“India is not the only British possession to which the route will be abridged by the passage _viâ_ Suez. Australia will profit no less by the change; and it will be all the more necessary to facilitate the defence of that country, as it will become, if the cutting through of the Isthmus of Panama be effected, more accessible to the ships of war of the United States. “We may conclude from these observations, that there would be small risk of the opening of the Isthmus of Suez weakening the military power of Great Britain. Her commercial power could only be compromised by it, if it were possible for the multiplicity of her transactions with the East Indies to be decreased by shortening the intervening distance by 3000 leagues, or if it were possible for the producers and sellers of the commodities of the extreme East to lose by the consumption of them in Europe being doubled. “If England must gain by the opening of the Isthmus an increase of military and commercial power, the genius of calculation within her will soon triumph over an ill-considered opposition. She will not sacrifice the positive elevation, the basis of which is enlarged by the developement of what surrounds it, to that relative elevation which is satisfied with the degradation of others, and she will not give any one the right to attribute to her, with regard to all the nations bordering on the Mediterranean, the language lately addressed by the Emperor Nicholas to the English Minister on the subject of Greece, and of the East. Such a policy she leaves to its fitting home. She does more, she opposes it by force of arms. Convinced that her strength lies in her power of expansion, and in her commercial capabilities, she endeavours by the prosperity of her neighbours to enlarge the basis of her own, and for this reason it is that she animates with her co-operation so many enterprises which enrich the Continent; no undertaking that she has ever assisted will prove more productive of beneficial results to herself than the operations at the Isthmus of Suez.” To the preceding quotation, which is conclusive, I add some figures which also have their value. The Mediterranean ports will profit, it is true, by the opening of the Isthmus of Suez, but England with the 5,000,000 tons employed in her commerce—a tonnage greater than that of all the navies of Europe, including France, united—cannot fail to profit in a much greater degree by the increase of relations which must necessarily result from the shortening of the distance between the points of traffic; to this opening moreover she will be indebted for the inestimable advantage of finding herself in closer connection with her colonies, than another nation whose competition might otherwise be really formidable in the eyes of the upholders of an exclusive system.