260 THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND 



enthusiastic helpers. She made her colonies self-governing colonies. 



This movement for the improvement of the government of the 

 colonies was precisely coincident with the great reforms at home. 

 This is a thing directly concerning the expansion of England itself 

 which all must remember : her great advances were all along the line — 

 at home and abroad together. We talk of England learning the lesson 

 of honest civil service from the Indian service. The improvement at 

 home and in India went together. Constitutional reforms at home 

 and a true civil service have grown steadily. Coincident with her 

 advance in democracy at home, as illustrated in the time of Lord 

 Durham and Peel, as illustrated in the civil service and in other move- 

 ments of these threescore years, has come whatever is praiseworthy 

 in the great movements abroad. 



In the work of her great colonial administration England has shown 

 us some of the noblest statesmen of modern history, men Avho have 

 done more almoiit than an}' others to make this world more orderly 

 and a better place to live in. Sir George Grej' was a t3'pical man in 

 this age of expansion, with whose life we ought to be familiar. His 

 life, beginning in 1812, almost spans thecentur}'. He died two years 

 ago. He was the son of one of Wellington's colonels, and early in 

 life, after work in the exjiloration of Australia, he wiis ai)pointed 

 governor of South Australia. He was one of the first governors of 

 New Zealand, and one of the first governors of Cape Colonv. There 

 is no chapter in his biography more didactic and wholesome than 

 that on his government of Cape Colonj^ especially that portion show- 

 ing his judgment of all those movements which, culminating this last 

 year, have brought England to the melancholy i)ass which we see in 

 South Africa. Most wholesome is the exposure of the futility and 

 futalit}' of tiie eftort to manage colonial details from Downing Street. 

 Men like Sir George Grey, by the great reform measures for which 

 they strove in New Zealand and Cape Colony, have helped England 

 toward tlie tilings which might so easil}' save her from such folly and 

 sin as this Avar in South Africa toda}'. It was an Englishman who 

 well said that what South Africa needed at this time was rest and not 

 a surgical operation. 



WHKRKIN THE MIGHT OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE RESTS 



The British empire is an empire toda}' greater than four Europes. 

 Britain has more than half of the trade of the world. Do we realize 

 what a factor the British empire is in the world ? The four great facts 



