No subject race can entirely escape this degradation.  No matter how good the government may be or how protective, all forms of subjection involve a certain loss of manhood.  Under an alien Power the nature of the subject nationality becomes soft and dependent.  Instead of working out its own salvation, it looks to the government for direction or assistance in every difficulty.  Atrophy destroys its power of action.  It loses the political sense and grows incapable of self-help or self-reliance.  The stronger faculties, if not extinguished, become mutilated.  In Ireland, even to-day, we see the result of domination in the continued belief that the British Government which has brought the country to ruin possesses the sole power of restoring it to prosperity.  In India we see a people so enervated by alien and paternal government that they have hardly the courage or energy to take up such small responsibilities in local government as may be granted them.  This is what a true Liberal statesman, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, meant by his wise saying that self-government is better than good government.  And it might be further illustrated by the present condition of the largest subject race in the world—­the race of women—­to whom all the protective legislation and boasted chivalry and lap-dog petting, fondly supposed to be lavished upon them by men, are not to be compared in personal value with just the small right to a voice in the management of their own and national affairs.

Such mutilation of character is the penalty of subjection at its best.  At its worst the subject race pays the penalty in tormenting rancour, undying hatred, and the savage indignation that tears the heart.  It may be said that indignation is at all events better than loss of manhood, and again I agree.  Where there is despotism it may well be that for this reason a cruel despotism is less harmful than a paternal despotism—­less harmful, I mean, to the individual soul, which is the only thing that counts.  But the soul that is choked by hatred and torn by indignation is not at its best.  Its functions go wrong, its sight is distorted, its judgment perturbed, its sweetness poisoned, its laughter killed.  The whole being suffers and is changed.  For a time it may blaze with a fierce, a magnificent intensity.  But we talk of a “consuming rage,” and the phrase is terribly true.  Rage is a consuming fire, always a glorious fire, a wild beacon in the night of darkness, but it consumes to ashes the nature that is its fuel.

Loss of manhood or perpetual rancour—­those are the penalties imposed on the soul of a subject race.  Nor does the dominant race escape scot free.  Far from it.  On the whole, it suffers a deeper degradation.  A dominant race, like a domineering person, is always disagreeable and always a bore, and the nearer it is to the scene of domination the more disagreeable and wearisome it becomes, just as a tyrannical man is worst at home.  I have known