ABSTRACT
The convulsion, looking to all its effects, had been a violent one, and the old order was shattered beyond recovery; yet the British Revolution of 189 – was working for the good of the nation and of the world better than any national triumph could have done; thus verifying what Victor Hugo had written half a century before, ‘Les nations sont grandes, Dieu merci! en dehors de la bonne ou mauvaise fortune d’un capitaine.’ The dissolution of the old pattern of empire purchased cheaply the new domain of social improvement; and, after all, when 307we ask what sort of greatness the country had lost, the answer comes that it was only a discredited sort, – one which the awakening public conscience was beginning to look askance at. There was a prospect now that nations might at last learn to trust one another, not because human nature was radically altered, but because it was against the interest of each to be out of touch with the general sentiment of the others. Public opinion, which formerly belonged to cliques, subsequently to the mass of the people, was now becoming international. And all this because the British Revolution had broken the cast-iron shell and let a ray of the truth illumine the darkness and purify the bad air within.
