194 ENGLISH INTERESTS IN CENTRAL AMERICA. Book I. 
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contributed systematically to the titter ruin of those help- 
less republics, had followed the opposite course lending 
assistance to their liberal party — a party which has always 
been in favour of foreign immigration, religious tolerance, 
and other means of improvement and progress — a con- 
federation of Central American States would now exist, 
strong enough by the influx of population, intellect and 
capital from abroad, to preclude any idea of an annexation 
to the United States, or of the re-introduction of slavery. 
All the civil wars down to the invasion of William Walker, 
would have been avoided, and prosperous communities 
would now be in a condition to buy ten times the amount 
of British goods which the bankrupt inhabitants of ruined 
cities and neglected plantations can ever afford to purchase. 
Mosquitia and Yucatan might have formed two acceding 
States of the confederation, and I cannot see why British 
Honduras should not have contributed to raise the number 
to eight. England would not have lost; she would have 
gained in every respect by such a development of Central 
American politics : a development which has been, and 
still is, in the hands of the British Government. By 
following such a course, England would have avoided 
many disagreeable transactions and useless difficulties with 
the United States, while the result would have heightened 
British influence in American affairs in a manner too noble 
and too legitimate not to be approved in the United 
States by all the adversaries of slavery, of filibusterism, of 
imprudent territorial extension, and of political iniquity. 
Such a result would have harmonized the true interests of 
England with those of the United States, with those of 
Central America itself, and with those of civilization in 
general. 
Even now it is not too late. Whatever complications 
