to add a further reply, based, not on theory, but on rather striking facts. We have in the Jains a sect who are peculiarly scrupulous on this point of consideration for animals; who have probably for ages past been carrying their regard for animal rights, in at least some of its forms, to what many would call absurd lengths. And what is the consequence? Are the Jains being slowly but surely outstripped by their neighbours, borne down by the force of circumstances, eliminated through the operation of the struggle for existence, in which their scrupulosity places them at a disadvantage? Not at all. It is true that the number of professing Jains is not now great; and as a Church they have been described as fallen into decay. But the falling to pieces of a Church for one reason or another is quite a different thing from the financial or vital decay of those who compose it. The Jains at the present day, instead of being poor and hard pressed, are the richest, most prosperous, and, for their number, most influential body of natives in all India. Though they count perhaps less than one in 500 of the population, it is said that half the mercantile transactions of India pass through their hands as merchants and bankers.' My Benares informant assured me that there are hardly any really poor families among them. Certainly it does not seem that, owing to their extreme tenderness, the means of support are failing them in life's competition. Nor does it appear that their wealth is accumulated by miserly habits. Their charity is boundless,' says Sir W. W. Hunter. In the past as well as in the present, they have evidently known the meaning of material prosperity, as is proved by the beautiful and costly temple architecture on which their piety has lavished money at Mount Abu and elsewhere. On the other hand, they have not lacked the necessary leisure to appreciate and cultivate intellectual pursuits. They have produced scholars of great eminence and exercised much influence on literature, while some of the oldest and largest libraries are theirs. I have no wish to press the argument too far. I am not contending that regard for the feelings of animals makes a people richer, but only that apparently it is not incompatible with continued wealth and prosperity. And as evidence of this fact I point to the very remarkable case of the Jains. Notwithstanding the opposition, if not active persecutions, of bygone times, the one small sect, which, more than any other in the world, has taught and practised the doctrine of 'ahimsa,' or 'non-injury' to living creatures, stands to-day, after some four-and-twenty centuries, by far the most prosperous community in a population verging on three hundred millions.

ERNEST M. BOWDEN.

SEA-POWER AND SEA-CARRIAGE

OVER-SEA in France a notable thing befel-if one might adapt the words of Carlyle-when M. Delcassé sent Major Marchand to Fashoda. The mission was not a Prinzenraub, nor did it raise any specially new phase of the Nigger Question, and, although an 'unfriendly act' in a diplomatic sense, it was, in another sense, a most friendly service. For all at once it caused the British people to realise their own strength. During long years of prolonged peace, broken only by 'little wars,' they had lost consciousness of it. Now, thanks to pinpricks and faux pas, they have felt it again, and, still more, have seen that all the world knows what they had forgotten or overlooked. It was worth a gleam of the 'blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire;' it was worth more than the few hundred thousands that may have been spent in naval preparations; it was worth even the temporary alienation of an old friend and neighbour, for whom we have otherwise the highest esteem and warmest affection-for Britain to learn her own might. And as France has taught us to appreciate our own sea-power, so have the risks of the war from which we have happily escaped, and the events and consequences of the war in which America and Spain have lately been engaged, brought vividly before us the vast importance of our sea-commerce. The greatness of our sea-power has been called forth by the magnitude of our sea-carriage. Our large and ever-growing merchant navy has brought into being our large and ever-growing naval armament. It is the fashion nowadays to deny that 'trade follows the flag,' and if we look, say, at the West Indies and at Fiji, one may be constrained to admit that the flag can neither make nor keep trade. But it can make, and has made, a Royal Navy, and it is rather an interesting incident that an important branch of our business as sea-carriers is in the conveyance of supplies of the new sinew of war to the coalingstations established for our fighting ships. This is a curious thought -that the peaceful pursuit of over-sea commerce has created the engines of war, and that the development of sea-going warlike machinery has in turn created a new over-sea trade.

Now, this business of sea-carrying is without doubt the most important trade in the world. Those who go down to the sea in ships, those who do business on the great waters, those who labour directly and indirectly in association with shipping, and those who are more or less dependent on it, number three-fourths of the world's population. It is one of the oldest trades, too, if not as old as that

of the farmer and the potter, and there were hardy mariners before the days of the Phoenicians. Whether the Phoenicians did much ocean-carrying for other people is doubtful, for their voyages seem to have been more after the manner of the Spanish and Elizabethan merchant-adventurers. At all events, they were not sea-carriers to the same extent as the ancient Arabians, who carried the traffic of Egypt and India to and fro under a foreign flag. Since these old days the carrying-trade has passed through many hands. It is good to have the lion's share of this great world-business, but we did not always possess that share. It is not a hundred years since the Scandinavians and Germans had secured practically the whole of the sea-carriage of the Baltic and Mediterranean, which the enterprise of Henry the Seventh had won for England. Those who believe in what Mr. Herbert Spencer calls the great political superstition of the present the Divine Right of Parliament '-will find food for much profitable study in the legislation by which England in the eighteenth, and the United States in the nineteenth, centuries lost their foreign carrying-trade. And the student of social evolution finds abundant and interesting material for examination in the changes effected by steam in the commercial, and therefore the social and political, relations of Europe. The Navigation Laws robbed us of the Mediterranean trade which we had taken from the merchants of Venice and Genoa. The steam-engine brought it back to us, and gave us in rapid succession the trade of the Iberian Peninsula, of Italy, of the Levant, of the Danube and Black Sea, and finally of India and China. At least two of our present great lines of steamers originated in humble little sailing-packets between the ports of Britain and those of Spain and Portugal. And it was by way of the Mediterranean that we won our position in the carrying-trade of the East, for John Company only carried for self and partners.' Steam-power was introduced into the Mediterranean trade by the Peninsular Company (now known as the P. and O.) in 1837, and in 1840 into the American trade by the Cunard Company, into the West Indies trade by the Royal Mail Company, and into the Pacific trade by William Wheelwright.

We may take the year 1840, then, as the birth-year of the maritime supremacy of Great Britain, although for some years afterwards the growth was very small owing to the aforesaid Navigation Laws, which so lapped our shipowners in the swaddling-clothes of Protection that they were slow to move in pursuit of new trade. The repeal of the Corn

Laws, however, gave a new impetus to sea-carrying, for this opened up a great traffic in grain with the Baltic and the Black Seas; and then, as steamers came to be more and more employed, more and more employment was created for colliers.

The transitions in the Eastern carrying-trade have been strongly marked. As Portugal first found her way by sea to India, she had the monopoly of the sea-traffic down to 1600, and as many as 300

sail would be found at one time in the port of Goa loading for, or discharging from, European and Eastern ports. Then the English flag was not known in Indian ports: now the Portuguese flag is rarely, if ever, seen. But first came the Dutch, who went out to find for themselves whence came the rich stuffs brought by the Portuguese traders for sale in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. As they could not make a north-east passage from Europe, the Dutch went round the Cape, and, after they had occupied Sumatra, gradually displaced the Portuguese from the Eastern Archipelago, Ceylon, and Southern India. They in turn had a monopoly of the Eastern trade for a hundred years, and then the English served the Dutch as the Dutch had served the Portuguese. What the Indian carrying-trade now is we shall presently see, but it is to be noted that, while the Indian trade has only developed under our flag, the sea-traffic with the Australasian Colonies and the major part of that with South Africa has been actually created within living memory.

In proceeding to examine the present extent and conditions of the world's sea-carrying trade three avenues of inquiry open up to us: (1) the actual shipping possessed by each country with a seaboard; (2) the extent of the sea-carriage of the British Empire; (3) and the share which British shipping has in the carrying-trade of foreign countries. As to the first, the following presents a tolerably complete view of

These figures are extracted from Lloyd's Register, and they differ somewhat from those given in the French Register, Bureau Veritas, according to whose Répertoire Général for 1898-1899 there are 11,576 steamers in the world over 100 tons, representing a total tonnage of 18,887,132 gross tons, and 3,149 steamers under 100 tons, representing a gross tonnage of 492,229 tons. The French Register, moreover, gives the number of sailing-vessels at 28,885, of a total gross tonnage of 8,893,769 tons; but it includes vessels down to 50 tons, whereas Lloyd's does not include such small craft. These differences, however, are not material, and we give preference to Lloyd's figures.

Now this table is peculiarly interesting, and we invite the attention to it even of those to whom 'multiplication is vexation' as much now as it was in their school-days. One needs no aptitude for mathematics to appreciate the comparative value of the numerals. Look, for instance, at the British Empire's record of a fleet of 11,143 merchant vessels, representing a tonnage of 13,665,312 gross tons; that is, nearly three-sevenths in number, and more than one-half in tonnage, of the entire shipping of the world. In steam vessels our proportion is even greater-more than one-half in number and about 60 per cent. in tonnage. This is gratifying to our national pride; but look now at the records of what Lord Salisbury calls decaying nations. Portugal, once foremost in maritime exploration, the founder of sea-traffic between Europe and Africa and India, has now not much more than half the tonnage of her old colony of Brazil. Spain, once mistress of the seas, is now outdone by Italy, and is being rapidly approached by the newest of nations, Japan. An even more interesting comparison is that between the sea-power of the Teutonic and the Latin races. Excluding for the moment Great Britain and her Colonies, we make the following division: