One of the most important results of the Panama Canal, one which is likely to have the largest influence on future political history, seems scarcely to have been noticed by writers on this subject. I have shown how much nearer Australia and New Zealand are brought to New York than to Liverpool, owing to the isthmian passage. They are brought of course proportionately nearer to the eastern provinces, which are also the governmental headquarters of Canada. But the moving away, so to speak, of these great countries from England, and their closer approximation to the great and growing branches of the Anglo-Saxon stock in America, has the effect of locating the centre of gravity of the English-speaking races more firmly and permanently than ever in the New World. When Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have grown for another quarter of a century, and the United States have reaped for so long the advantage in wealth and power of the new waterway, the little islands of the United Kingdom may begin to appear as a detached and distant fragment, rather than as the "heart and hearth," of the British Empire and the English-speaking world. In the eighteenth century, when the English plantations in America began to develop their manufactures and had increased rapidly in population, the question was discussed in England how long she could continue to control an oversea empire, likely to be in time more populous and prosperous than the home-country itself, from these far-away islands of the Old World. It was actually suggested at that time that the King of England should carry his crown and throne where the most part of his subjects were congregated. That suggestion is not likely to be repeated. We have found a way of harmonizing local self-government with imperial unity. But the position of England in her empire is sure to be greatly modified as time goes on, and the Panama Canal, by bringing these vast and undeveloped continents and isles of the far south-west so much nearer to North America than to the imperial centre, cannot fail to have some influence in this direction. From a commercial point of view, its effect will be to increase the value and importance of those trade preferences which Australia gives the home country in her markets.