it so; for “we,” through the Parliaments and Ministries which exist only by “our” choice, can legislate and administer for millions on millions of human beings, our subjects, our provincials, who have no voice in determining their own destiny, but who must humbly accept their doom from us. “We” hold India, “we” govern India; “we” sometimes, in our Imperial clemency, stoop to say that we govern it, not in our own interests but in the interest of those over whom we rule. We are minded, in short, in dealing with our provinces and with their subject inhabitants, to be an Emperor after the pattern of Hadrian, not an Emperor after the pattern of Constantius. But this is not our only Empire. We have too--the most familiar phrases daily repeat the form--a Colonial Empire. The instinctive phrase is true, true to the very letter. We--the same We that have an Indian Empire, have also a Colonial Empire. For an Empire it is. With reference to them also, I must again insist on the fact sometimes forgotten, that the freest of British colonies, those who can act with most unshackled freedom in their internal dealings, are not like the colonies of old Hellas or of older Canaan; they are still dependencies, provinces, subject lands, which have not escaped the absolute dominion of the corporate Emperor. That they can do ought for themselves is wholly of our grace and favour; they hold their practical independence as our gift, the gift of their corporate master. But, more than this, fact will sometimes over-ride theory even still nearer home. In theory every part of this United Kingdom has equal rights; there are no provinces, no subject lands; there is no favoured city or district whose inhabitants have any claim to bear themselves as the masters of any other. Yet truth will out; the corporate Emperor will assert himself in defiance of such pleasing theories. No man says, “We” must govern England, or Scotland, or Wales, or any part of England, Scotland, or Wales; but we every day hear the phrases, “We must govern Ireland,” “we” must do this and that for Ireland, while we should be amazed indeed if the people of Ireland, any more than the people of India, should take upon themselves to say back again, “We must govern England.” Nay, I have seen the full doctrine of Empire, the doctrine which makes the corporate Emperor, not only ruler but landlord in his provinces, set forth in the clearest words with regard to one part of what we still formally hold to be an United Kingdom with equal rights in every part of it. Not long ago I read something very instructive on this head in that one among English newspapers which we may be always sure says what its conductors really think, and not what it is for the moment convenient for party purposes to say. I there read of Ireland as an island which, if “we” had not governed, “we” had at least owned, for six hundred years. There are points in this saying on which it might be well to consult both a