The "Great Powers"

image 1image 2image 3image 4cropped image 1

THE "GREAT POWERS."

Heretofore the European papers, in discussing political questions, have been in the habit of referring to England, France, Russia, Austria and Prussia as the "Five Great Powers." They have hitherto regarded Europe as the sole theatre for great political events; and as each of these powers contributed to rule Europe, and Europe was said to rule the world, these were supposed to be the arbiters of the world's destinies. But the application of steam to navigation, and still more, the last great achievement of sub-oceanic telegraphing, have exploded these ideas and modes of thought. Henceforth no nation can be included among the "great powers," that has not the means of making itself heard and felt in every quarter of the globe. This Austria and Prussia cannot do. Having no fleets, the great questions of the world's politics will hereafter be decided without their presence and intervention. The "great powers" of the world, henceforth, are four—the two great free governments, England and the United States, and the two great despotisms, France and Russia. These can make themselves heard through the telegraph, and seen and felt in their naval power, everywhere, as we have just seen in China, where a very trivial and imperceptible exertion of their strength sufficed to bend a whole continent of Asiatics to their will. These four powers must henceforth give the law to the world. So long as they can agree among themselves, they can prevent the smaller "dogs of war" from slipping loose; but the diverse institutions of government which appertain to the Anglo-Saxon, as contrasted with the Gaul and the Cossack, must ultimately bring them into collision. And, in the struggle which must surely come, for the mastery of the world, between freedom and absolutism, these four nations will doubtless be the chief combatants; it is well therefore that a closer connection has been established by the great achievement of the Atlantic Telegraph, between the two great branches of the enterprising, freedom-loving Anglo Saxon race. In the triumph which they have achieved over nature and distance, and the nearer union they have brought about between each other, is an augury of the sure victory they will obtain in the cause of human progress, whenever its antagonists dare obstruct its march.

Further, the completion of this great work puts an end to all doubt, removes all difficulty from future attempts of the same kind. There is no other such ocean space necessarily to be bridged throughout the world. In every other direction we can wish the electric line to traverse, we find resting points at about a third of the distance. The calculation will become simply one of cost and profit; risk of failure is put quite aside, and with it the difficulty of raising funds for any speculation of the kind calculated to yield a due return. New kinds of cables, cheaper, and more easily laid, are already offered; and experiment with the better hope of reward will probably soon give us manufactures of this kind, which will make us smile at the labors necessary to unwind the Atlantic coils. Man is becoming master and usufructuary of the whole globe, and dominating all interposing hindrances by that science the progress of which accelerates in almost geometrical progression.