The Portland daily press., 1880-09-21
Accidents of History.
Great Events that Have Sprung up from
Little Causes.

1t was one of the maxims of Catherine de
Medici that "a false report, if believed for
three days, may be of great service to the Gov
ernment." A printers boy with bad memo
ry was few days since on the point of doing
the ministry service by forgetting to deliver
Lord Beaconsfeld's amendment 10 the liabili-
ty bill. Lord Redesdale gave it to his secre-
tary; the secretary gave it to the boy, who
put it in his pocket and forget all about it, and
thus Lord Beaconsfeld's views failed to reach
the members of the House of Peers in due
time. The incident in itself was trihing, but
it does not stand alone in history M. Four
nier wrote book on events which never took
place, and Lord Beaconsfeld's father was the
author of learned essay on history which
might have been enacted. An equally curious
volume might be penned on the trifes which
have determined great events Indeed though
momentous historical incidents have been due
to long concourse of circumstances, all work.
ing toward a common end, the final catastro-
phe has often been precipitated by the merest
trifie. 1t was but trifle that gave Spain for
SO many generations the lordship of the New
World and enabled her by the wealth which
she derived from that source to become the
most powerful nation in Europe. 1t is we'll
known that Columbus dispirited with the
refusals which he met with at so many courts,
despatched his brother Bartolomeo to ask aid
from Henry VII. of England But on the
way the messenger fell into the hands of pi-
rates, and by the time he reached London
was so destitute that he had to try and earn
the money to clothe himself in proper style be-
fore he could be presented at court. But by
that time it was too late. Even the fact that
Ferdinand and Isabella supplied the funds to
equip the expedition was mainly due to the
accident that Juan Perez de Marchena, the
queens confessor, happened to be passing at
the moment when the weary mariner was
knocking at the door of La Rabida Monastery
to beg little bread and water for his boy Die
go, and was struck with the noble face of the
dusty pedestrian Had Bartolomeo Colon
reached London in time, had Christoval been
by any chance little earlier or little later at
the monastery door, the fate of Europe might
have been changed, and the destiny of the An
glo-Saxon race altered. Three centuries later
it was again nearly revolutionized, for in 1906
the English held Buenos Ayres, and it is no
secret that Napoleon was almost persuaded to
abandon Europe as a field for his ambition
and try what he could accomplish in the way
OF carving out an empire among the dissatis-
fed provinces of South America. When citi-
zen Bonaparte seemed little likely to sit on
the throne of Louis Capet. he was on the point
of Offering his sword to the sultan, as, at lat
er PERIOD Won Moltke actually did.
1t is curious now to speculate what would
have been the present state of the Eastern
question had Napoleon carried his intentions
into effect, or supposing that Moltke had re-
manned in the Turkish service, whether the
Danish war would have been fought or Prus-
sia's supremacy been established at Sadowa or
Sedan. Had Bonaparte not had friend in
the Directory, would he ever had the good for
tune to keep his head ON his shoulders; or had
not General Grant accidentally been on good
terms with the Governor of Illinois, would he
have been lucky enough to have obtained that
volunteer coloncy which transferred him from
the saddler's shop in Galen to the White