We are told that however much steam and telegraph have annihilated distance 'they have not annihilated the parish steeple. They have not carried the thoughts of the ordinary citizen beyond the circle of his own life and work. They have not qualified a common farmer, tradesman, plough man, or artizan to direct the politics of a world-wide state[3].' Shall we {175} then give up all large statesmanship, and adopt the parish steeple as the measure of our political ideas? The parish steeple has its place and limiting power in England as elsewhere, but it has not prevented the creation of a great Empire, its successful administration and its retention. In the end it is the strongest men and the clearest minds of a country which give direction to its destiny, and nowhere is this more the case than among Anglo-Saxon people. The common farmer, tradesman, plough man, or artizan may not be able to direct the policy of a state, but he has a marvellous instinct for discovering and supporting the man who can, be he a Cromwell or a Cecil, a rail-splitter or a Hohenzollern. When he has made up his mind, moreover, we have more to fear, apparently, from a too complete surrender of his own judgment than from ignorant interference in matters which he does not fully comprehend. That the spread of modern democracy involves no necessity of abandoning large statesmanship the history of the colonies clearly proves. Canadians may not, as Mr. Smith suggests, know much of Australian or South African politics, but they have given themselves up with singular persistence to the guidance of a statesman with an imperial range of ideas and policy. In Australia the masses, however much they may be absorbed in their labour struggles and social problems, choose, as their leaders, with occasional change, but on the whole singular steadiness, men like Sir Henry Parkes, Mr. Service, Sir Samuel Griffiths, Mr. Gillies, or {176} Sir Henry Atkinson, every one of them men who, even when most absorbed with the affairs of their own colonies, are thinking constantly on national questions, and dreaming of some great British unity in the future, as their written and spoken thoughts fully testify. Even in South Africa, with its intensified localism, we see the reins of power committed to a man who stakes his political career equally upon working out a South African unity, and upon securing that it shall be consistent with the policy of a united Empire.