done, it is worth trying to do it. For it is of the utmost consequence that we should all understand our real stake in the Suez Canal. This once clearly understood, we shall not be liable to panic; we shall not let ourselves be drawn into complications, wasteful of the blood of our citizens and the substance of our country; complications, moreover, which constantly expose us to the danger of becoming involved in a European war.
I do not for a moment wish to depreciate the enormous advantage which the Suez Canal has conferred upon producers and consumers both in Asia and in Europe, upon our fellow-subjects in India, and upon our own people at home. The Suez Canal is one of the noblest works of modern enterprise and modern science, and I regret that any English statesman should have opposed its construction. It has been of the utmost value to the general commerce of the world. Its maintenance is, in this sense, an interest common to all nations, and especially to all commercial nations. But when people attempt to make out that the formation of the Suez Canal has in any way promoted our commercial preponderance, or that our commercial preponderance could be destroyed by its destruction, or that we are any longer dependent on it for the rapid transfer of men and material of war from England to India, it can be shown from the actual results which have attended the opening of the Canal, from the history of commerce, and from the present power of our commercial marine, that they are mistaken. The Suez Canal has not improved the commercial position of England relatively to that of other powers; it has done just the contrary. Let us ask, What are already the established results of this great work?
Let us take a most important trade, the business of supplying East India cotton to the manufacturers of the Continent. I will give the history of East India cotton intended for the supply of a, say, Austrian manufacturer some forty years ago and at the present time. At that time cotton came down from the interior of India on bullock-carts, each cart carrying four bales. A native merchant, generally a Parsee, collected and assorted the cotton, and shipped it under advances from an English merchant in Bombay, who charged 2½ per cent, for so doing. It was carried by an English wooden sailing ship to England, consigned to an English merchant in Liverpool or London, who stored it in an English warehouse, insured it with an English assurance company, and sold it with a commission of 2½ per
