xii THE TRANSLA TOR 'S PREFA CE. 



with which M. de Lesseps was met thirty years ago 

 when about to commence the Suez Canal. "We are told 

 now that the Panama Canal in which, as my readers 

 will all be aware, he is the guiding and controlling 

 spirit can never be completed, not at least for a sum 

 which is, practically speaking, obtainable ; and that the 

 Channel Tunnel between France and England, if not 

 as impracticable from an engineering and financial 

 point of view, would be as detrimental to the interests 

 of England as Lord Palmerston declared the Suez 

 Canal to be. I do not profess of myself to have suffi- 

 cient knowledge to speak with authority upon either 

 of these subjects, though, of course, it can only be in 

 joke that people talk about the military risk which the 

 making of a submarine tunnel would involve. But 

 when one finds how the self- same arguments which 

 retarded, but did not prevent, the cutting of the Suez 

 Canal all of them falsified in the event are being 

 served up again by the adversaries of these two pro- 

 jects it is impossible to avoid feeling that a little more 

 prudence, a little more self-restraint, a little less self- 

 confidence would not be out of place. Those who de- 

 clare that the Panama Canal never can be made, and 

 that the Channel Tunnel never ought to be made, may 

 be justified by the result, and the arguments which in 

 the case of the Suez Canal were so utterly falsified 

 may in these instances prove sound. But, to borrow 

 a famous phrase, one would be sorry to be " as cock- 

 sure of anything as they are of everything," and M. 



