is an insolent creation of English harshness and rapacity.
Imperialism, I think, is a fiction created, not by English hardness,
but by English softness; nay, in a sense, even by English kindness.

The reasons for believing in Australia are mostly as sentimental
as the most sentimental reasons for believing in heaven.
New South Wales is quite literally regarded as a place where the wicked
cease from troubling and the weary are at rest; that is, a paradise
for uncles who have turned dishonest and for nephews who are born tired.
British Columbia is in strict sense a fairyland, it is a world where
a magic and irrational luck is supposed to attend the youngest sons.
This strange optimism about the ends of the earth is an English weakness;
but to show that it is not a coldness or a harshness it is quite
sufficient to say that no one shared it more than that gigantic
English sentimentalist--the great Charles Dickens. The end
of "David Copperfield" is unreal not merely because it is an
optimistic ending, but because it is an Imperialistic ending.
The decorous British happiness planned out for David Copperfield and Agnes
would be embarrassed by the perpetual presence of the hopeless tragedy
of Emily, or the more hopeless farce of Micawber. Therefore, both Emily
and Micawber are shipped off to a vague colony where changes
come over them with no conceivable cause, except the climate.
The tragic woman becomes contented and the comic man becomes responsible,
solely as the result of a sea voyage and the first sight of a kangaroo.

To Imperialism in the light political sense, therefore, my only
objection is that it is an illusion of comfort; that an Empire whose
heart is failing should be specially proud of the extremities,
is to me no more sublime a fact than that an old dandy whose
brain is gone should still be proud of his legs. It consoles men