ly, when they
go beyond us, as now they often do, we can learn from them. Physically
the world is rapidly becoming one, and its unity must ultimately be
reflected in political institutions. The old doctrine of absolute
sovereignty is dead. The greater States of the day exhibit a complex
system of government within government, authority limited by authority,
and the world-state of the not impossible future must be based on a free
national self-direction as full and satisfying as that enjoyed by Canada
or Australia within the British Empire at this moment. National
emulation will express itself less in the desire to extend territory or
to count up ships and guns, and more in the endeavour to magnify the
contribution of our own country to civilized life. Just as in the
rebirth of our municipal life we find a civic patriotism which takes
interest in the local university, which feels pride in the magnitude of
the local industry, which parades the lowest death rate in the country,
which is honestly ashamed of a bad record for crime or pauperism, so as
Englishmen we shall concern ourselves less with the question whether two
of our Dreadnoughts might not be pitted against one German, and more
with the question whether we cannot equal Germany in the development of
science, of education, and of industrial technique. Perhaps even,
recovering from our present artificially induced and radically insincere
mood of national self-abasement, we shall learn to take some pride in
our own characteristic contributions as a nation to the arts of
government, to the thought, the literature, the art, the mechanical
inventions which have made and are re-making modern civilization.

Standing by national autonomy and international equality, Liberalism is
necessarily in conflict with the Imperial idea as it is ordinarily
presented. But this is not to say that it is indifferent to the
interests of the Empire as a whole, to the sentiment of unity pervading
its white population, to all the possibilities involved in the bare fact
that a fourth part of the human race recognizes one flag and one supreme
authority. In relation to the self-governing colonies the Liberal of
today has to face a change in the situation since Cobden's time not
unlike that which we have traced in other departments. The Colonial
Empire as it stands is in substance the creation of the older
Liberalism. It is founded on self-government, and self-government is the
root from which th