Zealand to annex the rich and fertile South Island, anticipated by only a few hours a French ship dispatched for the same purpose. The rising of the French Canadians in 1838 has been described as “the last convulsion of despair of a sinking nationality.” The English, French, and now the Germans are still rivals in present and future colonizing grounds in Africa, China, and the South Seas. But no British colonist doubts that further pacific defeats (if only by being bought out of their possessions) await the French in different quarters of the globe, for it is the colonies that press forward. The North American colonies were at all times more aggressive than the mother state, as the Australasian are now. They are unconsciously on the way to become the suns of new systems. Conquests may be made on various pretexts. The Cape was twice seized by the English to prevent it from falling into the hands of the French, and a few years later the Dutch were constrained to cede the colony to its temporary possessors. Gambetta schemed to annex and colonize the whole North African coast from Egypt to Morocco, and thus to create a _France nouvelle_ along the northern shores of the Mediterranean in place of the New France lost in Canada more than a century before, or of that still older New France on the shores of the Bosporus. In pursuance of this policy, the powers at the Berlin Conference in 1878 permitted France to occupy (not to annex) Tunis, prohibiting her, however, from fortifying its chief port. But no one doubts that the ‘regency’ there, as in Madagascar, will speedily give way to undisputed sovereignty, and Bizerta is already fortified. Writers are said to be dreamers, and Locke’s constitution for Carolina, Rousseau’s for Corsica, Bentham’s for Russia, with many another quixotic proposal, furnish proof of their simplicity or their wrong-headedness. It is nevertheless a fact that most of the new ideas that are being carried into effect are the suggestions of publicists--journalists who stand midway between men of thought and men of action. Sometimes the former contribute immediately practicable proposals. Russia, Germany, France, and Great Britain--the four grasping powers--along with Italy and Belgium, are now, after a digestive interval of thirty years, carrying out a suggestion made by Renan in 1871. The Chinese, who threw off the yoke of the conquering Mongols, belong (it appears) by ordination of Nature to the subject races. The people that produced Confucius and Lao-tze consist of laboring men who need direction and organization. China, therefore, calls for conquest. The powers have obeyed the call, and that vast and peaceful land is now undergoing dismemberment, with a view to final wholesale partition. It is a parallel to the conquest of Peru by the Spaniards. In both countries a more perfect civilization of a lower type was or will be superseded by a less perfect civilization of a higher type. In this alone lies its assumed justification.