have wrought and beene readie to oppresse them for hunger and want of
sustinance." It lies so far north--the latitude of Labrador--that the
winters are long and the climate inhospitable.  It would be severely cold
if the Gulf Stream did not make it always damp and curtain it with
clouds.  In some parts the soil is heavy with water, in others it is only
a thin stratum above the chalk; in fact, agricultural production could
scarcely be said to exist there until fortunes made in India and in other
foreign adventure enabled the owners of the land to pile it knee-deep
with fertilizers from Peru and elsewhere.  Thanks to accumulated wealth
and the Gulf Stream, its turf is green and soft; figs, which will not
mature with us north of the capes of Virginia, ripen in sheltered nooks
in Oxford, and the large and unfrequent strawberry sometimes appears upon
the dinner-table in such profusion that the guests can indulge in one
apiece. 

Yet this small, originally infertile island has been for two centuries,
and is today, the most vital influence on the globe.  Cast your eye over
the world upon her possessions, insular and continental, into any one of
which, almost, England might be dropped, with slight disturbance, as you
would transfer a hanging garden.  For any parallel to her power and