but at the call of brotherhood, as members of a household still one however scattered. In the gatherings of the Hellenic folk around the altars of the gods of Hellas the thought of Empire was unknown. Still less could the thought of Empire cross the mind when Carthage, in the pride of her wide dominion, still sent the offerings of a child to her mother Tyre in her Persian bondage. If Empire there was, if we must so cruelly thrust the special Roman name either backwards or forwards, if Athens had her tributaries, if Carthage had her subject lands, the thought of Empire was cast aside when the higher thought of brotherhood was called to life. When the just judge from Aitôlia, representative of the mother-land in its Eleian settlement, bestowed the Olympic wreath on the Olympic victor, he asked not whether the city from which that victor came did or did not follow the lead of any mightier city in war and peace. Athens, keeper of the hoard of Dêlos, had there no precedence over the smallest town whose tribute helped to fill her coffers. When the scattered brethren came together on their day of union, the only master whom they knew was one who sat on a higher throne than the thrones of Babylon and Susa; the one Imperial lord whom united Hellas knew was he whose graven form sat in his majesty in the temple round which they gathered; their only king was the deathless king of Olympos, the common Father of gods and men. That this now familiar name of “Empire” expresses a fact, and a mighty fact, none can doubt. The only doubt that can be raised is whether the fact of Empire is a wholesome one, whether it is exactly the side of the position of our island in the world which we should specially pick out as the thing whereof to boast ourselves. Empire is dominion; it implies subjects; the name may even suggest unwilling subjects. From one point of view the analogy which the word first suggests, the analogy with the first state that bore the name, with the ruling commonwealth of Rome, is perfect. The People of Rome were, in constitutional theory, lords and masters of their subject lands, those provinces which they held as _folkland_ on a mighty scale, the estates to which the ruling people was not only a corporate sovereign but a corporate landlord. And so the People of Great Britain, if not in constitutional theory, yet in forms of daily speech which express the facts more truly than any constitutional theory, proclaims itself as the corporate ruler, perhaps the corporate landlord, of no small portion of the world. If I may quote a phrase which I have myself used in another place, the “corporate Emperor We,” that manifold Imperial being of which you and I and all of us rejoice to be members, ranks high indeed among the potentates of the earth. No phrase comes more readily to the lips of the patriotic Briton than that of “our Indian Empire;” and he speaks truly. For “ours” it is; we instinctively call