proportion. Once more, the free nations of the Empire have ally or if they have not, ought to have, a common interest in the protection and good government of the great dependencies. At present, however, these dependencies, both in Asia and in Africa, are dependencies of the Mother Country alone, and on her shoulders falls practically the whole weight of the white man's burden. Until this burden has become the common duty and privilege of all, until a Canadian or an Australian feels as strongly as an Englishman that his interests and honour are bound up with the security and good government of India, there is obviously a serious flaw in the unity of the Empire.
This is not the place to discuss in detail how these or other such problems should be approached. The hope—nay, the conviction—that they are capable of solution has been growing in the minds of the present generation. The faith that the Empire is not doomed to disintegration, but can be reorganized on permanent lines and preserved to continue its beneficent work for humanity, has become the basis of a new political creed. The vision of a future before it, longer and more glorious than its past, has seized hold of the imagination of men of the British race, and become their main political inspiration. It is in this hope, this faith, this vision, that for Britons the Imperial ideal is embodied; it is in these that it lives again resurgent from the ashes of the past.
X.
There is good reason to believe that the great political movements of the last five centuries have, in spite of the endless struggles and aggressions by which their progress has been accompanied, been gradually working towards a more stable order. The end, indeed, is not yet, but it is less distant, perhaps, than many think. The sharper definition of national boundaries, the extension of European civilization and control to the backward countries of the world,
