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 GREATEE 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 1 Shall we say, " The historian should make prominent those events which are interesting i" 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 “1 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 woidd be the use of this’? Great events are commonly judged by contemporaries quite wrongly. It is in fact one of the chief functions of the historian to correct this 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 Revolution 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 Revolution, 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 EXPA2TSI0N OF ENGLAND LBOT.
is spent in striving to avert schism in Greater Britain.
Look now at the American Eevolution. 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 1 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 jJassed the Stamp Act with viri 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 1 And yet the American Revolution 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 Eevolution took place. America is the great question of the Eockingham 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 Eegency 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 vements of Louis XIV. When at last he reaches the wars of the French Eevolution, 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 m 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 modem 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 a 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 bythis 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 andNew England, the growth of the English navy andtrade, Cromwell’s attack on Spain, the naval wars with Holland, the colonial expansion of France anddecline of Holland, the maritime supremacy of England from the Peace of Utrecht, the duel of England and France for the New World. I haveshown that these events taken together make up the exipansion of England, that during the seventeenth century this development is necessarily somewhathidden 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 andCornwallis 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 Vlil SCHISM IN GKEATEK BKITAIN 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 Kevolution of 1688, and twice the population that France had at the Revolution 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 himthere 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 phenomenonought 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 RepubUcs have sprung from Spain, and Brazil from Portugal, in the sameway, but they cannot be called great states ; andbesides, as I have said, the South American popula tion is to a very large extent of Indian blood. Butthis great state, sprvmg 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 byreason of the immense expansion and ubiquitous activity of both nations is always close to us, alwaysnil SCHISM IN GKEATER 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 1 History, I say, is not constitutional laAv, 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 ? 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. Noav 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-coimtry 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, VIII 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 pervefseness 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^ 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. “Wemust 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. Eeligion 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 imhallowed before. For I always hold that religion is the great state-building principle; these colonists could create a new state because they were already a church, since the church, so at least I hold, is the soul of the state ; where there is a church a state grows up in time ; but if you find a state which is not also in some sense a church, you find a state which is not long for this world.
Now in this respect the American colonies were very peculiar. How is it possible to draw from their history any conclusion about colonies in general 1 In particular how can you argue from their case to the » HUdretb, u. 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 Avhen 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 1 They have not sprung out of any religious exodus. Their founders carried no gods with them. On the contrary they go out into the wilderness of mere materialism, into territories where as yet there is nothing consecrated, nothing ideal. Where can their gods be but at home ? If they in such circumstances can find within them the courage to stand out as state-builders,—if they can have the heart to sever themselves from English history, from all traditions and memories of the island where their fathers lived for a thousand years, —it will indeed be necessary to think that England is a name which possesses sadly little attractive power.
I think then that we mistake the moral of the American Revolution, when we infer from it that all colonies—and not merely colonies of religious refugees under a bad colonial system—fall off from the tree as 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 LEOT.
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. Wesaw, 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 ofi” 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 afi"airs 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 togetherVIII SCHISM IN GREATER BRITAIN 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 de\dsed 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 iinder 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 186 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LBOT. vill 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 overlargc, 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?