Imperialism, A Study

frantic eagerness, on every tract of territory adjacent to your own or desirable from any other point of view which you thought it desirable to take. That has had two results. I dare say it has been quite right, but it has had two results. The first result is this, that you have excited to an almost intolerable degree the envy of other colonising (sic!) nations, and that, in the case of many countries, or several countries rather, which were formerly friendly to you, you can reckon – in consequence of your colonial policy, whether right or wrong – not on their active benevolence, but on their active malevolence. And, secondly, you have acquired so enormous a mass of territory that it will be years before you can settle it or control it, or make it capable of defence or make it amenable to the acts of your administration ... In twelve years you have added to the Empire, whether in the shape of actual annexation or of dominion, or of what is called a sphere of influence, 2,600,000 square miles of territory... to the 120,000 square miles of the United Kingdom, which is part of your Empire, you have added during the last twelve years twenty-two areas