harbours of his own coasts.

It is difficult for the Englishman to understand how near Great Britain
has always been to the citizen of the United States, for to the
Englishman himself the United States is a distant region, which he does
not visit unless of set purpose he makes up his mind to go there. He
must undertake a special journey, and a long one, lying apart from his
ordinary routes of travel. The American cannot, save with difficulty and
by circuitous routes, escape from striking British soil whenever he
leaves his home. It confronts him on all sides and bars his way to all
the world. Is it to be wondered at that he thinks of Englishmen
otherwise than as Englishmen think of him?

Yet this mere matter of geographical proximity is trivial compared to
the nearness of Great Britain in other ways.

Commercially--and it must be remembered how large a part matters of
commerce play in the life and thoughts of the people of the United
States--until recently America traded with the world almost entirely
through Great Britain. It is not the produce of the Western wheat-fields
only that is carried abroad in British bottoms, but the great bulk of
the commerce of the United States must even now find its way to the
outer world in ships which carry the Union Jack, and in doing so must
pay the toll of its freight charges to Great Britain. If a New York
manufacturer sells goods to South America itself, the chances are that
those goods will be shipped to Liverpool and reshipped to their
destination--each time in British vessels--and the payment therefor will
be made by exchange on London, whereby the British banker profits only
in less degree than the British ship-owner. In financial matters, New
York has had contact with the outer world practically only through
London. Until recently, no great corporate enterprise could be floated
in America without the assistance of English capital, so that for years
the "British Bondholder," who, by the interest which he drew (or often
did not draw) upon his bonds, was supposed to be sucking the life-blood
out of the American people, has been, until the trusts arose, the
favourite bogey with which the American demagogue has played upon the
feelings of his audiences. Now, happily, with more wealth at home,
animosity has been diverted to the native trusts.

It is true that of late years the United States has been striking out to
win a world-commerce of her own; that by way of the Pacific she