PREFACE.
These two lectures were given quite independently, the former to the Students’ Association at Edinburgh on December 22nd, 1885, and the latter as a public lecture in the University of Oxford on Washington’s birthday, February 22nd, 1886. As they were written for two different audiences, and as one leading idea ran through both, there was naturally a good deal of repetition, sometimes even to the very words. This I have, in revising them for the press, done my best to get rid of. They appear now as two discourses, looking at the same general subject from two somewhat different points of view, and each putting different points more prominently forward. To these I have added, as an Appendix, such parts as were not immediately temporary of an article which appeared in Macmillan’s Magazine for April, 1885, under the heading of “Imperial Federation.” In this article, written only to be read and not to be heard, some points which were treated in a more rhetorical way in the lectures are dealt with in a style of more minute argument. It seemed therefore to make a fitting commentary on the lectures.
Cahors,
April 7th, 1886.