Historians are sometimes ridiculed for indulging in conjectures about what would have followed in history if some one event had fallen out differently. ‘So gloriously unpractical!’ we exclaim. Now it is not for the sake of practice, but for the sake of theory that such conjectures are hazarded, and I think historians should deal in them much more than they do. It is an illusion to suppose that great public events, because they are on a grander scale, have something more fatally necessary about them than ordinary private events; and this illusion enslaves the judgment. To form any opinion or estimate of a great national policy is impossible so long as you refuse even to imagine any other policy pursued. This remark is especially applicable to an event so vast and complex as the Expansion of England. Think for a moment if there had been no connexion of England with the New World! How utterly different would have been the whole course of English history since the reign of Queen Elizabeth! No Spanish Armada would have come against us, and there would have been no Drake and Hawkins to withstand it. No great English navy would have grown up. Blake would not have fought with Van Tromp and De Ruyter. The wars of the Long Parliament and Charles II. with Holland, the war of Cromwell with Spain, would never have taken place.