way of escape from inconvenient responsibilities which did not pay. In every British possession beyond sea this deliberate policy made itself painfully felt Surprise and astonishment at existing relations of the Colonies to the navy, upon which their peace and prosperity depend, must be tempered by remembering that their older men were brought up, and their middle-aged men were born, in the cold shade of their Mother Country's disregard. At home all idea of building up and consolidating, however slowly, a British Empire, embracing all its infinite and varied resources for common security in war and mutual advantage in peace, was openly spurned and deliberately repudiated. British communities abroad consequently became persuaded that the old Imperial spirit of Britain was dead, and they were driven from conception of Imperial duties and obligations towards an exclusive provincial patriotism, offering the immediate prospect of becoming a series of separate and glorified municipalities. The belief in assured peace spread to the Colonies, so possible interference with them by foreign Powers was ignored. At home the brotherhood of nations was affirmed to have begun, and the superiority of Manchester soft goods and Birmingham hardwares accepted as a perpetual guarantee for Britain's permanent monopoly of the manufactures of the world under conditions of general disarmament. The infant Britains beyond sea formed a different idea of their own fixture, being confident in the knowledge of their unlimited natural resources, which were freely conferred upon them by the Home Country, and of their ability to develop vast wealth and commercial greatness to rival in the ftiture the position of the United Kingdom itself. In the calm sunshine of universal peace, the huge foreign lions, with their teeth and natural appetites, were to lie down with these colonial lambs, and wag tails of approval at their rapid and successful development of power. This may appear to many readers an exaggerated view of the situation in those days; but at all events the feeling that the Mother Country had
