sot uEroRT— 1900. 



have not complete military as well as political control. Persian, Arabian, North 

 African railway projects are happily rarely heard of now. As national enter- 

 prises they never were and never could be practicable, or otherwise than dangerous 

 mistakes. We are a world-power solely because of our worship and because of 

 our command of the sea. In the future also we shall remain a world-power only 

 so long as we hold command of the sea in the fullest sense of the term, not merely 

 by the force and efficiency of the fighting navy, but by the excellence and the 

 perfecting of our mercantile marine, by increasing its magnitude, carrying power, 

 and speed, and by anxiously attending to its recruitment by British sailors. We 

 must not attempt to overtax our resources to guard railway "lines through foreign 

 semi-ciyilised or savage countries by exported or local armies. A heavy land 

 responsibility lies upon us already. Under a little more we might be easily over- 

 weighted and crushed down. We must concentrate all our surplus energies upon 

 our sea communications. Therefore the railway lines which I spoke of as helping 

 to consolidate the Empire in the near future are those only which are projected or 

 are being built in the various colonies and dependencies, lines to distribute and 

 collect, to connect provinces, and feed harbours. The mighty Canadian Pacific 

 Railway is unique in the Empire. It not only complies with all these require- 

 ments, but in addition it provides to Australia and the Eastern dependencies an 

 alternative road, convenient and safe. As I said before, all railways, wherever 

 built, will probably help us directly or indirectly in the long run, provided we 

 are never committed to the protection of any one of them outside of our own 

 boundaries. 



And what has been said about railways applies, with obvious modifications, to 

 telegraph lines and to maritime cables. "The more general the extension of these, 

 and the more numerous they become, the greater benefit will there be to this 

 country iii its double capacity as the greatest trader and the greatest carrier of 

 merchandise in the world ; while the actual equivalent to a diminution of time- 

 distance in travelling is to be found in the instantaneous verbal message which can 

 be despatched to the most distant point of the Empire. But we ought certainly to 

 join all the shores of the Queen's dominions by sea-cables completely controlled by 

 British authority. To rely upon connection between our own cables through 

 telegraph systems stretching across foeign countries, however friendly, or to 

 permit the ends of these sentient nerves of the Empire to emerge upon shores 

 which might possibly become an enemy's country, is dangerous to the point of 

 recklessness, that parent of disaster. As a melancholy instance of my meaning 

 it is only necessary for us to remember the Pekiu catastrophe— how we sufiered 

 from tliose dreadful intervals of dead silence, when we could not even communi- 

 cate directly with our own naval officers at Taku, or with any one beyond Shanghai, 

 although we have in our possession a place of arms at Wei-hai-Wei upon the Gulf 

 of Pechili. It is obvious that we ought to have an all-British cable for pure 

 strategic reasons as far as Wei-hai-Wei, our permanent military outpost on the 

 mainland. 



Now to give some suggestion of the increased facilities for carrying mer- 

 chandise, for conveying passengers quickly about the world, and for the sending 

 of messages to all parts of the earth, a few, a very few, salient facts may be 

 quoted about ships — sailing ships and steam vessels— and about telegraphs and 

 cables. 



In 1870 there were no more than ten British sailing ships which exceeded or 

 reached two thousand tons burden. In 1892 the yards on the Clyde alone launched 

 lorty-six steel sailing ships which averaged two thousand tons each. In 1895 the 

 number of large steel sailing ships being built in the United Kingdom was down 

 to twenty-three, and, speaking generally, it is inevitable that sailing vessels must 

 give way to ocean steamships for most "kinds of cargo— cattle, coals, wool, grain, 

 oil, and everything else. ... 



Now let us turn to the results in shortening journeys accomplished by the 

 progress made in the construction and in the driving machinery of steamships 

 withm the last forty years, which has especially been fruitful in such improve- 



