good thought of was the personal improvement or comfort of each
individual or of a mass of individuals. While this was going on in
British towns and counties, something was happening on the neglected
globe. There was a large part of the British Nation living on other
continents without votes in any British town or county, yet looking to
the British Government to champion something they loved, which has come
to be called the Empire. There were also great nations emulating the
British in the notion that the world was their inheritance, and that
they would take possession of a fair share of it. Their quarrels had
driven them to perfect their armies and to build navies. Each of them
was annoyed to find that in the scramble for the heritage some one had
been before them. On the best plots the British flag was flying, yet
Great Britain had not much Army and was very careless about her Navy.
The strong powers began to elbow her a little. The British Government
was not disturbed by these hints from the globe. A Government made by a
Parliament in which every member represented a town or a county or a
scrap of a town or county, and in which no one represented the Nation,
no one the Empire, and no one the Globe, felt bound to keep its eye upon
towns and counties, the Opposition benches, and the next election. Why
should it stand up for the British outside, and why concern itself about
other Powers looking round the globe for claims to peg out? The
colonists who looked to the British Government for championship were
snubbed; the foreign Powers working for elbow-room were politely made
way for, or if they brushed against the British coat-sleeve and caused
an exclamation received a meek apology. This was the normal frame of
mind of British party leaders and ministers, from which they have never
quite emerged. They were asleep, dreaming of a parochial millennium.

But outside of cabinets there were a few men who used their eyes. Sir
Charles Dilke took a turn round the globe, and when he came back said
"Greater Britain." That was an idea, and ideas are like the plague--they
are catching. Sir John Seeley took a tour through the history of the
last three centuries, and said "Expansion of England"; that meant
continuity in the Nation's life not merely in space but in time.
Whatever the cause, a few years ago there set in an epidemic of fresh
ideas, tending to reveal the Nation as more than a crowd of individuals
and the Empire as the Nati