If we search carefully, we shall find every where underlying the great struggles recorded in past history, no less than those which have occurred, and are now occurring, in our own time, an antagonism of one kind or another between two systems, visions, or ideals, which in some particular were fundamentally opposed and could not be reconciled. State papers and the memoranda of diplomatists, when in due course they come to light, are not a little apt to confuse the real issues, by setting forth a diary of minor incidents and piquant details, not in their true proportions, but as they appeared at the moment of their occurrence to the eyes of harassed and suspicious officials. But even so, all the emptying of desks and pigeon-holes since the great American Civil War, has not been able to cover up the essential fact, that in this case a million lives were sacrificed by one of the most intelligent, humane, and practical nations upon earth, and for no other cause than that there was an irreconcilable difference amongst them, with regard to what St. Paul has called 'the substance of things hoped for.' On the one side there was an ideal of Union and a determination to make it prevail: on the other side there was an ideal of Independence and an equal determination to defend it whatsoever {11} might be the cost. If war on such grounds be possible within the confines of a single nation, nurtured in the same traditions, and born to a large extent of the same stock, how futile is the assurance that economic and material considerations will suffice to make war impossible between nations, who have not even the tie of a common mother-tongue! A collision may occur, as we know only too well, even although one of two vessels be at anchor, if it happens to lie athwart the course of the other. It was therefore no security against war that British policy did not aim at any aggrandisement or seek for any territorial expansion. The essential questions were--had we possessions which appeared to obstruct the national aspirations and ideals of others; and did these others believe that alone, or in alliance, they had the power to redress the balance?