hat the views of the Manchester school on this
subject have within the last few years steadily lost ground, and that
a far warmer and, in my opinion, nobler and more healthy feeling
towards India and the colonies has grown up. The change may be
attributed to many causes. In the first place, what Carlyle called
'The Calico Millennium' has not arrived. The nations have not adopted
free trade, but nearly all of them, including unfortunately many of
our own colonies, have raised tariff walls against our trade. The
Reign of Peace has not come. National antipathies and jealousies play
about as great a part in human affairs as they ever did, and there are
certainly not less than three and a half millions, there are probably
nearly four millions, of men under arms in what are called the peace
establishments of Europe. It is beginning to be clearly seen that,
with our vast, redundant, ever-growing population, with our enormous
manufactures, and our utterly insufficient supply of home-grown food,
it is a matter of life and death to the nation, and especially to its
working classes, that there should be secure and extending fields open
to our goods, and in the present condition of the world we must mainly
look for these fields within our own Empire. The gigantic dimensions
that Indian trade has assumed within the last few years, and the
extraordinary commercial development of some other parts of our
Empire, have pointed the moral, and it has been made still more
apparent by the eagerness with which other Powers, and especially
Germany, have flung themselves into the path of colonisation. In an
age, too, when all the paths of professional and industrial life in
our country are crowded to excess, the competitive system has combined
with our new acquisitions of territory to throw open noble fields of
employment, enterprise and ambition to poor and struggling talent, and
India is proving a school of inestimable value for maintaining some of
the best and most masculine qualities of our race. It is the great
seed-plot of our military strength; and the problems of Indian
administration are peculiarly fitted to form men of a kind that is
much needed among us--men of strong purpose and firm will, and high
ruling and organising powers, men accustomed to deal with facts rather
than with words, and to estimate measures by their intrinsic value,
and not merely by their party advantages, men skilful in judging human
character under its many type