28 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

/other, upon the ground, that|the undertaking, if it < proved successful, was deemed likely to deal a deaths' blow to the commercial supremacy of England. / Because the republic of Venice had been deprived of her caravan traffic with the Far East, owing to the discovery of the Cape route to India, it was deemed to be certain that England would lose her trade with the kingdoms of Cathay if ever a ship canal was opened between the. Red Sea and the Mediterranean. In this case, I Marseilles and Genoa would become, it was thought, the natural ports for merchandise passing to and fro between Europe and the Far East. This expectation has been disappointed for the time, owing to the extraordinary energy and enterprise of the British manufacturers and shipowners, who, as soon as the Canal was shown to be the shortest route for the East, availed themselves of its advantages in such a manner as to supply three-fourths at least of the tonnage which passes by the Canal. J How long this state of things can endure, how long a vast mass of the world's produce will continue to be brought to the British islands, manufactured there by British industry, and then exported again in manufactured form to every quarter of the globe, is a question to which it is very difficult to supply an answer. This much, however, may be said, that if ever the time should come when the historians of the future may be called upon to explain the story of the decline and fall of British commerce, one of the explanations which will be offered will undoubtedly be the revolution