sympathy of the American people, and Nicaragua is virtually under
American protection. The American eagle, from its seat in the North,
overshadows with guardian pinions the American continent.

* * *

In the case of Hawaii the American Republic seems likely to depart from
its traditional policy of acquiring no territory beyond American bounds.
The Hawaiian Islands were won from barbarism by the efforts and
sacrifices of American missionaries and their descendants. A republic has
been established there, and intelligent Hawaiians look hopefully forward
to a common future with the United States. There is hardly a doubt that
this hope will be fulfilled, and that the Eden of Southern seas will
become an outpost of American civilization. With the two great English
speaking nations of America and Australia confronting each other across
the Pacific, that ocean is certain to be in the twentieth century the
theatre of grand events, perhaps of future Actiums and Trafalgars. In
Hawaii we will have a Malta worthy of such a mighty arena, and the flames
of Kilauea will be a beacon fire of American liberty to the teeming
millions of Asia.

* * *

The Behring Sea negotiations have from the first been discreditable to
diplomacy at Washington. The attempt to prove that the fur-seals are
domestic animals, and the property of the United States when a hundred
miles out in the Pacific Ocean was a humiliating reflection on the
intelligence of both parties to the dispute, and showed abject and
degrading subserviency to the corporation controlling the seal monopoly.
Added to this was the disgrace of forgery, detected, unfortunately, not
at Washington, but in London, and indicating that, while Washington
officials were doubtless innocent of complicity in the crime, the forger
knew, or thought he knew, what was wanted. The end is that this country
has to pay about $400,000 to England, while the seals are abandoned to
destruction, which at least will have the happy effect of removing them
as a cause of international controversy.

* * *

The assassination of President Garfield, July 2, 1881, by a disappointed
seeker for office made that President the martyr of civil service reform,
and gave an irresistible impulse to the movement to alleviate the evils
of what is known as the "spoils system." Notwithstanding the opposit