"Since 1868 the Empire has been growing by leaps and bounds. That is, perhaps, not a process which everybody witnesses with unmixed satisfaction. It is not always viewed with unmixed satisfaction in circles outside these islands. There are two schools who view with some apprehension the growth of our Empire. The first is composed of those nations who, coming somewhat late into the field, find that Great Britain has some of the best plots already marked out. To those nations I will say that they must remember that our Colonies were taken--to use a well-known expression--at prairie value, and that we have made them what they are. We may claim that whatever lands other nations may have touched and rejected, and we have cultivated and improved, are fairly parts of our Empire, which we may claim to possess by an indisputable title. But there is another ground on which the extension of our Empire is greatly attacked, and the attack comes from a quarter nearer home. It is said that our Empire is already large enough, and does not need extension. That would be true enough if the world were elastic, but, unfortunately, it is not elastic, and we are engaged at the present moment, in the language of mining, in 'pegging out claims for the future.' We have to consider not what we want now, but what we shall want in the future. We have to consider what countries must be developed, either by ourselves or some other nation, and we have to remember that it is part of our responsibility and heritage to take care that the world, as far as it can be moulded by us, shall receive an 'English-speaking' complexion, and not that of another nation. We have to look forward beyond the chatter of platforms, and the passions of party, to the future of the race of which we are at present the trustees, and we should, in my opinion, grossly fail in the task that has been laid upon us did we shrink from responsibilities, and decline to take our share in a partition of the world which we have not forced on, but which has been forced upon us." Statistics of area of square miles, population, and so forth, can be readily found by those who care to seek for them, and we need give them no place here; but let us at least try and realise just by bare enumeration something of what this Greater Britain is. In Europe it includes, besides the home islands, Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus. In Asia--the great Indian Empire, Ceylon, Aden, Hong-Kong, North Borneo, the Straits Settlements, Perim, Socotra, Labuan. In America--the Dominion of Canada, Newfoundland, Trinidad, Guiana, Honduras, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Bermudas, Barbadoes, Falkland Isles, the Leeward and Windward Isles. In Australasia--New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania, Queensland, New Zealand, Fiji, New Guinea. In Africa--the Cape Colony, Basutoland, Bechuanaland, Zululand, Natal, {78} Gold Coast, Lagos, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Mauritius, Seychelles, Ascension, St. Helena. Our list is by no means a complete one.