624th ordinary GENERAL MEETING, 



HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL, 

 WESTMINSTER, S.W., on MONDAY, JANUARY 17th, 1921, 



AT 4.30 P.M. 



Alfred W. Oke, Esq., B.A., LL.M., in the Chair. 



The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read, confirmed and signed 

 and the Hon. Secretary announced the Election of the following : — Mr. 

 George Wilson as a Member and Mrs. Elizabeth Blackie, the Rev. G. E. 

 Henderson, D.D., and Miss K. M. Beresford, as Associates. 



The Chairman then called on the Right Rev. Bishop E. Graham 

 Ingham, D.D., to read his paper on " Some Reflections on How Empire 

 came to us, and can alone be conserved." 



SOME REFLECTIONS ON HOW EMPIRE CAME TO 

 US, AND CAN ALONE BE CONSERVED. By the 

 Right Rev. Bishop E. Graham Ingham, D.D. 



N Institute bearing the honoured name of " Victoria " 

 may well enter upon such an inquiry as this. 



It was during that very Victorian Era that Dr. Vaughan 

 once said : It pleases the self-importance of a good many folk 

 to think of themselves as perpetually passing through a crisis.'* 

 It is no affectation to apply the word to things as they are to-day ! 

 When Mr. Joseph Chamberlain came to the Colonial Office in 

 the same great reign he exhorted us as a people to " think 

 Imperially." It was a call, as he meant it, not to enter upon a 

 Crusade of Empire, but to wake up to existing world-responsi- 

 bilities, and not to be too self-centred. 



You will not find in this paper a story of great wars and their 

 legacies. Nor will you be invited into the political arena. 



Other movements, quite outside these, will be examined, 

 and such lessons as they may suggest will be noted. Nor will 

 you find here any claim to scholarship or special research, but 

 only plain thoughts and findings of a plain man for the plain man 

 in the street or elsewhere to digest. 



