very complete forts, and is hopefully awaiting
some nine-inch breach-loaders that are to adorn them. There is something
very pathetic in the trustful, clinging attitude of the Colonies, who
ought to have been soured and mistrustful long ago. "We hope the Home
Government may do this. It is possible that the Home Government may do
that," is the burden of the song, and in every place where the
Englishman cannot breed successfully must continue to be. Imagine an
India fit for permanent habitation by our kin, and consider what a place
it would be this day, with the painter cut fifty years ago, fifty
thousand miles of railways laid down and ten thousand under survey, and
possibly an annual surplus. Is this sedition? Forgive me, but I am
looking at the shipping outside the verandah, at the Chinamen in the
streets, and at the lazy, languid Englishmen in banians and white
jackets stretched on the cane chairs, and these things are not nice. The
men are not really lazy, as I will try to show later on, but they lounge
and loaf and seem to go to office at eleven, which must be bad for work.
And they all talk about going home at indecently short intervals, as
though that were their right. Once more, if we could only rear children
that did not run to leg and nose in the second generation in this part
of the world and one or two others, what an amazing disruption of the
Empire there would be before half of a Parnell Commission sitting was
accomplished! And then, later, when the freed States had plunged into
hot water, fought their fights, overborrowed, overspeculated, and
otherwise conducted themselves like younger sons, what a coming together
and revision of tariffs, ending in one great iron band girdling the
earth. Within that limit free trade. Without, rancorous Protection. It
would be too vast a hornet's nest for any combination of Powers to
disturb. The dream will not come about for a long time, but we shall
accomplish something like it one of these days. The birds of passage
from Canada, from Borneo,--Borneo that will have to go through a
general rough-and-tumble before she grips her possibilities,--from
Australia, from a hundred scattered islands, are saying the same thing:
"We are not strong enough yet, but some day We shall be."

Oh! dear people, stewing in India and swearing at all the Governments,
it is a glorious thing to be an Englishman. "Our lot has fallen unto us
in a fair ground. Yea, we have a goodly heritage." Take a