and 
 carrying with them strong religious ideas of a peculiar 
 type, may make the nucleus of a new state. This 
 remark is confirmed in an unexpected manner by the
 
 L86 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. viii 
 
 history of the secession of Southern and Central 
 America from Spain and Portugal. Here, to be sure, 
 there was Catholicism on both sides of the ocean ; but 
 Gervinus remarks that in reality the religion of those 
 regions was Jesuitism, and that accordingly the 
 suppression of the Jesuits gave a moral shock to the 
 population which he reckons among the leading causes 
 of disruption. 
 
 Lastly, we infer from the greatness of the United 
 States since their secession that the division of states, 
 when they become overlarge, is expedient. But the 
 greatness of the United States is the best proof that 
 a state may become immensely krge and yet prosper. 
 The Union is the great example of a system under 
 which an indefinite number of provinces is firmly 
 held together without any of the inconveniences 
 which have been felt in our Empire. It is therefore 
 the visible proof that those inconveniences are not 
 inseparable from a large Empire, but only from the 
 old colonial system. 
 
 But the expansion of England has been twofold. 
 Hitherto we have considered only the expansion of 
 the English nation and state together by means of 
 colonies. What are we to think of that other and 
 much stranger expansion by which India with its 
 vast population has passed under the rule of English- 
 men?
 
 SECOND COUESE
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 HISTORY AND POLITICS 
 
 Historians are sometimes ridiculed for indulging 
 in conjectures about what would have followed in 
 history if some one event had fallen out differently. 
 " So gloriously unpractical ! " we exclaim. Now it is 
 not for the sake of practice, but for the sake of 
 theory, that such conjectures are hazarded, and I 
 think historians should deal in them much more than 
 they do. It is an illusion to suppose that great 
 public events, because they are on a grander scale, 
 have something more fatally necessary about them 
 than ordinary private events ; and this illusion 
 enslaves the judgment. To form any opinion or 
 estimate of a great national policy is impossible so 
 long as you refuse even to imagine any other policy 
 pursued. This remark is especially applicable to an 
 event so vast and complex as the Expansion of 
 England. Think for a moment, if there had been no 
 connection of England with the New World ! How 
 utterly different would have been the whole course
 
 190 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 of English history since the reign of Queen Elizabeth ! 
 No Spanish Armada would have come against us, 
 and there would have been no Drake and Hawkins to 
 withstand it. No great English navy would have 
 grown up. Blake would not have fought with Van 
 Tromp and De Ruyter. The wars of the Long 
 Parliament and Charles II. with Holland, the war of 
 Cromwell with Spain, would never have taken place. 
 The country would not have amassed the capital 
 which enabled it to withstand and at last to humble 
 Louis XIV. The great commercial corporations 
 would not have arisen to balance the landed interest 
 and transform the policy of the state. England 
 would not have stood at the head of all nations in 
 Queen Anne's reign, and we should have had a wholly 
 and entirely different eighteenth century. Every- 
 thing in short would be utterly unlike what it is; 
 and you may be tempted to ridicule the whole 
 speculation as unprofitable, because infinite. 
 
 But yet it is the most practical of all speculations, 
 and for this reason. All this vast expansion, all 
 these prodigious accretions which have gathered 
 round the original England in three centuries, are 
 yet not so completely incorporate with England that 
 we cannot contemplate shaking ourselves free from 
 them and becoming again the plain England of Queen 
 Elizabeth. The growth of our Empire may indeed 
 have been in a certain sense natural ; Greater Britain, 
 compared to old England, may seem but the full- 
 grown giant developed out of the sturdy boy; but 
 there is this difference, that the grown man does not
 
 I ■ HISTORY AND POLITICS 191 
 
 and cannot think of becoming a boy again, whereas 
 England both can and does consider the expediency 
 of emancipating her colonies and abandoning India. 
 We do not, as a matter of fact, think of Canada as 
 we think of Kent, nor of Nova Scotia as of Scotland, 
 nor of New South Wales as of Wales, nor of India 
 as of Ireland. We can most easily conceive them 
 separated from us, and, if we chose, we could most 
 easily bring about the separation. Nay more, many 
 authorities actually recommend us to do so. We are 
 forced then to pass some judgment on the expansion 
 of England considered as a whole. Is it a transient 
 development, like the expansion of Spain 1 Was it 
 even a mistake from the beginning, a product of mis- 
 directed energy 1 Nations can and do make mistakes. 
 They are guided often by blind passion or instinct, 
 and there is no reason in the nature of things why 
 their aberrations should not continue for ages and 
 lead them infinitely far. And thus it is conceivable 
 that England ought from the beginning to have 
 resisted the temptations of the New World, that she 
 ought to have remained the self-contained island she 
 was in Shakspeare's time — " in a great pool a swan's 
 nest " ; or at least that it would have been fortunate 
 for her to have lost her Empire as France did, or 
 when she lost her first colonial Empire not to have 
 founded a new one. 
 
 But if this be so, or even if it may be so, what an 
 enormous, intricate, and at the same time what a 
 momentous problem is before us ! If we have thus 
 wandered from the right path, or if only we ought
 
 192 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 now to strike into a wholly new path, how prodigi- 
 ously important is the fact ! How much it surpasses 
 in importance all those questions of home politics 
 which absorb our attention so much ! Many of us 
 elude this consideration by a very confused argument. 
 We say, "Let us mind our own affairs and not 
 concern ourselves with remote countries, which are 
 beyond our comprehension, and which it was a mis- 
 fortune for us ever to become connected with." But 
 if this really was a misfortune, if our empire really 
 is so much too large for us, then the question is 
 infinitely more urgent and instant than if it were 
 otherwise. For then we cannot too soon resolve to 
 free ourselves from an encumbrance which will 
 assuredly entail disaster upon us; then we ought 
 to devote ourselves to the vast and delicate problem 
 of destroying our Empire, until it is fairly achieved. 
 And thus in any case we have here by far the largest 
 of all political questions, for if our Empire is capable 
 of further development, we have the problem of 
 discovering what direction that development should 
 take, and if it is a mischievous encumbrance, we 
 have the still more anxious problem of getting rid of 
 it, and in either case we deal with territories so vast 
 and populations which grow so rapidly that their 
 destinies are infinitely important. 
 
 I say, this is a political problem, but is it not also 
 a historical problem? Yes, and the main reason 
 why I have chosen this subject is that it illustrates 
 better than any other subject my view of the con- 
 nection between history and politics. The ultimate
 
 I HISTORY AND POLITICS 193 
 
 object of all my teaching here is to establish this 
 fundamental connection, to show that politics and 
 history are only d inherent aspects of the same study. 
 There is a vulgar view of politics which sinks them 
 into a mere struggle of interests and parties, and 
 there is a foppish kind of history which aims only 
 at literary display, which produces delightful books 
 hovering between poetry and prose. These perver- 
 sions, according to me, come from an unnatural 
 divorce between two subjects which belong to each 
 other. Politics are vulgar when they are not 
 liberalised by history, and history fades into mere 
 literature when it loses sight of its relation to practical 
 politics. In order to show this clearly, it has seemed 
 to me a good plan to select a topic which belongs 
 most evidently to history and to politics at once. 
 Such a topic pre-eminently is Greater Britain. What 
 can be more plainly political than the questions 
 What ought to be done with India ? What ought to 
 be done with our Colonies ? But they are questions 
 which need the aid of history. We cannot delude 
 ourselves here, as we do in home questions of fran- 
 chise or taxation, so as to fancy that common sense 
 or common morality will suffice to lead us to a true 
 opinion. We cannot suppose ourselves able to form 
 a judgment, for example, about Indian affairs without 
 some special study, because we cannot help seeing 
 that the races of India are far removed from ourselves 
 in all physical, intellectual, and moral conditions. 
 Here then we see how politics merge into history. 
 But I am even more anxious to show you by this 
 
 o
 
 194 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 example how history merges into politics. The 
 foundation of this Empire of ours is a comparatively 
 modern event. If we leave out of account the 
 colonies we have lost and think only of the Empire 
 we still possess, we think of an Empire which was 
 founded almost entirely in the reigns of George II. . 
 and George III. Now this is the period which 
 students avoid as being too modern for study ; this 
 is the period which classic historians neglect, and 
 which accordingly passes in the popular mind for an 
 uneventful period of uniform prosperity and civilis- 
 ation. I have complained that our historians all 
 grow languid as they approach this period, that 
 their descriptions of it are featureless, and that 
 accordingly they lead their readers to think of 
 English history as leading up to nothing, as a story 
 without a moral, or as like the Heart of Midlothian, 
 of which the whole last volume is dull and superfluous. 
 You see then how I think this evil may be cured. I 
 show you mighty events in the future, events of 
 which, as future, we know as yet nothing but that 
 they must come, and that they must be mighty. 
 These events are some further development in the 
 relation of England to her colonies and also in her 
 relation to India. Some further development, I say, 
 for evidently the present phase is not definitive ; but 
 what the development will be we cannot yet know. 
 Will there be a great disruption 1 Will Canada and 
 Australia become independent States? Shall we 
 abandon India, and will some native Government at 
 present almost inconceivable take the place of the
 
 I HISTORY AND POLITICS 195 
 
 Viceroy and his Council 1 Or will the opposite of all 
 this happen ? Will Greater Britain rise to a higher 
 form cf organisation ? Will the English race, which 
 is divided by so many oceans, making a full use of 
 modern scientific inventions, devise some organisation 
 like that of the United States, under which full 
 liberty and solid union may be reconciled with 
 unbounded territorial extension? And, secondly, 
 shall we succeed in solving a still harder problem? 
 Shall we discover some satisfactory way of governing 
 India, some modus vivendi for two such extreme 
 opposites as a ruling race of Englishmen in a country 
 which they cannot colonise, and a vast population 
 of Asiatics with immemorial Asiatic traditions and 
 ways of life ? We do not know, I say, how these 
 problems will be solved, but we may be certain that 
 they will be solved somehow, and we may be certain 
 from the nature of the problems that the solution of 
 them will be infinitely momentous. This then is 
 the goal towards which England is travelling. We 
 are not then to think, as most historians seem to do, 
 that all development has ceased in English history, 
 and that we have arrived at a permanent condition 
 of security and prosperity. Not at all ; the move- 
 ment may be less perceptible because it is on a much 
 larger scale; but the changes and the struggles 
 when they come — and they will come — will be on a 
 larger scale also. And when the crisis arrives, it 
 will throw a wonderful light back upon our past 
 history. All that amazing expansion which has 
 taken place since the reign of George II, and which
 
 196 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 we read of with a kind of bewildered astonishment, 
 will begin then to impress us differently. At present 
 when we look at the boundless extent of Canada and 
 Australia given up to our race, we are astonished, 
 but form no definite opinion. When we read of the 
 conquest of India, two hundred millions of Asiatics 
 conquered by an English trading company, we are 
 astonished and admire, but we form no definite 
 opinion. All seems so strange and anomalous that 
 it almost ceases to be interesting. We do not know 
 how to judge of it nor what to think of it. It will 
 be otherwise then. Time will reveal what was really 
 solid in all this success, and what was not so. We 
 shall know what to think of that great struggle of 
 the eighteenth century for the possession of the New 
 World, when the event has shown, either that a 
 great and solid World-State has been produced, or 
 that an ephemeral trade-empire, like that of old 
 Spain, rose to fall again; either that a solid union 
 between the West and East, fruitful in the greatest 
 and profoundest results, was effected in India, or 
 that Clive and Hastings set on foot a monstrous 
 enterprise which, after a century of apparent success, 
 ended in failure. 
 
 This lesson time will teach to all alike. But 
 history ought surely in some degree, if it is worth 
 anything, to anticipate the lessons of time. We 
 shall all no doubt be wise after the event ; we study 
 history that we may be wise before the event. Why 
 should we not now form an opinion about the destiny 
 of our colonies and of our Indian Empire? That
 
 I HISTORY AND POLITICS 197 
 
 destiny, we may be sure, will not be decreed 
 arbitrarily. It will be the result of the working 
 of those laws which it is the object of political 
 science to discover. When the event takes place, 
 this will be visible enough ; all will see more or 
 less clearly that what has happened could not but 
 happen. But if so, the students of political science 
 ought to be able to foresee, at least in outline, the 
 event while it is still future. 
 
 Now, do not these considerations set the more 
 recent history of England in a new light? I have 
 shown you England in the latter part of the sixteenth 
 century entering upon a wholly new path. I have 
 traced the stages of its progress in this path through 
 the seventeenth century and the prodigious results 
 which followed in the eighteenth. I have pointed 
 out that we are still in a state of things which is 
 evidently provisional, of which some great modifica- 
 tion is evidently at hand. It follows from all this 
 that the modern part of English history presents to 
 us a great problem, one of the greatest problems, in 
 political science. And thus I show you history 
 merging in politics. I show you the reigns of George 
 II. and George III. not as a mere bygone period, 
 whose quaint manners and fashions it is a delightful 
 amusement to revive with the imagination, but as a 
 storehouse of the materials by which we are to solve 
 the greatest and most urgent of all political problems. 
 In order to understand what is to become of our 
 Empire we must study its nature, the causes which 
 support it, the roots by which its life is fed ; and to
 
 198 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 study its nature is to study its history, and especially 
 the history of its beginning. 
 
 We have been told for a long time past by fashion- 
 able writers that history has made itself too solemn 
 and pompous, that it ought to deal in minute, familiar, 
 vivid details ; in fact that it ought to be written just 
 in the style of a novel. I will pause once more to 
 tell you what I think of this view, which has been 
 of late so prevalent. I do not deny the criticism on 
 which it is founded. I fully admit that history 
 should not be solemn and pompous, and I admit that 
 for a long time it was both. But solemnity is one 
 thing, and seriousness is quite another. This school 
 argue that because history should not be solemn, 
 therefore it should not be serious. They deny that 
 history can establish any solid or important truths ; 
 they have no conception that any great discoveries 
 can ever come out of it. They can only see that it is 
 exquisitely entertaining and delightful to call the 
 past into life again, to see our ancestors in their 
 costume as they lived, and to surprise them in the 
 very act of doing their famous deeds. I find their 
 theory stated with the most ingenuous frankness by 
 Thackeray in the opening to his lecture on Steele, a 
 passage which almost every one has read, and I fancy 
 almost every one has thought very shrewd and true. 
 He says, " What do we look for in studying the 
 history of a past age? Is it to learn the political 
 transactions and characters of the leading public 
 men 1 is it to make ourselves acquainted with the life 
 and being of the time? If we set out with the
 
 I HISTORY AND POLITICS 199 
 
 former grave purpose, where is the truth, and who 
 believes that he has it entire 1 " And then he goes on 
 to declare that in his opinion the solemn statements 
 which we find in books of history about public affairs 
 are all nonsense, and would not bear any sceptical 
 examination. He refers by way of example to 
 Swift's Conduct of the Allies and Coxe's Life of 
 Marlborough, and you see that it is from works of 
 that extremely old-fashioned cast that he has formed 
 his idea of what history is. But now, political 
 history being all nonsense, what are we to substitute 
 for it ? 
 
 Thackeray tells us that we are " to make ourselves 
 acquainted with the life and being of the time." 
 What does this mean 1 He goes on to explain. " As 
 we read in these delightful volumes of the Tatler 
 and Spectator, the past age returns, the England of 
 our ancestors is revivified. The Maypole rises in the 
 Strand again in London, the churches are thronged 
 with daily worshippers ; the beaux are gathering in 
 the coffee-houses, the gentry are going to the drawing- 
 room, the ladies are thronging to the toy-shops, the 
 chairmen are jostling in the streets, the footmen are 
 running with links before the chariots or fighting 
 round the theatre doors. I say the fiction carries a 
 greater amount of truth in solution than the volume 
 which purports to be all true. Out of the fictitious 
 book I get the expression of the life of the time ; 
 of the manners, of the movement, the dress, the 
 pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules of society — the 
 old times live again and I travel in the old country
 
 200 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LEOT. 
 
 of England. Can the heaviest historian do more for 
 me?" 
 
 That a great' novelist should think thus is in 
 itself almost a matter of course. The great engineer 
 Brindley, being asked for what purpose he supposed 
 rivers to have been created, answered without the 
 least hesitation, To feed canals ! Thackeray, being 
 asked why Queen Anne lived and the English under 
 the Duke of Marlborough fought the French, answers 
 candidly, It was that I might write my delightful 
 novel of Esmond. Of course he thought so, but how 
 could he, with his keen sense of humour, venture to 
 say so ? You see, he appeals to our scepticism. He 
 does not deny that history might be important if 
 it were true, but he says it is not true. He does 
 not believe a word of it. 
 
 Well! if so, what should we do? Must we take 
 the course he points out to us? Must we give up 
 history as a serious study but keep it as a delightful 
 amusement, turn away from European wars and 
 watch the ladies thronging to the toy-shops, cease 
 studying what sort of government our ancestors had 
 and inquire rather what they had for dinner ? I tell 
 you there is another and a much better course, which 
 leads in quite the opposite direction. If history for a 
 long time has been, as it has been, untrue and un- 
 satisfactory, correct it, amend it. Make it true and 
 trustworthy. There is no reason in the world why 
 this should not be done, or rather it has been done 
 already for the greater part of history, and only 
 remains undone in those more recent periods which
 
 I HISTORY AND POLITICS 201 
 
 students have neglected. It seems not to be generally 
 known how much the study of history has been 
 transformed of late years. Those charges of untrust- 
 worthiness, of pompous and hollow conventionality, 
 which are vulgarly made against history, used to be 
 well-grounded once, but are in the main groundless 
 now. History has been in great part rewritten ; in 
 great part it is now true, and lies before science as a 
 mass of materials out of which a political doctrine 
 may be deduced. It is not now pompous and solemn, 
 but it is thoroughly serious, much more serious than 
 ever. Here then is the alternative which lies before 
 you. Instead of ceasing to regard history seriously, 
 aa Thackeray advises you, regard it more seriously 
 than before. Instead of holding that you cannot 
 find the truth, and therefore may as well cease to seek 
 it, consider that the truth is hard to find, and there- 
 fore must be sought all the more diligently, all the 
 more laboriously. 
 
 For observe that if once we grant that historic 
 truth is attainable, and attainable it is, then there 
 can be no further dispute about its supreme im- 
 portance. It deals with facts of the largest and most 
 momentous kind, with the causes of the decay and 
 growth of Empires, with war and peace, with the 
 sufferings or happiness of millions. It is by this con- 
 sideration that I merge history in politics. I tell 
 you that when you study English history you study 
 not the past of England only, but her future. It is 
 the welfare of your country, it is your whole interest 
 as citizens, that is in question while you study
 
 202 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 history. How it is so I illustrate by putting before 
 you this subject of the Expansion of England. I 
 show you that there is a vast question ripening for 
 decision, upon which almost the whole future of our 
 country depends. In magnitude this question far sur- 
 passes all other questions which you can ever have 
 to discuss in political life. And yet it is altogether 
 a historical question. The investigation of it requires 
 not only some knowledge, but I may almost say a 
 full knowledge of the modern history of England. 
 For, as I have pointed out, England has been entirely 
 engaged for the last three centuries in this expansion 
 into Greater Britain. If therefore you would discern 
 in outline the future of Greater Britain, you will have 
 to master almost the whole history of England in the 
 last three centuries. Only enter upon these inquiries, 
 only undertake to make up your minds upon the 
 colonial question and the Indian question ; you will 
 find that you are led back from question to question 
 and from one department of affairs to another, until 
 you discover that these two questions bring the whole 
 modern history of England in their train. And not 
 only is this one way of grasping English history, 
 but it is the best way. For in history everything 
 depends upon turning narrative into problems. So 
 long as you think of history as a mere chronological 
 narrative, so long you are in the old literary groove 
 which leads to no trustworthy knowledge, but only 
 to that pompous conventional romancing of which 
 all serious men are tired. Break the drowsy spell 
 of rarrative; ask yourself questions; set yourself
 
 I HISTORY AND POLITICS 203 
 
 problems ; your mind will at once take up a new 
 attitude ; you will become an investigator ; you will 
 cease to be solemn and begin to be serious. Now 
 modern English history breaks up into two grand 
 problems, the problem of the colonies . and the 
 problem of India. 
 
 Moreover, all those considerations which make the 
 universal study of history imperative in all countries 
 where there is popular government, operate in 
 England far more strongly than in any other 
 country. For this immense expansion of our race 
 has the effect of making English politics most 
 bewilderingly difficult. I take it that every other 
 country — France, Germany, the United States, every 
 country except perhaps Russia — has a simple problem 
 to solve compared with that which is set before 
 England. Most of those states are compact and 
 solid, scarcely less compact, though so much larger, 
 than the city-states of antiquity. They can only be 
 attacked at home, and therefore their armies are a kind 
 of citizen soldiery. Now, distant dependencies destroy 
 this compactness, and make the national interest 
 hard to discern and hard to protect. Because of our 
 scattered colonies it is easy for an enemy to strike at 
 us. If we were at war with the United States, we 
 should feel it in Canada ; if with Russia, in Afghan- 
 istan. But this external difficulty is less serious than 
 the internal difficulties which arise in a scattered 
 empire. How to give a moral unity to vast countries 
 separated from each other by half the globe, even 
 when they are inhabited in the main by one nation !
 
 204 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LBOT. 
 
 But even this is not the greatest of the anxieties of 
 England. For besides the colonies, we have India. 
 Here at least there is no community of race or 
 of religion. Here that solid basis which is formed 
 by immigration and colonisation is almost entirely 
 wanting. Here you have another problem not less 
 vast, not less difficult, and much less hopeful, than 
 that of the colonies. Either problem by itself is as 
 much as any nation ever took in hand before. It 
 seems really too much that both should fall on the 
 same nation at the same time. 
 
 Consider how distracting must be the effect upon 
 the public mind of these two opposite questions. The 
 colonies and India are in opposite extremes. What- 
 ever political maxims are most applicable to the one, 
 are most inapplicable to the other. In the colonies 
 everything is brand-new. There you have the most 
 progressive race put in the circumstances most favour- 
 able to progress. There you have no past and an 
 unbounded future. Government and institutions 
 are all ultra-English. All is liberty, industry, in- 
 vention, innovation, and as yet tranquillity. Now if 
 this alone were Greater Britain, it would be homo- 
 geneous, all of a piece; and, vast and boundless as 
 the territory is, we might come to understand its 
 affairs. But there is at the same time another 
 Greater Britain, surpassing this in population though 
 not in territory, and it is everything which this is 
 not. India is all past and, I may almost say, has no 
 future. What it will come to the wisest man is 
 afraid 'to conjecture, but in the past it opens vistas
 
 I HISTORY AND POLITICS 205 
 
 into a fabulous antiquity. All the oldest religions, 
 all the oldest customs, petrified as it were. No form 
 of popular government as yet possible. Everything 
 which Europe, and still more the New World, has 
 outlived still flourishing in full vigour ; superstition, 
 fatalism, polygamy, the most primitive priestcraft, the 
 most primitive despotism; and threatening the northern 
 frontier the vast Asiatic steppe with its Osbegs and Tur- 
 comans. Thus the same nation which reaches one 
 hand towards the future of the globe and assumes the 
 position of mediator between Europe and the New 
 World, stretches the other hand towards the remotest 
 past, becomes an Asiatic conqueror, and usurps the 
 succession of the Great Mogul. 
 
 How can the same nation pursue two lines of 
 policy so radically different without bewilderment, be 
 despotic in Asia and democratic in Australia, be in 
 the East at once the greatest Mussulman Power in 
 the world and the guardian of the property of 
 thousands of idol-temples, and at the same time in 
 the West be the foremost champion of free thought 
 and spiritual religion, stand out as a great military 
 Imperialism to resist the march of Russia in Central 
 Asia at the same time that it fills Queensland and 
 Manitoba with free settlers? Never certainly did 
 any nation, since the world began, assume anything 
 like so much responsibility. Never did so many 
 vast questions in all parts of the globe, questions 
 calling for all sorts of special knowledge and special 
 training, depend upon the decision of a single public. 
 It must be confessed that this public bears its respon-
 
 20 G EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. i 
 
 sibility lightly ! It does not even study colonial and 
 Indian questions. It does not consider them in- 
 teresting, except in those rare cases when they come 
 to the foreground of politics. When the fate of a 
 Ministry is concerned they are found intensely 
 interesting, hut the public does not consider them 
 interesting so long as only the population of India, 
 the destiny of a vast section of the planet, and the 
 future of the English state itself, are concerned. As 
 to India, Macaulay writes thus : " It might have 
 been expected that every Englishman who takes any 
 interest in any part of history would be anxious to 
 know how a handful of his countrymen, separated 
 from their home by an immense ocean, subjugated in 
 the course of a few years one of the greatest empires 
 in the world. Yet unless we greatly err, this subject 
 is to most readers not only insipid but positively 
 distasteful." 
 
 The acquisition of India by England, as part of 
 that expansion which in the last two centuries has so 
 profoundly modified our state, will be examined in 
 the succeeding lectures.
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 THE INDIAN EMPIRE 
 
 As formerly the Colonial Empire, so now the Indian 
 Empire is to be considered only so far as it illustrates 
 the general law of expansion which prevails in the 
 modern part of English history. It will be considered 
 not in itself, but only in its relation to our own 
 state. It will be considered historically — that is, in 
 the causes which produced it; but also politically — 
 that is, in regard to its value or stability. 
 
 From this point of view we shall not find it 
 convenient to observe chronological order. Our 
 acquisition of India was made blindly. Nothing 
 great that has ever been done by Englishmen was 
 done so unintentionally, so accidentally, as the conquest 
 of India. There has indeed been little enough of 
 calculation or contrivance in our colonisation. When 
 our first settlers went out to Virginia and New 
 England, it was not intended to lay the foundations of 
 a mighty republican state. But here the event has 
 differed from the design only in degree. We did
 
 208 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 intend to establish a new community, and we even 
 knew that it would be republican in its tendency ; 
 what was hidden from us was only its immense 
 magnitude. But in India we meant one thing, and 
 did quite another. Our object was trade, and in this 
 we were not particularly successful. War with the 
 native states we did not think of at all till a 
 hundred years after our first settlement, and then 
 we thought only of such war as might support our 
 trade; after this time again more than half a cen- 
 tury passed before we thought of any considerable 
 territorial acquisitions; the nineteenth century had 
 almost begun before the policy of acquiring an 
 ascendency over the native states was entered upon ; 
 and our present supreme position cannot be said to 
 have been attained before the Governor-Generalship 
 of Lord Dalhousie little more than a quarter of a 
 century ago. All along we have been looking one 
 way and moving another. In a case like this the 
 chronological method of study is the worst that can be 
 chosen. If we were to trace the history of the East 
 India Company from year to year, carefully putting 
 ourselves at the point of view of the Directors, we 
 should be doing all in our power to blind ourselves. 
 For it has not been the will of the Directors, but 
 other forces overruling their will, forces against 
 which they struggled in vain, by which the Indian 
 Empire has been brought into existence. For this 
 reason it is almost necessary, as for other reasons it 
 is convenient, to begin at the other end, and before 
 considering how the Empire grew to its present
 
 II 
 
 THE INDIAN EMPIRE 209 
 
 greatness to inquire what at the present moment it 
 actually is. 
 
 We call this Empire a conquest, in order to mark 
 the fact that it was not acquired in any degree by 
 settlement or colonisation, but by a series of wars 
 ending in cessions of territory by the native Powers 
 to the East India Company. But let us be careful 
 how we take for granted that it is a conquest in any 
 more precise sense of the word. 
 
 Above I criticised the term "possessions of 
 England," which is so commonly applied to the 
 colonies. I asked, if by England be meant the people 
 inhabiting England and by the colonies certain 
 English people living beyond the sea, in what sense 
 can one of these populations be said to belong to the 
 other 1 ? Or if by England you mean the English 
 Government, which is also ultimately the Govern- 
 ment of the colonies, why should we speak of the 
 subjects of a Government as its possession or pro- 
 perty, unless indeed they became its subjects by 
 conquest 1 Now this criticism does not directly apply 
 to India, because India did come under the Queen's 
 government by conquest. India therefore may be 
 called a possession of England in a sense which is not 
 applicable to the colonies. Nevertheless the word con- 
 quest, which, like most of the vocabulary of war, has 
 come down to us from primitive barbaric times, may 
 easily be misunderstood. We may still ask in what 
 sense England c;:n be said to possess India. What 
 we possess we dovote in some manner to our own 
 enjoyment. If I own land, I either take the profits 
 
 ?
 
 ^10 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lkct. 
 
 of the harvest, or, if I let the land to a farmer, I get 
 rent from it. And in primitive times the conquest 
 of a country was usually followed by possession in 
 some literal sense. Sometimes the conquerors actu- 
 ally became landlords of the conquered territory or 
 of part of it, as in that conquest of Palestine which 
 we read of in the Book of Joshua, or in those Roman 
 conquests where a certain extent of confiscated land 
 was often granted out to a number of Roman citizens. 
 Now assuredly India is not a conquered country in 
 this sense. England has not seized lands in India, 
 and after displacing the native proprietors assigned 
 them to Englishmen. 
 
 There is another sense in which we may conceive 
 the condition of a conquered country. We may 
 think of it as tributary or paying tribute. Only we 
 must be careful how we understand the expression. 
 If it merely means that the people pay a tax, — in other 
 words, that they meet the expense of their own govern- 
 ment or of the army that protects their frontier, — there 
 is nothing in this peculiar to a conquered people. 
 Almost every people in some form or other pays 
 the expense of its own government. If the word 
 " tributary " is to be equivalent to " conquered " or 
 " dependent " it must mean paying something over 
 and above the expense of its government. We have 
 an example of such a tribute in modern Egypt. The 
 government of Egypt is in the hands of a Khedive 
 who pays himself handsomely out of the pockets of 
 the people ; but Egypt is tributary to the Sultan of 
 Turkey, — that is, it pays to him a sum which does not
 
 II THE INDIAN EMPIRE 211 
 
 in any shape return to the country, but simply marks 
 its relation of dependence upon the Sultan. 
 
 Such a tribute as this would mark that the country 
 which paid it was a possession of the country which 
 received it, because it seems analogous to the rent 
 which a tenant farmer pays to the landowner. Is 
 India then tributary in this sense to England? 
 Certainly not, at least not directly or avowedly. 
 Taxes are raised of course in India, as taxes are 
 raised in England, but India is no more tributary 
 than England itself. The money drawn from India 
 is spent upon the government of India, and no money 
 is levied beyond what is supposed to be necessary for 
 this purpose. 
 
 Of course it may be and often has been argued 
 that India is in many ways sacrificed to England, and 
 in particular that money is under colourable pretexts 
 extorted from her. I am not now concerned with this 
 question, because I am inquiring simply what is the 
 relation established by law between India and 
 England, and not how far that relation may by 
 abuse have been perverted. India then is not a pos- 
 session of England in the sense of being legally tribu- 
 tary to England, any more than any of our colonies 
 are so. 
 
 The truth is that, though the present relation 
 between India and England was historically created 
 by war, yet England does not, at least openly, claim 
 any rights over India in virtue of this fact. In the 
 Queen's proclamation of 1st November 1858, by 
 which the open assumption of the government by the
 
 212 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 
 
 Queen was announced, occur the express words, " We 
 hold ourselves bound to the natives of our Indian 
 territories by the same obligations of duty which bind 
 us to all our other subjects." That is, conquest 
 confers no peculiar rights, or India is not for practical 
 purposes a conquered country. 
 
 In fact, though the advance of civilisation has not 
 as yet abolished wars nor even perhaps diminished 
 the frequency of them, yet it has very much trans- 
 formed their character. Conquest is nominally still 
 possible, but the word has changed its meaning. It 
 does not now mean spoliation or the acquisition of 
 any oppressive lordship, so that the temptation to 
 make conquests is now very much diminished. Thus 
 our possession of India imposes upon us vast and 
 almost intolerable responsibilities ; this is evident ; 
 but it is not at once evident that we reap any benefit 
 from it. 
 
 We must therefore dismiss from our minds the 
 idea that India is in any practical sense of the word 
 a possession of England. In ordinary language the 
 two notions of property and government are mixed 
 up in a way that produces infinite confusion. When 
 we speak of India as " our magnificent dependency " 
 or " the brightest jewel in the English diadem, " we 
 use metaphors which have come down to us from 
 primitive ages and from a state of society which has 
 long passed away. India does indeed depend on 
 England in the sense that England determines her 
 condition and her policy and that she is governed by 
 Englishmen, but not in the sense that she renders
 
 II THE INDIAN EMPIRE 213 
 
 service to England or makes England directly richer 
 or more powerful. And thus with respect to India 
 as with respect to the colonies, the question confronts 
 us on the threshold of the subject, What is the use of 
 it? Why do we take the trouble and involve our- 
 selves in the anxiety and responsibility of governing 
 two hundred millions of people in Asia 1 
 
 Now in respect to the colonies I argued that this 
 question, however naturally it may suggest itself, is 
 perverse, unless it can be shown that our colonies are 
 too remote either to give or receive any advantage 
 from their connection with us. For they are of our 
 own blood, a mere extension of the English nationality 
 into new lands. If these lands were contiguous to 
 England, it would seem a matter of course that the 
 English population as it increases should occupy 
 them, and evidently desirable that it should do so 
 without a political separation. As they are not 
 contiguous but remote, a certain difficulty arises, but 
 it is a difficulty which in these days of steam and 
 electricity does not seem insurmountable. Now you 
 see that this argument rests entirely upon the com- 
 munity of blood between England and her colonies. 
 It does not therefore apply to India. Two races 
 could scarcely be more alien from each other than the 
 English and the Hindus. Comparative philology has 
 indeed discovered one link that had never been 
 suspected before. The language of the prevalent race 
 of India is indeed of the same family as our own 
 language. But in every other respect there is extreme 
 alienation. Their traditions do not touch ours at any
 
 214 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 point. Their religion is further removed from our 
 own even than Mohammedanism. 
 
 Our colonies, as I pointed out, were in the main 
 planted in the emptier parts of the globe, so that 
 their population is for the most part either entirely 
 English or predominantly so. I pointed out that 
 this was not the case with the colonies of Spain in 
 Central and Southern America, where the Spanish 
 settlers lived in the midst of a larger population of 
 native Indians, whom they reduced to a kind of 
 serfdom. Here then are two kinds of dependency, 
 of which the one is much more closely cognate to the 
 mother-country than the other. But both are con- 
 nected by real ties of blood with the mother-country. 
 Now India belongs to neither class, because its 
 population has no tie of blood whatever with the 
 population of England. Even if colonies had gone 
 out from England to India, they must have continued 
 insignificant in comparison to the enormous native 
 population; but there have been no such colonies. 
 England is separated from India by one of the strong- 
 est barriers that nature could set up between the two 
 countries. Nature has made the colonisation of India 
 by Englishmen impossible by giving her a climate in 
 which, as a rule, English children cannot grow up. 
 
 And thus, while the connection of England with 
 her colonies is in .the highest degree natural, her 
 connection with India seems at first sight at least to 
 be in the highest degree unnatural. There is no 
 natural tie whatever between the two countries. No 
 community of blood ; no community of religion, for
 
 II THE INDIAN EMPIRE 215 
 
 we come as Christians into a population divided 
 between Brahminism and Mohammedanism. And 
 lastly, no community of interest, except so much 
 as there must be between all countries, viz. the 
 interest that each has to receive the commodities of 
 tiie other. For otherwise what interest can England 
 and India have in common 1 The interests of England 
 lie in Europe and in the New World. India, so far 
 as so isolated a country can have foreign interests at 
 all, looks towards Afghanistan, Persia, and Central 
 Asia, countries with which, except through India, we 
 should scarcely ever have had any communication. 
 
 The English conquest of India has produced results 
 even more strange than the Spanish conquest of 
 America, though the circumstances of it were, I 
 think, considerably less astonishing and romantic. 
 Whether we think of it with satisfaction or not, it is 
 the most striking and remarkable incident in the 
 modern part of the history of England. In a history 
 of modern England it deserves a prominent place in 
 the main narrative, and not the mere digression or 
 occasional notice which pur historians commonly 
 assign to it. But how important it is we shall not 
 see so long as we only consider its strangeness ; we 
 must also bear in mind its enormous magnitude. 
 Much has been written to show the immensity of the 
 task we have undertaken in India ; yet with surpris- 
 ingly little effect. Figures seem only to paralyse the 
 imagination when they pass a certain magnitude, and 
 thus, while in our domestic politics we grow the more 
 interested the larger the question at issue is shown to
 
 216 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 be, we cease to be interested when our ' Empire with 
 its much vaster questions is brought before us. Point 
 out that this Indian Empire is something like what 
 the Eoman Empire was at its greatest extension, and 
 that we are responsible for it; the only effect pro- 
 duced is a disinclination to attend to the subject. Can 
 we seriously justify this 1 ? I fancy we are in some 
 degree misled by an impression that in the outlying 
 parts of the world large dimensions are a matter 
 of course and make no difference. Thus if India is 
 large, Canada and Australia are still larger, and yet we 
 do not find that the affairs of Canada and Australia 
 require much of our attention. True, but we over- 
 look an important distinction. In Canada and 
 Australia the territory is vast, but the population 
 exceedingly small ; the country also is not merely 
 distant from us, as India is, but also distant from all 
 the great Powers with which we might possibly en- 
 gage in war. India really belongs to quite a different 
 category of countries. It is a country as populous 
 and in some large regions more populous than the 
 most thickly peopled parts, of Europe. It is a country 
 in which we have over and over again had to wage 
 war on a grand scale. Thus in the second Mahratta 
 war of 1818 Lord Hastings brought into the field 
 more than a hundred thousand men. And, distant 
 as it may seem, it is by no means out of the range of 
 European politics. Thus throughout the eighteenth 
 century it was part of the chess-board on which 
 France and England played out their game of skill. 
 Again since about 1830 India, and India almost alone,
 
 II THE INDIAN EMPIRE 217 
 
 has involved us in differences with Russia, and given 
 us a most intimate interest in the solution of the 
 Eastern Question. 
 
 India therefore is rather to be compared to the 
 countries of Europe than to the outlying, thinly- 
 peopled countries of the New World. Let us then 
 contemplate a little the magnitude of this Empire, 
 and take some pains to realise it by comparing it to 
 other magnitudes with which we are familiar. Let 
 us think then of Europe without Eussia — that is, of 
 all that system of countries which a few centuries 
 ago formed almost the whole scene of civilised history, 
 all the European countries of the Roman Empire 
 plus the whole of Germany, the Slavonic countries 
 which are outside Russia, and the Scandinavian 
 countries. India may be roughly said to be about 
 equal both in area and population to all these coun- 
 tries taken together. This Empire, which we now 
 govern from Downing Street, and whose budget forms 
 the annual annoyance and despair of the House of 
 Commons, is considerably larger and more populous 
 than the Empire of Napoleon when it had reached 
 its utmost extent. And, as I have said already, it is 
 an Empire of the same kind, not some vast empty 
 region like the old Spanish Dominion in South 
 America, but a crowded territory with an ancient 
 civilisation, with languages, religions, philosophies 
 and literatures of its own. 
 
 I think perhaps it may assist conception if I split 
 up this immense total into parts. The reason, no 
 doubt, why the thought of all Europe together im-
 
 218 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leci. 
 
 presses us so much, is that there passes before the 
 mind a series of six or seven great states which must 
 be added together to make up Europe. Our con- 
 ception of Europe is the sum of our conceptions of 
 England, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, and 
 Greece. Perhaps the name India would strike as 
 majestically upon the ear, if in like manner it were to 
 us the name of a grand complex total. Let me say 
 then that in the first place it has one region which in 
 population far exceeds any European State except 
 Eussia, and exceeds the United States. This is the 
 region governed by the Lieutenant-Governor of 
 Bengal. Its population is stated actually to exceed 
 66,000,000 on an area considerably less than that of 
 France. Then come two other regions which may 
 be compared with European States. These are the 
 North- West Provinces, which answer pretty well to 
 Great Britain without Ireland, being in area some- 
 what smaller, but somewhat more populous. Next 
 comes the Madras Presidency, larger in area — being 
 about equal to Great Britain with Ireland — but less 
 populous, being about equal in population to the 
 Kingdom of Italy. The population in all these three 
 cases rises far above 20,000,000. Then come two 
 provinces in which it approaches 20,000,000, the 
 Punjab, which is somewhat superior in population to 
 Spain, and the Bombay Presidency, which is slightly 
 inferior, though in area it is equal to Great Britain 
 and Ireland. In the next class come Oude, which is 
 rather superior, and the Central Provinces, which are 
 about equal, to Belgium and Holland taken together.
 
 II THE INDIAN EMPIRE 219 
 
 These provinces, together with some others of less 
 importance, make up that part of India which is 
 directly under English government. But the region 
 which is practically under English supremacy is still 
 larger. When we speak of the Empire of Napo- 
 leon, we do not think only of the territory directly 
 governed by his officials; we reckon -in States 
 nominally sovereign, which were practically under 
 his ascendency. Thus the Confederation of the Rhine 
 consisted of a number of German states which had by 
 a formal act consented to regard Napoleon as their 
 Protector. Now England has a similar dependent 
 confederation in India, and this makes an additional 
 item which, reckoned by population, is superior to 
 the United States. 
 
 Is it possible that besides our terrible hive of 
 population at home, giving rise to most anxious 
 politics, and besides our vast colonial Empire, we are 
 also responsible for another Empire densely peopled 
 and about equal to Europe ? Is it possible that about 
 this Empire we neither have, nor care to acquire, the 
 most rudimentary information 1 Would it be possible 
 for us, even if we did try to acquire such information, 
 to form a rational opinion about affairs so remote and 
 complicated 1 
 
 There have been great Empires before now, but 
 the government of them has generally been in the 
 hands of a few experts. Eome was forced to commit 
 her Empire to the care of a single irresponsible 
 statesman, and could not even reserve for herself her 
 old civic liberties. In the United States we do indeed
 
 220 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 see a boundless dominion successfully guided under a 
 democratic system. But the territory in this case, 
 extensive though it be, is all compact and continuous, 
 and the population, however large it may come to be, 
 will still be in the main homogeneous. If the United 
 States should come into the possession of countries 
 separated from her by the sea, and of different nation- 
 ality, her position in the world would be at once 
 essentially altered. What is unprecedented in the 
 relation of England to India is the attempt to rule, 
 not merely by experts, but by a system founded on 
 public opinion, a population not merely distant, but 
 wholly alien, wholly unlike in ways of thinking, to 
 the sovereign public. Public opinion is necessarily 
 guided by a few large, plain, simple ideas. When the 
 great interests of the country are plain, and the great 
 maxims of its government unmistakable, it may be 
 able to judge securely even in questions of vast 
 magnitude. But public opinion is liable to be be- 
 wildered when it is called on to enter into subtleties, 
 draw nice distinctions, apply one set of principles 
 here and another set there. Such bewilderment our 
 Indian Empire produces. It is so different in kind 
 both from England itself and from the Colonial 
 Empire that it requires wholly different principles of 
 policy. And therefore public opinion does not know 
 what to make of it, but looks with blank indignation 
 and despair upon a Government which seems utterly 
 un-English, which is bureaucratic and in the hands 
 of a ruling race, Avhich rests mainly on military force, 
 which raises its revenue, not in the European fashion,
 
 II THE INDIAN EMPIRE 221 
 
 but by monopolies of salt and opium, and by taking 
 the place of a universal landlord, and in a hundred 
 other ways departs from the traditions of England. 
 
 And it may be asked, For what end ? As I have 
 remarked, the connection itself is not directly profitable 
 to England. We must look therefore to advantages 
 which may come to us from it indirectly. We find 
 then that the trade between the two countries has 
 gradually grown to be very great indeed. The loss 
 of the Indian trade which might follow if the country 
 fell again into anarchy or under a Government which 
 closed its harbours to our merchants, would amount 
 to ,£60,000,000 annually. But we are to set over 
 against this advantage the great burden which is 
 imposed by India upon our foreign policy. In the 
 present state of the world a dependency held by 
 military force may easily be like a millstone round 
 the neck of a nation; for it may lock up an army 
 which the nation may grievously need for other 
 purposes or even for defence. We all conceive with 
 what satisfaction Bismarck at the present moment 
 sees France undertaking schemes of conquest in Africa 
 and Asia. Now if England, which is not a military 
 state, had in reality to hold down by English military 
 force a population of two hundred millions, it is 
 needless to say that such a burden would overwhelm 
 us. This is not so, owing to a fundamental peculiarity 
 of the Indian Empire, upon which I shall enlarge 
 later, the peculiarity, namely, that in the main England 
 conquered India and now keeps it by means of Indian 
 troops paid with Indian money. We keep there only
 
 222 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 an English army of 65,000 men. But this is by no 
 means the whole of the burden which India lays upon 
 us. India, at the same time that she locks up an 
 army, more than doubles the difficulty of our foreign 
 policy. The supreme happiness for a country of 
 course is to be self-contained, to have no need to 
 inquire what other nations are doing. Very wisely 
 did Washington advise his countrymen to retain this 
 happiness as long as they could. England cannot 
 well enjoy it, but if she did not possess India she 
 might enjoy it comparatively. Her colonies as yet 
 have for the most part only peaceful or insignificant 
 or barbarous neighbours, and our old close interest 
 in European struggles has passed away. But we 
 continue to be anxiously interested in the East. 
 Every movement in Turkey, every new symptom in 
 Egypt, any stirring in Persia or Transoxiana or 
 Burmah or Afghanistan, we are obliged to watch 
 with vigilance. The reason is that we have possession 
 of India. Owing to this we have a leading position 
 in the system of Asiatic Powers, and a leading 
 interest in the affairs of all those countries which lie 
 upon the route to India. This and this only involves 
 us in that permanent rivalry with Russia, which is to 
 England in the nineteenth century what the competi- 
 tion with France for the New World was to her in 
 the eighteenth. 
 
 My object in this lecture is to lay before you the 
 Indian question in its broad outlines. I have put 
 together at the outset some considerations which 
 might incline us to take an anxious or desponding
 
 n THE INDIAN EMPIRE 223 
 
 view of it. If it is doubtful whether, we reap any 
 balance of advantage from our Indian Empire, and if 
 it is not doubtful that it involves us in enormous 
 responsibilities and confuses our minds with problems 
 of hopeless difficulty, may we not feel tempted to 
 exclaim that it was an evil hour for England when 
 the daring genius of Give turned a trading company 
 into a political Power, and inaugurated a hundred 
 years of continuous conquest 1 Must we not at least 
 hold, as many among the distinguished statesmen 
 who have devoted their lives to Indian affairs have 
 held, that the Empire is ephemeral, and that the 
 time is not far off when we must withdraw from 
 the country ? 
 
 On the other hand the wisest men may easily be 
 mistaken when they speculate on such a subject. 
 The end of our Indian Empire is perhaps almost as 
 much beyond calculation as the beginning of it. 
 There is no analogy in history either for one or the 
 other. If the government of India from a remote 
 island seems a thing which can never be permanent, 
 we know that it once seemed a thing which could 
 never take place, until it did take place. At any 
 rate, if the Empire is to fall, we ought to be able to 
 point already to proofs of its decline. Proofs certainly 
 we can show of the immense difficulties it has to con- 
 tend with, but scarcely symptoms of anything which 
 can be called decline. And again if we should admit, 
 or not deny, that England has not been repaid in any 
 way for the trouble that this dependency has cost 
 her, the admission by itself would have no practical
 
 224 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 importance. Between such an admission and any 
 practical project, such as that of abandoning the 
 Empire, there is a gulf fixed. 
 
 It is possible to hold that England would be better 
 off now had she founded no such Empire at all, had 
 she remained standing, as a mere merchant, on the 
 threshold of India, as she stands now on that of 
 China. But the abandonment of India is an idea 
 which even those who believe that we shall one day 
 be driven to it are not accustomed to contemplate as 
 a practical scheme. There are some deeds which, 
 though they had been better not done, cannot be 
 undone. A time may conceivably come when it may 
 be practicable to leave India to herself, but for the 
 present it is necessary to govern her as if we were to 
 govern her for ever. Why so 1 Not mainly on our 
 own account. Some tell us that our honour requires 
 us to maintain the acquisition which our fathers 
 made with their blood, and which is the great 
 military trophy of the nation. To my miud there is 
 something monstrous in all such notions of honour ; 
 they belong to that primitive and utterly obsolete 
 class of notions, of which I have spoken before, 
 which rest upon a confusion between the ideas of 
 government and property. Nothing is to be con- 
 sidered for a moment but the well-being of India 
 and England, and of the two countries India, as being 
 by much the more nearly interested, by much the 
 larger, and by much the poorer, is to be considered 
 before England. But on these very principles, and 
 especially on account of the interest of India, it is
 
 II 
 
 THE INDIAN EMPIRE 225 
 
 impossible for the present to think of abandoning 
 the task we have undertaken there. We might do 
 so if our own interest alone were considered. Not 
 that it would be easy, now that such a vast trade has 
 grown up and such vast sums of English money, 
 particularly in these latest years, have been invested 
 in the country. But it would be possible. On the 
 other hand if we consider the interest of India, it 
 appears wholly impossible. Much may be plausibly 
 alleged against the system under which we govern 
 India. It may be doubted whether it is altogether 
 suited to the people, whether it is not needlessly 
 expensive, and so forth. We may feel a reasonable 
 anxiety as to what will come in the end of this 
 unparalleled experiment. But I think it would be a 
 very extreme view to deny that our Government is 
 better than any other which has existed in India 
 since the Mussulman conquest. If it should ulti- 
 mately fail more than any one imagines, we could 
 never leave the country in a state half so deplorable 
 as that in which we found it. A very moderately 
 good Government is incomparably better than none. 
 The sudden withdrawal even of an oppressive 
 Government is a dangerous experiment. Some 
 countries, no doubt, there are, which might pass 
 through such a trial without falling into anarchy. 
 Thinly-peopled countries, or countries whose inhabit- 
 ants had been long accustomed to much freedom of 
 action, might be trusted to devise for themselves 
 very speedily as much government as might be 
 necessary. But what a mockery to lay doAvn such 
 
 Q
 
 226 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 propositions with India in view ! When we began 
 to take possession of the country, it was already in 
 a state of wild anarchy such as Europe has perhaps 
 never known. What government it hud was pretty 
 invariably despotic, and was generally in the hands 
 of military adventurers, depending on a soldiery 
 composed of bandits whose whole vocation was 
 plunder. The Mahratta Power covered the greater 
 part of India and threatened at once Delhi and 
 Calcutta, while it had its headquarters at Poonah, 
 and yet this power was but an organisation of 
 pillage. Meanwhile in the North, Nadir Shah 
 rivalled Attila or Tamerlane in his devastating 
 expeditions. It may be said that this was only a 
 passing anarchy produced by the dissolution of the 
 Mogul Empire. Even so, it would show that India 
 is not a country which can endure the withdrawal 
 of Government. But have we not a somewhat 
 exaggerated idea of the Mogul Empire? Its great- 
 ness was extremely short-lived, and in the Deccan it 
 seems never really to have established itself. The 
 anarchy which Clive and Hastings found in India 
 was not so exceptional a state of things as it might 
 seem. Probably it was much more intense at that 
 moment than ever before, but a condition of anarchy 
 seems almost to have been chronic in India since 
 Mahmoud, and to have been but suspended for a 
 while in the Northern half by Akber and Shah 
 Jehan. 
 
 India then is of all countries that which is least 
 capable of evolving out of itself a stable Government
 
 II THE INDIAN EMPIKE 227 
 
 And it is to be feared that our rule may have 
 diminished what little power of this sort it may have 
 originally possessed. For our supremacy has neces- 
 sarily depressed those classes which had anything of 
 the talent or habit of government. The old royal 
 races, the noble classes, and in particular the Mussul- 
 mans who formed the bulk of the official class under 
 the Great Moguls, have suffered most and benefited 
 least from our rule. This decay is the staple topic 
 of lamentation among those who take a dark view of 
 our Empire ; but is it not an additional reason why 
 the Empire should continue 1 ? Then think of the 
 immense magnitude of the country ; think too that 
 we have undermined all fixed moral and religious 
 ideas in the intellectual classes by introducing the 
 science of the West into the midst of Brahminical 
 traditions. When you have made all these reflec- 
 tions, you will see that to withdraw our Government 
 from a country which is dependent on it, and which 
 we have made incapable of depending upon anything 
 else, would be the most inexcusable of all conceivable 
 crimes, and might possibly cause the most stupendous 
 of all conceivable calamities. 
 
 Such then in its broad outline is the Indian 
 Question of the present day. In what way did such 
 a question grow up ? How did we come into posses- 
 sion of a dependency so enormous 1
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 HOW WE CONQUERED INDIA 
 
 The question how we conquered India does not at 
 all resemble the questions which I raised in the last 
 course. Our colonists in the new world occupied, to 
 be sure, a vast territory, but it was comparatively 
 an empty territory. The difficulties they encountered 
 arose not so much from the natives, as from the 
 rivalry of other European nations. By what degrees 
 and from what causes we gained the advantage over 
 these rivals, I partly discussed. It was a question to 
 which the answer was not at once obvious, but at the 
 same time not extremely difficult to find. On the 
 other hand it is at first sight extremely perplexing 
 to understand how we could conquer India. Here 
 the population was dense, and its civilisation, though 
 descending along a different stream of tradition, was 
 as real and ancient as our own. We have learnt 
 from many instances in European history to think it 
 almost impossible really to conquer an intelligent 
 people wholly alien in language and religion from its
 
 LECT. ill HOW WE CONQUERED INDIA 229 
 
 invaders. The whole power of Spain could not in 
 eighty years conquer the Dutch provinces with their 
 petty population. The Swiss could not be conquered 
 in old time, nor the Greeks the other day. Nay, at 
 the very time when we made the first steps in the 
 conquest of India, we showed ourselves wholly un- 
 able to reduce to obedience three millions of our own 
 race in America, who had thrown off their allegiance 
 to the English Crown. What a singular contrast is 
 here ! Never did the English show so much languid 
 incompetence as in the American War, so that it 
 might have seemed evident that their age of greatness 
 was over, and that the decline of England had begun. 
 But precisely at this time they were appearing as 
 irresistible conquerors in India, and showing a superior- 
 ity which led them to fancy themselves a nation of 
 heroes. How is the contradiction to be explained 1 
 
 History is studied with so little seriousness, with 
 so little desire or expectation of arriving at any solid 
 result, that the contradiction passes almost unre- 
 marked, or at most gives occasion to a triumphant 
 reflection that after all there was life in us yet. 
 And indeed it may seem that, however difficult of 
 explanation the fact may be, there can be no doubt 
 of it. Over and over again in India, at Plassey, at 
 Assaye, and on a hundred other battlefields, our 
 troops have been victorious against great odds, so 
 that here at least it seems that we may indulge our 
 national self-complacency without restraint, and feel 
 that at any rate in comparison with the Hindu races 
 we really are terrible fellows i
 
 230 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 But does this hypothesis really remove the diffi- 
 culty 1 Suppose that one Englishman is really equal 
 as a soldier to ten or twenty Hindus, can we even 
 then conceive the whole of India conquered by the 
 English *? There were not more than twelve millions 
 of Englishmen at the time when the conquest began, 
 and it was made in a period when England had other 
 wars on her hands, dive's career falls partly in the 
 Seven Years' War of Europe, and the great annexa- 
 tions of Lord Wellesley were made in the midst oi 
 our war with Napoleon. We are not a military 
 state. We did not in those times profess to be able 
 to put on foot at any moment a great expeditionary 
 army. Accordingly in our European wars we usually 
 confined ourselves to acting with our fleet, while for 
 hostilities on land it was our practice to subsidise 
 any ally we might have among the military states, 
 at one time Austria, at another Prussia. How then 
 in spite of all this weakness by land could wc manage 
 to conquer during this time the greater part of India, 
 an enormous region of nearly a million square miles 
 and inhabited by two hundred millions of people 1 
 What a drain such a work must have made upon 
 our military force, what a drain upon our treasury ! 
 And yet somehow the drain seems never to have 
 been perceived. Our European wars involved us in 
 a debt that we have never been able to pay. But 
 our Indian wars have not swelled the National Debt. 
 The exertions we had to make there seem to have 
 left no trace behind them. 
 
 It seems then that there must be something wrong
 
 Ill HOW WE CONQUERED INDIA 231 
 
 in the conception which is current, that a number of 
 soldiers went over from England to India, and there 
 by sheer superiority in valour and intelligence con- 
 quered the whole country. In the last great 
 Mahratta war of 1818 we had, it appears, more than 
 a hundred thousand men in the field. But what ! 
 that was the time of mortal exhaustion that succeeded 
 the great Napoleonic War. Is it possible that only 
 three years after the battle of Waterloo we were at 
 war again on a vast scale and had a much greater 
 army in India than Lord Wellington had in Spain 1 
 Again at the present moment the army kept in foot 
 in India amounts to two hundred thousand men. 
 What ! two hundred thousand English soldiers ! 
 And yet we are not a military State ! 
 
 You see of course what the fact is that I point at. 
 This Indian army, we all know, does not consist of 
 English soldiers, but mainly of native troops. Out 
 of 200,000 only 65,000, or less than a third, are 
 English. And even this proportion has only been 
 established since the mutiny, after which catastrophe 
 the English troops were increased and the native 
 troops diminished in number. Thus I find that at 
 the time of the mutiny there were 45,000 European 
 troops to 235,000 native troops in India — that is, less 
 than a fifth. In 1808 again I find only 25,000 
 Englishmen to 1 30,000 natives — that is, somewhat less 
 than" a fifth. The same proportion obtained in 1773 
 at the time of the Regulating Act, when British 
 India first took shape. At that date the Company's 
 army consisted of 9000 Europeans and 45,000 natives.
 
 232 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 Before that I find the proportion of Europeans even 
 lower — about a seventh ; and if we go back to the 
 very beginning we find that from the first the Indian 
 army was rather a native than a European force. 
 Thus Colonel Chesney opens his historical view of 
 it in these words : " The first establishment of the 
 Company's Indian Army may be considered to date 
 from the year 1748, when a small body of sepoys 
 was raised at Madras after the example set by the 
 French, for the defence of that settlement. ... At 
 the same time a small European force was raised, 
 formed of such sailors as could be spared from the 
 ships on the coast and of men smuggled on board the 
 Company's vessels in England by the crimps." 
 
 In the early battles of the Company by which its 
 power was decisively established, at the siege of 
 Arcot, at Plassey, at Buxar, there seem almost always 
 to have been more sepoys than Europeans on the side 
 of the Company. And let us observe further that we 
 do not hear of the sepoys as fighting ill, or of the 
 English as bearing the whole brunt of the conflict. 
 No one who has remarked the childish eagerness with 
 which historians indulge their national vanity, will 
 be surprised to find that our English writers in 
 describing these battles seem unable to discern the 
 sepoys. Read Macaulay's Essay on Clive ; every- 
 where it is " the imperial people," " the mighty 
 children of the sea," "none could resist Clive and his 
 Englishmen." But if once it is admitted that the 
 sepoys always outnumbered the English, and that 
 they kept pace with the English in efficiency as
 
 IH HOW WE CONQUERED INDIA 233 
 
 soldiers, the whole theory which attributes our 
 successes to an immeasurable natural superiority in 
 valour falls to the ground. In those battles in which 
 our troops were to the enemy as one to ten, it will 
 appear that if we may say that one Englishman 
 showed himself equal to ten natives, we may also say 
 that one sepoy did the same. It follows that, though 
 no doubt there was a difference, it was not so much a 
 difference of race as a difference of discipline, of 
 military science, and also no doubt in many cases a 
 difference of leadership. 
 
 Observe that Mill's summary explanation of the 
 conquest of India says nothing of any natural supe- 
 riority on the part of the English. "The two 
 important discoveries for conquering India were : 
 1st, the weakness of the native armies against 
 European discipline ; 2ndly, the facility of imparting 
 that discipline to natives in the European service." 
 He adds : " Both discoveries were made by the 
 French." 
 
 And even if we should admit that the English 
 fought better than the sepoys, and took more than 
 their share in those achievements which both per- 
 formed in common, it remains entirely incorrect to 
 speak of the English nation as having conquered the 
 nations of India. The nations of India have been 
 conquered by an army of which on the average about 
 a fifth part was English. But we not only exaggerate 
 our own share in the achievement ; we at the same 
 time entirely misconceive and misdescribe the achieve- 
 ment itself. For from what race were the other four
 
 234 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 fifths of the army drawn ? From the natives of India 
 themselves ! India can haixlly be said to have been 
 conquered at all by foreigners ; she has rather 
 conquered herself. If we were justified, which we 
 are not, in personifying India as we personify France 
 or England, we could not describe her as over- 
 whelmed by a foreign enemy ; we should rather have 
 to say that she elected to put an end to anarchy by 
 submitting to a single Government, even though 
 that Government was in the hands of foreigners. 
 
 But that description would be as false and mis- 
 leading as the other, or as any expression which 
 presupposes India to have been a conscious political 
 whole. The truth is that there was no India in the 
 political, and scarcely in any other, sense. The word 
 was a geographical expression, and therefore India 
 was easily conquered, just as Italy and Germany fell 
 an easy prey to Napoleon, because there was no 
 Italy and no Germany, and not even any strong 
 Italian or German national feeling. Because there 
 was no Germany, Napoleon was able to set one 
 German state against another, so that in fighting 
 with Austria or Prussia he had Bavaria and Wiirttem- 
 berg for allies. As Napoleon saw that this means of 
 conquest lay ready to his hand in Central Europe, so 
 the Frenchman Dupleix early perceived that this road 
 to empire in India lay open to any European state 
 that might have factories there. He saw a condition 
 of chronic war between one Indian state and another, 
 and he perceived that by interfering in their quarrels 
 the foreigner might arrive to hold the balance be-
 
 in HOW WE CONQUEIiED INDIA 235 
 
 tween them. He acted upon this view, and accord- 
 ingly the whole history of European Empire in India 
 begins with the interference of the French in the 
 war of succession in Hyderabad that broke out on the 
 death of the great Nizam ul Mulk (1748). 
 
 The fundamental fact then is that India had no 
 jealousy of the foreigner, because India had no sense 
 whatever of national unity, because there was no 
 India, and therefore, properly speaking, no foreigner. 
 So far, as I have pointed out, parallel examples may 
 be found in Europe. But we must imagine a much 
 greater degree of political deadness in India than in 
 Germany eighty years ago, if we would understand 
 the fact now under consideration, the fact namely 
 that the English conquered India by means of a 
 sepoy army. In Germany there was scarcely any 
 German feeling, but there was a certain amount, 
 though not a very great amount, of Prussian feeling, 
 Austrian feeling, Bavarian feeling, Suabian feeling. 
 Napoleon is able to set Bavaria against Austria or 
 both against Prussia, but he does not attempt to set 
 Bavaria or Austria or Prussia against itself. To 
 speak more distinctly, he procures by treaties that 
 the Elector of Bavaria shall furnish a contingent to 
 the army which he leads against Austria; but he 
 does not, simply by offering pay, raise an army of 
 Germans and then use them in the conquest of 
 Germany. This would be the exact parallel to what 
 has been witnessed in India. A parallel to the fact 
 that India has been conquered by an army of which 
 four-fifths were natives and only one -fifth English.
 
 236 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LEOT. 
 
 would be found in Europe, if England had invaded 
 France, and then by offering good pay had raised an 
 army of Frenchmen large enough to conquer the 
 country. The very idea seems monstrous. What ! 
 you exclaim, an army of Frenchmen quietly under- 
 take to make war upon France ! And yet, if you 
 reflect, you will see that such a thing is abstractedly 
 quite possible, and that it might have been witnessed 
 if the past history of France had been different. We 
 can imagine that a national feeling had never sprung 
 up in France ; this we can easily imagine, because we 
 know that the twelfth century is full of wars between 
 a king who reigned at Paris and another who reigned 
 at Rouen. But let us imagine further that the 
 different Governments established in different parts 
 of France were mostly foreign Governments, that in 
 fact the country had been conquered before and was 
 still living under the yoke of foreign rulers. We can 
 well understand that if in a country thus broken to the 
 foreign yoke a disturbed state of affairs supervened, 
 making mercenary war a lucrative profession, such a 
 country might come to be full of professional soldiers 
 equally ready to take service with any Government 
 and against any Government, native or foreign. 
 
 Now the condition of India was such as this. The 
 English did not introduce a foreign domination 
 into it, for the foreign domination was there already. 
 In fact we bring to the subject a fixed miscon- 
 ception. The homogeneous European community, 
 a definite territory possessed by a definite race — in 
 one word, the Nation - State, — though we assume
 
 Hi HOW WE CONQUERED INDIA 237 
 
 it as if it were a matter of course, is in fact much 
 more exceptional than we suppose, and yet it is 
 upon the assumption of such a homogeneous com- 
 munity that all our ideas of patriotism and public 
 virtue depend. The idea of nationality seems in 
 India to be thoroughly confused. The distinction of 
 national and foreign seems to be lost. Not only has 
 a tide of Mussulman invasion covered the country ever 
 since the eleventh century, but even if we go back to 
 the earliest times we still find a mixture of races, 
 a domination of race by race. That Aryan, Sanscrit- 
 speaking race which, as the creators of Brahminism, 
 have given to India whatever unity it can be said to 
 have, appear themselves as invaders, and as invaders 
 who have not succeeded in swallowing up and absorb- 
 ing the older nationalities. The older, not Indo- 
 Germanic race, has in Europe almost disappeared, 
 and at any rate has left no trace in our European 
 languages, but in India the older stratum is every- 
 where visible. The spoken languages there are not 
 mere corruptions of Sanscrit, but mixtures of Sanscrit 
 with older languages wholly different, and in the 
 south not Sanscrit at all. Brahminism too, which at 
 first sight seems universal, turns out on examination 
 to be a mere vague eclecticism, which has given a 
 show of unity to superstitions wholly unlike and 
 unrelated to each other. It follows that in India the 
 fundamental postulate cannot be granted, upon which 
 the whole political ethics of the West depend. The 
 homogeneous community does not exist there, out of 
 which the State properly so called arises. Indeed to
 
 238 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect 
 
 satisfy ourselves of this it is not necessary to travel 
 so far back into the past. It is enough to notice that 
 since the time of Mahmoud of Ghazni a steady stream 
 of Mussulman invasion has poured into India. The 
 majority of the Governments of India were Mussul- 
 man long before the arrival of the Mogul in the 
 sixteenth century. From this time therefore in most 
 of the Indian States the tie of nationality was broken. 
 Government ceased to rest upon right; the State 
 lost its right to appeal to patriotism. 
 
 In such a state of affairs what is called the conquest 
 of India by the English can be explained without 
 supposing the natives of India to be below other 
 races, just as it does not force us to regard the English 
 as superior to other races. We regard it as the duty 
 of a man to fight for his country against the foreigner. 
 But what is a man's country ? When we analyse the 
 notion, we find it presupposes the man to have been 
 bred up in a community which may be regarded as a 
 great family, so that it is natural for him to think of 
 the land itself as a mother. But if the community 
 has not been at all of the nature of a family, but has 
 been composed of two or three races hating each 
 other, if not the country, but at most the village has 
 been regarded as a home, then it is not the fault of 
 the natives of it that they have no patriotism but 
 village-patriotism. It is one thing to receive a foreign 
 yoke for the first time, and quite a different thing to 
 exchange one foreign yoke for another. 
 
 But, as I have pointed out, the surprising feature 
 in the English conquest of India is not so much that
 
 til HOW WE CONQUERED INDIA 239 
 
 it should have been made, as that it should have cost 
 England no effort and no trouble. The English people 
 have not paid taxes, the English Government has not 
 opened loans, no conscription was ever introduced, 
 nay, no drain of men was ever perceived, and no 
 difficulty was ever felt in carrying on other wars at 
 the same time, because we were engaged in conquer- 
 ing a population equal to that of Europe. This seems 
 at first sight incredible, but I have already given the 
 explanation of it. As to the finance of all these wars, 
 it falls under the general principle which applies to 
 all wars of conquest. Conquest pays its own expenses. 
 As Napoleon had never any financial difficulties, 
 because he lived at the expense of those whom he 
 vanquished in war, so the conquest of India was 
 made, as a matter of course, at the expense of India. 
 The only difficulty then is to understand how the 
 army could be created. And this difficulty too 
 disappears, when we observe that four-fifths of this 
 army was always composed of native troops. 
 
 If we fix our attention upon this all-important fact 
 we shall be led, if I mistake not, to perceive that the 
 expression " conquest," as applied to the acquisition 
 of sovereignty by the East India Company in India, 
 is not merely loose but thoroughly misleading, and 
 tempts us to class the event among events which it in 
 no way resembles. I have indeed remarked more 
 than once before that this expression, whenever it is 
 used, requires far more definition than it commonly 
 receives, and that it may bear several different 
 meanings. But surely the word is only applicable
 
 240 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 at all when it refers to some action done to one state 
 by another. There is war between two states ; the 
 army of the one state invades the other and overturns 
 the Government of it, or at least forces the Govern- 
 ment to such humiliating terms that it is practically 
 deprived of its independence ; this is conquest in the 
 proper sense. Now when we say that England has 
 conquered India, we ought to mean that something 
 of this sort has happened between England and India. 
 When Alexander the Great conquered the Persian 
 Empire, there was war between the Macedonian state 
 and the Persian, in which the latter was subjugated. 
 When Caesar conquered Gaul, he acted in the name 
 of the Roman Republic, holding an office conferred 
 on him by the senate, and commanding the army of 
 the Roman state. But nothing of this sort happened 
 in India. The King of England did not declare war 
 upon the Great Mogul or upon any Nawab or Rajah 
 in India. The English state would perhaps have had 
 no concern from first to last in the conquest of India 
 but for this circumstance, that it engaged five times 
 in war with France after the French settlements in 
 India had become considerable, and that these wars, 
 being partly waged in India, were in a certain degree 
 mixed up with the wars between the East India 
 Company and the native Powers of India. If we 
 wish clearly to understand the nature of the phe- 
 nomenon, we ought to put this circumstance, which 
 was accidental, on one side. We shall then see that 
 nothing like what is strictly called a conquest took 
 place, but that certain traders inhabiting certain sea-
 
 Ill HOW WE CONQUERED INDIA 241 
 
 port towns in India, were induced, almost forced, in 
 the anarchy caused by the fall of the Mogul Empire, 
 to give themselves a military character and employ 
 troops, that by means of these troops they acquired 
 territory and at last almost all the territory of India, 
 and that these traders happened to be Englishmen, 
 and to employ a certain, though not a large, propor- 
 tion of English troops in their army. 
 
 Now this is not a foreign conquest, but rather an 
 internal revolution. In any country when government 
 breaks down and anarchy sets in, the general law is 
 that a struggle follows between such organised powers 
 as remain in the country, and that the most powerful 
 of these sets up a Government. In France for 
 instance after the fall of the House of Bourbon in 
 1792 a new Government was set up chiefly through 
 the influence of the Municipality of Paris; this 
 Government having fallen into discredit a few years 
 later was superseded by a military Government 
 wielded by Bonaparte. Now India about 1750 was 
 in a condition of anarchy caused by a decay in the 
 Mogul Empire, which had begun at the death of 
 Aurungzebe in 1707. The imperial authority having 
 everywhere lost its force over so vast a territory, the 
 general law began to operate. Everywhere the minor 
 organised powers began to make themselves supreme. 
 These powers, after the fashion of India, were most 
 commonly mercenary bands of soldiers, commanded 
 either by some provincial governor of the falling 
 Empire, or by some adventurer who seized an 
 opportunity of rising to the command of them, or 
 
 R
 
 242 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LEOT. 
 
 lastly by some local power which had existed before 
 the establishment of the Mogul supremacy and had 
 never completely yielded to it. To give an example 
 of each kind of power, the state of Hyderabad was 
 founded by the satrap of the Great Mogul called the 
 Nizam, the state of Mysore was founded by the 
 Mussulman adventurer Hyder Ali, who rose from the 
 ranks by mere military ability, the great Mahratta 
 confederacy of chieftains headed by the Peishwa, a 
 Brahminical not a Mussulman Power, represented 
 the older India of the time before the Mogul. But 
 all these powers alike subsisted by means of mercenary 
 armies ; they lived in a state of chronic war and 
 mutual plunder such as, I suppose, has hardly been 
 witnessed in Europe except perhaps in the dissolution 
 of the Carolingian Empire. 
 
 Such a state of affairs was peculiarly favourable to 
 the rise of new powers. In other circumstances con- 
 quest presupposes what I may call a capital fund of 
 power. No one can undertake it that does not 
 already possess a recognised authority and an army. 
 In those circumstances it was otherwise. Hyder Ali 
 had nothing but his head and his right arm, and he 
 became Sultan of Mysore. For mercenary armies were 
 everywhere; they were at the service of every one who 
 could pay them or win an influence over them ; and 
 any one who commanded a mercenary army was on a 
 level with the greatest potentates of India, since in 
 the dissolution of authority the only force left was 
 military force. 
 
 Now among the different local powers in India,
 
 in HOW WE CONQUERED INDIA 243 
 
 which in such peculiar circumstances might strike for 
 empire with some chance of success, were certain 
 merchants who had factories in the seaport towns. 
 They were foreigners indeed, but, as I have pointed 
 out, this could make no difference in India, where most 
 Governments were foreign, where the Great Mogul 
 himself was a foreigner. Much rhetoric has been 
 spent on the miraculousness of the fortune of the 
 East India Company. It is true that there had been 
 no previous example of such a fortune, and that for 
 this reason it would not have occurred to any one to 
 predict such a fortune. But it was not miraculous in 
 the sense of being hard to account for or having 
 no visible cause. For the East India Company had 
 really some capital to start with. It had a command 
 of money, it had two or three fortresses, the command 
 of the sea, and it had the advantage of being a cor- 
 poration — that is, it was not liable to be killed in 
 battle or to die of a fever. We are not much 
 astonished when an individual rises from some 
 private station into empire over a great territory, 
 because this has happened often. And yet intrinsic- 
 ally it is much more astonishing. That the younger 
 son of a poor nobleman in Corsica should control the 
 greater part of Europe with despotic power, is in- 
 trinsically far more wonderful than that the East 
 India Company should conquer India, for Bonaparte 
 began without interest, without friends, without a 
 penny in his pocket, and yet he not only gained his 
 empire but lost it again in less than twenty years. In 
 like manner the rise of Hyder Ali, or of Scindiah, or
 
 244 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 of Holkar, was more wonderful and demanded more 
 of the special favour of fortune than the rise of the 
 East India Company. You see that I wish you to 
 place this event in a different class of events from 
 that in which it is commonly placed. It is not the 
 conquest of one state by another. It is not an event 
 in which two states are concerned, at least directly ; 
 it is not an event belonging to the foreign department. 
 It is an internal revolution in Indian society, and is 
 to be compared to one of those sudden usurpations or 
 coups d'4tat, by which a period of disturbance within 
 a community is closed. Let us imagine for a 
 moment that the merchants who rose to power had 
 not been foreign at all, — the nature of the event is not 
 thereby altered. We may suppose that a number of 
 Parsee merchants in Bombay, tired of the anarchy 
 which disturbed their trade, had subscribed together 
 to establish fortresses and raise troops, and then 
 that they had had the good fortune to employ able 
 generals. In that case they too might have had their 
 Plassey and their Buxar; they too might have ex- 
 torted from the Great Mogul the Dewannee, or 
 financial administration of a province, and so laid the 
 foundations of an Empire, which might in time have 
 extended over all India. In that case we should have 
 had substantially the same event, but it would have 
 appeared clearly in its true light. We should have 
 recognised it as having the nature of an internal 
 revolution, as being the effect of the natural struggle 
 which every community makes to put down the 
 anarchy which is tearing it to pieces.
 
 in HOW WE CONQUERED INDIA 245 
 
 In such an event as that there would have been 
 nothing very miraculous, and yet the rise of the East 
 India Company was much less miraculous. For the 
 Company was closely connected with Europe, and 
 could call in the military science and discipline of 
 Europe, which was evidently superior to that of India. 
 That same Frenchman Dupleix, who laid down so 
 clearly the theory of the conquest of India, perceived 
 that the native armies could not for a moment stand 
 before European troops, but he perceived also that 
 the native of India was quite capable of receiving 
 European discipline and learning to fight with 
 European efficiency. This then was the talisman 
 which the Conqjanj^ possessed, and which enabled 
 it not merely to hold its own among the Powers of 
 India but to surpass them, — not some incommunic- 
 able physical or moral superiority, as we love to 
 imagine — but a superior discipline and military 
 system, which could be communicated to the natives 
 of India. 
 
 Beyond this they had another great advantage. 
 They did not, to be sure, represent the English State, 
 but yet their connection with England was of infinite 
 service to them. They had indeed to procure in 
 the main for themselves the money and the men by 
 which India was conquered. But as a chartered 
 Company which had the monopoly of English trade 
 in India and China, they were an object of interest 
 to the English Government and to Parliament. It 
 several times happened that the war by which they 
 acquired Indian territory wore the appearance before
 
 246 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 the English public of a war between England and 
 France, and was therefore heartily supported by the 
 nation. This is a fact of fundamental importance, 
 which has not often been sufficiently considered. 
 The English conquest of India began not in some 
 quarrel between the Company and a native Power. 
 It began in an alarming attempt made by the French 
 to get control over the Deccan, and so among other 
 things to destroy the English settlements at Madras 
 and Bombay, by interfering in the question of the 
 Hyderabad succession. Our first military step in the 
 East was to defend ourselves against the French 
 attack. And from that time for nearly seventy years 
 —that is, to the end of the war with Napoleon, — our 
 wars in India never ceased to wear more or less the 
 appearance of defensive wars against France. The 
 effect of this was that, though they were not waged 
 in the name or at the expense of the State, yet they 
 seemed to a certain extent national wars, — wars in 
 which England was deeply concerned. To a consider- 
 able extent therefore the Company's troops were 
 aided by Royal troops, and from 1785, when Lord 
 Cornwallis went out as Governor-General, an English 
 statesman of mark was sent out to preside over the 
 political and -military affairs. The attacks that were 
 made upon the Company in Parliament, the vote of 
 censure moved against Lord Clive, the impeachment 
 brought against Hastings, the successive ministerial 
 schemes for regulating the Company's affairs, one of 
 which in 1783 convulsed the whole political world of 
 England, all these interferences contributed to make
 
 in HOW WE CONQUERED INDIA 247 
 
 our Indian wars seem national wars, and to identify 
 the Company with the English nation. In this way 
 the Company was practically hacked by the credit and 
 renown of a first-class European state, though at the 
 same time that state contributed little to the wars by 
 which the Company acquired territory. 
 
 The words " wonderful," " strange," are often ap- 
 plied to great historical events, and there is no event 
 to which they have been applied more freely than 
 to our conquest of India. But an event may be 
 wonderful or strange without being necessarily at all 
 difficult to account for. The conquest of India is very 
 wonderful in the sense that nothing similar to it had 
 ever happened before, and that therefore nothing 
 similar could be expected by those who for the first 
 century and a half administered the affairs of the 
 Company in India. No doubt Job Charnock, or 
 Josiah Child, or Governor Pitt of Madras (grand- 
 father of the great Lord Chatham), or perhaps Major 
 Lawrence, never dreamed that we should one day 
 suppress the authority alike of the Peishwa of the 
 Mahrattas and of the Great Mogul himself. But the 
 event was not wonderful in the sense that it is diffi- 
 cult to discover adequate causes by which it could 
 have been produced. If we begin by remarking that 
 authority in India had fallen on the ground through 
 the decay of the Mogul Empire, that it lay there 
 waiting to be picked up by somebody, and that all 
 over India in that period adventurers of one kind or 
 another were founding Empires, it is really not sur- 
 prising that a mercantile corporation which had money
 
 248 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 to pay a mercenary force, should be able to compete 
 with other adventurers, nor yet that it should out- 
 strip all its competitors by bringing into the field 
 English military science and generalship, especially 
 when it was backed over and over again by the whole 
 power and credit of England and directed by English 
 statesmen. 
 
 The sum of what I have urged is that the conquest 
 of India is not in the ordinary sense a conquest at all, 
 because it was not the act of a state and was not 
 accomplished by the army and the money of a state. 
 I have pointed this out in order to remove the per- 
 plexity which must be caused by the statement that 
 England conquered India — that is, a population as 
 large as that of Europe and many thousand miles off, — 
 and yet that England is not a military state, though 
 this enormous conquest was achieved by England 
 without any exhausting effort and without any ex- 
 pense. The explanation of this contradiction is that 
 England did not in the strict sense conquer India, 
 but that certain Englishmen, who happened to reside 
 in India at the time when the Mogul Empire fell, had 
 a fortune like that of Hyder Ali or Kunjeet Singh, 
 and rose to supreme power there. 
 
 But yet of course in its practical result the event 
 has proved to be a conquest of India by England. 
 For now that the process is complete and the East 
 India Company has been swept away, we see that 
 Queen Victoria is Empress of India, and that a 
 Secretary, who is a member of the English Cabinet 
 and sits in the English Parliament, is responsible for
 
 in HOW WE CONQUERED INDIA 249 
 
 the administration of India. England as a state 
 did not make the acquisition, yet it has fallen to 
 England. This is merely an exemplification of the 
 general principle, which, as I pointed out above, has 
 governed all the settlements of Europeans outside 
 Europe since the time of Columbus. However far 
 they roamed, however strange and wonderful was 
 their success, they were never able at the outset to 
 shake off their European citizenship. Cortez and 
 Pizarro trampled under their feet the Governments 
 they found in America. "With scarcely an effort they 
 made themselves supreme wherever they came. But 
 though they could set at nought in Mexico the 
 authority of Montezuma, they could not resist or 
 dream of resisting the authority of Charles V., who 
 was on the other side of the Atlantic. The conse- 
 quence was that whatever conquests they made by 
 their own unassisted audacity and effort were con- 
 fiscated at once and as a matter of course by Spain. 
 So with the English in India. After 1765 the East 
 India Company held nominally a high office in the 
 Empire of the Great Mogul. But it was asserted at 
 once by the English Parliament that whatever terri- 
 torial acquisitions might be made by the Company 
 were under the control of Parliament. The Great 
 Mogul's name was scarcely mentioned in the discus- 
 sion, and the question seems never to have been 
 raised whether he would consent to the administra- 
 tion of his provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa 
 being thus conducted under the control of a foreign 
 Government. The Company made part of two states
 
 250 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. hi 
 
 at once. It was a Company under a Charter from 
 the King of England; it was a Dewan under the 
 Great Mogul. But it swept away the Great Mogul, 
 as Cortez swept away Montezuma ; on the other 
 hand it submitted all its boundless acquisitions 
 meekly to the control of England, and at last, when 
 a century was completed from the battle of Plassey, 
 it suffered itself to be abolished and surrendered 
 India to the English Government.
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 HOW WE GOVERN INDIA 
 
 I have considered the nature of the relation in which 
 India stands to England, and have tried to explain 
 how this relation could spring up without a miracle. 
 We may now advance a step and form some opinion 
 on the question whether that relation can endure 
 without a miracle, as it was created without one, or 
 whether we ought to regard the government of India 
 by the English as a kind of political tour de force, a 
 matter of astonishment while it lasts, but certain not 
 to last very long. For the great difficulty which the 
 student has to contend with in studying Indian 
 affairs is the dazzling effect of events so strange, so 
 remote, and on a scale so large, by which he is led to 
 think that ordinary causation is not to be expected 
 in India, and that in that region all is miraculous. 
 The rhetorical tone ordinarily adopted in history 
 favours this illusion ; historians are fond of parading 
 all the strange and marvellous features of the Indian 
 Empire, as if it were less their business to account
 
 252 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 for what happens than to make it seem more un- 
 accountable than before. 
 
 Thus we come to think of our ascendency in India 
 as an exception to all ordinary rules, a standing 
 miracle in politics, only to be explained by the heroic 
 qualities of the English race and their natural genius 
 for government. So long as we take this view, it is 
 of course impossible for us to form any opinion 
 concerning the duration of it. What was a miracle 
 at the beginning is likely to continue so to the end. 
 If ordinary laws are suspended, who shall say how 
 long the suspension is likely to last 1 Now I have 
 tried to look calmly at our Empire in its beginning. 
 I have examined the conquest of India, and have 
 found that it is indeed miraculous in the sense of 
 being unlike our experience — the revolutions of 
 Asiatic society would naturally be unlike those of 
 Europe — but that it is not miraculous in the sense of 
 being unaccountable, or even difficult to account for. 
 I now inquire whether our government of India is 
 miraculous in this sense. 
 
 It must certainly appear so, if we assume that 
 India is simply a conquered country and the English 
 its conquerors. Who does not know the extreme 
 difficulty of repressing the disaffection of a conquered 
 population 1 Over and over again it has been found 
 impossible, even where the superiority both in . the 
 number and efficiency of troops has been decidedly 
 on the side of the conquerors. When the Spaniards 
 failed in the Low Countries, they were the best 
 soldiers and Spain by far the greatest state in
 
 IV HOW WE GOVERN INDIA 253 
 
 Christendom. For the instinct of nationality or of 
 separate religion more than supplies the place of 
 valour or of discipline, being diffused through the 
 whole population and not confined to the fighting 
 part of it. Let us compare the parallel case of Italy. 
 Italy corresponds in the map of Europe to India in 
 that of Asia. It is a similar peninsula at the south 
 of the Continent, with a mighty mountain range 
 above it, and below this a great river flowing from 
 west to east. It is still more similar in the circum- 
 stance that for many centuries it was a prey to 
 foreign invaders. No long time ago Italy was sub- 
 ject to the ascendency and partly to the actual rule 
 of Austria. Its inhabitants were less warlike, its 
 armies much less efficient, than those of Austria, and 
 Austria was close at hand. And yet, though fighting 
 at so much disadvantage, Italy has made herself 
 free. In the field she was generally defeated, but 
 the feeling of nationality was so strong within and 
 attracted so much sympathy without, that she has 
 had her way, and the foreigner has left her to her- 
 self. Now in every point India is more advan- 
 tageously situated with respect to England than Italy 
 with respect to Austria. She has a population about 
 eight times as great as that of England ; she is at the 
 other side of the globe ; and then England does not 
 profess to be a military state. Yet to all appearance 
 she submits to the yoke ; we do not hear of rebellions. 
 In conducting the government of India we meet with 
 difficulties, but they are chieHy financial and econo- 
 mical. The particular difficulty which in Italy was
 
 254 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 
 
 too much for Austria we do not encounter ; we do 
 not feel the difficulty of repressing the disaffection of 
 a conquered nationality. Is not this miraculous? 
 Does it not seem as if all ordinary laws were sus- 
 pended in this case, or as if we might assume that 
 there are no bounds either to the submissiveness of 
 the Hindu or to the genius for government of the 
 ' English ? 
 
 What I urged above may partly prepare you for 
 the answer which I make to this question. In the 
 question it is assumed, first, that India constitutes a 
 nationality ; secondly, that this nationality has been 
 conquered by England. Now both these assumptions 
 are wholly unfounded. 
 
 First the notion that India is a nationality rests 
 upon that vulgar error which political science 
 principally aims at eradicating. We in Europe, 
 accustomed to see the map of Europe divided into 
 countries each of which is assigned to a peculiar 
 nationality, of which a special language is the badge, 
 fall into a profound misconception. We assume that 
 wherever, inside or outside of Europe, there is a 
 country which has a name, there must be a nationality 
 answering to it. At the same time we take no pains 
 to conceive clearly or define precisely what we call a 
 nationality. We content ourselves with remarking 
 that we in England should be most unwilling to be 
 governed by the French, and that the French would 
 be sorry to be governed by the Germans, and from 
 these examples we draw the conclusion that the 
 people of India must in like manner feel it a deep
 
 iv HOW WE GOVERN INDIA 255 
 
 humiliation to be governed by the English. Such 
 notions spring from mere idleness and inattention. 
 It does not need proving, it is sufficient merely to 
 state, that it is not every population which constitutes 
 a nationality. The English and the French are not 
 mere populations ; they are populations united in a 
 very special way and by very special forces. Let 
 us think of some of these uniting forces, and then ask 
 whether they operate upon the populations of India. 
 The first is community of race, or rather the belief 
 in a community of race. This, when it appears on a 
 large scale, is identical with community of language. 
 The English are those who speak English, the French 
 those who speak French. Now do the inhabitants of 
 India speak one language 1 The answer is, No more, 
 but rather less, than the inhabitants of Europe speak 
 one language ! So much has been said by philologers 
 about Sanscrit and its affinities with other languages, 
 that it is necessary to remark that it is an obvious 
 community of language, of which the test is intelligi- 
 bility, and not some hidden affinity, that acts as a 
 uniting force. Thus the Italians regarded the Aus- 
 trians as foreigners because they could not under- 
 stand German, without troubling themselves to 
 consider that German as well as Italian is an Indo- 
 European language. There is affinity among several 
 of the languages of India, as among those of Europe. 
 The Hindi languages may be compared with the 
 Romance languages of Europe, as being descendants of 
 the ancient language, but the mutual affinity of the 
 Bengali, the Marathi, the Guzerati does not help to
 
 256 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 make those who speak them one nation. The 
 Hindustani has sprung out of the Mussulman 
 conquest, hy a mixture of the Persian of the invaders 
 with the Hindi languages of the natives. But in the 
 South we find a linguistic discrepancy in India 
 greater than any which exists in Europe, for the 
 great languages of the South, Tamil, Telugu, 
 Canarese, are not Indo-European at all, and they are 
 spoken by populations far larger than those Finns 
 and Magyars of Europe whose language is not Indo- 
 European. 
 
 This fact is enough by itself to show that the 
 name India ought not to be classed with such names 
 as England or France, which correspond to nation- 
 alities, but rather with such as Europe, marking a 
 group of nationalities which have chanced to obtain a 
 common name owing to some physical separation. 
 Like Europe it is a mere geographic expression, but 
 even so, it has been much less uniformly used than 
 the name Europe. Europe at any rate has been 
 used in much the same sense since the time of 
 Herodotus, but our present use of the word India is 
 not perhaps very old. To us indeed it seems natural 
 that the whole country which is marked off from 
 Asia by the great barrier of the Himalaya and the 
 Suleiman range should have a single name. But it 
 has not always seemed so. The Greeks had but a 
 very vague idea of this country. To them for a long 
 time the word India was for practical purposes what 
 it was etymologically, the province of the Indus. 
 When they say that Alexander invaded India, they
 
 IV HOW WE GOVERN INDIA 257 
 
 refer to the Punjab. At a later time they obtained 
 some information about the valley of the Ganges, 
 but little or none about the Deccan. Meanwhile in 
 India itself it did not seem so natural as it seems to 
 us to give one name to the whole region. For there 
 is a very marked difference between the northern and 
 southern parts of it. The great Aryan community 
 which spoke Sanscrit and invented Brahminism 
 spread itself chiefly from the Punjab along the great 
 valley of the Ganges, but not at first far southward. 
 Accordingly the name Hindostan properly belongs to 
 this Northern region. In the South or peninsula we 
 find other races and non-Aryan languages, though 
 Brahminism has extended itself there too. Even the 
 Mogul Empire in its best time did not much penetrate 
 into this region. 
 
 It appears then that India is not a political name, 
 but only a geographical expression like Europe or 
 Africa. It does not mark the territory of a nation 
 and a language, but the territory of many ^nations 
 and many languages. Here is the fundamental 
 difference between India and such countries as Italy, 
 in which the principle of nationality has asserted 
 itself. Both India and Italy were divided among a 
 number of states, and so were weak in resistance to 
 the foreigner. But Italy, though divided by organ- 
 isation, was one by nationality. The same language 
 pervaded it, and out of this language had sprung a 
 great literature, which was the common possession of 
 the whole peninsula. India, as I have pointed out, 
 is no more united by language than Europe is. 
 
 s
 
 258 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LEOT. 
 
 But nationality is compounded of several elements, 
 of which a sense of kindred is only one. The sense 
 of a common interest and the habit of forming a 
 single political whole constitute another element. 
 This too has been very weak, though perhaps it has 
 not been altogether wanting in India. The country 
 might seem almost too large for it, but the barrier 
 which separates India from the rest of the world is so 
 much more effective than any barrier between one 
 part of India than another, that in spite of all 
 ethnical and local divisions some vague conception of 
 India as at least a possible whole has existed from 
 a very ancient time. In the shadowy traditionary 
 history of the times before Mahmoud of Ghazni it is 
 vaguely related of this king and that king that he 
 was lord of all India ; the dominion of some historical 
 princes in the first Mohammedan period, and finally 
 the Mogul Empire, were approximately universal. 
 But we must not exaggerate the greatness of the 
 Mogul Empire, or imagine that it answers in India 
 to the Roman Empire in Europe. Observe how short 
 its duration was. We cannot put the very com- 
 mencement of it earlier than 1524, the date of the 
 capture of Lahore by Baber — that is, in Henry VIII. 's 
 reign. When Vasco da Gama landed in India it had 
 not begun to exist, and its marked and rapid decline 
 begins in 1707 — that is, in Queen Anne's reign. 
 Between these dates there is less than two centuries. 
 But next observe that the Mogul Empire cannot be 
 properly said to have existed from the moment when 
 Baber entered India, but only from the moment wheo
 
 IV HOW WE GOVERN INDIA 259 
 
 the Indian dominion of the Moguls became extensive. 
 Now at the accession of Akber, which was in 1559, 
 or the year after that of Queen Elizabeth, this Empire 
 consisted simply of the Punjab and the country 
 round Delhi and Agra. It was not till 1576 that 
 Akber conquered Bengal, and he conquered Sind and 
 Guzerat between 1591 and 1594. His empire was 
 now extensive, but if we consider 1594 instead of 
 1524 as the date of the commencement of the Mogul 
 Empire, we reduce its duration to little more than a 
 century. 
 
 Next observe that even at this time it by no 
 means includes all India. To imagine this is to con- 
 fuse India with Hindostan. Akber's dominion in 
 1595 was limited by the Nerbudda, and he had not 
 yet set foot in the Deccan. He was Emperor of 
 Hindostan, but by no means of India. In his later 
 years he invaded the Deccan, and from this time the 
 Mogul pretensions began to extend to the Southern 
 half of India. But it cannot be said that anything 
 like a conquest of the Deccan was made before the 
 great expedition of Aurungzebe in 1683. From this 
 time we may, if we choose, speak of the Mogul 
 Empire as including the Deccan, and therefore as 
 uniting all India under one Government, though the 
 subjection of the Deccan was chiefly nominal, for the 
 Mahratta Power was already rising fast. But thus 
 the duration of the Empire is reduced to a mere 
 moment, for the Mogul Emperors purchased this ex- 
 tension of their dominion by the ruin of the Empire. 
 Within twenty-four years decay had become visible.
 
 '260 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 and, as I take it, directly in consequence of this am- 
 bitious expedition. The Empire had always wanted 
 a sufficient nucleus, and its powers were exhausted 
 by this unwise attempt to extend it. 
 
 On the whole then it may be said that India has 
 never really been united so as to form one state ex- 
 cept under the English. And they cannot be said to 
 have accomplished the work until the Governor- 
 Generalship of Lord Dalhousie thirty years ago, 
 when the Punjab, Oude, and Nagpore were incor- 
 porated with the English dominions. 
 
 Another leading element of nationality is a com- 
 mon religion. This element is certainly not altogether 
 wanting in India. The Brahminical system does 
 extend over the whole of India. Not of course that 
 it is the only religion of India. There are not less 
 than fifty millions of Mussulmans — that is, a far 
 greater number than is to be found in the Turkish 
 Empire. There is also a small number of Sikhs, who 
 profess a religion which is a sort of fusion of 
 Mohammedanism and Brahminism ; there are a few 
 Christians, and in Ceylon and Nepaul there are 
 Buddhists. But Brahminism remains the creed of 
 the enormous majority, and it has so much real 
 vitality that it has more than once resisted formidable 
 attacks. One of the most powerful of all proselytis- 
 ing creeds, Buddhism, sprang up in India itself; it 
 spread far and wide; we have evidence that it 
 flourished with vigour in India two centuries before 
 Christ, and that it was still flourishing in the seventh 
 century after Christ. Yet it has been conquered by
 
 IV HOW WE GOVERN INDIA 261 
 
 Brahminism, and flourishes now almost in every part 
 of Asia more than in the country which produced it. 
 After this victory Brahminism had to resist the 
 assault of another powerful aggressive religion, hef ore 
 which Zoroastrianism had already fallen, and even 
 Christianity had in the East had to retreat some 
 steps, Mohammedanism. Here again it held its own ; 
 Mussulman Governments overspread India, hut they 
 could not convert the people. 
 
 Now religion seems to me to be the strongest and 
 most important of all the elements which go to 
 constitute nationality ; and this element exists in 
 India. When it is said that India is to he compared 
 rather to Europe than to France or England, we may 
 remember that Europe, considered as Christendom, 
 has had and still has a certain unity, which would 
 show itself plainly and quickly enough if Europe 
 were threatened, as more than once it was threatened 
 in the Middle Ages, by a barbarian and heathen 
 enemy. It may seem then that in Brahminism 
 India has a germ, out of which sooner or later an 
 Indian nationality might spring. And perhaps it is 
 so ; but yet we are to observe that in that case the 
 nationality ought to have developed itself long since. 
 For the Mussulman im'asions, which have succeeded 
 each other through so many centuries, have supplied 
 precisely the pressure which was most likely to 
 favour the development of the germ. Why did 
 Brahminism content itself with holding its own 
 against Islam, and not rouse and unite India against 
 the invader? It never did so. Brahminical Powers
 
 262 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 have risen in India. A chieftain named Sivaji arose 
 in the middle of the seventeenth century, and 
 possessing himself of one or two hill-forts in the 
 highlands behind Bombay, founded the Mahratta 
 Power. This was a truly Hindu organisation, and, 
 as its power increased, it fell more and more under 
 the control of the Brahmin caste. The decline of 
 the Mogul Empire favoured its advance, so that in 
 the middle of the eighteenth century the ramifications 
 of the Mahratta confederacy covered almost the whole 
 of India. It might appear that in this confederacy 
 there lay the nucleus of an Indian nationality, that 
 Brahminism was now about to do for the Hindus 
 what has been done for so many other races by their 
 religion. But nothing of the kind happened. Brah- 
 minism did not pass into patriotism. Perhaps its 
 facile comprehensiveness, making it in reality not a 
 religion but only a loose compromise between several 
 religions, has enfeebled it as a uniting principle. At 
 any rate it appears that in the Mahratta movement 
 there never was anything elevated or patriotic, but 
 that it continued from first to last to be an organisa- 
 tion of plunder. 
 
 There is then no Indian nationality, though there 
 are some germs out of which we can conceive an 
 Indian nationality developing itself. It is this fact, 
 and not some enormous superiority on the part of 
 the English race, that makes our Empire in India 
 possible. If there could arise in India a nationality- 
 movement similar to that which we witnessed in 
 Italy, the English Power could not even make the
 
 IV HOW WE GOVERN INDIA 263 
 
 resistance that was made in Italy by Austria, but 
 must succumb at once. For what means can England 
 have, which is not even a military state, of resisting 
 the rebellion of two hundred and fifty millions of 
 subjects 1 Do you say, as we conquered them before, 
 we could conquer them again 1 But I explained that 
 we did not conquer them. I showed you that of the 
 army which won our victories four-fifths consisted of 
 native troops. That we were able to hire these 
 native troops for service in India, was due to the fact 
 that the feeling of nationality had no existence there. 
 Now if the feeling of a common nationality began to 
 exist there only feebly, — if, without inspiring any 
 active desire to drive out the foreigner, it only 
 created a notion that it was shameful to assist him in 
 maintaining his dominion, — from that day almost our 
 Empire would cease to exist; for of the army by 
 which it is garrisoned two-thirds consist of native 
 soldiers. Imagine what an easy task the Italian 
 patriots would have had before them, if the Austrian 
 Government which they desired to expel had de- 
 pended not upon Austrian but upon Italian soldiers ! 
 Let us suppose — not even that the native army 
 mutinied — but simply that a native army could not 
 any longer be levied. In a moment the impossibility 
 of holding India would become manifest to us ; for 
 it is a condition of our Indian Empire that it should 
 be held without any great effort. As it was acquired 
 without much effort on the part of the English state, 
 it must be retained in the same way. We are not 
 prepared to bury millions upon millions or army
 
 264 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 upon army in defending our acquisition. The 
 moment India began really to show herself what we 
 so idly imagine her to be, a conquered nation, that 
 moment we should recognise perforce the impossi- 
 bility of retaining her. 
 
 And thus the mystic halo of marvel and miracle 
 which has gathered round this Empire disappears 
 before a fixed scrutiny. It disappears when we 
 perceive that, though we are foreign rulers in India, 
 we are not conquerors resting on superior force, when 
 we recognise that it is a mere European prejudice 
 to assume that since we do not rule by the will 
 of the people of India, we must needs rule against 
 their will. The love of independence presupposes 
 political consciousness. Where this is wanting, a 
 foreign Government will be regarded passively, and 
 such a Government may continue for a long time and 
 prosper without exerting any extraordinary skill. 
 Such a passive feeling towards Government becomes 
 inveterate in a country that has been frequently con- 
 quered. Governments most oppressive have often 
 continued for centuries, and that though they had no 
 means of resisting rebellion if it should arise, simply 
 because it did not enter into the habits of the people 
 to rebel, because they were accustomed to obedience. 
 Read the history of the Russian Czars in the sixteenth 
 century. Why did a great population submit to the 
 furious caprices of Ivan the Terrible 1 The answer 
 is plain. They had been trampled under foot for two 
 centuries by the Tartars, and during that period they 
 had acquired the habit of passive submission.
 
 iv HOW WE GOVERN INDIA 265 
 
 Now ought we not to expect the population of 
 India to be in a similar condition of feeling? Of 
 liberty, of popular institutions, there exists scarcely 
 a trace in the whole extent of Indian history or 
 tradition. The Italians had the Eoman Republic 
 behind them, and it was by reading Livy to the 
 people that Rienzi roused them to rebellion. No 
 Indian demagogue could find anything similar to read 
 to the people. And for seven hundred years when 
 the English arrived, they had been governed not 
 only by despots but by foreign despots. It would be 
 marvellous indeed if in such a country the feeling 
 could have sprung up that Government exists for 
 and depends on the people, if a habit of criticis- 
 ing Government, of meditating its overthrow, or of 
 organising opposition against it, could have sprung up. 
 Nations have, as it were, very stiff joints. They do 
 not easily learn a new kind of movement ; they do 
 what their fathers did, even when they fancy them- 
 selves most original. It has been pointed out that 
 even the French Revolution strangely resembled some 
 earlier chapters in the history of France. Certainly 
 the Italian nationality-movement resembles earlier 
 Italian movements that go back beyond the age of 
 Dante. Now by this rule we should expect to find 
 the Indian population silently submitting to whatever 
 Government had the possession of power, even though 
 it were foreign, as our Government is, and even 
 though it were savagely oppressive, which we think 
 our Government is not. 
 
 Our Government of India would be a miracle on
 
 266 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 two conditions. First, if the Hindus had been accus- 
 tomed to be ruled only by their own countrymen, 
 and were familiar with the idea of resisting authority. 
 This is not the case of the Hindus, and accordingly 
 they submit, as throughout history vast populations 
 have been in the habit of submitting to Governments 
 which they could easily overthrow, as the Chinese at 
 the present day submit to a Tartar domination, as 
 the Hindus themselves submitted to the Mogul 
 domination before the English came. Indeed this 
 example of the Moguls is well adapted to show that 
 our ascendency over the Hindus is no proof of any 
 supernatural statesmanship in us. For one cannot 
 read the Mogul history without being struck with 
 the very same fact which surprises us in the history 
 of the English rule, viz. that the Moguls too con- 
 quered almost without apparent means. Baber, the 
 founder of the Empire, did not come with a mighty 
 nation at his back, or leaning on the organisation of 
 some powerful state. He had inherited a small 
 Tartar kingdom in Central Asia, but he had lost this 
 by an invasion of Osbegs. He wandered for a while 
 as a homeless adventurer, and then got possession of 
 another small kingdom in Afghanistan. Nothing 
 could be slighter than this first germ of empire. 
 This Tartar adventurer ruling Afghans in Cabul 
 founded an Empire which in about seventy years 
 extended over half India, and in a hundred years 
 more extended nominally at least over the whole. 
 I do not say that the Mogul Empire was ever 
 comparable for greatness or solidity to that which we
 
 rv HOW WE GOVERN INDIA 267 
 
 have established, but like our own, even more than 
 our own, it seems built up without hands. The 
 Company had at least English money, English military 
 science, and the immortality of a corporation. Baber 
 and his successors had none of these resources. It is 
 difficult to discover any causes which favoured the 
 growth of their Empire. All we can say is that 
 Central Asia swarmed with a wandering population 
 much inclined to the vocation of mercenary soldiers, 
 which passed very readily for pay and plunder into 
 the service of the ruler of Cabul. 
 
 Secondly, our rule would be wonderful if the two 
 hundred million Hindus had the habit of thinking all 
 together, like a single nation. If not, there is nothing 
 wonderful in it. A mere mass of individuals, uncon- 
 nected with each other by any common feelings or 
 interests, is easily subjected, because they may be 
 induced to act against each other. Now I have 
 pointed out how weak and insufficient are the bonds 
 which unite the Hindus. If you wish to see how 
 this want of internal union has operated in favour of 
 our rule, you have only to read the history of the 
 great Mutiny. It may have occurred to you when I 
 said that a mutiny or even less than a mutiny on the 
 part of our native troops would be instantly fatal to 
 our Empire, that just such a mutiny actually happened 
 in 1857, and yet that our Empire still flourishes. 
 But you are to observe that I spoke of a mutiny 
 caused by a nationality-movement spreading among 
 the people and at last gaining the army. The mutiny 
 of 1857 was not of this kind. It began in the army
 
 268 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lkot. 
 
 and was regarded passively by the people ; it was 
 provoked by definite military grievances, and not by 
 any disaffection caused by the feeling of nationality 
 against our Government as foreign. But now let us 
 ask ; in what way was this mutiny, when once it had 
 broken out, put down 1 I am afraid the only opinion 
 that has ever obtained in England has been that it 
 was crushed by the prodigious heroism of the English 
 and their infinite superiority to the Hindus. Let me 
 read you the account which Colonel Chesney gives of 
 the matter in his Indian Polity. After remarking 
 that an intensely strong esprit de coips had sprung up 
 in the Bengal Army — for observe that the Bombay 
 and Madras armies were very slightly concerned in the 
 mutiny — an esprit de corps which was purely military 
 and actually opposed to the feeling of nationality, 
 since it welded together the Hindu and the Mussul- 
 man elements (so that Colonel Chesney remarks : " In 
 ill-discipline, bitterness of feeling against their masters, 
 and confidence in their power to overthrow them, 
 there was nothing to choose between Hindu or 
 Mussulman "), he goes on to point out by what 
 counter-movement this movement was met. "For- 
 tunately the so-called Bengal Presidency was not 
 garrisoned wholly by the regular army. Four 
 battalions of Goorkhas, inhabitants of the Nepalese 
 Himalaya, who had been kept aloof from the rest of 
 the army, and had not imbibed the class-feeling which 
 animated that body, with one exception stood loyal ; 
 the conspicuous gallantry and devotedness to the 
 British cause displayed by one of these regiment?
 
 IV HOW WE GOVERN INDIA 269 
 
 especially won the admiration of their English com- 
 rades. Two extra-regiments of the line, which had 
 been recruited from the Punjab and its neighbourhood, 
 also stood firm. But the great help came from the 
 Punjab Irregular Force, as it was termed — a force, 
 however, which was organised on quite as methodical 
 and regular a footing, was quite as well-drilled and 
 vastly better disciplined, than the regular army. 
 This force consisted of six regiments of infantry and 
 five of cavalry, to which may be added four regiments 
 of Sikh local infantry, usually stationed in the Punjab. 
 These troops were directly under the orders of the 
 Government of that province, and not subject to that 
 centralised system of administration which had a 
 share in undermining the discipline of the regular 
 army. It was with these troops and the handful of 
 Europeans quartered in the upper part of India that 
 the rebellion was first met. Meanwhile the sympathies 
 of the people of the Punjab were enlisted on behalf 
 of their rulers. A lately-conquered people, whose 
 accustomed occupation had been superseded by the 
 disbandment of their army, they entertained no good- 
 will to the Hindustani garrisons which occupied their 
 country, and welcomed with alacrity the appeal to 
 arms made them to join in the overthrow of their 
 hereditary enemies. Any number of men that could 
 be required was forthcoming, and the levies thus 
 raised were pushed down to the seat of war as fast 
 as they could be equipped and drilled. And on the 
 reorganisation of the Bengal army these Punjab levies 
 have formed a large component part of it."
 
 270 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 You see, the mutiny was in a great measure put 
 down by turning the races of India against each 
 other. So long as this can be done, and so long as 
 the population have not formed the habit of criti- 
 cising their Government, whatever it be, and of 
 rebelling against it, the government of India from 
 England is possible, and there is nothing miraculous 
 about it. But, as 1 said, if this state of things should 
 alter, if by any process the population should be 
 welded into a single nationality, if our relation to it 
 should come to resemble even distantly the relation 
 of Austria to Italy, then I do not say we ought to 
 begin to fear for our dominion ; I say we ought to 
 cease at once to hope for it. I do not imagine 
 that the danger we have to apprehend is that of a 
 popular insurrection. In some of the alarmist litera- 
 ture, for instance, in Mr. Elliot's book entitled, 
 Concerning John's Indian Affairs, I find harrowing 
 pictures of the misery of the poor ryot, and then the 
 conclusion drawn as a matter of course that this 
 misery must lead to an explosion of despair, by 
 which we shall be expelled. Whether the descrip- 
 tions are true this is not the place to inquire ; but 
 granting the truth of them for argument's sake, I do 
 not find in history that revolutions are caused in this 
 way. I find great populations cowering in abject 
 misery for centuries together, but they do not rise in 
 rebellion; no, if they cannot live they die, and if 
 they can only just live, then they just live, their 
 sensibilities dulled and their very wishes crushed out 
 by want A population that rebels is a population
 
 IV HOW WE GOVERN INDIA 271 
 
 that is looking up, that has begun to hope and to 
 feel its strength. But if such a rising took place, it 
 would be put down by the native soldiery so long as 
 they have not learned to feel themselves brothers to 
 the Hindu and foreigners to the Englishman that 
 commands them. But on the other hand if this 
 feeling ever does spring up, if India does begin to 
 breathe as a single national whole — and our own rule 
 is perhaps doing more than ever was done by former 
 Governments to make this possible — then no such 
 explosion of despair, even if there were cause for it, 
 would be needed. For in that case the feeling would 
 soon gain the native army, and on the native army 
 ultimately we depend. We could subdue the mutiny 
 of 1857, formidable as it was, because it spread 
 through only a part of the army, because the people 
 did not actively sympathise with it, and because it 
 was possible to find native Indian races who would 
 fight on our side. But the moment a mutiny is but 
 threatened which shall be no mere mutiny, but the 
 expression of a universal feeling of nationality, at 
 that moment all hope is at an end, as all desire ought 
 to be at an end, of preserving our Empire. For we 
 are not really conquerors of India, and we cannot 
 rule her as conquerors ; if we undertook to do so, it 
 is not necessary to inquire whether we could succeed, 
 for we should assuredly be ruined financially by the 
 mere attempt.
 
 LECTURE V 
 
 MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA 
 
 In the last two lectures I was engaged in showing 
 that the conquest of India and the government of it 
 by the English have in a certain sense nothing 
 wonderful about them. We may fairly be proud of 
 many particular deeds done by our countrymen in 
 India, and of many men who in India have shown a 
 rare energy and talent for government, but it is a 
 mistake to suppose that the Empire itself is a stand- 
 ing proof of some vast superiority in the English 
 race over the races of India. Without assuming any 
 such vast superiority we are able to assign causes, 
 which are sufficient to account alike for the growth 
 aud for the continuance of that Empire. It is not 
 then wonderful, if by wonderful be meant simply 
 miraculous, or difficult to account for by ordinary 
 causation. 
 
 Nevertheless there is a sense in which it is not 
 only wonderful, but far more wonderful than is 
 commonly understood. It is wonderful rather in its
 
 v MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA 273 
 
 consequences than in its causes. In other words, it 
 is great in the peculiarly historical sense, for the 
 pregnancy of events, as we remarked, is what gives 
 them historical rank. By applying this test we 
 raised the rank of several events in English history, 
 especially the American Revolution, which for want 
 of dramatic or romantic interest are too little studied. 
 Let us now remark that the Indian Empire, however 
 it may seem less marvellous on close examination 
 than at first sight, will he found to gain in historic 
 interest, as much as it loses in romantic. 
 
 A vast Oriental Empire is not necessarily at all an 
 interesting or a particularly important thing. There 
 have been many such Empires in Asia, which historic- 
 ally are less important than a single Greek or Tuscan 
 city-republic. That they have been of wide extent, 
 or even of long duration, does not make them inter- 
 esting. Generally when we examine them we find 
 that they are of a low organisation, and that under 
 their weight the individual is crushed, so that he 
 enjoys no happiness, makes no progress, and pro- 
 duces nothing memorable. And perhaps when first 
 we turn our thoughts towards our Indian Empire, 
 we may receive the impression that it is not intrins- 
 ically more interesting than the average of such 
 overgrown Asiatic despotisms. We trust indeed 
 that, thanks to the control of English public opinion, 
 it may stand at a higher level of intelligence, 
 morality, and philanthropy than the Mogul Empire 
 which it has succeeded. But at best we think of it 
 as a good specimen of a bad political system. We 
 
 T
 
 274 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 are not disposed to be proud of the succession of the 
 Great Mogul. We doubt whether with all the merits 
 of our administration the subjects of it are happy. 
 We may even doubt whether our rule is preparing 
 them for a happier condition, whether it may not be 
 sinking them lower in misery, and we have our 
 misgivings that perhaps a genuine Asiatic Govern- 
 ment, and still more a national Government springing 
 up out of the Hindu population itself, might in the 
 long run be more beneficial because more congenial, 
 though perhaps less civilised, than such a foreign 
 unsympathetic government as our own. 
 
 But let us consider that it is not quite every 
 Empire which is thus uninteresting. The Roman 
 Empire for example is not so. I may say this now 
 without fear, because our views of history have 
 grown considerably less exclusive of late years. 
 There was a time no doubt when even the Roman 
 Empire, because it was despotic and in some periods 
 unhappy and half-barbarous, was thought uninterest- 
 ing. A generation ago it was the reigning opinion 
 that there is nothing good in politics but liberty, and 
 that accordingly in history all those periods are to be 
 passed over and, as it were, cancelled, in which 
 liberty is not to be found. Along with this opinion 
 there prevailed a habit of reading history, as we read 
 poetry, only for an exalted kind of pleasure, and this 
 habit led us, whenever we came to a period in which 
 there was nothing glorious or admirable, to shut the 
 book. In those days no doubt the Roman Empire 
 too was condemned. The Roman Republic was held
 
 v MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA 275 
 
 in honour for its freedom ; the earlier Eoman Empire 
 was studied for the traces of freedom still discernible 
 in it. But we used to shut the book at the end of 
 the second century, as if all that followed for some 
 ten centuries were decay and ruin ; and we did not 
 take up the story again with any satisfaction until 
 the traces of liberty began to reappear in England 
 and in the Italian republics. I suppose I may say 
 that this way of regarding history is now obsolete. 
 We do not now read it simply for pleasure, but in 
 order that we may discover the laws of political 
 growth and change, and therefore we hardly stop to 
 inquire whether the period before us is glorious or 
 dismal. It is enough if it is instructive and teaches 
 lessons not to be learned from other periods. We 
 have also learnt that there are many other good 
 things in politics besides liberty; for instance there 
 is nationality, there is civilisation. Now it often 
 happens that a Government which allows no liberty 
 is nevertheless most valuable and most favourable to 
 progress towards these other goals. Hence the 
 Eoman Empire — not only in its beginnings but in its 
 later developments up to the thirteenth century — is 
 now regarded, in spite of all the barbarism, all the 
 superstition, and all the misery, as one of the most 
 interesting of all historical phenomena. For it is 
 perceived that this Empire is by no means without 
 internal progress, without creative ideas, or without 
 memorable results. We discern in it the embryo of 
 that which is greatest and most wonderful, namely, 
 the modern brotherhood or loose federation of
 
 276 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lbot. 
 
 civilised nations. And therefore, though it was a 
 great Empire, and though it was despotically governed, 
 it is studied with infinite curiosity and attention. 
 
 This difference between the Eoman Empire and 
 other Empires founded on conquest, arises from the 
 superiority in civilisation of the conquerors to the 
 conquered. A great conquering race is 'not usually 
 advanced in civilisation. The typical conqueror is 
 some Cyrus or Zinghis Khan— that is, the chieftain of 
 a hardy tribe, which has been steeled by poverty and 
 is tempted by plunder. Before such an assailant the 
 advanced civilisation is apt to go down, so that in 
 history we see civilisation often conquered, sometimes 
 holding its ground, but not very often making great 
 conquests, until in recent times the progress of inven- 
 tion strengthened it by giving it new weapons. The 
 great conquering race of history has been one of the 
 least progressive, the Turcomans. It was from this 
 race mainly, from the hive of tribesmen, who in 
 Central Asia furnished mercenary armies to all the 
 ambitious kings of Asia, that Baber and Akber drew 
 the force with which they conquered India. Such is 
 the ordinary rule, but when an exceptional case does 
 occur, when high civilisation is spread by conquest 
 over populations less advanced, the Empire thus 
 formed has a very peculiar interest. Of such a 
 nature for instance was the conquest of the East 
 by Alexander the Great, because the Macedonians 
 through their close relationship with the Greeks 
 brought all Hellenism in their train. Accordingly, 
 though the kingdoms of the Diadochi were in them-
 
 v MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA 277 
 
 selves but military despotisms of a low type, yet the 
 strangest and most memorable effects were produced 
 by the fusion of Greek with Oriental thought. Still 
 more remarkable, because it lasted much longer and 
 because it is much better known, was the effect pro- 
 duced upon the nations of Europe by the Roman 
 Empire. In fact this great phenomenon stands out 
 in the very centre of human history, and may be 
 called the foundation of the present civilisation of 
 mankind. 
 
 Now it will make all the difference if the English 
 conquest of India is to be classed along with the 
 Greek conquest of the East and the Roman conquest 
 of Gaul and Spain, and not along with those of the 
 Great Turk and the Great Mogul. If it belongs to 
 the latter class, we shall not be misled by any mere 
 splendour or magnitude, but shall pronounce it to be 
 a phenomenon of secondary interest, belonging to the 
 history of barbarism rather than to that of civilisa- 
 tion. But if it belongs to the former, we shall be 
 prepared to place it among the transcendent events 
 of the world, those events which rise as high above 
 the average of civilised history as an ordinary 
 Oriental conquest falls below it. 
 
 There need be no question about the general fact 
 that the ruling race in British India has a higher and 
 more vigorous civilisation than the native races. We 
 may say this without taking too much to ourselves. 
 The English, as such, are perhaps not a race of 
 Hellenic intelligence or genius, but the civilisation 
 they inherit is not simply their own. It is European
 
 278 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 civilisation, the product of the united labour of the 
 European races held together and animated by the 
 spirit of the ancient world. What do we see on the 
 other side? What estimate shall we form of the 
 native civilisation of India 1 
 
 As I have said so often, India is not one country, 
 and therefore it has not one civilisation. It has not 
 even so much unity as it seems to have, for Brahmin- 
 ism by its peculiar trick of absorption and assimila- 
 tion has brought together under one name forms of 
 civilisation which are really diverse. If we look 
 below the surface, we find two distinct layers of 
 population, a fair-skinned and a dark-skinned race. 
 The two layers are visible almost everywhere; the 
 dark layer preponderates in the South; it is out- 
 numbered but clearly visible in Bengal ; it is evanes- 
 cent perhaps higher up the Ganges ; but that the two 
 races did really blend almost all over India appears 
 from the fact that no language is now spoken which is 
 a mere corruption or dialect of Sanscrit, as French 
 and Italian are dialects of Latin. Every Hindi 
 language, even when its vocabulary is most ex- 
 clusively Sanscrit, has inflections and forms which are 
 non- Aryan. 1 Now in estimating the civilisation of 
 India we must begin by taking account of this funda- 
 mental distinction of race. The dark-skinned race is 
 in many parts not civilised, and ought to be classed as 
 barbarous. Mr. B. H. Hodgson says, "In every 
 extensive jungly or hilly tract throughout the vast 
 continent of India there exist hundreds of thousands 
 1 Stated on the authority of Professor Cowell.
 
 V MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA 279 
 
 of human beings in a state not materially different 
 from that of the Germans as described by Tacitus." 
 
 We are to distinguish again between the Hindu 
 races proper and the great Mussulman immigration. 
 There are not less than fifty millions of Mussulmans 
 in India, and of these a large proportion consists of 
 Afghans or Pathans, Arabs, Persians, and Turco- 
 mans or Tartars who have at different times entered 
 India either with, or in order to join, the armies of 
 the Mussulman conquerors. Here we may expect to 
 find, as everywhere in the Mussulman world, a sort 
 of semi-civilisation, certain strong virtues but of a 
 primitive kind; in short an equipment of ideas 
 and views not sufficient for the modern forms of 
 society. 
 
 Then finally we come to the characteristically 
 Indian population, the Aryan race which descended 
 from the Punjab with the Sanscrit language on its 
 lips, which spread itself mainly along the valley of 
 the Ganges, but succeeded in spreading its peculiar 
 theocratic system over the whole of India. Perhaps 
 no race has shown a greater aptitude for civilisation. 
 Even its barbarism, as reflected in the Vedic liter- 
 ature, is humane and intelligent. And after its 
 settlement in India it advanced normally along the 
 path of civilisation. Its customs grew into laws, and 
 were consolidated in codes. It imagined the division 
 of labour. It created poetry and philosophy and the 
 beginnings of science. Out of its bosom sprang a 
 mighty religious reform called Buddhism, which 
 remains to this day one of the leading religious
 
 280 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 systems of the world. So far then it resembled those 
 gifted races which created our own civilisation. 
 
 But the Aryan race did not make so much pro- 
 gress in India as in Europe. As it showed in India 
 an extreme incapacity for writing history, so that no 
 record of it remains except where it came in contact 
 with Greek or Mussulman invaders, we can only con- 
 jecture the causes that may have retarded its pro- 
 gress. But the great religious reform after some 
 centuries of success for some reason or other failed ; 
 Buddhism was expelled. The tyranny of the priestly 
 caste was firmly established. No great and solid 
 political system grew up ; there was little city-civil- 
 isation. And then came the scourge of foreign 
 conquest. 
 
 Subjection for a long time to a foreign yoke is one 
 of the most potent causes of national deterioration. 
 And the few facts we know about the ancient Hindus 
 confirm what we should conjecture about the moral 
 effects produced upon them by their misfortunes. 1 
 We have in the Greek writer Arrian a description of 
 the Indian character, which we read with surprise. 
 He says, "They are remarkably brave, superior in 
 war to all Asiatics ; they are remarkable for simplicity 
 and integrity ; so reasonable as never to have recourse 
 to a lawsuit and so honest as neither to require locks 
 to their doors nor writings to bind their agreements. 
 No Indian was ever known to tell an untruth." 
 
 1 See this subject treated at much greater length by Professor 
 Max-Mullcr in his recently published volume, What can India 
 teach ust
 
 v MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA 281 
 
 This description has no doubt an air of exaggeration 
 about it, but, as Elphinstone remarks, it shows that 
 an extraordinary change has passed over the Hindu 
 character since it was written. Exaggeration consists 
 in exhibiting the real features larger than they ought 
 to be. But this description exhibits on an unnatural 
 scale precisely the features that are wanting in the 
 modern Hindu character. Modern travellers there- 
 fore are found to exaggerate the very opposite 
 features. They accuse the Hindu of want of veracity, 
 want of valour, and extreme litigiousness. But the 
 change is precisely such as might naturally be pro- 
 duced by a long period of submission to the foreigner. 
 On the whole then we find in India three stages 
 of civilisation — first, that of the hill-tribes, which is 
 barbarism, then that which is perhaps sufficiently 
 described as the Mussulman stage, and thirdly, the 
 arrested and half-crushed civilisation of a gifted race, 
 but a race which has from the beginning been in a 
 remarkable manner isolated from the ruling and 
 progressive civilisation of the world. Whatever this 
 race achieved it achieved a long time ago. Its great 
 epic poems, which some would compare to the greatest 
 poems of the West, are ancient, though perhaps much 
 less ancient than has been thought, so too its systems 
 of philosophy, its scientific grammar. The country 
 has achieved nothing in modern times. It may be 
 compared to Europe, as Europe would have been if 
 after the irruption of barbarians and the fall of ancient 
 civilisation it had witnessed no revival, and had not 
 been able to protect itself against the Tartar invasions
 
 282 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 of the tenth and thirteenth centuries. Let us suppose 
 Europe to have vegetated up to the present time in 
 the condition in which the tenth century saw it, 
 exposed to periodical invasions from Asia, wanting in 
 strongly marked nations and vigorous states, its 
 languages mere vernaculars not used for the purposes 
 of literature, all its wisdom enshrined in a dead 
 language and doled out to the people by an imperious 
 priesthood, all its wisdom too many centuries old, 
 sacred texts of Aristotle, the Vulgate, and the Fathers, 
 to which nothing could be added but in the way of 
 commentary. Such seems to be the condition of the 
 Aryans of India, a condition which has no resemblance 
 whatever to barbarism, but resembles strikingly the 
 medieval phase of the civilisation of the West. 
 
 The dominion of Eome over the western races was 
 the empire of civilisation over barbarism. Among 
 Gauls and Iberians Rome stood as a beacon-light ; 
 they acknowledged its brightness, and felt grateful 
 for the illumination they received from it. The 
 dominion of England in India is rather the empire of 
 the modern world over the medieval. The light we 
 bring is not less real, but it is probably less attractive 
 and received with less gratitude. It is not a glorious 
 light shining in darkness, but a somewhat cold day- 
 light introduced into the midst of a warm gorgeous 
 twilight. 
 
 Many travellers have said that the learned Hindu, 
 even when he acknowledges our power and makes 
 use of our railways, is so far from regarding us with 
 reverence that he very sincerely despises us. This
 
 v MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA 283 
 
 is only natural. We are not cleverer than the Hindu ; 
 our minds are not richer or larger than his. We 
 cannot astonish him, as we astonish the barbarian, 
 by putting before him ideas that he never dreamed 
 of. He can match from his poetry our sublimest 
 thoughts ; even our science perhaps has few concep- 
 tions that are altogether novel to him. Our boast is 
 not that we have more ideas or more brilliant ideas, 
 but that our ideas are better tested and sounder. The 
 greatness of modern, as compared with medieval or 
 ancient, civilisation is that it possesses a larger stock 
 of demonstrated truth, and therefore infinitely more of 
 practical power. But the poetical or mystic philoso- 
 pher is by no means disposed to regard demonstrated 
 truth with reverence ; he is rather apt to call it 
 shallow, and to sneer at its practical triumphs, while 
 he revels for his part in reverie and the luxury of 
 unbounded speculation. 
 
 We in Europe however are pretty well agreed that 
 the treasure of truth which forms the nucleus of the 
 civilisation of the West is incomparably more sterling 
 not only than the Brahminic mysticism with which it 
 has to contend, but even than that Roman enlighten- 
 ment which the old Empire transmitted to the nations 
 of Europe. And therefore we shall hold that the 
 spectacle now presented by India of a superior 
 civilisation introduced by a conquering race is equal 
 in interest and importance to that which the Roman 
 Empire presented. Moreover the experiment is tried 
 on a scale equally large. This Empire is usually 
 judged by its immediate effect on the welfare of the
 
 284 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 
 
 inhabitants. It has removed evils of long standing, 
 says one ; it has introduced new evils, says another. 
 This whole controversy puts on one side the most 
 characteristic work of our Empire, which is the 
 introduction in the midst of Brahminism of European 
 views of the Universe. No experiment equally 
 interesting is now being tried on the surface of the 
 globe. And when we consider how seldom it is put 
 in the power of a nation to accomplish a task so 
 memorable, we shall learn to take an eager interest in 
 the progress of the experiment, and to check the 
 despondency which might lead us to ask what profit 
 accrues to ourselves from all this labour that we have 
 undertaken under the sun. 
 
 And now let us take note of a great advantage 
 which we enjoy in working at this task. It comes to 
 light when we compare our Empire with the Roman. 
 Rome was placed in the midst of its Empire, was 
 subject to an overwhelming reaction from it, and 
 was exposed to all the dangers which threatened it. 
 England on the other hand is singularly disengaged 
 from this enormous Empire which it governs, and 
 feels but a slight reaction from it. 
 
 Every historical student knows that it was the 
 incubus of the Empire which destroyed liberty at 
 Rome. Those old civic institutions, which had nursed 
 Roman greatness and to which Rome owed all the 
 civilisation which she was to transmit to the countries 
 of the West, had to be given up as a condition of 
 transmitting it. She had to adopt an organisation 
 of, comparatively, a low type. Her civilisation,
 
 v MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA 285 
 
 when she transmitted it, was already in decay. In a 
 great part of the Empire her very language was 
 worsted in the competition by the Greek, so that the 
 Emperor M. Aurelius himself writes his Meditations 
 in Greek. The Roman religion instead of making 
 converts fell into neglect, and in the end gave way to 
 a religion which had sprung up in a distant province 
 of the Empire. There came a time when almost all 
 that was Roman in thought and feeling seemed to be 
 dead in the Empire of Rome, when its Emperors were 
 like Oriental kings and wore the diadem. We know 
 now that this was not so, and that Roman influence, 
 the Roman tradition, continued to sway the European 
 mind for many centuries. But this sway was exerted 
 secretly, through law and through Catholicism, at a 
 later time through the Renaissance in literature and 
 art. Think how different would have been the course 
 of modern European history if the mother-city of its 
 civilisation, instead of being in the midst of the 
 nations it educated, instead of suffering in their 
 discords and convulsions, instead of receiving as 
 much barbarism from them as it gave civilisation to 
 them, had stood outside, enjoying an independent 
 prosperity, developing its own civilisation further 
 with an unabated vigour of youth all the while that 
 it guided the subject nations. 
 
 The Roman Empire is in this respect a somewhat 
 extreme case, because the conquering Power was so 
 remarkably small compared to the empire it attached 
 to itself. The light radiated not from a country but 
 from a city, which was not so much a shining disk as
 
 286 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 
 
 a point of intense light. The Roman Republic had 
 
 institutions which were essentially civic, and which 
 
 began to break down as soon as they were extended 
 
 even to the whole of Italy. But even where the 
 
 conquering Power has a much broader basis, it is 
 
 commonly altogether transformed by the effort of 
 
 conquest. The wars by which the conquest is made, 
 
 and then the establishments necessary to maintain 
 
 the conquest, call for a new system of government 
 
 and finance. Of all the unparalleled features which 
 
 the English Empire in India presents, not one is so 
 
 unique as the slightness of the machinery by which 
 
 it is united to England and the slightness of its 
 
 reaction upon England. How this peculiarity has 
 
 been caused I have already explained. I have shown 
 
 that our acquisition of India was made by a process 
 
 so peculiar that it cost us nothing. Had England as 
 
 a state undertaken to subvert the Empire of the 
 
 Great Mogul, she would have destroyed her own 
 
 constitution in the process, no less than Rome did 
 
 by the conquest of Europe. For she would evidently 
 
 have been compelled to convert herself into a military 
 
 state of the most absolute type. But as England has 
 
 merely inherited the throne which was founded in 
 
 India by certain Englishmen who rose to the head of 
 
 affairs in time of anarchy, she has been but very 
 
 slightly disturbed in her domestic affairs by this 
 
 acquisition. It has modified no doubt, as I have said, 
 
 her foreign policy in a great degree, but it has 
 
 produced no change in the internal character of the 
 
 English state. In this respect India has produced as
 
 v MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA 287 
 
 little effect upon England as those Continental States 
 which have been in modern times connected with 
 England in what is called a personal union, Hannover 
 under the Georges, or Holland under William III. 
 The consequence is that in this instance the operation 
 of the higher civilisation on the lower is likely to be 
 far more energetic and continuous than in those 
 ancient examples of the Roman Empire or the Greek- 
 Empire in the East. In those cases the lower civilisa- 
 tion killed the higher in the same moment that 
 the higher raised the lower towards its own level. 
 Hellenism covered the East, but the greatness of 
 Greece came to an end. All nations crowded into 
 the Roman citizenship ; but what became of the 
 original Romans themselves 1 England on the other 
 hand is not weakened at all by the virtue that goes 
 out from her. She tries to raise India out of the 
 medieval into the modern phase, and in the task she 
 meets with difficulties and even incurs dangers, but 
 she incurs no risk whatever of being drawn down by 
 India towards the lower level, or even of being 
 checked for a moment in her natural development. 
 
 This has been the result ; but for a long time it 
 was uncertain that the result would be such. In the 
 history of British India there are two most interest- 
 ing chapters — I should say that in the whole history 
 of the world there are no chapters more instructive — 
 in which we learn, first, how a mischievous reaction 
 from India upon England was prevented ; secondly, 
 how European civilisation was, after much delay and 
 hesitation, resolutely brought to bear upon India
 
 288 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 
 
 The first chapter embraces chronologically the first 
 half of George IIL's reign, that stormy period of 
 transition in English history when at the same time 
 America was lost and India won. It covers the two 
 great careers of Clive and Hastings, and the end of 
 the straggle is marked by the reign of Lord Corn- 
 wallis, which began in 1785. The second chapter 
 • embraces about the first forty years of the present 
 century, and the crowning point of this development is 
 the Governor-Generalship of Lord William Bentinck. 
 For in the Indian Empire Lord Cornwallis and Lord 
 W. Bentinck have been the two great legislators after 
 Hastings, as Lord Wellesley, Lord Hastings and 
 Lord Dalhousie have been, after Clive, the great 
 conquerors, and when we consider, as we are doing 
 now, the progress of civilisation in the Empire, the 
 great legislators naturally demand our attention 
 most. 
 
 First then let us consider the reaction which at 
 the beginning India threatened to have upon England, 
 and how this danger was averted. The literature of 
 the seventies and the eighties of the eighteenth 
 century is full of that alarm which found its strongest 
 expression in the speeches of Burke against Warren 
 Hastings. England had taken a sudden plunge into 
 the unknown abyss of Hindu politics. Englishmen 
 were becoming finance ministers or commanders of 
 mercenary troops to Mussulman Nawabs, and were 
 bringing back to England the plunder of the Mogul 
 Empire, acquired no one knew how. There were two 
 dangers here — first, lest the English character should
 
 v MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA 289 
 
 be corrupted, for those who take the most favourable 
 view of the Hindu character would admit that Hindu 
 politics in the last century were unspeakably corrupt ; 
 secondly, lest the wealthy adventurers, returning to 
 England and entering into English political life with 
 ideas formed in Asia, should upset the balance of 
 the constitution. This was particularly to be feared 
 under the old electoral system, which allowed so 
 many seats in Parliament to be put up to sale. 
 Moreover in an age when Government derived its 
 chief power from patronage, there was a danger lest 
 one of the contending parties should make a snatch 
 at the vast patronage of India, a prize which, whether 
 it fell to the King or to the Whig party, would 
 probably make its possessor supreme in the State. 
 
 To give you a specimen of the fears which were 
 entertained by leading men, I will read a passage 
 from William Pitt's motion for parliamentary reform 
 made in 1782. He said, "Our laws have with a 
 jealous care provided that no foreigner shall give a 
 single vote for a representative in Parliament ; and 
 yet we now see foreign princes not giving votes but 
 purchasing seats in this House, and sending their 
 agents to sit with us as representatives of the nation. 
 No man can doubt what I allude to. We have 
 sitting among us the members of the Rajah of Tan- 
 jore and the Nawab of Arcot, the representatives of 
 petty Eastern despots ; and this is notorious, publicly 
 talked of and heard with indifference ; our shame 
 stalks abroad in the open face of day, it is become 
 too common even to excite surprise. We treat it as 
 
 u
 
 290 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 a matter of small importance that some of the electors 
 of Great Britain have added treason to their corrup- 
 tion and have traitorously sold their votes to foreign 
 Powers; that some of the members of our Senate 
 are at the command of a distant tyrant ; that our 
 Senators are no longer the representatives of British 
 virtue but of the vices and pollutions of the East." 
 
 The great incidents of this struggle are, the fall 
 of the Coalition Ministry on the India Bill of Fox 
 and the passing of the India Bill of Pitt, the trial of 
 Warren Hastings, the succession of Lord Cornwallis 
 to the Governor-Generalship, and the administrative 
 reform carried out by him in India. I merely touch 
 these great occurrences to mark their significance 
 and to show what results flowed from them. If I 
 went into detail, I might show that much was un- 
 reasonable in the clamour raised against the India 
 Bill of Fox, and that there was much unreasonable 
 violence in the attacks made upon Hastings. I might 
 also criticise the double system introduced by the 
 India Bill of Pitt. But, taking a broad view, it must 
 be said that the particular dangers feared were very 
 successfully averted, that Lord Cornwallis established 
 a title to gratitude and Edmund Burke to immortal 
 glory. For the stain of immorality did pass away 
 as by magic from the administration of the Company 
 under the rule of Lord Cornwallis, a lesson never to 
 be forgotten was taught to Governors -General, and 
 at the same time the political danger from the con- 
 nection with India passed away. 
 
 England had broken the toils that threatened to
 
 V MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA 291 
 
 imprison her. But liow far was she, who had so 
 stoutly refused to be influenced by India, entitled to 
 influence India in her turn 1 We could not fail to see 
 the enormous difference between our civilisation and 
 that of India ; we could not fail on the whole greatly 
 to prefer our own. But had we any right to impose 
 our views upon the natives? We had our own 
 Christianity, our own views of philosophy, of history 
 and science ; but were we not bound by a sort of 
 tacit contract with the natives to hold all these things 
 officially in abeyance 1 This was the view which was 
 taken at first. It was not admitted that England 
 was to play the part of Kome to her empire ; no ; 
 she was to put her civilisation on one side and govern 
 according to Indian ideas. This view was the more 
 winning as the new and mysterious world of Sanscrit 
 learning was revealing itself to those first generations 
 of Anglo-Indians. They were under the charm of a 
 remote philosophy and a fantastic history. They 
 were, as it was said, Brahminised, and would not 
 hear of admitting into their enchanted Oriental en- 
 closure either the Christianity or any of the learning 
 of the West. 
 
 I have not space left in this lecture to do more 
 than indicate how we were gradually led to give up 
 this view and to stand out boldly as teachers and 
 civilisers. The change began in 1813, when, on the 
 renewal of the Company's charter, a sum was directed 
 to be appropriated to the revival of learning and the 
 introduction of useful arts and sciences. Over this 
 enactment an Education Committee wrangled for
 
 292 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 twenty years. Were we to use our own judgments, 
 or were we to understand learning and science in the 
 Oriental sense 1 Were we to teach Sanscrit and 
 Arabic, or English ? 
 
 Never on this earth was a more momentous ques- 
 tion discussed. Under Lord William Bentinck in 
 1835 the discussion came to a head, and by a re- 
 markable coincidence a famous man was on the spot 
 to give lustre to and take lustre from a memorable 
 controversy. It was Macaulay's Minute that decided 
 the question in favour of English. In that Minute 
 or in Sir C. Trevelyan's volume on Education in 
 India you can study it. Only remark a strange 
 oversight that was made. The question was dis- 
 cussed as if the choice lay between teaching Sanscrit 
 and Arabic on the one hand, or English on the other. 
 All these languages alike are to the mass of the 
 population utterly strange. Arabic and English are 
 foreign, and Sanscrit is to the Hindus what Latin is 
 to the natives of Europe. It is the original language 
 out of which the principal spoken languages have 
 been formed, but it is dead. It has been dead a far 
 longer time than Latin, for it had ceased to be a 
 spoken language in the third century before Christ. 
 By far the greater part of the famous Sanscrit poems 
 and writings, philosophical or theological, were 
 written artificially and by a learned effort, like the 
 Latin poems of Vida and Sannazaro. Now over 
 Sanscrit Macaulay had an easy victory, for he had 
 only to show that English had poetry at least as 
 good, and philosophy, history, and science a great deal
 
 V MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND AND INDIA 293 
 
 better. But why should there be no choice but 
 between dead languages'? Could Macaulay really 
 fancy it possible to teach two hundred and fifty 
 millions of Asiatics English 1 Probably not, probably 
 he thought only of creating a small learned class. I 
 imagine too that his own classical training had 
 implanted in his mind a fixed assumption that a dead 
 language is necessary to education. But if India is 
 really to be enlightened, evidently it must be through 
 the medium neither of Sanscrit nor of English, but of 
 the vernaculars — that is, Hindustani, Hindi, Bengali, 
 etc. These, under some vague impression that they 
 were too rude to be made the vehicles of science or 
 philosophy, Macaulay almost refuses to consider, but 
 against these his arguments in favour of English 
 would have been powerless. 
 
 But though this great oversight was made — it has 
 since been remarked and, since the education despatch 
 of Sir Charles Wood in 1854, in some measure 
 repaired — the decision to which Macaulay's Minute 
 led remains the great landmark in the history of our 
 Empire, considered as an institute of civilisation. It 
 marks the moment when we deliberately recognised 
 that a function had devolved on us in Asia similar to 
 that which Eome fulfilled in Europe, the greatest 
 function which any Government can ever be called 
 upon to discharge.
 
 LECTURE VI 
 
 PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA 
 
 The sum of what I have laid before you up to this 
 point is that in India a result has been produced by 
 causes less wonderful than is commonly supposed, 
 which result is in magnitude more wonderful, and in 
 the consequences which may possibly flow from it far 
 more wonderful and great, than is imagined. But in 
 showing how such a result could be produced without 
 a miracle I have laid stress upon another peculiarity 
 of this Empire, which is of fundamental importance, 
 namely the slightness of the machinery which con- 
 nects it with England. Let us now remark that in 
 this respect our Indian Empire resembles our colonies. 
 There is of course this vast difference, that our chief 
 colonies determine in most matters their own policy 
 through Governments which spring up by a constitu- 
 tional process out of the colonial assembly, and that 
 India has no such independent initiative, the Viceroy 
 himself being liable to be overruled by the Indian 
 Secretary at home. But at the same time there is
 
 lect. vi PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA 295 
 
 this great resemblance, that India, like the colonies, 
 has been held at arm's length, that its Government 
 has never been suffered to approach the Home 
 Government so closely as to blend "with it, or to 
 modify its character, or to hamper its independent 
 development. India is both constitutionally and 
 financially an independent Empire. If the Empire 
 of the Great Mogul had continued in its original 
 vigour up to the present time, no doubt in foreign 
 affairs the history of England would differ consider- 
 ably from what it is. Several of our wars with 
 France would have taken a different turn, especially 
 that war of which the Egyptian expedition of Bona- 
 parte was a main incident. We can imagine too 
 that the Crimean War would not have happened, 
 and that we should not have taken the interest we 
 did in the recent Eusso-Turkish war. But the con- 
 stitution of the English state would have been 
 precisely what it is, and our domestic history would 
 have run almost exactly the same course. Only 
 once, I think, namely in 1783, has India come quite 
 into the foreground of parliamentary debate and 
 absorbed the attention of the political world. Even 
 in the Mutiny of 1857, deeply as our feelings were 
 stirred, the course of home politics was not affected 
 by the affairs of India. 
 
 Accordingly if the Indian Empire were lost, the 
 immediate and purely political effects of the change 
 would not be great. A Secretaryship of State would 
 disappear ; the work of Parliament would be lightened. 
 Our foreign policy would be relieved of a great
 
 296 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 burden of anxiety. Otherwise little would immedi- 
 ately be changed. In this respect I say the Indian 
 Empire resembles the colonies, and we are led to 
 perceive a universal characteristic of that expansion 
 of England which is the subject of these lectures. I 
 have remarked before that this expansion does not 
 seem at first sight to be of the nature of organic 
 growth. When the boy expands into the man, the 
 boy disappears. He does not increase by an accretion 
 visibly different from the original boy and attached 
 to him so as to be easily peeled off. But it is in 
 such a way that England seems to have increased. 
 For the original England remains distinctly visible at 
 the heart of Greater Britain, she still forms a distinct 
 organism complete in herself, and she has not even 
 formed the habit of thinking of her colonies and her 
 Indian Empire along with herself. 
 
 Turgot compared colonies to fruit which hangs on 
 the tree only till it is ripe. And indeed it might 
 seem natural to picture the aggregate of English 
 communities rather as a family than as an individual. 
 We may say that the England of Queen Elizabeth's 
 time has now a large family scattered over distant 
 seas, that this family consists for the most part of 
 thriving colonies, but that it includes also a corpor- 
 ation which had the good luck in the course of its 
 trade to become ruler of a vast country. There is 
 no objection to such an image, provided it is regarded 
 only as an image, and is not converted by sleight of 
 hand into an argument. But we know that a family, 
 at least in the present state of society, is always
 
 vi PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA 297 
 
 tending towards practical dissolution. It is a close 
 union so long as the children are young ; it becomes 
 a federation, and at last a loose federation, as they 
 grow up; finally, in the present state of society, as 
 the grown-up sons disperse or emigrate in quest of a 
 livelihood and the daughters are married, it often 
 ceases practically to be a federation or even a perma- 
 nent alliance. Now we may call our Empire a 
 family, but we must not without further investi- 
 gation assume that it will have the fate which cannot 
 even be said generally to attend literal families, but 
 which attends them in the very peculiar form of 
 society in which we happen to live. The dissolving 
 causes which act upon families do not act in an equal 
 degree upon states, and, what is especially to be 
 observed, they do not act upon them nearly so much as 
 they used to do. In the time of Turgot and of the 
 American Revolution there was much force in the 
 comparison between a distant dependency and a son 
 who had left home and so practically passed out of 
 the family. But there is much less force in it at the 
 present day, when inventions have drawn the whole 
 globe close together, and a new form of state on a 
 larger scale than was known in former ages has 
 appeared in Russia and the United States. 
 
 This consideration should make us hesitate in 
 drawing the obvious conclusion from the great fact 
 that the connection of England with her colonies and 
 her Indian Empire has been all along so remarkably 
 slight. Above I pointed out with respect to the 
 colonies that, though their connection with the
 
 298 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 mother-country was loose at the outset, so that the 
 secession of the American colonies was a natural 
 effect of the causes then in operation, yet the connec- 
 tion does not steadily grow slighter and slighter, but 
 on the contrary increases and becomes closer. The 
 colonies have practically approached much nearer 
 to us, all that was invidious in the old colonial 
 system has been repealed, and they have now 
 become a natural outlet for a superfluous popula- 
 tion, whereas in the old time, when there was as 
 yet no surplus population, they were peopled 
 principally by discontented refugees, who bore a 
 grudge against the country they had left. A 
 similar law governs our connection with India. 
 The machinery by which the connection is main- 
 tained is slight. England has not allowed herself to 
 be hampered by her relation to India. Enormous as 
 the dominion is, England remains what she was 
 before she acquired it, so that, as I have said, the 
 connection could be broken any day, though it has 
 lasted a hundred years, without any violent wrench 
 or any dislocation in our domestic system. But if it 
 be inferred from this that a connection so slight must 
 sooner or later snap, before we can admit such an 
 inference we must consider another question. In 
 which direction is the tendency? Does the slight 
 connection grow looser and looser, or does it on the 
 other hand tighten with time 1 And here again, as- 
 in the case of the colonies, we shall find that the 
 general tendency of our age, which brings together 
 what is remote and which favours large political
 
 vi PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA 299 
 
 unions, operates to strengthen rather than to weaken 
 the connection between England and India. 
 
 Macculloch, in the Note on India in his edition of 
 Adam Smith, speaks of the trade between England 
 and India about 1811 — that is, in the days of the 
 monopoly — as being utterly insignificant, of little 
 more importance than that between England and 
 Jersey or the Isle of Man. Now if trade be one of 
 the principal bonds which unite communities together, 
 we shall have some criterion of the tendency, and of 
 the strength of the tendency, whether towards union 
 or towards separation, between England and India, by 
 comparing the present with the former state of the 
 trade between the two countries. It was supposed in 
 old times that the Hindus had unalterable habits, and 
 therefore that they would never become consumers of 
 European produce. But now instead of Jersey or the 
 Isle of Man we compare our trade with India to that 
 with the United States and France — that is, with the 
 greatest commercial communities — and we find that 
 though indeed we receive from India much less than 
 from them (thirty-two millions, as against thirty-nine 
 from France and not less than a hundred and three 
 from America in 1881), yet India comes next to them 
 as an exporting country, and on the other hand 
 India heads France and all other nations except the 
 United States as an importer from England, for she 
 took in the same year twenty-nine millions, whereas 
 the countries which came next — that is, Australia 
 and Germany — took twenty- one and seventeen re- 
 spectively.
 
 300 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND i.ect. 
 
 Now here is a prodigious advance which has been 
 made in the present century, and it measures, you 
 will observe, the gradual approach of the two popula- 
 tions towards each other, not their gradual separation 
 from each other. And thus, though politically the 
 direct effects of disruption would not be great, 
 economically they would be enormous. For we are to 
 remember that it is owing to the political connection 
 between the two countries that this commercial inter- 
 course has been allowed to exist, and that it would 
 cease perhaps if India became independent, and 
 certainly if she passed into the hands of another 
 European Power such as Kussia. At the beginning 
 of the century indeed we might have severed our- 
 selves from India with little anxiety, and those 
 struggles with France about our commercial factories 
 at Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta may seem to have 
 had no sufficient motive, since the trade carried on at 
 those stations was but insignificant. It is no longer 
 so; the commercial stake we have in India is now 
 very large — that is, we are more closely bound to 
 India than we were. Look again at the moral 
 approach that England has made towards India 
 during the same time. Originally we had no sort 
 of interest in the affairs of the Hindus among whom 
 we had stationed commercial agencies. The Mogul 
 Empire or the dissolution of the Mogul Empire did 
 not concern us. It was no affair of ours whether the 
 Hindus had a bad Government, or had no Govern- 
 ment at all and were merely the prey of armed 
 plunderers. Even when we began to conquer them,
 
 vi PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA 301 
 
 it was not on their account but partly to resist the 
 French, partly to protect our factories from sudden 
 attack. For a long time after the Company had 
 become a sovereign Power, this indifference on our 
 part to the welfare of the natives continued. Adam 
 Smith, writing in the eighties or about the end of 
 the reign of Warren Hastings, says that there never 
 was a Government so wholly indifferent to the wel- 
 fare of its subjects. This was only the natural conse- 
 quence of the false position in which a trading 
 company suddenly turned into a Government found 
 itself. The anomaly and the effect of it could not 
 but last as long as the Company. But since 1858 it 
 has been removed. The very appearance of a selfish 
 object is gone. The Government is now as sincerely 
 paternal as any Government can be, and, as I ex- 
 plained, it has abandoned the affectation of not impart- 
 ing the superior enlightenment we know ourselves to 
 possess on the ground that the Hindus do not want it. 
 At the same time the introduction of the tele- 
 graph and the shortening of the voyage to India, 
 first by the overland route and since by the Suez 
 Canal, has brought India much more within reach of 
 England. It has often been contended that the 
 effect of this change is bad, that the constant inter- 
 ference of Downing Street and still more of English 
 public opinion is mischievous. Let this be granted 
 for argument's sake. Whether it be desirable or 
 undesirable that India should be more closely united 
 with England, is not now the question. What con- 
 cerns us at present is the fact that, for good or for
 
 302 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 evil, the connection of England with India does not 
 diminish but increases. 
 
 Once more, let us remark the speed with which 
 our intercourse with India increases. Mr. Cunning- 
 ham in his volume lately published, entitled British 
 India and its Rulers, compares the increase of the 
 foreign trade of India between 1820 and 1880 with 
 that of the foreign trade of Great Britain itself in 
 the same period. This last increase has often excited 
 astonishment : English foreign trade rose from about 
 80 to about 650 millions sterling. But Mr. Cunning- 
 ham points out that the increase of Indian trade in 
 the same period has been even greater, and, as of 
 course the foreign trade of India is principally with 
 England, it follows that the tendency to commercial 
 union between the two countries is prodigiously strong, 
 so that fifty years hence, if no catastrophe takes 
 place, the union will be infinitely closer than it is now. 
 
 If we combine all the facts I have hitherto ad- 
 duced in order to form a conception of our Indian 
 Empire the result is very singular. An Empire 
 similar to that of Rome, in which we hold the 
 position not merely of a ruling but of an educating 
 and civilising race (and thus, as in the marriage of 
 Faust with Helen of Greece, one age is married to 
 another, the modern European to the medieval 
 Asiatic spirit) ; this Empire held at arm's length, 
 paying no tribute to us, yet costing nothing except 
 through the burden it imposes on our foreign policy, 
 and neither modifying nor perceptibly influencing 
 our busy domestic politics ; this Empire nevertheless 

 
 VI PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA 303 
 
 held firmly and with a grasp which does not slacken 
 but visibly tightens ; the union of England and India, 
 ill-assorted and unnatural as it might seem to be, 
 nevertheless growing closer and closer with great 
 rapidity under the influence of the modern condi- 
 tions of the world, which seem favourable to vast 
 political unions ; all this makes up the strangest, 
 most curious, and perhaps most instructive chapter of 
 English history. It has been made the subject of 
 much empty boasting, while those who have looked 
 deeper have often been disposed to regard the whole 
 enterprise with despondency, as a kind of romantic 
 adventure which can lead to nothing permanent. 
 But, as time passes, it rather appears that we are in 
 the hands of a Providence which is greater that all 
 statesmanship, that this fabric so blindly piled up 
 has a chance of becoming a part of the permanent 
 edifice of civilisation, and that the Indian achieve- 
 ment of England as it is the strangest, may after all 
 turn out to be the greatest, of all her achievements. 
 
 At this point again we are led to turn our eyes 
 from the present to the past, and to inquire how it 
 could happen to us to undertake such an enterprise. 
 I devoted a lecture to the historical question by what 
 force we were able to subdue the people of India 
 to our government; but this question is different. 
 That was the question, how 1 this is the question, 
 why 1 We see that without any supernatural force 
 or genius it was possible to raise such an Empire, but 
 what was the motive which impelled us to do it ? 
 How many lives, some of them noble and heroic,
 
 304 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 many of them most laborious, have been spent in 
 piling up this structure of empire ! Why did they 
 do it t Or if they themselves looked no further than 
 their instructions, what was the motive of the 
 authority that gave them their instructions 1 If this 
 was the Company, why did the Company desire to 
 conquer India, and what could they gain by doing so 1 
 If it was the English Government, what could be its 
 object, and how could it justify such an undertaking 
 to Parliament 1 We may have been at times too war- 
 like, but the principal wars we have waged have borne 
 the appearance at least of being defensive. Naked 
 conquest for its own sake has never had attractions 
 for us. What then did we propose to ourselves 1 
 
 The English Government assuredly has gained 
 nothing through this acquisition, for if it has not 
 hampered their budgets by the expense of con- 
 quest, on the other hand it has not lightened them 
 by any tribute. If we hope to discover the guilty 
 party by the old plan of asking Cui bono ? that is, 
 Who profited by it? the answer must be, English 
 commerce has profited by it. We have here a great 
 foreign trade, which may grow to be enormous, and 
 this trade is secured to us so long as we are masters 
 of the Government of India. Here no doubt is a 
 substantial acquisition, which stands us in good stead 
 now that we find by experience how tenacious of pro- 
 tection foreign Governments are. May it then be 
 assumed that this trade has been our sole object all 
 along ? 
 
 The hypothesis is plausible, and it is made more
 
 vi PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA 305 
 
 plausible still when we remark that our Empire began 
 evidently in commerce. To defend our factories and 
 for no other purpose we took arms in the first 
 instance. Our first wars in India, as they belong to 
 the same time, so belong evidently to the same class, 
 as our colonial wars with France. They were pro- 
 duced by the same great cause on which I have 
 insisted so much, the competition of the Western 
 states for the wealth of the regions discovered in the 
 fifteenth century. We had trade-settlements in India 
 as we had trade-settlements in America. In both 
 countries we encountered the same rivals, the French. 
 In both countries English and French traders shook 
 their fists at each other from rival commercial stations. 
 In America our New England and Virginia stood 
 opposed to their Acadie and Canada ; and similarly 
 our Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay stood opposed 
 in India to their Pondicherry, Chandernagore, and 
 Mahee. 
 
 The crisis came in America and India at once 
 between 1740 and 1760, when in two wars divided 
 by a very hollow and imperfect peace these two 
 states struggled for supremacy, and in both quarters 
 England was victorious. From victory over France 
 in India we proceeded without a pause to empire 
 over the Hindus. This fact, combined with the 
 other fact, equally striking, of the great trade which 
 now exists between England and India, leads very 
 naturally to a theory that our Indian Empire has 
 grown up from first to last out of the spirit of trade. 
 We may imagine that after having established our 
 
 x
 
 306 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 
 
 settlements on the coast and defended these settle- 
 ments both from the native Powers and from the 
 envy of the French, we then conceived the ambition 
 of extending our commerce further inland ; that 
 perhaps we met with new states, such as Mysore or 
 the Mahratta Confederacy, which at first were un- 
 willing to trade with us, but that in our eager avarice 
 we had recourse to force, let loose our armies upon 
 them, broke down their custom-houses and flooded 
 their territories in turn with our commodities ; that 
 in this way we gradually advanced our Indian trade, 
 which at first was insignificant, until it became con- 
 siderable, and at last, when we had not only intimi- 
 dated but actually overthrown every great native 
 Government, when there was no longer any Great 
 Mogul, or any Sultan of Mysore, or any Peishwa of 
 the Mahrattas, or any Nawab Vizir of Oude, or any 
 Maharajah and Khalsa of the Sikhs, then, all 
 restraints having been removed, our trade became 
 enormous. 
 
 But it will be found on closer examination that 
 the facts do not answer to this theory. True it is 
 that our Empire began in trade, and that lately there 
 has been an enormous development of trade. But the 
 course of affairs in history is not necessarily a straight 
 line, so that when any two points in it are determined 
 its whole course is known. The truth is that if the 
 spirit of English trade had been thus irrepressible and 
 bent upon overcoming all the obstacles which lay in 
 its path, it would not have raised wars in India, for 
 the main obstacle was not there. The main obstacle
 
 VI PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA 307 
 
 to English trade was not the jealousy of native 
 Princes, but the jealousy of the East India Company 
 itself. Accordingly there has been no correspondence 
 in time between the increase of trade and the advance 
 of conquest. 
 
 Our trade on the contrary continued to be in- 
 significant in spite of all our conquests until about 
 1813, and it began to advance with great rapidity 
 soon after 1830. These dates point to the true cause 
 of progress in trade, and they show that it is wholly 
 independent of progress in conquest, for they are the 
 dates of the successive Acts of Parliament by which 
 the Company was deprived of its monopoly. Thus 
 it appears that, while it was by the East India 
 Company that India was conquered, it was not by 
 the East India Company, but rather by the de- 
 struction of the East India Company, that the great 
 trade with India was brought into existence. Our 
 conquests in India were made by an exclusive 
 chartered Company, but our Indian trade did not 
 greatly prosper until that Company ceased practically 
 to exist. 
 
 In order to make this clearer, it will be convenient 
 here to give such an outline of the history of the East 
 India Company as may mark the principal stages of 
 its progress and those alone. The East India Com- 
 pany then came into existence in the year 1600 — 
 that is, near the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. In 
 the view we are now taking of the expansion of 
 England it deserves note that this occurrence took 
 place just at that time and at no time either earlier
 
 308 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 or later. England, we have seen, assumed its 
 modern — that is, its maritime and oceanic — character 
 about the time of the Spanish Armada, since it was 
 then that its first race of naval heroes appeared, and 
 then too that it made its first attempts to colonise 
 America. If this general statement be true, we 
 ought to look in this period also for our first settle- 
 ments in India. Just in this period we find them, 
 for the creation of the East India Company took 
 place twelve years after the defeat of the Armada. 
 
 It was created for trade, and it remained devoted 
 to trade for a hundred and forty-eight years. During 
 this period several important occurrences in its 
 history took place, but none so important as to 
 deserve our attention here. It was in 1748 that the 
 disturbances occurred in the Deccan which forced the 
 Company to undertake on a considerable scale the 
 functions of government and war. Then began its 
 second and memorable period, which is nearly as 
 long as the first ; it embraces a hundred and ten j^ears 
 and ends with the abolition of the Company by Act 
 of Parliament in 1858. It is this second period alone 
 with which we are concerned at present. In order 
 to understand the course of development, we must 
 endeavour to subdivide it. 
 
 It happens accidentally that there is a certain 
 regularity in the course of events over a great part 
 of this period, which rarely occurs in history and 
 which is very helpful to the memory. The Company 
 being dependent on Parliament for a renewal of its 
 Charter, and its affairs having since 1748 taken such
 
 VI PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA 309 
 
 a strange turn, it was natural that Parliament should 
 grant the renewal only for a definite term, and at the 
 end of the term should reconsider the condition of 
 the Company and make alterations in its organisa- 
 tion. In this way the Company became subject to a 
 transformation, which was strictly periodic and re- 
 curred at absolutely equal intervals. These intervals 
 were of the length of twenty years, beginning with 
 Lord North's Regulating Act in 1773. If then we 
 bear this date in mind, we acquire at the same time 
 four other dates which of necessity are of primary 
 importance in the history of the Company. These 
 are 1793, 1813, 1833, and 1853. 
 
 We shall find these five dates quite as important 
 as we might expect, and they form a very convenient 
 framework for the history of the Company. The 
 first is one of the most important of all. If 1748 
 marks the beginning of the movement which led to 
 the creation of British India, 1773 may be said to 
 mark the creation itself of British India. In that 
 year began the line of Governors-General, though for 
 a long time they had not the title of Governor- 
 General of India but only of Bengal ; then too was 
 founded the Supreme Court of Calcutta. The 
 enormous danger which attended the new state of 
 our Indian affairs was at the same time met, and the 
 root of corruption cut through, by the abolition of 
 the power in the Company's affairs of the share- 
 holders or so-called Proprietors. 
 
 The next renewal in 1793 is less important, 
 though the debates which then took place are
 
 310 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 
 
 interesting now for the picture they present of the 
 phase of Anglo-Indian life when it was brahminised, 
 when the attempt was made to keep India as a 
 kind of inviolate paradise, into which no European 
 and especially no missionary should be suffered to 
 penetrate. But the date 1793 is itself as important 
 as any other, being the date not merely of a renewal 
 of the Charter, but also of the famous Permanent 
 Settlement of Bengal, one of the most memorable 
 acts of legislation in the history of the world. 
 
 It was at the next renewal in 1813 that the aged 
 Warren Hastings, then in his eightieth year, came 
 from his retirement to give evidence before the 
 House of Commons. This date marks the moment 
 when the monopoly begins to crumble away, when 
 the brahminical period comes to an end, and England 
 prepares to pour the civilisation, Christianity, and 
 science of the West into India. 
 
 In 1833 the monopoly disappears, and the 
 Company may perhaps be said practically to have 
 ceased to exist. Henceforward it is little more than 
 a convenient organisation, convenient because of the 
 tradition it represents and the experience which it 
 guards, by means of which India is governed from 
 England. At this time too the systematic legislative 
 labours of our Indian Government begin. 
 
 Finally 1853 is the date of the introduction of the 
 system of appointment by competition. That old 
 question which had convulsed England in 1783 and 
 which statesmen had been afraid to touch since, the 
 question who should have the patronage of India or
 
 vi PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA 311 
 
 how it should be dispensed without shaking the 
 constitution of England, was in this way solved. 
 
 But here we are reminded that history cannot for 
 a very long time proceed in this regular manner, so 
 convenient to our memories. The convulsion of 
 1857 put a final end to this periodicity, and 1873, 
 the centenary of the Eegulating Act, is no great 
 Indian date. 
 
 It appears from this outline that 1813 is the 
 year when the monopoly was first seriously curtailed 
 and 1833 the year when it was destroyed. Now 
 Macculloch when he speaks of the utter insignificance 
 of our old trade with India has before him the 
 statistics up to the year 1811, and the statistics which 
 show so vast an increase in the modern trade 
 refer to the years after 1813, and especially to those 
 after 1833. In other words, so long as India was in 
 the hands of those whose object was trade, the trade 
 remained insignificant; the trade became great and 
 at last enormous, when India began to be governed 
 for itself and trade-considerations to be disregarded. 
 This might seem a paradox, did we not remember 
 that in dismissing trade-considerations we also de- 
 stroyed a monopoly. But there is nothing wonderful 
 in the fact that an exclusive Company, even when its 
 first object is trade, carries on trade languidly, 
 nothing wonderful in a vast trade springing up as 
 soon as the shackles of monopoly were removed. 
 
 On the other hand we do not find that the increase 
 of trade corresponds at all to the augmentation of 
 our territorial possessions in India.
 
 312 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lkct. 
 
 There have been four great rulers in India to 
 whom the German title of Mehrer des Reichs or 
 Increaser of the Empire might be given. These 
 are Lord Clive, the founder, Lord Wellesley, Lord 
 Hastings, and Lord Dalhousie. Roughly it may be 
 said that the first established us along the Eastern 
 Coast from Calcutta to Madras ; the second and 
 third overthrew the Mahratta power and established 
 us as lords of the middle of the country and of the 
 Western side of the peninsula ; and the fourth, be- 
 sides consolidating these conquests, gave us the 
 north-west and carried our frontier to the Indus. 
 There were considerable intervals between these 
 conquests, and accordingly they fall into separate 
 groups. Thus there was a period of conquest be- 
 tween 1748 and 1765, which we may label with the 
 name of Clive, a second period beginning in 1798, 
 which may be said to have lasted, though with a 
 long pause, till about 1820 ; this period may bear the 
 names of Wellesley and Lord Hastings ; and a third 
 period of war between 1839 and 1850, but of this the 
 first part was unfortunate, and only the second part 
 led to conquests, of which it fell to Lord Dalhousie 
 to reap the harvest. 
 
 Now there was no correspondence whatever in 
 time between these territorial advances and the 
 advance of trade. Thus we remarked how insignifi- 
 cant the trade of India still was in 1811, and yet 
 this was shortly after the vast annexations of Lord 
 Wellesley. On the other hand trade took a great 
 leap about 1830, and this is one of the peaceful in-
 
 vi PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA 313 
 
 tervals of the history. About the time of the mutiny 
 annexation almost ceased, and yet the quarter 
 of a century in which no conquests have been made 
 has been a period of the most rapid growth in trade. 
 
 And thus the assertion which is often made, and 
 which seems to be suggested by a rapid survey of the 
 history — the assertion namely that the Empire is the 
 mere result of a reckless pursuit of trade — proves to 
 be as untrue as the other assertion sometimes made, 
 that it is the result of a reckless spirit of military 
 aggression. 
 
 Our first step to empire was very plainly taken 
 with a view simply of defending our factories. The 
 Madras Presidency grew out of an effort, which, in 
 the first instance, was quite necessary, to protect Fort 
 St. George and Fort St. David from the French. 
 The Bengal Presidency grew in a similar way out of 
 the evident necessity of protecting Fort William 
 and punishing the Mussulman Nawab of Bengal, 
 Surajah Dowlah, for his atrocity of the Black Hole. 
 
 So far then the causation is clear. In the period 
 which immediately followed, the revolutionary and 
 corrupt period of British India, it is undeniable that 
 we were hurried on by mere rapacity. The violent 
 proceedings of Warren Hastings at Benares, in Oudc, 
 and Rohilcund, were of the nature of money-specula- 
 tions. If the later history of British India had been 
 of the same kind, our Empire might fairly be said to 
 be similar to the Empire of the Spanish in Hispaniola 
 and Peru, and to have sprung entirely out of the 
 reckless pursuit of gain.
 
 314 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 But a change took place with the advent of Lord 
 Cornwallis in 1785. Partly by the example of his 
 high character, partly by a judicious reform, which 
 consisted in making the salaries of the servants of the 
 Company considerable enough to remove the excuse 
 for corruption, he purged the service of its immoral- 
 ity. From that time it has been morally respectable. 
 Now among the consequences of this change we 
 might expect, if gain were the principal inducement 
 to conquest, to see the aggressions of the Company 
 cease. For not only had its agents from this time a 
 character to lose, but it was also impossible for it to 
 engage in purely wicked enterprises of conquest, 
 since under the double government introduced by 
 Pitt in 1784 it would have had to make the English 
 Ministry its accomplice. Now the English Ministry 
 may be supposed capable of crimes of ambition, but 
 hardly of corrupt connivance at the sordid crimes of 
 a trading-company. 
 
 The truth is that from the time of Pitt's India 
 Bill the supreme management of Indian affairs passed 
 out of the hands of the Company. Thenceforward 
 therefore an enterprise begun for purposes of trade 
 fell under the management of men who had no 
 concern with trade. Thenceforward two English 
 statesmen divided between themselves the decision 
 of the leading Indian questions, the President of the 
 Board of Control and the Governor-General, and as 
 long as the Company lasted, the leading position 
 belonged rather to the Governor-General than to the 
 President of the Board. Now it was under this
 
 VI PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA 315 
 
 system that the conquest of India for the most part 
 was made, and it is certain that in this period 
 the spirit of trade did not preside over our Indian 
 affairs. 
 
 With the appearance of Lord Wellesley as 
 Governor-General in 1798 a new era begins in Indian 
 policy. He first laid down the theory of intervention 
 and annexation. His theory was afterwards adopted 
 by Lord Hastings, who, by the way, before he be- 
 came Governor-General had opposed it. Later again 
 it was adopted with a kind of fanaticism by the last 
 of the Governors-General who ruled in the time of the 
 Company, Lord Dalhousie. 
 
 Now this is the theory which led to the conquest 
 of India. I have not left myself space in this lecture 
 to examine it. I can only say that it does not aim at 
 increase of trade, and that accordingly, instead of 
 being favoured, it was usually opposed by the Com- 
 pany. The Company resisted Lord "Wellesley and 
 censured Lord Hastings; if they were strangely 
 compliant in dealing with Lord Dalhousie, it is to be 
 remarked that in his time the directors had practically 
 ceased to represent a trading Company. The theory 
 was often applied in a most high-handed manner. 
 Lord Dalhousie in particular stands out in history 
 as a ruler of the type of Frederick the Great, and did 
 deeds which are almost as difficult to justify as the 
 seizure of Silesia or the Partition of Poland. But 
 these acts, if crimes, are crimes of the same order 
 as those of Frederick, crimes of ambition and of an 
 ambition not by any means purely selfish. Neither
 
 316 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. VI 
 
 he nor any of the great Governors-General since 
 Warren Hastings can be suspected for a moment of 
 sordid rapacity, and thus we see that our Indian 
 Empire, though it began in trade and has a great 
 trade for one of its results, yet was not really planned 
 by tradesmen or for purposes of trade.
 
 LECTURE VII 
 
 INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DANGERS 
 
 For estimating the stability of an Empire there are 
 certain plain tests which the political student ought 
 to have at his fingers' ends. Of these some are 
 applied to its internal organisation, and some to its 
 external conditions, just as an insurance company in 
 estimating the value of a life will take the opinion of 
 the medical officer, who will feel the candidate's 
 pulse and listen to his heart, but they will also 
 inquire how and where the candidate lives, and 
 whether his pursuits or habits expose him to any 
 peculiar risks from without. Now I have partly 
 applied the internal test. The internal test of the 
 vitality of a state consists in ascertaining whether or 
 no the Government rests upon a solid basis. For in 
 every state besides the two things which are obvious 
 to all, viz. the Government and the governed, there 
 is a third thing, which is overlooked by most of 
 us, and yet is usually not difficult to distinguish, — I 
 mean the power outside the Government which holds 
 the Government up. This power may be slight or
 
 318i EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lkct. 
 
 it may be substantial, and according to its solidity, 
 or rather according to the ratio of its strength 
 to that of the powers which tend to overthrow 
 the Government, is that Government's chance of 
 duration. Now I made some inquiry into the 
 strength of the supports upon which the Government 
 in India rests, but rather with a view of explaining 
 how it stands now than whether it is likely to last 
 a long time. Let us reconsider then with this 
 other object the conclusions at which we arrived. 
 
 We found that the Government did not rest, as 
 in England, upon the consent of the people or of 
 some native constituency, which has created the 
 Government by a constitutional process. The Gov- 
 ernment is in every respect, race, religion, habits, 
 foreign to the people. There is only one body of 
 persons of which we can positively affirm that 
 without its support the Government could not stand ; 
 this is the army. Of this army one part is English, 
 and might be trusted to stand by the Government in 
 all circumstances, but it is less than a third part of 
 the whole. The other two-thirds are bound to us by 
 nothing but their pay and the feeling of honour 
 which impels a good soldier to be true to his flag. 
 This is our visible support. Is there beyond it any 
 moral support which, though invisible, may be 
 reckoned upon as substantial? Here is a question 
 which affords room for much difference of opinion. 
 We are naturally inclined to presume that the bene- 
 fits we have done the country by terminating the 
 chronic anarchy which a century ago was tearing it
 
 vii INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DANGERS 319 
 
 in pieces, and by introducing so many evident im- 
 provements, must have convinced all classes that our 
 Government ought to be supported. But such a 
 presumption is very rash. The notion of a public 
 good, of a commonweal, to which all private interests 
 ought to be subordinate, is one which we have no 
 right to assume to be current in such a population 
 as that of India. It seems indeed to presuppose 
 precisely what we have found to be wanting — that is, 
 a moral unity or nationality in India. This being 
 absent, we ought to presume that, instead of consid- 
 ering what benefits our rule may confer upon the 
 country in general, each class or interest inquires 
 how it separately is affected by our ascendency, the 
 Mussulman how his religion, the Brahmin how his 
 ancient social supremacy, the native prince how his 
 dignity, is affected by it. The great benefit which 
 we have conferred upon the country at large in 
 putting down general plunder and the omnipotence 
 of a mercenary soldiery, is enjoyed perhaps mainly 
 by a class which, though the most numerous, yet has 
 little influence and a short memory, — that class so 
 characteristic of India, the small cultivators whose 
 thoughts are absolutely wrapt up in the difficult 
 problem of existing, whose utmost ambition extends 
 only to keeping bod}'' and soul together. Those who 
 used to be plundered, tortured, massacred in the 
 chronic wars, ought no doubt to bless us ; but the 
 plunderers, the murderers are not likely to do so; 
 and these, it may be, form the more influential class. 
 It is certain in fact that all those who under the old
 
 320 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lbct. 
 
 rule of the Moguls used to be influential in India, 
 those who used to monopolise official posts, those 
 who belong to the race which used to rule and 
 represent the religion which used to dominate, — all 
 those therefore whose opinion of us might be expected 
 to be politically important, — have suffered by our 
 ascendency ; and that all our philanthropic attempts 
 to raise the native races have had the effect of de- 
 pressing them, and that to such an extent that vast 
 numbers of them have been reduced to the greatest 
 distress. The subject has been discussed in Dr. 
 Hunter's book on the Mussulmans of India. In 
 these circumstances it would be very rash to assume 
 that any gratitude, which may have been aroused 
 here and there by our administration, can be more 
 than sufficient to counterbalance the discontent which 
 we have excited among those whom we have ousted 
 from authority and influence. 
 
 It remains then that our power rests on an army, 
 and on an army of which two-thirds are in relation 
 to us mere mercenaries. This may seem a slight 
 support, especially for so vast an authority, but we 
 are to consider on the other hand what is the force 
 of opposition which has to be overcome. And we 
 find a population which by habit and long tradition 
 is absolutely passive, which has been dragonnaded 
 by foreign military Governments, until the very 
 conception of resistance has been lost. We find also 
 a population which has no sort of unity, in which 
 nationalities lie in layers, one under another, and 
 languages wholly unlike each other are brought
 
 vii INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DANGERS 321 
 
 together by composite dialects caused by fusion. In 
 other words it is a population which for the present 
 is wholly incapable of any common action. As I 
 said, if it had a spark of that corporate life which 
 distinguishes a nation, it could not be held in such a 
 grasp as we lay upon it. But there is no immediate 
 prospect of such a corporate life springing up in it. 
 In the meanwhile our Government seems in ordinary 
 times sufficiently supported. It is considerably 
 stronger in many respects than it was at the time of 
 the mutiny. The proportion of English to native 
 troops in the army is larger, and many precautions 
 suggested by the mutiny itself have been taken. A 
 mutiny might happen again, but so long as it is a 
 mere mutiny there seems no reason why it should be 
 fatal to our power. The native troops want native 
 leadership, and so long as they find no effective 
 support in the people, so long as their own objects 
 continue to be, as they were in the last mutiny, 
 wholly unpatriotic and selfish, so long as they can be 
 disbanded and replaced by another native army, the 
 position looked at purely from within seems tolerably 
 secure. But this statement at the same time brings 
 to light certain dangers. In the first place, what is 
 said of the passive habits of the native population 
 applies only to the Hindus. The Mussulmans have 
 in great part different habits and different traditions. 
 They do not look back upon centuries of submission, 
 but upon a period not so long past when they were 
 a ruling race. Secondly we are to remember that, 
 much as unity may be wanting, one kind of unity, 
 
 Y
 
 322 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 that of religion, is not wanting. There is the 
 powerful and active unity of Islam ; there is the less 
 active but still real unity of Brahminism. In Dr. 
 Hunter's book on the Indian Mussulmans there is a 
 chapter entitled "the chronic conspiracy within our 
 territory," in which is described the religious agitation 
 which, under the influence of Wahabite preachers, 
 constantly rouses against our Government (according 
 to Dr. Hunter, but others deny this) just that part 
 of the population which has the proudest memories, 
 and therefore the keenest sense of indignation against 
 the race that has superseded them. Brahminism, 
 though a tenacious, is a much less inspiring religion. 
 Still we all remember the greased cartridges. The 
 mutiny of 1857, though mainly military, yet had a 
 religious beginning. It shows us what we might ex- 
 pect if the vast Hindu population came to believe that 
 their religion was attacked. And we are to bear in 
 mind that the Hindu religion is not, like the Moham- 
 medan, outside the region which science claims as its 
 own. We have always declared that we held sacred 
 the principle of religious toleration, and on that un- 
 derstanding we are obeyed ; but what if the Hindu 
 should come to regard the teaching of European 
 science as being of itself an attack on his religion ? 
 
 Great religious movements then seem less im- 
 probable than a nationality-movement. On the other 
 hand the religious forces, if they are livelier, 
 neutralise each other more directly. Islam ••md 
 Hinduism confront each other, the one stronger in 
 faith, the other iu numbers, and create a sort of
 
 vii INTEENAL AND EXTERNAL DANGERS 323 
 
 equilibrium. Is it conceivable that we may some 
 day find our Christianity a reconciling element 
 between ourselves and these contending religions'! 
 We are to remember that, as Islam is the crudest 
 expression of Semitic religion, Brahminism on the 
 other hand is an expression of Aryan thought. 
 Now among the religions of the world Christianity 
 stands out as a product of the fusion of Semitic with 
 Aryan ideas. It may be said that India and Europe 
 in respect of religion have both the same elements, 
 but that in India the elements have not blended, 
 while in Europe they have united in Christianity. 
 Judaism and classical Paganism were in Europe at 
 the beginning of our era what Mohammedanism and 
 Brahminism are now in India; but in India the 
 elements have remained separate, and have only 
 made occasional efforts to unite, as in the Sikh 
 religion and in the religion of Akber. In Europe a 
 great fusion took place by means of the Christian 
 Church, which fusion has throughout modern history 
 been growing more and more complete. 
 
 Such then is the appearance which our Empire 
 wears, when it is looked at by itself and with reference 
 only to the internal forces which play upon it in 
 India. But in order to form any estimate of its 
 chance of stability it is equally important to consider 
 what influences affect it from without. 
 
 Few countries known to history have been so 
 isolated as India. Between Nearchus, the Admiral of 
 Alexander, and Vasco da Gama no European com- 
 mander navigated the Indian Ocean, but the Arabs
 
 324 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 appear to have made naval descents on Sind as early 
 as the time of the Caliph Omar. With this exception 
 the only traceable foreign relation of India, except 
 towards the North, has been with Java, and here the 
 influence went forth from India, for we find in the 
 Kawi language of Java the strongest traces both 
 linguistic and literary of Hindu influence. What 
 the sea is to the peninsula, that to the plain of the 
 Ganges is the enormous barrier of the Himalaya. It 
 has the effect of making India practically rather an 
 island than a peninsula. On this side too Indian 
 influence has gone forth into Central Asia, for it is to 
 the north and the east that Buddhism went forth to 
 make its extensive conquests. But on this side too 
 there have been no political relations, no wars or 
 invasions of which we have any authentic knowledge, 
 except at a single point. 
 
 We can easily imagine therefore that the isolation 
 of India was for thousands of years complete, and 
 indeed the natives told Alexander the Great, when he 
 appeared among them, that they had never been 
 invaded before. 
 
 But this isolation came to an end at last, because 
 after all India is not an island. It has one vulnerable 
 point. There is one point at which the mountain 
 barrier can be penetrated. It can be invaded from 
 Persia or from Central Asia through Afghanistan. 
 Accordingly the whole history of the foreign relations 
 of India up to the time of Vasco da Gama centres in 
 Afghanistan. We may reckon perhaps eight great 
 invasions by this route.
 
 VII INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DANGERS 325 
 
 The first is the most memorable of all, but no 
 history of it remains. The Aryan race must have 
 entered by this route, or perhaps we may say that 
 the Aryan race must have come into existence here. 
 The Afghans themselves are Aryan by language, and 
 the correspondence in certain matters between the 
 Zendavesta of Persia and the Vedas of India leads 
 us to place the original Aryan home of the Sanscrit- 
 speaking race somewhere on the frontier of India and 
 Persia. 
 
 The next invasion was that of Alexander the 
 Great, famous enough in history, for it first threw 
 open the door of India to the Western world. But 
 it had no permanent consequences, since the Graeco- 
 Bactrian kingdom, which for a time maintained a 
 footing in India, came to an end in the second century 
 before Christ. 
 
 The third wants a history almost as much as the 
 first. It is the so-called Scythian invasion, or series 
 of invasions, of the first centuries after Christ. All- 
 important as it is to students of Sanscrit literature, it 
 need not detain us here. 
 
 Then comes the invasion of Mahmoud of Ghazni 
 (a.d. 1001). This is one of the most important, 
 because it is at once the end both of the isolation and 
 of the independence of India, and also what may be 
 called the practical discovery of India for the rest 
 of the world. Mahmoud is to India, as it were, 
 Columbus and Cortez in one. Since his time foreign 
 domination has never been interrupted, and the way 
 to India through the Khyber Pass has been a beaten
 
 326 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 road trodden by many adventurers. In several 
 respects too Mahmoud is a precursor of the Great 
 Moguls. He is by birth a Turk, he has a petty 
 throne in Afghanistan, and he is irresistibly impelled 
 to the conquest of India by his Mussulman faith and 
 by the near neighbourhood of the shrines of idolatry. 
 In all these points he resembles Baber. 
 
 The fifth great invasion was that of Tamerlane in 
 1398. It was purely destructive, but has an import- 
 ance of its own, which however we shall understand 
 better when we are in a condition to compare it with 
 the seventh and eighth invasions. 
 
 Then comes the invasion of Baber in 1524 and the 
 establishment of the Mogul Empire. What Mahmoud 
 had begun he and his successors carried out with more 
 continuousness. Their empire was similar to the 
 Mussulman Empires which had preceded it, but 
 firmer and more consolidated. 
 
 The seventh and eighth are desolating incursions 
 like that of Tamerlane. The one was undertaken by 
 Nadir Shah, the tyrant who seized the throne of 
 Persia on the fall of the Son dynasty ; it took place 
 in 1739, when the Mogul Empire was already in full 
 decline. The other took place in 1760 ; the author 
 of it was Ahmed Shah Abdali, head of an Empire of 
 Duranis, whose headquarters were in Afghanistan. 
 
 Such are the principal invasions which India has 
 suffered. A review of them shows that, though 
 India has but this one point at which she is vulner- 
 able by land, yet at this point she is very vulnerable 
 indeed. For a long time indeed it seems that the
 
 VII INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DANGERS 327 
 
 way to invade her was not discovered, but at least 
 from the time of Mahmoud of Ghazni she has become 
 peculiarly liable to invasion, and her history has 
 been completely determined by it. For she has 
 shown extremely little power of resistance. The 
 history of India up to and outside of the English 
 conquest may be thus briefly summed up. It consists 
 in the first place of two great Mussulman conquests 
 and of a great Hindu reaction against the Mussulman 
 power, which took shape in the Mahratta confederacy ; 
 the two conquests were both made from Afghanistan ; 
 in the second place, of the destruction of the two 
 great Mohammedan Powers in succession and the 
 decisive humiliation of the Mahratta Power; this 
 was accomplished by three other invasions from 
 Afghanistan. That you may understand how this is 
 so I will ask you first to examine the fall of the 
 Mogul Empire — that is, the second of the great 
 Mussulman 'Powers. The ultimate cause of its fall 
 was perhaps the unwise attempt of Aurungzebe to 
 extend it over the Deccan ; accordingly its decline 
 began visibly at Aurungzebe's death. But the 
 decisive blow which was mortal to it, which converted 
 it from a sick man to a dying man, was tbe devastat- 
 ing invasion of Nadir Shah, who came down through 
 Afghanistan in 1739. He sacked Delhi, and so 
 completely plundered the treasury that the Mogul 
 Government was never able to raise its head again. 
 In precisely the same way the Mahratta Power, just 
 at the moment when it seemed on the point of 
 uniting all India, was broken by the descent of
 
 328 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 Ahmed Shah Abdali from Afghanistan and by the 
 fatal battle of Paniput (in which 200,000 men are 
 said to have fallen) in the year 1761 — that is, when 
 the English were already making themselves masters 
 of Bengal. And it appears to me that, as these two 
 invasions were fatal to the Moguls and the Mahrattas, 
 so the earlier invasion of Tamerlane at the end of the 
 fourteenth century crushed the earlier Mussulman 
 Power, which just before under Mohammed Toghlak 
 had reached its greatest extension. 
 
 But now, as Mahmoud of Ghazni threw open 
 India to invasion from the north, Vasco da Gama 
 opened it to maritime invasion from Europe. This 
 was, though it did not seem so at the time, the 
 greater achievement of the two. For Mahmoud only 
 established a connection between India and the 
 Mussulman world of Western and Central Asia, but 
 Vasco da Gama for the first time since Alexander the 
 Great connected it with Europe, and this time it was 
 Europe christianised and civilised. This could not 
 be remarked at the time because, while Mahmoud 
 came as a mighty conqueror, Vasco da Gama was but a 
 humble navigator. His discovery for a very long time 
 led to no political results. There followed a century 
 which I called the Spanish-Portuguese age of colonial 
 history. Almost throughout the sixteenth century 
 the whole newly- discovered oceanic world was in the 
 hands of two nations, and the Asiatic half of it 
 almost exclusively in the hands of the Portuguese. 
 But in the last years of that century the Dutch 
 succeeded in taking their place. As to the English,
 
 VII INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DANGERS 329 
 
 when the seventeenth century opened, they were still 
 but timid interlopers encroaching a little in India 
 upon the monopoly of the Dutch. 
 
 I explained above how at the end of the seven- 
 teenth century England and France had begun to 
 take in the colonial world the position which had 
 belonged in the sixteenth century to Spain and 
 Portugal, and how the whole eighteenth century is 
 filled with the struggle of these two nations for 
 supremacy in it. In 1748 this struggle breaks out 
 violently in India, and it has already become clear to 
 Dupleix that the struggle is political, not merely 
 commercial, and that the prize is nothing less than an 
 Indian Empire. Here then is a momentous turning 
 point in the history of Indian foreign relations. 
 Hitherto she had been connected with the outer 
 world only through Afghanistan ; henceforth she is 
 to be connected with it also by the sea. 
 
 This new connection, once established, for a time 
 eclipses the old, especially in the eyes of the English 
 conquerors themselves. As I have said before, the 
 enemy whom the English for a long time continued 
 to dread most in India was their earliest enemy, 
 France. Invasions from Afghanistan had not indeed 
 ceased. Nadir Shah's invasion took place only nine 
 years before that year 1748, from which we date the 
 rise of the British Empire. The invasion of Ahmed 
 Shah Abdali took place thirteen years later. But 
 these occurrences did not much attract the attention 
 of the English. For we are to bear in mind that, 
 though they had begun to conquer, they did not yet
 
 330 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 dream how far their conquests would carry them. 
 Because they were now firmly planted as territorial 
 rulers in the neighbourhood of Fort St. George and 
 Fort William, they did not as a matter of course 
 think themselves responsible for all India, or study 
 comprehensively the relations of the country con- 
 sidered as a whole to the outer world. The affairs of 
 Afghanistan or the Punjab seemed almost as much 
 beyond their horizon as those of the Turkish Empire. 
 But towards the end of the eighteenth century a 
 change took place in the view of the English. 
 Hitherto they had looked most anxiously towards 
 Madras and the Deccan. Their main fear was lest 
 the French might make some new alliance with one 
 of the native princes of the South, might help him 
 with arms and officers or with a fleet, while he 
 descended upon Madras. This was what actually 
 took place in that war with France which grew out 
 of the American Revolution, and never perhaps were 
 we so hard pressed in India. Hyder Ali descended 
 upon the Carnatic to the gates of Madras, and from 
 the sea the greatest of all French sailors, the Bailli 
 de Suffren, co-operated with him. But fifteen years 
 later the whole face of our foreign relations in 
 India was changed by Bonaparte's Egyptian expedi- 
 tion. French policy here took a new direction. It 
 did not indeed break off from its old connections in 
 the Deccan. Tippoo was expected to be as useful to 
 the Directory as his father Hyder had been to Louis 
 XVI. But at the same time Bonaparte's occupation 
 of Egypt and his campaign in Syria, movements
 
 vn INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DANGERS 331 
 
 which were avowedly aimed at England, seemed to 
 show that he had conceived the design of attacking 
 our power in India from the north. Then for the 
 first time we remembered Nadir Shah and Ahmed 
 Shah Abdali ; then for the first time we began to 
 look anxiously, as we have so often looked since, 
 towards the Khyber Pass, towards Zemaun Shah, who 
 at the end of the eighteenth century sat in the seat 
 of Ahmed Shah at Cabul, and towards the Court of 
 Persia. 
 
 This then is the second great phase of the foreign 
 policy of our Indian Empire. It is marked by the 
 celebrated mission of Malcolm (afterward Sir John) 
 to the Persian Court in 1800. Never before had we 
 had occasion to study what I may call the balance of 
 Asia, or to inquire quid Tiridaten terreat, what thoughts 
 agitate the mind of the Persian king. But observe it 
 is not the secret influence of Russia that is feared, 
 but that of France. I said before that perhaps the 
 Duke of Wellington considered himself to be fight- 
 ing the French at Assaye, not less than at Waterloo. 
 In like manner you will find that Malcolm in his 
 Persian negotiations has Napoleon and the power of 
 France, not at all that of Russia, in his mind. 
 
 But in this second phase, though we have begun 
 to look towards Afghanistan, we have not ceased to 
 be afraid, as in the first phase, of French influence in 
 the South. The life of this same Sir John Malcolm 
 illustrates this. He was selected for the Persian 
 mission on account of the distinction he had won just 
 before in the war against Tippoo Sultan of Mysore.
 
 332 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 
 
 Now this is a war against the French almost as truly 
 as that earlier war in which Clive first distinguished 
 himself. Tippoo himself was understood to be hand- 
 and-glove with the Directory : Bonaparte is his ally, 
 as Suffren had been his father's. The French called 
 him Citoyen Tipou. And what is the Nizam doing 1 
 It was with the Government of the Nizam at Hydera- 
 bad that the French had had their earliest connection 
 half a century before. They knew even better than 
 the English how to conquer India, and that the secret 
 lay in training sepoys and putting them under 
 European leadership. We find that now in 1798 
 there is in the Hyderabad country a force of 14,000 
 men, who are disciplined and commanded by French 
 officers. A certain Raymond is in command of them, 
 and we read in Kaye's Life of Malcolm that " assign- 
 ments of territory had been made by the Nizam for 
 the pay of these troops. Foundries were established 
 under competent European superintendence. Guns 
 were cast. Muskets were manufactured. Admirably 
 equipped and disciplined, Raymond's levies went out 
 to battle with the colours of Revolutionary France 
 floating above them and the cap of liberty engraved 
 on their buttons." Now so long as our nominal 
 ally the Nizam supported such a force and Tippoo 
 was avowedly in concert with France, our position in 
 the Deccan was not so materially changed from what 
 it had been when our Indian quarrel with France 
 first began. It was still possible that the tables 
 might be turned on the English in 1798 by Ray- 
 mond's force, as they had been turned on the French
 
 vii INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DANGERS 333 
 
 before by Clive at Arcot. At this juncture the 
 young Malcolm was sent to Hyderabad, and he 
 succeeded in disbanding this French force, or, as he 
 himself calls it, "expelling this nest of democrats." 
 
 Thus we have two phases of the foreign policy of 
 British India. At first it has but one enemy outside 
 India, namely France, and it expects the attack of 
 this enemy only in one quarter, namely the Deccan. 
 In the second phase it has still the same enemy, who 
 works in the same way, but his power has become 
 far wider. He has formed, or is supposed to have 
 formed, relations with other Asiatic Powers outside 
 India. These Powers are the Afghans and the 
 Persians, and after the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807 there 
 is added to these another Power, European indeed 
 but beginning already to overhang Asia, a Power 
 which is now named for the first time in the history 
 of British India, Russia. 
 
 This second phase is brought to an end by the fall 
 of Napoleon. With him fell completely, though it 
 would be rash to say finally, the influence of France 
 upon India. Her exclusion was secured by the 
 capture of the Mauritius in 1810 and by the reten- 
 tion of the island at the general peace. 
 
 There followed a pause in our foreign affairs. 
 Our Empire had no important foreign relations for 
 about twenty years. And then began a new phase. 
 Another European Power takes the place of France 
 as our rival in Asia. This Power is Russia. 
 
 In the whole history of Greater Britain from its 
 commencement at the end of Elizabeth's reign we
 
 334 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 may perhaps distinguish three great periods. There 
 is first the seventeenth century, in which it rises 
 gradually from a humble position to pre-eminence 
 among colonial Empires. There is next that duel 
 with France both in America and Asia, of which I 
 have said so much. This occupies the eighteenth 
 century. But this too passed, and we have entered 
 upon a third phase, which, according to the fashion 
 of historical development, began to form itself long 
 before the second phase was over. In this third 
 phase the English world -empire has two gigantic 
 neighbours in the West and in the East. In the 
 West she has the United States and in the East 
 Russia for a neighbour. 
 
 These are the two States which I have cited as 
 examples of the modern tendency towards enormous 
 political aggregations, such as would have been 
 impossible but for the modern inventions which 
 diminish the difficulties caused by time and space. 
 Both are continuous land-powers. Between them, 
 equally vast but not continuous, with the ocean flow- 
 ing through it in every direction, lies, like a world- 
 Venice, with the sea for streets, Greater Britain. 
 
 This third phase may in a sense be said to have 
 begun with the American Revolution, but it is more 
 just to consider it as dating only from about the 
 thirties of the present century. For the great destiny 
 that was reserved for the United States did not 
 become manifest till long after its independence was 
 established. That great emigration from Europe 
 which is the cause of its rapid progress, did not
 
 vii INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DANGERS 335 
 
 begin till after the peace of 1815, and in the twenties 
 again its importance in the world was vastly increased 
 by the South American Revolution and the establish- 
 ment of republican government in Spanish America, 
 an event which placed the United States in a lofty 
 position of primacy on the American Continent. 
 Now it was about the same time that the great 
 extension of Russia in the East took place. The 
 moment when we began to feel keenly the rivalry of 
 Russia in the East is very plainly marked on the 
 history of British India. It was in 1830 that Russia 
 in her progress touched the Jaxartes, and soon after 
 she reduced Persia to a condition which we might 
 take to be one of practical dependence. When there- 
 fore in 1834, and again in 1837, Mohammed Shah of 
 Persia led an army into Afghanistan, we believed we 
 saw the hand of Russia, as thirty years before we 
 had seen the hand of Napoleon when any movement 
 took place in the same region. At this moment 
 begins a new and stormy period in our Indian history, 
 which may be said to extend to the mutiny — that is, 
 over twenty years. This period witnessed a series of 
 wars, in the course of which we conquered the whole 
 north-west, annexed the Punjab, Sind and Oude, and 
 at last aroused a disquiet in the minds of our Hindu 
 subjects which issued in the mutiny. These disturb- 
 ances seem traceable in the main to the alarm caused 
 by Russia. For it was this alarm which led to the 
 disastrous expedition into Afghanistan, and it was 
 in the effort to restore our damaged reputation that 
 the conquest of Sind was made, and it seems likely
 
 336 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LEOT. 
 
 also that if these disturbances in the north-west had 
 not thus been commenced, the Sikh wars might never 
 have happened. 
 
 Lord Auckland, we are now very sure, did not 
 take the right way in 1838 to meet the danger he 
 foresaw. Perhaps he exaggerated the danger ; per- 
 haps even now, after forty years more have passed 
 and the advance of Russia in Central Asia during 
 that time has been beyond all anticipation, we still 
 exaggerate the danger. But the historical sketch of 
 the foreign relations of India which I have given in 
 this lecture shows that there exists a prima facie case 
 for alarm, which cannot but produce a prodigious 
 effect. That case rests upon the simple fact that 
 our three predecessors in the Empire of India, the 
 Mahrattas in 1761, the Moguls in 1738, the older 
 Mussulman Empire in 1398, all alike received a 
 mortal blow from a Power which suddenly invaded 
 India through Afghanistan, and that, on two other 
 occasions quite distinct from these, invaders from 
 Afghanistan, viz. Mahmoud of Ghazni and Baber, 
 have founded Empires in India. 
 
 I call this a prima facie case for alarm. It is 
 nothing more. Such reasonings per enumerationem 
 simplicem can establish only that there is ground for 
 instituting an examination, though unfortunately 
 when history is brought to bear at all upon politics, 
 which happens but rarely, it is commonly done in 
 this random way. We cannot argue from the Moguls 
 and Nadir Shah to the English and Russia. It would 
 be easy perhaps to show that the Mogul Empire never
 
 VII INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DANGERS 337 
 
 had a solidity at all approaching that of the English 
 Empire, and we might point out also that when 
 Nadir Shah came to Delhi the Empire had already 
 been in manifest decay for thirty years. With re- 
 spect to Russia, on the other hand, it would be easy 
 to show that it is a Power wholly different in kind 
 from those Powers, generally more or less Tartar, 
 which have invaded India, — a Power certainly far 
 greater and more solid than most of them, but still 
 so different that we cannot assume it to be equally 
 capable of invasion and conquest at a prodigious 
 distance. In short, history proves nothing more than 
 that the way to India lies through Afghanistan. 
 Whether a Power such as Russia can successfully 
 attack by this route a Power such as British India, 
 is a question upon which historical precedents throw 
 no light whatever. It can be answered only by 
 analysing and estimating the military resources, both 
 moral and material, of the two Powers. 
 
 But it may be asked, How is it possible to question 
 Russia's power or her will to make distant conquests 1 
 Has she not conquered in the North the whole breadth 
 of Asia, and in the centre has she not penetrated 
 to Samarcand and Khokand? What Power ever 
 equalled her in successful aggression 1 But we must 
 pronounce no man happy, Solon said, till we have 
 seen his end. Can such a career continue indefinitely, 
 when Russia shall have been thoroughly Europeanised 
 at home? As soon as her political awakening is 
 complete, must not a transformation of her foreign 
 policy take place ? 
 
 z
 
 338 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 On the other hand it may be said, Who can ques- 
 tion the ability of England to contend with Russia t 
 But as I have argued, England is very distinct from 
 British India. Russia may be rich enough to conquer 
 vast regions at a distance of thousands of miles, but 
 England is not. British India must in the main 
 defend herself — that is, she can have English troops, 
 but she must pay for them. 
 
 We must ask then, What is the inherent strength 
 of British India? And thus its stability depends 
 upon its being strong enough to withstand those in- 
 ternal dangers I spoke of, complicated with the ex- 
 ternal danger from Afghanistan. We were able to 
 put down the mutiny, and perhaps we could defeat 
 a Russian army of invasion. But what if a mutiny 
 and a Russian invasion came together 1 What if our 
 native army, in some fit of disaffection or in some 
 vague hope of profiting by a change, should prefer 
 the Russian service to the English? This is the 
 danger which since about 1830 has been foreseen. 
 The Government can hold its own within and also 
 without. But it has little strength to spare, and 
 must guard itself anxiously against any coalition 
 between its domestic and its foreign enemies. 
 
 Other combinations may be imagined which would 
 be extremely dangerous. Thus it is sometimes 
 argued that sooner or later we must lose India, 
 because sooner or later some war in Europe will force 
 us to withdraw our English troops. It is true that 
 without those troops we cannot keep India, and j'et 
 some great sudden attack upon ourselves, such as an
 
 vii INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DANGERS 339 
 
 invasion of England, might compel us to send for 
 them. It is however also true that such a danger is 
 not at present to be foreseen, for what enemy could 
 invade us but France 1 Now sixty-eight years have 
 passed since we last fought the French ; our old 
 hostility to France has become a matter of ancient 
 history ; and the aggressive power of France has 
 much declined. 
 
 But the subject is too large for the space I am able 
 to give to it, and I must ask you to be content with 
 this imperfect outline.
 
 LECTURE VIII 
 
 RECAPITULATION 
 
 We have now dwelt for a long time on that extra 
 ordinary expansion which has had the effect that, 
 considered as a state, England has left Europe 
 altogether behind it and become a world-state, while, 
 considered purely as a nation — that is, as speaking a 
 certain language — she has furnished out two world- 
 states, which vie with each other in vigour, influence, 
 and rapidity of growth. We have inquired into the 
 causes, traced the process, and considered some of 
 the results of this expansion. It remains then in 
 this closing lecture to gather up the impressions we 
 have received into a general conclusion. 
 
 There are two schools of opinion among us with 
 respect to our Empire, of which schools the one may 
 be called the bombastic and the other the pessimistic. 
 The one is lost in wonder and ecstasy at its immense 
 dimensions, and at the energy and heroism which 
 presumably have gone to the making of it; this 
 school therefore advocates the maintenance of it as a
 
 LECT. VIII RECAPITULATION 341 
 
 point of honour or sentiment. The other is in the 
 opposite extreme, regards it as founded in aggression 
 and rapacity, as useless and burdensome, a kind of 
 excrescence upon England, as depriving us of the 
 advantages of our insularity and exposing us to wars 
 and quarrels in every part of the globe ; this school 
 therefore advocates a policy which may lead at the 
 earliest possible opportunity to the abandonment of 
 it. Let us consider then how our studies, now that 
 they are concluded, have led us to regard these two 
 opposite opinions. 
 
 We have been led to take a much more sober view 
 of the Empire than would satisfy the bombastic 
 school. At the outset we are not much impressed 
 with its vast extent, because we know no reason in 
 the nature of things why a state should be any the 
 better for being large, and because throughout the 
 greater part of history very large states have usually 
 been states of a low type. Nor again can we imagine 
 why it should be our duty to maintain our Empire 
 for an indefinite time simply out of respect for the 
 heroism of those who won it for us, or because the 
 abandonment of it might seem to betray a want of 
 spirit. All political unions exist for the good of their 
 members, and should be just as large, and no larger, 
 as they can be without ceasing to be beneficial. It 
 would seem to us insane that if the connection with 
 the colonies or with India hampered both parties, if 
 it did harm rather than good, England should resolve 
 to maintain it to her own detriment and to that of 
 her dependencies. We find too a confusion of ideas
 
 342 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LBCT. 
 
 hidden under much of the bombastic language of this 
 school, for they seem to conceive of the dependencies 
 of England as of so much property belonging to her, 
 as if the Queen were like some Sesostris or Solomon 
 of the ancient world, to whom "Tarshish and the 
 isles brought presents, Arabia and Sheba offered 
 gifts " ; whereas the connection is really not of this 
 kind at all, and England is not, directly at least, any 
 the richer for it And further we have ventured to 
 doubt that the vastness of this Empire necessarily 
 proves some invincible heroism or supernatural genius 
 for government in our nation. Undoubtedly some 
 facts may be adduced to show natural aptitude for 
 colonisation and a faculty of leadership in our race. 
 A good number of Englishmen may be cited who 
 have exerted an almost magical ascendency over the 
 minds of the native races of India ; and in Canada 
 again, where the English settlers have competed 
 directly with the French, they have shown a marked 
 superiority in enterprise and energy. But though 
 there is much to admire in the history of Greater 
 Britain, yet the pre-eminence of England in the New 
 World has certainly not been won by sheer natural 
 superiority. In the heroic age of maritime discovery 
 we did not greatly shine. We did not show the 
 genius of the Portuguese, and we did not produce a 
 Columbus or a Magelhaen. When I examined the 
 causes which enabled us after two centuries to surpass 
 other nations in colonisation, I found that we had a 
 broader basis and a securer position at home than 
 Portugal and Holland, and that we were less involved
 
 vin RECAPITULATION 343 
 
 in great European enterprises than France and Spain. 
 In like manner when I inquired how we could con- 
 quer, and that with little trouble, the vast country of 
 India, I found that after all we did it by means 
 mainly of Indian troops, to whom we imparted a 
 skill which was not so much English as European, 
 that the French showed us the way, and that the 
 condition of the country was such as to render it 
 peculiarly open to conquest. 
 
 Thus I admitted very much of what is urged 
 by the pessimists against the bombastic school. I 
 endeavoured to judge the Empire by its own intrinsic 
 merits, and to see it as it is, not concealing the incon- 
 veniences which may attend such a vast expansion, or 
 the dangers to which it may expose us, nor finding 
 any compensation for these in the notion that there 
 is something intrinsically glorious in an Empire " upon 
 which the sun never sets," or, to use another equally 
 brilliant expression, an Empire " whose morning 
 drum-beat, following the sun and keeping company 
 with the hours, encircles the globe with an unbroken 
 chain of martial airs." But though there is little that 
 is glorious in most of the great Empires mentioned 
 in history, since they have usually been created by 
 force and have remained at a low level of political 
 life, we observed that Greater Britain is not in the 
 ordinary sense an Empire at all. Looking at the 
 colonial part of it alone, we see a natural growth, a 
 mere normal extension of the English race into other 
 lands, which for the most part were so thinly peopled 
 that our settlers took possession of them without
 
 344 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 conquest. If there is nothing highly glorious in such 
 an expansion, there is at the same time nothing forced 
 or unnatural about it. It creates not properly an 
 Empire, but only a very large state. So far as the 
 expansion itself is concerned, no one does or can 
 regard it but with pleasure. For a nation to have an 
 outlet for its superfluous population is one of the 
 greatest blessings. Population unfortunately does 
 not adapt itself to space ; on the contrary, the larger 
 it is the larger is its yearly increment. Now that 
 Great Britain is already full it becomes fuller with 
 increased speed ; it gains a million every three years. 
 Probably emigration ought to proceed at a far greater 
 rate than it does, and assuredly the greatest evils 
 would arise if it were checked. But should there be 
 an expansion of the State as well as of the nation ? 
 " No," say the pessimists, " or only till the colony is 
 grown-up and ready for independence." When a 
 metaphor comes to be regarded as an argument, what 
 an irresistible argument it always seems ! I have 
 suggested that in the modern world distance has very 
 much lost its effect, and that there are signs of a time 
 when states will be vaster than they have hitherto 
 been. In ancient times emigrants from Greece to 
 Sicily took up their independence at once, and in 
 those parts there were almost as many states as cities. 
 In the eighteenth century Burke thought a federation 
 quite impossible across the Atlantic Ocean. In such 
 times the metaphor of the grown-up son might well 
 harden into a convincing demonstration. But since 
 Burke's time the Atlantic Ocean has shrunk till it
 
 vill RECAPITULATION 345 
 
 seems scarcely broader than the sea between Greece 
 and Sicily. Why then do we not drop the metaphor 1 
 I have urged that we are unconsciously influenced by 
 a historic parallel which when examined turns out to 
 be inapplicable. As indeed it is true generally that 
 one urgent reason why politicians should study history 
 is that they may guard themselves against the false 
 historical analogies which continually mislead those 
 who do not study history ! These views are founded 
 on the American Revolution, and yet the American 
 Revolution arose out of circumstances and out of a 
 condition of the world which has long since passed 
 away. England was then an agricultural country by 
 no means thickly peopled ; America was full of 
 religious refugees animated by ideas which in England 
 had lately passed out of fashion ; there was scarcely 
 any flux and reflux of population between the tAvo 
 countries, and the ocean divided them with a gulf 
 which seemed as unbridgeable as that moral gulf 
 which separates an Englishman from a Frenchman. 
 Even then the separation was not effected without a 
 great wrench. It is true that both countries have 
 prospered since, nevertheless they have had a second 
 war and may have a third, and it is wholly an illusion 
 to suppose that their prosperity has been caused or 
 promoted by their separation. At any rate all the 
 conditions of the world are altered now. The great 
 causes of division, oceans and religious disabilities, 
 have ceased to operate. Vast uniting forces have 
 begun to work, trade and emigration. Meanwhile 
 the natural ties which unite Englishmen resume their
 
 346 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect. 
 
 influence as soon as the counteracting pressure is 
 removed — I mean the ties of nationality, language, and 
 religion. The mother-country having once for all 
 ceased to be a stepmother, and to make unjust 
 claims and impose annoying restrictions, and since 
 she wants her colonies as an outlet both for popula- 
 tion and trade, and since on the other hand the 
 colonies must feel that there is risk, not to say also 
 intellectual impoverishment, in independence, — since 
 finally intercourse is ever increasing and no alienating 
 force is at work to counteract it, but the discords 
 created by the old system pass more and more into 
 oblivion, — it seems possible that our colonial Empire 
 so-called may more and more deserve to be called 
 Greater Britain, and that the tie may become stronger 
 and stronger. Then the seas which divide us might 
 be forgotten, and that ancient preconception, which 
 leads us always to think of ourselves as belonging to 
 a single island, might be rooted out of our minds. If 
 in this way we moved sensibly nearer in our thoughts 
 and feelings to the colonies, and accustomed ourselves 
 to think of emigrants as not in any way lost to 
 England by settling in the colonies, the result might 
 be, first that emigration on a vast scale might become 
 our remedy for pauperism, and secondly that some 
 organisation might gradually be arrived at which 
 might make the whole force of the Empire available 
 in time of war. 
 
 In taking this view I have borne in mind the 
 example of the United States. It is curious that the 
 pessimists among ourselves should generally have
 
 VIII 
 
 RECAPITULATION 347 
 
 been admirers of the United States, and yet there we 
 have the most striking example of confident and 
 successful expansion. Those colonies which, when 
 they parted from us, did but fringe the Atlantic 
 sea-board, and had but lately begun to push their 
 settlements into the valley of the Ohio, how steadily, 
 how boundlessly, and with what steadfast self-reliance 
 have they advanced since ! They have covered with 
 their States or Territories, first the mighty Mississippi 
 valley, next the Rocky Mountains, and lastly the 
 Pacific coast. They have made no difficulty of 
 absorbing all this territory ; it has not shaken their 
 political system. And yet they have never said, as 
 among us even those who are not pessimists say of 
 the colonies, that if they wish to secede, of course 
 they can do so. On the contrary they have firmly 
 denied this right, and to maintain the unity of their 
 vast state have sacrificed blood and treasure in un- 
 exampled profusion. They firmly refused to allow 
 their Union to be broken up, or to listen to the 
 argument that a state is none the better for being 
 very large. 
 
 Perhaps we are hardly alive to the vast results 
 which are flowing in politics from modern mechanism. 
 Throughout the greater part of human history the 
 process of state-building has been governed by strict 
 conditions of space. For a long time no high organ- 
 isation was possible except in very small states. In 
 antiquity the good states were usually cities, and 
 Rome herself when she became an Empire was obliged 
 to adopt a lower organisation. In medieval Europe,
 
 348 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 states sprang up which were on a larger scale than 
 those of antiquity, but for a long time these too were 
 lower organisms and looked up to Athens and Rome 
 with reverence as to the homes of political greatness. 
 But through the invention of the representative 
 system these states have risen to a higher level. We 
 now see states with vivid political consciousness on 
 territories of two hundred thousand square miles and 
 in populations of thirty millions. A further advance 
 is now being made. The federal system has been 
 added to the representative system, and at the same 
 time steam and electricity have been introduced. 
 From these improvements has resulted the possibility 
 of highly organised states on a yet larger scale. Thus 
 Russia in Europe has already a population of near 
 eighty millions on a territory of more than two 
 millions of square miles, and the United States 
 will have by the end of the century a population as 
 large upon a territory of four millions of square miles. 
 We cannot, it is true, yet speak of Russia as having a 
 high type of organisation ; she has her trials and her 
 transformation to come ; but the Union has shown 
 herself able to combine free institutions in the fullest 
 degree with boundless expansion. 
 
 Now if it offends us to hear our Empire described 
 in the language of Oriental bombast, we need not 
 conclude that the Empire itself is in fault, for it is 
 open to us to think that it has been wrongly classified. 
 Instead of comparing it to that which it resembles in 
 no degree, some Turkish or Persian congeries of 
 nations forced together by a conquering horde, let us
 
 viii RECAPITULATION 349 
 
 compare it to the United States, and we shall see at 
 once that, so far from being of an obsolete type, it is 
 precisely the sort of union which the conditions of 
 the time most naturally call into existence. 
 
 Lastly, let us observe that the question, whether 
 large states or small states are best, is not one which 
 can be answered or ought to be discussed absolutely. 
 We often hear abstract panegyrics upon the happiness 
 of small states. But observe that a small state 
 among small states is one thing, and a small state 
 among large states quite another. Nothing is more 
 delightful than to read of the bright days of Athens 
 and Florence, but those bright days lasted only so 
 long as the states with which Athens and Florence 
 had to do were states on a similar scale of magnitude. 
 Both states sank at once as soon as large country- 
 states of consolidated strength grew up in their 
 neighbourhood. The lustre of Athens grew pale as 
 soon as Macedonia rose, and Charles V. speedily 
 brought to an end the great days of Florence. Now 
 if it be true that a larger type of state than any 
 hitherto known is springing up in the world, is not 
 this a serious consideration for those states which 
 rise only to the old level of magnitude 1 ? Russia 
 already presses somewhat heavily on Central Europe ; 
 what will she do when with her vast territory and 
 population she equals Germany in intelligence and 
 organisation, when all her railways are made, her 
 people educated, and her government settled on a 
 solid basis ? — and let us remember that if we allow 
 her half a century to make so much progress her
 
 350 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 population will at the end of that time be not eighty 
 but nearly a hundred and sixty millions. At that 
 time which many here present may live to see, 
 Russia and the United States will surpass in power 
 the states now called great as much as the great 
 country-states of the sixteenth century surpassed 
 Florence. Is not this a serious consideration, and is 
 it not especially so for a state like England, which 
 has at the present moment the choice in its hands 
 between two courses of action, the one of which 
 may set it in that future age on a level with the 
 greatest of these great states of the future, while 
 the other will reduce it to the level of a purely 
 European Power looking back, as Spain does now, to 
 the .great days when she pretended to be a world- 
 state. 
 
 But what I have been saying does not apply to 
 India. If England and her colonies taken together 
 make, properly speaking, not an Empire but only a 
 very large state, this is because the population is 
 English throughout and the institutions are of the 
 same kind. In India the population is wholly foreign, 
 and the institutions wholly unlike our own. India 
 is really an Empire and an Oriental Empire. It is in 
 relation to India especially that the language of the 
 bombastic school offends us, and that we are struck 
 by the misconception which is betrayed in their 
 high-flown imagery borrowed from the ancient world. 
 And here we cannot, on looking more closely into 
 the phenomenon, reconcile ourselves to it by dis- 
 covering that, though it has not the romantic great-
 
 viii RECAPITULATION 351 
 
 ness attributed to it, yet it has a solid value and 
 utility to us which is of another kind altogether. 
 
 Gradually and in recent times a great trade 
 between India and England has sprung up, but even 
 this, as I pointed out, was hardly contemplated by 
 those who had the principal share in founding the 
 Indian Empire. And it is difficult to see what other 
 great advantages we reap from it, so that we ask 
 ourselves in some perplexity, what made us take the 
 trouble of acquiring it. Historically the answer is, 
 that in our great colonial struggle with France we 
 were led into wars which left us in possession of 
 territories in the neighbourhood of Calcutta and 
 Madras, that we then proceeded to organise our 
 government of them, that we successfully purged 
 away the corruption which had sprung up in the first 
 period of conquest, and created an administration 
 that was pure and under the direct control of the 
 Government at home ; but that afterwards there 
 arose a line of Governors-General who on high 
 grounds of statesmanship were favourable to annexa- 
 tion. The policy now adopted was not sordid, but it 
 may have been ambitious and unscrupulous. If we 
 are to think, as Mr. Torrens l imagines, that Pitt and 
 Lord Wellesley in secret deliberation determined to 
 replace the American colonies by an Eastern Empire, 
 such an idea, according to the view taken in these 
 lectures, belongs to an unsound and chimerical system 
 of politics. But ostensibly the policy was justified 
 by arguments chiefly of a philanthropic kind, and 
 
 1 Tlte Marquis Wellesley, by W. M. Torrens, M.P., vol. i. p. 128.
 
 352 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot. 
 
 they were arguments of such strength that it was 
 difficult to resist them. It was not to be denied 
 that a most deplorable anarchy reigned in India. 
 Here and there a tyranny arose which had some 
 degree of stability, though it was almost always a 
 military government of the lowest type. But over 
 the greater part of India there prevailed a system 
 which it would be appropriate to call, not govern- 
 ment of a low type, but robbery of a high type. 
 Occasionally in Europe, as in some Highland clans 
 or among the Western buccaneers, or those ancient 
 pirates of the Mediterranean whom Pompey was 
 commissioned to suppress, robber-bands have had 
 almost the magnitude and organisation of states, but 
 they never have reached the scale of the robber-states 
 of India. The Mahrattas levied their chout, a sort of 
 blackmail, all over India, and at a later time the 
 Pindarrees surpassed the Mahrattas in cruelty. Now 
 this anarchy arose directly out of the decline of the 
 authority of the Great Mogul. It was possible of 
 course for the English to wash their hands of all this, 
 to defend their own territories, and let the chaos 
 welter as it would outside their frontier. But to 
 Governors-General on the spot such a course might 
 easily seem not just but simply cruel. Aggrandise- 
 ment might present itself in the light of a simple 
 duty, when it seemed that by extending our Empire 
 the reign of robbery and murder might be brought to 
 an end in a moment, and that of law commence. 1 
 
 1 " Tt is a proud phrase to use, but it is a true one, that we have 
 bestowed blessings upon millions . . . The ploughman is again in
 
 VIII RECAPITULATION 353 
 
 Accordingly Lord Wellesley laid it down that there 
 had always been a paramount Power in India, that 
 such a paramount Power was necessary to the 
 country, and that it became the duty of the Company, 
 now that the power of the Mogul had come to an 
 end, to save India by assuming his function. 
 
 And thus we founded our Empire, partly it may 
 be out of an empty ambition of conquest and partly 
 out of a philanthropic desire to put an end to 
 enormous evils. But, whatever our motives might 
 be, we incurred vast responsibilities, which were 
 compensated by no advantages. We have now 
 acquired a great Indian trade, but even this we 
 purchase at the expense of a perpetual dread of 
 Russia, and of all movements in the Mussulman 
 world, and of all changes in Egypt. Thus a review 
 of the history of British India leaves on the mind an 
 impression quite different from that which our 
 Colonial Empire produces. The latter has grown up 
 naturally, out of the operation of the plainest causes ; 
 the former seems to have sprung from a romantic 
 adventure ; it is highly interesting, striking, and 
 curious, but difficult to understand or to form an 
 opinion about. We may hope that it will lead to 
 good, but hitherto we have not ourselves reaped 
 directly much good from it. 
 
 I have shown you however that, though it may be 
 called an Oriental Empire, it is much less dangerous 
 
 every quarter turning up a soil which had for many seasons never 
 been stirred except by the hoofs of predatory cavalry." Lord 
 Hastings, February 1819. 
 
 2 A
 
 354 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 to us than that description might seem to imply. It 
 is not an Empire attached to England in the same 
 way as the Roman Empire was attached to Rome ; it 
 will not drag us down, or infect us at home with 
 Oriental notions or methods of government. Nor is 
 it an Empire which costs us money or hampers our 
 finances. It is self-supporting, and is held at arm's 
 length in such a way that our destiny is not very 
 closely entangled with its own. 
 
 Next I have led you to consider what may be the 
 effect of our Indian Empire upon India itself. We 
 perhaps have not gained much from it; but has 
 India gained 1 On this question I have desired to 
 speak with great diffidence. I have asserted con- 
 fidently only thus much, that no greater experiment 
 has ever been tried on the globe, and that the effects 
 of it will be comparable to the effect of the Roman 
 Empire upon the nations of Europe — nay, probably 
 they will be much greater. This means no doubt 
 that vast benefits will be done to India, but it does 
 not necessarily mean that great mischiefs may not 
 also be done. Nay, if you ask on which side the 
 balance will incline, and whether, if we succeed in 
 bringing India into the full current of European 
 civilisation, we shall not evidently be rendering her 
 the greatest possible service, I should only answer, 
 "I hope so; I trust so." In the academic study of 
 these vast questions Ave should take care to avoid the 
 optimistic commonplaces of the newspaper. Our 
 Western civilisation is perhaps not absolutely the 
 glorious thing we like to imagine it. Those who
 
 vni RECAPITULATION 355 
 
 watch India most impartially see that a vast trans- 
 formation goes on there, but sometimes it produces 
 a painful impression upon them ; they see much 
 destroyed, bad things and good things together ; 
 sometimes they doubt whether they see many good 
 things called into existence. But they see one 
 enormous improvement, under which we may fairly 
 hope that all other improvements are potentially 
 included ; they see anarchy and plunder brought to 
 an end and something like the immensa majestas 
 Eomanae pacis established among two hundred and 
 fifty millions of human beings. 
 
 Another thing almost all observers see, and that 
 is that the experiment must go forward, and that we 
 cannot leave it unfinished if we would. For here too 
 the great uniting forces of the age are at work ; 
 England and India are drawn every year for good or 
 for evil more closely together. Not indeed that dis- 
 uniting forces might not easily spring up, not that 
 our rule itself may not possibly be calling out forces 
 which may ultimately tend to disruption, nor yet that 
 the Empire is altogether free from the danger of a 
 sudden catastrophe. But for the present we are 
 driven both by necessity and duty to a closer union. 
 Already we should ourselves suffer greatly from dis- 
 ruption, and the longer the union lasts the more 
 important it will become to us. Meanwhile the same 
 is true in an infinitely greater degree of India itself 
 The transformation we are making there may cause 
 us some misgivings, but though we may be led con- 
 ceivably to wish that it had never been begun, nothing
 
 356 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT. 
 
 could ever convince us that it ought to be broken off 
 in the middle. 
 
 Altogether I hope that our long course of medita- 
 tion upon the expansion of England may have led 
 you to feel that there is something fantastic in all 
 those notions of abandoning the colonies or abandon- 
 ing India, which are so freely broached among us. 
 Have we really so much power over the march of 
 events as we suppose 1 Can we cancel the growth of 
 centuries for a whim, or because, when we throw a 
 hasty glance at it, it does not suit our fancies 1 The 
 lapse of time and the force of life, " which working 
 strongly binds," limit our freedom more than we 
 know, and even when we are not conscious of it at all. 
 It is true that we in England have never accustomed 
 our imaginations to the thought of Greater Britain. 
 Our politicians, our historians still think of England 
 not of Greater Britain as their country ; they still 
 think only that England has colonies, and they allow 
 themselves to talk as if she could easily whistle them 
 off, and become again with perfect comfort to herself 
 the old solitary island of Queen Elizabeth's time, " in 
 a great pool a swan's nest." But the fancy is but a 
 chimera produced by inattention, one of those 
 monsters — for such monsters there are — which are 
 created not by imagination but by the want of 
 imagination ! 
 
 But though this is a conclusion to which I am led, 
 it is not the conclusion which I wish to leave most 
 strongly impressed on your minds. What I desire 
 here is not so much to impart to you a just view of
 
 vill RECAPITULATION 357 
 
 practical politics, as a just view of the object and 
 method of historical study. My chief aim in these 
 lectures has been to show in what light the more 
 recent history of England ought to be regarded by 
 the student. It seems to me that most of our 
 historians, when they come to these modern periods, 
 lose the clue, betray embarrassment in the choice of 
 topics, and end by producing a story without a moral. 
 I have argued in the first place that history is con- 
 cerned, not mainly with the interesting things which 
 may have been done by Englishmen or in England, 
 but with England herself considered as a nation and 
 a state. To make this more plain I have narrated 
 nothing, told no thrilling stories, drawn no heroic 
 portraits ; I have kept always before you England as 
 a great whole. In her story there is little that is 
 dramatic, for she can scarcely die, and in this period 
 at least has not suffered or been in danger of suffer- 
 ing much. What great changes has she undergone 
 in this period? Considerable political changes no 
 doubt, but none that have been so memorable as 
 those she underwent in the seventeenth century. 
 Then she made one of the greatest political dis- 
 coveries, and taught all the world how liberty might 
 be adapted to the conditions of a nation-state. On 
 the other hand the modern political movement, that 
 of Reform or Liberalism, began not in England but 
 on the Continent, from whence we borrowed it. The 
 peculiarly English movement, I have urged, in this 
 period has been an unparalleled expansion. Grasp 
 this fact, and you have the clue both to the eighteenth
 
 358 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND i.ect. 
 
 and the nineteenth centuries. The wars with France 
 from Louis XIV. to Napoleon fall into an intelligible 
 series. The American Revolution and the conquest 
 of India cease to seem mere digressions and take 
 their proper places in the main line of English history. 
 The growth of wealth, commerce, and manufacture, 
 the fall of the old colonial system and the gradual 
 growth of a new one, are all easily included under 
 the same formula. Lastly this formula binds to- 
 gether the past of England and her future, and leaves 
 us, when we close the history of our country, not 
 with minds fatigued and bewildered as though from 
 reading a story that has been too much spun out, 
 but enlightened and more deeply interested than ever, 
 because partly prepared for what is to come next. 
 
 I am often told by those who, like myself, study 
 the question how history should be taught, Oh, you 
 must before all things make it interesting ! I agree 
 with them in a certain sense, but I give a different 
 sense to the word interesting — a sense which after all 
 is the original and proper one. By interesting they 
 mean romantic, poetical, surprising ; I do not try to 
 make history interesting in this sense, because I have 
 found that it cannot be done without adulterating 
 history and mixing it with falsehood. But the word 
 interesting does not properly mean romantic. That 
 is interesting in the proper sense which affects our 
 interests, which closely concerns us and is deeply im- 
 portant to us. I have tried to show you that the 
 history of modern England from the beginning of 
 the eighteenth century is interesting in this sense,
 
 VIII 
 
 RECAPITULATION 359 
 
 because it is pregnant with great results which will 
 affect the lives of ourselves and our children and the 
 future greatness of our country. Make history inter- 
 esting indeed ! I cannot make history more interest- 
 ing than it is, except by falsifying it. And therefore 
 when I meet a person who does not find history inter- 
 esting, it does not occur to me to alter history, — I try 
 to alter him. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 STACK COLLECTION 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW. 
 
 APR4 1988 
 
 icifl I 1987 
 
 •OTIS AUG 5 -1993 
 
 fitt'0JUL24i993 
 
 7 
 
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