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Cape, be exposed either to France, or the United States. As regards the latter, the protection you would have to afford would then have to extend no further than the gut of Gibraltar. In the Mediterranean you would be exposed to France, but you have always had the supremacy in that sea, and unless you have it, you cannot carry on war with her. Hitherto you have had for warlike purposes to maintain your supremacy in the Mediterranean and simultaneously to employ a large portion of your navy to protect your Indian traffic in its course of 10,000 miles. From the latter drain you would be relieved by the passage through Egypt. The two seas which give access to Egypt on either side are themselves confined by a gut, both of which are in your hands, and close to which you have naval stations, so that no armament can be within reach, without at least your knowledge. But being superior at sea in the Mediterranean, Egypt is entirely in your hands; you are equally superior in the Red Sea; there is no one there to contest it with you. No attempt could be made by any foreign power on the canal, unless by an expedition of sufficient force to conquer Egypt itself. England's power of coercion over the government of Egypt is absolute in the height of the naval strength of Mehemet Ali, a single line of battle ship with a frigate sealed up Alexandria.

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In the first speech he ever made-the Demosthenian oration, which, in a short hour, brought his fame from germ to maturity, Canning exclaimed, "Secrecy is Treason!" The secrecy which he denounced bore on the motives of the English Government in respect to its dealing with other States : England, in his opinion, had no legitimate object which would not have been advanced by publicity. On the other hand, Russia has no object which publicity would not frustrate. Secrecy is, therefore, as essential a portion of her system as it is essentially opposed to England's interest and character; we may rest assured that wherever there is concealment there is a Russian hand at work, and a Russian object in view.

That secrecy is now no longer confined to the reciprocal operations of governments, but grasps also the most important of material enterprises, It must be evident to any one, that if the objection secretly made by Lord Palmerston to M. Walweski had been publicly stated, whether in Parliament, or in a document, instead of attaining its end, it would have produced the very contrary effect; the capital of England would then have effected that which the diplomacy of England prevented France from attempting.

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I cannot conclude with a more striking fact. thing could bring home to us the nature and consequences of that indirect and un-English process, by which we are represented abroad, it would be a practical application such as this. If Englishmen could but apprehend it, they could not fail to put an end to it. It is endured only because so unlike the ordinary dealing of Englishmen, that, despite all evidence, its existence cannot be believed.

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Here is a case in which the nation may rectify as well as judge. We are seeking for means of investment for superfluous capital: here is a field better than any loan or railway at home or abroad. The present traffic by the Cape amounts to 1,500,000 of tons, we may estimate it by canal at 2,000,000 which would soon be largely increased. mating the dues at the half of that sum proposed by Louis Napoleon, for Panama (the quarter upon American vessels), the yearly returns would amount to half a million, or 20 per cent. upon the original investment. There is no difficulty whatever in the enterprise, if those who conduct it steer clear of Downing Street in England, and the British Embassy at Constantinople.

But if English merchants are unfit to walk by themselves, is there no capital available in France?

We have heard much of the spirit of enterprise of the Anglo-Saxon race; we have heard much of what its energy was capable when planted in the New World, and freed from the

governing trammels which oppress it in the Old: if so let it appear. Here is something worthier than buccaneering expeditions against Cuba, or civilising armaments for Japan. The United States have pretensions to justify and character to regain, no less than interests to advance and fortune to pursue. The parental stock in these Islands pleases itself sometimes in the anticipation of their future greatness, strange if it should have to look to them for its own present #extrication.

NOTE.

HUMBOLDT ON THE SUEZ CANAL.

"The History of the Survey of the Earth includes the narration of all the means by which nations have been drawn closer together, by which greater portions of the globe have become accessible, and the sphere of man's knowledge has been widened. One of the noblest of these means was the actual formation of a navigable route from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean by the Nile. At the point where the two Continents, which are scarcely connected together, admit the waters of the sea to the farthest extent between them, Sesostris (Ramses Miamim) according to the representations of Aristotle and Strabo, or at any rate Necho (Neku) commenced the digging of a canal, but was frightened by some oracular words of the priests, and again gave it up. Herodotus saw and described one which had been completed, opening with the Nile a little above Bubastus; it was the work of Darius Hystaspis, of the family of the Achæmenides. This canal having fallen into disuse, was afterwards so completely re-constructed by Ptolemy Philadelphus, that it kept alive the trade of Ethiopia, Arabia, and India until the time of the Roman Empire, until Marcus, Aurelius, and probably as late as Septimius Severus; and this for more than four centuries and a half, even though it was not navigable at every season

of the year, in consequence of its artificial contrivances for enclosing the water. For the similar object of promoting commerce in the Red Sea, the houses at Myos Hormos and Berenice were carefully built, and connected with Coptus by means of a splendid artificial road."-Cosmos, vol. ii, p. 200.

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CONCLUSION.

Since

THE author of the "Progress of Russia in the East" has selected for the period illustrated in his map that between the accession of Peter and the accession of Nicholas. the accession of the present Emperor, her advance has been greater than in the previous period: the victims are POLAND, HUNGARY, and DENMARK,-the work of dismemberment being completed for the first, and commenced for the latter two.

During the first period, there stood against her in the West an array of substantive power, which she might overreach but could not coerce. In the course of the second, all power and purpose of resistance has been swept away.

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The East presents a different picture. It was on that side that the power of Peter first developed itself: he planned the expulsion of the Turks from Europe, he commanded the Caspian by a fleet; his influence and alliances extended to the banks of the Indus; and he had secured by Treaty more than one half of Persia. Nadir Shah arose, and Russia was driven back behind the Caucasus the Turks signally defeated her in the West and drove her back behind the Dnieper. The accession of Nicholas was followed by a Persian and a Turkish war, which re-advanced the position of Russia to the point which she had occupied ninety-two years before, and even beyond it: Persia, under her dictation, was expending its last resources in an invasion of Herat as the means of reaching India: the Ottoman empire, tottering to its fall, was signing, with the Russians encamped in the Bosphorus, a Treaty

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