in some sort of federal council or parliament, if Europe would keep pace with America in the advance towards universal law and order.  All will admit that such a state of things is a great desideratum:  let us see if it is really quite so utopian as it may seem at the first glance.  No doubt the lord who dwelt in Haddon Hall in the fifteenth century would have thought it very absurd if you had told him that within four hundred years it would not be necessary for country gentlemen to live in great stone dungeons with little cross-barred windows and loopholes from which to shoot at people going by.  Yet to-day a country gentleman in some parts of Massachusetts may sleep securely without locking his front-door.  We have not yet done away with robbery and murder, but we have at least made private warfare illegal; we have arrayed public opinion against it to such an extent that the police-court usually makes short shrift for the misguided man who tries to wreak vengeance on his enemy.  Is it too much to hope that by and by we may similarly put public warfare under the ban?  I think not.  Already in America, as wre have seen, it has become customary to deal with questions between states just as we would deal with questions between individuals.  This we have seen to be the real purport of American federalism.  To have established such a system ovrer one great continent is to have made a very good beginning towards establishing it over the world.  To establish such a system in Europe will no doubt be difficult, for here we have to deal with an immense complication of prejudices, intensified by linguistic and ethnological differences.  Nevertheless the pacific pressure exerted upon Europe by America is becoming so great that it will doubtless before long overcome all these obstacles.  I refer to the industrial competition between the old and the new worlds, which has become so conspicuous within the last ten years.  Agriculturally Minnesota, Nebraska, and Kansas are already formidable competitors with England, France, and Germany; but this is but the beginning.  It is but the first spray from the tremendous wave of economic competition that is gathering in the Mississippi valley.  By and by, when our shameful tariff—­falsely called “protective”—­shall have been done away with, and our manufacturers shall produce superior articles at less cost of raw material, we shall begin to compete with European countries in all the markets of the world; and the competition in manufactures will become as keen as it is now beginning to be in agriculture.  This time will not be long in coming, for our tariff-system has already begun to be discussed, and in the light of our present knowledge discussion means its doom.  Born of crass ignorance and self-defeating greed, it cannot bear the light.  When this curse to American labour—­scarcely less blighting than the; curse of negro slavery—­shall have been once removed, the economic pressure exerted upon Europe by the United States will soon become very