Politics & Power Quote by John Strachan

Strachan is issuing a warning dressed up as gratitude: Britain can export parliaments and “liberal principles of legislation,” but without Christianity those institutions will be hollow, even dangerous. The sentence turns on “in vain,” a blunt verdict that reframes political modernity as insufficient on its own. He grants the empire its best self-image - free government, enlightened law - then undercuts it by making legitimacy conditional on “the revelations of God.” That phrase matters. It doesn’t mean generic spirituality; it’s a claim for doctrinal authority, revelation as a kind of constitutional bedrock.

The intent is strategic. As a cleric and colonial power broker in British North America, Strachan is arguing for the church’s central role in shaping the colonies: education, moral discipline, social hierarchy. He’s also staking out a theory of governance where rights and procedures don’t generate virtue; they must be anchored in a Christian moral order delivered from above, not negotiated from below. “Carry with her” reads like a mission statement for empire: colonization as moral transport, not just administrative expansion.

The subtext is anxiety about what “free government” unleashes when severed from religious authority: dissent, sectarian pluralism, republican contagion from the United States, and a loosening of deference in a rapidly changing Atlantic world. Strachan’s line flatters Britain while tightening the leash. It turns liberalism into a vehicle for Protestant establishment, insisting the empire’s success depends not merely on exporting institutions, but on exporting a sanctioned moral grammar that keeps those institutions safely predictable.