Whether or no M. de Lesseps and his allies have conferred any substantial advantages on England by their completion of the Suez Canal, it is quite beyond controversy that the English people have not rendered much aid in the promotion of that great waterway. The part which England took when the preliminary arrangements were being made in 1856 is one of which many Englishmen are now a little ashamed. England was invited to co-operate in the project at an early stage. Not only did we refuse co-operation, but we refused it with that species of incivility of which we are occasionally guilty when we have our insular prejudices offended. The canal was first of all, opposed by the British Government, as such. Lord Palmerston was then Prime Minister. On the 8th of July, 1857, he declared the opposition to be—(1) that the construction of the canal would tend to the more easy separation of Egypt from Turkey, and would, therefore, be in direct violation of a policy “supported by war and the Treaty of Paris”; and (2) that there were “remote speculations with regard to easier access to our Indian possessions, only requiring to be indistinctly shadowed forth to be fully appreciated,” which rendered the canal undesirable. How much better it would have been for the memory of genial “old Pam,” if, in announcing his judgment, he had recollected the rule that “you should never give your reasons.” History is rapidly made in the nineteenth century. It is not in the least discreditable to Palmerston that he should have failed to realise how completely his anticipations would be falsified by events. No one at that time could have foreseen that, in less than thirty years from that date, the Suez Canal would not only have become an accomplished fact, but would have become perhaps the most successful industrial enterprise of modern times; that it would have revolutionised our shipping and transit trades; and that our Indian and Australian possessions would have participated in its advantages to an enormous degree. Prescience of this kind is given to few men. But while the lack of this ability to discern the “coming events” which “throw their shadows before” is not common, so neither is the example of the representative of a great nation describing as a “bubble,” and denouncing with all the eloquence and power at his command, an enterprise which has conferred upon his country, as the first maritime power in the world, advantages which generally transcend those that are enjoyed by any other country.