I have now the honor to propose to you the toast of “Prosperity to the Royal Colonial Institute.” The Institute was founded in 1868, almost exactly a generation ago, and I confess that I admire the faith of its promoters, who, in a time not altogether favorable to their opinions, sowed the seeds of Imperial patriotism, although they must have known that few of them could live to gather the fruit and to reap the harvest. But their faith has been justified by the result of their labors, and their foresight must be recognized in the light of our present experience. It seems to me that there are three distinct stages in our Imperial history. We began to be, and we ultimately became, a great Imperial Power in the eighteenth century, but, during the greater part of that time, the colonies were regarded, not only by us, but by every European Power that possessed them, as possessions valuable in proportion to the pecuniary advantage which they brought to the mother country, which, under that order of ideas, was not truly a mother at all, but appeared rather in the light of a grasping and absentee landlord, desiring to take from his tenants the utmost rents he could exact. The colonies were valued and maintained because it was thought that they would be a source of profit--of direct profit--to the mother country. That was the first stage, and when we were rudely awakened by the War of Independence in America from this dream that the colonies could be held for our profit alone, the second chapter was entered upon, and public opinion seems then to have drifted to the opposite extreme; and, because the colonies were no longer a source of revenue, it seems to have been believed and argued by many people that their separation from us was only a matter of time, and that that separation should be desired and encouraged, lest haply they might prove an encumbrance and a source of weakness. It was while those views were still entertained, while the Little Englanders were in their full career, that this Institute was founded to protest against doctrines so injurious to our interests and so derogatory to our honor; and I rejoice that what was then, as it were, “a voice crying in the wilderness” is now the expressed and determined will of the overwhelming majority of the British people. Partly by the efforts of this Institute and similar organizations, partly by the writings of such men as Froude and Seeley, but mainly by the instinctive good sense and patriotism of the people at large, we have now reached the third stage in our history, and the true conception of our Empire. What is that conception? As regards the self-governing colonies we no longer talk of them as dependencies. The sense of possession has given place to the sentiment of kinship.