CHAPTER IV.

THE REMOTER CAUSES WHICH HAVE SHAPED THE NATIONAL PICY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND.

In studying the course of these Allied Powers toward America, it is not necessary to assume that it has been dictated by any special hatred of the American people, that all the old friendship of France has been suddenly turned to gall and bitterness, or that England is watching to repay the ancient grudge caused by the separation of our colonies.

There is no such animosity between these nations and our own as demands a war. Left to their own impulses, the people of these countries would not only live in peace, but would gladly cultivate friendly relations. But whoever builds a hope of continued peace, merely upon the absence of hostile feeling, or upon such popular friendship as may exist, will surely be deluded. France and England will be governed only by considerations of national policy. Back of all friendly feelings, whatever they may be, back of all influences of the ties of race, language and religion, which might otherwise move England, are the stern necessities of her British policy, by which she will be inevitably controlled.

England's commercial and manufacturing interests, England's power and supremacy among nations, these will be first considered; all else will be coldly thrust aside. The English people may be suddenly kindled into a perfect blaze of wrath, as in the case of the Trent, but the moment it was seen that British policy did not then demand a war, the angry fires burned harmlessly out.

On the other hand, it is by no means safe to suppose that, because Mr. Beecher's efforts were applauded by so many thousands, that therefore all apprehensions may be laid aside, and our safe course now is to caress the British Lion into quietness and friendship. It would be a short-sighted and dangerous policy to place any reliance upon such manifestations as these.

The necessities of England's position will override all this. If the Anglo-French Alliance continues, and these powers pursue the policy with which it was formed, they will remain in real antagonism to Russia and America, and the struggle for the mastery will surely come. Let us do our part in the preserving of peace; yet by all means, prepare for the future.

In studying the policy of the Great Powers of Christendom, we must remember, that the greatness and power of a nation in this age, depend upon the extent of its commerce and manufactures.

War itself has become as much a question of capital and machinery, as the working of a cotton mill. But the capital made for a great and long war can only be created through manufactures and commerce, and therefore, a nation must be commercially great in order to become a first-rate military power-and to great wealth must be added skill, in the production and use of machinery.

Battles by land and sea are fought more and more each year by machinery. These remarks apply with peculiar force to France and England. Their future supremacy depends upon their commerce and manufactures, and armies and navies are needed by them mainly to extend and secure these great interests, which are the sources of their wealth and power. Bonaparte found that, although he could overrun Europe by mere military power and skill, that he could lay no permanent foundation of a great Empire, except upon a manufacturing and commercial basis, such as England had created; and from that time France has been endeavoring to obtain for herself extensive colonies, and to create both a great navy and a commercial marine.

If we add to these interests, the influence of the great religious organizations of Europe, we shall have the key to the whole policy of England and the great powers of the Continent.

European wars just now are not waged for an idea, notwithstanding what France has said. England will make war, if necessary, to protect the sources of her wealth, and to crush a commercial rival; France may do the same to add to her colonies or increase her territory, that her commerce and manufactures may grow, and she may use the idea of restoring the prestige of the Latin race as best suited to her purpose; but she will prepare no armies or navies merely to propagate or defend a principle.

In order to understand the commercial necessities of the Great Powers of Modern Europe, it is necessary to trace from afar the movements of the commerce of the world.

From the earliest ages, to which history reaches even with an uncertain light, it is found that wealth, civilization, and power are connected with the commerce of eastern Asia, India, China, and the East Indian Archipelago. Wherever a depot could be formed for the reception of the precious merchandise of the "far East," there was a magnificent center of dominion. From this source Egypt derived much, or most of her enormous wealth. Her upper and lower Capitals were each connected with the Red Sea and so with India, one by the celebrated ship canal, portions of whose bed still are visible, and the other by a graded road from Karnac to Kosseir, and their wonderful ruins sufficiently attest how Egypt fattened both upon the military and commercial spoils of India and the eastern Islands. Solomon with his Indian seaport at Ezion Geber on the Elanitic. Gulf, directed a portion of that commerce by sea toward Jerusalem, while Palmyra, that beautiful miracle of the desert, was created by the trade of the caravans, and the enriching effects upon Judea are graphically described in the Scriptures, where it is said, that iron became as stones, and silver as iron, and gold as silver in the streets of Jerusalem. Again, when this trade was centered upon the eastern

shore of the Mediterranean, it produced Tyre, that ocean queen, and Sidon, scarcely inferior. It was a vast commercial idea, and not simply a mad thirst for useless conquest that originated the eastern expedition of Alexander. It was one of the most remarkable conceptions of any man in any age, considering the birth, education and position of the young Macedonian, dying as he did almost in youth, in his thirty-third year. It was the establishment of a mighty empire, with an Eastern capital as its center, to be enriched by the control of the commerce of India. For this purpose he founded Alexandria, and attempted to control all the East.

A French writer bears the following testimony to the sagacity of Alexander: "Alexander opened to Europe the commerce of the Indian seas, and of Eastern Africa, by a road, which if it was at the present day free and perfected as it ought to be, would cause the way by the Cape of Good Hope to be entirely abandoned." At the same time, Alexander and his successors did not overlook that more northern route upon which Russia has her eye now fixed, by the Caspian and Black Seas, and whose advantages were so long enjoyed.

Alexander built cities on the south and east of the Caspian, while one of his immediate successors attempted to unite the Black Sea and the Caspian by means of a canal connecting the River Kouban, which empties into the Euxine, with the Kouma which flows into the Caspian, thus stretching a line of navigation eastward toward India,

The idea of Alexander was long and fondly dwelt upon by Napoleon, and gave rise to his expedition into Egypt. He saw that if the East Indian commerce could be diverted from its route by the "stormy Cape," and brought once more along its ancient channels, through the Red Sea to Egypt, that it would change the seat of the world's wealth and dominion, and restore to their former importance the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. England has undertaken to monopolize this trade, by conquering and holding the very countries where it originates, and while she makes

Europe echo with her bitter condemnation of the aggressions of Russia, she seems to forget that the annals of earth do not present a record of a more grasping, selfish, and cruel policy than that which has marked her course in India. There is no act of ambition or fraud, selfishness or oppression, which Great Britain has ever charged upon Russia in her acquisitions in Europe and Asia, for the purpose of opening a highway to China and northern India, for which impartial history will not find at least a parallel in the manner in which England has sought occasions of quarrel and interference in India, and trampled down the weak and wrested their possessions away, for the purpose of controlling this very commerce of which Russia once enjoyed a part, and which she is now seeking to share with the rest of Europe.

The importance of that portion of this trade which once poured into Europe by the Black Sea, must not be forgotten in an estimate of the present course and aims of Russia. An active commerce between India and the West was carried on along this route, in the remotest antiquity to which the light of history has reached. The Phoenicians who are said to have possessed a powerful navy two thousand years before the Christian era, established colonies and built cities both on the Dardanelles and the shores of the Black Sea, which flourished upon the trade of the remote East. The description of the traffic of Tyre, in the twenty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, shows that horses, mules, slaves, and other articles were brought from the Black Sea and the Caspian, while from thence also, she hired the soldiers by which her walls were defended. The route traversed by those merchants who brought her the silks and spices of China and India is not mentioned, but we should infer from other facts, that the course of a part of this trade was by the Sea of Aral, the Caspian and the Euxine.

Troy, at or near the entrance of the Dardanelles, was also an opulent emporium of eastern commerce, whose power is attested by the ten years siege. This city seems to have been attacked because, as Constantinople now does, it com