nt in governance, and we
are now told that in 1880 Turkey framed a scheme for such,--and
pigeonholed it. At last, under unendurable conditions, spontaneous
combustion has followed. There can be no assured peace until it is
recognised practically that Christianity, by the respect which it
alone among religions inculcates for the welfare of the individual,
is an essential factor in developing in nations the faculty of
self-government, apart from which fitness to govern others does not
exist. To keep Christian peoples under the rule of a non-Christian
race, is, therefore, to perpetuate a state hopeless of reconcilement
and pregnant of sure explosion. Explosions always happen
inconveniently. _Obsta principiis_ is the only safe rule; the
application of which is not suppression of overt discontent but relief
of grievances.

The War of American Independence was no exception to the general rule
of propagation that has been noted. When our forefathers began to
agitate against the Stamp Act and the other measures that succeeded
it, they as little foresaw the spread of their action to the East and
West Indies, to the English Channel and Gibraltar, as did the British
ministry which in framing the Stamp Act struck the match from which
these consequences followed. When Benedict Arnold on Lake Champlain by
vigorous use of small means obtained a year's delay for the colonists,
he compassed the surrender of Burgoyne in 1777. The surrender of
Burgoyne, justly estimated as the decisive event of the war, was due
to Arnold's previous action, gaining the delay which is a first object
for all defence, and which to the unprepared colonists was a vital
necessity. The surrender of Burgoyne determined the intervention of
France, in 1778; the intervention of France the accession of Spain
thereto, in 1779. The war with these two Powers led to the maritime
occurrences, the interferences with neutral trade, that gave rise to
the Armed Neutrality; the concurrence of Holland in which brought war
between that country and Great Britain, in 1780. This extension of
hostilities affected not only the West Indies but the East, through
the possessions of the Dutch in both quarters and at the Cape of
Good Hope. If not the occasion of Suffren being sent to India, the
involvement of Holland in the general war had a powerful effect upon
the brilliant operations which he conducted there; as well as at, and
for, the Cape of Good Hope, then a Dutch possession, on hi