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civilization, a unique social condition and a population 

 so redundant as to make labor almost without value, and 

 life without a higher aspiration than to live. 



It has long been a favorite theory with political specu- 

 lators that the nation which, for the time being, controls 

 the trade of the East, practically controls the world. Sir 

 Walter Raleigh reduced this principle to a formula, thus : 

 "Whosoever commands the sea, commands the trade of 

 the world, — whosoever commands the trade of the world 

 conniiands the riches of the world, and consequently the 

 world itself." "He who possesses Constantinople gov- 

 erns the world," said Napoleon I. This theory that the 

 carrying trade of the East is the key of modern empire, 

 has had the countenance of Dr. Robertson and other Eng- 

 lish writers to some extent, and has guided many of the 

 conspicuous acts of the Bonaparte family in France. 

 This was the star that lured the first Napoleon into Egypt, 

 and it has so far influenced the career of Napoleon III., 

 that a moment will not be misspent in considering the 

 form assumed by the theory in the mind of that Emperor. 



It will be remembered that Charles Louis Napoleon 

 Bonaparte, before his election to the Revolutionary as- 

 sembly of 1848, and his later election as President of the 

 Republic, had made two several armed attempts upon the 

 throne of France, each one of them as ill-advised as John 

 Brown's raid into Virginia, though I never heard that the 

 wily Frenchman was esteemed a madman on account of 

 them. The first of. these took place at Strasbourg, Oct. 

 30, 18^5. And instead of dealing vigorously with it, 

 the kiiig, not feeling very firm upon his throne, and 

 anxious to conciliate the enthusiasm which the name of 

 the adventurer still roused throughout France, for he was 

 about to bring back from St. Helena, with pomp, to Paris, 

 the ashes of the mighty founder of that name, excused in 



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