Long ago, in the crisis of the American Revolution, when the faithfulness of Britain to her tradition of liberty was for an unhappy moment wavering in the balance, the great orator Burke spoke some glowing sentences on the character of the British Empire as he conceived it. They read like a prophetic vision of the Empire of to-day, linked by ties which, in his words, "though light as air, are strong as links of iron," yet joining in an heroic comradeship to defend the threatened shrine of freedom. "As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But freedom they can have only from you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond, which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the Empire. Do not dream that your letters of office, and your instructions, and your suspending clauses, are the things that hold together the great contexture of the mysterious whole. These things do not make your government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English Constitution that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English Constitution which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the Empire, even down to the minutest member." The spirit of Burke was wounded in 1775; it is rejoicing to-day. [1] The passages in this section are mainly quoted directly from "The Expansion of Europe."