General Grant, in a speech in Dublin yesterday week,—a speech
which he declared to be the longest speech of his life, though the report of it occupies only a few lines,—gave Lord Beaconsfield a testimonial, as being in his opinion "one of the most far-seeing men of the age." His particular illustration of Lord Beacons- field's farsightedness was the remark made by the Prime Minister on the opening night of the December Session, that American prosperity means European prosperity. We should hardly have thought this a very good illustration. Doubtless American pros- perity contributes greatly to European prosperity, just as Euro- pean prosperity contributes greatly also to American prosperity, but we do not see why either adversity or prosperity should ap- pear in the West before it appears in the East. In the present case, the distress in Europe has been contemporaneous with dis- tress not only in America, but in India and China, and it would be difficult indeed to find any a priori reason why either the light or the shadow should strike one country before another. Was not the financial collapse in Turkey as clearly the symptom of what was at hand, as the commercial collapse in the United States ? The truth is, that spendthriftness breeds spendthriftness, just as thrift breeds thrift,—that suffering breeds suffering, just as
prosperity breeds prosperity, wherever it begins. Yet we do not wonder that General Grant is gratified by Lord Beacons- field's recognising the fact that the " hub of the Universe " is situated in the United States.
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