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PARALLEL WITH VENICE.

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cities, Rome the chief of all, which commanded a continuous dominion. That is almost the same thing as saying that her parallels, if she has parallels, must be sought for among seafaring powers only. The life by sea was the very life of Carthage. When the Romans before the last siege made it a condition of peace that Carthage should be forsaken and some point ten miles from the sea occupied instead, every Carthaginian felt it to be a sentence of death. Athens could not be great without her fleet; but she could live without it. She had for a moment a scattered dominion of somewhat the same kind as the dominion of Carthage; but it was only for a moment. No other city of old Greece, no other city of her own Phoenician stock, comes near enough to her to admit even of contrast. The mediæval world supplies nearer parallels. Among cities of our own race, as we are tempted to call Bern the Teutonic Rome, so are we tempted to call Lübeck the Teutonic Carthage. But neither Lübeck nor any of her Hanseatic sisters fully reproduces the old Phoenician model. They are mighty on the sea, mighty for trade, mighty for warfare; but their special character was to be mighty in both ways, to strike terror and to bear rule, without forming anything which could be called territorial dominion. Far nearer to Carthage are the later seafaring cities of her own Mediterranean waters, Genoa in some measure, Venice in a higher. Venice indeed is the nearest reproduction of Carthage that the world has seen. She too united trade and dominion; she ruled from her islands, as Carthage ruled from her peninsula, over possessions scattered far and wide, fortresses, cities, islands, kingdoms, over all of which she exercised lordship, but none of whom did she or could she incorporate into her own commonwealth. More perfect in her position than Carthage, she never paid rent for the soil of her Rialto as Carthage did for the soil of her Bozrah. But the two ruling cities agree in this, that dominion on the adjoining or neighbouring mainland was the latest form of dominion for which they sought.

One fears to carry on the thought further. But, now that the world has grown, now that great kingdoms and commonwealths have taken the place of single cities, now that the Ocean with its continents has taken the place of the Mediterranean with its islands and peninsulas, it may be that later times supply parallels to the dominion of Carthage on a greater scale than that of Venice. It may be that they supply one special parallel of special interest to ourselves. In every such comparison we shall find the differences which come of altered scale and circumstances; but in every power which has held a scattered dominion over lands parted by the seas we may see a nearer or more distant parallel to Carthage, as in every power which has slowly and steadily advanced to a continuous dominion by land we may see a nearer or more distant parallel to Rome. The thought of Carthage is called up both by analogy and in ways more direct when, in one of the subject lands of Carthage, we see a power grow up which holds under its dominion a large part of her other subject lands. The thought comes more keenly still when that power is for a while clothed with the majesty of Rome, and in that character goes forth to wage victorious war in Africa and for a moment to make Carthage itself part of its possessions. When a Spanish King who is also Roman Emperor, who is also King of Sicily and Sardinia, goes forth on the old errand of Agathoklês, Scipio, and Belisarius, when he sets forth to war from Caralis and comes back to triumph at Panormos, we seem to see the old forces of Phoenician Carthage turned against her on her own soil. Charles of Austria, Charles of Burgundy, first Charles of Castile and Aragon, fifth Charles of Germany and Rome, setting up the banners of half Europe upon the walls of conquered Tunis, seems, as it were, to gather up the whole tale of Rome and Carthage in his single person. And when we go on to remember that the Roman Augustus, the Spanish and Sicilian King, was lord, not only of the inner sea, but of the Ocean, that he bore himself as monarch of its continents

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PARALLEL WITH SPAIN.

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and islands, monarch of the Eastern and the Western Indies, ruler in every quarter of the globe, master of a dominion on which the sun never set, we may think that the conqueror of Tunis had not only, in a figure, subdued Carthage in her older world of the inner sea, but had in truth called up a dominion like her own in the newer and wider world of Ocean.* And his dominion has passed away from the older and narrower as well as from the newer and wider world all but as utterly as the dominion of Carthage herself. Of an European power that took in Sicily and Friesland not a shred is left outside the Spanish peninsula and its islands. A few islands east and west stand as survivals of dominion in Asia and America, memorials of the proud style of King of the Indies. A fortress on the coast of Africa, holding one of the pillars of Hêraklês, is before all things a reminder that the grasp of the pillar which stands on Spanish ground, and with it the keeping of the mouth of the inner sea of Phoenician and Greek, of Venetian and Genoese, has passed into the hands of an island kingdom in the Ocean. It is in fact in the power which has thus so strangely established itself on Spanish ground that we seem to see the nearest parallel to Carthage in the modern. world. England indeed, as well as Spain, has played, and still plays, a direct part within the old dominion of Carthage. Gibraltar, Malta, Minorca so often taken and lost in the last century, Sicily, so remarkable a scene of English influence in the early days of the present century, all bring us within the actual range of Carthaginian power. Malta and Gozo indeed, richer than any other spots in Phoenician antiquities, keeping, not indeed the tongue of the Phoenician, but the kindred tongue of the Saracen conquerors of

* I remember being much struck with the first page of a book which I saw at New York-I saw only the first page under a glass case, and I forgot to carry off the name. A Latin panegyrist of Charles the Fifth magnifies him for having won for himself a new Empire in America equal to his old Empire in Europe. Here is the same general idea carried out in another direction.

Sicily, seem to stand as a special memorial of the two ages of Semitic dominion in the Mediterranean. Cyprus again brings us, if not within the immediate range of Carthage, yet within the general range of Phoenicia; and the English bombardment of Algiers, if less striking in itself, not touching the immediate land of Carthage, was a worthier work in the world's history than the Spanish conquest of Tunis. But, just as in the case of Spain, the more instructive side of the comparison between England and Carthage lies outside the old Carthaginian world. England indeed, with her settlements and possessions, her colonies dependent and independent, scattered over the whole world of Ocean, is truly a living representative on a vaster scale of the Phoenician city with her possessions and settlements scattered over the Western Mediterranean. The Empire of India, held by an European island, calls up the thought of the dominion in Spain once held by an African city. And in some points the dominion of England seems to come nearer to that of Carthage than the dominion of Spain ever did, while in other points the course of English settlement rather carries us back to the older Phoenician days before Carthage was. One point is that the spread of Carthaginian and of English power, as being in each case the advance of a people, have more in common with each other than either has with the advance of Spain under her despotic kings. But the higher side of English colonization has more in common with the earlier days of Phoenician settlement than it has with the Carthaginian dominion. The old Phoenician settlements grew up in Spain, in Africa, in Sicily, just as English settlements grew up in America, Australia, and New Zealand. In both cases men went forth to find new homes for an old folk, and to make the life of the old folk grow up in the new home. But the settlements and conquests of Carthage had all a view to trade or dominion. She conquered, she planted, but with a view only to her own power. It was no part of her policy to encourage the growth of new seats of the common stock, formally or practically independent of the

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PARALLEL WITH ENGLAND.

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one great city. It was rather her object to bring the other Phoenician cities, her sisters, some certainly her elder sisters, into as great a measure of subjection or dependence on herself as she could compass. In her struggle with Rome her Phoenician sisters turned against her. She had done nothing to make herself loved either at distant Gades or at neighbouring Utica.

To this last form of dominion or supremacy, the rule of one commonwealth over other equal or older commonwealths of the same stock, the relations of the modern world supply no exact parallel.* But both England and Spain have at different times dealt, if not with sister states, yet with daughter states, too much after the manner of Carthage. The result all the world knows. One hope at least there is, that this peculiar form of national folly is not likely ever to be repeated. We cannot foretell what is to be. How long a barbaric empire may be kept, to whom it may pass if it fails to be kept, are matters at which it is dangerous even to guess. We have had, like Carthage, our War of the Mercenaries, with the difference that we have not had it at our own gates. As for the nearer question of our own flesh and blood in distant lands, the tie between the mother-land and its still dependent settlements may abide or it may be peacefully snapped. There is at least no fear of a new Bunker Hill, a new Saratoga, or a new Yorktown, between men of English blood and speech.

Among all the great powers of the past, Phoenician Carthage seems to stand alone, in being simply a memory, in having had no direct effect on the later history of the world.

*It must be remembered that in saying this we are speaking of a very modern world indeed. The relation of ruling and subject cities and lands was in full force in Switzerland till 1798, and traces of it lasted till 1830. I suppose that the condominium of Hamburg and Lübeck, over the district of Vierlande, has hardly lived through 1866; but it was in being in 1865. Middlesex perhaps did not know that it was a subject district to London; but it was till the very last changes.

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