the race for worldly goods, and their place was taken by a growing luxury, extravagance, and quest for pleasure. Even the elementary duty of the citizen in defence of his country was lost sight of, and our Colonies and the great deeds which had won them were forgotten. Hence arose the school of 'Little England'—a school which contained many diverse thinkers, from the serious philosophic insularism of those who disbelieved in oversea possessions to the vulgar self-satisfiaction of the class who were convinced that their own narrow view represented the last word in political development. Fortunately for England, leaders in the persons of Carlyle and Ruskin in the theoretical, and Beaconsfield in the practical, spheres arose, and preached a new doctrine, restated the old ideal, roused the nation from its sluggishness, and stimulated it towards a higher purpose. Once more the old doctrine was preached that works were valueless without faith, and that politics, unless inspired by a true social faith, were only a blind stumbling among precedents. Men began to realize that the nation could not shirk its responsibilities without the degradation of its moral life, and that the truest national well-being lay in great tasks and grave difficulties honestly and fearlessly faced. Such, with all its defects, was the creed which Imperialism attempted to expound. Taking as its axiom that it was desirable to maintain England as a great nation, it argued that no national life can develop without a material foundation. To use the jargon of philosophy, all qualitative development must have a quantitative basis. It sought this basis in the development of that oversea Empire which had been won by its forerunners. The rise of other nations, the growth of armies and navies, the dawn of colonizing ambition among other European Powers, might well make such a development a bare necessity in self-defence; but Im-
