maintain" as well as to "respect and promote the integrity and independence of Persia, by an agreement with Russia embodied in correspondence extending from 1834 to 1888." And most especially and most repeatedly has Great Britain guaranteed her most ancient ally, Portugal. By the Treaties of 16th June, 1373, of 9th May, 1386, of 20th July, 1654, of 28th April, 1660, of 23rd June, 1661, and of 16th May, 1703, the strictest alliance is stipulated between the two countries, and the most complete obligation by Great Britain to defend not alone Portugal itself, but also (by the Treaty of 1661) "to defend and protect all conquests or colonies belonging to the Crown of "Portugal against all his enemies, as well future as "present"-an obligation which seems to extend even to Delagoa Bay. แ Thus, either singly or together with other Powers, Great Britain is under the most serious and solemn Treaty engagements with respect to Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey, Portugal, Greece, Muscat, Persia, and China, engagements which might at any time only be capable of being carried out by force, and for the forcible carrying out of which all her power might not be too much. In view of responsibilities so great, and of an area of liabilities so extended, it would be at least prudent to consider betimes how far it is prudent, or even safe, to forego the major portion of her main power on the seas. Whether under any circumstances Great Britain should tamely submit to be deprived of her offensive power at sea; whether under present circumstances she can safely submit to it; and whether, in the face of the undisguised hostility and the scarcely dis b guised aggressive schemes of Continental military States, she should not now resume that power which alone has ever enabled or ever can enable her to hold her own against them; these are questions which affect not less the issue of the present war in South Africa than the fate of the Empire and the future of the Kingdom. If to matters so urgent and so momentous, these imperfect and inadequate pages avail to draw some attention, their end will have been achieved. 25, LOWNDES SQUARE, 10th March, 1900. T. G. B. XIII. THE EFFECT OF THE DECLARATION OF PARIS. XIV. THE EFFECT OF THE DECLARATION OF PARIS XV. THE DECLARATION OF PARIS NOT IRREVOCABLE XVI. OBJECTIONS TO THE RESUMPTION OF MARITIME RIGHTS BY GREAT BRITAIN CONSIDERED THE DECLARATION OF PARIS OF 1856. CHAPTER I. THE DEFENCES OF GREAT BRITAIN. WE who live in Islands have not to choose what or where our defences shall be. Nature herself, which has brought to our doors the waters that wrap the earth, has taught us plainly that by the sea alone shall an enemy reach us or we him. She has taught us that the sea is the gate and the rampart of our house, and the waters our battlefield, from which none can debar us, and which while we hold them, as we may, are our sure barrier against the world. If there be methods of making war at sea so effectual that they can reach and paralyze the very heart of landlocked nations remotely seated in continents; if there be means of opposing sailors to soldiers and fleets to armies so powerful that to control the seas is to coerce the land; then indeed the British Empire may be secured against all danger from without. If not; if it be that, from any cause whatever, we are found impuissant at sea, and unable by acting there to produce any impression, then the days of the British Empire are numbered. B |