or of European Policy, than we were at the time of the Crimean
War, when we mainly determined it; and our theories and discussions will
act and re-act upon that policy just as did any considerable body of
thought, whether French political thought of the eighteenth century, or
German religious thought of the sixteenth century, even at a time when
the means of producing that reaction, the book, literature, the
newspaper, rapid communication, were so immeasurably more primitive and
rudimentary than ours. What we think and say and do affects not merely
ourselves, but that whole body politic of Christendom of which we are an
integral part.

It is a curious fact that the moral and intellectual interdependence of
States preceded by a long period, that material and economic
independence which I have tried recently to make clear. Nothing is more
contrary to fact than to suppose that any considerable movement of
opinion in Europe can be limited to the frontiers of one nation. Even at
a time when it took half a generation for a thought to travel from one
capital to another, a student or thinker in some obscure Italian, Swiss
or German village was able to modify policy, to change the face of
Europe and of mankind. Coming nearer to our time, it was the work of the
encyclopaedists and earlier political questioners which made the French
Revolution; and the effect of that Revolution was not confined to
France. The ideas which animated it re-acted directly upon our Empire,
upon the American Colonies, upon the Spanish Colonies, upon Italy, and
the formation of United Italy, upon Germany--the world over. These
miracles, almost too vast and great to conceive, were the outcome of
that intangible thing, an idea, an aspiration, an ideal. And if they
could accomplish so much in that day when the popular press and cheap
literature and improved communication did not exist, how is it possible
to suppose that any great ferment of opinion can be limited to one group
in our day, when we have a condition of things in which the declaration
of an English Cabinet Minister to-night is read to-morrow morning by
every reading German?

It should be to our everlasting glory that our political thought in the
past, some of our political institutions, parliamentary government, and
what not, have had an enormous influence in the world. We have some
ground for hoping that another form of political institution which we
have initiated, a relationship of distinct p