The Elizabethans and the Empire. By A. F. Pollard. (H.
Milford for the British Academy. Is. 6d. net.)—In this Raleigh Lecture Professor Pollard discusses the question whether the Elizabethans had empire in their mind, and whether they foresaw the British Empire. He thinks, on the whole, that they did not. Protector Somerset, and Camden after him, were premature in advocating a " Great Britain." When the Elizabethans talked about England being an Empire, they only meant that she was independent of the Pope and the Emperor. The Tudors dis- covered the importance of sea-power, but neither they nor their people had military ambitions. " The purpose of Elizabethan projects of colonization was less to reproduce desirable com- munities in new worlds than to expel undesirable elements from the old "—especially Roman Catholics and Puritan Dissenters, the unemployed, and the criminal classes. " It was our good, and not our evil, fortune that postponed the expansion of Eng- land until we had learnt ourselves, and had taught to our rulers, the lesson of responsible government and some of the virtues of self-determination." It is a brilliant and suggestive lecture.
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