with politically weak and under-civilized native communities, which were nominally protectorates, and administered either by a High Commissioner set over native chiefs (as in Basutoland) or over a chartered company (as in Rhodesia). In some cases the Foreign Office, in some cases the Colonial Office, and in some cases the India Office had been concerned in acquiring the possessions that fell into this last and least definite class of all, but for the most part the Colonial Office was now responsible for them.
It will be manifest, therefore, that no single office and no single brain had ever comprehended the British Empire as a whole. It was a mixture of growths and accumulations entirely different from anything that has ever been called an empire before. It guaranteed a wide peace and security; that is why it was endured and sustained by many men of the "subject" races—in spite of official tyrannies and insufficiencies, and of much negligence on the part of the "home" public. Like the "Athenian empire," it was an overseas empire; its ways were sea ways, and its common link was the British Navy. Like all empires, its cohesion was dependent physically upon a method of communication; the development of seamanship, ship-building, and steamships between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries had made it a possible and convenient Pax—the "Pax Britannica," and fresh developments of air or swift land transport might at any time make it inconvenient.
Air transport may indeed be already opening the way to a still more extensive and universal "Pax," in which the British system may of its own accord merge. It is impossible to say whether this unprecedented imperialism will obstruct or help forward that final unification of the world's affairs towards which all history is pointing. A system so various in its structure has many contradictory aspects, some very attractive and some very repellent to a liberal intelligence. The conversion of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa from mere administered dependencies into quasi-independent allies, has been a very fine feat of statescraft. But in these cases the British Government had to deal with largely kindred and sympathetic populations, very ready to renew the methods of the old country upon a distant soil. In the case of mainly alien peoples the record is not so good,
