The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-06-28

control of the Baltic. IL remains. therefore,
to be seen only whether Earl Granville and
the Government of which he is q member
are sufficiently impressed by the peril of their
own position of great foreign war to seek
an escape from that peril through still
more perilous abdication of Englands posi-
tion as great power.
In this connection il is worth noting that
Bldckaoo0dS clever parable of the "Battle of
Dorking" has just been reinforced by the
English Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr..
Robert Lowe, in a striking speech on the
apparent safety and the possible peril of
England. II it is in some respects foible
of MIR. Lowe that he is the most un-English
of English statesmen, it is also in some re-
spects his forte. If he worries his party and
helps its enemies by disposition to treat the
solemn traditions of English culture and
English society as disrespectfully as Sir
David Brewster treated the North Pole, his
Australian experience and his cosmopoite
temper enable him to see England somewhat
as men outside of England see her. In the
speech to which we allude Mr.. Lowe
urged upon the House of Commons
continuance in a steady reduction of the ma
tional debt as duty which the passing Eng
lishmen of to-day imperatively owe to the
enduring England of which they are citizens,
in view of the gathering clouds along the Eu-
ropean horizon. He made a very felicitous
comparison between the condition of England
and of Europe at the close of the war of the
American Revolution and at the close of the
Franco-Prussian war. 'Upon the conclusion
of Mr.. Pitts commercial treaty of 1885 with
the France of Louis XVI" said Mr. Love-
everything seemed as if England was enter
ing on an era of prosperity" But what Eng
land really was entering on at that time were
the long and terrible wars with the French
republic and the French empire-neither of
them then SO much as dreamed of by the
wisest statesmen Of the world
MIR. Lowe might have pushed his CON-
parison even further than he did. At the
close of the Crimean war, in 1885, England
seemed to have strengthened herself against
any probability of danger from abroad quite
as solidly as she seemed to have strengthened
herself against such dangers by the magnif-
cent triumphs of the elder Pitt, confirmed
to her in 1852 by the peace of Fontainebleau.
The prostration of Russia in 1856 seemed
to deliver her from all risk of her position in
Asia, as the surrender of Canada by France in
1862 seemed to deliver her from all risk of
her position in America. Yet thirteen years
after the signing of the treaty of Fontaine-
bleau that great war in the West began which
ended only with the downfall of the British
American empire. And fourteen years after
the signing of the treaty of Paris Russia has
recovered by a single bold diplomatic move
all the ground she had lost in the disastrous
war of the Crimea. Nay, only seven years
after the imaginary pacifcation of Europe by
the treaty of 1856 we find the great English
Minister openly saying in the House of Com
mons that he thought England might safely
reckon on ten years of unbroken peace;" and
two years before this, in 100, Edmund Burke
himself had pronounced France to be ''self-
extinguished in Europe" and upon the
strength of this verdict had recommended
''the speedy reduction of the English war
establishment"
Mr.. Lowe, however, has reasons to offer
for his warming fresher and more striking
even than any reference to the shortsighted-
ness of wise men as proved by the past. He
bids England take heed to herself for the
single and sufficient motive that she has
ceased to be confronted by a congeries of
powers, none of them exactly strong enough
to assail her if unsupported; and that she
finds herself to-day face to face with three or
four colossal States, any one of them abun-
dainty able to grapple with her single-handed
The old maxim of ''Divide and conquer" has
ceased to be applicable with the absorption of
the smaller States of Europe. What England
has now to provide for is the contingency of
conflict with such power as Russia, or the
new German empire, or the United States
In the wars of the last century and in the
Napoleonic wars the principle of coalition
played great part, and diplomacy had ample
scope and verge enough in the making and
the breaking up of combinations of States.
The Crimean war proved, by the attitude of
Austria, how much more difficult it is to
effect q coalition between two or three great
powers than between one great power and
several smaller States. The Franco-German
war inaugurates new era of colossal duels,
and the power which is unprepared to sustain
such a duel single-handed is in very serious
peril of its position as a great power if not
of its existence as a nation. Hence the
timorous attitude of Austria at this
moment and hence, as Mr.. Lowe
conceives, the urgent necessity for England
of reorganization of her financial and her
fighting force. Another motive for anxiety
on the part of England Mr.. Lowe touched
upon more lightly. 1t is the decay, made
manifest by the internal condition of
France during the late war, of what used
to be the spirit of patriotism in Europe and
the tendency of classes to array themselves
on the lines of class sympathy in obedience
to class interests. 1t was believed by all the
world down to the outbreak of the recent
Partisan civil war that the ''Freneh feeling
of Frenchmen was stronger than the cores
pondent national feeling of any nation in
Europe.
Events have dissipated that belief. Bat is
there any good ground for believing that the
divorce of class from class has made less pro-
gress in England than on the Continent? Is
there not reason even to believe that it has
made more progress in England than on the
Continent +?
REVIVAL OF THE SLAVE TRADE.