We can unite in a common cause, as we have, but, once that is over, we will go our own way--which way, owing to the increase of our shipping and foreign trade, is likely to become more and more antagonistic to England's.
"England has been a commercially unscrupulous nation for generations and it is idle to throw the blame for this or that act of a nation on an individual.

Such arguments might be kept up indefinitely as regards an act of any country.

A responsible nation must bear the praise or odium that attaches to any national action.

If England has experienced a change of heart it has occurred since the days of the Boer Republic--as wanton a steal as Belgium, with even less excuse, and attended with sufficient brutality for all practical purposes....
"She has done us many an ill turn gratuitously and not a single good turn that was not dictated by selfish policy or jealousy of others.
She has shown herself, up till yesterday at least, grasping and unscrupulous.

She is no worse than the others probably--possibly even better--but it would be doing our country an ill turn to persuade its citizens that England was anything less than an active, dangerous, competitor, especially in the infancy of our foreign trade.