Mr. Carnegie endorses Mr. Goldwin Smith's opinion that Britain's 'position upon the American continent is the barrier to sympathetic union with her great {265} child, the Republic.' As an American he should be ashamed to admit the accuracy of such an opinion. Britain's right to her place on the American continent is as much above question as is that of the United States. The man or people to whom a neighbour's enjoyment of an admitted right causes irritation, has lost the finer sense of morality. The nation which yielded an undoubted right under the pressure of such a base irritation would do a harm to international morals. British Federationists have more faith in the nobler qualities of the American people than has Mr. Carnegie. They earnestly hope for a union of effort in behalf of the higher interests of humanity between the great Republic and the Empire from which she sprang, but they know that that union can only come from mutual respect for each other's rights, and can never be brought about if the aggrandisement of the one must be purchased by the disintegration of the other. One more passage must be quoted to illustrate the range of Mr. Carnegie's vision when he leaves the domain of American politics to discuss the affairs of Great Britain. He says: 'Her (Britain's) colonies weaken her powers in war and confer no advantage upon her in peace.' I must let another American, whose mind has not been too much influenced by devotion to trade on a highly protected continent, a man who has had occasion to study seriously the larger problems of national life, make answer. {266} 'England,' says Lieutenant Mahan[3], 'by her immense colonial Empire has sacrificed much of this advantage of concentration of force around her own shores; but the sacrifice was wisely made, for the gain was greater than the loss, as the event proved. With the growth of her colonial system her war fleets also grew, but her merchant shipping and wealth grew yet faster.' And again;--