“England without an Empire! Can you conceive it? England in that case would not be the England we love. (Cheers.) If the ties of sympathy...between ourselves and our children who are soon to become great nations across the seas—if these ties were weakened or destroyed, if we suffered their affection to die from want of food, if we allowed them to drift apart—then this England of ours would sink from the comparative position which she has enjoyed throughout the centuries...she would be a fifth-rate nation existing on the sufferance of her more powerful neighbours.”

— Joseph Chamberlain

Speech in Birmingham (9 July 1906), quoted in The Times (10 July 1906), p. 11
1900s

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Joseph Chamberlain 44

British businessman, politician, and statesman 1836–1914

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Joseph Chamberlain 44

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