The Great Game; A Plea for a British Imperial Policy

Now at length in the fulness of years he holds in his hands the power to shape the history of England; the power to loose and to bind the British Empire ; the power to set the fashion of government which the world is most likely to follow. [...] A judicious bstowal of some few privy councillorships and a more liberal distribution of the honours of the Bath among the more prominent Colonial officials would give a seductive foretaste of the imperial grandeur which they are asked to share and be wonderfully efficacious in facilitating the cheerful acceptance of the federal state of existence by the ambitious Englishmen of the southern [...] Holding such a position in the most powerful federtion of countries on the face of the globe she would inevitably reach a still higher position in the time of the unity of man and the Federation of the World." She would be the necessary seat of the " Parliament of Man " the administrative centre of the earth the foutain--head of all authority. [...] And she would also be the great University of the nations; the Athens as well as the Rome of the new civilisation ; the centre of thought and light to which illustrious men would be irrsistibly attracted from every corner of the earth and whence their children would go forth fitted for high careers of honour and of usefulness. [...] The keener and more comprehensive mind of the Marquis of Wellesley came to perceive in the light of continual wars and worries that Bengal and Madras were interested in and affected by every part of India and that they could never be sure of peace and safety except under the domination of one parmount power able and willing to forbid the firing of a shot between the Indus and the Bramhap-at