n,' says the orator, 'the system of blockade is mere suicide.'

"But a blockade may be clearly as effective a means of warfare as a
cannonade. If you can cut off your enemy from all that he gives and all
that he gets from without, you have taken the first great step in war.
Unless he can supply himself, he must presently surrender or perish. For
war is brute force. It is a process of terrible compulsion. 'Do this,'
says War, 'or you shall burn, and starve, and hunger, and be shot, and
die.'

"The point to be settled between the two combatants is, which can stand
starving and shooting longest. If one of them depends for his food upon
the sale to others of what he makes, and depends for what he makes upon
what he can get from others, it is easy enough to see, that, if the
other is self-supporting, his victory is sure, if he have only the means
to cut off supplies. England is at the mercy of a skilful and effective
blockade. No wonder her shrewdest statesman implores her to see it.

"'My dear John Bull,' says Cobden, 'an honorable member of your
Parliament, a miller and grain-merchant, estimates that the food
imported into England between September of last year and June of this
year was equal to the sustenance of between three and four millions of
people for a twelve-month; and his remark to me was, that, if that food
had not been brought from America, all the money in Lombard Street could
not have purchased it elsewhere, because elsewhere it did not exist.'

"That is the position of a nation with the hand of another upon its
throat.--Do I tire you?" ticked my watch.

"Not at all. I am listening intently, and trying to see what you are
coming to," I answered.

"We are coming, and very rapidly, to West Newton and the Waltham
Watch-Factory," ticked my companion.

"I hope so. It was where I understood you to invite me to go," said I.

"Courage, my friend! Before we get to the factory, let us understand the
reason of it. Let me finish showing you why I have a national pride in
my ancestral halls, and why I think that the American flag floats over
that building as appropriately as over Fort Adams or Monroe."

"I have always trusted you implicitly," I answered.

"Well, then, England is a nation whose mill grinds at the will of a
neighbor. Is it wonderful that so sagacious a statesman as Cobden says
that the blockade is a terrible thing for a commercial people? Take the
estimate of his authority, and imagine the supply