Parliament in which every member represented a town or a county or a
scrap of a town or county, and in which no one represented the Nation,
no one the Empire, and no one the Globe, felt bound to keep its eye upon
towns and counties, the Opposition benches, and the next election. Why
should it stand up for the British outside, and why concern itself about
other Powers looking round the globe for claims to peg out? The
colonists who looked to the British Government for championship were
snubbed; the foreign Powers working for elbow-room were politely made
way for, or if they brushed against the British coat-sleeve and caused
an exclamation received a meek apology. This was the normal frame of
mind of British party leaders and ministers, from which they have never
quite emerged. They were asleep, dreaming of a parochial millennium.

But outside of cabinets there were a few men who used their eyes. Sir
Charles Dilke took a turn round the globe, and when he came back said
"Greater Britain." That was an idea, and ideas are like the plague--they
are catching. Sir John Seeley took a tour through the history of the
last three centuries, and said "Expansion of England"; that meant
continuity in the Nation's life not merely in space but in time.
Whatever the cause, a few years ago there set in an epidemic of fresh
ideas, tending to reveal the Nation as more than a crowd of individuals
and the Empire as the Nation's work and the Nation's cause. The
Government did all it could to resist the infection. Instead of standing
up for the Empire it was bent on passing measures in the sense of its
own party. It ran away from Russia, from France, and from Germany. But
the new ideas grew; every globetrotter became a Nationalist and an
Imperialist, and shed his party skin. Then came Fashoda, and Lord
Rosebery's action in that matter killed what was left of party.

The case of the British in South Africa cried aloud for British action.