328 TlMEHRl. 
goods duty free into Honolulu, — the first step towards 
annexation, if the present state of things is not more 
profitable. 
Mexico is a similar case. American enterprise is now 
building railroads over that country, whereby centres of 
population are reached, and under the fiscal preference 
given by a treaty of reciprocity, American goods can 
be introduced and monopolise the best part of the foreign 
trade. Mexican sugars find a lucrative sale in the 
United States, and a great stimulus will be imparted to 
open sugar plantations throughout the tierra caliente 
or coast lands of Mexico, where every condition is 
favourable, climate, soil, labour, transport and capital 
attracted by the sure returns of a treaty-guaranteed 
market. 
The United States has similar advantages to gain by 
entering into a treaty of reciprocity with Spain, and it 
may be that there lies in the background the old desire 
of acquiring Cuba, revived. A generation ago America 
offered Spain a hundred million dollars for the purchase 
of Cuba, in her eyes the very gem of the Antilles, and 
she has always hankered after a foothold in the West 
Indies. Much more recently the acquisition of St. 
Thomas and of Hayti has been recommended in high 
quarters at Washington. 
The Americans, collectively, as a nation, are as shrewd 
as they are individually, and why should they give to 
this colony or to the British West Indies a preference 
when they can do better elsewhere. Evidently Her 
Majesty's Government are not very sanguine on this 
point, lor when the West India Committee last February 
first urged the extension of the Most Favoured Nation 
