attempted reassertion of their former independence, it was treated by Athens as revolt, and crushed with military and naval force. The conduct of Sparta when she succeeded to the hegemony of Greece was in no way different; perhaps it was harsher, and so we have a vast amount of protest against the tyranny of these leading states, and their “enslaving” of the rest of Greece. They on their side pointed to the necessity of union to prevent foreign domination; they pointed to the labours and sacrifices the citizens of the leading state had undergone, to the security of the seas from pirates, to the increase of trade, and of the reputation of Greek civilisation, all produced by their efforts; but generally this came in at the end of the argument: that having acquired their power they intended to keep it. Here then was a great constitutional question and one still under dispute in the last century. Supposing that several independent states combine to promote common objects, and make a solemn league or union; is it lawful for any one of the contracting parties to withdraw from the union if it considers its liberties infringed? I need not to take into account the further complication, when some of the states involved were created subsequently by and for the union, in fact were daughters and not mothers of the union. You know how in this country that constitutional problem was only solved by a great war, and this was but the echo of the same kind of conflict endemic in Greece. Yet the tone and temper of the world had changed in the long interval. The creation and success of many great states led men to appreciate the advantages thus obtained, and though there was, and still is, a strong sentiment in favour of small nationalities coerced by the greater--you remember the sentiment of all the European press during the recent Boer war--yet on the whole the imperial idea is not unpopular. In Greece it was the reverse. From the outset to the end, the right of the smaller members of an union to secede was always maintained in theory and produced fatal results in practice.