The heart of the empire : discussions of problems of modern city life in England. With an essay on imperialism.

Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The heart of the empire : discussions of problems of modern city life in England. With an essay on imperialism. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    355/444 (page 331)
    themselves to be. The year 1900 will live in history no less for the conduct of the standard-bearers of Christianity than for the conduct of the Chinese. II. My attitude has been, to a large extent, negatively defined in the above review of the elements of weakness and danger in the current conception of Imperialism. I shall now fill in the picture by a few positive touches, and lay down the plain rules that are vital to the moral health of great and small nations alike. The first rule is that progress towards civilisation owes its triumphs to the recognition of the principle that moral causes determine the standing and falling of nations no less than of individuals ; that the spirit of Machiavelli is as disastrous in international as in domestic affairs ; that the end of statesmanship is to raise the standard of political and international conduct to the level which obtains in private relations. “The principle of true politics,” said our greatest political teacher, Burke, “ are those of morality enlarged, and I neither now do, nor ever will, admit of any other.” 1 What, we may ask, does it profit a State if it gain the whole world and lose its own soul ? Jam seges est ubi Troja fnit. Sir John Seeley, who would be called a Little Englander if he were alive to-day, is sufficiently explicit : “ If by remaining in the second rank of magnitude we can hold the first rank morally and intel- lectually, let us sacrifice mere material magnitude.” 2 To demand that statesmen will in all cases act on strict moral principles may be as unreasonable as to expect a perfectly straight course in the sphere of individual conduct. The important point is that the existence and authority of the moral standard should be recognised in public as it has long been recognised in private relations. The excuse that while other nations recognise no moral obligations we cannot fairly be expected to do so is equally relevant in private affairs, where its cogency is no longer admitted, 1 Letter to the Bishop of Chester. “ Correspondence,” i. p. 332. 2 “ Expansion of England,” p. 16.