All such phases pass, however, as does every human thing.  Increase of production—­the idol of the economist—­sought fresh markets, as might have been predicted.  The increase of home consumption, through increased ease of living, increased wealth, increased population, did not keep up with the increase of forth-putting and the facility of distribution afforded by steam.  In the middle of the century China and Japan were forced out of the seclusion of ages, and were compelled, for commercial purposes at least, to enter into relations with the European communities, to buy and to sell with them.  Serious attempts, on any extensive scale, to acquire new political possessions abroad largely ceased.  Commerce only sought new footholds, sure that, given the inch, she in the end would have the ell.  Moreover, the growth of the United States in population and resources, and the development of the British Australian colonies, contributed to meet the demand, of which the opening of China and Japan was only a single indication.  That opening, therefore, was rather an incident of the general industrial development which followed upon the improvement of mechanical processes and the multiplication of communications.

Thus the century passed its meridian, and began to decline towards its close.  There were wars and there were rumors of wars in the countries of European civilization.  Dynasties rose and fell, and nations shifted their places in the scale of political importance, as old-time boys in school went up and down; but, withal, the main characteristic abode, and has become more and more the dominant prepossession of the statesmen who reached their prime at or soon after the times when the century itself culminated.  The maintenance of a status quo, for purely utilitarian reasons of an economical character, has gradually become an ideal—­the quieta non movere of Sir Robert Walpole.  The ideal is respectable, certainly; in view of the concert of the powers, in the interest of their own repose, to coerce Greece and the Cretans, we may perhaps refrain from calling it noble.  The question remains, how long can it continue respectable in the sense of being practicable of realization,—­a rational possibility, not an idle dream?  Many are now found to say—­and among them some of the most bitter of the advocates of universal peace, who are among the bitterest of modern disputants—­that when the Czar Nicholas proposed to move the quiet things, half a century ago, and to reconstruct the political map of southeastern Europe in the interest of well-founded quiet, it was he that showed the idealism of rational statesmanship,—­the only truly practical statesmanship,—­while the defenders of the status quo evinced the crude instincts of the mere time-serving politician.  That the latter did not insure quiet, even the quiet of desolation, in those unhappy regions, we have yearly evidence.  How far is it now a practicable object, among the