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places (la) Balkans to Central Asia; (2a) Eastern portion of Central Asia; (3a) Indian Ocean and Malay Archipelago; (4a) East Japan.

It seems therefore legitimate to conclude that there may exist some such connection between earthquakes as that here considered. It is not suggested that it would ever become possible to announce the probable approach of an earthquake in any given locality of small area; the circumstances in which the law above proposed would be obeyed must be comparatively rare, and it would depend for its fulfilment on a number of elements which we can never have a suffificiently accurate knowledge of. Perhaps the most exact statement of this view would be that one earthquake might be the occasion of a succeeding one-the final factor in the series of causes to which earthquakes owe their origin. Whether they be caused by steam, or by chemical reactions, by the collapse of places of weaker crust, or by volcanic actions, or by a general shrinkage of the earth's crust due to a gradual loss of heat is immaterial, for in every hypothesis there must be times when these forces are on the point of giving rise to an earthquake—when the equilibrium is not stable. In such circumstances a very little extra disturbance would be sufficient to determine the occurrence. This last straw' might be the effect of an earthquake in a distant place, and especially in the locality where its influence would be a maximum. In favourable circumstances this sequence of events would be as inevitable as the avalanche called into being by the unwary cry of a traveller, and which overwhelms him and brings ruin to hundreds of others.

Such speculations may seem to have a scientific rather than a practical interest for us who live in places not much disturbed by earthquakes, but if we are able to feel secure it is only on account of knowledge acquired by much patient toil and study. In other less favoured lands-and many such are included in England's possessions beyond the seas-the results of these investigations are of the greatest practical importance. For it is only by an exact knowledge of all the circumstances connected with earthquake shocks that it is possible to determine the most suitable style of architecture, and best kind of building material to employ, so as to defy the earth's shakings. And now that the earthquake temperature' of every portion of the globe is as well known, one might almost say, as its climate, it would be wise for the inhabitants of these countries to look well to future possibilities, and to read aright the lines of Wordsworth :

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To the solid ground

Of nature trusts the mind which builds for aye.

H. V. GILL.

THE TRUE IMPERIALISM

THE following address was delivered by me, as President for the year 1907 of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, in the Town Hall, at Birmingham, on the 11th of December. As the newspaper reports were necessarily condensed, and as the address may perhaps appeal to a wider audience than that which heard it, I have been urged to give it a wider publicity. The courtesy of the Editor of this Review has provided me with the opportunity; and the address is accordingly reproduced in the form in which it was delivered.

CURZON.

I HAVE taken as the subject of my address to-day what I describe as the True Imperialism. I do not thereby suggest that there is a false Imperialism, though it may be that strange figures sometimes masquerade under a disguise to which they can lay no claim. More often they are distorted images of the original, deliberately constructed for purposes of censure or ridicule by unscrupulous opponents. In truth there cannot be a false Imperialism, if the proper meaning of the conception as the Faith of Empire be borne in mind. I shall, however, as I proceed, hope to make clear the difference between the original and the baser caricatures to which partisan speech and writing sometimes give birth.

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I have chosen this subject for my address for two reasons. the first place I think that a man placed in the honourable position of President of the Midland Institute-a position that has been filled by many of the most distinguished Englishmen of their time, and that has called forth many notable utterances in the past-should, if he cannot compete with his predecessors in public credit, at least emulate them in the sincerity and earnestness with which he chooses his message, whatever it may be. I speak of Empire therefore because I am a convinced and unconquerable Imperialist, who by the accident of events has been called upon to spend the whole of his working manhood in the study or the service of Empire, and to whom it has come to be a secular religion, embodying the most sacred duty of the present, and the brightest hope for the future; and because, so feeling, I welcome a platform from which to utter the belief that is in me. And

my second reason is this: To what place could I come more likely to receive such a message with an enlightened but businesslike comprehension than here? The citizens of no mean city, who with a genius for industrial enterprise and a local patriotism that is almost Hellenic in its ardour, have raised your town to a unique place among the great manufacturing capitals, not merely of England but of the world, you have for the past twenty years identified yourselves with the politics of Empire. You have nourished in your midst and have again and again sent out on his public mission the greatest imperial statesman of this generation-the man of whom, whether you agree or disagree with his particular views, it would be stark prejudice to deny that he is animated by a noble devotion to his country and an impassioned belief in its destinies. At a time when other places and districts have fallen away, you have stood fast to your convictions, as I doubt not that when the opportunity offers you will do again. Where then could I better come than to Birmingham, to attempt an analysis and demonstration of the faith that I believe to be equally in you and in me? From what platform so suitable as this Town Hall, which is almost the central altar of the British democracy, should I address my countrymen in the endeavour to show them what it is that Empire means, in what sense it is vital to them, why it ought to be deep in their hearts and fervent, though never boastful, on their tongue ?

GROWTH OF EMPIRE

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I have no time to deal this evening with the history or growth of the British Empire. Two theories have been much in vogue to explain the facts. The first is the idea that the Empire has been built up by a succession of wicked and unscrupulous men, that Empiremakers are as a rule commandment-breakers, and that Proconsulsa class to which I am so fortunate or unfortunate as to belong— represent in general a peculiarly dangerous type. Years ago, before Mr. John Morley had had the opportunity of showing that he could deal with a great Empire in the spirit of a great statesman, he wrote a book in which he spoke of Warren Hastings as the great criminal' and the foundation of British dominion in India as a long train of intrigue and crime.' I do not know whether with fuller knowledge he would hold these views now. I hope not. Anyhow I believe them to be incapable of historical demonstration. Some Empiremakers have been bad and vicious men. By no stretch of imagination could Cæsar or Napoleon possibly be described as good men. But these characteristics have not been confined to the making of Empires. Crime has hovered over the birth of liberty equally with that of despotism, and small States have produced their villains with as much or as little regularity as large ones. If we look at the list of the men who have carved out the British Empire, we shall find that moral

virtues, a spirit of humanity, and an almost puritanical fervour have been more common qualities than those of the filibuster or the bandit. In India in particular, after a careful examination of the evidence, I hold that no substantial case can be made out either against Clive or Warren Hastings; and that those who have added most to our Empire there have been men with clean hands and a high moral purpose. Empire in general can no more be fairly discredited by a sluupon the character of its agents, often working amid surroundings of political and moral upheaval, than painting or poetry can be condemned because some poets have been immoral and some painters lax.

The second theory, which I believe to be equally fallacious, is summed up in the famous phrase that the British Empire was acquired in a fit of absence of mind: or in the more recent apophthegm that what was won in a night may be lost in a day. It has needed many days and nights, even in the widest acceptation of the terms, and the concentrated purpose of many minds, to build the British Empire. True it may be that our advance has often been fortuitous, that we have blundered into many of our greatest triumphs, and that we have often been compelled to go forward because of the short-sighted precipitation with which we had previously endeavoured to go back. But while the masses of men, and even the statesmen, who are by no means as a class more far-sighted than their fellows, have thus stumbled and erred, in the background have been working unseen but powerful forces, the spirit of enterprise inherent in our race, the laws of economic and political gravitation, and the dynamic conceptions of masterminds. Warren Hastings and Wellesley foresaw an India very different from the India of the counting-house. Rhodes conceived a British Africa stretching from the Northern to the Southern seas. I would describe the Empire therefore as the result, not of an accident or a series of accidents, but of an instinct that ineradicable and divinely implanted impulse, which has sent the Englishman forth into the uttermost parts of the earth, and made him there the parent of new societies and the architect of unpremeditated creations.

EXTENT OF EMPIRE

As a result of three centuries of such effort, we have the British Empire as it now exists. It is recorded that Philip the Second of Spain in the reign of Queen Elizabeth took a small map of the world, laid his little finger upon the tiny spot of England, and having thus obliterated it, asked where England was. It was nowhere then. But by contrast it is everywhere now. I do not propose to parade the arithmetical constituents of the Empire before you or to exult in the number of territories, and islands, and cities, and peoples that acknowledge allegiance to our King. I have not brought a map here, with vermilion splashes spread about over sea and land. It is enough to say

that about one-fourth of the world's surface and more than one-fourth of the world's inhabitants are included in the British Dominion. It is the largest Empire that now exists or that ever has existed. It is also unique in character and organisation. But numbers are not the main thing, except as indicating the scale of importance and responsibility; the test is not size, but the work done, the good things accomplished, the bad things wiped out, the general impress left upon the well-being of mankind.

PROGRESS AND LOYALTY

Two features we may at once notice. Wherever this Empire has extended its borders and I am far from confining the claim to the British Empire, though I think it is on the whole more true of AngloSaxon expansion than of other races-there misery and oppression, anarchy and destitution, superstition and bigotry, have tended to disappear, and have been replaced by peace, justice, prosperity, humanity, and freedom of thought, speech, and action. I need not labour that point. But there also has sprung, what I believe to be unique in the history of Empires, a passion of loyalty and enthusiasm which makes the heart of the remotest British citizen thrill at the thought of the destiny which he shares, and causes him to revere a particular piece of coloured bunting as the symbol of all that is noblest in his own nature and of best import for the good of the world. When Rome was threatened by the barbarians, she called to her standard her scattered legions from far and near, and they frequently rebelled and mutinied on the way. But there never rallied to her aid the offspring of her own loins, as Australia and Canada poured their volunteer manhood into South Africa. Crowds of titled Franks and Goths paraded the streets of Rome, and were even designated Roman senators and citizens. But they were quite as ready to pillage its temples as to marvel at them. It is this particular loyalty, which is more than patriotism, since it inspires not the Englishman only, but the foreign-born members of the Empire, the African chieftain or the Indian prince, who are poles apart from the Englishman, which strikes me as the distinctive feature of our Empire. Partly, and more of course in the case of the Englishman than of alien races, it arises from the sense of common citizenship. More still, and irrespective of race, it seems to be identified with the conception of a single and powerful Sovereign. I have no time to develop this point to-night. But just as a Cæsar was found to be essential to the Roman Empire, and the magic of the name and conception continued to prevail even after they had been dishonoured by military upstarts or contemptible debauchees, so I believe the British Empire to be inseparable from the idea of a single sovereign, of ancient lineage, and personal prestige. There is no limit, in sagacious hands, to the useful and even indis

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