16 
EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. 
[lECT. L 
same level as the states nearest to us on the Continent, 
populous, but less so than Germany and scarcely equal to 
France. But two states, Russia and the United States 
would be on an altogether higher scale of magnitude, 
Russia having at once, and the United States perhaps 
before very long, twice our population. Our trade too 
would be exposed to wholly new risks. 
The other alternative is, that England may prove able 
to do what the United States does so easily, that is, 
hold together in a federal union countries very remote 
from each other. In that case England will take rank 
with Russia and the United States in the first rank of 
state, measured by population and area, and in a higher 
rank than the states of the Continent. We ought by no 
means to take for granted that this is desirable. Bigness 
is not necessarily greatness ; if by remaining in the second 
rank of magnitude we can hold the first rank morally and 
intellectually, let us sacrifice mere material magnitude. 
But though we must not prejudge the question whether 
we ought to retain our Empire, we may fairly assume 
that it is desirable after due consideration to judge it. 
With a view to forming such a judgment, I propose 
in these lectures to examine historically the tendency 
to expansion which England has so long displayed. We 
shall learn to think of it more seriously if we discover it to 
be profound, persistent, necessary to the national life, and 
more hopefully if we can satisfy ourselves that the secession 
of our first colonies was not a mere normal result of ex 
pansion, like the bursting of a bubble, but the result of tem 
porary conditions, removable and which have been removed.