SOME REFLECTIONS ON HOW EMPIRE CAME TO US. 51 



and brings, in the end, often greater and surer wealth, as 

 well as peace. No People has been appointed to be an incubus 

 on any other or control it because greater, wiser or interested, 

 forgetting its own origines and struggles at first for Independence 

 or to be punitive or enforce Protection. Were one to be an aggres- 

 sive evil or uphold a crime, the other nations should unitedly 

 protest. Were this the ultima ratio, war would never be called for. 

 And evil can never be needful, as it can never be right. The laws 

 of God and of Religion apply'to the worldly as well as to His children, 

 and, like those of philosophy, are identical to man whether individual 

 or collective, and to small and weaker companies or to large. All 

 domains, however potent or favoured, stand alike under and are 

 answerable to God, and have also a common trust and duty to the 

 rest of mankind. 



" In the grandee's allowing access to his park he admits tacitly 

 the right of others to the common soil, which is the Lord's, and not 

 the lord's of the manor ; and Nations are now ashamed of Invasion 

 and call it Annexation : the thief might claim the same right, but 

 he would be overruled by his Empire's laws. Professing Christ's 

 example, the Civilized have been, in feverish rivalry, seizing and 

 dividing the Globe — thus covering it with jealousies and hates. 

 Could each have been content with what God gave it, all Peoples 

 might have had enough doubtless and been, also, safe and happy, 

 and the World been easily at peace — now never possible or sure. 

 They have reaped the whirlwind and the sword because they sowed 

 the same, and made a lovely World, as many earthly Paradises, 

 a Hell. What they suffer is their own fault, as with Man himself. 



" When a Power becomes Augustan and rests on ' traditions,' it 

 is a fatal sign. Whether Empire is j;er se desirable or abstractly 

 righteous is a question that may be some day considered. Where 

 it has, by whatever means, been obtained, its responsibility is 

 commensurate and very great. That of its own cares, perils, loss 

 and sufferings is hardly less than its altruistic one of the treatment 

 of brethren alien by the accidents of geography, language and 

 name, but in essentials one. The estimating things by size and 

 number is a mere illusion of the world. Values by Principle only, 

 though far less regarded, are the true. Men ought to be under a 

 Theocracy, and might if they would. There should be no ideal, and 

 can never be a true one, which involves hate, cruelty or greed ; and no 



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