354 VENEZUELA AND AFTER 



terial and spiritual forces. Yet it does not 

 stand out so incontestably the chief reservoir 

 of such forces as was the case a century earlier, 

 when it numbered but 19,000,000 souls. Then 

 it dominated the English-speaking peoples of 

 the earth commercially, industrially, intellec 

 tually, and, save the United States, polit 

 ically. Its dependencies were already vast in 

 extent, but none contained more inhabitants 

 of British origin than Canada, where there 

 were hardly 250,000. To-day the dependen 

 cies include, in addition to Canada, with its 

 7,500,000 people, Australia, with some 4,500,- 

 ooo, New Zealand, with 1,000,000, and South 

 Africa, with another 1,000,000 of whites, among 

 whom the English type is somewhat modified 

 by the Dutch. The reaction of these great 

 progressive communities upon the mother-land 

 is altogether too significant to be disregarded, 

 and it is growing from year to year. Domi 

 nation, in any such sense as was accurate in 

 1814, cannot be predicated of the United 

 Kingdom. It is now but the most powerful 

 member of a larger unity, the British Empire, 

 already in fact, and rapidly becoming in name, 

 a federation of English-speaking states. 



Outside of this political and cultural aggre- 



