'If, as one result, our neighbours to the north of us should become an integral part of a real empire, such a natural and simple solution will find no congratulations {270} more prompt and cordial than those of the American people, even though they are not based on any of those selfish advantages which annexation professes to offer to the United States[4].' [1] _Nineteenth Century_, _Sept._ 1891. [2] This statement is a characteristic instance of Mr. Carnegie's inaccuracy. Let him subtract from the whole population of the United States the seven or eight millions of negroes in the Southern States, the six or seven millions of Italians, Spaniards, Poles, Hungarians, Austrians, Russians, Germans and Scandinavians, who entered the country between 1847 and the present time, the people who with their descendants threaten, according to American writers, to overwhelm the native element of the population; let him place beside these figures the further facts stated on American authority that the emigration from Great Britain to the United States has been in the same period only about 1,500,000, and from Ireland 2,500,000; and he may find reason to acknowledge that the mass of 'our race' is still in the British Islands and in the great colonies which yet retain their distinctive Anglo-Saxon character. Mr. Carnegie makes the triumphant calculation that the child is born who will see more than 400,000,000 people under the sway of the United States. He adds the odd comment: 'No possible increase of the race can be looked for in all the world comparable to this.' So far from such a growth indicating the increase of our race, it could only mean its practical obliteration in the great Republic. The increase of the native American population is notoriously very slow--only a largely increased influx of alien races could make Mr. Carnegie's calculations a reality. [3] _Influence of Sea Power_, p. 29. [4] _Century Magazine_, Jan. 1889. {271} CHAPTER XII. FINANCE. THE financial aspects of our question are striking and significant. Britain herself is the greatest money-lending nation of the world: her colonies and dependencies, with their vast undeveloped resources, are among the greatest borrowers. The public debts of the Australasian colonies amount to nearly £200,000,000, and private investments for the development of mines, for the wool producing and meat raising industries and so on, amount, I have been told by Australian business men, to even more. It is probably a moderate estimate to say that Australasia borrows £400,000,000, all of which is raised in London, to which the interest steadily flows back. In his 'Problems of Greater Britain' Sir Charles Dilke says: 'British capital to the extent of £350,000,000 sterling has been sunk in Indian enterprises, on official or quasi-official guarantee; and a further vast amount of British capital is employed by purely private British enterprise in industry.'