We may make a liberal allowance for mistakes in British foreign policy. We may criticise things done in the heat of national passion, or at times when Britain was carrying on a struggle for existence. We may leave out of our reckoning the glory of having saved the liberties of Europe when other nations were yielding in despair, when British subsidies alone brought their armies into the field, and British resolution inspired them with new courage. Yet, when all this allowance has been made, we may say that a colonist is perhaps the last man in the world to sneer at the public debt of England. She came out of the prolonged and tremendous struggle which piled up her debt possessing as an asset to show for it about one-fifth of the known world. Professor Seeley has proved conclusively that England's great continental wars, the chief causes of her vast expenditures, were in large measure contests for colonial supremacy. From those wars she gained the power to give Canada to the Canadians, Australia to the Australians, vast areas and limitless resources in many lands to those of her people who have gone to inhabit them, and so to complete by industry the conquest begun by arms. From those wars she emerged with a command of the sea which has enabled her to supplement her gift of territory with a guarantee of safety which has secured it from attack during the early stages of settlement until the {97} present time. The National Debt would seem to be a natural mortgage upon the territories acquired by war expenditure, yet the gift of Crown lands which was made to the colonies acquiring responsible government was made absolutely free from this mortgage. These Crown lands in all the colonies are sold and used entirely for local benefit, while the whole incidence of taxation for what may fairly be called the interest of the purchase-money falls upon the United Kingdom alone. The expense of the great expeditions which culminated in the victory on the Plains of Abraham is a considerable item in the National Debt, but half a continent now held by Canadians is no insignificant item to set against it. If the expenditure for the American War be put down as a mistake, it must be remembered that the United States themselves, no less than Canada, reaped the advantage from the previous expenditure which set the Anglo-Saxon on the American continent free from French rivalry[5]. Fifty years ago the French Government asked the British Foreign Office how much of the vast unoccupied {98} areas of Australia it claimed. 'The whole of it,' was the prompt reply. No doubt the recollection of the Plains of Abraham, of Trafalgar, of Waterloo, had something to do with the acceptance of that reply as conclusive.