A74 The Fall of the Confederacy. 
it surely would not have arisen. It is then to the discovery 
of the New World that we are indebted for modern com- 
merce, and the countless and priceless benefits that proceed 
from it. But the age that believed the fairy-like tales of 
the adventurers would not have believed a prophetic reve- 
lation of the story of modern commerce. Would the incre- © 
dulity have been unreasonable? Shall we then sneer at 
the credulity which believed in stories that were false, but _ 
which were not so marvellous as the truth ? 
But not less certain or less reasonable would have been 
the incredulity if a prophet had foretold the political and 
social career of the vast republic which dominates in the 
New World. A few old men are yet in the flesh who were 
in the cradle when the United States, ceasing to be colonies, 
had just been born into the family of nations. Suppose at 
the outset of the war of independence some one had told 
the King of England that in less than threescore years and 
ten, the allotted span of human life, but a day in the life of 
a nation, the handful of colonists would have become one of 
the Great Powers and predominant in the New World. Not 
only the Third George, but also the most sagacious of his 
subjects would have treated the prediction with contempt. 
The King wept, as well he might, to lose thirteen colonies. 
How would his grief have been intensified if he could have 
had a vision of the future of those colonies! There would 
have been no consolation forhim. If someone could have 
told him that his granddaughter would wield a far mightier . 
sceptre, would be Queen of the Canadas, Queen of the 
newest world that is washed by the Pacific, Empress of 
India, and the mistress of two hundred millions of people, 
the prediction would have been regarded as a cruel and 
bitter mockery. 
But we need not Pesuceiace events that are even one 
generation old to prove that the history of America has 
been so strange as to refute predictions founded on expe- 
rience, and that the apparently probable has not come to 
pass, and the apparently impossible has been realised. 
Imagine some writer of eminence stating in January, 1860, 
that he believed that the impending party conflict would 
be followed by a disruption of the Union, by a four years’ 
civil war, a war that would cost more treasure than the 
Continental war cost England, and which would involve an 
unsurpassed sacrifice of human life. Why, the writer, de- 
spite his eminence, would have been laughed at, and no 
one would have deemed it worth while to reply to his spe- 
