'Great Britain may need a coaling station on the Atlantic coast of North America, not for the purposes of blockade, which could no longer have place when all danger of war was at an end but for the general defence of her trade. Safe coaling stations and harbours of refuge, rather than territorial dependencies, are apparently what the great exporting country and the mistress of the carrying trade now wants. Newfoundland would be a safe and uninvidious possession, and it has coal, though bituminous and not yet worked. The Americans do not covet islands, {169} for the defence of which they would have to keep up a navy. The island itself would be the gainer: there would be some chance of the development of its resources; with nothing but the fishing the condition of its people seems to be poor. Let England then keep Newfoundland. Cape Breton is rather too close to the coast, otherwise it has coal in itself, and Louisbourg might be restored.' Clearly we have here an Englishman who has learned in his new home to talk a language unfamiliar for some centuries at least to the English ear, and one who fails to grasp the fundamental conditions of England's existence as a great nation. The greatest naval power in the world, bound to defend a world-wide commerce and above all to defend that main food route across the Atlantic which would almost certainly be the first point of attack in a Great European war, because it is the one point at which a well-nigh mortal blow could be delivered, is quietly asked to hand over to another nation her well-nigh impregnable naval station at Halifax, her command of a hundred minor ports, of the St. Lawrence, and of the splendid coal fields of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, and to relegate herself to the rock-bound, fog-encircled and sometimes ice-beset coasts of Newfoundland: to content herself with coal 'bituminous and not yet worked,' and all because the possession would be 'safe and uninvidious' and because 'the Americans do not covet islands.' In this casual redistribution of the bases of naval power it is {170} extremely characteristic and noteworthy that on the Pacific where the trade of a great ocean is to be protected, and where Russia has a great naval depot, not even an island is reserved for British people, probably because again Vancouver is 'rather too near to the coast,' to be outside the range of American covetousness, and its coal deposits too extensive for it to be considered 'uninvidious.' In reading the lines I have quoted from Mr. Smith expressing his conception of the relation of the United States to Great Britain, it is impossible not to recall the words which Shakspere puts into the mouth of Cassius;-- 'Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves.'