It is the main justification for British annexations that they opened and developed new markets for all the world, instead of closing them; and it was this fact chiefly which made the acquisition of such vast areas tolerable to the other trading powers.  The extension of the British Empire was thus actually a benefit to all the non-imperial states, especially to such active trading countries as Italy, Holland, Scandinavia, or America.  If at any time Britain should reverse her traditional policy, and reserve for her own merchants the trade of the immense areas which have been brought under her control, nothing is more certain than that the world would protest, and protest with reason, against the exorbitant and disproportionate share which has fallen to her.  Only so long as British control means the open door for all the world will the immense extent of these acquisitions continue to be accepted without protest by the rest of the world.

In the new protectorates of this period Britain found herself faced by a task with which she had never had to deal on so gigantic a scale, though she had a greater experience in it than any other nation:  the task of governing justly whole populations of backward races, among whom white men could not permanently dwell, and whom they visited only for the purposes of commercial exploitation.  The demands of industry for the raw materials of these countries involved the employment of labour on a very large scale; but the native disliked unfamiliar toil, and as his wants were very few, could easily earn enough to keep him in the idleness he loved.  Slavery was the customary mode of getting uncongenial tasks performed in Africa; but against slavery European civilisation had set its face.  Again, the ancient unvarying customs whereby the rights and duties of individual tribesmen were enforced, and the primitive societies held together, were often inconsistent with Western ideas, and tended to break down altogether on contact with Western industrial methods.  How were the needs of industry to be reconciled with justice to the subject peoples?  How were their customs to be reconciled with the legal ideas of their new masters?  How were these simple folk to be taught the habits of labour?  How were the resources of their land to be developed without interference with their rights of property and with the traditional usages arising from them?  These were problems of extreme difficulty, which faced the rulers of all the new European empires.  The attempt to solve them in a high-handed way, and with a view solely to the interests of the ruling race, led to many evils:  it produced the atrocities of the Congo; it produced in the German colonies the practical revival of slavery, the total disregard of native customs, and the horrible sequence of wars and slaughters of which we have already spoken.  In the British dominions a long tradition and a long experience saved the subject peoples from these iniquities.  We