THE POLICY OF AGGRANDIZEMENT. 



543 



if she ever acquires Constantinople ; it is liable 

 to attack from every port between Cherbourg and 

 Port Said ; its wardership will oblige us to flaunt 

 the flag of our domination in the faces of all the 

 dwellers on the Mediterranean. The present 

 helplessness of France, no doubt, is our oppor- 

 tunity; but we are credibly assured that her 

 jealousy will be at once aroused, and that her 

 hostility awaits us in the end. 



It is probable that in tbe present mood of the 

 nation aggrandizement will carry the day. We 

 say mood, and it does not seem that there has 

 been any definite change of conviction such as 

 new arguments produce since the time when 

 more moderate views prevailed. But the nation 

 is now flushed with wealth, and with the sense of 

 power which wealth begets ; it is infected with 

 the military spirit which fills armed Europe ; it 

 has built a great fleet of iron-clads, and feels in- 

 clined to show its power. The aristocratic party 

 is in the ascendant, and British aristocracy, as 

 well as Russian despotism, is willing to divert 

 the mind of the people from progress at home 

 to aggrandizement abroad. The knowledge that 

 the Government is favorable to them stimulates 

 to activity all enterprising spirits, and at the de- 

 cisive moment they throw into the scale, by en- 

 thusiastic and combined effort, a weight out of 

 proportion to their mere numbers. In such a 

 state of excitement are spirits of this sort at pres- 

 ent, and so great has been the development of 

 their ambition, that we read projects for making 

 England mistress of all the water communications 

 of the globe. What she would do with that 

 magnificent possession we have not been in- 

 formed. We need not to be informed what the 

 other nations would do if they found all the 

 water communications of the globe seized into 

 the hands of one domineering power. There are 

 politicians who, if they had their way, would 

 make the battle of Dorking a reality in spite of 

 Nature and of Fate. 



Those who counsel England to seize on all 

 the water communications of the globe seem to 

 forget that, though still far the first of maritime 

 powers, she is not, as she was at the close of the 

 war with Napoleon, sole mistress of the seas. 

 Other countries now have their navies, which, 

 though singly not a match for hers, united must 

 be a good deal more than a match, and which, 

 moreover, would be free to strike with their full 

 force, while she would have to disperse her force 

 for the purpose of shielding unguarded depend- 

 encies in all parts of the world. Nor is it in 

 this respect only that her position is changed. 



Her naval and military power depends partly 

 upon her superiority in wealth ; her superiority 

 in wealth depends in great measure on her su- 

 premacy in manufactures, and this also has been 

 greatly reduced by the development of manufact- 

 ures in other countries since the Napoleonic 

 wars. The commercial progress of other coun- 

 tries, especially of France, where the military 

 spirit seems to be gradually giving way to the 

 commercial, threatens British interests, even Brit- 

 ish interests in the East, more seriously than the 

 approach of Russia to Herat. 



That there are certain classes, administrative, 

 military, and commercial, which have a special 

 interest in a policy of aggrandizement, no one 

 needs to be told ; our ears ring with the vocifer- 

 ous demonstrations of the fact. What it seems 

 particularly desirable to elicit, before the irrevo- 

 cable step of occupying Egypt is taken, is the 

 proof that foreign dominion is equally beneficial 

 to the whole people. Beneficial, we mean, either 

 in the way of material well-being or in the way 

 of real moral and intellectual elevation. The 

 mere pride of dominion we confess does not seem 

 to us a sufficient object. Besides being radi- 

 cally antagonistic to the tendencies of modern 

 civilization, its enjoyment is confined to the few 

 who play the game ; it is not shared by the many 

 who pay and bleed, scarcely conscious all the 

 time of the existence of an empire. 



To all who have not entirely abandoned them- 

 selves to the prevailing impulse it must be clear 

 that aggrandizement is a question to which there 

 are two sides. That there are two sides to it in 

 a moral point of view, we all imply as often as 

 we denounce on moral grounds the territorial 

 ambition of Russia. But let us put the question 

 of morality aside. In truth, it does not present 

 itself in a very serious form so far as the occu- 

 pation of Egypt is concerned. The general con- 

 currence of the powers, at all events, if it could 

 be obtained, might relieve us from any misgivings 

 on that score. The khedive is, to the mass of 

 his unhappy subjects, not a national sovereign, 

 but an alien oppressor, whose dominion has no 

 foundation but brute force, and whose power is 

 exercised without the slightest regard for the 

 welfare of the people. Anybody who can is 

 morally at liberty to overturn him and relieve 

 the victims of his oppression. There can be no 

 doubt that English government, however it might 

 affect the destinies of the country in the end, 

 would at present be an enormous change for the 

 better. Nor is it easy to see who could cast a 

 stone at us. Certainly not France, with Algeria 



