The federation of self-governing dominions has not been the most striking feature of Imperialist policy since Disraeli. In the last thirty years of the nineteenth century four and three-quarter millions of square miles of land and eighty-eight millions of human beings were added to the Empire, and of the latter only two millions were white people.[343] The primary object of all these extensions was not the incorporation of free peoples in a federal union, but the subjugation of weak peoples for the purposes of private profit. The British trader and the British capitalist who wanted security for his foreign investments were the pioneers of Empire, and in South Africa they succeeded, not only in incorporating, by methods often worse than dubious, races of barbarians, but in dragging the whole British people into a costly war for the annexation of two civilized Republics. Imperialism has not of set purpose extended liberty in any part of the globe. It has introduced order and justice into some unsettled tracks, it has provided capital for the development of neglected natural resources, and in South Africa it showed how readily it would subordinate the moral to the material interests of Empire. The only conspicuous extensions of liberty during the period of expansion have been made by Liberals, and in South Africa they acted in the face of almost unanimous protest from the Imperialist party. The successes of Imperialism have been material. The steady deterioration which has taken place in the ideals of Imperialism has already been indicated. Its moral failure {315} is due simply to the fact that the object of expansion was never in any case moral. Incidentally, as in India, Egypt, and Nigeria, an enlightened bureaucracy has avoided the blunders of exploitation and oppression. But for the most part, the best that can be said of our rule is that it is disinterested. Little has been done, even in India, to train and develop the higher faculties of the natives, and it is only in the Liberal reforms of Lord Morley that definite steps towards self-government have been taken. We are in these countries frankly to maintain order and to produce wealth, and for the most part we attempt nothing else. Benefits to the natives are only incidental and not primary. Unquestionably the growth of the Empire has extended the advantages of civilization to backward and uncultivated districts. But it has been promoted by the zeal of the investor rather than of the missionary. The enormous growth of wealth required new fields for investment. Visions of national grandeur were employed to direct the common people from the social reforms which would have reduced this wealth. The Press, the pulpit, and the platform united to represent the material pursuit of gain as a disinterested labour on behalf of humanity. A mist of moral enthusiasm was wrapped about the crude realities of commercial enterprise, and the acquisition of wealth by private persons was disguised