Englishmen could not emigrate to distant parts of the world, and found settlements, without, in many and serious ways, involving the English nation—and that apart from the fact that the soil on which the most populous of the colonies grew up was the unquestioned property of the English Crown. From the very beginning of colonization, therefore, even before any permanent success had been achieved, we find the question being discussed as to what use, if any, to the English people were these distant settlements, with their possible disadvantages and certain responsibilities.[717] Footnote 717: The beginnings of the discussion were noted in an earlier chapter. For the view at the end of the 19th century, _cf._ C. P. Lucas's Introduction, in Lewis, _Government of Dependencies_ (Oxford, 1891), pp. xlv _ff._ If the establishment of the British Empire was not the result of absent-mindedness, neither was it prompted by motives of philanthropy toward generations yet unborn in countries overseas. Exploration, settlement, far-distant foreign trade, ensuing wars with competing powers, and the policing of trade-routes, were costly and hazardous matters, and not to be undertaken without the prospect of very tangible rewards of one sort or another. As we endeavored to show in an earlier chapter, the main underlying motive that led to the great discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and, in the main, to the colonizing movements of the seventeenth, was economic. It was, therefore, entirely natural that the speculation as to the advantages and disadvantages of empire, and as to the relations of England to her dependencies, should be based upon the economic theories of the day. The question, moreover, as to what advantages, if any, would accrue from founding, or allowing to be founded, colonies not yet in existence, was almost necessarily, what those advantages would be for England herself. After the Empire had come into existence, the point of view shifted somewhat, and, theoretically, the question became one of what advantage a policy might prove to the Empire as a whole, although, as its greatest aggregation of wealth and population, the source of protection, the seat of power, the centre of all exchanges, in a word, the heart of empire, the local interests of England would still outweigh those of any of the dependencies. In no case would those at the head of the imperial government, aside from selfish motives, of which there were plenty, have thought it the part of either wisdom or justice to uphold the citizens of any one colony in a course that seemed to run counter to the interests of the Empire as a whole.