The Chinese Government gave its assent to the construction of a railway from Pekin to Kirin _viâ_ Moukden Jan., 1890. Footnote 11: There are now more than sixteen million miles of wire, and in 1887 the number of telegrams carried were about five millions (“The Statesman’s Year-book,” 1889). Footnote 12: The post office carried, in 1887, 54,313,385 letters, 55,332,873 post cards, 20,713,422 newspapers and books, 163,630 packets, 7,014,859 letters and newspapers free of postage (“The Statesman’s Year-book,” 1889). Footnote 13: “The English world-empire has two gigantic neighbours in the west and in the east. In the West she has the United States, and in the East Russia for a neighbour” (Prof. Seeley’s “Expansion of England,” p. 288). Footnote 14: Extracts from a pamphlet written in 1847 by His Imperial Majesty, Napoleon III.:— “There are certain countries which, from their geographical situation, are destined to a highly prosperous future. Wealth, power, every national advantage, flows into them, provided that where Nature has done her utmost, man does not neglect to avail himself of her beneficent assistance. “Those countries are in the most favourable conditions which are situated on the high road of commerce, and which offer to commerce the safest ports and harbours, as well as the most profitable interchange of commodities. Such countries, finding in the intercourse of foreign trade illimitable resources, are enabled to take advantage of the fertility of their soil; and in this way a home trade springs up commensurate with the increase of mercantile traffic. It is by such means that Tyre and Carthage, Constantinople, Venice, Genoa, Amsterdam, Liverpool, and London attained to such great prosperity, rising from the condition of poor hamlets to extensive and affluent commercial cities, and exhibiting to surrounding nations the astonishing spectacle of powerful states springing suddenly from unwholesome swamps and marshes. Venice in particular was indebted for her overwhelming grandeur to the geographical position which constituted her for centuries the _entrepôt_ between Europe and the East; and it was only when the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope opened a ship passage to the latter that her prosperity gradually declined. Notwithstanding, so great was her accumulation of wealth, and consequent commercial influence, that she withstood for three centuries the formidable competition thus created.