That standpoint is ably presented by a British "liberal imperialist," Professor Ramsay Muir, who writes: "It is an undeniable fact that the imperialism of the European peoples has been the means whereby European civilization has been in some degree extended to the whole world, so that to-day the whole world has become a single economic unit, and all its members are parts of a single political system. And this achievement brings us in sight of the creation of a world-order such as the wildest dreamers of the past could never have anticipated. Without the imperialism of the European peoples North and South America, Australia, South Africa, must have remained wildernesses, peopled by scattered bands of savages. Without it India and other lands of ancient civilization must have remained, for all we can see, externally subject to that endless succession of wars and arbitrary despotisms which have formed the substance of their history through untold centuries, and under which neither rational and equal law nor political liberty, as we conceive them, were practicable conceptions. Without it the backward peoples of the earth must have continued to stagnate under the dominance of an unchanging primitive customary regime, which has been their state throughout recorded time. If to-day the most fruitful political ideas of the West--the ideas of nationality and self-government--which are purely products of Western civilization, are beginning to produce a healthy fermentation in many parts of the non-European world, that result is due to European Imperialism."[83] The ethics of modern imperialism have nowhere been better formulated than in an essay by Lord Cromer. "An imperial policy," he writes, "must, of course, be carried out with reasonable prudence, and the principles of government which guide our relations with whatsoever races are brought under our control must be politically and economically sound and morally defensible. This is, in fact, the keystone of the imperial arch. The main justification of imperialism is to be found in the use which is made of imperial power. If we make good use of our power, we may face the future without fear that we shall be overtaken by the Nemesis which attended Roman misrule. If the reverse is the case, the British Empire will deserve to fall, and of a surety it will ultimately fall."[84]