minds. They
_can_ be governed still, these English; they are men still; not gnats,
nor serpents. They love their old ways yet, and their old masters, and
their old land. They would fain live in it, as many as may stay there,
if you will show them how, there, to live;--or show them even, how,
there, like Englishmen, to die.

"To live in it, as many as may!" How many do you think may? How many
_can_? How many do you want to live there? As masters, your first object
must be to increase your power; and in what does the power of a country
consist? Will you have dominion over its stones, or over its clouds, or
over its souls? What do you mean by a great nation, but a great
multitude of men who are true to each other, and strong, and of worth?
Now you can increase the multitude only definitely--your island has only
so much standing room--but you can increase the _worth in_definitely. It
is but a little island;--suppose, little as it is, you were to fill it
with friends? You may, and that easily. You must, and that speedily; or
there will be an end to this England of ours, and to all its loves and
enmities.

To fill this little island with true friends--men brave, wise, and
happy! Is it so impossible, think you, after the world's eighteen
hundred years of Christianity, and our own thousand years of toil, to
fill only this little white gleaming crag with happy creatures, helpful
to each other? Africa, and India, and the Brazilian wide-watered plain,
are these not wide enough for the ignorance of our race? have they not
space enough for its pain? Must we remain _here_ also savage,--_here_
at enmity with each other,--_here_ foodless, houseless, in rags, in
dust, and without hope, as thousands and tens of thousands of us are
lying? Do not think it, gentlemen. The thought that it is inevitable is
the last infidelity; infidelity not to God only, but to every creature
and every law that He has made. Are we to think that the earth was only
shaped to be a globe of torture; and that there cannot be one spot of it
where peace can rest, or justice reign? Where are men ever to be happy,
if not in England? by whom shall they ever be taught to do right, if not
by you? Are we not of a race first among the strong ones of the earth;
the blood in us incapable of weariness, unconquerable by grief? Have we
not a history of which we can hardly think without becoming insolent in
our just pride of it? Can we dare, without passing every limit of
cou