HENRY C. TAYLOR. 183 
commerce of all these countries and obtain over them 
an immense proponderance ; for in politics as in strat- 
egy, a central position always commands the circumfer- 
ence. This is what the proud city of Constantine could 
be, and this is what she is not, because as Montesquieu 
says, ‘God permitted that Turks should exist on earth, 
a people most fit to possess uselessly a great empire.’ 
There exists in the New World a state as admirably sit- 
uated as Constantinople, and we must say up to this 
time as uselessly occupied. We allude to the state of 
Nicaragua. As Constantinople is the centre of the an- 
cient world, sois the town of Leon the centre of the 
new, and if the tongue of land which separates its two 
lakes from the Pacific ocean were cut through, she 
would command by virtue of her central position the 
entire coast of North and South America. 
‘‘The state of Nicaragua can become, better than 
Constantinople, the necessary route of the great com- 
merce of the world, and is destined to attain an extra- 
ordinary degree of prosperity and grandeur. 
‘‘Hrance, England, and Holland have a great commer- 
cial interest in the establishment of a communication 
between the two oceans, but England has more than the 
other powers a political interest in the execution of this 
project. England will see with pleasure Central Ameri- 
ca becoming a powerful and flourishing state, which 
will establish a balance of power by creating in Span- 
ish America a new centre of active enterprise, powerful 
enough to give rise to a great feeling of nationality, 
and to prevent, by backing Mexico, any further en- 
croachments from the north.”’ 
These utterances of a man of thought, this evident 
fear of the eagle in the north, are significant. To this 
student of large enterprises, the pre-eminence of lake 
_ Nicaragua, politically and commercially was quite plain, 
orty years ago. He could not think that the eyes of 
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