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