arrested every British ship she found sealing in Behring Sea. The Commission has decided that this was little else than an act of piracy, and yet we neither bombarded New York nor San Francisco nor annexed Alaska nor marched an army to Boston, simply because we knew that America never interferes except in what is, or what at least she believes to be, her own business; and, although in this instance she may have been technically wrong in the action she took, the regulations now laid down by the Commission for the future conduct of sealers show that she was to some extent justified. We hear a great deal about our prestige, and spend millions to maintain it. Surely a nation which can boast that she can maintain her prestige with a single revenue cutter is in a most enviable position. Clearly dignity and moral strength are not the prerogatives only of nations armed to the teeth with engines of destructive warfare. True, America now seems anxious to follow the burdensome European fashion, and acquire a navy; but even in this she is different from European nations. The real origin of her navy was the necessity of finding an outlet for her overflowing treasury, and now that that has been somewhat depleted, wiser counsels are likely to prevail.

Unfortunately there are 'jingoes' in America as everywhere else, who wish to have the pleasure of paying for an army and navy, and to annex every conceivable continent and island under the sun; but they receive very little support from the bulk of the nation. Only the other day the American residents in the Hawaiian Islands deposed the native government, and practically annexed the islands to the United States; but the Federal Government absolutely declined to confirm their action. Yet Hawaii is much more closely connected with the United States than many islands and other parts of the world which we have annexed were with England. By a commercial treaty existing between the two countries each had agreed to admit the products of the other duty-free, and the sugar industry of the Pacific States, the largest foreign industry they possess, was dependent on Hawaii; but America has not yet discovered that apparent expediency gives her any right to

commit an injustice, and it is to be hoped that for her own sake, as well as for that of other nations, she may never make this discovery. The best reason for America not having a large and costly navy is that she does not require one, and, such being the case, she could not man it, for her people are too profitably employed at home to spend their time sailing the seas in search of quarrels.

We, on the other hand, are so entangled in the meshes of European and Eastern politics that all parties in the State seem agreed on the necessity of submitting to the grievous burden of our military and naval armaments. Great wars are happily so rare that we are entirely in the dark as to the value of the huge and costly experiments which we are making in naval construction. We do not know whether in time of war our ships can be successfully manœuvred, whether they will prove seaworthy and shot-proof, and we are not without apprehension that they may turn out to be as great a danger to each other as to an enemy. We maintain an army at an enormous expense, and yet it is admittedly insufficient, without the aid of very untrustworthy alliances, to meet the demands which may be made on us. We attempt to conciliate one nation in the hope of securing it as an ally, and by doing so we arouse the suspicion and jealousy of some other nation, and so almost precipitate the catastrophe we seek to avoid. Is not the position of America, I repeat, in many ways enviable? Is it impossible for Europe to learn a lesson from her example?

Our Colonies, unhappily, have committed many errors; but they have none of them been drawn into the stupendous folly of wishing to entangle themselves in our complicated European politics. Ambitious and sentimental schemes of Imperial Federation have dwindled down to a mere proposal for protection, a Zollverein, which is to open colonial markets to our manufacturers and home markets to colonial products, to the exclusion of other countries. The proposal is too ridiculous to bear much discussion. How, for instance, would it suit Canada to be shut off from trading with the seventy millions of the United States, her nearest and best customers, in exchange for the

very trifling advantage to be gained from trading with Australia and her small and probably decreasing population of three millions? Or is it likely that Australia will care to involve herself in war with the United States for the sake of a few sealskins coveted by British Columbia? If our Colonies have done nothing else by incurring the enormous load of debt which now weighs them down, they have at least discovered a new protection against annexation. The Colonies have now neither men nor money to spare; so they are not likely to prove valuable either as markets or recruiting grounds for many long years; and until they follow the example of America, and, paying off their debts, determine to contract no more, they will find that the surplus population of this and other countries will prefer the United States as a field of emigration.

These, I am well aware, are unpopular sentiments; but in the changes which must follow on the adoption of free trade by America, England will be brought face to face with a great dilemma. We have an enormous population absolutely dependent on our foreign trade. If we wish to retain our share of that trade and to save our labouring population from the suffering involved in a long, continuous, and everincreasing depression of trade, we must insist on some relaxation of the burden of taxation. We have staggered along till now because America has handicapped itself with protection and because we have only been opposed by European States as heavily burdened as ourselves. In the future we are to face a young and vigorous competitor, which is laying aside the errors of protection and preparing to run its industrial course without encumbrances. The question is not, Are these sentiments popular? but, Is the danger real? England has a proud roll of achievement in the service of humanity. No greater addition could be added to her fame than that it should be given to her to take the initiative in the disarmament of Europe.

There is another way in which more economical public administration and greater freedom of enterprise would materially assist industry. Of late years vast sums of money have

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been sent abroad to Argentina, to Australia, to Africa, and to every part of the globe. A very large part of this might just as well have been thrown into the sea; it is hopelessly and irretrievably lost. This money would have been much safer at home; and, if our industry were not hampered with heavy taxation, obstructive regulations and with fear of what is known as the labour trouble,' it would remain at home, and give employment to labour in the extension of industry.

One might write much without exhausting the lessons to be learnt from America; but these I have mentioned must suffice. No one reading Mr. Cleveland's inaugural address inculcating thrift and self-reliance on his countrymen, and warning them against overconfidence in the future because of their achievement in the past, and then turning to the somewhat boastful harangue of Sir William Harcourt, can doubt where the real strength and wisdom lie. Both of these men presumably represent a majority of their countrymen and of public opinion. The one represents a country where development has little more than begun, and whose prospective wealth is greater than has ever been dreamed of for any nation in the history of the world—a country not only practically without a debt, but which has just, by an unparalleled effort, repaid an enormous debt, so repugnant to it was the very idea of indebtedness-a country without an army because it fears no other nation, with no liabilities beyond her own frontiers, and no complicated foreign relations such as in European States may at any moment give rise to a struggle for existence: and to this country her President preaches public thrift and frugality, and deprecates overconfidence in her own powers. Sir William Harcourt, on the other hand, sees great and increasing depression in all the most important industries of this country; but he bids us be of good cheer, as there is no occasion for apprehension or disquiet. A mighty trade is going on, wealth is being rolled up, capital is accumulating; and the two industries to which he refers are the medical and legal professions, which, according to him, produce wealth faster than either cotton or coal.

These comforting assurances do not reassure. Turning

from Sir William Harcourt's easy, confiding optimism, we see on every side leaders of party renouncing the duty of leadership, ostentatiously abandoning every principle of economy in a headlong race to catch the votes of the most ignorant class of the electorate-a class which, to do it justice, is amenable to reason and appreciative of courage, if those who profess to be our leaders had the boldness to speak out. We see that freedom of enterprise which is the foundation of England's greatness, and the support of her vast population, threatened on all sides by the unreproved clamour of ignorant empirics. We feel ourselves burdened by a large imperial debt of which we have repaid only a fraction and by a local indebtedness which increases by leaps and bounds, while during the last twenty years we have spent on our armaments nearly enough to have paid off the national debt. We have got rid, it is true, of an oppressive protective tariff, but we are fettering our industry by debt, by taxation, by strikes, and by innumerable vexatious and costly regulations. Meanwhile, we see a great nation of our own kith and kin about to adopt that principle which has been the secret of our success, and which we in our folly are now throwing away. We cannot, under these conditions, look forward without apprehension to the inevitable and rapid transference of the centre of trade to the other side of the Atlantic. It means to our poorer classes long and dark years of suffering, till our population can transport itself to freer fields of industry or becomes reduced by decimation to the needs of an industry shrunk to the narrowest dimensions.

If, by reason of the very obviousness of the danger, we are warned in time, not we alone, but all Europe, will have to thank America. That country, fearing no other, and at peace with all, will begin to monopolize the trade of the world. The nations of Europe will then, when they find their resources dwindling away, discover, perhaps when it is too late, that they have devoted too large a proportion of their wealth and the flower of their manhood to preparations for wars which rarely come, and would never come at all without these preparations. Then, when they will find themselves