Next, the mass of the people had gained a potent
voice in the management of affairs. Democracy was coming to the throne,
if it had not quite grasped all the trappings.
The key of what was to be, rested in those two facts, which made the
world so different a working-machine from what it had been. And the using
of the key was primarily confided to the Anglo-Saxon race, since it
occupied the greatest extent of the globe, and included what was ripest
and best in democracy.
'Everywhere,' Sir George showed, 'our people are working, with might and
main, to develop the resources of the earth. They are characterised by a
common language, a common literature, and common laws. Shakespeare,
Milton, the riches of our classic literature, belong as much to these new
nations over-sea, as they do to the Mother Country. The men and women of
Anglo-Saxon stock carry with them, wherever they go, the one faith of
Christianity.
'Really, there could not be anything but a unity, a oneness, in the whole
structure upon which the race rests. If the progress, in natural
federation, has been so great, through years when South Africa, or New
Zealand, was far distant from England, when there were no swift steamers
and no cables under the sea, what must it now become? Such wonderful
changes has modern science brought about, that the peoples of Greater
Britain and America are next-door neighbours to the folks in the Old
Country.
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