And then, however disguised, there is in the heart of France an intense naval rivalry of England.  Though the stern logic of events has been against her more than once, she does not accept the verdict.  She means to revise it with a strong hand.  But she must have a navy, and a navy cannot exhibit its highest vigor, unless it have a just foundation in an energetic, wide-ranging commerce.  And such a commerce cannot exist except it have its depots and its agencies, its outlets and its markets, everywhere.  Above all, we are to seek the source of this new colonial ambition in the character and purposes of that singular man who controls the destinies of France.  Not even his enemies would now question his ability.  The power he wields in Europe, the impression he has stamped upon its policy, the skill with which he has made even his foes minister to his greatness, all bear witness to it.  But no one can study him in the light of the past and not see that his is no ordinary ambition.  To be the ruler of one kingdom does not fill out its measure.  To be the arbiter of the fortunes of states, the genius who shall change the current of affairs and shape the destiny of the future,—­to exercise a power in every part of the globe, and to have a name familiar in every land and beneath every sun,—­this is his ambition.  No wonder that under such a ruler France has embarked in a career of colonial aggrandizement whose limit no one can foresee.  The same hand which curbed the despot of the North, and made the fair vision of Italian unity a solid reality, may well think to place a puppet king on the throne of the Aztecs, or to carve rich provinces out of Farther India.

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France made her first practical essay in colonization by her conquest of Algiers.  A Dey once said to an English consul, “The Algerines are a company of rogues, and I am their captain.”  The definition cannot be improved.  That such a power should have been permitted to exist and ravage is one of the anomalies of modern history.  Yet within the memory of living men this hoard of pirates flaunted its barbarism in the face of the civilization of the nineteenth century.  But in 1830 the Dey filled the cup of wrath to the brim.  He inflicted upon the French consul, in full levee, the gross insult of a blow in the face.  The expedition sent to revenge the insult showed upon what a hollow foundation this savage power rested.  The army landed without opposition.  In five days it swept before it in hopeless rout the wreck of the Algerine forces.  In three weeks it breached and captured the corsair’s strongholds.  The history of the French occupation of Algeria is a tale of unceasing martial exploits, by which France has extended her empire six hundred miles along the shores of the Mediterranean, and inland fifty miles,—­two hundred miles, according, we had almost said, to the position of the last Arab or Kabyle raid and insurrection.