THE I'IMN'CIPLES OF WORLD- KM PIRE. 



21 



Lawrence and Newfoundland, and later surveyed the east coast 

 of Australia and discovered much of New Zealand, of the islands 

 of the Pacific, and the coast of British Columbia. The superb 

 hydrographic work carried out by Capt. Cook, largely aided 

 by a member of the Greenwich staff, Charles Green, laid the 

 foundation of the complete series of hydrographic charts prepared 

 by the British Admiralty. And because nine out of every ten 

 sea charts were thus British, and took the Greenwich meridian 

 as their basis, the International Conference at Washington, in 

 1884, adopted Greenwich as the prime meridian of the world, 

 and Greenwich time as the basis upon which to found a world- 

 wide system of standard times. 



Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands were in turn defeated in 

 the struggle for the Empire over seas. France and England 

 contested the prize for a hundred and twenty years, and the 

 final decision was reached at the Battle of Trafalgar. Sea power 

 decided the event, but sea power was not merely a question of 

 armaments and valour : it was to no small degree a question of 

 the skill of the navigator, and the greater experience which our 

 sailors had had in exploration and discovery. 



I must apologize for this digression, but I have been moved 

 to it, partly by what I hope is the innocent pride that Greenwich 

 Observatory bore so practical a part in the building of the 

 British Empire, and partly because I must confess to impatience 

 with the slander so often repeated, even by Englishmen, that 

 the British Empire has been built up by robbery. It is not so. 

 The great British Dominions : Canada, Australia, South Africa, 

 New Zealand, have been built by British effort and British 

 brains. True we won Quebec by the sword, but it was in the 

 course of repelling a French invasion, nor was the country taken 

 from its inhabitants. The French were left undisturbed in the 

 enjoyment of their fields, their language and their faith ; and to- 

 day, on the one hand, they are masters in their own house, and, 

 on the other, they are most desirous to show their loyalty to the 

 British Crown. West of Quebec we found the country a 

 desolate wilderness, almost without inhabitant ; and now it is 

 the granary of the world. 



Empire-States 



But to return. In the years following the discovery of 

 America, both Portugal and Spain acquired large over-seas pos- 

 sessions, of which now Portugal retains little, and Spain almost 

 nothing. Holland also established a colonial Empire which is 



