VIII.
There remains the third and last of the three great world States—the British Empire. England has played a leading part in both the great political movements of the last five centuries. She was one of the earliest Powers to stand out before Europe in the full strength of nationality; she anticipated, if she did not inaugurate, the religious revolution; and she not only inaugurated the political revolution, but carried it far on its way to completion. Since the decadence of Spain in the seventeenth century, she has also led the movement of expansion, and at times almost monopolized its energy. In the Empire which has grown up around her we shall expect, then, to find the highest product of all these activities; there, if anywhere, we ought to find implicit the Imperial ideal.
At the very outset we meet with a fact of nomenclature that is not without its suggestiveness and promise. The whole vast and complex political system is known to the world as the British Empire, yet we find that one of the political units which compose it is known, and with better legal claims to the title, as the Indian Empire. The latter is a true Empire in the Roman sense; and we are therefore led to suspect that the Imperialism of the larger organization is something higher, more flexible, and more inclusive than Roman Imperialism, and we are not disappointed.
In area and population alike the Empire holds the first place, not only among the political combinations of the world to-day, but also among the political combinations of the world as known to history. That in itself, perhaps, supplies only a base and mechanical claim to greatness. But the fact has more importance when we think of the immeasurable range of interests it implies, of the immeasurable variety of the parts of which the Empire is composed, of the immeasurable complexity of its government and institutions. It includes, besides several free and self-governing nations, a vast and
