C. S. Goldman

“ Our national ideal, then, properly considered, must combine all three aims. When it is shorn of its practicality it will become the creed of dreamers and doctrinaires; if it is bereft of its spiritual side it will become the dogma of a hard and narrow class of utilitarians, such as Bentham and Mill; if it is shorn again of its political aspect, we get the commercialism of the Manchester School in its decadence, where the individual was looked upon as apart from society, where money-making was regarded as per se a religious and moral act, quite apart from the ends for which money was sought. ”

“ As in the realm of thought and of matter, organic and inorganic, forms and conditions show an evolutionary progress, so with the forces and ideals which create and maintain Empire. It is our first business to consider the many and various ideals which together produce the modern Imperial ideal in order to understand the true nature of a creed which to many of us is the one living creed in current politics. Montesquieu truly remarked that three qualities above others distinguished the English from any other nation—the qualities of Liberty, Piety, and Industrial Ambition. ”

“ Political liberty, the first of these ideals, was won in an early stage of our history, at a time when England took small part in international affairs. While the rest of the world was groaning under the tyranny of absolute rulers, the spirit of individual liberty had already permeated our masses, certain substantive rights had been won as against autocratic power, and when the ultimate crisis arose, and the fleet of the greatest nation of the day threatened her coasts, the country armed as a whole in its defence. ”

“ If there is any truth in Schiller's saying, 'Men rise by their higher purposes,' it is as applicable to nations as to individuals. In no period in history has it fallen to the lot of mankind to witness a greater Empire than the British Empire of to-day, and it follows as a logical conclusion that the administration of such an Empire must needs imply a heavy weight of responsibility. Are we conscious of these responsibilities, and is the nation rising to meet them? ”

“ Taking as its axiom that it was desirable to maintain England as a great nation, it argued that no national life can develop without a material foundation. To use the jargon of philosophy, all qualitative development must have a quantitative basis. It sought this basis in the development of that oversea Empire which had been won by its forerunners. The rise of other nations, the growth of armies and navies, the dawn of colonizing ambition among other European Powers, might well make such a development a bare necessity in self-defence ”

“ It desired to make the Empire a united and self-subsistent whole, not merely on the ground of safety, but on the wider ground of the richer life which it would afford. Seeing in England an old, crowded, and complex society, with little room for internal development, it sought to open a wider horizon to its view, and to remedy some of the greater evils of the social organism by means of the wide, untried territories at its command. ”

“ Fortunately for England, leaders in the persons of Carlyle and Ruskin in the theoretical, and Beaconsfield in the practical, spheres arose, and preached a new doctrine, restated the old ideal, roused the nation from its sluggishness, and stimulated it towards a higher purpose. Once more the old doctrine was preached that works were valueless without faith, and that politics, unless inspired by a true social faith, were only a blind stumbling among precedents. ”

“ Men began to realize that the nation could not shirk its responsibilities without the degradation of its moral life, and that the truest national well-being lay in great tasks and grave difficulties honestly and fearlessly faced. ”

“ The Empire in its modern form is a factor with which earlier statesmen had no need to reckon, because it did not exist. To-day there is nothing visionary in the conception of a future Imperial organization which shall assure the independence of the several democracies and the safety of our Imperial administration more securely than any foreign alliance. For the time being, while only the foundations are in place, it has been found necessary by us to seek the buttress of a foreign support. But those who know the Empire cannot rest satisfied with that solution of the permanent problem. ”

“ Both were practical men using the best weapons for achieving their ends, and if Cromwell is now remembered as the man who had to crush and stamp out great evils, and did so by methods which a weaker man would have feared to use, in the same way we may regard Rhodes as one who took the most prosaic and most suspected of all methods, and used it for the furtherance of an ideal. He will be regarded, we believe, in future ages as a living proof of that stage in which capital becomes transformed and loses all its vices—a potent instrument towards the dissemination of high and noble principles. ”

“ After a short destructive period the nation produced a man who, while vindicating that liberty of conscience which England has never since lost, at the same time refused to seek a barren liberty, but joined a moral reformation to patriotic ends, and welded the whole into one national ideal. ”

“ True Puritanism urged that faith without works is dead, and that the glory of God was equally achieved in practical life as in the hermit's cell. The service of God in the world, and not out of it, in an active life of enterprise, and not in a passive mood of religious contemplation, became the standard of a new régime growing up under Cromwell's example and with the memory of Bunyan's hero, who was not a priest, but a pilgrim. ”

“ The day of the individual and the small nation has gone for England with the advent of rivals. In any era of competition Providence is on the side of the bigger social battalions. As in commerce we see every day new trade combinations, so also in politics the future is for the State which can unite and consolidate. Happily, the conditions of such Imperial consolidation exist within the Empire to-day. ”

“ One great feature in England's history is that her political and social conflicts were never barren of results. In France the Wars of Religion left only a bankrupt society and an effete autocracy. The Imperial ambitions of Spain left only a wearied and reactionary State. The Thirty Years' War in Germany took its toll of bloodshed without bequeathing as a recompense any real political or moral blessing. ”

“ They believe that the administration of an Empire is as much a science as any other branch of politics, and therefore demands exact knowledge and serious reflection.
The point of time is important, both to the future historian and to the present generation of British citizens, because it is recognised on all hands that we have reached a critical period of Imperial evolution. In the self-governing Colonies the work of the past century has been that of foundation-laying. ”

“ Chamberlain's policy, several are not, and there is the same divergence of views on non-Imperial questions. The one link of connection is that all are believers in constructive Imperialism. In their view of the Empire they represent the revolt from the old unfruitful attitude of apathy, ignorance, and vague sentimentality. They desire to see a self-conscious community rather than a collection of indeterminate atoms. They believe that the doctrine of laissez-faire, while it may be valuable as a conscious and reasoned policy, is extremely dangerous and futile as a temperamental attitude. ”

“ It would be strange indeed if the men who have developed the administration of our great Dependencies could readily reconcile themselves to a new order of the world, in which the perpetuation of their life-work would depend upon the support of allies to whom the British tradition would be a mere exotic, possessing only a certain market value in diplomacy. ”

“ The Elizabethans, the Puritans who founded the New England States and gave the first impulse to English industrialism, and, at a later date, the people of the North of England, who combined Methodism and a zeal for political reform with an unfailing practical instinct, seem to prove that Montesquieu's diagnosis is the correct one, and that the English racial ideal at its best, whether we call it Nationalism or Imperialism, combines these three attributes. ”

“ With the practical insight of an experienced statesman he recognised the fact that England's future must be based upon a solid economic foundation. Puritanism at its best refused to allow the individual to live his moral life apart from the world of men. ”

“ Looking back over the course of history, we cannot avoid being struck with the fact that zeal for political liberty, religious freedom, and industrial ambition were coeval, and combined in all great epochs. ”

“ With the rapid rise of formidable European Powers the period of our insular predominance and 'splendid isolation' has been brought to an end. Once more Little England, intent on her national independence, returns to the tradition of an earlier age, and looks abroad for political combinations. ”

“ They apprehend the imminent questions which will be raised by the growth to maturity of the colonial nations, and they value the pride in British tradition which spreads even to peoples not of our own blood, but living under the flag. ”

“ That so many busy experts in different provinces should have been ready to give their knowledge for the instruction of their country is surely a signal proof of public spirit I wish especially to thank my friends Mr. ”