1877*] National Wealth and PMic Debt. 20 
which is necessary to huild up a nation. With these pros- 
perity has a tendency to decline, and when once they have 
become ruling passions in any race its decadence must of 
necessity speedily follow. To the faCt of this Ancient 
Greece and Rome abundantly testify. 
Two of the leading elements of national prosperity are 
the encouragement of colonisation and foreign trade. Greece 
and Rome were both of them at one time the pioneers in 
commerce and in the establishment of foreign settlements. 
In more modern times Holland, Spain, and Portugal were 
conspicuous amongst nations for the same reasons, and the 
names of Sebastian and John Cabot, Tasman, Bartholomew 
de Diaz, Vasco de Gama, and Columbus are well known to 
all readers of history, but the lands discovered and taken 
possession of by them, in the names of their respective Govern- 
ments, have, for the most part, long since passed into other 
hands, and the glory and influence once possessed by the 
countries they represented has become a thing of the past. 
In later times the task of colonisation has passed almost 
exclusively into the hands of the English, and the British 
flag now waves where formerly a tricolor was the standard 
representing the supreme power. Emigration from this 
country, of some description, and on a limited scale, began 
in the early part of the seventeenth century. Virginia, 
Massachusetts, the Bermudas, and Barbadoes were the 
fields in which the first successful attempts at colonisation 
by the English may be said to have commenced. On the 
13th of May, 1607, the first colony in Virginia was planted 
under a patent granted in the preceding year by James I., to 
a London company, and subsequently settlements in the 
Bermudas and Barbadoes were effected in 1612 and 1625. 
Earlier attempts at founding British colonies had indeed 
been made by Sir Richard Grenville, Sir Walter Raleigh, 
and others, but they had failed. To those names, however, 
must be accorded the honour of having been the pioneers of 
that progress which has now, in a great measure, secured to 
England a position never possessed by any other nation. 
It can hardly be questioned that the colonial policy of 
Great Britain during the past 270 years has been mainly 
instrumental, humanly speaking, in the establishment under 
the British crown, of the largest empire of either modern 
or ancient times, compared with which the Roman empire, 
in the zenith of its prosperity, was insignificant. The pos- 
sessions of the British empire comprise an area of nearly 
eight and a half millions of square miles, and a population 
of upwards of 283 millions, scattered all over the world, 
