149 



fleets and dominion," and adds, "this is what the city of 

 Constantino might be, but is not, because, as Montes- 

 quieu says, God permitted the Turks to exist, possessing 

 uselessly a great empire." 



Napoleon III. then develops the correlative proposi- 

 tion , as follows : 



"A State exists in the new world as admirably situa- 

 ted as Constantinople, and as uselessly occupied Nicar- 

 agua. As Constantinople is the centre of the old world, 

 so is the town of Leon of the new ; and if the tongue of 

 land which separates the two lakes from the Pacific were 

 cut through, she would command, by her central position, 

 the entire coast of North and South America. 



" Here is the shortest route ' for the United States to 

 China and the East Indies, and for England and Europe 

 to New Holland and the South Pacific. ***** 

 England will see with pleasure Central America become 

 a flourishing and powerful State, which will establish a 

 balance of- power by creating in Spanish America enter- 

 prise powerful enough to prevent, by backing Mexico, 

 any further encroachment from the North." 



As late as 1858, and probably up to the time when the 

 French designs upon Mexico began to unfold themselves, 

 the Imperial mind still clung to the project of a Nicar- 

 agua Canal, to bear the name of Napoleon, and to be 

 commanded at its mouth by French ships of war. Polit- 

 ical as well as physical facts seem to have set their fiat 

 against the fruition of his dream, and the adventurer 

 turned his attention, after the failure of his Mexican and 

 Central American designs, to the completion of the Suez 

 Canal, by which he hoped to bring the largest Indiamen 

 into the Mediterranean through the Gulf of Aden and the 

 Ked Sea. Should this plan succeed, and it has, I believe, 

 the endorsement of the elder Stephenson and every pros- 



