In a hundred years' time, Australia will probably be a strong and independent Republic, a second America; but the separation will mean no loss of prestige or of profit to England; her commerce will not suffer; her steamboats will continue to ply between London and Sydney, as they do between Liverpool and New York.
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Who would dare to compare the greater number of England's conquests to those sterile ones that only survive in man's memory by the tears and blood that they have caused to flow?
"We are a wonderful people," cries General Gordon, in his Diary at Khartoum; "it was never our Government which made us a great nation; our Government has ever been the drag on our wheels. England was made by adventurers, not by her Government; and I believe she will only hold her place by adventurers."
This is true enough.
They were adventurers, who were the first to set foot on the soil of those remote regions which have been added one by one to the lists of England's colonies; but if England is a great nation, it is thanks to heroic deeds, such as thine, great advanced sentinel of modern civilization, who for months couldst unaided keep hordes of barbarians in check; it is thanks to heroes of thy stamp, poor Gordon!
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England conquers by the railway. She imposes her civilization and her commerce in the countries she subdues, puts the natives in the way of earning money, and sensibly takes care to make her yoke felt as little as possible. Her commercial power makes her indispensable to the rest of the world, including the shareholders of the Suez Canal Company, to whom she pays more than three times as much as all the other powers put together.
That which makes the strength of this colonial empire, is that each colony, like each child in the mother-country, serves the apprenticeship of life in the enjoyment of liberty.
As each colony becomes rich enough to suffice unto itself, and strong enough to defend itself, England says to the colonists: "You are now big enough to manage for yourselves, it is time you learnt to do without my help." This is what the Englishman says to his sons, as they come to man's estate. The colony forms its government, chooses its ministers, and its parliament; sends representatives to England to watch over its interests there, and becomes, as it were, a branch house of that immense firm, known in every latitude, under the name of "John Bull and Company."[5]