Other objections have been made, and as they have been seriously brought forward, I cannot allow them to pass without remark. Some very modest Englishmen have compared their country to Venice, and have contended, that if Venice lost her power by the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, England would see hers decline by a return to the shortest route. In the first place, the shortest route is a geographical fact which no one can get rid of, and, from the moment that it is ascertained that no material obstacle prevents the opening of this direct line, it will not be for any Government, much less for the one which has inaugurated the era of commercial freedom, to oppose the realization of a work which will satisfy the interests of all. Then, Great Britain in the nineteenth century cannot be compared to Venice in the fifteenth: the latter, in consequence of her defeats in 1291 and 1298, had been obliged to cede the supremacy to Genoa, and, after having still shone in the first rank when she put herself at the head of the league against Charles VIII. (1495), finally lost her preponderance when the Portuguese destroyed her fleets in the Red Sea, and the Emperor, the Pope and the kings of France and Aragon formed the league of Cambray against her (1508). It would be useless to prove by historical evidence that the decline of the Queen of the Adriatic was due to other causes than the discovery of the Cape (1497), by which she might have profited as well as the Portuguese, if she had had the same elements of strength and vitality. Trieste, which has succeeded to her commercial prosperity, and even surpassed it, has had no need of the re-establishment of the ancient route to India. If Trieste participates largely, as is to be hoped, in the advantages of the Isthmus Company, if her neighbour of the Adriatic finds therein a new life, Great Britain will lose nothing thereby. Has it ever been seen that a capital city, brought into communication with a great market by a railroad, has had to regret the shortening of the distance and the amelioration of its own relations, because some secondary towns on the line were nearer to the market and participated in the common benefit? Marseilles, Trieste, Greece, the ports of Italy, of Spain and of Turkey, are nearer to Egypt than London and Liverpool. Well; in the present state of the relations of Europe with Alexandria, England absorbs to herself alone _half the value_ of the commerce between all other countries and Egypt, and her tonnage comprises _two-thirds_ of the navigation to and fro under all flags. I wrote the following from Cairo, December 3rd, 1854, to a friend of mine, a member of the British Parliament.