Page:Great Britain and the Suez Canal.djvu/16

 development of her carrying trade. She has lost the large profits derived from her former position as geographical centre of the trade between Asia and Europe, but she has found fresh trades and fresh industries. Instead of bringing to England cotton and silk from India and China to be distributed over Europe, she brings millions of quarters of grain grown by her subjects in India to feed her artisans at home. Up to the present time she has even held her own in the carrying trade between her Indian possessions and the ports of the Mediterranean. Her merchants have now lost many large profits once realised by them, but she now has far more manufacturers, merchants, and other traders who make moderate incomes. Her political freedom, her freedom of trade, her enormous capital, the energy, enterprise, and experience of her citizens, have averted the fate which in similar circumstances overtook the great marts of mediæval commerce. And those beneficent powers will continue to avert that fate so long as her manufacturers, merchants, and other tradesmen retain their enterprise and integrity, her mechanical engineers their inventive skill, her artisans their intelligence and industry. To these good qualities, and to these fortunate circumstances, but not to the making of the Suez Canal, she will owe her mercantile prosperity. Had the Canal never been made she would have maintained that prosperity as fully and with less effort. It is, therefore, as absurd for us to say, as it is undesirable for foreigners to believe, that by closing the Canal they can ruin the commerce of the United Kingdom.

Then as to the necessity to England of the Suez Canal for the swift transport of men and munitions of war to India, it would be most valuable, no doubt, in case of mutiny in India unaccompanied by a European war. But in case of any war in which a Mediterranean State was concerned, I do not for a moment believe that the Canal would be available. On this subject I would refer to Mr. Caine's letter in the Daily News, and to Mr. Norwood's full and carefully written letter to the Times of the 10th of July. In confirmation thereof I am advised that there would be no difficulty in building transports capable of performing the journey to Bombay by way of the Cape in about thirty-one days, only four days more than the time occupied by the steamers of the Peninsular and Oriental Company in reaching the same destination by way of the Canal. Our present troopships, I believe, perform the shorter voyage in about thirty-one days. The improved troopships would perform the voyage through the Canal in