The name of the thing was
enough for him, a word made in Germany, thick and mucky,
like their tumblers. As to the colonies--Mr Chafe had
been told of a certain spider who devoured her young
ones. He reversed the figure and it stood, in the imperial
connection, for all the argument he wanted.
Alfred Hesketh had lived always in the hearing of such
doctrine; it had stood to him for political gospel by
mere force of repetition. But he was young, with the
curiosity and enterprise and impatience of dogma of youth;
he belonged by temperament and situation to those plastic
thousands in whom Wallingham hoped to find the leaven
that should leaven the whole lump. His own blood stirred
with the desire to accomplish, to carry further; and as
the scope of the philanthropist did not attract him, he
was vaguely conscious of having been born too late in
England. The new political appeal of the colonies, clashing
suddenly upon old insular harmonies, brought him a sense
of wider fields and chances; his own case he freely
translated into his country's, and offered an open mind
to politics that would help either of them. He looked at
the new countries with interest, an interest evoked by
their sudden dramatic leap into the forefront of public
concern. He looked at them with what nature intended to
be the eye of a practical businessman.
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