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 What the future of our self-governing and really great Colonies may be, it is hard to say. Perhaps the best thing that could happen would be a ‘Federation’ of the whole British Empire, with a central Parliament in which all the Colonies should get representatives, with perfect free trade between the whole, and with an Imperial Army and Navy to which all should contribute payments. But where and when shall we find the statesman great and bold enough to propose it?

Our Indian Empire must be treated to a few lines by itself. It is not a Colony but a ‘Dependency of the Crown’. The extension of our rule over the whole Indian peninsula was made possible, first by the exclusion of any other European power (when we had once beaten off the French there), and secondly by the fact that the weaker states and princes continually called in our help against the stronger. From our three starting-points of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, we have gradually swallowed the whole country; though some states keep their native princes, these are all sworn dependants of King George as ‘Emperor of India’, just as in feudal times a great feudal earl was a sworn subject of his King. Our rule has been infinitely to the good of all the three hundred millions of the different races who inhabit that richly peopled land.

Until 1858 the old ‘East India Company’, founded at the end of Elizabeth's reign, was the nominal sovereign. Its early conquests had been made over the unwarlike races of Bengal and of the South; next, in the reign of George III, over the gallant robbers who swarmed over the central plains and were called Mahrattas. Early in Victoria's time we had to meet those magni-