islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon "to serve as a shelter for the French fishermen," and for the proceeds of their fishing. The policy which thus allowed the enemy whom England had just expelled from Newfoundland and Canada to retain an important and vaguely defined "interest" between the two lost shores has borne its natural fruit. The French claims have here, as everywhere else, been steadily maintained, and on occasion expanded. The two islands now form the rendez-vous of a large fishing fleet from St. Malo and the headquarters of a naval squadron. They are officially described as a principal trainingground for the French blue-jacket. The fishing rights on the Newfoundland shore, though repeatedly regulated by treaty and convention, have bred endless controversies, the latest and bitterest of which is upon us now. Our colonists complain that the French have entirely transformed their original permission to fish on the so-called French shore by many acts indistinguishable from territorial jurisdiction. Such are the erection of permanent buildings on land, the arrest of Newfoundland fishermen and the seizure of their tackle by armed French parties. The French answer every charge by producing their ancient bond and claiming their pound of fish. To England remains the task of ascertaining the true extent of her treaty obligations and the price at which they may be extinguished. But a speedy settlement is by no means in the interest of France. That she cannot in the end peacefully retain her user of the Newfoundland coast is probably quite plain to her. Yet, as against England, it is her custom to mass her claims all over the world, and of such claims in Egypt and elsewhere, there is no lack. Hence the delays which have bred much bad blood between England and her oldest colony afford France time for leisurely calculations as to the nature and amount of her compensation. Meanwhile, and before settlement, her

rights may acquire a new value on the very spot. If it should suit an antiEnglish Government in the United States to start or support a regular Secession movement in Canada, the attitude of the French Canadians would, for reasons already given, become of prime importance. Their doubts and scruples would be met by promises and pledges of all kinds, in the formulating of which France might serve as an invaluable intermediary. It is at such a time that her actual powers of annoying England on the Newfoundland coast would probably be supplemented by direct American support.

In India-to which we next turnFrance holds the scattered territories which were restored to her at the Peace of 1815. They have an extent of 200 square miles, a population of 270,000 and a revenue of some £80,000. This tiny empire is solemnly ruled by five distinct governments; those of Pondicherry and its dependencies of Chandernagore, Karikal, Mahé, and Yanaon. "This is effected," says Sir W. W. Hunter, "by rigid economy, and the prestige of the French Government is worthily maintained in the East." Our own times have witnessed repeated attempts to realise the dream of a French Empire in the East. What the vague "Will of Peter the Great" is to the Muscovite, the fortunes of Dupleix and the campaigns of Bonaparte are to the French Foreign Office. Between 1858 and 1863, Napoleon III. annexed part of Cochin China and Cambodia. In 1884 M. Ferry's Government occupied Tongking and Annam, and in 1885 began the determined attacks on Madagascar which have lately blossomed into a protectorate. The most important of these enterprises was that which is shortly styled the Tongking Expedition. It was for a time very popular in France. Cochin China had been almost forgotten, when M. Ferry's new policy in the neighbouring regions excited the highest hopes of extended empire and commercial gain. Nor was the anticipated chagrin of England

at the presence of French troops on the Burmese frontier without its peculiar charm. There is little doubt indeed that the close relations between Paris and Mandalay furnished some of the grounds for England's recent annexation of Upper Burmah. The illusions of France with respect to Tongking were shortlived. She found herself involved in a desperate struggle with shifting bodies of guerillas, well assured of the sympathy of their Chinese neighbours. Engagement followed engagement, and the announcement of a French victory was invariably coupled with a demand for reinforcements. Finally the French public became alarmed by a situation in which men and money were being lavishly expended, and a war with the whole force of the Chinese empire seemed inevitable. As usual the general feeling found a cry, "A bas le Tonkinois !" and M. Ferry was driven from office and apparently from public life. His recent election to the Senate, and the cessation of the Radical movement for the evacuation of Indo-China have therefore a peculiar significance on which we shall comment later on.

In Egypt and Syria the policy of France has always been a branch of that pursued by her in the Indian Ocean. She has never accepted Bonaparte's double failure as final. The rule of Mehemet Ali at Cairo (18111848) coincided with a great revival of French influence in Egypt. French

men flocked into his civil and military services, and fostered in him a deep dislike to England. He soon declared himself an independent prince, marched an army into Syria, and threatened Constantinople. But France refused to adopt the English policy of intervention on behalf of the Porte. England's answer was the formation of a Quadruple Alliance, in which France had no place. Mehemet Ali was quickly crushed, and such was the fury roused at Paris that throughout the operations on the Syrian coast in 1840 the British fleet were prepared for a French attack. During the halfcentury that has since elapsed, France

has been ceaselessly busy both in Syria and Egypt. In the former country her system of missionaries and mission schools has become the instrument of a formidable political propaganda. Since the Lebanon troubles of 1860 she has treated the Maronite Christians as virtually French subjects, and has borne with corresponding severity on their Druse antagonists, whose sympathies are English. During the anti-clerical campaign in France, and while M. Paul Bert was tearing down crucifixes in French schools, France was, for the purposes of her Foreign Office, not a whit the less the eldest daughter of the Church. And why? "Our schools and missions," said M. Ribot, only the other day, "are the most effective weapons of French colonisation." Accordingly the French Budget for 1891-1892 provides for a large increase of the vote in aid of missionary schools. As regards Egypt, the history of that country since 1840 has been the history of a struggle for influence between France and England. The main facts which led up to the present occupation of Egypt by a British force are too familiar to need more than a summary notice. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, under the patronage and in the presence of the Empress of the French, the downfall of the Empire and the desperate efforts of Republican France to maintain intact her Egyptian influence the warlike enterprises and financial collapse of the Khedive Ismail, his subjection to the Dual Control of France and England, his deposition and exile, the rebellion of Arabi Pasha against his son and successor, the refusal of France to help in restoring order by force, the singlehanded action of England, the defeat of the rebels at Alexandria, Tel-elKebir, and Cairo, and the British military occupation of the Delta-these are the facts which have created the present relations between France and England with regard to Egypt. England's successful administration 1 Journal des Débats, November 8th, 1890.

of the country since 1882, the restoration of public order, of commercial stability, of financial and agricultural prosperity, have merely added increased bitterness to French resentment. For the purposes of international controversy Egypt is as much a lost province as Alsace or Lorraine. Successive French Ministries have been constrained to earn a reputation by utilising the remains of their influence at Cairo for the maintenance of sinecure offices, long held by Frenchmen, and for a systematic opposition to all English measures for the benefit and development of Egypt. "Is it nothing," said M. Ribot to the Opposition critics last November, "that we have preserved such French institutions as the Commission of the Debt and the Commission of Antiquities which were on the point of being abolished? If you ask me why we refused to sanction the application of some of the money saved by converting the Egyptian Debt to an increase of the native army, I answer that we opposed the measure because England wished for it, and because it would have given her an advantage." It is in the same temper that the French Cabinet lately summoned their minister from Cairo to Paris to account for his failure to prevent the selection of an AngloIndian judge to reform the native Courts of Justice. The corruption and misconduct of these tribunals and the sufferings which they inflict on the fellahin are not denied, even in France. But the whole domain of Egyptian law was for many years a close French preserve, and in the view of the French Foreign Office it is only by virtue of a succession of English outrages that it has ceased to be so.

From Spain-for a brief period the kingdom of Joseph Bonaparte-the French were driven in 1814.

Yet

within ten years, France, now acting for the Holy Alliance, intervened in defence of Ferdinand VII. against a rising of his exasperated subjects. The army of the Duc d'Angoulême took 1 Journal des Débats, November 8th, 1890.

Madrid and Cadiz, and occupied the country for five years (1823-1827). Later on, in the matter of the Spanish marriages (1846), Louis Philippe acted as though for him, as for Louis XIV., there were no more Pyrenees. A third and last interference with Spain brought on France disasters from which she is suffering to this day. In 1868 the Bourbon Queen Isabella was expelled from Spain. Her illomened marriage to Francis of Assisi, that triumph of French diplomacy, and her own character had proved fertile sources of evil. But the cynical calculations of Louis Philippe were, in one respect, disappointed. She had a son, who ultimately reigned as Alfonso XII., and died universally regretted. The Spaniards were, however, at first inclined to a change of dynasty. Among the candidates under consideration in the year 1870 was a German, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern. There is little evidence that the King of Prussia seriously pushed his kinsman's claim, but the peremptory demand of Napoleon III. that the Prince should withdraw at once, was met by an absolute refusal. In the war which ensued France was defeated and dismembered. With Alsace and Lorraine she lost nearly two millions of valuable subjects. The victor entered her capital and was proclaimed Emperor of a re-constituted Germany at Versailles. Never had her humiliation seemed more complete. Yet never did her spirit rise higher. In the midst of shame and disaster at home, she abandoned no foreign possession and abated no jot of any foreign claim. Napoleon I., when virtually beleaguered at Moscow, devoted three evenings to some new regulations for the Comédie Française. Even so France, hardly freed from her German garrison, opposed the rest of Europe on minutest details of her consular jurisdiction in Egypt. Sixteen other European States had agreed to substitute for the existing anarchical medley of Consular Courts new local tribunals under European guarantee and largely officered by European Judges. They

were to deal with all cases in which a European was involved, the purely native litigation remaining unaffected. But France saw in the innovation an attack on her own position in Egypt; and, when defeated on the principle, she defended her own view of any detail as though it were a Strassburg or a Belfort. By sheer tenacity she contrived to mark the international tribunals which were in the end established with the deep impress of her own laws and institutions.

Egypt and Syria do not exhaust the list of Mediterranean countries in which France has, since the disasters of the Napoleonic wars, sought dominion, or influence leading to dominion. It is as though she had sought to identify the sea that witnessed so many English victories with fresher triumphs of her own. In 1830 she attacked and presently annexed Algeria. Between 1881 and 1884, at the very time when she was denouncing English action in Egypt as though the Union Jack had been hoisted over a French department, she occupied Tunis and threatened Tripoli. Next came a promising intrigue in Morocco. Its object was to depose the Sultan Muley el Hassan in favour of the Sherif of Wazan, his chief religious dignitary, who had accepted French protection. The vigilance of Sir John Drummond Hay, and the costly drain of the Tongking war were the chief motives for the adjournment of this project. Seated as she now is in the two central Barbary states, France can strike east and west at the two countries that remain independent of her. The likelihood of her doing so is among the elements of European trouble in which the Mediterranean region has ever been fertile.

So far we have dealt with French activity in countries which have for centuries passed under a succession of dominating influences. In the recent Partition of Africa, as the assignment to different European Powers of huge spheres of influence is somewhat prematurely called, France has obtained

the lion's share, as far so actual extent of territory is concerned. In no other part of the world has her activity since the German war been more conspicuous. In 1876 France held, in Algeria, Senegambia, Gaboon, and elsewhere, some 280,000 square miles. Within fourteen years this extent of territory has been increased eight-fold by accessions containing over two millions of square miles. Algeria and Senegambia have grown out of all knowledge. Tunis, Madagascar, and the French Congo are new acquisitions. Besides these an enormous area in the Soudan to the south and west of Lake Chad has been recognised as French. Such are the problems in colonisation and empire-making which France is setting to her stationary, if not diminishing population. Her single share of Africa is but little less than those secured by England and Germany taken together. The idea that genuine Frenchmen will settle abroad in any large numbers, except as paid officials, seems indeed to be recognized as hopeless. It is therefore proposed by persons claiming to be practical that "Frenchmen" must be manufactured by the naturalization of foreign Europeans and by the "assimilation" of the Mohammedan races ! A state of the public mind in France in which so huge an access of responsibility could be welcomed, amply accounts for M. Jules Ferry's decision to return to public life. Compared to this African camel, Tongking and Annam, he might argue, were but gnats. Certain it is that the colonial enthusiasts have again won the public ear in France. Colonial chartered companies, rival projects for creating a colonial army, glowing accounts of French travelling and exploring enterprise-all such matters daily occupy the Press. M. Bonvalot, who recently travelled with Prince Henry of Orleans from Russian Turkestan to the French frontier in Tongking, has been the object of special enthusiasm. Not only have his eloquent addresses added strength, in however visionary a degree, to the idea

of a Russo-French alliance, but he has discovered that Tongking, the muchabused, is the "fairest gem in the colonial crown of France." Another French pioneer, M. Crampel, is pushing his way to Lake Chad from the Congo, with the object of bringing it within the confines of French Africa.

Enough has been said to show that so far as regards the assumption of responsibility and the processes of annexation or protection, France seems to have resolutely entered on a wide colonial policy. But by a remarkable coincidence, at the very time when the imagination of her people is dealing at ease with regions whose name even was unknown to them yesterday, the condition of two of her older colonies is engaging the sorrowful attention of her Legislature. Two very acrimonious debates on the administration of Tongking and Algeria have thrown a flood of light on French colonial rule, as it exists in the sober regions of facts. The disclosures respecting Tongking were made on the occasion of a demand for an increased subvention from the mother country, reinforced by hints of imminent local bankruptcy. The entire Indo-Chinese territory of France is administered and financed by the Colonial Council of Saigon. This body is elected by 1,600 Frenchmen, of whom 1,200 are Government officials. The entire community manage to live on the public revenue, which is collected from the natives and supplemented from France. Thus the Council, while declaring itself unable to execute any public works, even out of funds voted for that purpose, has made a practice of providing the daughters of the French residents with dowries upon marriage. This identical body now came before the French Legislature as a suppliant for an increased money vote. Some members of the Chamber declared that the Council must cease to exist because it had been the mere instrument of tyranny and corruption. Others maintained that its patriotism

"Of

had redeemed all its faults. course," said the candid Under-Secretary for the Colonies, "anarchy must prevail in a country in which every Frenchman is an official."

The most important contribution to the debate on Algeria was the report of M. Pauliat to the Senate on the condition of that colony. A summary statement of the facts acknowledged to be true must suffice. France has held Algeria for sixty years. She has spent, on this one colony, six milliards of francs (£240,000,000), or considerably more than the German war indemnity. Her receipts amount only to one and a half milliards (£60,000,000). She garrisons the country with an entire army corps, numerous local levies, and a crowd of officials. Yet what is the record of sixty years' work? The natives are, in 1891, so incurably hostile that not one soldier could be withdrawn to France. Of 600,000 Arab children, only 10,000 enter a French school. The railways, which receive large annual subventions from France, hardly pay their working expenses. Every inducement is given to French immigrants by the Home Government, but of all the European nationalities represented in Algeria the French shows the least growth. At the present rate the French element will be swamped in twenty years. In 1911 the colony will contain 5,000,000 Arabs, 395,000 Frenchmen, and 440,000 other Europeans. The administration of justice is a farce. The Arab Cadis have been dismissed and replaced by French lawyers who know no Arabic, and are in the hands of their interpreters and clerks. Generally speaking, the Governor-General obeys the French Algerian deputies, the deputies obey the French residents, and all three combine to oppress the Arab. "M. Tirman," said M. Pauliat of the late Governor-General, "est Arabophobe." The natives pay nearly all the taxes, but their nominal representation on the various local 'spending" bodies is so restricted as to deprive them of any real

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