British interests

“ To watch over the interests of those great offshoots of the British race which plant themselves in distant lands; to aid them in their efforts to extend the domain of civilisation, and to fulfil that first behest of a benevolent Creator to His intelligent creatures—'subdue the earth;' to abet the generous endeavour to impart to these rising communities the full advantages of British laws, British institutions, and British freedom ”

“ Sir, in pursuing that course, and in pursuing the more limited direction of our own particular interests, my conviction is, that as long as England keeps herself in the right, as long as she wishes to permit no injustice, as long as she wishes to countenance no wrong, as long as she labours at legislative interests of her own, and as long as she sympathizes with right and justice, she never will find herself altogether alone. ”

“ It is, therefore, with the sincerest pleasure I have observed on the part of the British government various manifestations of a just and friendly disposition towards us; we wish to cultivate peace and friendship with all nations, believing that course most conducive to the welfare of our own; it is natural that these friendships should bear some proportion to the common interests of the parties. The interesting relations between Great Britain and the United States are certainly of the first order, and as such are estimated, and will be faithfully cultivated by us. ”

“ We have not looked to any interest, either large or petty, in regard to ourselves; we have regarded the great interests of Europe; we have desired that the settlement which put an end to a century of bloodshed should remain in full force and vigour. ”

“ In the United States there are several million British-born who are lost to the Empire for ever. Their sentiments are British, their sympathies are British, but their interests are here, and interest becomes sentiment. And observe that their children born here have sentiment as well as interest for the land of their birth.
“The British Empire is the largest in the world. In natural resources it is the wealthiest. It could support a population of hundreds of millions in a high degree of prosperity. The British are an able and intelligent people. The nation is rich. ”

“ Here, as fully as in the self-governing Colonies, membership of the British Empire does not mean subjection to the selfish dominion of a master, or the subordination to that master's interests of the vital interests of the community. It means the establishment among a vast population of the essential gifts of western civilisation—rational law, and the liberty which exists under its shelter. ”

“ We represent those vast imperial interests of the British Empire to which you are all proud to belong." It went just as flat. And then I added, "But what in the name of God would have become of the British Empire if it had not been for the village pump?" [Laughter and applause] The fact of the matter is, we are all out in this war. The man at the forge, in the mine, in the field, in the foundry, and the factory, even the Johnny in Rotten Row—they are all taking their little part. ”

“ She is sure to find some other state, of sufficient power, influence, and weight, to support and aid her in the course she may think fit to pursue. Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow. ”

“ But, my Lords, the whole position and influence of this country with regard to foreign countries ought to be fully considered by Parliament and by the country; for we have great interests with multiplied complications arising from various connexions and various treaties with every part of the world. It is no longer a question with reference to the balance of power in Europe. There are other parts of the world in which our interests may be as deeply involved, and in which we may some day or other find it necessary to maintain the honour and interests of this country. ”

“ And if it be true that the institution of civilised government in these regions was necessary in the interests at once of modern industry and of the backward peoples themselves, it is equally true that there are no other backward regions in which the interests of the native subjects have been more solicitously considered, and none in which the interests of all the industrial nations, and not merely of a single dominant race, have been so steadily held in view, as in these regions of the British Empire. ”

“ So far, then, as the interests and honour of Great Britain are concerned, those interests and that honour have, been scrupulously maintained. Great Britain has come out of the, negotiations, claiming all the respect that is due to her; and, in a tone not to be mistaken, enforcing all her rights. It is true that her policy has not been violent or precipitate. She has not sprung forth armed, from the impulse of a sudden indignation; she has looked before and after; she has reflected on all the circumstances which beset, and on all the consequences which may follow, so awful a decision as war ”

“ Great Britain could have afforded better than France to tie its national life to an over-national idea, but the only idea in which Britons have really believed was that of British security, prosperity, and power. ”

“ Other men might have acted, no doubt, with more ability—none could have acted with a more entire devotion both of their time and faculties. The principle on which I have thought the foreign affairs of this country ought to be conducted is, the principle of maintaining peace and friendly understanding with all nations, so long as it was possible to do so consistently with a due regard to the interests, the honour, and the dignity of this country. ”

“ The roots of nations lie deep in the past. We can understand the interests and the policy of States and gauge the character, attitude, and probable conduct of nations only by studying their history and development, their experiences, and their traditions. ”

“ To guard and preserve so vast and lucrative a dominion, to vindicate its integrity alike against outer foes and inner disaffection, to strengthen its unity by drawing closer the bonds, whether commercial or administrative, which linked its various parts to the mother country, became from this moment not only the aim of British statesmen, but the resolve of the British people. ”

“ We shall claim much for them as the British nation claims much for itself—on the strength of its best examples, without imagining that the full advantages are universally, or even generally, realised. ”

“ The fact is that the whole concept of modern statesmanship needs revision. But England has been, and is, the chief of sinners. Quite apart from the idea of a self-contained Empire there is the idea of Britain as an organized nation. And the British Empire as an organized Empire, organised for trade, for industry, for economic justice, for national defence, for the preservation of the world's peace, for the protection of the weak against the strong. ”

“ If England could, by legitimate means, and without unduly sacrificing or imperilling her own interests, accelerate this consummation, she would, in my opinion, earn the just gratitude of the civilized world. ”

“ The essence of the British system is the free development of natural tendencies, and the encouragement of variety of types; and the future towards which the Empire seems to be tending is not that of a highly centralised and unified state, but that of a brotherhood of free nations, united by community of ideas and institutions, co-operating for many common ends, and above all for the common defence in case of need, but each freely following the natural trend of its own development. ”

“ I first give you, gentlemen, what I think the right principles of foreign policy. The first thing is to foster the strength of the Empire by just legislation and economy at home, thereby producing two of the great elements of national power—namely, wealth, which is a physical element, and union and contentment, which are moral elements—and to reserve the strength of the Empire, to reserve the expenditure of that strength, for great and worthy occasions abroad. ”

“ However England may regard us, we need only view her as a splendid example of a nation great and powerful by the productiveness of her soil and mines, the ability of her people, and the liberalizing spirit of her commerce. In her present external condition, in her vast navy, her extensive commerce, in all save her insulated and secure position, we may read our own near destiny. Grasping, ambitious and powerful the British race certainly is ”

“ It may soon become a question of prosperity or starvation for the masses. Great Britain stands at the parting of the ways. She must either protect and re-create her industries, federate with her colonies, and make the British Empire a reality, or sink into insignificance, and history knows no instance of a great nation becoming a small one without the most intense suffering to the masses of the people. ”

“ If we are once established, when troubles come, England must for her honour protect her subjects, and in protecting them, protect their interests, and they knew that England once committed to interference in any country (said to be rich) , must of necessity remain to restore order, introduce good government, and generally to further the cause of progress and morality, which is specially her aim in every country peopled by an inferior race. ”

“ This contact and communion of interests became to them the voice of responsibility and of obligation to impart their blessings to them as well as to take their material resources from them. The dawn of the new altruistic sense towards its subject people, though long deferred, rapidly grew into full daylight; and Great Britain today feels, as no country has felt before, its privilege and duty to bestow upon its dependency in the East the highest and best which it can furnish. ”

“ If you turn to the history of England, from the period of the Revolution to the present, you will find that an entirely new policy was adopted, and that while we had endeavoured in former times to keep ourselves free from European complications, we now began to act upon a system of constant entanglement in the affairs of foreign countries, as if there were neither property nor honours, not anything worth striving for, to be acquired in any other field. ”

“ Still more, it has given us reason and opportunity to appreciate our obligations to the mother country for the dignified and powerful influence of the British Empire in the maintenance of our principles and rights.
There are other fields to conquer. The past has gone, and the future opens the door to greater responsibilities, and I trust to greater progress and prosperity. We are ascending to a clearer atmosphere, up to a higher level, where we should take a stronger position than ever before occupied by our government and people. ”

“ Such is the manifest decay of our authority, so fallen in the eyes of all mankind is the character of this country, that two of the greatest States of the world are content to arrange their differences through a British Minister, from reliance on British influence, and from confidence in British equity and British wisdom! ”

“ Great enterprises have ever attracted some base adherents, and these by their very presence seem to sully every achievement recorded of nations or cities. But to arraign the fountain and the end of the high action because of this baser alloy? To impeach on this account all the valour, all the wisdom long approved? Reply is impossible; the thing simply is not British.
Indeed, in very deed, it is for another cause, and for another ideal—an ideal that, gathering to itself down the ages the ardour of their battle-cries, falls in all the splendour of a new hope about the path of England now. ”

“ British Empire, a policy which shall cover every phase of our national, economic, and social life; which shall develop our tremendous resources, and yet be compatible with those ideals of liberty and justice for which our ancestors fought and died, and for which the men of our race now, in this, the greatest of all wars, are fighting and dying in a fashion worthy of their breeding. ”

“ But the creation of these things is, or ought to be, the ultimate aim of European government in such countries. And in the meantime, and until they become fully masters of their own fate, these lands, so our British experience tells us, ought to be treated as distinct political units; they should pay no tribute; all their resources should be devoted to their own development; and they should not be expected or required to maintain larger forces than are necessary for their own defence. ”

“ For to bring home to all within her borders who bear rule and responsibility, from the village headman in India and Nigeria, the Basutu chief and the South Sea potentate, to the public opinion of Great Britain and the self-governing Dominions, the nature of the British Commonwealth, and the character of its citizenship and ideals, and to study how those ideals may be better expressed in its working institutions and executive government—that is a task to which the present crisis beckons the minds of British citizens, a task which Britain owes not only to herself but to mankind. ”

“ Thus British institutions—the institutions of national self-government, which are peculiarly British in origin—have played a main part both in determining the character of the British Empire and in bringing about its wonderful expansion. The more the British Empire has grown the more freedom has been established on the face of the earth. ”

“ In plain English, they will recognize that Germany had become too much of a menace to the prosperity of the British Empire to be allowed any further development as the general purveyor of the world's manifold wants and needs. ”