trangler is full grown, becomes
tightly clasped by a number of inflexible rings. These rings gradually
grow larger as the Murderer flourishes, rearing its crown of foliage
to the sky mingled with that of its neighbour, and in course of time
they kill it, by stopping the flow of its sap. The strange spectacle
now remains of the selfish parasite clasping in its arms the lifeless
and decaying body of its victim, which had been a help to its own
growth. Its ends have been served--it has flowered and fruited,
reproduced and disseminated its kind; and _now when the dead trunk
moulders away its own end approaches; its support is gone and itself
also falls_."

The analogy is almost the most perfect in literature, and if we would
not see it made perfect in history we must get rid of the parasite
grip before we are quite strangled. If we would not share the coming
darkness we must shake off the murderer's hold, before murderer and
victim fall together. That fall is close at hand. A brave hand may yet
cut the "Sipo Matador," and the slayer be slain before he has quite
stifled his victim.

If that hand be not a European one, then may it come, bronzed, keen,
and supple from the tropic calm! The birds of the forest are on the
wing.

Regions Caesar never knew, including Hibernia, have come under the
eagles, nay the vultures, of imperial Britain. But the lion's maw is
full.

At length the overgorged beast of prey, with all the diseases in his
veins that over-eating brings, finds that his claws are not so sharp
as they were, that his belly is much heavier when he tries to leap and
that it is now chiefly by his voice he still scares his enemies.

The Empire of England dates from Tudor times. Henry VIII was the first
John Bull. When the conquered Irish and the wealth derived from their
rich country England set out to lay low every free people that had
a country worth invading and who, by reasons of their non-imperial
instinct were not prepared to meet her on equal terms. India she
overran by the same methods as had given her Ireland.

Wholesale plunder, treachery and deceit met at her council board
under a succession of Governors and Viceroys, whose policy was that of
Captain Kidd, and whose ante-room of state led every native prince to
the slippery plank. The thing became the most colossal success upon
earth. No people were found able to withstand such a combination. How
could peoples still nursed in the belief of some diviner wi