America, an immense possession, glorious in the present, destined to become far more glorious in the future; we have the whole of Australia; the whole of India; the whole of New Zealand; we have rich and beautiful islands, such as Jamaica, Ceylon, Newfoundland, Mauritius, and hundreds of other islands; we have Burmah, Singapore, and the settlements of the far East; we have a vast extent of territory in Africa; we have strongholds in the Mediterranean; we occupy Egypt; the whole round world is dotted here and covered there with the possessions of the Anglo-Saxon race; all that is best, most temperate, most fertile, best fitted for the white man's permanent residence, is ours: if it were one United Federation of States it would be the greatest, the richest, the most powerful empire, republic or state that history has ever recorded.

The imagination cannot all at once take in the magnitude of the Anglo-Saxon possessions. We want help to assist us in understanding what our possessions really mean. Take the test of the language, for instance. If we add up all together the numbers of those who speak the European languages we should find that one-third of the whole number speak our language, while only one-eighth speak French, and only one-seventh speak German. For at this moment there are a hundred and twenty millions of people who speak English as their native tongue, without counting the Hindoos, who are fast acquiring it.

Take, again, the test of literature. Everybody now reads. Some, it is true, read only newspapers: most read books. There are free public libraries, which put all books worth reading into the hands of the people. Suppose that only one-half of the English-speaking race read books; that means that a popular work, a work which appeals to the heart or to the head of the great public, can command sixty millions of readers, and in the immediate future will command double, and, presently, treble that number. Never before, in the history of the whole world, has literature commanded so enormous an audience; never before has poet, dramatist, novelist, historian, preacher, had so magnificent a theatre, so crowded a house. We cannot realize such a theatre; we can only in imagination see a vast theatre filled with white faces, listening faces, faces that are played upon by passing sunshine and flying cloud, as the speaker moves their hearts. Perhaps we may imagine something of this vast audience, if we

remember that it used to be thought much if a book was read by two or three thousand, and now we can talk of a book being read by sixty million.

It surprises, again, one who considers this present position of our race not so much that we have spread over so vast an area, and have multiplied ourselves so enormously, but that this has been done with such wonderful rapidity. In the sixteenth century, when the English-speaking race was just beginning to feel its way across the Atlantic, it did not number more than five millions. A hundred years ago, when England began her long war with France, her own population was no more than fifteen millions, while in America there were about five millions-twenty millions in all. Again, a hundred years ago there were in the whole of Australia no more than a few thousand convicts and guards; in New Zealand, Tasmania, and South Africa there were none. In fifty years we have seen these countries assume a population as a man puts on a cloak. We look one moment; there is the solitude of the forest, the lapping of the river on its shores, the cry of the wild beast. In twenty years' time there is a great city in the midst of a crowded colony. Nor are these ephemeral cities; they have come to stay; they stand in the centres of real and lasting trade; they increase every year as the country to which they belong grows richer and more populous. In America the States which a hundred years ago were the far West, belonging to the fierce and untameable Red Indian, are now central States, while the far West is the coast of the Pacific, and the Red Indian has almost disappeared; the prairies are broken up into farms; the woods are disappearing before the axe of the settler, and the States which thirty years ago were wild lands are now filling up with towns and villages and cultivated farms.

I have spoken of a hundred years ago: one may say fifty years ago.

It was then that a mysterious restlessness seized all of us at the same time. English, Scotch, Irish, Welsh in thousands sailed to Australia, to New Zealand, to Canada; some of them flocked to the United States. The young men of the States moved westward with one consent. The Irish seem more than any to have felt the impulse, and they sent half their people across the We used to say that the Irish exodus was the result of the

seas.

potato famine. That was one cause, but not the greatest: it was restlessness that fired the blood of a people who had lived too long in peace and quiet. It is now, as it always has been with our race; from time to time we want something to work off the instinctive restlessness. Travel, emigration, the struggle with savage races, the many little wars which are always stirring our blood-these things take the place of those which formerly quieted our restless souls.

Mere emigration, however, will not account for this vast increase of the English-speaking population. Besides, the increase has gone on in England as well: we who a hundred years ago were fifteen millions are now forty millions. The increase has been brought about partly by the invasion of the foreign element which the Anglo-Saxon has made haste to absorb. Look at shop windows as you walk about certain parts of London; the foreign names occur continually-here are French, Dutch, German, Italian, and Norwegian names. Inside every house you would find an Englishman bearing that name. It is exactly the same in New York. The Anglo-Saxon has absorbed that man; in the second generation he is pure English or American.

There remains, however, the remarkable fact that in a hundred years the English-speaking race has leaped up from twenty millions to a hundred and twenty millions, and has extended its possessions by something like a fifth part of the habitable globe. It would be impossible to find any other example in history of an increase so rapid, and an extension of territory so vast.

This, then, is the present position of our race: we possess the finest and most desirable parts of the earth; we are more wealthy than all the rest of the world put together; we are connected together by a common ancestry; by a common history up to a certain point; by the same laws which we have inherited from our common ancestors; by the same speech; by the same religion, not speaking of sects; by the same literature; by the same customs, with minute differences; and by millions of close ties of blood relationship, even those of brothers, sisters, parents, and children. It would be difficult to find stronger bonds: they are such as nothing in the world can cut asunder. No fighting between ourselves, not centuries of warfare, not rivers of blood, can destroy these bonds. Nations which are so connected may have their quarrels, their wars, intensified by kinship into civil wars;

but they cannot cut asunder these bonds, which bind them more tightly than any treaty, or alliance, or covenanted bond of union.

Yet, to speak of the present union of the English-speaking race is ridiculous. What, then, about our disunion? Well, we form, theoretically, one great empire and one great republic. In point of population the two sections of our race are equal; but one section is split up and divided into many parts; the other is an undivided whole, which adds very greatly to its strength. Again, one section, itself the union of many sovereign States, is bound together by a central government representative of all those States. And it has free trade between all those States. The other section has a central government, but it is not representative of other component parts; each of these parts-each of these sovereign states--has its own government, and is practically independent and sovereign, though it is called a colony; there is no free trade among these states; but each has a tariff of her own to suit the supposed wants of her people. In other words, the tie which binds Great Britain and Ireland to Canada is so slight as to be little more than a sentiment; so with Australia. England derives no revenue from the colonies; yet it is understood that in case of war she must defend these colonies out of her own resources. And slight as is the connection of Great Britain with one of these states, their connection with each other is slighter still: there is hardly even a touch of sentiment, as yet discovered, in the regard of Australia for Canada.

The position, therefore, is this. On the one hand, there are the United States, really, not nominally, united—a compact extent of territory, with a constitution which makes it very unlikely, very difficult, for any questions to arise which will endanger that union, with a population equal to one-half the whole of our numbers; on the other hand, we have a so-called empire consisting of the British islands and the practically sovereign states of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India, without speaking of the smaller and less important dependencies. The advantage, so far as to position and strength, would seem to be with America; at the same time this advantage is every year lessened, because population always increases faster in new than in old countries. If in fifty years' time the United States will have a hundred millions instead of sixty, Australia

will have twenty millions instead of four, South Africa ten millions instead of two, and so on. Let us remember that the continent of Australia will be able to support a population of two hundred millions, and that South Africa will support as many as are likely to demand its hospitality for a hundred years to come.

There are three things which separate states-difference of language, difference of religion, difference in form of government. With us there is no difference in language, nor is there, practically, any difference in religion. The vast majority of English-speaking people profess some form of the Protestant religion; those who do not, enjoy the most perfect freedom to follow their conscience. The third point, however, the difference in form of government, is serious.

I suppose that many have never realized the significance of the fact, or even the fact itself, that while all the states that have come out of Great Britain have had to create their own form of government, every one has become practically a republic. In every one of them exist all those institutions which are essentially republican—the recognition of every man's equal rights, the vote given to every man, representative government, no hereditary or privileged class, no established church, free education. The governor, who is the only officer sent out by the mother country, represents the President of the state, who is nominally the Queen of the colony; but as President he has very little power all the power is in the hands of the people and their representatives. What does this mean? All these countries found themselves under the necessity of creating a form of government for themselves. Did they proceed to copy the form of the mother country? Not at all. Did they weigh the advantages against the disadvantages of monarchic or republican government? Not at all. Quietly, without any fuss or argument, without exciting any bad blood or party feeling, they proceeded, each state by itself, and without. communication or conspiracy or mutual understanding, to create a new republic.

This is a very remarkable circumstance in the history of the English colonies: it is very significant that not one should have attempted to produce a copy of the British Constitution. Here, in England, we grow up contentedly with our King, Lords, Commons, and Church; many among us are prepared to defend our institutions en bloc; many more, who would not trouble to