that great political aggregates have an inherent tendency
towards breaking up, and that great political aggregates
cannot be maintained except by a strongly-centralized
administration and at the sacrifice of local self-government.
A century ago the very idea of a stable federation
of forty powerful states, covering a territory nearly
equal in area to the whole of Europe, carried on by
a republican government elected by universal suffrage,
and guaranteeing to every tiniest village its full
meed of local independence,—the very idea
of all this would have been scouted as a thoroughly
impracticable Utopian dream. And such scepticism
would have been quite justifiable, for European history
did not seem to afford any precedents upon which such
a forecast of the future could be logically based.
Between the various nations of Europe there has certainly
always existed an element of political community, bequeathed
by the Roman empire, manifested during the Middle Ages
in a common relationship to the Church, and in modern
times in a common adherence to certain uncodified
rules of international law, more or less im perfectly
defined and enforced. Between England and Spain,
for example, or between France and Austria, there
has never been such utter political severance as existed
normally between Greece and Persia, or Rome and Carthage.
But this community of political inheritance in Europe,
it is needless to say, falls very far short of the
degree of community implied in a federal union; and
so great is the diversity of language and of creed,
and of local historic development with the deep-seated
prejudices attendant thereupon, that the formation
of a European federation could hardly be looked for
except as the result of mighty though quiet and subtle
influences operating for a long time from without.
From what direction, and in what manner, such an irresistible
though perfectly pacific pressure is likely to be
exerted in the future, I shall endeavour to show in
my next lecture. At present we have to observe
that the experiment of federal union on a grand scale
required as its conditions, first, a vast extent
of unoccupied country which could be settled without
much warfare by men of the same race and speech, and
secondly, on the part of the settlers, a rich
inheritance of political training such as is afforded
by long ages of self-government. The Atlantic
coast of North America, easily accessible to Europe,
yet remote enough to be freed from the political complications
of the old world, furnished the first of these conditions:
the history of the English people through fifty generations
furnished the second. It was through English
self-government, as I argued in my first lecture, that
England alone, among the great nations of Europe,
was able to found durable and self-supporting colonies.
I have now to add that it was only England, among
all the great nations of Europe, that could send forth
colonists capable of dealing successfully with the