narrow rule of the Spaniards.  The fact is instructive, for the conditions to-day are substantially the same as those of a century ago.  Possession still vests in states and races which have not attained yet the faculty of developing by themselves the advantages conferred by nature; and control will abide still with those whose ships, whose capital, whose traders support the industrial system of the region, provided these are backed by a naval force adequate to the demands of the military situation, rightly understood.  To any foreign state, control at the Central American Isthmus means naval control, naval predominance, to which tenure of the land is at best but a convenient incident.

Such, in brief, was the general tendency of events until the time when the Spanish colonial empire began to break up, in 1808-10, and the industrial system of the West India islands to succumb under the approaching abolition of slavery.  The concurrence of these two decisive incidents, and the confusion which ensued in the political and economical conditions, rapidly reduced the Isthmus and its approaches to an insignificance from which the islands have not yet recovered.  The Isthmus is partially restored.  Its importance, however, depends upon causes more permanent, in the natural order of things, than does that of the islands, which, under existing circumstances, and under any circumstances that can be foreseen as yet, derive their consequence chiefly from the effect which may be exerted from them upon the tenure of the Isthmus.  Hence the latter, after a period of comparative obscurity, again emerged into notice as a vital political factor, when the spread of the United States to the Pacific raised the question of rapid and secure communication between our two great seaboards.  The Mexican War, the acquisition of California, the discovery of gold, and the mad rush to the diggings which followed, hastened, but by no means originated, the necessity for a settlement of the intricate problems involved, in which the United States, from its positions on the two seas, has the predominant interest.  But, though predominant, ours is not the sole interest; though less vital, those of other foreign states are great and consequential; and, accordingly, no settlement can be considered to constitute an equilibrium, much less a finality, which does not effect our preponderating influence, and at the same time insure the natural rights of other peoples.  So far as the logical distinction between commercial and political will hold, it may be said that our interest is both commercial and political, that of other states almost wholly commercial.