land should have consented to a treaty that leaves her colony at the mercy of another country, but so it is. There is no English soldier who would risk his reputation by attempting to defend such a line against the United States. Well, England might have bombarded or occupied the Atlantic cities, or laid

them under contribution. It does not do a town much harm to bombard it, as I found out at Vicksburg. If she had occupied the cities she would have had to feed the people, which would have been very expensive. If she had laid them under contribution the nation would have paid the bill, and England would have lost ten dollars for every one she exacted. She

ENGLAND AND AMERICA.

169 might have blockaded our coasts. Well, I cannot think of anything that would do America more good than a year or two of effective blockade. It would create industries, throw us back upon ourselves, teach us to develop our own resources. We should have to smuggle in our coffee-we could raise our own tea. It would keep our people at home. Hundreds if not thousands of privateers would have preyed upon English commerce, as English-built ships preyed upon ours. The war would have left her carrying trade where our trade was. If England were to blockade our ports, she would succeed in nothing so effectively as in cutting off her own supplies of food. America really depends upon the world for nothing. England might have sent troops to help the South, but she would have to send many more than she did to the Crimea to have made herself felt. Her soldiers would not have been as good as Lee's, because they lacked training. They would have been simply so many raw levies in Lee's army. So far as I was concerned I see no end to such an intervention but the destruction of the English power on the American continent. Other nations would have come in. The moment England struck us, she would have been struck by her enemies elsewhere. It would have been a serious matter to have made such a war, so far as English opinion was concerned. opinion was concerned. For these reasons I never feared the bugbear of intervention. I am glad it did not take place, especially glad for the sake of England. I never desired war with England. I do not want an inch of her territory, nor would I consider her American possessions worth a regiment of men. They are as much ours now as if they were under our flag. I mean that they are carrying out American ideas in religion, education, and civilization. Perhaps I should say we are carrying out English ideas. It is the same thing, for we are the same. But the men who governed England were wise in not taking an active part in our war. It would have been more trouble to us, but destruction to them. We could not have avoided war, and our war would have begun with more than a million of men in the field. That was our aggregate force when the war ended, and it was a match for

EXCITEMENT IN BURMAH.

171

lined with people, as at home during an exciting election canvass, clamoring against the king, demanding the beneficent rule of England. I only saw the patient, dreamy, plodding Asiatic, bearing his burdens

like his brethren in India, content if he can assure a mess of rice for his food and a scrap of muslin for his loins. As to the rest, accept it as an axiom that when the moral sensibilities of the English statesmen in India become so outraged as to become uncontrollable it means more territory.

A KNOWING ELEPHANT.

Our days in Rangoon were pleasant. The town is interesting. It is Asiatic, and at the same time not Indian. You have left Hindostan and all the forms of that vivid and extraordinary civilization, and you come upon a new people. Here you meet the inscrutable John, who troubles you so much in California, and whose fate is the gravest problem of our day. You see Chinese signs on the houses, Chinese workmen on the streets, shops where you can drink toddy and smoke opium. This is the first ripple we have seen of that teeming empire toward which we are steering. Politically Burmah is a part of the British empire, but it is commercially one of the outposts of China, and from now until we leave Japan we shall be under the influence of China. The Hindoos you meet are from Madras, a different type from those we saw on our tour. The Burmese look like Chinese to our unskilled eyes, and it is pleasant to see women on the streets and in society. The streets are wide and rectangular, like those of Philadelphia, and the shade trees are grateful. Over the city, on a height, which