embodied in the life and work of the worthy of this day and of the men
who were his fellow-workers. There may, I trust, be still some left,
who can take in the thought that there may be true brotherhood among
men of the same race and speech, though their homes may be physically
parted by the full breadth of Ocean, though they may be parted into
distinct political communities, possibly rivals, possibly, by some
unlucky chance, even enemies. Let us go back--there is no parallel so
living--to those old Greek analogies of which I have often spoken,
the analogies which some of us may still have in our memories. Let us
place ourselves in the plain of Altis on one of those high festivals
when the scattered folk of Hellas come together as speakers of the
common tongue of Hellas, as worshippers of the common gods of Hellas.
They come from every scattered settlement of Hellenic speech from the
pillars of Hêraklês to the altar of the Tauric Artemis. The race is
run; the victor is proclaimed, the victor whose success is to give
fresh glory to his native city, the city which on his return he may
not enter, like other men, through the opened gate, but through the
breached wall, as it were the conqueror of his own birth-place. That
city may be one of the renowned centres of the Greek motherland; it may
be Athens or Sparta, Thebes or Argos; but it may also be the Iberian
Zakynthos or the Campanian Kymê, Kyrênê on her terrace by the Libyan
sea or far away Olbia by the banks of Dnieper. Every scattered member
of the great brotherhood comes there of equal right; all are alike at
home in the gathering of the united folk; all throng to the common
hearth of the common gods of Hellas and her children. From east and
west and north and south, all are alike Hellênes; none would refuse
the name; none would endure to have the name refused to him. Wherever
men of Hellas have planted themselves on barbarian soil, the soil has
become Hellas through their presence. The man who goes forth from
Athens to Milêtos still remains Greek and Ionian; the man who goes
forth from Rhodes to Gela still remains Greek and Dorian. The tie of
national brotherhood, the abiding feeling of the oneness of the folk,
lives on through physical distance, through political separation,
through political rivalry and wasting war. Here is indeed a gathering
of scattered kinsfolk, but it is no gathering of dependencies round a
common mistress or even round a common mother. It is the picture of
something nobler; the picture of scattered communities, free and equal,
gathered together in a common home and rejoicing in the tie of common
brotherhood.
Let us try to call up the like picture of another scattered folk,
a folk which has spread itself far and wide over the islands and
continents of Ocean, as the folk of Hellas spread itself over the
islands and continents of the inner sea. The settlements of the men of
English blood and speech in our own day are in many things a lively
image of the settlements of Hellenic blood and speech in the elder day.
It is indeed hard to conceive a spot round which the whole English
folk might gather as the whole Hellenic folk gathered around the altar
of the Delphian Apollôn or the Olympian Zeus. But let us conceive
such a gathering in some venerable spot of the mother-land, in its
temporal capital or in its ecclesiastical metropolis. Let us conceive
the scattered brethren meeting from their distant homes, from America,
Australia, Africa, from every land where English enterprise has found
a new dwelling-place for the speech and the law of England. But could
the scattered men of England meet together on the same terms on which
the scattered men of Hellas met together? Let us stop for a moment to
think of the terms on which it seems to be commonly taken for granted
that they must meet together if they meet at all. I have just been
reading some brand-new rimes, the literal translation of which might
be toilsome, but the general drift of which it is not hard to see. We
hear in the patriotic poet’s strain of
“The great England over seas,
Where, giant-like, our race renews
Its strength, and, stretched in strenuous ease,
Puts on once more its manhood’s thews.”
Yet more mysteriously is the fervent hope set forth
“That our dear land, in days to be,
May orb herself in fuller scope,
Knit, heart to heart, in bondage free;
Till all the peoples of our Queen
One undivided Empire know.”
In what the promised Elysium is to consist is a little dark, but it
is plain that its blessings are to be confined to “the peoples of
our Queen,” and that, whatever may be the exact political condition
described as being “in bondage free,” it is reached only by those
who are members of “one undivided Empire.” A question which I put
on another occasion is now answered. Till this doctrine was thus
clearly laid down, I was allowed to hope that “the great England over
seas” at least took in that mighty company of free and independent
commonwealths, speaking the English tongue, living under the English
law, where, whether “in strenuous ease” or otherwise, our race has
surely renewed its strength on the shores once planted by the Thirteen
Colonies of England, and in the wider lands to the west of them. It is
now at last plain that, in this new-fledged patriotism which can see
national union only in “undivided Empire,” no place is found for the
country of the man whose birth and deeds we this day remember. It is
plain that “the great England beyond seas” is one in which Virginia and
Massachusetts, Illinois and California, have no part or lot. Strange
indeed to those earlier colonists, to the man of Hellas and to the
man of Canaan, would the doctrine have sounded that there could be
no national fellowship save among “peoples” of the same sovereign,
that national brotherhood could take no shape but that of “undivided
Empire.” “Empire” forsooth; there is something strange, nay something
ominous, in the way in which that word and its even more threatening
adjective seem ready to spring to every lip at every moment. The word
sounds grand and vague; grand, it may be, because of its vagueness.
To those who strive that every word they utter shall have a meaning,
it calls up mighty and thrilling memories of a state of things which
has passed away for ever. Its associations are far from being wholly
evil. It calls up indeed pictures of the whole civilized world bowing
down to one master at one centre. But it calls up thoughts of princes
who bound the nations together by the tie of a just and equal law; it
calls up thoughts of princes who gathered the nations round them to do
the work of their day in that Eternal Question which needs no reopening
because no diplomacy has ever closed it, the question between light
and darkness, between West and East. But the thought of Empire is in
all shapes the thought, not of brotherhood but of subjection; the word
implies a master who commands and subjects who obey; “Imperium et
Libertas” are names either of which forbids the presence of the other.
The thought of “Empire,” alike in its noblest and its basest forms,
may call up thoughts of nations severed in blood and speech, brought
together, for good or evil, at the bidding of a common master; it
cannot call up the higher thought of men of the same nation, scattered
over distant lands, brought together, not at the bidding of a master,
but at the call of brotherhood, as members of a household still one
however scattered. In the gatherings of the Hellenic folk around the
altars of the gods of Hellas the thought of Empire was unknown. Still
less could the thought of Empire cross the mind when Carthage, in
the pride of her wide dominion, still sent the offerings of a child
to her mother Tyre in her Persian bondage. If Empire there was, if
we must so cruelly thrust the special Roman name either backwards or
forwards, if Athens had her tributaries, if Carthage had her subject
lands, the thought of Empire was cast aside when the higher thought
of brotherhood was called to life. When the just judge from Aitôlia,
representative of the mother-land in its Eleian settlement, bestowed
the Olympic wreath on the Olympic victor, he asked not whether the
city from which that victor came did or did not follow the lead of any
mightier city in war and peace. Athens, keeper of the hoard of Dêlos,
had there no precedence over the smallest town whose tribute helped to
fill her coffers. When the scattered brethren came together on their
day of union, the only master whom they knew was one who sat on a
higher throne than the thrones of Babylon and Susa; the one Imperial
lord whom united Hellas knew was he whose graven form sat in his
majesty in the temple round which they gathered; their only king was
the deathless king of Olympos, the common Father of gods and men.
That this now familiar name of “Empire” expresses a fact, and a
mighty fact, none can doubt. The only doubt that can be raised is
whether the fact of Empire is a wholesome one, whether it is exactly
the side of the position of our island in the world which we should
specially pick out as the thing whereof to boast ourselves. Empire is
dominion; it implies subjects; the name may even suggest unwilling
subjects. From one point of view the analogy which the word first
suggests, the analogy with the first state that bore the name, with
the ruling commonwealth of Rome, is perfect. The People of Rome were,
in constitutional theory, lords and masters of their subject lands,
those provinces which they held as _folkland_ on a mighty scale, the
estates to which the ruling people was not only a corporate sovereign
but a corporate landlord. And so the People of Great Britain, if not
in constitutional theory, yet in forms of daily speech which express
the facts more truly than any constitutional theory, proclaims itself
as the corporate ruler, perhaps the corporate landlord, of no small
portion of the world. If I may quote a phrase which I have myself used
in another place, the “corporate Emperor We,” that manifold Imperial
being of which you and I and all of us rejoice to be members, ranks
high indeed among the potentates of the earth. No phrase comes more
readily to the lips of the patriotic Briton than that of “our Indian
Empire;” and he speaks truly. For “ours” it is; we instinctively call
it so; for “we,” through the Parliaments and Ministries which exist
only by “our” choice, can legislate and administer for millions on
millions of human beings, our subjects, our provincials, who have no
voice in determining their own destiny, but who must humbly accept
their doom from us. “We” hold India, “we” govern India; “we” sometimes,
in our Imperial clemency, stoop to say that we govern it, not in our
own interests but in the interest of those over whom we rule. We
are minded, in short, in dealing with our provinces and with their
subject inhabitants, to be an Emperor after the pattern of Hadrian,
not an Emperor after the pattern of Constantius. But this is not our
only Empire. We have too--the most familiar phrases daily repeat the
form--a Colonial Empire. The instinctive phrase is true, true to the
very letter. We--the same We that have an Indian Empire, have also a
Colonial Empire. For an Empire it is. With reference to them also, I
must again insist on the fact sometimes forgotten, that the freest of
British colonies, those who can act with most unshackled freedom in
their internal dealings, are not like the colonies of old Hellas or of
older Canaan; they are still dependencies, provinces, subject lands,
which have not escaped the absolute dominion of the corporate Emperor.
That they can do ought for themselves is wholly of our grace and
favour; they hold their practical independence as our gift, the gift
of their corporate master. But, more than this, fact will sometimes
over-ride theory even still nearer home. In theory every part of this
United Kingdom has equal rights; there are no provinces, no subject
lands; there is no favoured city or district whose inhabitants have
any claim to bear themselves as the masters of any other. Yet truth
will out; the corporate Emperor will assert himself in defiance of such
pleasing theories. No man says, “We” must govern England, or Scotland,
or Wales, or any part of England, Scotland, or Wales; but we every
day hear the phrases, “We must govern Ireland,” “we” must do this and
that for Ireland, while we should be amazed indeed if the people of
Ireland, any more than the people of India, should take upon themselves
to say back again, “We must govern England.” Nay, I have seen the full
doctrine of Empire, the doctrine which makes the corporate Emperor, not
only ruler but landlord in his provinces, set forth in the clearest
words with regard to one part of what we still formally hold to be an
United Kingdom with equal rights in every part of it. Not long ago I
read something very instructive on this head in that one among English
newspapers which we may be always sure says what its conductors really
think, and not what it is for the moment convenient for party purposes
to say. I there read of Ireland as an island which, if “we” had not
governed, “we” had at least owned, for six hundred years. There are
points in this saying on which it might be well to consult both a
lawyer and a chronologer; but the doctrine of “Empire,” the doctrine
that the people of one part of the United Kingdom are master and
landlord over another part of the United Kingdom, could hardly be set
forth more clearly.
The fact of Empire then cannot be denied. The burthens of Empire, the
responsibilities of Empire, cannot be denied. They are burthens and
responsibilities which we have taken on ourselves, and which it is far
easier to take on ourselves than to get rid of. The only question is
whether this our Imperial position is one on which we need at all pride
ourselves, one about which it is wise to be ever blowing our trumpet
and calling on all the nations of the world to come and admire us. Is
there not a more excellent way, a way which, even if it is too late
to follow it, we may at least mourn that we have not followed? Is it
wholly hopeless, with this strange, yet true, cry of “Empire” daily
dinned into our ears, to rise to the thoughts of the old Greek and the
old Phœnician, the thought of an union of scattered kinsfolk bound
together by a nobler tie than that of being subjects of one Empire or
“peoples” of one sovereign? Will not the memories of this day lift us
above this confused babble about a British Empire patched up out of men
of every race and speech under the sun, to the higher thought of the
brotherhood of the English folk, the one English folk in all its homes?
Surely the burthen of barbaric Empire is at most something that we may
school ourselves to endure; the tie of English brotherhood is something
that we may rejoice to strive after. Cannot our old Hellenic memories
teach us that that brotherhood need be none the less near, none the
less endearing, between communities whose political connexion has been
severed--alas, we may cry, that ever needed severing? The land in
which Washington was born has not yet wholly forgotten the name of the
“old dominion.” Might it not have been better if the word “dominion,”
dominion on the part of the mother-land, had remained as unheard on
the shores of English Virginia as it was on the shores of Hellenic
Sicily? I have elsewhere traced in full the historic causes which led
the colonists of modern Europe to plant only dependencies, provinces,
of the lands from which they severally set forth, while the colonists
of Phœnicia and Hellas planted free and independent cities. It is easy
to trace the causes; it is yet easier to trace the results. Those
results are written in the whole history of the Western hemisphere from
the river of Saint Lawrence to the river of La Plata. It is written
in the fact that, while in the colonies of the elder world the men
who were most honoured were their founders, in the colonies of the
younger world the men who are most honoured are their deliverers. Whom
do we honour this day? Not a man who went forth from the mother-land
to plant a settlement, but a man who helped to tear away the long
planted settlement from the dominion of the mother-land. For the career
of Washington, for the career of Bolivar, there was no room among the
colonies of Ionia or the colonies of Sicily. Between them and their
parents in the elder Hellas, there was no bitter remembrance of a time
of parting, a time of parting in anger and in bloodshed. It would seem
as if the colonial history of later times had picked out Korkyra and
Kamarina as the model colonies of the elder time. I have said that
among the worthies of old time the one whose fame is most akin to the
worthy of our day is the deliverer of Syracuse, Timoleôn of Corinth.
But that we describe him as Timoleôn of Corinth at once goes to the
root of the matter. That we have to speak of Timoleôn of Corinth, while
we can hardly speak of Washington of England or of Bolivar of Spain,
brings out in its fullest life the difference between the colonial
systems of the elder and the younger Europe. The deliverer of Syracuse
was a man of Corinth, a man whom the mother-land sent forth to free
her daughter alike from domestic tyrants and from foreign enemies.
The deliverer of Virginia and her sisters was a man of Virginia, a
man who had once played his part against the foreign enemies of the
English name, but whose abiding glory was won by parting asunder the
newer lands of England from the elder. I shrink from saying that he
had to fight against tyrants or enemies--let us strive to veil the
grievous fact under some gentler words--but so far as he had to deal
with tyrants or with enemies, they were tyrants and enemies to be
looked for in the mother-land. Timoleôn had to strive against strangers
and hirelings, against Carthage and the motley hosts which she sent
against Hellenic Sicily. Washington had to strive against strangers and
hirelings, but they were strangers and hirelings whom the elder England
sent to work the subjection of the younger. Timoleôn had to break
no tie of allegiance; in freeing the daughter city he was carrying
out the bidding of the mother. Washington had to trample allegiance
under foot; he had to become, in legal form, a rebel and a traitor;
he had to free the daughter-land in defiance of the bidding of the
mother-land and their common sovereign. In short, his work, the work of
his fellows, was to work the dismemberment of the British Empire. But
in working the dismemberment of the British Empire, they wrought, I say
once more, the true Expansion of England, the enlargement of the bounds
of the English folk, and of all that the English bears with it to all
its newly settled homes.