h his grasp on Mexico, unless compelled to
do so by force of arms. Should the rebellion succeed, as he professes to
believe it will, his instrument and accomplice, Maximilian, will be
discarded with as little ceremony as the first Napoleon discarded some
of the puppet kings whom he saw proper to crown and discrown according
to the exigency of his occasions.

The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) terminated one of the wars of
England with Louis XIV. The renunciation by France of the cause of the
Pretender was the most material advantage accruing to England from that
treaty. But the ink was hardly dry with which it was written, before
England took umbrage at France for efforts to rebuild her navy, which
had been seriously reduced and crippled by the events of the previous
war, and also for the encroachments of the French in Canada on the
English settlements. For these causes the Seven Years' War was
commenced, and, under the auspices of the first William Pitt,
successfully prosecuted, until France was completely humbled. Now,
however, Napoleon the Third constructs a navy more powerful than France
ever before possessed, and, instead of molesting some obscure English
settlement in the interior of America, appropriates to himself a great
country, fertile in resources, with mines of incalculable wealth, and in
close proximity to English colonies, cherished by the most vigilant
protection of England.

The value of Mexico is thus portrayed by the British historian Alison
(vol. iv., p. 423):

'Humboldt has told us that he was never wearied with astonishment
at the smallness of the portion of soil which, in Mexico and the
adjoining provinces, would yield sustenance to a family for a year:
and that the same extent of ground which in wheat would maintain
only two persons, would yield sustenance under the banana to fifty;
though in that favored region the return of wheat is never under
seventy, sometimes as much as a hundred fold. The return on an
average of Great Britain is not more than nine to one. If due
weight be given to these extraordinary facts, it will not appear
extravagant to assert that Mexico, with a territory embracing seven
times the whole area of France, may at some future and possibly not
remote period contain two hundred millions of inhabitants.'

This is the magnificent empire which France now seeks to conquer,
without a murmur of remonstrance from Gre