128 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Apbil 1, 1887. 



done has been harmful ; but the power and the right which 

 Americans possess to go their own way, and their manful 

 determination to hold that right, let Governments, their 

 own included, do wliat they will, have been all-in-all to the 

 great nation of our kinsmen across the Atlactic. Even the 

 possession of the suffrage by persons utteily unfit to vote 

 on any higher question than the paving of a back alley has 

 not been able to do one-thousandth part of the harm one 

 might have expected. 



The illustrative map, taken from an old edition of the 

 " Encyclopjedia Britannica," is as strongly suggestive of 



sider what it is now I The three millions of 1770 had 

 grown to thirteen millions in 1830, and now to nearly sixty 

 millions — '• more English-speaking people than exist in all 

 the world besides," more than the whole population of the 

 United Kingdom pbn twice the population of the British 

 colonies. In 18-50 the total wealth of the United States 

 was 1,686,000,000/., that of Great Britain being 

 4,500,000,000/. ; now the wealth of Great Britain is 

 abjut 9,000,000,000/., or almost exactly double what it 

 was in 1850; but the wealth of the United States had 

 risen in 1880 to 9,790,000,000/., and is now nearly 



t.EOaHATHT. 



i-iate OXXCTV. 



.^//i/r^^. r 



what America was when that majj was thought sufficient, as 

 is the letterpress of that work so for as it relates to the 

 United States. Not one page in all is devoted to the de- 

 scription of the infant nation which had just begun to run 

 alone. Except for a line or two about Virginia, one might 

 suppose the States were still British colonies, though the 

 edition bears date 1783. Not a single line implies that 

 there had been any contest worth mentioning on the other 

 side of the Atlantic. The map was manifestly drawn to 

 correspond with this feeling of contemptuous indifference 

 for the young nation. 



America was, indeed, but a small nation then, though it 

 deserved the respect and sympathy of Great Britain, since, 

 while as yet it was not America but a community of British 

 colonists, it had maintained its just claims to independence 

 against the full strength of the mother country. But con- 



1 1,000,000,000/. In 1850 it was hardly worth while to men- 

 tion America's manufactures in the same breath with those of 

 Gre.at Britain ; in 1880 Briti.sh manufactures amounted to 

 818,000,000/., those of the States to 1,112,000,000/., nearly 

 half as much as the manufacturing wealth of the whole of 

 Europe. As our author well puts it, though Great Britain 

 manufactures for the whole world, while America is gainirig 

 onl}' the conti'ol of her own markets, Biitish manufactures 

 in 1880 had not two-thirds the value of those of the 

 century-old republic. The annual savings of America are 

 210,000,000/., exceeding those of the United Kingdom by 

 50,000,000/. and those of France by 70,000,000/. In com- 

 paring the American carrying business with that of Great 

 Britain, we seem to find the younger country behind, since 

 the American shipping amounts to but nine millions of 

 tons, that of Great Britain to eighteen millions. But when 



