654 THE EVOLUTION OF COMMERCE. 
In 1875, Lord Beaconsfield purchased for England a controlling 
interest in the Suez Canal, and England now rules both Egypt and the 
sanal. The vessels of all the maritime nations of the world are con- 
stantly passing through the canal, with the single exception of those 
of the United States. : 
Colonies.—The commerce of the great nations of the world has been 
principally with their colonies or dependencies, and from this com- 
merce they have derived their wealth. The mother country in return 
for its real or nominal protection, and for its own aggrandizement, has 
restricted the commerce of her colonies. 
The European nations adopted four classes of restrictions: 
(1) Restricting the exportation of goods from the colony except to 
the mother country. 
(2) Restricting the importation of goods from foreign countries into 
the colonies. 
(3) Restricting the exportation or importation of goods excepting 
in ships of the mother country. 
(4) Restricting the manufacture of their own raw products by the 
colonies. So strong was this feeling in England that even Lord 
Chatham declared in Parliament, ‘‘The British colonies of North 
America have no right to manufacture even a nail or a horseshoe.” 
Most of these restrictions have been removed, though the result still 
remains. 
The Phoenicians, Carthagenians, and Greeks had colonies on the 
Mediterranean, The Romans conquered and held as subjects nations 
and empires. Venice and Genoa had colonies on the Black and Medi- 
terranean seas. Spain and Portugal held as dependencies all Central 
America, South America, Africa, India, and the islands of the Pacific. 
The Dutch Republic and France planted colonies in India and America. 
England has colonies in every part of the world, and on her dominion 
the sun never sets. 
Germany, France, Portugal, and Russia, appreciating the necessity 
of colonies for the extension of their commerce and for opening new 
markets for their manufactures, are planting colonies—France in Cochin 
China, Germany on the eastern and western coasts of Africa and the 
islands of the Pacific. Portugal, aroused to a new life, is determined 
to hold her remaining possessions in Africa; Russia is steadily adding 
to her dominions in Asia, and her railway from the Caspian Sea to 
Samareand has opened in western and a part of central Asia a market 
for her manufactures and commerce hitherto supplied by Great Britain. 
United States.—The United States is the only nation that has become 
great without colonies and without foreign commerce and shipping. 
Its vast extent of territory, where the east and west, the north and 
south are separated more widely than the colonies of Tyre and Sidon 
or of Carthage and Rome from the mother countries; the great variety 
