last of the Whigs, 'I truly regret an old friend of forty years' standing, whose personal kindness in trying and anxious times I shall ever remember. "Lord John," as I knew him best, was one of my first and most distinguished Ministers, and his departure recalls many eventful times.'

In this transition from enthusiasm for Whigs in general to temperate praise of the last Whig in particular we may read, perhaps, not only the sobering influence of years, but also a deliberate change in political opinion. Lord Beaconsfield had avenged himself on his ancient foes, and the spell of 1688 was broken.

GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL.

176

THE ALL RED ROUTE.

TRADERS and travellers, sailing or steaming between England and the Antipodes, may go by half a dozen routes. Much merchandise and many passengers are still carried homewards on the long seavoyage round the point which, with cheerful disregard of Dutch spelling and pronunciation, we call Cape Horn. Considerable, too, is the outward traffic round the Cape, that of Good Hope. Voyagers and shippers to New Zealand who rate cheapness above time, invalids who seek or are ordered to try unexciting weeks in the bracing air of the Southern Ocean, families of harassed parents and young children, are always likely to patronise these circuitous roads upon the open ocean, despite their length and monotony. But for passengers bound for Australia, as well as for New Zealanders and tourists who want speed with variety, the choice is limited to one or other of the lines which converge on the Suez Canal, or pass by trans-shipment and railway across North America. They may choose between east and west; hitherto they have more often chosen the east. To a visitor from Mars, knowing nothing of the past history of British trade routes, this would seem not a little strange. The westward voyage enables the traveller to pass across an interesting continent, insures him a pleasant voyage across the Pacific, with glimpses of two very beautiful tropical archipelagos; and takes him to eastern Australia or New Zealand in less time than the way through Suez. The Suez route has its attractions truly. They are great, in some ways unrivalled; but in certain months of the year the Red Sea and Indian Ocean are oppressed by sultry heat or vexed by monsoon winds. Except for those whose destination is Western or South Australia, or for leisurely travellers who wish to turn aside to Egypt or India, the natural claims of the Suez-Fremantle-Adelaide route can scarcely rival those of a fast and comfortable line by way of North America. The Queensland steamers, which, touching at Singapore, reach Brisbane through Torres Straits, may fairly be classed as cargo boats. On the map Australia looks close enough to southern Asia, and a long way, indeed, from North America. But then Australia-the Australia of the white man-turns its back on the

Indian Ocean. Though there are cattle and pearl fisheries in the north and north-west territory; though there are famous gold mines in the western deserts, and agriculture in the oasis round Perth; still, a line drawn across the continent from Cooktown to Spencer Gulf would have but one-fourteenth of the white population to the west and north-west of it. Such a handful are the inhabitants of the two-thirds of the island continent nearest to Asia. To get to the seaports of eastern and south-eastern Australia, and to connect there with the passenger ships for Tasmania and New Zealand, steamers from Suez have to pass half round the not trifling expanse of Australia. This they must do to serve the needs of the four largest of the Australian group, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and New Zealand, as well as of little Tasmania; all these front on the South Pacific, and are best reached from America. In the same ocean lie the Fijian islands, a backward and as yet disappointing dependency, whose great fertility and remarkable beauty, nevertheless, assure it a future of importance.

A line of communication, then, passing through Canada, Fiji, and New Zealand to the central port of eastern Australia, will thread and connect most of the chief self-governing Colonies of the Empire. Of the advantages and attractions of the route more anon. In this page let me anticipate the question-Why has not a route with these claims already superseded, or, at any rate, rivalled, the noted and popular eastern lines via Suez? The answer is simple enough. For many years the Suez route was the only one available. More than half a century ago the enterprise of the Peninsular and Oriental Company brought Australia into steam communication with Europe long before the American railways had pierced or climbed the Rocky Mountains and reached San Francisco. And even when San Francisco was linked with New York, a long interval was to follow before the Canadian Pacific railway financiers succeeded in their apparently desperate enterprise and gained their goal at Vancouver after winding through four ranges of mountains and laying rails across two thousand miles of howling prairie desolation. During that interval Canada was not a possible line of transit. So Antipodean colonists who grasped the importance of the Pacific route had to look to Washington. Thirty-five years ago New South Wales and New Zealand opened negotiations with the American Government for a subsidised mail. service. As a result a line of steamers flying the Stars and Stripes plied for many years from San Francisco to Auckland and Sydney,

VOL. XXIV.-NO. 140, N.S.

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and the 'Frisco Mail' became a household word in Australasia. Fast the steamers-judged by present-day standards-never were. More commodious, not to say luxurious, they might have been. But they, or rather their route, did attract passengers, and, at their best, they enabled London letters to arrive at Auckland in thirtyone days from St. Martin's-le-Grand. Moreover, in the face of the American tariff, they were directly and indirectly the means of fostering a considerable trade between the States and Australasia. The mail steamers did not always carry this trade themselves; but they carried the men and the letters by which the trade was opened up and pushed on. They carried the American commercial travellers, touts, and wool-buyers who descended on the Trans-Pacific Colonies to buy, and still more to sell. In 1906 the trade between the United States and Australasia had mounted to the respectable figure of 11,000,000l. But the American Union, as befitted a community in which Protectionism had reached its high-water mark, conducted its trade with the colonies on the principle of selling as much as possible and buying in return as little as might be. A certain amount of high-class wool and of two natural monopolies, kauri gum and New Zealand hemp, they found it convenient to take. Generally, their object was to conduct a trade with a heavy balance in their own favour. The figures for 1906 show how well they succeeded. At first sight these would seem to show that the Australian Commonwealth exported almost as much to the States as it took from them. The Australian exports amounted to 4,338,000l. But of this no less than 2,195,000l. came under the heading of specie-gold.' Comment is needless. Wool ranked next in value, forming with copper the bulk of the export. As for New Zealand, she sent to the States 640,000l. of merchandise, buying in return about 1,400,000l. of American goods.

Unpopular as American methods were in Australia and New Zealand, it has only been within the last five years that any retaliation has been attempted. New Zealand led the way with the Preferential Duties Act in 1902, and now Australia is following in her footsteps with a drastic measure. It may be too much to say that this last will destroy trade between America and Australia, but the rapid expansion of that trade is not likely to continue, and it may even find a difficulty in increasing at all.

Australasians, however, found Protectionism not the only unpopular element in the American connexion. Steamers making for North America from the South Pacific have perforce to stop at

Honolulu in the Hawaiian group, to coal. There is no other stopping place and coaling station for a steamer traversing the vast expanse of the North-Eastern Pacific. Now, in the 'nineties, the Government at Washington stretched out a hand and seized the Hawaiian There was some excuse for this, inasmuch as the archigroup. pelago was in an uneasy state, and a certain amount of American capital had been sunk in it. But the outcome was peculiar and unpleasant for colonial shipping. After a while the American navigation laws were extended to Hawaii. This meant that the great stretch of open ocean, 2800 miles broad, between Honolulu and San Francisco, became legally part of the coastal waters of the United States-that is to say, no foreign vessel was allowed to carry cargo or passengers from one American port to another across it. At the time of this monstrous aggression upon the natural rights of ocean navigators, the San Francisco steam service was being carried on conjointly by an American and a New Zealand Company. In obedience to the overbearing enactment, the New Zealand company had to beat a retreat, leaving the conduct of the service entirely in the hands of the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company of San Francisco. This last-named corporation proved, after some years, unequal to the task. Its steamers showed, more and more, signs of wear and tear, and it complained that the subsidy given by the American Government-some £69,000 yearly, though supplemented by certain payments by the Colonies-was insufficient to support a first-class service.

An attempt was made to induce Congress to increase the subsidy, but ocean subsidies have not been popular in the House of Representatives of late years. The attempt failed, and early in 1907 the San Francisco service came to an end. It may be asked why, if the American mail service had grown to be unpopular from a traders', and inconvenient from a passengers' point of view, it had not been supplanted by something better running by way of Vancouver. The answer is that the Colonies were naturally very loth to abandon steam connexion with the United States, or see the decease of a line which as a mail service was excellent, however unsatisfactory it might have been in other respects. Moreover, there was also in its favour the strong argument that it connected with the rapid Atlantic steamers between New York and Liverpool. While the service between Canada and Great Britain remained for many years respectable merely, those great competitors, the Cunard and the North-German Lloyd, were engaged in establishing world