L] TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 13 
material fact, or that it carries no moral and intellectual 
consequences. People cannot change their abodes, pass 
from an island to a continent, from the 50th degree of 
north latitude to the tropics or the Southern Hemisphere, 
from an ancient community to a new colony, from vast manu 
facturing cities to sugar plantations, or to lonely sheep- 
walks in countries where aboriginal savage tribes still wan 
der, without changing their ideas and habits and ways of 
thinking, nay without somewhat modifying in the course of 
a few generations their physical type. We know already 
that the Canadian and the Victorian are not quite like the 
Englishman ; do we suppose then that in the next century, if 
the colonial population has become as numerous as that of 
the mother country, assuming that the connexion has 
been maintained and has become closer, England itself 
will not be very much modified and transformed ? Whether 
good or bad then, the growth of Greater Britain is an 
ev cnt of enormous magnitude. 
Evidently as regards the future it is the greatest event, 
ut an event may be very great, and yet be so simple that 
t ore is not much to be said about it, that it has scarcely 
an y bistory. It is thus that the great English Exodus is 
commonly regarded, as if it had happened in the most simple, 
^evitable manner, as if it were merely the unopposed 
occupation of empty countries by the nation which happen- 
c to have the greatest surplus population and the greatest 
U 1 ari time power. I shall show this to be a great mistake. 
s all show that this Exodus makes a most ample and a 
most fu]} and interesting chapter in English history. I 
? a b venture to assert that during the eighteenth century 
^ ctermines the whole course of affairs, that the main 
struggle of England from the time of Louis XIV. to the 
lrn ° Napoleon was for the possession of the New