10 
EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. 
[lect. 
was the creation of a still larger Britain comprehending 
vast possessions beyond the sea. This process began with 
the first Charter given to Virginia in 1606. It made a 
great advance in the seventeenth century ; but not till the 
eighteenth did Greater Britain in its gigantic dimensions 
and with its vast politics first stand clearly before the 
world. Let us consider what this Greater Britain at the 
present day precisely is. 
Excluding certain small possessions, which are chiefly 
of the nature of naval or military stations, it consists 
besides the United Kingdom of four great groups of 
territory, inhabited either chiefly or to a large extent by 
Englishmen and subject to the Crown, and a fifth great 
territory also subject to the Crown and ruled by English 
officials, but inhabited by a completely foreign race. The 
first four are the Dominion of Canada, the West Indian 
Islands, among which I include some territories on the 
continent of Central and Southern America, the mass of 
South African possessions of which Cape Colony is the 
most considerable, and fourthly the Australian group, to 
which, simply for convenience, I must here add New 
Zealand. The dependency is India. 
Now what is the extent and value of these possessions? 
First let us look at their population, which, the territory 
being as yet newly settled, is in many cases thin. The 
Dominion of Canada with Newfoundland had in 1881 a 
population of rather more than four millions and a half, 
that is, about equal to the population of Sweden ; the West 
Indian group rather more than a million and a half, about 
equal to the population at the same time of Greece ; the 
South African group about a million and three quarters, 
but of these much less than a half are of European blood ; 
the Australian group about three millions, rather more