ressible expansion, we are come here into contact with the
progress of another great people, the law of whose being has impressed
upon it a principle of growth which has wrought mightily in the past,
and in the present is visible by recurring manifestations. Of this
working, Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Egypt, Aden, India, in geographical
succession though not in strict order of time, show a completed chain;
forged link by link, by open force or politic bargain, but always
resulting from the steady pressure of a national instinct, so powerful
and so accurate that statesmen of every school, willing or unwilling,
have found themselves carried along by a tendency which no
individuality can resist or greatly modify. Both unsubstantial rumor
and incautious personal utterance have suggested an impatient desire
in Mr. Gladstone to be rid of the occupation of Egypt; but scarcely
has his long exclusion from office ended when the irony of events
signalizes his return thereto by an increase in the force of
occupation. Further, it may be noted profitably of the chain just
cited, that the two extremities were first possessed--first India,
then Gibraltar, far later Malta, Aden, Cyprus, Egypt--and that, with
scarce an exception, each step has been taken despite the jealous
vexation of a rival. Spain has never ceased angrily to bewail
Gibraltar. "I had rather see the English on the heights of
Montmartre," said the first Napoleon, "than in Malta." The feelings of
France about Egypt are matter of common knowledge, not even
dissembled; and, for our warning be it added, her annoyance is
increased by the bitter sense of opportunity rejected.

It is needless here to do more than refer to that other chain of
maritime possessions--Halifax, Bermuda, Santa Lucia, Jamaica--which
strengthen the British hold upon the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the
Isthmus of Panama. In the Pacific the position is for them much less
satisfactory--nowhere, perhaps, is it less so, and from obvious natural
causes. The commercial development of the eastern Pacific has been far
later, and still is less complete, than that of its western shores. The
latter when first opened to European adventure were already the seat of
ancient economies in China and Japan, furnishing abundance of curious
and luxurious products to tempt the trader by good hopes of profit. The
western coast of America, for the most part peopled by savages, offered
little save the gold and silver of Mexico a