Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/18

2 Each of the vast sections of the Pan-Britannic Confederation (as it was barbarously called) enjoyed the most complete independence under its own President and Congress, but in the old country a respect for antiquity and history still supported the venerable monarchy, although the hereditary peerage was fast dying out, no new peers having been created for many years, and the heirs of the old families generally dropping their titles. Each year an assembly of the Presidents of the Confederate States, or their Representatives, was held in London, werewhere [sic] such matters were discussed as concerned the welfare of the Confederation at large, and question of Foreign Policy determined which virtually controlled the diplomacy of all the European Courts. It will be in the recollection of all that when in the year 1930 the late Czar had collected a vast army and fleet for the subjugation of the Chinese Empire, and war was on the point of being declared, the remonstrances of the Presidents of the Pan-Britannic Confederation in London assembled, who "could not view without regret and alarm the projected attack upon a peaceable power," caused the abandonment of that vast