Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/268

 ally changed in many of its aspects. There was still an ever-advancing "Liberal," and a restraining and opposing "Conservative" party in "the House" and in the country; but the aims and objects of the two contending political bodies were strikingly different from those of five centuries previous. Political attention was now, and had been for some time before, absorbed by the grand question of the impending change in the disappearance of international distinctions in the world. While the Liberals had been cherishing and promoting this idea, as one of the fitting consummations of human progress and brotherhood, the Conservatives, on the other hand, had been strenuously, almost even bitterly, opposing it, and vehemently declaiming against all this upsetting and erasing of the good old world's landmarks, systems, and institutions. "Are you a Nationalist, or an Antinationalist?" was then the great cry. How odd such a controversy looks now! We, who are so long accustomed to the larger and nobler idea, look back in wonder upon these narrow prejudices of the past; but, at the comparatively early time we speak of, there was still a hot dispute over the merits of the prospect, and a daily expenditure of much argument and eloquence on either side.

The premier to whom we have just alluded, as having been the last of his political race, was a Liberal; and the final triumph of his party and its cause was achieved when he formally surrendered his distinctive premiership, and, along with it, a distinctively English nationality and Government. Thenceforward the whole world became virtually one people and one political administration. Practically, how-