Excerpt from A Short History of the Expansion of the British Empire: 1500, 1870 This History is not a 'Manual, ' i.e., a digest of the general body of facts relative to Colonial history. Events have been dwelt upon, or passed over, as they serve, or do not serve, to illustrate the broad underlying principles which from time to time governed British Expansion. A manual of information makes a bad text-book for a student. For the right kind of text-book should aim at something beyond storing the mind with facts: viz., at stimulating the reader to further enquiry, and at guiding him in the classification of his material and in framing conclusions about it History-teaching is barren if this threefold result has not been attained. Further, the mental discipline which History affords may be better derived from the earlier rather than the later epochs; in our subject, from the period of struggle and experiment rather than the age of full achievement and fruition. The story of the American Colonies, though we lost them, is in this way more instructive than the orderly progress of Australia. For real insight into motives and forces the Elizabethan time, perhaps, has merits which the Victorian age lacks. Hence I have refrained of set purpose from bringing down the narrative to the present day. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.