second to no conception of modern times, and it ill becomes other nations to accuse her of ignorance and barbarism, when she is working out before the world so vast a problem as the restoration of the commerce of the East, in part at least, to its old highways, that commerce which filled once. all the space between the Mediterranean and the Indies with populous cities, and whose ebbing tide left these seats of old dominion to waste and desolation.

There is one feature of the operations of Russia which seems to indicate a design to render her commercial scheme independent of the possession of Constantinople. While the Allies were arrested at Sebastopol, she was exceedingly active in Asia, in the neighborhood of Trebizond and the south-eastern extremity of the Black Sea. She evidently intends to possess herself of permanent stations there. With a seaport at that point, and communication with the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf, she would possess a commercial line to India and the East, which would be entirely independent of Constantinople and the Mediterranean.

These statements present a view of the policy and commercial views of Russia up to the time of the Crimean war. As will be more fully explained hereafter, she was endeavoring, in a perfectly legitimate manner, to develop her own great resources by cherishing her manufactures, and to secure for herself an independent channel for her trade with India. If now we turn to the policy and acts of France and England, we shall understand why Russia was attacked, and why America is menaced.

Russia was attacked because France and England feared her growing power, and for no other reason whatever. They feared that she would soon become a great commercial power by the overthrow of Turkey, and a manufacturing nation by the development of her immense resources, and therefore they wanted to cripple or destroy her—and the very same reasons have caused their hostility to us.

Let not Americans forget that these reasons remain in full force, whatever the present aspect of these powers may be.

CHAPTER V.

ENGLAND'S DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN POLICY.

"I would not suffer even a nail for a horse-shoe to be manufactured in America."-(Declaration of the elder Pitt). "Nicholson, the royal governor of Virginia, calmly advised that parliament should forbid the Virginians to make their own clothing." Spotswood repeats the complaint: "The people, more of necessity than inclination, attempt to clothe themselves with their own manufactures; adding, it is certainly necessary to divert their application to some commodity less prejudical to the trade of Great Britain.(Bancroft, vol. iii., 107).

In the same connection, Bancroft also cites the following act of Parliament: "After the first day of December, 1699, "no wool or manufacture made, or mixed with wool, being "the produce or manufacture of any of the English planta"tions in America, shall be loaden in any ship or vessel, "upon any pretense whatsoever-nor loaden upon any "horse, cart, or other carriage, to be carried out of the English plantations to any other of the said plantations, "or to any other place whatsoever." Thus, says Bancroft, the fabrics of Connecticut might not seek a market in Massachusetts, or be carried to Albany to traffic with the Indians. An English mariner might not purchase in Boston woolens of a greater value than fifty shillings, lest a larger amount should injure the manufactures of England at home.

Another Colonial measure is thus stated by Bancroft, vol. iii., 103-4: "To make most of the money centre of England,

"the Lords of trade proposed a regulation of the colonial "currency, by reducing all the coin of America to one "standard. The Proclamation of Queen Anne was not "designed to preserve among the colonies the English basis; on the contrary, it confirmed to all the colonies a depre"ciated currency, but to make the depreciation uniform and "safe against change; and England therefore," he says, "monopolized all the gold and silver."

To these statements may be added what the English historian Russel (vol. ii., 181,) says in regard to the character and design of the "famous navigation act, which prohibited "foreign ships, unless under some particular exceptions, "from entering the harbors of the English (American) colo"nies, and obliged their principal produce to be exported "directly to countries under the dominion of England.

"Before this regulation, which was with difficulty sub"mitted to by some of the colonies, and always evaded by "the fanatical and factious inhabitants of New England, the "colonists used to send their produce whithersoever they thought it would be disposed of to most advantage, and "indiscriminately admitted into their harbors ships of all "nations. *** The navigation act remedied this evil; "and the English parliament, though aware of the incon“venience of such a regulation to the colonies, were not "alarmed at the probable results."

To all these settlements, England thenceforth exported without a rival her various manufactures.

These quotations set forth with perfect accuracy the spirit and policy which have governed England for more than two hundred years. Her scheme is very simple in its elements, and its main points are perfectly obvious. They are first to manufacture, as far as possible, for the rest of the world; second, to confine the commerce of the world, as much as in her lies, to her own ships; and third, as the consequence of these, to draw to herself the gold and silver of the nations, and make herself the Banker and Capitalist for all nations.

To accomplish these ends, Great Britain has steadily

employed all her sagacity and all her power, and in the pursuit of her purpose, she has been just as selfish and unscrupulous in all her course as she was in her treatment of her American colonies.

Were she able to prevent it, she, in the spirit of Pitt, would not permit any nation of earth to manufacture a horse-shoe nail for themselves, or own a single ship.

She has hesitated at nothing that promised her success. If, in order to increase her manufactures, her commerce, and her wealth, it was necessary to oppress her colonies, and cripple their industry, it was done. If she needed a country like India, she seized it, annihilated its domestic manufactures, and reduced its millions to mere serfs, laboring for her mills, and to employ her ships. If China would not buy her opium, she battered down her towns, and slaughtered her inhabitants, and then forced China to pay the expenses of the robbery.

When Russia is making such rapid advances in manufactures and commerce, as to threaten her with rivalry, she smothers the enmity of centuries, and unites with France to attack and cripple her, and then on the first opportunity, joins with France and the Rebels in an attempt to destroy this manufacturing and commercial Republic, and she has done this in the same spirit and with the same end in view, as when she crushed, so far as she could, the manufactures and the commerce of the infant colonies. The spirit that protested against the Virginians manufacturing their own clothes, is the same which now cries out against a tariff which cherishes our home industry, and declares the Morrill tariff a proper cause of war, and the policy which forbade the colonists to ship on any but English bottoms, is the same that now furnishes privateers to the Rebels, which by rendering our commerce unsafe, transfers to British ships our own proper carrying trade.

England desires to see the nation divided, both in order that a rival may be crushed, and because she hopes that thus the South would be virtually an agricultural colony, to supply her looms with material, and furnish a market for

her fabrics, while France covets Mexico, Texas, and California, for similar reasons, but at the same time religious ambition is largely shaping her policy. We may judge whether they will be moved from these purposes by pleasant words.

Having thus given the key-note to the policy, both of England and France, it is necessary to look at their course somewhat in detail, in order to understand fully their present attitude and aims.