national House of Representatives, would bind our provinces closer to us than Rome's or England's, and as they developed into states they could easily become an integer of the World Republic.

It is a noticeable fact that the utterer of the famous saying was the first to practically annul it. For the share he took in the creation of this American colony his name was given to its capital. For twenty years he labored to plant America in Africa. His deeds rebuked his words. The Republic desires closer connections with the United States. It would not be just to say that it desires annexation, but it is very anxious for very close relations. In the last message of the President, delivered last December, he says: "The people of Liberia have had, all along their history, the duty imposed upon them to entertain the liveliest sense of gratitude to the American government. To it they have looked, for guidance and for help, more than to any other, in the great efforts to establish themselves where, untrammelled, they might develop their manhood, erect a government of their own, and take part in the solution of the problems that look to the enfranchisement and elevation of mankind."

Similar remarks, revealing their feelings towards this country, are found in many of their documents and in much of their conversation. The presence of the "Alaska" two years ago was a great gratification to the people. A lady remarked to me, "We had rather see one American vessel of war here than the whole British navy." She looked out to the old, weather-beaten, leaky barque which lay in the harbor bearing the American flag, and the white and red flag of its owners, "Y. & P.", and said, "I had rather see the ships of Yates and Porterfield, rare as are their visits, than all the English steamers," yet the latter drop their anchor every week, and the former not oftener than every hundred days. She spoke the sentiments of all the people. They talk America; they are Americans. They will make greater sacrifices to win our favor than that of all other nations. They will grant concessions to our government which they would not to any other nation. Their Constitution forbids selling land to any except colored persons, -a wrong regulation, but they will lease land on long terms to any who desire such privileges.

Great Britain already has all the adjacent coast under her control. From the Gambia to the Gaboon, a distance of nearly two

thousand miles, she holds sway. One governor rules the whole. Liberia is the only break in this line. But for that, her sway would be complete from the Equator to Sahara. Of course this American Naboth does not please the kingly eyes. "How can he be swallowed up?" is the thought of many a representative of England. "We shall be swallowed up," is the fear of many an Afric-American.

Railroad to Cairo.

They need this closer relation to their own advancement in many lines. They need wagon-roads; they cannot make them. They need railroads; they cannot build them. They need a better land-office, where titles may be given to public lands and native claims extinguished. They need a better postal service. These absolute necessities they cannot themselves supply; they are too weak, too few, too poor. America should lend a hand.

Especially might the railroad be built. Scores, if not hundreds, of millions of European money have gone into our railroads. We might repay by building one across Africa.

As we entered the St. Paul's from the Stockton, Dr. Blyden pointed to a path which went up from the bank of the river, near a little Baptist Church at a place called Virginia City. "Do you see that road?" said he. Yes." That leads direct to Cairo. I have travelled it a hundred miles, and met in its towns Mohammedan teachers, who had walked from Cairo and even from Mecca." What an enterprise for American explorers would be the traversing of that path! Four thousand miles through an utterly undiscovered country! The projected wagon-road of the King of the Belgiums, or the railroad of Cameron, or the proposed band of fifteen hundred explorers to be sent out by the European Geographical Society, would be lost to public view in Europe and America by the following up of that path to Cairo. It would pass through the richest and most important section of the continent. It would touch Timbuctoo, the Niger, the Wely, the Nyanza district, and the vast unknown territory that lies between the eastern and western centres. It would unite every explorer from Mungo Park to Henry Stanley; Lander and Barth and Park on the west would be joined to Baker, Schweinfurth, Speke, Grant, and Stanley on the east. Only Livingstone and Cameron, whose exploits are in Southern Africa, would be excluded from the list, and even these

would touch it at its eastern division by the Egypt and Good Hope Railroad, which would traverse all Livingstone's chief linesThis road is feasible, is necessary, is certain, is not far distant. Already Cameron urges a road from Zanzibar to Tanganyika, a distance of one thousand miles. He says it can be built for one thousand pounds a mile. It only remains to be seen whether America will help her first-born, her representative, her child still, in every pulse, to win this honor for herself and for us. Such an enterprise will give our trade and manufactures a new opening. Whenever that railroad to Cairo terminates on this side, thither flows the commerce of Africa. Monrovia can have that honor, if we will undertake with her and for her. Let the North Pole remain in its icy isolation, while this vaster, nobler, and more useful undertaking is furthered by our government.

The latest and greatest of African discoveries should increase our zeal. Stanley has revealed the secret, to find which Livingstone died and Cameron labored in vain. He has fought his way down the Lualaba, and proved that river and the Kongo to be one and the same. His discovery adds new honor to America. Three of the small company of explorers are her sons, — Ledjard, Long, and Stanley. Ledjard was almost the first who sought to master those secrets. Stanley is the last of the victors.

Each of them will be matched and surpassed by him who shall unite St. Paul's and the Nile, Monrovia and Cairo. That victory can be American also if she wills it. Already proposals for initiating it are being submitted. Let them be fostered by our citizens and by the general government.

No American should fail to sympathize with this struggling Republic. It is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. It is our contribution to the vast problem now being solved in that marvel of continents. It is the seed we plant in that rich soil. It is the leaven that we have placed in that mighty lump. We should study it in all its numerous and growing phases. We should see it in the light not only of its interests, but of our own also. We should form closer connections with it in business, and then we shall in politics. We should bind it to us by steam, by mail, by trade, by political alliance; in a word, we should help America in Africa for the sake of our own Africa in America.

GILBERT HAVEN.

ART. VIII. THE SITUATION IN FRANCE.

It might perhaps be not unreasonably imagined that the general similarity of the political influences now at work throughout Europe must be beginning to produce some similarity of results, and that distinct affinities must be becoming perceptible between the political conceptions of different countries. But scarcely anything of the kind has yet happened. The distinctions between the political dispositions of races are still, as a general rule, almost as marked as the differences of language. No two nations hold the same view of their political situation or of their political duties; no two nations have yet learned to apply the same precepts of guidance to their political working or the same remedies to their political difficulties. Here and there, it is true, the evolutions of the more advanced divisions of Liberalism do offer a certain appearance of international brotherhood, but the Conservatism of each country remains rigidly and exclusively its own. Each country in Europe has shaped its Conservatism for itself alone; and each national Conservatism goes its own way, in the conviction that it alone understands what it needs; each one acts for itself without the slightest reference to the others.

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The diversity which exists between the many forms of Conservatism which have thus been developed has just been rendered remarkably apparent by the events which have occurred during the last four months in France. An attempt at " Conservative reaction" was commenced by Marshal MacMahon on the 16th of May he suddenly turned out a Ministry which was supported by the Chamber; he dissolved the Chamber because it had supported the Ministry; and then he changed all the prefects and other functionaries, and publicly took every possible measure to influence the results of the new elections. In England particularly, in the birthplace and home of the highest, most intelligent, and most practical Conservatism of the time, reprobation was expressed with curious unanimity. The English press discussed the policy of Marshal MacMahon with a calmness, fairness, and thoroughness

which bestowed special value on its judgment, and it wound up by the declaration that, in its opinion, Despotism, and not Conservatism, is the true designation for that policy.

In order to clearly understand the considerations which have led English Conservatism to form this judgment, it is essential to remember that English Conservatism has assumed in our day a totally new character. It is therefore in reality, as events have now fashioned it, neither more nor less than an extremely prudent, slow-marching power of Liberalism.

Consequently, when English Conservatives proceeded to measure "the Act of the 16th of May," their first step was to inquire as to the precise object of that act; their second was to ascertain whether the object was being preserved by Constitutional means. On neither point did they obtain a satisfactory answer. The movement of the 16th May was most certainly Conservative, in the true European sense of the word, in so far as it claimed to be a struggle against Radicalism. And, furthermore, if it could be proved that each nation has really a right to a Conservatism of its own, unlike that of its neighbor, we should then be forced to recognize that the French are fully entitled to exercise that right, and to frame and practise their Conservatism as they may themselves think best, according to what may appear to them to be the necessities of their situation, without any reference to what is thought or done elsewhere. This is forcibly the argument which the French themselves employ towards their foreign critics; and, at first sight, there does appear to be some value in their reasoning. It seems to be just to urge that, as political tenets are evidently still generated everywhere by local forces, as the levelling impulses of the period have not succeeded thus far in unifying their shape, as their character still continues to be determined, in every land, by a collection of influences resulting from the history and temper of the people, and as those influences differ in every country in Europe, therefore those tenets themselves cannot be and ought not to be universally identical. And if there be variety in the tenets, there must, of necessity, be even more variety in the manner of applying them, for surrounding incitations make themselves felt in the direction of action almost as easily as in the formation of opinion. So far, and in these general terms, it may be owned that each nation is entitled to entire liberty of political fancy.