THE POLICY OF AGGRANDIZEMENT. 



545 



ly to state the case with which we may fairly as- 

 sume they are prepared. England will then ad- 

 vance her eagles not only with the assurance 

 that some of her sons would be greatly gratified 

 at present, but without misgiving as to the effect 

 on the general welfare of her people for the 

 future. 



Does conquest bring strength to England ? 

 That is the most obvious question, and for the 

 ordinary advocates of aggrandizement the most 

 important. To the Roman it brought strength, 

 because it brought him both tribute and military 

 contingents ; to the Spaniard it brought tribute, 

 with which his armies were paid. But in the 

 case of England modern sentiment interposes. 

 England draws from her dependencies no tribute; 

 large sums come from India, but they come into 

 private hands. Sepoys were sent to Egypt at the 

 time of the war with France, and Mr. Sidney 

 Owen, in the preface to his " Selection from the 

 Wellesley Dispatches," contends that, though they 

 were not actually engaged, their presence pro- 

 duced an effect, and might be regarded as the 

 symbol of a real addition to the military power 

 of England. But rating this addition at the 

 highest, and taking into consideration also any 

 instance of the employment of negro regiments 

 from the West Indies, will it be contended that 

 the accession of force derived by England from 

 her dependencies bears any proportion to the 

 force expended by her in acquiring and defending 

 them ? 



India must be debited not only with all that 

 has been expended in her acquisition and defense, 

 but with all that has been expended in securing 

 access to her, and notably with a large portion of 

 the cost of the Crimean War. But the expendi- 

 ture, whether of money or of blood, is not all ; 

 the whole foreign policy of England quivers with 

 alarm for India. We are being constantly drawn 

 away from that which would otherwise be the 

 manifest line of our interest by that besetting 

 fear. Under its influence we have sullied our 

 civilization by an alliance with the foul decrepi- 

 tude of Turkey, and made an enemy of Russia, 

 perhaps the only sincere friend we had in the 

 world. 



The Roman Empire, though colossal, was ge- 

 ographically united, and the provinces, as time 

 went on, were more or less incorporated with the 

 imperial state. The Russian Empire, though 

 equally colossal, is also geographically united ; it 

 annexes conterminous regions, which are gradual- 

 ly incorporated, and will no doubt be thoroughly 

 assimilated in the end. The Spanish Empire was 

 60 



scattered ; its dependencies were incapable of 

 incorporation, much more of assimilation, and 

 the same is the case with ours. A line of com- 

 munication with the East has to be maintained, 

 to the length of which, and the forces threaten- 

 ing it at every point, attention has been already 

 called. 



In England the strength of England lies. Why 

 this thought should be unwelcome, it seems diffi- 

 cult to say ; at any rate, such is the fact. 



In the days before free trade, monopoly of 

 I markets was a very intelligible and solid, though 

 not a very laudable, appanage of empire. But 

 free trade has thrown open the ports of the In- 

 dies, East and West, to all nations alike, and, if 

 England still has the lion's share of the trade, it 

 is not because she is the mistress, but because 

 she is the great exporting nation. The commer- 

 cial handling of the dependencies by planters, 

 contractors, and others engaged in the internal 

 production and trade, is, on the other hand, an 

 advantage connected with political dominion. 

 The only drawback from it is that English pro- 

 duction in the dependencies may exclude British 

 imports, as in the case of the cotton-manufactures 

 of India, which are supplanting British goods in 

 the Indian market. 



It is said, and with truth, that empire trains 

 soldiers and administrators. But are they not, 

 for the most part, soldiers and administrators of 

 a special kind ? Algeria trained soldiers, and 

 her training is said to have been one of the causes 

 of the military disasters which befell France. 

 Administrators generally end their official lives 

 in the dependency, and the benefit of the Indian 

 Civil Service is therefore reaped more by the in- 

 dividual Englishmen employed in it and their 

 families than by the country, except in so far as 

 the appointments may act as prizes in stimulat- 

 ing education. Even were it otherwise, bureau- 

 cracy, intensified by exclusiveness of race, and by 

 severance from English society and opinion, would 

 scarcely be a good school for the service of a free 

 nation. The author of "The Abode of Snow" 

 seems to be an acute observer, and he is certain- 

 ly not indifferent to the glory of British dominion, 

 or opposed to the extension of British influence. 

 In a passage on official character in India, which, 

 as its tenor is mixed, it may be fair to append in 

 a note, he draws a strong, and what seems a 

 probably just, distinction between the effect of 

 India on superior minds, or those immediately 

 under their influence, and its effect on the mind 

 of the ordinary official. His general estimate 

 may be somewhat adverse, and it may be fairly 



