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 a dependency of Egypt. The justice and mercy, which these countries had not known since the fall of the Roman Empire, is now in full measure given to them by the British.

This great expansion of the British Empire during the last ninety-six years has not come about without a great deal of jealousy from the other European powers; and this jealousy was never more real or more dangerous than it is to-day. But the one European war which we have fought since 1815 had nothing to do with the expansion of our Empire.

The other nations have realized that this Empire was founded on trade, that it has to be maintained by a navy, and that it has resulted in good government of the races subject to us. So, though they have envied us and given us ugly names, they have, on the whole, paid us the compliment by trying to copy us, to build up their navies, to increase their manufactures, to plant colonies and to govern subject races well. Some people think that they have not succeeded in this last object so well as ourselves. But all European nations are now keenly interested in trade rivalry; whether this will end peaceably or not, remains still to be seen.

All civilized nations, except ourselves and the Americans, have also set themselves to arm and drill all their citizens, so as to fit themselves for war on a gigantic scale at any moment. If ever a great war breaks out in Europe, the nation that is most ready with its fleet and its army will win; in the greatest war of the nineteenth century (that of 1870 between France and Germany) it needed only a telegram of two words to put the German army in motion in a few hours. On the other hand all the great mechanical inventions