I.

Going home--Retrospect--Alternative courses--Future of the
Empire--Sovereignty of the sea--The Greeks--The rights of
man--Plato--The voice of the people--Imperial federation--Hereditary
colonial policy--New Irelands--Effects of party government.

Once more upon the sea on our homeward way, carrying, as Emerson said,
'the bag of AEolus in the boiler of our boat,' careless whether there be
wind or calm. Our old naval heroes passed and repassed upon the same
waters under harder conditions. They had to struggle against tempests,
to fight with enemy's cruisers, to battle for their lives with nature as
with man--and they were victorious over them all. They won for Britannia
the sceptre of the sea, and built up the Empire on which the sun never
sets. To us, their successors, they handed down the splendid
inheritance, and we in turn have invented steam ships and telegraphs,
and thrown bridges over the ocean, and made our far-off possessions as
easy of access as the next parish. The attractive force of the primary
ought to have increased in the same ratio, but we do not find that it
has, and the centrifugal and the centripetal tendencies of our
satellites are year by year becoming more nicely balanced. These
beautiful West Indian Islands were intended to be homes for the
overflowing numbers of our own race, and the few that have gone there
are being crowded out by the blacks from Jamaica and the Antilles. Our
poor helots at home drag on their lives in the lanes and alleys of our
choking cities, and of those who gather heart to break off on their own
account and seek elsewhere for a land of promise, the large majority are
weary of the flag under which they have only known suffering, and prefer
America to the English colonies. They are waking now to understand the
opportunities which are slipping through their hands. Has the awakening
come too late? We have ourselves mixed the cup; must we now drink it the
dregs?

It is too late to enable us to make homes in the West Indies for the
swarms who are thrown off by our own towns and villages. We might have
done it. Englishmen would have thriven as well in Jamaica and the
Antilles as the Spaniards have thriven in Cuba. But the islands are now
peopled by men of another colour. The whites there are as units among
hundreds, and the proportion cannot be altered. But it is not too late
to redeem our own responsibilities. We brought the blacks there; we have
as yet no