hrow out these
suggestions, as I have said, in ignorance of the practical difficulties
that may lie in the way of carrying them into effect, on the general
ground that personal and local influences are very subtle, and often
unconscious, while the future greatness and efficiency of the noble
institution which now commences its work must largely depend upon its
freedom from them.

* * * * *

I constantly hear Americans speak of the charm which our old mother
country has for them, of the delight with which they wander through the
streets of ancient towns, or climb the battlements of mediaeval
strongholds, the names of which are indissolubly associated with the
great epochs of that noble literature which is our common inheritance;
or with the blood-stained steps of that secular progress, by which the
descendants of the savage Britons and of the wild pirates of the North
Sea have become converted into warriors of order and champions of
peaceful freedom, exhausting what still remains of the old Berserk
spirit in subduing nature, and turning the wilderness into a garden. But
anticipation has no less charm than retrospect, and to an Englishman
landing upon your shores for the first time, travelling for hundreds of
miles through strings of great and well-ordered cities, seeing your
enormous actual, and almost infinite potential, wealth in all
commodities, and in the energy and ability which turn wealth to account,
there is something sublime in the vista of the future. Do not suppose
that I am pandering to what is commonly understood by national pride. I
cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your bigness,
or your material resources, as such. Size is not grandeur, and territory
does not make a nation. The great issue, about which hangs a true
sublimity, and the terror of overhanging fate, is what are you going to
do with all these things? What is to be the end to which these are to be
the means? You are making a novel experiment in politics on the greatest
scale which the world has yet seen. Forty millions at your first
centenary, it is reasonably to be expected that, at the second, these
states will be occupied by two hundred millions of English-speaking
people, spread over an area as large as that of Europe, and with
climates and interests as diverse as those of Spain and Scandinavia,
England and Russia. You and your descendants have to ascertain whether
this great mass will