On page 227 of the writer's earlier book _England_, etc., the Colonial as well as ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Privy Council Judicial Committee was explained in detail. Since those words were written an important step has been taken under an Act passed some years ago by Lord Herschell. By this, the Chief Justice of the Cape Colony, Sir Henry de Villiers, Chief Justice Sir Henry Strong of Canada, Sir Samuel Way, Chief Justice of South Australia, have been added to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, in order to strengthen that body with special reference to the Roman-Dutch, French-Canadian and Australasian law, in legislation and practice. Here too, it is well to refer to the recent formation of the Society of Comparative Legislation. This body is actively engaged and has already done good work in classifying materials throughout the Empire, as well as in accumulating a compendium of information which will greatly promote the simplicity and uniformity of the laws of the world. * * * * * Some distinct idea must, however, be formed of the concrete reality connoted by the familiar expression 'Colonial Empire,' beginning, as in truth for our generation it did, with the founding of the Australasian capital called Adelaide, after his Queen, in the last year of William IV., but practically co-extensive in its growth with the reign of his successor. The area of the United Kingdom is 121,000 square miles. That of its possessions in foreign parts is 8,725,000 square miles. In other words the mother country is only in extent a seventieth part of the Empire of which that mother country is the nucleus. To put the facts somewhat differently this British Empire, covering some 9,000,000 square miles, occupies a fifth part of the habitable globe. No other world power such as this has been known to past or can be found in present history. The British Empire of the Victorian age is five times as large as was the Empire of Darius five centuries before the Christian Era began. It is four times the size of the Roman Empire at its zenith. Among modern Powers, the Empire of Great Britain is larger by an eighth than that of Russia; it contains 230 millions more people. It is sixteen times as great as the foreign dominions of France; forty times as great as the Empire of Germany. Seven days and nights of continuous travelling are required to cross the American Continent. The lands which owe allegiance to the monarch of these Islands are three times as extensive as those composing the Republican Empire of the United States.