being as eighteen millions to one hundred and ninety millions. Moreover, we find that in British India the expenditure has for many years (with the exception of 1866, 1871, and 1872) largely exceeded the revenue, while there has been invariably in Java an annual surplus, amounting in 1864 to 35,000,000 guilders. The surplus has indeed dwindled considerably of late, but this diminution is due, not to any failure in the revenues of Java, which are larger than they were ten years ago, but to the increased cost of governing and protecting an empire which has grown in area with rapidity too great for the due development of its resources. The dependencies of Java in the East Indies have twelve times her area, and only one-third of her population. Java is now the queen of the archipelago, but she has not a monopoly of fertile soil, nor of mineral wealth, in which last particular she is far surpassed by other islands. When the resources of the vast islands of Borneo, Sumatra, and New Guinea have been developed even partially, Java may lose her exalted pre-eminence, but she will also be relieved from her present burden of paying for the administration of poorer neighbors.
Thus in every detail except Indian finance, the parallel holds good between the two nations, English and Dutch, so closely related in blood and language, so long the allied champions of civil and religious liberty, so long also maritime and commercial rivals, and now the only European States ruling over great empires within the tropics. The United Kingdom has far outstripped the United Provinces in population and power, and the two countries have long ago ceased to be rivals; but Holland continues to play her part bravely on the world's stage, and in proportion to her natural resources administers possessions and bears burdens fully equal to those of England. The ease with which she does both (two-thirds of her debt are held at the rate of 2.5 per cent.) shows still superabundant energy and credit, and leaves little sting in the taunt sometimes directed against England, that she is tending to become a second Holland. The Dutch have succeeded after an arduous struggle in establishing their complete supremacy in the island of Sumatra, larger than the United Kingdom or Italy, where Atjeh (Acheen) was the last remaining native state of importance. This is not an occasion, however, for raising the much-abused cry of "British interests in danger." Great Britain can feel neither alarm nor jealousy at the successful progress of the Netherlands, a smaller epitome of herself. We have dealt hard measure to the Dutch upon a good many occasions in history, and even the recent annexation of the Transvaal republic has been to them a somewhat distasteful transaction, as placing a community of Dutch origin under a foreign flag. But the independence of the Netherlands is to Great Britain a matter of the deepest interest, and prosperous as the Belgian kingdom undoubtedly is, its establishment as a separate State may be regretted on the ground that it has rendered more difficult the future maintenance of that independence. If the great manufacturing and coal-producing provinces of Belgium were now able to share the benefits and the burdens of colonial empire with their northern neighbors, a great additional security against foreign aggression would be enjoyed by all, and the United Netherlands would be a power capable of making its independence respected and its alliance desired.
It is naturally the wish of Englishmen that the constitutional states of Europe should not be swallowed up by the great military powers, and it is clearly to their interest that the splendid maritime resources of the Scandinavian countries or of the Netherlands should not pass into the hands of any nation likely to become a maritime rival. Upon this point Englishmen are sensitive to a degree, which is justified by the fact that the security of the British islands and the maintenance of our colonial empire alike depend upon our maritime supremacy, and would not long survive its decay. The nation which for the time being appears to menace this supremacy is certain to be regarded as our "natural enemy," whether it be Spain, Holland, France, or Russia, and the time may not be far distant when even Germany will be so regarded. Certainly a Pan-Teutonic empire extending from the Little Belt to the Adriatic, and possessing the shores of the Baltic and the North Sea from Dantzig to Antwerp, is a more formidable vision of the future, and one more capable of realization, than any conjured up by those whose nightmare is Panslavism. The German provinces of Austria gravitate willingly towards the united fatherland; but the same cannot be said of the Teutonic Netherlands, proud of their distinctive dialect and independent traditions. Still, many Netherlanders apprehend that absorption in the Germanic empire will be their ultimate fate. Such an event would confer upon a
