260 ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION ix 



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 im- 

 pressed 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 

 han^s a true sublimity, and the terror of over- 

 hanging 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 peo- 

 ple, 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 hold together under 

 the forms of a republic, and the despotic reality of 

 universal suffrage; whether state rights will hold 

 out against centralisation, without separation, 

 whether centr^li^=ation will get the better, without 

 actual or disguised monarchy; whether shifting 

 corruption is better than a permanent bureauc- 

 racy; and as population thickens in your great 



