There is a destiny now possible to us—­the highest ever set before a nation to be accepted or refused.  We are still undegenerate in race; a race mingled of the best northern blood.  We are not yet dissolute in temper, but still have the firmness to govern, and the grace to obey.  We have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we must either now betray, or learn to defend by fulfilling.  And we are rich in an inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour, should be the most offending souls alive.[175] Within the last few years we have had the laws of natural science opened to us with a rapidity which has been blinding by its brightness; and means of transit and communication given to us, which have made but one kingdom of the habitable globe.  One kingdom;—­but who is to be its king?  Is there to be no king in it, think you, and every man to do that which is right in his own eyes?  Or only kings of terror, and the obscene empires of Mammon and Belial?  Or will you, youths of England, make your country again a royal throne of kings; a sceptred isle, for all the world a source of light, a centre of peace; mistress of Learning and of the Arts;—­faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent and ephemeral visions;—­faithful servant of time-tried principles, under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in her strange valour of goodwill toward men?[176]

“Vexilla regis prodeunt."[177] Yes, but of which king?  There are the two oriflammes; which shall we plant on the farthest islands—­the one that floats in heavenly fire, or that hangs heavy with foul tissue of terrestrial gold?  There is indeed a course of beneficent glory open to us, such as never was yet offered to any poor group of mortal souls.  But it must be—­it is with us, now.  “Reign or Die.”  And if it shall be said of this country, “Fece per viltate, il gran rifiuto,"[178] that refusal of the crown will be, of all yet recorded in history, the shamefullest and most untimely.

And this is what she must either do, or perish:  she must found colonies as fast and as far as she is able, formed of her most energetic and worthiest men;—­seizing every piece of fruitful waste ground she can set her foot on, and there teaching these her colonists that their chief virtue is to be fidelity to their country, and that their first aim is to be to advance the power of England by land and sea:  and that, though they live on a distant plot of ground, they are no more to consider themselves therefore disfranchised from their native land, than the sailors of her fleets do, because they float on distant waves.  So that literally, these colonies must be fastened fleets; and every man of them must be under authority of captains and officers, whose