"Let them take the debate which had recently been carried on with so much vivacity on the subject of Imperial expansion. There was a process of expansion which was as normal, as necessary, as inseparable, and unmistakable a sign of vitality in a nation as the corresponding processes in the growing human body. We might control and direct it by oversight and by means adapted to the end, but we could not arrest it. ... [I]t was not part of the most illustrious apostles and disciples of Liberalism to condemn expansion in the sense which he had described it."
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H. H. Asquith, speech in Darwen, Lancashire (27 January 1899), quoted in The Times (28 January 1899), p. 8
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Imperialism
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H. H. Asquith
Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, KG, PC (12 September 1852 – 15 February 1928) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916. As Prime Minister, his Liberal Party government passed social legislation beginning the modern British welfare state and reducing the power of the House of Lords. He was the leader of the country during World War I and formed a wartime coalition with the Conservative Party. He was was forced to resign in favor of David Lloyd George
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