Another criticism may be made upon the author's peculiar delimitation of his subject. We will accept Mr. Seeley's definition of history as having to do with the state, with the growth and the changes of a certain corporate society, acting through certain functionaries and certain assemblies. If the expansion of England was important, not less important were other changes vitally affecting the internal fortunes of the land that was destined to undergo this process. Expansion only acquired its significance in consequence of what happened in England itself. It is the growth of population at home, as a result of our vast extension of manufactures, that makes our colonies both possible and important. There would be nothing capricious or perverse in treating the expansion of England over the seas as strictly secondary to the expansion of England within her own shores, and to all the causes of it in the material resources and the energy and ingenuity of her sons at home. Supposing that a historian were to choose to fix on the mechanical and industrial development of England as the true point of view, we are not sure that as good a case might not be made out for the inventions of Arkwright, Hargreaves, and Crompton as for the acquisition of the colonies; for Brindley and Watt as for Clive and Hastings. Enormous territory is only one of the acquisitions or instruments of England, and we know no reason why that particular element of growth should be singled out as overtopping the other elements that made it so important as it is. It is not the mere multiplication of a race, nor its diffusion over the habitable globe that sets its deepest mark on the history of a state, but rather those changes in idea, disposition, faculty, and, above all, in institution, which settle what manner of race it shall be that does in this way replenish the earth. From that point of view, after all, as Tocqueville said, the greatest theatre of human affairs is not at Sydney, it is not even at Washington, it is still in our old world of Europe.